Lily glared at the woman outside her window. Probably not an advisable course of action, but, well— She hadn’t even done anything yet, and she’d already ruined her day. “Did Mingtian put you up to this?”

Outer disciple Zhihu shook her head, hands behind her back and posture perfect, respectable enough to stand in any king’s court. Which was why Lily found it so odd that she was standing outside her window— a no name orphan’s window— at an ungodly hour of the morning on the day before the spring festival. “Of course not. I am not beholden to a mortal librarian.” Which only made the situation all the stranger. “I took it upon myself to arrange something for you. And the cat, I suppose. Consider it an… early festival gift.”

Except for the fact that there was zero chance that the outer disciple wanted to spend her time with her over the festival. Surely she had some

cool cultivator friends… cautiously, she asked— “what?”

“It’s a surprise.” A second passed. Lily didn’t laugh. “Fine. You drive a hard bargain… I reached out to some of my contacts in the sect and managed to arrange a meeting with a trustworthy alchemist of some skill. If you’re willing, of course.” She looked smug. That was the best way Lily could describe it— fittingly so. She’d known that there was no way she’d be able to reject that.

Sighing, she rolled out of bed, closing the blinds and tossing on a jacket and pretending that there was no way Zhihu could see her as she got dressed. Obviously she could use whatever fancy spirit sense an outer disciple of the Bloody Saffron Sect had, but… she put it out of her mind. Worrying about that was like worrying the sky was falling— utterly pointless, completely inane, and—

She flung open the blinds again, the faintest echo of pre-dawn light tinting her room ever so slightly bright, alight with silvery shadows. “I’ll meet you outside—”

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“Just step out of the window.” With a wave of her hand the window unlatched and rose open, entirely of its own volition— the bug screen unscrewing itself from the wall and hinging out to the side on a mechanism that didn’t exist. If she looked carefully, Lily thought she could see a slight hint of oily red, glimmering against the open skies above…

Had she made hinges out of blood? That was… really cool, actually. The possibilities of such a technique… she forcefully wrested her mind away from its wanderings, grabbing the box and crawling out of the window, and letting Zhihu firm grip prevent her from falling further. As soon as both her feet were resting on Zhihu’s flying sword, the window resealed itself shut, silently returning once more to just how it’d been mere seconds prior.

“I’m going to fly faster than last time. Hold on.” Lily blinked— then, as the whole world lurched beneath them as they rocketed up into the air, she gripped Zhihu’s arm with deathly fervor. Ah. She’d meant that literally. They sliced through the air upwards, the cityscape beneath them fading quickly from the familiar view of streets and houses to a patchwork of darkness and points of light, to— something alien, something divine, an almost living thing glowing with all the refulgent colors of the city at night as they rose so far above it all that distinction ceased and it all coagulated into this sole, singular East Saffron thing.

They coasted to a stop after a short while, so high up that the air was bracing and cold, and thin like she remembered from the Dragonspine Mountains, and the whole city lay sprawled out below them, a blanket of light for as far as the eye could see. She blinked in awe, as she could see— the dragon river winding beneath them, the lake, silver aglow with the first premonitions of sunlight, the wall, a line of sharp red curving through the luminous below…

For a while, a single moment that seemed to stretch out into eternity as she stood on the outer disciple’s sword, the whole world seemed to hold its breath. A great and subtle pressure suffused every part of her, of bloody tang, of saffron aflutter on strange winds of…

Dawn.