Hao’s fingers twitched as he took the last step that brought him into the clearing where the camp stretched. It wasn’t the cold that got to him. What he was about to do finally set in, a different cold perhaps, a bloody and grim cold.

  He was silent on the frosty dew. Braided orange grass snapped silently as he glided across the forest floor, littered with clipped branches and fallen leaves.

  Hao stood above the fire pit. His flat white shoes lightly crushed coal and embers, silver buttons and brass cups dancing with reflection in the moonlight. Another light, too, the purple light of amethysts. A handful of them were scattered around the shoddy fire pit’s edge. Dim yet enticing. The scratches on their surface were from the damage to his eyes, not on the stones themselves.

  Hao leaned forward and took one. The coals underfoot quietly cracked, suppressed by the sound of grumbling voices in the tents and their pristine, silky covers rippling in the icy wind.

  The stones were common, yet famed. The constant reminder he gave himself of them made them feel as important as life itself. All that wasted thought teetered towards vindication as he held it. The ones around him were weak, from what he could tell. The book in the library he read told of stones that glittered like gemstones, and glowed purple and gold like a field of flowers at noon. These had only hints of color.

  Visually, the stone in his hand, or the ones at his feet, were not what he expected. They were still beautiful. A glow that bordered near bright added color to the forest ground. Yellow-white danced in angular bends, dodging around a dark-purple-blue that swirled freely in circles.

  The sensation, however, was a charged shock that made his bones ring and heart pound. World Energy swam inside his body as he drank the energy inside the stone. The stone freely let it happen.

  As the amethyst lost its luster, Yin-Yang flavored energy ran a course through his Qi channels. Nothing like the pillars outside the Trial. Not even close to the energy that flowed through the world during summer’s ebbs and tides. Still, the trickle from the small stone was refreshing. Of course, they could not mix. Just like lightning, many times before, they pushed away from each other, but they were more tame. It quickly settled the energy in his body. Immediately, it melted into his forming vital core and his flesh.

  Hao took up the rest of the stones and stored them; he didn’t want the Drinking-Stone to take the energy inside of them until he investigated them further. He placed them inside a holding bag. Then put the holding bag inside the Spirit-Holding bag.

  Hao stood there in the center for a while longer. A buzz filled his head as he stood on the fire where the group met every night; it felt like a taunt. He scanned the camp one last time and got familiar with the terrain. He knew every hill and ditch, every branch and stone before he looked at the tents and storage bags.

  About to step forward, he stopped himself. It was addictive, that buzz that bounded with the rhythm of his heart, and an impulse to do something rushed through him. If it were as simple as saying something, he might not have been able to control himself. He always had a problem with keeping his mouth shut; there was a reason the Second Elder gave him a few slaps back when he was still new to the Drifting Stream Sect’s Mountain.

  Still, curiosity flared, and it was hard to calm. It made his mouth dry; the half-dozen thoughts of mischief, only one harmless one he could cause. How would that old man react if he came out of the tent to keep watch, and I was standing here? Hao imagined the man screeching and falling back on the dew and frost. Or would he draw a sword and approach? Call for help? If they fought me like that, it would be less cowardly… and I would probably die, the thought was like a fly that floated near his ear.

  Hao shook his head. An honorable fight, an alternative to what he was about to do, wouldn’t get him the result he wanted. He had to capitalize on the tension between factions and start a grand conflict—a small war between two groups. The white cloak, another man’s skin, he had on was a poor fit. There was no better way to get Hongyu and Bangcai in the same place.

  At the same time, he could keep himself alive. For his comfort, he could protect those peaceful, unintrusive people in the Secret Realm. He had no desire for people like that girl Fa, or even random others from different factions, to get involved. Yao had no place in this fight. And Lang should stay hidden where he was tending to his wife, if he was still alive.

  Hao’s fingers stopped twitching. If you spare the wolf, the sheep are sacrificed. The buzz in his head went calm as his heart. He didn’t like the feeling; he felt like a still fish on a shore, waiting for something to start his heart beating again.

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  It took only a second to steady his breath. Hao let another curiosity pull him around the camps, stacked-up storage. A small rummage as quietly as possible through the large, crate-like bags of the mortal make, the first one to catch his eye.

  The first backpack he opened held two dozen small surprises. But the first thing to catch Hao was the smell: alcohol, blood, and moldy bread—rotten meat, too, perhaps. It was full of holding-bags. Hao felt the leather covers of the magic tools, and a few morbid questions popped to mind. Did you bring some of these, or are these all from people killed and robbed?

  The Spirit-Holding bag Hao got from the Second Elder could do a few things normal bags couldn’t. The least exciting, it could house other spatial treasures. Normal holding bags, other spatial treasures. Before, it was just speculation, but Hao had enough holding bags himself now to test out the conventional wisdom and the words of Dong Lingli.

  Hao didn’t know why his Spirit-Holding bag was different, and had no interest in questioning something that made his life easier.

  He used the part of him that was lashed back in the Peach-Takers trail, his soul, as Yao explained, if his interpretation was correct. It was tangible enough. That soul, like a hand and eyes, rapidly passed through the holding bags two at a time.

  The search was quick and unfruitful; the most significant things were plain spirit stones the size of pebbles. Rations, too luxurious for the longer-term stay in the Secret Realm, and alcohol of many varieties, written in the same script with unique styles. A few of the bags were clean. Clean in the sense that they didn’t have blood on their outside, or paintings of unrelated people. Those, Hao assumed, were taken with violent means.

  Hao didn’t bother taking much. He didn’t want to look at it for a moment longer; it bothered him less than it should have, but he wasn’t keen on the rotten food stolen from the dead. The good things are probably kept on the people. He lingered on the thought. His head went back and forth between the tent where those pourers slept and the injured rested.

  No interest or care was given to the pourers. He acknowledged his cold detachment from them; everyone here was a killer, even those who shed tears of pain after killing. What help he could give them would be a problem for himself. And whatever he could give them would not get them far if they could not get away on their own. At least they were tormented constantly. Not from what Hao saw.

  He went wide of the tent of prisoners. The sound of a tent further away, where the old man entered with Mo Bangcai, slowly went silent. It was quiet already. The only sound was the ripple of the blanket, clothing with a muffled warning, and canvas tent edges.

  Hao placed a white Spirit Stone in his mouth. The outside was lit by moonlight, but inside the shelter it was as dark as a summer midnight. He pushed a canvas flap aside. It was easy to step right in; no longer did he have to step softly, there was no frost to crack under his feet. The canvas covered the ground as it did the walls. The material was immaculate; a mortal Emperor would want his bed sheets made of it. Not a single wrinkle, smooth as warm lard, and quiet. Immortal silk, an indulgence that betrayed those who took advantage of its comfort.

  Hao opened his mouth. Light shined out from behind his teeth, the white stone brighter than the blue spirit stones and brighter than the amethyst he retrieved.

  The first man he found was right at the entrance. No snore, but his eyes were closed, his breathing steady, his chest bobbed with the whisper of air that passed through his thin lips. He knew the face in front of him nearly as well as he knew the moons. It matched one of many in the painting Grandpa He made of Hao towering above the masses. The scroll was in his head, never perfectly memorized.

  His hair was brown, not a single strand of gray. One single strong color throughout, bold against the white light of the spirit stone and pristine near-beige of canvas.

  Hao took the scroll out just to be sure. Not that he needed any more reason to kill someone who was a part of the Mo Bangcai group of wild animals.

  Time had taken its toll on the scroll. Although the meat didn’t rot inside the Spirit-Holding bag, time still passed; the paper yellowed, and the paints cracked over the months. Hao stood high on a cliff, his hair a plume of gold and black, his robe a tattered mess of shredded dark cloth. This is the only painting or drawing Grandpa He didn’t add a spear to Hao’s hand. He looked over the ocean, and the sun burned in the sky in the distance.

  The cracks started to form at the bottom of the parchment, down below the cliff. There, people crawl up on the beach and the jagged rocks. Trees grew on peaks, moss spread over rocks, and mushrooms and mold ate away at the grasses.

  Bandages were the only difference. The man in front of Hao was the spitting image of the man fourth to the right, among the dozens in the desperate crowd. Grandpa added everyone who went into the library, it seemed, or anyone who annoyed him in any way—That wouldn’t have taken much. But those who took offense to it needed no reason to kill him but their own annoyance, using the face of their Young Master on the painting as an excuse.

  Hao put the painting away and took the man’s holding bag, which was tied to his waist. With a slow breath out, he slid his hands to the mouth and nose of the man in front of him. He had never strangled a man before. If a few died of their wounds, all the better. We all die eventually. Life is a coin falling. Death is when it lands.