“Let me be brutally honest with you right now. If there was a way for me to see my daughters? I would be there with them. Me not having a way to get back to them and I’ve been trying to do anything I can to get back? That’s how you want him to be.”

  “Actually no,” I said. “Brutal honesty is pretty terrible. See if he wants to be forgiven and then, if so, what he does to make that happen...”

  Min popped out of the window to look at us. If there was something going on, she would have told us. But it looked like she just wanted to eavesdrop.

  “I get where you’re coming from and I appreciate you. Maybe one day I’ll have kids and I’ll treat them the way they that you say that you treat yours,” she said, faltering for a minute.

  I had loads to say about how others parentified her and forced her to act older than she was, but it wasn’t my time to talk.

  “For now though, maybe you can learn his teleportation circle technique,” I said. “Then he really won’t have an excuse to not visit your mother.”

  “I hadn’t even thought about that. I was just thinking about him and me,” she said. “She’s going to be ecstatic.”

  She took a seat on a bench next to me. It was one of those pastoral scenes that get because of proper urban planning. A beautiful park laid out in front of us. Someone cultivated every detail to create the effect of a lush forest. Probably more like a savannah, given the amount of grass and trees.

  In a veritable forest, that would be way more trees. In a proper family, they would be way more love. She was going to have to get to where she wanted to be, but she knew. We had talked about her dreams and her hopes. Now she could make those real.

  “I’m serious about this teleportation thing,” I said. “I need a realistic way to get from here to there and if you can teach me to do it as well? Even better.”

  She laughed. I could see her wiping off a tear.

  “Can I have a hug?” She said, getting up.

  I knew her parents were not big on hugs of physical affection.

  I nearly bowled her over with a bear hug.

  She melted.

  Min saw that happening and sucked back in.

  We returned to brunch.

  ---

  They spend way too long. Working on something that I was hoping would have taken half a day.

  By the time Egiya had a working prototype of her own, I was ready for dinner. Thankfully, the blue robes gave us our final set of debriefings and we could use her newly enhanced teleportation circles to head all the way to Western Jewel.

  ---

  We popped out into the safe house. Or rather than Kang residence. I hadn’t gotten all the details, but it looked like it was easier to return to a spot that one was familiar with than not.

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  Behind the three story shop was the second floor walk-up area that we appeared in. It was a thoroughh way for the residents in that block to easily walk through without going to the street. I was very familiar with it. Ellen Kang, mother of Egiya, would be there.

  “Thank you for keeping my daughter safe,” he said, pausing at the door. “I think we’ve talked a lot about how I have to face the music. I hope to speak to you all soon.”

  “Hey,” I said, placing my arm on his after shaking his hand. “If you want to talk, I may not have been a cultivator for as long as you, but I raised two girls.”

  He smiled back at me. The man had no right to look so classy.

  “I’ll... keep that in mind,” he said.

  Min and Egiya said their goodbyes. Xueyie gave her a hug.

  We went down to the square where is all started and I looked about. I felt like a new man.

  If only I had taken the time to savor the moment.

  ---

  The next morning, Lee woke me up early and it was quite nice. Halfway through fooling around, the bed shook.

  “That wasn’t me,” I said, still naked and sweaty.

  “That wasn’t me,” she said as she straddled me.

  “Do we need to stop?” I said. “It would be pretty uh...”

  “We need to stop,” I think, she said. “Something’s off.”

  “Or we could continue,” she said, before an earthquake rocked us. “Or next time.”

  I didn’t even have time to clean up, which was probably the worst thing. Fuck walking into battle. All around us, the moon clan was assembling into various stages of war footing. No one raised an eyebrow at me coming out of Lee’s room, though her hair was immaculate already.

  Sex hair was so in right now.

  “I gotta speak to my cousins and sisters. Can you see if Min knows anything?” Lee said. I could see that she wanted to stay with me, but she was one of their stronger fighters.

  “I understand. Be safe,” I said.

  She came in for a kiss and again; I was grateful that she used to be the one that would beat you with a sandal if you got out of line. No one would mess with her, and by proxy me.

  We separated, and she went to the innermost part of the compound.

  “Min, do you know what is going on?” I said.

  The spirit beast who had been napping outside of her room bounded in front of me.

  “This earthquake, it feels like the...”

  Min trailed off and looked distracted.

  Well, that wasn’t good.

  Was this one of the divine beasts? I flew up to get a better look. Something was off. The normally colored city now had an orange hue to it I couldn’t place. The only thing that it reminded me of was our trips in the airship and...

  “Min, what’s going on with the orange hue?” I said.

  “Oh! That’s... not normal,” she said. She, of course being on my shoulders had a good view of the strangeness.

  “I know. But like what...?”

  A time comes in every man’s life when someone offers him a chance to be a hero. This wasn’t one of those. When I saw the cracks, I knew it was going to be a rough day.

  “Something is going on and yeah, I think we need to get ready,” I said.

  “There’s something else going on as well,” Min said. “There are several powerful cultivators just blasting their aura around town as if they just want to be noticed. At least one is heading to the Moon clan right now.”

  “You don’t say. You think they finally made their move?” I said, descending. I was going to need to conserve my energy, if there was going to become some sort of long drawn out fight.

  “It looks like it. Destroy Western Jewel because we killed so many of their people.”

  I landed softly on the ground. I headed to the assembled moon clan group. Several men and women that I had trained alongside were present.

  “Does anyone have an idea what’s going on here?” I said, quietly.

  “Not yet, boss,” one of the junior members said.

  Then the higher ups arrived, and the tension decided to ratchet up two notches. They were on a war footing. I got that by their tone. Also, that they had shown up so quickly meant that they had to make some sort of response.

  Fuck. What was it this time?

  “The Mandarin is about to call in all fourth realm cultivators. There’s something big brewing,” Lee said.

  She paused and then looked at her sisters and brothers before speaking again.

  “There’s something else. The walls are down.”

  I could feel the picker from there. I knew that she had said something relatively profound, but it was taking its time to reach my big dumb brain. I was only useful for punching things and making obscene jokes at that moment.

  “The walls are down. There’s nothing stopping the beasts outside from breaking in,” Lin whispered into my ear.

  “Ah yeah, that. See, now that means something to me. Fuck it, let’s go,” I said.