> The enduring lay reverence for the four ‘Cardinal Courts of Celestial Fate’, and occasional lack thereof, has as much to do with the political narrative associated with lineages who claim descent from them as it does their wider roles within society. Everyone reveres the Three Pure Ones and the Heavenly Maiden of Celestial Creation, but of the four Queen Mothers it is only the Queen Mother of the West who receives widespread reverence among the laity almost irrespective of where you go on Eastern Azure Great World.

>

> Socially, this is partly down to accessibility. The Queen Mother of the North represents the esoteric mysteries of the samsara and the balance therein, while the Queen Mother of the South, her opposite, espouses its extremes, Life and Death. Both have their role in our lives, but outside of questions of birth and death, or musings on the profundity of nature and its fickleness, neither linger long in the mind or the heart. The Queen Mother of the East… is more contentious, mostly because her auspice relates to the experience of life – specifically the idea of ‘red dust’ and karmic judgement – but rarely in ways that make for easy, or socially acceptable, worship.

>

> By contrast, the Queen Mother of the West, who also patronizes the ‘experience of life’, focuses more on honour, piety, family, good fortune and prosperity in your current and future lives… something almost everyone, from any walk of life, can get behind, and about which people obsess on a daily basis.

>

> It is the politics, however, where things get truly interesting, especially on our own Eastern Azure Great World. Here, the patronage of the Queen Mother of the West extends to the very highest echelon, in ways none of the others now do, for the Blue Morality Empress originated with the Huang Heavenly Clan, who claim a deep ancestral connection to the Queen Mother of the West.

>

> The other three, however, all have closer associations with powers opposed to both the Huang and also the Kong Heavenly Clan who support Eastern Azure’s Imperial Court through the Blue Morality Emperor. As such, those three have, in many parts of the world, been supplanted by the cults relating to the Wise Emperors of Shu, Huang and Kong.

Excerpt from – The Celestial Paradigm and the Four Courts of Heaven on Eastern Azure.

  ~By Scholar Qing Qingshi.

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~ JUN ARAI – WEST FLOWER PICKING TOWN ~

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Arai awoke and stared at the ceiling of her room, wondering what had disturbed her, given it was barely light… and she was still exhausted from the previous few days.

“Uwwwaaaa…”

Yawning, she sat up and then shuddered, because while she was not quite… damp, she was clammy and sweating to the point where her nightgown was sticking to her in rather unpleasant ways.

With a groan, she stretched, pulled at her clammy nightgown again and swiped her hand over a book.

“Oh…”

She had actually fallen asleep reading the novel about the fictional ‘adventures’ of Cang Di that Sora had loaned her. Picking it up, she closed it and put it on the table by the bed, then went to the sash door to the veranda outside and pushed it open. The rain was still falling, albeit less than it had been, across the pre-dawn town, shrouding the middle distance in a faint haze. She could just about make out the shadowy spires of the Green Fang Pagoda in the middle of the Blue River District, courtesy of their lanterns…

*Hrruuuuumble*

“Oh… Monkey-summoning tribulations,” she remarked to the world at large as a vast rumble of thunder shook the cloudy sky above, “that would be what woke me.”

Leaning on the balcony, she watched the skyline to the south, beyond the Blue River and Western districts, curious as to the colour of the tribulation lightning. A moment later, a bolt of deep blue lightning stabbed down to the south of the town, followed by another, then another.

“Earthly, huh? So Nasc— ——…”

The thunderclap didn’t even have sound, it was just sensation, blotting all sound from the world, rolling across the town like a dark, suffocating cloak. It was followed a moment later by a different series of flickers of purple lightning on the south side of the town, beyond the river, that were so bright they made her put her hand up to shield her eyes.

“I know it’s an auspicious hour, but seriously?” she grumbled, as the rainbows cast through the rain and mist faded away.

The last of the blue bolts dissipated as she looked on, that tribulation clearly concluded successfully. The other… she winced as a flash of gold swept through the rain—

The entire house shook. In fact, the entire neighbourhood shook, probably, as the golden corona dissipated and the rain fell normally again.

Exhaling, she squinted up at the sky, feeling the raindrops on her skin for a few moments, then gave herself a shake and went back inside. Pulling off her nightgown, she walked over to the bath set into the floor of her bathroom and slid into it. The water, which she had not emptied from the night before, was lukewarm enough that she poked the ward stones on the side until icy qi started flowing into it.

With a deep sigh, she lay back and stared at the ceiling, savouring the refreshing chill the qi was putting into the water.

In the end, she lay there for a good thirty minutes, alone with her thoughts, ignoring the occasional rumble of thunder, simply enjoying being ‘cold’. What forced her to get out was mostly the ward stone running out of qi, allowing the water to rapidly become tepid, then annoyingly lukewarm again. The secondary consideration was that she was hungry.

Standing up, she poked the formation jade at the side of the bath and climbed out, claiming a towel to dry herself as the bath emptied. Looking around, she recovered the two jars of wine, now empty, that she had drunk in the bath the night before and went back into her bedroom. Picking a light robe, entirely at random, she tossed it on and then sloped out of her room and headed downstairs.

Her morning routine was pretty autonomous when Sana and her father weren’t at home: get up, have food, go cultivate for an hour in the garden, then go do what needed to be done.

In this instance, ‘what needed to be done’ was probably hide at home until Han Shu came with a list of plants, as he had promised he would the night before, or someone from the Pavilion showed up to make her life more annoying. She had done the requisite number of ‘clearance missions’ required for her rank, but that didn’t mean more might not be found for her.

Shuddering at that idea, she made her way through the dark house – there was no point in turning lights on in a place she could walk around blindfolded anyway – to the kitchen and started to poke through the cupboards, while she mulled over the dinner from the previous night.

It had been nice to catch up and eat a meal at Mrs Leng’s, but having to recap the previous few days had not been that enjoyable. The mood had been a bit weird as well, mostly because Lianmei had been furious, not with Han Shu, but with the elders who gave him such a thankless and clearly mendacious task. Mostly it had become him telling Lianmei in detail what he did, while she chatted to Sora and Wenhua and occasionally supplied details for that other conversation.

“…”

“Aiiii… I guess all I can do is keep my head down until father gets home…” she reflected, finishing up her trawl of the cupboards and considering what she had found.

That turned out to be some dried mushrooms, a jar of dried noodles and more yin-fire peppers than was probably required for a household of three.

After staring at the collection for a long moment she pulled a pot out from under the sink, filled it with water and set it on the stove. Next she poked the fire-attribute ward stones powering the formation built into it, and then went back upstairs to claim her storage talisman, which was sitting on the table by her bed.

Five minutes later, she had returned to the kitchen, tossed some lotus leaves and roots into the now-bubbling water, along with the mushrooms, noodles and some yin-fire peppers and left the whole thing to simmer as she went through the rest of the cupboards, making a list in her head… which turned out to be a rather long list, because nobody had been back in the house for a week at least and even before that, it had just been her and Sana and they had mostly eaten out of the garden.

-I suppose there is stuff in the garden, she mused, staring out the window at the misty greenery beyond the veranda.

Sighing, she grabbed a grass hat from beside the door that led outside from the kitchen and stepped into the rain. Thankfully, someone, probably Sana, had placed most of the plants useful for cooking fairly close to the kitchen, so it only took her a few minutes to make a quick circuit and claim a few leaves of edible spirit vegetation to further season the soup. For good measure, she grabbed some blue mangosteen off the spirit fruit tree near the veranda and headed back inside.

Back inside, she tossed the herbs into the soup, put the mangosteen in a bowl for later and then just sat down on a chair and stared out the window again, into the rain.

“Today is a day when I will do nothing,” she declared to the world at large, and the pot of bubbling concoction specifically. “Yesterday… was shit. The day before was shit slung by monkeys… and the day before that, I am going to call a nightmare and try to forget.”

Sadly, saying it out loud did not help much, and the only response the world gave her was another distant peal of thunder as another cultivator, likely seeking to make the best of the convergence of auspicious ‘moments’ that the ‘week’ between the old year and the new year afforded, underwent a tribulation somewhere outside the town.

“…”

Sighing, she got up again and went and filled up a teapot with water, tossed some jasmine and a green tea Sana had gotten somewhere in Blue Water City into it, and put it on to heat up as well. Considering what else she had to hand, she got a shallow bowl, tossed some oil into it, sent a pulse of qi through it to help it heat up and then tossed a few pieces of bread she had bought the previous day into it.

Standing in the kitchen, she looked around, and then recalled that there was one other job to do, given it was currently the most auspicious hour of the day, on one of the most auspicious days of the year…

Returning to her own room, she rooted around until she found some blank scrolls. It was rare she got the opportunity to paint or do much non-work related illustration these days, but for once her childhood interest in drawing flowers was going to have another use... sombre as it was.

It took a while longer to find the right paint, which was in Sana’s room for whatever reason, then she headed back through the house and considered the various vases and pots of flowers until she found the ones she recalled had been bought from Ha Fenfang and replanted. Taking the pot, she went back to the kitchen and sat down again at the table.

It only took her a few minutes to sift through her memories and find a nice one of the young girl standing with the other flower sellers, a view in passing as they stood together by the Queen Mother’s Bridge, joking about something as she walked past. Sketching out the group portrait, which was much better quality than the one she had made back at the Kun estate, she coloured them in and painted the faces to resemble the various dead flower sellers standing around, talking and eating spirit fruit, Nen Shirong helping his sister organize some flowers.

That took about twenty minutes, by which point the soup was mostly done and the tea brewed, so she took those off the stove and then, leaving the scroll picture to dry, went to look for some other bits and pieces around the house.

She claimed an empty bowl from the kitchen, some spare incense from the family stores, an extra side table from the main reading room and then the flower pot, pot of tea and a cup; relocating them all to the room in the house that held the family shrine.

Upon entering she covered her head with her shawl, offered a toast of the tea she had just brewed to the family altar at the end of the room and placed an origami chrysanthemum, made by Sana, on it for her mother.

It was the work of a few more moments to re-arrange a bit of furniture without wrecking the feng shui of the room and then claim another small table to set up a further shrine on the left side of the room, where the various auspices and good luck charms usually sat.

When she was done, she returned to the kitchen, claimed the painted portraits and returned to the hall, placing them behind the bowl of incense along with the small pot of flowers.

As a final offering she wrote the names of the various orphaned flower sellers on sandalwood talismans and placed them before the incense, effectively making a memorial shrine to the dead girls and boy. Beyond Lianmei and whoever she got to officiate over their last rites, she was certain almost nobody else would bother with this small gesture towards good fortune in their next lives. Hopefully those would be far from the grasping greed of the Ha clan.

That done, she finally spent a long moment considering the other painted portraits, of her, her sister, her father, mother and brother, on the main shrine at the end of the hall. They were all created by her mother – almost the first thing ever put in this place. Each one was a beautiful work of art, such as any master would be proud of and any patron would be honoured to own, evoking a skill and vision in their creation she could only aspire to in her dreams.

Both she and Sana were dressed in formal gowns of azure, white and green – hers was patterned with chrysanthemums while her sister had picked lotus flowers. The gowns were enchanted, commissioned at great cost by their father from Old Fang's youngest daughter she was certain, for their tenth birthday. Even though it would resize for her, she hadn't worn it since this portrait was painted.

Their younger selves had their long dark brown hair plaited ornately, in a style more common in the south-east and the southern continent, the land their father said his family originated from. There was a white chrysanthemum flower in her hands as well, representing loyalty, filial piety and devoted love.

-At that age I just liked the crispness of the colour, she thought wryly.

Dark hazel eyes stared back at her from her own childlike face, their bright intensity carrying no hint of the tragedy that would soon befall their small family.

Her gaze turned to her mother's portraits in the middle. There were two: one with her mother and father, dressed in formal gown and robes, holding hands and smiling; the other with her mother sitting on the veranda smiling faintly, wearing a simple robe, with flowers woven through her hair.

Placing her fingertip to each candle on the shrine in turn, she lit them using a faint thread of qi.

She bowed three times again to the portrait of her mother and then knelt down before it.

“Dearest Mother… I have returned home, safe and well. Your blessing is still with me, it seems.

“It has been a difficult week… and I find myself thinking more and more of… when we were all here, together.

“It seems overdone, but it truly is hard not to miss those days when you watched us play in the garden and we interrupted your painting with pointless, stupid things. When times seemed simple and we had no cares.

“I…

“You…”

She stared at the floor, trying to find the words to explain what she wanted to say… then just sighed softy.

“The flower sellers deserve better, please watch over them. Their names are… were… Ha Fenfang, Ha Tenli, Nen Hong and Kanra… and Nen Shirong. They were always bright and happy, even when life was neither kind nor fair to them.”

As she spoke, tears welled up in her eyes, the scene of Ha Fenfang and Nen Hong… reaching for each other in frozen stillness lingering like a haunting shadow in her mind’s eye.

“Please watch over them, Mother.”

She stared at the shrine and the kindly face staring back down at her, then wiped the tears from her eyes and bowed again.

“There is not a day that passes when we do not miss you…

“On your behalf, I, your daughter, thrice curse your wretched parents and uncles for their crime. May they be haunted by the Eye of the Nameless Fate for what they have done!”

Her words – half-prayer, half-curse – echoed in the enclosed space.

The flames of the candles flickered and the smoke from the incense swirled.

With a soft sigh, she stood again, her gaze lingering on the third portrait: a young boy, aged six, wearing a robe identical to the one her father wore in his portrait, holding a sword in his left hand and a scroll in his right. His expression was intended to be serious, but really nobody could ask a child that age to hold a serious expression for a portrait, so their mother had just painted it as it was. Her own version of this portrait was in the cabinet below.

Stepping back, she bowed three more times to the family shrine, then once more to the shrine for Ha Fenfang, Nen Hong, Nen Shirong, Ha Tenli and Kanra, saying a short prayer for their onward passage into a happier next life. Finally, after replenishing the incense, which was also running low, she bowed once again to the room and, after reclaiming the teapot, left to go back to the kitchen.

After placing the teapot on the table, she poured herself a bowl of the soup and claimed the fried bread, which was heading towards ‘extra crispy’ at this point, then sat down and stared out the window for a long moment before turning to the food.

She had just dunked the fried bread in her soup, however, when the sound of hammering on the gate echoed through the whole estate.

“Who, by the Nameless Fates, is it at this hour?” she grumbled to herself, staring at the bowl of soup.

The only person meant to be calling around was Han Shu, and he would not show up for several hours at least. It wouldn’t be Sana or her father either, because they would not knock and the formation protecting the house would let her know they were outside. That left someone from the Bureau, though they would probably contact her through the talisman, someone from the neighbourhood… or someone come to make trouble about bodies and clearance missions.

“…”

Considering her clothes, she judged the light robe and shawl good enough for visitors at this hour. Giving the soup and the tea a final glance she set off, back through the house towards the entrance courtyard.

By the time she got there, the pounding on the door had become somewhat… intense.

-Really, I get it. Stop thumping the door, you barking dog, she grumbled. Who calls uninvited before the seventh auspicious hour?

Her mother would have said ‘Only Evils and Heaven’, and disapprovingly at that.

She doubted it was Heaven so that only left Evils, because, unless someone was being murdered, none of her neighbours would bang on the door that loudly.

In any case, opening the door without looking was out of the question, especially given her lingering concerns about the whole bandit fiasco of the previous days, so instead she headed around the courtyard up to the second floor and opened the screen door to the veranda overlooking the square outside to survey who, or what, was making all the fate-thrashed racket.

The square below held two squads of rather damp-looking town guards, carrying staves in place of spears and several lanterns.

Those they were escorting were mostly sheltered by umbrellas, but she could make out the fancy robes of officials from West Flower Picking’s Civil Authority.

The final group were clearly personal guards for the officials, and they were all dressed in armour with the insignia of the Ha clan’s own authorized military force, deputized to the Civil Authority. It was the sergeant of that group who was hammering on the door with his fist.

“Shall we open this up, Official Fan?” the corporal of the Ha clan guards asked, turning to a rather rotund man with a wispy beard standing in the middle of the flunkies, who, now that she looked at him more closely in the flickering lantern-light, was wearing the robe of a mid-ranked civil official.

“Great... just what I wanted first thing in the morning,” she muttered under her breath, really glad she hadn’t opened the gate normally now. -It seems your thoughts on visitors were right, Mother. Evils have indeed called, and wasted no time to do so.

The guards by her gate below finally noticed that she was standing on the veranda and one pointed up at her angrily.

“Get down here!”

“Show proper respect for authority!” one of the officials added, loudly, waving for a guard to hold a lantern higher to better illuminate her.

“Open this door in the name of the guards!” the corporal added, pounding on it again.

“At this hour?” she retorted, feeling no need to humour them. “Aren't you aware of the saying ‘only Heaven and the Evils will call before the seventh auspicious hour’?”

That got a few chuckles from the town guards but only stony-faced glares from the official and his flunkies.

“Are you claiming to be 'Heaven'?” she called down, glancing at the overcast sky for emphasis.

Rather humorously, a blue-green tribulation lightning bolt picked that moment to flash down on the west side of the town, cutting through the haze with an accompanying rumble of thunder.

“…”

Even Official Fan seemed a bit askance at that. Obviously no one was going to claim to be ‘Heaven’, especially not on a day like today. That kind of thing got you attention, and the ‘Heavens’ didn’t believe in repeat reminders.

Official Fan stared up at her for a long moment, as another mid-ranked official mostly obscured by an umbrella whispered something to him, then passed a scroll to the official who had demanded she ‘show proper respect’.

“HUNTER JUN ARAI!”

The official’s voice, enhanced by qi, echoed around the whole street, loud enough that some of what he said was probably heard a full block away.

“ON BEHALF OF THE CIVIL AUTHORITY WE COME TO UPHOLD JUSTICE!”

There was the sound of barking dogs and slamming doors, even a few lights turned on in other nearby estates.

Based on the trim of their robes, the official yelling inadvisably loudly was only a Soul Foundation cultivator and even Official Fan was only at Dao Seeking. While they were far above her strength, they were nowhere near big enough fish to annoy a whole neighbourhood, especially not a somewhat upmarket one in the Western District. Most estates here had elders who were at least Immortals, and quite a few would be visiting or out of seclusion, thanks to the New Year.

“YOU ARE SUMMONED TO APPEAR BEFORE AN INVESTIGATIVE COMMITTEE OF TOWN ELDERS REGARDING… the… proper—”

The speaking official at last seemed to realise he might have erred, because he trailed off, looking around uneasily as whispered threats and curses cut through the rain from the surrounding houses, carried like a sibilant wind through the rain from the nearby estates.

The echoes vanished, but the damage was certainly done. Other windows were opening on the far side of the street. A few doors down she could see Old Immortal Fang poking his head out of a second-floor window. There was Grandmaster Oudeng as well, an eminent talisman maker, standing on the balcony of his own house across the square.

She shook her head wryly as a few of the officials and guards looked around, pale-faced.

The idiot took a deep breath and continued a lot less loudly. “—You are mandated to appear before an investigative committee of town elders to answer questions regarding the deaths of twenty citizens of this town near Jade Willow Village…”

A band of youths had also appeared further up the street, she noted, from the direction of the Red Blossom District – one of the local influences probably. Even at this distance, she could feel the ill intent radiating off them as they considered the nearest Ha clan guards to them like foxes who had just seen orphaned ducklings, barely giving any face to the squad of town guards standing by.

“Furthermore! In compliance with Section 9a, Scroll Seventy-Six of the Civic Charter of West Flower Picking Town, you, Hunter Jun Arai, are required to explain the use of children, including those from the Ha clan, by an elite Hunter; the death of those children within the notorious Red Pit; the death of Ha Shimo… and the disappearance of other upstanding scions of local families… facilitated by a lack of timely and detailed updates on regional threats to regional and local governance…”

Listening, she could only salute, in her head, how shamelessly the official was twisting what was, as far as she could tell, meant to be a rather routine summons to narrate what she had seen and encountered. Taken at face value, it would be all too easy to assume she was the one responsible for half of what the official was talking about.

However, she could already hear the mutterings from nearby...

“Ha clan?”

“Underage?”

“Misrepresentation—?”

“Did one of the young masters do something dumb?”

“That doesn’t sound like something young Miss Jun would do…”

“Why the fates is this fat shit disturbing my nap?”

“—wasn’t it ignored before?”

The echoing whispers, infused with qi, were back in force as a small crowd assembled almost like a travelling entertainer’s trick in the markets out of the various other estates and houses and people passing by, interested in what was suddenly occurring.

“First these monkey-cavorting young assholes playing with their ‘big’ lightning all night…”

“Yeah… no consideration…”

“When you’re part of a big clan…”

“Didn’t your Lu’er die last year when those Ha Hunters botched a trip near there?”

“Now we get some fat-faced dog-botherer coming here with his flunkies?”

“I think that one looked at me funny, Father. Can you discipline him?”

“Isn’t the Red Pit really dangerous?”

“—It is… daughter; I’ll explain about it later…”

The problem, really, which she found rather amusing, was that the officials, or whoever had sent them, clearly didn’t know this neighbourhood’s opinions on such things as well as they thought, given the mutterings from the rapidly assembling crowd. You did not annoy neighbourhoods of cultivators like this, especially not this early in the morning – not unless you had an exit strategy.

Below her, the now rather outnumbered guards who had been brought along were also coming to this conclusion as they tried to keep a sort of perimeter around Official Fan and his group. The numbers were really not on their side, however. The strength of the crowd itself was pretty average, mostly Qi Condensation and Golden Core cultivators, interspersed with a lot of Physical Refinement cultivators, but they already outnumbered Official Fan’s whole party by about three to one. The Immortals were not leaving their...

“Ohhhh.” Movement in the crowd caught her eye, even as the crowd itself split, murmuring.

“Old Fang…”

“Sir Immortal…”

“Are they not very uncouth, Sir Fang?”

“Sir Fang, that one said improper things about…”

She saw Old Fang sauntering forward, holding his walking stick like a rod of imperial command. The sergeant leading the town guards also saw this, because he smartly stepped forward and met the old man with whispered words of sincere apology. Immortal Fang was a former ‘Banner Leader’ within the provincial Military Authority, now retired and living with his youngest daughter and her family.

“I am Corporal Wu, Miss Jun, with the Town Guard’s central district,” the town guard corporal called up, much more respectfully. “Might we come inside to talk matters over?”

“That would not be proper! You wish to enter this young lady's house at this hour while her father is not here?” she called down blithely.

“…”

The corporal looked resigned, but nodded, largely because she was well within her rights to refuse. The only way they could ‘force’ access without serious repercussion was with a formal writ from the District Guard Captain.

“Now see here—!” one of the Ha clan guards yelled up at her, clearly unhappy with her reply.

“—This is standing against the Civil Authority. Disrespect is a crime!" one of the flunkies added sanctimoniously.

Ignoring both of them, she instead chose to directly address the sergeant, who, having now come closer as he talked to Old Fang, she thought she recognised as someone affiliated with the Han estate.

“Sir Han, can you provide assurance that this is an official declaration of the Civil Authority backed up with the written authority of the appropriate District Captain?”

Sergeant Han stroked his beard, no doubt trying to recover some appearance of gravitas, before speaking: “Well, the proclamation is—”

“—The proclamation is signed by the requisite number of town elders, Deputy Ha provided authorization as the Town Captain is out on official business!” the Ha clan guard who had tried to dent her gate, and who also appeared to be a sergeant, declared, cutting him off.

Leaning on the balcony, she sighed softly.

-So it is indeed the Ha clan, she mused, noting that Sergeant Han at least looked a bit awkward now. Probably they will claim that I should have sought out some official last night when they were all at a fancy meal or watching their scions’ tribulations or something, and that ‘failure’ is not an excuse.

However, before she could speak up, Old Fang cleared his throat.

*Ahem!*

The echo and accompanying wave of qi silenced half the street and made a few of those accompanying Official Fan go weak at the knees. One guard actually dropped his staff.

“You are disturbing our neighbourhood for this?” the old man growled, looking around, the air almost distorting as he did so in spite of the hazy rain still oppressing everything.

“Respectfully, Sir Immortal Fang—” the official who had been doing the announcing found his voice, though he failed to avoid sounding strangled as he did so.

“Be silent!” Old Fang waved a hand and that official, still holding the scroll, deflated like a punctured bladder. “This old man is speaking!

“You think you can just come here and disrupt a whole neighbourhood like this, force your way into the home of a private citizen without disclosing your authority formally?

“Do the oaths of office you uphold as a civil official mean nothing?

“Is this all the Ha clan is worth?

“Are you, sworn officials, bullying the weak for personal pretence?”

“…”

Under his tirade, the officials and their toadies actually took a few steps back, all of them sweating. A few nearly stumbled and fell.

“Do you have some rebuttal to his words, Miss Jun?” Old Fang asked, looking back up at her.

“Erm,” she coughed politely and nodded. “I was sent on a personally mandated, rapidly authorized clearance request asking me to track down and rescue several Ha clan scions who vanished in the mountains while returning from hunting for rare beast cores near Jade Willow Village. Unfortunately, the Ha clan officials filed bad jadework—”

One of the minor officials opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again and went pale at a sideways glare from Old Fang.

“—concealed circumstances, refused to accept that it would likely be a corpse recovery mission – or that the group had walked right into the Red Pit – and are now trying to find an excuse to blame me for their careless—”

“Slander!” one of the other minor officials managed to yell, cutting her off. “How da—!”

“…”

She stared dully as he frothed at the mouth and collapsed, stunned by Sergeant Han with a projection of Martial Intent before Old Fang could do as much as look in his direction.

“I was personally assigned two clearance missions by the Governor’s Authority. I did discover corpses in the process of completing one of those missions: a request to look for a missing Elder Ha Li. Those dead were all working for various estate owners near Jade Willow Village, who have been luring unfortunate folk from our town to be exploited in dangerous valleys near the Red Pit. I am sure rumours of bandits have already circulated and that is indeed the case; the responsible party was a bandit group working with some local elements to exploit ginseng fields for personal gain.”

“These are serious allegations,” Official Fan murmured, staring up at her.

“Indeed,” the official standing next to him agreed, also staring up at her with a faint sneer.

“Is anything I said there incorrect?” she challenged them.

“…”

The group didn’t have much reaction, beyond some further, much quieter mutterings of slander, but that didn’t matter now. The grand pantomime had fallen completely flat in any case.

The crowd, now much clearer on the situation, was starting to mull over the ‘show’ properly as well. The problem, really, was the local influence, who were giving both her house and the officials some rather contemplative looks. The Red Blossom gangs had a lot of conflict with the Ha and Kun clans over trade in the town. The clans were winning, obviously, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t unwilling to stick a knife in here and there. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be a good look to be mentioned as being at the scene of a riot kicking off.

“Of course it is right that the circumstances of their deaths be explained, and that families receive closure, but is this the moral way to do so?” she added, staring at the group of officials, wondering why they seemed so certain. “With guards and viciously misconstrued words raising a clamour before the sun has even risen?

“Is this not the Ha clan using the Civil Authority as a borrowed knife to bury their own misdeeds?”

“Heh…” the official standing beside Fan snorted at that, shaking his head dismissively before murmuring. “You are certainly a girl who speaks some fancy words, but I wonder if you understand the weight of what you are saying…”

-Oh, I think so, she reflected sourly.

Had she not known Han Shu had already had to go around families, she would have suspected this was just someone trying to seize an opportunity to put the faction within the Pavilion she was nominally associated with – that affiliated with Old Ling – in a bad position. Having failed, this would just have been ‘laughed off’ as an overzealous official looking to curry favour and ‘misunderstanding’ circumstances.

Probably it still would be; however, forearmed with the knowledge that the bare facts of the deaths had already circulated, devoid of much of the context, her Spirit Jade was firmly placed on the theory that this whole farce was designed by someone to attract attention to her role in recovering the bodies, which it had already done thanks to them reading out the summons earlier. A few squads of guards and a bunch of officials showing up and having a confrontation here was enough to do that, irrespective of the reality of the circumstance.

“Sergeant Han…”

She considered her next words and decided that on balance there was no harm in twisting the knife a bit more.

“As I recall, was there not that incident with Senior Kun Juni—?”

“—Now just you look here, young brat! You’re not showing respect here!” One of the other minor officials with Official Fan cut in quickly, because that was a much spicier bit of local politics for the Ha clan, given it had led to Juni being demoted from a nine-star ranked Hunter. “This is an official—”

Sergeant Han didn’t stun him this time, like he had the previous speaker, but the flunky still wilted under the glower of Old Fang.

“Official Fan,” the sergeant frowned, “I have to remind you that our authorisation was to escort you for official business… If this is just you covering for some Ha clan elder’s scheme…”

“Indeed!” Old Fang agreed, casting a dark frown at the rather flat-faced Official Fan. “A claim of impropriety against the ‘Pavilion’ is one thing, but stringing along some political horse-crap for some rural estate managers again after the mess that Green Veil Village caused already… are you showing blatant disrespect for the good running of our town?”

“With all due respect… Eminent Immortal Fang—” Official Fan tried to find a moment to speak, but Old Fang just cut him off again.

“—Sir Jun’s time is valuable; his family make a good contribution to the town’s prosperity and here you are making trouble for him... in the New Year’s week when we should all be celebrating future opportunities? Have you no respect?”

“Sir Jun, as you call him, is hardly a normal private citizen,” Official Fan retorted, rather superciliously. “What office does he hold? As a private citizen yourself, Immortal Fang, you can appreciate that there are standards that must be kept? Jun Han’s impropriety—”

“Regarding the matter of 'Sir' Jun Han, you should also be careful where you ascribe influence,” the official standing next to Official Fan cut in, turning to Sergeant Han.

She glared down at the group below. That insinuation was perilously close to an allegation of corrupt impropriety. Rather ironic coming from the Ha clan, who had made an art form of it.

“So you did come here with some balls after all, Qingfao,” Old Fang sneered, eyeballing the official who had threatened her a few moments ago.

“—Yeah, if you’re not careful, you might have to experience some regrets!" another junior official added, rather suggestively.

“Humph!” Old Fang narrowed his eyes, sweeping his gaze back across the assembled group. This time, however, his attempt at suppressing them foundered slightly for some reason.

“All his influence comes because he had some luck and made a few powerful friends a hundred years ago…” Official Fan retorted.

“—and retired on his service reward with a sexy young wife to help polish his spear!” Qingfao added with a sneer.

“…”

-You rude little mutt, she cursed, struggling to bury her scowl given she was trying not to use her mantra to allow for her mental state to recover its normal equilibrium after the week’s ups and downs.

She had to admit that this ‘Qingfao’ was brave to bad-mouth her mother in this district. The word he had used could mean ‘sexy’, but was sometimes used as slang for…

She narrowed her eyes.

-If I tell Father that this idiot called Mother a harlot—

“Do Not Speak Disrespectfully of Fairy Ruliu!”

The words were like a slap in the face to everyone present below. Most of them took a few steps backwards, while Qingfao, who had bad-mouthed her late mother, coughed up blood, a ‘symbol’ on his forehead becoming visible for a few seconds, revealing him to be an Immortal realm cultivator.

“Sir Oudeng!”

“Grandmaster!”

“Seeing Grandmaster Oudeng!”

A few people in the crowd actually saluted the old man, whose glowering expression made Old Fang’s appear positively genial.

The toadies and hangers-on all shuffled back, bowing and sweating profusely, and even the guards protecting them looked decidedly uneasy. Annoying Old Fang was one thing; annoying someone as eminent and respected as Grandmaster Oudeng, who was a Chosen Immortal, was quite another.

Sergeant Han, no doubt seeing that the situation was about to turn rather unpleasant, finally seemed to make up his mind on how to deal with matters and held up his own rank talisman, not quite glaring at Qingfao and Fan.

“Honoured Sirs, you have delivered your proclamation. It has been observed legally by our responsible selves,” he stated, his words drawing several jeering hoots and chuckles from the onlookers, as he decided to take refuge in bureaucratic protocol. “Our guidance on official matters relating to the internal politics of the Civil Authority is very clear, so I think we should head back to the Governor’s Palace?

“It is important that, as the next step, a formal statement be made to the senior official responsible for regional security that this request for cooperation in an investigation has been delivered, – – ––?”

*Krrrrrrrroooom*

With somewhat unfortunate timing, another vast peal of thunder echoed across the gloomy sky, making the shifting haze of dark clouds above shake and the rain intensify for a moment. Off to the north, a flash of azure lighting stabbed down.

“…”

“Is it not?” Sergeant Han reiterated when the noise had passed.

Qingfao scowled but seemingly could not find it within himself to say anything while being directly stared at by Sir Oudeng.

“—We must, of course, also wait for Sir Captain of the Town, His Excellency, Master Tai Yuan to return from his official business so he can formally witness the ‘actual’ declaration of summons for Hunter Jun,” the squad corporal volunteered with a shit-eating grin on his face – a reminder that not only young nobles could hide behind influence to thumb their nose at powerful cultivators if required.

“Yes, you are quite correct, Corporal Wu,” Sergeant Han agreed with a thankful nod.

“Are you trying to take the piss?” the official holding the scroll hissed.

“No, Official Longluo,” Sergeant Han replied, a bit more tartly. “This is all set out by the Civic Guidelines and Review Policy for Personal Political Disputes, as you are certainly well aware.”

“Are you inciting the good Sergeant here to break the law… in public, to help a personal grudge along?” she called down, adding her own bit of incitement for good measure.

Official Longluo, and some of the guards, glowered back at her, but perhaps wisely did not say anything.

Instead, Official Longluo turned back to Sergeant Han and said, rather superciliously: “Are you, a mere sergeant, gainsaying Deputy Ha?”

Sergeant Han, and even Old Fang and Sir Oudeng frowned at that, as did she. Deputy Ha was the problem here, truth be told. He had an influential position within the Ha clan and was a liaison between the Ha clan and the Town Guard, as well as a former Civil Authority official. He also had a strong foundation for that matter, as a peak Chosen Immortal.

Abruptly, there were shouts of “Sir Captain!”

From the back of the small crowd, another two squads of town guards arrived. One was just a standard squad, but led, she realised, by Han Shu’s uncle Han Murai, who was a respected Master Sergeant within the Guard. The second squad was properly armoured and armed – with halberds, carrying a pennant identifying them as a personal squad under the command of Captain Li, the official charged with overseeing the good order of the portions of the Western District north of the river.

Sergeant Han stepped forward smartly. “SIR CAPTAIN, SIR!”

She noted that the ‘local influence’ had all melted away as soon as the captain appeared. A few of their faces were still visible on the edges of the crowd, but they wouldn’t want to draw undue attention, even with the cover of the ‘Rain from the East’.

"I APOLOGISE TO YOU, SIR, FOR THE DISTURBANCE CAUSED!” the sergeant bowed formally from the waist to the captain, cupping his hands in salutation.

“SIR!” the various guards standing around all bowed as well in the same fashion, even the Ha clan ones with the other sergeant who had bashed on her door.

“As you were, Sergeant Han Feihan, Sergeant Ha Jian Fumei,” Captain Li replied, acknowledging their respect with a wave of the fan he carried, before staring around sourly at the assembled throng with the expression of a man just called from bed and told he might have a ‘little problem’.

“Now, what is this about…?”

His words made everyone around the square fall silent and most of the officials flinch. It even made the wards on her house and a few others on the south side of the square shimmer faintly, which was impressive. The formation on her house was, according to her father, strong enough to stop a weak Dao Weapon punching through it, so long as it retained its integrity – which was another reason why she had not been inclined to let them in earlier.

“We were tasked to come here to assist in the delivery of a summons from the Civil Authority of the Town,” Ha Jian Fumei, who had been bashing on her door, said smoothly, although she could see he looked pale in the lantern-light.

“—I respectfully state that this has led to some… overreach by the appointed official, Ha Fan Jingman,” Han Feihan added blandly.

“—Here is the offending article, Captain Li,” a woman in armour handed the scroll over to the captain.

Official Longluo, who was still looking a bit stunned, flinched, because nobody had even seen her take it from him. The Immortal realm official’s arm, still half outstretched as if to stop her, dropped to his side again.

“Mmmmm,” Captain Li skimmed it, then glanced up at her with piercing blue eyes. “Jun Arai, yes?”

“Yes, Captain Li,” she replied, bowing as politely as she could, standing where she was.

“Report to the district garrison later. I take it this is related to the mess over in Jade Willow Village and all the bodies recovered?”

-Interesting. She quelled her inner annoyance. Why do I get the impression that there is even more known about those bandits than is being let on? Were there already suspicions about people going missing?

“Regarding Deputy Ha—” the captain turned back to Official Fan and the Ha clan guards, his gaze sweeping over them before landing on Official Qingfao “—while it is admirable, Official Qingfao, that you are so willing to step forward for your cousin, he is a busy man. Very concerned with the matter of the Imperial Court Envoy’s Audit for this year past. He might even get an 'Official Acknowledgment' for his good service there.

“It would be deeply disappointing to Deputy Ha if you put him in an awkward position over such a small matter, would it not? You recall that Master Tai is an official who must be considered… politically neutral in the eyes of all parties?”

“…”

Both Official Fan and Official Qingfao were looking somewhat uneasy now, she was rather pleased to see. The implication that this could come spinning back at Deputy Ha, as one of the more visible personages of the Ha clan in the town, was the final nail in the coffin, she assumed.

The pair stared up at her, then at the captain and the other guards, then Official Fan shook his head and stalked off across the square, the Ha clan guards pushing through the crowd to clear a path. The other officials followed after, with Qingfao casting her a dark look for some reason.

Their departure was met with a smattering of wry applause and polite jeering that mostly covered the quiet, somehow disappointed sound of several half-bricks and at least one hefty terracotta roof tile being replaced into the gutters.

That did not go unnoticed, as Sergeant Han, now reinforced by more senior authority, quickly and efficiently started to clear the square, ushering people away.

Captain Li watched the officials depart with a shake of his head, then turned to say something to Sir Oudeng.

In any case, the early morning entertainment was properly over.

She was about to close the window when Sir Oudeng looked up at her.

“Might this old man come in for a short chat?”

The words arrived before her like a nebulous breath, sent with his Martial Intent, presumably so others would not hear.

“Of course,” she nodded.

It took only a few moments to go down and open up the smaller gate and invite the old man in. Old Fang came with him, as did Mrs Leng of all people, who she hadn’t realised was present.

“I see you are keeping well,” Mrs Leng said, looking around the courtyard curiously.

“I am, thank you,” she replied as she ushered them through into the main hall.

“Sorry, I was making breakfast when this kicked off,” she admitted.

“It is a most unsociable hour,” Mrs Leng agreed, giving her a supportive smile.

Nodding, she led them through the hall, through the larger meeting room beyond it and out into the garden, where there was a table and chairs set up in the shelter of the broad veranda, overlooking the garden and the view down to the river.

“Please sit here and I will get you all some tea,” she murmured.

The three nodded graciously and took seats around the round table. It took a few moments to go back to the kitchen and take off the food. She considered the tea she had brewed, then sighed and put another pot of water on. They did have tea good enough to serve to Immortals, but it was all stashed in weird places. In the end, she settled for singing rose petal tea, which had a gentle yang attribute, and tossed a handful of petals into the pot, letting it steep.

When she returned, tea finally brewed, the three were admiring the early morning garden flowers. She placed the pot on the table and poured three cups for them.

“Thank you for visiting our humble house,” she murmured, putting it on the table and saluting the three of them.

“Such a polite young girl you are,” Mrs Leng smiled at her. “You look more and more like your mother.”

“Erm… thank you,” she smiled at the compliment.

“Young Arai will think you are trying to marry her off,” Sir Oudeng chuckled.

“What nonsense,” Mrs Leng sniffed.

All three raised their cups and toasted with her. The ritual observed, she also sat down at the table.

“So what do I owe this early morning visit to?”

“The commotion outside,” Old Fang sniffed. “Is what was said true? That there were dozens of bodies in a tetrid nest and that you got sent on a wild chase after young scions with bad jadework? That sounds like someone trying to force an ‘accident’ to this old man.”

“Yes,” she murmured. “I did get that impression.”

That latter thought had certainly occurred to her as well, especially in light of what she had seen and heard with the bandits.

The dinner last night had not helped there either: Lianmei had been furious that someone had ‘leaked’ so much about what had transpired, effectively giving the perpetrators in West Flower Picking a full day to clean up and hide their tracks, thanks to Han Shu’s obliviously dutiful trip through the Seng District.

“Disgraceful,” Mrs Leng sniffed, putting her tea aside. “Mrs Sera did speak to me last night about this, but she had no idea you were involved.”

“Your father will not be happy,” Sir Oudeng agreed. “Not if what Old Fang suggests is borne out.”

“He will not,” she agreed. -Especially not when we were placed within the Pavilion to try to keep us away from that kind of machination at the hands of mother’s extended family.

After a moment’s further consideration, she added: “Please let me speak to him about all this when he returns.”

“Of course,” the old man nodded, as did Old Fang and Mrs Leng.

“Things are taking a worrying turn these last few months,” Old Fang sighed. “It sure is hard for young folks like you to grow up believing in an honest world these days.”

“We make our own virtue, leave judgement to heaven,” she replied a little sanctimoniously.

“Most girls your age would play music and flirt,” Mrs Leng chuckled, a little sadly she thought. “Yet your father, Old Ling and these two old fogies have you reading classics and planting gardens.”

“I seem to have flirted a lot with death of late,” she grumbled.

“…”

“She has you there,” Old Fang remarked drily.

Mrs Leng just sighed and sipped her tea.

“Did you find them?” Mrs Leng asked after a long moment.

“I… did,” she nodded at last, staring out into the rustling greenery of the garden.

Mrs Leng just sighed again while the two old men said nothing, also looking out into the greenery, sipping their tea in respectful silence.

“If you wish to talk about it…” Mrs Leng said gently.

She continued to watch the raindrops fall off leaves of the spirit vegetation in the herbaceous border. If she closed her eyes, she fancied she could almost be standing back in that clearing, in the gloom, with the ginseng and the frozen bodies.

“I… found the flower sellers, Ha Fenfang and Nen Hong first… along with Nen Hong’s brother, Shirong,” she said softly. “It was… just a clearing, and they almost looked like they were asleep… except for their faces. All I could see was Sana and I, lying there…”

“…”

None of the three said anything, so in the end she just narrated what she experienced the previous few days. Mrs Leng occasionally poured her tea, but mostly the three old experts, who in a strange way were the closest thing she had to grandparents, just sat and listened quietly.

By the time she had finished, feeling rather drained, emotionally, the pre-dawn gloom had faded away and been replaced by the flat, grey, haze of early morning.

“To see death in any form is no easy thing, even if the society we live in sometimes seems steeped in it,” Old Fang remarked at last.

“It is difficult,” Sir Oudeng agreed.

“You two are useless,” Mrs Leng grumbled, putting an arm around her and giving her a kind hug. “You did the best you could. You brought those poor souls home, and cared enough about them to see justice done. It was a nasty thing that those elders did yesterday to young Shu, though I don’t doubt in their petty little hearts that they would have sent you to do it if they could.”

“They—” Old Fang frowned.

“I should have done it,” she said softly. “I stood there, in that darkness. I saw it, breathed it, and lifted them out of the dirt, out of the grass…”

“It is not a young girl’s job, to stare widows and orphans in the face and tell them these things,” Mrs Leng sighed, sounding old suddenly. “I will see to it that the others are informed, and that those who were already spoken to understand.”

“I… in that case, you should see it,” she said softly.

“See it?” Sir Oudeng frowned.

Wordlessly, she took out her scrip and poked it, presenting a shimmering image of the clearing for them to see.

“Ah…” Old Fang nodded.

After a few moments, she flitted the image to the ruins, showing the rooms with the bodies as well.

“Tetrid stalkers…” Sir Oudeng frowned. “Controlled… like before?”

“Elder Lianmei said it had the hallmarks of some old villain from the era of the Blood Eclipse,” she said softly. “Yeng Illhan.”

“…”

Three heads turned to stare at her, with an intensity that made her wonder if she had misspoken in some way.

“I see…” Mrs Leng murmured at last. “Would you show us what you showed little Lianmei? Old Oudeng here had some experience during that time… and sometimes old eyes see a little less passionately.”

“As did I,” Old Fang frowned.

Seeing no harm in it, she pulled up what she had shown Lianmei, the other room and the other bits of the ruins.

“These ruins are also strange…” Sir Oudeng mused. “Tai… that rune.”

“It is unsurprising that some like that should be there,” Mrs Leng remarked, with a touch more amusement in her tone. “Tai has deep roots in these lands, for all that it is now a common name. If bandits were looting a ruin like this though…”

“There was also this…” she added, showing the inner area.

“…”

Mrs Leng stared at it for what seemed like a long time, then shook her head.

“It is remarkable what hides in the dark corners of those valleys.”

“It is,” Sir Oudeng nodded. “Tai… huh… perhaps it is indeed an auspicious year for the Ha.”

“Though not necessarily in the way they likely expect,” Mrs Leng added, with a rather malicious giggle.

“What do you make of the compasses on those bodies?” Old Fang frowned, staring at the last image.

“Hmmm…” Mrs Leng narrowed her eyes, staring at them as well.

“I am not sure,” Sir Oudeng mused, taking the scrip from the table and enlarging the image. “The talismans are certainly exquisite. Far superior to anything I would expect any bandit to have access to, though.”

“Even bandits connected to those old villains?” Old Fang murmured.

“…”

All three stared at the line of bodies then Mrs Leng sighed and shook her head.

“That is a worry for another day,” she said. “We did not come here to draw this poor girl back into her dark thoughts.”

“It’s… fine,” she murmured. “Talking about it has helped… I couldn’t with… well, I could, but it just isn’t the same?”

“No, it is not,” Mrs Leng said, rather firmly. “Little Lianmei means well, but she has her own shadows to carry relating to those dark days, as does Talshin.”

“You should be wary for the next while,” Old Fang added, looking at her with a more serious expression. “This matter, I am sure the Military Bureau and the Duke’s Authority will take an interest in—”

“—And the politicking between the Astral Authority bureaus and the Court bureaucracy is likely to get worse,” Sir Oudeng added. “Last time it went on for years, culminating in that mess with the Deng District, which they should never have formed.”

Mrs Leng sighed. “Aye, it’s been going on so long that I nearly don’t notice it anymore.”

“Just what happens when they forget what good grace looks like,” Sir Oudeng grunted before taking a deep sip of his tea.

“By the way, who is that ‘Qingfao’?” she asked after a short pause, because that had been bothering her for a while.

“Ah… Ha Qingfao,” Old Fang grunted.

“A shameful fellow all around,” Sir Oudeng scowled.

“Why did it seem like he had some problem with my father?” she added, frowning.

“—A very petty one,” Sir Oudeng growled, clarifying his words. “He made several approaches regarding your mother, before she married Jun Han, and he took Ruliu’s rejection rather personally. He is not an official from West Flower Picking Town, but rather associated with the Civil Bureau at a provincial level.”

“So… he just came to make trouble?” she muttered, staring at her tea with a gloomy frown.

“Some scorned men are as petty as any spiteful shrew,” Mrs Leng murmured.

“If he causes further problems, you let us or your father know,” Sir Oudeng added.

“Quite,” Mrs Leng murmured, while Old Fang nodded in agreement.

“Well, let us talk of something less obnoxious,” Old Fang murmured, helping himself to more tea. “How is your cultivation progressing?”

“I am… probably going to hit the absolute peak of Physical Refinement in the next few months,” she replied after a moment’s consideration. “My… qi already cycles under its own inertia and my bones and organs are close to saturated with vital qi.”

“Impressive,” Old Fang mused, stroking his beard and giving her a deep look. “Have you spoken to Old Ling about Mantra Seeds? Your mantra…”

“—is the thing of our mother,” she said simply, politely shutting down that line of conversation for now. “We will find a solution in what she left us.”

“I understand your determination,” Old Fang frowned, staring at her. “But that mantra is… well…”

“Mother made the breakthrough without her family's teaching,” she pointed out.

“Your mother was a remarkable young woman,” Sir Oudeng agreed.

“Now you’re sounding like Arai here and Sana aren’t,” Mrs Leng murmured.

Sir Oudeng waved a hand. “Ahaha… not at all. Not at all. When the time comes, I will personally invite an old friend to help with this matter. I owe your mother this much.”

“Thank you,” she saluted the old man.

His offer, and this was not the first time he had proffered it, was genuine. Her mother had painted flowers into talisman designs for him several times and the old man had held her talent in great esteem. His cultivation art required talismans of supreme artistry and, since her death, he had frequently bemoaned the lacking aspects of most other talisman painters in the town.

“I still wonder why your father doesn’t let you learn a spiritual law,” the old man sighed. “The two complement each other remarkably.”

“He has his reasons,” she shrugged.

In fact, it wasn’t her father, but their mother that had been adamant. They were not to so much as touch a spiritual law before their Mantra Seeds formed. If not for her mother's premature death, she was certain they would have both formed them before their thirteenth birthdays.

“The current situation works well enough for what I have to do in the Pavilion,” she supplied. “The fact that I don’t rely at all on a 'foundation' built with spiritual cultivation helps enormously when going higher up.”

Old Fang nodded sagely. “That it does, but you shouldn’t get overconfident. The heights and depths of that place are not simple.”

She nodded politely, accepting his advice, which made the old man smile happily. He was nearly as eccentric as Old Ling, although much more sociable.

“It is a shame, really. So many are quick to dismiss physical cultivation as just a failed thing,” Sir Oudeng sighed and stared out at the veranda.

“It is a failed thing,” Old Fang muttered, looking sideways at the other old man.

Sir Oudeng eyed him darkly as he went on, "And I say this as someone who has advanced their practice in it to Soul Meridians. Advancing beyond the peak of Nascent Soul in it is as challenging as pursuing spiritual or martial cultivation in a Mortal World. Perhaps even more so.”

She nodded in agreement there: physical cultivation was indeed much derided. Making a Golden Core as a spiritual cultivator was not a particularly challenging achievement in a Great World; even someone with a truly terrible spirit root could at least manage that. Even getting to Immortal was not that hard, so long as you had time and resources and didn’t care about dropping out of the ‘junior’ ranks.

Making a Mantra Seed, however – the equivalent within physical cultivation of a Golden Core – was, as Old Fang had just noted, as challenging as breaking through to Golden Core was in a Mortal World by all accounts. While the generalities of the realms beyond were known openly, advancement through them was shrouded in secrecy.

Her mother had been at Unity Physique – the equivalent of Dao Seeking – however, that had been known only to a very select few. In everyday life she had presented herself as a ‘Soul Meridian’ cultivator and even that, she had said, was simply to explain her soul sense in an expedient way.

Advancement was not unheard of, but she knew of next to no one who openly acknowledged their progress beyond the peak of Soul Meridians in West Flower Picking Town and of those rumoured only two were, to her, remotely credible. Han Shu’s grandfather, Han Cangfei, also rumoured to be at Unity Physique, was one. Old Ling in the Hunter Pavilion was the other, who some claimed knew the secrets to successfully becoming an Immortal with the method.

“And yet... at that threshold, you can do almost everything a weak Immortal can,” Mrs Leng observed and took another long sip of her tea.

“Progress beyond that is certainly linked to the secrets of the land in those mountains. That odd, immense and voracious qi that lurks beneath it, for example,” Old Fang mused. “It is an ill omen, like the Kun that heralds the storms.”

“Yes,” she murmured, recalling that devouring darkness from the few times she had been into the true… under-layer of Yin Eclipse. “I know of it…”

“Anyway… we have overstayed,” Mrs Leng said abruptly.

Clapping her hands brightly, the matronly woman smiled at her and added, “Later today, come by. I will have some of the special soup for you. A new recipe, it will help with your cultivation.”

“Yes… we have overstayed,” Old Fang sighed, before adding: "Give my regards to your father and sister.”

“Yes, yes,” Sir Oudeng nodded as well, standing. “Before we go… might you show us the garden?”

“Certainly,” she agreed, standing up as well.

...

After they had left, she ended up just sitting at the table on the veranda, enjoying her now rather lukewarm soup and what remained of the tea, watching the garden in the light rain.

The garden had been started by her mother, as a hobby mostly. A private space, away from the bustle of the town, where she could play music and paint. Both of them tended it now; however, if painting and such was something of a hobby to her, then this garden was Sana’s. It was Sana who put the most into it, cared for it, arranged it, nurtured it and guided it as best she could. She had, over the years, with feng shui and herb lore, turned it into a harmonious space to promote their physical cultivation... as well as just being a pleasant environment to relax in, and a source of edible herbs.

*Thock – Thock – Thock*

The sound of someone banging on the door echoed subtly through the estate, stirring her from her mild reverie. Sighing, she stood up and went back through the house and glanced out at the square from the second floor balcony… to find Han Shu standing there under an umbrella.

“Heya!” she called down, attracting his attention.

“Sorry, I ended up being a bit early,” he replied, by way of apology.

“Don’t be. I feel like I’ve had a full day’s worth of socializing already,” she remarked with more joviality than she felt. “I’ll be right down.”

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

~ HAN SHU – JUN FAMILY ESTATE ~

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

Han Shu didn’t have to wait long for Jun Arai to come and open the door to the Jun family estate and let him into the walled courtyard at the front.

“Again, sorry for coming so early,” he murmured, repeating the apology, noting that she was dressed casually for receiving visitors and appeared somewhat jaded. “If you want we can sort this out some other time?”

“Eh… no, it’s fine,” she replied with a sigh. “You are here, and as I said, it’s already been an eventful morning.”

“Oh?” he asked, looking around the courtyard.

He’d been here before, but it still surprised him how large the Jun family estate was, for all that it was fairly typical of the Western District. The main courtyard was about thirty metres across, bordered on all three sides by the main estate building, which was some three stories tall. In the rain, and without any lights, it gave off an oddly sombre vibe, he felt, but nothing appeared particularly out of place, unless he counted the formation rune on the front door of the gate being active when he came in.

“The Ha clan came to make good on sending you around yesterday,” Arai remarked sourly. “Anyway, do you want some food?”

“Sure,” he nodded. “My estate is serving nothing but fancy New Year’s celebratory food.”

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“The pastries are nice,” she noted, somewhat absently, he couldn’t help but notice, before waving for him to follow her.

“I suppose they are,” he conceded, falling in alongside her as they made their way across the courtyard, towards the main door of the estate. “So, what happened earlier?”

“Some officials, Ha Fan Jingman and Ha Qingfao, came and tried to make a scene on behalf of someone. Captain Li showed up and sent them packing though,” she said, leading him up the steps and into the estate’s entrance hall.

-What kind of scene do you have to cause for that to happen? he wondered, pausing in the doorway to put his umbrella away.

“Ha Fan Jingman?” One of the names she had used stuck out to him.

“You know him?” she replied, pausing in the middle of the hall to look at him.

“Of him,” he shrugged, rather apologetically, because while he knew of the official to name, he didn’t know that much about him personally, or his role. “I couldn’t tell you what he is supposed to do though. ‘Qingfao’ I have no idea regarding; that name is not familiar at all.”

“He is a cousin of Deputy Ha, works for the Provincial Civil Authority. He apparently has some old grudge with my father,” Arai replied, a bit sourly he thought, before adding: “Sorry there are no lights, I’ve not gotten around to putting spirit stones in those formations since I got home after the meal yesterday.”

“It’s fine,” he replied, not really minding, and appreciating that she probably didn’t want to waste the stones when her eyesight, and his, was largely untroubled by the lack of them.

They walked on in silence after that, into the second hall that ran through the middle of the main building, which in a larger household would be the formal reception hall, then through a further smaller room with bookshelves, a few small tables and some couches and out onto the veranda at the rear of the main estate building, which fronted onto the estate’s rather substantial garden.

“Soup is okay?” Arai asked him as she led him over to the table and chairs set out under the veranda, where there was already a pot of tea, a small pile of cups and a bowl of mangosteen spirit fruit.

“Sure,” he agreed, sitting where she indicated.

“In that case, I’ll be back in a moment,” Arai murmured, heading off down the veranda and into another door, which he recalled led to the kitchens for the estate.

Pouring himself some tea, which to his surprise was very good, suggesting she must have had some other visitors earlier, and likely not the Ha officials, he took a seat, admiring the garden while Arai got food.

It was undeniably a very impressive spirit garden, even by the standards of some he had seen. Most of those in West Flower Picking Town were just ornamental, or designed to work for specific spiritual laws; however, the Jun family one was closer to a facsimile of one of the valleys in Yin Eclipse.

All the herbs and spirit vegetation complemented each other, sometimes in surprising and subtle ways. It also held several quite rare trees – like the fruiting mangosteen, a fire-stone cherry, which was just coming into bloom, and several little vales and thickets of spirit herbs usually associated with the High Valleys. There was even a lash rose growing over some rocks by a waterfall, which was certainly a new addition.

“Here.”

Arai’s return, with a large bowl of soup and a plate of fried bread, refocused his attention away from the garden.

“The lash rose is new?” he noted.

“Yeah, we had to get one for a request,” Arai said, sitting down and serving out two smaller bowls from the large one, pushing one over to him.

“Thanks,” he murmured, lifting it up and taking a deep sip—

“…”

“S-s-spicy,” he gasped, managing to put it down again without spitting any out. He was starkly reminded in that moment that it was usually Jun Sana who did most of the ‘cooking’ between the two sisters.

It was not to say that she was a bad cook either, just that it was absolutely food for someone who had a physical cultivator’s constitution, and she had not made much effort to disguise that.

“Ah, yeah,” Arai stared at him for a moment, then shook her head wryly as he continued to try and mitigate the sense that his mouth was on fire. “Sorry, there were a bunch of yin-fire peppers in the cupboard, and the mushrooms might have been dusty-yang mushrooms.”

“Oh…” he managed to say, quickly pouring himself some of the tea, which was slightly yang attributed, to wash away the spicy taste from the yin peppers.

“I forgot you are not a fan of really spicy things,” she sighed, rather apologetically. “Want me to get some spirit-rice milk?”

“No… it’s fine,” he coughed lightly, “I was just surprised.”

In truth, he was not that big a fan of ‘spicy’ things. His tolerance was fairly good, because the local cuisine tended towards things with a lot of ‘ooomph’ anyway; however, Arai’s soup was comparable with the wine he had gotten from Sengji the previous day.

“The bread is fine,” she remarked, giving him an amused look that nevertheless did make him feel a bit awkward.

Nodding apologetically, he took a piece from the plate and scarfed it down, relieved that it was indeed not at all spicy and that it melted most of the lingering fire from the yin peppers.

“So, what plants are you looking for?” Arai asked him, as she poured them both some more tea.

“Ah… I have a list,” he frowned, pulling out what Mei Chang had given him the previous day. “The ones I got are crossed off.”

“Hmmmmm…”

Arai took the list and considered it pensively as she sipped her own tea.

“The singing rose we have, but I can only give you a cutting,” Arai mused. “Ginseng are hard to grow here, but we do have tubers of a few Sana was trying to re-grow. As to the others… You want a lash rose; that’s oddly serendipitous, though I suspect the one by the pool is too high a realm—”

“What realm is it?” he asked.

“The qi purity is Immortal, though the plant is just Nascent Soul, and it doesn’t have spiritual wisdom. It’s being balanced by the two water lotuses in the pond,” Arai explained, between sips of her own soup. “Sana thought about selling it, but ended up being more interested in how she could fit it into the garden in a harmonious way.”

“I know the list says a cutting, but probably just some flowers or buds would do,” he mused. “I suspect it’s for one of my cousins, to support refining a Golden Core.”

“Hmm… okay,” Arai nodded, continuing to look down the list.

“The lotus seeds I think we actually have, in a jar somewhere in the storehouse. The five-elements foxglove is over by the far herbaceous border, next to the training hall, but it is not in flower thanks to the rain… The other items on the list are mostly nurturing ginseng, but if you like I can see if we have anything that is similar?”

“How much does that come to?” he asked.

“…”

Arai gave him a long look, then considered the list again.

“Seven Spirit Jade,” she said at last.

-That’s… actually less than I thought, given the current circumstances, he mused, wondering if she was giving him a discount and whether it would come across as rude to ask.

“That is the market price in case you are wondering,” Arai added with a half-smile that was closer to her usual manner, correctly reading his lack of a reply. “And some of those ginseng are not easy to find.”

Shaking his own head, he dipped a bit of the bread in the soup and ate it, before asking: “You said there are alternatives to some of them?”

“Well… maybe,” she conceded. “The garden is Sana’s thing…”

“I understand,” he nodded. “Mostly, these were selected for—

“—New Year’s gifts,” Arai finished for him. “They are exotic or unusual things, even for here. Your parents are trying to impress relatives?”

“They are,” he agreed.

“You may get some of the others from Kun Talshin’s herb brokerage,” she added, pushing the jade back over to him. “I am sure—”

“I went there already,” he remarked. “Most of the suppliers and brokers in the region seem to have had all their herbs taken to Blue Water City for some gala event. Most of what I got was from back alley herb merchants in the Seng District.”

“That likely made for an ————…”

She trailed off as a peal of thunder shook the sky, followed by six flashes of blue-green lightning in rapid succession.

“Another one…” Arai sighed.

“They have been fairly non-stop,” he agreed, watching the last flickers of the lightning fade away. “There was even an Immortal tribulation yesterday afternoon.”

“I suppose it is the day for it,” she conceded, staring at the rainy sky as it settled back to ‘normal’. “What will you do with the rest of the day?”

The question, somewhat out of nowhere, surprised him somewhat.

“I… dunno,” he conceded, thinking through what few plans he had. “I was going to take these herbs back to the Han estate, then I need to go see Elder Ling about my own clearance mission fiasco, down in Green Veil Village.”

“Ah, the shadow-balsam,” Arai nodded. “We didn’t have a chance to talk about it properly last night, but I heard about that from Ha Erlang Leng.”

“I am sure,” he sighed, vaguely remembering her mentioning that and wondering what the Hunter from the Ha clan had said.

-Probably nothing complementary, he reflected.

“After that…” he trailed off for a moment, staring at the distant towers of the Green Fang pagoda. “Probably go back to the Han estate and keep a low profile. I have done my quota of missions, but I really don’t feel like being landed more.”

“Same,” Arai nodded, sipping her tea. “And I can’t shake the feeling that something even more political than usual has been going on with the missions we have gotten.”

“It does seem that way,” he agreed, reflecting on the whole mess with the shadow-balsam and the efforts various local officials had made to get their absolute spirit-stones’ worth out of the team of Hunters sent purely to sort out a formation and train some people in its use. “It was hard to put your finger on… but it definitely felt like we were being dragged through the muck, unusually so.”

“…”

Arai stared into the distance for a long moment, then sighed deeply.

“Perhaps it’s related to whatever is going on in Blue Water City?”

“This… princess visiting?” he asked. “I can’t say I know much about that. I spent the last few days trying to recover from being bitten by a burning eye wandering spider.”

“Nasty,” Arai winced sympathetically. “Are you still seeing spiders everywhere?”

“…”

“That seems to have cleared up today, thank the heavenly maiden,” he sighed, rather relieved on that point.

His arm still hurt, and the phantom pain was still there, but the spiders had been really unpleasant.

“So what about you?” he asked after a short pause to drink more of his own tea.

“What about?” Arai blinked.

“What will you do today?” he clarified.

“Hmmm… go to the Queen Mother’s Shrine… go shopping, come back here,” Arai mused. “Actually, you should probably come with me to the Queen Mother’s Shrine.”

“I… should?” he blinked, not following where she was going with that.

“Today is the day when the influence of the Cardinal Fates is at its most balanced,” Arai said blandly. “Make an offering to the Queen Mother of the West on behalf of those unfortunates who were found in the tetrid nest near Jade Willow. This is an appropriate act, especially given a goodly number of them were orphans or those without other family.”

“…”

He actually put down his cup of tea, which he had been about to sip, and stared at her for a moment, because as far as suggestions went, it was a good one. The main allegation, or complaint, regarding yesterday was that he had ended up just doing grunt work for the Ha clan, sent on the job because he was a ‘local boy’, from south of the river.

“Your expression tells me you are overthinking,” Arai said drily, shaking him out of his musings.

“I am overthinking?” he muttered, wondering how she had arrived at that conclusion.

“Yes, it didn’t occur to you, because you are you. But now it has, don’t get some stupid idea about overdoing it.”

“I… am me?” he frowned.

“Yes, you are you,” Arai reiterated, giving him a look of… not quite amused despair, but ever-so-slight judgement. “Han Shu, you’re not a noble, but your clan is influential and you are one of its male heirs. They let you come home from a clearance mission because a spider bit you. Do I have to draw you a picture?”

“…”

He was about to complain that that was not quite the case… except, from her perspective, he realised, it probably was.

Arai was a young, attractive, talented woman; however, while her father was surprisingly influential he had come to realise, her background was very common, and that weighed against her in ways it did not for many of her peers, like Juni, or Lin Ling. She had nothing like the backing even he could fall back on, not that he did, unlike his brothers, who were not shy about leveraging the Han’s influence with the town guards when it suited them.

She could probably get Juni to intercede, as seemed to have happened in Jade Willow Village; however, that would align her clearly in the eyes of others with the Kun clan, and Juni’s side of the Kun clan as well, with all the baggage they carried.

If he had been in her position, he would probably have gone to the Military Bureau and reported the bandits, and his clan would have put enough pressure on the Bureau to ensure that the clearance requests did not totally foul up his permanent record. In her case, she had had to play the game and come out ahead. She had gone to the Kun clan, but that had also forced her to pick a side he would not have had to. Now, her best route to avoid issues was to just be the ‘proper’ young woman in the eyes of others: filial to her ancestors, sympathetic to those she had found, not seeking any gain or agenda out of the mess and not dwelling too deeply on what she had experienced, outwardly anyway.

“I see what you mean,” he sighed, not sure if he was admiring her outlook or feeling sorry for her, all of a sudden, because that solution was wise beyond her years, certainly among her peers. “What do you suggest?”

“Eh… just come with me, act suitably respectful, say a prayer. That’s enough,” Arai shrugged, pouring herself more tea. “Ha Yun, or someone like him, would take a fancy gift or make a big song and dance of it, and it would look twice as fake as it already was hollow. This is just like using ‘Empty Eye Steps’.”

“…”

He had to stare at her again, because that… was a slightly off-the-wall, if entirely apt, way of viewing matters.

“Anyway, that’s a matter for after we consider these herbs you want. How do you plan to get them back to the Han estate?”

“What do you suggest?” he asked for the second time in as many minutes.

“Well, I have a hand cart, we can just wheel them over, then call in at the shrine on the way back,” Arai replied. “After that, you can help me do my shopping. Mrs Leng offered to make me soup later, so…”

-Is she trying to make up for her sour mood yesterday? he suddenly wondered, before catching himself and reflecting a bit wryly that he was, perhaps, overthinking things again.

“It’s that, or you get someone from the Han estate to come collect them?”

“Probably easiest if we take them,” he suggested after a moment’s thought. “That way there are less questions asked about how I got some of these items.”

“You make it sound like my garden is full of illicit herbs,” Arai pouted, before shaking her head in agreement. “That is probably best though; some of these herbs are quite rare.”

“I have transport boxes for some of them at least,” he added.

“Eh… probably not necessary unless you really want to,” Arai sighed, skimming down the list. “Of the herbs you want, only the two roses, the foxglove and the ginseng tubers are whole plants, and only the foxglove might need one. If you go grab the petals and such from the lash rose, I’ll go sort out the singing rose and the foxglove?”

“Okay,” he agreed, finishing his tea with a final sip and putting the cup down.

…

In the end, it took him about twenty minutes to wrangle a few suitable flowers off the lash rose, with the help of a pair of luss cloth gloves and some patience. Arai had not been exaggerating when she said it was probably too high a realm to be immediately useful, but in truth, that didn’t really concern him, because there probably wasn’t another specimen of that quality in the whole of West Flower Picking Town currently, and the qi it gave off was exceptionally pure.

Returning back to the veranda, he found Arai had brought half a dozen pots over in that time, half of them covered with luss cloth and bearing seals.

“Those three are the ginseng tubers you want,” she explained, tapping one of the three pots with her foot. “All of them are quasi-Soul Foundation tubers that were close to gaining spiritual awakening when they were harvested.”

“So why didn’t you sell them?” he asked, curious.

“Because the market price was garbage and they all came from the High Valleys,” she explained with a shrug. “This way we can at least profit from the expense of capturing them.”

“And the lotus seeds?” he asked, looking around at the other pots.

“This one,” Arai poked a smaller pot made of blue-green stone and sealed with a spirit wood lid with her foot. “There are a dozen or so in there; they will germinate within a few days in a bowl with some spirit stones. I assume they are for someone’s spirit pond?”

“They are… probably,” he agreed.

“In that case, I’ll leave you to package up the flowers you picked, and go see about getting you the foxglove.”

He nodded, watching her head back into the garden, then checked the other two pots, which held a cutting for a singing rose, which was actually about to flower, and a ginseng with greyish-blue leaves that had several small flower buds on it. Both were of exceptional quality, which was more than he could have hoped for, and certainly more than his distant relatives deserved really.

Sighing, he put the flowers and collection of buds from the lash rose on the table, and withdrew several small jade containers from his own talisman.

Opening one, he put a spirit stone into a groove in the underside of the lid, then placed a rose flower within, then closed it, before poking the points that represented a sealing formation on the outside. Within a few moments, the sense of muggy, itchy oppression in the air receded a little, telling him the flower was safely contained.

He repeated that process for each of the four flowers he had plucked, then put the rose-hips and collection of fresh leaves into their own boxes as well.

While he was checking the buds, Arai returned carrying a forty-litre pot containing a half-metre-tall plant with a basal rosette of large, oval-shaped greyish-blue leaves with toothy edges, surrounding a pagoda-like spire of purplish-green bell-like flowers. Just by breathing deeply, he could feel the faint sense of calming dissociation that the plant manifested through the scent of the flowers.

“This variety is rather soporific. I don’t recommend having it in an enclosed space without wards,” Arai cautioned him, plonking the pot down on a handy bench as he closed the box of rose-hips. “For what it matters, this is probably the most expensive item on your list.”

“I can believe it,” he murmured, carefully checking some of the leaves, which had a furry texture that left very odd sensations against his fingertips. “Though I do have to wonder what my mother wants with some of these…”

Five-elements foxglove was one of a number of plants prized by those who arranged ornamental gardens, because their soporific and calming effects extended to other plants. Some could even act as natural feng shui anchors, stabilizing their surroundings, helping other spirit herbs and vegetation to become more tolerant and adapt.

“Maybe one of your aunts has issues with a spirit garden?” Arai shrugged.

“Could be,” he mused.

“They are also good for calming conflicting qi,” Arai added after a moment’s thought. “Useless to us, but good for spiritual and body cultivators who want to temper themselves.”

“That could be it,” he conceded, “several of my cousins are around core-formation.”

“—So long as they don’t eat it,” Arai remarked drily. “I do not want to be held responsible for some Han clan scion offing themselves through a deviation in one of their five core meridians to their heart or kidneys.”

“…”

“Hopefully not,” he agreed, even if he didn’t quite mean it. The idea of someone like Chen Bei suffering poisoning from a spirit herb was oddly appealing after the day he had had yesterday.

Arai gave him a long look, then rolled her eyes. “I’ll go see what Sana has stashed away that might fit your other missing herbs. I suppose you are after prestige as much as actual utility?”

“They are New Year’s gifts,” he nodded. “However, I am not made of money.”

In truth, he was well under budget for what he had anticipated, largely thanks to yesterday’s excursion through the Seng District. The pile of herbs before him might have cost ten to fifteen Spirit Jade in the open market, despite Arai telling him she was selling them at spec. Many of them had to come from deeper within Yin Eclipse, or were hard to nurture, and the former especially added enormously to the cost.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Arai remarked drily. “Do you want to come see my sister’s collection of arboreal insanity?”

Giving the pile of herbs a further glance, he nodded, and followed after her as she led him back around the edge of the garden, past several flowerbeds and another fruit tree and into the wing of the estate at the far side, which had several talismans set up in a formation around the doorway. Inside, the hall, which in another lifetime had probably been intended as a martial training hall, had been turned into an indoor arboretum.

“This… is impressive,” he murmured, admiring it.

The centre was dominated by a large pool, quarried out of the floor in fact, and now surrounded on three sides by artfully-placed rocks. A small waterfall fed it, and half the hall was a really quite faithful recreation of a small gorge from ‘somewhere’ in western Yin Eclipse.

The upper level was wreathed in vines and draped with greenery, disguising much of the second floor walkway, which threaded behind slabs of rock placed to reflect the rising cliffs of the valley ridges.

“It is, father helped build it, along with Grandmaster Oudeng,” Arai mused, staring around. “It was a present for mother. Most of this is spirit vegetation, but that is kind of the point.”

This was not the first time he had been into it, actually, though it had been quite a few months at least, and it had been with Sana, rather than her sister. Still, he didn’t bother to comment on that, because Arai’s pride in it was palpable.

“Somehow, it manages to make outside seem… cool and refreshing,” he remarked instead, tugging at his already slightly damp robe.

“That will be the cloud ferns,” Arai clarified, pointing up at the upper level, where he could just make out the forms of several large, broad-leafed ferns growing out around an upper pool that fed the waterfall.

“How much did this cost in the way of spirit stones?” he asked.

“Hah… less than you would think,” Arai grinned. “That’s why most of it is spirit vegetation, can’t you feel the qi purity in the room?”

That… was true, he had to concede. The qi purity in the room held a verdant freshness that you did not usually get with an arboretum supported purely by spirit stones.

“Well, there are only about two dozen spirit herbs in here,” Arai added, waving for him to follow her. “Two have spiritual wisdom as well, so don’t paddle in the pond unless you want to go for a proper swim.”

“Noted,” he murmured, looking at the gently swirling surface covered in lily pads and the occasional patch of pond weed.

“In terms of things you might want… I can give you a piece of the rainbow fern?” Arai mused, pointing to a plant halfway up the waterfall that was contributing to the delightful shimmering haze in the mist above them. “There is also a bunch of teardrop orchids up on the kobbin tree to your left.”

He turned to look where she was pointing, to where a small kobbin tree was growing out of a large vertical slab, a reminder that the garden had been slowly maturing for decades at least, given how slow-growing those trees were once they passed the sapling stage. In a cleft between its branches, several broad-leafed bunches of orchids, not currently in flower, were nestled.

“Those would certainly be suitable,” he agreed. “If you were willing to spare one.”

Teardrop orchids got their name for their tendency to condense a tiny teardrop of liquid qi within their flower petals, which then nurtured the plant and drew pollinators to it. A skilled grower could actually harvest that qi, and it was much sought-after to help purify spirit roots and to help with core-formation.

They were also really rare, growing only in a few valleys on the eastern slopes of the East Fury Peaks.

“Taking a few will do it no harm,” Arai mused. “In fact, it will probably promote them to flower again and maybe self-seed elsewhere. I can also guarantee you that no one else has them. Even Kun Talshin’s supply came from us. If anyone asks, you should probably say you got it from their shop using your ‘special contacts’ as a high rank Herb Hunter or something.”

“May I take a closer look?” he asked.

“Sure,” she nodded. “Go up that way.”

He followed where she was pointing and saw a well-disguised little track up between the rocks that threaded under and around trees and shrubs. Nodding in thanks, he carefully picked his way up—

“Oh, watch out for the moss. Some of it may have algru!” Arai called after him.

“You… have algru here…?” he asked dully, stopping mid-step.

“Of course,” Arai remarked with far more amusement than his comment warranted. “It’s part of the ecosystem, just don’t stand on it.”

Shaking his head, he looked around and saw quickly where she meant. Several of the rocks by a second small waterfall, just beyond the tree with its orchids, had large patches of moss that had pale, wispy, flower-like fronds. They were rather obvious, when you actually looked, but he had to admit that had she not said anything, he might have trodden on one, just because it was so… unexpected that they be actual algru, not some odd moss.

“Thanks for the warning,” he called back, making his way onward and carefully hopping across from a rock onto the lower tree branch beside the orchids.

Up close, they were… rather mundane, by the standards of orchids, which was kind of the point really. Most of the valuable ones, like teardrop orchids, didn’t stand out. Tree orchids were among some of the most sought-after herbs on the market.

“Pick one of the smaller ones on the left side and bring it down!” Arai called up.

“…”

He stared at her for a moment, then nodded and pulled out a pair of luss cloth gloves from his talisman and put them on. The second reason for the orchids’ name was their defence mechanism. Disturbing them incautiously would make them expel all their qi in a toxic, deviation-inducing cloud that would mark you like a night lantern for days afterwards – leading you to weep tears of frustration and pain.

Carefully, he dug his fingers into the loamy soil they were rooted in and teased out the roots of one of the smaller plants she had indicated, holding his breath and using his mantra to still his qi as he lifted it up. To his relief, it didn’t explode in his face and he slipped down out of the tree and back to the main path.

“Not bad,” Arai remarked with a grin.

“Did you want to see it explode in my face?” he grumbled.

“Nah,” Arai said drily, putting on her best innocent smile. “Would I do that?”

“…”

“How much is that going to cost my father?” he asked instead.

“It’s only a Qi Refinement plant,” Arai mused, looking at it critically, “So a Spirit Jade.”

“Only a Qi Refinement herb…”

“Even the adult above it is only at Golden Core,” Arai murmured, pointing to a second cluster further up the tree. “You want one that is remotely manageable after all.”

“Fair,” he concluded, placing it in the pot she proffered.

“You pot that up,” she added. “I’ll go get you your fern.”

“Okay,” he agreed, quite happy for her to do that.

Arai took about ten minutes in the end to make her way through the garden, claim the rainbow fern and come back again. By the time she had returned, he had potted up the orchid and was admiring the pond, which held a small ecosystem of water lily and lotus varieties tended by several fish and terrapin.

“What are the fish?” he asked, curious.

“Meng carp,” Arai replied, kneeling down and gently trailing her fingers in the water, attracting one of them—

He blinked as she moved like a snake and fished it out. It spat a few bubbles at her, which she avoided easily and then held the forearm-length, bronze-scaled fish out for him to admire.

“Even though they came from Old Fang’s estate, they cost a pretty spirit stone,” she remarked as he ran his hand down the scales, feeling the tingle of yang qi from them. “But they are invaluable when it comes to dealing with the little issues that crop up with a pond like this. They almost entirely eliminate the need for purification formations on the water when it cycles. In theory, the terrapin should now mean we don’t need them at all.”

“Impressive,” he murmured, looking around again, just admiring the gentle stillness.

The whole place carried a faint hint of the verdant vitality and natural wonder of the valleys within the depths of the Yin Eclipse mountain range, but at the same time… it had none of their shadow, or the threat…

“Is that a statue?” he blinked, noticing for the first time the seated female figure carved of greenish-grey rock, wearing a flowing robe, on the far side of the pond, near the waterfall.

“Oh, that,” Arai glanced over at the seated figure and nodded. “Mother put it there, I think. I recall she explained once that it helped the ambience, and she is not wrong, it has some strange aspect to it that helps make the feng shui in this place settle slightly. I always thought she looked rather like the ‘Star of Guidance’ from the Queen Mother’s shrine.”

Now that she said that, he could see the similarity. It was something in the gentle benevolence of the expression that shone through the faint weathering that was slowly overcoming the statue.

“It came from a ruin in Yin Eclipse?” he asked, curious, because it evoked that kind of ‘style’, like the carvings in some of the way stations – particularly the flowing, dress-like robes and the way the hair was curled up around the head in ringlets and bunched at the back.

“No, actually,” Arai replied. “My father said it came from near the town and he ended up with it because nobody else was interested in it at the time and he had some small skill with feng shui. It was in the hall he used to train in for a long time, before mother thought it would work better here.

“It also has my sister’s name carved on the forehead,” Arai added, drawing his attention to the barely visible composite moon rune on the woman’s brow that read… ‘Sa-Na’.

“Sana?” he murmured, reading it phonetically.

“Yep,” Arai nodded. “It means something like ‘New Gift’, which seems rather appropriate for a place like this. Mrs Leng once told me it can also mean ‘new grain’, and that similar inscriptions show up on some of the pots from the river that are A-Ke-An-As-Sa-Na, which would be: guiding ‘Queen’ or maybe ‘Female Leader’ who brings new gifts.”

“It also looks a bit like those four statues in the Green Fang Pagoda,” he mused, seeing some similarities in the way the gown was carved to the four statues that sat outside the front of the small sect in the Blue River District.

“Yeah,” Arai agreed, giving it a further look. “There are a few in that style squirrelled away around town. Anyway, shall we take these back and head over to the Han estate?” she added, giving him a poke in the side to move him out of the way so she could get back to the path.

“Oh... yes, sorry”, he nodded, giving the statue of the smiling woman a final glance before moving out of the way.

Returning to the veranda with the two plants, they spent a little while longer packing them up, then Arai left him to move them to the front courtyard while she went and got changed. He had just finished doing that when she returned, looking a lot less casual, in a plain, knee-length robe and trousers, with sturdy boots and a broad hat, her dark-brown hair now plaited back properly.

Without any preamble, she withdrew a small, rather battered hand cart from her own talisman and they loaded the various pots onto it.

“What do we do about the foxglove?” he asked, looking at it, because it did stand out.

“Hmmm…” Arai stared at it for a long moment, then shook her head and walked back into the house without comment.

She returned a few minutes later with a large woven basket in one hand and a roll of heavy cloth in the other. Passing him the cloth, which turned out to be treated canvas layered with luss cloth on the underside, she put the basket over the top of the foxglove, hiding it completely.

“That should do it,” she said critically.

“Yeah,” he nodded, unrolling the covering and putting it over the hand cart.

It took only a few moments to fix it securely, then they exited the estate, Arai pausing to re-activate the wards fully on the way out.

The town was fairly busy, but thanks to the early hour, most of the activity was focused along the river boulevards and the main concourse up to the markets, making the trip across the river to the Han estate pleasingly straightforward. Beyond a short wait for some larger carts to cross the Mother’s Bridge, they made it to the Han estate in the middle of the Blue River District without any issue.

The whole trip only took about thirty minutes, from Arai’s front door to the square at the centre of the Han enclave, where he had a clan guard go off find Mei Chang while they led the cart through into the main courtyard of his home.

“Ah, you are back!”

He looked over to find Han Xiaobo of all people coming over, followed by two of his friends.

“Cousin Xiaobo,” he sighed.

“It has been agreed you will train me for an hour,” Xiaobo stated. “You were to do it this morning, but apparently you left on a personal errand.”

He was about to reply that his brothers were probably free, when Mei Chang appeared, walking briskly, followed by two helpers.

“Shu, excellent, you are back!” she called over, then noticed Xiaobo and the others.

“Why don’t you go play, little Bo?” Mei Chang remarked drily. “Us adults have important tasks to deal with. I am sure someone can come play with you later.”

“…”

“—Miss Mei,” Xiaobo frowned.

“Miss Han,” Mei Chang corrected him absently, before turning back to the two of them. “Hunter Jun, Shu, shall we take these inside?”

“Yes,” Arai nodded, pulling off the cover and storing it away.

“Oh… spirit herbs!” one of the youths beside Han Xiaobo exclaimed, seeing the orchid in its deep pot.

“Please stay back,” Mei Chang commanded, waving the three away as they all craned to see what was in the cart. “—and what is that?” she added, pointing at the fern.

“Rainbow fern,” Arai said blandly. “Han Shu found someone willing to part with one, thanks to me.”

“A… r-rainbow fern?” Mei Chang gawked. “Like… from the East Fury Falls?”

“Yes,” Arai nodded, a trifle smugly he thought. “And we even got you a teardrop orchid.”

“…”

Mei Chang stared at them both dully, then at the cart, then shook herself, and stared at him, her look clearly saying ‘how much?’

He just rolled his eyes and passed her the pot with the tree orchid, which she took with wary hands, then passed on to one of the waiting helpers.

“Don’t drop that,” Arai said absently to the youth. “It might explode.”

Both helpers stared at the orchid, then at her, then at him.

-That… isn’t going to help their inner equilibrium, he thought drily.

“It won’t really explode,” he clarified, “it will just emit a field of chaotic… Actually, that doesn’t help, does it?” he muttered.

Both shook their heads, rather accusingly.

“Don’t drop it,” he reaffirmed drily.

“Ah, if you’re here,” Mei Chang collared Xiaobo and the other two, who, having seen that there was also work involved in handling ‘spirit herbs’, were slowly sidling away now. “Take a pot each and carry them.”

“…”

Xiaobo opened his mouth, then, rather surprisingly, seemed to think better of it, and picked up the pot of lotus seeds.

“That will be the foxglove,” Arai signed with an eye roll.

“What’s under the… basket?” Mei Chang asked, lifting it up… and then staring.

“A variant five-elements foxglove,” Arai said drily.

“I’ll carry that,” he offered, reaching into the cart and hefting the pot by its handles.

“Okay…” Mei Chang murmured. “I assume it needs to be stored outside?”

“It will be fine in a dedicated arboretum,” Arai replied.

“It seems your father will be happy, at least,” Mei Chang sighed, taking the box of boxes, while the other helper took the remaining pots.

“We can but hope,” he agreed, having not actually seen him since he came back.

“Well, if you follow me,” Mei Chang said to the others, setting off with the box of rose bits.

Nodding, he waited for Arai to go after her, then ushered Xiaobo and his friends after her, bringing up the rear with the two helpers.

The pot with the foxglove was not that hard to carry, but having his face that close to the plant meant he did have to use his mantra to offset the effects somewhat as they walked through into the next courtyard, then into the annexe where the estate’s administrative offices were. Mei Chang took them across that courtyard, into another hall, then into her offices directly and directed them to store everything in one corner.

“I’ll have someone deal with the foxglove shortly,” she said to him as he put it down with a slight grunt. “You three can run along now,” she added to Xiaobo and his friends, who retreated so fast he almost suspected they used a movement art.

Mei Chang watched them go with a shake of her head.

“Do I actually have to train with them?” he asked, grimacing at that idea.

“Possibly,” Mei Chang sighed, staring around the room with its bookshelves and small displays… and now a pile worth some twelve Sprit Jade in spirit herbs. “I dunno what’s going on there. This is more important though.

“How much will these cost?” Mei Chang asked, not quite looking at Arai. Certainly she would suspect their origin.

“Ten Spirit Jade,” he half said, half suggested.

“That includes the tree orchid and the fern?” Mei Chang asked.

“It does,” Arai nodded.

“Okay, that’s manageable,” Mei Chang sighed, her expression suggesting that family members might be getting cuttings of those, rather than the whole plants. “Jade or spirit stones?”

“Half and half,” Arai said after a short pause. “And I would appreciate it if my role in this was just kept to ‘helping Han Shu’.”

“Okay,” Mei Chang nodded.

He watched as she took out five eye-sized jade-green discs, marked with the Ling clan crest on one side and the seal for Blue Water Province on the other, and passed them to Arai, followed by five pale white cubes, each about the size of a fist, each a set of one hundred spirit stones set together.

“Is there anything else?” he asked.

“The beast cores?” Mei Chang mused questioningly.

“Oh… those,” he grimaced, because with everything else, he had almost forgotten them. “I’ll get them later.”

“Okay,” Mei Chang murmured. “Can I offer you tea before you head out again?”

-Nothing much gets by her, he thought drily, glancing sideways at Arai, who just shrugged in a vaguely affirmative manner.

“Sure,” he agreed.

In the end, they sat and chatted to Mei Chang about everyday things... and then the ongoing saga of the monkeys for about thirty minutes before bidding her farewell and heading back out into the wet streets.

“So, Temple?” he asked as they stood on the street corner where the Han clan enclave joined onto Blue River Street, the district’s main thoroughfare, forming a small market plaza in the process.

“Yeah,” Arai agreed. “It—”

She trailed off as a flash of golden-green lightning seared down on the western size of town, casting strange shadows everywhere as it coruscated around, scattering stray bolts of white, blue and purple lightning for several seconds.

Instinct had him put his hands over his ears even before the shockwave, in the form of an expanding wall of white mist, rolled over the town, pushing rain sideways briefly, and even revealing blue sky for a brief moment at the epicentre, before it all dissipated and the rain redoubled its efforts as peals of thunder faded away.

“Uggh!” Arai grumbled, pulling out her umbrella and storing away her hat.

“They do not let up,” a nearby old man watching a market stall sighed.

“It’s just that time of year,” he noted. “And there are lots of people gathering for the Patriarch’s celebration.”

“Aye, don’t mean it’s not a nuisance though,” a bystander grumbled. “They could at least go away from the town, rather than just outside it.”

“Then who would see their achievements and laud them for it?” Arai remarked drily.

“True, true,” the stall vendor agreed, sticking a finger in his ear and wiggling it around.

“It will get busy later,” Arai added, returning to the original topic of conversation as they set off down the street again. “Thankfully, today there are no inauspicious hours while the sun is risen.”

He was about to remark on that, but stopped, recalling that of their ‘group’ within the Pavilion, she was probably the most talented at feng shui and divination after Kun Juni, her own sister and Ha Jiang Ren. It did occasionally lead to a slightly different way of looking at the world.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she pouted, making him realise he was looking at her a bit oddly because of that comment. “It’s not like that’s uncommon knowledge, and you were the one who took those classes, teaching us about it!”

“That… is true,” he had to admit.

He was rather less willing to admit he had taught feng shui to entry level Herb Hunters at that time more because it was easy contribution points, rather than out of any deep expertise in the topic, though she certainly knew that anyway. His own expertise there was enough to do his job properly, but he had not doubled down on that path, like Jun Arai and Sana had.

“I suppose I could do some of my shopping here,” Arai mused as they walked on, changing the topic.

“What do you have to buy?” he asked, glancing at a shopfront selling various spices as they walked past.

“Household things,” she replied. “We have no food for starters, given it all ran down because we were eating out. As for other stuff: ward stones… quite a few talismans, I spent far too many this last week, including a teleport anchor talisman.”

He winced at that last one. That was a tenth of her ‘profit’ from what she had gained from the Han estate right there, just for that talisman.

“Ah—! Convenient!”

She stopped by the next storefront, which turned out to be a shop selling rice and other bulk items, including oils and liquids refined from soy and cloud rice according to the advertisements outside.

“Give me a moment,” she said with an apologetic smile.

He nodded, watching her head into the shop to speak to the manager, then wandered over to one of the stalls selling manuals on the edge of the street. He had barely flicked through three, under the watchful eye of a youth minding it, when Arai returned.

“No luck?” he asked.

“I got what I wanted,” Arai shrugged, peering at the various manuals. “Anything interesting?”

“Unless you want to complete a full set of the ‘great works’ of the Scholar of Qin, probably not,” he remarked drily, putting Volume Sixty-Two of said ‘great work’ back.

“Heh!” Arai shook her head in amusement, quickly flipping through books, before picking one up. “How much for this one?”

The youth, who had likely expected them not to buy anything, took it, frowned and held up two fingers.

Arai tossed him two spirit stones and he bowed slightly as they departed.

“What is it?” he asked, curious.

“A text talking about ‘Empty Eye Steps’ and a few other similar arts,” Arai shrugged, passing it to him.

As they walked on, he flipped through it while Arai stopped at various other stalls and the odd shop, buying various things. In fact, the manual was one he had read, but whoever had owned it last had made copious notes in various parts, which was probably why Arai had bought it he supposed.

It was a reminder, if one was really needed, of just how… unusually driven, the younger woman was. Among her generation within their town Pavilion, only Lin Ling worked… as hard, he supposed, or displayed that degree of dedication. For Lin Ling, it was because of her family, he knew that much, but even after knowing Arai and Sana for almost six years, their motivation was… opaque, beyond being related in some manner to their late mother, Jun Ruliu, who had been a famed scroll painter in the town since well before he had been born.

Some of it was certainly Arai’s status, as she had alluded to earlier. Her background required that she work harder than many others simply because of the gulf in opportunities afforded outside the Pavilion, but, even back when she first started, long before such considerations were relevant, she, Sana… and Lin Ling, for that matter, had all had a focus far in excess of their years.

Now that he thought about it, as he skimmed the various scrawlings in the book, even Arai’s ‘hobbies’ – she liked to read, was good at painting, had a keen interest in feng shui and gardens – were related to her work as a Herb Hunter in some way… as were Sana’s, or focused on improving her cultivation…

“—You needed qi beast cores?” Arai remarked, drawing his attention back from pondering that pointlessly, as he half tried to decipher a particularly cryptic comment in one of the margins.

Looking where she pointed, mostly to hide his own awkwardness at having been caught pondering something like that for no real reason, he saw a youth sitting behind a crude stall, with several hundred grade one and two cores in boxes, looking very bored as he flipped through a book.

“Ah, convenient,” he murmured, passing the manual back to her and walking over to the youth.

A quick check of the cores showed that the quality wasn’t… great, but there were more than enough grade two cores to fulfil what Mei Chang had asked him to get.

A Golden Core, which was to say, three-star grade core or its qi equivalent, was generally worth about a spirit stone, so a quick division in his head told him he could probably get the entire box of grade two cores the youth had for five or six spirit stones.

“Whatcha want?” the youth asked, looking up at him and putting the book aside, which turned out to be pictures of very scantily-dressed ‘fairy immortals’.

“I’ll buy that whole box of grade two cores for five spirit stones,” he said, quickly looking through the box to make sure the youth wasn’t a scammer.

“Ten,” the youth said blandly.

“Six,” he countered back.

“…”

The youth stared at him, no doubt wondering if he could get away with just saying ten again, before sighing.

“Seven.”

Without comment, he took out seven spirit stones and the youth shoved the box towards him.

“Thanks, have an auspicious day,” he murmured, storing them away in his talisman.

“Yeah… you too…” the youth shrugged, picking up his erotic book again.

Arai just shook her head, looking amused.

“What was eating you up before?” Arai, who had apparently noticed his distracted state earlier, asked abruptly as they continued on.

“…”

He stared straight ahead, keenly aware that he had no idea how to honestly answer that without it seeming weird.

“I was just impressed with how… studious you are,” he muttered at last.

“Hah…” Arai shook her head, half smiling in a way that was… both cute and slightly sad at the same time, he felt. “Mrs Leng said just the same thing to me recently. That I should act more like a girl my age.”

“…”

“Probably she is right…” Arai sighed softly. “But three days ago, I saw two girls who could have been me, dead in a clearing in a valley in Yin Eclipse, killed by a spirit herb some idiot felt was deserving of the name ‘meek’. They sold flowers and danced and sang and did no wrong to anyone…”

For a split second, he felt… as if there was a sort of shadow, cloaking her, then it vanished as she got her intent back under her control. A few passers-by looked at them a bit oddly, but nobody said anything and they were walking quite briskly, due to the rain.

“Sorry, it’s been a weird few days,” she added with a further, deeper sigh. “Maybe I should ask Juni for lessons playing the flute. I tried the zither once, and was told I had talent if I ever wanted to cut glass with it.”

“Hah!” He had to laugh at that, if only to dispel some of the tension in what she had just said.

Even so, they still walked on after that in somewhat more awkward silence, Arai just continuing to purchase odd things, and him feeling a bit of an idiot.

The markets and shopfronts had a quite remarkable variety of goods once you actually stopped to look, and tuned out one in every four being related to spirit herbs in some way, shape or form. Blue River District was mostly dominated by craftsmen and women who didn’t need to have workshops right next to the docks on the north side of the river, so there were lots of shops selling the staple, crafted goods for talisman makers, scroll painters, inscribers and so on. There were even clothing stores and the odd jadework enchanter, though most of those were closed given it was basically a province-wide holiday.

As they continued on, Arai stopped and bought a few herb pots and replenished some common talismans and basic ward stones with the spirit stones she had to hand – as did he, because he had also spent quite a lot of both in the course of dealing with the various ancillary ‘requests’ that had been folded into the shadow-balsam clearance missions. Eventually, though, they made it back to the Queen Mother’s Square, by the western bridge across the river, which was by this point starting to become increasingly thronged with people, moving amid the various stalls.

West Flower Picking Town did, in fact, have shrines to all four ‘Cardinal Courts of Celestial Fate’, in addition to the much more focal and influential shrine-temple of the Emperor Blue Morality in the Pavilion District. The Queen Mother of the West, however, as a heavenly being associated with honour, family, piety and most importantly good fortune and prosperity, was the only one widely worshipped outside of specific, auspicious days. It also likely helped that the shrine-temple to the Blue Morality Empress was associated with this compound.

“Maybe we spent too long walking here anyway?” he noted wryly, watching the milling groups of people looking at stalls or heading in and out of the shrine itself.

“Eh…” Arai just shrugged, starting off across the square towards the large enclosure that was the town’s temple shrine to the Queen Mother of the West. “It will only get really busy after lunch; that’s when the shrine maidens will give out benedictions and read out the first of their three divinations for the year ahead.”

“You say that like I don’t also live in this town,” he muttered, shifting his umbrella to the other shoulder.

“I wonder sometimes,” Arai quipped back, stepping out of the way of a carriage pulled by a tiger puppet that was crossing the square from the direction of the western gate.

The shrine itself was an impressive building, rising to a height of several stories, even after you accounted for it being raised up on a broad stone foundation to overlook most of the square beyond the walls of its compound. The walled grounds and outlying buildings around it were a veritable garden of delights – glittering ponds, broad-branched trees and ornamental flower beds dividing up lawns and the odd pagoda, through which milled groups of people come to admire either the scenery, or to leave offerings at the seven smaller shrines that surrounded it, each dedicated to a facet of the Queen Mother.

“You are together?” a woman in turquoise armour and a helmet bearing a crest of peacock feathers, standing by the gate, asked him, reminding him of the other somewhat unique element of the shrine – it was a place adult men could only enter when escorted by women.

That was the ‘other’ reason the gardens were known as a ‘garden of delights’, almost all those roving it were women.

“Yes,” Arai replied, saluting the shrine guardian respectfully.

“—To make an offering, or to watch the ceremony in Blue Water City?” the woman asked, before Arai could continue.

“Ah… no, we have come to make an offering at the main shrine,” Arai added.

“What ceremony?” he asked, curious.

The woman looked him over, her bright gaze making him suddenly feel very underdressed for a moment, before just waving them on through without replying.

“What was that about?” he murmured to Arai as they passed on through the gateway into the main plaza before the temple, which was full of groups, mostly women, milling about beneath colourful umbrellas.

“No idea…Should be easy enough to find out though,” she mused, looking around then walking over to a shrine maiden brushing wet leaves off the path.

“Can I help you?” the young girl asked respectfully.

“We wanted to ask about this ceremony In Blue Water City?” Arai asked politely.

“Oh… that,” the girl nodded. “Imperial Princess Dun Lian Jing is leading a series of rituals at the grand shrine honouring the Empress and asking the Queen Mother to bestow prosperity upon Blue Water Province. It will be shown throughout the day, for those who wish to participate in the western garden plaza, before the Shrine of the Empress.”

Arai gave the girl a polite salute of thanks, which she returned, then went back to sweeping the path as they walked on towards the steps leading up to the main shrine, which rose like a miniature mountain above them.

“I suppose that explains the crowds,” Arai mused, looking around at the various well-dressed groups in the plaza.

“Indeed,” he agreed, stepping out of the way of a group who almost walked right between them, barely even looking at either of them. “I have to admit I am curious about the Princess…”

“—the rituals are mostly everyone saying prayers,” Arai remarked drily, starting up the steps. “I went two years ago, when Ling Yu had to fulfil that role. All you will see is a woman wearing a very fancy robe and veil, chanting prayers.”

-And we will probably be there half the afternoon… he reflected, seeing her point.

“—we will be there for hours, even as onlookers, or people will think us disrespectful…”Arai added, echoing his thoughts as they both sidestepped another group, this time coming down the stairs.

At the top, the entrance to the temple itself was flanked by statues of four seated, robed figures, sheltered by canopies from the rain, each dressed in opulent phoenix robes of blue, green, gold and purple. Each had a moon rune painted prominently on their forehead – ‘Wonder’, ‘Might’, ‘Royalty’ and ‘Beauty’ respectively, representing four of the ‘Seven Stars of the Queen Mother’. Of the remaining three, ‘Night’ and ‘West’ sat before the temple, flanking the door, while ‘Guidance’ was just inside the entrance itself.

Bowing respectfully, he put his umbrella away. Arai followed suit, storing her own umbrella, then covering her head with a deep green shawl.

Inside, it was actually rather quiet, a few people standing around at various altars, or kneeling before the statue of ‘Guidance’.

Arai led him forward, down the hall to the large altar at the far end. The statue of the Queen Mother herself was hidden by a vast curtain of semi-transparent cloth that retained some element of ‘mist’ when looking through it. Before the statue itself, barely visible as a shadow behind, a vast golden luan with seven tail feathers, each holding a symbol that matched those on the statues outside, stared down over the hall.

A few groups were already praying before the broad altar below the curtain, so they ended up having to stand patiently for several minutes before a shrine guard, dressed in a turquoise robe, let them approach.

He followed after Arai, bowing three times as she did, then saluting the shadowy statue beyond the curtain. Arai, for her part, just stood there in silence for a moment, then took out a white and blue lotus flower, which she placed reverently upon the altar. Finally, she produced a painted scroll. As she unrolled it and, reaching up, placed it upon the altar, he was able to see it was a young, dark-haired girl holding a basket of flowers.

“…”

As he looked on, she repeated that for two more scrolls, then knelt down and started to recite names, quietly, lighting a stick of incense for each one as she did so, and placing them into one of the bowls set up before the altar.

Shaking himself out of his moment of surprise, he followed suit saying each of the names on the list quietly, offering a small prayer for each that they might live more prosperously in their next life and lighting a stick of incense for each one.

The whole ritual took about five minutes in the end, at which point Arai stood again, bowed respectfully to the altar then stepped forward again and placed a small origami chrysanthemum among the other offerings.

There was a small queue forming at this point, but beyond one young woman in a very ornate blue and gold dress glaring at them a bit, nobody said anything as they made their way back down the hall.

“One moment,” Arai murmured to him, turning and walking towards one of the side chambers.

Following after her, he found himself in a room where a dark-haired young woman was sitting at a table, poring over a jade scrip.

“I want to make a personal offering,” Arai said respectfully, taking two Spirit Jade out and passing them to the woman. “Funeral rites. To be said, today, for Ha Fanfeng, Nen Hong, Nen Shirong, Ha Tenli and Kanra.”

“The flower sellers?” the woman blinked.

“…”

“Yes,” Arai said softly.

“They… died?” the woman frowned, looking a bit lost.

“Yes, you heard about the bandits near Jade Willow?” Arai asked softly.

“Half the town has… Oh…” the woman trailed off. “Did you recover them?”

“I did,” Arai replied, a trifle flatly.

“Okay,” the woman sighed, sitting back. “Do the others know?”

“Yuuna helped me determine who had perished,” he spoke up, also taking out a Spirit Jade and passing it to Arai.

“I see…” the woman mused, fixing him with a look that made him want to go into the corner and put his head in his hands, before looking back at Arai, who took the Spirit Jade without comment and added it to the other two.

“I take it the rumours going around are thus… rather political?”

“The bandits seem to have deep roots,” Arai sighed. “Elder Lianmei is looking into it, and I imagine there are others now as well. They all went north because of offers of lucrative work from estate managers… and their corpses ended up in a tetrid stalker nest. Next to none of them died from the tetrids.”

“…”

The woman stared at Arai for a long moment, then at him again, then sighed deeply. “Thank you for telling me.”

Arai bowed again and then turned and walked out again without comment.

“No one else will do it for them,” Arai said softly, as they walked back out past the statue of the Star of Guidance. “Mrs Leng would, if I asked, but I found them.”

Rather than say anything, he just nodded in silence, because there wasn’t much he could say.

It was all the sadder because it was true. A formal funeral, even just the reading out of their names and having someone perform the appropriate rites in a temple, cost spirit stones if you didn’t have your own family shrine. None of the other flower sellers would have been able to afford it, except if they all pooled together, and he doubted they were that cohesive a unit.

“…”

They walked out the front doors in silence, past a chatting group of young women dressed in the robes of the Green Fang Pagoda, discussing what they wanted to give as an offering to bolster their senior brother’s breakthrough that day, and back into the light rain.

“Life goes on…” Arai remarked a bit sadly, glancing at the group, then sighing and giving herself a shake as they both paused at the top of the stairs to look out over the square.

Again, he could only nod, because that was also true. It was almost jarring in a way; however, as much as it was discomforting to admit it, life was jarring like that.

-Maybe it is just that she is just so… stoic about it, he reflected glumly, as Arai continued to just watch the world pass by below them, twirling her umbrella slowly between her hands, suddenly looking very much her age.

Juni would have given her a hug… Lin Ling or Sana probably said something funny… but he could do neither of those, so he just stood there in silence, letting her process her thoughts.

It was hard to tell if she was using her mantra to hide her emotions; he suspected somewhat, but then again, he had never actually seen her quite this… flat, before. In any case, he couldn’t ask here and now anyway, the oath binding him regarding his own mantra’s forbidden arts prevented any disclosure in public about it… and hers certainly would as well.

“So… what now?” he asked at last.

“…”

Arai gave herself a shake and sighed softly.

“I have to go see Captain Li, it might actually help if you came, given you got roped into delivering bad news,” Arai said with a slightly resigned tone. “Then… I dunno. Go home for a while, probably. I’d kind of hoped today was my day off, but it seems circumstances have other plans.”

“Why Captain Li?” he asked as they started back down the steps.

“He was the one who broke up the mess outside my house this morning,” Arai sighed, with a sideways glance at him that made him hide a wince as he remembered that she’d already told him that earlier. “There is a summons for me to ‘explain what happened’, regarding my clearance requests. Mostly in regards to the one for the… Elder—”

“—The one Elder Lianmei was talking about last night?” he asked.

“That’s the one,” Arai nodded. “But I suspect the Ha clan really wants to cause headaches with the search and rescue request, given one of them is also dead, likely without a corpse.”

“Oh… how?” he asked.

“I incinerated a body stuffed into a tree by some tetrids in the Red Pit using a talisman. Hindsight suggests that was my missing Ha scion,” Arai grumbled.

“…”

He found he wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, because there were many problems in that sentence and he rather suspected that the Ha clan would be fixated on the least of them – the destruction of the unfortunate corpse.

“Miss Arai!”

They both turned to find Yuuna, dressed a bit more smartly than he had last seen her, with a large basket of peacock lilies on her arm.

“Ah… Yuuna,” Arai replied, a complex expression flickering across her face.

“I didn’t think you two…” Yuuna remarked drily.

“…”

Arai stared at the young girl, then bonked her on the head playfully.

“Ooooow!” the girl muttered.

“I went to make an offering on behalf of your friends,” Arai murmured.

“Oh…” Yuuna grimaced. “T-thank you, we… were going to do so… but it’s so expensive… and all we can do is try and sell flowers… but—”

“I… paid for their funeral rites,” Arai added softly. “Well, we did.”

“You…” Yuuna stared at them both dully.

Arai sighed and without comment wrapped her arms around the younger girl and gave her a solid hug, which after a moment Yuuna returned, snivelling slightly.

“Thank you,” the younger girl mumbled again after a moment, finally breaking away.

Yuuna tried to bow to both of them, but Arai stopped her, before he could, just shaking her head.

The two other young girls nearby did both bow, saluting both of them and murmuring their thanks.

Arai plucked a flower out of the basket, one of the more battered ones from the bottom in fact, and sniffed it before patting the girl on the cheek.

Yuuna stared at her for a long moment, then gave a bow and let them both continue on their way.

“Before you ask, I palmed her a spirit stone, you think I am going to give them one openly, even on a day like today… here?”

“I hate this town sometimes,” he muttered, understanding her worries.

They had been handing Spirit Jade back and forth earlier like they were spirit stones, yet, for many in this town, a single Spirit Jade was more than they might see in a whole year. A flower seller like Yuuna was trading flowers for bronze talismans, maybe iron if she got very lucky, and had to live off that as well, or risk sleeping outdoors. There were parts of the town, poorer ones admittedly, where you could even rent a room for a month on a single spirit stone. There were also parts of it where a flower seller possessing even silver talismans, never mind an incautiously-given spirit stone, would see her vanish, never to be found again.

“I...”

Arai trailed off as a sheet of azure lightning flickered down to the east of the town.

“I think that says it all really,” Arai grumbled, spinning her umbrella a bit more forcefully, scattering raindrops around her widely enough to garner a few ill looks from passers-by.

“It does,” he had to agree, watching the six bolts pulse down in rapid succession as the peals of thunder echoed across the sky.

The trip back across the bridge, into the Western District north of the river, was largely silent after that. It wasn’t that there was nothing to say, as they made their way through the bustling streets towards the tall tower that marked the Captain’s compound, rather, there was a steady barrage of lightning bolts and the odd shockwave, to the point where it was just outright distracting.

The compound itself, set just off the main road through the district, was busier than he expected, but at least they were shown inside to wait beneath shelter. After about thirty minutes, a clerk finally came and found them.

“You are Hunter Jun Arai?” he asked Arai, who had started reading one of the manuals she bought earlier.

“I am,” Arai replied, putting the book away. “I was asked to come see Captain Li this morning, about the disturbance with the Ha clan official?”

“Ah… that,” the clerk nodded. “Unfortunately, Captain Li is… busy. He sends his apologies, but an important matter has come up.”

“Will it take long?” he asked.

“Ah… Hunter Shu,” the clerk frowned, glancing at him. “All I can say is that the Captain is busy, and is seeing no one.”

“It’s fine,” Arai remarked. “However, I want some assurance that I will not have some mendacious official on my doorstep tomorrow morning claiming I am disrespecting both the Civil Authority and the Guards.”

“…”

The clerk stared at her with narrowed eyes, then sighed and nodded. “Please wait a bit.”

“You do know they are going to keep us here for ages now,” he pointed out after the clerk had left, well aware of how the Town Guards’ administrative arm disliked having to do things like that.

“I do,” Arai agreed with a sigh. “However, my faith in this whole sorry mess is such that I’ll consider it worth it, at this point, if it just means I have to spend an hour here reading a manual while they try to make a point.”

“…”

He nearly pointed out that he was also having to spend an hour here, now, before realising that that also counted as a net positive, because it was an hour less he could be ambushed regarding this determination someone had in his immediate family to help Xiaobo try and beat him up for ‘training’, or run the risk of landing a new clearance mission.

In the end though, thankfully, they were only waiting for half an hour before the clerk returned, informing them that Deputy Captain Kun would see them briefly. That turned out to be a very brief meeting indeed, because the Deputy simply reiterated what the clerk had said, then handed Arai a jade slip of the conversation they had just had bearing his seal and dismissed them again.

Standing back out in the rain, watching people bustle by, Arai was silent for a few long moments, before turning to him.

“As I said earlier, Mrs Leng offered to make me soup, do you want some? We can probably hide away for most of the afternoon on the upper floor of her restaurant, playing Gu Takes All or something.”

“That…” he considered that for all of about three seconds before nodding decisively. “That sounds like a plan.”

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

~ JUN SANA – LING TAO’S ESTATE, OUTSKIRTS OF BLUE WATER CITY ~

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

Sitting on a bench, watching Juni and Ling Yu trade blows as they danced around in the garden of Ling Tao’s estates, overlooking the Blue River, Sana had to admit that Juni was faring much better than she had in her own earlier spar.

Ling Yu, being a Nascent Soul cultivator, had been suppressed to the peak of Qi Refinement for the bouts by Baisheng, who was sitting at a table nearby sipping tea and looking on with Ling Tao, but her superior stamina was still keeping her ahead of Juni, who was using a spear to keep the younger woman at a distance.

“I reckon three more moves,” Lin Ling, who was seated on the other end of her bench beneath the sheltered veranda they were all sitting under, mused.

“Young Lady Juni definitely has the edge with technique,” Ling Fei Weng, Ling Yu’s ‘official’ bodyguard, remarked drily from where he was seated by the main table, which servants were slowly filling with various dishes.

“HEY!” Ling Yu called over as she danced away from another sweeping spear thrust from Juni, clearly having heard. “Traitor!”

“To balance it, I say Young Lady Ling will win in two…” Kun Feng Jinhai, one of the trio of cultivators from Nine Moons Province who were travelling with them, remarked.

Juni just shook her head and launched another strike towards Ling Yu, who vaulted acrobatically backwards, and nearly paid for showing off as Juni lashed the spear up, then down in a vicious curve, tracking after her.

“Both of them are better than either of you,” Bai Jiang remarked to Feng Jinhai and Kun Ying Ji, who both shot him askance looks.

“No solidarity when faced with a beauty,” Ying Ji grumbled.

“I’ll trade pointers with you,” she snickered, patting the staff next to her.

“…”

Both of them looked at her sideways, neither volunteering, which she found rather amusing.

She only tended to land blows on Ling Yu in sparring matches where her friend was very heavily restricted, but compared to Juni her ability to take a beating was several times better in some ways, thanks to her ability to feed her pain and her frustration straight back into her body in beneficial ways thanks to her mantra.

For her, Juni was the significantly tougher matchup though, because the older woman was nearly twice her age and had been trained from the same age as Ling Yu by martial experts of the Kun clan with the intention that she be one of its core talents… at least until astrologers and clan politics had other ideas there.

{Double Dragon, Rolling Thunder}

The martial technique, triggered by Ling Yu, using pure Martial Intent, washed over the whole sparring area, making her feel like a clawed hand was hidden just out of sight, waiting for her to make any move. Ling Yu swept low, closing distance with Juni in a series of afterimages, holding her sword with two hands now, sliding the blade along the haft of Juni’s spear, using her own momentum against her—

{Kun Pierces Heaven}

Juni knocked Ling Yu’s sword down, expertly interrupting her art at the critical point, in spite of her opponent’s superior speed and then unleashing the briefly trapped momentum of the spear going forward to flick the tip straight at Ling Yu, who was forced to spin backwards.

“Winner Kun Juni,” Baisheng, who was watching the proceedings, puffing away on a pipe, said drily.

“Winner Kun Juni,” Ling Tao, Ling Yu’s golden-haired aunt, who could have passed for her friend’s older sister and didn’t look much older than Juni, added with an eye roll as she looked up from the jade tablet she was flicking through.

“Winner, Martial Techniques,” Fei Weng, who was honorary third judge, remarked.

“Hah!” Ling Tao agreed. “Very true!”

“Bah!” Ling Yu sighed, stepping back and wiping the thin sliver of blood off her cheek where the tip of the spear had just managed to nick her as it spun up. “Well done!”

“Indeed,” Juni agreed, leaning on her spear, breathing a little hard. “Thank you for the instruction.”

Sitting back, she poured a cup of wine from the jar between her and Lin Ling and sipped it pensively, while Lin Ling helped herself to a plate of freshly sliced fish seasoned with bitter seeds and a dark sauce made from soy beans.

They had ended up coming to Ling Tao’s estate on the banks of the Blue River, just inland from Blue Water City that morning. Ostensibly, in her case, the visit was to help set up the recuperation formation for Little Blue, and also prepare a place for the blaze orchid, but really the goal was to just get out of central Blue Water City, which was muggy and not particularly pleasant at the start of the wet season even before you factored in all the fuss and fallout surrounding the grand auction. The secondary concern, or at least Ling Yu’s concern, was that she not end up being sent to any more state banquets by scheming clan elders.

The clincher had been Ling Yu informing them that her Aunt had a personal teleport formation within her estate, which was not that surprising, really. Ling Tao’s status and personal wealth in Blue Water City as the younger sister of the City Governor was considerable, even before you factored in her role as deputy headmistress of the Blue Gate School, the disciple of its current headmaster and all the opportunities that had brought.

That was also the reason why Juni had ended up coming along; because she did have to go back to West Flower Picking Town today. Firstly because she was escorting the three from Nine Moons Province, who were guests of the clan, but also, because she was, it seemed, expected to be the Kun clan representative attending the inaugural banquet in honour of Patriarch Ha Dongfei later on this evening.

From here, Ling Yu assured them, they would be able to hop straight nearly anywhere in the province this side of the Shadow Forest, so returning to West Flower Picking Town as and when they liked would be easy.

“—Lady Ling, sorry to bother you…” a servant murmured quietly to Ling Tao, as he put down another plate of roasted fish and also passed her a second jade tablet.

“Well, now that you have both worked up an appetite, shall we actually eat?” Ling Tao, who was acting as host for their… rather eclectic group, courtesy of Ling Yu, remarked, acknowledging the servant with a nod of thanks.

“Of course, Auntie,” Ling Yu said impishly, skipping over towards the shelter of the veranda and sitting down at the table so fast she practically left afterimages.

“…”

Juni, who was much slower, just sighed and shook her head as she walked back over to join them.

“At least the rain has stopped,” Lin Ling remarked, lifting the plate of fresh fish slices up and carrying it over to the table as they both relocated.

“Small mercies are indeed small,” she agreed drily.

“Why do you say it is a small mercy?” Ying Ji asked, taking his seat opposite her.

“Because it won’t last,” she elaborated. “It likely means the weather patterns flowing across the south side of the Great Mount are shifting. Either it—”

“Actually, it’s because someone has messed with the weather,” Baisheng interjected, pouring himself some wine. “A youth from the Four Peacocks Court is attempting their Dao Seeking tribulation. His elder seems to have used a fairly formidable talisman to temporarily disperse the ‘unnatural’ weather front. Probably they are worried it might ‘interfere’ with their scion’s attempt to leverage the auspicious nature of the day.”

“Idiot,” Ling Tao muttered with a grimace, not looking up from the jade she was now skimming.

“Well, when you’re from a sect on the Imperial Continent and not used to this weather you get these people occasionally,” Baisheng said with an amused chuckle.

“Seniors, can you explain why that would cause a complication?” Bai Jiang, who had now also taken his seat, asked politely.

“Simply put, the rain will return but about three times as hard,” Juni answered. “It’s actually a crime in the eyes of the Provincial Civil Authority… and the Duke’s Authority – punishable by a huge fine and maybe even personal imprisonment – to interfere with those weather patterns for personal gain.”

“It causes all kinds of disruption, even in the wet season when this kind of weather is already common,” she added. “The normal ‘rain from the east’ is already unpleasant, but if it intensifies, it will start to bring other elements of the suppression with it. The groundwater, for example, will start to leech qi from things like formations.”

“Oh…” Bai Jiang frowned. “So… things like local estates’ formations might start to suffer issues?”

“Any formation will start to suffer issues,” Baisheng murmured. “Even ones like the teleport formations—”

“—and those are expensive to fix,” Ling Tao, concluded, putting aside her tablet and accepting a plate of fish and salad from a waiting servant.

“Indeed,” Baisheng agreed. “Anyway, it’s not our problem, not yet – Tao, would you say the blessing?”

“Eh… ah, yes, of course,” Ling Tao murmured, standing up and smoothing off her shoulderless deep blue and green gown, embroidered with swirling golden clouds, which was cut in a way that left little doubt how alluring and attractive she was.

“For what we have been delivered in the past year… and for what we may be delivered in the year to come, may it all be blessed in the eyes of the Seven and the heart of the Queen Mother, upon this, her most auspicious and sacred day.”

It was a fairly simple prayer, which they all echoed politely, following Ling Tao’s example and bowing politely to the west once it was concluded.

“Right, eat up!” Ling Yu grinned, starting by stabbing her chopsticks into a large piece of roast fish and moving it to her plate.

“What will you do when you get back home?” she asked Lin Ling, who was sitting beside her now.

“Not sure, I think I have one more clearance mission to do,” the younger woman sighed, pouring herself some wine. “After that? Probably just spend as much time out of the house as possible… could I come stay with you for the week?”

“Probably,” she mused, helping herself to some raw fish and dark sauce. “We certainly have the space, though your family will?”

“They will be so focused on my younger brother and his ‘talent’ that I would be surprised if they notice I am not there, beyond not having someone to order around for menial tasks,” Lin Ling grumbled.

“Well, I’ll likely need a hand with that ginseng anyway, so sure,” she agreed.

“You have to go to this grand reception, don’t you?” Ling Yu asked, turning to Juni.

“I do,” Juni sighed. “It will be… tiresome.”

-That’s not the word I’d use, she thought sympathetically.

“A pity we can’t come,” Lin Ling added, claiming a bowl of soup, into which she tossed more of the fish.

“Sadly, it is formal,” Juni replied with a grimace. “Even if you came, you would just be sitting at some low table, forced to talk to minor officials all hoping to curry favour with someone more senior.”

“What will the three of you do?” she asked Feng Jinhai, to include them in the discussion a bit more.

“I don’t know,” Feng Jinhai mused. “We will be guests of the Kun clan, so probably just sightsee. Do you recommend anything?”

“The Yu District’s formal gardens are nice,” she mused. “Or you can always go shrine hopping, admiring the fancy altar pieces.”

“Spiritual tourism recommended by a young miss,” Ying Ji chuckled, not mockingly, just amused at her rather tongue in cheek recommendation.

“West Flower Picking Town is heaving with spirit herbs,” she added. “You could spend days just wandering around the various markets seeing what unusual things people are selling. There are some well-respected talisman masters and formations experts as well, who give public lessons… less so the alchemists I am afraid, they are a cagy lot, but you may get to meet some interesting folks if you play up your Pill Sovereign credentials.”

“And if old ruins are your thing, there is a fairly substantial one outside the town,” Lin Ling added.

“…”

Bai Jiang looked… rather interested actually, but she couldn’t help noticing that both Feng Jinhai and Ying Ji had poorly disguised ‘is that it?’ expressions on their faces.

“Or you can go trawling the Red Blossom District, just don’t take any spirit stones with you, or you will be poor by the end of the night,” she finished.

Both Feng Jinhai and Ying Ji spluttered into their cups of wine at her last suggestion, while Bai Jiang just rolled his eyes.

“What Sana means is there are some excellent spirit food restaurants with wonderful views and excellent ambience in which you may while away your hours out of the rain… and mostly without having someone try to demolish a teahouse around you,” Juni said with aplomb.

“Yes… of course I meant that,” she murmured drily.

“There will also be a tournament,” Ling Tao added.

“A tournament?” Ling Yu asked, suddenly sounding interested.

“Not for you,” Ling Tao remarked drily. “There will be an alchemical competition tomorrow, and a tournament for upcoming juniors at the Patriarch’s grand dinner the day after. Entry is limited to peak of Golden Core though.”

“Ah, that is disappointing,” Feng Jinhai sighed, before glancing at Bai Jiang. “Maybe you will be interested in the alchemy competition?”

“Perhaps,” Bai Jiang mused.

“How come you know about that, anyway?” Ling Yu muttered.

“Because it is my job to know what sources of madness may cross paths with the disciples of the Blue Gate School,” Ling Tao replied blandly. “And there are a lot of juniors around from outside the province.”

“You are not interested in such a tournament?” Ying Ji asked Juni, then glanced at her.

“Eh… not really,” Juni shook her head, not rising to the leading question.

“Too much hassle,” she murmured. “You could win some things, but if you’re a young woman it will just draw all kinds of unpleasant eyes, or worse, some scion who thought it was going to be ‘their day’ holds a grudge. I have better things to do than look over my shoulder for weeks because some senior brother or sister might want to ‘exact justice’ for their junior.”

“Ah, the sorry case of Duan Mu,” Lin Ling nodded sagely.

“Who?” Bai Jiang asked.

“One of our compatriots at the Hunter Pavilion,” she clarified. “Who competed in a tournament a few years back, because it offered a spatial ring that you can soul bind below Soul Foundation.”

“Yep, he’s… a seven-star Hunter at the moment, I think?” Lin Ling went on. “He got third place in the end, by beating out a scion from the Deng clan, who was visiting from the Imperial continent… Deng… Fei?”

“Nah, that was his cousin,” she interjected. “Deng Faihan is who you are thinking of… the one with the nose that is just too long.”

“Oh yes,” Lin Ling nodded. “Anyway, Duan Mu beat him… it was actually a very good match, a close thing, but his father was absolutely enraged that his son lost to a commoner… and a local commoner at that, and pulled strings afterwards and managed to get him demoted from a nine-star ranked Hunter to a seven-star one via several clearance missions and a hefty bribe to a Deng Elder in the Blue Water City Pavilion.”

“Oh… that is petty,” Ying Ji conceded.

“Yep, Mu was half a year off gaining his junior official stripe as well,” Lin Ling nodded.

“Surely the Bureau would do something?” Bai Jiang remarked.

“Yeah, no... they got him demoted legitimately, by failing clearance missions,” she said sourly. “It’s not a crime if your victim over-reaches and you wait for them to walk into the problem.”

“The moral of the story is – don’t do tournaments unless you have someone who can stand up for you afterwards,” Ling Yu concluded with a sigh. “It’s shameful, but that’s just the way it is.”

“That is indeed shameful,” Ying Ji sighed. “The Deng clan are like that even in Pill Sovereign City.”

“Indeed…” Bai Jiang agreed. “There was this one story about…”

After that, the dinner conversation mostly revolved about the unfortunate things that Ying Ji, Feng Jinhai and Bai Jiang had known to happen to people who over-reached in tournaments in Pill Sovereign City.

Much as was expected, the rain returned after an hour or so, its intensity redoubled to the point where eventually they moved inside to finish the meal and then continue to talk over tea and various fancy spirit fruit desserts. At that point the conversation mostly turned to the ‘auction’ that had been… and was in fact still ongoing, in Blue Water City.

It was somewhat odd to see Ling Tao, and to a lesser extent Baisheng, answer questions – mostly about blood ling trees – having been there for some of it and being well aware that her own part in diffusing matters would likely go entirely unacknowledged.

Bai Jiang, being interested in all things spirit herb, even went so far as to ask if it was possible to visit the Red Pit, an idea which they all shut down with various degrees of wry amusement. Of those there, only she could go in safely anyway, and she had no intention of taking sightseers to a place that could literally follow you home and haunt your emotional state for days afterwards.

“When do you want to head out?” Ling Tao finally asked Juni, who had mostly been sitting on the sidelines of the discussion between her, Lin Ling and the three visitors.

“Well, the reception thing is later on in the evening, then there is a dinner, so probably relatively soon,” Juni mused, staring out at the fading afternoon light.

“I suppose you will want some time to prepare,” Ling Tao said, with a vaguely sympathetic tone. “Those kinds of gatherings are always a trial.”

“They are,” Ling Yu agreed. “I could—?”

“—I think not…” Baisheng cut in drily, making Ling Yu pout. “That would be entirely too much honour for the good Patriarch, given you have recently been dining with an Imperial Princess. Fei Weng here will be going, along with your younger brother and your cousin Luo.”

“…”

Ling Yu scowled, then sighed and nodded in agreement.

“I suppose we must wait for them to come through?” Juni asked.

“They are travelling with a larger party from Blue Water City; Fei Weng will meet them in West Flower Picking Town,” Ling Tao said.

“In that case,” Juni mused, looking around at them, “I suppose if everyone else is happy, we can take our leave of Lady Ling?”

Lin Ling just shrugged ambivalently, then, after a slightly more sideways look from her, nodded. She also nodded, standing.

“Thank you for your hospitality, Lady Ling Tao,” she murmured, saluting her politely.

Ling Tao accepted her salute, and then those of the others with a graceful nod, then stood herself and gestured for them to follow her.

It didn’t take long for their party to make their way through the estate to a large courtyard with a thirty-metre-wide raised platform in the middle, surrounded by eight jade slabs, each carved with a complex divination formation. The centre of the platform was a large taiji in white and black stone, with a flat, waist-high pedestal in the middle.

A group of servants already had the various goods they had to bring back stacked up in the shelter and, with their appearance, were starting to transfer them onto the platform.

“You all know the drill,” Baisheng remarked drily, walking up onto the platform and placing a hand on the pedestal in the middle. “Don’t stand on the edge, or jump—”

Ascending the steps after Juni she felt the hair on her arms and the back of her neck rise slightly as the density of qi changed subtly.

“—No qi use and absolutely no active manipulation of spatial artefacts or talismans,” the old man finished as they clustered around the pedestal in a ring.

“This is most impressive,” Ying Ji declared, looking around at the array.

“I should hope so,” Baisheng chuckled. “It cost more than a small sect to set up.”

Off to the side, the servants finished stacking up the various boxes and stayed standing beside them, presumably because they would go with Ling Fei Weng on the other side.

“Okay… everyone ready?” Baisheng asked.

She nodded, exhaling, because long-range teleportation could be a bit… odd.

Ling Yu gave her a final wave and called over. “See you later!”

“You too!” she called back, returning the wave.

“Three… two… one—”

There was a sense of the world dropping around her.

The taiji twisted, strange patterns flowing out of it as the scenery around them occluded like they were inside a bubble of water for several seconds, then refocused somewhat distractingly, as her eyes briefly found that the world had a few too many edges on things…

…

“—and we arrive,” Baisheng remarked with aplomb, taking his hand off the pedestal as the twisting mirage around them blended into their new surroundings in a rather disorientating way – if you made the mistake of looking directly at it – to reveal the main teleportation platform in the Blue Gate District of West Flower Picking Town.

“Ohh… I will never get used to that,” Bai Jiang grumbled, looking a bit pale.

“It is certainly a distracting experience,” she agreed, sympathetically, letting her somewhat jarred senses settle as the hubbub of the large square they were in faded into focus.

“—Miss Jun, these are your herbs, and some stuff from Young Lady Ling,” a servant notified her politely, drawing her attention to the storage box for the ginseng and a second box, which was just a normal container, but sealed with a red talisman on which Ling Yu had painted ‘Present’. “For you, Miss Lin.”

“Oh… a present,” Lin Ling murmured, picking the box up as the servants started to move the rest of the transported goods off the teleport platform. “Thank you.”

“Fuhai, Xunfei,” Baisheng said, motioning to the servant who had just spoken to her and another nearby. “You will come with me, pick up the goods for Miss Jun and Miss Lin.”

“Sir,” the two servants saluted Baisheng politely, then summoned a transport container that could be carried by two people and loaded the goods into it.

“That… isn’t…” she trailed off, deciding not to complain, and instead grabbed a random crate and carried it off the platform, stacking it with the others so she could feel vaguely useful.

Off to the side, Fei Weng had summoned a carriage and four puppet horses, which another servant was connecting up, while the rest started to load those goods into that.

“Come on! Clear the…” an irate official who was hurrying over to them trailed off as Fei Weng walked over to him. “My apologies Lord Ling,” the official mumbled, saluting him deeply. “In this rain, I did not see. I will accept a penalty.”

“No need,” Fei Weng gestured dismissively. “Just get some people to help move those goods and we will be on our way.”

“Of course, of course,” the official replied, bowing deeply again.

“We can leave them to it,” Baisheng remarked, taking her by the arm and leading her clear of the area around the teleport formation.

Juni, who had already walked clear with Ying Ji, Bai Jiang, and Feng Jinhai came over and bowed politely to Baisheng before falling in beside her as they all made their way out of the square.

“I take it you are all going to walk me home?” she asked Juni drily.

“I could call a carriage, but I feel like walking,” Juni replied with a half-smile. “And in case you forgot, your house is on the direct route there, unless you expect this clan daughter to cut right through the Red Blossom District?”

“Scandalous,” Lin Ling giggled.

Juni gave Lin Ling a playful bonk on the back of the head, which made her pout.

“So, this is West Flower Picking Town?” Bai Jiang remarked, staring at the lantern-lit shops as they started to walk down the main road from the western ‘Blue Gate’, leading out of the town north of the river, towards the Mother’s Bridge.

“Yep, this is home,” Juni agreed, stepping out of the way of a carriage that rumbled past a bit too close to the kerb of the pedestrian zone at the side of the road. “And probably the best place in the province to buy spirit herbs at lower cost.”

They walked on, chatting away, with her and Lin Ling mostly leading the way. Their progress was neither fast nor slow, mostly because the three sightseers stopped to look in various shop windows every twenty or thirty paces. As such, it was getting properly gloomy by the time they finally arrived at the square where her house was, which at this hour held various market stalls plying food and drink for the most part.

Walking up to the gate, she put her hand to it and opened the ward, using her talisman, ushering everyone into the darkened courtyard.

“Sorry, it seems nobody is home,” she apologised, going over to the nearest stone lantern and putting a spirit stone into the neatly concealed little formation within it.

The lantern burst into life a moment later, illuminating the forecourt, with its two raised flowerbeds, followed a moment later by one on the far side, which Baisheng had lit just by putting a hand on it.

“Can I offer you some tea?” she asked Baisheng and the others. “As thanks for helping carry this stuff back here?”

“Of course,” Baisheng replied magnanimously.

“Sure,” Juni nodded, before looking at Bai Jiang and the others. “Do you want to walk or…?”

“Of course!” Ying Ji replied.

“Please, come inside. Excuse the darkness, I’ll go turn on the formations,” she murmured, waving for the others to follow her.

Escorting them up the steps, she pushed open the front door, noting that someone had been home recently, because they were merely locked in the normal fashion, not sealed with the defensive formation.

-So sis is out somewhere? she mused, walking inside and heading over to the formation centre in the left wall of the main hall.

Putting a few spirit stones into it, she sent a thread of qi-infused intent into the jade in the middle and a moment later, the various lanterns in the hall, then elsewhere in the house, all shimmered to life.

-I guess she hasn’t replaced the spirit stones since coming back, she mused, noting that the flames in most of the lanterns were a bit ghostly.

“Impressive,” Baisheng said approvingly, looking around at something with interest. “An excellent formation setup.”

“My father made it,” she replied, before turning to the others and bowing politely.

“Welcome to my home. Please make yourselves at home,” she murmured, offering them all a formal greeting.

“Where do you want us to leave the goods?” Fuhai asked.

“Ah… Ling,” she turned to Lin Ling, who was just standing nearby. “Can you guide them through to the arboretum and put the herb in the small hall next to it?”

“Sure,” Lin Ling nodded, waving for the two servants to follow her.

“Please, come with me,” she said to the others, inviting them to follow her through to the smaller hall, which was what passed for a reception hall.

Once they were all seated and chatting away, she went to the kitchen and opened cupboards… confirming that her sister had done… what her sister tended to do, and not actually bought anything.

“Probably she just went to eat out,” she grumbled to the world at large as she placed a large pot of water on the stove before claiming some of the singing rose tea from its usual hiding spot, noting that it had been used recently.

-I wonder who she entertained… or was father back for some reason? she mused, as she put a handful into the water and waited for it to boil.

“Done!” Lin Ling said, coming in with the two servants.

“Do you want to wait here and have some tea?” she asked them, before adding; “Ling, go grab some mangosteen off the tree outside?”

“What am I, your servant?” Lin Ling pouted.

“You’re staying here, so you’re an honorary sister,” she retorted drily as Lin Ling made her way back out into the gloomy, wet garden, making a rude gesture over her shoulder.

“We have time for a cup,” Fuhai agreed as Xunfei sat down at the table.

It only took a few minutes for her to make the tea, leaving the pair of servants and Lin Ling to chat away with their pot, while she took hers and a plate of prepared mangosteen spirit fruit through to the others.

“Sorry for the wait,” she apologized to them as she put the tea and platter down and started to pour them all out a cup.

“Not at all,” Baisheng murmured from where he was standing looking out at the garden. “Can I ask, is the garden outside your work?”

“Oh… yes,” she nodded, not that surprised that he could see it clearly given that she still had no idea how powerful he was beyond ‘very’. “My mother started it and now both Arai and I look after it.”

“It is an exceptional little thing,” Baisheng mused. “A pity it is raining.”

“…”

She half wondered if he intended to disperse the rain, just to look at the garden, not doubting that he probably could, but he just shook his head and accepted the cup of tea she proffered without further comment.

“Perhaps we can come look at it tomorrow?” Juni remarked as she handed out cups to the others.

“Sure,” she nodded. “If you are not totally jaded with the town by then and set to leave!”

“Hah…” Juni shook her head, accepting her own cup.

“To prosperity on this auspicious day,” she murmured, holding up her own, offering them a toast.

The others returned it, then all sipped their tea and sighed.

“Excellent tea,” Ying Ji murmured, savouring it. “What is it?”

“Singing rose,” she replied. “Made from petals picked from an Immortal grade plant.”

“Exceptional,” Baisheng nodded. “A nice blend.”

“It’s not bewitching dream jasmine tea,” she murmured.

“That is why I am the senior old grandpa and you are you,” Baisheng replied with an amused smile.

They stayed and drank tea, chatting for some ten minutes, before Juni and the others begged leave and set off for the Kun estates. Baisheng stayed for a while longer, mainly because he asked to see the arboretum. She was happy to oblige, giving him a quick guided tour of the hall and its pond, while in return he made a few suggestions about how the ambience might be subtly improved either by moving some things or with some additional herbs, then also headed off with the two servants, leaving her and Lin Ling alone in the house, listening to the rain fall outside.

“Well, that was a day,” Lin Ling said at last, pouring herself a second cup of the tea.

“It was, rather,” she agreed. “Do you want to go sort yourself a room?”

“I can do it later,” Lin Ling mused, helping herself to a mangosteen from the bowl. “What do we do now?”

“Well, there is no food at all in the house beyond what’s in that bowl and some dried noodles and yin-fire peppers.”

“Yin-fire pepper mangosteen curry—”

“I think not,” she remarked blandly, squashing the half-formed thought that her sister probably wouldn’t think that as terrible an idea as it was.

“Yeah, I have to agree,” Lin Ling giggled.

“If we were going to go out… where?” she mused.

“The food stalls in the plaza?” Lin Ling suggested, rolling her eyes.

“…”

She stared at her friend and then just sighed and nodded. “You do indeed see it clearly.”

…

Ten minutes later, they were back in the kitchen, with a jar of beef-noodle stew, several roast fish and as many fried river-shrimp crackers as they could carry away from a very amused old man’s stall. Alcohol was not something they had in short supply in the house, thankfully, mostly because it was easy to make herbal spirit wine and sell it anonymously.

They had just settled down to eat; however, when the talisman around her neck chimed.

“What is it?” Lin Ling asked.

“Arai is back it seems like,” she mused.

There was the sound of someone closing a door then three sets of chattering voices coming closer.

“SIS?!” she called out.

“Ah… she is in the kitchen,” Arai’s voice echoed through.

A few moments later, her sister, looking a bit damp, appeared at the kitchen door… followed by Han Shu of all people, and Ning Sora.

“Ah… Ling is here too?” Arai blinked, surveying their spread… and then groaned.

“Yes, and you forgot to do the shopping,” she remarked drily.

“No… I just forgot to leave it back,” her sister sighed, taking her talisman and rapidly depositing a small mountain of stuff out onto the kitchen floor. “It’s been that kind of day.”

“That it has,” Han Shu agreed, walking over and pouring himself a cup of mangosteen infused wine.

“Did you go out for food?” she asked.

“Yeah, Mrs Leng came by earlier,” Arai said, sitting down in a chair. “I have soup for you.”

“Oh… speaking of things ‘for you’… I got you a present in Blue Water City,” she said blandly. “Juni said you had a fairly horrid time of it up in Jade Willow.”

“That… might be underselling it. I will have nightmares about tetrids for a good while,” her sister grumbled, before downing a shot of the wine.

“Want to talk about it?” she asked, taking the pot of soup that Arai had put on the table and giving it a sniff.

“…”

“This is proper spirit food… Did Mrs Leng make this?” she asked, opening it up and scooping out a spoonful to try.

“She did,” Arai nodded. “And as to… talking about it… maybe… I dunno. It’s been a fairly terrible few days really.”

“When are they not?” Lin Ling sighed. “I had my clearance request to teach basic herb lore sabotaged by that Elder Gongli… Some Huang clan scion got asked to take the class with me…”

Han Shu winced, but her sister just nodded and poured herself a second cup of wine… which was rather unusual for her, she had to admit.

“You know Ha Fenfang?” Arai spoke at last.

“The flower seller?” she frowned.

“Yeah… she is dead,” Arai said softly.

“…”

She opened and shut her mouth, not quite sure what to say to that.

“As are Nen Hong… Ha Tenli… Kanra, even Nen Hong’s brother Shirong,” Arai went on.

“Um… how?” she asked, because that was about the only thing to say really. Lin Ling was also looking aghast.

“I found their bodies in the Red Pit, killed by a meek yin ginseng… well, it’s a long story,” Arai sighed. “Probably best left for tomorrow.”

“What were they doing in the Red Pit?” Lin Ling asked, frowning.

In the end, Arai… and Han Shu, who it turned out had had to go around telling lots of people their kith and kin had died, narrated a quick and dirty summary of her sister’s week… which, as Arai went on, left her with a rather empty feeling in her stomach.

-Motherless fates above, I should have been there with her, she sighed, understanding why Arai was drinking now.

“Speaking of ginseng… and the Red Pit,” she said at last, once they finished. “I… ended up with a weird one, courtesy of an auction in Blue Water City. I figured you might like it as a present… It will probably need a bit of careful nurturing, given it had a narrow escape with blood ling intent.”

“Go on?” Arai frowned.

Her own escapade took much less time to narrate, it had to be said, finishing with them all traipsing out to the storage hall to look at the plant she had brought back. it didn’t take long to unseal the storage box and, after setting up a suppression formation within the room, open it to reveal the meek yin ginseng.

“What…”

Her sister stared at it dully.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“That… can’t be right…” Arai murmured softly, walking over to it and crouching down.

“What?” she repeated.

“I… had a meek yin ginseng stolen from me in Jade Willow Village, the same one that killed Fenfang, Hong and Shirong. It was sealed securely in the Pavilion vault but it went missing, along with one of the Ha clan scions’ bodies I recovered… which showed up with the bandits… this…”

Arai wordlessly turned the sleeping plant over a few times, considering it with narrowed eyes.

“No-fate thrashed way…” she declared at last, sitting back and just staring at the ginseng before continuing in an enraged monotone. “May that elder be cursed with the maidens’ condition every day of his life! This is my ginseng.”

“Your…?” she repeated, her thoughts dissociated for a moment.

“Really?” Han Shu asked, sounding equally disbelieving.

“I am certain!” Arai snapped. “I spent hours taking the thing out of the ground; it still has some of the harvest scars on it, here on the main body…”

-What are the odds of that… she wondered.

‘Well, one is a ginseng, it was rather mistreated prior to capture though and apparently confiscated by a regional Pavilion because the Herb Hunter who turned it in was incompetent…’ the words the Myriad Herb Association disciple Beifan had said about the herb echoed through her mind.

“That little monkey-shit!” she swore, cursing both Beifan and whoever had written the slanderous dagger aimed at her sister.

“What?” Arai asked, stirred out of her own angry fugue.

“Well, this ginseng, they said it came from Red Lake… and that it was mistreated by an incompetent Herb Hunter before capture so the Pavilion confiscated it…” she elaborated. “Someone stole that off you, and put a fate-thrashed hidden knife for you into the bargain.”

-Somewhat ironic, though, if this all comes unstuck because they wanted to put one over on my sister for some reason.

“Those scamming little shits…” Arai snarled, sitting back on her haunches and staring at the herb—

The air around her sister grew leaden for a moment, as her emotions started to bleed into her intent, until she presumably used her mantra to get them back under control and exhaled softly, rubbing her temples with her fingers.

“So… it’s all connected?” Han Shu asked at last.

“It does look that way,” she mused, suddenly wondering about Ling Mu’s red ginseng and that smuggling group. “I was going to get in contact with you to ask as well, because you were up that way, if you knew anything about this… but somehow never got around to it,” she muttered, running her hands through her hair.

“Well, we are going to have to see Old Ling about this first thing in the morning,” Lin Ling said decisively.

“We are,” Han Shu agreed.

“I feel like my horizons have been somewhat broadened,” Ning Sora muttered from where she was standing by the door, “and not in a good way.”

“That’s one way of putting it, yes,” Arai agreed. “But this all but confirms that the bandits I met, who killed those people, and that gang—wait… wait!” her sister trailed off, then continued. “I saw them… in the forest… A group, carrying pots with mutated spirit herbs… those must be the herbs from the auction?”

“That settles it then,” Han Shu said flatly, looking deeply concerned now. “We have to go to Old Ling first thing.”

“And Elder Lianmei,” her sister muttered, staring at the meek yin ginseng with a complex expression. “This just got complicated, didn’t it?”