Chương 31

Mayari Lakan held a glass vial over a low flame and watched the liquid inside turn from amber to clear. The meridian cleansing elixir required a steady hand and a patient eye, fourteen reagents reduced to seven, seven to three, three to one. She had brewed this formula ten thousand times across the centuries, and her hands performed the steps on their own as the flame held steady and the liquid clarified. The scent of refined spirit herbs filled her private laboratory, sharp and clean.

And then Jun Fang's aura vanished. One moment it was there, a familiar presence she had felt across the city forever, faint and distant but as constant as the tides. The next it was gone. Snuffed clean, the way a thumb snuffs a candle. The vial stopped moving in her hand. She stood still and cast her senses wide across the city, searching for what she already knew she would not find. Jun Fang was dead. Then the shockwave came. Power tore through the city on a scale she had not felt since the founding.

Two vast forces collided somewhere beneath Tianlong Castle, and the impact radiated outward through the earth, through the air, through every dragonline on this world. Her laboratory shuddered. Vials rattled in their racks. The flame beneath her hand guttered and nearly died. Mayari steadied the vial and set it down. She knew what that power was. She had felt it once before, centuries ago, when she and Jorin and Jin Shenlei had stood before a wounded dragon and done what they came to do.

The signature was unmistakable. Divine. Draconic. A chime sounded from the Registry. – You have received a message through the Jianghu Registry from Jun Fang. Do you accept the message? – She accepted. – To my old friends, I am composing this letter in the event of my untimely death. If you are reading it, then my heart has stopped, and the Registry has delivered these words on my behalf. I will not waste your time with pleasantries.

If my death has come to pass, it was most likely at the hands of the Burning Lotus. You have all seen the signs. They have grown bold, and I believe the time when they could have easily been brought to heel has passed. In recent years I have taken steps to cover up the worst of their crimes, so as not to cause a panic among the smallfolk, but I believe a purge of their ranks is overdue regardless of what the Eyes of Heaven may have to say about it.

In the event of my death, I ask that Han Yuan and the Divine Gale Sect assume provisional governance of Huidao until the Imperial House can appoint and dispatch a replacement. We have done hard things together, the four of us. And we are not without sin. But we have always done what's necessary to protect this city and its people, and if you're reading these words, it means you will have to carry on doing so in my absence. Be strong, Jun Fang – Jun Fang had been many things, overcautious, sentimental, corrupt.

The letter was all of them, the sum of his person in a single missive. They all thought they had this under control. But Jun Fang suspected this was coming, at least he'd thought enough of the possibility to write this letter, and his final act was to hand the reins to the one man Mayari and Jorin despised most. She could not fault his reasoning. But just then, she'd have liked to have revived him from the dead, so she could feed him a poison that would deliver a much slower and more painful death.

One she could watch. The elixir on her workbench had gone cold. She looked at it for a moment, then looked away. A second chime sounded in her mind. – You have received a message through the Jianghu Registry from Han Yuan. Do you accept the message? – She accepted. – Tianlong Castle. One hour. Attendance is not optional. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. – It wasn't signed. Not that it needed to be. A swell of revulsion curdled her stomach.

Best to get this over with quickly. - - - - Mayari Lakan flew across the night sky, crossed the entirety of Dragon's Rest in moments, and alighted on the parapet of Tianlong Castle's southern wall. Jorin Shen was already there, arms folded, a scowl on his bearded face. The two of them exchanged a look that said everything. They both knew this was the moment Han Yuan had waited centuries for.

The opportunity to gloat over them, to exact whatever revenge he could, for the injustice of being stationed in what he considered a pitiful backwater. An inner disciple of the Divine Gale Sect, robed in blue and black, leapt up onto the wall with them, and then gave them a deep bow.

"Master Yuan awaits you in the governor's offices, honored Patriarch and Matriarch," he said.

"Please follow me." The disciple leapt down to the courtyard, and they followed. He led them through the main courtyard and into the castle's central keep. Torch sconces lined the corridor walls, half of them dark, their flames snuffed by whatever had torn through this place. A guard lay face down across the threshold, a hatchet buried between his shoulder blades. Blood had run from beneath him and pooled in the gaps between the stones. Past him, two more guards slumped against the corridor wall.

One had a dart in his throat. The other had been opened from collar to belt by something wide and heavy, the stroke of an axe or cleaver, and his hands still clutched at the wound. Caltrops littered the floor ahead of them, scattered in clusters at the intersections where reinforcements would have come. A chain lay coiled around the ankles of a woman in imperial colors who had fallen on her face ten feet from her post.

The air smelled of smoke, the chemical kind, acrid and thick, and a gray haze still clung to the walls and ceiling. Mayari counted the dead as they walked. It certainly looked like Burning Lotus handiwork. She wondered what had inspired them to finally make their move. They turned a corner and both Mayari and Jorin stopped. The statue of the Ascetic lay in pieces across the corridor.

It had stood in a vaulted alcove for as long as either of them had known this castle, a twelve-foot figure carved from white jade on a black platform. Someone had cracked it down the center. The two halves had tipped forward and shattered against the flagstones, and fragments of white jade lay scattered across the floor in a bed of pale dust. A hand still curled in a mudra rested ten feet from the torso it belonged to. The disciple stepped through the debris with care and kept walking. Mayari did not.

The alcove gaped open behind the wreckage, and beneath the black platform, dragged aside by force, a staircase descended into the earth. Cold damp air rose from the opening. Mayari smelled dragon marrow, old fire, and beneath both, the faint metallic tang of her own spatial craft, cracked open and drained. Her fingers trembled. She curled them into fists and held them still. She glanced at Jorin, noticed that some of the color left his face.

The disciple in blue walked on ahead of them as though none of it mattered. He led them up a broad stair and through a set of double doors lacquered in red and gold. The governor's offices occupied the top floor of the central keep, a suite of rooms that overlooked the castle courtyard, the Terraces and the harbor beyond and below. Silk screens divided the antechamber, painted with scenes of cranes and mountain peaks. Carved rosewood furniture lined the walls, every surface polished to a mirror sheen.

Jun Fang's touch was everywhere. His calligraphy scrolls still hung from the walls. His tea set still sat on the sideboard, four cups arranged around a clay pot, as though he might walk in and pour at any moment. But Han Yuan sat behind his desk, and the smug look on his face made Mayari Lakan grimace. He looked the same as he always did. Short brown hair, light green eyes, a boyish face made severe by the contempt in his eyes. He wore fine robes, blue trimmed with white, without a crease or stain on them.

He raised one hand the moment they entered. His palm faced them flat, and his voice cut the air before either of them could speak.

"Sit down, and keep your mouths shut. Nothing you have to say matters." Two chairs had been placed in front of the desk. Mayari took a seat, and Jorin sat next to her. She glanced at Jorin just as Jorin glanced at her, and she took no comfort in the equally dour look on his face. But it was also a look that said, Just sit here and let him bluster, we'll talk later. Yuan let the silence stretch. He tapped one finger against the surface of Jun Fang's desk.

Then he stood, pushed the chair back, and walked to the window behind the desk. The harbor spread below him, torches on the water, lanterns on the docks, the vast dark of the ocean beyond. He spoke to the glass.

"Huihun has found a host. With the aid of the Shattered Summit Sect, he struck this castle, killed Jun Fang, and attempted to merge with the other half of his soul." He paused.

"He failed. The other half fled the premises. It is somewhere out there, in the wilds beyond the city." He turned from the window and looked at them coldly.

"Huihun's whereabouts are also unknown, for the moment." He clasped his hands behind his back and paced the length of the desk, his steps slow and measured like his voice.

"But he has a host now. Which means he is flesh. Which means he is within my reach." He stopped at the corner of the desk, looked down at them as if they were a smear of shit on his shoe.

"I am going to find Huihun and its host, and I am going to slay them both with the God-Slaying Threefold Cut, as your old friend Jin Shenlei ought to have done." The name landed in the room like a stone dropped into still water. Mayari held her face steady. Behind it, the memory surfaced whether she wanted it or not. Jin Shenlei on his knees before the wrathful, mangled spirit Huihun, head bowed, palms flat to the ground. The man who helped them kill the dragon, and then sold his soul to its ghost.

The Burning Lotus, born in secret, fed in shadow. And then the order from the Imperial House. Kill him. Tell the city he ascended. Afterward came Han Yuan, young, talented, trained at the capital, ripped from his own cultivation path and planted in a city he despised, told to watch the two of them for the rest of their natural lives. Yuan leaned forward and planted both fists on the desk.

"Never forget. I hold your lives in my hands." His voice dropped low, and the veneer of cordiality cracked open.

"You sorry sacks of shit took me from my training. I would have ascended by now, were it not for you." He straightened. Smoothed the front of his robes. Walked back to the window and clasped his hands behind his back again.

"Now. I am told Huihun's host is a barbarian from Joguo." He let that settle.

"And I am told that not three days ago, another barbarian from Joguo arrived in this city, looking for his brother." He turned from the window and smiled at them, and it was the worst smile Mayari had ever seen.

"I am going to introduce myself to him. And if Heaven permits, I am going to use him to lead me to his brother. Then I will dispose of them both." He looked from Mayari to Jorin and back.

"And you two are going to assist me every step of the way." He paused. The smile widened.

"Or perhaps it will be time for your 'ascension' at last."