> When it comes to matters of generational insanity, few things in recent millennia can stand next to the decision by the Huang, Kong, Long, Weng, Tang, Shu and Fang clans to announce a grand exception to the generational rule. Wracked by the aftermath of the Huang-Mo wars, they sought, as a means to avoid further such conflicts, to settle among themselves that kind of question by competing in the nature of one’s resources, rather than purely by the force of one’s arms. Each clan would raise a junior of especial talent and endeavour, within the timeframe of 100 years, to nurture them to Dao Ascension. The winner would thus be considered the ‘Young Sovereign’ for that generation, spanning 9000 years, and the apex to which all others could aspire.

>

> This was initially met with great success, and the Kong Clan’s big miss, Kong Rui, already a renowned talent who had become a peerless Immortal with a Heavenly Physique by the age of twenty, was crowned young sovereign as the youngest among those competing to reach that threshold within that hundred years.

>

> The next such contest, when Venerate Rui ascended, vacating her ‘rank’, became somewhat more standardized – being declared at a specific time, auspicious and upstanding to all those taking part, the winner was Shu Yingji, who carried that rank until that generation had finished its course and a new one was declared.

>

> Thereafter though, two such sovereigns died in rapid succession – one to misfortune, the other by an assassin’s blade and thereafter the generations were wracked with a problem, because among those who had lost out, with a third sovereign declared in the span of two millennia, a great amount of resources were expended. This was somewhat alleviated by the implementation of the Heavenly 100 Ranking. However, to those competing behind the scenes, the appeal of inward competition had started to lose its lustre. As a result, their juniors started to turn their eyes to competing with other influences, intent on carving out the status of the current generation more thoroughly, and thus set in motion a chain of events that spiralled beyond all expected control.

From A commentary on the Aftermath of the Huang-Mo Wars

  By Bo Seong Yoon – Celestial Scholar of Many Skies.

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~ ARAI – CAILLEACH’S HOLD, UNDERGROVE ~

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The lightning twisted in the sky, swirling like a celestial dragon as it danced between the clouds, shaking the clouds with its passage as they in turn twisted in strange gyres and ripples. The sound that came after it, the echo of its passage, made the peaks themselves shiver faintly as the multi-hued bolt was caught in the twisting tides of the storm up above and fractured and scattered. In their brief and flickering passage, the bolts light up the lower mists, casting strange shadows across distant peaks for an ephemeral moment, casting the twilight world into a strange, dark relief before that too faded away. Finally, in its wake, the terrifying bolt left only a lingering reverberation in the world all around to herald its passing.

Arai sat there, listening to the brief moment of silence, after the last echoes of that vast sound vanished and before the drumroll of another flaring bolt took its place and the whole scene began anew.

The Myriad Transformations of the world.

The wind rose again, the dull roaring sound of trees in the cloud-drenched valleys below returned, briefly, before another colossal hammer blow of displaced air overturned the world.

There was no rain this high up to reach this place, where the foothills of the mountains swept out over the war-wracked highlands. Even with the storm swirling, with the cloud and the rain she could also see the dull flares of conflict where the cliff met the swamp. Green fire, blue lightning, red clouds and occasionally, black cracks flickering out like bizarre spider-webs, fracturing space. Once, it would have been impressive, but compared to the primordial bolts of the surging storm front, the scale of the war felt miniscule.

Putting her brush aside, she considered the ink painting she had just put the finishing touches to. It was not the scene before her, but one from her memories, of her, Sana and their mother Ruliu… and father Han. The fifth figure was the only one lacking a face, her younger brother Ruo… All the others she could picture in that moment, but his was the only thing missing amid the scene of them all standing before the veranda of their town estate, overlooking the garden in spring.

She nearly crumpled the ink painting up and threw it away, before stopping and just rolling it up instead.

Another vast roll of thunder shook the whole sky and she turned her attention back to that instead. The lightning this time almost looked like some dancing tiger as it charged from cloud to cloud, following the unseen current of qi that Cailleach told her rolled high in the sky, between the ‘ground’ and the ‘sky islands’ that these clouds supported many miles above.

The principles of the natural world – the means by which the lightning formed, sought its path, the disturbances it made, the harmonies it found, its place within the storm itself… They were all things far beyond her, but they were still why she was out here… to try and grasp something of it, of the way the world was… how things changed within it, throughout it, from big to small and back again.

The Myriad Transformations of the world.

It did help as well, in a strange way. She could see, in the way her ‘principle’ was reflected in her own inner world, echoes within echoes of the vast storms above, of the way the wind and the rain swept out, nourishing the land.

The sound of cracking stone beside her stirred her from that consideration with a sigh and she turned to look at the crude, stone-carved compass disc that now had a faint crack across it. A lightning bolt cracked the mountain slope more than a mile above in the same instant, scattering rocks that were already mere illusions of stone as they rained down like sparks.

Its last reading was ‘Death from Six Directions’, which was…

“Well at least you’re honest about the chances if you get hit by one,” she chuckled, taking the compass in her hands and considering it, before sending it spinning out into the void below, where it bounced off a few rocks and then vanished, before standing up.

The trip back into the hold was not especially difficult, given she was still technically within it. She walked through a small passage in the rock, which took her down off the high promontory she had been sitting on, overlooking the mountain slope. The path twisted down the side of gorge, first along a rock-cut colonnade, then down steps and finally through some terraces where hardy alpine plants flourished. Thereafter, it went through a few more colonnaded walkways before finally coming out next to what amounted to some storerooms before turning back to the valley floor, winding between small plots and a few orchards and pools, branching off to various residences of the inhabitants. Here and there a goat picked its way through the clumps of vegetation nibbling as only goats could.

She nodded politely to the ‘Ghoblan’ sitting on a rock by one of those lower little plots and meandered back towards the ‘main area’ of the gorge. The place was also set up like a rather mundane little village beyond there. Abodes were arranged on several layers, with stairs and well concealed entrances and exits to higher levels scattered around. Other Ghoblan, real and… other, as she had come to think of them, were scattered about doing odd day to day tasks.

The scale of the gorge was… odd. How it succeeded in always being ‘just’ the right size for any given day or place you were in it, for example, was something Cailleach had been rather vague about. Today the weather outside was better, so it was bigger and the open areas towards the back, including the path she had taken to get up to that particular high overlook outside, were quite easy to find. On other days, presumably when Ghoblan were less interested in tending their gardens, the gorge was narrow and winding, with its offshoot passages, stairways and cut colonnades hidden and obscured.

Two of the Ur’Inan, Ragash and Jelas, who were sat next to one of the pools, talked quietly glanced up at her as she passed by. She nodded to them as well and got a wave back before they returned to whatever they were discussing. Both were still recovering, and mostly all three from Thunder Mountain kept themselves to themselves as far as she was aware, except at more communal meal times when most of the Ur’Inan came together in their shared abode.

“Ah, there you are!”

She turned her head to find Rusula also sat nearby, the ‘spellbook’ she had given the young Ur’Inan sat across her knees. This was probably only the second… no… third time she had seen the apprentice shaman out and about, now that she thought about it.

The Ur’Inan’s current garb was the same style of woven tunic she was herself currently wearing. Woven of thick wool, presumably from the goats, it came down to their knees but left their arms bare. Her own was dyed blue, while Rusula’s was purple, yellow and grey square patterns. When combined with the young woman’s grey-brown skin tone and dark hair, it was nothing if not striking, and probably why she had settled upon it. She had also taken to wearing blue and gold streaks of dye on her cheeks and an upturned blue triangle on her brow with a yellow line through it, similar to the one she had seen on the various shamans back in the Cloud Arrow tribe’s hold.

She certainly looked much healthier than before, although she herself was well aware that appearances there could be deceiving.

“You’re looking better…” she greeted her politely and made her way over to bench Rusula was sat on.

“Yeah, the… Witch of White Depths Peak said I was recovered enough to start using mana properly again…” Rusula murmured.

She nodded and sat down on the other end of the bench. The determination of the Ur’Inan to not refer to Cailleach by name was another thing she had just come to accept. Any time she was mentioned there was a faint pause before they uttered her title as well, as if they were having to force themselves to even say that. They were fine with ‘Old Bones’, but Cailleach unnerved them in some way they all refused to talk about.

“I wanted to ask you… some things…” Rusula said, pushing her hair back and putting the book to one side.

“Ohh?” she nodded. “Sure…? What is it you need?”

“…”

Rusula looked a bit awkward and shifted about. “Well, this book, it’s really impressive… I know you lent it to me before… when we were fighting... them.”

“If you want to keep it, you can,” she said without any preamble. “I have memorised all five of the arts, as has Sana as far as I know, and recorded the rest of the text.”

“…Memorized…” Rusula eyed the book dubiously for a moment. “Ah… um… thanks.”

“No problem,” she said with a smile. “It is the least we can do in terms of repayment for… well… everything. I may want to look at it occasionally, but you can do as you like with it.”

Knowing what she did now, and looking back on things, she could see how they had literally spun through that tribe like a whirlwind and it made her feel kind of bad, in all honesty. It was little wonder the old shaman Argor had been so keen to see them off: Likely he had known more than he let on about their physiques’ ‘natures’. Probably he had also known that having more of them in one place could also lead to… interesting times. I guess I know the real reason why he didn’t have the both of us join him in that room now. That divination of his probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere, she thought.

“Ah… erm… thank you,” Rusula blinked, apparently caught off guard by her willingness to just give what was presumably a fairly rare thing away.

In truth, she might have balked, had she some way to conveniently carry the thing with them, but they were probably going to be here for quite a while, and it was true that she had memorised the patterns in them completely. They were no more difficult to deal with than formation templates in that regard, and despite being rooted in arrays, much simpler than the majority of the symbols. The trade-off for them basically only doing variants on their specific theme.

“That… erm… wasn’t what I wanted to ask though,” Rusula said, almost squirming now.

“…”

“I… learned a few of the symbols you used… before,” the young shaman almost whispered. “Only… I thought it would be easier…”

“…”

She stared at Rusula, not sure whether to be surprised, impressed or amused. Thinking back on it, though that seemed like a small lifetime ago, as did most of the things prior to her capture, Rusula had been quite interested in the symbols they were using to help with the mining.

“Am I to assume that one of the reasons you ended up coming along with us… was because the Cloud Arrows tribe hoped you would pick up a few of them?” she asked, using her mantra to make sure her amusement was hidden.

“…”

Rusula just looked more uncomfortable if that was at all possible.

“It was mentioned, but… I didn’t come… just because of that,” the young shamaness muttered.

“…”

Once, several months ago, when she was much less clear on the social workings of both the Ur’Inan and the Cloud Arrows tribe specifically, she would probably, she guessed, have been rather put out by this revelation. Now, though, she was more surprised at how little it bothered her. In any case, it wasn’t like the two of them had some proprietorial grasp over all those symbol sets. Her main reticence about sharing them was down to the context within which they had been acquired as much as what they, themselves did, at least for those that originated within the academy.

That was certainly the impression she had gotten from Cailleach on the few times they had talked since. It was the other, much more complex symbols, that were the problem ones.

“I understand-” she cut off the rather embarrassed and a bit crestfallen Rusula before she could continue, realising that her silence had gone on long enough to make it look like she was going to refuse.

“I can certainly advise you in some of them,” she replied, wondering what the best way to do so was.

“You will…?” Rusula said a bit blankly.

“Isn’t that what I just–”

*thump*

They both paused as a dull, ear-ringing explosion that was oddly familiar to her, echoed through the chasm. If she wasn’t imagining things, it was the sound you got when you exploded a pill furnace.

“Ah, that will be Sana,” Rusula said with a glance towards the main area of the village.

“What is she doing?” she asked, looking in that direction.

“Trying to work on some refinement thing,” Rusula said with a shrug. “She just started earlier, and the explosions like that have been pretty consistent for most of the morning.”

“Ah,” she nodded, and decided not to go look. Sana’s tribulations with the pagoda’s refinement art had her sister in what she could only describe as a foul mood. “I guess we should just leave her to it,” she added.

“Yes,” Rusula nodded vehemently. “She has been trying to make some kind of furnace from it all morning.”

“I am pretty sure I know what the issue there is,” she said with a resigned sigh – it would be the purity of their qi and control issues resulting from manipulating miniscule amounts of it causing problems with the materials used. “Anyway, these symbols… which ones did you want to ask me about?”

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~ SANA – CAILLEACH’S HOLD ~

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Staring at the burn scars on the floor of the outermost room of the house Cailleach and Old Bones had set aside for them to stay in, Sana regretted cutting her hair short again. It was hard to run your hands through short hair and scream in frustration with quite the same cathartic impact.

The remains of the rather crude pill furnace were scattered across most of the room. The problem, as far as she could see, was indeed that their qi was just too pure for most common materials to handle the strain of. A secondary, much more reasonable problem was that making pill furnaces, even when you had a blueprint floating beside you, was not a thing mastered in a day.

Sighing, she swept out her qi and wiped away the ruins of the furnace and checked the integrity of the Eight Trigrams chart she had carved into the floor. It was, thankfully okay – though the reading on it was quite conclusive.

The Yang readings were currently:

‘Correctness’ – Unlucky.

‘Stability’ – Inauspicious.

‘Fortune’ – Auspicious, which was surprising.

‘Power’ was deeply auspicious, but eclipsed by ‘yin’, which she had always felt was a smart-ass way of saying ‘overloaded to the point of being negative’.

The Yin readings were about what she expected as well, as she considered the other half of the diagram she had drawn out and how qi was shifted in it.

‘Flourishing’ was neutral, which was to be expected, really.

‘Fortune’ read as inauspicious, which when combined with the yang reading meant that part of the process was both cancelling itself out and also interfering with itself simultaneously. That would be the poor materials she was using.

‘Grace’ was inauspicious, which was also expected, given she had blown the furnace up.

‘Aspiring’ was thankfully auspicious. That meant that she was at least improving.

Looking at the materials she had left, she contemplated trying again, before deciding to just go outside for a bit. There was such a thing as doing too many divinations after all. The process could start to give you strange feedback into your own qi if you were exposed to many in a row. That was a point Old Oudeng had stressed when teaching them how to use these charts. It tended to be a very subtle corruption of the readings as well – the more you did, the more likely the readings of previous results were to influence the next ones, and after a while what you had was just a muddled mess. This was apparently a form of ‘returning to origins’ wherein the natural chaos of the systems of the world it originated from started to reassert their own influence over the divination’s system. To get order out of that madness, according to Old Oudeng, required you to start comprehending natural laws.

Or at least that was the conventional wisdom. Her principle was, in some ways, if not making a minor mockery of that, at least making her sit and question elements of that assertion. It was a… difficult problem to ponder as well, because ‘Formless Permutation’ was…

Walking out of the room, she went down the hall and grabbed a wooden staff from by the door on the way as she exited into the warm, sunny environs outside… to hit something.

Arai was sat with Rusula, drawing symbols on a slab, so, beyond a slight wave, she left them to it, and made her way deeper into the valley, wandering between the beds of various spirit vegetables and fruit trees, past some of the routes to the higher level, until she got to the real inner regions.

After a few hundred metres, the gorge opened out somewhat into what she could only call a huge sinkhole. The walls high above had some trees and vegetation on them and several hundred metres above was the blue circle of a sky – not the sky outside. Here there were also buildings cut into the walls that she could see – but they were rarely opened. Some were tomb complexes according to Old Bones – for those members of the hold who had died over the years. There were also some ancestral shrines, a few storehouses and a stone quarry.

The broad space at the base of the sinkhole held a series of five warm pools around the perimeter. Each pool held a spirit tree, growing out of a rock at the back where they abutted the wall. It was in many ways a natural arrangement, she had come to recognise – the place responsible for the mild climate of this little hidden world.

The middle, where she was heading, had a broad, open space that in the right season was apparently used for processing crops, but at other times was surrounded by lush grass. On it, she had set up, with Old Bones’s blessing, a rock that she had taken to using to practice her spear arts on.

The question of ‘weapons’ was somewhat difficult it turned out, because despite most of the ‘other’ Ghoblan – ‘Huldrekall’, ‘Tusser’ and ‘Bjergfolk’ as Old Bones had termed them when her sister pressed – in this place possessing them, few were inclined to loan them, and all were apparently precious things. It was apparently a great honour for them to have been lent the ones they had been, a thing only possible because Cailleach was the one who asked it. As to the others here, the genuine Ghoblan, they had no weapons either and were, as far as she could see, here on what amounted to a ‘cultivation retreat’ to ‘find their ancestral selves’ according to Bright Fungi-seeker.

There was no common iron or steel or anything like it in this place either, she had come to realise. One among its many other oddities she had encountered in the three weeks since they had become guests of Cailleach and Old Bones. In fact, there was very little in the way of such weapons or even tools here. The things used to work the fields, wood or quarry stone were, where required, made of wood and stone, but mainly spirit wood. The staff she had, had come from the supply of spirit wood kept for making furniture… as was a wooden sword/blade her sister had carved to train with.

Putting those concerns from her mind, she settled into the rhythm of the martial form from the pagoda and started to run through it, using it to practice melding her purified qi with her soul-sense, the Maelstrom Martial Intent and her Formless Permutations principle. This was, she had come to conclude, the fastest way to properly advance her cultivation. The grasping of her ‘Principle’ had not really superseded those lesser parts, but rather given her an overarching structure into which to fit them and used the two combat forms to explore the interaction of those parts.

Blow after blow crashed into the rock as she worked on controlling the recoil of the strikes, taking the repelled energy and sending it back again and again.

Above and beyond everything else, she was learning that the key to the first form was the point between attack and defence. The moments of stillness between the flows. The same principle held true for the unarmed combat form – ‘Way of the Harmonious Maelstrom’.

Finishing the form, she stepped back and considered her handiwork. The face of the stone before her had a few dents in it and the odd crack, but that was about it, which was good. She had broken three such rocks already while she got a handle on controlling the force that went through it. The staff was also still in pretty good condition, for the punishment it had taken. The end was a bit worn, but it held no cracks or other abnormalities.

Walking around to the other side, she surveyed the damage done to it. The block was close to two by two metres, and the far side of it had a crater almost a metre across and twenty centimetres deep in it at this point. Gravel and dust were scattered in a fan shape a few metres across, with some larger chunks spread throughout.

“Not bad,” she conceded out loud, running her fingers across the depression.

It was rough still, and the splintering showed. The previous block the depression had been more like an irregular fissure. In this one, as far as she could see… she sent her qi into the rock, and indeed, there were no continuous fissures all the way though.

The goal was to pass the strikes through the rock rather than break the rock itself. Only when she could do that with pure martial intent fused with her principle – no qi, no soul-based intent – would she be considered as having reached ‘completion’ with the first step of the form, according to the pagoda. To reach ‘mastery’ as the pagoda termed it, she had to be able to replicate that feat with ‘Dreaming of Abzu’. The stage beyond that was to be able to break a second rock without harming ones on either side of it, and then pick which rock she wanted to break.

Setting the staff aside, she turned her mind towards the ‘Way of the Harmonious Maelstrom’.

This was, in many ways, much harder to use compared to the spear. The spear gave her a point of focus, a route and a framework beyond herself for each strike. The empty hand form asked the same of you, but without that crutch.

It had two forms: ‘The Maiden’s Story’ and the ‘Dragon’s Dance’.

The Maiden’s Story held five forms: ‘Maiden Dances on the Waters’, ‘Shadow upon the Waters’, ‘Maiden Dances with the Dragon’, ‘Mystery of the Moon’ and finally the ‘The Moon Maiden Ascends’.

The Dragon’s Dance also held five forms: ‘Moon Dragon Descends’, ‘Overturning Sea and Sky’, ‘Dragon Dances with the Maiden’, ‘Dragon from the Waters’ Shadow’ and finally ‘Moon Dragon Ascends’

The ‘Dragon’s Dance’ was well beyond her capabilities currently. Even the most basic form, ‘Moon Dragon Descends’, required her to have grasped worldly strength, probably laws, and attained an understanding of ‘Connate, Natural Intent’ that was far beyond anything she was capable of. It was only mentioned in the form by way of explanation for the parts of the ‘Maiden’s story’ that necessitated its awareness.

Much like the spear forms, each of the ‘forms’ had a mnemonic associated with it. ‘Maiden Dances on the Waters’ was also a movement art as much as a footwork and striking form. The only reason she had not been using it up to this point, was that ‘Maelstrom Shifting Steps’ was more tailored specifically to ‘Maelstrom Intent’ and what the pagoda had required her to focus on.

Inhaling and exhaling a few times, she started to perform the first form, slowly. It was a strange form, and she could see why, in the time she had now spent practicing it, the pagoda had started her off with the spear form. Her early misconceptions about how the whole lot were meant to be used were rooted in her using this empty-handed form before she grasped the receiving and returning aspect.

Her steps carried her around the cleared area as she went through the different movements impressed into her mind from the pagoda – flowing through each one, time after time, until she shifted to the grass, where it was much harder. To attain ‘minor completion’ required you to be able to walk across the ground or through the grass without disturbing it in any unnatural ways. To reach completion she had to be able to dance on the tops of the blades of grass with only the martial intent of the form to carry her, and be able to step on water in the same way.

To attain mastery she had to be able to do so on water without leaving any distortion and only when she was able to move through the world, using her qi through this form, without leaving the faintest ripple of her presence would she be considered to have reached ‘perfection.’ The amount of effort required for that...

Despite having tried for almost a week now, she could barely take a few steps on the grass blades before she came a cropper.

This time, she made it six steps before she missed one of the moments of stillness between the motions she was flowing through and sent herself sprawling on her face in the dirt in what was probably quite comedic fashion to anyone watching.

Dusting herself off, she picked herself up with a wry chuckle and she started again, running through the form on the cleared earth before shifting to the grass. She was able to complete most of a circuit of the cleared area, barely breaking the grass before attempting once again to walk on it. This time she only made it three steps, courtesy of an unforeseen gust of wind and slipped, falling on her back, arms spread.

She could have stopped herself fairly easily, but the empty-armed form had a few other oddities in it. Falling – the ‘harmonious way of falling over’ – was one of them. That was basically a thing of mortal martial arts. Cultivation martial arts forms did have some aspects of it, akin to the receiving and returning force, but it was a very minor part of them as she understood it. Where that occurred it was focused into the attacks and defences.

Inhaling, she rolled back up with a bounce and exhaling, started again.

By the time she had worked off her frustrations with exploding pill furnaces and the truly esoteric refinement art and was starting to veer back towards getting unduly angered by her continued failure to skip across the blades of grass like a fairy immortal, it was well towards the middle of the afternoon and the sunshine had given way to a misty sky.

Arai and Rusula were still talking about array symbols. Rusula was looking… vexed and there were a few egregiously melted-looking rocks nearby, as well as a small audience of the three Ghoblan. They were, in a way, the reason why she was conducting her experiments with refinement inside. Not because of any fear of them copying anything, but because it was distracting to have a nut throwing gallery giving running commentary on your successes and failures, and she hadn’t the heart to tell them to shove off after everything they had all been through.

Still not feeling like revisiting the refinement art, she found herself instead wandering through the gorge looking at the various gardens, pondering… stuff. That was the problem with their new circumstances, if you could call it as such. Even in the Cloud Arrows tribe there had been things to do… and a certain worry – concern, even – keeping her on edge.

Here… it was just too peaceful.

Three weeks had flitted by, in various ways, since her sister also broke through… rather spectacularly, it had to be said, in one of the mountain vales to the north of the hold, and in the process she had come to recognise that singular problem and the understanding that she had no idea how to deal with it. Part of it, she suspected, was the continued lure of her Physique, now that she was aware of it. Old Bones had explained as much quite early on. Knowledge of how things worked could, sometimes, be as much a hindrance as a help, if you were not very clear on why they worked. This was apparently not a problem unique to ‘Mortal Physiques’; it also occurred in several other odd powers.

The one that stuck out for her from that discussion of a few days back was something called… empaths. Those who were born innately as such – with an inborn power to grasp the emotions and even subconscious desires and thoughts of others, to the point where they could even control them were, according to the old Ghoblan, the worst afflicted. Frequently they went mad before they ever realised what their gift was, sometimes before they were even born. Telling one what was happening tended to be even worse, because then they started projecting their desire not to feel emotions of others outwards, leading to a different kind of horror.

A similar kind of problem could, apparently occur with Mortal Physiques as well, especially early on. In that case, it was akin to actually forcing the issue, inadvertently – or deliberately. Somewhat unsurprisingly, knowing you were a walking disaster alignment usually turned you into a self-fulfilling divination as well as a disaster alignment. Or the conflict between trying to suppress it or stay ahead of it led to everything blowing up and you had a psyche break, then it became a self-fulfilling divination.

Even though Old Bones had assured her that wouldn’t happen to them, not to that absolute degree anyway, given they had severed a portion of their connection to the agency of the world, it was hard not to worry.

Weirdly, even her mantra didn’t help with that. She had tried, several times in fact, and the two – mantra and issue – sort of just slid past each other, like lightless boats in the night, never interacting. Her best guess there, because neither Old Bones nor Cailleach, when she was around, had been especially forthcoming about those, was that the two powers were sort of evenly matched. Sadly, that could only be idle speculation…

The only person she could have asked was long…

“This is the problem!” she sighed, again reaching to run her hands through her hair before stopping and finding she had unknowingly stopped to stare into one of the ponds, at some multi-coloured water lilies that they grew here for their seeds and roots.

“Many problems there are, to some, even answers you may find…”

The perpetually amused tone of Old Bones interjected from nearby.

“Unless you can help me speak to my mother, I suspect this is a problem without an answer,” she remarked rather more tartly than she intended, looking around for a moment before finally finding the old Ghoblan sitting cross-legged on a rock on the far edge of the pond, holding a fishing rod.

“That is, sadly, beyond me means,” the old Ghoblan agreed. “Although, I assume that is not, in fact, the problem.”

“It is not,” she sighed. “I was wondering if my Mantra and the Mortal Physique would be considered of equal origin, because…”

Trailing off, she belatedly realised that the oaths regarding speaking about the secret techniques to others still worked. It had been so long since she had been around anyone that wasn’t Arai that that had been a practicable non-issue.

“Oh, hmm… depends on the mantra, and the words in it,” the old Ghoblan pondered. “The origins of that promise, what you call a ‘mantra’, are quite unique. The words that come from them have much in common with the symbols like the one that likely makes up the core of your physique. The two share a parallel common origin, I suppose. It depends on how they are being used. You could consider them a method such as your physique, in their own right.”

“They are?” she asked – she already knew as much, given they were the de facto root of a cultivation method that the physique seemed content to work alongside, but wasn’t going to miss out on the opportunity to actually have someone else talk, hopefully knowledgeably, about them.

“Well, usually those methods are quite tightly guarded,” the Ghoblan chuckled. “The one who dreamed up that whole thing was quite extraordinary, not someone who is easy to deal with… not at all…”

“Is?” she blinked, wondering if he was just speaking with a turn of phrase or…? “You mean the person who… created the method still lives?”

“Oh, certainly they still live,” Old Bones chuckled darkly. “They tried to kill them, and their descendants tried to seize their power for themselves. The aftermath was quite spectacularly unpleasant, and the repercussions are still being felt to this day. Those that survived, of which the creator of ‘mantras’ is certainly one, are among some of the truly ancient beings. ___ name is _________.”

She stared as the Ghoblan spoke two non-sounds. The experience of comprehending them was bizarre.

“The knowledge does nobody any good though, because like ________ and ______, if you speak their name, any world touched by them denies it, and that happens,” Old Bones said sourly. “You cannot even write ___ name down. Here, watch.”

The Ghoblan drew a series of incomprehensible squiggles in the air with his finger, which to her were just a weird pattern with no meaning, a thing of no consequence…

The moment of duality that came with it made her eyes water. Briefly she understood something of what had occurred – that it was like what had been done to her before, but this was… utterly different at the same time. That had been an aberration, a manipulation; this was deliberate on the part of that being… or those ______.

“That is very weird,” she said after a moment.

“It is,” the old Ghoblan agreed sagely. “When the day comes that you can speak those words and have someone else understand them, you will have stepped across a threshold that even the hagiographers of myth have never fully grasped – or fallen under the auspice of the truly powerful.”

“How come you are able to say ____ live,” she had another weird moment where the word came out empty somehow, even though she knew it and Old Bones had said it to her earlier just fine.

“The difference in realm and perspective,” the Old Ghoblan said with a toothy grin. “That you can even say as much as you can regarding ___ and those other beings of yore is a testament to the nature of what you succeeded in severing at the 5th circle. Most would never be able to do even that before crossing the 7th or 8th circle. Mostly because few are provided the opportunity or the desperation to do what you did.”

“Anyway, to answer your question tangentially,” he continued. “If you are speaking of some of the things those mnemonics can achieve, then yes, they might be considered on a level with what a mortal physique is capable of doing, in terms of their absolute potential at least. Realising that potential, though, is much, much harder in comparison.”

She mulled those words over, weighing them against her inability to have the mantra sweep up her concern about…

“Would the two work together?” she asked after a moment. “Sympathetically?”

“Absolutely,” the old Ghoblan nodded. “Everyone forgets, but ______, _______ and _________ were __ ___ ____ ____ and _____ _ ___ __ …”

“…”

Old Bones trailed off, realising as she stared at him dubiously listening to the non-words what was happening.

“Esssshh, ___ really holds _ ______,” the old Ghoblan scowled, casting his fishing rod out into the pond again.

“…”

She tried not to look awkward on his behalf.

“Even that?” he stared up at the sky for a long moment, frowning, before shaking his head. “It is what it is I suppose.”

“That was also quite informative, in a different way from what you were perhaps expecting,” the old Ghoblan sighed. “In short, the things that touch that topic are hard to discuss, even for us, even in a place like this, sealed away as we are.”

Eyeing the Symbol, which just sat there doing symbol things in her Sea of Knowledge, and considering the mnemonics for her mantra, she thought she grasped what was happening, after a fashion. What Old Bones had said was enough of a hint though – her mantra and her physique had some sort of sympathetic – understanding was maybe too strong a word – synergy perhaps, preventing the two from working against each other?

The other possibility…

“Oh,” she nodded. “I think I get what’s going on.”

As far as intuitive guesses went, it was probably the right one. Old Bones had implied that trying to deny the incidental effects of the physique on her interaction could lead to odd, and probably rather undesirable exacerbations of the phenomenon. Would her basically hiding her own worries about those effects also count for that? If they did, that was quite terrifying.

“False ignorance is no protection against the influence of a mortal physique?” she said, looking at him sideways.

“Oh… regarding the earlier point, absolutely no good, positively dangerous in fact. In the long run, it would be like constantly tensioning a rope,” Old Bones agreed. “Now I get why you asked. You are feeling bored, sat here doing the same things every day.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“…”

She wouldn’t have couched it in quite those terms. There were plenty of things she could be doing – should be doing, and was in fact doing.

“It’s more that… we were fighting everything for so long, struggling to survive from day to day… hour to hour even, against all kinds of stupid odds…”

“And now you’re sitting here, eating well, if not actually sleeping and not in any obvious danger at all…” Old Bones nodded.

“Well, yes…” she conceded a bit lamely.

“These days, they would call that a traumatic disorder,” the old Ghoblan snickered. “They were big on those in the academy – traumatising your students with brutal training regimes was considered… unethical or some such according to my dear one. Mostly it raised them a bunch of sissies who could theorise you ten solutions to the letter ‘A’ but couldn’t punch their way out of a damp paper bag.”

“…”

She was about to complain that she did ‘not’ have something like that, but in fact… she recalled.

“Oh.” She shuddered; it wasn’t a very nice memory either...

When she had been… seven, she guessed, they had been in a teahouse in a village near West Flower Picking town. She had been playing with some local children, and they had all started laughing at an old man – a cripple, who was drunk off his head in the teahouse. She, wanting to go along with her new ‘friends’, had laughed at the stupid way he talked while playing with some of their friends and said something… she couldn’t recall what, and their father who had been there had… been almost enraged and dragged her over and made her bow down and apologise to the drunk old man, even as all the others in the teahouse laughed at them both. When they had gotten home, she had been roundly thrashed as well, and told to respect others – even her mother had agreed on that. They had then explained why the old man was… broken.

He was a conscript into the military authority, someone who had fought in wars 150 years before she was even born, a Golden Core cultivator no less. Eventually, when those wars were done, the Military Authority had sent all those conscripts back home, and while many had fit back in, or got jobs as guards, that old man, whose name she had never known… had apparently been unable to adjust – he had had jobs, been a guard, a mercenary and such, but had never been able to put his experience behind him.

As a former conscript he had had no support from the authority and while people like her father helped him, the damage he had suffered was not a thing that could be fixed by cultivation strength alone. Many such people, her father explained, either ended up dead as mercenary blades, or through picking fights with people, or just walked into the forest and kept killing. Because the old man had not wanted to abandon his family, finding no honour in the death he had seen far too much of, and not wanting to leave his grandkids without a grandfather, no matter how terrible a one he might have been, he just drank himself insensible in the teahouse, gambled with money he didn’t have, and which no one ever asked for if he lost, and acted a fool instead.

When she framed it like that… their year of fighting… was like that, especially given their months in captivity… albeit much less horrific in its end, perhaps. Having arrived at this point… even after a few weeks, she was just unable to settle.

“Well, you’re a long way off that, honestly,” the Old Ghoblan observed, clearly registering her long face and conflicted expression that she could see reflected in the pond.

“There were people I saw… back home… who fought in wars, who just didn’t know how to stop when they got home,” she said eventually.

“Aye, a common problem,” Old Bones agreed. “Here, in a harsh land like this, the edge keeps you alive, but as you are finding, the edge can also follow you home. The problem with coddling children is that it just makes them more susceptible though. When it does happen to them, they don’t know how to deal with it.”

“And how do you… Ghoblan… deal with it?” she asked, eyeing him sideways again, still a bit annoyed over the memory itself, but determined not to rely on her mantra to get rid of that – she was still suffering symptoms of that overuse as well.

“Alcohol usually, or sex,” the Ghoblan cackled.

“…”

“You can’t tell someone else how to deal with it. The first step is largely knowing you do have to deal with it though, after that it becomes a lot easier. You just need time to adjust to something approaching ‘normality’ for you. That is all I can suggest.”

“…”

Seated in silence, watching the fish swim in the pond, she mulled that over. As far as advice went, it was useful, not quite what she had started the conversation considering… but also… well it was comforting in a way, she supposed.

“Don’t tell my dear what I suggested before that though; she gets ratty about that kind of thing,” Old Bones muttered after a moment, casting the line again.

She couldn’t help but laugh at that thought, because it was such a funny concern in such a heavy topic. It was true that Cailleach seemed to have ‘views’ about conduct here. There were also almost no women around who were not partnered with others she had already noted, outside of them and those who came with them. The vast majority of the Huldrekall and the others were all male, of that she was pretty certain – as were most of the actual Ghoblan living, or lurking in the hold.

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

~ ARAI – CAILLEACH’S HOLD, SINKHOLE ~

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

Seated on the large block that Sana had taken to using for her martial training, Arai found herself considering in detail Rusula’s issues with the arrays. They had worked for several hours on it, until Rusula had had to go rest, having overtaxed herself at last. It had certainly been… informative, for her at least. Probably for Rusula as well, assuming she wasn’t utterly disheartened by the whole experience. Rusula certainly had as much talent for exploding rocks as she had had when first starting out. That was why they had finished up all the way out here – Old Bones, who was fishing in one of the ponds while talking to Sana had thrown a fish at them in the end and told them to be considerate of others.

The whole thing had certainly highlighted some interesting differences between her own capabilities and Rusula’s – mainly in terms of qi refinement and control methods. Well, mana and qi methods, because Rusula was quite clear that she wasn’t using qi.

At first, she had wondered if that was what the problem was, but in the end, she had had to go all the way back to their very earliest efforts to demonstrate to herself as much as to Rusula that that was not what it was. That was the point they had been exiled out here – when Rusula proved herself every bit as adept at that as they had been.

It had taken a while after that, but she had finally got to the edge of the problem, or difficulty as it could also be termed. Back in the Cloud Arrow tribe’s settlement she had not asked anything regarding that, beyond managing to manoeuvre a conversation or two around to discussing ‘advancements’ and such. That had mostly been because she was still afraid of being found as not being whatever an ‘Ur’Sar’ was. Now she was somewhat clearer on that, at least by implication – although she fully intended to ask Cailleach for a full explanation whenever she next appeared – she was less concerned about revealing her ignorance of a few matters like this.

So, the explanation Rusula gave her, by way of their exploration of the ‘basics’ of the problem, had shown that her understanding of ‘Intent’ was the issue, and by extension, the fact that Ur’Inan didn’t use anything remotely like a cultivation law.

Ur’Inan tribes all had a singular symbol or set of symbols, akin to the ones she had begun thinking of as the ‘advanced’ ones, that were handed down as part of their clan and family lineages. All Ur’Inan children were totally mortal until they underwent puberty. At that point the tribe shamans did a big divination ceremony each year, on a particularly auspicious day – usually midsummer – and used that singular symbol, or one passed down within a family group along with an auspicious object associated with that person at birth to activate their mana.

Every few years this would result in the discovery of a child, like Rusula, who was particularly suited to mana manipulation. Those then became potential candidates to be apprentice shaman, assuming they didn’t die first.

Even more rarely, would this result in the manifestation of a physique, like the old shaman Angor had, according to Rusula. The tribe had some twenty such warriors, hunters, two of their shamans and a few others with such physiques, although only Angor’s was considered to be worthy of an epithet.

In any case, the issue was that ‘spellcasting’, as Rusula called the use of elemental attacks manifested through arts, was done and trained to work entirely through the shaman’s control of mana, supported by their connection to the ancestral heritage of their tribe. Rusula had no issues using the arts from the book because they had the basics of their ‘intent’ fused into the arrays, she had come to realise. It had barely been of relevance to them when they found the book, because their own grasp of intent at that point was sufficiently advanced that it easily substituted for that in the arts, and once they memorised them, it was moot. Only when using the art via the book was it a pertinent point, and that was what allowed someone like Rusula to use it like a treasure artefact, or a talisman with unlimited charges. When viewed like that, she finally understood why the Ur’Inan had been so shocked when she easily gave it away. To a tribe like the Cloud Arrows, it was a priceless weapon.

Regarding ‘Intent’ as she understood it, it was warriors and hunters who learned from a young age how to fight and, through that, master a form of ‘martial intent’, and indeed, their advancement was almost entirely related to intent and manipulating their mana in that style. That was why she had felt they were so close to body refinement cultivators.

Rusula’s problem, thus, was that she had no understanding of how to imbue intent into array centres, because shamans used the symbols they had in a totally different way, as personal body augments. On the face of it, this had a passing similarity to what she was doing with the symbols in her own dantian, but in terms of function the shamans treated them like she would her mantra. They could also paint them on others, and using the strength of their ancestral connection allow other Ur’Inan to use a lesser version of them.

She could see how it worked, and even the advantage of the Ur’Inan’s way, but it wasn’t half headache inducing in terms of her helping Rusula

Idly, she hopped off the rock and made her way over to the stone quarry in the far wall. With the leaf, she sheared off a rectangular block half a metre by half a metre and about one metre high and a flat metre square slab and took them out to the cleared area. It was a matter of a few moments to fuse the two using an array, at which point she sat back to consider what she actually intended to do with them.

Rusula’s ‘strength’ was akin to a powerful Soul Foundation expert, even if she didn’t have the ‘soul’ aspect of the foundation. The main issue was her lack of Intent as much as anything…

She stared at the pillar for a few minutes, walking around it pretty much at random, in the misty late afternoon light before sighing and conceding that she was better off just going and asking someone. It wasn’t like she could even give Rusula a mantra. While the West Flower Picking pavilion had had several – orphaned ones acquired through various means, such as the one Juni and Ling used – she had never made the effort to learn about them. There had never been any need, and who was she going to bestow one to anyway?

“Oh hindsight, get thee off my fate-thrashed lawn,” she proclaimed eventually, before turning on her heel and making her way back towards the hold proper.

The only methods for martial intent, or any kind of intent she had, could not be passed on either. Same with the ones Sana had from the pagoda. They had tried that and it had gotten nowhere; Sana had gotten very clear vibes that certain things should not be shared and that was that.

“I see you have finally given up murdering helpless rocks…” Old Bones remarked as she passed by his pond.

“I am sure they had it coming… somehow,” she grumbled, before stopping and realising that he was probably the person to ask. “Can I… ask you a question about cultivation methods?” she added.

“If by the esoterically obscure collections of cosmic illogic you call ‘cultivation laws’ by that, probably not,” Old Bones said drily. “I know Heaven’s Path practitioners, but I have never been one.”

She smiled wanly and shook her head. “No… not that, it’s to do with intent, and arrays.”

“Ah, I know where this is going – the little shamaness cannot use it to control the centres,” Old Bones nodded immediately.

“You knew that already and you let me explode rocks all afternoon?” she grumbled.

“What am I? Your grandfather? You worked it out on your own didn’t you?” the old Ghoblan snickered.

“…”

“Short of teaching her a martial cultivation form, which I don’t possess any of that can be shared,” she said, “is there any way for her to use them like I do?”

Old Bones cast his line out into the pond and was silent for an almost awkward length of time before speaking again.

“Do you wish to give her fish, or teach her to fish?”

“…”

-Uggh, elders and their metaphors. If you mean it, just say it, she complained in her head.

“The latter,” she said after a moment.

“Then you should go tell her to pick up a weapon and get good at hitting things,” Old Bones chuckled.

“Aren’t there more… well, less physical ways?” she frowned.

“You’re overthinking things; you worked out that intent was the problem, but the whole methodology of the Ur’Inan is different from your way of thinking. She doesn’t have to hit things with a sword. Get her to practice with a bow and arrow, or throwing things – rocks,” the old Ghoblan said with an amused laugh. “The easy way, to give her fish, is for you to draw the symbols with intent within them, and then let her comprehend them herself, in that manner. That is how they usually learn them.”

“That will limit their effectiveness though…” she pointed out, having run into that problem already, herself.

“The depth of understanding gained from them is indeed tied to that of the person who makes the array,” the Old Ghoblan said, staring at her with a different sort of amused expression.

“…”

She stared back at him, before standing up with a sigh.

“Thank you for the instruction, Elder Bones,” she saluted, mostly seriously, but with a faint hint of play in there as well.

“Scram – before I throw another fish at you,” Old Bones said, sticking his tongue out between pointed teeth.

Walking back through the fields towards the sinkhole, she had to reflect that her previous thought had been rather short-sighted.

“Too caught up in what others want, not enough with what I need…” she mused, putting her hands behind her back as she walked.

The answer, which Old Bones had pointed out in not so many words, was kind of obvious. If she wanted to teach Rusula those symbols, she could only do it herself, and she had admitted as much that she was not confident in her own depth of knowledge regarding them… so all she could do was get better at them herself.

Arriving before the stone pillar, she considered it and the various symbols she currently had an understanding of. They floated in her Sea of Knowledge like dim stars. Picking the most basic set from the academy, which she had spent the longest poring over, she drew upon her qi and considered her intent. ‘Sundering Intent’ wasn’t really suitable, so she took some of her Soul Intent instead and used that, infusing it into her qi.

With a final soft sigh, she sat down began to draw.

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

~ JUN HAN – WEST FLOWER PICKING TOWN ~

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

“How quickly a town changes,” Jun Han mused, looking at the patrol of guards from the Military Authority Bureau stalking through the river market, poking at various stalls in the misty rain.

Everywhere the sound of life nervously ‘continuing’ echoed. People hawked their goods, herbs were being sold… even some wild animals and such. People had to make a living, after all, in spite of everything else.

“As far as compromises go, it’s remarkable the province is not already embroiled in a war,” Mrs Leng, Yuan Leng, agreed as she sat next to him, watching several of her workers oversee the complex of stalls they were selling their spirit food at.

As far as changes went, Jun Han felt that he hadn’t seen such a relative spinning of a location on its social and political axis in such a short period of time since he was a mortal cultivator on Feilin continent in Ba Yan Tai Mortal World – the world of his birth. The new guards were mostly not the old guards. The Military Authority had rotated the Blue Water province legion out, almost in its entirety at this point. Not off world, at least not the rank and file, but they had been re-deployed to the Northern Tang continent, on the border of the Phoenix Pyre desert. Those who were now patrolling the streets were rapid deployment troops, brought in from the Eclipse Point while, presumably, someone in authority decided which legion got to do the dirty job of attempting to keep this province under their thumb.

“Did you hear, the rumour coming out of Blue Water city is that the Imperial Court has in fact appointed the legitimate duke?”

“What monkeyshit, the Azure Astral Authority would never permit such an outrage…”

“It’s true, there was a big battle in the city last night – between rebels and the Azure Astral forces…”

“Rebels? I heard it was the Lu clan…”

“But didn’t the Azure Astral Authority win? The military are…?”

“That’s what they are saying, but my cousin’s sister is a maid… at…”

“Nah, not the Lu Clan, some old ancestor from the Cao clan escaped, I heard…”

“I heard Saintess Meng was seen in Blue Water city…”

“I heard that there was a pitched battle between the new Military Authority for the town and the Deng clan to the north as well…”

“Get out. An Imperial Princess was one thing, but you think someone like her…?”

“Yeah, the Deng clan kicked their thieving asses I heard…”

“Could it have been Lady Meng Yang…?”

“Just because it’s the wet season doesn’t mean they won’t come kick your gossiping monkey butt.”

“Stop it…”

“Marshal Tai was at least a proper captain… knew what was what…”

“They hear you saying that, they’ll conscript you and send you up north as well…”

“Nameless-accursed weather, do we really need to deal with all of this?”

“…All the Imperial Court’s fault.”

“Yeah… although…”

“Certainly, the heavens are pissing on us…”

And so it went… around and around. The topics of conversation were myriad, but the theme was largely the same, because apparently, much like whatever had happened in Blue Water city, the climate in Yin Eclipse had finally decided to stabilize into a wet season of the kind astrologers and farmers alike would likely complain about for years to come.

“It seems that Yin Eclipse has a dark sense of humour at least,” he observed as the queue for food continued to shift.

“Well, this is what you get when you poke and prod too much,” Mrs Leng agreed, glancing up from whatever she was reading.

That made sense, on several levels…

*boom*

*zzzzzzzzap*

*Thwack*

“Oh, great,” Mrs Leng said, snapping her scroll shut and glancing in the direction of the river as others also ducked away for cover.

There was the sound of a warning bell, and the shimmer of a few distant formations in the rain, and then another series of small explosions and shouting. That was the other issue: The town was still half occupied by a huge number of young nobles from the central continent, a large swathe of them from sects you could only call hard-line Imperial loyalists.

“It is indeed remarkable that the town at least is not in a pitched battle,” he agreed, not needing to hide his own scowl as he peered through the mist that fuzzed soul sense and immortal sense to see what had occurred.

The scene calmed down after a few moments, and people started to pick themselves up or come out of whatever shelter they had briefly sought – picking up scattered umbrellas and the odd pack, helping their compatriots up… and yes, taking the opportunity to skip a few places in queues where it was convenient.

It took a few moments to find the unrest: – a fight, brawl really in a teahouse a few streets over with a view overlooking one of the broader canals that branched off the river. His soul sense, which could just reach that far in this quasi-rain if he properly focused, told him that the responsible parties were a bunch of youths who had gotten drunk and an argument about a table had morphed into some insult or other about the Imperial Empress. Two people had ended up in the river, while a third, from a sect he didn’t recognise, appeared to have been hurled into in a building across the street. The remainder were getting the snot beaten out of them by the teahouse guards now they had all been suppressed by the formations on the establishment.

“What happened, Sir Yuan?” one of the servers asked him nervously.

“Teahouse brawl between a bunch of youths,” he replied. “It seems to have been handled.”

“Thank goodness. I already had my house demolished once,” another muttered. “Don’t want the Military Authority trying to go for round two.”

“Bunch of dog-molesting brats,” another of the women scowled.

“Could they even catch local dogs to torment?” the old man who she was serving, who had just picked himself up, chuckled darkly.

“…”

He shared a chuckle with the others, less nervously though, and went back to scanning the market, or at least looking like it.

Outwardly, that was his cover now – a mercenary guard, from a small branch of the Yuan clan, called Yuan Zixin. Who the original Yuan Zixin had been, he had no idea, but Mrs Leng had produced that identity for him the previous night, and told him that that, as far as the world was concerned, was his name from now on. He was someone she had contracted through distant, reputable relatives out east – a Golden Immortal with a good history in these matters who had been adopted into the Yuan clan as a mortal world ascender some centuries prior.

He had been dubious that would ‘work’ given the scope of people ‘looking’ for him, but Tai Qiuyue, who had left for somewhere else early this morning, had just laughed at his worry and told him to just stick to his new identity and not be troubled by such inconsequential things and that even if the Emperor of Shan Lai himself came poking, he would be Yuan Zixin and not Jun Han henceforth.

As for Jun Han… he was… missing. There were, in fact, posters up with his face on them on the communal notice board, not 30 metres from their current spot.

‘Jun Han – missing – Military Envoy abducted during civil unrest. If any information is known, please contact the Military Authority clerks. A reward of 5 spirit jade for any credible information.’

Whatever Mrs Leng and Tai Qiuyue had done, it had been comprehensive. His house was a ruin and the Military Authority had offered a hefty reward for any information regarding his whereabouts. He was not the only one, admittedly. Several other local officials had gone missing and a few other important persons as well in the last week or two. His spat with the Jade Gate Court had turned out to be remarkably convenient there. They, of course, strenuously denied anything, but had also been about as cooperative as a bull being asked to walk backwards when pressed. The tangential links between one of their missing scions, the ludicrous ‘rebellion’ charges of before and his own daughters who most now thought dead, along with Kun Juni it seemed, had sealed the ‘scenario’ in most people’s minds.

“Stop worrying about it,” Mrs Leng chuckled. “You’re here to do a job, that’s all.”

“It’s a bit…” he sighed, and focused himself. It had been a hard few days, weeks even, but she was right. “Never would I have thought I would be back in a position like this.”

Even when he was still a mortal cultivator, back home… the series of events where the sect he had been part of had been overturned when a new emperor was crowned had been… nothing compared to this.

“I know, it’s not what you agreed to, but who could expect what today would bring, compared to yesterday… or the day before,” the old woman grumbled. “It’s a miracle of heaven we are not in a war right now.”

“Indeed,” one of the serving girls nearby muttered, making an auspicious sign as she looked for some spirit herb in a crate.

That was, indeed, true – whatever had happened the previous night in Blue Water city, under the onset of the seasonal rains, had put a hard break on the Azure Astral Authority’s re-occupation of the province. Whoever was responsible had basically stuck a foot out of the darkness and tripped everyone flat on their faces, near enough.

“I take it you have no thoughts on who was responsible?” he murmured.

“…”

“There are many rumours. Some of them may even be true. We will no doubt find out when the dust settles,” Mrs Leng replied rather drolly.

He shook his head and went back to looking at the market. Her reply was as close to a non-answer as possible… and yet… it was hard not to wonder if the people doing the tripping were not, in fact, other members of the Solitary Slaughter Sept. From what he knew of them, even just from his time in the Military Authority, they could achieve a thing like this. As a dark organisation, they were the most feared and elusive for a reason.

The man he had seen that time, in the midst of the ruins of the Blood Eclipse Cult’s headquarters, was the Rage of Solitary Slaughter – Yuan Leng had shown him the signs of all seven.

‘The Rage’ was a myth who had slaughtered an entire Imperial Palace and executed an Emperor over a single dead child and slain three dukes on two continents since then. Between them, the seven had a reputation that even an unlettered child in a slum knew: folk heroes, myths and living monsters. Dozens of stories and feats attributed to them… including three dead Emperors, one Empress, a visiting Envoy of the Mo clan, several Azure Astral Envoys, a bevy of Dukes and any number of evil cults and notorious villains and clans had fallen out of history over the years. Their demise attributed to that mythical, folkloric group of seven.

Even the upper echelons of Eastern Azure’s Military Authority, presumably with the support of Shan Lai, had gotten nowhere, despite them slaying two generals, an entire battalion of a legion and an adjunct from Shan Lai on the northern continent in the last thousand years.

“Sir Yuan?” He glanced over at the young woman called Ning Sora who had spoken to him, who he had apparently not replied to.

She was offering him a bowl of nourishing spirit food broth.

“Apologies,” he bowed to her politely and took the food and the flatbread that came with it with a smile. She blushed slightly and nodded before turning back to the pot and pouring out some of the others’ portions.

“…”

He took a deep drink of the soup, to avoid having to deal with the fact that someone who had been a passing acquaintance of his daughters and was only 26 years old and a distant relative of Old Fang at that was trying to flirt with him, on a day like today.

The chilled soup was excellent though, with a sort of cool spice to it that took away the humidity of the day a little bit. It was the reason why there was a small crowd around their portion of the market. Most of the nearby stalls were all those of Mrs Leng’s friends or associates as well.

“Oi OI!” shouts from the back of the crowd made him sigh and put down the bowl.

A group of a dozen youths, accompanying five wearing the robes of junior officials from the Hunter Pavilion, pushed their way through the crowd with a certain amount of force. Eyeing the group accompanying them, he had to admit they were not from any influence he recognised.

People grumbled and shuffled out of the way as best they could. Two of the other guards on the stall, who were outside, tried to move forward only to find themselves blocked by the people retreating. A few more testy ones pushed back. A group of youths who had been queuing up from one of the local ‘social associations’ that really should be called gangs started to obstruct the new arrivals…

“Enough,” he snapped, as one of the group appeared to reflexively take a stray kick at a child who had been caught in the kerfuffle and separated from his parents, having failed to get out of the way fast enough.

The word, infused with a bit of his intent, echoed through the crowd and made most of them still or flinch. The youths from both parties all winced as well and were brought up short. It was a good thing they stopped too, because while the members of the local ‘gang’ were mostly Golden Core or Soul Foundation, two of those with the new arrivals were Dao Seeking or Severing Origins. Three of the junior officials were Immortal, he noted, wearing the markings of eight star ranked herb hunters. The leader, who was standing beside the youth who had originally shouted, was a junior official with three silver slashes and six bronze slashes on his azure robe, which had a gold trim.

-They wasted no time reintroducing those extra status ranks, it seems, he sneered inwardly.

Stepping forward, he leant on the counter and looked them over with narrowed eyes.

“Please stop causing a ruckus,” he said, projecting his voice through the crowd again. “There is more than enough for everyone.”

“Then these people should not have obstructed, guard,” one of the youths with the hunters said flatly, having recovered his composure.

“Hey, old man…” one of the gang members scowled before his compatriots noted the other guards looking at them pityingly and started to back up.

“Stay there,” he said with a polite cough, locking that entire group down.

“…”

The crowd had mostly shuffled back now.

“This is the stall of Leng Shuang?” one of the youths of the accompanying group said.

-Shuang? It took him a moment to realise that he had asked for Mrs Leng by her given name.

“It is,” he nodded.

“Our young lord is hosting a banquet for many outstanding figures in the younger generation this evening. We are here on his behalf after he was was informed that she is the premier spirit food cook in this… town. He hopes it would be her especial honour to provide food for Young Noble Fan Peizhi's banquet for this evening.”

“For that you make this kind of fuss?” he asked dubiously, looking at the scattered crowd.

“What Young Master Peizhi asks for, it is beholden on others to give,” another youth said with a perfectly straight face. “This is a great honour? Young Noble Rua here is…”

“…”

-Just who exactly taught this moron morals? he thought in the privacy of his own mind, even as the crowd just stared dully at the youth. They come here asking this for his ‘boss’ who is literally called ‘respectful’ and his subordinates are…

It was an effort not to put his hand to his face. A few others, further back, were incapable of that self-control – the youths from the local gang had expressions bordering between incredulity, and others looking like they have just seen their new idol in shamelessness descend like Buddha from the heavens.

“Apologise to the people here before anything else,” Mrs Leng said softly.

The affronted-looking youth almost expanded as he drew himself up, while the others, having taken a quick look at the rather impoverished attire of most present started to look gloomy.

“Or scram and never enter my sight again, any of you.” Mrs Leng added.

Exhaling, he used his movement art to arrive at the other side of the stall in the blink of an eye, pressing a palm gently against the Dao Seeking boy’s chest. All the youth’s qi faded away and he collapsed to the ground looking like a squid someone had stood on, limbs pale and shaking.

“I believe Mrs Leng was quite clear,” he said softly. “While supplying spirit food–“

“Guard, do be silent. He was not speaking to you,” one of the Immortals said. “And you have laid hands on one of our compatriots… This is–”

“This is not a place without laws,” he said pointedly, holding up his militia talisman that all mercenary guards in the town had to bear. “Unless the Military Authority has all left in the last ten minutes and nobody noticed?”

“…”

“I think you will find, guard, that our patience has limits,” the second Immortal muttered, taking out a talisman.

“Please, this is not how this should go,” the last Immortal, a youth with the gold-trimmed robe, who was presumably Young Noble Rua, said with a rather awkward smile, finally speaking up. “My compatriots are…”

“Young Master, you must think of your status!” several of the other goons all said at once.

“My compatriots were overly forceful. It is Young Noble Peizhi’s hope that you would provide spirit food for his banquet. He has just become the leader of the younger generation within this hunter pavilion. He is a Nine-Star Ranked Hunter, a person of some renown,” Young Noble Rua said, evidently attempting to lionize his acquaintance.

“You may place an order, but today it is impossible,” Mrs Leng said simply. “Perhaps for his next banquet, if he comes and asks in person.”

“This old man asks you to give Young Master Rua face,” an older man in a grey robe appeared like a ghost beside the youth and spoke directly to Mrs Leng.

He exhaled, because the old man was like him, a Golden Immortal, and one with an unusually formidable strength as well.

“I don’t believe I am familiar with Young Master Rua?” he asked politely.

“A guard, dares to ask?” the Immortal standing beside Young Master Rua scowled, looking sideways. “Old Dee, please.”

The old man glanced at the trio, then at him, and sighed. In the same instant he felt the strength of the old man’s intent encompass him. It was fairly forceful, and would have driven a Chosen Immortal to their knees coughing blood – embarrassing, but doing no lasting harm. On the other hand, he had no intention of being made to kneel to a bunch of half-cocked brats, so he matched it with his own intent, making the old man named Dee blink in shock and take half a step backwards.

“Mai…” Mrs Leng said softly.

Yuan Mai stood, like she had always been there, beside the old man, a hand resting gently on his arm, as if she were helping him avoid falling.

“Good Sir, I ask you politely to give my mother, Mrs Leng here, some face and not make a scene. The popularity of her spirit food is well known, but the town has undergone some difficulties, so she has sworn to her ancestors to help the common folk as best she can – Young Noble Peizhi’s request is a considerable honour, however, before an oath to heaven and our most austere ancestors to help the common folk, even an Emperor should stand aside?”

It took all his composure not to stare, because, in that instant, he realised he couldn’t see through Yuan Mai either. The old man’s face went a trifle sickly and he patted her hand warily.

“Thank you for explaining, young miss… much appreciated… much appreciated… very righteous…”

“Old Dee?” the youth scowled.

“Young Master Chao, Young Lord Rua… it seems we should give the good shopkeeper a little face. Our family is new to this town after all… Please accept this as our Quan family’s gift to the people,” the old man said, recovering himself smoothly and placing an amber jade talisman on the counter of the stall.

He had to sigh and admire the old man – clearly he was someone who had quite a bit of experience in keeping idiots in check. But he couldn’t help but note that the Quan family’s servant was perhaps a bit too accustomed to using gifts as a means to smooth over misconduct and awkward situations.

“There is still the matter of the insult to my son,” Mrs Leng said softly.

“Your… son?” the old man blinked, eyeing him again.

“Yuan Zixin is my adopted son,” Mrs Leng said with a smile that never reached her eyes. “He has come to help his mother in these unstable and troubling times.”

“Ah…” Quan Rua genuinely did put a hand to his head, while the other two immortals suddenly looked a bit… off-kilter.

“He is a member of the younger generation,” Mrs Leng said with a faint smile.

“Oh.” The old man suddenly looked more serious, realising what could very well happen here.

The youth, Chao, had wisely shut up, or, judging by his expression, was perhaps being kept quiet by the old man.

“On behalf of my younger brother Chao, I extend my apologies,” Quan Rua said bowing politely. He noted that the youth’s apologetic smile never reached his eyes though.

-So you will bow to power, but you still think I am beneath you? He chuckled inwardly.

“This old man is Dee Wenfa, an old servant of the Quan family. I also apologise for the previous disrespect. It was beneath me to strike a junior; my ignorance is no excuse!”

Dee Wenfa, who was clearly a much better judge of strength than either young noble, did bow properly.

Mrs Leng nodded and turned back to the book she was reading.

He watched as the group were speedily led back by the old man, not quite being dragged by his qi, but it was close. Yuan Mai had, he realised, vanished back into the crowd. He thought he caught a glimpse of her shopping at a distant stall as if nothing had ever happened.

“Quan family eh…” Mrs Leng mused, when they were far out of earshot. “So that is how the Azure Astral Authority plans to handle this.”

“I can’t say I have heard of them…” Sora, who was nearby, muttered.

“I would be surprised if you had, dear. They are from Shan Lai.”

“How…?” another of the young women asked.

“They have set up a stable greater teleport gate, I have to assume,” he replied.

“A stable... gate?” Sora said a bit confused.

“Normally, people cannot leave a world before Dao Immortal, simply because travelling through the void is impossible for them, and the anchor of the world’s fate is too strong until they cross that threshold. Shan Lai, however, is a throne world. The way to go around this is to set up a Greater Teleportation gate that has been attuned to both destinations. It is… expensive.”

“A strategic weapon almost,” Mrs Leng agreed.

“They are bringing minor branches of noble families from Sheng and Fan lands on Shan Lai…” he nodded. “To settle in the town and others.”

“To settle?” another of the serving women said dully.

“Indeed, they plan to solve the issue of having no clans here to provide backing and land for their control of the three Bureaus in key places like this by settling new ones,” he muttered. Just like the Imperial Court did all those millenia ago after the Blue Water sage departed.

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

~ HA LENG – HA CLAN ESTATES ~

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

“SEEING ANCESTRAL YOUNG MISS!”

“SEEING ANCESTRAL YOUNG MISS!”

“SEEING ANCESTRAL YOUNG MISS!”

The triple salute echoed through the main estate of the Ha clan, located some miles outside of West Flower Picking town. Ha Leng knelt, along with Lan Huang, off to one side of the great courtyard, unmarked by anyone there. The only person not kneeling at this point, was Ha Kai, stood quietly in the shadows behind them. As the aforementioned ‘Young Miss’s great grand uncle,’ as he understood it, Ha Kai was presumably too senior to bother.

“THE HA CLAN GREETS YOUNG LADY TAI!”

The supreme elder almost wailed the salute, as did all the other assembled elders – bowing three times, yet again, to the young woman with dark hair, wearing a white, red and purple robe embroidered with patterns resembling cherry blossoms and snow and with a hairpin shaped like a cherry blossom affixed to her veil, who was stood before the family gate.

They all bowed again as the Patriarch called out the final salute.

“THE HA CLAN GREETS THE TAI CLAN!”

“GREETS THE TAI CLAN!”

The entire concourse, of several thousand people, everyone from servants to disciples to guest officials all, almost screamed the greeting in refrain – then everyone, right up to the Patriarch, bowed a final time and stayed kneeling. The Patriarch poured a bowl of wine and, head still bowed, offered it to her. She took a sip and saluted to the altar before pouring the rest on the altar.

Finally, she turned back to the hall and spoke.

“The Tai Clan greets the Ha Clan,” Tai Yanmei said simply, waving for the ‘old’ man to rise.

“She does love to make scenes,” Ha Kai muttered.

The unsolicited arrival of Tai Yanmei on the front doorstep of the Ha family’s ancestral gate that morning had provoked nothing short of turmoil. Terrified shock as well, once they realised who exactly they were dealing with. Ha Leng found that he was… weirdly unaffected by it all.

-That’s because I’ve been around far too many… eccentric old seniors, he corrected his thought without even really thinking about it, then sighed for his lost innocence.

The real reason for all the frenzied salutation, Lan Huang had already explained. There were influences and then there were influences. Everyone sort of knew that the Tai clan and the Ha clan had very ancient shared origins in this part of the world, and their early generations had been closely linked – what he, and he was certain most others here, had not known was that the Tai Clan was affiliated with North Star Grotto.

The North Star Grotto.

When you thought of the Cardinal Courts, you thought either of the aloof and mysterious Turquoise Pond with its celestial beauties, its divine music and connection to the mythological Luan… or the power and the glory of Vast Obscurity Grove, with its Phoenixes and heavenly trees and the Meng clan. Nobody thought too much about God Slaughtering Hall, and that was good, because the Eastern Court was… not auspicious. As to North Star Grotto, it always seemed to fall off the list, mostly because they were quite low key – of late. Lan Huang’s stress on that ‘of late’ though, had said more about that than any pictures ever could.

“Tai Yanmei sees Great Grand Uncle,” the woman suddenly bowed in their direction.

“Bollocks, that girl’s eyes are too good,” Ha Kai muttered. “I only came to see that she didn’t cause a ruckus and now she uses me to cause a ruckus, is this also karma?”

Lan Huang had an expression that said quite clearly ‘this is not a thing which we have heard’, and he had to agree.

There was a murmur spreading within the assembly and then Ha Kai’s robe shifted and he suddenly stood in the middle of the square. Before, he had looked a bit like a rumpled scholar, wearing robes in the Ha clan colours, but in a style that most junior disciples would have been embarrassed for. Now, he looked like a proper old ancestor though. The air fairly wavered around him, his robe was purple and grey, with gold and deeper purple foxes dancing with serpents around its hem. The symbol ‘Ha’ shimmered on the back, and on his head he wore a scholar’s crown.

“SEES SEVENTH ANCIENT ANCESTOR!”

Every person in the square, who only a moment earlier had finally be able to stand up, all hit the ground again and bowed their heads to the ground with a synchronous impact that nearly drowned out the salute.

“Please, stand,” Ha Kai said blandly, waving a hand.

“You look… well, great grand niece,” Ha Kai said with a polite salute. “I see you have flourished under my little sister’s tutelage.”

“Your little sister has gotten tired of your playing games and sent her disciple to come here in person,” Tai Yanmei replied blandly. “It was that, she said, or receive the same ‘message’ for a fourth time in all likelihood.”

“…”

“Qiuyue is here?”

“You thought they would let me come out to this ‘dangerous’ backwater all alone?” Tai Yanmei said with a light laugh.

“…”

“May the heavens have mercy upon our world,” Lan Huang muttered.

“Who is she talking about?” he whispered.

“Erm… Tai Qiuyue, the North Star Sovereign,” Lan Huang murmured. “She is… a figure of a certain repute. We will talk about it later, if you truly decide you wish to never sleep again at night.”

“How is Grandpa Tai?” Yanmei added. “I don’t see him around?”

“Your grandpa is… grappling with a matter of some personal disrespect,” Ha Kai replied with a certain aplomb.

“Someone disrespected Grandpa Tai?” Yanmei said dully.

The whole courtyard flinched slightly at that statement and the way she managed to make the word ‘disrespect’ sound like an evil curse.

“Yes, a junior no less, goes by several names, but the most pertinent is Kong Di Ji. Your grandpa, being a deeply moral and upstanding figure, is meditating on how he can answer this question of disrespect appropriately, without demeaning his status as a venerable senior of the world.”

“Whelp, that’s that,” Lan Huang said simply.

“…”

“I mean... if we haven’t found him… and that other…” he asked, confused, thinking back to their strange meeting in West Flower Picking town of a few days prior.

“Daughter Yanmei is a member of the younger generation; she is 97 years old and at the peak of Dao Sovereign,” Lan Huang muttered. “The only reason she isn’t considered a Saintess in this generation by the Grotto is that Xue Suyin is 82 and an early stage Dao Ascendant.”

“…”

He stared dully at the beautiful young woman, feeling like his throughs had become slightly dissociated with reality for a moment.

“This is the terror of an influence like North Star Grotto,” Lan Huang said sympathetically, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Their means are not like you or I can consider. Their means are beyond most Heavenly clans.”

Frowning, he tried to work out…

-Oh.

“Oh,” he muttered. “That’s… isn’t that basically cheating though?”

“People make the rules, then they have to live by them,” Lan Huang answered after a quiet and quite nasty laugh. “A bunch of very influential Heavenly Clans about twenty thousand years back, after the Huang-Mo wars, got together and decided on an ‘exception’ to the 9000 years in a generation before Dao Immortal norm that most hold by. One Hundred Years to Dao Ascension, basically a way of flashing their reputation and their backing by saying they can be profligate enough to raise a person like that in a generation – they then started calling them Young Sovereigns, to ape the idea of the Sovereign Venerates of the four Cardinal Courts. It somewhat backfired though… It worked well enough for a while… until they started using it to bully others rather than competing among themselves.”

“Oh…” he understood what Teacher Lan meant now.

Those clans had made that rule and made a big deal of it, and then their juniors had started using it to bully others, presumably with the tacit approval of their elders. It was… exactly like the whole mess around the grand auction in Blue Water city a few weeks back in all likelihood. Probably they had won some success, then a bunch of other influences had also gotten in on the matter and, when the original core group complained, were left with the choice of admitting that their ‘juniors’ were now in fact ‘seniors’ opening them up to all sorts of other examination, or sucking it up and running with the devil they had unleashed.

“Clearly they decided to run with the devil they made rather than call it quits,” he said after a moment.

“Of course they did,” Lan Huang chuckled. “Do you have any idea how much it costs to nurture a Dao Ascendant in that kind of time? Talent obviously plays a big role, but not as large a one as you might think. Mostly it’s old elders twisting heaven and earth to make favourable conditions and massively stack the deck. The junior in question is beside the point; the effort that went into nurturing them is the statement. If you abandoned that, the face that would be lost would be so massive you would be a laughingstock.”

“So... for someone like Holy Daughter Yanmei?”

“She is a once in ten generations talent, taught personally by several renowned persons, her showing up here is… like an Imperial Princess coming to visit her childhood home in some backwater village,” Lan Huang added. “But that isn’t really the point – if someone like her comes out and decides to seek justice on behalf of her grandfather, as an act of filial piety, that’s tantamount to the Tai clan giving the Imperial court a box of rancid monkey piss as a first greetings gift. Even the Kong clan will think twice about annoying this kind of evil star. Di Ji was heralded as being a candidate for their…”

“This person, how did he disrespect grandfather?” Yanmei asked frowning.

“He was a candidate the Kong and Dun clans saw as a potential youth sovereign, a member of the Din clan as well. He stated that he was a talent that eclipsed all others,” Ha Kai said with a sigh. “He even mentioned your grandfather by name and called him a waste for still being a Dao Ascendant after all this time, despite being so talented in his early years…”

“As in the clan that killed ancestral senior brother?” Yanmei said flatly. “This Di clan, dares to consider itself as having a talent worthy of being compared to Grandpa Tai?

“After the face Ancestral Uncle gave them before? This is a direct insult to my Tai clan!"

“This is… indeed a very difficult problem for your grandfather—” Ha Kai agreed with a weary sigh, taking Yanmei’s hands.

“…”

“Is he just?” he stated dully at Ancestor Kai wiping way faux tears and bowing to Yanmei.

“—On behalf of my poor father, who is wrestling with this matter, I hope you can understand why he is unable to be here to see you, his beloved grand-daughter.”

“Uhuh…” Lan Huang agreed, sounding… impressed. “This is the reason why you walk softly around these old seniors who have been around a good while. Their means are not like you or I can imagine.”

“Uncle Kai,” Yanmei replied seriously, taking his hands and stopping Ha Kai bowing again. “This… disrespect, please allow me to seek an account regarding it. The Di clan, the Din clan and the Dun clan… the Kong clan—they are simply showing our Tai clan no face here at all!”

“Ah… that… such a thing, your grandfather will be troubled if you involve yourself,” Ha Kai sighed, again clasping her hands. “He would not know how to face your teacher, or my little sister!”

“Nonsense, Uncle. This matter, they are playing with the norms and disrespecting my grandfather’s status. As I said, this is simply showing our Tai clan and the Ha clan no face at all. I cannot accept this. Please allow me to seek an account.”

“…”

Ha Kai sighed deeply and bowed fully at the waist to Tai Yanmei before straightening.

“Please consider your grandfather’s position deeply.”

“Oh, I shall,” Yanmei almost purred, the air around her starting to shift slightly even as she returned Ha Kai's bow with one of her own.

“That sound you hear?” Lan Huang said drily. “That is the sound of every divination compass the Din and Di clans have showing ‘death in four directions’.”

“…”

He nodded mutely, staring around at the rest of those assembled. From the most august elders, to Patriach Dongfei, to the Clan Lord, to his own family, right down to the lowliest scion, the entirety of the Ha clan in assembly might as well have been carved of stone.