CHAPTER 197
### The Twelve
Mo Xuan's report came three days after the false message disruption.
He wrote it as a formal document. Not a relay message. A document. Forty-seven pages. Organized. The precision of someone who had been building operational reports for thirty years and could not stop making them organized even when the subject had changed completely.
He sent a summary.
*Of the eighteen faction members who left the hollow:*
*Seven have contacted me directly. Six are in active correspondence about the gaps-instead-of-nulls modification. One is uncertain but has not returned to the faction's positions.*
*Three sent the false relay messages. Of these three — after the counter-message distributed through Shen Bo's network — two contacted Rong Yan asking what the hollow actually is. They had never been to it. They deployed the false message based on a briefing from faction leadership that turned out to be inaccurate.*
*Rong Yan is corresponding with them.*
*The remaining eight: four are in territory where the between quality propagation has been reaching them for weeks — sections near their regular routes that are generating. They have felt the frequency change without identifying its source. They are not in contact but they are also not actively working against the growing season.*
*Four are unaccounted for.*
*The faction leadership: three people. I have identified two of them. Both are in the dead zone's deep interior, beyond the combination's outer range effect. They are in fully inert territory.*
*The option three adaptation cannot reach them there. The hollow's propagation cannot reach them there. They are in the last genuinely inert territory available to them.*
*They will stay there until the inert territory shrinks further.*
*It will shrink further.*
*The growing season sections are developing. The hollow's propagation is expanding as more practitioners contact it and deepen it. In two to three years the inert territory available to the faction leadership will be significantly smaller.*
*Not gone. Smaller.*
*At some point they will need to make the same decision Rong Yan made.*
*Or they will not.*
*That is their choice.*
He read the document summary to the group at the evening camp.
Feng Luo listened with the fire at resting height.
Xian Yue was reading the detailed document.
Bing Xi was at the camp's edge with the Frostbite Edge.
Lin Mei was writing.
"The four unaccounted for," Feng Luo said when he finished.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"Mo Xuan cannot find them," Feng Luo said.
"No," Jian Yu said.
"Are they a threat," Feng Luo said.
He thought about it.
"The false message disruption was their best option without direct suppression capability," he said. "It failed. The practitioners verified through direct practice. The network responded faster than they anticipated. The four unaccounted for practitioners do not have a suppression technique calibrated for the hollow or the formation site. They do not have Void Anchor capability."
"What do they have," Feng Luo said.
"The same thing the other fourteen had," Jian Yu said. "The choice."
Feng Luo was quiet.
"The gaps instead of nulls modification," Xian Yue said. She had been reading. "Mo Xuan's document includes the full methodology. He has been teaching it for two months."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"The four unaccounted for," she said. "If they encounter a practitioner using the modification—"
"They will see the between quality being used rather than suppressed," Jian Yu said.
"The same thing Rong Yan felt at the hollow," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"The modification is spreading through Mo Xuan's network," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"Which means the four unaccounted for will encounter practitioners using it," she said.
"Eventually," he said.
She looked at the document.
"The hollow will be there when they arrive," she said.
"Yes," he said.
Feng Luo looked at the fire.
"The faction leadership in the deep inert territory," he said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"They are watching everything close in around them," Feng Luo said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"And they are choosing to stay in the shrinking space rather than adapt," Feng Luo said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
The Flame Blade's fire was at resting height.
Feng Luo looked at it.
"My father," he said. "Before I showed him the directed heat application. Before he used my name."
Jian Yu looked at him.
"He was in his own shrinking space," Feng Luo said. "The wrong assessment of who I was. He held the wrong assessment even as the evidence that he was wrong kept arriving." He paused. "He held it until I showed him what I could actually do."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"The faction leadership," Feng Luo said. "They need someone to show them what is actually there."
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"Who shows them," Feng Luo said.
He looked at the grey blade.
He thought about Rong Yan at the hollow.
He thought about the oversight cultivator at the formation site.
He thought about Mo Xuan at the combination valley.
He thought about every person who had encountered the between quality and taken time with it.
"Whatever gets through their door," he said. "At the right moment."
Feng Luo was quiet.
"The door stays open," Feng Luo said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"Until they walk through," Feng Luo said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
The fire burned.
The camp was quiet.
The domain extended around him.
The network was larger than the faction.
Always had been.
Always would be.
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