"I won't." The Lord Inspector of the North sneered. "But make no mistake, I'm not one of you, so don't expect me to come to your aid. Should An Jing fall to you, then it's simply his misfortune. But if you fail, you'll have no say in whose hands he falls into next."

"I expected nothing less from you." The Lord Inspector of the West wasn't surprised. "I'll ask you once more, are you really going to pass? Are you sure you don't want a cut?"

"My mind is made up. I'm staying out of this. I'm heading back to the headquarters shortly. My plan is to have our goddess perform the initiation rites and bring her formally into the cult as her guide." A hint of amusement colored her voice.

With Bai Qinghan already in her pocket, her merit was ironclad. There was no need to entangle herself in another battle with other sages. With the involvement of the heavenly fiends and other unexpected complications in Xishan, she had no desire to step back into that vortex.

The Lord Inspector of the West nodded. "Agreed. It's best that you stay clear of this. I'm merely fulfilling my duty to inform you. May the heavens watch over us."

"May the heavens watch over us."

After the two said a prayer together, the waterscreen collapsed into a swirling fog.

The deep voice from the other end issued an earnest reminder. "Steel yourself against the heavenly fiends. Our internal sources confirm that Grand Chen has been critically compromised. Do you recall the Hanhai Fiend Calamity twelve years ago? It was ostensibly sparked by the friction between the two factions, but..."

The waterscreen dissolved completely.

"Wait! Ugh, you... that's not! Come on..." The revelation sparked an immediate flare of anxiety in her, but her counterpart's timing was calculated to a fault. It left her with the full weight of the warning, but denied her the opportunity to demand answers. "Would it kill you to finish your sentence?!"

Nonetheless, the Lord Inspector of the North had heard enough to read between the lines. Grand Chen and the heavenly fiends...

She raised her goblet and drained it in a single, fluid motion. When she turned her gaze back to the city, her eyes had sharpened. "The Hanhai Fiend Calamity, huh?"

As a daughter of South Han, she watched the fiend calamity scour her birthplace. Though she had no loved ones left to lose, the land itself, the familiar landscapes, had been reduced to rubble.

It was believed that the fiend calamity was the catastrophic aftermath of the demonic cult and heavenly fiends forcing the Fiend-Subduing Chi into retreat, plunging the world into chaos. In truth, it was far more convoluted than anyone dared to dream.[1]

Gazing into the liquid depths of her goblet, she let out a cold snort.

"Those high-ranking dignitaries of the imperial court certainly have their ways. To kill the reforms, the pack of old vultures staged a farce that drove away the anointed chi and crippled the reformists in both regions. Only the demonic cult and the reformists, their scapegoats, know the secrets buried beneath the lies."

She clicked her tongue. "Granted, they never could have pulled off such a self-destructive scheme without our 'guidance,' so the accusations aren't entirely a lie. Worst still, they're infested with heavenly fiends...

"Anyway, the world already calls us the demonic cult. While our reputation may suffer, a little more infamy wouldn't hurt. We even got to harvest disaster children, so it's no loss at all. In the end, the only ones who pay the price are the benevolent, the loyal, and the righteous."

At this, the Lord Inspector of the North let out a sigh that wavered between regret and cynicism. "It's true what they say; live for your own interests or be ground to dust. How can one ever hope for a fortunate end when they anchor everything to abstract ideals?"

Xishan, however, was another matter entirely. It and the great wilderness were among the cult's strategic bases, and a fiend calamity in that region would unleash chaos. The cult would gladly watch or even instigate calamities elsewhere, yet they would never allow their own territories to burn. Should the heavenly fiends wreak havoc upon Xishan...

"Sigh, I don't want to deal with all this trouble..." She shook her head. Her words were one thing, but her commitment to intervene, should the circumstances demand it, was quite another. If An Jing managed to escape the Lord Inspector of the West's clutches in one piece, she could make her move in Xishan and claim another miracle-arc bearer!

Silence fell over the tower. Closing her eyes, Lin Yongye, the Lord Inspector of the North, let her mind drift. A while later, her eyes snapped open.

"If I recall correctly, An Jing's parents are still around. They're not exactly experts, but martialists wouldn't succumb to the snow calamity so easily. Instead of risking a messy confrontation with Grand Chen and heavenly fiends just to haul him back to headquarters, we should focus on winning his heart. We can position ourselves against the empire that left the north to fall into ruin if we take care of his parents..."

Without hesitation, she pulled out several talismans and traced the air with her right index and middle fingers. The falling snow condensed into streams of ice-blue profound yin qi that wove into patterns that sank into the talismans. Those once-ordinary talismans erupted into a blizzard, fighting the current to vanish into the clouds before dispersing in every direction.

***

"Orders to the Hanhai and South Han altars. You have a new mission."

Meanwhile, in the deepest reaches of a Xishan canyon, hidden from all abilities and techniques, a tall man slowly emerged from a sea of tiny skeletons, crushing bone beneath his boot as he stood.

"A miracle arc?" His dark, crimson eyes glazed over to the northwest, his laughter revealing a jagged mouthful of shark-like teeth. "Oh, Sister Lin, you're so naive... How can you expect to advance in this world without feeding on the flesh of your own kind? Then again, I have the manor lord to thank for the tip-off, or I never would have realized the boy bears a divine arc.

"Devouring a hundred thousand mortals is worth less than consuming a single thread of divinity... It seems my path to the Altar Sanctification Realm, my ultimate ascension, rests solely upon An Jing's divine arc!"

Following the flick of a finger, two scarlet talismans shot out from the cave and vanished. "Orders to the adepts from Keensight and Skybless. You have a new mission."

But that wasn't all.

"Are both the heavenly fiends and the demonic cult actively pursuing the miracle-arc bearer, An Jing?" asked an old voice through a transmission from Hanhai all the way to a distant Crimsonguard camp.

"It appears the boy harbors secrets beyond his miracle arc. Whether he's connected to the heavenly fiends or bears an extraordinary lifearc, there's more to him than meets the eye. Hmph... It's strange that my granddaughter is so concerned about the boy. Bring him back quickly. We can't let the imperial court find out about this."

An Jing remained oblivious to the secrets of Grand Chen and the Heavenly Demon Cult, unaware that neither stood as a unified front. Little did he know that his arc was already being coveted, regardless of its nature. However, he was keenly aware of one thing. They valued his lifearc, not his life, and each party was driven solely by self-interest. Furthermore, he knew that he was being closely watched by both humans and heavenly fiends.

1. 螭 (chī) refers to a legendary hornless dragon in Chinese mythology. ☜