Early the next morning, White Snow was awakened by the lingering heat of her storage ring.
The iron band forged from a fragment of the Purple Cauldron rested against her left claw, warm as a flatbread fresh off the griddle. She hopped over to the edge of the docks, her claws stepping into hollows in the bluestone. Last night's sense that "something was breathing underground" had faded considerably, but it had not disappeared.
"What's going on..." she muttered, pecking twice at the storage ring. It gave no response; only a trace of warmth remained.
Breakfast had already been laid out in the ground-floor hall of the Listening to the Tides Pavilion.
Han Yuwan had cooked a pot of spirit rice porridge so thick a chopstick could stand upright in it. White Snow buried her head in her bowl and ate with relish, rice grains coating half her face. Qing Feng sat beside her, occasionally wiping her mouth with a handkerchief. Three flasks of strong liquor stood before Red Dragon Girl, who was already drinking straight from them first thing in the morning.
"Red Loach, aren't you afraid you'll drink yourself to death?" White Snow mumbled.
"I won't. Mind your own business." Red Dragon Girl let out a drunken belch. "Hurry up and eat. Once you're done, we'll investigate those lousy docks of yours."
Ningyu sat by the window, watching the cultivators passing along the street below. She flexed the little finger of her right hand and said quietly, "The rogue cultivators here walk very quickly, as though they're avoiding something."
"The Stars Pavilion, obviously." White Snow licked her bowl clean. "Didn't Old Zhou say last night that this place has a lot of rules?"
The Seventh Elder took a Bronze Formation Disk from inside his robe, set it on the