Finding the gang’s base of operations had been pretty easy, all things considered. Jia’s memories served her well, despite how long it had been since she’d last prowled the streets of Yangye. Jia had never been privy to the places where the gang conducted their business, but that hadn’t stopped her from wondering exactly where the goods she stole for them ended up. Her curiosity had gotten the better of her as a child, and she’d once followed the man responsible for collecting their take to find out. She didn’t remember the exact building, but she knew that it was somewhere in the red light district within the city walls, and it wasn’t too hard to track people leaving the gang-run brothel without the lingering smell of sex and cheap perfume.

There were a few false starts—some simply returned to their homes to sleep for the night, while others had their own clandestine meetings in places that Jia knew weren’t the place she was looking for. Time was on her side, however, and Yoshika was capable of tracking a dozen such people at once through her domain anywhere within the district. Eventually, they found their mark. A shifty-looking half spirit man carrying a lockbox—the contents of which were warded against detection—left the brothel, and Yoshika tracked him to a tall but otherwise unremarkable building. By all appearances it was just a regular apartment building, but Yoshika’s domain was unable to pierce the formations to see beyond the facade.

“That’s it.”

Ja Yun jumped, startled by Yoshika’s sudden declaration. They’d been standing in a dark alley, and Yoshika had been meditating silently for hours, focused on her tracking.

“Ancestors, don’t do that. You scared the crap out of me. I don’t mind the creepy twin thing but, a bit of warning would be nice.”

Jia put her hands together and bowed apologetically.

“Sorry about that! Anyway, we found it—I think. I’m almost certain it’s the right place.”

“Really? Just like that?”

Eui scoffed.

“Jia’s seen the place before. If her childhood memories weren’t so shit, we could have just gone straight there.”

Jia rolled her eyes and bumped Eui with her hip as they made their way out of the alley.

“Well excuse me for not having a perfect memory before I even awakened. I’ll be able to recognize the place if we see it, but even if I didn’t remember the place at all, I’m pretty sure this is it. It’s too suspicious.”

The three of them made their way through the streets unimpeded. The red light district never slept, but those who did their business at night still eyed the mages warily and gave them a wide berth. As they approached the building, Jia felt the memories coming back to her. She’d been caught following the gangster, and he’d given her a swift beating before sending her back home to the orphanage—where she’d been denied dinner for two days as punishment. Strangely, she remembered the denied rations much more strongly than the beating.

Ja Yun scratched her head and sighed.

“So this is it then? What’s the plan? We just go in and start knocking heads together? Ancestors, this is such a bad idea.”

Eui snickered.

“Heh, sounds like a solid plan to me. Either Boss Lee is there and we kick his ass here and now, or he’s not and we find someone who knows where he is. Easy.”

Ja Yun grimaced, but didn’t try to argue. Jia opened her mouth to reassure their unwilling accomplice, when she heard an unexpected voice from within her robes.

“Miss Jia! Yoshika! Can you hear me? Ancestors, please tell me you haven’t tampered with that stone...”

Jia’s eyes widened with recognition and she quickly cast a privacy spell to mute their conversation to any eavesdroppers—one of the few she could do without a talisman. She reached into her robe and took out the speaking stone—the same one Eunae had left her, which had been utterly silent for the last two years.

“Dae!? Is that you? What happened? Are you alright? Where are you?”

“Yes! Miss Jia, it’s me. I’m fine! And I’m very glad that you are well. I’m nearby, actually. Perhaps you can come visit in person?”

Jia paused—this was odd. Why would Dae be contacting her now of all times, in the middle of the night, right before she was about to raid the headquarters of the gang that had made her childhood years so miserable?

“Dae, what’s going on? Why didn’t you come see us earlier if you were in the city? How come you didn’t contact us sooner with the speaking stone?”

“We tried! For years, we tried, but the distance was too great. Princess Seong left a stone with me while I went out for field work just in case—I’m glad she did! Listen, I’d like to explain things, but first I need you to get away from that building before you ruin everything.”

Jia’s expression darkened.

“What do you mean?”

There was a long pause before Dae’s voice came through the stone again.

“I-I’ll explain soon, hehe. Please, Miss Jia, I know it’s been a long time, but trust me. You know I wouldn’t ask this of you if it wasn’t important.”

Jia frowned down at the faintly glowing piece of jade for a moment before relenting with a sigh.

“Oh, fine! Where are you now?”

Dae’s voice was filled with relief as he responded.

“Oh thank the ancestors. I think I saw you cast a privacy spell—was that talismanless casting? Very impressive!”

“Yeah it took a lot of—wait, you can see us!?”

“Second building on the left from where you’re standing, third storey up.”

Jia squinted up at the building in question, but didn’t see anything. She swept her domain across it, but didn’t sense anything out of the ordinary—certainly not a third stage mage like Dae hiding inside.

“Uh, no? You’re not there.”

Dae’s response was dripping with so much excited pride that from anyone else it might have sounded smug.

“Hehe, it’s warded! A formation inspired by you, in fact! Anyway, get out of the street and come up to meet us. Discreetly, please—you stand out like a sore thumb down there.”

‘Us?’ Jia wondered who else might be with him, but figured she’d find out soon enough. She glanced around to find that the three mages standing in the middle of the street speaking silently into a magical rock had in fact drawn quite a bit of attention.

“Alright, we’ll be there in a moment. Come on, Ja Yun.”

The three women ducked into a dark alleyway and with an application of their Valley of Illusory Mists technique, they masked their presence with an illusion that would make mortal attention slide right past them—not enough to survive the scrutiny of any cultivators, but an efficient way to avoid attention at night. She was a little ashamed at not having thought of it sooner. Thus hidden, Jia led them into the building that Dae had indicated.

For the first time, Jia experienced evidence of a class of people she had never realized existed. In her mind, it had always been that wealthy people lived inside the walls, and the poor lived outside of them. The truth was more complicated—there existed a class of people unique to Goryeo’s strange, crowded cities. While some people could live quite comfortably in the ‘upper echelons’ of the shanty towns, such as they were, others opted to trade in everything they had for a chance to live inside the walls. But not everybody who lived inside the walls thrived there—for the first time, Jia realized that there were poor people inside the city as well.

In hindsight, it had been silly to assume otherwise. She had even seen Lee Jung’s shack, but in her mind she had seen it as a little piece of the slums, transplanted inside the city for the convenience of the brothel masters and mistresses. The apartment building she found herself in shattered that illusion entirely. The place was filthy, poorly maintained, and she could sense vermin everywhere. This was a place for the people who succeeded outside the walls, but failed once they got in. What was Dae doing here?

Jia spread out her domain as she ascended the stairs to the third floor. The building was created with strict utilitarian purpose—a cold, lifeless architecture designed to cram as many people into the limited space as possible with little regard for beauty or comfort. The tiny apartments were all completely identical, and many were vacant except for the rats and bugs. At the end of the third floor hallway, one room stood out under the careful scrutiny of her domain. An empty apartment, identical to the ones around it—except for a complete lack of vermin. It’s not something she would have noticed if she hadn’t known to look, and even then it was quite subtle. Jia approached the door to the apartment and knocked.

There was no response, and for a horribly embarrassing moment, Jia began to worry that she’d gotten it wrong and the apartment really was empty. The door opened in total silence, revealing a surprised looking Dae.

“Wha—Miss Jia, I was just about to come meet you. How did you...?”

Dae let the question trail off as Jia peered into the room behind him. She saw the illusion of a perfectly empty apartment, confirmed by what she sensed within her domain, but something just felt off.

“You said it was warded, right? This room is too empty. I don’t know how you fooled the senses of my domain, but the place still feels wrong. No rats, no bugs—it’s too strange for there to be nothing in here.”

“Hehe, no fooling you, I suppose.”

Jia felt nostalgic at the sight of Dae’s nervous chuckle—the way his shoulders fell and he scratched the back of his head—familiar gestures she didn’t even realize she’d missed. Dae had changed a bit since last she’d seen him. He was taller, a bit more confident in his body language—for all that he was still a bit awkward—and had apparently stopped wearing his spectacles at some point. His tail wagged happily at the sight of her.

Eui snorted and rolled her eyes.

“Are you really going to flirt with my girlfriend right in front of me? The first thing after two years? Don’t tell me you’re still infatuated—how shameless can you be?”

Dae blushed at the accusations despite Eui’s playful smirk and teasing tone indicating that she hadn’t taken any real offense.

“Are you going to make us stand here in the hallway? Out of the way.”

Eui shouldered past Dae, who stumbled back before catching himself and belatedly making a gesture of invitation.

“S-sorry! Please, come in.”

The illusion broke as they crossed the threshold of the apartment, revealing the true contents to both Jia’s physical and metaphysical perceptions. The apartment consisted only of a single room, with only a small mana-powered stove, a single table with some cushions, and a futon for furniture. The furniture had been piled into a corner to make room for the large, dizzyingly complex formation taking up most of the floor. Some of the floor space had been reclaimed by a few cushions, upon which Jia saw a pair of unexpected but familiar faces.

Harada Jun and Ishihara Nao stood and bowed in greeting. Harada was a plain looking Yamato man with short brown hair and matching eyes, and Jia knew that his plain appearance belied his combat ability. Ishihara was a somewhat effeminate looking man with dark hair and eyes—one of a small number of other unified cultivators that had learned Jia and Eui’s method. His domain was vaguely reminiscent of Yan Yue’s, owing to the fact that they both practiced the same signature technique. But where hers gave the impression of a moon lighting up the night, carrying her hopes and dreams—Ishihara’s domain wielded darkness as a shroud, exemplifying the idea of a fear of the unknown.

Harada Jun grinned at Jia as she greeted him with a small bow.

“You saw through it, didn’t you? Ishihara, pay up!”

Ishihara shook his head and sighed.

“I never agreed to your silly bet, Jun. Miss Lee, Miss An, it’s good to see you again. I’m glad you’re well. I trust you will keep our presence here a secret from Lady Hayakawa? I don’t think she’d appreciate having a pair of deserters right under her nose.”

Eui shrugged dismissively as she settled for leaning on a wall for lack of any other furniture to sit on.

“Sure, doesn’t matter to us. How about you, Ja Yun?”

Ja Yun edged her way delicately into the room, casting about as if some beast was going to jump out of the darkness at her, she jumped a bit at the sound of her own name.

“Wh—me? I’m pretty sure that would count as spying against my own country and I’m in enough trouble as it is. No, your secret is safe with me.”

Jia busied herself with examining the formation on the floor while the others introduced themselves. It was a complex array of interweaving circles and symbols, the likes of which she’d only seen in the barrier formation that Do Hye had once used to prevent her heavenly tribulation from destroying her house—the same one she’d been studying to no avail for the last two years.

“Not bad, eh?”

Dae’s voice snapped Jia’s attention away from the formation, and she realized that everyone else had already finished with their introductions. She stood up straight and met Dae’s eyes, returning her thoughts to the present.

“It can wait. What I want to know first is what’s going on here. I assume you know why I’m here, but what the hell are you doing here?”