"Clan Chief Long!" I shouted. "Are you so eager to hand over control of the Long clan to Bailian?"

Long Guan froze. Her talismans wilted in her hand.

"You know you cannot fight my sister. Even if the sect leader ends up defeating her, you will almost certainly die in the process. And then... now that Long Guoqiang is out of the picture, the battle for succession is already settled, isn't it?"

The sect leader and Natsuki alike stepped back, neither of them understanding my words. Bailian shook her head and sighed.

"Ai, Chunxue, you're giving the game away..."

A confused silence nearly fell over the courtyard, but before it could, the sect leader drew her sword—

she drew it, and it that very same motion, she swung it—

though its blade, invisible but for the dripping bloodstain on its edge, did not fly towards Natsuki, but rather ended its arc half an inch before Long Guan's neck.

"Long Guan, have you pulled me onto a boat leaking from its hull? Explain yourself."

Long Guan grimaced deeply, not even daring to swallow. Overcome by her love for Bai Qiao, she had forgotten her hate for— Long Bailian! Thus, all I had to do was pit those two emotions against each other— and snatch further opportunity as it arose!

"The Long family has lacked talent for several generations now," she grunted through clenched teeth. "Of the younger generations only Bailian and Guoqiang could be said to be of any worth... but I absolutely cannot let that demon-spawn Bailian become the next head! If we could not make Guoqiang the next head, then Xiuyun was—"

"Long Xiuyun?" The sect leader snorted derisively. "I know the name. He is trash. If someone like him becomes the next head, the Long family will no longer have the right to name itself a great family." She thrust her sword back into its sheath and turned off to the side. "What will the jianghu say of me if I let you destroy the Long family at your own whims? If you wish for me to let you die, then you must first guarantee me that the Long family will continue standing without you. I cannot speak much as to your family matters, but you and your fellow elders alike are too old for this position. I would be satisfied were Long Bailian to be the next head. I know her current position is purely nominal, so I would need a more... concrete assurance."

A protracted groan, like the kind one makes when pushing against a weight that is just barely too heavy for one's muscles, creaked forth from Long Guan's throat, and as it did, Bailian began laughing, cackling, howling with unrestrainable glee.

"Good!" she cried. "Let me hear you swear a Dao oath that I will be the next head of the family. That works for me just as well! Or I can always just wait for you to die, and then take the position myself!"

"Why are you taking it for a given that I'll die?" Long Guan growled, not facing Bailian but rather the sect leader. "You think I can't defend myself against some rogue cultivator?!"

The sect leader sighed and cast a sidelong glance at Natsuki, though it seemed that Natsuki did not understand its meaning, since she only tilted her head and frowned slightly in response.

"You will die," Bailian spat, "and once the rest of the elders are too brain-addled to stand in my way, I will dismantle everything you accomplished in your life!" An impenetrable anger began spreading over her expression. "I will restore the Long family to its old glory as a clan that rules along the full length of the Yellow River, and I will wipe you from its history!"

"Bailian!" Long Guan roared, a wave of force crackling out from her feet. "How many generations of my family must you lay waste to before you will be satisfied?! You killed your mother in birth, your father in grief, your cousins in contest, and you drag your elders to the gates of Hell every time you yourself are thrown there! If only you would lay down and let yourself be killed, or—" Barely holding back her rage, Long Guan clamped one hand against her face, her nails digging into her own flesh. "Or should I blame myself for this?! If only I had listened to my own elders and crushed your skull when you were born under that shattered star, none of this would ever have happened!"

And though those words were not pointed at me, though Long Guan could not care less about my existence— they struck me deep in my heart, because I had heard those words, words like those, no shortage of times before. And the emotions I had felt when I had heard those words— the despair, the guilt, and most of all the hatred, hatred for both myself and the one speaking— I saw them all in Bailian's expression too—

In some sense, she and I were quite alike—

And thus, I could hardly bear to listen to any more of Long Guan's bullshit.

I tugged on Natsuki's sleeve and whispered,

"Xia-jie, can you... show your power?"

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Furrowing her brow, Natsuki raised her left hand, pointing two fingers at Long Guan. We all turned to her, though the dull expressions on the others' faces suggested that they did not anticipate what Natsuki would do next. Perhaps they could not feel the fluctuations in her qi, or in whatever it was that flowed through her veins—

Natsuki raised her right hand, then brought it close to her outstretched left hand. She pointed two fingers of her right hand out as well, and reached them towards the middle joints of the fingers of her left hand. When they came in contact, for a single moment I thought I could see something like a circuit glowing in the shadow cast by her body upon herself, travelling from her heart down her left arm, into her left hand, through the fingers of her right hand, back up her right arm and finally reentering her heart.

"Then let me show you the power that will one day lay waste to all the lands west of Altyn—"

Everything went silent— even Natsuki's words— as if my ears had been plugged with water, though I could see the air rippling in front of me, oscillating like ocean waves around a riptide, waves with sparkling golden froth and gaping black bellies, waves that sliced through the air with the uncontrollable irregularity of a flooding river, with speed enough to hew up a silently howling wind in its wake, with force enough to shatter and crush matter in passing alone. And then I lost sight of the rippling waves, though less than half a moment later the clouds far in the distance were rent open, revealing behind them an impenetrable black pit in the otherwise azure sky. Immediately, an innumerable count of lightning-bolts began arcing from nearby clouds over the pit, sewing it closed like stitches over a gaping wound, a wound in what seemed to be the fabric of reality itself.

My hearing returned, filled with the muted whistling of the wind flitting through lifeless trees, but I could not hear the thunder, if it was even there.

"Humans may raise palaces higher than the noctilucent clouds or deeper than the abyssal oceans, yet a mere trembling of the earth returns even their best-laid schemes to rubble."

At Natsuki's voice I turned my gaze back down, and I saw Long Guan standing there, her head turned just enough that she too could see the pit in the sky out of the corner of her eye. The rippling had passed by her shoulder, merely singing the right collar of her robes, but miring her face in an expression of deep terror.

"Long Guan, you are alive not because you have power, but because those with power have not found value in your death. If you choose to fight, you will suffer the same pathetic end as those who have challenged the mountains and seas."

Long Guan clenched and ground her teeth, but she could not hide her terror. The sect leader, glancing at her face, shook her head and spoke in a surprisingly soft voice.

"Long Guan, is it not said that one's duty is first to one's living family, and second to one's departed ancestors? The Long family is in decline. I daresay that even Bai Qiao would wish for nothing more than for you to put what time you have left on this earth into reviving the Long family."

—And that was the final puzzle piece.

Now Long Guan had both private and public reason to retreat. Privately it was fear, and publicly it was familial duty. The only question was— between her fear and her love, which one was heavier?

I watched her carefully, as the pattern of her breath fell into shallow, ragged disarray. That was the force of doubt crashing through her veins! I knew that doubt well— it was the same doubt I had felt when first entering the sect many years ago, before I had fully come to terms with how little power I truly had, and it was also the same doubt I had felt after killing Jiang Hanfeng, before I had fully come to terms with how great my borrowed power was. There is, after all, no doubt in power; nor is there doubt in no power. There is only doubt in the space between, when one does not understand one's own place in the world.

—"In all the lands under heaven, the one thing most important to me is—"

Long Guan's breathing calmed. She straightened her posture and turned her gaze off to the side, looking at something that— though it was certainly not far in the distance— was nonetheless not visible to me.

"—the Long family. That is why I am the only one of my generation left willing to carry its weight on my shoulders. As long as I am the head of the Long family... I cannot possibly take such unnecessary action to endanger it."

She turned to the sect leader and, clasping her hands together, bowed deeply.

Sect Leader, I will yield the matter of this rogue cultivator to your expertise. I will take my leave here."

Long Guan thrust her hand into her robes, setting away her talismans and pulling out two tokens— the ceremonial tokens that belonged to Bai Qiao and herself. She turned south, towards the obsidian-jade gates, and held the tokens up to the lazy sun. Like butter over a pan, they melted away into sputtering bubbles, leaving behind nothing but two life-threads, one glowing, one torn.

That was the only show of respect she could offer to Bai Qiao. Having made it, she shook her head and flashed away.

The sect leader turned to Natsuki and, for the first time today, spoke in a respectful tone.

"Senior Xia, how long are you planning on staying in this city?"

Natsuki shrugged.

"A week, maybe. And... I probably won't come back here, at least not within your lifetime."

The sect leader was unable to restrain an ear-splitting smile.

"Good!" she laughed. "The mountains are high and the rivers long. Among them, may our paths never cross!"

The sect leader turned away and flew off, back to the mountains of the Phantom Orchid Sect.