Memories of the Fall

The matters that followed the decision that Song Jia should marry Shu Bao as his concubine are, unfortunately, historically murky. We only know for certain what the end result was, and some of the twists in that, but the nuance is likely known only to a few elders, Song Jia, Shu Bao and a few others at this point. It does not help that it is only from these opposite sources that the narratives are presented, so both are included here that posterity may make up its own mind. About the only thing they do agree on is that days before the wedding, Song Jia returned to the sect, alleging that Shu Bao had mistreated her.

Song Jia alleged that Shu Bao and his associates had, while drunk, gotten into a gambling competition with several other prominent young masters. Shu Bao was uncharacteristically unlucky, eventually losing enough that a youth from the Din clan – who also lusted after Song Jia – forced him into a position where he either had to kowtow towards him and call him grandfather or allow him to spend a night with Song Jia. Song Jia alleged that rather than lose face and kowtow, Shu Bao had handed her over and the young master from the Din clan had seized her Good Fortune Core, ruined her purity, used a fate locking art on her and given her back to Shu Bao to do with as he wished, as a ‘gift’ for his upcoming wedding.

Shu Bao roundly refuted her account. Instead, he claimed that Song Jia had grown to despise him, despite all the privilege heaped upon her. That she had embarrassed him by dallying with other disciples at a gathering of their peers and that when confronted, she had grown hysterical and injured her own foundation. Several of his associates also testified that her tale was nothing but a fanciful slander concocted of various slanderous tales based on other politically motivated rumours to try to cover her shame.

The Shu Pavilion’s Elder Hall convened; however, most of those records are, unfortunately, sealed. Various rumours persist, but what is known is that in the end, faced with contradictory reports, the majority of the Elders found Shu Bao’s account more compelling.

Their judgement noted that no corroborating accounts of Song Jia’s allegations could be obtained, nor was there any evidence she was under any art. Song Jia had, however, sought repeatedly to extricate herself from Shu Bao, who while not always attentive, had been committed to the agreement and had acted with appropriate decorum. The final twist, however, came from Shu Bao’s mother, who alleged that the Shu Pavilion had not actually tested her purity before the engagement. Song Jia was examined in a degrading fashion before the Elder Hall and when this was revealed to be true, Shu Bao denounced her publically for breaking the contract between them.

The Shu clan’s position was declared openly after that. Song Jia was beaten, all the benefits she had attained from the Shu clan were stripped from her and finally she was thrown out of the Pavilion on the orders of the Elder Hall, with no prospects, no worth and no cultivation.

Later that month, Shu Bao married Kong Meixiao in a grand ceremony and both left Eastern Azure immediately on their honeymoon back to the Shu Heavenly clan.

Excerpt from: ‘The Politics of the Heavenly Hundred. Volume 16 – Eastern Azure’

~ By Kung Quan

~ Juni – Dawn on the River ~

Off to her right, a large water bird launched itself out of the reeds, something twisting in its beak. Focusing her gaze on it, she saw the flash of red and black before it swallowed the unfortunate snake down. Beyond it, the pale haze of lights from Udrasa and Ulquan had faded away to nothing in the first light of dawn, visible now only as a memory in her mind’s eye.

-How… uneventful, Juni thought with a sigh, sweeping her gaze back across the swaying reed beds, tinted pink in the first light of the day.

“You look contemplative,” Ling mused, coming to lean on the rail beside her.

“I was just thinking how remarkably uneventful the night was,” she replied softly.

“If you call nearly running into a mud bank and two narrowly missed collisions with ruined ships uneventful,” Ling chuckled quietly.

“You know what I meant,” she replied, elbowing Ling in the side. “Sure, there were some issues, but they were uneventful ones…”

“I suppose when you put it like that,” Ling agreed.

“It also feels strange that it’s only been a… day since the…” she trailed off, considering the ruin spread around them.

“…”

Ling looked at her sideways and nodded.

“We will need a break soon though,” Ling pointed out. “The crew is shattered and undermanned for rowing a boat this size.”

“I know,” she nodded. “We do have some functional qi-replenishing medicine left, don’t we?”

“I made some more,” Ling sighed. “They would barely qualify as mortal garbage but they are still better than nothing. It turns out Feiwu Shen actually has some talent for alchemy.”

“How did we miss that?” she asked, surprised.

“Because it never came up and we don’t have any pill furnaces!” Ling chuckled. “In any case, I put some in breakfast, stuffed the fish with it, in fact, and it went down pretty well. It’s no substitute for actually taking a break though.”

“True, true,” she nodded.

That was the issue, really. Fatigue. Their crew was small and rowing a vessel as large as they were on, it turned out, was not something you could just sit down and pick up in a few hours.

“Still, even with this slow pace and the currents and the changing channels we are nearly a third of the way to Ulquan, according to Uarz,” Ling added.

“How did he work that out?” she asked.

“Stars… and the lights on the horizon,” Ling shrugged. “Does it surprise you that he is actually quite good with divinations?”

“No, actually,” she conceded.

“It is quite something, isn’t it?” Chunhua said, also coming to lean on the side of the boat and passing her a roasted fish.

Taking it, she took a bite and nodded in agreement. With the dawn she could at last see the true breadth of the damage unleashed… and it was nothing if not grimly spectacular.

Everywhere you looked, on both sides of the river, small settlements and areas of carefully managed riverland were ruined. Where they were now rowing, fields were visible only as silver mirrors, distant boats occasionally drifting in them as their owners presumably tried to recover what few crops they could before the higher water thoroughly destroyed them.

Shading her eyes, she could just make out the remains of a village about half a mile away, its buildings levelled, the walls barely visible and only a few taller structures above the water. One had a smoky bonfire burning that had proved to be a useful guidance marker. Those were a strategy to keep the bugs away, according to Lashaan.

“At least this explains why nobody came to Ulmaz,” Chunhua observed after a few moments of silent eating.

It did. Clearly, the focus of the local inhabitants, those still alive she supposed, was on salvaging their immediate livelihoods. Not worrying about forts downriver. The other reason, prominently visible in the rising sun, was that the paths of the main channels through the riverlands had completely shifted.

“…”

They watched in silence as the ruined fields fell behind them. The boats amongst them observed their passage in turn, many of the occupants openly armed with bows and spears. No doubt, she supposed, there were plenty of folk concerned with looters as much as qi beasts.

“Hey!”

“Over here!”

“STOP!”

“Help!”

“…”

The various shouts caught her attention from the riverward side of the boat, making all three of them turn.

“To port!” one of watching Ur’Vash on the prow of the boat called out a moment later, pointing over to the left.

Walking across to that side of the vessel, all three of them gazed out at the shimmering pink-tinted water, reflecting the sun, to find a half-capsized vessel a bit smaller than theirs, lodged firmly into what looked like a newly emergent mud bank about 200 metres away.

Several bedraggled Ur’Vash were waving the tattered remnants of a sail back and forth to attract attention while standing on the highest part of the vessel.

“It’s considered bad form to not rescue people,” Naakai, who was leaning on the rail nearby, muttered to them.

Off to the side, she saw Uarz looking at them and buried a sigh.

-It seems that some suspicions really do die hard…

“You are the captain, Master Omurz, do as you need to…” she called over brightly to the Ur’Vash who was shading his eyes and looking at the distant wreck. “We cannot leave these poor souls out there at the mercy of the crabs after all!”

That got a few laughs from the crew and Omurz actually preened slightly at being called ‘Master Omurz’, which she found amusing.

That was the key to this lot really; just doing what was mostly expected. If she pushed it, she supposed they would just go on past, but if it was not a ‘typical’ action, it would stick in the mind and they had already trodden their share of ‘memorable actions’ with this lot, since encountering them.

“Left, slow!” the crewman, Urluz, whose job it was to keep the rowers in time yelled.

“Clear for sunken obstacles for 20 metres!” the watcher up front called.

“Somehow, I feel like it would be better for us to just ignore these kind of things…” Chunhua muttered.

“I can’t blame you,” she agreed, focusing on ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ and getting vague twinges both towards the inauspicious and the auspicious… which was really not that helpful at all.

-Too much divination, she reflected glumly.

“What do you think?” Ling asked her.

“That I’ve been using it too much.” she grumbled, rubbing her temples. “The wreck is inauspicious, but something about it is auspicious. Does that mean it’s dangerous, or that it’s wrecked and that’s unlucky and someone survived and that’s good?”

“Fair,” Ling mused.

“Probably we should be on our guard anyway though,” she said, grimacing.

“Anchor away!”

There was a *splash* from the front of the boat, followed by a second smaller one as the watchers tossed both anchors down to stop them drifting too far.

“What do we do?” Uarz had come over as well.

“What you usually do,” she said with her best smile.

“…”

Uarz looked at her, the frown never really moving beyond his eyes to his face, before nodding.

“Send the boat over. Teff, Ladrak, you row. We will have arrows on you. If it looks dangerous, come back.”

The pair singled out nodded wearily and put their oars aside, scrambling up to the deck. The small boat, rowed for the moment by Naakos, was coming alongside. The Ur’Inan hopped up, trading with the pair and they all watched in relative silence as the small boat began its passage over.

“What do we do if they want to seize this vessel?” Qing Yao, who had also come to the rail, murmured.

Giving a half laugh, she glanced at Ling and then Uarz and drew a finger across her throat.

That thought had occurred to her as well, but she had to admit she was more confident in their available means than she had been for a good while at this point.

“Fair enough…” Qing Yao chuckled, barely hesitating as she cut off the reflexive ‘Senior Juni’.

Uarz rolled his eyes and walked back down the boat to confer with Omurz, Kreva and Avarz who were at the back end now, armed with bows and scanning the surrounding reed beds without even being prompted.

“How are the others?” she asked Qing Yao, looking over at where Kai Manshu, Feiwu Shen and Wei Chu were sitting on some crates, finishing tidying the remains of the hastily prepared breakfast.

“Contemplating our gains,” Qing Yao replied with an eye roll. “Also, keeping a low profile as you suggested.”

“Speaking of which”—she passed her jade scrip over to Qing Yao—“this will help.”

While she had been recovering from her various divinations during the night, she had imprinted much of her knowledge of the Ur’Vash language and more stuff about Easten, including older Easten and the various other alphabets, onto it for the others to use.

Qing Yao scanned it and raised her eyebrows.

“Should have done it before,” she murmured by way of apology, “but circumstances have been what they are.”

“This will help… a lot,” Qing Yao agreed with a smile. “How… did you get such a good grasp on it?”

Her question was somewhat vague, mostly in case others were prying; however, beyond Uarz, the woman, Kreva and the older guard, Avarz, nobody else among the crew was much stronger than Feiwu Shen really and none of them had any serious talent with ‘Perception’ as they called ‘Soul Sense’ here. Still, it was good that Qing Yao was being wary.

“Travelling widely and not killing everyone I meet,” she replied, only half joking.

“That said, they are… starting to think about rescues as well…” Qing Yao murmured, barely hiding a grimace as they both watched the progress of the smaller vessel.

“I am aware,” she said at last, sighing softly. “However, I think you all saw the same things I did…”

“We did…” Qing Yao sighed as well. “However, their sense of camaraderie… especially—”

Qing didn’t say ‘Feiwu Shen’, thankfully, she was too savvy for that, but the implication was fairly clear, even as she subtly cut off the other woman.

“I know,” she replied. “However, there is a time and a place… and circumstances to consider.”

“The difficulty is that my own side will not necessarily care for them either…” Qing Yao murmured, looking a bit vexed.

“…”

-Which is why they are pinning their hopes on us, quietly, she thought with a sigh, aware that Feiwu Shen in particular thought them most likely related to the Huang clan in some way, given both Lin Ling and Teng Chunhua’s strengths focused on Yang energy and Luan.

“It seems there is some complication…” Naakos had also come over to the rail and was watching the gesticulation from the distant boat.

“When isn’t there?” she sighed, stopping leaning on the rail.

‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ had also just nudged her in a way that put her rather markedly in mind of someone telling her there was something right behind her and that under no circumstances was she to turn around suddenly.

Walking to the stern of the vessel, she stepped up onto the navigation deck to stand beside Uarz and Omurz, who were also watching the distant exchange with shaded eyes.

“There seems to be a problem?” she mused.

“Ah… maybe,” Omurz muttered.

As they watched, two of the group on the wreck had jumped onto their boat which was now coming back again, Teff and Ladrak appearing far from happy based off their body language.

“I know I said what I said earlier,” she murmured, watching the boat approach. “However, if they do try to commandeer this boat, I will throw them in the river. I hope you understand that?”

Omurz winced but Uarz just nodded.

They watched in silence as the smaller boat came alongside and the two jumped out with ease, landing on the side deck of the vessel. Up close, she could tell immediately that both were Sixth Advancement. If put in the army that had fought against the cultivators, they would certainly have been considered among the elites.

“I am Izvar, first mate of the Star of Lumvaz,” the first one said, looking around a bit disdainfully, clearly sizing up the strength of the crew.

Avarz and Kreva both crossed their arms, while Uarz also narrowed his eyes.

-Do they know it? she mused.

“I am Quavez,” the second, somewhat paunchy Ur’Vash, dressed in a muddy red robe said. “I am burdened with Important Purpose, of which it is your especial honour to help serve Udrasa in its completion…”

“…”

Across the boat, there was calculated silence. Many of the crew were casting subtle glances at her and Ling, Lynn as she had started to call herself. The Ur’Inan were unobtrusively looking for weapons near at hand. Interestingly, Quavez and Izvar were basically ignoring everyone bar Uarz and Kreva. Given she, Ling and Chunhua were all now concealing their strength to be on par with Qing Yao and Fei Manshu, largely to stop the crew going glassy-eyed if they stopped focusing, none of them were given any real attention.

“What if we refuse?” she asked, coming over to lean on the rail and stare at the pair. “What if our own ‘Important Purpose’ is more worthy than Udrasa’s?”

Quavez looked at her and barely managed to hide a sneer, before turning to look at the rest of the crew again, spreading his arms grandly.

“There is no purpose more important than that of the Masters,” Quavez proclaimed with just a hint of steel in his tone… and also a slight, insidious sense of compulsion, though she easily shook that off given their strength difference.

-So he can do something comparable to us?

“…”

Izvar stared at her and she again felt a faint sense of pressure try to push against her. In terms of strength, she had to guess he was a bit stronger than Kai Manshu or Qing Yao… probably Kreva as well, but nowhere close to her, Ling or Chunhua.

Narrowing her eyes, she controlled her own strength to make it seem somewhat comparable to Kreva’s. Off to one side, she could see Teng Chunhua and Lin Ling both watching with neutral expressions now.

“Kill? No kill?” She caught Lin Ling’s unobtrusive sign from the corner of her eye.

“What is your mission?” Omurz asked somewhat carefully, shooting a sideways glance at Uarz.

“And you are?” Izvar said bluntly.

“The Captain,” Omurz replied, scowling slightly.

“…”

Izvar just snorted, suddenly making her wonder if he knew this crew’s old captain.

“Captain Ragvaz died during the flood,” Uarz added, looking appropriately pained.

“How… regrettable,” Izvar said with a faint smirk. “Maker watch over him.”

“…”

If Uarz registered the amusement in Izvar’s tone, he didn’t rise to it. “As you can see, our vessel is barely water worthy so we are trying to get back to civilisation before it falls to pieces.”

“Our mission is Udrasa’s business, as is our cargo,” Quavez said simply, looking around at all of them. For a second, she fancied his gaze lingered on Wei Chu and Feiwu Shen for some reason, before he continued speaking. “You will do as we ask, I trust? It is the Honour of All to Serve the Masters.”

Again, she felt a faint pressure from his words and shrugged it off. Uarz was also frowning now, as were Kreva and Avarz. However, Omurz and the other crew, most of the Ur’Inan and even, somewhat concerningly, Feiwu Shen and Wei Chu, nodded in agreement, as if that ‘convinced’ them somehow.

“…”

“Bad,” Lin Ling signed.

-You don’t say, she sighed inwardly, not needing to reply to that. Is this what they mean about the ‘consequences of doing good deeds’?

-So, do we just force it… or go with it for now…?

Staring at them, she considered their options. If it was something as simple as escorting a few survivors back to the dock at Ulquan it would be stupid to murder a bunch of people and attract notice over it. However, if it was something like going back to Ulmaz…?

-Or see if Uarz and the others can sort this out?

“If it is just a matter of transporting some cargo…” Uarz replied, frowning.

-Ah, he was resisting both me and Ling. Presumably his talent there is pretty good for an Ur’Vash.

Izvar scowled at Uarz as if also annoyed at that and stepped forward to loom over the smaller Ur’Vash.

“It is your honour to serve Udrasa…” Quavez reiterated.

“If it’s just cargo transport back up the river, or salvage, we can drop you off at the shoreline and you can hire some locals,” Uarz stated somewhat sourly. “However, you are not helping your case by trying mind-tricks with us, mage.”

“…”

Izvar and Quavez both frowned and looked a bit annoyed again, as if this wasn’t quite going to plan.

Kreva and Avarz, who had been loitering nearby, were both holding blades openly now, she noted.

“For that, we want a quarter of whatever remains of your cargo,” Uarz said, scowling.

“Now you—!” Izvar stepped forward but Kreva was faster, smoothly stepping up beside Uarz.

“If you don’t like it, you can just wait for the next vessel,” Avarz added.

“—or you can try swimming to shore,” Kreva grinned, licking the edge of the copper blade she had drawn.

“I think not,” Quavez smirked, his aura rising.

This time, she really did feel the pressure as it washed over her, trying to insinuate its way into her mind. In that instant, ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ tugged faintly at her awareness, implying rather directly that if things continued on much further, events would take a turn for the decidedly inauspicious.

“…”

“We require that you—”

Before he could finish, she countered his pressure directly, exerting the full strength of her presence on both of them for the first time, leaning on the railing of the navigation deck and smiling faintly as the qi in their bodies revolted visibly, the air around the pair rippling faintly in the early morning light.

“That… you…” Quavez trailed off, his mouth slack with shock.

In that moment of confusion, Naakos, who was standing nearby, moved like a snake, arriving behind Quavez and grasping his neck, restraining him with his own mana.

Izvar spun, looking equally horrified, but Ling had also turned her principle on both of them, constricting them like they were caught by some dark serpent. Before either could fall, she also focused her qi properly around them, coordinating with Ling to anchor both in place.

Walking down the boat to the pair, she put a hand to the straining Izvar’s forehead and pushed a thread of her soul sense into him.

{Bright Heart’s Mirror}

The mind delving art from the talisman shifted in her and her principle reflected straight into the unfortunate Ur’Vash’s mind, carrying with it the strength of the Kun Lotus symbol and her mantra as it did so. His mental defences wavered for a heartbeat, resisting, then crumbled like rotten wood.

Images of the last day or so flickered through her mind in reverse according to his recollections…

‘Marooned…’

‘Scrambling to stay afloat…’

‘Boat wrecked…’

‘Shifting channels…’

‘Flood…’

‘Great storm…’

‘Sailing from Udrasa…’

‘Quavez and several others coming aboard.’

‘Captain paid to take Quavez to Ulmaz… two days ago…’

“…”

Looking at that, she understood now why ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ had suggested that it was most auspicious for her immediate good fortune that she cut this off quickly.

“Faugh,” she sighed, taking her hand away.

In the meantime, Lin Ling and Naakos had thoroughly suppressed Quavez while keeping him standing upright, having clearly had the same thought she had – that seeing both of them ‘fall over’ would immediately cause a problem with anyone watching from the wreck.

Thankfully, Izvar’s most recent thoughts, mainly about how his crew could easily seize the vessel and keep it from this understrength crew, also gave her the means to obfuscate her own intervention.

“…”

Uarz and Avarz were staring at her like she was a strange fish that had just jumped onto the deck.

“If we had known this was the Star of Lumvaz we would not have stopped,” Uarz sighed, sounding resigned.

“They are somewhat infamous, I take it?” Lin Ling asked.

“The Star of Lumvaz is indeed infamous,” Naakai agreed.

“They are widely known to be pirates at worst,” Uarz added with a resigned look.

“And paid mercenaries any other time…” Avarz agreed.

“They raid readily and scavenge battlefields, travelling bands and poor villages for slaves on a regular basis,” Naakai added. “They hunt for those with promising gifts and sell them at slave markets in Umadri and Udrasa by the Gates… or just take them upriver directly.”

“So, a charming bunch all around,” she concluded.

“Yeah, charming…” Uarz grunted.

-And more importantly, mercenaries bought and paid for to check out what happened to Ulmaz. Presumably disposable if they failed but competent enough to be worth the effort invested?

“So what do we do with the rest?” she mused, looking across at the wrecked boat.

“I am very tempted to say bash their heads in and toss them in the river,” Kreva remarked, spitting on the deck next to Izvar.

“Given this lot are pirates, we might as well capture them and sell them to someone who will pay,” Omurz chuckled.

Ling nodded, but before she could do anything Uarz spoke up again.

“Don’t be an idiot!” he snapped at Omurz, pointing at the frozen Quavez. “I know who that is and if he holds a grudge here we are all dead.”

“He works for someone influential in Ulquan, I take it?” she asked as Omurz scowled.

“He is an important servant of the Master of Ulquan…” Uarz sighed. “He was also the one who spoke to Ragvaz while we were stuck there.”

“And you couldn’t say this earlier?” Kreva scowled.

“I wasn’t expecting this to go weirdly sideways so fast…” Uarz grimaced.

Listening, she wondered whether this could be considered some kind of good fortune or some really unfortunate piece of luck. In a way it made sense that they could, hypothetically, run into the force sent to investigate the destruction of Ulmaz, but for it to involve someone who served directly with the Master of Ulquan…

-At least he didn’t recognise Qing Yao or the others, she reflected grimly… then recalled his gaze lingering on Wei Chu and Feiwu Shen and sighed, out loud this time.

Realising the others were all looking at her now because she was basically staring into the middle distance, sighing deeply, she collected her thoughts and looked back at the wreck.

Narrowing her eyes, she sent out her soul sense, sweeping over the boat and finding that it faded some fifteen metres away from it.

“They have an active ward,” she observed.

“Unsurprising,” Uarz sighed. “This vessel had one as well but it was broken in the storm because it was placed by the mast.”

“So, there is no way of knowing the strength of those on the vessel,” Chunhua mused.

“There is not,” she agreed, thinking matters over again in her head.

“Guard Manshu, Official Yao, we shall go deal with the rest of this,” she said abruptly, looking across at Kai Manshu and Qing Yao, then back again at the distant wreck where the other survivors were watching.

“Do we take them back?” Qing Yao asked, walking over to join them.

“…”

-Complications everywhere! a part of her moaned.

Teff and Ladrak, who were still in the rowing boat, were both looking a bit unwell as well, she noted. The odds there were fairly high that Quavez had done to them what he tried to do to the rest of the crew.

-Looking at it differently, it might have been better to play along and then subdue all of them on the boat in one go… she complained to herself. Oh well, it is what it is.

Walking over to the edge, she bowed to the two frozen figures and then jumped down to the boat. Kai Manshu and Qing Yao followed her lead. Focusing her qi, she managed to suggest to the thoroughly discombobulated Izvar that he turn to watch them depart.

-This not how I hoped my first attempt at complex soul sense manipulations would go, she grimaced.

To her surprise, the command did take and a moment later Lin Ling somehow made Quavez follow that lead and walk up to the navigation deck. The crew, clearly spooked by this, didn’t have to feign looking uneasy.

“Take us back to the wreck,” she commanded Ladrak and Teff as the three of them made their way to the front of the boat.

The rowers spun the boat and started back without any comment. Eyeing them both critically, she found that they had indeed been rather forcefully ‘pacified’ with soul sense. The damage was unlikely to be permanent, but Quavez had been neither subtle nor restrained.

Kai Manshu and Qing Yao were both still looking at her with a degree of confusion in their expressions, no doubt wondering why she had picked them to come out here. In truth, it was a bit spur of the moment but both were disguised as people from Ulmaz – Kai Manshu as an elite soldier and Qing Yao as an important servant. Given that Quavez had been heading to ‘check’ on Ulmaz, having a guard and a powerful servant come back to the wreck would hopefully sell the subterfuge that they no longer needed to go there.

Remaining standing as they rowed, she watched the distance to the wreck close, counting down the metres to where the boundary of the soul sense ward was.

-How did Quavez manage to use a soul attack on them within the ward? she pondered, watching the survivors clamber down off the hull of the capsized boat.

“You have been troubled!” she called up, using her words to carry her principle and qi towards the waiting crew of the vessel. Looking around, she counted four that were visible. According to Izvar’s memories there should be nine surviving crew, so that meant the others were either in the boat or scouting the perimeter, she supposed.

“…”

None of the crew replied to her greeting, as they pulled up alongside.

“Is there much to transfer?” she continued brightly, as if their silence was not a problem.

Annoyingly, the Ur’Vash here didn’t go for status tattoos like those on the plains, so she had to rely on intent and with their silence she could get precious little of that either.

“Not much…” one of the crew spoke at last.

“Where is Master Quavez?” another, wearing gold-copper bands around his arms and a muddy red robe, asked with a frown.

“Negotiating with our Captain perhaps?” she replied with a pleasant smile. “We have come from your destination… so there is much to discuss between them, I imagine.”

“You come from Ulmaz?” the robed Ur’Vash frowned.

“What is left of it,” Qing Yao answered in flawless local. “The flood devastated it, few survived… We were lucky to be rescued by Captain Omurz before the swamp life started to investigate.”

“I see… well, we have two prisoners and some crates to take over,” the robed Ur’Vash replied after a long pause.

“Prisoners?” she asked, glad her mantra helped her school her scowl.

“Yes,” the red-robed Ur’Vash said a bit curtly.

Before she could say anything further, he turned on his heel and walked quickly across the sloped deck and into the doorway that presumably led to a stern cabin and the access to the hold of the vessel.

Checking the layout of the boat, she noted that while it was smaller than the one they were on… it was clearly a sail boat. There was no evidence of space for lots of rowers and it was broader than their one as well.

-A shallow-bottomed sail boat… designed for these marshes, rather than what we are using, which seems more for open water?

It fit if they were mercenaries who plied their trade in this region, she supposed.

The red-robed Ur’Vash returned surprisingly quickly, after barely a few minutes had passed, accompanied by four others.

Two were women – naked and sodden, wearing bags over their heads, their wrists and ankles bound by the same silver-blue bracelets that had been used on her in her own captivity. The other two carried a chest apiece and were dressed in loose fitting red tunics she recognised from their trip across the marshes – guards of important Ur’Vash. The last to emerge was the red-robed Ur’Vash, who now carried what appeared to be a closed lantern…

‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ told her in no uncertain terms that the next few seconds would be very inauspicious if she didn’t act immediately.

Unleashing every shred of her strength, she darted for the red-robed Ur’Vash.

{Misty Lotus River}

Given she had two other movement arts at this point, she rarely used ‘Misty Lotus River’, if at all. In this case though, it had a clear use, because she was in the middle of a huge river and it was a water-attuned art. All around her, the water surface shivered as if smashed by a flat hand. Hundreds of thousands of droplets swirled up, obscuring everything in a haze of iridescent flowers.

In the same instant, the red-robed Ur’Vash opened the lantern and she felt a sense of inexorable compulsion try to grip her—

{Bright Heart Shifting Steps}

Groaning as her qi reserves plummeted, she closed her eyes, blotting out the strange, skin-tingling non-sound that accompanied the sense of profound compulsion and let the art get to work.

Something scythed through the mist at her—

She swayed away from it, briefly unstoring her sword-staff and parrying a coppery blade that was aiming for her head.

Her arms shook from the force of the impact; however, the copper-gold blade came off much worse, bending like it was made of cheap metal.

Drawn on by her divination art, she spun and swept the legs out from a shadowy figure, sending them flying into the shallow muddy water below with a dull splat—

Suddenly, every angle she could move to became breathtakingly inauspicious in her mind’s eye. Gritting her teeth, she charged forward, relying on her qi to—

A palm slipped through her guard like a ghost and nearly connected with her left breast, just above her heart… then snapped back, aiming to try and grab her weapon. Sneering inwardly, she stored it away again and grabbed the wrist.

{Blossoming Lotus Seizes All}

Her attacker screamed in shock as a luminous, pale lotus with janky red and yellow patterns on its petals blossomed around her hand, drawing in qi which was then thoroughly purified by her physique and her mantra.

A second palm shot out of the mist and abruptly ‘Misty Lotus River’ was scattered, revealing her opponent to be… Quavez?

That moment of disorientation nearly cost her dearly as the red-robed Ur’Vash grinned nastily and materialized the lantern into his hands directly a moment after she saw the familiar shape of a storage ring on his finger.

-Nameless mother—

Biting her tongue, she focused herself inwards, sheltering behind the shield of her mantra.

“GLORY TO QUAZAM!”

The words blazed into her mind, projected there by the shining eye within the lantern, which itself held a disturbing purplish-yellow flame that oscillated in a way that made her eyes bleed.

“ALL GLORY TO QUAZAM!”

“ALL GLORY TO QUAZAM!”

The words crashed into her psyche like hammers, refusing to let her shut her eyes to blot them out. Accompanying them was a shadowy projection of ‘Quazam’ herself, imperiously sitting on her throne in that strange, otherworldly place she had been dragged to before…

The cadence of the words dug into her mind, flowing into other patterns… more ominous patterns and sounds that evoked the whispered words of the Sar’Katush and their dread master.

-Nope!

-No way!

-Not a chance!

The unfortunate parts of her psyche that had been clipped by the formidable treasure’s attempt at totally seizing control of her screamed in fury, even as her Nascent Soul marshalled her defences and her mantra brutally crushed the invading strength.

In the meantime, the red-robed Ur’Vash and the one who was likely the ‘real’ Quavez had both grasped her—

‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ nudged her thoughts.

“Gift of the Lotus becomes the Bestowed Path for the Body”

Externalising the song-like phrasing, muttering it under her breath, she let her mantra seize all of her anger and pain and imbue it into a distillation of the devouring darkness of the depths of Yin Eclipse. Both Ur’Vash recoiled, but it was already too late as the manifestation swirled around her, lotus petals twisting as the world rippled. Having fought so many Sar’Katush, it was disturbingly easy to recall that helpless, terrifying feeling of the hand always about to descend behind you, to grasp you… drag you down to the darkness…

{Blossoming Lotus Seizes All}

This time, the art caught everything. Both Ur’Vash thrashed but the manifestation of her mantra, carrying a shadow of the pain and torment she had undergone so far, had caught them both in a cruel trap.

It probably only took a moment or two… but it felt like far longer before they both slumped unconscious to the ground, the qi in their bodies chaotic.

“Yeah… I’m quite done with the whole ‘Glory to Quazam’ thing,” she muttered, kicking ‘Quavez’ in the head, viciously.

~ Kai Manshu – On the Wreck ~

Hauling himself out of the shallows, spitting mud, Kai Manshu looked around for Qing Yao… who had most definitely just shoved him into the water… and nearly got hit in the head by an enraged Ur’Vash.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t anyone from the boat they had come to ‘investigate’, but rather ‘Teff’, who had just jumped at him. Grimacing, he tried to recall the last few moments but everything was rather hazy…

-Juni attacked…

-There was a lantern… that was unveiled?

“Yao?” he called out, easily fending off the flailing Teff, sending him tumbling back into their own smaller vessel.

On the wreck, Juni was viciously kicking the red-robed one in the head with a murderous expression on her face while two more crewmen in muddy red tunics tried to circle her.

“Here!” Qing Yao called out, standing up out of the water behind up.

“What just happened?” he asked, turning to look at her and then turning away again just as quickly.

“I saved us from a very unpleasant treasure,” Qing Yao grumbled. “For the cheap price of my maidenly modesty.”

That last part was certainly true. The local garments they had acquired were all scandalously thin by any measure and now Qing Yao, who was wearing a full length one, was drenched to the skin. There was really not that much left to the imagination.

Looking annoyed, she started to wade over towards the shore—

“ALL GLORY TO QUAZAM!”

Teff surged up and tried to attack him again, the words he was yelling imbued with a strange intonation that carried hints of a strength well beyond anything the Soul Foundation Teff should have been able to manage…

Clenching his jaw, he caught Teff’s arm and landed a hard punch in the crewman’s side, sending a shockwave of mana into his body that dispersed most of Teff’s mana and made him collapse, properly this time.

-Ladrak? Belatedly, he realised Ladrak was not in the boat—

Spinning around, he found that Ladrak had taken that opportunity to charge for Qing Yao, tackling her into the water as she flailed, caught unawares somehow.

“Maker Curse You!” he snarled, having the presence of mind to curse in local as he staggered over and hauled Ladrak off her, tossing him back into the boat.

“T-thank you!” Qing Yao gasped, sitting up in the water and rubbing her neck where Ladrak had grabbed it.

Grimacing, he pulled off the upper half of his own garb and tossed it to her, because Ladrak had torn away much of the cloth, revealing far more of Qing Yao than…

“Ahhhhiii!”

A scream from the boat made him turn to see that the red-robed Ur’Vash had shaken off whatever Juni had done to him and had grabbed her by the neck, holding a pair of silver bands in his other hand.

Two more crewmen from the wreck were also scrambling down towards them, weapons drawn, blocking off the path.

“No wonder you looked so familiar,” the leader chuckled, eyeing Qing Yao. “Didn’t recognise either of you until I saw your fine figure…”

“…”

“Wait... what?” his own voice sounded weak in his ears.

“Th-they… are…” Qing Yao, behind him, also sounded shocked. “Captured…”

-Wait… this is the same boat that captured her? He stared at their attackers dully, hardly wanting to credit that coincidence. Unless… is that why Juni brought us…?

Gritting his teeth, he saw she was resisting the red-robed Ur’Vash, but clearly her assailant was a proper Immortal… or maybe higher.

“Yes… we caught you once… Easy to do it again…” the first chuckled nastily. “You don’t shake off our special treasure that easily…”

Casting about, he found no obvious weapons to use; however, their intent was such that he could tell both were slightly weaker than he was. Clenching his jaw, he tried to focus his mana...

“W-what?” Qing Yao, who had just done the same gasped in shock.

Even some distance away, he could see her mana turn chaotic and uncontrolled, as if something was fundamentally interfering with her ability to direct it. His own was under his control, but there was a sort of slipperiness to it that made him uneasy.

“You think we are idiots?” the second one leered, mainly at Qing Yao. “That we will let you direct mana as you like? You cannot attack us. It is forbidden. Just give up.”

The words, directed at Qing Yao primarily, still sank into his mind like leaden weights, even as he tried to resist the soporific command that came with them.

-Shit… did they do something to her?

“Just give up,” the second crewman sneered as Qing Yao stumbled, looking pale and struggling to breathe.

His own mana was fog now, swirling away from his control—

“NO!” he snarled, managing to push back at it… barely, thanks to the days spent dealing with the uncooperative hydra mana, coupled with a definite desire not to be captured again.

Focusing purely on his intent, he lunged forward, trying to focus on one of the few martial forms he knew.

{Palm of Sagacious Qin}

A ghostly palm exploded out of his own, striking the first crewman in the chest and sending them sprawling back in the muddy water.

“Ahhhhiii!”

Behind him, a second scream – Qing Yao’s – distracted him for a moment as he realised both Teff and Ladrak had somehow recovered.

{Moonless Shadow Fist}

Qing Yao’s own martial strike smashed into Teff, sending him into the water with a flat *thwack*—

The second guard lunged for him, mana coalescing on the edge of the guard’s blade as the guard closed the distance between them with deceptive speed.

{Sagacious Qin Seizes the Moment}

Twisting away, he countered the strike, sending a wicked blade of his own mana through the crewman’s body, scattering the momentum of the Ur’Vash’s attack.

“Dammit!” the crewman snarled, aborting the strike to slam his shoulder into him, sending them both rolling in the shallow water of the mud bank.

Trying to avoid swallowing too much of the slimy mud, he flailed for the first crewmember’s blade which he had somehow failed to grab a moment earlier, even as he attempted to keep his current assailant, who was really strong as it turned out, at arm’s length—

His attacker went limp as he realised he had unwittingly made him stab himself.

Gasping, he stood up and grabbed the copper-gold blade from the Ur’Vash’s hands before turning to see to Qing Yao.

She had finally overpowered Ladrak as it turned out, but was panting hard and looking pale.

“Are you okay?” he asked, wading over to her.

“Y-yeah…” she grimaced, holding her side and breathing hard. “Something… those two did… interfering with my mana…”

“GET THEM!”

He turned to find two more crewmen had scrambled out of the ruined boat… both carrying copper-gold studded cudgels.

“The guard from UImaz is being controlled by the crazy witch!” Teff, who was still somehow conscious, yelled.

-The guard…?

Confused he looked around, but the only person here disguised as a guard was… him?

Juni was still keeping the red-robed Ur’Vash and the other two who had been with him at bay, but she was now properly pressured, her principle barely allowing her to stay on equal terms.

-We need to finish this fast, he thought grimly, looking left and right—

Ladrak, eyes red and face twisted in desperation, lunged for him—

Both emerging crewmen jumped down off the wreck into the shallows, covering the intervening distance in a few strides…

Exhaling, he smashed the pommel of the blade into Ladrak’s face hard enough to draw blood and hopefully render him unconscious and moved to intercept the first one.

His opponent’s blow didn’t aim for him, but the copper-gold blade he had looted. Turning the blade aside he deflected the blow—

*Tink*

His looted blade shattered under the impact as if it was glass, splintering into a dozen pieces, two of which embedded themselves in his leg—

Pain…

Excruciating, unutterable pain consumed him.

His Nascent Soul screamed in his dantian, grasping its leg as the injury to his body made it bleed misty qi—

The second attacker struck him on the upper arm as he tried desperately to ward both off—

He screamed again, the copper-gold studs in the cudgel making the blow resound through his arm, totally ignoring his mana and his cultivation strength and rendering him barely able to move it.

Winded and in agony, he hit the mud and immediately tried to roll away, noting as he did so that the crewman who had just struck him was now closing on Qing Yao, who was backing up with a terrified expression on her face.

“Dammit…” he focused inwards, pulling out what strength he could, and lunged for that crewman.

A further blow from a cudgel smashed into his back, making him choke back another scream; however, he did manage to grab the ankle of Qing Yao’s attacker.

{Second Deceptive Finger of Qin}

The finger strike shattered the crewman’s ankle and ruined the meridians in his leg, making him fall, wailing in agony.

Qing Yao staggered forward and punched the reeling Ur’Vash in the face.

Intuitively, he twisted to the side, nearly submerging himself fully in the water in the process, barely managing to avoid getting struck in the neck by a swinging strike from their other attacker.

Snarling inarticulately, he lashed out with his leg, tripping his attacker, who landed on top of him with a splash.

{Scholarly Axe of Decisive Resolution}

Focusing his intent, he managed to plant an elbow into the Ur’Vash’s side as they fell, the blow shaking their organs and making them spit blood. Pushing the stunned assailant off him, he followed the strike up by literally kneeing his attacker in the head with enough force to make the Ur’Vash sink into the mud.

“Shit! We can’t keep this up…” he gasped.

Qing Yao, who was now half-naked and leaning against the boat nearby, breathing deeply, her face flushed, nodded, wiping her wet, muddy hair out of her face. His top, which he had passed her before was drifting away in the water he noticed with some annoyance.

“T-thank you…” she panted, staring viciously at the second attacker—

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a crewmember scramble over the side of the boat, already casting a net at them both. Without any recourse, he tackled her into the mud as it hissed over them, snaring half the boat even as it missed.

“FLANK THEM!” a second crewman appeared around the far end of the boat.

“How many of them are there?” he gasped, scrambling up.

“Enough…” Qing Yao grimaced, pushing herself up.

“Sorry,” he muttered, avoiding looking at her.

Looking up, he could see Juni had managed to down one of the two helping the red-robed man, but even at this distance he could see she was finally starting to struggle, just as they were…

Grabbing the cudgel that was half floating in the water, he advanced towards the nearer of the two Ur’Vash, who drew a blade, grinning nastily.

“…”

Weighing up his options, he spun and threw the cudgel at the net wielder as hard as he could. His throw hit them in the head with a satisfying *thud*, visibly deforming their skull even as they tumbled out of sight.

“DIE!” the other crewman snarled, lunging at him.

{Sword Finger of Qin}

Avoiding the energetic strike, he jabbed at their neck with his forefinger, focusing his limited Martial Intent through it—

Cursing, he spun away, aborting the strike at the last minute as the blade hissed back up, nearly opening up his arm and then following after him like a striking serpent as he realised he had been thoroughly feinted.

He got two steps before his control over his own mana failed him and his foot sank deep into the mud. Raising his arms he barely blocked the strike as it came down, groaning at the momentum—

The kick caught him in the chin, making his vision waver as the Ur’Vash found a gap in his guard. Instinct and sheer bloody-mindedness kept him from dying then and there as he forced himself to move to the side, even as his opponent dragged the blade downwards. The strike missed him by a fraction, biting into the mud as it did so.

{Sagacious Qin Seizes the Moment}

Forcing his mana to obey him as best he could, he pushed his open palm into their side and unleashed the strongest attack he had. His attacker’s torso deformed and they spat blood and misty mana in equal measure as they went sprawling, pitching into the beached boat to lie there, twitching.

Exhaling, he shook his head, trying to clear it… and found two more crewmen had emerged from the hold, one carrying some kind of hooked polearm and the other also with a cudgel, their faces furious.

“…”

Picking up one of the blades from the mud, he passed it to Qing Yao, who took it with a grimace.

-This can’t go on, he thought grimly. This crew are an entirely different prospect compared to the one we rescued at Ulmaz…

This time, before either could close on them, he scrambled forward, engaging the one with the polearm, trapping the blade as best he could. He was the first to admit that he was not a martial cultivator, or even particularly good with physically wielding weapons, but you did pick a few things up. Duels with abstract or obtuse rules were the kind of thing his fellow disciples in the Erudite Sage of Qin Pagoda went for quite a bit…

The Ur’Vash snarled and his compatriot tried to flank him, but this time he got the railing of the vessel between him and his opponent and managed to slice open the Ur’Vash’s forearm, sending him reeling, howling in agony—

A grasping hand shot out of the melee along the boat. He barely avoided it, being fortunate enough to duck to one side; however, a moment later it was followed up by one of the two guards in person, who, in almost leisurely fashion, reached out a hand and flicked the blade with his finger, shattering it like glass.

-Shit… it’s an actual Immortal!

He didn’t need to feel the creepy, inexorable sense of being ‘drawn’ towards the strike, even as the ruins of the blade scattered everywhere, to realise he was outmatched – badly.

Almost predictably, the other attacker now ignored him as well, walking towards Qing Yao with a grin on his face as he looked her over.

-Shit… shit…

He tried to back up, but the ‘Immortal’ Ur’Vash, who was dressed in garb similar to his but with some scale armour thrown over their shoulders in the same copper-gold metal, easily kept pace with him, his expression dismissively amused.

“Little guard… she really has you wrapped up good… do not try my patience,” his attacker chuckled.

“Stop messing about; just cripple the shit. It’s only some guard from a backwater fort!” the other snapped, even as they moved around Senior Juni, who was backing up again, barely blocking feints from the red-robed—

The blow arrived like a shadow of a shadow. Only luck saved him, he was sure, as he tripped on a tangled rope, making the clawed fingers snatch at air rather than his neck—

The clawed hand became a palm, his surroundings turning sluggish as the blow descended upon him like a hammer.

He hit the deck hard enough to bounce, his mana turning chaotic as he struggled to remain conscious.

It was Qing Yao’s scream that provided the impetus for him not to fully surrender to the dark agony as he saw through blurry vision that she had been grasped by the guard far too easily and was now being dragged by the hair, flailing ineffectually, towards the boat...

-No! No…

“You want to save her… little guard?” his attacker laughed. “I see it in your eyes… she does have a certain appeal… does she not, if you can look past her ugly face.”

-Ugly face?

Parts of him, jarred by the force of the impact, were starting to speak up now… suggesting a few rather odd things…

-Why have we fought two crewmen, four times over and they have been better matched every time?

-Doesn’t Hunter Juni seem too… weak?

-Why aren’t the others from the boat coming?

-Hunter Juni?

Pushing the weird thoughts away he struggled to move, fighting the sense of mana bleeding out of his body from the strike he had just endured.

-Must help… Qing Yao…

-But how…?

-Take out the elites… Even if you die, it will give the others an opportunity?

It was a chilling thought… but without any other tools… no martial technique he possessed would allow him to fight a proper Immortal. The only hope was Hunter Juni…

Groaning, he focused on her. She had landed several blows on the red-robed figure… but as it stood, he saw inevitability in that fight as well.

Unfortunately, his body was slow… sluggish even. The accumulated wounds from the other fights had taken their toll. His Nascent Soul was literally bleeding out in his dantian, unable to stem the damage dealt by those blades…

-I could stab them with one!

-Except the blade was shattered immediately! You think they don’t know their own weapons? Another part of him snapped, angry and frustrated.

-I was injured by shards, it’s not the weapons…

-It’s the metal?

Other parts of him tried to refute that, but he silenced them decisively.

As if to further validate his decision, he also noticed that, stuck in the deck nearby, was a hand-length shard of the blade he had been wielding.

His attacker turned away to look at Qing Yao who was being dragged over.

“Don’t let her cripple herself!” the Immortal snapped.

Reaching out, he grasped the shard and pulled it out slowly, ignoring the pain in his hand as he did so.

{Sagacious Qin Seizes the Moment}

Forcing his body to move according to his instruction he lunged upwards, stabbing for the Immortal’s back—

His target turned and easily caught the strike.

Grinning, he stabbed the blade shard into their heart gate with his other hand, exploiting his attacker’s inability to reach across him to block the actual blow. His opponent howled in agony as he stabbed a second time, then a third, then lunged not for the one dragging Qing Yao… but for the one flanking Hunter Juni.

The Ur’Vash spun, easily deflecting his blow; however, in that instance, the opening he made allowed Hunter Juni to slip back from the red-robed official from Udrasa and hit the elite guard with a strike that scattered all their mana.

“Damn you…” the Ur’Vash gasped, staggering forward, pushing him back. “I… hope you…”

He made to stab them—

“Idiot!” the elite sneered, recovering instantly and tackling him all the way off the boat to crash down in the shallows again.

Gasping from the impact, he kicked his attacker away, sending a wave of mana into them.

“It’s a waste to kill soldiers but fuck it…” the elite sneered, grasping him around the neck and shoving him under the water. Intent tore into his body, turning his mana turbulent far faster than he could force it away, even as he struggled, grasping vainly in the mud—

His hand found a shattered piece of the first blade and without any hesitation or thought he stabbed upwards. The elite trying to drown him thrashed as he stabbed a second, then a third time… and then slumped down.

Spitting out mud and water, he pushed them off and sat up—

Instinct saved his life, again, as he threw himself flat in the mud.

The crewman who had been dragging Qing Yao – and who he had completely forgotten about, he realised – slashed for his head. At the last moment, he kicked the man in the leg, unbalancing him. The Ur’Vash landed with a splash and he immediately rolled onto him, stabbing madly until the crewman stopped moving.

Panting, he stood up and saw Qing Yao was kneeling in the muddy shallows nearby, breathing hard.

Stumbling over, he knelt down, trying to help her up.

“T-thank you,” Qing Yao gasped, putting a hand around his neck and using him to haul herself up.

Suddenly aware of how very naked she was… and how very close she was… he put a hand on her shoulder and tried to step away—

“Yeah... I’m quite done with the whole ‘Glory to Quazam’ thing...”

The words drew his attention back to Hunter Juni… even as he realised that Qing Yao’s hand on his chest was now grabbing his neck, pushing him back.

“W-what…?” he gasped.

“…”

She stared at him… then at their surroundings… breathing hard.

Looking around, he realised everything was… well, in chaos.

It was also not as he recalled his surroundings mere moments before.

His head pounded, his skin itched and he felt oddly hot and hyperactive for some reason.

Teff and Ladrak lay nearby, unconscious… the crew from the vessel were scattered around, some alive… some very stabbed…

Hunter… Juni? was kicking the comatose red-robed figure on the deck of the ship in the head.

Pushing himself away from Qing Yao, he realised that she was almost entirely naked… as was he… most of his upper garment having been torn off by the elite…?

“What... just happened?” he rasped.

Qing Yao, who looked like he himself felt, scowled and turned away… which just revealed that her bare back was almost as attractive as her—

He closed his eyes and tried to banish that image… but it refused to be eradicated.

-This is going to be so awkward… a voice in the back of his head groaned.

“We got hit by some strange artefact,” she explained, her voice cool.

“Artefact?”

-The… lantern… thing? a part of his recollection of previous events supplied.

Looking around, he saw no obvious sign of it.

“I… I thought we dodged it?” he asked, holding his head again as it throbbed unpleasantly. “You pushed me in the water… and?”

“I did,” Qing Yao scowled, wrapping herself in a part of her torn robe before turning back to him. “Then you climbed straight back out and attacked me, along with all the other crew…”

“I… no, that’s not right?” he muttered, squinting at nothing as he tried to make the headache be… less. “I… was protecting you? The crew… I killed them?”

“…”

She stared at him with an expression that said far more than he wanted to see in a beautiful woman’s face…

“We saw different things,” he realised, feeling somewhat stupid.

“Evidently,” Qing Yao muttered.

“That was singularly unpleasant,” Hunter Juni grumbled.

-Senior Juni— he corrected in his head.

“Ah!” her gaze alighted on both of them and she sighed. “Well, you didn’t kill each other it seems.”

“What… just happened?” he asked again.

“They had an artefact… I think.” Juni replied, casting around. “Ah hah! There we are.”

She slid down the sloping deck and carefully picked up a small metal lantern. “Seems it was tied to this Quavez.”

“Quavez?” he repeated, confused. “Wasn’t Quavez on the other… boat?”

Involuntarily, he turned to see the other vessel was where it had been, the others looking on and pointing with some concern now.

“How… long were we out?” Qing Yao asked.

“…”

“Thirty seconds?” Juni mused. “A minute maybe?”

“Thirty?” he repeated dully.

“Well, this puts a hole in my plan,” Juni mused, sitting down and staring at the various crew. “Are those two still alive by the way?”

“Those two?” he repeated again… still trying to get a grip on his understanding of events as they had just transpired.

“Teff and Ladrak,” Juni repeated patiently.

“Oh…” Qing Yao experimentally poked Teff, who lay nearby in the boat. “He seems to be unconscious.”

“That’s something anyway.”

“What was your… plan?” he asked, latching onto that.

“To make this all look like they died in the wreck of the ship if it came to it,” Juni grumbled. “Which is hard to do now that you have seven bodies with stab wounds floating about.”

“…”

Something about the way she phrased that made him slightly annoyed for some reason, but the logic was undeniable, except…

“If it was only a minute then how did they die?” he asked, looking at the seven bodies scattered around.

“I killed all of them…” Qing Yao replied, frowning.

“I killed two… four times over… then you fought two elites and that red-robed Ur’Vash,” he added, counting them off on his fingers looking around… and then recalling that one had fallen off the top of the boat.

Grimacing, he staggered up the deck and peered over. There was no body…

“None of it was real…” Qing Yao said after a moment.

“How do you gather?” he asked, sliding down the sloping deck.

“Well… my qi is turbulent and dispersed but I should have used quite a lot of it… and yet I haven’t…”

“…”

Feeling like an idiot, he checked his own condition and the headache returned, though for different reasons. There was clearly trauma to his soul, but his qi reserves, while somewhat depleted, were not what he might have expected…

-Except I was mostly using Martial Intent…

“My qi was really chaotic, so I mostly used Martial Intent…” he mused, frowning.

Juni stared from him to Qing Yao and back again and then shook her head.

“Well, the reality is that they are dead with stab wounds and that’s—”

Juni trailed off mid-sentence and he was left with a moment of deep disorientation as his surroundings simply…changed.

There was no bleed in or out, no flicker, no nothing.

One moment he was standing there, the next he was lying on the sloping deck of the vessel, staring up at the cloudless blue sky, keenly aware that he had the world’s worst headache.

“Ah! That worked.”

Juni’s voice, nearby, made him try to sit up, at which point he just stopped trying to move because he had grievously underestimated what he had just thought of as being the world’s worst headache.

“I hate the world…” Qing Yao moaned from next to him.

“Sadly, I don’t think it cares,” Juni replied from wherever she was.

“What… happened?” he asked, realising that his mouth was dry and that his skin was hot and itchy.

“You got hit by the artefact that bastard was carrying,” Juni sounded apologetic, he thought. “I figured breaking the connection to Quavez would drop you out of it, but that didn’t happen – so I had to destroy it.”

“The… lantern?” he asked, forcing his memories to re-coalesce themselves into some kind of coherence.

“Yes,” Juni agreed.

He tried to move again and found that all sorts of places hurt in ways they had no right to. The pain wasn’t physical either, but instead…

“Why… How is my soul still damaged?” he rasped, looking at the injuries that were still extant on his Nascent Soul, against all probability

“Because this artefact is a terrifying thing,” Juni grumbled, coming over to kneel beside him.

~ Juni – Minoring in the Dao of Salvage ~

Crouching down beside the stunned Kai Manshu, Juni again found her gaze drifting back to the ruined lantern. In the end, she had had to put it into a stone bowl of Lin Ling’s blood, and even then it had resisted like crazy.

-What a terrifying artefact, she thought, before adding somewhat regretfully; and a terrible waste as well.

She wasn’t too cut up about the destruction, life was more important after all, but a part of her still saw all sorts of useful things such an object could have been used for. The problem seemed to be that it had had some aspect of the creature that the core originated from still sealed within it, allowing it a sort of intelligence of its own.

“We… thought we were out…” Kai Manshu spoke again after a moment, sounding hoarse and a bit confused. “Or I did… It was all so… real…”

“Yeah…” Qing Yao agreed, sounding drained.

Turning to Qing Yao, who wasn’t in much better shape, she sent a pulse of qi into her as well, watching it work to remedy a bit of the damage. In a way, it was fortuitous that she had seen so much mental trauma with Lin Ling… and also experienced so much herself, she supposed.

“This is not how I wanted this morning to go,” she complained, sitting back and surveying the rest of the ship.

Quavez – the other Quavez – and the two guards were unconscious. The remainder of the crew, all nine of them, she had sealed up as well. They were strong, but not that strong and had absolutely underestimated her, thinking her caught in the artefact.

The two prisoners were sitting nearby, staring at her dully, trying to process their current circumstances. Neither had said so much as a word since she took the bags off their heads after destroying the lantern and, much like Qing Yao and Wei Chu, neither had any markings to identify them, though she was fairly sure they were cultivators. It was something unquantifiable about the manner in which they sat there, a kind of ingrained formality perhaps. She also didn’t recognise them from the group she had been held with in Ulquan, which was interesting in its own right.

-Are we collecting lost cultivators or something? she wondered, not for the first time.

“Do you know what I am saying?” she asked in Easten after some consideration.

Both of them glanced at her… then just looked away again.

-Though if I was them… having no doubt experienced whatever they have… would I talk to me?

-If I revealed myself to be a cultivator things might be easier… but that is not possible right now…

With a groan, Kai Manshu at last managed to pull himself up and look around properly, finally spotting the two prisoners. Thankfully, he glanced at her before saying anything.

“They don’t seem to understand,” she said in Easten.

“Unsurprising,” Kai Manshu replied.

Qing Yao also finally sat up and then covered herself.

“Why am I naked?”

“The crew tried to drag you both off while I was tied up with the red-robed idiot,” she explained. “They were hiding in the mud. As soon as the lantern got used, three of them jumped you both, stripped you of your gear and were trying to pull you to the other side of the ship.”

“Oh…” Kai Manshu sighed deeply, his anger and frustration etched into his face as he stared at the water below them.

“If it’s any consolation, that lantern was almost certainly something meant to be used on Ling,” she added.

-Speaking of Ling…

Standing up, she hopped onto the top of the vessel and waved in the general direction of the others, making a few obvious signs that Ling and Chunhua would understand, calling for one of them to come over. A moment later, Ling hopped onto the river and dashed over in a matter of moments to arrive on the side of the vessel.

“I was starting to get a bit concerned,” Ling signed.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t come,” she signed back. “This lot were heading to intercept us… or more specifically… you.”

“…”

“Sharvasus,” Ling mused out loud.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the auburn-haired prisoner flinch at the mention of the name and start unobtrusively casting about.

“Seemingly,” she agreed, then pointed to the bowl of blood that was steaming faintly, where it sat on top of a wedged crate. “The object in question is over there…”

Ling walked down the sloping deck to it and lifted up the stone bowl that held the lantern, doused in blood, carefully examining the charred smoking sphere that had formed its core, turning the bowl this way and that.

“Huh…”

“Careful, it may still have some potency,” she warned. “It was able to trap them in an illusion real enough that they didn’t know they had failed to break out of it, and the soul damage dealt in it somehow retained its effectiveness as well.”

Ling considered it a moment further and nodded, putting the bowl back on its perch before turning to the two prisoners and the other boxes.

“What do we do with them?”

“You ask me, but who do I ask, you?” she grunted, somewhat vexed by that problem herself.

“They seem to be cultivators, but I have no idea about their influence.”

“I… sort of recognise them,” Qing Yao spoke up, replying as they were speaking, in the local tongue.

“You do?” she asked, surprised.

Qing Yao nodded, adding: “They are junior disciples who were with our faction, though my language skills are not up to explaining it in this tongue.”

-So, aligned to the Nine Moons? Is this more good luck or circumstances just conspiring to take the metaphorical piss?

Somewhat annoyingly ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ nudged her mind in a way that was utterly ambivalent on that point.

“Okay,” she mused. “We can discuss it in detail later, or if you feel up to it, you can help me check out the rest of the vessel?”

“I’ll come,” Qing Yao replied. “I don’t suppose you have some spare clothes?”

“…”

She felt a bit embarrassed that she had forgotten about that in all the mess.

-How quickly we forget the norms of before… she sighed inwardly, withdrawing three of the spare, lightly woven, fabric gowns they had looted from Ulmaz.

Passing one to Qing Yao, she handed the other two to the two rescued prisoners. The younger-looking one, with sandy blonde hair, took them without comment, merely staring at her with slightly haunted eyes.

“You know, if we take them back looking like this, our ‘crew’ may want to do something stupid like sell them on for profit,” she mused.

“We can resolve that, at least,” Ling mused.

“We can?” Kai Manshu, who had just been sitting there listening in silence, asked.

“Yep,” Ling nodded. “We just put some tribal markings on them that won’t wash out.”

“…”

“Fine,” she nodded, deciding to let Ling do what she needed to. “You handle that; we will see about the rest of the boat.”

Leaving Ling to sort through her own collection of stuff and maybe get something out of the two freed prisoners, she headed towards the rear of the vessel, Qing Yao following. The stairs down were still intact, but given the entire boat was sloping at close to a right angle and half buried in the mud bank, it was little surprise that it was harder to get down than it looked. She still scoured the interior warily with her qi though, before descending.

Inside, it was rather cramped, which was again unsurprising really. One wall had been smashed completely and various crates and the contents of a room were tumbled through muddy water. A quick sweep revealed nothing particularly interesting beyond some scattered plates, the ruins of a bed and a few other accoutrements of everyday life.

“So, what do you know about that pair?” she asked Qing Yao quietly as she started checking through the second room.

“I have seen them, so I know they are cultivators,” Qing Yao murmured. “As to their sect… it should be Fire Orchid Pavilion, a subsidiary of Verdant Flowers Valley. I think they were under the wing of a senior there, Ao Qingcheng.”

“I see,” she nodded.

It wasn’t a sect she knew at all, nor a ‘senior’ she recognised, not that that was surprising. Her knowledge of influential cultivators outside of Blue Water Province was limited to famous people like Cang Di, or Dun Tian, the Imperial Crown Prince. Similarly, she knew of Verdant Flowers Valley, but only by the vague whispers of reputation.

“The coincidence is somewhat unnerving though,” she conceded, pondering that point as she kept looking through the wreckage.

Qing Yao simply nodded as well.

“Well, there is nothing here,” she declared, looking around the rest of the rear of the vessel.

“Cargo hold?” Qing Yao suggested, looking back down the length of the hull, towards the middle sections.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

Making her way back past Qing Yao, she carefully looked at the door and passage that led towards the front of the vessel. Near as she could tell, it ran all the way down the vessel to an open section at the front with another stair up. There was nothing especially out of place, though the contrast of light and shadow from the sunlight shining through the damage in the hull was a nuisance. With her eyesight it was okay, but the lack of soul sense made her somewhat wary nonetheless.

-Really, I’ve only had it a few days and already I am missing it when it’s not here, she complained to herself as she finished her sweep.

“Seems clear,” she murmured, stepping through and starting to check the first compartment in the middle of the vessel.

Looking around, the compartment itself was entirely sparse of furnishings except—

“Chains…” Qing Yao observed, pointing past her to the muddy water near the nearest upright support.

“…”

They were indeed chains, linked to solid supports in the middle of the boat, though formed of a dark grey metal rather than the silver-blue of the bands on the pair of cultivators.

“Charming bunch,” she sighed. “Let’s check the next one.”

From the outside, the second room, right in the middle of the ship, appeared as the first one had; however, the interior was taken up by the remains of the mast and, set into it, what she now knew to be the ‘Ancestral Ward’ that muted soul sense.

This one was a series of glyphs wrought of the golden-copper metal that formed an intricate pattern that coiled around the whole mast and across the middle of the floor. The only way to disable it would be to rip out the whole middle of the boat she assumed, an action made quite a bit harder by the presence of the mast.

“No way that is being easily salvaged,” Qing Yao observed, likely recognising it from what they had seen in the fort of Ulmaz.

“Indeed,” she agreed, checking beyond the mast in the mud and the water.

There was nothing much in the crates and two containers drifting there. She salvaged the rope – because more rope was always useful – and an undamaged crate, sending them directly into her talisman, but left everything else.

“There must be an actual storeroom somewhere,” Qing Yao frowned, looking around. “There is nowhere near enough in the way of supplies.”

“Or they didn’t expect to make a long trip?” she suggested.

“Could be,” Qing Yao mused.

“Could also be a lower level,” she pointed out. “The vessel is wider and flatter than ours, for all that it’s shorter.”

“Third room,” Qing Yao sighed, clambering back up to the corridor.

“Yep,” she agreed.

Sweeping her qi into the third room, she sighed as it was almost completely flooded… and also contained two bodies. Both of them appeared to be Ur’Vash, marked with the flower tattoos she had seen those who took part in the battle on the plains using after Ling’s breakthrough.

Sliding down, she dragged the nearest one up—

Qing Yao grabbed her, even as she dodged to the side to avoid the strike of the attacker who surged out of the murky water.

Scrambling to the side, she kicked them in the chest and then cursed as a second surged up out of the debris, casting the chains attached to their arms over her. She slipped away fairly easily, helped by ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ and found a third figure in the doorway, already shoulder charging Qing Yao.

“DIE!” her attacker screamed – in Imperial Common – as they tried again to snare her with the chains.

“…”

{Blossoming Lotus Seizes All}

She hit them in the chest with a palm strike at the same time as she felt the temperature in the entire ship rise noticeably for a second.

-So they tried to attack Ling? She frowned, spinning away from the first ambusher and sending them slamming into the wall.

The one who had gone after Qing Yao was now being made to regret that decision as she smashed his head into the door frame repeatedly and without much consideration for his wellbeing.

“Enough.”

She imbued all of the strength of her principle and her Martial Intent into the command, directing it towards the pair, hoping that they were fairly limited in their capabilities. Both staggered back, slipping in the water.

“How is she so powerful?” the one on the left gasped.

“Isn’t this… a principle?” the other sounded worried as well, she was pleased to see.

“Shit… just when we thought this was—”

She caught the sneaky punch and threw him back into the water.

“Do you understand?” she asked.

“…”

Both stared at her blankly.

“What language is that?” the right-hand one, who had long black hair in the traditional, scholarly style, asked.

“Dunno… sounds vaguely familiar though… something in the pronunciation?” the other, bearded youth muttered.

“How can it be familiar in this fate-accursed place?” ‘black hair’ snapped back.

“Well, we can find out when we beat them—”

Shaking her head, she evaded the strike from the black-haired youth… his speed was actually pretty good, so she guessed he was Dao Seeking—

{Blossoming Lotus Seizes All}

This time she put a bit more force into it, along with the strength of her principle. Her attacker groaned in agony as his qi distorted and revolted from his control.

“You… have… arts?” he gasped in Imperial Common.

In other circumstances she might have laughed at that, but given she was pretending not to understand it, she just endeavoured to look slightly puzzled, then turned to the other cultivator who was backing up now, looking uneasy.

“Weak,” Qing Yao grunted, having also restrained her assailant at this point.

Pointing at the stunned cultivator, she motioned to the still standing one to gather him up, then pointed up the stairs.

“…”

The bearded youth looked warily at them, then at the dark-haired youth but made no move.

“…”

“If you were in his position would you be much different?” Qing Yao said, sounding a bit resigned as she checked the condition of the one who had attacked her.

“You still smashed that one’s head off the wall a dozen times…” she pointed out.

“He called me a demon whore,” Qing Yao retorted, hauling her attacker up. “And then he grabbed my breasts while trying to tackle me.”

Shaking her head, she stared back at the bearded youth, then repeated the gesture.

“Bring,” she reiterated in ‘crude’ Eastern, pointing at the dark-haired one who was groaning in the water now. “Or I beat, like him.”

She pointed at the unfortunate victim of Qing Yao’s recent frustrations for added emphasis and mimed a fairly universal gesture for ‘wrung out’ with both hands.

The bearded youth stared at her, eyes narrowed then looked to his stunned companion, then to the other and finally back to her.

Qing Yao retreated through the doorway, dragging her captive and she followed, not turning her back. Eventually, the bearded cultivator did help his compatriot up but they didn’t move…

“…”

“Ah!” she realised at last what the issue was, feeling a bit stupid. They were still chained up.

“They are still chained up,” Qing Yao observed with an eye roll.

“They are,” she agreed, wondering if there was something wrong with her today.

~ Kai Manshu – Increasingly Unfond of Reality ~

Gasping in pain, the world around him a blurry mess, Kai Manshu wondered if today was somehow determined to be the day he genuinely died.

He had expected the two cultivators to try something, given Senior Ling had barely paid attention to them as she checked out the pair of boxes that the guards had been carrying and he was barely able to move… but for one of them to throw the bowl of blood over both of them was not…

Not…

“It’s not that bad…” Senior Ling muttered, kneeling over him.

“…”

Given the options were swearing extensively in her face or shutting up and letting her neutralize the poison trying to devour a third of his body, he grit his teeth again and instead opted to thank the fates for small mercies as the pain slowly faded away, like the fact that most of it had hit his already rather numb arm and landed on his chest and leg… not his face.

“What… is... it…?” he gasped instead.

“Blood,” Senior Ling sounded amused as much as she was vexed, though that tone didn’t fool him, because the last few moments had illuminated three things very clearly to him.

The first was that the hydra qi was not the most unpleasant cultivation material he had ever had the misfortune to be exposed to – the blood in the bowl absolutely took that ignominious prize.

The second was that Senior Ling really disliked people tipping bowls of burning yang-rich blood over her head.

The third and perhaps most immediately relevant was that, while it had burned away almost all her clothes, it had had exactly no effect at all on her.

As to what she had done in return…

Grimacing he managed to turn his head and look at the pair of cultivators, now visible again as the vision-blurring pain had vanished. Both were frozen, one still holding the bowl, the other in the process of lunging for one of the discarded blades. Their expressions were rigid, but their eyes were very much aware and he could see the fear etched in them clearly.

He had no idea how she had done it, she had used no talismans or treasures that he saw… she had frozen space around all of them, with a single snarled word.

-She has comprehended some of the secrets of spatial qi?

“Don’t overthink things,” Senior Ling remarked, looking sideways at him with a rather amused smile.

-What is so funny about this? a part of him sobbed.

“Ah… so that was what they did…” Senior Juni’s voice cut across the deck.

Space un-constricted itself a moment later, allowing him to move and see both Senior Juni and Qing Yao had exited the hold.

“A-another?” he rasped, staring at the brown-haired youth that Qing Yao was dragging after her.

“Yep,” she glowered, sending him sliding across the slanted deck with a certain degree of force to stop against the collapsed crates.

“…”

“There are more?” Senior Ling muttered, looking at the unconscious youth then at the now slumped and shivering pair of women.

“Yep,” Senior Juni replied, sighing deeply “Today just gets better and better. We should have just rowed on past. There are two more down there as well, though I will need what remains of that blood to get them loose.”

“Well, I will have to raise you one,” Senior Ling said dryly, shoving the nearest box over to Senior Juni. “Today just got weird.”

Wordlessly, Senior Juni bent down and picked an object out of the box. It was a jar, made of blue-grey stone, sealed with a plug of the same stone and tied across with some tattered cloth very tightly. He watched as she undid the tie, removed the cloth and removed the stopper—

Their surroundings turned hazy almost as soon as she took the top off the container. His skin itched even before the sweat started to evaporate off it. The wood of the ship around them creaked ominously and started to steam as well—

Senior Juni put the stopper back on the container and wrapped it up tightly again.

Both of them stared at it, then at each other, then at the jar again… then finally at the ‘prisoners’.

Not for the first time, he got the distinct impression that they were holding a conversation somehow, though given that soul sense was still suppressed he had to wonder how. They did appear to have some kind of sign communication language that they used occasionally, but neither were using it right now that he could see.

The pair stared at the contents of the box, then Senior Juni replaced the jar in it and closed it over, before turning back to the pair of shaking, wide-eyed female cultivators and shaking her head.

“Good thing there is some blood left in the bowl,” she declared at last, picking it up and walking back down the stairs.

“I’ll come,” Senior Ling added, standing up.

He watched as they both went downstairs again, then turned his attention to the stunned youth, who looked like he had had his head smashed off the wall a few times.

“It’s been a long day,” Qing Yao muttered, sitting down on a box and staring at the pair with a sour expression.

“It’s not even mid-morning,” he pointed out.

“I know… and already I don’t want to find out what the rest of today brings…” Qing Yao muttered, clasping her arms and hugging herself.

“Tell me about it,” he agreed, rubbing his own arm where it was still itching like crazy.

“Oh, you sweet, innocent children,” Teng Chunhua observed.

He nearly climbed straight into the air in shock, because he had not seen her arrive.

Neither had Qing Yao, it seemed, because she also flinched visibly.

The pair of female cultivators fared little better there, clearly not at all pleased to see a third powerful ‘expert’ appear like a ghost…

He was about to ask why she had come over, when he realised the answer was self-evident. She was carrying the ‘bodies’ of the other Quavez and the unfortunate Izvar, who was now shaking like a leaf and looking very worried as he saw the other bodies lying around.

“Look…” Izvar said, almost wheedling in his tone. “I am sure we can arrange something? This is clearly a terrible misunderstanding?”

“I… am sure,” he rasped rather sourly, trying to ignore the hot itch in his throat. “But… your time for that… has somewhat passed.”

“…”

“You can take all the cargo,” Izvar muttered, looking at him now. “The prisoners, they are not pretty but they have good bodies, yes?”

“…”

Both he and Qing Yao stared at him, not bothering to hide the disgust in their expressions. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the pair of prisoners shaking like frightened deer.

“I’ll swear to the Five to say nothing!” Izvar continued. “Go to the plains… go to Bad Mango—!”

“—I’ve been to Bad Mango,” Senior Chunhua interjected, making Izvar flinch and him curious as to what kind of place it must be. The name was a bit… “—And while I admit you would fit right in there, I am afraid you had your chance and blew it by being party to this mess.”

Below them there was the sound of someone cursing in Imperial Common and then awkward silence. The two women’s expressions managed to turn even more apprehensive and gloomy, which was quite a feat given their current circumstances. On a certain level he did feel bad over their deceit… but on the other hand, the memory of that fate-thrashed blood searing his flesh and how painful it was would probably haunt him all the way to his next tribulation.

“All a misunderstanding… I swear by the Maker! A misunderstanding…” Izvar protested.

“Ah, I see you brought back the trash,” Senior Ling remarked, climbing back out of the door to the lower level.

“Yes,” Senior Chunhua chuckled. “I’ll leave you to it. The group on the vessel are getting restless.”

“I can imagine,” Senior Ling nodded as two youths – one bleeding from his nose, perhaps the reason for the cursing – warily scrambled up after her, taking in their surroundings very warily as they rubbed their wrists.

Senior Juni climbed up a moment later and deposited a box full of some kind of seed pod on the deck, wedging it so it wouldn’t slide.

“Spirit fruit?” Senior Chunhua asked, looking over at it.

“Yes, there are probably a few more such crates and such down there as well. Could you start checking them?”

“Sure,” Senior Chunhua nodded, heading past her and down into the hold.

“So, what do we do with these… five?” Senior Ling asked, walking over to the box with the blood and other oddments and picking it up.

“Take them back to the boat I suppose and keep an eye on them,” Senior Juni replied, sounding resigned.

“What happened here?” the bearded youth hissed to the blonde-haired woman.

“…”

Neither said anything, just continued to watch every move Senior Ling made, as if she was a venomous snake.

“They are going to be a liability unless we explain things,” Qing Yao pointed out as Senior Ling walked over to her and very deliberately put that box right beside her.

“None of them speak Easten though,” Senior Juni added as Qing Yao sat on the box after casting a sideways look at the other cultivators. “Or at least none that they admit to…”

“Well, let’s start loading up the small boat,” Senior Ling said after a further look around. “I trust you have a plan for this lot?”

“I do,” Senior Juni agreed. “First though, let’s go finish clearing out the hold…”

He watched as they both went downstairs… wondering at the wisdom of that decision given it left him and Qing Yao – neither of whom were exactly in the best of condition, along with the unconscious Teff and Ladrak – with five cultivators who had all tried to make a break for it.

“What do we do now?” He studiously didn’t turn his head to look at the four cultivators who were crouched down together, looking frustrated and worried.

“What can we do? I tried to use that blood and it just—” the sandy-haired one who had thrown the blood mumbled very quietly.

“—the blood that melted the chains holding us?” the dark-haired youth who had a bloody nose interrupted.

“Yes… and it did nothing… she is—” the auburn-haired woman hissed.

“—You hit her with that… and it did nothing?” the dark-haired youth exclaimed.

He didn’t need to look to know that all four were staring after Senior Ling with worry.

“She froze space as well…” the sandy-haired girl whispered.

“She…” the bearded male cultivator sounded disbelieving.

“A treasure?”

“Does she look like she had any on her?” the sandy-haired woman hissed.

“What about Brother Shi?” the auburn-haired one murmured, sounding a bit concerned.

“The dark-haired, aloof-looking one face-planted him into a wall,” the bloody-nosed one muttered. “She had some kind of art, or whatever these demons have that pass for them.”

“…”

Listening to them talk away, it was honestly quite hard to keep his composure.

The fact that ALL of them here were cultivators was somewhat ironic in its own right, but that half of them just didn’t know was…

In other circumstances he would have thought this a hilarious joke, but right now it was veering towards the slightly pathetic.

“What was the language they were speaking earlier?” the bearded youth frowned.

“Did it sound a bit like: ‘Do you know what I say’?” the sandy-haired one murmured.

“Yes, kinda,” the dark-haired one nodded, wiping away more blood which was still streaming from his nose.

“That’s… kinda nasty,” the bearded one pointed out.

“Her attack damaged a meridian,” the dark-haired one muttered. “Lucky hit…”

“No idea...” the sandy-haired girl sighed, replying to the question about the ‘language’. “Our captors also spoke something that sounded very similar occasionally. I guess it’s some kind of formal language or something?”

“…”

He looked across at Qing Yao, who was studiously pretending to recover her energy.

“Could we try to make a break for it?” the bloody-nosed youth suggested. “They have a boat and neither of those two are in the best condition.”

“The dark-haired beauty beat up Brother Shi like he was a punching bag…” the bearded youth pointed out.

“But there are four of us… and the other is injured…” the bloody-nosed one retorted.

“And we are all sealed up, our attunement is dog-shit and all we have is some crappy Martial Intent,” the auburn haired woman hissed.

“Not to mention none of us are martial cultivators,” the bearded one added. “We only did as well as we did below because it was an ambush and we had those chains!”

“Could we not just tell them?” Qing Yao muttered at last, in the local tongue. “This is honestly pathetic. I feel embarrassed to be their nominal senior.”

“You are?” he asked, not quite believing that.

“In a sense…” she nodded glumly. “Though I only know the two girls in passing. These other three I dunno though.”

~ Juni – Mucking around on boats ~

“Is it really wise to leave those five… up there with just Kai Manshu and Qing Yao?” Chunhua asked as they poked through the last of the crates and barrels in the hold.

“They are sealed and if they steal the boat and flee it sort of solves a problem,” she shrugged. “Though I suspect their judgement is a bit better than that.”

“It would be awkward to go back up and find that those on the boat have shot them full of arrows…” Ling pointed out.

“True,” she agreed, finding nothing of interest in the barrel she was checking.

“That said, if our situation was a bit weird before, it’s going to be doubly odd now with a second group of cultivators along…” Chunhua pointed out.

“Yep, however Qing Yao recognised the two women at least, if only vaguely. They are part of ‘her’ faction in the larger group we are following, apparently,” she mused. “No idea about the other three though.”

“What concerns me more is what’s in that box,” Ling sighed, pushing another barrel away.

“Yes… what is the deal with that?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Well… the blood is what you think, but the issue is that it doesn’t come from the meat soup cavern,” Ling muttered.

“It doesn’t?” she frowned.

“Nope… it comes from, um… the time when I dumped a huge amount of it over the prison Di Ji took me to,” Lin Ling murmured, sounding a bit haunted. “The only place I’ve seen jars like that was in that prison...”

“The cloth is yours though…” she frowned.

“Nope…” Lin Ling shook her head. “The cloth belongs to Han Shu.”

“…”

She stared at the younger girl, trying to put that together in her head.

“Wait, so the blood is associated with Di Ji… and the cloth with Han Shu… but Han Shu and Di Ji have never crossed paths except…” she ticked the various bits off on her hands, certain that there was something about it that didn’t add up.

“Could you be mistaken? Could the blood have been gotten some other way?”

Ling stopped and stared at the ceiling of the flooded room.

“It’s not pure enough to be from the soup cavern directly… That means it’s either from the prison where I was – when I had my spirit root transformed – or the only other place it could conceivably originate from is the valley we ruined.”

“The ruined lake, when I found you?” she asked, “When you transformed?”

“That… is possible,” Lin Ling conceded. “However—”

“—that doesn’t explain the jar,” she mused, tossing another crate that had nothing but ruined foodstuffs, some kind of spirit vegetation rice, into the corner.

“There is nothing else worth considering here,” Teng Chunhua remarked, straightening up.

“In that case, let’s put most of these salvaged bits in some crates,” she agreed, looking quickly through the last one and storing away everything that was vaguely useful – most of it some packs of spirit herbs with addictive properties.

“Half of this stuff is like lash lamium flowers,” Ling remarked, holding up two wrapped bundles.

“They are pirates that deal in slaves…” Chunhua pointed out. “That they also trade addictive drugs is—”

“—unsurprising?” she finished.

Both of them laughed as Ling picked a crate and dumped several dozen different bundles into it. Chunhua followed suit, then picked another crate and repeated the process.

“Enough?” Ling asked her, comparing the two crates, which accounted for barely half of what had been in the hold.

“We can sort the others out by the stairwell,” she suggested, looking up again.

“They don’t seem to have made a break for it…” Ling mused, picking up her box.

Nodding, she led the way out, checking carefully just in case something else was lurking.

As she approached the stairs back up, hushed chatter in Imperial Common filtered down.

“—we could steal the boat… with soul sense restricted?”

“That other vessel out there likely has more experts on it… and I can see some with bows…” the auburn-haired woman muttered.

“Yep, unless you can work out how to get these accursed bands off us…” the youth she had punched hard into the wall added, sounding frustrated… and also somewhat nasal.

Deliberately clattering a crate, she dumped a bunch of stuff out of her storage talisman into it and made her way back up to the deck.

The one Qing Yao had stunned before was conscious again, she saw, being looked after by the sandy-haired young woman. The other three were clustered together, watching their surroundings warily and not looking at each other, likely due to all of them being naked. That she found somewhat amusing. Modesty was pointless if you were dead and while some small part of her did lament that lost part of her innocence… reality was cruel.

“They are back…” the dark-haired youth whose nose she had broken muttered somewhat redundantly.

“I guess they are salvaging the wreck…” the sandy-haired one observed equally redundantly.

“The question is do they intend to salvage us with it?” the bearded youth muttered.

“They do appear to have killed those who were transporting us…” the auburn-haired woman frowned.

Making her way past, she scrambled down to the smaller boat and found Teff sitting there warily, watching proceedings while Ladrak sat with his head in his hands.

“You’re okay?” she asked.

“What… happened?” Teff asked, looking a bit confused.

“You got hit by an artefact… eye of a toad or something,” she explained.

Her best guess was that that was what the core – or eye, it was hard to tell and she hadn’t looked that closely – was. The effects sort of fit the description Naakos and Naakai had given.

“A toad?” Teff repeated, turning a bit pale.

“How’s Ladrak?” she added, looking at the other Ur’Vash.

“He should be fine,” Teff replied. “Just a bit dizzy.”

Nodding, she put the crate in the boat and accepted the second that Chunhua was waiting to pass down to her.

Teff peered into it whereupon his expression brightened.

“They were transporting this as well then?” he asked, holding up one of the bundles, apparently recognising it.

“Evidently,” she remarked drolly.

“Two more,” Chunhua added, taking another crate from Ling who had also exited the hold now.

Accepting the final two crates she put them in the boat and then waved for Qing Yao to bring the ones by her down, which she did with cautious alacrity, no doubt wary of what was inside.

“Shall I take these across?” Qing Yao asked, eyeing the contents.

“Yep, and take Teff and Ladrak as well,” she replied. “Then come back with someone less injured.”

“Okay,” Kai Manshu, who had also made his way over, acknowledged.

She watched as both of them got into the boat and started back towards their vessel.

“So… what now?” Chunhua asked, looking at the five, who were also staring at them with clear apprehension, having finally stopped chattering away in Imperial Common.

“You two go back with this lot and I’ll sort out the vessel and the others,” she replied, not looking at the line of bodies and the shivering Izvar.

They stood there in silence after that, until the boat returned carrying Qing Yao, Naakos and Lashaan, both of whom looked somewhat grim.

Both eyed the five cultivators… then the three of them, but said nothing despite certainly working out what was what almost immediately.

“Get on the boat,” she instructed the five in Easten, pointing.

“You also speak… ‘Easten’?” the youth who Qing Yao had knocked unconscious, who she thought had been called Shi, asked dully.

Sighing, she turned to Qing Yao.

“You had to knock out the one that spoke a civilized language,” she remarked drily in Easten.

“…”

Qing Yao just sighed.

“…”

“You understand them?” the sandy-haired girl asked.

“A bit… it’s a savage language from the Eastern Continent, or very close to it… not sure why they speak it though,” Shi muttered, rubbing his temples – she could still see bruises from Qing Yao’s fingers where she had held his head.

“Could they be related to those barbarian tribes?” the auburn-haired woman asked softly.

“Yin Eclipse is a strange place,” the bearded youth shrugged. “My family showed me some records, but it’s been largely stable since the Huang-Mo wars.”

“Well, while this is all very interesting, you still have to get on the boat,” Ling added, also in Easten, finally exerting her own principle.

All five turned a bit pale as her friend’s strength of presence washed over them, shifting uneasily.

“What even is this… principle…” the bearded youth gasped.

“…”

“If you stay here, whoever comes to investigate this vessel will not be so understanding as us,” Ling continued, exerting even more subtle pressure on them.

{Bright Heart Shifting Steps}

“They will not,” she agreed, triggering her own divination art quietly in her mind. “If you co-operate with us, at the very least we will treat you fairly.”

“Co-operate…?” Shi repeated.

“You know the word?” she said with an eye roll, considering what it hinted about this whole circumstance. “It means we work together, you leave here, we trade in useful way, perhaps you profit in a surprising way.”

“…”

“What is she asking…” the bearded youth hissed.

“I don’t quite get it,” Shi muttered in Imperial Common. “She seems to be saying that we can leave here with them or get caught by the group from before… but…”

“But what?” the auburn-haired woman added.

“My Easten isn’t that good…” Shi finished lamely.

“Running is out of the question,” the sandy-haired woman muttered, glancing at the youth with the still-bleeding nose.

“How do you gather?” Shi asked.

“…”

Both women looked at the three men like they were idiots.

“These three all have really formidable Martial Intent,” the bearded youth muttered in agreement. “Stronger than some Inner Disciples I’ve seen in my clan.”

“So… we cooperate and try to bide our time?” the bloody nosed-youth proposed.

“As best we can,” Shi sighed. “If we could remove these bracelets…”

“You say… co-operate,” Shi said, turning back to her. “You give… guarantee… or… goodwill?”

“Goodwill?” she repeated, almost certain where this was going but keeping her face neutral with her mantra.

Shi held up his wrists, revealing the bands.

“…”

They stared in silence for a moment, then Ling burst out laughing.

“I dunno what tribe you come from, but your balls have hidden size,” she cackled.

“…”

The rather naked youth flushed, clearly understanding that, making her wonder where he had actually learned his Easten.

“Can you deal with them if they are hiding their strength?” she asked Ling.

“Unless they are fully attuned and stronger than that hydra, yes,” Ling nodded. “However, at that point I can’t promise I won’t kill them.”

“Okay,” she agreed, walking forward.

“Okay?” Shi blinked, clearly surprised by her sudden agreement.

Without further comment, she took his hands and unlocked them the same way she had for Qing Yao and the others. There was a hint of resistance and then the bracelet fell away with a clatter, rolling a little distance before she stopped it with her foot.

“However, if you cross us,” she added with a smile, “we can make your life such a hell you will never believe it possible.”

“She actually freed him?” the sandy-haired girl muttered dully.

“They actually fell for it?” the bloody-nosed youth murmured, again marking him in her eyes as the one to watch for stupid actions.

“…”

Resisting the urge to pinch her nose, she sighed.

“Now, you…” she turned on Izvar, who was pale-faced.

“Look,” he said in Easten, “You seem reasonable… Surely we can—?”

“You had your chance earlier,” she said with a half-smile, cutting him off. “On the boat, when you first asked for our ‘aid’. You blew it: you attacked us and your buddy Quavez really annoyed me as well.”

“Quavez…” Izvar gulped, looking at both bodies nervously.

“Quavez is not my friend,” he hissed. “You cannot ignore the command of the Master of Udrasa.”

“We make our choices,” she shrugged, keeping her Easten simple so ‘Shi’ could understand as well. “We live by them—”

Grasping Izvar, she hauled him up.

“And we die by them.”

“No! Please... On the Maker’s Daughters, I swear! I can pay—”

“The Gift of the Lotus becomes the Bestowed Path for the Body”

Focusing on the deepest darkness of the depths and the suppressed shadowy horror of the things she had witnessed, she projected her mantra straight into him. The bright sunlight mellowed, the shine on the water faded away, the wind picked up.

Izvar didn’t even scream, he just twitched as the darkness consumed him, devoured him like he was drowning in some dark, fathomless depths.

The actual cause of his ‘death’ was in fact an acute case of ‘exposure to an inauspicious alignment of an absolute nature’, in that her principle, her divination art and her mantra all coordinated within his body to ‘kill’ him; however, with the aim of not being immediately rumbled by an investigating expert in the off chance the body was discovered, she tried to make it look like drowning, physiologically speaking.

Exhaling, she dropped his lifeless body back to the deck and relinquished her principle. The bright mid-morning sunlight returned to the world, the ghostly scene of devouring dark passing like a barely remembered nightmare.

Based on what she had seen of his memories that was probably too light a punishment, truth be told, but the idea of killing people in cold blood – even bastards like him – was… difficult. Some cultivators would do it without hesitation but she, while she had killed before, bandits mainly before ending up in this savage hell, had never found anything pleasant in such acts. She had threatened a few times… and would probably have gone through with it…

Shaking her head, she turned back to the five cultivators, who were frozen like statues, cold perspiration visible on their bodies. She fed her frustration and displeasure with what she had just done to her mantra and smiled pleasantly.

“Do you understand?”

All five nodded hurriedly, faces pale and eyes wide, even the bloody-nosed youth.

-How ironic… of the three of us, probably my ability to do use my principle like this is the least as well...

“Good,” she said brightly, playing up the clear contrast in her manner and how it was projected with her principle. “Then I look forward to our… cooperation.”

Shi gulped and nodded again.

Walking over to the sandy-haired young woman, she removed her bands, then went onto the others, one after another. All of them were clearly unnerved by what had just happened, and in other circumstances she would have felt somewhat worse than she did. She could appreciate their circumstances and their plight acutely, far better than they had any idea of, really. However, they had also tossed a bowl of the blood over Ling and not known she was immune… and it had landed on Kai Manshu, so a bit of suffering was probably in order.

When the last one had been freed she stepped back and eyed them. Qing Yao had gathered up the bracelets, she noted, and was tying them together.

“What are you called?” she asked, turning back to ‘Shi’ and simplifying her Easten again.

“Shi Tengfei,” Shi, who had become the group’s official spokesperson at this point, replied after a moment.

“What did she ask?” the bearded youth muttered.

“Your name!” Shi Tengfei retorted, just about managing to resist adding ‘idiot’ or something similar to it.

“Ao Meicheng,” the sandy-haired girl muttered.

“Bai Ruli,” the auburn-haired woman added.

“Shu Feilong,” the bearded youth replied.

“Kei Zhanfeng,” the one she had punched said at last, pinching his still-bleeding nose.

“…”

Sweeping her gaze over them she sighed inwardly and pointed to the boat.

“Please get on board. We will talk more on the vessel.”

“…”

The five all stared at her dubiously, then at the distant vessel, then at their surroundings.

“Do we?” Kei Zhanfeng murmured, frowning.

“What other choice is there? You think we can fight?” Bai Ruli muttered.

“They unchained us…” Shu Feilong pointed out.

“…”

All five turned to look at them and she was again glad she could hide her expression so well.

“As she said, the alternative is that someone will likely come looking. What if the next group isn’t…?” Bai Ruli muttered.

“—we wouldn’t be caged,” Kei Zhanfeng hissed. “And with some time to recover our strength…”

“This assumes they let us stay…” Ao Meicheng added.

“Or that they don’t just capture us again on the boat?” Kei Zhanfeng, who was fast emerging as the voice of militant opposition in the group, muttered as he poked at the pressure points on his face trying to fix what she had done.

-I bet he is holding a grudge over me breaking the meridians in his face, she sighed. I should fix that in a bit or he will just keep bleeding over everything.

“Then why would they free us?” Shu Feilong pointed out.

“…”

“To put us in a situation like this?” Kei Zhanfeng muttered.

“Let’s go,” Bai Ruli finally interjected, seeming to reach a decision.

Ao Meicheng nodded.

“I suppose, so long as they underestimate us, we have the advantage… With the bands off, we can recover our condition a bit and take stock?” Kei Zhanfeng frowned.

“—But what if they take us to a city and…?” Shu Feilong muttered.

“And what, and what, and what?!” Shi Tengfei finally got a bit annoyed with the back and forth. “They sound disturbingly reasonable for all that we have attempted so far…”

Ao Meicheng and Bai Ruli watched the other three with faintly annoyed frowns, studiously not looking at Ling. Of all of them, they presumably had the clearest idea of their group’s strength, she supposed. That they were not really trying to explain it to the others though, was interesting in its own right.

-Are they not as unified as they first seemed?

She glanced sideways at Qing Yao who read her unspoken question fairly well given she just shrugged.

-Could be that there is some issue with the three men being left? She mused.

The three prisoners had seemingly been abandoned and left to their fate, unless that was just part of the bigger ploy and Quavez had not expected them to resist the lantern and the three would have been brought up later?

“…”

They debated on in hushed tones for almost a full minute more before finally concluding that ‘being cooperative’ was the safer bet, all while the five of them there stood or sat watching with expressions of studious curiosity or, in the case of Naakos, who likely didn’t get most of it, amused disinterest.

“Why do I get the impression that none of them are that worldly?” Ling muttered, watching them walk over to the boat and clamber in.

“This whole thing is so bizarre,” Chunhua muttered, shaking her head.

“Do you want to go back with them?” she asked Chunhua.

“I’ll go back as well,” Qing Yao added, as Chunhua simply nodded and followed them down to the boat. “That way we can keep the other two from saying anything silly if nothing else.”

“True, having gone to all this effort to have it blown like that would be annoying…” she agreed.

Chunhua got into the boat and they watched it row away in silence for a few seconds before Ling sighed deeply and turned back to the bodies.

“So, what’s the plan now?” Ling asked.

“We need to do some divinations concerning Han Shu –without the others staring over our shoulder,” she mused.

“How are we going to handle that?” Ling frowned, kneeling down by the nearest body and riffling through their belongings.

“Good question,” she mused, thinking over what she knew. “We should be able to divine a rough direction and I am almost certain at this point that the trail we were following before is the same group that Qing Yao and Wei Chu were aiming to meet up with. The Bai and Ao pair are also apparently part of the Verdant Flowers Valley, who are, again, part of that group…”

“I guess we start there then?” Ling sighed, before looking around at the bodies and adding, “—and them?”

“Well, that plan was a bit nebulous,” she conceded, looking over them. “I guess we take them down and scatter them about to make it look like they died trapped and everyone else escaped?”

-The problem there is managing the whole thing so it looks vaguely plausible, she mused to herself, turning to look again across the mud bank and fast flowing river channels as she pondered that point…

Here and there, she caught sight of bubbles rising inconspicuously in the calmer water…

“We might also go see if we can find some wildlife to put in there with them to further obfuscate matters,” she suggested.

“The crabs…” Ling said drily, following her gaze.

“The crabs,” she agreed.

~ Shi Tengfei – Wondering what changes the day brings ~

They got onto the small boat in silence in the end, after the rather awkward debate over the whole thing. Shi Tengfei, inner disciple of the Green Dawn Dragon sect, could understand the reticence of the others, but in a strange way he was just ready for the whole very weird interlude to just… end.

The debate had been a reminder that theirs was not exactly a group formed of unity of spirit either, even if captivity made for strange… and necessary bedfellows.

Shu Feilong was, like him, from the Green Dawn Dragon sect. Kei Zhanfeng, however, was from the Dusk Star Hall, a subsidiary of the Dusk Sky Pagoda. Ao Meicheng and Bai Ruli were both from Fire Orchid Pavilion, a branch of Verdant Flowers Valley.

Fire Orchid Pavilion might be small, but Verdant Flowers Valley who backed it up was a behemoth of the western continent, lacking only in comparison to the Shu Pavilion and Burning Tiger Temple. Dusk Sky Pagoda was also a powerful Shu clan influence, though one from the Central Continent and not directly associated with the hegemonic Shu Pavilion. Neither were particularly aligned to the current dominance of the Imperial Court within their generation either. That the Shu clan member was in Green Dawn Dragon rather than Dusk Star Hall was… a major coup for Green Dawn Dragon honestly…

-How we are not dead…? I have no idea, he thought glumly, looking at each of their ‘rescuers’ in turn. Did I offend some evil spirt unknowingly and get cursed to live out the last days of my life in ‘interesting times’?

The previous few weeks had certainly been one disaster after another, such that they all sort of blurred together in rather distressing fashion… culminating in today, which was just turning into a very strange day.

What was clear was that their captors were ‘powerful’. He had thought that vile bastard Quavez was strong – for a demon – as was the other demon who appeared to be called Izvar, who had taken control of the crew of the ruined boat; however, the casual display of power by the blue-eyed, brown-haired demoness was… chilling. Literally in fact.

The memory of that shadow that swirled around her for a moment, like the devouring tug of dark water, was disturbingly familiar. He had been sure they would drown in the ruin of the boat… then, when they were abandoned by their captors with Meicheng and Ruli, the only ones they seemed interested in...

“What realm do you think she really is?” Ao Meicheng’s question cut off his reverie.

“No idea… but presumably powerful enough that they don’t care about restraining us,” Bai Ruli murmured, looking around warily at the others in the boat.

The four escorting them were largely ignoring them, focusing on manoeuvring the vessel itself in the current.

Unbidden, he glanced at the demoness who had rather brutally knocked him out earlier. Sitting as she was, however, just watching the water, he could easily imagine her as some ice-cold beauty were she dressed in something not quite so scandalous, though undeniably it meant that there was plenty to admire—

She turned to look at him, her dark eyes staring through him with something between amusement and mild exasperation for some reason.

-Why am I so focused on appearance? a part of him groaned, even though he knew the answer, or suspected he did.

All of the female demons were stunning in their own ways… It was impossible not to remark on it, really. If you took them out of this circumstance and dressed them up in fine dresses with jewellery they would be widely admired, there was no doubt about that. Even as they were, there was a sort of savage beauty to them that made his heart race and his thoughts…

-Principle! It’s a principle! that part of him reiterated forcefully. Stop being caught up in their pace. It’s deliberate!

Gritting his teeth, he turned away but that didn’t help, because that just brought the likely perpetrator of his unease into his field of view again. The black-haired, blue-grey-eyed demoness whose gaze seemed to embody some kind of inner fire that made his heart palpitate uneasily just to look upon.

The worst part was that there were no obvious signs that they were doing anything. They were just chatting away in their own language, occasionally looking towards either the wreck or the boat they were travelling to. The pressure was entirely passive, and that alone spoke volumes. Very few Dao Seeking cultivators he knew would be able to achieve that amongst their peers.

Exhaling, he shifted to look the other way and consider the other two occupants beside them, who were doing the rowing.

The old man was inscrutable, his appearance weather-worn even if he was surprisingly muscular. The younger woman looked much plainer, muted perhaps, her bare arms and legs marked with various swirling tattoos in a way he had not seen on any of their captors. Again, though, there was a hidden strength to her that was being projected somehow. A faint oppressiveness that spoke to concealed strength.

“All of them are strong…” Shu Feilong muttered, rubbing his wrists again where the silver-blue bands had been.

“You don’t say,” Kei Zhanfeng grumbled. “I still don’t like this. What if…”

Kei Zhanfeng trailed off and flinched… as did Shu Feilong, Ao Meicheng and Bai Ruli.

“The suppression is gone!” Shu Feilong remarked on it at the same time as he felt Kei Zhanfeng, who as the only genuine Immortal among their number was probably the strongest of them overall sweep out his soul sense—

“...”

The dark haired woman didn’t actually say anything; however, Kei Zhanfeng’s soul sense was scattered like mist, vanishing as if it never was. His own soul sense wavered and was suppressed simply by being near her, which was shocking in its own right! That she easily overpowered Kei Zhanfeng, even if he was only a very recently ascended Immortal…

Turning, he looked at her and immediately regretted it.

Her gaze swept through him, her smouldering grey eyes now highlighted with a faint hint of azure that, as he met them, seemed to draw all his attention. If, before, she had been beautiful in an eye-catching sort of way, now she was impossible to look away from. His mind spun, unable to gain any purchase on anything regarding her. It was like staring at a flawless thing and not even knowing how to start picking words to consider praising it.

Her strength was… was…

Kei Zhanfeng looked like he had been poleaxed.

The others all paled as well, caught in the same ‘focus’ he was, with only Ao Meicheng managing to avoid looking utterly gormless, even if she did have to bite her lip and look away.

“Tell Kei Zhanfeng not to do that again or I’ll throw him overboard after breaking his legs,” the grey-eyed demoness remarked levelly.

It took him some seconds, as he tried to work against the really distracting strength of her principle pushing at him, to realise she had actually spoken.

“What did she—?” Shu Feilong asked somewhat reflexively, even though the emphasis likely needed no translation thanks to the unsettling pressure of the Martial Intent that had come with it.

“She said not to probe her with soul sense again,” he translated, even before Shu Feilong had finished speaking, eyeing Kei Zhanfeng with a grimace as he somewhat sanitized her comment.

“…” Kei Zhanfeng, who was sweating hard now, didn’t quite meet his gaze.

The way the blue-grey-eyed demoness stared at him for a moment made him sweat even harder somehow.

-Did she guess somehow that I didn’t relay the threat?

“…”

The old demon laughed and said something which made the three women all chuckle and the tension vanished again, as did the oppressive shadow of her principle.

“What realm?” Shu Feilong asked at last, after their heart rates had recovered somewhat and the boat had started moving again.

“Quasi Immortal,” Kei Zhanfeng said with a grimace. “She might as well be a False Immortal in terms of her actual foundation strength.”

-False immortal? He shuddered involuntarily, as did Ao Meicheng.

False Immortal was an odd realm to call out, not at all common on a Great World like theirs, because with time and resources, much like at Golden Core, it was possible for most people with a decent spirit root to eventually have a chance at becoming an Immortal if you cast away the label of your ‘generation’ and just stuck it out. The main benefit to becoming a False-Immortal on a great world was the avoidance of the tribulation, which was the predominant source of attrition among those without backing or resources if their talent was not good.

False Immortals were usually a thing of lower worlds. They couldn’t advance beyond that realm without abandoning their cultivation entirely and starting over, but the advantage was that their Immortal Foundation was gained by direct bestowal of a powerful ancestor usually, so you didn’t have to undergo a crossing tribulation.

Even if Kei Zhanfeng was being mildly hyperbolic, that was somewhat concerning. In his own sect he doubted there were any Quasi Immortals who would genuinely be worthy of that comparison.

“False Immortal?” Shu Feilong sighed, sounding depressed.

-Perhaps the Shu clan has a few…?

“If so, that was stupid,” he murmured to Kei Zhanfeng. “The last thing we need is to put them more on guard against us than they already are…”

“Says the person who tackled one and got beaten unconscious, wasting our precious opportunity,” Kei Zhanfeng muttered back.

“You got punched pretty hard as well…” he pointed out, choosing to ignore the other jibe.

“There is still the issue of our lack of attunement,” Bai Ruli pointed out.

“True… but we have to work with what we have, hypotheticals are useless,” he muttered, feeling more vindicated by their decision to cooperate.

“And what even is that… principle?” Ao Meicheng mumbled, tangling her sandy hair in her fingers nervously and cutting through their hushed conversation. “I have never felt anything like that… even with my seniors who are Immortals…”

Nodding, he turned his gaze back to the distant wreck. The other two – who were even more terrifying that the blue-grey-eyed demoness – were still visible, talking about something as they moved the bodies of their former captors around it seemed.

“What are they trying to do?” Shu Feilong mused after a few moments.

“At a guess… probably make it look like they didn’t clean out the vessel or kill those other ones,” Kei Zhanfeng mused, shading his eyes and beating him to the obvious response.

“The real question is why they speak the Eastern tongue,” he pointed out instead.

“We are in Yin Eclipse… somewhere…” Kei Zhanfeng retorted, rather stupidly.

“…”

Sighing, he fell silent, not bothering to reply to that.

“Coming alongside!” the dark-haired woman called up, again using Easten, he noted.

-Do they use it specifically? Is it a cultural thing?

The pair had only spoken in the barbarian Easten tongue when occasionally asking them things. All the other conversation had been in their local tongue which was totally opaque.

He supposed they might be able to get somewhere if they searched the Sea of Knowledge of a few of those who spoke it, but in the current circumstances that was not something that would go down well, he was sure.

“You can jump up,” the other demoness with tattoos on her arms and legs said, attracting his attention and pointing to the boat.

The others all turned to look at him expectantly, as if what she had said was not obvious, given she pointed to them the boat and mimed jumping as well.

“We have to jump,” he translated, wishing again that his grasp of the barbarian tongue from the east was much better than it was.

“You have strength again,” she added. “Or do you want to be carried like a cat?”

“…”

The old demon grinned, and immediately he had the suspicion that the one hauling them up there would be him, rather than any of the women.

Taking a breath, he stood and crouched, drawing qi into himself and trying not to wince as his meridians protested. The boat rocked as he leapt, landing on the deck to find… normality.

A quick sweep of those there showed that most of them were weaker than he was… but that didn’t change the alchemy of the overall circumstance because ‘most’ was not ‘all’. Two demons leaning on the rail nearby were both at least as strong as he was, while there was an old female demon with white hair sitting on the far side who was utterly unfathomable.

The others scrambled up after him, standing in silence and taking in the occupants, most of whom were not really that interested in them, it seemed.

The icy beauty and the grey-eyed one both jumped up a moment later and the smaller boat started back towards the wreck.

“Go sit over there, stay quiet, don’t annoy anyone,” the blue-grey-eyed demoness half stated, half commanded, pointing to free spot on the far side of the deck.

He had taken several steps before he realised that he had responded involuntarily, such was the strength of her presence…

-Fates, that’s insidious! he hissed in his mind, noting that Kei Zhanfeng and Shu Feilong were both looking a bit pale suddenly. What attributes even is it?

Going where she pointed, he tried to work that one out. There was wood or life and fire, all of it vaguely attributed to yang, but he could get no further than that without trying to press her directly, which he did not intend to do unless left with no other choice. He was confident in his strength as a Quasi Immortal... but not that confident, he self-examined.

Instead, he sat down with a weary sigh on a crate and went back to taking in the rest of the boat’s occupants, a fair number of which were quite similar in general attire to his previous captors… just a lot more ragtag. The rest though…

“There are clearly three groups here,” he observed after a moment as the others found comfortable spots.

The ‘crew’ were like their captors… then there was a group with tattoos, mostly female, focused around the white-haired old demon woman. The final pair sat near them, a youth who looked naggingly familiar who was staring at them with a frown… and a younger demoness wearing a gown similar to the icy beauty’s, just not torn and muddy.

“…”

Near him, Bai Ruli was starting at that pair as well, her brow furrowed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“She looks familiar for some reason,” Bai Ruli murmured softly. “But I can’t place why…”

“Maybe you saw her in captivity?” Kei Zhanfeng suggested. “A worrying number of those here are dressed like them…”

“Maybe…” Bai Ruli muttered. “Meicheng, what do you think?”

Meicheng shrugged and leant back against the edge of the vessel.

“No idea… Let’s just focus on recovering our strength and seeing what we can do.”

The pair were talking to the icy beauty now, he noted, their discussion surprisingly heated and in hushed tones.

“Here, you drink…” he flinched, realising that one of the tattooed group had come over, a muscular demon with quite a few red and black symbols tattooed across his bare chest and several very recent looking scars.

“I am Teshek,” the demon said simply, in Easten again.

Warily, he took the jar, and swept it with his soul sense. Their captors before had fed them various things he was sure and the chance that this lot were playing a game like that was not… impossible.

“It just water,” the demon chuckled, patting him on the shoulder.

“Shi Tengfei,” he introduced himself warily.

The demon nodded politely, then continued speaking. “You accept water, this act of greeting, meeting and hospitality. Give gift, give promise, you understand?”

“…”

The other four all looked to him, making him want to cry inside.

“Greeting?” he asked carefully, because the way the words had been structured was… confusing based on the knowledge of the language he had, which came entirely from spending too much time in certain establishments in Green Dragon City’s harbour quarter.

“Hospitality, you know?” the demon frowned, now glancing at the rest of his group.

It took him a moment before he realised what they were talking about – the idea of sharing food and a meal and bringing gifts was quite traditional back home. Most clans knew each other so the rituals were fairly muted except for big ceremonies… to find that this lot had something similar…

“Well?” Ao Meicheng asked.

“It’s related to hospitality… I think?” he said at last. “If we drink water and eat food we are treated like a guest?”

“We eat, drink, like guest?” he asked.

“Yes, like guest, polite, equal,” Teshek reiterated.

“For your group… or everyone?” he pressed.

“…”

“No difference,” Teshek said after a moment, clearly simplifying what he was saying for his benefit now.

-Well, we have nothing to lose, he thought with resignation.

“Okay,” he nodded, lifting the jar and taking a drink.

Their captors before had only fed them lukewarm muddy water, which they mostly hadn’t drunk, and then drugged compounds which they had been forced to drink. The offered water, on the other hand, was cool and refreshing, especially given there was little breeze and the humidity and the glare of the sun was quite fierce.

Swallowing several gulps down, he sighed and passed it along to Bai Ruli.

While he was savouring the last mouthful, she passed it on to Meicheng, then his junior brother, who both drank deep gulps before Kei Zhanfeng finally passed the jar back to Teshek after his turn.

“You keep,” Teshek said with an eye roll. “We bring food later, when others return.”

“He said there will be food later,” he repeated for the others, before anyone had had an opportunity to ask.

Exhaling, Feilong leant back against the edge rail of the boat and looked around.

“I… just don’t get this…” Feilong said at last.

“Really?” he muttered, half turning to look at his junior brother.

“Are we captives or are we not?” Feilong asked, looking around.

“Um…”

He turned to find the younger-looking demon who had been looking at him earlier had come over.

“Clothes, for you,” he handed them both a pile of garments. “For all of you.”

“…”

He stared at the youth, who had short hair and a few tattoos painted across his face and shoulders, trying to work out what it was that was ‘familiar’, but drew a blank in the end. Perhaps it was because the physical resemblance to them was somewhat uncanny.

“Thank you,” he replied in kind, accepting the stack of clothes.

“If you have any issue, just ask us,” the youth added after a moment, then retreated awkwardly.

“Odd…” Shu Feilong muttered, staring after him. “Very, very odd.”

Nodding in agreement, he distracted himself from those circling thoughts by sorting through them, then passed the two robes over to Bai Ruli and Ao Meicheng. Bai Ruli took them without comment and held one up then just sighed. Both of them had been given clothes already; however, the single layer of cloth was scandalously sheer, such that you would not wear it in your own bedroom if unmarried, he suspected.

Putting on one of the tunics, he was struck, suddenly, by the realisation that it was great… just to wear clothes again. In a small way it was quite pathetic, he knew, but after all the misery of the last few weeks, it felt like a tiny, if profound step back towards some kind of civilization.

~ Juni – Back on the river… ~

By the time Naakos and Lashaan came back they had moved all the bodies down and arranged them conveniently to make it appear that most had drowned or suffered death by various boat-related accidents. With the help of the pair of Ur’Inan it was fairly easy to capture a few of the crabs and other things capable of scuttling in and leave them to hopefully do their work, after which they all made their way back to the main vessel.

The divinations showed pretty much what she had expected, that Han Shu was vaguely north-east of them, but veering more east and that following the river was the most ‘auspicious’ route towards their potential destination. Somewhat oddly, the reading she did on a whim regarding Feiwu Shen’s ‘Seniors’ told her that that was already auspiciously aligning… The question regarding Qing Yao’s talisman gave her similar readings as well though, so after doing enough to be sure it was not just a ‘weird result’, she had accepted that they just were what they were for now.

“How are they settling in on the boat?” she asked Naakos as they rowed back.

“They tried to scope everyone out,” Naakos chuckled. “Chunhua threatened to throw them overboard and break their legs if they did it again.”

“That’s… uncharacteristically blunt,” Ling chuckled.

“Deserving though,” Lashaan snickered. “Their eyes were all over the place. You would think they had never seen breasts before.”

“Debatable,” she muttered. “Depends how old they really are.”

“Most are not older than she is,” Naakos replied.

“You… know how old they are?” she asked, surprised at that, even though she supposed she shouldn’t be.

She was fairly sure Naakos was actually Sixth Advancement, even if he had never acknowledged his realm openly and nobody had commented on it. He had never even really shown off his strength that she could recall, even when pushed in Udrasa.

“Old eyes have many tricks!” the old Ur’Inan chuckled, stroking his beard.

“Two are older than you, the one who was unconscious… by a few years and the auburn-haired girl is nearly as old as Teshek, who will see his 40th season.”

“Aren’t the seasons here stupidly long…” Ling pointed out.

“…”

Naakos stared at her like she was a bug that had just spoken back for a moment. Lashaan, however, burst out laughing to the point of tears.

“In that case she is twice your age,” he pointed at her.

“That’s old for a…” she was about to say, ‘Old for non-Immortal cultivator’, but then stopped because they had just passed out of the ward from the vessel.

“How would you rate their strengths?” she asked Naakos.

“The one who poked Chunhua is Sixth Advancement; the rest are all similar to Yao and Manshu,” Naakos mused. “None would give any of you issues, I suspect, based on what I have seen.”

“Unattuned and without storage rings or bound treasures, probably not,” she agreed as they pulled up alongside.

“Coming alongside!” she called up, just to remind those waiting of their presence.

“Okay!” the crewman on the rail above acknowledged, tossing a rope down.

She caught it and passed it to Lashaan, who tied it to the side of the boat. Once they were secure, she crouched slightly and leapt up to land on the edge and take in the deck.

Everything was mostly as she had left it, she was pleased to see.

Kai Manshu was lying off to one side, a cloth over his face, clearly trying to meditate off the worst of the artefact. Teff and Ladrak were sitting in the shade at the rear drinking some kind of alcohol, not that she could blame them.

The others were sitting about doing various tasks. Avarz and a very pleased looking Omurz and were sorting through the crates. Feiwu Shen and Wei Chu were talking quietly and sorting through some food… which reminded her.

“Don’t forget your crab!” Naakos called up, making her roll her eyes.

A moment later a dead crab about the size of her torso arced through the air and landed on the deck with a thud, making those nearby turn. She had put four live ones in the boat but this one had made the cardinal mistake of trying to spit space-distorting bubbles in her face and had been designated as ‘lunch’ for its crime.

Stopping its spinning with her foot, she skidded it along the deck, towards Qing Yao who stuck out a hand and snagged a leg, stopping it.

“Everything is sorted, Hunter Junee?” Uarz asked walking over.

“Yep, there should be no immediate problems,” she nodded. “Though under no circumstances are we stopping at Ulquan or Udrasa now.”

Uarz did glance at the distant boat, but just nodded and didn’t press further, which made a nice change.

“What of them?” he pointed to the five instead.

“Prisoners, destined for Ulmaz for some… purpose known only to that Quavez, I think,” she replied. “They are free.”

“More bodies to help row,” Uarz shrugged. “And a further reason to avoid Ulquan?”

“Maybe,” she agreed, rolling her eyes. “And yes.”

Uarz stared at her for a long moment then nodded again, turning back to look at the activity as the crew pulled up the anchor.

“What does worry me is that we may have been spotted from the bank. We swept with our perception but that is not a sure thing,” Uarz mused. “Kreva thought she saw something and we are not that far from the last village.”

“It is what it is,” she remarked. “We cannot control everything, simply expect the worst.”

-Which means we should probably try to pass by Ulquan at night, she added inwardly. Or take some steps to disguise the vessel… I guess I’ll have to leave that in Ling’s hands; maybe her isolation array will work?

“How long do you think it will take us to get to Udrasa and Ulquan?” she asked, mulling that idea over.

“Were it before? Early evening,” Uarz said with a sigh. “However, with the channels fouled up, it might take twice that. It is hard to believe it has changed so much.”

Turning in a half circle, she surveyed the meandering channels, glittering to their left and right like great serpents and mirrored his sigh.

“Well, we can only do our best,” she said, trying to sound encouraging. “We will prepare that crab and some other things. A good meal will help everyone, I think.”

“What if those five cause problems…?” Uarz nodded towards the five rescued.

“Have they caused problems?” she asked.

“They were somewhat free with their perception,” Uarz grunted. “I suppose they want to be sure that they are not being held by more pirates.”

“Probably,” she agreed, suspecting it was somewhat more than that and that the cultivators were being a bit twitchy and still thinking about escaping. “I’ll talk to them.”

“Do,” Uarz nodded his voice dropping slightly. “Quavez was someone important and all of them have good strength… There is a lot of interest in captives like that at the moment.”

She gave him a bit of side eye but he said nothing further.

“I’ll let you get the vessel moving them,” she said, giving him a pat on the shoulder by way of taking her leave. “Omurz seems to be focused on sorting out what we salvaged so hopefully that will go some way to helping your situation.”

“Ha… yes…” Uarz agreed with a wry shake of his own head.

Shaking her head, she walked back down the vessel to Qing Yao and the others.

“RIGHT LET’S GET ROWING! COUNT OUT A RHYTHM OR URLUZ WILL COUNT IT OUT ON YOUR HEADS! WE DON’T HAVE OARS TO BREAK!” Uarz yelled behind her.

His holler made the rowers groan but they scrambled back down to the oars and started to poke each other as ‘Urluz’, the drummer, laughed and walked back up the middle of the deck from where he had been checking the bodge on the shattered mast.

On their side of the boat, Ling was already carving open the crab, draining the blood into a clay bowl and looking for the core. Chunhua had gone to the front again, she noted, along with Eruuna, while the others were sorting through various herbs to go with the crab. In normal circumstances you would need to cook the crab, but with Ling all she needed to do was sit there and pass fire qi through the shell while they kept it off the deck, and make a stew inside the crab itself.

That whole process appeared well in hand, so she left them to it, instead crossing the deck to where the five newly rescued cultivators were watching everything that was going on very carefully… while simultaneously trying not to look like they were doing so.

“Ah, she is coming over…” Shu Feilong muttered, noticing her approach.

“You have clothes, and water,” she said by way of greeting.

“We… do. Thank you,” Shi Tengfei answered.

“In that case, I feel we got off on slightly the wrong foot before,” she said sitting down on a handy crate.

“…”

Shi Tengfei eyed her warily the others just looked confused, which made her sigh inside.

“I am Junee,” she said, pointing at herself by way of introduction. “My companions are Lynn and Khunua.”

Shi Tengfei followed her pointing, nodding, then looked back to her somewhat expectantly.

“So, basically, we need to talk a bit more clearly about… your circumstances,” she explained.

“We… do?” he asked after a moment in which he was presumably sorting out what she had said.

“We do,” she confirmed. “We are not interested in you as prisoners, this I swear to you upon the golden flowers of fortune.”

A golden flower shimmered in the air before her and all five of their mouths dropped open.

“This is a binding oath, sworn by an ancient ancestor of this land, one who walked to the very pinnacle,” she said. “You understand?”

“A… Heavenly… Oath?” Shi Tengfei asked at last, clearly having to struggle to recall the words.

“Yes,” she replied after a moment’s consideration.

“She swore, but what about the others?” Kei Zhanfeng hissed.

Shi Tengfei scowled slightly then turned back to her. “My friend say you swear, but what of others?”

“I am the boss here,” she grinned, pointing at herself.

In a technical sense, that was true… At this point, she was the de facto leader of most of this mess.

“In any case, you need to keep a low profile.”

“…”

They stared at her as she pondered how to go about convincing them not to do anything stupid before deciding to just go with a version of circumstances they would find narratively compelling if nothing else.

{Bright Heart Shifting Steps}

For good measure, she triggered her divination art quietly. Her main reason to use it, beyond sounding them out, was to help her gain further understanding of her principle, though at this point it was somewhat transcending that meagre use to become something akin to an actual cultivation scripture in its own right.

“Those who owned that boat will want to recover you. To them you are valuable, as I am sure you are aware.”

“And we are not… worth to you?” Shi Tengfei asked.

“Not as slaves or prisoners,” she said simply.

“But you are interested in us,” he repeated.

“You are the most interesting thing on that boat. I would be an idiot if I was not,” she pointed out. “And you are not our prisoners, as I said before.”

He stared at her for long enough that she wondered if she needed to use even simpler words, before he nodded. The others were all staring at Shi Tengfei expectantly as well.

“She said that we are the most interesting thing on that boat,” Shi Tengfei said at last. “Or something like it. And that we are not their prisoners.”

“Right…” Kei Zhanfeng muttered, clearly not convinced.

“Your compatriots do not believe me,” she said after a moment, making Shi Tengfei flinch slightly.

“Uh…”

“I do not have to speak your language to read people,” she pointed out with a half-smile. “You talk and talk and look wary.”

-Really this would be so much easier if I could just tell them right now, she sighed inwardly, but it is what it is.

“…”

Shi Tengfei nodded, looking apprehensive.

“As far as I and those on this boat are concerned, we found a wreck of a ship belonging to some pirates and rescued a few unfortunate people,” she added. “I do not want to have to re-think that idea, okay?”

She smiled but she could almost see the image of Izvar dying replaying in their eyes, which was about what she expected.

“You have also accepted water, clothes from us, you are guests,” she added, smiling again with encouragement.

“She says we are guests,” Shi Tengfei added for the others, who were still watching in silence now.

“I hope we have an understanding?” she murmured, not looking at Kei Zhanfeng.

“I… think we do,” Shi Tengfei replied with a worried smile.

-Well, that’s probably good enough for now, she mused, looking over them.

‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ had not given her any hints towards the inauspicious from them either, which was about as much as she could hope for.

Looking over them again, she suddenly noticed Kei Zhanfeng’s nose, which was still bleeding. Shaking her head, she realised she had nearly forgotten about that… again.

“I will fix his nose, tell him not to do anything stupid,” she said.

“What is she—? Kei Zhanfeng asked, shifting back slightly.

“She says she will fix your nose,” Shi Tengfei said.

Reaching over, she put her hands on his cheeks and sent a faint pulse of her Martial Intent into his body. There was a lot of resistance, which she expected, but she had done the damage, so it was easy enough to disperse the lingering qi. Within a few moments the thin trickle of blood stopped and Kei Zhanfeng’s natural recovery took over.

“Done,” she declared after a few more seconds, sitting back.

Kei Zhanfeng didn’t actually thank her, but did nod, even as he massaged his own face again and used his soul sense to check she hadn’t done anything else.

-That one will take a while, she thought with a sigh.

“Anyway, I have some other matters to deal with,” she said standing up. “There will be some food soon, which you should eat. You need to recover your strength.”

“…”

Shi Tenfei stared at her for a moment, then nodded again.

-At least the others are so confused that they are no longer talking away behind my back, she thought wryly.

Leaving them to their pondering, she made her way back over to Qing Yao and the others.

“How are you holding up?” she asked Qing Yao.

“Better. The headache is still brutal, but it seems Manshu has it worse,” Qing Yao replied with a weak smile. “However, we might have... I hesitate to call it an issue, but…”

Qing Yao trailed off and studiously didn’t look at the five across the other side of the boat.

“What is the problem?” she asked sitting down.

“Um… you know the way we were talking about… seniors?” Feiwu Shen muttered.

“…”

Unbidden, her earlier divinations shifted back into her mind’s eye and she was struck with the bizarre feeling that their circumstances might be genuinely messing with her.

“You know one of them?” she asked him a bit dully.

“Four of the five…” Wei Chu replied softly.

“…”

“Ao Meicheng and Bai Ruli are—”

She cut Wei Chu off with a hand.

“Soul sense is not suppressed,” she reminded her.

“…”

Wei Chu sighed, understanding what she was worried about, and Feiwu Shen nodded.

-Really, I should see about teaching them sign language, because this is getting annoying, she thought.

“This will be ready soon,” Ling interjected.

Shifting around she considered the upturned crab, wedged on several blocks to keep it off the deck. The shell was smoking faintly but enduring the steady stream of fire qi that Ling was infusing into it. To make it somewhat more interesting a few other odds and ends – some peppery spirit vegetation leaves, a roll of persis bark that was miraculously still with them, some snake meat and a bunch of diced rhizomes of edible reeds had all been added to what was basically crab hotpot.

Scooping some of it up in a cup, she tasted a bit and sighed. Even with the spices, there was still a faint hint of river mud – there were limits to all marvels after all.

“What? I have to do my best with what I can…” Ling grumbled, stirring it some more.

“It’s fine,” she chuckled. “At least you care what it tastes like, unlike… Arai...”

She trailed off, suddenly realising that she had not thought about Arai and Sana in quite some time. Unbidden, she sighed, putting her chin on her hands and suddenly feeling a bit drained and also… sad.

Ling stared at her then at the crab hotpot and sighed as well.

“Something wrong with the soup?” Qing Yao asked, clearly having not caught all of what she said.

“…”

“No,” she shook her head. “Just been a long day.”

Qing Yao sighed herself and nodded glumly. “That it has.”

~ Shi Tengfei – New Boat, New Circumstances ~

“Is that even… edible?” Bai Ruli muttered from nearby as he watched the final touches to the ‘soup’.

“More to the point, what even is that principle?” asked Shu Feilong, somewhat rhetorically he was sure, because certainly none of them had any idea, and despite all having Principles of their own.

“Just another reminder of how vast the world is,” he muttered.

“…”

The others all looked at him, but nobody had the heart to refute or add to his statement, mainly because it was true. They had randomly been rescued by a group of women, mostly younger than they were, it appeared, who could walk into any sect he knew and immediately be made full disciples of some status. All of them were terrifying in their own way as well.

The blonde-haired one cooking the crab was called something like Lynn, which seemed rather close to Lin in his head. Her principle was so Yang that he was certain she had to have some inborn physique related to it, which outside this place would immediately put her into the upper echelons of the younger generation in his sect and probably most others.

The brown-haired one who had so easily killed their captors had introduced herself as Junee. What her principle actually was he was even less clear, except that it was hypnotic and seemed to relate to most of the elements in some way as well as containing a strange devouring strength. It also held some relationship to ‘Good Fortune’ which was perhaps even more terrifying than the Yang strength of Lynn in its own way.

The third, dark-haired, blue-grey-eyed woman, Khunua, also had a principle relating to all five elements and hints of a devouring strength, yet there was also a sense of vitality in there that was nearly as unsettling as the hints of ‘Good Fortune’ in Junee’s.

Still, all of that was sort of manageable. He had, however, found that his bottom line was seeing a ‘Pure Yang’ and a ‘Good Fortune’ principle used for… cooking soup.

“You expect this in alchemy…” Shu Feilong muttered. “But three women with Yang principles of this quality in one place is—”

“—Odd,” Zhanfeng interjected.

“I was going to go with unusual,” Shu Feilong shrugged, still watching Lynn stir it while controlling the steady stream of Yang-rich fire qi, presumably to stop it melting the shell of the crab.

“Isn’t the Fire Orchid Pavilion famed also for its fire-based inheritance?” he asked Ao Meicheng who had just rolled her eyes.

“Yes, but our teachings don’t make things like that,” Bai Ruli was the one who answered. “This is closer to earth-fire—”

“It’s cooked!” Lynn declared, pushing a bit of her principle into her shout to get the attention of those all over the ship.

Again, he was struck by the casual efficacy of her principle. By turns it was forceful, alluring, and now oddly compelling. Not in the sense that it forced you to do something, though it did, but in that having been touched by it, it was very hard not to be drawn towards whatever she was doing. In this case, the idea of food and lunch, but before he had seen how she used it more directly…

Giving himself a shake, he looked around and found that the tattooed demons were happily crowding over to get some. Junee had pulled some stone bowls out of a sack and was passing them out, along with some spoons and chopstick-like implements.

“Spoons?” Shu Feilong muttered.

“It is soup,” he pointed out.

-You are surprised that the people with a boat of this calibre have spoons? the small voice in his head sounded somewhere between amused and disgusted.

-It’s been a long day… he replied and then froze.

-Don’t reply to the voices in your head… bad idea… he mumbled inwardly.

“Here,” he realised that the younger demon who had spoken earlier had actually brought them soup.

“Ah… thank you,” he replied in Easten, accepting the bowl and cutlery.

Looking around, everyone else was tucking in, with the crew being passed bowls and exclaiming happily in their own language as they drank it down.

He was about to carefully sweep it with his soul sense, then sighed because Kei Zhanfeng had done so quite openly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lynn just shake her head, looking somewhat amused.

Grimacing, he swept his own bowl, much more covertly and then swept it again… slightly confused. On the face of it, the soup was very normal. Quite qi rich, certainly, and with a curious harmony to the way its ingredients seemed to interact, but the majority of the yang energy was nowhere to be found, merely present as traces in some of the crab meat.

In a way, that was a relief, because he was fairly sure that the strength of yang qi that Lynn had been using was close to the level of a legitimate poison.

“These bowls?” Kei Zhanfeng’s curious exclamation made him look over.

“What about them?” he asked, looking at his own.

It was made of some kind of blue-grey stone or ceramic and decorated with various scenes of swirling flowers and the occasional wild animal. All that stood out was that it didn’t feel particularly heavy, or dense, for a stone bowl.

“They are pretty, certainly?” Bai Ruli mused.

“No… not that, these bowls are made of…” Kei Zhanfeng continued to frown, before turning to him properly.

“Ask them where they got these?”

“…”

“Uh… my friend Kei here wants to know where the bowls came from?” he asked the youth who had brought the soup and who was now sitting nearby, eating his own portion with some relish.

“Not sure,” the youth replied apologetically after swallowing down his mouthful, looking to the others.

“Ah…. Excellent soup,” the older demon who had rowed the boat put his empty bowl down with a deep sigh and wiped his mouth. “Very nourishing, big impression!”

Lynn rolled her eyes and smiled, looking pleased and said something in their local tongue, which made the demon hold out his bowl which was promptly refilled.

“They came from a ruin,” Lynn added, looking over at him. “They are handy because they don’t break.”

“Aye,” the old demon agreed.

“A ruin?” he asked, looking at it again.

“You not see?” the old demon replied. “Even here, you chuck net in river get something interesting maybe. Out on plains, some places throw rock, be lucky not to hit ancient thing. Ruined places, ancient shrines, old cities long abandoned.”

“I… see,” he nodded, barely managing to follow along with that.

“What did he—?”

“They came from a ruin,” he answered, cutting Kei Zhanfeng off mid question. “Apparently they are quite common out on the plains and these sorts of things get picked up regularly.”

“You should eat,” the old demon added, looking at his soup. “Even if it’s just a little, need to keep strength up.”

“…”

He opened his mouth, about to say that they ‘didn’t need to eat’, then caught himself, because, looking around, everyone was eating, even those technically stronger than he was.

-Is there something we are missing? a part of him wondered.

“Ib’s spbyce…”

The mumbled response came from Ao Meicheng, he realised, who had taken a spoonful and was now waving her hand looking for something to drink.

“…”

Bai Ruli shook her head, passing the jar of water to Ao Meicheng, who gulped down some of it and sighed… then stared at the soup with suddenly widening eyes.

“W-what the fates?!”

His stomach sank at her exclamation.

“What is it?” Bai Ruli asked, concerned.

“It’s… it’s—” Ao Meicheng opened and shut her mouth a few times, then suddenly snatched up the bowl and hurriedly gulped all of it down, apparently uncaring now for how spicy it was

“Hey! Be careful!” Bai Ruli hissed, trying to slow her down.

“What is wrong?” he asked, shifting over towards her.

Ao Meicheng, however, just waved them away and finished the liquid from the bowl in nearly one go, closing her eyes and shuddering—

A faint haze of fire qi shifted visibly around her, making the already humid air briefly turn arid…

“Hey! Don’t set boat on fire,” the old demon, who was still watching, observed with a barked laugh.

“This… is spirit food?” Bai Ruli said dully, holding up her bowl, having just swept it again with her soul sense.

As one, they turned to look at their own bowls. Gingerly, he took a spoonful and tasted it.

It was indeed spicy, with a lingering heat and pepper that mostly hid the fact that the water tasted faintly of… mud. Carefully chewing on a bit of the crab meat, he got the second shock: it was a seven-star ranked – that was a Dao Seeking spirit beast. Qi flowed into his body from it, replenishing his stamina a little bit, even as the yang strength gently washed into his dantian, soothing a bit of the torture his meridians had endured from being starved of qi.

Exhaling, he sat back and saw the others also looking a bit shocked.

“This… spirit food is actually rather good?” Shu Feilong muttered. “It’s not up to my family’s standard, but you could serve it in the sect and it would be acceptable…”

That was a bit of an understatement really. Most sect disciples would not see spirit food every day; the ingredients were just too much of a pain to get and the expense of hiring a chef was such that only important people would consume it. Even as a full disciple he only ate it once a week.

-Then again, I am not from the Shu clan and don’t have my own household within the sect… he reminded himself.

Unbidden, he found that Lynn was staring at them again.

“Uh… she can probably read the intent of your words even though she doesn’t speak the language,” he reminded his junior brother.

Given the strength of her principle he was pretty sure that this lot could do most of the things a skilled cultivator could with it. He had no idea about the age of any of this group either. They appeared to be in their twenties with the exception of the old demons, but as any cultivator knew, appearance counted for precious little beyond Nascent Soul when trying to determine actual age.

“…”

Shu Feilong winced, noticing her look and bowed slightly in apology. Probably she wouldn’t understand the gesture but…

“Seconds?” the other young woman who had helped serve it, who Ruli had thought was somewhat familiar, cut through the awkward moment with a radiant smile, holding out a larger bowl of the stew with more bits of crab in it.

Kei Zhanfeng nearly snatched it away from her, scooped a full bowl out of it before anyone else could react and started to eat with gusto.

Shaking his head, he helped himself as well.

“What?” Zhanfeng mumbled through a mouthful of crab, catching Ao Meicheng’s supercilious look as well as his own head shake.

“Nothing,” he replied, trying to look as neutral as possible.

-They must think we are shameless, a part of him muttered.

“Odd…” Ao Meicheng murmured, looking at her second bowl.

“What?” Bai Ruli asked, sounding more concerned again. “Is there a problem…?”

“What? Ah, No…” Ao Meicheng frowned, still staring at her second helping “It’s just… odd. Do you notice how our qi is recovering?”

“…”

“It’s spirit food,” Zhanfeng pointed out, “That’s what it does.”

“Exactly,” Meicheng replied. “Except our recovery has increased. Mine has… I am no longer as repressed by the world, but my recovery rate with my law is still atrocious, mostly because of this landscape, I think. With this, however, I actually feel… genuinely restored somehow…”

Taking another mouthful, he chewed it slowly and found that she was right. He had not done much with his law, mostly because forcing his recovery seemed like a fairly bad idea given how tormented his meridians were. The soup, however, was steadily diffusing its qi into his body and refilling his dantian all of its own accord, not to mention slowly helping to heal the myriad number of little injuries he had sustained in the previous weeks.

“Our attunement has somehow improved?” Ruli mused, involuntarily touching her wrist.

“Because of our captivity?” Shu Feilong asked with a slight frown.

“It can only be that, can’t it?” Meicheng pointed out. “Most of our qi, even refined qi, was dispersed by those bands. I was even starting to suffer meridian stress and yet now that my qi is recovering it’s bounced back to levels close to what might have been expected outside?”

“…”

Kei Zhanfeng was also looking pensive now. “That would certainly explain a lot of things.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not an easy question to ask,” he pointed out. “This group seem to suspect a few things, but they don’t know everything, I would imagine.”

“You are suggesting it might be better not to be seen too widely as interlopers?” Meicheng mused, scooping a third bowl of soup out of their group portion.

“Looking at how we were treated as captives before, I think that’s an eminently smart idea,” he mused.

“Except, we don’t speak the language and have no easy means to make a jade slip or anything like it,” Kei Zhanfeng sighed.

“Which makes it all the more important that we not piss off this more reasonable group,” he added.

“…”

The rest of them ate on in silence after that, which was something of a mercy, because throughout that conversation a few of their captors had been looking over at them.

-We got too used to being in circumstances where soul sense is restricted, he thought glumly, looking around again.

“Do you want to be useful?” he blinked as he realised that Lynn had appeared beside him.

“U-useful?” he asked, looking around at the others who were equally surprised by her quiet approach, even Kei Zhanfeng.

She just ‘looked’ at him for a moment, then passed him a stick and line. “You know how to fish?”

“Yes…?” he replied without really thinking about it.

…

That answer, as it turned out was a fateful one, because the rest of his afternoon was thus spent at the back of the vessel with a basket and a fishing rod, catching dinner. In a way, it was oddly cathartic watching the flooded landscape flow by; it certainly gave him time to settle his thoughts and properly recuperate for a while. It had the added benefit of having him not be constantly forced to be the go-between to the others and the crew.

Kei Zhanfeng sat, recovering himself for the most part. Ao Meicheng and Bai Ruli eventually got dragged into helping the other women with preparing herbs or something. Shu Feilong eventually came to join him, after sitting around with Kei Zhanfeng for a while.

“I wonder what caused the flood?” Shu Feilong asked at last, as another ruined village passed by in the middle distance, its fields now shallow ponds between the reed-beds.

He stirred himself from watching the swirling waters and the lines thrown out behind them, to look over at Shu Feilong.

“It seemed related to whatever that storm and the tribulation was…” he replied, not knowing himself really, either.

“Yes, but it’s odd. A tribulation like that…” Shu Feilong sighed.

“You say that, but no answer will come,” he pointed out. “And if it does, the odds of us surviving them based on the scale of what occurred are nearly nil. Do you think we can resist some being that spawned what appeared to be a four layer tribulation and seems to have ruined hundreds of square miles of this landscape?”

Shu Feilong just sighed, nodding his head.

“Sorry,” he added, realising he had sounded a bit short there. “It’s been a strange day.”

“…”

They sat, watching the river swirl by to either side of the boat in silence for quite some time after that. Devoid of the horror of captivity and with the knowledge that, for a while at least, such a gloomy fate was averted, watching the world go by as you waited for the line to fill up was a very easy way to pass time and recover yourself.

His reverie was eventually jarred by a large dragonfly that hummed across the water, its wings moving fast enough to leave a wake behind it.

“It would really suck to have to try and walk out through those reed beds,” Shu Feilong observed, watching the critter, which was easily a metre long, dart from side to side as it vanished over the swaying reed tops.

“Yeah…” he agreed, checking the various floats on the line again to see if any had sunk.

It was not hard to imagine their miserable fate had they tried to swim away from the wreck, or run over the water, assuming they could have gotten free.

In the few hours they had been sitting here, he had already seen one large predatory shadow in the water that had taken half a line of fish in the blink of an eye and then followed the boat for almost 30 minutes. He had tried to strike at it a few times with soul sense and been thoroughly rebuffed as well, which meant, rather concerningly, that it was likely stronger than he was.

“You know,” Shu Feilong sighed, “while this is rather disconcertingly idyllic—”

“—Large dragonflies and carnivorous fish aside,” he interjected.

“…”

Shu Feilong shot him a sour look then continued smoothly: “—I just can’t stop wondering what they even hoped to achieve with this stupid trial.”

“…”

Watching the shimmering water and the floats bobbing, he just nodded. That was a thought that had occurred to him a few times already, not that any real answer presented itself.

If you compared this place to the ‘Dragon Pillars’ with their various tombs and challenges that the ‘worthy’ could attempt to untangle, there… was no comparison really. This place was, it appeared, a separate world and one with its own power structures.

“The idea of sending only juniors in here was laughable,” Shu Feilong complained.

“You think seniors would help?” he grimaced, recalling some of those figures who had looked on at the fights they had been forced to partake in during their captivity – when they had been dragged out to fight the strange serpents and a spider-like creature.

It was Shu Feilong’s turn to sigh there, as he had been in the same fight. Ao Meicheng and Bai Ruli didn’t talk about what they or the other female prisoners had endured, but probably it had been humiliating at the very least.

“By the way…” changing tack, he turned to look back down the vessel for a moment, then back at the water, “do you think that youth who was helping us earlier is… kind of familiar?”

Shu Feilong glanced back as well, then shook his head. “Maybe?”

That was bugging him something horrid. He was certain there was something oddly familiar about him… and yet nothing stood out when he tried to think back to their recent events.

“Bai Ruli thought the same… but in the end she just gave up and there was no opportunity to ask,” Shu Feilong added.

“…”

They both stared out at the river in silence again, watching the reeds and the water shimmer in the afternoon sun.

“It’s strange,” Shu Feilong finally spoke again after a very long pause. “We got… rescued… and yet this just feels unreal…”

“It does,” he agreed, noting that another of the floats had bobbed a few times.

“I feel like there are so many different things… I want to ask or question and yet…” Shu Feilong trailed off again.

“And yet every time I just think that we could end up captured again… if that happened…”

-If that happened again…?

That thought had been scuttling around in the back of his mind, but he was very glad it wasn’t getting any particular purchase.

-Would we be so lucky a second time…?

There was a part of him that, like Shu Feilong, found this almost too good to be true. That thought this was a dark trick, an elaborate stratagem to really break them. That they were still in the… hold of the boat, caught in that horrific lantern.

“What even happened to that lantern?”

“It got destroyed,” Shu Feilong said, making him realise he had asked that out loud, “before they came down to us.”

“…”

“That makes sense,” he agreed. “I can’t see them not using it.”

“They dumped some of the same blood that she used to free us from the chains onto it,” Shu Feilong shuddered. “At least that is what Meicheng said.”

“The same blood that did nothing to Lynn?”

“The same,” Shu Feilong nodded glumly.

That had been when they were still down below, but whatever had transpired had had such an effect on Bai Ruli and Ao Meicheng that they refused to talk about it at all. Ao Meicheng’s only comment about it since they got on the boat had been to again cut down Kei Zhanfeng’s suggestion that they make a break for it when they recovered.

“Hey... did you see that?” Shu Feilong was now staring at the reed bed across from them, he realised.

“See what?” he asked, surveying it carefully and seeing nothing.

“I thought I saw some movement in it… a reflection or something,” Shu Feilong murmured.

“Could just be the water, or some kind of spirit herb? Or an animal?” he guessed, sweeping again.

“Maybe,” Shu Feilong sighed. “Seemed larger though. It was only for a moment but the reeds were definitely moving as well.”

Frowning, he scanned the reeds again but saw nothing.

They watched carefully for a while until finally, off to their left a large lizard-like thing slipped out of the reeds and into the water and swam off lazily.

“Guess it was that,” Shu Feilong mused, watching it twist and turn in the current.

“Help me pull these up,” he interjected, pointing to the fishing lines.

“Oh, yeah…” Shu Feilong grimaced and started to pull in the line next to him.

That decision was quickly vindicated as the lizard turned in the water a few times and then started to swim after the vessel. Thankfully they got all of the lines in, bringing the catch of fish up to 34 in total.

“Not bad, not bad,” he glanced up from unhooking the last of them to find Lynn had come over and was inspecting what was swimming in the crate.

“This will certainly do for dinner,” she enthused, picking a middling sized one up easily and inspecting it.

“There would have been more, but some lizards took them,” he added apologetically.

“It’s fine, this kind of thing is to be expected,” Lynn chuckled, looking at both of them. “So, do you know much about preparing them?”

“…”

…

Landed with the markedly less enjoyable job of killing and preparing the fish for dinner, the rest of the afternoon moved… rather slower and in a somewhat messier fashion. The fish didn’t need to be skinned, but they did need to be filleted and their cores extracted. That the fish had cores was a bit of a surprise. That they were a total pain to extricate was not. Even with the loan of a knife and some convenient advice from Lashaan, one of the female demons, by the time he had a pile of cores and a pile of filleted fish both of them were covered in shed scales and viscera.

“How can some of these actually be Soul Foundation?” Shu Feilong asked at last, sorting through the cores as they surveyed the final result of their efforts.

Looking at the two that Shu Feilong was holding, he could only shrug.

“Ah, these are the cores?” Junee, who had come over, nearly made him jump as she proved herself to be just as adept at appearing silently as Lynn was.

Picking up a handful, she considered them with a pensive expression before nodding.

“Yes, most of them are at least… Golden Core,” he supplied. “I was somewhat—”

“Gold Core?” she repeated back to him, frowning.

“Ahh,” he realised in that moment that she might not actually know what a ‘Golden Core’ was.

“Another name for these, of a certain rank,” he clarified, grasping for other names for them in ‘Easten’ yet finding none.

Junee just nodded, however, and picked another one up – one of the Soul Foundation cores that Shu Feilong had noted earlier. “And even some reasonably pure Fourth Advancement ones… not bad, not bad at all.”

-Fourth Advancement? Is that what they call Soul Foundation?

He filed that away as really useful information if they were going to try to blend in a bit. Considering the pile of cores in that light, he supposed most of the fish caught were Second or Third Advancement.

Junee, for her part, flicked back through the cores a second time before taking about half of them for some purpose and leaving them to it.

By the time they were finally finished, their vessel had left the reed beds behind and returned to rowing past more flooded fields. The aftermath of the devastating flood that had led to their freedom was visible everywhere here. Most buildings were flooded out and in one case the river had actually diverted through a small village.

Interestingly, the villagers, most of whom were visibly armed, made no effort to engage with the vessel. Many retreated inside and those who did mark their passage did so silently from rooftops or distant vessels in the flooded fields.

Dinner turned out to be spicy roasted fish, which he had somewhat expected. It wasn’t Lynn that did the cooking this time, though she did supply the fire, but rather the other demons of that group. There was also more of the crab soup and a few other oddments that surfaced from out of the vessel’s rather depleted stores.

They were just polishing off their second fish when Junee and Lynn made their way over and called all five of them to sit down.

“You will need to stay down with the rowers for the next few hours,” Junee said fairly bluntly to him in Easten. “We will be passing by two large towns and while we don’t expect trouble—”

“—It doesn’t hurt to be careful,” Lynn finished.

“The main thing is that you use no soul sense and you show no overt mana use,” Junee went on, passing him five talismans that he realised were carved out of cores from the fish. “Each of you will wear one of these. If you take one off I will knock you out cold and leave you to sleep off your stupidity, is that clear?”

“What do these do?” he asked, nodding and trying not to grimace. Near as he could tell, ‘mana’ was what the locals called ‘qi’.

“Hide your presence, even from the kind of people who took you captive before,” Lynn interjected. “I will know if you take them off.”

“What is she saying?” Kei Zhanfeng asked frowning.

“That we need to keep out of sight while we go past the town and that we will wear these talismans to hide our presence,” he replied, passing one to each of them. “They also said that if anyone takes them off…”

Trailing off, he glanced at the two who were looking at him expectantly and sighed.

“They will what?” Bai Ruli asked, turning her talisman over in her hands.

“They will knock you out cold and leave you to sleep off your stupidity,” he said with a grimace.

“Right…” Kei Zhanfeng scowled.

“They will also know if we take them off apparently,” he added.

“…”

The other four all looked at him and then at Junee and Lynn. After a moment, Bai Ruli sighed and put her talisman around her neck, Ao Meicheng followed suit as did Shu Feilong, glancing sideways at him. The last was Kei Zhanfeng, but he mostly seemed disgruntled at the threat near as he could tell.

“How strong are the forces in the town?” he asked. “That captured us?”

“…”

“One of their leaders had a pet serpent… a four-headed snake three times the size of this boat,” Lynn said drily. “There are ten such leaders in this region and several are likely in this town.”

“Four?” he repeated dully, trying to work out what she meant.

“That’s a Seventh Advancement beast,” she supplied helpfully.

“What is she—?” Kei Zhanfeng asked but he waved for the other to be quiet for a second as he tried to work that out.

If Fourth Advancement was Soul Foundation did that mean a Fifth Advancement was Nascent Soul and a Sixth Advancement was Dao Seeking? So a Seventh Advancement Serpent should be an Immortal Realm qi beast?

“Like him?” he pointed to Kei.

“…”

Both stared at him, then at Kei and shook their heads.

“He is like us, Sixth Advancement,” Junee said.

“…”

-Chosen Immortal? He shivered involuntarily.

“The town here may have Chosen Immortal guardians,” he explained to the other four.

None of them said anything, but all of them, including Kei Zhanfeng,eyed the talismans again with a bit more interest.

“And these will hide us from them?” he asked, surprised in truth, given that while powerful, neither were close to a Chosen Immortal.

“Those will hide you from anything below the Ninth Advancement,” Lynn said drily. “Their method is similar to the wards that were on your ship.”

“Ancient Immortal?” he reiterated dully, then realised he had spoken in Imperial Common.

“What about Ancient Immortals?” Shu Feilong asked, properly nervous now.

“Apparently the talismans will conceal us from anyone below the Dao Step somehow.”

“Right…” Kei Zhanfeng muttered, sounding thoroughly unconvinced.

“Anyway, if something does go wrong, you are to stay down there, stay quiet and not interfere,” Lynn said simply.

There was little he could say to that other than to nod and look where she pointed, down by where the ruined mast of the boat would have been.

“Do we go down there now?” he asked.

The pair looked at each other and said something in the other language, then Junee nodded.

“Any other questions?” Lynn asked.

All he could do was shake his head. Certainly he had questions, but unfortunately they were not the kind that he could easily ask and expect them to answer or know the answers to.

“Fine, then go with them,” Junee waved a hand towards the two younger demons who had offered to be of help earlier.

“So there will be others down there?” he asked.

“Yes, everyone who cannot fight or is nursing an injury will go down,” Junee said simply.

-Why didn’t you lead with that? a part of him wondered.

-Because it doesn’t matter? he retorted then grimaced and rubbed his temple involuntarily.

“A problem?” Lynn asked.

“Just… some residual stress from my captivity,” he explained with a grimace.

“…”

The pair shared a look, frowning.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Junee sighed. “If it persists, let me know. My skill with herbs is good.”

Again, all he could do was nod.

“So what are we doing?” Meicheng asked.

“Everyone who can’t fight or is a person of interest goes down below,” he said, standing up and suppressing a wince as his legs creaked slightly.

The others sighed and stood as well, scrambling down to the lower level and sitting where Junee pointed.

Junee, Lynn and Khunua spent the next ten minutes or so painting various symbols on the boat and even, weirdly, splashing quite a large quantity of what was, near as he could tell, purple dye over the deck and side of the vessel, and then the others also started descending, several of the demons actually manning spare oars.

…

For all their apparent concern, however, they rowed on into the dusk without any incident. Out of the gaps for the oars it was possible to see some of the landscape as it passed, even if most of it just became shadowy haze and the whispering of the wind against unseen reeds as darkness properly fell.

Occasionally the distant lights of passing boats passed by, but nobody came close or showed any real interest that he could see. Their own vessel carried no lights in any case, and soon started to feel like it was smothered in a faint veil of darkness even beyond what night might normally have provided. Even the rising of the moon and the emergence of the stars didn’t seem to penetrate the gloom that encapsulated them.

Like that, hour after hour passed, until at last… they saw Udrasa.

It was not what he expected.

He had known than the demons had large settlements – they had to have, given what they had experienced – but he had never seen any of them. When they had been transported, they had been hooded and their senses curtailed. At other times, they had been locked in small cells or in courtyards which were certainly grand, but which had provided no idea of the scale of the places that held them beyond the occasional tower.

“It’s… huge,” Shu Feilong murmured as they watched the lights dance in the water.

Half the town was lit up like a bonfire, thousands of lights illuminating walls that bore substantial scars from the flood. In a few places they had even collapsed and even now, in the far distance, he could see shadows, like ants moving across them as the forces controlling the town worked through the night to repair the worst of the damage.

“It is,” Kei Zhanfeng muttered. “There must be tens of thousands of demons there.”

Bai Ruli poked him in the side, making him shuffle around to look at her. She simply pointed out the left side of the boat and he felt his mouth go dry.

If the town on the right side was… big, then the settlement across the river, shrouded in ten thousand lights, was a proper city. Its walls were not much better, but he could see dozens of towers and large, shadowed complexes beyond that faded into the darkness between the constellations of fires that draped it.

“That’s… a lot of demons,” he agreed softly.

Looking sideways, he saw that the others were not as enthused with looking outwards, which was understandable he supposed. While it was a spectacular if deeply worrying sight to them, if you were expecting it, it was probably less so.

“This explains why we are sneaking at least,” he remarked to Shu Feilong.

“Yeah…” Shu Feilong agreed. “That’s the size of a decent town back home.”

The unspoken words there were that a town back home would have Dao Step cultivators watching over it… Even in a rural place like Blue Water Province, most towns would have a few reclusive Ancient Immortals, either as clan elders or maybe ancestors of a local sect. To have a demon one come and capture them would, indeed, be dying without a grave.

“Silence!”

The command slipped through the boat from rower to rower, and as he listened, maybe within three heartbeats the already rather slight sound of oars dipping out of water seemed to fade away.

“Is that an art?” Shu Feilong whispered, barely audible next to him.

“…”

In truth, he had no idea, it hadn’t felt like one, but that didn’t rule out the possibility. In the end, all he did was shrug, because Lashaan, who was nearby, had glared at them and shook her head slowly. He grimaced in apology and put a hand over Shu Feilong’s mouth to get the point across.

Shu Feilong also winced and bowed in apology after he removed his hand.

The reason for the silence quickly became clear though, as two serpents – each maybe twenty metres long – swam past… not fifty metres away, demons holding lanterns actually seated on their heads. Somehow, almost improbably, they were not spotted and the serpents left, but thereafter, they sat in the dark, watching lights of ‘civilisation’ pass by for he had no idea how long.