The air rumbled with the blows of the gigantic stone cicada, and, far away up the peak, the land trembled. Rocks and scree slid loose, tumbling down through the forest and slowing as they shattered trees, but the cicadas continued to fight, and the rocks continued to fall.

  White light oozed from the entrance to the Howling Blossom Valley, and it dragged my attention like a moth to a flame.

  “We can’t let a landslide cover the entrance,” I said. “We have to stop the cicadas from fighting.”

  Song Shuai grinned as I shared my thoughts with the expedition.

  “Isn’t this exciting?” he said.

  “Why did you do this?”

  He shrugged, and thunder clapped as he avoided Chen Ai’s punch.

  “There’s no time,” I said with a frown. “Ran clan, take the closest cicada. Shen, take the furthest. All the non-combatant attendants must get back.”

  The nine attendants ran back down the path, each of them loaded down with packs of travel provisions, tents, refreshments, fans, and changes of clothes. Looking at the lot of them, one would think we were embarking on a month-long journey across a vast plain.

  While the Clan members assessed their targets, Song Shuia tapped me on the shoulder.

  “What should I do?”

  “Go find a cliff and jump off it.”

  He looked around.

  “I can’t find any cliffs.”

  I ignored him as the expedition split off to tackle the battling cicada. This was a good opportunity for me to see their capabilities.

  Each of the cicadas was larger than a house with thick stone-plated armor. My research indicated that they were rarely any stronger than Qi Condensing Realm, but there is a different type of strength that comes from sheer size and mass. Their footsteps shook the ground, and my ribs thrummed every time they impacted. Proboscises swung like glinting lances in the morning air, and, all the while, the threat of the landscape loomed as dust and pebbles bounced their way down the slope towards us.

  Chen Ai, my disciple, and I let the clans take the lead. The Ran members raced towards the cicada we’d been following. Ran Cong produced several small white pouches from his storage ring. Each bag suspended in the air before him, and fine powders flowed and combined into a sparkling resin. Ran Yaliu swiped her blades in the resin pouch as the Ran attendant produced a pipa and plucked away at a tune. With each note, the air grew frenzied, and the Ran clan moved faster as the attendant poured her qi into the song.

  Her eyes lit up quite beautifully as she played, and her control was so great that none of the effects spread to the Shen Clan. Ran Yaliu moved with windswept grace, her steps taking her through the air as though she climbed the notes from the pipa toward the rearing cicada’s neck. With quick thrusts, her knives stabbed into the creature’s thick shell. Her strength was enough to pierce the rock, but the tiny daggers couldn’t do much more. Steam rose from the dagger’s blades as the resin reacted to the stone.

  She leaped away, flipping backwards in the air before landing softly beside Ran Cong.

  While the Ran were employing poison and preparation, the Shen Clan had already attacked their cicada with brute force. A shirtless Shen Botao extended his arms and summoned thin roots of stone to bind the cicada’s legs. Either he grew in power since his examination, drew inspiration from the environment, or both, but his vines were more barbed and stronger than Chen Ai led me to believe. While he pinned the cicada, Shen Tongtong drew back her bow.

  A fiery arrow rushed through the air, the flames laughing in the wind before striking the cicada’s eye. The creature thrashed against the roots, but the bindings remained firm. Arrow after arrow splashed against the cicada’s head, and the rocky plates glowed with heat. As soon as the heat transferred from red to white, the old swordsman attendant dashed forward. He thrust his jian through the molten stone and pierced the cicada’s skull. With a shudder and a thunderous boom, the creature fell to the ground.

  Surprisingly, the jian remained intact, proving that it must be a three-star jian or higher. The weapon’s quality, combined with the way the swordsman drifted in and out of my attention, made me aware that he must be more than a regular attendant. The same went for the musician sent by the Ran. They were obviously skilled, but that just made me wonder why they weren’t a part of the initial expedition candidates.

  I’d hoped to leave politics and scheming behind in Mountain Root City.

  Not to be outdone by the hated Shen, the Ran attendant increased the rate of her song, and the steam rising from the daggers intensified. Thick rivers of grey clouds billowed from the daggers as the blades sank deeper into the stone. The Ran’s cicada let out a screech like a dying kettle, and it charged away through the forest, the immense strength in its limbs giving greater and greater speed as it screeched and rumbled in pain. The distant sounds prevented a true silence from breaking, but the distant threat of a landslide faded.

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  “How like the Ran,” said Shen Tongtong with a sneer. “Scaring a spirit beast away because they’re too soft to kill.”

  “A soft stone has many uses,” Ran Cong replied softly. “Unlike the Shen.”

  “Well said, young master,” said the Ran attendant. “Truly, the Shen are only good for eating the droppings straight from a dog’s ass”.

  “You dare?” shouted Shen Tongtong as she stepped forward. “Shen Botao, teach this Ran welp some manners!”

  Shen Botao wore an expression of resignation as he stepped forward, but he stopped at a polite cough from the elder swordsman. Shen Tongtong glanced at him, and her temper quickly faded to admonishment.

  An awkward silence bloomed. Shen Tongtong choked wordlessly rather than apologize, while the Ran watched with glee as they waited for the conflict to escalate.

  In the distance, the servants were slowly approaching, and no doubt their presence would only stoke the pride of the nobles.

  I sighed to myself. I had a plan for moments like this, but it wasn’t one I’d wanted to use. Passing Cabbagy to Chen Ai, I stepped forward and addressed the expedition.

  “Enough,” I said. “There is no time for this behavior. We must work as a single group for the sake of all our lives.”

  I made an effort to speak to the clan members as though they were rational adults, rather than children, but they barely paid me any attention. This made sense, to an extent. They’d interacted with Chen Ai and my disciple and understood their relative strength, but the only one here who’d seen my abilities was Song Shuia.

  And I had no idea what could make him take anything seriously.

  I took a cue from his book and grinned at everyone present.

  “During this expedition, I wanted you to act as though none of you had a clan name. If you ignore me, I shall take your clan name from you.”

  This last statement drew their attention, and they looked at me as though I were insane. Honestly, it was kind of an interesting feeling.

  “None of you know what I’m capable of,” I said quietly. “If you think I cannot reach into your soul and snatch up your name, then I am happy to give a demonstration. Shen Tontong, look into my eyes.”

  ###

  Shen Tongtong, the greatest archer in the Mountain Root City’s youngest generation, glanced up inadvertently when the expedition leader addressed her. It was an involuntary response that came from her life of servitude as a member of the Shen Clan’s outer house.

  She’d listened to his speech with the same outraged expression as the others, and she was just about to shout her two favorite words: ‘you dare’.

  But before she could speak, she met his eyes.

  They were a drab brown, the kind of puddle you see a hundred times on every rainy day, but they burned. The flames only grew, and he grew with them until he blotted out the sky, and she cowered, staring up at this colossal man with such profound fear that she couldn’t even breathe.

  He leaned down from the sky and pressed his flaming gaze into hers, and she expected to burn, but he only filled her with cold. The expedition leader stood in the doorway to her mind, and a wintry draft blew in behind him.

  He stepped back, the flames snuffed out, and she felt the door to her mind slam shut, but she knew…

  She knew!

  The door hadn’t closed properly. That now there was a crack where he might peek in at any time and see what was going on inside, and that if he so wanted, that door might be yanked open again, and he could stroll in and take whatever he wanted.

  The name she’d fought so hard to wear proudly… could be snatched away in an instant.

  She’d thought that only the Shen Patriarch possessed such a power, and as she gazed at the expedition leader, she felt the door to her mind rattling in the wind.

  ###

  I retracted Ghost Fang’s flaming eyes ability. He never told me what it was called, but after communing with my weaponized self, I found a growing intuition linking my willpower to my eyes in the same way I felt my blood, bones, or flesh. My mental reserves dipped dramatically after exerting a bit of pressure on Shen Tongtong’s brain, but blood control prevented my body from revealing any weaknesses.

  Shen Tongtong staggered, and Shen Butao caught her from falling.

  His eyes widened with surprise.

  “She’s cold,” he said with a quaver in his voice.

  “What did you do to me?” she asked.

  “You know what I did.”

  She shook her head before falling to her knees and pressing her forehead to the ground.

  “I shall honorably serve the expedition leader!”

  Everyone stared, and not even the Ran dared say anything. They could all feel her genuine display.

  My disciple stepped forward.

  “That shall teach you all to second-guess my master,” he said haughtily. “You should all kowtow before him.”

  Shockingly, they all did. Only the older Shen swordsman resisted, who knelt slowly as though his knees were stiff, though the fluidity of his earlier movements proved that to be a lie.

  “What exactly did you do?” he asked.

  I turned to him.

  “How badly do you want to know my secrets?”

  He stiffened and kowtowed along with the rest of them. The servants arrived, and though they were clearly confused, they knew how to read a room better than anyone else present, and so they quickly set down their packs and kowtowed in rows behind their respective masters.

  I gazed at the group of people kowtowing.

  Doesn’t this feel good?

  I wasn’t sure which past self asked that question. There were the influences of too many, as though all my past were an amalgamation speaking with a single voice.

  The only people not kowtowing were Chen Ai and Song Shuai.

  You could make them…

  I ignored the voice.

  “Rise,” I said. “Prepare to move out…”

  The faint whistling that had been the background the entire time had finally stopped. We all stood and looked around until my disciple shouted.

  “Over there!”

  We all gazed up the slope, where the Ran cicada lay in a recently formed clearing. The house-sized body was barely visible, but an immense cloud of steam rose into the sky. A shadow moved in the thick steam.

  “It moulted to escape the poison,” Ran Cong muttered to himself.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him.

  My answer came as a gigantic mature cicada crawled out of the steam. As large as a ship, with a dark carapce that gleamed like polished metal. Long wings trailed behind like damp sails, twitching, but not yet ready to fly.

  I’d never seen something so large before.

  “Foundation Establishment,” Chen Ai said, her grip tightening on her club.

  “Don’t worry,” Ran Cong said. “We’re fine so long as it’s not a male.”

  A thunderous clicking resounded from the creature. Air trembled, and the party clapped their hands over their ears, crying out in pain. Willpower stopped my ears from bleeding, but my eyes widened involuntarily.

  The cicada’s mating call had caused the landslide we’d tried to avert.