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Bao Chishan had been quite literal when he’d said ‘the clear other end of the sect.’

The Eastern Estate capped off the sect’s eastern side entirely, as it was situated right where the terrain turned from ‘buildable’ ground to ‘building on this rocky nothingness would just be inviting death’ ground. Nothing could be safely erected past it, and unless an earth root with godlike powers came over from parts unknown, it would never be usurped.

Set between two steep mountain edges, the area was considered to have good feng shui, and had therefore been graced with the Shrine of the Snake Ancestor. The hallowed structure was tucked up into the farthest corner of the rocks, that stone-carved coil snake on top of it angled to glare at the sect slanting below it.

In order to get to the shrine to pay one’s respects, one had to take the public path that split the Eastern Estate into two. Once the rough equivalent of a monastery built for convenience purposes, the land had eventually been settled in by various Zhu descendants over the years, and the rest was history.

Zhu Li had never been here before, since other shrines to their (alleged, possibly exaggerated) serpentine heritage were a lot closer. Whether the legendary snake had been real or not, the shrines were beautiful areas of solace for the troubled spirit.

Well, they would be beautiful without winter’s temporary death blanketing everything.

Some would argue snow did make it beautiful. Zhu Li would argue that snow caused severe frostbite for those less fortunate, which meant missing toes and fingers.

But he was probably just jaded. The medical field would do that to someone.

Meanwhile, Guhui was doing a backwards-diagonal run-walk in the pen she’d been placed in, frost and dirt alike getting arced through the air. If there was a better way to describe the way she was taking a step, kicking out her back legs, and repeat—all while somehow going sideways and at a ridiculous speed—Zhu Li didn’t know it. At least she was happy.

Someone who wasn’t happy was the man nearly fastened to his side. That ever-present smile had turned into a sneer of disdain against the higher-than-average chill of today.

“Does the Dao enjoy its little jokes, I wonder?” he’d quipped this morning. “It seems to have decreed that the day of our trip be even colder. How kind of it. Or perhaps this is the force of fate itself having a little laugh. Do you agree, my lethargic little noodle friend?”

They should probably give those anti-Junhe snakes back at some point. At least their company was being enjoyed in the meantime.

Anyways. They’d come here to find Zhu Chenfeng, and finding her was what they were going to do.

Bao Chishan hadn’t been able to give them much information on her: she was a first cousin of Zhu Li’s grandfather, she painted, she’d lived in the Eastern Estate all of her life, she’d stopped painting quite some time ago and turned into a hermit.

Which was why, when they finally reached the gate of the Estate and asked for her, they were surprised to hear that she was busy.

Zhu Li frowned at the unfortunate servant that had been chosen to convey the news. What would an old, retired hermit be busy with? Go? Writing poetry? Napping in the middle of the day?

“That’s rather poor timing, then,” Chu Ran said somewhat diplomatically. “Do tell her that the Fourth Lord of the Zhu Estate and Sect Head Xin will be waiting in the Shrine for her to finish her proper business.”

Zhu Li raised a brow as he sent him a look. Visiting the Shrine wasn’t something they’d discussed previously.

Chu Ran turned them both around to set them on their path, then patted him placatingly on the arm. “I’m sure that waiting like forgotten luggage in the front hall wouldn’t be too pleasant. Unless there was somewhere else you wanted to go nearby, Doctor?”

“No. But if you wanted to check out the Shrine, you could have just said so in the first place.”

“Ah, I’ve been caught,” he said with no sense of urgency whatsoever. “It’s not every day I get to cross paths with a jing shrine, let alone an ancestral jing shrine. How can I be blamed?”

Zhu Li rolled his eyes. “I told you they’re just legends.”

“Tsk, tsk, Doctor. Legends always have some basis in reality, even if they’ve been exaggerated in the centuries since. Where is your sense of imagination?”

“I left it somewhere.”

Chu Ran chuckled, bumping gently into Zhu Li’s side.

The path to the Shrine was made of smooth stone, the spaces between them caked with snow that hadn’t yet been forcibly melted away. At the end of it laid stone steps carved straight into the mountain itself, the gate partitioning it heralded by yet more snakes where other shrines might leave dragons, and guardian fenghuang where others might leave guardian lions.

Why the ancestors had chosen fenghuang, he would never know. Maybe it was because birds were brave and mean little assholes; Zhu Li had once seen a gray goose try to nip Guhui’s legs.

It had then died from her kicking it. While it didn’t get any points for brains, his point still stood.

The Shrine itself wasn’t anymore grandiose than a home would be. Made of the same dark wood and white stone as the rest of the sect, it was tszujed up a bit with gold decorations of protective creatures to signal wealth and prosperity. The inside was spacious enough to act as a meeting hall, and banners of scarlet-dyed silk draped the walls to break up the dark wood.

Unlike the dreary and cramped Wanming Court with its candles, the windows here were uncovered to let natural light in, giving the place a white glow. Incense topped off the atmosphere, sending a warm, slightly spicy sent through the air.

A few people were in here already. They appeared to be meditating on bamboo-woven mats, and were too deep in the act to notice either their entry or the noise of the door.

“Oh, floor mats and meditation? In a shrine?” Chu Ran whispered. “How quaint.”

Zhu Li didn’t comment on that, simply taking the mat furthest from everyone else. His companion settled in right next to him.

Both adopted a lotus position, then sank into their respective meditative states.

Some were able to blank their minds out during meditation. Zhu Li wasn’t one of them; he needed one thing to focus all of his attention on.

Thinking about any current events was a bad idea and would make him too angry to meditate at all. Instead, he opted for thinking about his line of work.

Monkey’s head, for inflammation. Dandelion, for bowel obstructions. Wild ginger, for wasting disease. Nutmeg, for indigestion. Alcohol, for disinfecting wounds. Turmeric, for clotting blood.

Mushrooms and herbs, set to dehydrate. Roots ground into powder. Dry, cut, measure, dry, cut, measure, dry, cut, measure…

He felt the phantom sensation of his qi moving as the memory of treating ailments came to him. Qi lived in harmony with all bodies, though only cultivators could coax it to their will; his would convince wounds to stitch together faster, purge toxins from inflamed organs, liquefy unwelcome growths, fuse broken bones back together, force unwelcome substances out of the pores, and so much more, all without breaking the skin.

Such processes were invisible to bystanders. He couldn’t count the amount of times he’d been considered some sort of shaman or divine being for what he could do with qi therapy, though he’d eventually had to stop informing them that it was less magic and more science at play. If they even understood what he was talking about—which wasn’t really their fault, since information traveled poorly—they would still brush his protests off and proclaim him some sort of deity that made miracles happen.

It was hard to envision himself as that when there’d been so many scenarios where he could do absolutely nothing.

Once he’d gone through every medical treatment he knew, his mind meandered over to the many teachings he’d had on his path as a cultivator, which all convalesced into one lecture.

The Dao feels nothing. It does not laugh at one’s misfortune and pain, nor does it smile upon one’s good fortune. The tribulations that one goes through are just the way the world is, and they signify nothing in the grand scheme of things. They do not mean that one was immoral in a past life and deserves it; they do not mean that the stars have aligned improperly upon someone’s birth; they do not mean that fate has conspired against them. Things are as they are.

The Dao grants us powers in exchange for coming above primitive cruelty and depravity. To live in harmony with nature and our fellows is the supreme point of being. Alas, nature is sometimes cruel, its whims splitting the earth apart, spitting fire, conjuring storms, begetting floods, holding droughts, creating pestilence, and bringing predators to our most vulnerable. Alas, our fellows are sometimes just as cruel as nature’s destructive tendencies, slaying the innocent, placing their hands on the unwilling, and selling their brethren for the absurdity of money, as if a life can be valued in the material.

Nature’s bloodthirsty beasts may be warded off, its mighty forces can only able to be recovered from. But all tragedies made by humanity’s hands can be prevented by ensuring those with evil corrupting their hearts may never act on those impulses again.

The Dao imparts upon us a cold, if important fact of our lives: there is no need to contribute to suffering by our own make when nature will deal plenty. Take things as they come, but do not stand idly by as suffering goes on around you. As a doctor, you must heal the infirm and aid the hungry. As a cultivator, you must destroy evil before it can cause further harm.

The lecturer sounded a lot like his dad, he realized belatedly.

“Fourth Lord, Sect Head.”

A gentle voice broke Zhu Li’s concentration in an instant. He looked up to spot a sectmate standing in front of him, head lowered and arms held out in a bow.

“This one is Weng Qiuniu. My grandmother apologizes for the delay. She’s ready to see you now.”

“It’s quite alright,” Chu Ran answered for him, rising easily to his feet. “I’m sure a painter as famous as her has quite the busy life.”

Zhu Li was still seated on the floor, so he got a full view of his sectmate’s brow twitching in annoyance.

Welp. He shouldn’t just sit by and let their guide get tongue-lashed further.

After rising to his feet, he nodded to Zhu Chenfeng’s grandson—who did not look particularly young—and then they were led out of the Shrine and back over to the Estate’s depths.

“Well, that was rather refreshing,” Chu Ran chirped. “What did you meditate over, Doctor Zhu?”

“Medicine and mantras,” Zhu Li answered flatly. “You?”

“I was imagining the fear in my family’s hearts when they realize that their world is falling apart beneath them, which will be something they cannot prevent. And also some new qin scores. Silence is rather conducive to the creative mind, don’t you think?”

Zhu Li nodded idly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Weng Qiuniu give them a slightly perturbed side-eye.

It took a lot of willpower not to smirk. At this point, it really was just plainly funny.

They took a right, then were brought to the foremost hall. Once the doors were pushed open for them, Zhu Li’s eyes immediately landed upon an old woman seated at the table.

Her head was bowed low over her steaming tea, completely cutting off her visage from view. Mostly gray hairs fell out a messily-tied bun to curtain her head, and bony hands gripped the porcelain cup like it was an offering to some god. Her clothes were a plain, mournful white, and she wore no else.

Weng Qiuniu shut the doors behind them once they were stamding in, after which he moved ahead of them to pour their tea into cups. Once done, he quietly gestured for them to sit across from the woman.

Zhu Li’s eyes didn’t leave her as he went through the motions of taking his seat. This paid off when, in the very next second, the woman tilted her head upwards, and her haggard, wrinkled, puffy-eyed face came into view.

And her eyes… they were glazed over, the light behind them dulled. Despite having definitely known Zhu Sun, she gave no reaction to Zhu Li’s appearance.

Discomfort and foreboding entered his gut at the sight. It was the same kind he would get whenever he walked into a patient’s room to see that their condition was graver than he’d been expecting.

He’d had no concept of what Zhu Chenfeng would look like, but even then, he hadn’t imagined anything like this.

“Grandmother has always been quirky,” Weng Qiuniu said. “Two decades ago, however, she came down with a severe illness and started acting and speaking very strangely.”

Ah, an explanation for the feeling. Doctorly instincts were rarely wrong. “Does she need treatment?”

The man looked at Zhu Li sadly. “The doctors have tried. Her condition is psychological, and there’s nothing they can do.”

Zhu Li’s lips turned down hard. Psychological healing was a difficult and imprecise field. At least with physical trauma, one could find the source and patch it over easily; undetectable scars could only be healed with time, or by the person themselves.

Time had failed Zhu Chenfeng, it seemed.

“Madam Zhu, your qi appears to move quite sluggishly,” Chu Ran noted. He took a sip of his own tea between words. “Ah, green Buddha. A fine choice.”

Zhu Chenfeng blinked slowly. It was the first time she’d blinked at all since looking up.

He sighed through his nose. “In that case, I will get straight to one of the main points; what is your opinion on Meng Ruoxue?”

The old woman’s eye noticeably twitched, the ghost of sneer curling her lips ever so slightly.

“My, my. That seems to be some truly bad blood. Is she the reason you’re so withdrawn? Do be honest, as we’re already quite aware of how she treats people.”

Her lips began to move. A harsh, rasping voice came from the depths of her throat.

“…A viper from the tainted lands… a plague of the mind, the soul…”

One of Chu Ran’s brows raised up, while Zhu Li’s furrowed.

“Meng Ruoxue is a viper? That seems about right. She treated her own granddaughters quite poorly, as I’ve heard. She’s not popular amongst her own blood, just amongst arrogant idiots.”

Zhu Chenfeng’s eyes narrowed. Her hands gripped the cup tighter. “A plague, a plague…”

All at once, she stood up and threw her cup against the far left wall with a shout of, “A plague!”

Porcelain shattered into pieces and tea splashed everywhere in an arc.

Zhu Li blinked at the display. He’d raised an arm to defend himself and Chu Ran as soon as she stood just in case she decided to throw it at them, but she didn’t even seem to be aware of them. She huffed out hard breaths, her shoulders rising and falling, her gaze focused on the table’s surface.

He turned to Weng Qiuniu, who was looking on impassively at his grandmother with his hands crossed over his stomach. After a few seconds, he turned to his visitors and said, “My apologies. Grandmother has never liked Meng Ruoxue, even before her incident. She won’t be violent towards you.”

…What. Was that really his reaction to his grandmother acting like that? It was great that he wasn’t kicking them out and therefore killing their only lead, sure, but maybe care more than that.

“It seems that you have some very intense opinions about the late Meng Ruoxue,” Chu Ran started slowly. He somehow wasn’t too fazed by the outburst. “In that case, let’s get to the main point; who was Zhu Sun to you?”

Zhu Chenfeng shot a quick look at Zhu Li. So she had noticed the resemblance before.

She was also clearly not that crazy.

A full-body shiver went over her as she still stood. “The bright star of our sect. The bright star. The bright star…”

Zhu Li watched her carefully as she spoke, crossing his arms with a frown.

“So we’ve been told,” Chu Ran continued. “He was the former to-be Sect Head, yes? Was he a friend to you?”

Her head bobbed back and forth. “Was he a friend to you? Was he… a friend to you? A friend to you? A friend to you?”

“I believe that’s a yes, Doctor Zhu. Or she thinks me to have known Zhu Sun when he died before my birth.”

Zhu Li held his gaze on her for a spell, taking in her body language and the wild look in her eyes as she looked at nothing. Then, he sighed out of his nose. “I see.”

“Oh? Care to share with those that cannot?”

“She can understand us just fine,” he answered, ignoring that little joke, “but she seems to be having trouble forming her own words, so she repeats phrases she’s heard before.”

Zhu Chenfeng suddenly whipped around to stare him in the eyes. There was a hint of clarity within them, but the look was otherwise inscrutable.

And also a little unnerving. It was like she was boring straight into his soul.

He suppressed a shiver.

Meanwhile, Chu Ran hummed. “How interesting. And you’ve figured that out from just this interaction?”

“I came across something like this before.”

A patient had been bleeding in his brain. Zhu Li had drained the wound and healed it to the best of his ability, but permanent damage had already been done—the man could no longer speak or comprehend words, despite having been a storyteller before he’d fainted.

That case was even worse than this one, as he couldn’t even repeat words back. It was also far too depressing to recount aloud.

Chu Ran simply nodded, satisfied with the vagueness. “Well, then. Since Zhu Sun was a friend to you, do you know what happened to him? Why did he die?”

Her expression darkened. “Filial piety… is sacred. Filial piety is sacred. Filial piety… goes both ways. Filial piety… filial piety…”

Zhu Li frowned. Filial piety had caused his death? How was that?

“The monster had a maw of blood,” she hissed, swaying on her feet. “I saw it… I saw it devour, kill, destroy! I saw it!”

She looked to be on the verge of a complete breakdown as she continued to shout about a ‘monster’ for a good few minutes.

Then, all at once, she stopped, her face blanking out completely.

“I don’t understand, Chenfeng,”she said. “She had him cremated, and now she’s accusing me of all these terrible things, and they’re talking about a conspiracy, but I don’t know what they’re talking about, Chenfeng. I don’t know what to do. What do I do?”

Despite her non-expression, her voice was almost a creaking, monotone sob, sending Zhu Li’s hairs on end. And even with the affectation, her voice was steadier than her previous utterances, never once trailing off or repeating.

After that, she plopped down into her chair. Her hands, having nothing to grasp at anymore, grabbed at the air on the table in front of her.

Zhu Li stared at her for a few seconds longer, seeking any signs of further action, before looking to Chu Ran. He had no idea what those random phrases were supposed to mean together.

“Filial piety, a yao, and a repeated conversation…” said the other with a frown. “I’m rather stumped, Doctor. That could mean anything, or nothing at all.”

“I can’t blame you for that,” Zhu Li said back quietly. He really couldn’t, since he had no damn idea what she could mean.

“Perhaps we should simply move on to a different question. Why was he chosen to be the Sect Head instead of Zhu Longmai, the direct descendent? Was he more talented?”

Zhu Chenfeng’s face quirked in perplexion. She stared at them, unanswering.

“You appear to be confused, Madam Zhu. Why is that? I don’t believe I’ve said anything convoluted.” Chu Ran tapped his lips. “Maybe it’s more that I’ve said said something incorrect? Something not quite right?”

The woman hunched over and began to shudder violently. Once finished, she quickly looked up at Zhu Li and asked, “How do you not know?”

A prickly feeling went up his spine.

He was suddenly overcome with the idea that she was just pretending to be damaged, pretending to be crazy, but then she started bobbing her head again. “One is sunrise and one is sunset. Sunrise and sunset. Sunrise and sunset,” she said on repeat.

“What do you mean?” he had to cut her off with. “What should I know?”

‘Sunrise and sunset’ was his only answer.

Frustration colored his brow. Why couldn’t anything ever be easy? Why did their only lead have to speak in riddles, when all he wanted was to get an answer and get this over with?”

A hand settled over one of his fists, which he hadn’t even realized he’d made. He turned to Chu Ran—the man seemed to be unfazed by the cryptic messages, still smiling.

“Let’s rephrase,” he said calmly. “Who was Zhu Sun to Zhu Longmai? A cousin? A friend?”

Her head bobbed. “Wrong, wrong…” she mumbled.

“A closer relation, then? A half-brother?”

Zhu Li’s stomach jumped.

However, Zhu Chenfeng just bobbed her head harder. “Sunrise and sunset… sunrise and sunset…”

“Who’s the sunrise and the sunset, Madam Zhu? Please, tell us.”

She snapped up to full attention. Her eyebrows were set in a deep valley of concentration. “The boy is the sunrise, and the girl is the sunset. They were blessed at birth.”

“Who?” Zhu Li demanded. He didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but he felt anticipation weighing his lungs down, threatening to make him stop breathing. “Who are you talking about? What girl? What boy?”

A grin split her face in two. “Haven’t you heard?” she whispered reverently. “Lady Meng had two healthy babies at once. Isn’t that divine?”

The wind left him all at once.

No.

No, no, fuck that. There was no way.

He stood up abruptly enough to knock the chair over onto its side, then backed away from the table. His gaze fixated upon Zhu Chenfeng’s dull, somewhat absent eyes.

“You’re lying,” he said quietly, though he didn’t mean it. “We went through all of the files. Mom doesn’t have a brother.”

She stared back. No retort came from her lips, nor did any further disjointed phrases that had to have been lies this entire time.

He didn’t believe her. There was just no way that could be true.

“She doesn’t have a brother,” he repeated, louder this time. “I’ve never heard of her having one. I… I would’ve by now.”

Right. That’s right. He would’ve learned about Zhu Sun way earlier if he was so important. There was no way he could’ve gone his whole life without hearing anything about his dead ringer of an uncle.

He only then remembered to breathe, taking in a a shaky breath.

Zhu Chenfeng was still staring at him. Puzzlingly, the look she had made him feel the need to explain himself.

“You’re telling me that Meng Ruoxue went to all this effort to erase her own son from existence? Why would she do that? That doesn’t make any sense.”

It really didn’t, but Meng Ruoxue had been a terror to her granddaughters. Then again, she was said to unduly devalue women under men. If she had a son, why would she disrespect him in death?

“Her mirror shattered,” Zhu Chenfeng whispered. “That which did the shattering must be snuffed out.”

He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand.

Spinning on his heel, shedding all desire to keep up a front of calmness, he stormed right out of the building without another word.

Once outside in the frigid air, he got a few steps away as the door slammed shut behind him, then stopped dead in his tracks.

The breeze gently blew his loose hair about him, while his hands clenched into fists. His feet refused to move from where they’d been glued.

He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t sad. He wasn’t even in disbelief, despite the ridiculousness of this whole thing.

What he was was deeply disturbed.

It made too much sense, didn’t it? His mom had a twin brother slated to be the next Sect Head, he’d died while she was off in the world, she’d been forced to come home and train at the last minute, and the lengths her own mother had gone to erase said brother’s existence had definitely been weighing on her ever since.

A twin brother… fuck. No wonder.

Did she really think he wouldn’t believe her about this? Did she think that saying, ‘Hey, I’ve been acting weird because you look exactly like my dead, possibly murdered brother, and I’m still mad about how my mother acted about it,’ would be too much?

Had she told other people, and they’d not believed her?

Gods below, what a mess. He still didn’t have the full picture yet, either—for the umpteenth time, what the hell had been Meng Ruoxue’s problem?

He thought back to what little he remembered about his grandmother. Those meetings had been so bland, he couldn’t reconcile them with the blurry, smiling face that held evil under its surface.

If she’d treated her own son like that, how would she have treated him when he grew up? Would he have been subjected to a different brand of bullshit his sisters had? If she’d still been alive when he’d left the sect, would she have done her best to unperson him, too?

Had she… been responsible for Zhu Sun’s death? Was that why she’d gone to great lengths to damn his memory?

A chill went up his spine. His gut twisted and prickled strangely with emotions he couldn’t define.

“Doctor?”

He turned to the left, strangely numb, to see Chu Ran’s concerned face enter his line of sight. The man gently placed a hand on his upper arm.

“I’ve already said passable goodbyes to those inside. There may be some pieces of etiquette I’ve missed, but I thanked them for their help and hospitality and… oh, that hardly matters, does it? What do you want to do now, Doctor?”

“I need to go talk to my mother,” he mumbled as a lame answer.

“Yes, clearly, but you hardly seem to be in the right state of mind for that. Let me repeat: what do you want to do?”

Zhu Li opened his mouth to say something. However, nothing came out, and he closed it all too soon, electing to rake his wayward hair away from his face with a sigh. What did he want to do, indeed.

What he should do was calm the hell down and go find his mother for an overdue talk. What he wanted to do was grab people by the lapels and shake them.

He didn’t even know which people, just that somebody needed to be shaken up for this shit. There was no way Meng Ruoxue had been able to pull off something of this magnitude alone, after all, and that meant that way too many people had allowed it to happen without ever stopping to say, ‘Hey, this is fucked up actually.’

Chu Ran still waited quietly for his answer. It was an answer he wasn’t really sure he had, though.

He took a deep breath, then let it out, took one in, let it out. In, out, in, out.

That weird, prickly feeling in his stomach eventually went away, replaced by an uncomfortable jitteriness. He felt like he had to do something, but if he just ran out of here without thinking, he’d probably just end up making a fool of himself.

He needed to think about what he was going to do, to say, and in what order. It wouldn’t be proper for him to burst through the doors and shout ‘You had a twin brother that looked like me?!’ at his mother, as justifiable as the reaction might be.

Again, what the fuck had been wrong with Meng Ruoxue? He couldn’t get over any of this. He’d always been curious as to why Zhu Longmai was mean only sometimes, but with a mother like this, he was now curious as to why she wasn’t way meaner. Negativity bred negativity in a horrible loop that was difficult to break out of.

He’d… have to ask. Directly. And with no room for more riddles.

Hopefully, she’d grant him that without too much of a fuss.

“I want to take a walk.”

The phrase left him before he even full formed it in his head. It was true, though—he wanted nothing more than to clear his head, and a good walk always helped with that. Typically, he would meditate or exercise instead, but this was too personal for meditation.

And Chu Ran was too present for his usual exercise routine of doing one-armed pull-ups until his heightened emotions were worked out.

The last time he’d done it, Chu Ran had smiled at him and said, “If I tried that, my arm would tear itself out of its socket in protest, Doctor Zhu. Would you be able to reattach it after the fact?”

In other words, it wasn’t exactly a couple’s activity. Walking was a better choice.

“A walk it is,” Chu Ran said, chipper. He attached himself to Zhu Li’s arm in typical fashion. “Too bad it isn’t warmer. I wouldn’t be able to convince you to meditate in the shrine with the large, hollow, metal thing on top?”

“No. And the metal thing is a snake statue.”

“Is it? That does make sense, considering the name.” He tugged gently on Zhu Li’s arm. “Well, let’s get off their property, now. The walk won’t start itself. And we can chat about what you’re feeling!”

Zhu Li’s feet got to moving. “I’d rather not.”

A beat.

“And we can chat about everything except for what you’re feeling!”

He huffed out a small laugh.

Odd as Zhu Li’s choice of partner acted, no one could say that Chu Ran wasn’t one to roll with the tides.

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The author says: what do you think zhu chenfeng’s condition is? i know what it is.
i had to rewrite this chapter in order to make this encounter, well, interesting. the original one was boring. having the information be easily found and explained is too easy.

(i owe counts on feathers two more chapters this week. hoo boy. I Will Do It)

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