> …It is oft remarked that if you are without particular talent in Spiritual Cultivation, have not the heart for Dharma, or Bodily Cultivation, not the nature for Soul Cultivation, nor the teacher for the Martial Forms, there still remains Physical Cultivation. So long as one has the means to acquire a mantra, one can attain quite easily a degree of strength that would be impressive in a mortal world.

>

> While it is true that one can gain strength, durability, and in fact an almost cockroach-like survivability compared to a spiritual cultivator of that realm. That one can live for a millennia and ensure that your descendants live double or even triple their normal mortal spans. It is in the end, an inescapable truth that this is sadly not a mortal world, and we are not mortals dreaming of Tian.

>

> To us Immortality is not the end of the path, but the beginning. As such, Physical Cultivation has no road here. None that I know of have ever taken it beyond its equivalent of Spirit Severing. Most never make it past Mantra Seed, its equivalent to forming a Golden Core. Additionally, those who dual cultivate these mantras with other methods such as Spiritual Laws cannot take the spiritual part as the major component. To do so invariably invokes issues in tribulations that not even the most remarkable of sages have ever managed to raise a disciple to overcome. As such your spiritual cultivation will never advance beyond your physical one, cursing you to a broken road for the compromise of a swift start…

~Excerpt from a talk on the Heavenly Dao.

  Dao Sovereign Sheng Wen.

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~ MENG FU – SEVEN SOVEREIGNS SCHOOL ~

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Meng Fu; Ancient Imperial Ancestor, Dao Mother Heaven Pyre, True Flame Sovereign, Founder of the Seven Sovereigns Imperial School, and to her mother—and now one ancient eldritch thing beyond the comprehension of mortal existence—‘little chick’, paced slowly in the middle of the ruined grand teleport nexus in the heart of her sect, trying to collect her thoughts.

That she could not, given her years and experience, was somewhat embarrassing.

Then again, surprise encounters with entities from Yin Eclipse did tend to somewhat disturb your personal equilibrium. And that was before Meng Tan, the very lucky to be alive Ji Ming and Lian Erbei had said their pieces.

She stopped her progress through the ankle-deep mud beside a fallen family. Mother, Father, Daughter… slumped lifelessly, not as lucky as her own disciple—If luck was what had kept Ji Ming alive to this point…

Kneeling down beside the girl, a child of barely ten, she picked up the golden-haired doll and the little box the girl had been carrying, staring at the familiar symbol for ‘Fu’—‘Fortune’ or ‘Blessings’, as her name was sometimes rendered when displayed on banners around the sect—embroidered on its robe. The box, when she opened it, was a hand-made music box. Nothing special, just the kind of thing a child might treasure, inscribed with a short dedication by a father, Jing, to his daughter, Fumei, and yet…

Absently, she twisted the mechanism and let it run, listening to the simple, elegant chimes it created fill the space around her.

It evoked memories of her own childhood, of her mother sitting beneath a parasol tree, idly plucking on a qanun while she tried to catch carp in the pond—

The lingering, nostalgic tones of the qanun took on a uniquely unpleasant intonation.

“Wretched old bastard, why must you always be right?” She sighed, staring at where the bizarre entity that was the ‘Old Scholar’ had vanished—whom she had almost managed to forget about after their last encounter, before it popped back up like a cursed talisman— the allure for those bygone days, that the yang strength still lingering in the surroundings had tried to touch turning bitter in her mouth.

The ‘Ugly Heart’ of Yang, was what her mother called it, when she first showed her this twisted side of ‘Heavenly Yang’. Scholars these days, who fancied themselves theorists on the fundamentals of all, liked to claim it was the ‘Yin’ within it, but what whispered longingly—if emptily—at her was just another facet of Yang. That was a thing people sometimes missed: with sufficiently advanced or esoteric applications, what was Yang could be used to create consequences that were traditionally regarded as Yin, and vice versa. The same Yang that could be ‘bright’, ‘fierce’ and ‘creative’, could also be ‘subversive’, ‘deceitful’ and ‘lingering’. Yang strove to always ‘be’; that was what they liked to ignore. It cared nothing for the path to get where it was going.

As a thought, it was like an unpleasant itch that wouldn’t go away.

-Had I been a little later…

Frowning, she stared up at the cloudy, rain-drenched sky, visible because most of the ‘roof’ of the confluence was scattered to the four directions. The rain itself was not yet reaching the ground, but that was only a matter of time, between the lingering influence of Yin Eclipse and the oppressive, turbulent humidity of the clouds above.

Partly responsible for the delay in her return, it was clearly a Rising Dragon Typhoon—which usually blew west to east, not north to south…

“The Rising Dragon Gale?”

She turned her head slightly to look at the veiled young woman, dressed in a dark red and gold robe in an archaic style, who had been slowly picking her way over to her for the last few moments.

“—Prince Fanshu did it,” Maharahanya, the Keeper of the Ancestral Pavilion, continued. “I believe he ordered the Imperial Advisors accompanying him to disperse one that was about to make landfall in Blue Water Province, so his ‘state visit’ would happen under ‘blue skies’.”

“Did he.” she grunted, shaking her head.

This whole disaster was posing questions, and none of the answers she was coming up with in her head were comforting ones.

-Had I come later, or less decisively, it would have been me killing them all, to save this place from a greater calamity still…

As a thought, it was like an unpleasant itch that wouldn’t go away.

For all that she had raised good successors—especially Meng Tan and Yun Quan—the depths of the ugliness in the yang strength around her were beyond the comprehensions of anyone in a world like Eastern Azure. She had had her mother to show her, and even then, it had taken many years to realise the depths of what she had been shown that day by the pond.

-Killing thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of ‘innocents’ because of yang poisoning in the middle of my own sect, including maybe… most likely… some of my own disciples?

This wasn’t a good look either, but in being the one to cut off this path, that Old Scholar had at least ensured their end was… it… he would have said this gave them a greater meaning—a glorious sacrifice, or a heroic purpose, perhaps.

In her opinion, that was just the sophistry of an ancient thing. However…

-Without his intervention, would I have been forced to obliterate all that I built here with my own hands…?

“Wretched old bastard,” she whispered, staring down at the accusingly peaceful face of the young girl and the doll, as the last chimes of the little music box faded away. “Could you not be wrong, just this once?”

For a moment, a flicker of her own anger did creep out, childishly, and petulantly, on behalf of all the… misery here, and her own powerlessness in the face of much of it.

“Because that is not its way,” Maharahanya—who apart from her, and maybe the ‘Old Scholar of Tai’, probably knew the most about that existence—murmured softly, putting a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “Anyway, your disciples are worried…”

Exhaling, she glanced over at them, realising with a flush of personal embarrassment that her momentary display of anger had managed to reach them, where they were conversing with some of the other few elders strong enough to enter this macabre testament to the poisonous and malingering nature of Absolute Yang.

All of them looked… shaken, fraught with palpable nervousness or unease as they tried to not look over at her and Maharahanya.

Unable to help herself, she sighed again, more ruefully.

Ji Ming, she could certainly understand. He was new to his status and, given his age and realm, perhaps the most active and engaged of all her direct disciples in daily matters. He was also eager to prove himself worthy of being taken under her wing as well as fiercely loyal to the Seven Sovereigns and what it stood for. For him, this was nothing short of a disaster, one which he had, rather inadvertently it seemed, been right at the heart of.

-Fate-thrashed Tuo Kankai, I should have kicked him into the canal millennia ago…

His niece, she recalled, trying hard not to rub her temple, had been in the running for her most recent discipleship spot as well, though the girl had been a distant third to Ji Ming in terms of mentality.

Meng Yang, while she put on a brave face, was also new in her post as the outward-looking face of authority for the Seven Sovereigns, and this was certainly a calamity with a body count she knew would be thrown back in her face once the news spread. Especially given how many lay dead in and around the grand hall.

As for the others… they were likely thinking that this had happened under their watch—especially Yun Quan and Meng Tan—making it both a slight on their capabilities as her trusted deputies of many years, as well as the status and reputation of the sect.

“Every sect and power experiences moments like this,” Maharahanya observed sympathetically.

“I am aware,” she agreed sadly, turning her gaze back to the doll once more.

The raindrops had finally started to reach the ground in places, now. A testament to how much the formations in the heart of the sect had been compromised. Some might have felt drawn to comment on how fitting it was or suggest that the Heavens were weeping for their loss. The angry young woman in her felt that it was more like spitting on it.

“I know,” Rahanya conceded, “But nobody else here will say it to your face. Or understand why you will not… cannot do as those heartless brats do, and turn your face heavenward.”

“Do… you think…?” she started to speak, then trailed off again.

“Do I…?” Maharahanya gave her a sideways look, but didn’t pry, perhaps catching a hint of her inner mood.

Some things were best left unsaid, at least for now, anyway, and the gnawing, haunting worry that, in some manner… beyond the obvious, she was more culpable in these events than initially appeared was… not comforting. She wanted to say it was just the punishing, insidious Yang Intent tugging at her, but…

“It’s nothing,” she murmured, shaking her head as a ‘young woman’, one of the elders from Meng Yang’s cohort, who had been looking through the dead, wary of lingering contamination, made it into earshot of them.

“Um… Honoured Founder, Saintess Rahanya…” the female guardian elder, who actually seemed to recognise her current appearance, bowed formally to them, her nervousness radiating off of her despite her status as a quasi-Dao Eternal.

“What is it, Cana?” Maharahanya asked the young woman patiently.

“W-we have found the bodies of Senior Jin… erm, Elders Fang and Kufan…” she reported, her voice shaking as she straightened up.

Maharahanya exhaled softly, as she glanced over at Meng Kan Wen, who was still conferring with her disciples.

-Ah, she sighed again.

Both Fang Jin and Kufan Mei Shu had bowed to Kan Wen as disciples, before he took up his role as the Supreme Elder in charge of the Seven Swords of the Parasol Pavilion formation.

If there was someone she was annoyed with, right now it was Meng Kan Wen and those other guardian elders—for their rather injudicious deployment of her mother’s formation all the way to Yin Eclipse. Still, in the face of the loss they had just endured… her gaze returned again to the doll and the music box.

She tried to reach out for the swords again, but got nothing meaningful in terms of a connection with which she could use to summon any of them back. Even when she focused directly on her mother’s mark, she got little more than a sense of… their commitment, the distant clash of strength—between them, Yin Eclipse, the aspects of that Old Scholar and the insidious yang strength.

That last one was… concerning, actually, given that her mother’s treasures should have been all but…

-Oh, of course… she had to fight the instinct to kick something as a nasty suspicion settled in the back of her mind once again, but from a different angle.

“—Problem?” Maharahanya’s question drew her attention back from the swords and the feeling like someone, or some group was trying to screw with her, but really naively.

“The swords,” she sniffed, rubbing her temples, noting that the rain had started to shift from a spotting drizzle to actual rain drops.

“—What were you saying about the dead?” she added apologetically to Elder Cana, who had been informing Maharahnya about that while she was distracted.

“There were between… two and three… thousand disciples in the vicinity of the Grand Teleportation Hall,” Elder Cana replied, softly, her voice still shaking a little. “Not to mention dozens of visiting officials, guests of the sect…”

Looking around, she found that number was… depressing.

Yun Quan, Meng Yang and Elder Kan were also coming over to join them, at this point, the latter holding an umbrella for them.

“Two or three thousand…?” Meng Yang, who had clearly heard that last bit, groaned, staring around helplessly.

“Sect Mistress, Honoured Ancestor, Elder,” Elder Cana bowed respectfully to the three of them. “Elder Kan, I am sorry,” she continued. “Your disciples…”

“Aiiii…” Elder Kan seemed to age before her eyes. “Young Jin… Shu…”

“I am sorry,” she murmured, stepping forward and putting a hand on his shoulder.

“They died defending the sect…” Meng Kan Wen murmured sadly, not meeting her eyes.

She exhaled, putting aside her anger, took the umbrella from him, then silently embraced him for a long moment.

“We shall remember them,” she murmured, affecting not to notice as he shed a few quiet tears, tactfully ‘unnoticed’ by the others around them.

Few others might care to replicate her action, among the other sects, but the simple truth of it was that Meng Kan Wen had treasured Fang Jin and Mei Shu as if they were his own blood children.

“Them and all the others who fell here,” she added, stepping back from him and turning to Elder Cana.

“It is my decree that every person here, have their names entered upon the memorial stele as core disciples of the Meng Pavilion, who have fallen in defence of the sect’s foundation. Their living relatives may adopt the honorary title of ‘Meng’, if they desire it, and every person who has fallen will be accorded the appropriate pension, if they were not already recorded as such, even if the title is not accepted.”

“As you command,” Elder Cana saluted her formally.

“In addition, nobody who has entered the area contaminated by this event is allowed to depart it, so relay that verbally to someone outside. Then tell them to assemble the Authority Hall. I want the Masters of all seven pavilions and their two ancestral generations in attendance in… I guess the Eastern Grand court,” she gestured to the far end of the teleport complex, not that it was required, “Make sure they do not enter here. Despite my forcing that terror back, this place is still dangerous.”

“I understand,” Elder Cana replied.

“Elder Kan, could you help her in that task?” she added to him.

“Of course, Founder,” Elder Kan saluted her formally as well.

They watched in silence as the pair distanced themselves, then she turned to Meng Yang with an apologetic grimace.

“Sorry, you should have been the one handing out such instructions,” she murmured.

“Not at all, Teacher,” Meng Yang coughed.

“Um, please let me…” Yun Quan hurriedly claiming the umbrella. “I misspoke,” Yun Quan added, not quite meeting her eyes. “It was not the moment, teacher.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” she replied blandly, though she did give his arm a squeeze.

She had no real desire to make good on her earlier threat to him. The mere possibility of moments like this were the dark nightmare of most ancestors or authority elders of large sects. Yun Quan was probably more shocked and angry than she was and, had a tendency to say stupid things anyway. He was also, in some ways, out of all of her disciples, the one whose character most resembled her own, so she could easily see the pain and anger his dissembling was trying to hide.

“Oh, It’s a doll of you?” Yun Quan added, his gaze falling on the doll and the music box, which she was still holding.

“—Not that it did her any good,” she sighed, her gaze returning to the young girl as the last chimes of the little music box faded away. “We have bled today, and for what…?”

Again, a flicker of her own anger crept out, making everyone nearby bar Maharahanya shudder.

“Anyway, I assume you have hashed out what you intend to do next?” she asked both of them.

“Ah… Um, yes,” Meng Yang suddenly looked a lot less certain of herself, which was also why she had sent the two elders about that task. “We have some ideas, however…”

“My role here is to deal with the things you cannot,” she murmured, putting a hand on each of their shoulders. “If our sect must rely on knee-jerk decisions from someone who has been in cultivation seclusion for many years…”

“We are not the Shu Pavilion,” Yun Quan sniffed.

“Praise be unto the Three Pure Ones,” Maharahanya added under her breath, which drew an involuntary snort from Meng Yang as well.

“I guess I’ll start with the matter of our official response,” Meng Yang stated, after taking a breath to compose herself. “The turmoil in our sect will surely have attracted notice already. There are always eyes upon us, and this stupid…” she paused to glared up at the typhoon surging above them. “This stupid storm was sent to provoke a reaction even before this.

“Therefore, someone senior should go to Blue Water City,” Meng Yang continued. “Not to protest the actions of that idiot prince, but to simply be there, and also keep an eye on this so-called ‘trial for the generation’s youth’ and the politicking with Shan Lai. It will also unsettle the watchers the longer we go without the ‘expected’ kind of response, especially once word of… this… leaks, assuming it has not already.”

“Call me a cynical bastard, but I would not be surprised if news of this was spreading before it ever happened,” Yun Quan muttered.

“Mmmm…” Meng Yang also nodded, continuing. “—The most critical thing, though, is to shore up the sect’s security. The loss of the warding formations and central nexus for our greater teleport…”

“—that’s easy,” she cut in. “Setting up a second greater teleport is just time and money, we have attuned luminary jades…”

“I can handle that side of things,” Maharahanya added. “We have other anchors, as you say, so it is just a matter of resources, which we do not lack.”

“In that case, we can all be reassured,” Meng Yang murmured, nodding gratefully to her.

“We’ll leave that in your hands then,” Meng Fu agreed. “As to wards…”

“That’s what Ancestors sitting balefully on the top of pagodas are for,” Yun Quan muttered, only half joking.

“—You can leave the matter of security to this old man…” A ghostly voice echoed in her ears.

A moment later, a wavering, mirage-like apparition of a hunched, bearded old man, sitting cross legged in the air, shrouded in a thick azure robe of ancient style, embroidered with silver and gold cranes and phoenixes appeared beside them.

“In that case, I can feel relieved on that count,” she replied, nodding thankfully to the old man who went by the title of ‘Heavenly Azure Sword’, and was even before her, among the oldest cultivators associated with Meng influence currently on Eastern Azure. Back then, in those halcyon days of Meng Hegemony, he had not only advised the Seng Emperors, but even her own mother on the matters of this starfield. He was also one of a very select group, including herself, who had both witnessed that fate-thrashed mountain come down and been fortunate enough to survive the aftermath.

“You took your time; did you misplace your sword while getting out of bed?” Maharahanya remarked drily at the conspicuously sword-less old man as he took in the devastation with piercing eyes that glimmered with azure fire.

“L-Lord Heavenly Azure Sword,” Yun Quan flinched at the old man’s appearance as did Meng Yang.

“Aiie, Aiie,” the cowled old man waved for them to pay him no heed, and just rolled his eyes at Maharahanya’s comment. “These old limbs do not move as freely as they used to—”

“—and whose fault is that?” Maharahanya muttered rather archly. “If you are this slow, how can I entrust the security of our foundation to you?”

Listening to their bickering, she could only shake her head wryly. Both were old beyond years and frequently put her in mind of an old couple when they were together, not that either thanked her for the comparison. Maharahanya was already giving her side-eye, over her reaction.

“Give this old man some credit, girl,” Azure Sword grumbled, ignoring both of them as he stroked his beard with one gnarled hand, that was in fact a replacement limb of living parasol wood. “What a mess…”

Azure Sword reached out with his good hand, though even it showed traces of fern-like scarring hundreds of millennia after he had sustained those crippling injuries, and waved it casually in the air in front of him.

“—Absolute Yang Qi…” the old man muttered as golden sparks shimmered around his fingertips—

“Faugh!” with a faint snort of disgust, Azure Sword flicked his hand, and they vanished in a series of disconcerting sizzling pops.

“—that mendacious old fellow did a real number on this place,” Azure Sword remarked with a tired sigh, taking in the devastated hall once again. “Though I see he also did you something of a favour as well.”

“He did,” she grunted.

“You call this a favour?” Meng Yang muttered, aghast, her shock overcoming her respectful demeanour for a moment.

“Compared to the alternative?” Azure Sword sighed, putting an elbow on his knee and cupping his chin. “This is generosity from Heaven. Or would you rather—”

“—It is what it is,” she sighed, cutting him off with a raised hand.

Not because she didn’t want to hear it, though she didn’t, but more because she had just felt the first brush of foreign eyes on the wards of this place—two from the west and one from the south—probing somewhat stealthily for information about what was happening.

“Tcch! I should poke out a few eyes first, maybe?” Azure Sword sneered, glancing up at the sky. “Clap some ears?”

“—Or pull some tailfeathers,” Maharahanya agreed, her smile turning cold.

“There will be time for blinding idiots later,” she shrugged. “The chaos this has caused is actually an asset in that regard, unless someone goes outside, which would be so obvious they might as well just come in person to offer condolences.”

“Hah, that is a funny image,” Yun Quan chuckled, shaking his head.

In truth, it was a fairly solid idea as well, though one to pitch later, assuming Meng Yang or someone else didn’t realise it in their own. Not only would be a good opportunity to put on a show of unity, but it would also push back at any speculation that they might have taken a serious knock to the sect’s foundation.

“So, if the security of the Seven Sovereigns is well enough in hand, what else do you have in mind?” she asked Meng Yang.

Meng Yang blinked and stared at her for a second, then gave her shoulders a shake and collected herself once more.

“We need to better understand the leadup to the censure,” she stated. “And also unpick what happened to Brother Ming. Senior Brother Tan says he has a few avenues that he wishes to follow up. Apparently one of the Ha clan’s ancestors got in contact with him earlier today about something going down in Blue Water Province that seemingly has links to the Seven Star Pagoda.”

“Oh? Which ancestor?” she asked.

“Ha Tai Kai?” Meng Yang ventured, sounding a little unsure, which was understandable really, as Tai Kai was like a leaf in the wind most of the time and had very little in the way of wider prestige within the current generations.

“…”

“Seven Star Pagoda?” Yun Quan frowned. “In Meng City?”

“Mmmm,” Meng Yang nodded.

“That was the influence little Murali founded,” Azure Sword frowned.

“It was, yes,” she sighed.

“Interesting…” Yun Quan’s frown deepened as he stared off into space.

“And…?” Meng Yang prompted after he didn’t say anything further.

“They have been suffering quite a bit of late, what with the political situation on the mainland,” Yun Quan muttered. “Give me a moment, I am checking something…”

“Speaking of interesting, if not timely things,” Azure Sword added, more quietly to her. “Here…” He handed her scroll. “Our wandering philosopher got in contact with me just before you jumped off the edge to get down here.”

“…”

-Did he now? she took the scroll and unfurled it to find an archaically arranged poem. Why am I not surprised you are in the middle of whatever is going on in Blue Water Province.

Azure Sword’s other role was as the deputy leader of the Meng clan’s shadow influence throughout the Azure Astral Starfield, a select cadre of old experts that her sworn sister—and younger cousin by blood—Ruo had gathered around them in the chaotic years of the Celestial Interregnum, after the fall of the Seng Dynasty amidst the devastation caused by the descent of Yin Eclipse.

Thus, while Meng Ruo was off furthering her own cultivation, he was the key point of contact for the others, rather than her, who also tended to spend extended periods in personal cultivation.

It was fair to say that all of them were… chaotic little demons when the mind took them, epitomized by the name they had adopted as the ‘Solitary Slaughter Sept’. A name under which they had, over the eons, quietly come to be the foremost ‘dark cultivator influence’ not just on Eastern Azure, but most of the starfield. Such was the antiquity of their origins though, that she was fairly sure that even now, not even the likes of the Shan Emperor knew that their roots lay in her immediate circle.

“Blue Water, Little Sky, White Circle, Lamentation Awakens, Jasmine and Mulberry,” Meng Yang muttered under her breath as she peered over to read it. “Blue Water, Little Sky… is that talking about Blue Water City and Lady Xiao?”

“Uh-huh,” she nodded, considering the intent that had been carefully hidden within the simple words, layered meanings hidden not simply in code, but in shifting interpretations of the very Laws the words evoked. That Meng Yang was able to grasp even a little of it spoke to her suitability as the current leader of the Seven Sovereigns.

“White Circle, so Ling Baisheng as well,” Maharahanya mused.

“Mmmm, he returned shortly after the debacle with the Di Scion,” Azure Sword observed. “Very quietly as well. I don’t think many have marked him.”

“I wonder what brought him back,” she frowned. There was nothing in the poem that really hinted at that.

The current Ling clan was, rather like the Cao, in somewhat of a slump on Eastern Azure, though not as marked as the upheaval left behind by Cao Hongjun. For one of their strongest Celestial Venerates to be quietly drinking tea in Blue Water province though, was indeed… interesting.

“Mmmm, he paired him with her, so it must be to do with the future of the Ling clan,” Maharahanya remarked.

While the other woman was not a part of that group, she was familiar with all of them and personable with most. ‘Lamentation’ was, despite her ominous name, the one she had perhaps the most in common with as well, not only because they were both powerful cultivators who had grasped something of the true ‘origin’ of Physical Cultivation as a path.

-Does that mean they had a genuinely promising talent appear?

She filed that away as something worth checking out. The Ling clan regaining a bit of its past prestige was something that would only benefit the Seven Sovereigns while hindering the current direction of the Azure Astral Authority and Blue Morality Dynasty.

“Have you reached out to her?” she asked Azure Sword, as she pondered the last line, which was by far the most concerning, to her.

“I tried, but thanks to the same stupidity that has dropped this typhoon on our heads, Blue Water Province is currently in the grip of a vast weather system that has blown straight out of Yin Eclipse,” Azure Sword replied with a helpless shrug.

-Which might go some way to explain why I can’t call mother’s swords back, she reflected, or would, if I wasn’t quite so clear on their capabilities.

“What does Jasmine and Mulberry mean?” Meng Yang asked her, frowning as well.

“Trouble,” Azure Sword sniffed. “And not the kind you want to embrace willingly. I can taste both of them in the air, here.”

Indeed, despite all the other sensations and impressions with the ambient qi, the strength of Yin Eclipse was tinged faintly with the alluring scent of Jasmine blossom. She had marked it before, but the dangers posed by the Yang Qi and then her clash with the Old Scholar had forced it from her thoughts somewhat. It was also hard to focus on, even for her.

As for Mulberry, as she stood there, contemplating what was around her more carefully now, in the dirt and the water and the shifting miasmas of qi, she soon found it as well, along with tantalizing hints of Myrtle and Oleander, Peony and Lotus flowers, and even stranger, lesser-known fragrances, such as Blood Briar and Wind Reed. Those last two in particular, made the back of her neck itch, because there was only one ‘influence’, if you could call it that, in Yin Eclipse that had traces of all those spirit herbs.

-I guess I will have to cause some stress to little Ji after all, she reflected with an inner sigh.

“Yin Eclipse is home to some seriously dangerous places,” she replied. “And the most mysterious of the lot is the Court of Flowers that resides within the Jasmine Gate.”

“…”

Yun Quan turned slowly to look at her, then groaned.

“If Tuo Kankai has just deployed a censure to save some fate—idiot who tried to rob the Jasmine Gate over that ‘gift’ for the Shan Emperor…”

“Anyone capable of doing that is not going to be helped by a censure deployment,” Maharahanya sighed.

“Unless they did it expressly to cause us a headache,” Yun Quan muttered, rubbing his temples.

“That would… be basically declaring war on us, though,” Meng Yang pointed out, her expression darkening.

“Assuming it was deliberate,” she sighed. “Which…”

“—makes it all the more important that we take our time and pick our targets,” Meng Yang murmured, biting her lip.

“It does,” Azure Sword nodded, approvingly.

“Just cutting us off from the Meng clan at this point is inopportune,” Yun Quan grimaced. “And for most sects repairing all this would be an epoch-crippling endeavour.”

“Good thing for us our roots are deeper than most,” she chuckled bleakly.

The worst case would, in some ways, be if it ‘wasn’t’ deliberate, at least not in a direct sense. Having an outward perpetrator, even if the target was geopolitically tiresome to deal with currently, like the Kong or the Huang, would at least give the wider elements of the sect something to focus on, while those at the core of their influence did the actual work of getting to the bottom of things. If it was just some idiotic act of self-sabotage, sect morale was going to… require some careful management, and there would be no shortage of rival influences moving to exploit that.

“What do we know about this Ji Tantai?” she asked Meng Yang, as questions of who to blame didn’t need to be arrived at right this moment. “He was the root of the censure?”

“Ji Tantai?” Meng Yang tilted her head to the side, looking confused. “We haven’t determined what is going on with the censure yet, Senior Brother Tan…”

Yun Quan opened his mouth to say something, then also frowned, his expression turning confused, as if he had just forgotten what he was about to say.

“…”

Maharahanya and Azure Sword both glanced at her, frowning, as she fought back the desire to kick something.

Both Yun Quan and Meng Yang were looking at her with concern now as well, clearly aware something was not right, even if they were not sure quite what.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Well, I guess that answers a second question I had,” she muttered after a moment.

“—How we could have an Inheriting Disciple nobody seemingly knows anything substantive about, who got access to a censure scroll?” Maharahanya grimaced.

“On the bright side, it’s a very small list of people who can deploy a Devouring Eyes artefact,” Azure Sword mused, before turning to Meng Yang, who was now staring at the three of them with an expression of understandable panic. “May I?”

“Uh… y-yes, of course,” Meng Yang held out her hand hurriedly.

“Try to think about Ji Tantai, the censure and who he is,” Azure Sword instructed her, taking her hand.

Meng Yang nodded uneasily and then stared off into space for several seconds.

“Interesting, very interesting,” Azure Sword muttered after a moment. “It is a Devouring Eyes artefact. This Ji Tantai is completely shrouded within its auspice.”

“The question is whose,” Maharahanya pointed out. “Those do not grow on trees…”

“—It’s the one the Imperial Court has,” Azure Sword replied. “Well, this is nostalgic, someone tried to sneak in a junior to cause a mess.”

“The Huang clans?” Yun Quan frowned. “Or has the Kong—?”

“No, the one that used to belong to the Zi clan, then the Han, that went ‘missing’ all those years ago, during the Shan’s spectacular implosion.” Azure Sword replied.

“Oh, that one,” Maharahanya made a face. “That doesn’t help though—there are a dozen clans orbiting the seat of power on Eastern Azure who claim roots with them!”

“Zi clan?” Yun Quan asked her quietly as Maharahanya was complaining to Azure Sword.

“They are one of the old clans,” she replied. “It isn’t surprising you know little of them, they are from the same era as the Seng, Shu, Tai and such. By the time of the Shan they were just a name on old records, having long splintered into the Dun, Di, Din, several Ji clans, including the one Ji Ming hails from. Even the Bia and Han have links by marriage to them.”

“—It was a Han family astrologer who made the original charm,” Azure Sword added. “It is why they managed to hold onto it…”

“Until they didn’t,” Maharahanya sighed.

“Mmmmm,” Azure Sword just shrugged, before giving Meng Yang an encouraging smile. “Anyway, you have no traces of any complications caused by it, it seems whoever is using it is quite naive in that regard.”

“Good,” she nodded, relieved on that point. “Still, if it has re-emerged, I would like you to see about dealing with it. One of those in the hands of someone who might not respect the status quo is… unacceptable.”

Azure Sword said nothing, simply replied with a wolfish grin.

“I’ll see about making sure we are proof against any further meddling with it,” Maharahanya added.

“Mmmm… Ah! Elder Guanfei has finally gotten back to me,” Yun Quan informed her. “Four of the new external elders that the Seven Star Pagoda has taken in over the last few decades were part of this censure deployment, accompanying Tuo Kankai. All of their life jades are missing.”

“As in broken?” she frowned, “Or…”

“—Missing,” Yun Quan clarified. “They were replaced by excellent fakes, much to the seeming confusion of the keepers, who protest they had no idea.”

“It seems we will have some questions for the leader of that Pagoda…” Meng Yang muttered, glancing off towards the door to the Eastern Court.

“So it…” she was about to reply, when a deep sense of unease, as if someone was looming menacingly behind her.

The clouds above shook, carrying with them an echo of a great roar, its passage unconstrained by distance, that resonated with aeons worth of tribulations she had endured.

Azure Sword and Maharahanya were also staring up at the sky, their eyes narrowed, while Yun Quan, his face pale had a hand to his chest. The only person with her who was not overtly affected was Meng Yang, though she had clearly heard the roar.

Even as she was trying to process why the strength of ‘Judgement’ was manifesting so, she suddenly felt the connection to her mothers’ swords turn chaotic, as if something was trying to compromise the stability of her link to them in some hard to define way—

“This is…” Azure Sword’s expression had turned grim.

Turning away from the others, she put aside all pretence and forcefully reached out for the swords, three of them responded immediately if in very muted fashion, but even as she touched the fourth, the Yang Qi started to push back, calling to her surroundings, attempting to undo her earlier ‘dissociation’—

Gritting her teeth, she tried to get some impression of the surroundings of that sword as it traded blows with threads of molten extermination—collapsing rock, burning vegetation, rising darkness.

For a brief, singular moment, she was standing in a shattered ruin of a cavern, ancient columns crumbling around her, golden blood dripping from the edge of her sword, the strength of her mother coursing through her body. Out of the tumult, a pale-faced figure stalked, leading others, even harder to make out, holding… something in their hand, sapphire eyes boring into her, too-red lips twisted in greed.

The space between them occluded, her perception of her surroundings fading. She was left feeling like whoever this was had just tried to ‘touch’ her, back through the link, grasping inquisitively for the very root of the connection, and she smiled back, mirthlessly, as the would-be thief’s expression turned guarded, shocked even—

Abruptly, the chaotic disturbance enveloping her connection to all the swords twisted in a way she could not follow, and the whole scene in her mind shattered, melting away like a dream as if it had never been.

The connection to one of her swords—not the one she had just peered through—vanished, with a shocked, furious scream of warning, accompanied by a feeling like she had just been punched in the gut, followed a moment later by another.

“Are you okay?” Maharahanya had caught her arm as she stumbled, nearly slipping in the mud. Gasping, she was relieved to find that the root connection was still there, however, for those two it was now totally veiled and impossible to pin down, already fading beyond her ability to follow. Even the other swords were at a loss as they searched frantically for their compatriots.

“Some motherless little shit just tried to steal mother’s swords,” she spat, putting a hand to her nose and finding it was bleeding—and that’s why we don’t toss things into that place without looking first!

“Someone…” Azure Sword gave her, not a disbelieving look, but a properly concerned one, because even if Yin Eclipse was a place where that link would be lessened, that still required a treasure that was beyond anything most should be able to produce in this era on Eastern Azure, and of those who could, none would be so utterly suicidal as to use it to rob from someone like her mother.

-What was the treasure?

Closing her eyes, she tried to pull the scene back into her mind, but beyond the pale face and blue eyes, nothing else connected, and even that was hazy now.

“Teacher…!” Meng Tan and Cao Liang were also hurrying over, as was Elder Cana.

Taking a breath, she gave Maharahanya what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

“How?” Meng Yang asked her, wide eyed.

Rather than reply, she just held up a hand, then took another deep breath, and then flipping the paper with the poem over, used her qi to imprint the residual image that was still trying to scatter itself, onto it.

“Whoever that is, they look eminently punchable,” Maharahanya observed, peering at the image. “Our thief?”

“Yes,” she replied, passing it to her. “It will be useless to us; send this to my mother as soon as the greater teleport is working again.”

Maharahanya pondered the picture for a long moment then nodded grimly.

“Right, I assume that the various Pagoda Masters and other Elders are assembled?” she asked Elder Cana, who was just standing there, shocked.

“Y-yes,” the elder nodded hurriedly. “Grand Elder Ji, representatives of all seven Core Pavilions and the envoys of the Outer Pavilions are in the Eastern Court, as you instructed.”

“Can Ji Ming be moved safely, yet?” she asked Meng Tan.

“Yes, though taking him out of this space will be inadvisable,” he replied. “Are you…?”

“I am not made of glass; it was just a sucker punch,” she grumbled, trying to put her thoughts in order.

Meng Yang and the Pavilion Masters were more than capable of handling all the mundane aspects of the aftermath here, and their formal response was what it was, really. The key thing was to work out who was pulling the strings, and her disciples were much better placed currently to do that discretely than she was, with Azure Sword working in the shadows, once the sect security was dealt with.

“The rest of you, go meet the assembled throng, I need to ask Ji Ming something,” she told the others. “Tan, walk with us,” she added, as the others, excepting Azure Sword, all trooped off after Yun Quan and Maharahanya.

“Are you really okay?” Meng Tan asked quietly as they made their way back over to where Ji Ming, Fang Ren and Meng Li Xiaomei were waiting.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Whatever you are looking into, with regard to the Seven Star Pagoda, hand it over to Yun Quan.”

“I… okay?” he looked at her quizzically.

“You are coming with me, to Yin Eclipse,” she clarified.

“Ah. We need to see if there are any other survivors,” Meng Tan sighed deeply. “And recover your esteemed mother’s other swords, I assume.”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “And get some proper answers while we are about it. What did Tai Kai tell you, earlier?”

“He asked me to look into Ji… Tantai, who it turns out is a remarkably hard person to pin down,” Meng Tan grunted. “Whoever backed him had some formidable divination to deploy, because…”

“—It’s a Devouring Eyes Talisman,” she replied with a deeper sigh of her own. “Lord Azure here will handle that.”

“A… of course it would be something like that,” Meng Tan nodded. “How many are we taking in?” he asked after a short pause.

“No more than seven, not counting myself,” she mused. “I want to be able to get out again in a hurry, so we can’t farcast.”

“In that case…” Meng Tan frowned, then glanced at Azure Sword. “We don’t have many Dao Step physical cultivators just hanging around, drinking wine—”

“Just two will be enough,” she mused. “Cao Liang will be coming as well. The remaining three I’ll pull from volunteers among the Pagoda Masters and Grand Elders.”

“Very well, I’ve called Arashin and Sai Xingxiu,” Meng Tan replied after a short pause. “—and, uh… Meng Guan—”

Even as he was speaking, she felt the storm above them shift, the clouds twisting into a chaotic gyre, followed by a protracted rumble of breaking space. A moment later, a shining figure dropped like a meteor towards the sect, wreathed in storm-light and scattering tribulation ephemera, their descent only slowing with a final, thunderous crack of compressing space a few hundred metres above them. She then simply dropped the final distance to land in the middle of the hall.

“—yue just got in contact with me…” Meng Tan finished with a sigh, as the golden-haired woman, who was clad in a ragged, slightly singed and now quite soaked knee-length, sleeveless tunic, that once, many centuries prior, might have been the same red Maharahanya’s was, walked over to them, still scattering traces of grey-black denial ephemera like raindrops as she moved.

“Teacher, Brother Tan, Old Villain,” Meng Guanyue murmured, nodding respectfully to her and Meng Tan in turn, before shooting Azure Sword, who was rolling his eyes at her ‘entrance’, a sideways look.

“Little Guanyue,” Azure Sword nodded amicably to the woman. “You tracked in dirt…”

Guanyue paused and turned to stare behind her, at the almost invisible bolt of silvery-gold lightning that had silently followed her down out of the storm.

The bolt, realizing it was spotted, actually flinched like a dog caught doing a misdeed, and slowly started to fade away, which was rather laughable really.

“Tcch!” Guanyue, who back when the heavens had turned had been one of the last physical cultivators to successfully reach the peak Dao Flame—what spiritual cultivators called Dao Eternal—and attain an Ascendant Mantra before Dun Fang’s ban settled fully into place, simply clicked her tongue as the shroud of her mantra settled over the whole sect like a smothering cloud and then held out her hand.

The silvery denial lightning that had been taking on hints of retribution and extermination shivered, trying to break free of her grasp, but to no avail, as it and all the Intent it had carried were drawn towards her, finally becoming a sizzling orb of silver and gold in her hand for a few moments, until she closed her fist, absorbing it fully.

“Shameless,” Guanyue remarked, staring up at the roiling, rain-drenched sky for a long moment, before turning back to them. For a few seconds she could still see the silver and gold energies shimmer in the young woman’s eyes, screaming in silent horror before her strength fully devoured them. “Not that I expect anything less of this dynasty. Even their lightning bolts are sneaky little shits.”

“I would not tempt them too much,” Meng Tan remarked.

“They are hardly going to waste a totem on me,” Guanyue chuckled. “Not when those old spirit beasts or the ‘Demon King’ are still lurking in the shadows, nevermind the likes of Tai Wen or old Blue Blade here!”

“Before today, I might have agreed with you,” Meng Tan sighed ruefully.

“Yes, I saw the one that got used earlier,” Guanyue grinned mirthlessly. “Anyway, I am coming with you.”

“You are?” she repeated, not entirely sure she agreed with that sentiment.

For all that she was a powerful physical cultivator, Guanyue was… also chaotic and unpredictable, and had, in her personal opinion, never fully gotten over the mysterious vanishing of her younger sister Guanxi, then ‘Grand Elder of Discipline’ for the sect, during the Shan-Dun Interregnum. That she had been quite happy to spend most of her time over the last few imperial cycles in the Azure Maelstrom, beyond the limits of the great world had been something of a relief.

-Wait… Tuo Bei took over that post while I was still off world, and Guanxi was a close associate of the last Empress of Shan…? Why do I get the feeling that things orbiting this mess keep linking back to those years?

“—Revered Founder…”

Before she could press Guanyue on exactly why she was suddenly so keen to go into the most dangerous place on the great world, Arashin and Sai Xingxiu also arrived in the hall, their entrances, but for their joint salutation to her, as unassuming as Guanyue’s had been spectacular.

Arashin, despite her name literally meaning ‘Lightning Wolf’ in her native tongue, was a slight young woman dressed in a pale red and white silk gown, her dark hair exquisitely made up and plaited as if she were just about to go out to a teahouse with friends. Sai Xingxiu, meanwhile, had the demeanour of a scholarly prince out to wander among the people, garbed in a simple scholar’s robe, his long black hair tied up loosely. The contrast to the wayward, frankly beggarly appearance of Guanyue was nearly painful when they stood opposite her.

Still, both were as strong as she was, standing at the peak of Dao Flame. Xingxiu also had an Ascended Mantra, though the narrower nature of his mnemonics meant that it lacked somewhat in comparison of all around strength, despite the vast difference in their ages.

“You look well, Little Sister Yue,” Arashin remarked with a warm smile.

“And you look like you need to get out more,” Guanyue chuckled, accepting a clean robe from Fang Ren.

“How can we help, Founder?” Sai Xingxiu asked her softly, looking around at the hall with a pained expression as Guanyue stripped off her old, ruined tunic. “Brother Tan said something about Yin Eclipse?”

“Yes,” she confirmed, moving over to Ji Ming and Meng Li Xiaomei. “Old Azure here will fill you in.”

“We shall rely on you, then,” Arashin murmured politely, bowing to the old man.

“Can I do anything to help?” Meng Li Xiaomei, who had also been looking on in silence, asked her as she knelt down beside Ji Ming.

“Meng Yang will certainly need your support,” she replied, beginning to take stock of Ji Ming’s injuries.

“How are you?” she asked Ji Ming, who had also stayed silent the whole time.

“It hurts,” Ji Ming grimaced, trying to sound jovial and not really succeeding. “And this poison is…”—he shivered as his qi turned chaotic for a moment.

“Yeah, it’s nasty,” she agreed sympathetically, putting a hand on his forehead and quickly checking his condition, which to her relief had not gotten any worse. “Unfortunately, I need to ask something rather stressful of you.”

“A-anything, teacher,” Ji Ming rasped.

“Hold that thought,” she chuckled drily, shifting so she was kneeling in front of him, her fingertips resting lightly on his temples.

“You talked me through what you experienced before, but I need to see it. Was there anything in the place you arrived at that… stood out? A landmark, some kind of notable ruin?”

“Uh… yes,” Ji Ming replied weakly.

Closing her eyes, she carefully, she connected her perception to sea of knowledge, conscious of Lian Erbei as well. Both their souls were so fragile that she was only willing to risk this because she was the one doing it. It didn’t help that the Yang energies in his surroundings were already starting to perk up as he began to lead her through the memories of their arrival, sniffling about like a pack of greedy dogs as they searched for a way to connect these ‘memories’ to the ‘moment’.

To her relief, she quickly found what she sought as Ji Ming exposed part of an exquisite floor mosaic created from blue and red arborundum, depicting a taiji, surrounded by the Seng era zodiac out of the steaming mud of the swamp.

She spent as long as she could considering that ‘moment’, memorizing what Lian Erbei and Ji Ming had seen, to make it as if the memory were her own, before exhaling and opening her eyes.

Ji Ming was pale, cold sweat slicking his skin, but thankfully her touch had been light enough that neither he nor Lian Erbei had experienced more than some momentary soul stress.

“D-did you… find what you… needed?” Ji Ming asked her, weakly.

“Yes,” she affirmed, giving his hand a squeeze.

“Teacher…” he tried to grasp her hand back, clumsily. “I… This…”

“—is not your fault,” she reassured him, glancing over at Azure Sword.

“I was going to ask Maharahanya to look after him…” she murmured to the old man as he moved over to float, cross-legged beside her. “But given how things are developing here…”

“This is well within my capabilities,” Azure Sword replied softly, putting his gnarled, parasol-wood hand on her shoulder. “Leave your disciple to me and do what you need to without feeling burdened.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, giving him a grateful nod as she got back to her feet. “Probably the assembled throng of our bureaucracy should not see you, so we will talk later.”

“Heh,” the old man chuckled, but nodded in agreement with her thoughts there.

As one of the foundational deterrents of their influence, it was already enough that the initial scrying eyes might have caught some vague hint of his presence. Azure Sword’s status, especially since he got his injuries, was a carefully managed bit of obfuscation on her part, and even this was not reason enough to openly expose his presence before more than the innermost core of the Seven Sovereigns.

“If you need anything, go through Xiaomei here,” she added after a moment’s further thought.

“—Of course.” Li Xiaomei replied hurriedly, saluting the old expert deeply. “Whatever is required, I will do my utmost to provide.”

Giving Ji Ming one final, reassuring smile, she waved for Meng Tan and the others to follow her and without further delay headed off to the Eastern Courtyard.

As she made her way through the hall, she cast her mind back to how she appeared when she was last more active around the sect, a century or so ago. Currently, her appearance was one of sort of ageless adult beauty, but she let a few more years settle overtly on her face, aging it to a woman in her late-forties, the first streaks of silver fading into her dark-blonde hair. For a style, she directed it to plait itself into a traditional Meng style, wound like a tiara around her head, to fall at the nape of her neck, held in place by her hair ornaments.

“Going for the traditional, matronly look?” Guanyue remarked drily, as she finished by remodelling the outward design of her robe be more like the one Meng Yang was wearing, but with more white than red.

“Well, they expect ‘Meng Fu, Ancestral Founder,’” she remarked with a faint smile.

“Strength and Stability in these trying times,” Arashin added, putting her hand to her lips to hide her own laugh as the others shook their heads in amusement.

Passing through the gateway, the devastation outside was much as it had been inside. Corpses of those who had been passing through the busy throughfare at the heart of the sect lay everywhere. Trees were charred, while the lawns and the ornamental ponds lay fouled with seething mud and detritus.

Traces of collapsed formations clung to everything she could see, fluttering like tattered flags on a battlefield. As Elder Cana had said, most of the senior sect officials were already assembled, milling in groups or just staring in shock at the destruction from beyond a cordon set up by a group of eight Dao Sovereign Elders and formations experts from Maharahanya’s hall, who were doing their best to stop the contamination spreading further in this area. Meng Yang, Maharahanya and the rest were currently conversing with a group of fifteen of the most senior right on the boundary.

“SEEING SOVEREIGN ANCESTOR!”

The first shouted salutes were offered up almost before they had gotten halfway down the steps from the hall.

“SEEING IMPERIAL ANCESTOR!”

“HONOUR TO LADY MENG!”

“It seems most of the core are indeed all here,” Meng Tan mused as they made their way over to Meng Yang and the rest. “Only the ones off world are missing, and at least their deputies are here…”

“As should be expected,” Guanyue sniffed. “Though I see quite a few new faces; they look really green.”

“There has been something of a changing of the guard over the last few generations,” Meng Tan remarked dispassionately. “Things have been pretty quiet since the Huang-Mo Wars.”

“Lady Meng!” Meng Ji Kang, the Grand Elder of Ceremonies, stepped forward smartly and bowed to her, followed a moment later by Meng Fang Hua, the current leader of the Heavenly Hearth Pavilion. “Lord Tan, Ancestors…”

“—Seeing Lady Meng!” the others eleven leaders and three Grand Elders all added, en-mass, also saluting her formally.

“Be at ease,” she murmured, waving her hand to acknowledge them.

“So, what happened, Lady Fu?” Meng Zhong Fei, the leader of the Phoenix Cry Pavilion, asked, almost immediately, earning her several glares from other Pavilion leaders and Ji Kang.

“—We got attacked is what,” Meng Xi Zhi, the leader of the Moon Flower Pavilion cut in, archly, actually stepping in front of Ji Kang slightly.

“—Some decorum, please,” Ji Kang hissed, pulling Xi Zhi back. “Give our most esteemed Founder a moment to breathe!”

Before Xi Zhi could retort, Maharahanya gave all three such a sideways look that even Ji Kang, who was largely impervious to the judgement of others, fell silent.

“M-my father is stuck off world…” Meng Cao Ling, the daughter of Meng Cao Jiao, the leader of the Eternal Flame Pavilion, whispered apologetically, as Fang Hua unobtrusively pushed her forward in the silence. “I can only apologize on his behalf that our family is not prepared for this disaster…”

“He is at the Nine Starfields Gathering—as our representative,” Meng Tan’s voice whispered in her ear, helpfully.

“—Master Jiao also sends his apologies,” the deputy leader of the Parasol Garden Pavilion, Meng Li Qiao, added hurriedly, looking somewhat shifty.

-Ah, I bet he is off at some Dao Gathering, she sighed inwardly.

That would be very like Meng Li Jiao, whose obsession with the Dao of Poetry was a bit… much, frankly.

“—off reciting the poems of his grandfather to Duchess Teng’s Symposium at the Nine Starfields Gathering,” Meng Zhong Fei muttered under her breath, confirming her suspicion.

“That idiot…” Guanyue put her hand to her face as the others also rolled their eyes while Meng Li Qiao squirmed with embarrassment on his uncle Li Jiao’s behalf.

“—Lord Brilliant Heron is caught up in the Rising Dragon Gale,” the envoy for the Brilliant Heron Pagoda, one of the sect’s five outer pavilions, added.

“—Lady Wisteria is also off world, attending this New Year’s Azure Astral Auction on behalf of the sect,” a young woman in a purple and red gown from the Formless Wisteria Court, another of the outer pavilions, also spoke up.

“It’s fine, I understand their circumstances,” she murmured, accepting the various apologies.

Given the time of year, it was somewhat surprising that more of the leaders of the Seven Sovereign’s main influences were not off attending such gatherings.

“I was just briefing them on what our initial plans should be,” Meng Yang cut in smoothly, before any of the others could. “But…”

“Do we have any idea who was responsible, yet?” Meng Zhong Fei asked. “Sister Yang here is being coy, but this gale is surely the work of those sheltering that yapping dog Fanshu.”

“Father was right; we should have fought for the era back then,” Meng Xi Zhi muttered gloomily. “The Blue Morality Cult is going to be the death of our world.”

-They spent the whole time trying to provide helpful advice, I’ll bet, she sighed. Fang Hua, Zhong Fei, and Xi Zhi all meant well, she was sure, but the large difference in years between even the youngest of that trio, in Xi Zhi, and Meng Yang meant that they basically treated her like a little sister who was just showing the first steps towards excellence.

“It is as Meng Yang has explained,” she replied sweeping her gaze across the whole group. “She will be handling our response to whatever overt external forces have dared to get involved in this, so I ask that you all give your utmost and do not dishonour our sect.”

“Well said, Lady Fu,” Meng Shi Yung, who led the Azure Phoenix Pavilion murmured.

“Indeed, we must all do our utmost to help Lady Yang in these difficult times,” Ji Kang agreed smoothly. “Still, she was quite reticent to explain overly… and this bizarre yang corruption—”

“—apparently it comes from Yin Eclipse?” Meng Hongwei, the leader of the Star Sovereign Pavilion, added.

“…”

“Yes, it does,” she confirmed with a nod, because there was no point in denying that, or stringing this out. “That place does occasionally vomit out insanity like this—”

“Which is why we have those long-standing policies about leaving it well alone!” Maharahanya added archly.

“The matter of the Censure will be dealt with by Ancestor Yun Quan,” Meng Yang continued. “In that, the sect will be asking for the full cooperation of all the pavilions.”

“Of course,” the group murmured as a whole, though there was some studious not looking at Heng Xing, the pale-faced leader of the Seven Star Pavilion.

The rest were starting to finally notice the others with her, especially Arashin and Sai Xingxiu, neither of whom were at all active participants in the last few generations.

“If you are not taking command of that, what do you plan to do?” Fang Hua asked her more quietly, as if that actually made any difference to who could hear and who could not.

“I will be taking a few volunteers and going after my mother’s swords, and also hauling what remains of the Censure party out of Yin Eclipse—”

“Into Yin Eclipse!?” Fang Hua gasped.

“You… are going to Yin Eclipse?” Meng Hongwei paled slightly.

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Founder, you cannot!” Hongwei bowed formally to her as he protested her action, mirrored by Ji Kang and quite a number of the other assembled sect officials.

“Send some of us!” Meng Shi Yung added, also stepping forward and bowing.

“At this critical time, you must be here, in the sect!” Ji Kang protested.

“…”

She swept her gaze across them, not sure whether to laugh or cry at their reactions.

“What if some opportunist… dog was to target you!?!” Xi Zhi added grimly.

“And what—!?”

She held up a hand cutting off any further protestations from the assembled group.

“I understand your concerns, however…”

“—You greenhorns will not do much better than Ji Ming did,” Guanyue cut in acerbically. “Or are you claiming to be better than my sister, or Hao—?”

“—The person best placed to do this is me,” she continued, interrupting Guanyue before she could start bullying those present too much. “We must each do for the sect, in this hour, what is most within our means, and so I am entrusting the face of our ‘response’ to all of you.”

“But… you must at least take some experts with you, Honoured Founder!” Ji Kang declared. “At least allow me and…”

“Sect Founder, please allow us to make amends. If it transpires it was our disciple…” the leader and deputy leader of the Seven Star Pagoda both called out.

She sighed wryly as half of the assembled group all took half a step forward, despite Guanyue’s earlier words.

“Two volunteers,” she stated, holding up her hand. “And while I appreciate your candour, Lord Heng, I do need you to work with Grand Elder Quan.”

“Then at least let me accompany you!” the deputy leader, Heng Jiayi, who was also Lord Heng’s son, declared, lowering his head.

“He won’t be too much of a burden,” Meng Tan judged in the back of her mind.

“A Dao Eternal Body Cultivator, with a firm grasp of his foundation…” she appraised, considering Heng Jiayi pensively.

“His character is good as well,” Cao Liang added.

“Please, allow this one to accompany you as well, Lady Fu,” the Lord of the Silent Crane Pagoda, Song Peizhi, who was the oldest and most senior of the leaders of the five outer influences, stepped forward decisively.

“…”

“A good choice,” Sai Xingxiu murmured.

In that, she had to agree. If she were to pick people directly, Song Peizhi would have been among the first. As a peak Dao Eternal with a powerful constitution and the blood lineage of a Heavenly Crane, he was probably second only to a peak physical cultivator in terms of his ability to withstand the rigours of Yin Eclipse.

“I have spent time in those mysterious valleys and am still counted as friend by some who dwell, everlong, within their mist-bound groves,” Lord Silent Crane added softly.

“In that case,”—she gestured for Heng Jiayi and Song Peizhi to come forward and stand behind her—“there is no further time to waste.”

“You are going… immediately?” Ji Kang asked, raising an eyebrow. “Without any further preparation?”

“Time is not on our side,” she sighed, waving away the protestations of the other Pavilion leaders before they could do more than open their mouths.

The connection to her mother’s swords was still obscured, and the remaining five swords she could still directly connect to were growing increasingly frustrated with whatever they were facing, which was concerning in its own right. The roar from earlier was also bothering her. It hinted at resonance with a power even she didn’t want to poke willingly, though why that silent party to the order of this world would be moving now eluded her.

“Peizhi, Jiayi, take a moment to familiarize yourself with the nature of the yang corruption; it will be worse where we are going,” she instructed the pair, who, now that they were actually within the boundary, were looking around with palpable distaste.

“Worse?” Jiayi grimaced, rubbing his palms together. “This is the most unsettling Yang energy I have ever encountered.”

“Absolute Yang is not a force commonly encountered,” Song Peizhi agreed.

“How do you plan to take us there, Teacher?” Cao Liang asked her quietly as she took a moment to centre herself a little.

“How…?” she exhaled and stared at the music box, which she still held in her hand, along with the doll, then twisted it so that its gentle chimes started to play once more.

“Well, first things first,” she focused her Intent on the ornaments in her hair and seven of them drifted free, the perspective around them occluding, until seven of her personal swords floated in a crescent before them.

With a thought, their forms shifted, transforming to best suit the capabilities of each of those who were accompanying her, moving away from her as they did so to map out a constellation formation.

A spear, representing ‘The Mountain’ stood closest to her, which Meng Tan stepped forward and claimed, without having to be prompted. Next, came a second spear—‘The Storm’, for Guanyue, flanked by Sai Xingxiu’s whisk as ‘The Kun Peng’, and Jiayi’s axe and shield as ‘The Kirin’, in a central, controlling sub group. Finally, beyond them, in an encompassing outer crescent, were ‘The Lightning’, represented by Song Peizhi’s sword, ‘The Protector’, in Cao Liang’s, and the most esoteric of the bunch, ‘The Dark’, in Arashin’s twin blades.

“Take your weapons,” she instructed the rest of them, moving to take up her position beside Meng Tan as the rest of the courtyard looked on with growing anticipation.

“Ah, so this is your plan,” Maharahanya grinned.

“It is,” she affirmed, mirthlessly returning the grin.

“Why does Tan get to be ‘The Mountain’?” Guanyue pouted, claiming her spear.

“Because he is still your senior?” Maharahanya retorted, giving her a playful ‘chop’ on the head as she walked over to join her and Meng Tan.

“—And because we are not doing the usual thing with this,” she added, rolling her eyes.

“Aye, this is the Southern Gate Guardian Formation, but… with the Western Enclosure’s nodes?” Jiayi asked, quizzically, looking around as the others all finished moving into position.

“Uh-huh,” Arashin nodded, also smiling now. “I guess it is time to remind a few people, whose years seem to be catching up with them, that we are more than just the Meng clan?”

“Shush, you,” Maharahanya rolled her eyes. “Everyone, this ritual is going to be… a bit odd, but none of you are new to this, so…”

She watched for a moment as Maharahanya used her mantra to communicate the basics of what she was going to do to the others, then exhaled and began her own preparation.

Contrary to what most watching likely expected, it wasn’t really a formation which she intended to use, but something that, in her mother’s view, probably predated the very concept of a ‘Formation’, as most cultivators today understood it. Rather, this was a thing closer to the nature of the Grand Rituals, or the Supreme Stratagems.

Maharahanya’s role, ostensibly as ‘cupbearer’ to her as she performed this, was mostly just to ensure that nobody tried to interfere or subvert in some strange way, the fundamental purity of the moment.

‘—Purity is important, but it is Heart that must guide you…’

Even as she reflected on that, she could hear her mother’s admonishing tone, talking her through learning this, all those aeons ago.

‘This is not teleportation; it is not a thing of the rational, thinking, calculating mind… but of wonder and beauty; that is why it starts with ‘The Mountain’, for what is most wonderous, above all else, but the vast expanse of the stary sky, and beyond it…’

As the simple chimes of the music box continued to fill the air around her, she stared back into her memories, to the first time she had beheld ‘that’ great sky, and beneath it, a never-ending storm, rolling across silvery waves where, if your eyes were good enough, you could still see the paths those mythical ancestors had first travelled, guided by the Kun and Peng, by the Kirin, like, and yet also protected by lightning, into the endless dark, between sea and sky…

‘It is the purest expression of what was sought, that echoes in every sky every known, and perhaps which will ever come to be,’ her mother sighed, wistfully, as she looked up at those seven shining stars. ‘And yet… it is also a reminder…’

‘Wonder and… Fear—our kind made this journey, not because we wanted to, but because we had to…’

She followed her mother’s pointing hand, up into the shadows of the vast vault of the Star Ocean, to a different series of shining stars.

‘We were hunted, and still, they hunt us…’

‘—But, are we not Vast Obscurity Grove?’ she remembered asking, confused.

‘We are, my dear daughter, but just as I showed you the cruel heart of Yang, so too even with our Grandfather’s long shadow… are the Heavens not so accommodating…’

“—Everyone is ready,” Maharahanya informed her.

Nodding, she let the music box circle complete the cycle of its gentle melody, then turned it back to the start.

-No, those Heavens are indeed not so accommodating, she reflected, ignoring the others around her, and just listening once again to those gentle chimes, thinking of a young girl who would never take those first steps. Of a father and mother who would never see them, of all those lives cut short, who would now never witness these wonders. But that is why we exist.

‘It is indeed,’ her mother’s voice almost seemed to whisper in her ears, in reply to her statement, as she turned to her young daughter, gazing, awestruck at the goddess-like figure before her, as she spread her arms wide and the whole sky… rippled, as if it too were following the chords of the music she had just been playing a short while before—

“And so, we fly, high—”

Smiling, she raised her own arms, speaking words that were hers, but also not, because there were her mother’s and her grandmother’s and maybe even her’s before that. In her heart, they sang with the pure sublimity of the first time she had heard them.

“On miraculous wings—!”

The hands she raised were hers, but also not. Younger, more childish, reaching out in mimicry of her mother’s as they moved together. The one teaching, the one taught, in a beautiful, elegant dance, while all around her, the chord of the little music box reverberated, bleeding through everything, touching everything.

The Horror.

The Glory.

The Sorrow.

The Wonder.

She sang, her mother sang, the world sang, a young girl holding a doll sang.

Seven shining stars, flowing across the sky, treading a wondrous path across tumultuous seas, following the wings of the miraculous phoenix and its song. Great storms crashed about her, thunder and lightning joining her, whispering of a legend as old as heaven itself. Cities, villages, towns, forests, plains. Mortal and Immortal alike gazed up in awe, or terror, or just… mute incomprehension at their passing. Towers of mountains rose and fell, earth and sky unified in one glorious, unlimited horizon of possibility that drew her on… until at last, deep in the shadow of that vast, inscrutable phenomenon that was Yin Eclipse, she stood upon the blue and red Taiji from Ji Ming’s memory.

“If you truly believe, there is no world you cannot achieve…” she whispered, taking in the reality of the twisted, broken, destroyed swamp from his nightmare.

The others she had carried with her stood dazed, gazing at her, and a part of her could not help but feel a little gratified at the genuine shock, awe and wonder reflected in their eyes. Even among those who had been with her since almost the beginning of her time on this world. Just like she had gazed at her own mother, when she first beheld the same feat she had just shown them. Along with the renewed realisation that even after all this time together, she still had things to show them.

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~ LU JI — BLUE WATER CITY, DUCAL PALACE ~

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“—Come on Lanying, darling, just take deep breaths…”

“B-but Luo might be…”

“My sister and Lord Baisheng have this covered—”

“THEY ARE UP THERE TOO!”

Tearing his gaze away from the still rippling clouds and the lingering ephemera of golden petals that were merging into the rain, Lu Ji found himself really wishing he had had the presence of mind to take one of the jars of wine off a side-table when he left Cao Leyang’s meeting. All around him, the garden courtyard within the Blue Palace, which they had been making their way around on the way back to the Ling Estates, was in chaos.

A few paces away, Ling Jiang was trying to calm his understandably hysterical wife, for whom the otherworldly sight of the Meng Clan’s actual prestige dropping like a celestial tribulation from beyond the horizon had been the last straw in a very, very bad morning.

“H-HOW CAN YOU BE SO FATE-THRASHED CALM! THAT WAS A… WHATEVER IT WAS!” Lanying shrieked, actually grabbing her husband’s robes and dragging him towards her a bit.

“Please, darling, just…” Ling Jiang, not much better, could only try to put his arms around her and do his best to both comfort her and ensure that her distraught, weeping visage was not stared at by too many people.

Truthfully, he didn’t think Jiang had to worry too much about that. Not right now, anyway.

Nearby, two guards were checking on a young lady in waiting who had just collapsed in shock.

Another young lady was sitting on the side of one of the raised ornamental flower-gardens in the courtyard, staring vacantly at the sky, her hand half tracing something.

An old diviner was on his knees, mumbling about the foresight of the Astrology Bureau.

“A-ah… H-headmaster Lu…”

He turned to find a pale-faced, dark-haired young woman wearing the robes of an inner disciple of the Blue Gate School standing there, trying to get his attention.

“Sorry,” he sighed, giving her an apologetic grimace. “What is it… Muyin?”

That he actually knew her name made her start in shock and flush a little.

-How aloof do they think I actually am? He complained inwardly.

“W-what was… t-that, j-just now, H-headmaster?” Muyin stammered, her gaze involuntarily wandering from him back to the rain-dark sky as she spoke.

-That is indeed a question, he reflected, stroking his short beard and also turning his gaze back to the sky.

They had actually still been inside when what he was pretty sure had been the Seven Sovereigns Gateway Guardian Treasure Formation passed over head. That in and of itself would have been bad enough, but some moron had, he was almost sure, tried to use some treasure to ‘push back’ or otherwise interfere with one of the swords as well, which…

The city had taken big hits before, most notably, in recent memory, in the Huang Mo War’s. The aftermath of the Blood Eclipse had also been quite… something, and with the knowledge he had of the inner workings of the formations his Grand Uncle had built into the city, he was… mostly confident that it could have taken that hit, or at least a hit, buying time to interact with the sword spirit, but still.

It took an effort not to rub his temples, just thinking about what might have been.

That the formation had tried to mark several people near the waterfront told him it was probably some idiot in a certain Prince’s group, but it had been stopped at the last minute.

He hoped whoever that had been, suffered a foundationally crippling yet non-lethal deviation for the fright they had inflicted on everyone else. Certainly, they should be up for some sort of ‘Idiot of this Generation’ participation award.

No, what had everyone now cowering and stunned was what had come after.

It was hard to even put into words how… unsettling what he had just witnessed was as well. Especially with it having just followed after those swords.

Was it the way it had just wrapped the entire world up in its passing?

Or maybe the fact that he had, for a moment, sworn he saw the Star Ocean, which inside the realm wall should have been impossible.

Or those seven stars, each embodying something so… profound, that even with all the things he had seen, he had next to no way to truly put it into words.

Or the way the whole moment, from start to finish had had no artifice, or sense of imposition, or hint of laws, or any-fate-thrashed thing like it, in its form at all, that you usually saw in an ‘art’, or a ‘technique’, even a profound one, as if what he had seen just—was.

For most it would have been the Phoenix, though, and the shining path it cut as it, with those wonderous wing-like ephemera, passed from the southern sky into the north.

-Towards Yin Eclipse… and after those swords…

-And then there was what I really hope was not a Dragon’s roar…

“Trouble,” he answered her at last, because that was basically all he could say.

The down to earth answer also punctured the girl’s dazed manner a little, though not enough to truly shake her out of it. For that, he had to put a hand on her shoulder and gently still her chaotic qi for a moment, until she stopped hyperventilating.

“S-sowwy, H-headmaster,” she mumbled, trying to bow to him, adjust her robe and hide her face all in one fumble.

“It’s fine,” he reassured her. “Still—what you just witnessed, Muyin… you should do your best to remember this moment,” he added. “There will come a time in your future when having seen that… might bring you some surprising benefits. So, anyway, what do you need of me?”

“Oh… uh, um… I…” Muyin stared at him in a daze for a full ten seconds, before starting and hurriedly shoving a message scroll bearing the seal of her teacher within the school into his hands. “There was also…”

Frowning, Muyin turned around as if looking for someone—

“—My Apologies, Headmaster Lu.”

He blinked and turned around to find a second young woman, wearing a beautiful, if now somewhat wet, dark green gown, her dark-brown hair plaited loosely, bowing politely to him.

-Headmaster?

Examining her, he kept his face carefully neutral, because he thought he knew most of the school’s disciples at least to recognise, and while the young woman before him was vaguely familiar for some reason, somehow, he just could not place her. He also had not heard, or sensed her approach, either.

“I was just offering some help over there,” she continued respectfully, gesturing slightly towards the far side of the courtyard, beyond the still praying old diviner, to where a pair of young serving girls were sharing what looked like a potion to calm their nerves.

“Ah, its fine,” he waved a hand, accepting her apology and also to intimate that she should stop bowing, if only so he could get a good look at her face.

The dark-haired young woman did as instructed, a slight yet mysterious smile ghosting on her lips and he flinched, because he realised he did recognise her. And she was pretty much the last person he expected to see… just casually wandering about the Blue Water City, never mind the Blue Duke’s palace—though in retrospect, that was very much her style.

“Mo Bing, Headmaster.” the young woman added helpfully as he kept staring at her. “I am not a disciple of your school, but my sister is, maybe that is why you find me… familiar?”

“Your… sister,” he repeated, staring at Mo Xiao—the Mo Xiao—very glad all of a sudden that circumstances had conspired that anyone seeing his momentarily shocked expression would think it was because of the Phoenix, not because of the identity of the ‘young woman’ standing before him.

The most ‘her’ part was that she had barely even made an effort to disguise herself. Sure, she had swapped out the character for ‘mournful’ in her name. Her plaited hair was arranged into a short bun, affixed an elegant white jade fan hairpin. She also seemed to have put on a bit of makeup around her eyes for some reason and didn’t usually wear green gowns that showed quite that much bosom, but that was about it. At least she was hiding her cultivation properly, or at least well enough that he could not detect she was more than a talented Golden Immortal with a good Principle and a connate water-element physique right now.

“Mmmm, my little sister Lu is in your sect,” Mo Xiao informed him with a bright, helpful smile. “She just broke through in the new year, so I came to congratulate her!”

“…”

“Ah yes, I recall her,” he replied evenly.

“I think she intended to introduce me formally, there was going to be some… ceremony, or something?” ‘Mo Bing’ murmured, glancing at Muyin as if asking for support.

As far as cover stories went, it was so on brand for her that he almost sighed out loud. There would indeed be a conferral ceremony to publicly acknowledge and reward inner and core disciples who had advanced their cultivation or made other achievements in the previous year, and there were several students who had the personal name ‘Lu’.

“Ah, yes, you mean the conferral ceremony at the end of the month,” Muyin replied hurriedly.

“Yes,” ‘Mo Bing’ nodded gratefully. “Anyway, it seems she is busy with something today, and while I was looking around, I was invited to a party for all of the… young talents, and this… well, some snotty Huang clan servant mistook me for my sister I guess, because he told me it was my great honour to deliver a message to you, Headmaster Lu. I think his offer to invite me to dinner was intended as a reward for delivering it, but I don’t think I will go.”

So saying, she produced a beautifully sealed official document bearing the Crest of the Imperial Family and handed it to him with such a lack of ceremony that Muyin didn’t notice the seal for some seconds and ended up doing a shocked double-take.

Considering the two, he sighed and quite deliberately set the one from either Dun Jian or Prince Fanshu aside in favour of the one Muyin had delivered. Breaking that seal, he skimmed the contents and could not help but sigh again, much more deeply.

The contents were fairly cryptic, but the gist of it was that Muyin’s teacher, Mu Xuan, was tipping him off that there was a lot of quiet interest in Dun Jian’s ‘circle’ towards inner and core disciples with experience in Yin Eclipse, and that it looked like he might be considering drafting them to help Princess Lian on whatever task she had been set in coming here.

“Thank you for delivering this so promptly,” he murmured, turning to her and giving her a polite bow. “You are a credit to your teacher and the school.”

“Y-you honour me, Headmaster,” Muyin replied, flushing as she bowed formally to him.

Accepting her bow, he put that scroll away and, with a sinking feeling, opened the one ‘Mo Bing’ had been given to deliver.