There was a certain grace afforded a clan elder. A certain expectation that, in turn, they had to fulfill. For the good of the clan, they laid all to rest at the feet of the new generation. For the new generation, they gave up the resources of the old. All in its due time. All in its due course.

Incense filled the room. Lazy curls of smoke rose of smoldering sticks, sweet scent suffusing the room with all its bounty of pleasantry, dripping from the rafters and eddying with the quietude of each and every breath. A darkness cloyed amongst it. The lantern’s light could only illuminate so much; its soft glow failing to reach all corners, crashing against the intricate woodwork dividers and casting only faint, geometric shadows across the rest of the room. A pleasant beauty. A comforting darkness.

To the younger generation, it would be a vast and vaulted, impenetrable gloom, wherein the ancient heart of the clan lay. To him… it was a room he knew more intimately than any other. Each and every tiny shift, breath, of incense smoke and flowing qi, and aura of hope and fear stuck out to him cynosure bright.

There was a man kneeling in front of him.

He’d known from the moment he’d slunk into the room, disrupting the sanctity of the space in his wake. They’d taken great pains to avoid notice until they were ready, but for all the minutes they knelt there and mustered the courage to speak— he knew they were there, even if they didn’t know he knew. His gaze could not be deceived by the darkness.

Finally, just as they were finally ready, he spoke over them. “La’ao. I find myself… disappointed. You were given one task, and one task only, and yet here I find you, scurried back to the nest fearful of the next stiff breeze. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“The songbird does not seek to outfly kunpeng.”

“Hm.” It was a good response. There was a sort of turn to these sorts of things, that went so— he knew that very well. He’d trained La’ao well too. “Yet, you’re here. Have you no piety? No honor?”

“What is the honor of a fish in a drying puddle? Of a bug affixed beneath the attention of a saint? Both of their lives are forfeit all the same.”

“Something happened, then. And the fool branch clan you were assigned to thought that they could cover it up, and make it seem like their usurpations of the Old Saffron and Fourth Precinct candidates were the only thing of note to have happened.”

The man nodded his head, bowing low enough to touch his forehead to the cold-wood floor. “It is as you say, Elder.” In that motion, it was so painfully obvious that he was not how he’d once been. Shaken… yes, that would be a good way to describe it. His disciple had been shaken by something, his course pitted against something and found wanting.

That, and he was missing an arm.

“Well then.” He leaned back just a little, unnoticeable to the man still kowtowing on the floor. “Go on. Tell me what sin the branch clan did that was so grievous you felt the need to report to me in person, La’ao.”

“They stirred the ire of the Bloody Saffron Sect.”

“Oh.” It was a mark of shame that he broke composure at that bit of news, flinching back— but an understandable

mark of shame. What else was a man to do when they learned their relatives crossed the one organization in all of Ca Cao they were absolutely not to cross? “We will need to show the sect some face and offer remuneration. Or…” a new plan was already forming in his mind. “If one of the youth is chosen this time. We have good chances…” twice more than they usually did, as it were. “Then, all would be forgiven. The Bloody Saffron Sect has a reputation of magnaminty towards the families of those who join. Go.”

The man bowed again. “I will instruct them immediately, Elder. May you live and prosper.” And with that, he left.

Things were getting interesting now…

………

The Great One was everything he had expected and more. Finally standing in front of him, feeling the indomitable weight of his aura-body, knowing the mantle that was being placed on their backs… it was a fulfillment of everything he’d ever wanted. More. Looking into the fathomless eyes of infinite power, aglow with eerie green light, ever shifting and roiling and collapsing and growing—

He shivered, from his nose to the tip of his tail as they looked at him. “And… Svvh, if I am not mistaken.” They knew his name. The Great One, one of the gods of their Refuge jungle, knew his name. “You performed the best amongst your peers. You will be in charge.” His was a tone that brooked no argument.

Svvh wasn’t sure if he was ready for the responsibility, but… if the Great One so commanded, then who was he to argue? He kowtowed before him, accepting the grace he’d been given. “As I am commanded.”

The Great One stared at him with an unreadable expression for a long few seconds before turning its back on him and striding back to the front of his small group. Three. Of all their efforts, of all the different academies, of all the teams sponsored personally by the Great One, they’d only managed to win three slots. It was yet another indication of the humans’ corruption.

Yet, it would be enough. It would have to be. For everything they’d lost, for all their kind… to defeat the Empire of Nine Sunlights and avenge all those who had been killed or taken— he would have to be enough. He would not let the Great One down.

“You three are… sufficient. Perhaps not so much as I would have liked, but… I do not doubt your conviction.” The Great One began to pace, slinking back and forth with the effortless grace of a near-divine cultivator. “The question is whether or not conviction will be enough.” A pause— “conviction will not be enough. I expect you to fail. You will

fail.”

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There was a finality to that judgement, and one that Svvh didn’t like— he’d come to far to fail now, and to be told it was inevitable— then, in the next moment, he felt an attention on him. The Great One hadn’t moved at all, but the weight of his passing regard was nonetheless enough to arrest his breath and make the whole world feel stifling beneath the density of such power.

He could all but taste the jungle, so long ago left as to become but a blurry memory, yet on the qi of the great one something grand and close indeed. “I see,” said the great one after a while— “why you were the greatest amongst your peers. That will. That refusal to fail… it is the heart of true cultivation. You will seek heaven, and you will fail, but you will never give up. You must show the Bloody Saffron Sect that our kind are not to be taken lightly. That this is as much our war as it is their war. Only then will we achieve freedom.”

“As the Great One commands!” Svvh felt his heart fill with something, vast and deep and heady, and as he bowed once again, and the others followed suit—

For once, the anger felt far away.

………

Daoist Bleeding Horizons floated above the greatest single concentration of power in Ca Cao outside his sect, and could not— arms crossed as he stared down on it with all the impunity of a vengeful god. Workers scurried beneath, hurrying to their each and every task, striving to make sure that not a single thing was out of place— not daring to do anything that might offer offence to the most powerful man in all of Ca Cao.

They knew that if he so desired, he could erase any of them from existence as easily as breathing. Easier than breathing, actually. Breathing still took a moment at his level when he deigned to, and if he wished to kill a mortal, they would just… die. Gone. The blood in their body would revolt at his command and they would be reduced to a fine mist faster than anyone could react.

Not that he’d do that.

Beside him, Daoist Flowing Blade hovered beside him, arms folded behind his back. “Must we scare them so? It's uncouth to do this inspection in person.” He’d also positioned himself so his blood-red robes caught the sun and fluttered in the breeze at altitude, making him out the very image of a terrible immortal hovering above. “Not to disparage you or anything, but…”

“This,” he waved a hand, and saw no small number of lesser cultivators below flinch at the simple gesture— “is the heart of our strength. The aerial might of Ca Cao is everything. If anything will keep us from war, it’s this. And if anything will deliver victory unto us… it would also be this.” It was an awe-imposing sight even for him, not that he’d admit it to anyone but Flowing Blade. Lined up like so many silvery behemoths, resting there, on the enormous drydocks of East Saffron… the Second Expeditionary Fleet of the Aurelian Alliance of Sects lay, a potent reminder that for all the Bloody Saffron Sect was great, they were merely one small part of something so much greater

. Not that the council of elders could realize that, the old fools…

Once, skyships had been small, wooden things, more reminiscent of their mortal kin than anything. He was just barely old enough to remember back to then, but the difference since then was nothing short of remarkable. Gone were the old, wooden ships— no, the massive ironclad behemoths, each a moving fortress strong enough large enough to carry armies, were what had become of them. He could feel it— in the heart of each and every enormous ship lay a core that burned with qi to his senses, muted but inescapable in its might. Each of them had been crafted personally by an Immortal Ascension cultivator.

Each ship was a spiritual tool that had the power to change the face of the war. Together, they were an indomitable armada— the very spirit of Ca Cao— that even the Empire feared.

And they were building more of them.

Fifteen ships lay in drydock. Four of those were replacements for the last war, by and large built during the last war. Beneath him though, were the skeletal frameworks of five more enormous ships, top of their line, to be fitted with the combined technical might of the Aurelian Alliance of Sects. They would be great.

They would be a threat.

War might be coming… and for it, he would be prepared. There existed no world in which he would let the Empire run roughshod over Ca Cao again, like it had those hundred years ago…

“So.” Flowing Blade interrupted his brooding, leaning back against the sunlight behind him— “not to be insensitive or anything, but when are you going to pick a new disciple? The council of elders had been pestering me to no end—”

“If it weren’t for the fact that we’re in public,” the Sect Master whispered softly, carried to his long-time friend on a soft blade of qi— “I would have punched you into Saffron Lake. I will pick a disciple when I am ready.”

“Of course.” He was silent for a second, then— more seriously— “but… soon, though. I know you. You’re good with disciples and… you remember how it was for us, with that empty hole where our master refused to accept anyone else after she fell. Don’t do that to Qingdao. Especially not if you’re sending him to war.”

The Sect Master frowned. “He won’t appreciate a replacement.”

“Then don’t replace him. Zhuge was unique. He can’t be replaced.” That spoke to him, somehow, on a level deeper than spirit wherein wounds still raw resided— “but you can find another disciple. One with their own strengths. It’ll be good for them.”

“…I will give it some thought.” He would, if only for his friend’s sake… but. There were other, more important things on his mind.

The world teetered on a precipice; he walked the knife’s edge between salvation and destruction. With the Empire ever more active over the Severing Sea, they could not show themselves to be weak.

Ca Cao would not become the next Beixian Port. Not on his watch.

Below him, the fleet continued, so slowly, to grow.