The pond was old.
The kind of old that cultivation territories accumulated quietly — a body of water that had been sitting inside Void Return ambient qi for long enough that the surface had taken on the specific, flat, dark luminescence of something that had absorbed more than water. It reflected the stars perfectly, without distortion, the way things that have been very still for a very long time learn to reflect.
She was at its edge.
He heard her before he saw her. Not loud — the Chief was not a loud woman. The sounds she was making were the specific, suppressed, deeply unwilling sounds of a woman whose body had decided to cry despite receiving formal objections from the part of her that ran a tribe.
He stopped five meters behind her.
He reached into his qi.
