"Shit!" Chao cursed. Chao did not like cursing. He let go of the vine and jumped to the right, his sword hand tossing the sword up and, in the next moment, he grabbed the adjacent vine three feet away. He caught the sword with his free left hand, bringing it down on the last fiend, chopping it vertically. The corpse fell alongside the previous vine.

Chao looked down.

The fiend remains and the vine broke through the canopy below. There were some fluttering wings and roars from animals, then a thudding sound.

He waited a few minutes in that position. Figuring it was safe, he slowly began his descent again.

It took half an hour, and his feet touched the canopy. Chao sighed in relief, and let go of the vine to hold onto the branch of the ancient tree...

...only to come face to face with a snarling lemur.

"Gri!" the fiend roared.

Chao struck with his sword on instinct. The lemur jumped away, and before Chao could give chase, it vanished out of sight.

"That was a Fiery Wine Baboon," Chao muttered to himself. He knew these 2 star Chaosfiends. Fiercely territorial, and they had nasty tempers. But they were cunning too. So much so that no fiendhunter liked to mess with them.

Chao took note of the surroundings again, then climbed down the tree like a monkey himself. After landfall, he quickly located the river he’d seen from above the cliff. He did not know its name, or if it had one, but all he knew was that his blood ached with the urge to head downstream.

Chao did so. For two days he tracked the primeval forest, hunting sparsely only unavoidable foes and staying hidden out of sight. And then, he finally found what he was looking for. Behind a waterfall roaring down from the heavens on the side of a cleaved mountain, there was a cave. Inside, an intense aura of yin and yang emanated. Chao was careful. Treasures like these usually had beasts that guarded them. He carefully made his way around the fall. The footholds were slippery, with green and brown moss covering every stone.

He was halfway to the cave, his hands gripping the narrow cracks on the wall behind the waterfall with a death grip, when he heard a low growl.

"Gri!"

Thuck!

A stone hit three inches to his left.

Thuck! Thuck! Thuck!

Then three more. And then it was a shower. One hit his hand, and Chao could feel his bones crack. He bit down on his teeth and turned his head.

He saw the Fiery Wine Lemur crouching by the banks of the river, hoisting a stone to throw at him. It growled again, then grinned.

"This bastard!"

The Lemur wasn't alone. In the surrounding forest and behind tall boulders dotting the waterfall basin, similar lemurs picked up stones, rocks, and clams and readied their artillery.

"I will kill you. Mark my words, I will hunt every last—"

Chao couldn't finish his sentence. His chin was hit by a conch shell thrown from a blind spot. He slipped, and the rushing waterfall hit him like a lopsided tsunami.

The last thing the baboons heard of him was his anguished scream as his bleeding form disappeared into the plunge pool, without even raising a splash.

***

An Ping read the message from her husband through the communicator.

An Ping swore she could hear the emotions from the text message. The man usually had crippling social anxiety, but not having to face another person whilst 'communicating' via this token seemed to give him new life. It was better than speaking with sound transmission tokens too, because of An Xing's insecurities with how his voice sounded.

There were currently ten communicator windows open in An Ping's vision, and it did feel cramped.

However, until the final part of their mission was finished, that is, to take out the Imperfect Heaven 3rd Order fiends, she would stay back in the commander's seat. On that matter, she turned to look at the boy sitting opposite to her and said, "Is it really not possible?"

Ziyou Yung shook his head, "My guess is that the transmission array token has to be crafted with the special Dim Gold Silk. Only then would it be able to bind with the communicator tokens."

"That is a shame." An Ping said. The boy handed back the tower-like pseudo transmission array token. "I guess we will have to coordinate with traditional scene transmission tokens."

"For now. We'll see if we can do something after the foxmoths have been recovered." Ziyou Yung said.

Something about that sentence caught An Ping's notice. Is he not planning to go with the fox princess back to the Twilight Blood Palace? She pondered asking but let her curiosity go.

Her gaze was attracted to one of the communicator windows. It was their newest subordinate, a ruffian who was just a bit too happy-go-lucky.

< ╰⋃╯ >

An Ping spat a sip of wine out. She had the sense to do it to her side, but Ziyou Yung's eyes turned into saucers nonetheless.

That bastard! She cursed.

< c======3 > This time it was her husband. And An Ping almost rolled over in rage.

"I-Is something wrong?" Ziyou Yung asked.

An Ping shook her head. There would be a reckoning later, and it would not be pretty. There was one question that she wanted clarifications for, though.

"Can you tell me why you limited which characters could be, uh, typed into the communicator?"

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"Is the alphabet hard to use?"

An Ping shook her head, "It is intuitive, writing with these simple 'alpha-numeric' characters and 'diacritic marks' for tones, as you call them. I would guess they will be far more popular with the peasantry than the alphabet for the traditional language is, as they would not need to memorize thousands of characters to merely be literate. And the special characters... Normal tokens do not really have this limit, and I was wondering if such artificiality served any special purpose." She looked at the young boy's face, adding, "If it is a secret of some sort..."

"Nothing like that," Ziyou Yung said, "And normal tokens do have limits."

"I was not aware."

"It is quite a large limit, but there is one. One of the arrays needed to craft these tokens actually sets the number and type of input a practitioner can apply into a transmission token, and even the capturing tokens." Ziyou Yung took out a page and quickly drew an array. It was a familiar one, made up of seven runes that she saw on practically all tokens having to do with knowledge storage or communication.

"Come to think of it, this is missing in the communicator token." An Ping said, "No, not missing. Modified?"

"Exactly," Yung circled two of the runes, "We need only these two. In a normal Imperfect Heaven grade token, these five other runes actually act as libraries."

"Libraries?"

"I don't know how they work, but something to do with the Greater Dao? These five runes set which characters, thoughts, sounds, lights, and other manner of 'information' can be inputted into a token. From my understanding, it enables the token to read and store millions or even billions of unique characters, symbols, and runes. It allows them to store esoteric, mysterious knowledge such as cultivation technique manuals, Dao scriptures, and numinous arts." Ziyou Yung said. He pointed at the second of the two circled runes.

"We don't need all that. The first rune is what does the reading and writing, but with the second rune, I can specify exactly which characters I want, and I only need about a hundred and twenty. Alphanumeric, punctuations, special keys, diacritic marks. Not much else is needed for proper communication."

"Indeed, that is so." An Ping said with amazement.

Most of her team had joined in on the shenanigans, and the latest message was truly an amazing one.

< :) >

She understood so much from those two little characters.

An Ping took out a jade slip from her storage ring. It contained a cultivation technique, the one she used. While most cultivation techniques were pretty hard to put into nice qualitative categories such as Imperfect Heaven or Unfolding Heaven, that was not to say that all techniques were the same. Some were ingenious, even the most talentless could reach amazing heights with them. While some were stringent, only working with specific physique types and Dao aspects. The rest were shoddily written, the fault lying with the author of the technique who was unable to convey their thoughts into writing properly.

However, Unfolding Heaven grade jadeslips largely bypassed the third category's problem by being able to store the cultivation technique creators' thoughts, experiences, knowledge, and even emotions alongside sound, writing, and other information to aid the future generation. She passed Ziyou Yung the token, pointing at nine specific runes to create a singular array.

"Yeah, that's Unfolding Heaven alright. I think this array can allow the user to store even weirder stuff. I heard Nanya say that Harmonious Heaven grade jade slips have such a vast library, it allows the storage of souls. Actually, I think spectral cultivators who lose their body use these to craft artificial ones, to house their soul and all."

An Ping nodded, "It makes sense." She brought up the communicator again before saying, "Yet I do find the removal of redundancies and this well-thought-out limit to be truly liberating in a sense. Understood. This was a productive conversation, and I learned a lot."

"You did?"

"Indeed," An Ping said, "Knowing the limits of the tools we use is paramount. It could be a matter of life and death in many scenarios."

Ziyou Yung seemed taken aback by that. The boy shrugged, "That’s fair. Well, in the near future, I won't be able to make any more changes to the communicator without a new breakthrough. I think most of the bugs have been fixed, but my lack of knowledge in runes and arrays limits a lot of what could be done."

"It is a shame that the transmission array token was a bust." An Ping said.

She truly meant that. Having ten windows open before her eyes was not a good experience at all.

"We'll have to make one."

"Lord Brother will perhaps be discontent. But then again, Fairy Su would not care for the feelings of a mere 'headsman'." An Ping imagined how unsightly her half-brother's face would become at the blatant disregard, but this was a world where the heaviest fist was right. Though she did suspect that the boy sitting in front of her would frown at her statement.

Good thing he couldn't read her mind.

"Nanya won't just hand me one. She did give me the manual to make it, but I have to find the items and craft it myself. Or at least, gather people who can," Ziyou Yung said. They talked more after that, mostly about the upcoming hunt.

The Dark Star mercenaries have just about finished their training with the new tokens. That's why they had the time to mess around. And An Ping had finalized a workable plan with the head of the Free Sparrow gang and the Youjin clan.

Soon, they'll complete the commission. And perhaps soon after that, she and her husband could finally fulfill their longtime dream. The Dark Star Sect would finally see the light of day.

***

"Now isn't this a good sight," Youjin Gengxin muttered out loud. He was on his flying sword up in the sky, looking down at the voidfiends and chaosfiend fighting it out. There were thousands of the beasts, and no matter how many each side killed, more would spawn from the voidrift and chaos spring.

"Between us and the Dark Star mercenaries, we can manage," Youjin Liu said, on his own flying artifact, but his was a boat. The good patriarch wasn't yet strong enough to control a flying sword with as much dexterity as Youjin Gengxin, but both of them hoped that one of the cores from the Imperfect Heaven 3rd order fiends below would change that.

"And Ziyou Maque's gang has the most manpower. He does seem to mind when we call it disposable, but the man is competent," Youjin Liu continued.

"They'll do fine with the cleanup," Youjin Gengxin said. "And he can be a tough nut when in a fight. We'll count on him better. Way better now that he's taken over the Baishui territory."

The whole city had once belonged solely to the Youjin. But certain concessions needed to be made in the previous centuries, the perks of being subjects to a kingdom.

Suddenly, Youjin Gengxin felt a fearsome aura approaching from the east.

"On your guard, it's her," he told his brother, and Youjin Liu set his artifacts at the ready.

The Flareful Empress appeared in a smoke of amethyst fire.

"Elder Gengxin," the tiny woman greeted the two. Under her dainty figure, Youjin Gengxin knew, hid the might of a dragon. She could probably take ten cultivators on Gengxin's level and escape.

"I thought the Flareful Empress had proclaimed that her business with our Westmoon kingdom was over." Gengxin did not want to provoke her. But he was a Youjin too, not only a Selenosilver Valley elder. And this was the Dim Gold's neighborhood.

The Flareful Empress merely smiled. "You do not have to be on guard, little Elder," she said, looking at the situation below. Her smile was soon replaced by a frown. "I have come to an accord with Ziyou Yung. And one such term was to help with recovering your precious chaosfiend."

"You have? I mean, then you'll be joining the hunt?" Youjin Gengxin asked. His suspicions only grew.

"You are being quite disrespectful," the Flareful Empress said. But she didn't find any more faults. "We have taken two disciples."

"Ah, yes. The Xiu Jiujiu girl. What kind of story did you come up with? Well, actually I ain't that interested. As long as it has nothing to do with our Youjin clan, I don't care," Youjin Gengxin said. He could not imagine how humiliated the Flareful Empress must've been. The absolute gall of that madlander boy. But such guts he could admire.

The Flareful Empress, on her side, cared very much. For her face, that is. She had purged clans for far less, yet her hands were literally tied here.

"Perhaps that is fine. The Ziyou Yung boy is quite lucky," she thought back on their talk. The madlander boy was interesting and reminded her of her first lover. Cunning and cowardly, yet quite naive too in that idealistic kind of way. She would be delighted to kill him for the loss of face he had incurred. Even now, her blood burnt at the mere thought of her smoke-monger past being laid bare.

Yet he was the Fox Princess's toy, and there was very little she could do without having her life's work, her empire and imperial family, and indeed her life itself being flushed out. One did not scheme against the Su Fox Clan. Not even if they had Harmonious Heaven Immortals. And the Flareful Empress was merely a purple lizard with a grudge.

But more so than that, Ziyou Yung did extend an olive branch. And now she had the perfect successor. A chance would come, and she would await the day the Fox Princess's favor ran dry. But until then, she had words to fulfil.

The Flareful Empress's frown deepened. "Something is not right."

"And what would that be?" Youjin Gengxin said, going into guard himself.

"There is a stench," the Flareful Empress's expression turned doubtful, and her small nose twitched. "of an Unfolding Heaven voidfiend."