The fire ca first.
It licked up the wooden beams of Gentle Wind’s hos, devouring them one by one, the smoke so thick it turned the stars to ash. Screams carried through the night, sharp and unrelenting.
I tried to move, to reach for them, but my body stayed rooted. My legs refused to obey.
The Envoys lood in the distance, their silhouettes vast and formless, each step sending tremors through the earth. Cultists sward in their wake, claws flashing. Every face they cut down was familiar; neighbors, friends... people I had sworn to protect.
'It’s a dream,' I told myself. 'It’s only a dream. Just my mind.'
But my mind didn’t listen.
Tianyi appeared in the smoke, wings torn, her small fra staggering as a cultist’s claws carved straight through her. She fell soundlessly, her eyes wide with pain.
“No—!” My voice tore from my throat, but my body wouldn’t move.
Windy’s coils snapped forward next, striking with the fury I knew so well. But the Envoy's blood-soaked dagger caught him, pinning him against the burning earth. His hiss faltered, then stilled.
'Not real. Not real. It’s not what happened.'
But the nightmare pressed on, unrelenting. The Envoys drew closer, their shadows swallowing the light, their presence crushing. My chest constricted, panic clawing up my throat.
I forced myself inward. Away from fire. Away from blood. Away from the nightmare.
I entered the Manifold mory Palace, where I had control of my mindscape. The garden lay at the center, bruised and straining, but alive.
The chaos pressed against the edges of the mindscape, fire bleeding through the cracks, but here I could move. Here I could breathe.
When I opened my eyes again, the sll of cedar filled my nose, not smoke. The faint glow of a lantern edged the room in gold.
The Whispering Wind guesthouse.
No.
The word cut through the lingering terror like a blade. In the nightmare, I had been helpless. Frozen while everything burned around , unable to move, unable to act, unable to save anyone.
But that wasn't what happened. That wasn't who I was.
I pressed my palms flat against the bedding, feeling the solid reality beneath my fingers.
I fought. I survived. These hands had developed a cure when no one else could. These hands could still work, still create, still make a difference.
The nightmare lied.
I sat up, pushing the lingering images away. I needed to move. To prove to myself that the helpless boy in the dream was nothing more than trauma's cruel fiction.
I needed to go sowhere I knew I could act. Where I could make things better.
The Alchemy Pavilion.
I dressed quickly and stepped into the pre-dawn corridors. The sect was still mostly asleep, only a few early risers moving through the halls with quiet purpose. Good. The fewer people to see like this, the better.
But as I walked, sothing shifted inside . Each step away from that suffocating dream-helplessness felt like reclaiming a piece of myself. By the ti I reached the Pavilion doors, my hands had stopped trembling.
The Alchemy Pavilion was alive with motion even at this early hour. Rows of disciples bent over furnaces and ledgers, copying notes, adjusting flas, recording each reaction with tireless precision. The air humd with purpose, the kind of purpose I understood bone-deep.
Elder Zhu stood at the center, surrounded by instructors and Association experts, their voices low but urgent as they debated refinents.
I slipped into the rhythm, inclining my head to the other alchemists as I walked past them.
Palm pressed to herb, coaxing its essence free. Feeding it into the seeds. Balancing fire and flow with careful precision.
I worked through three batches without lifting my eyes. The rhythm returned easily, muscle mory doing what my mind refused to. Every scrape of mortar, every hiss of steam, was sothing solid. Sothing small enough to be contained.
Around , voices moved.
Two refiners debated whether to divert the next run of stabilizers up north. A steward muttered about caravan delays. Soone cursed the marsh roads again. None of it was ant for . It was just the sound of people trying to solve a problem too big for any one table.
I kept my eyes on the fla.
“—northern carriers are requesting double allotnt,” a voice said. “They’re burning through antidotes faster than projected, and our stock of licorice root is running out.”
The work steadied . Each extraction, each asured infusion was sothing I could control.
“That’s because they’re treating twice the expected amount,” another replied. “The projections didn’t account for—”
“It's because of Pingyao,” a third voice cut in, irritated. “That’s skewing everything.”
I exhaled through my nose.
Pingyao wasn’t skewing anything. Was there a miscommunication? I knew I ntioned it to the Verdant Lotus; had it not reached the broader coalition that the village was destroyed?
Stolen novel; please report.
I told myself to stay silent. That this wasn’t my lane. That I’d already said too much in rooms like this.
But my mouth opened anyway.
“Pingyao shouldn’t be on your chart.”
The words were quiet. Flat. I didn’t turn when I said them.
A pause followed.
Soone cleared their throat. “What?”
“It fell,” I said, still asuring heat. “Weeks ago. There should be no supply going there. All the survivors were evacuated to Gentle Wind.”
A steward frowned at the map. “Then the northern overuse isn’t Pingyao?"
“Possibly displacent from other sources; like sect refugees,” soone suggested. “The smaller halls likely pulled their people back north when the outer trade routes collapsed.”
I should have stopped there.
I didn’t.
The cauldron hissed as I dialed the fla down a notch. My hands kept working even as my attention drifted outward, tethered by habit.
“The shortage still won’t resolve,” another alchemist said, tapping the margin of a supply sheet. “Even if we correct the charting, licorice root is the choke point. Half the analgesics rely on it for smoothing the reaction.”
“That’s not negotiable,” another replied. “Without it, the burn rate—”
“You can cut it.”
Several heads turned.
I finally looked up.
“You can reduce the licorice,” I repeated, quieter now. “Not remove it. Replace the bulk with corydalis tuber.”
A few brows knit. Soone clicked their tongue. “That’s weaker. Less stable.”
“Yes,” I agreed. Letting my mind run in multiple directions to recall the Association's recipe for the antidote, which had been heavily modified to make more efficient. “And it doesn’t round the pain the sa way. But it still blunts it enough to keep patients functional. More importantly, it doesn’t compete with respiratory tonics or antitoxins for supply.”
I lifted the ladle, letting the brew roll once before setting it aside. My mind spun with more calculations, discarding dozens of theoretical recipes before I finished my concoction. “If you keep licorice as a binder instead of a base, you stretch the stock threefold. It won’t be comfortable. But it will be survivable.”
A person began scribbling, muttering calculations under his breath. “Threefold… assuming local processing…”
“You’ll need to adjust dosage timing,” I added, already regretting that I was still talking. “Corydalis peaks faster. If clinics stagger intake, you avoid the worst of the drop-off.”
Soone asked, “How do you know?”
I hesitated. Then shrugged. “Northern villages use it when nothing else is available. I learned it before the plague.”
Tokens shifted on the map. Licorice stocks were circled, annotated, partially relieved of their burden. The conversation flowed on without pausing for , and I let it.
I returned my attention to the bench.
It lasted maybe a minute.
“Then what about the upper valleys?” a voice asked sowhere to my left.
I stiffened despite myself. A mont of pause before I answered as best I could.
Then another question followed, this one about patrol losses near the ridge forests. I answered that too, adding that it housed a small squadron of cultists, and it was easy to assu that survivors were lingering and ambushing them. It wasn’t advice so much as context. That was how I justified it to myself.
A third question arrived, overlapping the second. Sothing about supply burn rates, about why analgesics were disappearing faster than projected in the westallotnts. I found myself explaining that the numbers didn’t account for refugees moving through instead of settling, that pain relief was being used to keep people walking rather than healing them.
Another voice chid in. Then another.
I answered without looking up, without noticing when I’d stepped away from the bench entirely. I described the northern forests as I rembered them from my ti escorting survivors to my village, and where cultists were most likely to move because the land itself erased their traces.
At so point, the conversation shifted from questions to confirmations.
I heard my na used less as a call and more as a reference. As Kai ntioned. As Kai observed. The way it happens when a discussion quietly reorients itself around a single axis without anyone formally acknowledging it.
Only then did I realize my hands were empty.
The fla behind had been left unattended long enough to cool to coals. The cauldron was finished—perfectly so, by muscle mory alone—but I hadn’t noticed when I’d stopped tending it. I was standing at the edge of the central table now, eyes moving across maps instead of asurents, tracking flow instead of temperature.
The room felt different.
Less like an alchemical hall. More like a war council that had forgotten to clear away its furnaces.
I wasn’t giving orders. I was just... shoring up weak places, smoothing rough assumptions, redistributing weight so the structure wouldn’t collapse under its own urgency. The sa ntal rhythm I’d honed over countless Tianqi duels with Xu Ziqing, spotting imbalances several moves before they appeared.
By the ti soone ntioned that the stock for activated charcoal wouldn’t stretch far enough, I responded without hesitation, suggesting a substitution with crushed snowwillow bark. Weaker, yes—but abundant, and sufficient if expectations were adjusted. It wouldn’t solve everything. But it would buy ti.
“We can accelerate reagent acquisition if the Association releases reserve credit,” a clerk said. “But it’ll strain us later.”
“It won’t,” another voice replied. “Sumr Sun has agreed to underwrite the difference.”
That made my hand still.
“They’re absorbing transport and refinent losses,” the clerk continued. “The heir, Bai Hua authorized it himself. Said their partners owe them favors from the last drought.”
Of course he did.
“And they’re doing more than funding,” soone else added. “Sumr Sun’s alchemists have been working with the scouts. Developing scent profiles; residual markers unique to demonic cultivators. Oils that react faintly in their presence.”
I closed my eyes for half a breath.
People I hadn’t seen since the Gauntlet, fighting the sa war from angles I’d never stood in.
The thought settled strangely in my chest. I picked up another vial and began labeling it, hands steadier than when I first started.
But the illusion of calm didn’t last.
The Pavilion doors slid open, and a disciple in Verdant Lotus green hurried inside, bowing quickly before stepping forward. His robes were dust-streaked, his eyes ringed with fatigue.
“Report,” Elder Zhu said at once, straightening from the bench.
The disciple swallowed, his voice tight but steady. “We’ve consulted the magistrate’s archival records against the current sky charts. Cross-referencing with the Association’s notes on past cult rites, the conclusion is clear: they’re preparing for the eclipse. When the moon devours the sun, yin will overwhelm yang—an imbalance perfect for a ritual of this scale.”
A ripple passed through the Pavilion. Pestles stilled mid-grind. The low murmur of scribes faltered. Even the bubbling furnaces seed to hiss louder, as if the very air recoiled.
I’ve seen eclipses before. I’d watched the village gather outside when the sky darkened. I’d laughed nervously with them, pretending not to feel the way the air itself seed to hold its breath.
I’d read how certain refinents grew unstable under eclipsed skies. Recipes that demanded balance between yin and yang faltered when one overwheld the other. A rare few recipes even sought those hours deliberately, using the extre yin to anchor pills that cooled the blood or stilled fiery temperants. But modern alchemical recipes didn't rely on them as often anymore.
Elder Zhu’s gaze sharpened. “How long?”
“Six days at most,” the ssenger said. His bow deepened, as though apologizing for the words themselves.
Six days.
The number landed like a stone in my chest.
Never enough. Ti had never been enough. But six days felt like nothing. Against a cult that had been burrowing its roots for centuries, what could be done in less than a week?
Murmurs spread, sharp and anxious.
Elder Zhu cut across them. “And the base? Any progress from the scouts?”
The disciple shook his head, sha flickering in his eyes. “Little to report. The teams have searched the western valleys and the southern marshes, but there are no signs. It’s as if the cult has vanished.”
A cold silence settled.
We couldn’t win this with dicine alone. Not with weapons of alchemy, nor with pacts between sects, not if we didn’t know where to strike.
I felt the familiar ache of absence then—the phantom tug where the Interface would have once given a quest, a nudge, a breadcrumb to follow. But that voice was gone. The silence it left behind was deafening.
I looked at the faces around . Elder Zhu’s weathered calm. Mingi’s hawk-sharp eyes. Instructors muttering theories, Association alchemists scratching frantic notes.
For the first ti, I realized the burden wasn’t only mine to shoulder.
I drew in a breath. Split my thoughts using the Manifold mory Palace.
I let them run in parallel, weaving and colliding, testing each possibility like sparks striking stone.
'Six days.'
If that was all the ti we had, then every mont had to count.
The Dawnsoul Bloom on the table pulsed faintly, its golden glow steady as a heartbeat. I'd been so focused on its curative properties that I'd nearly forgotten its other trait—the one that had made it so valuable to the cultists in the first place.
Hunger. The ability to sense and devour specific essences.
"Perhaps we can make a way to find them."
The words cut through the murmured discussions like a blade. Every head turned toward .
Elder Zhu's brows lifted. "Explain."
I stepped closer to the Dawnsoul Bloom, my hand hovering over its petals. "The scouts are searching with their eyes, looking for signs the cultists left behind. But what if we could track the corruption they carry instead?"
I gestured to the bloom. "This plant can sense and hunger for demonic essence. I—no, we've been training it to devour plague corruption, but that's just one form of demonic influence. The problem is, with the Athyst Plague spread across half the province, there's too much background corruption. The bloom would be overwheld; it couldn't distinguish between residual plague and active cultist presence."
Understanding began to dawn in Elder Zhu's eyes, but I continued before he could speak.
"But what if we could teach it to recognize a specific type of demonic influence? The kind that cultists carry. The kind that would be saturating their base."
Elder Mingi leaned forward, her cane tapping once against the stone. "You're proposing to condition the bloom to distinguish between different types of demonic essence?"
"Exactly." I reached into my storage ring, producing a small vial of dark, viscous liquid. The undiluted essence of a Bloodsoul Bloom. "This is pure demonic essence. If I can attune the Dawnsoul Bloom to hunger specifically for this signature..."
Elder Zhu’s eyes narrowed, thoughtful. “And can you do it?”
Dozens of gazes pinned in place. I clenched my jaw.
“Yes,” I said at last. “But not with every seed. They’re still fragile, too prone to corruption. They'll likely revert to their original forms if I feed them this. Only the mature Dawnsoul Bloom has the stability and the bond with to endure the conditioning.”
A hush followed, weighty and expectant. The mature Dawnsoul Bloom I'd brought back from Gentle Wind, stood at the center of the table. If there was any chance to shape its hunger, it lay with this one.
Elder Mingi tilted her head, eyes sharp. “Then we will treat it as our keystone. All efforts will turn to ensuring its survival.”
“Six days,” Elder Zhu reminded. His voice cut through the bustle, low but steady. “Every refinent must serve that limit. No wasted steps.”
The murmur of assent rolled like a tide.
I exhaled, steadying my hands over the Bloom. The nightmares still clung to , whispering of fire and failure. But here, with every alchemist and elder leaning in, I felt sothing stronger than dread.
If we could make the Bloom into a beacon, then maybe...
Maybe the nightmares I had could just stay as that.
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