They ran.

  There was no plan, no strategy beyond putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the unnatural disaster that was the battle between Old Nan and the elders. Li Xuan took the lead, his movements a blur of grey robes in the deepening twilight, with Mistress Bai close behind him. Their destination was obvious – anywhere out of the city.

  They were nearing the western gate when the world ended.

  It wasn’t a sound. It was a feeling. A sudden, profound absence that swallowed every sense, followed by a light from behind them so white and so absolute that it bleached the colour from the world and cast their shadows long and sharp before them. Jiang threw up a hand to shield his eyes, but the light was everywhere, shining through his eyelids, through his very bones.

  The ground heaved, a single, violent lurch that threw them all from their feet. A wave of pressure, hot and silent, washed over them, and for a heartbeat, Jiang felt a sound that wasn’t a sound at all – a deep, final crack, as if the sky itself had broken.

  Then it was over. The light vanished, plunging the world into an even deeper darkness. The silence rushed back in, broken only by the distant, terrified yells of mortals.

  “Move,” Li Xuan snapped, voice flat with urgency. “They’ll chase the light first. We use the gap.”

  Jiang’s throat was tight, but he forced himself to keep going. Even his senses could detect what felt like a dozen cultivators heading directly from the outskirts of the city towards where… where Old Nan had fought. He had no idea if they were Ironwood Pavilion disciples or another sect, but Mistress Bai and Li Xuan didn’t seem to be worried about being detected, so he ignored them.

  They kept moving, the frantic scramble of their initial flight replaced by a grim, silent retreat. They didn’t stop until the city was a distant smear of light behind them and the scent of ozone and shattered stone no longer clung to the air. Li Xuan finally changed directions, veering off the faint track they’d been following into the dense, snow-laden woods. They pushed through tangled undergrowth for another ten minutes before emerging into a small, unremarkable clearing, hemmed in on all sides by thick pines. It offered concealment, if nothing else.

  Zhang conjured a small, hesitant ball of fire, the light casting the clearing in harsh, flickering relief. Li Xuan stood stiffly, his back to the firelight, scanning the treeline, every line of his body taut with tension. Mistress Bai paced the small clearing like a caged tigress, her serene mask completely gone, replaced by a look of cold, simmering fury.

  “Well,” she said, her voice dripping sarcasm as she rounded on Li Xuan. “That went precisely according to plan, did it not, Inner Disciple? Provoke an Elder, possibly start a war, destroy half my city, and get us all hunted like dogs. A masterful display of diplomacy.”

  Li Xuan didn’t rise to the bait. “The situation was… fluid,” he stated, his voice flat.

  “Fluid? You threw a lit torch into a powder keg!” she snapped. “And now look where we are.” She gestured wildly at the dark, unfamiliar woods, Qi flickering around her hands for a brief moment before she took a deep breath and mastered herself. “My network, my influence, centuries of work… gone. Because an arrogant Sect pup couldn’t keep his sword in its sheath.”

  “My actions were necessary to protect a Sect asset,” Li Xuan retorted defensively.

  “An asset who is now the most wanted individual in the province!”

  “Enough,” Zhang interrupted, surprising them both. He looked pale and shaken, but his voice was steady. “Arguing achieves nothing. What… what was that? Back there? The old woman?” He looked at Jiang. “Who was she?”

  Jiang hesitated, debating how much to share. In the end, the fact was that the people in this clearing already knew basically all the secrets he cared about keeping, and as much as it hurt to think about… well, Old Nan’s secrets didn’t matter much anymore. Not that he really knew any of them in the first place. “I didn’t know her for long,” he admitted. “I didn’t know she was that strong, either – I know that she was a Pact-bearer, bonded with the Wolf, and that her cultivation was shattered a long time ago. That’s… that’s about it, really.”

  Mistress Bai stopped pacing, her sharp gaze fixing on him. “Shattered? A Nascent Soul cultivator, living in the lower city – my city – with a shattered core? It makes no sense. Why would someone of that level be here?”

  Li Xuan clearly read the confusion on his face. “Nascent Soul cultivators are figures of legend,” he explained, clearly just as interested in answers as Mistress Bai. “Beings who stand only a few steps shy of the peak of this world, within reach of ascension. The Mistress is right, they do not live in provincial backwaters, let alone with crippled cultivation. If nothing else, any cultivator at that level is wealthy enough to outright buy a city.”

  “Does it matter?” Jiang asked, impatience creeping into his tone. For some reason, the way they were asking the questions irritated him. “She’s gone.”

  For a moment, no one spoke. Li Xuan looked a little apologetic, but notably didn’t actually apologise.

  Eventually, Zhang broke the silence, shifting uneasily. “So… what now?”

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  “Our objective hasn’t changed,” Li Xuan said simply. “We need to track down Gao Leng and deal with the threat he represents. Then… then we can travel to Biragawa and retrieve Jiang’s family.”

  Bai let out a short, incredulous laugh. “Are you entirely out of your mind? Half the province just saw a Nascent Soul cultivator detonate her core in the middle of my city, and you want to carry on as if nothing happened?” She gestured sharply toward the faint red glow on the horizon. “Do you have any idea what that means? The sects will swarm this place like carrion birds.”

  “That’s precisely why we can’t stop,” Li Xuan said. “Every sect within a hundred li will be focused on what happened at Qinghe. If that cultivator… actually, what was her name?” he trailed off, looking to Jiang.

  “Old Nan,” he supplied.

  “If—I’m sorry, did you just say Old Nan?” Li Xuan broke off, incredulous.

  Jiang shrugged.

  “…Right. Well, if Old Nan managed to kill even one elder – and I’d wager she did – the investigation will consume the sect’s attention for weeks. Probably longer if any of the Thousand Petal Grove elders were killed as well. That’s the sort of thing that could very easily lead to a war, so they’ll need to be thorough.”

  Zhang frowned, looking between them. “So the other sects won’t want to split their attention to deal with Gao Leng. Couldn’t we at least tell the Azure Sky Sect what we know? Let them handle it?”

  Li Xuan shook his head once. “No, it’s too risky. If anyone learns that an Azure Sky disciple was even tangentially involved in a Nascent Soul’s death – especially if that Nascent Soul happened to kill multiple elders before dying – then we’ll never escape scrutiny. Better for them to be able to legitimately say they have no idea what happened.”

  Jiang scowled, kicking at a loose clump of snow. “So your brilliant plan is to just… carry on? Like nothing happened? I thought you said finding Gao Leng would be difficult even with the help of the other sects – and you expect to manage it alone?” He shook his head, resolved. “Well, good luck. I have the information I need, so I’m going to head to Biragawa and save my family.”

  Li Xuan took a step forward, gaze locked on Jiang. “Our agreement stipulated that we would deal with Gao Leng first, and only then would we travel to Biragawa.”

  Jiang narrowed his eyes stubbornly. “That’s fine, I’m not asking you to go with me. I’ll go alone.”

  “We have a duty,” Li Xuan pressed, changing tactics. “As cultivators, we have a responsibility to deal with threats like Gao Leng. Not just for our own safety, but for the safety of the mortals who live under our protection. You saw what he did to those bandits. You know what he did to your village. Can you truly walk away, knowing he is still out there? Knowing he could do it again, to someone else’s family? To another village?”

  Jiang hated that the argument worked. He hated the image it brought to mind – another village burning, another family torn apart.

  “Let the other Sects handle him,” Jiang repeated, though the words felt hollow now. “They’ll be crawling all over this province. They’ll find him eventually.”

  “Eventually?” Mistress Bai scoffed, stepping forward. She looked torn, her expression a mixture of frustration and weary resignation, but her voice was firm. “Eventually could be months. Years. How many more villages will he ‘harvest’ in that time? How many more lives will be twisted or extinguished? The idiot is – in this one instance – right,” she conceded, nodding towards Li Xuan, though the agreement clearly pained her. “Gao Leng is a rabid dog. Leaving him loose while you chase your own concerns is not just irresponsible; it is dangerous. He is a threat that must be dealt with immediately and decisively. There is a reason the sects moved in force at the mere mention of a demonic cultivator, though they are now distracted by what they believe may be a greater threat.”

  She grimaced. “There’s even a not-insignificant chance they believe the demonic cultivator is responsible for the events in Qinghe. How that would affect their response, I have no idea.”

  The clearing fell quiet again, the only sound the soft hiss of snow settling from the branches above. Jiang stared into the dim light of Zhang’s fireball, jaw tight. He wanted to argue, to tell them they were wrong, that it wasn’t his problem anymore. But every reason he could summon felt thin and brittle against the weight of their stares.

  He thought of Lin, lying bruised and broken in Old Nan’s house, all because she was caught up in cultivator business. How many others were there like her, people taken by someone like Gao Leng? How many didn’t have hope of rescue at all?

  In the end, it was that memory that decided it. In addition, his family’s situation wasn’t likely to change in the next few months anyway. In a strange way, their situation might actually be safer than his own, if less pleasant.

  He let out a slow breath, the air fogging in front of him. “Fine,” he said at last, the word tasting like ash. “We find Gao Leng first. But once he’s dead, I’m done. I’m going to Biragawa, no matter what’s happening here.”

  Li Xuan nodded once. “Agreed.”

  With the matter settled, a tense silence fell over the clearing. The argument was over; now came the much harder part.

  “So how do we find him?” Jiang asked, breaking the quiet. “We have no leads, unless someone found something in the Broker’s office and didn’t share it with the group?”

  “We know he works with bandits,” Zhang offered. “We know he was tied to the Dead River Gang. It stands to reason he has connections to others.”

  Mistress Bai snorted. “There are dozens of bandit crews in the outer territories. Which is why we were going to leave that task to the other sects – they could mobilise dozens of disciples easily. Scouring every forest and mountain pass by ourselves would take years.”

  “We don’t have years,” Li Xuan stated flatly. “We have weeks, at most, before the other Sects conclude their investigation in Qinghe and start looking for loose ends. Like us.” He paced the small clearing, his boots crunching in the snow. “So, we use the brute-force method. We start with the largest bandit groups and work our way down. We hit them, we hit them hard, and we leave one or two alive to answer questions. It’s messy, but it’s fast.”

  Jiang could agree with the method – if only because he absolutely wasn’t willing to wait for years before heading to Biragawa.

  “There is another complication,” Zhang said thoughtfully, seeming calmer now that they had a more solid plan. “If we are attempting to stay discreet to avoid anyone asking us… uncomfortable questions, and thus potentially revealing our parts in the recent events,” he gestured vaguely back towards the city, “then we shall have to change our robes. We cannot move through the province dressed as disciples of the Azure Sky Sect.”

  Li Xuan grimaced, but nodded. “We shall have to pretend to be wandering cultivators, then. A common enough sight in the outer territories. A small group, seeking fortune or adventure. With luck, we’ll be able to track down Gao Leng and slip out of the province without any of the sects noticing. We can lay low in Biragawa for a time if needed, then return to normal.”

  Jiang resisted the urge to groan.

  Like things were ever going to go that smoothly.