The Tianhua Domain.

From the Bafang Domain to Tianhua, a full relay of transit formations took the better part of a day. Getting from there to White River City, however, turned out to have no direct transit portal at all — because White River City was in the middle of a war that had been ongoing for close to three thousand years.

The Tianhua Domain was subdivided into more than ten regions, nearly a thousand territories, and tens of thousands of states and kingdoms of varying sizes, all engaged in shifting patterns of conflict that had never quite resolved into a decisive conclusion. The longer it went on, the less resolution seemed possible — every death generated new grievances, every new grievance pulled in new factions, and the interests had become so thoroughly entangled over millennia that the idea of a clean ending had stopped making sense.

There were no just causes here. There were no armies fighting for something worth fighting for. There were only participants in a machine, some feeding it and some being fed into it, all of them simultaneously both.

The mercenary dead alone, if their bones were stacked, could have built a mountain range.

And every day, more warriors arrived. For the pay, for the training, for the particular kind of skill that only developed under genuine threat.

“Welcome, brave merchants.” No category of visitor was more valued in Tianhua than merchants willing to enter it. The three domain lords, for all their mutual contempt, had each independently arrived at the same practical conclusion: commerce had to be protected. Supplies had to move. The armies needed feeding and the civilians needed not to starve, and without the merchants willing to navigate a war zone, neither happened. So the proclamation was consistent across all three factions: merchants were untouchable. Their goods, their freedom, and their lives were guaranteed, and anyone who violated this principle answered for it with their head.

The logic was brutally practical and had held for centuries.

Yueyang had researched the domain before coming. He dressed as a wealthy merchant, as most travelers did, because the identity provided access that nothing else did. With a merchant’s papers and a merchant’s cover, he could go almost anywhere — including White River City. Which was, of course, the entire point.

And since the disguise required actual merchandise to be convincing, and since Tianhua happened to have abundant reserves of Electric Flower Ore — a material on his list for War Beast Bracelet production — the commercial logic practically wrote itself.

Yueyang and the three women traveled on the lead vessel, a well-appointed private airship carrying no cargo. Behind it came the convoy: fifty wide-hulled cargo ships loaded with grain, ten narrow fast-ships carrying wine, the whole enterprise nominally commanded by Baoguo as merchant-team leader — borrowed from the Nightly City operation for exactly this purpose. Security was provided by Flying Locust and Spotted Pattern from the Wild Bull unit that had surrendered into Nightly City’s service, plus the three surrendered fighters Zhongguan, Baima, and Heitu, who had long since earned genuine trust. Yonghui and Yuexiu — their power significantly diminished after the recent events — hadn’t yet earned enough of it to be included.

Zhongguan was the escort captain, Sky-rank tier three. In Tianhua, that was a serious credential. A convoy with five Sky-rank escorts wasn’t claiming to be a merchant operation so much as announcing that attempting to rob it would be a memorable mistake. Even without the merchant papers, the composition of the escort made the point clearly.

Five Sky-rank guards put you in the top twenty merchant convoys operating in Tianhua by default, and probably the top ten.

Their first stop was a city called Jinyang.

A grain merchant named Ouba had the sharpest nose for opportunity in the city, and he arrived at the docks before the convoy had finished mooring. The moment he understood that the fifty cargo ships were carrying grain — all fifty of them, nothing but grain — he nearly lost his composure entirely.

“Respected Elder Baoguo — please sit — we have no intention of concealing anything — for a trading house of your caliber, we maintain the deepest possible respect — we simply need a moment to assemble the right people—” He was talking faster than his thoughts could organize themselves. “I dare say that not only our entire city’s merchants, but the soldiers and civilians here who haven’t eaten properly in weeks, will be singing your name. You’ve arrived at the most critical possible moment. If you hadn’t come — in one more month, a fifth of the people in this area would have starved. Possibly more. Elder Baoguo, please sit, I’ll notify the city lord immediately, and I give you my absolute assurance that not a finger will be laid on your cargo, regardless of your escorts—”

“We appreciate the warmth,” Baoguo said, with the measured dignity of a man who had learned this register in a hard school. He was nothing like the small-time peddler who’d once been too frightened to take a full breath in the wrong company. Knowing Yueyang had changed the trajectory of his life completely, and the version of him that existed now knew exactly how to use a room. “We’re here because we’re evaluating the Tianhua market. These fifty ships are a preliminary investment, pending our assessment of the returns.”

Ouba’s expression said he would do very nearly anything to make the assessment come out favorably.

“There is one specific item we need,” Baoguo continued. “Electric Flower Ore.”

Ouba’s expression transformed into a wince of genuine suffering. “Electric Flower Ore is under military restriction—”

“Then we’ll be going.”

“Wait — Elder Baoguo — please — it’s not that none exists, it’s that the domain lords require all of it to be purchased centrally, refined, and converted into weapons. Public trading is prohibited. The penalties are severe.” He spread his hands. “Execution, for violations.”

Jude the toad-fatty, who had been sitting in the corner contributing an atmosphere of ambient authority, stirred. “How disappointing. And we were so looking forward to this partnership.”

Baoguo stood up.

“No — no, please, one moment — I wonder if I may have expressed myself poorly.” Ouba’s mind, which was a merchant’s mind and therefore very fast, had already found the angle. “If weapons captured on the battlefield were to be considered scrap material, and if that scrap were to be processed through a third party for disposal purposes, and if certain friends were to receive, as an expression of goodwill, a quantity of grain and wine in recognition of their assistance with waste management—”

He let that sit.

Baoguo and Jude looked at each other.

“We would consider that a reasonable arrangement,” Baoguo said.

Ouba’s relief was visible from across the room.

The grain gave him leverage he hadn’t had in months. No amount of regulations changed the fact that the people in this city were hungry, and the city lord would understand arithmetic even if he pretended otherwise. Sometimes the only question that mattered was: who had the food?

While Baoguo and Jude were managing Ouba and the city lord, Yueyang was studying the route maps.

The convoy was a means, not the destination. White River City — at the near-center of the Tianhua Domain, surrounded by contested territory — was where the snake-haired sorcerer had asked to meet, and it was a long way from anywhere convenient. The journey would take time no matter what path they chose, and all the paths went through the war.

But why White River City specifically? The sorcerer was a legitimate descendant of one of the Four Great Clans — someone with real knowledge, real resources, and presumably real reasons for choosing a meeting location. What made White River City worth the inconvenience?

Something worth finding? A divine artifact? A relic site that had attracted his attention immediately after escaping the Earthen Demon Divine Palace?

“Have you noticed,” Qianqian said, without preamble, “that this entire region is water? Rivers, lakes, marshland — it’s everywhere. Not just White River City.”

“I’ve been mapping the settlements,” Yue Yu added. “The layout — if you draw it out — forms a pattern. Something unusual about the arrangement.”

The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady, finding both sets of eyes turning to her: “I notice nothing and apologize for this.”

Yueyang didn’t answer immediately. Both Qianqian and Yue Yu had caught something real, but neither had quite completed the thought. The water distribution, the city arrangement, the choice of White River City as a meeting point specifically — these weren’t separate observations.

They were part of the same picture.

He sat back with the maps and thought.

Baoguo and Jude came up the gangway to report, took one look at Yueyang’s expression over the table, turned around without speaking, and went quietly back down.

The city lord could be handled. The grain merchant could be handled. Whatever was on that man’s mind was considerably more important than anything they needed to tell him right now.