CHAPTER

53

Restraint and Control

I

Hao Zhen had already been turning to face the direction Du Qing was staring when he heard her voice. He’d only met her twice, and briefly both times, but he still recognized her at first sight.

Bao Yun.

He should’ve known getting rid of Du Qing wouldn’t be so simple.

Feeling the exhaustion encroach upon him, darkening his sight and slowing his thoughts, Hao Zhen bit his lower lip, hard. Alert from the pain, he managed to remain standing long enough to produce two pills from his spatial ring and pop them.

Moments later he felt a second, deeper surge of alertness, as some of his mental and spiritual stamina recovered. Standing straighter, mind clearer, he took proper stock of the situation. Mere seconds had passed since Bao Yun’s appearance, nobody had spoken yet, or so much as moved. Du Qing seemed to be struggling for words, Bao Yun waiting for an explanation, and Tian Jin and Lan Yue looking confused and wary.

If he was reading Bao Yun and Du Qing right, then this wasn’t some kind of setup. The problem was that even if Bao Yun wasn’t working with Du Qing, her arriving just when they were about to finish off Du Qing—assuming the talisman he had wasn’t too big of an issue, and considering how he hadn’t used it yet, it probably wasn’t—was suspicious. Unless the Weave had a much greater effect on the world than he had originally assumed, to the point it could just randomly guide Bao Yun over here with no discernible explanation, it was hardly likely she’d just stumbled upon them right at this moment when she should have been busy in the Inner Forest, and likely under the supervision of inner elders. Du Qing had also managed to leave the Inner Forest and track them down—which also raised a number of questions—but he at least had a reason to be here. Bao Yun didn’t. At least not an obvious one.

“Bao Yun,” Du Qing said, his voice tight and strained, and probably not just because of the pain he must be in because of his wounds. Abruptly, Du Qing flinched and shut his mouth, a wide-eyed look on his face. His face twisted through a series of emotions, too fast for Hao Zhen to pick them apart.

Then Du Qing was dashing in Bao Yun’s direction.

Hao Zhen lunged forward on instinct, but he was too far away to do anything. Tian Jin and Lan Yue immediately gave chase, thrusting their swords at Du Qing’s speeding form, but a dome of light appeared around Du Qing, blocking the strikes. Then Du Qing was upon Bao Yun, the barrier around him disappearing as he pulled Bao Yun into his embrace. Then he swiveled on his heels, turning back around to face them.

Du Qing had Bao Yun pressed tight against him, his functioning arm wrapped around her shoulders. The talisman he’d brought out earlier was still in his hand.

“Don’t move!” Du Qing barked, glaring at them. “Move, and she dies.”

Tian Jin, who’d been about to attack, came to an abrupt stop, and so did Lan Yue. Hao Zhen stayed put.

Du Qing’s face had reddened, and he was breathing heavily. Still, when he spoke next, he did so coldly and deliberately. “I will leave this valley,” Du Qing said. “Bao Yun will be coming with me. If any of you move, she dies. If I catch anyone coming after us, she dies.”

There was something to Du Qing’s eyes and the draw of his lips that made him look almost resigned. And there was also the way he’d reacted earlier, just before making his move. Just what had been going on in his head?

While Hao Zhen was trying to glean something from Du Qing’s expression, his gaze dipped a little and Bao Yun caught his attention. She’d grown terribly still under Du Qing’s hold, and she looked tense, alert, but her eyes weren’t particularly widened, nor did she seem any paler than usual.

He couldn’t detect any of the fear someone in her situation should be feeling. She only looked tense, which was to be expected when you had what was likely an explosion talisman within inches of your face.

Either she was working together with Du Qing, and knew this was only a ruse and that she wasn’t in any danger, or… Hao Zhen used his Spiritual Sight and sent his gaze past Du Qing and Bao Yun, into the forest—at the spot Bao Yun had stepped out from.

Ah. His heart raced. Well, then.

His speech done, Du Qing took a step back, pulling Bao Yun along with him, but before he could take another, a barrier of light—like the ones Du Qing had used before, but of a much darker shade of red, almost crimson—appeared, wrapping around his body like a second skin.

Du Qing’s barrier-covered left arm slowly moved away from Bao Yun’s shoulders, releasing his hold on her. There was something unnatural about the movement, something involuntary, and Hao Zhen recognized it was like when he controlled a resisting target using Ethereal String Puppetry.

Bao Yun stepped away from Du Qing, and turned around to face the tree line, looking past Du Qing’s frozen form.

A man stepped into the clearing, clad in the white and golden robes of a prime elder.

“Father,” Bao Yun said.

Hao Zhen had heard several rumors about Bao Shan, though none of them had ever been about the man’s appearance. Still, Hao Zhen had at some point come up with a mental image of the man, an idea of what he looked like.

He’d imagined Bao Shan as a taller, older version of Du Qing. A handsome, graceful man, with a scholarly air to himself. Instead, Bao Shan was tall—towering over all of them—and the bulk of his muscles was evident in the thick white and golden prime elder’s robes he wore. He wore his hair short, cropped and square, and had on a severe look that seemed to brook no nonsense. Hao Zhen would’ve thought he was looking at some kind of military officer if it weren’t for Bao Shan’s robes. The way Bao Shan just stood there, ramrod straight, only added to that impression. Then again, Bao Shan was the leader of the Justice Hall—the sect’s law-enforcement division, something akin to an army-cum-police force—so Hao Zhen reckoned the looks fit the office.

But still. Dainty, doe-eyed Bao Yun must’ve taken after her mother.

Bao Shan walked up to Du Qing. The red barrier binding his body vanished, but before Hao Zhen could get a proper look at him, Bao Shan slammed his hand down on Du Qing’s shoulder. Hao Zhen only caught a hint of something flashing before another barrier materialized around Du Qing, even smoother and more tightly wrapped around his body than the previous one. It was also opaque instead of slightly translucent, and yellowish white rather than crimson. It was the exact same color as the dome of light erected by Lan Yue’s Radiant Light Imprisonment Talisman.

Wordlessly, Bao Shan turned away from his imprisoned apprentice and walked up to Tian Jin. Bao Yun remained by Du Qing’s side a few moments longer before trailing behind her father.

Reaching Tian Jin, Bao Shan gave him a small nod. “I apologize for my apprentice’s actions,” he said, firmly, voice deep but clipped.

“You are not to blame, Elder Bao,” Tian Jin said.

Bao Shan looked past Tian Jin. Hao Zhen felt the elder’s gaze land on him, but it lingered on him for only an instant before it moved toward Lan Yue.

She held Bao Shan’s attention for far longer. Lan Yue silently returned the elder’s gaze, and as their eyes remained locked, Lan Yue’s expression took on a stubborn edge as her stare turned into a glare.

Bao Shan gave her a small, almost unnoticeable nod, then addressed Tian Jin. “My daughter and I have been tailing Du Qing for a while, and we’ve witnessed your entire confrontation, so I understand you aren’t in the wrong. I lack details, however. Du Qing will be interrogated, but I’ll also require a proper accounting of the situation from you and your companions. I’ll have to take all three of you back to the Justice Hall with me for questioning.”

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“I understand,” Tian Jin said.

Seeing that Tian Jin didn’t seem to intend on speaking any further whereas Bao Shan appeared to be about to continue, Hao Zhen spoke up. “Excuse me, Elder,” he said, drawing Bao Shan’s attention. “But what about the Hunt?”

Maybe Tian Jin and Lan Yue didn’t care much for the results of the Glistening Stone Hunt anymore now that they were fourth-level redsouls, but he was still very much so interested in the Shimmering Light Pills, and he wasn’t about to be accidentally disqualified if he could help it.

“Disciple Hao Zhen, yes?” Bao Shan said, giving him another stiff nod. “Worry not. Your contribution points will be calculated and considered.”

Before Hao Zhen could respond, one of the rings Bao Shan wore flashed, and a small stone disc appeared in the elder’s hand. Bao Shan held it for a few moments and whispered something Hao Zhen couldn’t catch. Then the disc vanished, and Bao Shan addressed them again, “We will head straight to the Justice Hall from here. The elder in charge of the Outer Glistening Stone Hunt will send someone over to Justice Hall later to gather your spoils from the Hunt.”

Bao Shan then waved his hand, and his magical cloud spilled out from his sleeves, before coalescing in front of them. He then turned around, made his way over to the other side of the clearing, and picked up his immobilized apprentice who was now closer to a glowing white statue than anything else, holding him under his arms as if he were a plank, then carried him back. With that, Bao Shan stepped onto the magical cloud, dropping Du Qing beside him.

After climbing onto the magical cloud, Hao Zhen sat down at the back, near Tian Jin and Lan Yue. Bao Yun and her father were at the front, and between them was Du Qing, who lay belly-up on the cloud like a statue that had tipped over and nobody had bothered to replace, the soft, pillow-like surface of the cloud half-sinking to accommodate his bulk.

Under Bao Shan’s command, the magical cloud rose into the air. As the white and blues of the sky replaced the green and brown of the forest, Hao Zhen closed his eyes, sinking into the softness of the cloud, but he didn’t allow himself to relax just yet. Du Qing’s behavior earlier still mystified him, and he still wasn’t too clear on what Bao Shan and Bao Yun had been doing shadowing Du Qing, or how much they knew.

Maybe all of his suspicions could be attributed to the workings of the Weave, but that wasn’t a sure thing. And an interrogation was waiting for them back in the sect. That was most certainly a concern, as there were some things he’d much rather keep between himself and Tian Jin and Lan Yue. And then there was the whole matter of the Radiant Light Sword, which was a whole can of worms all on its own now that he thought about it.

He sneaked a glance at his teammates. They were both sitting cross-legged, backs straight and eyes closed, but Hao Zhen had spent enough time around them to tell they’d winded down. Clearly, as far as they were concerned, this whole debacle was past them, and they were perfectly safe in Bao Shan’s hands.

One of them had to keep their guard up, though, so that exalted duty fell to him. Little surprise there.

II

As short as the journey from the sect to the Glistening Stone Valley had been, the journey back was even shorter, and it took no time at all before they were overflying the sect proper. As they delved deeper into the Inner Court—mostly uncharted territory as far as Hao Zhen was concerned—what at first seemed to be a white-colored mountain caught his eye. It was like a great, towering mound of marble, made even more striking by the glare of the midday sun and standing out starkly against the other mountains near it, which boasted the more common alpine palette of brown and gray with patches of green.

Drawing closer, he saw the supposed marble mountain for what it was. Whereas most of the sect he’d seen so far was mostly composed of grasslands and groves with the occasional building, like an idyllic stretch of countryside, from base to peak this mountain was covered in buildings built from white stone. And where there weren’t buildings, there were walkways connecting buildings. What little green could be seen came from courtyards.

Countless red dots flitted in the air around the mountain—a flurry of red motes in the sky, like a hive of red wasps that someone had had had the misfortune of disturbing. Proximity once again revealed the truth: magical clouds—thousands of them, some leaving the mountain and disappearing into the distance, some arriving at the mountain, but most of them simply traveling around the mountain, from one building to another. Magical clouds were a rare sight in the Outer Court, but just in this one location, there were already more than Hao Zhen could be bothered to count.

It was to the peak of that mountain that Bao Shan flew them before lowering the cloud onto the middle of a square courtyard. The building they were in was the biggest one on the mountain from what Hao Zhen had managed to discern, a sprawling two-story complex he assumed to be the headquarters of the Justice Hall. It was built from the same sleek white stone the walls of the Mission Hall were made of and seemed to be immaculately, pristinely clean.

A pair of men in the golden robes of inner elders stood at attention at the edge of the courtyard, and they approached as soon as the cloud made contact with the ground.

Bao Shan was the first to alight, grabbing the still-immobilized Du Qing by the waist and stepping off the cloud. The pair of elders stopped right in front of him, and wordlessly Bao Shan handed Du Qing over to them. One of the elders took Du Qing by the feet, the other by the shoulders, and together they carried him away, into the left wing of the building and out of sight.

Hao Zhen’s gaze lingered on the doorway the inner elders disappeared into. Logic dictated they’d taken Du Qing to a holding cell or something to that effect, and there was little he could do about what seemed like the standard operating procedure for captured lawbreakers, but that didn’t mean he had to like letting DU Qing go out of sight like this, alive and whole. He was still unsure about this whole situation, as well as what the Weave had planned for them.

This could be the end of the whole Du Qing situation, the denouement leading to Du Qing being tried, judged, then hopefully given capital punishment, or however the Justice Hall operated. But there was also a chance that the Weave wasn’t quite finished with Du Qing yet.

This was the problem when you didn’t finish off your enemies yourself and left someone else to handle the punishment. You could never know whether they’d follow through. Even more so when a reality-warping higher power was involved.

Once they were all off the cloud, Bao Shan collected it into his sleeves, then turned to his daughter. “Wait for me at home.”

Bao Yun widened her eyes. “But—”

A steely glare from Bao Shan, and Bao Yun snapped her mouth shut. Then, jaw mutinously set, she stomped away into the wing of the building opposite to the one the inner elders had taken Du Qing into.

Bao Shan followed his daughter with his gaze until she was gone, then addressed them with the usual eloquence Hao Zhen was coming to expect from the man, “With me.” Bao Shan didn’t wait for a response and just strode out of the courtyard.

They followed Bao Shan into the same side of the building the inner elders had gone in earlier. The inside, much like the outside, wasn’t too different from the Mission Hall, though the corridors here were much wider and taller, as well windowed, even if sparsely, with most of the large, circular windows overlooking courtyards.

Unlike the eerily empty corridors of the Mission Hall, however, the ones here were nothing short of busy.

As soon as they stepped inside the building they came across a group of white-robed young men and women, who almost stilled at the sight of them—or, most likely, at the sight of Bao Shan—then readily bowed and waited for them to pass before they proceeded on their way.

They kept on walking, and there wasn’t a single corridor they walked through that wasn’t already occupied when they entered it. Reactions to seeing Bao Shan ranged from bows to nods, the bowing mostly from gray-clad servants and white-robed disciples, and the nodding from the golden-robed elders. All of them did so with perfect form. This only served to reinforce Hao Zhen’s idea of the Justice Hall being something akin to a military. They certainly had the discipline and respect side of it down pat.

Bao Shan wasn’t the only one people reacted to. Tian Jin often got a nod from those they passed by. Given his history with Bao Shan, he’d probably been here a couple of times already and was a known quantity. Hao Zhen and Lan Yue, on the other hand, mostly only got discreet glances from disciples and elders and simple nods from servants.

Eventually, they arrived at a corridor with a large set of doors at the opposite end, and Bao Shan walked straight toward them. As they neared, the doors opened inward on their own, and Bao Shan strode inside without pausing.

Neither Lan Yue nor Tian Jin hesitated to follow, and Hao Zhen followed their example as he stepped through the doorway with them.

Past the doorway, what first caught Hao Zhen’s eye was a large banner of the Blazing Light Sect at the end of the room, a stylized golden sun on a red background. It spanned floor to ceiling, and on either side of it were large circular windows overlooking a courtyard. In front of the banner was a large desk. On top of it were several shelves filled with jade slips, as well as a number of scrolls and sheets of paper. Everything looked meticulously organized.

In the center of the room was a rug that was also embroidered with the Blazing Light Crest. The rest of the room was occupied by shelves, all of them similarly filled with papers, scrolls, and jade slips.

Bao Shan sat down on the large, high-backed chair behind the desk—a hard-looking thing built from the same dark red wood as the desk and with little in the way of cushioning—then motioned toward the couple of smaller, but similarly-looking chairs facing it on the opposite side.

They sat down, Tian Jin choosing the center chair directly opposite Bao Shan, with Hao Zhen and Lan Yue taking Tian Jin’s sides.

Bao Shan nodded to Tian Jin. “From the beginning.”

Hao Zhen tensed, despite himself. As much as he would’ve preferred to be the one being questioned, he’d already expected that it’d fall to Tian Jin. At least it looked like they weren’t being treated as suspects, or they’d have likely been questioned separately to make sure their stories matched.

Showing no hesitation, Tian Jin began recounting his history with Du Qing. Hao Zhen only half-listened, concerned about the turns the situation could take when the explanation reached the Glistening Stone Hunt. He wasn’t about to bet on Tian Jin being as discreet as he’d have liked, and he was unsure how much the Weave would see fit to keep suspicion off them.