The forest was quiet as Wang Yonghao approached the fence around the facility, the cilia of his soul fully extended as he reached out with his spiritual energy senses. His mind spun through a hundred ways in which this could all go horribly wrong. It wasn’t his first time trying to break into a place - not by far - but this was different. The fact that he was choosing to proactively do this… the anxiety of it all made him want to flee and never return.

Just follow the plan.

As soon as he felt the cultivator on the other side - middle refinement stage, and not even that high up - he headed straight for them. Through his spiritual energy senses, he felt them stop in their tracks just a few moments later, and retreat away from the fence.

He squished a spot of panic in his soul. It was going to be fine.

With a single leap, he grabbed the top and pulled himself over with one hand, coming face to face with his target standing some thirty meters away from the fence. Back when they observed the facility from up in the tree crowns, it was hard to tell his age, but this close, he could see that the man would have passed for forty, wearing practical, expendable robes of leather and linen, with few decorations. The lower half of his face was covered by a thick cloth mask, and his hand rested warily on the handle of his sword.

“Fellow cultivator, please help!” Wang Yonghao said, putting some urgency into his voice. Shanyi said focusing on a memory helped, and he did his best to recall that sharp spike of despair when she fell down into the caldera of a waterfall. “My partner, she - she is sick, and now she has fainted - I don’t know what to do.”

“Your partner? Where is she?” the other cultivator said, looking around. Some of the initial tension left his body, and he stepped a bit closer. “And who are you?”

“I am Wang Yonghao, loose cultivator,” Wang Yonghao said, gesturing to himself with his free hand. Shanyi said that he was a terrible actor, and true enough, it was really hard for him to hold this entire fictional life in his head all the while thinking of things to say - but she also said that people went with their first impression, and as long as he didn’t mess up too much, he should be fine. “My partner is Qian Shanyi. She is here, in the forest - I only left her to see if I could find some help.”

The other cultivator relaxed completely, and jogged over to the fence. “No wonder your face looked familiar,” the other cultivator said as he approached, “This here cultivator is Zhao Anquan. I’ve been helping with the butchering when you came and donated so many Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures. You have my thanks.”

Quietly, Wang Yonghao breathed out. Okay. This didn’t go disastrously.

Zhao Anquan leaped over the fence, and Wang Yonghao dropped down, shaking his head. "That was Shanyi's idea."

"Then I suppose I better thank her in person,” Zhao Anquan said. “Lead the way."

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

Zhao Anquan knew the surrounding woods well, and even under the dim light of the moons, following Wang Yonghao was child’s play. He did wonder what a pair of cultivators was doing in this part of the woods this late at night - but there were more mysteries on the path of cultivation than stars in the sky, and it wasn’t for him to question. Perhaps they had a dual cultivation law that had to be practiced beneath the stars.

As they followed the path back, he scanned the treeline, noting things to do later - a tree that grew too close to the fence line here, a series of tracks to report there. It would save him a patrol later.

They found the poor woman slumped against one of the trees, wafting air into her face with one hand. Her face was deathly pale, bright enough to shine even through the darkness of the forest, eyelids half closed. Her breathing was labored, quick, shallow breaths just on the edge of wheezing.

Zhao Anquan felt a pang of pity in his heart. For someone who transcended a tribulation, she looked so small. Would they have to carry her? Or was that bad, when someone was injured? He honestly couldn’t remember.

As they approached, she turned her face slightly in their direction, but did not open her eyes. "Yonghao," Qian Shanyi said quietly, "you brought someone?"

"I did,” Wang Yonghao said, gesturing towards him. “This here is Zhao Anquan."

Zhao Anquan stepped forwards, and bowed. Qian Shanyi’s face turned a bit more in his direction. “A healer?” she said.

“No,” he said, thankful the two weren’t from a sect. He always fumbled the formal addresses. “Just a fellow cultivator. What happened?”

Wang Yonghao approached Qian Shanyi and kneeled next to her, putting a hand on her shoulder. The color of it really stood out in contrast with her skin. “She was hit pretty badly during her tribulation.”

Qian Shanyi slowly pushed Wang Yonghao’s hand aside. “I am fine. Just a bit light-headed.”

“We could help -”

Qian Shanyi grimaced, and pushed herself upwards, back scraping across the tree bark. “I do not -” she grunted, slowly raising to her feet. “- require help.”

She stopped, keeping herself stable with one hand on the side of the tree, and waited for a couple seconds before stepping forwards. Standing up, she was actually a hair taller than the both of them. “See?” she said, opening her eyes and smiling slightly. “I am completely fine -”

The wind changed, bringing with it a hint of the noxious fumes from the pools, and Qian Shanyi gagged, folding in on herself in a fit of coughing and almost losing her balance, if not for Wang Yonghao holding her up by the waist. Zhao Anquan hurried to support her from the other side.

“You are not fine,” Wang Yonghao grumbled, “stop being stubborn and let us help.”

“Damnable smell,” she grimaced, slowly getting her breathing under control, and wiping some blood off her mouth with the back of her hand. “We were heading back to town when it hit us before. By the time it passed, I had all but coughed up a part of my lung, and my wounds reopened. What is it that you are making here? Poisons for the next imperial succession?”

Zhao Anquan frowned. It was easy to forget how those unaccustomed fared in this environment. “It’s a paleworm farm,” he said, untying the thick mask from around his nose, and carefully offering it to Qian Shanyi. Jingxin stuffed it with flower petals for him every morning, to make the work more pleasant. “This should help with the smell.”

She accepted the offering with a grateful nod. “I should have realized.” She sighed. “Of course a town of this size would have one. Should have studied the map better before we decided to take our walk. I humbly apologize for taking you away from your duties.”

“There isn’t much to do most nights,” he said, “even during the day, we only harvest the hives twice a week. I am just here in case an errant demon beast is attracted by the smell.” He gestured towards the northern side of the farm, though it remained hidden by the trees. “If you’d like, you could rest in our quarters until your wounds will let you reach the town safely. It’s calm, safe and with clean air.”

The other two cultivators shared an incomprehensible look, then nodded, and they set off slowly, supporting Qian Shanyi lest she fall over again.

Zhao Anquan was mostly glad they didn’t have to carry her.

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

The entrance to the offices passed through a long greenhouse, the curved ceiling of pure glass letting starlight through. Thankfully the smell of the greenery around them easily overpowered the draft that came from beyond the doors, and they could finally breathe freely.

Zhao Anquan picked up a lantern near the doors, and Wang Yonghao looked around in wonder at the little circle of color surrounding the three of them, as they walked past wooden troughs, full of exotic flowers and herbs, filling the air with a dozen different scents. It wasn’t the most colorful or unusual sight he had seen in his life - not by far - but at least nobody was trying to kill him, and -

I like these flowers, he thought, focusing back on the moment. They are pretty. They smell nice.

That was Qian Shanyi’s advice, to try and focus on sensations and the positives, and it surprised him how well it worked - at least compared to what he used to do before. She was walking right next to him, looking around with a small frown on her face, no doubt brewing up some new devious scheme. So far everything was going just about how they planned it - down to her pretending to be more injured than she was, and refusing help at first.

She said that it was best to stick close to your own personality, to minimize the chance of something slipping through, which is why that particular element was necessary - but he felt it was more down to her enjoying fooling other people.

They soon reached the opposite end of the greenhouse, and passed through another door into a small and cozy kitchen, illuminated only by the dim light of a smoldering fireplace. There was a large window, looking out towards the pools, with a table right next to it, and so many plants all over the place, in pots and troughs, some sort of vines climbing up small railings and up to the ceiling, that for a moment he thought they were still in the greenhouse. Two doors, on opposite sides of the room, led further into the building.

Zhao Anquan pressed his hand to a talisman on one of the walls, and gentle light slowly spread throughout the room. One of the other walls turned out to have a large glass tank, filled with water and more plants, and small golden fish swimming between the roots. Wang Yonghao walked over to it to take a look: they seemed content with their small lives, occasionally splashing up to the surface.

While Zhao Anquan was busy with lights, Qian Shanyi lowered herself into one of the chairs with a grateful sigh. Her face was still deathly pale - only partly makeup, he knew - and as she took the mask off her face, he felt her spiritual energy stir ever so gently, reapplying it where it might have rubbed off. If he wasn’t looking for it, he was sure he would have missed it.

“Are you back already?” a male voice came from one of the doors, and Wang Yonghao turned around to see another man enter the room, dressed in a fluffy bathrobe. A mortal - or “ordinary person”, as Shanyi kept insisting - and closer to fifty. About the same age as Zhao Anquan, really, once you accounted for the latter being a cultivator. He squinted up at the bright lights, and when his eyes focused on Wang Yonghao and Qian Shanyi, he stopped and raised an eyebrow. “We have guests?”

“A fellow cultivator had been injured,” Zhao Anquan said, turning towards the new man with a smile, and gesturing towards Qian Shanyi. “This is Qian Shanyi - she is the one who made that donation. I offered to let her stay until she recovers her strength.”

The other man paused, looking between Qian Shanyi and Wang Yonghao. His lips were pursed ever so slightly. “And she just happened to be injured here? In the middle of the forest?”

Zhao Anquan sighed. “Jingxin…”

“Very well,” the other man bowed deeply after a pause. “I am Zhao Jingxin. Should we send for a healer?”

“It is not necessary,” Qian Shanyi waved her hand, “I have it under control. I just need a bit of rest, and conversation to distract myself. But I am forever grateful for your kindness.”

“I should be the grateful one,” Zhao Anquan said, sitting down opposite her at the same table. Zhao Jingxin went over to the fireplace, and stoked the fire with new wood, before hanging a kettle over it. “Your donation is worth much more than a place to rest and some tea.”

Wang Yonghao turned away from the room and back towards the fishes, concealing his emotions. Qian Shanyi said she could handle the conversation, but he was still worried. What if they made something slip and were discovered?

“Have they distributed it already?” Qian Shanyi said with a smile in her voice. “The empire works fast.”

“I was there at the hill, helping with processing.”

“Truly? Post office is quite some distance from here.”

He heard fabric shift. A shrug. “It’s good pay. And with your donation, it’s exemplary - easily six times what I earn here in a month. We’ll be able to buy so much for our garden now.”

Wang Yonghao breathed deeply, and then turned around. Zhao Anquan was chatting amicably with Qian Shanyi, Zhao Jingxin standing just a bit behind him with a hand on his shoulder. Nothing seemed to be going wrong.

It was probably fine.

He walked over to the table and sat down next to Qian Shanyi.

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

Their plan - modified once they saw that the facility was manned - had two stages. First, they would try to find out as much as they could about the worms, and verify exactly how many people were on the farm. Then, if they could manage it, Qian Shanyi would distract them, while Wang Yonghao went off to steal the queens. If that didn’t work… Well, nothing they could do - the information alone would already be quite useful, and she had a legend prepared for if they were caught.

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Once the tea was ready, Zhao Jingxin sat down on the same table, right next to Zhao Anquan. Qian Shanyi studied his appearance in the reflection of the window, pretending to look at the pools of the farm. There was something off about him - how he looked at her and the tone of his voice, a certain air of suspicion and mistrust - but it was hard to place. It definitely wasn’t the usual awe many ordinary people had for cultivators, and it wasn’t fear either, but rather something else entirely. In theory, it shouldn’t be a problem… but it was still an uncontrolled factor, a ball tossed up into the air and out of sight. With Wang Yonghao’s luck muddying the picture, she couldn’t simply dismiss it.

“Would you mind if we closed the curtains?” she asked, turning back to the others. Just because she needed more information, it was no reason not to set up for the second stage of their plan. “I wouldn’t want to impose, but the sight of these pools brings back the memory of that horrific smell…”

“Oh it’s nothing,” Zhao Anquan said easily, and stood up to do as she asked. Zhao Jingxin, on the other hand, did not react to her sudden request at all, not even a twitch of an eyebrow out of place.

So he isn’t suspicious of what I am planning? Only the circumstance?

She hummed in thanks, keeping her outward attention on Zhao Anquan. “I take it you are the beastmaster of the farm?”

Zhao Anquan nodded as he sat back down. “One of the two,” he said. Zhao Jingxin put an arm around his shoulders, and he didn’t resist. “We switch who is on duty every other week. The other one would usually still be here, in case I needed to step away for something - but he went off to celebrate the very same donation you made. Said he’d be back tomorrow, so now it’s just me and Jingxin.”

Qian Shanyi did her best to project a feeling of smugness at Wang Yonghao without changing her expression or posture. Even though she knew no telepathic techniques, he still shifted slightly right next to her, which she considered a success.

“I see,” she continued smoothly, “Well, send him my regards when he returns. This is not a job many cultivators would be willing to take, I imagine.”

Zhao Anquan shrugged. “It’s a job,” he said, “it pays well enough, and we like it here, out in the forest. Not many people to bother. Most days, me and Jingxin do some maintenance, and then work on our garden.”

And what a garden it was.

“Still, I would have thought a beast could only be bound to one person?” she said, letting her true curiosity seep into her tone, ”I’ve never been on a paleworm farm before, though I have read about them in books - how does it work with two beastmasters?”

“We don’t bind them,” Zhao Anquan said, shaking his head. “It would be far too much effort, especially since they breed all the time.”

“Really? But then how do you prevent escapes?”

“They have been made to depend on the Rose Sand of Shah,” Zhao Anquan said with a shrug. There was a hint of surprise on his face, probably because very few cultivators aside from her would be interested in what happened to their poop. “Without it, they die. But mostly, they don’t really try to escape.”

“Fascinating,” Qian Shanyi said, leaning forward in excitement. “Tell me more.”

They talked more about the farm - how the worms were grown and cared for, and the flow of water. Apparently there was a river passing not too far from the valley of glass, and kept from spilling into the valley through careful civil engineering - half a dozen dams and artificial channels. Water was drawn from the river somewhere upstream, passed through the town, and then ended up here before being returned back into the river.

It was all quite interesting, though she could tell that she was the only one among the four of them truly curious about the subject, and Zhao Anquan was just humoring her as a polite host. After a while, Wang Yonghao picked up on the situation, and started to talk with Zhao Jingxin about the greenhouse, and gave her an excellent opportunity to study his reactions.

There was still that tension there - less than for her, but noticeable if you knew where to look. Not quite suspicion - but definitely a certain wariness. He stayed close to Zhao Anquan, their hands touching - in an almost protective gesture.

One question kept nagging at her mind. Why here? This was not a particularly prestigious or well paid job, and neither of them seemed like much of a recluse. Zhao Anquan was in the middle of the refinement stage - he should have had plenty of options, so why pick a job so far away from the eyes of anyone else?

Hm. They were quite old, weren’t they?

A hypothesis appeared in her mind, one that would fit everything quite neatly, and give her the opportunity she needed. And even if she was wrong - she could improvise. She only needed five minutes, at most.

Qian Shanyi glanced at Wang Yonghao. Yeah, she wasn’t testing it with this prude at her side. Instead, she grimaced, rubbing her chest. “My lungs are still more sore than I would like. Yonghao, would you mind running to our room and bringing me my medicine?”

He nodded, and headed for the doors. They’ve discussed this signal well in advance - he knew what to do.

Only a short minute after he left, Zhao Jingxin yawned, and rose up from his chair. “Honorable cultivator Qian, I must retire for the night,” he said tersely, bowing to her, “my sleep was interrupted, and there is plenty of work to do tomorrow.”

“Before you go,” she said immediately, “there was one thing that made me curious.”

By her mental count, Wang Yonghao should be sneaking back into the brightly lit yard of the facility right around now. If she let Zhao Jingxin leave, he’d surely glance out the window in another room and notice him.

“You two have the same family name,” she noted with a smile, “What’s the story there?”

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After he left the others, Wang Yonghao sped off in the direction of Glaze Ridge, before making a wide hook through the forest and circling around to the other side of the farm. He glanced at the windows from up in the trees to check that the curtains were still closed - they were - before quietly hopping over the fence and heading towards one of the hives.

His task was simple: steal one or two queens, make it seem like a fox got in instead of a person, and then run to Glaze Ridge and back - not so much so that someone could see him, as to make sure he was gone for a right amount of time. Taking longer than expected was plausible - returning too quickly was not.

It was a simple task. There was just one problem.

Wang Yonghao stared at the waxy, brown-black surface of the hive, hundreds of disgusting pale worms wriggling in and out of it, and traveling down a channel to reach a pool of raw sewage. Up close, the smell was so bad he opted to block up his nose with a pair of wooden plugs he prepared in advance.

The queens were, of course, in the very middle of the hive. He felt them keenly, like warm spots to his spiritual energy senses, streams of much dimmer worker-worms heading to them and back out of the hive.

“Damn you Shanyi,” he grumbled, glancing up at the building with the closed curtains.

Surely there had to be a better way.

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

The tension in the air ramped up a notch as Zhao Jingxin narrowed his eyes at Qian Shanyi. She met his gaze with a polite smile, saluting him with her cup of tea.

“Why shouldn’t we have the same name?” He challenged her. “We are family.”

“Brothers?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. They looked nothing alike - but stranger things have happened.

He put his hands on his hips, and nodded at her challengingly. “What is it to you?”

Clearly not brothers, then, but nonetheless quite close. There was no fear in his eyes - he had to know for sure that Zhao Anquan would back him up against a cultivator.

Zhao Anquan breathed in sharply, aghast. “Jingxin! That is no way to speak to our guest!”

Our guest, huh.

“A guest that shows up in the middle of the night?” Zhao Jingxin said, looking back at Zhao Anquan. “In the middle of the forest?”

She inclined her head. “Your tone tingles with accusations. Have I harmed your family in some way?”

Ultimately, she just had to keep him occupied and away from any windows that looked out onto the pools. That he ‘decided’ to go to sleep just about when Wang Yonghao would have circled back to the facility certainly had a stink of the Heavens.

“Of course not!” Zhao Anquan said, turning to her, eyes full of concern. Zhao Jingxin, thankfully, stayed quiet, though he kept his glare on her. “Fellow cultivator Qian, please don’t take this to heart. He is my adoptive father.”

She shook her head. Father? They were practically the same age. As if she’d let them off this easily - she had no interest in what was technically in their papers. Besides, she couldn’t just let such an excellent opportunity lie. “Should I not take this to heart?” she said, “I have felt the suspicion in the air ever since I walked in - but I had little interest in ruffling feathers, and so I stayed quiet. But now, you have all but slapped me across the face.”

Zhao Anquan’s eyes widened a fraction, and he turned back to Zhao Jingxin. “Jingxin, apologize to our guest,” he said, tension in his voice.

Zhao Anquan’s reaction seemed to put him on the back foot, but not entirely. “What for?”

A dangerous ignorance, if he was claiming to be a father of a cultivator. “I am a loose cultivator, honorable Zhao Jingxin,” she said, shaking her head. “We are not like ordinary people. My honor and my sword is all that I have. If people go around making insinuations about why I came to their house, I could hardly stand that, could I? If people thought I was some kind of robber, who would deal with me at all? It’s said that to insult a cultivator is to court death, and there is a reason for that.”

Zhao Anquan stood up at once, stepping over to Zhao Jingxin and putting himself between them, a grave look on his face. He wisely kept his eyes on her sword - she was younger and of a higher realm than him, and likely better trained too. Wounds or not, if they crossed swords, she would put money on herself three times out of four.

Zhao Jingxin’s face only showed confusion. Less bravery and more foolishness, then.

She waved both of them off, leaning back in her chair to show just how not prepared for a fight she was. “Please. We are alone in here, and nobody else heard us,” she said, “I have no reason to seek satisfaction. But my point stands. The least you can do is explain what it is that I did that put you on edge.”

He should be thankful she wasn’t Jian Shizhe, or there would have been blood already. Honestly, why was she the one to teach him this? The man was twenty five years her senior. Perhaps they lived so far from the other people that he never had a chance to learn.

Zhao Anquan breathed out, his body relaxing. Zhao Jingxin warily looked over his shoulder at her, clearly unnerved. It took him a moment to come up with the words. “Why did you donate your winnings?” he said slowly, “people do not simply do that.”

“And if I said it was out of the kindness of my heart?” she asked, and chuckled at the frown Zhao Jingxin gave her. “Very well.”

Suspicions did not arise for no reason. Every suspicion was borne out of someone failing to put you into their picture of the world - and if you helped them do so, it could easily resolve, or even turn them into your closest friend, depending on how you did it.

“There are certain… expectations that are put on a young woman such as myself,” she began slowly, pouring herself a new cup of tea, “ones I do not welcome. To marry, to have children, to obey my husband. I refuse to live up to them. But to do so - it is like trying to turn back a river. It is much easier to at least pretend to conform.”

All true enough for many people, though her view was that a true cultivator should simply force the river to flow uphill. To do anything less was cowardice - but truth would not help here.

“So I have a partner who is not my partner,” she continued, bending the truth with practiced ease, “We rent the same room at a tavern, even though we don’t sleep together. I donate money - for people tend to look through closed eyelids at anyone who gave them a gift. And sometimes I sneak off into the forest at night, all so I can do what I want in peace.”

“And what might that be?”

She gave them her best flat, unamused stare. “I would have thought the two of you, of all people, would have guessed already.”

The silence between the three of them grew palpable, until Zhao Anquan spoke a single syllable. “Ah.”

“Oh,” echoed Zhao Jingxin, “So you know.”

“Honestly,” she said, crinkling her nose at them slightly, “Who do you think I am? A refiner?”

At least they had the decency to blush.

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“Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew,” Wang Yonghao muttered, as he sprinted away from the paleworm farm, shuddering in disgust. He quickly found a quiet corner of the forest, before dipping into his inner world to unload his cargo - a pair of paleworm queens, and a few kilos of this Rose Sand, that was simply poured into the middle of their hives though a big funnel.

Then he headed straight for the bath to wash himself thoroughly. He’d say thanks to Shanyi for coming up with the idea of building a bath here, but he was short on thanks for her at the moment.

Half an hour of thorough scrubbing later - and only seven minutes on the outside - he was back on track, heading towards Reflection Ridge. The bath really helped him center himself, and as he ran, he thought that actually, this heist went off surprisingly well - being disgusted was probably a small price to pay for having a proper latrine. Stealing the queens was simplicity itself, after he overcame himself, and by the time the morning rose, the other worms would repair the rest of the hive, erasing all evidence. Maybe Shanyi was right that he could relax more about these things.

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Zhao Jingxin did not end up going to sleep. Instead, they got out a mahjong set, and started a game for three people.

With their secrets out in the open, and her own idiosyncrasies more or less accounted for, the tension was gone from their conversation, and she slowly turned it towards their garden. She kept track of what Wang Yonghao had talked about, of course, but his interest was in the flowers, while hers was on the food. Even though she only recognised about half of the plants in the greenhouse, their density was much higher than she expected - and she was wondering if she could adapt the same principles to the farm in the world fragment.

It turned out that she could not. Their farm was some fiendishly complex arrangement of pipes and troughs, water flowing through different varieties of herbs, grasses, shrubs and flowers and being filtered by their roots, with half a dozen species of fish feeding on the parasites and providing nutrients through their excrement. While it was undeniably impressive, it also required constant attention, as two dozen different factors had to be manually adjusted all the time, and the system for circulating the water was finicky at best.

This simply wouldn’t do. She needed a farm that she could leave alone for weeks, if not months at a time, and be sure that it would still be there when she returned, and one that wouldn’t take up even more of her precious time.

Well, no matter. She didn’t come here for the garden - she came here for the paleworms, and she managed to not only conceal Wang Yonghao’s movements, but even somewhat turn the pair of Zhaos to their side - she doubted that they would talk about this meeting.

And yet, despite the fact that everything was going her way, her mood only seemed to worsen - not that it showed on her face.

For lack of a better word… the plan was going too damn well.

It was suspicious. She understood opposition and sabotage, but if the Heavens were staying quiet, that meant they were plotting something - and she didn’t know what.

It only got worse when Wang Yonghao returned with her bottle of pills. She easily palmed one, pretending to swallow it, and then they quickly left, heading back to town. Once they were far enough away from the farm, he told her that he had no problems whatsoever. His unbridled optimism made her scowl.

“Did your part go that badly?” he asked, misunderstanding her mood.

“My part went fucking perfectly.” she said, “Better than I could have hoped for. Now come on, let's get out from under the moonlight. There is trickery afoot, and I won’t rest until we have a plan to deal with it.”