Two days of preparation, frustratingly hard bargaining, and three duels to establish the pecking order, saw Jai Long ready for finally penetrating the Transcendent Ruins, with a party consisting of the leaders and hence the best fighters of the Five Factions Alliance, the party cleared the way, leaving dead dreadbeasts, sacred beasts and remnants by the hundreds behind them.

With the scripts so uncooperative during the past attempts, the party decided to break the doors, which turned out to be unnecessary, every door they neared opened on its own, thoroughly unnerving the party, which they did not show on their faces, but they cycled their madra as though in preparation to unleash their techniques and exchanged meaningful glances. And Jai Long's suspicions solidified.

The pace at which the party moved slowed down as they tried to be more cautious of the new rooms they entered, which in turn gave the dreadbeasts and sacred beasts time to catch up to the party and made them waste their strength to put them down.

Jai Long considered sharing his suspicions with the others, about someone with control over the scripts of the Ruins opening the doors for them, but dismissed the idea, he was sure more experienced and wily among the group already suspected something long the same lines and they have not shared their thoughts.

Finally, the party neared what should be the penultimate door to the centre of the Transcendent Ruins. The door opened on its own, into a broad, featureless hallway with an open doorway at the end. In the very centre lay a circle of script.

As their rearguard kept dreadbeasts occupied, Jai Long took a moment to observe the advanced intricate script on the floor, there were at least ten layers to the circle, lines of runes and sigils wrapping an empty space in the centre, it seemed to be inactive.

Jai Long, his friend Kral and Sandviper chief Gokren, unleashed their individual striker techniques on the floor, and failed to even put a scratch on it. The stone floor seemingly stronger than any other part of the Ruins.

Cautiously, Jai Long led the way along the edges of the hallway and entered the brightly lit doorway. His attention zeroed in on the enormous spiked turtle in the near centre of the spacious room, it matched Jai Long's gaze with black eyes and burning crimson irises, Jai Long probed with his spiritual sense and got the answer he dreaded, peak Truegold. Those burning eyes held his own for a moment before turtle snorted derisively and moved on to others in the party. And Jai Long took in the rooms other occupant, a young man seated in the chair behind the table beside the turtle, built like brick wall, with black hair, and broad shoulders, and a face reminiscent of a sect leader's rebellious son, but it is the eyes that caught Jai Long's attention, dark brown and mild. And incongruously a miniature remnant of a woman, entirely softly glowing blue, sat on his right shoulder.

Before Jai Long could open his mouth or even probe the young man for the strength of his spirit, striker techniques flashed from behind him. And in the blink of an eye, before he could even understand what happened, the young man's eyes flooded with black and kindled with fire to match the turtle's, his spirit felt like a furious dragon and dark burning threads shot out and every striker technique started to dissolve into essence.

The enormous turtle rose to its feet and let out a roar loud enough to rattle Jai Long's bones. And stunned others in to inaction.

The young man, whose eyes returned to dark brown and his spirit to calmness of an undisturbed pond, rose from his seat to stand beside the turtle, with one of his hands on the turtle's shell as though to sooth it, and spoke in a clear, calm voice, "I will chalk that down to surprise on your part. Introductions are in order I suppose, I am Wei Shi Lindon. We can talk or we can fight, your choice."

Jai Long could feel others of his party probe the young man, this Wei Shi Lindon, with their spiritual senses and joined them, Lowgold.

Sandviper chief Gokren took the lead and demanded gruffly, "Who are you?"

Wei Shi Lindon quirked an eyebrow and an edge of his lips tilted slightly upward, as though he had already answered that question, but he answered in mild tone anyway, "I am Wei Shi Lindon, as I have already said", he patted the enormous sacred beast at his side affectionately, and continued, "this is Orthos, a noble descendent of the Black Dragons", then he pointed at the remnant on his shoulder, and said, "and this is Little Blue, a Sylvan Riverseed."

The Slyvan chirped cheerfully and gave a wave, and before Gokren could further his questioning, Wei Shi Lindon, continued speaking in an even calm tone, "And we should discuss our options. One, we can fight, Orthos and I, we will kill you, then depending how belligerent your followers are, we will have a brief rampage, after which there would be enough fire and destruction aura in the environment for us to wipe out the settlement outside, and Little Blue will be here for us as moral support. I sincerely hope we do not choose this option, I abhor needless death."

At the young man's nonchalant words, everyone of the Jai Long's party stiffened for an instant, and the madra they have been cycling sped up, Jai Long already on edge at the confirmation of his suspicions of a Blackflame, stepped up beside Gokren and spoke before a fight broke out, and asked, "What is the other option then?"

Wei Shi Lindon gave Jai Long a wide, almost fond smile and said, "Option two, I give a soul oath, that we have only taken one thing from this workshop. This thing", the young man took out a white binding slowly from the pocket of his outer robe, "and there is even a duplicate for it, in this room. Your party are free to loot this place to your hearts content. I will not interfere. We will go our separate ways."

Jai Long considered that answer and asked another question, "Are there other options?"

Wei Shi Lindon nodded and answered, "One more in fact, the third and final option, we all wait for the Skysworn, they will take me into custody. Which does not negatively impact my own plans. They will probably let you claim what is in here, there is very little that is truly dangerous in here, and the problem with restricting knowledge is that when someone stumbles upon 'forbidden' knowledge, they usually do not know it is forbidden."

The Jai clan Elder, Jai Wang Qiu, who has been silent this whole exchange pushed to the front and demanded, "What forbidden knowledge?"

Wei Shi Lindon looked mildly surprised and said, "Oh, I thought of everyone here, it would be Jai clan who would know. After all, your clan Patriarch is charged with guarding an entrance to the Labyrinth."

Jai Wang Qiu paled, and stuttered out fearfully, "Dreadgods."

Every one of Jai Long's party took a step back, and Wei Shi Lindon raised his eyebrow, surprised at their fear, then apparently comprehension dawned on him and he chuckled and waved his hand down as though calm them down and said, "No, no! Apologies, that is not what I sought to imply, the four beasts will not be coming here. This facility, the Transcendent Ruins, as you call them, is mostly independent of the Labyrinth, they have risen up to collect some energy, they will not attract the attention of the four beasts, I assure you. I was just saying that", Wei Shi Lindon gestured to the thousands of books packed into the shelves in the room and continued, "all of these books are filled the notes from ancient soulsmiths research into hunger madra and hunger aura. The dissemination of the such knowledge is looked upon with mild disapproval by the Akura clan."

Those of the Jai clan and Cloud Hammer sect took another step back unconsciously, at the name of the Akura clan, while those who did not know, primarily factions native to Desolate Wilds, looked at them with confusion.

Jai Long suppressed the shiver down his spine and gathered himself, and looked to the party he gathered and said softly, "We should confer."

They stepped out of the workshop and into the hallway with the intricate script and Gokren growled out roughly, "What is there to talk, we should kill that arrogant whelp and be done with it."

"Chief Gokren, he is a Lowgold, but still a Blackflame Lowgold. Even as Copper's they were weapons of mass destruction. And I know of the sacred beast with him, there are stories of him decimating small armies of his own back in the Empire. If they are confident in killing us all, it is not without basis", Jai Long replied stiffly.

First Fisher Rahgan cut in before before Gokren can reply, looking to the Jai Elder, "Jai, how true are the boy's words about the Ruins connection to Dreadgods?"

Jai Wang Qiu looked cornered as he answered, "True enough."

Fisher Gesha, the Fisher sects premier soulsmith sighed out and said, "This turned into a mess, hasn't it?"

After a few moments of silence, Cloud Hammer outer sect Elder, Benfrei, said quietly, "We should wash our hands off this and leave it to Skysworn to deal with."

One by one, reluctantly, they all nodded. And they returned to the room, to see Wei Shi Lindon deposit a small beautifully carved wooden chest on the table, he looked up-to them and said, "The Skysworn it is then. No matter, come I have something that will cheer you."

Cautiously they moved as one, together, nearing the table but still a healthy distance from the enormous sacred beast and Lindon opened the box, it contained badges made of copper, iron, jade, gold, halfsilver, some sort of silvery metal, and some metals of red and blue. They indicate advancement stages, Jai Long thought.

Wei Shi Lindon tapped on the silvery unknown metal, and said softly, "In ancient times people wore badges to indicate their level of advancement. This is wintersteel, it is a precious metal, it can only worked by will, Sages wore them", then he tapped the red badge, "this is adamant, this too is precious, it requires a level of physical strength to work that only Herlads can output, Heralds wore them to indicate their rank", and then he tapped the blue metal, "this is an alloy of wintersteel and adamant, it has no particular name that I know of, but ancient Monarchs wore them. If you find the right buyer, they are worth half a million scales by Desolate Wilds reckoning."

Jai Long could feel the greed rising in the members of his party, and Jai Long was no exception to that, with that many scales I can cure Jai Chen.

But Wei Shi Lindon was not done yet, he took out a loose sheaf of papers and three scripted river-stones, and put them on the table.

Wei Shi Lindon tapped the pages, "These are notes on what you call the Ancestor's Spear, only a very small portion of it deals with hunger madra, most of the remaining concerns the scripts on the weapon, it is brilliant work, studying them will immensely benefit any scripter", and the young man tapped on the riverstones once and practically lit up with enthusiasm, "but these, I consider the actual prize of the Transcendent Ruins. Watch carefully."

Then Wei Shi Lindon infused the script on a riverstone with pure madra, what!

Before Jai Long can dwell on it more something fuzzed in the air above the riverstone, and Wei Shi Lindon reached his hand into thin air and pulled out a book, and another, then another.

Smiling widely, Wei Shi Lindon reached beneath the fuzz in the air and lifted up the river stone towards them, and they saw a small wood panelled interior, enough to fit three books. Then the box disappeared.

At their stunned faces, Wei Shi Lindon laughed and repeated the same thing with other riverstones and said conversationally, "Void spaces are nearly impossible to make without involvement of a Sage. It requires a capacity to influence reality with just will. But nearly impossible is not completely impossible", he patted the books he took out affectionately and said, "these contain a level of scripting knowledge that is generally only privy to Archlords or above. And with considerable study and dedication, the knowledge in those books will allow any talented scripter to make small void spaces, nothing to match what a Sage or a Monarch can do. But.." he trailed of leadingly, what is trash to a Sage is treasure to anyone below them, Jai Long finished the sentence in his own mind.

Lindon walked to stand beside the enormous turtle, and made a wide sweeping gesture towards the table, and said with a warm smile, "My suggestion, take the Ancestor's Spear, the notes about the spear, the badges, the soulsmith tools, and the riverstones along with the knowledge of how to make more of them. Then pack up everything else, and hand it over to Skysworn, along with me, you could probably make a convincing argument to the Skysworn to reward you for my 'capture' and for giving the Empire your hard won loot."

With a crooked smile Wei Shi Lindon asked, "Do we have an accord?"

And even as Jai Long felt like he and his party were played like a flute, he knew they were going to make the deal.