Bai Shuo broke the surface with a splash, wiped water from her face, and exhaled.
After the mountain descent, Wu Zhao had led them straight into the Yiwang Palace. No guards. Maids setting out a dinner. The place was quiet in the way only very old power could manage. Wu Lu arranged for everyone to rest and wash up, and none of them argued — they were all people who knew how to be comfortable, Bai Shuo included. She had grown up in the human world with every convenience, and a hot spring after a night of fighting sounded exactly right.
She had wanted to pull Chongzhao aside first, to talk about reaching Hu'er and Ta Niang. The fairy and demon tribes didn't trust outsiders, but Chongzhao had saved an alien child once — there was at least something there to work with. Before she could say a word, Chongzhao had already walked off behind a maid, face blank as stone. Bai Shuo let it go and slid into the water.
Fan Yue hadn't moved more than half a step from her side all evening. Even now, sitting at the edge of the spring, his eyes hadn't fully closed.
Bai Shuo looked at her apprentice's rigid expression and sighed.
This city was strange. The boy needed coaxing. She swam close and poked him once in the cheek.
"Stop worrying, little Wood. Master's lived a hard life. She doesn't die easy."
Fan Yue lowered his eyes. "Master. You're lying. Every one of them has stronger spiritual power than you. Any one of them could kill you."
It was the longest sentence he had ever said to her. Bai Shuo nearly choked on spring water.
"We don't let other people's strength become our fear," she said, and this time there was no coaxing in it — she meant every word. "In this world, I'm more afraid of dying than anyone. That means I'll do whatever it takes to stay alive."
Fan Yue was quiet for a moment. Then, in that careful way of his: "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why are you afraid of dying?"
Bai Shuo smiled at him. The deflection she'd half-formed dissolved before it reached her mouth. She tilted her head back instead, staring up. The sky above this wasteland city was a peculiar shade of blue — deeper than it had any right to be.
She raised her hand toward it, fingers open. The nine clouds were still impossibly far.
"Because I'm looking for someone," she said. "And I can't die before I find him."
"Who?" The young apprentice tilted his head, then stopped when he caught her expression.
He had never seen that look in her eyes before. Not even when she talked about her master, the one she missed with such obvious pain. This was different. There was a light in it — something fixed and old and burning — and some quiet part of him named it before he could.
Obsession.
"I don't know." Bai Shuo turned in the water and smiled, breaking whatever had gathered in the air.
"You don't know?"
"I don't remember his face. His name is gone. All I kept is his back, and the promise I made him." She sank lower in the water, chin nearly touching the surface. "The seal he put on my memory didn't take completely. I don't know why. But the promise stayed."
"Master."
"Mm?"
"Are you looking for someone you love?"
Fan Yue's voice had gone soft. Bai Shuo opened her mouth and said "Of course not" so fast the boy's eyes lit up.
She flicked water at his forehead. "I'm looking for the person who saved my life. I grew up in the human world. When I was small, a monster came for me. That man appeared and killed it, and I made him a promise — that no matter how many years passed, I would find him and repay what he'd done. So I cultivate. To live long enough. To find him." She bent her eyes at Fan Yue. "Which means, dear disciple, I have absolutely no plans to die before that happens."
Fan Yue was quiet. The sulk that had been sitting in his chest all evening loosened without warning. The whole world seemed slightly brighter.
"I'll come with you."
"What?"
"To find him. I'll stay with you."
His voice landed like an axe hitting wood — no hesitation, no softness, just done.
Bai Shuo was still smiling, forming something generous to say about her excellent apprentice, when there was a heavy crash from the tree above and someone hit the ground face-first beside the spring.
Dust rose. They both turned.
Hua Hong lay sprawled in the dirt, grinning up at them with an entirely unrepentant expression.
"Slipped," she announced. "Don't mind me. Keep talking."
She then sat up, crossed her legs, and made no attempt whatsoever to leave.
Bai Shuo stared at her. Her face went flat.
Hua Hong stayed. She settled in like she had always been there and intended to remain indefinitely. When Bai Shuo had first seen the alien princess traveling with them, she had assumed it was for the Wutong Heart Fire. But Lian Rongxian had a golden elixir. The princess of a foreign city had nothing to gain from that fire.
So why was she following them?
Through the rising mist, Bai Shuo studied Hua Hong, then let her gaze slide to Fan Yue beside her.
Not me she's watching. Him.
She knows who Mumu is.
Bai Shuo's chest tightened. This city was riddled with things she didn't understand yet. Hua Hong was sharper than she looked. Could she be trusted?
She made a decision.
"Mumu, go wash up. You'll feel better. You haven't bathed in days —" She glanced at Hua Hong with the most transparent excuse she'd ever offered anyone. "— and there's clearly room."
Fan Yue shook his head. "Not going."
Hua Hong watched the two of them with a private smile, playing with the water, thinking whatever she was thinking.
Bai Shuo took a breath and tried again. "Fine, fine." She glanced at Hua Hong. "At least this ancestor is from a different wing of the palace. It's not actually dangerous."
Fan Yue — who was still in most ways a person who had not yet learned to read the room — stood up and left.
Bai Shuo had been leaning with half her shoulder out of the water, her arm nearly in his face. She hadn't thought anything of it. Fan Yue left so fast Hua Hong was the only one who saw it: his ears had gone the color of iron left in a forge.
"Safe." Bai Shuo exhaled. "Right. Good."
"Safe?" Hua Hong's eyes sharpened, not quite laughing. "Girl. Where exactly is this confidence coming from?"
Before Bai Shuo could answer, Hua Hong grabbed her wrist and pulled her to the spring's edge, close enough that there was nowhere comfortable to look.
Bai Shuo swallowed. Then, without preamble: "You're following Mumu, aren't you."
"Your little apprentice?" Hua Hong glanced toward where Fan Yue had gone, then turned back. She slapped Bai Shuo lightly on the cheek — affectionate, dismissive. "He's a locust tree spirit with simple instincts. What would I want with him?"
"You know who he really is."
The words landed clean. Hua Hong went still for half a breath.
Smart people. No detours. Bai Shuo was too tired for games. "Nanwan brought me into this city to calculate the Wutong Heart Fire's location. But you're a princess of a foreign city — an actual one — and you've been living in a thatched house in Nanhai, raising chickens with us, following a nobody outcast like me around for weeks. I'm broke. I have nothing worth scheming over. Except my apprentice."
Hua Hong stared at her for a long moment. Then she leaned in, lips near Bai Shuo's ear.
"That pig said you were fairly smart. Looking at you now, I'm not so sure. You already know who he is, and you still let him call you master. You must think you have a very long life ahead of you."
Her voice was laced with something between mockery and genuine amusement.
Pig. Long Yizhu. She's from Haoyue Hall.
Bai Shuo felt something settle in her spine — certainty, or close enough. She pushed Hua Hong back, slipped out of her grip, and let herself drift comfortably in the water. "That's my problem to manage." She stretched out her voice to match Hua Hong's tone. "And since you're from Haoyue Palace, that makes us more or less on the same side." A pause. "So — Iron — why exactly were you expelled from the foreign city?"
Hua Hong's eyes narrowed.
Fan Yue had lost his memory. That silly pig clearly knew Hua Hong and had been watching over him in some capacity. But Hua Hong was still a princess of a foreign city, and this foreign city was hiding things. Whether she would turn on them — Bai Shuo genuinely didn't know.
A dark flicker moved through Hua Hong's expression.
Before she could speak, a maid's voice cut through from outside the hot spring enclosure.
"Your Highness, there are guests inside — you cannot enter—"
"Is Sister Wang back? Get out of my way!"
The voice was a child's. The footsteps weren't. Someone crashed through the entrance toward the spring.
Bai Shuo startled and dropped below the waterline with only her eyes showing.
A shadow fell over the spring. She looked up.
Not a child. A young man, clearly over six feet, wearing a tiger-head hat and a rattle tied at his waist. The combination was so absurd it almost registered as funny.
He didn't look at Bai Shuo at all. His face lit up, and he ran straight for Hua Hong.
"Sister Wang!"
A wave of force cracked from Hua Hong's feet. Gravel hit him across the face. Blood welled from the cut immediately. He didn't flinch, just stood there, looking at Hua Hong with the expression of a dog that had been kicked and didn't understand why.
"Get out." The warmth that Hua Hong sometimes carried was completely gone. Her voice was winter.
The young man's face crumpled. He looked at her the way a child looks at something they love that has stopped acknowledging them. He called her name again, soft and lost.
Bai Shuo stared.
This was the crown prince? He looked like someone had left a child's heart inside a man's body and forgotten to update the rest.
Then Hua Yong tilted his head and found Bai Shuo in the water.
The child's expression dropped out of his eyes. What replaced it was cold and calculating, even as his mouth stayed soft.
"Sister Wang... because she's here, you don't want to play with me anymore...?"
Bai Shuo's blood went cold.
What logic — what possible logic — connects those two things? Your sister doesn't want you here. That has nothing to do with me. Why are you looking at me like that?
She didn't get to finish the thought. Hua Yong lunged across the spring and threw a punch straight at her face.
A smell hit her first — rancid, familiar, wrong. She had no time to remember where she knew it from. The fist was already between her eyes.
"Mumu!"
The word tore out before she chose it. Fan Yue didn't make it in time — but the fist didn't land either. Hua Hong's iron rod came from nowhere and swept it wide. Hua Yong hit the ground hard, head bleeding.
Bai Shuo pressed her hand to her chest.
She had half a second of gratitude before Hua Yong scrambled up and rushed her again.
"HELP — your brother has lost his mind —"
Bai Shuo dove under the water. Through the distorted shimmer of the spring she could see Hua Hong with both hands occupied: one tossing clothes toward Bai Shuo, the other driving Hua Yong back with the rod.
Bai Shuo clawed out of the water, threw on her clothes with shaking hands, and stood there trying to remember how to breathe.
Holy — was there a single normal person in this palace? The strange king was strange in an acceptable way. What exactly had happened to this prince?
That smell. Bai Shuo's eyes sharpened. The evil aura from that night on the mountain. Same smell. Exactly the same.
"Master!" Fan Yue appeared at the spring's edge, wet-haired, still dripping — he had clearly just crawled out of whatever pool they'd put him in. His face was frantic.
The alien palace had given him different clothes. Somehow they suited him. Bai Shuo noticed, vaguely, that his face had shifted slightly from when she'd first seen him, though she couldn't name how. She filed it away and shook her head.
"I'm fine, I'm fine. Mumu — where's Hua Hong?"
"That way." He pointed toward Hua Hong's afterimage.
"Take me. Now."
He didn't ask. He stepped out of the spring, got his arm around her waist, and ran.
They found them by following the sounds.
Fan Yue pulled up short outside a courtyard wall and went still. Bai Shuo stumbled into him and grabbed his arm to stop herself falling.
"Mumu?" He pressed a finger to his lips and pointed through the gap in the stones.
In the courtyard: Hua Hong standing over the crown prince, who was barely conscious on the ground, face covered in blood. Wu Zhao had inserted himself between them, holding the prince's lapel, keeping him from the worst of it.
When had the young apprentice learned to eavesdrop at walls? Bai Shuo made a mental note and turned her attention inside.
Hua Hong glanced once at Wu Zhao. She pulled back the rod.
"Can't the palace even control its own madman?"
"Your Highness — whatever else he is, the Crown Prince is your brother. You used to care for him—"
"He's compatible with me?" Hua Hong's voice was flat disgust. "I have no brothers."
She turned to leave. Then she stopped.
In the corner of the courtyard, half-hidden, a red plum tree. Old branches. Just beginning to bloom.
Hua Hong stood very still. Then she walked toward it the way you walk toward something that can still hurt you. She leaned down and breathed it in. When she spoke again her voice had gone rough.
"I burned all the red plums in the palace. Why is this one still here?"
"The princess loved red plum. His Majesty had it planted."
"False kindness." The softness left her face like a light going out.
"Your Highness — His Highness Yong, he—"
Wu Zhao hesitated. Then: "No one wanted to speak of what happened back then. Your Highness was just a child — you were innocent in all of it—"
Hua Hong turned and swung the rod at Hua Yong. Wu Zhao yanked him sideways and caught the blow meant for the prince.
"Innocent." She said the word like it tasted bad. "If he had never existed — if his mother hadn't taken mine's place — she wouldn't have broken. She wouldn't have died delivering a child she was terrified to have." Her hand on the rod was white-knuckled. She wouldn't look at the red plum anymore. "Yong'er. His Highness Yong. An illegitimate child sitting in a stolen nest, and you call him your Crown Prince. If he appears in front of me again, I'll make the Inhuman King sort through what's left."
Outside the wall, Bai Shuo had both hands over her mouth.
She had not been prepared for this.
The Three Realms only knew one son and one daughter of the alien king. She had never heard a word about an illegitimate prince. What had happened here? What had Hua Hong done to get expelled from the city she was born to?
She leaned closer.
Fan Yue's expression changed. He picked her up and moved, and in one step they were back at the hot spring.
"I wasn't finished—"
"Someone was coming. We'd have been found."
"Who? I didn't feel anything."
"Inhumans."
Bai Shuo went rigid. Then let out a long breath and patted her chest. "Good. Good, you got us out. Mumu, you're incredible."
She did not want to lose whatever fragile position they'd managed here. The alien king clearly valued his fool son — if he knew she'd heard any of this, she would never see the outside of this city again.
Do I actually not understand yet? Why does that prince carry an evil aura? Why does the alien king keep him so close?
Bai Shuo reached into the Qiankun bag at her waist and pulled out the turtle shells she'd nearly forgotten about.
She pointed her fingertip at the nearest one. It swayed at first, gently, then began to spin — faster and faster — and when it stopped, the tip pointed directly behind her.
At the palace.
Bai Shuo stared at it.
She had used these shells to track the Wutong Heart Fire. Venus had scattered it over the foreign city, yes — but the shells should have been pointing outward, toward the sky. Not back. Not into the palace walls behind her.
The alien king had lied to her.
Something cold moved through her chest.
In the courtyard, Hua Hong frowned at Hua Yong's unconscious form without expression. Something moved behind her eyes.
"Why does he have an evil aura?"
Wu Zhao's face changed. Before he could answer, someone else stepped into the courtyard — a tall figure, looking at Hua Hong with something that wasn't quite grief and wasn't quite patience.
"You shouldn't have come back."
"Shouldn't have." Hua Hong laughed, and the sound had no warmth in it. "Who would want to come back here. The spirit-lock formation opens tomorrow morning. I'm leaving. Whatever rot is happening in this city — it stopped being my problem a long time ago."
She turned to go. She crossed the courtyard. She reached the entrance.
And walked into a barrier that had been there the entire time.
She spun around, already calculating — and something hit the back of her neck. Her legs went soft. Her face changed as she caught herself.
When?
Her eyes found the red plum in the corner. Her expression went still.
The plum had been poisoned.
Not the room. Not the cup. The plum she had stood over and breathed in without thinking, because it had been her mother's favorite and she had not expected her own grief to be used against her. Hua Yong had not appeared by accident. He had been sent here to pull her into this courtyard. The barrier had been set before she arrived. And the plum —
That was for her specifically.
What a king. What a father.
Hua Hong's eyes filled, not with tears but with fury, and she closed them as she fell.
A pair of hands caught her before she hit the ground.
The alien king's face held nothing.
Wu Zhao looked between Hua Hong and Hua Yong unconscious at the courtyard's edge. He couldn't quite make himself stay silent. "Does it have to be this way, Your Majesty. Her Highness Hong — when she wakes, she won't forgive you."
"She stopped seeing me as her father long ago." The alien king did not look at his daughter. He looked at Hua Yong, limp in Wu Zhao's arms. "This is Yong'er's only chance. Lock her up. When everything settles, send her out of the city."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Back at the hot spring, Bai Shuo put the turtle shells away. Her expression had gone quiet in the way it did when she was thinking fast and hard.
"Mumu. Let's go find Chongzhao."
The Wutong Heart Fire was inside the palace. She needed to tell him now. Nanwan and that fox couldn't be trusted. Kunlun sword cultivators were straightforward — honest in the way only people trained to cut through everything could be.
She grabbed Fan Yue's hand and turned toward the door.
The maids of the Yiwang Palace were already waiting.
"Prince Mu. Miss Bai. The time has come. The other guests have already entered the banquet. Please, follow us."