Liu Xie sat in one room. It was bare except for the shifting ash-sands blown in by the wind that whistled through the windows which tugged at his hair and the edges of his new clothes that the servants had presented him with. The edges had already gathered its characteristic tattered dinginess. He sighed mightily, maybe even dramatically, and flopped backwards into one of the piles. It smelled pleasant, like a mixture of cassia, cinnamon, and frankincense...

Frankincense was a foreign scent, someone must have been showing off their wealth by burning a large amount of exotic incense he thought.

He felt... tired.

It was a strange unpleasant feeling. He was not accustomed to it. When Eona looked tired, her body would relax, her eyelids would droop and her eyes would grow misty as her voice would become a trickle. It was cute when it was her. But for himself he disliked it, it was a sense of weakness that made him uncomfortable.

The abrupt abandonment of Li Chunning had struck a melancholic atmosphere over everyone. Even he felt it although he had long suspected that Li was at the end of his rope. He was right, after all, this was a journey of monsters. It was better that he went home rather than deal with any more terrors. This had never meant to be an adventure of multiple different people. He was just supposed to... his mind drifted. He had just supposed to have gotten Idony from Norwen to the First Palace, that was it. That was all the effort required. When Idony was there, Eona would come back to him. It really had been too easy, he bitterly realized.

He had too eagerly agreed, had too thoughtlessly tossed himself and Idony into this mess, and now others were getting dragged in. So long as Idony and Eona were split, too, he was stuck in a lesser body and could not properly investigate the Lady of Calm Waters intentions. He felt as helpless as a mortal praying for rain.

A sense of coolness leached into him and he sat up from his ash bed, brushing some out of his hair. The familiar emanation drew him out from his fugue into a more irritated state. But then he thought that this would be an excellent time to ask some questions as well. If he was going to be bothered by an unpleasant relative, he might as well get something out of it in return.

He left the room of ash, going down a shorter corridor that brought him straight to the courtyard night shrouded courtyard, which was still and quiet without anyone in sight. The trees had already replenished themselves with fat ripe fruits and bunches of fragrant flowers. But no wind stirred them, since there was nobody around to watch. He walked on a grey stone path to the large pond with its arcing bridge that he stepped lightly on. The black water below was still, like a mirror of obsidian. It swallowed all light into itself, and even his reflection seemed incredibly dim.

A ripple formed.

It expanded slowly, sluggishly expanding outwards before it gently lapped against the banks of the pond. Then another ripple came, moving slightly faster. Another, and another.

"Stop messing around," Liu Xie grumped.

The water was broken by a faintly greenish shape, oblong and longer than a man. With a great rattling of water and land, the oblong shape grew larger, then it exploded upwards, trailing behind a drenched shape that writhed in the air as it raced upwards into the sky. Liu Xie held up his hand to cover his face, his sleeve catching stray sprays of water.

The shape stopped, rearing backwards as it's long body made a hook shape as it moved its massive head downwards. It was, all in all, the vague shape of a dragon. It was long with a tubular body covered in pieces of jade in white and green with flecks of other colors mixed in at random, yet its head was a strange triangular shape, a pointed maw with too many rows of teeth made of broken coral that opened slowly, fish and storm water pouring out. Its eight eyes were scattered over its head, bright jade things that glowed with power. The being had two human like arms, but they were very long, with too many joints, seven fingers on both and nails that spread ice as it settled them on the bridge.

"What's with that form?" Liu Xie asked.

"You insulted me," the voice came not from the massive creature but from all around. Liu Xie was unimpressed.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"So you, the person always so concerned about his appearance, decided to look like that?"

"You don't deserve to look at me in my favorite shape," the voice sniffed petulantly.

"I don't need you to be here, I can just look down at the water and there it is, your obnoxious face!" Liu Xie snapped, ignoring the widening of the multiple eyes. "Why are you here?"

The Jade Prince lowered his head, so at least one pair of eyes would meet Liu Xie's. The head alone was big enough to swallow a man, and Liu Xie knew that if the Jade Prince desired he could get much, much larger. However, the Jade Prince's face was also incredibly thin, he would not make himself more monstrous than necessary. "...I just wanted to visit, of course. Your journey is taking so long."

"I wonder way, you had only so happily allowed someone you knew to be suspicious carve vows into my back to bind me," Liu Xie's patience was already at its end.

"I admit, I did know. But if I had acted on my suspicions immediately, then she would have known and done something drastic I think." He admitted. "And look! She's disappeared now."

"Well it's not like I've done anything directly to her," Liu Xie said.

"I know, you'd probably eat her if you could, you have a very brutal and unpleasant way of doing things sometimes you know? This is why nobody likes inviting you to parties."

Liu Xie sighed. This conversation was doing nothing but draining what little was left of his tolerance. He racked his wooden brain and felt an itch in his arm, idly scratching it as he watched the Jade Prince continue talking about how Liu Xie was mean, rude, too solitary, had a difficult personality, was not respectful, could not respect any actual beauty. Then he remembered the flowers. "...Uncle-"

"You don't even visit during parties... wait yes?" The complaining god got closer. "Did you just call me uncle?"

"Yes, I have a question. In my experiences, we've come across these thick petaled white flowers. They were being used in the Free City-"

The numerous eyes rolled in their sockets, "yes, yes, I know. Sister screamed at me about that-"

"And by a river, I found a cluster of them. They were wound around the bones of a human who had been involved in making the flesh puppets... and my fr..." he stopped, trying to find the right words. "There's two mortals in my group who said they found a strange scene at the river. A pale being was shedding flesh into the water."

The eyes once more focused, interested. "A pale being? Maybe a demon?"

"No, it was interacting with Wang Huaqing, who we know to be working with the Lady of Calm Waters and they were talking about..." For some reason his chest felt knotted. "...Idony. They were talking about Idony. They even knew her name given to her by her mother."

The Jade Prince was silent. The body then abruptly melted into mist, and the splitting image of Liu Xie stepped out except far more exquisitely dressed. His face however held nothing of its usual humor. It was dark and serious. He walked close to Liu Xie and suddenly grabbed his shoulders, his slender hands crushing into the wood beneath. "Listen, you need to protect Idony-"

"I kno-"

"No, you don't understand," he said, his voice had a strange tremble to it. Liu Xie had never heard it before and instantly felt a growing sense of fear. "You need to protect her. I need to check a few things, but if it's what I suspect then Idony is going to be the next target. There were questions I had about this, but now this makes sense. The flowers, the Lady of Calm Waters..."

A heavy rock dropped in his stomach, what was the Jade Prince talking about? The next target? "What does the Lady of Calm Waters have to do with this?"

"There is no Lady of Calm Waters," the Jade Prince replied flatly, before baring sharp teeth. "I've been made a fool, I should have known..." He vanished then, an eruption of liquid that collapsed in on itself into emptiness.

Liu Xie was left confused, worried, and apprehensive. His uncle rarely took anything serious, he had always been more interested in being praised, chasing beautiful people, and making art. Something that caught his attention was usually an entity powerful enough to shake the heavens, but Liu Xie could not remember any alarms recently about such. What did he mean by there being 'no Lady of Calm Waters'? She had temples, and statues... although he had seen many being tossed away in the Free City. If some gods stop answering prayers for long enough, people will stop believing, and their power will fade. If they fade enough, they would be summoned to the Amber Emperor's Throne where a course of action would be taken. Either they submit to working for tiny amounts of notice until they rebuilt their reputation, or they gave up their flicker of Flame back to their patron and rejoin mortality. But she had not been recalled...

He looked up and realized morning had arrived.

"Boss? Boss!?" Bo's voice called out. "Boss!"

"I'm out here!" Liu Xie yelled back.

Gradually, Bo emerged, yawning. He was holding a bundle under his arm as he walked over to Liu Xie, gazing back up at the numerous trees with hungry eyes. "Boss, when I woke up, I noticed there was this bundle of stuff at my bed."

"Those are your new clothes," Liu Xie sighed, rather thankful for some defusing of the tension in his chest. "...Don't change out here. Go do it in your room, what if Zhu'er sees?"

"I used to change in front of my sisters all the time," Bo protested, but still turned around to go back to his room.

The moment he was out of sight, the tension returned, and Liu Xie's arm began to itch again.