~ LING YU — BLUE WATER PROVINCE BY ROAD ~

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

They watched as he marched his prisoner out, escorted by several of the guards.

“T-thank you for your patronage,” the youth managing the teahouse stammered, saluting them all.

“In that case, we should not keep people standing around,” Grandpa Bai remarked to Captain Han.

Taking the hint, she bowed again to the group as a whole, and after waiting for her ‘seniors’ in their party—in effect the Shu bunch and Lady Ao, to continue processing outside, fell in behind them with Lingsheng and Anya.

“Um, if I might have a moment?” Lady Huang herself fell in beside her, with the spirit dog a step behind. “I… might have to go with them, so could I ask you two to keep an eye on my Anya?”

“Momma has to do work,” Anya confided, knowingly.

“Of course, Lady Huang,” she replied, giving her a polite bow.

“Biyu, please,” the woman replied with a faint smile.

Outside, two ‘heavy’ variants of the mudskipper personnel carrier were pulled up in close order, fully armoured and armed soldiers climbing into both, while a third was manoeuvring out of the checkpoint compound, towards the road to join them. Off in the middle distance, from within the compound, she could just make out two large plumes of smoke and dust billowing upwards through the rain.

Based on the eerie iridescence that was catching the rain, like a weirdly lensed rainbow around clouds, she had to assume that it was an alchemical stockpile that was burning.

Unfurling her umbrella, she noted that the Shu group were making no move themselves to go over to their carriage, and had just gathered under the sheltered eaves of the teahouse, talking amongst themselves and watching the soldiers finish securing the prisoners.

Glancing behind them, she found Grandpa Bai and the rest of the ‘seniors’ were still talking with the captain and lieutenant.

“I guess we should go get the vehicle,” she mused, glancing at Lingsheng.

“Probably, yeah,” Lingsheng agreed, glancing over at the Shu group and sighing.

“Driving!” Anya interjected, her eyes shining.

“Yes, yes,” she nodded drily, setting off across the road, with Anya, Lingsheng and the spirit dog following after her. “Driving indeed.”

“It looks like some stray bits of a sherd bomb hit the holding area,” Lingsheng observed, as they passed by the first of the queued up vehicles.

“They did?” she asked, trying… and failing to hide a grimace, looking around.

There was basically nobody in the lot at the moment, presumably because they had fled to take cover when the explosions occurred. A few guards were conferring about something near the entrance gate to the checkpoint, and another was crouched with a heavy weapon on the nearest watchtower, but that was about it.

“Uh-huh,” Lingsheng pointed at the near-side front of an unlucky merchant’s carriage, where, just visible in the water, a shimmering bloom of blueish-green qi was slowly forming in the puddle around its wheel.

“Don’t touch anything on the ground,” Lingsheng added seriously to Anya, who had crouched down to peer under the vehicle. “Especially if it looks grey, green and vaguely ceramic or crystalline.”

“Of course,” Anya replied, nodding very seriously.

“Worf!” her spirit dog just barked, but even through the rain she got a ‘no shit, why would I touch anything like that!’ vibe from it, that was somehow both serious and cute at the same time.

“They put very pure yang qi in those bombs, looks like,” Lingsheng observed. “It won’t kill, but… it will cripple fast—and wreck formations. Based on the scatter, probably half the vehicles in the lot have been compromised in some fashion.”

“That doesn’t bode well for our carriage,” she muttered, noticing another, a rented carriage a few meters away was steaming faintly in the rain.

“Ours is hardened, so unless we scored a really unlucky hit, directly through the navigation control area…” Lingsheng mused.

“The way today is going, would you bet against that?” she asked sourly.

“No, honestly, I would not,” Lingsheng replied drily. “But positive thinking!”

“Positive thinking!” Anya echoed, pumping her fist, while the dog barked again.

“They really thought this attack through,” she mused, considering the damage around them and the smoke, which she could now see was primarily coming from the warehouse at the far end of the lot.

“Yep,” Lingsheng agreed. “Though their luck in executing it was…”

“Bad?” she suggested wryly.

“Very Bad,” Anya agreed, nodding.

“Speaking of bad,” Lingsheng added, frowning, and staring up at the swirling cloud of smoke. “I just had a bad thought, run to our vehicle, quick.”

“Eh?” she followed Lingsheng’s gaze, as she started to jog onwards, but saw only the same shifting, twisting, multi-hued haze flickering off the swirling smoke she had before.

“WORF!” the spirit dog suddenly barked, also staring up at the sky, then ducking its head and tugging at Anya, as if to get her to climb on its back.

Shaking her head, she grabbed Anya rather unceremoniously and, holding her under one arm, hurried after Lingsheng.

Thankfully, their vehicle wasn’t that much further. Upon getting there, Lingsheng pushed her hand to the side and opened the side door. Grandpa Bai had already stored the golem when they first arrived, to save space when parking the carriage in the lot, so there was no external preparation to do, either.

“Dry the dog in the back, while we get it moving,” Lingsheng instructed Anya as she passed the young girl up to her.

“What has you spooked?” she asked Lingsheng as she let the dog climb in ahead of her.

“Yang energy, plus a lot of destabilized spirit herbs, in this weather,” Lingsheng muttered. “If we are lucky, it’s nothing, but—”

A thunderous rumble shook the sky above them, even as she quickly closed her umbrella and climbed in after the dog.

“Today is today,” Lingsheng added with a grimace. “And today is—”

She lost the rest of what Lingsheng said, though she was pretty sure she could guess at it, as a spiderweb of purple-gold lightning ripped through the smoke cloud rising above the warehouse, arcing up into the rain heavy clouds above, sending pearly ripples of light off in every direction.

Because the absolute worst thing you could do when faced with the real possibility of random lightning from the sky was stand there like an idiot and look for it, she hurriedly closed the door behind them.

“Here, towel,” Lingsheng, who was already in the front part of the vehicle, tossed a slight wet towel back through the door for Anya to catch.

“Do you need a hand?” she asked Lingsheng, peering through as Lingsheng slid over into the driver’s seat.

“Grab a helmet, don’t look at the sky, you can watch me back out,” Lingsheng replied, pulling on her own face plate.

Nodding, she grabbed the one she had been using before and putting it on. “Let it resynch—”

“—Vehicle integrity compromised.”

“Uhhh?” she turned to Lingsheng, who was poking at the formation interface.

“Looks like a stray piece hit the right-side plating,” Lingsheng’s voice echoed through the headset. As she spoke, her own helmet showed three red chevrons, drawing her attention to that side of the vehicle, where a series of ghostly ‘cuts’ were reflected in the half-transparent view through the carriage.

“Doesn’t seem to have gone through though,” she remarked, turning in circle, looking for any others, but there didn’t seem to be any more.

“Yep.” Lingsheng agreed. “Formations are still functional, just some loss of redundancy to a few sensor-nodes on the right side, looks like. Now, look at the back, would you?”

Turning to the rear, she had to grab a handhold on the ceiling as the vehicle started to move backwards. With more speed than she expected, Lingsheng reversed them out of their spot, only stopping when the crescent of the turn was a pace from another vehicle, that had arrived after theirs and which had been… parked at a noticeable diagonal to theirs.

“Might want to hold onto something,” she instructed Anya, who had not been quite so lucky, and was now hugging the wet dog.

The look she got back was both cute and put out, but the young girl did nod and sit down.

“Can you look to your right?” Lingsheng asked.

Doing as asked, she watched as Lingsheng moved them forward again, barely making the turn into the slightly too narrow space between those vehicles, then drove them the wrong way back down the path they had originally taken to enter the lot.

“The ones who came in behind us should not be allowed to drive these carriages,” Lingsheng grumbled, her voice carrying through the whole vehicle this time, as they turned back out onto the road.

Nodding in agreement, she went over to Anya and, kneeling down beside her and the dog, began to quickly towel it dry. The dog growled a bit but was clearly intelligent enough to understand that they would not let it into the more confined front area if it was sodden as a wash rag, so sat there docilely. As they were moving along to the front of the teahouse, another deep rumble of thunder shook the clouds overhead, followed a few seconds later by a noticeable increase in the intensity of the rain.

By the time Lingsheng had parked them just beyond the guard mudskippers, the dog was pretty dry, so she instructed Anya to lead it through to the front, then went over and opened the right-side door. The first person to come over, slightly to her surprise, was the lieutenant.

“It seems your grandpa has some connections, huh?” the lieutenant observed, climbing into the rear. “This really is a converted Command Vehicle.”

“I can’t help you much there, lieutenant,” she replied with a helpless shrug, not needing to put any additional ignorance on that point, as this trip was the first time she had ever been in this carriage.

“Well, it will be more comfortable than the skippers, anyway,” the lieutenant chuckled. “I am just here to help with the communications between vehicles.”

“—and to ensure that we, the critical witnesses do not do anything silly,” Lingsheng’s voice added drily in her ear.

“Do you want to ride up front, Lieutenant Han?” she added politely.

“Nah,” the lieutenant shook her head. “Just give me a headset from the front.”

Nodding, she moved through to the front, to find Anya was already playing about with one, so she took one of the remaining two out of the locker and passed it back to the lieutenant.

“Thanks,” the woman gave her a bright smile, then sat down on one of the seats and put her hand on the back of the face plate—

“External synchronisation of a secure device is being requested…” the formation-voice dispassionately informed her.

“Accept, Protocol Yuan Three Four Six Two Six Nine,” Lingsheng replied from up front.

“—Granted,” the formation voice interjected.

“No weapons,” the lieutenant remarked drily, putting her face plate on.

“This is a civilian vehicle,” she pointed out.

“It does have barriers, and ablative armour,” Lingsheng called out.

“And hardened formations,” the lieutenant mused, looking around.

“Those come as standard, pretty much,” she remarked. “Otherwise, you spend a fortune on formation maintenance in the wet season. People think that just because talismans and basic treasures work in Yin Eclipse that there are no… complications.”

Sana had complained quite a bit to her about that.

“You are rather knowledgeable for a girl from the coast,” the lieutenant murmured, a little leadingly, she could not help but feel.

“You overpraise me, Lieutenant Han,” she replied with aplomb. “I just paid attention to my elders when I was instructed. Shall I tell the others to get on board?”

“Cute, too, when you want to be,” the lieutenant remarked drily. “Yes, call them over. Let’s get this show on the road before we get struck by lightning—or something worse.”

Choosing to ignore the lieutenant’s remark, she went to the door.

“ALL OF YOU GET ON BOARD!” she called out to the Shu group and others who were still sheltering beneath the veranda.

The first one to reach their vehicle was in fact the Shu youth who had stayed downstairs. He got onboard with barely a look at her as she moved back to the doorway to the front section and took up the same spot near the rear he had occupied before. After him came Mei and Lady Ao’s two companions, grumbling about the effect of the rain on their clothes. Jian Chen’s group were next, followed by Lady Ao herself, and then Grandpa Bai and, somewhat to her surprise, Shin.

“We will be third in the convoy,” the lieutenant informed them all, once Shin had found her seat. “Drive about thirty metres behind the vehicle in front, match its speed,” she added to Lingsheng, through the helmet com. “You can do that, yes?”

“Of course, Lieutenant Han,” Lingsheng answered brightly.

“Very good,” the lieutenant said, faintly smiling. “In that case…” she trailed off, seemingly conversing with someone else, through her own helmet.

With the helmet, she was able to see two soldiers in full heavy armour climbing onto the top of the most recently arrived mudskipper. Both were carrying what she recognised as ‘heavy’ bows—which were classed as such only because they fired arrow-like projectiles, usually imbued with formations.

“I am surprised you don’t have any snapdragons,” Shin remarked.

“Hah…” the lieutenant sighed. “Funny you should say that. They were meant to send us a platoon, but they got reassigned last week to General Su’s command.”

“Such is politics,” Lady Ao mused.

While they were talking, the lead vehicle pulled out into the road, followed a few moments later by the one holding the prisoners.

“What is a snapdragon?” Xiao Sheng asked, curious.

“One of these, but with a heavy version of the weapon that the guards on top of the vehicles are carrying,” Shin replied. “They are usually used for… targeted demolition.”

“Demolition, heh,” the lieutenant chuckled. “That sounds about right. Anti-formation weapons, basically. Still, they are slower than mudskippers, and nobody wants to fly a void sparrow in this weather.”

Almost as if the weather had heard that comment, a further ripple of lightning—dark purple, this time—scattered into the cloud above. Remembering Lingsheng’s warning, she looked down… and even then, the flare of iridescence that bled through the rain was unpleasantly nauseating—

“—Calibrating visual input, please wait...” The dispassionate voice of the formation spirit echoed in her ears as her view of the outside flitted through a dozen different colours, then back to normal.

“I still wouldn’t trust it.” Lingsheng informed her as a loud rumble of thunder sounded overhead.

Looking over at the teahouse, as Lingsheng manoeuvred their vehicle back onto the road, she saw that the old monk, the guqin player, her friend and the white-robed woman were still watching them, from the shelter of the porch. Half on a whim, she raised her hand in a final salute and blinked, as the monk, half smiling, mirrored her gesture… as did the white-robed woman.

Anya, who had actually taken her seat, beside Lingsheng, glanced around and, spotting them, also waved… and, proving it wasn’t a fluke, she watched as the white-robed lady and the monk waved. Again.

“Don’t be too surprised,” Lingsheng remarked. “If that is who I think, the idiots who attacked us… are either the luckiest or unluckiest idiots you will meet in many a year.”

“Alotta experts in that teahouse,” Anya agreed sagely.

“Understatement of the day, right there,” Lingsheng added with a chuckle.

Shaking her head, she sat down in the navigator’s seat, then turned it, so she was looking forward rather than sideways.

“Speaking of that, you knew them, and didn’t tell me!” she complained to Lingsheng directly, through the helmet communication.

“Honestly, I wasn’t sure until they came upstairs,” Lingsheng replied with a sigh.

“You could have said something, though,” she pointed out.

“I did,” Lingsheng replied drily. “Like, you love ‘Record of a Scholar’s Journey’, yet you don’t recognise Sai Xingxue?”

She turned to stare at Lingsheng, then slowly put a hand to her faceplate.

If there was a saving grace, it was that her face was hidden by the helmet, mostly, so nobody else would get to see her flushed, embarrassed expression.

-How stupid can I be? I wanna just curl up in a ball and sit in the corner…

“That… isn’t actually… ‘him’, is it?” she asked at last, wondering if Lingsheng was just messing with her. “The Scholar Prince of the Sai Dukedom? Who was acclaimed by the Yuan Shan Emperor and recognised as his advisor—”

“Uh-huh, that is him,” Lingsheng replied, sounding amused. “And the ‘Shin’ sitting back there, chatting to Grandpa Bai like she is his old friend, is Lady Arashin. The Lightning Sword, who became one of his sworn companions, and who led to him joining forces with Meng Fu.”

“…”

-Scratch that, maybe I can just abandon society and become a hermit, living in a cave for the next millennia! She groaned. Still, Grandpa Bai sure knows some people, huh, she mused inwardly, as they passed through a temporary checkpoint the guards had set up on the main road.

The more she pondered that—about her grandpa, not the hermitic existence thing—the more it began to bug her.

She had always been around him, since she could remember, pretty much, but… now that she mulled it over, it was always like… he had been accompanying her on her official duties? She had basically… never seen him socialize outside of her immediate family, even within the clan. Occasionally, like when she and Sana had gone to the auction, they did something fun, but even then, it was always focused on her, now that she thought about it. It was only since this stupid trial screwed everything up… that things had started to change?

“—As to how I know them… somehow, mother convinced him to teach me the classics.” Lingsheng added, cutting through her reverie a little smugly, she felt.

“—and Sana used to joke about ‘My People’,” she grumbled, staring out at the rain as their convoy started through the outskirts of Huling village, and decided to blame it. The rain, or Huling, it didn’t matter, really.

-Still, is this the first excursion where I am clearly the one accompanying him? she found herself wondering as she watched the queue of vehicles starting to clog up the road in the opposite direction pass by. And he knows these experts who are basically figures out of folklore, like Scholar Prince Sai, and the Lightning Sword…?

In front of her, Anya, who had been waving her arms about, abruptly squeaked with surprise, then turned to her.

“You can see through walls with this?” she declared. “So cool!”

-And her parents are from the Huang clan… That old monk is seemingly from the Tang clan… A peerless martial expert from the Lu clan. Lady Ao is clearly someone as well, despite being so low key, she was talking so easily with those experts, and Grandpa Bai seemed to know her, as well…?

-And that red robed lady, Ren Xin, who her mother called Martial Aunt?

“What about the red-robed woman, then?” she asked Lingsheng at last.

“…”

“I’d suspect someone has pissed off the wrong group in the Huang clan,” Lingsheng mused after a pause she thought was just a shade too long. “She should be someone from Emeishan.”

“Emei…” She stared at Lingsheng, wondering if she had misheard, all of a sudden, because Emeishan was… well, even if she had to admit, she socialized in some fairly elite circles—

“Assassin, hyo!” Anya nodded, making a stabbing motion with her hand, and making her realise the young girl was also in their conversation ‘group’.

She found herself again looking at the bubbly young girl, who was still making swishing motions with her hand.

“Not everyone from there is an assassin,” Lingsheng murmured, shaking her head in amusement.

“—and now I am wondering who that white-robed lady was,” she sighed.

“Oh… her.” Lingsheng fell silent again. “Do you know the Zheng clan?”

“Zheng?” she repeated.

“As in… the clan from the Ming territories?” she asked, weakly, recalling Aunt Tao mentioning them when talking through famous influences from beyond the Azure Astral Territories. “Led by the Princess Divine Golden Swallow?”

Somehow, though, the idea that an expert from a clan like that was traveling around here still didn’t loom quite as large in her thoughts as the fact that she had been a few feet away from the Scholar Prince.

“It should be,” Lingsheng sighed. “Nobody else would dare wear that golden hairpin—”

“—And someone just killed a whole bunch of people using a forbidden artefact associated with the Ming clan,” she added, recalling Grandpa Bai’s comments on that event.

“It’s almost like the start of a bad joke,” she declared at last, sitting back and fighting the urge to rub her temples.

“A bad joke?” Lingsheng asked.

“A monk, a warrior and an assassin all walk into a rural teahouse,” she murmured.

“—and the teahouse, got up and left, quickly,” Lingsheng quipped as the vehicle started to slow.

Returning her focus to what was going on ‘outside’ she was surprised to find that they were already almost clear of Huling. The reason for their slowing down was the checkpoint on the other side of the village. The two vehicles ahead had slowed to walking pace, as one of the guards on top of the one in front held some kind of conversation, she presumed, with a sergeant who had jogged over from their checkpoint building while the other scanned the street behind them, and the queue of vehicles, with their curious on-lookers in the opposite lane.

She was just wondering if they were, against all the odds, still going to end up waiting at this checkpoint, until the sergeant waved for the vehicle ahead of them to head on through.

Lingsheng, who was looking around nervously, she couldn’t help but notice, exhaled as the two mudskippers ahead of them rapidly began to pick up pace once more.

“Is there a problem?” she asked.

“Well, if they are going to ambush us, it will likely be around here,” Lingsheng replied grimly. “So keep an eye out for anything odd, especially stuff lying on the road.”

“Ah,” she glanced behind them. In a matter of less than a minute, the village was almost out of sight through the rain and they were already back to the standard ‘road speed’ of their carriage.

“You both might want to strap in,” Lingsheng added, as they kept accelerating. “I think we will be driving… fast, for a bit.

Nodding, she leant forward and checked Anya as she pulled the straps on her seat across and fastened them, then did her own up.

Soon, the vehicle had picked up enough speed that she could gain a faint sense of inertia, even without looking ‘outside’, which was honestly kind of disorientating. The rain was hammering into the exterior of the vehicle, and between it and the spray from the road surface, even with the helmet’s augmentation, trying to peer through it hurt her eyes after even a short time. Still, she persevered, on the grounds that spotting anything would be helpful.

“My eyes hurt,” Anya groaned after they had driven very fast for a rather tense five minutes.

“Yeah, it sucks,” Lingsheng agreed. “Just imagine what it would be like to be outside.”

“Euwww…” Anya audibly echoed the sentiment in her own heart there.

“Well, unlike us they are trained for it,” Lingsheng added drily.

“—Hostile intent detected.”

The voice of the formation spirit echoed in her ears as, almost in the same instant six red chevrons appeared off to their right, moving very fast, somewhere…

To her mild surprise, the helmet actually told her—four hundred and eighty… six meters away, well, four hundred and eight, by the time she finished reading the number, and closing fast—

A pale tongue of fire blazed out from the weapon of the lead soldier on the vehicle in front of them and three of the red chevrons vanished. A moment later, the vehicle behind them also fired and another two vanished, leaving the remaining one to flee, vanishing from her helmet’s overlay of the exterior at some seven hundred meters.

“—Hostile…”

Even as she was looking in that direction, trying to pierce the grey curtain of rain over the spirit-rice fields, the formation spirit spoke again in her ear. This time though, it didn’t even get to finish before the additional red chevron that had snapped into focus on her left, some three hundred meters away, vanished in a plume of dirt and unstable qi in the rice paddy.

“And this is why you don’t pick fights with the Military Bureau,” Lingsheng murmured.

“Why do they even bother?” Anya asked, looking over at the rapidly vanishing impact point.

“Because that prisoner in the other vehicle is a very hot gourd, and the Jeo clan are likely in a bad place already, due to current events,” Lingsheng replied. “They are probably trying to get ahead of us… but for once, this weather is helping, because nobody can fly, or teleport, so they have to run on foot…”

“And because we got out of Huling so fast, they are playing catchup?” she suggested.

“Turn off at the next feeder road,” Lieutenant Han’s voice echoed through their helmet communications.

Lingsheng waved her right hand and a visual projection of the road-network heading towards West Flower Picking Town snapped into focus in front of them. About two miles ahead of them, on that she could see a road heading off to the north-east, that ran through the paddy fields.

“Got it,” Lingsheng replied, as behind them the guard crouched on the rear vehicle opened fire at something—

Their vehicle suddenly swerved as Lingsheng took them into the opposite lane. A fraction of a second later an arrow scythed out of the rain and hit the road where their vehicle would have just driven, exploding in a gyre of inauspicious Yin Earth Qi. The vehicle behind easily avoided it, while the guard there returned fire again at something.

“Wonderful,” Lingsheng muttered as their vehicle accelerated even more, to the point where if she looked directly sideways out over the fields, even with her enhanced senses it was a little nauseating.

“Turning.” Lingsheng called out a moment before the vehicle in front abruptly… crossed the opposite lanes and turned down the incoming feeder road.

Following after, they soon found themselves hurtling along the edge of a lotus-flower choked irrigation canal.

The next twenty minutes turned out to be simultaneously the most boring yet stressful experience she had ever had in a carriage. There was no further shooting at anything, and all the formation spirit detected were some shocked farmers tending to fields and a few spirit fowl that their speedy passage stirred up. The road itself was also not designed to be driven at anything like the speed they were going at, she was sure, and she was very glad when it widened out again.

“Straight on and take the second road to the east,” Lieutenant Han instructed Lingsheng.

Eyeing the map, she found that road and tracing where it went, realised it cut the corner of the main road as it followed the river inland to West Flower Picking Town and also avoided the next two villages.

A flash of purple bloomed in the fields to their right, kicking up a drifting plume of iridescence.

“What was—?”

Focusing on it, she winced as a serpent of purple lightning skittered chaotically across the rain-lashed fields before earthing itself on a luckless road marker several hundred meters ahead of them.

“Owwwwie, my eyes,” Anya groaned, pulling her helmet off. “Whut attacked us?”

“End of the auspicious hour, huh?” Lingsheng grunted, as a third bolt lashed out of the grey haze, like an errant skimming stone before obliterating several trees behind them.

“Is this an attack?” she asked uneasily. “We are a long way from the town now, so it shouldn’t be the warehouse fire?”

“There is a village about four miles to the west,” Lingsheng informed her, the map pinging a small settlement with a few extra symbols around it. “And given the hour…”

“It’s a tribulation?” she groaned. “What sort of idiot would undergo—oh. It’s the first day of the dawning dragon week, and the province is crawling with lunatics,” she sighed, belatedly recalling once more what day it was.

“It is, and it is,” Lingsheng agreed drily.

While new year was more auspicious, in a sense, this ‘week of the dawning dragon’ was usually the earliest period when you could get stable gains breaking through with yang-aligned methods. Unless the place you were in was experiencing Yin Eclipse’s special brand of ‘weather’.

Two further bolts skittered out of the sleeting rain on their right-hand side, the first briefly illuminating a large irrigation pond about a mile on their left, the second obliterating another part of a field boundary in a cloud of burning tree.

“Mah Ayes Attained da Dao O’ Purple splotches,” Anya groaned, rubbing her eyes.

“Should we be concerned, Lieutenant Han?” she asked, through the com link, looking back into the carriage, where their new travel companions were peering out of the windows and talking animatedly about the quality of the lightning.

“It looks to be a tribulation run wild,” Grandpa Bai informed her, before the lieutenant could reply. “Probably a spirit herb awakening, based on the ambience. It has been a bothersome year for Duo Li Lotus infestations.”

“Indeed, it’s actually helpful, heh.” The lieutenant added, shaking her head. “Anyone within a few miles of this is…”

As if determined to illustrate that point perfectly, the rain clouds to their right twisted inwards, collapsing upwards, as the lightning crackling down turned a deep golden hue. At the same time a vast, ephemeral white and blue lotus bloomed across another irrigation pond, now just visible off to their right amidst the rain—

Dozens of lesser lightning bolts of various colours flailed, like the tendrils of some heavenly sea monster, a full third of them shooting off in the direction they had come. Others scattered towards where the map told her the village should be.

“—Is in for a very bad day, if they are tossing divining intent around.” The lieutenant concluded.

“—And this is why you invest in formation hardened, ablatively dampened carriages,” Lingsheng added drily as none of the remaining lightning bolts directly came for their convoy, though a few tore molten furrows through the fields around them as they sped on.

“Are you okay?” she asked Anya, who was still rubbing her eyes.

“Nuh-huh,” the younger girl replied, with a tone that was… not entirely convincing.

“Take some deep breaths, close your eyes and let your qi circulation stabilize,” Lingsheng instructed. “It will pass—”

A glow of golden light blazed through the rain, from off to their right. Their vehicle shuddered, and the rain around them suddenly turned to misty vapour.

“Whu was dat?” Anya asked, shocked.

Before she could reply, a black line, like a fissure into some other place, split the horizon, over the distant reservoir, warping the perspective of its surroundings, before scattering outwards like a black spider web. Fortunately, it petered out in the fields before it reached them, but it left her in a cold sweat, nonetheless.

“A Duel of the Fates… but for a spirit herb?” she answered, wondering whether it had succeeded. “What…?”

“Ohkay, tell them to drive faster!” Lingsheng called through the com-link to Lieutenant Han, as the sky above them… abruptly turned a much gloomier shade of dark.

“Way ahead of you,” Lieutenant Han replied drily, even as the vehicle in front of them rapidly sped up.

Off to their right, the spectral lotus had reformed, its petals now edged with shadow, while in the sky above… a vast corona of iridescence was shimmering—

“Look away!” she instructed Anya, closing her eyes and cancelling her helmet’s exterior view entirely.

It was just in time as well, as a curtain of white light descended, sucking all the colour out of the landscape outside, leaving only shadows for a brief moment, followed by—

This time, the barrier on their vehicle did trigger, she was sure, as a shockwave thumped into them. It left her lightheaded and wheezing as, even with the shielding, her qi tried to flee her body for a few seconds… before settling back to normal.

Off to their right, when she finally looked, a shimmering white and black lotus almost the size of the distant reservoir, was unfurling its petals. In its midst, she just fancied she could see a figure, cloaked in lily leaves, staring up at the sky—

Abruptly, it turned and looked right at her. For a split second, she felt like wasn’t in the vehicle, but instead, standing on the water, mere paces away from the dark-haired figure, who looked barely older than her.

“Interesting… really interesting…” the spirit herb murmured, before its gaze slid sideways to something else—

Her presence in that moment snapped back, leaving her feeling like she had just seen double—

“Uh…” Anya’s shocked gasp drew her attention to the vehicle ahead of them, where the same spirit herb was now standing, on the top of the vehicle, staring at the shocked guards, along with a second feminine figure, clad in golden sycamore leaves, her pale hair garlanded in a wreath crown of the same leaves.

“Oh. Shit.” Lieutenant Han groaned.

“Those are not immortal realm spirit herbs, are they?” she murmured.

“You know, I don’t think so, somehow,” Lingsheng replied grimly as, with the air of someone out for a nice stroll, the sycomore-clad figure turned to look back at them.

“You think you can have designs on us, in your heart?”

The words, like a gentle breath, sank through the vehicle, directed not at her, but at those in the rear of their vehicle. Unable to resist, her focus was drawn to the youth—‘Senior Brother Hu’—who had gone to sit right at the back of the carriage.

Scowling, Lady Ao stood and, to her surprise, slapped him, right across the face, twice, then grabbing his head, pushed it down in a bow.

“We gave that old poet’s son a warning… but I guess it bears repeating more widely,” the sycamore woman whispered. “This injustice we have endured… redress it, or we will do it for you. And if we have to do it… well… I shall light a lamp for your regrets, on the Altar of the Rains.”

As suddenly as they arrived, the pair were gone, in a scatter of green and gold leaves.

“You… idiot!” Lady Ao snarled, rounding on the stunned Senior Brother Hu. “By rights, I should toss you out in the rain right now, to make your peace with your stupid decisions… attracting the attention of that…!”

“Mmmm, yes.”

She glanced at Grandpa Bai, and flinched, because his expression was flat, like a statue.

“Who… was that?” Mei stammered. “It was like… I was…?”

“Her name is lost to time, but she is described, in ancient texts on Yin Eclipse, as one with its ancient powers—akin to the Bewitching Jasmine and the Life-breaking Aspen,” Grandpa Bai replied coolly. “In the Yuan and Shan Dynasties, they worshiped her as a protector spirit, a bright sun that protected against the darkness that rose from the deep places of Yin Eclipse. Nowadays, there are still shrines to her, in villages in the Shadow Forest, and it is not uncommon for sycamore spirit trees to be planted as auspicious anchors in the northern part of Teng Province.”

“So, why the fates is she out here?” Lieutenant Han asked, sounding worried. “Could it be that the Jeo…?”

“—Are allied with them? No, no way,” Shin answered, shaking her head emphatically. “At best, those ancient spirit herbs turn a blind eye, like you might mice beneath your floorboards… but every time someone crosses them, blood flows and the balance of power focused on these provinces changes,” she added a bit more wryly. “—Or so I am led to believe.”

“Indeed, had Young Lord Shu here not cast some foolish stones in his thoughts while watching that tribulation, she would likely have never made her presence felt,” Grandpa Bai sighed.

“Mmm, yes,” Lady Ao agreed, gloomily.

“You…” Shu Fei Hu glared at her, holding his hand to his face.

“What, you want to protest?” Lady Ao sneered. “Be grateful she seems content to just threaten you. In any case, your trip into Yin Eclipse is over, Shu Fei Hu. I will not have your fate being held over the Shu Pavilion as a second Shu Bao.”

“Senior Sister, I am sure they will understand,” one of her companions murmured, putting a hand on Lady Ao’s arm, presumably to try and calm her down.

“More concerning, is what did she mean by that warning… ‘an injustice we have endured’?” Sheng Xiao asked, frowning. “—and who is ‘the son of that old poet’ she mentioned?”

“Who can say?” Lady Ao replied, sitting down with a sigh. “What does seem clear, is that someone, somewhere, has pissed off some very powerful beings in Yin Eclipse in the last few weeks, and they are starting to come out to look for answers…”

After that, the Shu disciples asked a few more questions, but Shu Fei Hu balefully glaring at Lady Ao was a real conversation dampener, and neither Grandpa Bai, Lady Ao, Shin nor the Lieutenant seemed keen on giving more than the vaguest answers.

“How are your eyes now?” she asked Anya, shifting her attention back to the front of the vehicle, where Lingsheng was still focused on following the vehicle in front.

“Better,” Anya replied giving her a thumbs up. “That lady spirit herb was really scary, huh?”

“Worf!” the spirit dog barked.

“She was,” she agreed, resolving to ask Grandpa Bai about the whole thing in private, later.

After the chaos of the tribulation and the additional, unexpected encounter with a freakish old monster of years gone by, the next two hours were… disconcertingly boring. There were still things to do—namely playing spotter, just in case, but between their high travel speed, the dreary weather and the lack of checkpoint stops, the whole thing eventually just blurred together.

At a certain point, Anya’s concentration noticeably collapsed as well, so on a quiet stretch of highway, they spent some time looking through the selection of view-casts and serialized dramas that were stored in the carriage’s formation database. What she found was… eclectic, to say the least. Anya quite quickly picked one she was familiar with, but had never felt especially compelled to watch—‘Purple River’, a long-running series about a trio of sworn brothers working to preserve the peace of their world and prevent a sinister cabal of court officials from overthrowing the rightful empress.

In that vein, the formation database also had almost all of ‘Beneath the Saintesses Umbrella’—a tale about the ingenious consort to an aloof Emperor fighting to support her family’s place within a fictional Heavenly Court—which was some feat, as that series had nearly a thousand episodes at this point. There were also several hundred episodes of the Anthology series ‘Tales from the Night Market’; the tragic ‘romance’ ‘A Petal Too Dark’; ‘The Dao of Duty’, about a unit of elite Military Authority investigators; and the downright surreal ‘Where in the Heavens is Alchemist Jiang!?’

Interestingly, there were very few series set in the current Heavens of Eastern Azure. Though, those tended to overwhelmingly feature Kong or Huang-esque protagonists, lots of power-tripping, acquisition of lineages linked to the Divine Strategist and what not, an excessive number of cameos by powerful figures, supporting the 'heroes' from the shadows and large harems of beauties who they saved. She had hate-watched several episodes of the most recent one, written by the eponymous Qin Qiu, and featuring a Crown Prince very like Prince Dun, and realised quite quickly it was just a rip-off of ‘One with the Spear‘ attempting to pedal thinly veiled propaganda… and had the Crown Prince lead quoting Qin Qiu at length.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“—How are you all holding up?”

She was just considering whether to dip back into the library to see what else was there, as they hit another long stretch of empty, rain-swept road between spirit herb fields when Shin stuck her head into the front section.

“Well enough,” she replied, giving her a polite bow. “It’s been uneventful.”

“So courteous,” Shin sighed wryly, shaking her head and coming in. “I bring snacks, but no wine, for obvious reasons.”

“They drank it all to steady their nerves after our brush with an infamous spirit herb?” Lingsheng asked drily.

“Shush! It’s at the pivotal reveal!” Anya waved a hand seriously at Shin.

“What are you watching?” Shin asked, curious.

“Little brother Zichuan is just about to uncover the Eunuch’s plot against Princess Fan!” Anya replied seriously.

“Oh, Purple River…” Shin rolled her eyes and slid into the free seat and passed her a meat bun. “What else is in there?”

Taking off her face plate, she projected the formation interface so it showed up for everyone.

“Oh, some real classics in there,” Shin appraised. “Saintess’s Umbrella, The Mysterious Alchemist Investigates, huh, and… Hoh! the Sunrise Pavilion version of ‘Record of A Scholar’s Journey’?”

She blinked as Shin waved her hand through the sprawling library and a series snapped into focus.

The reason she had not noticed it before, was that the library was ordered, for the most part, chronologically, so she had been just working her way back down the entries, when not required to peer suspiciously at the road and fields around them.

“OH! OH! THE EUNUCH WAS ACTUALLY PRINCESS FAN!?” Anya’s shriek made both her and Shin wince.

“Ahhh… to be young again,” Shin giggled, as Anya waved her arms in the air, mimicking sword slashes.

“Ohhh! AND NOW IT’S BROTHER YILIN’S MUSIC!” Anya gasped.

“…”

“Nooooo! THE CHANCELLOR IS HERE?! It wus him all along?”

With almost comedic speed, Anya’s elation turned to shock and horror.

“He is so strong! How is he so strong?!” Anya wailed. “Fight, brother Yilin! Fight!”

“It’s honestly funnier watching her than it is the scene itself,” Shin giggled.

“Yeah,” she agreed, taking another bite out of her bun.

“Ahhhhhhh! HIS BODYGYARD WAS BIG BRO LIN IN DISGUISE!?” Anya… somehow, managed to find a new level of shock to vocalise. “Is it the long awaited teamup?!

“It is!”

Lingsheng sighed and poked something in her formation interface, and then the scene flitted into focus for the rest of them as well, showing three valorous, dark-haired youths facing off against dozens of heavily armed and armoured ‘elite soldiers’ dressed in black and gold armour, while a powerful man in a dragon robe looked on impassively, his arms behind his back. The ‘Princess’ was currently kneeling nearby, her face pale.

“Hidden Virtue!” Anya called out, as the elder brother used his sword to deflect a shimmering sword-phantasm conjured by the combined qi and law attacks of the onrushing soldiers.

“Guard of the Sun!” Anya whooped as the middle brother raised his great sword and deflected the sneaky assault by several shadows amidst the soldiers on the princess.

“Your end is now!” the youngest brother declared, pointing his blade at the chancellor and advancing forward. “Celestial Spear!”

Anya’s calling out of the moves was nearly as emphatic as the declarations of them from within the scene as it was playing out, the music that had been building the mood as the heroic trio exchanged blows finally spilling over into something more.

“You have to sing,” Anya instructed them, archly, as the trio’s blows landed in unison.

“Our Stars combined, until the end!” Anya added waving her arms in mimicry of the younger brother’s strike against the chancellor.

-Ah, what the fates, she giggled.

“When we shine…” she sang, easily picking up the chords as the whole scene slowed and the ‘theme’ of the series, which was actually famous in its own right as a piece of music.

“—We shine together,” Shin also joined in, picking up the refrain easily.

“Our oath, to stand forever,” Lingsheng also joined in at this point.

“Even after heaven has dealt its hand—” they all chorused, as within the scene, the youngest of the three directed the momentum of the formation to block the overwhelming counterstrike of the ‘Evil Chancellor’.

“We’ll endure, the storm to come…”

“Our Oath to fight, until the end!”

“Even when the clouds descend!”

Weathering the strike, the trio flawlessly struck at the chancellor, protected the princess and obliterated all the onrushing guards, forcing the Chancellor to deploy one final move… at which point the youngest one, supported by his brothers, landed a devastating, strike to his chest, obliterating the villain’s body entirely.

“Yeah! Get HIM!” Anya yelled exuberantly. “Our stars! Combined until the end!”

It was flashy, cheesy, really not how such formations worked… but it was undeniably a great moment, and after a stressful, tiring afternoon, it was oddly freeing, if only for a brief few moments… to just let go and have a bit of fun.

In the end, she found herself singing along to the entire ‘credit sequence’ for the episode, showing the trio mopping up the last witnesses, then returning to their secret headquarters with the stunned princess, at which point the episode ticked over… to a scene in a dark hall, where a powerful, ancient figure sat, obscured by strange means, while looming over the ‘big brother’, who was explaining that the ‘Chancellor’ and his men were all dead and the princess was now ‘missing’.

“Our hand was ruined… because you chased your ‘junior brother’… and you did not even manage to kill that wretched boy,” the ancient figure hissed, leaning forward. “You have failed me for the last time… apprentice. There will be no other chances…”

She had to admit, that it was impressive… and quite awe-inspiring as black and gold lightning flashed across the ceiling, revealing ninety-nine chanting figures in the higher gallery of the ‘hall’, in a facsimile of the ‘Hall of Judgement’.

“—You will reach West Flower Picking Town in forty miles,” the dispassionate formation spirit informed them, flawlessly cutting through the pivotal crescendo in the theme music as the next episode launched into its opening montage.

“Honestly, that is the most realistic part of it,” Shin snickered as she turned to stare at the map between her and Lingsheng, surprised they were that close. “Have you ever tried to deliver a good monologue? The heavens hate that shit more than physical cultivation, I swear.”

“We have been driving… inadvisably fast for the last two and a half hours,” Lingsheng remarked.

“Still, now comes the bit where things might get a little dangerous,” Shin mused.

“Yeah,” Lingsheng sighed.

-Ah, because our destination will not have been in doubt, just the route.

To her surprise, however, they reached the outskirts of West Flower Picking town in short order, encountering no difficulties beyond a few flooded roads where river levies had broken due to the rain. The three checkpoints they passed through just waved them on, and it was only when they finally reached the north-western gate, leading directly into the heavily fortified ‘Military District’, that they finally had to stop… and she realised, after a quick count back, that they had only passed through thirty-two checkpoints.

“What’s wrong?” Shin asked her, noticing her rather depressed sigh as they waited while Lieutenant Han spoke to a heavily armed sergeant at the door of their vehicle.

“We only passed through thirty-two checkpoints,” she grumbled. “My Dao Path has only reached completion, not perfection.”

“…”

Lingsheng turned and gave her a ‘look’, while Anya, who she had expected to at least understand, just giggled.

“The Nameless Dao of Checkpoints,” Shin chuckled. “Truly, a mysterious and obscure comprehension path.”

“It is,” she agreed, affecting to ignore the pair.

“—Okay, follow them in,” Lieutenant Han’s voice echoed in her ears.

Ahead of them, the vehicle with the prisoners, which was now flanked by a full squad of ten soldiers in heavy armour, started to crawl forward again.

Half an hour later, saw them all outside the vehicles at last, though thankfully not to stand around in the rain. They were escorted to the sprawling compound within the Military District that used to belong to her Aunt Tao, when her Uncle Weng had been governor of the town long ago. Since the Ha clan were passed governorship, they had relocated to one of their own estates, so it had since become the main offices of Military Intelligence for the wider region, as she understood it.

“—How long will we have to wait here?!” Mei, who was clearly keen to be done with the whole thing at this point, grumbled, getting up to pace back and forth in the spacious lounge they had been given to wait in. “At this rate, even though we got here…”

“Relax,” Lady Ao told her. “As I understand it, that banquet is likely to be cancelled, or at least postponed anyway, so…”

“P-postponed?” Sheng Xiao asked.

“Mmmm, were you not listening to the guards when they were escorting us here?” Yufu, Lady Ao’s younger companion, mused. “It seems that a large-scale audit of the spirit herb warehouses has caused some… upheaval in the town today, and the ramifications are still being unravelled.”

“How does that mess with our event?” Mei grumbled.

“—Because everyone important who might attend it is currently being sent hither and thither, overseeing soldiers tipping out boxes and counting gourds and trying to separate malpractice and incompetence from maleficence and mendacity, Young Lady Shu,” a kindly-looking, middle-aged man with short-cut dark hair, whom she had not even noticed enter the lounge, remarked, before saluting the room at large. “I apologise for keeping you all waiting. I am the Military Adjunct, Ling Li Sheng. It has been a busy day for us here.”

-Li family, huh… she sighed.

That rivalry was… revitalizing itself, as she understood it, from following Grandpa Bai around. The Li family branch were on the rise on Southern Azure, and the difficult circumstances in the province currently were being seen by their old elders as an excellent opportunity to reassert a degree of ‘involvement’ with Yin Eclipse, and a controlling stake in the resources there.

“Lord Li, please, we understand your circumstances,” Lady Ao murmured, standing and bowing politely to him. “However, we can help you…”

“Ahaha… Lady Ao is very considerate,” Lord Li replied jovially. “For now, all we require is a sworn statement from each of you as to your role in what happened at the teahouse, and a mental imprint of your perspective.”

“A… mental imprint?” Shu Fei Hu scowled. “We are the victims here?”

“Alas, with this weather, other methods are not reliable, Young Lord Shu,” Lord Li replied respectfully. “It is just to corroborate matters, you understand. Those who are innocent surely have nothing to hide.”

“However, a mental imprint of the kind you are talking of is no small thing to leave in the hands of others!” Xiu Tianyu added, also huffing a bit. “Even were we in the Shu Pavilion—”

“—But it is not the Shu Pavilion asking; it is the Azure Astral Authorities Military Bureau, Young Lord Xiu,” Lord Li cut in smoothly. “I am sure your lordship did not mean to suggest that our August Bureau was… suspect in any way?”

“…”

-So, this is how they plan to play this, she sighed inwardly.

It was, in truth, standard practice to take mental imprints of witness accounts, so that divination experts could view them and perhaps see things from them that witnesses might have missed. It was also much more reliable, in this miserable weather. However, both youths had a valid point, in that while it was nothing like demanding someone open up their storage ring, or reveal all their soul-bound items, or, even worse, scrying someone’s soul or sea of knowledge directly, it could still reveal a lot about a cultivator that they perhaps… did not want to reveal. As such, usually such an imprint was just recorded perspective, rather than an actual ‘imprint’ of a person’s mental perception of that moment.

Someone of the status of Military Adjunct, like this Ling Li Sheng, would know this full well, so his decision to lean on it quite so... overtly suggested that he, or someone else in the hierarchy here, was angling to get some extra info about their group, likely spooked by so many experts rolling up at once.

“I am afraid mental imprints of the kind you are suggesting will be impossible,” Lady Ao replied politely. “All Shu Pavilion disciples have recently been extended certain protections. If you wish to pursue that line, you will have to petition our Elder of the Hall, currently in Blue Water City.

“And if you wish to allege we have something to hide in this, I must inform you that the Shu Pavilion will formally protest, using the highest authority we possess.” As she spoke, she produced a simple iron talisman, about the size of her hand and bowing slightly, proffered it to Lord Ling Li.

The Military Adjunct considered the talisman, then looked askance.

“You do know how to make my life difficult, huh. In that case—”

“Surely just a recorded visual perspective from each person, on a sufficiently high-quality loci would be sufficient to your needs?” Scholar Sai suggested, from where he had been sitting quietly, off to the side, with Grandpa Bai. “That was always the heavenly standard, as far as I was aware, unless manipulation of a witness testimony was suspected? I hardly think anyone here has any need to resort to such low-down means?”

“The dictate is what it is,” Lord Ling Li replied with a sigh. “Of late, the tolerance of the authorities has shrunk... considerably. What was acceptable under the old regime, which was remarkably... lax, in many areas, is seen as reflecting badly on the authority of the Quan, Fan and Su clans, and of course our Ling Li.”

“Honestly, I say this mostly for your benefit,” he continued. “Because while Lady Han’s perspective is compelling, there are experts from the Dragon Pavilion in the town, and if we have to bring them into this... and it is found that these are, in fact, experts from there, you may face considerable difficulties...”

“Is it not enough that they attacked us?” Mei objected. “They killed—”

“It is true, some bandits seem to have capitalized on matters, but your clash was with these Sheng clan disciples, and they claim they are being framed by villains and rebels, and that it is our duty to investigate all sides... Young Lady Shu,” Lord Ling Li replied, patiently. “We are not the Ha clan, or the local Ling clan; we cannot just take your word for it because you are also from a famous power. Similarly, we cannot take their word for it, so, we are at an impasse.”

-What a little snake, she sneered, glancing over at Grandpa Bai, who was just sipping his tea and looking on quietly.

This kind of passive-aggressive oppression was nothing new to her.

“That is fine, I am happy to speak to them in person,” Lady Ao replied blandly. “Where are they? If you can provide us with an escort, I think this can be tidied up quite—”

“OI! OI GET OUT OF MY WAY YOU MENIAL THING!” a woman’s angry shouting from outside, cut off Lady Ao.

“... amicably.” Lady Ao finished, as the others also turned to see what the disturbance was.

The door behind the adjunct slammed open, and a golden-haired young woman in a military official’s robe with four gold stars on the breast stalked into the room even as two guards and a protesting official hurried after her.

“Huh, Sheng,” she stopped and stared at the Adjunct. “Don’t you have explanations about resource embezzlement to be sorting out?”

“Young Lady Sheng...” Lord Ling Li bowed respectfully to her, though she caught the grimace ghosting the corner of his lips as he did so. “With the greatest respect, this matter is somewhat...”

“—Oh, Big Sister Ao! I wasn’t expecting you till this evening!” Lady Sheng entirely ignored the adjunct’s bow and swept past him to grasp Lady Ao’s hands then give her a warm embrace. “How long has it been! You are looking so well! And are these your cute juniors?”

“Ahaha... little Shanguang! You are as boisterous as ever,” Lady Ao chuckled, after returning her embrace. “It has been too long. I had to undergo a long cultivation retreat...”

“Lady Ao is my personal guest, and these companions of hers have undergone a dreadful ordeal,” ‘Lady Sheng’ stated, glancing over at Ling Li Sheng. “Being attacked by vile criminals of the Jeo, no less. Go deal with your resource embezzlement issue, Adjunct Sheng. Lord Quan is asking for an update on that.”

“As you command... Lady Sheng,” Ling Li Sheng replied. “I just ask that you be considerate of matters. This has the...”

“Yes, I am aware, probably moreso than you,” Lady Sheng replied levelly. “I would recommend you be... proactive with Lord Quan’s request. This day has been testing for him.”

“It has been a testing day for most of us,” Ling Li Sheng replied, bowing again.

He gave them one further ‘look’ over, and sighed, then turned on his heel and walked out, followed by the guards and the other official, who was already trying to tell him something, under a ward of silence. Lady Sheng waited until he had properly left the hall, and then a while longer, before sighing and sitting down on a couch opposite Lady Ao.

“Fates, do you know how miserable this appointment is?” Lady Sheng grumbled. “When they sent me here to unsnarl the silliness over that ‘gift’, I never expected those idiots backing Sheng Dian to be so… bleugh.” She made a face, then finally looked around at the rest of them. “So, these are your cute juniors, huh?” Her gaze ran across Jian Chen, then Shu Fei Hu, then… surprisingly, to her and Lingsheng. “I see some interesting faces… some more interesting than others.”

“Well, the Shu clan suddenly has decided that they do in fact care a bit more about things in the last week,” Lady Ao replied drily. “As, it seems, does the Sheng clan. Or they would not have let you come down here from Shan Lai.”

“My Aunt, the Envoy, has been angling to try and give me ‘additional responsibilities’ for years,” Lady Sheng pouted. “Honestly, though I was just complaining, it isn’t that bad. These idiots are all known quantities. The Li family have their ambitions, the Su are in need of resources, the Quan just want respect and the Fan… the Fan are… as they always are.”

“Young Lady Sheng is forthright as always,” Scholar Sai finally spoke up.

“Motherless—!” Lady Sheng bit off a curse, and flinched, turning to stare at where Scholar Sai was sitting, then glared back at the door. “OFFICIAL FA!”

There was a moment’s silence, then the official from before hurried in.

“You are assigned to auditing the herb association’s matters for… well, until I forget why I assigned you to it.”

“…”

The official stared at her and then, involuntarily his gaze slid over to the openly acknowledged ‘elders’ of their group—her grandfather and Scholar Sai, then back to Lady Sheng, his expression paling.

“I… s-sorry your ladyship, I… did not realise Scholar Sai had come here, or I would have assuredly forewarned y-you. Lord Ling—”

“You are the deputy official in charge of such matters here,” Lady Sheng replied coolly. “Or were, until just now. Send in Minyue when you leave.”

“Y-your ladyship.” The official bowed, his face expressionless, then backed out of the room.

“If you do not treat these minions like this, nothing ever gets done around here. In another month I might have managed to promote enough people for our operation to be more than pointlessly intimidating, and actually achieve some good,” Lady Sheng grunted, getting to her feet and politely bowing to Scholar Sai.

“I apologise, Eminent Scholar, Lord Duke, for showing you something unsightly, please accept my, Sheng Shanguang’s most humble apologies.”

“Not at all,” Scholar Sai, who had also stood, returning her bow politely, replied with a half smile.

Watching the exchange, she felt that her grasp of the ‘Dao of Playing Stupid Games’ had actually advanced a step. Whether this Lady Sheng had already known Scholar Sai was there was… moot. But Ling Li Sheng’s attempt at gaining some leverage had likely just lost him a useful subordinate in a position of influence.

“Lady Sheng, you called for me?” a graceful, tall woman with dark hair asked, entering the room and bowing politely.

“You are replacing Fan Fa in his role,” Lady Sheng informed her.

“I am honoured to accept your decision,” the woman replied, bowing formally.

“For your first task, please go inform young Lord Quan that I am willing to host Lady Ao as my personal guest tonight,” Lady Sheng continued, drily. “I… suspect he will be greatly relieved given the current circumstances, to be unburdened of the social nightmare of hosting a banquet this evening. Also inform him that I will happily attend with my guests at whatever date he feels he can reschedule. You can also pick an auspicious date on my behalf.”

“As you command, Lady Sheng,” Minyue murmured, bowing deeply.

“And just like that, Lord Quan gains what he most wants,” Lady Ao observed with a faint smile.

Beside her, Lingsheng was quite aggressively occupied pondering the depths of her cup of tea, likely so she would not be caught rolling her eyes or something, she suspected.

“Actually, scratch that,” Lady Sheng held up her hand, glancing at Lady Ao, then Scholar Sai, a strange smile playing across her lips. “Tell Young Lord Quan that I have an opportunity to attend a rare gathering this evening, and that he can come… as my guest.”

“He… can? Lady Sheng?” Minyue asked that in such a way that it implied she was asking if the sky was now green.

“Indeed, it will be an interesting experience for him, I think. One that he will not regret, because it will smooth over a lot of the chaos unleashed today.”

“You are as cunning as I remember,” Lady Ao giggled.

“Unfortunately, I am not the person you have to ask, for that invite,” Scholar Sai chuckled.

“You would not invite this young lady, who has always held up a lantern for your reputation in these generations, for your long service to my ancestral shrine and the acknowledgements you attained for those great figures who reside there?” Lady Sheng pouted.

“…”

“An enquiry will be made, Young Lady Sheng,” Scholar Sai replied after a long pause. “Be on your best behaviour.”

While this conversation had been going on, she had been half looking at the others in the room, who were all marooned in various states of confusion at this point.

“Lady Ao…” Duyu, the older of her companions whispered, only to be cut off by Lady Ao waving her hand in placation.

“It’s fine, this will be a much more interesting evening,” Lady Ao murmured. “And one with markedly less pretension… I think you will be pleasantly surprised.”

“As to the matter with which Adjunct Ling was being a nuisance over, it is true that the regional authority have significantly beefed up their approach to problems around here, but it will be a small matter to invite little sister Hua over; her older brother has just become a Martial Elder in the Azure Astral Dragon Pagoda this month past. She is very familiar with the core elements of that sect, so…”

“—All it will require is a dinner invite?” Scholar Sai asked drily.

“I would not presume,” Lady Sheng replied with an entirely straight face. “But Han Hua Ying is a very dear friend of mine, and has never been anything less than a delight at any gathering she has graced.”

“Very well,” Scholar Sai replied after a further short pause.

“In that case, Minyue, if you would?”

“I will send someone to get her,” Minyue replied, bowing formally. “Is there any other matter?”

“No,” Lady Sheng shook her head slightly.

“In that case, Lady Sheng, please allow me to take my leave first,” Minyue murmured, bowing again, then leaving the hall.

A moment later, four maids came in, putting more tea and some snacks down on each of their tables.

“I’d love to ask you how the Shu Pavilion is these days, but if you have been staring at a wall for so long…” Lady Sheng joked, accepting a cup from one of the maids. “Or was that all a ruse so you could go off and do something else?”

“No, I was in closed door cultivation,” Lady Ao sighed. “As to how the Shu Pavilion is… well, there are a few promising juniors rising through the ranks… but they are still haunted by Shu Bao’s life choices.”

“Song Jia… aiii, that was such a waste… I heard she resurfaced recently?”

“Off the back of the mess with Di Ji, Lady Sheng,” Mei interjected bowing politely, and clearly keen to be ‘involved’.

“—Who has also popped back up,” Lady Sheng sighed, more deeply. “Though that raises the interesting possibility that we might get to see one of those old terrors openly play the ‘get rid’ card. The Imperial Court losing some face is only a good thing really.”

“Tempted?” Lady Ao asked with a wry grin.

“As I understand it, Young Lady Tai has that idiot in her sights,” Lady Sheng replied drily.

“Ummm, Lady Tai?” Mei asked respectfully.

“Tai Yan Mei,” Lady Ao replied casually. “Her grandparents have ancient links to the Ha clan, in case you were wondering why the Ha are so good at balancing on fences.”

“The Tai and the Ha clan have ancestral links?” Xiao Sheng asked, shocked.

“Mmmmm, the waters of this world are murky, and many strange, unexpected things swim in what at first appear to be its shallow waters,” Scholar Sai mused. “Ha, Bia, Ling, Han, Shen, Qing… these flags and some others have flown for far longer than many might think.”

“Eras rise and fall, and still their names are there; that is as much a warning as it is an achievement that should be respected. You need only consider the sorry fate of the Heavenly Dawn Sect, in the antiquity of this Heavenly Era’s formative years, as a lesson on how greatness can… all but vanish overnight.”

“Wise words, Scholar Sai,” Lady Sheng agreed.

“The Heavenly Dawn Sect?” Xiao Sheng asked, glancing at his friends.

“They were unto the second great Dynasty of the Shan, as the Jade Gate Court is in this era. A hegemonic power that worked hard to uphold that era,” Scholar Sai replied. “Alas, their misfortune was to cross paths with a peerless thief of hopes and dreams, who hauled himself out of a long-gone era, and in the end, their destiny was insufficient and their leadership fell into darkness as a result. It is a tale few now are willing to dwell on, but in these current, troubled times, I suspect more and more old eyes that recall those years, may start turning to their recollections of them… and that will likely bring little good.”

“Scholar Sai is indeed learned,” Lady Ao murmured. “Perhaps, while we wait, you might regale with some knowledge of that era?”

“I… alas, I cannot,” Scholar Sai replied, with a faint grimace. “Though it pains me to say I lived through those tumultuous days, I was not on Eastern Azure when the Shan dynasty fell.”

“You… were not?” Lady Sheng asked, leaning forward, as did the Shu group.

“No, I was accompanying Saintess Meng, participating in the great expedition to relieve the Ten Songs Starfield,” Scholar Sai replied, his expression turning gloomier. “And I fear I have no seemly tales to tell of those blood-soaked days that are fit for your gentle ears. Some innocence should be treasured and not thrown away so eagerly.”

Off to the side, she fancied she saw Shin grimace faintly as well. Ren Xin just sipped her tea.

“I… have heard something of those times,” Lady Sheng sighed, bowing apologetically to him. “Please accept my apologies for speaking unthinkingly.”

“Please,” Scholar Sai held up a hand to assuage her. “You could not know—not that it is any great secret. I was simply one among many.”

“—And far too few returned to our star fields, from that abyss of hope,” Ren Xin murmured.

“Indeed,” Scholar Sai agreed with a deeper sigh. “Those losses have shaped this era as much, if not more-so, than any so-called achievement wrought by those who remained.”

“What do you expect?” Ren Xin shrugged. “The faces of war never change.”

Looking around at the others, she could not help but feel a little amused at how stone-cold dead the conversation topic now was. Some, like Mei and Xiu Tianyu, were clearly itching to ask more, but to get between Lady Ao, Scholar Sai, Ren Xin, and the rather wistful, middle-distance gaze of Lady Sheng was as formidable a block as any Dao Cage.

“—Would the young lady like some tea?”

She glanced up at the maid who had finally made it over to her, Lingsheng and Anya, after going around literally everyone else, and bit back a sigh.

“Yes,” she replied holding out her empty cup, fighting back the urge to be a bit snide.

Even so, for the attitude of the maid, who was actually an Immortal in her own right, she gave a decidedly judgy look, that she affected not to notice.

Setting aside the cup, she took out a bun from her storage ring and nibbled on that, instead, staring out at the rainswept garden.

Soon the conversation did bubble back up, Lady Sheng and Lady Ao chatting about stuff in the Shu Pavilion and Shan Lai, while the others fell back to conversing about their own matters. Eventually, Minyue came back, accompanied by a dark-haired young woman in a deep blue gown, and a tall, pretty-faced youth who greatly resembled her, wearing a scholar’s tunic in a similar style.

“Introducing Young Lady Han and Young Lord Han,” Minyue declared, at the door, bowing politely to the pair.

Standing with all the others who were not Scholar Sai, her grandpa, Ren Xin… or Lady Ao, she politely greeted the young woman, and presumably brother.

“Ah, Sister Sheng!” Young Lady Han came over to clasp Lady Sheng’s hands warmly. “Is it really true?”

“It is,” Lady Sheng replied drily, before gesturing to Lady Ao. “This is my dear friend Ao.”

“The Lady Ao?” Young Lady Han gasped. “My apologies Big Sister… I can call you Big Sister, right?”

“Of course,” Lady Ao replied drily.

Sighing inwardly, she found herself tuning out the rest of their greetings, until they reached her and Lingsheng.

“To be an immortal, at such a young age, your future is sure to be bright,” Young Lady Han murmured, accepting her bow. “If you have any trouble, you can bring it to me.”

“Young Lady is too kind,” she replied blandly, a heartbeat after Lingsheng.

Thankfully, after everyone had been introduced, Lady Sheng suggested that they could take their leave. Returning to the vehicle, half the Shu group decamped to travel with Lady Sheng, so as it turned out, their vehicle suddenly held all the ‘old experts’… and Anya and her dog.

Back in the front, there wasn’t a whole lot to do, because Grandpa Bai had taken over control of the vehicle at this point, to drive them through the town. It was dark now as well, so there wasn’t much to see, beyond the lanterns of teahouses and the shops, as they drove through the rainswept streets, down to the river, then along the tree-lined throughfare beside it to eventually arrive, after some minutes stuck in traffic at the Wusheng Bridge, at a large estate just before the Yu Bridge.

Turning into its courtyard, she found that it was filled with soldiers mainly, which was not what she had expected. Two dozen armoured figures were sitting around in the shelter of the courtyard-side verandas, or in huddles at the rear-entrances of several parked mudskippers.

One of the more heavily armoured corporals stood up and headed over, waving at them and pointing back at the road, clearly telling them to leave… only to be called up short as a young woman in command armour jogged out of the main hall ahead of them, waving for all the soldiers to line up.

“How auspicious,” Shin observed drolly, considering the guards, who were now hurriedly forming up, into two ranks.

“It is what it is,” Scholar Sai replied, rolling his eyes.

Grandpa Bai just sighed.

Outside, Lady Sheng and the others were starting to get out of their vehicle, as the soldiers stood to attention. Lady Sheng had just begun to walk towards the major, accompanied by Lady Ao, when two more mudskippers turned into the gate, marked with Quan clan symbols.

“And that will be young Lord Quan. I guess we should step outside and give the Sheng girl a hand with her little moment?” Shin asked drily.

“Probably not a bad idea,” Grandmaster Huang agreed, while his wife rolled her eyes.

Sighing, she picked up her umbrella and, opening the top hatch, climbed out, unfurling her umbrella as she went. On the top of the vehicle, she ignored the looks from the soldiers, and just crouched down. A moment later, Lingsheng, then Anya joined her. Meanwhile, below, Grandpa Bai and the others had begun to dismount. Once they were all clear, they dropped down onto the paving and followed after them, Lingsheng sealing the vehicle as she went.

“—received your invite, Lady Sheng,” Young Lord Quan was saying, a little breathlessly as they came into earshot.

“Lady Ao, you surely know by reputation,” Lady Sheng replied, gesturing to her friend. “However, might I also introduce Scholar Sai, whose gracious goodwill has allowed us this opportunity”—she gestured to their group—“and his companions, who were instrumental in apprehending that Jeo criminal.”

“S-scholar Sai? As in…?” The old man standing behind Young Lord Quan turned a bit pale, then bowed hurriedly.

Young Lord Quan blinked, then turned to their group, and after giving them all a once over, bowed formally to Scholar Sai.

“It is an honour to make your acquaintance, Sir Scholar. Your fame resounds widely in my ancestors’ halls.”

“Not at all,” Scholar Sai replied politely, nodding in return.

“—When I invited you to dinner, I did not expect you to bring quite so many guests…”

Turning, she found a beautiful, motherly-looking woman had arrived, accompanied by a maid holding a wide umbrella. A younger woman in a hooded gown and a female guard stood a little way back, behind her.

“My apologies, Madame Leng,” Grandpa Bai sighed, giving her as respectful a bow as she had ever seen him give, except to the old monk and the warrior in the teahouse. “You know how things can develop sometimes.”

“Aiii, and it is a day like today,” Madame Leng agreed, coming over to them.

“Might I introduce to you my granddaughters,” Grandpa Bai added, motioning them forward, slightly to her surprise, and ahead of everyone else, who were still focused on ‘Scholar Sai’, as if they could barely notice the arrival of this woman, or Grandpa Bai, for that matter. “Xiayu and Zhihuan.”

“My, oh my,” Madame Leng stepped forward, so they were barely an umbrella width apart and took her hands warmly. “What a dear child you are, such a credit to your grandfather. And you…” she added, turning to Lingsheng and also clasping her hands and giving her a warm smile. “I only wish my own granddaughters were here to greet you…”

“Might I also introduce Lady Ren Xin,” Grandpa Bai added, gesturing to the Emeishan lady, who had been standing quietly next to them, with the Huang couple, Anya and her dog.

“Lady Ren… it has been a very long time,” Madame Leng murmured, bowing respectfully to her.

“Likewise, Madame Leng… it seems the years have been kind to you,” Ren Xin replied, her bow mirroring Grandpa Bai’s.

“I hope the trip here was not too troublesome, anyway?” Turning to Grandpa Bai, Madame Leng asked.

“I’ve had worse trips into Blue Water Province,” Grandpa Bai replied, with remarkable restraint, she thought.

If she were to list it off in her head, between the checkpoints, the teahouse, the spirit herbs, the badly timed bandit attack, the weird guqin girl and Anya stopping said bandit attack… yep, it definitely felt like an understatement, in her eyes.

“Mmmm, yeah,” Ren Xin agreed, after a moment’s consideration. “There have been worse trips.”

“That eventful, huh,” Madame Leng chuckled, before turning to Shin and the Huang family.

Grandmaster Yichen, Lady Biyu and Anya all bowed respectfully.

“Hi,” Shin just waved, breezily.

“Shin,” Madame Leng gave the ‘young woman’ a slightly amused look, before stepping forward and giving her a warm embrace. “It has been far too long for you as well; I sometimes think you all avoid me.”

“We would not dare,” Shin replied drily. “It is just that mutual interests have kept us rather busy, I suspect.”

“Truly?” Madame Leng murmured, smiling gently as she stepped back with a knowing look in her eyes.

Off to the side, she noted that the others had finally noticed Madame Leng’s arrival, and were eyeing her choice of greeting Grandpa Bai and Ren Xin first with a mixture of confusion, veering on annoyance among some of the followers of Young Lord Quan.

“You must be the young lady Shan Lai sent to try and bend the early adopters into some semblance of a functional bureau?” Madame Leng remarked, to Lady Sheng.

“Grand Lady Leng…” Lady Sheng bowed deeply. “I must confess that I had no idea you were resident in this town… If I had known…?”

“None of this would have occurred?” Madame Leng murmured, a little archly, she couldn’t help but feel, though she still bowed politely in reply. “Trouble always finds a way of causing unwanted headaches. In any case, just Madame Leng will suffice.”

“Hmmm, that is true,” Lady Sheng sighed.

“And in any case, if your stalwart soldiers had not done their duty, all these other issues with embezzlement would not have come to light…”

“At least not for some time,” Lady Sheng conceded with a faint grimace. “Indeed, they would probably have evaded notice for long enough to become a real problem. I expect there will be some organizational changes off the back of this, if only to avoid a repeat.”

“I have full faith you will do what you must,” Madame Leng replied, before turning to the others.

“It seems fate has finally allowed us to cross paths, Young Lord Quan.”

“I… yes, it seems so… Madame—Grand Lady… Leng,” Young Lord Quan seemed slightly nonplussed, she could not help but notice.

“And you, Young Lady Han, and Young Lord Han… and even Shu Pavilion’s reclusive Lady Ao. This is quite the collection of rising stars you have fallen in with on the road,” Madame Leng murmured, glancing at Grandpa Bai and Scholar Sai.

“...”

“Well,” Madame Leng added, after a short pause. “Now that you are here, it does nobody any good to stand around in the rain. My estate is a bit hectic right now, as I am helping your uncle, Lord Quan, with his… enquiries,” she remarked, to Young Lord Quan. “So, you must take us a little as you find us.”

So speaking, she gestured towards the lantern-lit porch of the estate’s reception hall.

“Oh, Major Lady Lanying, if your men want, there is food laid on with those staying in my guest rooms; you are more than welcome to partake as guests of my household. Your soldiers have been working awfully hard,” Madame Leng added, as they fell in behind her.

“…”

“I will confer with Commander Quan,” the major replied politely, before glancing at Lady Sheng.

“—Absolutely, I see no problem with that,” Lady Sheng interjected brightly. “Nor will Lord Quan Ji object, I am sure.”

“Uh, yes, I don’t imagine my uncle will,” Young Lord Quan added hurriedly.

“Ummm, Young Lord…” the old man muttered, only to gain a glare from the youth, who pointedly took a step or two forward, to carry him ahead of the old man and the two officials who were coming with them.

At this point, Lady Sheng and the others were also moving ahead of them, after Madame Leng, who was now being introduced to the Huang family by Lady Ren, so she just fell in with Lingsheng and, rather gratefully given the rain was increasing again, followed after them up. Meanwhile, behind them, the soldiers fell out of their formation and after receiving some sort of instruction from the major, half headed towards the left side of the courtyard.

Heading up the broad steps and into the reception hall there, they were met by several more servants, led by a dark-haired youth with a close-cut beard and a tall, dark-haired young woman with a slightly aloof vibe. Considering them, she could not help but feel that the youth, who was a Golden Immortal, and according to her talisman a notably young one at that, seemed both notably careworn… and also vaguely familiar. The young woman, meanwhile, despite also appearing quite ‘young’, was clearly in the Dao Step.

It took her a moment to realise why that stood out so to her though, even on this weird day. These were clearly people of standing in this household, and Madame Leng—Yuan Leng Shuang, as she had been styled in the invitation to Grandpa Bai—had been established in West Flower Picking Town for some time. Reasonably, these two should be exceptional local elites, yet she could not recall any mention Dao step junior, OR a golden immortal of this age in West Flower Picking Town at all.

“Might I introduce to you, my son,” Madame Leng gestured to him as the youth bowed politely to them. “Zixin, and my daughter, Mai.”

-So they really are juniors? she mused.

“It is an honour to meet you all,” Zixin murmured, bowing formally.

“Please, be welcome in our mother’s house,” Mai added, also bowing politely to the assembled experts.

“Ah, Lady Sheng…”

From the right door into the hall a tall, dark-haired martial-looking young man with the stars of a ‘Commander’ on his armour, strode over to them, followed by a specialist Sergeant.

Both of them bowed formally to her, before shifting their gaze to ‘Young Lord Quan’.

“Nephew, why are you here?” Lord Quan asked, frowning.

“I invited him,” Lady Sheng replied blandly.

“I see.” The commander stared at her, then shifted his gaze to their group, taking in each in turn.

“Zixin, Mai, why don’t you take our younger guests on a quick tour and help them get settled in before dinner?” Madame Leng remarked, turning to her children.

“Of course, mother,” Zixin replied, before turning to her, Lingsheng and the Shu group, who were milling about nearby. “If you would all like to follow me?”

Nodding politely, she didn’t bother to hang back this time. She had been around enough ‘elders greet each other’ moments to know that Madame Leng and the others surely had a fair bit they wanted to discuss and had no intention of doing so in front of juniors, at least not so openly. Notably, Young Lord Quan, Lady Sheng and Lady Ao… did not come with them. Somewhat to her surprise, Shin did, though, thinking about it she had never ‘behaved’ like a senior, despite her eminent position, and with all the others distracted by the presence of Lady Ao and Scholar Sai...

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

~ HUANG JI — AUTUMN PINES AND MISTY BAMBOO ~

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

Huang Ji, venerated elder of the Huang Heavenly clan across two aeonspan, noted for his means with formations, feng shui, divination and the classic arts, stared at the swaying, mist-wreathed bamboo either side of the narrow path he was climbing, and wondered… not for the first time, if he was somehow lost.

The Autumn Pine Gate… was a strange place at the best of times. A land of misty ravines, sheer cliffs, whispering pines and bamboo groves, it was something between an ancestral land and… a slightly weird backdrop to day-to-day life in Huang Shan.

Most would never give it a second thought. It was as ‘there’ as the sky was, an ever-present western border to the sacred ground on which the Imperial Palace of the Heavenly Huang, a place that was also almost a world unto itself, sprawled. The imperial gardens looked up to these peaks he was now slowly winding his way up to, as did the various mountains to the south of the palace, where the palatial villas, groves and cavern abodes of the true elders and ancestors of the Heavenly Huang resided.

Sometimes, you travelled into the foothills of this place, an otherworldly boundary between the earthly and the heavenly, to make offerings. At the coronation of a new Emperor, at the death, though that was rare, of one. At the auspicious dawning of each cycle of the Chronogram, the priests and priestesses of her Celestial Eminence, the Queen Mother of Western Providence, would come to their shrine here… the Autumn Pine Pagoda.

“I am sorry, Lord Ji… usually the path is not this…” the priestess who, carrying a ritual lantern, was guiding him, or rather, escorting him in this instance, gave him an apologetic grimace as she noticed he had come to a stop.

“—Esoteric?” he sighed drily, turning to look back the way they had come, for all the good that would do.

“The Autumn Pine Path is a test of providence, even we… must abide by,” she continued.

“It is,” he agreed, taking a deep breath and just listening to the whispering of the bamboo around them.

Some, idiots the like of which had led to him exiting his seclusion to make this journey, would have gotten angry with her, he was sure, but their current predicament was not her fault.

“It is this old man’s fault for not doing his due diligence,” he sighed, absently touching his breast, where he fancied, he could still feel that terrible, yet majestic, heavenly personage’s touch.

“This one could not possibly comment on matters pertaining to the core of your clan,” the priestess, who wasn’t, in fact, a member of the Huang, but of the Ju, murmured, bowing more formally to him.

“I know,” he replied, giving her what he hoped was a reassuring smile—it had been so fate-cursed long since he had interacted with the wider clan in person that it was still hard for him to judge.

“The everchanging path is a test of the dao heart of the supplicant; do not feel burdened by anything this old man says.”

Most of his initial anger he had worked out anyway. It had been enough to see the shocked and horrified faces of those lesser ancestors when he showed up at their stupid little council and yelled at them for giving out treasures he had refined, intended to aid the wellbeing of the clan’s Heavenly Path, to juniors without any real fate-thrashed oversight. Given Emperor Shirong was still in seclusion, it would likely be his son, Crown Prince Weng, who complained formally about the ‘interference’ of an Ancestor with the day to day running of the Heavenly Core, but he had left immediately after that to the priestesses of the Ancestral shrine, and informed them that he needed a guide into this misty maze. What remained at that point he had mostly walked off on the meandering path to get to where they were now at… wherever that was.

-Unless that is the problem? Am I still too caught up in mundane matters? he mused to himself.

Up here, cultivation below the divine threshold counted for exactly nothing. Everything was about the state of your being in the moment. A mortal might walk a few miles, climb the path and find themselves at the destination they sought… while someone like him…

He pushed away the unhelpful thought that the stupidity of the younger generation in not properly looking before they jumped off a cliff… for fun, might see him walking these misty peaks for a very long time.

“It’s okay, Lord Ji, I don’t think we will have a repeat of that time Prince Wei demanded to hear Fairy Wusheng play,” the priestess muttered.

“Let us hope not,” he agreed, resisting the urge to tug a non-existent beard.

Like most ancestors, his true body would no doubt appear surprisingly youthful to the eyes of most. He could look older, and in fact, his perception-projection associated with the treasure those idiots had used looked much more like the predictable image of a venerable old master, but only an idiot would dare be so disrespectful as to send just their spiritual body into this place. That was a very fast way to suffer some serious, and probably impossible to heal, spiritual injuries.

“Perhaps we should rest at the next way stone,” the priestess mused, peering up at the sky. “Or…”

“—Ah, I knew something weird was going on.”

He blinked as a brown-haired young girl, barely twelve or thirteen in appearance, clad in a cloak of pine needles, with a clay mask covering her face, stepped out of the shadows between the bamboo onto the path a few paces in front of them.

“Oh! Esteemed Eminence, Lady Misty Autumn!” the priestess immediately dropped to both knees and pressed her face to the ground, holding the lantern up like an offering. “You honour our unworthy persons with your august presence.”

“Eminence Misty Autumn,” he also bowed, getting down on one knee and lowering his gaze, as the real power in these peaks, the guardian, or maybe original inhabitant of the Autumn Gate, considered them both.

“Show it to me,” Misty Autumn instructed him, walking past the priestess as if she wasn’t even there.

Withdrawing the strange talisman, depicting a bird of prey carrying a crescent moon in its talons from his sleeve, he presented it to her.

“…”

“How did you come by this?” Misty Autumn asked, plucking it from his outstretched hands.

“I… was presented it… in a certain encounter… I do not know if I can?”

“Mmmm, that would be very Her. I assume you were told how to use it?”

“I was instructed to place it in a bowl of cold water, beneath the night sky, and that it would lead me… to the person I sought,” he replied respectfully.

“…”

“—Ancestral Empress Lianshu,” he added after the mountain spirit stared at him for a long moment. “I tried it below, but it… well, it just pointed vaguely towards the Autumn Gate, so I hoped to go there and try again, and maybe consult with…”

“Your sister, yes, follow me,” Misty Autumn replied, passing him back the talisman.

“You as well,” she nodded to the priestess, who was still prostrated on the loamy path.

Slowly, the priestess got to her feet, her head still bowed and held out her lantern to Misty Autumn… who took it after looking at it for long enough that it almost felt to him like she might have forgotten some of her own ‘temple’s’ rituals, though that would, of course, be unthinkable.

“Don’t fall behind,” Misty Autumn added, before setting off at a brisk trot between the clumps of bamboo.

They climbed in silence for almost… well, it was properly gloaming by the time they finally reached an age worn ritual gate, with the barely legible words ‘Autumn Pine Pagoda’ painted on the signboard over it. Passing through it without any ceremony, Misty Autumn led them on between rows of ancient stone lanterns, overshadowed by the swaying, mist-cloaked bamboo until the path opened out into a walled in clearing, dominated by an elegantly lit seven-story pagoda, painted myriad shades of green and detailed in slightly peeling gold, that looked out over a swirling sea of cloud towards the distant lights of the Huang Imperial Palace far below. To their right, set against the edge of the cliff and just visible through the twilight, thanks to its own lanterns, was the rear of the Autumn Pine Gate temple complex, meaning that Misty Autumn had actually led them straight into its inner sanctuary, he realised.

On the ground level of the pagoda, two figures, both familiar, though in different ways, were pondering a gently lit Go board.

The nearer of the two, his older sister, Huang Qiuyue—who barely looked a day over thirty, and elegant as always—was twirling a white piece between her fingers, looking lost in thought. The other, her beauty hidden by a diaphanous veil, shimmering golden locks bunched elegantly at the nape of her neck… didn’t so much as glance at them, and given her status, if she did not acknowledge their presence, he could not even greet her, and just had to pretend she was not there until that point.

“Seeing Heavenly Saintess Autumn Moon,” the priestess whispered, kneeling and again putting her face to the ground.

He also went down on one knee and lowered his head, because while they shared that bond of blood, and he was one of the Huang clan’s proper Old Ancestors, his sister… in the long years since their cultivation path’s diverged, his to the Huang clan, and hers into the heart of the Western Cardinal Court… had risen to another sky entirely.

“I found your little brother,” Misty Autumn declared, as Qiuyue sighed and put the piece down, making her move, then turned to look at them.

“—Do you need me for anything else?” Misty Autumn asked, glancing at his sister’s Go partner.

“I will come see you later,” the woman murmured. “I have some nice wine I think you will like.”

“I shall look forward to it,” Misty Autumn replied with a grin, before skipping off, back down the path and into the forest.

“Please, arise, Lady Priestess, Brother,” Qiuyue murmured, waving for the pair of them to come over.

Getting to his feet, he walked over to the pagoda, followed, rather nervously, by the priestess.

“Little Fei, could you get us some more wine?” his sister asked the priestess gently.

“Of course, Your Ladyship,” the priestess murmured, bowing deeply and then retreating towards the temple complex.

“She will not be at ease, waiting on us, so it seems cruel to put her through that,” his sister sighed, waving for him to take a seat at the side of the go board.

“Such… is the way of things,” he agreed, politely. “I trust you have been well?”

He had exchanged a few messages with her, over the last few thousand years, but they had not met in person for nearly three times that, he realised, counting hurriedly.

“Your estate still sends me a birthday gift each year, which is better than some of my junior sisters,” his sister replied rolling her eyes. “Rather, I feel it is I who should be asking you that. It seems you have put your foot in some clan politics.”

“That is a very charitable way of describing dogshit,” he conceded, pouring out a cup of wine for his sister, then himself.

He was almost tempted to pour a third, but she was just looking out at the swirling clouds, which currently obscured their view down towards the Huang Imperial Palace, paying neither of them any heed.

“Well, we gave our opinion back then, and they took it under ‘advisement’,” Qiuyue sighed. “By the way, Lady Wuli is… in a mood right now. You should advise our juniors to be scrupulously careful around her branch. Someone has clearly crossed her bottom line, because the Guo family is also starting to move.”

“The…” He could not help but pinch the bridge of his nose, because that was not good news, and it was the first he had heard of it, despite having had some serious words with some of those elders before coming up here.

“By your expression, I see those children playing court below have gotten better with their obfuscations,” his sister mused.

“I did not press them as hard as I perhaps should have,” he grunted.

“I would… let that play out as it has to. The Twelve Flowers are not lightly crossed, and it will do some good to learn that there are dangers to acting as they have been. At worst, we will just be looking for some new ‘Young Sovereign’ candidates, once the dust has settled.”

-And, as always, you have such a charmingly understated assessment of what could be a generationally defining mess of bloodshed and turmoil, dear sister, he reflected to himself.

“Admit it, you would love to see them sprout red umbrellas like mushrooms in the rain,” his sister smirked.

“Perhaps, but the people pulling the strings behind those factions might not,” he sighed. “And the Huang clan in the last fifty-thousand odd years has been… fractious, by any standard.”

“You mean, the mess with Mo Zhao and the fact that a whole starfield got screwed over was not enough to put some of them back in their lanes?” his sister murmured, sipping her wine. “Colour me shocked, dear brother, shocked.”

“Anyway, that is… well, I hesitate to say ‘secondary’, because I did some digging on the state of Eastern Azure before coming to see you,” he muttered. “And well, it has not improved my assessment of anyone involved—”

“—Yourself included,” his sister snickered.

“Indeed, I have to consider myself culpable as well. After all, it was my fate-thrashed treasure compass those loons used for their fishing.”

“With the blood of our lineage, you could just step back to the start, rise through the ranks and break a few idiots along the way,” she suggested with a faint smile. “It might even help you with your extant bottleneck.”

That thought had occurred to him, truth be told, but rebirthing using a Luan Bloodline was not as… straightforward… as a Phoenix one, lamentably. By the time he made the necessary preparations and got some insurance in place… things might have progressed too far, in any case.

“Though I guess with the time constraints…” she shook her head. “So, what can I help you with?”

“I… need to find Ancestral Empress Lianshu,” he replied, putting the talisman down on the edge of the Go table.

“Huh—so this is what I felt.”

He flinched as the blonde-haired woman calmly reached over and picked it up.

“Seeing Your Sovereign Eminence,” he murmured, bowing as deeply as he could, without acting improper, as she finally made something of her presence felt.

“Please, you are Qiuyue’s little brother, that practically makes you my martial nephew,” Wusheng Xiurong, the ‘Star of Beauty’, and Saintly Daughter of the West, murmured.

“Your words are the honour of a lifetime,” he whispered, still not looking up.

“So, how did you come by this?” Wusheng Xiurong asked, motioning for him to stop lowering his head.

“I… well, I was given it, in Yin Eclipse,” he replied frankly. “Along with the mark on my soul.”

“Ah.” Wusheng Xiurong sat back and sighed. “Now I think understand why they sent you to get Aunt Lianshu. You were told how to use this, I assume?”

“I… was,” he affirmed, once again. “That eminent being instructed me to place it in a bowl of cold water, beneath the night sky, and that it would lead me to her.”

“And you did that in the clan, and it pointed you here?” his sister mused.

“It did,” he nodded. “So, I figured you were the best person to ask,” he added.

“It takes a soul mark from a Greater Goddess to get you to come speak to your sister in person; if it wasn’t so you, I would be offended,” his sister snorted.

Involuntarily, he found his hand going to his forehead, where that terrifying figure had poked his perception-clone.

“It isn’t going to hinder your cultivation,” Wusheng Xiurong added, giving him a reassuring smile. “It mostly allows that person to keep track of you. It is quite interesting in that regard, and also, why Misty Autumn had to go get you.”

“Oh?” his sister asked, pouring herself, and Saintess Wusheng new cups of wine.

“Yes, that mark is the genuine article, but… there was a time… ah, my mother spoke of that war, and every time she does, she invariably breaks something,” Wusheng Xiurong sighed. “A lot was lost then, and little ever regained by those who deserved it. Among the old powers that vanished, only to have their things reappear in the hands of factions not well disposed to our Heavens, the powers associated with that mark suffered… heavily.”

“Oh,” he grimaced, understanding what she meant.

The Autumn Pine Gate, as well as being a place… was also the gateway from the Huang clan to the strongholds of the Western Cardinal Court, through the Star Ocean, and a formidable barrier against potential intruders into that sacred heartland of the Martial Axial Region.

“Two attempts on my spiritual grandmother’s life were made in aeons past, with weapons bearing similar natures to this talisman,” Wusheng Xiurong added.

-Wait… what!? It took a supreme effort of control on his part not to gasp out loud. “Someone actually dared…?”

“Both through the hands of ‘talented juniors’,” his sister added with a bitter smile. “Since then, the defences on this place have always been wary of things bearing that aura.”

“I… I did not know,” he declared, hurriedly, lowering his head again.

Fates, go… and I nearly walked in here with such a thing? It is a miracle I was not hit by something!

“Do not fear, Ancestor Ji. They are not so undiscerning,” Wusheng Xiurong murmured, putting a hand on his arm and leading him to raise his head again.

“—Maybe the being who placed this mark on my brother didn’t know about that?” his sister mused. “The touch within it has the bearing of truly archaic antiquity, and both those attempts came after…?”

“I think, rather, that they did not care,” Wusheng Xiurong chuckled. “I have half a notion of who it might be that you encountered, but even speaking of her, or her lineage, is… taboo. If she is in Yin Eclipse, or some vestige of her, it is little wonder that the Xue and the Li and the Mo have had eyes on it so warily, yet done so little.”

“And we…?” he could not help but ask, because now that he thought about it, while the Huang clan had a lot of strategic interested in Eastern Azure and the Azure Astral Starfield, Yin Eclipse figured very little in anything official that he was aware of.

“—Oh, our court has as well, but the Huang clan has nothing substantial to do with that endeavour,” Wusheng Xiurong replied. “It is sufficient that the Wuli faction gain a stronger footing on Eastern Azure, at the expense of others, like the Gan and the Hong. It does not surprise me that you know nothing of it. It is a matter not discussed at the level of Advisors or the Ancestral Council.”

-Which means that only the Huang Imperial Seal and the Heavenly Eminences are involved, and she very politely is telling me to mind my own business, he mused, taking her words to heart.

“That said, both the young sovereign candidates have gambits in play, regarding this ‘trial’ on Yin Eclipse,” his sister mused, taking another sip of her wine. “The Gan have long been a concern, and the Traditionalist Faction backing Huang Teng…”

“—is supported by Ancestral Empress Lianshu’s son—among others,” he added.

That bit of information had been bugging him quite a bit. Her only surviving son had been an ancestor when he was just starting out, and while he was not a Mantled Venerate, he was under no illusions that in a direct clash with that mysterious fellow, he would surely come out well behind.

“Empress—Aunt Lianshu’s philosophy on matters pertaining to the Dao is not shared by her son,” Wusheng Xiurong observed, also sipping her wine. “She was a strong believer in letting her children grow up, unfettered by her shadow. It was one of the reasons why she originally stepped aside from her position as Empress, in favour of Consort Huiling. Unfortunately, I don’t think her children quite saw it that way. To be robbed of the chance of being Emperor, by right, because your mother does not want to hamper your ability…”

“I did not know that was why,” his sister mused, sipping her wine.

“Well, there is a bit more to it than that,” Wusheng Xiurong added with a shrug. “But among the current junior generation, Huang Teng is best placed among those scions to receive the Crown Prince’s acknowledgement, which would…”

“—make him a very credible candidate for an inheritance seat, in the eyes of the Royal Advisors, if he were to prove himself as Young Sovereign,” he mused.

“It also paints a big target on him, especially if his followers go around saying stupid stuff,” his sister added, rolling her eyes.”

“Oh?” he found himself curious on that point. There had been some whispers about one of the Huang clan juniors annoying the Ju Heavenly Clan in some way, when he was asking about what they had been using his treasure for, but nobody had had any real details.

“Mmm, yes, I have half a mind to ask the Crown Prince for an explanation on that,” Wusheng Xiurong mused, putting her wine cup aside and turning to look back down into the clouds. “If only to see Lady Xifeng throw things at him, again. Anyway,”—she turned back to him—“if you are looking for Aunt Lianshu, it will… well, I believe I can point you in the right direction, but you will be in for a bit of a trek, and the last person she associated with that I know of is almost as hard to pin down as she is.”

“Oh?” he asked.

“Mmmm, yes. She attended a beggar’s auction, a few millennia ago, as a personal guest of Big Sister Rin—Li Rin.”

“The… the Seven Severing Saintess?” he asked, staring at her blankly. “Heavenly Princess Meng… Li Rin?”

“Unless there are two, yes, her,” Wusheng Xiurong nodded, before taking a small sip of her wine. “Even with this divination compass,”—she put aside her cup and held up the talisman for effect—“you may struggle to track her down and not come to grief.”