~ PART 2 ~

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~ LIN LING – MISTY JASMINE INN ~

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Knowing you were going to have to get up two hours before dawn, did not, Lin Ling found herself reflecting as she splashed water from the baths over her head, make doing so any easier. Especially not when the rain had started to pick up overnight.

“Uggh…” Sana, standing in the water nearby just stared at the ceiling, looking dazed. “Did I say how much I hate this rain?”

“Nope, not once,” she replied a bit more snarkily than she intended.

‘Scion, Path, Lotus, Body, Gift’

Taking a deep breath, she focused on her mantra, using it to really try and shift the fugue of tiredness that had not quite vanished from the day before.

“I went to bed at like… nine,” Sana grumbled, massaging her neck as she waded back to the side.

“…”

“At least you didn’t have to swap rooms,” she pointed out.

Ostensibly, she had moved in with Juni after generously donating her room to the Ling clan elder, Ling Leng Dushan. That said, she had not protested too hard over it. Her room was the one right next to Ha Yun's cronies and it had just become hard to rest comfortably on her own for some reason.

“I half expect none of us to have rooms here when we get back,” Sana agreed with a sympathetic grimace offering her a hand to get out.

Accepting it, she hauled herself out and quickly towelled herself down. She would be wet to the skin in an hour anyway, but for a few blissful minutes it was nice to wear dry clothes. Putting on her travelling robes, she checked she had everything then followed Sana out, through the inn, into the common room. The others; Arai, Juni, Mu Shi, and Han Shu were all in the kitchen, eating breakfast by the light of a single lantern.

Duan Mu and Mu Shi were staying here, to help with the warehouse organization, at least for the morning, but Mu Shi at least had gotten up to see them off.

“I’ll go dunk my head in the baths,” Han Shu murmured, seeing them enter.

“You could have just shared with us,” Sana said. “It’s a large bath.”

She wasn’t quite so sure she agreed with that, but in fairness Han Shu was… Han Shu, and basically something like an older… if not brother, cousin in some respects she supposed.

“Hear that, Shu?” Mu Shi chuckled. “One door closes, another opens.”

“…”

Juni eyed Mu Shi silently, but the other woman affected not to notice.

-Ah yeah, Han Shu’s older brother, she recalled.

Sana just shook her head.

“It’s not like we are behind schedule,” he said with a shrug, heading for the door. “I’ll be quick.”

“…”

“We were only five minutes,” she muttered.

“Have some food, we will need a lot of energy today,” Juni said drily, pushing a plate of fried bread and spicy snake meat over to her.

“Do we need to prepare much?” Sana asked.

“It will be waiting for us,” Juni said. “So we just need to take what we have. None of you are short on anything, are you?”

“Nope,” she shook her head.

“No,” Sana and Arai both agreed.

They chatted away, quietly, about this and that, until Han Shu came back. After confirming that he had resupplied yesterday, when he came back, they headed back over to the storerooms.

The guard on the door, Ling Fuqing, gave them a reasonably cheery nod as they went inside. In the guard room, Qiu Wentian and another guard, Ling Erwei Bei, who were both playing dice also gave them a wave as they trooped past.

In the main hall, Lianmei was standing with Mo Shunfei, Sir Huang and Senior Ying. The other people there were more of a surprise. Ling Dushan was an elder she had a very slight impression of, beyond having seen him around the Blue Gate School on occasion and Ling Tengfei was… just a clan scion. Ha Botan she only knew from yesterday, however neither Juni nor Arai looked especially pleased to see him. Ha Caolun just looked sleepy, and slightly nonplussed as to why he was there, while Din Jian just looked a bit bored as he leant against the wall.

“—Look this is not the kind of trip we can send either of these three on,” Lianmei was saying as they entered earshot.

“—Yes, however, you must respect our position in this,” Ha Botan said with a rather haughty tone.

“Must we?” Lianmei said with a smile that never reached her eyes. “The way I see it, it is your Ha clan who should be grateful, on your knees, that we are willing to play ball in this matter at all, given how badly you have miscalculated matters.”

“Rather than be at odds with each other, would it not be better to consider that cooperation is the best way to slight the Sheng clan’s overarching desires in this?” Elder Leng murmured.

“Is the issue that neither Ling nor Ha has a presence in any exploration and the scouting for a forward base?” Juni asked, leading them over.

“Ah, Junior Official Kun,” Ha Botan said blandly, before visibly dismissing Juni and turning back to Lianmei. “See, this is symptomatic of the entire problem.”

“I will remind you that the mission in question does give Kun Juni here the authority to pick who she chooses,” Lianmei added. “You say we should work together, yet you are all here, aiming for your bit of involvement.”

“Yes, the Ling clan is not particularly content with Ling Tao’s choices either, it must be said,” Ling Dushan mused. “There is a feeling that this mission lacks experience, for the stakes involved.”

-Lacks experience? It was difficult not to feel angered at that.

Arai and Sana were both blank faced, as was Han Shu, but she could tell all three were annoyed at that comment. Even Juni was frowning slightly now as was Mu Shi, standing at the back.

“Certainly compared to the other hand of this…” Ling Dushan frowned.

-Compared to the…

-To that slacker Fan and those other fair weather bastards?

She had to work hard not to grind her teeth at the arrogance and ignorance of the Elder’s comments.

“Some of them are barely better than Ha Yun!” Sana signed unobtrusively to her.

That did make her bite her lip, if only to not laugh in agreement.

“How about this,” Sir Huang said blandly after giving Juni a small nod of greeting. “I will accompany the hunters as the Ha clan representative.”

“…”

“With respect, a bodyguard lifted from that minor force is hardly someone worthy of representing the Ha clan’s prestige,” Ha Botan retorted. “What next, will you suggest that dancing girl you brought to cook?”

“Then why not Ha Yun?” Sir Huang asked drily.

“…”

Ha Botan stared at Sir Huang blankly. Even Caolun looked a bit shocked.

“I mean, I understand Wufan, he is still suffering somewhat, but if we are speaking of someone suitable, familiar with Yin Eclipse, and who has capabilities as a Herb Hunter and can contribute, without any disrespect to Cao Caolun here, who is a very capable Ha clan scion, Ha Yun is certainly more suitable to be represented on this team?” Sir Huang said.

“As to my status…” Sir Huang sighed deeply and pulled out a jade talisman shaped like a fish from around his neck and held it out to Ha Botan.

“This…” Ha Botan stared at the token dubiously. “Your ancestor is Sovereign Worldly Fisher?”

“The founder of the School of the Worldly Fisher?” Din Jian mused. “You are a long way from the western continent, Brother Huang.”

“…”

Sir Huang just shrugged, still looking at Ha Botan.

“Yes, he is my great great grandfather. Not everyone feels the need to shout out their status at every salute, Associate Official Botan. I wonder who your ancestor is, that you can talk to me like this?”

“…”

Ha Botan looked like he had just discovered he had eaten shit.

“And if it is experience, I have over a decade, and qualified as a nine-star ranked beast hunter before the Three Schools Conflict…”

“Do you have any thoughts, Young Lord Din?” Ha Botan asked, looking at Din Jian.

“The Din clan is just here to help the Ha clan,” Din Jian replied with a shrug, which came across to her as basically ‘I don’t care who you send’.

“…

“And who do you have in mind, Elder Dushan?” Lianmei asked.

“Tengfei and Qing Aofang,” Ling Dushan replied blandly. “Young Lord Aofang is a member of the Myriad Herb Association. His capabilities are hardly in doubt.”

“…”

“While I am sure Tengfei is a capable disciple of the Blue Dragon Hall… If it is a capable Herb Hunter with an excellent relationship with the Ling clan, Jun Sana here should also be acceptable,” Lianmei pointed out.

“Isn’t she a bit inexperienced given her age… and the concessions the bureau has made in recent years?” Ling Dushan asked, his gaze transferring to Sana.

“You can speak to Lady Tao about it…” Lianmei said blandly.

“Lady Tao….” Ling Dushan pursed his lips.

“Or I can?” Lianmei added helpfully. “In fact… Shunfei?”

Shunfei passed Lianmei a talisman.

“…”

“Hmmm, if Lady Ling vouches for her, I suppose she is suitable in the short term,” Dushan agreed.

“Responsibility Ho!” she murmured to Sana, who had a complicated expression now.

“…”

“So, is this resolved to your satisfaction?” Lianmei asked elders Botan and Dushan.

“…”

Both scowled, but neither objected, making her wonder what the point of the whole thing was, unless it was just that both parties didn’t want to lose face.

“Do you intend to accompany us?” Sir Huang asked Din Jian.

“My senior brothers certainly want to see these tombs and explore the town a bit more… I will have to consult with them,” Din Jian said with a shrug. “I just came because Associate Botan here requested my input.”

-Aren’t you just saying that you have no strong feelings one way or the other? she wondered to herself.

The abiding feeling she got was that Din Jian actually had very little interest at all in this matter, and basically saw it as a nuisance that was beneath him.

“In that case, Young Lord Jian, perhaps we might go discuss matters over breakfast?” Associate Botan asked respectfully.

Din Jian looked pensive for a moment, then simply nodded.

“Fairy Lianmei, Brother Huang… Young Lady Kun…” Din Jian gave them all a polite, respectful salute which they all returned, then left without a backward glance.

Botan gave them all a final sour glance then followed after him, waving for Caolun to follow.

“—Ah, Caolun,” Sir Huang said, putting a hand on the youth’s arm.

“…”

Caolun paused and looked at Sir Huang, frowning.

“Don’t get too caught up in Botan’s schemes,” Sir Huang murmured. “Remember why you are here.”

Caolun gave Ha Huang a frown, then shook his arm free and left, still looking quite nonplussed.

Ling Dushan stared after Caolun and Botan for a long moment, then gave them all slightly searching looks, before also leaving. Tengfei, however, didn’t go with him, just standing there frowning, not so much at them, but after Ling Dushan.

“Is there a problem, disciple Ling?” Lianmei asked him.

“Ah, sorry Elder Lianmei. No…” Tengfei shook his head.

They watched in silence as he also gave them polite salutes, somewhat deeper to Sana and Juni, interestingly, then also walked out of the hall.

“That was odd,” Arai remarked at last, glancing down the corridor after them.

“That was politics,” Lianmei said with a disgusted sigh, sitting back on the edge of the desk.

“You know I am not actually affiliated with the Ling clan in any way, beyond my friendship with Ling Yu?” Sana muttered, staring after Ling Tengfei.

“Yes,” Lianmei nodded. “However, for the moment, that is all that is needed.”

“In any case, thank you for your intervention, Sir Huang,” Juni said politely, giving him a small bow of gratitude.

She had to admit, that was rather funny. It did go to prove that you could never be too sure of anyone’s background.

“Also, sorry about you having to pull status on that idiot,” Lianmei added to Sir Huang.

“Ah, think nothing of it,” Sir Huang shrugged, accepting Juni’s polite salute. “I haven’t made any especial secret out of it. Though it seems I have ended up going on this trip despite not actually intending to, at least not today.”

“You… didn’t?” Juni asked, frowning slightly.

“No, Young Lady Kun, my main concern right now is keeping most of the cliques among our Ha clan disciples apart and disorganized. That and keeping a clear eye on those four from the Din clan.”

“…”

Juni kept frowning, but did nod.

“I know you were probably intending to ask Priestess Ying, given her familiarity with these mountains, but in that regard, I can at least also contribute, I hope,” Sir Huang added with a self-depreciating smile. “Even if my specific knowledge is a few decades old.”

“I see, well thank you, again,” Juni replied politely.

“A spirit stone says something else stupid happens before we are on that platform,” she muttered to Sana, looking around, half expecting Wufan to come rushing over, or there to be a notice that there was another early teleport at this point.

“Hah ha haa…” Sana laughed.

“It does feel a bit like that,” Han Shu agreed.

“Yes,” Lianmei murmured, grimacing.

“Darkness permitting, I am all for leaving as soon as is convenient, actually,” Sir Huang mused. “Though I will need to go relay some instructions to Yun and Leng first… I would appreciate it, if you could see fit to engineer jobs for Yun’s group that are not so likely to see them at the beck and call of Caolun or Wufan’s bunch.”

“I am sure we can find something,” Lianmei mused. “You could even take them with you.”

“Tempting, but probably not today. It would cause unnecessary friction with the other Ha groups.”

Standing there she found she was quietly relieved at that.

“In regards to the others…” Sir Huang stared at the map and sighed. “It would have been easier if the Ha clan also sent someone like Old Erlang. If you speak to Lady Ling in the next day or so, suggest it, in light of Ha Botan and Elder Leng both appearing.”

“Old Erlang… huh, that’s not a bad idea,” Lianmei mused. “An Elder from the Ha family who they can’t treat as a piece of sword wielding furniture would go a long way towards solving our problems, wouldn’t it.”

“It would,” Sir Huang agreed. “In any case, I’ll see you shortly.”

They watched as he left at a brisk trot.

“I know, it’s not ideal,” Lianmei said with a sigh, after Sir Huang had left. “However, Ha Huang is someone entirely aligned to our goals in this.”

“…”

Juni sighed as well and nodded.

Personally, she still found it hard, in light of what had happened so far, to entirely buy that, but Elder Lianmei being as confident as she was, was something at least.

“Okay!” Lianmei said after staring into space for a moment. “Everyone go grab the stuff you need from here. We will send you on your way as soon as it is no longer pitch black.”

Nodding, she followed Sana and Arai over to the pile of herb jars and added a bunch to her own storage talisman. By the time they were done with that and finished synching up the maps on their various scrips, Sir Huang had returned. After some further conferral, they all headed back outside. Lianmei watched from the raised area outside the storehouse as they made their way onto the teleport platform. Mo Shunfei and Ling Shun had also followed them out, she noted. Both gave them a cheery wave, then started talking quietly to Lianmei.

“Everyone ready?” Juni asked, walking over to the centre of the platform.

“Uhuh,” she agreed, while the others all nodded.

“In that case…” Juni linked the talisman in her hand to the one on the formation. “Three, two, one—”

The rain around them twisted, the dark shadows of the gorge deforming and spinning ninety degrees in somewhat unnerving fashion to fall away behind her. When the rain stopped drifting sideways and their surroundings had settled, they were standing on a semi-circular plaza built into a depression in the side of the escarpment that rose above them.

Half nocking an arrow, she scanned their surroundings with Juni, Han Shu and Sir Huang. Arai and Sana had crouched down to check the teleport formation.

The plaza where they had put the formation had probably been some kind of meeting area or auditorium, they concluded yesterday. What looked like benches had been built up or carved out of the rock above them and several broad platforms were set into the first tier where you could sit more elegantly.

“You cleared this?” Sir Huang asked, taking in the lack of vegetation growing up through the shallow soil and half visible paving.

“Yeah, the soil is quite shallow and this was the best ‘open’ spot we could find,” Juni said, looking around at the deep shadows. “Most of the stuff here is edible as well, if you know how to prepare it, which was quite surprising.”

“Hmm… yes, isn’t this a wild amaranth?” Sir Huang mused, plucking a stem of a small plant nearby.

“Yes, much of what is here is in the gardens of the few things we investigated on the way here,” Sana said, joining the conversation. “The quality of the spirit vegetation is also pretty high, as you can see…”

“Yeah,” Han Shu agreed, picking up a handful of the muddy loam and running it through his fingers. “This is excellent spirit soil.”

“Yes,” she nodded. “The issue really is the density of the overgrowth, its much worse out in the rest of the town, compared to here.”

“It certainly makes you appreciate the flooding of the lower town,” Juni agreed.

“—Well, it remained unmolested,” Arai interjected, standing up again from where she had been checking the stable jades.

“Good,” Juni said with a relieved sounding sigh.

“So, where are we in relation to the lower city?” Sir Huang asked.

“Hmm…” Juni pulled up the map, and pointed to a spot on it. “We are here…” turning, she pointed towards the flat edge of the plaza, where there was a raised, rectangular platform. “Over the edge of that are a few buildings, and then a two hundred metre drop down to the area where the herb garden was. The path up runs up the cliff, basically carved right into it.”

“I see,” Sir Huang mused, heading over in that direction, where there was a raised platform and a bunch of tumbled columns.

“This is certainly different from forests,” Han Shu said to her, falling in beside her as they all went over to stand on the platform and look out into the gloom.

Below them, if there was no rain, she was sure they would be treated to an excellent view out across the district below them, all the way to the massif on the far side.

“It is, although oddly similar in some ways,” she agreed, eyeing the shadows beneath a bush some metres away.

There were things up here. They had killed a few spiders, including one that had been parasitized by a fungus, not to mention centipedes and flying insects.

Looking around at the shrouds of green in the pre-dawn gloom and the swirling mist from the waterfalls, Han Shu nodded.

“Out there, in the gloom and the darkness is the other massif,” Juni said, pointing out into the swirling low cloud.

“On a good day, the view would be spectacular, no doubt,” Arai added.

“Wrong season for that,” she remarked adjusting her quiver a bit so it was not rubbing against her already wet clothes.

“It is rather,” Arai agreed, giving the plait of her already sodden hair a wring out for emphasis, and watching water trickle through her fingers.

“So, what is the plan first?” Sir Huang asked after a moment.

“We checked out some gardens yesterday, did some divinations, so we will head to that plaza and then see what is what,” Juni said.

“Certainly there is stuff here, we have confirmed that already…”

“Is this the top?” Han Shu asked her as Juni started to brief Sir Huang on their progress from before.

“We are pretty sure, yes, although the rain and cloud don’t make that easy,” she sighed.

“No… they do not,” Han Shu agreed.

They stood there getting their bearings in the dark for a few more minutes while Juni and Arai brought Sir Huang and Han Shu up to speed, then headed out of the plaza. The exit was on the north side, through a tumbled down building which was clearly the entrance to the whole complex. The overgrown street beyond, which they had mostly cleared the previous evening, led down to a lower plaza surrounded by ruined buildings.

“The river is about a hundred metres beyond the eastern exit,” Juni told Sir Huang as they walked across it. “There is a ruined bridge, but we didn’t go across it yet.”

“The scale of this place is quite remarkable,” Sir Huang mused, taking it in. “If anything it’s even grander than the area around the large shrine down below…”

“It is surprisingly extensive,” Arai agreed.

“Once you get out of this narrow area between the escarpment and the river, most of the estates up here are almost the size of those in West Flower Picking town…”

“—And many have their own gardens, or what remains of them,” Sana added.

“So, I take it you have explored much of this area then?” Sir Huang mused, looking around as they started off again, towards the northern exit of the plaza.

“We have,” Juni confirmed. “We did a few divinations, and there is certainly stuff up here…”

“Indeed,” she agreed, re-joining the conversation. “The two gardens we checked had similar kinds of herbs. Water lotus in ponds, the odd vine and flowering shrub. Quite a few spirit trees but not much fruit…”

“I see,” Sir Huang mused. “And Qi beasts?”

“Similar to below, though we didn’t—”

Han Shu was already drawing his bow as she spotted the spider, about the size of a small cat, slowly picking its way through the shadows, down a vine covered wall towards them.

The arrow took it through an eye, pinning the twitching thing to the stonework.

“—encounter many?” Sana finished for her with an amused grin.

Rolling her eyes, she turned to check behind them, though that was Sana’s spot in their impromptu formation as they made their way down the street.

“It’s just a solitary,” Han Shu said, having gone over and recovered the arrow.

“The trick is basically to not go poking in buildings guilelessly,” Juni said blandly. “This place has basements, and maybe layers below that. How flooded they are…”

Juni gave a helpless shrug, while Sir Huang and Han Shu both nodded.

“—So is the plan to check out the areas heading towards the escarpment above us?” she asked, trying to recall what they had discussed yesterday, which already seemed slightly too long ago.

“Yes,” Juni agreed, nodding once. “That seemed to be where the majority of the divinations were pointing... Unless you have any suggestions, Sir Huang?”

“I am more than happy to follow your lead,” Sir Huang said blandly. “I am confident in my abilities with formations and feng shui, certainly, and in the Dao of ‘Hitting things that Need Hit’.”

“Hah…” Juni muffled a laugh. “Okay, that’s basically what Senior Ying did, so if you take her role, we can feel at ease.”

“…”

Walking along behind, she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Senior Ying had been… well it was nice to have her along. Sir Huang seemed pleasant enough company, but a part of her did find it hard to look past him being a Ha clan expert…

“Still, isn’t quite the same, is it?” Sana signed to her as they kept scanning the greenery for more critters.

“No, it isn’t,” she agreed.

Certainly it was not so hard to get on with Fanqing Diaomei or Xiang Meilan after the initial bit of wariness. Part of that though, was because they were… like them in a way. Xiang Meilan had been a flower seller before the Cherry Wine Pagoda took her under their wing, and while Diaomei had not really discussed her past with them, she still got the impression that she was not from the Ha clan proper. Sir Huang, however, had demonstrated himself to not only be one, but a descendant of some proper old ancestor.

Her pondering of that was cut short by catching sight of something about the length of her leg, with long legs on a column crunching down a spider the size of a dinner plate.

-Cave centipede, she signed to Sana, drawing another arrow.

Ahead of them, Juni and Sir Huang had spotted it as well—

In the same instant, it saw their group and shot back into the shadows, leaving with its prize.

“…”

Staring after it, she sighed. Sana just shook her head.

“On the bright side, it’s one less spider,” Sir Huang signed.

“Indeed,” Juni agreed with a grin. “Anyway, let’s move on.”

…

In the end, they carefully poked around the ruined upper district for almost an hour following the threads of various divinations, before arriving at the overgrown plaza below the promontory overlooking the valley they had just come from. The path up to the sprawling complex at the top was a broad stairway, about fifty metres across, half overgrown by spirit vegetation that was growing up the small massif on top of the ridge like a grasping hand.

To both sides were tumbled down buildings, accessible from landings in the stairs every twenty-five steps. Peering into them as they went past, she found the interiors were largely the same in style as those they had seen on the other massif: an altar, a statue – usually of a robed man or woman holding some object – and a door or two further into the interior, usually sealed shut.

“Well, my compass certainly suggests there is something up here,” Han Shu, mused, as they reached the mid-way point up the steps, eyeing the shamble-like construction he had put together as they explored.

“The last time someone said that, I nearly trod on a razor crab,” Juni joked, looking around.

“…”

“If it’s a razor crab up here I will be genuinely impressed,” she murmured, looking around at the leaf-strewn rock, wet with rain and covered in many places with moss or algae.

“—Related to Yang, Earth and Life,” Sir Huang mused, looking at Han Shu’s compass. “There is some hint of danger, but it is strange, and subtle.”

“Up here there is always some danger though,” Sana remarked. “Usually it’s when your compass shows none at all that you should worry.”

“Uh-huh,” Han Shu agreed, looking around.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Absolute alignments in particular are the worst.”

“So…?” Juni asked, looking at them.

“We are here for the herbs,” Han Shu said with a shrug. “The compass pulls up, basically straight up the steps in fact.”

“Ah well, everyone keep an eye out then,” Juni murmured, drawing an arrow for her bow from the quiver at her hip.

They continued on up the steps, warily scanning the surroundings until they reached the top…

The plaza was winged by column-fronted buildings on both sides and dominated by an immense, golden-leaved tree, growing out of a circular, two metre high platform in in the middle.

At the far end, a broad set of steps led up to the large building they had seen the roof of from below. In front of it, a twenty metre statue of the blue-eyed, naked woman from the herb garden stood, her arms raised up to the sky, like she had once been holding something between them. On her golden-haired head, she wore a crown with cow’s horns, and the robe that concealed her lower body was of a deep red stone, like the setting sun.

“Is that a golden mulberry tree?” Arai asked dully, staring up at the tree, which was almost certainly the source of all their auspicious compass readings.

“Sycomore, I believe,” Sir Huang said. “It’s actually a kind of fig. They are not uncommon on the western continent, by the coast, although not… like this. The only other golden sycomore I have ever heard of are in the Shu Pavilion’s ancestral peaks.”

“Somehow, it almost feels anticlimactic,” she remarked looking around at the buildings,

“…”

“—But I’ll take it,” she added as all the others looked sideways at her.

“What realm do you think it is?” Han Shu mused as they walked slowly forward, towards the split staircase that led up to the platform around the base of the tree.

“Golden Core?” she joked, sending qi into her jade tablet to look up information on them.

“You know what I meant,” Han Shu said with a mock sigh.

Sir Huang reached down and picked up a fist-sized fig-like fruit that had fallen from above, considering it pensively.

“What do you reckon?” Juni asked him as they gathered around.

“Dao Step, certainly,” Sir Huang mused, passing the fruit to Juni and crouching down again to pick up a handful of the fallen leaves that carpeted the plaza.

“The question is, is this a spirit tree or something more?” Arai murmured staring up at the leafy boughs above them.

“…”

That was the question, really. The tree was not that big, maybe thirty metres high and twenty across, but size alone was not a great indicator of age beyond a certain point. Given it was growing in what looked like its original position though, that made it at least as old as the ruins, or some aspect of them.

The information on her tablet was kind of scant as well. The bureau records on that species noted its rarity, that the leaves were highly prised by talisman makers and that the wood was exceptional for any number of things. The tree itself tended to promote ‘yang’ qi, especially ‘yang wood’ and ‘yang earth’ when planted in gardens, but could take centuries to mature. It noted that fruiting could occur all year round, and that eating one would help restore lost longevity among a long list of other conditional benefits.

“The last real communities of people speaking and writing Old Easten vanished over a hundred thousand years go,” Juni mused.

“Oh, its waaaaay older than that,” Sir Huang mused, looking around pensively. “These ruins are from the previous aeonspan, at the very least.”

“How do you work that out?” Han Shu asked, looking around.

“Well, for starters, there is no mention of any Imperial Script, or styling, anywhere in these ruins, in any inscription I have seen,” Sir Huang mused. “The architecture style is vaguely reminiscent of some ancient fortresses on the western and northern continents as well. However, returning to the imperial script thing, my knowledge of Ancient Easten’s various forms is a bit patchy, but the text here…”

He drew their attention to the carving between the two steps, which depicted a woman placing a tree on this very spot, watched by three shrouded women gowned in the style of the statues in the garden and two martial-looking men, while a vast crowd of people looked on.

“This inscription reads, ‘This tree was planted by Empress Everkind, after signing the ‘Dawn Concord’, in recognition of Rhana’s ancient heritage, and on behalf of its future prosperity during the tenth year of her reign’. There is no ‘Everkind Empress’ anywhere in the annals of the emperors and empresses that I have read, going all the way back to the middle of the Shan…”

“Oh…” she stared up at the boughs, wondering how old that potentially made the tree.

“What about this…?” Sana, who had been standing to the side, was pointing to the carved scene to the right of the stairs which also had an inscription on it.

“‘Her will was born from the waves, whence the…’ huh…”

Sir Huang trailed off, then took his blade and cut away the rest of the vine growing down across it to reveal that panel in full.

The relief showed a naked, dark-haired, bearded man, picked out in white stone, holding down a shadowy male, golden-haired figure in the sky and castrating him with a green sickle, then throwing away the severed genitals into an ocean of water, from whence emerged a beautiful woman, also blonde-haired and picked out in pure white stone, onto a shoreline to the adoration of many people, who led her to a temple on an island where a golden-leaved, white-trunked tree was depicted and a cow was sacrificed in her honour.

“…”

The blonde haired woman had a rather striking resemblance to the voluptuous middle figure in the herb garden. She stared at the scene, reviewing it a second, then a third time, not quite sure what to make of it.

-Is this somehow related to her… an origin of her?

“What does the rest of it say?” Sana asked. “All I can get is something being born, and that they called her ‘Heaven’, and then a bit about ‘loving the heavens’.

“— ‘the genitals of the father of sky’, or maybe heaven, ‘were cast by his youngest son. Upon her birth, all knew her as ‘she who was born from the foam’ and upon her revelation, her name became ‘Heaven’, for she was the purest distillation of the love of the heavens’,” Sir Huang said, tracing the second line.

“I wonder…”

Juni walked over to the left side and cleared away the vines from that carving. That revealed a shadowy woman in the sky with golden hair, very much in the same style as the male figure on the right. However, in this one, she descended on her own, becoming a white cow that travelled along a great river, being venerated by lots of people who built her a great temple.

“The figure depicted is the same,” Juni noted. “The translation calls her ‘Potnia Urania...’ Mother of Stars? Or ‘Mother of Heaven?’.”

“It should be Mother of Heaven,” Sir Huang remarked, glancing over. “Imperial scholars have frequently associated her with the Queen Mother, usually facing East or North. This motif I know, it shows up on ruins on the western continent.”

“So the woman standing over there is the same as the statue of the blue-eyed woman in the herb garden’,” Arai added.

“I’ve also seen a similar statue in the lower town,” Sir Huang mused. “In what looked like a garden courtyard in a brothel.”

“There was an altar at the top,” she added, wondering if there was more up there, now. “Perhaps…”

She trailed off, staring at a huge, centipede-like thing with a golden-bronze chitin carapace that had just appeared at the top of the stairs.

Thoughts momentarily frozen, she stared at it, even as it seemed to consider them in turn.

“Uh… stairs…” she hissed, recovering quickly and stepping back, levelling her bow at it, cursing in her heart how they had totally failed to notice it.

“Mother of Heaven!” Han Shu cursed, stepping back as well and levelling his bow at it.

Arai and Sana both had talismans out as well.

“That’s your ‘slight danger’ then,” Juni said with a grimace, swapping her bow for a spear in an instant.

“…”

“Don’t shoot it,” Sir Huang said quickly, holding up his hands and waving for them to back up.

“Don’t shoot the giant centipede?” she queried sceptically as the insectoid monstrosity smoothly moved down the stairs on hundreds of legs in their direction.

The immediate thing that stood out was that it was almost silent as it moved, and what noise it did make was almost indistinguishable from the rustling of the leaves of the tree and the patter of rain hitting everything.

-If that thing rolls at us, can we even get away quickly, and what if it spits poison or something!

“It’s not a centipede,” Sir Huang said, sounding a bit less worried suddenly.

“It’s not a…”

“Huh…” Juni stepped back quickly as the creature, which had way more than a hundred legs she now realized, reached the bottom of the stairs and grasped a fallen fig, munching it down in a few bites. “—So it isn’t.”

“Millipedes are herbivorous,” Sir Huang added.

“Spirit Cows are dangerous,” she pointed out, not relaxing.

“Yes, which is why I said don’t shoot it,” Sir Huang said drily. “Maybe it thinks we are monkeys, or maybe it is just that strong, but it doesn’t see us as a threat, so let’s not change that?”

Grimacing, because he was not wrong there, she lowered her bow, but didn’t relax her vigilance at all.

They watched as the armoured millipede, which had to be almost four metres long and half a metre wide, sedately made its way to another fig and munched that, then a third, before heading for the edge of the plaza where it vanished into the shadows of some fallen columns.

“…”

“Ohhhkay,” she said at last, looking around warily, in case there were more.

“Well, let’s gather what we can, I guess,” Juni said, tearing her eyes away from where the giant insectoid thing had vanished.

“Certainly, we should go gather up all the fallen fruit,” Sir Huang agreed. “There are also what look like a few saplings, see over there?”

She looked where he pointed and saw that there were two much smaller golden-leaved trees growing near the edge of the plaza, unnoticed due to the dominance of the central tree.

“The leaves are also a prize as I recall,” Han Shu added, giving himself a shake. “The bureau—” he trailed off, presumably checking information on his scrip.

“Everything is valuable,” she supplied. “Leaves, wood, bark, saplings…fruit.”

“So I see,” Han Shu mused.

“Well, I guess we start gathering then,” Arai said, taking a crate out of her storage ring and putting it on the ground.

“Ling, Sana, do you want to check up by the tree with Sir Huang?” Juni added.

“…”

Warily, she made her way up the stairs to the raised platform, followed by Sana and Sir Huang. Thankfully, there were no other giant millipedes up there, just a white stone altar before the tree, carved with a relief like the ones below.

“Huh…”

She walked over to the altar and considered the bowls that someone, or something had placed on it. All were now full of water, but one contained disintegrating figs while the other two held something burnt.

“Monkeys?” Sana suggested, pointing a bunch of ochre-coloured monkey paw prints on the surface of the altar.

“There is stuff on the altar…” she called down.

“Because of course there is,” Juni called back, sounding both amused and resigned. “Monkeys?”

“Seems that way,” Sana confirmed to Juni, giving the ochre prints a second glance.

Looking up at the tree again, she sighed, reflecting that the days up here were only getting odder and odder.

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

~ HA YUN – MISTY JASMINE INN ~

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

“Oh fates, please let me have one day where I don’t just hold a formation core while my balls shrivel up in water,” Ha Yun muttered to Leng as he made his way with Leng towards the baths in Misty Jasmine inn.

“While you’re at it, pray for an Immortal Peach and a beautiful wife?” Leng added sarcastically.

“I wonder how Ding and the others got on,” he sighed.

“It can’t have been worse than either of us,” Leng grumbled.

“…”

Pausing in the ante-chamber to the baths he sat down on a bench and sighed, mostly because Leng was right.

‘—enjoy your bath and being treated like a responsible adult for thirty minutes…’

Somehow, those words Diaomei had spoken felt almost like a curse now, having spent a whole day with a bunch who had not acted remotely like that.

“I mean, if I have to put up with another day of this, I will probably kowtow to that little monkey and demand it piss in my wine,” Leng groaned, sitting down and taking his boots off.

Their day had been… well, he had words for it, but ‘grim’ was probably the overarching one.

Sir Huang had left early in the morning with the Hunters and was still not back. He had come and talked to them in the morning, before he left, warning them not to get too involved in whatever game Elder Botan, Caolun, Wufan and the Din group were playing.

That had proven to be… disturbingly prescient advice. The day had started off well enough, with him, Leng, Yufan, Pei Quan, Kun Ji and Sir Teng heading to the town under orders from Elder Lianmei to continue what they had been doing, while Ding and the rest went with Sir Chu Jiao and Jiang Wushen to continue sealing in the forest.

Once they were out there, though, that plan had come to a screeching halt thanks to Elder Baotan, Caolun and the others. His group had basically been split as soon as they came back to offload their first batch of sealed herbs and resupply on pots. Ha Botan, who had come with the Din clan group and the experts from the Ling clan, to ‘see the ruins’, had re-organized the groups, sending him and Pei Quan with Ha Jingbei and a bunch of Wufan’s friends, while Leng ended up going with Caolun.

The worst part was that he had done it using the exact same reasons Sir Huang had, ostensibly. To ‘spread out’ expertise about working in the town between various groups so everyone could be more productive. As a mere ‘bodyguard’ Ha Jiang Teng had been ordered to stay with Ha Leng, while his group had gained the two Ji elites, Erbei and Deng Lei, neither of whom he knew much about, and Din Ji Jiaofang who professed that tombs didn’t really interest him.

Thereafter, his entire day was spent with a group ostensibly being ‘led’ by Jingbei, courtesy of Ha Botan’s order, with him being designated the ‘person looking after formations…’

In other circumstances it might not have been that bad, he supposed, if they had just opted to slack off and poke lazily around in a few ruins. They could have argued that the group had just been inexperienced and worked slowly, or that it was all Ha Botan’s fault. However, Jingbei and the others had instead pushed forward as if they had six people able to use formation cores efficiently not three, in him, Quan and Deng Lei.

The whole experience made the previous two days excursions through the upper town seem like a pleasant dream.

The final insult though, was that most of the actual spirit herbs that had been found or sealed, the valuable or useful ones at least, had all gone straight into the Ji scions’ pockets as well. Cognisant of his status as the son of a clan lord, they had given him some as well, but he was sure Jingbei and the others had still pocketed the best stuff and given him only enough to ensure he was ‘in it with them’.

The only oddity in the whole thing had been Din Ji Jiaofang, who had actually been more inclined to help them than go along with Jingbei’s ass kissing, even manging a formation or two.

He had not asked Leng if the same thing played out with his group, but he rather suspected it had.

“Ah well, at least we survived,” Leng sighed, standing up again.

“Indeed,” he agreed, also standing up, trying not to grimace.

Heading into the baths, they found it already much fuller than he expected.

“—Gah! If I stare at another lotus I will use it to strangle someone!”

Looking around, he spotted Ha Ji Kunbei, one of Ji Wufan’s friends, who had been reprimanded already for the stupid action of trying to re-organize Jun Sana’s little arboretum to use as a cultivation resource.

“Yeah, this sucks, I thought we would be doing something…” Ha Ji Aofan, Kunbei’s partner in that stupidity, declared, from where he was lounging in the shallows of the main pool, sipping wine.

“Well, if you will arrange the arboretum clearly set up to nurture herbs not people…” Leng muttered to him as they made their way past to a less crowded bit of the pool.

Having overheard, Ha Ji Kunbei and Ha Ji Aofan both scowled at Leng.

“It was set up wrong!" Ha Ji Aofan called over to Leng in a challenging tone.

“And you tell me I shouldn’t run my mouth off?” he muttered to Leng, slipping into the water.

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

“—Oh hey, Yun!” Cao Tan raised his wine cup to them with a grin.

“Honestly, I think they just used it as an excuse to cause Brother Wufan problems,” Ha Leung Fan, one of Caolun’s friends, added.

Ji Shibei, Ha Erfei and Ha Caotan, who were also sitting there, and who had also ended up being part of the group exploiting Western Fall’s Valley with the Beast Hunters and Ling guards, also nodded, looking aggrieved.

“Yes,” Kunbei agreed, nodding vigorously. “Whoever did that had no idea about proper feng shui! My family’s teacher is from the Imperial School… and some upstart bitch—”

“Hey, she has some redeeming qualities!” Erfei remarked with a grin.

“…”

“You see her and her sister in a wet robe?” Erfei said with the air of someone appreciating fine wine. “Ooffff, it’s a pity they bathe in that other place, I’d be in here all the time otherwise.”

“True, true,” Kunbei agreed, while the others laughed.

“I dunno, I feel Kun Juni is more my type,” Aofan chuckled, making grabbing motions in the air.

“I feel like they should be manifesting ephemera for comprehensions in the Dao of ‘lacking self-awareness’,” Leng muttered very softly.

Snorting a laugh, he could only agree, as yet again Diaomei’s comment about sitting with the adults drifted through the back of his mind.

“They even fixed it afterwards and just blamed us for finding the flaw!” Aofan added sounding outraged.

“Don’t you think that’s the case, Brother Yun?” Cao Tan added, turning to face him properly.

“Think what is?” he asked, affecting to have not really been paying attention.

“That those three bitches from the Hunter Bureau are, blaming us for their mistakes and profiting off our manpower…”

“Yeah… the least they could do is show a bit of appreciation for our Ha clan…” Kunbei added.

“Hmmmmm… yeah…” Erfei said with a sigh. “That said, complaining about them is ruining the feng shui, why don’t we just admire their fine attributes…”

“When they are off, finding all the good stuff?” Ha Ji Kunbei grumbled, clearly not willing to let go.

“You’re in the town group, right Yun?” Cao Tan called over.

“Yeah, I’d stick with water lotuses if I was you,” he grimaced, wishing the water would work faster to soothe the meridian stress in his limbs.

“I doubt that… I was nearly drowned today,” Aofan scowled. “You would think we are the prisoners of the Ling clan or something.”

“Well, if you will mess up a valuable storeroom…” Leng murmured, before adding “—Wine by the way.”

“Oh yeah, please,” he sighed, accepting a cup from Leng and gulping it down…

“—Brother Yun… you really surprised us today!”

Groaning, he turned around to find Din Kongfei, Din Ouyeng, Ji Wufan and Ji Jingbei, none of whom he really wanted to see at this point, had all arrived at the edge of the baths and were disrobing and getting in.

Jingbei, who had spoken, gave him a smile that never really extended to his eyes.

“Oh?” the others in the pool looked interested.

“Brother Yun killed a Nascent Soul spider today!” Ji Jingbei added with a grin, clapping him on the shoulder. “Isn’t that right, Qwan?”

“It’s Quan,” Ha Pei Quan, who had also entered the baths behind that group with a few others, remarked sourly. “And yes, we did.”

“You did?” Leng asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Icck,” he just shuddered, because that was all that needed to be said, really.

It had been a particular low point of the afternoon, not helped by the lingering suspicion on his part that Ji Jingbei had actually spotted it and still let it jump him anyway. Either as payback for suggesting Jingbei learned how to read a compass, or because Din Ji Jiaofang had been more interested in talking to him.

“I’ll definitely toast Brother Yun’s expertise today!” Ji Jingbei added with a grin.

“Yes, I will also drink to the big style of Brother Jingbei’s leadership,” he agreed, putting on his best smile and toasting Jingbei right there, downing the cup of wine in a gulp.

-If only so I can try to forget how annoying you are, he added in his heart, wondering, not for the first time that day, if he could get his father or uncle to censure Jingbei when they got back.

“…”

Ji Jingbei stared at him for a long moment, likely trying to work out if he was taking the piss and probably if he could get away with claiming that he was.

“—You know, the Hunters found something really good today…” Ji Wufan interjected.

“Faugh…” Ha Ji Aofan spat.

“Oh, what did they locate?”

“They sent back a bunch of crates of spirit herbs, almost first thing, I saw them arrive just after dawn. And then there was another bunch, just after lunch…”

“Wait... they left that early?” Ha Erfei frowned.

“Yeah, they snuck away before sun-up,” Ji Wufan replied, grimacing and holding his stomach for emphasis. “I got up because I couldn’t sleep and saw them go.”

That Ji Wufan was still claiming to be ‘poisoned’ was… just another reason to feel aggrieved really.

“…”

“Didn’t your other guard go with them, Yun?” Wufan added, sitting down on the edge of the pool between him and the rest of the group.

“Yes, Botan sent him,” he replied with aplomb.

Ha Botan had spent much of the day quietly stirring up various sentiments about ‘young inexperienced hunters’ on the one hand and ‘politically appointed hunters taking all the glory’ on the other… He also had more than a suspicion that Ha Botan was favouring the Cao and Ji groups over his at this point. Especially after the day he had had.

“Botan?” Wufan frowned. “I didn’t see him there, just Dushan, Lianmei and the Hunters, along with your bodyguard.”

“He was in the storehouse,” he replied.

“—Oh! Hey Caolun!” Leng interjected, as Caolun, also looking rather tired, sloped in.

“Oh, Brother Caolun,” he asked as Caolun came over to them “What were you meeting with the Hunters and Botan about this morning?”

“Oh… that? Uh…” Caolun paused, sitting down on the edge of the pool with a groan. “Botan wanted me to go with them, don’t ask me why, thankfully Sir Huang stepped up instead.”

“The bodyguard?” Ji Jingbei snorted.

Caolun glanced sideways at him and just shrugged.

“…”

“So, what did they bring back?” Jingbei asked Wufan.

“They dragged it off inside really fast,” Wufan sighed, “But first load was several boxes of spirit fruit and what looked like several saplings of a tree…”

“So they found a spirit tree?” Din Ouyeng mused, looking interested. “I wonder what kind…”

“—And they found a bunch of stuff yesterday,” Fanbo added. “There is whole room in the storehouse now that is sealed and has a guard outside it permanently. I saw it yesterday when they had us carry stuff in.”

“Uggh,” he pushed away from the rest of the group in the water, followed by Leng a moment later.

Listening to the others moan about ‘not experiencing anything interesting’ and others finding pretty stuff just gave him a headache at this point.

The Ha family were the ones who made it possible for them to even be here, and yet all they were doing was, again, taking and taking, and blaming others when they couldn’t take any more.

“Can they only complain?” he sighed, sipping his wine.

“I think it’s kind of funny,” Leng replied after a moment.

“Oh?” he asked.

“In a dark way,” Leng clarified. “I mean, they were taking stuff all today in my group, and now this lot are whinging about how the hunters are absolutely doing this and that.

“I know most of them well enough to know that while they may be a bit bitchy at times or annoyingly officious, they are neither incompetent nor likely to pocket things. Han Shu and Duan Mu are both pleasant enough company if you get them outside of work, if a bit standoffish as well.”

That he had to concede was true, although there was little he could find redeeming about Lin Ling.

They lay there for a few more minutes, trying to just enjoy the baths, but with the fairly raucous discussion on the other side, it was impossible to really feel… relaxed.

“Ah, brother Yun, may I join you?”

He turned to find Ling… Tengfei, he thought his name was, had come over to sit down near them.

“Brother… Tengfei, right?” he asked, hoping that the name was right.

“Uh-huh,” Ling Tengfei confirmed, sitting down. “I understand it has been quite a day?”

“It… has,” he conceded.

His interactions with the Ling clan were not that many, truth be told. Its elite juniors were largely people who stayed around Blue Water City as well, so he only encountered them on the trips to there.

“You… went to Western Falls?”

“We did,” Tengfei nodded. “It was really quite interesting. Brother Aofang caught a razor crab and we found a few interesting spirit herbs. All good practice for this trial, and it helps out the Ling clan.”

Leng just sighed.

“If you keep talking like that they might send you to Portam Rhanae,” Leng remarked drily.

“Yes, Brother Aofang and the others are somewhat keen to check it out, even if it is simply because the Din clan being there already chafes somewhat.”

“If it is any consolation, there are only two things there,” he said drily. “Scavenging qi beasts and annoying spirit herbs.”

“And that fates-accursed water,” Leng added.

“Okay, three things,” he said with a sigh.

“That does seem to be the pattern up here,” Ling Tengfei agreed. “You would think we should be used to rain? But somehow this is even worse than usual?”

“Uh-huh,” Leng agreed. “This is what happens when you mess with the weather on the plains.”

“Ah yes, the prince’s grand gesture,” Ling Tengfei grimaced.

“Yep. No rain there, all rain here,” Leng said with a sigh.

“Indeed, I have nearly forgotten what it’s like to feel… dry in a robe.” he agreed with a bitter laugh which Tengfei echoed.

It was quite nice to chat to someone who wasn’t either complaining or making crude comments about beauties, and in the end, the three of them chatted away for a good thirty minutes until Ding and the others came in, looking like drowned rats.

“You guys are back quite early,” Ding remarked with a groan, sitting down in the water and rubbing his arms.

“Well, it’s what you get when the people calling the shots are idiots like Jingbei,” he murmured. “Though I am not complaining, because if I’d stayed out there another hour with him I’d have maybe tried to drown him.”

“He does have that effect on people,” Shi Yufan sighed. “I had the misfortune of being saddled with him last year, the first time around with the balsam.”

“Euewwww…” Leng shuddered.

Having avoided that entirely, by dint of being the Ha family young lord and being able to just refuse, he could only nod sympathetically.

“How was sealing herbs in the forest?” he asked instead, pouring them all wine.

“If I see another shadow claw vine I will weep,” Yufan sighed. “I feel I have actual expertise in them now.”

“Shadow claw vine?” Tengfei asked, curious.

“A nasty vine that can mimic the qi signatures of things they kill and use them to summon manifestations,” Yufan explained with a grimace. “The higher rank ones, like the horrid thing we found today, can even mimic some of their abilities. You would have loved it, Leng, so many spiders…”

“Yeah, no thanks,” Leng said blandly. “I got my fill of spiders with the false shadow spitters and they were already dead…”

“Oh, and hook bats, we found a bunch sleeping in a tree…” Mao grimaced.

“I’ve heard of those,” Tengfei said with a grimace.

They chatted away for a while longer until the rest of Caolun’s cronies entered, declaring that they had found something awesome. At that point, the bath house was getting busy enough that he was more than happy to accept Ling Tengfei’s offer that they relocate to the common room and chat there instead until dinner was ready.

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

~ LIN LING – SOMEWHERE WEST OF PORTAM RHANAE ~

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

Sitting on a handy rock in the shelter of an overhang on the side of the river gorge they were currently in, Lin Ling stared out across the treetops swaying gently in the ever-present rain, catching her breath.

The day had been a long one, even by the standards of valley exploration, and she was, she would happily admit, nearly dead on her feet.

‘Scion, Path, Lotus, Body, Gift’

Her mantra shifted silently in her mind, quietly merging the dull ache that passed for her body with ambient qi, slowly grinding out progress towards the Peak of Physical refinement. Gauging her progress through it up here was hard, but she had a hunch that if she kept this up for another week or three, she might actually reach something close to the peak of it, which was…

“—Hey, Ling, how are you doing?”

She was stirred from her empty eyes admiration of the forest below them as she pondered that, and glanced around to find Han Shu had come over to sit beside her, two bowls of soup in his hands.

“Everything hurts, I have chafing in places I will not talk to you about and I no longer have any comprehensions regarding the mythical state known as ‘dry’,” she replied with a tired half smile. “But aside from that, I am good, I think.”

“Haa…” Han Shu shook his head and sat down on the other end of the rock, passing her the soup.

Taking a sip, she sighed, because, while it wasn't Sana’s spicy soup cakes, after a day like today, it was tasty.

“Have they calculated how far we have come?” she asked after savouring a few mouthfuls.

“Still debating, but the best guess is twenty miles.”

“Only?” she grimaced. “I figured that having cut through four of these massif pillar valleys and having had a road to abuse for half of it, it would be… more?”

“Twenty in a day is good up here,” Han Shu replied, sounding amused.

“Ah…”

She sighed as a bit of her good mood vanished for a moment as she was awkwardly reminded that her experience up here was the least of all of them.

“—honestly, we would have covered a lot less, were it not for the roads,” Sir Huang remarked, also coming over to join them.

“Yep,” Han Shu agreed.

“So, are we staying here or going back?” she asked, changing the topic.

“…”

Both looked at her sideways, making her feel a bit aggrieved again.

“Hey, I am just asking,” she scowled. “Don’t look at me like that. I ask mainly because we have achieved the nigh-impossible and filled everyone’s storage devices with herbaceous crap,” she pointed out.

Both men sighed and looked a bit embarrassed.

“That is very true,” Han Shu agreed.

“And even if we go back, it’s not like we will get to soak in the big baths…” she added, a bit more archly.

“Don’t you all basically have a private one in the shrine?” Han Shu grumbled.

“Well, yes,” she conceded, “but it’s small, and the efficacy is… different.”

“Oh, I didn’t realise it wasn’t as good,” Han Shu sighed.

“Eh… it’s not worse, just… different,” she sighed. “It’s hard to put your finger on why though.”

“In any case, the bath is usually swarming with…” Han Shu cast a sideways glance at Sir Huang, who just shook his head.

“Don’t hold your tongue on my account,” Sir Huang chuckled. “Whatever your issues are with the so-called ‘young heroes’ of my clan, believe me when I say that it hurts more than you can know, having to share a surname with some of them.”

“They are indeed quite detestable,” she agreed.

“I must admit to being slightly curious on that point,” Sir Huang mused. “I can understand Kun Juni’s dislike, and Arai has had several rough episodes courtesy of my clan’s politics. Her sister is… a supportive sister…”

“My complaints are largely that they are a bunch of leaching…” Han Shu trailed off again.

“…”

“You want to know why I dislike them?” she replied archly.

“…”

“My family enrolled me in the pavilion a year early, so it would look better when I got to nine-star rank. The bureau promoted me because of what happened to the Lin clan and because Old Ling asked them to, otherwise I would likely still be like Ha Yun, stuck at five star rank. Yun and his friends don’t like that, even though I had to do every exam and pass them with higher grades than anyone else who sat them at the same time,” she said simply, not even sure why she actually replied rather than just laughing it off. “They, on the other hand, had to work for… what exactly?”

“Oh…” Sir Huang simply sat there, looking pensive for some reason.

“—There are a bunch of other reasons as well,” she added, more archly “Maybe them making ‘ranking lists’ of us ‘exotic beauties’ over dinner, or suggesting that we ‘show respect to the Ha clan allowing us to be here’, or ‘asking us if we sing as well as we dance’?

“Or perhaps because we can’t walk through the common room without a dozen leering eyes trained on us, or go near the baths, or feel comfortable just sitting and having a drink outside of our own rooms?”

Sir Huang considered her silently, clearly not sure what to say to that, which made her feel a bit better.

“Anyway, I was feeling good about today, but now, I think I’ll go help Sana with the fire. Enjoy the view,” she added, standing up. “My vote goes for staying here, incidentally. At least the threats out here are orthodox.”

Leaving them both there, she went and sat down beside Sana, who was crouching by the cooking fire, staring at the flames in silence as the soup gently bubbled.

“Oh, hey Ling,” Sana said glancing over at her with an almost hilariously delayed reaction that suggested she had been doing stuff with her own mantra.

“I’ve come to join you, because they want to talk about stupid stuff,” she said with a sigh.

“Stupid ‘stupid’, or just stupid?” Sana asked.

“Why do I dislike the Ha morons ‘stupid’,” she grumbled.

“Because they are the worst?” Sana said drily.

“Indeed, they are the worst,” she agreed, spitting into the fire.

“Come on you two,” Juni sighed, coming over to join them.

“Have we got a joined up map again?” she asked, ignoring Juni’s remonstration.

“We do, although it’s gone the way they usually do up here when you want to put more than four valleys in a single map,” Juni sighed.

“Oh?” Sana asked. “Distances not matching?”

“They do not,” Juni agreed. “By one measure we should already be past the Jasmine Gate, but by the other we are still… ten miles from it and quite a way to the east?”

“Well, we will find out when we walk out of a gorge and into either it or the Aspen,” Sana said with a sigh.

“Or a spider hole,” Juni agreed. “If this rain would just bugger off back to fate knows where it comes from we might be able to get a fix on either East Fury or Thunder Crest, but as it stands we are somewhere vaguely north east of where we started, heading back west in a sort of arc.”

“On the bright side, these valleys are disgustingly lucrative,” she pointed out, to feel like she was contributing something to the discussion.

“That they are,” Juni agreed.

“So, are we going to stay here or go back?” Sana asked.

“Probably we will have to, once we find a suitable place to set up a formation,” Juni sighed. “If only because we are, shockingly, running out of herb pots.”

“We expected to stay up here, honestly,” Sana said with a shrug. “This is normal, and actually, I kind of like it. Especially compared to the Misty Jasmine Inn at this point.”

“The bigger problem though, is that half these gorges show signs of flooding and the rain is getting worse,” Juni pointed out. “Were we on an actual ridge I would be more comfortable… not to mention, these gorges are all part of one valley system, despite the fact that we have ‘crossed’ three, maybe four valleys, we have not met a single ‘real’ ridgeline yet.”

That, sadly, was true, she had to concede. Everywhere they had gone, there had been qi beasts, even in this valley, they had killed a few wandering spiders scavenging things that had died when the river waters rose a few days ago. The widespread nature of that flood event was… impressive, although these valleys had not been as badly affected it seemed. Even so, the quantities of water rushing down them were enough to be concerning, especially given the vertical faulting of the cliffs above them and the plethora of new waterfalls.

They had mostly stopped in this rock shelter because it was convenient and they had all been running on empty for a few hours at that point.

“In that case, shall I tidy up here and tell the other two the joyous news?” Sana said.

“Yeah,” Juni nodded, before turning to her. “Ling, do you want to help Sana tidy up, then pre-emptively prepare some teleport talismans so we are not bothering with that later?”

“Sure,” she agreed, taking out a handful of blank talismans and a formation jade.

It took them about ten minutes to tidy up, in which time she got most of the way through the process of sorting out the teleport formation. Packing it away as they set off again, through the now very gloomy gorge, she found Sir Huang had fallen in beside her.

“Sorry about my question before, it was… impolite of me,” he said simply.

“…”

“It’s fine,” she said with a soft sigh. “I doubt they told you.”

Sir Huang just nodded, not really replying.

She could guess what they had probably said about her anyway. That he had made the effort to come apologise to her was a nice surprise though.

They made their way on, largely in silence after that, navigating along the swathe of fresh boulders and rocks deposited by the recent flooding. In the end, they had to travel almost another mile, down the gorge, before it finally opened out into a more forested valley with a broad lake stretching down its midst.

“Well, this looks more promising,” she remarked to Han Shu, who was walking beside her.

“Yes, it does,” he agreed, taking in the mossy trees and swathes of ferns growing over the rocks.

“—Leeches!” Arai called up from ahead, almost in the same instant.

“…”

“I take it back,” she sighed, to which Han Shu just rolled his eyes.

“Stand still while I check you,” he murmured.

Nodding, she did as instructed. Thankfully, Han Shu found none, but she still took out her broad brimmed grass hat. Once she had checked him, they made their way over to the others.

“—Nobody got any?” Juni was saying.

“Thankfully not, I noticed them in time,” Arai said.

Peering past her, she saw several wavy…tendril-like worms; each as long as her finger and maybe as thick as a reed, hanging in the moss of a low-hanging tree branch. All of them were currently twitching in their general direction, confirming that they could likely sense both qi and heat.

“This is going to be one of those valleys, isn’t it?” Sana said with a resigned sigh, taking out a bottle of purification pills.

Considering the route down slope, with ferns everywhere, trailing tree branches and vines everywhere, she couldn’t help but grimace. Finding things like leeches suggested that there were predators beyond insects and reptiles, because most of those were poisonous enough that leeches and other such predators just died out. Even in the low valleys, places like this were obnoxious.

“—Here,” Sana, who had just taken one of the pills, passed her the bottle.

Eyeing it for a long moment, she sighed and took one, and popped it in her mouth before passing the bottle to Arai as Han Shu had already taken out one of his own, as had Sir Huang. Trying not to cough, she took a jar of spirit wine – normal, not ice wine – out of her storage talisman and washed the pill down.

Within a few moments she could already feel the pill taking effect. They were very good at what they did, infusing your blood with a yang attribute for up to a day under optimal circumstances. The problem was that using them in this heat and humidity was… grim. Her skin felt hot and her whole body itched unpleasantly.

“Uggh,” Arai shuddered then coughed quietly.

“Let’s see if that’s enough…” Sana muttered, poking her small blade into her hand to draw a bit of blood onto it.

She watched as Sana held it out to a leech, which went for it, then twitched, smoked and died almost immediately.

“Thank the fates for that,” Arai grimaced. “Double dosing them is…”

“Yeah,” Juni agreed.

“I think that settles the question of do we go back, as well,” Han Shu added.

“Indeed, I do not want to spend the night in a valley where there might be…” Juni trailed.

“Problem?” she asked.

“Frogs…” Juni pointed to a bromeliad on a tangled tree branch growing up from the base of a sloping slab of rock just down-slope from them.

Looking in, she saw three little bright pink frogs, each about the size of her thumb, all glowing slightly in the gloom.

“Well, this valley is out for anyone but us,” Arai concluded as Juni started to pick her way down slope even more warily.

“Yep,” Sir Huang agreed, turning his head this way and that.

“Oh?” she asked, curious, even though she suspected she knew the answer.

“With the suppression, those things are lethally dangerous to spiritual cultivators,” Sir Huang said. “Death by agonizing qi deviation if you touch them or their spawn, and they can lay it in muddy puddles—”

“Or even damp moss,” Arai added.

The next thirty minutes until they got down the slope and out into the more open areas near the edge of the lake were, in her estimation, the single most frustrating and painful since she had come to Misty Jasmine Inn. There was no evading leeches, or a plethora of other little horrors that they rapidly started encountering.

By the time they were down by the flooded edge of the lake, she reckoned she had been bitten a dozen times, stung twice and almost poisoned, not by a frog, but by a nearly invisible brown lizard in the leaf litter that had enough spines to put a porcupine to shame.

“Any formation we put in this valley is going to be gone before dawn,” Juni concluded, looking at the lake.

“I don’t suppose anyone packed a boat?” she asked, mostly joking.

“…”

Juni gave her a sideways look that made her wince.

“With luck, if we follow the edge of the lake it will lead us to somewhere less horrible,” Sir Huang suggested.

“At this rate, I fully expect there—”

She put her hand over Han Shu’s mouth and glared at him.

Han Shu shook his head wryly and waved for her to start walking again, as Juni, Arai and Sana were already starting along the water’s edge, wading through the knee-deep bog of leaf litter and water with their blades already drawn.

Following suit, she set off after them, Han Shu and Sir Huang bringing up the rear.

In the end, it was getting properly dark by the time they reached the head of the lake, where it flowed down a shallow, much expanded waterfall and out into a broader swathe of forest that faded into the rain.

“What do you reckon?” Han Shu asked the rest of them, pointing to a massif about half a mile way, just about visible through the rain and gloom if she forced her ocular meridians to boost her night vision.

“Possibly,” Juni conceded.

“Yeah,” Sir Huang agreed. “Though if it is just hiding a formation, I am pretty confident I can do it for a night, even here, if you have spare talismans.”

She was about to agree, when her intuition told her to duck.

Dropping to her knees, something raked across her back, nearly snagging her pack—

A moment later an arrow-impaled hook bat landed with a thud, shot by Sana.

“Don’t linger on the rocky open area by the waterfall, got it,” she grimaced, checking her pack, which thankfully was okay.

“Welcome to the High Valleys,” Arai muttered, going over to retrieve the arrow.

With that not so subtle warning lingering over them, they quickly descended the waterfall, jumping from rock to rock down the cliff and then set off at a proper jog into the forest, led by Juni. Sir Huang soon took out a compass and began relaying them directions, eventually bringing them, after another very nervous twenty minutes travel along the edge of the swollen river, out into a broad open area in the forest where the river bent around the massif spur they had spotted from the waterfall.

“Here is probably good enough,” Sir Huang said, looking around critically. “If you set up the formation, I’ll work on something to obfuscate it… Arai, Sana, can you give me a hand?”

“Sure,” Arai agreed.

Taking out her compass, she quickly checked the readings and then set off with Juni.

“Snake!” Sana called out a bare thirty seconds after they had gotten out into the grasslands.

Groaning, she turned to see that Sir Huang was already engaging the eight metre long monstrosity with a broad hood that had appeared out of the gloom of the tangled riverbank like a malignant spectre.

“You set that up,” Juni called over to her, already moving forward with her spear. “Shu, keep an eye on Ling!”

Han Shu, who had been screening them with a bow as they advanced, nodded and moved over towards her.

“Well, this is just fun,” she grimaced, trying not to be distracted as Sana started sending arrow after arrow at the large serpent as she continued to wade forward.

“Night time in Yin Eclipse, live it, hate it,” Han Shu agreed.

It took a very nervous few moments for her to set the jade, very glad now that the stable jades were already linked to it. Passing two to Han Shu, she headed a few metres away and placed one carefully in the water.

“Do you think—”

They both ducked as a shattered tree branch spun across the wetland to splash down in a plume of water about thirty metres behind them.

Looking over at the fight, she saw the serpent reeling back, Sir Huang’s blade deep in its neck. Juni, Arai and Sana were harrying it with spears and a bow, dodging away from its enraged tail sweeps, one of which had just sent the branch their way.

“—four is enough?” Han Shu finished as they both got up again.

“…”

“I hate you,” she grumbled taking a fifth of the expensive artefacts out of the storage ring and wading back to the formation core.

By the time she had set down the fifth one, the fight with the serpent had mercifully finished. Despite the energy of the attacker, it was very one sided, ended basically by Sir Huang in a matter of a few minutes of dodging around and cutting at it.

“Well that was fun,” Arai muttered as the four of them came over to the formation, which she was in the last stages of checking, dragging the dead serpent with them.

“We can teleport whenever,” Juni added.

“Want to check it?” she asked.

“…”

Sir Huang walked over, knelt down by the jade, and then glanced around at the five stable points. While he was doing that, she passed everyone out a talisman.

“Seems solid,” Sir Huang said giving her a grin and a nod. “Give me a few minutes to do some feng shui and we can go.”

She watched with interest as he paced off into the wetlands, kicking the odd rock and occasionally stopping by a shrub to place a talisman. The whole process, which like most feng shui workings in her experience was outwardly opaque, took Sir Huang about five minutes in the end, whereupon he returned to the formation core.

“Sorry that took a bit longer, figured I might as well not cut corners,” Sir Huang signed with an apologetic shrug...

“It’s all good,” Juni signed back, looking around warily.

Glancing at her own compass, she really wished she hadn’t because the inauspicious readings did not make for good reading.

As they all looked on, Sir Huang knelt down by the formation—

Space around them twisted, the rain scattering sideways.

She appeared about a metre above the teleport platform at Misty Jasmine Inn and landed with a roll, glad that the serpent corpse which crashed down a moment later had retained its original position. That would have been an embarrassing way to end the day.

Ha Faolian and Lianmei, both looking tired and annoyed, holding lanterns were already coming to meet them.

“We didn’t think you would be back this evening,” Faolian noted.

“Yeah, neither did we,” Juni grimaced, picking herself up. “But it turns out we found the real High Valleys, so here we are.”

“You found?” Faolian looked a bit confused.

“Ah, how bad?” Lianmei asked.

“We will know when we cut that serpent up,” Sir Huang said drily, going over and grabbing the monstrosity and starting to drag it off the platform.

“That’s…”

“A juvenile marsh cobra, yes,” Sir Huang nodded. “Came to say hi just as we were leaving.”

“Oh… they came back!”

She looked up to find that Ling Tengfei and a few others had come out of the Inn. Some of the Ha group were also looking out of the second floor balcony on their complex as well.

“What kind of serpent is that?” someone exclaimed.

Ignoring them, she sat down on a handy block and took a few deep breaths. Sir Huang took his blade and sliced open the serpent’s throat, helped by Lianmei and Faolian as they bent its head back.

“It should be Dao Seeking…” Ha Botan, who had come over with Ha Ji Wufan and Din Kongfei, mused, managing to sound both authoritative and unimpressed at the same time.

“Only Dao Seeking?”

“Disappointing…”

“Didn’t Brother Caolun defeat that centipede today?”

“Yeah, that was an immortal realm monster…”

“What do you think, Brother Din?”

The mutters from behind made her just shake her head.

A moment later Sir Huang had a milky white, fist sized orb in his fist which all three considered pensively.

“Barely a year old and Dao Seeking?” Lianmei said at last, taking the core and turning the bloody thing over in her hands.

“It was hatched from its egg at Golden Core?” Juni asked, eyeing the serpent with folded arms.

“Probably,” Lianmei agreed, frowning.

“Anyway,” Lianmei added, “Good work today, all of you, we will chat in the morning before you leave, so go make sure you didn’t bring any friends back and then go get a hot bath and some food.”

“Teacher is wise!” Sana said, saluting Lianmei with a grin.

“So this is all you managed to bring back?” Ha Botan asked, eyeing them pensively.

“…”

“What you see is what we have,” Juni said blandly, kicking the snake.

Ignoring Ha Botan, she turned and hurried after Sana and Arai, who were already moving with determined speed towards the shrine.

Thankfully, they had not brought back any unexpected surprises like leeches or spiders.

In the end, they spent almost an hour soaking in the pool in the shrine, chatting to Senior Ying about the day’s events, before finally going back to the Inn. Rather than eat in the common room, which was rather too crowded for her liking, she ended up just taking food straight from the kitchen back to her and Juni’s room. There she ate a bit… and then basically crashed out on the bed, hoping that she would not dream of leeches, lechers or snakes of any kind.

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

~ HA YUN – MISTY JASMINE INN ~

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

Ha Yun opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling of his room, listening to the rain and fighting the urge to roll over and try to sleep some more.

*Knock, knock… knock*

“Who the fates…”

Groaning, he sat up and stared at the door, which someone was banging on, and then outside, where it was still dark, although not that dark

“Who is it?” he called out.

“Me,” Leng said softly.

“…”

Fighting the urge to tell Leng to bugger off, he slipped off the bed and walked over to the door, unsealing it.

“What is it?” he asked, trying to ignore the faint shadow of meridian strain that was still wracking his body as he moved.

“Apparently the rains are getting worse,” Leng said, coming in.

“You don’t say,” he replied sarcastically. “Why is this worth waking me at this hour?”

“Well, I doubt you were asleep,” Leng said with an eye roll.

“I was, actually,” he muttered, going over to a basin of water which held yin water ward stones and splashing some in his face to try and shake off a bit of the early morning fugue.

“We are wanted in the storehouse,” Leng said. “Sir Huang caught me as I was going down to grab an early dip, so I said I would let you know to save him some time.”

“And you didn’t wake me?” he grumbled.

“…”

Leng gave him a sideways look.

“Oh well, give me five minutes,” he said.

Leng nodded and left again, heading back to his room.

He leant on the table and stared into the bowl of water, examining his scattered reflection – taking in his lank dark hair, matted with sweat, three day old stubble and black rings under his eyes.

“Uwaa…. Should I actually grow a beard?” he wondered blearily, running his hand over his face again.

Shaking his head, he undid his tied-up hair and ran his hands through it a few times, then re-affixed it in a rough scholar’s knot. There was a lot of be said for having short hair up here, for all that it was usually a sign that you were not a follower of the Blue Morality… from an indigenous clan, or a Buddhist monk.

“—And does filial piety to one’s parents outweigh not feeling uggggh…” he muttered, staring at the crude topknot.

His reflection had no answers there, sadly.

Splashing more water on his face, he pulled on a travelling robe and headed out of his room.

The common room downstairs already had a few people in it, Ling clan guards mostly, although he did see Bai Cheng and Bai Laofan as well, sitting at a table near the kitchen, eating breakfast. Bai Laofan gave him a cheery wave.

“You are up early, Brother Yun!” the youth from the Bai clan called over.

“I could say the same,” he replied.

“It’s hard to sleep in this accursed rain, who knew,” Bai Laofan sighed. “I hate to think what it would be like without those miraculous baths…”

“—Unpleasant,” Xiang Meilan, who had just come out of the kitchen, holding a tray of soup, replied, before glancing at him. “Do you want some as well, Yun?”

“I’ll take a piece of fried bread or something,” he replied. “I have to go to the storehouse.”

“Ah, that, well, fighting!” Xiang Meilan said giving him an encouraging smile and flicking a fried bread roll over to him.

Catching it, he took a bite and nodded in thanks, then also bowed politely to the Bai group before hurrying off out the door. Outside, the rain was… indeed worse, so he dashed along to the storehouse and was waved in by the guard on the door, who he didn’t recognise today.

Ling Shun, the leader of the guards, gave him a nod as he passed the guard room.

“—Oh good, you are here,” turning he found Sir Huang coming through the door behind him, followed by Fanqing Diaomei.

Returning Ling Shun’s polite nod, he then bowed to Sir Huang.

“Sorry I didn’t get a chance to speak to you yesterday,” Sir Huang sighed. “it was a long day.”

“Yeah… uh, it didn’t go quite as anticipated,” he muttered.

“Yes… I heard about that… can I have your storage ring?”

“My…?” he blinked.

Wordlessly he passed the ring over to Sir Huang, who eyed it pensively and then passed it to Diaomei, who stashed it in her sleeve.

“I take it you also have the one your father gave you?” Sir Huang asked.

“What are you?” he asked, not quite sure what was going on.

“Wear this one,” Diaomei passed him back an almost identical ring, which he realised after a second was hers. “As a disciple of the pagoda, you can access it if I allow it, but I will want it back, later.”

“…”

“Call it insurance,” Sir Huang said drily. “Botan split you all up for a reason, I suspect I know what it is, but nothing is ever certain and that one fancies himself both ambitious and smart.”

“…”

“You expected that to happen?” he asked dully.

“Mmmm…” Sir Huang looked pensive as he walked on. “In here, just be silent and stand at the back and be quiet.”

“Okay,” he nodded, reflecting that that was very easy to do.

“No doubt he has spoken smoothly in your absence as well,” Diaomei murmured.

“No doubt,” Sir Huang muttered.

Heading into the main hall of the storeroom, he found Lianmei, Kun Juni, Mo Shunfei, Ling Dushan, Ha Botan, Caolun, Wufan, Ling Tengfei, Qing Aofang, and Din Kongfei all standing or sitting around the table. None of the elders looked annoyed, but only a blind, drunken monkey would not have caught the tension.

“—Look I don’t think you quite understand what you are… asking, Ha Botan,” Lianmei was saying patiently.

“I feel that perhaps Elder Baotan has… misrepresented that,” Elder Dushan said blandly.

“Ohh…” Lianmei frowned. “See, I can’t help but feel we talked through much of this yesterday. The Ha and Ling are both represented on the Hunter’s team. Is something in that… unsatisfactory?”

“Ah… no not at all,” Ling Dushan said. “Rather…”

“Ah, Sir Huang, you finally grace us with your presence again,” Ha Botan said, noting their arrival.

“…”

Sir Huang just shrugged and walked over to take his seat, gesturing that he stand behind, much like the other juniors were. Diaomei went over to a side table and started to prepare some tea.

“Anyway, after yesterday, it feels like you are wasting talent,” Ha Botan said, leaning forward. “It was understandable that you rely on Young Lord Huang here for some advice, but as an Elder of the Ha clan—” Ha Botan glanced at Sir Huang with an expression that was half fatherly condescension and half annoyance, “— while he clearly did his best, I must concede that his ability to organize others is… lacking. We lost a lot of time because I had to re-organize our Ha clan’s groups to make better use of the expertise available… and I feel the results speak fairly clearly.”

“…”

Sir Huang just met Ha Botan’s gaze steadily until Botan looked away, using the excuse of waving to Diaomei for his tea, after she walked right past him to serve Lianmei first.

“Not to mention, you have some of Young Lord Wufan’s most talented friends harvesting water lotus, over a silly grudge?” Botan added, casting a sideways look at Kun Juni now.

“I hardly call what those two did a ‘silly grudge’,” Lianmei replied. “They nearly ruined several heavenly jades’ worth of spirit herbs and that Lingzhi is valuable.”

“While I concede that there may have been fault on both sides, it is petty to sideline them for that,” Ha Botan added. “Brother Aofan and Brother Kunbei are both excellent formations experts with decades of experience between them… Jun Sana is what… seventeen?

“—eighteen,” Juni corrected him absently.

“My apologies, eighteen,” Ha Botan murmured. “In any case… A hot dispute, between a sister who feels a little aggrieved and two youths who could have been more tactful,” Ha Botan continued. “They have both come to me expressing their own remorse, so I hope that matter can be put behind us…?”

“Indeed, it is a shame that two of my good brothers, both taught by an expert from the Imperial School, cannot contribute more… meaningfully,” Wufan agreed.

“…”

“In terms of their competence as well,” Ha Botan added. “Caolun, Wufan and Yun’s gains yesterday were just as good as anything achieved the previous day, more so in fact, given how depleted it is becoming.”

“…”

“You have something to add, Yun?” Elder Botan asked, catching his disbelieving expression before he could hide it.

“…”

“Nope,” he replied, being well aware of how much less they had brought in and wondering how Ha Botan could say that with a straight face.

The valley was hardly depleted in his eyes. It was just that Jingbei and the others had stopped being systematic and gone building chasing, prioritizing valuable herbs over just going block by block as they had been before.

“I wonder, Ha Yufan’s bunch certainly brought back a lot,” Mo Shunfei pointed out.

“I concede that the quality was less, but that is just symptomatic of the place you have everyone looking,” Ha Botan sighed. “Yesterday I was unclear on the exact state of it… but today, I feel I can speak with the authority of a clan elder and a pavilion elder.”

“…”

-Isn’t he just an associate official though? he frowned.

“I understand you want to play to what you know. I would not dare speak ill of Lord Feirong, but there is a perception, you understand? His wife is from the Ling clan and a student of Ling Tao’s… and Yun’s group have certainly been treated differently. All Caolun and Wufan are asking is the same opportunities be extended to them. That is hardly objectionable, is it?”

“…”

Again, he caught Ha Botan looking at him. This time, he just about managed a neutral expression, though it probably didn’t fool the old man.

-Yep, he definitely favours the Cao and Ji over the Ha family, he thought grimly.

“So, the crux of it is that you want to send out more than just the elite hunters into the valley we came back from last night,” Sir Huang said, cutting to the point.

“It seems the best use of resources, rather than wasting our time with depleted valleys and flooded ruins,” Dushan agreed.

“I would certainly need to see it for myself,” Ha Botan said. “I mean, Ha Huang here has some expertise, but he is still only a Junior Official.”

“And what happens when a team walks into some horror up there and just vanishes?” Lianmei said with a sigh. “Will you both still sing that same tune when we have to explain to the Bai, or the Qing, or the Din clan why their excellent and talented young lords are now plant mulch or worse?”

“—with properly set up teams… and the expertise of the other Hunters…”

“What do you reckon?” Lianmei asked Sir Huang and Juni, cutting off Botan. “Having been up there?”

“Hard to say,” Sir Huang said with a sigh. “At night it was… inhospitable, but that can be said for a lot of places. During the day, with caution, if they don’t rush around and act responsibly, and report in every hour or so?”

“I have to concur,” Juni agreed. “However, it would be best…”

“—That your ‘team’ check it first? Young Lady Kun?” Wufan interjected.

“Young Lord Wufan, please,” Ha Botan held up his hand.

“So far, nothing you have said is any worse than in the valley they have been in already, without mishap, for several days?” Ha Botan said.

“Your reticence is understandable, Fairy Lianmei,” Din Kongfei added. “However, as Elder Baotan here says, it was just a Dao Seeking qi beast. We are here to help in this endeavour, so please let us help… nobody wishes to see the Azure Astral Authority act so roughshod.”

“…”

“As I said before, we do not wish to say you are being insincere…” Ha Botan added, holding up his hands. “But at the very least the stakes in this are quite high, can you really afford to place it all on one team of hunters?”

“As much as I hate to say it, I can only agree,” Ling Dushan said with a sigh, sipping his own tea. “We must use what we have, efficiently. By all means, leave a team clearing the town and valley. The rest of the Ling group will also be arriving today, so they will need to acclimatize, as you put it. But those forces we have, should they not be better deployed at the cutting edge of this task?”

“…”

Listening to both of them, he could not deny that they were good at spinning matters.

“Okay,” Lianmei said, sitting back with a sigh. “You are here to help, so let’s see how helpful you can all be.”

“…”

“Go find out who wants to go, assemble them at breakfast and we will see what is what.”

“Caolun, Wufan and Yun ask for nothing more,” Ha Botan said, standing up with a broad smile. “Expertise is there to be used, after all.”

-You speak for me? he thought sourly. Really?

He watched dully as Elder Botan and the others filed out, not quite sure what to make of that whole scene.

“And what about you,” Lianmei said to Ling Dushan and Qing Aofang “Do you also want to send your bunch straight out there?”

“Well—” Dushan started to speak, but Qing Aofang actually held up a hand to stop him.

“I am happy to be guided by Elder Lianmei on this,” Qing Aofang said. “We are here for the trial, I am happy to admit this, but we are also here to be useful to the Ling clan. As guests in this, it is not our place to be… making demands.”

“In that case, I suppose you will come with me, today,” Lianmei said pleasantly. “Or with whoever ends up finishing up the rest of that valley.”

“With… you?” Qing Aofang blinked.

“Yes,” Lianmei nodded “there is a district on top of the escarpment that needs cleared. It is not like the one below.”

“And you didn’t mention this to Ha Botan?” Elder Dushan said drily.

“…”

“Or perhaps Elder Botan did not feel it was necessary to mention it in front of you,” Lianmei said blandly.

“We will go prepare then,” Qing Aofang said with a polite salute.

Dushan sighed and stood as well, following Qing Aofang out, leaving him and Kun Juni as the only juniors still there.

“Well, that went a bit differently to how I expected,” Mo Shunfei said at last.

“You expected them to threaten and be strident?” Lianmei asked, between sips of her tea.

“Well, yes?” Mo Shunfei replied.

In truth, he was somewhat surprised as well.

“Their goal is to be a royal pain in my ass while getting as many benefits as they can. They can do that much better by playing the smiling ‘friend’ with a knife behind their back than a belligerent tough holding a cudgel under my nose,” Lianmei said, sitting back and sipping her wine.

“Here, your storage ring,” Diaomei said, passing it back to him.

Lianmei raised her eyebrow, likely wondering why he didn’t have it. Sir Huang, however gave him a sideways look.

With a sigh, he took the ring and unloaded a small stack of herb jars and herbs onto the floor.

“A case in point,” Lianmei said, eyeing the pile of herbs for a moment before looking back at him. “I hate being right sometimes.”

“They pocketed the herbs to make it look like the valley is worse than it is?” Shunfei mused. “And you didn’t call them on it?”

“If there are herbs they will not be in Caolun or Wufan’s rings,” Lianmei shrugged. “They gave Yun here herbs so he was also tarred with the same brush, or he would have had to refuse them and that would have caused different problems.”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “I was going to mention it, but… it was kind of hectic yesterday evening and there was no good time.”

“Indeed,” Sir Huang agreed.

“No doubt both those scheming old men are wondering why I just let them have their way as well,” Lianmei mused.

“Uhh…”

He wanted to ask just that, actually, but now found himself wondering if he should, or if they would even answer. Lianmei eyed him for a moment, sipping her drink then glanced up at Juni.

“Why do you think, Juni?”

“…”

“Because this is… useful to us,” Juni said after a short pause. “It would be easier if none of them were here, but now that they are, something is better than nothing. Antagonizing them gains us little and while headhunting priceless herbs is… useful enough, what we need are bulk harvests of high quality goods that are genuinely enticing for this gift. Not a bunch of seven-star tree orchids and the odd ornamental fern.”

“Yes, quite,” Lianmei nodded.

“You are after the things like the lingzhi and spirit fruit,” he said, understanding at last.

“Mmm-hum,” Lianmei nodded.

“So, what will I be doing today?” he asked Sir Huang, because there had to be a reason he was called here, other than to just ‘be’ here. “Will we also be going to this new valley?”

“Hmmm…” Sir Huang stared at him pensively.

In truth, he was not at all keen to go.

Being in a different valley from Botan and his scheming seemed like an eminently good idea after the experience he had had yesterday. That said, he didn’t need a picture drawn at this point to see what the ‘issue’ was. The ‘Spreading the expertise around’ narrative that Sir Huang had started was a totally double-edged sword. Even if he avoided this mess, could Leng also avoid it, could Ding and the others?

-Do Ding and the others want to avoid it?

That was a bothersome thought. He suspected they would, given this promised to be what they had been doing before, but with even less of a safety net, but at the same time, it was difficult for them to refuse if Ha Botan actually ordered them. Probably he could wave his father’s talisman around. Certainly Caolun and Wufan would in his place.

“It may be that you have to go, but there is work to be finished in Portam Rhanae, so you will be taking Leng and at least some of your group there,” Sir Huang said at last.

“I suspect Botan will spin that rather awkwardly,” Diaomei, who had sat down at the table now and helped herself to tea, noted.

“…”

“Wufan and Caolun’s groups have big eyes for this, but Botan will almost certainly want Yun’s friends to be among the actual bodies on the line,” Diaomei went on. “If you don’t go, I guarantee you, you are going to be about as well liked in twenty-four hours as the elite hunters. Even more so, because I can also guarantee you that at least one, maybe two, of the Din clan will go with you. No matter what you do. One will stay here and one will go with Caolun.”

“Because they want to make a link with the Ha family,” he answered with a grimace.

“Indeed,” Sir Huang mused. “—As for Botan being annoyed, I am sure he will be, but I can always toss his comments about being useful right back in his face. I am fairly sure yesterday was not particularly systematic.”

“No… no it was not,” he conceded.

“I take it you do not have the scans to prove it,” Lianmei added.

“Actually, they were very dutiful about the scanning side of things,” he said blandly, “The marking though…”

After that, they spent about ten minutes sorting out, from the records he did have, where he was going to take Leng, Ding and the others as a matter of priority. Heading outside again, into the pre-dawn darkness, he found that the rain had again picked up intensity as well.

-As if I needed another reason not to go to this other valley, he mused, dashing back into the common room of the inn.

Back inside, he found Leng chatting to Bai Luofan and Ling Tengfei.

“So, what is the plan?” Leng asked him as he sat down.

“For now, we are going back to the ruined town,” he answered, helping himself to some soup. “Though I don’t imagine Botan will be hugely pleased.

“—Ding and the others?” he asked.

“Still in the baths,” Leng replied. “Mao came by though and said they were asked. Ding claimed they all had meridian strain and pill backlash, on account of everyone being Qi Refinement. Even Botan couldn’t argue too hard with that.”

Staring at his hand for a moment, which felt a bit numb, he grimaced, wishing that had occurred to him back in the storehouse. A day recuperating, rain or no, would not have been a terrible outcome.

“—Morning,” Ha Mun, who had just come over, looking a bit sleepy, said, sitting down beside him.

“Morning,” he replied.

They chatted away for a good while, until Caolun and Wufan came back, both actually going over to Jun Arai and Han Shu, who were eating breakfast, to ask them if they would join their teams, which he found mildly hilarious. Both were polite, as far as he could tell, but their refusal was pretty obvious.

“Yun, you will be coming with us, won’t you?” Caolun said, coming over to their table next.

“No, actually, not to start with,” he said, shaking his head. “There is still a bunch of stuff to clear up in Portam Rhanae it seems.”

“You aren’t tired of there?” Ha Fanbo, who had come over with Caolun, asked sourly.

“I am, but at least it’s a familiar kind of tired,” he replied drily. “You saw the hunters come back yesterday?”

“And that discouraged you?” Fanbo sniffed.

“—Ah, Brother Caolun, we are assembling!” Ha Caotan called over from the doorway.

“Aiii…” Caolun sighed and shook his head.

“Good luck,” he said blandly.

“Mmm, yeah,” Caolun nodded, before heading for the door.

Fanbo just gave him a look that was somewhere between supercilious and pitying as he headed to the door.

“You are not going?” he asked Wufan.

“Alas, I am still injured,” Wufan grimaced in a somewhat affected manner.

-Riiiiight, he sneered to himself.

Wufan gave him what he probably thought was a ‘superior’ look, then headed off after Caolun and the others.

Somewhat to his surprise, Elder Botan did not bother to come ask them to tag along. His best guess there was that it gave the others more opportunities to monopolize whatever they found.

They ate breakfast in silence after that, until Ding, Mao, Jiao, Fang and Yufan all appeared, all looking drawn and tired.

“Did they leave already?” Ding asked, looking around.

“Uh-huh,” he confirmed.

“That’s something, I really didn’t fancy spending all day being ordered around by Jingbei or Fanjing,” Mao muttered.

“Well, you get to spend the day being ordered around by us instead,” Leng joked.

“Noes… please,” Jiao said, pretending to be terrified.

“I am surprised they didn’t drag us out though,” Ding said after helping himself to some soup.

“Probably took it as a sign that they could get more opportunities for themselves,” Mao shrugged.

“We are going back to the town anyway,” he added.

“Uggh…” Ding grimaced.

“It could be worse,” Leng reminded Ding.

“Yes, that is very true,” Mun agreed.

They chatted away for a while longer, until Duan Mu appeared to inform them that they would all be setting off in about ten minutes. The Bai group all went with Duan Mu at that point, so they finished their breakfast, largely in silence, before heading outside as well. None of them had much to pack at this point, having had several trips out there already.

“I’ll be with you today,” Sir Teng said with a grin, coming to join them as they made their way over to the platform.

“To ensure we actually work?” Leng asked, rolling his eyes.

“No, to ensure that today is not the day an alkyr kills one of you,” Sir Teng replied with a laugh.

“Oh… Yun!”

He turned to find Ha Faolian coming over.

“You need a communication talisman…” she said with a slight scowl.

“…”

“There is always something,” Leng murmured.

He took the talisman from Ha Faolian, doing his best to ignore the sideways looks from the others. It would not have been the end of the world if they left without one. You could still send messages using the teleport jades, but it was certainly more convenient.

“It’s keyed to the central channel, don’t use it to chat with people,” Faolian added. “The groups were doing that yesterday and it does our heads in trying to keep an eye on things like portal order.”

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Sir Teng said with a grin.

“Good luck,” Faolian murmured, shaking her head.

“Everyone ready?!” Lianmei called from the centre of the platform.

Nodding, he moved a bit further in, as did the others, watching as Lianmei counted down—

There was the usual distortion, which he was almost getting used to by this point, and then they were standing in the upper town plaza before the grand shrine.

“Oh… this is not what I was expecting,” Bai Luofan exclaimed, looking around.

“We will go get started,” Sir Teng said to Lianmei.

“Okay,” she nodded. “If you finish up you might as well head back. Probably we will portal from up top.”

“Gotcha,” Sir Teng confirmed.

They watched Lianmei, Mu Shi, Duan Mu, Ling Tengfei and the rest head off into the steady downpour until they vanished from sight, then Leng sighed deeply, taking his tablet out.

“So, I guess we just retrace our steps from yesterday… and do it block by block?”

“That seems the best bet,” he agreed, setting off on the route they had taken the day before.

“It will be nice to do it without feeling like we are trying to set some kind of record,” Ding added, which got a round of laughter from all of them, even Sir Teng as he sorted his bow out.

Somewhat… remarkably, much of the morning after that was really, in the grand scheme rather painless, for the place they were in, at least. Most of the spirit herbs that had been skipped over by the groups yesterday were vines, creepers and a surprising number of tropical fig trees once they got out of the shadow of the massif itself. Conversely they encountered almost no bothersome predators bigger than a dinner plate which surprised him not a bit, given how many they had killed the previous day.

“I wonder why they skipped all these figs…” Ding muttered as they sat in the shelter of a ruined hall, watching the formation slowly sealing up a trailing mutated water fern on one of the smaller trees growing out of a wall.

“Because they are common… unexciting, golden… core grade fruit?” Leng said, between mouthfuls of one of the larger ones as he scanned for the none-existent threats.

“I know, but you could sell a crate of these for a dozen spirit stones down below…” Mao pointed out. “And we have filled half a storage ring with them…”

“Put a few jade in on your side!” Jiao called over to them from the far side of the hall, where he was sitting with Mun and Fang.

Glancing at the compass and the formation node beside them on the mossy block, he sighed and nodded, feeding another spirit jade into the formation.

“So, what do we do when we reach the end of this?” Leng mused.

“The end of?” he asked blandly.

“You know what I mean,” Leng said drily, waving down the overgrown street. “We will hit the cliff on the north side of the valley by mid-afternoon even if we dance backwards on our hands.”

“Go up to the flooded area and the waterfalls and have a poke around there?” Ding suggested.

“Is there much forest left to do?” he asked.

“Mmmmm… we basically wrapped that up yesterday,” Mao answered. “The area north of us, out there is a tangle of flooded stuff and it ends in cliffs and two more huge waterfalls about half a mile into the rain. We went to the water’s edge and Duan Mu and Han Shu took one look at the cliffs and said no. Something about qi drain in the low cloud.”

“Yep, that happens the higher you go,” Leng confirmed.

“How do you know these things, Leng?” Mao asked with a sigh.

“Because I actually read the things I was meant to when I took the promotion exam?” Leng retorted.

“Wait, we are expected to read?” Mao asked gormlessly.

“Well that explains a lot, I guess you just cultivated by banging your manual into your face repeatedly,” Ding cackled.

“Nah, I paid beauties to read it to me, while I lounged in teahouses, drinking fine wine,” Mao smirked.

“Come on, you two!” Jiao called over.

“Sorry, sorry!” Mao apologized, putting a spirit jade into his formation centre.

“How much longer do you reckon?” he mused, eyeing the still fern, which was still curling up slowly.

“Long enough for a few more of these delicious figs,” Ding said, taking another from the crate, then swigging some wine.

“…”

Leng, who had taken another one as well, and was now splitting it open, eyed Ding’s fig pensively.

“What?” Ding asked.

“You are checking them for fig-wasps… right?” Leng asked blandly.

“Fig…?” Ding blinked

“Wasps…?” Mao asked, looking at his half eaten fig with a frown.

Ding made a face and then spat out the mouthful of fig on the rock beside him. It was wasp free.

“You’re a right bastard!” Ding complained as Mao started to laugh.

They spent another thirty minutes, in the end, slowly sealing up the fern and then teleporting it back, before continuing on through the complex of ruins. Jingbei had basically skipped through them yesterday, only interested in a water lotus in plaza at the front, which the group had divided up between them anyway, rather than harvest properly.

“You know…” Fang remarked as they stood in another of the halls, this one with tumbled columns and a broad, almost silted up pool in the middle. “Doesn’t this place kind of remind you of the baths back at the inn?”

“Now that you mention it…” Looking around, he found what Fang had said to be kind of true.

“I will say this for whoever made these ruins, their eye for beauties is fiiiine!” Ding remarked, elbowing him in the arm and pointing at the vine-draped statue at the end of the hall.

The woman, naked and carved of white stone—as all these statues seemed to be—was lounging lazily on a couch. A slow stream of water tumbled down from above, over her, keeping the statue perpetually glistening, the relief of the carving made it almost lifelike, as if she could get up from at any moment, though her eyes had vanished at some point, which made her hollow face somewhat unnerving.

“—How is your progress?”

He nearly jumped as Ha Faolian’s voice echoed in his head.

“What’s wrong?” Leng asked.

“Badly timed transmission,” he muttered.

“Uh… we are getting there,” he replied vaguely.

“Do you think you could take a trip to the other valley?” Faolian asked.

“I… thought we were not needed there?” he asked.

“Would it surprise you to learn that the groups who went there are turning out to be… unreliable?” she sighed.

“And we are?” he replied drily.

“You will at least follow orders,” she said blandly.

“We are kind of in the middle of something here,” he added. “We found what looks like a bath house and are checking it out, there might be a herb here they missed.”

On one level, he felt a bit bad about spinning her a tale, but at the same time, nothing he had just said was… incorrect, either.

“…”

“What would we be doing if we went there?” he asked, after the awkward silence extended for a few seconds.

“There are three teleport points they have… set up,” Faolian said with a grimace. “Half of Wufan and Caolun’s groups came back after lunch, with, admittedly, a bunch of quite impressive herbs, including a seven-star lamium. A few then went back out again, and of those, Caolun’s group are no longer answering their talismans…”

“And we can’t send some of the Ling guards to check?” he asked, really not enthused about going to a new valley to look for people who had gone missing. “Or the Herb Hunters?”

“The Hunters are already… occupied,” Faolian replied. “As are the others… your group is the largest one that is sort of free.”

“I see…” he replied.

“What is it?” Leng asked.

“Caolun’s group has not reported in and they want us to go check on it,” he replied.

“Us?” Ding muttered sceptically.

“Your senior sister Xiang went back out there with them,” Faolian added, sounding a touch more annoyed now.

“Meilan…”

“…”

“Ah… sorry, senior sister, I didn’t mean to sound hesitant,” he sent back apologetically.

“What about her?” Ding asked, making him realise he had sent that out loud.

“She is with Caolun’s group, apparently,” he said with a grimace.

“Oh… then why do they need us?” Fang asked.

“Why did she head out there, any idea what we might be heading into?” he asked Faolian.

“Caolun’s group needed an extra… feng shui expert,” Faolian said after a short pause.

“…”

He stared up at the rainy sky and sighed.

“Okay, we will come back to the Inn…”

“Just set up a teleport formation where you are, I can link it through,” Faolian replied. “They are sending stuff back via the Inn at the moment…”

“Well?” Fang prompted him.

“Let’s go out to the plaza and set up a teleport formation,” he said.

Leng frowned, but the others were already heading back outside.

“Do we have enough spirit stones to make a jump like that with all of us?” Leng asked, frowning.

“What’s happening?” Sir Teng asked, coming over.

“It seems that Caolun’s group has gone missing, along with Meilan,” he said, rapidly bringing Teng up to speed.

Teng frowned and looked distant.

“Huh… I can’t reach Sir Huang either, or Elder Lianmei…”

“Could be the rain?” he guessed. “They have been saying that a Rising Dragon Gale is coming back for almost two days now?”

“…”

“Although… would they not have sent a message warning us?” Leng muttered.

Sir Teng nodded, still looking slightly perturbed.

“Faolian?” he asked.

“…”

The talisman shifted but there was no answer, so he supposed she was talking to someone else now.

It took only a few moments to set up a teleport circle in the relatively clear plaza outside the ruined baths, where they had harvested the lotus the previous day.

“We have the teleport formation set up,” he sent.

“…”

“Ah, yes, sorry… link your talisman to it,” Faolian said a moment later.

Shaking his head, he took the talisman and placed it on the jade. A moment later it chimed, confirming that—

Everything around them twisted. The world bled colours he had never seen before and the rain seemed to flow upwards into the sky. Sir Teng’s expression was frozen between shock, anger and fear, even as their surroundings melted away.

Walls bled into tangled vegetation.

The ground was still leaf litter over paving, but the air was suffused with a rich earthy smell, like he was both tasting and smelling freshly turned over leaves or grass… melded with recently burnt wood.

He appeared a metre above the ground and then felt himself drawn to it like a giant palm was suddenly pressing down on him. Nearby, Ding smashed down face-first, groaning. Leng, who had been beside Sir Teng, half hit a rock and bounced awkwardly, spitting blood on the ground.

He hit the ground – not rock, mercifully – and coughed up a mouthful of blood, his qi thoroughly chaotic as he tried to focus on his surroundings.

-What the fates just… happened?

“Faolian!”

He tried to use the talisman, and froze, because it wasn’t there.

“Nameless fates go get buggered by monkeys!” Fang, who had also landed nearby groaned, rolling off a branch he had landed on hard enough to shatter it.

“Teng?” he gasped, pushing himself up.

Sir Teng, who had not landed awkwardly, was looking around, his face pale.

“Mao… Mun?”

“Here…” Mun gasped from somewhere behind him.

“What just…” Leng pushed himself up and then trailed off.

All around them, the ground rippled, like a gentle breeze had just emanated out from somewhere behind them. Before his eyes, a tall, white stem slowly twisted out of the loam, golden-brown, furry leaves sprouting from it—

An arrow wrapped in a talisman hit Leng in the chest, and exploded in a flash of nearly invisible fire, doing nothing except make Leng wince.

“GET OUT OF THERE!” a woman’s voice… Kun Juni’s he thought? imbued with qi, screamed from somewhere nearby.

Before he could locate her, however, Sir Teng grabbed him and Leng and tossed them both bodily away. Tumbling in the air, he could only watch, helpless, as the elite guard, who had just been laughing and eating figs with them not ten minutes earlier, grasped Mun, even as the ground beneath them erupted into stems of the golden-brown plant—

Sir Teng grimaced and spun the blade in his hand back along his arm, and then, to his shock, sliced it off at the elbow, a fraction before it dissolved into leafy loam, then leapt towards him.

He hit the ground, rolled, spotting with relief that Ding and Fang had also managed to make it to a rock—

The area to his left twisted outwards in a silent crash of shattering space; Caolun, Ha Cao Cao, Din Kongfei, Din Ouyeng, Ha Shuwei and Ha Leung Fan appearing to merge with the clearing from another space with scattered ruins in tall grass by a river, overshadowed by a rising cliff.

“—Don’t!” Sir Cao’s truncated shout rang through the clearing.

“That’s not—!” Din Kongfei’s exclamation was cut off as he landed in a crouch, a spear already appearing in his hand, sweeping away the nearby golden brown leaves.

“W-what!?!” Caolun landed on the ground and stumbled forward, only to be grabbed by Ha Shuwei before he could pitch into another emerging plant.

Sir Cao, seeing them and Sir Teng, immediately spun and grabbed Caolun and Din Kongfei, leaping vertically into the air to crash down on a fallen tree about ten metres away.

Shaking his head, fighting the disorientation still grasping at him, he tried to get up, as the rolling wave of golden-brown knee high plants surged towards them.

Ha Shuwei triggered a barrier, even as Ha Leung Fang raced after after Sir Cao—

“EARTH CORROSION!” Din Ouyeng yelled, a talisman appearing in his hand as he slammed a palm into the ground…

{Jade Providence Seal}

The motion of the plants around him slowed somehow, almost seeming to telegraph where they were going next in the expanding wave of greenery.

He rolled to his left, intuitively grasping that he was in danger somehow!

A heartbeat later a small, nettle-like plant unfurled from the loam with deceptive speed, right where his stomach would have been. Mun, who had fallen nearby, staggered forward and then fell with a scream as a similarly emerging plant caught his ankle.

“No!” he gasped, drawing his blade and hacking at the plant with a desperate lunge—

His weapon passed through the plant and then it exploded into loam… and his blade rusted away at a rate so fast he barely had time to drop it, even as he grasped the groaning Mun by the arm and staggered up, looking for the woman who had shouted.

It was Kun Juni, as it turned out, blood running from her nose, crouched on a wall about ten metres away, a cracked formation core beside her.

“Get clear!” she screamed, “——— — —!”

Unfortunately, the rest of her shout was lost in a vast, world-shaking crash of breaking space as a further teleportation arrived.

Swirls of scattering rain left thousands of tiny flickering flames on the leaves of the blooming plant that was now surging up everywhere he looked, focusing around almost a dozen two metre tall trunks in the middle of the clearing, each one of which had a shimmering little ball of near invisible fire over it. Almost like a…

-A formation?

-A spirit herb that can use a formation?

The entire clearing distorted outwards, like the inside of it was too large to be contained—

A hand grasped his and he was hauled a few paces further backwards, even as the spatial turbulence that had just consumed the clearing seemed to draw everything back inwards for a mind-bending moment—

The spatial turbulence that had consumed the clearing faded away, the spirit herb, whatever it had been, consumed by it, almost as if it never was.

Getting his bearings, he found that his saviour was a blonde-haired youth about his age in a vaguely familiar purple and red robe, with golden flame-like patterns around the edges. A moment later, a beauty with golden hair, wearing a red and blue travelling dress, arrived next to them, looking around with a wary expression.

“…”

“—Ji?” a name surfaced to match the face of the youth he had met at the banquet in the Ling clan, who had come from Meng city to visit the Ling clan, what felt like a lifetime ago.

“Thanks,” he gasped, looking around for the others, his heart pounding.

“We meet again, Brother Yun,” the youth said with a wan smile, offering him a hand. “Although in much less auspicious circumstances it seems…”