Meng Yi

  After her search group had been sughtered by Old Xian’s corrupted abominations, Meng Yi had been carried to the portal by birds, and it had taken them hours of flying to get there.

  Pan Cai ran the distance in mere minutes.

  While her movement technique was only a beast rank, the woman’s peasant rank Qi Realm cultivation powered it to heights that left her eating the distance faster than even Xiuying could have when using the Surefooted Steps of the Keen Tiger.

  Unlike the Vice Commander’s sage rank technique though, the Dash of The Deer had no space-bending quality to it.

  When Xiuying used her technique, reality shifted itself to her benefit in wild, incomprehensible ways, bringing her where she wanted to be in the blink of an eye. For Pan Cai, that effect was absent, likely a limitation of the technique’s low rank.

  Pan Cai’s movement technique simply made her faster, meaning that to get pces, she had to physically traverse all of the intervening space, and while the woman’s qi offered some measure of protection from the buffeting winds moving at speeds faster than in a hurricane, Meng Yi quickly came to appreciate that a Qi Realm cultivator’s arm was not at all a comfortable means of travel.

  A few minutes the journey may have sted, but by the time the older cultivator deposited them at the manor, in front of the shocked servants, Meng Yi felt like one giant bruise.

  Even Xiuying was worse for wear, though Meng Yi suspected that the woman’s prior exhaustion did not help matters.

  Despite their pain, both women’s focus shifted to the swirling mass of Wild Qi lighting up the sky many li away.

  “Wait,” Xiuying said after a moment, disbelief in her tone. “Did it…”

  “It stopped,” Meng Yi said, putting voice to the impossible truth they could both sense. “Qigang stopped it.”

  He’d said he would, and Meng Yi hadn’t doubted him. But it was one thing to believe a person when they told you they would do the impossible, and it was another thing entirely to actually see them live up to their words.

  “He can’t do that forever though,” Xiuying said. “He said himself that he can’t do it for long, so we need to start figuring out how to get in touch in with the Suppression Bureau and light a fire in their asses.”

  Yes, they did. But the question was how.

  Qigang always talked about how resourceful and competent she was, and while it was nice that he thought so, Meng Yi knew she wasn’t. She only appeared that way because he made easy requests of her.

  Until today.

  That said, as out of her depth as she was, she would be a failure as a manger if she didn’t rise to the occasion.

  Especially with her Young Master out there risking the unknown horrors of Wild Qi to protect a pce that was more her home than his.

  “We need to go into town,” she said. “I need to talk Magistrate Qin’s assistants. They should be able to point us in the right direction.”

  “No need,” Pan Cai said, and her qi poured out to surround Meng Yi, Xiuying, and herself, like a dome.

  “What are you doing?” Xiuying asked, not quite wary, but certainly curious.

  Meng Yi was curious too. What was the woman doing?

  Despite having met her twice before, Meng Yi knew next to nothing about Pan Cai besides that she obviously thought little of both her and Qigang as he’d been before the Plum.

  Now however, a lot had changed, and Meng Yi wasn’t sure of even that anymore.

  Ignoring Xiuying’s question, Pan Cai held out her hand, and a noble rank item appeared in the woman’s grasp.

  It was a small box of rich, dark wood, barely big enough to fill the cultivator’s palm.

  It had no artificial designs, simply the natural ebbs and swirls that pattern wood, but it was beautiful for it.

  Noble rank qi leaked from the box in minuscule amounts, and Meng Yi felt her cultivation thrum with a dangerous thrill as it tasted it.

  Pan Cai opened the box.

  Noble rank qi exploded from within, pouring out only to sm into the older woman’s qi cocooning them.

  Curious, Meng Yi peered into the box from where she stood and found it half-full of a blue powder.

  Meng Yi had no clue what it was or did.

  Instead of asking however, she stayed quiet and watched.

  Pan Cai took a pinch of the powder, and as she lifted it up, she said, almost like an afterthought, “Brace yourselves.” Then she sprinkled the powder into the air.

  “Matriarch Xian Qi,” she commanded, and the fine particles of the powder suddenly froze in midair.

  A moment passed. Then two. Then ten. But nothing changed, the powder simply hung.

  A spark of lightning fshed through the particles suddenly. Once, twice, and then the Thunder Dragon Goddess graced Meng Yi’s insignificant existence with Her presence.

  Meng Yi felt her knees sm against the ground.

  Her presence was like a hammer blow to the gut, forcing out every thought, every breath, and keeping her from drawing in new ones.

  Every sense was overloaded, every fiber of her being buzzing with the energy of a thousand lightning storms as Her presence surrounded Meng Yi like a thick, wet bnket. Suffocating, choking.

  Her cultivation tried to push back. Tried to expel the Other from her being. It was too much. Too potent. Her qi network could not survive this. Then something sparked. Something with a warm glow, and her cultivation lit up with it, and suddenly, Meng Yi stood at the heart of a massive web of silver and gold, threads running off into eternity.

  The Thunder Dragon Goddess stilled, then She turned, and for the first time, truly focused Her gaze on Meng Yi.

  The weight of it crushed down on her, but Meng Yi felt it roll through her body and into the web she stood on, leaving it thrumming with a deep constant bass.

  The Thunder Dragon Goddess came down then, scales of magnificent sapphire with arcs of silver lightning rolling across Her glorious serpentine form.

  Slowly She descended, form so huge Meng Yi knew that if She stretched out, Her tail would reach out into infinity, much like Meng Yi’s web.

  Down and down the Thunder Dragon Goddess descended, until finally, like a pnet hanging over an ant, She halted and floated, body coiled and massive horned head, rger than a thousand mountains, pushed close until Meng Yi could reach out and touch Her nose.

  She didn’t. She could barely move.

  Two gargantuan eyeballs of gold peered into her, observing depths that the young woman suspected that even she herself may not have had the privilege to see, and Meng Yi swallowed, letting this being so far beyond her there was no comparison to make do as She would.

  “You are the mortal peasant Cai spoke of,” the Thunder Dragon Goddess said, voice soft and feminine. Meng Yi’s soul shuddered with its weight.

  With as much grace as she could manage in that moment, Meng Yi went down to her knees.

  “This one is Meng Yi, Honoured Matriarch,” she said. “I manage the estate of Young Master Qigang.”

  The Thunder Dragon Goddess said nothing for a time, simply watching her. Then finally: “This was careless of him. Weaving into you in this way. Promising... but reckless.”

  Meng Yi stilled, then, after a moment, forced herself to calm.

  Several more moments of silence followed, then the Thunder Dragon Goddess said, “I will send Weiju to you. When this is done, you and Qigang will come to me.”

  Meng Yi did not know who Weiju was, and the thought of meeting this being, especially after how clearly She’d seen through her, was terrifying in ways she couldn’t articute, so Meng Yi bowed deeper.

  “As you command, Honoured Matriarch.”

  Meng Yi felt the attention of the Thunder Dragon Goddess begin to shift from her, and even before she realized she was about to, she said, “Can you help him?”

  Attention returned to her, and Meng Yi felt her spine near buckle with its weight and the appreciation of the enormity of what she’d just done.

  For a servant of her insignificant level to address one such as this without prompting…

  People lose their heads for less.

  No matter though, she’d done it. Nothing could take that back now.

  Meng Yi remained on her knees, waiting for—and dreading—an answer.

  “I am,” the Thunder Dragon Goddess said, and with a speed near instant, Her qi retreated and disappeared, leaving behind nothing but a strange tingle in the air.

  Meng Yi gasped with relief, the constant thrumming of her web slowing to a still.

  The world began to fade around her, and with a blink she found herself back on the front yard of the manor, Xiuying and Pan Cai watching her.

  “Are you okay?” Xiuying asked her, features twisted with worry.

  Meng Yi nodded, breathing too heavy to allow speech. She felt like she’d just run up a hill with a vilge on her back.

  “What are the Honoured Matriarch’s directives?” Pan Cai asked, face the stern, unyielding mask Meng Yi was familiar with.

  She tried to answer, failed, then swallowed and tried again. “She said she would send someone named Weiju to us.”

  “Who’s that?” Xiuying asked.

  “The fifth child and fourth daughter of the Honoured Matriarch,” Pan Cai informed.

  Oh.

  Meng Yi and Xiuying met eyes and shared a thought. That was a very important person to send here.

  Pan Cai was one thing, but one of Qigang’s siblings? That was a whole other matter entirely.

  “This Weiju, is she with the Suppression Division?” Xiuying asked.

  “Not to my knowledge,” Pan Cai said, and both Xiuying and Meng Yi frowned.

  “But she can help us get them here quicker, right?” Xiuying asked.

  “Perhaps, but I don’t know,” Pan Cai said. “I serve the Honoured Matriarch,” she added by means of expnation, then her attention shifted to Meng Yi. “Did you inform the Honoured Matriarch of our urgency?”

  Meng Yi blinked. She had in fact not informed her, but she hadn’t needed to. It had been clear that she knew.

  She had even made the comment about helping.

  Meng Yi opened her mouth to expin this, when she got the strangest feeling of her life.

  Something tugged on her soul, and she felt it separate from her body, traverse thousands of li in an instant, and come to a sudden halt before a woman she had never seen before.

  The woman was incredibly beautiful, dressed in finery worth more than Meng Yi had ever owned, and she bore an expression that suggested that she was currently feeling an immense amount of irritation.

  This woman was also a noble rank cultivator at the peak of Qi Realm.

  “Who are you and why has my mother instructed me to contact you?” the woman, who Meng Yi didn’t need to be told was Xian Weiju, demanded.

  Meng Yi bowed. “This one is Meng Yi, Young Mistress. I manage Young Master Xian Qigang’s estate.”

  Xian Weiju’s look of irritation turned into one of perplexity.

  “And why are you relevant?” she asked.

  “Because there is a growing mass of Wild Qi corrupting the Bloody Fang Mountains, and Young Master Qigang is currently holding it back at risk of his own life. We need the Suppression Division. Now.”

  Xian Weiju blinked, then she looked at a man Meng Yi hadn’t even noticed before now.

  The man shrugged at her helplessly.

  Xian Weiju turned back to Meng Yi. “Where are you?” she asked.

  Jackpot-kun