A group of them disembarked at an Immortal Ferry Crossing called Ink Line Ferry. The ferry buildings stood packed together, though most had been newly built after the war, forming something like a small town. A little river ran through it, tranquil and without a ripple. Shops lined both banks, but business was slow. The ferry had earned its name long ago from a strange kind of water creature: neither fish nor snake, extraordinarily hard to catch, and dead the moment it left the water. They were slender, with a streak of ink down their backs. They swam through the water in great schools, each ink line winding through the river like a mountain range. Yet after the great war, not a trace of these creatures remained in the river, so Ink Line Ferry had become a name without substance.
Huang Yiyun had brought her disciple Xue Huai, along with two guests from Pu Mountain, to attend the sect-founding celebration at Xiandu Mountain.
The old woman and young girl beside Ye Yunyun were the owners of the tea stall by the Chilin River, where a Dinghun Shop had been set up.
The old woman went by the alias Qiu Du. Her true form was an old Horned Dragon with nearly five thousand years of cultivation. She had once served as an instructing matron in the old Great River Dragon Palace, one of the "close ministers of the Son of Heaven"—low in rank but great in power, with authority comparable to half a Discipline Patriarch among the Mountain Immortals.
The girl's name was Hu Chuling. She bore both her parents' surnames, and her pet name was Cucu.
Unlike the old woman, she was no mountain or marsh spirit. She came from the local people of the Chilin River, and her ancestors