The crimson stain on the sky spread, not like a sunset, but like a bruise across bruised bone. The noise carried the heavy crunch of iron wheels grinding across frozen firmament. From the blood-red maw above, three figures descended, each radiating an oppressive aura that bent the pines and froze the breath in the air. These were three exalted lords of the high court, clad in blinding silk.
The lead commander, a woman named Xuanji whose robes rippled with pale auroras, dropped onto the crag. Beside her, Longshan, a hulking warlord clad in thunderheads, drove his gilded glaive into the snow, splitting the frozen crust. The third, an elder named Shanyue with a halo of floating jade plaques, hovered behind them, his mouth twisted in contempt.
“Mortals,” Xuanji said, her tone driving needle-sharp into every ear. “You shelter a thief. This cookhouse has siphoned the core veins of the upper reaches, withering our sacred lotus pools and dulling our stars.” Her sight cut through the oilcloth window, finding Yumo as he rubbed dough from his knuckles.
“Surrender the thief and the hoarded qi,” Longshan bellowed, snow tumbling down the cliffs at his shout. “Or this mountain range turns to fine ash.” His glaive flared, burning a crater in the snow.
Inside the warm tavern room, silence fell. The spirit fox, curled by the hearth, trembled. The stray cat, usually smug, flattened its ears. Yumo set down his scraping tool, scanning the huddled crowd by the stove. He saw the cripples, the outcasts, the once-proud who now knew peace. He saw Mei Lingshuang, her hand already on the hilt of her frost-etched blade, her knuckles white against the ray-skin grip. He saw Ao Wanchen, the carp, flicking his tail agitatedly in his jade basin, a silent, furious judge.
A bitter draft seeped under the threshold, but the scent of boiling broth remained sweet. If those warriors struck, the kettle would spill, and the wounded disciples would freeze before dusk. He walked to the door, picked up a sturdy rolling pin—his most reliable tool—and pushed the door open, stepping into the biting cold without a trace of hesitation.
“I am Shen Yumo,” he said, voice steady against the howling gale. “And this is my cookhouse. The people here are only eating their supper. If you mean to break their bowls, you answer to me.” He clutched the rolling pin, a ludicrous weapon against cosmic power, but in his hands, it felt like an extension of his will.
Xuanji sneered. “A scullery drudge defies the high halls? Such insolence will extinguish your kin down to the roots.”
Before Yumo could respond, a gruff cough broke the silence. Elder Zhan Kui, his hands still smudged with soot from the stove, stepped out from behind Yumo. He held his firewood axe, the very tool that had once felt heavier than a mountain to his weakened state, now clutched with a strange, fierce pride. “He speaks the truth,” Zhan Kui grumbled, glaring at the Sovereigns. “These are good people. This place… this place is sacred. You want to destroy it? You’ll have to go through me first, you preening peacocks!” His voice was rough, but his stance was unwavering.
Longshan let out a sharp bark of laughter. “The Pill Emperor of the Frost-Qilin Pavilion, reduced to chopping firewood for a scullery boy! And you dare challenge us?”
Then, another figure emerged, robes once grand, now merely functional, but worn with a new, quiet dignity. Sect Head Jin Xu, his golden core stabilized by bowls of Yumo’s simplest gruel, stood beside Zhan Kui, a gleaming ceremonial sword in his hand. “My sect has been a den of vipers for too long,” Jin Xu stated, his gaze meeting Xuanji’s without flinching. “We chased power and forgot humility. This hearth reminded us what truly matters. We will not allow it to be trampled, not even by the upper clouds.”
Finally, the pale inquisitor, his formal collar torn and dusting flour on his sleeve, stepped forward. He held the paring knife, his hands, once clumsy, now steady and capable. He balanced the grease-stained paring blade in his palm. “Elders,” he said, voice rasping like dried husk, “the real sickness is not in this valley. We starve the earth while our jade towers crack from greed. I have eaten his millet. There is more balance in his broth than in all our scripture.” He leveled the fruit knife at Longshan. “You will not pass.”
“Madness!” Shanyue snarled, his jade talismans spinning in agitated loops. “You have been corrupted! Such blatant defiance calls for absolute obliteration!”
Spurned by their own tracker, the three invaders threw their palms upward. The blood-red sky above them began to swirl violently, coalescing into a vortex of pure, destructive energy. Pure purple lightning cracked through the crimson overcast, condensing into a spear of tribulation wrath designed to split mountain roots.
“Die, you blasphemers!” Xuanji shrieked, and the column crashed down toward the threshold. Pine boughs snapped like twigs under the heat. Yumo stepped forward, lifting the wooden cylinder horizontally before the shivering apprentices.
The bolt never reached the porch. From the stoneware basin beside the door, Ao Wanchen cleared the rim with an indignant splash. His fat, whiskered carp frame swelled mid-leap, emerald scales thickening into plates of dark jade as four clawed limbs tore free of his flanks. A bellow shook the bedrock, blowing the purple lightning back into the clouds like scattered embers. The dragon coiled across the roofbeam, towering over the crestfallen envoys, teeth bared in deep, ancient mockery.