> …The politics of the periphery across the sea, locally called ‘Yin Eclipse’, is perhaps best described as a pyramid. At the top are the branches of our noble clans and heroic settlers whom his Majesty’s Imperial Grandfather sponsored from our Imperial continent and who, with the ongoing support of our August Imperial Throne since that time, have endeavoured to bring enlightened civilisation to this difficult land.

>

> Below them are those who arrived in their wake, seeking to exploit the opportunities provided, yet well-meaning and capable of following the tenets of the Blue Morality to the best of their capacity, limited though it is by their innate disposition. Below them are those who have cast aside their misguided ideas of a ‘heritage’ and made some mediocre effort, through the generous and beneficent means granted to them by the Imperial Court, to better themselves. At the bottom are the indigenous, who have resisted most opportunities we have afforded them and at best are apathetic to our Majesty’s rule – living in towns and villages but barely embracing anything beyond this that might make them less savage – and at worst have even been known to provoke outright rebellion against the Imperial Mandate…

Excerpt – A report on the current situation to the east of Blue Water City to the Imperial Court.

  ~ By Imperial Envoy to Blue Water Province, Duke of Qiao, Dun Qiao Honghui.

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~ JUN ARAI – JADE WILLOW VILLAGE ~

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Lunchtime found Arai standing on the steps of the Jade Willow Hunter Pavilion, looking much more like a junior official of the Hunter Bureau than she usually did. She still wore the light robe, vaguely in the colours of the Ha clan, but over it she now had a short-sleeved grey one with a red trim, the front slashed with nine bronze stripes. The bronze stripes signified her status as a nine-star ranked Hunter, while the red edge to the robe identified her as a Hunter allowed to undertake corpse recovery – in effect someone at the very top of the lowest of the three ranking scales – bronze, silver and gold. Officials and elders all had silver stripes, while Pavilion Leaders and other very senior Bureau officials bore gold stripes.

The rankings got a bit esoteric in Blue Water Province though. Technically, as a ‘recovery hunter’ she should have been a three-star silver ranked official, but the Hunter Bureau had effectively eliminated those ranks from the local roster when removing the cultivation realm requirements for those advancing in some regions of Blue Water Province, since the Three Schools Conflict. This had been replaced by a requirement that you serve within a regional Bureau Pavilion at nine-star rank for five straight years before being elevated to a one-star silver rank. For two-star it was ten years and three-star it was twenty. The reason she was, in spite of this, a ‘junior official’ was entirely down to her being a recovery hunter for West Flower Picking Town’s Pavilion.

It was a strange exception to the rule, which persisted, according to her teacher in the Pavilion, Old Ling, because it was much harder to selectively change the designation that a recovery hunter was a junior official than it was to just remove three ranks from the grade scale…

It was the kind of bureaucracy that made people’s eyes glaze over when talking about the Hunter Bureau, made all the more ironic in a way, because she held the status of recovery hunter due to the same chronic shortage of qualified hunters after the Three Schools Conflict that led to the cultivation requirements being relaxed in the first place.

“…”

Looking over the twenty-two people – not eleven as earlier stated – standing around below her though, it was hard not to feel like someone was making trouble at her expense. That she pretty much expected something in this vein didn’t help either. Having secured her services so cheaply, there was no way that the people here were going to not capitalise on things now that she had to complete the task.

-Likely the list of things I requested to help with looking for this elder got back to some bastard who thought he could be really smart, she grumbled to herself as she set about matching the various disciples she had been expecting to the records she had read on them earlier.

Six were from the Jade Willow Sect, led by a Golden Core cultivator, with all the rest very early Qi Refinement. The five from local influences were scattered through the group talking to others – the two at Qi Condensation and one at Qi Refinement were standing with the Jade Willow group, and the two Golden Core cultivators were talking quietly at the back.

-None from the Pavilion though…

“…”

She swept her gaze across the group a second time to be sure, but it seemed the rest were all from the village, looking like they had been sent here straight from the fields with some haste given their damp appearance and muddy boots.

Seven of that group were at Qi Condensation and four at Qi Refinement, near as she could tell in this weather.

-At least all of them are younger than me, she sighed, giving mental thanks to the fates for that small piece of fortune.

She would freely admit that she did not do a lot of this kind of missions; however, her previous experience had taught her two things: firstly that sect disciples were always difficult and secondly that trying to teach cultivators who were both higher realm and older than her gave her a headache.

Thankfully, before she had to work her way through the tangled rigmarole of not offending a bunch of cultivators from the local school, Elder Mu appeared out of the hall behind her and shot her a small nod which she gracefully returned.

“Good afternoon, Elder Mu. Thank you for coming to see us off,” she said, offering him a formal salute, which he returned politely.

“Senior Hunter Jun, I see you have gotten started already,” Elder Mu replied pleasantly, casting an eye over the three groups of cultivators standing around on the steps.

“I was led to believe there would be eleven?” she pointed out quietly.

“Mmm,” Elder Mu nodded with narrowed eyes. “I was under that impression as well after they made such a fuss earlier. We will talk more about it when you get back.”

He passed her a black bracelet that she slipped in her pouch for now. “The supplies you asked for. Please try to use them sparingly. I understand you are going to take this bunch fishing?”

“Thank you,” she saluted him again and checked what was inside it as she stashed it away.

It held ten high grade cores, thirty mid-grade cores and a small crate containing a few hundred elementally attuned ward stones. Most of the latter would be for the teaching. There were also a few more pots, the rope, a canvas, several jars of basic replenishment and purification pills and various other technical sundries that rendered her previous day’s shopping a bit redundant, but it was better to have more rather than less.

“—and yes, that is the plan,” she answered with a bright smile.

“Don’t drown any of them,” Elder Mu added in the sign language that field Hunters frequently used.

She nodded, taking that warning to heart, then turned to face the group.

“EVERYONE!”

Raising her voice, she got their belated attention and waved for them all to come in closer.

“Good afternoon everyone… just about,” she said, walking down the steps a bit. “I am glad to see so many people are here.”

The assembled potential trainees stared back at her with expressions that varied from boredom to a desire to be somewhere cool and dry. She couldn’t really blame them for that latter opinion at least – it was developing into a truly muggy day.

“I am Jun Arai, a Junior Official from the Hunter Bureau. Per a request from the village elders of Jade Willow Village and the elders of the Pavilion here, I have been asked to come and spend some time teaching you the basics of scouting for ginseng.”

Most of them just stood there muttering dully to each other, which was to be expected, really.

-Likely they thought they were going to get some high ranked expert from Blue Water City… and instead they get… me…

It was hard not to feel slightly aggrieved there, but she would be lying to herself to think that, again, was not something she had anticipated. Only the few from the local village with physical cultivations were actually treating her with anything approaching actual respect, and even that was more tinged with curiosity.

“—Requesting permission to speak to Senior Mu!” one of the boys, a peak Qi Refinement disciple from the Jade Willow Sect, called out, stepping forward smartly and saluting Elder Mu.

“..”

Elder Mu, for his part, just narrowed his eyes and the youth hurriedly stepped back, sweating a bit.

-There is always one, she reflected with a soft sigh.

“Elder Mu has already briefed me on what is required,” she said, speaking up again and choosing to ignore the slight for now. “The village wishes you to learn the practical basics of formations, feng shui and how the valleys around here work—”

Off to the side, Elder Mu nodded along.

“—Because of the rain, however, taking you up into the ginseng fields is not going to happen today.”

Several of the locals breathed out in relief. The Jade Willow disciples and those from the influences just frowned or continued talking in quiet voices though.

-Ah well, if you are disappointed you will soon get over it, she chuckled to herself.

“So, this afternoon we are going to go deal with another local issue: an infestation of Duo Li’s water lotus. We will be spending the afternoon sweeping the field systems between here and the small massif four miles south-west of the town, finishing at the Gen family estate. Any questions?”

“…”

There was a lot of silence, which was – again – much as she had expected.

-Nobody ever asks questions…

“Are you really a senior hunter?” the boy who had spoken to Elder Mu asked abruptly.

“Kun Shi, right?” she asked, recalling his face from the briefing she had been given.

“Disciple Kun Shi,” the youth corrected her, superciliously.

“I am indeed a Senior Hunter,” she answered, her bright smile never slipping.

“But you’re not any stronger than I am,” Kun Shi stated challengingly.

“…”

She looked him over; he was indeed close to the peak of Qi Refinement. His misconception was understandable… probably, if he didn’t have much exposure to those who worked in the Yin Eclipse Mountains. Externally, Physical Path cultivators were largely indistinguishable from Spiritual Path cultivators who focused on body refinement, or Martial Path cultivators. Only with soul sense would the distinctions become properly apparent to most people, although there were ways to tell.

Glancing sideways at Elder Mu, she saw he was also frowning a bit, though not at her. The subtle emphasis on ‘Kun’ when Kun Shi corrected her had been telling there…

“Elder Mu,” she said brightly, turning to him “—if I might impose upon you?”

“You may,” Elder Mu replied with a polite nod.

The fact that Kun Shi had dared to actually speak to this Elder Mu, and didn’t have a middle name like Elder Ha Li Wen, suggested he was actually tied to the main Kun clan in the province somehow, which was both good and bad.

-Well, if it all goes tits up because of him, I can always ask Juni to sort him out, she thought with a snicker. Her friend was the big miss of West Flower Picking Town’s Kun clan and also a proper official within their Pavilion.

-That will be an object lesson on who you mess with for him.

She didn’t let any of that seep out though. The important thing here and now was that Elder Mu was also likely from the Kun clan if Kun Shi dared to call out to him like that, and if he was Dao Seeking that meant that his law was water affinity, as was his spirit root in all likelihood as that was what the Kun clan favoured.

Pulling out one of the blank mid-grade formation cores, she imprinted a formation centre onto it and tossed it down on the ground between them along with a few ward stones of each element.

{Devouring Pit of the Yin Worm}

The yin-earth-attuned sealing formation swirled out, encompassing both her and Elder Mu in the blink of an eye. Elder Mu was locked in place as the pavement around him manifested ephemeral quicksand.

The corrosive aspect of the formation was ineffective – that was to be expected given he likely had a nascent principle and she didn’t want to waste a high-grade core. The locking aspect of it, however, was perfectly sufficient to the task of physically restraining Elder Mu as his water attribute became the lesser link in a minor elements cycle, keeping the formation centred on him.

As she watched, Elder Mu tried to move, raising an eyebrow as the sand mixed with the natural elemental cycle that was being subverted by the rain and consumed its properties as yin earth was wont to do. He took two steps with great effort and then his Nascent Soul, looking identical to his physical body and just as solid, appeared right beside her.

“Impressive, Senior Hunter,” Elder Mu said, stroking his beard as he took in the formation. “You were taught by Old Ling and Grandmaster Mang?”

“This junior has indeed received teachings from both, Elder Mu,” she answered, masking her smile, and then added for good measure, “—and some slight instruction by Jade Willow Immortal Fei a number of years ago.”

-It never hurts to mention the local powerhouse, she smirked inwardly.

The rest of the group below stared at her dully, a few trying to shuffle back only to find that they too were now mired in the formation. Nobody was able to take a single step as the suppression of the rain continued to merge with the yin earth element of the formation to seal up everything within some twenty metres of Elder Mu. It wouldn’t do much against Nascent Souls, but for anything physical the more they struggled, the more they would get stuck.

“Thank you for humouring me, Elder,” she signed unobtrusively.

“Think nothing of it,” his voice echoed in her mind. “They should follow orders. That Kun Shi is a distant relative it seems. I shall have to have words with his parents about his attitude.”

“I trust that is enough of a demonstration for you, Disciple Kun?” she said pleasantly, amused that he winced a bit and finally stopped struggling. “First lesson, I suppose – does anyone want to hazard a guess at how I did that?”

Twenty-two silent faces stared up at her and Elder Mu in the rain.

“Okay, new first lesson!” she said a bit more sharply. “Speak out about things! Communication is the single most important thing out there. If you are wrong that is no slight on you; nobody knows everything. If you did, you would be the Eye of Heaven, and nobody goes around claiming to be that… at least not for very long.”

As far as jokes went, it was not great, but it did get her a few weak laughs, finally breaking the ice somewhat.

There was, however, still a lot of shaking of heads until finally one of the other Jade Willow disciples, a girl called Chen Lanfeng, ventured: “You used Elder Mu’s own qi against him.”

“…”

“How did you know Elder Mu has a water law?” another, who she placed as Chen Da, asked, sounding confused and staring at Elder Mu.

“Observation,” she answered, with a half-smile. “Kun Shi here dared to step forward and speak out like that to him, and when he used some of his qi earlier on today in my presence it had hints of water qi—”

“Indeed, I will swear to the worldly fate itself that I had not at any previous point told Hunter Jun that I was a member of the Kun clan,” Elder Mu said with a faint smile. “I have also been in seclusion for over a century and only left two days ago.”

“—and yes, I used the attribute of his own qi against him – Elder Mu’s physical body is only somewhat hindered because of his realm. You, however, who do not have Soul Foundations are all totally sealed,” she explained to them watching as they kept trying to struggle free, to no avail. “The Dao of Feng Shui is also part of the Dao of Formations.”

“Indeed,” Elder Mu added, stroking his beard. “The Dao of Formations and the Dao of Feng Shui are closely linked. You can achieve remarkable things with both that defy cultivation realms when you are aware of the rules by which things operate.”

She nodded and cancelled the formation with a sigh, recovering the core. The ward stones she had scattered at the most auspicious locations nearby as she activated it were all used up but for the sake of a useful demonstration like that she was willing to take it.

“The reason why we are not going up into the Outer Valleys today is also because of this,” she explained, waving a hand through the falling rain, scattering drops with her palm. “This rain comes from the east, literally. It is from the slopes of the East Fury Peaks and carries with it vestiges of South Grove Pinnacle’s soul-sealing miasma. It is the ‘Yin that Devours’ and ‘Yang that Suppresses’; in the midst of this, the Outer Valleys’ ambient feng shui will be crippling for anyone on the Spiritual Path.”

As she spoke she noted a few of the locals nodding along, which was reassuring at least – this wasn’t common knowledge, but the basics of it would be known by those who worked around the edges of the suppression zone. It was mostly for the local nobles and Jade Willow Sect disciples’ benefit as they likely didn’t have any real engagement with the forbidden zone at all.

“So, everything is suppressed up there, and currently we are stood in the middle of a weather system that is temporarily turning down here into a lesser version of the Outer Valleys,” she went on. “That suppression can work in your favour if you are quick-witted and, as Elder Mu said, understand what you are working with. One of the things you are going to learn is how to use formations to deal with things far above your realm, or which have difficult properties to otherwise deal with. Overconfidence and cutting corners will get you killed; plants are sneaky, they move at a different pace to us, and they don’t see the world in the same way as we do.

“While ginseng are sneaky buggers, Duo Li’s water lotuses are the very picture of sneaky and mendacious invaders into ecosystems,” she finished up, looking at them and their still rather non-committal expressions.

-You won’t look like that in two hours, she snickered inwardly, remembering her own first experiences with various incursive water lotuses.

“—But aren’t they water element herbs?” one of those from a local influence, Fan Bo Pei according to the list, finally spoke up, “Isn’t that useful now?”

“Now, yes, but come next dry season when they are rooted in—”

“So doesn’t that just make them stronger?” Fan Bo Pei said, interrupting her with a frown. “Water feeds life, and while earth subdues water, the fields are set up to be ‘balanced earth’ with yang life, so won’t the lotuses actually be a good thing?”

“On paper, yes,” she agreed, looking around at the others and noting that some of the locals were rolling their eyes unobtrusively. “However! Duo Li’s lotuses don’t support alignments – they are the alignments. They are qi-gathering spirit herbs. If left unchecked they will turn your fields into a perpetual quagmire and when the dry season comes again with the north wind that brings all that yang qi from Northern Tang, what is going to happen?”

She subtly looked at the villagers, trying to lead them to answer this, to see if any of them could.

“The alignments of the fields will be totally broken and we won’t be able to grow anything,” one of them said finally.

“Exactly,” she replied, giving them a smile and a nod of thanks. “And there is a more pressing problem… If left for a season, those with spiritual wisdom will start hunting livestock and other spirit herbs in the waterways. You have nothing that will naturally prey on their seeds in this area either, so they will just subsume everything else, because the most suitable environment for a Duo Li’s lotus… is a bunch of other Duo Li’s lotuses—”

“—And eventually they will start killing more than just livestock,” Elder Mu added impassively.

“And once they get beyond Golden Core, the principal plants of the colony will run for the Outer Valleys and might even overturn one or two of the closer ecosystems there,” she concluded.

“But don’t they already exist up there?” a Jade Willow disciple asked a bit archly.

-Well, I suppose it’s not so unreasonable to assume, she reflected, even if it was hard not to sigh mentally.

“Yes, but those lotuses grow up as spirit vegetation up there,” she replied. “Every valley is basically a giant natural formation. Much like the display with Elder Mu here, they are locked within the cycle and cannot subsume it. A rogue one coming in from outside would be able to hunt with impunity and rapidly destabilise everything.

“The livelihood of your village is tied to the ginseng harvest, so it isn’t much of an exaggeration to say that if left unchecked you will have an expensive problem.”

“But then why hasn’t an Immortal come and dealt with it?” another of the Jade Willow disciples asked.

“Are you aware of how much it would cost to have an Immortal with that level of formations knowledge come here?” she asked, glad she had the means to hide the amusement in her tone.

“…”

There was much shaking of heads.

“Ten to twenty Spirit Jades, depending on how extensive the messing about was.”

“Oh…”

“…”

“And who is going to be paying for that?” she added, before anyone else could speak up, trailing her gaze across the whole group again.

The differing reactions to that were quite interesting. The sect disciples and those from local influences just looked nonplussed. The eleven from the village however had slightly sour expressions.

“The village, probably,” one of the villagers finally replied.

“Or whichever family owns the land that was contaminated,” a girl spoke up.

“Exactly,” she nodded “And that is enough spirit stones to bankrupt many spirit farmers, doing almost as much damage to the local economy as the water lotus would in the first place…”

“…”

That, really, was why these eleven from the village were here now, rather than helping with the harvest. Ginseng was next season’s problem, the harvest was more important to them – however, the alignments of valuable fields being ruined for years was any season’s problem, and if they could get it fixed for next to nothing and get a few more people with those skills in the process, few would not jump at the opportunity.

“Exactly,” Elder Mu agreed, stepping forward and putting his hands behind his back. “A masterful summation of the problem at hand, Senior Hunter Jun.”

“Thank you, Elder Mu,” she murmured, giving him a small smile, before turning back to the group again.

“So, for those of you thinking that this is not that important – it is,” she said with a certain emphasis. “I will repeat, because it’s important, spirit plants… herbs are sneaky, they move at a different pace to us and they don’t see the world in the same way as we do.

“This why we will start off this series of lessons by dealing with these lotuses. It only seems fair when the heavens have seen fit to provide us with an ideal opportunity to do so, because this rain means they can no longer use the main tool at their disposal – their innate soul sense.”

“—This is an important lesson,” Elder Mu added, looking at the group more severely now. “Being unwilling to learn, or thinking something is beneath you, will get you killed anywhere, incidentally.”

“Thank you for the instruction, Elder Mu,” they all chorused, offering him a salute.

“Thank you for the instruction, Hunter Jun,” most of them added a moment later. The Jade Willow group mumbled it, but they did acknowledge her now, so it was a start she supposed.

“Elder Mu?” she asked, turning back to him. “If I might have a moment?”

He nodded, and she gestured for the group to take it easy for a few moments. They all did so with remarkable alacrity, sitting on the steps or getting into small huddles to talk. A few even produced lunch.

“Are there any I need to be wary of?” she asked softly.

“My distant nephew might try to act out,” Elder Mu mused. “The bunch from the Jade Willow Sect are mostly distant relatives of the Ha, Kun, Fan or Chen clans. The local ones are, as far as I am aware, all from good families. Mostly their dissatisfaction stems from the expectation that they were going to be following around some influential Hunter from Blue Water City where the request was originally filed, as it turns out.”

“And instead they get a girl from West Flower Picking Town not much older than they are,” she murmured, feeling a bit aggrieved in her heart.

“It is what it is,” Elder Mu said, patting her on the shoulder. “I must admit, I was dubious, but your record speaks for itself, and you have acknowledgements from people I know well. I hope you can teach them well… and as I said, please don’t drown any of them; that would be…”

“I won’t,” she reassured him. “Incidentally, Elder Mu, may I allow them to keep any they harvest themselves?”

“…”

“You are surprisingly cruel for such a nice young lass,” Elder Mu chuckled, stroking his beard again and looking over at the group. “Yes, if they can achieve that feat, they can keep what they themselves harvest.

“I think that covers everything?” he asked.

“It does,” she agreed.

“Please teach them all well,” Elder Mu said, a bit more loudly, to get the attention of the group below, before offering her a salute and stepping back. “Best of luck, Senior Hunter Jun – I hope for good luck in your tasks!”

“Thank you, Elder Mu!” she replied, saluting him formally in turn before stepping back, and turning to the group.

Without further preamble, she waved for them gather round.

“Right! Elder Mu has graciously said that you can keep any of the lotus plants that you manage to harvest yourselves!”

“Indeed,” Elder Mu agreed, nodding at her words. “You may keep any you yourselves manage to harvest.”

“Thank you for your generosity, Elder Mu!”

“Elder Mu is generous!”

“Giving thanks to Elder Mu!”

“…”

Quite a few of them saluted and the rest brightened up considerably at his words, she couldn’t help but notice.

-Some things do not change, she thought wryly. Nothing like some incentives to get things moving.

“Okay!” she called out, waving for them to get moving. “The day will not get any younger the longer we stand around here talking about it! Let’s get going!”

Following her words, they all trooped out of the pavilion and into the village square, in a gaggle of contrasting umbrellas and quiet discussion; mostly, it had to be said, complaints about the weather.

The village was much quieter than it had been first thing in the morning. Partly that was down to the climate at midday, which was bordering on vile and trending well past ‘deepest jungle in a rainstorm’. Those who were still bustling about in the muggy, muddy, misty rain that drenched the streets were either those with tasks they couldn’t put off or those too poor to afford a lot of teleport talismans.

On the way out of town, she continued matching faces to names and memorising them. The rain was a bit annoying in that regard, but thankfully the mission list gave her a rundown of the general competencies of those eleven she received from the school and local influences. They had been selected because they already had some aptitude for divination, geomancy or formations, or good instincts and a bit of prior experience. As for the villagers, they were likely those from families Clerk Bai and maybe others had sent her way.

It did mean that the ‘usual’ practice of these things would need a bit of a mix-up though. The idea was usually to randomly divide up groups and make you learn teamwork in a rather sink or swim manner, forcing you to work with what you had and discover your weaknesses for yourself. It was a brutal way of weeding out those who were unsuitable, because the Pavilion stressed flexibility. Most senior Hunters worked alone or, for those who didn’t, moved from team to team of lesser-ranked Hunters – leading others or acting as on-request specialists for the most part. Stable teams like the one she and her sister Sana had were very much the exception.

“Uhh… Hunter Jun?” one of the locals dropped in beside her.

“Yes?” she replied, smiling at the younger man somewhat encouragingly.

“—Lun Quan. I’m Fen Duan’s younger cousin,” he said, offering her a salute of greeting.

“Ah,” she nodded and returned the greeting. “How can I help you?”

“Are we really going fishing for those fate-accursed lotuses?” Lun Quan asked, lowering his voice slightly.

“Yes,” she re-affirmed, glancing around at some of the others as well who were listening in. “I assume the local farmers are not unknowledgeable about getting rid of them?”

“This will be the third infestation of a rogue spirit herb of this type in five seasons,” Lun Quan muttered, spitting on the ground.

“I believe I was told as much yesterday, by a bunch of old-timers out beyond the road on the way to Red Lake Village,” she nodded. “We will be starting out there anyway.”

“Old Ge’s fields?” another nearby villager, a young woman with dark hair and a thin build asked.

“You know him?” she said, offering greetings to the guard on the gate as they went past.

The guard, who was one of those she had seen earlier, shady moustache, waved back at her as Lun Quan nodded, answering for the young woman who had just spoken up. “Yep, cranky old sort but well respected. A lot around there have trouble with Old Weng, a local rivalry going back quite a while.”

“Are you familiar with most of the other local folks here?” she asked after a moment.

“Afraid you got lumped with a dud assignment?” Lun Quan asked, casting her an amused look.

She gave him a sideways look but said nothing.

That suspicion had crossed her mind – that someone really had decided to sling a jar of monkey piss over this assignment for some reason – given how the initial request had come via the village, yet the reworked request had been through the Pavilion, but with no people from the Pavilion along for the ride.

-I suppose someone among the village elders got word and ensured they had representation, she mused. Especially with this issue of the locals being frozen out of pavilion tasks by the Ha clan.

“The Pavilion has been… difficult over this request,” she answered diplomatically, after a moment’s consideration. “Especially given what I have heard regarding this Elder Li Wen.”

Lun Quan spat on the ground again and made an inauspicious sign with his left hand, as did several others nearby who overheard.

“That popular locally, huh?” she chuckled.

“If I had two left hands I’d curse the bugger twice,” Lun Quan scowled, which got some laughter from the others.

“Anyone here particularly good with formations?” she asked, looking at the villagers. “I have to assume that most of you have a grasp of five elements geomancy and landscape feng shui?”

“Formations not so much, but the other two? Aye – and those that don’t are fast learners,” Lun Quan answered as a few other villagers walking nearby nodded.

-So he has become their informal spokesperson? she mused. Duan was also quite well connected…

“—Why do you ask?” the dark-haired girl interjected from nearby. “We have some knowledge but we cannot stare at books all day like them…”

One of the Jade Willow disciples walking on the other side, Fuan Gu if she recalled from the jade she had been given, scowled at the veiled barb in the girl's comment but, perhaps wisely, said nothing.

“Ahem… So how do you plan to smoke those fate-thrashed lotuses out?” Lun Quan asked, quickly moving the topic on.

“Alignment Overburden,” she replied, by way of explanation. “And then sending people in in teams to go fish the ones with spiritual wisdom out.”

“Is that even possible out here? In this weather?” Lun Quan asked again, taking care not to step into a puddle that was spreading across the road just beyond the gate.

“Of course it is,” she answered with an amused grin, patting him on the shoulder. “That’s why you’re all here… to learn.”

Unlike her previous trip down the road between the villages of Jade Willow and Red Lake, this one went very quickly as she led her group at a literal jog back towards the fields where she had first emerged from the mountain range. They passed a few covered wagons and such, but traffic was mostly people and smaller hand carts now. On either side of the road, she could see people working speedily to gather spirit herbs before the rain totally overwhelmed the fire qi that was the vital root of the dry season’s herb crop. The flares of teleportation circles were like flashes of distant lightning every few minutes.

Finally, she arrived at the point where she had stopped the previous day and first spoken to the two old farmers, and waved all of them to come to a stop.

“Is this it?” someone asked looking around dubiously.

“No,” she remarked drily, looking east through the misty rain, along the canal that ran under the road. “From here we are going to follow the canal inland.”

There were a few groans, but as she directed, the group went down the bank with her following. Shaking her head at the grumbled complaints she led them along the canal banks, which were lush with vegetation, birds calling and insects buzzing everywhere, until they arrived at the spot where she had fished the lotus out the previous day.

Much as she had expected, there was no sign of another right at that spot, so she led them a short distance further up the waterway until she spotted the tell-tale signs of another lotus that had started to awaken its spiritual wisdom and called them all to a stop.

“Right,” she said brightly, looking around at the slightly bedraggled group. “We have arrived.”

“There are Duo Li’s lotuses here?” Kun Shi asked, looking around sceptically.

“Yes,” she nodded, giving him a wry smile. “So the first thing to do is to show you all how to find them when you can’t use soul sense.”

Given there was nobody other than her from the local Hunter Pavilion here it was, she judged, highly unlikely that anyone had more than passing acquaintance with a proper feng shui text. The ‘Han Manual’ was what the Hunter Bureau favoured, so that was mostly what she had decided to teach them today as it was more readily available. The other two manuals she had studied – the ‘Eight Trigrams Chart’, courtesy of their father, and the ‘Azure Skies Codex’, courtesy of Ling Yu, were much more complex.

Looking at the group… groups really, she thought for a moment about the best way of getting them to learn this, before deciding to have them do it by process of elimination, starting with the most obvious methods first. Not only would it be instructional, but it should help break down a few more barriers between the different groups.

That was the other reason she was all the way out here. This was probably the current extremity of the infestation, or good as. That made it a good place to make mistakes and be sure that the lotus plants would only run one direction.

“You,” she pointed at one of the group basically at random. “Young Master Bei, would you please use your qi perception to find us a Duo Li’s lotus in the canal?”

Wen Bei, the scion from the local ‘Wen’ family, shot her a frown but still swept his qi out across the waterway.

His cultivation was a bit worse than hers, at the upper end of Qi Refinement, so even in the current environment he was able to cover a few hundred square metres quite easily. They all stood there in silence watching as Wen Bei spent several minutes scouring the river very thoroughly.

“There don’t seem to be any here,” he said, the suspicion clear in his tone.

“Anyone else like to try?” she asked still smiling, looking around at the group as a whole, who were arraigned in a rough semi-circle of umbrellas along the bank of the canal now.

Kun Shi, who had been growing increasingly restless as everyone watched Wen Bei’s attempt, stepped forward immediately and sent a very narrow, focused sweep of qi across the river bed. He made three passes before scowling and also throwing up his hands, to some laughter from the sect disciples. In truth, she had to judge that he was a bit unlucky. Had Wen Bei not spooked every lotus within line of sight, Kun Shi might actually have found one or two of the quasi-Qi Condensation ones.

None of the Golden Core cultivators stepped forward, so eventually after two more had tried by various methods, she waved Fuan Daiyi, the one from the Jade Willow Sect, forward.

“Disciple Fuan, perhaps you might like to try?” she said pleasantly.

“Is this really necessary?” Disciple Fuan grumbled, clearly not wanting to lose face to his juniors by failing.

“If it makes you feel any better,” she murmured so only he could hear, smiling at him as nicely as she could manage. “If you use intent, you might actually succeed.”

He coughed a bit, clearly unused to having pretty young... slightly older than him... women, smile quite that pleasantly at him, and nodded.

She watched as he scoured the river twice using intent-infused qi, the hallmark of a Golden Core cultivator. Several of the lotuses that were close to gaining spiritual awakening finally reacted slightly, their flowers opening a bit more fully and the pinkish colour darkening slightly at the tips for the briefest moment to turn blue-purple.

“Ohh!”

“Amazing! Senior Fuan!”

“See, I said Senior Fuan could do it…”

The rest of the Jade Willow disciples muttering at one side finally provoked a bit of competitive spirit and Fan Bo Pei, one of the two Golden Core cultivators from the local families, stepped forward. He swept the other side of the canal, also revealing a few of the spirit vegetation ones briefly. The other Golden Core cultivator, Dan Fei Gung, was also about as successful.

“…”

It was a bit cruel, she had to admit, but learning by experience in this instance was the best medicine. The village cultivators all had very carefully schooled faces now, clearly knowing what was going to happen next.

“Right!” she said with a further smile, clapping her hands together. “Now that you have revealed a bunch, you should go grab them before they run off.”

“…”

Their congratulations died down a bit and the disciples eyed her a bit dubiously, clearly sensing a ‘catch’.

“Incidentally, if you catch one you can sell it yourself.”

That extra bit of impetus set the two groups to discussing heatedly before Chen Da waved to the locals. “You lot, what are you waiting for? Go get us those lotuses!”

“Ahaha… no,” one of the villagers, a skinny youth with crooked teeth, chuckled. “We would not dare to rob you esteemed members of the Jade Willow Sect of spirit stones.”

“You’re getting them for us, not—”

“—Elder Mu was pretty clear,” she interjected. “Whoever harvests them gets to keep them,”

“…”

The Jade Willow disciples scowled and there was some more discussion before Fuan Daiyi waved Fuan Gu, who was likely a family relative, forward. As everyone watched, he walked across the surface of the canal towards the clump of lotus pads—

“Fates get—!” with a curse, Fuan Gu abruptly destabilized and fell, flailing into the water with a splash about a metre from the lotus plants.

“…”

Keeping Elder Mu’s warning about none of them drowning in mind, she eyed the actual lotus several metres away on the far bank in case it decided to be a bit opportunistic as Fuan Gu flailed and eventually grabbed one of the lotuses his senior had identified and pulled it up.

Or tried to, at least.

He struggled for several minutes before finally drawing a treasure sword out of his talisman and hacking in the mud as the locals all watched on with faces worthy of a high stakes Gu Takes All game. Finally, he staggered back to the shore, covered in stinking, red canal mud and drenched in canal water, triumphantly carrying the twitching, amorphous root stock of the lotus he had been wrestling with.

Wordlessly she went down the bank and helped him up, taking the weakly twitching spirit plant from him. It was a quasi-Qi Condensation water lotus, however… Thankfully, without her even having to say anything, Fuan Gu had realised something was amiss, because golden sap was running over his hands now from the root he was holding.

“Is that a ‘golden star lotus’…?” Kun Shi muttered.

“It is,” she agreed. “A quasi-Qi Condensation one as well.”

“But…” Fuan Gu just looked confused.

“You should probably put it back before the local farmers get annoyed,” she suggested with a slight smile.

Fuan Gu stared at the lotus in his hand for a long moment then sighed and tossed the root back into the shallows where it rapidly sank back into the disturbed mud.

“Water lotuses are sneaky!” she explained. “They are good at hiding, excellent at misdirection and can even lead you to target their nearest competitors in the ecosystem, believing that you are actually pulling up them.”

“They can?” Chen Lanfeng, the only female disciple from the Jade Willow Sect, asked, looking puzzled.

“Well, you just saw Fuan Gu here haul out a golden star lotus,” she said, beckoning them all down to the water’s edge. “In case you are unfamiliar, that is an earth attributed lotus planted here to help balance the canal’s alignments and ensure that the water does not become attributed to yin thanks to the runoff from the fields. At least you didn’t pull up a ‘red root lotus’ of the same rank by accident.”

“Ohh…”

“Lucky!”

The villagers’ comments made her struggle not to laugh.

“There are those in here as well?” Fan Bo Pei muttered.

Hiding her amusement at the various reactions, she put her umbrella down and stored away her grey robe, then added her lighter robe for good measure before wading into the shallows in her under-tunic. After a few moments searching she found what she was after and carefully lifted up a root of a lotus with slightly darker leaves, taking care not to break the stems as she did so. Holding it up for them she poked the root with a knife and a moment later came a few threads of red sap that smoked faintly in the humid rain.

“Red root lotus,” she stated, showing it around to them as they all clustered down at the water’s edge. “A spirit herb with a mixed attribute of life, fire and earth. Their sap is quite unpleasant. Their leaves are actually a minor ingredient in some really spicy spirit food recipes. They are also used to help balance the canal’s qi attributes.”

Once she had put the lotus back, she waded ashore and re-robed – ignoring the slightly puerile looks from one or two of the male disciples – and got them to continue searching.

The next thing she got them to try was talismans, some actual divination arts and even a compass that one of the Golden Core nobles, Dan Fen Guang, possessed. Those attempts were marginally more successful, but fell afoul of another problem – those using them all failed to take into account the artificial field alignments and such, and nobody using them was familiar with the lay of the land at all.

The villagers didn’t really get an opportunity to participate much in this: few of them possessed the means to have expensive divination talismans, and compasses were important tools that were in much demand right now for the harvesting, meaning none of them had been gifted any to use for this training.

During their time well spent exploring how sneaky this variant of Duo Li’s lotus was, she had gone around working out how many lotuses there actually were in the canal. Discounting the one she had grasped the previous day, she had found two close to becoming proper spirit herbs and maybe three times that that were still spirit vegetation hiding amidst other clusters of lotuses.

Eventually, though, after half an hour of watching them eliminate all the common solutions to finding the plants, she finally called them back together.

“Are there really Duo Li’s lotuses here?” Kun Shi grumbled, staring at the waterway in disgust.

“There are,” she confirmed. “And as I said, they are sneaky. The rain is messing with their soul sense, but their other tricks are still very much in evidence – namely that they can disguise themselves as other lotuses to a certain degree, and also make other lotuses look a bit more like them. They are a qi-gathering spirit herb, remember? That affords them some extra quirks.”

In fact, the ones here were even better than usual, she had to admit. Likely that was part of the mutation this variant had... and why it was a clearance request she was pretty sure. The record showed Blue Water City had already ‘evaluated’ the original request, by one Gen Weng, while it was still a normal request. No mention of the wider infestation had been made either, which told her that someone had likely decided to tweak the nose of a Pavilion that the upper echelons of the Hunter Bureau in the province felt was too close to the Ha clan.

-Nothing like a year’s bad harvest or a few very expensive clean up jobs to change local minds, she reflected, staring at the cloudy, disturbed waters of the canal.

It was a reminder that even something as boring as this could be used as a political club. That was certainly why it landed in West Flower Picking Town as well, another pavilion which was embroiled in a local power struggle of sorts between the Ha and Kun clans, the Deng clan and the Blue Water City Hunter Bureau that leaned much more towards the Azure Astral Authority.

-Well, I suppose I should bring in the others at this point, she mused, turning to consider the villagers sitting or standing in a few small groups mostly just watching.

“Ah…Fu Kang, right?” she eyed the villagers and picked a youth who looked like he was paying attention.

“Yes, Miss Jun?” he straightened up a bit and stepped forward.

“How would the farmers here normally resolve this issue, assuming nobody could be tasked from outside to solve it?” she asked him.

“Seal off the waterway spur, drain it, dig it down to the clay, incinerate all the earth and vegetation, boil the water to vapour and leave it open for a dry season,” Fu Kang replied promptly.

“And why is that not exactly favoured?” she asked, opening up the question to everyone.

“Because it takes a huge amount of manpower,” Heng Ning, the dark-haired young village girl, muttered.

“—Also stupidly expensive,” another villager, Pei Vung, added.

“It wrecks the field alignments, and then you can only grow normal crops here for that season,” Lun Quan said.

“Exactly, this is how it would normally be dealt with: scorched earth, literally,” she said to the assembled group as a whole. “It is an effective strategy, but also rather inefficient.”

“There is of course a third alternative,” she said, looking at the Jade Willow disciples.

“Get a senior to come and root them out,” Fan Bo Pei, one of the nobles, was the person who actually replied.

“Indeed, but that is also not as easy to do as it might seem,” she said.

“People have many concerns and if an infestation like this is not caught early, even if they come and resolve it, the damage will linger,” another villager, Hu Juan, added.

“If this were a spirit pond, how would it be resolved?” she said to Kun Shi, who as a member of the Kun clan should be familiar with this kind of thing… in theory at least.

“A formations expert would be called in, they would seal the pond, and people would fish everything out and check the plants one at a time at an auspicious hour?” Kun Shi answered after a moment’s thought.

“And why is that not going to get any traction out here?” she queried right back at him.

“Uh…” he looked a bit nonplussed at the follow-up question.

“—Expensive,” Lun Quan interjected. “For the time and effort involved.”

“So, how would the local old-timers deal with it?” she said finally, turning back to the villagers.

“Find the extremity and overload the sympathetic alignments that the lotuses are parasitizing, cut them off, and force them inwards until you find the source,” Lun Quan answered promptly.

“Indeed, but that requires a lot of people and time under normal circumstances and a few Nascent Soul cultivators to hold the strings if they were something like Duo Li’s lotuses with innate soul sense,” she agreed. “Which is why this fate-accursed rain that is being pissed down on us by the mendacious monkey in the heavens is actually useful for once.”

That got a few laughs, which was good, because standing around in the rain was not a whole lot of fun – most of them had given up on their umbrellas now, as everyone was thoroughly drenched anyway, though most still sported broad-brimmed hats.

“So if it requires so many people, why are there only twenty-two of us here?” Wen Bei grumbled.

She resisted the urge to rub her temples.

The answer was actually pretty simple – because it was rare that you could interest a nine-star ranked hunter with this kind of mission. She was probably as qualified as a local feng shui expert, but such people were not specifically experienced in dealing with spirit herbs. Her grasp of formations was focused in this area as well – suppression and sealing. Most formations experts focused on what Grandmaster Mang called ‘the specialisms of the rich and famous’, or aspired to, at least – things like arranging ornamental gardens, which was probably what her sister was currently doing, likely in a far more comfortable environment as well.

“That will become apparent once we actually locate it,” she said brightly, suppressing her mild annoyance.

-Nothing promotes trouble on these missions like the teacher not looking like they want to be there… especially if it’s someone like me, she thought glumly.

“How do we do that?” Chen Da asked, not bothering to hide his annoyance. “We tried with all kinds of compasses and qi-perception and got nothing.”

“You tried with an alignment compass, not one that deals with good fortune,” she said drily.

“Like… for tombs and such?” Fuan Daiyi asked with a frown.

“Yes, like for tombs and such,” she agreed, nodding. “As such, the method you are going to see here has its origins in the ‘Eight Trigrams Chart’, rather than the much more common ‘Han Manual’.”

“Ohhh…”

“Oh…!”

“Eight Trigrams Chart, isn’t that…?”

“Interesting…”

“Didn’t she say the Han Manual before?”

“Yes, I did,” she conceded, to that last point. “However the Eight Trigrams is better for this,” she explained, as she took a shallow bowl out of her talisman and knelt beside the canal, filling it to the brim with water.

Next, she tossed in a few naturally occurring materials with different elemental affinities. Holding the bowl level while they watched, she sent qi, infused with intent, into it and cleared her mind.

The compass, acting as a facsimile for the locality thanks to the sympathetic links to the environment from the materials used, gave her a sense of inauspiciousness regarding the local spirit vegetation that drew her further along the bank marginally.

She had to repeat the divination a few more times, but after a just a few minutes she had homed in on one of the spots she had noted earlier, where a water lotus was lurking, hidden amidst a bed of other vegetation. This one also looked like a golden star lotus, but she wasn’t fooled by its façade, able to see the tell-tale hints of a qi-gathering plant nearby along with the inauspicious shimmers for other local spirit vegetation in the compass.

“There is one in here,” she said drolly, passing the bowl to Fan Bo Pei who happened to be nearest to her.

“How do you gather that?” Lun Quan asked, echoing the mutters of quite a few others as they stared at the spot she indicated in the canal.

“Duo Li’s lotus and its variants are, as I have said a few times, qi-gathering spirit herbs,” she explained, considering the shallows as she spoke. “They have innate soul sense, but that isn’t their only trick; it’s just their most infamous. Even quasi-Qi Condensation ones like the plant in here behave like feng shui controllers: they parasitize existing alignments, twisting the local environment and ecosystem around them until it is suitably sympathetic to them. This also allows them to mask their presence and pretend to be other lotus plants.”

“Then how come this works… supposedly…?” one of the Jade Willow disciples asked, before she stopped them with a wave of her hand.

“Just watch,” she said, by way of instruction.

Pulling out a twenty-five litre pot from the storage bracelet she had been given, she filled it with water and put it on the bank. Had she been here alone she would probably have stripped further, but the idea of being ogled more than she had already been by a bunch of teenagers was not appealing and the water was shallow.

Wading in, she found the plant and crouched down, gently digging in the mu—

The roots swirled around her, trying to drag her under, cording around her arms and legs and leaving weals on her arms as she grasped for the core of the root stock in the mud.

She let her mantra work – ‘Renewal’ and ‘Body’ giving her qi armour beneath her skin to resist it and turning her qi reserves in her meridians into a means to further augment her physical strength. Unable to stun her with its soul sense, it instead lashed at her with its roots, trying to send water qi into her body to disrupt her qi circulation and poison her or cause an inner injury.

This was hardly the first lotus she had had to wrangle out of a waterway though, so the struggle lasted only a few moments as she grasped the root and lifted the whole plant, leaves and all, out of the water.

“And there you have one,” she said with a muddy grin, holding out the oval, mango-sized tuber that had a lot of small, prehensile roots leading off it which were now coiling around her hand and wrist, trying to constrict her and break her skin.

Holding it at arm’s length so it didn’t smack her in the face or tear open the front of her robe or something, she waded back to the shore and dropped the thrashing plant into the pot. It took a few moments to pry the smaller roots off her arm before covering the top with a board and a handy rock to stop it climbing out.

Eventually, after a few minutes’ thrashing and two attempts to tip over the pot, it calmed down and she took the cover back off to reveal a lotus plant with a few dark green pads and purple-blue flowers tinted with green floating on the surface of the water.

“Convinced?” she asked the assembled group, wiping some of the mud off her face.

They all nodded mutely, staring at the offending spirit vegetation.

“However if we do it that way, for every river way, we will be here until next week,” she remarked with an eye roll. “And that only gets the ones like this, which are already turning into spirit herbs—”

“—that’s not already a spirit herb?” Wen Bei interjected, eyeing the now quite docile plant with clear disbelief.

"Nope, though it’s getting close to that point,” she said, with a grin. “Anyway, there is one other problem: anyone want to hazard a guess as to what that is?”

They all stared at the canal, which was now silty and disturbed, the rain breaking the surface of the water and scattering off the swathe of broken vegetation she had left in her brief struggle with the plant. As she sort of expected, no answer was forthcoming – had anyone ventured the right answer, it would have been impressive really.

“The uprooting of that plant has disturbed the ambient qi…?” Dan Fen Guang said at last, just as she was about to tell them.

“Exactly,” she said, with a pleased smile. The notes had said that this youth was the most talented at formations out of the whole group, so it was likely someone had explained this phenomenon to him at some point.

“This is a form of Ablative Geomancy,” she explained. “The plant, having been uprooted, has scattered the harmony of the waterway around it deliberately to obscure its fellows. Where one was captured the others have already scattered. Were we dealing with actual spirit herbs they would have actually moved after trying to help their compatriot drown me in all likelihood.”

“—Making it impossible to find the others until it settles by that kind of method,” Dan Fen Guang half asked, half stated a bit more confidently.

“Yes,” she agreed, “but that isn’t the only method we have at our disposal.”

Picking up the pot, she brought it to the top of the bank where a Jade Willow disciple helpfully re-chocked it with a few rocks.

“This method also has another flaw…?” she asked leadingly, casting her eyes over the group again.

“The compass needs intent,” Fuan Daiyi said promptly. “The method is unsuitable for those who have not comprehended it.”

“Exactly, and I am here to teach twenty-two people, not three,” she said drily as she wrung the worst of the water out of her light tunic, for all the good it did. “Feng shui, though, started off as a mortal art – it has mortal practitioners, as rare as those are – so we need to take a step even further back than this already quite basic method. Landscape feng shui and divining good fortune. The goal here is to get all the plants in a part of the canal at once and ensure they reveal themselves.”

Grabbing several straight twigs off of a tree, she started to scavenge for other materials to make a crude five elements compass as she continued to explain. “There are several types of compass, and a few of them do not require any intent to use. Just observational nuance as to what you are seeing and a decent ear for your own intuition.”

It was a matter of a few more moments to find pieces of material attuned to each of the five elements and fashion what was sometimes called a ‘beggars’ compass’. It was also sometimes called a ‘thieves’ compass’, but she didn’t feel the need to let them know about that given how dubiously they were all staring at her somewhat ad hoc construction.

-Oh the innocence of youth, be amazed… she chuckled to herself as she held it out, balanced on her palm.

“This, is what they call a beggars’ compass,” she said, showing the compass off as it rocked slowly and then began a curious set of almost random-seeming oscillations as it stabilised itself.

Still holding it she walked down the bank a few metres, watching how the different parts shifted on her hand as she moved, reacting to the changes in the ambient qi. The disturbed nature of the local elemental harmony was irrelevant to a compass this crude. The lotus was not capable of making that big a splash.

“The materials of the compass are important,” she explained. “They have to have some relevance to what you are looking for. In this instance, we are looking for higher than average concentrations of water element qi that are not in harmony with the canal. This is basically a dowsing compass.”

They kept eyeing it dubiously so she handed it to Fuan Daiyi. “To use it, just send a thread of your qi into it and then let it do its thing.”

Everyone watched as he stared at the compass, which shifted a bit differently to how it had when she used it, but that was to be expected.

“How does this actually work?” he asked dully, staring at it, then her.

“Qi is qi; it’s a part of everything and the harmonious alignments between five elements are part of everything – the basis of all cultivation. From the highest power in the sky to the most meagre bug buzzing around here, it’s all connected in some way. What this is doing is a very crude form of natural formation, a means by which the interactions between different forces can be drawn upon to act visibly in some small way – it’s the foundational method within the ‘Eight Trigrams Chart’, incidentally.”

“And we can use this to find them?” Lun Quan asked, looking at her and then the river with a dubious expression.

“Singularly, with your comprehensions, nope,” she denied it with a wry smile. “However, there are workarounds.”

She rapidly put together a few more and handed them around so they could see the pattern. “All of you go make one of these, don’t think too hard about the materials you pick, just select what feels right.”

“…”

They all slopped off in the rain and mud to scavenge various bits and pieces as she considered the rest of the waterway again, finding the points where they would need to set up the divination formation.

The second stage would be an actual formation, so she started sorting that out while they did as instructed. One of the things she almost always carried around was a set of ironwood staves – eleven to be exact – however right now, she didn’t want to take those materials from her own supply. In any case, elementally attuned wood was not hard to find in their immediate vicinity: the farmers had planted bronze-leafed willow trees at various points to give the ground rigidity here and to sympathetically support the nourishing water and life alignments in the canals.

By the time they had all constructed crude compasses based off her instructions, she had found a bunch of trees with straight enough branches, cut a few dozen staves and checked they were good enough to the task. Using metal element ward stones would be quicker, but her goal here was to teach them the cheapest and most robust method. All the materials could be scaled up, and probably would be over the course of the afternoon, especially once she had a full set of five water lotuses in pots to drive matters.

When they all reconvened, she spent a few minutes checking everyone could in fact read their compasses, before splitting them up into two groups of eleven with a roughly balanced number from the three different groups in each.

“First, one group is going to divine the most auspicious locations for metal element qi within the surrounding… oh… thirty metres from this spot,” she instructed them pleasantly. “Once you have all done that, you are to drive those staves into them and start sending qi through them. Don’t use your cultivation laws—”

“What will that do?” Kun Shi asked, interrupting her before she could finish

“Well, I doubt all of you have earth element cultivation laws,” she pointed out with an amused smile. “It will unbalance matters and interfere with the operation of the formation.”

“…”

The various cultivators, Kun Shi included, looked at her with their best ‘of course we knew that’ faces, not really fooling her at all.

“As I was about to explain—” she said with a smile that was rather opposed to her annoyance at being interrupted, “—you will send qi into the ground through these bronze-leafed willow staves in a balanced and measured fashion according to the readings you get from your compasses until you find a rhythm to it that is auspicious for all eleven points. The goal here is simply to feed the ambient water qi to the point where the lotuses can no longer resist revealing themselves to make the best of the ‘opportunity’ we are providing and use the metal qi to make them a bit more docile in the process.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“…”

“Any more questions?” she asked, looking around at the group of eleven.

“If these are water lotuses… then how will—?” one of the villagers, Fan Zhuliang, started to speak before trailing off.

“—presumably they have a life attribute,” Wen Bei interrupted a bit superciliously.

“Yes, they do,” she agreed, cutting Wen Bei off in turn before he could add a barbed remark at the end. “If you look at the pot—?”

She walked back over to the pot and took the board off, revealing the lotus with its flower, which had a faint greenish tint at the base of the indigo coloured petals.

“Setting aside the fact that it tried to flay the skin off my arms, the colour of the flowers is a fairly reliable indicator among younger plants as to their elemental affinities,” she explained.

“So the metal qi we use will feed the water and suppress the life,” Lun Quan nodded.

“Exactly,” she agreed. “So, any more questions?”

Both groups shook their heads.

“Well, in that case, go see how you get on,” she instructed them, waving a hand towards the wider area.

Watching them all scatter out, either singly or in small groups, staring at their compasses, she took one of the basic formation cores she had been provided and imprinted a simple elemental formation to force metal qi onto it just in case it was necessary. It wasn’t that she didn’t think they would succeed, but it never hurt to have a backup.

-Well, I suppose they are not doing any worse than half the trainees when I first learnt this, she reflected with a wry smile, watching them start to identify spots with some trial and error.

It took them a while to get a grasp on it, even with someone else standing next to them holding a divination compass to aid the process, but they were all quick studies. Somewhat counter-intuitively, the closer they got to the most inauspicious hour of the afternoon, the easier it would get, ironically enough, because forcing was in and of itself an inauspicious act.

Once she was satisfied they were making actual progress, she went back to the canal and watched with her own, much better compass, continuing to ponder the prevalence of the minor life attribute in the lotuses.

It didn’t take all that long for there to be an appreciable change. The required magnitude of shifts in the ambient qi composition for spirit vegetation to start being affected was miniscule, certainly in comparison to an actual spirit herb. Within twenty minutes, there were nineteen indigo and greenish flowered water lotuses blooming away happily, soaking up the currents of metal qi that were flowing between the staffs.

“YOU CAN STOP NOW!” she yelled, calling them all back to the river bank.

The effect would linger for a good while, just with the amount of qi they had directed here already – that was mostly down to the Golden Core cultivators, but all of those who were here were pretty promising, with decent spirit roots. A few among the villagers were even metal attribute cultivators, which would speed matters up a lot – they could use their laws, as could any earth element ones that could feed metal.

“Wow…”

“There were that many?”

“That’s… it’s that easy?”

“What is easy! Idiot!”

“I’m exhausted…”

“But still…”

The chatter as they admired their own handiwork was cut short as she waved for them all to come down.

“Right…” she pulled the top off the container again and lifted out the now much more docile lotus to show them its various body parts. “You want to grasp the root stock almost immediately; ignore the stem and leaves; it can just discard that if it needs to.”

“We… have to fish them out…” Wen Bei asked, sounding uncertain.

“Well, they aren’t going to walk out of the river themselves, not unless you wait for them to get spiritual wisdom,” she pointed out, which got a few laughs, even from Wen Bei, who could see the funny side in that.

“Work in pairs,” she instructed. “You have about ten minutes before they guzzle up all that metal element qi.”

With sighs and groans, the villagers started pairing up.

“Remember what Elder Mu said,” she added. “Any you harvest, you get to sell yourselves! These are a pest here, but they are still a qi-gathering spirit herb if you nurture them right… Each one is worth about ten silver talismans, and if you sold them off in bulk to someone setting up a water element spirit pond you might even get a spirit stone for a decent batch of them!”

“…”

“How easy are these to nurture though?” someone asked from the back of the group.

“They are spiritually invasive plants who reorder the ambient feng shui and environment to suit themselves. Provided you do your research and spend a basic amount of effort nurturing them, they essentially look after themselves. You won’t get any high quality lotuses this way, though… is what I would say, but these are at least minor life mutates and probably worth a bit more to the right person regardless. Your major concern should be to have firm measures in place so they cannot disrupt the area outside wherever you nurture them, really, unless you want to pay for damages,” she explained, wondering even as she spoke how many of them would, in fact, end up paying for damages.

-Probably not the villagers at least, she mused, their elders know better.

A few of the Jade Willow disciples who were particularly quick with sums glanced over the road, then back at the pond and did a few quick guesses at how many of these they might end up with by the end of the day before disrobing with almost hilarious haste and scurrying after the villagers who were already wading in and starting to wrestle with the plants.

-Truly, money is the grease that turns all wheels, she giggled inwardly as even the four nobles finally gave in and headed up the bank to grab a few from a little way further up.

Had she been doing this herself, she would probably have stunned and killed the ones that were still just spirit vegetation. It would be a loss of a bit of money, but much easier to sell them in bulk as dead roots than several hundred live plants. That bit of wisdom would come a bit later though, when they realised they were not dealing with just a few dozen plants but hundreds to put into jars that wouldn’t store in storage rings.

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

~ JUN SANA & LING YU – BLUE WATER CITY ~

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

Sitting in a small teahouse in a side street off the western markets, Sana found herself staring out at the rain and wondering, rather pointlessly, why it had chosen now to bucket down. It was from the east, the last few hours of traipsing about in it had removed any lingering doubts many would have on that front.

It was kind of pretty, in the afternoon light, but the mugginess that had come with it was not. That was another gift from the mountains, along with the soul sense scattering and the modicum of realm suppression – a change in the flows of the land’s feng shui to make a mockery of anyone’s desire to remain coolly unaffected.

“Utterly unseasonable,” Ling Yu sulked opposite her, fanning herself with a paper fan.

“This is what it’s like every day, even in the Low Valleys, for much of the year,” she pointed out with a faint smirk.

“I know… but this is meant to be the dry season,” Ling Yu complained.

Ignoring her friend’s grumbling, she went back to sorting out how much money she had left. Exchanging spirit stones for metal talismans was always a chore, especially in Blue Water City.

“Twenty-one spirit stones…” she sorted those out, counting them out under her breath.

“Two gold…” those went on the table right in front of her, because unlike the spirit stones people did try to rob you of the gold talismans and they had surprising value in certain shops despite usually being a one to one exchange with spirit stones.

Her third gold had been split up into a bunch of other talisman coins – one hundred silvers’ worth becoming forty-seven silver and five hundred iron talismans and off of that, a miscellaneous pile of brass and copper talismans that inevitably accrued from transactions with iron, of which she had been making quite a few since they crossed over the river into the Little Harbour district. The loss of three silver out of the usual one hundred was galling, but that was the price of Blue Water City where spirit stones were preferred over talismans in the central districts.

“I told you, just let me pay for it,” Ling Yu said, eyeing her shuffling the piles back into her talisman and her money talisman.

“It’s fine,” she muttered. “You’re paying for all the herbs anyway. And do you even have any non-spirit stone currency on you?”

“…”

Her friend rolled her eyes.

Ling Yu would have paid a spirit stone for the tea here and told the maid to keep the difference. Her friend would not care; transactions smaller than spirit stones basically didn’t exist in her usual day-to-day world, but she had a bit more know-how with these quarters. Overpaying by that much would just cause problems, especially on this side of the river, in Little Harbour, where people were very prideful of what they did have and how hard they had worked for it. People could find it outright suspicious if you were paying them too much, and wonder what exactly it is that you are trying to pay or compensate them extra for.

“Can we have some soup?” she asked the maid who was hovering nearby. “And… oh… whatever the day’s pastries and some of the best tea is?”

“Of course, young ladies,” the maid replied, bowing before she scurried off. That would come to about five iron talismans, mostly for the tea, and she could tip three more.

“Eight iron?” Ling Yu said dubiously as she sorted out the tokens and put them in the bowl in the middle of the table.

“Not everything costs what it does in the Myriad Blossoms or the Golden Dragon, you know. This is my world, not yours,” she said with an eye roll. “Just let me navigate it. If people know who you are, it will just make things more awkward.”

At least the bedlam of the central district had not followed them over the river. They had eyed the Blue Gate School for all of twenty seconds before Ling Yu had judged that Sana would be stopped at every corner by someone complaining she was a commoner, or someone from the Azure Astral Authority, and not allowed in today.

She could probably have worn her nine-star rank robe, but here in Blue Water City that could be more of a lightning rod for trouble than just being considered a person promoted ‘above’ their rank. Ling Yu got some protection because she could wear her family’s Jade and there was a guard unobtrusively shadowing the two of them, but even if Sana put her Hunter Jade in a halo over her head and screamed her rank at every person she passed, half would think it was fake and the other half would recall that there was special dispensation for the rural pavilions and just continue treating her like a servant.

“What even is going on over there?” she asked, peering out over the rooftops. Even through the rain it was possible to make out the shimmer of a large formation and a duelling platform in the grand plaza.

“That tour—”

“Not that,” she said with a shake of her head. “At the school?”

“Oh… Same thing, as far as I could tell by putting my head through the gate. The guard told me that it was a bad time even for me to visit, not being an official member and all,” Ling Yu said with a pout. “I guess an Imperial Princess really is visiting, or something like that. The gate watchers said that Headmaster Ji was in a mood and that my aunt was running around taking care of this and that, so whatever is going on is probably political.”

Ling Yu said the last word with a certain distaste.

“—Begging your pardons, young ladies, but I heard that it was because some dignitary had come from across the water?” the maid, who had returned with the food, interjected politely as she put it down on the table. A moment later she noticed the payment and scooped it up with a pleased smile and another polite nod to both of them.

“Ah, wait…” she said, holding out a hand to stop her.

“Yes?” the maid asked respectfully.

“A third bowl please,” she nodded to the Ling family estate guard who, having caught up to them earlier to escort Ling Yu, now sat quietly on the other side of the alcove, where he could watch both the window and the teahouse.

“That’s… unnecessary,” the guard, who was named Ling Fei Weng, said with a polite dismissal.

“Nope, you’re out with us,” she insisted politely, making him sigh, even though he did nod in acquiescence.

“Some fried sea squid, your speciality, and some wine please,” Fei Weng said, passing over payment to the maid.

“Of course, Sir,” the maid said with a broad smile, taking the silver talisman then glancing back at Ling Yu who had just agreed that ‘that was indeed the case’ in regards to the maid’s earlier question.

“—It is somewhat uncommon, though. I’d have thought two such young ladies as yourselves would be over there, watching the festivities?” the maid added, with a further glance at the guard who just rolled his eyes and mimed ‘young ladies, what can you do’.

“The world cannot stop for nobles,” she said with a bright smile that got a laugh from Fei Weng and the maid, who then bowed politely and excused herself as she was called off to someone else’s table.

“You could fool the lot over there with that,” Ling Yu giggled, poking fun at the slight affectation she had just put on.

“I’d probably be challenged to a duel on the street for it,” she said a bit sourly, “Then you would be carrying me home in a pot as well as the herbs we have to buy. Half the youths in the city want to play up their ‘noble’ credentials today, it seems like, and the other half want to tear them down for it.”

“So, what else do we need to get?” Ling Yu asked, changing the topic.

“Nurturing herbs that are water and metal element qi-gathering supporters and a bunch of catalysts,” she mused, thinking through the list in her head quickly. “And probably a properly balanced, Five Element Qi attuned pot – which you will have to pay out the nose for, sorry, to help Lil’ Blue convalesce.”

“When you say pay out the nose?” Ling Yu asked, shifting again in discomfort at the sudden humidity.

“Hard to say, we will have to go to one of the workshops and ask in all likelihood. I’d imagine it will be anywhere between 250 and 300 spirit stones though for some that are of acceptable quality,” she guessed, thinking about the last time she had had to go buy one for a mission.

“We can’t just buy one…?” Ling Yu asked, rather gormlessly.

“You could, but you will pay a Spirit Jade for even a lousy one,” she replied with an eye roll that Fei Weng mirrored and grabbed a pastry while Ling Yu muttered about merchants overselling things. “Mostly those who use them professionally get them straight from one of the workshops over here. The ones you buy over the river are for—”

“—people like me, who won’t ask about the cost?” Ling Yu finished for her, a touch drolly.

“We would not dare say that,” Fei Weng murmured.

“I was going to say people like your brother, who would buy the most expensive one, because that would clearly be the best one,” she said with a smile.

“Uggh, I hope he gets his ass kicked,” Ling Yu sniffed.

“You and me both,” she agreed, offering a toast of tea that Ling Yu matched with a smirk.

…

In the end, it took the rain almost an hour to pass over. Fei Weng just sat there quietly reading some manual and watching the world go by. Ling Yu, on the other hand, kept managing to draw the serving woman back to chat about local gossip – repeatedly. She, meanwhile, spent a while drawing out a quick schematic of the requirements for the pot Little Blue was going to need to recuperate. Once that was done, and the maid had finally managed to excuse herself, they chatted about various things, with occasional interjections from Fei Weng, watching those who had no choice but to brave the burst of unseasonal weather hurry by as they cursed the rain and the humidity with equal measure.

Here, the only real evidence of the turmoil across the river was the fact that two patrols passed in that hour rather than one. Neither were wearing any of the regalia of the city’s various authorities either, instead carrying the slashes of gold, blue and white of the Imperial Court on their armour.

“Odd to see them,” Ling Yu mused, as they watched a third group go by just after stepping onto the street.

“Yeah,” she agreed, nodding.

“It’s because of the goings-on over the river,” Fei Weng supplied. “With royalty in the city, Imperial Envoy Qiao’s estate will not want to be seen to be lacking.”

“Father is going to be annoyed this evening, I have no doubt,” Ling Yu sighed, watching them force people out of the road in the distance.

Making their way through the streets, she saw a few other flashes of the shifting mire that was the political status quo of Blue Water City made more visible than usual. A few workshops were displaying things in a more imperial style today. A maid in another teashop had her hair done in the traditional fashion, a statement of repudiation against the ‘invading’ influences from across the water. There were even flags bearing the crest of the Imperial Family flying in a few places.

“Huh…” she paused to stare up at one of the newer warehouses.

“What is it?” Ling Yu stopped and stared up at the sign alongside her. “Myriad Herb Association?”

“That wasn’t here a few months ago,” she remarked, shaking her head and starting onwards again.

“Oh… Yeah,” Ling Yu nodded. “They have started popping up with the support of Imperial Envoy Qiao and a bunch of the clans and families who are less aligned to the Azure Astral Authority.”

“Great, just what we need,” she sighed.

“Yeah, I heard they are sweeping up many of the mercenary herb gatherers in the city – using clans with links on both sides of the ocean to circumvent the influence of the Azure Astral Authority in the province,” Ling Yu added as they made their way onwards through the now much busier streets.

“Anyway, let’s stop talking about politics,” she grumbled, pausing at a street vendor.

“A wise idea on a day like today,” Fei Weng chuckled, from where he was now trailing along a few paces behind them.

“Can I have six of those?” she asked the young woman minding the stall, pointing to some roasted fish on a stick.

“Of course, miss. That will be twenty bronze,” the young woman said with a smile, handing her six of the roasted fish.

She handed over the talismans and passed two fish to Ling Yu who nibbled one curiously and then wolfed the rest of it down in half a dozen bites. Another two she passed to Fei Weng, who just took them without comment and started to eat one.

“That’s very unladylike,” she giggled, watching Ling Yu inhale roast fish.

“Itsh tashty,” Ling Yu mumbled around a mouthful.

“They are rather good,” Fei Weng agreed, between mouthfuls, “although if you give the young miss food poisoning from eating dodgy spirit food…”

“Who gets food poisoning at my realm?” Ling Yu sniffed between mouthfuls.

“Young misses who eat poisonous fish without a care?” Fei Weng pointed out with a mock scowl.

“Shush you,” her friend said with a pout and a hand wave. “And at least walk beside us; one shadow is enough in my life.”

They walked on through the rainy streets, Fei Weng now wandering alongside as instructed, stopping to peer in various herb brokerages on the off chance that there was something useful to Ling Yu and Little Blue Moon, but largely it was all low grade herbs or things being traded from the south. Given she was now walking along in her grey- and bronze-slashed Bureau robes, she got a poor reception in quite a few of them, so they didn’t linger.

Eventually, they arrived at one of the warehouses she had to visit for her own reasons, rather than anything to do with Ling Yu and their general purpose in this district of the city.

“Kun clan…” Ling Yu noted, looking up at the signboard as they made their way inside. “Is this why you are now wearing your robes?”

“Yep, I need to stop here for a moment,” she explained apologetically.

“—It’s nothing dangerous,” she added, glancing sideways at Fei Weng who had narrowed his eyes momentarily. “I just have to drop off some stuff for a request.”

“Oh… a mission,” Ling Yu said with a hopeful look. “Can I come watch?”

“Ah?” she blinked. “It won’t be very interesting though.”

“Pleease,” Ling Yu wheedled.

“…”

She glanced at Fei Weng who just shrugged.

“Sure, okay then,” she agreed with a mock sigh. “It really won’t be very interesting though—”

“You should wait down here; it would be weird if you follow us up,” Ling Yu added to Fei Weng who had made to follow.

“I am meant to accompany you all the time…” he grumbled.

“Is there anyone here stronger than you?” Ling Yu said with an eye roll, waving an arm expansively around.

She had to admit, she wasn’t sure what realm Fei Weng was, but he was at least an Immortal, she was pretty sure. For him to be wandering about guarding Ling Yu, he was probably a promising junior from one of the Ling clan’s regional branches.

“…”

“Don’t cause a fuss. If I have to drag you out, it will look bad.” Fei Weng sighed and wandered back out the entrance to a nearby food stall to take up watch.

Ling Yu followed after her, shaking her head as they made their way through the rather ostentatious entryway and into to the central courtyard of the warehouse, where she cast about, finally finding a youth who was poring over some paperwork.

“Hey, I’m Jun Sana,” she held out her token. “Is the owner about? I am here about a ‘lash rose’.”

“Oh?” the youth put aside the papers and looked at the talisman. “Go up the stairs at the far side, someone will take you.”

She nodded politely and went in the direction instructed as Ling Yu trailed along behind, looking around with interest at the goings-on of the warehouse and all the different crates of things and potted spirit herbs being stored. After some further asking, they were shown up to a plush waiting room on the second floor by a servant and asked to wait for a few minutes.

Eventually an old man, with a certain subtle presence that her intuition told her was a principle, bustled into the room followed by a younger maidservant who put some tea down on the table before them.

Standing, she greeted the old man, who was very likely an Immortal realm cultivator, with a polite salute. “Seeing Sir Proprietor!”

Ling Yu also stood and saluted politely. If she was here officially there would be no need, but clearly she was happy to play along and stay incognito.

“Jun Sana, Recovery Hunter from West Flower Picking Town. This is my friend… Miss Yu”

“Miss Jun, Miss Yu, please, be seated,” the old man waved his hand politely, taking a seat, hiding what little remained of his outward-facing aura from them. “I am Kun Zhong Bei, proprietor of this warehouse – a servant has already informed me that you are here about the lash rose request.”

“I am,” she agreed, looking in her storage talisman for the mission jade.

“I am surprised anyone agreed to it,” Zhong Bei remarked with a sad sigh, as the maid poured them all tea.

Finding it at last, she put it on the table and then set out three medium-sized boxes with sealing formations on them containing various parts of two Nascent Soul grade spirit herbs. “As near as we could determine, these three should be the closest matches to the one that was used to poison your grandson.”

She watched as the old man lifted the first box and opened it – inside was a whole plant, roots and all, covered in fine thorns with long, thin reddish leaves also covered in stinging hairs and a series of deep green buds scattered along its length. The second box contained a very similar plant but with broader, triangular leaves, purple-gold flowers and much finer hairs. The third was a collection of flowering heads from the first plant.

“The first is lash rose, collected from the slopes of East Fury,” she explained, adding, “We had to separate out the flowers to make it easier to manage; the request did not specify a living plant after all.”

“Quite,” the old man nodded. “A living plant is unnecessary for the antidote.”

“The other is yang lash lamium,” she continued. “These strains are the two predominant ones from which almost every other mutate in the Outer and High Valleys originates.”

“This is the one that was used,” the old man sighed, putting the lash rose down again and turned to the maid. “Please, bring the payment.”

The maid bowed and left quickly by the same door Zhong Bei had arrived.

“I must, again, convey my thanks to you, Miss Jun, for fulfilling this request. With this, my grandson may well be cured of the injury he was given,” Zhong Bei said, offering her a salute that she accepted as politely as she could. “My request had languished, I fear, because my son made several difficult associations in recent years. That combined with the difficulty of the request…”

She had to concede, it had been quite an annoying request – skipped over twice as far as she was aware before it had been made a clearance mission, at which point it had immediately been shuffled off to their Pavilion. The request was well paying, five hundred silver talismans in fact, for the pieces of the herbs. The main reason it had languished, beyond whatever the politics were, was that both lash rose and yang lash lamium were rare in the Outer Valleys. They only lived in habitats around East Fury Peaks, almost on the boundaries of the most dangerous valleys of the whole western region of the Yin Eclipse mountain range. Even for ten thousand silver talismans – one hundred spirit stones – the Hunters in Blue Water City would not move unless it was forced on them, like it had been her and Arai.

“Politics is an ugly thing,” she replied politely. “I find it better to remain professional about these things. It was designated as a clearance quest in any case. My team goes into the Inner Valleys quite regularly.”

“If it was easy, it would have been done weeks ago,” the old man muttered. “Neither of these plants is at all affable or common. Few trade in them.”

“Not for legitimate means anyway,” she agreed.

Yang lash lamium and lash rose were favoured natural venoms for those seeking to really inconvenience opponents. The spines of the latter in particular held necrotic qi poisons that if properly prepared were dangerous even to Immortals. She had no idea what the old man’s grandson had been involved with to get poisoned by one, but she also had no intention of prying about it either.

They sipped the tea in silence until the maid returned, accompanied by another servant who was carrying a lacquered box which he placed on the table. Opening it, she confirmed the payment of the five hundred silver talismans and stashed it away.

“Could you verify that this was received?” she asked, proffering Zhong Bei her talisman.

“Of course,” the old man nodded and sealed the mission entry, also providing her a jade talisman with his seal and acknowledgement of receipt.

“A pleasure, Sir Zhong,” she said, with a polite salute. “I hope your grandson recovers.”

“Fates willing he shall,” Zhong Bei agreed, accepting her salute.

“Incidentally, there is another matter you might be able to help me with regarding a request, if you were willing?” she asked, recalling the matter of catalysts, which they had failed to find in any sufficient quality on their trawl through the docks to arrive here.

“Ohh?” Zhong Bei asked. “We have a wide array of goods here; what is it you are looking to acquire?”

“Five element catalysts suitable for nurturing moon song ginseng.”

“Hmmmmm…” Zhong Bei frowned, then turned to the servant who had come with the payment. “Cheng, do we have such a thing in the alchemical warehouse?”

“I believe we do have some. They were due for export to the south… Their quality is top grade,” Cheng informed them.

-Which is code for: ‘Are you sure you can afford them?’, she thought with an inner eye roll.

“That’s fine; my friend here is looking to purchase in bulk,” she replied – speaking the magic words all warehouse owners wished to hear when it came to alchemical purchases.

“In bulk, you say?” Cheng asked, looking pensive.

“Probably about… one hundred kilos?” she clarified. “The highest quality you have.”

“I shall go make enquiries?” Cheng asked with a further unobtrusive glance at Zhong Bei.

“A moon song ginseng is not a common plant to keep,” Zhong Bei mused, taking another sip of his tea and nodding to the servant who departed in the direction of the warehouses.

“My Little Blue Moon is the best plant!” Ling Yu stated... a bit more exuberantly than she perhaps needed to given the circumstances.

“While we are on this topic,” she added smoothly, before her friend could start off on a tangent, “we are also looking for a few other herbs, to support its nourishment and recuperation from a sudden injury. Do you have an arboretum here on the premises?”

“You are remarkably well informed about such warehouses as ours,” Zhong Bei chuckled. “We do indeed have an arboretum here. What plants are you interested in?”

“Mild qi-gathering plants with qi purity akin to the Immortal grade – water attributed and, if you have one, metal attributed,” she stated, before adding helpfully, “It is intended to be a nurturing plant, not a reagent.”

“The former we certainly have – the latter, however… those are in much demand of late, or were, given the season,” Zhong Bei mused. “I have some matters to attend to, so I will have my grand-nephew escort you two young ladies around it to see if it has what you need.”

They both politely stood and saluted him in thanks. The old Immortal returned the salute and then left with the maid in tow.

“It would be a real stroke of luck if we can get any of them here,” she remarked, sitting back down and selecting a pastry to nibble.

“Mmmmm,” Ling Yu agreed, nodding happily as she helped herself to another of the rolls.

They only had to wait a short while before a youth a few years older than her entered the room. Seeing the two of them he perked up visibly and bowed to them both. “I am Kun Zhen Fei. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintances, young ladies.”

“Jun Sana,” she introduced herself politely.

“Ling Yu,” Ling Yu added, standing up and straightening her dress. “We wish to see the arboretum,” she said with a bright smile. “It would be wonderful if you could show us both around.”

Zhen Fei led them back down through the warehouse asking various polite questions about what they were looking for until eventually they arrived in a rain-drenched garden courtyard holding several large biome areas for growing spirit plants. In normal weather it would have been protected by a formation, but even here the unseasonable weather was, apparently, doing its thing.

Without comment, she pulled her umbrella back out, as did Ling Yu. Zhen Fei, clearly caught out by their lack of concern over the rain, had to pause to get one from his own storage ring before hurrying after them.

Ling Yu was more than happy to chat with Zhen Fei about various unusual plants as they made a quick circuit through the fire and life attuned biomes, which showed her nothing of especial interest. In the water one, however… she found several plants that were more than suitable for their purposes in their own way.

The first was a ‘waterfall jasmine’, a beautiful and very mild spirit herb that was usually encountered growing wild around pools deep in the shadow forest, south of the Yin Eclipse Mountains where the suppression zone extended beyond the actual valleys.

The specimen plants the warehouse had, had been trained up over some picturesque stone pillars. It was currently in bloom, thanks to the weather, its several dozen deep blue flowers exuding a shimmering water mist that reflected many colours. It made her even damper just standing near it, but that was just part of dealing with these kind of plants. Gently brushing her fingers across the underside of one of the larger leaves she listened to it give off a faint tinkling sound as the plant rustled, rainbows forming in the air as she walked around it.

The second, was a ‘Fei-Mu lotus’, equally impressive in its own way, within the pond in the biome. In the pouring rain its pale, almost ethereal petals held a shimmering little sea of mist that spilled over across the water. Its physical form was almost at the Nascent Soul realm, and if she listened carefully, she could hear within the mists a faint sighing sound that suggested it was close to attaining true spiritual wisdom in its own right.

The third was in a subsidiary pond, befitting its more bothersome nature – a Duo Li’s lotus with a pure water affinity. It was a large one as well, with three half-metre wide pads surrounded by over a dozen smaller ones, indigo and white flowers ranging from the size of her fist to large dinner plates.

Looking around the edge of the pond, she could see a subtly placed formation to keep it docile and stop it doing strange things with its innate soul sense and illusions. Even despite that, though, the gravity of qi that flowed towards it was impressive. The plant itself was probably close to the peak of Nascent Soul, but the purity of its qi and the strength of the gathering likely made it a seven or eight-star ranked plant.

“Do any of these take your fancy, Miss Yu?” Zhen Fei was asking as they stood beside another small pond, looking at a collection of various five- and six-star water herbs.

“There are two that will serve our purpose over here,” she replied, attracting Ling Yu’s attention towards the jasmine first.

“Ah!” Zhen Fei nodded brightly. “The water jasmine, a marvellous plant.”

“Both of these are suitable in their own way, the water jasmine a little less so than the Fei-Mu lotus,” she continued. “Little Blue Moon will get more benefit from the lotus in the long term, but the jasmine is probably the more gentle plant and better suited to its—”

“They are of a suitable grade?” Ling Yu asked her, stepping forward to stroke one of the jasmine’s petals.

“The Fei-Mu water lotus is an eight-star grade,” Zhen Fei said proudly.

“The waterfall jasmine should be that rank as well,” she added.

“It is… certainly; it’s a wonderful example of the plant, a seedling from the gardens of the Blue Pavilion actually,” the youth expounded… “But…”

“There is a problem with it?” she asked, looking at it again.

“No… uh…” Zhen Fei said, looking a bit awkward suddenly. “Perhaps you might be more interested in the Duo Li’s pond lotus? It’s a nine-star grade herb with a very beneficial mutation that makes it much more manageable than they usually are.”

“Then is it not for sale?” Ling Yu frowned, making another flower on the jasmine chime.

“Ah, no… it’s just that that has already been sold to Young Lord Ling Fan,” the youth said with an awkward expression.

“What is he, an evil ghost haunting my every turn?” Ling Yu muttered under her breath, before turning back to her. “Would the jasmine do?”

“Certainly,” she chuckled, amused by Ling Yu’s brother’s lack of good luck today.

“I appreciate that you want to buy it, but… really we cannot back out of a sale to the Ling clan,” the youth said a bit awkwardly. “Even if I ask my grand-uncle, it is a matter of good business practice… We have a—”

“You are not backing out of a sale to the Ling clan, or even the Ling family,” Ling Yu said matter-of-factly. “We will take both the Fei-Mu lotus and the jasmine.”

“Erm…” the youth looked a bit nonplussed for a moment, before Ling Yu finally sighed and pulled out her family talisman.

“I… Young Lady Ling,” he spluttered, stepping backward while simultaneously trying to bow.

She caught him by the arm before he could fall backwards into a pond and make an idiot of himself.

“We are here incognito,” she said with as beautiful a smile as she could muster. “We will probably need to speak to your grand-uncle again, I assume.”

“Ah… uh… yes,” Zhen Fei mumbled, steadying himself.

“Then we shall take a quick circuit through the rest of the biomes while you go tell him we will be making a purchase,” she suggested gently.

“Ah… yes… of course, Young Lady Ling, Young Lady Jun,” the youth bowed and hurried off.

When he had left, she took Ling Yu by the arm and quietly asked her. “We can afford to buy both those, yes? They will cost thousands of spirit stones each.”

“Yep, I brought ten Earth Jades with me,” Ling Yu replied cheerfully, making it her turn to nearly trip and fall into a pond in surprise.

“Ten!” she hissed.

“Relax, nobody is going to rob me,” Ling Yu chuckled.

On balance, that was probably true, but ten thousand spirit stones was enough to found a small village sect. She shuddered and composed herself, going back to look at the biomes.

There was nothing qi-gathering that was suitable in the earth one, not that she needed one of those now. The fire biome did in fact have an interesting plant – a desertic cactus from the North Fissure flats that, had she been in possession of an Earth Jade of her own, she might have bought herself. The metal biome, as it was a transitory period between the dry season and the wet season, was basically bare of anything as those with money sought to prepare water element spirit ponds and such.

“You didn’t take long to decide,” Zhang Bei said cheerfully, meeting them as they returned to the entrance of the arboretum. “However, as much as I would love to sell you that jasmine… I have signed a contract with the Ling family for its deliverance.”

“It’s fine, Fan won’t complain,” Ling Yu said blandly, proffering her family jade for the old man to see. “May I see the contract?”

“…”

Zhong Bei looked conflicted, before waving a hand and sending a servant running. A few moments later they returned with a fancy scroll that Ling Yu skimmed before nodding.

“There is no problem here; my older brother charged it to the estate rather than waste his own money on it,” Ling Yu said drily. “For once his penchant for spending other people’s hard-won spirit stones backfires. Nothing in my purchasing it for the Ling family estate contravenes this contract at all.”

“Won’t Young Noble Ling Fan…?” the old man looked a bit uneasy, presumably at the idea of making an enemy out of Ling Yu’s older brother and potentially his social circle and backers.

“It’s fine,” Ling Yu shook her head again. “If you sell it to me, I can guarantee you payment here and now – I can also guarantee it won’t end up on some alchemist’s chopping block if he gets bored of it.”

“I understand your assertion… but—” Zhong Bei tried again, only for Ling Yu to cut him off more decisively.

“It will not come back to you,” her friend said archly. “This young lady will owe your warehouse a graciousness, which I am sure is a lot more than what my brother was giving you for it.”

“He was paying twelve hundred spirit stones for it,” the old man said with aplomb.

“Then let us consider this matter closed,” Ling Yu said with a pretty smile, simply using her own seal over the top of Ling Fan’s on the contract to update it.

“Regarding the Fei-Mu lotus,” she interjected, speaking to Zhong Bei. “It’s in excellent condition. I assume it was nurtured in captivity?”

“Indeed, it has been transplanted from its parent plant in the Kun estates to the south. The owners are selling it off to allow for a wedding ceremony for their eldest daughter, my niece,” Zhong Bei agreed.

“Hmmmmm…” Ling Yu gently smiled. “How does two Earthly Jades for the jasmine and two for the lotus sound? I’ll give another Jade as a personal gift to the family who were selling the lotus. A personal gift from me, rather than the Ling clan, wishing the bride and her new family well.”

The old man nearly fell over as Ling Yu produced five glittering amber stones, each about the size of her thumbnail. The spiritual aura in the room jumped up noticeably and the plants nearby all twitched slightly.

She had to admit that Ling Yu had a way with making friends and contacts that both her brothers and a few others in the Ling clan should probably be rightly concerned about. With a single generous act she had basically bought a small fountain of goodwill with one of the more established trade houses on the docks, just from that single gift. It was the kind of thing neither of her brothers would have bothered to do, and who would more likely have invited themselves to the wedding and used it as an excuse to get drunk and flirt with one too many women.

“Thank you for your generosity, Young Lady Ling,” the old man bowed, stashing the stones away rapidly.

“What of the catalysts?” she asked politely.

“—Ah, those are likely awaiting your inspection in the main hall,” Zhong Bei replied. “Please follow me.”

They followed after the old man as he practically skipped back through the hall to the main warehouse and led them over to where a group of workers were unpacking several crates. Fei Weng was also there now, leaning nearby with a mild scowl on his face.

Leaving Ling Yu to trade pleasantries with Zhong Bei and his grand-nephew under the gaze of Fei Weng who was rapidly introduced as her personal guard, she quickly started to check through the jars. To her mild relief, the quality was certainly better than anything she might have easily or affordably gotten a hold of on the other side of the river. The jars were all stamped with the seal of the Blue Gate School as well. After how well everything else had gone it would have been unfortunate if these were sub-standard.

Quickly tallying up the cost of the two crates, she costed the lot at about three hundred spirit stones.

“Do they meet your requirements, Young Lady?” the warehouse quartermaster, standing nearby, asked.

“They do,” she nodded. “Twenty spirit stones a jar I assume?”

“No need, no need,” Zhong Bei said, coming over. “Please consider them as part of the other purchase.”

She eyed him in surprise, but from Zhong Bei’s perspective it made sense in a way. Ling Yu was paying four thousand spirit stones for the two plants, overpaying somewhat in fact, to make a bit of a personal point.

“Not at all,” Ling Yu said with a smile, drawing out four eye-sized shimmering green Spirit Jade stamped with the Ling clan crest with aplomb. “I am not my brothers.”

Fei Weng, stood in the background now, had the perfectly schooled face of someone who was expecting to have to do some explaining to the estate accountant later on.

“It is difficult to make a living in this city as it is,” Ling Yu said diplomatically, putting on her best ‘young miss will do this, and you will like it’ face. “If we stop paying for things and rely only on words, people will think we are all made only of hot air.”

“Young Lady is truly kind and honourable,” the various people standing around all saluted them both, making her feel just a touch awkward. Even Fei Weng couldn’t resist an eye roll at that.

“Young Lady Ling truly has an upstanding character,” Zhong Bei bowed deeply. “But I feel I must insist, else people will say I am simply taking advantage of the Ling family’s young miss. Please give this old man face and accept these other things.”

“…”

“You put me in a difficult position, Sir Bei,” Ling Yu also bowed politely. “Very well, I shall accept your good intentions.”

Both Zhong Bei and Ling Yu bowed again politely to each other and Ling Yu returned the Spirit Jades to her storage ring.

“Regarding these purchases, shall we deliver the plants to your estate, Young Lady Ling?” Zhong Bei added, straightening again.

“Someone will come from the estate to collect them in due course,” Fei Weng interjected smoothly, to which Ling Yu just nodded in agreement.

“Do you happen to have any insights into where we might get a metal attribute, qi-gathering spirit herb of similar quality and manner to your water jasmine in the city at the moment?” she asked politely as the workers scurried off.

“…”

“Hmmm…” Zhong Bei frowned, staring up at the ceiling for a long moment. “I heard the Wind and Waves Auction tomorrow might have some unusual spirit herbs like that, but metal ones are quite rare. Nobody is going to be trading them at this end of the season except at a massive premium. That auction is also likely to be…”

“—swarming with young nobles, here for the Imperial Princess?” Ling Yu finished for him, making a face.

“Young Lady Ling sees it clearly,” Zhong Bei nodded.

“We can only keep looking, it seems,” Ling Yu said with sigh.

“I can make some enquiries of course, Young Lady Ling,” Zhong Bei added smoothly, “if you leave me with a list of what you need.”

She glanced sideways at Ling Yu who nodded. It was a matter of a few moments to copy the prerequisites for suitable metal element, nurturing spirit herbs onto a scroll, which Zhong Bei passed to his warehouse quartermaster after skimming them and nodding a few times. Bowing a few more times, they took their leave of the warehouse and hurried back out into the rain.

“Why didn’t we wait for the people from the Ling clan?” she asked as they made their way down the promenade and onwards towards the part of the Little Harbour district where the pottery workshops were.

“I heard the maids talking before we left about a fancy meal in the Golden Dragon Teahouse,” Ling Yu said with an uncharacteristic scowl. “Putting two and two together, it will likely relate to this Imperial Princess. Mother will undoubtedly want to drag me along. It would be very tiresome,” Ling Yu said with a bright smile.

“So you’re using me as an excuse to avoid being paraded around in front of all sorts of young nobles while your mother looks to see if any of them are good enough to marry you off to?” she surmised drily.

Beside them, Fei Weng just kept looking straight ahead, again no doubt seeing much need for explanation in his future. She had a momentary pang of sympathy for him.

“Young Lady Jun’s wisdom is a gift from heaven,” her friend said, bowing to her mockingly.

“…”

“I bet this rain is making a total pig’s ass of their grand tournament,” Ling Yu snickered, changing the topic as she sent the instructions to go collect the herbs back to the Ling estate with her message jade.

“Probably,” she agreed. “It’s also likely playing all kinds of havoc with Arai’s epic mission to teach a bunch of young masters how to catch ginseng.”

“That sounds like it could be quite a lot of fun,” Ling Yu chuckled.

“Oh, sweet friend of mine,” she giggled. “You only say that because you don’t know how mean-spirited and unforgiving wild ginseng are!”

“I did want to go out and experience the Low Valleys,” Ling Yu pouted…

“—Not a chance,” Fei Weng muttered, which made Ling Yu spin her umbrella and pretend-sulk even harder.

They walked on, through the rain, watching life go by as her friend continued to complain about how much the Ling clan stifled her desire to just go out and be one with the world. It was a strange feeling, because of the two, Ling Yu was probably the one who was currently dressed more like a commoner. As they walked, arm in arm through the streets under their umbrella, she could see people usually glance at her first. She could almost fancy she was a noble miss of some minor family out for an afternoon stroll.

“I have to say, this is turning out to be a much more interesting afternoon than I expected,” Ling Yu sighed, leaning against her as they threaded across the bridges that connected the land portion of the harbour to the docklands proper.

“It’s fairly normal,” she replied.

“On the contrary, I never get to see this kind of stuff,” Ling Yu complained, casting a dark look at Fei Weng.

“With good reason, Miss Ling. It’s quite rough down here,” Fei Weng replied, watching a group of youths wearing vibrant clothes walk by.

“Killjoy,” Ling Yu muttered.

“He has a point, though,” she conceded.

“Grandpa Baisheng would be here to catch me before I’d even begun to stub a toe,” Ling Yu sniffed.

“And so does the reality of the Big Miss return to the moment,” she said, giving Ling Yu a playful poke.

The three of them walked on, through the rain-drenched streets of the Little Harbour district, trading meaningless banter until she finally brought them to the Hurong Ceramics workshop. To call it a workshop was a bit disingenuous, really: at this point it was closer to a manufactory warehouse that adjoined the original workshop as she understood it. It was also one of the oldest in the whole city, having been here for long enough that even Old Grandmaster Mang, possibly the oldest person she knew to give common greeting to, remembered where it was.

They made their way through into the inner court where workmen were bustling around moving pots of all sorts, either singly or by the crate-load into various wagons, carts, storage containers and other forms of storage for shipment out.

Beyond that, she finally found one of the warehouse officials and introduced Ling Yu. Upon learning that Ling Yu was in fact ‘that’ Big Miss, the woman practically danced and scattered petals as she led them through to the inner warehouse and told them to look around at their leisure while she went to get someone with actual authority.

“I must admit, this is going much more easily than the last time I was here,” she said with a sigh. “I hope they kind of don’t remember that…”

“Ohh?” Ling Yu perked up a bit, making her laugh a bit. Her friend’s instinct for amusing anecdotes was almost a Dao unto its own.

“Ah… Young Lady Ling, a pleasure,” an older voice murmured as the official returned with one of the managers. “Unfortunately, I regret to tell you that Grandmaster Hurong and his sons have closed up early and gone to the Golden Dragon Teahouse. There is a meeting of all important personages of the town there this afternoon, hosted by the city leaders in honour of some visiting personage from the Huang clan, I believe.”

“…”

She sighed, and Ling Yu nodded, waving to her.

“In that case, might we leave a request for an appointment as soon as possible, Sir Manager?” she asked politely.

“Of course… Young Lady Ling was it… I am sure a meeting can be arranged for tomorrow, or… if it is important someone can come consult at the Ling estates directly?”

“That would be easiest,” Fei Weng interjected, making Ling Yu pout and cross her arms. Clearly she had wanted to see the workshops.

“Well that was a bit anti-climactic,” Ling Yu grumbled as they made their way back through the Hurong Ceramics workshop.

“At least they will come sort the pot tomorrow,” she pointed out. “It’s not exactly like anyone can walk in here and get a next day home appointment from a Grandmaster formations expert… We still need the metal element spirit herb anyway.”

They walked out in silence to find that the rain had finally, if probably only for a short while, ceased. It took her looking at her own scrip to grasp the time – two hours before dusk, so six in the evening, although you would not have known it looking at the sky, which was still grey and overcast. Lower layers of mist swirled above the city as well, dense enough to obscure the tops of some of the taller buildings across the city and make the more distant watchtowers of the harbour or tall pagodas shadows in the haze. It also muffled the ever-present bustle of the city, the creak of ropes from ships, the rumble of carts, the hubbub of people.

“If we are finished with this shopping trip, you should call for a carriage,” Fei Weng suggested.

“After it’s stopped raining?” Ling Yu giving the guard a sideways look.

“He has a point,” she conceded, her gaze drawn to the flares of light that rose from the central district where the tournament, or perhaps tournaments, still continued. “At least to take us back across the river.”

“If it’s just that, we can teleport,” Ling Yu said.

“Can’t teleport in the city at the moment,” Fei Weng said with a sigh. “Special order of the Imperial Envoy’s palace; it was circulated even before they arrived in the city.”

“Well, it’s a nice evening for now, so we might as well walk then,” Ling Yu said, and before either of them could voice any further objections, started to walk off in the direction of the central plaza.

It took a moment for her to catch up, but when she did, Ling Yu threaded her own arm through hers and set off at a brisk pace back through the Little Harbour. Fei Weng followed along behind closely, because Little Harbour in the evening was, as the emergent nightlife was already evidencing, not the same district as Little Harbour in the day.

Now released from the rain, the streets were also bustling and packed with people going about daily business that had been put off earlier.

Stalls were out, street vendors trying to make up for a day’s lost sales from those now visiting the ‘old quarter’ of the city who had been lured from their teahouses by the lack of rain. Already drinking houses and gambling dens were also opening on side streets as they made their way onwards. Pleasure barges were lighting their lanterns on the canals, beauties dressed in fine silks starting to call to young men and women while toughs took up stations in case people wanted to enjoy themselves without payment.

She was pretty sure that Ling Yu wanted to walk just so she could see the city like this. Usually she was taken around with maids and guards… or a carriage, and everyone was aware of who she was and perhaps more importantly what she represented.

“You would think it was a festival or something,” Ling Yu remarked, eyeing all the flags with Imperial Court and Dun clan sigils on them as they threaded their path across the main bridge off the Little Harbour and back onto the mainland and the central district.

“It kind of is,” she pointed out. “It’s not everyday someone from the Imperial Court, a Princess no less, comes all the way over the ocean.”

“It’s just one Princess; there are 119 of them, you know,” Ling Yu retorted with a pout, stepping out of the way as a young tumbler vaulted along the edge of the parapet over the river, using the lingering effects of the rain to make their performance seem more impressive.

“You say that too loudly and some youth might actually challenge you to a duel,” she said with a grin.

“Bring ‘em. If they are under Severing Origins, I’ll throw them in the Grand Canal,” Ling Yu snickered.

“Please don’t,” Fei Weng muttered behind them. “The city is crawling with people from out of town.”

“You lot never stop my brothers picking fights with people,” Ling Yu pointed out. “And you always clean up after them as well.”

“With the greatest respect, young miss,” Fei Weng said a bit wanly, “you beating people half to death in the street is not the same as them.”

“This is what we have to put up with,” Ling Yu exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air in mock frustration and stalking off ahead of Fei Weng.

Laughing, she hurried after Ling Yu, quickly catching her up. After that, they walked on, pausing only to buy some snacks from a street stall to eat, watching the city bustle by as the streets slowly transformed into much more upmarket affairs as they rose towards the central district.

Arriving back in the main plaza proper, they found it thronged with a crowd maybe one hundred thousand strong at this point, watching the competition on a duelling stage someone had set up in the middle of the grand concourse. Several smaller stages had also been set up around the square, holding smaller crowds, and smaller fights. Everywhere people were discussing the dazzling displays and victories earlier in the day.

“Oh, someone from the Ling clan is fighting over here,” Ling Yu said, sounding surprised and, she noted, a little bit hopeful?

“It is unlikely to be either of your brothers,” she suggested with a certain degree of amusement.

“It seems neither of them have fought,” Fei Weng remarked as they threaded their way, Ling Yu in the lead, towards one of the side stages. “I checked the listings of who fought and how they have been ranked, and unless they fought anonymously…”

“Ahh, ahahahaha!” Ling Yu laughed out loud, making people turn to see what had set her off. “Those two couldn’t act anonymously were they in a room full of only clones of themselves.”

“You—” Ling Yu grabbed a random youth wearing bright robes and sporting an inadvisable beard from the edge of the crowd. “Have you seen either Ling Fan or Ling Mu about here today?”

“You mean Young Noble Ling Fan and Young Noble Ling Mu?” the youth retorted.

“That’s them,” Ling Yu agreed, nodding.

“No,” the youth sighed sadly, possibly taking her for an admirer. “I’d hoped Young Lord Fan would uphold honour for Blue Water City with all these young nobles from the—”

“Thanks,” Ling Yu said dismissively and left the youth working his mouth in confusion as she threaded her way through the crowd to a point where they could see the smaller stage.

“Young Master Fan was at the Blue Gate School earlier,” Fei Weng said, catching up to them again and stashing a talisman away. “Apparently he was invited in by some of his friends, including the young master from the Deng clan, to listen to a visiting elder from the Pill Sovereign Sect speak about their Supreme Pill Alchemy Canon.”

“Is his surname even Ling?” Ling Yu grumbled as they finally got to a point where they could see the stage.

Of the two fighting on it currently one was clearly from the Ling clan based on his attire, the other, however, she didn’t recognise. The vast majority of those in attendance were cheering for them though, rather than the local.

“Who is fighting?” she asked Ling Yu, who was watching pensively as the pair danced around each other, deflecting waves of intent-infused qi, wondering why nobody much was cheering for the youth from the Ling clan.

“Ling Tengfei, a distant cousin. The other is Wei Zhaohui.”

“Oh.”

-Well, that makes sense, she thought with a sigh, looking around at the cheering crowd.

Wei Zhaohui was a local celebrity of sorts, although she only knew him by name and reputation. When she was younger, she had also read the five bronze talisman story scrolls they sold in the markets about tales of down on their luck people, juniors usually, stumbling across some fabulous treasure or inheritance, usually in the most preposterous circumstances, and rising to heaven in a single bound. Wei Zhaohui was… well, someone who had actually had that happen; he acquired part of the teaching of some ancient expert from the time of the Blue Water Sage in a random cave in the mountains south of Blue Water City.

In short, Wei Zhaohui was the living, breathing, all singing, all dancing evidence to many among the younger generation of Blue Water Province of those self-same tales, of the dream that they too might one day soar. Someone like Ling Tengfei, born to a great clan, a relative of the city ruler no less, was almost the narrative antithesis of that.

“Fifty spirit stones says Hero Zhaohui wins with the next exchange!” a woman in a glorious peacock-coloured robe standing next to the stage yelled.

“One spirit treasure on Ling Tengfei lasting two more moves!” someone else yelled as various people ran around taking wagers on the fight.

“Seventy-five spirit stones…”

“Two Nascent Soul spirit herbs!”

The bets ran on as she watched them back off, having made their ‘exchange’. These battles were not really ‘fights’, as she would have viewed them. Usually, the combatants fought for either three rounds, or more. Each round they exchanged a technique, and the person who came out ahead, namely the one who blocked the attack aimed for them and landed the attack they delivered, was judged to have won. Victory was by successful techniques, knockout or judges’ score usually.

She watched as Wei Zhaohui spun his spear and charged forward, pulling the momentum of his intent around him to strike at Ling Tengfei. Both were peak Nascent Soul experts, likely at or approaching Severing Origins, which was considered well above average for people under the age of twenty in Blue Water province.

{Seven Stars Celestial Spear}

The intent behind the attack almost blazed its name to the audience as people exclaimed and continued to cheer on Wei Zhaohui. The strike was certainly showy, she had to give it that. The grand momentum it built up as Wei Zhaohui sent strike after strike towards Ling Tengfei, rolling over his guard and scattering the defensive art he had used to shelter from it, made the whole stage shake.

Ling Tengfei finally succumbed and crumpled into the edge of the barrier as the fifth strike landed, spitting blood and unable to fight any longer as his opponent’s qi and Martial Intent overwhelmed his own.

“Winner! Wei Zhaohui! Overall winner – Wei Zhaohui with two wins and one defeat!” an old man stood unobtrusively on the edge of the platform, wearing the robes of the Blue Gate School, declared grandly.

It was certainly impressive, but watching it just made her think of running away from tetrid stalkers or serpents in the valleys between East Fury and Thunder Crest. No fireworks there, just creeping death and no option to make a mistake.

The arts they were using were powerful, any one of those would ruin her, but at the same time, she could see that if you put them up in those forests they would break trees, ruin rocks, and get bitten in the back of the head by a spider they never saw, or dragged into some snake hole, or smothered in qi-dampening vines.

“Well, that was anti-climactic,” she shrugged, turning away.

“Are the noble duelling styles of the youth not to your liking?” Ling Yu snickered.

“It is very impressive,” she conceded, looking around at the crowd who were pushing by to congratulate the winner.

“Good martial arts from both of them,” Fei Weng mused. “Although clearly young Tengfei has been spending too much time in teahouses and not enough time training.”

A few people nearby eyed them dubiously and one, a youth in Ling clan garb, part of a group who were clearly with Ling Tengfei, started to walk in their direction only to be swept away by the crowd mobbing around Wei Zhaohui. She offered a wry prayer for his good fortune in the fates intervening to stop him getting in trouble with Ling Yu.

“What do you think?” Ling Yu asked her.

“I’m not getting caught in that trap… again,” she replied as superciliously as she could manage.

“No, really… they put all this store by these big techniques…” Ling Yu’s emphasis on ‘big’ made one or two women nearby giggle and Fei Weng look a bit put out at what amounted to a rather crude insinuation.

“I wonder how they would fare against a tetrid stalker or three,” she said diplomatically. “Or a rock centipede… or a small swarm of those accursed spiders from the Shadow Forest.”

“I admit that would be funny,” Ling Yu chuckled.

“Their fighting styles are too impractical, from my perspective,” she said finally. “Under the suppression, up in the Yin Eclipse Mountains, they would make too much noise, and they are not quick or decisive enough. Neither had… conviction… in their strikes.”

“Fighting beasts is not like fighting people,” Fei Weng agreed, nodding seriously as they moved on, across the plaza. “Forms like that are only good for these kind of duels. Not for the battlefield, unless you want to become a big fat target.”

“—And fighting plants is not like fighting beasts,” she added.

“I suppose,” Ling Yu nodded. “It is just a bunch of duels for honour and reputation though, not a fight to the death.”

“True,” she agreed, a bit more quietly. “But…”

It was hard to put into words really.

“They do… lack an understanding of conviction in their intent,” she said with a sigh. “Both of them could flatten me in the street as easily as you could in all likelihood… but they are still… It’s not something you can easily put into words…”

“How so?” Ling Yu asked, turning to look at her.

“You have never killed anyone,” she said quietly, suddenly feeling a bit cold, even in the humid evening air.

That was not a nice memory.

She and Arai had killed three robbers who had accosted the convoy of herbs they had been sent to inventory north of West Flower Picking Town… four years ago. The bandits, who had attacked likely because they thought two fourteen year old girls and a wagon driver had been an easy mark, had mostly been Qi Refinement. The two of them had barely broken through to Physical Foundation, the equivalent realm at that point.

She had burned one of them with a talisman, and he had screamed for far, far too long.

They had had to fight off the other two with the help of a few locals who arrived after the initial ambush. A militia patrol had come shortly after to find them sitting in the middle of the road beside a smashed wagon, pale and shaking, trying not to cry; a burning corpse in the middle of the road, two badly stabbed bandits and a bleeding wagon driver nearby.

If she closed her eyes, even now, nearly four years later, she could still recall the older bandit’s screams as he burned, and the smell, too.

She drew upon her mantra and fed the unpleasant memory to it, shaking her head.

A roar made her turn to look at the middle of the plaza. On the main stage, she watched as the victor, a youth wearing grey armour and carrying a blade, kicked his opponent off the platform, gave a whoop and then pointed towards the Golden Dragon Teahouse where various people stood watching from an upper balcony overlooking the square. Some of them even applauded.

“Killing is not the same as that,” Fei Weng agreed, following her gaze.

“Mmmmm,” Ling Yu just nodded, saying nothing more as they continued to thread their way through the plaza.

The rest of the walk back to the Ling estate was entirely uneventful. She bought herself a few more bits of spirit food from street vendors along the way, mostly to lift her own spirits after having been reminded of the lingering smell of burning bodies.

There, however, reality came slithering back in, as they were met by a bevy of maids and escorted into the estate’s inner courtyard, arriving before the vexed countenance of Lady Huian – one of the ladies-in-waiting to Ling Yu’s mother, Lady Ling Zhenzhen.

“You are late, Miss Yu,” the older woman said sternly. “It was expected you would only be out for the morning, and yet the sun has near set afore you have graced this estate’s doorstep again… It is unbecoming of a young lady.”

Ling Yu just raised an eyebrow and swept by her as if she had spoken to the wall. “I take it mother is still in the estates out of town?” she said, looking at the various talismans that had built up on a table in the hall.

“The Lady Ling is at the banquet hosted in honour of the Imperial Princess at the Golden Dragon Teahouse and banquet hall. You were to go with her, but you were not here.”

“I assume my brothers are also eating out then,” Ling Yu added.

“They are with your mother, at the event your father is hosting, for Young Noble Huang and Imperial Princess Dun Lian,” Huian said sternly, “Unlike you, who has been running around…with your friend all afternoon.”

The woman’s sideways gaze settled on her, making her skin prickle and her breath grow ragged for a second before it passed. The implication in Lady Huian’s rebuke was one only a blind idiot could miss. That Ling Yu, by spending the afternoon running around the city, was doing a disservice to the Ling family, unlike her siblings.

“It is what it is,” Ling Yu said simply. “If it was important, I am sure Grandpa Baisheng would have mentioned it.”

“…”

The lady-in-waiting’s face twitched slightly at Ling Yu’s remark, but she said nothing. The riddle of why Ling Yu could walk sideways and always had her Grandpa Baisheng to fall back on was something she had just come to quietly accept. Her friend was afforded a remarkable amount of latitude in who her friends were and what she did within the Ling family, but it occasionally led to awkward moments like this and being party to them was always awkward for her.

Ling Yu had a very strange relationship with her mother, and as someone who would have sold everything she owned and then some for a single moment longer with her own, that was hard for her to reconcile at times.

“We will eat out at the Myriad Blossoms Teahouse,” Ling Yu said after a moment. “First, though, Grandmaster Hurong Tan will come here tomorrow to see about a new pot for my ginseng – to remedy the problem caused by my brothers. When he arrives, I wish to be informed.”

For all that she was only barely seventeen, in that moment she had to acknowledge that the polite, disarming, open Ling Yu was gone and in her place was a proper noble daughter, with a remarkable presence. The maids actually stepped back, for all that they were all Immortal realm cultivators. Even the Lady Huian paused and then just sighed, clearly having decided that her part in this was done.

“I will send ahead. How many?” Lady Huian said, defeated.

“Just the two of us, I think, but reserve a quiet table, overlooking the gardens on the fourth floor, and make sure it isn’t cross-booked by some other young noble, will you?” Ling Yu added.

“As you say, young miss,” Lady Huian bowed slightly and then waved the rest of the maids away and went off to her own matters, leaving them standing in the courtyard.

“I must apologize for that,” Ling Yu said with a sad sigh.

“…”

She said nothing as they walked back through a colonnaded walk along the edge of the gardens which now looked like a quarry for spirit plants.

“This place is going to be thoroughly inhospitable until they put the formations back in,” Ling Yu judged as they made their way towards her quarters.

“Well, if they get Grandmaster Mang to fix it up, it will likely be as good, if not better than it was before,” she mused.

“You find it strange that I don’t get on with mother,” Ling Yu sighed deeply again.

She barely avoided tripping over a paving kerb at the sudden non-question.

“Every family has their own circumstances,” she replied as diplomatically as she could.

“And yet you would give everything to see yours again…” Ling Yu said softly… “Sorry, I showed you such an unsightly scene earlier.”

“Don’t be,” she said, taking her friend’s hand. There was perhaps more she could say to the younger girl, but her intuition told her to just leave it at that.

“You and Arai are so close, and yet… I have this adversarial relationship with my brothers… They play us against each other… those wretched old elders and advisors. None of them want a female inheritor of the Ling clan, so I am just a piece to move between them. I will never have what either of those two have…” Ling Yu muttered, trailing off.

“I said it’s not important,” she said decisively. “You are you.”

“That’s the kind of thing my Aunt Tao would say,” Ling Yu said with a slight sniff that she pretended not to notice in the soft light and shadow of the lantern lit veranda.

“Grandpa Baisheng,” Ling Yu said softly.

“Yes, child?”

She avoided jumping, barely, as a shadow stepped away from a nearby tree to become a middle-aged man with a stately beard wearing a broad straw hat with some baubles on it and a long azure gown covered in patterns of small dancing animals.

“Seal my rooms. I don’t want either of those morons getting near Little Blue before I can take him to Auntie Tao’s.”

“Done,” the old man murmured, then stepped back into the shadows as if he was never here.

“I will never get used to that,” she muttered, looking around at the dark gardens.

“I used to think it was funny. I could call him and he always appeared behind and slightly to the left of people who annoyed me. Nine times out of ten they jumped like a scared cat,” Ling Yu said with a giggle, her previous humour restored.

“So… if we are going to the Myriad Blossoms Teahouse, we can’t have you looking like a minor official either,” her friend said critically eyeing her in the gloom. “I have a few spirit gowns you can try on that will… resize.”

“That’s… not necessary,” she muttered, a bit awkward for a different reason now.

She did have a gown in her talisman – she carried one every time she came to Blue Water City, just in case she had to go do something formal at the Hunter Pavilion. You could only look like a vagabond if your cultivation matched or exceeded your rank by quite some margin, she had found. If you were some junior official of the Hunter Bureau adrift between bronze and silver without a powerful family to back you up, you had to look like a classy merchant’s daughter at the very least – or people just walked right over you.

“I rather think it is. It’s bad enough that half my family and people like Huian treat you like you are my handmaid, rather than my friend. Don’t put up with it out there,” Ling Yu sniffed.

She shook her head and hid a weird smile behind her hand as she was pulled by the hand after Ling Yu, who headed for her rooms with renewed purpose all of a sudden, humming a catchy, if sad-sounding tune under her breath.

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

~ DUN LIAN JING – BLUE WATER CITY, GOLDEN DRAGON TEAHOUSE ~

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

Dun Lian Jing, well, Lian Jing as she usually thought of herself, sat in a private room on the second floor of the Golden Dragon Teahouse, in a terrible mood.

The Headmaster of the Blue Gate School had been everything that was frustrating to deal with in these mid-ranked influences. Polite, efficacious, and totally coy about everything they asked. The other local powers had at least been a bit more helpful in their way. Willing to fawn over them for influence and more than willing to spill everything they knew in the process if they felt it would get them her sympathetic ear or some recognition with the Huang clan.

“At least that atrocious rain has stopped,” she muttered, staring out of the window at the plaza for a long moment.

It was like a metaphor for this whole city, possibly this whole endeavour in its own way, especially after…

To avoid grinding her teeth over that fate-accursed orchid, she snagged one of the remaining pastries and chewed that instead.

There was a game, of sorts, that got played, if you could call it that. Some in the Imperial Palace’s younger generation did view it as a kind of game. A puzzle of how far you could poke and prod to get your way before people snapped and you got to take home all your winnings, because the game was rigged, always rigged in your favour. They played it on sects, on old family rivalries, at the behest of their seniors, or for their juniors… and they also played it on each other. That was the kind of thing you always had to look out for in the Imperial Palace – even the guards set to mind you might also have someone else’s interests in mind.

“Fanshu, I hope someone puts monkey piss in your soup,” she cursed to the world at large.

The only parties responsible for that pointless bit of escalation could be the two shadows the Imperial Palace had sent with them. The most likely person who would benefit from screwing them, and her in particular, over like this was Dun Fanshu – the Third Imperial Prince.

She shot a look at the pair of attendants, standing motionless by the door to the room, and waved a hand at the woman in the Huang clan robe.

“Yes, Imperial Daughter?” the woman, who was basically Jilao’s personal maid said politely.

“When will JiLao arrive?”

They had split earlier, when it became clear that the meetings with the various clans were going to be exercises in obsequious fishing on their part. Something had clearly been bothering him, as well, and with that fate-thrashed orchid, the whole thing was awkward, so she had simply made her excuses and come back here.

The Huang clan servant bowed politely. “As far as this servant knows, he is still meeting with the head of the Deng and Ling clans. He said he would be here on time, Your Highness.”

“And what of the Imperial Envoy?” she asked the other woman, who was an attendant from the Imperial Envoy’s palace, assigned to attend her.

He had been meant to meet with her an hour ago, to discuss the banquet in the evening, but basically just sent a maid to relay his ‘sincere apologies’.

“Duke Qiao will be here at the appropriate time…. Imperial Highness,” The attendant from the Imperial Envoy’s palace paused briefly… but caught herself.

She shook her head. Her expression would not be visible under the veil, but she let the servant know that her pause was inappropriate simply by the manner of her aura. The woman, who was barely an Immortal, shivered slightly but didn’t move.

“Leave me… Send someone up with a local delicacy worthy of my status and don’t come back until JiLao returns,” she said, perfunctorily dismissing both of them.

It was ruining her mood having the two women haunting the corner.

The Huang maid said nothing, just bowed politely.

“Yes, imperial daughter,” the imperial palace maid murmured.

She narrowed her eyes behind her veil, had the woman just…?

“Oh…”

The maid stopped, frozen, probably wondering if her little discourtesy had been marked.

She shook her head, and the woman fled with alacrity, no doubt to report back to Imperial Envoy Qiao that the ‘Princess’ was everything they had expected, and maybe more.

“Let it not be said that I am that unreasonable,” she sighed, letting the woman leave after the Huang maid.

Some of her siblings would have had the woman beaten for just that little slip, on principle, or worse. Insult to the ‘Imperial Person’ voided quite a few ‘rights’ and ‘privileges’ under the rule of the ‘Blue Morality’ – the Heavenly Mandate of the Dun Imperial Dynasty.

“What to do… what to do…” she muttered, leaning on the edge of the railing and watching the world go by outside.

The rain was starting again, she noted. It was atrocious to walk about in, but it was also adding a certain unpredictable element to the stupid tournament going on outside in her ‘honour’.

“Your Highness,” there was a very polite knock on the door.

She half glanced over as a group of maids for the teahouse brought in food and drink, bowed politely and left, backing out of the room.

“Ah,” she waved at the last one, who froze, sweating.

“I have no interest in meeting any of the young nobles loitering. Tell them all to scram and bother some functionary.”

“Of course, Imperial Daughter,” the singled-out maid said with a deep curtsy.

“See that I really am not disturbed until Huang Ji Lao gets here,” she added sternly.

“Of course, Imperial Daughter,” the maid curtsied again and backed out of the room at her gesture of dismissal.

She poured herself a cup of the tea and sipped it.

“Mediocre,” she sighed, but took another sip anyway.

Normally, she didn’t mind the ‘imperial blend’, a lifetime living in the Imperial Court had forced her to at least outwardly appreciate it, but there was just something about it here, in this city that, that made it sit… or linger unpleasantly on her tongue.

If she demanded it the owner would ransack half the city for a better blend, but really, it just wasn’t worth it. There was such a thing as the fuss just not being worth the amusement it would cause. Some of her siblings would have done it, certainly, but she liked to think she was at least better than them in that regard as well.

-It has just been that kind of day, I suppose, she reflected with a soft sigh.

Setting the cup of tea aside, she went back to watching the people rush by in the lantern-lit plaza. Night-time did somewhat improve the view of the city, it had to be said. In the day, even the rain obscured day, it was far too obvious how… provincial Blue Water City was.

Some might have called the hustle and bustle quaint… but to her, used to the grandeur of the Imperial Capital, Blue Morality City, it was just tedious and lacking. Aping more famous constructions, styles and whatnot. Even its famous Blue Pavilions were derivatives of the 'Dragon Pillar Pagoda'.

If there was something to be said for it, at least the populace had pride in their backwater stack of mud bricks. That was more than you saw in a lot of the much older cities of the Imperial continent.

Outside, the tournament on the middle platform had reached the final few contenders as far as she could see. The level of the competitors was… kind of bad, in all honesty. One was from Pill Sovereign City, an Immortal realm alchemist who had gotten this far purely on a rare spirit flame his family had no doubt acquired for him at great expense. His opponent was from the… Deng clan, she guessed by his robes, from the Blue Gate School. Also an Immortal but barely in the younger generation at this point.

She let her gaze linger on their posturing for a few moments longer before turning back to the food and considering the repast, such as it was. It was tempting to take the teapot and put a random formation on it, then send it out there and tell them all that whoever solved it would get an audience with her.

“Most of them would still be trying when the next generation turned,” she snickered, picking a piece of roast fish and nibbling it.

The Blue Gate School was at least a real school though – sure its juniors were all either fawning toadies or mediocre ducks dreaming of being swans, but they were still better than what little she had seen of Fanshu’s little puppet, the Teng School.

“And who calls their school ‘Golden Promise’ anyway?” she said to the world at large. “That sounds like the name of a brothel dreamed up by a bunch of confidence scammers…”

Finishing off the piece of fish, which was… better than anticipated spirit food for this backwater, she picked a pastry roll with some kind of steamed ginseng inside it, studiously ignoring the various flashing messages on the transmission jade on the table. At least one would be from Dun Jian, her teacher, who, after the day’s events and that fate-accursed…

She chomped down the roll…

“…”

-Huh… its actually… acceptable, she mused, mildly surprised. It was pleasingly savoury, unlike most similar things in formal imperial cuisine.

Idly she took another and ate that as well, savouring it a bit more, nodding to herself, because it was quite tasty.

“If you want confirmation we got here and made a mess, no thanks to Dun Fanshu and that advice you solicited from him, just look for yourself, Teacher,” she grumbled, tossing a napkin over the talisman.

The only one she was halfway tempted to check was the one that would be from her mother… but really there was nothing to say there either that she wanted to hear these days. While she did remember a time when they had been close, when she was younger, the lifestyle and duties of an Imperial Concubine left little time for her, and her mother invariably just wanted to talk about her youth, not the princess she had striven to become.

A particularly loud cheer drew her attention back to the scenes outside, and the endeavours of the youths fighting. When she measured them against her own struggles, she could only despair slightly, on their behalf.

Nothing would ever come of their ‘talent’ that they lauded as special in this place. She had broken through to Dao Seeking at the age of fifteen. Immortal at seventeen, as soon as was generally acknowledged to not cause complications with the stability of your Sea of Knowledge. Chosen Immortal at twenty-four. And now a Golden Immortal before the age of sixty, and working towards founding a True Principle.

The worst part there was that even though she was certainly talented, she had no doubt of that, even someone like her was, among her peers, an easy target for petty and vain slander.

“What will come of your futile struggles…” she reached out and closed out the window with her hand, blotting out the combatants on the stage in her eyes with a closed fist.

Those above derided her for merely being seventeenth ranked, out of over one hundred princesses. Those below claimed she was only where she was because of Dun Jian – ignoring that Dun Jian taught a veritable stable yard of Imperial scions. They also taunted her for her age. Just because she was among the oldest on the new list once you discounted the top ten, who would never change in this generation.

“Reality is cruel,” she told them, not that any below in the plaza would hear her words. “There is always a higher sky, always a crueller lash to flay your dreams on.”

Taking her half-drunk cup of tea, she saluted the ‘winner’ on the platform, the youth from the Pill Sovereign Sect.

“You who came all the way over here just to ‘win’, should just accept your fate and carve out your niche in mediocrity. All of you in fact… would do better to leave the sky to those of us who have the fate to grasp it.”

Downing the toast to nothing, she cast the idiots outside from her mind again and started to nibble another roll, diverting her attention to the teahouse itself.

“I should at least know which of you I don’t care for ahead of time,” she muttered, thinking about the banquet later. “Given that servant Qiao cannot be bothered to come and fulfil his purpose.”

“…”

Her first glance with her Immortal sense through the common area of the teahouse nearly made her give up on the spot and go back to staring out at the rain-drenched streets.

Those inside were not really any better than those outside in many ways. Those of actual importance or real social status were currently roving around the upper floor, the wives of various clan heads and officials in the city and wider province for the most part. Their husbands and whatever passed for unmarried nobility out here were all meeting with JiLao. She could have sat in on that, but she had a fair idea of how that was going to go anyway, based off their earlier conversation with the Patriarchs of the Deng, Leng and Mu clans.

She swept the various juniors again and sighed.

Almost all of them were Nascent Soul or Dao Seeking, which was to be expected in a backwater like this. Their conversations were… – many were excited to simply be in the same building as her; others were dubious as to whether she was even here. Everywhere she cast her sense, all she saw was rumour and gossip.

The clans present were interesting though. The Ling clan in particular was not one that had a strong connection to the Imperial Court or its politics. Traditionally they had been supporters of the Azure Astral Authority, but politics elsewhere in this part of the starry heavens was shifting that as she understood it. Their young nobles had…

She cast her eyes back outside for a moment, to refresh her memory on the competitors…

They had acquitted themselves reasonably, she supposed, even if nobody of actual status within their earthly branch on this world had competed. Certainly they had done better than most others in the face of the bunch who had come over this side of the ocean to prance about and feel good about themselves bullying the weak in this backwater province.

-Ling Fan… Ling Mu.

Indeed, neither had fought. The younger one she had a vague impression of from passing by that elder from the Pill Sect boasting about his big furnace… The other had been drifting around here with his friends – cronies, really – drinking a lot and doing little else from what she could see. The only other person of import from the Ling clan she could see was actually a Soul Foundation girl talking to a group of disciples – two were Nascent Soul from what she could see, while the other two were… hiding their cultivation, even from her, which was unusual here.

“Fairy Luo… I must say it is a remarkable achievement to have the rank of a Junior Official at your age…” one in white and blue robes edged with gold was saying.

“You praise me, Senior Di,” the girl replied politely, swirling her drink.

“Someone from the Di clan is here?” she actually muttered that out loud, such was her mild surprise.

She looked at the other three for a few moments but couldn’t place them beyond them being from the Din clan…

-And the Din clan? she mused with a faint frown, refocusing on the two ‘leading’ the conversation they certainly didn’t come with me.

“Brother Yao is quite correct… the Authority is indeed over-reaching…” the green-robed man with hidden cultivation murmured.

“Di Yao… Di Yao…?” she frowned, drumming her fingers on the arm of the couch she was sitting, on as she struggled against the stupid weather messing with her soul sense for a moment before placing him.

He was mildly famous, if only for…

-So that is why that old geezer Lu Ji was talking about events of one hundred years ago, she thought, munching down another roll, finally putting two and two together in her head.

They had had the Din clan here, presumably trying to do what they did best – muddy the waters.

“Ah, you already ordered some food,” JiLao – who she had only just marked as approaching with her own Immortal sense which was starting to founder a bit under the rain outside – said, entering the room.

“They brought it. It was complementary. The rolls are not bad,” she supplied, retracting her sense before the weather did it for her.

“Did you know the Din clan was also here?” she asked, pouring herself a cup of the wine.

“The Din clan?” JiLao frowned, absently touching the Official’s Talisman from the Huang clan he currently wore on his robe. “I was not aware.”

“There is a group of them in the party down below, accompanied by… Kong Di Yao,” she said, sipping her tea and trying not to make another face at how bad it was.

“The one who made his name capturing that ‘fox demon’ and became a lineage disciple of the Jade Gate Court as a result? The one associated with the fallout from the scandal around Kong Di Ji?” JiLao mused, raising an eyebrow.

“It might well be,” she acknowledged. “Might be worth trying to find out what their game is?”

“Din clan… Din clan…” JiLao frowned, staring into space for a moment. “Oh, there was something in passing.

“Two somethings, actually: the Din clan are entering into some kind of agreement with the Ha clan… and there was talk of the Din clan asking about the remnants of an old, defunct influence from here, the Lin School,” JiLao made a face and put his wine aside in favour of a jar from his own storage ring. “I guess they had some people in the city and decided to show up, though why someone like Di Yao would be here I have no idea, isn’t he part of Fanshu’s group? Who were they talking to?”

“Some junior from the Ling clan,” she shrugged. “I can only assume that servant Qiao invited them of his own accord.”

“Probably,” JiLao nodded with a sigh.

“And yes, he is part of my imperial brother’s clique. Anyway,” she said, changing the topic, because the day was already annoying enough without thinking about Dun Fanshu. “How did your enquiries go?”

“Not much more than earlier,” Ji Lao grumbled, sipping his wine and sitting back in his chair. “It might have been useful to have you there, in fact.”

She grimaced and helped herself to his wine.

-Left because you were being insufferable, she grumbled, and now you say it was difficult because I wasn’t there?

She downed another cup of the wine, which was strong enough for a Golden Immortal like her to get drunk on if she imbibed a lot, to hide her scowl.

“After what happened in the school?”

“…”

“I suppose that is true,” Huang JiLao agreed with a slight scowl of his own. “Anyway, I came here because the banquet will be starting soon, so I thought you should at least make an appearance at the start. People are already grumbling that the ‘local’ princess skipped it; if you, the ‘actual’ Princess, are also late people will think you are snubbing them.”

“Local princess?” she asked with a half laugh, because that was honestly amusing.

-There are actually people in this backwater place who think that some local scion with a little bit of attitude can compare to me, in status?

“Ling Yu, the eldest daughter of the Lord Ling Yusheng, the City Governor and current Patriarch of the Ling clan in this province,” JiLao elaborated.

“And she is a princess?” she asked, trying not to sound totally dismissive.

“Technically, yes, through the Ling family. Ling Yusheng’s own great grandfather was the ‘Grand Duke’ in control of the whole sub-continent before it was split and Cao Hongjun took the title of Blue Duke. The Ling family have been in this province almost as long as the Ha family and the Kun family, for all that the latter have long lost their own ducal claims and just become common nobility,” JiLao said, looking at her like she should already know that.

“They are?” she had to admit, to herself at least, that she had not known that little titbit.

The events he was talking about were almost before the previous ‘grand generation’ in any case, as far as she was vaguely aware – over fifteen thousand years ago.

“…”

“Did you read nothing of what Imperial Uncle Dun Jian supplied?” Huang JiLao asked, looking at her a little judgingly.

She pretended she hadn’t heard that, because she had, indeed, stopped at that point, intending to read the rest of it ‘later’ – namely, when it became relevant. The umbrella label of being a ‘high-ranked’ Imperial Princess was remarkably useful at times, when it came to not caring about the status of others.

“I read what he marked as relevant,” she said after it became clear that JiLao was going to keep staring at her until she said something.

“So, this ‘local princess’ skipped. Should I feel slighted?” she asked drily.

“Only if you wish to feel slighted by a seventeen year old girl who, while apparently talented, doesn’t have much clan favour compared to her siblings and is only at Nascent Soul,” JiLao replied, amused.

“Hah,” she took another swig of the wine and cast a final eye out the window. “I assume they are holding off on the final series of that little farce outside so I have to actually watch them?”

“It was espoused in my meeting with the various heads of the clans earlier that it would mean a lot if you were to present an award to the winner,” JiLao’s face was inscrutable as he selected one of the pieces of fried fish from a bowl.

“And I am guessing you are of the view that that goodwill would go a long way towards making amends for… earlier?” she added with a sigh.

“…”

JiLao had the grace to look a bit awkward.

“There is no love lost between the Headmaster of the Blue Gate School…”

“Potentially ‘former’ headmaster if the insinuations from that old goat from the Deng clan were anything to go by,” she pointed out.

“Well, yes, there does seem to be some long-term rivalry there,” JiLao agreed. “The Lu clan doesn’t hold Lu Ji in much regard either it seems, mainly because of…”

“His father. I am aware of that. Let us not talk of my Imperial Aunt or the Third Imperial Crown Princess here and now?” she said, letting her annoyance creep out at last.

She grabbed another piece of the spicy fish herself, because it was another surprise highlight of the otherwise quite mediocre repast, and changed the topic slightly.

“It would seem to me that the local clan heads should be happier that… oh, their clan disciples are among the various ‘finalists’ who have managed to endure against Pill Sovereign City’s second string of mediocrity,” she remarked.

“A few have indeed done quite well,” JiLao said blandly.

“And, let me guess, they have proffered various interesting titbits about the mountains, ancient ruins and such, and hope that I will have a generous eye?” she suggested, not bothering to hide the mockery for their obvious attempt at getting an edge.

“I believe such was obliquely hinted at, yes,” JiLao agreed with a carefully neutral face.

“…”

“So we show the locals a bit of favour… for all the good it will do them.”

“Uhuh—”

Whatever JiLao had been about to say was cut off as there was a knock on the door and then four figures swept in. She grimaced, recognising the Imperial Envoy, Duke Dun Qiao Honghui, who had already kept her waiting well over an hour.

“Your Imperial Highness, Young Noble Huang, it is time,” Qiao Honghui said grandly, saluting her.

“…”

She eyed him and then, without comment, just nodded her head towards the door.

He narrowed his eyes, but bowed appropriately and all of them backed out again.

“Uncouth lout, just because his eldest sister is the Ninth Imperial Concubine,” she murmured, making a hidden rude gesture after the retreating Imperial Duke. “So what were you about to say?”

“It… its nothing,” JiLao sighed, again touching the talisman on his robe absently. “Not important now.”

“…”

She stared at him for a long moment, because clearly something was bothering him.

-Is it just that orchid? she wondered.

He met her gaze for a long moment, giving away nothing, until she just sighed herself and sat back.

“I guess we cannot put this off any further?” she mused, looking at the exit.

JiLao just shook his head.

“In that case, do you mind?” she murmured waving for him to leave so she could get changed.

“…”

JiLao sighed and nodded again, getting up and heading outside to wait for her. After he departed, she took one final swig of the wine and then sent her Immortal sense into her storage ring. It was a matter of a few moments to swap out her somewhat scholarly garments for a deep blue and green-gold Imperial Phoenix robe. The adding of various bits of symbolic jewellery took a while longer, finishing off with the crown of her rank and affixing a veil to it.

With a final glance at the table, she swept out of the room and headed in the direction of the grand banquet hall of the Golden Dragon Teahouse.