Instead of working, I headed straight to the Central Theatre. I wanted to see a face I could trust, and I saw it. There, sitting in the center of the square, was Professor Jibeidi, arrayed in brilliant blue-and-gold robes that captured both the stillness of the afternoon sky and the brilliance of the setting sun. She detected me as I clambered to a spot where I could get a good view, and smiled in my direction. I waved back.

Next to her was the sect elder Jiang Sheng, who was, supposedly, in some way or another related to Jiang Hanfeng. Stroking his beard, he said,

"Good, good, good. If we can get more pills, then we will certainly also be able to welcome more inner disciples. Though I have heard that the resources required for this recipe are more suited to the southern provinces than here."

Professor Jibeidi nodded. "That is true. Specifically, the Twilight Redwood tree, which is the source of the wood required, is grown most in Hulin Province. But Hulin Province is currently ruled by Ji Han, which means that wood exports will become a sticking point in trade negotiations, if another war doesn't break out first. We are hoping to increase production of this tree here in the Great Plains to counter this."

Elder Jiang nodded. "I see. Then we shall also look towards planting some such trees around here. We have much good land for wood." He stood. "Come, Doctor. Let me show you around the inner sect. We have made many improvements at the recommendation of the Tower."

I felt a pang of regret. I could not enter the inner sect grounds, so if Professor Jibeidi went there, I could not see her anymore.

—"Elder Jiang! This disciple has a grievance to raise. Please administer justice."

A voice called out from the crowd, eliciting murmurs across the plaza. Raising a grievance in front of an elder was one thing, but raising a grievance in front of a guest was another. Elder Jiang frowned deeply, but he had little choice in the matter now.

"Then speak. It must not be a small matter, if you dare raise it while a guest is present."

"Last night, this disciple witnessed outer disciple Bai Chunxue wandering around the sect grounds with a strange person, who was not of the outer sect and also not of the inner sect. This disciple fears that the integrity of the sect rules may be at risk."

"Bai Chunxue... are you causing problems again?!" Elder Jiang growled. Of course he knew me, even though I was a mere outer disciple. I held the surname of Bai. How could he not know me? How could he not know how powerless I was?

"If I may," Professor Jibeidi interjected, "I don't think Bai Chunxue is the type of person to—"

"Doctor Jibeidi, please," said Elder Jiang, barely maintaining a smile. "Matters of the sect must be handled by the sect."

She nodded. She could say nothing further.

"It is not necessarily a violation of sect rules to unilaterally bring outsiders onto the grounds of the outer sect," declared Elder Jiang. "Do you have any further basis for your grievance?"

A figure stepped out from the crowd and bowed to the elder. "This disciple, Chen Mantian, understands that the outsider fought with Lady Wang, which would constitute a flagrant violation of sect rules for Bai Chunxue who brought them onto sect grounds."

The murmurs of the crowd grew into a rolling thunder, and many eyes turned to glance at me. Chen Mantian was not just some random disciple. She was an inner sect cultivator and the right hand of Long Guoqiang, a powerful and influential ranking member the inner sect— and also the target of revenge I hated the most, even more than Wujiu, who had killed me! Day-by-day it was not Wujiu but rather Guoqiang who sent minions out to make my life difficult. Jiang Hanfeng beat me regularly on Guoqiang's orders, and if Guoqiang succeeding in fabricating a story here, I would be punished severely for it— and not for the first time!

My gut roiled, but there was nothing I could say. I was trash. My word was worth nothing against that of an inner sect cultivator! Whatever I said would only dig me even deeper in this hole!

"Wang Wujiu!" hollered Elder Jiang. "Are you present?"

"I am here."

Wujiu was sitting on top of the arch that led from the Central Theatre to the inner sect— the Gate of Glory, as it was commonly called— looking down at the crowd. She hopped down, landing without a sound, and walked into the square where Elder Jiang stood. She bowed before the elder.

"I offer my greetings to Elder Jiang, and to our guest Doctor Jibeidi as well."

"Wang Wujiu, is it true that an outsider dared to pick a fight with you on sect grounds last night?"

Wujiu straightened her back and shrugged. "Last night? The only thing I remember from last night is that my dinner was unacceptably distasteful, so if I did in fact see Bai Chunxue or this mysterious outsider, it must not have been particularly memorable."

Smirking, Long Guojiang stepped into the square and said, "Sister Wang, we are not asking you to tell us a story. We have already heard the story from several of your followers. All we are asking is for you to confirm it."

Wujiu groaned, then shrugged again. "Fine, I saw the outsider. Yes, she was suspicious. She had horns and inverted eyes and looked something halfway between a corpse and a rakshasa. Apparently she's from the archipelago. I couldn't read her cultivation particularly well, but she seemed to be in Core Formation. Are you happy now?"

"Archipelago?" Guoqiang tilted his head. Apparently he had not heard this part of the story. "You mean the Huoshanlong archipelago?"

"You body cultivators ought to train your minds a bit more," sneered Wujiu. "If she was from the Huoshanlong archipelago, she wouldn't be suspicious, would she? No, she's from the archipelago at the other end of the world. That's what makes her fucking suspicious."

With a grimace, Guoqiang clicked his tongue. "Well, that's not really the problem, is it? The problem is, did you get in a fight with her or not?"

Wujiu cackled. "Are you fucking stupid? I tell you she's from the other side of the world, and the only thing you can think of is fighting her? Someone with that sort of experience is worth ten thousand times their weight in gold here in Wei, and you want to ask if I fought her? This is why your little sister will inherit the Long family instead of you, Guoqiang. For all your supposed strength, you don't have the slightest idea how the world works."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Guoqiang slammed his foot into the ground, and the tile cracked under the force, sending a shockwave clattering through the square. "Stop with the damn snark and just answer the fucking question! You're not the only one here in the Martial Master stage, shithead. If you want me to crush your dantian so bad, I'll fucking do it when Elder Jiang's work here is done. Right now, all you need to do is say that you fought her. Get the picture?"

Wujiu rolled her eyes. "Fine. Before I learned that she was a foreigner, I took offense at her disrespectful conduct and got into a minor scuffle with her. Are you happy now?"

With a wide smile, Guoqiang turned to Elder Jiang and bowed. "As you can see, Elder Jiang, as this matter affects the safety of our sect, it is not something that can be overlooked. Chunxue brought an outsider onto sect grounds, who, if not for Sister Wang's valiant efforts, might have harmed many of our siblings. Ah, it pains me to imagine how our sect would lose face if we did not resolves this as soon as possible."

Elder Jiang frowned. He understood that the story was suspicious, but if three inner sect cultivators agreed on it, then he had no choice but to swallow the story if he did not want to lose face.

"Bai Chunxue!" he finally shouted. "I will give you a chance to respond to these allegations. If you do not, you will be punished in accordance with sect rules for your misdeeds."

Everyone looked to me.

"I—" My muscles froze up. My jaw would not move. My lungs would not eject the breath that they had stored.

"Do you have nothing to say for yourself? In that case—"

I slammed my fist into my chest to force a breath out. With only the dull shifting of my tongue, I tried to speak.

"N... na— si, ch— g, g, khhy—"

"Chunxue, did you call for me?"

A voice, unfamiliar to the crowd, resonated from under the arch leading to the inner sect. But— if it was an inner cultivator, they would have recognized the voice. Who was it? Who was it that stood under the Gate of Glory, with a voice at once smooth and sharp, like a river current rippling through gravel? Everyone turned to look— except for Wujiu, who stood frozen with a thick plaster of incredulity fixed to her visage. Perhaps she recognized the voice. I did.

There under the arch stood Natsuki, her face no longer bloodless and her body no longer draped in shadow, though her horns and black sclera stood out ever the more for it. She wore a deep purple robe crossed left over right, as was standard here in Xili, tucked below a crimson skirt that draped straight from the bottom of her ribcage to the top of her ankles. Not that far from traditional Xilian garb, you might think, but I recognized the five asymmetrical pleats on her skirt. I had seem that pattern in my favorite book— it was characteristic of the traditional wear of some regions of the archipelago.

"Good morning, everyone," she said with a wave. "I am Natsuki, without a surname, for it is not customary to give surnames where I am from. I am a traveler by birth, one who has come to this land as I have gone to every other, in search of truth, in search of the truths that humans mold from the aether with only their own hands."

Professor Jibeidi narrowed her eyes. She first turned to Elder Jiang, who was at a loss for words. So instead, she spoke. "Are you..." Her words stopped there. She did not believe in demons, but at the same time, she knew what foreigners actually looked like, so what could she possibly think of someone with black eyes and a Baphomet's horns?

"A foreigner, yes," Natsuki said with an impish smile. "My circumstances are complicated, as is self-evident by my presence here, but I do not think it unfair to call me a Peizeikyouzhen."

"Ah— ah, I see." Professor Jibeidi squinted and rubbed her temples. She was normally so composed, but Natsuki's presence had completely caught her on the back foot. "Where was it you said you were from again? I'm... not sure I know the place."

"Peizeikyou. It is one of the many states on the archipelago at the other end of the world. It is not the most powerful state, nor is it the largest, nor is it even the most beautiful, but it is the most pittoresque— not most beautiful, but most pittoresque, a distinction you cannot comprehend until you stand atop a grand hill and look over its harbors."

"Does..." Professor Jibeidi's words came out slowly. "Do all the Peizeikyouzhen look like you...?"

"No, not at all," Natsuki said, and just as everyone's shoulders relaxed with the knowledge that foreigners do not have horns or eyes of inverted colors, she continued, "I am much taller than the average Peizeikyouzhen, so much so that I have several times hit my head on doorframes there, though this is nothing more than a product of the chronic malnutrition that plagues much of the archipelago due to war."

"I see." Professor Jibeidi cleared her throat, then smiled. "Well, it is quite rare to see foreigners this far inland of Altyn-Tagh, especially from lands more distant than the Almoran regions of Nalantuo. At the Tower, we would be quite thorough in welcoming such a guest. What do you think, Elder Jiang?"

Elder Jiang finally coughed up his hesitation and said, "Yes, yes. We must treasure such guests. Natsuki, if you wish to stay here some time, I will have a room prepared for you."

Natsuki bowed deeply. "Thank you. I—"

"Wait, wait, aren't we forgetting something here?" interjected Guoqiang, pointing a finger at Natsuki. "This foreigner attacked Sister Wang and several other students of our sect. For that, she and Bai Chunxue both must be punished according to sect regulations."

"Attacked?" Natsuki straightened her back and raised her eyebrows. "I would not use such a dangerous-sounding word. We simply had a vocal disagreement about the meanings of the five Confucian virtues, in the tradition of all great Xilian scholars. Is that no longer common practice in this land? I must say, I was hoping to have many such debates here in the great land of Wei, which I learned is the truest inheritor of the ideals of the glorious Han, which I know is the only state capable of eventually unifying all the lands east of Altyn-Tagh."

How could anyone possibly object to those words? If you denied her words, you would be spitting on the face of Wei, and who had so little respect for their homeland as to do that?

Everyone's gazes turned to Wujiu. She only shrugged. "When did I ever say she attacked us? That was just Guoqiang's blockheaded assumption. Sure, she didn't understand Xilian etiquette and she said some rude things, but that's a prerogative of foreigners. So?"

Guoqiang swung his fists in anger, but they only struck empty air. "Wujiu, you—!"

"Me what? You're the one who started this pointless fight. Now shut up and sit down. You're embarrassing the sect." She sneered one last time at Guoqiang, then leaped back onto the Gate of Glory and sat there upon its crest.

Grimacing, Guoqiang withdrew into the crowd.

Natsuki smiled.

With a cough, Elder Jiang said, "Well, let us all be more prudent in what we say going forward. You all know that the Imperial Court has long prized the contributions of foreigners, and though our Phantom Orchid Sect may rank decently highly in the state of Wei, we would not survive if we incurred the wrath of the Imperial Court. Do not forget what happened to the Mountain of Clear Water. I watched it unfold myself. One of their more irresponsible inner sect members killed a foreign delegate from Almora, and in return, the Court executed every member of the sect and erased the families of the sect elders, then sent their heads to Nalantuo as apology and fed what remained of their corpses to the vultures as punishment."

I could hear Guoqiang snarling with rage. Meaningless, aimless rage.