Family Reunion.

  Na was on her knees.

  To her side, Shen and Ai watched in silence.

  Both children had tears in their eyes as they watched the father punish her with his belt across her back, then across her calves.

  With each set of strikes, he would intone the rules she had forgone.

  “You left your post to purchase a woman without my permission. I CHOOSE! I LEAD YOU! YOU OBEY!” Kurn shouted at her.

  Kurn was on the cusp of Foundation Establishment, but he could not obtain what he needed to compress his Dantian.

  His wife had grown too old to fast; she had not borne him another child in years, no matter how often he entertained her.

  Her words with other matrons had caused him trouble more than once, as Chen's husband was his superior.

  The children she bore him were small and weak, taking after her bloodline, not his.

  Now she had broken Clan orthodoxy, cast his face into the ground, and dared to spend the money that was not even hers on clothes for children that would be leaving soon to train in the Forge: wasted effort, wasted money, wasted potential.

  He was tired of it.

  He had favors pooled up; it was time to move on.

  He was already looking at sanctions or worse, demotion.

  “You understand I have to report this?! You misused household funds, even if the Team commander indulged you… I have questions why he would allow you to leave your post, but for now, I will be reporting you for insubordination as well.” Kurn stated coldly.

  Na trembled in pain and rage.

  Kurn looked to the two children, then back to Na.

  “I will be filing to have them separated. You are a bad influence on them, and it shows. I will see if I can have Shen sent to the Forge sooner. Perhaps they can sweat out the poison you’ve filled him with.”

  He leaned closer.

  “It is time. Your place in this house is no longer up for discussion.”

  He put away the belt and sighed—not in sadness, but impatience.

  “Pack your possessions. By midday, you will either be charged, or I will push to have you moved to a household where someone of your ability won’t drag others down.”

  There was no softness in his words. The only regret he carried was that he had allowed it to continue for so long.

  As he stood there thinking about what needed to be done, paperwork filed, palms greased, an alarm bell began to ring.

  It cut through the night, startling Na and Kurn, who forgot their argument.

  “Take the children to the room, don’t make a noise, I will report in!” Kurn ordered as he turned and took his weapon from their only attendant.

  He stepped out, then heard the door get barred behind him by the old man they kept as a porter and laborer, and nodded, running to the rally point.

  Patriarch's residence.

  When Wukai briefed his father, he felt genuine fear.

  Varek Bloodforge was not a man who was warm or forgiving.

  Wukai knew he had shed wives and children like dead skin in the past before his birth.

  As Wukai stood sweating, he knew that his entire staff had been detained and were being interviewed.

  Those interviews were dangerous enough that he knew many people would never return from them.

  Bloodforge assumed that mistakes or misaligned information indicated secrecy or conspiracy.

  Enforcer Wang Daoming, along with several others, raced along the rooftops as the lockdown bell echoed through the city. Those who failed to heed it were detained.

  Those who resisted were dealt with swiftly.

  They had just come from the Registrar, who had sold the woman; he was already in custody.

  When they reached the residence, movement stirred inside, and a man armed with a short Jian stepped out.

  “Who goes there?” a low-level guard shouted.

  Daoming raised his token. “Clan Enforcer Wang Daoming. We are here to take Matron Chen into custody for questioning.”

  The man sheathed his weapon and bowed. “Elder, my wife is inside with our children.”

  The Enforcers watched his face and posture for tells.

  “Have her come out and surrender,” another Elder ordered.

  Chen was taken into custody shortly after. By the time she was secured, the Enforcers were already moving toward the next name.

  Matron Na—a minor figure who had signed the girl in at the gate—had been bitter about losing her.

  That bitterness alone was sufficient to warrant questioning.

  Daoming felt the weight settle on him like a mountain.

  The Patriarch had ordered them to find the girl, the traitors, and anyone who might have helped.

  Clarity mattered less than expediency sometimes.

  A shadow caught his eye and his attention when his Spirit Sense showed nothing, as if devoured.

  There was a moment of clarity.

  This was their traitor.

  He knew it in his bones.

  Daoming shouted and reoriented toward the person moving south along the road.

  “Halt! Surrender in the name of the patriarch!” He shouted as he moved to cut down the person shrouded in darkness.

  Five men raced after him, some sticking talismans to themselves, others sending word by token.

  Daoming’s foot touched the road, then he exploded forward with his great Dao sword that pulsed with Aura, entering Energy Eaters' range, but not dimming it much due to only being in its passive state to hide and recover.

  His blade met another that did not glow but shimmered with inner light.

  As time slowed for everyone involved, their senses heightened, and their minds narrowed the information being processed.

  The fact that the sword that met Daoming's bit into and then bent the blade sent a cold chill down their backs as they watched in growing horror as the weapon…did not stop.

  Its momentum carried as if by divine right.

  Daoming could not stop moving forward.

  The blade swung at him would not stop either.

  When it cut across his face, shearing flesh and bone alike, he realized he should have done something …anything different.

  The sound of the Dao sword failing hit the men around the time the upper half of Daoming's head separated from his body.

  “HOSTILE CONFIRMED!” one man shouted.

  They surged forward as one.

  The figure ahead finally stopped.

  In the darkness, only fragments resolved: a bulky vest, bare hands wrapped around a thick cloud sabre, and eyes burning violet where the light should not reach.

  Aura flared—each man’s presence crashing outward as they moved together to drown the lone fighter.

  The small figure flowed.

  Their body bent and turned like water under force as the massive blade blurred through its arc.

  Stone tiles fractured and collapsed under the cloaked assailant's swing pressure.

  Four blades descended like Heaven’s judgment—

  —and were gone.

  The cloud sabre struck from the side.

  Some weapons folded as if struck by a mountain.

  Others were simply torn free, hurled spinning into the dark, their wielders thrown with them.

  The blade never stopped as the person's body rotated their short legs, cracking flagstones from the pressure to accelerate thirty-five kilograms of mass to kill.

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  Jianrong’s back arched as she let the mass carry her body around, and her arm stretched out, allowing the blade reach its second victim.

  Then it struck the first attacker and kept going.

  The man folded over the blade as it crushed his bones and severed flesh.

  He wasn’t even able to scream when his body accelerated into his companion

  The man took on the weapon's momentum and became a weapon himself.

  The mass struck and sent the next man into his companions, sending the survivors crashing into the wall and ground.

  The last man to shout launched his talisman, which raced through the air and attached itself to Jianrong.

  She felt a crushing weight of several gravities anchor her to the ground.

  Her feet left outlines in the packed earth, pulverizing flat tiles where she pivoted.

  The men heard a woman’s laugh, as though she had been given a present she hadn’t considered—but found pleasant all the same.

  The man on the roof readied another talisman as Jianrong was forced to release her sword. What had been a thirty-five-kilogram blade had become more than a hundred kilograms while anchored to her.

  The closest man moved to tackle her, believing she had lost her advantage—her weapon.

  His shoulder slammed into the small woman and stopped.

  Pain lanced through his body.

  He hadn’t knocked her back at all.

  His seventy-kilogram mass had struck what he would later describe as a rooted tree—her body, anchored under nearly six hundred kilograms of force.

  The arm he had pinned moved freely.

  In the next instant, a blade punched through his aura shield and deep into his gut.

  Jianrong made a slight “Hup” sound.

  The man screamed, clawing backward as his insides bulged against the tearing wound, blood pouring onto the ground like a bottle of wine tipped and forgotten.

  The two men jumped onto their weapons to recover them.

  A breath later, both stood with weapons at the ready, but outside her knife range.

  She let her body settle, lower her legs wide, almost in a horse stance, as she waved with her free hand for them to come.

  She had not spoken, they could not see her face, and they did not know or understand what the shadowy orb around her was, only that it was a muffled sound.

  Meanwhile, Jianrong was pulling Aura and Qi from the air as the Talisman was bleeding away its charge into Energy Eater.

  A bright light ignited, then raced upward.

  The man to the left looked up and smiled. Help would be on the way.

  Then he was smashed into the wall behind him as Jianrong launched herself the moment he took his eyes off her.

  The Enforcer could only think one thing as he tried to move.

  “Why can she stand while so heavy?”

  The other enforcer’s blade flashed with Aura and drove into the woman’s side. The tip bit into the bone scale, seeking a path before reaching divine silk—and stopped.

  What it did not stop was the force of the attack transmitting through the blade into her flesh, rupturing veins and bruising muscle.

  Everyone present felt dozens of powerful Spirit Senses shift toward them.

  Jianrong's mind raced as she calculated where she needed to go as the anchor weighing her down finally ran out of energy.

  Without word or fanfare, she rotated and exploded forward, her legs moving faster and faster now that concealment had failed; she would go all out, leaving the sword behind.

  There was a moment of disbelief when the only man on the ground who was not seriously injured shouted.

  “GO! I WILL SECURE THE WEAPON!”

  The man on the roof didn’t wait; he gave chase as his movement art made him accelerate, but he nearly fell as his speed outpaced his Spirit Sense, which could no longer feed him a coherent map in a night that had turned chaotic as the flare talisman made shadow jump and distorted night vision.

  The man realized he could not keep up if he remained on the roof.

  But he also knew dropping to the ground was akin to serving himself up on a platter.

  In the end, he kept his Spirit Sense on the area that consumed it as he pursued.

  His hand on his token, he shot out information.

  An Enforcer group of Foundation Establishment warriors met the woman and was blown away as she hit them like a buffalo—no slowing, no aura flare, just momentum and speed.

  Then she turned, and Elder Yuxuan knew where she was going.

  “She is headed to Matron Na’s house! The woman who sold the breeder!”

  Jianrong never slowed as she pivoted in a long curve, striking the door with her arms crossed in front of her, Aura supporting her body.

  The green door was pulverized.

  A moment later, she turned and poured Qi into the ground. She stomped her foot, and a door of earth and stone surged up in its place, then compressed, locking them in for the short term.

  Energy Eater vanished with a snap, and her Spirit Sense flowed through the house.

  Moments later, Rong was in the room with the child curled around her mother, who had been crying—her face swollen where her husband had first lost his temper and struck her with a fist in rage for spending the money she had received.

  More people arrived outside, surrounding the house.

  Energy Eater snapped back into place the moment Jianrong felt hostile Spirit Senses probing the walls.

  Na could barely move. Her skin was a deep, mottled red, muscles swollen and torn where her husband had used his full strength with the belt.

  Rong moved them to the central room and tossed everything that could burn in the fireplace as the people outside decided what to do.

  With a flick of her hand, she ignited the wood and broken furniture.

  Shen watched her in fear. Ai, on the other hand, tried to help—but was scooped up by Rong, who removed her mask and leaned in to kiss the adorable child.

  “No,” Ai stated.

  “Sorry. I just love you,” Rong said with a smile while setting the child down.

  “Who are you?” Ai asked, unsure.

  “I am your mother’s friend. You’re coming to live with me,” Rong said, gaining strength not in Qi or muscle, but in the heart.

  “We can stay with Mother?” Ai asked, glancing at Shen, who blinked.

  “Is that true?” Shen asked, watching Na's quiet children interact with Rong as if she were something other than human.

  Rong nodded. “Very true. I told your mom I needed people I could play with and help me eat good food.”

  She cleared her throat and continued in an old woman’s voice.

  “My son Shen is a good eater. We should bring him—and Ai, who is pretty.”

  Ai’s eyes sparkled. “Mother said that?!”

  Rong put her fists on her hips and smiled, knowing something they did not.

  “HOHO. Of course. That’s how mothers are where I live. You will see.”

  She laughed as Energy Eater devoured the heat, and the fireplace turned into an inferno.

  Jianrong placed her hands over Na’s and began slowly cycling her Qi.

  “Heal, sister,” Rong said softly.

  Time passed.

  Patriarch Bloodforge arrived where his Enforcers had fallen.

  The bodies were gone. The weapon was not.

  Varek looked from Wukai, who had accompanied him, to the shattered ground. “What does the reading say?”

  An Elder stepped forward. “Patriarch, it appears to be some form of Earth-aligned manifestation.”

  Wukai’s brows shot up.

  Varek leaned closer, probing the Qi-rich blade. “How so?”

  “It is made of stone,” the Elder said.

  Wukai looked closer. The handle, pommel, hilt, and blade were all worked, artistry carved from rock.

  “Impossible,” he breathed.

  Varek studied the thickness and the mass.

  “The weight must be immense.”

  The Elder nodded. “Two of the kills were caused by weight alone. It crushed sword and bone alike.”

  “Is it her?” Wukai asked.

  The Elder hesitated, then bowed deeply.

  “The Qi registered on the woman named Xin’s token does not align with what we later recorded from her affinities. We are certain it was the same woman, but she deceived the aura-reading array. The affinity signature matches.”

  He swallowed.

  “She fooled the system.”

  Varek paused, then reached down and gripped the handle of the weapon. There was no flare, no reaction; it was just warm to the touch.

  Using just his strength, he felt pain in his wrist. His Aura reinforced him, and he was able to stand with it.

  Using two hands had moved around with the blade and frowned. With a thought, he stabbed it downward, and it pierced the stone tile and remained upright.

  “You are sure she wielded this?” Varek probed.

  “We have three living witnesses, all our people.” The elder stated.

  The two men knew that meant three people to silence, then with more clarity. Four.

  The Patriarch and his son walked along the road in silence.

  There were no people, no sound, but Spirit Sense showed that up ahead, the world was alive with movement.

  “Did she ask anything, mention anything?” Varek asked quietly.

  Wukai thought back to every word, every look.

  “Nothing beyond what a village girl might ask when finding herself in a new place. She remained small, used simple words, and seemed to have simple thoughts. I was concerned she was too simple—and a risk of being fooled,” his son admitted.

  They arrived near Na’s residence. Her husband had already been detained and was in the process of being processed for information—and silenced.

  Nearly two hundred people surrounded the house, all the residents within one thousand meters had been evacuated ‘for their safety’ which meant keeping the incident contained.

  From the moment Xin disappeared to the time the house was surrounded, nearly two chimes had passed.

  The group had arrays in place, techniques were used, but the same response kept coming back.

  Static.

  Whatever skill she had was consuming the sensing and Qi that entered the residence, determining location and status.

  They had switched the anchor array off when it was determined that the field she generated drew its energy from it.

  They knew for a fact she was there because the field was there.

  They knew the children and wife were there because the attendant who fled said they were before he was repurposed.

  Inside the house, Na held Rong. She had faith, true faith in her and her ability to take them away.

  “Sister, what is the plan?” Na asked quietly, as Ai had decided Rong was safe, demanded to be held in her arms, and was now asleep.

  Rong smiled as she swayed, rocking the child gently. “We put the fear of the gods into them, so we don’t have to come here again.” Then she handed over Ai and moved to the earth door. With her foot braced, she pushed it outward, and it fell like a cut tree, scattering into rubble when it hit the ground.

  “I seek arbitration and blood confirmation!” Rong shouted and then fell back to her family.

  Elders looked at one another, then to the Patriarch, who tilted his head downward in thought, a scowl forming.

  He turned. “You will oversee it. Go, now.” Varek demanded.

  In under an incense stick's time, three people entered the house.

  Wukai led the medical technician and an Elder who would oversee the process, ensuring nothing suspicious occurred.

  The house was cool, which surprised all three, since the smoke rising from the chimney meant it was hot.

  The entropy field snapped closed, and a small woman in dark, hooded clothes stepped forward.

  She held out her left arm, which had the sleeve rolled back, and the other rested on the handle of her knife behind her back.

  “Good evening, Uncle,” Rong said curtly.

  Wukai paused. He knew this was Xin, but she was wearing a hood, which was disorienting.

  The technician moved forward. After a few breaths, the blood was taken.

  Then, with everyone watching, a pulse of redlight moved through her body and healed the minor wound.

  “I am curious, will you still place a child in me once you see who I am?” Rong said sweetly.

  The group fell back, and the entropy field snapped back into place as Rong burned more materials, refining her Qi while she waited for them to figure out exactly who she was.

  Wukai felt a coldness as he left.

  By wearing a mask, she concealed her face and his ability to read emotions; by hiding her aura, she forced him to rely solely on her words.

  Those words were simple. “Do you desire me enough that putting a child in me overrides whatever you find out?”

  The group took the sample to a tent; only senior elders were present.

  The number was provided.

  The ledger was cross-referenced.

  Bloodline.

  Varek Bloodforge/ Patriarch

  Mireya Valecourt/Deceased

  Nadia Bloodforge/ Exiled

  Sample.

  The group was silent. Finally, Varek spoke.

  Analyze the blood, determine the father's line.

  Varek knew Nadia had four sons; he had heard a rumor that a daughter had appeared.

  “You have hidden your children too deeply, daughter,” he murmured, both in frustration and respect.

  A short time later, the results came back, but they were terrifying.

  The man said nothing; he simply rose and let the Patriarch see for himself.

  Varek took a seat and let his Spirit Sense check the treasure.

  Nadia Bloodforge/Exile

  Unknown/ Spirit Beast markers, Fox/other.

  Varek sat up and then leaned back.

  “Pull our people back, do not get close,” Varek murmured at the same time a call came from the house.

  “Message for Grandfather,” a hand tossed out a small scroll.

  A man ran up and grabbed it as people retreated; at the same time, Energy Eater snapped shut, and Qi poured into the ground.

  All Spirit Sense could see the house was filling with energetic Qi.

  The man arrived with the small scroll.

  Varek stood and then moved away from the others.

  At the same time, air raced into the house fast enough that it made a sucking noise through the gaps in windows and walls.

  Dawn had touched the horizon with a light blue light.

  Not far behind it were three men on horseback who were racing to tell the Patriarch what had happened and pray that the magical weapon and Savage Core they had was enough to save their lives.

  The scroll opened.

  Greetings, grandfather.

  I am Jianrong Dar Bloodforge.

  If you come for our mother again… I won't come alone.

  I could have killed you today, but I was told not to.

  There are no second chances.

  Enjoy your son, he is a good man.

  Inside the house, Rong held Shen while Na held Ai.

  Her foot stomped, and the bubble of compressed air fell upward at three gravities, easily destroying the roof before Rong let it go.

  From outside, the men watched as Qi grew vibrant inside the house.

  Then the sky flickered as if light was being distorted, inside there was a flash when more Qi was suddenly released, seen only by Spirit Sense.

  The interior of the house opened like a flower in the morning light.

  A half-beat later, a white pressure wave exploded outward, sending the roof into the sky and blowing the wall apart.

  Men shouted, and debris rained down for several hundred meters, and the shock wave knocked people down and damaged other houses.

  When Spirit Sense locked down on the house once more, it was empty.

  High above, a precise shape of an Albatross took form around Jianrong and her family, then reoriented and moved away at a leisurely pace.

  There were children on board; there was no need to miss the chance to instill wonder.

  Besides, they were headed home.