Huzhou.
Fanyun Temple stood on Stacked Emerald Peak. Initially obscure within the Meditation Sect, it had only grown wealthy after supporting the sect reform of "exchanging golden sutras for Daoist registers" and embracing full secularization. Abbot Jinghai had also ridden that favorable wind into the transcendent grade.
Though Monk Jinghai had become tainted by fame and fortune, he had not sunk to consorting with the Demon Path like Jing'an Temple. His schemes mostly involved plain, unadorned commercial warfare, such as seizing territory while Purple Emblem Mountain was in trouble or exposing Li Chimo's affair with the Widow Gang Leader.
When he heard Xie Jinhuan was leading a team to Huzhou to investigate Blood Rain Tower, Monk Jinghai was actually quite nervous. He feared this newly favored court figure, who had close ties to the Cinnabar Cauldron Sect, would come and inflate the issue to settle private grudges under official cover. Thus, he had been especially well behaved today, suspending all commercial activity and sitting in the Abbot's Room, striking a wooden fish and chanting sutras. He had even put away the valuables, leaving the room so bare that even Li Gongpu would probably have felt pity at the sight.
And this preparation for a rainy day clearly had not been wasted. Xie Jinhuan really did come, even bringing several guests.
At midnight, Monk Jinghai sat wrapped in an old kasaya, chanting the Diamond Sutra with his ears shut to everything outside, when he suddenly heard a disturbance beyond the mountain:
Rumble...
Monk Jinghai's wooden fish fell silent. He glanced at the tranquil night sky, then took flight toward the disturbance. Only moments later, he spotted a dark cloud floating at the edge of the heavens, twisting lightning serpents emerging within it, as though some fellow cultivator were undergoing a heavenly