Morning sun filtered through the cedar lattice. The sweet, intoxicating scent still clung to the room, thick, mixing with the incense haze.
Calming Yù Qíng's terror had required far more than words. And because the cultivation bond shared the Altar's tensions, the consolation had to extend to each of the wives. The dawn was consumed by a storm of Yin and Yang. He spared none of them, draining every drop of energy until the sky lightened.
Now the bodies lay scattered across the colossal bed.
The women's skin gleamed under a thin film of sweat on the ruined sheets. Yù Qíng breathed deeply, her face buried in the pillows. Qīng Yǔ slept clinging to her eldest sister's waist, breathing softly. Yù Méi snored faintly with a leg thrown over Bái Wǎn, whose neck displayed reddish marks. Huáng Bìyù lay with her hair spread across the mattress, while Lín Jié was sprawled facedown, unconscious.
None of them had the strength to move a finger.
Only two people were awake in the chamber.
Zhì Yuǎn was already on his feet, adjusting the ties of his gray tunic, his eyes as calm as if the dawn had been nothing more than a warm-up. He walked in silence to the corner of the room.
Seated at the writing desk, a robe thrown over her bare shoulders and her hair held by a black-and-white jade pin, Mò Yán was working. A transmission stone glowed on the table.
Mèng Lián's voice echoed low from the stone. They were discussing the Conglomerate's newly seized routes and advancing Lín Jié's paperwork to begin the takeover of the Twin-Faced Empire. Mò Yán answered with short, numerical instructions, operating with cold efficiency in the middle of that perfumed room.
Zhì Yuǎn stopped behind the chair and wrapped his arms around his wife's waist.
Mò Yán muffled the transmission stone with her hand. She turned her face and captured his lips, savoring a short but slow kiss.
"I'll be gone for a few days," he murmured. "I need to isolate that world's foundations and create a method so that the only anchor bound to that space is me."
"How many days?" she asked, her voice hoarse.
"Five. Approximately."
Mò Yán nodded slowly. She raised her free hand, caught his face, and gave her husband a wet, lingering kiss, as if she needed it to endure so much time without him.
When she drew back, her scarlet eyes fell quickly upon the bed.
"This time she'll stay quiet. Don't worry. We'll take care of her."
Zhì Yuǎn only let out a laugh and winked his right eye at his wife before vanishing.
An incense stick's time later, Yù Qíng opened her eyes with a jolt.
Her heart raced. She groped the sheets blindly, searching for her husband among her sisters' bodies. The fear of leaving him alone in that canyon still squeezed her chest.
From the writing desk, Mò Yán's voice sounded before the First Wife could rise.
"He's already left to finish acquiring that world for us, Eldest Sister."
She did not even take her eyes off the papers.
Yù Qíng stopped. She pouted in frustration, but this time she did not stir. The weight of exhaustion still anchored her. She let out a long sigh and let her body fall back onto the bed.
She landed straight on Yù Méi's chest.
The youngest sister let out a loud, dry snore in response to the impact.
Yù Qíng's tension evaporated. She looked at her little sister's crumpled face, could not hold it, and started to laugh.
Mid-laugh, Yù Méi's arm whipped upward, locking the First Wife's neck in the fold of her elbow.
The snore vanished. The entire room moved.
Qīng Yǔ released her sister's waist and sat up. Bái Wǎn rose to her knees, bracing her hands on her waist with a severe expression. Huáng Bìyù and Lín Jié also rose and closed the circle. All of them had already been awake, merely waiting.
"We're going to have to have a little talk about that outburst of yours, Eldest Sister," Yù Méi whispered in Yù Qíng's ear, while the others cracked their knuckles and wore intimidating expressions.
At the writing desk, Mò Yán shut off the transmission stone. She dropped the brush and walked to the bed to join the circle.
Yù Qíng looked at the mutiny around her and could only let out an embarrassed little laugh.
The fearsome Priestess was reprimanded. At first she sat in the center of the bed, lowering her head and conceding the point while the sisters vented their frustrations. Even Bái Wǎn and Qīng Yǔ, who were fervent worshippers of the eldest sister, did not refrain from delivering their scoldings. None of them forgave the panic she had caused in the Altar. And for the first time, Yù Qíng simply accepted it.
But as time passed, the dynamic began to change.
Listening to each complaint presented, the eldest sister began to counsel her own "council" on their problems. Little by little, her voice recovered its usual calm and tone of leadership. By the time lunch arrived, the intervention had turned into a true sisterly council, and Yù Qíng had already taken the reins of the situation, drawing only more worship and adoring looks from her sisters.
Some things never changed.
------
While the sisters headed animatedly toward the dining hall—drawn by the scent of the always-impeccable lunch prepared by the butler, the Third Sister's grandfather—Yù Qíng made a detour.
The First Wife walked in silence to the west wing of the pavilion. She stopped in the middle of the empty corridor.
"Xú Lán."
The shadows in the corner of the wall rippled. The white-haired woman emerged from the dark and knelt at once, pressing her forehead to the wooden floor. She said not a word. She merely awaited retaliation.
Yù Qíng looked at the bowed figure. The rancor for the ice that had bound her the day before still burned, but a Priestess's pride demanded firmness.
"My loss of control was a mistake," Yù Qíng's voice sounded polished. "I thank you for what you did. You obeyed my Heaven blindly, even if it meant raising your hand against me. That is praiseworthy."
Xú Lán held her breath.
"As a reward for your loyalty to him, from today onward I will allow you to be assigned as the family's personal guard."
Xú Lán's heart lurched in her chest. Her eyes shone toward the floor, wide and dazzled. Personal guard meant constant proximity to the Master. Despite the rigid posture, the slave looked like a pup holding back the urge to wag its tail.
"But you challenged me all the same," Yù Qíng's tone changed, cutting the air like glass. "And I cannot allow that to occur again without consequences."
Xú Lán stiffened.
"As punishment for your insolence, you will be assigned as Méi's personal guard and servant."
To Yù Qíng, turning a cold, lethal warrior into the youngest sister's nanny was the perfect punishment. A humiliating collar on any cultivator's pride.
Xú Lán pressed her head even deeper into the floor. Her shoulders began to tremble.
Yù Qíng watched the tremor from above, certain the woman was swallowing the frustration and shame of the demotion.
In reality, Xú Lán was digging her nails into her own palm to keep from breaking into a hysterical smile. Her heart hammered hard against her ribs. Her thought was simple: The Ladies are always glued to the Master. I'll be near him the whole time… who knows…
The white-haired woman's thoughts began to wander into dangerous and ambitious places.
The silence stretched through the corridor. Yù Qíng narrowed her eyes, suspicious of that strange tremor that would not pass.
"You have nothing to say?" the First Wife asked.
Xú Lán swallowed hard.
"It is my honor, my Lady," she answered in a slightly trembling voice, without lifting her face.
And before she made a spectacle of herself and let the euphoria slip out in a stupid smile, the slave melted into the shadows and vanished.
------
Back in the main chamber, Mò Yán watched the light of the transmission stone pulse on the writing desk. Mèng Lián's voice sounded clear through the connection.
"The Alchemy Hall's flow records have begun to align in our favor," reported the leader of the Firmament Consortium.
Mò Yán traced a line with the brush across the scroll. Elder Yáo remained completely blind to the political movements under her own nose. Naming Lín Jié secretary of the Pill Pavilion had proven to be the perfect accidental move.
She moistened the tip of the brush in the jade inkwell, turning the spirit-wood handle between her fingers as she processed the numbers. Adding Lín Jié's post to the fact that Qīng Yǔ was the finest alchemist of the youngest generation and the master's favorite, the influence of the two swept the entire structure of the Hall.
Mò Yán drew four small, slow ideograms on the paper: the Pill Pavilion, the Elixir Pavilion, the Cauldron Pavilion, and the infamous Flame Pavilion, with its rare warriors dedicated to alchemical flames. Her two sisters manipulated those gears with mastery.
"And the connection with the Consortium?" Mò Yán asked, her voice flat, her eyes fixed on the drying ink.
"The Empire is unhealthily dependent on the Firmament Auction." Mèng Lián paused, her tone gaining a calculating edge. "Because the imperials have a hand in the Consortium, they aren't worried at the moment. Folly on their part. Most of the adjacent shops and commercial partners of the Auction are already falling under my control."
"Use the Alchemy Hall's link with the Consortium. Start infiltrating those resources silently."
"Exactly, Third Lady. We will buy the influence of disciples and elders over the coming weeks… I have already prepared a few hunting dogs in case certain convictions prove too stubborn, especially among the older ones."
Mò Yán nodded slowly, her eyes already running to the next stage of the scroll.
"Extend the net," Mò Yán ordered. "The Arms Pavilion, the War Pavilion, and the Metals Pavilion also have dozens of commercial agreements with Consortium entities you already dominate or are about to swallow. Tighten their supply. Force them to depend on our routes."
"It will be done."
Mò Yán set down the brush, satisfied with the slave's efficiency.
"My husband will reward you immensely when we manage to finish this work, Lián."
The stone vibrated with a warm light. The answer came soft, dripping a dark devotion.
"Fu fu… this humble one does everything for the Master's grace, Third Lady."
The stone's light went out, returning silence to the room.
"Hm. Good thing that fox is in heat. I wouldn't want our husband to have to kill her for being so obstinate," Mò Yán murmured to herself.
She rose and put on her black-and-white hanfu, ready to go meet her sisters, who had already scolded her for skipping meals because of work.
------
Zhì Yuǎn floated a few paces from the ground, his eyes fixed on the invisible line he had sealed hours before. He undid the blind knot. Thick threads of Primordial Qi ran from his fingers, plunging into the silver fissure to stitch the mass of that isolated space.
He was realigning the dimensional coordinates to transfer the entire dead world into his Inner Universe. It was not a swift task. It was a meticulous process of trial and adjustment of the balance between the Laws, for he would have to reestablish the structure of Laws so the world would be compatible with his Inner Universe. The slightest miscalculation and the dead world would implode, taking him with it. That was why he advanced with absolute caution.
But as he pulled the spatial mesh, binding the distortions and the tangles he himself had created to deceive Lǐ Jìngzhī, the fabric of reality vibrated in a different way.
Zhì Yuǎn stopped.
A secondary ripple scraped against the edge of the main fissure. It was subtle. If he had not had his senses buried in the depths of that space, he would never have noticed.
His dark threads groped the void and hooked the anomaly.
It was not a reflection of the first space. The magnetic shock from when he twisted the coordinates had dragged a second dimensional opening close to the first.
A slow smile spread across Zhì Yuǎn's face.
"What a coincidence…" he murmured, his voice vanishing into the cold wind.