They found Li Xuan and Mistress Bai waiting outside the tavern.

  Jiang had half expected them to be inside, enjoying a hot meal and a drink, but neither looked remotely relaxed. Li Xuan stood by the doorway, arms folded, his expression unreadable. Mistress Bai was speaking quietly to him, her tone sharp enough that even without hearing the words, Jiang could tell it wasn’t a pleasant conversation.

  Zhang inclined his head politely. “Senior Brother. Mistress Bai.”

  Li Xuan turned. “Good. You’re back. We’re leaving.”

  Jiang blinked. “Already? We just got here.”

  He hadn’t expected them to stay long, but considering how Mistress Bai clearly didn’t enjoy camping, he’d thought they might at least stay the night. If nothing else, it was already getting dark, and unless the plan was to travel through the night, they wouldn’t get far before having to find a camping spot anyway.

  Li Xuan’s tone brooked no argument. “We’ve already learned what we needed. The longer we stay, the more likely someone is to notice who we are.”

  Mistress Bai gave a faint, humourless smile. “And given the current rumours, that would be… unfortunate.”

  That did not sound encouraging.

  They followed the pair out of town in silence, keeping to the side streets until the last of the lantern light was behind them. Only once the road opened into dark, open countryside did Jiang finally speak.

  “So,” he said, “what exactly was so concerning?”

  Li Xuan didn’t answer immediately. When he did, his voice was steady, but quieter than usual. “It seems the rumours have outpaced us. Suffice to say that the woman… Old Nan’s battle wasn’t contained to just a single elder.”

  “How bad?”

  Mistress Bai’s tone was dry, clipped. “Four elders are dead. A fifth gravely injured so badly that she hasn’t woken.”

  Zhang let out a shaky breath. “Four… Heavens have mercy.”

  “Four elders,” Jiang repeated slowly. “That’s… that’s going to cause problems, isn’t it?”

  “‘Problems’ is one way to describe it,” Li Xuan said. “The sects are calling it an act of war. They’ve mobilised their disciples and sent patrols through the surrounding regions. Every cultivator within two hundred li is under scrutiny – sect disciples especially. Nobody is pointing fingers quite yet, but Nascent Soul cultivators don’t just pop up out of nowhere, but at the same time, none of the sects in the area have any in their ranks. They aren’t sure if this is some political move from a sect in the inner provinces. It has everyone on edge.”

  He paused, then added, his voice flat, “They believe the attacker also killed Mistress Bai and myself. We are officially listed among the missing, presumed dead.”

  “In fairness, better to be considered missing rather than culpable,” Mistress Bai chimed in. “Though it’s a little insulting to be considered nothing more than collateral damage when the mysterious Nascent Soul cultivator destroyed half the city. Tragic, really.”

  Her words were laced with mockery, but Jiang caught the tension beneath them. She might have been pretending not to care, but the loss of her influence in Qinghe had clearly cut deep.

  “Will that cause any problems with the Azure Sky Sect?” he asked curiously.

  Li Xuan raised an eyebrow. “What, being presumed dead? Not really. The elders will have questions, of course, but explaining the situation should be enough to put them to rest. It’s not like we did anything wrong – and if pressed by the other sects, they can just say that I was assigned a mission of utmost importance, and they refuse to answer any more questions. As for Mistress Bai, I’m not entirely sure.”

  Mistress Bai sighed. “I… won’t be able to return to Qinghe.” The admittance seemed to pain her. “Unlike you, I don’t have the influence of a sect to stop people from demanding answers, and any answers I provide are unlikely to be satisfying. No matter the result, my influence in the city will be permanently marred.”

  Jiang wasn’t entirely unsympathetic, but at the same time, he wasn’t very sympathetic either. This whole mess might have happened because of his status as a Pact-bearer, but that didn’t mean it was actually his fault. He’d taken every step to avoid attracting attention to himself, and sometimes things just didn’t work out. Besides, it wasn’t like Mistress Bai was now helpless or anything – she doubtlessly had more than enough money to live a comfortable life, and even if she didn’t, she was powerful enough to set herself up anywhere she wished.

  He wasn’t dumb enough to express his thoughts, though. She seemed more than a little uptight about the whole thing.

  “The important thing,” Li Xuan continued after a moment, “is that if anyone recognises us, they will have questions we cannot afford to answer. From now on, discretion is paramount. We avoid towns, we avoid roads, we avoid everyone.”

  “So we stay invisible,” Jiang said. “Got it.”

  “Exactly,” Li Xuan nodded. “The plan remains the same: distance and discretion. The further we are from Qinghe, the safer we’ll be.”

  “And what about Gao Leng?” Jiang asked pointedly. “I’m not going to just lie low for the next few months, hoping that we either stumble across him or the sects stop looking for us.”

  “Relax,” Li Xuan held up a hand placatingly. “I didn’t say we were giving up. The tavern gossip wasn’t entirely useless — in fact, it might’ve given us the first real lead we’ve had since Qinghe. Apparently, there’s been talk of several bandit groups joining forces deeper in the province. A rather large gathering, by the sound of it. They’re calling it a ‘settlement,’ though that’s putting it kindly.”

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  Jiang frowned. “A bandit town? That’s a thing? And I thought most bandits were operating around Qinghe.”

  “Most slavers were operating near Qinghe,” Mistress Bai corrected. “Mostly because it’s the closest port to the border of the province, and thus easier to transport their… product. Bandits can be found almost anywhere, and if they manage to last long enough, sometimes they build walls, gather merchants willing to look the other way, and declare themselves a town. The magistrate calls them outlaws, the locals call them ‘temporary,’ and everyone waits to see who wins. It’s rare, but it happens occasionally.”

  “How occasionally?” Jiang asked.

  Mistress Bai paused for a moment in thought. “Every hundred years or so, perhaps?”

  Jiang relaxed a little. Only a cultivator would consider something that only happened every hundred years to be ‘occasionally’. At least it meant there weren’t dozens of ex-bandit strongholds lying around everywhere.

  “Sounds like something the magistrate should deal with,” Zhang said. “Raise an army, send in soldiers—”

  Bai gave a short, mirthless laugh. “An army? The nearest magistrate barely has a hundred men under his command, half of them drunkards. You’ve been too long behind sect walls, Zhang. Out here, the Empire’s laws are more like… suggestions. There are too many roads, too many forests, too many mountains. You could lose a regiment in half the valleys in this province and no one would ever find them.”

  Zhang looked taken aback, but Li Xuan nodded in quiet agreement. “The sects have the power to handle such problems, but we mostly concern ourselves with matters of cultivation alone. Spirit beast tides, rogue cultivators, disputes over resource nodes. We do not involve ourselves in the squabbles of mortals unless the scale becomes… problematic.”

  “That sounds like an excuse,” Jiang scoffed bitterly. The idea that the Azure Sky Sect could have prevented what happened to his village, but didn’t, because it was a ‘mortal problem’ was infuriating.

  “It’s not perfect,” Li Xuan admitted. “But as hard as it is to grasp, it is better than the alternative.”

  “The alternative being what, safety for us ‘mere’ mortals?” Jiang snapped

  “The alternative being petty warlords,” Li Xuan countered calmly. “Each and every cultivator has the power to subdue any number of mortals. And don’t forget, you aren’t a mortal any more, Jiang. That’s something you will need to accept. You’ve been a cultivator for, what, six months now? A little less, even? And how many mortals would it take to fight you, as you are now? How much longer until you could declare yourself ruler of a village or town, and have no one contest you?”

  Jiang scowled, but didn’t answer. How could he, when he had already noticed how cultivation was affecting him, how he was quicker to use violence as a solution.

  “Our system is not perfect, and no one is claiming that it is,” Li Xuan continued softly, seeing that his point was sinking in. “But if the sects started to involve themselves in mortal matters, no matter how benignly, how long would it be until some of the disciples started demanding recompense from the towns and villages under their protection? It wouldn’t even be unfair – should they not see a reward for their work? And then how long until they started leaning on their status, ruling in all but name? As it is, many cultivators already demand special treatment from mortals, throwing around their power like a child throwing a tantrum if mortals don’t bow and scrape quickly enough.”

  He sighed. “And so, the sects arrived at one inescapable conclusion. We cultivators seek to leave this world behind, to challenge the Heavens and ascend. As such, we should distance ourselves from it as much as possible – even when that means letting the mortals deal with their own problems. Even when it means they can’t.”

  The atmosphere that followed was heavy and uncomfortable. The kind of silence that stretched too long, where words felt like they might only make things worse. Jiang didn’t look at Li Xuan, but he could feel the man’s calm certainty like a weight pressing down on him. He wanted to argue, to call it hypocrisy, to point out that letting mortals suffer in the name of avoiding corruption didn’t sound much better than ruling over them – but the words stuck. Because the truth was, Li Xuan wasn’t wrong.

  He’d seen it himself, in small ways. That creeping sense of distance since his Qi had first started circulating properly. The way he looked at people now – their fragility, the smallness of their struggles – it all felt… different. He didn’t like that, but not liking something didn’t make it go away.

  For a while, the only sounds were the crunch of boots on the road and the sigh of wind through the grass. Finally, Zhang cleared his throat softly, clearly uncomfortable with the lingering tension. “Setting aside the moral philosophy,” he said, his voice careful, “I’m still curious about this bandit settlement. You said they build towns? How does something like that even happen?”

  Mistress Bai’s expression softened slightly, the edge in her tone replaced by something almost reflective. “It’s rarely as simple as it sounds,” she said. “Most bandits aren’t born criminals. They’re farmers, hunters, soldiers – people pushed too far. A failed harvest, a sick child, taxes they can’t pay. You’d be surprised how quickly desperation turns to violence when the alternative is watching your family starve.”

  Jiang frowned. “So they just… decide to become bandits?”

  Bai gave a small shrug. “Decide is a generous term. It’s usually more like being swept along by circumstance. One man steals to survive. His neighbour joins him, because if the officials hang one thief, they might as well hang two. Soon it’s a group, then a gang, then an army. By the time they’ve realised what they’ve become, they’ve already burned bridges they can’t rebuild. No village will take them back, no magistrate will pardon them. Once a bandit, always a bandit.”

  “That doesn’t excuse what they do,” Zhang said firmly.

  “Of course it doesn’t,” Bai replied. “They still rob, kill, and destroy lives. But you asked how such settlements form, and that’s how. Many of them don’t want to live in the wilds forever. They want safety, routine – a place to grow food, get married, raise a family and not worry that the next patrol will find their camp. So, when enough of them gather and they have the strength to defend themselves, they try to build something permanent.”

  Li Xuan nodded slightly. “A twisted reflection of civilisation, perhaps. But understandable in its own way.”

  “And if they succeed?” Jiang asked.

  “Then,” Bai said, “they build walls, start trading, and pretend they were never bandits at all. Sometimes it works. After a few years, people forget – or choose to. Bandits become guards, raiders become merchants. As long as the taxes flow and no one stirs up trouble, the Empire looks the other way.”

  Zhang exhaled slowly, as though trying to reconcile the idea. “So they go from criminals to citizens simply by surviving long enough?”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Bai said. “But most don’t last. Either the magistrate raises enough men to crush them, or rival groups destroy them before they can grow. The few that endure tend to learn restraint – violence draws attention, and attention kills.”

  Jiang stayed quiet for a while, staring down the dark road ahead. It made sense, in a bitter kind of way.

  Still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to pity them.

  “So that’s where we’re going,” he said finally. “A town full of desperate killers trying to pretend they’re something else.”

  “Well, not quite,” Li Xuan said. “After all, Gao Leng might have gotten his hands on them, so we might find a town full of twisted abominations created by unorthodox means, trying to kill us.”

  “…Right,” Jiang said after a long pause. “Thanks for the reminder.”