> Hell is what we make it, as is the darkness of our hearts.

Unknown sage, Era of the Shan.

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~ DUN LIAN JING – THE PERILOUS REALM ~

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She lay in the dirt, laughing. It was silent laughter, because they had long since robbed her of her voice unless commanded, but the hilarity of the situation they found themselves in touched a chord within her that made it impossible to suppress. The courtyard they stood in was a ruined mess. A handful of captives, those who they had managed to find nearby, who had been witnesses to the events and known anything at all, lay slumped and dead-eyed against a wall. Broken sobs echoed from one of the other buildings, ignored by the majority of the party.

And yet, nobody knew how Gan Deng had died. It was hilarious.

“Certainly, there was some heavenly tribulation here,” one of the two diviners who the Huang Gan clan had brought with them muttered, holding up a compass that spun idly.

“…”

Gan Renshu, who stood nearby, said nothing. Gan Jiao, who was stood nearby in his lightly armoured red robe, leaning on his spear scowling into the distance, also said nothing, perhaps because he didn’t want to get another beating. The loss of his storage ring was…

“Would someone shut that bitch up?” Gan Sheng, another one from the Red Sovereign Sect, said looking in her general direction.

“What in the nameless fate could actually do this anyway?” the diviner muttered, still pacing around. “His soul jade is dead, as if he never even had refined it to begin with. It’s like he was killed without ever entering reincarnation, but that should be impossible in this place, for us?”

“Or whatever killed him exceeds the protection on our soul jades that Grand Elder Jai placed upon them?” another spoke up from where he was sat nearby – she thought his name was Yan Fu, a senior of Yan Ju’s or someone from his clan.

“You think?” the diviner, who she finally managed to place as Gan Tai, a Dao Immortal no less, said with a sarcastic gesture. “There are three signatures that leave this place anyway. Two go east; one goes south. All of them have something auspicious associated with them, but I cannot grasp the moments of this place: something had ruined the feng shui thoroughly, scrubbed it clean, in fact.”

“What of the other things?” Gan Renshu said eventually, not looking at Gan Jiao.

“The Dao Seed pills? Not a sign, not even a peep from the compass,” Gan Tai said matter of factly. “You’re welcome to try yourselves if you think your destiny with divination is better than mine.”

“You realise what you have done?” Gan Renshu said with a scowl, turning to Gan Jiao.

“How in the name of the inauspicious, virginal whore was I supposed to know that moron would walk into something like this?” Gan Jiao scowled.

“You could have… I dunno, just run away?” Gan Renshu sighed.

“…”

“From a qi beast that can break Dao Immortal grade storage rings in its bare hands and moved so fast I couldn’t perceive it even with the help of a heaven’s eye artefact and having lifted the suppression?” Gan Jiao said sourly. “You’re lucky I went after that asshole as it is, or we would never even know there was something like that running around here.”

“I guess, but if only we hadn’t traded two bottles of heavenly grade Dao Immortal Foundation pills for it, that would be…” Gan Renshu sighed.

She could see the supreme effort it took him to refrain from screaming at people. Passing off those two bottles of pills as ‘just’ Dao Immortal Foundation pills was kind of funny to her, because she knew they were not just that. Most Dao Immortal Foundation pills were fierce things that you could only take once and which had a high chance of causing complications or secondary mutations within your Dao Seed. Those pills had come from a master pill refiner in the Huang Clan, Huang Fenghuang – the ‘Phoenix Fire Pill Emperor’. They were so gentle that a babe could take them like candy and yet they were every bit as potent as most other types.

A single bottle was unattainable to most and they were coveted even by Dao Sovereigns as supplements to boost your foundation. They also held both Luan Fire and Phoenix Fire, so with each one all the impurities from your consumption of the previous pill would be washed away and every one also purified your Dao Seed along with building the foundation. On the open market a single one would sell for thousands of dao jades, and Gan Jiao had managed to lose half the group’s entire supply – the advance payment promised to the various Dao Immortals from the Heavenly Solace and Gan Clan who were along for the ride.

If the group had been divided before, now there was an actual chasm between those who had been paid to come here and those who were the ‘true believers’ in this task of theirs.

Her body stood up on its own – a horrible feeling – and she was sent over to the building where the sobs had mostly stopped. Inside it, she was made to stand against the wall, staring at the three cultivators who had been captured with one of the fleeing groups. All of them had been promising juniors, two with Sky Fairy Pavilion and another with the Storm Blaze Sect. They actually still had their foundations and were largely unharmed, beyond being humiliated. Their screams and sobs were entirely down to the indignity of being naked in front of men, a childish fear in front of this lot.

“Later, I will feel sorry for you, when you stand here like me, assuming they don’t just kill you,” she said, her lips moving but no sound coming out.

“You think they will make us slaves, like you?” the woman from Storm Blaze hissed.

“You think that lot care that you’re from Sky Fairy Pavilion?” she said with a sad smile. “I’m from the Imperial Court.”

They just stared at her with derision in their eyes, still believing themselves much better than her, who was just a ‘slave’.

“Just because you were some servant to the Imperial Court, do you think that makes whatever you suffer what we will suffer?” the woman from Storm Blaze sneered.

-Idiots, don’t come crying to me when you realise why that lot didn’t kill you or soul scour you, she thought in her head.

Maybe in another time she would have felt sorry for them, but all her pain and anguish was for herself now, and even that was stretched thin enough – and it made her skin crawl. They had placed a slave brand in her dantian – to stop her from obliterating herself that first day.

She had also been forced to swear an exemption from punishment to Young Noble Gan Hao so that her curses would not trigger tribulations from the ‘Cloak of Heaven’ that shielded that bastard from prying eyes. The whole thing was a hilarious farce, and it had cemented in her mind that she was both the prisoner here, and the one thing that was not expendable to Gan Renshu.

Without her, their task failed as she understood it, because she was the only one with any actual thread of ‘Destiny’ to whatever it was they were seeking.

She stood there in silence, in the evening light with the other three women, listening to the world around them. All her senses were mortal now. Their claim that her body cultivation and spiritual method were totally bogus seemed to have been born out in a bunch of other ways like that. It was a cage within her body to which Gan Renshu, Gan Jiao and the two diviners held the primary keys. Any could command her in a few ways: make her dance, cavort or do various embarrassing things or just walk here and there. However, only Gan Renshu could command anything else of her. Mercifully, he seemed content to just use her as a living compass.

“So, which way?” Yan Ju asked.

“We wait for the others, then we push on towards the river. The sweeping teams have mostly pushed the other cultivators in this valley over any serious obstacles at this point,” Gan Tai said, presumably having consulted that compass of his again.

“No, we will catch them on the way,” Renshu said after a moment’s silence. “Staying here is certainly a bad idea.”

“You think there is something dangerous to all of us around here?” a distant voice asked a bit derisively.

“What do you think, Brother Jiao? Is there something dangerous around here?” Gan Renshu asked nastily.

“…”

“The group responsible seem to be the Argent Imperial Hall,” Gan Tai added. “They seem to have headed to the river in any case – I cannot grasp their talismans, not yet anyway – but their qi signatures head in that direction.”

“Come,” the voice echoed in her head, and she and the other three all stood up mechanically and walked out into the courtyard.

She mimed spitting at Yan Ju on the way past, making him frown.

“Hold out your hand,” Gan Tai commanded her.

She did as commanded, struggling against the unnatural calm that was forcing its way into her mind.

“Be calm,” Gan Tai said blandly and she felt her rage and frustration momentarily frozen, like a small animal before a predatory animal, then scattered temporarily.

Flipping out a knife, he cut her palm and then her other hand moved and she drew a design on her own palm with her blood. All the blood in her body suddenly tugged faintly to the south-east, making her stumble slightly. The blood symbol, a complex thing that was as much a three dimensional image as a rune swirled off her hand like a small serpent and hung in the air, extending in that direction as Gan Tai considered something in a grubby manual he had.

“This divination rune suggests we must travel for three days south-east before making another divination. We must cross two barriers and a trial.”

“Does the trial involve…”

“Fighting?” Gan Tai shrugged. “The ways of heaven are mysterious, but probably, yes, it involves fighting. It doesn’t seem to have been forestalled by us sweeping everything ahead of us, just delayed by a day.”

“What of this one’s tale?” Gan Sheng said holding up one of the limp cultivators.

“That some servant had a treasure sword and that was why Gan Deng died?” Yan Fu mused. “It might be worth pursuing.”

“Do it, do it,” she sneered. If you’re lucky he’ll be right and you can go die too.

“Enough from you,” Gan Tai said absently and her mouth stopped moving. “Well, he certainly saw what he saw, but that whole recollection in their heads is so hazy as to be meaningless. Not one of them was closer than 100 metres and I had to divine what they might have seen had they actually been close enough. There were at least a dozen signatures, two treasure swords, a spear, a strange talisman that should hold martial intent, another strange signal that relates to the lightning we all saw and two other abnormalities that neither this compass nor the talisman that is its superior could make anything of. Both those signatures are still here, by the way.”

A few of the Golden Immortals looked around uneasily.

“Whatever it was went through those other two groups of cultivators like they were chumps and the signal regarding that is still here as well,” Gan Tai stressed.

“Which is why we are moving on,” Gan Renshu said briskly.

“But…” Wen Di, one of the mercenary cultivators who had come with them courtesy of Yan Ju, spoke up.

“I don’t care what you want from this. Your task is given by Young Noble Hao, and you will perform it or you will not. If you choose not to, you are no longer a part of this group.” Gan Renshu said simply.

Looking on as Renshu started to walk out of the ruined courtyard, she could see that that was that. The unspoken words there were ‘and then you will die’, as two already had when the original loss of the pills became known. Both had only been Ancient Immortals, but it had certainly stressed to everyone else that there were ‘bosses’ here and ‘minions’. While Gan Renshu was only a peak Golden Immortal, he had enough treasures on him to kill a Dao Sovereign in a straight up fight, she was pretty certain at this point, not to mention his cultivation was somehow adapted to this place. How he had achieved that, even she wasn’t sure, but he was able to exert his full strength irrespective of the various talismans that others were using.

“Walk,” he said flatly, waving to their little group of prisoners.

The command set her and the three other women after Gan Renshu as the rest of the group traipsed after them. She saw from the corner of her eye that the bodies vanished into a corpse coffin artefact that Dai Tan, another of the Dao Immortal mercenary cultivators, had produced.

“Where are we heading?” one of the cultivators ahead of them asked as they fell in around them.

“Tomorrow’s rendezvous,”Gan Renshu said shortly.

“And where is that?” one of the Red Sovereigns Sect disciples asked, frowning.

“Where we rendezvous with the others tomorrow, moron,” one of his compatriots said, slapping him on the back of the head as he went past. The woman behind her gave a squeak as that cultivator also slapped her on the ass on the way past as an afterthought.

That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the day. They walked in a rough escort formation through the sub-tropical forest, encountering little by way of threat and eventually crossed over the river to the river wetlands on the other side. The two diviners, Gan Tai and Gan Bingwen as the other ironically turned out to be, led the way, escorted by four Dao Immortals.

That evening they didn’t bother to stop, which she found to be a minor mercy of sorts. The forest at night was… unpleasant, in all kinds of ways, but it was far more preferable to being ridiculed or made to do lewd dances for the amusement of personages in the Gan clan or other influences at the whim of some of the more crass elements of their band.

The following day was the same as the previous; it passed her by in a monotonous torment wherein she was perpetually made aware of her own body being the cage which was binding her, all the while grappling with the fact that the damage from the mushroom spores, which felt like a small eternity ago, was still working its way deeper into her body. Now it was taking advantage of her attempt at destroying her own foundation with those curses to slowly do just that, but rather than it being via heavenly lightning, it was like being rotted away from the inside out.

The day after was much the same – they encountered some unlucky qi beasts, who were caged, slaughtered and butchered for their cores and whatever worth they had. It didn’t really seem to matter what realm they were or how aggressive they were: those who were doing the sweeping killed them and stored away the cores.

On the afternoon of that day, they also captured a second group of cultivators, a band from a sect on the southern end of the Easten continent. It didn’t even deserve to be called a battle really – one of the Dao Immortals just locked them all in place and then went through them, soul scanning them one after another, taking their rings and then storing their bodies in the corpse coffin.

The only survivors were a Soul Foundation female outer disciple and a female herb hunter from the Hunter Bureau, who the diviner Gan Bingwen bound as a second living compass using the Huang Clan’s soul arts before sending them into their group.

By this point, the three who had been captured before – from the Sky Fairy Pavilion and the Storm Blaze Sect – had been gagged to stop them complaining or shouting insults. Their eyes still held quite a bit of resistance, but their body language was that of people who realised they were in quite a big pit. Likely they were taking comfort in the idea that their ‘purity’ was at least assured if they were to be used as supporters for divinations.

Thereafter, the group continued on their way, under the direction of Gan Bingwen and Gan Renshu, winding their way along the banks of the river they were now following… onwards to wherever they were leading them.

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~ HA YUN – EDGE OF THE MOUNTAINS ~

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“Why in the evil eye of heaven did we ever agree to come here…” a nearby cultivator wearing Shen Clan robes and the badge of some sect from the Western Shu continent grumbled.

“Because you’re a minion whose mother was screwed by a monkey?” another cultivator walking behind them snickered.

“Quiet, you lot,” the herb hunter hissed back down the line.

“…”

“This is why we should have brought someone from the Myriad Herbs Association…” another voice grumbled from further back in the line, a Pill Sovereign Sect disciple probably.

“Yeah, they at least have the proper pedigree…”

“There are more of those stalkers around,” he muttered.

“…”

They glanced sideways at him and spoke a bit more quietly.

Ha Yun exhaled and went back to his ‘task’, which was basically to screen a bit of the left side of their column. There were no tetrid stalkers around here, but their group had had a run-in with one the previous day and that was fresh in many people’s minds. As were, it had to be said, the scenes from before they arrived in here, when Senior Cang and a few others had killed those thirteen star qi beasts.

He waved a hand and they moved to the right a bit uneasily. No tetrid stalkers, but quite a lot of bothersome spirit vegetation.

“Would you lot shut up? We don’t want to attract another of those bug swarms!” the hunter who was leading the column hissed back.

“Really, he’s so highly strung,” one of the Shen clan muttered.

“Must be inexperienced. You know...” another added, “word has it they promote hunters in Yin Eclipse regardless of their cultivation realm or some such.”

“Such a mockery of the rankings would never be allowed in the Myriad Herbs Association. Even if the Yin Eclipse suppresses cultivation, the skills and expertise of a higher realm tell,” the Pill Sovereign disciple grumbled.

“We have talismans for those bugs anyway,” the first one added rather naively.

The time since they had arrived in this horrible place had certainly reinforced why he had avoided these kinds of missions like the plague back in West Flower Picking town. They were bothersome, as were teaching ones. It was a common theme among the veteran herb hunters that sect disciples were the worst kind of escort mission you could land.

It was never quite as bad as they made out, but there was a kernel of truth to it.

That kernel was that background mattered to even the lowliest sect disciple. Those from clans had a more variable grasp of status than just cultivation realms, but they had made it into a matter of influence after all. Background and face. They could take being ordered around by someone from the older generation – Elder Weng for example – however, this younger herb hunter, also from North Fissure, who was only a seven-star herb hunter and barely at Soul Foundation had been doomed before he ever started. The idiot had even volunteered to lead this little trek back into the mountains here. For people like these, from the Shen clan… and others… who had a very firm grasp of their own status, taking orders from commoners was like asking them to eat shit.

As such, they were more amenable to listening to him, a Golden Core cultivator from the Ha clan than they were listening to Hunter Pei. It wouldn’t have mattered if Hunter Pei had been the third coming of the Erlang Buddha himself; he was from a nameless little village somewhere on the northern coastline of the Yin Eclipse sub-continent and three realms adrift of his ‘rank’. Despite being a veteran of several years, he might as well have been instructing cats.

“So, Brother Ha,” one of the other cultivators in their little band said, moving over to walk beside him, “why is someone from the Ha clan in the Hunter Bureau?”

“The West Flower Picking town Hunter Pavilion is mostly controlled by the Ha Clan, apart from a few rogue elements that recently rebelled,” he explained.

“Ah, I heard about that – they tried to attack that Senior Din and a Ha Clan group?” the disciple, a young woman from the Nine Auspicious Moons sect on the central continent, nodded sociably.

“They did,” he conceded. His memories of the whole thing were still… weird… and gave him headaches.

He called upon the art that Senior Ouyeng had given him to help with the lingering soul injury as they walked on in silence for a bit. He scoured the surrounding for problems, while the young woman focused on looking where she was walking so she didn’t trip over a rock or something.

It was not that surprising that nobody recognised him as the person who had been part of that group. A few seniors likely did, but there were two other bunches from the Ha clan now in their camp besides. Din Ouyeng himself spent most of his time with his compatriots from the Jade Gate Court, now led by an Ancient Immortal Senior, Senior Bo. And Ling Luo might as well have been welded to Din Ouyeng’s side at this point.

–An immutable truth of the world: nobody complains about the presence of beautiful women, no matter their realm, Ha Yun thought with a sigh.

Ling Luo might as well have been Din Ouyeng’s maid, or maybe she was actually his companion at this point; she certainly looked at him on occasion like she was. He had no idea, because while she was personable enough when they crossed paths, she rarely did cross paths with him and that wasn’t the kind of conversation you could just strike up with someone.

-So... Fairy Luo, are you having relations with the senior from the Din clan? – *Slap* How dare you. That was a microcosm of how most variants of that conversation were likely to play out.

“Scary, that there could be people who would rebel so rampantly,” the girl muttered.

“The politics of the three provinces of Yin Eclipse have been… fraught,” he conceded.

“Ah, look out,” he took her arm and stopped her from stepping on a vine that would likely have exuded a sap strong enough to melt her slipper.

“Oh,” she shivered, and stepped over it carefully. “Such a horrid place.”

“No disagreement there,” he murmured in a hushed tone. “Hunter Pei’s instruction not to talk too much is a good one, though: those bug swarms are unpleasant.”

“…”

She sniffed. “It’s just the way he says it… do this, do that, no explanation.”

“To be fair, if he were to take the time to give a proper explanation for every instruction given in the midst of our travels, everyone would be dead by now,” he pointed out.

“…”

She shrugged and they kept walking on.

“Why did you even come on this trip anyway?” he asked after a while.

“Because Senior Dongmei said someone from our sect should be here, involved,” the woman explained, before adding, “so I volunteered. I am Bia Meifen, by the way.”

“…”

“Ha Yun,” he politely supplied back.

That was how things had panned out pretty much. They had a combined group that was… if not fractious, then growing in ways that made the influences within it uneasy. It was split three ways, by the continent, pretty much:

The Jade Gate Court and their allies were led by an Ancient Immortal: Senior Bo. The Pill Sovereign Sect, meanwhile, had become the de facto leader of the rest of those from the imperial continent, led by another Ancient Immortal, Senior Quan. Those from the southern continent, on the other hand, were jointly led by Senior Jiao Den, an Ancient Immortal from the Argent Hall, and Ze Min, an Ancient Immortal from Thunder Phoenix Gate. Those from the western continent and elsewhere had mostly gravitated to the shadow of Senior Dongmei, an Ancient Immortal from the Nine Auspicious Moons, and Senior Tian Cang Di, of the Shu Pavilion.

Three continents’ worth of sects, all of whom had a rather difficult working relationship, bound together because the alternative would likely end in a messy bloodbath. Nobody likely fancied themselves the outright winner of that, except perhaps Tian Cang Di, who seemed disinclined to engage in the manoeuvring of the other groups for whatever reason.

They made their way onwards, with Hunter Pei and the other hunter on the far side of the column occasionally attempting to instil a bit more rigour in their formation. As they went, he chatted quietly to Bia Meifen, pointing out some interesting spirit herbs and even gathering a few as the opportunity arose. Most of their haul from this trip was being held by Hunter Pei, but everyone had been scavenging on the side anyway.

It was another hour of slow descent through the montane jungle before they reached the actual foothills of the mountain range they were in. Here, the sub-tropical jungle ended at a series of cliffs and gorges before opening out onto the broad savannah.

Their group, led by the five Ancient Immortals, had occupied a small ruin on a rocky outcrop on the edge of the forest for now.

It was strategically placed with a gorge and a torrential river on one side, and a large valley on the other. Making their way over the rise towards it, he had to admit that the view was spectacular. Ahead of them, vast grassy plains extended into haze, while to their north and south, forested slopes rose, transforming from savannah into jungle and then cloud forest slowly as the humidity rose with the altitude. The peaks they had made their way out of, and those broad winding valleys with their rivers, were shrouded in clouds and might as well have been another world compared to what now lay before them.

In the far distance, a second vast range of mountains loomed, stretching from horizon to horizon, their snowy peaks glittering in the distant light above amidst the swirling clouds. All the divinations they had done showed that that was the most auspicious direction to travel to exit this bizarre place.

“Welcome back… Did you find anything good?” one of the Pill Sovereign disciples on watch waved to them and gestured for them to come on into the region around the camp.

“Just a few spirit herbs, Senior Nangong,” Hunter Pei replied respectfully, giving him a storage ring that held the majority of their harvest, such as it was, now never to be seen by their eyes again.

“Senior Quan will be grateful,” Nangong nodded, pocketing the ring without any preamble. “Nobody else has anything?”

“…”

“Pardon? What are you, a magpie?” the Bia Meifen beside him sniffed.

The disciple was about to retort before noting her affiliation and shutting up and so waved the rest of them on by with a scowl. A few of the others also made derisive comments as they passed.

That was also life here in a nutshell. Those below Immortal realm – or independent cultivators, for that matter – were all basically working for seniors or influences now. Most had initially sought the safe shadow of those seniors when it became clear that this place had no proper suppression in any case. Now, they were the ones taking on most of the actual endeavour, and risk.

With the talismans’ external connections no longer working, most influences in their group had begun progressively presenting their resources to their seniors as it gathered at the top. Those lower down knew they had no chance of getting anything meaningful now that there was no suppression, so everyone was now just feeding what they got to their seniors, hiding behind flags and reputation.

It was a cunning strategy in one way, because the only people showing the most actual growth in this place were those lower realm cultivators, himself included. They were also the ones adapting fastest to whatever was going on with the qi here. On the other hand, it was hard not to feel like they were being treated as an expendable resource – that was certainly how the Jade Gate Court and Argent Hall were treating lesser influences and disciples. The worst part was that most were willing to go along with it anyway.

It was one reason he was happy to go out into the forest. He was happy to volunteer his expertise if it kept him out of that fate-accursed town and the weirdness around it, where most of the sects and influences interest here were focused now. Death to a beast attack in the forest was a possibility, but death by a fellow cultivator was fairly common down there. There were three big groups like theirs already in this vicinity, funnelled here by the mountains and the shared inability to fly or teleport.

“The camp grew again,” Meifen muttered as they made their way through it.

“It has,” he agreed.

There were several new clusters of cultivators. The number here in this ruin had to be upwards of 150 now. The camp on the other side of the valley had close to 200 and there was at least one further large group on the far ridgeline in another ruin that held a hundred or more from what the camp gossip here suggested.

With nothing better to do, he wandered along with the woman from the Nine Auspicious Moons, eventually winding back at Cang Di’s section of the ruin. The nearly mythical senior was sat on the edge of the ruin, staring at the town below, which was the other source of their recent exploitation. They had arrived here three days ago, and the town, which abridged the river that ran along the edge of the mountains, was the most straightforward way into the plains from what he could see.

That they hadn’t moved on past it was down to two reasons as far as he could see: the fact that nobody understood what was going on with its feng shui, and greed.

“Any luck, Junior Sister?” another member of her sect called out from a nearby room where they had a fire going in the fireplace and were experimenting, badly, with making spirit food from what he could see.

“A bit, thanks to Young Master Ha here,” the woman said brightly.

He blinked at that, because all he had done was talk to her on the way back, and point out a few interesting herbs for her to gather.

Considering their efforts, he had to admit that even he could do better – so, seizing the opportunity, he politely saluted them and added. “It was my pleasure. I also have some slight knowledge of spirit food. Perhaps we might compare some notes?”

“…”

The girl by the fire eyed him dubiously, but the other two in the room and Meifen as well brightened considerably at that.

“You didn’t mention that when we talked earlier…” Meifen said, eyeing him with renewed interest.

“It is a slight thing. The Ha clan does a lot of exploration of the ruins, and as a result we are expected to learn a bit of this and that,” he explained.

“I see…” the girl by the fire nodded. “In that case, be my guest.”

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~ RUO HAN – DARK VALLEY RUINS ~

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Ruo Han lay on his back, staring at the first stars that were slowly emerging from the sky between scudding clouds, lost in his thoughts. Nearby, Jin Chen was seated, staring silently at images of Meilan Xiaoli in the flickering light of the campfire they had. Liao Ying was also sat there, poring through the book they had recovered from the ruin, which Han Shu had been more than happy to give her. Hao Jun…

He sighed, because Hao Jun was… he was loath to say a nuisance, but had they been back in the sect, he would probably have sent him to be disciplined already. Unfortunately, that strategy would bear nothing out here. Hao Jun was already difficult enough to deal with without causing an actual schism over putting him on the spot.

The problem, essentially, was one of status… Hao Jun was from the Hao clan, and he knew it, and they knew it. The Hao clan were a big heavyweight on the southern continent, and while Hao Jun was only a very minor member, he had at least one cousin, if not two, in the Argent Hall, the Argent Justice sect’s parent sect. That was their hope for getting out of this mess really, but it was also a fate-accursed liability, because all their efforts to be more inclusive to Hao Jun had basically been met with polite rebuttal. He was from a big clan, and the three of them were all commoners. He was still a member of the sect, whereas they were people who had been marked as trouble makers. He was also the person who was going to intercede on their behalf, and they all knew it.

That things had gone this smoothly, was mainly down to him having two long talks with Hao Jun already, his own cultivation being higher than Hao Jun’s and the four herb hunters making their path through this place depressingly easy compared to all the suffering it had been before.

Right now, Hao Jun was sat in the middle of the camp, meditating on his cultivation.

Sighing, he sat up and stretched. Thinking too much about their current circumstances made keeping an empty mind difficult, even for him.

“Got bored of looking at different stars already?” Liao Ying, who was at nearby, joked, glancing up from the book she was reading.

“Something like that,” he conceded. “How is the book?”

“Technically brilliant, and simultaneously the most boring thing I have ever read,” Liao Ying said with a sigh. “It’s a moron’s guide to replacing nodes in a teleportation formation, but on a scale that I can only see a very big sect ever employing.”

“When you say… very big?” he asked.

“Argent Hall big, Jade Gate Court big,” she said absently. “Four fifths of the materials this talks about are utterly unknown to me and the remaining fifth, those I think I recognise, I only do from looking through those super high-end auction listings in the warehouses back home for fun.”

“So…” he was about to ask if that meant you could actually make one of those formations with the book, but she just shook her head.

“You can’t make shit with this. It’s purely about replacing individual nodes. It’s the 7th manual in a 21 manual series and deals exclusively with a very specific part of the formations,” Liao Ying explained with a sigh.

“What of the other stuff we found on the way through the forest…?” he said, looking at the small pile of pots and other oddments that would go in nobody’s storage rings or talismans.

“Somewhat indestructible, kinda pretty, fairly utilitarian…?” Liao Ying said with a wry smile.

“A pain in the ass to lug around…” Jin Chen’s voice interjected.

“And not especially valuable, in all likelihood,” Kun Juni said, appearing out of the shadows to sit down by the fire.

“How can you say that?” Hao Jun asked.

“Much like Miss Liao’s family, I also have connections to brokerages,” Juni said a bit drily. “I recalled that I had auction listings for stuff on my scrip, so checking back through them for artefacts that were hauled out of ruins on the outskirts of Yin Eclipse, I found this…”

They looked at the series of projected images for a series of dark stone pots and a collection of plates, knives, forks and spoons and a small set of very ornamental boxes.

These were all sold at auction in Blue Water City through various clans’ auction houses in the past decade. The pots reached about 2 spirit jade, the cutlery sold as a set for about 5, while the boxes sold for between 30 and 90 spirit jade.

“Why were these ones worth so much more?” Hao Jun asked, opening his eyes and finally engaging with the general conversation. Talk of treasure always brought him over.

“They are the right size to hold pills or spirit herbs, I would guess,” Liao Ying replied.

“Yep, pretty much. The properties of the stone made them excellent for preserving spirit herbs,” Juni agreed. “That’s mostly what the largest pots get used for as well, unofficially. My family has a few. They were so unwieldy they got buried in a cellar in the end and we use them to store grade seven and eight spirit grass pulp that’s used for mid-grade alchemical catalysts.”

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

“That seems… very…” Jin Chen trailed off…

“Mundane?” Juni said with a smile.

“Well... yes,” his friend conceded.

“I mean, even a few spirit jade is a lot to the average person… but to a Nascent Soul cultivator, it’s not much…” she sighed. “Most of this stuff is just domestic things in the first place. That it cannot be stored is likely down to some idiosyncrasy of the material used to make it rather than any big secret in their use.”

They all watched the fire in silence for a while, before Liao Ying remarked, “I see your cultivation is continuing to recover, Miss Juni.”

“It is,” Juni nodded.

He didn’t scan her with his soul sense, which was being weird in this part of the forest anyway, and it would have been rude besides, but he could now feel that she was somewhere around the peak of Qi Condensation. As a rate of recovery, to have achieved that in a week, even with the amount of foundation pills she had been consuming, was impressive. To his annoyance though, Hao Jun did send a flicker of soul sense at her. Whether she noticed or not, he had no idea, but Liao Ying did and shot him a narrowed look for a moment before closing her book with a sigh.

“I am going to go meditate until later,” she declared pointedly.

Juni nodded and stood as well. “I’ll go relieve Lin Ling of her watch.”

He watched Juni walk back into the shadows before sighing and looking at Hao Jun.

“That was rude,” he pointed out, sending the words with his soul sense, so nobody else would hear.

“I was merely concerned for her state of well-being… We are relying on them to lead us out of this place…” Hao Jun said with a half-smile.

“…”

“Please, ask next time,” he said, as politely as he could. “And maybe apologise to her.”

“She didn’t notice, and if nobody tells her…” Hao Jun muttered.

“And you know that for sure? I don’t know that for sure, you know?” he said, narrowing his eyes.

“…”

“I overstepped, Senior Han, sorry,” Hao Jun said, pointedly apologising to him, not to Juni. “I have been so preoccupied with thinking about how we can make things good with the Argent Justice Sect…”

He smiled and nodded, masking his annoyance at having that thrown back at him. Hao Jun had developed a tendency to do that, when he did something that was a bit stupid like that, as if it somehow excused his behaviour.

Not for the first time did he wish that Hao Jun hadn’t been unconscious for most of that brawl with their sect seniors. He had also been rather nosey about the background of the three – especially Kun Juni and Han Shu. He was never rude about it, but the questions were always a little more searching than they needed to be.

The root of the problem, was that technically Hao Jun was almost of a rank on par with him in the sect, and in a different part of the Outer Sect at that. He and Liao Ying were both people deemed particularly promising and were effectively quasi full-disciples. He was also one, but having taken up the position of a junior elder, had basically stepped sideways in the inner promotion track of the sect. Hao Jun would certainly become a full disciple and perhaps even an inner disciple if they returned. As might Liao Ying if their problems could be meted with their seniors. As such, had Hao Jun been at Nascent Soul, he would likely already have claimed that he should be in charge.

“Look, we all want to get home alive,” he sighed. “Whatever happened before, since we joined forces with Miss Juni and the rest, our passage through this miserable place has been like night and day.”

“This is true,” Hao Jun nodded. “They are almost as good as some of the Association scouts. I will admit, it does make a nice change not to have to stare at every tree in paranoia at least.”

“…”

“Exactly,” he agreed.

“However, the matter remains, that to make the Hao clan listen to us, we will likely have to show them some benefits,” Hao Jun sighed.

“…”

He resisted grinding his teeth. This was a point on which their group was politely split, but for differing reasons. Hao Jun wanted to look in every ruin – he was here to participate in the trial, and make a name for himself. To a lesser extent Liao Ying was as well. Jin Chen was here because he and Xiaoli had been talented alchemists among the outer sect disciples. He was here to basically manage the outer sect disciples from his court that had come along. The herb hunters had no interest in ruins at all, and just didn’t want to die horribly and alone out here.

As such, he, having had experience with ‘ancient ruins’ back on the southern continent, was not in a hurry to go walking into any – and clearly neither were the herb hunters unless they couldn’t avoid it. The others to a lesser degree wanted to see what was what, but only Hao Jun really wanted to explore.

“Look, the issue was that our seniors screwed up… If we can take something to the Hao clan that makes it clear that we made gains when idiots like Sheng Zhao and Shan Roxu did nothing but get people killed, it will make the case all the more compelling,” Hao Jun said, leaning forward. “That book is something, as are the few other oddments…”

“So you are saying we need to poke around more,” he sighed.

“You want to find good stuff as well, don’t you?” Hao Jun grumbled. “This place is clearly some kind of treasure realm.”

“And it’s also unspeakably weird,” he pointed out.

“Where there are gains are to be made there will also be risk, and yet…” Hao Jun scowled. “And yet they just walk past everything and that Lin Ling usually just says no.”

“And when she doesn’t it’s a creepy ruin where you get inauspicious vibes from everything?” he said.

“Well… yes,” Hao Jun grumbled. “I mean, we are gathering herbs and such, but those are all pretty crappy things – our seniors can pull them up like weeds if they desire.”

He was pretty sure that was an over-exaggeration. Most of the herbs that the hunters had been grabbing were excellent quality and all had awkward properties.

“I can’t say I disagree with her that there is something increasingly off about these forests,” he pointed out.

“…”

“Your ability to externalise your Nascent Soul is recovering?” Hao Jun asked, changing tack.

“A little. It seems to be a question of acclimatisation,” he mused. “Why?”

“Well none of our compass talismans work up here… I just thought…”

“Oh,” he nodded. That was a good point. There were certain divination options available to Nascent Soul cultivators not afforded to others of a lower realm.

“The hunters’ compasses still work, though…” he frowned.

“Those things that read ambient feng shui are hardly divination compasses,” Hao Jun scoffed.

“Tell that to the people who arrange your estate’s spirit gardens,” he muttered.

“That is clearly different,” Hao Jun said with a dismissive smile. “You are comparing the comprehensions of those old things who have stared at heaven and earth for thousands of years to the hunters here?”

“They haven’t been wrong yet,” he pointed out.

“We haven’t been in a position to ever prove that their paranoia has been…”

“I think if you repeat that back to yourself,” Liao Ying said from nearby… “you will find the answer you seek.”

Hao Jun scowled at her. “I thought you went to meditate.”

“You’re both sat here chattering like housewives… Your discussion is making me meditate on the price of fish!”

He could only laugh at that, although Hao Jun looked a bit affronted.

“I’m going to go meditate,” the younger man sniffed, and walked off into the shadows.

“…”

“If only you had been the one from the influential clan,” he grumbled, once he was certain Hao Jun was outside of the wards around the fire.

“I am,” Liao Ying said with a sniff. “Just not with the Argent Hall, sadly. If it helps, he was a passive asshole back in the sect as well.”

“It does, and yet it doesn’t,” he sighed, rubbing his temples.

“Even the hall elders trod lightly around him. His cousin is someone seriously influential, you know.”

“He is? He doesn’t talk about it.”

“Should have just asked me,” Liao Ying said with a smile. “Hao Tai is a Golden Immortal in the Argent Hall, made it to that realm by the age of 300. He was an Immortal by his mid 40’s.”

“Why didn’t he just tell us?” he frowned.

“Why do you think? I imagine that at home everyone is Hao Tai this and that… He, on the other hand, is in his mid 20s and only at Soul Foundation. Just like the rest of us mere mortals,” Liao Ying said, poking the fire.

“Great,” he sighed, seeing the problem. Intra-family politics would easily supplant any minor clan dealings for someone like Hao Jun.

“His cousin will likely bail him out, but he isn’t wrong. Whether his cousin bails out the rest of us is another matter. We might almost be better off hoping that Senior Ning survived,” Liao Ying agreed.

“How is your cultivation coming on anyway?” he asked, changing the topic.

“Disturbingly well. I take it yours is the same?” Liao Ying said after a moment’s consideration.

“My efficiency is frankly terrible, but even with what I have regained, I am still progressing faster than I had been outside with the aid of pill supplements,” he said.

“Same…” Liao Ying nodded. “Jin Chen is the same, and probably Hao Jun – not that he will ever speak of his cultivation to any of us. In a single night’s meditation I’ve made the kind of progress that might have taken me a week outside… and my law is working at maybe a tenth of what it should be?”

He nodded – his was actually doing better than that. His absorption efficiency was still hampered, maybe 15% of what it should have been, but to have even that be getting him the gains it was…

“I’ll be honest, though,” Liao Ying mused, leaning back against a warm rock. “The bottleneck is as much my cultivation law as it is whatever is going on with this place.”

“…”

He had also noticed that, but been unwilling to say it out loud. He had been pretty confident in his own law. It might be a basic one from the Argent Justice sect, but it was the core chapter of their basic law: the same one that was the foundation of all their more advanced laws going forwards. That it just wasn’t equipped to deal with the purity and complexity of the naturally occurring qi in this place was…

“Yeah…” he agreed. “I had wondered before…”

“About this being some kind of special ‘treasure realm’?” Liao Ying nodded. “That looks more and more likely – the complexity of the qi here… its purity, the strength of the tribulations…”

“Can you envisage what kind of speed you might have if your law was capable of making the best of it?” he asked, picking up a branch in the fire and waving it, watching the flickers of fire qi dance in the air.

“I could break through to Nascent Soul in a month,” Liao Ying whispered, staring at the fire, making it clear she had also done the calculations with her reply.

He had been wondering that himself. His Nascent Soul looked like a fourteen-year-old version of him and had been maturing at a slow but steady rate outside here. It was a hypnotically enticing thought, for all that the issue of their laws just not being good enough for this place was a problem that would be almost insurmountable.

“You reckon that’s why Hao Jun wants to explore everything?” he mused.

“Heck, it’s why I’d want to explore everything. This place is a complete ruin: people lived, worked here, built settlements here and a lot of their stuff is lying about, I’d bet. This book was in a random pot for fates’ sakes,” Liao Ying nodded again. “Even a basic law from this place, what would it look like?”

“I can’t disagree that it’s a tantalising idea,” he agreed… “However…”

“We have to be alive to make use of it,” Liao Ying replied with a nod, brushing her hair out of her face. “I am well aware. My family made its money on artefacts, remember.”

“If only Hao Jun was aware,” he grumbled.

“He is; he just doesn’t care.” Liao Ying said with an annoyed sigh. “I spoke to him about some of the ruins when he was asking me about the book yesterday. He nodded and smiled and said all the right things, but I know the look he had in his eyes, and it said only one thing to me: ‘you may think that, but for me, it will be different.’”

He could only nod – it was the kind of thing you could tell a certain type of person until you were blue in the face. Show them scrolls, tell them what happened to others, and they would nod, and smile, and agree – but in their heart, they always believed they were the one it would be different for.

“It is the kind of thing you can only learn from hard experience,” Teng Chunhua said, arriving beside the fire and sitting down opposite them. “And this is not the place to tempt it. The mortality rate of people who explore ruins in Yin Eclipse is terrifying: one in five usually die on their first trip in, unless guided by those who are very familiar with them.”

“And this place must have some connection to those ruins outside?” Liao Ying asked.

“It does. The designs, the style, everything here is the same,” Teng Chunhua stated. “To think otherwise is a fool’s conceit… and death in those ruins usually comes in ways that nobody ever sees. A doorway that just kills anyone who walks through it. A place where the alignments are purely inauspicious, with no qi involved at all. According to the records of the Teng School, the ruins outside the suppression zone have buried Dao Sovereigns and even an Eternal in the last thousand years. Places where Qi Condensation cultivators had been walking without trouble looting pots and pans one season, became an inexplicable death zone to any the next, before returning to how they were.”

“That is why Miss Lin and Miss Juni are going nowhere near them unless they cannot help it,” he mused.

“Yes, the ruins here are not like the anomalies further up,” Teng Chunhua said, biting her lip. “The way the alignments of the land are disturbed is… abnormal. The faster we are clear of this place, the better.”

“You said that before,” Liao Ying frowned, “but our compasses show little…”

Teng Chunhua shook her head. “It is not to do with compasses; it is the difference in methods. Physical Cultivators are more sensitive to ‘intent’ at their realm than spiritual cultivators are and all of us have had a lot of experience working with feng shui and formations. It is a requirement for advancement beyond the six-star ranking.”

“Regarding the compasses though…” the herb hunter frowned, and pulled out a copy of a battered manual and tossed it over to him.

He caught it, and looked at the front cover. “Han Manual on Feng Shui – Volume 1…”

“As in Han Ouyeng?” Liao Ying said, leaning over to look at it.

“Yes, as in that Han Ouyeng,” Teng Chunhua nodded. “All those who start out in the pavilion are expected to have mastered this volume by the time they make it to the seventh-star rank.”

Han Ouyeng was, indeed, famous. Despite being a senior official within the Hunter Pavilion, he was… known to be someone who walked a path that was not as dogmatic as those others who led the Hunter Bureau in Eastern Azure. He was the de facto head of the Bureau, although it was more a ceremonial position than a practical one, as the major decisions were taken by council of the heads of the Bureaus on each continent and a few other influential persons as he understood it. Han Ouyeng was, however, an old fellow who had been around a very long time, who knew how stuff went, and presumably had a lot of contacts that were beneficial to the Authority, so despite being quite independently spirited, he endured.

He flipped through it, not being particularly familiar with what the Hunter Pavilions taught their juniors. They were on the decline on the Southern Continent. He only knew what he did because his role as an Outer Sect Junior Elder was to coordinate the sect’s external missions with various influences, including some local arms of the Hunter Pavilion. By and large, they were being supplanted by Associations though, which were basically sects in all by name.

“I have to admit, it’s an aspect of the Hunter Bureau training I had overlooked,” he conceded.

“Well the Bureau has all but pulled out of the southern continent at this point,” Teng Chunhua acknowledged. “I think there are some efforts to re-establish and reinforce a few choice pavilions, but the strength of the Associations and their backing, not to mention the distance…”

“That’s what I heard,” Liao Yin nodded. “They are only issuing missions through the eastern cities, and they rarely involve sects; it’s the same on the Western Continent.”

He had heard as much by gossip as well.

“Well, if you like, I can teach you how to make the basic talisman compasses; it will be useful out here, because principally it relies on natural harmonies rather than instilled order,” Teng Chunhua said.

“This is really interesting… My own family has a manual like this, but it’s nowhere near as comprehensive,” Liao Ying said, having claimed the book from him to look through it properly. “It would save you a fortune in basic talismans…”

“It does,” Teng Chunhua chuckled, “although it does mean that the talismans that get sold in Yin Eclipse are a cut above the others in most other places. If you have to compete with this and a few other manuals like the Deng clan’s and the Golden Promise Canon, you have to go higher rather than lower.”

In the end, the rest of the night became a long discussion about that manual and how to make the compasses. It was interesting as well, because the method also had a close relationship with formations, of which his own grasp was pretty good.

The Argent Hall required all outer sect junior elders to know a few multi-person formations. He had four he could call upon, although with the horrible qi efficiency of everything here, they were not of much benefit unless they acclimatized to this place a good bit more than they already were.

He had discussed it briefly with Kun Juni already; however, there were issues. It was one thing to use them with their group, but revealing how to use them to the hunters, as he had explained to Juni, was likely to cause friction with Hao Jun. The formations could be considered as minor sect secrets and the one time she had tacitly broached the idea with him, he had been quite put out at the idea of giving those with no roots in the sect access to such knowledge. He hadn’t raised it since then. Adding ‘actual’ betrayal of secrets to their current predicament was probably not ideal unless there was no other choice and Juni had agreed with him when he went back and explained that.

They were also largely unusable to the hunters anyway – the smallest offensive one required four people at Soul Foundation and while he had been working on making it usable with three… that would be rather unstable. The defensive one was more hopeful. While it required five people, four of them could be at Golden Core, while only the controller was required to be at Soul Foundation.

Seeing the first lightening of the sky, he got up, and started to dismantle the campsite. The pre-dawn watch seemed to have been done by Han Shu and Jin Chen, which was good. His friend had hit it off quite well with Han Shu, it seemed, and having someone to talk to outside of the three of them was clearly helping to alleviate a bit of the grief that was gnawing at him regarding Xiaoli.

Rousing Hao Jun to help him, he set to hiding the scattered traces of their presence while Hao Jun disguised and dispersed the fire. The watchers for the night had likely been Lin Ling and Kun Juni. Lin Ling was almost always the one who was on watch and it was hard not to feel that she was on edge about something, though she never said what.

It took about 20 minutes to wrap everything up and set off again. Their marching formation, of sorts, had shifted a bit into a single order line. Lin Ling went at the front, Kun Juni went at the back while Teng Chunhua and Han Shu carried the middle. Of their four, he tended to go to the back, then Liao Ying, then Hao Jun and finally Jin Chen at the front, usually alongside Han Shu.

The reason for that was the change in the forest. It was no longer cloud forest, but dense, subtropical jungle with scattered opening and a lot of rivers running through it. Visibility was dire, even factoring in soul sense, and everything was, on some level, a form of spirit vegetation. Scattering as they had been would have led to people getting confused and left behind, inexperienced as the four of them were at moving in this kind of forest.

As they set out, he noted that Liao Ying was already scavenging herself a compass and playing around with it, asking Teng Chunhua questions occasionally.

“May these bugs be returned to the nameless fate,” Hao Jun grumbled ahead of him, swiping his hand at a swarm of black and yellow flies that had swirled out of a nearby bush.

He pushed out his own qi and grimaced as they actually swirled towards him as well, clearly drawn by the energy. A few flew through it and he got a nasty shock and understood why Hao Jun had complained: the bugs fed off his qi, draining it a…

There was a faint shift, and he saw the flies buzz and disperse again. He saw Teng Chunhua now had a beast core out, a low grade one, and was passing ward stones around. He took one – it was a fairly basic elemental ward stone, but carved with a small formation link that he recognised from the manual they had been looking over.

“These are basic formations, but so long as you keep putting qi into the ward stone, it will keep bugs like that away,” Teng Chunhua explained as they moved on.

“A bit draining,” he noted.

“But better than us losing all our qi to those flies,” Juni remarked from behind.

----------------------------------------

~ LING YU – BLUE WATER CITY ~

----------------------------------------

“What do you mean, we can’t go out?”

Ling Yu sat in the still ruined garden of the estate, listening to her younger brother Ling Mu complain about his social activities being restricted.

“It is the command of the old elders, Young Master Mu,” her mother’s handmaid, Huian said, crossing her arms defiantly.

“Then I’ll go ask them!” Ling Mu said with a scowl, making to take his leave before Huian caught him by the back of his top, rather like an errant cat.

“You will do no such thing, Young Master Mu,” Huian scowled. “They are in an important meeting.”

“All of them?” he said disbelievingly.

“All of them.” Huian glowered.

“Liar. You’re lying. No way all the elders are in one meeting,” her brother said accusingly. “It’s bad to lie. I’ll report you to Elder Fei!”

Sighing, she closed her book and stood up.

“You also cannot go out…” Huian said to her.

“I am aware,” she said with a scowl. “I was going to go back to my room. I don’t need to hear him screeching like a cat–”

She paused, for dramatic effect. “Except, wait, I can’t, because a certain someone ruined all the formations in the whole estate!”

“You… you…” her brother nearly went red in the face.

“I’ll be in the front reception rooms,” she said with as much of a haughty sniff as she could muster before leaving them behind.

“Just see that you don’t go out…” Huian’s voice called after her.

“No fear there. I know where this goes...” she muttered.

“You should be wary of being too savvy,” the old man now walking beside her said with a wry smile.

“…”

She sighed, and walked on, because Elder Baisheng was right.

“What is going on in the city, Grandfather Baisheng?” she asked in the end.

“Trouble, that has been a long time coming,” the old man grumbled. “Nothing for us to worry about though, although the exploits of the two young masters may look a bit awkward to the hindsight of those who enabled them."

She paused, because sat forlornly on the edge of a potted orchid was Little Blue. The ginseng had been sulking for weeks now. She grabbed it and gave it a hug and walked on, with Grandpa Baisheng walking her, looking pensive.

“You are certain about the news that Sana and Arai were caught up in all this...” she said softly.

“I am,” Grandpa Baisheng said sadly.

“And Cousin Luo.”

He nodded.

That hurt, almost as much as Sana and Arai… she had been set to go to that party, the one where Di Ji put his hooks into her cousin near enough as she understood it. Only her gallivanting with Sana around the docks looking for things to cure little Blue Moon had stopped her.

-Was I the original target?

That thought was a chilling one in a different way. She had read up about Di Ji since then, when she learned about him…

-If I had gone there, Grandpa Baisheng would have been there, might have seen something… might have stopped whatever he did to Luo… and he wouldn’t have targeted Sana…

“This Di Ji, why did nobody kill him before?” she hissed trying to avoid getting tears in her eyes, hugging little Blue Moon tighter.

“He… is the epitome of what it means to be a ‘Young Noble’ with the backing of the Imperial Court.” Baisheng said, sounding… odd.

-Untouchability.

It made you want to grind your teeth – the untouchability of absolute power, aloof from any repercussion unless you wanted the consequences to be dire and far outstrip anything done before it. It made her feel…

It twisted a knot in her stomach, made her want to hit something, to scream or cry… maybe all of them, but…

“If I asked it… would you kill him?” she said, stopping and turning to him.

She could see her own sad face and slightly teary eyes reflected in his eyes as the old man stared at her sadly.

“You think very highly of this old man,” he said with a sigh.

“…”

“Would you, though?” she said, holding his gaze.

“It is not such a simple thing… but…” he looked conflicted for a moment.

“…”

“Because it is you asking… yes… this old man would,” Baisheng nodded. “However, it will have to wait. First, the Ling family must endure.”

They walked on in silence. She, lost in her sadness… He… lost in whatever an old grandpa who stood at the apex of a world could be lost in, she guessed. Little Blue Moon sent her a thought that said that it would also kill Di Ji, and anyone else responsible if it ever became strong enough. The certainty in that statement made her want to cry.

The trial had been such a grand thing, and now it was… She felt only bitterness in her mouth. She had asked and they had refused to tell her… until she commanded Grandpa Baisheng to find out. Sana and Arai might be dead, Lin Ling and Kun Juni declared rebels?

“I may be small and weak now, but you did this to my friends…” she hissed under her breath. “I will make you all…”

The old man’s hand fell on her shoulder and she cut off her thoughts. Being too savvy caused problems.

She stalked the last of the distance to the room and dropped down on a couch, staring at the ceiling which was painted with scenes of dragons grasping stars. If she reached out, she could almost fancy herself a dragon, grasping for one of them. A great dream, and a terrible reality, that was how you could sum up a place like this.

“You are far too young to be thinking about the duality of ‘shadow and light,’” Baisheng remarked, sitting down on a chair and waving his hand in the direction of the cabinet.

She watched, because it was never not amazing, as tea, with wine added to it, made itself and swirled over to the table between them. She reached out with her qi and grasped a cup, feeling the warmth of the water and the tang of the tea leaves as she drank it down, accented with just a hint of the flavour of the wine.

“Is it possible they are not dead?” she asked.

“This old man did look… Others believe it might be so… but they are not easy to approach.”

“Others… you mean the Azure Astral Authority, those who overturned the City today,” she asked.

“Among others, yes. Old eyes see plots everywhere, when sometimes reality is just cruel,” Baisheng mused. “In any case, these are matters you should not have to worry about.”

“I am a daughter of this family,” she said sitting up. “My brothers sure as f-fate won’t worry about them.”

“Language, child,” the old man said with a wry smile.

“I know that you are angry, child, that reality is cruel, that you are born with a gift… and yet, the world always provides ways that your gifts cannot help you… This is simply the trial of life.” Baisheng mused.

“…”

She poured another cup and drank it down.

“The fact that none of those old elders will do anything, even about Sister Luo…” she said softly. “If it was Mu or Fan… they would be…”

“If it makes you feel any better, they would sit there just the same, only it would be your mother screaming at them, not your aunt,” Baisheng noted. “The forces behind this Di Ji are not simple. In fact, this Di Ji is not simple either. This old man has looked into him, and found only lies and deceit, and behind that a mendacious hand twitching curtains best left alone.”

“Oh?” she sat up.

“There is something wrong with him?”

“Well Di Ji, for starters, is likely a fake thing – it is understandable how others do not see it…”

“Like a clone?” she frowned.

“A bit more than that – but the means by which it was done tells me much about those who were doing it,” Baisheng frowned.

She thought through what she knew of those kinds of things… a clone to distract was… somewhat predictable, but she could guess there were ways…

“Why would nobody think of something so obvious?” she asked blankly.

“Because it is not obvious. Someone has shifted things so that the idea of Di Ji, the ‘clone’, is totally opaque, and then… everything else will be arranged as it can be, because all those looking on will find other ways to make that certainty of theirs a reality.”

She stared at him blankly. “Is such a thing actually possible? Isn’t that the–?”

“Do not speak of that idea here lightly,” Baisheng had covered the room and pressed a thin finger to her lips.

The door crashed open, and Baisheng was back on his chair as if nothing was untoward.

“Ah, there you are, Ying,” her father said grimly.

She stood up, and saluted politely. “Ying greets father.”

Little Blue Moon also saluted him, which was humorously cute and made her want to hug it again for comfort.

“What is the matter, father?” she asked.

“You are under no circumstances to leave the side of Uncle Baisheng,” her father said, glancing at the old man.

“I am sure she had no plans to do so,” Baisheng noted. “I take it matters are going about as expected?”

Her father stalked over to the side table where the wine was and just drank a whole jar.

“Ah… here you are…” a youth said, walking into the room.

“What in the devil…” her father scowled.

“And Young Lady Ling. You are every bit as lovely as others have said,” the intruder continued blithely.

“Why are you in my house, Sheng Fulo?” her father scowled.

“My father is the new Duke of Blue Water City. The whole city is my house…” Sheng Fulo said brightly.

“Not my house, it isn’t… Scram,” her father scowled. “We already gave you our answer. You can have all the offices.”

“Now now… that’s very…”

“If the Head of the Ling Clan in this province asks you to get out,” Baisheng said with a smile. “Then he is, without a doubt, being very polite about it.”

“Who are you, old…”

“I am Baisheng, boy…” Grandpa Baisheng said with a smile that never reached his eyes.

The whole room turned oppressive and two shadows who had been walking behind Sheng Fulo both spat blood suddenly and staggered.

“You…” her father turned pale at the sight of the two guards… which certainly meant they had been a higher realm than he was.

“You…” one of them rasped.

She stared as their bodies twisted, their words lost, as her normally jovial Grandpa Baisheng literally unscrewed their limbs and turned them into red mist and rags before they vanished in flares of grey fire.

“Go back and tell them that the Ling Clan is the same as the Ling Clan back home, and that the next time one of you enters my house unaware, I will send you all back to Shan Lai in a funerary urn, after being cremated on a pyre of monkeyshit.”

“…”

The youth backed out of the door only for an intangible force to grasp him.

“Too slow,” Baisheng said blandly. She watched dully as the youth vanished in a blur of opening doors and then a thunderous crash as he hit something distant outside.

“Thank you for your intervention, Old Elder Baisheng,” her father actually bowed, at the waist, to Grandpa Baisheng, something she had never seen him do before.

“Odious boy,” the old man scowled. “Nobody raises their juniors right these days…”

“So I take it…”

“Leaving is no longer an option. My martial brother will come here soon, with the rest. We will wait out this mess and then see what needs doing afterwards.”

----------------------------------------

~ DUN JIAN – SOMEWHERE SOUTH-WEST OF THE SHADOW FOREST ~

----------------------------------------

*tak*

*tak*

*tak*

Dun Jian sat, watching the two women, both beauties such as you rarely saw in a place like this, play their game at a breath-taking speed. The rain outside was the only reason he had taken refuge in this hovel of a roadside teahouse. Walking in it was a disgusting endeavour, frankly. A stupid person would have tried to flee by teleportation, but he knew enough about the ways and means of those in charge to know that that would have been suicidal. The Huang clan certainly had been keeping an eye on him, but until he could get to the Teng School, it was the Azure Astral Authority that now had him worried. They were also plotting something, his intuition told him. They had cleaned out the Astrology Bureau this very day, and as he walked the roads south he heard tales in every direction of what was going on elsewhere with the Hunter Pavilions.

-How did I end up like this anyway? He seethed inwardly.

-Can’t take counsel? Don’t want to hear words? I hope you choke on your aspirations.

Sighing he quelled his anger, barely and sipped the tea.

“Tolerable,” he muttered, and poured some wine into it and went back to watching the two beauties. His thoughts however, refused to settle.

-First those ungrateful and manipulative bastards from the Huang Clan and that fraud of an old master disown me, then they steal my abode?

-Hah…

-One minute you have a bright future, all those possibilities, everything within your grasp… even that physique of Dun Lian Jing’s…

And it had all been upended, by the squabbling between two mendacious brats, worlds away, jerking themselves off over mythical tales. His master’s head turned by them as well.

-Mercenary old bastard, fraud, accepting three bows and doing what you did… I hope that whatever is down there kills them all, just so you get to die with them!

They played mostly in silence, beyond talking about very mundane things and he found himself focusing on that to distract him from his own problems. One, the older with her auburn hair and bright blue eyes, was talking about visiting an old friend, who she seemed to have not seen in a long time, while the other was apparently planning a memorial for an ancestor and had decided to take this road by chance. Two old friends meeting at a random teahouse to play a game of Gu...

-Like the start of a bad novel, he judged, but definitely a novel that will be easy on the eyes. Looking around other patrons surreptitiously watching the pair, sat there seemingly oblivious had the same thoughts no doubt.

In fact, he knew they did, because he could almost see them, such was the disparity in realms on display.

“Would sir scholar like something else?” the waiter asked, bustling over to him, bringing him back to the present. “Some wine perhaps?”

“Ice Lotus Wine, for the road,” he requested, eyeing the rain that was now lessening.

“Very good,” the waiter left, and he went back to watching the others in the teahouse. Nobody here was of a realm to see through his disguise; it was one of his most precious and hidden treasures.

*tak*

“What will your father think if he knows you are here?” the younger one, fiddling with her long, dark hair as she considered her next move asked.

“I can imagine him hopping like an angry toad on a hot rock,” her opponent, who had plaited auburn locks framing a flawless face with deep azure eyes and full lips, murmured. The mental image of an old man fuming over his beautiful daughter travelling unbeknown to him was quite funny, and also… oddly alluring.

*tak*

She made her own move and her playing partner sighed again.

“And what of…?” the other woman asked something and trailed off.

*tak*

“Let’s not talk about that, whether he and I will reconcile…” the auburn-haired beauty said with a pause in her game.

*tak*

*tak*

*tak*

…

They played another game in silence and then left together, with their own jar of ice wine for the road. It was a fitting drink for this muggy, humid weather.

He sat there, watching the world go by until the rain had stopped entirely and someone with an umbrella walked in. Picking his moment, he quietly stood up and left, ice wine in hand, and on the way out, smoothly took an umbrella from an unsuspecting patron, who would no doubt think it had been left at home or stolen by some child. A shame to just take it like some common thief, he thought, but if he knew it was going to a member of the imperial family, he would no doubt have graciously volunteered his umbrella anyway, and I’d best avoid standing out too much as a stranger unfamiliar with these parts as it is right now.

Just as he had arrived at the dilapidated little place, he left it unmarked and set out southwards once more. The road had few travellers: just a few wandering fellows, a man hauling spirit herbs on a cart and a rather down on his luck scholar. The rain spotted down again periodically, but thanks to his umbrella, it was now much less of a nuisance. Idly, as he walked, he found himself regretting that he had not approached the beauties – walking down the road, side by side with such, no matter their mediocre realm, would have been a delight no doubt, and he never lacked for means to attract favourable relations either. A night with the pair, one way or another, would have been quite a thing, he was sure.

“Hey, good sir scholar!” a woman’s voice cut through his reverie.

He had left that other scholar far behind, and, looking around, he realised there was nobody else on the road other than him… and the beauties, who were stood beside a spirit carriage that had thrown its wheel. The horse was stood nearby, looking bored as only spirit horses could.

“How may I help you both?” he said, smiling at last.

Finally, the day was looking up.

“Our carriage has… well...” the auburn-haired beauty turned her azure gaze towards the wheel of the carriage as if it had offended her nine generations.

“It was a thing of my late father, a family heirloom in some regards. But you know how these things are…”

“Of course, of course,” he nodded, walking over to look at it.

It was clear what had happened. The spirit wood had had a small flaw in it that had just worn out over time, the axle had cracked and the wheel slipped on the surface of the road.

“I believe I can fix it,” he mused…

“Oh! You can?” the younger woman with the lustrous dark hair said with a bright smile. “Wonderful.”

In truth, it took him a few moments to fix it. Both women were Nascent Soul cultivators, and he, even injured as he was, could exert the prestige of a Dao Eternal if he was so inclined. To remake the wood anew and reset the wheel was nothing more than a trifle.

“Oh, wonderful, truly an opportunity born of heaven and earth.” The dark-haired beauty said, bending down to inspect the work he had done.

“I don’t believe I know either of you young ladies’ names?” he asked, smiling.

His current appearance was that of a rugged scholar wearing orthodox robes in his late thirties, with chiselled features and a short beard. Standing tall as he was, he was certain he cut a striking figure to them.

“Xiao Mei,” the dark haired woman giggled, blushing slightly at his gaze.

“Kai Lan,” the older auburn beauty murmured. “Are you perhaps heading south towards Teng Town?”

“That was my intention, fairy maidens,” he acknowledged, sending out a bit of his prestige to bedazzle them a bit more.

“Perhaps you would like to ride with us,” Kai Lan asked archly. “The weather in this season is… unpredictable after all, and we would feel happier for a good scholar such as yourself to accompany us and while away the hours.”

“…”

“It would be my especial pleasure,” he said with a smile, already looking forward to the evening – a hearty meal at the next inn, an expensive suite, impress them with some money and riches, or tall tales…

They hitched up the horse again and he checked out the rest of the carriage, just in case it was some particular kind of treasure. Helping them both up, he sat on the other side as they set off once more.

The rest of the day’s travel passed in pleasant conversation. Both women were enchanting and very easy on the eyes, hanging on his every word as he spun them slight tales of the ancient history of this land. They all drank the ice wine and by the time they arrived at the next town, both were very jovial. He had expected them to go to a mid-tier inn, but Kai Lan led them straight to the second most expensive one in town, overlooking the river and with a marvellous view out over the groves of spirit trees beyond.

That evening they wined and dined and he feigned a certain degree of drunkenness as they asked for tunes from the musicians in the inn, and even bought a round for everyone else there, toasting Xiao Mei’s ancestor Ruo Tian among others, as well as the good fortune of all those present.

Several hours later, he awoke with a groan, staring at the ceiling of his room in the inn.

“You’re finally awake,” Xiao Mei, who was dressed in a diaphanous robe and sitting in the window of the room murmured.

“You talk such a big game, yet you really cannot hold your liquor, Scholar Dun,” a voice purred from the bed beside him. The arm of Kai Lan was, he realised, encircling his shoulders and he had never noticed.

He frowned, and tried to focus on the last few hours’ events. It was impossible that he, even injured as he was, should have gotten drunk with…

-Scholar Dun…

His mind caught up with the words Kai Lan had spoken and he grasped her hand and made to move her…

“That’s rude, you know,” she murmured, pushing him down on the bed. “You’re here with two beauties and all you can think of is running away?”

He hadn’t been thinking of running away, not immediately anyway but that wasn’t what was shocking. Her strength was greater than his.

“Who are you…” he managed to slur, realising he really was, properly drunk.

“I told you when we first met, I am Kai Lan…” she purred, scooting closer to him, her breasts cupping his arm.

“Well, I may have been a little coy with my introduction,” Xiao Mei murmured, getting off the window and walking over.

His gaze was drawn, inexorably to the fact that her robe hid… very little, even shadowed and moonlit as the room was.

“I am Hua Xiao Mei…” the dark-haired beauty said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, her figure taking up his whole perception of the room.

“And I am Xue Kai Lan,” the beauty beside him whispered, her breath hot in his ear.

“You do know who the Xue Clan are? Don’t you, Scholar Dun Jian?”

His blood ran cold, even as the oppressive weight of her strength fully locked him down. He realised his new storage ring was gone, and his inner world was suddenly beyond his grasp.

“I believe you owe us both a few questions, so in lieu of that I will give you an answer up front,” Hua Xiao Mei purred, sliding over to kneel right beside him on the bed. “People also sometimes call me the Dewdrop Sage…”

-Nam...

“You know, cursing out two beauties sharing your bed could be considered really inauspicious, little scholar from the Dun Clan,” Xue Kai Lan giggled, running her hand across his forehead.

“If we wanted you dead, you would have died in that teahouse none the wiser…” Hua Xiao Mei said patting his leg companionably.

“I mean, we can kill you, if you want – even make it enjoyable…” Xue Kai Lan softly snickered. “Do you know how many young masters would actually give their lives to be lying in the same bed as me?”

Given she was claiming to be from the Xue clan, he had a pretty good idea that that number would be generation ruining.

-Soul art…

He tried to focus on his inner self but there was nothing there, nothing to get purchase on.

-I’m caught in her soul art somehow…

He might as well not have had a Dao Foundation or a Dao Soul – nothing was there, he might as well have been mortal for all the grasp over the various aspects of his own inner self he found he could exert.

“Lady Kai…” he managed to mumble – finally connecting name to face… and the reputation.

“Really, if I wanted you dead, all I’d have to do is leak a recording of this scene to Ha Kai… He really holds a grudge, you know… I mean, your idiot of a nephew and those other fools who fancy themselves ‘wise’ men of ‘methods and means’ got between him… and this.”

He found his head drawn around and given a full length view of the naked Xue Kai Lan in the moonlight. The sight was so intoxicating… he wanted to reach out… caress her breasts… kiss her beautiful…

She grasped his hand, preventing him from reaching out.

“Ah, ah… now… now,” she pressed a finger to his lips and forced him back even as he barely regained control over his own faculties.

“You… split up…” he weakly remonstrated with her – that had been one of the…

His thoughts fogged up again as she laughed.

“Because of Di Ji. He believes that, yes… I was very angry about that, still am… But there are enough people queuing up to tip over the Din Clan’s garbage pile already – if he has slipped away this time, I’ll make my move. I did make that stupid declaration after all, and so far you have all kept the letter… if not the spirit, of my angry words.”

“No… rather, we are here for the other matter,” Hua Xiao Mei said, caressing his leg and drawing his attention back, hypnotically… but reluctantly away from Xue Kai Lan’s flawless form

“Another matter…?” he managed to stammer out.

He was still desperately, some part of him, trying to find the hooks in her soul art to…

“Why yes… tell me… Scholar Dun… a man of letters such as yourself, must be very familiar with Mu Shansu…”

-Mu… Shansu!?!

His brain went blank

-Shit-Monkeyshit-Nameless-sent-monkeys-buggering-the-auspicious-heavenly-maiden-herself.

He had been so careful, so circumspect. When the stories filtered back after that failed endeavour following the Blue Water Sages great achievement - that had killed both his older brothers and his nephew's direct rival to the throne, he had untangled that remarkable nugget of information. That traces of that ancient expedition, lost right at the very founding of their dynasty had emerged – and with it, potentially a clue to what their dynasty's founder, Emperor Azure Tyrant – Kong Dun Fang, had been seeking in that malignant place…

-There might be room to bargain though… unlike the Huang Clan, the Xue Clan were…

“Oh, you sweet child of the summer season…” Xue Kai Lan’s voice was sultry and amused as she ran her hand delicately across his chest

“…and the people who vanished into that mountain range with them…”

“Perhaps we can…” he asked hopefully, the Xue Clan, powerful as they were would…

“My adoptive father, who first took me under his wing when I ascended to this world, Ruo Tian, was one of them, one of Mu Shansu’s sworn companions, one of the teachers of that Dun Fang...”

He stared at her, his soul nearly flowing out of his body as he finally realised what they were there for...

"Now... sleep little scholar," Xue Kai's breathy voice whispered in his ear even as darkness, haunted by the forms of their beautiful bodies claimed him.