> Few places have elicited such furore and bloodshed by sideways means as the lingering rumours surrounding the heart of the ‘Darklands’ in the Great Savannah. The Gate of Sun, as it was known to the first settlers of the plains who came from the Eternal City, was, even then, a place that held profound mysteries. Though the best scholars of this era are fairly categorical that they never made it further east than the Solaneum, the seat of their ancient compact with the Queens of the Hibric tribes, those who came after were in turn fascinated, desirous and envious of what fruits they found and the rumours of what they might have hidden away while we were still trying to fight our way into the passes of Avamoor on the far side of that ancient domain.

>

> Much has been said elsewhere about the horror wrought by the decadence and desperation of the fading embers of the Eternal City’s glory years and the early shadow of tyranny that slunk back south to the Dominion of Old Kingdoms, soon to be reformed from the ashes of the Succession War. Instead, I will talk here about one of the most enduring siren calls of calamity that arose out of that era.

>

> Yogo Shada.

>

> When the first brave pioneers seeking fortune and new horizons arrived in those lands, even before the High King of Carrolan had drafted the proclamation for the land’s rightful liberation from chaos all they found was ruin and enigma. Starting with Solaneum, all the cities were devoid of life and everywhere the chaotic savagery of the clay-bound demon spawn of the sorcerer lords of ancient Ur’Mammon ran unchecked. What enclaves of men remained were besieged on the coast, their lords long fled and their treasures already resting in old kingdom vaults.

>

> It is there that we can first trace the persistent rumours of ‘Yogo Shada in the West’ to something more than the ravings of drunken lunatics lost in their libraries of mouldering scrolls. Before that war, there was little knowledge of those savage folk in that land. If they existed at all they were likely purged by devilish elvish spears or Sovereign Steel of the Old Kingdoms and the riddle of their reappearance would eventually lead to persistent rumours of the ‘Totem of Vash’, long associated with the ancient sorcerers of that ancient era and the means by which they held dominion.

>

> The second echo of that fabled place came in fact from those silent cities themselves, for they turned out to be anything but – within them, their occupants still lingered, remnant shades bound between life and death in a deathless struggle against all who might fall to defilement. Eventually, our mighty mages succeeded in sealing them away, but when they did, they found again, at the root of that malignancy born of desperate men, echoes of another ancient tale of that era – ‘The One Language’.

Excerpt from ‘The Enduring Myth of Yogo Shada’

  ~By Martel Caerlan, Chronicler of Avamoor.

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~ JUNI, LING & CHUNHUA – BREAKFAST WITH THE UR’INAN ~

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Sunrise on the plains was invariably beautiful, Juni had to acknowledge as she watched the first rays of sun creep over the horizon. Nearby, Lashaan, one of the Ur’Inan womenfolk, was quietly playing on a flute of reeds, a strange, haunting melody that melded with the natural sounds of the early dawn. As she listened, focusing on the sunrise with ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ and ‘Bright Lotus Eyes’, she found it carrying echoes of the wild calls and the wind on the grass, melding them so harmoniously that had she not seen the woman playing she would have thought it a natural phenomenon.

As she watched, the other Ur’Inan all stood with the first sunrise and bowed to it, holding up bowls of their honeyed alcohol and murmuring variously in Easten.

“Salutations, Father of Sun…”

“Salutations, Maker of Names, who gave meaning to the day…”

“Salutations for your great achievements!”

“Praise be upon your advent…”

They all held up the bowls until the first rays of the sun had fully stretched across the rocks around them. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lin Ling pick up a handful of dirt and clasp it in her hands for a moment before letting it fall. Teng Chunhua, also watching from the side, mirrored the gesture. She followed suit as well, still contemplating the sunrise and how the first emergence of new yang was mixing with fading celestial yin.

Once the moment had passed, the Ur’Inan all drank a toast from the wooden cups, even the children, who had a strange symbol drawn on their heads with the wine, then the rest was poured over the rocks and the stone vessels then put in the fire.

After that, the camp became all hustle and bustle as breakfast was prepared – a major element of which turned out to be the rest of the meat that Lin Ling had provided as their hospitality gift.

“You find our ways strange, no doubt?” the older Ur’Inan woman, called Naakai, said with a faint smile as they sat around the fire, eating the roasted meat with a kind of seed porridge and wild honey.

“The ways of the world are many,” she supplied politely, suddenly very glad she had seen any number of formations masters and feng shui experts spewing auspicious platitudes over the years. “It is important to meet the day in an auspicious manner.”

“It is,” one of the younger male Ur’Inan, called Teshek, agreed. “Especially out here, where death walks with many faces, all of them depressingly familiar.”

“You should not grow up to be like him though,” Naakai chuckled. “Enjoy youth, leave the preaching to us old bones who can only follow on behind telling you where to step.”

“…”

Her comment got a few sideways looks and made Teshek look a bit shifty.

The old Ur’Inan hunter, Naakos, who was Naakai’s brother, chuckled and poked the fire before turning to Lin Ling.

“What path do you plan to take today?”

“Mmmmm…” Lin Ling frowned and stared at the sky for a moment.

“We must travel north, so I guess we will just have to pick the most auspicious path.”

“It is better that you head east first then,” Naakos mused. “The lands to the north and west have undergone changes in the last months.”

“Ohh?” she cut on.

“The Ur’Vash tribes here tend to avoid this place anyway,” Naakai nodded, “although if you were passing through, those scammers in Bad Mango probably told you there was good game out here.”

“…”

“We crossed paths, yes,” Chunhua muttered, spitting into the fire.

“An interesting name for the town,” she added.

“A corruption of the old tongue,” Naakai chuckled. “They treat words of life and death cheaply and took the name for the town out of a bad joke on what is on those ruined boundary stones for this ancient territory of the first peoples.”

“The Land Bad Man Go-” Lin Ling nodded.

“The ancient texts of those monuments do not have an easy relationship to grammar,” Naakos said, sounding amused as he stroked his beard. “If you were to write that today, it would be ‘The Land is bad, Man Go-‘, where ‘Go’ is actually ‘God’.”

“The same warning shows up on other boundary markers, or something like it, all along the edge of the Western Badlands,” Naakai added. “It tends to read as some variant of ‘The Land is Bad, Man-God’s servants ruined it for greed of stolen gifts.’”

“When you say ruined?” she asked carefully.

“Cursed… mostly,” Naakos shrugged. “Although around here that doesn’t say much, in truth.”

“No, it doesn’t,” another of the younger female hunters, Lashaan, added, picking up her bowl of porridge. “You can throw a rock around here and you will hit something someone will claim was cursed by a ‘god’.”

-Great, she sighed inwardly, and the trail we are tracking runs vaguely north-east as well.

“The Vash tribes laugh at it, create things like ‘Bad Mango’ to remember after a fashion, because the alternative leads to a dark pit they will not crawl out of. They fear their past, even as they seek ways to overcome it-”

“Or covet it,” Naakos grumbled.

“-We can be charitable – the tribes of the deeps are not good,” Naakai cut back in with a rather… odd tone, she thought.

-So there are differences in opinion regarding whatever was going on in the mountains that we walked right into?

“At least, even if it is a terrible joke, some aspect of those dark things are remembered – even if it is only ‘don’t go to Bad Mango, because their jokes are even worse than their brigandry’,” another hunter chuckled.

“Or, they just care little for the past, living only in the here and now,” Teshek grumbled.

“True, true,” Naakos said with a resigned sigh. “It is easy to remember a thing because it has a funny name – much easier than recalling why it got that name in the first place.”

“Their brigandry was certainly more convincing than their ‘humour’,” Lin Ling snickered, which got quite a few laughs from those around the fire as well.

“That is indisputable at least,” Naakai agreed with an eye roll, finishing serving out porridge to the last of those who had arrived around the fire. “The root of the curse is associated with the fate of Vashada, about 200 miles north of here, on the banks of the great river Buranuna.”

“Vashada?” Lin Ling asked with a faint frown.

“A city, founded in a previous era, before the great calamity overturned everything,” Naakai elaborated.

“Like Ajara?” she added.

“…”

The others laughed, as if amused by the comparison.

“Yes, although a hundred times the size. Vashada at its peak was home to a million souls, maybe more – or so the tales go,” Naakai said with an amused smile.

“What happened to it?” Chunhua asked, clearly also curious.

“It was ruined long ago – a tragedy of greed and pride. Vashada was the site where, tradition holds, the Vash tribes first arrived in this land with the help of our ancient ancestors. It was their most holy city, but it was ruined by that ancient history, because when men came out of the west, after the ruin of the Great Defilement in the previous era, they believed the tales that it was a place called Yogo Shada.”

“So why do we need to avoid that land?” she asked, moving the conversation back on track, not that ancient history of this place wasn’t interesting.

“The land is broken, the paths through it severed,” Naakai explained. “Also, in the last two months Death Watch have been spotted within its ruins.”

At the mention of ‘Death Watch’ the others all made signs she assumed were intended to ward off misfortune.

“The Death Watch are a thing of the Western Badlands, and the Thunder Crest heights. Of the cursed cities of ancient men,” Naakos grunted.

“That they are also out here was an unpleasant surprise,” Lashaan added, with others nodding.

“What are they?” she asked.

“Undead, to be blunt,” Teshek supplied, after swallowing down a mouthful of porridge.

“Undead…?” she repeated, then recalled that the Ur’Vash had been big on cremating the bodies on the battlefield.

“Yes, and not the easy-to-deal-with kind,” Naakai sighed.

“There are undead that are ‘easy’ to deal with?” Chunhua muttered, sounding disbelieving.

“Hah… indeed there are no easy undead, but it is relative. The Death Watch, as they are most commonly called, are in effect cursed. The tales themselves are only known to us very tangentially, but they were the ancient folk who built many of the ruins you see around you in this land. They came from across the ocean originally, but by the time the settlers of the west had arrived their power was waning in the face of the toil this land instils. Eventually, so our tales of that time tell, they were betrayed by circumstance, or by the poor choices of their new Lords and came to ruin during the ‘Great Defilement’ – that the histories of humanfolk called the ‘Nightmare of Neron’.

“Their lords coveted their lands but not so much their people, or so the tale goes,” Naakos chuckled darkly. “They lingered in sending aid while the rulers of those towns fought against a warlord who had unified many of the Vash and Akun tribes to try and reclaim these lands.”

“Ah… so they played politics, hoping to weaken the hand of their erstwhile allies and misjudged matters?” she asked.

“Yes, I suppose,” Naakai agreed. “By the time they realised their mistake, Valinkar upon the waters had fallen and Menacarus was drowned by the river, cutting off their route back, which those Lords neglected because they saw the elvish warriors from across the sea as their most dangerous foe.”

“So these cities were reclaimed by… the tribes of that time?” Chunhua interjected.

“If only it had been so,” Naakai sighed. “The warriors of Kromua, warlord of the Spider Eye tribe, had already been consumed by darkness, just as the pitiable and accursed Mo’Kratha was long ago. Rather than fall to that ancient curse or abandon their peoples and homelands, the Lords of the Nine Cities, as they were once known, used a dreadful means and cast away their ‘future’ so that their ‘past’ would not be corrupted. In their eyes they held that they would become ‘Immortal’ by their action and thus remembered forever, which they have, after a fashion I suppose.”

“It is hard to forget about the hordes of deathless revenants that pop up periodically,” Naakos grumbled while others nearby just laughed a bit bitterly.

“…”

She was about to say that that wasn’t what an ‘Immortal’ was before catching herself and just nodding slowly.

“So how do you deal with them?” Lin Ling asked instead.

“Deal with them?” Naakos barked a laugh while a few others shook their heads.

“We avoid their resting places in the Badlands and let them well alone,” Eruua, another of the female hunters, muttered.

“They cannot die. You can put them down, scatter them, burn them and so on, but their curse will always return them to the fight,” Caanar muttered.

“Not even by the means of great shamans?” Lin Ling asked, affecting to sound a bit overawed.

“Some have certainly tried; even succeeded, supposedly,” Naakai replied to her, sighing a bit. “Tales speak of the Ironwytch ameliorating some elements of their grudge in the east, or it could be Grimvak, her ‘deathless daughter’, Shamaness of Vaksha, who was responsible. She is also reputed to have done so in the early days of our time in these lands – reclaiming Solaneum for those tribes she favours.”

“This is why settling down in mud huts made by others is never good,” Teshek complained, “It breeds weakness and ignorance of the world.”

She didn’t quite follow that jump. Likely he was implying that the Ur’Vash, in settling those ruins with the aid of others, were growing soft.

“They did same with Vashada, did not?” one of the children nearby pipped up.

“Did them not,” Lashaan corrected them with a half-smile.

“What is Solaneum?” she asked.

“Ah, you likely know it by its common name, Caeracht, as they now call it.”

She did not, but shrugged diplomatically, realising she should probably have just let Naakai keep on speaking without interrupting.

“It is no wonder young girls more interested in hunting and making a name for themselves do not know fusty ancient places like that,” Naakos laughed, coming to her rescue. “It is just another bit of dead history, as nasty as the tales around the antiquity of Vashada in any case.”

“Aye,” Naakai sighed again, before pausing to stir the pot on the fire. “In my mother’s time, when our tribe was not splintered as we are now, our elders held that the Deathless let them take that place. Much like Vashada, it is a place important to many – humans, Aelf, Sea Folk, Ur – and for all a memorial that touches only bad things, such that those cursed folk saw opportunity to further cause strife for our Ur peoples in relinquishing it.”

“That is how the Death Watch are,” Naakos sighed. “They are no simple undead, risen through evil means or spells such as some shamans or mages use. They are implacable and unmovable by conventional means.”

“They are not?” the same, younger Ur’Inan who had spoken up earlier asked, also interested.

“No, they are, so the stories go, bound by an oath to an ancient god – they will not pass into her halls until the defiling curse on the world is lifted,” Lashaan, who was sitting next to… him, watching him prepare the meat explained.

“That… sounds like a rather difficult oath to swear?” Chunhua murmured.

“Yeah…” she nodded in agreement having thought that herself.

Their own Eastern Azure had a few infamous examples of such oaths sworn to higher powers of heaven, either in ignorance or by ill design, that in the end did more damage than good to those who held them up. The most notorious example in recent times had been one sworn by an inner disciple of the Four Peacocks Court that had led to him having to exchange marriage vows with an actual peacock.

“You can say that again,” Naakos grumbled.

“Yep,” Caanar agreed. “You cannot kill them, they are functionally immortal and powerful ones can even follow those that ‘kill’ them out of the Badlands. I knew of a hunting group who suffered that fate some years ago.”

“Indeed,” Naakai added, sound a bit resigned now, as if this whole conversation was running a bit beyond what was expected of a chat around a breakfast fire.

Lashaan just rolled her eyes. “Grandmother, you started this topic. You cannot complain when people ask questions.”

“By my age I certainly will,” Naakai, who didn’t look much over 50 she had to admit, sniffed. “As Caanar says, they are dangerous in unexpected ways. Powerful ones or specific places carry additional curses as well – amplifications of elements of their laws in life that have damned several unwary tribes over years. The case with Solaneum is notable as much because it is the exception. Nowhere else has anyone reclaimed a whole city from them. I can say this with certainty because none of your Vash tribes that achieved such a feat would stay silent about it.”

She had to roll her eyes at that, because from what she had seen, it seemed quite apt to say.

“Apparent exception,” Lashaan added.

“True, apparent exception,” Naakai acknowledged.

“Aye, there was that Grass Ghosts bunch on the western marches of the Grass Stalker tribes, wasn’t there?” Caanar interjected.

“Faugh, that bunch of idiots are better forgotten,” Naakai scowled now. “What happened to them was almost justice sent by the Mother of Dark Earth.”

“Aye,” Naakos spat into the fire, which got him a frown from Naakai, Lashaan and Eruua. “What? They gave even Grass Stalkers a bad name. I am sure the anniversary of their doom is toasted widely in Ajara and Akasi.”

“…”

“What happened to them?” she asked, curious now, and also seeking more information on what might be a potential future threat.

“They robbed a tomb complex on the edge of the western Badlands, near a place the ancients called Rulani – nowadays it’s mostly a pile of old rocks and some very extensive catacombs cut into the cliffs.” Naakos elaborated. “According to the tales that came out from the very small number of survivors, a band led by the chief’s son got drunk after a festival and went off on an expedition to it. Against all the odds they actually found a bunch of weapons and armour in ancient styles and a few other trinkets and oddments – talismans, rings, this kind of thing.

“They returned to great acclaim and several neighbouring chiefs whose scions who had taken part came to toast their achievement in a grand feast, overseen by several important shamans. They partied long into the night and when the sun rose the next day the entire tribe and all the visitors had vanished without a trace.”

“Aye, I recall it now,” Caanar nodded. “They searched high and low, caused all sorts of problems, blamed our folk, blamed the Wailing Daughters, even tried to blame the Grass Scorpions.”

“Hah!” Naakos laughed. “That was the point when others became cool on trying to find an explanation for it.”

Caanar nodded and the others laughed knowingly at that. “After that, the survivors scattered but few were willing to take them in for fear of attracting whatever curse the tribe had incurred.”

“Indeed,” Naakos agreed, taking up the tale. “It was mostly forgotten, until during my father’s time, about a decade after that was said to have happened, the village of Qom, on the other side of that border with the Hundred Legs territory, woke up one morning to find themselves under attack by the ‘Grass Ghosts’ – a few survivors reported it and a warband was sent out… which was annihilated almost to the last warrior. The entire tribe and their guests were turned into Death Watch, right down to the dogs, chickens and maybe even the rats.

“They are now called the Grass Ghost Warband and have plagued the Hundred Legs tribe for close to thirty years…” Naakai finished off, while adding more of the seeds to the porridge pot and stirring it.

“The entire tribe was turned?” she echoed Chunhua’s shocked exclamation.

“Well, their town and its immediate locality – that was about 20,000 Ur’Vash all told, a settlement a bit smaller than Ajara, to give you a comparison,” Naakos elaborated as he leant over to skewer one of the pieces of now roasted meat off the fire with a pointy stick. “As young Caanar said, the survivors then fled over to these lands, but nobody would welcome them or take up their cause, so they formed a few isolated towns on the edge of the Badlands to the south-east of here… Somewhere between the western edge of the Moon Sickle territories and the Badlands adjoining the mountains, if I recall right.”

“…”

Unbidden, she was reminded of those heavily fortified settlements they had originally targeted that the local tribes had not been especially cut up about or interested in avenging.

-Did they think our initial work was these Death Watch then? To have undergone all that and then get ruined by cultivators, they were truly unlucky…

“Can’t say I am sorry it was them though,” Naakos spat into the fire again.

“Aye, kin butchers and raiders,” Teshek agreed.

“Oh?” Chunhua asked.

“They raided with impunity. Their chief’s son was a close friend of the current war chief,” Caanar, also skewering a piece of meat from the fire, answered. “On a certain level it is deeply amusing that the son of the Hundred Legs War Chief is now their territory’s greatest scourge!”

“The added sting, is that anyone who spends the night around that former town also dies and becomes undead,” Naakai finished. “Whatever was done tainted the Grass Ghosts’ ancestral heart so thoroughly that mere association with it is enough to bring ruin.”

“That is not the only such tale either,” Naakos noted.

“However it is far too early in the day to be talking about old ghost stories to young girls,” Naakai said abruptly, apparently satisfied the second helping of porridge was ready. “Just take it from us, who have wandered from the Shining Sea to the Killing Desert and back, that the Death Watch are mendacious and inexplicable in equal measure. Do not cross their path, or if you do, run and never cross blades with them.”

“Aye,” Naakos chuckled darkly, while holding out a bowl for seconds. “Although the curse upon Renlath and Valinkar-”

“Brother…” Naakai scowled, narrowing her eyes and handing him the ladle instead.

“Fine… fine, later,” the old Ur’Inan sighed, to the laughter of the others as he was forced to get his own seconds.

“Um… if I can ask?” she pipped up, having finished her porridge and thinking about the ruins inland now.

“Fine, one last comment on the ancient vengeance in those towns,” Naakai sighed, with an eye roll.

“Why do they target… us?” she nearly said ‘Ur’Vash’, but caught herself. “We are not their enemies of old and many millennia have passed since that time?”

Chunhua and Ling also nodded to that question.

“Ha… yes, a good question,” Naakos nodded appraisingly.

“The simple answer is that the scope of their ancient grudge is vast – their enemies are all those involved in their downfall,” Naakai sighed. “They… see all of our Ur peoples as ‘demons’. That we have not fallen to the ‘Great Defilement’ as those ancient tales call it, is not important, because in their eyes, no Ur can resist the curse of Orcus. We are just demons who have not yet realised our cruel fate in their broken view of the world.

“Similarly they care nothing for what few of the people of Earth and Sea who still walk these lands-”

“They still have a presence here?” Lin Ling asked, frowning.

“Yes, although they are elusive,” Naakai mused. “I have never met one, but in my mother’s time, she claimed to have seen one. However, the Death Watch hate them just as much as us. There was no love lost between those ancient men and the Kingdoms of the Isles.”

“Not to mention the ‘Six-Eyed Crow of Ullai’,” Naakos added.

The various Ur’Vash made auspicious signs again at the mention of whoever that was.

“Aye, this place breeds grudges like a garbage pile breeds dogs,” Naakai grunted. “She, before you can ask, was a daughter of a sorceress of the Sea Peoples called Deirdre who had a rather tragic run-in with the High King of Isla Ullai. Hating men and elves with equal measure for the ruin of her parents and the disgrace meted out afterwards, she has haunted these lands like a malignant storm crow through three eras now.

“As to the ancient humans of these lands, you already guessed the right of that – they coveted the lands of the Lords of the Nine Cities and refused to honour the oaths they had received, having expected allegiance for centuries, and then their actions directly led to the Great Defilement through their fallen king Neron and his war with the Isla peoples.”

“So they hate everyone,” Chunhua observed.

“Yep,” Naakai agreed. “And only the workings of the greatest shamans of the Ur’Vash have ever gained any ground with them. As such, rumour of their emergence to the north, in the lands around Vashada, a place already rife with ill omen and its own list of dark myths and legends, is a new and disturbing development.”

“We have been fortunate in our passage that we have seen little – but the unsettling sky at night and those signs of ending eras from the south were not good omens,” Teshek muttered, again making a special sign.

“…”

Lin Ling, the perpetrator of much of that, looked inscrutable while she was glad she had had plenty of practice at looking nonplussed dealing with young nobles for the Kun clan.

“So what do you suggest if we had to travel north?” she asked, to change the conversation away from that rather awkward topic.

“We are heading for Udrasa, on a tributary of the Great Buranuna,” Naakai said. “You are welcome to travel with us for the two days it takes to arrive there. Its folk will know more of the situation. I would suggest continuing north through Ur’Vash territory.”

She frowned, glancing at Lin Ling.

Lin Ling shrugged, looking annoyingly inscrutable.

{Bright Heart Shifting Steps}

She focused on the idea of ‘Will travelling to Udrasa cause complications for our pursuit?’, very warily. Much as she expected though, she got very little back that was meaningful. That kind of divination didn’t cost her any ‘qi’, not in the same way that trying to directly divine a route between two places had before, but it still put a lot of strain on her mental state for the ambivalence she got out of it.

‘Will not travelling to Udrasa cause complications?’ she posited, being quite familiar with the way you needed to carefully pose questions of this sort.

That, at least got her a slightly more determined ‘possibly’. The lack of it framing things in ways she understood, like ‘Heart Shifting Steps’ had been willing to do was… vexing.

‘What are our chances of survival if we go north as we were?’

“…”

She sighed as she got a very definitive ‘Death in Four Directions’ reading and a bit of a backlash transmitted into her Sea of Knowledge in the process.

‘What are the chances of survival if we go via Udrasa?’

“Huh…” she sighed outwardly this time, because that came back basically identically.

“Problem?” Lin Ling signed.

She shook her head for now and took another mouthful of the porridge as the conversation turned to other topics, ancient history having been temporarily quarried out it seemed. What was surprising there was that the art had no issues with the idea of divining their route to a place she had never heard of. The nuances of how it worked were things she was still exploring, but the things it did and didn’t draw qi for could be rather arbitrary, she was finding.

‘What are the chances of our survival going forward at this point in…?’

“…”

She stared inwardly, suddenly feeling a weird sense of dissociated recall to those divinations before the ruined town in the jungle and its slaughtering formation. The sensation was still ‘imminent danger of death in any direction’, but the nuance in it was disturbing. It hinted at ‘dismantling’ and also ‘deviation’ – both tangentially focused in ‘current circumstances’.

Her first instinct was that they were still being targeted or that it was a lingering auspice from whatever the Jade Gate Court had done, but it had not been there yesterday.

“The trail we’re following heads north-east,” she said at last. “I have to assume that is the general direction of Udrasa?”

“It is,” Naakai nodded. “It is a river town on the little Zan, a place where the swamps are less, making habitation less vexatious.”

Considering the path they had been taking in her head, following the surging trail, it had been going back and forth, but certainly, when she considered the things that had just been talked about, its more easterly twists now made sense.

-Does whoever is leading them also sense some problem ahead? she mused.

“In that case, we will head for this village of Udrasa,” Lin Ling replied politely. “Your offer of hospitality is most welcome.”

She glanced at Lin Ling again, wondering what had spurred the other girl to take the initiative there, when before she had been silent. Because there was no way to easily hold a conversation about her rationale right here and now, they finished the rest of their breakfast in silence then helped a bit with the sorting out of the camp.

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~ JUNI, LING & CHUNHUA – THE GREAT SAVANNAH ~

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While she had been concerned that it would be difficult to follow the trail when travelling along with the group, her fears turned out to be largely unfounded, because they rapidly splintered up into four bands, with Naakai and two others staying with the beasts carrying much of the goods while the others foraged. Under the cover of that, they were able to split off and also ‘help’ with the hunting while she reacquired the trail.

They had walked for almost two miles before Chunhua finally spoke.

“Would it not be easier to just take our leave and accept their good wishes?”

“Perhaps,” Lin Ling frowned. “But this land is not simple… and these ‘Death Watch’ are not a thing we want anything to do with in an adversarial manner.”

“The memories know of them?” she asked.

“Not as such, but they do know of a ‘Spring and Autumn’ and a bit of her achievement, although their impression of it is such that I am not sure where to begin,” Lin Ling sighed.

“At the beginning?” Teng Chunhua said a bit jokingly.

“…”

“Ha, ha,” Lin Ling shook her head.

“Is she one of the Honoured Five that they spoke of?” she asked changing tack. “There are a few parts of their belief system you failed to mention before…”

“…”

Lin Ling shot her a sideways look and sighed again. “Look, I would have, but I didn’t really expect us to literally walk over a hill and straight into that camp. The Honoured Five are a weird bunch though. Probably they just venerate them because they were ancient symbols of that bygone era, associated with the origins of the various Ur tribes in their own ways. The ‘Maker’ you know a bit about already, but there is also the ‘Breaker’, ‘Taker’, Shaper’ and ‘Changer’. The origins of most of them are shrouded in ancient antiquity-”

“When are they not?” she chuckled drily.

“True,” Chunhua agreed with an eye roll.

Lin Ling just shook her head and continued. “The Maker is the most important, along with the Shaper – they venerate them because the ‘Maker’ gave worth to words and the ‘Shaper’ gave form to being, near as I can tell. The memories’ impressions of the Ur peoples themselves are rather slight until they were already fully formed. I also don’t want to look at those memories too closely… The last time I did so, I got a very weird interaction.”

“Weird?” Chunhua asked.

“Are your memories meant to talk back to you?” Lin Ling snapped suddenly, sounding a bit rattled.

“…”

“It’s fine,” she stepped in quickly, because for all that she was sure Lin Ling seemed to have turned several corners in her mental state, she didn’t want to take any chances.

Chunhua, looking at the little flickers of fire on the grass tops before they vanished, also seemed to reach that conclusion, just shaking her head sympathetically.

“Sorry… it was a very unnerving experience in hindsight,” Lin Ling sighed, recovering herself and looking around at the once again normal grass. “I am still getting used to having a ‘Principle’ as well.”

She waved it away and they walked on in silence for a while, homing in on the edge of the trail before Lin Ling spoke again.

“As I was saying, they swear by the Honoured Five, along with various others, but for the former it is more as a sense of respect I think.”

“Oh…” she understood that. “A bit like how we swear by things that are important, but don’t always have a direct connection to us?”

Lin Ling nodded pensively.

“Do they not have ancestors of their own to venerate?” Chunhua frowned.

“Clearly they do; we saw the shrines and such in Ajara,” she pointed out.

“It’s… complicated,” Lin Ling sighed again. “They venerate their ancestors, yes, but they still adhere to these aspects of much older things, of which the Honoured Five and the Great Mothers and the High Fathers are a part.”

“The way you pitch it, the Maker sounds like he is associated with language?” she asked, to turn the topic back towards its original point.

“And oaths, endeavour, understanding, sovereignty through knowledge…” Lin Ling listed off a bunch of other things.

“Oh…” Chunhua nodded. “So he is somewhat like the Divine Daode?”

Almost involuntarily she made the sign of the three pure ones, as did Chunhua.

“Yes, actually, I guess the association is similar,” Lin Ling conceded after a moment’s thought and also made the sign. “In more ways than one.”

They walked on in silence for a while after that, because the ground became rocky and everywhere she looked startled to take on the manner of a snake hole or a place some scorpion could be lurking. It was only when they had crossed back down into the next grassy sward that Chunhua spoke.

“So what of the others? They do not seem to swear by them individually except for the Maker and Breaker from what I’ve seen and occasionally someone called the ‘Life Shaper’?”

“…”

“I have to go by what the memories say, and they are confusing on several,” Lin Ling mused. “Certainly to the Ur, the Maker and Breaker would be the easiest to venerate. I guess we can start with the Breaker, given I just talked about the Maker. She was an ancient expert, one of the very first. The memories really only have eyes for her, which makes interrogating the others difficult, because the Breaker is frankly terrifying and all the memories associated with her are taxing to look at.”

“With a name like that it seems rather on point that she have a terrifying reputation,” she pointed out.

“True, although all their names, in the eyes of the memories, are strange,” Lin Ling sighed again and gave the horizon with its hills and rocks and vast quantities of grass another scan. “Any sign of the trail?”

She blinked at the sudden change of topic, but it was fair to ask. Staring around, she considered the swirling currents of ambient qi in the landscape for a moment before pointing off to the north-east. The trail itself had not passed directly through here, but it had begun to rapidly curve more towards the east from what she could tell.

“They are moving more easterly now, away from the grasslands to our left.”

“So they are also moving away from this ‘Vashada’,” Chunhua observed.

“It seems that way,” she agreed. “The trail is quite diffuse here; they seem to have not done the strange shifting thing as much.”

“How does that work?” Chunhua asked her.

“How does…? Oh…” she paused, trying to work out what the other woman meant.

“Sorry, the trail was quite tight, or so it seemed when we were following it initially?”

“Oh… that,” she nodded, understanding now.

She hadn’t actually explained it to them, just set about following the trail and not really elaborated beyond a brief explanation of the wave-like patterns of its passage through the landscape.

“Basically, when it drops off and re-emerges, it is quite narrowly constrained, but the longer they just go normally, using whatever it is they use to travel faster, the more rapidly the trail diffuses, like the wake of a boat going in a straight line. They are also not travelling a lot faster than us, or so it seems, and that is somehow contributing. The slower they go, the more it diffuses, the wider the trail becomes.”

“Oh… I see,” Chunhua nodded. “That’s kind of annoying.”

“Tell me about it,” she rubbed her eyes absently. “It seems to be good for my cultivation though to follow it… assuming I don’t do what I did before.”

Lin Ling and Chunhua both laughed nervously at her allusion to her mishap of the previous day.

“Basically, if we keep as we are, it looks like…”—she glanced up and orientated herself on the circling hawks that marked the main group as they moved—“It looks like this trail will cross theirs maybe in the late afternoon?”

“So, what about the Breaker?” she asked Lin Ling as they set off again. “Do the memories say how she got that title?”

“It was a name the ancient peoples gave her; the memories have a different name which is something like ‘The one who broke that which was, so it could be’, which is a heck of a mouthful,” Lin Ling muttered.

They both had to nod at that, while Lin Ling just looked distant for a moment. “The ancient folk gave her the name ‘Breaker’ but not for a good reason – it was because she was independently-minded and spent more time fighting others. She rarely kept to a side and roved where her heart took her. Many in that time felt that she did not side with them in their many conflicts with other races and powers so the name ‘Breaker’ arose because she was someone who ‘broke the stratagems of others’, usually on a whim or because it amused her.”

“So why do the blood memories like her?” she asked, curious now.

“Well, the Ur folk like her because she was the one who had the greatest hand in ‘freeing’ them, as far as I can see from the memories. The memories of that time don’t hold that action in high regard though – they have a profound dislike for those early Ur peoples and don’t think it was worth her effort – those early Ur peoples and others like them were instrumental in capturing many of their kith and kin and binding them as tools for great powers of that age. To those memories, they are just a tool, and a symbol of the rationale by which they themselves were enslaved, ruined, hunted or driven out.”

Listening to that explanation as she directed them to head a bit more east again, it was indeed easy to see how that would make it difficult to glean information out of them if they are just consumed with hatred.

“Wait… so those from the spider tribe were referencing that?” she asked after a moment, connecting the dots.

“Yep, those tribes are much older than these ones, I think,” Lin Ling mused, referencing presumably the towns on the savannah. “The memories did observe that the crab spiders they used were another thing of that ancient time and that they held a degree of sorrow over how they had been so enslaved, same with the banners of the animals.”

“…”

Seeing their slightly nonplussed expressions Lin Ling rolled her eyes. “They are a bunch of ancient lizards. To them you are just a slightly less hairy monkey. Their view of the world is headache-inducing.”

“That much we gathered,” she shot back drolly, “So, regarding the Breaker?”

“Regarding the ‘Breaker’,” Lin Ling rolled her eyes and continued her explanation. “The memories like her because she was a being who overcame her limits of her own volition and refused to bow to the era that came after, nor did she flee as they seem to imply many others did. Like them, she endured many tribulations and walked a difficult path, refusing to compromise by either dying embarrassingly, running away or joining the winning side.”

“They consider dying embarrassingly to be ‘compromising’?” Chunhua muttered a bit disbelievingly.

“I’ll get to the ‘Taker’ in a minute,” Lin Ling said with another eye roll, “Anyway! At that time, their own kind were already waning and their place in the world crumbling under the machinations of those powers who stepped through time to form the original iteration of this place. They… sought to close out that circle, to purify the world for their descendants – the aftermath of the, uh, meteorite you saw as a matter of fact. As far as I can gather, she may have actually had a hand in them surviving in some way, because it spited those other influences.”

“…”

“…”

They both had to stop and stare at Lin Ling, because she said it so offhandedly.

“That… meteor was a reflection of a real thing?” Chunhua asked disbelievingly.

Recalling the sense of imminent devastation that it had conjured, she couldn’t help but nod in agreement.

“Yep… Very real… very, very real,” Lin Ling nodded, looking a bit haunted for a second but not saying anything else.

They walked on in silence after that, she hunting for the trail and directing them this way and that, Chunhua occasionally shooting small animals so they looked like they had done ‘something’ and Lin Ling presumably trying to wrangle further sense out of ancient lizards.

Eventually, after maybe another hour had passed and she had to rest her eyes because the stress of using ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ on this land was only getting worse, she found an opportunity to ask about the others.

While they sat in the shade of a rock and munched on some of the remaining roast meat from breakfast Lin Ling continued her explanation.

“The ‘Breaker’ and ‘Maker’ were of the same people, maybe even the same tribe – the Bel people. The ‘Taker’ was associated with the Ash people who came out of the deserts, while the ‘Changer’ was its own thing.”

“What of the ‘Shaper?” she added, noting they had not been on the list.

“There are a few people who have held that name in the memories. The one they most consider worthy of the title is certainly not the one the Ur peoples venerate though.”

“So the ‘names’ are more like Dao Names than actual titles?” she noted, having already thought that in regards to the ‘Breaker’ but not having an opportunity to ask.

“That is a good way to see it,” Lin Ling agreed, sitting back with a sigh. “They are not so much ‘Names’ but closer to a Dao Name or an Imperial Title. A representation of what they stood for in the eyes of others. They are also used because speaking the real names of those ancient powers is either impossible now or would attract the notice of those interested in them. It is confusing, though, because – and I take the ‘Shaper’ here as an example – there have been at least three to hold that title or a variant of it that the blood recall, and their impressions of all of them are bad in various ways.

“The Ur certainly venerate the first, but the blood really only consider the one who supplanted him, who became the ally then ruin of the ‘Taker’, to be worthy of the title in all its horrible glory. All of them, though, acquired the title ‘Shaper’ by taking ‘what was’ and bending it to their will in some way, shaping reality for themselves and their followers, transforming the world according to their desires.

"The ‘Shaper’ the Ur refer to was the ancient who first arose with that epithet but was also widely titled ‘Keramos’ – associated with the Ancient Mo people. He created their ancestors from clay and with the help of the ‘Maker’ gave them life. They became Ur’Khal, which literally means ‘Favoured Son’ – the memories note that that people were warlike, arrogant and cruel… and also hunted their kind extensively and, when pressed, usually relied on their ‘father’s’ strength rather than their own.

“The one that the memories hold most worthy of the title, though, acquired it through using various means to shape the course of that entire era and attained eventual dominion over it, remaking it completely in his image.

“The last, and least, in the eyes of the memories, was that power’s direct successor in many ways, an ancient being affiliated with the Mo’Ghann Tribe – ‘The Children of the Wolf’ – who also sought to shape reality in his image, becoming a singular being over everyone else.”

“I have to assume that didn’t end well?” she guessed.

“No… it did not,” Lin Ling agreed. “The memories regarding the last two are very unpleasant: many of the memories’ descendants joined the ‘Era-Shaper’ and the people of the third, and the ‘Empty-Shaper’ took that as a sign that their kind were destined to be subservient. As such they hunted the memories’ kith and kin for their blood and bones, capturing enslaving and dominating them wherever they found them, driving them out of many of their ancestral lands.”

“…”

It was hard to know what to say to that – by any standard. When you heard the tales of old experts, they invariably came across as either thoroughly eccentric or downright terrifying – the ‘Shaper’ seemed to fall very much into both categories.

“At least the other two are easier,” Lin Ling added after a moment’s silence as they all walked on, staring at the sun-drenched grassland. “The ‘Taker’, who I mentioned before, was a leader of a confederation of various forces from the ancient peoples of Ash, Sar, Mar, El, Bel and Mo among others. She gained the epithet, much like the ‘Breaker’, because of her deeds and not initially in a positive way. According to what I can discern, she conquered vast lands for her people, leading them to auspicious victories that brought great fortune to those who followed after her…”

“-And took everything from her foes?” Chunhua guessed.

“Yep,” Lin Ling agreed with another sigh. “The memories were frequently adversarial to her, or at least those who followed after her, notably those forces who would go on to follow the ‘Era-Shaper’, but for all that she had the acclaim of ‘She Who Takes All’, they contend that she was in fact the most reasonable of the lot.”

“That sounds like something of a contradiction?” Chunhua pointed out.

“The memories see her as someone who had a deep understanding of the flow of nature, the rhythm of how things move in connection to each other. She conquered through stratagems and such, gave freely of knowledge and expected nothing in return, preferring to wield the aftermath of her actions to her benefit rather than just take things with a pointy stick. More often than not, circumstances wound up where she was the one left with the last word to say, or the great victory in hand at the cost of others.”

“Oh…” she understood what Lin Ling was driving at now.

This ‘Taker’ had been someone who used many means and made friends widely, and in doing so had always ensured that her people were in a position of strength without leaving any opportunities for others.

“In the end, though, they say that it was her desire to elevate the entire era, rather than just those people around her, that ruined her. Her people rebelled, ironically because she gave so easily to them, so they believed she had more to give, but would not, and was also playing the same stratagem on them as she had on their foes. According to the memories, the orchestrator of that was the one who would go on to become the ‘Era-Shaper’ whose views on those people’s place in the world were much more appealing to many.

“At his urging, the Taker’s allies ruined the ‘Shaper’, in her name no less, and seized the means to his children, using the chaos of their affliction by another ancient evil made manifest – the emergence of the Orcnéas – to lure him. The title of ‘Shaper’ then passed on to that person and while apparently the Taker was quite displeased, such was his popularity that she could do little about it.

“Thereafter, those followers also brought low several lords of the Bel clans, of similar status to the ‘Maker’, including his nephew, and then used those stolen gifts to trick her in turn and seize her power, killing her and her disciples with a black blade the ‘Shaper’ supplied. At that point the ‘Shaper’ claimed that mantle as well and, while affecting sorrow at what had happened, became the new leader of the ‘Taker’s’ former followers.”

“What of the Changer?” she interjected, noting that Lin Ling hadn’t mentioned the last one at all up to this point.

Lin Ling stared at the grasslands for a while as they sat there, before replying, “The Changer… they held as an eccentric recluse and thus don’t actually know an awful lot about him. Unlike either Shaper or the Taker he never sought dominion and simply studied the natural world and the changes within it, seeking enlightenment through its myriad changes and methods. Among those five, they imply that he was perhaps the strongest, after the ‘Breaker’, but in many ways the least dangerous.

“After the Shaper seized control over the ‘Taker’s’ faction, that alliance splintered. His acolytes, seizing momentum, killed the Maker and the Changer, seizing aspects of their power while other powers recoiled under a different calamity, related to those Orcnéas and their emergence.”

“So why do they swear by the honoured five?” Chunhua frowned. “They don’t seem to have been at all unified?”

“The memories basically care nothing for the strange beliefs monkeys of various materials gave events of the past,” Lin Ling sighed deeply. “Near as I can grasp, those original five represent the purest ideals of that first era. The ‘Maker’ gave language, laws and oaths. The ‘Taker’ showed the strength of working together for a greater cause, the ‘Breaker’ represents the determination to always move forward, the ‘Shaper’ brought forth new life and brought order to the natural world and the ‘Changer’ showed how to live in harmony with it.”

“…”

Running that through her head, she realised, to her surprise, that that actually mirrored the five elements cycle in a strange way.

“It’s like the elements cycle?”

“It is an early version of it, yes,” Lin Ling agreed. “Individually, you would never pray to Yin Earth or Yin Water – they are terrifying destructive forces – but all are needed in some way to nurture the others.”

“And when bad things happen it is because the cycle went out of order, invoking all five is like invoking order over chaos?” Chunhua mused.

“That’s a good way to look at it,” Lin Ling agreed. “In any case, it’s the best spin I can put on it – while the memories of that era are not the really objectionable ones that start cropping up with the era the Ur peoples were actually born into, filled with fear, fury and arrogance, they did not have much interest in those folk. Mostly, they saw their squabbles as a distraction to their own plight as they clawed their way back from the brink.

“That is why they respect the Breaker so, because she at least did not disgrace herself through failure or see her achievements corrupted by others. In any case, the ‘Maker’ and ‘Keramos’ under that first auspice of the ‘Shaper’, are ones the Ur peoples most venerate and respect. They swear by the ‘Honoured Five’ because that is just the nature of the saying, I think.”

“While we are on the topic, what about these ‘Great Mothers’? Are they the ancestors they venerate?” she added.

“…”

“A bunch of really scary old ancients,” Lin Ling rolled her eyes. “Much scarier than the ‘Honoured Five’, maybe with the exception of the ‘Breaker’ – who is also the ‘Great Mother of Broken Skies’.

“The Mother of Water is the figure associated with the golden peony flowers, for example. She is actually the eldest daughter of the ‘Maker’.”

“She is scarier than her father?” Chunhua blinked.

“Eminently, in the eyes of the memories,” Lin Ling nodded grimly. “Although, of her sisters, she is again the most reasonable of the bunch in their eyes. That is not really important though – it is what they stand for.

“The Mothers of Blood and Fire are both beings they associated with vitality and the very acts of living.

“The Mother of Earth with life born anew and life ended – she may well be who the Ur’Inan talked of. The same entity that these Death Watch swore their oath to – or they could be talking of another, the Mother of Spring and Autumn, who also goes by that epithet ‘Mother of Dark Earth’ on occasion.

“The Mother of Sky is the most mysterious. She is associated with dreams, prophecy and also with water and stars and the mystery of an unknowable future.”

“They are all the sisters of this Mother of Water?” Chunhua asked

“No… those three are different again,” Lin Ling sighed. “The Mother of Blood originated with the ancient Mo, the Mother of Fire with the ‘Sar’, the Mother of Earth with the El. The Mothers of Spring and Autumn, Water, Sky and also the ‘Maker’ are all linked with the Bel…”

“…”

She found herself actually checking those off on her hands as Ling listed them off, before the younger woman just shook her head.

“Look, the list of scary people in the memories associated with this land in various ways through its patchwork of iterations is such that you could probably fill a small manuscript hall with the tales of misery and mayhem they have wrought and still leave things out. Basically, if someone asks you to swear by any of them, treat it as if you were being asked to swear by Tianzun.”

Lin Ling scowled suddenly.

“By the evil-hopping monkey!”

“What’s wrong?” she asked frowning.

“I could just have told you both that it was like being asked to swear by Tianzun and saved myself the headache of interacting with that bunch of scary memories!”

“…”

Both she and Chunhua sighed, trying not to look amused.

“Thank you for explaining it,” Chunhua said after a moment. “It does clear a few things up.”

“Indeed,” she agreed, stretching. “Although the main thing I’m taking away here is that their belief system resembles something like a prestige scroll from an ancient clan, where you need to read the subscript and then the associated documentation on the different ancestors’ seating order really, really carefully to make sure you’re seating the right Daoist Big Style in the seat because while they all have some admirable trait, they do not get on.”

“That is an excellent way of putting it,” Lin Ling chuckled, standing up. “In any case, as I said, it is more what they represent, through their past achievements, that is relevant, rather than who they were.”

“We expect them all to kowtow to the flag, not pay too much attention to who is waving it,” she agreed with a sigh, resisting the urge to suddenly rub her temples.

That was a saying of her father’s, but she had heard it repeated by her brother, Old Ling, and various other old timers regarding how the symbolism and influences of sects and powers worked. The Kun clan had a certain ‘style’, as did the Ha clan, or the Ling clan for that matter… as did influences like the Jade Gate Court – even if their style as the ‘Discipline Gate of the Imperial Court’ seemed to be ringing a bit hollow.

In a way, that was why her father had always added the second bit she suspected, usually in relation to her cousins or the old elders backing them. She had rather naively thought that many problems would be sorted by just being a good representative of those ideals – it had marked her as a precious and cute child, and then when she had lost that seat, those same plaudits had been flipped on their head so that now she was grasping and pretentious, hiding her failings behind putting others down.

That had been her first real lesson in what her father had rather scathingly called ‘Board-Tipping’. Thereafter, her ‘face’ had been as her father’s daughter rather than a person in the clan in her own right. It was jarringly similar to how this whole discussion on ancient ancestors reflected into future generations. They respected the flag, rather than the person holding it.

-Is that why they have no members of their own people among that number? she found herself pondering as they made their way onwards.

-Or is it that they do, just on a much smaller scale than Lin Ling is explaining. A priest or a shaman for the clan?

For the next few hours, they continued to follow the trail, periodically keeping an eye on where the circling hawks that marked the Ur’Inan’s main party were. By the time it was properly heading for mid-morning, she at last managed to pick it up again properly and ascertained that it had indeed diverted in the same direction they were travelling in.

In many ways that was a stroke of good fortune, but looking out into the hazy, distant grasslands she could understand why – there was a faint shadow within the grassland itself, not a visible thing really, but a sense of foreboding that mirrored that slaughtering formation they had walked into unawares. Even Chunhua, who was now the one with the least to offer by way of divination arts, remarked on it after a while. She was sure at this point, that whoever was leading the group they were pursuing was a consummate expert in geomancy, so that shadow would not have gone unnoticed.

Once, she attempted to divine what might happen if they went towards that point. As expected, she nearly got a deviation as her qi dissipated.

By the time an eagle swept down and signalled for them that the group was, in theory, massing for lunch, they found that the trail she was tracing faintly was actually heading for the same destination as well.

The group, when they found it, however, was much smaller than she expected. They had made a quick camp in the shelter of several trees, the four children butchering small animals under the careful direction of Lashaan. The only other ones there were Naakai, Caanar and a hunter she had seen with Teshek but never been introduced to who was keeping watch from a nearby rock.

“Your hunt has gone well?” Caanar said, coming to meet them as they made their way to the crest of the ridge and the shelter of the rocks and trees.

“We had some success,” she acknowledged.

In effect, it was Chunhua who had done most of the hunting, shooting several small animals. She, for her part, had abused her divination arts to forage a few choice herbs here and there. She could probably have gotten more, but at the same time, they had concluded that if they rocked up with some rare herb that was buried deep in the roots of an innocuous tree or such it would probably invite questions as to how.

“It’s about as good as anyone else,” Caanar sighed. “This is already close to Vashada, according to Naakai. The land here is wrong.”

“We noticed,” Lin Ling nodded.

“It is unsettling,” Caanar nodded wearily. “This passage along its edge has been by far the most unnerving I have experienced.”

“It is like there is a shadow within it, even beneath the warmest sun,” she agreed.

“Let us hope that we do not suffer misfortune,” Chunhua murmured, making an auspicious sign.

“You are not wrong,” Lashaan observed from nearby. “That shadow you feel are the scars from the sealing of that ancient land by the humans of the previous era.”

“All we have are these small rodents and a bunch of spirit herbs,” she apologised, putting down the two bundles.

“You have done better than the others, it seems,” Naakai chuckled, looking at the rather small pile. “Most have elected to stay out and forage ahead.”

She helped cook the lunch while Lin Ling and Teng Chunhua both talked quietly about the jade slip that Lin Ling had made the previous day. It was, in truth, quite cathartic to just sit there turning small rodents and not have to use any divination arts for anything.

Naakai talked a bit more about their previous journeys, with occasional interjections from Caanar and Lashaan. It seemed that their group was part of a slightly larger band that was heading across this territory with the eventual intention of making it to the cooler lands on the north side of the savannah before the season of summer here really peaked.

That surprised her, because she had already thought this place mildly infernal by reasonable standards. Naakai, however, confided that it was currently only around late spring and that there was nearly 300 more days of summer along with the threat of the mana tides from the west dropping off at some point.

Apparently, when that happened, the winds would swap to run from the east, carrying the heat of the deserts there back towards the distant coast, funnelled between the two great mountain ranges to the north and south, guided along the mana vein that was the Buranuna River. Then, the land would become a grass desert, prone to vast wildfires and daytime temperatures hot enough to cook eggs on rocks even in early morning.

After lunch, they bade farewell to the group and continued on following the trail as it wound through the grassland.

The landscape around them was just featureless rolling grassland and rocks, interspersed with the odd clump of trees and the occasional spirit herb which Lin Ling detoured a few times to collect. They only met with one other hunting band in the mid-afternoon, led by Teshek, taking a rest in the relative shelter of a dry river bed.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

As such, the whole afternoon was almost unnervingly uneventful beyond a few brushes with weak serpents and a scorpion. Once it was clear that the trail was not going to do its cresting wave trick as it had before, she was able to devote much more time to using ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ to adjust the many minor issues with her qi flow through her meridians.

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~ JUNI, LING & CHUNHUA – CAMP WITHIN ANCIENT RUINS ~

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The camp that evening was in a series of ruined buildings beside a shallow cliff. The reason for that choice appeared to be the rock-cut cisterns at its base which held cool, fresh water that was being drawn by jars and given to the beasts of burden.

They were met on the approach by Teshek, who waved for them to come down cheerily.

“Did your hunt go well?” he asked, which she had come to realise was almost like a ritual greeting at this point.

“We killed a few snakes,” Chunhua supplied, holding up four 2 metre long snakes.

“And a scorpion,” she added, holding up the offending critter which had been de-tailed and de-clawed for safe transport.

“It is not exactly crawling with things out there,” Lin Ling agreed, “which is surprising really, given how far away from anywhere we are.”

“We are not as far as you might think,” Teshek replied with a wry grin. “Weaker animals avoid the lands around Vashada as well. That is why we have stopped here: this place is defensible.”

“You expect to encounter predators in the night?” she mused, thinking of their own brushes with watching serpents.

“If we do not, I will be very surprised,” Caanar added, coming out of the nearest building to meet them.

“Any progress on that other group, Brother Nar?” Teshek asked.

“Not really,” Caanar shrugged. “They were large, but left little trace and maybe had a shaman to obscure their tracks, or so Lashaan thinks. What we can say is that they do not appear to be hunters and they were heading roughly towards Udrasa.”

“A group from the battles to the south?” she guessed, wondering if it was the group they were following. The trail did swirl around here, but she would likely need to spend some time examining the remnant trail to work out if they stopped for long.

“That seems likely,” Teshek agreed and Caanar also nodded.

“In any case, they left this morning and there was no sign of them lingering nearby,” Caanar shrugged again.

“Come, anyway. Do you want to leave your takings for the kids to mess with?” Teshek asked. “I promise they will not butcher them too badly!”

“Sure,” she shrugged.

All their takings for the day were below Golden Core, useful only to her in a real sense and she was already trying to slow her cultivation down somewhat so her comprehensions with ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ could catch up – as such, they were only catching things for cover in a sense.

“In that case, we will drop them off and you can go find a building that suits you,” Teshek grinned.

As they made their way down, she got a better chance to look at the collection of old mud brick houses, tumbled-down walls of what might once have been field plots and, as they crossed it, a rock-cut ditch of all things. The whole place had been warded against soul sense as well.

“What was this place?” she asked, curious because the style of the walls put her in mind of the ruins they had seen in the camp the cultivators made, as well as the watchtower in the badlands.

“Its original purpose is lost to time,” Teshesk replied, running a hand along a wall. “Various people have rebuilt the buildings and such places are known to be refuges or holy places. This one has a shrine in the rock…”

He pointed to the cliff at the back, where there was a large rock-cut structure, which she had not actually noticed; such was her focus on the more immediate surroundings.

“…”

Chunhua and Lin Ling both managed to look suitably inscrutable and she was indeed glad that she had a small lifetime’s worth of experience interacting with people in situations that required a straight face at all times.

Set into the cliff was a small, rock-cut shrine that was disturbingly familiar – its circular entrance, flowing serpentine motifs and two glaring, if very weather-worn, guardian fates holding rods of command. The only oddity was that they had the heads of lions. However, just as back home, their third eyes stared down at any and all visitors who passed by. The whole thing might have been lifted from an old ancestral shrine or ruin to the north of the Yin Eclipse range.

It even had three columns on each side, two behind the guardians and one at the outer limits of the rock-cut frontage to symbolise thematically the duality of Heaven and Earth through three reflected truths to manifest as 33 heavens.

“I have never seen such a shrine before in these lands,” she murmured at last, staring at the writing that was obscure.

Chunhua nodded, her face a picture of blank inscrutability along with Lin Ling. She was sure both were shocked inside.

-It even has dragon tiles carved into the rock over the entrance…

“It is of the ancient Mo’Ashai,” Teshek said, bowing slightly to it. “Some hold them to be the ancestors of all Ur peoples… Others, that they were the tyrants that gave us purpose that we might seize the world for them…”

“The history of ancestors is complicated,” she agreed diplomatically, thinking back to what Lin Ling had said earlier.

“That it is!” the muscular hunter laughed, shaking his head. “It is because of ruins like this that the Ur’Vash believe Vashada holds the importance it does.”

“Is it safe to stay in a place like this then?” she frowned.

“Safe as any other. The shrines have historically given refuge to all who wander these lands so long as they do not disrespect them,” Teshek shrugged. “Few speak the old tongue, among our band – probably only Naakai has learned it, from her mother – but if this shrine is like the others, it is dedicated to the Mother of the Mountains, who took from nature and gave to all that they might excel. No doubt Naakos will tell you of this place if you wish it over dinner, or some tale regarding its ilk…”

“…”

That somewhat tangentially sounded like the ‘Taker’ that Lin Ling had mentioned before.

“All of them have places for animals to drink, shelter, pools, fertile ground even to grow crops or some other resource,” Teshek elaborated as they walked over to one of the far buildings where the various beasts of burden were sheltering in the shade. “You can look inside later if you wish.”

Looking around, she found that was also true – the place was set up like a small agricultural village.

It would have been quite idyllic were it not for the raised voices from the building across the square.

“I still think we should move on,” a voice she didn’t recognise, who was clearly unhappy, snarled as they approached the house.

“That is not your choice to make Uaakaz,” Naakos replied, sounding somewhat more measured.

“Uaazar was clear: you are already lagging behind and our agreement was that we be in Udrasa today. We are too close to Vashada still and while you may be content to trust to old fables of the past…”

“Uaazar puts too much faith in strong walls and the ‘good folk’ of Udrasa,” Naakos sounded annoyed now. “If you want to push on and run all the way there, hoping they will not shoot us full of arrows when we arrive an hour after sunset with some serpent on our ass, be my guest, but Uaazar will rush without my kith and kin.”

“…”

“Well, when the undying claim us I will be sure to curse your name first,” Uaakaz snarled.

They stood back as a hulking Ur’Inan covered in red and black tattoos stalked out of the house, glanced at them derisively and then walked over to the group of new arrivals.

“Ah, Teshek, and our three guests,” Naakos said, following him out.

The old Ur’Inan did not look like he had just been engaged in a shouting match, but he did have a certain edge to his aura. Lin Ling had said that all those here were around Dao Seeking, and she had to trust her friend’s senses, but she did wonder again, as she had that morning, about Naakai and Naakos particularly.

“They are being pushy again?” Teshek asked with a frown after the retreating Ur’Inan.

“Some days I regret that his father and my older brother swore their blood oath, binding our families, for he is an obnoxious cock and his cousins are no better,” the old Ur’Inan grumbled.

“Uaazar only sticks around because he thinks Lashaan might grow blind one day, I am sure,” Teshek added with an eye roll.

“You have seen something unsightly,” Naakos muttered, looking back at them.

She shrugged and handed over a package of herbs and the scorpion, while Chunhua and Lin Ling both supplied the snakes.

“It is not much,” Lin Ling said apologetically, “but game seems sparse here.”

“It is,” Naakos nodded, taking the package and passing them over to the children.

“I will see to instructing them. The scorpion has been well prepared,” Teshek glanced at them apologetically, “but children are children and Lashaan will thrash half of us if one of them gets stung.”

“Go keep an eye on them,” Naakos chuckled, then waved for the three of them to enter.

They entered after him and took a seat along the wall. The main room itself was surprisingly sound, the roof without too many holes and the windows looking out towards the animal pens. The fireplace already had several bits of roasting meat on it and a large pot of water.

Looking around, she could see that the building had three other rooms and was surprisingly roomy for how it had looked outside.

“There is also a basement, but it’s full of crap,” Naakos chuckled.

“What kind?” she asked without really thinking.

“Goat, I believe!” the Ur’Inan cackled. “Mostly to burn on the fire.”

“…”

She shook her head at that terrible joke, then noticed that the fire was indeed burning through a combination of animal dung and dried wood.

“Did you see anything weird?” the old Ur’Inan asked, squatting down by the fire and poking it.

“Beyond the shrine?” Chunhua muttered.

“Fair, fair,” Naakos nodded. “Nah, I meant in regard to the Death Watch, or other oddities out there. We are close to Vashada and as you no doubt heard, that has set some of our bigger group on edge.”

“No, just that there was not much out there and the land felt…”

“Weird,” Lin Ling said. “Empty, broken somehow,”

“So no more than the usual. That is good,” Naakos sighed. “Naakai has seen trouble in our future, but she wisely kept quiet about it. The grass-smoking bint that sleeps with Uaakaz was not so mum with her words.”

“Uhh…”

She diplomatically pretended not to have heard that, although ‘Uaakaz’ who had left before in a huff had seemed a bit objectionable.

“Don’t mind it,” Naakos said, waving for them to take a seat again, which she did after checking under it for scorpions.

“There are politics here that do not concern honoured guests who have accepted our hospitality. Uaakaz and his cousin Uaazar lead the largest faction within our band,” Naakos sighed. “Uaazar dislikes that I am ‘leader’ in kind, because before his father was ‘Leader’, but the position passed to me, as his sworn brother. Uaazar is not his father. He embraces ways that are not Ur’Inan.”

“What trouble did they see?” she asked warily, thinking of her own issues with divination.

“The usual signs that denote hardship, but this close to Vashada, people fear more keenly and so what elsewhere would be taken as a warning to be wary of wild animals or something, now is taken as a sign that scattered elements of this warband or Death Watch may be close,” Naakos remarked.

She was about to say that they were not that far from the battlesite, when Naakos continued. “This may be true, but blabbing about it to all, as Uaakaz has done, is a stupid way to alleviate concerns. In any case, we are as safe here as we can be, we have good bows and strong hearts.”

“And travelling through the night is not a smart idea,” she agreed.

“It is not,” Naakos agreed, giving her a searching look.

“We have had to do so a few times,” she told him. “The serpents and the horned Jaguar packs are not even the least of it.”

“No, here you will find grass scorpions or rock spiders as well,” Naakos grimaced, “or even worse come from the river to the east or the Badlands to the west.”

“We saw rock scorpions in the Badlands near the Blue Serpent Tribe,” Lin Ling agreed.

“Aye, nothing nice comes out at night,” Naakos agreed.

They sat around chatting and sharing some of the honey alcohol until Naakai also appeared with Lashaan, both wearing paint and slightly smarter looking garments. Thereafter they helped prepare the evening meal while Naakai, who seemed to be teaching Lashaan tales and rituals she realised, got the younger woman to recount various stories of ancestors’ travels across the land and the various symbolisms and important lessons to be learned from them.

It was a curiously instructive evening, even before it turned to Vashada, as a more topical subject.

“According to the most ancient tales, Vashada was once called Yogo Shada,” Lashaan explained, while Naakai went about preparing food by the fire.

“Why did it get that name?” she asked, curious for a while about the various allusions to it that had been made. “It is not a tale we know.”

“I would be surprised if you did,” Naakai said with a smile from by the fire.

“Do you want me to tell it, grandmother, or will you just keep talking?” Lashaan pouted.

“Who is your grandmother?” Naakai sniffed, waving for the younger woman to continue.

“…”

Lashaan shook her head and turned back to them, pretending to blank out the older woman entirely. It was a funny gesture to see mirrored in an entirely different place to West Flower Picking, for all that it was nearly identical.

“Vashada was, or so the Vash tribes believe, the original capital of your influence in this land, before the collapse, before the humans came the first time, before the Great Defilement, before the wars between Ullai and the First Men, before the rise of the Empty Shaper even…”

“Not Ukashi as it is now?” Lin Ling asked, having acquired that bit of knowledge from somewhere it seemed.

“Indeed, not Ukashi,” Lashaan agreed. “That city was founded with the determination of those acolytes of the Ironwood Wytch to cast out the last vestiges of human darkness. Before Ukashi it was Belloc, but before that, it was held to be Vashada.”

Lashaan broke off to accept a steaming bowl of herb and meat soup from Naakai, who then also passed one on to each of them and Naakos who was sitting quietly by the wall smoking a pipe.

“However, even Vashada is a renaming of a much older place, or so the wisdom of our oldest storytellers goes,” Lashaan went on, setting her soup aside to cool. “Our history speaks of it as a cursed jewel, coveted by many, not least the Vash forebears. Once it purported to be called Yogo Shada and, so they hold, was in the end the reason that humans ruined our peoples in these lands so long ago."

“But not by the Ur’Inan,” Lin Ling asked.

“No,” Naakai, who had also taken a seat, half-smiled, in a way that was not entirely comforting. “Not by our folk.”

“…”

Lashaan pouted for a moment and scowled at her grandmother, before speaking again. “In terms of its tale, its history, there are many variations – most agree, though, that a city held to be Yogo Shada was founded in these lands during the age of the great dawning, when the Shaper wrought his favoured sons from the earth and when the Maker still walked the lands.

“Another, holds that the forbears of our Ur peoples raised up a great city in the following era, on a site holy to them, on the banks of the great river Buranuna. It was not their capital, but it was a great city nonetheless, or so the stories go. The Vash hold that they were born there, shaped from the clay of that river’s banks, and from there they conquered a vast kingdom and attained many glories.

“In the end, though, that city fell and the Vash were exiled and scattered. Its circumstances were lost to time and tall tales until later men resettled it once more, following the river, because it was a strategic place. That was long ago, though, when it sat beneath a sky much different from where we now live.

“Now it is just a remnant, a twisted place, best left alone and slowly vanishing into the land from whence it was first birthed and then foolishly uncovered in ancient times. All that remains are tattered remnants, like a ruined banner to past glory, slowly being purified by the great flow of Buranuna as it runs into the west-”

“Though memories are bad when it suits people,” Naakos grunted, interrupting her again which got some wry laughs from all of them, herself included, thinking for a moment of those dark depths and the ruins in them, and a long look from Lashaan.

“Yes, greed makes everyone blind,” Naakai agreed, before elaborating further. “The plain there is fertile. Once you drop out of these rocky flats, the inundations off the northern mountains make for a broad, shallow river.”

“It has been a city in several eras, as I said…” Lashaan pouted. “And the Buranuna is the manifestation of one of the great mana flows that runs across this continent. It was, so the ancient speakers claimed, a city born for magic…”

“And also an unhealthy degree of ruin,” Naakos agreed.

“Who is telling this tale?” Lashaan sniffed.

“…”

The old Ur’Inan hunter looked at the ceiling and busied himself with eating his roasted haunch of meat.

“It is fine,” Naakai grinned. “Eat your soup before it gets cold.”

“…”

“As Lashaan was saying,” Naakai added with an eye roll, “who can say what occurred in the distant past. Yogo Shada had enough dark legends associated with it to fill a pot full of very lurid picture scrolls. The city that the ancestors of those who now rule the Vashlagh founded there, they called Vashada – believing it to be the gate by which our peoples first arrived into this land and this a holy place and a seat to cement their authority.”

“A lob ov good ib did them,” Lashaan grumbled around a mouthful of soup.

“True, it did not end well,” Naakai agreed, pausing to pour herself some of the honey wine. “After the wars on the coast and the ‘Great Defilement’, it was greed for Buranuna’s riches that was our undoing. The Grand Dukes of the human kingdoms to the east came, reconquering the land from the broken factions that had crawled out of that ruin, and in the process stumbled across Vashada and fought a war over it that was the ruin of our kind in these lands until after the great apocalypse.”

“What did they see in it?” Chunhua asked.

“Beyond its strategic location upon the Buranuna, securing the route from the mountains to the north and the ocean to the west? Somehow, they connected it to those ancient tales of Yogo Shada, just as our own ancestors did.

“Apparently, or so they believed, it was associated with the Sorcerer Lords who forged our own distant ancestors from the earth. Both they and others sought to monopolize its riches, seeking the power to subjugate this whole land,” Naakai said.

“Everything that crosses its path meets with disaster, rots or falls to ruin with time, consumed by the secrets it purports to hold in those ancient tales, yet never delivered except in the most ironic of ways,” Naakos added, spitting into the fire.

“What ancient tales?” she asked, surprised that she got a very faint resonance off her divination art regarding what Naakos had just said.

“Oh, there are many associated with its distant antiquity beneath other, ancient skies,” Naakai chuckled, before turning to Lashaan. “Granddaughter?”

“…”

Lashaan, who was busy eating her haunch of meat, scowled and had to put it aside.

“One ancient tale claims that a Great Mother of the First Day descended to its people in the Era after the Golden Dawn and was worshiped by them – she gave them many gifts and they entreated her with many words. However they squandered her gifts and when she rebuked them, they thought she was holding back things. So they tricked her, seizing her, or perhaps her daughter, or her sister – the tales vary on that – believing that person to be the greatest gift of all.”

“She, who is usually just referred to as ‘The Mistress’, cursed them for their arrogance and greed before departing, and that is why beauties are the ruin of all men and the nations they found,” Naakos added with an eye roll.

“Another variant of that tale exists where, rather than ‘The Mistress’, it is ‘The Taker’ who was the one who descended, and she united all the peoples of the world before powers conspired to be her undoing,” Lashaan added.

“…”

She resisted looking sideways at Lin Ling, because that tale was basically a facsimile of what the younger girl had said earlier.

“Another is that it was the place where Chronominthian was first opened,” Lashaan went on. “Yet another is that it was the place men first learned to speak the ‘words of god’ when they did great works, but always they sought greater works, until they felt they could do a better job than the gods themselves. As a result, they were cursed for their arrogance to speak many tongues thereafter, their inability to work together a perpetual hindrance stopping them from re-achieving that sublime strength,” Naakai agreed.

“A variation on that tale pairs it with the opening of Chronominthian,” Naakos also added, with an amused expression.

She could see, listening to that, how those two might indeed be conflated as well, despite not knowing what this ‘Chronominthian’ was.

“Others include it as the place where ancient peoples first created money, giving birth to greed,” Lashaan continued-

Lin Ling, with an eye roll, added, “So it is a place with enough infamy to attract a variation of every ill tale that our ancestors wanted to hold up as a moral teaching.”

“Indeed,” Lashaan and Naakai both nodded.

“This is the invariable moral of all tales regarding Yogo Shada,” Lashaan concluded. “That good intentions can spawn terrible things, but that it is frequently hard to evade them and that even in the evasion, a disaster may happen.”

“Indeed,” Naakos nodded. “We only brave its edge because our tribe’s ancestral grove lies there, and because the Grass Scorpions have been active in the Badlands.”

“…”

“It is also believed that the strength ancient men used to fight against the Great Defilement was grasped from there,” Larshaan mused. “Not to mention Supreme Solitude Hierophant, along with Solaneum.”

“As you said, every old tale needing a place for villainy to be done tends to find itself conflated with Yogo Shada or the land where it once sat,” Naakai mused. “Which tales are true and which are not, it is hard to say. All that is certain is that it is an ill place best avoided.”

“Indeed,” she agreed. “So it lies to the north of here?”

“Only in spirit, although that might be enough,” Naakai shrugged.

“The tales of the human settlers of these lands tell that their heroes sealed it away, to purify the land of our kind’s ‘dread taint’. They built a fortress upon the place it stood, with many holy shrines, and said prayers there every day for 10,000 years,” Lashaan added.

“…”

-Because that doesn’t sound like a bunch of old experts from a rival sect showing up and stealing someone else’s ancestral ground… not at all?

She glanced sideways at Lin Ling, but her expression was inscrutable, apparently just listening keenly.

“Our ancestors’ tales say that the humans sealed it away somewhere, never to be seen again, and harnessed the power of Buranuna to form a great teleportation that secured their dominion over the entire eastern half of this continent and allowed them to challenge the Isla kingdoms for their sea-blasted rock keeps in the western ocean,” Naakai elaborated as Lashaan passed them more meat and fried spirit herbs.

“Certainly, they stood there for 10,000 years though,” Naakos chuckled. “The Vashlagh seized the fortress, or tried to… several times since the great catastrophe and our return to the surface; however, invariably it meets with a disaster.”

“Last time was 1500 years ago, I believe,” Naakai nodded. “There was a terrible flood that wiped out half the city and brought a spell plague with it, unearthed from some inauspicious ruin upstream dating to the time of the Great Defilement. The land was abandoned within a generation and most of those who lived there now exist around its periphery: the Hundred Legs, the people of Udrasa, the Gokali to the north…”

After that, they finished the meal with general chatter, Lashaan being asked to speak of other, happier tales, again by Naakai, who seemed to delight on then correcting her on minor details. The way Lashaan took it in good grace suggested this was not an uncommon thing, and so, in the end, they listened well into the night – at least until the serpent attacked.

Some thirty minutes later, standing on the roof, she watched the various hunters shoot arrows at the huge, two-headed green and brown serpent as it tried to approach the settlement, screaming in rage. Their own collective efforts were easily keeping it at bay and it was clearly loath to enter into the soul sense ward, which she could now see had the effect of repelling it.

“On your left,” Chunhua sighed, and she glanced over and saw a smaller serpent slithering down the slope, also grey-brown with a horn on its head.

Sighting on it, she shot it with an arrow dipped in the yang blood, watching it shriek and flail for a few moments before collapsing.

“Do you think we need to intervene?” she asked Lin Ling, who was also standing nearby, occasionally shooting arrows at the big one.

“They seem to have it quite well in hand,” the younger woman shrugged. “If it gets really dangerous I can step in, but it’s well over Immortal, probably Chosen Immortal.”

“…”

The battle dragged on for several hours around the isolated little farmstead, well into the early dawn, before the serpent finally retreated to lick its wounds. In the end, sat in the pre-dawn light, surveying the ruins, it was clear that neither side had done much to the other party.

Only lucky hits with blue arrows and then an arrow fired by Lin Ling at an extant wound had injured it that she saw, but after that it had not been touched by another projectile, preferring to sit back and spit venom everywhere, smash rocks and use some kind of qi-based sonic attack from shifting its body in a particular way to wear down the defenders without much success. Thanks to the wards it didn’t seem able to use soul sense attacks either.

The end result, was that by the time it left, mainly it was the serpent’s pride that was dented. There were quite a few wounds but no fatalities on the side of the Ur’Inan and the serpent had only lost a few of its swarm to arrows, evading most arrows easily.

The result, though, was that departing the next morning in a timely manner was out of the question. They helped out with the injured where they could but were still sorting matters out by the time the sun was five hours risen and a second band of Ur’Inan had arrived, almost as large as the one already in the ruins.

They watched from a distance, from where they had been helping Lashaan and Teshek extract goods from a ruined building collapsed by one of the serpent’s attacks as the group trotted down the hill and headed straight to Uaakaz’s group.

“Great, one annoyance after another,” Teshek sighed at last as that group fanned out, talking to people.

“Who are they?” she asked.

“Uaazar probably,” Lashaan sighed. “He rushed ahead but likely they sent word we were attacked so now he comes back. It would be better if he had just gone to Udrasa and we could meet him there.”

“True, but it seems that Uaakari’s words had a degree of truth in them.”

“You can throw a rock in this land and hit a problem,” Lashaan sniffed. “If I say I will hit a problem before I do it, that doesn’t make me a prophet, just someone with good aim.”

“You, over there!” a commanding voice yelled.

They turned to see two groups walking over: the first had Naakos leading it, looking annoyed, the second had Uaakaz and also a hulking Ur’Inan covered in golden suns and black serpents that she guessed was Uaazar.

The group arrived without much preamble and the Ur’Inan in black markings came to stand in front of them.

“These are the ones?” he asked Uaakaz.

“They are,” Uaakaz nodded. “They saw the battle.”

“Don’t look like much, very ugly,” Uaazar sneered, then turned back to Naakos.

“You are delaying. We leave within the hour, once the scouts get here.”

“…”

“That is not your call to make,” Naakos scowled.

“And you are chief only in name,” Uaazar sneered again. “You are putting our word in Udrasa to disrepute.”

“Words are put into disrepute simply by existing in relationship to Udrasa,” Teshek muttered.

Uaazar scowled at him, then stalked off without further comment, leaving Naakos standing there looking annoyed.

“Perhaps we should part ways with them now?” Chunhua signed.

“Perhaps,” Lin Ling nodded, glancing at her.

She repeated the divination and got ambivalently bad outcomes for that idea, which made her sigh. Thinking through matters, it was clear that people here were interested in the battle.

“What is the problem? Grand uncle?” Lashaan asked, scrambling down. “Why does Uaazar want to rush to Udrasa?”

“Apparently he has a prisoner…” Naakos scowled.

“A prisoner?” Teshek asked.

“One of the mages from the warband. They appeared out of thin air and were easily captured. ‘Only four dead’, or so he claims.”

“Only four…” Teshek scowled.

“There is a bounty on them from Udrasa apparently, as well as something about a new tribe that the masters of the town don’t like in their domain.”

“…”

She stared dully, as did Chunhua, resisting the urge to immediately put on her mask.

“He does, does he?” Lin Ling frowned.

“Two of his brothers took it on to Udrasa,” Naakos looked a bit derisive. “Greedy boy.”

“What will happen to them?” she asked, wondering if it was a male or female cultivator.

“If there is a bounty on them, likely someone will buy it as a slave – some of the settlements up river keep slaves for work or pleasure,” Naakos sighed. “It is not the way of Ur’Inan. We do not take slaves, nor do we keep them.”

“…”

“In any case, we will find out when we get there,” Naakos frowned after Uaazar. “You said you saw the periphery of the battle?”

“We did,” she nodded. “If that Uaazar has captured one of that band and they were not alone, it will go badly for a band of us this small.”

-Unless Lin Ling steps in, she didn’t add out loud.

“What kind of numbers did they have?” Naakos asked.

“The whole ‘warband’ was maybe 400… with over a dozen at the peak of the 7th advancement,” Lin Ling supplied. “They were able to fight with an old mage and his drums and their war chief was a spear master on par with the best Ajara had to offer.”

“…”

Naakos stared at her for a long moment before tugging his beard. “That brat, does he want to put me in the ground with his stupidity?”

“Possibly,” Lashaan scowled.

“You think they will come for a prisoner, even if they are by all accounts broken and scattering?” Caanar, who had come over as well, frowned.

“They are scattering, but the group was already divided. That, we saw,” Chunhua said.

“All the battle did was splinter their fragile alliance. Their warband spent more time fighting itself than it did the Ur’Vash forces from at least three tribes sent to wipe it out,” she supplied.

“Faugh,” Naakos sighed again.

“I would send him and his lot to Udrasa and head somewhere else,” Lin Ling chuckled darkly.

“Hah…” Naakos nodded and then trailed off, because a column of about forty Ur’Vash in light leather armour, carrying bows and a banner that read ‘Udrasa’ on it in Easten, appeared on the ridge above them and yelled something in their local tongue.

Uaazar, Uaakaz and a few others walked out and yelled something else, waving for the leader to come down.

“When it rains in really rains,” Lin Ling scowled.

A few minutes later the entire group had descended the ridge and were standing around looking generally intimidating. They rapidly slipped off to the side, letting the two groups talk about whatever it was that had drawn the patrol or similar here.

“What do you think?” Chunhua signed to her.

“My divination art is still being weird,” she grumbled.

“Weird?” Lin Ling frowned.

She looked at the other two, then realised she probably hadn’t said anything about that and sighed inwardly.

“When I try to divine anything about our group, ever since the battle, it’s fuzzy, hard to pin down and usually very open-ended,” she supplied. “I guess it has to do with us being right in the middle of the whole mess.”

“Ah, that makes sense…” Chunhua nodded.

“Hmmmmm…” Lin Ling, however, looked a bit vexed. “Does it just affect us? Or is it all divinations?”

“Specifically, it relates to our group. It’s a bit like what we saw up in the mountains, but less specific.”

“…”

Lin Ling looked distant for a moment, then sighed and signed. “Shit, that might be because of me.”

“How so?” she frowned.

“Well… my physique changed slightly in the tribulation and my grasp of my principle is a bit lacking still. The results of that are likely messing with your attempts to do divinations relating to me directly and us indirectly.”

“What kind of physique does that?” Chunhua sighed.

“…”

Lin Ling went inscrutable again suddenly.

“What is it?” she signed, narrowing her eyes.

“That Uaakaz just said we were at the battle. Apparently the local power is unhappy that there is a new tribe, the ‘Golden Flower’ tribe that has formed. They are seen as a rebellious influence so this patrol was sent out to gather a bunch of them up so that they can be taught a lesson.”

“…”

“How did he know that?” she signed.

“I guess someone mentioned it in passing to him,” Chunhua said, her eyes drifting to the golden flowers they all had painted on their breast bones.

“People wore golden flower marks in various forms before the battle,” she pointed out, having seen the odd one in the camps they passed through, notably the Golden Grass territory.

“Yeah, somehow I don’t think they will care about that,” Lin Ling signed back with a sigh.

“…”

“So what do we do?” Chunhua frowned. “I don’t want to get implicated here, but Naakos and Naakai have been gracious hosts.”

Lin Ling scowled, still listening.

{Bright Heart Shifting Steps}

‘What happens if we fight here?’ she formulated the question and got sensations back that could only be described as ambivalent.

-Fat lot of use you are, she complained at the divination art.

‘Is fighting here a good idea?’ – That came back a fairly categorical no, which, when she paused to think about what Caanar had said about the shrine, made sense actually.

At this point, the others were looking around, clearly seeking them out.

“What is all this, Uaazar?” Naakai’s voice cut through the hubbub as she stalked out of the shrine, followed by Eruua.

“Grezvor is seeking this new rebellious tribe that has emerged. Udrasa’s chief wishes to make it clear to them that this is his territory and not that of any other tribe.”

“Last I checked this was the territory of Vashada,” Naakai said a bit pointedly.

“You should speak of Chief Kozrak with respect,” one of the Ur’Vash with Grezvor scowled.

“When Kozrak does something worthy of respect, I, along with the rest of the world, shall bow down, for surely it will be proclaimed by the Mother of Sky herself!” Naakos muttered.

“…”

“It has struck me before, but the Ur approach to diplomacy is really heavy on the insults…” Chunhua signed.

She was nodding in agreement when the guard who had first spoken levelled his spear at Naakai, Naakos and Lashaan.

“Are you trying to make problems here, Grezvor?” Naakai scowled.

“…”

“…”

The cloth-clad Ur’Vash scowled for a moment then waved for the others to put their weapons down.

“Your rebels are no concern of us,” Naakai said, more flatly. “We have always been a good friend to Udrasa and this is how we are repaid? If some manifestation of the Mother of Golden Flowers has appeared this is surely a good thing? Or are we to all wear only the markings that Kozrak believes are right?”

Grezvor scowled and a few of the other guards behind him looked shifty now.

“You should still act with respect in our lands,” another guard scowled.

“In that case, you may search our camp for interlopers,” Naakai shrugged. “When you leave, take that Uaazar and his idiots with you. He will deliver a message to Kozrak from me.”

“…”

Uaazar looked a bit shifty now as well, she fancied.

The scout group poked around, found nothing then basically invited themselves to lunch from what she could see. In the intervening time they re-did their markings a bit and eventually exited the building they had taken refuge beside.

“Ah, there you are,” Uaazar scowled, pointing at them immediately. “These three ugly girls are the ones I spoke of earlier.”

Chunhua narrowed her eyes and she also felt a bit put out by the way his gaze ran across them, lingering just a bit too long.

“You are hardly one to talk. Your soul is so rotten I can smell it from the other side of the latrines!” Lin Ling snickered, pointing at Uaazar.

“You saw the battle?” Grezvor said, looming over them.

“We saw the aftermath, and shot a few arrows. It was very chaotic,” Lin Ling answered plainly. “Are you telling me you didn’t? The meteor was very… forceful, and it would take exceptional awareness to miss all that lightning or the sky turning black.”

“…”

There was some more uneasy laughter and a few mutters in the Ur’Vash’s tongue which she just about got as some kind of insinuation about orange poop.

“They are not wearing your signs of rebels,” Naakos added.

“Paint is-”

Lin Ling closed the distance and, with a single punch, sent the guard who had spoken sprawling, vomiting blood.

“Disrespectful, you dare to make light of me?” she hissed, her principle now properly settling over everything, stifling the world around them faintly and making the already hot day truly sweltering.

“You disrespect our people in a place like this? You are not Ur’Vash – you are Orc.”

As far as insults went, she was pretty sure at this point that calling an Ur’Vash an ‘Orc’ was a bit like telling a cultivator their mother was a whore, or they had the ancestry of a dog or a rabid monkey.

“You…” Grezvor had drawn his sword but was looking uneasy, so she had to guess he was weaker than Lin Ling.

What was weird though, was that she had been letting ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ remain active throughout all this and the shifts in how it was informing her perceptions of the scene were actually giving her some slight benefits to her cultivation – just by standing here and letting it literally spin in the wind…

“Enough,” Naakai sighed. “You were disrespectful to our guests, Grezvor. Be on your way. What you seek is not here.”

“I have accepted a gift from them,” Uaazar scowled.

“Then they can eat at your fire and no other, and share your food,” Naakos grunted.

“…”

That resolution was decidedly unpopular she noted, based on the shifting in Uaazar’s group. They did not seem to have that much game as far as she could see. That was reflected in Uaazar’s now sour expression as well. Looking sideways she could see that several others were quickly gathering up other bits of food lying around and retreating unobtrusively as well.

Lunch, such as it was, was thus rather awkward. The scouts all had to be fed by Uaazar’s group while everyone else sat around almost provocatively eating the biggest fruits or the juiciest meat and fish they had acquired and drinking water that they actually splashed on the ground. Uaazar’s group sulked and tried to put on a brave face, but she knew social judgement when she saw it, and Uaazar seemed to rub up quite a few in this group the wrong way.

“You saw something rather unsightly,” Naakos sighed, coming over to sit at the main fire and looking at the three of them.

“We have imposed,” she said with a grimace.

“If it were not you, he would have found some other thing. He only stays with our band because he is prideful,” Caanar scowled.

“Will it not cause difficulties when you get to Udrasa?” Chunhua added.

“None more than we usually face,” Naakos replied, unconcerned.

“The gossip they are spreading is that there is some disorder to the south though,” Caanar sighed. “It seems that the armies that went to support the Grass Stalkers from these regions and beyond the river have all met with unexpected obstacles. The shamans are blaming it on disunity within the ranks of the Ur’Vash, a wavering of the heart.”

“Oh… so that’s why they are complaining about a ‘new tribe’,” Lashaan rolled her eyes.

“Foolish – new tribe, old tribe, problem is never them, always someone else,” Naakai scowled, taking a large bite of a fried fish and crunching it down, bones and all.

“What obstacles?” she asked Caanar.

“Apparently the War Chiefs of the Vashlagh beyond the river emptied this region to go fight in the mountains. All that were left were auxiliary forces who were chafing that they didn’t get to go, so they all ran off after this new warband. Now, by the sounds of it, they are nearly all dead without reply. Udrasa’s own force was almost annihilated in a strange storm about two days south west of here.”

-Oh… that… she resisted looking at Lin Ling and Chunhua.

“We… saw that battlefield in passing,” she volunteered. “There were very few survivors.”

“So it seems,” Caanar nodded. “They have sent word inland to the Vashlagh, but the shame of what has occurred is causing them issues, even when it is couched as a vast warband of crazy mages.”

“I guess they were expecting that their forces would return by now,” Naakos sighed.

“Apparently the Death Watch have also stirred in the Badlands, and one of the guards was also talking about Grass Scorpions being sighted north of Valinkar,” Teshek added. “Both just after the sky at night began to manifest those ill omens.”

“So now they have a bunch of crazy mages running around doing Maker knows what, Death Watch where there were none previously and all their forces are stuck on the wrong side of the Badlands, playing with their cocks,” Lashaan giggled.

“…”

The others around the fire also looked a bit amused, but she could sense the worry underneath their humour. The battle and its aftermath had not wiped out the auxiliary strength of the tribes in this region, it seemed, but it had put a big dent in their ability to deal with anything else, she guessed. When you added in the likelihood that many of those cultivator bands were agents of unremitting chaos in their own right…

She put that out of her mind and went back to focusing on the chatter around her. Most of the Ur’Inan were speaking around them in Easten, because, as she had gathered, that was respectful, but away from the fire they were speaking their own tongue. The guards were as well.

It had been quite a while since she had actually learned another language – Ancient Easten had been the last one some 20 years ago, beyond a few dialect words here and there to deal with diplomatic aspects of her duties in the Hunter Pavilion.

That was turning out to be another strange perk of ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ – it was helping her pick up the language. Combined with her body’s much purer qi she was picking it up much faster than she had expected to. She doubted she was going to speak it any time soon, but she was certainly getting a general grasp of the intention of many of the spoken words. Within a few days she would probably have memorised most of the common words spoken around the camp.

They had just finished up their lunch when Grezvor came back over, looking part shifty and part pleased.

“Command come from the masters of Udrasa,” he said. “We not able to guarantee safety of any Ur people who want to hunt here, so we escort you all to Udrasa now.”

The various hunters around the fire all just looked at him, their expressions somewhere between ridicule and amusement until Naakos just shrugged. That was clearly not the response Grezvor was expecting, because he stood there looking silly for a few moments then just walked back to his group.

“This why Vash tribes always make my head hurt,” Naakai grumbled at last, standing up and looking around. “They have no heart. It’s no wonder Vashada ruined them.”

“The more I see of some of these Ur’Vash tribes, the more they remind me of the folk out east,” Chunhua signed as they watched the camp pack up while the group led by Grezvor continued to talk with Uaazar’s party.

As she watched them, she saw two gestures in their general direction and the Ur’Vash that Lin Ling had hit was also still looking unhappy. Even without ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ feeding her the general vibe of their surrounding she would have been leery of them at this point. That group just screamed unreasonable trouble of the petty and mendacious kind.

“That lot also gives me a bad vibe,” she signed to Lin Ling after a moment.

“Yeah, was it really a good idea to punch that one?” Chunhua asked, also looking at them.

“It was the best of a bad bunch of options,” Lin Ling shrugged. “It fits with their ‘picture’ of us, though, so it’s better than being labelled as an actual rebel.”

“True,” she agreed, before adding, “Should we go look in the shrine?

“…”

“We might as well,” Lin Ling nodded. “It’s better than watching this play.”

She wasn’t sure what she expected as they walked through the buildings and back into the rock-cut shrine they had passed before, but the inside was… much as the outside had been, a jarring mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar. She bowed slightly, entering, as did Lin Ling and Teng Chunhua.

The interior was the size of a small entrance hall, maybe 20 metres long and 10 wide. The back wall was curved with seven faces in a rough hemisphere, holding seven alcoves, all now devoid of their original statues. Someone, possibly Naakai, had placed a bowl of offerings and a small clay lamp on each one.

The walls themselves were carved with various scenes of figures doing various things while people bowed down.

“That one is the ‘Taker’,” Lin Ling murmured, pointing to a panel showing a woman grasping what appeared to be a sun in her hand. Plants bloomed everywhere while small people followed along behind her, harvesting them with various implements and using them to build a city.

Below it was a partial inscription that read something like ‘She ----- the sun ---- ---- that her people ---- might eat well’ in an Easten Script she was surprised to recognise.

In another, there was a many-armed figure seated upon a mountain, or maybe shaped of a mountain – in his hands he was creating figures and placing them down amid the land below where they hunted great beasts and sang and danced.

Two of the other panels had been smashed entirely. One had been replaced by a faded painting of a woman with six arms holding a moon. Someone else had half washed it away though and been in the process of changing it to something else. The other scene held an ancient painting of a long procession of people building a great city.

“That is Vashada,” she turned to see Lashaan standing in the doorway. “The local folk have altered the shrine, which is… well it is their choice, I suppose.”

She looked around at it and nodded. The question of altering shrines was fraught, even back home. The last time any kind of renovation to the Ancestral Kun shrine had been mooted, elders had come to blows over it… in public no less. It had amused her father, in private at least.

“What is the figure they are washing away?” Chunhua asked, staring at the damaged painting.

“Probably the Mother of Sky. The people here do not really respect her, because of her association with the Grass Scorpions,” Lashaan observed.

“We are ready to go!” a voice called from the outside.

“Yeesh, such a pain,” Lashaan scowled. “We should go, or things are wont to get even more annoying.”

Traipsing back out into the glare of the midday sun, she found that the various beasts of burden had been loaded with remarkable haste and the various scouts were already urging those leading them to make them move fast. Uaazar and several of his band were standing on the ridge with Grezvor.

“You wonder why he sticks with us?” Lashaan muttered, noting her travelling gaze.

“It has crossed my mind,” she said apologetically.

“His father was respected, a great hunter, but when he passed away leadership of the band passed to Naakos and his brothers.” Lashaan sighed. “Uaazar felt it should have been his position, despite only being 20 summers at that time. He has attracted a following of younger folk who also feel as he does, but the old Hunters and especially Speaker Naakai do not hold him in high regard because he is always doing things like this and does not respect customs.”

“Every tribe has such things,” she nodded in agreement. “My cousin is such a person.”

“As is my brother,” Lin Ling muttered, spitting on the ground.

She nearly tripped over a rock at that. Even when her mind had been disintegrating Lin Ling had basically refused to broach the topic of her brother, yet now she just threw it out like nothing?

-I suppose it fits with the circumstance at least, she acknowledged.

The trip to Udrasa took most of the rest of the day and was undertaken at an almost painfully brisk trot. The Ur’Inan took a great deal of delight in moving as fast as they physically and logistically could, adhering to the instructions of the scout patrol to the point where she nearly found herself taking notes on how maliciously compliant they were.

Largely devoid of immediate threat, given how robust their current disguises seemed to be, against all the odds, she was, as she observed the lands they passed through, struck by how similar the trappings of much of it was to what she knew of the eastern tribes beyond the great mount and the city Yun Shan…

The rumoured tales of the battle and the crazy mages’ ‘despicable brutality’ that led to it, especially their determination to not give decent Ur’Vash an ‘honourable death’, were a frequent topic of conversation among the scouts as well, she found as she continued to get a better grasp on their local tongue. That she still had a small pile of cores from the battle in the forest left her with an odd feeling – but at the same time, watching how the folk from Udrasa behaved, she found that she held much more sympathy for Ajara than she did this place.

There, at least, the Grass Stalkers had seemed rather genuine in their outrage. Here, the scouts spent quite a lot of time talking about how they were doing a ‘favour’ for their less fortunate tribal settlements to the south by deigning to help them absolve the ‘dishonour’. The outrage, to her, just felt like a veil through which to exert their superiority over others.

Her own use of ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ and ‘Bright Lotus Eyes’ also continued to advance quite rapidly. Part of that was because she had, she supposed, basically stopped using it as just a movement or divination art.

She had long since acknowledged that her initial focus on its individual merits, along with her expectations of how a ‘holistic’ cultivation law should be set out had nearly led her astray – but she was still shocked at how much of an influence the two arts were having now on her foundation.

With the help of ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ and to a lesser extent ‘Bright Lotus Eyes’, she was slowly unpicking a small lifetime’s worth of little errors and inefficiencies in her qi flow through her twelve Basic Meridians. It was an intensive and laborious process, especially when paired with her periodic need to keep an eye on the ‘trail’ they were still broadly following.

It had wound off somewhere to the east, but she was still able to feel its distortion faintly, just because they appeared to be travelling slower to avoid notice of the Ur’Vash, she supposed.

However, the benefits were undeniable – despite the fact that she was probably burning more qi than she was refining – her qi was flowing in marginally more auspicious ways through her meridians with each iteration she now performed and she had to devote very little effort to making sure that the changes ‘stuck’, thanks to her mantra.

The immediate result, was that the mists of ‘unrefined’ qi she was absorbing were now condensing multi-coloured drops of liquid qi like small rain showers. As a direct result of that, and her now purified spirit root she was sure, the qi in her dantian was also starting to attain a faintly multi-coloured hue as it flowed back and forth through her meridian system.

The second aspect that was still surprising her, especially since that change to her spirit root, was her mantra. It had already ‘changed’ in the darkness below, but since her close brush with its resurgent presence when she got the talisman, she had been rather wary of probing it too deeply. In a rather profound way, ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ was also working to resolve that, she was coming to realise – giving her clearer, if subtle, understanding of those changes.

Using the mantra in conjunction with the art had been hard since the battle, so she had again mostly been letting it do its own thing. The reason for that had been perplexing and annoying, and also elusive… until, almost by accident, about three hours after they left the shrine she stumbled across the answer when associating images of the mantra in her head with Old Ling while reviewing other things.

As soon as that happened, Bright Heart Shifting Steps gave her vexation ripples and twists that persisted for a full ten minutes until she realised that it was pointing to the same issue as she had had with her ocular meridians.

That… realisation, that she had been using her mantra ‘wrong’ somehow, was as unnerving as it was shocking. As she re-examined what she knew, she found that where it was guiding her was away from the focus of what she traditionally thought of as ‘Physical Cultivation’ – imbuing the strength of the world into her body in a very specific manner – and was almost completely pivoting it away towards the mental aspects and her psyche.

Looking back at those early lessons given by Old Ling as they passed by a sprawling, fortified farmstead where many Ur’Vash were labouring in flooded fields harvesting some kind of river grass, she started to get the distinct impression that there had been a lot more in there than the old man had let on.

His rationale was likely that it was ‘good enough’ at the time that she mastered the basics, but the realisation she had not been as good, or perhaps intuitive, a student of his teachings as she had liked to think was unsettling. As they walked on, that feeling got stronger and stronger as she moved forward through those memories a second time, re-evaluating them in light of her new understandings, especially the changes of what Valash had changed in her mantra gained through ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’.

By the time dusk was starting to colour the sky, she was distinctly sure that progress with her mantra as it now was, was less about bodily transformation and more about connecting the bridge between her physical self and her mind in some obscure way.

That idea shifted again as they walked on through more shifting, sighing reed bed fields, as she realised that it held the same properties as when she had touched the Ur’Vash’s shared strength. As she waited for her qi to replenish itself again, she explored that further, finding that her mantra was, with the help of ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’, drawing a connection to emotion in her mind on an almost instinctual level and linking it with elemental qi in her meridians to adapt her body and make changes to it.

If she thought about Old Ling, or her father, or Lin Ling, for that matter, friends, family, teacher, using ‘Devoted’, it did something very different to thinking about kicking a tree.

The former gave her a sense of mental strength, calmness or centring. The latter gave renewed strength to her muscles.

In a strange way, she had to acknowledge that some of this was nothing new – what was new was the ‘understanding’ of why, which she would probably not have made that intuitive jump towards for many years without her struggles with ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’.

Turning her inner eye back to her replenishing qi, she thought about that while using it and found that the mantra was effectively doubling as an extra set of meridians, threading through her twelve principal meridians mainly and her inner organs, naturally guiding and focusing her qi to the places she subconsciously thought of as needing it.

This… turned out to be why she was getting the resistance from ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ as well, because, it turned out, what she ‘believed’ she needed was not, in fact, what she actually needed in a few places. She worked on remedying that for a bit, but had to stop after a while because walking while messing with her meridians to that degree was deeply disorientating.

It also ate up her qi reserves at a rate that made her nervous of suffering accidental depletion, but after a few minutes she found that ‘Devoted’ had left the qi in her bones marginally more refined as a result of the optimisations she had acquired.

Other words had similar effects. ‘Path’ was weird and diffuse, but basically it seemed to change the way her mantra worked in tandem with her current tasks.

If she matched it with some of her martial forms, warily so as not to cause any weirdness among the group, it almost became a pseudo movement art in its own right. Similarly, it had a very noticeable effect on ‘Bright Lotus Eyes’ and a somewhat lesser, iterative one on ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’. Unfortunately, unlike with ‘Devoted’, she struggled to find the ‘how’ and so in the end set it aside for future consideration.

‘Lotus’, one of the words that had been changed by Valash, seemed to relate clearly to transformation of unrefined qi to refined qi, and also, again, did something to her state of mind, like ‘Devoted’. There was more to it than that, she was sure, but now was not the time to spend poking at the metaphysical aspects of her mantra interpretation to that extent.

‘Body’ was perhaps the easiest, but it also had hidden depths, she discovered. Its ability to heal wasn’t just related to her mental state and her emotions and desires, but it was also the root of the connection to the Ur’Vash along with ‘Path’.

That connection also still lingered in the background if she sought it as well, which was downright weird in a different way, because it instantly gave her a much better read on their group as a whole and only cemented her view that she would not lament if the scouts from Udrasa stepped in dog shit.

‘Bestowal’ was weird as well… It didn’t quite provide boosts for nothing, but seemed to take her emotional state – and it turned out that it could use -any- state – and provide boosts to her body based on how that worked.

This raised an interesting thought in her mind, as they walked along, regarding Lin Ling’s ‘words’, but there was no easy way to talk to her about it so she could only set that aside for a quiet moment.

After that, she spent some more time continuing to investigate how her mantra interacted with the art until they turned another bend in the road and Udrasa came into better view in the evening light. The entire town itself was surrounded by a soul-suppressing ward – Lin Ling had remarked on it even before the sun started properly dipping over the horizon – but the walls on it were also… impressive.

“You know, it looks rather like the town we saw in the mountains?” she signed to Ling.

“It does have that look, yes,” Lin Ling agreed.

Eventually, they stopped at an outlying waystation heavily guarded with layers of spikes and various wards facing the river. Looking around, the faces of the guards on the walls were somewhere between amused and disinterested. The scouts departed with Uaazar and his other group, before returning and singling the three of them out a few minutes later.

“You three, come with us,” the new arrival said perfunctorily, in the common tongue rather than Easten.

She glanced sideways at Lin Ling.

“This is disrespectful,” Naakos scowled suddenly, speaking in Easten.

“Shut up, old man. We ask for your words, you can shit them,” one of the guards sneered, again in the local tongue.

“So, do we fight?” she signed to Lin Ling, even as she consulted the divination art and got the predicted ambivalence.

That was the problem with relying too much on them in a weird way.

“…”

Lin Ling narrowed her eyes then shrugged and followed after the group.

“What is the strongest illusion talisman you have?” Lin Ling signed to Chunhua as they went out of that courtyard into another with various crates and goods stacked about.

“Dao Seeking?” Chunhua signed back.

“Get ready to use it to stun them all when the opportunity arises,” Lin Ling signed.

Chunhua nodded while she again cursed that the outcome on her divination was mixed at best. What was more helpful, she noted as they were escorted into an opulent room at the end of that courtyard, was that her connection to the Ur’Vash was allowing her to roughly gauge their strength through their relationship to others. Both the guards following them were maybe close to Nascent Soul body cultivators…

“These are the three you suspect of being of the rebel tribe?” a fat Ur’Vash in a spun cloth robe, sitting on a bench looking bored and drinking from a stone cup, grumbled as they were brought to a stop.

“Indeed,” Uaazar, who stood to the side now, nodded. “They also have artefacts that no hunter of their status should have.”

-So, robbery, she sighed inwardly.

“They are ugly,” the official said dismissively.

“Only if you look at their face,” Uaazar sneered, again making her contemplate how she could see him suffer appropriately.

“I guess,” the official sighed as if that was some great imposition and the guards laughed in a way that made her itch to hit them as hard as she could. “All that’s there and what they have on them are likely barely enough to make recompense though, compared to what you promised, which was a captured mage…”

-The prisoner they captured got free? On the one hand, she was pleased at that, but on the other it might not be a good deed either, depending on what sect they were from.

-Not to mention, the three of us are also cultivators… her inner monologue sneered after a moment’s further contemplation. That irony was bleakly amusing somehow.

“…”

“What you hope to gain here?” Annoyed now, she spoke in their common tongue to Uaazar, who blinked in shock.

“Indeed, are you sure you want to do this?” Lin Ling grinned, also speaking in the common tongue.

-Because of course she can speak it, she rolled her eyes inwardly.

“We travel far from home, experience many things, go on pilgrimage to make our names,” Lin Ling said, lapsing into Easten.

The two guards now looked a bit awkward she fancied. The official laughed after a moment.

“Very well, you are on a journey, but this is Udrasa.”

“…”

“So I see,” Lin Ling deadpanned.

“You must pay passage to enter,” the fat Ur’Vash grinned.

“Then we will just go someplace else,” Lin Ling shrugged. “We only travelled with this band of Ur’Inan because they offered us hospitality.”

“You disrespect Udrasa by not wishing to visit?” the official chuckled.

“We were hardly given a choice,” Lin Ling pointed out.

“Sometimes life is cruel. As a young Ur’Vash woman, you should understand this. Consider the price of entry a reminder of that,” the official chuckled.

“…” Chunhua’s hand on her weapon shifted slightly.

Lin Ling waved her hand and Chunhua frowned. ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ shifted slightly and she found that it was still being fogged as well.

-Lin Ling if this is also your principle mucking with things, I swear I will kick you in the river, she complained inwardly.

Lin Ling tossed out a token onto the table, graven of ivory that had the rune for Ajara on one side and that of ‘Health’ on the other.

“You…” the official scowled. “How do you have this?”

“How do you think, given we came from the south?” Lin Ling sniffed. “We took part in the subjugation of the warband with Ajara,” Lin Ling said. “They recruited auxiliary forces and allowed us to take what we could from the battlefield, as is appropriate.”

The official stared at her, then at Uaazar, then at the ceiling for a moment and then just laughed.

“So, you think Ezajara’s token will help you? This is not Ajara; this is Udrasa.”

“I just figured I should at least give you a chance,” Lin Ling said with an eye roll.

“What do you-”

“Forget”

Lin Ling’s voice hissed through the evening air, even as the air turned sweltering. Even though she was not the target, the twisting insanity in the words was familiar. It was hot, humid, muggy and grasping, the madness of the jungles and the depths of the grassland, but also the brutal cruelty of the darkness below, slipping through their minds and divorcing them from reason.

Chunhua triggered the illusionary formation, miring up the entire room and burying all the Ur’Vash in it. Without soul sense to help them and with their minds fogged by whatever Lin Ling had done there was no resisting even the relatively weak talisman.

Without comment, Lin Ling tossed out one of the broken jars from her talisman. It had been one of the ones Han Shu picked up in the depths, covered with swirling vines and such as she recalled. Lin Ling made sure to put the bowl where it might have fallen from the hand of one of the fat Ur’Vash in robes and then just turned on her heel and walked out of the room.

“Oh…” Chunhua understood at the same time she did, recalling the story that Naakai had told about the Death Watch and cursed objects.

“So how do we get out of here without a fuss?” Chunhua asked a moment later.

“Easily, the same way we came in,” Lin Ling giggled, grabbing the guards that had escorted them and pulling them up.

They both watched as the younger woman did something to both of them with her principle. Both shivered for a moment then picked up their weapons.

“Store half your gear, make it look like they confiscated stuff and just follow my lead. Look annoyed or sad or something,” Lin Ling murmured to both of them.

She did as instructed, hiding much of her garb, as much as modesty permitted… then with narrowed eyes stored her top as well.

-The things we do… she complained inwardly, trying to ignore her lost modesty.

Lin Ling gave her a sideways look but she just shrugged.

“Now what?” she asked.

“We wait for oh… a few minutes, then go back. That should be long enough, unless you want to kill everyone here and dump their bodies in the river.”

“Tempting,” Chunhua grumbled.

They stood in the room, watching the others flop around like morons caught up in whatever the illusion formation was beguiling them with for nearly five minutes before Lin Ling finally waved to the guards and they turned on the spot and led them back out.

They followed the pair back through to the other courtyard where a few of the Ur’Inan were sat. Naakai and Lashaan noted their state and scowled. She felt a bit bad at the subterfuge, but it was probably necessary as Lin Ling had pointed out.

“We can all leave,” she sighed, channelling that annoyance into her response.

“You all leave. Udroz thank you very much for your tribute,” the guard behind her leered and slapped her ass for good measure.

“…”

She looked sideways at Lin Ling who didn’t look in her direction.

“Uaazar say he come after, have business to discuss,” the other guard added perfunctorily. “You leave all goods here with him; this command of Udroz.”

Naakos scowled, as did several of the others, but under the watchful eye of the other guards by the far gate and with walls and towers around, nobody was willing to object it seemed. They walked through in silence, escorted onto the road by the two guards for a bit before they turned without comment and left.

“Did you really have to do that?” she signed to Lin Ling with a scowl.

“I just provided the suggestions,” the other woman grimaced. “It’s not my fault they’re horrible idiots and greedy besides.”

“You…” Naakai finally said at last when they were about half a mile away from what she assumed was a customs post of some description.

“It’s fine. They might have done something but Uaazar was there and the official was looking at a strange pot. They just made us take off all our gear and give it over,” she answered before Lin Ling could.

“…”

The others eyed them dubiously.

“Also, it seems that the prisoner that your tribesman captured was intended to go to that official,” she added. “However, the prisoner got free somehow. Uaazar sought to use us to redress the agreement he had with that scum.”

“That brat, I will break his three legs,” Naakos scowled.

“This is betrayal of our group,” Caanar scowled. “I say enough is enough. To pedal in selling others, especially those under our hospitality, is not Ur’Inan.”

“I agree,” Lashaan added. “Uaazar is no longer part of our band.”

Recalling what she had noted before, she wondered sympathetically if Lashaan might not have another motive in being rather keen to see him go.

-Maybe we did some good here, irrespective of saving our own hides, she mused.

The others were also nodding grimly and within a few moments all fourteen of the remaining Ur’Inan reached the same consensus as they walked on. It was a strange thing to observe: a majority vote, a few words spoken and after an oath sworn on the Mother of Earth, which made the air seem to hang heavy around them all for a moment, Uaazar was no longer a part of that group.

“We come a long way, only to be robbed with collaboration of our own tribesmen. This is a disgrace,” Naakos sighed at last, after they had all walked on in some silence.

“At least we are alive,” Teshek muttered.

“Is pity we lost Umma and Yuaz,” one of the children snivelled. It took her a moment to realise that was the two large beasts who had been carrying their camp gear.

“You suffered this problem on behalf of us,” she said after a moment, feeling bad about that, “At least let us redress some problems.”

“We could not…” Naakos grumbled. “It is not your fault that Uaazar has done this.”

“…”

She grimaced and shook her head. “However, your hospitality to us has still caused you difficulties. Please allow us to make some contribution here.”

Naakos still looked unwilling, at least until Naakai elbowed him in the side and he nodded.

“Please, see it as us contributing what a guest should to a shared calamity,” Lin Ling said.

“That is acceptable,” Naakos relented, “but first we must decide if we go into Udrasa or just seek someplace else.”

“Unless you plan to spend the night hopping on serpents’ heads in the fields out there, we have no choice,” Naakai sniffed.

“They will, however, ask us for payment to enter the gates,” Caanar pointed out.

“…”

“Give us ten minutes,” Lin Ling scowled.

Before she could comment further, her friend had slid off the bank and into the field on the riverward side. With a shrug, she followed as did Chunhua. They walked through the gloom, which with her eyes was not really all that gloomy, until Lin Ling finally stopped and pulled out a pot, staring around.

Looking around the more open area, she could see green shoots all around them poking out of the water which were likely some variant of Gold Water Iris, or maybe a Star Iris that had taken root in a little geomantic conflux. As a plant they were sought after by people making water gardens because of that very aspect: they became natural confluxes between Water and Earth qi and in the right season their fragrance was calming.

With ‘Bright Lotus Eyes’ it was almost farcically easy to find, although digging it out might take longer than five minutes.

“Are we after the Iris?” Chunhua also asked after a moment of looking around and spotting it.

“Tempting, but actually I just came here because it was a bit more open,” Lin Ling shrugged, passing them a few herbs and other things from her storage talisman.

“It might actually be part of the field alignment,” she added, looking around. “The last thing we need is some annoyed farmer going to the town and saying someone is pulling up his prize plants.”

“That’s fair. I guess it could cause unnecessary trouble,” Chunhua agreed.

“Also this one is barely 3 Star Grade and hasn’t awakened spiritual awareness yet, so it wouldn’t do us much good to collect that unless we want to settle down and start farming spirit herbs,” she added with a laugh, looking around again and tracing the disturbances that showed the extent of the plant.

“Anyway, it’s far enough away from the road that it looks like we might actually have gathered these,” Lin Ling said, pointing at the various things she doled out.

“…”

Shaking her head, she dunked the two spirit herbs into the water until they partially revived under the impetus of her qi and then passed them to Chunhua to hold.

“You had those toads?” she added, listening to the distant sound of said critters in a neighbouring field.

“That’s an excellent point,” Lin Ling nodded, taking the two plants back from Chunhua so she could unstore three of the toad corpses.

After they dunked those in the water, they reapplied some of the war paint, but in designs more in the style they had seen of those working in the fields and on the guards on the way in, and then made their way back to the road.

“Ah,” Naakos chuckled, seeing them toss the various bits on the ground and taking in their revised appearance.

“This is not the first time we have run into this problem,” she chuckled.

“In truth, we would also consider it,” Lashaan grumbled, and even Teshek who seemed quite proper nodded. “But we are known in all likelihood through that expelled moron.”

“It should be fine,” Lin Ling remarked. “It’s a big town, must be 20,000 people around here. They can’t know everyone and we can pay for you to get in anyway.”

“Not to mention it’s harder to rob people at a gate in inventive ways when there is a queue. That’s certainly why those scouts took us to the customs post,” Chunhua pointed out, which got knowing if slightly bitter laughs from the Ur’Inan.

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

~ JUNI, LING & CHUNHUA – UDRASA, BY THE RIVER ~

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

That assertion turned out to be spot-on, because there was indeed a queue at the gates and the guard basically didn’t care so long as they gave something – surrendering up a handful of low-grade beast cores was properly on the generous side, but it got everyone into Udrasa with no questions asked and that was enough.

Once inside the town, which turned out to be like the Little Harbour in Blue Water City, but given a mud brick overhaul, Naakos and Naakai led them through bustling streets filled with the produce of the river lands around them. It was similar to Ajara as well, but the buildings were mostly unpainted and there was a lot more rubbish in the side streets. Jewellery, mainly gold and polished stones, were being displayed much more commonly than they had been in places like Ajara, and they even saw a few Ur’Vash being carried along on palanquins.

Clothing of woven plant fibres, presumably from the reed farms all around the town, was also common place and, as they passed, she noticed their own more barbarous attire got them many sideway looks and condescending sneers. A few shopkeepers even pulled goods away from the children as they peered curiously at them.

It was also, she noticed, a lot less orderly, or rather, orderly in a more corrupt manner compared to Ajara. Doors had sigils over them that denoted status, she found when she asked. Guards wandered hither and thither, but didn’t do much to enforce anything that she saw, although their group, again, got obvious stares and pensive narrowed eyes as they hurried along.

She also saw what she considered as proper ‘temples’ for the first time as well, shrines dedicated to the ‘Honoured Five’ and the various mothers, their exteriors daubed with paintings while merchants hawked animals outside for sacrifice. Teshek and Caanar both grumbled a lot at how off-putting the ambience was while Lashaan just looked glum.

Eventually, they arrived at a compound by the docks, controlled by Ur’Inan as it turned out. Here, the buildings were much more cramped and the air, already humid from proximity to the river and dense with bugs, was almost stifling, even in the dust. It was also noisy, with taverns, dancing and various other enticements in full display.

“Naakos!” a voice boomed, cutting through her curious investigation of the various stalls with their fish and river produce.

“Azuum,” Naakos bowed slightly. “Maker’s greetings to you and your family.”

“And to you… and to you… I see your group is less this season?”

“Uaazar and his bunch have gone their own way,” Naakai said flatly. “It was beyond time. The young must fly from the nest and all that.”

“Right… right…” Azuum nodded, although she caught a faint flicker of dissatisfaction. “A pity, I had hoped to talk to him about certain things.”

“I am sure an opportunity might arise,” Naakos grunted. “He will no doubt arrive sooner rather than later.”

“Probably later,” Lin Ling signed derisively.

“I do not see Jarani?” Naakai noted, looking around.

“Old Jarani has sadly gone to the Mother of Dark Earth,” Azuum sighed. “She passed with the darkening season.”

“Oh…” Naakai nodded. “I will go pay my respects to her…”

“Her shrine was taken back to her homeland by her children,” Azuum added tactfully.

“…”

“I see… In that case, it was good to speak to you again, Azuum,” Naakai said. “We will find ourselves some lodgings and discuss other matters at a more hospitable hour.”

Without further comment, they departed the square, Azuum and a few others still watching with considered expressions.

“Is that because of Uaazar?” she asked after they had travelled most of the street.

“You’re very astute for your age,” Naakai sighed. “Yes, Uaazar’s mother was Azuum’s sister.”

“It is what it is,” Caanar shrugged.

“We do not plan to stay more than tomorrow anyway,” Naakos also shrugged.

They walked on in silence until at last Lin Ling spoke again. “If you find a place you wish to stay, we will pay.”

“You have already paid for our entrance into the town,” Naakai said. “That is enough.”

“Without our presence you would still have your goods,” she shook her head, eyeing Lin Ling. “How much might you have expected to gain for them?”

“A few dozen talismans at best. Our way of life is not lucrative; we just travel where we will and see the world,” Naakos shrugged again. “We make what we need with our skill and require little of others. The main loss is the pack animals, but there are ways around that and it is no worse than if they had been killed by that serpent.”

Based on what she had seen of them, it seemed a very stoic outlook to take. The group had lost their animals, all their goods, their tents and so on. Anything not on someone had been seized by the customs guards or near enough. Perhaps some of it would go to Uaazar and his bunch, but she didn’t expect it to when the aftermath of what they had done played out. Likely Uaazar would be lucky to escape with his life.

“There is a good place by the north dock,” Naakai mused after they had walked on for a while. “We shall try there.”

They spent the next hour or so making their way there and settling into several rooms. The ‘tavern’ was much like the one they had seen in Ajara, but less salubrious if that was at all possible. They paid for the rooms and Lin Ling basically forced Naakai to accept the rest of the pouch of currency and bone talismans before they retreated to their own room.

“So, what do we do now?” Chunhua asked at last.

“Well, the trail curves around the town. It will not be hard to pick it up, but the question is where, if at all, they cross the river,” she said. “I would advocate not lingering here though.”

“That seems like a no-brainer,” she agreed looking at Lin Ling.

“Yeah, probably not a good idea,” the younger girl nodded. “While what I did is unlikely to reflect back on us, Uaazar seems to have more… influential connections in this place than Naakos or Naakai do.”

“I do wonder if it would not have been easier to part ways with them that morning,” Chunhua sighed.

“Possibly,” she conceded, “but we are still where we are, and we have knowledge, at least, to show for it.”

“Ah, Ling,” she finally recalled the question she had intended to ask before everything stupid with the town official.

“Yes?”

“Aren’t those weird words you use rather like mantra mnemonics in how they behave?”

“How so?” Lin Ling frowned.

“Well,” she paused to consider this train of thought, because she only had her impressions of them. “They are single phonetic tones, or collections of them, that do a singular thing when you use them?”

“…” Lin Ling frowned for a moment before bobbing her head to the side ambivalently. “I can see how you arrived at that idea. But not as such, I’d say. I could speak whole sentences with them, but then I’d probably run out of qi within three words at my current realm. Each word costs a factor more qi and soul power if I string them together.”

“Oh…”

“That wasn’t what you wanted to hear?” Lin Ling asked.

She didn’t quite nod, but it wasn’t in a way.

-That would have been too easy, she sighed inwardly, thinking again about those subtle connections between Mantra, Emotion, Intent, Qi and also now, how she had manifested that darkness, which had been as much an emotional thing as a physical one.

It was hard to shake the sense, brought on by ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ in fact, that she was poking at the edge of something ‘important’ in how mantras worked.

That did take her onto the other topic of her consideration – which was her Core Formation and what the texts in the talisman meant by a ‘complete’ Golden Core. The problem there was that her general knowledge of it was awkwardly lacking because it would have been a good while before she arrived at that point and her Father had said he would take responsibility for it.

Based on their previous talk, there was no point in asking Lin Ling, because she was no more in the know there than her, not to mention her Core Formation process had been so abnormal that it was, she suspected, almost useless as a reference guide.

“Chunhua?” she sighed at last, turning to the other woman.

“Yes?” she lifted her head from where she been lying on the bed, presumably reviewing what was on the jade slip again.

“Can I ask you about Core Formation stuff?”

“…”

Chunhua stared at her for a long moment. “Sure, although probably I don’t know more than you.”

“You would be surprised,” she grimaced.

“So, what do you want to know?” Chunhua asked, sitting up properly.

“Just the specifics of the formation process…”

“I can do one better,” Chunhua materialized a slip and passed it to her.

She took it and read the title – ‘Teng Silver Manual’.

“This is… the manual you used to form your core?” she blinked.

“It was,” Chunhua nodded. “And before you ask, it’s the common one. Anyone can buy it for contribution points from the Teng School, so it’s not like there are any great secrets in it.”

“…”

“Thanks,” she saluted the other woman who just laughed.

“It’s fine, I’ve gotten a thousand times what that’s worth out of both of you and that was just for my escaping half of that shit with my life intact,” Chunhua remarked.

“You didn’t include sanity…” she chuckled.

“Yes, still on the fence on that one,” Chunhua joked, although she could feel the edge in the woman’s humour.

“I’ll go poke around the town see if I can’t learn anything interesting,” Lin Ling said after a few moments. “And see about getting some food or something.”

“Sure,” she nodded. “We will just stay here and stare at scripture like good girls.”

“…”

Lin Ling just rolled her eyes and left without further comment while Teng Chunhua laughed quietly. After that, she settled down and just started to read the text, which basically confirmed what she had suspected in truth, but was still good to know.

According to the ‘Teng Silver Manual’, she should refine her qi in set patterns until her dantian was saturated with qi mist which began to move under its own inertia. The next step was then to use the law to set the mould for the core, using your spirit root as the seed, and continue absorbing qi, performing the qi cycles prescribed by the law until the core finally started to coalesce under its own inertia within the framework you had provided it.

That was why the quality of the spirit root was so important – it was basically the foundation of the core, and that, paired with the law itself, governed the principal quality of the core. The attribute also took the root as the foundation rather than the qi you were absorbing. However, you had to absorb qi that was in harmony with your core anyway, so that was not a problem in the eyes of the law – only an idiot would absorb qi that was in conflict with their root, or use such a law.

At that point you had two choices: either let the core coalesce naturally as it would in accordance to the law, or try to force extra rotations out of it to get a better quality core.

From her general knowledge, she knew most would do the former, because the latter could cause a deviation and even potentially ruin your spirit root if it went wrong. The ‘Teng Silver Manual’ also talked a bit about the grades, which was helpful, if a bit unnerving, for providing her context on her Core Formation so far.

The texts that came with the manual advised the user that formation was basically guaranteed. So long as you just followed the steps set out and didn’t make any mistakes while possessing pretty much any kind of marginally passable spirit root, you would form a core that was between one and four rotations. You could force it as high as 7 or even 8 if you held your nerve and had a lot of qi on hand or a wealth of spirit stones.

If you had a decent spirit root or someone to help you form the core by giving their own qi, you could get maybe 15 rotations without much trouble. With a lot of qi stimulus you could push that up to 18 or 19 rotations.

Twenty one rotations was achievable if you had a spirit root graded as ‘high rank’ with either one pure attribute or two sympathetic attributes and the right environment to break through. You could force that as high as 22 or 23 if you were feeling suicidal or had a small fortune in spirit crystals to burn, or some other spiritual treasure with a lot of qi to support the action.

“How does 24 rotations sit in the Teng School’s classifications?” she asked Chunhua at last, putting the text down because it didn’t elaborate beyond 23 rotations.

“…”

“That requires the Top Grade version of the manual,” Chunhua said sitting up again. “24 rotations though is usually a Soul Gold Core. I have no real knowledge of those cores beyond the fact that a few of the Teng School’s inner disciples have high grade cores of that calibre.”

That matched broadly with what she knew. To get a high grade core, you need a top grade Core Formation law, all of which would be closely guarded secrets or prohibitively expensive. You also needed a pure spirit root with a single attribute or an auspicious hybrid root – like Yin Wood feeding Yin Fire or Yang Thunder feeding Yin Water.

Her original triple element mixed root with no clear yin yang affinity was, she reflected, indeed utter garbage by those standards as the old diviner had stated 15 years ago to the disappointment of her parents.

“All the cores above 24 rotations usually form with a thread of soul-infused qi though, all but guaranteeing you get to Soul Foundation,” Chunhua added after a moment’s thought. “It also provides a useful boost in that tribulation.”

“What about the Core Formation tribulation?” she asked, “The manual doesn’t really talk about it.

“Oh, yeah… those tend to be variable,” Chunhua nodded. “The common knowledge is that you get a tribulation at Core Formation, but serious lightning is not guaranteed unless it’s a mid-grade core as I recall.”

Frowning, she trawled her memories and recalled that various specialist tools and talismans were available to common born folk to alleviate or minimise the impact of spiritual lightning in core formation. That she hadn’t given it more thought was…

-Because I am a rich father’s daughter who didn’t give it any thought, having been told it just involved money, she sighed inwardly. And because my spirit root has always been my shame and I just didn’t engage with it, throwing myself into Physique Law Cultivation instead…

“Anything above blue-green lightning is rare unless you get a mutated 24 rotation core,” Chunhua added. “The inner disciple I saw from the Teng School who formed a 26 rotation one only got a single strike of Deep Blue Earthly Lightning. I don’t think I had ever seen Purple Earthly Lightning in a sub Dao Seeking tribulation until I met you…”

The other woman’s voice wasn’t quite accusatory there, but she did wince in sympathy

“Oh… I think I was told that certain lower grade cores tended to get lightning more frequently – metal and wood cores usually. Fire and earth cores are the least likely to get big lightning, while for water it’s a toss-up, more dependent on how many rotations you eke out.”

“What about mantras with Core Formation?” she frowned.

Chunhua stared at her oddly. “Uhh…”

“I can tell you a bit, because you appear to have already worked something out, but I can’t tell you the specifics…”

-Can’t or won’t? She wondered, given they both knew that heavenly oaths were not really observing the proper rules.

“It’s not that I want to be unhelpful, but…” Chunhua sighed, looking awkward, but did continue speaking after a long pause, “I… have an Inherited Mantra but my family has no roots in the Yin Eclipse or Easten clans. My ancestral grandfather acquired our mantra during the aftermath of the Huang-Mo Wars. Anyone who knows it has to swear a very strong oath to Daode Tianzun not to divulge it or any matters regarding its specifics.”

She stared at Chunhua who now looked somewhere between awkward and challenging. “That’s an oath that exceeds Eastern Azure’s heavens…”

“Yes,” Chunhua nodded a bit tersely. “It is.”

“So that is why the information that a mantra is not necessarily an obstacle to Core Formation hasn’t leaked out?” she mused, being careful how she phrased it, in case even her acknowledgement of that in this context now caused Chunhua issues – those kinds of oaths regarding ‘proscribing actions’ could be tricky like that.

“…”

Chunhua eyed her for a moment, before nodding.

“The Yin Eclipse clans are even more close-mouthed about it than my old ancestor was, but yes, given you seem to have worked out this much my oath does not bind on that,” Chunhua muttered. “They pass down mantras in their complete form only through the inheritance rituals to their heirs and divulge nothing about anything over the Mantra Seed realm. Their formal stance on the matter is that their inheritances were lost and everyone else can just screw off.”

Given that basically finished off the conversation, she smiled apologetically, because Chunhua just looked even more awkward after falling silent again, all but radiating unwillingness to continue.

“Sorry, I didn’t intend to ask a difficult question like that,” she said with a polite bow and a salute.

“It’s nothing,” Chunhua sighed. “But I really can’t talk about it; heavenly oaths to Eastern Azure’s heavens are no good here but oaths to the ‘Three Pure Ones’ seem to work just fine.”

“They do, huh…” she was slightly surprised at that.

“Yeah, although only an idiot or someone very sure of themselves would swear one,” Chunhua grinned weakly.

“Fair,” she conceded. “Thank you for telling me what you could though.”

“As I said, it’s fine,” Chunhua shrugged apologetically. “You have already done a lot, and I wish I could be of more help.”

After that, she went back to contemplating how her mantra, her divination art and her body were interacting until Lin Ling came back about four hours after she had left with a large bundle of fried food and various other oddments.

“How is the town?” she asked, sitting up.

“Like the worst cesspit corners of Little Harbour,” Lin Ling grumbled. “It makes Ajara look like a Buddhist temple. I did confirm a few things though…”

“Ohh?” Chunhua asked, getting up and coming over to grab a fried fish.

“Yeah, we will need a boat to cross the river and they cost a packet.”

“We can’t just walk over?” she frowned.

“We could,” Lin Ling groused as she also started to eat a fried fish, “but the river actually has an element of suppression to it that interferes with qi control. I went down to the harbour and tried walking on it. I could probably run across on my own thanks to my principle but carrying even one of you it would be impossible.”

“That’s a pain,” she agreed.

“It is, but the good news is that passage across is pretty common,” Lin Ling agreed. “As I said, it just costs extortionate amounts if you don’t have a buddy in the town. This place basically runs on corruption as far as I can see. It’s really quite remarkable. They even have their own coinage made of beast cores.”

“Anything else of note?” Chunhua added.

“They really are on edge about these Death Watch,” Lin Ling mused. “I made a few enquiries about Vashada but got little of note – Naakai is probably the person to ask there.”

“And cultivators?” she asked.

“Hmmm, there have been two sightings of bands of crazy mages. One group apparently had an extended skirmish with a bunch of scouts and were taken captive about two days ago to the south of the town. Then, yesterday, another band numbering about 200 came and captured a river outpost some ten miles beyond the town to the north and crossed in numbers, razing everything and then vanishing into the marshes.”

“200…?” she repeated dubiously.

“I am certain that was a gross exaggeration,” Lin Ling said. “Likely the numbers were doubled or more by the survivors to make them not look so bad.”

“That sounds about right,” Chunhua conceded. “What about these prisoners?”

“They were taken across the river already. There were a lot of people sad that they wouldn’t get a chance to try and buy a mage slave in the night markets,” Lin Ling added with disgust.

“Charming place, this,” she agreed. “So what about the one that Uaazar captured?”

“I didn’t prod about that for obvious reasons, but there was some complaint about missing boats this morning on the south side of the town,” Lin Ling mused.

“If I had to bet, I would say that was the group we were following who maybe also swept up that prisoner,” Chunhua agreed.