The crescent moon shone over the Nine Provinces.
Inside a Vinaya School temple in Yuzhou of Great Li, moonlight streamed through the window as though reading a book. On the table lay a sheet of slightly rough paper, bearing the words: "Far from inverted dreams."
By the river near Caiyu Mountain of the Bamboo Branch Sect, Chen Jiu, an outer-sect receptionist, fished upstream. Downstream, a young Daoist priest cast his rod into the water. "Ha, fishing the big edge from downwind—you can catch big fish."
In Changning County of the Yuxuan Kingdom Capital City, within a flower-filled residence, moonlight flowed over the Moon-Flying Pavilion. A woman had painted hibiscus brows; she and the moon alike possessed enchanting eyes.
On the first floor of Luopo Mountain's Bamboo Building, Chen Ping'an, dressed in blue, blew out his reading lamp and stepped outside. In the deep stillness of night, he came alone to the stone table by the cliff, bathed from head to toe in moonlight.
The moon was pale, the wind clear, and waves of pine roared like heavenly music.
Upon this mountain cliff, neither too near nor too far from Hehuan Mountain, stood the child-faced State Protecting True Person of Qingxing Kingdom, the white-haired old patriarch of Tiancao Prefecture's Zhang clan, female Sword Immortal Zhang Caiqin, young sword cultivator Zhang Yujiao, the halberd-bearded, frog-bellied Zhang-clan retainer Qi Gu, Golden Body Realm martial man Lu Mo, female cultivator Jin Lü from Chuiqing Peak's branch of the Golden Que Sect, and one outsider: a young female Qi cultivator from Fengle Town at the foot of Hehuan Mountain, named Ni Qing, Daoist name Qing Ni. She wore an Oiled Paper Umbrella slung across her back and carried a cotton bundle.
Message talismans glittering through the night sky continuously delivered intelligence to the mountain ridge.