The rest of us followed her eyes, but saw nothing strange there, in the silent mountains beyond the city. Long Guan paused for a moment, making sure that there was nothing there, and only then did she shout,

"You lout! If you insist on disrespecting me, then I will sever your limbs one by one until you fix your attitude!"

Natsuki did not turn back, and Long Guan, put off by that unresponsiveness, did not immediately unsheath her sword.

"What's your sister looking at?" Bailian whispered to me.

"I don't know, maybe it's one of those karma things again?" I whispered back.

—A few silent moments later Natsuki did turn back, but she did not face Long Guan. Instead she craned her neck to the side and pointed her gaze at the fountain. The rest of us, too, turned to look at the fountain, but there was nothing there, nothing but the water and the small fish swimming around within it.

I peeked at Natsuki's face, but I could not make sense of her expression, her expression that looked something vaguely like that of someone eating bitter-gourd for the first time.

"I see," Long Guan finally said with a sigh. "She failed her severing, didn't she? The backlash from a failed severing can easily break a mind. Well, I'm not cruel enough to kill someone mentally disabled. I guess I'll just have to investigate the manor myself."

She stepped forward, but before her foot could land on the ground, a wave of overpowering heat smothered the courtyard, and with it came a presence, the presence of a cultivator, standing just where Natsuki had been looking a few moments ago. For some odd reason, I could not see them out of the corner of my eyes, so I turned to face them. But I failed. Before I could even turn my head, I felt the cultivator's gaze upon me, piercing through my joints like flaming iron stakes. I felt like I could not move, like I was frozen in place. But I was not frozen in place. My knees bent forward, only enough to force me to collapse onto them, though not of my own will, and my back curled forth, only enough to slam my forehead into the ground, though not of my own will. I did not know who they were, and yet I found myself kowtowing before them, as if every bone in my body had already acknowledged them as my superior. I tried to turn my head up, just to get a proper look at them, to run their face through my memory, but I could not. My neck refused to arc back.

As they say, a dog is not permitted to look at a king.

"—No, Xue'er."

From the back of my head, I heard Natsuki's voice bubbling across my consciousness, like little ripples upon a calm lake.

"There is nobody in this dream who has the right to make you kneel."

And so I stood.

I stood, and I looked at the figure, and I did not recognize her, not in the least. I could tell that she was wizened and wise, but I could not tell who she was.

I looked to my side, and saw Bailian on one knee, gripping tight onto a confluence of green mists in the form of a polearm with both hands. Grimacing, she attempted to pull herself up to a standing position. Before I could walk over to offer her a hand, she raised her hands so the polearm's end lifted a foot above the ground, then slammed the polearm's end back into the ground, launching herself up to her feet. She tossed her ghastly polearm up into the air, and just like that, it vanished into its own cloudy trail.

I turned my gaze to Long Guan, who was standing, though she was bowing with her hands clasped out in front of her.

"Sect Leader," she called out.

Sect leader? This figure was a sect leader? Of which sect? Her robes should have carried her sect emblem upon them, but no matter how many times I tried to look at her dull gray robes, I could not make sense of the characters written upon them, which shifted like waves upon a beach with her every breath.

"Long Guan."

The sect leader's voice resonated through the cold air as if her vocal folds were made of stone rather than flesh, and I could not help but feel as though there was something profoundly offputting about her intonation, as if she were reading her words aloud in a language she herself did not understand.

"—It has been some time since you last visited my city."

'My' city? In this generation there was only one sect in the vicinity of Kangtian, and that was the Phantom Orchid Sect. In other words, she was none other than— Zheng Minglan, the reclusive sect leader of the Phantom Orchid Sect, of the sect that only until a few days ago I myself had been imprisoned in!

I staggered back, though honestly, I did not know what to think. I did not know her, and she had never harmed me. I could, certainly, blame her for my suffering, but I honestly doubted she had taken any role in it, any more role than the Emperor of Wei himself.

"Sect Leader, I have come to Kangtian in order to speak with Bai Fei. However, he—"

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"He left last week," interrupted the sect leader.

Long Guan frowned deeply. "Sect Leader, the Long family has not received any report of Bai Fei departing Kangtian. The Bai family would have spoken with us in advance were he to leave. Someone of his stature does not just... get up and go."

"His aura vanished last week. Either he died or he left my city. But I have seen his name in the Register of Life and Death, wherein he is yet blessed with a few more centuries on this earth. Thus, he must have left." The sect leader raised her eyebrows. "Actually, the rest of the Bai family left at the same time, didn't they? Well, it does not matter to me. Let Sima Rui deal with such accounting annoyances."

The sect leader turned her gaze, her gaze as heavy the sea itself, over each of us in turn, then finally to the crumbling remains of a divine cypress tree at the edge of the courtyard.

"I have heard several times over that a 'Bai Chenshui' killed Wang Wujiu. Where is this Bai Chenshui? I was told that he is at the Bai residence, but I do not see anyone here with white hair."

I tried to speak, but the words could not find hold in my throat, which I found was incredibly dry, no doubt because of the winter wind. I swallowed some saliva, and yet— and yet my throat was yet too dry. It was too dry for me to speak.

But— no. How could I let myself be cowed into silence, when Natsuki was by my side?

If I wished for it, so it would be granted.

I wished to speak, so I stepped forward.

"I am Bai Chunxue," I declared, my voice echoing across the courtyard for only the span of a few breaths.

"A civilian? I see, so Wang Wujiu tripped over her own feet and shattered her own skull? She must have ended up offending Sima Rui, I suppose." The sect leader threw her head back and laughed, though her laugh sounded less like the laugh of a human than the screeching of a vulture.

"—Well, that does not particularly matter," she finally said after calming herself. "I am here because my disciples were complaining that someone attacked them. I do not really care for such petty conflicts, but now that I am out of secluded cultivation I must go kill the offender, else I will lose face."

Long Guan trembled. After all, if sect elders were being attacked, her own safety was also at risk. "Sect Leader," she said carefully, "Do you really mean to say that the sect elders were attacked? I cannot imagine how such a thing might happen. Other than those at the peak of the Bai and Long families, there are no cultivators around Kangtian powerful enough to do such a thing."

"Ouyang Di was maimed and Jing Ke was killed, both here in this very manor," the sect elder replied lazily, taking a few directionless steps around the courtyard. "At least that is what I am told. Jiang Sheng seemed somewhat delirious when he spoke, but he carried Jing Ke's corpse in his arms, so I can only doubt his words so far. Oh, and he said that the person who did it was a... a... uh..." She looked down at the fish swimming around the fountain at the center of the courtyard. "Xiaoyu, was it? Do any of you know of a Xiaoyu?"*

Long Guan's face contorted. It seems she had pieced together some of the puzzle. "Sect Leader, my sworn sibling Bai Qiao was also killed recently. Given that Jing Ke worked for the Bai family, I suspect that these incidents were linked. Please permit me to aid you in resolving this mystery, so that I may bring peace to Bai Qiao's memory."

"Long Guan, if you wish to help me, then provide me some useful information. Where is this Xiaoyu?"

The sect leaders said these words casually, but they carried an overwhelming force. This was not a general question, pointed to the void in the hopes that a response might reflect back in an echo. It was a question she was asking directly of Long Guan, as a superior demanding a report from an inferior. Long Guan's head sunk, as if something were pressing down on her neck, and she winced in pain. The weight of the sect leader's expectation was difficult to bear, even for her.

—"Zheng Minglan. I shall answer that question for you."

Natsuki stepped forward, a dull smile on her face.

"I am Xiayue, and I am the one responsible for your woes. I killed Bai Fei, and then I killed Bai Qiao, and then I killed Jing Ke, and then I let Ouyang Di flee with her life."

The sect leader only stifled a laugh.

"Child, your joke is amusing, but be careful with your words. You do not have the right to address me by my name. Do it a second time, and for the sake of my own face I will have no choice but to sever your head and hang it over my sect's entrance gate."

Deep creases crossed over Natsuki's forehead.

"You too doubt my words? Jing Ke did not doubt me, so why do you? Is it blindness or ignorance?"

"Child, anyone can see that you are in Core Formation." The sect leader lowered a hand to the surface of the fountain, and a little thread of water jumped up and spun around her finger. "Bai Fei is at the peak of the True Dao realm. Compared to him, you are like a speck of yeast. To even dream of harming him is a category error on your part."

A wide sneer broke across Natsuki's face, and she cried out:

"I see, I see! You think I am in Core Formation? What is it that you say for such situations? Right— You have eyes, but you do not see Mount Tai."

Laughing slowly, she plunged her left hand like a knife into the center of her chest, and for a moment I thought she would pull out her own soul, but then I heard—

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