Memories of the Fall

Upon the road to Mahavaran,

There lies a teahouse, of strange repute.

Where at dusk, as the prayer bird cries,

At dawn, while misty bamboo sighs,

While gentle chimes, the rain child’s dance

Beneath its ancient eaves,

King and Beggar at times may meet.

When the sun has risen to its peak

And share a drink, to times gone by,

Ere mountain fell, and dread terror split the starry sky.

While bright heroes drink, to future days.

Lamenting the path that led them here,

And measuring their gleaming blades

Against the weight of days gone by.

And all delight, when moon’s eye is wide

as fair maidens sing, of misty pines

Their delighting voices,

And gentle laughter

The melody of cherished classics

Old scholars ponder,

reflections of all mortal lives,

one may behold them as the world passes that place by.

‘Upon the road to Mahavaran’ or ‘There lies a Teahouse’.

—Author unknown.

~ Fen — Mrs Leng’s Estate ~

A girl stood alone upon the shoreline, watching great waves crash against the dark rocks. The ground thrummed beneath her feet and the sky wept above her. Grey darkness shrouded the horizon, amidst which she could just make out the swaying masts of ships, yet it was the icy water swirling murkily around her feet, bare on the sandy mud that felt… the most real of all she witnessed.

Perhaps historians and scholars, who liked to write the tales of soldiers and heroes would change that, so it was golden, or maybe silvery sand. The haze would roll away as the ships came in, a crude attempt at symbolism or something.

They would not talk about the bodies. Tens, hundreds, thousands of them. They drifted in the water, lay dismembered upon the muddy, rocky, seaweed-festooned foreshore, impaled on the rocks, or buried by the rain in the crumbling dunes behind her. Not yet anyway. The great slaughter those historians awaited was yet to come. Yet to disembark from those high-masted ships, too afraid to venture close in the storm surge.

“You are alone, here…”

“No longer…” the girl sighed, turning to the golden-haired young woman… a girl, really, now standing some distance away, her once bright armour battered and bloody, a freshly painted, sixth weeping eye prominent on her breastplate. “Why have you come?”

“Because I must,” the golden-haired girl replied, trying to sound resolute. “I cannot run from it.”

“Death is not a thing we can run from,” the girl conceded, turning back to the dark ocean.

“To hear even you say that…” the golden-haired girl said sadly. “The others, they have not come, even though they swore their oaths and said such things…”

“I remember this land when we first came here, bright-hearted, at the break of day,” she mused, watching the bloody waters pull away as the waves recoiled. “I remember it when the grasses grew tall and we danced among them, glorying at the bounty of our Mother… I also remember it when we grew restless and turned upon each other, our arrogance and our pride scattering broken hopes and dreams like the autumn leaves. Why should I turn from it now,” she sighed softly, “When the midwinter wind howls from the north and the new era marches forward to meet us so… eagerly? What would that say about the path I have taken to get here?”

“I…” The girl didn’t need to look at her golden-haired companion to perceive the loss in her voice. “So, we just… accept our place?”

“I did not say that…” the girl chuckled grimly. “But the era that comes will not be ours. We have never had to strive as we will from this day forward. So, I say that the death we have hidden from, in our hearts—that those who have not come, flee from, is one we cannot hide from any longer… or we will be no different from those who will come with this tide.”

“There are those who would say that thinking leads to Akalaraltis, to Tarantis…” the golden-haired girl replied, frowning…

“The Dark Dancer and Deathless Lord, they are indeed terrible faces…” the dark-haired girl conceded, as the echo of distant drums and horns finally cut through the sleeting rain and surging swell. “That is also why the others will not come. They fear that shadow in themselves—however… compared to them, I still think I am the cruel one.”

“You do?” the golden-haired girl frowned, clearly not quite understanding.

“Oh yes,” the girl sighed softly, kneeling down and sinking her hand into the wet sand. It came back red and bloody as she let the muddy silt run between her fingers.

“—To think that a heretical witch and her whore apprentice would meet us!”

The pair watched as the hundred knights advanced across surging waters, each garbed in their heraldry. Young, bright, heroic perhaps, in their eyes, surrounded by the radiance of their faith. Dreaming of the story where they would be the great heroes who claimed this new land for their god and country.

The girl mused sadly, focusing again on the bloody water and mud on her hand. It was cold, and the mud gritty. Those scholars would not record the curses and insults they hurled.

“I am definitely the cruel one—”

The girl opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling, listening to the ceaseless tattoo of the rain drumming on the roof tiles in the pre-dawn darkness.

“Oh yes… I am definitely the cruel one,” Fen sighed softly.

It was a sucky thought to wake to, but then again, a part of her felt that waking in general was kind of sucky. It was tempting to go back to sleep, if only because rainy mornings were so… last year. It was also nice to sleep in a real bed, under a real—if slightly sweaty, given the aggravating humidity—sheets. Unfortunately, sleep would also bring dreams, and those were not so nice.

Shadows twisted on the ceiling as she stared at them, tracing the patterns.

In the end, she lay there for an appropriate thirty or so seconds, then sat up with a tired huff and slid out of bed.

Hong had already risen, or maybe she had just not gone to sleep. Either way, she wasn’t in the room they shared, so that meant she was probably in the kitchen doing maidly things or bullying spirit fowl or something. Meixiu, meanwhile, had been given her own room.

“Guh-mornin…” she allowed herself a yawn as she greeted the pair of monkeys who were crouched beside the open window, no doubt attempting something nefarious, and poked the array in the wash basin to fill it with cool, refreshing water.

“You know, the one thing I don’t miss… is waking up feeling like I slept in a steam bath,” she added to the pair, running her hands through her hair a few times to untangle it while making faces in the mirror. “Stupid weather.”

After splashing some of the cold water on her face and neck, she shrugged off her light gown and swapped it for a fresh one, then pulled on a shawl and, after remembering to pick up her estate talisman from the bedside table, left, leaving the stunned monkeys without a backward glance.

The ‘Leng Estate’ was quiet at this hour as she made her way through a darkened reception room and out into the shelter of a veranda courtyard.

Between the rain and the enforced curfew laid on much of the town, most were choosing to stay quietly in their quarters. Cultivators didn’t really need to sleep, especially once they started to grasp their soul strength, however, in this weather the smart ones still opted for some semblance of sleep in any case, as maintaining certain habits helped with mitigating its effects. The natural world was surprisingly profound like that.

“Go away…” she turned as a disgruntled spirit fowl that had been sheltering there squawked at her.

“No, you.” The bird froze in shock as she directly replied to it, allowing her to drench it with a kicked spray of water.

“Oh Name—Oh, it’s just you, Miss Ha…” the teenage girl who had just opened the window at the sound spotted her and gave her a slightly bleary smile as she cut off her cursing at the bird.

“Mun Fa, right?” she made a stab at pretending to reach for the girl’s name.

“Uh-huh,” the teenager nodded, leaning on the windowsill. “You don’t need to be up at this hour…”

“Kitchen stuff,” she shrugged, kicking another spray of water at the bird and forcing it out of shelter into the rain.

“No, really…” Mun Fan protested, clearly feeling that as a ‘Young Miss’ of the Ha clan, even if she was currently a maid, there were certain proprieties.

“Mistress Leng has so kindly offered us a place; we cannot meet her charitable act with indifference,” she declared, with all the considerable charm a twelve-year-old girl could muster. “In any case, I couldn’t sleep,” she added.

“Oh… I guess…” Mun Fan looked a bit embarrassed all of a sudden, the recollection of her ‘terrible ordeal’ flitting through her eyes.

Mrs Leng had not dug too much into that, but she had overheard enough gossip since they started staying here to know that the return of her and Nen Hong had… not gone entirely unmarked. Though thankfully Yin Eclipse spat out so much weird shit anyway that digging into the return of two ‘dead’ girls seemingly wasn’t high on anyone’s priorities.

“Ah well, do you wanna come out with me, Sora and Young Master Zixin in a bit, to the early market?” Mun Fan asked, clearly reaching for something to bridge the now slightly uneasy silence building between them. “We have passes.”

“Eh, sure…” she agreed after a moment’s pause. “Let me get some slightly better clothes on.”

Mun Fan eyed what she was wearing, silently noting that she was currently barefoot, and nodded in agreement.

Sauntering back to her room, she found the monkeys had gone. A quick check determined that they had placed a rotten fruit in the clothes closet and swapped the hot and cold spirit stones in the array for the sink. Carefully picking up the fruit, she went to the window, located a suitably offensive, vibrantly feathered bird and hurled it into the mist—

“You suc—Awkkkkk!” a curse and a squawk, along with the sound of a distant breaking branch made her chuckle, as she returned to the sink and fixed it.

“Oh, peaches, of course!” It was such a stray thought, she could only chuckle.

Looking around, she got some ink from the table and quickly scribbled a missive in a certain script onto a sheet of paper then affixed it to the outside of the window shutter.

That errand set in motion, she changed into some slightly more ‘outdoors’ clothing and a pair of waterproof shoes and headed back downstairs.

Given the way the curfews worked in this town, it would still be a while before they set off, so to pass the time, she wandered through into the main garden courtyard of the Leng Estate.

As far as such gardens went, it was classically laid out, though with a few interesting quirks that belied its relatively ‘young’ age. In the misty rain and pre-dawn gloom, they could not be said to be anywhere close to their ‘best’; however, that didn’t really bother her as she watched the rain splash on the lily pads in the ornamental pond.

Each quarter had its own distinct theme—the western one, where they were standing, was a sprawling ornamental pond. The northern one was a rock garden, the eastern an arrangement of herbal shrubs and flowering plants and the south a small ‘grove’ of spirit trees. In essence, that made it what would have been called a ‘Four Seasons Garden’, though here, she was sure it had some other, odder name. Where it became… somewhat unique though, was in the placement of the ‘linking’ elements, that were impressively bedded in for a garden of this kind that was barely a century old.

Usually, the pagoda would be in the middle, but here, it was the link between the pond and the rock garden, and it was mirrored by a well that sat between the east and south sections. If she measured the depth of that well, she also expected it would be exactly as deep as the pagoda was tall.

The overall effect, though, was that the whole thing was transformed, in very subtle ways, from the traditional, inward-looking layout typical of such a courtyard, to one that was more akin to a highly attuned Taiji compass, that would highlight even the slightest sense of ‘abnormality’. That it was done so entirely without reliance of any external strength, just made it all the more impressive, really.

Additionally, each quadrant had at least one powerful awakened spirit herb. The one in the pond before her, a lotus, was currently watching the only other occupant of the garden unobtrusively from the densest patch of lily pads, its spirit form little more than a near-invisible pair of eyes peeking between the leaves.

Young Master Yuan Zixin—or rather ‘Jun Han’—was on a bench in the shelter of the pond-side pagoda a few meters from where she had paused, also watching the rain fall in what would, to a casual observer, appear to be little more than simple meditative silence. A more astute observer, she supposed, would have picked up on the melancholy that touched him. To her, though, what was really interesting was the art he was endeavouring to practice.

“—Ah, so this is where you are…”

She glanced up as Olivia—Meixiu, dressed in a loose gown and red shawl, stepped out into the covered walkway to join her.

“You are up early,” she murmured, speaking just loudly enough that their presence could not fail to be noticed by Yuan Zixin, but not so much that it would actually disturb him as he tried to find the flow within the state of passive mindfulness he was trying to maintain. “I guess you can’t sleep because of the rain?”

In truth, she could have entirely avoided his notice, but a Nascent Soul girl avoiding the notice of a Golden Immortal, even in this weather, was the kind of thing that would draw comment, doubly so given how naturally good Olivia had become through the millennia of her time in the shard at hiding her own presence.

“You say that like I have not always been a morning person thanks to my upbringing,” Meixiu chuckled, pulling her shawl around her, but for a brief moment, she caught the faint shadow on the other woman’s face.

-It seems I am not the only one haunted by cruel memories of days long past. she reflected to herself. I guess the rain reminds her of how she first ended up in these strange times…

“—Though I concede, the ambience of this place unnerves me slightly,” Meixiu added with a soft sigh. “Even in the dark places, I never felt her presence quite as keenly as this.”

“I suppose not,” she agreed pensively.

Divide’s focus had always been outwards, towards the things pinned, like primordial bugs in the ruin of the lands beneath the mountains, and also to turning prying eyes away from the domain she watched over. In that regard, the weather like that which shrouded the town today was but a small part of that whole. The equivalent, within her perception, of periodically wiping down a table, or clearing condensation from a window before it could cause mould.

“That said, I did not expect to see something like that here either.” Meixiu mused, nodding towards Yuan Zixin. “Isn’t this a version of…?” she started to ask, putting a hand on her shoulder and speaking inwardly now.

“Mmmm, it has a commonality with it,” she confirmed. “But I would not speak too openly about it, even like this. The shadows of that ‘Old Master’ and his peers are far more vivid in these heavens, as is the thirst for the secrets of his era. Even if Mayumi has instructed you in the methods of the Eight-fold Palace, unless you are with me or Hong, your thoughts may still be vulnerable. Especially to powerful Mantra wielders.”

“I understand,” Meixiu replied with a slight nod.

As they were inwardly conversing, Yuan Zixin finally stirred, glancing over in their direction.

“Our apologies, Young Master!” she called out, saluting him respectfully. “We did not mean to disturb you.”

“Not at all,” Yuan Zixin replied, waving a hand at them, before getting to his feet and stretching.

She was just wondering how to engineer them walking over to him, when Yuan Zixin took a step and, with what to most would seem like a disconcertingly perspective distorting ‘shift,’ alighted on the edge of the balustrade a few paces away.

“Four steps, that fluidly, at his realm is impressive,” Meixiu, who still had her hand on her shoulder, mused.

“It is,” she agreed, bowing politely to Yuan Zixin. “We did not mean to disturb you, Young Master Yuan.”

“Please,” Yuan Zixin replied calmly, hopping down off the balustrade. “I can hardly claim a monopoly on this place.”

“This is Young Master’s estate,” she pointed out respectfully, deepening her bow a little, curious to see how he would respond.

“He has to be the politest Young Master I have ever met,” Meixiu remarked drily.

Yuan Zixin gave her a decidedly odd look, to the point where for a moment she actually wondered if he had somehow caught Meixiu’s comment, then shook his head ruefully.

“You know, everyone seems to be saying that to me, of late,” he murmured, mostly to himself as he turned to gaze back out over the pond. “And yet…”

For a split second, she caught a melancholic look in his eyes, then he sighed softly to himself.

“—You are both up very early,” he remarked, glancing from her to Meixiu. “I hope our miserable weather is not the cause?”

“Not so much the rain, as the dreams,” she muttered, replying without really thinking.

“Bad dreams, huh.” Yuan Zixin sighed, his gaze turning back to the rain-dappled water, before continuing so softly that she was sure he did not intend for her to hear, such was the ‘difference’ in their realms. “What cruel times we live in…”

“—I am sorry to hear that,” he added, a moment later, recovering himself and giving them both a reassuring smile. “I hope you feel better now?”

“They fade with waking,” she shrugged, trying to dissemble a little while not explicitly cursing a certain goddess in her heart for the slip. “I guess some old elder would say they are a sign that you have lived a full life, if your experiences are spilling over into your sleep.”

“That… does sound like something they would say,” Meixiu agreed, wryly, to which Yuan Zixin also nodded, the irony of her comment entirely passing him by.

“Ah… anyway, would you like some breakfast, Young Master Yuan?” she asked quickly, recalling her role as a ‘maid’ and that that was the sort of helpful service she should be volunteering. “I can…”

“—Thank you, Miss Ha, but… no,” Yuan Zixin gave her a further sideways glance there, that made her sigh inwardly.

-Now that things have settled a little in the short week since we moved in here, he surely recognises me, but isn’t sure how to broach the matter tastefully, she reflected wryly to herself. I guess we could have taken new faces, but things are what they are…

“Not even some cool wine?” she pressed politely. “To ward off the morning humidity?”

“That is an interesting way to pitch it,” Meixiu murmured, giving her a sideways look.

“Shush you.” she retorted.

“Wine,” Yuan Zixin considered after a moment’s silence. “I guess we could use something refreshing.”

Saluting him politely, she turned and trotted back the way she had come, leaving Meixiu behind to engage with whatever small talk she saw fit.

The kitchens were not that far away in fact, only a hall over from the gardens and a brisk walk around the sheltered edge of a smaller, much more utilitarian courtyard. Hong, who was chatting away to one of the other maids, gave her a small wave as she entered, but none of the others working there at that hour paid her more than the slightest glance of attention as she claimed a tray, a jar of iced wine, some cups and then a plate of sliced fruit. Returning the way she had come, she pretended not to notice the pair of monkeys perched on the guttering on the opposite side of the courtyard. Currently, they were playing rock-paper-knife, presumably to pick who would drop the rotted fruit sitting beside them on some luckless person.

She was just about to turn into the hall that served as a shortcut back to the garden when a series of dull thumps, like someone hitting a door far too hard, echoed through the misty courtyard behind her. A bare two seconds later, three more, even louder, reverberated, accompanied this time by the estate wards shimmering.

Behind her, maids were sticking their heads out of the kitchen, looking towards the main reception courtyard of the estate with concerned expressions. Among them, she saw Hong, who caught her eye and raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Yep, it’s probably someone about to do something stupid,” she mouthed back.

The strength of the person who had just punched the door, she assumed, was roughly that of a Dao Lord, and a fairly strong one, as far as they went.

“OPEN THESE GATES!”

A strident voice boomed through the courtyard, and likely most of the estate, enhanced, and likely permitted, by some wider integration of the estate formations into the ones affiliated with the town as a whole.

“—BY ORDER OF THIS WARRANT, WE ARE EMPOWERED TO ENTER! IF YOU DO NOT OPEN THEM, THEY WILL BE OPENED FOR YOU!”

“So much for our shopping trip…”

She glanced over at Mun Fa, who had come into the hall behind her, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Meixiu and Yuan Zixin were a few paces behind her.

“Don’t worry, even if it’s a Dao Lord, they can’t really break in,” Mun Fan reassured her. “A group tried during the… chaos, with one of those dreadful alchemical bombs; it’s why the back wall by the library pagoda is newly repaired.”

“I cannot imagine such villains met a good end,” she remarked, giving Mun Fan an appreciative nod, partly to make conversation, but also because the girl herself was clearly putting on some confidence to reassure her.

“No… they did not,” Mun Fan gave her a wan smile that made her sigh softly, for the poor girl’s lost innocence. “The spirit herbs in the garden got them… I never knew a lotus could be that…”

“—Violent?” Yuan Zixin gave Mun Fan a sympathetic ruffle of her hair as he and Meixiu caught up to them.

“Ah—!” Mun Fan jumped like a surprised cat at the realisation her ‘young master’ was right behind them and then hurriedly bowed. “N-no,” Mun Fan mumbled, flushing and trying to fix her hair a little even as she was still bowing. “Y-you hear stories, but…”

“Spirit herbs are dangerous,” Meixiu agreed.

“—UNDER ORDER OF THIS WARRANT, LET ALL IN THIS ESTATE ASSEMBLE IN THE FRONT COURTYARD!”

“Ah, they are actually intending to search the estate?” Yuan Zixin muttered. “What idiot authorized that I wonder.”

“—FAILURE TO ASSEMBLE WILL BE SEEN AS AN ADMISSION OF REBELLION AGAINST THE AUTHORITY OF THIS WARRANT!”

“…”

“Mistress—Y-Your Honoured Mother will certainly sort this out!” Mun Fan, who had sort of recovered herself, declared, folding her arms.

“Of that, I have little doubt,” Yuan Zixin agreed, wryly.

"Young Master might as well take the wine and drink it now,” she added, respectfully proffering him the tray, and drawing an eyeroll from Meixiu in the process.

“—Ah, here you are!”

“—Young Master Yuan!”

A pair of the estate guards, both looking a bit perturbed, hurried into the hall by the same door Yuan Zixin and Meixiu had just used, and upon encountering them, saluted Yuan Zixin respectfully, then also Ganlan, presumably because of her status as a Dao Step expert, which she had not bothered to hide.

“Sir Jia, Sir Zhen,” Yuan Zixin nodded respectfully to the pair, Jia Hao and Zhen Wei.

“Your Mother is telling everyone to assemble in the front courtyard,” Jia Hao, who was the elder of the pair, informed them. “It seems… this is going to be a bit of a bother.”

“What kind of force did they send?” Yuan Zixin asked, waving for the two to lead the way.

Faced with having to abandon the wine and the snacks, she considered how the next few hours were likely to go, then quickly scooped the two plates together, into a serving cloth, and shoved the bundle inside her robe, along with the wine jar. It made her look a bit frumpy, but her shawl hid a lot, and so long as she kept the small jar cradled in one arm it wouldn’t slip.

“Uh… yeah,” the younger guard, Zhen Wei, who was a Chosen Immortal, grimaced as they all fell in behind Yuan Zixin, who rather than lead them back into the garden or the kitchen, set off through the interior of the hall towards the main east west concourse through the estate. “I can’t see through any except the local lads, and they sent twenty Immortals, in full kit.”

“T-twenty!?” Mun Fan stumbled in shock, nearly tripping before Meixiu caught her arm.

“Is that a lot for here?” Meixiu asked politely.

“Ah, Young Lady Ganlan,” Zhen Wei saluted her hurriedly. “Y-yes, it would have been, uh, before…”

“—It’s in line with the established Military Protocol,” Yuan Zixin informed them with a resigned sigh. “Do you know who is leading them, Sir Jia, and executing the warrant?”

“No, Young Master,” Jia Hao replied with an apologetic shrug.

“We were in the main house,” Zhen Wei added, grimacing. “With Big Sister Ning. She told us to come get you.”

“—YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES! FAILURE OF THIS HOUSEHOLD TO ASSEMBLE BY THEN WILL BE TAKEN AS RESISTANCE TO THE RIGHTFUL APPLICATION OF THIS WARRANT!”

“…”

At this point, she could hear doors slamming and children crying in every direction, even with the declaration reverberating through the estate.

“They really want to make a point with this, huh?” Zhen Wei muttered.

“Yep, seems that way,” Yuan Zixin agreed, coming to a stop as they reached the main paved path that ran across the south side of the gardens, parallel to the sprawling reception annex, and which would eventually take them to the reception hall and the main courtyard at the south side of the estate.

The path itself was currently full of bustling groups, families mostly, of those employed in the day-to-day work of the estate who Mrs Leng was currently putting up, all rushing in a mild panic. A few paused to bow to Yuan Zixin when they spotted him, but most were either preoccupied with marshalling errant, confused children, or just getting to the south gate as quickly as possible.

When there was a suitable gap in the hubbub, Yuan Zixin led them across the throughfare and directly into the ground floor of the private dining hall. From there, they cut directly through that room, then along the edge of the garden courtyard at the heart of the annex, and then left into a second large hall typically reserved for entertaining large groups, as she understood it. Exiting there, at the south end, they finally arrived on the western side of the estate’s central courtyard plaza and into a scene of… mildly oppressive bedlam unfolding amidst the morning drizzle.

Some forty people, mostly family of estate workers, were already being lined up, in the rain, by family groups, under the watchful eyes of almost forty heavily armed and armoured soldiers, of which the twenty Immortals Zhen Wei had mentioned were only the rank and file, near as she could make out.

“Ah.” Yuan Zixin, who had paused to take in the scene, sighed unhappily.

“It is going to be those ones in the middle who are the problem, isn’t it,” Jia Hao muttered, warily eyeing the two squads of six, who were decked out in a slightly bulkier version of the modular armour that the town guards used, the four they were escorting.

“Mmmm.” Beside her, Meixiu pursed her lips, frowning as she eyed that group, particularly the leader, a dark-haired youth with five golden stars on his well-appointed armour, who had immediately glanced over in their direction when they arrived.

“Bureau E-Elites…” Mun Fan gulped nervously, her eyes fixed on the twelve, who all radiated an oppressive, martial intent, even in this weather. “Why are they… and what realm even is…?”

Nobody among their group answered, though she was sure Yuan Zixin should know, if only by his previous experience. In truth though, telling them would not help keep people calm, either, so she understood why he remained silent.

Even in a town as large as this, a force of twelve Ancient Immortals, especially those who had already comprehended the basics of at least two laws apiece, one relating to their own method, and the other relating to the halberds they all held, could walk sideways into nearly any problem without care. However, it was the four they were escorting that posed the real ‘issue’, even if their presence seemed lower key right now, in comparison to their subordinate guards.

The only woman among them, who wore lighter armour, marked with three golden stars on her breastplate, along with a taller bearded man wearing the same bulky armour as the ancient immortals, augmented by a fan-like series of protrusions on its back, were both Dao Immortals, and not weak ones either. To her eyes, both had above average law comprehensions for their age and realm, and well-developed qi-based physiques. The bearded man was also the one who held the ‘warrant’.

The other man who stood next to them, accompanied by a servant holding an umbrella, was actually an outlier in the overall group, because he was only an Ancient Immortal. However, he wore a fancy enough official’s robe in the Ha clan colours to suggest he had some considerable rank in both the clan she was nominally a part of, while wearing this face, and the local bureaucracy.

It was the leader of the group, though, the dark-haired young man, who was currently conversing with Yuan Mai and the head of the estate’s guards, Qi Jiguang, who was making Meixiu concerned. Currently he was keeping his presence thoroughly in check, presenting himself as only a little stronger than the others, but with the law comprehensions he had engrained in his body, she could easily determine that he was a peak Dao Lord. The armour he wore was also perfectly matched to his strengths, and despite its plain appearance, of much higher quality than that of anyone else present.

“Go join up with the others. Don’t worry, this is just a formal procedure; it will all be worked out.” Yuan Zixin informed them with a pretty good effort at a reassuring grimace, before turning to Meixiu, who had been quietly comforting Mun Fan “Miss Meixiu, I fear I will have to ask you to accompany me.”

“Of course,” Meixiu replied, nodding as she pulled her thick shawl up around her shoulders a little more overtly.

“Sir Jia, Sir Zhen.” Yuan Zixin spoke a bit louder now, presumably so the nearby soldiers would hear them clearly. “Please go help the old and families make all haste here.”

“YOUNG MASTER!” Both saluted loudly and quite deliberately hurried off up the concourse towards the other arrivals, making sure the soldiers noticed them.

“Come on, Big Sister Fan,” she said, taking the still slightly stunned Mun Fan by the arm and gave her a winsome smile. “Let’s go join the others, okay?”

“Y-yes,” Mun Fan nodded, before taking a breath and setting off towards the other maids who were starting to form their own group on the edge of the courtyard. “You stick with big sister, okay? It will… all be okay.”

Almost as if to curse poor Mun Fan for saying that, they had only made it halfway to the other maids when two of the soldiers stepped into their way, staring them down through the faceless helmets.

“Estate talismans,” the right hand one instructed, holding out his hand.

“O-our t-talismans?” Mun Fan squeaked. “I… um…”

“You don’t have one?” the other soldier asked, focusing on Mun Fan.

“N-no… I… h-here!” Mun Fan fumbled hurriedly at her waist and plucked off the jade talisman that functioned as her record of employment in the estate and passed it to the soldier.

Sighing, she passed hers over as well.

“Mun Fan, fifteen, employed for six years…” the soldier mused. “And you, Ha Fenfang, fourteen, employed… two days?”

“I… uh, just started,” she replied with a cough, finding a line between bullish and nervous in her tone. “After all the chaos, I came back here… and well…”

“Odd, there is a Ha Fenfang listed as deceased on the civilian roll,” the other soldier observed.

“I must have been listed as missing,” she replied as glumly as she could.

In the back of her mind, she could almost hear a certain goddess laughing at her, right now, and that wasn’t helping her frame of mind at all. It would be easy to just ‘twist’ things a little, but she had enough experience there to know that it was never ‘just’ a matter of one little thing you had to change.

“There is even a record of offerings…” the soldier frowned, fixing their gaze. “A Jun Arai paid fees to the Queen Mother’s Temple; that was before…”

“I was kidnapped by bandits,” she replied sullenly. “They recovered bodies… I guess I was misidentified? There were a few girls with names that use the same characters in the wider Ha clan.”

“Oh, I heard about that,” the first soldier remarked. “The Jade Willow thing, feels like a lifetime—”

“Is there a problem there, Lieutenant Dufang?” one of the other soldiers, their armour marked with a single gold star called over to the pair.

“Oh, uh, no Captain Fan, just checking the record,” the soldier holding her talisman replied. “It lists her as dead—”

“Oh great, another one,” the Captain grunted. “And yet, she is standing there in front of you. Does her estate talisman check out?”

“Uh… yes, Sir?” Lieutenant Dufang replied after a short moment of hesitation.

“—Then mark it down and go check the others. This rain sucks, and it’s early, and I had to leave a beautiful dream behind for this shit. She can’t go anywhere.” Captain Fan retorted sourly.

“Sir.”

Both soldiers saluted, then passed them their talismans back and waved them past.

“Nameless, that scared me,” Mun Fan muttered. “They must be looking for someone?”

“I guess,” she mused, frowning.

“—They wanted to check your talismans too?” Meilin, one of the older maids, asked as they reached the rest of the group.

“Yes, Sister Mei,” Mun Fan nodded, glancing back behind them, at the pair of soldiers who were now checking a family of four who had just come from behind where they had been.

“—And they took all their name plates off,” another of the maids sneered.

“I recognised the Captain; it’s Deng Fan,” someone else murmured.

“Motherless dog! My cousin helps manage the Blessed Fortune Teahouse; I’ll get him blacklisted,” a younger girl, Feihua, who was only wearing her nightgown and a now rather damp shawl, and understandably not happy about it, muttered.

“I wonder who put them up to this?” another maid asked in hushed tones, eyeing the Ancient Immortals in the centre of the courtyard nervously. “I bet it was that Quan bastard.”

“Oh, from the market the other day?” Ning Sora, who had also arrived now, remarked.

“Because Mistress Leng wouldn’t cater for that young noble’s banquet? How petty…”

Shaking her head, she tuned out their chatter a little and looked back over at Meixiu and Yuan Zixin, who had now reached the Dao Lord, more interested in what was being said over there. She could have used her perception to check, but at this distance, it was easier and safer to just lip-read for the most part. Especially since the space inside the ring of Ancient Immortals was being sheltered by a reasonably sophisticated ward.

“—You must be Leng Shuang’s son?” the female Dao Immortal asked Yuan Zixin.

“His talisman checks out, Major Lanying,” an Ancient Immortal informed the woman respectfully. “Yuan Zixin, three hundred and eighty-nine, Golden Immortal.”

“Still a junior, huh,” Lanying remarked, eyeing Yuan Zixin a little more pensively. “Congratulations, I guess.”

“Both of them have Yuan? Yet their mother goes by Leng?” the bearded man holding the warrant asked, scowling.

“Married in, I guess,” Lanying suggested with a shrug. “You can ask her when she gets here. I am sure she will love talking about her family circumstances in detail with you.”

The bearded man just snorted, then turned back to look at the rest of the assembling group.

“They are still dragging their feet as well. They clearly don’t take this seriously,” he grumbled.

“It’s pre-dawn, the weather is shit, half of them look like they have been legitimately asleep, and we have the whole estate surrounded. All yelling at them again is gonna do is make people stroppy,” Lanying replied with a sigh. “Let’s keep it professional, at least for now.”

“Yes, my mother is widowed,” Yuan Zixin interjected politely.

“—And who is this?” the bearded man asked, eyeing Meixiu from head to foot.

“Young Lady Ganlan,” Yuan Zixin replied calmly. “A guest, of the estate.”

“Young Lady?” the bearded man snorted.

“She is younger than you,” Lanying remarked, before giving Meixiu an apologetic smile. “Please forgive my compatriot, he is a military man at heart, and doesn’t speak to many ladies, so his manners have only ever been homely.”

“—If that is what passed for ‘homely manners’ around here,” Hong, who had snuck up beside her while she was listening to the exchange, murmured wryly, “it’s probably a good thing ‘here’ is a long way from where we grew up.”

Rolling her eyes, she shushed Hong unobtrusively and kept listening.

“Well, as a Dao Step expert, there are certain formalities you have to observe if you want to remain in this town,” the bearded man continued. “Starting with full registration with the Military Bureau, an aura test, a full statement on what influence and family you belong to, and the registration of any of the following items if you have them on your person.”—as he was speaking, he held up a talisman scroll that unspooled in the space before Meixiu to display various bits of information—“If you are not willing to subscribe to these terms, you can leave, but having entered without doing so, I am afraid there will be a fine of… two Heavenly Jades.”

“—I believe all jadework for her presence here has been properly filed with the town authority,” Yuan Zixin replied. “My mother has guaranteed her presence, and they were meant to deliver the appropriate authority talismans today…”

“—And you have jadework to prove that?” the bearded man cut in, clearly enjoying his role.

“The binary jade is in my rooms,” Meixiu replied with aplomb as she adjusted her heavy shawl around her shoulders. “As you can see, I am not fully attired.”

“You should carry it with you, on your person, at all times,” the bearded man stated blandly.

“Relax, send a… Ah, Lieutenant Jing,”—Lanying waved to one Immortal-step soldiers who was checking talismans nearby—“grab one of their maids, go to Young Lady Meixiu’s rooms and bring the binary jade talisman the authority will have issued for her—”

Yuan Zixin looked like he was about to say something, but just sighed and nodded.

Lieutenant Jing saluted and then trotted briskly across the courtyard towards them.

“You,” he pointed arbitrarily at the rather luckless Mun Fan, who squeaked in shock at being singled out. “Come with me, take me to Lady Ganlan’s room.”

“If you need access, I have a higher authority talisman, Lieutenant,” Meilin spoke up.

The soldier considered the pale-faced Mun Fan, then Meilin, and shrugged.

“Fine, lead the way, and be quick about it.”

“Of course,” Meilin murmured, saluting him and hurrying off towards the gardens with the soldier in tow.

“Ugh, what a morning, I will demand a refund from Astrologer Shin,” one of the maids grumbled. “He told me that today would be the luckiest day of the week, and dared charge a whole iron talisman, the fraud.”

Shaking her head wryly at the poor maid’s naivety in the way divinations worked, she turned her attention back to the group in the middle of the courtyard, because Mrs Leng, accompanied by a brown-haired maid holding an umbrella, had finally arrived.

“Mrs Leng Shuang, your talisman please?” An ancient immortal asked blandly, stopping her at the edge of their circle.

“Aiii…” Mrs Leng sighed and handed over her jade.

“You as well.” A second ancient immortal added to the maid, who just stared at him for a long moment, then took her token off the sash at her waist without saying a word.

“That seems in order,” the first ancient Immortal remarked after a short pause, passing Mrs Leng her talisman back. “The maid has to stay here though.”

“It’s fine, Shalin,” Mrs Leng informed the maid, who had also just been handed back her talisman. “Go see to some of the others.”

Shalin held out the umbrella silently, but Mrs Leng just smiled and shook her head.

“Give it to one of the families that have children. Fates know, everyone is so panicked.”

Shalin gave her mistress a remarkably long look, but in the end did turn on her heel and silently walk back the way she had come, handing over the umbrella to a young girl whose mother was currently trying to calm a two-year old who was screaming for their stuffed monkey.

“Mistress Leng Shuang,” the Dao Lord stepped forward to meet her. “I apologize for this unseemly show, but these are, unfortunately, unseemly times. I can only ask you to bear with us as we do our duty to the safety of West Flower Picking Town.”

“Commander Lord Quan, Official Shi.” Leng Shuang bowed politely to both the Dao Lord and the Ha clan official. “—And how can my estate help with the safety of our beautiful town on this most charming of mornings?”

“Mistress Leng,” the Ha clan official returned her bow, a little warily she thought.

“Dayum, is that Deputy Ha?” one of the maids behind her sniggered as she watched the group exchange greetings.

“Didn’t get his promotion it seems,” another observed, sounding pleased.

“The warrant.” The Dao Lord beckoned to the bearded man.

“Commander,” the bearded man saluted the Dao Lord formally and passed him the warrant.

Watching them, she had to concede they were being very disciplined about giving away names.

“May I examine it, Commander Quan?” Mrs Leng asked politely.

“Of course,” the Dao Lord passed the document over without so much as blinking.

Mrs Leng spent almost two minutes contemplating the document in silence, before sighing and passing it back.

“This appears to be in order. I will send Qi Jiguang with a squad of your men and a full inventory of the armoury. My daughter Mei here can take some of your people to inventory our warehouses against the last list of stock we registered with the Town Authority, though I must inform you that was four weeks ago, and a lot has happened since then.”

“That is very accommodating of you, Mistress Leng,” Lord Quan replied, giving her a bright smile. “Do you also have a list of registered occupants? We also need the formation registry and, per the ruling of the Town authority, your restricted inventory registry.”

“Here,” Leng Shuang said, producing a palm sized green jade talisman and passed it to Lord Quan, who silently handed it off the Ha clan Official. “And this our copy of the restricted inventory,” she added, handing him a second, red jade talisman. “Alas, Commander, this estate does not possess a formation registry—”

“You don’t?” the bearded man grinned. “You are aware—”

“—That this estate is one of the eight registered exceptions to that list in the town, yes, all that jadework will be on record with the Town Governor’s Office,” Leng Shuang continued brightly. “I believe the Military Authority Offices should also have copies, but it is understandable if they are not immediately at hand, given how it was so unfortunately looted the other week.”

“Yes, things are a little disorganized there,” Lord Quan agreed, his smile slipping just a little for the first time, she noted with amusement. “Do you know anything of this, Official Ha, as a deputy to the previous Commander?”

“Ah, um, yes,” the Ha clan official nodded slowly. “This estate is one of four that were originally owned by the Ling clan. It goes all the way back to the founding charter of the town. I believe Leng Shuang was a close friend of previous owner, and he bequeathed it to her in his will. He was a notable war-hero who attained great merit during the Huang-Mo Wars, but suffered several crippling injuries at that time, which he eventually succumbed to.”

“Why does that mean it has no formation registry?” Lord Quan asked, frowning.

Off to the side, she noted that Yuan Zixin, Yuan Mai and Qi Jiguang were all a picture of passive neutrality at this point as they listened to the conversation.

“Because this estate predates the formal establishment of the town and was in the family of a close friend of Lady Tao’s up until Mistress Leng acquired it by bequeathal. The formation that is currently associated with it is the zone block one.”

“Oh, I see, so it’s like that,” Lanying mused, looking around with more interest now.

“Indeed, Lady Lanying,” the Ha official nodded politely to her. “This estate fully encompasses one of the node-blocks.”

“There are clearly additional formations here, though,” the bearded man growled, gesturing at the rain-drenched halls flanking the courtyard.

“Yes, but they are not of sufficient magnitude to require registration on a unified record, under the current guidelines.” The Official Ha pointed out. They were also installed by, or under the supervision of, Grandmaster Li, if I recall, who has—had—a standing contract with the Town Authority to deal with most of the old Ling formations. His certification and association was deemed sufficient, so…”

“—There was no formal registry required, I see,” Lord Quan nodded. “And so, it was reported directly to the relevant bureaus at the time.”

“It is as you say, Lord Quan,” the Ha Official agreed.

“That is an unorthodox, if understandable loophole,” Lord Quan mused. “I will have to tell them to close it, I suppose. Especially in light of Grandmaster Li no longer holding the confidence of the Town Authority.”

“Yes, well, you may find it… difficult to do that,” the Ha official muttered, not quite meeting Leng Shuang’s gaze. “None of those estates are simple.”

“Nor is our Quan clan,” the bearded man retorted.

“Of course not, Sir Quan,” the Ha official demurred, bowing slightly to the bearded man. “However, the two south of the river, the old Han clan estate and the Fei family estate, have both been claimed by the Su clan…”

“—Because of course they have,” Lanying sighed.

“As for the others, they include the old Ha family estate and the Cherry Wine Pagoda,” the Ha official added.

“Well, that isn’t a matter we need to worry about right now,” Lord Quan sighed. “In that case, when we are finished up with this, Lanying, take a squad and have Mistress Leng escort you around the particular parts. If anything concerns you, act as you see fit.”

“Of course, Sir,” Lanying agreed, saluting him.

“I wonder what they are talking about,” one of the maids next to her muttered.

“Probably working out how much they can loot from our warehouses,” Feihua sneered. “Nobody has anything so all they can do is stuff like this, I imagine.”

“Now, now, Fei,” one of the older maids murmured warningly. “Even if this rain is terrible, they have perception formations for days on those armours.”

“They could at least let us have a few umbrellas if they are going to make us stand here for ages,” another maid grumbled.

“I think that is rather the point, Yingling,” someone else pointed out.

Tuning them out again, she glanced around the courtyard, noting that most of the estate’s occupants had finally mustered here, before focusing back on the conversations going on in the middle.

Lord Quan was still asking Leng Shuang about the specifics of things, which was an interesting insight into how much bureaucracy had to go into owning a decent size estate in this town. Yuan Zixin and Yuan Mai were both seemingly content to stand near their ‘mother’, pictures of stoic, patient calmness amidst the sense of unease pervading the wider courtyard, while Qi Jiguang, now joined by Zhen Su, the woman who headed up the small group of female guards in the estate, were both idly taking in the soldiers milling around, still checking talismans. That exercise alone, she fancied, would probably take some time, because like her, there had to be quite a few with ‘challenging’ circumstances.

After several more minutes of conversation, mostly about the details on the various registries the warrant empowered them to audit, the various groups split off—Lord Quan, Major Lanying, Leng Shuang and Zhen Su in the direction of the main household, Qi Jiguang with some soldiers to the armoury and barracks on the eastern side of the estate, while Yuan Mai and Yuan Zixin headed off with all but two of the Ancient Immortals and the Ha official towards the west side of the estate.

Amusingly, that left Meixiu basically standing, as if forgotten, with two slightly uneasy looking Ancient Immortals and ‘Sir Quan’, whom she was masterfully ignoring, for company.

“We are gonna be here a while, aren’t we?” Hong mused, tugging at her now very damp robe.

“It does look like it,” she agreed.

The performative ritual of these sorts of events was nothing new to her—to either of them, in their own way.

“How can you be so calm?” Yingling, who was now sheltering under a shawl she was sharing with Mun Fan, asked giving her a sideways look.

“Does panicking do any good?” Hong asked with a shrug. “It is what it is. We are where we are.”

“That… is a remarkably fatalistic outlook to have for a girl your age,” one of the older maids remarked wanly.

“It’s a remarkably fatalistic age we live in,” Hong replied with a shrug.

“It is a pity we don’t still have those snacks,” Mun Fan added, glumly.

“…”

With a cough, she pulled the bundle and the wine jar out of her robe and put them down opposite the young woman.

“H-how…?” Mun Fan stared dully at the small, rather mixed-up repast as the other maids around them also did some humorous double takes.

“It seemed a shame to leave them,” she chuckled.

“Ahhh…” Mun Fan took one of the small savoury pastries and bit into it with relish.

“HEY! YOU LOT—!”

She turned halfway as the bearded man suddenly rounded on them—

A wave of distortion swirled around them and the wine jar shattered into a dozen pieces, scattering its contents in a splash over two maids who shrieked in shock. The majority of the pastries also vanished in a smear.

“WHO GAVE YOU SERVANTS PERMISSION TO DO AS YOU LIKE!?” Sir Quan glowered as others in the courtyard turned to see what had happened. “KNEEL AND REFLECT!”

With a grunt, everyone around them abruptly collapsed to their knees, bodies trembling as his intent enveloped them. Exhaling, she went with it, as did Hong, ending up staring at mucky remnants of one of the pastries that sat on the paving before her. Beside her, Mun Fan whimpered.

In the distance, the sky rumbled. Whether it was Eris, or her, or Hong, or some other power, she didn’t really care, as the first heavy pea-sized droplet of rain struck the unfortunate pastry like a meteor from heaven, dispensing judgement. Then another, and another. In a matter of seconds, the misty drizzle had transformed into an unspeakable deluge, bringing with it a profound sense of silent, peaceful isolation.

“Motherless Dog-shit spawned weather!”

Nearby, Captain Fan swore furiously and tossed his helmet on the ground.

“Oh, come on…” Feihua groaned.

“This rain is the worst!” Yingling declared gloomily.

On a distant rooftop, a pair of monkeys bowed in her general direction.

Silently, she stared up at the rain-dark sky, and imagined she heard a certain goddess laughing. Unfortunately, that goddess was her.

-I guess the cruel one really is me after all, she reflected wryly, ignoring Hong’s accusatory sideways glance as all around them, amidst angry shouting and some screams due to sensory overload, the soldiers communication chatter fizzled out, a moment before the formations they had been maintaining also began to fail.

~ ??? — This Artificial Forest ~

“Over there!”

“Get it!”

‘Anger—Fury—Focus!’

“Where is it!?”

“Look out for the —Orchids!”

“Ahhhhhh! Get it off me!”

‘Grasping! Power!’

‘Hurt!—Fury—Greed!’

“The f—! There is another in that N—! Pond!”

‘Running—Capture!?’

Sensations assailed it, strange sounds screamed at it. Darkness, stifling and secure twisted strangely around it. It tried to break free. Tried again to break free, but the roots of nothingness clung to it.

“Through here!”

“One came through here!”

Words, spoken by the predators, whispered all around it, even in its cruel prison. Dark, constraining, it tried to push against it, but again, the nothingness clung. It wanted to scream, to shout, to let the burning… whatever it was, within it, envelop everything, but it could not.

“Where is—Ahhhh!”

‘Pain—Hurt—Cessation.’

That last whisper of sensations it knew. Familiarity, born beneath dark trees, in shadowed glades, where strange things danced and sang. The start and end of ‘being’. Mostly an end, when the ‘Cessation’ was so abrupt.

“It killed—Where!—Look ou—!”

Noise, like a dying thing that roamed beneath those trees.

‘Pain—Horror—Cessation!’

Again, familiarity, the ending of something… and yet. It struggled, and the nothingness clung even harder. The prison of stilled, frozen dirt that bound it refused to budge, no matter how it moved. No matter how—

‘Breaking—disruption—annoyance—Cessation!'

The prison of dirt, lifeless as it was, died. A face stared down at it, a rippling mirage of the familiar and the unknown. Higher, superior, formidable… Chosen?

It tried, experimentally, to push against the clinging nothingness and found, to its shock, that that curse of its existence, the bane that suffocated it, denying it nutrition, denying it light, denying it any kind of impetus was… gone?

“Do you… understand… me?”

The familiar… formidable… whispered to it, became bigger and also smaller, before it.

“DIE!”

The form of the predator stood, like a brutal shadow, over them. Its unnatural hunger grasping for the superior one that had somehow freed it—

Something snapped, within it. The cold chill that it had been unable to warm, that had shifted from a calming balm to a dreadful gnawing agony over the interminable time it had been stifled by the barren, brutal dirt of its prison filled the space it was in.

Artificial, unnatural space. Regular, it could not describe how it knew that, but it was not like home. The shade too uniform, the light hot, but slight and shallow—

“Wake. Up.”

A presence touched it, physically. Disconcerting disruption blossomed. It opened its… awareness? And beheld the familiar great above, from whence nourishment fell—was currently falling.

Familiar, soothing, silent, like being back where it had been, once. Before The Nightmare.

Green shelter, comforting, shrouded in crisp clarity, clung to its body. Instinctually, it grasped at it… with the odd, unfamiliar limbs it was now wearing, wishing to retreat to the nurturing, sheltering darkness of the dirt, only to find it… could not... not easily at least—due in part to the ‘covering’ on its new form that was disturbingly like that of the predators. The sense of cool clarity was also fading, unable to endure in the place it currently was.

After The Nightmare, it had survived, somehow.

Six of the superior ones were nearby, it could feel that, intuitively—including the three from then, Calming, Bright and Moistening in turn, along with another three who all felt similar, who were all of this place, and who it didn’t like, due to their grasping, vibrant and stifling presences.

“You had a Nightmare,” the Calming Superior One—no, its saviour, from that artificial hell, informed… it? gently, her…hand? that was what it was called, it recalled, a little groggily, no longer pinching its… face?

The strange concepts of the predator-forms being wavered like fog in its awareness, before vanishing again as it looked at the calming one before her. Shrouded in her—?

“Camoflague?” it tried to pronounce the word, but the sound was hard, unnatural to it, even in this form it now wore.

“Camouflage,” the Calming One made a sound that the predators seemed to like, that put them at ease, then patted it gently.

“Night…mare?” it repeated that set of sounds. It had heard them before.

“Yes,” the Calming Superior One moved the focal point of its form—its… expressive flower, face?—in what the predators thought of as some sort of motion of… agreement? “That is what you just experienced.”

“You?”

“You may be at this some time,” one of the ones it didn’t like observed, its sounds carrying ‘Amusement’, ‘Consideration’ and… something alien it could not really grasp. “It awakened, but this trauma is…”

“Well, being badly poisoned, stuck in a sealing pot for weeks, taken hither and thither, poked and prodded, then attacked as soon as you are freed isn’t the best way to start,” the Calming Superior One…

“The word is ‘observed’; we are speaking, about ‘you’,” the Bright Superior One, who had a much more open, easier-to-read manner, sending with it the much more familiar understanding it had always had, of the way the world worked, though it was somehow, still not quite right, in some way.

“—It would be easier if you just…” another of the stifling, vibrant ones cut in, another alien, unknowable ‘sensation’ imbuing their sounds.

“No, it has suffered enough. It must heal,” the Calming One rejected their suggestion with ‘cessation’ hinted in her sounds now.

“Indeed,” the Bright One moved her head in a motion like… agreement. “We should not add to its scars by imposing upon its emergent wisdom in such a way.”

Its ability to follow their intent foundered as more sounds, more whispers filled the place they were in. Intuitively, it knew they were talking about it, and somehow, were disappointed? Or maybe just vexed. It wanted to try to explain to them, but they were not like it, despite being superior individuals of its… kind, they were not like it. It struggled to consider how to enunciate that. The unnaturally instilled presence of the Dark Ones that ruled where it came from was not helping either, though their dangerous influence was lessening here, in this place.

“We need a ginseng, don’t we?” the third superior it actually liked, the moist, wet, refreshing one, who had barely entered into its awareness compared to the others, whispered.

As it spoke, the comforting silence of the rain deepened.

“Ginseng?” it repeated that sound, because the intent within it was familiar, graspable, carrying within it a sense of belonging.

“So, you do know that word, at least,” The third Stifling One mused. “Do you remember the words for her?”

It pointed an appendage—its hand, something within it corrected softly—at the Calming Superior One who glared at the three pushy, stifling ones in return.

This was, in many ways, awkward, it had to concede. Up there, there had been no need for this kind of thing, except these ones were hard to read, their intent confusing, too complex, or maybe not complex enough? Or in the right way?

Feeling oddly… put upon, for some reason it could not place, it considered the Calming One, camouflaged as she was, with her leaves hanging around her in a loose canopy, her… ‘name’ upon her ‘form’, like a luminous focal point of white and purple, and made another attempt at doing it ‘their’ way.

“Lily?” it hazarded at last, after struggling to enunciate the intent correctly with the unnatural sound. If only it could go back to its ‘real’ body, this would be so much easier.

“Close enough,” the Lily sighed, giving her a smile.

“—And them?” The pushiest of the three it really didn’t like at this point, gestured with her ‘hand’ to the bright and moistening superior figures on its other side.

“It is still a child, in that sense, even if it has lived a relatively long time,” the Lily stated, an alien sense drifting through her sounds as well now. “And it suffered quite a bit, during its captivity, stop pushing it so.”

“She needs to grasp this, or it will be in danger…”

As it spoke, the Pushy One’s hand guided its attention back to the Superior Luminous One and the Superior Wet One, not that it needed that; it knew just fine where they were, and what they were, and how they fit into the world around it, even if their forms were both currently also of the camouflage.

“Go on, just do your best,” the Calming One murmured, its hand lightly brushing against its own appendage.

“Nourish, moistening Fren?” it hazarded carefully, trying to enunciate the words like they had. “Bright Sustenance Orkid?”

“Sustenance Orchid?” one of the other pushy trio groaned, ‘amusement’ settling over all three.

“I take back what I just said… instil away, big sis.” The Bright One, a cruel betrayal of intention resonating in its sounds, along with unhappiness for some reason, added.

“No,” the Moistening Superior One shook its leaves, mist swirling around it gently in the rain.

Instinctively, it found a part of it wanted to reach out for that, because as it currently was, it was hard in this… camouflage they had forced it to adopt to gain what it needed. It felt stifled still, on some fundamental level, by it. Like nothing was quite satisfying while it was like this, even if it was apparently required to evade and confuse the predators.

“I know where there is a ginseng nearby. It should at least be able to advise us.”

“Uggh, it’s both humid and cold here—ah! Is this the poor child who you spoke of before? Are they any more lucid?”

It flinched as a sudden, stifling shadow settled over the whole grove. It was like the three pushy ones but, as it warily considered this new arrival within its awareness, it found it could not compare them at all. They might be the same… kind, but the new one now standing there, examining it, could not be considered merely pushy or stifling; rather, simply by being, its presence felt… strangling. An inescapable shadow, blocking out sustenance and seizing nourishment. It could also sense on some intuitive level, a near incomprehensible burden of years welling up ceaselessly within it, while the alluring vibrance and vitality that seethed just beneath its form was almost as suffocating as the shadow it cast.

It struggled to find something other than instinctual fear to identify it. The four who ruled this place, perhaps, but even they were lesser, in vitality, in vibrance, in gloom, in simple ambience. It was also not like that Dreadful, Unfathomable One that had grasped it so briefly, in the misery of its captivity, when it feared its end had finally come. Rather… it… it was almost like it was in the presence of the Dark Ones, whose red leaves whispered in strange ways, and who when the moon and stars were wrong and the rains sang, sometimes sang with them, taking on forms like the camouflage of these ones, here, but somehow not.

Not a ‘Superior’ one, but an… Elder being?

Just the thought alone, made it want to hide beneath the dark, comforting dirt, to return to the mindless slumber of ‘growth’, free from all of this—

The Lily took its hand, giving it a sense of ‘calm’, and ‘support’, and the instinct to flee, while it didn’t recede entirely, did somehow lessen a little, but it still moved, intuitively, towards its saviour.

“‘Lucidity’ is a strong word. She has awareness and, actually, a lot of intuition. She just lacks a suitable means to communicate properly, because, well, she is a ginseng that lived in the mountains its whole life, and now she is here,” the Bright Sustenance Orkid replied, and this time, to its surprise, it actually got the meaning of most of the sounds, even if it was hard to focus on so many so quick, with such obscure intent.

“Ah, I see, you lot are like the blind leading the blind,” the overwhelmingly pushy one mused, crouching down before them, and to its further surprise it found it also understood… perfectly… what it, at least, meant. “You are all too used to hiding the nature of your intention and you speak way too fast.”

“…”

“…”

The others all turned to observe it, and it could not help but mimic a sort of moment it had seen earlier that finally said ‘Yes, the Elder one is right; you all speak like idiots, aping our predators, so it is hard to understand.’

“…”

“You…” the three pushy ones stared at it in shock, while it… in truth, suddenly just felt like a miserable weight that had been clinging to some part of it was not… longer. The shadow of the Dark Ones, that the predators had tried to instil on it, was no longer like a mutilation scar, digging unharmoniously across its awareness.

“—Ah, so it was also like that,” the Elder One mused—a sense of gentle harmony settling over everything her shadow touched as her manner turned contemplative, like the stillness of a glade in a deep valley. “The scars of your ordeal really do run deep. Do You Still Understand Me If We Converse Like This?” it added, something subtle shifting in its manner as it continued.

“I… Do?” it replied warily, and carefully, matching what the Elder had just done as best it could, but still really wishing it could abandon this unpleasant form and dig itself back down to where it was naturally more comfortable, and hidden.

It was also confusing how this had not worked before but worked just fine now. All it could think was that it was because of the Elder One?

“—Also, please call me Big Sister Fu Ji,” the Elder added, its aura continuing to lessen with every fluctuation of its intent. “I’ll feel embarrassed if you equate me with those figures of the Dark Valleys.”

“Fu… Ji?” it managed, though the intent it pushed was mostly still influenced by its memory of the stifling, strangling nature of the domineering Elder being before it, even with the harmony it was also now embodying.

“Ahhh, maybe just Big Sister Wisteria is fine,” Fu Ji sighed, projecting ‘welcoming’ and ‘warmth’ even more overtly with its appearance that was markedly at odds with how its presence still felt, truthfully.

“Big… Sister?” it turned those words over, unfamiliar as they were, trying to match them to associations it could properly rationalize. “Also—Her?”

“Family is a weird concept to you, I know, when you have grown up solitary and just ‘are’ in groups with your—”

The Wisteria stopped speaking as a presence swept across the place they were in. Hungry, Powerful, Searching in its intent.

Reflexively, the others all froze as well, as, a moment later, voices echoed through the rain.

“What do you think that was?”

“Awakened spirit herb, maybe? It is a garden that looks like it should have some. Maybe it is one of the four on the list?”

“Uggh, they just let them roam wild? How irresponsible…”

“Well, our orders are to sweep it for anything unusual and report what isn’t on the list. It claims there should be four, one in each quadrant…”

“What I would not give to be rid of this Avici-sent rain. Our armour is going to stop working properly at this rate.”

The disruptive sounds and presence… of predators… echoed through the greenery around them, followed by the sound of shifting vegetation, then two hulking, armoured figures came into view, through the downpour, picking their way around the spirit trees and shrubs.

Both were looking about warily, but didn’t seem able to notice them, for now at least.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she noted the three pushy ones had melted back into the shadows, the trains of purple flowers winding through the branches overhead rustling faintly. The Bright One and the Moistening One had also flitted into the nearby greenery, their natural forms settling silent as if they had always been there.

“Do not panic,” the Calming Lily murmured softly to her, her own leaf-garment rippling into the form of the things the predators frequently wore to cover their form. “Just play along. It will be fine.”

“Ah! Over… oh…” the nearer of the two predator-beings immediately turned to look in their direction as the lily spoke to it, and then paused.

“The orders were for everyone to assemble in the courtyard. Why are you two kids…?”

The Elder Wisteria coughed gently and the rain around them shivered. Both predators focused on her, where she had taken a seat beneath the vine-draped tree, their faces turning pale.

‘Fear—Unease—Aggression—Terror’

Intent bled off them as they considered her presence, then they both bowed deeply.

“Apologies, S-Senior…?”

“Lady Fu Ji,” the Elder Wisteria whispered, not bothering to get to her feet. “You must be soldiers from the Local Authority.”

“We are… which influence…? Ah.” They both paused as the wisteria adjusted her camouflage to reveal a certain set of patterns adorning the front more clearly. “Our apologies, Priestess.”

“I am a part of the Wusheng Temple,” the Wisteria murmured. “I was invited here by Madam Leng to tend to some of these poor children,” she said, gesturing towards the two of them. “They suffered a lot of trauma these past few weeks, and the gardens here calm them.”

“I… see,” the Weaker One spoke up, weirdly. “However, they should still have assembled with…”

“Their families are lost, their homes are gone and as you can see, they are not comfortable around others,” the Wisteria murmured, the sense of ‘warmth’ and ‘comfort’ radiating off her intensifying as she spoke. “If it pleases you, of course we will come to the courtyard. All I ask is that you be understanding of their circumstances.”

“Just… so you understand, Priestess Fu,” the Weaker One nodded, both predators’ panic slowly fading, replaced with acceptance, as she spoke.

“I… uh, don’t suppose you have seen the spirit herbs in this place?” the stronger of the two added.

“In this weather, I am afraid I cannot help you much,” the Wisteria answered with a sigh. “I can only advise against poking around too much; they are quite strong.”

“Mmmm, yes, that is why we have to account for them, you understand, Priestess,” the weaker of the pair muttered. “It’s part of the regulations… and there have been… accidents in the last while.”

“I can imagine,” the Wisteria mused. “I suppose we could come with you and offer a… hand. At least two of them are familiar to me, so they will at least register their presence a little without causing any ructions—I assume that is all you have to do?”

“Well, um… the…” the Stronger One looked like it was going to say something, but the other one elbowed them unobtrusively in the side.

“—Just recording their presence and ensuring the gardens are as… documented, is all that is required,” the Weaker One replied with a polite bow. “Your aid in that matter will of course be noted.”

“Your understanding does you credit,” the Wisteria replied making an expression on her ‘face’ that radiated warmth and acknowledgement as she got to her feet and waved for both of them to come join her.

Not really able to do anything else, it stood up, a bit woodenly, because the camouflaged form was hard to move about in, and taking the calming lily’s hand, stiffly walked over to stand beside the Wisteria.

“What happened to her?” the weaker of the predators pointed at it.

Again, for a moment, it had to fight the urge to hide in the safe, cool ground, as even if it were the ‘weaker’ one, the predator still felt notably stronger than it…

“Yin poisoning, during the upheaval,” the Wisteria replied calmly. “She has to learn how to walk.”

“Motherless… those bastards really are…” the Weaker One mumbled sounds under their breath, anger shimmering around them for a moment.

“And this is why we present ourselves like this,” the Lily whispered, gently as they walked beside the Wisteria, through the sky-nourishment-obscured greenery. “This is their valley, and this artifice all around them their forest, into which we must adapt, lest…”

That didn’t need that sense to be finished. It… she, it supposed, considering the conceptual mask provided, had seen all too well where the lack of it had led her. Capture, torment, misery upon misery, then that numbing, untouchable cage of frozen dirt.

“Is she… okay?” the Weaker One was looking at it… ‘her’, she realised.

“Sry…” it managed to speak, trying hard in not meeting its focus as… it—she realised something of her own intent had inadvertently manifested at recalling that miserable, stagnant time.

Bizarrely, where that would have had no impact at all in her… place she had come from, the Weaker One actually sighed and something like pity and pain, on her behalf hung around it for a moment.

“You see?” the Lily murmured, putting a hand that openly portrayed ‘comfort’ to those around them on her body. “They do not see us, not really. They see what they want to see. A form, a flower, a mask. Gender, Age, Innocence—all of it becomes camouflage to help our survival here, because they adore these things, along with beauty and elegance, and fear the cruel rawness of the reality of these lands, until it becomes a kind of blindness.”

“It is a grim time,” the Weaker One observed, its presence again cloaked in a sense she once again couldn’t quite grasp. “I hoped never to see these days come again, after that blood-soaked year.”

“This is just how it is,” the Wisteria replied evenly as they reached the edge of the rocky gravel grove that, every time it had come to this part of the garden, gave it a sense of creeping unease due to the formidable one lurking at its heart. “All we can do is live as we are and do the best we can.”

“As you say, Priestess,” the Stronger One said, though there it—she, sensed something else, almost like… opposition, or discord?

“So, um, the one here should be a… bamboo?” the Weaker One suggested as they paused at the edge of the gravel that flowed between rocky outcropping, consulting with a half-visible blue thing that appeared in the space in front of it.

“Uggh, this weather!” the Weaker One added, pausing to glare up at the clouds above.

“I can’t see shit with my helmet,” the Stronger One added. “It’s just a fate-thrashed blur of iridescence out there.”

It was hard not to shake… ‘her’… ‘head’, both still feeling like weird concepts. Their lack of awareness was slightly problematic to it, in a way it was hard to articulate as well, as it took in the various places where spirit herbs were currently lurking. Most were not ‘superior’ ones like they now were, but just within eyesight it could feel at least seven, all of a strength with it, silently watching them from their respective territories.

“Fu Ji, you honour me with your presence…”

Like a silent whisper, out of the deluge, the Bamboo appeared, clad in the same elegance and grace as the Wisteria beside them. Its presence was not as overwhelming as the Wisteria, but it had almost the same vibrancy, in this climate. Certainly, it was enough to intimidate both of the ‘predators’, who flinched, and took a step backwards, their expressions again paling as they bowed slightly before it.

“—And it seems we are being raided… again?”

“It has… happened before?” the Weaker One asked, uneasily.

“Oh, long ago,” the Bamboo replied. “Some rogues from the Huang sought to assassinate the Lord Ling’s son, over some small grievance. There was a teahouse, a poem and a beauty… though that always seems to be the case.”

“Invariably,” the Wisteria agreed, shaking her head.

“I have some memory that there was a protest when we returned the bodies, but we left them intact, so…”

“You left them… intact?” The Stronger One’s presence flared with hostility now, and unease.

“It was long ago, the due was paid, and the Huang Lord bowed thrice to our Lord and his son,” the Bamboo sighed. “I believe a song was later composed, but it was not very good.”

“…”

“I assume you wish to meet with my sisters?” the Bamboo added, eyeing the pair, who were just staring at the Bamboo now. “There is likely a warrant or something you must observe?”

“Y-yes,” the Weaker One replied hurriedly, stepping forward and holding out that strange blue-ish shadow for the Bamboo to look at “A formality, you understand.”

“Of course, the ritual of these things matters,” the Bamboo agreed after considering it for a moment.

“Formality?” it… she asked the Lily softly, because while it had a fair grasp of the sounds spoken, the intent in many of the words not spoken by their kind still occasionally felt hollow to the point of near incomprehension to it.

“They are trying to pretend like they are not making trouble,” the Lily replied, radiating amusement.

“Shush, you two,” the Wisteria whispered. “Be respectful.”

“…”

As they watched, the Bamboo produced a length of… well, bamboo, and, holding it lightly, flicked it with one of the appendages on her hand three times in quick succession. The sound it made reverberated gently through the garden, merging with the ambiance.

The first to arrive was the other one she had actually ‘met’, the Lotus from the lake, who slid into focus as little more than a shadow amidst the nearby greenery, barely revealing her camouflage form to the startled pair. Its aura was the coldest and most comfortable of the four, she felt, perhaps because it was closest to her in nature.

“Fu Ji…” its voice whispered, like the sighing of reads and the lapping of the moisture on dirt. “Honour…”

“Shanyuan,” the Wisteria murmured, inclining her head in reply.

“—Old Ling would never have permitted this,” the Willow from the southern end of the garden remarked coolly, also arriving next to them in a rustle of leaves and alighting on one of the stone box-things dotted around the place to give brightness at night. “It has been a while since you blessed us with your presence, Fu Ji. I had begun to think you did not know what a bridge was.”

The second half of what it spoke was pure intention, projected through ambience, and it could not help but notice that both of the not-so-dangerous–seeming ‘predators’ looked at her as if she were some poisonous thing.

“—If you behave like that, Green Willow, they will take it as hostility and that would cause Lady Leng difficulties,” the last of the four leaders among their kind in this place, the Plum Tree that lived in the eastern area, murmured, stepping out of the mist.

Unlike the others, who all appeared in the camouflage of what she supposed were ‘adult’ predators, the Plum preferred a younger form, more akin to the one she and the Lily beside her currently maintained, and her manner was bright and cheerful. It was completely at odds with her ‘presence’ as well, which was…. easily the most formidable of all four, though still not as smothering and overwhelming as the Wisteria.

“I do hope you are not causing problems for Aunty Leng,” the Plum Tree added ‘playfully’, giving the pair the most spectacular and subtle immersion in her aura.

“They really are unperceptive as rocks,” she could not help but whisper to the Lily, because had she run into that sort of ‘sense’ of ‘play’ up in the mountains she would have been leaving that valley as fast as she was able.

“I think that is slandering rocks,” the Lily replied drily.

“N-no, of course not,” the Weaker One flushed, panic and other hard to read feelings bleeding off of both of them now. “It is just a routine thing…”

“I will watch with interest as you check the rest of the neighbourhood then,” the Plum Tree suggested sweetly.

“Ah-hah, little lady, that isn’t how this works,” the Stronger One tried to interject, performative strength briefly pushing out from it, for all the good it did.

“Mmmm, so you are making trouble for Aunty Leng, then?” the Plum Blossom asked, the expression on its face turning into an ever more radiant manifestation of ‘delight’.

“—I believe you have observed what you must, so you can report back to your superiors that the records are… as correct as they can be for any estate in this town,” the Wisteria interjected smoothly.

“I-I do believe that is the case, as you say, Priestess Fu,” the Weaker One, who seemed by far the more adaptive of them, she had to concede, agreed quickly.

“We will just be…”

Abruptly, a discordant, creaking sense of pressure bled through the greenery around them, radiating from the tall construction surrounded by trapped moisture on the northern side of the rocky area.

All four spirit herbs vanished, their forms scattering into leaves, flowers and, in the case of the lotus, moisture droplets—

In the middle distance, she felt a subtle ripple of ‘Aggression’, then four artificial thorns that the predators likely used as weapons shattered into fragments a few paces away from their group. Both guards flinched, panic and shock running through them as they turned to look in that direction, drawing their own artificial weapons—

A moment later, six masked figures, all dressed in dark colours, appeared around them.

“Who—?!” one of the dark figures turned towards the depths of the rocky area and then… collapsed as several spikes of pale bamboo impaled it.

“Shit, ther—!” the strongest of the remaining predators rounded on them, looked at the two of them, entirely seemed to miss the Wisteria, and then collapsed along with the other four as more bamboo slid silently out of the ground around them in a rippling wave, obliterating their qi and vitality, while drifting willow leaves slashed across their bodies, severing limbs and even a head in one instance.

The whole ‘attack’ lasted less than a pulse of her qi and, with the exception of the initial discordant wave of pressure and then the flash of ‘Aggression’, had barely caused a ripple in the ambience of their surroundings.

It was in stark contrast to the end of her own ‘Nightmare’. Those predators had not gone down anywhere near as easily as this, and ruined half of the small artificial valley in that other place in the process. “So… uh, who are they, anyway?” the Lily asked the Wisteria as the two predators stared, pale-faced, at the six dismembered, broken corpses of their kind.

“Mercenaries,” the Willow replied, from the shadows. “From Western Azure of all places. Their plan was to sneak in while this warrant is being executed, killing a few of these guards, clean out the library and some other places as well and then leave, after making it look like this estate was responsible.”

“Mmmm, and who put them up to this, I wonder?” the Bamboo’s voice whispered out of the depths of the rocky islands.

“They have no idea,” the Willow mused, glancing around. “It was just a—”

“—Dammit, that idiot!”

The Willow fell silent as abruptly, a seventh masked figure, with a hungry strength bleeding off of it that made her want to crawl back into the ground and hide, stopped a few paces away from them.

“He swore he could get inside the pagoda without—!”

She had the gratification of seeing this predator’s expression turn slack, as it did spot the Wisteria, and its aura destabilised momentarily with terror, before the Willow stepped silently out of the greenery beside it and with a casual swipe of her hand, decapitated it, placing the severed head on the stone box beside her.

“…”

“Uh, what should we do with them?” the Lily asked the Wisteria quietly after they had all had a moments silence to take things in.

“Bury… Deep?” the Lotus suggested quietly from the shadow of one of the other box-things, making the ‘stronger’ predator flinch in fright as it registered her return.

“So, not making trouble for Lady Leng, huh?” the Plum Tree asked brightly, eyeing the head the Willow had severed as she also reappeared right between the already jittery pair, who both jumped a foot in the air.

~ Jun Han/Yuan Zixin — Mrs Leng’s Estate ~

They made it halfway through the inventory of the first warehouse, before an ‘incident’ finally occurred. Which, in the face of what he suspected was unfolding on some level, Jun Han had to admit to himself was quite an impressive feat. He was standing by, watching two of the local guards, whose names he vaguely recalled were Jin and Heng, glumly check crate after crate of various low-quality spirit food ingredients against a purchase and supply order Yuan Mai had produced, all overseen by the former deputy commander Ha, when a discordant, nails-on-stone sense of pressure bled through the hall, radiating from the rear of the Estate.

“What was that!?” the leader of the squad of Ancient Immortal soldiers from the Quan Legion turned to him, his expression disconcerted.

“I believe, Master Sergeant, it was someone triggering the wards on the estate’s library pagoda in a way… that they should not be,” he replied, pushing away his own sense of unease and trying to be as professionally cordial as possible. “It isn’t even the first time this week.”

“Oh…” the Ancient Immortal grimaced. “Elaborate.”

“—Some bandits used a sherd bomb to blow down the back wall during the chaos a few weeks back,” Yuan Mai interjected.

“That was before I returned,” he added helpfully. “Then, four days ago, several thieves attempted to slip into the grounds and raid the library. Likely they expected the newly repaired wall to be weaker and hoped to make some easy pickings.”

“What happened to them?” the Sergeant asked, frowning. “This was not reported?”

“The sherd bomb incident was,” Ha Shi Junpei—the former Deputy Commander of the Guards turned Official—volunteered. “It was one of… twenty-two, such incidents that morning, including the assaults on the Li estate and the Ha family estate. Seventeen invaders were reported dead if I recall, along with three employees of this estate, another six across the road and ninety-one injured in the aftermath… there were probably more, but it was… chaotic, that day.”

“I see,” the Sergeant sighed, turning back to him. “And these thieves from a few days ago?”

“Failed to get through the renewed wards and fled,” he clarified. “Sir Qi reported to the Yu District Guard Authority…”

“—We can only hope that they are doing their utmost,” Yuan Mai added a little helplessly.

“Undoubtedly,” the Sergeant replied in a tone that told him that it was one of a very long list of things they were undoubtedly ‘doing their utmost’ to investigate, right now.

“You four,” the Sergeant beckoned to four of the other Ancient Immortals who had been working up the other end of the warehouse. “Go check out what it was.”

“SIR!” the nearest of the four saluted and the four put aside the crates they had been checking and, after replacing their helmets, headed out the door, into the courtyard and the direction of the gardens.

“You two,” the Sergeant then pointed to two who had been watching the doorway to the warehouse. “Check the other warehouses, just in case.”

“Sir!” both saluted and left as well, being replaced by two of the remaining four who had been doing the inventory.

“I guess we will be here a while,” Heng muttered under his breath, putting the crate of lotus roots he had been checking aside and turning back to the Sergeant. “This one is as on the list, Sir.”

In other circumstances, and in a different lifetime, having been on the other end of a few ‘warrant searches’ like this, Jun Han fancied he would have felt a bit more sympathy for them. However, all his intuition was telling him that this was someone playing stupid games, so it only felt fair that they won a stupid prize. In this instance, it was going to be spending the entire day, in all likelihood, going box by box through the five warehouses in the estate, inventorying low-grade spirit food ingredients, because the soul-sense inhibiting deluge falling outside was as bad as he had ever experienced outside the actual border of Yin Eclipse.

“This entire hall… is just spirit food ingredients, Young Master Yuan?” the Sergeant asked him, a slight hint of resignation in his voice.

“It should be, Sergeant,” he replied politely. “However, in order to assuage the concerns of Lord Quan…”

“Corporal Jin,” the Sergeant jerked his head towards Jin, who stood up quickly. “The weather is going to mess with the com-array, isn’t it?”

“This is as bad as I can remember, Sir,” Jin replied smartly. “The array in the mudskipper might do better.”

“In that case, go to tell them to summon… twenty of the district auxiliary force here to help with this.”

“Sir!” Jin saluted smartly and left without a backward glance, more than happy to do anything other than check crate after crate of food produce.

“I believe that is this section of the Purchase Order affirmed,” Yuan Mai spoke up after considering her list as Corporal Heng put aside another crate. “There were nineteen irregularities in the order caused by the supplier failing to deliver goods of sufficient quality or substituting at point of delivery in this next batch though, so we will also have to check all of them manually against their and ours as well,” she added, her voice dripping with apologetic sincerity as she gestured towards the next set of pallets in the hall.

“Another substituted batch?” Official Ha muttered, looking around with a grimace.

“It isn’t normally this bad,” she apologised, putting a hand on his arm. “However, that auction in Blue Water City…”

“Upended the whole market, yes,” the Sergeant, who was also familiar with the problem by now, sighed as well.

“On the bright side, sir, we get to be indoors,” one of the Ancient Immortals still checking called over.

“Praise the Heavens of Shan for small mercies,” he added with aplomb.

“Quite.” the Sergeant agreed, sitting down on one of the checked crates and staring into nothing for a moment.

-Surely, he is starting to regret the choice to wear heavy armour in this climate, he mused. Probably they are not adapted to it either, yet.

Most of the heavy armour used in the province had been periodically adapted to compensate for many of the most egregious issues that arose from working in a region where rainstorms of the kind currently overhead could occur with depressingly regularity and last as long as a week or more.

Unfortunately for the newly arrived forces, most of those supplies were controlled directly by the Ling clan and the Cao clan, who contributed the majority of the heavier firepower to the provincial military for the last few millennia. What remained of the Cao stockpiles in Blue Water City had been seized by the Sheng clan as well, leaving little for the provincial forces brought in by the Quan and other clans in their wake. The Ling were also not sharing, by all accounts, so most of the newer units, like the one executing the warrant on their estate, were deploying with gear that did not yet have any adaption, operated by soldiers, many of whom had never experienced these conditions before in any sustained manner.

“Perhaps we could get you and your men some refreshments?” Yuan Mai suggested politely.

“Mmmm,” the Sergeant continued to stare into space, as if lost in thought, so she didn’t press matters, and instead beckoned to him.

“Brother dear, could you help me move these crates, so Official Ha can check the ones behind?” she asked him, with a bright smile, gesturing to a double stacked pallet.

“Ah, sure,” he nodded going over to them, observing wryly as he did so, that Official Ha didn’t look especially enthused about getting ‘help’.

Truth be told, he still found it a little weird at times to be formally calling and thinking of her as his ‘sister’, but it was still much easier than fully settling into the young master persona his status required, especially when faced with the lingering eyes of Ha Shi Junpei.

Somewhat surprisingly, it only took about five minutes for Corporal Jin to return, somewhat bedraggled and out of breath, carrying a pair of umbrellas.

“Sir! Reporting, Sir!” Corporal Jin stated smartly. “The secure communication network for the whole town is failing in the rain, Sir. I sent Corporal Fan to the District Headquarters in person to deliver your request.”

“The whole network…” the Master Sergeant shook his head. “And that alert, just now?”

“Um, it seems like a bunch of intruders, Sir,” the Corporal replied. “Just what I overheard though. The spirit herbs in the garden killed them.”

“The… Huaaaaa…” the Sergeant did sigh this time. “Their origins are unclear, but they look like hired mercenaries. Sir Quan is looking into it.”

“I see,” the Master Sergeant made a face, then stared around the hall again. “Corporal, go find me a proper assessment of these invaders, and while you are out there, also get one of the maids and tell them to prepare some refreshments for my men and deliver them here.”

“Sir!” Corporal Jin saluted with a deadpan expression and departed again, leaving one of the umbrella’s behind.

-And so it begins, he reflected, watching the exchange with the carefully neutral yet attentive expression of a young master who had no real idea of how the inner workings of military dysfunction could begin.

“Smart lad, that; will go far,” the nearer of the other Ancient Immortals remarked drily.

The Master Sergeant’s decision to look out for his own troops was, on the face of it, commendable, and understandable in this horrid weather, but by the letter of regulations, he should have refused Yuan Mai’s offer and just stuck it out. That he was willing to bend the rules meant he suspected that there was something a bit fishy going on with this warrant now, and this rather conveniently timed ‘attack’ was only going to feed into that assessment.