The job of founding the new Holy Tree Temple fell to Jing Shuixiang. The task of rebuilding the new The Bladeseekers landed on Yao Jue. Cui Huayin had no fixed post, hurrying to whichever side was in danger of drowning under the workload. Ping'an, meanwhile, had three wives and a houseful of children. For now Li Yuan didn’t want his daughters-in-law or grandkids sucked into the mess, so he shooed Ping'an home to spend time with them. Li Yuan could read his own wives like a well-thumbed book, but the people around Ping'an still needed a longer probation period. There were simply too many secrets, his own and that . Even the tiny bit that had leaked out forced him to decide who stayed close and who kept their distance. Tang Nian, meanwhile, was completely preoccupied by the Tang Sect and her puppet arts. Sheng'er couldn’t cultivate any shadow blood cultivation technique. So, she spent her time wrestling for control of Cloudpeak Province’s commerce sector while keeping a gaggle of Ice Folk children in line. These, for better or worse, were all the people Li Yuan could still rely on. True, there were Pang Yuanhua and Yan Mu. However, Pang Yuanhua was off helping Sheng’er within the ancient ghost street, and her mind had grown a bit…twitchy after years of dealing with ghosts Yan Mu, meanwhile, was fully settled within the Holy Tree Temple. He had married a girl of the Gu Clan, fathered a child, and was living a blissful life among his in-laws. Li Yuan couldn’t very well club his grand-nephew’s family over the head like a runaway wife, so he let them be. Li Yuan had thought about Jen’gal Snow and his own youngest son, Jen’gal Naran. But the pair belonged to the Nine Flames Tribe, and he was loath to uproot them. The boy was already nine years old, yet Li Yuan had never found time to watch him grow. His lone thousand-mile thread could only bridge two places at once. It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about getting his hands on a second one, but that meant paying a visit to Happyland Zoo on the ancient ghost street. And since Yan Yu ran her own shop on the ancient ghost street, Li Yuan was well aware that the rarer the wares, the longer they were out of stock. Something as valuable as the thousand-mile thread would likely be unavailable 364 days and 23 hours a year. Of course, he could have Pang Yuanhua’s undying husks infiltrate Silkfloss Province and secretly take control of imperial tutor Zhao Gutong’s forces. But exposing one of his major trump cards this early hardly seemed worth the risk. So all he could do was hope and pray he’d bump into another undying husk that happened to be carrying a thousand-mile thread. Until then Li Yuan would have to prioritize the future wellbeing of his whole family. Nevertheless, an inexplicable sadness welled up every time he thought of Naran. With the overall situation relatively stable and the affairs of Cloudpeak Province delegated to reliable hands, Li Yuan picked up the ghost hammer and burned 600 years of life-force to forge fifth rank weapons for Ping’an and Cui Huayin. Task completed his hair returned to a snow-white once more. He slipped on his wooden mask, picking up a walking stick, and spent half a month hobbling far west to the territory of the Nine Flames. He hadn’t set foot here in ages. The migration of the Nine Flames Tribe was a success. Having settled on the frontier, the new generation of Ice Folk were natives of Cloudpeak Province in all but name. Fear and hostility had thawed into something almost familiar. Demonic beasts still came down the mountain and raided townships every spring, but it was like a colony of rabbits blundering into seasoned hunters. The Ice Folk cheerfully slaughtered the beasts and tossed them on the spit. In the past, the people of Cloudpeak Province would have never thanked the Ice Folk. Blood debts simply couldn’t be wiped clean overnight. However, the story was a little different when the newer generation was a niece, nephew, sibling, cousin, or grandchild. The atrocities were committed by the older generations; it was unreasonable to have the younger generation shoulder their sins. Besides, the older generation would eventually die off, and who didn’t want strong children to carry on their legacy? Even the heroes who had fought during the invasion began sending their pregnant wives to the Nine Flames Tribe, hoping to birth mighty sons and daughters. Along the road Li Yuan saw many former heroes. He even ran into the Black and White Swords, Meng Nan and Jiang Shu, who’d previously attempted to assassinate a tribe chieftain in Cloudrise. The pair were now paying respects to the Sunmother. Only now did Li Yuan learn that Jen’gal Suljagar, the previous chieftain of the Trueflame Tribe, had died of old age. His own son, Naran, now wielded the Khagan’s Axe and became the new Khagan. Snow had naturally become the Yeke Khatun, Mother of Khans. She received every visitor, hearing them out with patience. Li Yuan joined the queue for an audience. While he waited, he watched the tribe’s upheaval. The most striking change was the rise of sun worship. What had once been a raucous of bonfires, song, and dance now carried the hush of a sacred rite. Crowds knelt around the flames, foreheads to the earth, prostrating themselves before the flame. Among the worshippers milling around the bonfire Li Yuan spotted not just Ice Folk but plenty of people from Cloudpeak Province as well. He caught onto phrases like Sunmother and The Great Return from the surrounding people. The line for an audience never did reach his number that first day. Unbothered, he accepted a straw-tag token and spent the night in a communal tent pitched outside the palisade. The space could barely hold a cooking fire, yet nearly 20 people were crammed inside, sharing shaggy hide-blankets. Li Yuan uttered no complaint; he lay down and slept as soundly as a stone. At dawn three great drumbeats rolled across the camp. Outside, a blizzard howled, but heralds still announced the arrival of a new day and the tribe roared awake. Li Yuan rejoined the queue and shuffled forward until dusk, when at last his turn arrived. Snow sat upon a bronze throne wreathed in massive carven antlers. Her face had barely changed, yet her aura had transformed utterly—stately, solemn, fathomless, touched by the sacred. When her gaze fell on the white-haired elder before her, disbelief flickered across her eyes, chased by confusion. “It’s me.” Li Yuan murmured. She trembled, rose, and said only, “Come with me.” Frugality and respect for the old and young were the Yeke Khatun’s public creed, so no one questioned her escorting a gray-bearded stranger in person. She led him to a private pavilion crammed wall-to-wall with books. There were brittle scrolls, worm-eaten manuals, and leather-bound volumes reeking of time. On a low desk lay a piece of parchment beside a massive hourglass, one bulb engraved with a sun, the other a moon; sand was sliding from sun toward moon in a slow, shimmering stream. Li Yuan took it in with a glance, then removed his mask, revealing a face lined but still recognizable. Silence settled like snowfall. At length Snow smiled and said softly, “Sure enough, the Sunmother will welcome your return into her embrace. A man as mighty as a god wasn’t meant to walk the earth for long. If you go on ahead, Naran and I will soon follow. Your deeds have surely earned the Sunmother’s favor. Sadly, the two of us must keep striving, or else we might die unqualified to stand at your side.” In a single breath she recast Li Yuan’s creeping age as a blessing, turning a sorrow fit to break a heart into a fortune others might envy. Her logic was clear enough. Li Yuan, body fused with the Everflame, burned stronger each day and therefore nearer to ashes. Still, her phrasing felt oddly foreign. He hardly needed to ask who the Sunmother referred to. Every religion needed a supreme deity, and his clever wife, seizing the moment, had birthed one to cement the crown of the Nine Flames. “The Sunmother, high above, blesses those who honor her, yet she also punishes those who betray her,” Li Yuan quietly muttered. “And to do so is to commit an unforgivable act of heresy.” Punishment, after all, was the mortar that binds a faith together. Since his wife wished to build this temple of belief, he would supply her one of its cornerstones. Snow’s voice turned gentle. “You were always quick on the uptake. I didn’t need to explain anything, and you already understood everything. If the Sunmother had a firstborn in this world, surely it would be you. I will compile the Ancient Sun Canon and set it all down, so it may endure forever.” “Ancient Sun Canon?” he echoed. “Come.” She seated herself at the desk, and Li Yuan joined her. Spread before them was a bundle of pages, overwritten and scored through again and again. One glance froze him. The prose mimicked the tribe’s oldest annalistic style, but every event had been re-stitched with threads of solar worship, every cause and effect reframed beneath the Sun’s all-embracing light. He turned to look at Snow. The once clumsy, wide-eyed girl now gazed back with eyes veiled, luminous with mystery and faith. On impulse he pulled her into his arms. She was strong now, strong enough not to tremble or unburden herself in a man’s embrace. So she simply wrapped her arms around him in return. They spoke in low tones, mostly about Naran. She recounted a small incident from last year, when the boy was about to take the throne. It began with the treachery of Khor’eer Hudor, the chieftain of the Bronze Clad Tribe. Outwardly he claimed the Nine Flames had to remain utterly independent and sever all outside ties, a view shared by many among the older generation. Hudor had plotted for years. With Li Yuan having been missing for many years and Suljagar nearing the end of the years, he had his subordinates poison the old chieftain and steal the Khagan’s Axe.