Quick, quick, change the subject! “Li Xiang, did you find our children?” Hui asked, before Bai Xue could continue to pressure him.

“No. I noticed an anomaly inside myself—a falsehood, but when I delved into it, I found that no one could perceive me anymore,” Li Xiang replied.

Bai Xue nodded. “Is that why I can remember you now? We’re all inside the… ‘anomaly,’ so we can remember one another, but no one else will?”

Li Xiang nodded. “It seems that way.”

Hui’s eyes lit up. Wonderful! No one can remember if I owe them a debt! At this very moment, Xiao Hui is debt free!

Ah, but… no one can remember they owe me anything, either. How unfortunate. Is this what it means to become an adult, and realize your place in the world? Hui drooped, shaking his head at himself.

“Can you tell if I’m lying now when I say I’m Xiao Hui?” Hui asked.

Li Xiang looked at him, then nodded, just once. “You are Weiheng Hui.”

Phew. That’s a relief. It was hard on me when Li Xiang couldn’t tell truth from lies! She even attacked me… Hui turned, looking in the direction Li Xiang had been running. “Do you know something we don’t, Elder Sister?”

Again, Li Xiang nodded once. “There’s a faint perfume on the air. If you breathe deeply, you can smell it. The smell grew stronger once I entered this space. I began to wonder if this technique, whatever it is, is an incense-based illusion technique. In which case, if we proceed to the source of the illusion, we will likely find our children.”

Ah! Now it all makes sense. Incense-based techniques require one to burn an incense to use them. By their very nature, they can only last for a limited time. For this one to last for so long, they must have several incenses, or a particularly long-burning stick… but either way, it will eventually burn out, and everyone will remember us and our children once again. Hui nodded to himself, thoughtful.

Bai Xue frowned. “What if someone else is holding the incense, while our children are stolen off in a different direction?”

Hui closed his eyes and took a deep breath. A faint spicy-sweet scent swirled through his nose. Ah… no wonder I didn’t notice until now. It is extremely faint! I don’t think anyone under fifth stage could have smelled it. He flew left and right, forward and back, then opened his eyes and shook his head, lifting his head to point toward the barrier mountains in the distance. “The incense grows stronger toward the barrier mountains. Our children were taken by the Eight Tiers Palace of the Eastern Alliance. Their destination would be across the mountains, in the Palace. It’s likely the two are travelling together.”

“And if they aren’t… we can always force an answer out of whoever we find,” Bai Xue said, grinning maliciously.

Hui swallowed. Hmm. I sometimes forget that Bai Xue’s clan is considered half-demonic!

Oh well. They’re the ones who stole her child. It’s their fault that they stole it from Bai Xue. What happens to them afterward is what they get for making bad decisions!

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Li Xiang nodded. She looked at Hui and Bai Xue. “There’s no need to speak any longer. Let’s proceed.”

Hui nodded. He waved his hand and summoned his bamboo pole back from where it had fallen to the ground below. “Yes.”

Bai Xue reached into her dimensional pouch and offered him a white folding fan. “You can borrow one of my fans. It flies back to me when you dismount it, so you don’t have to keep calling it back each time you play dead.”

“Ah, no, no, it’s fine,” Hui said, waving his hand. I’m flying on the bamboo pole for style, not because I need something to fly on! Yes, yes. It’s very ‘hidden master.’ Vibes, Bai Xue, it’s all about vibes!

Ah, but… come to think of it, aside from sword cultivators with sword qi, who can easily turn into beams of sword light and fly even faster, why does everyone else fly on weapons? After a certain stage, we can all fly on our own power, with or without a sword, or any other weapon. I suppose it’s a bit easier to fly atop something, but… it’s a bit confusing.

Or could it be? Does everyone but me have weapon qi? I have no karma with weapons, after all. Even Senior Chen Wuya’s sword technique, I could only learn through talisman techniques. Hui looked at his bamboo, then shook his head. I’m not the only magic-focused cultivator, and that’s putting aside fist-based martial artists and scholarly cultivators, too! Mysterious, truly mysterious.

Oh well, it’s interesting, so I can’t complain.

Li Xiang flew off without another word. Hui and Bai Xue fell in line behind her. As they flew, Hui found himself falling further and further behind Li Xiang, while Bai Xue fell behind him. He paused for a moment, offering Bai Xue a place on his bamboo. She hesitated, then jumped on, waving her hand to call her fan into her sleeve after she did.

Hui leaned toward her ear. “Elder Sister, what realm is Li Xiang?”

“Sixth, the same as myself,” Bai Xue said.

Hui frowned. “I’m seventh realm.”

“Early seventh?” Bai Xue asked, raising a brow.

Hui nodded. “Naturally, naturally. This cultivator is still lowly, after all.”

“When you say it like that, I’m suddenly not sure what you mean,” Bai Xue muttered to herself. She waved her hand, dismissing what he was about to say before he said it. “Li Xiang is the pinnacle of sword cultivators. She’s reached a level of One with the Sword realm where it’s hard to tell where her power ends and the sword’s begins. To call her sixth realm is only to categorize her cultivation. In truth, she can defeat cultivators at mid, or even late seventh realm. I think she could even match a great-circle seventh realm cultivator.”

“It’s fortunate that we were flying perpendicular to her, or else we might have never caught her,” Hui murmured.

Bai Xue nodded. “Indeed.”

Li Xiang turned back. “The scent grows stronger. Be on your guard.”

Bai Xue and Hui nodded. Bai Xue drew her fans. Hui reached into his robes. His eyes widened.

“What is it?” Bai Xue murmured, sensing the disturbance in his qi.

“I just realized I’m completely out of talismans,” Hui muttered.

“I saw you draw one on the air earlier. Do you need them pre-drawn?” Bai Xue asked.

Hui gave her a look. “Of course I do, of course I do! Just because small cultivator can draw talismans at a moment’s notice doesn’t mean I don’t need pre-drawn talismans. What if an attack comes faster than I can draw a talisman?”

Bai Xue nodded. “As ever, our Hui is preeminently reasonable.”

“No, no. Elder Sister praises me too much,” Hui demurred.

“I’m excited to see what new seventh-realm attacks you have,” Bai Xue said, smiling.

Hui froze. Seventh… seventh realm!

I’m at seventh realm! I’m at seventh realm, and yet, what seventh-realm attacks do I have? Aside from Zhu Diyu’s attack… which, what do I even call it at this point? Realm Breaker? World Shaker? Vibration? Wave? Dimension? Void? –anyways, aside from that, I don’t have any attacks at the seventh realm!

Ah, cultivation is so hard, truly difficult indeed. To have to chase down new techniques each time I break through to the next realm… is this a sort of debt?

Hui’s heart seized up, but in the next second, he shook his head. No, no. This isn’t debt at all. This is merely something I owe myself, which can’t be debt at all, since small cultivator will never chase myself down!

In the distance, a fog of gray smoke clouded the horizon. Li Xiang sped up again. Exchanging a glance, Bai Xue and Hui sped after her.

Here we go!