Memories of the Fall

...Power acquired at birth is as much a curse as a blessing, so the sages say. Nowhere is this seen better than in the behaviour of the scions of most Noble and Heavenly Clans when they venture out into the world. Their path, to their ears accompanied by trumpets and salutations, is to the eyes of the common man and woman a trail of mayhem, wrought by their unshakable determination that they, and only they, are the masters of any place in which they happen to find themselves.

Excerpt from – ‘Morality and Birthright’

~Anonymous Scholar.

~ Huang JiLao, Young Master of the Huang Heavenly Clan ~

Huang JiLao winced, pausing his progress through the document he was reading, and glanced out the window, again. It had been a stressful few days, he reflected, 'taking over' the Blue Gate School. It was, in his view, also entirely unnecessary for all that Dun Jian had been quite determined on that point. Massaging his temples, he thought about the insistent, niggling sensation in the back of his mind that had been there ever since the day of their arrival, when Jing had smashed that plant to prove a point. His Uncle Leng had given him two talismans before he set out; a Huang clan 'Official's Token', which he wore at his waist and another, in private, that was a personal gift from him and had a bestowal from Lady Ju Shan on it that was designed to guard his safety. That latter one had just told him, again, that he had been observed somehow… which was concerning because that talisman had some very specific activation criteria.

The other talisman triggered as well, alerting him to another sweep a second later that came from elsewhere in the school. In comparison to the sense that periodically triggered Lady Shan's talisman, the ones being picked up by the Huang clan's emblem were much more normal at least. The strength of the latest 'observation' there was hard to gauge, perhaps Dao Immortal… maybe a Dao Lord? Either one of the elders or one of the clan heads, who were hovering around like flies on a corpse, speculatively seeing if he was here. It was a mercy at least that most of the local authority figures had been very supportive on the whole.

On the other hand, Lady Shan's talisman was one that was designed to notify him if some properly reclusive old ghost set eyes on him: someone at the realm of a Dao Eternal or Dao Ascendant. There had been no expectation of encountering either within the school, but probably the province had a few. For all that it was considered a backwater by those on the central and southern continents it was the ancestral cradle of three great clans; the Ha, Lu and Ling. All three of those, it turned out, also had links to both the school and the Blue Water Sage, which was not something he had been told of before he came and participated in the annexation of their proverbial golden luan in the name of the Imperial Court.

-Please have eyes, whoever you are, and don't provoke a bigger problem, he thought with a sigh.

For all that it was a relatively backwater town, Blue Water was a nice change of pace compared to the central continent.

-It would be a shame, he thought, to see this place brought to ruin because one of the those old ancestors lingering in the shadows decided to chance their arm.

Headmaster Lu Ji was the one he was mainly concerned about at this point. The man had been 'helpful'... in front of them at least. However, he was a sly old fox by all accounts and, unlike his father, very much focused on this province rather than the goings-on of the Lu clan. Amid the stories of a man who liked to socialise, had many friends and female admirers, who was a gambler and a philanthropist in equal measure, it was possible to find the iron core of a someone who would keep smiling right up until they snapped your neck without blinking when they had finally had enough. It might be time to try to mend some fences there, for all that those on Dun Jian's side of the Court did not get on with the Lu clan.

As to the other niggling sensation… he knew better than to send any obvious mention to his Uncle Leng, and he was already doubting Dun Jian enough that that was also out of the question. If it was important, Lady Shan would already know. In her role as his uncle's... bodyguard, he supposed, little that was truly a threat to anyone in the inner circle of the Huang clan's Wuli branch in this world would pass her by.

That latter talisman's insistent niggling did, however, suggest strongly that powers beyond what his Martial Teacher believed to be present or relevant had started keeping an eye on their work here.

“That old geezer is back from whatever his meeting was at the Town Bureau?” He looked up as Lian Jing entered the room.

Dressed like a scholarly 'Young Noble' now, albeit still veiled with a broad hat, Lian Jing looked sourly out the window and tossed a wrapped bundle of food on the desk.

“This place is so…”

“Mundane?” he completed for her.

The last few days had, it seemed, only reinforced her view that this place was a waste of time. She thought that they should just head inland and look for themselves rather than spend all this time messing about here.

“I guess…” she wandered over to the window and looked out towards the Blue Pavilion, its tall azure roofs glittering in the early morning sunlight.

“Have you made any more progress?”

“A little… it seems that the school does have some connection to the Blue Water Sage… although it appears largely incidental based on the records and the headmaster’s documents,” he mused, putting the documents down and glancing over a jade tablet.

“On the other hand,” he continued, “the headmaster’s connection to the Lu family is not as simple as your Uncle Teacher seems to believe.”

He picked up the tablet and skimmed through it; it was a short and very dismissive account of various local practices and superstitions of the Yin Eclipse People. It might have been interesting if the author wasn’t peddling a very clear agenda, and doing so with prose almost as bad as that biased hack Qin Qiu, who was clearly an influence.

Lian Jing frowned slightly and stared harder at the pavilion in the distance as if it held some secret she could unpick. He found himself wondering if she had a similar artefact to his own.

“It’s not really much of a secret at court that the current headmaster’s father is deep in the pockets of…” Lian Jing trailed off momentarily, scowling as she turned away from the window to look around the room idly, “...and he’s deep in plenty of other things as well by all accounts. Truly an obsequious thing.”

Huang JiLao sighed, “No… not that, and anyway I believe the feeling is entirely mutual, it is not like the Third Princess has anything to do with you?”

“It’s a disgrace,” she went on, uncaring. “The man’s a commoner, and not even that wealthy. Sure he has some talent for alchemy but still... look at this place, it leeches off the stories associated with the rise of the Venerate Blue Water. All it trades in is marginally uncommon grass and the occasional mildly potent minor pill. Sure he’s a good alchemist, but it’s just alchemy. Nothing that she would fall so… so...”

‘His adopted uncle is the Blue Water Sage’, Huang JiLao was about to say but stopped himself.

While he was here at Imperial Teacher Dun Jian’s own instruction, mainly to keep his senior sister from flying off the handle it seemed, there was no reason that they had to be totally on the same page at this point. Certainly not in light of the growing feeling he had, that somewhere, in all of this, they were being subtly led to fall in a hole by Lian Jing’s Imperial Uncle. His own uncle’s warnings in that regard kept resurfacing in his mind as well but, no matter how he looked at this whole endeavour, he still couldn't see where such a hidden danger lay.

“The Blue Gate School has deeper ties than expected to the Blue Pavilion,” was how he phrased it in the end.

The more he learned about the unassuming Blue Water Pavilion, the more uneasy he became, in truth. The majority of the local leaders of local powers were Ancient Immortals or Dao Immortals. Only the more influential or storied ones were Dao Lords for the most part, along with many of the elders in the Blue Gate School with actual authority, like vice headmistress Ling Tao. He hadn't set eyes on their old ancestors at all though, and this place should have at least one or two who were close to the Dao Sovereign realm. Unfortunately, those prying eyes which Lady Shan's talisman kept warning him of were stronger than that...

Thinking on it again, as Lian Jing strolled over to the cabinets and starting rooting through them, he struggled to bury a sigh. It was remarkable how scrupulously distinct the school and its origins were from those events thirty thousand years ago. A different branch of the Lu clan, the unfavoured older brother of the Blue Water Sage... a long history of rivalry between them, the clan setting up this influence to subvert and capitalise on the Sage's reputation after he had ascended from the world...

It would be far too obvious, he couldn't help but feel, for such a figure to be associated with the school. However, the local Bureaus, the Ling clan... or even the Blue Pavilion itself?

-Yes, he thought with a frown. Those are places where an old monster like that could quietly pass their days, far from the sights and sounds of the Imperial capital and its politicking and power struggles.

His investigations and conversations with various powers around the city had also turned up that a number of the Sage Lu Fu Tao’s old companions were unaccounted for. Some of those had likely ascended from the world with him, their passage off Eastern Azure overshadowed by the Sage’s great fanfare. Others, however, like the Sage’s old protector during his youth, Lady Xiao, flitted in and out of the worldly discourse in various influential ways—

Now, why had Fairy Xiao suddenly come to mind? The Ha clan knew nothing of Old Freak Ha, and had made it clear they didn't want to know either. That ancient old thing, and several others, had slipped quietly into the shadows and barely made a ripple of a rumour since.

That was one reason why he was less interested in West Flower Picking Town. The Ha clan were held as degenerate and profligate in the eyes of many, content to sprawl across the subcontinents in their mercantile endeavours, playing the commoner and the fool by various schools and sects incapable of digging too deep into their background, but under their floor tiles were at least two old monsters who the Huang clan speculated to be Dao Ascendants with 'Earthly' Dao Seeds. In a Great World as young as Eastern Azure, most would still be forming 'Spiritual' Dao Seeds as he understood it. 'Earthly' Dao Seeds usually required some proper accumulation with the fate of a world, which few would invest the time to nurture... or necessarily even know about outside of a world’s ruling elite.

Dao Ascendants with 'Earthly' Principles and Dao Seeds were people capable of truly summoning the wind and rains and making a huge scene if things got out of hand. Both his uncle and Dun Jian had been quite clear on that point in different ways; Old Freak Ha was apparently inexplicable and inscrutable in all kinds of ways and didn’t see the world in quite the same way others did. Never mind the last thirty thousand years, he had kept a low profile in the last 300,000 and was almost untraceable somehow. Even Lady Shan knew his name, which was enough to make him nervous in this context.

“So?” Lian Jing cut into his thoughts.

She had poured them both a drink from the decanter on the side table while he wasn’t paying attention, and she had another set of the rolls from the teahouse. He ignored those, he knew better than to comment on any woman's eating habits at this point. On the other hand, it was very fine herbal wine, he had to admit. The alchemist master who provided it had already been snapped up by one of their ‘flunkies’, which was annoying. He would see if he could get the man via a bet or some other wager in due course.

“So we should be a little more… polite, going forth with the headmaster, is all?” he went on, glancing sideways at her.

Jing sniggered at that. A very unladylike reaction, but not really out of keeping. If she behaved a bit more sagaciously she would actually be quite pleasant company.

“No. Really. Please don’t smash any more of his plants or steal his family mementoes,” he felt Lady Shan's talisman chill a second time at that.

That had been a little too coincidental. He turned to look back towards the Blue Pavilion in the distance, the upper stories still veiled in their shifting mists. He knew it was foolish, he didn’t really expect to see some quasi-Ascension old monster – or worse – sitting cheerfully on the roof staring at him or something... this wasn’t the Imperial Courtyards. And just as he gave thought to that foolish notion, within it for a split second he swore he made eye contact with… something. Slick sweat formed down his back. A shadow sat there, in the mist, drinking tea. It was impossible to see if it was a man or a woman, but they looked straight at him with eyes that saw through his soul for a split second. Then the moment was past, the mist moved once more and the momentary pressure was gone.

All he could manage in the end though was a rather pained, “Please?”

Lady Shan's talisman was ice cold around his neck now. That was probably quite bad. He wanted to take it out and check the symbol.

Lian Jing frowned out the window, “It’s just one old fool, doesn’t have eyes to see the sky.”

Huang JiLao sighed. “Jing, while it may just be one—”

-Fates! He swore inwardly as the second talisman niggled again.

“—Who as you put it so succinctly cannot ‘see the sky for their eyes’, provoking a confrontation now will just draw eyes here. That isn’t what our Martial Teacher wishes. Already other families have moved towards North Fissure and South Grove. We have been successful so far because this place is… less interesting...”

He picked that phrase carefully, just in case. “In all kinds of ways... And I understand that the Din family has ‘arranged’ an encounter with the local Young Master from the Ha clan.

“We play nice with Lu Ji, for now. Get what we need from here and use the school and the proclamation, when it’s made public, as the cover we need to enter the mountain range unnoticed. Something has turned eyes, other than our own teacher's, towards this place of late. The trial by fire is something Martial Teacher apparently argued against, or so he claims in that communique, but we shall use it as we can.

“We take the best and brightest that this school has to offer, tell them we’re seeking rare plants, that we know, from our ‘investigations and sources in the Hunter Bureau’, to be related to the anomalies. Either we find what we seek – what Uncle Teacher seeks – or, based on his divinations, there is a high probability someone among the local school's number will luck out, obtain something worthwhile and then show it off in the following competition, or make it known to us. Our Imperial Uncle will be one of the judges apparently and has a selection option on any talents that might emerge. He will select the most auspicious of the ‘young talents’ and invite them back to Meng City to join the Pill Sovereign Sect as a core disciple. Even the Jade Gate Court or the Shu Vast Pavilion aren't going to be that generous, I'd imagine.”

Lian Jing sighed and pursed her lips. “Yes yes… And once they are out from under the bothersome eyes…”

“Exactly,” he agreed.

It was not a plan without flaws, but no plan was; they could only hope that things would not deviate too wildly when you sent so many volatile 'talents' into a trial like this.

In any event, if the plan failed... it failed. He was prosaic enough to accept that the beginning and end of this was certainly outside their hands. If there was a toll, well, all that was lost were a few minor mid-tier schools in a provincial backwater. Few individuals of actual worth ever fell in these trials – their ancestors were too protective for that – and as far as the Azure Astral Authority was concerned any more could be obfuscated and denied, or just made plain inconvenient to follow up.

~ Lu Ji, Headmaster of the Blue Gate School ~

Lu Ji spent several hours longer in the Authority Bureau than was strictly necessary for an official of his status within Blue Water City, in the end. He had felt his Aunt’s gaze travel to the school compound several times since their talk. He doubted the brats making a mockery of his grandfather’s ideals, or his Grand Uncle's old study for that matter, knew exactly what it was that they had drawn the notice of. Which was good, because he planned to be a long way away, with as many of his students as possible when that calamitous fairy slipper dropped.

The Authority Bureau had been surprisingly cooperative with his manoeuvring. He suspected it was because the influx of young nobles, not just from the Huang family but now half a dozen other influences from the Shen, Din, Bao, Jiang, Gan and Fei, to list but a few, into the four towns and three cities was also becoming a problem for the Duke's Estate and the wider structures of civil authority, not just the local schools.

The new Duke was fastidious and dutiful. He had been groomed from a young age by his father, the old Duke, to succeed in the position. Based on his previous meetings with the young man, his father had instilled him with the level of martial principle and righteous mentality that probably exceeded what the vast majority of young nobles of the central continent were able to fully envisage even in their most fevered delusions. Never mind that he was a generation hopper, ascending to Dao Immortal some two millennia ago, with barely a thousand years of cultivation under his belt prior to that and then Dao Lord a mere 500 years ago. He was also not a subscriber to the Blue Morality.

The Duke still tolerated it, much like Lu Ji and the various other schoolmasters and sept leaders tolerated the nobility’s fascination with that ridiculous document which they held up at every turn to further cement their societal and economic position over the lower orders. It was not worth picking a proper fight over something that had the backing of a Heavenly Clan, especially when it provided dubious, if useful, control – control necessary in societies as ill-disciplined and riotous as those in which cultivation powerhouses arose regularly. Simply put, it was a soft...ish glove that was better than the alternative.

So he felt his heart sink when he saw vice headmistress Ling Tao hurtling across the courtyard in his direction, with a look approaching proper panic in her eyes.

Stopping short of Lu Ji she gave the proper salutations as quickly as possible and then panted out. “This just arrived from the central continent, Teacher”.

She proffered the scroll which, while sealed, was fully readable, no doubt by intention he felt somewhat glumly as he scanned it. He read the thing a second time just to be sure he wasn’t having some nightmarish hallucination, then cursed all young nobles in his mind.

“I take it we are not the only recipients of this?” he said after a long pause.

Ling Tao, still catching her breath, shook her head. “All three schools, the Authority Bureau AND the town authorities have all received it… it will already be making the rounds via the public channels as well.”

Lu Ji groaned and sat down, in a very un-headmasterly manner, on the fence overlooking the courtyard pond. “And what is the view of our school's pupils on this... ‘Remarkable’ opportunity?”

“The outer disciples? They have been… well, they are very much in Young Noble Huang’s camp, Teacher,” Ling Tao muttered, sounding deeply embarrassed.

As if the sublimation of two hundred talents from the minor nobility and merchant houses by the Imperial Court and the Huang clan was something she could actually do anything about.

“Our inner disciples,” she continued. “Well… it’s mixed, they all see the appeal of such a remarkable opportunity, and several are… calculating enough to consider it worth the risk?”

“I see,” Lu Ji nodded glumly. “Make me a list. Don’t write it down, we will discuss it in the Blue Pavilion in the morning.”

“Very good, Teacher,” Ling Tao saluted once more then left, again with somewhat unseemly haste.

By this time she was not the only one. Lu Ji noticed both the transmission envoys for the ‘Seven Shifts Heavenly Eye Pavilion’ and the ‘Blue Water City Hunter Bureau’ sprinting across the far side of the square. With a further soft exhalation of breath, he got up and started to stroll, in a rather mundane fashion for one of his status, not towards the school – there was no reason for him to spend any time there with those two occupying his quarters – but rather towards the northern outskirts of the town where his grandfather’s villa lay. Along the way, he started to compose a very carefully worded letter to the Blue Water Province's Duke, Lord Cao Leyang.

~ Jun Arai, The Herb Hunters ~

Arai’s message jade cooled around her neck. She ignored it as they picked their way carefully along a rock-strewn path, only to come up short because Juni had also stopped, as had Lin Ling on the path behind.

“All of you just got a message transmission?” Sana asked from behind.

“Seemingly so. Who on earth is it from?” She quashed her annoyance as she hauled out her own jade and, pressing her thumb to it, watched as a glittering scroll and a seal appeared in front of them all.

The others all did the same and there were five glittering scrolls, all identical, hanging in the air. That alone marked it out as being rather abnormal; nobody local would bother with the expense of such a format just for a simple message.

BY ORDER OF HIS ROYAL AUGUST AND SACRED PERSONAGE

A TRIAL FOR THE GOOD FORTUNE OF THE YOUTH OF THE GENERATION IS ANNOUNCED.

HIS AUGUST PERSON, BLESSED BY THE HEAVENS, HAS DECREED AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE YOUTH OF THE BLUE REALM. ALL WHO ARE ELIGIBLE MAY PARTAKE OF THIS GREAT EVENT IN BLUE WATER CITY AT THE SET DATE. [9th to 17th of the Month of the Monkey, 19th Millennium - 6th Gen. of Dun.]

ALL WHO EXCEL SHALL, UPON THEIR SUCCESSFUL RETURN, BE JUDGED THROUGH THEIR CONTRIBUTION AND THE WINNER BY IMPERIAL AUTHORITY

SHALL BE GRANTED THE OPTION TO JOIN ONE OF THE GREAT SCHOOLS.

THE TRIAL SHALL BE SET AS PRESENTED

Staring at it, Sana frowned. “Well, that’s informative, if bombastic-sounding.”

Kun Juni frowned and said, “Show me the details.”

Her scroll shifted suddenly and new text appeared.

THE TRIAL SHALL BE SET AS PRESENTED

HIS AUGUST IMPERIAL MAJESTY HAS HEARD THE WORDS OF HIS VASSALS AND PEOPLES AND HAS DECLARED A TRIAL OF EXPLORATION. THE LAST GREAT UNDISCOVERED FRONTIER OF OUR EASTERN AZURE AWAITS YOU, PROUD YOUTHS OF OUR GREAT IMPERIAL REALM.

ENTER THE YIN ECLIPSE MOUNTAIN RANGE AND UNCOVER ITS SECRETS, SEEK NEW DESTINY WITH THE BLESSINGS OF FATE AND USHER IN A NEW AGE OF PROSPERITY FOR THE PEOPLE OF OUR EASTERN AZURE BLUE MORALITY REALM WITH YOUR VALOROUS ACTIONS. 30,000 YEARS AGO THE GREAT SAGE BLUE WATER ENTERED INTO THOSE LANDS AND EMERGED TRIUMPHANTLY TO PRESENT HIS GOOD FORTUNE BEFORE OUR AUGUST FATHER.

I, YOUR IMPERIAL MAJESTY, TRUST THAT YOUR VALOUR SHALL EXCEED OUR REVERED ANCESTORS. IN COLLABORATION WITH THE AUTHORITY BUREAU ALL WHO CARRY ITS TALISMANS MAY PARTICIPATE. IF YOU LACK SUCH MEANS, YOU MAY REGISTER AT ANY PROVINCIAL AUTHORITY TO TAKE PART. YOUR TALISMANS WILL TRACK YOUR PROGRESS, SANCTIONED BY OUR IMPERIAL ASTROLOGY BUREAU. THE INDIVIDUALS WHO PRESENT THE MOST REMARKABLE TREASURE OR COMPREHENSION AS ADJUDGED BY OUR APPOINTED ENVOYS AT THE CLOSE OF THE TRIAL SHALL BE PRESENTED OUR PERSONAL REWARD AND GRATITUDE JUST AS THE BLUE WATER SAGE WAS.

GO WITH BLESSINGS AND GOOD FORTUNE, YOUTH OF OUR REALM.

~Sealed~

~ EMPEROR DUN JIANG~

They all stared dully at the proclamation, not even sure where to start.

-Have they taken leave of their senses? Arai found herself wondering in the back of her mind.

After a few moments of stunned silence, Han Shu finally found words to speak. “Isn’t this asking for the death of a generation’s youth….?”

"...The Emperor?" her sister said, sounding a bit strangled.

"A trial? Here?" Juni sounded equally disbelieving. "Like the thing they do at the Dragon Pillars every few years?"

As one, all five turned to stare up at the peaks that towered over them. Even two hundred miles in and several thousand metres up, they seemed to scale the sky itself. Great thunderclouds roared around the heights of Yin Eclipse itself, Thunder Crest Pinnacle and East Fury Peak at this very moment. Further across the valleys, the equally precipitous Trampling God Spire, the nearest of East Fury’s peaks was being ravaged by what appeared to be acidic clouds from this distance. The forest below them hummed with restrained vitality. Birds flitting through the trees and occasionally getting devoured when they passed to close to an ‘uki uki tree’ or trappish vines. Under the canopy would be a leafy quagmire of predatory vegetation and arboreal fauna, all of it with the potential to bring death to the unwary this far in.

She sat down on a rock and took a sip of a hydration tonic. “This is going to mess us over so hard when it comes to ensuring we don’t get an Autonomous Censure over the herb levy, isn’t it.”

“Yep,” Lin Ling grimaced and wiped a strand of blonde hair, slick with damp, off her face.

“At the head of this valley should be one of the rogue mutates that the Beast Hunter Cadre encountered during their last patrol out this far,” she added, glancing at the jade scrip lashed to her wrist like a forearm guard, which it also occasionally doubled as. Enchanted jade of that quality was as tough as a piece of quasi-immortal grade armour, albeit with not of the other perks of such a thing.

“We need to go across the west face,” Juni noted, pointing down across the valley.

On the far side, where their path would have led, was a shifting miasma that seemed to blend into the leaves, almost unnoticeable at this distance unless you paid attention to the shadows beneath the trees.

“This is going to be a long day, isn’t it,” Han Shu wearily interjected, staring up the slope in the other direction, where their new path was going to force them.

Following his gaze, she could only agree, the tumbled rock shelves were strewn with recently deposited erosion debris from caves higher on the ridgeline, tangled shrubbery rapidly reclaiming everything.. Water ferns and vines were everywhere, and the whole place was rife with the potential for hidden danger to skulk unseen.

She laughed bitterly and adopted a tone of mock cheerfulness… “Just look at it this way, bro: you’re doing this with us!”

That brought a sour laugh from Juni. “Yep. You get to walk in the mountains with four beautiful young ladies and have perilous adventures, partake of mighty deeds and see wondrous and mysterious views like this”.

She gestured back down the valley, where the changing weather patterns left a patchwork of sunbeams, rainbows and the occasional thundercloud. The dappled over-canopy of the cloud forest shimmered below them, a kaleidoscopic patchwork of colourful leaves and miniature ecosystems within the offshoot valleys that almost seemed like their own little worlds as you made your way through them.

“Or,” Juni pointed beyond it to the distant shimmer of pagodas and towers of West Flower Picking Town. Somehow they were still visible despite the apparently vast distance, a rare visible reminder of the combined wonder of the selective perspective and the strange way space worked this close to the peaks.

“You could be doing this with some obnoxious little shit from the coast, amped up on glory and face, standing right behind you telling you to go faster because they might turn a nail or dirty their robe.”

“However,” Sana was staring at her talisman with a foul look on her face now. “We do have a proper problem.”

She held up her Hunter Pavilion talisman, which was once again glimmering dimly.

All five of them pulled out their own talismans and looked at them: all glimmered with a slightly unnatural light. This message was simpler and shorter... and the five Hunters all found themselves tempted to throw their talismans straight off the cliff into the forest below when they read it.

DESIGNATED MISSION:

~ ALL WEST FLOWER PAVILION HUNTERS ABOVE SEVEN-STAR GRADE ~

ESCORT YOUNG MASTER HA YUN INTO THE INTERIOR OF THE YIN ECLIPSE MOUNTAINS AND ENSURE THEY FIND A PRIZE WORTHY OF THE AUGUST THRONE’S TRIAL.

- VALLEY MASTER AUTHORITY [SEAL]

- TOWN AUTHORITY [SEAL]

- HA CLAN [SEAL]

She, along with the rest, stared at the message dully.

"Really Father, your concerns of trouble were disturbingly spot-on," her sister muttered.

After a long moment, she spoke for all of them. “Right… let’s just ignore that. Avoiding that festering pile of monkeyshit is why we’re here anyway.”

“Yep,” Han Shu grimaced, evidently sharing her opinion. Juni and Lin Ling both rolled their eyes and started upwards again.

Determined to get the parting shot, her sister finished up his sentence for him. “Let’s get climbing, it doesn’t mention a failure state, and six-star mutate earth seizing lamium does not pick itself... or so I am lead to believe.”

That brought a round of somewhat weary laughter from all of them as they continued on their way and over the next few hours she mostly put the messages out of her mind. While it was clearly aimed at them, the superiority of their existing mission absolutely outranked even a personal request from the Valley Master’s Authority and the Ha clan, so it was perfectly within their rights to ignore it. They were already on a 'Designated Mission' in any case, so really it was totally within their rights to pretend they had seen nothing. When they returned in two weeks, the trial would already well underway. The follow-on request linked to their current mission would then allow them to dodge the rest of this mess entirely. It meant nothing to them in any event; it was the issues with the logistics levy that concerned them.

The landscape around them was changing at any rate, the cloud forest closing in as they climbed. The path was less a trial, and more winding arcs of least resistance over rock scree and around thickets of dense vegetation, climbing ever upwards. The exit to this valley was some thirty miles to the north-west and would take them to a point almost on top of their next target, a mutate lamium that had been sighted several times in the next valley.

“So how are we going to go about this next one?” Lin Ling asked, from just in front of her.

“Hmm…” she thought out loud. “Probably best to leech it of its qi reserves as subtly as we can… the location is…”

“Yes. We don’t want to rile up the life-breaking aspen in any way, shape or form,” Juni agreed from ahead of them.

Their discussion was cut short for a few moments as they navigated the large sloping rock that was a miniature run for water ferns.

“It seems it’s earth attuned... with some minor mutation for thunder and fire? Ahh, it was originally earth lash lamium according to Senior Yao’s notes,” Han Shu consulted his own jade tablet and recording scrip as he waited for her, and Sana behind, to haul themselves up the rope he had dropped and was holding for their ascent.

She reached the top of the rock a moment later, running a hand through her hair to remove the worst of the water and then squeezing out what she could from her sleeves. It was humid enough that there was no point in trying to dry off her clothes properly and their quality was good enough that they wouldn’t chafe when wet anyway. She took over from Han Shu, holding the safety rope for Sana’s ascent while he quickly sorted out some talismans and ward stones to review what he had.

“The fire is problematic… but it seems by far the least of the three elements it has an affinity for.”

“In that case I say we start sapping it with wood… although why in the fates is an earth lash mutate hiding in the life breaking aspen grove?” Lin Ling added, sitting down beside her to wait for Sana to finish climbing up.

“What’s the holdup?” she called down. Sana should have been up by now.

“Sage cutter ant line,” her sister’s voice echoed up, sounding… bored.

“Oh…. Well… just be safe,” she called back down.

In the end, it took ten minutes for the ant swarm to make its way across the base of the rock. It was an unfortunate confluence of biomes: the ants despised water, and the area around the base of the colossal slab was the driest path due to the overhang. The area below it was a death trap in many ways; an ecological one – not a dangerous Qi Zone, simply a place where stuff fell off the rocks above and accumulated below. While passing along it, they had already harvested a few useful fungi and some rare snail shells that would be useful for medicines. However, what was bountiful for them was also a happy scavenging ground for many other critters, looking for things swept off the rocky slopes.

Making their way onwards, they debated the best means to sap their target. Grandmaster Li had given Juni a new booklet of ward stone tabulations a few weeks ago, updated to her specifications. She had been meaning to go get one done as well, but it was expensive, even with Grandmaster Li’s generous discounts to the Pavilion.

“I think we go with a triple circle of wood, supported by minor fire to overcome the thunder and water to overcome the fire,” Han Shu pondered, thumbing through the wood chapter of Juni’s booklet.

“Do we have enough stones for that?” she queried. She had had about two hundred of each to start with and since they started she had used maybe a quarter of her stock… “I have 150 wood left.”

“I have sixty left…” her sister added.

“Ninety-one... and 120 water,” Lin Ling supplied from ahead.

“Eighty wood… 150 fire and water,” Juni added.

“Seventy-five.” Han Shu frowned…

“We need three hundred-odd wood stones... thirty-three fire and sixty-six water….”

“Should be,” Juni agreed.

Enough then. She glanced at the formation Han Shu was considering as they swapped position on the line.

“Still doesn’t explain why it’s in the aspen grove, to begin with,” Lin Ling frowned.

“Suppression…? It may be trying to consolidate itself before advancing.” She replied.

If that was the case, and she suspected it was, hence why this one target had been selected over the two fire lash lamium beds that were in this region, they might have an easier time with this one compared to the others.

“Uhgh,” Lin Ling sighed, “I wish I could become a plant… they have it so easy.”

Her sister laughed at that, and she allowed herself a wry chuckle. Lin Ling was struggling with a bottleneck of sorts in her physical cultivation: if she recalled correctly the younger girl required some expensive fire herbs with a gentle nature to help temper her meridians before she advanced her mantra. They might find them out here if they were lucky, but otherwise, it would mean expensive purchases back in town.

The message talisman cooled again on her neck. She glanced at it and sighed. It was another message… upgrading the status of the previous mission authorisation to be on par with a designated request from the Authority Bureau, ‘for the good of the town’, courtesy of an amended authority seal originating from the Astrology Bureau.

“Seriously?” Han Shu sighed, staring at his own talisman.

“Changes nothing,” Sana grunted, squinting up the slope. “This next one is gonna be awkward… that loon vine has started to encroach and it may have rock roots.”

She followed her sister’s pointing hand, appraising the plant. It was easy enough to pick out, with twisty-shaped vomit-coloured leaves. This far away she couldn’t smell the faint perfume of its sap, which was a good thing. However, the next slab was also colonised by a huge swathe of water ferns, and that was what her sister had flagged. There would be a not inconsiderable risk of the sap leeching persistently through the rock runoff, allowing it to have qi roots far beyond its obvious reach...

She pushed qi through her ocular meridians and stared at the rock for several long moments, letting her vision acclimate to the different way the world worked. The waters carried the neutral signature of the water ferns and there was some underlying distortion with the slab, which was neither unusual nor particularly convenient right now. Turning her eyes to the greenery above, she tracked the rest of the plant until her vision was diffused rapidly by the shifting morass of green and mixed signatures. There was no convincing evidence of the vine’s field, no tell-tale discolouration or dispersal of the local qi, but plants like the loon vine were deserving of their bad reputation.

“Do you see anything, sis?” she asked Sana, whose vision was a bit better at determining differences in aspect.

“No…" her sister shook her head. "But something is off with this area, up towards the top of the slab. I still say we go up the right side… it’s worth the twenty minutes of scrambling to not have a splitting headache for the next six hours or get ambushed by something in those ferns. It's a long fall down, and we don't bounce so good up here.”

"I don't see anything either," Juni frowned, “but that swathe of ferns still gives me a wrong feeling.”

"Plus one on the bad feeling," Lin Ling agreed.

"Yes. We indeed don't bounce good," Han Shu added with a dark chuckle. He was still nursing a few bruises from a trip down a lower slab that had turned into a water slide courtesy of a water orchid.

In the end, it took closer to an hour than twenty minutes, but it was better to be safe than unpleasantly afflicted. Sitting on the next level, eating some of the nutritious herb-infused bread she had bought from Mrs Leng, she reviewed their plan of ‘attack’ on the lamium. If it all went to plan it would be quite boring and take about half a day of sitting around, slowly sending it into a comatose stupor with wood qi poisoning, before digging it up. Then they would have to neutralise that and put it in stasis so it could be transported.

“It’s the neutralising that worries me,” her sister said, peeking over her shoulder.

“Yep. It will be exposed, we will be exposed, and if we get raided by something it will all be for naught,” she agreed.

“What do you have in the way of Grandmaster Li’s finest?” she called over to Han Shu, who was drinking from a jar of spirit herb soup.

“A few barriers capable of keeping six-star actives contained for an hour or so…” Han Shu shuffled his own talisman wallet open, checking the sigils in it before continuing “One that can hold a seven-star ranked monster for a few minutes, but will take a lot of wind up and is really only good as a trap.”

“I have an eight-star one,” Juni noted. “I’d rather not have to deploy it though… it’s quite old…”

She didn’t add expensive. Money saved lives out here, so whinging about the price was dumb. Age on the other hand… new talismans were generally better. “It is one of Mr— Grandmaster Mang’s specials though…”

-Ah. She winced inwardly even as the others all nodded sagely.

Grandmaster Mang was their town's other formations guru. If Grandmaster Li was the principled eccentric, the trailblazer in that field in the town, then Grandmaster Mang was, well, the mad eccentric. The artisan. He only sold his stuff to auctions, and his works were always impressive, it was just… It wasn’t that they were unreliable, but rather they tended to do things above and beyond what you sometimes expected, and every single one was a bit unique. They were excellent if you had to make some critter's day permanently miserable though. She had a few of Grandmaster Mang’s ‘Prismatic Pit’ talismans in her own sheaf, a present from her father for her fifth anniversary as a Herb Hunter. She had used one on an eight-star shifting alkr the previous month and it had turned the horrible thing into a pink gerbil. Permanently. Grandmaster Mang had bought the transformed critter off her for 10 spirit stones.

“Well so long as we have the means,” she agreed.

“I have a full complement of Nascent Soul and Spirit Severing elemental offensive talismans,” Lin Ling added.

She stood up. “Well… we should get over the ridge before darkness falls.”

“Definitely,” Juni agreed. “The notes say that there are devouring centipedes in this part of the gorges and a run-in with a few of those… would not be part of the plan.”

She flipped through her own scrip to find the ancillary information. “The notes say there was a nest with at least one seven-star one.”

They had an uncharacteristic glut of knowledge on the non-herbaceous threats in these valleys, which was a nice change. The Beast Hunter Cadre was excellent at their job, but the fauna situation could change so quickly from seasonto season that information quickly became unreliable no matter how often patrols were undertaken. Still, it would have been nice to have one of their number along for the trip, she reflected as she finished the bread.