<blockquote>


    ‘At the Savage Gates, where once Valinkar stood proud as the gateway to riches did the first ‘sign’ arrive to us. There was the Saintess anointed by the first revelation, her banner held high, to bolster Valiant Edward’s forces, as they valiantly held back the baletide of the deathless damned.’


    This is how the Chronicler Trevelyn chose to portray the remarkable military feat that eventually stopped the incursion of the Second Corpse Master, Slaxukuga the Mo, into the province of Jeris. While one can charitably acknowledge that the prose of Trevelyn and others make good mileage on the tongues of tavern singers, they are alas profoundly lacking in meaningful substance. Such is the dearth of any non-hagiographic account of this campaign, especially Sarah Helena’s role in it, one could be forgiven for thinking she did not actually take part. However, we are fortunate that sources for her activities in this time do, surprisingly, exist, though they largely come from traditions outside the academic ‘norm’.


    Six months later, the Prince Edward and his ‘Chosen Men’, as the survivors of that force would come to be known, clashed once more with the forces of Slaxukuga, this time at Rulani. At this point, the narrative behind what many were rapidly starting to call his ‘Heroic Errantry’ was properly taking on shades of the First Hero of Light, Saint Laurentius of the Solace. Unlike at Valinkar, the battle that erupted at Rulani was a much more multi-faceted affair, for the forces of local powers were already deeply embroiled in their own efforts to push back the probing raids of the Corpse Master’s Lieutenants. One such force was from the D’vari hold of Bekarkilrud, and recorded their part in the campaign as a whole within the ‘Isden-zengrod’, or ‘Dignified Record’.


    This account is interesting for a number of reasons. In recent times, it has gained some popularity due to its notably less judgemental view on Prince Edward’s prowess as a General in pitched battles, however, I would argue that that is mostly because the account paints a much more disengaged picture of his forces involvement in the early parts of the battle. The Chosen Men did not enter the fray at the Western Gate until the ninth hour of combat, and did so under cover of a heavy disjunctive bombardment from Menacarnian forces.


    Most interesting, though, is that Sarah Helena did not advance with the Prince’s party in this account. She instead moved with knights from Jeris and flanked from the east, seemingly against orders from the Prince’s strategic command, crossing the portion of the line being held stoutly, against all comers, by the forces of Bekarkilrud, Drassel and Keleth. It is this clash which is narrated in the Isden-zengrod, and which I shall quote in full for you here [Appendix 5 for annotated text and Dvari Calligraphy].


    ‘Bright Leader, precise moment, to advance fleet of foot and fast of steed, the turn of the river, the clash of bodies red and forceful. Her words, were as spoken to the world. Mana became her, and would sing to no other. All was vivid with Power, for a moment, and then, recoiling, ghostly, evil and defiled, fled. Raging meat and rotted carrion the only sign. A chasm through their lines, momentum broken.’


    Military historians have argued about some of the terminology—Dvari is notorious for its grammatical impenetrability—but two things stand out, or are perhaps made more obvious, due to the considered linguistic structure of written Dvari. The choice of Dvari for ‘Mana’ and ‘Power’. Almost always, Dvari uses a variant of ‘Shin’—bright, when discussing Mana as we consider it, and which is used itself in the very first word. ‘Power’ is usually ‘Emen’, which is oft taken as Power in terms of ‘Strong’ or ‘Strength’. Here, however, the words are ‘Arom[shin]katthir’ and ‘[Emen]eshomissun’. ‘Mana—akin to Beloved of Bright Nourishment’ and ‘Power—like Strength to Silence Everlasting’. Nowhere else, in any translated corpus of Dvari writings that this author, or a number of other reputable scholars of Dvari consulted, has had the privilege to peruse, does this compound ‘Emeneshomissun’ occur. The only other use of ‘Eshomissum’ in the Isden-zengrod is as an epithet for their ‘Mother of the Final Cavern’ spoken in a prayer to her at the death of King Sestan the Learned. To the Dvari of Bekarkilrud, her skill with the esoteric arts, at the age of a mere twenty-three years, was considered spectacular enough, in this moment, to have been described with an epithet borrowing one of their most esoteric ancestral entities, uttered in a hymn to a beloved ancient monarch, said to have been blessed by the primordial powers themselves.


    ~ Excerpt from De Speculum ‘The Mirror’, Chapter 2, by Pseudo Marius (of Jeris)


    </blockquote>


    <hr>


    <h3 style="text-align: center">~ Kun Yunhee – The Plains, Just before Dawn ~


    <hr>


    The blare of distant horns drew Yunhee to wakefulness.


    -What''s out there this time? She groaned, opening her eyes to stare up at the pink, dawning sky.


    Grimacing, she gave herself a shake to ward off what passed for the ‘morning chill’ from the rock beneath her woollen cloak, then sat up as she adjusted the tunic in the local style she was currently wearing, listening intently as the horns gave way to the reverberating booms of drums.


    The early light of pre-dawn was just beginning to touch the rocky outcropping, with its tumble of abandoned stone buildings clinging to its summit, which their group had been using as shelter for the past few days.


    -Another day in ‘Paradise’, huh… she mused, massaging her neck, which was uncomfortably stiff.


    The night itself had not been especially cold, but between the clear sky and the prevailing arid wind from the plains, it was enough to make staying still for a few hours slumber uncomfortable. It didn’t help that sleeping on rock, even with the ‘comfort’ of a cloak and some scavenged fur pelt, would never be a pleasant experience, in her opinion.


    “Don’t worry, it’s not for us…” Ling Fei Weng, who, also dressed in the local style and wrapped in his own cloak, was currently sitting cross-legged on an elevated part of the ruined building they were in, that held a sheltered yet commanding view out over the rolling grasslands below them, informed her.


    -Hmmm… he stayed on while I was asleep?


    Looking up a little above them on the rock, she found Ha Shi Meihua, wrapped in her own cloak, was still taking her turn at keeping lookout.


    Technically, she and the woman from the Cherry Wine Pagoda were the ‘team’ on watch. Ling Fei Weng had joined them late on in the night, just before Meihua had swapped with her, citing the need for a break from puzzling over the changes to talisman symbology that making them from scratch in this place seemed to require.


    “Yeah, looks like a raid,” Meihua agreed. “Maybe for livestock or something?”


    “A raid?” she grimaced, getting to her feet and shaking some of the stiffness out of her legs.


    Even fully acclimatized to this new land, thanks to Elder Xian, her body was still getting used to being re-subjected to the rhythms of life that only a few weeks ago, she had barely given any thought to in decades. Sleep, bodily hunger, muscle fatigue—all were things that crossing the Immortal Threshold largely consigned to irrelevance, unless you were some weird masochist, ascetic, or practicing Body Cultivation.


    “No matter where you are, some things do not change,” Ling Fei Weng agreed as she pulled herself up onto the platform beside him to get a better view of what was going on.


    The plains below were slowly being tinted pinkish red in the dawn light, the ocean of golden grass shaded in an enchanting array of warm hues. In another life, she might have admired the rugged grandeur, but weeks spent trekking across these fates-forsaken badlands and plains had convinced her that it was only a step up when compared to the nameless-blessed montane jungle they had struggled out of in those first, chaotic days since arriving in this place.


    -At least our senses are only a little worse than they would be outside, she reflected, gazing into the middle distance of the plains below them.


    There, she could just make out the fortified settlement, just visible in the dawn haze thanks to the smoke from early morning fires, where it nestled on a hilltop overlooking the silvery serpent of the river that wound across the endless grasslands beyond it.


    “They came from the Badlands, under cover of darkness,” Ling Fei Weng pointed off to her left. “And…”


    She watched as several distant points of light arced up from a barely visible watchtower a few miles away from them, then exploded like fireworks into dozens of smaller ‘sparks’ that swarmed down into the morning mist. Whoever had done that had to be at least a Chosen Immortal, or the local equivalent, in her estimation.


    “—I guess they are not going back there,” she murmured drily, watching several distant plumes of dirt and smoke rise up.


    “No, I don’t think they will be,” Fei Weng agreed with a chuckle.


    “Remind me not to—” she paused as the sharp claps of sound from the shockwaves reached them, startling birds across the escarpment. The traces of qi that came with it confirming that, yes, at least in terms of qi-purity, the ‘caster’s’ realm was superior to hers. “—steal sheep here. The question is: is it locals, or…?”


    “—some of ‘ours’?” Fei Weng shaded his eyes at her question, then glanced up at Meihua, as above them, there was a flutter of wings as a small bird of prey took flight, coasting away towards the distant clash.


    “No harm in finding out while we wait,” Meihua called down.


    -Indeed, she mused inwardly.


    To say that the influence of those who had been dragged into this place, just as they had been, was disruptive, was really underselling it. Given the nature of the Trial, she expected many over-eager lunatics to cause some upheaval, but in actuality, they were not even in the majority of people who had ended up in this place, and were certainly not the most visible offenders. Elder Xian and Bai Sheng had speculated that pretty much every cultivator, and probably quite a few spiritual beings, within the wider Yin Eclipse Forbidden Region had been drawn into this place during that heaven-shattering assault of lightning upon the Great Mount.


    Certainly, in the weeks since, as they had searched for signs of the Five Fans and the Yeng Brotherhood, Ling Luo or Juni and the rest of the missing herb hunters, they had encountered scattered, chaotic and frequently forlorn traces of every social stratum operating around Yin Eclipse. Common folk, from peripheral villages adjoining the ancient boundaries of the forbidden region in the western and southern parts of their province, unlucky travellers, participants in the ‘Trial of Exploration’, and even other, lesser bandit influences, though none seemingly affiliated with those they sought.


    It was those last ones that had caused the majority of the ruination they had personally discovered so far… and they were not even the worst source, potentially. What brought her a cold sweat every time she dwelt on it, was that somewhere, out there, in the vast expanse of this shard of another world, there were also, in all likelihood, several tens of thousands of Easten rebels and mercenaries—not to mention the relict foundations of ‘indigenous’ clans like the Jeo—just waiting for some unlucky bastards to stumble into them…


    “Trouble in paradise?” Ha Shin, the other member of the Cherry Wine Pagoda group currently at the camp, asked drily as he walked out of the rock cut passage behind her that led to the inner part of the ruin complex to join them.


    He was followed a moment later by Ling Xiao Jiang—the leader of the left claw of the Ling clan’s ‘Little Dragon’.


    “Local diplomacy… probably,” Meihua informed the pair as Ling Xiao Jiang shaded his eyes and squinted out at the distant plumes of smoke that were now starting to drift a little on the wind.


    Since they arrived in this place, all of the Little Dragon had removed their masks and assumed something like normal identities, though she still doubted that the names they had given—Xiao Jiang, Tan, Li, Bai and Hei—were their ‘real’ names.


    “Any news of the others?” Fei Weng asked Ha Shin.


    “A bird came in earlier,” Ha Shin replied absently as he shaded his eyes and watched distant fighting. “They will be back by mid-morning, probably. The good news is that the new compasses work, and they also found some resources to help Brother Ryong solidify his breakthrough to Mortal Boundary.”


    “They work?” she asked, her heart involuntarily skipping a beat. “So, that terrifying tribulation that broke all the old compasses a few days ago has…?”


    “—also cancelled whatever was being used to hide the trails we were seeking?” Ling Jiang nodded. “Yes, it looks like it.”


    “Well, that is some good news, at least,” Fei Weng sighed, looking as relieved as she felt.


    The search they had been enduring for the last few weeks was one she could only describe as deeply frustrating. While they had found some early ‘traces’, both before and after ending up in this remnant of another world, it had quickly become apparent that the perpetrators still at large had been shrouded by some very powerful anti-divination artefacts.


    Thanks to the Ling clan experts, Bai Sheng’s quick thinking and Elder Xian just… brute forcing a few divinations, they had managed to push back against it, but Bai Sheng had since speculated that even when they were liberating the inn, many of those initial traces they had had to work with were in fact an elaborate attempt at ablative geomancy that had enabled their quarry to make some educated, preventative measures to stay ahead of them for much of this time.


    “Oh! Big Sister Qiao is also close to breaking through,” Shin added, glancing up at Meihua.


    “Good for her,” Meihua murmured, smiling slightly. “It’s been far too long.”


    “—Is this place some promised land for physical cultivators?” Ling Fei Weng remarked, shaking his head.


    The rapid advancement of the physical cultivators in their group was another surprise, one that had caught even Elder Xian off guard, she felt. It was sort of expected that in this much harsher environment, those below the Immortal Realm would reap some additional benefits, but the fact that even the Mantra Immortals were showing visible, daily progress in their cultivation strength was… a little unnerving, actually.


    Her own cultivation art was her family’s and as its sole surviving ‘successor’ she felt somewhat bound to stick with it, but Elder Xian, in an act of stunning generosity, had also given her the full chapter on the Immortal Realms of his own manual, going all the way up to Dao Immortal to use as reference… and even with that to rely on, the three female Mantra Immortals from the Cherry Wine Pagoda were solidly outpacing her. Nevermind Han Ryong, who was somehow progressing like his cultivation method was based on spiritual bamboo.


    “It is interesting, how the nature of your progress has shifted,” Ling Xiao Jiang agreed, glancing up at Meihua.


    “Yes, this place poses many questions,” Meihua softly agreed.


    “—Not least, the prevalence of archaic Easten among the locals as a language of ‘diplomacy’,” Shin added grimly.


    “Indeed,” she agreed softly.


    While the benefits they were reaping were remarkable, it was impossible not to also dwell on how they would surely be helping many of those they sought, especially the likes of the Jeo and Yeng, whose archaic foundations were steeped in physical cultivation to a terrifying degree.


    “—Actually, speaking of other odd things,” Shin added. “I think I understand now, why the locals are not using this place.”


    “Oh?” she turned her attention back to him.


    That was something that had bothered them somewhat, over the last few days of staying here. This place was a very defendable outpost, with excellent visibility over the surrounding area, so it was… odd, that the local settlement had no presence here.


    “It does not appear to be made by them, for starters,” Shin mused. “You have seen their settlements, and they do have a certain, deliberate ‘style’ that they favour.”


    “Right,” Ling Fei Weng nodded.


    “Please don’t tell us there is some cursed formation here we missed?” Meihua groaned, albeit a bit theatrically.


    “No, actually, nothing so mundane,” Ling Jiang interjected, chuckling at her reaction and taking over the explanation from Shin. “It seems like the makers of this place were a group called the ‘D—var’, or maybe ‘Vari’. There is an inscription in the main courtyard that also has an Easten sub-script relating to that event. It seems it was originally some kind of… observatory, for the stars? Some of the scenes engraved on the big fallen slabs suggest they had a conflict with the locals, and that they fortified it more thoroughly at that point.”


    “Pretty much, yes,” Shin nodded in agreement. “In that regard the arrangement itself that is obfuscating this place is actually a very sophisticated thing, built entirely as a natural alignment, drawing on everything from the temporal age of the rocks here, to height differentials and the days of the week and the phases of the moon. If I were to compare it to anything, it would be the anti-divination hardening on the main Ha or Kun estates in West Flower Picking Town. The end result is the inducement of a negative, ablative geomantic vibe that has persisted for so long that it is permanently etched into the local alignments, pretty much anywhere within visual sight of some part of this complex.”


    “Ah, so it’s like that,” Meihua mused, nodding to herself.


    “—And for those of us not called to the Dao of Feng Shui…?” Ling Fei Weng asked drily, even as she was wondering if she could ask for that explanation in Imperial Common without sounding snarky.


    “Ah, hah, sorry,” Shin coughed and gave the rest of them an apologetic smile. “Basically, if you were born or raised here, the effect will be much more profound, as an aspect of it will be inherited within local society.”


    “—And between the remnant alignments, the simple passage of time and where the access is, in relation to the current settlement, general awareness of this place is probably just really poor at this point,” Ling Jiang added.


    “So, how did we get in here… unless?” she asked instead, frowning, casting her mind back to their arrival here, a few days back.


    She had no recollection of Elder Xian or any of the others breaking any formations, or even mentioning doing so. In fact, it was he who had set Shin to looking into that matter, as a precaution once the strategic position of the place became clear and it was apparent they would be based here for a few days.


    “It seems that the criteria to enter are pretty degraded, given the state of this place, so with Elder Xian’s presence and our own capabilities, we were simply able to ignore it entirely,” Shin chuckled ruefully. “You do recall that it did take us a bit of looking to find the way up.”


    “True,” she conceded.


    Bai Sheng had been the one to originally spot it, in the evening twilight, but it had been well after dark before they finally found the ruined stairway, cunningly hidden between the rocks, to actually get up here without climbing straight up the cliff-face on the far side of the promontory.


    “I can only assume local communities do not have many Dao Lords, or whatever passes for them, that are knowledgeable enough in this sort of thing to push back against its influence,” Shin continued, pensively. “It is a very subtle formation, in that regard. Probably it had to exist for some time, unnoticed as well, to really gain traction.”


    “Could our finding this place have anything to do with the fate-breaking aftermath of that triple-tribulation to the south?” Meihua mused.


    “Possibly,” Shin agreed with a shrug, “But this place is old, like… thousands of years old. If you told me that it was older than the settlement below, I would believe you and that alone would explain why they are not exploiting it.”


    “—Anyway, the key thing is that there is nothing untoward in the formation itself,” Ling Jiang interjected, reassuringly.


    “Yep,” Shin nodded along with him. “It is just that the makers of this place took great pains to make it unobtrusive to others. In that regard, spending some time…”


    As he was speaking, another ripple of explosions blossomed amidst the scrub-covered hills below their vantage point.


    “Well, that settlement has at least one group of decently powerful Martial Archers,” Ling Fei Weng observed pithily. “How is the bird?”


    “The attackers are good at skirmishing and minimising their presence,” Meihua shrugged. “Looks like thirty or forty in number, kinda like the cruder, more tribal groups we skirted in the jungle valleys… Ah! That’s interesting.”


    Rather than press her, they just waited as Meihua stared off into the middle distance for some twenty seconds, then sighed.


    “They have at least a few cultivators with them; it wasn’t immediately clear. It’s a group of about five… no, six—seven, dressed like locals and then about the same again who are being controlled by them.”


    “Bandits?” she asked, trying not to sigh out loud.


    “Hard to say, I don’t want to be too overt… Ah! Fates, go get—!” Meihua bit off a curse and fell silent.


    Almost in the same instant, in the distance she saw three small explosions flash in the sky, followed by a fourth and then a fifth tracking towards the far escarpment and the edge of the Badlands.


    “She escaped,” Meihua informed them after a tense few seconds, exhaling and sitting back against the rock face.


    “How did you get spotted?” Ling Jiang asked her, frowning seriously now.


    “The controlled cultivators are bound in a yin-aspected exclusionary formation of some kind,” Meihua grunted. “It passively detected the bird looking at it.”


    “That is not the sort of thing bandits usually have,” she observed.


    “Should we expect company?” Shin asked as they watched several more speculative small explosions blossom in the sky above the distant battlefield.


    “It should be fine; I caught no hints of backwards intrusion—they just started tossing fire at me, which is sort of inefficient,” Meihua reassured them. “You would think they would do lightning, unless…”


    “—Unless their goal was to see where it went?” Ling Fei Weng mused.


    “Yep,” Meihua nodded.


    “If the bird comes back here though…” she pointed out.


    “Don’t worry, I gave her a solid suggestion to maybe spend the next few hours away from here,” Meihua added. “If she makes it back, I’ll feed her some soul strength to help it advance.”


    “Ahhh well, it is what it is,” Ling Jiang sighed, puffing out his cheeks. “What about the cultivators, any hints to their identity?”


    “The captured ones? No, but they are all female and at the Immortal Realm,” Meihua clarified with a jaded sigh. “The bandits are male, four Immortals and two Chosen Immortals, with one that is a Golden Immortal—about the same strength as the leader of the raiders.”


    “Are they acclimatized?” Shin asked Meihua, shading his eyes as he continued to watch the distant skirmishing battle.


    “Impossible to tell,” Meihua shrugged. “They were being conservative with their qi use though. As I said, I was keeping a light touch.”


    “Well, we should assume they are,” Ling Jiang stated drily. “That way, if we do have to break their faces in the near future and they are not—it will be a pleasant surprise.”


    “I was thinking more about whether they have a Dao Immortal backing them or not,” Shin remarked with a grimace.


    “I know,” Ling Jiang flashed Shin a wry grin.


    “Fighting a Dao Immortal before the others come back would be annoying, though.” Ling Fei Weng interjected, though even he didn’t seem that… concerned, she reflected, sighing inwardly.


    Most of the time it was easy to just… ignore the difference in her realm with most of the others, but occasionally, in moments like this, the difference in world view did peek through. She was personally confident she could kill even an above average Chosen Immortal, but to casually discuss fighting across the Dao Step was… not quite the same. Were it anyone other than those in front of her she would have thought it typical bravado, but… she had witnessed Xiao Jiang and Ling Fei Weng both cripple Dao Immortal bandit leaders in straight up fights since they got here.


    “The quickest way would be to just blow them up,” Shin chuckled mirthlessly, adding to the slight unreality of the conversation. “We can certainly do that.”


    “Well, now my poor bird is off flying for her life, how about one of you two swap with us, so we can go get some breakfast and stretch our legs?” Meihua cut in, hopping down from her perch to land beside Shin.


    “Sure,” Ling Jiang replied with a nod, starting to climb up to where she had been. “Brother Fei and I will keep an eye on this.”


    “In that case, I’ll go reinforce the boundary formations a bit,” Shin stated. “If they look like they are going to come this way…”


    “We will let you know,” Ling Fei Weng replied.


    “Yunhee, want to come give me a hand?” Meihua added, turning to her.


    “Ah… sure,” she gave herself a slight shake and nodded, falling in beside Meihua.


    “It is a bit unreal, listening to them just casually talk about murdering Dao Immortals, isn’t it,” Meihua murmured to her wryly they left the cliff-side building behind and made their way through the short rock-cut arch into the inner courtyard of the ruin.


    “It…” she could only shrug a little helplessly, by way of reply. “Yeah…”


    They hid it well, but even the Cherry Wine Pagoda’s Mantra Immortals were ‘old’. Immortals who had drifted around the province doing that reclusive influence’s work for… she wasn’t entirely sure, but Renhua, who wasn’t a physical cultivator, had made an offhand joke about the Blue Water Sage that was still bugging her… and Meihua was still the ‘leader’ in that group. The other woman had not said much about her ‘history’, but she did know her family name was ‘Shi’ and the implication seemed to be that she was one of that family’s ‘hidden scions’ from the previous generation. Certainly, Meihua’s arts, and those of the three Mantra Immortals for that matter, had more than a passing resemblance in her eyes to those she had seen Lady Xiaolian using during the liberation of Misty Jasmine Inn.


    “Don’t let it get you down,” Meihua chuckled, giving her a pat on the shoulder as they walked out into the inner courtyard. “You are still young, and have your whole future ahead of you. Aim for the day when you can horrify some poor junior with the same attitude. Fates-know, it is depressing though, that wherever we are, things seem as they ever are.”


    “It would be nice to not be in the middle of slaughter and misery,” she agreed, habitually scanning the area, a semi-circular, open space, surrounded on three sides by weathered stone facades and flanked by the jutting rock outcroppings of promontory, for anything untoward. “Sadly…”


    “—The world is ruled by greedy assholes,” Meihua sighed, also pausing to consider the open space, which was not yet properly touched by the rising sun. “You know… rather than breakfast, we might as well wait a few minutes and take advantage of the Dawn Manifestation first. Those guys can ignore it, but it’s useful for us. Not to mention, there is something… unusually intense about it today.”


    “There is?” she frowned, staring up at the pink sky, then out at the distant haze of the horizon where the first proper rays of the rising sun were starting to touch the open side of the courtyard, picking out some of the weathered engravings that covered every surface of this ruin.


    It wasn’t that she doubted Meihua, the woman’s instincts were certainly a lot sharper than hers, but she could see nothing especially unusual about this dawn, except perhaps that the morning light on the rocks before them felt a little more… vivid?


    “I guess it’s subtle, but yes…” Meihua mused. “I wonder…”


    She watched with interest as Meihua held up a hand and closed her eyes.


    Beyond her being from the Shi family, and a Golden Immortal, even after all these weeks in her company, Meihua’s actual cultivation art was a bit of a mystery to her. She hardly expected the other woman to share such a thing openly, but usually there were hints if you paid attention, as to the nature of the cultivation laws others cultivated—either in their Principle, or the way they used their qi. Yet… with Meihua, even when they had connected for formations, everything about her foundation had always felt formlessly opaque, also very much like Lady Xiaolian’s had.


    Now, however, she suddenly felt like she was standing slightly too close to a naked flame. It wasn’t ‘heat’, exactly, that was radiating softly from the other woman, but an intensity that made her skin prickle. With it, a barely visible, shimmering orb, like the corona of the sun in full eclipse, shone around the other woman’s uplifted hand.


    Meihua exhaled and the alluring intensity around her faded.


    “Weird,” was all Meihua muttered, staring at her hands, then the courtyard around them.


    “Is something wrong?” she asked, coming over to stand beside her.


    “No,” Meihua stared up at the pink sky above them, as if slightly confused by what she was sensing or seeing. “Quite the contrary… it should be very beneficial for your Immortal Soul.”


    “My Immortal Soul?” she stared up at the line of sunlight as made its way over the rocks opposite them, a flush of anticipation running through her.


    Of all the things that a cultivator had to improve after crossing the Immortal Threshold, the strength of their Immortal Soul was perhaps the most important, yet also the hardest to nurture. Treasures that benefited it were among the most expensive, while Laws and Arts were the most coveted, second only to Heart Force methods.


    She was about to press Meihua on what she meant, when the hairs on the backs of her arms and neck stood up.


    The air around them turned heavy and cold for a moment, like a shadow had just passed across the very idea of ‘warmth’ in the world, then the first rays of dawn properly touched edge of the courtyard, where it opened out to provide a vantage across the plains below them.


    “Ahh, right! An observatory!” Meihua gasped as everything around began to glow with a near otherworldly radiance. “Forget breakfast! If we can get something from this, it should give both of us a qualitative leap towards the next realm.”


    “Chosen Immortal…” she stared at the other woman for a second, then took a deep breath and sank her focus into the heart of her being.


    The boundary between her surroundings and her Dantian faded away, such that her awareness of her body and her Immortal Soul merged. To her body’s eyes, the ground around her was rippling lightly, embodying the reflection of the surface of the ‘Qi Ocean’ in her Dantian, while to her Immortal Soul, the waters now reflected the outside world of the courtyard, with its weathered stone buildings, rich with engravings merging into the hewn rock—


    Inhaling, she pulled the qi in her immediate surroundings into her body, while focusing on the cultivation manual that drifted, constellation-like, in the form of a Peng, throughout her Dantian. Normally, it just drifted there, in perpetual communication with her Immortal Soul, and the lingering reflection of her Golden Core, now preserved beneath the water’s surface like the pupil of an ever-circling Kun. Now, though, it actually moved, its wings slowly shifting, twisting the currents of qi that flowed through her immortal meridians, pulling them in towards it, stirring the placid ocean surface with faint ripples that shed iridescent spray as it did so.


    The whole process felt agonizingly slow as she watched the sunlight creep across the curved, weathered surfaces of the courtyard.


    “Gah!” She found Meihua had not actually moved away but was staring at her with a frown now. “Change of plans—”


    Before she could say anything Meihua took her by the hand and led her directly to the middle of the courtyard, sitting down opposite her.


    “Lady Xiaolian will forgive me for showing a few things,” Meihua muttered under her breath. “And Lord Xian will be unhappy if I lead you to miss an opportunity like this…”


    “—What is going—? Ohh…” Behind her, Shin had also come through into the courtyard now, and had stopped. “So, this is what that…”


    “—Out!” Meihua snapped, pointing at the arch he had just come through, and was now already retreating into. “Now!”


    Indeed, even as Meihua spoke, she could feel something in Shin’s presence in the courtyard, subtly distorting the sunlight.


    “Yes Ma’am! Good luck, Yunhee!” Shin smartly stepped back into the shadow of the archway, the distortion vanishing as he did so.


    “Ummm…”


    “It is surprisingly sensitive,” Meihua muttered, taking her hands in hers. “Or maybe it’s not surprising. Just keep focusing on your qi cycle, don’t waste this! Let me handle the rest!”


    Taking a breath, she nodded and redoubled her efforts to get her qi cycle moving.


    Meihua, meanwhile, just sat there waiting while the sun crept, second by second, around the walls of the courtyard. It was only when it had nearly reached the centre where they were sat, that Meihua exhaled, the same formless, spherical corona she had conjured before appearing between them—


    “Purple Forbidden Formation,” Meihua murmured under her breath. “Eye of the Minister of the Northern Star—”


    Just as Meihua finished speaking, the rays of the sun finally reached them. The warmth of the sun and the cold of the rock beneath her warred in her expanded senses, shadows and light shifting in her suddenly dazzled vision.


    At first, she thought nothing had changed, then, like the faintest of whispers, she heard words. They hung in the air, like the verse of some ancient, half-remembered song as the rays of the sun finally converged in the centre of the courtyard, shadows and light shifting before her eyes, picking out details in the engravings.


    “Delighter in Endeavour…”


    The words, so soft she almost thought she imagined them at first, melted out of the silence of the courtyard as the sun finally converged on the central area, where they were seated.


    “…First and Eldest…”


    “Pure Maiden…”


    “… governs Charity, Grace and Good Order…”


    “Love and Courage…”


    In each of the four directions and the very sky itself, for a moment she swore she saw luminescent figures, raising up their hands, etched into carvings and the tumbled ruin of the courtyard.


    “For the Mysteries you have revealed to us…” Meihua murmured, as did she now, finding rhythm within the voices to echo what they were saying, as ephemeral, iridescent qi bled off every surface around them.


    “We offer our thanks to thee…” she whispered, as the Peng fully spread its wings, and that strange, otherworldly qi suffusing the courtyard was drawn into her body, bathing her immortal meridians with intoxicating, refreshing crispness, like she had just inhaled the purest essence of the freshness of the morning—


    She barely had time to register the shift, as her whole dantian warped, her qi within shifting in rippling waves as the Peng flapped its wings a second time, then a third. Her Immortal Soul trembled as her Qi Ocean was swept up into a misty hurricane that shone like a celestial aurora. Meanwhile, the nucleus of ‘Guiding Intent’ held within her family manual was now struggling frantically to retain full control over the ‘nature’ of the Peng as its appearance rapidly began to transform in the ‘sky’ of her dantian.


    Its plumage took on the same iridescence that was suffusing the courtyard, while with each flap of its wings, the spectral bird was practically doubling in size, such that by the time it had done so seven times, it was almost too big for her dantian to contain—


    Just as she was becoming seriously concerned that her dantian was going to suffer enduring damage, the hurricane of qi within swept back out through her meridians, merging with it, and her awareness of her inner world was abruptly fractured.


    Her awareness of the courtyard vanished away and she found she was drifting amidst shining, sun-kissed clouds, the ghostly shadow of the great Peng rising above, and the glittering remnants of her Qi Ocean scattering below. Her family manual hung before her, slowly dispersing into its component parts. A part of her wanted to reach out and grasp it, to try and pull it back together, but at the same time, she was unable to draw her attention away from the great shadow above, that was now starting to descend towards…


    -No, that’s not right…?


    She stared blankly at the manual before her, which was shrinking in size, as if it were falling away into nothing, then at the drifts of dawn-tinted clouds around her.


    -Is… my Soul Projection increasing in size?


    Even as she realised what was happening, the moment passed. The Peng descended to circle above her, its body about the same size as hers. The remnants of her manual orbited her like a cloud of feathery sparks, each no bigger than a candle flame.


    With a gasp, her awareness of her outer body re-synchronized itself and she found herself gazing at the distant sun, which was now fully above the horizon, its rays turning the streaming clouds above them a wonderous shade of pinkish red, shadowed in blue and purple. Of the ghostly figures from before, there was no sign, though she fancied she could still hear the echoes of their remarkable song.


    Opposite her, Meihua, her expression a mirror of her own shock, she suspected, was staring at her hands, as golden runes rippled across her tanned skin.


    “Ah!” With a start, she recalled what had just happened to her family manual and hurriedly sent her sense back into her body… at which point, she got what she could only call the fright of her life.


    Her dantian had practically quadrupled in size, and most of the qi within it was still drifting in its ‘sky’. The phantom of the Peng was slowly gliding in circles within it and occasionally collapsing its wings or rolling to dart after one of the hundreds of drifting sparks that had been her manual, which were now scattered across the ocean surface.


    With a thought, she shifted her soul’s form to approach one and tried to scoop it up, only to find it scattered into nothing and then reformed, a few hundred meters away, like a darting fish, flitting this way and that for several seconds, before resuming its idle drifting.


    “What in the…?”


    Taking a breath, she focused on her qi-cycle… and found her awareness drawn to a pagoda in the heart of her dantian that had not been there before. Arriving in the middle of it, she found it looked like the hurricane of before had ripped through it. The different techniques held within her manual were still there, but the intent that had existed to provide the overall guidance was…


    “Oh, that’s what the sparks are…?” she exclaimed, turning to gaze back at the shimmering waters, where if she wasn’t mistaken she swore she had just seen a fish, almost the same size as she currently was, flit by the submerged foundations.


    “—Hey!”


    Meihua’s voice cut through her reverie, drawing her attention back to the courtyard. The other woman was no longer seated opposite her but had taken her by the shoulder and was glancing towards the western side of the courtyard, where the passage to the lower part of the ruins was, with a frown.


    “What’s wrong?” she asked, getting to her feet.


    “A soul sense just intruded into here,” Meihua whispered. “Very stealthily, directed at this courtyard.”


    -The fact that she phrased it like that means it’s not ours, or she wouldn’t be so worried, she pondered, staring into the shadowed passage. And I didn’t sense anything, which means they are stronger than me…


    “Someone in the raiding party?” she guessed.


    “Could be,” Meihua agreed neutrally. “Thankfully it didn’t interfere during the sunrise.”


    “—Or what we just experienced drew their attention?” she suggested.


    “The feng shui alignments of this place should prevent that,” Meihua replied softly, grimacing. “At least…”


    “Ahhhiii!! Anyone!?” a woman’s panicked scream rang through the courtyard.


    A moment later, a dark-haired young woman, dressed in the ragged remains of some travelling robes, stumbled out of the passage to the lower ruins and, spotting them, immediately started towards them.


    “H-help me!” she called out to them, before glancing fearfully back over her shoulder. “I… I barely got away from them!”


    “You barely got away?” Meihua replied in Easten as they both stared at the young woman, then at the passage behind her. “—From who?”


    “From…” the young woman stopped, and taking a deep breath, turned to look behind her properly, at the shadowed passageway, which was empty and quiet. “Uh… they… they were, uh, right behind me?” she panted, in creditable Easten herself, gesturing at the passage. “Like, a… a dozen, I think, of those, umm savage…?”


    -Wouldn’t our wards have tripped? She found herself wondering, eyeing the young woman, whose cultivation was a bit above hers, and felt more like Meihua’s actually. However, there was a slight… edge to it that was hard for her to pin down. A nagging feeling like she had felt something similar, before, though not recently. Is it because of the law she practices?


    -Not to mention, she doesn’t seem collected enough to have swept so stealthily with the soul sense Meihua mentioned just now. I should have felt something if it was this woman?


    “Ah, you are one of the prisoners of those raiders attacking the village by the river?” Meihua replied earnestly, sticking to Easten, though she made no move to come towards the young woman.


    “I… um, I ran away from them, yes.” The young woman nodded as she answered, her gaze flitting skittishly around the courtyard.


    She was just about to ask what the young woman was looking for, when out of the corner of her eye, she caught something odd going on with the shadows on the side of the courtyard where the sun was rising. It was almost as if there was a faint mirage occluding various spots there, slowly moving inwards, around the courtyard. Without her newly enhanced senses, she probably would have missed them as well, she had to concede. However, as soon as she knew what she was looking for, she fancied there were at least three people, trying to stealthily make their way across, behind them.


    “You see them too, right?” Meihua’s voice whispered softly for her ears only.


    “Three, maybe four?” she suggested, doing her best not to look at them or even really focus on them, and instead keep an eye on the young woman. “Heading for the rooms we have been living in?”


    “At least.” Meihua agreed. “They must have climbed up. I think they are physical cultivators as well.”


    -Wonderful.


    “Look, we can’t stay here,” the young woman added hurriedly. “I swear, they were right behind me! If they catch you…”


    “—This place isn’t that easy to get into,” Meihua replied calmly.


    “Yes, but—” the young woman, who had turned to look behind her now, at the shadowed passage she had just come from, started to speak again, only for Meihua to interrupt her.


    “—Just take a deep breath and collect yourself,” Meihua instructed her. “What’s your name?”


    “My…?” the young woman blinked. “F-Fan, Fan Xiao.”


    “That isn’t a name from around here,” Meihua observed. “Are you one of these ‘outsiders’ who have been cropping up all over?”


    “One of…?” the young woman paused now, looking at both of them as if she were just seeing them for the first time. “You are… not cultivators?” she asked, suddenly much more wary.


    -Ah, so that is how she wants to play this, she mused.


    Hiding that they were cultivators, or at least obfuscating matters suitably, was a smart ploy, especially if, as she was suspecting, this was something of a ‘play’. The infiltrators behind them, who were now almost halfway to the doorway of their rooms, pretty much gave it away, but even the young woman’s actions just rang slightly hollow to her. Had she been a ‘clan child’, or a sheltered scion of some sect, she might have bought it, but the young woman’s words, despite her initially quite panicked demeanour, felt quite deliberate in places. As if she was taking care not to be caught in any untruths. It was, of course, possible that she was just ensuring they didn’t suspect her of lying, but even so…


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    “Cultivator? Do I look like I plough fields for a living?” Meihua deadpanned.


    “N-no?” Fan Xiao shook her head.


    “If those bandits from below are going to come here, I guess we will have to do something,” Meihua sighed, turning to her and switching to flawless, accented ‘local’ like had been spoken in the last village they passed by a few days back.


    “It seems so,” she agreed, playing along and answering in the same accent.


    Just as she was about to offer to go check on the status of the attack, the sound of metal scraping off of stone echoed from the passageway behind the young woman. A few seconds later, Ling Xiao Jiang appeared, dragging the broken body of a bandit with one hand, and absently trailing his sword off the wall beside him with the other.


    “If it is the rats who chased you up here, they are already dead,” he declared in Easten, eyeing the young woman with a faint frown.


    “…”


    Fan Xiao flinched back from him as he held up the bandit’s ruined body for emphasis.


    Examining it, she grimaced, because the Ur expert’s cultivation was absolutely above hers, to the point where even now, crippled as it was, she could barely get a grasp on his qi foundation, or what passed for the local take on it. If she was to hazard a guess though, it had been close to their equivalent of Ancient Immortal.


    “This is one of those who were chasing you, right?” Ling Xiao Jiang asked.


    “Y-yes,” Fan Xiao nodded, warily.


    Behind them, the hidden figures on the far side had all stopped moving as well, she noticed.


    “Good,” Ling Xiao Jiang smiled broadly. “That just leaves—”


    Behind her, the far wall shook as a dark-haired, male figure appeared, impaled by the five talons of a shadowy-dragon claw. One lodged in each of his limbs, while the last one pinned his head against the rock, just shy of piercing his forehead directly.


    The other… five, all found themselves pulled forwards into the courtyard as if something had clutched them by their dantian’s directly.


    “D-Dao Immortal!” one of them managed to cry out, his eyes widening in shock as they all struggled against the unseen strength restraining them.


    Abruptly, a glassy barrier snapped into focus around Ling Xiao Jiang and the cultivators who were being dragged forward all collapsed to the ground, gasping. The one pinned to the far wall wasn’t freed, though, she noted.


    “Dammit, you bastard! You cut that too fine!” one of the youths snarled, pushing himself to his feet and shaking his fist.


    Inside the barrier, Ling Xiao Jiang eyed the now barely visible shimmering sphere pensively, then poked it with his sword. It rippled but didn’t break.


    “Hah! Even if you are a Dao Immortal, you can’t get out of this!” a sandy-haired youth she had not noticed boasted, dropping down off the upper rock-face on the nearside of the courtyard. “That is a proper Dao Cage! I bet you have never seen anything like it, huh, huh?”


    Ling Xiao Jiang turned to the gloating youth, then sighed.


    The sandy-haired youth opened and shut his mouth, his expression turning confused. Then, his arms and legs twisted like wrung rags. From the shadows of the entrance to the overlook where they had been keeping watch, the real Ling Xiao Jiang stepped forward, his expression somewhere between amused and annoyed.


    “A… c-clone?” one of the youths behind them gawped.


    “No,” Ling Xiao Jiang rolled his eyes.


    If she hadn’t seen him do this before, she might have been similarly shocked, but in truth, it was just his Immortal Soul. The remarkable part in her eyes was that he could manifest it this lucidly, despite not being fully in the Dao Step, which according to Elder Xianfang appeared to be the basic requirement for most people to externalize it here.


    He appeared amidst the rest of the group, who instantly tried to scatter. Three went straight for them, while the other two fled directly back towards the open side of the courtyard.


    Neither got there, as their legs collapsed under them with sickening, fleshy cracks.


    Simultaneously, a wave of unease—the manifestation of a mantra, trying to use yang oppression to mess with her qi circulation—clawed at her, originating from the dark-haired youth who was racing right at her—


    All three attackers went down like puppets whose strings had been cut before she could do more than visualize her own strike. Meihua, the source of the attack, shook her head slightly at their failed action and turned back to the frozen Fan Xiao and the incapacitated, sandy-haired youth and smiled slightly.


    A moment later, the qi of all the interlopers was forcibly expelled from their bodies. She grimaced as ugly yang-infused formation symbols flickered across most of the cultivators, turning the air around them hazy, before the seals, intended to force destruction of their bodies, flaked away into nothing.


    “Are there more?” she asked, warily scanning the heights above the courtyard where the sandy-haired youth had jumped down.


    “Not on this side,” Ling Xiao Jiang replied, shaking his head. “I’d guess they moved early, after detecting what you two just achieved in this courtyard.”


    “Aiiii,” Meihua sighed, shaking her head. “Typical greedy bastards. That just leaves the question of what to do about you, ‘Miss Fan’.”


    “A-a-about me?” Fan Xiao, who was now breathing hard, her face pale, took a step backwards, then flinched again as she realised that was taking her closer to the copy of Ling Xiao Jiang who had sat down cross-legged within the barrier.


    “Aye,” Meihua nodded. “I wonder why the ‘Golden Mask Cult’ are playing bandit.”


    “…”


    Fan Xiao stared at her, her expression almost nauseous now, then abruptly swooned and collapsed to the ground, blood running from her nose.


    On the face of it, it was as if she had just been overwhelmed by their presence, but in that instant she almost felt like she had sensed a string quietly breaking within the young woman. With it, her skin seemed to shimmer faintly golden in the sunlight, before returning to normal.


    “Was she being controlled?” she guessed, as Ling Xiao Jiang sighed and shook his head.


    “Very likely, yes,” Meihua nodded.


    “What makes you think this lot are associated with that group, though?” Ling Xiao Jiang asked Meihua as he walked over to the Dao Cage and took a broken hemisphere of a small void stone pot out of the bag at his waist.


    As they watched, he just shoved the pot into the barrier. It rippled, then slowly began to tear as he ground the broken edges back and forth around it.


    “A hunch,” Meihua sighed, as they Ling Xiao Jiang work on the barrier “Though we will have to wait for the others to be sure, I think. If they are, though, it was only a matter of time until we ran into one of the bothersome groups anyway.”


    As she finished speaking, the entire near side failed and the whole barrier dissolved into nothing. Ling Xiao Jiang’s Immortal Soul blurred back into his body, leaving only the sword behind in his free hand.


    “Who… are the Golden Mask?” she asked Meihua, as the name while faintly familiar to her, didn’t trigger any real association.


    “A bunch of bastards from a long time ago,” Meihua replied, walking over to the three who had tried to attack them at the end. “And by that, I mean from the era before the Blue Water Sage came and shook everything up. Their successors show up occasionally, which is how I know something of them. These days they basically provide certain ‘desirable services’ to those with spirit stones to spare and a morality vacuum. Virgins with promising spirit roots and so on.”


    “Ah,” she scowled as she swept her gaze around the upper part of the courtyard again, just in case.


    “Yep,” Ling Xiao Jiang replied. “There was a rumour that someone with their style was behind that brothel scandal that caught up several members of the Ha clan in West Flower Picking Town. Not that it was ever properly proven, as far as I know,” he added, glancing quizzically at Meihua.


    “The one Ha Yun got credit for breaking up?” she asked, surprised.


    “Yep, that one,” Meihua sighed, sitting back on her heels as she considered the bodies she had been searching.


    “I see you have wrapped it all up here.” Ling Fei Weng remarked sardonically, walking out of the passage from the overlook to join them.


    “Did some come up that side?” she asked, eyeing the blood he was wiping off his own sword.


    “Nah, they tried to come around from the escarpment side, I guess with him,” Ling Fei Weng jerked his head at the sandy-haired youth who had tossed the Dao Cage.


    Surprisingly, he was still alive, though apparently in a lot of pain. Whatever Ling Xiao Jiang had done to him was stopping him from screaming, but he was trembling and shaking like he was having some kind of seizure—though given how his body had been mangled, that was quite likely, anyway, she supposed.


    “This was quite a sizable force of high-ish realm experts,” she observed, doing a quick count in her head.


    Fan Xiao had been… whatever realm she really was, while the majority in the courtyard had all been at least Immortal, or maybe Quasi Immortal—it was hard to tell with Physical Cultivators sometimes. The youth being restrained was at least a Golden Immortal, as was the one who had thrown the Dao Cage.


    “Find anything?” Ling Fei Weng asked Meihua, who was now eyeing the other corpses with a distasteful expression.


    “As I suspected, these aren’t simple corpses,” Meihua replied, standing up and dusting off her hands. “I think they are a type of ‘Broken Body’.”


    “I figured it was something like that,” Ling Xiao Jiang muttered.


    “Uggh, abhorrent,” Ling Fei Weng spat on the ground.


    “Indeed,” she agreed, eyeing the remains with a grimace.


    Since she had become a ‘guardian’ for Juni, at the behest of Lady Liang, she had had cause to learn quite a lot about physical cultivators, but more specifically mantras themselves, under her direction. As far as ‘Ill Fates’ went, this was in among the worst, in her opinion.


    It was an unpleasant truth that for some time there had been a concerning demand for the bodies of physical cultivators on the black market within the province and, that using them as puppets was problematically common. What she had learned of ‘Broken Bodies’, however, was a step even beyond that. A ‘technique’ that was truly vile, in that it prioritized the utter obliteration of the ego of the victim, while retaining its longevity, and in the case of a physical cultivator, their mantra base, so their body basically became akin to an empty husk, which could then have its cultivation increased using means typically reserved for treasures.


    It wasn’t quick, compared to raising, say, qi-beasts for that purpose, but for making puppets with bodies that reached the realm of Mantra Immortal with all the advantages and few of the limitations, it was something that many dark powers were more than happy to resort to with their expertise. The tribulations for it were also markedly ‘different’, as she understood it, something that she assumed was down to the ‘lack of ego’ circumventing some of the hostility of the heavens to physical cultivation as a whole. It also made a bit of a mockery of the notion commonly espoused that ‘the words of the heart’ could not be ‘taken’.


    “It looks like they have all had bones in their hands recently removed,” Meihua informed them.


    “If you have the resources and the knowledge, you can regenerate the bodies from just that,” Ling Xiao Jiang mused, tapping his fingers against his chin. “And if they are high enough in realm and you have qi to spare—”


    “These are all mantra immortal bodies, so…” Meihua puffed out her cheeks.


    “Yep,” Ling Xiao Jiang nodded, eyeing the sealed youth at the back. “His body has had its head removed at some point. For more bothersome mantra foundations, that isn’t uncommon as I understand it.”


    “You seal the residual ego in the head and use the trauma to force a mutation?” Meihua asked, her expression twisted into one of deep disgust.


    “Indeed,” Ling Xiao Jiang confirmed. “As I understand it, that allows them to disrupt the connection between the body and the head and then regrow a new body to manipulate. Is this what led you to think of those old villains?”


    “It truly is a practice developed by vile old wretches,” Meihua observed sourly, nodding her head.


    “No arguments there,” she agreed. “Can we soul-search either of these two?”


    “Yes, but perhaps it might be better to wait for the others?” Ling Fei Weng suggested. “We might only get one stab at it, so to speak.”


    “Hmmm, perhaps yes,” Ling Xiao Jiang agreed. “It is a pity their qi has ended up contaminating this place. Based on what you both managed, it might have been worth checking if the other auspicious hours could be similarly leveraged.”


    Looking around, she realised with a sinking feeling that he was right. While the living corpses had been prevented from exploding, Ling Xiao Jiang had still scattered most of their qi into the wider courtyard, where it was now lingering inauspiciously in the more shadowed areas, out of the sun’s glare.


    “Hmmm, what do you all make of this?” Ling Fei Weng, who had been searching the sandy haired youth, asked, drawing their attention back to that body as he held up a dark purple stone-ware pot, wrapped in rough cloth within which was a cord that held over two dozen rings of varying designs.


    Just from what she could see, it looked like most of the major influences on three continents were represented within.


    “Storage rings?” Meihua mused, frowning. “I wonder why… unless?”


    “It’s quite a collection,” Ling Fei Weng observed, taking care not to disturb the rings within the pot, presumably in case they were trapped or marked in some way. “Shu Pavilion, Red Sovereigns, Jade Gate Court, Nine Auspicious Moons, Imperial School…”


    “That’s a lot of big names,” she observed, noting that there were even some in there from influences affiliated with the Seven Sovereigns and the Moon Tomb.


    “—Nearly the full set, yes.” Ling Fei Weng agreed, nodding to her, then Meihua. “And yes, I think that’s rather likely. I am guessing the girl there tried to bait you?”


    “Right,” Meihua nodded, as did she.


    “Is she also a…?” she found herself asking, eyeing the crumpled form of ‘Fan Xiao’.


    “No, actually.” Ling Xiao Jiang mused, kneeing down beside her. “She is something far more… interesting.”


    “More interesting?” Meihua asked, raising an eyebrow.


    “Yes, and I think it’s a further point towards your theory that this group have some kind of link to the Golden Mask Cult,” Ling Xiao Jiang stated, holding up a bronze-coloured metal token that for all the world looked like it was made of the same ancient metal her own short blades and Elder Xianfang’s sword were made from.


    “Huh, he has one as well.” Ling Fei Weng, who had been carefully searching inside the youth’s robe, held up a similar token. This one appeared very weird to her eyes however, because even though he was holding it up quite deliberately for them to see, her gaze somehow kept sliding off it.


    “That explains how he got that close, at least,” Ling Xiao Jiang grunted.


    She was just about to ask what it was, specifically, that was making it hard to look at, when she felt a cold shiver run down her back. Turning her head slightly, she carefully checked the courtyard behind her, while trying to make it seem as if she was still examining the pendant Ling Fei Weng was holding, yet there was nothing obvious that stood out.


    Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Meihua glancing surreptitiously at her, a faintly questioning look on her face. Rather than reply, she just took a deep breath and tried to calm her senses.


    For several seconds she got nothing, then, abruptly, another faint chill touched her, as if she was no longer standing in direct sunlight. With it, was an ever so slight sense of ‘hunger’ as well. It was almost as if she were being stared at by some kind of predatory…


    -Is it a qi beast? She found herself wondering, doing her utmost to not ‘react’ more than she was. Is it just focused on me?


    None of the others seemed to have noticed, but that could just mean they were better than her at hiding it, she supposed. However, the more she thought about it, the more likely it was that something was attempting to single her out, and had, perhaps, underestimated her own perception.


    “You okay?” Meihua asked her softly.


    “Something about that amulet made me feel a bit weird, is all,” she replied, giving the other woman a grateful smile and patting her hand. “And I just need some time to adjust to the attenuation of my senses after…”


    “I think something is staring at me,” she sent, via a flicker of soul sense at the same time as she spoke. “Did you feel anything just now, like a faint chill?”


    “No.” Meihua sent back. “Any idea where from?”


    “Behind me, somewhere.” she replied. “It feels… predatory.”


    “What is that talisman, anyway?” she asked, out loud, to further cover the short exchange.


    “It’s designed to mask soul sense, though it only works effectively if you keep your intent very guarded,” Ling Xiao Jiang replied. “Good for assassins—”


    “—Well, that idiot was not a particularly good fit for it,” she noted wryly, recalling his gleeful response to having caged Xiao Jiang.


    “Probably why they gave it to him, to make up for his sloppiness,” Meihua remarked, shaking her head. “Keep an eye out. If you detect it again… run your hand through your hair.”


    “So, what do we do about that one?” Ling Fei Weng asked Xiao Jiang, gesturing towards the youth still tightly restrained by the spectral dragon’s claw.


    “We will let the others deal with him when they return.” Ling Xiao Jiang replied. “His restraint will hold well enough, though someone should probably keep an eye on him—?”


    “—I can do that.” Meihua volunteered. “You two should go help Shin and finish sweeping the other courtyards in case there are more of them lurking.”


    “What about the other bodies?” she asked, eyeing the prone forms before shifting her focus to Fan Xiao. “—And her…?”


    Normally, you would just barrier them and that would be that, but if they were still being observed, producing methods from back home like Cage Talismans would be a dead give-away, she couldn’t help but feel.


    “This charm of his still has some… mana left.” Ling Xiao Jiang held up the talisman that the sandy-haired youth had used. “Ummm, let me see…”


    She watched, rolling her eyes inwardly as Ling Xiao Jiang made a show of considering the talisman and spending a short while working out how to activate it, then triggered a small barrier with it.


    “Seems simple enough,” Ling Fei Weng remarked drily as Ling Xiao Jiang cancelled the barrier he had just made.


    “Yep.” Ling Xiao Jiang agreed, shaking his head. “Put them over there”—he gestured at the ground near Fan Xiao—“and once we have stripped them, we can try to put one over all of them.”


    Nodding, she knelt by the one who had made to attack her and started to strip him of his garments. Meihua gave her a reassuring smile, then moved over to Fan Xiao and did the same, though she did leave the ‘girl’ her cloak as a cover of modesty. Ling Xiao Jiang meanwhile passed the talisman to Ling Fei Weng and walked over to the youth he had restrained and quickly searched him as well.


    By the time they had finished stripping and moving all the bodies, Ha Shin had come to join them as well, dragging an unconscious, dark-haired, heavily tattooed woman dressed in the local style behind him.


    “I have two more,” Ha Shin informed them, depositing the woman beside the other bodies. “Are those… Broken?” he asked, eyeing the five with a raised eyebrow.


    “Uh-huh.” Meihua nodded as she started to check the woman. “I’ll bring you up to speed in a bit.”


    “I see.” Ha Shin shook his head as he took in the courtyard. “The ones attacking the village appear to have backed off, incidentally.”


    “Don’t tell me they are coming this way?” Ling Fei Weng asked with a grimace.


    “No, headed back into the scrub to the north.” Ha Shin replied. “They were being chased by several groups from the village.”


    “Well, I guess all we can do is keep an eye on them, then,” Meihua mused.


    The others, herself included, all nodded. It didn’t really need to be stated out loud that the failure of this attack was likely already known to those who orchestrated it. None of them were new to this sort of circumstance, so their next steps, beyond checking for lurkers, like whatever she had sensed a short while ago, were pretty much set out ahead of time. Secure the bodies for the others returning. Secure the perimeter, or rather, re-secure it. Set up additional countermeasures to future intrusion—which would likely aim for the bodies as much as them. Then hunker down and wait for Bai Sheng, Elder Xian and the rest to return.


    “Indeed,” Ling Fei Weng agreed.


    “Thus, starts another wonderful day in Paradise,” she added drily, eliciting rueful chuckles from the others.


    <hr>


    <h3 style="text-align: center">~ Ruo Han — Southern Riverlands, at Dawn ~


    <hr>


    Gentle breath, the strange scent of flowers, lilacs maybe, or pomegranate, tugged at him. No, not scents, grasping hands, the sense of being lifted up and carried somewhere, and then distant voices—?


    With a jarring shiver, Ruo Han awoke, the distant voices becoming cursing, and someone else shouting. It was just after dawn, as it turned out, and a serious argument was in full flow, on the far side of the ruin.


    Shifting, he turned to look at Liao Ying, to ask her what was going on, and flinched, because next to her by the entryway… somehow, was Xiaoli, her clothing still ragged and worn like it had been back then, the traces of the cruel injury that had killed her clear on her body. She gave him a strange, slightly complex smile. He blinked, and she was… gone?


    “…”


    He stared at where the disconcertingly vivid hallucination, for that was all it could have been, of Xiaoli had been, then back at Liao Ying, who was now looking at him, frowning.


    -Fates, is Jin Chen’s talking starting to get to me as well? He groaned.


    Sitting up, he winced, as his leg twinged. Somehow, despite the attempt at putting down a padded blanket, his hip had found cold stone while he slept and was very happy to let the rest of his leg and back know it.


    “What’s happening?” he asked Liao.


    “You ask me, but I can’t honestly tell you?” she replied with a helpless shrug. “It was something strange, with the dawn, when it touched the hilltop a few moments ago. You look like you saw a ghost, bad dreams again?”


    “Weird dreams…” he replied his gaze again drifting back to where he had just seen Xiaoli, sitting by the door to their crude shelter. “Definitely weird.”


    The lingering sense of being grasped, somehow, or maybe pulled was also there. It made him want to look at his forearms, or pull up his robe and check his legs, in the hope that there were handprints there, somehow, but they had also grasped his hand, and his palm had no sign of them.


    At this point, the angry exchange between Muli and one of the Imperial School disciples had at least quieted down slightly, thanks to the arrival of Quan Dingxiang, who was trying to placate both sides. He caught ‘look, it caught everyone by surprise and it seems a lot of disciples sensed nothing—So their incompetence—'' from Quan Dingxiang and Muli and then their voices vanished, leaving only some distant bird song and the hiss of the wind, as a ward slid into place over the whole exchange.


    A part of him was surprised that the exchange had brought no comment from Jin Chen, until he realised that his friend was curled up, sound asleep under one of the other blankets, just beside Liao Ying, and on the opposite side of the doorway from where he had hallucinated Xiaoli for a moment.


    -Maybe I should ask Quan Dingxiang about some of that medicine he offered Chen, for myself, he reflected ruefully.


    Getting to his feet and trying not to wince again, he made his way outside.


    Official Weng was seated by the fire, cooking what smelled like mixed-grain porridge in a re-purposed alchemy cauldron, so he made his way over.


    “Good Morning.” Official Weng gave him a wan smile.


    “Good Morning,” he returned the greeting with a polite salute.


    “If you are wondering what has them spitting venom, it’s the dawn thing,” Official Weng informed him, without him even having to ask.


    “It seems there was something in the morning manifestation,” Weng continued, giving the pot a stir. “But someone down in the camp below panicked and triggered one of the yang-aspected formations, thinking it was some sort of attack or something. Broke the moment.”


    “Ah,” he nodded, understanding now.


    Those sorts of comprehensions you could only really seek by chance, so it was quite expected that Muli would be spitting nails over someone else interfering with one. The now silent argument seemed to have reached a cessation, at least. Meanwhile, a small monkey, no more than two-feet high, with a dark face, a long, prehensile tail and earthen-coloured fur was poking around by the medical tent, peering curiously into containers and looking under coverings.


    “Who is the Imperial School disciple?” he added, more softly, because he didn’t recognise their face.


    “New—new arrival,” Official Weng replied with a grimace. “There was another group came in about an hour before dawn, very much a mixed bag. Chased out of their old campsite, they claimed, and ‘happened’ upon ours after a few hours fraught travel.”


    “Right…”


    At this point, he didn’t feel the need to be especially guarded in his reply on that topic. The question of other groups somehow finding theirs, despite everything, was an ongoing drama, as the previous night’s arrivals had also emphasised.


    “I’ll give them the benefit that they were pretty beat up,” Weng sighed, giving the pot another speculative stir. “Well, this appears done, want some?”


    Nodding, he limped back over to their shelter and claimed their bowls.


    By the time he had returned the short distance to the fire, Muli had stalked over to join them and was raking through the charcoal with a stick.


    “It’s ridiculous,” she muttered, mostly to herself, he thought, as he squatted down and proffered a bowl to Weng to fill with the porridge.


    There was nothing he could say, really.


    “Utterly stupid,” she continued, sourly. “First they—”


    *BANG*


    The explosion made everyone within eyesight of them flinch. A moment later a smoking chunk of pottery hit the top of the nearby wall and exploded on impact, sending plinking bits of shrapnel everywhere.


    Muli absently reached out a hand and caught a finger sized chunk before it could hit the porridge pot, stared at the charred ceramic for a long moment, then dropped it on the ground with a disgusted expression.


    Looking around, he saw Quan Dingxiang, looking rather peeved, stalking over to the edge of the enclosure. Ji Fushan, who had been startled to wakefulness, didn’t look any happier, nor did the two alchemists, who had been tending the alchemy cauldron at the rear area.


    “Looks like an alchemy cauldron?” Official Weng observed, picking up another fragment that had landed right next to them. “No residue beyond charred water though. A soup pot?”


    “How in all that is sacred to the four courts could…” Ji Fushan swore, stalking over to where they were. When he set eyes on some of the fragments though, he seemed to deflate a little.


    “Are you honestly surprised?” Muli asked sardonically.


    “That someone found a way to blow up an alchemy cauldron boiling water?” Ji Fushan muttered. “No, I guess not.”


    “At least you got some sleep,” she added archly. “Even if you slept right through an auspicious dawn manifestation.”


    “I…” Ji Fushan stared at her, then up at the sky, then around at the enclosure, and then turned and kicked a rock hard enough that it sailed right off the hilltop.


    “It is going to be that kind of morning, isn’t it,” Official Weng suggested diplomatically.


    “It already is that kind of morning,” Muli growled.


    Off to the side, Quan Dingxiang was now conversing in silence with Shen Biyu, who had come up to the hilltop, looking rather annoyed herself, it had to be said, and gesturing in a few directions.


    “It seems I am not the only one shafted out of some comprehensions, either,” Muli added.


    Nodding sympathetically, he claimed the three filled bowls and beat a hasty retreat back to their shelter, where Jin Chen was still asleep, and Liao Ying was still doing her breathing exercise.


    Passing Ying over her bowl, he placed Chen’s serving down to one side.


    “Best just to let him sleep,” Liao Ying mouthed softly, covering Jin Chen’s serving with a cloth. “He probably needs it.”


    “Yeah,” he agreed, casting about for a spoon, only to find himself proffered one by Liao Ying.


    For what it was, Official Weng had done his best with the porridge. It was flavourful and filling, and largely without lumps. He also clearly needed it, because he had eaten most of the bowl before he really realised it. In contrast, Ying just took a few mouthfuls of her portion and set it aside with a tired sigh.


    “What’s wrong?” he asked, then reflected that it was more a case of what wasn’t wrong.


    “Ahh, I just don’t have much of an appetite, I guess,” she replied, with a deeper sigh. “I’ll finish the rest in a bit.”


    Now that he looked at her a little more closely, her complexion made her look a bit sleep deprived.


    -Did she not sleep, last night? He wondered. There was also something…


    It took him a moment to realise what was off. The woven shawl-cloth which she had been wearing almost constantly, either around her shoulders, at night, or on her head, at day to keep the sun off, wasn’t there.


    “Where is your shawl?” he asked, frowning, casting around for their pack.


    He had not asked what its importance to her was, but it had always been a part of her outfit, now that he thought about it, since they started travelling in Yin Eclipse, nevermind since.


    “…”


    She stared at him, then put her hand to her shoulder, then cast about and then groaned.


    “I definitely had it last night…” she muttered, continuing to riffle around, even going as far as to glance under Jin Chen’s blanket. “I must have dropped it, when we were leaving the other place, to move here?”


    “I’ll go take a look,” he reassured her.


    His leg was still stiff, in any case, so he needed to walk that off.


    “We won’t have to pack up for a while yet, I suspect, so just take it easy,” he added.


    “I… okay,” she sighed.


    “It will show up,” he reassured her.


    Leaving their shared shelter, however, he didn’t immediately head off to where their old camp location had been. On the one hand, a part of him felt that it was entirely reasonable that simply going back to their camp and asking Cao Kongshin’s group if he could check for Ying’s keepsake should be an entirely drama-free endeavour. Cao Heizhang had seemed upstanding in their interactions last night, and Kongshin, while aloof, had not come across too badly, either. Rather, it was the two women that gave him pause, and also the association with the Imperial School Faction. They, as a whole, had no qualms about being pushy and awkward. There was also no saying who else would be at the camp at this point, and there was an undeniably funny ambience about the camp this morning.


    His intuition from years of being a Junior Elder in the outer sect of the Argent Hall had given him a lot of experience in working around the whim’s and attitudes of his seniors in cultivation realm, and right now it was telling him to beware of rain without clouds.


    “Is there something wrong?”


    He blinked as he found Ji Fushan standing near him and bowed quickly. He had not heard the golden immortal approach at all, or sensed him, though that was not at all unusual. Even with the wards, cultivators of that realm were impossible for someone like him to keep track of, unless they went out of their way to be noticeable, and thus you just got used to them ‘flitting’ around after a while. His surprise was more that Ji Fushan had taken the initiative to approach him, as unlike Quan Dingxiang, or Official Weng, he hadn’t interacted with him all that much.


    That said, Quan Dingxiang was still talking to Shen Biyu, and while Official Weng was respected among the core group, there was no guarantee that his name would have any clout among the newer arrivals. Realm and recognisable sect prestige were the only sure-fire currency there.


    “Ying thinks she misplaced a keepsake at our old campsite,” he informed Ji Fushan politely.


    “Ah… oh, she doesn’t have her head-scarf,” Ji Fushan glanced at Ying, then their little shelter and immediately spotted what was missing, “And the Imperial School bunch have taken up your old spot… ah, I have to go down that side anyway, I’ll ask them on the way, if you like?”


    “I…” it took some effort not to ask what was in it for him, but he just about managed it. “Thank you,” he replied, instead.


    “Not at all,” Ji Fushan chuckled, giving his shoulder a pat as they started to walk towards the edge of the camp. “Honestly, I see something of myself in you, you know?”


    “You… do?” he blinked again.


    “You were an outer sect junior elder at the Argent Hall, right?” Ji Fushan asked.


    “I… yes,” he confirmed, surprised Fushan actually knew that.


    “My family isn’t well enough off to do more than secure my entrance to the sect, and while my spirit root was… good for my town, it was never that exceptional.” he added. “I got lucky with some opportunities and caught the eye of one of the administration elders.”


    “Would you believe that’s pretty much how I got into the inner echelon of the Four Peacocks court?” Ji Fushan informed him, drily. “You would think that as an inner disciple I’d be the son of a regional noble or something, but no—my parents were merchants, and my father nearly bankrupted our family to get me into the entrance test. I got made an inner disciple pretty much by hard graft, rising through the ranks in the outer sects. It gives you a different perspective, doesn’t it.”


    “It… does,” he agreed carefully.


    “—And a wariness of companionable seniors,” Ji Fushan chuckled ruefully.


    “…”


    He couldn’t help but flush a bit at that.


    “Which is also how I ended up in this shit-show,” Ji Fushan continued, shaking his head, as they reached the edge of the slope. “Half of the folks here are so detached from the reality of day to day living that its embarrassing. Born to privilege, facilitated at every turn, and encouraged to do whatever they desire, while others—like us—are on hand to clean up after it all. I know you are leery of Jin Fu, but his background isn’t much different from mine, actually—or yours.”


    “It isn’t?” he blinked.


    “Mmmm, but he will never admit it,” Ji Fushan chuckled.


    -And presumably, I should not let on that you told me, he reflected inwardly, though something of that thought must have shown in his expression, because Ji Fushan just shook his head slightly as if amused.


    Looking down at their old campsite, he could see both Jing Changmei and Jing Faolian there, along with Cao Kongshin… and four others—a dark-haired young woman, a pale-haired youth, a stocky, martial-looking youth and a tall, scholarly one, all of whom seemed to be even newer arrivals, as he recognised none of them.


    “Looks like Heizhang got pulled into patrols already,” Ji Fushan mused. “Wait here, I’ll go chat to them, it will be easier that way.”


    “Thank-you,” he replied earnestly, saluting the youth from the Four Peacock’s court again.


    “Not at all,” Ji Fushan replied with an airy wave of his hand.


    Sitting down on the rock, he watched Ji Fushan make his way down to the group, and pass through the ward with a friendly wave. The actual exchange of greetings only lasted about a minute, then he took the younger Jing girl off to one side. She looked quite happy to chat to Ji Fushan, and indeed, after a moment, cast about, and came back with Ying’s scarf, seemingly apologizing for how it had ended up in her belongings. At the same time, two short, beige-furred, dark-faced little monkeys, both just under two-feet tall, came into view, momentarily, exiting that camp between the rocks just below him, carefully carrying a jar of wine between them. Ji Fushan, meanwhile, exchanged a few more pleasantries with the group as a whole, and headed on down the slope, where he spent a few more minutes talking about something with one of his juniors who was watching the edge of the Four Peacock’s encampment, before finally coming back up the slope to rejoin him.


    “Here,” Ji Fushan passed him the embroidered cloth. “It seems she found it on the slope just by the camp and liked the pattern. I told her Young Lady Liao was from Burning Tiger’s family, so that will help a bit with any future interactions, I imagine.”


    “You are most generous, Sir Ji,” he replied accepting the cloth and bowing formally in thanks.”


    “Sir… haha, just Big Brother Ji will do,” Ji Fushan replied, giving him a warm smile and returning his bow. “If you need anything else, just let me know.”


    All he could do was nod in thanks.


    He watched Ji Fushan head back across the hilltop, for a moment, then gave himself a shake and headed back to Liao Ying and Jin Chen.


    “That was quick,” Ying commented as he ducked back into the shelter.


    “Here,” he passed her the scarf. “Senior Ji interceded for it, in the end. It seems it slipped out of our stuff when we were leaving the camp.”


    “Did he, that was most generous of him,” she replied, a little… drily, he thought.


    “Does his family have some connection to Burning Tiger Province?” he asked, a few things suddenly clicking together in his mind.


    “Mmm, if it’s the Ji Shin family—he has their pattern on his robe—they are a major exporter of Burning Tiger Jade and a few other alchemical commodities to the Central Continent via Pill Sovereign City and Four Peacocks province,” Liao Ying replied, rolling her eyes. “Well, I’ll have to thank him, this is a keepsake from my grandmother.”


    Sighing, he nodded and stared at two small, beige-furred, dark-faced, long-tailed monkeys, which had just slipped through the gap between the wall and the rear of their shelter. One was slowly picking up the bowl of porridge, left for Jin Chen, while the other was turning over the edge of Liao’s pack to see what was inside.


    “Why are there monkeys stealing our stuff”? Jin Chen, who had just opened his eyes, asked dully.


    He stared at the two small monkeys, as did Liao. The monkeys stared back at them, and then the one holding Jin Chen’s bowl made a strange gesture with its free paw, drawing its palm in front of its eyes and then waving it up and down as if to hide them from view…


    “What…?” Liao managed, as the monkey stared at them, at its fingers, then back at them, as if confused as to why this had done nothing.


    -Ah, I saw monkeys earlier? He realised, dully. By the medical tent… and taking… wine from our old campsite? Why…?


    He had clearly seen then, he could remember seeing them, but they had just seemed so normal and…


    “…”


    With a mentally deafening ‘clang’ every perimeter alarm in the camp triggered, nearly simultaneously.


    With it came shouts and a lot of cursing, and then one very clear, furious snarl, from Jin Fu, that was echoed a hair later by half a dozen other senior experts.


    “WHY IN THE NAMELESS—!?


    “—MOTHERLESS—?!


    “FATE THRASHED—!!


    “—LOVING, GODDESS—!??


    “—ARE THERE DOZENS OF MONKEYS ALL OVER THE CAMP!?!”


    <hr>


    <h3 style="text-align: center">~ Ha Yun — Near Merovin ~


    <hr>


    The days since he had… been caught up in the spatial and temporal anomaly were hazy. Sleep came too easily, but the dreams they brought were seldom pleasant. All of that was, apparently, expected. Side effects of what he, and to an extent Meifen, had experienced that would, according to Ganlan Meixiu, fade with time. That didn’t make it any easier, however, on a day-to-day basis. Or night-to-night, for that matter.


    As a cultivator, back home, he had, admittedly, not slept much. Once you got to golden core the requirement to do so got less. You tended to dream even less, because your awareness at that point transformed in fundamental ways—at least that was how it was explained to him. As such, the lucidity of the ‘dreams’ he now had… were disconcerting in a whole other way. The meta-textual awareness of being in a dream, yet it feeling so real as to be indistinguishable from waking, of standing on a beach he had never seen, looking out over a sea and wondering how he knew to describe it as wine-dark, or why the white-painted, red-roofed buildings felt so normal, despite being so alien to anything he knew from back home.


    Those were the good dreams, at least. The bad ones were faces, screaming, shadowed trees, hands reaching. Desperate last words from friends he knew to be dead. Mocking shadows, not quite placing their hands on his shoulders, whispering not quite audibly in his ears, even though he didn’t need to hear, to see their changing faces, to know what was being said— ‘I… I am Di Ji’.


    According to Mayumi and Meixiu, that too would fade with time. The link was broken, and it was mostly just his recent experience that was exacerbating things. It didn’t help though.


    Nor did the fact that nights on the plains were frustratingly cold. Heat bled from everything and returned with an almost vengeful attitude upon each sunrise.


    Sleep, not sleep.


    Not dreaming, dreaming.


    Cold, not cold.


    Mediocre comfort, discomfort.


    Yes, calling it all a haze that bled together was a very apt description, he couldn’t help but feel, as he huddled up under his blanket, in the lee of one of the ruined walls and tried, rather aggressively to ‘rest’. The hours before dawn were pretty much the only ‘comfortable’ ones as it turned out, but sleep was always too shallow. Even now, he could feel the odd dissociation, the awareness of ‘him’, who had been trying to meditate before he just… fell asleep, even as he now sat on this sandy beach, listening to the distant sounds of some sort of zither and someone singing… or maybe chanting?


    Dreams like this were the strangest. He had no real means to ask anyone about them either. They didn’t really seem to be about him. It was like he was just… there, a part of the scenery. Experiencing the moment. It was vivid. He scooped up the wet sand… and tasted a bit. It was gritty, salty, and had a notable smell of seaweed. Nearby, a seabird landed and started to poke at the beach.


    “I shall come to you… to this holy temple… to… bah, it really doesn’t scan does it?”


    He blinked as he found a pretty, dark-haired young woman, dressed in a flowing blue gown, standing nearby—the singing voice hers.


    He had never seen her arrive, she was simply… there.


    “Come to me… come to you…” she sang the line again, then paused and seemed to realise he was there, looking at her. “Cold, clear water sounds—everything shadowed, by roses, and sleep that falls from bright shaking leaves…” she murmured in a singsong, almost melancholy manner, as rain fell from a bright, cloudless dawn sky, then sighed ruefully and shook her head—


    He awoke with a jolt, and a feeling of accented, muscular discomfort in his neck.


    Dew clung to his robe, almost as if it were the rain that had just fallen in his dream.


    “—Sleep that falls from bright shaking leaves?” he muttered, except, the words that he spoke were… not… quite that, even if the meaning was there.


    “—ku—yaku—sha—ri—shiki—fu—i—ku…”


    The chanting, as it turned out, was one of the nearby grass-scorpions, who was sitting next to a rock, reciting what sounded like a prayer or meditation text in their own strange tongue, while drawing symbols onto the surface using a bowl of water.


    “That is an interesting poem for you to know…”


    He started, finding Ganlan was sitting atop the wall, a few feet away, staring off at where the sun was rising.


    “I… uh… heard it somewhere before,” he replied trying not to sound… too uneasy.


    “In a dream, maybe, just now?” she asked drily.


    “…”


    He couldn’t bring himself to deny it, really, so just nodded.


    “Interesting,” was all she murmured, then, to his surprise started to sing in a similar timbre to what he had just heard in the dream, and in fact in the same tongue he had just repeated. “?ν δ? λε?μων ?ππ?βοτο? τ?θαλεν ?ρ?νοισιν ?νθεσιν, α? δ’ ?ηται μ?λλιχα πν?οισιν…”


    He stared at her, because despite the words just sliding past him, somehow, something of the meaning was there, about a field of flowers, and horses, maybe, while the breeze sang?


    “That is the next verse,” Ganlan informed him drily. “In Easten it would be,” she coughed and cleared her throat a little—''Within is a meadow, where horses linger, with blossoms and spring flowers, breezes blowing gently’… There, Cyprian Goddess, mix our joy with nectar in golden cups and pour it out like wine.”


    “You think this is related to her?” Kojiro, one of the few Grass Scorpions whose name he actually knew for certain, asked, coming over to join them.


    “If it is, Grimvak just gained the mother of all pains in her ass,” Ganlan replied, with a broad smile.


    “Couldn’t happen to a nicer person,” Kojiro murmured. “Though, I do have to wonder what sort of ritual…?”


    “—Could touch on the nature of immortality in this place, to such a profound and widespread degree?” Ganlan mused, glancing off to her left for some reason. “I wonder… what do you think, old fellow?”


    “I think that that rabble-rousing girl is not gonna like the garden of flowers blooming in her back yard,” the old Grass Scorpion replied, joining them at the wall. “As to the ritual? Is it not as you just said—within that fair meadow, where horses linger still, breezes sing, and joy, mixed with nectar, in golden cups, has been poured out anew.”


    “…”


    Both Kojiro and Ganlan gave the old scorpion long looks, but he just shook his head with a chuckle.


    “The question, rather, should be ‘for whom, was such a ritual worth the expense?’,” the old scorpion added. “In any case, we are disturbing Kiyo’s practice and our guests have taken it upon themselves to make breakfast, it would be discourteous to let their efforts go to waste, no?”


    -Are they? He couldn’t help but wonder.


    On the one hand, they seemed happy to give him a lot of freedom, and Meifen was also broadly tolerated, it felt like, but almost everyone else in that group still walked on eggshells, and the newest four…well, it was hard to know what to make of them, but he very much doubted they felt like ‘guests’.


    “Are they our guests?” Ganlan asked drily, echoing the thought he had just had.


    “Well, they are free to check out any time they want,” the old scorpion replied with an amused shrug.


    “…”


    Both Ganlan and Kojiro gave the old man another long, faintly judgemental look, which he affected to ignore.


    “I am off to check with the scouts, save me some,” the old scorpion added, starting to head off towards the ‘edge’ of the ‘hill’.


    “Somehow, its more unnerving when he is in a good mood,” Kojiro muttered to Ganlan quietly, as the old scorpion sauntered off.


    “Shall we get food then?” Ganlan declared, giving him a broad grin, rather than replying to Kojiro, who just shook his head in seeming amusement.


    Left with no choice really, he got to his feet and followed after them.


    The ‘main’ campsite today was a little further around the slope from where he had opted to shelter for the night. There, three fires had been kindled amidst the largest of the secondary sets of foundations dotting the hill on the scorpion’s back. Those three campfires really reflected the divisions within the group as a whole, as well. The largest one—a functional cooking pit, really, was being tended by ‘Brother Feng’, whose given name he had learned was ‘Yuanshen’. Bo Kangji, one of the martial experts in Meifen’s group, who he had originally made acquaintance with in Valinkar, was crouched nearby, chopping up various ingredients to put in a large pot of some sort of porridge. A little further around, Erfang Lan, another of that group of guards and Ji Shin Fa—who had been originally introduced to him only as ‘Senior Ji’— were roasting some plucked birds. Meifen herself was going around with the help of Scholar Quan—Quan Huangfan—serving out portions of the porridge.


    As they approached, she paused and gave Ganlan and Kojiro a quick salute, which Quan Huangfan echoed, and then gave him a wave… which Huangfan did not.


    His relationship with the other cultivators was… stressful, really. To the point where he had begun to actively avoid them most of the time.


    Half seemed to think he was somehow involved in their current circumstance, half seemed to think sucking up to him would help, somehow—particularly in getting their stuff back—while a third of the whole seemed to think he was acting above his station just because he was from a ‘local little Provincial’ influence. Most of them were clustered around a smaller fire, talking quietly among themselves.


    Then there was the new group, seated around the third fire. Sheng Quan of the Sheng Martial Hall, Hong Xingguang of the Hong Huang family, Ao Tongfei from the Bright Wisdom Court and Jiang Gongli from the Purple, fate-thrashed Nebula Pavilion of all places.


    These things he knew, because they had all come up to him and personally, formally introduced themselves, their three generations and their influences, and even bowed to him like he was the young master he had previously felt he sort of was. All of them were Dao Step cultivators. Sheng Quan he was fairly sure was a Dao Lord and then there was Jiang Gongli, who might be one as well, and whose identity had been a surprise even to the others of that group. The Purple Nebula Pavilion was one of the ‘unaligned’ starfield hegemonies, and he only knew the name because the Ha clan met a lot of people and did business very widely, but in terms of reputation, they were… a big deal once you got out of the bubbles of the Great Worlds themselves. One of their disciples had come to the clan once, three years prior, and nearly every ancestor had come crawling out of their caves and pagodas to fawn over the youth. Gongli had told him that he should call him ‘Big Brother Gong’!


    Thankfully all four seemed to have their cultivations fully sealed, much like a lot of Meifen’s group, but unlike them, they seemed much more sanguine about it, and that didn’t help, either.


    Right now Sheng Quan and Ao Tongfei were both meditating. Hong Xingguang gave him a bright smile and a wave though, and Jiang Gongli, who had been tucking into one of the roasted birds, also gave him a friendly nod. Their attitude was part of why so many of Meifen’s cultivators seemed to be trying to give him deathly sideways looks, at every available opportunity.


    The grass scorpions—thirteen that he could see—were mostly just scattered about the surrounding slope, in groups of two or three, eating their own food and conversing, or checking their bows and other weapons. Two were quietly meditating and another was doing the same chant and drawing practice that the one near him had been.


    “Talk about damning you with misguided politics…” Ganlan murmured, giving him a sideways look that was entirely too amused. “This I don’t miss from back then.”


    “Can you blame them, really?” Kojiro remarked.


    “No, they at least understand the height of the heavens…” Ganlan replied with a rueful sigh. “Or at least believe they do. The old fellow clearly made an impression.”


    “You could certainly say that,” Kojiro agreed. “Fortunately I was not that close.”


    “Senior Ganlan, would you like something?” Meifen asked, brightly coming over to join them.


    “You really are determined not to savour the delights of Three Rodent Mysterious Stew a second time, aren’t you,” Ganlan remarked, her comment drawing audible laughter from some of the nearer grass scorpions. “To sacrifice our precious grain stores for… porridge.”


    Meifen flushed and lowered her head a little.


    “Relax,” Kojiro chuckled. “We can always get more.”


    “What would it have been used on…?” he blurted out, mostly because his own memories of that ‘stew’ were not much better than Meifen’s. “Bread?”


    As far as he had seen, here, the Grass Scorpions, while they had had flatbreads with some meals, he had never seen anyone ever make any.


    “…”


    Both Kojiro and Ganlan gave him amused looks, then Ganlan shook her head and produced a jar from somewhere.


    “Alcohol not made out of fermented spider ichor,” she informed him with a broad grin.


    “T-the alcohol is made out of spiders?” Quan Huangfan, who had been drinking the stuff yesterday, he recalled, coughed and made a face.


    “Mostly spiders,” Ganlan replied drily, as Quan Huangfan flinched and turned pale, though neither Ganlan or Kojiro seemed to care that he had commented.


    “Honestly, I still can’t stand it,” Ganlan informed Quan Huangfan with a wink. “Even after all this time. You cannot take the taste of formation-catalyst reactant out of it, or the sensation that something with too many legs is scratching the back of your throat out of it, no matter what you do.”


    “It isn’t that bad,” Kojiro protested.


    Giving Kojiro an very level sideways look, Ganlan passed her jar to Quan Huangfan, who after looking at it apprehensively for a long moment, unstoppered it and took a sip.


    “…”


    While Huangfan didn’t say anything, the conflicted look that flitted across his face said enough.


    “Really, it isn’t,” Kojiro muttered, in the face of Ganlan’s broadening grin.


    “They… are both appealing… in their own way,” Quan Huangfan replied, very carefully, clearly not wanting to offend either of them.


    “This is cultivators for you,” Ganlan remarked, sounding amused, while one of the nearer grass scorpions who had overheard, laughed. “Always—”


    A loud, albeit rather distant rumble, like thunder, but sharper, and more explosive, washed across the hilltop, making some of the cultivators flinch and others half stand as they looked around.


    Turning to look out over the rugged, scrub-cloaked ‘plains’, he saw a distant plume of dust rising on the near-horizon and a faint halo of a shockwave travelling out from it. A moment later, another, smaller series of clouds puffed up. Counting down, he got to thirteen before a distant rumble reached them, suggesting they were some distance away.


    “Looks like someone is having fun…” another of the nearby grass scorpions observed, shading their eyes as they peered off at the distant cloud that was already starting to collapse.


    Several flashes of distant green fire lit up the roiling haze of dust, followed by a shimmering distortion that looked awfully like a slash through it, then the entire cloud haze of dust trembled and scattered outwards, followed seconds later with a dull rumble. The shockwave itself washed over their hilltop, but by the time it reached them it was little more than a shift in the breeze. Whether it was cultivators or locals, he had no way to say, at this point.


    “Aiii… it seems opinions call us,” Ganlan sighed, suddenly, glancing up the hill to the top, where he had to presume Mayumi was.


    She claimed the other two bowls of porridge in Meifen’s hands, then set off without a backwards look. Kojiro gave him an eyeroll that conveyed a sense of ‘such is life, eh?’ and then followed after, leaving the three of them standing there.


    “That… was odd,” Meifen muttered, giving him a sideways look that he could only shrug at.


    “Do you reckon its some of…?” Quan Huangfan glanced surreptitiously over at Sheng Quan and the other ‘senior’ group.


    “—Are you thinking some of them might try to rescue their compatriots?” Meifen asked drily. “Or us?”


    “Who even knows where we are,” Quan Huangfan muttered.


    “Honestly, we are probably safest right where we are, anyway,” he pointed out. “Given…”


    “You know, I had almost managed to forget we are right on top of the largest spirit-beast I’ve ever heard of,” Quan Huangfan grumbled.


    Before he could say anything else, a strange, juddering, rumble-like sensation thrummed through the air around them. Contrary to the previous explosions, this did cause the nearby grass scorpions to all pause what they were doing, a few finally standing up to look at the horizon.


    “What is it?” he politely asked the one who had commented about ‘fun’ a moment ago.


    “Mmmmm, it seems some mad bastards have woken up one of the Ostux-glosalos,” the grass scorpion replied. “It’s certainly a choice.”


    “Ostuucks…glosaloss?” Meifen repeated, before turning to the grass scorpion and bowing politely. “What is that, Sir Sojiro?”


    “Ah, I guess in Easten it would be something like ‘Cyclopean Mountain Creature’,” Sojiro replied. “They never really had a name for them. Its hard to call them even sentient, in any serious sense. They are driven by urges… to consume, to refine, to grow… that’s about it. I guess you could consider them as being a very evolved, old form of slime…?”


    “Slime?” it was Quan Huangfen’s turn to look confused now, though Meifen also didn’t seem familiar with them.


    “You… mean the… it’s like a creature that has an amorphous, qi rich body around a qi core, that can slowly adapt itself to what it consumes?” he asked.


    He had never encountered one in Yin Eclipse, but you did have to know something of them in the Hunter Bureau. How he even recalled it, he wasn’t sure, because they really only existed as a threat if you went cave diving, and he had never had any inclination to go near one of those missions, ever.


    “That’s a pretty basic description of one, yeah,” Sojiro agreed, nodding. “They can be anything from the size of a fruit to a large boulder, and tend to be quite hard to spot. Ostux’glosa’los is the traditional name they were given by the deep Ur. The Dvari—a people of this land who dwelled beneath the hills and deep in the ground—and whose names are often taken for such things—called them ‘Nugteg Onolmes’, which is basically the same thing.”


    “Will it attack us?” Meifen asked as another rumbling howl washed through everything.


    “Probably not,” Sojiro chuckled. “As I said, they are barely even ‘sapient’. They tend to prowl only at night as well, so this one was either drawn to the dawn manifestation, or someone just got very unlucky. The city states by the great river sometimes hunt them down, because their cores can synthesise complex mana-alloys like Orichalcum or Agrond.”


    “Even if you downed one the size of a small hill though, its very random, and you might only get a few bits of ore the size of your fist,” the other grass scorpion added. “And even a weak one is basically a colony creature composed of a few thousand individuals. The strong ones can be in the seventh or even eighth circle and have dozens of six circle entities.”


    Recalling some of what Ganlan had said in passing over the previous few days about ‘circles’ and what they represented, he couldn’t help but shudder a little at that.


    “I think ‘Seventh Circle’ is sort of like Dao Sovereign… or higher,” he clarified for Meifen and Quan Huangfen, who both gave him ‘we didn’t need to know that’ looks.


    “They are not that common,” Sojiro added, drily, seeing their expressions. “These lands likely have a few simply because we are so close to Merovin, and nobody in their right mind would go near that ghost-infested tomb of a place.”


    “Could they have been drawn towards the residue of their teleport?” the other grass scorpion suggested, pensively, glancing over at Sheng Quan and the others, who were also looking off at the distant clash, their breakfasts set aside.


    “Hmmm, that is indeed possible,” Sojiro agreed. “Well, we can only wait to see what the boss thinks. In any case, it won’t come to us.”


    “Unless it is suicidal,” another nearby grass scorpion, who had been watching the distant fight remarked, glancing in their direction.


    “—Or controlled,” another added.


    That last comment surprised him a little, because Ganlan had implied a few times that this camp could not be found unless the old scorpion wanted it to—though it was always possible she had been generalizing, he supposed.


    “Charming bunch, you are,” Sojiro retorted, before giving them a reassuring, if slightly toothy grin.


    “Incidentally, are we now Uldarans?” the grass scorpion who had suggested the distant creature might be suicidal asked, with a cheeky grin, holding out his bowl to Meifen. “To have to trade stories for meals in our own hall?”


    “…”


    Meifen flushed and Quan Huangfan grimaced.


    “Is this a hall?” Sojiro remarked, raising an eyebrow and glancing around the ruins.


    “All of this jigoku-touched realm is our hall!” the grass scorpion replied, with a broader grin.


    “…”


    Meifen sighed and gave him a look that sort of suggested she wanted to talk to him later, then went over to that group of grass scorpions and started to serve them out portions of the porridge.


    “Don’t take their words to heart,” Sojiro murmured to the slightly stony faced Huangfan, as he walked past them.


    Huangfan gave Sojiro, then him, an odd look, but did nod in thanks to the grass scorpion, his scowl fading, replaced by something more pensive as he followed after Meifen.


    “I’ll just go sit over there and eat my porridge,” he informed Sojiro, holding up his own bowl and gesturing towards a sheltered spot that wasn’t… quite with the grass scorpions, but was still enough among them that he hoped he could avoid dealing with the other cultivators as well. Sheng Quan’s group had been looking in their direction repeatedly, while they were talking.


    “Enjoy!” Sojiro replied, giving him a toothy grin.


    Nodding, he went over to the spot he had picked out. It also had a decent view of the distant conflict. He had barely sat down and tasted it, however, when he found that Meifen had split from Quan Huangfan and was making her way back over to him.


    “You should try the bird,” she declared, passing him a large chunk of the roasted meat.


    Putting aside the porridge, he accepted it. Undeniably, it did smell good.


    “Shin Fa is actually pretty good at spirit food, would you believe?” she continued, sitting down and taking a large bit out of her own piece. “They have some herb that grows wild, it seems, kind of like Persis root, that makes it not taste quite so gamey.”


    Taking a bite, she wasn’t wrong. Ji Shin Fa certainly had succeeded in making the bird quite delicious.


    “You are wondering what I want?” she asked drily.


    “It… has crossed my mind,” he conceded.


    “To sit and eat my breakfast without getting funny looks, or having to listen to people try and talk quietly behind my back,” Meifen replied, before taking another bite of her own bird. “—Or ask me what we are going to do next.”


    “…”


    He had to resist quite hard, the impulse to somewhat sarcastically ask her just that, but he did manage, and instead ate another mouthful of the bird.


    “It is true that I brought most of them here, to this fates-forsaken trial,” she sighed, sitting back. “And I have tried to do my best for them—fates know I’d like to think I haven’t gotten anyone killed pointlessly, at least.


    “—More by luck than any skill, it must be said,” she added ruefully.


    “So they don’t want you leading?” he guessed, trying to read between the lines of where this impromptu heart-to-heart seemed to be going.


    “If it were that easy,” she muttered. “Some might try to attach themselves to our new captives… but everyone saw how they were brought here.”


    “And that doesn’t inspire confidence in their status,” he observed, giving her a rueful grin of his own.


    “No, surprisingly, it does not,” she agreed, rolling her eyes. “That and they are sealed, have shown zero interest in our group, beyond asking all the obvious questions… and have instead all tried their utmost to cosy up to you, for some reason—something that has not gone unnoticed among the others, incidentally.”


    She gave him an appraising sideways look, seemingly interested in that herself.


    -Yes, I wish I knew for sure why as well, he reflected to himself.


    “I guess it’s because I am the only one walking around without their cultivation sealed and with some degree of rapport with our ‘hosts’?” he suggested, after a moment.


    That was mostly the impression he had gotten from the conversations they had had with him so far, and glancing over surreptitiously now, he could see Sheng Quan and Hong Xingguang had shifted their seating such that they could continue to ‘unobtrusively’ observe him, where he currently was.


    “I guess, but you should be wary of them,” she mused, after taking another bite of her bird. “I know the Ha clan has deeper roots than a lot of the others think within Blue Water Province, but those four are all Dao Step Juniors from powers whose names would allow them to walk into any Dao Gathering on any continent on Eastern Azure and be greeted like an old friend.”


    He nearly said ‘I know’, but given she seemed intent on giving him the advice, he just nodded in thanks, instead.


    “I am pretty sure that the Huang lady was going to come over here, before I did,” Meifen added.


    “So I guess it is convenient for both of us to sit here and enjoy our breakfast, watching the show, safe from the interruptions of others?” he suggested drily, holding out his bowl of porridge as if giving her a toast.


    “Indeed,” she agreed, knocking her roasted bird against the edge of his bowl. “To avoiding the stupidity of others.”


    He couldn’t help but chuckle at that toast, as off in the distance, the cyclopean creature thing emitted another roar, its clash with whatever its opponent was scattering up another billowing cloud of dust.