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Chapter 4 – Yang Mu

The journey through the main courtyard walls and the defensive external walls was silent. As was their entrance into the inner wall of the Palace of Lesser Harmonies. The silence was brittle and filled with unspoken meaning, palatable tension radiating from the body of Captain Mao Ya Wen. A strain that was echoed in the guards surrounding Wu Ying and that she glimpsed in the bodies of each of the guards that patrolled the palace.

So many of them, spending just a moment to stare at her and Ah Ying.  Their gazes fiery and focused, as though they were attempting to burn the memory of their visages into their mind, to imprint the echo of their souls upon them.

Perhaps they were.

She could sense it, the tension that radiated throughout the massive, sprawling palace. Not just amongst the guards and sentries that dotted the palace itself, but also the servants and caretakers of the palace. Such was the tension that they exhibited, the vibrating worry that she could almost taste it in the air and the flicker pressure on her spiritual aura.

Not that her aura was spread too far. She kept it contained as was necessary and polite as a guest in another’s residence. Such was the politick matter to do so, and also necessary to ensure that her own spiritual sense and self was not damaged.

She had been warned about the pressure of a higher realm, even come in expecting it. Even so, the protection offered by the overlapping auras had been insufficient to entirely shield her. She was a new Ascendant and one that had come about her immortality in a strange manner. Even though she had suffered the tribulations of the heavens, a testing that had further helped her reforge and discard her mortal self; her immortality was new.

The consumption of the immortal peaches that Wu Ying had stolen had leapfrogged her understanding of the dao, had given he the strength to become an immortal. In consuming multiple immortal peaches, she had pursued a form of immortality unusual to most – and different even from those gifted the Celestial immortal peaches.

Even now, the numerous peaches she had consumed lingered in her body, flashes of the dao, glimpses into the past, the present and the future infusing her as they broke down within her. It would be many years, she knew before these patches of understanding would be thoroughly digested by her.

In the meantime, she continued to experience the aftereffects, glimpses of connections that was vaster and more complex than her own pursuit of the dao had offered her before. Details about the Captain who led them within.

“My mistress will not see you, Captain Mao. You shame her and yourself with such displays,” the maid that had emerged from the building spoke softly but firmly to the man. “You cannot keep coming by.”

“Why?” he said, plaintively. “But a year ago, we had been planning our wedding.”

“But a year ago, you were a rising star in the Jade Emperor’s personal bodyguards. Even if you failed to be promoted again, your rank would have a match for my lady.”

“And I still keep that rank!”

“For now. The wheels of punishment grind slow, Captain. Yet, it grins ever onward, and in the turning, much my change.” She bowed low. “She thanks you again for the numerous pleasant evenings, but requests that if you ever cared for her, not to return.”

Then, the maid left, leaving the Captain standing alone, outside the walls of the compound of her mistress. Fitting, that the day turned rainy, that the night fell and washed him in the tears of heaven. As though the world was crying for him, for the mistress within would never do so.

Or for Guardian Chu, a messenger.

The man shifted nervously on his feet, the scroll held in hand. A scroll marked with the seal of the Ministry of Justice, summoning Guardian Chu to speak with them immediately. Highly unusual and discourteous, for the Guardian should be speaking with his own superiors first in the Ministry of War after his return.

However, if he were to receive this summons beforehand, he would be placed in a terrible position. Either react to the summons immediately as it demanded or ignore it and report to his superiors. Either option would see him offending someone, and in doing so, open him to censure.

As the messenger, he understood the implications of such tricks. The other portion of being a messenger was to ignore all such implications, do his job and hope that the one who received the summons would forget his face and only cuss him out a little. A cuff on the head, a shove… all acceptable.

Better than a century long grudge that some of his fellow messengers labored under.

Poor man, he did not even see the one lurking behind in the eaves of the barn. Their focus on the messenger so powerful that Yang Mu was drawn to them, to their immediate past.

“Ensure that Guardian Chu is not intercepted or otherwise inconvenience. He is to report to us immediately,” Vice Minister of War An said, firmly. “He has already been diverted once before from his duties.”

The scout bowed. Once, he had served on the front lines of the army, passing through wilderlands and cities, doing battle with demonic scouts and enemies. He had tracked bandits and rogue ascendants alike for centuries and had been good at it. So good, that he had been promoted, over and over again till he came here. Before the Vice Minister.

Now, he dressed like a servant, slipped through hallways and waited on Ministers and bureaucrats, intercepted messengers and dropped off scrolls and other documents for the Vice Minister. Doing battle in another form, though with even larger consequences than when he had served in the army.

He still missed the forest though, the thrum of vibrant woodlands. His spirit beast friends, many who were never promoted no matter their gifts, all for looking different than what the Jade Empire desired at the moment.

Now, he lurked, waiting to see if there were more impediments as Guardian Chu arrived into the maelstrom of politics that he had formed.

In through the doors, they exited and there, another individual waited. She looked serene, but her aura churned just a little and the colors of her world bled and twisted. Connections to others shifted and deepened or disappeared, a multi-dimensional abstract painting of all that she was and all that she interacted within. Reading such a complex painting was Yang Mu’s entire goal of her existence, and seeing the flashes of the woman’s own past and present.

The fugitive arrived, chained and yet, glowing with triumph. He might have been captured, but not before he had completed his task, his heretical act of defiance of the rules and norms of immortal society. No wonder so many desired the banishment of the Ascendants, a removal of their presence from the heavenly realm.

She had struggled against such beliefs for near a century now, doing her best to train and elevate the Ascendants from the half-mortal savages that they were. To ensure they understood the norms of the Jade Empire, to subdue the rebellious nature of the Ascendants and pacify their restlessness.

Now, this single individual had put the entire matter at jeopardy. Now, of all times, when chaos beckoned in the wings and the Jade Emperor had finally deigned to see her charges.

And beside him, his partner. She could already tell that this woman was going to be a problem, looking out through the eyes of a diviner, who saw too much and too deeply. Vice Minister Yu made a small gesture with her fingers, a cutting motion and…

Yang Mu slammed back into herself, her vision cut short. To find the Vice Minister smiling at her serenely as the reverberations of her vision faded.