> While the heights are a thing all mortals aspire to, too rare is the understanding that when we reach them, we are still just mortals, staring at another great height.

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>   Mortal Moon Dream c. 700 AD, Chang An.

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~ JUN HAN – MISTY JASMINE INN ~

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“I don’t like this…” Shi Lian muttered unhappily, looking up at the mist-shrouded cliffs above the Misty Jasmine Inn.

“I agree, it’s too quiet,” Yunhee agreed, shifting uneasily, even if a not-so-distant peal of thunder tried to prove her wrong. “Especially after… all that.”

Listening to the two converse softly, Jun Han found he was in wholehearted agreement. Since they cleaned up the tetrid attack, almost twenty tense, worrying minutes had passed with barely a hint of any follow up. Not even any arrows. There was no question of ‘patrolling’ the perimeter—that was just asking to get picked off, given their low numbers—and there had been precious few ‘bodies’ to clean up either, thanks to Lord Baisheng. So now they were just sitting near the door to the inn, watching over the sweating prisoners, while Baisheng, Ling Tao, Shi Xiaolian and the woman from the Little Dragon conversed on the teleport platform.

“—And the ‘weather’ is getting worse,” Shi Lian added sourly, making a face.

“Somehow,” he agreed with a grimace, trying not to tug at his own now far-too-heavy and awkward feeling armour.

“—Which should not be possible, I swear,” Yunhee agreed bitterly.

The heaviness in the air was physically oppressive at this point. The humid heat clawed at everything, and the misty haze drifting through the gorge only reinforced the impression that they were in the middle of the province's most malignant steam bath.

The ambient qi in their surroundings was also behaving… oddly, which up here was never a good sign. Something was seemingly twisting or disrupting the yang attributes within it, in ways that put his teeth on edge, and nobody, not even the Dao Step experts with them, seemed to know what was causing it, not even Lord Baisheng.

“—Are the three of you busy?” one of the Cherry Wine Pagoda’s Golden Immortals, who he thought was called Shin, stuck his head out the door of the inn, interrupting his aimless pondering on that point, and the others grumbling.

“I am advancing the Dao of Seething,” Yunhee declared glumly, which got an amused snort from Shi Lian, and an eye roll from him and Shin.

“What do you need, Shin?” Shi Lian asked, shifting again and adjusting her armour again, ignoring the catcalls from a number of the more active imprisoned bandits.

That audience was not helping either, he reflected sourly.

“We have a… well,” Shin grimaced, the tiredness and stress over what they were dealing with flickering like a shadow in his expression. “Can one of you go ask if there are any Arborundum pots in the shrine?”

“I’ll go ask Priestess Ying,” Shi Lian affirmed, getting up. “Anything else?”

“Some roof tiles would be good, and um… maybe ask Lady Shi to come back with you?”

“Is there a problem?” he asked, raising an eyebrow as Shi Lian made her way down the steps.

He hadn’t given it much thought until now, but Shin and his compatriot, Kei, had stopped bringing bodies out quite a while back—before they had been attacked by the tetrids and the parasol qi, in fact.

“Mmmm…” Shin grimaced, glancing back inside for a moment, before sighing tiredly. “Either of you have any recent experience with Ablative Divination?”

“Ablative…” Yunhee made a face. “Some, I guess.”

“I can’t say I have—not… recently, anyway,” he replied, really wondering where this was going now. Did they find a trap they can’t disarm?

“Why, what did you find?” he asked, curious, now, if only to try and take his mind away from dwelling on the matter of his precious daughters being stranded in the company of—

It took an effort, but he caught himself before thinking about that piece of mortal excrement again. One ‘relapse’ with memories of that dreadful incident had been more than enough.

“Mmmm, might as well come in and take a look,” Shin sighed, jerking his head for them to follow.

Giving the leering and mugging bandits behind their barrier one final glare, Yunhee followed Shin inside, into the common area of the inn, with him bringing up the rear.

“Step where I step,” Shin instructed them. “The place is mostly clear, but… this is not the nicest working environment.”

“That’s a bit of an understatement,” Yunhee observed, looking around at the interior with a grimace.

Despite the removal of most of the bodies from the common room, he had to agree with Yunhee.

Blood and gore was still in liberal evidence, and with the humidity and the sabotage to the building’s formations, flies were already starting to buzz around, attracted by the first traces of death qi. Three bodies remained untouched: one slumped against the far wall, next to a door; half of a dark-haired youth lying in the ruin of a table in the middle of the room; and an armless youth someone had impaled through his diaphragm into the far wall.

“We have cleared most of the safe bodies,” Shin commented as they carefully picked their way through the ruined room towards the second Ha clan expert, who was crouched, motionless on a ruined table, taking in the room. “Been slow work, checking each one though.”

“I can imagine,” he muttered, not envying Shin that task at all.

“They really wanted to make a statement, huh,” Yunhee murmured, shaking her head in disgust as she looked around.

Rather than say anything, he just gave her shoulder a sympathetic pat.

“Any luck, Kei?” Shin asked his compatriot.

“Whoever set this is… well, they say there is nothing more dangerous than a little bit of knowledge,” Kei replied softly, not looking at them. “I don’t suppose you dealt with these, during your days with our esteemed Duke?” Kei added to him.

“Dealt with?” he asked, eyeing the three bodies in turn, pretending not to notice Kei’s seemingly low opinion of Cao Leyang.

“Shredders,” Shin clarified with a grimace as Kei pointed at an innocuous, overturned wine jar nobody would look twice at, wedged beside the body in the table.

Both of them inhaled involuntary, though in his heart he had sort of expected it would be something like that.

-If they are dealing with those inside, it’s no wonder they are being cautious. This is not the weather for trying to disarm them, either, he reflected, eyeing the room again, grimly.

‘Shredders’, or ‘Sherd Bombs’ as they were also generally termed, were… infamous, as a category of trap, named partly for their notoriously indiscriminate nature and difficulty in disarming… but mostly, he suspected, for what went into them.

They had been around forever, as far as he was aware, likely owing to the fact that they could be very simply constructed. The ‘local’ form was, like the one Kei was indicating, basically a pot, filled with alchemical explosive, into, or around which several dozen to upwards of a few hundred sherds of pottery or, worse, jadestone scavenged from within Yin Eclipse were arranged.

“I have… some experience with them,” he replied, uneasily now.

The really nasty ones sometimes even had a few pieces of broken arborundum in them, and even up here, he fancied one of those would go through the walls of the building they were in like a hot blade through butter. “—None of it pleasant.”

During his time working with Cao Leyang, probably… a third of all the soldiers who had died had been killed by various forms of this trap, including several instances of them taking out entire mudskippers.

“I can bet,” Shin grimaced.

“Any idea what type?” Yunhee asked, giving his arm a sympathetic squeeze. “Jeo-Seng? A re-packaged Ling Barrier Breaker?”

“Hard to say,” Shin replied, frowning pensively as he crouched down to look at the wine jar. “Outwardly, it doesn’t look like a Jeo-Seng, which is unfortunately the style we have most experience with—”

“—Doubt it’s Ling, either,” Kei added. “Though it can’t be ruled out, given one of their elders seems to have been in on this—”

“So, one of the newer variants?” he suggested, his heart sinking.

“There are new variants?” Yunhee hissed, glancing at him. “Or do you mean the Deng ones that got popular around the Three Schools Conflict?” The way she put emphasis on Deng almost made the clan’s name sound like a curse.

“Uh-huh, the illicit Deng one was bad enough,” Kei nodded. “This one might be a Deng-style one?”

“Or some fate-thrashed homebrew take on it,” he added under his breath, to which Shin nodded grimly.

“Well, if you need ‘cauldron tappers’”—Yunhee jerked her head suggestively back towards the door and the prisoners outside—“two of the bandits ate peaches of Immortality, if I recall,” Yunhee finished, her smile turning vicious.

“As tempting as that is, I don’t think the elders will go for it,” Shin replied with a bleak chuckle.

“Aye, I rather suspect Lady Shi won’t want to let any of those rats out their box—even if it means we might get to watch one lacerate himself… repeatedly,” Kei agreed softly.

On that point, he suspected Shin and Kei were right. As attractive as Yunhee’s suggestion was, ‘Shredders’ were nasty enough traps, even in their crudest and most basic variants, to not mess around with, especially in this environment. Not to mention, a bandit who knew they were immortal was also not someone he wanted to trust at all with that kind of object, though, understanding Yunhee’s grudge with the Yeng Brotherhood intimately, he didn’t point that out.

“Worth keeping in mind, though,” Yunhee murmured with a mirthless smile as she moved carefully around the table.

Crouching down, he tried to get a better look for himself, not that it really helped. The amount of bloodshed in the room and the sheer ‘trauma’ of what had occurred was blanketing everything, and the heady miasma-esque oppression of the weather only magnified it.

“It looks remarkably compact,” Yunhee noted. “There is no obvious evidence of an external formation?”

“Yeah, whoever did much of this… was pretty skilled,” Shin agreed. “However…”

“I can only assume they did it in a hurry, or directed others, once we started the attack,” Kei added. “That one, on the wall is definitely a statement trap though.”

They both glanced over at the unfortunate youth, who had been very brutally executed—there was no other term for it, really—and impaled there.

“Is that also a Shredder?” Yunhee asked.

“No, it’s a pretty standard Corpse Bomb,” Kei sneered. “Probably intended to be the trigger that set everything else in here off.”

“Hence the lack of a formation on this?” he asked.

“Perhaps,” Shin replied with a slightly helpless shrug. “Certainly, it’s why it’s been such slow going. Likely they set it all up in a hurry—which just means we have to be triply careful dismantling…”

“Uh-huh, Sloppy work kills thrice,” he agreed, quoting an old military saying on that as Shin trailed off.

“That it does,” Kei nodded. “Especially in a place like this.”

“—And him?” he nodded towards the youth slumped by the wall.

“No idea, that’s why we really need Lady Shi,” Kei supplied with a grimace. “Every divination on him says ‘bad’ but we can’t find anything at all, and with this Nameless-sent weather…”

“Could it be incidental?” he mused, as much to contribute an idea as anything. They would certainly have thought of that already, given most of the dead here were juniors from influential families.

“—Like, he had some treasure that was meant to trigger?” Yunhee suggested, looking around with narrowed eyes.

“Could be…” Shin agreed. “Could be. Which is all the more reason to not mess…”

“—Ah, so you are just left with the problem ones,” Lady Shi Xiaolian stated, entering with Shi Lian… and surprisingly, Bai Sheng—both carrying large pale pink pots—even as Shin was speaking.

“Yes, Lady Shi,” Kei confirmed with a respectful nod.

“Aiii…” Shi Xiaolian looked around the room, then sighed softly. “Put the pots by the door and give me… Hrmmm, let’s start with six roof tiles,” she added.

Bai Sheng and Shi Lian did as she asked, depositing their cargo where she pointed and then passing her a handful of tiles. Without any preamble, Shi Xiaolian placed them in a rough circle on the floor and proceeded to draw a series of extremely esoteric formation marks on each one, before spitting a small drop of blood on each.

“Take one apiece, carefully put them at the six most auspicious points in the room,” Shi Xiaolian instructed, handing each of them one.

“Um, when you say… auspicious, Lady Shi?” Yunhee asked a little hesitantly as she accepted the one Shi Xiaolian passed to her.

“Auspicious according to you,” Shi Xiaolian clarified blandly.

Curious about the method she was using, he took his tile and, looking around, carefully made his way over to the western wall of the room—

His foot slipped on a patch of gore—

Cursing in his heart, he tried to steady himself—

*Crack*

“Oh for—!” He bit back a curse as, to his dismay, the tile somehow clipped the edge of a ruined table next to him and a large chunk flaked off along a hidden flaw in its structure.

“Motherless—!” Shin abruptly bit off a curse as his robe snagged on a chair, his tile also slipping between his fingers to bounce on the floor and fracture with a resonant *Ting*

“Wha—!?” Shi Lian, distracted by their mishaps, also somehow slipped on a puddle of gore, falling to her hands and knees, breaking her tile in two with a flat *Krak* as she did so.

“—Heok!?”

“Watch out!” Fei, his face pale, grabbed Yunhee, who had also just lost her footing, both their tiles colliding and breaking with an unpleasant scraping sound.

“Huh…” Shi Xiaolian who had managed not to fall, found her tile had cracked clean down the middle when she put it down on the floor, leaving a sweating Bai Sheng, who had walked over to the exit to the baths, near the slumped body, the only one holding an intact tile.

“W-what just happened?” Shi Lian stammered, looking around with wide eyes.

“Nameless Son of a Dun Whore,” Bai Sheng hissed under his breath, warily examining his immediate surroundings like someone who suspected there was a venomous snake waiting for him.

“How… interesting,” Shi Xiaolian muttered, also looking around the room again with concerningly narrowed eyes.

“A Leading Fortune,” Bai Sheng growled.

“Indeed, so that answers one question,” Shi Xiaolian agreed.

“Leading… what?” he asked nervously, because that could be both good and bad.

“It means that whoever set this up was at least given a chart,” Shi Xiaolian mused, making her way back to the doorway. “Bring me your tiles, so I can look at them.”

Taking great care as he retraced his steps, he handed her the two pieces of his broken tile and watched with interest, as it was not every day you got to watch a Dao Lord do Divination, as she laid the six out, one after another in a rough shape of the room.

The thing that immediately stood out, even to him, who was utterly unfamiliar with the method she was using, was that the cracks were… eerily aligned when the six were placed together. Comparing them to the layout of the room, he traced roughly a series of connections between the three bodies, the door to the kitchen area and the entrance, focused on the slumped body by the wall near the door to the baths.

“So, the nexus is indeed that body,” Kei muttered.

“Yeah,” Shi Xiaolian confirmed, eyeing it pensively. “Actually, it’s a fairly good trap, in that it is actually the mere act of disturbing that body that will set it off.”

“—and they disguised it with the other stuff,” he asked, taking in the room again. “The body in the wall, specifically?”

“It looks that way,” Bai Sheng agreed. “That also likely sets it off, but the real trap is if you disarm that one, then think you are done…”

“You did well to get this far,” Shi Xiaolian added, standing up and dusting off her hands. “This was set down by someone who has decent comprehensions in the Laws associated with Feng Shui.”

“So, what do we do now?” Shi Lian asked her nervously, on behalf of all of them, really.

“Now?” Shi Xiaolian chuckled. “Now I go call the lucky bitch who deals with exploding pottery on a daily basis!”

“Uh, Wait!” Bai Sheng held up a hand, suddenly, staring at the corpse by the door to the baths warily.

“Problem?” Shi Xiaolian raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe,” Bai Sheng bit his lip. “There is another possibility that just occurred to me.”

“Go on…” Shi Xiaolian prompted.

“The parasol qi from before,” Bai Sheng made a face. “What if this is an attempt at a ‘Seven Slaughters Cauldron’?”

“A part of me wants to ask how you even know that cursed name,” Shi Xiaolian muttered, as the rest of them all looked confused.

“Seven Slaughters?” Yunhee asked, waving her fingers in the air as if drawing it out.

“Like, Seven as in ‘Supreme’?” Shi Lian added. “The historic anagram for the ‘Seven Sovereigns’?”

“Right,” Bai Sheng made a face. “The idea behind them is that it entangles those who encounter it in a quasi-absolute feng shui alignment.”

“The Supreme Sage Slaughters the Seven Directions, to escape the Will of Heaven leaves only one Path,” Shi Xiaolian’s expression turned gloomy as she muttered under her breath.

“Only one…?” Shi Lian echoed, confused, even as he felt cold sweat suddenly forming on his own neck.

“It means…” he started to explain.

“—Must accept your fate and try and do better in your next life,” Bai Sheng explained with a bitter smile before he could. “Or at least that’s their ‘intended’ outcome.”

“Slaughtering Formations are the worst,” Shin groaned.

“What makes you think it might be that?” Kei asked, not sounding convinced.

“Optics,” Bai Sheng grunted. “Someone seems to be trying hard to draw connections between this and the Meng clan—the strategy they used out there is derived from an old Meng tactic, though only superficially executed I think.”

“Your knowledge of history is… far reaching,” Shi Xiaolian murmured, giving Bai Sheng a rather searching look.

“I like to read,” Bai Sheng replied with a slightly awkward shrug, “—And I had the good fortune of receiving some small instruction in the evolution of the ‘Classic Stratagems’ from Her Eminence, The Lady Azure.”

“Fairy Sovereign Sky Song,” Shi Xiaolian sighed. “You are indeed a card the Ling clan has kept close.”

“—That said, if it is something like that, they will have had to set it up in a hurry, so by no means would it be… unbreakable,” Bai Sheng added hurriedly. “I mean, it looks like they are trying to frame the Meng clan here… so at best, it will be a crude attempt at it—”

“—‘Set up in a hurry’, ‘crude attempt’—these are not auspicious words when it comes to obscure and notorious variants of Alchemical Sherd Bomb,” Shi Xiaolian pointed out.

“I agree,” Bai Sheng nodded. “However, I have confidence that…”

Bai Sheng trailed off, even as he felt the hair on the backs of his arms stand up—

“Son of a Dun—!” biting off an expletive, Bai Sheng lunged for the pink pot nearest him, even as Shi Xiaolian dove for the other.

In the same instant, something profound and unsettling happened to the ambience of their surroundings. The oppressive humidity became like a smothering cloak of lethargy, while the room itself wavered eerily, shadows that were not quite… there, flowing through everything—

Instinctively, he found himself diving for the floor, trying to make his profile as small as possible, dragging down Yunhee and Shin, who were next to him, as he did so.

Leaving strange afterimages, Shi Xiaolian appeared by the youth by the exit to the bathhouse, slamming the pot down over the body, even as Bai Sheng did the same with the potential sherd bomb in the middle of the room—

A creeping sense of destabilization tugged at the qi in his body, trying to dissociate it—

-The corpse bomb!

Shi Xiaolian and Bai Sheng, both stranded, trying to disarm the shredder and the central node respectively, could only glance at the corpse on the far wall, their expressions ugly, but they were at the wrong end of the room.

-What do I…? Ah!

With a supreme effort, he overcame the feeling that he was caught up in grasping mud and focused on his Principle and pushed back at the lethargic draw of the trap and, grasping Ruliu’s ‘Merope’ blade, threw it at the corpse, praying in his heart his instinct was right about how the trap was set up—

The dagger slammed into the corpse’s diaphragm, cutting through where the core meridian gate was, linking the remnants of its dantian to the five inner gates—

*Crarrrrrrrrrrkkkk-Tiaukuuuuing-aaaaaak—!*

A terrifying, crackling, ringing sound reverberated through the room, even as it stopped twisting creepily before his eyes.

Something picked him up and slammed him into the near wall, amidst a scatter of ruined furniture and kicked up gore. Ears ringing, he rolled over, ignoring the icy pain blossoming in his leg and side and found to his relief that the corpse, now pinned to the wall only by his blade, was still largely intact, the inauspicious aura around it slowly dissipating.

“—T BACK HERE!” Xiaofang’s furious yell from outside cut through the chaos as he continued to collect his own awareness.

“Everyone… okay?” Kei called out, his voice shaking.

“I…” Shi Lian pushed herself up, wiping blood off her face. “Yes.”

“Quick thinking,” Bai Sheng, who was sweating visibly, muttered, nodding to him from where he had been thrown. The cauldron over the shredder was on its side, rolling back and forth.

“Indeed,” Shi Xiaolian, who had barely managed to shelter in the doorframe also gave him a grateful nod, albeit accompanied by a slightly probing look.

“Uggh, my arm,” Shin sat up, holding his right arm, which had two large lacerations running from his elbow to the middle of the forearm—

Before anyone could move, a body—garbed in sodden beggar’s rags—smashed into the doorframe, bending horribly before sprawling, broken, into the wreckage of the room.

Outside, he heard more cursing, then Kun Xianfang stalked through the doorway, his expression grim.

“Don’t tell me,” Shi Xiaolian sighed, eyeing the twitching body. “Waiting for their moment?”

“Oh yeah,” Kun Xianfang growled, reaching down and grasping the male cultivator, who was breathing raggedly, blood bubbling from their mouth, by their matted hair and flipping them over. “What happened in here?”

“Nasty trap, multi-stage thing,” Bai Sheng replied, picking his way back over to the jar that had blocked most of the Shredder.

“Um… Han, your leg,” Yunhee, who he had dragged down was staring at him with concern, he realised.

“My…?” he tried to sit up, and winced as another icy jolt raced up his side—

Trying not to grimace, he shifted and sat up so he could look at his left leg.

The skirt of his armour had been torn apart and blood was flowing freely from a nasty wound just above his knee. There was a second tear in the armour on his left lower back, by the feel of it as well.

“What about my… Huaa… back?” he asked her, as another shooting pain made him grit his teeth.

“Flesh wound,” Shin replied, “It tore the armour and opened up a gash by the looks of it.”

“Anyone else?” Shi Xiaolian asked, looking at the others, who all shook their heads, faces pale.

“Just a few cuts and scrapes,” Shi Lian supplied.

“Same,” Kei confirmed, while Yunhee just nodded.

“Let me see your leg,” Yunhee added, wincing as she picked herself up.

“Motherless… I was right,” Bai Sheng spat, tipping out the pink pot, to reveal… several hundred sherds of a glassy material that varied from reddish-pink to greenish-black, quite a few of which didn’t even slide, just embedded themselves straight in the stone floor at the angle they came into contact with it.

The remnants of a blue-ish grey pot and quite a lot of greenish dust came with it, several pieces of pot further shredding themselves on the fragments.

“…”

Shi Xiaolian picked her way over to it and carefully scooped up some of the dust with a piece of roof tile, her expression flat.

“It went right through,” Yunhee informed him. “Doesn’t look like the bone got hit, and your meridians…”—she sent a gentle pulse of qi down his leg that left him feeling a bit flushed and the muscles itchy— “seem fine. There is intrusive Yang Qi in the wound though.”

“Sorry about that,” Bai Sheng grimaced, glancing over at them. “I should have been quicker.”

“It’s… fine,” Shin, who was flexing his arm with a pained expression, muttered. “To escape with just these injuries is already spitting in heaven’s eye.”

“You blocked most of it,” he reassured Bai Sheng. “Without your timely action, we would all be dead.”

Bai Sheng shrugged a bit awkwardly at his words he felt, clearly not happy with himself.

“The same could be said of you, Sir Jun,” Shi Xiaolian added, giving him another sideways look.

“What was that dagger?” Yunhee asked.

“It was just some lucky judgement,” he muttered, as she started to pack the wound in his leg with some luss cloth seeped in purification medicine. “What is going on outside, Lord Xian?”

Kun Xianfang, who had been searching the twitching cultivator, scowled.

“Six of these rats crept close, came down over the roofs. Must have been watching and waiting for an opportunity to hit the barrier around the prisoners. All of them had arborundum sherd weapons. As soon as the trap went off, they struck.”

“Any casualties?” Shi Xiaolian cut in.

“Injured pride, mostly,” Kun Xianfang spat. “However, we lost the link back to Blue Water City, at least temporarily with whatever that just was.”

“—And the Prisoners?”

“Sweating,” Kun Xianfang sneered. “I think the reality of their plight might finally be sinking in a touch.”

“That would be the day,” Shi Xiaolian snorted. “Sherd weapons aren’t a good sign though. Those are not common, and hard to make—also, these are not from pre-broken pots.”

“Someone flaked pottery?” Kun Xianfang asked, raising an eyebrow as Shi Xiaolian carefully searched through the fragments embedded in the floor.

“That isn’t… good,” he noted, trying not to flinch as Yunhee poked around at the wound on his back.

“Uh-huh,” Shi Xiaolian nodded in agreement, sitting back on her heels.

While it wasn’t impossible to work pots like that—the commonly held assumption that arborundum and its lesser variants were basically unworkable was… well, there were exceptions, if you were persistent enough and didn’t care especially about the end product—it did suggest that a formidable feng shui expert was working with this lot.

“This dust is nasty stuff as well,” Shi Xiaolian continued. “A mix of Soul-Searing Bronze, Parasol Qi and Death Qi. I wonder how they got the parasol qi in it.”

“—Parasol Wood Charcoal,” Ling Tao cut in as she stalked into the room, scattering water as she did so. “At least, that is how I would do it. Prepare it with a Yang-attributed accelerant, pack it around a core of whatever alchemical explosive you like, line the thing with luss cloth, then alternate suitable sherds of whatever with the dust, put it inside a void-stone pot and wait for some sharp shock to do its thing.”

“Nasty,” Kun Xianfang agreed.

“The question there is where they got the Parasol Wood Charcoal,” Shi Xiaolian mused, turning her attention to the cracked blue-grey pot that had been hidden inside the more mundane, broken one.

“The easy way would be to just strip some old treasures for parts,” Ling Tao shrugged, “However…”

“That would be equalized wood, though,” Kun Xianfang mused. "Unless it came from the Meng clan directly. Given the bodies before, they must have some active source of it.”

“Can you… reactivate parasol wood?” Kei asked respectfully.

“You can, but it will get you interest in places you won’t like if you get caught,” Ling Tao mused.

“—And you will get caught,” Shi Xiaolian added with some certainty. “Though… I wonder, have there been any Beggar’s Auctions recently in our Starfield?”

“Now there is a deep pool to spit pointlessly into,” Kun Xianfang sighed. “I’ll go take this one to the others and consult with Lord Baisheng on what we do now.”

“Okay,” Ling Tao nodded, looking around the room pensively. “It seems they really want us to bark at the Meng clan’s tree, huh.”

“That is a terrible, terrible pun,” Shi Xiaolian muttered as Kun Xianfang dragged the unconscious cultivator back outside.

“I know, but if I don’t make it, I might become unsociable,” Ling Tao replied, making her way over to the corpse his blade was still pinning to the wall. “So, was this some kind of makeshift single trigger formation?” she added, looking back across the room.

“Yes,” Shi Xiaolian nodded. “Pure feng shui, no linking qi involved in the setup at all. It’s also a chart type, so any idiot can set it up with some pointers. If we don’t find the person who developed it, they will be trouble if they get to hone this at all.”

“A chart. Of course it was,” Ling Tao sighed, shaking her head.

-So, definitely a formidable feng shui expert, he reflected grimly.

Reaching out, she yanked his blade out of the wall and lowered the ruined body gently to the floor.

“Anyway, how are the injuries?” she asked, making her way carefully back over to them, Ruliu’s blade Merope in hand.

“Inconvenient,” he replied, which got a bitter chuckle from Shin.

“Can you stand?” Ling Tao asked, passing him back the blade without so much as passing comment on it, to his relief.

“—One moment,” Yunhee, who was still checking the wound on his back, cut in as he accepted it and sheathed it with a nod of thanks, “…and yes, you can try now.”

Trying not to wince, he shifted his posture and accepted Yunhee and Ling Tao’s helping hands to get to his feet. The wound on his back felt more like a burn than a cut in some ways. Putting weight on his left leg, he grimaced as the dull ache deepened into a flush of hot pain that itched unpleasantly. Simultaneously, the circulation of qi into those meridians in his lower back and leg became more erratic.

-Oh, great, he groaned. “I think I have some minor yang poisoning,” he informed her, unhappily.

“—I wouldn’t say minor,” Yunhee cut in with an eye roll, as she started to check Shin’s injury. “I have packed both your wounds with reduction medicine, but it will take time to work.”

“I think I do as well,” Shi Lian mumbled. Indeed, he could see an ugly flush, like a burn starting to spread from the gash on her cheek.

“…”

Ling Tao made her way over to Shi Lian and touched the wound, then scowled.

“What is it?” Shi Xiaolian asked as Ling Tao wiped her hands on a piece of luss cloth and bade Shi Lian sit on a miraculously unharmed stool.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Blood Ling qi,” Ling Tao spat as she continued to examine Shi Lian’s wound. “That’s what they activated the parasol qi with—Irresponsible.”

“I believe I have heard the Yeng Brotherhood called worse,” Kei observed sourly.

“Much worse,” Yunhee agreed under her breath.

“—And messing with tetrids,” Bai Sheng mused. “Not to mention whatever was done to some of the survivors here.”

“I think, when we get back, I may have to have a chat with a few people,” Ling Tao sneered. “Whoever did this is passingly good at Jeo-style alchemy as well, which means the Five Fans…”

“—Have got a friend in the old villains from before the Great Restoration, or one of the heterodox old bastards hiding from the current heavens out east?” Shi Xiaolian mused. “I can make some enquiries about that as well.”

“Lord Baisheng will certainly be able to invite some interest too,” Bai Sheng added with a wolfish grin.

While they talked, he spent a few moments exploring more carefully the influence of the intrusive Intent on his cultivation. The problem with yang poisoning was that it was insidious, and avaricious. Orthodoxy focused on Yin as the negative, which tended to stagnate and obstruct, but Yang nature was to strive, almost unto the exclusion of sense.

Focusing on his leg, he tried to use his Principle to guide his qi and slow down his qi circulation, only to find that the yang Intent influencing it might as well be a ghost, or a gossamer of mist, a telltale sign that it was derived from comprehensions that significantly exceeded his own in their foundation, but not, interestingly, application.

“—My Principle can’t touch the yang Intent in my leg,” he informed the others, “But I can detect the application.”

“You can? Interesting,” Shi Xiaolian mused. “Shin?”

“Same,” Shin confirmed.

“Nope, it’s… just… Ahhhck!” Shi Lian gasped as Ling Tao poked at her wound again. “Hahh—Ethereal.”

“So, whoever set the trap was in the lower half of the Immortal Step,” Kei observed. “While the designer of the sherd bomb…”

“Is approaching Dao Step, for sure,” Shi Xiaolian supplied with a grimace. “But probably not a Dao Lord; the law comprehensions are very refined, but appear unfounded, though that might just be an artifice of where we are.”

“Makes sense,” Ling Tao mused. “You can’t make too many of those except by blind luck, unless your grasp of the principles of Feng Shui is also approaching the Dao Step.”

“Is the person who set it up among the prisoners?” Bai Sheng, who had been quietly listening this whole time, finally spoke up.

“…”

“No, actually, and I…” Shi Xiaolian trailed off, looking pensive, as did Ling Tao.

-Wait… is she implying that there might be a quasi-dao step expert skulking about, that has somehow managed to evade us?

That was not a comforting thought in the slightest.

“They did try to impersonate one of our soldiers,” Bai Sheng mused, his gaze roving around the room now. “But we haven’t suffered any real casualties…”

“Yet.” Ling Tao sighed. “Anyway, that is a—”

“Nice daggers you got there…” a cool, female voice whispered right beside him, as he found the qi flow in his body that wasn’t the poison stagnating inauspiciously.

-A Mantra!?

Pushing away his shock, as he recognised the effect, he was relieved to find he could work against it, in no small part thanks to the aid of Lord Baisheng’s talisman.

For her part, he thought he caught a flicker of shock from his attacker, as he twisted on the spot, grasping for Merope as he did so—

There was no one there, only a shocked Kun Yunhee and Shin, who were already flinching backwards as he checked his strike.

“Hey, watch—!” Yunhee broke off with a yelp as Ling Tao abruptly moved like a snake, dragging her out of the way of a half-visible shadow that had seemingly stepped out of what appeared to be the shadow between the nearest pillar and a broken table.

“—it would be a terrible shame…” the woman’s voice giggled mockingly, still behind him, somehow, her mantra manifestation tugging at his body ever more insidiously, despite his efforts to resist it.

“White Horizon—” Bai Sheng started to exclaim, as a third, figure-like distortion appeared behind him—

{Purple Forbidden Formation: Auspicious Celestial Enclosure}

“—If something were to—!” the woman taunting him cut off with a surprised gasp.

Seven shining lights hung in a constellation before Shi Xiaolian, accompanied by an ethereal sequence of chimes, and each of them gained their own shining star above their heads. Simultaneously, the influence of her manifestation on him scattered.

Rounding on her, he flinched in shock as he found that Merope was somehow not in his hand, but rather both it and Phoibe were now in the grasp of the now frozen, yet still distorted and shadow-like female figure who had been attacking him.

Six more similarly shrouded figures were locked in place across the room, in the act of sneaking up on the others, while three more had just been about to drop down from above.

“That took longer than I expected,” Shi Xiaolian sighed, staring around at the room, which was now cast in an otherworldly, iridescent hue.

“Physical cultivators,” Bai Sheng observed, stepping away from the now frozen figure that had tried to ambush him. “Inheritors as well, Easten Mercenaries?”

“Mmmm…” Shi Xiaolian grimaced, as did Ling Tao as they surveyed the room.

-Fates… these are Easten mercenaries? He groaned. Up here, that was about as troublesome an opponent as they could get, really.

He was just about to move towards the woman who had tried to ambush him, eager to recover Merope and Phoibe, when Ling Tao caught his eye, subtly shaking her head.

“Y-you…”

He tried to hide his surprise as the woman who had attacked him actually spoke, her voice sounding strained as she glared at Ling Tao then at him.

“You… have not spent… time…” the woman hissed, her head shifting slightly to look at Shi Xiaolian, then Bai Sheng. “We—”

“Aiii…” Shi Xiaolian nodded, cutting her off. “That is true, my application of this up here is only this much, otherwise I could have seized you all without you ever knowing what hit you.”

“You… won’t… keep us…” the shade that had targeted Bai Sheng cut in. “Not unless…”

“I mean, you are here trying to stop us delivering a provincial gift to the Shan Emperor,” Ling Tao pointed out. “It would not be uncalled for, for my brother to speak to Southern Azure directly and have them send an ancestor or two over to directly obliterate… oh, Jufa province? Maybe we could decimate Feisho or...”

“Dofai,” Shi Xiaolian suggested, picking another of the Easten-dominated border principalities beyond Teng Province. “I never liked the way the trees there grow crooked, and their flowers are so fate-thrashed weedy.”

“Assuming you get out of here,” a tall, cowled man garbed in a cloak of qi-repelling leaves appeared in the doorway to the upper floor, at what was presumably the edge of Shi Xiaolian’s formation. “To think that there was someone in the Ha clan who knew the Tai’s ‘Celestial Enclosure Domain,” he continued. “Truly, the Ha clan seemingly has some cards in hand here…”

Shi Xiaolian gave Bai Sheng the most complex look, then just sighed ruefully.

“How about this?” the new arrival suggested with a light chuckle. “The fabled, much admired and desired beauties of Blue Water Province… vanished without a trace, and with their loss, a great tragedy befell the vile invaders… If the Shan Emperor wants to kill a few mill—”

“—And what about the rest of us?” Bai Sheng cut in, sounding amused more than angry at his words.

“I have always wanted to see what happens when a person encounters an Eldritch Moon Mushroom,” the man replied blandly to Bai Sheng. “Despite all my years in these mountains, you know I have never encountered one?”

“How fortunate,” Kun Yunhee sneered. “Perhaps we can accommodate you, then.”

“—Rather, should you not be worried about Lady Meng Fu and the Seven Sovereigns?” Ling Tao added.

“Meng Fu?” the man blinked, turning to her.

“Indeed, I see a lot of shade being thrown at the Meng clan in this endeavour,” Ling Tao added with a disarmingly bright smile. “Yet it is clear that you all are… not really appreciating her style.”

“—What was the old Meng clan saying?” Ling Tao asked Shi Xiaolian.

“If they do not Fear us, then it is time for Fire…” Shi Xiaolian grinned.

“—And they shall learn to once again fear our Fury,” Bai Sheng added.

“How amusing, to be lectured on the Meng’s ‘Three Stratagems’ by brats not even born before the dawn of this stolen era of Lu Fu Tao’s,” the cloaked man chuckled, radiating a disconcerting sense of formless oppression now, that left his skin clammy and qi circulation sluggish in ways he seemingly had no recourse to resist. “If you are placing your hope in the Seven Sovereigns, I fear you will be disappointed. They are not the force they once were, and once these events are—”

“—If Meng Fu and her disciples were that easily written off, the history of this world would be very different,” Bai Sheng interrupted again. “Given how much you are talking, I wonder if your wits are not unspooling a bit, though.”

“…”

The hooded man’s Intent turned a bit harsher at that insult.

-What realm would he be outside of here? He found himself wondering. High realm Physical Cultivators, assuming that was what he was, were all strange and a bit unpredictable.

“Or are you just afraid to step in here, and are waiting out Lady Shi’s barrier, hoping it will weaken her?” Bai Sheng countered drily, drawing his sword.

“Be careful, this old fellow is not simple,” Ling Tao warned him. “He is almost certainly a quasi-dao step physical cultivator.”

“Quasi?” the man laughed. “Oh, you stupid girl, allow me to—”

Bai Sheng repelled the man’s blow, aimed at Ling Tao seemingly, as he entered the room in a blur of shifting iridescence.

“—enlighten,” without pause, the cloaked man swept a foot through the remains of the sherd bomb, sending scattered flakes of pottery pinging across the room, even as they all ducked for cover.

“—you.” His second strike, before he had even finished speaking, sent Bai Sheng back half a step, though the youth did again successfully deflect the blow with an ominous *ching* of his blade.

“So not just your shield is nice,” the man chuckled as Bai Sheng recentred himself between them and the cloaked man.

“So is your cultivation,” Bai Sheng retorted, skilfully deflecting another blurring strike.

“What were you, before the heavens cut off your path?” Shi Xiaolian added mockingly. “Dao Bones? I bet it hurts having to watch everyone just waltz past you now.”

“Are you useless lot just gonna stand there?” the man called out to the others, smoothly sidestepping Bai Sheng’s return strike.

“…”

“Uh, we actually… can’t move,” a man on the upper floor retorted, sounding annoyed.

“Use your charms!” the cloaked man snapped.

“We did!” the woman who had targeted him protested. “That’s how we can talk!”

“Faugh…” the man sent out another lashing strike at Bai Sheng, then used the opening to dart towards Shi Xiaolian—

Almost as quickly, he retreated though, as golden flower-like markings appeared on Shi Xiaolian’s exposed skin, they flowed like a repeating motif across her body, swiftly converging on her brows, where they took the shape of a strange, esoterically styled moon-rune that translated itself to him as ‘Stratagem’, although the symbol gave him decidedly… odd vibes as it did so.

It took him a moment to realise where he had seen such a symbol before. Especially with that slightly derisive, disconcerting feeling associated with it, but when he did…

-No way, did she gain comprehensions from the shrine in Blue Water City?

He had visited that famous shrine on the edge of the Blue Water Gardens several times, most recently with Ruliu. However, while there were always rumours that people did gain ‘comprehensions’ from it, he had never heard of anyone openly displaying anything remotely credible.

“Purple Forbidden Art,” Shi Xiaolian declared, narrowing her eyes. “Tai–Yang–Shou!”

The golden flower-like markings on her skin blazed, transforming into an incandescent corona of golden flames that seemed to occlude the space around her—

“You—!” the cloaked man threw up his hand as a flare of the fire flashed out at him and the other attackers.

For the briefest moment, her attack appeared to waver, then the cloaked man’s garments exploded into ashen sparks and disordered qi.

“Dao step physical cultivators are indeed durable,” Shi Xiaolian sneered as the man’s features resolved themselves amidst the scattering flames revealing to them a muscular youth with shoulder length curly dark hair and a fancifully braided beard. His arms and upper torso were decorated with vivid red and black tattoo seals styled after swirling clouds.

The only items still intact on his body were a necklace of interlocking blue-green crystalline talismans and the weapon in his hand, revealed as a twisted, sword-length spirit-wood club studded with dark blue flakes of stone. Unfortunately, he also seemed to have taken little outward damage from the attack, beyond looking a bit flushed.

“Jeo Zhongshan,” Ling Tao hissed, seemingly recognizing the man. “So, you have thrown in your lot with the Five Fans?”

“Haha… the Ha clan really do have some surprises,” Jeo Zhongshan scowled. “Unfortunately, this changes nothing, except that now I know the true depth of loss that I will—”

The constellation hanging above Shi Xiaolian rippled, shifting its arrangement as if it were wheeling through an unseen sky.

{Purple Forbidden Formation—

Jeo Zhongshan suddenly sucked in his breath, his expression turning serious as he appeared like a vengeful mirage before her—

“Nope!” Ling Tao somehow got there ahead of him, checking his advance and deflecting the blow from his club with expert timing to ensure that it didn’t ruin her own blade in the process.

—Eight Guardians of the Left}

The constellation before Shi Xiaolian rang like an auspicious bell. With the chime, the seven stars sheltering the rest of them rippled and twisted in on themselves.

The one before him transformed into a symbol that read ‘First Imperial Guard’, then sank directly into his forehead. Ling Tao’s shifted to become ‘First Premier’ even as she advanced after Jeo Zhongshan, while Bai Sheng’s transformed into ‘Second Premier’ as he moved to support her. Shin and Kei’s became First and Second Minister respectively. Kun Yunhee became ‘Second Imperial Guard’ and Shi Lian ‘Second Prime Minister’. All of them reflecting important traditional ranks and roles within the ‘Bureaucracy of Heaven’.

Shi Xiaolian, meanwhile, also gained a star-symbol that read ‘Left Pivot’ at the heart of her formation that merged and burned like a third eye on her forehead.

-It’s a martial formation?

Exhaling, he was shocked to find that it brought with it an almost unsurpassed sense of clarity, resonating with both his foundation and the effects of Lord Baisheng’s amulet, to elevate his ability to leverage his comprehensions back to a level that actually exceeded some aspects of his best condition outside the mountains.

From the shocked and surprised gasps of the others, he guessed it was the same for them as well.

“Rather, isn’t it you who is underestimating someone who leads the oldest influence in the province?” Shi Xiaolian retorted as Jeo Zhongshan parried a follow up strike from Bai Sheng. “I think you have hidden up in these mountains for too long!”

“Indeed,” Ling Tao agreed with a bright smile as the purity of the qi surrounding her suddenly surged. “Clearly, the isolation has gotten to your sense of judgement!”

Jeo Zhongshan clicked his tongue in annoyance, then sidestepped another slash from Ling Tao, kicking up a spray of the remnants of the sherd bomb towards her as he did so.

Ling Tao, for her part somehow seemed to slip away from them, the space between her and him distorting oddly—

“—Heyok!” Jeo Zhongshan exhaled as her sword somehow almost cut open his chest.

“L-Laws…?” one of the other attackers gasped.

“Ah, you lot—” as if his words had suddenly reminded her that there were other attackers there, the iridescent flames around Shi Xiaolian swirled inwards, forming a palm-sized flower of fire in her hand that illuminated the whole room crazily—

The blurry obfuscation around the attackers melted away like mist, then their clothing, followed. Over half of them gasped or screamed as their skin charred and blistered—

“Tccch—!” Jeo Zhongshan stamped on the floor, sending a shockwave of distorting qi rolling through the room.

Furniture splintered and tiles cracked. Unable to dodge, he could only set himself as it washed over him, but to his surprise, it merely left his legs feeling a bit numb. The distortion tugged at his qi, trying to disperse it from his body, but the empowerment from Shi Xiaolian’s formation easily matched it, so in the end, all it did was agitate the yang poison somewhat.

The flames attacking the other physical cultivators did scatter, though, finally revealing them to the rest of the room. Four women and six men, marked with tattoos in a similar style to Jeo Zhongshan.

To his surprise, the woman who had attacked him had short-cut dark brown hair and a long scar across both her shoulder and right side. Her injuries, which were among the least of those attacked, likely because of the passive influence afforded by Ruliu’s blades, were also healing visibly before his eyes as she struggled to her feet.

The restriction around the woman abruptly distorted as she waved first Merope, then Phoibe sluggishly, then her eyes turned bright—

“Nameless-sent fates,” he hissed under his breath, a pit opening up in his stomach.

“That’s it! Keep at that!” the two men upstairs yelled as the woman holding his daggers stared at them, then waved them to disrupt a further flare-like attack from Shi Xiaolian.

Gritting his teeth and doing his best to ignore the dull ache that was starting to spread through his left side, he focused his qi and Intent, about to move towards her to recover them, when his instincts howled at him to dodge—

…

“—them, while also fighting me?” Jeo Zhongshan’s mocking words slid into focus in his head.

Ears ringing and his head pounding, he found he was lying awkwardly in the ruin of one of the tables. His bones hurt, as if each one had grown spikes that were now trying to rip his body apart from the inside out, while the icy discomfort of the yang poison in his side and leg were only getting worse as well.

-Motherless… I didn’t even see that, he groaned, frantically trying to regain some awareness of his surroundings.

Shi Lian was sprawled nearby, groaning.

Kei was being helped up by Yunhee—

Another wave of vicious qi enveloped him, trying to overwhelm his mind and body, making the spikes tearing at him from the inside out feel like they were gaining extra spikes. Gasping, he tried to push back against whatever it was… and was momentarily shocked to find that he could. Somehow, Shi Xiaolian’s formation was augmenting his ability to manipulate both his Martial Intent and his Principle to an almost unnerving degree as he used it to first match, then remarkably force back the incoming Intent.

Staggering to his feet, he found Jeo Zhongshan was staring at him as if he were an inexplicable species of mushroom—to the point where he nearly forgot to parry an opportunistic blow from Ling Tao.

Looking around he found that the others, while stunned, were all seemingly okay. Even Shi Lian, who was on her knees now, wiping blood from her nose. The woman with his daggers though…

-Where is she?

For a confused split second, he stared at where she had been, and now, very obviously wasn’t, before catching himself. In fact, she was now scrambling laboriously onto the upper level, struggling against the lingering restraint of Shi Xiaolian’s formation.

Trying not to grimace with the pain as he circulated his qi, he snatched up a nearby broken table strut. Rather handily, all the furniture in the room was high-quality spirit wood, and it had spent years, if not centuries, steeping in the ambience of Yin Eclipse, making even broken staves a more than serviceable weapon.

Focusing on the idea of it ‘bestowing misfortune, but not on him,’ he threw it, underarm, in a looping arc in her general direction.

It slammed into the balcony beside her and bounced strangely, smacking her in the side of the head and also dislodging the cracked banister that she had just been about to grab. With a yelp, she crashed back down to the lower floor and rolled to her feet, glaring at him, as everyone else also turned to stare at him now with expressions varying from amusement from Bai Sheng and Ling Tao to shock and surprise on everyone else, and lastly to anger from Jeo Zhongshan.

“You…” the woman gasped, staggering to her feet and staring at him with a trace of shock in her eyes. “How—?”

“Monkey-faced Bitch!” Kun Yunhee yelled, followed his strategy and slinging half a chair at her, forcing her to make an ungainly stumble backwards.

Snatching up a longer stave of wood that had probably been part of the balcony above them in a past life, he flipped it in his hands, getting a feel for its rather dubious balance, then lunged after her.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jeo Zhongshan feint Bai Sheng, who had been circling him from the other side, aiming for one of the other restrained physical cultivators.

Hoping the previous time had not been a fluke, he put all his trust in Shi Xiaolian’s formation and imbued his Principle and Martial Intent into the crude staff and warded in Jeo Zhongshan’s direction—

A wave of tumultuous qi slammed into his speculative parry, nearly throwing him off his feet, and leaving the qi in his arms juddering painfully, despite his success, as it partially scattered. Remarkably, the stave held up as well.

-Fates, this formation… unable to really find words for his admiration of it, he rolled over half a ruined table to avoid tripping right into it… and then promptly flattened himself, face up on the floor, as a follow-up blow hit the table directly, sending it scything a hair’s breadth above him, to smash into the wall.

At the same time, he saw that the woman who had stolen Ruliu’s daggers had managed to scramble to the doorway, scattering another grasping tendril of the searing luminescent qi Shi Xiaolian was directing at will around the room now.

Thankfully, the combined efforts of Bai Sheng and Ling Tao were once again pressing on Jeo Zhongshan, as he had to work to protect not just himself, but also four of the remaining cultivators sealed up on the lower floor. Taking the provided opportunity, he threw himself towards the door, after her, followed a moment later by Yunhee.

Reaching it, he exhaled and, doing his best to calm his mind, triggered the only movement art he had held onto since arriving as an Immortal in Blue Water Province.

{Old Master’s Ten Steps of Passive Mindfulness}

As expected, the woman was waiting, tensed and ready to strike, her aura totally hidden by her mantra and yet, as he took the first step, through the doorway, the world seemed to just flow by them both, such that she ended up staring at him somewhat uncomprehendingly as he arrived just a moment earlier than she had expected.

The second step took him fully past her, while her delayed strike ferociously struck empty air as it scythed after him.

With the third, he was properly into the corridor, stepping past her, drawing her into the space he had left behind as she tried to recover from her over extended blow.

At that point, Yunhee caught up to him, using her own movement art, forcing the woman to make an ungainly backwards dodge or get stabbed.

The fourth allowed him to properly flank her, observing as he did that there were two frozen attackers near the stairs up to the second floor, and one by the door further into the interior of the inn—

With a snarl, the woman unleashed what he could only assume was the full force of her mantra manifestation, which settled over his surroundings like a clinging, entangling shroud of negative emotion and formless pain.

Exhaling, he managed to step outside the ‘flow of the moment’ again, in no small part thanks to Shi Xiaolian’s formation, letting the deeply unpleasant sensations just wash by him, and smoothly raising his staff, took a fifth step, and thrust the tip towards her heart gate.

With that, his ability to sustain the art finally gave out, and the sense of events just ‘flowing by’ faded away, as actively attacking with ‘passive mindfulness’ was something even now he had to admit he had not fully mastered, even with the added assistance of the formation. As a process, it was akin to one of those challenge games, where you tried to write calligraphy on sodden rice paper, the merest misjudgement enough to ruin all your efforts.

Still, the woman barely had time to react, twisting slightly to the side in an attempt to throw off his strike, before his staff slammed into her side. With a ragged gasp, she stumbled back into the stone wall desperately lashing out with the blades, aiming for his staff as he took half a step to the side and swept the tip across the floor at her in a rising arc—

At the last moment, he reversed the strike, pre-empting her second attempt at countering him and stabbed with it instead—

Displaying remarkable agility, she managed to pivot on her feet and roll away before the blow properly connected… and then rolled again, bringing herself up beside the nearer of the pair by the stairs, cutting upwards as she did so.

With a metallic *ching* the blade Yunhee had just thrown at that cultivator deflected into the wall, then the sealed cultivator gasped and made an awkward hop to the side as his ability to move returned.

-For fates’ sakes, he groaned inwardly, as the woman spun behind the man she had just freed, even as he snatched Yunhee’s spinning weapon out of the air with disturbing ease—

“That’s a nasty movement art you have,” the woman’s familiar voice suddenly whispered, mockingly from behind him. “Almost caught me …”

-Wait, what?

A feeling of what he could call ‘compelled confusion’ clawed at him—

Doing his best to not be drawn in by it, he refocused on ‘Old Master’s Ten Steps’. Taking the first step, he moved to the side and turning to face her… only to find himself staring not at the woman who had stolen his daggers, but at Ruliu, who stood there, smiling, holding Merope, with a faint smile on her lips.

“So, you have some ability with it…” she giggled from behind him once again, as he realised that the woman was also still there, holding Phoibe in a low guard as she darted back towards him, flanked by the man she had just freed.

‘When you are not tranquil within…’

Taking the second step, he stepped in a half-circle, trying not to overtly manipulate the short staff as he moved, while keeping his intent in his actions at the barest minimum.

With a surprised, pained grunt, the man stepped right into the drifting end of his staff, staggering to the side and momentarily cutting off the woman’s advancement on him as well. The fake Ruliu, meanwhile, lazily thrust at him with Merope, hoping, he supposed, that the dagger might disrupt him in the same way it had Shi Xiaolian’s formation.

Reversing his movement trajectory with his third step, he evaded that strike, while sending the man sprawling awkwardly into the wall with the butt end of the short staff, then swept it out casually in front of him—

The woman holding Phoibe blurred, collapsing into a swirl of black petals.

In the same instant, he saw her re-appear beside the other sealed cultivator and free him as well, with a mocking smirk.

-That is a really bothersome Mantra Manifestation, he complained, ignoring the fake Ruliu and the man who had just been freed and using the fourth step to close on her again.

His staff caught the newest freed physical cultivator in the stomach, sending him crashing back into the stairs with enough force that he fancied he heard bones audibly cracking.

“Feng Shui martial form?” the man holding Yunhee’s blade gasped, his expression turning grave, even as the woman wielding Phoibe lashed out viciously at him with the blade—

The fifth step took him away from her, avoiding the strike, while the rebound on the motion of his staff as he moved flicked into her wrist—or rather, tried to, because she again seemed to effortlessly read the attempted disarm and reversed the strike, shaving a long sliver off the staff as she warded the blow away.

“You…” the physical cultivator he had just thrown into the stairs was already back on his feet, giving him cause to bemoan just how fate-thrashed durable Mantra Immortals were. “Just Die—!”

The Mantra Immortal threw out a palm and a grasping, limb-ensnaring sense of lethargy, tried but largely failed to settle over him.

-Let’s see how good this formation really is, he decided, taking the sixth step: ‘Align your body, assist the inner power…’

Shifting his stance from left to right, he spun the staff in his hands, warding her strike away before she cut far enough along to reach his hands and drawing from its momentum in a sweeping arc—

The qi and Intent within his body melded with the simple strike… and caught her, mid-lunge, on the shoulder, whereupon her body crumpled into the ground like a broken puppet, cracks spreading out from the paving around her. Unfortunately, the stave of wood also finally succumbed, splitting along half its length.

The Mantra Immortal who had just attacked him screamed and collapsed as the shockwave from the blow shattered his legs so badly bone could be seen visibly jutting out of his flesh—

He had the barest moment of forewarning as the crumpled woman’s qi turned chaotic and then he was picked up and thrown ten feet down the corridor as her body exploded in a shockwave of drifting black petals, its features melting away to become a much younger, very dead young woman with a fresh stab wound over her heart.

Rolling to his feet, trying not to wince as icy pain pulsed through his leg, he observed with a grimace that the fake Ruliu had somehow already recovered Phoibe.

“A corpse puppet?” Yunhee spat, picking herself up and glaring at the fallen body.

“It is a worth beyond what such… traitors to our people deserve,” the Mantra Immortal who had claimed Yunhee’s dagger sneered, rising to his feet as he pointed it at them.

The fake Ruliu scowled, and another shadowy wave of oppressive confusion fogged the corridor—

It was as if the very worst of the stress of the day: the strange ‘weather’, the crippling humidity, the injury he had sustained, his worries about his daughters… about Di Ji, even the fact that the woman in front of him was so brazenly wearing his dear wife’s face were a stifling shroud, smothering his thoughts.

A moment later, the grasping lethargy returned to join it, the two manifestations merging, joined by a third—a gnawing, creepy feeling like something was peeking at him from the shadows of the doorways, always just out of sight.

-Mantra Synergy?

He looked from one to the other, inwardly shocked. As rare as it was infamous, that ‘ability’ required multiple mantras with the same mnemonics. His daughters could utilize it, to a degree, but nothing remotely close to what was being displayed before them now…

-Are they able to play off the discordant resonance as well as the sympathetic?

“Young… miss, go and free the others,” the one whose legs he had just broken hissed, hauling himself laboriously up, his injuries already healing, visibly before their eyes. “We… will deal with these… imperial dogs.”

“You think you are capable?” Yunhee retorted, her expression hardening.

*—Crack!*

Yunhee’s dagger exploded in the Mantra Immortal’s grasp, its blade scattering in a cloud of greenish-gold metal shards that lacerated the luckless cultivator and sent both the woman wearing Ruliu’s appearance and the other Mantra Immortal diving for cover, their combined manifestation faltering.

“A shame,” Yunhee sneered, blurring forward and burying her other blade in his neck, before tearing it sideways in a bloody arc. “Worth it, though, if it takes out one of you Yeng supporting bastards!”

Pushing away his pain with a grimace, he also charged forward, past Yunhee, and slipped past the woman’s warding slash—

“For a brat, you are surprisingly durable!” her voice whispered in his ears as her form… literally split in two before his eyes.

Only instinct saved him from accruing a crippling injury from Ruliu’s blades as he twisted, vaulting acrobatically, to the point where the soles of his feet brushed the ceiling of the corridor before he landed again.

Rather than try to chase his movement though, the woman split her focus—one of her darting towards Yunhee, who had just clashed with the injured Martial Immortal, while the other went straight for the other sealed cultivator.

Skidding to a halt, he snatched up the broken remains of his stave… then changed his mind and offering a silent apology to the luckless young woman whose body had become fodder for his opponent, grasped her arm—

“Pathetic,” the ‘corpse’ sneered, surging to her feet, her features warping back into that of his wife, Phoibe clutched in her right hand. “You were not this weak back then! It’s because you are like this that our daughters are in the hands of that wretched Di brat!”

“…”

Her words, somehow managing to recapture even Ruliu’s tone, cut at him as cruelly as if they were her daggers. Hate, pain, anger, loss, welled up inside him. those lingering memories of beautiful days… haunting ones of the terrible ones… the joy and the trauma… and in that pale face, staring at him… that final, eviscerating… nightmare.

“Yes, you are right,” he whispered, something finally… snapping inside him. “But you made one mistake…”

“Mistake?” she repeated, derisively.

“—You talk too fate-thrashed much!” he snarled, closing his hand over hers and twisting her arm backwards.

Even by the standards of a physical cultivator, she was, he had to admit, ferociously strong, but strength alone didn’t always help.

“You—!” her face paled as she realised what he intended, her other self turning, Merope raised, but it was too late.

Focusing his Intent not on her but the act of the movement itself, while trying to make it as inauspicious as he was able, he felt her wrist, then her elbow, shatter.

The chaotic pulse of qi bleeding out of her broken bones briefly suffused her meridians in such a way that even if she could ‘force’ control of the limb with her mantra—like his daughters… or Ruliu had been able to—it would take at least a split second for her to regain it.

Exploiting her momentarily weakened grip, he pried Phoibe from her nerveless fingers and stabbed the blade into her elbow, severing the key meridian running through her arm—

With a horrified, agonized shriek, a wall of fury, pain and crippling anguish slammed into him, sending him stumbling backwards, dazed. He could feel her mantra-infused qi raging at him, pressing inwards as it consumed the whole corridor. Dimly, he was aware of the other her, staggering, changing… in some hard to define way. Yunhee and the other physical cultivator, along with the one she had not yet managed to free, flinched, their faces paling.

“Ahh… I… I’ll…!” she gasped painfully, clawing at her arm—“F-FATHER!”

Her furious scream rang through the corridor, and brought with it—

Jeo Zhongshan appeared in corridor, beside the ‘other’ her, fixing him with a baleful glare, his weapon already rising. He barely had time to try to evade, summoning as much of the strength of Shi Xiaolian’s formation as he could while lashing out hopefully with Phoibe… only for Jeo Zhongshan to suddenly break off his attack and move sideways with vision-defying agility as Bai Sheng appeared beside him, his sword strike already sweeping upwards.

The blade scoured sparks off the walls, leaving a groove as the youth spun, his sword leaving a faint trail of white in the air as it passed—

—Sunders Heaven}

It connected with Jeo Zhongshan’s weapon, the two blows repelling each other, leaving iridescent waves of chaotic qi radiating outwards throughout the corridor.

The woman beside him, meanwhile, vanished in a cloud of black petals as they passed through her.

{Singing Maiden’s—

Without so much as pausing, Bai Sheng shifted his posture, twisting around the flowing trajectory of his sword to thrust it directly at Jeo Zhongshan a second time.

“No—!” Jeo Zhongshan’s snarl visibly distorted the space between them as he pulled back his own weapon and used it to deflect Bai Sheng’s blade from its path, seemingly breaking whatever art he had been about to use—

—Sorrowful Sword}

The discordant clash of their weapons in the enclosed corridor left his vision wavering, even with the support of Shi Xiaolian’s formation. Jeo Zhongshan was forced to retreat two steps, protecting his daughter, now at his side, and the other two physical cultivators as they stared glassy eyed at the momentary clash. It also scattered the black petals that had been swirling through the corridor, seemingly before they could do anything.

“No Junior should be able to use that art,” Jeo Zhongshan snarled, the atmosphere of the corridor turning heavy. “Yuan’s Sorrowful Sword is not of this era.”

“For a malingering ghost like you—” Bai Sheng broke off as Jeo Zhongshan shifted his stance and unleased a vicious overhand blow.

{Little Shield from North Heaven}

Bai Sheng flipped his sword over, holding the hilt up, with his palm on the flat of the reverse of the blade, collecting the blow on the reinforced blade, thoroughly stifling the momentum of the blow. Where the two met, a shimmering corona of flowers of all kinds scattered outwards.

“—All sorts of arts can surely cross the aeon briefly,” Bai Sheng sneered, advancing forward, raising his weapon smoothly—

{Horizon Slaying Heavenly Sword}

Jeo Zhongshan snarled inarticulately as Bai Sheng’s white blade skittered off the sherds embedded in his staff, then bit deep into the spirit wood, leaving a fresh gash in it.

“Get Back!”

The physical cultivator’s furious shout reverberated through the corridor, sending them all staggering and finally forcing Bai Sheng back a step—

{Rising Moon—

Bai Sheng grinned nastily, shifting his feet, turning the act of Jeo Zhongshan repelling his weapon into another technique, his sword’s ever-moving trajectory shifting into a rising crescent.

—Eclipses the Sun}

Stepping forward, the sword fell, the white blade turning dark, while the qi around it, didn’t simply turn chaotic; it just vanished, as if the strike itself was literally blocking it out in some way that had to be related to Bai Sheng imbuing the strike with a Law.

Jeo Zhongshan’s expression turned grim, then he decisively retreated, refusing to even meet the strange blow, instead hurling his weapon at Bai Sheng as he evaded it.

“You will regret this…” the woman sneered at him, as Jeo Zhongshan grasped her and the other injured Mantra Immortal, before vanishing up the stairs to the second floor with both of them.

Before any of them could react, the other, still sealed mantra immortal started to laugh manically, then as they looked on, his appearance warped, turning into that of a dead-eyed, pale-haired youth with a hole through his temple and a wound over his heart. Still laughing, the youth’s body shook, then turned into a cultivator-shaped outline of chaotic qi for a brief moment, as the detonation of the puppet failed to break Shi Xiaolian’s formation.

“They got away,” Yunhee snarled, glaring up the stairs.

“He is good at running,” Bai Sheng grumbled, going over to the body she had incapacitated and stabbing it with his sword.

-Ruliu’s blade… he stared helplessly after them as well.

“—Thankfully they don’t have either of those blades, though,” Bai Sheng added. “Good work, both of you.”

“They don’t?” he exclaimed, unable to hide his surprise and relief at Bai Sheng’s words.

“No, I got it,” Bai Sheng reassured him with a smirk, withdrawing Merope from the front of his robe. “When she realises she is holding a splinter of wood with a moon rune on it she will be pissed!”

“How…?” he asked, a little lost for words as he tried to replay the last few moments since Bai Sheng arrived in his mind’s eye.

“When he diverted his weapon to protect them,” Bai Sheng clarified, holding it out to him.

“Many thanks…” he accepted the blade back, feeling embarrassed and relieved.

“As expected, that bastard can run,” Shi Xiaolian, who had come into the corridor as well, at this point, sighed, taking in the ruin of the corridor.

“Should we…?” Yunhee gestured tentatively towards the stairs.

“—Chase after them?” Shi Xiaolian shook her head. “No, trying to catch that bastard now would be like flipping lily-pads looking for Duo Li’s lotuses in the rain. Anyway, none of them are within my formation now, and there is nothing to be gained from chasing that old bastard and his daughters blindly up here.

“Yes,” Ling Tao agreed, coming down the stairs to join them. He could only assume she had jumped up there directly from the common room. “The Jeo mantras are nasty.”

“—and his and his daughters’ are the worst—even for them,” Shi Xiaolian continued. “I think I saw him use ‘Reflection’, ‘Heart’, and… maybe ‘Self’, to go with the ones I already knew they could use, like ‘Bestowal’, ‘Break’, ‘Fire’ and ‘Vessel’. Honestly, you did well to chase that thieving little bitch Yuemeng down. Few can claim to have caught her—”

“—and survived to speak of it,” Ling Tao added bitterly. “You can add ‘Moon’ to that as well, incidentally. I recognise its effects.”

“That’s… more than five?” Yunhee noted, sounding as confused as he felt.

As far as he knew, you could only use five mnemonics, and Ruliu had never so much as mentioned any means to utilize more than that.

“It is,” Shi Xiaolian nodded. “That bastard has had his mantra a long time, and learned a lot. All those old ghosts are slippery.”

“They would not be alive today were they not,” Ling Tao agreed.

“The others… exploded like that one?” he asked, suddenly feeling quite drained, even with the ongoing support of Shi Xiaolian’s formation.

“Yes,” Ling Tao confirmed. “There were six more up above. Manifestation-controlled corpse puppets powered by what amount to glorified alchemical bombs.”

“So, like that one,” Shi Xiaolian jerked her head towards where the sealed cultivator had exploded so pointlessly. “Expensive, but expected. And a good way to minimise potential losses, especially up here.”

“So, the injury I dealt her…?” He felt a sense of frustration rise like bile within him.

“That might stick,” Bai Sheng mused, his gaze lingering on Phoebe and Merope. “Though I am afraid…”

“—That stabbing the daughter of an infamous old ghost like that might not have been a good deed?” he suggested bitterly.

“There is a solution for that, at least,” Shi Xiaolian observed drily.

“There is, Lady Shi?” he asked.

“Just get stronger, fast,” she replied with a faint smile.

“…”

“It was a joke, a joke,” she sighed, waving a hand. “The Cherry Wine Pagoda is not the Cao clan; we honour our debts.”

“…”

Now he did stare at her, because that was…

-How much does she actually know?

Before he could dwell on exactly how much Shi Xiaolian might know about him, Ruliu and his history with Cao Leyang’s family however, the whole corridor shook, accompanied by the unpleasant sensation of the hair on his arms standing on end.

Bai Sheng, Ling Tao and Shi Xiaolian all suddenly turned deathly pale—

The whole corridor rippled, as if reality had just become a rug that someone had given a very good shake to. The qi within his body revolted, leaving him gasping for breath, iridescent sweat beading his arms, meanwhile, the walls, doorways and edges of the stairs bled shadows in ways that left him nauseous.

It lasted for almost ten agonizing seconds, then just as abruptly, everything seemed to snap back into focus, bringing with it…

He crumpled to his knees as qi… and awareness settled over him like he had been doused in a bucket of profoundly icy water. For a confused moment his senses flailed, as if he had just been thrown off a cliff into a hurricane of… everything. Noise, trees… rain, colours… pain. Perception.

A hand— Shi Xiaolian’s—grasped his shoulder, and everything returned to normal, except for his nausea.

“What… just happened?” Yunhee, crouched, her head in her hands, groaned, as Bai Sheng knelt beside her.

“Something… bad, very, very bad,” Ling Tao, pale-faced and leaning against the wall now, muttered under her breath.

“Can you stand?”

It took him a moment to realise Shi Xiaolian had been speaking to him.

Fighting the desire to just lie flat on the floor with his eyes shut until everything stopped trying to spin in different directions, he accepted her help to get to his feet—

His vision blurred, icy pains stabbing down his side and leg, making him gasp involuntarily.

Directing his Principle at his injuries, he shuddered, as he found that even with the help of Shi Xiaolian’s formation, his ability to deal with the yang poison had qualitatively transformed… for the worse.

“The poison’s influence is spreading,” he informed her, trying not to grind his teeth, because even speaking was hard.

“Of course it is,” Shi Xiaolian muttered. “This Intent is also, uggh…” she shuddered, staring at something he couldn’t see in their surroundings.

“Get him to the baths,” Ling Tao instructed, even as Kei and Shin arrived in the corridor, the latter supporting a very woozy Shi Lian. “All three of you,” she added, taking in Kei and Shi Lian’s conditions—

Before any of them could move, a second ripple twisted the whole corridor.

For a brief moment, it felt like the floor was the wall, while every edge and angle gained a second shadow.

When it passed, it took all his effort not to just vomit.

Dimly, he was aware of being lifted up. Someone taking Ruliu’s daggers from him…

“Dimension… Yang Intent… going on?” Shi Xiaolian’s voice drifted in and out… then with a splash, he was floating in… water, someone pulling off his armour.

“—I wanna… did something suicidally stupid,” Ling Tao’s angry voice cut in from somewhere nearby. “—each time…”

“—It just gets worse?” Shi Xiaolian added bitterly.

“—how… outside?” Bai Sheng’s voice also reached him, making him realise that his awareness, his condition was… bad.

All he could do was lie there for several long moments, trying to breath to regulate his qi, focusing on the same principles that ‘Old Master’s Ten Steps of Passive Mindfulness’ did… until at last everything settled down.

“That was quick, for a non-physical cultivator,” Shi Xiaolian, who was sitting on the edge of the pool beside him, remarked as he stared at the vaulted, rock-cut ceiling above them. “You were only out for ten minutes…”

“—wanna puke,” Shi Lian’s weak voice complained from somewhere nearby.

“—and you are still doing better than the other two,” she added with a faint smile.

“Ten…” he took a deep breath.

The pain from the poisoning was still there, but the strange, almost dissociating influence of the water he was floating in, combined with the meditation and Shi Xiaolian’s formation, seemed to have forestalled its spread.

“Sorry,” he sighed.

“Lian, the others?” he asked, after a long moment, if only so he didn’t end up dwelling on how bad his own state seemed to be right now.

“They are fine,” Shi Xiaolian informed him. “Just focus on staying…”

She trailed off as a thunderous rumble shook the whole room. Strange eddies and swirls formed in the rising mists from the warm waters around him, merging with bizarre, vaguely discernible ephemera born of iridescent, unstable qi.

Looking at them made his head hurt, so after a moment he shut his eyes…

“You cannot…”

“Your fault…”

“Your daughters…”

“Failure…”

“Pathetic…”

“Abandoned your son…”

“How can you…”

Yet, that didn’t help. Strange, half-heard whispers taunted, accused and derided him, while those eerie ephemera——shifting faces, rotting flowers, accusing eyes—refused to vanish, no matter what he did…

Arai and Sana, dressed up in the gowns Ling Yu had given them, at the Patriarch’s banquet danced in front of his eyes. Arai’s painting, with its cruel, mournful, yet hopeful beauty, Sana’s sideways glares at Kun Xianfang’s protégé…

-I sent them up here… I should have taken them far away… far, far away from this miserable, misbegotten place…

Exhaling, he opened his eyes and stared at the dark vault of the ceiling once again.

Even though he knew it was partly the yang poison and certainly the influence of that—he could not even bring himself to think of her name, given how her mantra tried to twist his memories of Ruliu—bitch’s mantra, that didn’t help with the unpleasant, undeniable, bitter reality.

“I am not getting any better,” he informed Shi Xiaolian, who was still sitting there, cross-legged now, the shimmering symbols on her skin glimmering eerily in the misty humidity of the baths.

“You’re not getting worse, though,” Shi Xiaolian replied drily. “Which is something.”

“I guess," he sighed. "Though that is largely thanks to your formation, Lady Shi...”

“Don’t sell yourself short, the fact that you are talking to me, mostly coherently, despite this, is nothing to sniff at,” Shi Xiaolian reassured him, as he did his best to refocus on ‘Old Master’s Passive Mindfulness’, and how it synergized rather fortuitously with the innate effects of the water he was floating in. “I know you want to do the best by your daughters… and it hurts that circumstances feel like they are mocking you.”

“I… am all they have left,” he whispered, striving to ignore how those scenes still flitted on the edge of his vision, almost mockingly. Tugging at his awareness. “What kind of father am I?”

“Miao showed me your daughter’s painting,” Shi Xiaolian murmured. “A bad father could never raise a capable girl like her.”