The ebb and flow of time was quick.

  It wasn't long before the sun set, the veil of night covering the WanLing sect. Within the Myriad Herbs Clan's oversized garden, work had concluded for the day.

  The maids and butlers had long since returned to their accommodations, the golems laid to rest, but the spirits continued to frolic in their workplace. Laughter chimed like bells as spirits of all colour flitted through the endless fields of herbs and lanterns, a little light show for none to see.

  But one part of the garden remained desolate and dark, save for the qi lanterns that could not flee. All the spirits had taken a wide berth, and the earth spirits bound to golems laid trembling within their massive earthen bodies. Even the gardener moles beneath the soil had fled.

  Laohe paced back and forth in the darkened area and gritted his teeth. Qinghe stood a few metres away, watching in careful silence.

  "That accursed Inferno Clan!" he bellowed. "If it wasn't for that bastard Mo Fan, how could things have gotten this bad? The Wind Clan? They're bastards too! They pretend to care about children, but had no qualms about soulsearching Baiyun!"

  Qinghe glanced at her grandfather with distaste. Laohe really wasn't one to speak, considering he was willing to even drug Baiyun. It was clear he saw her friend not as a person, but a mere tool.

  She did agree Baiyun should undergo the surgery, but she hoped her grandfather would try to slowly convince him instead. Unparalleled Insight was a legendary constitution related to the myths of alchemy's origin after all, but it seemed her grandfather had less boundaries than she thought.

  "How? How did things happen this way?" Laohe yelled. "Qinghe already convinced him to visit our clan, long before the mantis incident! Everything should have been perfect!"

  He let out a bellow towards the skies, so loud it reverberated through the whole garden. The laughter of the spirits died down, and the maids and butlers shut their windows.

  "The heavens are toying with me! They taunt me with such a huge opportunity, only to snatch it away at the last moment!" Laohe screamed. "Bastards! The heavens are bastards!"

  "Clan master." Qinghe said slowly. "Badmouthing the heavens will only worsen your karma."

  "Bad karma? Who cares for the whispers of an ant? The heavens govern the cosmos and have much more to worry about than the insignificant rambling and curses of trillions of trillions! If you want to talk about bad karma, go and curse Ying Guang instead; that maniac actually soulsearched his own daughter! Everyone already knows soul-harming arts are considered demonic by the new laws, yet he harmed his own kin with it and worsened the penalty several times over!"

  At least her grandfather seemed to subconsciously realise how pointless his rage was. But Qinghe viewed karma as precisely an autonomous law to judge the endless sea of ants. If whatever was superficially labelled "demonic" could be tracked so accurately, why not the insults of the masses?

  Laohe's anger seemed to only grow the more he shouted and cursed. He saw a golem lying perfectly still and peaceful. Something about that infuriated him, and he kicked the construct with all his might!

  A deafening bang echoed as the golem went tumbling, a large crater in its abdomen. Thousands of herbs were crushed by the makeshift boulder.

  "Hn? Hrkkkk!"

  The golem opened its eyes and stared at its wound with trembling hands. It waved its arms in a panic and ran away from Laohe as fast as it could, the earth rumbling from its sheer mass.

  "Ah! Why would you do that?" Qinghe cried.

  The two of them watched as the golem trampled the spirits plants in its way like a charging bull, causing nearly a million tokens worth of damage in an instant. Panicked spirits finally rushed in and halted the golem, doing their best to pacify the frightened earth spirits bound within.

  Laohe clicked his tongue and kicked off the head of a nearby lantern post, glass and formation plates shattering all over the ground.

  "What did Ying Guang even have to gain by soulsearching her? If that bastard didn't harm his daughter for no reason, what Baiyun did would never have been revealed! Ahhhhh!"

  He continued his rant as if nothing had happened, stomping on the fallen lantern repeatedly. The horrible screech of crushed metal echoed as it was reduced into scrap and rubble.

  "There has to be more to it!" he shouted. "That man must be plotting something! He is not that thoughtless!"

  Qinghe sighed as she watched her grandfather. At this point, nothing she said would calm him down, and even she had to stay a fair distance. Laohe did not get truly angry often, but much like a dormant volcano, he was uncontrollable when he finally erupted.

  She would have to watch and listen to him whenever he was venting, as he was more restrained in her presence. If she was not around, the damage would not merely be a single rampaging golem.

  Years ago, when her father told her with a serious expression this was an important role that would help preserve the clan's budget, she laughed. But she was starting to see what he meant now, quite regrettably.

  Laohe cursed every single clan and person he could think of in his fury until it was almost as if he forgot his granddaughter was present.

  ...

  The turmoil of the WanLing sect did not end there.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Far into the southern reaches, an enormous volcano of pure obsidian jutted out of the ground, created artificially centuries ago by drilling into a large deposit of fire qi. Many buildings were carved into its sides, their windows lit with flames from within even at this hour of the night. A truly extravagant paradise for fire cultivators, the Inferno Clan's cultivation speed was one of the fastest in WanLing.

  On a balcony of a palace atop the volcano, Mohei ran around his father Mo Fan and yelled.

  "Father! Father!"

  "Mohei!" Mo Fan frowned. "Have you not had enough?"

  "Hmph! How am I in the wrong?" Mohei huffed. "You wanted Baiyun to die just because you're angry at that Myriad Herbs old man!"

  "Ahem!"

  Mo Fan was so offended by the thought, he nearly spluttered. Exactly what type of impression did his son have of him?

  "I would not be so petty! You are still young, so you don't understand." he harrumphed. "The Myriad Herb Clan might be small right now, but they have a lot of potential and could overshadow us in the coming years. A Clan Leader has heavy responsibilities, and I cannot allow them to have an asset like that of Unparalleled Insight!"

  "I don't care!" Mohei screamed. "You wanted to kill my friend! I'm not in the wrong, you are!"

  "Ahhhh!"

  Mo Fan wanted to pull on his hair in frustration. How was he supposed to negotiate with his son if he wouldn't listen to reason?

  Behind Mohei, a spirit showed itself, nervously speaking to him with soulsense privately.

  "Young master, your father is tolerant of you, but please show some tact!" it said in a panic.

  "AHHHH!" Mohei yelled.

  He slapped the spirit with all his might and sent it flying into the distance.

  Mo Fan wracked his head, and finally thought of a way to placate his son.

  "Mohei. Have you heard of the legend of Teacher Zhang?"

  "No! What does that have to do with this?" Mohei yelled.

  "Now now... listen for a moment." Mo Fan said, holding out his hand and speaking gently. "A long, long time ago, our realm Fu Yan was far less prosperous. Cultivation was slow and painful, a road of blood and thorns that crawled forward only with utmost talent and persistence. Mohei... do you know why that was?"

  Mohei's eyes were still full of anger, but he shook his head in silence. Mo Fan felt relieved; his son did love to listen to stories after all, even in this state.

  "That was because true alchemy had not been born. The cultivators of old ate herbs and the cores of beasts raw like barbarians. What pills human alchemists of the time refined were crude and full of impurities. The only alchemy that bore fruit was the Natural Alchemy of the beast faction, though its secrets laid far from human hands in the grasp of dragons."

  Mohei frowned as he listened, wondering what exactly Natural Alchemy was. While he was not an alchemist, the studies of young masters covered every subject to ensure they would not easily be shamed, yet this was his first time hearing of it.

  Humans might have the weakest talent for cultivation, but they were the only race that truly had meridians of all 9 elements, essential for alchemy and formations. Beasts had incredible talent in cultivation, but they were often limited to only a single element. How could they possibly have their own school of alchemy?

  "It was a dark time. Humans were a small and helpless race that cowered before beasts, scampering in caves and burrows like rats and mice. No one dared to build even the simplest of buildings, as we were merely pests to them."

  "That's not possible!" Mohei shouted, now angry for a different reason. "We are at the top!"

  Mo Fan raised a hand to quieten his son.

  "That only changed when Teacher Zhang, the first true alchemist was born. He had eyes and senses like none other and was the first to truly understand alchemy. Each day of ponder to him was akin to a thousand years of another, and he wrote countless manuals that still form the basis of alchemy today. Only with his elixirs and pills was humanity able to fight back, and he soon became one of the first humans to gain territory in the land of beasts."

  "In his later years, he invented the World Cauldron and truly kicked off the age of alchemy. Thousands of powerful human cultivators rose to power practically overnight, and he was the catalyst that sparked the revolution of humanity! But Mohei. Do you wonder how a single human could have so much talent, enough to even shape the destiny of a race?"

  Mohei shook his head.

  "Teacher Zhang was the only one in history to have the Unparalleled Insight. D you understand now? This is the true gravity of your friend's constitution."

  Mo Fan nodded as he saw his son frozen in shock, before continuing.

  "Even if Baiyun is merely a servant and even crippled, he is a dangerous firecracker that could erupt at any moment. Our clan is not on good terms with Myriad Herbs, so this could be a matter of life and death for our Inferno Clan!"

  "What?" Mohei shouted. "But he's my friend, so he wouldn't hurt us! Why would you do this if he had so much potential?"

  "Naive! So naive!" Mo Fan shook his head in frustration. "How many friendships have lasted the test of time, when the stakes are high? How many times in history have the mighty fallen to their own comrades or even family? Mohei, have you been paying attention during your history classes?"

  Mohei was silent for a moment, his face blank for a moment. Then he grew angry once more.

  "Then if his constitution is so important, then what you are doing to Baiyun is betraying humanity!" he shouted. "How could you be so ungrateful!"

  "Mohei, this is merely a legend, a product of exaggeration and conjecture! There are more than a dozen variations of Teacher Zhang's story, and in some, he even went by the name of Kong! What I just told you was precisely the most controversial version of this legend, to help illustrate my point!"

  "In all other versions of the legend, humanity had never fallen that low. Teacher Zhang was instead a insurgent who shook the planet with the World Cauldron, collapsing countless clans and causing wars that took billions of human lives! Many recounts even end with him being assassinated, fearing the further horrors his alchemy might cause!"

  "Shut up! Shut up!" Mohei yelled with fury, his face turning red.

  "The legend where Zhang saved humanity is widely agreed to be a re-branding of the legend, rewritten by Alchemy Sects hoping to paint him in a better light! It is one of the few legends where he was not the villain!"

  "Shut up! I'm not listening to you anymore. I'm leaving!"

  Mohei was so angry he had begun to cry, jumping over the balcony and stumbling onto a lower roof of the palace.

  "Where do you think you're going?" Mo Fan roared.

  But Mohei did not listen, descending the volcano as he jumped from roof to roof atop buildings.

  "Grandpa was a much better leader than you! He should never have passed the clan to you!"

  With that final shout, he made a big leap and tumbled onto ground level, getting up and running away from the clan as fast as he could.

  "Hah..."

  Left alone on the balcony, Mo Fan could only sigh. His face seemed to grow several years older as he furrowed his eyebrows, clutching his temples in silence.

  "Lord Mo Fan..."

  The spirit from before showed itself once more, emerging from behind weakly.

  "Begone. I don't need you to console me."

  "But my lord..." the spirit said before deflating.

  With a heavy spirit, it slowly floated off into the distance.

  "And let Mohei be." Mo Fan said. "He'll only get angrier if we chase him, so wait for him to return once he calms down."

  The spirit nodded, and the Inferno Clan's leader returned to his study.

  He picked up a document and placed his pen upon it. But his fingers remained unmoving, and the ink soon seeped into the page as a black blot. He hoped work would distract him, but he could not think of a single word to write with how worry clouded his mind.

  Mo Fan sighed a final time. He took out the only high-grade heaven stone he had and stared at it with hesitation. If the richest sects stronger than even WanLing were gathered in an auction, it would likely fetch at least half a billion tokens.

  His eyes hardened, and he made a silent wish to the 9th heavens for Mohei's safety.

  The stone glinted before crumbling into dust.