Interlude III: Jadeflame Island

  Song Shaoyue’s face was painfully blank when she emerged from the meeting, which was how Han Wenqing knew it had gone about as badly as it possibly could.

  She did not say a word to him. She simply moved past, graceful and measured, walking the way she’d been forced to in the etiquette lessons she’d always hated. That, in itself, was a warning. And it rankled him. Not that she was ignoring him, but that even as the master of the island, she was choosing to leave – flee, really – because of their guests.

  For a servant like him, could there be anything more shameful?

  He kept every trace of that thought off his face. Neither his anger nor his disdain would mean anything to the three elders from the main family now residing on Jadeflame Island. He was no longer the young miss’s protector, the favored attendant of the family head. He was the lone servant of a disgraced daughter, banished alongside her. His position was one to pity, not envy.

  Han Wenqing followed Song Shaoyue to the flying carriage waiting for them, letting her step inside first before entering after her. The carriage itself was a top-grade artifact, carved from an Iron-Skinned Oak and etched with formations for fast flight and privacy. He personally preferred using his natal artifact for nearly everything, but a few luxuries were acceptable in this regard, chief among them, traveling in comfort.

  The instant he sank into the plush cushions and the carriage rose into the air, being pulled by no visible creature, Song Shaoyue’s mask cracked.

  She slammed her fist against the carriage wall. The whole vehicle shuddered. Her expression twisted into contempt and fury.

  “Those damned geezers. How dare they? Looking down on me like I’m some piece they can move at will. When I reclaim my position, the first thing I’ll do is make them kowtow for their impertinence.”

  Han Wenqing said nothing. She wasn’t finished.

  “As if exiling me for trying to preserve the clan wasn’t enough, now they dare to threaten me over the divine treasure once it’s in my hands.” She scoffed sharply. “As if! They can dream. I’ll make Father acknowledge me as heir again, and get rid of that vixen first, before I even think about handing it over to the Song clan.”

  Han Wenqing nodded. He didn’t wholly agree with her reasoning, but the outcome? That he could stand behind. Especially where Peng Meihua was concerned. Matters had rotted too far for anything less than one woman’s death, either his mistress’s or the other’s, to settle things. As for the divine treasure…

  “You aren’t making the mistake of thinking you can hold on to the gui, are you?” he asked, hoping anger hadn’t clouded her common sense.

  He didn’t mean the Song clan alone. Even if they won the coming tournament and secured the treasure, it was impossible to keep. As a merchant house, they might try to put it up for auction, but the thing about priceless artifacts was that they were, by definition, priceless. No, in the end, the treasure would fall into an immortal’s hands; likely the emperor, also known as the Six-Eared General, simply due to being closest, because none of the other immortals cared enough to intervene.

  Song Shaoyue scoffed. “Of course not. What do you take me for, Wenqing? It’s just-the sheer presumption of these fools is enough to make me see red. They exile me because of my weakling brother and the whore who’s sunk her claws into him, and now Heaven itself presents an opportunity to me, and they think they can swoop in and lecture me? No wonder Father went from a grand cultivator to the sickly fool he is. Listening to those elders’ drivel every day would rot anyone.”

  Han Wenqing frowned, though the instinctive protest he would have made in his youth to defend his benefactor and the current head of the Song clan never materialized. In truth, though not as vehemently or personally, he also no longer agreed with Song Jianfeng’s decisions. That entire debacle with Peng Meihua could have been avoided had he reined in his son, but he had refused to do so.

  And his mistress… well. She had inherited her father’s stubbornness. Attempting to assassinate her brother’s wife, despite any grievances between them, had crossed a line. Anyone else would have been executed outright; exile had been merciful. Han Wenqing had also not pushed back on that idea as he should have. His pride had been wounded by Peng Meihua outclassing him so effortlessly, despite being half a century younger, and he had let that guide his judgment.

  He sighed. Turning to Song Shaoyue, he said, “Even so, we can’t stand without their help right now. We have no choice but to bow. But if our champion wins, not someone the main house sends, then we’ll have leverage. Enough to overturn your exile. Maybe even see you reinstated as heir. And if we play it well enough to be put in charge of the pilgrimage to the capital afterward…” He let the implication hang.

  Song Shaoyue’s scowl eased, little by little. “Yes. So the most important thing is to field powerful cultivators under my banner. Mine; not the Song clan’s. If we secure the prize, even Father will have to bend. But do we have anyone of that caliber? The fact that I even have to ask suggests the answer is no.”

  Han Wenqing stroked his wispy beard. “It’s not that dire. We have several promising Foundation Establishment cultivators, loyal ones, even. But none who truly shine. And considering Qing and Fu will enjoy a decisive home advantage…”

  Song Shaoyue picked it up at once. “They’ll get their pick of the crop, and we’ll scrape up the dregs.” She bared her teeth. “Unacceptable. Either we sabotage their most promising competitors, or we find talents of our own. This is not an opportunity that will come twice. Only a fool will let it pass.”

  On that point, Han Wenqing agreed wholeheartedly.

  When he’d first sensed the shiver of a descending gui from Heaven, he’d thought he was hallucinating. No one expected such a thing after the Shattering. True, gui still fell into the mortal realm for ages after the Great War in Heaven: that was their nature. Shen faded over time as their possessors ascended, but gui persisted, passing from immortal to immortal, or if left unclaimed, descending onto a new world. Yet the Shattering had torn their world from its cosmic place. Every record agreed it should be impossible.

  Apparently not.

  It only proved how foolish cultivators were to think they understood divine treasures. Even here, Heaven could reach them effortlessly.

  And that reaching had not been gentle. Han Wenqing had fought in the battle where four Nascent Soul cultivators clashed to claim the prize. Whatever arrogance he’d once held as someone from the mainland had been stripped away quickly. Qing and Fu had been his equals, and the Lord of the Lonely Roads had been a nasty surprise, managing to counter his Urn of the Dead God with the Yin-Yang Brush. Had the fight continued, whoever crawled out alive would have been weakened enough for even a Core Formation cultivator to kill.

  It had been for this reason that, when three Nascent Soul cultivators from the Song clan finally arrived, the clash abruptly stalled. One might expect that three culitvators from the same clan; four, if Han counted himself, could overwhelm the three separate Nascent Soul experts from the Thousand Shattered Islands, but the island cultivators had shown a startling unity in the face of mainland interference. Qing and Fu had joined hands without hesitation, and they had accepted the Lord of the Lonely Roads into their formation as though it were the most natural thing in the world. The man had not protested in the slightest.

  In the face of such cooperation, it was the Song clan elders who hesitated. Neither they nor Han Wenqing fully trusted one another, and so discussions became inevitable.

  Only recently had Han learned the full picture: the Song clan was burning through their accumulated resources to prevent any other mainland force from intervening. It was a strategy that could only hold for a short while, and only then because no one from the mainland had chosen to push the matter. The emperor had not reached for the treasure, so the nobles in the capital followed his example, sense be damned. The regional families, in turn, mimicked the capital. Foolish, yes, but convenient. That chain of inaction had granted the Song clan a narrow window, one they were desperate to exploit.

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  Such an opportunity would never come again, externally or internally.

  Still, to answer his mistress’s question-

  “Sabotage is not on the table,” he warned quietly. “The strongest candidates will be close relatives of the local powers or directly backed by them. They’ll be hard to reach, and heavily guarded to boot. Also, no one involved is a fool. They’ll expect sabotage. What we need is one or two genuinely promising champions we can polish with the time we have left. On that note… do you remember the young girl I mentioned?”

  It took Song Shaoyue a full minute to respond, a sign she had paid the matter no real mind. Privately, he thought that a mistake. Even if the girl was under Qing’s authority, it was from a distance, and that distance presented an opportunity.

  “Wait-she’s the one who reached Foundation Establishment at seventeen, yes? Impressive, certainly, but probably one of Qing’s playthings. What about her?” Her tone was deliberately obtuse; enough that he knew she was avoiding the real subject by forcing him to say the obvious.

  Han Wenqing, long accustomed to her methods, simply waited.

  After a few moments, Song Shaoyue yielded.

  “Fine, fine. Yes, I remember her. And yes, we could probably snatch her if we tried. But I am sick of dealing with so-called ‘geniuses’ after that bitch Meihua. One was enough. Let’s spare ourselves the headache and find someone else. Early breakthrough or not, just reaching Foundation Establishment early doesn’t guarantee real strength. She’s probably weaker than half the cultivators who’ve been at the stage for decades.” Her voice grew firmer with each sentence, as though she were convincing herself.

  Mistake, Han Wenqing thought, though he stayed silent. His mistress was letting her resentment toward Peng Meihua poison her judgment. But he knew her too well. If he pushed now, she would only dig in her heels.

  Better to let this matter go, and save the argument for something that truly mattered.

  For a while, the only sound in the carriage was the soft, slicing whisper of air, like scissors cutting silk each time they pierced through a cloud. Outside, the sky wore the bruised colors of late afternoon, sunlight bleeding into long, gold ribbons that stretched across the sea. Inside, the quiet clung to them, close and suffocating, like a second skin neither could shed.

  Song Shaoyue pressed two fingers to her temple, her anger cooling into something colder: resentment, sharpened rather than soothed by distance.

  “I refuse to bow to those elders again,” she murmured, the fire in her earlier tirade banked but not extinguished. “Not when Heaven itself has opened a path for me.”

  Han Wenqing studied her profile for a fleeting moment. In the shifting half-light, she resembled her father in his youth: proud, unyielding, certain of his place in the world. A dangerous mixture in any cultivator, but doubly so in an heir cast into exile.

  “You won’t have to,” he said at last. “Not if we secure the right people. The Song clan has been accused often enough of being willing to sell anything, family included, if the price is right. I’d like to dismiss that as nonsense, but there is a kernel of truth in it.” He exhaled, long and quiet. “If we win, we can go back. Everything can be forgiven, after all, for the right prize.”

  Those words had once belonged to the clan leader himself; the same words he’d spoken when he secured Han Wenqing’s freedom along with his family’s. Later, he had called it an investment, and told Han he had already repaid it tenfold.

  Song Shaoyue clicked her tongue and let her head fall back against the silk rest with a soft thud. “I’m not seeking forgiveness. When I’m done, they’ll beg me for it.” The bitterness in her voice had returned, coiled, but fierce.

  Han Wenqing inclined his head. “As you command.”

  A simple acknowledgment. A pledge of allegiance.

  Outside, Jadeflame Island had long since vanished behind them, first a dark smudge against the sea, then nothing at all. Ahead lay the tangled paths of ambition, Heaven’s meddling, and the treacherous politics of the Thousand Shattered Islands.

  ...................................................................

  Interlude IV: Chao Qinzi

  The images had returned. War, endless war, with oceans of blood drowning the world, and a madman presiding over it all. Chao Qinzi forced himself deeper into the crevice, hoping that the pain from the sharp rocks cutting into his skin would dull the sight.

  As always, it did not work. Not only was his skin tough enough that even steel blades would struggle to penetrate it, the images of the future that he was cursed to see could not be dispelled so simply. Once, he had thought himself blessed. Favored, even, if not by the Heavens, then by fate. Now, he had learned too late that what he held was a curse.

  Ever since that fight; ever since that girl; ever since…

  His teeth gnashed in hate, but he forced himself to calm down immediately after. Any tantrum could break the formation and expose him. Too risky. He had no idea if he was still being hunted, but it was too risky. Let them all kill each other and die, only then would he emerge. Though, with what was coming… he shivered, once again thinking about the oceans of blood carving rivers through the cities.

  If only he had not seen that girl. Even now, the image haunted him. It should have been simple. Easy, even. Just get her, refine her into a cauldron, and he could have waited out the coming war in peace. Even if her bloodline had turned out to be only half as potent as he had seen in the images, just having another fragment on hand would have been enough…

  But it was not to be. Mo Jian, that accursed, hateful, conniving, back-stabbing wretch had stolen what should rightfully have been his. How had he known? Had he detected the bloodline? But how? Chao Qinzi carried the same legacy in his blood, which was what had allowed him to recognize it on sight in that girl, but he had felt no such thing from Mo Jian. Then, had he somehow stumbled upon another fragment? It sounded absurd, but was he, a mighty Core Formation cultivator, not sniveling in the dirt like a worm just because of that very possibility?

  No, he was past the point of absurdity. If someone knew about the fragments, and was hunting them all down one by one, then he was a target. At the beginning, when the visions had first come to him, he had believed he could gather every fragment and claim the true inheritance. But after that humiliating defeat, after the visions that tore into him night after night in the aftermath, his arrogance, his confidence, all of it had blown away like ash in the wind.

  Now he was only fearful… and hateful. But not hateful enough to leave his hiding place. The end was coming, no matter how blind the fools inhabiting this world were, and all Chao Qinzi wanted was to survive it. If he could not get another fragment, then he would focus on disappearing. Hiding so well that he might as well be dead.

  He had no need to crawl out and personally slaughter the imbeciles who had offended – no, opposed – him. They would all be dead soon enough. After… after it was over, he would take great satisfaction in pissing on Mo Jian’s corpse. And if anything of the girl survived, well… she could still serve as a toy to vent the anger festering in his gut. It had been a long time since he last took a woman. He pushed the thought away before it tempted him into recklessness. No, he would not leave. He was determined to stay hidden, even if it took years.

  Even the recent manifestation of the gui hadn’t shaken that resolve. He had not seen it in his visions, and for a moment the terror – thinking the end had arrived too early – had nearly made him soil himself. But then he had understood, feeling those old monsters fighting, and had almost laughed out loud. Those fools; those poor, doomed fools.

  It didn’t matter what came; the end was already written. He had seen it. And the images were never wrong.

  ‘They were wrong about the girl', an insidious voice whispered in the back of his mind.

  Chao Qinzi shook his head furiously, mad at the voice for pointing it out. He wished he had the Soul Severing Gourd at hand to calm himself. But no, taking out his natal artifact was too much of a risk. The formation was good, but it required that the user not expend any qi beyond the bare minimum, or move much, if at all, after setting it up. Like the most gossamer thin and fragile silken cocoon in existence. It would hide him from anything, but he could not move, lest he tear it apart mistakenly.

  No, the images were not at fault. Cursed as they were, they had never deceived him. It was that bastard, Mo Jian. He must have another fragment. That was why he had never appeared in the visions, why he had slipped past all detection. He was collecting them, no doubt chasing after the ultimate defense. Let him try. He would fail. Chao Qinzi was no one’s fool; he would stay hidden, and no one would kill him.

  And afterward, when the world lay empty of all living beings save him and a few scattered remnants, then he would emerge and take his revenge. On everyone who had ever slighted him. On anyone who had dared to think him a fool. On all those who would not bow. Everyone.

  The images showed him the future again. A red sky. A red ocean. A land drenched in red, with furious crimson rivers carving their way across it. In those rivers floated people, melting, dissolving, until all that remained was red, red, and more red. And above it all, looking on with indifference, floated the only speck of color in that crimson world, the madman in white.

  Chao Qinzi clenched his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut even though it never helped. The visions came from within. His fragment, his bloodline; the shard of a shattered remnant he had inherited, it could not be denied.

  He pressed himself into the crevice harder, hoping that the pain from the rocks poking into his skin would distract him.

  As always, it did not work.

  Not only was his skin tough enough that even steel blades would struggle to penetrate it, the images of the future that he was cursed to see could not be dispelled so simply. Once, he had thought himself blessed. Favored, even, if not by the Heavens, then by fate. Now, he had learned too late that what he held was a curse.

  Ever since that fight; ever since that girl; ever since…

  …