In the sky above the courtyard, where the last ship belonging to his Drifting Stream Sect landed, the Fifth Elder looked down.

  “They are back earlier than I expected.”

  He turned, pushing the last remnants of his brown hair aside to get a clear view of the speaker. There was only one other person up here with him, but her voice was still as soft as when she was just a girl. It caught him by surprise each time. His little niece—she was the Second Elder now, superior to him.

  The reminder of time’s passage made him pull on his long beard, already gray, the only thing unchanged, the walking stick in his hand.

  He smiled, though it was hidden beneath his facial hair. “Seventh Brother was probably in a rush to get back. He seems quite angry, that boy, the Mo boy, there seems to be the source of it.”

  The Fifth Elder lifted his walking stick to point. “I haven’t seen Seventh Brother this flustered since Yinjing created a servants’ hall that mines the spirit stones.”

  His niece flung a hand from her hip as if waving away smoke. The gesture made the Fifth Elder sniff himself; he hadn’t touched his pipe in a while, but thinking of it, it would be nice to reminisce, even if the leaf he had to puff to reach that dream state was corrosive on his mind.

  “Is that surprising?” The Fifth Elder spun his head around to the Second Elder. Her words echoed in the barrier keeping rain and eyes off them. “He strutted around before he passed the disciple trial. Once Yinjing took him under his wing, he only got worse, and then he emboldened that entire group around him.” Done, her arms crossed as she looked down, her head turned to something else.

  The Fifth Elder sighed. He could almost imagine her face, unable to see it, obscured by that weird stone she wore as a crown on her forehead. “He has the backing of Elder, and to be fair, his talent with short blades is decent—lack of aptitude can be made up for with resources, which he has access to.”

  He stopped for a moment, caught his breath. It was an old habit from when his cultivation was smaller than the disciples scattered below him. With a tap of his staff on the ground, he continued. “That temperament…”

  The Fifth Elder could have said more, but he didn’t need to, and it was obvious his niece had a few things to say. Her thin fingers flicked the air before they rested on her hip.

  “An attack dog raised as a waste can not become a wolf, no matter how many pills he gets fed to him.” The Second Elder spat, but Old Fifth knew she wasn’t talking about the boy down there, Mo Bangcai.

  She crossed her arms, paused for just a breath, then continued. “But a wolf can be born a waste and still rise to his required station.”

  Fifth walked over to her side the moment she crossed her arms. He was going to half-agree with her, but was surprised she had more to say. More shocked that her head was angled at a lone disciple wandering an old path in the Sect.

  He looked out at a child. The only child that was in the view of the Second was no older than fifteen, his robes torn to shreds.

  Fifth didn’t take his eyes off the child. The boy ran around the abandoned back of the Sect, but he had to side-eye his niece—he thought for just a moment, she was still more of a child than he thought.

  “Is this boy part of our Sect? I don’t think I have seen him before. You favor him highly?” He had to ask.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The Second Elder uncrossed her arms, and one hand floated up to her mouth behind the light around her face. She laughed, a bell-like chirp. “Uncle, you have seen him before. It took me a moment to realize, just wait a moment longer, the rain will take away such a flimsy disguise.”

  Flimsy disguise, how could it be flimsy if it fools both you and me? He didn’t voice the question. She wasn’t pleasant when her mood was soured by silly questions that could, in her mind, be considered rhetorical.

  His attention stays split. One eye on the disciple heading up to that old abandoned servants’ courtyard.

  The other eye stayed with the rest of the group. Old Seventh, or, really, not old, quite a bit younger than the Fifth Elder, was scowling as he floated over the gangplank, disciples around him in a rush to do something. Sleep, heal, get their spirit stones, and treasures in return for resources from the Mid-Summer cave.

  By the time most of the disciples had scattered, and Seventh floated down to the ground, taking the ship into his Space Ring, the young disciple Hao, if he remembered correctly, started to shake the dirt off himself.

  Strange streams of brown mud ran from his hair. Once enough had gone away, the Fifth Elder exclaimed. “That, the Islander boy from summer’s start?”

  Second Elder, now he had to think of her as that. A scheme popped into his mind, her scheme, as clear as day, strengthened as he sent Divine Sense down to probe him. The boy glanced in his direction.

  She let the hand that hovered near her face fall. “Yes, you showed him favor too, don’t you remember? A fifth peak badge…”

  The Fifth Elder gulped. He hardly remembered who he handed out his badges to. Some he handed out to someone if they made him laugh, or showed decent quality. If he didn’t give the boy one before, he would know, “If I remember right, he has the worst aptitude the Sect has seen in a while, but he is sitting at a barely stable Eighth Rank…” He gulped, his fingers tapping on his walking stick as he did the math.

  “… and in under a whole year’s passing.” That pace of cultivation was not unheard of, but from a random half-blood boy with no free resources, it was certainly something he would have to turn his attention to.

  He sent his Divine Sense a little deeper. The Fifth Elder felt Hao’s meridians—instantly, he was reminded of tracing his hand across cracks on porcelain. The boy wasn’t hopeless. Those imperfections made his rapid cultivation more believable.

  There were more, stranger things he found. Flowing through the boy's flesh and blood, pure World Energy got grasped by ice-cold Yin Qi. Deeper inside the opposite: an unmistakable heat, not hot enough to burn the Fifth Elder's Divine Sense, but enough heat to leave him surprised. His nascent Vital Core burned like the sun.

  It's not natural—not a physique or bloodline. Yin Qi, that could be a heart demon, those broken meridians too, forceful cultivation, I don’t know how he is walking. But that doesn’t explain the Yang…

  The Second Elder, straight back, interrupted his thought, “That is promising, yes. But all of that is secondary to the fact that he rang the Bone-Shaking Bell—that alone is enough to put pressure on Eldest Brother, Yinjing.”

  She turned to him, and he felt like an old fifth standing in front of another Elder, not an uncle before his niece. He thought he saw those clear, ocean-blue eyes through the light around her face.

  “Even if, as Elder, First, Second, you ignore the rules, the disciples and servants will eventually chatter about the story if they like it well enough—A servant who completed the Trial that determines the future of the Sect. The First Elder, Yinjing, has been suppressing all of it while building up his new disciple down there, but they tripped up.”

  The Fifth Felt like he should take a step back from the Second. Spiritual Energy swirled around her, her voice heated. He went forward instead and placed his free hand on his niece’s shoulder, which calmed her well enough.

  “I see,” he said. “Now, we just have to make the truth seem more believable. Be careful, Yinjing will have some new plan in his head.”

  She looked away from him, down at the courtyard. “It’s during his next plan, we just have to take advantage of it, make everyone see what is true, and what is false.”

  The Fifth laughed. “It would be nice to see Yinjing’s sunken face. No matter what, he can’t take full control of the Sect. If nothing else, if Sect Master Meng were around when the bell was rung, all this would be solved.”