In Parallelity, In Perpendicularity |XICHENG|

IV | weave only to leave

The earth went quiet in the night's wake. It was hardly unusual—quietness, that is—but silence was. It rang around them almost bemoaningly, crying with the ghost of an attempted battle lost.

The last time Jiang Cheng heard any sound of life was miles ago. Not even crickets tried to linger around.

"It was an accident, they said," came the low report of a senior disciple of his. "Unfortunately, we have no way of confirming yet since we just made a rotation. We were patrolling the borders when it happened."

Jiang Cheng looked at the numbers of disciples lain out from a few distance. Four of them, three from the Nie and one from the Jin. He had gone to them earlier and had seen pale lips and sunken eyes. He had thought them for a funeral until he had leaned in close enough to notice their shallow breathing. Their qi had barely even been depleted, though chaotic, with traces of resentful energy suppressed but not eliminated.

Everyone guessed they must have found themselves inside the barrier. It broke, after all. Accidentally, they said. Corpses had found their way around the area somehow, prompting the disciples in charge of maintaining the protective array to leave their stations and defend themselves.

No one had seen it supposedly, but during the fighting, one of them must have accidentally severed the barrier, and with no one left to maintain the array which so happened to have been smudged from the tussles, the barrier shattered. Now, four disciple lie unconscious with only two witnesses left to explain what happened. Neither had much to explain too.

Jiang Hanan's dark violet robe stood out among the yellows and forest greens, such that his smallest movement immediately drew Jiang Cheng's attention. He had to look when he saw the boy step away from the unconscious disciples.

"Sect Leader," the boy called solemnly as he walked over. When he was near enough, he lowered his voice to an almost whisper. "I spoke with a disciple and he said something."

"Something," Jiang Cheng repeated, already turning on his heel. The pensive look on his disciple did not bode well.

"Tell me then," he said when they were finally at a distance.

Hanan threw one last look behind him then drew a deep breath. "It may have been done intentionally."

Jiang Cheng's eyes narrowed. "Who?"

"QingheNie. Although—" once more, Hanan glanced back, gaze lingering a few seconds more than necessary for merely checking back. Jiang Cheng followed his gaze and found more confusion than answers when it landed on an unsuspecting disciple. "—there is no proof of it yet. It doesn't help that the disciple who told me is not part of the contingents responsible for tonight's overwatch. He is from the Li Sect, the new rising Sect at the Meishan borders, if Sect Leader can remember."

Jiang Cheng's lips pressed into a tight line.

"I remember."

The Li Clan of Zizhou, a small city just next to Meishan, had always existed as far as everyone was concerned, but they hadn't always stood out. Jiang Cheng knew them from the Sunshot Campaign; they'd come, that time, with MeishanYu volunteers, and helped as much as they could despite their smaller numbers. Though contact with them after that was rare. Still, they were good enough neighbors with MeishanYu for Jiang Cheng to occasionally hear about them.

Words made it so that Jiang Cheng knew they were gaining a bit of attention recently mainly for their healing skills. Jiang Cheng also knew vaguely about their internal power conflict, as well as the fact that they sent disciples to study in Gusu, too. He just didn't know what they were doing here so far away from home.

Volunteers for this cooperative effort were mainly of those concerned—QingheNie and LanlingJin—and the nearest surrounding minor sects who could afford to. YunmengJiang was here by association to LanlingJin, especially when their Sect Leader-to-be was indisposed, and so was GusuLan after much pitiful theatrics from Sect Leader Nie.