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~ LING YU — BLUE WATER PROVINCE BY ROAD ~

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“I forgot… how much… I hate… long trips by road.”

That epiphany arrived to Ling Yu sometime around mid-day on the second day after they left Blue Water City. She pronounced it, with as much of a jaded air as she could manage, while lying on one of the long side seats of Grandpa Baisheng’s carriage, staring at… basically nothing. Unfortunately, it drew exactly no reaction from her travelling companions, however, so after a few moments, she sat up and stretched a little instead.

Ling Lingsheng was perched on the other side of the carriage, reading a novel, or maybe re-reading it, gave her a half glance, but no more.

Grandpa Baisheng, who was sitting at the table that was the centrepiece of the front half of the carriage, also didn’t look up from the various papers he was examining.

Only Little Blue acknowledged her, and its response was ‘your hatred lacks conviction’, or something to that effect.

“You wound me,” she sighed, slumping back to stare out the window beside her… for exactly four seconds, because it was still an unspeakable deluge outside, and the weather had properly closed in.

Staring at the ceiling again for a few moments didn’t provide any better distraction either, so she sat up and turned to Ling Lingsheng.

Before she could ask what the novel was, because it was a different one from before, the carriage suddenly started to slow.

“Oh… Nameless… Fates,” she groaned, sitting back again. “Please don’t tell me there is another checkpoint?”

It was, indeed, another checkpoint. The twenty-third of their trip, in fact. Twenty-three checkpoints on the road between Blue Water City and West Flower Picking Town. Twenty-three, and they still had, by her estimate, several hours of travel yet to endure.

“Do you think we will reach some hitherto un-founded level of enlightenment if we experience a whole thirty-three checkpoints by the time we get there?” she wondered out loud.

Lingsheng threw one of her seat cushions at her.

“Oh, cruel persecution,” she sighed, catching it and adding it to the other two she had accumulated over the course of the morning.

“—By order of the Su clan, everyone is to exit this vehicle and present their papers!”

A brash voice yelled, a few seconds later.

With a sigh, Grandpa Baisheng considered the papers on the table, then, with a wave of his hand, about two thirds of them vanished, replaced with some scattered books and less official-looking documents.

“Welcome to the new checkpoint, same as the old checkpoint,” she muttered under her breath, puffing out her cheeks as she gathered up little Blue and putting him inside the little travel pouch she had for him.

Lingsheng just closed her book and shoved it inside the front of her loose-fitting summer gown.

There was no point in bringing anything else, or making any effort to tidy anything, in any case, if the previous twenty-two experiences were anything to go by.

“HURRY UP! FAILURE TO—!”

The guard outside had to stop shouting as Grandpa Baisheng swung the front-right-side access door open.

Following him outside, she claimed an umbrella and considered the roadblock.

Off to their right, A convenient building on the side of the road had been hurriedly expanded by the addition of a new wall that effectively enveloped the entire road, with two-gate like openings to facilitate vehicles going through. What should have been a roadway wide enough to take four carriages abreast had been blocked down to two sections. The ‘fast’ lanes for a hundred meters in each direction were now filled with large, meter-wide diamonds of qi-reinforced stone. A hastily thrown up watch tower had also been added, overlooking it all. Through the rain she could just make out the now familiar clan symbol of the Su clan, flapping on the tower.

A group of five guards wearing standard military-pattern body armour were currently standing a few paces away, led by a glum-looking man with a stupid moustache and thin beard, who had four bronze stars emblazoned on his chest plate.

Glancing around though, she could spot at least a dozen more guards loitering around the compound, observing matters.

“How can we help you, Sergeant, on this fine, fine day?” Grandpa Baisheng asked the moustachioed man, who, based on his gloomy expression and the vibe he gave her, she was willing to bet actual spirit stones was the one who had yelled for them to get out.

“Travel passports and inventory papers for your carriage,” the sergeant stated perfunctorily, holding out his hand.

“Of course, my good man,” Grandpa Baisheng replied, sounding admirably unfazed as he produced two jade talismans from his robe and passed them to the Sergeant, who, with barely a glance at them, passed them over to one of his subordinates, who had two bronze stars, denoting his rank as a Corporal on his shoulder plate.

Trying not to sigh, she pulled her own travel passport out of her storage ring and held it out.

“Mmm, Immortal, above average qi purity… seventeen years old?” the Corporal remarked, after taking her passport, glancing over it and then giving her a look over that she really didn’t like. “And your name?”

“Qi Xiayu,” she answered evenly. This ritual to fish for irregularities in the passports was pretty familiar to them now, having repeated it at basically every checkpoint bar one.

Nodding, the corporal turned to Lingsheng and took her passport as well.

“Immortal, similar Qi purity, twenty-one years old,” the corporal mused, considering it, then Lingsheng. “And your name?”

“Qi Zhihuan,” Lingsheng replied.

“And you?” the corporal added, turning back to Grandpa Baisheng.

“Qi Shibo,” Grandpa Baisheng answered.

“And what is your purpose of travel?” the Sergeant asked Grandpa Baisheng.

“Travelling to West Flower Picking Town, to visit an old friend,” Grandpa Baisheng replied evenly. “We—”

“—Their address?” the Sergeant interrupted.

“An estate on Yu Promenade…” her grandfather replied.

“—And what about you?” the Corporal who held their passports asked Lingsheng and her. “Travelling with him?”

“Yes,” she nodded, slowly twirling her umbrella. “He is my grandfather, and she is my cousin.”

“Uh-huh,” Lingsheng agreed as two more guards walked over to join them, standing, she could not help but notice, between them and Grandpa Bai.

“Do you have a registration for that ring?” the Corporal asked, eyeing the storage ring on her finger. “Any listed items on your person?”

“Grandfather has all the papers; they are part of the travel inventory,” she replied with a sigh.

This ritual was almost performative now. The first time it had been disconcerting, the second time annoying. Now, at the twentieth time, it… just was.

“Do you have a list?” Lingsheng asked sweetly.

Silently the Corporal pointed to a sign put up on the nearby building that read ‘It is the duty of travellers to present the proper documents in a timely fashion and be aware of any extant restrictions; ignorance is not an excuse. Failure to observe will result in a fine or incarceration.’

“What my cousin means is are there any… local peculiarities to the list,” she asked as brightly as she could, fighting back a sigh.

“They will have informed you of that at the previous checkpoint,” the Corporal grunted.

Casting her mind back, she really couldn’t recall any such mention, so she just nodded at his words.

“—What is that?” the Corporal pointed to the pouch on her waist.

“My companion, Little Blue,” she replied politely. “I—”

“Open it.” The Corporal instructed her perfunctorily.

Puffing out her cheeks, she did as instructed, revealing Little Blue, who stared up at the soldier silently, doing its level best to look as unthreatening as possible.

Interestingly, none of them actually reached out to try and pick him up. That was a change on some previous checkpoints, and suggested this lot might actually have some eyes, or at least have learned a lesson or two thanks to the weather.

“Ginseng… its intent is passive, qi purity is unusually high though, and it has wisdom; it should be a restricted item, right Cheng?” the solider standing next to the corporal remarked.

“Yep, no awakened herbs can be transported without a centrally issued licence,” the other guard grinned.

“As I was about to say,” she repeated patiently, producing the papers in question from her ring, “I have all his papers, here.” She passed document over to the Corporal.

There was no point in being too forthright about things, she had discovered. Volunteering information and being helpful at these checkpoints just got you marked as someone trying to hide something, it transpired. That had been a lesson learned at checkpoint five.

The guard silently flicked through the document, stared at her, then at Little Blue, who did its best to shy away and look small and unthreatening in front of the big, bad Immortal realm guard.

“Go check those with the Sergeant; see if they are good,” the Corporal commanded, passing them over to ‘Cheng’. “And confirm these as well.”

“Sir,” the guard nodded, taking all their passports and the various documents and walking back over to where Grandpa Bai was.

“OI! You four!” the corporal called over to another group of four guards who had been sitting in the shelter of an awning at the front of the building playing cards. “Start checking their vehicle!”

“Sir…” the singled-out group groaned and with a notable lack of enthusiasm trooped over to their carriage.

In the end, they stood there in the rain for nearly twenty minutes while the guards looked over their vehicle, checked everything off against the permit and occasionally asked them questions about things in it that veered between the utterly mundane and the mildly perplexing. By then, two further vehicles had been stopped behind them as well, so there was a small crowd of gloomy people starting to gather. As far as check point experiences went, she had just about decided to rate it ‘six out of ten, not as bad as it could have been’ when fate decided to sneer at her, likely because of the formidable strength of her recent epiphany about road trips.

“—I say, young ladies, this is most depressing, is it not?”

Silently, she downgraded it to ‘four out of ten, I’d like to leave now please’, as a pair of youths from the most recently arrived vehicle sauntered over to join them, where they were sitting on one of the blocks stopping vehicles cutting into the open area beside the house.

Looking them both over, they screamed ‘young masters forced to take a road trip’. The one who had taken the initiative to speak to them had long dark hair and delicate features and was attempting to project a somewhat scholarly air, while his companion, who was… robust, it was fair to say, sweating profusely in the humidity and really needed someone to tell him that moustaches would never be his thing, if he wanted to engender any trust in those he spoke to.

“It could be worse,” she replied blandly, glancing over at the building, where Grandpa Baisheng was still seemingly in negotiations with the Sergeant about something or other.

“Have you been here long?” his compatriot asked with what he likely hoped was an ingratiating smile.

“Long enough,” Lingsheng supplied politely, looking up from her book, which she had long since gone back to reading.

That was another lesson of the Dao of Checkpoints, learned at checkpoint nine. Guards had good hearing, and guards in armour missed little. If you started badmouthing them, they noticed and things suddenly started taking three times as long. After all, the guards were just here; it was you, the poor soul who had entered their web, who had places to be.

“I am Xiao Sheng,” the scholarly youth volunteered, giving her another hopeful smile.

“Xiu Tianyu,” his robust friend added, sitting down on the next block with a deep sigh and mopping his brow. “I really hope this won’t take long. This infernal rain is… quite something.”

“It is,” she agreed diplomatically.

“Ah, I see you are also fan of Young Noble Cang,” Xiao Sheng added, noting Lingsheng’s novel, which she had since learned was another of the long running ‘One with the Spear’ series. “You know, he is actually a member of my sect!”

“You… don’t say,” Lingsheng replied blandly.

“Uh-huh,” Xiao Sheng nodded giving them both another charming smile as he produced an ornate jade talisman from his sleeve that read ‘Shu Pavilion’.

“Mmmm, Brother Xiao here is a disciple of some repute in his own right!” Xiu Tianyu added more conspiratorially, nodding towards another scholarly youth currently standing on his own, near that group’s vehicle, quietly taking in the checkpoint. “As is our Senior Brother, Jian Chen.”

“So why are you travelling by road?” she asked with aplomb.

“Ah, well, this most inclement weather seems to interfere with the local teleportation network,” Xiao Sheng sighed, shaking his head. “We had hoped to take part in the trial, but alas…”

“With luck like yours,” Lingsheng suggested drily, “maybe you should have tried teleporting…”

“…”

Both youths turned to look at her, their expressions suggesting they were not entirely sure if she was praising them or making fun of them.

“Alas, our ship was delayed in Heavenly Moon City that dreadful storm the Seven Sovereigns conjured up.”

“—We did see the omen though!” Xiu Tianyu interjected. “That amazing phoenix, flying across the sky.”

“It didn’t do those who went into the mountains much good,” she observed, her mood slipping for a moment, before she caught herself.

“Aiii… yes, we heard something of that,” Xiao Sheng conceded. “However, it seems that those that went in still retain their life-jades? Several of my senior brothers numbered among them…”

“How fortunate for them,” Lingsheng murmured.

“—Big Brother Xiu! They have agreed to let us forward!”

A young girl with platinum hair called over, waving to the pair from beneath her broad umbrella.

Glancing towards the queue of vehicles, which had gained another three while they had been talking, she saw the carriage that this pair had come from was slowly manoeuvring its way into the courtyard area beside the guard house.

“It seems your friends are waiting for you,” she suggested politely.

“Ahhah, it does seem that way,” Xiu Tianyu agreed with a slightly awkward smile.

“—Hey, you two, the Official says you are to move that carriage!”

“Three out of ten. Grandpa, please can we leave now?” she muttered under her breath, as a corporal stepped out of the guard house and pointed at them.

Sighing, she gave both youths a wan smile and, with Lingsheng in tow, left them where they were, to return to their vehicle.

“Do you want me to watch your back?” she asked Lingsheng, considering the gap between their vehicle and the merchant behind them. Normally, this would be a trivial exercise, but the rain was getting the point where it was even messing with the sense-capabilities of the spirit controlling their golem—a rather attractive combination of lion and hawk, sans the wings—pulling their carriage, which meant it would be borderline unmanageable for most others.

“Uh… are you young ladies able to handle that okay?” the middle-aged merchant asked sceptically, eyeing the two of them and then their carriage.

“We…”

She was about to say it would be fine, and that maybe he should worry about his own, but out of the corner of her eye, she could see the annoyed driver of the fourth vehicle had already started to move forward, into the space freed by the Shu Pavilion one, either unaware or uncaring of the headache he was about to cause.

“—I would back yours up quick,” she instead suggested quickly as Lingsheng, also spotting the issue, shoved her book back into her robe and, stashing her umbrella into the interior of the vehicle, walked around to their golem and climbed up onto its back.

Following her gaze, the merchant’s expression twisted.

“Hey, Junjie,” he yelled at the youth who had been sitting in the shelter of his vehicle, smoking a pipe. “Go stop them!”

With a sigh, the youth got up and jogged off, waving for the vehicle to stop and pointing in the direction of the guard house.

Twirling her umbrella absently, she watched the farcical play unfold as the merchant’s… son, maybe, and frustrated driver gesticulated at each other, until at last the other vehicle, which appeared to be a rented one, stopped crawling forward, allowing the merchant to back up his own about half its length.

Considering where the other gap in the blocks was, about where the front of their carriage had stopped, she stepped to the side so Lingsheng could see her more clearly and then began to wave her back.

The whole thing only took about two minutes, really, but it also meant they had to decouple the golem to make space for the Shu carriage to pull out… at which point, she could only sigh as it stopped at an angle half into the road and all its group were warmly ushered into the shelter of the guard house by the Official, while several of the soldiers started to check it, just like they had checked theirs.

“What a day,” the merchant, who had gone back to sitting on a nearby block, groaned, watching this unfold.

“Where have you come from?” she asked the merchant, feeling a pang of sympathy for him.

“All the way from the coast,” the merchant groaned. “It used to take a day and a bit, you know, to get to Fushai Town. Been traveling three days. Three. And they ask why our prices on stuff can only go up.”

“Twenty-three checkpoints for us,” she sighed, sitting down again on the next block as Lingsheng returned to join them.

“Oommph, all the way from Blue Water City?” he shook his head. “At least you have a nice carriage.”

“This weather is the enemy of all comfort,” she muttered with a sniff. “And it’s not that fancy, actually; it’s just durable and a little spacious.”

“Aye, that’s more important right now,” the merchant conceded. “Tell you what, would you young ladies care to join us… and maybe the poor bunch in the fourth vehicle for a spot of light lunch?”

Considering her options, and the worth of fostering a bit of camaraderie between fellow sufferers of checkpoints, she found she was inclined to agree, but did glance at Lingsheng first.

“Sure,” Lingsheng nodded amiably.

Given the guards didn’t like them loitering around the vehicles and the boldly written guidelines on the notice board on the far side of the road made it clear that nobody was allowed to return to their vehicle without permission while in the confines of the checkpoint, they ended up just gathering around one of the blocks at a midpoint near the merchant’s vehicle.

The food itself was simple, yet tasty. Their contribution was a box of steamed buns she had snagged on a whim from the inn the night before, actually in anticipation of something like this occurring, and they went down well, particularly with the two younger children of the family traveling in the rented carriage.

They had just gotten to the point of sharing around a jar of iced fruit juice, when Grandpa Baisheng finally returned from the guard house, shaking his head.

“Do you want some lunch, Grandpa?” she asked as he eyed their backed-up carriage, the decoupled golem that Lingsheng had had kneel down in ‘repose’ next to it, to make space for the still being ‘checked’ Shu Pavilion carriage and then them.

“Mmm, that is very kind, dear.” He gave her a smile and a pat on the head and accepted a bowl of brown rice and pickled fish in sauce.

“—They must be from some big sect,” the teenage son of the family in the carriage was saying to Junjie. “And that fairy, Aiii…”

“Well, they certainly got influence we don’t,” Junjie sighed, shooting a glower over at the guard house.

“I assume we will be here some time?” she asked more quietly.

“Yes, the procedures are what they are,” Grandpa Baisheng sighed, sitting down on the block between her and Lingsheng.

“What was the holdup with us, anyway, Grandpa?”

“Just different groups controlling different checkpoints,” Grandpa Baisheng replied, between mouthfuls. “And this rain, mainly. They can’t authenticate some of the documents remotely, and didn’t think of this problem, so…”

“Oh,” she sighed, staring up at the rain-dark sky, that was doing its level best to make mid-day look like early evening.

That was the issue with travelling while keeping a low profile, as they were. If they had been travelling as ‘Lord Baisheng’ or ‘Eternal Daughter Lingsheng’, it would have been a very brave checkpoint official that kept them sitting around for longer than the bare minimum, nevermind in the rain. That said, in better times, a mere lifetime of three and some weeks ago, there had only been five checkpoints on this road, between Blue Water City and West Flower Picking Town, at the river crossing forts and Blue River Town.

“Young Master One and Two are coming back,” Lingsheng murmured, nodding slightly towards the guard house.

“Because of course they are,” she sighed, eyeing the pair as they came over to join them.

“We wanted to apologize on behalf of our compatriots, Sir Elder, Fellow Travellers,” Xiu Tianyu informed them, smiling a little awkwardly as he attempted not to look at the now properly soaked Lingsheng, especially now that Grandpa Baisheng was sitting right between them.

“Indeed,” Xiao Sheng added, also bowing slightly in apology. “Our Sister in the Shu clan wishes to get to West Flower Picking Town before evening, so she can attend a certain engagement, and it has caused you all some inconvenience.”

“T-the Shu clan?” the teenage son coughed on his chilled juice.

“Oh, how… grand,” his mother sighed as all of the others bowed hurriedly to the pair.

“P-please accept our apologies for inconveniencing such a one,” the merchant added, also bowing formally to the pair, pushing Junjie’s head down at the same time. “And our um… earlier…”

Seeing Grandpa Bai had also proffered a polite salute in return she also followed suit, as did Lingsheng, if only to not stand out from the rest.

“Not at all, not at all,” Xiao Sheng assured them politely, accepting their bows.

“—Please, uh, we hope you can accept this token, in compensation, to share between you…” Xiu Tianyu added quickly, proffering a lacquer-wood box to her, of all people.

Accepting it with a small bow of her own and an appropriately bright smile, she opened it and… found it was full of slices of candied spirit fruit.

As far as quality went, it was absolutely top notch, and probably they meant well; however, just looking at it suddenly reminded her of Sana and Arai. As such, she did manage to keep her smile, just, but immediately proffered it to the others they were sharing lunch with.

“That is a very thoughtful gift, young man,” Grandpa Bai mused as the others eagerly tucked into the expensive food. “Very thoughtful indeed.”

“It isn’t much, Sir,” Xiao Sheng replied politely.

“—Ah, um, if you wish to … er, dry yourselves off, miss…” Xiu Tianyu added, to her and Lingsheng.

-They really are fishing for our names, huh? she mused wryly.

“It’s fine,” Lingsheng shrugged, waving away his concern politely. “It’s just water, and it isn’t going to stop any time soon, it isn’t like umbrellas do more than keep your hair dry at this point.”

“You get used to it,” she agreed with a shrug of her own. “And we will have to re-link the golem anyway, so…”

To illustrate her point, she gestured towards where it was kneeling, silently, like a statue in the downpour.

“Hey, Hey! Brother Xiu!” The silvery-haired girl stuck her head out the door, again waving for the pair. “Big Brother Jian is asking for you!”

“Ah, it seems our senior calls,” Xiao Sheng murmured apologetically, before giving them a polite salute that was mostly for Grandpa Baisheng and the two of them she noted. “Well, if you change your minds, just come over, I am sure there will be no problem at all.”

“Your offer is very kind,” she replied politely.

“I see you are making friends?” Grandpa Baisheng observed wryly, watching the pair return to the shelter of the guard house.

“Is that what it’s called?” she muttered under her breath.

“You poor jaded child,” Baisheng chuckled, brushing a strand of her sodden hair off her cheek.

“You also must belong to some influence, Sir?” the merchant asked Grandpa Baisheng politely, while proffering the lacquer box back to them.

“Ah-Hah, you mean the carriage?” Grandpa Baisheng laughed jovially, as he took the box and sampled a slice. “Mmmm, these are indeed a fine thing.”

“Bit bitter for my taste,” Lingsheng mused, helping herself a slice at the same time.

“Aye, it is impressive,” the merchant continued. “And you even have a golem for it.”

“Alas, it is just a thing I inherited from family,” Baisheng grumbled helplessly, “who had some small titles and style, yet little else. Unfortunately, it is expensive enough to run that you can feel your teeth being pulled, one by one, for every mile it travels! Its sole advantage is that it is a little durable, and spacious. Both valued things in these difficult times.”

“That they are,” the merchant agreed, proffering Grandpa Bai a cup of tea from the communal pot that had been brewing as they talked.

“It could certainly do with a slightly more comfortable set of seats inside,” she conceded, putting a hand to her lower back.

“Well, if you would sit in them properly,” Lingsheng giggled.

Like that, they chattered away about mostly mindless things and the myriad inconveniences the last few weeks had been inflicting on the province in general, until after another thirty minutes the corporal who had taken their talismans and documents when they arrived came over to them.

“The Official wishes to speak to you,” the corporal informed Grandpa Baisheng.

“Of course,” Grandpa Baisheng replied, passing Lingsheng his nearly finished cup of tea and getting up.

This time, Grandpa Baisheng was only gone some five minutes, though, and when he returned, for the first time, she detected actual annoyance in his demeanour.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“They want us to take that group on to West Flower Picking Town,” Grandpa Baisheng replied with a grimace.

“They have a perfectly serviceable vehicle right there,” she pointed out.

“They do, but it is, apparently, too slow. The weather has degraded its capabilities. The Official is also concerned that the young nobles will be inconvenienced by the inevitable delays of other checkpoints, and traffic on the road.”

“—And we will not be?” Lingsheng observed drily.

“Ours is a much faster vehicle than theirs,” Grandpa Baisheng replied. “—And designed for this weather, which they noticed when checking it over. Faugh! I should have just rented a carriage.”

“Refusal is not really an option, is it?” she asked, mostly rhetorically.

“It would delay us, significantly,” Grandpa Baisheng sighed, giving the answer she expected.

“I don’t mind riding the golem,” Lingsheng suggested, her eyes sparkling.

Grandpa Baisheng gave Lingsheng a sideways look that she matched challengingly, until he just ruffled her hair and shook his head.

“Ahh well, it is what it is. It will be a bit cramped, but if you don’t mind sitting in the front section?”

Faced with the possibility of having to socialize with a bunch of young masters for the next few hours, or the more cramped confines of the front driving and observation compartment in this foul weather, she didn’t hesitate in the slightest before choosing the latter.

“I don’t suppose we can drive it?” Lingsheng asked.

“In this weather?” Grandpa Baisheng asked, eyeing the rain sleeting down around them.

“It will be fun!” Lingsheng grinned.

“Your mother will yell at me,” Grandpa Baisheng grunted.

“She lets me fly.” Lingsheng pouted.

“But not in this weather,” he pointed out. “Maybe on the way back—but crashing a bunch of young masters and misses from the Shu clan’s influences into the river or a paddy field, or taking out a bridge, isn’t a good way to get to West Flower Picking Town fast.”

He gave the vehicle one final look and sighed again, then headed back towards the guard house. A few moments later, the driver of the Shu vehicle trotted out and reversed it back out of the road, parking it beside the two mudskippers at the rear of the compound.

“Do you actually want to drive it?” she asked, after they had said their goodbyes to the others, as they led the golem back into place and started to re-attach links—physical ones, for this weather, akin to a horse-harness— between it and the carriage.

“Where is your sense of adventure!” Lingsheng replied, grinning.

“Stuck at a checkpoint somewhere,” she retorted.

“Says the girl who professed to have attained an epiphany in the Dao of Checkpoints,” Lingsheng snickered. “Clearly, your comprehensions are shallower than you thought!”

Shaking her head, she finished attaching the link on her side and initialized them, checking that qi was flowing properly between golem and carriage. It was a fairly straightforward procedure, but by all accounts, you did not want to have one throw up a coupling error when moving fast.

Ling Fei Weng had told her a few times of the sorts of ‘advanced’ training you got for driving these vehicles properly. And a lot of time was apparently spent on what to do if you flipped one at speed.

Recalling that, she could not help but sigh again, because he had… also not come back from Yin Eclipse.

“Problem?” Lingsheng asked, coming around to her side just in time to catch her staring off at the obscured horizon where Yin Eclipse would be.

“Just thinking about those who aren’t here,” she replied with a wan smile.

“They will be fine,” Lingsheng reassured her, giving her a shoulder hug.

“You think so?” she muttered.

“Would you rather be up there with them, or up there with that lot?” Lingsheng asked, nodding towards the group of seven now making their way over to their carriage, led by the Official, the Sergeant and Grandpa Baisheng.

“Point,” she conceded. “Let’s get in, before they do something like ask us to accompany them.”

Lingsheng rolled her eyes and quickly clambered up the inset ladder on the front left that allowed access from the outside to the driving compartments. At its core, the carriage was actually an up-sized mudskipper, she was pretty sure. Likely proportioned to allow soldiers to deploy directly while wearing heavy armour, rather than the much more common lighter variants like the guards here wore. That meant its internal structure still had the front command section, which was retained because occasionally you might need to drive it without the golem, which was much more resource efficient in terms of spirit stones, compared to the carriage itself, she had learned yesterday.

“Which side do you want?” Lingsheng asked, pulling open the top hatch.

“Does it matter?” she shrugged.

“I suppose not,” Lingsheng mused. “I’ll take the driver’s side then, just in case?”

“In case…?” she promoted, rolling her eyes.

“We actually have to drive it,” Lingsheng giggled, though she thought she detected a slightly more serious undertone hidden in her friend’s manner. “Unless you really do want to crash it in a ditch on purpose?”

“No, no thanks,” she replied drily, climbing up to join her.

Inside the driving compartment, there were actually four seats. Driver, co-driver, spotter, she thought, and probably a gunner, not that this carriage still retained any of its usual armaments. Lingsheng was already making herself comfortable in the driver’s one, adjusting it so she could recline a bit more comfortably. Considering the remaining spaces, and the fact that sitting crossways in this vehicle had occasionally been less fun than it seemed over the last day and a half, she picked the co-driver seat, and after depositing Little Blue beside her, also started to make herself comfortable.

Somewhat to her surprise, Lingsheng actually started hitting buttons on the formation interface after a few moments.

“What are you doing?” she asked, curious, because Grandpa Baisheng had controlled the golem up to this point and had been pretty clear they were not to drive.

“One of the advantages of being up here, is you can get a better view,” Lingsheng replied. “Oh, grab a face-plate”—Lingsheng pointed to one of the compartments to her immediate right, just behind the side-front window—“thanks to our talismans you can use them.”

“A… better view?” she asked as she opened it and took out two of the four ceramic-textured half faceplates.

“Uh-huh,” Lingsheng nodded, accepting one of them, before waving her hand through a shimmering formation window.

Curious, she considered how it should be worn, then, bundling her hair up into a loose ponytail, put it on and adjusted the fittings so it sat snugly on her face. Everything was dark for about three seconds, then, the same symbol that was shaped into the talisman Grandpa Baisheng had given them both to change their cultivation realms shimmered before her eyes for a moment, brightening everything until she found herself looking at what was… effectively, the space in front of the vehicle, as if the entire cockpit area was transparent.

“Cool, huh?” Lingsheng informed her as some of the control area returned to her vision, like a translucent mirage.

Turning to look behind her, she blinked as she realised, she could also see clean through the rear of the vehicle and look at its occupants, who were currently settling in and praising how much space there was, while the scholarly Xiao Sheng traded some final pleasantries with the Official at the door.

“You can also, helpfully, view other things with it,” Lingsheng snickered.

“Like?”

“Like view-casts, recorded plays and what not,” Lingsheng replied with aplomb. “It can also function the same way as a scrying formation, though not in this weather. You can also turn the view off, and just have the dark, which is useful for sleeping.”

“All secure in there?” Grandpa Baisheng’s voice unexpectedly echoed in her ear, making her flinch. “I see Lingsheng has broken out the headsets. Don’t poke anything, please.”

“Yes Grandpa!” Lingsheng replied cheerfully.

“In that case—”

She watched with interest as various formation sections lit up on the control formations without them doing anything, and the golem in front of them slowly began to trot forward, down the narrow lane towards the other exit of the checkpoint.

“The whole thing is soul-bound?” she realised, feeling a bit stupid, suddenly, for not having thought of that long ago, because it made perfect sense.

“Yes, though usually, you do not,” Lingsheng replied, taking her helmet off again. “There is a lot of strain for a ‘treasure’ this complex, even if you are in the Dao Step. Tactically, it also means that you can’t snipe the entire thing out, either.”

“Of course there would be a consideration like that,” she sighed, sitting back and watching the various control arrays work on their own.

Lingsheng, meanwhile, just pulled out her Cang Di novel and started to read again, at least until they were a few minutes clear of the checkpoint at which point she put it aside and clambered out of her seat.

“What are you doing now?” she asked, as Lingsheng manually locked the compartment door from the inside.

“Changing my clothes,” Lingsheng replied with aplomb, tugging pointedly at her sodden robe.

“Oh,” she had to drop her head, as in the history of silly questions posed by one, Ling Yu, that was a pretty good one.

“You should as well,” Lingsheng added. “Or this place is going to get wretchedly humid in half an hour.”

Considering her own light robe, which while no means as sodden as Lingsheng's, was indeed heading well past ‘very damp’, she had to concede Lingsheng had a point there.

Taking a towel and a spare set of clothes out of her own storage ring, she sighed and moved over to sit in the navigator’s seat beside the more open area nearer the door.

“You do not realise how much you miss high quality rings until you do,” she observed, starting to dry her hair.

With her proper ring, she could actually designate clothing via a small formation which via the convenience of being soul-synchronized could summon and unsummon garments directly onto her body. Sadly, the one Grandpa Baisheng had given her for this trip was just a bog-standard one, though she understood why. Rings with advanced formation functions were not something most people could just buy. She had even had to unbind the few bits of soul-bound clothing she possessed, because they were all potentially recognizable as the property of one ‘Ling Yu’.

“Suffering is Life,” Lingsheng replied with a smirk, tugging off her sodden over robe.

“Is that why you keep reading those Cang Di novellas?” she joked.

“—And apparently culture has not made it to these shores,” Lingsheng retorted with a giggle.

Rather than grace that with a reply, she tossed her towel at Lingsheng, who, despite having one arm still in her wet gown, still managed to catch it, which she felt was rather unfair, all things considered.

Abruptly, a feeling like she had just been goosed ran down her neck, accompanied by the un-canny feeling that they were not alone in the compartment.

“What in the…?”

She stared around for a moment, before realising it was dispersed soul sense, unable to return to…

“The fat idiot just tried to use soul sense to look at the inner workings of the carriage,” Lingsheng grunted. “He didn’t see in here. The shielding on this is capable of obfuscating even Dao Step experts.” Lingsheng added, finally pulling off her wet robe and tossing it over her seat with a grimace. “It was just because we have the talismans, so we get the perception link, thanks to synching with the headsets.”

“Oh.” She sat back and sighed, then picked up the headset.

Looking into the rear, she saw that the scholarly one, Xiao Sheng, was hurriedly apologising to Grandpa Baisheng.

“—You have just passed road-marker thirty-nine, Huling village in eighteen miles…”

-Huling village?

Momentarily caught off guard by the announcement from the onboard navigation formation, she found herself staring out at the rain-obscured road ahead of them.

“We have been travelling for six hours and we are only just reaching Huling?”

“Maybe we will hit thirty-three checkpoints after all,” Lingsheng mused.

…

Huling village was, she had to concede, rather picturesque. Perched on higher ground between the Blue River and a sprawling maze of rock spires reminiscent of the outer valleys of Yin Eclipse, it commanded an excellent view over the surrounding region, and also held the distinction of being one of the oldest continually settled communities in the province. Before West Flower Picking Town had risen to eclipse it, it had been the critical junction between the eastern and western parts of the province.

It sported two ancient temple-shrines, a famous pagoda said to hold an inscription by the Blue Water Sage himself, several widely admired teahouses and was the inspiration for the popular saying ‘Ah, such and such is on the road to Huling, huh.’

All these things she knew from having visited it once, three years prior, to perform a mind-numbing ritual at one of said ancient temple shrines and give an offering on behalf of all the juniors in the Ling clan at said famous pagoda. She had been wined and dined at both widely admired teahouses. At the time, ritual aside, she had thought it a fun day trip thanks to being able to teleport directly there…

Now, as she stood under an umbrella which offered scant protection against the claustrophobic weather, standard ritual with passports and documents completed, considering the two-dozen other vehicles already at the sprawling checkpoint on the outskirts of the village, she felt her journey along the Dao of Checkpoints had… reached an important threshold.

“So, this is why ‘being on the road to Huling’ is used as a euphemism for running late,” she mused, looking up at the sky. “Truly, rather than reading ten thousand scrolls or books, it's better to have travelled ten thousand miles.”

Ling Lingsheng who had taken a seat on a nearby block, glanced up from her novel and gave her a look—which she opted to ignore.

The question, really, was whether or not this Huling Gate, as she decided to style it, had to be forced, could be navigated purely through comprehensions, or whether a fortunately acquired talisman treasure from the Shu clan would do the trick.

The Shu group had made a beeline straight for the guard officials’ post, which was also being run by the Su clan, it seemed, based on the flags flying. Grandpa Baisheng had gone with them, taking all their documents.

“Ah, I see you know the classics…”

Turning back to the speaker, she blinked as she found herself looking at a beautiful young man. Garbed in a simple yet elegant green scholar’s robe, his long black hair tied up loosely, and sheltering beneath a matching green umbrella decorated with a vibrant tree picked out in black, red and white, he almost felt like a scroll painting come to life—

“Ah, thank you for your consideration, Sir Scholar,” she replied decisively, giving him a polite bow to acknowledge the compliment.

Even the slight bow he returned was… crisp, elegant… cultured.

“We should go to the teahouse,” she murmured to Lingsheng, glancing pointedly across the road, at the charmingly rustic three-story building that was probably as old as the checkpoint itself. Or maybe older.

“Mmmm, we should,” Lingsheng agreed, stashing her novel in her robe and standing up.

He stared at them both for a moment, then just nodded gracefully and to her surprise did just walk off—towards the teahouse.

“I believe he is also going to the Teahouse,” Lingsheng observed wryly.

“…”

-Fates, go… now it looks like we are following him, she complained, watching the scholar cross the road and head inside. Ah well, it is what it is.

The teahouse wasn’t one of the two she had visited before. Those were exclusive, elegant experiences, built around stylish gardens and lavish courtyards, where their guests could chat, or listen to beautiful music, while admiring the views out over the river plain. Part market, part meeting house, part inn, The Huling Checkpoint Teahouse—styled as the ‘Lixi Inn’ on a big gaudy sign hanging over the entrance—was, in contrast, a sprawling, age-scarred building, arranged organically around what was probably a central courtyard.

A few qi-beasts were stashed in the stable beside it, including an impressive black warhorse that was practically the same size as the golem pulling their carriage.

A few merchants had also set up shop in the shelter of the front veranda, overlooking the road, and were still making half an effort to hawk their goods. The one nearest where they crossed over was selling luss-cloth umbrellas, woven hats and various charms, while another, nearer the stable was displaying some basic talismans, pills and a bunch of battered sub-golden core manuals. A third, staffed by a very bored looking young girl offered a selection of things caught in the nearby river—fish, buckets of clams and crayfish and some spirit vegetation.

“Hey, young ladies…?”

“—You two.”

Ignoring the umbrella-seller’s pitch, her attention was drawn away from admiring the black horse, which was at least an immortal-realm beast, by a glum-looking sandy-haired young woman in guard armour, who was standing next to the doorway into the main hall of the teahouse.

“—Recognise any of these?”

She found a bundle of papers shoved at them, each one depicting a ‘person of interest’.

“Mmmm, can’t say I do,” Lingsheng replied, giving them a quick riffle, before passing them to her. “What did they do?”

“Says on ’em,” the young woman grunted. “If you know something, contact Magistrate Su’s Office.”

“I see,” she nodded politely, having experienced this ‘ritual’ as well, when they stopped the previous night, also making a point of looking through them.

Half of them were bandits, or those wanted in connection with smuggling and such, that she had seen before. The new ones were a youth wanted in relation to the murder of a Quan clan young master in a teahouse in the village, and a courtesan who disappeared right after poisoning a number of people at a banquet, including three officials who had been competing to buy her out.

A few others, the majority of which had been circulating for years—including for information on the whereabouts of the infamous Jeo Zhongshan that had a bounty of two heavenly jades—were pasted on the board behind the guardswoman. Of the new ones, the most prominent was asking for information about suspected ringleaders of the Five Fans in the region. Interestingly, someone had also recently refreshed the one offering a reward for leads on the missing Saintess from the Ruan clan and doubled its reward to a whole heavenly jade as well.

“Oh yeah, the magistrate is also offering rewards over the suspected kidnappings of several military officials,” the young guardswoman added, passing them a further sheet.

This time, she did have to muster all her skills at keeping a neutral face, because the first of the three flyers, issued under the auspice of the Military Authority, was actually asking about Arai and Sana’s father, Jun Han. His ‘family’ were apparently offering a reward of 500 spirit stones for any information about his whereabouts after his estate in West Flower Picking Town was destroyed.

“If we see them, we will surely do our civic duty,” she replied blandly, giving the young woman her best engaged smile, as she passed the flyers to Lingsheng.

“—Also, as Immortals, I have to remind you, that licences for flying treasures have been mandated for renewal by the new regional governor, Lord Quan,” the guards woman continued, jerking her head towards one of the posters plastered on the notice board beside her.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Having also had this reminder at four checkpoints now, she just nodded politely, inwardly relieved to just move on from the Jun Han flyer.

“I can’t imagine anyone wants to fly in this weather,” Lingsheng observed, tilting her umbrella to glance skywards.

“Aye, well, it’s all there on the wall; ignorance isn’t gonna wash well with the magistrate,” the guardswoman grunted, giving her a look that screamed ‘do as you like’.

“We understand,” she murmured, giving the guardswoman a polite salute, which was not returned.

“—Momma, momma, can we go look the horsey, while we wait for papa?”

“Later, Anya…”

While they were talking, a tall, dark-haired young woman wearing a stylish, off-the-shoulder red gown and beige over-robe, carrying an umbrella painted with roses in one hand and trying to marshal a six-year-old girl wearing a cute rose-coloured hat with pointy black ears, who was determined to go look at the black horse in the other, had come up behind them.

“—Ah, excuse me!” The guardswoman called out to the pair before they could walk inside, then jerked her head for both her and Lingsheng to move on. “—Little lady, do you recognise any of these people?”

-She can be polite to them, but not us?

Pushing that somewhat jaded thought aside, she followed Lingsheng through into the teahouse proper, leaving the guardswoman who was now proffering some of the sheets to the distracted young girl and her mother behind.

Despite the rain the hour and the number of vehicles at the checkpoint, the main hall, which was open to the upper story, was surprisingly empty. Somewhere, someone was plucking at a guqin, playing a rather archaic rendition of the ‘classic’ from the Shan Dynasty, ‘High Mountains Flowing Water’. Looking over the establishment’s main hall, though there was really only the elegant scholar, who was busy putting his umbrella away, a serving boy, who was lethargically brushing the floor and…

“—Look, I’ll give you a whole earthly jade for it!”

—A slight young woman, dressed in a pale red and white silk gown, her dark hair exquisitely made up and plaited, was remonstrating vociferously with a buff youth, clad in expensive silks, who was seated at a table overlooking the central courtyard.

“No! This volume is a limited edition!” the youth growled, folding his arms. “Five spirit jades? You could offer me—”

The dark-haired young woman didn’t even hesitate as she produced a fistful more spirit jades to add to the small pile already on the table between them. At the same time, she noticed Lingsheng quietly slip her own novel deep inside the front of her gown, for some reason.

-Ah… she caught the familiar design of the cover of a volume of ‘One with The Spear’ and could only shake her head.

“I guess we claim a table on the second floor and order some tea?” she suggested, glancing at the serving youth as she folded up her umbrella.

“Uh-huh,” Lingsheng, who she noted had also firmly put her between herself and the girl trying to persuade the youth to part with his book, nodded.

-Truly, the allure of that series is mysterious… she sighed, as she found her elegant scholar was also walking over to the dark-haired young woman.

“—Not even for a heavenly jade!” the youth declared, lifting his chin defiantly and sitting back in his seat.

“A heavenly jade, you say?” the elegant scholar mused, considering the book, then the youth, then the girl.

“Oi, Xue, gimme a heavenly jade!” the young woman snapped, holding out her hand to him.

“…”

“Come on, how do you not have one?” the young woman muttered as she looked on, wondering suddenly if the weather was messing with her perception.

“Hey, you.” Lingsheng beckoned to the serving boy, who gave them the most ‘who, me?’ look she had seen in a while. “Bring us some tea and snacks to a table upstairs.”

Without waiting for a reply, Lingsheng led her straight for the stairs to the second floor, not quite rushing, but certainly not lingering, either.

Reaching the top of the stairs, she found that there were several more people scattered around. A family were eating lunch a few tables away, while a middle-aged merchant-looking fellow was sipping some wine and glaring out across the road at the checkpoint compound. Lingsheng glanced this way and that, then deliberately led them to a table that was not within the line of sight of the trio downstairs and plonked herself down with a sigh at a table with a view of the central courtyard.

“Do you know her?” she asked, taking a seat opposite somewhat surprised, because this was perhaps the first time she had ever seen Lingsheng so… wary.

“Mmm, I like that book; she will pester me for it,” Lingsheng grumbled, which wasn’t really an answer.

“I just can’t see the appeal,” she mused. “Now, if it was something like ‘Record of a Scholar Prince’s Journey’…”

“—Can you even find copies of it, these days?” Lingsheng asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Grandpa gave me them,” she replied with a grin.

“Ah, that explains it,” Lingsheng sighed, shaking her head now. “Is that why you were so interested in the walking scroll painting downstairs?”

“Walking…” she opened her mouth to refute that, then just sat back and puffed out her cheeks. “This daughter has no idea what you mean.”

“Right…” Lingsheng rolled her eyes back at her, and then glanced back down to the ground floor. “Anyway, I know we are in Huling, but seriously, how long does it take to walk up the stairs with a pot of tea?”

“Maybe he is also participating in the book auction down below,” she joked. “You could always go and check?”

“…”

Lingsheng gave her a sideways look and then just shook her head.

Rolling her eyes, she produced a jar of wine—snagged from the inn they had stayed in the night before—and two cups and poured them both out a measure.

“—Also, aren’t you too young to be drinking spirits?” Lingsheng asked with a smirk, taking her cup.

“Xiayu has no idea what you mean,” she replied, downing her cupful in a single gulp and then pouring another. “That said, don’t you think there is a bit of a weird vibe about this place?”

It was hard to put her finger on exactly what it was, but ever since she had gotten here—since they had stopped at Huling, actually—she had been feeling weirdly on edge.

“It’s the rain,” Lingsheng replied, finishing her own cup and helping herself to a dumpling. “Probably… or maybe they used persis sugar in those sweets the fatty shared?”

“…”

She held up the wine cup and stared at her hand, which was not trembling, then sighed and downed the second cup.

“I think grandpa would have commented were that the case,” she mused, putting the cup back on the table and looking around the upper floor. “Rather, it’s more like… anticipation?”

The other groups nearby were all preoccupied in their own matters—the family having a quiet argument about the polite way to drink tea in public, the merchant still gazing gloomily out at the distant checkpoint. Just across from them, on her left side, a young, dark-haired woman in a red gown was sipping tea while gazing contemplatively at the little pavilion in the centre of the courtyard below.

There, she found two cultivators, seated in its shelter, either side of a stone table with an inset Go board.

The one on the left was a tall, martial-looking man of early middle age, with long black hair and a beard, clad in a deep red martial robe. His weapon of choice—a spear, the same height as he was, adorned only by a long red scarf tied to the space between blade and haft—was propped against the empty chair beside him. Currently, he was contemplating the board, with narrowed eyes, chin on palm, absently turning a black stone over in his free hand.

His opponent, a broad-shouldered, bald-headed man with a dark bushy beard, dressed in a travel-worn sky-blue and white robe reminiscent, rather unusually of a wandering monk, was watching the board and sipping his tea. His weapon—a plain-looking ‘fork spear’, with a broader middle prong, adorned with a blue and white tassel and a charm of what looked like tortoise shell—was resting on the stone bench behind him.

Nearby, a young, dark-haired woman, her hair held up by a silver hairpin and wearing a pale grey robe that was… rather too short in the leg for her own personal tastes, was sitting cross-legged at the sheltered edge of the courtyard, elegantly playing the guqin.

The ambience about the whole scene, with the musical accompaniment, was profoundly weird, though. Both were physically imposing, in their own rather distinct ways. The martial expert presence was faintly stifling, even as she felt drawn to hang on his every move, while the old monk left her feeling like she was staring at clouds in the sky, yet in spite of their evident ‘presence’ in that moment, she could not help but feel as if she were gazing at a picture, rather than reality. She could easily linger on individual details—their weapons, their clothes, the board itself, which held a game of… disconcerting simplicity—yet as soon as she shifted her focus away, it all just melted back into… normality? Two men, a go board, and a game, and a not very remarkable game at that.

The more she considered it, the odder that felt as well. Black and White were pretty evenly matched, and both were clearly experts of some calibre, yet had she played a game like this in front of others, she would have been roundly mocked, she couldn’t help but feel.

—Tak.

With a grimace, the martial expert finally placed his stone… the sound of its placement ringing oddly loud in her ears, despite the rain and the distance, almost as if she were right there, at the table and she gasped softly, as if goosed, because in that moment, it was as if some undefinable pressure had been released from inside her. The subtle sense of nervous anticipation and much of the claustrophobic stagnation she had put down to the weather melting away, as if it never was.

-Don’t tell me, that that feeling was… all him? she wondered, staring at the pair, cold sweat prickling her arms, then back at the board—

This time she did flinch, because it was as if the whole nature of the game she had just been looking at, had changed—her prior understanding of it, of the two gambits… everything she had seen moments before was like a distant dream, and now…

Now, it was still a bizarre, honestly, rather mediocre game, she had to admit. Just that placed stone had marginally shifted the momentum in favour of black.

-Still, why does this remind me of Grandpa Bai and Old Kai? She found herself wondering, as the old monk put aside his teacup and with a sigh, leant forward to look at the board.

Their games, those she had seen, at least, in the Myriad Blossom Teahouse, had never felt this… well, like this, though, but there was something of an undeniable commonality…

“Complexity to simplicity, a move in the moment, huh.”

Someone, a woman, speaking nearby, jarred her out of her attempt to recall the ambience of one of those games in more detail.

Looking around, she found her elegant scholar and the young mother in the stylish gown had both at some point come up to the second floor… and were standing next to the red-gowned young woman’s table, also gazing down at the central pavilion.

“It really is a classic gambit, is it not?” the scholar mused.

“Is he really going to try that line on every beauty in this teahouse?” she muttered, feeling suddenly quite put out at his words.

“…”

Lingsheng stared at her, then burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” she grumbled, pouring herself another cup of the wine and knocking it back.

“This, I dunno, everything,” Lingsheng sighed, wiping tears from her eyes. “You professed to admire ‘A Record of a Scholar’s Journey…’ and yet… truly, it is as the sages say: to know a thing, one must experience it.”

“…”

Momentarily speechless, she stared at Lingsheng, wondering if she could get away with throwing some food at her.

“Hey, Xue, call your junior sister up here.” Lingsheng added, calling out to the scholar.

“My…?” her elegant scholar, who had just been lifting the red-robed woman’s umbrella—a fetching white one, decorated by a swirl of deep red lotus flowers, that felt oddly familiar for some reason—so the young mother with him could sit down, turned to their table and stared at them.

“Wait… you know him?” she finally asked, turning to look at the scroll-painting-like scholar.

“Uh-huh,” Lingsheng grinned. “I’ll—”

“I knew I recognised you from somewhere!”

She choked on her wine as the young woman in the pale red and white silk gown from below, who had been trying to buy the book, appeared like a ghost beside their table.

“—one elementally attuned Dao Jade.” Lingsheng declared, putting her book on the table with a deadpan expression.

“One…” she stared at Lingsheng, then at the book, then at the young woman, then at the scholar and the others, feeling like she was… suddenly not quite a part of the same reality as the others.

“Do you think this seat is made of spirit stones?” the young woman gasped.

“It’s a time-limited offer,” Lingsheng chuckled.

“Time limited?” the young mother coughed.

“Uh-huh,” Lingsheng nodded. “Just because it’s you, Shin.”

“—And you know…” She turned back to Lingsheng, then just groaned and poured herself more wine. “—of course, you know her as well.”

“Until our grandpa gets here,” Lingsheng continued, her grin widening. “Then you will have to pay three times that.”

“…”

“You horrible child,” Shin abruptly slid around the table, and before any of them could move, had grabbed Lingsheng by her cheeks and was pulling them. “Why should I not just toss you in the river!”

“Becwub we embed twavling wib a grup ov…” Lingsheng mumbled.

“Travelling with?” Shin repeated, as she looked on not sure whether to laugh or be genuinely concerned at this point.

“Ib u dwon’t belieb…” Lingsheng tried to continue, her gaze narrowing, despite the stupid hold Shin currently had on her.

“Anyway, who is your grandpa?” Shin sniffed, letting go of Lingsheng’s cheeks. “I should send you back to your poor mother, if only for her peace of mind!”

“Well, if you don’t believe me…” Lingsheng trailed off, rubbing her face, though there was a faintly calculating look in her eyes. “Feel free to pull up a chair and...”

“How is it worse than outside?”

“You ask me, but who…”

“You there—!”

“—this daughter’s dress is just… uggh.”

“Ah!—I bet they are upstairs!”

Almost on cue, amidst the emerging hubbub on the ground floor, the voice of Xiu Tianyu drifted up from below.

“…find out,” Lingsheng continued, her grin widening.

Moments later footsteps on the stairs heralded the arrival of some of the Shu group. A flushed, bright-eyed youth was in the lead, with Xiu Tianyu following right behind him, then Jian Chen, who she recognised from before, the silver-haired girl—whose name was Mei—and a tall, golden-haired young woman wearing a veil, who had only been introduced as Senior Sister Ao. Ao’s two female junior sisters, also veiled and looking around with glum expressions, brought up the rear. Senior Sister Ao immediately spotted them, and sighed softly, shaking her head for some reason.

“Young Master Xiu, Young Master Jian, Lady Ao, it is a huge honour to have such esteemed disciples of the Shu grace my uncle’s humble inn!” the bright-eyed youth was gushing. “Please, anything you require, while you are staying here…”

“Ah, Miss Xiayu! Miss Zhihuan!” Xiu Tianyu also zeroed in on them immediately and called out brightly, giving them a wave.

“Friends of yours?” Shin asked Lingsheng, raising an eyebrow.

“Mmmm,” Lingsheng’s grin was so broad now that it was starting to turn a little creepy, in her personal opinion.” So, will it be one… or will you end up paying three?”

“The seats they found for us are not bad, Senior Brother,” the silver-haired girl, Mei, sniffed.

“Is grandpa with you?” she asked the group, noting a few of the group, and Grandpa Baisheng, were still absent.

“They were just behind us, Miss Xiayu,” Xiu Tianyu replied with a shrug. “And indeed, this is a most excellent table.”

“It isn’t like there is any shortage,” she replied neutrally.

“Young Miss, you should be more respectful!” the bright-eyed youth hissed.

“They are with us,” she pointed blandly, what should have been thoroughly self-evident.

“They…” his gaze flitted to the food and wine they already had on the table, which was notably not from the teahouse.

“Your servants can clearly only see when it suits them,” Lingsheng added, a little more archly.

“Ah, a small misunderstanding, I am sure,” the youth muttered, glancing downstairs with a frown.

“In that case, bring us tea, wine, whatever our companions here want…” Xiu Tianyu smoothly cut in.

“—And a selection of every speciality dish on your menu,” she murmured, deliberately half turning her gaze back to the Go game below, where the old monk was still pondering his move.

“—and I am sure we can overlook it,” Lingsheng added, fixing the youth with a withering smile.

“Ah, we… um,” the youth coughed, not meeting Lingsheng’s gaze at all, which was unsurprising given he was barely Soul Foundation.

She had to assume he was a relative of the owner, who given they were not here themselves, escorting such guests, was presumably out of the teahouse for some reason.

“Is there a problem?” Lingsheng asked brightly.

“No, no… just we do not normally cook lunches, ah, my apologies, I will get onto it right away… right away… with—”

“—They are with us, too,” she gestured absently to the red-robed woman’s table and Shin, who were all watching this play unfold with slightly bemused, or maybe amused, expressions.

“Of course… of course,” the youth nodded, ducking his head and hiding his grimace behind his hands. “With your leave, young masters, ladies?”

Xiu Tianyu gave the youth a sideways look that just screamed ‘Yes, now hop to it!’.

“Look,” Mei, who had been quietly simmering in the background, finally spoke up as the youth scuttled off downstairs, with all the pomp of a kicked dog. “You didn’t even—”

“It’s fine, Mei,” Jian Chen finally spoke up, putting a hand on her arm.

“B-but Senior Brother!” Mei muttered, glaring at the two of them.

-Ah, I guess we should have at least stood, she sighed, suddenly regretting her moment of pique. We are trying to keep a low profile, after all.

“Just let it be,” Jian Chen murmured, ushering her into a seat, which she took, flushing a little.

“This table is indeed not bad,” Lady Ao mused, taking the seat beside her without any real ceremony and glancing out into the courtyard. “And… hmmm?”

Her veiled gaze fell on the warrior and the monk and for a split second, she swore she saw the young woman’s eyes widen in shock, beneath her veil, before recovering.

“Interesting, a game of Go… huh.”

“Go?” Xiu Tianyu, who was looking a little put out, she couldn’t help but notice, at having missed claiming the seat right next to her, stepped over to the balcony and peered down. “I must profess, I have a little ability with the game. I wonder what sort of strategy is playing out?”

“Why don’t you explain it to us,” Lingsheng suggested, sipping her wine and ignoring the sideways look Shin was now giving her.

“Well, um…” Xiu Tianyu gave Lingsheng a slightly accusatory look, which melted into nothingness when met with an innocent, encouraging smile from Lingsheng that should have been classed as a forbidden technique, and served as a reminder that she did have a Heavenly Physique and a frankly… unnerving Heart Force method tailor-made for it.

“Black, that is the martial expert, is… has been playing a very aggressive game,” Xiu Tianyu elaborated, again giving Lingsheng a slightly more disconcerted look, that she again, met with a lethally innocent expression. “He has spent what are probably… the last eight-five turns, aggressively taking territory—it looks like an adaption of the Flood Dragon gambit. His opponent, white, meanwhile, has been matching that, with what looks like a Rising Moon strategy. That is… um, where he has built up his position with the end game in mind.”

While he was speaking, two serving girls and the youth who had been sweeping had come up, with trays of tea, wine and some plates of appetizers which they put down on the table between where they were and the red-robed woman and the others.

“I see,” Lingsheng mused, nodding.

“As you can see…” Xiu Tianyu continued, seemingly gaining a bit of confidence from the way Lingsheng was, to all intents, listening raptly to him, “black has a very large lead in territory, but white’s position on the board is very stable, so every move he has to make from here on out will, um, count quite a bit?”

“So, which strategy should win out?” Lingsheng asked, frowning slightly.

“Well, normally, black—”

With a *clack*, the youth, who had been gloomily moving dishes from the nearby table to theirs, nearly knocked over her wine jar with the one the inn was providing.

“Ah, s-sorry, m-my Lord,” the serving girl who was helping, bobbed her head hurriedly as Xiu Tianyu stopped, and Mei also turned to glare at the pair.

“It’s fine,” Xiu Tianyu coughed, giving the young girl what he probably hoped was a winsome smile, before turning back to look at the courtyard below. “Anyway, where was I?”

“—You were about to elaborate on black’s strategy?” the young mother, whose name she still hadn’t managed to pick up, asked, while putting a hand on the arm of the other maid, serving their table, who was also looking a bit jittery for some reason, as she also put down her tray a little heavily.

“Ah, yes,” Xiu Tianyu nodded. “Black would have overplayed by now, and white’s position would be unassailable.”

“So, the old monk is likely to win, hmmm,” Lingsheng mused.

“Conventionally, yes,” Xiu Tianyu agreed, giving her a bright smile. “However, black has managed to successfully prosecute such an aggressive game that, slightly against the… um… choices, made, the game is still in the balance.”

“Against the choices?” Lingsheng echoed, gazing down at the board, where the old monk was still pondering his move, while the black-haired warrior looked on, absently swirling his drink in his cup, seemingly more interested in his opponent than the board itself.

Xiu Tianyu coughed.

“Far be it for me to… er, cast judgement on those playing below, but… their choices made in the development of this game appear to be… well, it would be charitable to call them radical. Were this game played in the Shu Pavilion, it would not have developed quite like this.”

“No, I don’t imagine it would,” Lady Ao mused.

“Oh?” Lingsheng asked.

“Honestly, no self-respecting player of the game on black would proceed with such a reckless gambit like Flood Dragon this deep into a game when faced with a competently set up Rising Moon,” Xiu Tianyu elaborated with what he probably felt was a knowing sigh. “As someone who has ranked quite highly in our sect’s tournaments, it is such a naive strategy, and it has such a hollow defence that white should easily be able crack.

“The problem here, is that white is squandering opportunities to close the game off. For a game in a teahouse, it is what it is, I suppose, but I regret to say, Miss Zhihuan, that if you wish to learn anything from this game, it should be that you should not play a game like this. The way this has played out… is almost without a wider strategy, like neither really know how to play properly and are just making whatever moves they feel like?”

“How would you go about finishing it up, then?” from her table, the red-robed woman asked, as ‘Anya’, the daughter of the young mother, accompanied by a large fluffy spirit-dog, bounced up the stairs clearly pleased about something.

Behind Anya, meanwhile, she noticed that a second group of seven youths were also coming upstairs, all of them dressed in the robes of the Sheng clan’s Azure Astral Dragon Sect.

“Well, hmmm…” Xiu Tianyu coughed again and turned back to the board in the courtyard. “If I were black, given that the aggression of the early game was what it was, I would shift from a Flood Dragon to the Eight Diagram Spear, and strangle white’s remaining territory, the game would be over in… twenty, maybe thirty moves?”

“And what if you were white?” Lingsheng added sweetly.

“Swap Rising Moon to—”

“—Pathetic, is this what qualifies as ‘commentary’ in the Shu Pavilion?” one of the Sheng Group, a fair-haired youth with a ‘pretty’ face, which she would not have trusted to sell her mud from a puddle, suddenly cut in.

-Oh, come on… she groaned inwardly as the rest of that group, who had been looking around at the empty tables, formed up around their compatriot, casting judging, challenging looks at Xiu Tianyu’s companions while also rather openly admiring her, Lingsheng and the rest of the women.

“Anyway, I would shift Rising Moon to Sovereign Sun or Four Gates, to stop conceding ground,” Xiu Tianyu gamefully continued, after giving the group a dirty glare. “Then—”

“—Aren’t you just trying to flatter these ladies with empty words?” one of his compatriots cut in, his gaze flitting over the rest of them in a way that made her feel unpleasantly ‘looked at’.

“—Well, a worthless toad can only croak with thirst,” another of them snickered from the rear.

“—And then just wait for black to invariably compromise their strategy and collapse them!” Xiu Tianyu finished, flatly, glaring at the Sheng group now.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the dog tugging at the daughter’s sleeve, its body-language giving her a subtle ‘this is bad’ vibe.

-Even the dog knows this is trouble, great…

“One could also say that your inelegant attitude is unbecoming of the prestige of such a longstanding sect as the Azure Astral Dragon Pavilion,” the scholar cut in smoothly.

“Inelegant?” one of the others in the group sneered. “Who are you to dare speak to Young Lord Quan?”

-And they really are spoiling for a fight, for some reason… she grimaced, glancing at Lingsheng, who was… oddly, staring not at the group, but at the wine jar.

“Heh…” Lingsheng’s smile suddenly turned absolutely vicious and she hurled the jar straight at the ‘baby-faced’ youth, who she had to assume was ‘Young Lord Quan’, who had initially interrupted Xiu Tianyu.

Young Lord Quan, who probably could have caught it, or at least only suffered some mild indignity of being splashed in wine, did the most acrobatic and martial avoidance of a wine jar she had seen in some years, leaving it to sail right out of the teahouse window… and land in the courtyard with a distant crash.

Half of Quan’s group flinched, visibly as well, which was… weird. Doubly so, given that, thanks to her talisman, she could tell, roughly, that most of them were Golden Immortals, and the leader, ‘Quan’, was at least a peak Ancient Immortal, and Lingsheng had tossed the jar pretty slowly.

The red-robed woman, meanwhile, had also gotten to her feet and plucked the lid off her unopened wine jar. She stared at the inside for a long moment, then at the Sheng group, then very deliberately poured it over the veranda into the courtyard below.

“…”

“Were… you expecting some problem with the wine?” Shin asked, her eyes narrowing as well.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the mother and father of the family who had been eating their lunch dragging their shocked children away, and the merchant…

-When did he leave? She blinked, realising he was no longer there.

“How… how… HOW DARE you attack young Lord Quan!” one of the youths snarled, his intent grasping out viciously towards Lingsheng—

His intent scattered chaotically as Jian Chen, of all people, deflected it.

“Mmm, your sword intent isn’t bad,” the youth sneered, focusing on Jian Chen. “But it—”

The youth abruptly swayed backwards as Jian Chen drew a purple-blue bladed one-handed sword and thrust directly at the youth’s chest.

“Careful there, young master,” the youth replied, taking a further step back and raising his hands, a disassembling smile on his face. “Could it be that your Shu clan is actually attacking our Sheng clan? On Azure Astral Territory? What if—” the youth abruptly crumpled to the ground, qi bleeding chaotically out of his body.

“You…” one of the other youths pointed at Jian Chen, then turned and yelled. “HELP! YOUNG LORD QUAN IS BEING ATTACKED!”

The open space of the upper story ate up the yell like a smothering blanket.

“I am sure it goes against your instincts, but killing them is a bad idea,” Shin added to Jian Chen, who had gotten to his feet now, a faint shadow of murderous martial intent clinging to him that brought out a cold sweat on her exposed skin.

“Young Lord Shu is being attacked!” a voice suddenly cried out from downstairs.

“So, that is how it is,” Lady Ao murmured, getting to her feet.

“Lady Ao, please,” Jian Chen held up his hand, stepping forward to stand between them and the group. “I will—”

“—There is that brat, get her!”

Three figures in wet travelling robes, wearing bamboo hats, appeared like ghosts at the top of the stairs, the lead one, who had just shouted, already lunging for Anya and the spirit dog, who had taken refuge by that table—

She never even saw the girl’s mother move. One second she was just standing there, watching, the next she was between the three, grasping the two trying to flank past her, to get to her daughter, one foot already resting on the shocked lead attacker's chest—

With a sickening crunch, his shout still on his lips, he slammed into the balcony on the far side of the stairs, spun over, and through it, hitting the table beyond which turned into a cloud of debris. The two she had just grabbed shuddered in her grip as she turned halfway, their limbs visibly deforming, before she dropped them like broken puppets on the floor.

“Uwu, mommy is scary…” Anya muttered, from beneath the table.

“Your abilities are not bad,” Young Lord Quan remarked, his grin broadening suddenly as he rounded on her. “Not bad at—”

Jian Chen moved with a blur, lashing out with a straight thrust towards Young Lord Quan—

“You on the other hand…” Young Lord Quan simply took a step to the side, a dark green crystalline poniard as long as his arm appearing in his hand to deflect the blow. “Well, I heard Eastern Azure’s number one expert in this generation is in the Shu Pavilion—” he mused with a sneer. “But clearly, you—”

“—Talk too much,” Shin murmured, drifting past Jian Chen, grasping the hand that held the poniard and effortlessly redirecting it straight at Young Lord Quan’s face.

The youth tried to break free, and then his eyes widened and he quickly did an acrobatic twist, barely avoiding slamming into the ground… for a moment at least, because Shin just followed him around, keeping the forward inertia of the movement, before twisting his wrist until it audibly snapped.

With an agonized snarl, he rolled away, and then had to roll again, as, with a shockingly effortless step, she overcame the distance he had just made, the poniard already stabbing down.

Meanwhile, the remainder of the group from the Sheng clan had shimmering symbols of a formation coalescing around them.

{Devouring Dragon—

Jian Chen gave his head half a shake, then drew a second, pale azure one-handed sword out and cut directly at the cultivator forming the centre of the formation—

The runes rippled, then collapsed as, with a *ching* of stone on whatever material Jian Chen’s swords were made out of, the formation leader blocked his blow with a pair of what looked like claw-gauntlets with…

“Arborundum, huh,” Lady Ao observed, as Jian Chen was forced to take a half step back, his arms shaking. “—And you are also a Dao Immortal Body Cultivator. Interesting.”

“D-Dao Immortal!” Mei, who had drawn her own sword at this point, gasped and took half a step back.

“You have good eyes,” the formation leader sneered at her, before glancing over at Lord Quan, who was still barely evading Shin.

“Stay beside me, all of you,” Xiu Tianyu instructed the rest of them, while stepping in front of Mei, a broad sword appearing in his own hand, which he levelled at the Sheng group. “It seems we have learned a lot about the style of—”

In the distance, three dull cracks, like alchemical cauldrons exploding, rang out. A moment later, the entire teahouse juddered as a shockwave washed through it, tugging painfully at her qi as it passed.

Xiu Tianyu staggered, as did Mei, and some of the Sheng group—

Like striking snakes, both of the nearest Sheng experts lunged for Xiu Tianyu, as if they had never been touched by the shockwave—

Both crumpled to the ground like stringless puppets as, like a ghost, the young mother stepped behind them and hit them with palm strikes on the rear of their heart gates.

“Gah, Quan, stop messing about with that bitch and—” the formation leader, who had just deflected another blow of Jian Chen’s, started to call out to Young Lord Quan, only to have to break off as Shin, who had been easily controlling her opponent, tossed him right back into the middle of that group… forcing them to scatter.

At that point, Jian Chen, who had been advancing again, suddenly swore and ducked, cutting upwards with his swords, barely deflecting a ghostly red crescent of sword intent that seemingly unsheathed itself where his head would have been.

“—And, I guess it is time to end this farce,” Scholar Xue sighed, snapping his open fan shut.

The air stagnated, as if the shockwave from before had somehow rolled backwards, then settled like a smothering blanket over the entire upper floor of the teahouse.

All of the Sheng group gasped, dropping to their knees, as the qi around them shivered, then abruptly bled out of each and every one.

To her shock, four figures, dressed more like those who had just rushed upstairs, crumpled to the floor, seemingly out of nowhere, between the tables and the support pillar for the balcony to their right. Meanwhile, on their left, beyond the red-robed woman’s table, a youth wearing a dark red robe, his face hidden by a black mask, was frozen, his weapon—a red-jade fan-sword—juddering with blocked momentum.

“W-what…?” The formation leader’s expression turned sickly as he stared at the scholar, as if somehow seeing him for the first time.

“It seems your eyes are kind of bad, though,” Lady Ao observed, shaking her head in amusement.

“I-impossible… h-how…?” Young Lord Quan had pushed himself to his knees and was also staring at the scholar like he was an evil ghost.

“Very easily, as it turns out,” the scholar remarked, his smile turning mysterious. “Now… let’s see who…”

She realised her mouth had fallen open, as the scholar swiped his fan back open… and all the Sheng group spasmed as their rings, various treasures, and talismans shifted out of their bodies and clattered to the floor.

“Odd that someone from the Sheng would have Shu clan and Huang talismans as well,” Shin observed, picking up two of the jades that had fallen. “And you don’t have soul-bound Dragon Jades either. That raises the question of…”

“It’s actually kind of academic,” Scholar Xue sighed. “The one you just tossed about is called Chao Jinhai. He should have been buried in the Black Cage… a very long time ago, for daring to make some… inopportune remarks about the parentage of the late Empress White Swan. His friend here, is Yun Xiaotong, also formerly of that same prison.”

“Ah, from then. That explains why I don’t know them,” Shin shrugged. “But still, I wonder what sort of bounty these bastards have.”

“Well, they pale in comparison to our friend here,” Sai added, nodding to the red-robed cultivator, who was straining desperately against whatever was binding him

“Sai… Xing… Xue!” the red-robed youth hissed.

“It is, indeed, I,” Sai Xingxue nodded. “Your Five Fans have been quite profligate in using things that are the property of others to make a mess. Surely you should have expected someone to come asking questions?”

-Sai… Xingxue? She found herself looking over at Lingsheng, who, through the entire fight, had just been watching impassively, wondering why that name was oddly familiar.

“I rather think they thought the weather would allow them to act with impunity; these idiots are not our era’s greatest minds,” Shin observed drily. “They are too used to the Dun, who could not raid Yin Eclipse competently if their destiny depended on it.”

“It seems things are being wrapped up elsewhere as well,” the red-robed woman remarked.

As she spoke, the ‘Sheng’ group flinched, staring at her in shock as well.

“Yep, their eyes are definitely not good,” Lingsheng murmured, rolling her eyes.

“Raiding the Huling Gate, at midday, on the first day of the Week of the Dawning Dragon?” Lady Ao observed drily. “Not to mention, it’s a year when The Eye has snapped back to its proper aspect—It’s not only their eyes that are no good.”

“—As I said, not our era’s greatest minds, by any stretch,” Shin agreed.

Down below, she could hear raised voices. Turning back to look at the courtyard, to her surprise she saw four figures, dressed in red like the restrained youth, sprint out of the ground floor across the courtyard, past the two who were still, somehow… through all of the disruption, pondering their Go game—

The hair on her arms stood on end as the four collapsed. There was no sense of qi, no intent, no… nothing, it just looked like the strength vanished from their limbs and they went sprawling, their momentum sending them rolling, arms flailing haphazardly, to lie motionless on the courtyard paving. The guqin player’s melody juddered, the long note trembling as she also gazed at the four slumped figures, then up at them, then over at the two Go players… then she took a breath and found a new note and the flow of the song continued once more.

“To think she played through all of this, her composure is something…”

“Indeed,” Lady Ao, who had also turned to look at the courtyard, agreed, as she realised she had just spoken that out loud.

—Tak

She flinched as the monk put down his piece, at long last… and then felt a bit weird as she looked around and nothing seemed to have happened. At least nothing on the level of when the warrior placed his. The rain was still falling, the ambience was still… weird, and the game… was still mediocre, though the momentum had tilted back faintly to white… and the Shu group were all now looking at her a bit weirdly.

“What’s wrong?” Xiu Tianyu asked her. “Is there some other…?”

“Oh… uh, no,” she shook her head. “I just saw them…” she gestured vaguely at the courtyard. “I…”

“Mei! Brother Jian!”

Before she could say more, Xiao Sheng and two other Shu clan youths came scrambling up the stairs, only to stop and take in the stunned and restrained Sheng group in a daze.

A moment later, two guards—the woman from the gateway and another, younger man wearing a corporal’s stars—hurried up behind them and also stopped to look around in shock.

“Ah, Miss, I believe I have some criminals for you to apprehend,” Sai Xingxue suggested to the guardswoman.

“Some… uh… right,” the guardswoman stared at him, then at the youth in the dark red robe, then at the group of Sheng clan.

“You… this criminal… attacked us!” one of the formation-leaders, Yun Xiaotong, gasped. “We… are inner disciples of the Azure Astral…”

“He is…” another tried to point at Sai Xingxue, his expression gloomy. “The Meng clan… backer, we tracked…”

“Are… they actually going to try to spin this?” she murmured to Lingsheng, not quite believing what she was seeing.

“Shamelessness is its own abyss,” Lingsheng replied.

“W-will you… believe some Shu… clan, over… our Azure… Astral?” another of the slumped youths in Sheng robes groaned, reaching out to the guard.

“Who is your Azure Astral?” the corporal grunted, knocking the hand away with his boot. “I am from the Ha clan. Hey! Zhen!” he turned and leant back over the stairwell, calling to someone down below. “Go get Sergeant Bo. Upstairs is gonna be annoying!”

“—They are bad guys!” Anya interjected, pointing accusingly at the Sheng group.

“Worf!” the spirit dog added, bobbing its head.

“Did… you do that?” the guardswoman asked Anya’s mother, eyeing the stunned pair on the other side of the stairwell and the ruined table.

“They attacked momma!” Anya declared, folding her arms.

“They tried to grab my daughter,” her mother added, patting her daughters head. “They are still alive.”

“I see…” the corporal sighed.

“I believe it should be a simple matter to verify in your system, if they are Azure Astral Dragon disciples,” Sai Xingxue added. “All disciples permitted to wear golden hems will be ranked as military auxiliary officials, and have a corresponding soul mark.”

“Their soul-bound treasures are all outside their bodies, though,” the corporal observed, picking one of the talismans, a Huang-style one that was by his feet, up. “So, forgive me if I do not take you at your word, Sir. Your qi and intent are smothering this whole place, to the exclusion of basically everything else.”

“Of course,” Sai Xingxue nodded.

“—And the only other substantive lingering trace of qi imbued with offensive intent is his,” the corporal added, pointing to Jian Chen, who just frowned.

“I don’t think we are getting to that banquet,” one of Lady Ao’s companions muttered to her friend and the quietly fuming Mei.

“Ya think?” her friend replied drily.

“None of you move,” the Corporal commanded, producing a fist-sized orb she recognised as am much fancier version of the jade tablets that allowed for capturing images of your surroundings.

“Now, look here!!” Mei, no longer able to contain herself, snapped. “We are the—!”

“—Or speak!” the Corporal growled, exerting a bit of pressure on her, revealing his cultivation to be at least that of a peak golden immortal, according to the augmented senses Grandpa Bai’s talisman provided. “—Or use qi,” the corporal added, glaring at Xiu Tianyu, who had been about to step forward. “If you interfere in trying to determine what happened up here, it will be your problem, not ours.”

Off to the side, she could see the cultivators who had been posing as Azure Astral Dragon disciples sharing smirks.

“Just relax,” Lady Ao murmured, putting a hand on Mei and Xiu Tianyu’s arms. “Let him do what he has to do.”

The pair huffed a bit, as did the two youths with Xiao Sheng, but did keep their silence. The corporal still stared at them for a full ten seconds, though, before finally releasing the orb into the air.

It floated there for a few seconds, spinning gently, then faint lines of light ghosted out from it, sweeping through the upper level of the teahouse, flitting back and forth around them.

The whole process of scanning the scene took nearly five minutes, near as she could tell, which she suspected was entirely down to the Corporal making a point. Arai and Sana’s talisman-scrips could have done this in about thirty seconds, she was sure, and the Military authority surely had better kit, especially for an important checkpoint like this one.

“Okay, that is done,” the corporal declared at last, as the orb settled back into his hand.

“—At last,” Mei muttered, glaring at the corporal.

Personally, she was more concerned about the ones who had attacked them recovering, but thankfully they showed no signs of that, at least that she could see.

“Finished scanning, Sir!?” a voice yelled up from below.

“Yes,” the corporal replied.

“Sir, you can head up now,” the voice below added respectfully, to someone else.

A moment later, a group of five cultivators came up the stairs. The one in the lead was the sergeant they had briefly interacted with when they first arrived at the checkpoint. Behind him, came a tall, middle-aged man in a dark blue, knee-length robe, under which she could see he was wearing a lighter pattern of the body armour. The two golden stars on his chest told her he was a captain. Beside him came a younger woman, in heavier armour, with a single gold star edged in red, denoting her status as a lieutenant specialist, prominent on her armour. After them, to her relief, came Grandpa Bai, accompanied by an elegant youth in his early thirties, with sandy-blonde hair—

“Papa!” Anya yelled, almost immediately, waving to the sandy-haired man.

“Sir!” the corporal and guardswoman saluted both sergeant and captain smartly.

“So, this is what was meant by ‘political’, huh,” the captain mused, taking in the upper floor, before returning to Sai Xingxiu, then Lady Ao.

“I can only apologize, Lady Ao,” the captain murmured, actually nodding his head to her. “That Huling Gate has given you such a…”

“It is quite okay, Captain Lord Han,” Lady Ao replied, returning his polite nod. “When one determines to sit in a teahouse, one must accept that teahouses occasionally present drama. It is a covenant as old as time.”

“That is a most charitable outlook, Lady Ao,” Captain Han sighed. “Now, about these miscreants…”

“They profess to be disciples of the Azure Astral Dragon Pagoda, Sir,” the corporal stated.

“They do, do they?” Captain Han mused, eyeing the group, who were now… concerningly at ease with their circumstances, she thought. “Well—”

She blinked as a series of iridescent barriers snapped into focus around each of the slumped attackers, freezing them where they were, then sank into their bodies.

“It was right that you were cautious, Corporal,” Captain Han stated as the Sheng group all crumpled, limp-limbed to the floor, their eyes blank. “However, not five minutes ago, four lunatics professing such an allegiance as cover, tried to assassinate me, using an… arborundum weapon and a sherd bomb. It was only thanks to the timely intervention of Elder Qi and Grandmaster Huang here, that the guard post escaped the worst.”

“Sir,” the corporal and the guardswoman both saluted, once he finished speaking.

“Sergeant Bo, take Corporal Ha and Guardswoman Lian and sweep the rest of the upper floor,” the captain added.

“Sir!” the sergeant saluted smartly, then waved to the pair to follow him.

“Good lad, Corporal Ha, he will go far,” the captain mused, before turning back to them.

“Interestingly, this one is in the Azure Astral Dragon Pagoda,” the lieutenant observed, crouching down beside one of the prone figures. “And…” she turned to look at Yun Xiaotong, frowning, as if reading something only she could see—

“Him, yes,” the captain grunted. “They were only outer gate disciples though. Yun Xiaotong was kicked out for trying to force his attentions on my older sister during a sect trial.”

“Ah, of course, your Lordship’s Honoured Father was a discipline elder there,” the lieutenant nodded.

“Indeed he was,” Captain Han agreed with a sad smile, “until he died of an unexplained cultivation deviation, shortly after that rat and his little clique—including that other one—were kicked out.”

“…”

Listening to the exchange, she had to wonder just how unlucky the idiots attacking them here were.

-Unless they targeted this place specifically because of this captain and his family—for vengeance or something?

“So, how did he end up here?” the lieutenant asked with a frown.

“His group ran off with a mysterious treasure from that trial, and it was never recovered, even after they scried their souls, so rather than kill them and risk losing it forever, the Punishment Elder decided to put them in the Black Cage,” Captain Han explained. “And it seems they got out when it was compromised.”

“…”

Listening to his explanation, she amended that thought to ‘almost certainly’, given everything she had learned about the Five Fans of late.

“I believe the other one is also a notable criminal, formerly imprisoned there,” Sai Xingxue added, gesturing to Chao Jinhai.

“Which just leaves this odd soul,” Captain Han mused, turning to the red-robed youth who had recognised Scholar Sai.

“Mmmm, yes, he isn’t someone you would be familiar with,” Sai Xingxue conceded. “His name is Jeo Feng Kwai, a notable renegade and assassin for hire, who seems to have thrown his lot in with the Five Fans’ bandit alliance.”

“I imagine he is, if not the person who organized this little raid, certainly second only to them in its execution,” Grandpa Bai added.

“The Jeo clan, huh,” the Lieutenant sighed, shaking her head. “We have only been back here a week, and it feels like I never left.”

“They do stick in the memory, it is true,” Scholar Sai agreed. “Same faces, new flags, welcome to Blue Water Province.”

“Although it was the Grand Duchy of Ling, back then,” the lieutenant chuckled, ruefully.

“In any case, I, Han Dong Zhuo, owe you all a debt of some small gratitude on behalf of this Bureau, and also my family and the Azure Astral Dragon Pagoda,” the captain stated, saluting all of them. “Thanks to the swift actions of your companions, Lady Ao, you have saved many lives here, and also delivered several notable criminals to our Bureau—not to mention, provided a possibility for closure on the death of my father.”

“Please, it is just what we should all endeavour to do,” Lady Ao replied, also getting to her feet and returning the bow.

“I understand you were hoping to leave, once the paperwork had cleared,” the captain added, with an apologetic grimace. “But…”

“Ah, Sir, if I might make a suggestion?” the lieutenant cut in politely.

“Of course,” Captain Han nodded.

“Well, these are some important prisoners, and honestly, it will be a pain to hold them here with the facilities we have. Fanjin Fort is still unrepaired, and while sending them back to Blue Water City would be ideal, the weather is playing hell with the teleports, and the Five Fans have proven ruthless and hard to track down…

“Not to mention, while we have come out of this remarkably unscathed, as far as manpower goes, those three sherd bombs that did go off, did a number on the compound formations.”

The unspoken hint there, she was sure, was that these prisoners staying here posed a significant ongoing danger to the checkpoint garrison, given there seemed to be multiple Dao Immortals among them, and from everything she understood about the Five Fans from recent events, they had no scruples about inflicting mass bloodshed.

“Hmmm, you make a valid point, Lieutenant,” the captain mused, nodding. “It is not quite by the ‘letter’ of protocol Commander Su is demanding, but it will be a much better use of our resources to have an escort run to West Flower Picking Town. That will only take a few hours and save a lot of bureaucracy if Lady Ao and the rest make their statements directly to the regional command on this matter.”

“We are more than happy to do whatever you require, Captain Lord Han,” Lady Ao replied with aplomb.

“Then, Lieutenant, take your squad, prepare the paperwork and… be ready to depart in ten, or as soon as you have two vehicles prepped. It will be good practice for them as well; they need to get used to working in this infernal weather. Sir Qi, might I impose upon you…?”

“It will not be a problem for my carriage to take those not needed to suppress the prisoners,” Grandpa Bai replied with a nod.

“Of course,” the Lieutenant gave a sharp salute and headed back down the stairs.

“I guess you do get to go to the banquet after all,” she remarked drily to Mei, whose whole demeanour had gone from vibrating frustration to confusion over the course of the conversation.

The silvery-haired girl stared at her, then just sighed and sat down, looking thoroughly nonplussed.

“We have swept the rest of the inn, sir!” the sergeant, who had just come back up the stairs, informed the captain. “Nine more unconscious on the ground floor, including the four in the uh… courtyard.”

At his words, she glanced back out, to find that the monk and the warrior had actually stopped their game and were conversing with a corporal, while three soldiers dragged the unconscious experts there away. The dark-haired girl who had been playing the guqin was watching the whole scene with an expression that read ‘what the hell is this place’.

“Any injuries?”

“Two so far, who have lost their bodies,” the sergeant replied with a grimace. “A kitchen maid and a local man who was fishing on the river-terrace. We saved their souls though, so they should be saveable. Oh, Lieutenant Jin took a leg wound from a stray bit of arborundum. They reckon it was poisoned.”

“Very good,” the captain sighed.

“What shall we do about them?” the sergeant asked, gesturing towards the prisoners.

“You… will regret—” the youth from the Jeo clan was cut off mid-sentence, his expression bulging.

“Keep them here,” the captain replied evenly. “When Lieutenant Han comes back with her squad, we will transfer them directly. I don’t want to risk anyone taking a long range shot at them.”

“Sir!” Sergeant Bo saluted, then headed back down the stairs.

Captain Han looked around at the prisoners, then sighed and turned back to the sandy-haired Huang expert.

“Perhaps we could confer on that other matter, Grandmaster, before my deputy whisks you off at a rather unreasonable speed?”

“Of course,” Grandmaster Huang gestured for them to step off to one side.

“Where is Senior Brother Hu?” Mei asked Xiao Sheng.

“Downstairs,” Xiao Sheng replied with a helpless shrug. “You know how he is.”

“Well, this is a surprise, Sir Qi,” Scholar Sai, meanwhile, had gone over to Grandpa Bai and given him a polite bow. “How many years has it been, since we crossed paths?”

“Quite… a few,” Baisheng replied, returning the scholar’s bow. “You look well… and is that…?”

“Shin, yes, she is here with me,” Scholar Sai nodded, as Shin, who she realised had been quietly sidling over to stand out of the way behind them, flinched.

“T-thank you for helping my husband, Yichen, Sir Qi,” the young mother murmured, also going over and proffering Grandpa Bai a salute. “I am Huang Biyu. This is my daughter, Anya, and my Martial Aunt, Ren Xin.”

“A pleasure, Lady Huang, Lady Ren,” Grandpa Bai murmured, accepting her greeting, then bowing politely to the red-robed woman, who nodded back. “Your husband Grandmaster Huang is a very capable young man!”

“Told you,” Lingsheng smirked. “It will cost you three, now.”

“You rotten girl,” Shin grumbled, stepping forward. “Sir Qi, it has indeed been a while. I am glad to see you are keeping well.”

“Ah, you know how it is,” Baisheng mused. “I have these charming granddaughters to keep me busy.”

“Yes, I can see,” Shin replied drily, shooting Lingsheng a dirty look that she affected not to notice. “I had wondered why her mother let her roam over to this place, given all the things going on, but seeing you here, some things make sense now.”

“You… um, know them?” she finally managed to find a moment to speak up, then grimaced, realising her casual address to two people who were clearly experts who knew Grandpa Bai on some level might be inappropriate.

“Mmmm,” Grandpa Bai nodded, making his way over to the table. “Though it has been some years since we had a proper catch up. In any case, you two seem to have a real talent for ending up in the eye of things.”

“That is… hardly our fault!” she grumbled, feeling a bit awkward as he ruffled her hair, before helping himself to a cup of wine.

“Mmm, today is shaping up—” Grandpa Bai glanced down at the courtyard and abruptly spat out the first mouthful, then turned back to Scholar Sai… who just shrugged a little helplessly for some reason.

“Is there a problem, Sir Qi?” Lady Ao, who had somehow managed to avoid getting sprayed with wine, asked as she turned back to the courtyard, wondering what had surprised him so, because Grandpa Bai was… basically unflappable, as far as she had ever seen.

“N-no, sorry, my apologies, Lady Ao, that was… unseemly,” Grandpa Bai muttered, giving her an apologetic bow. “I just saw something unexpected, was all.”

“Unexpected?” she echoed, taking in the scene below… which was basically as it had been.

The monk and the warrior had sat back down and were staring at their game pensively. The guqin player had started back on her seemingly eternal rendition of ‘High Mountains, Flowing Water’, joined by a youth with short dark hair, wearing the same style of grey robe, though of a much more acceptable length, who was conferring with her quietly.

Considering the board, she found that both had made another move apiece, and it was now black’s turn once again—though the game felt as much in the balance as it had been, before.

“Do… you see anything in that game?” Grandpa Bai asked her suddenly.

“In… the game?” she blinked. “It… feels very in the moment, kind of strange, like I am watching you and… um, Old Kai play?”

“Hah, we should be so lucky,” Grandpa Bai muttered under his breath, so softly she almost thought he didn’t mean to be heard.

“In the moment, huh?” Lady Ao turned to stare at her.

“Mmm, yeah, like, it’s technically a very weird game, but…” she shrugged helplessly, not quite sure how to put it, and keenly aware, all of a sudden, that Xiu Tianyu and Jian Chen were both looking at her sideways. “It is a dogfight?” she suggested at last. “Both are evenly matched so… it looks unnervingly mediocre, in a way, but… it’s… it’s…”

She stared at the board, playing back the few moves she had observed, trying to find a way to phrase her thoughts so they didn’t sound straight up silly.

“—It’s because every move up to this point has had to count?” she suggested at last.

“Interesting, very interesting,” Lady Ao mused, fixing her with a look that left her slightly unnerved. “Your granddaughter is a real talent, Sir Qi.”

“The music also makes it weirder,” she added. “Well, not weird, it fits… somehow?”

Now that she was listening to the music, there was a strangely… unquantifiable element to it, which, thanks in no small part to her heart force method, conjured in her mind, the faint impression of… silkworms? It almost felt like a Principle, but the girl below was nowhere near that level, in terms of her cultivation strength, and in this torrid weather, her senses were so blunt that if she was told she was imagining things, she would believe it.

“Have you ever considered coming to the Shu Pavilion?” Lady Ao asked, drily.

“Eh?” she stared at Lady Ao, not sure if the other woman was joking or not.

“My cousin is already spoken for,” Lingsheng huffed, puffing her cheeks.

“—Speaking of interesting,” Scholar Sai had also come over to join them, she realised with a start. “What do you make of those two?”

“The girl playing and her friend, hmmm…” Lady Ao frowned, then sat back in her chair and just stared at nothing for a moment. “Well, that is interesting,” she declared at last. “Slightly unnerving, but definitely interesting.”

-Because she seems to have a Principle? She found herself wondering. That would be… unusual, but not impossible, especially if she had some sort of inherited method, or a rare constitution.

“Truly, heaven is wide and the teahouses in Huling are always weird,” Baisheng muttered, shaking his head.

“Ha…” Lady Ao shook her head and just sighed much more deeply, staring down at the courtyard below.

“—Captain Han, the vehicles are ready.”

Turning her attention back to the interior of the upper floor, she found a squad of ten soldiers, all in full light armour, were coming up the stairs.

“Shall we start clearing?” the leader—a corporal—added, saluting smartly as the soldiers fanned out around the prisoners.

“Yes,” Captain Han replied, looking around the upper level again, and shaking his head, before turning back to the corporal. “We will follow you shortly.”

“Sir!” the corporal saluted again, then waved to his squad to get to work.

Quietly helping herself to another cup of wine, she watched the soldiers collect up the various objects Scholar Sai had ‘unbound’ from them, searching the bodies for any hidden weapons as they went.

“How do you want to move him, Sir?” the corporal added after a moment, a hint of concern finally entering his tone as he gestured towards the still struggling Jeo clan expert.

“If you like, I can handle him, Captain Lord Han,” Scholar Sai suggested, turning back from contemplating the go game and the musician in the courtyard.

“In that case, I will have to trouble you,” the captain replied drily. “His mantra seems… bothersome.”

“He is from the Jeo clan,” Scholar Sai sighed ruefully, walking over to Jeo Feng Kwai and opening his fan—

She blinked, as did most of the Shu party, and even some of the soldiers turned to stare, as with a casual wave of Scholar Sai’s fan, the room around Jeo Feng Kwai rippled, then occluded as if his surroundings were being drawn to his body, though there was no trace of any qi, or intent or… anything she could grasp in whatever he had done. The Jeo clan expert gritted his teeth, veins in his forehead and neck bulging as he tried to fight against whatever it was, but it was to no avail, as, with leaden slowness, he took first one step, then another, and another, towards the stairs down.

“How is he doing that?” Xiu Tianyu whispered to Xiao Sheng.

“You ask me, but who do I ask?” Xiao Sheng replied sourly.

“—Me.” Lady Ao cut in, rolling her eyes behind her veil. “You clearly ask me.”

Both coughed and flushed as Mei also rolled her eyes and Lady Ao’s two companions snickered softly. Jian Chen just shook his head.

“Anyway, Scholar Sai is using various laws and a keen grasp of ambient feng shui to directly control his surroundings,” Lady Ao elaborated. “This Jeo expert is a physical cultivator of real pedigree. His grasp of his mantra and purity of qi in his body allows him to… do something akin to the technique of ‘dead-weighting’, you sometimes see in unarmed combat.”

“Lady Ao’s understanding is exceptional, as expected,” Grandpa Bai murmured.

“But… why can’t you just use a barrier for that?” Xiao Sheng asked, frowning as they watched Jeo Feng Kwai start to slowly make his way down the stairs, under the attentive gaze of Scholar Sai.

“Because mantras are obnoxious once they cross the Dao Threshold, and this man is such a person,” Lady Ao replied.

“But… I thought you cannot advance physical cultivation…?” Mei started to ask, then trailed off, her face turning pale as a white jade. “Oh.”

“Yes, Oh. Indeed,” Lady Ao replied, the shadow of a bitter smile just visible through her veil.

“Even if he is just a Dao Immortal, that man was born in the last years of the Shan Dynasty. His path is now broken, but his accumulation?”

“The Jeo clan and others like them are still feared, even after all this time, for very good reason,” Grandpa Bai sighed. “Their strongholds in Yin Eclipse make them almost impossible to root out—”

“—Until that vast anomaly whisked everyone away,” Shin remarked drily.

“And their old experts really only move in the shadow of weather like this,” Baisheng added.

“But then, how is Scholar Sai…?” Xiao Sheng stared at the elegant scholar’s back, a decidedly unnerved look in his eyes.

“Accumulation can be overwhelmed, and there are… other workarounds, if your comprehensions are sufficient,” Lady Ao remarked. “As Scholar Sai has just shown.”

“Honestly, if you take one thing from this afternoon, it is that you underestimate physical cultivators, especially those stuck all these years at such forlorn thresholds, at your peril,” Grandpa Bai mused. “The weight of years is a terrible, terrifying, tempering agent, when coupled with a properly seeded mantra.”

“Indeed,” Lady Ao sighed. “Many a promising star has fallen in these provinces, for not showing due respect to a method far too many are quick to consign to failure.”

It took a lot of effort on her part not to add that the same was also true the other way, and that the price this province paid, and was paying, for the ignorance of others was really too great. Instead, she went to pour herself out another cup of wine… only for Grandpa Bai to put his hand gently on her arm.

“Daylight drinking is not a good habit to get into, young lady,” he murmured drily, picking up the wine jar and storing it in his own ring. “Now, why don’t you tidy up the rest of the food we brought… This will be a long few hours, I am afraid.”

Scowling at him, she grabbed the remainder of the dumplings and tried to put them back in her storage ring, while Lingsheng just sighed and recovered the box of pastries and crispy ice-lotus leaf rolls.

At this point, the soldiers were also starting to take the sealed prisoners downstairs.

“—Okay, everyone, please make your way downstairs, with Guardsman Fan,” the corporal interjected brusquely, nodding to a soldier nearby, who was recording something on a scrip.

Getting to her feet, she gave the courtyard… a final look, and somewhat to her surprise found the old monk had gone over to chat to the guqin player and her companion. The tall, slightly intimidating, black-haired martial expert was just sitting, sipping his wine, contemplating the sky above.

“Sir Qi,” Captain Han called out, beckoning to Grandpa Bai. “If I might have one further moment of your time?”

“Of course,” Grandpa Bai replied, giving the captain a polite salute, before turning briefly back to them. “Xiayu, Zhihuan, please help our new travelling companions get settled in.”

“Yes grandfather,” she replied, giving him a smile that… after everything that had happened in the teahouse, felt a bit mask-like, really.

“Yes grandfather,” Lingsheng echoed, also giving him a salute.

“I guess that puts us in your care,” Xiu Tianyu remarked with a grin, which Lingsheng met with a very even look.

Picking up her umbrella, she took one last look around, then fixed Guardsman Fan with her best ‘please, lead on’ smile.

If it had any effect, she could not say, but the guardsman didn’t sigh at least, and just gestured for her to walk after the last of his compatriots who was lugging the limp body of one of the pair Lady Huang had put through a table.

Making her way downstairs, she found the ground floor… remarkably unscathed. A table had been broken near the courtyard, and several guardsmen were standing around, next to Scholar Sai and his prisoner, talking quietly, while a veiled woman in a green robe tended to the bleeding body of a middle-aged man, who had been laid out on a table, watched by the youth who had initially led the Shu group upstairs. A maid was sobbing quietly nearby, while a slight, young woman in a snow-white scholar’s robe, her dark hair affixed up by a hairpin in the form of a golden swallow, was sitting opposite her, sipping some wine, her sword resting prominently beside her. The remaining youth from the Shu group was sitting at a table by the door, sipping some wine, trying to look bored, but also looking sideways at the white-robed woman, for some reason.

“Ah, sword lady!” Anya, who had come down the stairs right after her, waved at the white robed woman.

The woman raised her cup in reply, giving the young girl a friendly smile.

“She was really amazing,” Anya confided in her seriously. “I saw her go woosh swish slash—” She watched with amusement as the young girl made a few sword-cutting gestures, her eyes shining.

“When did you see that happen?” she muttered, not recalling seeing the woman within the teahouse before this moment.

“Oh… um…” Anya suddenly looked shifty. “It was when Anya saved the day,” the girl confided in her, after a short pause.

“Worf!” the dog barked, sending her a sense of intent that was akin to ‘Damn right we saved the day!’

“…”

Thinking back, she recalled that the girl and her dog had looked very pleased with themselves when they came upstairs just ahead the group posing as the Azure Dragon disciples.

“Those men who were chasing you?” she asked quietly, pulling Anya off to the side so they were not cluttering the bottom of the stairs.

“I was going to tell momma, but then those villains attacked,” Anya pouted, looking a bit embarrassed all of a sudden. “I saw her go swish, swoosh, stab! And then Anya distracted those three evil men, so they didn’t put something in the wine.”

“You…” She found herself staring at the girl, as another piece of the puzzle from up above slotted into place.

“—Ah, Young Sai, I am glad I caught you, before they rush you off…”

She turned at the unfamiliar voice, to find that the mysterious monk had come through, from the courtyard to join them, accompanied by the guqin player and her friend, who were both looking a bit dazed.

“Venerable Tang,” Sai bowed respectfully to the old man.

“V-venerable Sir…” the youth who had led the Shu group upstairs hurried over and bowed to the monk.“—please accept our teahouse’s many, many apologies… and, Um, Lord Lu’s horse…”

“—What about my horse?” the imposing martial cultivator, who had just followed the monk in from the courtyard, asked.

This close, he really was tall, she realised. Almost a head taller even than the monk, who was already… it took her some effort not to visibly measure with her hands, because even if she stretched her arms up and stood on her tiptoes, she probably couldn’t reach the top of his head, never mind the martial expert.

Beside her, Anya’s starry-eyed expression had turned positively radiant as she gazed at the two experts practically looming over the pale-faced youth.

“Uh… nothing is wrong with him, Lord Lu,” the youth hurriedly replied, bowing again to him. “He is totally unharmed, unharmed. But… um, I fear he did kill two of these invaders.”

“Oh, is that all?” the martial expert threw back his head and laughed, his voice easily filling the hall and drawing everyone to look that way.

“Ah, Venerable Tang…” Shin, who had just come down the stairs behind her, accompanied by Lingsheng and Lady Ao, bowed to the monk.

“Tang… huh, that makes a lot of sense,” Lady Ao murmured under her breath, also bowing, as did Lingsheng.

After a moment’s reflection she also followed suit, as did Anya.

“Please, be at ease,” the old monk chuckled warmly. “This old man is just a wandering monk; such salutations make me uneasy. In any case, it seems the teahouses of Huling maintain their… preeminent reputation.”

Hearing that, the still bowing youth flinched, while the guqin player just grimaced, and downed the cup of wine she had been holding.

“You know how that song goes,” Shin remarked ruefully, stepping out of the way so everyone else descending the stairs could pass by.

“Upon the road to Mahavaran,” Lady Ao murmured drily.

“—there lies a teahouse, of strange repute…” Lingsheng added more lyrically.

“At dusk, as the prayer bird cries,” the white-robed young woman continued.

“—At dawn, while misty bamboo sighs… While gentle chimes, the rain child’s dance.”

Somewhat to her surprise, the pretty-faced youth accompanying the guqin player also joined in.

“It seems the knowledge of the classics is indeed strong here.” Scholar Sai observed drily. “I think I will claim my spot as a scholar, watching life pass by and leave the gentle songs of misty pines to you young fairy maidens.”

“You need a terrible beard then, at the very least,” Shin snickered. “And some long drooping eyebrows.”

“The real question though,” Lingsheng mused, looking around at the assembled experts. “Is who among us is the King, and who is the Beg—?”

She was cut off by Grandpa Bai, who, having brought up the rear, with Captain Han and the Huang husband-wife pair, poked her in the back of the head.

“Show some respect, young lady,” he muttered, before giving Venerable Tang and ‘Lord Lu’ an apologetic bow.

“Owww…” Lingsheng pouted, rubbing the back of her head as the others laughed.

“Anyway,” Baisheng added, shoving both her and Lingsheng forward a step. “These two precocious young ladies are my granddaughters, Zhihuan and Xiayu.”

“Venerable Tang, Lord Lu,” she murmured, bowing again politely, as did Lingsheng.

“Discerning grandchildren are a blessing,” he mused, making an auspicious sign associated with ‘Amitabha’ with both hands as he spoke, rather than saying it out loud. “May you embody both merits and virtues in equal measure.”

He eschewed the traditional addition of blessing buddha directly, she presumed, because neither she nor Lingsheng were Buddhist. It was also a reminder that the Azure Astral Authority’s view on that path were very different from the Imperial Court’s.

“A sentiment well worth saluting,” the white-robed woman agreed, raising her cup with both hands to them.

“Indeed,” Scholar Sai added, nodding.

“Thank you for your kind words, regarding my granddaughters,” Grandpa Bai murmured, saluting both the monk and the woman.

Watching Grandpa Bai out of the corner of her eye, though, she got the distinct impression that he was… well, rather on edge. It probably passed unnoticed by most of the others, but she, who had been around him almost all her life, felt she had a pretty good grasp of his mannerisms, and normally… nothing phased him. Even when he been dealing with the chaos enveloping Blue Water City she didn’t think she had never seen him this uneasy.

“In any case, now we are all assembled, we should not hold matters up unduly,” Grandpa Bai continued, glancing sideways at Captain Han, who had just been observing quietly from the sidelines.

“Of course, of course,” the old monk agreed jovially, turning to Scholar Sai and bowing to him. “I am sure we will meet again on the path, Scholar Sai, Young Lady Shin.”

“I am sure we will,” Scholar Sai murmured, returning his bow. “And for your assistance before, once again let me extend my sincerest thanks on our behalf.”

“Not at all, not at all,” Venerable Tang waved a hand depreciatingly at Scholar Sai and Shin.

“—And also, for showing us such a remarkable game of Go, Lord Lu.” Scholar Sai bowed respectfully to Lord Lu as well now, as did the red robed woman and Lady Huang.

“Indeed, I feel my horizons have been broadened,” Lady Ao murmured, also bowing, as did her two companions.

Behind them, after a moment of confused hesitation, the other Shu disciples followed suit.

“—Sir, everything is ready.”

While the various experts around them were exchanging their greetings, the lieutenant had returned and also re-entered the teahouse and smartly saluted Captain Han.

“Scholar Sai, if you want to bring him out?” the lieutenant called over.

“Of course,” Scholar Sai nodded politely.