Xijiu had not actually intended to drag his father into harm’s way.

Nominating his father as a new recruit so the group could beat him into the ground as psychological compensation — that was something Xijiu would never dare, however bold he might be in other respects. What he’d actually been trying to do was speak up on his father’s behalf, since Ganquan might feel awkward approaching the new Prison Emperor directly. The Titan Trading Company was desperately short-handed, and Ganquan happened to be an exceptionally capable financial administrator. If he could step forward to assist the perpetually overwhelmed Jude in establishing a Titan branch in White River City and the surrounding territories held by their people, it would be the best possible outcome for everyone.

It would bring his father and their kinsmen formally under the Prison Emperor’s banner while making full use of the decades of quiet influence their people had built in the Sky Realm.

He simply hadn’t managed to explain any of that before his father leaped to the wrong conclusion entirely.

Once Ganquan learned the truth, the anger didn’t dissipate immediately. He issued a firm decree: under no circumstances was Xijiu to recruit any of their kinsmen into the group as new members, on pain of a severed father-son relationship.

“Sir, even if I wanted to drag someone in, Young Master Titan doesn’t take just anyone. It’s not a matter of who wants to join.” Xijiu smiled wearily.

“Oh, look at you, so indispensable.” Something in Ganquan’s tone suggested he’d heard an implication he found personally offensive — specifically, that perhaps he himself might not make the cut. The irritation surged again and he moved toward the kitchen. Then he spotted Elder Nangong emerging from the inner room, and barely managed to restrain himself. He filed the matter away for later, resolving to deal with his son at a more opportune moment.

“My respects, Elder Nangong.” Xijiu delivered a hasty bow and removed himself from the vicinity before his father could locate the cleaver.

“The Sky Tower is currently busy and understaffed on many fronts,” Elder Nangong said, settling in with Ganquan now that the social portion of the visit was complete. “Young Yue Yang would like to ask for Mr. Ganquan’s assistance, but worries that making the request too directly might disrupt your existing work. He asked me to come speak on his behalf.”

“Ganquan is willing to contribute whatever small effort he can to the rise of the Sky Tower.” Ganquan accepted without a moment’s hesitation, and with more happiness than he could contain.

“Excellent. Young Yue Yang will come by again before long. When he does, Mr. Ganquan is welcome to return to the Sky Tower first and see the old home, or alternatively to guide Yue Yang to the settlements of our kinsmen in the Sky Realm so they can all come back together. As for White River City — this location has been compromised, and continuing to operate from here serves no purpose. To avoid alerting anyone prematurely, it would be wise to begin preparations early.” Elder Nangong finished, then went back out to exchange a few words with Sea Fatty, Ye Kong, and the others — urging them to be careful, not to chase credit recklessly, and not to let impatience ruin what they’d built.

In front of Elder Nangong, Sea Fatty didn’t dare breathe too loudly.

Old Fox, Jun Wuyou, and the rest of their elders would have his hide otherwise.

Xijiu’s face went red when he heard the caution about reckless credit-chasing. Elder Nangong wasn’t speaking about him. But it felt exactly like he was.

Yue Yang wrapped up his meeting with Fengxian and the Southern Wilderness Demon King, a new plan taking shape, and came back at full speed. This time he returned to the sixth level of the Sky Stairway — Thunder Fortress — and brought back the Octopus Elder, Big Whale Zhang, Arrowfish Jifeng, and Mudskipper Suizui.

Fengxian and the Southern Wilderness Demon King were not women who needed help with strategy and positioning. Layout and planning came to them as naturally as breathing.

White River City housed several hundred thousand defectors from the Sky Tower lineage. Because of their betrayal and treachery, they had been cursed by ancient Sky Tower ancestors and warped into mutant fishfolk, generation after generation, the curse impossible to remove. Because of this, they had come to use the curse itself as a means of identification. Anyone who didn’t carry the curse, anyone who wasn’t a mutant fishfolk, was an outsider — and almost certainly an enemy. No ordinary person could genuinely infiltrate them.

What those mutant fishfolk could never have anticipated was this: within the Sky Stairway, there were sealed warriors who had also been cursed into the same mutant fishfolk form. And those sealed warriors had been released by Yue Yang and had become his followers.

Using the Octopus Elder, Big Whale Zhang, and Arrowfish Jifeng to penetrate the defectors’ inner organization directly — that would be difficult, and the timing was wrong.

But as performers in the right kind of scene, staged with Yue Yang and the others?

That would work perfectly. White River City’s mutant fishfolk, however guarded against outsiders, would never suspect people who looked exactly like them — would never question the Octopus Elder and the others who were virtually indistinguishable from their own kind.

“The resemblance is remarkable,” Ganquan murmured, studying the group. If Yue Yang hadn’t brought them personally, he’d have suspected they were defector spies who’d slipped in.

“It’s not that we merely resemble them — we are their enemies, and we were cursed by the exact same thing.” The Octopus Elder shook his head with a rueful smile. “We didn’t just receive the curse. We spent thousands of years sealed in a seafloor burial ground. Without Yue Yang, we would have remained sealed there forever, dead but unable to leave. If there’s something we can do to wash away even a fraction of our old sins, we are glad to do it. We’ve taken on this form, yes. But our hearts haven’t changed. We are not fish. We are not monsters. We are people.”

“Our blood will testify to everything we were.” Big Whale Zhang made Yue Yang a direct promise.

“Blood always tells the truth.” Arrowfish Jifeng nodded, his expression grave.

“…” Mudskipper Suizui drew a breath to speak.

Sea Fatty’s hand covered his mouth before the first word was out. “You don’t need to say anything. Truly. Not a word needed.”

“You know me that well?” Suizui managed to push out despite the hand.

“Like the back of mine.” Sea Fatty laughed. “I know exactly what you were going to say, because everything you say is irrelevant.”

“So is yours!” Ye Kong put a foot into both Sea Fatty and Suizui simultaneously and sent them stumbling, at which point Liqie, Ligua, and the others fell on them with practiced efficiency, the whole sequence playing out with the smooth coordination of a team that had done this many times before.

Xijiu, watching from the side, was filled with private longing. He didn’t dare pile on Sea Fatty — supposedly the group’s senior leader — and neither did Fengji or Jinyun, who could only stand nearby and watch with the same unsatisfied admiration.

Sea Fatty and Ye Kong’s scuffle carried on without disrupting anything that mattered.

Yue Yang finished walking through the plan in detail with the Octopus Elder and the others, then left Gray Wolf with them as a safety guarantee for the group.

Then he took Elder Nangong and Ganquan and headed back to the Sky Stairway — because bringing their kinsmen home, truly bringing them home, required showing them the place with their own eyes before the doubts in their hearts could fully dissolve.

This time, the destination was the first level of the Sky Stairway — the entrance.

Old Fox, Jun Wuyou, and representatives of many peoples had already gathered upon hearing the news. The Sky Realm remnants, from whom no word had come in at least six thousand years, had finally made contact.

How could it be anything but cause for joy?

When Ganquan opened his eyes and took in the Sky Stairway’s tower rising above him into clouds too high to see the top of, his tears came immediately and kept coming.

He dropped to his knees on the ground. His hands scooped up a handful of earth.

He brought it to his face and breathed it in, again and again.

It wasn’t enough.

This is the scent of home.

The home that had haunted his dreams and waking thoughts for all his years — and the wanderer stranded in the Sky Realm with no anchor, no roots — had finally come back. Finally come back.

White River City.

Qingping arrived at the Iron Guild early and waited.

If not for orders from above, she wouldn’t have given a second thought to the silver-masked, pale-faced guard from yesterday’s tram ride — the one who couldn’t keep his eyes to himself. His cultivation was laughably weak, and the mysterious mask was just theater. Did he think a silver mask was what it took to draw attention? True powerhouses didn’t need any of that. A genuine strong individual commanded notice without lifting a finger.

In the Sky Realm, strength was everything.

Without it? One word summed a person up entirely, and that word was trash.

Qingping waited and found Liuye coming through the gate without the silver-masked young man anywhere in sight. She kept her curiosity casual. “Good morning, Liuye! Where’s your teacher? He didn’t come?”

“There’s a lot that only he can handle, so he’s been very busy.” Liuye explained that Yue Yang had an important deal in progress and genuinely couldn’t get away — otherwise, she said, he’d definitely have been happy to come.

Qingping didn’t doubt the second part of that for a moment. A man like yesterday’s walking disaster? If a beautiful woman called, he’d come running. But important business this early in the morning? What business?

“What kind of deal?” Qingping kept the question light, as though it had simply occurred to her.

“Thunder-ore, I think? I’m not entirely sure. Some fishfolk men came in the middle of the night to discuss something…” Liuye admitted she didn’t know the full details.

Right. Qingping connected the pieces. Two tracks running at the same time — herself in the open, another line operating in the background. She didn’t know who’d sent this group, but her own cover was the one thing she absolutely could not blow.

She redirected the conversation smoothly.

Handling a man who led with his eyes was one thing; coaxing a girl as unworldly as Liuye was straightforward work. Qingping found herself thinking, with mild professional dissatisfaction, that this assignment was somewhat beneath her abilities. Chaperoning a girl around a shopping district was simple to the point of tedium. The worst part was that this particular girl was so genuinely sweet and trusting that Qingping kept catching herself reluctant to deceive her.

They’d gotten through two streets when the tram ahead of them discharged a crowd of passengers, and out of the crowd, a conspicuously punchable-looking fat man spotted Liuye and charged over.

“Liuye! What a coincidence running into you here — truly meeting a friend in a foreign land!”

“Oh, Sea Fatty is here too!” Liuye greeted him with her customary politeness.

“And who is this?” Sea Fatty’s eyes landed on Qingping, and whatever restraint he normally exercised over his facial expression immediately abandoned him.

Qingping’s opinion of the world took a slight downward turn.

If she’d thought yesterday’s silver-masked young man had been difficult to tolerate, the specimen in front of her now was in an entirely different category of offensive. This one was thoroughly unsightly and making absolutely no effort to hide how thoroughly unsightly he was. You have a face like that, she thought, and you’re not in a corner somewhere weeping — you’re out here, forcing it on people. Do you think the world operates on a principle where ugly is admirable? Do you think your absence would constitute a loss to civilization?

She nearly said it aloud.

She was, however, a trained operative, and her training held.

She swallowed the revulsion and smiled. The smile was soft and warm and carried just the faintest edge of shyness — exactly the variety most effective at triggering the specific type of enthusiasm Sea Fatty was exhibiting.

On the other side of the group, she registered the tall, lean man Liuye had called Ye Kong — his greeting to Liuye used the same register as Sea Fatty’s, which told her they came from the same circle. Ye Kong’s gaze moved across her like the edge of something sharp, and the sensation of being assessed by it was genuinely unpleasant. This one was a serious threat — considerably more formidable than the silver-masked young man playing at mystery yesterday. And he didn’t appear to be the group’s strongest member, either. That distinction belonged to the cold one — the one whose single glance made the temperature seem to drop. Snow-Hungry Wolf. One look from him and the air felt like it had ice in it.

Dangerous. Absolutely dangerous.

Someone like that needs to be eliminated as fast as possible, or he becomes a serious problem.

Qingping looked at Snow-Hungry Wolf’s coolly composed face and felt a small, private sense of waste. A man that striking, with cultivation to match — it really would be a shame. And he wasn’t the only one. Setting aside the repulsive fat man, most of the young people in this group were notably good-looking. The courteous, elegant one with the bearing of someone born to a great house — he’d make an exceptional husband by any standard. His cultivation was comparable to Snow-Hungry Wolf’s, his appearance was extraordinary — refined and otherworldly where Snow-Hungry Wolf was icily imposing, gentler and more considerate where Ye Kong was blade-edged and severe—

And then she heard Liuye address him.

A prince.

He was actually a prince.

When the handsome and distinguished prince turned and smiled at her, Qingping’s heart rate did something involuntary and embarrassing. Did she genuinely have to kill someone like this? What a terrible waste.

White River City had men of greater cultivation than this prince, certainly, but the ones who did were not looking at them. Compared to him, every male in White River City might as well have collectively sustained facial injuries. Even Snow-Hungry Wolf — with that cold, perfect face — could sweep the entire city without effort. The fat one was a lost cause, obviously, but even Ye Kong was actually quite decent-looking, and by the standards of White River City’s half-fishfolk male population, he was genuinely exceptional. Ye Kong, she mentally noted. Not a bad name either.

Where had these people come from, and how did they all end up in one group?

Three exceptional men, each different in his own specific way. Her heart said the prince above the others, but setting aside either of the remaining two felt unnecessarily wasteful. This was genuinely difficult to choose between. If somehow all of them—

Qingping’s thoughts were becoming somewhat disorganized.

The more she thought, the faster her heart moved.

Sea Fatty was already proposing that they share Qingping as a guide and pool together a fee, and for once Qingping had no objection — not because she needed the pretext, but because a woman who had genuinely never encountered this concentration of quality in her professional life was not going to walk away from it voluntarily. The silver-masked young man? Irrelevant at the moment. He was off doing business, he wasn’t a threat worth worrying about.

“Idiot. The prettier the guide, the more she’ll fleece you.” Ye Kong registered his opposition to Sea Fatty’s plan.

“I’ve only been a guide for one day — I’m not one of those seasoned old hands who steers clients toward overpriced shops. Liuye can vouch for me.” Qingping replied without irritation, her voice gentle.

“Doesn’t matter,” Sea Fatty said cheerfully. “If she’s beautiful, I accept being fleeced. Go ahead, fleece me, exploit me, take advantage of me, be as ruthless as you like — don’t hold back just because I’m a fragile flower. Oh yes!”

The sentence was not finished before several people simultaneously put him on the ground, and a crowd gathered around to kick him, which left Qingping staring.

“Sea Fatty has a problem with beautiful women,” Liuye said apologetically.

“Ha!” Qingping had, in fact, been considering joining in, but caught the Tianra Prince glancing over and immediately composed herself into something approaching ladylike decorum.

“This is pointless. Let’s go.” Snow-Hungry Wolf made a sound of cold disgust, and his voice alone — that aloof, imperious tone paired with that face — sent a small tremor through somewhere in the vicinity of Qingping’s heart. What an infuriating man.

For no reason she could identify, the silver-masked young man’s face flickered across her mind briefly.

Not my concern right now.

Although, thinking about it — he was actually reasonably good-looking, wasn’t he? With most of his face hidden, hard to say for certain, but the eyes and the mouth were quite appealing, and when he smiled it was genuinely something. Too lecherous, obviously — same category as the fat one, which cost him considerably. Without that, he’d score much higher. If she could somehow collect the entire group in one net — add the silver-faced one to the tally — that would be four, which wasn’t really that many, when you thought about it.