Volume 3: Sad Snow Ridge
Cai Zhao was eight years old when the silk shop across the street changed hands because the owner's son had gambled it away. That was when she understood: everything in the world needed an heir. From a roadside sugar stall to the Jade Emperor's throne, it made no difference.
The Qingque Sect's rule was simple — competence first. No matter whose son you were, if your martial arts fell short, the seat was not yours. The eldest prince's graceful abdication looked selfless on the surface. It was actually a hard lesson for everyone watching.
The Qingque Sect led the six sects of Beichen. Outside, the Demon Cult kept its eyes sharp. Inside, the brother sects smiled pleasantly and meant none of it. A weak sect leader meant the Demon Cult would smell blood by nightfall and be sharpening blades by morning.
Even if the Demon Cult somehow swore off violence entirely, there were still the other Beichen descendants to consider — those who admired the sheer scenery of thousand-foot river cliffs and might be happy to relocate certain rivals to Muwei Palace permanently. Cai Zhao suspected Song Jinshu would be first in line to volunteer.
Luoying Valley, by contrast, was refreshingly relaxed. Sons were sons. Daughters were daughters. Neither had to fight for it. There was no single path, and heaven had a soft spot for simple-hearted children.
Guangtianmen, Siqimen, and Peiqiong Villa each inherited differently — same problem, three wildly different solutions shaped by two centuries of trial, blood, and bad decisions.
Every Guangtianmen sect leader carried two clear life ambitions. First: grow the sect. Second: take as many wives as possible and produce as many sons as possible. More sons meant better odds. If your wife's family happened to be powerful and well-connected, you learned to be slightly more discreet about the second ambition.
Song Shijun, for instance, had three sons in one attempt — enough for himself, with one left over to send to Qingque Sect to compete for Guoguo's hand. Song Maozhi had a foul temper but respectable martial courage. In battles where everyone else came out missing limbs, he lost only one toe.
His wife, Lady Qinglian — proud, sharp-minded, the sort of woman who made rooms feel smaller — had to pinch her nose and accept that her husband had gotten a maidservant pregnant before their wedding. She even performed the virtue of supporting Song Xiuzhi's upbringing. For one reason: the Guangtianmen succession required sons, and she intended to win.
This dynamic had kept Guangtianmen's inner court ferociously, creatively violent for over two hundred years. Every wife and concubine wanted her son on the seat. The larger the pool of candidates, the higher any one woman's odds — which made every successive sect leader's domestic life what could only be described as extraordinarily busy.
The ladies pursued it like a campaign. Anyone who dared share philosophy or recite poetry at the wrong moment was expected to set it aside and get to work.
Song Yuzhi's grandfather, old Sect Leader Song, died at fifty-three having fathered over a dozen children. Only one son, Song Shijun, was left standing at the end. The Qingque Sect had ten generations of leaders across two hundred years. Guangtianmen also had ten — but for entirely different reasons.
They had driven the cattle into the ground.
If Guangtianmen's history read like a ribald comedy of domestic warfare, Siqimen's read like a bloodsoaked survival record. Guangtianmen was strangled by wives competing through their sons, but at least there was a floor — whoever produced the strongest heir won, and the losing sons had branch halls to retreat to. Guangtianmen was rich enough to absorb its own chaos.
Siqimen had no such floor.
Siqimen did not believe in father-and-son unity or brotherhood alliances. It believed that an uprooted weed still grows back in spring. Brothers killed brothers. The mild version was exile. The serious version was fire and murder. Only one person could hold Siqimen's power in the end.
Peiqiong Villa was civilized by comparison.
From its founding, the family rules stated clearly: any direct Zhou branch descendant of good character could compete for the landlord's seat. This sounded chaotic at a glance but was manageable in practice.
The real troublemakers at Peiqiong Villa were the sisters-in-law. A wife spent thirty years leaning on her husband and thirty years leaning on her son. If she had spent half her life as the villa owner's wife, watched her husband die, and then found herself displaced by a sister-in-law she had never acknowledged — well. The Zhou family had its own particular flavor of internal conflict.
Strangely, the Zhou line had produced only sons for three consecutive generations. The most capable cousins, Zhou Yuqian and Zhou Yukun, were three branches removed from the direct line and posed no real threat.
And then there was Taichuguan.
When Cai Changfeng returned from years of wandering the martial world, he found the graves of his brothers and sisters-in-law already covered in grass. He had to ask around before learning that his nieces and nephews had been taken in by the Zhou family. He said, with something close to admiration, that Taichuguan's inheritance method was the most balanced he had seen — not too exclusive, not too open, free of blood-soaked betrayal, and firm enough to uphold both cultivation and character.
Given the spectacular disasters of the Beichen ancestors' ceremony two hundred years running, however, Taichuguan's record was not entirely unblemished either.
"If you want to discuss the Demon Cult, then discuss it properly. What are we dragging Beichen into this for?" Cai Zhao lifted her head from the steaming bath tub, warm shoulders gleaming above the waterline.
She was furious. "Also — I am bathing. Why are you in my room?!"
The young man seated at the table frowned faintly. "There's a full screen between us. I can't see anything."
The room was divided by four large embroidered screens. On the left: warm mist, wet heat, the faint scent of cedar. On the right: a bright window, clean light, one table, one chair, one insufferably composed young man.
"Do you understand basic decency?" Cai Zhao's voice rose. "Men and women are not the same — do you not know this? I am bathing in here. Seeing me or not seeing me is not the point! When I walked into Third Senior Brother's room without knocking, he was only in a mid-length shirt and nearly fell over himself scrambling for a robe — look at how carefully he guards propriety. And you are really just—"
"What did you say?" Mu Qingyan's expression cooled immediately. "A grown man, dressed properly, in his own quarters — and you walked straight in without warning. Do you not understand the difference between men and women? A person your age should know better than to skip basic precaution."
Cai Zhao sank headfirst back into the water.
"You are a man," she said, voice muffled, then surfacing with a glare. "Why don't you take precautions?"
"I'm different." Mu Qingyan was entirely calm, entirely certain of himself. "I have no distractions." He paused, and his tone shifted to something more pointed. "Song Yuzhi, on the other hand — formally engaged and still tangling himself up with other women. Hard to know what he's thinking."
Cai Zhao, who owed Song Yuzhi a debt of gratitude, felt compelled to defend him. "Third Brother doesn't have feelings for Senior Sister Lingbo."
"Then why not break the engagement before another woman entered the picture? Making her wait until someone else appeared first — that's foolish."
Mu Qingyan's jade-pale fingers pressed lightly on the yellow pear-wood desk. A clean palm print appeared in the grain. "Going forward — if I hear you've been alone with another man without proper care, don't blame me for taking measures."
Cai Zhao rested her chin on the edge of the tub and sighed at the ceiling.
She had run into him at the foot of Jiuli Mountain early that morning and had not wanted to deal with him since. He had followed without a word, not asking for anything, until they had left Qingque Town and reached the fork in the road. Only then had he suggested — mildly, reasonably — that Cai Zhao take Qian Gongzi to rest, bathe, and change clothes.
Young Master Qian needed no convincing. The swill bucket had been emptied, but a full night on the ground left its own particular odor. His presence was spiritually exhausting.
Cai Zhao herself was covered in dried blood and sweat and running on nothing. To put her at ease, Mu Qingyan had even offered to take one of Xia Yinggu's poisons as a guarantee of good behavior.
"Why exactly would you take my poison?" she had asked, thoroughly lost.
He had explained with the patience of someone addressing a slow student: "If I decided to cause trouble while you slept, or take Qian Gongzi quietly, you would have no recourse. So you hold the poison. I take the antidote when you've confirmed everything is safe. That way, both sides have something to lose."
He had watched her blank expression and added, as if thinking aloud, "Does Luoying Valley not keep such things prepared? With your mother's talent, it wouldn't be difficult."
"...When I go home," Cai Zhao had said slowly, "I will suggest it to her."
The monastery was tucked into a bamboo grove — cool and quiet, only birdsong and wind through hollow stalks. A white-bearded old servant waited by the entrance without a word. Cai Zhao noticed that Mu Qingyan addressed him as Uncle Cheng, and that the warmth in his voice was unguarded in a way she had not seen before.
Young Master Qian attempted to walk directly to the main quarters. Mu Qingyan redirected him with a flat-palmed strike to the ground and had Uncle Cheng drag him to the woodshed to wash.
Cai Zhao's arrangements were considerably better.
The inner room held a waist-high confit tung-wood tub filled with steaming water, a full set of clean clothes and shoes folded neatly nearby, and a bed that looked softer than anything she had slept on in weeks.
The only flaw was that Mu Qingyan would not leave.
"Fine, fine — and then I'll tell you that the Demon Cult's leadership is short." Cai Zhao waved a hand and sank back into the water.
The truth was more specific than that. The Demon Cult's founding leader had been surnamed Mu. Most leaders across the past two hundred years had been surnamed Mu.
Simply put, like the wonton shop Cai Zhao frequented near the east gate, the Demon Cult was a family business.
But family businesses had a recurring problem: the next generation.
By the third Demon Cult leader, the issue had already arrived. His only son was gentle and quiet, the kind of person who made observers wince. Handing him the leadership would give the six Beichen sects something to laugh about for a decade. Handing it to someone outside the Mu line felt like a betrayal of everything the founder had built.
So the third leader invented something he called the adopted son system.
He selected an orphan — exceptional ability, loyal to the bone, the kind of child who could be shaped. He raised him carefully, and alongside martial instruction, steadily instilled one belief above all others: gratitude outweighs everything. When the leader died, the adopted son would serve the biological son as Protector King, and when a capable grandson came of age, power would transfer cleanly.
"How did he know his grandson would turn out capable?" Cai Zhao asked. "What if the grandson was gentle and quiet too?"
A strange expression crossed Mu Qingyan's face. "The Mu family has never produced two consecutive weak heirs. That was true even before Nie Hengcheng."
Cai Zhao sat up straighter. "Is Nie Hengcheng Mu's adopted son?"
"Yes."
Before Nie Hengcheng, three adopted sons had served as regent kings. Two were genuinely loyal. Both had grown attached to power over the years and yet, when their adoptive brothers' sons came of age, they stepped back according to the rules. The third had been reluctant — but after marrying his daughter to the new leader, he retired to the countryside. By all accounts, he spent his later years happily watching his grandchildren grow.
Nie Hengcheng was different.
Nie Hengcheng had been adopted by Mu Qingyan's great-grandfather. Sharp and capable from boyhood, he had begun assisting his indecisive adoptive father by fifteen. When the adoptive father died, he continued serving the frail adoptive brother — Mu Qingyan's grandfather. When that grandfather and grandmother both died young, Mu Zhengming, Mu Qingyan's father, was not yet ten years old.
The Demon Cult demanded strength. Its members were formidable, volatile, and could not be held together by a child's hands, let alone a child's name. So Nie Hengcheng, adopted son of the Mu line, took power as acting leader for the first time.
Power the first time. And then the second. And then it was simply his.
"What about your father?" Cai Zhao asked. "Where is he now?"
"He died four years ago."
Cai Zhao pulled back from the edge of the tub. A moment passed. "Then Nie Hengcheng didn't kill him? I had assumed — that Nie Hengcheng was too unwilling to give back the seat, and..."
"Nie Hengcheng was certainly unwilling," Mu Qingyan said. "But he never harmed my father."
Cai Zhao blinked. She didn't follow.
"Because my father didn't want the seat."
A small sound escaped her. "Was Lingzun's health poor?"
"No. My father was healthy, well-cultivated, and no pushover in a fight. He simply fell in love with wandering. The scheming, the killing, the politics of power — he genuinely had no appetite for any of it."
One year, a young Chang Haosheng had followed the heroes of the six Beichen sects into the assault on Huangdao Road in the Netherworld. After half a day of brutal combat in near total darkness, he had stumbled off course and wandered until he came upon Mu Zhengming in a mountain hollow, raising cranes and feeding a great roc.
Mu Zhengming said nothing of the war below. He simply pointed Chang Haosheng toward a way out, left a bottle of wound medicine on the ground at his feet, and walked back into the forest without a backward glance.
"Afterward, Chang Daxia must have found my father a few more times," Mu Qingyan said.
"So that's how it is." Cai Zhao let out a breath. "I wondered how Chang Daxia could trust you."
"Chang Daxia always remembered my father's friendship. My father once told me: if you are ever in real need, go to Chang Daxia. He will help." A pause. "Though Chang Daxia said on his deathbed that the destruction of his family was none of my doing — I know the truth. I brought disaster to the Chang family. When I return to the sect, the one responsible will have his eyes gouged, his tongue cut, his tendons pulled, his skin stripped."
Mu Qingyan's voice did not rise. It did not need to.
Cai Zhao knew the difference between a curse spoken in anger and a sentence delivered as fact. This was the latter.
She pulled her knees to her chest and was quiet for a moment. "Your great-grandfather's son was too gentle, his body too frail, and your father was indifferent to power altogether. That adds up to three generations where Nie Hengcheng held authority. Three generations. Long enough for ambition to stop feeling like ambition and start feeling like a natural right."
Mu Qingyan tilted his head back. The line of his neck was very still. "...Sometimes I think — if my father had wanted the seat, if he had fought for it instead of retreating to the mountains, how many lives would be different."
His voice was even, but not quite empty. "Nie Hengcheng might never have practiced that forbidden skill. Wu Yuanying might not have spent a decade being tortured. Luo Yuanrong might have lived his whole life beside the person he loved. The three Qingfeng elders might still be alive, still checking each other's worst impulses." He paused. "Heroine Cai Pingshu might not have died so soon."
The water went still.
Then Cai Zhao spoke, softly. "I don't think you can blame your father. It wasn't his fault. He simply couldn't act against his own nature."
Behind the screen, Mu Qingyan was motionless.
He had expected her agreement.
"It's like my aunt," Cai Zhao continued. "Old Lady Min always said she had no talent for cooking, no grace, no sense of domestic virtue — that she couldn't even manage to stay home properly and wait for her betrothed to return. She wanted to compete, to lead, to be first at everything."
"But my aunt can cook. She can sew. She tried, honestly, to live that way — and she couldn't do it. She told me once that she had been bold since she was small, that when she pictured that quiet domestic life stretching ahead of her, she would wake up from nightmares sweating through her clothes. So one night she stole Uncle Lei's clothes and slipped out before dawn. Fortunately, Uncle Zhou, when he eventually understood what she felt, was able to accept it."
"For Lingzun, being Demon Cult leader would have been what being a housewife was for my aunt — a slow suffocation. Something that would drive him out of his own skin." A breath. "So don't blame your father. I think he must have been a good person. Chang Daxia's trust in you didn't come from a single favor. It came from Lingzun showing him, over time, that you were worth trusting."
The bamboo grove rustled faintly outside.
Then Mu Qingyan said, quietly: "Zhao Zhao. Can I move the screen and come to your side."
He wanted to see her face. The expression that went with those words, the look of someone who had just smoothed something that had been knotted for years.
A ladle of hot water struck the embroidered screen with a sharp crack.
"Get out!!"