They took their leave of the Fairy Spring Valley. The injured Shao Luli leaned on her master's shoulder.
"Master," she said, "Why did you let that hag live after all that?"
"Because she's right about me, little Lu." Liao Lan smiled wistfully. "I was not banished on her whim alone. Someone like me should not be allowed to live in this place. I've long ago come to terms with that."
"I'll get angry if you keep putting yourself down like that, master. I don't care how many rumors people spread about you. I don't care even if every last one of them is true. Even if you're the worst in the world, I'll never leave your side."
Liao Lan seemed taken aback. She turned away from her disciple and sniffled. "Can I really hold you to that?" Her voice trembled as she asked.
"Kill me if I lie."
"Enough already!" Liao Lan wailed. She seemed at the end of her rope. "I'll tell you the story later."
Once their argument seemed settled, the Golden Witch asked, "Did you really have to drag your fight out to the end like that? You had me feeling nervous for you there. Just what's gotten into you? I told you you could do it. Did you not believe me?"
"I'm sorry, master... As you could probably tell, we had a bit of a history together." Liao Lan explained. "We fought against each other so many times, and I always came up short. And after wasting so much time beyond the valley, I thought I'd never catch up to her. And lately, I just haven't had much faith in my skills anymore..."
Shao Luli glared fiercely at the Golden Witch. She dodged the young woman's scornful gaze. Eventually, the grandmaster decided to leave the two of them to their own moment.
The Golden Witch addressed Tao Geming. "There might be some truth to what that woman said. If Liao Lan had been allowed to focus on her training, she would have been even stronger than she is now. What a waste."
"To believe that talent alone would be enough to ensure one's success as a martial artist is a deeply naive notion." Tao Geming replied. "Perhaps only with blood relations as the sole exception, no one is interested in grooming someone to the same level of strength. To be recognized as someone of talent by your superiors in this day and age is tantamount to spelling out your doom."
"Those underhanded tactics sound exactly like the type of thing you would pride yourself on." She said.
Tao Geming snorted. "Worried I'll stifle you, Fox?"
"Maybe that's why you're here." Her yellow eyes glimmered with suspicion.
"Then do enlighten me. How much of that potential is there even left for you to develop?" Tao Geming asked.
The Golden Witch let his question remain unanswered.
"Are you done messing around now?" He asked. "It's about time you got some real work done."
The Golden Witch sighed. "Fine, let's give your way a try."
Their subsequent travels brought them back to the bustle of cities. As their group briefly separated to take care of each other's business, the Golden Witch had suddenly found herself cornered by the young Shao Luli. Despite their height difference that bordered on the absurd, the smaller girl boldly stared up into her yellow eyes.
"Haven't you had enough yet? Haven't we entertained you enough?" She asked. "I think we've suffered more than enough for your amusement. Or how many more trials are you planning to put my master through until you're satisfied? Don't you feel even a little sorry for us? You're not even a little ashamed of yourself?"
The Golden Witch guiltily glanced away from her barrage of questions. "Rest easy. I won't bother you two anymore."
"So then we're free to go?" Shao Luli lifted a skeptical brow.
"I'm not letting you go just yet."
Shao Luli was instantly furious.
"You guys don't want your reward?" The Golden Witch followed up.
"We don't need anything! Just leave us alone."
"Now what kind of a master would I be if I didn't even teach anything to my disciples?" Her leading question instantly pacified the young woman. "I hope the two of you can handle learning on the road, though."
Shao Luli still looked sore, utterly unwilling to concede. It had taken her a few moments to reconcile herself with the necessity of the proposal. Reluctantly, she offered a bow. "Grandmaster." Shao Luli said, as respectfully as she could muster, bidding her farewell.
Though she left with some semblance of grace, as soon as she crossed the corner, the girl dashed out in search of her master. The Golden Witch couldn't resist the temptation and sneakily followed her behind. When the apprentice delivered the news, Liao Lan was shocked. She was overwhelmed with joy, simply couldn't believe it. They made it. Master and disciple hugged each other tightly, not a single thought spared to their busy surroundings.
The golden eyes were filled with yearning as they observed the two. Her heart was seized with inexplicable melancholy. It had taken her a long time to stop intruding on them. She pried herself away to face the scowling man behind her. They exchanged a knowing glance, and the woman's eyes filled with cold resolve.
As the days went on, Liao Lan continued to relentlessly tend to her master's needs. Shao Luli was frustrated by the fervor with which she carried out the duties that had never been demanded of her in the first place. Eventually, when she couldn't bear the sight of it anymore, she took the older woman aside and said, "Master, you don't have to keep trying so hard. She's already training us. The worst is behind us, I don't think she'll renege on her obligation now of all times."
Liao Lan stared at her as if she was confused. "I'm more than happy to carry out my obligations with all due diligence. Actually, I feel more than a little grateful for everything she's done for us."
"Master, she put us through so much misery and danger!"
"Well, it's not like I forgot. But I can't act like it's all bad. I have something to confess, little Lu - ever since master kidnapped me that time, every night I'd been assailed by nightmares of getting dragged back out into that snow field and threatened with a painful death. And you won't believe it, but ever since I became her disciple, the nightmares stopped. And maybe I'm just desperate to find the good things about our situation, but... I'm really not scared of her anymore... Or of anything..."
Liao Lan threw a glance at the golden haired woman in question. When Shao Luli noticed the peculiar tenderness in her gaze, she felt herself growing muddleheaded with inexplicable anger. Liao Lan noticed her foul mood. She pressed her forehead up against Shao Luli's.
"But if you're still scared of her... If you really hate that I've made this part of your obligations, I'm willing to leave it all behind for you."
Instantly Shao Luli's displeasure had been dispelled, and she couldn't help but mumble, "You don't have to go that far, master. I know you worked really hard to get us here..."
With both master and disciple committed to keep following the path they were on for at least a little longer, their days of travel, servitude and learning continued on.
...
Back within the caves of the Fairy Spring Valley, Sun Jia's subordinates were carrying out the process of trying to revive her limbs. But their persistent massages of the pressure points resulted in little gain. After a long time, when the woman had finally regained the use of her right arm, and just her right arm, she demanded to be seated upright.
"Make some ink and fetch me my brush." She ordered, and the women scuttled around to carry out her demand. "Bring me the seal I use for letters to the Jade Princess."
"Will you be needing your book of poetry as well, madam?" A girl asked.
"No, not this time. I'm just going to tell her about what happened here today. It's exactly the sort of information she likes to bother me about. This might even be worth a favor..." Sun Jia's eyes lit up. She moved her brush around with the utmost grace along the paper, like she was painting an exquisite picture.
Sun Jia's letter was then taken far beyond the valley, into the ancient jade halls that once served as the center seat of an empire long past. A diminutive, highly dignified woman whose unique combination of youthful features and a mature air had made it difficult to guess her age at a glance, received it in her spacious study. She disdainfully left it to be read for last in her current batch of messages. She perused a variety of reports, several of which bore the insignia of the Jianghu Investigative Bureau. Soon she ran out of things to read, and eyed the remaining letter with an unwilling smile.
"More love ballads for the darling Jade Princess?" A voice emerged from the corner of the room. A smooth-shaved, tall man sat in the corner of the study, a halberd leaning against the wall beside him. The woman had earned her nickname on the back of a couple of essays written during her youth on the matters of governance, which left a strong impression on the public when it came to her level of education. Years later, when her husband and son ran off in search of martial strength and never returned, and when practically all power over what remained of their splintered domain ended up in her hands, long after she could no longer be considered a princess at all, the title still stuck in the public eye.
"Oh, shut up." And despite her dignified bearing, out came the voice of a petulant brat. Her bodyguard's shoulders heaved with amusement. Wu Rong rubbed her eyes. "I don't have any time for that woman's antics. I still haven't come up a better way to organize our military."
"I thought you already decided that it was hopeless." The bodyguard noted.
"Maybe it is pointless! Maybe there really is no way to organize the entire animal kingdom under a single coherent military structure. You try to make the rats, the cats, the lions, and the elephants all work together cohesively! And all the while they took on the guise of common men!"
Wu Rong finally braced herself and unrolled Sun Jia's letter. She breathed a sigh of relief when the contents turned out to be something other than the usual middling poetry. Her brow creased with intrigue.
"It's another report about the golden haired one." She narrated. "Worse yet, it seems that she teamed up with the Invincible Blood Sea."
The woman's fingers ran across her face as she pondered the news.
"Well, that's not a surprise, right?" The man behind her pointed out. "They've always been seen traveling in the same parts pretty much ever since the golden one's emerged."
"It was fine for them to loom over each other like that." Wu Rong said. "To me it meant that they were either chasing each other, hiding from each other, or trying to kill each other. That made for a potential beneficial outcome for us. But now that they're working together, it could mean that the eternal vagabond Tao Geming might have formed an ambition in that head of his worth uniting over with another human being for. He was always uncontrollable, but his rampages were ultimately harmless in the big picture. So if we not only have a second Invincible Blood Sea on our hands, but both of them are part of the same team and working towards some villainous goal, who could even contest them anymore?"
Wu Rong arranged some figurines over a map. "Just look at the path she's taking. Look at the people she's targeting! Doesn't it just give you the creeps?"
The bodyguard threw a glance at her machinations, but the red crescent she had formed on the map told him little. Wu Rong explained, "It's like they're circling our Tang, can't you see? Vultures, flying around their future prey."
"Maybe you're being a little paranoid, your majesty? Why would they go out of their way to avoid us in particular? I think, vagabonds that they are, they're just wandering at random." The bodyguard said. "But then again, I'm not the Jade Princess, so why don't you go with your gut on this?"
"There is no way this is the result of a whimsical mind. Tao Geming did something similar before to build himself a reputation, but there's a key difference here - this far in, we still don't know her name. It's not right. I don't like this." Wu Rong jittered restlessly over her map. "What if that Tao Geming has always had a plan all along, and was just waiting for a peer to carry it out with?"
Wu Rong clapped her hands and demanded paper. "First of all, I need to tell the Bureau to back off. Maybe they've been able to fool the girl so far and keep an eye on her, but Tao Geming knows all their tricks. He's on the 'do not pursue' register for a reason. Heads will roll. But we can't leave them completely unattended either. I wonder if they're still in contact with elder Ma... That old beggar is probably their only hope at bloodless espionage."
The Jade Princess wrote down her frantic thoughts. "Maybe we should also call on the Sword Sage..."
"The maniac got really upset the last time you summoned him." The bodyguard reminded. "He just might cut off all ties with you altogether if you do it again for anything short of an apocalypse."
"Right..." Wu Rong shelved the idea for now. She finished her letter. With it sent out, half the world seemed to stir into motion.
...
Back in the Kunlun Mountains, within the bloodstained halls of the He residence, a familiar scene replayed itself in ceaseless perpetuity. The golden haired reaper in robes of stainless white silk wandered the mansion with a sword in hand, her stepless passage leaving a perpetual blood trail in her wake. In her free hand she dragged a disfigured victim along the smooth floor, her masked visage searching around every corner for her next victim.
The yellow glow behind her eye slits had finally glimpsed her next target. Her massive figure smoothly and quickly shuffled closer. Once her next sacrifice was within reach of those grotesquely long arms, she released the dangling corpse and set her bloodied fingers on her artificial face. She peeled back the featureless mask...
...Revealing the girl smiling sweetly underneath.
Bai Guo jolted awake once more, dripping with cold sweat.