~ The Hierarchy of The Heavens ~


    Upon this auspicious day, is mandated the Hierarchy of Heaven, August, Mantled and Serene, with most Venerable Advisors—Pure, Celestial and Sagacious, Enlightened, Wise and Illustrious, on behalf of this Throne of Jade and True Felicity, blessed by The Way itself.


    Gautama Buddha — Sakyamuni


    King Yama — Divine Ruler of Diyu


    Divine Emperor of Long — Dragon God of the Heavenly Ocean


    Great Mothers. Four Directions. Bestowed into our care, we acknowledge. Serene and Unparalleled.


    無生 — Wusheng


    Principle and Celestial, Commands the West, Queen Mother of the Dynasty, let it be known.


    薛 — Xue


    Serene and Wise, Commands the North, Queen Mother of the Dynasty, let it be known.


    魔 — Mo


    August and Tenacious, Commands the East, Queen Mother of the Dynasty, let it be known.


    李 — Li


    Miraculous and Farsighted, Commands the South, Queen Mother of the Dynasty, let it be known.


    Heavenly Emperors. Four Mansions, our crown attends. Meritorious, we acknowledge


    邰 — Tai, Emperor of the Northern Heavenly Mansion


    明 — Ming, Emperor of the Eastern Heavenly Mansion


    孟 — Meng, Emperor of the Southern Heavenly Mansion


    黃 — Huang, Emperor of the Western Heavenly Mansion


    Spiritual Mountains, Four Serenities, under the Enlightened One. Awakened, our crown attends


    補陀洛伽山 — Mount Potala — Guanyin. Avalokitesvara.


    峨眉山 — Mount Emei — Puxian. Samantabhadra.


    九華山 — Mount Jiuhua — Dizang. Ksitigarbha.


    梵净山 — Mount Fanjing — Mile Pusa. Maitreya.


    Heavenly Kings. Wardens of the Four Gates. Heroic and Steadfast, our crown bestows


    鞠 — Ju—Harmony, Heavenly King.


    邰 — Tai—Purity, Heavenly King.


    明 — Ming—The Middle Way, Heavenly King.


    孟 — Meng—Wisdom, Heavenly King.


    Ministers of State. Will of the Left and Right.


    For our Seat, Advisors we decree. Wise Council and Good Order.


    舒 — Shu—Grand Commandant.


    孔 — Kong—Prime Minister of the Left


    法 — Fa—Prime Minister of the Right


    相 — Xiang—Grand Chancellor


    For Merit and Precedence, achievement most August, the roll of the Clans of Heaven, announced!


    禹 – Yu Heavenly Clan


    無生 – Wusheng Heavenly Clan 薛 – Xue Heavenly Clan 魔 – Mo Heavenly Clan 李 – Li Heavenly Clan


    黃 – Huang Heavenly Clan 邰 – Tai Heavenly Clan 明 – Ming Heavenly Clan 孟 – Meng Heavenly Clan


    舒 – Shu Heavenly Clan 孔 – Kong Heavenly Clan 法 – Fa Heavenly Clan 相 – Xiang Heavenly Clan


    鞠 – Ju Heavenly Clan 隆 – Long Heavenly Clan 鄭 – Zheng Heavenly Clan 劉 – Liu Heavenly Clan


    郭 – Guo Heavenly Clan 興 – Xing Heavenly Clan 湯 – Tang Heavenly Clan 姒 – Si Heavenly Clan


    滕 – Teng Heavenly Clan 方 – Fang Heavenly Clan


    [Jade Seal of Heaven]


    In accordance with the rule, and in light of the tragic events that have transpired in the Ten Song’s Starfield, a new assessment of the Roll of Heaven is to be undertaken. Seven New Stars shall rise. Let it be known.


    ~ Proclamation by the Jade Emperor, setting forth the Roll and Hierarchy of the Heavens, in accordance with the change of eras and the new aeon, with addendum on the ascension of new heavenly clans in this era.


    Circular on Celestial Ranks and Honours — Office of the Grand Chancellor.


    ‘Queen Mother’ — Leaders of the Cardinal Courts of the Heaven’s Path.


    ‘Divine Emperor’ — Title of respect.


    ‘The Wise’, ‘Venerable’, ‘Enlightened’ and ‘Illustrious’ — Courtesy titles given to the advisors to the Jade Emperor.


    ‘Heavenly Mansion’ — Rulers of the Cardinal Regions of the Heaven’s Path.


    ‘Heavenly King’ — Champions of the Heaven’s Path, appointed by the Jade Emperor.


    ‘Prime Minister’ — Right and Left hands to the Jade Emperor.


    ‘Grand Commandant’ — Oversees the Armies of Heaven on behalf of Jade Emperor


    ‘Grand Chancellor’ — Oversees the Celestial Bureaucracy on behalf of the Jade Emperor.


    ‘Grand Duke of Heaven’, ‘Wise Emperor’, ‘Wise, Great & Awakened Sage’ — Courtesy title.


    ‘Heavenly Clan’ — Clans who have at least one Greater Divinity or four Lesser Divinities, and control at least one Starfield with a Supreme World.


    ~ Footnote on Ranks within the Hierarchy of the Heavens, further amended by the Celestial Secretariat, on behalf of the Office of the Grand Chancellor.


    <hr>


    <h3 style="text-align: center">~ Cang Di — Uldara, Quaruna’s rooms ~


    <hr>


    The chaos that the ‘dawn manifestation’ brought lasted… some time. Even an hour later, people were still going around, asking questions and talking about it in hushed tones, yet nobody really seemed to have answers. And those who might—like Erishkira—were so far holding their counsel.


    He had a few suspicions, that he had so far kept to himself, if only because in that moment, when the first rays of sunlight washed through the hall, accompanied by the melodious, songful whispers and the scents of flowers, he had been reminded not just of being in Meuanna’s presence, but more particularly, Origin’s, once she shifted her appearance to ‘Pasithea’. However, he was almost certain this had nothing to do with either of them, and he had not felt any particular ‘fated connection’ to whatever the source of the phenomenon was, either.


    Of the others, Quaruna seemingly had, if her reaction in the moment before ‘dawn’ was any indicator. It also had some impact on Amanali and, surprisingly, Qingcheng, but all three had gone out into the garden, and not yet returned.


    “—Is Lady Quaruna here?”


    He was stirred from mulling over those aforementioned ‘suspicions’ and what they might entail, as a middle-aged servant, dressed in a manner similar to Kuresa, brusquely entered the main hall where they were all sitting around, followed a moment later by two more attendants.


    Kuresa herself, sitting close to the window, arms folded on her lap, just sighed.


    “She is in the garden, Aroz. What do you want?”


    “I bring a summons, from Mistress Asherida,” the servant replied, waving the minion on his left to come forward.


    The youthful Ur servant produced a scroll from the satchel at his side and walking over to Kuresa, presented it to her with a deep bow.


    Kuresa opened it, nodded and put it on the table beside her.


    “I shall relay it. There is no reason she cannot attend—that I am currently aware of,” Kuresa replied.


    “The invitation is also extended to Lady Erishkira, Sorceress Meyla and Hunter Kang here,” Aroz added, nodding in his general direction before turning back to Kuresa.


    “Is there anything else?” Kuresa asked.


    “…”


    Aroz eyed the various servants and other cultivators still in the hall—Shirong and Huan, who were standing over by the couch where Nisa and Garesh was seated, eating breakfast, and then Mei Miao and Lifan Jia, his gaze drifting to the ornaments the two young women now sported in their hair as they waited on everyone else, sighed, and shook his head.


    “No, I will relay matters to her ladyship.”


    “Of course,” Kuresa replied blandly.


    Aroz bowed again and backed out of the hall, followed by the other two servants.


    “Is there a problem?” Qing Dongmei asked politely.


    “No, probably not, Lady Meyla,” Kuresa replied drily. “You have all been asked to attend the formal reception of a group of high-status dignitaries, who have just arrived. There are envoys from Great Sorceress Grimvak’s domain with them—among others.”


    “—Are there now?”


    Erishkira mused, walking in from the balcony outside, followed a moment later by Quaruna, Amanali and Qingcheng, who both looked a little lost in their own thoughts.


    “It seems you are going to meet every big character in this region within the span of a single day after all, Kang,” Quaruna remarked drily to him as she went over and picked up the scroll, giving it a cursory read through.


    “…”


    “Well, I guess it’s a good thing we all got dressed up,” Amanali added, eliciting amused chuckles from Nisa and Garesh. “Saves some effort, at least.”


    “Small mercies,” Quaruna muttered, putting the scroll back down and then turning to look around the hall at large. “Have you had any thoughts of a suitable estate or palatial courtyard, Kuresa?”


    “For Hunter Kang and Lady Erishkira?” Kuresa nodded. “The Honeysuckle Garden and Palace Court would be suitably secluded, and remain within the core edifice of the Old City, up here… unless your ladyship wishes something a little more secluded?” Kuresa asked Erishkira.


    “That will be fine,” Erishkira replied, waving her hand airily.


    “The Honeysuckle Garden, huh… I suppose that does have the advantage that it is already under the administration of my expanded household and is largely unused at the moment…” Quaruna nodded. “In that case, see about clearing it out and moving all of the newly acquired servants over there.”


    “As you wish,” Kuresa replied.


    “How are you?” he asked Qingcheng, who had come over to stand next to him, still looking a bit nonplussed.


    “I… uh… okay?” she replied, not entirely sounding convincing. “The… um, manifestation earlier was strange. I… It had some resonance with my spirit root, and Quaruna said I might have been blessed by… Ashinna, but I wasn’t—”


    “—In that case, it can keep, so long as you are okay,” he cut her off politely, before she could tell him more.


    It wasn’t that he didn’t want to know the details, but it was her opportunity, if that was the case.


    “…”


    She gave him a rather conflicted look, that made him sigh, inwardly. He suspected why she was trying to tell him, and certainly, he could have used Shatterpoint to find out, without her ever realising, but that would also amount to an abuse of the already rather awkward dynamic they were currently bound to.


    “If you gained some benefits, that is good,” he reiterated. “I cannot deny, I am somewhat curious, but it was an opportunity that came to you, not me, so…”


    “…”


    The ‘look’ she gave him by way of reply would, in other circumstances, have had him laughing out loud, over how ‘oh, really, you say that, huh?’ it was.


    “All I can tell you is that Ashinna is one of their local ancestors here, so if you have been touched by her power, that is also something you should seek to use to your advantage,” he added.


    There was no need to say anything about ‘divines’ or ‘gods’ to her, not at this point. That might actually be counterproductive to her mental state. Assuming that Quaruna or Amanali had not already explained all that, he supposed.


    “Yes, well, umm… Quaruna and Amanali told me a bit about her…” Qingcheng replied with a complicated expression, confirming that thought pretty much as he had it.


    “—It occurs to me, that there is an opportunity here,” Quaruna remarked, glancing at Amanali, who had gone over to get a drink, then at Qingcheng, before turning back to Kuresa. “Send someone to go make some quiet inquiries. See if any of the other prisoners have been ‘blessed’. If they have, they are to be sequestered to the Temple of Ashinna, so that this matter can be properly investigated—”


    “—There will be some who will not be happy about such an action,” Kuresa pointed out. “Even if compensation is offered.”


    “—Which is why we should act before the day’s ‘festivities’ get into full swing,” Quaruna pointed out. “What do you say, Amanali?”


    “I think my mother will go for it,” Amanali agreed. “It would be a good idea to check beyond the prisoners as well, to avoid too much finger pointing?”


    “Sounds good,” Quaruna mused.


    “I’ll see to it,” Kuresa replied, getting to her feet with the resigned expression of someone expecting their day to involve a lot of being complained at.


    “Will you need me at the reception?” Kuresa asked, pausing on her way to the door.


    “Mmmmm, it would do no harm for you to be there,” Quaruna replied. “And you as well, Ama?”


    “Sure,” Amanali, who had been heading after Kuresa, nodded.


    “—Do you want something to drink?”


    He turned around as Mei Miao proffered him a cup of wine, as Kuresa and Amanali both left, followed by two of the local servants and one of Quaruna’s bodyguards.


    “Sure,” he nodded, accepting the drink.


    Taking a sip, it was really more like faintly alcoholic fruit juice than actual spirit wine, but that was fine.


    “Anyway, as I said earlier, this could be a good opportunity for you,” Quaruna remarked, to Qingcheng, as she came over to where he was sitting and sat down next to him, on the couch. “There are some interesting opportunities that can be obtained, for those who are blessed by Ashinna.”


    “There are?” he asked, turning back to Qingcheng.


    “Yes, she told me a little bit about it, earlier,” Qingcheng replied softly. “It seems they have an artefact that only resonates with those touched by this… Goddess’s power.”


    “Indeed,” Quaruna agreed. “Even among the priestesses, there have not been many who actually qualify. If she took one of those trials and succeeded, not only would she no longer be considered a slave, but she would likely be elevated to the status of a cult priestess. Of course, that means you could no longer be her master, but it would confer further surety upon those associated with her.”


    -Which would certainly be of benefit, to her, and those she is looking to protect, he mused, listening to the explanation. Assuming there are no catches…?


    “What does the trial entail?” he asked. “Assuming it is permitted to inform those who are not… blessed? Is there much danger?”


    Truthfully, in asking the question he wasn’t expecting a particularly detailed answer. Such ‘trials’ relating to blessings or inheritances of greater powers like the Queen Mother’s Temple back home tended to have heavy restrictions on information that could be shared. It would, however, be a pleasant surprise if this one did not, so there was nothing to be lost by asking, just in case.


    “All who participate in the trials are compelled not to speak of its particulars,” Quaruna replied blandly, with the answer he had mostly expected. “We cannot know what it might entail for her; no trial set by Ashinna is without its challenges, and it differs for every person who takes it. There are steps that have to happen before it, anyway—such as the blessing being formally verified by the current Chief Priestess of Ashinna.”


    “—That is Amanali’s mother,” Garesh added drily.


    “Yes, she is currently the chief priestess,” Quaruna nodded. “I imagine Amanali will also undertake the trial, so that will make things easier.”


    “Does that mean you will also take the trial?” he asked, curious on that point.


    “I already took it,” Quaruna replied, rolling her eyes.


    -Ah, of course, he reflected, taking a deeper drink from his cup. Given what he had already seen of her background, he supposed he should have expected that reply.


    “I took the trial on my seventeenth birthday, and became the third youngest person to succeed, since they started keeping records in this era,” Quaruna added with a proud smirk. “As to the two who ranked ahead of me, that would be my own mother, and Amanali’s mother.”


    “That is an achievement,” Erishkira, mused, before turning to him. “And it is certainly an opportunity she should consider. Ashinna is a goddess of many faces, and many places. If she can secure Her acknowledgement, it would be an opportunity among opportunities.”


    “…”


    “There is no formal requirement that she join the temple,” Quaruna added, waving for Mei Miao to bring her a drink as well, which the younger woman did with slightly nervous alacrity. “Well, it is something to be discussed later. First, there is the matter of finding out what this bunch from Caeracht want.”


    “No doubt to tell us how gloriously ‘The War’ has gone,” Nisa remarked sourly. “And to suggest that we should contribute more to it.”


    “It is a truth, found to be self-evident in every instance, that those in possession of a war of ideologies, in a far-off land, are always short of money and soldiers to prosecute it,” Quaruna remarked, accepting the cup from Mei Miao.


    “Indeed,” Erishkira agreed, shaking her head.


    “Something to eat?” the remaining female Ur servant asked, proffering him a selection of fruit-filled bread that was part of the breakfast repast that had been brought earlier, and which he had not actually had any of.


    Accepting one, he took a small bite and then a larger one, because it was… also good spirit food. Not anywhere on the same level as that served by Meuanna, but still significantly higher quality than what had been on offer at the auction.


    Before the Ur servant could step back, Quaruna claimed the entire platter and put it on the couch beside her, then took a small bite to go with the wine.


    “Didn’t your uncle want you to go off to join them?” Nisa asked Garesh, while that was happening.


    “He did,” Garesh replied with a grimace. “But father refused. In the end Arrok got sent instead—”


    “Arrok is Garesh’s older cousin,” Quaruna informed him. “They don’t really get on. His aforementioned uncle is influential within the faction that wants closer relations with Katum and Caeracht, opposing the line my father is currently taking.”


    “I see,” he replied, nodding slightly, grateful for the explanation.


    “—Uncle Mazaresh raised a complement of soldiers for him to lead,” Garesh added. “About two hundred, all told, from our family territory out towards Ulmanar.”


    Nisa made a face and shook her head.


    “Causing problems for quite a few others in the process,” Quaruna added drily.


    “Indeed,” Garesh agreed, after taking a gulp of his own cup of wine. “It has been a pain in the ass. We really need those auxiliary forces to secure the Badlands border. What with the Grass Scorpions and the Flesh Tearers and the Devil Dancers all getting more active of late.”


    “—Roving warbands, raiders and bandit powers,” Quaruna remarked. “The Grass Scorpions I believe you already know something of, by reputation, but somehow they aspire to be the least vexatious of the three.”


    On that point, he could only nod slightly in agreement. Erishkira’s rundown of the major problems this land faced, of which experts of their age and realm should at least be passingly familiar with, had included all three of those groups. She had been… well, not exactly vague, about those latter two, but the rundown of them had focused mostly on their role as unreasonable agents of chaos and destruction that left basically no first-hand survivors, and giving them a summary of some notable atrocities they had committed in the last few centuries that they might be expected to know and have an opinion on.


    “Not much of a choice there, to be fair,” Nisa remarked ruefully. “At least as far as those deployed are concerned. Flesh Tearers or Blood Spiders. Devil Dancers or Blood Moon. Grass Scorpions or Deathless Veil.”


    “Ironic, that the latter would be much less of a problem if the major powers of these lands didn’t keep sending their most elite forces to try and smoke out problems the likes of Grimvak keep re-antagonizing,” Erishkira murmured, coming over and sitting down opposite them, on the couch Dongmei was occupying.


    “A reality not lost on my father,” Quaruna muttered, taking another bite of her piece of bread, then taking another piece and proffering it to him.


    Faced with the prospect of her trying to feed it to him, he took it with a smile of thanks, before she could, earning him a sideways look from Dongmei.


    “The unfortunate reality of having a few decades of relative ‘peace’ and ‘prosperity’,” Erishkira added, claiming some of the fruit-filled bread as well, simply by waving her hand slightly and pulling a piece over to her. “It dulls the senses of the prey, such that they forget what the predators look like.”


    -Which is a very interesting way to phrase it, as far as observations go, he couldn’t help but think, as he took a mouthful of the second helping of the fruit bread.


    “When you put it like that, Lady Erishkira…” Garesh grimaced.


    “Am I wrong?” Erishkira asked, raising an eyebrow.


    “No,” Garesh conceded, his expression turning more frustrated. “You are not, my Lady.”


    “What are the nature of the other two bands?” he asked Quaruna, curious what her view on them, as someone at the heart of Uldara, was.


    “Honestly, almost nobody knows,” she replied, slightly to his surprise.


    “Not even your grandmother?” he asked, surprised at that.


    “Mmmm, I am sure she does,” Quaruna replied drily. “But the one time I asked, she just told me it was not a problem of my era, and that a certain degree of innocence should be cherished.”


    “…”


    “I see,” he mused, smiling slightly, a little amused at how familiar that sort of rebuttal sounded. Some things were apparently universal, it seemed, when it came to secret keeping.


    “For the rest of us, who are not so privileged, there are rumours of course,” Quaruna added ruefully. “But invariably those who survive encounters with those two bands—and there are very few of those—can, assuming they are still sane, say only that they are savage barbarians, with no regard to anything proper. No crime is too heinous. No act too profane. Some believe they are the last legacy of the Great Defilement upon these lands. Others that they are remnants who escaped the ancient prison-mine that lay beneath the Darkveils. Or savage fey, unable to return to their Low Kingdom of myth… actually—”


    “Given their mysterious origins, what is your view on whence the Flesh Tearers and the Dancing Devils come from, Lady Erishkira?” Quaruna asked Erishkira.


    “…”


    “What are their origins?” Erishkira paused, mid act of taking another mouthful of her bread, and frowned.


    “Mmmm,” Quaruna nodded. “Everyone knows of their barbaric reputation, but…”


    “They are lost children, traumatized and enraged by the hand that the era of Aertha Majoris dealt them,” Erishkira replied, sounding a bit sad. “Even moreso than your folk, it must be said. You all hate and despise ‘the Humankind’, who rose to rule these lands with commanding crowns of oppressive magic and ensnaring, evocative faith, but if I were to say who was more wronged, it is undeniably those who stand behind bands such as those. Part of why Grimvak focuses so much on the darkness beneath Krista Tonnitrue is because she knows full well, in her heart, that risking touching the bottom line of those old souls will bring her no benefits and only problems. It is also why your own grandmother has no real interest in engaging with them.”


    “Hard to think of them as ‘children’, given the terrible violence they perpetuate,” Nisa muttered.


    “What… is their bottom line?” Garesh asked, leaning forward.


    “The continued existence of anyone who is not them,” Erishkira replied with a mirthless smile. “To them, your purpose at best is simply to be fuel for their fury. Wood for them to cut. Meat to consume. Eventually, there will come a time when a confrontation will be inevitable, but it will not be decided by any force of arms. Killing them is a cursed endeavour, and each paltry death you inflict on them is but a pyrrhic score-mark in the measuring stick of the depth of their grudge against basically… everything, even each other.”


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    “That sounds utterly charming,” Qing Dongmei muttered under her breath as she got to her feet.


    “In fact, it is rather why your grandmother, or Grimvak, or Starkadr, or Old Katum Chain Cleaver, are content to leave them alone,” Erishkira continued, as Qing Dongmei went over the table at the side and poured herself a cup of what turned out to be red tea from a red ceramic teapot. “The Flesh Tearers and the Devil Dancers hate each other just as much as they hate your folk, and neither will move on a great power, because it might give the other some advantage, so they are content to obliterate outlying villages and lesser tribes as they cross their path, leaving only ashes and little else, not even bloodied bones where they tread. Also, even they cannot deal with the Grass Scorpions, and the Scorpions care for neither. It is quite the farce, really.”


    “But at least the Grass Scorpions can be reasoned with,” Quaruna observed pensively.


    “Yes, and they are well aware of that,” Erishkira added, her smile turning from cold to amused.


    “The problem they have is that their numbers are, and always have been, small. Unlike the others, they have never recruited or gained any sort of auxiliary force or extra manpower.”


    “Really?” Nisa asked, sounding surprised.


    “Uh-huh,” Erishkira nodded. “One or two get sealed, every now and then, but it never ends well for those who gain such ‘victories’. The last such was when Vasgarmatha, the former Shamaness of the Golden Tiger tribe, managed to seal five of them, and all it brought her was death, and the collapse of their influence, in the end.”


    “I can’t say I am familiar with her—or them?” Quaruna frowned.


    “I would be surprised if you did know them, that was about twelve hundred years ago, give or take,” Erishkira replied, rolling her eyes. “The point is: the Grass Scorpions’ strength is that they are hard to pin down. The other two are just hard to assail. Nobody, as far as I am aware, knows the actual ‘home territory’ of the Devil Dancers, and the Flesh Tearers always retreat to the Red Flats, beyond Katum, and any who chase them into there, again…”


    “—vanish without trace and, eventually, the Flesh Tearers crop up somewhere else, to horrifically murder yet another settlement,” Garesh muttered.


    “Indeed,” Erishkira nodded.


    “What about the Deathless Veil?” Quaruna asked, leaning forward a little.


    “Oh, their stronghold is known about,” Erishkira chuckled. “But it’s an old D’vari hold—Nazushtorad-Onol, literally ‘Blood Body Mountain’—dug deep into the Dark Veils.”


    “Ah.” Garesh grimaced.


    “That’s an… interesting name,” Qing Dongmei remarked drily.


    “So called because the D’vari, who built it, originally slew an elder dragon that attempted to invade their halls, in the era before the great collapse. Later, they abandoned the halls, for what reason I cannot say, and it was taken over by a group of mages from the Red Tower, affiliated with the Belthorne family, during… I believe, the reign of Emperor Kaelis, so that was about six thousand years before the collapse. They turned it into a prison and a complex for magical experimentation, adjacent to Undergrove. They abandoned it when the Everkind Emperor came to power but left their prison to run amok. The leadership of the Deathless Veil are several ‘Deathwatch’ that they had tried to bind, after the style of the Corpse Masters of Akalaraltis, for their magical experiments into creating True Immortal Vessels.”


    “As in, Immortals that actually cannot die?” Qing Dongmei asked, raising an eyebrow as she walked back over to join them, with two cups of tea.


    To his surprise, she didn’t sit back down next to Erishkira but instead came to his couch and sat down on his other side with an innocent smile.


    “Yes. I believe their goal was to create ‘False Chosen’ vessels into which to summon outworlder spirits. Emperor Kaelis wanted an elite force that could rival the Twelve Immortals of the Eternal City, or the Chosen of Slaughter from Mount Wang,” Erishkira elaborated, as he found himself presented with the other cup of tea to drink.


    Putting his wine aside, he accepted the cup and took a sip, finding it actually cut through the sweetness of the bread and the wine very pleasantly. Beside him, he was aware of Quaruna trying her best not to laugh.


    “In the end, their endeavours failed,” Erishkira added, giving Qing Dongmei and Quaruna a rather amused look. “But nobody ever managed to reclaim the peak, those Deathless, among them several skilled in ancient Chthonic Magic from the Heroic Age, made its depths their new base, and it has remained in their power ever since. The necromantic overburden of that land is such that you would need to battle for weeks in the mountain forests and valleys against never-ending corpse tides, then assail entrenched slaughter wards and insanity vales, that have steeped in their nature for tens of thousands of years, while under constant siege from said aerial undead and far-cast Chthonic magics to even get within sight of their gates.


    “It would be an endeavour as great as any of the grand campaigns Grimvak and her allies persistently pitch, but for even less appreciable gain—unless you have access to a means to purify death magic.”


    The tone of her voice as she spoke left little doubt in his mind that that was not at all a common thing. Certainly, back home, purifying death qi, which he had to assume was broadly the same phenomenon given how she described matters, was a deeply resource-intensive endeavour, especially if you let it get any sort of roots into a natural spirit vein, or linger long enough warp the ambient feng shui of a place.


    “Fortunately, their ability to project power outside of their territory is markedly less, so the roving bands under their flag that periodically show up in our territories are mostly raiding for rare resources they cannot get in the mountains. In any case, they are almost certainly the weakest of those four rogue powers, which is saying something,” Erishkira added drily.


    “They are the weakest?” Garesh asked sceptically, sounding understandably puzzled.


    “Oh yes,” Erishkira nodded. “They are not as mobile as the Grass Scorpions, nor as bloody-minded as the Flesh Tearers, nor as unceasingly vengeful and elusive as the Devil Dancers. Aspects of All, but the Extremity of None, is how you might best describe it. They are more akin to the tribal powers around Krista Tonnitrue, in that regard. Dangerous in their home territories, a selective nightmare if you encounter them elsewhere, but ultimately limited by their inability to project power.”


    “That was a most enlightening lesson concerning their origins, Lady Erishkira,” Nisa murmured, proffering her cup to Erishkira in thanks, as did Quaruna.


    Nodding, he followed their example, as did Qing Dongmei and Garesh.


    “Yes, most insightful,” Garesh agreed.


    “Well, they are the plague that ruined the lands my family once called home,” Erishkira replied with a wistful sigh. “We once lived beside the banks of the Veil Stream, before the Belthorne and Meltras Lords, cursed be their names, forced us to flee, or risk enslavement or worse.”


    “—‘I think you could be a little harsher on them than ‘cursed be thy name’, Little Sister.”


    They all turned to find Lissaea standing at the entrance to the balcony, dressed in an elegant gown and veil, a floral wreath of honeysuckle crowning her head. The two female guards standing there flinched slightly, having apparently not noticed her arrival until that moment.


    “Auntie Lissaea,” Quaruna stood, with a smile and proffered her a polite bow.


    The other Ur nobles all hurriedly stood and bowed respectfully to her, as did he and Qing Dongmei, while the bodyguards and Ur servants actually went down on their knees. The cultivators also quickly dropped to their knees, those who had been in captivity a while, like Mei Miao, not looking up, he noted.


    “—True, I could recite their names, and curse them, each in turn, to forever experience the forlorn and miserable pain that Winter’s first frosts etched upon the Soul of the World,” Erishkira replied drily, getting to her feet and politely curtsying to Lissaea.


    “No need to stand on formality,” Lissaea airily waved her hand, after sweeping her gaze around the room.


    Quaruna just nodded and plopped herself back down rather casually on the couch. Nisa and Garesh were not so informal, he noted, but did also sit back down, waving unobtrusively for the servants and cultivators to also rise as they did so.


    “I could perform every ritual they ever claimed our peoples did, and many they have never conceived of, even at their most febrile and judgemental, to stain their names and ruin their lineages,” Erishkira continued, rolling her eyes as she retook her seat, and Lissaea sat down on the opposite end of her couch. “But that would require me to spend time, thought, and actual effort on them—and I know they would love nothing more than to think that even now, tens of thousands of years hence, we still think of them. I leave hating their very memories to the Devil Dancers, or the Flesh Tearers, or any number of other wretched, miserable prisoners of that bygone era. Forget their crimes, we should not, but give them the privilege of dwelling in our hearts? I will not surrender my hard-won years of peace, such as my own parents and grandparents never knew, to the twisted allure of hating ghosts so performatively.”


    “That, I cannot deny—” Lissaea chuckled. “I wonder what Grimvak would think of being called a ‘miserable prisoner of a bygone era’.”


    “Probably call me a coward who betrayed my ancestor, and then try to capture me so she can publicly humiliate me for daring to move on with my life,” Erishkira replied, sitting back with a rather depressed sigh.


    “That would be very on brand for her,” Lissaea agreed, waving a hand and claiming one of the stuffed breads from the plate beside Quaruna. “Which is also why I will be sitting in on this little reception.


    “It would be a little much for your grandmother to appear just for some flunkies, but Grimvak’s lieutenants and mouthpieces have a way of proffering surprises nobody else finds amusing, if they think they can get away with it—so it will do them no harm to remember whose house they are really in.”


    Beside him, Dongmei shot him a look that clearly said ‘The more I hear about this group, the less I like the sound of them’, to which he could only return a wan smile of agreement.


    “Thank you for your support,” Quaruna murmured.


    “—Also, this bunch who have just shown up have some troublesome children. It seems they want to show off just how much can be gained for ambitious youths, if they are willing to stand on Grimvak’s side,” Lissaea added. “Not to mention, they seem quite informed about our ‘crazy mages’.”


    “Ah,” Quaruna frowned, her gaze flitting over Qingcheng, Shirong and the others for a moment, before returning to Lissaea. “I didn’t intend to take them… but?”


    “That would be for the best.” Lissaea nodded. “However, take her”—she nodded to Qingcheng, slightly to his surprise—“but let the others remain here.”


    “Do you know which envoy it is, Lady Lissaea?” Garesh asked, respectfully.


    “Mmmm, it’s Sigurdrifa,” Lissaea replied, drily. “Expect a lot of charismatic and performative nonsense.”


    <hr>


    <h3 style="text-align: center">~ Lin Ling — New Day, not our problem! ~


    <hr>


    ‘You want to make them a little more oval…’


    ‘Slightly heavier, too. If they lack mass, they might break up in flight’


    ‘You could make some that do that as well…’


    ‘That is true; those make for very effective ways of killing weak people’


    “…”


    Lin Ling stared at the ball of clay she was currently infusing with Yang Qi, and wondered if there was some way to throw it at the various ‘memories’ trying to give her advice and suggestions.


    Currently, she was standing waist-deep in water at the edge of a clay pit beside a large pile of freshly excavated clay, making—that was to say, shaping and then baking with Yang Qi—apricot-sized lumps of clay to be used as sling bullets. The pit had been discovered not far from the boundary wall of the estate when Uarz took the smaller boat and some crew back to see about salvaging the mast. The suggestion that she make bullets had, in fact, come from a roundabout discussion with Lashaan about accessible and relatively easy to use weaponry. The blood memories, as it turned out, had also been quietly processing the problem of how she could fight better, and with the clay-pit revelation, had come back with notes, opinions, and a few ‘views’ that combined with Lashaan and then Naakos’s suggestion, found her where she now was.


    Helping her in this endeavour were Wei Chu, Eruuna, Ao Meicheng and Bai Ruli. The latter two were still rather skittish around her—understandable, she supposed, given their introductory experience. The four of them were there to excavate the clay, mostly. She could have done it herself—she still had qi to burn, and far too much of it at that—but, as Juni had reasonably pointed out, getting the newer group involved in things was also important, and it turned out that beyond Eruuna, Wei Chu and Bai Ruli both actually had some attainments in using slings as weapons. Neither was particularly ‘proud’ of that, it had to be said, not viewing it as an especially noble, martial thing, despite being part of the martial curriculum of their respective sects.


    Sighing, she considered the clay in her hand, which was too spherical, and then pulled all her Yang Qi back out of it. The clay baked, cracked and crumbled into dust between her fingers.


    Putting her hand on the pile beside her, she focused her qi and intent on it and… drew clay into her hand. The pile rippled, her qi drawing the semi-solid dirt to her, compressing it and twisting it as it did so. Physical compression of the material to make it denser meant that they were using clay up at a rather impressive rate. As the oval formed, she fed it a bit of her blood, and then started to weave a lattice of Yang Qi through it as well. It took about a minute, and ate several cubic feet of the clay pile in the process. The resulting slingshot was about ten kilograms in weight, and so dense at its core as to basically have turned into pseudo-metallic, metamorphosed rock.


    It was a lot of effort, but the structure also turned the slingshot into what was, in effect, a mini ‘sherd bomb’. That suggestion had come from the most… complicated of the memories, excepting, perhaps, Alexandros himself, that she was fairly sure had some connection to her encounter with the woman held captive by Caecillius.


    The way she had folded and twisted it, in theory, meant that it would survive its flight, but shatter on impact, scattering its outer layer in a cloud of Yang Qi-infused shards for some distance, while the super-dense core burrowed into its target, further propelled by the destabilization of the Yang Qi. Anything hit by one, or standing next to someone hit by one, would have a terminally bad day. She was pretty sure she could also supercharge them, and including a little bit of her blood into each shot also allowed her to then steep them in a jar of the Yang Blood.


    The clay shot the other three were making were nowhere near as impressive as that, but they were still very serviceable, and after she had suggested the two-step explosion thing, they had been trying to make their own versions of those as well. All three had pretty good attainments in various Yang Qi’s, and good qi manipulation. The main thing they lacked was speed, and stamina in repeating the process.


    “—How can she make them so fast?” Bai Ruli muttered, as she put the finished shot, which was oval enough, in the basket beside her.


    Ruli’s comment earned her a sideways look from Wei Chu, and a rueful shake of the head from Ao Meicheng and Eruuna.


    The answer, truthfully, was that she just didn’t need to care about efficiency. It was the same with digging the clay out. She could expend three or four times what the others did to do it quicker because every bit of qi she expended like that helped with the Hydra-Neonate qi issue. Even if she failed, like with the last one, messing up the internal structure, it was still qi spent.


    “—Rather than that, I want to know what in the Nameless Fates happened at dawn…” Ao Meicheng added to Ruli in Imperial Common.


    -Something that had nothing to do with us, for once, she reflected to herself.


    Naakai, Chunhua, Kai Manshu and Okal had been on watch at the time it occurred, and most of the rest of the boat had been asleep, as the few hours before dawn were pretty much the coolest and least horrid, and the decision had been taken to just let people sleep, ahead of a potentially full day of rowing.


    Lashaan and Naakai had clearly recognised something in what occurred, because the latter had been profoundly unnerved by it. Lashaan had been more outwardly prosaic, but also seemed quietly shocked, and it had woken up all of the other female cultivators and Ur. All of them seemed to have had some faint, or dreamlike resonance with the wave of intent as it passed over them, but no one had actually ‘gained’ anything from it, near as she could tell.


    According to the blood memories, that was because almost all of them didn’t match the ‘criteria’, and in fact, quite a few of the more recent, stupid ones, had had quite a bit to say about the possible ‘source’, and had not been shy about their views on it, either. However, the view of the much older memories, that she had a far more constructive rapport with, was that the whole ‘event’, while a little surprising, had nothing to do with them, and was harmless. Indeed, for her, all she felt in that moment was a brief sense of ‘meeting’ and arousal within the yang energies in her body, but it had vanished as fast as it arrived, and seemingly left nothing beyond the memory of its passing on her.


    As far as what the whole thing ‘represented’, their opinion was that someone—or something—had, at that auspicious hour, interacted in some way with the fundamental nature of ‘Immortality’, and done so under the auspice of an ancient power—in effect, a goddess—one that all the memories, whose opinions she valued, had agreed was obstinate, problematic, whimsical, flighty, profoundly lacking in focus and frequently downright vengeful, with a close association with karma and the mortal condition in such a dizzying array of ways that she found herself wondering how one entity could represent all of them.


    “You ask me, but how is your junior sister meant to know?” Ruli pouted. “Like, you thought it looked like tribulation ephemera?”


    As a reply, it was kind of snarky, and she had to work a little not to sigh. Off to the other side, Chunhua, who could also understand them, was very conspicuously focusing on putting some of her parasol-qi into clay-shot of her own. Eruuna, who didn’t entirely understand Imperial Common, but likely understood far more than either Ruli or Meicheng thought, just shook her head a little.


    “They clearly know something, so why not ask them?” Ruli added, nodding at Eruuna and Chunhua. “They were talking about it quite animatedly earlier.”


    -Ah.


    Now, she did sigh. She had been mostly caught up in her own thoughts and then agreed to come out here once the clay-pit got discovered and the conversation turned to sling stones. She had somewhat assumed someone would have explained things to them, but of course, Shi Tengfei was the only one of that group who spoke fluent Easten, even if the two women with them were starting to learn, and most of the conversation with Naakai and Lashaan, while she was getting bombarded by the blood memories’ own views… had been in the local Ur language anyway. Qing Yao had been up the other end of the boat, with Wei Chu, so in fact, all of the discussion had seemingly gone right over their heads. Ironic, really, given how much effort Juni was taking to otherwise integrate the others.


    “Is there a problem?” she asked politely, making sure to enunciate each word as clearly as possible.


    “Problem?” Meicheng echoed in Easten, before glancing back at Ruli. “Uh… she is asking something about a ‘problem’?”


    “No, I think she is asking if there is a problem,” Ruli replied with a rueful sigh of her own.


    “Um, no, we just wonder,” Ruli added, turning to her and speaking rather haltingly. “What…?” Lacking the words, Ruli settled for just waving at the sky and tried to mime the petals and the dawn thing.


    “It would be so much easier if we just gave them the ability to speak Easten,” Chunhua observed to her, across the clay pile.


    “It would, at that,” she agreed, ruefully.


    -Though the question is how to do it in a way that doesn’t give away that we are cultivators, or involve one of us literally implanting knowledge into them, which would be difficult to…


    Even as she was mulling that over, like a chorus of bored old folks, the blood memories slipped back into frame.


    “There is a symbol, like the ones before, that you could use…” the old turtle memory observed pensively.


    “Imprinted on clay, inscribed with an infusion of your Yang Qi, very historic… like we used of old, to convey simple concepts to those who bowed to us…” a serpentine one hissed softly.


    Others just presented images or memories directly, having long since decided that showing her directly tended to be quicker than trying to explain some things. She tried to ignore the slight sense of judgement that came with some of them.


    -It doesn’t require… preparation? She found herself asking, sceptically, as she considered the idea of a clay tablet.


    “A little,” the turtle conceded. “But it is nothing you cannot manage given what you are already doing. It is like so…”


    More images, of that process this time, blossomed like flowers in her mind. It wasn’t especially different from the process of imprinting information into a jade slip, truth be told, but there were a few quirks and changes to the process, likely to account for the material.


    “There is a way to convey language,” Eruuna remarked. “You can imbue the breath of words into an object, either hide, parchment… or even a tablet of clay or other rock, and then affix it with your perception.”


    “You can do what now?” Wei Chu asked, her expression that of someone who had put a lot of effort into something, to discover that there was an easier way.


    “Is there a reason why we didn’t do it before?” Chunhua asked, sounding a little exasperated.


    “Well, you already speak Lataan, and picked up the local tongue fast,” Eruuna replied drily. “And it takes quite a bit of effort. The more common way, that many travelling merchants use, is to just have an amulet, or similar, that two or more people can touch, that connects the Voice in their Hearts, so to speak. However, I have no idea at all how you make one of those, probably only Naakai or Naakos can.”


    “What is the downside?” she asked, because that sounded awfully like what the blood memories were talking about, though less effective.


    “It can cause a lot of strain on the person learning from the tablet,” Eruuna conceded. “The knowledge of language is more than just words. It is intent, and social customs and all of those things as well. That is likely why Naakai or Lashaan did not suggest it already. Even those who are strong-willed can suffer side-effects, and your advancement doesn’t protect you.”


    “Ah, soul strain,” Wei Chu mused.


    “Is that your term for it?” Eruuna asked.


    “We are discuss—talking about how you can learn Lataan,” she informed Ruli and Meicheng, who were looking between them with uneasy expressions at this point, seemingly wondering what problem they might have caused to lead to such a lengthy conversation and Wei Chu to look so peeved.


    “Oh.” Both of them nodded, relaxing a little.


    “Yes,” Wei Chu replied. “You cannot place inter…uh…? A limit on the tablet, I guess?”


    “If someone particularly skilled in making them does it, you can, but not every group has access to a shaman or logosa. In a village it would be a different matter, there would be a few who for business purposes can make them. Usually, the goal is just to instill a little understanding. Simple conversation, an understanding of a singular thing. Not to impart the entire language and the ability to speak it as if you have learned it all your life.”


    “Understandable,” she mused while her nascent soul continued to parse what the memories were telling her.


    With that extra information from Eruuna, the method the memories were hashing out for her and its benefits made a lot more sense all of a sudden. Particular their use of the State, Isolate and Link symbols in the arrangement that was to be fused into the tablet, before you even inscribed the words. The problem still remained, though, that it was clearly a method intended for those with strong souls and a great capacity for acquiring knowledge quickly. She could also see a problem, in that her syntax for Easten, if she imbued it this way, would instantly be outed if anyone looked, as being from back home.


    They could speak it and be understood by the Ur, and folks like Tengfei would not notice, but that was mostly because they were fudging quite a few things and had been adapting conversationally. If she set out her comprehensions of the language, the actual grammar and vocabulary in this way, and someone familiar with the study of the language on a structural level—like Tengfei, for example—looked at it, they would know at a glance that this was the standard Easten from Blue Water Province. Her Nascent Soul quietly ran her fingers through her hair in theatrical annoyance at this realisation.


    “What is a logosa?” Wei Chu asked.


    “The person who keeps the records of a tribe,” Eruuna replied.


    “Like a historian,” she added, absently. “A scholar who specialised in words and lineage. Usually, they keep records of a village or community, either through written text, or more commonly through spoken word. Passing down tales of ancestors and what not.”


    “Yeah,” Eruuna nodded, agreeing. “For example, Naakai is our group’s Logosa—Lashaan will take over from her eventually, I imagine.”


    “I see,” Wei Chu mused.


    “I guess we have to talk it over with Juni,” she suggested to Chunhua, who nodded in agreement.


    “There may be a way,” she informed Ruli and Meicheng. “But it not simple.”


    “Presumably they don’t have anything like a jade slip,” Ruli remarked to Meicheng, in Imperial Common.


    “…”


    “Anyway, um, simply, what occur earlier… like…” she paused, a bit theatrically, she had to concede, while trying to work out what the simplest way to convey the information to them was. “Breakthrough? Far away, someone… boom, zap…” she mimed lighting and thunder.


    “Ah, tribulation,” Ruli answered, as both nodded, seemingly getting the gist immediately, to her relief, because it was a bit silly.


    “So it was tribulation ephemera,” Meicheng mused, turning to look in that direction. “What sort of realm, I wonder.”


    “What… uh… how much strong?” Ruli asked, after thinking for a moment.


    “The blessing?” Eruuna asked, frowning with thought. “It felt like the power of Ashinna, who is the Great Queen of the Heavenly Order and Rule. Er… she is a supreme ancestor, worshipped in many places and held up at the same level as the honoured five.”


    “Too complicated,” Chunhua remarked drily, as Ruli and Meicheng’s expressions turned perplexed once more.


    “I know…” Eruuna sighed ruefully. “It isn’t exactly easy to explain?”


    Chunhua and Wei Chu both made faces.


    “Same realm… Zhanfeng,” she clarified, after making a show of thinking for a moment, and deliberately butchering the pronunciation of his name for good measure. “Probably.”


    There was more nuance in it than that, the memories had made clear. Kei Zhanfeng was indeed an Immortal, but the memories concept of the ‘fundamentals of immortality’ was quite a bit more profound than ‘simply’ an Immortal Realm cultivator. They were pretty sure it was ephemera relating to someone becoming truly immortal, which in their eyes, meant they literally could not die. Ever. At least unless they suffered an injury so great as to overcome the very conceptual foundation that that true immortality was founded in.


    “Senior Kei?” Ruli asked, looking understandably sceptical.


    “Really?” Meicheng echoed.


    “Some breakthrough like this,” she mimed very small. “Some like this,” she pointed up at the sky and spread her arms, miming big and expansive. “Understand?”


    “Ah, so it was a special breakthrough, like with a higher aspect,” Meicheng mused.


    “Like with black lightning?” Ruli nodded. “There was no lightning… or thunder visible, or tribulation clouds, so it had to be over the horizon by some distance.”


    “Thank you, you give… uh, instruction?” Meicheng added hesitantly.


    “Explanation—Thank you for the explanation,” she corrected


    “Thank you… for the explanation,” Ruli murmured. “Ah, so that word is ‘For’? she added, mostly to herself.


    “How about this?” she suggested, after a moment’s further pretence at thinking things over. “While we finish this up, we trade words. You teach us some of your language, and we can try to teach you some Lataan words, that way we both gain benefit.”


    She had to put a lot of her principle and intent into what she spoke, but somewhat to her surprise, they seemed to understand.


    “We teach… each… other?” Ruli asked, pointing between them.


    “Yes,” she nodded. “Better understand, fewer problem, yes?”


    “They want us to teach them Imperial Common, and in return we learn some Easten?” Meicheng said to Ruli, looking pensive now.


    “Well, they will probably pick it up quick enough anyway,” Ruli sighed. “I think they already understand a fair bit, and the more we talk… there is an advantage in them not knowing.”


    -She says, while three of us are fluent, she observed drily, glad her principle and mantra were really helpful with keeping a straight face now. Chunhua and Wei Chu were both doing their best ‘the cultivators are speaking and we totally don’t understand every word they were saying’ faces as well.


    “On the other hand, they seem to want to build bridges, after our uh… rather rocky introduction,” Meicheng pointed out. “And I would not bet against them just being able to learn by force, if you catch my drift.”


    “…”


    Ruli grimaced, and the three of them all continued to just ‘wait patiently’.


    Eruuna, on the side of the conversation now, also had a very interesting expression on her face, to the point where she hoped that her reaction didn’t give anything away. Fortunately, neither Ruli or Meicheng were really looking at her.


    “Should we talk it over with the others?” Ruli asked at last.


    “Probably,” Meicheng mused. “I imagine Tengfei will be in favour; I think he has been getting a bit fed up being the only person who ‘answers’ for the group—”


    “—and Zhangfei won’t,” Ruli sighed. “There is no harm in trading a few simple words and phrases, though, I guess. As you say, they almost certainly know a bit already, just from listening to us talk. Given we managed to pick up a bit of… well, yeah, I guess there is no harm in it, then we can talk to Tengfei and the others about something more detailed?”


    “Yes, we agree,” Meicheng replied, turning back to them. “Um… to uh, start. ‘My name is Ao Meicheng’,” she added, swapping back to Imperial Common and speaking very slowly. “In Easten… ‘My Name Ao Meicheng’.


    Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wei Chu open her mouth, likely to correct the slight grammatical mistake, then shut it again quickly before anyone noticed.


    “My name is Lynn,” she replied, in Imperial Common. “My Name is Lynn,” she added in Easten.


    “Mmmm,” Ruli, listening to that, clearly caught the mistake Meicheng had made before, based on how she blinked as she repeated the Easten back.


    Like that, they spent a few minutes trading basic conversation vocabulary back and forth, while getting back to actually making sling bullets at the same time. By the time Uarz and the others finished tearing the boat shed to pieces getting what they wanted out of it, they had almost five hundred ‘normal’ projectiles, ninety-three made by Ruli, Meicheng and Eruuna, thirty-two parasol-aligned ones and thirty-seven very ‘yang infused’ ones made by her.


    “You seem to have been far more successful than us,” the navigator remarked, eyeing the four baskets of ammunition as the row boat came to a stop near them. “Are some of those… safe?”


    The follow-up comment was for her basket, and Chunhua’s, both of which were surrounded by a faint miasma of yang qi.


    “The mana in them is sealed,” she replied. “That aura around them will fade in an hour or so. So, I take it the mast isn’t suitable?”


    “It is, but the mainsail to go with it is a triangular one,” Teshek elaborated.


    “Indeed, we can probably rig it, but it would cut down a lot on the space in the boat, what with a movable boom and whatnot,” Uarz continued. “It could be set up halfway between, but they have no suitable wood for a head of a trapezoidal mainsail.”


    “A ‘head’?” Wei Chu asked, confused.


    “It’s what you call the boom that goes at the top of some sails,” Chunhua replied, before any of the Ur on the boat could comment. “Which is the bit of wood that goes at the bottom of a triangular sail to keep it taut.”


    “Oh.” Wei Chu nodded her head slightly in thanks for the explanation.


    “So…?” she prompted, not that interested, truthfully, in the specifics of the problem.


    “We will bring what we have along; if nothing else, we can use the canvas for a shelter and the mast and boom that are there to support it,” Uarz replied. “Unstepped it won’t take that much space and we can keep the sail, boom and rigging in the rowboat if it comes to it.”


    -Which is to say we have gained salvage and clutter and it can’t be used in a hurry, she reflected with an inward sigh


    “They had some more oars though,” Ladrak added. “So that was something, even if they are a bit short.”


    “Aye, we can have four more people rowing, so that will help somewhat,” Uarz agreed. “Are you okay to stay here while we move stuff across, or do some of you want to go back first, we can probably fit two in now?”


    “Whichever is more convenient,” she replied with a shrug, as it didn’t really matter too much to her either way. “If you lack space, might as well just get us all in one go.”


    “Fair enough,” Uarz nodded. “We will move what is in the boat here and come back once we have space.


    “The most useful thing would be to acquire a second small boat,” Chunhua remarked with a chuckle as they watched those in the rowboat manoeuvre away, back towards their main vessel.


    “Could try making one out of reeds?” she joked. “Certainly we could make a serviceable floating platform to drag, if we claimed some roof timbers.”


    “It isn’t quite that easy,” Eruuna remarked with a cough.


    “I know,” she replied with a sigh.


    “Making sling bullets is probably enough arts and crafts,” Chunhua agreed. “Actually, I was wondering: could we fuse some arrow heads as well?”


    “…”


    She considered the clay, pondering that, then put her hand into the much-diminished pile and visualized a simple leaf-shaped arrow head. Directing her qi, she started to draw clay to her hand, folding and weaving her intent-infused yang qi. The process took rather longer than a slingshot, but did complete successfully, however, turning the prototype over in her palm, she knew immediately it wouldn’t really work.


    “I think it will be too heavy,” she informed them, passing it to Chunhua.


    “Oomph,” Chunhua took it and grimaced, nodding. “That would be a headache to shoot, you are right. What do you think, Eruuna?”


    Taking the arrowhead, Eruuna grimaced as well.


    “That is far too dense; it will fly really weirdly,” she agreed, considering it pensively. “What if we didn’t compress it?”


    “Just fuse the clay into the arrowhead and aim to make it about the same weight as a metal one?” Chunhua mused.


    “—and treat the qi more like a coating of poison?” she suggested.


    “Yeah,” Chunhua nodded. “I mean, we can already make arrows that explode, but this would potentially be safer for everyone else, compared to dunking them in a pot of blood, anyways?”


    Nodding, she quickly made another, doing the bare minimum to it in terms of compressing excess clay into it.


    “Might not do much against heavy beast-hide armour,” Eruuna observed. “Unless you can make them more like a long spike?”


    “…”


    Trying not to sigh audibly, she made another, twisting it into a longer, more elongated point. The problem with it, however, wasn’t weight, but how to haft it. With the leaf arrows you could bind them, but she didn’t have any arrow-shafts on hand to determine the best size of hole, that would allow them to just be slotted onto the spare shafts they already had.


    “I don’t suppose you know the thickness of the arrow shafts?” she asked Chunhua, turning the spike over in her hands.


    “Hmmmm…” Chunhua considered what she had made, then put her own hand to the clay pile and cast an arrow head of her own. “Should be about this?” she suggested, holding up her own construction so they could get a look at it. “That might be a bit small though.”


    “I guess we just have to get them to shoot an arrow over,” she sighed.


    Uarz and the others were already almost back at the main boat, so rather than confuse matters, she instead located Juni, who was standing at the prow, waiting for them, and sent out a thread of soul sense to her.


    “Can you send us over a bale of arrows that don’t have heads?” she asked. “We figured we could try making some arrowheads as well.”


    “I’ll get them to bring you a bundle and a bow to test,” Juni replied.


    “Thanks,” she murmured.


    “How are the bullets coming on?” Juni asked, waving to one of the Ur rowers still on the boat and point at something—the arrows, presumably.


    “We have enough to outfit a small battalion of slingers,” she replied drily. “About six-fifty, give or take some normal ones. They don’t take up too much space though, so we could make more. The arrowheads can’t be very dense, so the others can make them pretty quickly I imagine.”


    “More is better, I guess,” Juni replied, after a short pause. “Just do what you can.”


    “Well, I got mana to burn,” she retorted.


    “True,” Juni agreed. “I’m sending you two bundles of arrows and a bow.”


    “Okay,” she replied, giving Juni a final wave of thanks, which she returned, and then breaking off the contact.


    “We got arrows and a bow coming, and I guess we should make a few more slingshots as well,” she informed the others.


    “I’ll make some more of the infused ones, while you make the arrows?”


    “That works,” Chunhua replied, while the others all nodded.