> Oh Misty Jasmine Days,

>

> How you linger long in the memory.

>

> Those gentle moments we spent together,

>

> Between sunset and sunrise,

>

> The warmth of your laughter,

>

> The caress of your words,

>

> The calming songs you sing,

>

> I slumber in your embrace.

>

> Awaken to your gentle fragrance.

>

> Oh Misty Jasmine,

>

> For these Halcyon days,

>

> I can only dream.

Poem in Ancient Easten, carved on a stele in Misty Jasmine Shrine.

~Author Unknown.

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

~ SIR HUANG – MISTY JASMINE INN ~

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

Lan Huang opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling of the room. It was still dark outside, and raining, though that was a given at this point.

“You’re awake…”

Sitting up, he considered Diaomei, who was currently sitting, naked, on the end of the bed, which had its curtains now pulled back, plaiting her hair in the light of one of the dim lanterns in the room. Beside him, the gently slumbering form of Xiang Meilan lay fitfully beneath the light blankets.

“I wasn’t really sleeping,” he murmured…

“Really?” she smirked. “You snore pretty well, for a man just resting his eyes.”

“As if I could rest my eyes in a room with a pair of peerless beauties like you and your junior sister,” he replied with a grin.

“See… it’s amazing, how far just being sincere gets you,” Diaomei sighed, a bit theatrically.

“As I recall, it was largely your sincerity that finds me here,” he pointed out.

“You could have refused,” she said with a smirk, turning on the side of the bed to look at him directly.

In other circumstances, he might have, he supposed. But the rather awkward, if serendipitous, truth was that this was not the first time he had met Fanqing Diaomei. They developed a fairly platonic friendship some seventy years ago, when he last came through the province, adopting his current ‘Sir Ha Huang’ persona – a descendant of the famous, reclusive Elder Lan Huang, from the Shu continent. Yesterday had been a stressful day, for both of them, and one thing had sort of… well… led to another.

“Should I have refused?” he chuckled. “Perhaps I, too, am some villainous rogue, an enemy of all pure women, who can charm any flower with a smile?”

Diaomei just snorted at his words and slipped back down the bed to lounge against him, her bare flesh warm against his.

They lay there like that, in silence for a few minutes, just listening to the distant, pre-dawn calls of birds and the sound of rain falling outside.

“Honestly though, I was surprised when you showed up…” she murmured at last. “It’s been, what, sixty years?”

“Sixty eight,” he conceded, counting back quickly.

“And you sent like… three messages ever, and never wrote,” she pouted, turning to look up at him with sad eyes.

“…”

“Not even as a friend?”

“…”

“Sorry,” was all he said in the end, stroking her hair, because honestly, she didn’t deserve a stupid lie. “As I said before, I have no excuses there…”

“Too right you don’t!” she grumbled, poking him hard in the side. “Even if you went to the Eastern Yuan Delta.”

“You could have ignored me,” he pointed out drily. “Or demanded an apology?”

“Or blamed it on the rain?” she sighed. “What am I, eighteen?”

“According to Ha Yun, yes,” he joked, having overheard that bit of their tormenting their new ‘junior’.

“You!” she jabbed him in the side with an elbow and then sat back again with another sigh. “This… is just what it is, I suppose. We can be friends and you can do stupid things, like not write for three quarters of a century other than to send me a fish. What if I had died?”

“In the Three Schools Conflict…” he grimaced.

It was funny how events seemed to be circling back to this. Concerning as well, actually. As an old fellow, he had a fair eye for the twisting changes of chance and it was hard to avoid the conclusion that there was something profoundly rotten there going on in Blue Water Province.

It was somewhat unfortunate in the context of current events that he couldn’t just come clean with her. Both of them were Immortals. At that point, ‘age’ was just a matter of perspective, beyond the first few centuries.

“—It was a rare fish!” he reminded her.

“I know… it’s still in my pond at home,” she sighed. “Shi Lian said I should have eaten it.”

“…”

“Did you know… there is more than one ‘Ha Huang’, on the pavilion’s books?” she added, fixing him with innocent eyes.

-How in the fates did she…? he nearly choked on the wine. Oh, she is basically Ha Shi Xiaolian’s deputy… and if I didn’t write back…

Suddenly a few bits clicked, including Shi Xiaolian’s comments to him as ‘Elder Lan’, regarding ‘Ha Huang’ and how long he had been ‘gone’. Ostensibly, he had ‘called back’ Ha Huang to help with this.

-I bet Shi Xiaolian said something… didn’t she? he sighed. Though I suppose I certainly had it coming.

“Your uncle, and your grandfather … and even your old ancestor…” she mused, staring at him, her amber eyes boring into his in the dimly lit room.

“You even know about that old fellow,” he chuckled, feeling a bit awkward all of a sudden.

“Oh, I know many things,” she purred, stroking her hand across his chest.

“I am aware,” he murmured drily, grasping the jar of wine on the sideboard, which was much better quality than anything being offered openly downstairs, with some qi and pulling it over.

Taking a sip, he again had cause to savour just how remarkable the ‘body’ the Old Ancestor had furnished him with was. The taste of the wine, the humidity of the room, the touch of Diaomei’s skin against his… If he closed his eyes, there was no difference between it and his actual body, in terms of how he felt.

That said, it was also quite disconcerting how being in the body affected his mental state as well. Compared to the slightly aloof dissociation you attained in the Dao Step, everything was… vivid, raw even, like a subtle numbness that you just learned to live with, had suddenly been removed. That certainly had its perks… the lack of dissociation and the sense of being alive had made the night much more enjoyable than he expected.

Ancestor Kai had warned him of that side-effect, thankfully, though, in a strange way, he struggled to really call it a flaw, though it certainly meant that he had to be wary that he was not overly emotive and too open. He trusted most of those who had come with them, Ha Teng aside, about as far as they could kick him, which was to say not at all. More of a problem, actually, was that it was impossible to soul-bind items as he currently was, even outside Yin Eclipse’s suppression. As such, he had even had to change his storage ring to one from the Pagoda that didn’t have that issue.

That said, in return for those limitations, he basically had the strength and endurance of an Immortal Realm physical cultivator up here, and the ‘drain’ of the suppression was next to non-existent. Ancestor Kai had told him as much, but it was one thing to be told and quite another to experience.

Where Ancestor Tai had gotten it he had no idea, although he was starting to have suspicions. He could certainly understand why the old fellow had been a bit reticent about lending it out, though. It was almost like it was custom-made for dealing with the primary issues facing a spiritual or martial cultivator in Yin Eclipse.

“…”

“You are not surprised that we know those arts?” Diaomei asked him, almost out of the blue.

“Nope,” he shook his head. “Knowledge is power, though I must say, you two use that knowledge very well.”

“Ahaha…” she giggled, reaching over and stroking the still slumbering Meilan’s hair gently. “You are terrible, though honestly, up here, Heart Force methods and inherited mantras reign supreme…”

“They do,” he agreed, looking at her pensively, as that was a very interesting admission on her part. Even if it was just that she knew that information at all.

“Xiang… Jiang, huh…” he asked blandly. “Is that why you had your delightful junior sister join us?”

“Now you are thinking too hard. It’s kind of cute…” Diaomei murmured, putting a finger to his lips. “My junior sister just likes to enjoy herself occasionally… without any complications… and, your lack of literacy aside, you are… also someone who understands that.”

Based on her enthusiastic participation in their reunion, he could not deny that.

They sat there, watching the flickering lantern in the humid night air, listening to Meilan’s quiet breathing for a long moment, before Diaomei finally spoke again.

“—So why are you here?” she asked, looking up at him again. “I can’t flatter myself now and say it was because you came back and wanted to make amends…”

“…”

“I could say the same of you,” he replied, a bit more seriously.

That had been bothering him, especially since he realised Diaomei was who she was.

She was not an unimportant person in the pagoda’s hierarchy, even back when he had first met her, when she was close to the age Meilan was now. Nor was Meilan, in fact, or Faolian. To call them the closest thing the Cherry Wine Pagoda had to core disciples was not much of an exaggeration.

“Faolian and Meilan are talented young women; this is an opportunity to temper themselves, and shoulder some responsibility—”

“Whereas I am an old woman hiding her years with esoteric arts and unorthodox ways?” Diaomei pouted, looking up at him with eyes that would have had any junior in this place insensible, even before they got an eyeful of the rest of her figure.

“Nonsense,” he replied, rolling his eyes. At two hundred and fifty, she was old only in comparison to people like Ha Yun. A victim, in many respects, of the devastation that the Blood Eclipse had caused. “As your Senior, I am simply concerned. Something in this is rotten, to its very core.”

“You will get no disagreement from me there,” Diaomei sighed, staring at the flickering lantern again, still gently stroking Meilan’s hair. “The longer I stare at the puzzle of these days, the less I like the answers it is hinting at…”

Before he could ask her what those might be, beside them, on the bed, Xiang Meilan stirred, groaned, and stretched, then rolled over, squirming this way and that for a few seconds beneath the light sheets.

“Uwaa…. I gotta say, I needed that…” she moaned, rolling over and looking up at him, then at Diaomei with sleepy eyes. “It really helps with the acclimatization…”

“…”

“I gotta say I feel used,” he replied drily.

“Used?” Diaomei giggled, her previous, serious demeanour gone as if it never was. “Well, they do say a senior brother is there to serve his juniors…” she conceded “And you owed me a sincere apology anyway!”

“I don’t think that saying means quite this,” he reminded her with a grin as she took another large swig from the jar, ignoring that some if it ran down across her breasts.

“And yet, here you are, with us…” Meilan purred, sitting up and giving herself another stretch, which was certainly designed to remind him just how beautiful she was. “I must say, though, you are much better than I expected…”

“And what did you expect?” he asked archly.

“Less… stamina,” Diaomei smirked, running her fingers across his chest.

He had to admit, endurance was a neat perk of the puppet up here.

“Oh yes, much less,” Meilan giggled, running her hand up his leg.

“Have you two not had enough?” he asked.

Meilan just pouted and grabbed it to her chest and staring at him with clear, pure eyes. “But ‘senior brother’, we are your most devoted junior sisters. Would you not do anything for us…?”

“…”

“—Well, that’s what those childish brats we are saddled with would expect me to say, probably,” Meilan added, letting go of his hand with a giggle and sliding up to sit on his other side, her body resting against his.

“Which is why they carry on as they do and watch recordings of courtesans,” Diaomei smirked, passing him back the wine, then slipping off the bed.

He watched as Diaomei went over and reclaimed a light robe where it had been tossed on the floor.

-Really, it is impossible not to admire her, he sighed, his gaze lingering on her figure. When this is over I will have to come clean with her. Really, the Dao does work in strange ways…

“Haa…” Meilan laughed lightly, on his other side. “They are rather pathetic, aren’t they?”

“It is hard to disagree with that,” he conceded, taking a gulp and savouring the refreshing coolness in the muggy heat of the night.

“You know, half of them have recordings of either me or Xiurong dancing?” Meilan sighed.

“Xiurong…?” he asked.

“Fairy ‘Gentle Blossom’,” Meilan replied.

“Oh…”

Casting his mind back to the previous evening, he could picture the recording of the golden-haired beauty dancing delightfully on the table while the brats played dice and drank rather than doing something useful.

“…”

“Really, what was the Ha clan thinking, sending them up here,” Diaomei sighed, putting the robe over the back of a chair and turning to look at them both, frowning. “If half of them are still alive by the end of this, it will be a miracle sent by the Queen Mother herself.”

“Opportunity, and gain,” he sighed, taking another gulp before offering it to Meilan. “However, as far as we are concerned, they are a distraction, disposable. The only ones who are valuable, remotely speaking, beyond the Hunters, are Yun, Leng and Yufan.”

“That’s cold…” Meilan sighed, placing the jar on her stomach.

“The wine, or my views on our ‘valiant’ juniors?” he asked, amused.

“Yes,” she replied with a smirk. “You know one of them actually propositioned me, yesterday evening?”

“…”

“He was so… I dunno, you know that thing, where they try and actually flatter you, while making it like they are doing you some big favour?” she continued.

“…”

“I spat in his soup,” she smirked.

“Knowing some of them, I am sure they would like that,” Diaomei sighed, picking up Meilan’s light robe and tossing it on the couch by the wall.

“Which one was that?” he asked, curious.

“Ha Ji Bofan,” Meilan replied, taking another gulp of the wine and sighing.

“…”

-So one of Ha Ji Wufan’s bunch, he mused, filing the name away.

Of those sent up here, he trusted them the least. Their attitude to others was an unstable alchemical bomb as well. It had not escaped his notice that none of the female Hunters from the West Flower Picking Pavilion had come to dinner the previous night either.

“So… what do you make of this thing with the talismans, Senior Brother?” she asked, turning slightly to look up at him.

“Hmmm…”

He stared at the flickering lantern, mulling that over.

“There is a certain irony, there, certainly,” he conceded at last. “Ji and Cao sent half of them up here with the intention of stealing a march on this ‘Trial of Exploration’, and now they find that of those up here, only the ones with Hunter Bureau talismans are already participants?”

“It will reframe the dynamics of the groups, certainly,” Diaomei frowned, leaning against the back of the chair and staring at them pensively, her tone mirroring his own view that that was not a good thing.

“…”

“My guess, and Lianmei shares my view here, is that the split in the Hunter Bureau is close to becoming official,” Diaomei added. “Despite being the leader of the entire Hunter Bureau for Yin Eclipse, Fang Hai has spent so much time in Yun Shan city these past few months, negotiating with the Ruan, Gwan and Seung clans for status in Xah Liji province, that his faction can no longer keep a lid on things here.”

“I suppose the events of the last two weeks will not have helped either,” Meilan mused.

“Almost certainly not,” he agreed, accepting the wine jar back from Meilan and taking another sip.

Diaomei sighed and scooped up another two bits of clothing and tossed them down on the couch, then paused and turned back to him.

“By the way, did your talisman update? I never got around to asking, what with…”

He stared at her, then snapped his fingers as he recalled he did, in fact, have one, and that he had brought it with him, because ‘Sir Ha Huang’ was someone who had worked with the Beast Cadre some seventy years ago on various matters.

Withdrawing the talisman, which was actually in the style of the Western Shu Continent’s Pavilions, he found it… had.

“It has,” he confirmed passing it over to her.

“Oh, you have one from another continent,” Meilan observed with interest as Diaomei turned it over in her hands.

“Registration parametres had been updated, huh,” Diaomei murmured. “And, like the others, no log on what was changed.”

“Yeah,” he nodded.

“So this confirms that only ‘juniors’’ talismans updated automatically, of all those here,” she said, tossing it back to him.

“Waaaait… you’re a junior?” Meilan said, sitting up and giving him a playful push.

“…”

He coughed, and said nothing, letting her draw her own conclusion from his reply.

“Technically we all are,” Diaomei said drily. “At least by the letter of the usual definition.”

“I suppose that is true,” Meilan conceded.

“That would be in keeping with the previous trials though; these are about really screwing a region over,” he mused.

“It’s been a long time since one was declared, hasn’t it?” Diaomei frowned, pausing at the end of the bed.

“It has,” he confirmed. “The last one was…”

He trailed off, making a bit of a show of trying to remember, because ‘Ha Huang’ was only meant to be 450 years old and the last one had been on Northern Tang, some 6,000 odd years ago. Several disciples from his sect on the western continent had taken part, gaining some achievements in the process.

“Northern Tang I think, four… five millennia ago? My… sect, ‘The School of the Worldly Fisher’, sent a few disciples if I recall. They made some good gains in the Ice Jade Forbidden Zone.”

Not for the first time, he had to reflect that it was possible to dig yourself into entirely unexpected holes. It was all very well going around pretending to be much younger than you were, but occasionally, despite your best efforts, circumstances threw up moments like this.

“I still can’t credit that that’s actually the name your Ancestor picked for it,” Diaomei grinned. “Time has not dulled how silly a name that is.”

“…”

“It’s a strange enough name that it’s memorable,” he pointed out with a sniff. “Is ‘Cherry Wine Pagoda’ much better?”

“Who can say what strange thoughts preoccupy old ancestors in naming things,” Meilan giggled, taking another swig of the wine, then staring at it.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I brought a few jars of the cherry wine with me…” Meilan said mused. “Perhaps we could serve it to those morons? Maybe with some fire peppers?”

“That would be hilarious. Make sure I am there when you do,” Diaomei giggled, dumping the rest of their scattered clothes on the couch.

“Anyway, come back to bed, Sis,” Meilan said, waving a hand at her. “It’s easily an hour before dawn still. The only people who will care for breakfast at this hour will happily make it themselves…”

“…”

Diaomei stared at the pile of clothes, then at the door, and finally at the two of them and sighed.

“I suppose you are right,” she conceded, slipping back onto the bed with a wry smile.

Meilan giggled and put the wine jar to one side, running her hand down his chest as Diaomei nestled herself back down beside him languorously.

“And to answer your earlier question…” Meilan added.

“—Oh? Which one?” he asked drily.

“We haven’t had enough…” Meilan smirked, taking his right and placing it on her stomach.

“Indeed, ‘Senior Brother’,” Diaomei giggled, kissing him on the neck. “You still have quite a bit of apologizing to do to this junior sister…”

“…”

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

~ LIN LING – MISTY JASMINE INN ~

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

“—Sorry, did I wake you?”

Lin Ling rolled over on the bed she was sharing with Juni and groaned, regretting that she was awake, and had been for quite some time. Juni was already up, or maybe had never slept, sitting there, pondering a tablet projecting a luminescent cloud of tiny stars. If she squinted at it hard, she could make out the shadowy features of the ruin they had finished yesterday’s exploration in.

“Sadly… I don’t think I ever really slept,” she complained, rolling over again so she could look out at the darkness and the ever-present rain. “What time is it?”

“An hour or so before dawn.”

“Ohh… fates be damned, it’s still yesterday…” she sighed.

“You can try and sleep for a while longer, if you like,” Juni said.

She flopped back on the bed and closed her eyes for… five seconds, then opened them again.

“Nope, don’t think that’s an option,” she declared glumly.

Between her clammy undergrown, the latent humidity in the air, and the fact that the temperature, even at this coolest time of the day, was hotter than her own body, she suspected she could only sleep if someone knocked her out cold. She just felt uncomfortable, in all kinds of ways really.

“You get used to it, after a while,” Juni said sympathetically.

“It’s not like I am new to this,” she muttered.

Sitting up, she tugged at the light robe she had slept in and grimaced, because it might as well have been a second skin.

“If you want water, there is some on the bedside table,” Juni said, gesturing to a wine jar on the table beside the bed, which also held their bureau talismans and a few other oddments. “I put a bunch of yin water ward-stones in it though, so don’t gulp it down.”

“Sounds…good,” she nodded, trying to push away the fog-like malaise of ‘bad sleep’ as she sat up and swung her legs off the bed. “Sorry for sleeping here, by the way…”

“It’s fine,” Juni shrugged. “The beds are large enough… and you don’t snore.”

Taking a sip of the cold water, she savoured the refreshing coolness in her mouth for a few moments before sitting cross-legged on the bed.

She had ended up sleeping in Juni’s room as they had been working on combining the maps from the previous day into a complete record, with annotations and marks that could be used by others. That process had dragged on into the night, and by the time it was at a point where her part was done, she had just crashed out on the bed, or tried to.

“How is the map?” she asked, considering the multi-coloured constellations of points Juni was pondering.

“Progressing,” Juni said, pushing the tablet away and picking up another, which she recognised as Sana’s. “I finished linking all our records together for the valley. Now it’s just processing that and orientating it to the stable anchors from the teleport formations.”

Juni waved a hand and the constellation grew in size to encompass half the bed, providing enough light that you could almost see comfortably by it.

“This bit is the town… the waterfalls are there… the main plaza…” Juni pointed to various ghostly patterns in the cloud.

“Impressive,” she mused, propping herself up on her arm to look at it. “Want to turn it into a comprehensible image? Ghostly cloud of luminescent stars is a bit much for this daughter’s tormented self at this fates-forsaken hour.”

“…”

“Sorry, you do get used to looking at this version after a while,” Juni murmured, shaking her head in amused apology.

She watched as Juni tapped the tablet a few times and the cloud swirled out and then ‘set’ into an almost solid picture of the ruined town they had finished yesterday’s exploration in, focused on the teleport formation.

“Pretty,” she mused. “Though, looking at the work involved… Did you sleep at all?”

“A bit, I am not as badly off as you,” Juni chuckled. “The perks of being old.”

“You can hardly be called old,” she joked.

“Certainly I feel old in here,” Juni sighed, patting her heart. “Especially after yesterday.”

“Uggh… yes,” she agreed, sighing deeply. “So, is the plan for today more of the same?”

“Probably, yes,” Juni nodded. “Though I have not confirmed that with Lianmei. She said she would speak to me about it this morning, once she had gotten answers regarding what the deal is with that talisman update.”

“In principle, the Ha clan groups are meant to sweep the monkey valley starting today as well…” Juni added, her tone making it abundantly clear she didn’t hold a lot of hope regarding that.

“…”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” she agreed, before adding. “Please, Celestial Maiden of Heaven, send that I do not have to see it!”

The idea that she might end up supervising that lot, out in a valley like that, gave her shivers.

“I mean… they have only been here half a day, and this place suddenly has gone from being quite nice, to feeling like it…”

“Like a teahouse in the Red Blossom district?” Juni said drily, staring at the shimmering image of the ruin between them.

“Yes…” she agreed, sitting up with a sigh and finally pulled off her undergown. “You know they were ‘ranking’ us at dinner, last night?”

“That… does not surprise me in the slightest,” Juni sighed.

“Sorry, that’s a really depressing thing to grumble about at this hour of the day,” she apologised, slipping over and grabbing her talisman to get a fresh underrobe that didn’t feel like it was an uncomfortable second skin.

“No,” Juni just shook her head. “Don’t apologise for that. Ever.”

“I suppose if there is a bright side, those assholes will be so hung-over and maladjusted that they will not be able to do anything in a timely fashion,” she conceded, scooting back over to sit down beside Juni, putting her head against her shoulder.

Juni sighed and put an arm around her, giving her a hug, which kind of helped her mood, but only a little.

They sat there like that, in silence, watching the shimmering image of the valley, as it continued to solidify for she wasn’t sure how long, until there was a polite knock on the door.

“…”

“Who is it?” Juni asked.

“Me,” Lianmei replied.

“Ah, one moment…” Juni sighed, disentangled her arm from around her and slipped off the bed, going over and unsealing the door so Lianmei could enter.

“Sorry, it’s abominably early,” Lianmei apologised, stepping into the room and closing the door again after her.

“I’ll light the lantern,” Juni murmured, going over to the table striking a match to light the candle within it.

“You’re here as well?” Lianmei remarked, noticing her.

“Uhuh,” she nodded. “We were working on the maps from yesterday, so I just slept here in the end.”

Lianmei glanced at the map for a moment then nodded, sitting down on the end of the bed and leaning against the wooden bedpost that ran floor to ceiling.

“I take it you have answers regarding this update to the talismans?” Juni asked.

“Kind of,” Lianmei said with a grimace. “According to Lady Ling Tao, this was orchestrated at the highest levels in the province, and is certainly related to this ‘Trial of Exploration’. At least officially. Something will be announced today as well, though the specifics are unclear there. Best guess, it has to do with participation in the trial.”

“There is a certain irony there,” she pointed out with a smirk, thinking of the Ha clan groups with them and how few of them likely had Hunter Talismans with them.

“There is, yes,” Lianmei agreed. “Karma works in mysterious ways…”

“Speaking of them,” Juni murmured, “something does need to be done, somehow.”

“Yes,” Lianmei sighed and nodded. “Something does, I agree. If it is any consolation, I suspect that they will be told to smarten up, quite pointedly.”

“So long as that doesn’t cause more issues,” she muttered, unable to help herself.

Were this West Flower Picking Town, she might have been less sceptical, but up here…

“I will have a word with Ha Huang and Fanqing Diaomei,” Lianmei said.

“Aren’t they still the Ha clan, though?” she asked, not sure that that would achieve much really. “Ha Yun, Ha Caolun and Ha Wufan are all the children of influential people…”

“Yes, but much like the Kun and the Ling clans have factions, so do, rather unsurprisingly, the Ha clan,” Lianmei murmured.

“…”

“It’s just…” she trailed off, somehow at war with her own grasp of what the problem was.

She did want to believe Lianmei; however, if there was one thing she knew, from having siblings with attitudes depressingly similar to many of those sent here by the Ha clan, it was that being rebuked for ‘bad behaviour’ usually only led to those being chastised to seek other, more mendacious avenues to let out their frustrations.

Telling a bunch of arrogant, over-privileged, assholes that they could no longer be arrogant, lecherous or assholes rarely went down well.

“Sorry,” she apologized, and then wondered what she had apologized for, because nothing in this was their fault in any way.

-Uggh, even in this, they get in your head, she reflected.

Lianmei just sighed, her expression complex. “Don’t apologise. You are both quite right. Their behaviour is unacceptable and a problem. If they continue like this it is an outright liability.”

“…”

“Why don’t we go get some breakfast and try and put yesterday behind us?” Juni suggested, putting the three tablets aside with a sigh. “That map will need a while to work still.”

“I agree,” Lianmei said, more brightly. “And while we do that, you can brief me on these ruins…”

Stolen novel; please report.

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

~ HA YUN – MISTY JASMINE INN ~

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

Ha Yun rolled over and opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling.

-It’s still dark…

-What time is it?

He stared blankly at the ceiling for a while, then rolled over again, and put the pillow over his head, trying to will himself to go back to what had passed for very bad sleep.

“…”

Sadly, that act of denial failed to have any effect, beyond increasing the sense of muggy claustrophobia he felt.

-I didn’t even drink much yesterday. Why do I feel like a monkey slapped me with its balls? He moaned, managing to roll over again to grasp for the wine jar holding water that was on the side of his bed—

His hand connected with it, and he knocked it straight off. It hit the floor with a clonk, because it was a stone jar, but by the time he had rolled over on the bed and fumbled around for it, most of the contents had spilled onto the floor.

-Fates, I hate today already, he groaned, savouring the few sips left and then dropping it on the bed again.

Sending a thread of qi into his storage ring, he found himself staring at his hand, where his ring was not, and then realised he had taken it off, because with sweating being a thing up here, it had been uncomfortable to wear.

“…”

Looking around, he found it sitting on the bedside table. Taking out another jar of cold water, he took a few deep gulps, wondering why he had not just done that in the first place. Even then, it was not especially satisfying for some reason.

Sitting up, he looked around the dark room for a long moment, found that his eyeballs inexplicably hurt, and just flopped back on his bed, arms outstretched, staring at the ceiling again. It was certainly before dawn… and still raining. For all that, the humidity was…

Actually, there were no words he could find for the humidity beyond unintelligible cursing. Somehow, almost implausibly, it felt worse than it had yesterday.

“…”

Again he tried to go back to sleep… trying to ignore the dull pounding in his…

“Motherless son of a monkey…” he swore, staring at the ceiling, realising that the ‘pounding’ was not in his head.

“Who!?” he snapped.

The pounding stopped and there was no reply.

He contemplated getting up and seeing who was at the door, but enthusiasm failed him, largely because of the fates-accursed, energy-sapping malaise that was…

The pounding started again and he realised that the source was… the window shutter, flapping in the breeze.

Sitting up again, he stumbled over to the window and looked out at the darkened gorge. The only lights visible in the rain were the ones on the shrine opposite, and a few on what he recalled being the watchtowers.

Putting a hand to his face, he groaned again, then pulled the wooden lattice shut and stumbled back to his bed.

He lay there for… a while, he supposed, before concluding that sleep was elusive to the point of being a tormenting demon.

Sitting back up, he considered what he could do, before recalling that Ding, Mao and Chu Fang had spent a not inconsiderable time yesterday singing the praises of the baths, about how good they were, and how, somehow, the water did actually leave you feeling refreshed. At the time he had just not felt like socializing with a bunch of Caolun or Wufan’s friends, so he had not checked them out. Even if they were exaggerating though, it was better than lying here staring at the ceiling, suffering.

-Well, it’s better than lying here and tormenting myself, he concluded.

Getting up again, he found some shoes, tied his hair back up into a very crude scholar’s knot and shuffled out the door.

Pausing in the corridor, he looked in the direction of Leng’s room, then sighed and walked over to it.

Knocking on the door, he listened for a reply and got none.

-Ah well. If he has actually managed to sleep, good for him I guess, he mused, lowering his hand rather than knocking a second time.

Heading downstairs, rather than go to the common room, he went right, down a short corridor and some stairs, and into a square hall with benches and alcoves. Through the doorway beyond, he could see a low yet rather cavernous columned hall, lit dimly by several lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

Even in the antechamber, just breathing deeply seemed to make a bit of the malaise of his terrible night’s sleep dissipate.

Taking a second deep breath, he sat down on a bench and took off his shoes, storing them away—

“—Well, they went outside, and he revealed to the group that he was not, in fact, her senior brother, but her father…”

-Sir Huang? Getting up, he walked to the doorway to the baths.

“—That’s hilarious. What happened next?”

He froze as a woman’s voice, Meilan’s actually, joined Sir Huang, laughing.

“I know,” Sir Huang agreed jovially. “Anyway, her father looked around and says, ‘It just so happens, I have the perfect resolution for this matter… I understand you have a cursed Yang Physique?’—”

“He did not…” Meilan gasped.

“I swear, he did,” Sir Huang protested. “Anyway, her father then grins broadly and says that he has just the cure… then while he is standing there looking like an idiot, he pulls out a jade ruler and says ‘You said that thanks to your Harmonious Yang Physique, my daughter would be cured of her curse? Well, this father is going to purify your curse with my Jade Rod!’.”

“And that actually happened?”

“Yes…”

“And that old goat was standing there like a respectable elder… that’s hilarious!” Meilan cackled, her mirth accompanied by the sound of splashing water.

“He was… It was a scene to treasure for a lifetime,” Sir Huang agreed.

“Mmmmm, I’ll bet…”

“—Done eavesdropping?”

Turning, he found Fanqing Diaomei standing there in a light robe, holding a jar of wine.

“Ah… no, I didn’t realise someone was in here… and then I heard voices,” he said, stepping back—

“Pfft…!” Diaomei put her hand against his chest. “What are you, Junior Brother, twelve?”

Left with no way to escape, he could only back into the hall, which was a semi-circular space with a large pool in the middle and several smaller pools off to the sides. The roof was supported by carved stone columns and lit by several tastefully dim lanterns that scattered gentle shadows through the swirling mists on the dark surface of the water.

Despite being hot and humid, unlike outside, the haze of water vapour swirling in the darkness was not stifling, but rather…relaxing. It was like being wrapped up in a warm blanket.

“Ah, Yun,” Ha Huang, who was lounging in the nearest pool, called over. “You are up early.”

“Junior Brother… good morning…” Meilan, who was sitting, naked, on the edge of the pool, added, looking over her shoulder at him with a bright smile.

-How can they be this chipper? he complained inwardly.

“It’s hard to sleep,” he said apologetically, not quite sure where to look at this point.

“I suppose it is,” Sir Huang nodded.

“…”

“All we are missing is Faolian and it’s a sect meeting, what fun…” Diaomei added, pushing him forward again.

“Well, strip and join us,” Meilan said, slipping back into the pool and drifting over to sit beside Sir Huang on the other side.

“Uh…”

“Or would you rather go back to your room and watch Fairy Miaomiao…?” Meilan added.

“Be nice,” Sir Huang chuckled.

“What? He’s a growing boy, although not in this instance.”

“Are you drunk?” Diaomei asked.

“Mmmm, loaded question. Is he old enough to know the answer?” Meilan giggled.

He stared at her dully, not quite sure he had heard that right. His mind was still stuck on the Fairy Miaomiao bit.

“I like the story…” he managed at last. “And anyway, if we are talking about which heroine is the best… Saintess—”

Meilan stared at him, then burst into hysterics.

“Just get in the pool and stop being an idiot,” Diaomei said.

Feeling thoroughly bullied at this point, he took off his robe, trying not to feel embarrassed, and got into the pool.

“Don’t mind her,” Diaomei added, also slipping in and sitting down.

“…”

Meilan pouted, then turned to look at Sir Huang again. “You were going to tell us a story about Cang Di… Is it true you have actually met him?”

“I… have once,” Sir Huang conceded.

“When you say Cang Di… do you mean… Tian Cang Di?” he asked, not quite sure he believed that.

“Uhuh, back on the Western Shu Continent,” Sir Huang agreed. “There was a matter with a demonic cult in Burning Tiger Province about… three centuries ago, it has to be now?”

…

Sir Huang spent the next ten minutes recounting a rather fascinating, if oddly familiar, tale about Cang Di accidentally being caught up in events surrounding an evil gang who had used the reputation and image of a rather famous villainess, Demon Saintess Jia, to cause trouble for the province.

“It seems that that story cannot ever really die,” Diaomei sighed at last.

“Indeed,” Sir Huang agreed.

“That… story?” he asked, curious as to what she meant.

“The tragedy of Song Jia…” Sir Huang added. “Were it not for the catastrophe with Di Ji, that would be the defining shame of this generation, for all that it happened in its early years.”

“She was someone who, through her own personal endeavour, formed a Good Fortune Core,” Diaomei said. “And it was her ruin, and nearly the Shu clan’s as well.”

“A Good Fortune Core?” he frowned. “What kind of core is that?”

“A rare one, very, very rare,” Sir Huang said.

“They have a connate association with worldly good fortune and feng shui. If you create one, it almost guarantees you a chance at becoming an exceptional Immortal…” Diaomei added.

“…”

“That said, to form one outside a supreme influence is a very dangerous path,” Sir Huang sighed. “For a woman… it’s a curse beyond all reason…”

“A curse?” he frowned.

“Hopefully I don’t need to draw you a picture,” Diaomei said, giving him a sideways look.

“Any woman who forms one would be the target of every avaricious brat on five continents,” Sir Huang concluded. “Song Jia was engaged to a luminary scion from the Shu clan and even that didn’t save her in the end. Though the scandal was the ruin of Shu Bao and the shame of the Shu clan. It also brought the Demoness Mo back to the world, which earned them no favours either in the eyes of the other worldly powers.”

“Demoness Mo?”

“If you don’t know who she is, I will have to salute Ha Feirong next time I see him for raising a child whose literacy is even worse than Sir Huang here,” Diaomei said blandly.

“…”

Sir Huang coughed, actually looking embarrassed for a moment, while Meilan put her hand over her mouth, clearly trying not to laugh.

“I know who she is,” he muttered, wondering what the story there was.

Along with Seven Sovereigns Fairy Meng, Skysong Fairy Lingsheng, Dewdrop Fairy Xiaomei, Star-Blossom Fairy Kai Lan and Peacock Fairy Ju Shan; Demoness Mo, or Demon Fairy Mo, was heralded as one of the great beauties who sat atop the Azure Flower Ranking.

“I was just surprised to hear her name come up in relation to something other than the Huang-Mo Wars,” he added.

“I suppose her starring role there does overshadow a lot of other things,” Sir Huang mused.

“…”

“So, why am I here?” he asked at last, building up the nerve to ask the question that had been gnawing at him for the last fifteen minuites.

“Here?” Sir Huang raised an eyebrow.

“You could have just kicked me out and told me to go get breakfast, yet I am here…” he said warily.

“Haa…” Xiang Meilan scooted over to sit almost beside him, resting her elbow on the edge of the pool to look at him.

This close, it was hard to ignore just how… captivating she was. It took all his effort not to look… down and just maintain something approaching eye-contact with her.

“You are overthinking things, Ha Yun…” she said blandly. “You are our new junior brother; of course we want to get to know you. What if you are some villain who toys with women’s hearts…?”

“Or some illiterate idiot who cannot keep track of the years…” Diaomei added.

“Indeed… A lot is riding on this. As a disciple of the Cherry Wine Pagoda, you cannot be seen to be wanting,” Meilan mused.

“Really, stop bullying poor Yun,” Sir Huang muttered.

Meilan rolled her eyes and drifted back, away from him again.

“She is right though,” Sir Huang added. “This is—”

“—A very funny group to find in the baths at this hour…”

He turned to find Kun Lianmei and Senior Ying had both come in, followed by Kun Juni.

“Good morning,” Sir Huang said blandly, saluting all three of them. “Sorry if we have overstayed.”

“Not at all,” Lianmei sighed, stripping off her own robe without so much as glancing at him and sitting down on the edge of the pool.

“I gave up my pool to the others; they dislike the idea of having a bunch of Ha clan scions barge in on them,” Senior Ying added, following suit.

Juni did not, just slipping straight into the water, then storing her robe away, only giving him the barest glance.

Caught completely off guard by their casual attitude, he could only look away. What surprised him most, though, was that despite both being real beauties, both had a surprising number of scars. Especially Senior Ying, who appeared to have lost a leg and an arm at some point, and had two really brutal gashes across her stomach, not to mention a star-like scar on her chest.

“You wonder why I don’t heal them?” she asked.

“Ah… sorry,” he gulped nervously, realising he had been caught looking.

“They are reminders that life is cruel,” Senior Ying said.

“As to why we don’t chuck you out of here,” Lianmei grinned, “if casual modesty is your hang-up up here, trying to carve out a living from these cruel valleys, you will die young.”

“You would have thrown any of the others out,” he said.

“Do you want to be thrown out?” Diaomei added.

“…”

“So as my junior sister said, stop overthinking,” she said drily.

“Shake off the miserable effects of not being able to acclimatize, enjoy your bath and being treated like a responsible adult for thirty minutes.”

-A responsible adult…?

“So, what is the strategy for today?” Sir Huang asked.

“Juni’s group continues to scout,” Lianmei said. “Ying here will go with them… and if you want, you can as well?”

“What about the Ha groups?” Juni asked.

“Well, if we can assemble a competent group, they can start on the monkey valley,” Lianmei mused, looking at him now.

“Caolun and Wufan’s groups can tackle Western Falls Valley, I think,” Sir Huang mused. “Most of Yun’s group do have Hunter Talismans and despite having the most impressive mission list breakdown I have seen this side of Fan Huangfu and his friends, if you give them a Beast Hunter or two, I am sure Leng or Yun here can rise to the occasion.”

“You… want to send us into… the valley where those alkyr came from?” he asked, not at all enthused by that idea, frankly.

“Well, if you want, you can stay here and help us,” Meilan said.

Sitting there, her tone had all the hallmarks of his mother giving him orders couched as a ‘voluntary’ task.

-And yet, I did come up here, and I did pick Leng, Ding and the others…

He trailed off, as he realised there was a small monkey also lounging in the pool, cool as you like, eating a mangosteen.

The monkey stared at him and he had the distinct impression that it intimated ‘Can only you lot use baths?’.

“…”

“Or,” Diaomei said, grinning, “how about this? Yun stays here and does your job, Meilan, and you go lead a team of Beast Hunters and guards to go clear that valley.”

“It’s been so long since I killed qi beasts though,” Meilan sighed, theatrically.

“…”

“You hit them, and they spit blood and die,” Senior Ying said with a smirk. “It’s not like calculating abstract feng shui divinations.”

‘Indeed, it is not complicated’, the monkey agreed, nodding sagely.

“Uh… is everyone just going to ignore the monkey?” he asked at last.

“Oh… do you want wine with the mangosteen?” Ying asked, turning to it.

He stared dully as the monkey put the mangosteen aside and accepted a cup of wine from her, sipping it with the monkey equivalent of a satisfied sigh and sinking back into the water a bit more.

“…”

“What if I have gotten rusty though?” Meilan added, before turning to Sir Huang, “Senior Brother Huang, would you take me out and show me how to handle a spear…?”

-Is she actually flirting with him? he thought dully.

“…”

Kun Lianmei and Senior Ying both had expressions that were… well, he could only call them neutrally inscrutable. Juni… was just looking amused.

Ha Huang just sighed. “Really, it’s not difficult. You take it in both hands and stick it in the opponent. Hard.”

Meilan laughed and scooted over beside him.

“So, Ha Yun, will you—?”

“—I didn’t say I wouldn’t,” he muttered, trying to push away the last moments of conversation, which somehow refused to conform to how he understood the world to work.

-Seniors… don’t sit around drinking wine, making jokes about sex… Isn’t that our job? a part of him wanted to say.

“In that case, I will take Ha Yun, Ha Leng, Ha Caolun, Ha Wufan and Ha Yufan and we will accompany Juni’s team,” Sir Huang mused.

“You want all of them?” Lianmei raised her eyebrows.

“I know brats like these,” Sir Huang said, looking sideways at him. “If you want anything remotely productive out of them, you have to start breaking down the realities they construct around themselves.”

“That is very true,” Priestess Ying agreed.

“Uh…”

“You have a view on this?” Lianmei asked him.

“What will we be doing?” he asked.

“Mapping and capturing herbs, also killing any qi beasts that are too dangerous,” Juni said, though she was still frowning.

“You think there is a better way?” Sir Huang asked her.

“I think it would be smart to split Caolun and Wufan,” Juni said. “And Yufan.”

“But not Leng and Yun?” Sir Huang asked her.

“The Ha Ha and the Ha Erlang have always had a good relationship. As much as it may make several of my compatriots spit blood, neither of them are the problem here,” Juni mused.

“Why… thank you,” he muttered, not sure if he should be pleased at her comment or not.

“The Shi are split and the Cao and Ji are overtly agitating to get free things off others’ effort,” Juni added. “Their groups are also the most questionable and the least competent. Keep their cronies in Western Falls Valley gathering mushrooms and water lotuses. Ha Yun’s group at least have missions under their belts and can use formations. They understand feng shui and are able to mostly re-arrange gardens without the owners spitting blood and demanding compensation.”

“So we send them with a few Beast Hunters to sweep the valley?” Lianmei said.

“Yes,” Juni nodded. “Then, we have two groups. Senior Ying, Arai, Sana, Ling, and Mu Shi… Ji Wufan and Shi Yufan scout the ridge line, while a second group, with me, Han Shu, Duan Mu, Ha Yun, Ha Caolun and the rest of Ha Yun’s group… clear the forest.”

“That really does shuffle the pack,” Sir Huang, eyeing Juni with an appraising eye.

“Yes, it does,” Juni nodded. “And then Duan Mu and Han Shu can take Ha Ding and the others, if required.”

“Do you have anything to add to that… Yun?” Sir Huang asked him.

“Me?” his mind spun, and, rather uncomfortably, he found that he did not. “Uh, that seems fine?”

“Okay, in that case, I am going to go get a grip on breakfast,” Diaomei said, before adding: “You could take Sister Meilan if you wanted. It seems only fair she get out of this place for a while.”

“In that case, Meilan can go with me,” Sir Huang said, turning to Diaomei. “You can always keep an eye on the potential third group if it comes to it.”

“Responsibility, wooo!” Meilan declared, bumping a fist with the monkey, who intimated that it was good to get out every now and again.

“Yun, do you want to come give me a hand?” Diaomei asked, standing up.

-Why does she keep doing that? he groaned, glad he was sitting down, because she was… well, he doubted he would be able to forget for a while.

“—I can do that,” Juni interjected before he could say anything.

“Okay,” Diaomei nodded, pulling herself out and walking over to claim her robe from the bench it was on.

Gulping, he shifted a bit, fairly certain that the mental image of her sleek figure would indeed stay with him for quite some time. That Juni also chose that moment to slip out of the water, her robe reappearing on her as she did so, did not help either. Even with her light gown, there was very little left to the imagination.

-Stupid suppression, stupid body, he wept inwardly, hoping they weren’t going to ask him to get out right this instant.

“In that case, Yun, do you want to go round up your merry band, feed them some hangover cures and go get the equipment you need?” Sir Huang said to him cheerfully.

“Um… yes, I’ll do that.” he replied, agreeing.

There wasn’t much other option really anyway. Refusing at this point would be awkward at the very least.

-At least this way I can get through this without too much difficulty, he reflected.

He started to drift across the pool, then stopped and stood, because the other reason for his… ‘invigoration’… finally dawned on him.

-All my fatigue and muddle-headedness from the lack of sleep is gone? he realised.

“Problem?” Sir Huang asked him.

“No… I… The water is… effective?” he muttered dully, clenching and unclenching his hands a few times.

-Come on… think of something stupid… he groaned. Uh…

“Yes, it is rather,” Meilan grinned, also standing up and stretching. “And it works best when you are tired as well.”

“…”

“It’s really a remarkable application of the suppression,” Diaomei agreed, from where she had now sat down and started to fix her hair. “Whoever made it was a genuine genius.”

-They are doing this deliberately, aren’t they? he groaned. This is absolutely them messing with me; they cannot be this unaware… And being that they are my senior sisters, I cannot exactly afford to offend them.

“You said that you were compiling maps?” Priestess Ying said to Juni.

“Ah, yes,” Juni confirmed speaking up. “Those should be nearly done. If you like, we can look at them over breakfast?”

“Okay,” Senior Ying nodded, also swimming over to the side, where Meilan had pulled herself out now and was drying off.

“I’d like to look at those as well,” Sir Huang added, standing up and wading over as Senior Ying and Lianmei also got out.

Unbidden, he glanced at Sir Huang, but he looked entirely calm… despite being well-built in all the right areas.

-Fates take you, he sobbed inwardly. How can you sit here with these beauties and be like this is just normal?

Mind racing, he feigned a bit of a grimace and sat down again.

“If I am going to go into the valleys… I should acclimatize a bit more,” he muttered.

“Probably not a bad idea,” Sir Huang agreed, sitting down on the edge and pouring himself some wine.

Unbidden, the monkey also held up its cup, which Sir Huang refilled… as if it was entirely normal.

“Yun?”

“Uh… yes… Elder Lianmei?” he replied, please that he only slightly paused.

“We will leave fairly promptly after it gets light, so that gives you about half an hour to get the rest of them up, get breakfast and get your kit.”

“Oh… okay,” he nodded, saluting her as best he could without standing up so much that he revealed his condition.

“…”

Watching them leave, he sighed, and sank beneath the water again, closing his eyes for a few moments, trying to feel how the water was affecting his body in other, less socially embarrassing ways. Thankfully, when he surfaced again, the only people left were Sir Huang and the monkey, who was looking at him with an expression that clearly communicated ‘oh, they know, and they think it’s hilarious’.

Scowling, he splashed water at it, which made the monkey roll over in the water and wave its tail at him.

Sir Huang, looking on, just laughed.

“It’s not funny,” he groaned.

“No, it really is,” Sir Huang grinned. “You will not win an argument with a monkey.”

The worst part of that was that he was likely right.

“How can you just sit there so… easily,” he asked at last.

“Do you fantasize about your sister?” Sir Huang said drily.

“…”

“That’s not a helpful reply,” he muttered.

“Well, it’s to be expected. You are a growing lad and they are all very beautiful,” Sir Huang chuckled. “This water will not help either.”

“The water…” he stared around at it.

“It removes tiredness from the body, in all its forms, including that. As soon as you let your mind wander to stupid places… well, you will win stupid prizes,” Sir Huang chuckled. “On the other hand, do not forget what they said. If you want to be trusted… your complaint before was that others just take from the Ha clan…”

“Uh…” he stared at Sir Huang. How does he know about that?

“Well, here, you have an opportunity to redress that perception, because you are not wrong; however, your enemy here is not who you think it is. You saw those parties that the Din clan had… for all our scions…”

“I did…” he frowned, wondering where this was going.

“Well, it’s just something to think about,” Sir Huang said, standing up and going over to claim his own robe. “I’ll see you at breakfast.”

“…”

Not sure what to make of that, he saluted Sir Huang as he departed and then sat back down. Looking around the monkey had also left.

Lying there in the warm water, he stared at the ceiling in silence, trying to empty his mind and not think about the….

-Shit…

He groaned and stood again in the water, drifting back to the shallows to sit down cross-legged and just try and compose himself, staring into the gloom, mulling over the kind of headaches that the day was likely to bring.

“—HEY, was that Sir Huang?”

“And Meilan leaving. Were they in the bath together…?”

“Ohh… What I wouldn’t…”

“—Oh, YUN! This is where you were?”

Turning, he found that Ha Ding, Ha Mao Chu Fang and Ha Mufan had all entered the baths…

All four came over, stripping off their robes, and slipped into the water without comment.

“Ah… this is the best… really, a miraculous place…” Ding sighed.

“How long have you been in here?” Ha Mao asked him.

“…”

“Were you here with Meilan was…?” Ding asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

“…”

“Oh, you were! Brother, you’re my hero!” Ha Mao laughed.

“Have you never seen breasts before or something?” he asked sourly, suddenly feeling quite embarrassed for their reactions.

“Wait… there were others in here as well…” Ha Mao said. “We passed like… Lianmei and Priestess Ying as well… Yun, were you in the bath with ALL of them?”

“Uhh…” he stared at them dully, suddenly wanting to hit his head on a pillar.

-Well, I can only play it straight, he decided.

“I was. They came in when I was already here and ended up talking about what we will be doing today,” he said.

“Oh… who else was here?” Ding grinned.

“…”

“As I was saying,” he said, sitting up a bit, “we will be going into the valleys today.”

“You were?” Ding sighed, then grabbed him by the shoulder. “Dude, put that scene on a talisman for me… I need to—”

Twisting, he plunged Ding under the water, exerting his superior cultivation to hold the idiot under while he looked at the others.

“We will be going into the valleys today, all of us, basically once the sun rises, so we have like half an hour to get prepared and get breakfast,” he grumbled as Ding continued to flail for a moment, then finally grabbed his leg—

With a splash he was submerged as Ding surfaced, spluttering.

“Hey, that was not cool!” Ding complained, coughing a bit.

“Do you want me to die?” he hissed, standing up. “I was here with every senior on this expedition who has real clout. If some stupid recording appears, who are they going to blame?”

“Hey man… chill…” Ding muttered. “I was just kidding… You know me, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“…”

“Fine,” he sighed, sitting back down again.

“But still…” Ding grinned.

“…”

He glared at Ding, then splashed a wave of water at him.

“So… uh… you said we are going into the valleys?” Mao asked, leaning against the edge of the pool.

“Yes, we are,” he confirmed. “Playtime is over, it seems.”

“Aii…” Chu Fang sighed. “I mean, we did expect that we would be doing actual Herb Hunter things… Any idea where we are going?”

“With Sir Huang and the elite hunters,” he sighed. “They are going to send Caolun and Wufan’s groups into the valley to the east, which is really confusingly called ‘Western Falls Valley’, while we are going to this new valley where the hunters brought all those beasts back from yesterday.”

“Oh, joy,” Ha Ding grimaced.

“Caolun and Wufan will also be coming with us,” he added.

“They are?” Mao raised an eyebrow.

“Well, they don’t know it yet. It turns out annoying a bunch of elders is not a good idea,” he added.

“Really? Who knew,” Mufan muttered.

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

~ SIR HUANG — MISTY JASMINE INN ~

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

Leaning against the wall, basically unnoticed by Ha Yun and the others, having followed them back in with Diaomei in tow, Lan Huang watched Ha Yun not act like an idiot with something between relief and amusement.

“Oh… bath open!” Ha Caolun, Ha Fanbo and Ha Jingbei skipped past them without so much as sideways glance, tossing off their robes and jumping in, eliciting curses from the others already in.

“You are a surprisingly cruel person, Senior Brother,” Diaomei chuckled. “To put that boy like that, in a bath with a whole bunch of beauties, including his peers and make him suffer… hopefully he learns from it.

“What would you have done if he didn’t come through?”

“I… would have been a bit disappointed,” he conceded, watching Ha Yun get out at last.

“Kun Juni is a good judge of character,” Diaomei added.

“She is,” he agreed, watching as two more scions came in and headed for Ha Caolun’s group, complaining about the humidity outside.

“Splitting them up is not a terrible idea, though I may still keep them all in one spot for the morning,” he added, watching as Ha Yun left.

“You… don’t trust them at all, do you?” Diaomei mused.

“Nope,” he replied with a sigh. “Do you?”

“No…” she conceded. “If it was feasible, I’d force them all to give up their storage rings, strip them naked and give them new everything.”

“It may come to that,” he mused, slipping back out into the ante-hall, Diaomei following after. “Though first I want to know what we are dealing with.”

“You suspect that… they have a hand in this?” Diaomei added, implying the Din clan.

“At the very least, their juniors in West Flower Picking were spending a good bit of time around Ha Yun, Ha Cao Caolun and Ha Ji Wufan,” he mused. “Shall we go up to the second floor and wait for them to come and talk about this map?”

“Yeah,” she agreed, turning up the stairs.

They made their way to a table on the upper floor in silence and sat down, considering the tired bustle in the lantern-lit common room below for a few minutes, listening to the conversation before he spoke again.

“Caolun was with two of them, when they broke up the bandits… and in the Singing Lotus Teahouse. Wufan’s estate is hosting them while they are in West Flower Picking Town. Ha Yun has been invited to every party and banquet they have attended, and most of the other talented scions, like Leng and Yufan, have been engineered into positions where they can admire and avail themselves of the ‘opportunities’ on display.”

“They are trying to recruit promising seedlings?” Diaomei frowned.

“I’d like to think it’s just that,” he sighed. “There is something in this… something rotten, as you said before, but what…”

“It could just be that they knew about the trial in advance, and think that this makes for a good mark?” Diaomei suggested. “That’s what the Ha clan did already with the ‘gift’.”

“If it is just that, I will be very relieved,” he said. Taking out the wine, he poured them both a cup and sipped his, savouring it.

“Yes,” Diaomei sipping hers and sighing softly. “Too many things here are a bit too oddly associated for comfort.”

“That they are…” he agreed, watching Ha Yun grab Ha Leng and lead him off, hopefully to start sorting their kit.

“At least Ha Yun can be pro-active when he puts his mind to it,” Diaomei added, topping up her wine.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Though I think if he ends up in another situation like that it might break him.”

“Hah… it was funny,” Diaomei giggled. “You could almost see his thoughts – ‘Do seniors behave like this when there are no juniors around?’ – and Meilan’s…”

“I have to admit, I was concerned that either she or the monkey might push it too far,” he conceded.

“Oh… the monkey…” Diaomei had to put her wine aside for a moment as she hid her face in her hands, her shoulders trembling as she tried not to laugh, which was, really, adorably cute.

He had to admit, that the monkey was… funny. It was disarmingly droll and quite at ease around the cultivators, who had apparently saved it on the first day here. On the other hand… having seen what monkey bands up here were capable of, particularly during the period before Lu Fu Tao returned to these lands, it was impossible for him not to be slightly wary of it. There was a reason why many old local shrines had them as guardian spirits carved on their gates.

-Speaking of shrines…

“What do you make of Priestess Ying?” he asked softly, once Diaomei had recovered her composure.

“What about her?” Diaomei frowned.

“Do you know anything of her background?” he asked.

She was… oddly familiar to him. It was hard to say why though. Something about her delivery of words… and her hair, which was sandy-blonde in colour.

“She has been in the province at least a hundred years… She actually lives up here,” Diaomei mused. “She has some agreement, I think, with the Blue Gate School, and maybe the Ling clan? She keeps an eye on this place, though in return for what I am not clear. She was here when Faolian was here last, I do know that much, and Meilan met her before the Three Schools Conflict. I’ve always suspected she is one of the old ones.”

“Old ones?” he asked.

“The Mantra Immortals,” Diaomei said softly. “There are a few that lurk in the mountains, rarely leaving.”

“Ah…”

He could see where she got that idea from. That said, Priestess Ying didn’t give him the vibe of one of those old freaks, and it was fair to call them freaks, because they were older than he was, for all that their cultivations could no longer advance. Immortals that had lived for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions, forced to pursue a different path. To encounter one up here was almost as bad as meeting one of the old monkeys, or angering the squirrel.

The problem was that with his restricted senses, in this body, he couldn’t really gain any sense of her. She barely even used qi manipulation. He had not seen her infuse intent into anything, had never touched a principle that he saw, or even really used a talisman. Before he saw her injuries, he assumed she was just a Mantra Seed cultivator who had an inherited mantra and was good at concealing herself.

“I was just struck by her injuries, was all,” he mused, as he watched the various Ha clan disciples come and go below.

“Oh…” Diaomei looked at him.

It was the nature of the injuries that made him curious.

To the casual onlooker, they were nasty, yes, but that degree of healing was not impossible for a body cultivator, or a physical cultivator… or a dharma cultivator for that matter. The issue was the inauspicious nature of them. The wound on her breast, the cuts on her stomach, and the scars on her back… those were all intended not simply to cripple, but to maim. Whoever had done that to her had intended not to kill her, but to have her live in crippling anguish for the rest of her life.

“You could always ask her?” Diaomei suggested, before adding: “Ah, here they come with the map…”

Glancing around, he found Lianmei, Kun Juni and… Jun Sana, one of the other Herb Hunters, had appeared, along with Priestess Ying.

-I could, he supposed. Then again, her secrets are her own, and she seems both respected and knowledgeable.

It was mostly that sense of slight familiarity that piqued his interest, in any case.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Kun Juni apologised politely, putting a jade tablet down on the table.

“Not at all,” he replied, moving his chair around a bit to give the others more space to sit down.

“It took a bit longer to sort itself out than I anticipated,” Kun Juni added, poking the tablet. “Hazards of doing this on tablets and scrips rather than a dedicated jade locus.”

“You have to make do with what you can, up here,” Diaomei said, producing other cups and pouring wine for everyone.

“Indeed,” Lianmei agreed, sitting down. “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”

“We had something earlier,” Diaomei said. “But if you want food…”

“I’ll run down and see what Meilan has?” Jun Sana asked.

“No need,” Lianmei put her hand on the table and a handful of dishes – fried bread, spicy noodles, stir-fried leaves of spirit vegetation and a few ribs of snake meat – appeared on the table.

Claiming a bowl of spicy noodles and adding some of the stir-fried spirit herb leaves to it, he watched with interest as the point cloud manifested in the middle of the table and solidified into a fairly good image.

“You will be teleporting to here.”—Juni paused to poke the town’s main plaza—“Every group will have a copy of this map to start with, and will update it accordingly as they travel.”

“As far as we know, this ruined town is called Portam Rhanae,” Senior Ying added. “The language on surviving monuments is very old Easten.”

“Door of the Rain Bringer,” he mused, trying to recall if he knew the name. It was not immediately familiar, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t known by some other designation years ago.

“Fitting, given the current climate,” Diaomei observed.

“There are no real records of it in the West Flower Picking Pavilion, but that’s not that surprising,” Lianmei added as Juni manipulated the map to show the whole thing. “Our logs mostly go back to the Pavilion’s founding, so even stuff from the Blue Water Sage’s era, 30,000 years ago, is sketchy. A lot of stuff was sealed because of the Huang-Mo Wars as well and never unsealed—”

“Because of course,” he agreed.

“Indeed,” Lianmei sighed. “The upheaval of the last 150 years has seen another closing of ranks on the information you can get. The Blue Water City Pavilion has access to what the Eastern Azure Pavilion on Northern Tang holds, but going that route means any supreme elder in Blue Water City can tell who accessed what with next to no difficulty.”

“Which, in the current climate, is not ideal,” he mused.

“No, it is not,” Lianmei murmured.

“This is us…” Juni said, pointing to a gorge on the right-hand side once the map had stabilized. “To get there, you go across Western Falls, over what is now a huge lake, which is apparently still expanding, up that series of waterfalls…”

He watched her track the route, frowning, because it was familiar…

“Is there a ruin in this U-shaped valley?” he asked, trying to match it to scenes in his memory, long ago.

“There… is,” Juni confirmed, looking at him with a raised eyebrow. “But the degree of flooding made it impossible to investigate and the upper reaches are infested with hook bats. Spirit herbs tend not to grow in caves, only qi beasts.”

That was a fair assessment, he had to agree.

“The Cherry Wine Pagoda has records from before the time of the Blue Water Sage,” he said blithely, which was to say that he had memories of it. “I memorized them before coming along. The Pagoda Lord is just as keen that we succeed in this matter as Lady Ling Tao is.”

“So you are familiar with this valley?” Lianmei said. “That is reassuring.”

“Well, familiar is a complicated word,” he corrected her.

He followed the route up, into the valley, frowning.

“Those explorations back then were… fraught. The records speak of the mountains being abandoned to men for many millennia, with valleys in full bloom. Their main goal was to map the death-zones. These valleys lead directly into the southern edge of a large area of massifs, I believe they are called the Cloud Chaser Massifs now. The records noted that they were an oddly quick way to get into the Inner Valleys, compared to the slog of going up the middle. The downside, though… is that they take you out right into the territory of the Life-Breaking Aspen.”

“The aspen is over here though,” Juni zoomed right out and poked a place some twenty miles away.

“There are other places where that happens,” Priestess Ying noted. “The Jasmine Gate, for example, crosses more territory than it should if you walk around it.”

“Yes, the old records are not clear on that,” he said. “What is likely is that something damaged the integrity of the ridges at some point. That tends to lead to inconsistent distances as I understand it.”

“Gorges become hidden valleys, paths lead to strange places, ridge lines that are always in cloud,” Priestess Ying mused.

“In any case,” Lianmei said, waving a hand and bringing the map back to its starting point, of the ruined town, “that is a problem for later…”

They talked about the various routes and threats for a further twenty minutes in the end, before Lianmei suggested that they start rounding up those who would travel and check that they had done the preparation required.

With that in mind, he left Diaomei to her tasks for the day and went downstairs to talk to Ha Yun, who was sitting in the common room with the others who had come with him. To his mild relief, the slightly errant son of Ha Feirong had indeed rounded up his gang of friends and made at least a creditable effort of provisioning. All he had to do was send them back for more high grade formation cores, on the grounds that six per person was unlikely to be enough, especially for rookies like them.

“Where is Caolun?” he asked, looking around and not seeing him as they waited on Ha Ding and Ha Mun to come back with those.

“I think they are in the other building?” Ha Erlang Leng volunteered. “We did tell him that he was going out, but he didn’t seem to really take it to heart.”

“…”

“I’ll go see to it,” he said blandly.

Looking around, he found Meilan hanging around by the kitchen, talking to Faolian, dressed like the other Beast Hunters were.

“Are we nearly ready to go?” Meilan asked him as he came over.

“Yep. I just need to chase up the problems,” he replied. “Can you keep an eye on Ha Yun’s group?”

“Okie!” she agreed cheerfully.

“How is the logistics side of things going?” he asked Faolian as he had not seen her since the previous evening.

“Well enough, Mo Shunfei is capable in that regard,” Faolian said. “We agreed that I deal with the materials side and he handles the herbs and such.”

“At least something is going smoothly…” he remarked.

“Yeah… about that,” Faolian grimaced. “Caolun and Wufan’s groups have already tried to pillage the spirit stones and the high grade cores.”

A part of him wished he had the ignorance to be able to ask ‘why’, given they had gone nowhere at all, but having run a successful sect for several thousand years he knew that the answer was simply ‘free spirit stones’. There was a certain breed of disciple that was basically a curse on any large organisation or clan. Almost like a tax for being vaguely successful. The only way around them was to take the approach of powers like the Cherry Wine Pagoda and limit your disciple intake to elite prospects only.

It was either that or maintain very strong discipline or upright conduct among nearly all of your members, but the former caused its own problems and the latter was very difficult to maintain over the centuries, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Most large sects, like his own, simply resigned themselves to maintaining a competent Punishment Hall to curb egregious cases.

“But not the talismans…” he remarked drily instead.

“No, because they thought they were being smart,” Faolian sneered.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Oversight of the arboretum has been limited to high rank hunters,” Faolian added.

“Did someone try to steal a lingzhi?” Meilan remarked.

“No. Actually, two of Wufan’s group tried to cultivate in there,” Faolian grimaced.

“Who was it?” he asked with a sinking feeling. “I do hope they got deviations for their trouble?”

“Ha Ji Kunbei and Ha Ji Aofan, Ha Ji Wufan’s friends, and no, they did not,” she replied with a tired sigh. “They just re-arranged the plants so the alignments were more auspicious to them almost harming all the priceless moss. You need a talisman from Mo Shunfei to even get into the room now, and for punishment the pair are first on the list of any really nasty task that needs done around here. If they mess up again…”

“Well at least it’s dealt with,” he mused, reflecting that it was this kind of dilemma that made you fall out of love with running sects. “If they misbehave a second time, chain them to a rock and leave them outside overnight.”

“Uh-huh,” she nodded.

“Oh, there was a talisman communication… mostly for Kun Lianmei, but it sort of involves us as well,” Faolian added.

“Go on?”

“Various elders have been putting pressure on the Ling Jin and Ha Ji families to send up another group…” Faolian went on, speaking more quietly now. “This one will involve guest experts. Ling Tao is resisting, but it seems like she may be overruled by the Ling clan. They see this as their investment and, with the opportunities that this trial is going to provide, they want to get powers onside.”

“Any idea which clans?” he asked.

“Nothing confirmed, but you can probably guess…” she muttered.

“I can,” he murmured. For the Ling clan it is likely either the Bai or Qing. In regards to the Ha Ji… it is almost certainly the Din clan.

“Thanks for letting me know,” he added, giving her a smile of thanks.

“It’s my job,” she shrugged.

Leaving her to continue keeping an eye on those in the common room, he headed outside, into the rain. The sun had still not yet risen, but it was getting light enough, even with the rain and the low cloud, that you could see without needing a personal lantern.

The hunters were moving herb pots to the platform, so he left them to it and walked past the storeroom, nodding to the guard as he went, and into the complex on the far side of it.

“Morning Huang,” Ha Fan Teng called over to him from where he was sitting on a sheltered bench at the side of the courtyard, checking his gear.

“Morning,” he replied, walking over.

“Are we going out today?” Teng asked him.

“You… Cao and Jiao are coming with me,” he mused, thinking that over for a moment. “That leaves Bo, Erbei and…”

“—Deng Lei,” Teng said, reminding him of who the last expert with Wufan’s group was.

“Where are Caolun and Wufan?” he asked, nodding in thanks.

“Second floor,” said. “Caolun claimed the largest room, and the common-room there is basically their ‘den’.”

-You take your eye off them for half a day…

Leaving Teng to his preparations, he headed into the building, through the hall, in which someone had hung up the ‘Ha Ji’ and ‘Ha Cao’ banners, and up the stairs to the second floor.

“Sir Huang…” he was met by Ha Pei Quan, who was sitting at a table with some wine, a tablet and some talismans, looking bored.

“Where is Caolun?” he asked perfunctorily.

Pei Quan pointed through to the far room.

Heading through, he found Ha Cao Caolun sitting at a table, chatting away to two other disciples: Ha Fanbo and Ha Fanjing.

“Sir Huang,” Caolun said with a slight grimace, certainly aware why he was here. “Good morning to you.”

“Mmmm… yes,” he nodded, looking around the room, noting the talismans on the walls which would protect the occupants inside from many forms of spying, or at least would were they not in the High Valleys with a bunch of people who didn’t need to resort to such cheap tricks.

“So, how can we help you?” Fanjing added.

“You cannot,” he replied with aplomb, before turning back to Caolun. “Caolun, you will be coming with us to explore the valley the hunters were in yesterday.”

“Ah, yes,” Caolun nodded. “Yun did say something to that effect. Did he not also tell you that I was asked to wait for a special communication from Elder Ha Cao Quanbo?”

“…”

“Well, it can surely wait until you come back this evening,” he said blandly.

“How can I, as a filial son of the Cao family, disrespect the ancestor like that?” Ha Cao Caolun replied, looking legitimately anguished.

“You have a talisman communication with him?” he asked.

“…”

Ha Cao Caolun’s attempt to look innocent was… almost insulting, frankly.

“Where is Ha Cao Cao?” he asked, looking around.

“Off, somewhere?” Ha Caolun replied.

“What about Wufan?” he added.

“Indisposed. He ate something that didn’t agree with him yesterday; a few of the others are also suffering like that. It is a bit unfortunate really,” Caolun sighed. “We expected that at least the food will be capable…”

“…”

“Here,” he tossed a bottle of pills from his pouch on the table. “Those are quasi-immortal purification pills; go feed them one each. Give me the transmission talisman; I want to see this message from Elder Quanbo.”

“…”

“I am not showing you my Cao family talisman,” Caolun replied.

Without comment, he withdrew his Cherry Wine Pagoda talisman and held it in front of Caolun.

“You will give me the talisman, and you will be in front of that teleport in ten minutes, with Ji Wufan. If you are not, you can stay here, but you will not set foot outside of this gorge until we are done. You either do as you are told, or you are useless, am I clear?”

Caolun stared at him blankly, the words almost seeming to have passed right through him without registering.

“Sir… Huang, I appreciate that you believe that you have some say here,” Ha Fanbo said with a slight smile. “But we do not answer to you. We were sent here to—”

“I understand your position,” Caolun said, again doing an excellent impression of being very conflicted. “But at the same time, you do understand who Elder Quanbo is, don’t you, Sir Huang?”

It was sorely tempting to just drag him out, but the problem, frankly, was that scenes like that did not help.

“Well, in that case, show me the message,” he said with a faint smile.

“You think I would lie about that?” Caolun gawked.

-Yes, actually, and smile doing it if it suited you, you little shit, he sneered.

“…”

With a reluctant expression, Caolun took out a message jade and passed it to him. He flipped through it, and sighed, because there was indeed a message form the clan telling Caolun to stand by for an important, personal communication from Elder Cao Quanbo. What was notable was that there were no outgoing communications on it.

“If this receives communications here, it can receive communications in the next valley over,” he said, leaning on the table, which creaked slightly, despite being spirit wood.

“It… will,” Caolun repeated.

“Yes, so grab that bottle of pills and let’s go see Brother Wufan, shall we?”

Caolun’s gaze travelled back to the pill bottle, then, with some reluctance, he picked it up.

“Good lad,” he murmured, patting Caolun on the shoulder and then giving him a shove towards the door.

Leading Caolun out of the room, ignoring the frowns of the other two, he directed the still somewhat reluctant youth down a corridor and instructed him to bang on Wufan’s door.

“Who is it?” Wufan called.

“Me,” Caolun replied. “And—”

He squeezed Caolun’s shoulder just a fraction, making him stop speaking, then pushed open the door.

Contrary to his expectation, Wufan did actually look like he had eaten shit. His expression was pallid and the several pill bottles scattered around were testament to his attempt at self-medication.

“If you were this ill, why didn’t you say something?” he sighed, walking over to the youth and putting a hand to his neck.

“It was… the cooking,” Wufan groaned. “I… how can I…? They did this…”

“Nobody did this,” he sighed, already knowing what the problem was. “Did you drink water you left out?”

“I…”

Wufan stared at him, not quite understanding.

“Or wine?”

“Maybe?” Wufan replied.

“…”

-Do I tell him? he mused. Probably not a good idea, actually.

The simple truth of the matter was that Ha Ji Wufan was showing acute symptoms of having probably drunk alcohol poisoned by monkey piss.

“You drank bad water,” he said, passing him a purification pill. “Nothing more. It can happen up here, with the suppression. Take that and if it persists seek out Kun Lianmei.”

“So… I don’t have… to come?” Wufan asked.

-I’ll have to find out what he did to annoy the monkey, he mused, adding that to the list of problems.

It was tempting to bring Wufan along, but he would be more liability than anything as he was. A purification pill of the strength he provided would also leave him barely awake for hours while it worked.

“Better that you get healthy,” he said after a moment’s consideration.

At least the groups became somewhat easier to organize without Wufan. His absence certainly made for fewer unreliable moving parts at least.

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