While Ziyou Yung and Su Nanya were living everyday in bliss, the cogs of destiny did not stop grinding elsewhere.

The same night, in a forgotten corner of the lower town controlled by one gang or another, many hooded figures gathered in the basement of one such forgotten, derelict edifice.

The gathering was a diverse assembly, ranging from the sprightly youth to the weathered elders, both men and women. A subdued murmur vibrated through the atmosphere, growing slightly louder as each cloaked individual joined the congregation. These newcomers would settle themselves on stones, marked with distinctive purple hues and arranged meticulously in concentric circles.

"Everyone is gathered," said one hooded man sitting in the centre. "Brethren! Our wait nears to an end, oh beloved men and women! For our lord awaits on the other bend of the planar divides, the gates to which the blind blasphemers seek to seal." The hooded man raised his hand and placed a round object in the middle of the circle.

A putrid stink wafted off even though there was no wind. To the hooded figures present, it was the scent of ambrosia, the sweet nectar of the divinely damned.

It was Heart qi of the highest order they had ever tasted. It was pure fear, radiating from the object like the dying screams of a wronged man, beheaded by his adulterous woman in the arms of their lord.

The object, under the glistening resin that coated it, was a pristinely preserved human head.

"Brethren, we shall act with the non-believers. They wish to defile our lord's sanctity and delve into our promised plane. They gather forces untold, but they are eyeless rabbits in the dark forest. Only we have the sight to see, and we shall hunt them down when they are lost and alone."

"Here ye!" The crowd roared.

Each member brought out round objects from their sleeves.

Heads. Ren heads of all shapes and sizes. Some freshly severed, taken from victims of this very city. Some were dried and mummified, drafting out a foul wind of salted, cannibalistic delicacy. Each were preserved in one manner or another, from brining to spicing to resins for the rich.

The figures rose and bowed, then placed the heads in a concentric circle around the first. With each head placed, the violet flavoured Heart qi thickened.

The lights of the candlesticks flickered, and a humming buzz rose as though a thousand wasp queens were mating at once.

The hooded man sang the song of utopia, and the followers chorused along. The light in the basement turned a sickly purple, with bare hues of putrid greens lining the stone walls like diseased veins.

The wind cooled down, and one by one the hooded figures trembled at the knees and kneeled.

They dare not look, they dare not breathe.

For the lord was here, bestowing upon them strength to will. The Emissary of promise, preaching his Elysian dreams.

About the circle of severed heads, a small voidrift had opened. Behind which, an eye with two violet pupils peered out. It looked around the room, then at the ren, and grinned. Between the two pupils of the eyes, a maw opened with all the humour of a little child stomping on an anthill, and the foetid eyes of rot snarled with mirth and greed.

***

The heat of the wok scorched Gangbao in a way that made him feel at home. It wasn't the charred heat of the fire itself, but the hot air from the sizzling metal pot mixed with the spices, oil, and vegetables that washed away all his other thoughts.

Clack, clack, his ladle hit the wok, splashing the frying rice with more sesame and mustard.

Gangbao, his name, meant 'ladle.' Not the most creative, but Gangbao thought it suited him well. ‘He’ could scoop things up and put them in a pot of burning metal. His mother gave him the name. She wasn't that bright, but she had loved him dearly before a voidfiend outbreak in the underbelly of the lower towns had taken her so many years ago.

She was older than even his father, Old Gangliu, and they had their only son quite late in life. Before which, they had run this run-down restaurant for decades together. Gangbao only wished he could’ve spent more time with her, as he was barely two when she had passed.

“Ouch,” A drop of oil had sizzled out of the wok onto his hand. It didn’t burn, his skin was already too thick from the years of heat. But it did hurt.

Gangbao tossed the rice in the air, and before it came down into the wok again, he sprinkled cumin seeds and green onions. The spice sizzled in the oil, and the rice covered it nicely. Only he could do this trick. Ding Shi told him that the rice always tasted better if the onions used for garnishing were burnt just a tad.

Half a minute more of stirring, and the batch was ready.

"Ding—" Gangbao stopped mid-sentence. He stood there for a minute, lost. Until another ladle thunked his head like a hammer.

"Stupid son! You're burning the rice." His father pushed him away and took over, hurriedly placing the fried rice onto the wooden plates. The customers had started to stream in, and it was almost time for breakfast.

Gangbao would need to cook five more batches of fried rice. His father would do the meat soup and vegetable stir-fry. Ding Shi… would have been washing.

The morning hours darted by amidst a flurry of warmth and clamour. Patrons frequented in steady streams, their departures marked by a mounting accumulation of wooden plates and bowls.

A lass from the streets came in, she would work for coins today too, as she did the last few days. She helped out the granny next door from time to time, cleaning her house for some change and food.

An orphan she was, a mix of 'normal' ren and madlanders.

Just like the boy eating with gusto at one of their tables up front. But both orphans they might have been, their stations in life could not be more different.

Ziyou Yung scribbled strange words on strange paper, knocking his head against a tower-like crystal artifact every so often as his mouth munched the meat from the soup. The other customers sent greedy looks that way, but they'd known the fate of the so-called Divine Hawk Gang, displayed for all to see.

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Ding Shi must be there today too… I have to bring her breakfast.

Gangbao finished washing the dishes and came to the front carrying a bamboo box tied with indigo cloth. He made stirred egg with honey for Ding Shi. She liked it hot, but it would not do to leave without paying respect to their benefactor. His father was already there, almost grovelling. The old man had a smile on his face.

Gangbao joined him, bowing, "This one greets—"

"Good morning! Nice day for fried rice, ain't it?" Ziyou Yung interrupted with a smile.

“That it is,” Gangbao said. "This—"

“Oh, this?” Yung pointed at the tower-like artefact. "Glad you asked. It's a fake transmission array token. The real one is controlled by the royal family, but this fake one can at least work with ten spiritual imprints. The Dark Star Mercenaries gave it to me, but I just can't get it working with—... with stuff." The boy stopped mid-sentence, then sighed. "You didn't want to ask about that."

"N-No. I need to deliver breakfast to Ding Shi." Gangbao raised the food box while his father complained that he was being disrespectful to their benefactor. Gangbao could only show a broken smile.

"Is everything okay with her?" Ziyou Yung said, the worry apparent on his face.

"All's good!" Gangbao panicked, not wanting to get Ding Shi in the focus point of any cultivator. Good or bad. "Just shaken is all. She'll be fine after some resting."

"Where is she?" Ziyou Yung asked.

"By the bazaar entrance."

"Oh... the pikes?"

Gangbao nodded with unfelt pain.

"Okay, I can't keep you here," Yung said, and Gangbao was about to leave. But the madlander boy continued at the last moment, "If you need anything. Anything at all, come to the Dim Gold Hotel and find me. I’ve told the guards to let you through." The boy pointed at the half-madlander girl peeking out from behind the restaurant door. "I appreciate that you'd be willing to hire ‘our kind.’"

Gangbao couldn't help but laugh at that. "Skin colour means shit. The fairest cultivator could come in and kill me for putting too much salt on the egg."

"Gangbao!" Wang Gangliu tutted with no small amount of horror.

"You're right about that," Ziyou Yung said. "For now." He whispered the last two words.

Gangbao offered one final bow before making his exit. As he traversed the night bazaar, he observed the night-time vendors packing up, their time at work concluded, while the daytime merchants were just beginning to line up, eager to display their goods for the coming day.

Though the fervour around the sect recruitment had dwindled, the stream of travellers showed no signs of lessening. The major sects hadn't taken their leave, and whispers of an unprecedented joint venture began to circulate. There was talk of a collective fiend hunt in the forest, a collaboration of a magnitude seldom witnessed before.

There were talks of the void not liking that, but the old beggar loitering around their restaurant every evening had been mad for decades now. He said he saw things other people should be hearing. Strange that when he rambled, only Gangbao and Ding Shi, oh and the helper girl seemed be able to hear his words.

Maybe it was because the stench coming from his body kept everyone else out of earshot. But Gangbao had learnt not to judge by physical features.

Gangbao spotted Ding Shi at her usual place. She leaned on the wooden fence separating the pikes from the public. The pikes were just that, a collection of sharp wooden sticks seven or eight meters high each. They jutted out from the ground like spears. And like spears, they skewered something.

Heads, in this case. Criminal heads.

Three pikes held the bastards from the Divine Hawk Gang. There were seven or eight more, each hoisting dead cultivator heads for all to see.

The Youjin Clan had a mighty change of heart in recent weeks. First the madlanders, now the criminals. They shifted their whole policy, and Gangbao had suspicions that Ziyou Yung was behind most of that.

The old beggar had been spouting nonsense about how the madlander boy was nothing but a traitor. How his reforms to better the lives of madlanders were actually pushing them further away from the promised land.

Crazy stuff.

"Ding Shi," Gangbao called out.

The love of his life turned around. They had met when they were two days old, then engaged, then married when they both turned thirteen. Their first child died in miscarriage when they were fourteen, and the old beggar said that it was the curse of the unborn that ruined their chances of becoming cultivators.

The only path left was to look elsewhere, beyond the mortal plane. Where exactly that place was, Gangbao did not know. He tried asking some of the other cultivators that frequented his restaurant in recent days, but his mind would always wander back to the Divine Hawk Gang, and his body would scream at him to avoid these parasitic ren called cultivators at all cost.

His eyes returned to Ding Shi, how frail and beautiful she looked. She was the daughter of the couple that supplied them vegetables every morning. After the incident with the Divine Hawk Gang, her parents wanted to take her back to their village, to one of the tiny farming enclaves near the border of the white town, but she had been hysteric not to leave.

The scratches on Gangbao’s arms had still not healed. But that was fine. What was not fine was the look in her eyes that Gangbao did not like. One bit.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Ding Shi stuttered, then pointed at one of the pikes. It was the one spiking the head of the devil that tried to... Gangbao shook that thought away by biting his lips.

"It's not the same face," Ding Shi said. "Not the same head."

Gangbao looked up, and the head looked the same to him. "Ding Shi, I brought you breakfast."

His lover smiled. She had been getting better these days. "Let's tell the guards that someone misplaced his head, okay?"

Gangbao nodded.

They shared the breakfast, even though Gangbao had already eaten. Ding Shi picked up all the meat pieces with the chopsticks and held them up for him. He savoured them like immortal elixirs. Weird thing to do, since he cooked them. But it's the situation that mattered.

"I-I can help with cleaning," Ding Shi said.

Gangbao broke into a smile. He didn't rush her. "Take your time."

"I can't. That girl that you hired. What if she takes my place?"

"Ding Shi, do ye have so tiny trust in me?"

"Baobao, you still want me? Really?"

"Of course! I promised, didn't I?"

"I'm ruined. The old beggar said so. That the man whose head was changed ruined me. Do you still want me?" Ding Shi asked. The lack of emotion in her voice bothered Gangbao.

"Ding Shi, you aren't ruined.” He said with a strained smile.

“I think it’s the old beggar that changed the head. He wants to replace all the heads. And that lass wants to replace me. What if she does? Will she?”

“She won’t. You're the pretty lass that saved me from drowning when I was a kid." Gangbao could not control his tears anymore. "Y-you saved me from the bullies who poked fun at my weight. You threw yourself in front of a horse so it wouldn't hit me."

"So you still want me?"

Gangbao nodded.

"Why?"

He had no answers for that. None that Ding Shi could accept. So he repeated himself, “You’re me wife.”

“Yes! I am, ain’t I? Hee hee.” Ding Shi giggled, as if all was right in the world.

"Let's go home?" Gangbao said. Perhaps he would take Ziyou Yung up on his offer after all. Maybe the cultivators in the Dim Gold Hotel would be different and his body wouldn’t scream when he tried to talk to them. They were yao after all, and maybe yao cultivators weren’t as barbaric as ren?

Ding Shi nodded with a strange smile. She followed Gangbao to the restaurant, grasping his sleeve so tight her nails bit into his skin. By the time they returned, Ziyou Yung was gone, and the old beggar was lying flat by the alley beside the restaurant.

The helper girl saw them coming and called out to Wang Gangliu. The old man raised his hand. Gangbao waved back but suddenly felt a downward pull behind him.

"Ouch!"

Ding Shi had tripped.

"Ding Shi!" Gangbao shouted, and he heard his father running towards them. "Get up. What happened?"

The love of his life looked at the helper girl with acid in her eyes. "It's her fault! She tripped me!"

Gangbao was shocked. "Come on now. She couldn't have tripped you—"

"She changed the heads too! We have to tell the guards! She changed the bald man's head, and he tried to stab you with a knife, and she changed his bald head! Baldy!"

Gangbao took the frail maiden in his arms. He could do nothing else. Not now at least. But he didn’t give up hope. His mind wandered to Ziyou Yung again, and his offer.

Soon his father reached them, and the two men carried the hysterical girl to the back of the restaurant.

A throng of people had convened, and a multitude among them voiced their sorrow for the family, now fractured by the brutal hand of tragedy.

No one noticed the old beggar and the helper girl sharing a glance, mouthing invisible words with lips rounded in strange shapes. Maybe it was because of the stench, the nauseating aura that kept everyone away from earshot.