“Then what is right?” Cha Ming asked.
“Right is acting virtuously,” Feng Ming said without hesitation. “Conduct yourself with honesty and integrity. Be kind. Be courageous. Work hard. Don’t take more than what you should have. Be tolerant.”
“And wrong?” Cha Ming asked.
“The opposite,” Feng Ming replied. “Everyone needs to do the best with the hand they’re dealt. Playing well is harder with a bad hand, but the rewards are so much richer when you win.”
“We should go back,” Cha Ming said, nodding. “Do we just fly over the wall? Will our men just let us through?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Feng Ming said. “We’ll have to go through a checkpoint.” He frowned suddenly, then summoned a jade orb. “Unfortunately, it seems like we’ll need to hold that thought. The war’s started, and not where we thought it would.” He looked toward the east. “We need to head to the Eastern Desert as quickly as possible.
“Through Southern lands?” Cha Ming asked. “Dangerous.”
“Dangerous, but faster than the alternative,” Feng Ming said. “Do you have any flight treasures?”
“Something better, I think,” Cha Ming said. He began to grow. His neck grew longer, as did his body. His boots melted away as claws formed where they’d been. Feathers erupted from his skin, and in seconds, Cha Ming was a 333-foot-long falcon, an imitation of Silverwing. Unlike Silverwing, however, his body was riddled with qi pathways that led to his Dantian. Qi poured out from his massive body and into 1,080 gray sigils, which joined together with white light, summoning winds and clouds upon activating.
You going to hop on? Cha Ming asked, looking down at Feng Ming and Gong Xuandi, who were gaping in shock. Feng Ming was the first to recover. He took it in stride and hopped on Cha Ming’s back.
“So you can transform into a demon, can you?” Feng Ming said. “What else can you change into?”
“I’m not sure,” Cha Ming said as Gong Xuandi hopped on. “Let’s find out.” He flapped his massive wings, taking them up a mile high in an instant. He flapped once more, speeding off toward the east, wind and clouds trailing behind them.
Zhou Li knew something was wrong the moment he landed. The smoldering wreckage of a city aside, it was a feeling deep within his gut. He saw angry blood masters arguing over what was left of their monastery, and three shepherds had come from other cities. They had dousing needles out and were trying to divine the true culprit behind things.
He closed his eyes, and images appeared. Three messages, all scrawled by the same hand. The Wang family sends its regards, they read, but that was too obvious. The Wang family had been their agents for many of his lifetimes. Why would they suddenly turn against them?
The blood masters were incensed, and rightly so. The Spirit Temple had already sent an ultimatum to the Wang family. To Zhou Li’s surprise, however, Wang Jun had capitulated. That relieved him more than the destroyed temple and monastery bothered him.
The wall to the North was a complete wreck. Though the Ji Kingdom’s ruler lay mortally wounded in bed, he had fortunately chosen a successor. A wounded successor, but a successor nonetheless. That was far better than what the Northern kingdoms would get once the war was over. The beast that had devastated the Northern tenth of the city was gone, leaving tens of thousands of metallic corpses behind. The cost in lives was devastating, but those valuable corpses were a good consolation prize. Their smiths would forge them into weapons for the upcoming battle.
As for the Breaker… he’d known about its fate before even landing. No messages had been required to inform him of the fate of his pet project. He’d discarded the weapon the moment it had detonated. It had clearly been tampered with, so anything to do with it was suspect. Likely, that had been the mole’s goal in the first place. The skillful mole who’d infiltrated the Wang family. Heavens knew who it was or how he’d done it.
Soldiers avoided Zhou Li as he flew toward the caged beast in the distance. The Taotie, the vicious creature that had effectively destroyed half a city and a good portion of their experts, sat in its cage, patiently waiting. It had been down this road before, so it knew the drill. It fully expected to be sealed for another few thousand years.
Transcendents bowed as Zhou Li landed in front of the ochre cage, a black-and-ochre seal in hand. Last time, it had been the North who’d sealed it. This time, they were the ones to bear the brunt of its onslaught. And just like last time, they couldn’t kill the damned thing. They could only trap it and hope the seal held for as long as possible.
“Such a pity,” Zhou Li mumbled, fingering the disc.
“A true pity,” a man said, walking up beside him. It was Yao Xifeng, chief warlord and one of the grand viziers of the Southern Alliance. He was a tall, regal man who wore jet-black armor. He wore a large silver blade at his back that he never parted with. A wicked scar ran across his face, a burn he’d suffered in his childhood. And like Zhou Li, he, too, was a reincarnator.
“We had just ordered the first strikes against the North to take advantage of their distracted transcendents,” Yao Xifeng said. “Unfortunately, some powerful intruders wreaked havoc in the city as we fought the beast. They even killed one of our transcendents. Our losses were much greater than anticipated, and it will affect my calculations for the upcoming struggle.”
“It’s fortunate we didn’t commit so many forces to Haijing,” Zhou Li said. “Your suggestions on that front were wise.”
“A general never commits too much on a long shot,” Yao
