The Argent Peak Sect had long vanished behind them. More than a year of battles, trials and effort, gone like the sun sinking below the horizon. It was almost hard to believe that so much had happened in so short a time. Her heart still burned with miserable indignation at Han Jian’s total rejection, nearly as potent as the memory of the searing pain that had come with accepting heavenly tribulation into her flesh.

Gu Xiulan ran her fingers along the curve of the carved jade tongue of flame. The amulet was a simple piece, but masterful work for a third realm talisman. Ling Qi really had come far to commission a piece such as this. That girl elicited such strange emotions in her. She should have despised her for surpassing her so. From a certain point of view that girl was at fault for much of the ill that had befallen her.

If she had not been so talented, and so present and unignorable, would Gu Xiulan have felt her own ambition awakened so spectacularly? When she had arrived at the Argent Peak Sect, she had been too prideful in far too little. She hadn’t yet come to despise Fan Yu, even if her heart lay with Han Jian. It was the desperate need to not fall behind that had led her to see Fan Yu’s self pitying mediocrity with such scorn.

She had invited the fires of heaven to rage in her veins, reduced her own arm to a blackened cinder just to keep pace, and he, the son of the most famous general of the wealthiest count clan in the Golden Fields, lavished with every resource, dared to act as if his path was too hard, that his half-baked efforts were the limits of what he could accomplish?

She would rather finish immolating herself than be bound to such a pathetic man. No, she was not going to blame her friend merely for opening her eyes.

Ling Qi’s song filled the carriage, warm and insistent, and Gu Xiulan took a deep breath, calming herself. It really was a lovely and dare she say, intimate song, composed wholly for the two of them.

Her friend still had such little propriety. Gu Xiulan let the pendant drop and rest against her chest. Composing a song like that for her… People were going to talk. Well, let them, she thought with a huff. She may not be the sort of woman her mother would have preferred, but Xiulan had learned her lessons well enough. Let the gossips do as they liked; she could roast them with words as well as she could with flames.

“I bet you could get away with setting at least a few of them on fire,” Linhuo giggled. The fairy manifested as a warmth radiating from the center of her chest, setting Xiulan at ease. “Maybe just one? Strong statements are important!”

Xiulan smiled faintly. Linhuo was a quick study, if a little direct. The spirit wasn’t entirely wrong either. if she was going to do this, to lean into a more masculine demeanor, throwing down a challenge or two would hardly go amiss. Strength needed no explanation.

Which was why it rankled so to be recalled home, denied the opportunity to show that strength. Gu Xiulan frowned, crossing one leg over the other as she regarded the dull red panel of the carriage wall across from her. She understood her father’s reasons and even felt a prickle of pride. It was too much for the Gu clan to risk both of their prodigies and her elder sister had already spent more time gaining influence and contacts in the Sect.

It made sense, Gu Xiulan thought, letting her head fall back against the padded bench with a dull thump. So why did she feel such frustration? Pain sparked in her mind as her burned hand curled into a fist and she recalled Ling Qi, a demon’s knife at her throat. That idiot girl needed to take better care of herself.

The carriage jerked to a stop overwhelming the dampening formations that cushioned its motion, and Gu Xiulan blinked in surprise as she caught herself on the wall. The interior of the carriage shook, sending the silk curtains fluttering.

“Captain Yun, what is going on out there?” she called, flicking the curtain aside to peer out.

The man she was speaking to was peering ahead with a frown. An old man well into his second century, his face marked by deep wrinkles and weathered by sun and wind, Sho Yun sat astride a black furred charger and wore the regalia of the Gu. A cultivator at the final step of the third realm, he had been the guardian of the Gu family's children for many decades. He wore polished armor enameled with red and gold and twin feather plumes atop his helm.

“Lady Gu, my scouts have reported a disturbance ahead,” the old man replied, lowering his head. “Ash Walkers are assaulting the village we were meant to stop at.”

“What in the world are these borderlanders doing?” Xiulan asked, exasperated. They were beyond the borders of Emerald Seas at this point, but not by much. The land here was mostly flat, a stony plain marked by scrub brush, the occasional withered tree, and little bubbling streams. The fields were poor but better than any natural terrain in the interior. If she squinted, she could see smoke rising in the distance. “You would think that they could handle the stragglers the rest of us have already culled.”

“I cannot say, Lady Gu,” Captain Yun said. “If the Lady will excuse us, I and the others will move forward to assist…”

She gave the old man a hard look. “Captain, you are not implying that I am to stay behind, are you? Do you think me a coward or a child?”

Sho Yun’s expression was difficult to read behind the snarling face mask of his helmet, but it was easy enough to read the resignation in his eyes. Honestly, this was the problem with retainers like him; they could never acknowledge when their charges had grown up. “Of course not, Lady Gu. I merely believed the incursion beneath your attention.”

“It is not,” Xiulan sniffed. “I will not shirk my duties. Saddle my horse, and prepare to ride out.”

The old man thumped an armored fist against his breastplate and lowered his head. To his credit, he did not question her further, and instead, he immediately turned to bawling out his men to speed their preparations.

“Oh, what fun! I was getting tired of the carriage!” Linhuo chirped.

Xiulan smirked, standing to emerge from the carriage. Father had sent only a small detachment out to receive her, a mere twenty soldiers, but they were all veterans, older men and women of the second realm.

Within moments, a horse had been readied for her, a slim mare with an ash grey coat marked by sparking embers. She swung herself into the saddle with only a little hesitation. It had been more than a year since she had ridden, but one never really forgot. Father’s riding lessons had been one of the rare moments when the Head of the Gu clan had been able to make time for his daughters. It was unfortunate that she was still wearing a gown. Sidesaddle was less than optimal for war, but she was hardly some mortal maiden. Very soon, the soldiers of Gu had gathered on the road ahead.

“Soldiers, Vermillion Two formation,” the captain barked harshly. “Lady Gu, take the center, if you would.”

Gu Xiulan tossed her hair proudly and did as he asked, trotted her mount to the center of the forming wedge while the captain took the front, a heavy golden spear materializing in his grasp. This, too, was a maneuver she knew from lessons, though she had never taken part in the real thing before.

Yes, whatever anyone else said, she was not a child. She was a Lady of the Gu clan. She was second only to her sister among her whole generation. Fire was her blood, and in battle, she thrived. On her shoulder, a slender figure of pure flame and crackling lightning materialized, and the heat rising from her skin began to distort the air. Beneath her, her horse whinnied, tossing its mane and stamping, kicking up dully glowing red sparks.

“Forward!” Captain Yun roared, and the formation moved.

Xiulan’s grin grew, taking on a manic edge as she felt the qi of her father’s soldiers swirling around her. The soldiers of Argent Peak Sect were well trained, but in the end, they were not Gu clan soldiers. She breathed in, and the fire within her roared as she drank in the vibrant tinder of the Vermillion Formation Art. Her hair caught fire, flickering tongues of blue and white dancing in the rising heat, and all around her, the dull sparks kicked up by a score of hoofbeats roared into a conflagration.

The world blurred by as the Gu clan’s Ash-Mane Chargers reached their full galloping speed. The wind rushed past her, and Gu Xiulan wondered briefly if this was how it felt to fly. It took mere minutes to close the remaining distance and crest the last little hill that stood between them and the village.

It was a tiny settlement, little more than a rest stop on a long trade route, a few dozen buildings surrounded by a low stone palisade. The Ashwalkers outside were a great mass of bodies, without even the attempt at order. The gates had already broken open however, and even now, the Walkers surged through, and many more clawed their way up the walls. Screams rose from inside the village, but the attackers themselves moved in eerie silence.

Ash Walkers were the bane of Golden Fields since the Cataclysm. The unquiet remains of both the Twilight King’s armies and soldiers of the Empire slain in the final death of the Purifying Sun, their numbers were without end. They wore the shapes of men from days past, withered and skeletal, wearing the tattered and melted remains of armor and tabards, but they were merely sand and ash, animated by malice. Where they walked, the world was cold. In contrast to the burning heat of the desert, the Walkers drank heat in and were as cold as death.

Of course, as the Gu clan had proven many times over in the past millennia, that did not mean that the Walkers did not burn.

Around her, soldiers lowered their spears. They were heavy things with wide barbed blades. These were not meant to merely punch through armor, but to shatter and crush. Walkers were the foes these spears were made for, enemies who cared not for wounds or punctured organs.

Gu Xiulan released the reins of her mount, trusting the beast to charge with the others, and raised her hands above her head. Blinding tongues of white flame began to curl up her fingers. Pain shot through her damaged arm, but she had long since learned to ignore that. Power poured into her hands, not just from her own dantian, but from the soldiers around her, the flows of the Vermilion Formation art refining and fusing the power of a score of lesser cultivators into sheer blazing heat. The horses whinnied and manes burst into flames, and heavenly sparks danced on the tips of spears. Sparks and embers danced around her raised hands.

Lances of flame struck from the heavens, bolts of boiling sunlight that struck withered dusty flesh and reduced it back to ash in an instant. By the time the rear of the Walker formation had begun to turn, slow and ponderous, a score of their number had been reduced to ashen smears.

It was only then as they began to thunder down the hill that Xiualn noticed an irregularity. The undead pouring into the village were bunching up in the main street, as if stymied by something, charging bodies piling up in a mass of cold, dead bones. For a moment, she thought she caught a glimpse of red.

Then she heard it. Over the sound of screams and splintering wood, over the thunder of hooves and the crackle of lightning, a voice boomed.

“OOORRRAAAAA!!!!”

The mass of ash creatures piling up in the center street shattered, broken bodies rocketing into the sky as if fired from catapults, trailing ash. She saw one crash down on the side of the road, its crumpled armor and ancient bones exploding into powder and fragments from the force of the impact.

Then, she had no more time to think as her formation struck the rear of the enemy force with a boom of heat and thunder. A golden spear spun, and the ancient dead shattered as its wielder crashed through their lines like a burning comet. Lesser spears tore skeletons and walking corpses in half, and burning hooves pounded what was left to dust. She could worry about allies later; right now, these corpses needed to burn.

Gu Xiulan let out a whooping war cry of her own to join her soldiers’ and spread her hands, each hand holding a white sun. On her shoulder, Linhuo laughed and laughed as the conflagration grew. She hurled the first orb into the densest mass of walkers and it detonated with enough force to sunder stone disintegrating a dozen skeletal soldiers and scorching a half dozen more who were climbing the walls. From within the town, there was a ragged cheer.

It did not take long for the battle to end. There had been few Walkers, a mere handful of hundreds, barely enough to give them the awareness of beasts this far from the Grave. Still they were welcomed inside with much bowing and scraping in the aftermath. So it was not long before the question of the mysterious fighter was answered.

He was tall, as tall as Ling Qi, with wide shoulders and a veritable mane of auburn hair. He had stood in the path of their charge in the main street as it ground to a halt, crouched atop a small mountain of crushed Walkers. He was barefoot, wearing only a dusty and travel-worn brown robe, and over his shoulders rested a long staff carved from red wood. Only the band of gold around his forehead indicated any wealth.

“Ho, there! Thanks for the assist!” the man called as she and the soldiers who had remained in the center pulled up to a halt. “It took a little while for me to wake up, so these buggers were already through the gates by the time I’d rolled outta bed.”

Oh dear, Gu Xiulan thought, taking in the wild-looking young man. He looked younger than her sister, but his cultivation was a match for Captain Yun’s.

“But this is convenient! You’re Gu clan, aren’t ‘cha? I’m Zheng Nan, and I’m on my way to talk to your head man.”