The morning sun did little to warm the clearing. The fire had long since burned down to white ash, and the air hung heavy with the damp, biting cold that promised another snowstorm before the day was out.

  Jiang absently reflected that this was the sort of weather he would have dreaded before becoming a cultivator. It was getting increasingly difficult to even remember what that was like – he barely even felt cold now, and he wasn’t even wrapped up in his cloak. Instead, he was just sitting on a log, chewing a strip of dried meat that tasted faintly of smoke and salt and watching Li Xuan sketch a rough map in the dirt with the tip of his scabbard.

  “The settlement sits here,” the Inner Disciple said, tapping a depression in the earth. “Greywood. It’s built into the ruins of an old mountain fortress, nestled against the cliff face at the northern edge of the valley. Only one approach is viable for a group – the main road leading to the gate.”

  “Wait, they have an entire fortress?” Jiang interjected. “Why was there a fortress out here anyway?”

  “The current Empire is relatively new, as far as these things go,” Mistress Bai shrugged. “And before our Empire existed, there was another one, and presumably another before that. There’s plenty of old ruins scattered around the lands here – most of them are just crumbling remains of old buildings, but every now and then someone stumbles across something that can be used. It’s not terribly important anyway.”

  Jiang considered that for a moment before shrugging. It was true – he didn’t actually care about history, especially when it wasn’t relevant.

  “If I may continue?” Li Xuan asked dryly, pressing on before anyone could actually agree. “Mistress Bai and I scouted the perimeter two nights ago. The bandits have made some makeshift repairs to the existing ruins, but not enough to worry about. The important part is that we counted roughly two hundred bandits. It’s difficult to be precise without getting close enough to trigger their perimeter wards—yes,” he added, catching Zhang’s look of surprise, “they have wards. Rudimentary ones, likely alarms rather than defensive barriers, but enough to make a stealth approach difficult.”

  Jiang didn’t bother asking what wards were, mostly because it was evident from context. “Two hundred?” he asked instead. “That… seems like a lot. How long has Gao Leng been gathering them, and how did he manage it without anyone noticing?”

  Li Xuan winced a little. “It… is more than we expected, yes. Especially since we aren’t even entirely sure that we counted all of them. Even worse, we detected three more powerful Qi signatures – assuming that one of them is Gao Leng, that means he has two cultivator allies.”

  Li Xuan straightened, brushing dirt from his scabbard. “It is not an ideal force to be facing. The three cultivators alone would be a challenge. Supported by two hundred archers and foot soldiers in a fortified position? It is going to be a grinder.”

  Jiang swallowed the last of the jerky, the knot in his stomach tightening. “If it’s a grinder,” he said, “then why are we sticking our hands in it?”

  Li Xuan looked at him. “We have discussed this. Gao Leng is a threat—”

  “No,” Jiang interrupted, his patience fraying. “We’ve discussed why someone needs to deal with him. We haven’t discussed why it has to be us, right now, alone. I get it—duty, responsibility, whatever. But if this guy has an army and a fortress, that sounds like a job for an actual army. Or at least more than two disciples and a freelancer.”

  He gestured to the south. “I know you have a transmission stone, because Zhang used his to contact you. Why aren’t you calling the Sect? Tell them there’s a demonic cultivator building a kingdom in the Blackpine Forest. Have them send an Elder. Have them send a dozen Inner Disciples. Why are we throwing ourselves at this wall when we could just wait for a hammer?”

  Li Xuan’s expression tightened. He looked away, staring into the trees. “It is… complicated. The Sect’s response time would be slow. By the time they mobilised—”

  “Are we in a rush?” Jiang countered. “Obviously, we don’t want to let Gao Leng have free rein to build his forces further, but how long would it really take to get a few dozen cultivators down here? A week? Two weeks? How much worse could the situation possibly get that wouldn’t justify waiting?”

  “He’s right,” Mistress Bai spoke up. “Stop treating them like children, Li Xuan. If they are to die today, they deserve to know why.”

  She turned to Jiang, her gaze cool and direct. “We aren’t calling for help because we don’t know who will answer.”

  Silence fell over the clearing. Zhang looked between them, confused. “I… I don’t understand. We would call the Elders. The Sect.”

  “And who in the Sect?” Bai asked. “Who receives the message, Disciple Zhang? Who authorises the mission? Who decides which disciples to send?”

  “The… the Hall of Elders. The Sect Leader.”

  “Exactly,” Bai said. “And here we have a demonic cultivator who has been operating in this province for years. He has amassed an army. He has built a fortress. He has been harvesting mortals by the village-load. And in all that time, not a single whisper of it has reached the Azure Sky Sect? Not a single patrol has stumbled upon it? The local magistrates haven’t sent a single report?”

  She shook her head. “Qinghe is a backwater, yes, but it is not invisible. For an operation of this scale to remain hidden for this long, someone has to be hiding it.”

  Zhang took a step back, looking as if she’d struck him. “You’re saying… there’s a traitor? In the Azure Sky Sect?”

  “We’re saying it’s a possibility,” Li Xuan said, his voice heavy. He looked tired, the arrogance that usually armoured him stripped away. “I didn’t want to believe it either, Zhang. But Mistress Bai is right. The Dead River Gang, the Crimson Blades, Greywood… it’s too big. Too organised. If this were just a rogue cultivator hiding in a cave, maybe he could slip by unnoticed. But a fortress? Hundreds of men?”

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  He scowled, kicking at a tuft of snow. “Someone is diverting reports. Someone is ensuring that patrols are routed away from these areas. Someone is keeping the Sect blind.”

  “And if we call for help,” Jiang finished the thought, a cold chill settling over him, “the message might go straight to them.”

  “Or they might be the ones sent to ‘help’ us,” Li Xuan agreed. “We would be inviting a knife into our backs. Until we know who it is, we cannot trust the chain of command. We are on our own.”

  Zhang sat down heavily on the log Jiang had vacated. He looked devastated. To him, the Sect was a monolith of righteousness. The idea that it could be rotting from the inside seemed to physically pain him.

  “Could it be Elder Yan?” Jiang asked suddenly.

  Li Xuan blinked. “Elder Yan?”

  “Gao Leng was his disciple, right?” Jiang reasoned. “Maybe he’s… I don’t know, secretly helping his old student? Or maybe he just wants to see the Sect fail?”

  “That… isn’t exactly well-known information,” Li Xuan said, looking at Jiang curiously. “And I suppose it’s a logical guess, but you are incorrect. Elder Yan is… harsh, traditional, and unpleasant, but he is loyal to the Sect’s orthodoxy above all else. And more importantly, ever since Gao Leng’s expulsion, Elder Yan has been the most scrutinised man in the Sect. He has barely left the mountain in twenty years. He has no opportunity to manage a network like this.”

  “Then who?” Zhang asked, his voice hollow.

  “If I knew that, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” Li Xuan said dryly. “But the nature of this betrayal can give us a few clues: it would require someone who can travel the province without raising suspicion, who can meet with bandits and brokers without having to account for every hour of their time. Someone who spends more time outside the Sect than in it.”

  He paused for a moment. “And it’s worth keeping in mind that none of this is certain. While it seems unlikely that this could have happened without a traitor, that doesn’t make it impossible. The last thing we need right now is to fall into paranoia.”

  Jiang opened his mouth to speak, but stopped as something occurred to him. He wasn’t terribly familiar with the Sect’s hierarchy - he didn’t even know the names of all of the Elders in the Azure Sky Sect - but… he could think of someone who possibly met the criteria. Someone who spent most of his time wandering around the outer provinces. Someone who had been in the area when a village was raided by a group connected to Gao Leng. Who could have warned the bandits to clear out before the Sect could organise a response.

  Someone who had taken a sudden, inexplicable interest in a peasant boy, brought him to the Sect, and then largely left him unsupervised, uninstructed, almost as if he were being stored for later.

  Jiang looked up. He found Li Xuan watching him. The Inner Disciple’s eyes were dark, intelligent, and resigned.

  Jiang didn’t say it. He didn’t have to.

  Li Xuan held his gaze for a long, silent moment, then gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.

  “We don’t know for sure,” Li Xuan said softly, speaking to the group but answering Jiang’s silent accusation. “And without proof, an accusation against an Elder is a death sentence for the accuser. But… we must proceed with extreme caution.”

  “So we fight the bandits ourselves,” Jiang said, his voice flat. “Kill Gao Leng, and search for proof.”

  “Exactly,” Li Xuan said. He turned back to the map in the dirt, his finger tracing the line of the wall. “Now. Let us discuss how we are going to breach a fortress with four people.”

  He tapped the main gate. “The weakness – and the strength – of an army like this is its reliance on formation. Two hundred men in a prepared position are dangerous because they can overlap their fields of fire and bring their numbers to bear. If they are panicked, if their command structure is broken, they become a mob.”

  “So we make a scene,” Jiang guessed.

  “We make a target,” Li Xuan corrected. “Mistress Bai and I will assault the main gate directly. We will be loud, we will be visible, and we will force them to commit their reserves to stop us. This will draw out the enemy cultivators. They won’t be able to resist the challenge, and they’ll need to bolster the morale of their troops.”

  He looked at Jiang and Zhang. “While their attention is fixed on us, you two will circle to the rear. There are old drainage tunnels that likely feed into the cliff face—if the fortress was built properly, they’ll exist. Find them, or find another way in. Your task is containment.”

  “Containment?” Zhang asked, frowning.

  “I want you to cut off their escape,” Li Xuan said. “And more importantly, I want you to ensure no one flanks us. If the enemy cultivators realise they are outmatched, they may try to flee or circle around to strike at our backs. You stop them. Isolate the weaker ones if you can. If Gao Leng tries to run, you pin him until we can arrive. Once we’ve cleared out the chaff and engaged the cultivators in battle, you can make your way through the fortress and attack them from behind.”

  Jiang studied the makeshift map. “And if they just swarm you? Two hundred men would make for a lot of arrows headed your way, assuming they have enough weapons.”

  “We can handle a swarm or mob,” Mistress Bai said dismissively. “The danger is the coordination. And to that end…” She turned to Jiang, a contemplative look on her face. “I haven’t been idle these last few days. Watching you anchor your shadows to physical objects… it gave me an idea. A modification of an old sensory-dampening art.”

  She raised a hand, her Qi flaring subtly. “Hold still.”

  Jiang tensed as he felt a foreign energy reach out towards him. It felt… sticky. Invasive. Like invisible cobwebs trying to latch onto his skin. His instinct, honed by the Pact and weeks of danger, screamed at him to reject it. Without thinking, he flared his own Qi, spinning it through his meridians in a sharp, defensive rotation.

  The foreign energy shattered, dissipating into nothing.

  Mistress Bai gave him a look so unimpressed it could have withered a stone. “It works better,” she said dryly, “if you don’t break it.”

  “Sorry,” Jiang muttered, rubbing his arm. “Reflex.”

  “Try again. And relax.”

  She repeated the gesture. This time, Jiang forced himself to hold still, suppressing the urge to fight the intrusion. The energy settled over him, light and clinging, like a second layer of clothing made of spun silk. It wasn’t like his own stealth technique at all, and Jiang allowed himself a moment of pride. Instead, this felt more like a… blur.

  “What is it?” Zhang asked, watching with fascination.

  “A dampener,” Mistress Bai explained. “It won’t make you invisible to the eye – you’ll still need to use cover – but it muffles your Qi signature. It should buy you the time you need to get into position without alerting the enemy cultivators.”

  She applied the same technique to Zhang, who accepted it with a bow of gratitude. Jiang didn’t miss the slightly startled look Li Xuan was sporting, which implied that attaching a technique to someone else was probably more impressive than he thought.

  “It isn’t perfect,” she warned. “If you flare your own Qi aggressively, you will shatter the anchor, as Jiang so helpfully demonstrated. Use it to get close. Once the fighting starts, it won’t matter.”

  “Right,” Jiang said, rolling his shoulders, trying to ignore the sensation of the technique clinging to him. “Get in close, don’t get spotted, stab anyone trying to run away. Simple enough.”

  Li Xuan stood, looking at each of them in turn, his expression grim but resolute.

  “Then we are agreed. We move out now. By nightfall, Greywood falls.”

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