~ PART 2 ~

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~ HAN MURAI – GRANDMASTER LI’S ESTATE, WEST FLOWER PICKING TOWN ~

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“—She seems nice…” the haunting words clawed at him, even as a jarring feeling of emptiness, washed through him, like he had just been plunged into icy water.

His awareness returned to his physical body as the moment faded, causing him to almost fall over, as he found he was still sitting cross-legged—a minor miracle he could only attribute to his armour supporting him.

“L-lifa!”

“Motherless…”

“Bear with it, Yuli…”

“Is G-guanbo okay?!”

“—My ring!”

“Bro, snap out of it!”

“—Feng, check him!”

“Are you okay?”

Fighting the disorientation and his cramping muscles, he found that the hall around him was in uproar.

Lotus Blossom was slumped on the floor, being held by Caoxi, who had clearly vomited blood, among other things, all over her dress, watching as a grim-faced Master Liwen tended to her. Guanbo, beside them, was also unconscious, blood running from his nose and mouth, being checked by a shaking Singing Lily. Deng Xuong was still passed out as well, looking paler than he had been.

The others were little better, though that was somewhat relative as an assessment. Yuli was lying on her back, breathing hard. Qing just stared into nothing, trembling like a leaf. Master Jifang was crouched beside the younger of his workmen, who was also unconscious, while Oufan was holding his stomach and whimpering piteously. The only ones on that side not looking like death were Blue Jasmine and Misty Camellia, and even they were pale and confused while wiping blood from their mouths.

“Are you okay?”

Danshu, on his other side, had a bad nosebleed and looked deeply shaken. Hong, similarly, appeared to have been sick, but was also otherwise okay. Kun Yu, however, was slumped over, clutching his stomach in clear agony.

“—Murai?” Danshu gave him a hard poke in the side, as he finally registered that someone had been speaking to him the whole time.

“I—” he tried to say, ‘I’m okay’, but the cramps had other ideas, and it just came out as a wretched moan, the hall turning fuzzy for a moment as the nausea returned.

“—Easy…” awareness returned, and he found a concerned, dark-haired young woman in a white gown, embroidered with silver moons and stars, kneeling beside him, taking his pulse. “Take a breath…”

Following her advice, he took a breath, and nearly screamed as he was left feeling like someone had just reached into his stomach and twisted it, viciously.

“W-what happened?” he managed to rasp. He had half an idea, but the memory of Qing was still gnawing at him. “That… was not… a…”

“—Little discomfort?” Blue Jasmine finished for him.

“No, that was not,” Grandmaster Li muttered apologetically, from the centre of the formation.

Even as Grandmaster Li spoke, he was afflicted by another wave of nauseating light-headedness. He was also suddenly, and painfully, aware of a grasping chill spreading through his chest, while his right hand and left forearm felt like they had been dipped in ice.

“Soul Shock…” he groaned.

“Yes,” the young woman confirmed. “Give it a few minutes and it should pass. It seems the mark attached to you severed all your soul-bound items,” she added, confirming that suspicion.

“Severed?” Misty Camelia growled. “More like sundered…”

Following her gaze, he found that the selection of soul bound artefacts they had surrendered, which Grandmaster Li was now investigating, were indeed in a sorry state. His guard talisman was visibly cracked, as was Hong’s. Caoxi’s ring, which, given her realm had to be one of the expensive ones, was disturbingly deformed, and several of the other rings and ornaments gave him decidedly inauspicious vibes.

“Oh… motherless…” Hong suddenly groaned, putting his head in his hands.

“The mudskipper key?” Danshu sighed.

“Yep, it’s gone,” Hong sighed, sitting back and staring at the ceiling.

“And my father’s heirloom talisman…” Kun Yu gasped.

“So even stuff that isn’t here…” Master Jifang muttered, running his hands through his head. “What a day…”

“At least you are alive,” Blue Jasmine pointed out, her comment drawing some weak laughter from Caoxi, Misty Camellia and Danshu.

“I can only apologize,” Grandmaster Li spoke up at last, setting aside a blue-jade pendant from the pile as he did so. “I can assure you all, that there will be no difficulties in terms of salvage or reimbursement, though I appreciate some of these had value beyond mere spirit stones. It is the least I can do…”

“T-that… is most generous,” Lotus Blossom—who had also just about managed to sit up, with Caoxi’s help—rasped.

“—In terms of recuperation, could we not keep them under observation for a while, in the summer annex?” Master Liwen suggested. “If Miss Fengli has no objections?”

“Fengli?” Grandmaster Li turned to the young woman beside him.

“Eh, its fine,” the young woman waved her hand, unconcernedly. “I can just…”

She trailed off as the doors to the hall slammed open and two rain-soaked female servants rushed in, their faces pale.

“G-Grandmaster!” the leading servant gasped, trying to catch her breath and bow at the same time.

“Grandmaster, we have a problem…” the other, who turned out to be Qing who had served him tea before, managed to pant.

“Yes, we do, Suyin,” Liwen replied to the first speaker. “Can you go get medical supplies for our guests?”

“Uh, no…” Qing shook her head, then took another breath. “We are—”

“Ah, Suyin, Qing, here you are!” Luquan hurried into the hall, followed by two armed guards. “Grandmaster, we have a problem!” the servant added.

“So you all keep telling me,” Grandmaster Li snapped, standing up.

“What is it?” Fengli asked, also standing up, frowning now.

“—Ah, Young Lady,” Luquan hurriedly bowed to her, before turning back to Grandmaster Li. “It is Young Noble… Dai…”

Luquan trailed off, as a series of ephemeral barriers swirled into being around them—

A soundless roar left his ears ringing, as a flare of magenta light bled through their surroundings. The hall shuddered, formation symbols flickering eerily on the walls for several disorientating seconds, before everything returned to some semblance of stillness.

Looking around, he saw most of the others in the hall who were not already unconscious, were staggering around, or kneeling, looking disorientated and confused. Even the Mantra users, Master Liwen and Fengli were pale. Only Grandmaster Li didn’t seem that affected, though his expression was stony as he stared at the fading formation symbols.

“—— — ——?” Kun Yu groaned, pushing himself up.

He pointed at his own ears and then signed, “I can’t hear you.”

“Someone has decided… to branch out… from attack alchemist,” Danshu signed, somewhat disjointedly.

“What was… that?” Fengli’s shocked voice carried by her qi, echoed disconcertingly as his hearing started to recover.

“Someone just hit the estate with an Immortal Treasure,” Grandmaster Li muttered, turning to the shocked, pale-faced Luquan, who was picking himself up off the floor. “So, what evils has Young Noble Dai brought to my—”

The barriers around them suddenly rippled, deforming as if something were trying to scatter them.

“—Oh for…” Grandmaster Li lunged for the central formation dais he had set down earlier, and swept the jade bowl holding spirit stones off of it—

“You dare!”

The voice, distant, and yet also seemingly inside his head, left him seeing double, and feeling like he had had his face pushed into a pile of shit.

Two of the eight altars abruptly cracked, emitting sparks of black lightning. The hall around them warped, visibly, as parts of the formations running through it began to destabilize, scattering multi-coloured embers of chaotic qi.

“I HAVE DONE NOTHING TO YOU,” Grandmaster Li’s voice roared through the whole estate, and perhaps the entire town block. “EXPLAIN THIS—!”

“INSOLENT!”

A second ward, a cube with vaguely crystalline facets, snapped into focus around each of them—

A moment later, a muscular, blonde youth with a close-cropped beard, appeared in the hall like a ghost. Two others appeared beside him, amidst the swirling qi—a dark-haired youth in a dark green scholar’s gown and a tall, pale-haired youth, dressed in a teal and gold robe and holding a paper umbrella.

“Little formations expert, you seem to have some means!” the blonde youth snarled, pointing his blade—which shimmered with the same magenta fire—at Grandmaster Li. “How dare you attack my brother—!”

“Attack your brother?” Grandmaster Li repeated, flatly, before glancing at the pale-haired youth holding the umbrella. “Young Lord Ji, why would I attack anyone from the Imperial School—?”

“And yet, you have,” the blonde youth growled, taking a threatening half-step forward.

“Perhaps the Nine Moons are using the chaos to—” the dark-haired youth suggested, his gaze lingering on Fengli.

“—Disgraceful!” Fengli, who had recovered her composure now, snapped angrily, cutting him off. “How dare you try and drag us into your stupid games. This is an unprovoked attack on my brother-in—”

The dark-haired youth turned to her, and the aura of oppression in the hall intensified. Fengli flinched as if she had been slapped.

“Yeah, that’s right,” the dark-haired youth smirked. “You—”

“Gao, Wang—enough,” the pale-haired youth cut in, holding up his hand, at which point both Gao’s martial intent and whatever the dark-haired youth had been doing faded away somewhat. “Formations Master Li, this is a little awkward, but my sworn brother’s sibling has indeed suffered some accident on your estate.”

“Kai, his life talisman is cracked!” Gao spat. “That is not ‘some accident’!”

“Indeed,” the dark-haired youth nodded in ‘sympathetic’ agreement. “Certainly, something underhanded—”

“Please, Wang, just shut up and let me talk,” Ji Kai sighed, stepping to the fore. “While I appreciate that my sworn brothers have been a little… exuberant, in their incursion, Master Li, their actions were driven by their deep concern for Dai Gao’s younger brother, who is your guest…”

“…”

“Rather than level this estate,” Ji Kai continued, “Perhaps we should first find Dai Yun, who is clearly not here?”

Listening to Ji Kai speak, he had to admit that he had some balls. Using an Immortal Treasure and some kind of peak-Immortal step alignment disruption talisman or treasure to attack an estate, then call it ‘exuberant’ was…

Rather than reply, Grandmaster Li just stared, his expression a bit glassy, at the trio.

“Why would teacher attack his own guest?” it was actually Liwen, who spoke up first, and with remarkable restraint he felt.

“Why indeed…” Wang sneered, casting an eye across all of them, before focusing again on Fengli. “Why indeed—”

“Wang…” Ji Kai sighed, glancing at the youth as he silenced him.

“—Okay,” Grandmaster Li cut in. “Liwen, bring Fengli and help our guests—”

Dai Gao, however, shook his head. “Impossible—”

“—I’ll come with you, Donghai.” Fengli cut him off, seemingly without any care for what status the group might have. “Given their affiliations—”

“How dare you…” Gao snarled, actually pointing his blade at her.

“—and this trial,” Fengli continued, with barely a pause. “Who is to say what stupid ideas they might have…”

“You…” Wang glared at her.

“Wang, stay here with them, then,” Ji Kai added, pushing the blade down slightly with a grimace. “Just to be sure…”

Wang stared at Ji Kai and Dai Gao, then, somewhat surprisingly, just sighed and nodded. Grandmaster Li looked like he was going to say something, however, in the end he simply nodded as well.

“Lead on, Master Li,” Dai Gao growled, gesturing commandingly towards the door to the hall.

Grandmaster Li gave the youth a long, rather inscrutable look, then after one final glance around the room, led the pair of young nobles out, followed by the now scowling Fengli and a pale-faced Luquan.

“What was this formation for?” Wang asked, after they had departed, eyeing the remaining formation altars.

“To remove a curse mark, Young Lord Di Wang,” Liwen replied neutrally.

“A curse mark, huh—” Without any preamble, Wang stepped over to Yuli, who happened to be nearest to him.

“H-hey!” Yuli flinched, as he took her hand—

“I see, I see,” Wang mused, ignoring her as she stood there, trembling for several long seconds. “It seems your Master Li has some small ability after all…”

“Please, Young Lord Di,” Liwen interjected. “Miss Yuli and the others have suffered some backlash.”

Di Wang glanced at the others, taking in their pale faces, expressions frozen between shock, horror and fear then just shrugged and gestured to Master Liwen as if to give him permission to continue.

Liwen sighed and gave the youth a polite salute of thanks, which was far more than he deserved, really.

“Qing, Suyin, we will take them to the summer annex,” Liwen instructed the two maids, who had been standing there, quietly.

“O-of course…” Suyin replied as both bowed.

Straightening up, she clapped her hands, then stared at them in confusion, as if expecting something to happen, which hadn’t.

“The formations are monkeyed,” Qing muttered, shaking her head.

“So it seems,” Liwen agreed, as Suyin sighed softly. “Young Lord Di, might we call some extra helpers to move the injured?”

Di Wang stared around, then nodded dismissively. With a polite bow to him, Suyin scurried to the hall and called for help.

They stood around, in awkward silence, as Di Wang continued to poke at the remains of the formation, until four more servants appeared. All looked rather unnerved as they followed Suyin’s quiet direction to help the injured to their feet, avoiding Di Wang’s gaze and bowing whenever he so much as glanced at them.

“Is he from that Di clan?” Hong signed unobtrusively—

“Don’t sign again,” Di Wang cut in, glancing over at them. “—or I will break your arm meridians.”

“Apologies, Young Lord Di,” Hong bowed, apologetically, his face a picture of neutrality.

Danshu, beside him, sighed softly. That wasn’t really an answer, but it did show that Di Wang knew the formal military sign language or had good enough eyes and perception to read the intent in Hong’s hand-movements even with soul sense suppressed by the weather. Neither interpretation boded well, however.

The almost aggressive passivity of Master Liwen strongly implied to him that Di Wang was also stronger than him. That meant the youth was at least a Chosen Immortal. He wasn’t going to bet against Ji Kai being a Golden Immortal, either, at this point.

“—Um, Young Lord Di,” Qing stepped forward and bowed respectfully.

Di Wang glanced at her, frowning.

“May we move the injured, now, Young Lord?” Qing murmured, doing her best not to look nervous.

They stood there in silence as the youth pensively took in the hall, before finally nodding.

“How did they get cursed?” Di Wang asked Liwen, as the servants started to help the injured once more.

“Someone messed with an old formation in a teahouse robbery, Young Lord Di,” Liwen replied promptly, and with a slight bow. “They were all in the teahouse at the time. As part of our cooperation with the Town Authority we deal with cases like this occasionally…”

Di Wang nodded, then poked one of the cracked altars.

“… and, as Young Lord Di surely sees,” Liwen continued, “today is somewhat—”

“This lightning is not something you would expect to see in a place like this,” the youth noted, interrupted Liwen mid-sentence.

“Teacher is one of Blue Water Province’s most respected formations grandmasters—” Liwen pointed out, before Di Wang cut him off once more.

“Daoist Dongfei is not in the Dao Step,” the youth observed. "Quite arrogant to call himself ‘Grandmaster’?”

“…”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Di Wang chuckled, giving Liwen a frankly mocking ‘pat’ on the shoulder.

-Is he just trying to be confrontational at this point? He found himself wondering, as Liwen, his expression almost painfully neutral now, diplomatically ignored the leading question and the provocative follow up.

It was very tempting to just accept that Di Wang was merely concerned about his ‘companion’, and thoroughly distrustful of Li Fengli’s background. That this was just the youth’s way of asserting n his authority on the scene—

“—Sarge, shall we go with the lieutenant?” Danshu asked him quietly.

“What happened to him, anyway?” Di Wang asked, glancing over at the lieutenant, who was being moved by Kun Yu and Hong onto a stretcher the servants had provided.

“Ambushed, while responding to the teahouse robbery, Lord Di,” he replied, giving the youth a formal salute.

“Mmmm…” Di Wang just nodded again, then went over to the central altar.

-Wait a second, a disturbing possibility slipped into his mind, as, trying to pick up his train of thought once more, he watched Di Wang crouch down by the artefacts, which were still on the floor, reviewing the youth’s rather leading and provocative attitude and the way he kept asking questions. Is he trying to use some kind of divination art here? To check if we are hiding something?

“Errm… Young Lord, those may be unsafe to handle…” Liwen informed him, some nervousness finally creeping into his tone as Di Wang began to look through broken artefacts.

“Evidently,” Di Wang sighed, putting down Caoxi’s ring, then picking up a blue-jade hair pin that belonged to Blue Jasmine, who was also still loitering, even as the others exited the hall. “Odd, though, that a formation style associated with Ling Shuntao would be on a little teahouse.”

-And he can even pick out the formation maker? Yep, he is definitely fishing for information here. The question is, to what end? Stupid coincidences do happen…

Years of experience with the guards proved that on an almost monthly basis—especially when it came to rivalries between sects and clans. However, now that the shock of the moment was starting to wear off, he was starting to feel decidedly uneasy about the way things were developing.

“—The Ling clan has quite a history with our town, Young Lord,” Liwen added helpfully, as he returned his focus to the room at large so as not to miss anything. “Lady Ling lived here for many years, and Ling Shuntao was her great grandfather.”

“…”

“Fine,” Di Wang said, abruptly, standing up again before gesturing to Liwen to lead the way. “Show me this ‘Summer Annex’.”

“Of course, Young Lord Di,” Liwen replied, with another bow.

“Er… what about the artefacts, Young Lord, Master Liwen?” Suyin, who had also not left yet, asked hurriedly.

Di Wang glanced at them, then at Liwen, and then pointed quite randomly at Kun Yu who was now helping Hong carry the lieutenant.

“Gather them up, guardsman,” Di Wang instructed the corporal.

“Y-young Lord,” Kun Yu, looking understandably nervous, quickly passed his end of the stretcher to Danshu and gave Di Wang a salute, before hurrying over to the altar.

Because he had no storage device, and the rest of his ‘kit’ had been left in the mudskipper, the corporal had to use the jade bowl that had held spirit stones to hold the artefacts he gingerly collected up.

There were a few audible sighs of relief from those still in the hall, when Kun Yu put the last talisman in the bowl and stood again, holding it like it was alchemical bomb.

“Seriously,” Di Wang snorted, just loud enough to be heard.

“Come,” he murmured quickly to Kun Yu, jerking his head towards the exit. Blue Jasmine, who was still loitering, fell in beside them, giving Kun Yu’s arm a sympathetic squeeze.

“If I might show you the way, Young Lord,” Liwen added, helpfully, behind them.

The trip to the ‘summer annex’, which as it turned out was only a hundred or so metres from the hall and didn’t even require going outside into the rain to reach, was pretty much more of the same. Di Wang continued to ask questions and make observations that veered between leading, insulting and outright dismissive, and Liwen continued to reply with admirable calmness and good grace.

It was with some relief that Qing finally stopped by a door and informed them that they had arrived, ushering in Di Wang as if he were some guest of honour.

Inside, he found a rather nice reception hall with beautiful scroll paintings of famous provincial landmarks, a tasteful collection of what looked like Tai-era arborundum pots, and a view out over the courtyard garden and one of the smaller canals that ran through the estate.

The injured Lotus Blossom, Guanbo and Lieutenant Xiong, now resting on couches, were being checked by a male servant. The others were sitting around, chatting quietly and accepting cups of tea from Suyin and another male servant. Superficially, everyone seemed like they had regained some composure, however, he couldn’t help but notice that Yuli flinched when Di Wang walked in, and Master Jifang became very interested in the arborundum pots.

“Refreshments, Young Lord Di?” Qing asked politely as she ushered Di Wang to one of the focal chairs.

“No,” Di Wang replied, with an exaggerated eyeroll, as he picked a chair that wasn’t the one Qing had led him to. “I had some delicious wine earlier and have no interest in sullying its memory.”

“Tea, Master Sergeant?” Suyin murmured, coming over to him.

“Thanks…” he accepted the cup she proffered, as Kun Yu found a convenient table and eagerly put down the bowl.

Taking a sip, he couldn’t help but sigh softly, because it was excellent tea.

Savouring the slightly fruity flavour, with just a hint of jasmine, he found himself staring blankly out at the rain and the swaying trees of the courtyard garden.

“—So how did they do it?”

With a start, he turned to look at Qing, who had come to stand beside him.

“Do…?” he repeated, slightly confused, as for a moment, he could have sworn it was his wife’s voice he had just heard, not the young woman from the Li estate.

“Do you want more tea?” she asked.

“More… tea?” he looked down at the cup and found, to his surprise, that it was empty.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to gulp it down,” he apologised, passing her the cup.

“It’s fine,” she chuckled. “It’s been a long day…”

He blinked, because this time, for a split second, his wife was standing there, beside him.

-Motherless monkeys! Qing is far too common a name! he complained in his heart.

“Sorry, the last while seems to have caught up with me,” he muttered, catching her slightly odd look as she took the cup from him.

Taking a breath, he stared out at the rain-drenched garden again, trying to convince the sudden up-welling of fatigue that he could feel stealing over him to go away.

“—You were saying, about the case…” his wife murmured, taking his arm.

“I…” he turned back to her, suddenly feeling rather light-headed. “Case?”

“Yes,” she nodded, passing him another cup of tea. “That young boy from the Ha clan… Shi Chang, right?”

“Ah…” he stared back out at the garden, the name finally triggering a recollection of what she was ‘talking’ about.

It wasn’t even a recent memory, which was part of why he had been thrown by the ‘scene’ and how it was somehow blurring with here and now. The unfortunate case of Ha Shi Chang had been a few years ago, a case of poisoning that many had been keen to write off as ‘self-inflicted stupidity’, except that it had not been. Not really—

“You can sit down, if you like,” Qing murmured politely, nodding her head towards a handy couch where Blue Jasmine was already sitting, sipping her own cup, staring absently into nothing.

“…”

He stared at the teacup in his hand, then at the others, who were all sitting around, just savouring things not being chaotic and horrible, pretty much.

“I just gave you the teacup?” he muttered.

“Yes… um, are you sure you are okay?” his wife murmured, putting a hand on his arm. “Maybe there are still some after-effects…?”

“After… effects?” he continued to stare at the teacup.

“—From the soul shock,” Qing replied, biting her lip. “Are you sure you are…?”

He stared blankly at her, suddenly, painfully aware of just how much of a toll the last hour had taken on him, mentally as much as physically. He just wanted to sit down and close his eyes for a moment…

“Why was I thinking about Ha Shi Chang?” he mumbled, as much to stop himself just shutting down as anything else.

“Because he poisoned himself, you idiot, and you are about to make me a widow if you don’t get a grip!” his wife snapped, grabbing the teacup and tossing it straight at the male servant who had been helping Suyin, who flinched backwards, moving with far more fluidity and speed than his realm should have allowed him to—

In the same instant, a splitting pain flashed through his body, leaving him feeling numb and nauseous—

He hit wet paving with a hard thud and then skidded straight into an ornamental border. Gasping, he tried to move himself and process what had just happened.

Clearly, he had just been poisoned, likely by the tea—

Painfully, pieces of the ‘puzzle’ belatedly slid together in his mind. Likely this was how ‘Young Noble Dai’ had been incapacitated. That act had led to the defences on the estate being breached—

Qing landed beside him and, before he could do anything, grabbed him by the back of his armour and started dragging him back across the courtyard, towards the room.

Weakly, he tried to struggle, but his arms and legs refused to work.

With a grunt, she dumped him on the edge of the raised veranda, and he got a look at the room… and stared.

The four… no, five male servants, most of whom he had never even seen enter the room, lay dead amidst a scene of frozen shock.

Two had been very obviously stabbed in their heads, while a third was slumped in a very unnatural shape over the couch Blue Jasmine had been sitting on. A fourth was twitching on the floor, near a stunned-looking Caoxi and a sprawling Misty Camellia, his robe soaked with faintly steaming tea. The last, who was the youth who approached him, was slowly sliding down the near wall, leaving a bloody smear as he did so.

The other casualty, rather concerningly, appeared to be Di Wang, who was slumped, pale and shaking in his chair, being helped by a blood-spattered Suyin.

Excepting Qing, Suyin, Blue Jasmine and Misty Camellia, everyone else, including Master Liwen, were just staring around, their expressions dazed and confused.

“What… just…” he started to ask Blue Jasmine, who was nearest to him as she picked herself up off the floor—

“—Easy, this is gonna be hard to explain,” Qing muttered, vaulting up beside him and putting a hand on his shoulder that pinned him in place as if he had no strength at all. “Can you walk?”

“N-no…” he managed to reply. “Not… after… did you throw me?”

“I saved your life,” Qing grunted as she surveyed the room. “That bastard sliding down the wall—” he shifted his head blearily to look at the youth, just in time to watch him slump back onto the floor, a twitching, boneless mess. “—nearly took your head off.”

“Yep…” Blue Jasmine agreed with a grimace, nodding to a short blade that was stuck in the floor near where he had been standing.

“What… did they lace it with?” Misty Camellia asked, making a face.

“Dreamsoul Jasmine,” Suyin muttered, not looking at Qing. “Steeped the flower in spirit alcohol to preserve its unique properties, then likely used it to cure the tea.”

“Nasty stuff…” Misty Camellia murmured, picking herself up.

“Yeah,” Qing agreed, looking around at the devastation with an unhappy sigh.

She removed her hand from his back and, abruptly, he felt sensation and mobility flood back into his limbs, along with a feeling that he had been somewhat rejuvenated.

Sitting up, he stared at her, still trying to process exactly what was going on. Clearly, she was not a simple ‘servant’.

“We don’t have long,” Qing muttered, looking around. “They will realise this hasn’t gone as anticipated soon, or maybe they have already.”

“And what exactly is their plan?” he asked, sitting up.

“Chaos,” Qing spat, glancing at Suyin, who flinched. “And robbery.”

“—On the contrary…” he flinched as a youth wearing white, rain-drenched robe and a broad, woven hat with a veil sauntered into the room. “It is justice…”

“This is not justice,” Suyin muttered.

“I must admit, I am disappointed,” the youth sighed as three more similarly attired youths slipped into the room behind him. “Master spoke of you so highly, and yet…”

“We all made our choices,” Qing replied, moving forward until she was standing between them and the new arrivals. “It just so happens that hers didn’t involve bloodshed, mass murder, and eventually dying like a rabid dog to a monster.”

“Tut tut tut…” one of the other youths shook his head. “Miss, you really should not be so disparaging… after all, we are here?”

“Yes, though not for much longer, given you stuck your head into this den of vipers,” Qing sneered.

“You think we fear your backing?” another sniffed.

“If you don’t, you are even bigger idiots than she already thinks you are,” Suyin muttered.

A shining fan of sickle-like blades sliced out from every direction, aiming for Qing and Di Wang—

He tensed, but to his surprise, Qing just stood her ground and the blades dissolved into what looked awfully like silver moonbeams.

“Ah, you are the wife’s companion,” the youth focused on Qing properly. “Master warned us about you—”

“Don’t.” The lead youth held up a hand, and a fourth youth, a young woman in fact, dressed in the same style of white robe and broad-brimmed hat, lowered her pale bamboo fan. “Remember,” the youth admonished her. “We need ‘answers’, not headless corpses.”

“Apologies, Young Lord,” she murmured.

“Shit,” Suyin muttered under her breath.

“So that is how you plan to play this…” Qing murmured, expression turned flat.

“Mmmm… to think that you have betrayed the sect’s trust, harbouring a fugitive like her,” the lead youth sighed.

“So, it was you” Di Wang, who had seemingly recovered some of his own faculties, hissed. “As expected of the Nine Moons…”

“Ah, you can still yap?” the young woman sneered.

“If he dies here, this will get very awkward,” Qing sighed.

“I am aware,” Suyin grimaced as Di Wang tried to pull away from her.

“So, I take it you are going to make this difficult, Young Lady Yeng?” the youth asked, focusing on Suyin.

“…”

“Yeng?” the words were his own, he realised, blurted out in shock as much as anything.

Qing glared at the youth then just sighed. “Really, you had to go say it, right?” she muttered. “Are you trying to make me mad?”

“To think that an eminent person like ‘Grandmaster’ Li was hiding a fugitive of that Yeng clan,” the young woman added archly, looking the now pale-faced Suyin over with a faint smirk.

“Do you really think I could hide here without someone knowing?” Suyin murmured.

“You are part of the Yeng clan that were at the heart of the Blood Eclipse…” Misty Camellia stared at Yeng Suyin like she was some kind of strange aberration.

“Indeed, and she is not just a small-time member,” the youth chuckled. “Miss Suyin here is—”

“I was never part of their insanity,” Yeng Suyin cut him off. “And I will—”

“—Yeng Illhan’s blood cousin,” the youth continued, with a nasty smirk.

“Perhaps you think ‘outing’ her will force her to at least come along with you?” Qing asked, raising an eyebrow.

“If so, I can only disappoint you,” Suyin added, though she sounded… unhappy. “My presence here is hardly unknown—”

“Indeed, it is quite a wide-ranging plot,” the white-robed young woman agreed with a giggle.

“Aiii…” Qing just sighed deeply. “If you want to turn this region upside down, you can try,” she murmured. “Just don’t be too shocked when the bottom of it turns out to be a nest of poison and briars the like of which you have never seen.”

“—Meh, what about these others?” one of the other youths asked, glancing over them.

“Most likely they are innocent victims in all this,” the lead youth replied with aplomb, sweeping his gaze across them. “We will take them into—”

He was cut off, mid-sentence, by a wave of iridescence that rolled through the room. Everything in his line of sight blurred and then he landed with a thump on wet paving.

“Oh Fates…”

“H-help…”

Pushing away a flush of nausea, he found a teenage boy and a girl sprawled nearby, a scatter of clothes and bed sheets drifting down around them. Based on their groans, they had probably appeared a few metres off the ground.

Taking in the rain-drenched, enclosed garden courtyard, which was dominated by a large ornamental pond with a small pagoda in the middle, he found Blue Jasmine was also there, sitting up, holding her head.

“We have got to stop meeting like this,” she joked with a wan smile, spotting him.

“Indeed,” he agreed, getting to his knees and giving the courtyard another check.

As far as he could tell, only the four of them had ended up here. Unfortunately, he was not that familiar with the layout of the wider Li estate, so had no way of knowing if they had gone fifty metres or five hundred…

“What… h-happened?” the girl groaned, sitting up and scrunching her fingers into her temples.

“Forced displacement, probably,” he replied, moving over towards the pair. Both were basically at Qi Condensation and exposure to this kind of thing, especially if you were unprepared and hadn’t worked to build up resistance, could be very unpleasant.

“It looks that way, yes,” Blue Jasmine agreed, before adding. “Were you in the Summer Annex?”

“Y-yeah… its uh… over…” the youth pointed rather shakily over to the right side of the courtyard, then abruptly doubled over and vomited his breakfast on the paving.

“Easy, breathe,” he instructed the lad, managing to reach him in time to stop him sitting down in his own misery. “What’s your name?” he added, to take the lad’s mind off things.

“Ziyin…” the youth mumbled.

“Luli…” the girl sobbed, between taking deep breaths. “W-what is wrong… with us…? My head feels… horrid.”

“You have what they call ‘Jump Jitters’,” Blue Jasmine explained, shooting him a worried look as she moved over to the girl and put a hand on her back. “Brought on from your body being unable to cope with abrupt spatial displacements.”

“Uhuh,” he nodded in agreement, while helping Ziyin sit down. “It’s basically motion sickness,” he added, simplifying the explanation a bit.

“Oh…” Ziyin, his complexion still white as the bed linen stared at him with an expression that screamed ‘that doesn’t help’. Luli, who wasn’t much better, just took another deep breath.

“Don’t worry, it will pass in a while,” he added with a grimace, understanding their pain.

Setting aside whatever ‘Qing’ had done to him, the only reason he was not suffering more than he already was, was because the guards mandated training for everyone ranked Master Corporal or higher to build up resistance to its effects. Talismans and formations that forcibly cleared areas were a staple of gangs and criminal groups.

“How are you holding up?” he asked more quietly to Blue Jasmine, noting her surreptitiously massaging her temple with her free hand.

If a headache was her only side-effect, he had to concede he was impressed, even accounting for the fact that she was a physical cultivator, and close to him in terms of her foundation. Certainly, the girl looked a bit less pale now and was no longer hyperventilating thanks to whatever she was doing.

“I can’t say I do this kind of thing regularly enough to have acquired… resistance,” Blue Jasmine replied with a wry grimace, “but I do have a few ways to…”

She trailed off as the whole courtyard suddenly shuddered.

Window-shutters clashed and banged on the upper story for several seconds and raindrops danced bizarrely on the ground, then silence returned, punctuated only by the occasional sound of falling roof-tiles.

“…blunt it,” she sighed, rubbing her temple again. “That said,” she added, giving him a sideways look. “Shouldn’t there be serious restrictions in teleportation right now?”

“Yes, there should be,” he agreed, as another distant rumble dislodged more roof tiles.

The protections put in place after the Three Schools conflict had included a significant strengthening of the restrictions on unsanctioned teleporting within the vicinity of West Flower Picking Town.

“So how did those three get into the hall, back there?” Blue Jasmine murmured under her breath, looking around more nervously.

That was indeed a ‘question’. The only people with ‘exceptions’ should be Guard Captains, a few influential Ha, Deng and Ling clan elders and a very small ‘supplementary’ list of dignitaries that was reviewed on a weekly basis. All he could think of, in light of Grandmaster Li’s warning about their backing, was that somehow, someone had sponsored them into the list for the duration of their visit.

“—What the fates was that?”

“Watch out for the tiles…”

“—Hey! Everyone okay?!”

Shouts from the left-hand side of the courtyard, cut short his pondering.

Turning to look in that direction, he found half a dozen youths, wearing broad hats and robes that identified them as employees of Grandmaster Li’s formation’s workshop, were jogging into the courtyard.

“What happened?” the one in the lead, who seemed to be the only one above core-formation, and who was wearing a slightly smarter robe, asked as the group hurried over to them.

“Something…” Blue Jasmine started to answer, then stopped, her eyes narrowing as they got within a few metres—

Abruptly, all the youths staggered, their eyes bulging, as her Mantra Manifestation enveloped them. Like in the teahouse, most of them collapsed instantly, only the youth who had just spoken, along with a pale-haired youth to his left resisting. Both of them still fell to their knees, however, their faces white—

A distortion in the rain around him gave him just enough warning to throw himself to the side, narrowly evading a cut aimed at his head. It was likely that the barrier in his body armour might have deflected it…

-Fatherless-monkey-spawn! He cursed, rolling again to evade a follow-up cut, realising that, actually, he didn’t know exactly how much qi was left in his armour’s reserves. Talk about an over-reliance on your rank talisman, he scolded himself, as he kicked out at the youth, forcing him to dance back or get tripped.

“You have sharp eyes, whore,” the pale-haired youth sneered, getting back up and producing a short blade from inside his robe, which he pointed at Blue Jasmine, who had moved to shelter the two teenagers.

“And you have a Mantra!” she retorted.

-He does? Thanking her in his heart for the warning, he spared a quick sideways glance at the pale-haired cultivator and found that his foundation—in fact all their foundations, as he evaluated the others—were slightly… fuzzy. Shit… is this like at the teahouse?

“Just deal with the shameless bitch,” the youth who had attacked him called out, spinning his own short blade suggestively in his hand as he quickly closed on him again. “No need to drag this—”

This time, he anticipated the attack—a forward slash, which again aimed for his head—sidestepping it with the intention to move inside his attacker’s guard and trap the blade—

A bone-jarring wave of qi slammed into him, sending him crashing into the paving with enough force that he was left seeing double.

In the same instant, and rather to his surprise, the active protection in his armour triggered. A blueish-purple nova of lightning enveloping everything around him sending his attacker to the ground, his teeth grinding and limbs spasming as yang lightning coursed through him, then the others lying on the ground.

“You…” the pale-faced youth, who had almost reached Blue Jasmine, turned to stare blankly at his convulsing companions, then at him—

Seizing the opening, Blue Jasmine lunged forward, grasping him by the hair.

“Get off me you—Huaaaiiiiiggggggghk!” the youth’s snarl became a horrified gasp, then he collapsed like a stringless puppet with Blue Jasmine on top of him.

“Idiot,” she sneered breathlessly, slamming his head into the paving.

Sitting up, he grimaced with pain, wondering what in the nameless fates the youth, who was now unconscious, had used on him. The blade, lying nearby, appeared to be nothing special…

“I know it’s generally a bad idea to hit guards wearing body armour, but that seemed a bit… excessive…” Blue Jasmine observed as she sat back on her haunches.

On that, he was in agreement. Usually, the barrier—when it was active—just rebounded any blow it received, but for some reason, it had not triggered.

“—Not that I am complaining, or anything,” she added wryly.

“Yeah…” he agreed, focusing on the armour to finally do what he should have done when he first put it on.

Normally, you needed a guard-issued talisman to get the most out of them, not to mention a helmet, but like all things designed for combat, there was an expectation that ‘shit happened’, so using them without those crutches was perfectly possible, although a bit more involved.

Putting his right palm to the control plate on his chest, he sent a thread of qi into it, then held out his left palm. The ‘control interface’ appeared for all to see a moment later—

“Huh…” he stared as rather than the familiar blue octagon with a handful of options, he found himself faced with that and an expansive gold and azure ring of additional options.

“What’s wrong?” Blue Jasmine asked, presumably because his surprise, was visible on his face.

“It’s… Military Auxiliary armour, rather than what the guards usually use…” he muttered, feeling doubly stupid now, for not checking earlier.

That said, there wasn’t anything overt in the appearance to tell them apart and they had been in a rush to get out of the teahouse anyway, and worried about other things.

“That’s good though?” Blue Jasmine suggested quizzically, looking at the formation interface with interest.

“Yeah,” he conceded with a wry smile of his own, as he located the sub-formation that would allow the interface to synchronize directly to his Sea of Knowledge. Without a link talisman, and missing a helmet, that was the only efficient way to use half of what was on display, and as a process it would likely take quite a few minutes to complete. “It’s just not quite what I was expecting…”

-Does that mean Hong’s mudskipper was requisitioned from the military garrison? He mused, navigating back to the main interface to check what else was there.

As expected, the armour had barely any qi in it—a couple of spirit stones-worth at best, if he was any judge. The ‘stun’ capability, which had just triggered automatically, was notorious in that regard.

The modular nature of the armour meant that they could be upgraded in all sorts of interesting ways and the one that immediately stood out, was that this armour had a personal teleport beacon that was anchored to the mudskipper. Unfortunately, it required far more qi than remained in the armour, and probably more than he could supply personally either, in any kind of efficient manner, as ‘purity’ was much more important than ‘quantity’.

-So, I need spirit stones… he sighed.

“Anyway, how did you know?” he asked, dismissing the formation interface and moving over to check his attacker.

“I didn’t,” Blue Jasmine coughed, looking embarrassed all of a sudden.

“You didn’t…” he paused his search of the youth’s robes to stare at her, not quite sure how to reply.

“Well, not for sure… I just figured it was better to be safe, given how the other lot seemed to have infiltrated…” Blue Jasmine added, more defensively. “And if I made a mistake, well, I have a Master Sergeant here and Grandmaster Li would surely understand…”

He couldn’t really fault her logic, there, given how the day had gone so far.

“—that said,” she continued, starting to search the pale-haired youth’s robe. “The fact that at least one of them was trying to use mantra manifestation to dull our awareness suggests they were not planning…”

“—Help!”

“S-someone… please!”

A pair of female voices calling out drew their attention from the side of the courtyard where the summer annex was.

Squinting through the rain, he saw two figures stumble into the courtyard, revealing themselves to be Singing Lily, who was half pulling, half carrying Caoxi.

“That’s Singing Lily, and Caoxi…” Blue Jasmine stood up as the pair finally spotted them and picked up their pace—

“You can’t run!”

A sneering, mocking yell, imbued with a concerning degree of martial intent, reverberated through the courtyard, accompanied by several, echoing, hooting peals of laughter.

“S-Sergeant…” Singing Lily panted, as the pair reached them.

“Z-Zhong is here…” Caoxi gasped, as Blue Jasmine grabbed her to stop her falling, gesturing back the way they had come. “Got lucky… saw them… first…”

“Zhong?” Blue Jasmine grimaced and glanced at him.

Looking around, he quickly took stock of their options. Running was out. He could see Caoxi was injured, bleeding from her thigh, and the two servants were in no condition to flee, nor could they easily carry all of them and escape any kind of competent pursuit. That left hiding, or finding enough spirit stones for him to charge…

His gaze again went to the ornamental lake and pagoda, with its carpet of lily-pads and scattering of tastefully placed rock outcroppings.

“Get in the lake!” he snapped, a plan rapidly forming in his head.

“In the…” Blue Jasmine stared at the water, then at him, before nodding in agreement as she grabbed Singing Lily and Caoxi.

Without delay, he grabbed the two stunned teenagers and raced for the water’s edge after her.

“Go under, swim deep and head for the large rock between here and the pagoda,” he instructed them all, as Luli and Ziyin slid gingerly into the water after the others. “And try not to disturb the surface vegetation.”

Following after, he found, to his relief, that the water was almost two metres deep, even at the edge. Crouching down, he dragged the teenagers under and started to swim for a rock in the middle, surrounded by large water lotuses.

The crux of the plan was actually quite straight forward. In this weather, using soul sense was a non-starter, and qi sense wasn’t much better unless you were in wide open spaces. The ‘Rains from the East’ had also been plaguing the province for several weeks now, so any standing body of water would have acquired a problematic amount of qi from Yin Eclipse. Indeed, a quick check with his own qi sense proved it was significantly less useful under the water than just relying on his own eyesight.

“What is your plan, here?” Blue Jasmine asked, as he arrived at the rock, which helpfully had a bit of an underhang, and sank down into the waterweed beside them.

“Obfuscation,” he replied. “We can’t run, but unless they drain the whole lake, or come in after us, we shouldn’t be spotted if we stay low and hide our qi and try not to have a profile that looks like a body.” he replied.

“I… see,” Singing Lily mouthed.

“Also, I need spirit stones to replenish my armour,” he continued, noting with some relief as he did, that the armour’s interface had finally synchronized with his Sea of Knowledge. “An advantage of having a nephew who is an Herb Hunter of some status is that occasionally you learn weird yet useful things. A pond like this, for example, will be climate-proofed against this kind of weather.”

“—T-the formation… is… over there,” Luli interjected helpfully, pointing off towards the pagoda. “Should be a… marker slab, and a box.”

“Oh… does it need a talisman?” he asked.

“Ah… Ziyin!” the girl poked her compatriot, who groaned and then passed him a status talisman.

“Thanks,” he murmured, glad he had thought to ask. “I’ll be back shortly.”

“Good luck,” Caoxi mouthed as he moved off around the submerged face of the rock, taking care to avoid the drifting stems of lilies and lotuses.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

As it turned out, the marker was visible from their rock, situated a few metres out from it. Arriving beside it he found, in a small triumph of utility over aesthetics, that the blue jade slab actually held simple instructions on how to maintain the node.

Carefully pulling aside the waterweed growing up around it, he exposed a small, octagonal formation platform with a stone box in the middle. Skimming the instructions, he found how to ‘recharge’ it, which was as simple as opening the box and adding more spirit stones.

Placing Ziyin’s talisman into the pattern on the top of the box, he watched as the patterns swirling across it shimmered faintly as it sprang open. Inside, he was relieved to find it held almost thirty spirit stones, however, on closer investigation, he had to suppress a sigh, as many of them appeared about half spent.

Gathering them up, he quickly fitted them together, forming a small cube, then brought up the external formation interface for the armour. Trying not to dwell on how much quicker the whole process would have been with a working talisman, he manually keyed in the instruction to absorb any quality of spirit stone, then picked up the cube.

Absorbing all the qi within took about twenty seconds. However, that was the easy part.

Pulling up a second instance of the interface, he shifted to the readouts for its qi reserves and selected the teleport beacon—

“Unstable Link. Error—Reconfirmation Required.”

He groaned as almost immediately, it spat out a complication as the binary jade serving as the beacon tried and promptly failed to acquire a stable link to its other half.

Hoping that was because he was at the bottom of a pond with far too much rainwater from Yin Eclipse in it, and not because something had happened to the mudskipper, he overrode the error and directed qi to flow into the beacon formation anyway—

“Irreconcilable State: Coordinate Confirmation Signature has exceeded Maintenance Window… Error—Reconfirmation could not be carried out Automatically.”

The error flashed up again, though much more helpfully this time the accompanying information actually told him what was wrong. Namely, that the armour had presumably been sat in the storage longer than it should have, and nobody had refreshed the link to the vehicle. Presumably, it had been set up to do so through his talisman, without which the protocols within the formation were now misbehaving.

With a resigned grimace, he brought up a third instance of the interface and, after checking that the teleport was still absorbing qi out of the armour’s primary reservoir in spite of the ‘error’, started to hunt for the logs that would hold the spatial coordinates for the mudskipper.

Thankfully, and rather against the run of events, a part of him felt, he found the coordinates he needed in the very first log. Pulling the two formation windows together, he watched, somewhat nervously as the teleport ‘re-checked’ its link and this time, did validate it, though it continued to complain that a manually verified confirmation was undesirable for the stability of the link.

He could understand why—teleport accidents were the sort of thing that nobody liked accepting liability for—but here and now, it was really not that helpful, he reflected as he took the opportunity to properly look through the other sub-formations the armour had installed. Some, like the ones that provided a visual augment that tracked qi-use and reserves for the armour, and recorded what he saw, were basically essential. Others, like the ones that measured qi purity and provided personal threat divination were no less so, however, the problem was how much additional strain his already stressed meridians could take.

That was another reason why link talismans were so favoured, beyond making armours like this generally usable for those below Nascent Soul and enabling them to be redeployed efficiently. They helped mitigate many of the side effects of directly shouldering some of these formations and the pure qi they required for sustained periods of time. Meridian strain was never pleasant and could lead to long-lasting and hard to mend injuries. Most of the visual augments typically ran through the helmet for the same reason—to take that additional stress off the user.

Closing his eyes, he enabled the visual augments one after another, wincing slightly at the prickly chill that throbbed behind his eyes for a few seconds. The worst, as expected, was the qi-purity one, which brought with it some additional light-headedness, but thankfully it receded somewhat as his Nascent Soul began to manually regulate them.

Slowly opening his eyes, he carefully took in his surroundings, giving his vision and ocular meridians a moment to adjust to the complexity of the underwater environment in a controlled fashion.

Almost immediately, the formations outlined two qi condensation spirit herbs among the lilies drifting above him, then a further nascent-soul-grade source of wood and water qi a few metres to his left. Given it was also likely a spirit herb, he just marked it mentally, then carefully started to make his way back towards the others.

He had barely reached the rear side of the rock, however, when a sense of ‘dissonance’ disturbed the waters around him.

-Took them long enough, he reflected, sweeping his gaze up to the rain-dappled surface above him as he held his breath.

A moment later, a much more forceful though less penetrative wave of qi rolled over the surface above.

-Fates bless people who don’t know how to search with qi sense in this weather, he sneered, watching the lotuses above him, and quite a few of the other pond plants react instinctively to the intrusion by scattering their own qi everywhere for a few seconds before moving around to the others.

That was also why he had avoided the qi-vision and intent-focus sub-formations entirely. Just as Hong had joked earlier, multi-coloured fog and his eyeballs had a longstanding agreement not to meet, while the latter made it hard to hide, especially against higher realm experts. The qi purity one, in contrast would not see him blinded by some random talisman and was entirely inward-focused—as was the divination one.

“Thank goodness you are back…” Singing Lily muttered as he arrived beside him. “Did you find the altar?”

“I did,” he confirmed, eyeing the others, who aside from Blue Jasmine, all looked decidedly uneasy. “No problems?”

“—Aside from whatever that was?” Singing Lily shuddered, eyeing the vibrantly blooming lotuses above them.

“—Um, my leg won’t… ah, stop… bleeding,” Caoxi interjected, through gritted teeth.

“It seems she was clipped by some kind of yin-attributed arrow,” Blue Jasmine clarified for him as he carefully slid over to Caoxi who was pressing her hands against a length of torn gown she had wrapped tightly around her thigh. “I can slow its effects, but…”

She cut off as a ripple caused by a large splash distorted the water around them.

Gritting his teeth, he rose up to the surface and very warily, using the lotuses for cover, put his head above the water—

“—You IDIOT!”

“—did you shove me in?!”

Looking at the near shore, he saw a youth wearing Li Estate robes flailing angrily in the water, watched by almost a dozen more. The one who had pushed him in wore a non-descript white robe, his face hidden by a broad, peaked cloth hat. Almost immediately, the ‘qi-purity’ formation told him subtly that that youth was Quasi-Dao Seeking, while two to his right, one in blue the other in grey with a scrawny beard, were Nascent Soul, as was the one in the water, the rest, also wearing Li colours, being Soul Foundation or Golden Core.

“Search with your eyes!” the white-robed youth snarled, clearly incensed. “You, you, you, you and you… get in there. Sweep it!” the youth ordered, pointing to the most reticent among the group.

-Shit… there would be someone there with eyes, wouldn’t there… he groaned inwardly.

“That’s not good,” Blue Jasmine, who had surfaced beside him, mouthed.

“It is not,” he agreed silently.

“Can’t we just…” one of those just picked out, tried to ask.

“Watch the edge?” the youth asked, sardonically, rounding on the speaker. “Do you think you can just waste twenty minutes here, at leisure?”

“But…” another of the other youths eyed the lake sceptically, clearly not at all impressed with the idea of swimming in it.

“Get in, or I will throw you in…” the leader barked, his voice taking on an edge as his martial intent suffused it. “If your stupidity compounds what has happened to him, you will all regret it… keenly!”

Not waiting to see if they went willingly or not, he slipped back down, to find the others already moving.

“Yeah, we heard,” Caoxi mouthed. “He was—”

A shadow flitted above them, onto the rock—

Abruptly, the muted, oppressive, stagnant strength of the ‘Rain’s from the East’ suffusing the qi within the water became… he almost wanted to say ‘vibrant’, yet—

“YOU… DARE—!”

The words, arriving from basically everywhere and nowhere, all at once—like tribulation thunder, but right overhead—made him flinch, and left him cold, with a painful ringing in his ears.

“My head!” the terrified Caoxi grasped at him in a wild panic, even as experience had him disabling the visual augments as, the words still reverberating furiously in his head, an otherworldly, golden light bled down into the water.

Despite his best efforts, he was still left with blurred vision, full of iridescent shadows, accompanied by a nauseating bout of light-headedness.

However, for all that it was disorientating, no actual ‘attack’ arrived. Instead, as the golden hue faded, the vibrancy and colour of his surroundings seemed to bleed away with it—

The world around him groaned. A hideous, unnerving sound that made his skin crawl, his teeth ache and left him feeling like his stomach had just vanished.

“—CREATURE… FROM… BEYOND!”

The furious, enraged rebuke, building on the previous one, bled through everything, carrying with it an enraged promise of violence that was beyond any demonstration of martial intent he had ever conceived of.

Caoxi, screaming silently now, was trembling like a leaf even as he registered something large impacting the water above them, scattering lotus leaves—

“Watch—!” he half caught Blue Jasmine’s mouthed warning, before realising that the white-robed youth, who had ordered the others to jump, was sinking down right above him, flailing in confusion and grasping at the floating spirit vegetation—

Before they could collide, he managed to grasp the youth by his hair, covering his eyes in the process. Disorientated, the youth flailed wildly, but before he could do anything, he slammed his head into the rockface as hard as he could. For good measure, he followed that up by sending a punishing jolt of yang qi through his gloves into the youth’s ocular meridians.

“What… was that?” Blue Jasmine asked her voice shaking, as she arrived beside them.

“No idea,” he replied with a pained grimace, wondering that himself as he looked around for Singing Lily, and found she was huddled with the pair from the estate, her eyes wide with fright.

Colour was slowly returning to their surroundings, but the oppressive, furious intent still lingered, like shadows at the edge of his vision. It far outstripped anything Dai Gao and his companions had shown earlier, yet despite the fury and the disturbing sense that some terrible thing was lurking right behind him, its lingering effect felt weirdly… muted. There was little—if any—soul intent within it either, though that was more likely as down to the influence of the weather, their location, and the estate formations.

That, and the fact that the white-robed youth had been affected as well, suggested it was probably overspill from some other clash, elsewhere in the town, or someone coming to support Grandmaster Li—though that didn’t explain the ‘creature from beyond’ bit.

“—However,” he added, pushing those thoughts away for now, “we need to get—”

A faint flicker of inauspicious intent from the white-robed youth was the only warning he got before the explosion lifted him right out of the water, slamming him down with a bone-jarring splash several metres away, narrowly missing the edge of the pool in the process.

Ears ringing, he let himself sink, then, quickly took in his surroundings, trying to work out what the fates had just happened. Re-activating the various visual augments, he found that the barrier on his armour appeared to have absorbed much of the blast, though thankfully, it still had enough qi left to teleport—

Several shimmering black ‘petals’ of ominously pure qi drifting in the water beside him, caught his eye—

“Oh—!”

The shockwave of unstable qi as they exploded picked him up and hammered him into the wall of the pond. Gasping, he pushed himself away, only to find more petals drifted out of the shadows, exerting a disturbing ‘pull’ on the water around him as they did so—

Crouching down, he thanked the fates that the previous explosion had exposed the paved base of the pond, and leapt clear of the water—

A soundless roar enveloped him as he landed in an ungainly roll in wash overspilling the edge of the pond, a massive plume of water and pieces of spirit vegetation drifting down around him—

“What the—!”

“—Hey! You almost hit us!”

“—What was that?!”

“—Fatherless, son of a—!”

“Help me up, you moron!”

“Oh, come on…” he groaned under his breath, finding that he had literally landed in the middle of the group he had observed mere moments ago, narrowly missing one of the soul foundation youths in fact, who was struggling to stay on his feet amid the backwash.

Another soul foundation youth was cursing as he got back to his feet, while the blue-robed nascent soul youth, who was also pushing himself to his knees, a blade in one hand, was being helped up by a pale-faced golden core in Li estate robes, a Dao seeking barrier talisman—according to the divination sub-formation—clenched in his free hand. Two other golden core youths were helping a third pull himself painfully out of the water. The qi purity augment suggested there was a further, somewhat diffuse nascent soul qi signature obscured a few metres away in the chaos of the flooding as well—

“Ah—! There was someone hiding!” the soul foundation youth exclaimed, pointing at him.

Cursing his ill fortune—he shoulder-charged the cultivator who had just spotted him.

“Hey, old man, you wanna make this—”

He collided with the idiot—who, seemingly unaware of his realm, had actually spread his arms to try and grasp him—and felt his opponent’s ribcage shatter and deform under the impact from his shoulder.

Grabbing the incapacitated youth by his robe, he spun and hurled him at the youth who had been helping the nascent soul cultivator up. Getting trapped in a barrier right from the get-go would be… embarrassing to say the least.

The two collided with a bone-jarring crunch, and nearly hit the other soul foundation cultivator for good measure, forcing him to make an ungainly roll that nearly put him in the water—

“You monkey-born moron! Get him—!” the angry yell of the nascent soul cultivator was lost amidst a blizzard of blue jasmine petals.

Relieved that she at least was okay, he took advantage of the distraction Blue Jasmine’s art caused to close the distance with the blue-robed nascent soul. The trick to dealing with multiple opponents in situations like this was not to be left reacting to them. Their disorganisation was the best weapon he had to hand.

The youth attempted to ward against him with an upward cut, but it was slow, his technique was naive and his martial intent about as hollow as might have been expected for someone at that realm in their late twenties, so he easily evaded it. Trapping the youth’s hands from below, he turned with his upward motion and flipped him over his hip, sending a crippling pulse of his own martial intent into the luckless robber in the process.

The youth spat blood and convulsed as he slammed into the muddy, ankle-deep water—

Instinct sent him rolling away as a blade cut from a youth with a similar cultivation to his, wearing light, leather armour and a broad hat, who he had entirely failed to notice up to that point, nearly split his scalp.

“B-barrier him—” the other soul foundation cultivator started to shout, backing up and drawing a blade and a barrier talisman of his own.

“Yeah, no…” he hissed under his breath, throwing out an arm to change the direction of his roll and ensure he slammed right into the youth, throwing up an obfuscating spray of water as he did so.

The soul foundation cultivator actually spun twice in the air, before crashing down with an agonized groan beside him. Not giving him any chance to recover, he grasped the youth’s head and sent a pulse of poisonously pure qi into his ocular meridians and down his spine, blinding and paralyzing him.

“Nameless—! You are not some employee of the estate…” the new arrival hissed, jumping over the blue-robed youth, his comment reminding that he was, in fact, wearing a robe Master Liwen had lent him.

-Uh-oh… don’t tell me they think Misty Jasmine is a guard? he groaned inwardly, quickly taking stock of his options, painfully cognisant of how he had to ration the qi still in the armour, and finish this quickly.

Two—potentially three—nascent soul cultivators would not go down easily in an even fight, even in this weather, and even the three remaining golden cores could cause problems with talismans. There were also others out there, in the water, and Caoxi had been shot by an archer…

“Aiiiie… I can only do what I can,” he muttered, grabbing the incapacitated youth as he rolled to his feet—

His foot found something hard and round in the muddy water, and with the worst possible timing, he found himself falling flat on his back, the body on top of him—

His qi armour notification pinged a warning at him, about half a second before he landed on another hard, painfully angled object that completely ignored…

“Haaa! Get him!”

Not sure whether to laugh or cry, he fumbled beneath him and grasped the looted tea pot by its spout. Without even bothering to look at it in detail, he swung it up and smashed it against the descending blade of the armoured youth—

The youth’s blade rebounded with an ominous *ting* sound, accompanied by a scream from nearby.

Twisting his body, he braced himself and kicked the body on top of him using both his feet to launch it directly at his stumbling attacker. In the process, he spotted two more stoneware teacups in the shallow water, and snatching one up, hurled it with all his strength at the blue-robed nascent soul.

The youth tried to dodge, but the cup still hit him a glancing blow to the side of his face, sending him staggering away, holding his face.

Grabbing the other cup, he hurled it after the first—

{Fubei’s Supreme—

The divination augment notified him of the attack, even before it had finished.

—Slaying Sword}

—Rolling to the side, he barely avoided taking a direct hit from a large sword formed, rather inefficiently, of martial-intent-infused qi, that one of the golden core cultivators had opportunistically directed at him.

He was about to toss the teapot at the idiot, until his other hand brushed what turned out to be a stoneware saucer in the mud.

-Did they actually loot a whole dinner service? He found himself wondering as his hand closed around it, and taking care not to make the motion too obvious, skimmed it in the direction of the leather-armoured youth, forcing him to do an acrobatic flip—

“You bastards! Did you actually loot a whole dinner set!?” the youth snarled, as he landed awkwardly.

“F-fei…” the blue robed youth gasped, slumping to his knees, a pall of chaotic qi bleeding out around the saucer, which was now embedded deep into his side. “H-help m…me…”

A small part of him did feel slightly sorry for the youth, because that was probably a foundation-crippling injury. However, he had made his choice to come here, and if they were associated with the Yeng Brotherhood, probably it was less than he deserved and would get if most caught him.

“…”

“Y-you… you’re a g-guard…” one of the golden core cultivators stammered, behind him, finally spotting the armour he was wearing under the robe.

Gritting his teeth he rolled to his feet kicking a spray of water at the armoured youth in the process, making him reflexively dodge again, then charged at the golden core youths.

The one who had attacked him barely had time to react before he slammed into him, shattering the bones in the youth’s arm and side and sending him crashing to the ground, his blade spinning away across the courtyard.

The other two both had talismans in their hands—a barrier cage and a blink talisman respectively—but before either could trigger them, he was already in front of them. Grasping their arms, he sent a pulse of punishingly pure qi infused with his martial intent into the pair, then spun in a half circle throwing both to the ground, their arms shattered, and meridians crippled.

“Not a normal guardsman,” the youth who had initially attacked him grunted, rolling to his feet and spitting a mouthful of blood. “Plain armour—”

Not giving him time to finish, he shoulder-charged the youth, who nearly tripped this time as he managed to just about avoid being flattened.

Skidding to a halt, he used the unconscious soul foundation youth to check his momentum, also reclaiming the teapot in the same movement.

“—and survived brother Weng’s…” the youth gasped, getting to his feet, his hands now visibly shaking, as he pointed his blade at him. “Who—?”

Praising idiots who liked to talk when they should have been fighting, he arrived in front of the armoured youth, easily evading his panicked, retreating slash, and trapping his blade with his free left hand, hit him full in the face with the stoneware teapot—

A flash of chaotic qi bled around the pot as it dispersed the qi-barrier he had guessed the youth might have, given he was wearing armour. The blow shattered his opponent’s nose and sent him crashing to the ground with an agonized groan—

A shadowy, grasping blur of an arm dissociated from the youth’s body, grasping for his neck, as his nascent soul finally tried to get involved, but his own qi armour easily scattered the strike. In response, he slammed the improvised weapon directly into the breastplate, then hammered his fist into his opponent’s diaphragm, accompanying the blow with a punishing pulse of pure qi from his armour to ensure the youth’s meridians were properly crippled.

“Whew…” exhaling, he finally allowed himself a moment to collect his wits again. The whole fight had lasted probably thirty seconds, if even, but it felt far longer, simply because of the stakes involved.

Sweeping his gaze around the courtyard, he grimaced, as the rain was noticeably heavier than it had been even moments before—bordering on a torrential downpour in fact. There was also no sign of the other nascent soul qi signature he had seen before... or the first Soul Foundation youth he had injured for that matter.

Blue Jasmine’s petals had also vanished, which was more of a concern though.

“P-please…” he turned back to the blue-robed youth, who was slumped on the ground. “H-help me…” the youth moaned, trying to reach out to him. “I d-don’t…”

Standing up, he was about to walk over to him… when the rain, which had been noticeably heavier since he got out of the water… simply stopped.

“Uh…”

Turning, he quickly took in the courtyard and lake, looking for the others—

“Ahiiiiiie!—Get off!”

“—Guard bitch!”

“Mei! H-HELP, over here—!”

Almost in the same instant, an angry yell, coupled with Singing Lily’s terrified scream echoed through the courtyard.

Spinning back to look out over the lake, he found the others were all on the central island.

Blue Jasmine was struggling with the other nascent soul youth, who had been previously thrown in the water, while a second, soul foundation youth was dragging Caoxi and Singing Lily towards the bridge that accessed it. A cursing golden core youth was dragging the two servants after them.

Thinking quickly, he crouched down and, after sending a paralysing pulse of qi through the youth, pulled the saucer out of the wound in his side. Next, he dashed back over to the golden core youth with the blink talisman and pried it out from his fingers.

“Finally, a bit of luck,” he muttered, checking it and finding it was fully charged and had enough range and precision to reach the pagoda island in a controlled manner.

Turning back to the lake, he sized up the distance to the island, then set the talisman on a short delay trigger. Taking a half step to gather momentum, he hurled the saucer in a tight arc at the nascent soul youth trying to restrain Blue Jasmine.

Such was the speed of the projectile, that the youth didn’t even turn before it hit him in the back with enough force to pitch both of them into the water by the pagoda.

About two seconds later, the talisman triggered, and his surroundings blurred. Arriving beside the soul foundation youth—who had spun to look in the direction of the shore—he simply grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head into the pillar before he could react to his presence.

“T-thanks…” Caoxi gasped, stumbling free of the youth’s grip.

“It w-was you…” Singing Lily mumbled, wiping blood from her mouth, looking dazed and rather the worse for wear.

“Y-you!” the golden core cultivator stumbled back, shoving the two servants towards him, a barrier talisman appearing in his free hand. “G-get ba—!”

Before the youth could trigger the barrier—or even finish speaking—he simply kicked him in the chest, sending him careering off the water surface like a skipping stone, before crashing down in the middle of a patch of blooming water lilies.

"T-thanks...” Luli stammered, as all four stared wide eyed at the fading ripples the youth had left in his wake.

“Did you have to knock me in as well?” Blue Jasmine groaned, pulling herself back out of the water.

“Ah, sorry,” he apologised, giving her a helping hand up.

“What did you hit him with, anyway?” she asked once she was on her feet again, eyeing the body floating amongst the blooming lotuses by the pagoda.

“A saucer,” he replied drily, “Anyway, we can’t stay here, Zhong was not among that lot.”

“Um… should the sky be doing t-that?” Caoxi, who had pulled herself up and was now leaning against the balustrade of the bridge, asked weakly, pointing up.

Turning to follow her gesture, he could only stare, because indeed, the sky was… not normal.

The clouds were still swirling overhead, though flowing inland now, not towards the coast. The southern horizon was a slowly expanding haze of diffuse golden light, with what looked like sunbeams occasionally cutting down through the clouds.

“I-is something… pushing the weather back?” Singing Lily asked hesitantly, her tone disbelieving as she stared at the horizon and the roiling clouds above them.

“I dunno about pushing back,” Blue Jasmine muttered, looking out over the lake. “Its effects are still…”

On that, he had to agree. For all that the rain had stopped, the actual influence—the cloying humidity, the oppression and niggling discomfort it brought—was still well in effect, in fact, it might even have been getting stronger…

A splash from the water drew his attention. Searching it out, he saw a golden core youth flailing for a few moments in the water lilies on the far side of the pond, before vanishing under the surface.

“Well, as I was saying, we can’t stay here now, it seems,” he reminded them. “Come over here and…”

Even as he was waving for the others to stand beside him, the divination formation in his armour gave him a faint warning that something inauspicious was directed at him—

“Oh for—!” turning on the spot, he held up the teapot and used it to block an arrow that would have hit him in the back of his neck. The arrow itself shattered on the stoneware pot, emitting a small nova of inauspicious qi as whatever formation it had held collapsed.

“What’s—” he dragged Blue Jasmine down into the cover of the balustrade.

“—Get down!” he snapped at the others, as with a clinking clatter, two roof tiles slid off the roof above them and fell into the water, accompanied by a second arrow—

The lily pads around the pagoda recoiled, waves of water swirling outwards. The sense that he was being watched redoubled, this time originating from the shadows between the leaves, and the water itself.

“M-my q-qi…” Luli, groaned, colour suddenly draining from her, Singing Lily and Ziyin’s faces.

“Oh, Mother…” Caoxi gasped, slumping to her knees, holding her leg, as the humid air around them took on a hint of a chill.

“Qi disruption arrow…” he grimaced.

Thankfully, while his own qi was also being affected, the armour’s reserves were not. Nevermind his current military issue gear, which was rated to block even immortal-grade alignment disruption, even the guards' armour was hardened against those kinds of threats. The ceramic plates and luss cloth under-weave added further protection as well, because martial archers were standard deployment in military engagements, and rightly feared.

-Should have brought the nameless-cursed helmet! He cursed, focusing on the teleport mark.

Even with everything put into it, the range was still a little less than a metre around him though—

“YOU CANNOT RUN!”

The words boomed through the courtyard, infused with a martial intent that was almost comparable to his own. Its intent was likely to disrupt the attempted teleport, but only an idiot, or someone unused to combat would have fallen for it as a trick—

*Clink*

The arrow, with a crude talisman burning up on it, dropped through the hole in the roof-tiles and hit the ground between him and Ziyin.

Inhaling, he grabbed the youth, twisting around so his back was towards it in an attempt to sheltering him and block the others from the worst of it—

The explosion shook the whole pagoda, enveloping them both in a purple flare of yin fire. Gritting his teeth, he scattered its effects with his own qi, relieved that it was only a low-grade soul foundation talisman. Even so, Ziyin was left sobbing with pain, clawing at him, his clothing on his lower legs under his robe turned to ash in places, the exposed skin bubbling and blistering—

“Grab me!” he urgently instructed the others, as the mark finally, after far too many seconds of ‘confirming’, declared it had a ‘lock’ on its destination.

Blue Jasmine grabbed Singing Lily and Caoxi, while Luli almost fell on top of him. Checking that nobody was going to lose a limb, he triggered the mark.

“Ah, so yo—”

In the moment before the pagoda around them vanished in a swirl of distorting space, a silhouetted figure wearing a broad brimmed hat and a rain cloak appeared on the balustrade.

He breathed a sigh of relief as the courtyard where the mudskipper had been parked slid back into focus.

Quickly getting to his feet, he took in the courtyard, in case anyone was nearby, but thankfully it was deserted, apart from the mudskipper and a few spirit-fowl sheltering under a bush, glaring at them.

“Stabilize him!” he instructed Blue Jasmine, pointing to the sobbing, writhing Ziyin. “Then bring them inside!”

In truth, the youth was lucky, they both were. Without the Li estate robe, which seemed to be woven to resist qi-based fire based on how well his own was holding up, the wounds Ziyin had suffered would have been much worse.

Leaving her to do what she could, he hurried over to the mudskipper and placed his hand on the rear door. His guard talisman might have been junked, but thankfully that didn’t hinder him getting into it. All that required was that it recognise his combined qi signature.

Pulling the door open, he hopped up inside and accepted Luli as Singing Lily passed her up.

“What was that that nearly hit us?” Singling Lily asked him nervously, as she climbed in after him.

“Yin fire talisman,” he replied, pulling open the equipment locker, then the compartment within it where the medical supplies were kept.

“Uggh… my arm…” Luli groaned, biting back a sob of her own. Glancing over, he saw her exposed forearm was also blistering horribly.

“Here,” he passed Singing Lily a medicine box of pills intended for purification and dealing with Yin-type injuries along with an instruction pamphlet on how to administer them. “—Take this as well,” he passed her a further box, which held medicines that helped with pain, emotional shock and various other side effects of trauma.

While Singing Lily administered them, he helped Caoxi and Blue Jasmine, who had caught up by this point, get Ziyin onto the floor of the vehicle.

“W-will he be… okay?” Luli asked, between the deep breaths she was now taking as Singing Lily carefully poured medicine powder over her injury.

“Hopefully,” he grimaced, looking around the interior, noting that the gear and helmets they had not worn inside were stacked up at the front of the compartment, before focusing on the others once more. “Anyone else get caught?”

“Um, don’t think so,” Blue Jasmine replied, while Caoxi and Singing Lily both shook their heads.

“Your leg?” he asked Caoxi, as she sat down with a wince.

“No worse,” she replied, pulling up the hem of her dress to check the crude bandage Blue Jasmine had put on it. “What… do we do now though?” she asked him.

That was a good question. His personal instinct was that they likely had very little time to play with. Keeping them safe was the first priority, now their injuries could be at least provisionally treated.

“Please, search the compartments, we need spirit stones,” he instructed Caoxi after a moment’s thought.

His armour was critically low on qi, so spirit stones were high priority, or even better, a few spirit jade. The vehicle itself ran on them, but those were hard to get to, and there was a high chance they might need it working and with functional defences.

“Blue Jasmine,” he turned back to the open cabinet and pulled out one of the under-armours, passing it to her. “Put this on.”

“Uh… okay,” she took the bundle from him looking a bit surprised but started to strip off her robes without questioning.

Technically, there were all sorts of rules this violated, but right now he didn’t care. It would require some help from him to use efficiently, but she had proven a quick study up to this point, and the important thing, really, was the passive protection it would provide…

“You as well,” he added to Caoxi after mulling that over for a moment.

“But—?” Caoxi started to say, no doubt about to tell him she has no way to use it.

“—I can handle that,” he replied drily, cutting her off.

She stared as he slid past her to reach the front of the vehicle, and then nodded, pausing from tipping out drawers to begin quickly shrugging off her own ragged, blood-stained dress.

While they changed, he reclaimed the helmet he had worn earlier and initialised the formation to link it to his armour. Immediately, he got a prompt asking him if he wanted to re-second the visual augments to it, but he dismissed it. Now they were in the mudskipper, there was a much better use for the helmet’s functionality anyway—access to the vehicle’s tactical array, which as a District Sergeant, he had authorization for.

“Can you pass me a face plate?” he asked Blue Jasmine, who was now claiming armour plates and slotting them into Caoxi’s under-armour.

“Face…?” both her and Caoxi stared blankly at the various armour pieces for a moment, until he pointed to the featureless, full-face coverings slotted in vertically in the cabinet beside the remaining chest plates.

Caoxi passed him one, which he was about to put on, when the feng shui formation gave him a very… odd nudge.

“—Ah, rain’s back,” Blue Jasmine observed with a frustrated sigh.

Indeed, almost before she had finished speaking, the first drops of water were smacking into the wet paving and the exterior of the vehicle. Moments later, a curtain of rain rolled across the whole courtyard, bringing with it a stifling increase in humidity—

“Oh, come on,” he complained, feeling a distressing sense of events repeating as his qi-purity augment instantly caught the hazy outlines of five figures approaching them.

The lead figure—a teenage boy, sword in hand and dressed in a Ha clan robe—shimmered into partial focus in the rain some ten paces from the rear of the vehicle, looking both shocked and annoyed in equal measure, followed moments later by the rest.

The reason the group had gotten as close as they had, seemed to be because of a barrier talisman shrouding them, that had now partially failed under the onslaught of the resurgent rain.

-Eh, Hong? And Misty Camellia? He blinked in surprise as he found the two at the back were from their group. Misty Camellia was also wearing Hong’s armour—presumably because she was better able to use it properly.

The remaining pair, he also found he recognised. The dark-haired boy beside the Ha clan youth, wearing a blue and green robe with the Li crest on the shoulders, was Grandmaster Li’s youngest son, Li Qingshan. The girl beside him, meanwhile, dressed in a peacock gown and carrying a matching parasol was Cheon Xiaoli, young miss of a local clan similar in status to the Han.

Thankfully, before the youth could do more than point his sword at the shocked Singing Lily and Blue Jasmine, Li Qingshan put a hand on his compatriots’ sword hand, stopping him.

“It’s fine,” the Ha clan boy—who had very recently advanced to Nascent Soul based on the fluctuating purity of his qi—replied, shifting his sword to point at the half-clothed Blue Jasmine. “I am stronger than all of them…”

“Brother Jin, let us not be hasty,” Li Qingshan said quickly, glancing at Misty Camellia. “Some of them are wearing my family’s uniform…”

“Yes, I believe this is a misunderstanding, Lieutenant Jin,” Misty Camellia cut in quickly, addressing the Ha youth.

-Lieutenant? He narrowed his eyes at Misty Camellia’s words. Is he an auxiliary?

“Y-yes, Lieutenant,” Hong agreed, grimacing. “They are with us.”

“They don’t look much like guards, or auxiliaries,” Cheon Xiaoli observed sceptically, shifting her gaze to the others, who flinched slightly.

“We ran into an ambush by those robbing the estate,” Blue Jasmine replied, shaking off her surprise. “As you can see, we are tending to the wounded…” For emphasis, she shifted to the side slightly to reveal Ziyin, and Caoxi.

“Y-yes… Young Master Li,” Luli shifted forward, bowing respectfully to Li Qingshan. “It’s thanks to them we survived.”

“…”

Ha Jin and Cheon Xiaoli stared at the injured for a long moment, then at him, then back at Blue Jasmine.

-Please don’t do anything stupid, he prayed inwardly. The longer everyone stood around like this, the more chance there was of something else going wrong.

“You are another—?” Ha Jin started addressing him, only for a thunderous detonation to suck all the sound out of their surroundings.

Aside from Hong and Misty Camellia, all three of the others flinched, ducking towards the vehicle as a few stray roof tiles pinged off the rain-obscured roof above them.

Grimacing, he watched the already tortured estate formations flicker eerily for a few moments.

“Ah, Sergeant Han…” Cheon Xiaoli, who had scrambled inside, blinked in surprise as she finally recognised him. “Brother Jin, it seems they are guards. Uh, Han Mei Murai here is a Sergeant with them…”

“Might I suggest, Lieutenant, that your group takes cover in the vehicle while we discuss things?” he suggested respectfully. “Those attacking the Li estate have martial archers with them.”

“Yes, quite, everyone get in,” Ha Jin glanced at the rain-obscured upper stories around them and grimaced. “Can you get this vehicle operational?” Ha Jin added to him, some of the edge in his voice finally vanishing.

-So, he actually does have some understanding? He sighed in relief.

“Corporal Hong here is the driver,” he waved for Hong to come over to him. “There is something wrong with the guard talismans, but we can certainly get some of it working. While we do that, why don’t you put on some armour, sir, and Xiaomei here—” he pointed to Blue Jasmine, who blinked in surprise. “—can brief you on what has occurred.”

Ha Jin gave him a slight frown, but did nod, as Corporal Hong clambered into the vehicle and slid past Caoxi to get to him.

“I am glad you are okay,” he murmured to Hong as Blue Jasmine started to answer Ha Jin’s questions.

“You too,” Corporal Hong nodded, “we landed in the western gardens, basically on top of them, then the Ha kid—Lieutenant, suggested we secure the supplies and weapons from here…”

“Ah,” he sighed. “Any sign of the others?”

“Just chaos, everywhere,” Hong grimaced, claiming a helmet for himself.

“—We need spirit stones,” he continued, cutting straight to the point, as there appeared to be none in the rear of the vehicle at this point.

“I gave most of my plates to her,” Hong sighed, glancing back at Misty Camellia and the others. “Seems she knows how to use them and can soul bind it, unlike me. As to spirit stones, those are in the front locker. Folks keep nicking them, and that’s the most secure compartment.”

-Ah, figures, he mused. That was where he had been about to check next in any case, while looking into activating the mudskippers tactical array.

“I’ll get em for you,” Hong added, climbing into the co-driver’s section.

“Thanks,” he gave the corporal a pat on the shoulder as he passed.

“Um, sorry about before, Sergeant,” Cheon Xiaoli, who had ended up sliding all the way to the front to make space for the others, grimaced apologetically as he turned his attention back to the others.

“It’s fine,” he replied. “It’s a very messed up day.”

“Do you know what is happening?” she asked. “No talismans work, the weather is…”

“No idea, sorry,” he replied, helplessly.

“—Internal communications are back on,” Hong’s voice echoed in his ear.

“Thanks,” he replied. “Can you give me access to the tactical array? We need eyes.”

“I’ll need to manually synch you,” Hong replied apologetically. “Gimme a moment.”

There was some muffled cursing from the front, then Hong leant back around and passed him a storage box with half a dozen cubes of spirit stones and several spirit jade in it.

“Xiaomei, Caoxi,” he waved to the pair to come to the back—

A flash of unstable qi rolled through their surroundings. A moment later, a further explosion, this one much closer, perhaps even within the estate, shook the vehicle. Another reminder that time was very much not on their side right now—

“—Your armour,” he reminded Caoxi, who gave herself a shake and scrambled over to him.

Placing a hand on her chest plate, he focused his soul intent into it, then let it flow on, into her. The binding itself only took a few seconds, then he pulled up the interface for her and passed her a cube of spirit stones.

“Absorb those, I have to deal with the mudskipper,” he instructed her through the armour communication link.

“Wow… oh, okay,” Caoxi stared in shock at the small fortune in her hands then nodded.

“Here,” he passed a cube each to Blue Jasmine, Misty Camellia and Ha Jin, then started to absorb the spirit jades—

“We have company,” Hong hissed in his ear. “Twenty, in three groups, using barrier talismans, skirting around the edge of the courtyard towards us. Put your hand on the main control interface for the compartment.”

Leaning over, he did as instructed and a moment later a new interface flickered into being in his Sea of Knowledge. Instantly, his awareness of their surroundings extended to almost thirty metres in every direction from the mudskipper, giving him a bird’s eye view of the courtyard.

“We have company,” he informed the others as he parsed those moving towards them.

"Already?” Blue Jasmine and Misty Camelia both grimaced as the others all turned to him, various expressions of concern and trepidation flitting across their faces.

“—Five nascent soul, seven soul foundation, eight golden core,” he continued. “Armed, in three groups, don’t go further than five metres from the vehicle. With your permission, Lieutenant, I’ll go and deal with them?”

“Oh… um, okay,” Ha Jin blinked and nodded, albeit a bit uncertainly.

“We can help?” Li Qingshan asked, nervously, backed up by Cheon Xiaoli.

“It’s better if I do it,” he chuckled bleakly. Hong, and perhaps Misty Camellia aside, he suspected he had more ‘combat experience’ than everyone else in the vehicle combined. The group approaching them wasn’t simple, either. Not only did the array recognise two of the Nascent Soul’s as known mercenary experts, but the qi purity of most of the golden core cultivators was so similar he could only think they were in fact some kind of doppelganger art. “Lian, Xiaomei, once I—”

An arrow froze about a metre from the rear of the vehicle, caught in the qi barrier protecting the mudskipper, then exploded in a shockwave of chaotic qi.

“Can you locate that archer?” he asked Hong grimly, as he picked up a sheaf of blank talisman papers, bound them to his armour.

“On it,” Hong replied tersely.

“Once I go out, wait ten seconds, then go out the back,” he instructed Blue Jasmine and Misty Camellia as he waited for all the talismans to register as bound. “Watch out for the archer.”

“Okay,” Misty Camellia nodded, picking up a helmet for herself.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the hatch above him—

A second arrow smacked into it, scattering in a spray of iridescent qi as the barrier again did its thing.

Shaking his head, he put on his face plate, selected the teleport function, focused on the furthest of the groups, which also held the more experienced of the two mercenary experts, a martial cultivator known as ‘Three Golden Blades’, and triggered it.

His surroundings blurred and he appeared right between Three Golden Blades and the other Nascent Soul leading that group. Both swore and tried to dodge, but he had already grasped them and triggered the lightning field on his armour. All seven cultivators in the group screamed as a shockwave of poisonously pure yin attributed metal qi coursed through their meridians, then he teleported again, into the second group, led by the other mercenary— an independent cultivator by the alias of Shadowless Fan.

“Motherless—!” Shadowless Fan barely managed to dodge him, having just witnessed the demise of Golden Blade’s group.

“—Die!”

“—Thunder-sword Flash!”

The remaining two Nascent Soul cultivators reacted at the same time, one darting in close, aiming for his back with their blade, the other spinning their sword and sending a pulse of qi into it—

A cracking blade of martial-intent infused qi formed in the air above the courtyard and scythed down at him. However, warned by the feng-shui divination and the command formation, he had already teleported beside the one using the art, noting as he did, that the other golden core and soul foundation cultivators were scattering, formations talismans in hand.

Even as the youth reacted, his nascent soul grasping for him in spite of the rain, he spun away focusing on the blade wielder and Shadowless Fan—

Thanks to the birds-eye view of his surroundings the tactical array afforded, he caught the arrow streaking in from his right. Exhaling, he threw himself to the side and teleported again, arriving beside a soul foundation cultivator. The luckless youth didn’t even have time to scream as he slammed into him, breaking half the bones in his target’s body—

“Above!” Hong’s warning as he rolled to his feet, made him teleport again as a second arrow, this one falling dead vertical targeted him—

The arrow exploded the instant he spotted it, enveloping his surroundings in an eye-searing, iridescent shroud of yin-attributed earth qi, even as he moved clear of it just before it interfered with the teleport.

-Fate-thrashed archer! He grunted, scattering the residual yin qi.

“Neat trick!” Shadowless Fan called out, rather mockingly. “But—”

Shadowless Fan suddenly darted to his left, sweeping out his hand and breaking an arrow that had almost hit him. Glancing over he saw that Ha Jin, bow in hand, had gotten on top of the mudskipper—

“Right roof, already moving,” Hong informed him, even as Ha Jin summoned another arrow.

The tactical array highlighted an ethereal shimmer of very pure qi, matching that of the arrow that had just hit him, off to his left amidst the rain. Almost as soon as he spotted it, though, it vanished, only to reappear a heartbeat later to his right—

Of course he has a blink talisman, he complained to himself, as half a dozen identical residual signatures appeared in short order all around the upper story and rooftop of the courtyard, arrows suddenly cutting in from every direction—

Shockwaves of chaotic qi scattered through the courtyard, accompanied by a vision warping rainbow of haze. This time he didn’t bother to dodge, and instead ‘staggered’ as if that had indeed blinded him momentarily.

“Target the formation!” the sword-summoning Nascent Soul yelled.

“Get Him!”

“Your south, second floor balcony,” Hong instructed him drily, even as he ‘regained’ his footing and darted towards Shadowless Fan who had taken the opportunity to fall back some distance and take out a lightning attributed talisman of his own.

Seeing him approach, Shadowless Fan grimaced and triggered the talisman, sending several arcs of yang lightning at both him and Ha Jin. However, before they could hit either of them, they abruptly bent away and were absorbed by the barrier on the mudskipper.

Rolling his eyes, he exploited the moment to shift his focus and sent a cracking bolt of yin lightning at the upper story on his left side. The archer, who had just appeared there and was in the process of drawing their bow, was thrown into the wall behind him, qi armour scattering—

“Get over here!” he snarled, shifting the alignment of the lightning coursing through his gauntlets to yang.

With a thunderous crack of displaced air and rain, the archer was yanked off the balcony and cast into the middle of the courtyard. Shifting his footing, he focused his martial intent on the pure qi coursing through his armour—

{Double Dragon—

The stunned archer arrived in the air before him. Turning on the spot, he caught the annoying bastard and slammed him straight into the ground, unleashing the strongest martial technique he was currently capable of using.

“You have some skill,” Shadowless Fan sneered, charging for him “However—”

—Thunder Shadow}

The whole courtyard rang like a discordant bell.

Shadowless Fan didn’t even have time to cry out as a shockwave of debilitating qi rolled out from the archer’s impact with the ground. Everyone within fifty metres of him who wasn’t already at Nascent Soul, or linked to the mudskippers protective barrier was thrown to the ground, spasming, their legs shattered and meridians rupturing.

A moment later, the conjured sword art from earlier collapsed into the ground with a chaotic detonation of its own, sending Shadowless Fan and the blade user sprawling, cursing and coughing up blood.

Misty Camellia abruptly appeared beside the sword-summoner in a blur of distorting space, planting both palms onto his back. The youth staggered drunkenly, then… simply collapsed.

‘—Dodge!’

The warning from the feng shui formation was so forceful that he teleported instinctively—

“Smart,” a voice sneered from right beside him “but its no—”

He teleported again, almost three hundred metres vertically into the air this time, enabling the tactical array’s ‘perception assistance’ mode as he did so—

This time, he barely caught the flicker of his attacker appearing beside him, already lashing out as he started to fall—

Space blurred once more and he appeared beside the mudskipper to find Misty Camellia retreating from three new nascent soul cultivators, all with similar qi signatures to the golden core ones from before. Ha Jin and Blue Jasmine were trying to stop Shadowless Fan and the blade wielder from flanking her—

He found himself face to face with a lanky youth, brown-haired and a disturbingly disarming smile, dressed like a travelling merchant.

“Careful,” a second older man, sporting a close-cut beard and dressed like a soldier for hire, who had appeared near the young man murmured. “He isn’t just a simple guard…”

“I can see that,” the youth chuckled, advancing on him—

“—t you, Bitch!”

Three more figures appeared in a blur of twisting shadows at the rear door of the mudskipper, the leading one grasping for Caoxi who was guarding it—

“Can you only—” Ignoring those aiming for Caoxi, Han Murai sent a withering pulse of lightning at the still speaking brown-haired youth—

To his shock, however, the lanky youth just winced slightly as he blocked the bolt with his palm, the lightning flickering across his arm and managing to shred his robe’s sleeve, leaving a faint spider-web pattern on his arm.

Meanwhile, behind him, Caoxi shrieked in shock as the barrier on her armour triggered, consuming two of the shadow-like figures who had ‘appeared’ beside her in surging purplish-blue lightning. Their smoking bodies slammed off the door of the mudskipper onto the wet paving, where they sizzled for a moment, before vanishing in swirls of black petals, leaving only some burnt clothing and smoking weaponry behind.

“—Ahieeh!?” the remaining figure who had tried to grasp her fared better, surprisingly. Merely staggering back, his robe disintegrating as the lightning sizzled across his body—

He blinked in surprise as the figure who scrambled to his feet turned out to be the youth, Dong Fang, who had seemed to be the orchestrator of the teahouse attack.

‘—Dodge, Inward!’ again the feng shui formation and his augmented senses saved him as, lightning still flickering across his robe, the brown-haired youth appeared like a ghost before him, pressing his uninjured palm to his chest plate—

“Your resistance is surprisingly good,” his attacker remarked with a faint smirk.

-My resistance…? Oh, motherless—! guessing that the brown-haired youth was using some kind of control art on him, he tried to teleport—

“—ill inexperienced…” the attacking youth’s mocking voice echoed in his ears as his awareness of his surroundings painfully returned.

The rain had stopped, which was both disconcerting and ominous.

Han Murai found he was lying on his back in the middle of what appeared to be a small crater in the paving, every bone in his body screaming at him.

Half his vision was obscured thanks to a large crack in the right side of his faceplate, presumably where he had just been struck. Through it, he… His vision wavered unpleasantly as he tried to focus on one of what appeared to be two identical, brown-haired youths standing over him with one foot on his chest…

The weird sense of double vision faded away, though the pain did not as the youth, of which there was only one now, just shook his head with a smirk and pointed the weapon that had just ruined his faceplate at him, allowing him to get a proper look at it.

“Shit…” He groaned, taking in the mace pointed at his face, which was studded with several shards of razor-edged stoneware pottery, grasping what had probably just happened—Is that a club made out of broken pots from Yin Eclipse?

Because it looked like blue-grey stone, he supposed it probably wasn’t arborundum. However, there were other materials that occasionally made it out that were almost as bothersome.

“Back with us?” Dong Fang stepped into his field of view, with what he probably thought was a dismissive smirk, as he tried to focus on the condition of his armour.

Thankfully, it was still largely okay. His link to the tactical array was no more, and beyond the faceplate, the chest plate had also suffered some damage, but the binding to his nascent soul was still fully functional. The armour’s internal formations and qi reservoirs were also stable and still replenishing themselves from the remaining soul jade stashed in his gauntlet—

“Honestly, I was going to kill you,” the youth continued, shaking his head again. “But actually, that’s a bit of a waste…”

“A… waste?” he gasped, trying to keep the youth talking as he started to recover a bit.

His attacker’s physical strength was ridiculous. His armour should have at least allowed him to struggle against a normal Immortal… especially when drawing on spirit jades.

“Mmmm…” the brown-haired youth nodded, giving him a disturbingly pleasant smile. “Dong Fang here is right. There are not that many Master Sergeants in this town, Han Mei Murai, and you have exceeded my expectations by quite a bit—”

-That strange attempt to influence me before… how he dealt with the lightning, and this absurd strength. Is this bastard actually a Mantra Immortal?

“Having you in our pocket will be a useful thing going forward…” the youth continued, producing a decidedly inauspicious-looking white and gold talisman in his free hand.

“—Oh, and if you are interested in your friends—” Dong Fang put his boot against the left side of his faceplate, forcing his head to the side so he could see the mudskipper.

The hulking vehicle seemed undamaged, though that was unsurprising as he was sure this lot would dearly love to capture it in working order.

A dozen youths wearing a mix of Li-estate uniforms and civilian armour were fanning out around the courtyard, securing it.

Blue Jasmine, her face pale and bloodied, was being restrained by two nascent soul youths, while Shadowless Fan tore off her armour. Caoxi was being similarly stripped by the blade wielder. Luli and Cheon Xiaoli lay beside them, shaking like leaves, watched over by an inscrutable dark-haired youth in garb similar to the youth pinning him down.

Misty Camelia was pinned down by the old man, who was looking around unhappily for some reason. Of Hong and Ha Jin, he saw no immediate sign, but Li Qingshan was slumped, pale-faced against the side of the mudskipper… missing his right arm.

Gritting his teeth, he grasped the youth’s leg and tried to dislodge him, but it was like trying to push up a boulder. In response, he knelt down and pressed the talisman against his damaged chest plate.

“Look, you don’t have to be in as good a nick as you are, for this to work,” the youth remarked conversationally, as he felt a nauseating, hot, itchy numbness start to spread through his body. “You have a nascent soul, so I could easily smash your face in and cut off your arms and legs before doing this—”

A flush of hot air rolled over them, followed a moment later by the roar of a not-so-distant explosion. Bits of roof tile started to patter down across the courtyard.

“So much for this being stealthy,” the bearded man sighed, glaring at the dark-haired youth for some reason, who affected not to notice.

“—Says the old geezer who nearly broke one of those armoured vehicles earlier,” Dong Fang muttered, sullenly.

“—Anyway, we are running out of time,” the bearded man growled, glancing at a talisman wrapped around his left wrist then up at the clouds roiling disturbingly above them.

“Already?” the youth pinning him down frowned, looking around at the courtyard.

“Yes,” the bearded man confirmed sourly, as the rain began to fall once more. “While we got lucky—"

“—It isn’t luck,” the dark-haired youth cut in mulishly. “Strategist Huan has calculated—!”

“We. Got. Lucky,” the bearded man reiterated, silencing the youth with a glare he then turned on the others assembled there. “Even if a surprising number of those old bastards are elsewhere, elements of the Ha clan are starting to collect their wits and realise that they got buggered… badly. You do not want to have a face to face with that witch from the Cherry Wine Pagoda on her own turf.”

“Bah! That is true,” the brown-haired youth pinning him down sighed and turned his attention back to him. “I am sure you are a good man, Master Sergeant, it’s just a pity that this world has no place for…”

“—Hold on,” Dong Fang cut in, kneeling down beside him. “This bastard caused us a lot of trouble, so it’s only fair I repay it…”

The brown-haired youth gave Dong Fang a look, but nonetheless nodded.

“It’s okay,” Dong Fang chuckled, grabbing the helmet and twisting his head around so they were looking at each other. “I just wanna let you know that the first thing we are gonna do, after this takes hold, is have you go to the Han clan, and bring that pretty little sister of yours over—”

“You…” he hissed at Dong Fang, who just grinned even more broadly. Just for that, he would have already crippled the youth—

“—and your wife as well,” Dong Fang continued.

-I take that back, I’ll kill you, he swore, inwardly, recalling the ugly intent that had been imbued within the curse mark. Gritting his teeth, he tried to focus again on externalizing his qi, but something just kept interfering. The itchy numbness in his meridians was also spreading, and nothing he tried seemed to be able to even perceive whatever was causing it.

“—I know some people in Blue Water City who would love to make her acquaintance. A good, respectable man like you will make their work so… so much easier,” Dong Fang added.

“No…” he spat back.

“No… what?” Dong Fang sneered, leaning in. “What…”

“You… won’t die… a good, death,” he retorted, desperately trying to work out what he could do.

The restraint on him was unshakable, the talisman…

“Perhaps not,” Dong Fang chuckled, patting the side of his helmet. “But a nobody like you will…”

“—if you are gonna do it, do it,” the old man called over. “But stop dragging it out.”

The brown-haired youth shot Dong Fang another look, who just shrugged.

-What do I… taking a mental breath, he forced his arm to move to try and grasp his attackers’ arm, to teleport anything—

“Uh-uh,” the brown-haired youth half shook his head as he swatted the grasping hand away and the sense of pressure on his chest doubled. The feng shui formation in his armour was screaming at him now, telling him in no uncertain terms that everything was very, very bad.

-Is there no way out?

A part of him refused to believe that. He would sooner die than let them take control of him, like some puppet to move as they willed. But just that… would not help any of the others. Even before Qing, or Xiaolian, the fate of Blue Jasmine and the rest would be beyond miserable…

‘Why do we fight…’ the words were Jun Han’s… strangely enough.

Spoken as he stood in the shrine hall of his estate, staring at the shrouded form of his late wife…

‘Why…’

His little sister Xiaolian’s laughing face as she clutched a stupid book to her chest. His younger brother Yuen rolling his eyes at her reaction to their gift…

His wife Qing’s smiling face as she gazed adoringly at him through her red veil…

“Well?” Dong Fang’s grinning face stared down at him. “Any last words?”

“…”

“Qing, Xiaolian… I’m sorry,” he whispered closing his eyes, banishing that ugly face from his sight.

With a thought he released all the constraints on the qi reserves of his armour. Pure qi, like molten ice, boiled out of the remaining parts of the reservoir into his meridians.

In the blink of an eye, his dantian was full of the poisonously pure qi his armour had absorbed from the spirit jades.

“What are—” the brown-haired youth, who had been focusing on the talisman frowned, staring at him, but it was already too late.

“You want to die with me? Are you capable?” the brown-haired youth sneered, his qi massing around the palm holding the talisman as Dong Fang’s expression slowly turned incredulous. “Just—”

Both froze, as the volume of qi within him kept increasing.

Now there was so much that it was physically weeping out of his body where his skin was exposed to the air.

“Are… you?” he managed to rasp, grasping the shocked Dong Fang by the wrist as it finally reached the threshold, he had been driving it towards.

False-Immortality.

Colour bled out of the world as the sky above them slowly, inexorably warped., shattering upwards.

The turbulent clouds started to swirl inwards, darkening.

The town barrier ominously slid into focus—

“Y-you…” both Dong Fang and the brown-haired youth’s faces drained of colour as, in the same instant, it registered him as a ‘friend’ and didn’t immediately smite him or seal him up in a barrier for breaking the cardinal rule of tribulations in West Flower Picking Town.

It was also why, despite the relatively laid-back criteria for reaching Immortality on a Great World, people died, and died with depressingly regularity if they didn’t take certain precautions when dealing with formations, or certain kinds of divination, or when doing alchemy or forging.

The criteria to trigger the ‘Crossing Immortality’ was only reliant on two things. Your qi purity had to reach a certain threshold, and it had to stay there for long enough to resonate with the natural qi of the world.

As someone who had been promoted on merit to Master Sergeant, his foundation was good enough to summon Earthly Purple Lightning anyway. With the added boost of the spirit jade, the twelve golden bolts that fell, like spears of death towards them, were already taking on the dreaded white hue of a mid-step Heavenly Tribulation—

The Li estate formations flashed momentarily and then scattered.

Dong Fang tried to break away, but the pure qi suffusing their surroundings was far too much for him.

“Bastard—!” the youth screamed, a shimmering constellation of fifteen green flames appearing in the frozen moment above the three of them—

The bolts hit it, and all but three of the flames vanished, scattering golden lightning through the rain in an iridescent sheet of death.

Dong Fang was suddenly ripped from his grasp, flying over to land inside the region protected by the mudskipper.

Shadowless Fan avoided being hit only by luck, the others around him did not. Their skeletons shone momentarily through the shadowy outlines of their bodies as they were hurled across the courtyard and into the walls. Dong Fang, along with the others inside the protective barrier, could only stare in horrified relief as it voided much of the rest—

In the same instant, he felt the insidious touch of the talisman finally reach his nascent soul, worming into it, seeking his spirit root—

Fifteen brilliant bolts of golden lightning, edged with black slid out of their surroundings one after another. With their arrival, the clouds above had turned almost pitch black.

“No!” the brown-haired youth snarled, spitting blood on a fan made of black bamboo that had appeared in his free hand before waving it at the incoming bolts.

Instantly, eight of them scattered, while the remaining green flames claimed three more. At the same time, a powerful intent bore down on him, attempting to repel the qi in his body.

At that point, the youth also changed strategy, twisting his strikes with the fan to try and re-divert the increasingly formidable bolts at him. Unfortunately, his armour was still linked to the mudskipper, so the first one was drawn away, leaving a molten scar on the side of the vehicle where it hit, as was the second.

On the fourteenth, the youth finally messed up, a bolt snaking around the fan and searing his arm—

“I refuse!” the youth screamed, furious, somehow managing to channel the bolt through the talisman.

-Is it not enough? he sobbed as the claws of that cursed item inexorably twisting their way into his nascent soul finally broke through his remaining mental defences and stretched for his spirit root, even as the qi in his body wavered agonizingly on the threshold—

Like a dark serpent, sliding out of its hole, the remnants of the black lightning Grandmaster Li had used to break the mark on his soul, met the incoming intent seeking to consume him.

The two collided in a flash.

The driving rain, which had restarted, stopped falling. It didn’t vanish, it literally froze in the air.

The scattering golden lightning was devoured by darkness.

“NO!” the brown-haired youth screamed, his eyes widening in genuine terror for the first time as the sky above them seemed to crack and twist. “H-how?”

Even he was shocked, as the clouds above scattered and the courtyard around them seemed to fall away to reveal…

The vault of heaven was a starry sky, visible between rolling cliffs of pitch-black cloud, that swirled like the trunks of vast, primordial trees above them, lit by the flashes of what looked like iridescent phoenixes, trailing flower petals, clashing with roiling pitch-black shadows and dragon-like flashes of lightning—

“The worth of a hero is in how he faces death…”

The words slunk into his mind like shadowy knives. As they did, he found himself facing a shadow of himself, clutching his wife’s body, his own blade pierced through her breast.

“In fear—” The shadowy figure twisted, turning into the face of the youth he had seen when the Grandmaster Li was removing the mark.

Without even thinking, he was already moving to strike the youth down—

His blade passed through the figure, which scattered with mocking laughter, the black lightning enveloping him—

“In Fire…” his flesh melted as black flames consumed him, that same cruel laughter ringing in his ears…

“—In Fury?” they taunted as, screaming with pain and rage, he managed to disperse them, only to find himself facing the same shadow again, its blade already falling, far faster than he could block—

“—With Hatred…” the figure threw everything back at him, trying to overwhelm the torrent of pure qi that was fuelling his resistance—

“With Honour?” its manner turning accusing, the figure suddenly retreated, its frenzied attack instantly shifting into a more guarded… no, measured rejection towards him.

“With… Courage—?” gritting his teeth, he mustered what remained of his strength and drew as deeply as he could on the poisonous well of qi pushing him forward and struck back furiously—

To his shock, the blow actually pierced the shadowy figure’s guard, severing its arm—

“In Delusion…” the voices cackled all around him, as the opponent he had just ‘defeated’ melted away. Unable to react, he could only scream as the lightning that had made it up, enveloped him—

“With Vengeance…” the word cut at him as the shadow of the youth he had implicated appeared like a ghost, grasping his limbs, trying to rip him apart, even as the insidious serpents of shadowy intent and black lightning bored into him.

“With Regret?” the haunting word hung in his ears as the shadow of his wife clung to him, weeping, asking him accusingly why he fought, even as his body crumbled under the onslaught.

“In Doubt…” He could feel his control over the qi that remained in his body slowly ebbing away—

Shadows assailed him, one after another. Furious, vengeful, enraged, fearful—for every one he scattered or repelled, there was another… Cruel, elusive blades cut at his arms and legs, pierced his heart, his dantian, his meridian gates, trying to wear him down.

“With… Conviction…” Yet… a part of him just refused to succumb—determined, at the very least, to hold on long enough for the youth to fall before he did.

The silence, and the stillness, when it came, was almost as shocking as the onslaught. Something about the way he interacted with the qi raging through his body was changing as well. It had been shifting all through his struggle with the lightning, but it was only now that he really realised just how much. His Intent felt much… more focused, and the slight disconnect that had always existed between its different applications and his qi was no longer there—

Icy, nauseating yet concerningly untouchable pain drew him back to reality as something bit into the integrity of his nascent soul’s shoulder—

“Y-you…” the dishevelled, brown-haired youth was half kneeling over him, smoke rising from his body, which was now covered in inauspicious, shadowy fern-like scarring.

“W-why… do you… fight?” the youth snarled, pushing more qi into the dreadful talisman, even as his free hand tried to work a corroded, dark-bronze metal-dagger into the opening in his armour caused by the mace blow.

And yet… in that moment, it was not that, which called to him.

It was not the frozen rain, now falling upwards…

Nor the wreckage of ruined roofs and shattered, melted paving that was also rising across the whole courtyard and perhaps beyond.

It was not even the mountains—the impossible peaks of Yin Eclipse, the clouds wreathing them roiling and breaking like some otherworldly storm surge.

It was the white dragon, descending from the broken sky, its vast maw opening, its whiskers shedding lightning of every colour imaginable.

“The worth of a man is in how he lives…”

The words were not spoken… they simply… resonated out of the world itself as colour bled out all around him, as if in opposition, or refutation of what he had just endured.

“NO!” the bearded man howled furiously, somehow managing to make his voice heard over the tumult.

Unable to do anything, he could only look on as the bearded man appeared like a ghost— black lines blurring off of his already disintegrating robe—beside the brown-haired youth, whose expression was slowly turning from fury to unfathomable horror.

In the same instant, that horrible talisman distorted, and as white light slowly enveloped them all, scattered in a profoundly inauspicious flash of red and black light.

The old man grasped the brown-haired youth, hurling him away, while simultaneously sweeping up at the sky with the wrapped club he had been carrying—

The dragon’s maw collided with the weapon. The cloth concealing it vanished into ash, revealing a dozen glittering, crystalline fragments carefully set into a twisted, blackened spirit-wood haft—

“—SCATTER!” the old man snarled, furiously.

The dragon recoiled, its whole form seeming to bear down on them for the briefest moment, almost obliterating all the qi in his body simply by being… and then to his horror it did indeed scatter, into a maelstrom of pure white shards—

Uncomprehendingly, he stared as out of them appeared the ghostly form of a tall, bald man with a long beard, dressed in something like a monk’s robe. He had the strangest feeling, like the old man was gazing at him as well, as he put his hands together and bowed, before looking up at the roiling sky with a mysterious smile.

Colour washed back into the world, twisting in on him, drawing with it the white shards of the tribulation’s moment which vanished into his body. The bearded old man, staggering under the backlash of what he had just done, tried to evade them, but to no avail, as they also flowed into him, the brown-haired youth, Dong Fang and, in fact, everyone else remaining in the courtyard to a greater or lesser degree.

For several seconds, the only sounds he could hear were the hiss of falling rain and the ragged sound of his own breathing.

-I… survived?

If he could have laughed, he would have, even though he was under no illusions that his body wasn’t ruined, despite the protection of the armour.

“You worthless—!” the whispered words cut through the stillness like a curse, bringing with them numbing, gut-twisting pain in his shoulder that bled into his nascent soul like a virulent poison—

Reaching up, he managed to find the strength to grasp the weapon, the corroded bronze dagger from before, and sent a pulse of yang lightning into his attacker. His meridians screamed at him almost as loudly as his attacker did—

A second shadow appeared above him, already swinging down with the familiar mace—

-No! I refuse! Summoning the memory of resisting the shadows in the tribulation, he ripped the dagger out from his shoulder and, with gritted teeth, swung it up… and was momentarily shocked at how slow the attacker’s movements seemed.

The blade bisected the second attacker’s descending wrist, then opened up the front of his robe, before the figure collapsed in a swirl of black petals, revealing a half-charred corpse.

-Wait… what!?

Painfully, he tried hauling himself to his feet, and realised that both his attackers had been dead before he crippled them, slain by the lightning of the tribulation—

“Useless,” the old man stood before him, his expression indescribably ugly as the club, studded with what had to be arborundum, or some material like it, descended inexorably towards him.

He wanted to move, but there was no strength left in his body. He tried to summon the defensive formation, but… there was nothing left as he slumped to his knees…

The impact never came.

Instead, he was enveloped by the sweet fragrance of flowers in the rain.

Gentle hands grasped him, before he hit the ground.

Forcing himself to focus, he found Qing kneeling beside him, supporting him.

“H-how?” he tried to ask, as she stared at him with concerned eyes, the unreality of the moment utterly confusing to him—

“—Die…”

The whispered word bled through the courtyard. With it, what little he could see, including his wife’s face… wavered disconcertingly, as if he were looking at a scattering reflection in a pond, then everything returned to normal—

“We have got to stop meeting like this,” Qing, the ‘maid’ from the Li estate sighed as she knelt beside him, meeting his eyes with a complex expression.

Trying to focus on his surroundings, he found that, other than the old man and those around the mudskipper, every other body in the courtyard, alive or dead, was in the process of exploding into blossoms of gore and chaotic qi, their limbs twisting apart, bones cracking and organs smearing like macabre scroll paintings through the rain-swept courtyard. Those with nascent souls and still able to flee, tried, only to flare strangely then flow back into their bodily remains, like heads or hands.

With a furious snarl, the old man spun and lashed out at something, then went staggering back again, as a petite, dark-haired young woman dressed in a fashionable white and blue gown appeared like a ghost a few paces from where they were. A moment later, three other fashionably attired young women, armed with sword, blade and fan respectively, wearing broad-brimmed hats to protect from the rain, appeared, looking around distastefully.

“M-mother?” Qingshan’s haggard-sounding voice cut through his moment of reverie as he also finally matched the appearance of the petite young-looking woman to that of the rather reclusive mistress of the Li estate—Li Qiuyue.

“—Qingshan!” with a cry, Li Qiuyue appeared beside her son in a ripple of displaced rain, ignoring everyone else.

“—You may want to be quite objective with them, Senior Mei,” Qing remarked to the other new arrivals as they made their way over, encircling the old man as they did so. “It seems they intend to provoke us into a fight with the Imperial School and the Jade Gate Court.”

“Y-you dare!” the dark-haired youth spat furiously from beside mudskipper, pulling out a treasure sword—

“—Oh?” the youngest looking of the three blurred past them and arrived before the youth, grasping the sword with her hand. “For a bandit, you sure sound entitled—You think we will balk at killing you?”

“In this weather?” the blade-wielding woman chuckled. “How cute…”

“Well, they do seem to be remarkably naïve,” Qing sighed. “But ignorant or not, any rabid dog pack is dangerous. Especially when the dogs belong to the Shadow Fan.”

-Shadow Fan…? Of course, at her words, a few things finally solidified in his mind.

The brown-haired youth’s expression twisted at her words and swung his mace—somehow recovered—at the young woman restraining his compatriot…

However, she simply swayed to the side, caught his descending hand with her fan and turned slightly. The brown-haired youth tumbled over her arm and smashed into the ground so hard it shook. Without even pausing, the young woman lifted her foot and pressed it lightly on the youth’s chest—

The bearded man vanished, appearing before her like a ghost, lashing out with his club, the rain falling around them both juddering bizarrely—

The young woman just snorted, and the bearded man suddenly staggered back, coughing up blood. In the same instant, with an audible crunch, the brown-haired youth’s chest collapsed without any resistance at all.

“So, which of you injured my son?” Li Qiuyue asked coldly.

Half of those there shifted their gaze to Dong Fang—who he could see was leaning against the mudskipper, holding his right wrist, face pale as he glared balefully at him.

-So, it was him… with the clones, he sighed grimly, fighting back the shadows trying to devour his vision.

Dong Fang flinched as he realised, they were all looking at him—

With a sneer, Li Qiuyue arrived beside Dong Fang.

“I—” Dong Fang started to speak as she pressed her palm into his chest.

“—Save it for your next life,” Li Qiuyue sneered, strange patterns shimmering across her exposed arm for a moment, before a profoundly inauspicious aura enveloped Dong Fang.

“—Hey! Mei! Focus… hey!” Qing was trying to speak to him, but it was hard to focus on her.

All he could feel, as darkness finally overwhelmed his vision and his strength left him, was relief, as he watched Dong Fang’s body collapse to the ground like a broken doll beside the mudskipper, while the other attackers recoiled in horror.