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~ LU JI—BLUE WATER CITY ~

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“Cao Hongjun is dead...”

“Unseasonable rain. It’s not right…”

“What killed him?”

“I bet the season has changed because of something all those young masters have done.”

“I heard it was an attack by the Ming Heavenly clan—an assassin in the night.”

“Seems typical, should be dry season, but the sky is just shitting water on us at the same rate the heavens are shitting bad luck,” someone else muttered as they entered the building below him.

Lu Ji, no longer headmaster of the Blue Gate School, sat in the teahouse on a little side street in the harbour quarter of Blue Water City watching others complain about the weather.

The evening, now nearly darkness, was muggy and oppressive. The rain sweeping in was coming from the Yin Eclipse Mountains and carried all the properties of weather from that place—it was an equal opportunities downpour, a reminder of why most locals carried umbrellas, because no qi armour or principle, or laws, or truth even would stop you getting drenched by it.

Downing the cup of wine, he poured another and downed that in silence, looking at the gloomy street with its eddying flow of people and coloured umbrellas, lanterns and the occasional spirit beast. It was a remarkably mortal thing to be doing, given everything else that was going on, but it was calming… in a way. It was better than sitting in his estates, watching his Great Uncle Tao and Aunt Xiao’s work of many years get pulled up by the roots by the Azure Astral Authority.

“To stolen things! May you choke on them!” he toasted in the general direction of the Blue Water Pavilion.

‘You are too attached to things at your realm…’ that was what Aunt Xiao usually said, but he suspected that even her determination regarding that sentiment would be sorely tested when she returned from whatever she was doing in the shadow of this trial.

“Reorganised the Hunter Bureau,” he flipped over a cup…

“Re-constituted the Astral Bureau,” he pinged a second one gently against the tray, watching it go clink.

“Appoint a new duke…” he swilled the wine jar and poured a generous portion out into the bowl.

“To Cao Leyang, I hope you are not dead as well,” he murmured, and gulped it down.

“And now the Imperial Court says they also appointed a duke?” someone said from below.

“Surprised it wasn’t the Ling clan that the Authority appointed, they hold…”

“Held…”

The conversation chattered away below, rehashing this and that, discussing the rapidly shifting politics of the last twenty four hours.

The evening, now nearly darkness, continued to be muggy and oppressive as he drank.

“Yeah, like the weather, this city is really going to shit,” another voice, an older man’s voice, grumbled.

If there was an advantage of weather like this, it gave people licence to talk. It was auspicious weather for a day like today. Even the powers that were now squatting on the three institutions of the province were helpless in the face of it. The eyes of heaven blinded by a force totally beyond caring about their hopes and dreams.

Great Uncle Tao would have said it was a reminder from the Heavens—the real heavens, not the strings men put on them—that all men are beholden, from highest to lowest, to the whims of the world in some ways that can never truly be escaped.

“You reckon there will be a war?” someone else asked, a younger man dressed like a dock worker.

“Nah, they will posture a bit, but the Azure Authority’s days here are likely numbered,” someone else judged.

“Good riddance too,” another muttered. “At least our levies are going to something on this world.”

He laughed a bit at that and took another sip of his wine. It was… not untrue, probably. Most of what the Imperial Continent’s influences took in taxes, tariffs and influence did stay on Eastern Azure.

“You shouldn’t say that so loud,” someone else hissed, a companion of that group probably. “Sure, the weather blocks prying ears, but it doesn’t block prying feet.”

“You think those big shots who overturned the city have time to be wandering down these dives?” someone else sniggered.

“Probably not…” the first conceded.

“Maybe it will lead to some changes. The Ling clan have controlled too much stuff for too long,” someone else sighed.

“Nobles are nobles though… We just work and they get fat.”

“Now you’re sounding like you read those booklets by that old lunatic…” someone chuckled.

“Ee has a point tho,” someone else muttered. “The Dao ain’t got no nobles and shit… Old sage had the right idea.”

There was the sound of drink being poured and a few people spitting on the floor and getting rebuked by a maid. “Stupid school,” someone else grumbled.

“Wanted to send my son there, but they wouldn’t take ’im, not because he weren’t talented but because me Da worked on this side of the river. Claimed there were some quotas or sommat,” another agreed.

“Never lived up to the old founder’s promise,” another older voice muttered.

“Aye, now it’s just a meeting house for noble brats.”

Listening to the conversation was a reminder that here, in this place, nothing was popular. If they knew he was sitting up on the second floor, drinking his wine, Lu Ji supposed, they might change their tune…

“But I am no longer headmaster…” he sighed, swilling the cup of hot wine.

The school was currently being 'managed' by an adjunct of the Imperial Envoy, an Elder called Din Fei Huang from the Pill Sovereign Sect of all the fate-thrashed…

He took another swig of wine from the jar, finishing it and putting it back with a sigh. Envoy Qiao was currently acting as the Imperial Court’s ‘appointed’ Duke. It was a smart choice—smarter than many they had made in recent times—in many respects, if you ruled from a distance and bent your ear to those of influence. The Military Authority’s new leader was from the Fan clan as well.

“Everything changes, and where the pieces fall…” he waved for a passing serving girl.

“I want more wine, hot, and something to eat with it.”

“Of course, sir,” the girl said with a bow, not leaving.

With a sigh, he tossed her a bunch of iron talismans and she nodded politely and bustled off. That was a thing down here—nobody took things on tab unless they knew your nine generations by first name terms.

He sat there in silence, listening to the inane chatter as people continued to chew over what it all might mean. The wine and food, which was a cold soup with some fish in it and some spicy fried fish with crispy slices of gourd, was welcome in the current climate. He had just finished the soup when a figure slipped into the booth with him, putting an umbrella down and pushed back its hood to reveal blue-green locks and piercing azure eyes.

“You find the most interesting places to lurk,” Ju Shan said drily.

“It’s almost like I haven’t lived in this city all my life, Lady Shan,” he murmured.

“If it wasn’t for the fact that senior sister told me you were here, even I would struggle to find you in all this mass of people… Is that why you’re on this side of the river? It is a very interesting alignment.”

“It is a reason, yes,” he conceded.

The underlying structure of the island’s arrangement in the delta was one of the oldest secrets about the whole city. In fact, it predated its foundation by longer than most people cared to give numbers to years for.

“They are tearing up the Blue Water Pavilion root and branch, looking for what your old uncle might have left behind—same with the Duke’s estate and Cao Hongjun,” Ju Shan said, shaking off the last of the rain from her cloak and putting it down beside her.

“Old man Hongjun left nothing,” he sighed. “And my grand uncle didn’t leave anything they will find.”

“Senior sister said as much,” Ju Shan nodded. “Still, it is amusing to watch them try.”

“It is remarkable, how in this short time, a single piece of news can change everything…” he mused, swirling his cup of wine before taking another sip.

“This is usually the way of things, opportunities often come unlooked for… but this one…”

“—Smells of rotten fish?” he finished.

“A very mortal way to put it, yes,” Ju Shan agreed, taking a cup of wine he poured for her.

“I am guessing he died a while ago, and it was only confirmed recently?” he said.

“You ask me, but even I could learn nothing concrete,” Ju Shan sighed. “It was news to the Huang clan, Huang Leng is… vexed about it and the Imperial Court was sent scrambling for anything to hang a response off. Purportedly, Cao Hongjun was assassinated by a Celestial Venerate from the Ming Heavenly clan during an attack on the Shan Empress’s youngest, a terrible sacrifice.”

“And yet no hero’s funeral and anyone who pries just finds tales of grandeur, self-sacrifice and little else?” he suggested.

“You’re familiar with that wheeze,” Ju Shan said with just a hint more bitterness than he might have expected from someone of her position. “The Ling clan has blockaded themselves in their estate; the gate is guarded by Lord Baisheng, and the long shadow of Sovereign Fairy Skysong. What remains of the Cao clan has melted away like smoke in fog, which has not made the Sheng clan’s new Duke at all happy. Not to mention, nobody seems to know where Cao Leyang is, but the new authorities are not… as dedicated in searching for him as you might expect.”

He nodded morosely at that and took another swig of wine. If Cao Leyang was dead, or captured, it would be a shame. The younger man had a lot of promise and had been doing all the right things for this province, stuck as he was between two monolithic forces trying to grab bits of it away. Ju Shan also sipped her wine and stared out at the people rushing by, cursing the weather and either lamenting or rejoicing in what was going on. Not for the first time, he was certain she had some stake in all this as well, but what it could be he had no idea where to even start looking, or even if it was a good idea.

“So much optimism,” she mused after a few minutes.

“Give them their moment. They will come to know regret soon enough, I expect,” he said waving a hand for another jar… two in fact.

“What will you do now?” Ju Shan asked him eventually.

“Try not to suffer the same fate as Cao Leyang,” he replied with a bitter smile.

“Someone of your stature is not so easy a bone to gnaw,” Ju Shan said with appraising eyes that made his stomach twist.

What she was implying was possible… as a last resort. It would be a fitting death. Not that he wanted to or had any intention of dying.

“That’s why I am content to wander around here, sampling the nightlife and just going with the flow,” he mused.

They drank on, in silence, listening to the hubbub of the teahouse, pausing only to call for another two jars of wine. The nature of the conversations here and on the rain-drenched street, in the other teahouses as well, didn’t really change. Some were worried, some were happy, some were sad, or confused, or just didn’t care. The faces and names at the top might change, most concluded, yet the day to day life of the city would probably just continue as it had.

“Not for the first time, I can only say I find it strange,” he mused, finishing off the current jar of wine. “I sit at the cusp… at the very edge of the apex of this world and yet somehow I feel as powerless as some of those who are walking in the streets outside. They have such grand plans… such hopes… dreams… And yet they have no grasp of the turning of years. They see big things… or small things. Events of a century, a lifetime, a millennium even. Or they are buried in the mire of tens of thousands of years. They talk of the great deeds of the Blue Water Sage, the terrible, vindictive war between the Huang and the Mo, the villainy of Di Ji, the arrogance of Cao Hongjun… like these things should define an era. Yet before that spawn child Di Ji, before the Blood Eclipse Cult, there was almost a thousand years of little things—where nothing particularly grand happened and people just lived and worked and dreamed… when everything was…” he trailed off and scowled.

“Be careful, if you keep talking like that, the lightning will come, believing you are a great sage!” Ju Shan giggled.

“Sixty-one thousand, two hundred and sixty-one,” he mused, changing tack and sitting back a with a sigh.

“Why is the number of Immortals in the city important…?” Ju Shan said with an amused expression.

“It isn’t… but to some Qi Refinement labourer they might as well be an untouchable mountain. Cultivation is important, strength is important…”

“—And yet, it is also… not,” Ju Shan agreed.

“Indeed… until those enforcing the rules no longer find it expedient,” he muttered, downing another half jug in deep gulps. “Then… there is only darkness within and without. That was what my grand uncle said.”

“You get very philosophical when you are pretending to be drunk,” Ju Shan giggled, leaning over the table. “I do agree, though: the façade set up by the Azure Astral Authority is just that… a façade. They make rules not to protect, but to control, and that… incidentally helps people like the populace of these lands.”

“Until, like today, it doesn’t,” he sighed.

“But they are hurting the right people, or enough of the right people that the rule of what comes below still works for them. The day that belief crumbles—again—that is the day that will haunt your nightmares for an aeonspan to come,”Ju Shan whispered.

“The changing of the Mandate of Heaven,” he frowned. “That is a heavy topic to consider off the deposition of one duke and the ruin of clan.”

“And yet you said it yourself: for many of these people, this province is their heavens,” Ju Shan said with a strange smile.

“Very true,” he conceded, not having actually thought that line through to its logical conclusion as she seemingly had.

It would be a rather sobering thought… were he actually drunk.

“They fight for every moment, every breath even, every opportunity, and yet the longer the path, the more steps, the less meaningful the faces around them become, until they are presented with a choice,” Ju Shan said, quietly staring out at the people bustling by in the proper darkness now, lit by street lanterns, still cursing the rain but just going about life. “They succeed where others fall—they see fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, lovers, children… friends vanish into the dark, held only as little lamps in their mind’s eye, or names on a talisman in a room they never enter. Some get lucky and those around them rise, at least for a while, but more often than not they will always, eventually find themselves alone, between shadow and light. Heaven and Earth.”

He found himself drawn into her words, because suddenly the young woman sat opposite him was ancient. He had occasionally seen his aunt be like this, suddenly looking her age, her real age, a shadow mask of a living being draped over a force of primordial power that had watched aeons flow by like waves in the ocean.

-How long was an aeonspan?

There was a reason why people didn’t talk about numbers—beyond the fact that they weren’t actually fixed.

“Which is the shadow?” he asked softly.

“Where is the black and white in Yin and Yang?” Ju Shan murmured, with a sad smile, and the moment passed and she was like a carefree young woman again.

“You have lived facing the light, until now. Cared about these people, cared about what became of them, given them prosperity, opportunity, benevolence. Walked among them, although few would recognise you by the face you currently wear. Yours was the era that has spanned most of this 'heavenly generation—almost eight thousand years—yet... people do not see the light when they walk in it. They venerate the dark, just as those who stand in shadow… dream of that warmth.”

“—And yet, in this moment I am just as helpless as they,” he agreed, sighing again and reaching for the wine jar. “I—”

Ju Shan cut him off with a peel of laughter, actually kicking her heels on the floor, then, to his utter shock she picked up the jar and hurled it at him so fast he had no chance of avoiding it. It hit him in the face, splashing warm wine all over him and with it came a burning qi that flowed into his body, washing away the…

“You underestimate them, because you have not seen the Shadow.” Ju Shan whispered, suddenly crouching beside him, her voice hissing in his mind, like mental rain, even as she rebuked him for an insalubrious comment and called him a charlatan.

Those around him laughed and people pointed—just another bit of drama: a man and a woman in a teahouse, having a disagreement.

“You were wise to flee here, to hide amid the people, to hide in the gate of your forebears, but they do not care for 'tradition', for 'propriety'… and now… they do not care for 'rules'.”

She stood and stalked out, making a rude gesture at the tea house owner who looked mystified.

He felt her qi flow through him like an azure wave, freeing the fog of his—

The teahouse keeper took a step and then was split in two as a figure stepped through him, snarling.

“Get whoever that bitch was; she did something—”

The old man didn’t even scream as he died. A golden core old man who had owned this little shop for almost three hundred years, died to a…

The blade of Truth cut towards him like a cruel shadow in the world that passed between moments, aiming for his life.

‘They no longer care for rules…’ Ju Shan’s voice echoed in his head as he barely managed to get his sword out and block the strike.

The blow ruined the fixtures of the building, but didn’t do much more than that. The defensive formations within the city itself meant that even a building made out of mortal wood would be difficult for an Immortal to damage with destructive intent. The impact would be distributed throughout the whole, including things like the Celestial Venerate treasure that was his aunt's pagoda. Even the durability of the formation was tied to it, anchored in the setting points around that self-same pagoda that had, in truth, been set there by Mo Zhao herself as far as he knew. Unfortunately that didn’t extend to those living in the city and several hundred people died instantly as he crashed over the veranda and into the street, his attacker following.

A dozen more figures landed like ghosts out of the rain, encircling them, formation signs glimmering on talismans that floated in a ring to seal off the surroundings.

“It would be a pity if we had to kill you,” the man said, alighting a few metres away

He stood, exhaling, feeling the flow of the world around him, properly now. Thanks to Yin Eclipse, the rule of the Blue Morality was thin here, and even the Azure Authority had never been strong in these lands despite their grasping hand sitting upon it for over an aeonspan. Even less so now, when the wind and rain blew from the east in earnest. Those who had fallen, the innocents that had died here were still fixed in his mind’s eye. The strongest was at Chosen Immortal, which was a stretch, but it was possible.

The dead stood, and were not—even the teahouse owner.

“An impressive feat…” his attacker’s smile was just visible through the rain, obscured by their intent… “But futile…”

They died again, everyone within a mile of their location, in fact, with a silent sigh as the man’s nascent ‘Truth’ executed everyone, but he still held them in his mind’s eye and so they lived once more.

“You…” the dark robed man hissed in surprise. “You’re not a spiritual cultivator…”

“Not just a spiritual cultivator,” he conceded.

“I see… it is because the rule of this world’s rightful ruler is weakened by this accursed storm,” the attacker nodded pensively. “It seems their request to capture you with your soul intact will be bothersome after all.”

“Who are you… really?” one of the other shadows hissed, sending forth blade of truth to cut at him as well.

He had to laugh at that. He had a fair idea of who this group were now, although who had sent them was unclear as of yet. His initial thought was the new duke, but it could also be the Dun clan truth be told. At least they were not the Solitary Slaughter Sept—he was under no illusions as to their strength. This old freak in front of him was probably one of upper echelon of the Sable Sovereigns Sect. A meeting house of assassins and mercenaries, people who would do anything for money or secrets. If Ju Shan had not broken their spell, he might well have died, he had to concede. Though she hadn’t stuck around to fight, her intervention meant this was no longer the kind of subtle ambush they favoured.

“Lu Ji,” he shrugged.

“Lu Ji hardly has this strength. I am familiar with Lu Ji,” one of the shadows, a woman he thought, whispered.

In the driving rain, soul sense was even more obscured now, so he had no real means to know for sure what strength this lot were, beyond Ju Shan’s warning about rules.

“And so the façade comes crumbling down,” his own words sounded hollow in his ears as the simple spear with its long broad blade appeared in his hand.

“Spear?” one of the other shadows said a bit dully… “Isn’t Lu Ji a—”

“River Running, Clear and Bright, Banish Shadow and Bury Light.”

The order of the world overturned as he spoke the mnemonic that Lu Fu Tao had left him and the accumulation of the entirety of Blue Water City flowed through him. A river of life, millions of lives that he had perceived over the millennia, connecting to those who had lived here for aeons. There had always been a village here, this land had always belonged to someone from the Xiao. It was even preserved in the name of the district, Little Harbour. It was the place his Aunt had been born, she had told him once, in a moment of reminiscence. The tombs of his most ancient ancestors lay buried beneath this island, their temples had once been on its high point and their boats had fished off the waters.

“Oh shi—!”

The exclamation from the shadows was panicked. The blades of killing intent slid towards him even as he spun the spear blade and planted it in the ground.

{River Chart: Rains Run from the North}

The world stilled as the inheritance that his Grand Uncle had left for him hung in the air. Now that it was revealed there was no question of anyone of these people leaving here alive. They had been sent, likely to grasp him for the pagoda, or maybe the teaching stele Lu Fu Tao had left, but this was what they would have found, unknowing. It wasn’t even the whole thing, just a single, solitary chapter from a truly legendary thing: River Chart Scripture.

Lu Fu Tao had given it to him, telling him that it was too late for any of their old bones to learn such a thing, that their paths were set—and his aunt had been set on a different thing. Even so, the first chapter was a thing of wonder. A complete method through four paths—body, mind, spirit, soul—from the most basic realms all the way to Dao Ascension.

The currents of the world shifted and even more terrifyingly in that stillness he felt the world in the rain resonate. The weaker attackers were swept away as if they never were, consumed by the rain, which was now the tears of a million generations. Simple, basic strength of accumulation that was beyond the reach of a world’s fate.

The sky turned clear and the stars shone.

“It may indeed be beyond the world’s fate,” a youth dressed in white said, descending from the sky towards the island. “But my grandfather has watched this land since that accursed mountain fell. Someone like you is… unfitting, to hold something so miraculous that came from it.”

Sheng Dian.

He stared at the golden pendant around the youth’s neck.

“Not playing by the rules,” he sighed.

“We are the rules,” Sheng Dian stated with a smile. “It is unfortunate that you showed this openly, though. We had thought it left with Lu Fu Tao.”

“So that is what the Authority hopes to find in there, more pieces of this?” he said, still held in the grip of the impossible strength that had dispersed even the rain from the Yin Eclipse Mountains.

The seal of stars, from on high, shone down around both of them, the eye of Shan Lai cast from afar even as the whole axis of the world turned, sealing away–

In the last instant before the seal completed, a tiny blue flame flickered in his mind’s eye, upon the very crest of the Dao Tree that grew within his inner world and the whole illusion crumbled. The rain still fell and the attempt at sealing him away in an unreal world vanished like raindrops scattering on the cobbles.

“…”

The youth, Sheng Dian, who was there, stared at him dully. Now he was not dressed in that radiant robe and didn’t carry a golden talisman that resonated with the stars above, but was instead carrying a rather crappy-looking paper lantern and dressed in the standard robes of the Sheng clan. Still, he wasn’t fooled because he knew what that lantern was, and the youth had not been joking when he said that he was the rules right now.

“Seizing God Lantern,” he identified it, grimly.

“You know some things…” the youth muttered, looking a bit displeased as the others turned to look at the lantern with calculating gazes.

He could only laugh at that. Their plan had been good, but they had underestimated one little thing. One part of what he had had to show there had been correct. The mnemonic to draw on the accumulation from this land.

The youth drew out a sword and sent a lashing strike at him, which he parried with the spear. “Had we realised the depth of your roots, Black Jade would have ripped your soul out when we arrived.”

He blocked two more strikes, watching the qi within them scatter off the walls of buildings, leaving score marks behind.

“… Truly a remarkable formation of this city, far beyond what was expected—but used here in such a boring way.” Sheng Dian remarked snidely, observing the lack of damage their strikes had done.

Striking back, the man who had initially tried to ambush him swept his own sword into the fray, deflecting the arrow of his own quasi-truth and scattering the strength of the attack with a grunt. Two more arrived behind him, closing off retreat and aiming for his heart gate and dantian with their own blades of truth.

He grimaced, barely evading them, dancing across the puddles without even leaving a ripple in the world’s qi, the mnemonic for his movement art echoing in his mind’s eye.

{Maiden Dances on the Waters}

Long ago it had bothered him a bit that most of the names were… well, they were what they were.

The attackers were all caught off guard at any rate, shifting to protect Sheng Dian from his spear thrust, but it was clear now that not all of them were in fact the Sable Sovereigns. Their auras were such that they were likely all guards for Sheng Dian, or probably for the new duke.

{Moon Dragon Descends}

His follow-up strike drew upon the strength of the world, a phantasmal moon rising over the ocean, tracking the arc of his spear as the shadow of a dragon seemed to pass across the world. The person who blocked the strike this time was the assassin from the Sable Sovereigns, gritting his teeth as his blade shivered under the clash of their impact. The shockwaves sent the weaker combatants scattered and forced Sheng Dian to use a talisman to defend himself.

Those hiding in doors nearby were mostly safe, the strength of the defensive formation eating up the majority of the damage, but the shockwave swept out beyond the island catching others who were not so knowing unawares. Thousands died and tens of thousands were incapacitated. He didn’t dare return them for now, and some of those who had fallen were of a high enough realm that such a trick was impossible for him, or were too new to the city—without roots here.

Moments later the clarion sound of wards being triggered echoed through the rain as the whole city was made aware that two people close to Dao Ascension were properly fighting within the limits. The city's various lesser anti-intruder formations started to shift and he was surprised just how many managed to gain some kind of lock on him as he danced back again, blocking two strikes from swords and again barely managing to deflect the Sable Sovereign assassin’s blade formed of his truth.

{Sable Demise}

The assassin finally used an art, twisting the shadows around him, sending blades from every direction where light and darkness met to cut at him. A manifestation of the Truth of death, out of the shadows…

{Shadow upon the Waters}

He fell into a mirror moment as his body above was torn to shreds, striking in another world at the assassin who didn’t realise until too late what had happened, until the spear passed into his head. It was by no means a fatal blow, sadly. A Dao Ascension expert could not be killed that easily in a Great World and at best he was only a quasi-Ascendant himself. The man was still forced to use a minor treasure and suffered the embarrassment of having been hit physically though.

The Assassin snarled and vanished into the shadows which suddenly became far sharper than he was comfortable with, penetrating the alternate space his technique had carved out and forcing him back into the present moment.

“We need him ALIVE!” Sheng Dian snarled, still retreating behind the others.

Grimacing, in the moment the shadows closed around him, he crushed a World Venerate grade teleport talisman and was subsumed into chaos for a split second before the attempted teleportation collapsed. Sheng Dian looked drained—the toll of wielding that lantern, a treasure far beyond the youth’s means, was clearly starting to tell.

The assassin attacked again and this time he had to draw upon the accumulation of the land to resist it—hundreds of thousands of years’ worth of latent potential scattering to change the course of the strikes yet to arrive just enough to allow him to escape their grasp and crush a second talisman.

Sheng Dian screamed in anger and spat blood as the teleport failed and the lantern dimmed again.

“How long are you going to just loiter there?! Capture him!!” Sheng Dian roared into the night.

The attackers fell back expectantly, but nothing happened.

He stared around, understanding what the youth’s plan was. Clearly, he was commanding some World Venerate expert to grasp him… but… he had to laugh, and did. Bright Dream and Ju Shan might not be willing to stoop to the level of fighting juniors, in their eyes at least, that were of a realm for this world, but old ghosts at the World Venerate realm and higher were not going to come out to play right now in all likelihood, not while the shadows of that dreadful mountain stretched forth so lingeringly.

“I thought you said you were the rules,” he taunted Sheng Dian even as he backed up in the street, considering if it was worth trying to use a third talisman already.

He only had five of them, not counting his grand uncle’s one, and now that he was clear on the origins of the attackers, he understood that that talisman would probably put him in genuine danger. If he ended up in the void, outside the protection of the world, he would be seized by this brat’s teacher, never mind one of the other elders from Shan Lai who were likely watching from afar.

“…”

Sheng Dian scowled and waved at the guards to fall back. Even though soul sense was mostly castrated by the rain, he could feel powerful experts moving towards them now just via the shifting feng shui of the city itself. A signature akin to ripples on the surface as sharks circled.

“You won’t run!” Sheng Dian yelled.

Watching the guards spread out and start a second caging formation, he had to acknowledge that there were two layers to that statement—the more pressing one was correct as well. If he fled the city, tried to teleport to the mountain range for example, probably he would be grabbed by either the Huang clan group or the Imperial Court faction, both of whom were also likely watching this.

In any case, this was the best ground for this fight, because it was the Lu clan’s original ancestral ground, albeit one none of those on the Imperial Continent knew about in all likelihood. People from Xiao Village, then Town… then City… and then a dozen other cities in the millions of years since then had always lived here, buried their dead, venerated their ancestors—it even, he was now coming to realise, closely connected to that wellspring as he was, ascended to realms above Dao Ascension here, in eras gone by.

Uprooting the vitality of an ancient lineage was not a feat attainable through an act like this.

“I take it this is not going as you expected?” he called to Sheng Dian. “You haven’t seen a battle between Dao Ascension realm experts before I’ll bet.”

The assassin from the Sable Sovereigns Sept charged forward again, sending flickering sword strikes—two got past his guard, lacerating an arm and nearly causing damage to his Dao Soul in the instant before the wellspring of energy from the land surged to support him.

“Shit,” the Dao Ascension assassin said suddenly, ceasing his attacks and backing up. “We cannot kill him here.”

“I am not asking you to kill him!" Sheng Dian reiterated. “We need him alive!”

“Unless you have some grand plan to get him off this island, that isn’t going to happen either,” the Assassin muttered.

“You really exceeded our expectations, Lu Ji. To think that this place would also have an ancestral ground here. That bitch Lu Xiao really hides her cards well.”

“Ancestral ground?” Sheng Dian repeated dully, staring around at the rain-shrouded streets.

“Indeed, this Lu Ji has an ancestral connection to this ground, and an art that allows him to tap into it,” the assassin sighed. “Unless you have a means to sever the vitality of the land here…”

“How is that even possible? Shouldn’t it only be a few tens of thousands of years at most?” Sheng Dian muttered. “Blue Water City is only thirty thousand odd, and the Blue Gate School is less than that.”

“The Lu clan has existed since the previous era of the Heavens,” one of the shadows with the Sable Sovereigns Sect, the woman, said.

He marked the aura of her qi, because she clearly seemed to be someone who knew him, and of a realm to fight here, which put her at least Peak Dao Sovereign and probably Dao Eternal.

“Even if it’s in the hundreds of thousands, he cannot sustain…” Sheng Dian hissed, but he could see the uncertainty now starting to cloud the youth.

He might be an outstanding talent, but he was still a junior and it was a very rare junior indeed who was able to grasp aspects of the bigger cycles of Great Worlds. He would certainly make no claim to it himself, and he had had several old monsters and freaks pontificate about them at length in his presence over the years, and in some quite unguarded and frank explanations as well. Sheng Dian was right, though: he could not sustain this for much longer, but it had bought him enough time to decide what he had to do.

So he turned and fled down a side street, running as fast as the rain would permit, because that was the other glorious reality of this accursed weather: it brought with it some very bizarre restrictions because the strength being exerted on the world was much more formidable than usual beyond a certain point.

There was a lot of cursing and several distant crashes and the sound of splintering masonry as others also learned that lesson. The three from the Sable Sovereigns Sect, though, were close on his tail as he crossed a street and ran on. Speed was somewhat irrelevant in any case, because the place he was now seeking could not be found by those means, and running fast as literal lightning would just get him noticed in any case.

He turned onto the main street of the Little Harbour district and dashed up the hill, his footfalls leaving ripples in the rivulets running down as the three assassins hurtled after him. They were able to run much faster. A blade scythed through the air, forcing him to spin into a side street as it embedded into a shopfront near where his head would have been. Two more daggers arced after him, hissing around corners until he found the moment to block them. The impacts still left his arms numb and his qi chaotic for a few seconds, basically confirming that all three pursuers were Dao Ascension experts if not anywhere close to the peak of that realm.

One, the woman, appeared ahead of him, having gone by another route, sending a wave of daggers down the street that drew the rain around them into a twisting distortion of shadows and edges. Fleeing across the rooftops was inadvisable, on the off chance that some Dao Eternal or Dao Ascension realm Martial Archer—or worse, a Heart-Force expert skilled with bows—was lurking, waiting for their opportunity. It spoke to Sheng Dian’s inexperience that he hadn’t thought such a precaution was necessary perhaps, but he wasn’t going to risk his life on one brat’s potential inexperience.

Instead, he just swept out with his spear and executed ‘Shadow upon the Waters’ again, swirling through the other space even as the woman tried to adjust. He failed to hit her, which was expected: she was just too fast for that, but it did get him into a side street.

The chaos of the rapid cessation to evening activity was everywhere. Scattered goods, closed and shuttered shops, wards activated everywhere. A few dead lay, here and there. A Dao Immortal wearing the robes of the Blazing Dragon sect was slumped in a carriage, several Immortal servants lying around it, their forms slumped and dark in the rain. The odd spirit beast that nobody had cared to bring indoors and a few other people from out of town. An unfortunate cost to this whole mess.

Crossing the edge of the plaza, the leader of the Sable Sovereigns assassins found him again, his sword cutting through the rain with an ambush attack. He had to discard his physical body entirely for a second, reforming it from accumulation and leaving behind a dismembered remnant. It failed to fool the veteran assassin, as he had expected. However, the sheaf of Dao Ascension grade water art talismans that were attached to it did force the pursuit to retreat. Obscuring mist rolled through the streets around him, ghostly water dragons and worse swirling within them for a few moments—at least until Sheng Dian, he had to presume, dissipated it with that accursed lantern. It was a shame that he hadn’t been able to break or deplete it more, but it was what it was, and also not worth his life for the effort.

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“You think you can run, LU JI!?!” Sheng Dian’s voice suddenly echoed across half the city.

There was no soul strength in the yell, but there was… He suppressed his qi and aura completely and raced on as tendrils of soul laws tried to hunt for him and failed. A smart idea—for a junior—but not one that would work on someone of his calibre…

'You underestimate them, because you have not seen the Shadow.' That warning though…

He shook his head and pulled out a seriously priceless talisman—the shadow version of him split off, becoming just as real as he was. Not a clone, but an actual mirror of him, running through a different possibility. Two parallel moments, side by side. It was a compelling warning, especially coming from Ju Shan: expect them to do everything to catch you.

He turned a corner and found what he was after, scrambling towards it, he passed the doorway by without a second look and the moment dissipated. He ran through the streets grimacing.

“Heavens’ accursed fate-locking evil eyes. May your nine generations’ daughters all become the lovers of rabid monkeys,” he spat into the rain as the understanding of how that version of him had been seized filtered—literally fished out of the world by the strings of its fate—through vestigial connection between the moments.

Reality resolved itself and he used the second of those talismans to split the moment again. They hadn’t known he used a spear so that gave him some hope that they were underestimating, or at least misunderstanding where his real strengths lay. Elite soldiers flooded into the street ahead of him, deploying formations fit to suppress most Dao Sovereigns. He was momentarily confused until he realised that these soldiers were also wearing the deep blue of the Sheng clan and flood dragon insignia on their armour.

They had swept up the Cao clan, or as good as, and the Ling clan had blockaded themselves away. Practically everyone else at that meeting where he had openly revealed his cultivation that time had either a trusted ally of Cao Leyang, with the Ling clan, or part of the Imperial Court or the old city administration. Given their scorched earth policy, it was a pity, but they had shown no compunction about killing the people of this city, of this island, so he had to feel it was a small win for karma as a whole that they had miscalculated because of that.

The Sable Sovereign Sect pursuers caught up as he surged towards the formation and crashed through it without even needing to use an art. Broken bodies hit buildings and the whole street shook. The carnage would have made even a hegemonic sect flinch as the force of Dao Lords, Dao Immortals and mainly Ancient Immortals from Shan Lai was left shattered, still not clear on what exactly had hit them. A few talismans tried to snare him, but all of them were weak or ill-suited to the weather.

Behind him there were curses, screams and shouts and then another blade of focused, assassinating truth found him. The entire street was buried in a maze of shadow blades as he pulled his qi around him.

“ALIVE!” a voice howled in the distance, but the Sable Sovereign assassins ignored Sheng Dian now.

They were not that naïve, or confident perhaps. This was not a battle between lower experts where arts made much of a difference. Battles at the apex like this were rarely flashy. He had no need to really spend qi, and his pursuers, who would presumably have hopes of actual Ascension at some point, had to be wary of the chains of rampant slaughter. To break free of the world you had to resolve your ties to it, and even the most rampant manipulators of the world’s fate had certain ties they couldn’t easily deal with. The karma and sin of unjust slaughter was one of the very worst as well. In any case, so long as the rain continued like this—ruining soul sense and even, now that water was starting to permeate the stonework and ground of the city, extra-sensory perception that relied on ambient qi—the playing field was being dragged down.

Weirdly, their chase ended almost as abruptly as it began. He turned a corner and found himself in a small tree-lined plaza nestled amid the rising buildings. Ancient stone walls surrounded it and ill-kept statues and the occasional small shrine were scattered across the grassy swards that surrounded a rather old and dilapidated pagoda.

Unlike before, this was the real thing. They had tried to divine what he was seeking, but made a fundamental mistake: the age of the relict, ancestral ground was not something even one of those old freaks from Shan Lai would guess. Shan Lai was a world that had been raised up to a throne world when the Azure Astral Authority was at its height in the heyday of the previous aeonspan. Even its oldest lineage ancestors were younger than his aunt.

The three assassins alighted at the edge of the land but the leader stopped the other two from entering.

“So this is why they couldn’t find it,” the man said with a shake of his head, the broad brim of his hat scattering the rain. “My eyes have been widened today… Xiao Village huh.”

“I would be careful how you use that information,” he called over. “I am not Lu Xiao.”

“…”

“I must admit I was disappointed that it was not her I was to hunt. Their intelligence was lacking in many ways…”

“Charge them extra for the inconvenience. I am sure they are good for it,” he replied with a bitter laugh, taking out a gourd of wine and sitting on the steps of the old pagoda to rest for a moment.

The fact that his aunt had not shown up for all of this mess would undoubtedly perturb many onlookers and probably only add to her mystique in the long term—until she returned and found that all her things that had not already been taken away were being squatted on by others. As far as he was aware, the spiritual avatar she had maintained all the years he knew her, had left the world and returned with her sister's help to God Slaughtering Hall. A final surety presumably in case she failed or someone interfered with her to the point where an actual backer was required.

“You may be assured of that, Lu Ji… or should I call you Xiao Lu Ji at this point?” the leader chuckled.

“Why do we not pursue?” the other attacker scowled.

“Idiot,” the leader grunted. “This is not an ancestral ground that has an accumulation we can overcome. Consider your eyes broadened. Without him to lead us here we would never have made it this far, and we cannot remain here long, lest the ghosts of its glory come looking for us.”

The shadowy assassin turned and waved for the other two to come after him. The woman sighed and shook her head as if amused or impressed—he still had no idea who she was, despite her proclaimed familiarity with him. The other lingered, glowering based on what he could read of their intent that was trying to warp the surroundings before he too departed, following after the lead assassin back into the curtains of rain.

Watching them depart, he slumped back against the wooden door and pulled out a gourd of spirit wine, saluting the failure of the three departing assassins in the darkness. The accumulation that was welling up through this place pulling it back into the veil of its timeless antiquity, beyond the reach of all except those who it acknowledged.

Beyond the perimeter of the ancestral ground, the lights of the city were still dim and cowed in the rain. The formations still blazed in the sky—misty, shifting eyes and constellations—seeking him. No doubt word was already circulating that he was some kind of criminal, or perhaps he would just ‘vanish’ like Cao Leyang. He doubted the younger man had been as fortunate as he was if that was the calibre of the pursuit that had likely come for him.

“To stolen things! May you choke on them!” he made a rude gesture in the vague direction of the Blue Water Pagoda and took another swig of the wine.

As he drank the toast, those who had perished out in the city, who were still held within his mind’s eye, were lifted back up by the memories of this place and returned to their rightful place among the living once again.

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~ MENG FU—BLUE WATER CITY ~

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Seated in the uppermost level of the Myriad Blossoms Teahouse, Meng Fu watched the battle unfolding within the Little Harbour quarter between the various powers all colluding to try to grasp Lu Ji and Lu Ji himself, the former headmaster of the Blue Gate School.

“It is certainly educational to that Sheng heir,” she mused, watching as he remonstrated with the three Elders of the Sable Sovereigns who had wisely decided that they had done the best they could in the circumstances.

Even she would hesitate to walk into the Little Harbour, as it currently was, knowing what she did about Ancestral Grounds and the ways their accumulation could be deployed.

Next to her, Cao Liang had a face like a gloomy ghost, while Meng Yang was sipping her tea with the look of someone who saw a lot of problems in her future as sect master. The final occupant of their table, a scholarly looking man wearing rather travel-worn robes, was just looking out the window with a considering expression.

“I feel that the young master Lu Ji is someone many people have underestimated,” Seng Mo remarked appraisingly as the formations above the city started to settle again. “Some would wonder why you don’t step in already as well.”

“Some would be overly grasping fools, who don’t know when to advance and retreat,” she added, pouring herself a cup of the wine with an amused smile at Seng Mo’s penchant for such quandaries—it was a rather charming reminder of his distant background as a scholar of morals in a bygone era.

“—And in any case, rather than Lu Ji, it is actually the roots that that girl Lu Xiao has in this land that have really gone unnoticed,” she corrected him, watching the boy make good his escape into the ancestral cradle of a tiny village forgotten by all but a handful of people, none of whom would be willing to talk to the Azure Astral Authority or the Imperial Court.

“To think there was an ancestral ground of such calibre here,” Seng Mo agreed. “Even this old scholar didn’t know that place still had a lineage to light its lamps.”

“There are indeed a few surprising iron sheets like this for the unwary in these lands and others to break their feet on,” she agreed, before adding brightly—“In any case, it seems like it is our turn!”

“Our turn?” Meng Yang asked, turning to her in mild surprise.

“Uhuh, Lu Ji was a target of frustration for them, but Cao Liang here is a liability given what has unfolded today. They have no idea who I am; you are just a Dao Eternal, and yet the Sect Master of the Seven Sovereigns School, who have been in notable decline for some years; and Scholar Seng here is just a friend you are having dinner with,” she said with a happy sigh, taking another sip of her own wine.

“…”

“You’re using us as... bait?” Meng Yang muttered, looking back out into the rain.

“Not as bait, an education for the Azure Astral Authority, and the Imperial Court actually. The juniors of the Meng clan are not persons that small people can have ideas on,” she replied archly.

“We are bait,” Meng Yang refuted, puffing her cheeks in a decidely child-like way.

“…”

She just smiled and took another sip of her wine and checked her appearance. It was strange to be here without a mask to hide behind. It was an excellent disguise really, for all that she was aggressively dampening her presence. Nobody in this aeonspan, not even her personal disciples, had seen her real form as she would look were she to return home. Even Seng Mo, who she had known for a very long time, didn’t know that this was the real her. The divine swan that those tawdry, small, sovereigns with their paltry talent hungered after.

“For a force that’s intending to kill an ancestor of the Seven Sovereigns..." Meng Yang sighed.

"And disciple of Meng Fu," Cao Liang muttered.

"—and maybe aduct, or worse, try to kill this Sect Master," Meng Yang added. "That is..."

“—Embarrassing?” she agreed, considering the force that had silently entered the teahouse below.

Eight peak Dao Eternals, led by two Dao Ascendant masters, one from the Sheng and Fan clan's apiece, was a hefty sword, but not much stronger than what had gone after Lu Ji, a short while ago. There were also three others, two whose presences were entirely hidden, though she could tell both were at least Dao Eternals. It was the third, a Dao Ascendant, who was the only really problematic one, in truth: Dao Father Sable Eye, one of the founding ‘Sable Sovereigns’. He might not be the most acomplished among the upper echelon of that dark influence, but he was, certainly, an expert who could claim to stand at the peak of Eastern Azure.

“They are holding their best in reserve," she suggested drily, taking another sip of her wine. "—to deal with Meng Fu, no doubt.”

“For those who have taken charge of this city, they have truly little care for the welfare of its people,” Seng Mo sighed. She could see his discomfort at the actions across the water. Lu Ji had won himself a good opinion there, not that he knew it.

“This place is just a tool to them,” she shrugged.

It was true, the methods of both sides were… not to her liking really. Both had bad character in their own way.

Finishing the wine, she grabbed a piece of exquisitely fried fish and munched that down before expounding. “Even the Imperial Court is better in that regard: though the Blue Morality and the inheritance of Azure Tyrant is a blight on the heavens of this era, it is still a thing that is of this world—born of it and immutably a part of it. The Azure Astral Authority of this era, by comparison, has just become a parasite, drawing the vitality of these four worlds in different ways to elevate their throne on Shan Lai by sideways means.”

“A damning judgement,” Seng Mo agreed also helping himself to the fish. The other two, who had no appetite for their own reasons just nodded sourly.

She was just about to comment, when she felt another sense prickle her instincts and sighed.

“A problem?” Seng Mo paused, new piece of fish mid-way to his mouth “That sense…?”

“Not as such, but as they say, ill things come in threes…” she replied, eyeing the Celestial Venerate from the Huang clan who had arrived at the edge of city and been just a bit incautious about his prying, thinking Cao Liang was the strongest among them.

“The Huang clan…” Seng Mo nodded. “Do you want me to go disabuse him?”

“What’s the third ill thing?” Meng Yang asked, rolling her eyes.

She just laughed at that question. In truth it was her, not that anyone else would realise that, even her disciples for a few more minutes yet.

Recovering her composure, she patted Seng Mo on the arm and shook her head with good humour. “Unnecessary, I can do it myself if required. I understand that both their Young Sovereigns believe themselves to be a match that will make Meng Fu swoon and give up all her reason! It would be a shame to disappoint those looking on if it comes to that.”

“Hah!” Seng Mo barked a laugh that just made Meng Yang scowl.

“Scholar Seng, please,” her Sect Master grumbled, which she thought was kind of cute, because Meng Yang someone blessed with features that would never manage to look more than cutely disconsolate, even were entire her nine generations were dead in front of her.

She let them grumble away as Cao Liang sat there, working on his angry ghost impression while the group below walked up through the teahouse, ignoring all the protestations of various waiters on the first and second floors. Thereafter their progress was unhindered and people rapidly started vacating the teahouse itself. The owner’ soul sense flickered upwards towards them before it was abruptly cut off. A reminder that such things could still work inside buildings, if you had the right comprehensions, despite the unnatural weather outside.

“That must be why they are so confident,” Seng Mo mused, pouring himself another cup of tea.

“That the weather suppresses our strength and soul sense, while they work to dampen the links to the outside world?” she agreed.

There was no chance to say anything further because a soul sense that fancied itself mildly tyrannical swept over them. It brushed the symbol in her mind’s eye and she let it suppress her marginally.

Her breath slowed marginally and the surging energy within her briefly coalesced into the shimmering sigil for ‘Vast Obscurity Lotus Physique’. There was no need for the character for ‘Mortal’ or ‘Sovereign’ to appear for now—they were meaningless to most in this era anyway, who had a more simplistic method of viewing these things. To them, her Physique wasn’t even a ‘physique’ but a peerless ‘Heavenly Constitution’. The distinction between absolutes was already fading away in the era of the previous heavens in this world, never mind the current one where the orthodoxy from the heartlands of the Martial Axial Regions prevailed.

“This is a pleasant surprise, Lady Yang,” the new Duke, Sheng Fulao if she recalled right said with a broad smile, revealing himself to be one of the pair who had been obscuring their presence below. “Once this nasty business is done with, I will have to trouble you to discuss a small matter.”

“Nasty business?” Cao Liang asked with a dark expression. “Is that what you call murder for greed?”

“No murder,” the Duke Sheng shook his head. “Your Cao clan failed to do its part to protect the blood of the Astral Azure Emperor. Cao Hongjun paid for it with his life, a noble sacrifice, but the person of the Imperial Scion was injured, and the Empress is deeply distraught.”

“So you will bury the Cao clan to appease the Empress, because her precious baby got a few scratches?” Meng Yang said with distaste.

“Please, Lady Yang, this is not a matter for you to weigh in on. It is a matter between the Cao clan and their Emperor,” the new duke said dismissively. “I said we shall talk after this nasty business of dishonour of our Celestial Seat is dealt with.”

“—And a mere Dao Eternal, even one elevated above their station, has no right to speak so in front of their seniors and betters,” the Dao Ascension expert from the Fan clan, said with a faint sneer.

“Simply by dint of having ‘Meng’ in my name, I am already your better, and your senior by blood and ability,” Meng Yang sneered.

“Dissolute!”

The voice shook the whole room, revealing the strength of the Duke to be about as she expected. Cao Liang would be able to take him in a fair fight, but Meng Yang would suffer quite a bit just to run away. She feigned being affected, as did Seng Mo. She a little bit less than he, to draw the attention of the Sheng clan Dao Ascendant.

“I cannot say I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance, young miss?” the duke said eyeing her. “Are you a disciple of Lady Yang?”

“Yes, Sir Duke,” she said, letting a bit of blood run out of her mouth and shivering slightly.

“Not a bad seedling," the Duke chuckled, his eyes lingering unplesantly on her bosom. "I think you will get on well with our young noble Dian and my own son Fulo once you make their acquaintance.”

She snickered inwardly as her presence subtly mesmerised his thoughts, guiding his intuitions and instincts where she needed them to go, along with all the others in the room.

“Thank you for your praise, Sir Duke,” she watched him furrow his brows at the faint discourtesy hidden in her inflection. He had a lot of forbearance for someone from a clan as proud as the Sheng. “I had heard that Young Noble Fulo recently suffered an injury, please allow me to salute his rapid recovery… and ask a favour of you on behalf of the good fortune of your son’s future prospects.”

“Please, have mercy on Ancestor Cao, Sir Duke, on behalf of the good fortune of your son” she said proffering her cup with shaking hands. “Sir Cao is a personal disciple of Lady Fu, the Imperial Ancestor Meng. I am sure she would look well upon Sir Duke showing understanding and recognising that Sir Cao’s association with the Cao clan is thing of past history, not present politics. He has been a faithful servant to Eastern Azure for many years.”

“You speak very… eloquently,” the Dao Ascension expert from the Fan clan said, stepping over and cupping her chin in his hands. “Your teachers are clearly not just Lady Yang.”

“You honour me, Lord Envoy,” she stuck the knife in there as well. It was an oft-forgotten point that you could follow the Dao of Slaughter with words as well as any other means.

The Duke’s brow almost twitched as the needles of her veiled discourtesy sank deeper into him. It was kind of pathetic, in a way. He stood little chance: a Dao Ascendant with a Dao Heart made from the Sheng clan’s teachings was putty in the hands of any World Venerate with a passing knowledge of these kind of methods, let alone someone like her who, if she claimed to be second, probably not even that old vase in the Shu clan would seriously claim to be first.

“Will you submit, Cao Liang, and accept your part in returning honour to the memory of the Cao clan in the eyes of the Shan Emperor?” the Duke said with a bit more force this time.

“What of the other?” Dao Father Sable Eye, asked, stepping forward and 'formally' revealing himself as he gestured towards Seng Mo.

“Remove him,” the Duke replied with a wave of his hand.

“As you command, Lord Duke,” Sable Eye’s knives slashed out and Seng Mo collapsed dead to the ground.

Even without her messing with everything, the lack of concern for the scholar’s ‘death’ would probably have gone unremarked upon. None of them could be considered people unaccustomed to the brutality of the world. It was a rare person who made it this far up the cultivation tree without quite a lot of blood on their hands and corpses in their wake.

Cao Liang stood and without any preamble bowed to Meng Yang. “Apologies, Sect Master.”

“Please, Ancestor Liang, we have known each other a long time. Do what you must,” Meng Yang said with a faux sigh.

She avoided twitching an eyebrow, because Meng Yang, deep down, would likely be quite happy to see Cao Liang take a bit of a beating before finishing off the Duke.

Cao Liang’s opening move was pleasingly unshowmanlike—he just cut forward with all of his strength. The Duke’s squad of Dao Eternal body-guards moved in formation to block him while Sable Sovereign just stepped off to one side and the Envoy, Sheng Ascendant and the Duke watched with amusement on their faces as her disciple’s attack was met with a World Venerate’s formation treasure and repelled.

The whole teahouse shook and Meng Yang blocked the backlash with a talisman that was promptly cut by Sable Eye.

“Please, Lady Yang, do not interfere,” the Duke remonstrated with her, sounding like a stern father now.

Cao Liang struck a second time, repelling the formation and partially solving it in a single strike, making the Dao Eternal guards stagger back and cough up blood as their strengths were overdrawn to sustain the expenditure. The whole plaza lifted slightly and the shockwave that rolled out dislodged roof tiles and shed leaves across half the city. It made that of Lu Ji’s fight seem positively tame.

The formations above shifted, called to stare at this place even as those on the Teahouse creaked under the strain. That said, there was no danger to the integrity of much: unless they managed to pry up the rather thorny treasures buried in the gardens, it would probably take that Heavenly Venerate who was hanging around with Ju Shan to actually damage the city, she judged.

Cao Liang’s third strike, to break the encirclement, finally pushed Sable Eye to act directly. Their blades meeting and the old assassin’s relict blade forcing her disciple’s parasol wood sword aside and nearly costing him an arm in the opening exchange. It was a very… mundane fight, really, despite the shockwaves. Most fights at the Dao Ascension realm were. To kill your opponent you had to focus the strength of the world, meld it to your truth. Attacks of laws and principles, even intent were secondary because both parties were now partially apart from the world itself. Halfway between Earth and Heaven.

Certainly, either one of them could split oceans, break mountains, turn thousands of miles to glass and wither whole provinces. However, if you turned your truth on it, the oppression of the world would push back and so you had to overcome that to make your attack. Everything equalised and only the difference between the two became relevant. That was the only power that was going to creep out of any clash, what you had to overcome your opponent with.

They exchanged four blows before Sable Eye got the upper hand and the duke struck, his own sword ghosting to strike at Cao Liang’s heart. Her disciple saw the danger and warded it as forcefully as he could only to have something—from his view point anyway—inexplicably break his guard and send him crashing into the wall of their booth, blood streaming from his mouth and eyes.

The shadows of the room flickered and the trap closed on him, locking him in place and revealing the Sheng Ascendant and the remaining 'hidden shadow' to be one and the same, a World Venerate expert, likely sent to make sure of matters and ensure they could successfully grasp Meng Yang. Her sect master was also rooted in place by the oppression of the world’s rule while she, who was playing at being a Dao Sovereign for now, was pushed flat against her seat, which creaked dangerously and then shattered into fragments, ‘forcing’ her to kneel on the floor.

Outside, Sheng Dian had made it back across the bridge from the Little Harbour district with what remained of his escort. She tracked his progress as Cao Liang struggled against the restraints, watching as he turned and started to divert in this direction as she had hoped he would. Beguiling him was not difficult at that distance as he was barely at Dao Eternal.

“It is time, Seng Mo,” she whispered.

“It would be my honour, my Princess, to teach the people,” the old sage murmured as he grasped Cao Liang and Meng Yang and carried them away, stepping through the broken moments between reality and unreality as a circle of five ancient symbols shifted beneath his feet.

In the room behind were left mere mirages, held there by her strength of will, much like Lu Ji had done for the people of the town.

She left them to wrestle and interrogate a phantom and walked out of the room after Seng Mo, down through the now empty teahouse. The waiters and maids who were still there, locked down by the oppression cowered even further when they saw her pass, because she wasn’t hiding her form now.

Stepping out into the rain her garments rippled and transformed into a phoenix robe embroidered with ten different colours. Ten feathers affixed in her hair now to match it as the years fell away even further.

“You think you know me, Eastern Azure, but you know nothing of phoenixes and even less of Vast Obscurity Grove,” she murmured, her words lost to the rain as she walked across the plaza towards Sheng Dian and the three Elders from the Sable Sovereigns Sect accompanying him.

The rain fell, scattering off her robe as the shadows behind her shifted and she left lifetimes behind with every step. A motherly woman, majestic with snow white hair carrying a sword turned into a wizened old crone with horrible burns and an aura of death, she was a princess, a saintly daughter, a mother, a teacher, a demoness, a lonely child who wandered the wilds teaching animals and many more besides until finally she was, simply… herself.

Sheng Dian's guards, who had been racing forward to encircle her, tore out their eyes and broke their foundations to look upon her even as she walked between them. They screamed her name, lost to the rain and the thunder above and died, abandoned to the world, their blood running through the cobbles as they lost any will to live after seeing her.

The three elders fell back, crushing talismans to flee only to find the paths they would take obscured as well.

“Have you no words? Child from the Sheng clan?” she asked with her most radiant smile arriving before the paralysed Sheng Dian. “The Duke said that you and I would get along wonderfully together.”

The boy, old man in her eyes, given he was almost four thousand years old, stared at her in terror and managed to whisper “Who… are...?”

“I am the swan you 'young lords' have been lusting after,” she almost purred, walking around him, the rain now scattering lotus flowers in her path that burned with ten colours, ten qis of heaven and earth.

“You compose eloquent poems and make grand declarations on how you will win my heart, how your valour is without compare, how your talent will match mine… Tell me… young prince of the Sheng clan, does your talent match mine?” she let no derision seep into her voice now, because it was, in many respects, an honest question.

He stared at her blankly, at her… the true her.

“You know, this puts me in a bit of a bind, but back in the mountains I started to get the feeling that I was being… underestimated somehow. That people had forgotten who I am. Not the tales you tell each other, the portraits you trade. You convince yourselves that age does not matter, that despite my having lived since before your influences were ever conceived of in some cases, I am this pure thing, untouched by time. That you made it to this threshold or that before this age or that… that you have this physique or that, this art or artefact or that.”

Her words echoed in the square, even making the old Venerate from the Huang clan pause as he rapidly closed on her.

“Tell me, honestly, old man from the Sheng clan,” she said with a smile. “How old am I?”

“…”

Sheng Dian’s eyes stared at her in horror, and terror.

“Twenty... six...”

“Sorry, I didn’t hear it… How old is this daughter who is a World Venerate?”

“Twenty six…” he whispered, not believing the answer he was giving even as all his senses told him it was true.

“I went through my last breakthrough nearly thirty years ago,” she nodded. “It was inauspiciously timed, by intention, and rather unfortunately, in that moment that fool Cao Hongjun waltzed into that mountain and doomed his clan and far too many other innocent people besides.”

There was no harm in explaining it a bit to him. Word would get around and if nothing else it would scare a few people who deserved it.

“Y-you…” he stammered…

“You are honoured, I know… You will be able to brag about this at all the best parties: you met Meng Fu, and she even accepted your first greetings gift,” she said with a truly enchanting smile.

“You… wish a gift…?” he gasped out. “A-anything… I would…”

She plucked the lantern out of his hands and held it up. “What an enchanting little lantern. Truly, it has such a... novel character.”

“YOU—!” a furious voice erupted in the sky and a vast pressure suddenly descended down, only to be diffused away as if it never was, failing to find her as her nature obscured her from it while still allowing her to stand there.

“That is very rude, you know,” she pouted. “Your disciple gave this gift, and now an old man like you wants to rob a junior of something that was freely given?”

“You… dare call yourself a JUNIOR?!” the heavenly voice raged from beyond the sky, barely managing to make itself heard over the deluge.

She looked down at herself and shook her head. “I don’t make the rules, or are you saying that someone of my age, with such a cultivation cannot be considered a junior?”

“…”

The voice was apoplectic in its silence.

“That’s what I thought. It’s a nice gift, so I’ll overlook it. This once.

“As a first greetings gift…” she pretended to ponder for a moment, then waved her hand.

A shimmering little bird in ten colours with ten tail feathers appeared on her hand. It tilted its head and looked at the dead scattered everywhere then raised its wings and head and gave a tiny cry. Before taking flight and sweeping in a twisting loop before landing back on her hand where it rubbed its head against her arm. Those who had killed themselves at the mere sight of her were alive once more, staring blankly at the sky unwilling or unable to move.

“Your generosity…” Sheng Dian almost gibbered, dropping to both knees.

She ignored him and turned to walk back towards the teahouse, looking up at the duke and the envoy who had now realised how they had been tricked and were standing on the veranda of the top floor overlooking the plaza.

“You know it’s really rude to make a princess of a great power stand around in the rain?” she called up cheerfully. “Sir Duke.”

“You…” the voice in the sky almost ground its teeth audibly.

“And you laid hands on my person, you injured my disciple Liang, injured Lady Yang, who I view as if she were my own daughter, and who is also the Sect Master of a school under my protection. This seems awfully… disrespectful?”

“If any disrespect was given, Saintess Fu. This seat most humbly apologises.”

“You expected the Cao clan to apologise with their lives,” she mused… “When in the city, we must do as the city folks do, it seems…”

“Old thing peeking in, please see to it. This will be an acceptable first greetings gift on behalf of the duke to me.”

“You overstep... princess,” the voice from beyond hissed. “You can hide behind your mother’s name… but what you ask—”

“—Are you saying you don’t make the rules around here? Should I be asking the Dun clan? Or the Kong clan…? Or maybe the Huang clan? That’s a good idea, actually; people seem very keen on appropriating things that are mine of late.”

“Well? Old geezers, do you also want to chip in?”

“…”

“…”

The silence from the cardinal directions veered on positively awkward, but they were still underestimating her it seemed. It was reasonable after a way: they had little grasp of the way she was twisting things, and even if they had known, they would likely have fled even faster.

“I’ll take that as acquiescence, then,” she said clapping her hands together brightly. Her little Fu, the soul flame… Dao Flame, that was the manifestation of the Phoenix within, opened its wings and gave a piercing cry.

The voice from on high reached out through the void and then stopped because the target of her attack was not the Azure Astral Authority’s new duke, but the one-star Celestial Venerate from the Huang clan. He cursed and struck at the phoenix, his blow hit it full on and scattered her soul flame across the sky like a radiant firework. Within a heartbeat all the rain falling was suddenly multi-coloured.

The strength of Yin and Yang in the world exploded. With every raindrop that struck the ground, multi-coloured lotuses bloomed. The Celestial Venerate, caught in the middle of the downpour gave a miserable shriek as the profound purity of her Vast Obscurity Qi—Hongmeng, Grandmist or Myriad Elements Yin Yang Qi as it was sometimes called—suffused him, and much of the rest of the city.

“The Parasol Blooms, Vital Star, the Heart Awakens”

Before it could consume the whole city, bringing ruin even in this abnormal weather, she completed the mnemonic.

The man’s qi twisted on itself and a tree literally exploded out of his dantian, giving rise to drooping golden flowers as it took root on the roof of the Golden Dragon teahouse. The tiny bird re-coalesced and settled on the highest branch, giving a single chirping cry. The already tropical temperature shifted up a degree and the unfortunate, and entirely deserving victim became a withered corpse in a matter of a few seconds. The Parasol Tree bore a single fruit before the stunned onlookers from near and far as it drew in every shred of the Vast Obscurity Qi in the surroundings before withering away itself. Her Spirit Phoenix caught the fruit and bore it back down to her, dropping it in her outstretched palm and then hopping onto her shoulder.

“The promised payment, Scholar Seng,” she said blandly, tossing the 'fruit' to the old man who had reappeared with Cao Liang and Meng Yang in tow in the square.

“What about the new duke and the envoy, princess,” Seng Mo asked respectfully.

“What was it they said to you?” she said with a wave of her hand.

“Oh…” Seng Mo laughed as if she had just made the funniest joke in the world.

“Ill things tend to come in threes after all,” she added with a smirk.

“I don’t believe this old man got a chance to introduce himself before, Sir Duke,” Seng Mo said with a pleasant smile, drawing a flute out of his inner world. “This old scholar is called Seng Mo, but in recent times I do hear that the good people of the land have taken to calling me the Song of Solitary Slaughter.”

“…”

The old Sable Sovereign screamed wretchedly as he realised just who it was he had tried to cut up earlier, fleeing into the shadows. He didn’t get far though as Seng Mo put the flute to his lips and started to play a haunting melody. Amid the rain the accumulation of the city, and the land it was built upon turned. Aeons of lives of the common people joining voice with him to grasp an evil thing for righteous purpose.

"So... this is his prestige..." Meng Yang whispered, looking around with an unnerved expression as the shadows hunted among themselves.

"It is indeed," she nodded. "How many do you think have died through unjust murder in this city... in just the last thirty-thousand years?"

Meng Yang nodded as the other forces in the square, Sheng Dian, his guards, the other members of the Sable Sovereigns and the Duke and Envoy for the Azure Astral Authority just gazed on in horror as the enmity of uncounted lifetimes caught the infamous old Dao Ascendant, who was of the same generation as Shu Tian, no less, and dragged him down to hell. Quite literally devouring him in the shadows so that only bloody scraps, devoid of Dao or Soul were left to be scattered in the rain.

“This is war at the apex,” she said, turning back to the frozen Sheng Dian. “Not quite what the story books or the recollections of sages make of it, is it?”

“Thank you for your… i-instruction, Honoured Princess,” the terrified scion of the Sheng clan managed to reply, mostly without stammering.

“An old man like you should have bigger balls. You will get nowhere in life if this kind of thing unmans you,” she said dismissively.

“Now… let us return inside and get some hot wine. I am getting drenched out here—the night air does a young woman’s constitution no wonders, you know.”

Leaving the stunned and sodden Sheng Dian and the remainder where they were sat on the ground in the rain, she turned and started to walk quickly back towards the Myriad Blossoms teahouse, wrapping her now rather damp phoenix robe around her. That was one of the beauties of her Vast Obscurity Principle: even looking like a drowned chicken, she was still in the eyes of others the most fantastical thing.

Stepping back under the eaves she swept the cloak back off and gave herself a shake and removing the worst of the water. The rest evaporated in a crisping swirl of multi-coloured fire as her phoenix soul flowed back into her. Exhaling, she collected the shadows of her other selves out of the surroundings, all those lifetimes becoming one again before sending them all back to their abodes around the world.

“Won't they… know?” Meng Yang asked warily, frowning as terrified guests peered out of heavily warded rooms as they made their way back upstairs.

“Know what?” she asked innocently

“Having seen what you just did… Honoured Ancestor.” Meng Yang muttered, lapsing into honorifics due to her understandable edginess.

“Ah. Not as such." She replied with a shrug, checking her hair in a mirror quickly on the way past and wincing. "The rain has hid much, and while certain eyes turned on this place, only Sheng Dian, the duke and the envoy really know who I am. Sheng Dian will not speak, and the old ghost at his back is of an age to know what he should and should not prod.

“As to the duke and the envoy… I trust you have dealt with both?” she asked Seng Mo.

“I have—although…” the scholar trailed off.

“You wonder what my plan there is?” she mused. “The Azure Astral Authority has, on the face of it, come off ahead here… but I have given the Imperial Court an opportunity that the Kong clan will not miss. Their momentum, which was rampant, riding the crest of their decisive actions, was blunted here.”

“I see the plan well enough,” Seng Mo replied with a chuckle. “Even Lady Yang here should be able to see it?”

“…”

Meng Yang shot them both a dirty look that was mostly a cute pout and sighed. “The Imperial Court will seize the moment to properly claim the ducal seat, but the Azure Astral Authority control almost everything else. Neither side has the cooperation of the Ling clan though, or the Ha, who between them have the deepest roots here, and Lu Ji has run down a rat hole they will struggle to get him out of. The momentum they built up has been chopped off at the knees and the stalemate that was keeping anything meaningful being ‘done’ with the mountain range here in this cultivation ‘generation’ has been broadly speaking restored.”

“Had its knees broken, yes,” she agreed, not going into more detail than that with them.

Someone knowledgeable, like Seng Mo, knew what the deal was there, but it was still a source of inner annoyance. If she was a mortal, it would have given her ulcers. As it was, she resisted the urge to kick a table on the way past. It was something she had struggled with, seeking opportunity after opportunity for far too long, working on the sketchiest of ideas of what criteria she needed to finagle out of an uncooperative world and all the while watching the heavens above get more twisted. It certainly lived up to her grandfather’s assertions that Absolute Physiques were as much a torture as they were a blessing, and it had taken her far too many lifetimes to get rid of hers, to trade a Heavenly one back to basics for a Mortal one that would allow her to truly grow. The results of the previous 26 years spoke for themselves, but in the process she had had to watch the mess of 100 years ago and then the seeds of this current disaster with the now-deceased Cao Hongjun at their centre slip through her grasp. And even then, it was still stomach-curdlingly slow in a way.

She sighed, again.

“You have the look of someone who is contemplating lost innocence,” Seng Mo said, moving her onwards up the stairs from where she had stopped.

“I was just thinking how, on a certain level, I envy those idiots like Sheng Dian. Their starry-eyed innocence, the dreams and grand designs of those so called ‘Young Sovereigns’,” she said with a self-mocking smile.

“Did they actually hit you on the head?” Seng Mo muttered as they reached the top floor.

“That will be the day. I meant in the sense that they have those great achievements ahead of them, Dao Ascension in a hundred years… A Heavenly Physique, feted near and far as the next big thing, matched with this beauty or that young prince—at least the innocence of the world view,” she sighed, plopping herself down while Cao Liang and Meng Yang just looked at her as if she had grown a second head.

“Do you know how many times I have broken through to the Venerate Step since my most venerable and revered grandfather started tormenting me?” she asked, turning to Seng Mo.

“Humour this old scholar?” Seng Mo grinned, the curiosity clear on even his face at this point, because he probably knew more about her than most and even this was something she had not really spoken of, not that it was some great secret.

“Well since I met you, when you were fresh from advising that moron not to turn my mother’s gift of a parasol tree into a throne upon which to shit upon… forty two times,” she stated, before grabbing one of the jars of wine by the neck and just gulping down most of it in a single go.

“Forty two…” Meng Yang sounded a bit strangled, as well she might.

“It is a difficult thing to walk the Samsara and truly know it,” Seng Mo agreed, nodding in appreciation.

“May monkeys screw the samsara sideways,” she chuckled, waving for another jar of wine from a maid who bowed and almost sprinted for the store rooms once she was out of visual sight.

Cao Liang and Meng Yang both looked around furtively for tribulation flowers, but saw none.

“But only ten feathers?” Seng Mo mused.

“Do you want to know all my secrets? You will have to hang around me a few more lifetimes, old scholar,” she snickered.

“Ugh, one is already enough, thank you,” the old man said with a shudder, to which she patted him companionably on the shoulder.

“So… what happens now?” Cao Liang finally asked, settling back into his rather morose fugue.

That did make her feel bad—that the vitality of the Cao clan had been part of the price for her achievement was… unforeseen, but the world worked in cruel ways sometimes. Mortal Physiques exacted a remarkable price for the balance they struck. Grandfather Li had called them a curse that was the greatest blessing of the most ancient peoples devised. The oldest path, but the one with the most profound balance and the most to teach. They brought suffering, for you and those around you, but if you could endure—not break beneath the strain of what they brought, to balance the opportunities they would bring—then your path was limitless, constrained only by how far you had the strength to dream.

“What happens now…” she mused.

It was a very good question.

“It’s a good question,” she conceded with an amused smile that made both her sect master and her disciple just look at her like she was messing with them.

“What do you think will happen now?” she asked Meng Yang, who really should be having thoughts in this direction anyway.

“Well, balance has been… sort of restored by just tripping everyone up. The Imperial Court will push hard to ensure that they retain control of this city, the Azure Authority still has most of the offices of state for the province… but the vast majority of the noble clans prefer the Imperial Court to the Azure Authority… at least the minor ones,” Meng Yang mused, furrowing her beautiful brow as she sketched out various things on the table.

“Oh,” she sighed suddenly.

“The Azure Astral Authority wants to send its juniors in, and the Imperial Court will likely be unable to stop them, but there are two different factions there—you want them to go in, don’t you?”

“Indeed,” she nodded. “They will succeed in that, but now that their momentum is blunted, they will have to be more strategic about it. This is actually a good deed for them, but really, I want to see the Huang clan’s attempt at dragging a potential part of the Heavenly Solace Inheritance out into the light buried like a plague corpse.”

“The Azure Astral Authority will expend a lot of effort to get in there, looking for whatever Cao Hongjun had,” Meng Yang mused. “That will make the others nervous, but the Dun and Din clans are a bunch of cunning old thieves who made good on overturning the Azure Astral Authority’s ambitions once before as they saw it, so they will be confident they can do it a second time? ... So, they will actually cooperate?”

“Probably, yes, until one side or the other can see a clear path to screw the other side over for an undeniable advantage.”

“And now they know, or think, that Vast Obscurity Grove is sniffing about as well…” Meng Yang trailed off.

“Exactly,” she grinned. “They will be extra motivated to put their best work in, and we can sit here, waiting for them to make another mistake like going after Lu Ji. Really, that boy Di Ji has been a remarkable catalyst for so much misfortune.”

“They do say you pay for early good fortune in your life in later years,” Seng Mo mused.

“Tell me about it,” she said pretending to be put out.

“In any case, the most interesting thing that Yuan Leng managed to learn is actually to our benefit,” Seng Mo added.

“Ohh?”

“Yes, that Di Ji, or Ji Tantai as he was when he came to the Seven Sovereigns, is actually a Fate Lure for another Din clan disciple,” Seng Mo said with a toothy grin.

“A Dharma double…” she mused. “I can see it—for who though?”

“Not the only one either. They went through three: Di Ji, Ji Tantai and another Din Yao,” Seng Mo frowned. “Yuan Leng was quite perturbed by it when we spoke.”

She sat there in silence, thinking. Dharma doubles were not common. Expensive, required a miraculous opportunity or some very esoteric means to gestate. They only worked properly before you formed your Dao Seed. All those events had started before the trial…

“Do you have a list of who the people with that Ji Tantai were?” she mused.

Seng Mo passed her two talismans across the table. “It seems like a group mostly made up of the Ha clan and experts from a local pavilion, they were undertaking an exploration as part of the Ling clan's effort to assemble the 'Gift' for Shan Lai. Ji Tantai's group infiltrated the mission, then went to 'reinforce' them, it seems. On the surface you might assume it an unfortunate 'convergence', but it seems Yuan Leng has her doubts about that, and looking at what she has given us, I have to agree with that assessment."

She looked at the list, at the scores on the Hunter talismans and at the remarkable anonymity of the scores of the group from the Din clan.

“Yuan Leng’s interest was caught by these two,” Seng Mo added, pointing to two names on the list, “Jun Arai and Jun Sana. They purportedly died after falling off a cliff, during the assassination by the Din group of an elite from the Ha clan… however—”

“—Seven days later, that massive decimation descended, almost to the hour,” she mused, looking at the score updates. “Who else has these?”

“Nobody else,” Seng Mo said. “These are the only copies outside of the original jade core in Tai Qiuyue and Yuan Leng’s possession—”

She tossed the talisman up, there was a flash of fire and it vanished in haze of white sparks.

“What do you know about those two?”

“They are the daughters of a retired Military Envoy, named Jun Han. More interestingly though, he is a mortal world ascender; one of three who was taken in by Cao Hongjun a few centuries ago, who then assigned him to his son's retinue. As I understand it, Cao Hongjun had made a tacit agreement to take him and his wife into the Cao household when he left, after Jun Han rendered a meritorious service to his son, Cao Leyang, during the crushing of a resurgence of Blood Eclipse Cult a hundred years ago.” Seng Mo went on.

Sitting back, she closed her eyes for a moment to think.

“—My half-brother got himself assassinated and my whole clan ruined bar a few fortunate disciples in our sect because someone thought he was trying to pull a fast one after they noticed this?” Cao Liang asked, his voice trembling with anger and shock.

“That is the ‘logical’ conclusion the Sheng and Fan clans seem to have drawn,” Seng Mo agreed, giving her disciple a sympathetic pat on the arm. “He did go to great lengths to persuade them that he got nothing of value from that place, and then…”

“—And then events conspired to screw him over… ironic,” she interjected wryly. “This also explains why the Ling clan has two Celestial Venerates squatting on their gate right now, doing excellent impressions of Acala Buddha and Vajrayaksa Buddha.”

“It does?” Cao Liang asked with a frown. “I figured that was more to do with that Sheng clan brat... Fule or something, being thrown out of their estate like that and demolishing the gate of the Dukes Palace.

“Sheng Fulo,” she corrected absently… “But no… it has to do with Ling Luo in all likelihood, their other daughter."

She flipped the other talisman around and pointed at the name 'Kun Juni'. “Given she is the daughter of their clan lord, I am guessing that the Kun clan has also run for their dark waters and the Lin clan remnants…”

“Have fled into the suppressed depths of the shadow forest,” Seng Mo nodded. “The unfortunate ones there are the Han clan, who were just a small local influence. They have been wrapped up by the Fan and Su clans and all their secrets exposed at this point, such as they were. Someone in Shan Lai must have divined that they might hit it big out of this somehow.

"Unfortunately for them though, Jun Han has no other scions nor connections to this world beyond his daughters and his dead wife; now that he is beside Tai Qiuyue and Yuan Leng he is mostly beyond their grasp.”

“I don’t suppose you have any idea what Cao Hongjun actually got out of there when I was otherwise unavailable?” she asked with a resigned sigh, trying to think through what might have persuaded this kind of response from them.

“Sadly no," Cao Liang replied, staring gloomily at his own cup.

"It should be possible to find out, though, with a bit of ingenuity,” Seng Mo added after a moment. “Now that I consider it more closely, perhaps, this is also why they went after Lu Ji at this time?"

"Perhaps they assumed that the Blue Water Sage got something of the same thing?” Meng Yang suggested.

“What the Blue Water Sage got is no good to those old…” she trailed off and pulled out the lantern and stared at it.

It only took her a few moments to find the required talisman in her inner world to wipe away the refinement mark—when it came to fleecing things off others, she had means to make any young noble weep. Rather than use it, though, what she needed to do…

She pushed her qi and her Vast Obscurity Truth into it, looking for the Samsara of the artefact itself. It took a while to find it but when she did, she was able to see the various moments of its past use reflected back through it. It did the artefact no good, but that was beside the point. The knowledge was worth more than the divination tool, which she had stolen only to make other people annoyed in any case.

Through her mind’s eye she saw it used on Lu Ji to break a teleportation talisman... then another… and another… which was truly a waste of heavens riches. She watched as it played back and saw Sheng Dian try to cage…

“Oh.”

She stared at the lantern, the symbols of the ‘River Chart: Rains Run from the North’ still shimmering tantalizingly in her mind’s eye, even as the shadows of the future 'moment' where Lu Ji had used an art he most certainly did not have in 'reality' faded away. There was no question of whether or not Lu Ji, himself, possessed such a thing and he had wisely managed to reject the leading moment and not fallen into the trap of lingering upon it. In that regard, Lu Xiao had clearly raised him well. Had Lu Fu Tao returned with something like that God Slaughtering Hall would have moved thirty thousand years ago in any case.

“What is it?” Seng Mo asked, frowning.

“You’re better off not knowing,” she muttered, which was true, even for him. No wonder Cao Hongjun apparently swore anyone who might know anything to the secrets of heaven before fleeing to the stars post-breakthrough and getting the most important position of reclusive responsibility he could get that wasn’t suspicious, after leaving that place.

“That bad?” Seng Mo mused, raising an eyebrow.

“Worse, much worse,” she sighed softly.

She stared at the lantern and then opened up her soul fire on it, letting the myriad coloured flames eat into the little thing, slowly but surely abandoning it to Heaven and Earth. It took several minutes, but in the end all that was left was ashes, which she swept up and dunked in a jar and tossed in her inner world, forever hiding the knowledge from others of what the Sheng clan had their eyes set upon.

It was just... better that way. The 'River Chart Scripture' was one of the Supreme Seven. A thing hidden in myth, and yet even that myth could ruin a starfield as just a single chapter of it was every bit as appealing as the talisman she held as a reward from the Heaven Breaking Empress’ grand trial. A holistic method of four paths from the Mortal to the Ascendant—if you could hold it, and survive long enough to profit from it…