Is it the fate of thou, man, to succumb, which never falters and never halts, in fervor and lust? Is it wrong to be oppressed by beauty in a moment of inability to contain nature? Why should it be so, if it is, and how does one reverse the cause and effect of the wrongdoing?

To me, as a man, a human, as an inhuman, an immortal; what counts as wrong if it doesn’t bother my morality? In the first place, what force reckons on morals if not the weak, and since I am not of the weak, why should I follow the reason of ethics? For my conscience, perhaps an example, but this heart endured the slaughter of hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hence is it not wrong to assume I have a conscience? If it is, then what do I try to pleasure by being virtuous?

My mind. That is, of course, what spouts these justifications, what judges these statements, and what deems most of these important. It is the mind that decides, even, the course of the three mentioned before, and it is what lets me, and you, and others, to conclude why we follow ethics in the first place. Or why we don’t-

But the question is, why do you and I even bother to consider following an unspoken set of rules designed to defend the integrity of the weak?

The answer is...

Quan’s finger halted above the air, next to the marks of engraved Qi awaiting their process of imbuing themselves into the paper to end. The answer, it seemed, was too hard for him to find. Quan slightly tugged at his meridians with his mind, it was akin to letting loose a mouthful of water from the lips, and the transmission of Qi stopped. The flickering blue at the tip of his finger disappeared and the glistening words on the yellowish scroll faded. Just as they turned into blurrier letters, Quan waved his finger and the whole text turned transparent. This wasn’t erasure, and he could do that indeed, but this was a simple way of hiding the contents. Unless his own Qi aura acted, no one below his cultivation could peer into it.

Well, there was a certain individual that could look into it, but he doubted the Emperor was curious enough to do that.

Shallow- Quan leaned back on the wooden chair, his head rested on the toad shaped top, and his eyes looked up at the narrow ceiling. Too shallow. I wonder why?

His gaze reflected the white glow of the Qi crystal, embedded in the center of the roofing and gleaming like a golden prism. It was designed so that the excess Solar Qi from above could be released late into the night if the guest was willing to do so, and in some cases could even help with cultivation.

With a frown embed on his face, Quan stood up and walked to his left. Past the table in front of him and the grand bedding, next to it pieces of furniture; a gold inscribed cabinet to hold his tools and herbs, a cupboard made of jade with transparent glass behind him-and inside it a myriad of pills and exotic plants- then a wardrobe with golden linings to hold his robes next to the door; beyond them all was a huge window, with polished wood and removable curtains. He came before the crimson blind and pulled it open, then moved aside the wooden handles of the window.

The twinkling moon greeted him first, then the gales of the midnight pushed their way in with force. His robes, a brighter shade of the curtains, flipped in sync, and in response he took a deep breath to savor the fresh watered earth. The scent came from the garden underneath his living quarters, and although there were also a sizable gathering of distinct plants- examples would be Nine-leaved Clovers, Molten Grass, Lunar Orchids, Lunar Moon Daisies, and more Yin related herbs- their fragrance couldn’t disturb the dominating aura of the soil. One could catch upon their spicy whiff with a nose sharp enough, if one had it.

Quan gazed further into the horizon and soon pierced through the material realm- or simply opened his third eye. The flowers, the garden, the flickering street lamps in the distance; all disappeared and left their place to the mass gathering of bright, gloomy, and dancing Lunar Qi. Quan waved his hand, his meridians went back to work, and with the suction force of his meridians a cluster of them steered to his palm. Like a vacuum the Lunar Qi started revolving around his forearm, then Quan clenched his hand.

The suction force turned into an overbearing aura of compression, a gravitational force that surrounded from all sides. The Qi bent and bent, silent cackling and breaking of the Lunar Qi created fluctuations that could be felt dozens of meters away. A few seconds after the process stopped and Quan opened his palm. On the callouses stood a piece of crystal, like a dome on top of a square, a half bead. The emissions of power said it clearly- it was a piece of Lunar Crystal to aid in cultivation. A quarter of its piece would go for four soulstones in a normal store, a whole would reach as high as twenty-five.

With a slight smile on his face, Quan flicked his sleeve and sent the Lunar Crystal into the spatial pouch in the pocket of his robe, next to almost eight hundred other Lunar Crystals.

Two-thousand seven hundred and thirty-three left...

*********

There were two, bumpy things squeezing him between. One was soft, tender, and the other was quite hard. They were also quite big, almost as big as him, so they were also scary to some extent. But there was a warmth passing to him as well, a kind he loved very much.

But since he was awake, he didn’t need to stay here any longer.

He turned face-first to the ground, then pushed himself up with his wobbly arms. His knees were weak, but the will to walk was strong. He toppled over the soft pillow once, and the big, soft and hard arms around him tried to squeeze him in their warmth. But he didn’t want to. With another push, he evaded the vicious attack and stood up for a moment, only to fall on his butt again. But he escaped from them.

Giggling, he tried to stand up again. This time, he grabbed the sides of the hard one’s bottom and climbed up, then his feet planted on the ground with a great amount of confidence. Though shaking, his legs didn’t give in and he took a step. Then another, and another. With some twenty-or some more, he left the sleeping room and got into the wide area of the place they lived in. There was a long, cracked thing spiraling. And at its right stood a man- with a naked torso like him, but also carrying some weird things on a belt around his waist.

He became vigilant in a moment and rushed to the long white thing, all the while enduring the cold in his little feet. His efforts paid off as he snuck behind the long white thing and peeked at the man- and he was looking at him. There was a smile on his face.

He took a step back, but the man didn’t approach him. The man put his finger on his lip upwards, then made a ‘’Shhhhhh-’’ sound.

‘’Shhhhhh-’’ He made as well, and the man moved towards the big long gates leading to the outside. He came before them, pulled the handles and opened them forth with a squeak. He feared those two would wake up at the sound, and hurriedly turned to look back with worry, but it seemed they didn’t hear it. Smiling in satisfaction, he walked down the gates and climbed down the stairs, then sat on the dirt next to the temple.

His gaze sparkled as he watched the road, awaiting something. Then they came.

He saw four red things, bigger than him, running towards him with full speed. Clouds of dust rose behind them as they came, and stumbled and rolled towards him. They grunted and giggled with their pointy mouths, inside them sharp fangs, and once they stopped in front of him they started circling him. One left his side and passed the stairs to get near the man with bare torso, then slumped next to his sitting figure.

‘’Haoren!’’

The silhouette of a figure appeared on the horizon, and the faint body of a deer carried on his back. He, Haoren, laughed and waved his hand.

‘’Uncle!’’

*********

Ubel dropped the carcass of the deer next to the stairs and opened his arms wide. The little Haoren escaped the encirclement of the three sisters; Yihuli, Erhuli, Sanhuli, and leaped towards him. Or more like tried to, as he tripped on his own feet. Ubel took a step forward and caught the boy from under his arms, then lifted him up with a ‘’Heeey-’’

‘’Uncle-’’ Haoren said and tried to touch his nose and flailed them around his forehead, so Ubel slightly raised him higher into the air.

‘’Brother, it should be brother,’’ Ubel said and made a slight frown.

‘’Uncle, meal?’’ Haoren seemed oblivious to his acting, Ubel sighed in response.

‘’Yes, yes- I brought the meal for Haoren!’’ Ubel made a wide smile and gave a small hug to the boy, and once he felt the small hands reaching for his nose he put him on the ground at lightning speed. ‘’Brother is going to prepare the meal, alright? Play with Yihuli and her sisters.’’

‘’Yihuli! Erhuli! Sanhuli!’’ Haoren shouted with all his might, then lunged towards the three foxes running in circles. The three yelped and leaped out of the way, then started running left and right. Haoren chased after them with the fury of a two-year-old, which was nothing too serious.

‘’Senior Meng-’’ Ubel came before Meng Liu and clasped his hands. ‘’Are the others awake?’’

‘’Good morning-’’ Meng Liu smiled, at the same time on his palm one of the skulls he carried on his waist revolved like a ball. ‘’Hao is out at Rivrit to meet with an informant, Hong should be around the back. Those two- you know how they are.’’

Ubel nodded. ‘’Sound sleepers, then may I trouble you to prepare the fire?’’

‘’No need to ask, it’s as usual, isn’t it?’’ Meng Liu patted Sihuli’s head, the brother of the four foxes opened his eyes to look at them. Meng Liu smiled at him, then took Sihuli off his knee and stood up. After letting out a slight grunt, Sihuli went to support Haoren against his sisters in the battle of chase- so Ubel and Meng Liu got on to work.

Ubel came before the carcass and pulled it on his shoulders again, then followed Meng Liu a bit further away from the playing children. They stopped a dozen meters away and Meng Liu waved his hand at the clearing of grass and ash- they had been using this place to prepare for some months. Dust and dirt rose from the ground with a gust of wind, then with another wave of his hand Meng Liu created a screen of Qi to put the carcass.

Ubel raised his hand as Meng Liu prepared, a faint blue traveled between his fingers, and once it turned almost corporeal he slapped the deer with full force.

The blue Qi aura blasted with a boom and sent tremors shaking through the deer, yet it didn’t seem to get wounded in the slightest. Yet, from its eyes and mouth pools of blood flooded out to the grayed grass. The stream of crimson stopped a few seconds after, then Ubel slapped a second time. Blue Qi exploded like a cloud of dust and the deer’s body shook again, this time all kinds of dirt and dust on its skin shot off into the air.

Meng Liu put his index and middle fingers together at response and pointed at the carcass, then made a hand seal. His spectral Qi moved and created another gust of wind that moved forth and sent the dirtied air away. Now that they were done, Ubel laid the cleaned carcass on the screen Meng Liu created and put his hands together. Meng Liu, in the meantime, pointed his index finger at the pit on the grass and shot his Qi. A flickering ember appeared on the tip of his clean nails, then shot forth.

The ember floated down and touched the ground, and with a small tremor burst into flames of high temperature, enough to make them both sweat. Ubel watched for a moment as Meng Liu contained the flames, then moved his hand. The ambient Qi rushed at his hand, revolved around it, then with his will turned into a corporeal dagger. A flick of his wrist later the tip plunged into the skin and remained right before the flesh, blinding the edge was a drop of blood.

He pushed the dagger forward, the skin tore off, and started skinning the whole deer.

*********

Rivrit was a town to the east of Kıykan, surrounded by triplet hills at all sides and separated by a river- River Lont- from the rest of the Southern Haishen. The river between them flowed from the Pierced Mountains at the southeast and ended at the Lont Sea- shore region of the Grand Ocean, which provided many fertile lands to do farming. And as a result, to the town’s north, following down the path leading Denizage, was founded three farm households containing a large swath of the land next to the river. Yet, these folks built their estates at the border of Orabura Forest for reasons unknown. These families also ran businesses focusing on timber and lumber to cover their original intention, in Orabura obviously, and supplied to the rest of the Haishen villages and towns and cities.

This meant they had both a sizeable wealth to sustain and improve their line of work and a rather extensive network of contacts to draw support or influence from- both of which would prove quite helpful to The Raven and their upcoming travel to the Cindersnow City. The premise was, as one could deem, if they had the chance to gain first the interest, then the goodwill of one of these families. But with some interference by The Raven, then a little bit of spicy blackmailing by Hao Tou, there wasn’t much trouble left to encounter.

One example of the aforementioned benefits would be the informant sitting across him inside the lightless room, tapping on the table with a milky white finger. The man or woman, draped in a shadowy cloak and bound by dark red bandages all over his/her body, paid a great deal of attention to not even show a piece of his/her facial or physical features- except the hand. Though Hao Tou could imagine the other side being a man with how plump and coarse the fingers were.

‘’For first-’’ The supposed man spoke- but he, as per custom by now, hid his voice with an artifact, hence it came off like a claw scraped against a metal plate. ‘’Road Boty has quite an influx of Shuangguang scouts going back and forth and, in contrast, there are outposts situated across the old Han borders.’’

‘’That, I can infer myself. Is there anything I don’t know yet?’’

‘’You ask every week, Senior Yinying, and information doesn’t come in a flash-’’ Then the informant waved his hand in rejection. ‘’-or it does, but assessing the truthfulness, considering its worth, and delivering it in an organized manner takes time.’’

‘’Go on, then-’’ Hao Tou leaned back on the chair and crossed his legs. The motion caused the armor beneath his robes to jangle. ‘’If you finished making excuses.’’

The informant stood silent for a moment, took a deep breath, then exhaled.

‘’The detections are skin-tight, if I say in folk speech-’’ He said, ‘’They use civilian talismans in every check-point, if you don’t know, and there are some travel books on the market. Recently released, contains half the map of the North Haishen and Middle Han.’’

‘’Those books you trace your travel?’’

‘’Yes, past the Tashradag Mountain they also require you to carry one of those- each traveler is literally forced to buy one before.’’

‘’Quite flimsy,’’

‘’A waste of resources, indeed,’’ Informant also nodded, ‘’But to be safe, people are going to buy it anyways. It isn’t popular among traders, though.’’

‘’That is understandable,’’ No trader would want people to learn of their half-private routes or shortcuts, especially in the region of a brewing storm called Northern Triad. There wasn't any business to do at the south anyway, for Shaowei market was not so profitable and the war between Shamo and Shuangguang left the land bereft of small and middle scale merchants. Those that supplied food and arms skyrocketed, though, and with the tension between Shuangguang and Cindersnow they would, as expected, put up resistance to such regulations.

‘’Anything else?’’ Hao Tou asked.

‘’This one unconfirmed- from two weeks ago,’’ Informant said and raised two fingers, ‘’But they say someone crushed down half of the Mountain Of Emperors.’’

‘’Hmph-’’ Hao Tou pushed himself up the chair to turn back to the door at the other side and snorted, ‘’Who can even destroy a mountain, let alone that humongous mountain range?’’

‘’Don’t come to me with empty rumors again.’’

He flung the door open and sunlight sprayed inside the same instant, then with a step he left.

I have to take note of that...