The sun had not yet climbed high and the cloud-vapor was still thin as the ship skimmed above the pine-waves, splitting the ridgeline in two.
Gu Chengming stood at the prow, the ship-driving formula long since second nature to him.
He remembered the first time he had gone to the Capital with Elder Little Yu. They had ridden one of the sect's older flying ships, and it had jolted along for three full days before the outline of the Capital came into view.
Back then he had sat in the cabin counting clouds, and the more he counted the more he felt how truly far apart everything in this world was — one city and another, the distance between them measured in days.
Now he lifted a fingertip and the hull rose a notch, and the sea of clouds parted like a paddy field opened by a plough, yielding a straight road to either side. If he cut the formula loose entirely, he could reach the Capital in a day and a half.
The thought struck him as quietly funny.
In his past life, home and school had been separated by most of a city. As a boy he had swayed along on the bus to class, and the trip had always felt endless. Years later, after he started working, he looked back at that same route — a quarter hour by car.
Near and far, it turned out, had never really been about the road.
No sooner had the thought risen than he eased the ship's speed back down. There was no need to reach the Capital today.
A cough came from behind him. Gu Chengming turned and met Zhou Qingmu's eyes.
Today she wore only plain ink-dark robes, with Night-Sever absent from her waist, and she carried a warmed teapot in both hands. Her whole bearing was far looser than it ever was inside the Night-Watch Bureau. "I was starting to wonder whether the ship had slowed. I thought something might have gone wrong with the formation, so I came to look."
Gu Chengming smiled. "If the ship goes too fast, you can't see anything below."
"Mm," Zhou Qingmu said, and asked nothing further. She carried the pot two steps toward the cabin, then stopped and turned back, the question coming out of nowhere. "I hear Little Gu likes to drink?"
Gu Chengming blinked. "…Where did the Director hear that?"
Zhou Qingmu didn't answer. The truth was that a couple of days ago she had been leafing idly through old memorials submitted by the Night-Watch Bureau and caught a marginal note: "A cultivator of the Wenjian Sect brings wine into his sword, and breaks formations while drunk." She had filed it away. High-tier cultivators in the Wenjian Sect were few, and a moment's thought had told her who it probably was.
"I still have a few jars of spirit wine at home, gifts from others. They've been sealed for some years now." She set the teapot down on the small table by the rail. "Next time you're back in the Capital, I'll bring them out and we'll drink them together."
Something stirred in Gu Chengming. He had been about to say that he wasn't much of a drinker, that the whole business of wine was mostly his cultivation technique's doing.
The words were on his lips when the corner of his eye caught the dialogue box floating in front of him.
[The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula gazes at you pitifully.]
He turned his head. Zhou Qingmu was watching him with no small amount of anticipation.
The polite refusal died in his throat.
"Then I'll thank the Director in advance."
The corner of Zhou Qingmu's mouth curved upward. She bent to refill her tea and, seemingly a little too pleased with herself, mistook Gu Chengming's cup for her own.
Watching his Director lift his cup and take small sips from it, Gu Chengming opened and shut his mouth, and in the end said nothing at all.
That afternoon the ship put in at a small town beyond the clouds.
The town was modest, its streets long and narrow, lined on both sides with wooden houses of grey tile and white plaster, hung with little pennants of every color. Right beside the dock where the flying ship moored ran a food street — pastry shops, taverns and noodle stalls in a row, steam and flower-scent stirred together in the wind.
Ren Wencai had told Gu Chengming to rest often along the way, so he suggested they set down here for a meal.
The three of them disembarked. The street wasn't crowded.
Gu Chengming found a noodle stall, ordered three bowls of plain noodles, and went to fetch the chopsticks.
When he turned back, both Zhou Qingmu and Luo Jinyao had vanished. He blinked, glanced toward the corner of the street, and caught the tail of a silhouette disappearing into a pastry shop at the mouth of the alley. A wooden board hung above its lintel reading "Agarwood Record," and a wave of sweet osmanthus scent drifted out on the wind.
Gu Chengming understood well enough. He didn't follow, only went back to the noodle stall to wait.
In the pastry shop at the alley mouth, Zhou Qingmu stood before the counter with a composed, upright expression, as though conducting an inspection.
The proprietress behind the counter, seeing a customer of such obvious rank and bearing, was just opening her mouth to greet her.
"Osmanthus cakes," Zhou Qingmu said. "The best you have. Fresh from the oven."
"The customer has a fine eye. Today's osmanthus cakes are—"
The proprietress hadn't finished when the door-curtain was lifted, lightly.
Luo Jinyao stood in the doorway in pale green fighting robes, a thread of sword intent still trailing unspent behind her. Their gazes met across the counter.
Zhou Qingmu said, "…Elder Luo has come to buy pastries as well?"
"Mm." Luo Jinyao inclined her head. "Something to eat on the road."
"What a coincidence. So have I."
"Mm."
The proprietress asked, cautiously, "…And what flavor would the two customers like?"
"Osmanthus," both said at once.
The proprietress produced an obliging smile. "Ah. Osmanthus cakes have been selling very well lately. Both of you have excellent taste."
Gu Chengming had been waiting at the noodle stall for a quarter hour when his two elders returned, one after the other.
Zhou Qingmu carried an oilpaper parcel. Luo Jinyao carried an oilpaper parcel. The two were near identical in size, and the cipher-seal of "Agarwood Record" stamped on each wrapper was exactly the same.
Neither of them said a word to the other… At this point, neither could bring herself to say the words these pastries were bought for Little Gu.
Feeling out the peculiar atmosphere between the two of them, Gu Chengming's face went strange.
—What exactly had happened here?
On the second day of the voyage the cloud layer began to thicken. Below the ship there were no more unbroken mountain ranges, only scattered patchworks of good farmland, the rice heads nearly ripe, spread far below like a carpet dusted with gold powder.
Gu Chengming sat cross-legged alone at the stern. His true essence still ran a little rough after his recent breakthrough, so this leg of the journey served nicely for settling it. Zhou Qingmu sat not far to his side, reading through a scroll of the Night-Watch Bureau's case files from the past month.
Halfway through she remembered something, set the scroll down, and turned. "Little Gu. When you first took up the sword, which move did you practice first?"
Gu Chengming opened his eyes. "The opening form of the Huiyuan Sword Formula."
"Ah." Zhou Qingmu nodded. She was quiet for a while, then said, "The year I entered, the first thing I practiced was the Mountain-Cleaving Form."
Gu Chengming waited a moment, and found there was apparently nothing more coming. The intent, presumably, had been to carry the conversation forward from there — but having thrown out the opening, she had no idea what to do with it, and could only dryly report her own first move in return.
Something odd flickered through him. He had assumed that someone in Director Zhou's position — high office, years of dealing with sects and government offices and powerful families of every stripe — would find small talk effortless.
Yet after two days in her company, everything about it felt slightly off.
She spoke little. Before she spoke, she arranged the wording in her head first, and only then delivered it, so that what came out sounded like a memorial being read aloud. When it was her turn to pick up a thread, she didn't know how, and simply fell silent. When she wanted to be warm, she drifted back toward the cadence of a superior addressing a subordinate.
What Gu Chengming didn't know, of course, was that where the officialdom's kind of "dealing with people" was concerned, Zhou Qingmu was genuinely deft. But dealing with someone this sincerely was the first time in her entire life — which was exactly why she came off so clumsy.
Come to think of it, perhaps thanks to these two days beside her on the flying ship, he had come to understand Director Zhou rather better.
Before this, most of what he knew of her had come through Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method, and he had always assumed her temperament would be much the same as Zhouli's. Only now did he notice the places where the two diverged.
Zhou Qingmu was, in fact, considerably more wooden than he had imagined — a bit dazed, honestly, and thoroughly awkward with people.
On the other side of things, ever since the day she had discovered Zhou Qingmu's lap-pillow, Luo Jinyao had begun paying attention to the details of how Zhou Qingmu behaved around Gu Chengming.
Perhaps it was that reminder of hers — that Zhou Qingmu should treat him the way one cares for a junior of one's own household — but these past few days Zhou Qingmu's little gestures had multiplied noticeably.
At meals she would quietly place food in Little Gu's bowl. When he sat in meditation, she would produce a soft cushion from who knew where and slide it under his knees.
At dusk the ship passed a stretch of cloud-sea with a fine view, and Zhou Qingmu called Gu Chengming out to see it. After a while she seemed to remember something, drew a small spirit fruit from her sleeve and held it out. "I bought it on the road."
Sitting in her own corner, Luo Jinyao thought: Director Zhou is laying it on far too thick.
And yet, obvious as the effort was, Little Gu seemed to take genuine pleasure in that clumsy kindness.
Luo Jinyao thought back over Little Gu's origins. Outer sect of the Wenjian Sect. No father, no mother. Three years without receiving a single sect allotment, and no one had ever asked after him.
Put that way, it wasn't strange at all. The word elder was probably something he had never been given.
Director Zhou might be all thumbs, but Little Gu appreciated it.
Then Luo Jinyao remembered that evening on the back mountain a few days earlier — how she had peeled snow spirit fruit for Little Gu and wiped the corner of his mouth, while Zhou Qingmu stood behind a tree not far off — and something unwilling rose in her.
She drew a white porcelain vial from her own sleeve, pills she had refined with her own hands in the Northern Territory. She had meant to wait until the Capital to give them to him.
After a moment's thought she stood and walked toward the prow. "Little Gu."
Gu Chengming turned. "Senior Sister Luo."
She stepped up to the rail, pressed the vial into his hand, and with the same motion tucked the hair the wind had blown loose at his temple back behind his ear.
Gu Chengming thanked her, thinking privately that Senior Sister Luo's maternal radiance seemed to be running at double speed today.
Out of the corner of her eye, Luo Jinyao caught Zhou Qingmu staring at the scene from a short distance away — envy in that gaze, and along with it a dawning look of so that's how it's done.
A distinctly unpromising premonition welled up in her.
The premonition was confirmed soon enough.
The next morning, the ship moored on a cloud-island in midair for a rest.
Gu Chengming had just come out of meditation when he saw Zhou Qingmu approaching at a measured pace, carrying a tray. On it lay a peeled spirit peach, the flesh cut into precise squares and stacked into a small tower. She said with a light laugh, "Spirit peaches. The Northern Territory's run astringent, the Wenjian Sect's run sweet. The Capital's are just right — sour and sweet in balance."
Gu Chengming thought that this speech sounded oddly familiar. Then Zhou Qingmu remembered something else, drew a handkerchief from her sleeve, and offered it over.
"Wipe your mouth."
"I haven't eaten yet, Director…"
Zhou Qingmu appeared to find this rather embarrassing. The handkerchief went back into the sleeve. Her ears reddened faintly.
She turned and walked off a few steps, stood silently in the corner of the cabin for a while, then took out that small notebook from inside her robes and added a line.
Gu Chengming edged nearer, pretending to look at the clouds outside, and let his spiritual sense sweep across the writing on the page: "When handing over sweets, speak first." "When peeling fruit, cut it square." "Wipe mouth AFTER eating." "Do not hesitate when brushing back hair."
—What the hell was this?
A question mark hung over Gu Chengming's head. And then his spiritual sense registered Luo Jinyao, at the other end of the ship, unhurriedly producing a small notebook of her own from inside her robes.
She opened it and wrote several lines: "Pretended not to know she drank from Little Gu's cup by mistake — was forgiven." "Her way of caring for him is obviously calculated, yet Little Gu enjoys it."
"Progress exceeds estimate. Must accelerate my own pace."
No — what game exactly were the two of them playing?
[The Huiyuan Sword Formula, struck by revelation: So you can do it like that!]
[It writes, stroke by careful stroke: "Pretended not to know she drank from Little Gu's cup by mistake — was forgiven."]
Gu Chengming: "?"
You're starting too, are you!?
That night Gu Chengming entered the Love Huiyuan Sword Formula, and let a certain technique that wanted a mouthful of his backwash drink its fill.
Ninety li south of the Capital: Luoxia Ferry.
Luoxia Ferry was the last of the Capital's seven landing points — remote, and mixed in its clientele.
Anyone entering the Capital with a name worth speaking mostly went by Xuanwu Ferry to the north, where Night-Watch Bureau men stood waiting and a ship was met and escorted the moment it touched down. Those who diverted to Luoxia Ferry were either outer-sect disciples out on training assignments, or rogue cultivators who preferred not to be questioned.
Such as the man currently perched atop the old pagoda tree outside the landing.
He wore a green Daoist robe and was thin, with regular, decorous features — the very image of a tutor drilling the primers at some Jiangnan village school. Only if someone came within three feet to look would they see that his eyes had no whites at all: both sockets were pools of turbid ink.
He called himself Yu Xinji, and the Edict Name the Eternal Life Sect had granted him was "Inkstone Steward."
By the sect's own reckoning, cultivation at his level counted as half-proven Eternal Life. One rank higher was a proper Fourth Realm fiend.
Privately, though, Yu Xinji had long since counted himself as Fourth Realm already.
He crouched on the crown of the pagoda tree, narrowing those ink-black eyes at the landing below. The wind came from the south of the city, carrying a thread of cloying osmanthus sweetness. That scent had become very familiar to him of late.
Since last month the Capital had been steeped in osmanthus everywhere. On the surface it was simply the season, with the imperially sealed osmanthus garden in the western suburbs blooming early. But mixed into that fragrance was something else.
The sect's Wish-Particle Dust.
It was an exquisitely refined powder, formless and substanceless, riding on the pollen. Those who breathed it showed nothing for three days; after seven they grew restless of heart; after half a month they began to waver about their own path of the Dao. The higher a man's cultivation, the harder it was to detect — because adepts concerned themselves with their state of mind, and were all the more inclined to mistake that restlessness for something of their own making.
When the day came for the Great Feast of Eternal Life to open, nine parts in ten of the Capital's rogue cultivators and outer-sect disciples would become the sect's Guests of Joy.
Yu Xinji's assigned duty at Luoxia Ferry was to sweep the flying ships entering and leaving the Capital once every few days.
Whenever a sect sent out young disciples, he would slip inside the ship, and while they sat in meditation, attach himself to their spiritual sense and leave behind one thread of Wish Seed, exceedingly fine, exceedingly faint. That thread would resonate with the osmanthus scent, and when the day arrived it would count toward his tally of merit for the year.
In short, the dirty work nobody in the sect wanted, and nobody could do without.
A flying ship came out of the far end of the cloud sea.
The hull was plain, flying no sect banner, and it wasn't moving fast — drifting out of a gap in the clouds at a leisurely pace, for all the world as though its pilot feared jostling the tea of the people inside.
Yu Xinji perked up. Another house's outer-sect training run.
No banner usually meant a fear of causing trouble in the Capital. Slow speed usually meant disciples too shallow in cultivation to steer steadily.
Precisely what he wanted.
He dropped from the crown of the pagoda tree, his form dissolving into a wisp of the palest green smoke, circled beneath the hull, and clung soundlessly to the outside of the shell.
The ship shuddered, faintly — a tremor so slight that even an ordinary cultivator wouldn't have caught it, let alone a few outer-sect disciples.
Yu Xinji nodded to himself.
He rode the shell until the ship had cleared the airspace above Luoxia Ferry, then seeped in through a seam in that plain ship-formation.
The instant he entered, he followed the sect's old procedure: steady the spiritual sense first, compress himself into a thin sheet of shadow, and cling to the cabin ceiling. See the layout of the cabin clearly first, then decide whom to attach to.
He lowered his gaze. The cabin was small. In the middle stood a low table, and on it sat two portions of osmanthus cakes, both from the same pastry shop — even the "Agarwood Record" cipher-seal printed on the oilpaper wrappers was identical.
Beside the table sat two women. One wore ink-dark everyday robes, a long saber leaning at a slant against the cabin wall at her side. The other wore pale green fighting robes, silver hair falling to her waist, unhurriedly peeling a spirit peach.
Yu Xinji's gaze crawled upward along that utterly lusterless black saber. The blade caught no sunlight at all, its killing aura folded inward like an abyss.
That was unmistakably Night-Sever, the destined treasure of the Director of the Great Qian's Night-Watch Bureau!—
At that thought, Yu Xinji went blank. Surely he'd mistaken it? That was Zhou Qingmu?! The living King of Hell who ripped the souls out of Eternal Life Sect followers and burned them as sky-lanterns, whose name could stop a child crying at night anywhere in the Capital?!
Yu Xinji felt his brain giving out. His eyes shifted to the space between the two women — to the young man sitting obediently there, half an osmanthus cake in one hand, the other hand held out to receive a piece of spirit peach.
It was the Murderous Demon of Snowfall Pass. Gu Chengming!!
If you asked who the Eternal Life Sect's followers had feared most in the past, the answer was certainly Zhou Qingmu. Zhou Qingmu paid no attention whatsoever to the stance of any official at court; the moment she met a follower of the Eternal Life Sect, a single stroke of the saber split him in half. Combined with her sheer strength, the number of the sect's people who had died at her hands was beyond counting — even Jìntian had been slain by her, or left gravely wounded.
If you asked who the Eternal Life Sect's followers feared most now, the answer was beyond dispute: Gu Chengming.
After all, the people that title Murderous Demon of Snowfall Pass had been earned by killing were Eternal Life Sect followers.
And this man was uncanny in the extreme. At Second Realm and Third Realm cultivation he had cut down Third Realm and Fourth Realm evil cultivators and Eternal Life Sect followers alike; with the sect's people it was kill on sight, with no chance to negotiate anything. Worst of all were his methods — brutal, never leaving a whole corpse, until one couldn't tell which side was supposed to be the demonic cult. Every Eternal Life Sect follower who fell into his hands ended up like a rotten tomato struck by a sledgehammer, because there was almost nothing left but pulped meat.
"Run!!"
Yu Xinji made the decision on the spot.
Luo Jinyao and Zhou Qingmu, in the middle of covertly waging their "battle for Mom," sensed that thread of fiendish aura at almost the same instant.
For two women who had been fretting over the lack of any chance to demonstrate transcendent motherly capability to Gu Chengming, this was a live target dropped straight out of heaven.
Yu Xinji did not manage even a thousandth of a second's resistance before an unmatchable blood-slaughter astral qi, tangled together with bitter-cold sword intent, tore him bodily off the cabin ceiling like a medicated plaster being ripped free, and splatted him flat across the small table in the middle of the cabin, the one with the osmanthus cakes on it.
Astral qi sealed him in. A sword formation pinned him down. Several spirit talismans were pasted mercilessly across his forehead.
Forced back into his half-transparent true form, he sprawled on the tabletop and lifted his head in despair — and what filled his vision were three enormous faces, ringing him in from above.
Zhou Qingmu watched him without expression. Luo Jinyao's brows drew slightly together, her whole face full of distaste that he had dirtied the surface where she had just been peeling a peach for Little Gu.
And that legendary Murderous Demon of Snowfall Pass, in whose hands every Eternal Life Sect follower was guaranteed to become pulped meat, was looking down at him with a wide, spreading grin.
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