The air in the elders' pavilion was thick with the scent of aged tea and unspoken fear. The five sat around a low table of polished cedar, but no one drank. Sunlight streamed through the open screens, painting warm rectangles on the polished floor, a stark contrast to the cold mood.
Elder Mei's hands were folded in her lap, knuckles white. "Disciple Lian," she said, the name hanging in the silence. "Found three days ago, west of the Mirror Gorge. Her energy was… drained. Not just dead. Hollowed."
Elder Wen, a man with a face like weathered sandstone, stroked his short beard. "The fourth this season. In the past, when a disciple vanished during outdoor training… we thought them accidents. The cultivation world has its perils. Beasts. Qi deviations. But now…"
"Now we must wonder if they were not specifically targeted," Elder Huan finished, her voice like water over smooth pebbles, but now those pebbles were sharp. "At first, it was one in a great while. We did not think much. A tragedy, not a pattern. But since the Immortal Jiang died…" She let the sentence hang. They all felt the shift in the world's pressure, the loosening of unseen bonds.
"Three months," Elder Goran, the historian, said quietly, adjusting his spectacles. "Three months since the sky fell, and the disappearances have doubled. The Bliss Palace grows bold. They smell blood in the water."
A sharp, derisive sound escaped Elder Kwan. He was a lean man, all sharp angles, with a prominent, hawk-like nose that seemed to pull his thin lips into a permanent sneer. His long-fingered hands rested on the table like two pale spiders. "And where is our phantom master in all this? Where is *Faceless Ting*?" His voice was dry, cracking like old parchment. "Ten years. Not a word to his council. He leaves us to handle the wolves while he… what? Gardens? If he deigned to show his face—if he even *has* a face—to remind the world this mountain has a spine, the Bliss Palace would not be so reckless." His flinty eyes flicked to the empty space at the head of the table.
The other elders shifted uncomfortably.
Kwan's gaze swept over them, lingering on Mei. "Who knows," he murmured, the words deliberate and slow, "if he even *exists* anymore?"
Elder Mei's head snapped up. "Elder Kwan!" Her voice was a whip-crack in the quiet pavilion. She understood immediately. This wasn't just doubt about a man; it was an attack on the foundation of their authority.
Kwan raised one spider-like hand in shallow contrition. "My apologies, Elder Mei. A moment of frustration. Forgive an old man his blunt tongue." The smile that followed was thin and did not reach his cold eyes.
Elder Goran cleared his throat. "Complication piles upon complication. We have received a formal challenge. From the Silver Serpent Academy, in the very region the Bliss Palace influences."
"A 'friendship demonstration,'" Goran quoted dryly from the scroll before him. "They wish to test our disciples under our own roof."
Mei closed her eyes. The trap was perfect. Refuse, and they admitted weakness. Accept, and they invited spies into a compound already bleeding disciples.
"I will consider it," she said, her voice firm. "After I have spoken with the Master."
The skepticism was a physical weight. Elder Huan voiced it. "Elder Mei… you are the only one of us who has ever seen him. In all these years. Why is that?"
"Because I was the first elder here," Mei replied, her gaze unwavering. "The Master's trust is not a committee matter." She rose. "We will reconvene after I have his counsel."
She left, feeling the chill of their doubt on her back.
The moment the door slid shut, Elder Kwan leaned forward, his voice a venomous whisper. "'The Master's trust.' How very convenient." His prominent nose twitched. "She is not so old, our Elder Mei. Nor is she plain. Perhaps our elusive master has a taste for… devoted company. A private audience can have many interpretations."
Elder Huan's face hardened. "That is a foul suggestion, Kwan. Mei's integrity is beyond question."
"Is it?" Kwan's lips stretched into a humorless line. He thought of another woman, stern and beautiful and wasting her loyalty on a ghost's legacy. *They all cling to their chosen illusions.* "Who knows what fables people cling to for a scrap of borrowed power?" He stood, his movements oddly fluid for his gaunt frame. "Doubt is a wretched weapon, but it is the only one some of us are permitted." He glided from the room.
***
In the beast stable yard at the rear of the mountain complex, the late afternoon sun did little to soften the smell of animal musk, dung, and hay. The air was filled with the rhythmic *swish-thump* of a broom on stone flags. In a large pen, a scaled ox lowed softly.
Gen moved. He was a whirlwind of grey robes and polished wood, sweeping clean the area outside the pens. His arcs were wide and powerful, kicking up dust. His footwork was agile as he pivoted and thrust the broom handle like a spear. A confident smirk played on his lips. He could feel it—the flow Ting kept talking about. It wasn't the roaring river of his lost Jingdao, but it was a current.
"Ha! See that?" he called out to Ting, who sat on an upturned bucket near the sleeping Sky-Carp's enclosure, seemingly mending a harness. "The 'Whirlwind Sweeps the Peak' form! I just invented it!"
Ting watched, his ordinary face unimpressed. As Gen finished with a flashy, spinning flourish, Ting sighed. He picked up his length of bamboo.
Gen, chest heaving, didn't see the bamboo snake out. It tapped the back of his leading knee, precisely where his balance was most committed.
*Thwack.*
"YOW!" Gen's leg buckled. He stumbled and landed in a sitting position in a pile of clean straw, the broom clattering away.
"You're getting distracted again," Ting said, shaking his head. He walked over. "The flow is not for showing off. It is for *being*. You were thinking about how good you looked. Arrogance is a rock in the stream."
Gen scowled, picking straw out of his hair. "I was *feeling* it!"
"You were feeling your own ego," Ting corrected. He reached down to offer a hand, but as he did, his foot seemed to catch on nothing. Just empty air. He stumbled forward with a comical "Oop-ah!" and windmilled his arms before righting himself. He blinked, scratched his head, and peered toward the main palace halls, a faint, thoughtful frown on his face.
Gen's irritation vanished. He pointed a finger, his scowl dissolving into a gleeful grin. "Hah! Who's distracted now, old man? Trip over your own profound wisdom?"
Ting's head snapped back. The thoughtful frown was replaced by mock outrage. "You ungrateful little broom-monkey! Calling me old!" He brandished his bamboo rod.
Gen yelped with laughter, scrambling to his feet and darting around a water trough. "You can't hit me! I've mastered the 'Flow of the Frantic Chicken'!"
"Is it?" Ting shot back, his lunge suddenly faster than his clumsy persona should allow. The rod swished, missing Gen's backside by a hair. "Your chicken flow looks more like a beheaded pigeon!"
They dashed around the beast yard—a punished inner disciple and the enigmatic stable hand—playing tag among the wheelbarrows and hay bales. Gen vaulted over a low fence; Ting scrambled awkwardly under it. Gen threw a handful of straw; Ting spat it out, sputtering.
"Truce! Truce!" Gen finally gasped, leaning against the wooden pen of a crystal-horned goat.
Ting leaned on his bamboo, pretending to catch his breath. "Truce granted. But only because this old man's bones need a rest." He shot Gen a look that was both stern and fond. "Remember. The stream doesn't show off. It just goes. Now, put the broom away. Your flow still has the grace of a drunk ox."
Still chuckling, Gen went to retrieve the broom. The fear, the hollow silence inside him, was quiet for now, drowned out by the simple, sweaty comedy of the moment under the watchful, sleepy eyes of the palace's beasts.