Memories of the Fall

...The Blue Gate School is one of the rising stars of the Yin Eclipse Sub Continent. In the last 30,000 years it has risen from a minor faction in the coastal trading hub of Blue Water City to the pre-eminent sect within that north eastern region our of Great World, acting as the gateway for much of the wealth of alchemical and medicinal craft emerging from there. Despite being quite low in the overall rankings of Sects from the Eastern Continent, its leaders have largely shown excellent acumen when seeking out political allies to the south and it has some small connection to the Lu Clan of the Central Continent and to the Ha Clan. It is likely these connections which have enabled it to thrive when other influences, such as the ill-fated Lin School, were unable to survive the recent turmoil in the region…

Excerpt – The Sects of the East

By Seng Mo.

~ Jun Sana, Ling Estate - Blue Water City ~

Squatting down beside the large potted plant, staring at it pensively, Jun Sana tried to tune out Ling Yu’s prattling. The young niece of the bureau chief was truly a good friend, someone of her age who she could talk to about all kinds of random things. But right now, she didn’t need to hear about whatever weird thing had brought some young nobles from across the sea. Not when she was trying to work out what species of fungus was attempting to mutate her friend's pet. Keeping a plant as a pet was hardly unusual. The little Moon Song Ginseng could even get out of its pot and wander a short distance if it so wished. That was the question really. Was it something it had picked up here? Or had someone just done something weird to it? It probably wasn’t Yu. She doted on the little thing like it was her firstborn child, and it reciprocated with little displays of illusion and helping flowers in the gardens here bloom. So the fact that it was curled up and shivering deep in the pot, while several small mushrooms grew in the middle, was perturbing, because despite being a rather mild and carefree plant, Moon Song Ginseng were undisputed heavyweights in the hierarchy of the Yin Eclipse Mountains.

“You're certain nobody has done something weird with it?” she asked again.

Ling Yu was shaken out of her monologue about the beautiful woman on the boat, whoever that was, to reconnect with the reason she was actually here. “Eh?.... eum… I don’t think so?”

“Has it left your quarters at all in the last few days?” she ran through the options in her head.

The mould or mushroom trying to encroach the pot's soil had come back twice. Despite the entire pot being emptied and the soil replaced. The first time the ginseng itself had done so, much to the annoyance of Yu’s mother from what she could gather, as it had dumped it all over the floor of the room it was in at the time.

“My cousin mentioned something about a party and wanting to help her friend bloom some plants…” Ling Yu furrowed her small brow. “But I was sure she didn’t actually use my little Blue Moon in the end.”

She stared again at the mushrooms in the middle. They were greenish-white, and about the size of her thumb, with a decidedly unhealthy pall. If they had been purple and pale green, she would have had one of the Ling clan’s Immortals cage the pot hours ago, and already looking to see who was trying to kill Ling Yu, but greenish-white and that shape wasn’t anything she was familiar with.

“So do you know what is wrong with it?” Ling Yu said, leaning over her shoulder.

“The mushrooms are stealing its auspicious energies,” She puffed out her cheeks. “As far as I can see they haven’t spored yet, which is good. But somehow Blue Moon has been touched by their spores, or maybe some qi residue from them. They are trying to parasitize it.”

“So you have a solution?” Ling Yu pressed.

She sat back and sighed. She did, or at least a way to rule out a lot of possibilities. The only problem was that here in blue water city it was a bit of a bothersome one.

“I do… but.”

“But what?” Ling Yu pouted. “I don’t want Little Blue to get hurt by this nasty mushroom.”

“It’s likely to be expensive.”

“Money is your concern….” Ling Yu eyed her suspiciously. “How much are we talking…”

“Well… it will cost a few hundred pure spirit stones to get the right alignment of herbs unless your family has a bunch of auspiciously aligned five elements herb plots squirrelled away I've never seen.”

“………..” Ling Yu stared at her oddly.

“My father is the Bureau coordinator for the entire of Blue Water province. My second uncle is the Chief of the entire City Bureau. My Aunt is a Vice Headmistress of the Blue Gate Alchemy School, and you are worried that a few hundred spirit stones is a price too expensive for my little Bluey to not get sick!?!”

“Well… it might not work, and the other option is even more expensive,” she pointed out belatedly.

“Not to mention, I remember the fiasco with this pot, where your little brother claimed I was trying to cheat you out of spirit stones… and take advantage of you.”

“……”

Ling Yu had the good grace to not wince at that, even if it was several years in the past. It was still a sore point to her that, as a newly minted Herb Hunter on her third mission, she had been sent here to consult on the creation of this very pot. It had been couched as a training exercise for her only for her to discover that the family expert, who was also Ling Yu’s tutor had been basically making it wrong. Nobody liked being upstaged by a 14-year-old girl from the sticks. She had returned in tears and her father and old Ling had gone to the city and presumably had a few words with the bureau here, because whatever happened afterwards that tutor had been sweetness and light ever since. The only issue was that Ling Yu’s brat of a younger brother Ling Fu had had it in for her for losing him some kind of face in the process.

-Wait…

She turned back to the pot and with a wave of her hand, used qi to excavate all the dirt, taking care not to disturb the mushroom which was now sprouting on the top of the pile sending out ‘bad vibes’. Grasping the ginseng carefully, she took it out as well and dropped it in a second pot where it sat there looking remarkably and expressively sorry for itself. Its leaves curled around it a bit like a blanket, and its roots twitching in agitation. The pot thoroughly emptied, she peered inside it, looking at the formations and wards on its interior.

“What are you looking for?” Ling Yu asked.

“I am not sure,” she muttered. “Something else is off.”

She stared back at Little Blue, running through the extensive list of beneficial things they could do for a cultivator. Mostly this was a plant that had untold benefits to being kept alive, rather than refined, but it was also…

Pulling out her scrip, she skimmed to the alchemy sections and set it to searching for spirit root purification while she kept looking at the pot.

By the time the search came back, she still hadn’t worked out what had been done to it, though something certainly had been done. Glancing through the list, she ruled out the thirty or so different results regarding the Ginseng being ‘healthy.’ It was like Myriad Shell Crabs in that regard, a boundless cornucopia of auspiciousness that would only enhance most harmonious spaces.

-That left…

She ruled out the pill immediately. It was from the sealed records only available to those at nine stars or higher and only helped a Chosen Immortal with a Yin Heavens type spirit root. The other two, however. One was about inducing a deviation in the root of the ginseng which could be harvested and used to promote the quality of a supporting elemental spirit root accordingly. The other was even simpler. If you killed the root in a sideways manner, that was to say, cruelly, its life force would allow you, with the proper techniques, to enhance your spiritual constitution and make your meridians more attuned to life type qi. You didn’t even have to use the ginseng itself. Its purpose was just to become the focal point of… of the formation.

“It really hasn’t left this annexe in the last few months, has it?” she asked.

“Except for when we got the formations re-done a few months back,” Ling Yu replied.

“You got the formations re-done?” she asked.

“Yeah…” Ling Yu signed and put her chin on her hands. “That snotty brat's teacher owed father some favour, so he got him to repay it by fixing up some of the ones that were getting old in this part of the estate. It was a huge nuisance… my brothers both got made to participate as a teaching experience and both of them are really bad at them, so it took far longer than it should have. Even Teacher Grandmaster Wen got annoyed at them after a while.”

“Remind me what your little brother Mu's spirit root is again?” she sighed.

“Uhuh… 'Yang Life' with 'Minor Water', it’s really high grade,” Ling Yu sniffed, annoyed.

“Well, I have good news then, and bad news,” she stood, stretching.

“Bad news first,” Ling Yu said without hesitating.

“You can add three zeros onto the price of fixing this mess, and your little brother Mu is trying to kill your pet and refine it to make his spirit root stronger.”

Ling Yu’s flawless eyebrow twitched as a vein pulsed slightly in her temple.

Truthfully her rage right now was very understandable. If there was a bottom-line anywhere in her friend, it was her herb garden and her ginseng spirit pet. The sun could fall, the house of Ling could likely come to ruin, all her worldly possessions be stolen away and so long as she still had her companion pet, a first meetings gift to her from the Headmaster of the Blue Gate School himself, awarded in the first auspicious hour after her birth, everything would be just fine.

It was in fact how they had originally become friends, a shared interest in arranging gardens, although where Ling Yu gravitated more towards weird things like her ginseng or the singing trees in her aunt's estate, she tended to enjoy the arrangement aspect and experimenting with Feng Shui more. Probably because she got to see too much of the sneaky, dangerous side of sapient spirit herbs.

The air in the room had dropped a good few degrees at this point. The bedsheets around Ling Yu were starting to sparkle with frost as well. Easy to forget that she was the cultivation genius of this generation of the family. Her brothers were only stronger due to the resource disparity in nurturing male and female heirs. Had she been born a man, Ling Yu, who was at early Soul Foundation, would have been at Spirit Severing already, despite being only the same age… 15, as her fellow herb hunter Lin Ling.

“I’ll kill him.” Ling Yu hissed, scrunching the sheets in her hands. They cracked into shards under the freezing pressure of her qi.

“As your friend, I’d advise you not to kill your little brother and heir apparent to the Ling Household,” she winced, though she shared the sentiment. Both Yu's brothers treated her as either eye candy with a presumptive intent to be toyed with or a servant to be bullied or both at once.

“The good news is that the short term solution here is to send Little Blue to live with your aunt in the school for a while. Get him a new pot, and we will set up a new nurturing formation. Weren’t you saying your aunt wanted to spend time with you?”

“……”

Taking a deep breath, Ling Yu managed to get a hold of herself.

“So how does this work? And what is it with the fungus?”

“The fungus, I’m still not sure,” she admitted. “I’d hazard that has to do with whoever you got the soil from and the nature of the formation. We should go look around the gardens outside though.”

Thirty minutes of poking around outside revealed a dozen other spirit plants and one tree that had the same fungus starting to infect them. The garden itself appeared to have harboured it for a year or more. The tree itself seemed quite healthy, but when she dug three holes to its roots and found the fungus growing on all of them, slowly drawing qi from it. By this point, their endeavour had garnered some notice, and she was soon joined by the family servant who looked after the gardens. Upon learning that there was a fungus infecting a wide swathe of the more important spirit plants in it, the old man garnered a complexion akin to a thunder cloud and stormed off to find the seneschal.

The true extent of the fungus was finally pinned down to half the manor, with the help of gardener Tuo and a dozen servants who were told what to go look for. Some experimentation with her own crude means of feng shui divination and then some confirmations by Gardner Tuo, who was much better at it than she was, confirmed her suspicion that it was so widespread simply because of a very minor and previously insignificant change to the feng shui of the gardens.

“How the fates didn’t you find this problem Gardener Tuo,” the seneschal for the manor, Sir Kao, stood nearby with the face of a man who has just seen his beautifully balanced accounts for the year dissolve into a mass of debt and overspend.

“It’s not that we didn’t see it, it’s that the change is so subtle, and the fungus so… innocuous, that it has so far passed unremarked upon,” the old man tried to explain.

“Gardener Tuo doesn’t even have much to do with these gardens.” Ling Yu added. “My older brother Fan did a lot of messing about with it, changing the alignment so it better suited the law that he got from becoming an inner disciple of the Blue Gate School.”

“Mmmmm,” the Seneschal eyed all of them dubiously.

“Honoured Steward Sir Kao,” she stepped forward.

“The infection itself is easy to remedy, well within the means of the estate without significant expenditure beyond some sympathetic planting of relatively common, if spiritually aggressive herbs for a season that will re-order the soils innate qi, making the fungus less likely to mutate. The fungus itself appears largely benign until it was exposed to whatever had promoted the wider change in the feng shui of the gardens and this wing.”

That was a good hint, she didn’t look at the Chief Gardener. That would be too obvious.

Admirably reading between the lines of her comment, the Gardener Tuo scowled. “So Miss Jun, you are concerned that there could be other unintentional mutations caused by this change?”

“That would be my first concern.” She nodded. “Where did the soil here come from?”

“Its top-quality spirit soil, we bought it from South Grove,” the Gardener frowned.

“It hasn’t come from anywhere else?”

She crouched down, crumbling it in her fingers, before gingerly tasting a bit. One of the advantages of a physical cultivation base was a good sensitivity for changes in qi. It tasted faintly familiar. An acerbic tang of yin energy.

“Have you got any plants in here from the western reaches?... or from the lower and mid regions of the valleys around East Fury?" she asked speculatively.

“Gardener Tuo?” the Seneschal frowned.

“Nothing I've overseen, sir,” the old man frowned.

“Um… sir...” one of the maids nearby spoke up hesitantly.

“Yes?” the seneschal turned to the maid in question.

“Um… Young Master Mu purchased a Red Fire Ginseng at the Ha Clan’s auction the other month. It came with its own pot and everything.”

“Oh. That,” the seneschal frowned. “I thought he wasn’t keeping it here?”

“He… erm...” the maid looked shifty.

“Go on, girl.” The seneschal sighed.

“He had us dump out the soil and swap the pot for a better one… I… we…”

“You swapped the pot with the one for my ginseng!” Ling Yu went from normal speaking tone to murderous screech in the space of a single sentence.

“He… just told us which pot to take from the storehouse… I’m…I’m…s… sorry young miss!” The maid dropped to her knees, looking white as a sheet.

She turned back to the pot. Which had since been brought out, along with the decanted soil by another servant. So that was what was off about it. She hadn’t gotten around to turning it over and look at the rune on the base yet. That would have been the next thing to do, but it was a big pot, and she hadn’t wanted to make a mess of Ling Yu’s room. Raising an auspicious Yang Life Ginseng in a Yin fire element pot would certainly not help.

And that also solved the mystery of the soil, belatedly. Life was weirdly serendipitous like that. The trip to harvest a large bunch of Fire Ginseng from the western confines of the upper valleys, beyond the Red Pit had been a distressingly memorable week for all involved. The things lived in proximity to a bunch of other, far less amenable Yang fire type plants, including Lash Lamium, Fire Jasmine and Heavens Blaze pines. A painful and toxic weed, a forbidden and dangerously addictive plant that could be used as a spirit drug and a tree whose whole ecology was based on explosions and wildfire.

“The soil was probably contaminated with some exotic fungus from the high valleys,” she said. “Fire ginseng grows in hot, dark under hangs on their western edge. We harvested a large quantity about two months ago.”

“The soil may well have been outwash from caves higher up on the valley wall. If it was just dumped out here without proper treatment, all sorts of stuff could be in it.”

Thinking back, she had a memory of the Ha Clan’s bunch ranging away from the group. Had one of them grabbed a few barrels of the loam from the death trap at the bottom of the cliff? Really, the herbs shouldn’t have been sold on. Thinking about it, a herb sold in the soil of the place it grew was worth several times the herb on its own.

Rubbing her temples, she felt a headache coming on when she went back to West Flower Picking Town and told Old Ling about this. He certainly needed to know. This was the kind of thing that could come back to haunt them if others had bought herbs in that soil… Hopefully, it hadn’t actually gone through the pavilion. That would be a bit of political aggro that would definitely be deflected at them and the ‘inexperience’ of their younger generation. She had spent enough time in Blue Water City to know how that one was likely to play out in the short term.

“So what do you suggest?” Ling Yu turned to her.

“For now? Dig up the garden, what you can. Pot it all up in normal clay pots you got from the market, go to the gardens and tell them I sent you, they will loan you some low-grade spirit soil. Then get a formations master in here to eyeball the formations that were upgraded last year and see if anything is amiss. I recommend Grandmaster Mang or Grandmaster Li from West Flower Picking if you can afford it.”

“There are perfectly good formations masters here?” one of the aids next to the seneschal frowned.

She stared at him, trying not to wonder about the intelligence of those older than her. If even she could see the issue here, surely these old men of a thousand summers could.

“Grandmaster Mang and Grandmaster Li both have longstanding commissions with the Military Bureau, Grandmaster Li has a long-standing connection to the Hunter Bureau. Both are familiar with this kind of thing, having worked extensively in West Flower Picking…”

“Hmm… quite, familiarity with the issue will make a repeat less likely.” The seneschal nodded.

“Also, Sir Kao,” she added. “Grandmaster Mang is currently here in Blue Water City, visiting his grand-daughters family. A carefully worded letter and a suitable gift for a young child would see you a lot of favour there.”

The seneschal gave her an appraising nod. He waved a hand, sending a senior maid off to get that in motion.

“And what do we owe you for this… consultation? Miss Jun.” The seneschal added.

“Nothing. I was asked here by Yu, to see to her ginseng, this is part of the same request.”

Part of her dearly would have liked to ask for a second fee, but the smart part suggested that currying some favour with the seneschal was probably more valuable than some spirit stones. Being known as a reasonable and forth rite person of good means and methods got you re-hired. Being a money-grubbing youngster didn’t unless your family was a noble clan. Otherwise, Ha Yun would never have lasted a week.

She watched as the seneschal gave some more orders to various servants and Gardener Tuo bustled off to find some lads to tear apart the gardens and save or isolate what they could.

-Oh, yes. She nearly slapped her forehead for forgetting.

“Gardener Tuo!” she called after him.

“Yes?” the old man turned.

“Can I take a bit of the tree root, I can go by the Hunter Pavilion's great hall when we go to the market and see if they can identify the fungus. If I do it, you won’t have to pay extra!”

The old man frowned, and nodded, before heading off in the direction he had been.

“You could have just taken the fungus from my pot?” Ling Yu looked puzzled.

“I’m going to take that one, and a bunch of others besides,” She cast about, considering the different plants. “There are several species here. Odds are they all came from the caves, which means you might have Algru in there as well.”

They stood in silence, considering the gardens for a few moments longer before she spoke again.

“What are you going to do to your brothers?”

“Tell father, and then tell Auntie Tao,” Ling Yu sniffed and scrunched her hands into fists. “Between them, they just cost us the price of redoing every formation in this manor and contaminated the whole garden. Even if I don’t do anything, Uncle Kao will see them both sweating shit before the day is out.”

“They might just run off and stay with their friends until it blows over,” she pointed out. “Your Grand Uncles dote on them.”

“Uggh. Don’t remind me of those nasty old lechers,” Ling Yu sniffed. “They are still sore that Auntie Tao is stronger than all of them combined.”

“Anyway,” Ling Yu grabbed her arm and started to lead her towards the exit. “You said we needed to go out to get some stuff from the markets to help my Bluey?”

“Oh. Yeah,” she recalled that that also did need done.

“Let’s go do that then, while they all sort out this mess, it’s far beyond my realm to mess with the estate formations, let alone yours.” Ling Yu sighed as they made their way back through the estate's pavilions.

“You said that Juni and Ling might be in Blue Water City?” She looked sideways at the slightly younger girl, caught off guard by the change in topic.

“Lin Ling said as much, yes, although…”

“We should see if we can meet up with them after we fleece those fate thrashed old men in the central market,” Ling Yu giggled.

“…”

“Juni has such interesting tales about the ruins inland and such, I wanted to go see one, or go into the valleys but father made a face like Acala Buddha and refused.”

She sighed theatrically and patted her shoulder as Ling Yu crossed her arms and pretended to sulk.

“So long as you’re paying for the table at a tea house,” she said, hiding a faint smile.

“Please, you’re forgetting who my father is?” Ling Yu sniffed derisively. “I don’t have to pay for tables at tea houses, and neither do you, given you and Arai supply spirit herbs to half of them on personal contract these days.”

“Not likely, your father is very forceful, what with his remarkable resemblance to Acala Buddha and all. My best friend is really forgetting what money is to other people,” she shot back, ignoring the second half, which was true, but didn’t fit with her cheeky dig.

“Ohhh….That’s rare,” Ling Yu giggled archly.

Ling Yu paused to accost a maid and tell her to go bring a pouch of spirit stones. The maid looked like she was about to complain until Ling Yu stared pointedly in the direction of the gardens with a frown.

She shook her head, it seemed her previous unhappiness over little blue was receding at least.

“What is-?” she asked, pretending to look around in confusion as they waited for the maid to return.

“I was under the impression that your older sister was your best friend, what did I do to get an upgrade?”

Rolling her eyes, she gave Ling Yu an amused ‘oh you’ shove. “…. You offered to pay for the table at the tea house for all four of us.”

“Ah, so it’s just my money pouch who is your best friend,” Ling Yu said with a pretend pout.

“Says the person who just said money was no object,” she retorted as the maid finally arrived with the pouch containing more spirit stones that her whole house and garden would likely reach if she sold it via a scammer’s auction.

“So where do we need to go first?” Ling Yu said, swiftly tallying it up as they made their way out the door.

“The western plaza herb market probably, then the central one,” she said, swiftly drawing up a list in her head. “If we can’t find what we need there for your garden and Little Blue, we will go to the Bureau directly and I’ll spend some merit points to get whatever’s left.”

“Oh,” Ling Yu slapped her forehead. “We should also go check out the central plaza anyway. There was some rumour that an imperial princess was in the city and staying at the Golden Dragon Jade Inn.”

“Isn’t that reason to avoid the central plaza?” she grumbled. “It will be packed with all sorts of layabouts.”

“True, but half of them will be cutting each other’s clothes to pieces in an effort to impress her, my brothers included. With any luck they might even get the snot beaten out of them while we are watching.”

“That’s an excellent point,” she conceded.

“And if they aren’t, a few people owe me favours who can ensure that they do,” Ling Yu said with a very unladylike smile.

“I like your style, newfound best friend of mine, who doesn't pay for tables,” she sniggered, imagining those two idiots getting beaten up by one of Auntie Tao’s disciples or some other young master eager to impress Ling Yu.

“Oh you,” Ling Yu laughed, pushing her playfully in return as they made their way down the broad tree-lined street towards the central plaza of Blue Water City.

~ Lu Ji, Headmaster of the Blue Gate School ~

Lu Ji, Headmaster of the Blue Gate School, stood by the window of his ‘office’ staring out at the blue sky and the sweeping gardens below and the distant ocean that sparkled tantalisingly. It was a much preferable view to that behind him, at any rate. It also served to remind him why he was standing here, trying to hold his temper, and hear the pair behind him out.

-Did they have nothing better to do than make trouble for others and chase rumours like children after butterflies?

It was a question that had been exercising him for the past five minutes, as the pair, having barged in here, all sunshine and light sat there talking away like he wasn’t even in the room.

Leaning on the window and staring at the rising tower of the Blue Pavilion, with its strange architecture and gleaming azure and gold roof tiles, he ran through what he knew of the pair again in his head.

Of the pair, the girl, Dun Lian Jing was, on the face of it the more influential. A Genuine Imperial Princess. In the flesh. Even though she was technically here ‘incognito’ the news was already somehow roiling around the younger generation of Blue Water City like a malignant curse. Her talent was actually… not terrible. She was a Golden Immortal and only sixty-four. She had even gotten there, mostly legitimately, at least by the standards of the Imperial Scions. She was also, if he recalled Seventeenth in the overall rankings of Imperial Princesses and considered to be the fourth prettiest, to those who cared. setting all that aside though, she was influential largely because she was the most favoured student of a particularly obnoxious bundle of Imperial arrogance by the name of Dun Jian, the youngest brother of the current Emperor, who was still alive at any rate.

The boy, however, was the real problem here in the wider scheme of things. Huang JiLao. Just the name alone was enough to make most people sit up and be all proper. However, the Heavenly Clans were… well the more you knew about them the more of a headache they became. On the face of it, the boy was the nephew of Huang Leng, one of the more influential Imperial Advisors. Huang Leng was also the de facto ‘Head’ of the Huang Clan’s influence in Eastern Azure, the only son of Huang Gao Wuli, the head of the Wuli Hall within the Huang Clan. The Wuli branch was, it had to be said the most reasonable of the three branches of the Huang Clan in Eastern Azure currently. But ‘more reasonable’ was… relative, with the Heavenly Clans.

“Well, Headmaster?” Dun Lian Jing said, from where she was sat, sipping on a cup of tea.

He turned to look at the girl. Well, she would be considered middle-aged if she was mortal. Tall, for a woman, with sleek black hair, flawless features that spoke to her already being very beautiful before she ever became Immortal, a pale complexion as befitted a princess, and in her somewhat scholarly robes quite demure looking. Her only open acknowledgement of her imperial status, beyond wearing a veil was the dragon and luan hairpin and fastener than held her hair up. Were it not for the fact that she was quite favourably endowed she could pass for a very pretty boy if she tried.

Her question was directed to the gold and jade seal that was sat on the table, more so than the other contents, for all that they were probably more troublesome in the long run.

He eyed the Imperial Seal, Dun Jian’s Imperial Seal, and tried not to sigh audibly.

“Are you going to refuse Imperial Acknowledgement?” the girl pressed, without any preamble.

‘Refuse Imperial Acknowledgement’, he had to really struggle not to grimace. Refusing Imperial Acknowledgement was considered an act of ‘disrespect’ to the Imperial Seat. All seals belonging to the Emperor's direct family had the person of the Emperor formally associated with them as well. So not only would you be disrespecting the concept of Imperial Power, but also the Emperor… personally.

“And why does Lord Dun wish to annex my school?” he said eventually.

“All schools that are under the auspice of the Imperial Seat are affiliated with the Imperial Seat, the Seat cannot annex that which it already possesses a stake in,” the girl said blithely.

-Stake my ass, he scowled in his head, letting his focus slip just slightly.

The faint flicker of killing intent form the other side of the room made him sigh as the errant thought was caught by the minions skulking in the shadow.

“Show respect to the princess…” the thoughts echoed in his head because he let them.

He deliberately didn’t look at where they were, there was no way he should be able to ‘sense’ let alone ‘see’ those two watchers of the Imperial Princess. In one respect it was quite tiring, on another it was a curious exercise in self-control. Everyone in a world like this maintained a certain façade, it was just vexatious that the current eyes and ears in charge were especially nosey. Even the previous Emperor hadn’t been this insecure.

“Your Highness speaks the truth,” he nodded, rolling his eyes inwardly. “Allow this servant to rephrase. ‘Why does Lord Dun wish to have you take personal control over the Blue Gate School’.”

“So you do know manners,” the girl said with a pleased smile.

“Imperial Teacher has sent us here to investigate this tablet, it is of interest to him, in this capacity the Imperial Teacher expects the Blue Gate School to render every service required of it.” Dun Lian Jing said with a further sweet smile that never reached her eyes. “As Teacher Dun’s student, it is, of course, proper that I am the agent in this, however, I will delegate this to JiLao here.”

-And just like that, the hands of wealth from the sub-continent are all controlled by the imperial family, he sighed.

In a sense, this day arriving didn’t surprise him unduly, although he had rather hoped it wouldn’t be under his tenure as Headmaster. It would have been much better had his father’s tenure ended with this mess on balance. That way they could have at least gotten a few millenniums of being a happy sock puppet for the court before this point.

The Teng School and the Golden Promise School were both already sock puppets for other arms of the Imperial Family in any case. The Lin School had been the only other hold out, until recent events and some dab intervention by the Imperial Astrology Bureau had ruined them… for reasons that were publically stupid, but privately all about controlling the routes into the Easten Continent. The real issue here was the small print of this ‘take over’, the ‘every service required’ bit.

“This servant presumes that this other… artefact… you have brought here is related to the ‘service required’?” he asked as self-effacingly as possible.

“The Imperial Teacher understands that the School holds a wealth of knowledge about the time of the Blue Water Sage,” Huang JiLao smoothly interceded.

-I’ll bet he does, muttered inwardly.

All three stared at each other, well aware in their own ways why this was going the way it was. . In a strange sense these two were really only the messengers and that probably rankled a bit with them. Young Nobles of their calibre usually made other people run messages. Both of them seemed determined to make this awkward as well, not rising to the subtle prompts to just fess up what they were really after.

That was certainly why the two shadows were really here, just to push him into a corner and think the wrong thing, reveal the tidbit, report it back to Dun Jian directly.

The problems really were that fate thrashed artefact on the table and Dun Jian… and Huang JiLao’s backing.

“We do have certain records from that time, your majesty,” he acknowledged. “Do you wish to see them?”

“In due course,” Dun Lian Jing said, with a tone of voice that made it very clear that Huang JiLao would be doing that.

“We also wish to see the other artefact you have like this,” the Princess said waving her hand at the grey slate.

He schooled his face really carefully, the school absolutely had no artefact like that.

-Dun Jian you snake, he sighed in his head.

For all the lauding of the Blue Water Sage in days gone by, and those were days quite gone by. Almost 30,000 years in fact. There was quite a lot of lingering greed towards his Grand Uncles trip into the Yin Eclipse Mountains with various companions and a few other secretive old recluses. The Imperial Court and a few of their allies had sent a lot of people there afterwards, looking to capitalise on his findings. The vast bulk had been juniors, along with a few seniors, under the guise of a grand trial. The results had been, to put it politely, disastrous. The Yin Eclipse Mountain Range had as good as eaten the pride of a generation whole and barely spat out any clothes afterwards. Dun Jian had barely been a junior back then and while he hadn’t taken part, two of his younger siblings had vanished into the dark below the mountains. Ever since then, there had been a lingering fear and antipathy among certain quarters in the Imperial Court over this place, tempered by a general understanding that all it did was kill people, so it was better to harvest the risks from afar for the most part.

Various rumours had surfaced and died at the time as he vaguely recalled. He was a part of the successor generation to that ill-fated one, so much of it had passed him by. When he was at his peak as a junior it had been the last series of spats between the Huang and Mo Clans rather than Yin Eclipse that exercises everyone anyway.

The aftermath of those events had certainly been highly convenient for the Easten Continent, Northern Continent and the Yin Eclipse Sub-continent. Beyond some meagre and ill-fated attempts at restitution, the eye of the central continent had pivoted north, to a much older rivalry with the Moon Tomb Valley and the on-off rivalry between the Kong Heavenly Clan who backed the current Throne and the Teng Heavenly Clan who had backed the previous dynasty. The Blue Gate School owed its origins to that aftermath as the Lu Clan sought to build, opportunistically on his Grand Uncles Good Fortune.

“Our School has no artefact like that, your Highness,” he said, bowing in the appropriately apologetic manner. “If you wish, given you possess such authority, can take you both on a personal tour of the school’s vault and storehouse to.”

“The Blue Water Pavilion…” the girl said drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair.

“Is not part of our School and never has been,” he pointed out, really annoyed inside now.

“Teacher Dun…”

“Your highness,” He interjected smoothly. “With the greatest respect to the imperial teacher, he has shown precious little interest in this part of the world, it is understandable that some opportunistic people may have provided false testimony and rumour that has wormed its way across the ocean at some point, but I swear to you by the ‘Righteous Heart of the Heavenly Kong’, that the Blue Water Pavilion has no relation to the Blue Gate School.”

“You are doubting the word of my teacher?” the girl said leaning forward.

-You think id swear a falsehood on the prying eyes of the Heavenly Kong, he sighed…

“Not at all, he is undoubtedly a learned and discerning man, however…”

“So you are saying that the information relayed to us was incorrect and your school does not have one of these slates?” Huang JiLao cut in with a conciliatory tone.

“It is as Young Noble Huang deduces,” he said with an outward smile and an inwards eye roll.

“And yet this other slate was on its way to you,” Huang JiLao noted.

“Only in the sense that we got news of a strange artefact fished out of the river,” he pointed out, honestly.

This was indeed the case. The rumour of this accursed bit of grey rock had reached his disciple, and vice headmistress of the School, Ling Tao’s desk a week hence, but she being busy had set it aside and told a Requisitioning Elder to go deal with it and see if it was anything the school should be interested in. That Requisitioning Elder had been in the Deng Clan…

He would have to find out if they knew about these two before, because it had been a young noble from the Deng Clan who had handed that same grey slate to these two as a ‘first greeting’ gift on behalf of their Clan to the Imperial Princess almost as soon as they had set foot of the Dragon Ship that brought them here.

The most likely scenario was that they had just tried to chance their arm. The Deng Clan was one of four influences in the Blue Gate School with deep links to the Imperial Continent, the others being the Ha Clan, Ling Clan and Feng Clan. They were also the ones pushing for closer ties to the Imperial Court, whereas the Ha Clan played all angles and the Ling Clan had old ties to the Azure Astral Authority and a lot of power within the local Bureaus. In any case, that Elder would be going back to the Deng Clan, relieved of his position and status within the school.

“As you are aware… we work closely with both the Azure Astral Authority and the Imperial Court to ensure that things here run smoothly to the benefit of… everyone,” it did no harm to give them a gentle reminder that here, and on the northern continent the Kong Clan and the Huang Clan were not the only powers in the land it was wise to be wary of.

“And in any case, while this is an unusual artefact,” he waved at the broken slate on the table. “It appears to be very broken… we can certainly help you make enquiries regarding other such pieces, but I doubt you will have much luck. In the last few millennia, very little of note that wasn’t a spirit herb or a beast core has come out of the Yin Eclipse Forbidden Zone.”

-And long may that state of affairs continue, he added silently his own head.

“That’s as may be,” Huang JiLao conceded, picking up the other slab on the table. “However, Imperial Advisor and Teacher Dun has asked us to come here on his behalf and investigate matters regarding this and some other relics…”

He sighed properly this time, and looked again at the ruined slate.

It was truly a remnant fragment, a piece of grey stone a shade bigger than an average martial manual. It had some floral decorations around the edge and was missing one corner. visible to his qi enhanced vision in Easten script on its grey surface were the words ‘Yin Eclipse Wa-’ and another set of six characters set out in shape a bit like a constellation that appeared to be hand-drawn on the surface. The characters themselves were somewhere between an idiot savants idea of a dao formation centre and a moon rune. Or very badly drawn variants of little fortresses on a map. It could go either way. He would have thought them just meaningless scrawling, if it weren’t for the faint intent that lingered within each. All gave him a faint sense of guidance and directionality, two also held lingering aspects of control and a third of severance or something similar. The rest of it was some further text in an ancient Easten script that explained how the symbols were a meant to act as a guide… or a link in some way.

“So, basically, Headmaster, what we need from you is the cooperation of your school with our Imperial Teachers endeavour,” the princess said with a smile which she was trying to pitch as beautiful, yet oppressive.

“Just the two of you, Your Highness and young noble?” he asked, expecting the answer that he got with a glum feeling in his heart.

“Ah, there are a few trusted associates who have come with us, with the blessing of Imperial Teacher,” the princess said blandly. “I trust it will not be a problem to accommodate them within the school?”

“No… not at all,” he sighed.

It seemed that today would indeed mark the broadly inauspicious end of the Blue Gate School’s independence and the robbing of their Golden Luan, just like the Teng School three hundred years ago and the Golden Promise School one hundred years ago. Certainly very few of those ‘helpers’ would be here for these two. He knew Dun Jian too well for that. The man was a snake, but he was a meticulous snake, and had connections in many places. The acquisition of the last of the three schools to funnel the wealth out of this part of the Yin Eclipse Sub Continent into the coffers of another arm of the Imperial Court would just be another slow step in their plan to get a proper foothold on this part of the continent. They had made a lot of inroads with the Ruan Clan in Xah Liji, especially after their Saintess ran away a hundred and fifty years ago, and were also making inroads to the south with those influences.

The worst part of this was that few would actually lament this. The local politics were already so fraught between the Imperial Court, the Noble Clans and the Azure Astral Bureau’s governance than stability was mostly what folks craved. If the Imperial Court brought it, in the hands of a princess, with a golden scroll and a promise of imperial favour, few would look deep enough to wonder, more was the pity.

“And what of the other thing?” the princess asked.

He nearly asked what ‘other thing’ she meant, before flicking back through the conversation prior to this in his head and realising she was asking about the origins of the broken artefact itself.

“It is not advisable for you to travel into the interior to investigate in person, Your Highness,” he said politely.

“…..” both looked at him in a way that made him want to put his head in his hands and laugh with sadness.

“That is not what I asked,” the princess said a bit more coolly.

“It is what you intend though, is it not? Your Highness,” he pointed out belatedly.

This was a far bigger problem in reality. These two making a mess in Blue Water City and turning his school into an imperial sock puppet, at worst meant that he was just done with the school, as might a few other old ancestors. In any case, they would be sidelined and pushed out anyway. Certainly, those that were associated with the Ling Clan. But these two and a bunch of others going upriver, towards south grove pinnacle and the inner valleys, to the caves and scattered ruins where this tablet had certainly originated was a disaster that he would really like to avoid.

“You have… heard how dangerous the place this is rumoured to have washed from is?” he said carefully.

“There are local stories, yes,” Huang JiLao frowned.

“You understand the suppression, and what it means?” he asked a bit more directly.

“Certainly, there are some very interesting local stories and records regarding it,” Dun Lian Jing said with a half-smile that suggested she didn’t really give much credence to them.

Shaking his head, he changed tack. “You have been to the Dragon Pillars multiple times have you not, your highness.”

“Certainly more than you have, sect master,” she said with a sniff.

He struggled not to let a muscle twitch in his cheek.

“We have also experienced the Argent Devouring Pit,” Huang JiLao added. “We are familiar with realm suppression.”

It was a struggle to know where to start. He knew they were being deliberately awkward now. Unwilling to give him any face in this matter. There was a reason the noble clans across the water were largely more interested in ‘control from afar’ through branch families regarding this region. It was not a land where the riches could be grasped by brute force. That was why the Imperial Princes and the Emperor's Aunt had set eyes on the Teng School and the Golden Promise School respectively. That was certainly why Dun Jian was interested in the Blue Gate School, or someone working with him was. They were all more interested in money and influence that came from here, rather than the nigh inaccessible mountain range. A place which over the aeons had only provided wave after wave of escalating evidence that it was nothing but a literal and metaphysical death zone that only bit if you poked it and was more likely on balance to cause their nine generations to die without corpses before it yielded anything useful to them.

The last century and a half had been a procession of little aggressions into that status quo. Brought about by the shifting influences to the north and east, and also by a few other upheavals elsewhere, especially on the Northern Continent, where rogue powers were starting to accumulate influence once more in spite of the aggressive efforts of the Imperial Court and their allies.

-Perhaps something like this was inevitable, he thought with another flicker of emotional resignation.

-Great Grand Aunt would say that it was just a big cycle, shifting around a bit, and that his perspective was…

He winced slightly and glanced out across the gardens.

-Fairy Aunt was…was a wonderful human being!

Really, he wanted to know what Dun Jian’s goal here was though. These two had been sent here for a reason, and while subsuming the Blue Gate School might be that reason, and the slate here might also, be that reason, he doubted it in his heart. Dun Jian had one interest, his own personal power. He had never shown interest in the Imperial Infighting because he didn’t want to be tied down as Emperor. He had eyes beyond this world and made friends widely, in the Kong Clan and the Huang Clan, and among those others who visited the Imperial Court.

“You also have records here on the events of thirty years ago?” Huang JiLao asked.

“There is much about the Three School’s conflict available wherever you look, Young Noble Huang,” he said blandly.

“Regarding the Duke’s events of thirty years ago,” Dun Lian Jing said with a faint edge to her voice.

“I know he was active in the conflict, but I was in personal cultivation at the time, Your Highness” he shrugged apologetically. “I am aware of certain stories, certainly, but no more than your own sources I imagine. They all come from the same place after all.”

Three could play at being difficult after all, and that wasn’t a lie, he had been meditating on his advancement at the time, only to be dragged out later to deal with the mop-up. Not that he was going to volunteer that.

Eyeing their rather annoyed looks he decided to stick the knife in a bit, they had come here after all. “If you wish, you could seek out an audience with the Cao Household, the Blue Water Duke’s estate will certainly have comprehensive records of the latter half of the conflict given the degree of influence the Azure Astral Authorities Military Bureau had in bringing matters to a close.”

“….”

“Perhaps you could intercede in that matter, as a favour to Imperial Teacher,” Dun Lian Jing suggested sending a deliberate eye towards the seal.

“As you command, we shall make enquiries through some unofficial channels,” he said with a bow.

Certainly, enquiries would be made, mostly regarding the sanity of these two and what could be done to piss on their path in all likelihood. The Cao Household was about as amenable to bullying and seeping by the Imperial Court as the Blue Pavilion was. Cao Hongjun, the former Duke was now one of the three ‘Grand Marshals’ presiding the Azure Astral Authority’s Military Bureau for this whole world, based in Shan Lai, the Seat of the Astral Authority in this part of the Azure Astral Starfield. His Grand Uncle was also a widely respected person of the world beyond this place, with many valiant friends and companions would not take kindly to his hearth and home being sullied.

“Shall I also make enquiries regarding the other series of events?” he asked, now deliberately fishing.

“Other series of events?” Dun Lian Jing asked a bit testily.

“The events of one hundred years ago, when the Iron Crown Duke’s heirs led that expeditionary force with a large band of valiant young heroes to attack indigenous rebels across the straights, on the western coast of Yin Eclipse,” even just saying ‘valiant young heroes’ made him want to spit out the window.

That censure had caused more than enough trouble for all parties, riled up the various local clans, led to a number of deeply awkward revelations about the excesses of certain ‘Young Nobles’ and ‘Heroes’ from the powerful families on the central continent. Not to mention the status of the original perpetrators and the political tensions it spawned when the perpetrators got off way too lightly. He hadn’t thought about that fate sold little shit in a long time.

-Another text-jade example of the safety net known as; ‘having parents who can execute a country over trodden toes’, he grumbled.

“Oh… uhhh…” Dun Lian Jing looked lost for a moment, which was unusual.

“We are aware of those matters,” Huang JiLao said smoothly, saving his companions blushes. “Imperial Advisor Dun told us what he considered to be of consequence. Young Noble Teng Tai also sent us a short communique about those matters by way of a further briefing.”

-hah, finally, he thought, although it wasn’t really a happy feeling.

Likely it was something that had come out of that earlier incident that was the source of these two being here. The younger generations of the Iron Crown Duke’s family were all profligate little debtors and their associations with the ‘Jade Gate Court’ and the ‘Red Sovereign Sect’ were like a nascent cancer on that region. They had also been heavily involved in the mess a century ago and gotten off with not a whit of real punishment. Probably they found some artefacts that Dun Jian had thought interesting and it was all spiralling out from that.

“Teng Tai also spoke quite informatively about some really unusual ruins? Within the cave systems on the western edge of the Shadow Forest, north-west of West Flower Picking Town…” Dun Lian Jing said innocently.

That did take an effort not to scowl over.

That all but confirmed it, he thought with mental grimace. Whatever Dun Jian wanted was in the underworld below Yin Eclipse. It also confirmed that the roots of this might well be within the aftermath of the events 30,000 years ago as much as 100 years ago. That was, as far as he was aware, the last time anyone had made any serious inroads into those subterranean pits. By extension it also meant that they were here fishing for confirmation about that from the events of thirty years ago, when the Cao Hongjun had led his expedition into the depths of the Yin Eclipse Mountain Range.

He quietly cursed the Astrology Bureau and its three old gargoyles in his head and wondered if 'Solitary Slaughter' was interested in a few contracts. Reminding the Iron Crown Duke that his misbegotten sons, while gone, had not been forgotten might not be a bad idea. Without doubt the root of this resurgent interest was likely those three, who had slunk off to the Jade Gate Court after those events and all become Inheriting Disciples of various minor elders affiliated with the Kong Clan.

“I have heard some rumours about that, but you would need to go to the Hunter Bureau for anything specific about the depths. Our School had little to no involvement in either event. In any case, most of the ruins have been well-explored over-

“Stop obfuscating, Headmaster, we know that the Blue Gate School has been hiding information about those ‘treasure realms’ that the Blue Water Sage first spoke of...” Dun Lian Jin said flatly, finally, it seemed losing a bit of her patience.

Getting up, she walked around the room, looking at the various herbs he was growing for fun in their spatial arrays on the wall.

“It is in your interest to be cooperative, you still have not ‘accepted’ our ‘Imperial Acknowledgement’ either.”

“Jing…” Huang JiLao winced and started to speak. “Look, Headmaster…”

“You are being too conciliatory JiLao,” the Princess remarked, “We are already showing this old man this much face, just because his father has a bit of ‘influence’ and yet he is just feeding us back stuff we already know.

He schooled his face as she swapped to speaking with intention infused qi. Her disdainful allusion to his father’s influence left him in no confusion as to her views on it.

Schooling his response as carefully as possible he offered her a short bow and replied.

“Your Highness, The fissures are hardly any great secret, as to there being some kind of ‘Treasure Realm’ I am unsure what the Teng clan’s young heir Teng Tai, or the Schools Headmaster Teng Shan have told you… but I can swear to the-

He was cut off by the sound of splintering space, as one of his most treasured herbal specimens, a 9000 year Green Soul Orchid, a gift from his Fairy Aunt, was reduced to crushed stems and broken flowers amid the shards of the array and its glass case.

Staring at the ruined plant, he winced, resisting the urge to look out the window towards the pavilion. He also felt bad for the orchid, it had had a beautiful singing voice, and its little soul flame had liked to dance in the evenings and entertain him by making funny faces. Actually, he felt angry now. It was sorely tempting to just throw the arrogant little princess out the window. With enough effort, he could probably put her into the ocean from here. With her life-saving treasures, she would survive, but it would be character building for the city to see her impersonate a meteorite. Sadly that was probably the kind of repercussion that Dun Jian had hoped by sending someone as fiery as this here. Huang JiLao was clearly to temper her more problematic edges, but only by a little.

“In any case, please excuse us,” Dun Lian Jing eyed the ruin of the plant and waved for him to leave. “We must talk to Imperial Teacher about this slate.”

“Of course your highness,” he said with a formal bow, walking out of his own headmaster’s office masking his anger.

The door closed behind him, without him ever touching it. before it did he could see Dun Lian Jing holding up a message talisman, while Huang Jilao had pulled out a divination compass that was rather wastefully carved on a piece of Pure Life Jade and was using it to compare to the two pieces.

“Headmaster,” a school aide, from the Ha Clan, based on the subtle purple motifs on his robe stepped forward and saluted. “Will Her Highness and the Young Noble be needing anything?”

He shot the man a disgusted look and just walked on. Setting aside the amount of bowing and scraping he had just had to fake. He had also been deeply attached to the orchid, it was a gift from his aunt to help his cultivation, and a token of her esteem for his progress in advancing it.

“Headmaster Ji,” a tall old man wearing robes of the Deng clan paused to speak to him.

“Deng Kong,” he said flatly, now thoroughly in no mood to humour others, especially not this old fart.

“How is Her Highness? She has asked us to provide her with certain documents of interest...” Deng Kong offered him a slight salute, as one might between equals, which was frankly embarrassing.

“She is as you find her,” he grunted, narrowing his eyes and making the older man take a step back and sweat.

It was funny how he thought to address him as an equal without salutation. He might be the current head of the Deng Clan in Blue Water City, but he was merely an Ancient Immortal. The school had Elders stronger than he was. It actually had two inheriting disciples stronger than this old idiot, but that wasn’t so widely known.

Without comment, he swiped the books from Deng Kong and skimmed them as the man spluttered in shock. They were a series of eye witness accounts from various young masters of the Deng Clan regarding the ‘finding’ of the fragment. They emphasised a great deal how useful the Deng Clan had been in facilitating its speedy arrival to ‘Her Highness’ and that snake Dun Jian. If he was to bet money, this was at least sixty percent aggrandisement.

“I am sure she will be delighted with these,” he shrugged and tossed them back at the man, walking off and leaving him standing in the hallway.

Turning the corner, he found himself face to face with the Supreme elder of the Leng Clan and the Head of the Mu Clan, both also carrying gifts and scrolls and heading in the direction of his office.

They both opened their mouths to speak to him, then shut them again as he stalked past without so much as a sideways look, letting his aura do the talking. Already he could see how this was going to bring all kinds of ruin. It was absolutely going to bring about the end of the school in any case. The ‘Imperial Acknowledgement’ and the ‘Imperial Seal’, with its command for the Blue Gate School to ally itself with the endeavour of the Princess and the Huang boy was already the kiss of death there. Now it was likely just a matter of how much collateral went with it, certainly, they would head into the Yin Eclipse Range, likely heading for the High Valleys, and into one of the worst zones in the whole place outside of Snow Jade Peak.

The ruins and caverns they of were close to the bogs and swamps between the subsidiary peaks at the mountain ranges centre; ‘Thunder Crest’ and ‘East Fury’. Even the most skilled experts of the Hunter Bureau went there infrequently or commanded huge prices and a lot of surety on contracts if requested to do so.

If they died there, then this school would die with them, or at least everything of consequence about it. The death of an imperial princess would be a simple and brutal censure as they would be ‘held responsible’ for not giving her every support in all likelihood. Those close to the court would escape, everyone else without influence would either die or be ruined in other ways. If the Huang boy died there, the Huang Clan might even move. Given what he knew about Huang Jilao, his blood relationship to Huang Leng. The Huang Clan would not sit silent there either. It would be an excuse, but they would take everything as recompense and justice for their fallen scion. That was just how Heavenly Clans worked.

Arriving in the courtyard at the centre of the school, he surveyed the various disciples going about their daily task and sighed. A few saw him and saluted, drawing attention to his presence. Along the far wall were a bunch of people wearing robes of the various influences from the central continent, presumably who had come off the Dragon Ship with the pair. None of them made any effort to salute him as he walked across the edge of the courtyard.

Lu Ji managed to avoid twitching an eyebrow at that.

-Yes.

-This was absolutely going to be the end of the school as most knew it, what that meant for the disciples here...

He shook his head in frustration and walked through the gateway out of the central courtyard and into one of the garden courts.

-Although...Perhaps the writing was already on the wall with the Lin School debacle in any case. that had left them unfortunately wrong-footed and the Blue Gate School as the only remaining mid-grade influence on this half of the sub-continent, and also the fattest of the three golden luan left unclaimed thanks to what his Grand Uncle had left behind for Blue Water City.

Walking past a statue of his Grand Uncle, sitting in meditation he sighed again. It was really only the old man’s shadow that had kept them independent to this point anyway. A minor miracle of location and reputation…. Now broken and consigned to history in all likelihood.

“Sorry old man,” he muttered, standing and staring at the flower beds with the blue and yellow spirit blooms. “It seems that your unfilial descendants are really no better than anyone else’s.”

~ Imperial Daughter Dun Lian Jing ~

Dun LianJing… well Lian Jing, as she usually thought of herself, sat in a Tea House overlooking the central plaza of Blue Water city, feeling in a fairly horrible mood. It had been a stressful afternoon. The Headmaster of the Blue Gate School had been everything that was frustrating to deal with in these mid-ranked influences. Polite, efficacious, and totally coy about everything they asked. The local powers had at least been a bit more helpful in their way. Willing to fawn over them for influence and more than willing to spill everything they knew in the process if they felt it would get them her sympathetic ear or some recognition with the Huang Clan.

It didn't help either, that Blue Water City was a proper provincial backwater. Some might have called the hustle and bustle quaint… but to her, used to the grandeur of the Imperial Capital, Blue Morality City, it was just tedious and lacking. Aping more famous constructions, styles and whatnot. Even its famous Blue pavilions were derivative of the 'Dragon Pillar Pagoda'.

The people waltzed around with far too much pride in their stack of mud bricks she thought sourly as she stared at the tea… even this was… mediocre… If she demanded it the owner would ransack half the city for a better blend, but really, it just wasn’t worth it. There was such a thing as the fuss just not being worth the amusement it would cause. Some of her siblings would have done it, certainly, but she liked to think she was at least better than them in that regard.

She shot a look at the maid, standing motionless at the side and waved a hand.

“Yes Imperial Daughter?” the woman said respectfully.

“When will JiLao arrive?”

The maid paused… but caught herself. “He will be here on time Imperial Daughter.”

She shook her head. Her expression would not be visible under the veil, but she let the maid know that her pause was inappropriate simply by the manner of her aura. The woman, who was barely an Immortal shivered slightly but didn’t move. She was well trained at least…

“Leave me… send someone up with a local delicacy worthy of my status and don’t come back until JiLao returns,” She said, perfunctorily dismissing the woman.

It was ruining her mood having her haunting the corner.

“Yes, imperial daughter.”

She narrowed her eyes behind her veil, had the woman just...?

“Oh…”

The maid stopped frozen, probably she was wondering if her little discourtesy had been marked.

“If any of the local 'young nobles' wish to see me?... Tell them I’ll kill their three generations and their favourite pets if they disturb me with their obsequious fawning.”

“Yes Imperial Daughter,” the maid breathed out, as she bowed politely.

She noticed, but… well some of her siblings would have had the woman beaten for just that, but she didn’t believe she was that unreasonable, so she let her leave.

She watched the world go by, as she ignored the two, now three blinking messages on the transmission jade sate on the table. Two would be from her teacher, Dun Jian. One demanding another update on their progress, the other demanding confirmation of the nature of the tablet. As if the old man wasn’t capable of looking across this distance to ascertain it himself if required. The third one would be from her mother. She nearly opened that message to read it, but really there was nothing to say there that she wanted to hear these days. The talisman had… a lot of messages from her mother, but she never read them… not since the first one.

Outside, several young nobles were having a purportedly lively ‘Dao Discussion’ in the square. She cast her gaze over them from the veranda and sighed. They weren’t quite all looking at the second story of the tea house where she was sat… but really... she sighed again mentally, they totally were. Never mind that the strongest amongst them was barely at Dao Seeking. That they thought this preening display of arts and faux comprehensions would impress her in any way, or draw the attention of any Golden Immortal for anything other than ridicule. Especially not one of her talent and background. It was laughable really.

She let her gaze linger on their posturing for a few moments longer until several maids appeared with dishes of food. It was tempting to just throw the teapot out there with a random formation on it and send someone to tell them that whoever solved it would get an audience with her. They would still be struggling with it when the next generation turned. The Blue Gate School was little better. Its juniors were either fawning toadies or mediocre ducks dreaming of being swans. Still better than the Teng School which was basically a puppet of her elder half sibling the Second Imperial Prince or the Golden Promise School. A place whose name alone made them sound like a bunch of confidence scammers.

She allowed herself a snicker at that as she considered the food. The pastry rolls were actually tolerable. Savoury, with some kind of unusual spirit herb in them. She tried one speculatively and nodded. They were acceptable after all, -for a place like this at least. She gave one last look at the youths outside. -Some of them were over 100, and not even Dao Seeking. It made her want to shake her head and despair slightly for them if nothing else. Nothing would ever come of their ‘talent’ they lauded as special in this place. She had broken through to Dao Seeking at the age of 15. Immortal at 17, Chosen Immortal at 24. Now she was a Golden Immortal before the age of 60 and working towards founding a True Principle.

That her peers still held her to be untalented was just court politics and slander. They were mostly petty and vain. Taunting over minor things, making stupid slights killing offences.

Those above her derided her for merely being 17th rank. Those below claimed she was there because of Dun Jian, ignoring that Dun Jian taught a veritable stable yard worth of imperial princes and princesses. They also taunted her for her age. Just because she was the eldest on the new list once you discounted the top five, who would never change. Simply put, Reality was cruel. Eventually, the idiots outside would learn that.

-No… nothing will ever come of your futile struggles...There is always a higher sky, a crueller lash to flay your dreams on.

She sighed out loud.

-You should just accept your fate and carve out your niche in mediocrity, all of you. Leave the sky to those of us who have the fate to grasp it.

She cast the idiots outside from her mind as she ate another of the rolls. Instead, she directed her attention towards the markets. Those at least were a bit more interesting. At her realm she could wander through it with her cast vision, just from where she was seated, observing the stalls.

A lot of them were just selling low-level herbs and bits of qi beasts. But a few... this place was at least somewhere that lived up to its reputation as an alchemy bazaar. She watched idly as two young women, one with dark brown hair and dark eyes, and the other with more traditional, imperial features of pale skin and dark straight hair and bright eyes argued with a stall keeper. The dark-haired girl was complaining that some grade 10 herb, a rather succulent vermilion viper gourd if she wasn’t wrong, was not worth the 200 immortal stones her companion was paying for it. The shop keeper was having none of it, even though the girl was waving a… She blinked. The talisman the girl had marked her as a nine-star ranked Herb Hunter!

-Was it fake? That was on the level of a bureau official, yet she had no real cultivation.

She narrowed her eyes and blinked again as the girl paused and then, to her surprise, looked in her direction. Her strength had to be only quasi Golden Core and while she hadn’t been subtle about her gaze there…

-That was… she had no treasure?… How was that even?

She was considering going down there and grasping the girl to see what oddity allowed her to notice her prying eyes when the curtain opened and JiLao finally entered.

“Ah-, you already ordered food,” he grinned.

“They brought it. It was complementary. The rolls are not bad,” she supplied, turning her gaze away.

The girl and her companion had given up arguing with the man and left for other pastures.

“Maid,” she said absently.

“Yes, Imperial Daughter?” one of the women stepped forward.

“Are there any nine-star ranked Hunter Pavilion officials that have no cultivation?”

“Oh… your Highness means the ones from inland?” the maid supplied “From West Flower Picking and North Fissure?”

“There are… more?” she was surprised… “I did not think that buffoon Qin Qiu was actually speaking any kind of truth in his latest polemic.”

She conjured an image of the girl.

The maid blinked… “You know of Miss Jun Sana? Highness? And Young Lady Ling Yu”

She avoided saying ‘you know her?’

“The herbs you are eating in the dishes were acquired by her and her sister,” the maid supplied.

“They are among the best of the youngest generation of the West Flower Picking Pavilion.”

“That town sounds like it’s named after a brothel,” she joked.

“….”

JiLao snorted. “Don’t be crass, you know it’s written from Old Script, ‘The place where Westward Flowers Fall’.”

“Young noble is familiar with the story of the Fall of Yin?” The maid bowed respectfully. “We are honoured by your knowledge.”

She ignored the cut across and went on. “How are they able to be such a ranking? When they are so weak? Or is her sister much higher realm and just providing charity?”

“…. Ah." the maid nodded, which she let pass.

"Highness, they are both practitioners of the ‘Physical Cultivation’, not to mention that cultivation realm counts for little beyond comprehensions in the heights of the Yin Eclipse Mountains… as I am sure you are well aware,” The maid respectfully finished.

She wasn’t… why would she have cared about this place before imperial teacher sent them over here. -Not that she was going to admit that.

“These herb hunters also provide expertise for the Blue Gate School?” JiLao interjected.

“Yes young noble,” The maid replied. “It is common for any expedition to be led by them, they are the most knowledgeable about the depths of the mountains.”

“I find that surprising," He frowned… “Are all of them so young?”

“Erm… yes… mostly,” The maid said awkwardly. “Most of the current younger generation of the Hunter pavilion in the four towns was killed during the three schools war 30 years ago. It was something of a local disaster… likely not of interest to the great persons of the central continent. The job attrition is quite high, and those with prospects in cultivation rapidly move away from the inner ring in any event.”

"Leaving those without opportunities," JiLao nodded.

“If you wish to learn more… I can ask our chef? He was once a herb hunter in North Fissure before he retired to found our tea house.” The maid added hopefully.

“Perhaps another time,” JiLao nodded. “Thank you for answering our questions.”

He tossed a small jade to the maid who took it and bowed… a generous tip for not much she thought.

“You may leave us,” she dismissed the maid with a wave of her hand.

“Oh. See we are not disturbed by any of the rabble outside, or below.”

“Yes Highness,” The maid bowed respectfully and left. She saw two Chosen Immortal guards move into station between the private area and the rest of the tea house, where another throng of youths had congregated…

“You needn't be so brisk with them,” JiLao sighed.

She glanced at him…

“It is appropriate,” she shrugged. “Should I embrace her and call her sister?”

“Now you exaggerate! Although I do agree...” he sighed. “The idiots below are a nuisance. Did you see their farcical little display outside?”

“They did something outside?” she feigned ignorance in the entirety.

“They are having some 'Dao competition' in the square, in your honour apparently,” Jilao shrugged… either not picking up her lie, or not caring.

He had been a student of Dun Jian for nearly three decades. One less than her, so technically he was her junior martial brother. Not that he ever acted like it, coming from the Huang Clan.

“I feel my honour tarnishing just by the association through implication,” She gave a mock shudder… “What would you do if I told you to go out there and disabuse them… Junior Martial Brother?”

“I would tell you to order more wine, and to forget about them.” he deadpanned back. “No point in causing more of a scene… riding roughshod over the Blue Gate School, while it is Imperial Teachers strategy… the more we follow it… the less at ease I become… this town is not as simple as it looks and we made the Headmaster of the school deeply unhappy today.”

“tcch,” She clicked her tongue and helped herself to another of the rolls. They were growing on her, in a sort of colloquial way, she had to admit.

“What is there that is dangerous…” she sniffed. “The sects are mediocre, you and I have enough talismans and artefacts on our persons to duke it out with a Dao Immortal or two… and the talismans we have will bring a dozen Dao Sovereigns from the Imperial Court and the Huang Clan if we commanded it.”

“Mmmmm.”

JiLao sighed… and just didn’t continue whatever his train of thought was. This wasn’t the first time they had had this conversation in the week since coming here, and their positions were fairly entrenched.

“So… how was your ‘task’?” she asked in the end.

“Oh… that," He looked annoyed. "It was a dead end as you might expect. The records about what happened thirty years ago are locked up tighter than a princess’s moral compass.”

She ignored the jibe there. “Really? You can’t compel them to release anything?”

“On the contrary… I got a lot of stuff from the Leng and Deng Clan's” JiLao sighed, and took a swig of the tea. “Reams and reams of crud…that is just the same as what’s kicking about the imperial continent. It turns out that most of that spurious fluff emerged here, 30 years ago. The only people likely to know the truth of it are either the previous Duke or the people who went with him.”

“Oh,” She hid a scowl under the pretence of taking another roll.

Going to the Duke and waving their ‘authority’ under his nose would get them politely laughed out of the estate. That was the only power here that had no recourse to bow to them. The Duke's father, Cao Hongjun, being one of the Grand Marshals of the ‘Eastern Azure Great World's Military Authority Bureau’. And a world Venerate to boot…

“So that’s a no go,” She agreed with a frustrated sigh.

“For now,” JiLao agreed. “The Duke’s estate would take us in, entertain us… feed us the same tripe probably, and then we would be on their radar properly. Not to mention that pulling Imperial Court rank with them will go across about as well as a bowl of monkeyshit for a first greeings gift."

“This assumes we aren't already?” she added, a bit maliciously.

“Indeed…” Jilao nodded as her reasonable supposition. “But the Duke is a busy man… and the issues up north and with the rebels to the Far East are occupying a lot of their time. Two Imperial Nobles from the central continent bossing around the Blue Gate School on their teacher's orders isn’t enough to draw their attention so long as we stick to what we should.”

“Assuming they aren't behind the cover-up in the first place,” he added after a moment’s thought.

Eating another of the rolls, they really were growing on her, she asked. “What about the other lead?”

“From one hundred years ago?” JiLao groaned. “Don’t ask about that fate thrashed mess is all I learned today. I was seriously judged for asking about that as if the headmasters fishing there wasn't warning enough. There is a lot of bad blood over that whole event.”

“Unsurprising. Di Ji gave that entire generation a bad name,” she nodded, hiding her annoyance

“His name is actually a swearword around here. It’s remarkable,” JiLao took another gulp of the tea. “Nobody will say it outright, but most of the people who stumbled into the anomalies 100 years ago seem to have vanished or ended up dead.”

“Someone went around killing people off?” That sounded to her like it was actually a somewhat promising lead to chase up if so.

“If they have been... It’s the 'Brotherhood of Lives' or the Sable Sovereigns doing it,” JiLao grimaced and put the tea back down.

"Not 'Solitary Slaughter'?" she asked, curious as to why he hadn't named the most fearsome of their worlds 'Dark' factions.

"Methods are all wrong...And Solitary Slaughter are expensive." JiLao shrugged. “Some died in duels, others in blood feuds, several just vanished exploring ruins. Others just walked off into the landscape one day and never returned. But in any event, over the last 70 years or so almost all but a very select few people who are all inaccessible to us have died in various ‘inauspicious’ ways.”

"Inaccessible?" she queried... there should be few people beyond the combined reach of the Huang Clan and an Imperial Princess outside of...

"Either the Jade Gate Court or the Red Sovereign Sect," JiLao supplied.

“Local view is that they were cursed by whatever anomaly they went into…. Based on what I’ve have learned of some of them… that seems… probable in all honestly.”

“Charming,” She reached for another roll and found that the plate was empty. “More tea?” she asked him.

Jilao glanced at the table and shrugged. “Sure.”

When she made no move to call the maid, he sighed, and did it himself…. Asking for another round of the dishes, by the by.