With four people in a party of sixteen unable to fly under their own power, the trip to Lotus Pier involved a fair amount of walking. Wen Qing's jian was probably three provinces away, Tomoe and Shinta were both tragically not cultivators, and Wei Wuxian didn't have enough spiritual energy to fill a teacup. Shinta didn't particularly mind—he'd gotten places on his own two feet for almost all his life—but it grated on some of the others. Anyone who even looked like complaining got glared into silence by Jiang Wanyin.

"Wu-jie isn't as scary as you made her sound," said Li Jun, who hadn't been in the building when Tomoe and Wei Wuxian took Wen Zhuliu to pieces. Shinta hadn't either, but feeling the clash of qi was enough for him to work out what happened.

"Why should she be scary right now?" Shinta had asked him. As though Tomoe had never scared him in his life. That would be the most bald-faced lie Shinta told—this week. "We're friends."

"I'm never going to let you forget you said that. Ever."

It was—just maybe—a bit more humanizing than intimidating that Tomoe had hesitated for such a long time to get on a sword with Fang Shufen, even when asked. Shinta hadn't entirely been sure if her fear was real until, while anxiously surveying the scene, he noticed the way Wei Wuxian winced at the thought of flying. Tomoe was cleverer than Shinta was with qi-sensing and had been around Wei Wuxian longer; if she hadn't spotted the same problem, it would be a surprise. The resulting impasse stretched long enough for tempers to fray.

In the end, Wei Wuxian had a quick, quiet conversation with Jiang Wanyin—Shinta caught the word "thrown?!" in the latter's sharp voice—that changed the plan. Shinta's false name came up in the middle somewhere, too. In the end, most of the group decided to stick to the ground if their sect leader was doing it.

And rode in a small fleet of boats, eventually. Yunmeng was mostly rivers once flight was taken out of the equation.

Not everyone joined the river adventure, however. Fang Shufen and Hu Yating flew ahead to scout. Though neither of them hugged Wei Wuxian on reuniting with him—unlike both Jiang Wanyin and Li Jun—their relief on recognizing their sect's head disciple was genuine and almost overwhelming. Universally, the Jiang sect never wanted to let their missing member out of their sight again, but would have to. For a little while.

"Glad to have you back," Hu Yating told Wei Wuxian, her river-patterned sword bobbing against her shoulder. "And for Heavens' sake, get some sleep. You look like something dredged out of the lotus ponds."

"I've definitely walked out of worse, Fourth Shimei." Wei Wuxian's smile didn't quite reach his eyes.

Hu Yating puffed out her cheeks in a mock pout. "Just because you joined the Jiang sect as an actual child and not a rogue—"

"Get going! You were never as fast a flier as a talker," Wei Wuxian said, tapping her shoulder with his flute.

"Coming from you, of all people. The nerve!" But she laughed and took off with her sect-sister.

Shinta slept through about half of the river navigation process, alternating with Tomoe every few hours in a lower-risk version of their sleeping habits during their last days in Nihon. Even on the ship, that habit was too essential to break. Tomoe allowed him to rest his head on her lap, but just curled up under a travel cloak when it was her turn. Every so often, one of the cultivators would glance over curiously, but avoided actually speaking to Tomoe if she was the one awake.

The fact that Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing also spent much of the journey resting—under Jiang Wanyin's watchful eye and frankly inhuman endurance—spoke volumes about how hard they'd pushed themselves while chasing Wen Chao. Maybe Wen Qing, in her capacity as a doctor, was the one who had the most authority to order others to rest. She was a prisoner, sure, but Wei Wuxian and Jiang Wanyin still treated her with respect and Tomoe shoved food her way. No one even said anything about binding her hands.

At the same time, Shinta suspected Jiang Wanyin took the time to look directly into Wei Wuxian's pale, slightly sunken face and refused to ask any further questions before throwing someone's blanket at his head. There would be rest or there would be shouting as a direct consequence for refusal.

There was a lot of not-talking going on.

A few hours in, Jiang Wanyin signalled Li Jun to draw his boat back far enough to speak to Shinta. This put the boat steered by Hu Jianhong in the lead. The rest shuffled around without a word, to put the sect leader in the middle of the group instead of drifting along the side of the formation.

Through the process, his brother and their prisoner dozed in the covered portion. The former still had his flute tucked into his crossed arms.

Shinta, who was not steering the boat but remained on-hand to give the Jiang cultivator a break, bowed as best he could while staying seated.

"We're staying overnight in the main compound." Jiang Wanyin told him, which was just pitched to avoid waking anyone trying to catch up on sleep. "What are you going to do?"

"Taking a look at the house, first," Shinta said. By his leg, Tomoe's qi stirred, but she didn't move. "If it's in the same number of pieces, we'll stay there? We shouldn't intrude—"

"And if it's not, you come to us." Jiang Wanyin's tone brooked no argument.

Jiang Wanyin had a bad habit of couching concern in annoyance. It was a good thing Shinta's ability to read his qi from fifty paces cut down on the confusion.

Tomoe and Shinta broke off from the group when they arrived at the Lotus Cove dock, heading instead for their long-abandoned house along the river, with Jiang Wanyin's offer ringing in their ears. While the united Sunshot Campaign forces had managed to break the back of the Wen army in Yunmeng, and the Lan group that had departed the other night forced the remnants to abandon Lotus Pier compound, the Jiang sect hadn't recovered enough to occupy it themselves. But Jiang Wanyin and Wei Wuxian needed to make sure the ancestral shrine survived, and so everyone else went along with them, as though afraid to lose track of the two.

Wen Qing was probably going to be left in the entry hall and asked politely not to move around much without an escort.

"I'm a little surprised the house is still standing empty," Shinta said under his breath as they arrived at the front gate. Without Wataru's (localized) name on a bill of sale, no one would have legally moved in until a magistrate ruled one way or another. It was just that the cultivation sects were, in many ways, the ones who mostly fulfilled that role in their home regions. "How many people left after the Wen attacked?"

Tomoe pushed the gate open and walked into the yard without answering.

It wasn't so bad. Unlike some other homes, it had never been burned. There were a few signs of someone tossing the place—windows open to the elements, wreckage of the small statues that had come with the house, a Wen icon here or there and so on. The gingko tree's leaves were worse than snow and left strange stains when they rotted in place, but the yard was always going to require more work. Shinta picked through tools accidentally left outdoors for a season and found a molded broom. The rake was in a similarly sad state, and somehow a washbasin had been shattered against a wall.

Shinta scratched the back of his neck. After last glance at the yard, he entered the house after her.

Tomoe's voice drifted down the stairs. "I found your hair coloring."

Shinta grimaced where Tomoe couldn't see him. Great.

"No one took your sewing projects." Tomoe arrived in the kitchen with a large bundle, half-dismantled robes and trailing thread peeking out of the top. "Our spare robes are long gone, though."

"That's not so bad. I brought most of my best ones with me." Shinta's mouth twisted unhappily as he assessed the mess of broken crockery and bent cooking vessels left behind by whoever had wrecked their temporary home. "And a couple of my finished reworks."

People with steady incomes, such as Wen cultivators, could afford any arrangement of cotton or silk they ever wanted. Shinta hadn't even glimpsed silk until he was thirteen. All of his experience with sashiko, boro, and sakioki work was too distinctly from Nihon to use here, but he'd been learning since their arrival. Tearing the hems and fitting out of used robes was much more discreet, and more time-consuming than challenging. The fact that the Wen had stolen even the plain, modest robes of a Yunmeng household was either a sign of their greed or just terrible luck.

Shinta grabbed the inside broom and started sweeping the floor to keep his hands busy. He tried not to listen much as Tomoe packed his things into her mostly-empty qiankun pouch.

"Do we have any bedding?" Shinta asked.

"No. There were rats."

Assuming they still lived here after the Sunshot Campaign was over, Shinta was going to bribe some of the local cats into patrolling. He should've thought of it before, but they'd left in a rush. They wouldn't have left so many things to be stolen otherwise.

"I guess we're staying with the Jiang clan." Shinta continued clearing the debris and closing up the house like they hadn't successfully done before. Then: "Oneesan?"

Tomoe looked up from the qiankun pouch on the table.

"When you met Wei Wuxian, did you know he was the Jiang sect's missing first disciple?"

Tomoe raised an eyebrow. "We didn't exchange names at the time."

Shinta blew a loose lock of hair out of his face, fallen out of his topknot. "And he wasn't giving any hints…?"

"No." She didn't seem to be in much of a mood for talking about that. Maybe Shinta would be able to wrangle the full story later from Wei Wuxian or Wen Qing, but for now Tomoe only commented, "Someone stole my good hairpins and the board Wataru made."

And apparently anything they didn't steal or eat, the occupiers in this house had smashed. A game board was, somehow, important enough to just take.

Maybe some Wens had treated the house like an informal barracks, but that would've only been necessary in the first place due to the damage they did to Lotus Pier. The Jiang clan's compound was more than large enough to count as its own half-floating village.

The idea of losing their igo board—he'd have to remember to call it weiqi outside of the house—was just another detail in a sea of them, but it was still a surprise. Any food Shinta left behind during his departure would've rotted by now, and there definitely had been rice stored somewhere. Pickles of various kinds and dried meat, too. Those were expected losses, which would have ruined families without backup plans or hidden wealth. Any money they didn't take with them was long gone, as was any scrap of jewelry or ornamentation. But the board?

So Shinta muttered, "Why would anyone have to? Can't people afford better sets in any big city?"

Tomoe sighed and moved ahead with tying the qiankun bags shut. "It's what armies do. Better for soldiers to lose an evening playing games than causing havoc."

It wasn't as though they had miraculously stumbled across a better way to carve wood than what the locals could do. Or to make the stones. Wataru just liked destroying Shinta with an army of little black and white game pieces, and Shinta kept agreeing to games he inevitably lost because it helped fill their evenings. The matches between Tomoe and Wataru were actual battles, even if she'd eventually stopped playing during their time in Yunmeng.

They worked in silence as the sun traced its slow path across the sky. In what felt like no time at all, the light took on a yellowish afternoon cast and streamed through the open back door. Dust motes danced everywhere, no matter how many times Shinta swept old ash from the kitchen or dust from the rooms.

"I think we've done what we can." Tomoe strung the qiankun pouch from her belt again. "Let's go."

Shinta drew a slow breath, wrapped up what he could, and accompanied Tomoe to Lotus Pier for the night.

Not everyone who'd lived and worked in Lotus Pier had died. While the ruling family and the sect itself were drastically reduced, servants and family members of some of the disciples survived. The Wen sect merely installed themselves as the new overlords of what unburned parts of the Jiang sect's compound remained, lording over the servants who clung to their employment by cultivators. And the support staff waited, and worked, and greeted their young masters' return as though they were triumphant generals in a recent war.

No sudden victory peeked over the next tree or the next lake, but defeat could arrive from any quarter. Including a failure to manage the home front.

Maybe it hadn't just been the Lan sect who'd chased the remaining Wen here away. Normal people could get as sick of tyrants as anyone. They just usually had less recourse than people who led armies, even if peasants made up most of the foot soldiers Shinta had ever met. This was less the case with cultivation sects; a mundane army could press anyone into service if they could hold a spear and a line, but cultivators were each decades of investment in the making.

It was a long way of saying that Shinta wasn't all that surprised, in hindsight, when Jiang Wanyin followed up welcoming them to the place with a rather specific concern.

"How are you planning on hiding being from Dongying?" Jiang Wanyin twisted his ring around on his finger as he spoke. It was a nervous habit restrained only by the way Zidian also formed a linked bracelet, and it made other people less nervous than when the spiritual tool started dripping purple sparks.

"People mostly just assume we're not." This far into the empire, who was on the lookout for foreigners masquerading as neighbors. "I've never thought we could pass for noble cultivators or rich merchants, or anything like that. We're just unimportant enough that everyone's eyes just don't focus on us."

"That's going to change," Jiang Wanyin said. His customary frown deepened, though Shinta didn't judge him for it. His brother had just returned from the Burial Mounds and a Tomoe-led murder spree, and was sleeping like the dead in his own room. "You won't be able to hide in our shadow forever."

Shinta met Jiang Wanyin's eyes, steadied his qi, and said plainly, "Almost all of your disciples already know about me and about Jiejie. Are you offering something different, Jiang-zongzhu?"

Jiang Wanyin grimaced. When he made a face like that, it was hard for Shinta to remember that Jiang Wanyin was only eighteen. If not for the way Shinta had been shoved through his genpuku ceremony early, neither of them would've been adults by their cultures' standards.

Well. Shinta would now, but only through surviving to see twenty years.

"Dress like a Jiang disciple, even if you have to take something sized for juniors. We have enough to repay you for lending your assistance." Jiang Wanyin waved a hand to encompass both Shinta and Tomoe, who was still standing right there and waiting for an actual conclusion to the conversation. "No one will ask where either of you came from."

"I can sew, actually." Shinta bowed. Next to him, Tomoe copied his movements. "Thank you, Jiang-zongzhu."

"Stop bowing and get to work! I can't have you running around in those rags forever!"

"Wait, you're Wuya-jie's adorable didi?" Wei Wuxian asked the next day, after rising sometime just short of noon. He tapped his flute against his arm as he leaned forward, thoughtful, and then a smile quirked at the corners of his mouth. "You're all cute and sweet with your didi, but you bully me all the time? How is this fair?"

Tomoe, who had been carefully piling Shinta's hair into a high knot with the help of a comb and a borrowed ribbon, reached past her brother and shut the window in Wei Wuxian's face.

"I don't think you're allowed to do that, Oneesan."

"Watch me."

From outside, Wei Wuxian's voice shouted, "This is exactly what I was talking about!"

Tomoe declined to answer, but noted the path Wei Wuxian took around the outside of the compound, whistling loudly. He faded from her view faster than any cultivator. Figuring he'd be back around in a short while and show up at their door, Tomoe fixed the rest of their Jiang sect disguises in record time. There had yet to be a day—and might never—where Tomoe thought of this Wu Xue identity as her.

"No time to dye it," Tomoe muttered, standing back to survey her work. "Still, this should do."

Shinta noticeably bit the inside of his cheek to keep from commenting. While Shinta remained the most skilled with a needle out of their little cohort, Tomoe was by far the better at arranging hair and had managed to perfectly ape the strict, half-up style favored by most members of the Jiang sect. Though the blue-teal-purple combination made Shinta's odd hair color stand out all the more by clashing, he did look like a Jiang disciple. His somewhat sour expression even resembled Jiang Wanyin's.

"And you?" Shinta asked dryly.

Tomoe said in a matching tone, "I look like someone's handmaiden."

Tomoe's robes were a bright lilac that fell just short of the white layer underneath, and both left her close-toed cloth boots exposed. Her hair was tightly bound in a high, braided bun that contained two needle-sharp hairpins and a comb to control everything. Because they were accessorized with deeper purple-on-wisteria for a belt and white forearm ties, Tomoe was not looking forward to the first fight in this new outfit that inevitably ruined them forever with bloodstains. Most of the Sunshot Campaign was going to involve fighting people, after all.

At least she had backups. Her now-clean black outer robe made a decent second option, especially when paired with red. It was just a pity Wei Wuxian had effectively claimed the color combination for personal use.

"It might make it easier for you to make friends?" Shinta suggested at last, in the exact voice of someone whose optimism verged on desperation.

Tomoe had roughly one-third of the skills necessary to run a modest-sized household, with Shinta and Wataru making up for what she lacked. Approachability and friendliness were not among her more noteworthy traits. The resulting skepticism undoubtedly showed in Tomoe's qi despite her control over her expression.

Shinta looked away, unable to argue.

And that was when Wei Wuxian completed the inevitable circuit of Lotus Pier's guest wing and started pounding on the door. "What is taking you so long?"

Shinta opened it before Wei Wuxian could swing again, and nearly took a fist to his face. Unblinking, Shinta said, "Wei-gongzi. Are we late?"

"Probably." Wei Wuxian shrugged. He stood back so Tomoe and Shinta could leave the room, sizing them up. He still wasn't wearing the greedy, spiritually-active jian, but he spun his flute in his fingers. "You look like regular Jiang sect disciples! A brand-new shimei and shidi, perfectly balanced."

With the fluidity of a rockfall, Tomoe said, "No."

"Oh? Why not?"

Shinta stepped in before Tomoe was obligated to shoulder-check Wei Wuxian over a railing and into the nearest lotus pond. "Because I think both of us are older than you."

"It's not about birth order. It's about who joined the sect first, especially for outer disciples," Wei Wuxian told them, leading the way through Lotus Pier and toward the gates. They passed servants hard at work removing bloodstains, who all bowed to Wei Wuxian as they went. "Or are you both such strong cultivators that you're somehow my tiny shishu and shigu?"

It took Tomoe a second to translate the terms as "martial uncle" and "martial aunt." She wrinkled her nose just a bit.

Her objection had less to do with age than cold reality. Jiang Wanyin needed people who could cause damage out of proportion with the cost of deploying them. While Tomoe allowed Shinta to debrief her on the months of progress he and the Jiang sect had made—such as recruiting heavily from other, half-destroyed sects and from the Meishan Yu for more expertise—her natural cynicism kept any praise for his efforts trapped behind her teeth.

It wouldn't be out of character for local nobility to use people like them as assassins. The surprise was Shinta's certainty that Jiang Wanyin intended to keep them around long-term.

"Not cultivators at all," Shinta said, peering at Wei Wuxian curiously for his reaction. As a sect's guest disciple, Shinta was allowed to wear his sword openly, so he rested his left arm on it where it hung from his hip. "But it doesn't really matter. We're still going to do our part."

Whatever that means now, Tomoe avoided saying.

Wei Wuxian's weak qi clenched as soon as Shinta finished his first sentence. Tomoe didn't have enough context to deduce the reason, and definitely didn't have the linguistic fluidity. Still, she caught a quick flicker of Shinta's spiritual energy that let her known he'd spotted it too. As such, she noted the reaction for later and decided to change the topic.

"Twenty-four." Tomoe's interjection came out a little uncertain of her syllables, but she still pointed at Shinta and said, "Twenty."

Wei Wuxian recovered faster by leaping on the new subject than he ever would have otherwise. "So that makes you Wuya-jie and Wuya-ge."

"Wei-gongzi, I think that might draw a little too much attention our way," Shinta suggested, looking at Tomoe out of the corner of his eye.

"There's nothing wrong with a little notoriety."

"In moderation," Shinta allowed. He let the sentence lie as they walked, then said, "Wei-gongzi, I saw some of your talisman work while you were attacking those Wen cultivators."

Wei Wuxian's smile, once again, failed to reach his eyes. "And?"

"You clearly know how to break protections," Shinta said patiently, not acknowledging the defensiveness both of them clearly saw. "Do you know how to make better ones? And if you do, do you think you could teach us?"

At the same moment Tomoe shot Shinta a brief glare for speaking for both of them.

"That's going to be difficult if neither of you can read."

"Jiejie's well-read," Shinta protested.

In another country's poetry. Tomoe hadn't read much of anything since stepping off the ship. The fact that she could read imported books didn't help her talk to people, either; the written and spoken form of formal court language from two hundred years ago could only be so useful.

Shinta's standards were simply even lower.

"Wuya-jie asked me to translate Wen battle reports for her an hour after we first met." Wei Wuxian glanced at her and added cheerfully, "You were the most persistent stalker I've ever had. Besides all the actual birds."

Tomoe pretended not to hear him. And not to notice the amusement in Shinta's expression.

There was little chance of any of them avoiding the attention of the various sects involved in the Sunshot Campaign. Even if Tomoe had dismissed Jiang Wanyin's offer and simply disappeared into Yunmeng with her brother unhappily in tow, they were known. Wataru remained hidden solely because Li Jun could keep a secret when ordered to do so. He avoided attention from the larger world and would not break cover for useless heroics. Tomoe gave up that chance the moment she raised her sword to defend her brother's choices.

Controlling the story from this point forward was all anyone could do.

Tomoe kept walking, skirting neatly around workers, servants, and young disciples who had begun to repair and repopulate Lotus Pier. Someone had already gathered the swords and sect bells of slain cultivators and started the process of expanding the memorial hall for them. People talked and Tomoe listened, over and over again. The mental strain of comprehension was lower now, even if producing words of her own remained difficult.

There was something to be said for total immersion.

"Wait for us, Jiejie," Shinta called as Tomoe picked up the pace.

Tomoe's gaze caught on the signs of long-extinguished fire and dried blood on wood and stone, then skittered off just as quickly. With the reconstruction efforts underway, no hour of daylight passed without the sound of people hard at work. Still, months—if not years—lay ahead of them. Jiang Wanyin's future contained tireless rebuilding as far as the eye could see.

Not something Tomoe had much experience with. Her branch of her clan was too far gone.

Jiang Wanyin awaited them at the gate, alongside the ranks of cultivators he'd accumulated through months of hard work. There was enough purple dye in their uniforms alone to break the budget of many households Tomoe had seen. Even while Shinta passed her to join their ranks and Wei Wuxian shouted a mutual greeting with his sect leader, Tomoe closed her eyes for a few seconds to steady herself.

If not for Shinta's account of his many journeys as a passenger as the Jiang sect flew, Tomoe would've tried to get out of this. She had no more interest in flying now than she had a year ago. The closest she'd experienced involved falling, and there was a deep-seated rejection of putting her safety in the hands of people she didn't know.

"It's not that bad," said Fang Shufen, who watched Tomoe's indecisiveness with minimal contempt. "But Wu Tao was the same way when we started. Did he tell you we had to carry him like a goat to market? And look at him now."

Shinta chatted amiably with Li Jun a few paces away, more relaxed than he'd been during his first ride on horseback. A little past them, Wei Wuxian and Jiang Wanyin argued in hushed tones with neither of their swords drawn. Bringing up the rear, Wen Qing was almost perfectly camouflaged among the Jiang disciples in the same robes Tomoe wore, though everyone knew there was Wen red somewhere in someone's qiankun pouch.

It was just that none of them showed the same stab of fear Tomoe felt. Despising weakness in herself didn't make it go away.

"Sorry," Tomoe said to Fang Shufen, though she didn't mean precisely that. There was no use in apologizing for fear; only for the effect her reaction had on others. In this case, that meant just the momentary delay. "New."

Fang Shufen nodded, then her gaze flicked past Tomoe. "Jiang-zongzhu?"

Tomoe eyed Jiang Wanyin as he broke off from his argument to say to Shinta, "Your dao."

Shinta held it out, because he couldn't see a specific reason not to and was in fact a pushover. Jiang Wanyin already knew (some of) the details of Shinta's origins, and so did the cultivators all around them. And unlike cultivator jian, Shinta's nameless katana wouldn't bite or reject hands other than his.

"We'd have to see if a bladesmith still has the space or the time," Jiang Wanyin said, half to himself. He stared down at the katana as though he could unlock the secrets of metallurgy through sheer force of will. He didn't quite reach out to touch it, but he did say, "You need a proper finish for these. Both of you still stand out too much."

In Tomoe's opinion, the somewhat-stained cotton over sharkskin didn't stand out so badly. Tomoe could change the distinct braid pattern easily enough when she had some time and a new cord. It was just everything else that was wrong.

Katana were elegantly unadorned when compared to jian and dao wielded by mainlanders with money. Many cultivators preferred ornamental wooden hilts, wrapped in leather and decorated with every metal under the sun. Even Wei Wuxian's relatively plain blade (with no crossguard) had silvery vines running down the wood. Out of the two katana here, only Tomoe's Yukishiro had a proud carving of cranes in snow on the pommel. Shinta's was almost entirely blank. Probably for the best in Nihon, where most ashigaru eschewed decoration when there was higher turnover in both weapons and men, but just one more detail that made it harder to hide here.

Though the sheer distinctiveness of each jian made them somewhat easier to pick out of a crowd. Tomoe had a better memory for new swords than new faces.

All of this sprang to mind in a few heartbeats, simply because Jiang Wanyin was incapable of expressing gratitude—or recruiting people to his sect—without finding the most backhanded method of phrasing it.

And Tomoe made this judgement even as someone who was no better.

"That's very generous, Jiang-zongzhu," Shinta said, bowing deeply. It lasted just long enough for Jiang Wanyin to start looking uncomfortable, and then Shinta continued, "For now, I cannot accept your offer. This dao is best put to use as quickly as possible."

Jiang Wanyin briefly glanced at Tomoe, as though expecting her to convince Shinta to change his mind. When that appeal failed before it could even begin, he turned to the remainder of his forces and yelled at them to get in the air already.

Tomoe sighed and climbed onto the offered sword without a further word. That could be left firmly to Shinta for now.

Fang Shufen took the time to show her where to place her hands, then added, "By the way, I might ask you to move to Hu Yating's sword in a few hours. How to do you feel about midair transfers?"

Unfortunately, Tomoe wasn't able to compose a response before all of them were already in the air and headed for Qinghe.

Seeing the world spin away below them just reminded her, again and again, of seeing falcons knock other birds from the sky. Of falling from cliffs. Her ability to recover from long falls had limits. Much more stringent limits than cultivators seemed to care a bout.

Her fingers clenched in Fang Shufen's robes like claws, and her heartbeat refused to obey her otherwise iron control.

It was a very, very long flight.

AN: Go/Igo is a strategic game involving black and white stones that originated in China about 3,000 years ago under the name "Weiqi." In Rurouni Kenshin, Kenshin and Sanosuke play shogi while waiting for the assassin Kurogasa to show up early in the manga, so at least some of these people are inclined toward board games.

"Ashigaru" refers to foot-soldiers employed by daimyō armies, who can be either mercenaries or conscripts depending on the era. Historically, the glory days of ashigaru were during the chaos of the Sengoku Jidai, because they could be deployed en masse with early firearms.

As a reminder, "Dongying" and "Nihon" both refer to Japan, from different languages. "Nihonjin" are Japanese people, while "Nihongo" is the language.

Historically, China had a decreed monopoly on the production of silk until Koreans ended up with the technology in the 200s BC. India has had silk for about as long, but obviously never fell under the Chinese emperor's control. As for Europe, that's down to a Byzantine heist in the 500s AD. Silk usage in Japan was much more strictly stratified by social class, meaning Tomoe would be very familiar with the material and Shinta wouldn't had been.