> …The question of heaven’s eyes within the Yin Eclipse Mountains is one that has gone around and around in circles for as long as people have tried unpicking its secrets, so there is no reason to bore you with the long list of failures in this report. However, undoubtedly our own Fates seem somewhat blind to the happenings within it, and that is not for lack of trying both amidst our own influence and others to ensure otherwise.

>

> But what I will tell you in this report, is my own experience… If any force of the heavens genuinely has eyes in that place, it clearly works through those damn squirrels; nothing else can really account for the strange geometry of chance they effect on the success and failure of any endeavour which crosses their path in those deep places. Without their crossing we would certainly have died to that lizard abomination, more ghost than being.

Excerpt from a report on traversing the Inner Valleys

  ~Authored by Han Ouyeng

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

~ JUN SANA – MISTY JASMINE INN, YIN ECLIPSE ~

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

The teleportation faded away with a twisting ripple, leaving them standing in the rain on a raised, paved plaza just the right size to be a teleport formation.

The state of the gorge in which they had arrived would have surprised anyone who didn’t know a lot about the logistics of exploring the inner portions of Yin Eclipse. It had a reputation of sorts as a deathly dangerous verdant hell, which was entirely deserved, but it was also one that had been exploited for uncounted years.

To that end, both sides of the gorge, which split a ridgeline between valleys, held several complexes of spirit wood and stone buildings. Each exit was protected by solid stone walls, made of broken pieces dragged from nearby ruins in the valleys to either side of it, and the whole thing was watched over by several squat watchtowers to provide visibility over the encroaching forest.

“Welcome to our damp green hell,” a Beast Hunter, who had probably been minding the platform and watching for incoming transmissions, exclaimed as he scrambled up onto the platform.

Rolling her eyes at his comment, she took her bearings.

“Raining, even up here, huh?” Mu Shi grunted, hefting up a bundle and starting towards the edge of the demarcated area.

“Of course,” Duan Mu grinned, picking up one of the bundles of bamboo with practised ease.

“What do you expect?” Lin Ling added, grabbing a bundle as well and following after the Beast Hunter, who was shaking his head at Mu Shi’s comment.

“Who knows any more?” Mu Shi sighed. “Who knows…”

Smiling at that comment, she grabbed a crate of ward stones and hurried towards the edge as well. Lin Ling followed after a moment later.

“Welcome to the Misty Jasmine Inn, gateway to the Inner Valleys!” Juni, who was walking over across the cleared area beyond the teleport point, called over. “Our base of operations for the next two weeks, in all likelihood.”

“Can I go home now?” Lin Ling pouted, flicking her cloak hem to scatter raindrops everywhere.

“Take the crates over to the south side; the building adjoining the inn is going to be used as a storehouse,” Juni said, rolling her eyes at Lin Ling’s comment. “Elder Lianmei and a few others are sorting things out and scouting the perimeter, so we just have to get this lot put away.”

“Gotcha,” Mu Shi nodded, shifting her bundle under her arm and heading off in the direction indicated.

“Well, this is impressive,” Duan Mu remarked, looking around as they followed after her.

“You haven’t been up here before?” she asked him, somewhat surprised.

“No, actually,” Duan Mu shook his head, taking in the solid stone walls at each end of the gorge, the watchtowers and the various spirit wood and stone buildings lining the walls of the gorge itself. “My only trips up this side of the mountain have been direct teleports to Moon Slice Valley and Thunder Rainbow Cliff.”

“Both of which are a good way north from here,” she mused, looking up at the grey mist swirling above them.

Their current location was known to her. It was about a sixty miles into Yin Eclipse, in a handy gorge that acted as a chokepoint on the main route into the High Valleys between Thunder Crest and the East Fury peaks.

It was a defensible place, much like the gorges in Misty Vale, where, over the years, the Hunter Pavilions had dug in, abusing the position of the gorge and the barrier-like properties of the ridge lines that qi beasts rarely traversed to set up a proper outpost that had been here for some six hundred years now.

She had stayed here with Arai and Juni several times since becoming a six-star ranked Hunter. It was a very convenient place to put a teleport anchor.

Both ends of the gorge were barred off by solid stone walls, dragged from ruins in the valley to the west and repurposed into a new fortification. The gates in and out were protected by moon runes and reinforced spirit wood gates that no normal cultivator, suppressed by the mountains, would be able to hack through without some exceptional treasures.

The original rock-cut ruins in the gorge wall were now supplemented by substantial storehouses, a small inn with personal rooms, a kitchen, baths, and all the other accoutrements of ‘civilisation’, although the ‘inn’ wasn’t exactly a real inn. It just had that name because it amused those who used it to consider it such. You had to operate and supply it yourself while you were here, for starters.

“If it makes you feel better, Huangfei’s group will be slumming it,” Lin Ling told Duan Mu with a giggle as they started up the steps to the raised platform in front of the ‘inn’, marked by a nicely painted signboard.

“Oh, we will be slumming it out there as well, I am sure,” she remarked drily.

“Ah, Hunter Sana!”

She turned to find that a youth, wearing light armour painted in dull grey, green and brown stripes, had come out of the double doors by the inn.

“Mo Shunfei,” she saluted the Beast Hunter, who was a squad leader from West Flower Picking Town. “You are up here with us?”

“Eeeeevry one is,” he groaned, taking the crate off her. “I wanted a week off, but nooo… fate-thrashed missions gonna be mandatory missions. My wife threatened to curse me if I didn’t bring back little Bohai an Immortal ginseng to make up for it.”

“How is your wife?” she asked conversationally, taking the other end of Duan Mu’s bundle of bamboo to guide it in after Mo Shunfei.

“Lanmei is well, thanks,” Shunfei grinned. “The little one lifted her first leaf with qi just this week as well. They do grow up fast.”

“Congratulations!” Mu Shi called back, overhearing their conversation.

“Thanks!” Shunfei replied, before looking back at them. “Just stack the bamboo in the main hall; I doubt we will even need half this stuff, but clearly they are taking no chances.”

“Okie,” she nodded, leading Duan Mu on past Shunfei into a broad, lantern-lit hall as big as the largest one in her own house.

“Ah, bamboo, put it over there,” a second Beast Cadre Hunter, Kun Ji, who was also a diviner in his spare time, waved to them from where he was looking at something on a broad table in the middle of the room, and pointed to a set of trestles.

They deposited it where instructed, then she took a look around the rest of the hall.

“What else do you want in here?” she asked, heading over to Kun Ji while Duan Mu cut the bindings on the bamboo and started to check they were undamaged.

“Anything that needs to stay dry and isn’t likely to be used immediately,” Kun Ji chuckled. “They have given us enough supplies to set up a small sect.”

“Yeah, what’s coming with us is not even the bulk of it, I think,” she agreed. “Most is going with Fan Huangfei and his group, towards South Grove.”

“Ah, there isn’t much up there in terms of infrastructure,” Kun Ji nodded. “The main outpost like this was taken by bandits just after the Three Schools Conflict, a bunch occupied it again earlier in the season as well.”

“And they have not been kicked out?” she asked, surprised.

“Yeah, it’s hard to dislodge people up in the passes above the northern edge of the Shadow Forest,” Kun Ji sighed. “It’s impacted matters with the Teng School, but, because it’s technically in South Grove Province, I think the higher-ups just decided to let it be, given that’s now Imperial-controlled… except now that this has happened…”

“They suddenly need a base up there. Bad week to be bandits I think,” she mused.

“Very much so, especially after what happened in Blue Water City.” Kun Ji agreed.

“So, that group will have to find a new base camp?” she supposed.

“I would imagine so, they are keeping matters very compartmentalized though.” Kun Ji agreed. “There are a few old way stations that can be fixed up, though they will be nothing like as fancy as here.”

“This does make a difference,” she agreed. “Though I don’t expect we will be spending much time here.”

“Coming?” Duan Mu called over.

“I should go help them bring stuff in,” she said with an eye roll.

“Of course,” Kun Ji agreed, giving her a small smile.

Hurrying back out after Duan Mu, she saw that most of the goods that had come with them had been shifted off the teleportation platform and that two more Beast Hunters who she only recognised by sight were going around, replacing spirit stones in the altars. Off to one side, she noticed to her surprise that there was a beautiful woman with long brown hair, wearing a fairly battered robe and a grass hat, leaning on the railing watching proceedings with interest.

“Who is she?” she asked Lin Ling as she caught up to her on the steps back down to the open area before the teleport platform.

“No idea,” Lin Ling shrugged. “She seems to know Elder Lianmei though, maybe a guest expert?”

-Ah well, a question for later, she mused, picking up another crate, this time full of blank talismans, and set off back up the steps again.

…

On her return from her third trip to the warehouse, the teleport finally refreshed, so she got to watch it twist in the misty rain, scattering a halo of white mist for a few moments, as a new load was brought in, accompanied this time by half a dozen youths in Ling clan robes and leather armour, carrying bows and packs.

“Lads, get this shit off here!” the leader called out.

“SIR!” the other five guards saluted, grabbing a bundle in each hand and quickly hauling almost a quarter of the contents off in one go.

“Hunter Jun, Sergeant,” she said, saluting the leader politely as he spotted her and walked over.

“A pleasure,” the sergeant nodded, saluting her back. “Ling Mo Shun. Where do you want this stuff?”

“Storehouse is over there, Sergeant,” she pointed to where she had just come from. “They will tell you where it goes.”

“You heard the Hunter, lads. Get hauling!” the sergeant called over to the other guards, who groaned painfully but picked up a bundle each and started off.

“You are here to guard here… and us?” she asked as she also picked up a bundle.

“Yep, personal orders from Lady Ling Tao. We normally guard her estates,” the Sergeant, Ling Mo Shun, said, flashing her a bright grin. “Been a few years since I’ve been up here, but all my lads are veterans of the mountains with Military Bureau training. No bandits going to make a mess up here.”

“Glad to hear it,” she replied, returning his smile.

“There will be two more groups of guards coming as well, including some disciples from the Cherry Wine Pagoda if you believe it. I have no idea how Lady Ling got them to move.”

“The Cherry Wine Pagoda?” she nearly stumbled on the steps, because that was a Ha clan influence.

“Uhuh,” the sergeant nodded. “I was surprised as well. Thought they were keeping it hush, but the proprietress herself showed up with Lady Ling not thirty minutes ago, so there must be something else going on.”

“…”

Shaking her head, she followed after him in silence, wondering about that. As the sergeant said, she had expected this to be kept somewhat ‘quiet’, though, now that she thought about it, the captain who had escorted her had also been from the Ha clan…

“—Food crates?”

She was stirred out of her reverie by Kun Ji, who met them at the door.

“Yep,” she nodded, giving the contents a second quick glance.

“Take them to the inn,” Kun Ji said, directing her to the other door. “Sergeant Mo, a pleasure.”

“Diviner Ji, they even have you up here?” the sergeant chuckled.

“Yep, I’ve been based up here for a few weeks… It was my time,” Kun Ji sighed wistfully. “It does help with practicing your feng shui though.”

“I’ll bet,” Mo Shun agreed, before glancing back at her. “Talk later, Hunter Jun.”

Returning his friendly nod, she turned left and headed into the ‘Inn’, which was – and this had surprised her when she first came here – actually set out as an inn, with a teahouse area on two levels, a kitchen at the side and sleeping rooms on the upper levels. By memory, she threaded her way between the tables and into the kitchen, where she found Mu Shi sorting out goods from several other crates into cupboards, cleaning as she went.

“How are we for existing provisions?” she asked, curious.

“There was enough here for about four, if you like eating mouldy bread and stale wine,” Mu Shi remarked with a sardonic smile as she straightened up. “At least the rice is fine. The preservation wards are non-existent. It’s all mortal storage, looks like, but most of what we have brought is fruit, dried stuff and water it seems, so that’s fine.”

“Well, this is…” she checked a jar in the crate. “Fifty kilos of dried noodles, how wonderful.”

“…”

“Cupboard over there,” Mu Shi pointed her to the side and an open cupboard that held about that in jars of noodles already.

Taking the crate over, she unpacked it quickly then hurried back outside to get another, while Mu Shi continued to organize and clean around the preparation space.

By the time they had cleared all the outstanding stuff that came through, a third load had arrived, this time ward stones and various other supplies, along with what had to be about three heavenly jades’ worth of spirit stones in hundred-stone cubes.

“—For the teleport formation,” Lianmei, who was standing nearby and taking in the scene from the raised area before the inn, remarked as she stopped to stare at the small fortune sitting there in crates.

“Elder Lianmei,” she saluted the woman. “Sorry I missed you earlier.”

“Not at all, we were checking the walls and the wards,” Lianmei said absently.

“Everything is in order?” she asked, looking towards the near end of the gorge, where the tall wall and near watchtower were just visible through the cloud-mist and rain.

“A few small things,” Lianmei replied. “Some spiders seem to have scratched out one of the formations on the western wall and there are monkeys in the eastern valley, but that is pretty much expected.”

“Hopefully the monkeys stay clear,” she said.

“Hopefully,” Lianmei agreed.

“Can I ask who the brown-haired woman is?” she asked after a moment’s pause, figuring Lianmei would be the best person to ask.

“Oh, Senior Ying, you don’t have to mind her,” Lianmei said with a smile. “She has been a long-term occupant of this place for decades. Comes and goes as she pleases, pretty much.”

“A… long-term?” she blinked. “She actually lives up here?”

“Uhuh,” Lianmei nodded again. “She says it helps temper her comprehensions. She tends the small shrines on the other side as well.”

“I didn’t see her before when I came here?” she mused, shaking her head in mild awe.

People did live inside the suppression zone, but usually it was not by choice, and only around the edges. Even then, most were sub-Golden Core, as she was, and so sidestepped the worst of the overt suppression. For this Senior Ying to be living up here, and be recognised as a ‘senior’ by Elder Lianmei, meant she was almost certainly not a someone from the younger generation, and at least a Chosen Immortal.

“Usually she avoids others,” Lianmei mused. “It doesn’t surprise me you have never met her before. We usually give her some forewarning if this place is in use and she clears off somewhere else for a while. I think she has an agreement with either the Ling clan or the Blue Gate School.”

“Oh,” she murmured, nodding along as Lianmei explained.

“We trade her the odd thing – news mainly, or the odd talisman. Usually she gives beast cores or spirit herbs in return, high quality ones as well, and tips us off about odd herbs or dangerous beasts. She is strong and as good a diviner as I have ever met. Not to mention, more knowledgeable about these mountains than many of the old elders are.

“She has agreed to give us a hand if anything interesting shows up, so that will be a significant boon.”

“…”

“That will be helpful,” she agreed, before asking, “So, what will we do now?”

“Let everyone get settled in,” Lianmei said. “Then we will have a briefing, introduce everyone and sort an ‘evening meal’… then probably start talking about targets. If you wanted to go pick a room to dump your stuff, now would be a good time. There will be one more load, but the other ‘group’ are now using the teleportation circle again.”

“Okay,” she nodded, then paused again. “I can start on the meal,” she volunteered. “Any preferences?”

“Whatever you can cook up with what is there,” Lianmei said drily. “Find a helper and get cracking I suppose.”

“Yes boss!” she grinned, giving Lianmei a mock military salute.

“Heh,” Lianmei shook her head and smiled with amusement.

“Also…” she started to ask, then trailed off.

“Yes?” Lianmei asked.

“Any news about my sister and Han Shu?”

“Oh, they will be joining us in the morning, probably,” Lianmei told her.

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

~ KUN JUNI – MISTY JASMINE INN, YIN ECLIPSE ~

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

Once the unpacking and general logistical chaos had calmed, Juni found herself feeling oddly… directionless.

She had already swept some rooms out, sorted crates of ward stones, offered some thoughts on dinner, taken a walk around the whole compound and even thrown a rock at a lizard trying to make off with a box of spirit fruit… and none of it had helped, really.

There was a certain irony there, she supposed, that while she was the nominal ‘leader’ of the Hunter group… everyone else here was also used to that role in various ways and things were just being ‘done’ faster than she could find things to occupy herself.

It was a level of competence that would have confused some of the lower-ranked Hunters to no end, she supposed, that people would get to their responsibilities of their own accord before you could ask them. Still, an important part of leadership was also knowing how to avoid needing to give orders, she knew. It was all too easy to get used to doing as others ordered, just as it was all too easy to be too used to ordering others around.

The unfortunate result, though, of all of that, was that she now found herself standing outside the Misty Jasmine Inn’s main building, just taking in the lush, misty ambience of the gorge in the hazy afternoon light, with far too much time to think about her own problems.

“So… I hear things are not great down below?”

She turned to find Kun Ji had come over to lean on the small wall that ran along the edge of much of the raised platform in front of the Inn.

“That might be an understatement,” she replied drily, staring up at the buildings on the opposite side of the gorge – a small shrine complex and some extra accommodation, mostly.

“Oh, I didn’t mean this mission. I meant in regards to…” Kun Ji coughed awkwardly.

“Oh…”

She continued to trace the shadows of the buildings as the swirling cloud passed through the gorge, not answering immediately.

The mist swirled, distant birds called and rain pattered off rocks, roofs and greenery, the raindrops melding into an all-consuming hiss. The humidity, even in early afternoon, was cloying, suffocating almost, in the low cloud. If she really strained, she could just catch hints of the flat oppression between other sounds that was the perpetual thunderstorm that wreathed Thunder Crest Pinnacle.

“That bad, eh?” Kun Ji sighed.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t reply, or wouldn’t even. In a way, she supposed her silence was a kind of affirmation.

Kun Shun Ji was a long-standing friend of her brother’s. They had worked together when Talshin was the Envoy from the Kun clan to the Blue Duke’s Court. His family liked her; in fact, his wife, Kun Ling Seong, had married into the clan and had been one of her ‘maids’ back before she lost the clan inheritance position. In many ways, he and Seong were somewhere between the kind uncle and aunt she had never had, and an older cousin who kept her a bit grounded after her life fell apart in her teenage years.

-It is just that I don’t want to see the kind of expression he makes, if I tell him how bad it really is, she sighed sadly. That said, he will find out anyway, especially if this all goes south.

“It seems strange to say it, but it is oddly calming up here,” she said instead. “It is easy to just… let go of all that, in the face of what is all around us.”

“It is,” Kun Ji agreed, giving her a sideways look, knowing full well that she was dodging the question.

The discourse after Ling Tao had left had… not been civil. The position of Grand Elder Jiang, the Supreme Elder and many others had not really pivoted with the somewhat fortunate intervention of this ‘mission’, rather, just as her grandmother had warned her, their view on it was entirely expedient. Their desire to ‘solve’ the problem of Kun Juni remained; the ‘mission’ just provided a new approach.

She expected that if she succeeded here, the status that it would gain the Kun clan would be used to ram a match of their choice down her father’s throat, and if it failed, or met with complications, her father would be removed as Clan Lord. Either way, she would likely be married off in a way that was, again, convenient. The question now was simply whether it was to someone her parents wanted, or the elders wanted.

A part of her hoped that her grandmother would take her away from it all; however, she knew well enough that more than ‘her’ was wrapped up in this now, even if she had been made into the focal point through a toxic combination of convenience and shamelessness.

Weighed against the continued influence of her father’s side of the clan, it was more likely that her grandmother would support her mother’s preference and marry her into an influential family in Nine Moons Province, in the first instance, to thoroughly remove the threat of any potential… children she might have, being used to strengthen her half-uncle’s side of the clan.

“…”

“If we succeed, they will likely make a very concerted attempt to marry me off for the benefit of the clan,” she said at last. “Whether they succeed or not basically comes down to who wants to make the bigger mess, Grand Elder Jiang or my grandmother.”

She had asked herself several times if she could be ‘happy’, married to someone like Bai Jiang, for example, who was almost certainly the candidate her mother had in mind.

He seemed a nice enough person, and had never so much as raised the question himself, despite probably knowing just as well as she did why he was over here. For that alone, she was willing to give him some credit. He had also gotten on well with her friends and been generally upstanding, not giving anyone inappropriate attention or coming across as a boor.

Kun Baotan had a bit of a reputation, but even that would probably be okay, she supposed, staring out at the swirling cloud, not that the elders would go for that match. Kun Baotan was too close to the heart of the Nine Moons Kun clan.

-Monkey balls, she sighed sadly. I came up here hoping to get away from all that, and here I am, sulking about matches half the girls in the province would queue up for.

-Get out of my head, you worthless old men!

Kun Ji stared at her in silence, then just sighed and nodded, looking older suddenly.

“And if we fail here?” he said after a moment.

“I doubt it will matter,” she replied, honestly. “It has reached a point where Grand Elder Kun Jiang and Supreme Elder Xuanhai can no longer tolerate me. Best case, they remove father from the Clan Lord’s position to alleviate the backlash and push all the blame onto him, me and Talshin.”

“Tcchh…” Kun Ji spat into the wet shrubbery below the wall.

“Their decision from the beginning was to scapegoat me for their mess, and their solution was to marry me off for a huge bribe and assurances from either the Zhuge family or the Din clan. This mission totally wrecked that excuse to cash in on my ‘feminine potential’, as Grand Elder Jiang so succinctly put It.” she sighed.

“The language of old men is seldom fair to young women’s ears,” Kun Ji agreed, patting her arm sympathetically.

“True,” she agreed. “Father refused the idea of either marriage, but mother is in favour of marrying me to the Bai clan if that is what it comes down to. Grandmother will also back that… In any case, Grand Elder Jiang’s faction has effectively turned the blood ling fiasco—”

“Blood ling?” he interrupted her.

“Oh… sorry,” she apologised, realising that he probably hadn’t been briefed on this in any detail yet, having been one of the group already up here. She was also rambling a bit, she supposed. “—The contamination of the herbs at the auction… it disproportionately hit our region thanks to a combination of Ha clan scheming and Kun clan greed.”

“Oh, that, that’s just about made it up here,” Kun Ji chuckled darkly. “Bad news travels fast. Is that why you are here? Old Ling is pushing back with the help of Lianmei?”

“Indeed,” she confirmed. “Anyway, the Grand Elder has backed Xuanhai thoroughly—”

“That old scammer has had it in for his little sister for centuries,” Kun Ji murmured. “Self-serving old bastard.”

“Quite,” she nodded, agreeing completely. “No doubt he sees this as a final opportunity to get grandmother’s side of the family totally pushed to the side. The whole thing is being used as an excuse to have a forum on my father’s handling of clan matters more generally over the last century or so.

“Originally it was going to be put to the vote today, but it is now delayed to the end of the month pending the resolution of all this,” she waved a hand absently at their surroundings.

“Shameless, self-serving old farts,” Kun Ji murmured, “So, you save the clan’s hide by gaining plaudits here…”

“—And probably my father is forced out on a high note, while they capitalize on it to marry me off to someone useful to their agenda,” she concluded with a sad sigh.

“Maybe you should become like Senior Ying,” Kun Ji chuckled darkly.

“Senior Ying?” she asked, confused for a moment, before realising he was talking about the reclusive woman who basically acted as caretaker for this place and a sort of shrine maiden for the complex across the gorge.

She had been around earlier, watching matters, then gone back to her own business. Lianmei had said something in passing about her being willing to help out though, which was a bright spot in an otherwise quite stressful day.

“—What? Live up here like a hermit, trading with Beast Hunters for goods?” she laughed.

“Beats becoming the trophy of some young noble picked by those old villains who dare call themselves ‘Honoured Elders’,” Kun Ji pointed out.

“That it does,” she agreed with a deep sigh. “However…”

“Well, while you are up here, you are well away from all that, so I say we just focus on doing the best we can,” Kun Ji added, diplomatically, knowing full well that that was only an option if she valued herself over everyone else who stood behind her father in the clan. “More than just the Kun clan rides on this…”

“I know,” she agreed. “I know…”

“Wow… you two are practically radiating gloom! I know the weather is a bit claustrophobic, but I can see the alignments warping visibly!”

She looked around to find Kun Lianmei had come over to lean beside them carrying a wine jar and a few cups.

“Sorry,” she sighed. “Pausing to reflect on the day was clearly a bad idea.”

“…”

Kun Ji, who was the reason she had, grimaced.

Kun Lianmei gave him then her a long look and shook her head wryly, pouring out three measures and passing a cup each to Kun Ji and her.

“So, is there something to do?” she asked, taking it and sipping it, finding the alcohol inside refreshingly cool as it slid down her throat.

“It’s your name on the mission, not mine,” Lianmei giggled, raising her own cup and knocking the measure back.

“…”

Shaking her head, she turned around and looked up at the three story wooden building with its lanterns and its covered windows rising above them, the rooftop just visible through swirling low cloud that was blowing through.

“Do we need to do orientation for anyone?” she asked at last, sipping her wine again.

“No,” Lianmei shook her head, turning to look up as well. “Everyone is at least familiar with the High Valleys.”

“Perimeter security?” she asked, running down the list in the back of her mind.

“Ling Mo Shun is distributing men to the watchtowers. Probably we need a few more,” Lianmei mused. “I have already communicated that, so hopefully there will be a teleportation in an hour or so with another squad.”

“Mo Shunfei is also organising a group to check out the entrances on either side,” Kun Ji added. “He started that about half an hour ago.”

“So, I guess we just let people get their bearings for a while, get used to the place, then work out what our strategy for getting enough herbs is…” she concluded. “I suppose you have a list of targets anyway?” she added, turning her head to look at Kun Ji.

“Senior Ying likely knows a few. She was out… doing whatever it is she does, up until a few days ago,” he mused. “We do have some, from our patrols up these valleys, although there is not that much that is easy, in all honesty. Fanhee’s squad, who was up here before us, said there were two groups through from the Deng clan about a month ago, from Misty Vale and another, some youths from out of the province…”

“There never is,” Lianmei agreed. “Any idea where they went?”

“Not really, unfortunately,” Kun Ji sighed, “You know how those groups are. Apparently they teleported out and walked back to here a few times. Kept to themselves mostly, beyond a few raucous evenings.”

“Ah well,” she shrugged. “That kind of thing is…”

She trailed off, because, out of the corner of her eye, she saw half a dozen figures moving out of the mist, from the eastern side.

“Was there another group up here?” she asked, Kun Ji, gesturing to the cloaked bunch who were not moving that fast.

“No… there shouldn’t….” He turned, as did Lianmei, then trailed off as well, largely because he had realised the same thing she had, she expected.

-Monkeys?

The group of six were all wearing leaf cloaks and broad reed hats, walking stooped over in a line. The lead pair even had staffs, which was what had thrown her, because at a distance they looked like two stooped old men.

Kun Ji whistled twice and immediately two other Beast Cadre Hunters appeared at the windows of the Inn.

Most of the group stayed back, with only the two carrying staffs slouching forward into clear view, whereupon she saw that both carried bundles woven of vines. The lead monkey passed his weapon to his compatriot and spread his arms, grinning broadly at them, before taking the bundle and pulling out… a slightly dented, head-sized, pale green spirit fruit from a jack tree.

“—You actually came?”

Senior Ying walked out of the shrine on the far side and, without any real care, passed by the monkeys to arrive by the two adults.

The lead monkey, who she could now see was wearing yellow ochre paint in crude branching lines across much of his body, pointed to the fruit, then put it down and took out a second, at which point she had to do a double take, because it was clearly an immortal peach.

“You actually found one?” Senior Ying exclaimed, clapping her hands in delight.

The other monkey folded his arms and nodded, as if to say ‘of course we did, who do you take us for.’

-They can use Intent to communicate? she realised, somewhat surprised, eyeing the monkeys with a new sense of respect, because that meant that outside of here, they were likely at least Nascent Soul qi beasts.

“Wait… they can speak with Intent?” Lin Ling, who had also come out now, exclaimed, a bit shocked.

“Sorry, Miss Lianmei, I should have said,” Senior Ying apologised, addressing Lianmei directly, her voice surprisingly mellow. “I didn’t expect them to come, what with all of you suddenly appearing.”

“Ah… it’s fine,” Lianmei said, though her expression was a bit dull. “You know this band?”

“I do,” Senior Ying nodded. “This is ‘Ochre Lightning,’ while the other one there is ‘Ten Centipedes’.”

“Ten Centipedes?” she asked, walking down as well.

The monkey turned to look at her, then held out his arms, showing that he had a crude picture of a centipede with ten white crosses on it painted there.

“He killed ten adult centipedes that attacked the group,” Senior Ying said. “I can confirm it because they sold me the cores for medicine a while after.”

The monkey gave them a toothy grin and folded his arms again.

“Why is he called Ochre Lightning?” Lin Ling asked.

The monkey paused, looked at them, then pointed at the sky and mimed getting struck by lightning.

“Oh… that makes sense,” her friend conceded.

The monkey rolled his eyes, then turned back to Senior Ying, pulling out two more fruits, to which she could only raise her eyebrows. One was a Spring and Autumn plum and the other was a yang-attributed pomegranate.

The monkey held up a hand, then rummaged for a moment more and also produced a second pomegranate.

“You also want to place it?” Senior Ying asked.

The monkey nodded affirmatively.

“I’ll be back shortly,” Senior Ying murmured apologetically to them, then set off towards the shrine, followed by the entire family of monkeys.

The shrines in the little complex were fairly standard, dedicated to the Four Queen Mothers of Heaven and the Grandfather of Heaven. As far as she could recall, she had only ever been into the ones here… once, maybe? Usually they were kept closed up and only opened on auspicious days.

The most notable thing about them, really, was that the original builders had incorporated a few local twists into the designs, so the gateway to the courtyard there was flanked by two small shrines with a squirrel in one and a monkey in the other.

“What in the fates is actually going on?” Duan Mu, who had now also appeared, just in time to witness this bizarre scene, asked.

“If I was going to guess, the monkeys are paying their respects… to the shrine of the four Queen Mothers…” Lianmei said a little dully as Senior Ying led the group into the shrine courtyard and up the steps into the main building.

“Truly you can live many years and always see new things,” Ling Mo Shun, who had now also appeared, muttered, shaking his head.

True to her word, Senior Ying did indeed return after only a few minutes. The monkey group sat down on the shrine steps, far away from them, and started to eat another of the jackfruit between them.

“Sorry about that,” she said with a small bow to Lianmei. “They will not cause a nuisance. They only came to see me, really.”

“I… see,” Lianmei nodded, looking at the group pensively.

“They move through these valleys and I trade them things on occasion,” Senior Ying explained, adjusting her broad hat slightly. “Pills, the odd spirit stone, this sort of thing. In return they are happy to exchange information about rare herbs and the like, or where dangerous things have taken up residence.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“I didn’t think this was Fern Cloak territory,” Duan Mu remarked.

“Oh, they are not ‘Fern Cloak’ monkeys,” Senior Ying shook her head. “They are ‘Iron Fur’, so-called because they paint themselves with the ochre.”

“I can’t say I have ever heard of those,” Lin Ling murmured.

Thinking back, she did recall some mention of other groups of monkeys, but mostly those reports were so sketchy it was usual to assume they were just Fern Cloaks being even more mendacious than usual.

“Hardly surprising,” Senior Ying replied, nodding sagely. “They move around a lot and usually only come through here once or twice a year at most.”

“So, they are not beasts of the valleys?” Duan Mu asked.

“No more than you or I,” Senior Ying chuckled. “And you would do well to remember that in treating with them.”

“So, don’t annoy them then,” she murmured.

“Indeed,” Lianmei agreed, casting a sideways look over the others, though she doubted anyone here would, personally.

“…”

“In any case, I asked them about rare herbs. They are willing to trade you ten peaches and a few other things if you provide each of them the same in base building pills. They also told me that the valley above the great waterfall to the east has not been visited in years. It is also unusually accessible due to the heavy rains. The river flooded a few days back and washed away many dangers on the ascent.”

“I see,” Lianmei nodded, glancing sideways at her.

“Well, it’s a start,” she supposed. “Although what a monkey considers ‘more accessible’ and what we do might be radically different things.”

“Hah…” Senior Ying nodded.

“In any case, tell them thank you, from us, for that information,” she mused.

“When you say peaches?” Lianmei followed up.

“Immortal peaches,” Senior Ying clarified, giving them a grin. “They know where an adult tree is, though I doubt they will ever share its location.”

“An adult Immortal peach tree…” Duan Mu repeated dully.

“Even if the quality is not great, that will really help,” she mused, not quite as surprised as some of the others. “I know a part of this is quantity over quality, but a few showpiece items like that will go a long way towards making a good impression.”

“They will,” Lianmei agreed, nodding pensively. “What quality of base building pill?”

“I have been trading them Chosen Immortal ones,” Senior Ying answered with an amused smile. “They are eating Immortal peaches, remember.”

“…”

“That’s…” Lin Ling trailed off, looking back at the monkeys with an incredulous expression.

“A base building pill?” Duan Mu gawked.

“I can make them,” Senior Ying added. “If you have difficulties acquiring them…”

“Ah, no,” she shook her head. “Just shocked that they only want those.”

“A few spirit jades for an immortal peach is practically theft…” Lin Ling muttered.

-It is, she agreed, recalling the kinds of prices even an immature tree’s fruit had been commanding at the auction.

“You say that, but good quality pills are a treasure, especially ones like that,” Senior Ying said. “They help nurture children and act as a form of insurance if they run into difficulties. Spirit stones are not that useful up here, unless you can find ones that formed in situ.”

“True,” Lianmei agreed. “I am sure we can get a good number put in the next teleport, though if you do want to make them… we can also remunerate you.”

“You will have to supply the ingredients,” Senior Ying said drily.

“—‘Sup guys!”

She turned to find Sana had come out as well.

“We are admiring the insanity that is Yin Eclipse,” she said blandly. “What is it?”

“There will be some food ready in about an hour. We thought to time it for when the other group is supposedly coming?” Sana answered.

“Okay,” she nodded.

“So, what’s the ‘insanity’?” Sana asked, looking around with interest.

“Monkeys,” Lin Ling pointed across the gorge to the shrine steps.

“Oh…” Sana shaded her eyes. “Huh… Ochre Monkeys…”

“You know them?” she asked, surprised.

“We ran into a bunch of ochre-covered monkeys… I think it was last year,” Sana mused. “A couple of valleys beyond here. They traded us a bunch of ginseng and mushrooms for some high quality purification pills. I wonder if it’s the same bunch; Arai would probably remember.”

“I don’t recall you mentioning that in any report,” she murmured, trying to think back to what mission that might have been.

“Eh, it was when you were in Blue Water City for those two months, I think,” Sana said.

“Ah… right, of course,” she sighed, placing it at last. “When I was sent to oversee the tax audit…”

That had been a very dull, if incredibly busy, two months of going around various warehouses ‘demonstrating’ for the Hunter Bureau’s elders that the Kun clan was fulfilling their half of the transport arrangements. It was the kind of job you landed if a certain Supreme Elder wanted to keep you offside so his daughter could impress visiting dignitaries at the turn of the year.

“Well, I’ll go sort out the shrine,” Senior Ying added brightly. “Food was in an hour?”

“Someone will come find you,” Lianmei said.

Senior Ying nodded again and then sauntered back over to the entrance to the shrine and went back inside.

“Okay folks,” she said after a short pause as they all stared at the monkeys, who were still sitting around eating, “show’s over. Let’s get back to… whatever it was we were doing.”

“Aye, I’ll go tell the lads in the towers not to shoot any monkeys,” Ling Mo Shun muttered.

“That’s… probably very wise,” she replied. “I might come with you, to take a look at the perimeter.”

“Sure,” Ling Mo Shun agreed. “Grab a bow and a blade and I’ll see you here in five?”

“I’ll come as well,” Duan Mu volunteered.

Ling Mo Shun nodded, and then headed back up the steps into the inn.

“You don’t have to come,” she remarked as Duan Mu followed her over to the store rooms.

“I need to feel like I am doing something useful to justify my presence here instead of Brother Shu,” Duan Mu chuckled. “Allow me this…”

“It is a bit odd,” she conceded. “I think this is the largest group of elite Hunters I have worked with in almost ten years.”

“What was the last time?” Duan Mu asked her as they ducked into the impromptu armoury.

“…”

“An outbreak of soul-setting fungus zombies,” she answered, picking up a bow and testing the draw on it before putting it back. “A bit before your time really.”

“Oh… that,” he nodded, having read about it, she supposed.

“It is why we make every effort to recover bodies,” she went on, finally finding a bow which had a much stiffer draw that was more to her liking.

“Yeah, nothing says ‘clean up your mess’ like a horde of mushroom-controlled cultivator corpses,” Duan Mu shuddered.

“Uhuh,” she agreed, going over and picking up a few quivers of arrows and storing them away, before slinging two at her waist.

“Sign them out before you go,” she added, pointing to the board someone had put up on the wall, which had all their names on it and entries for who had taken what.

Duan Mu nodded silently, marking off what he had taken. Once he had done so, she followed suit, then they made their way back out to find Ling Mo Shun and Kun Ji waiting there.

“Figured I should come too,” Kun Ji chuckled. “I have been up here almost a month, so I know what is what, and more importantly, what is not.”

“East or west?” she asked Ling Mo Shun.

“West. We scouted the direction of the monkeys already,” Ling Shun replied. “Not that it did us much good.”

“Monkeys are monkeys,” she sighed. “At least they are not causing problems, so we should give thanks to the Grandfather of Heaven for small mercies.”

On the way back past the Misty Jasmine Inn, she caught Lin Ling and told her that Sana had ‘her’ role, while she was with Ling Mo Shun. The chances of anything actually happening were pretty small, but up here, clarity on that sort of thing was important.

The first place Ling Shun took them was the western watchtowers, which were lit by lanterns at the base, and with a guard apiece in each. In better weather, they would provide a commanding view across the gorge; however, currently the low cloud made the view from the vantage points akin to looking out across a sea of mist, taller trees and the odd collapsed slab visible in the middle distance as dark shadows on light.

“This is going to be a nightmare if the weather stays like this,” Duan Mu observed, shading his eyes to peer into the drifting rain.

“Uhuh,” she agreed.

“We can take steps,” Ling Shun said. “All my team are trained martial archers. Really, the only threat is bandits this far into the gorge.”

“Yep,” Kun Ji agreed. “The western end is a good three hundred metres away, not that you would know it. I assume we will go all the way to the edge of the valley?”

“Might as well,” she suggested. “We have at least an hour… and the ridge forest in the rain is an excellent test run for what might happen if this downpour doesn’t stop, because we cannot afford to sit around for half a week waiting for the weather to get better.”

“No, we cannot,” Ling Shun agreed.

“What route are you going to take, Sir?” the guard leaning on the edge of the watchtower smoking a pipe asked.

“If you shoot us on the way back in I will throw you off the cliff up there myself,” Ling Shun said with an amused laugh. “What do you recommend, Hunter Ji?”

“Our usual route is along the middle. There is a stream that comes down about a hundred metres out.”

“Caves?” Ling Shun frowned.

Kun Ji just glanced at them with an expression that said ‘kinda’. “I’ll show you on the way there.”

…

‘Cave’ did turn out to be something of an understatement. The river, when they finally got to it, was a small torrent of rounded boulders that wound down the path of least resistance towards the western valley, out of a natural fracture in the rock. She followed it up for about thirty metres, climbing carefully over rocks and looking for dangers, but it was, as expected, a ‘ridge biome’ and thus almost entirely spirit vegetation.

“What does it look like?” Ling Shun called up as he spotted her coming back down.

“The river is just run-off from above, formed from several small waterfalls travelling down this fissure and over some rockfall,” she explained, sliding back down to land in the knee-deep water of the ‘pool’ at its entrance and then wade back to shore. “Just spirit vegetation for the most part.”

Kun Ji nodded at her slightly redundant report, leading to her to roll her eyes as he offered her a hand to climb out of the shallow pool.

“Well, it all looks as expected so far,” Ling Shun mused looking around.

“Yep,” Duan Mu, who had been poking around the edge of the pool, called over in agreement.

“Yep,” she agreed, taking in the dripping greenery of the gorge floor and the tumbles of rock that were cloaked in swathes of vines and small shrubs. “Shall we go look at the way down?”

“Yep,” Ling Shun nodded, waving to Kun Ji to start moving again. “Lead on, Hunter Ji.”

“Of course, Sergeant Ling,” Kun Ji murmured, picking up the trail again and setting off down the riverbank.

It was a pleasingly uneventful twenty minute scramble along the edge of the riverbank to reach was what effectively the ‘edge’ of the ridge. The most ‘wildlife’ they saw along the way were a few birds and some crayfish and snails in the river. It was what she expected, and had anticipated, but it was nice to confirm that the ridge was acting as the barrier it should.

“So, this is the Western Falls Valley,” Kun Ji remarked drily as they stood on a rocky outcropping by the waterfall where the river descended into swaying greenery.

“Or what can be seen of it, anyway,” Duan Mu, who had largely walked along in silence, remarked, adjusting his hat so it wasn’t dripping water down his neck.

The valley itself was a broad swathe of shifting greenery, split by several massif pillars. It was entirely forested as well, which was as she recalled. In the distance, she could make out a faint truncation in the treeline that was probably the river, before everything blended into mist and rain. Tracing her gaze upwards, the whitish-grey river of cloud rolling down around them obscured everything above, but on a clear day she knew the central peaks of East Fury would be towering over them, their snowy, untouchable peaks wreathed in halos of dark cloud.

“What is the understory like?” she asked Kun Ji. “This close to a major teleport I imagine it is quite disturbed down there?”

“It is,” Kun Ji nodded, grimacing. “That said, there are established paths through, at least to the north-east and south-east.”

“Where would the valley that the monkeys talked of be?” she added, getting her bearings with her own talisman.

“Straight across, far side. You can’t see it, but the river merges in a fairly deep lake in the middle. The rain has raised the water table in this valley by a metre or two, so we haven’t scouted much, for obvious reasons,” Kun Ji mused.

She followed where he was pointing and then pulled up an existing map of the valley on her scrip for them to look at.

“Here,” Kun Ji pointed to the western-most of the waterfalls and traced a hazy, unmapped section up into the mountains, where the ridges that rolled down from above dipped and tilted into what she guessed to be some kind of natural fault.

“That looks fun to get to,” Duan Mu muttered, peering closely at the trails that ran across.

“Yeah, it’s probably half a day there, and half a day back,” she agreed.

“Would it be faster to go to the lake and cross by boat?” she mused.

“Yes, probably, but we would need a boat,” Kun Ji pointed out.

“That, we can solve, and spirit stones are not a problem,” she reminded him. “For once, the Bureau is paying, though some of the elders who fancy themselves the keepers of its wealth may be minting tears of blood—”

“Deservedly so, the thieving sons of dogs,” Duan Mu grumbled.

“…”

Standing there in the humid mist, she closed her eyes for a few moments and listened to their surroundings, fading out the chatter of the others to listen again to the sounds of the forest around them, on the edge of the valley. To the bird calls, to the dull hum of insects, to the patter of rain off leaves, the swish of branches and the dull roar of water rolling down the shallow cliff beside them.

It was quiet and harmonious, and also a little bit muted. In truth, it felt more like being in the Outer Valleys than at the very uppermost reaches of the High Valleys, but ‘danger’ was not a linear progression up here in any case. There were valleys beyond here that were largely normal cloud forest ecosystems with a few interesting plants, while in the Outer Valleys you had places like the Red Pit, where province-crippling danger was a literal stone’s throw from organized settlements.

“You said groups came through here just under a month ago?” she asked, opening her eyes again and looking out at the misty forest, skimming the information she had on the valley in her scrip, which basically said it was a ‘normal’ valley ecosystem for the High Valleys.

“Uhuh,” Kun Ji nodded.

“Did you patrol after?” she added.

“Our team didn’t. Fanhee’s did though,” Kun Ji frowned. “Why, do you think there is…?”

“A problem? No,” she shook her head, her gaze travelling along the cliff edge to the carved stone pagoda set down as a way marker for the path down. “It just occurs to me that with half an hour before we have to go back, we could check out the path the Deng clan took, to see what kind of state it is in and what the condition of the forest floor is, after a solid week of rain.”

“So, scout down the stairway then head back?” Ling Shun mused.

“Yes, it makes good use of our time and it shouldn’t be too dangerous,” she confirmed.

“Okay,” Ling Shun agreed after a moment’s pause.

“Okay,” Duan Mu also agreed.

“I don’t see why not,” Kun Ji also agreed.

“We go down there for ten minutes, take a quick poke about, if it looks plausible, I reckon we could go back, see if anyone is interested and take a crack at some easy spirit herbs,” she mused. “We need to practice formations a bit, certainly, and that can’t be done easily up in the canyon here.”

“Indeed, that is an excellent point,” Ling Shun agreed. “My squad are used to working with each other, but you Hunters work in small groups and usually rotate a lot, do you not?”

“We do,” Duan Mu agreed, nodding. “Some practice in that regard would be good. Most of my recent missions have been exercises in frugality and I was spared the worst of the clearance season.”

“How is your injury?” she asked, realising she should perhaps have checked that before.

“It won’t be a problem at this point,” Duan Mu reassured her, patting his right arm, then his side. “I didn’t lose anything, so it’s mostly just the lingering Intent. I have to eat a medicinal pill a day and apparently it will dissipate fully within a few weeks.”

“Glad to hear it,” she murmured, just about resisting commenting on how comparatively fragile it felt like spiritual cultivators were as she started picking her way along the cliff edge, between tangled shrubs and the occasional ground vines.

The trip down the cliff was easy, in large part because there was a small ruin at the bottom of it which had been transformed into a stairway up past the steepest parts. On the ground she looked around warily, taking in the presence of their surroundings as Ling Shun unslung his bow and moved arrows into his quiver, just in case.

“Everyone knows the common sign language?” she asked.

Everyone else nodded and signed back ‘yes’.

“Trail is over that way,” she pointed to an area of freshly rejuvenating vegetation that tracked a ‘channel’ through the forest.

“This is the usual path,” Kun Ji signed, pointing towards it. “There are quite a few ruins here lost to the jungle.”

“Old?” Duan Mu asked, curious as they picked their way forward.

“Post Blue Water Sage,” Kun Ji signed in reply. “There was a period when this place was quite heavily exploited during the resettlement. Not sure why they were abandoned, but they have been long since picked clean. The only reason the stones here remain is because there are much more accessible remnants on the eastern side.”

“Ah,” Duan Mu nodded, looking around again at the ruined buildings in their hauntingly familiar styles.

They walked for the entire ten minutes down the trackway, before stopping to consider their surroundings pensively.

“This is quite disturbed,” Duan Mu remarked, poking a tangled vine with his blade.

“It is,” she agreed. “More than it looked from above.”

“Most of the patrols range out beyond here,” Kun Ji elaborated. “This trackway becomes a convenient way to get to the lake. If you go off it a hundred metres or so, over the undulation of the valley floor, it rapidly becomes much less disturbed.”

“What do you think about first targets?” she mused.

“Nearest massifs are the best bet,” Kun Ji answered as they continued to watch the dripping forest.

“If we were to set up a teleport network, how long does it last?” Ling Shun added.

“Hmmmmm…” Kun Ji stared up at the sky, then the boggy trackway. “A week or two? In other circumstances it’s a poor return, but now, to get beyond this place, it is likely a good idea.”

“Something to plot out later,” she mused. “I hesitate to say we have unlimited finances, even with what was said earlier, but spirit stones are no good as a ‘gift’.”

“No, they are not,” Duan Mu agreed.

They stood there in silence, listening to the forest again for a minute or so, before she started to quickly gather the pieces for a beggar’s compass. It didn’t take long to put the little shamble-like thing together and consider what the alignments told her regarding the natural harmony of the locality.

“…”

Noting them all looking at her, even Kun Ji, she rolled her eyes. “Mixed, harmony, myriad, trending south.”

“That’s pretty mediocre,” Duan Mu remarked at last.

“What do you expect?” Kun Ji chuckled. “We are literally only a mile from the Misty Jasmine Inn still. This area gets swept regularly by the Beast Cadre, Herb Hunters and other visitors. Even a group of trainees could harvest here, with caution.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, on both points. “It’s much as I expected anyway.”

“Shall we head back?” Ling Shun added.

“Yes, let’s,” she agreed. “It would be… embarrassing to be back late from the very first ‘mission’.”

The trip back was pleasantly uneventful and they arrived back at the ‘gate’ in the wall, hailing the guards in the watchtowers well in advance, just so they didn’t accidentally end up shot with arrows.

“Find anything?” Kun Lianmei asked her as they made their way back to the front of the Misty Jasmine Inn.

“Western Falls Valley is quite disturbed; if we want anything out of it then it might honestly be better to bring up thirty or forty trainees and set them loose to sweep out from the exit for a few hundred metres,” she reported, having had time to think about exploitation strategies on the way back.

“So, about as expected,” Kun Lianmei agreed, leading them inside, into the teahouse area.

“Any news on the next group coming through? Elder Lianmei?” Duan Mu added.

“Delayed a bit. There is a big storm brewing outside so distant and precision teleports are quite unstable,” Lianmei said.

“Oh, we could have stayed out for a while longer,” she mused.

“You want to take a team back out?” Lianmei said.

“It’s what…” she trailed off, checking her scrip, and sighing softly as she found it was only half past three in the afternoon. “I somehow thought it was a bit later,” she remarked drily. “What with Sana talking about food.”

“Hah, I suppose that would throw it off. It’s like this until it’s not, in terms of daylight up here,” Kun Ji remarked.

“How long do you reckon we have?” she asked.

“Sunset is usually about six to half past?” Kun Ji replied. “So about three hours away. That gives an hour out, half an hour to look about and then back again?”

“Seems like a plan then,” Lianmei agreed, looking at her. “Who do you want to take?”

“If we are going to be quick? Duan, Ling, and Sergeant Mo?” she suggested.

In other circumstances she would have just suggested Sana and Ling, but Sana’s capabilities she was well aware of and ensuring that the others, who she was less familiar with on a day to day basis, were involved in this kind of thing was important.

“I’m happy to come, and bring one of the lads,” Ling Mo Shun agreed.

“Take Ji here as well,” Lianmei added. “A dedicated diviner is no bad thing, not that you or Lin Ling are bad by any means, but…”

“Okay,” she murmured, understanding what Lianmei was getting at. She had thought to give him a break, but Kun Ji provided valuable extra experience and had spent a lot of time here recently. “I’ll get us some extra kit and you round up the others and meet me outside in five?” she added to Duan Mu.

“Okay,” Duan Mu nodded.

“LIN LING!” she called out, looking around and not seeing the younger woman.

Lin Ling appeared at the first floor balcony.

“What is it?” she called down.

“Fancy a first trip into the Western Falls Valley?”

“…”

“Okay,” Lin Ling replied after a moment’s pause. “I’ll go get a bow and some gear… We are going to need formations arrows and the like?”

She gave Lin Ling an affirmative wave, which the younger girl returned as she hurried off.

“Do we have communications set up yet?” she asked Lianmei, because that was the other thing really.

“The locus is still calibrating, but we can give you a talisman and it should hopefully be working in… thirty minutes?” Lianmei replied, tapping her knuckles again her lips pensively.

-That’s actually quite fast, she mused, quietly impressed.

Usually portable jade ‘loci’, the more advanced versions of the scrips, took four or five hours to properly calibrate to the talismans and couldn’t be moved once you started the process. For the one Lianmei had been provided to only take an hour or two made her wonder what quality it was.

While she waited on Kun Ji to bring back a communication talisman, she went across to the kitchen area and stuck her head inside, finding Sana and Mu Shi chatting away while they sorted through scavenged spirit vegetation and various provided supplies, making a large quantity of soup.

“We are heading out, probably not be back until just before dark,” she said to the pair.

“Understood,” Mu Shi replied, glancing up. “Where are you going?”

“A range-finding trip towards the lake in Western Falls Valley,” she elaborated. “If we can we will set up a teleport anchor somewhere safe to expedite getting a boat down there tomorrow.”

“It’s that flooded?” Sana raised an eyebrow as she looked up from the bitter greens she was shredding.

“Maybe. The forest is plenty disturbed and not that bountiful on first look, so we will see,” she replied.

“Well, good luck,” Sana added, giving her a grin.

“Yep!” Mu Shi agreed. “Hope it goes smoothly!”

“Oh, grab some mangosteen,” Sana pointed to a bowl on the side. “If you’re missing food it will help keep everyone’s energy up, given most of those here are not physical cultivators.”

Taking the bowl, she nodded in thanks and headed back outside to find that Lin Ling was standing there now, along with Duan Mu and Kun Ji, who had a bundle of one-metre-long unattributed bamboo sitting near them.

“I have teleport talismans, anchors and markers as well,” Lin Ling said, speaking up first. “And some bamboo in case we do, in fact, find something worth marking.”

“Formations arrows as well,” Kun Ji said, patting his own talisman.

“The sergeant will meet us at the gate, apparently,” Duan Mu added as she looked around for him.

Indeed, returning to the gate, they found Ling Mo Shun and another of the guards, who politely introduced himself as Ling Qiu Wentai, waiting for them.

“Nobody has any objections if we go a bit quicker this time?” she asked.

Everyone shook their heads, so this time she set off at a brisk trot along the cleared path, back towards the waterfall and the route down to the Western Falls Valley. It didn’t take them long at all to get back to where they had stopped before, so, after some brief discussion and the election of Lin Ling as the person using their scrip to create a new map of the path they were taking, they just continued down that path, through the misty forest, bathed in the slightly off-colour light of late afternoon.

They jogged on for another twenty minutes, following the trail until it petered out in a broad open clearing within the forest that gave way to boggy ground and a tumbled-down watchtower-like structure and some vine-covered walls. The thing that really stood out to her, though, was that the humidity became a touch more cloying, giving hints of decay and earth.

“Someone made an effort to poke around in this recently?” Ling Wentai remarked, pointing out the slashed vines and signs of burning that were still prevalent.

“I get nothing untoward, beyond the usual,” Kun Ji observed, holding up a compass he had made on the trip along the forest ‘road’ for them to see. As he said, the reading off it was pretty much what she expected, suggesting the ruin was vaguely inauspicious and that the vitality of the clearing was compromised.

“There is a yin attribute spirit herb here, almost certainly,” Lin Ling mused, looking this way and that with narrowed eyes. “I suppose one of these groups that came through before tried to find it?”

“Mark it and we can come back to it,” she decided after a moment’s contemplation. “Yin herbs are troublesome and you can almost taste the earth qi in the air. I don’t want our inaugural attempt at a high rank spirit herb to be some obnoxious yin earth herb.”

“Yeah, that muddy feeling in the mist doesn’t make me enthused to go wading in those flooded zones looking for whatever it is,” Ling Mo Shun agreed.

She watched as Lin Ling and Duan Mu took out a metre length of unattributed bamboo, carved a slice out of it and put a marker talisman into it. They tied a vibrant length of cloth around the split area then between them sank the bamboo into the ground almost to half its length.

“Wait, stop,” Ling Wentai hissed suddenly.

“What is it?” she asked, turning to him.

“What did you see?” Ling Shun asked, nocking an arrow.

“In the tree… over there, I thought I saw… something about the size of a cat, with black fur?” Ling Wentai frowned.

She followed his gaze but saw nothing, not that that helped…

Ling Wentai frowned, looking around as well.

Lin Ling, who had stopped linking up the talisman to the map she was making, poked her in the side and pointed silently. About thirty metres away, on another tree branch, she caught a flash of black fur and a tail as something vanished into the greenery with a rustle of leaves, as if it had never been.

“It looked like a large koppi squirrel,” Ling Shun sighed, looking relieved and lowering his bow.

“Sorry…” Ling Wentai muttered, “guess I was on edge. This place has a bit of a reputation…”

“Yeah, it does,” she frowned, looking around with narrowed eyes.

“No harm done,” Kun Ji murmured, giving Ling Wentai a pat on the shoulder. “Just because it was a squirrel this time…”

“If you see it again, say something,” she added, for two reasons: firstly, because paranoia about things up here was no bad thing, and secondly, it would not do to have him think he should just not point stuff like that out. There was also ‘the’ squirrel, which thankfully this did not appear to be.

“Okay,” he nodded, but she could see he was still a bit embarrassed.

“So, where do we go then?” Duan Mu asked her as Lin Ling went back to finishing linking the map and talisman.

Looking around, she grimaced and then clambered up a nearby fallen tree to get a better view out across the rain-drenched clearing, not that it really helped much.

“The path should be roughly east of here?” Kun Ji volunteered, after checking his own scrip as she swept the edges of the clearing pensively.

“I suppose we can only go around and see what we find,” she concluded, hopping back down. “Do you want to lead on, Ji?”

“Okay,” the older man agreed, putting his scrip away in a pouch at his waist.

They made their way on, around the edge of the clearing for about a hundred metres, following the treeline, before eventually being forced upslope into the forest by the margin turning into a proper swamp with murky, turbid water flowing away to the south-east. Fortunately, they did find the ‘trail’ again just beyond that, in about the same condition it had been in before, albeit rather narrower and now mostly overshadowed by the tree canopy, winding near to a shallow, rock-strewn river.

“How are we in terms of orientation to where we started?” she asked Ling after they had followed it for about ten more minutes.

“Heading roughly east, still,” Lin Ling replied, projecting the ‘route’ they had taken so far, which rather resembled a two-mile-long, slightly winding serpent. “The valley is not as flat as it seems either.”

“You don’t say?” Duan Mu chuckled, glancing off at the rising forest floor to their right.

“We have actually descended about three hundred metres,” Lin Ling pointed out, spinning the small map so they could see.

Looking around, she reflected that that was why maps like the one Lin Ling was making were important. Out under the trees it became very hard to keep track of your direction, the distance you had travelled and how the geology of your surroundings was behaving.

“So there are lots of smaller rivulets running off, out of the bedrock to feed the lake?” she mused.

“Looks like,” Lin Ling agreed. “I am somewhat surprised that there was no scan like this done before?”

“There is one, but it was before the floods,” Kun Ji clarified. “It also focuses on the northern side, because that was where the Beast Cadre was focusing its interest.”

“Whereas out here is just a confusing green maze with a relatively stable path through it,” she concluded, understanding why a small garrison would have neglected it.

“Yes, and we only had one of those scrips,” Kun Ji remarked with some bitter amusement entering his tone. “For all that they are useful, they are expensive and the Pavilions tend not to lend them out for long-term assignments like way station tending.”

“Oh, I am aware,” Lin Ling muttered. “I bought this myself.”

“The trials and tribulations of being a glorified watchman,” she agreed.

They walked on in silence after that for almost another thirty minutes, until the path finally reached a shallow cliff that split the forest. Before them, vanishing into the haze, was about a mile or more of flooded forest, consumed by the lake that rippled vaguely in the middle distance.

“We definitely need a boat,” she said after taking in the scene for a short minute.

“Uhuh,” Lin Ling agreed.

“Yup,” both guards nodded.

“Has the talisman connected yet?” she asked Kun Ji, who was considering a spirit wood compass pensively.

He pulled it out and sent some qi into it, then nodded and passed it to her.

“Lianmei?” she sent through it.

“Mo Shunfei here,” a familiar voice sounded in her head. “I can get Elder Lianmei though.”

“Can we establish a visual link with this?” she asked Kun Ji, examining the talisman.

“Yes, with the help of a scrip and a few spirit stones,” he replied.

She took out her own scrip and passed it over to him.

“May be best. We are going to establish a visual link,” she sent back.

“…”

“Okay,” Shunfei replied after a short pause. “I’ll go get her.”

While they waited on that, she swept the swampy, sparse forest below them again, looking for landmarks or odd things that might be useful for navigation.

“My compass is getting a vaguely auspicious reading off to the north,” Duan Mu said after a few moments, holding out his own spirit wood compass for them to see.

“Oh?” she murmured, turning to glance in that direction, along the ragged forest boundary.

His compass was indeed showing a vaguely auspicious reading, though experience told her it was still well within the margin of error for that kind of compass.

“—Okay, we are set up,” Kun Ji interrupted.

Accepting the scrip back, she activated the record image function and passed it on to Lin Ling, before re-established her talisman link.

“So, what image is it you want to show us?” Lianmei’s voice echoed in her head a moment later.

“Here…”

She waved for Lin Ling to hold up the scrip, recording the image of the flooded forest and the distant lake, shrouded in rain.

“You are going to need a boat,” Lianmei judged succinctly.

“We are,” she agreed. “Or at least several decent canoes. The water should be deep enough and new enough that there is not much danger to be found crossing it.”

“The afternoon group has not come yet, so I can relay that. What will you do now?” Lianmei asked her.

“Push on north, tracking the edge of this, and keep making a map. If an opportunity arises we will put up a teleport anchor so we can get back here quickly once we have a boat.”

“Consider trying to find somewhere to establish a staging post?” Lianmei mused.

“I will keep it in mind,” she replied, noting that the spirit stones feeding the connection were almost dead already.

“Talk more in… twenty minutes,” she said after a quick assessment of how much time they had been out.

“Okay,” Lianmei agreed, then the connection went dead.

“Well?” Lin Ling asked her.

“We are getting canoes in the next supply teleport,” she confirmed, lashing her scrip to her forearm, like Sana did, then putting the talisman around her neck. “I said we would scout north for twenty minutes, map the edge and then call in again.”

“I had forgotten how boring this can be,” Duan Mu chuckled as they set off again, her leading this time.

“I’ll take boring out here every fate-trashed time,” she murmured.

“Preach that scripture,” Kun Ji agreed as the others, even Duan Mu, laughed quietly.

“Can you get a better read on this signature?” she asked Duan Mu as they moved on, threading their way along the top of the shallow cliff, trying to avoid the worst of the tangled vegetation.

“Somewhat, I’ll keep an eye out,” Duan Mu replied, looking around at the gloomy forest and shuddering slightly, looking a bit stressed.

She had to agree that the ambience here was… oppressive. There was a disquieting, smothering, claustrophobia to the place. A sense of being stifled by everything, and never at ease in any given moment. It made you anxious to step forward more quickly and yet also dragged at you, slowed you, tired you out, in ways that could be maddening. People could get reckless in truly inadvisable ways under that sort of fatigue and pressure.

In part it had to do with the slightly inharmonious contrast between open ground and well-established forest, but mostly, she knew, it was a form of the infamous ‘edge’ effect, a manifestation of the ambient alignments that was slowly worming its way into their perception of their surroundings.

There was nothing to be done about it really, except acknowledge its existence and try to be cognizant of the effect it could have on your judgement.

“Anyone feels a bit unsure, say so,” she said. “Clearly the disrupted alignments here are playing up the ‘edge effect’.”

“Is that what that is?” Ling Wentai muttered, looking at the forest to their left uneasily.

“Yep. Unpleasant, isn’t it?” Lin Ling murmured. “Imagine being up here alone, having walked in.”

“Euuuuuggh…” Ling Wentai gave a proper shiver at that.

“That is why we are here,” she said drily.

“Indeed,” Kun Ji agreed, nodding. “This is why this place is not that well-mapped, to be honest. This effect gets very troublesome under the trees. Few folk, even experienced ones, who don’t have good physical cultivations with certain… benefits, can stomach it for more than a few hours.”

“If you needed a reminder of why physical cultivators are valued, it is places like this,” she agreed.

“Thirty metres ahead,” Duan Mu murmured, pointing to where the cliff was dipping and the forest and floodwaters were just bleeding together. “That’s where the auspicious signature is, give or take.”

“Okay, in that case, sign language from here on out,” she murmured. “The compass give any idea on what it is? Animal, mineral, vegetable?”

“Out here? Could be all three,” Kun Ji signed back with an eye roll.

“…”

“Mark or investigate?” she asked the group.

“…”

“You know phrasing it like that makes me just want to say mark it and move on,” Lin Ling signed back, leading to the others to shake their heads in silent amusement.

Fighting the urge to comment, she suppressed her qi as best she could then focused on her stealth art.

{Empty Eye Steps}

Her sense of oneness with the world around her intensified subtly. Waving for the others to stay back, she made her way on, alone, between the vegetation and rocks, closing on the general location Duan Mu had indicated.

Unfocusing her gaze slightly, so as not to inadvertently ‘look at anything with intent’, she took in her surroundings as she moved forward, watching passively for something that might be out of place or unusual. Unfortunately, though predictably, there was little in the way of anything obvious.

The spirit vegetation was, as expected, hardwood trees, understory and a lot of vines. The vines were all tangled in the water, drifting like errant serpents, which was one reason for her slow progress. Water would not limit a trappish or life-catch vine, or a stray patch of brown thorn lost beneath the knee-deep lapping waters, murky with detritus, that swirled gently around rocks and tumbled trees.

Around ten metres away from the point Duan Mu roughly pointed out, she stopped properly, because there was little in the way of anything out of place at all. Here and there birds called to each other, no doubt complaining about the rain and the mist.

-So is it something mundane? she pondered, taking in the half submerged trees. This would have been somewhat open before…

“…”

Slowly, she took out a ceramic bowl, filled it with water and dropped a few stray bits of spirit vegetation into it and then turned the whole thing a half turn and watched how the five elements materials moved.

-Slightly to the left, huh? she watched as the swirl of different bits of plants spun, slightly dissociated from the momentum she had just instilled into the water, pulling sideways and also scattering a little predictably. That implies inauspicious surprise…

-Duan Mu’s compass is probably not wrong, either, she mused, which means that there is likely ‘something here’ and also ‘something waiting’, and that they may not be the same thing.

“…”

Holding up her arm, she signalled that to the others. Duan Mu grimaced, but it was not his fault.

“Move up?” Kun Ji signed back.

“Set up a formation around this whole place,” she instructed. “Stay clear of the water.”

Four pairs of eyes looked at the flooded area and she caught the soft sighs; however, this was the job they were all here for, so nobody actually said anything.

“Which formation?” Lin Ling sent back after a moment.

“A basic sealing one for now!” she replied. “This environment is very disturbed, so it needs to be subtle, play off the harmonies of the surroundings. ‘Sung’s Minor Five Elements’?”

The others conferred for a moment, then Kun Ji gave her the ‘affirmative’ handsign.

Taking out a formation core, she held it up then pointed to two trees, out in the water, and a rock beyond her. Ling Shun smoothly drew an arrow which had a minor formation core already fused into it and shot it at the tree she indicated. The arrow hit the trunk with barely a quiver. Ling Wentai followed suit a moment later with the other tree, while Lin Ling quickly moved past her, through the forest margin, skipping over a small stream feeding the waters around her to arrive at the rock outcropping and put a formation core there as well. Duan Mu took the last two spots on the near side.

“Water four and Life three,” Ling Shun signed to her, identifying the minor nodes on the arrows.

“Earth six!” Lin Ling signalled across.

“Fire two,” Duan Mu added.

“Metal one,” Kun Ji concluded.

Keying the different nodes into the high grade formation core, taking care to stay as still in the water as possible, she registered all five minor nodes and then held up the core again, which was the common signal for ‘that’s done’.

The two guards then started using arrows set with ward stones to shoot them out at various points, skilfully hitting auspicious and inauspicious points that Kun Ji was indicating while Duan Mu and Lin Ling quickly finished up the placement of the rest of the points.

-This is why it’s good to have real archers along, she thought happily. Everyone trained in archery, but she was the only one of the local Herb Hunters with an actual martial manual and any real expertise in it as a discipline, simply because it took time.

Kun Ji waved for her to place the central core when she was ready.

-Well, here goes nothing. Let’s see what’s lurking here…

Taking the core, she carefully lobbed it into the middle of the suspicious area, then immediately withdrew her own blade—

The instant it hit the water, a shadowy form exploded out of the detritus a mere two metres in front of her, long claws covered in razor-like ridges aiming for her—

Two arrows hit the razor shell crab, which had a body about a metre across, hard enough to rock it backwards and entirely break the momentum of its charge. Using the opportunity, she swapped out her blade for a spear and lunged forward herself.

{Kun Overturns the Waves}

The basic martial attack, aimed at the face of the crab, was deflected by its claws, but provided the further, necessary distraction for the formation to finally trigger.

{Sung’s Seal of Five Elements}

She felt the qi gradient in their surroundings twist faintly, focusing inwards on everything not linked to the formation, making qi harder to manipulate and drawing in and amplifying the divisive nature of the rain as well. The crab thrashed, but its movements were sluggish in comparison to a moment before, as if it were caught in mud.

“Good shooting,” she called over to Ling Wentai and Ling Shun, who both had second arrows ready to fire.

“Icck, it’s a biggun,” Kun Ji grimaced, walking over to stand beside her as she watched it try to escape towards the deeper water.

The crab flexed, trying to break the formation through pure strength as it fought to burrow back into the mud, its limbs scrabbling futilely as the formation continued to settle on it like a constricting net.

“I guess it must have come towards the forest thanks to the waters,” she mused.

“Yeah,” Kun Ji agreed, looking out at the flooded forest. “This is the biggest I have seen in a good while, honestly. Mostly they lurk over by the muddy areas near the lake and feed off fish.”

“Guess today’s dinner is crab hotpot,” Lin Ling called over, not having moved off her rock as she also surveyed their surroundings, an arrow nocked in her own bow.

“My compass reads that as also being the auspicious thing…” Duan Mu called over.

“…”

She eyed the crab critically, because even sealed it was not exactly easy to go over and search it.

Razor shell crabs got their name because their shells were covered in ridges like little blades, that made grasping them for anything vaguely predatory almost impossible without incurring catastrophic injuries. She had seen a few injuries dealt by small ones over the years, and just grabbing one could flay your skin. The ridges also secreted a yin-attributed poison that paralyzed quickly. Their preferred hunting strategy, especially the smaller ones, was to just wait in shallow mud for something to stand on them.

Sighing, she set her spear and, with one smooth motion, drove the point deep into an exposed gap by its ‘mouth’. The crab twitched a few times and tried to swipe at her.

“…”

Pulling her spear out, she stabbed it again, then again, each time no real obvious effect.

Two arrows, infused with a fair amount of qi smashed into it, making the animal rock sideways.

“Well, that’s odd,” she remarked, looking at it warily.

“…”

“Where is the core?” she called over to Kun Ji.

“Underside, between its ‘head’ and where the legs ‘join’,” Kun Ji replied.

Picking her angle, she lunged forward as hard and fast as she could, driving the spear deep into the crab’s body—

Its legs twitched, and for one hair-raising moment she was terrified it was going to try and roll over on her… however, instead, its flesh just turned to water and flowed away, leaving behind an empty, mud-coloured shell.

“…”

“Well, shit,” Kun Ji cursed, looking around grimly.

She poked at the moulted shell with her spear and nodded in agreement, understanding now why her spear thrusts and the arrows had done so little. The ‘real’ crab would be buried somewhere, likely having just shed this shell a short time ago, using qi manifestation in place of a Nascent Soul to create a puppet that could deliver it food or act as a decoy and guard while its new shell hardened.

Hopping on a rock, she jumped over to near where the crab had emerged and looked around at the still-rippling water.

“There is a gully down, about a metre ahead of you!” Duan Mu called over, having gone across a bit further up and started poking around with a spear of his own.

“…”

“I’ll go look. Do you want to come with me?” she asked Kun Ji.

“Okay,” Kun Ji nodded. “But I’ll go first this time.”

She nodded, then waved for the others to keep an eye out.

Kun Ji stored his hat, grass cloak, bow and quiver into his storage ring and then tied a rope to his belt. She followed suit, then they both waded out warily past the discarded remains of the grab shell.

Between one footfall and the next, she felt the ground beneath her vanish, though, being prepared for it, she did not face-plant straight into deep water. Kun Ji floated for a moment, then crossed his arms and sank beneath the water. She crouched and followed suit, slipping off the edge of the rocky escarpment into the murky gloom of the water.

“There,” Kun Ji signed, almost immediately, pointing to a tree, which was half-submerged on the surface.

In the gloomy, muddy water she could just make out the faint shimmer of luminescence. Swimming closer, she found the trunk of a broad, old tree had been partially split and dragged down into a shelving overhang within the gully, likely cut by millennia of water flowing through it.

-That’s a big lingzhi, she thought, mildly shocked as she took in the faint luminescence of the fungus coating the inside of the trunk.

Immediately below it, in the shelter of the tree and the rock was a crab, about one and a half metres across, its razor-edged shell still hardening.

The suppression of the formation was still taking effect, so neither approached, but even at a distance she could see it was clearly a prize. No doubt the crab had stumbled upon it with the flooding and seen the opportunity to advance.

“What do we do?” she signed, because dealing with qi beasts was not really her thing.

“That lingzhi is the kind of thing we need,” Kun Ji signed back, rather redundantly. “So I guess we can only take out the crab. Otherwise it will be a danger to anyone else coming through here.”

“I concur,” she signed back, withdrawing her spear and slowly drifting forward through the murky water.

The crab sensed her approach almost immediately, its eyes moving to watch them. However, restrained by the formation there was little it could do. Its new exoskeleton was still setting and it was penned in. It lashed out with claws, but both of them easily pinned the joints on the first attack, sinking their spears through gaps in the chitin and impaling it to the ground.

She let Kun Ji flit in and stab it once with a second spear, through the shell, only joining him once he had attached a rope to it. Between them, it took them about a minute to swim back up to the surface and then, with the help of Ling Shun, drag the unwilling crab up to the surface.

“I’ll let you lot deal with that,” she said, eyeing the twitching beast with a grimace.

“Okay,” Kun Ji nodded.

“Duan, come back down with me!” she called over to him. “See what you found!”

Diving back down, she waited for him to join her by the split log, as she considered what to do about the lingzhi itself.

“A lingzhi!” he signed, arriving beside her.

“A pretty good one, too,” she agreed. “Grab some luss cloth and help me dig it out of this log.”

It took them about five minutes of work to cut the main part out, finding several smaller lingzhi in the process. It wasn’t a longevity one, sadly, but the strength of yang life within it from gestating within the ancient tree was still exceptional, so she had to consider it a fortuitous find, crab and all.

Returning to the surface with Duan and the largest part of the fungus and the portion of trunk it had been on, she found that the others had dragged the crab out of the water, flipped it over and got the core out.

“It’s an Immortal-grade spirit beast!” Kun Ji called over, patting a pot which likely held the core itself, so it wouldn’t attract every scavenger within a mile.

“The lingzhi must be close to that as well,” she agreed, dragging her end of the block of wood above the surface and into the shallows.

“There are more as well,” Duan Mu added cheerfully to the others, his early frustrations at having just found a skulking crab thoroughly vanished.

Leaving him to sort out that one, she turned and slipped back into the water, swimming back down to the butchered tree and quickly cutting out the others. Duan Mu rejoined her after a few minutes, and between them they rapidly took the remainder of the tree trunk apart, recovering a further seven smaller lingzhi.

By the time they returned to the surface a second time, the crab had been butchered and Lin Ling had moved from sentry duty to inspecting the trunk.

“It will be a shame to tear this out of the wood,” Lin Ling commented as they came over, carrying the sack of extra mushrooms between them.

“It would,” Kun Ji agreed, “This has to be a few hundred years old.”

“So… teleport it back?” she suggested, because carrying it back manually was out of the question, frankly.

“Yep, that might be best,” Kun Ji mused, looking around. “We can send the crab back as well, then, and let them deal with it and the core.”

“Shunfei?” she sent into the talisman after linking it to another cube of ten spirit stones.

“You’re a bit early, what is it, a problem?” Mo Shunfei replied after a moment.

“Nope, the opposite actually, we have gifts,” she sent back. “Is the teleport formation in use, or expected to be in use?”

“Nope, there is still bad weather down below,” Shunfei sent back. “What do you need to send?”

“A crab… and some lingzhi,” she answered.

“I’ll go check,” Shunfei murmured.

“…”

“…”

There was a long silence that stretched to about two minutes before Shunfei returned.

“Okay, you can send them through,” he said. “We will expect them within the next…?”

“Five minutes probably,” she confirmed, before adding. “Thanks!”

“Not at all,” Shunfei replied. “Good luck.”

The connection went dead and she watched as well over half the spirit stones turned dim.

“We can send it back immediately,” she said to the others who were all looking at her expectantly.

“Excellent,” Lin Ling grinned, taking out a palm-sized teleport talisman, made out of jade for better durability, that was designed to teleport everything within a specific area.

Between them all, it took only a bit of effort to drag the main lingzhi log into shallower water and put it down beside the crab. While Duan Mu made some final checks to the lingzhi in the sack, she took out a Spirit Jade from her storage talisman and placed it into the indentation in the middle of the formation talisman, watching it melt away.

“Might need two Jades,” Kun Ji remarked eyeing the size of the load the talisman was going to have to take then glancing back at the now gently shining talisman.

Grimacing, she added a second, then, placing the talisman down beside the log, set the delay on activation to twenty seconds and stepped back smartly, heading out of the shallows to relatively drier ground.

Counting down, she watched with everyone else from a safe distance as the talisman shimmered, then the space around it twisted in on itself in a miniature version of the large teleportation circles—

The crab, log and mushroom vanished, along with a portion of the surrounding quagmire, rocks, water and all in a crack of displaced air and a small corona of water vapour.

“How long have we got before we think about the return trip?” Lin Ling asked her after a moment, as the water started to flow back into the three-metre-wide indentation in the ground and the cloud of mist vanished.

“About an hour still,” she replied, after checking her scrip.

“Also, do we walk back, or are we going to try and set up a teleport anchor?” Duan Mu asked.

“That depends on if we can find a suitable place,” she replied, looking around pensively. “Nowhere here inspires much confidence.”

Ideally, and especially up in the High Valleys, you wanted a place for a teleportation anchor that was both relatively open and, most importantly, not likely to disturbed. Any little change in qi density could be picked up on by something hunting around, and the very last thing you wanted was for your painstakingly set up circle to break because spiders had come and poked at it, or a burrowing hunter had come to see if it was a spirit herb. Nobody had died in recent years to that, but there were two or three ‘mishaps’ each year, usually people ending up teleported randomly to places far from where they intended to go after their anchors either decayed or suffered from some unexpected interference.

Their anchors were jade talismans rather than paper ones, but even so… some spider or other mendacious critter moving your talisman into a cave, or some thicket of horrible vines, or into the water here, would be a very bad way to start a trip into Yin Eclipse.

“No, it doesn’t,” Kun Ji agreed.

“Well, the main thing is to get a bit of distance from here,” she reminded them, looking around again. “The number one cause of problems up here is standing around after a teleport going ‘is we dun yet?’.”

“Depressing, but true,” Ling Shun agreed. “So, where to now?”

“Recover what we can of the formation, then I think we continue on, along this shoreline, heading up-stream,” she mused, putting her hat back on, for all the good it did with the weather, mostly it was to stop things falling on her head at this point. “If we are looking for a decent spot to set an anchor, that would be best, but if we haven’t found somewhere in thirty minutes, we start heading back towards the Misty Jasmine Inn.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Duan Mu agreed, quickly towelling the worst of the water and muddy leaves out of his hair.

“With glorious purpose, lead on,” Lin Ling agreed, flashing her a muddy grin.

“No, you lead on,” she replied, pointing forwards. “It’s your turn!”

“Booo…” Lin Ling pouted, rolling her eyes, though she still headed back towards the rock she had put the formation on originally.

Duan Mu sighed and started back into the water, followed by Wentai.

“Just get the main core,” she said. “Unless we are short on arrows?”

“We brought crates of formation arrows,” Ling Shun chuckled.

“Gotcha!” Duan Mu acknowledged.

In the end, it took them only a few minutes to recover what was worth recovering and set off again, along the shoreline, this time with Lin Ling in the lead. Duan Mu took up the next position in line, his compass now handed over to Kun Ji, who came third. She went fourth, with Ling Shun and Ling Wentai bringing up the rear now, scanning the forest and the water for threats.