Hong was silent. Too silent. It was starting to worry Mu.

The day after they returned, he’d secluded himself away in his room for several hours. That was already worrying enough - for Hong to spend several hours of daylight doing anything other than repairing noodle shops bespoke a serious disturbance of mind.

To make matters even more confusing, when he did emerge from his seclusion he went not to his job, but to the inn kitchen. Then he asked to start cooking.

Mu had tasted Hong’s cooking once. And again. And again. And again. It had taken a while for him to finish vomiting, and even longer to get the taste from his mouth. He still could not believe that a man who had dedicated his life so thoroughly to the restaurant would be so utterly incompetent when it came to cooking.

The kitchen cooks quailed at the sight of Hong. They too had tried his cooking once. And again. And again. And again. They protested, but however amiable a cultivator may be a cultivator he would always be, and Hong put his foot down. He was going to cook.

Mu desperately ran through every defence technique in his possession as Hong began to assemble the ingredients, slowly sinking into despair as he realised that none of them would work. Hong was just too strong.

Hong left the noodles to boil, and began frying some mushrooms in their own juices. The cooks hugged Mu and sobbed.

Hong made a thick sauce from scratch, pausing only to add some butter to the delicious smelling mushrooms. Unwilling to leave the safe arms of the cooks, Mu used his qi to pick up a pen and scrawl out his will.

Hong drained the water, dumping the noodles into a bowl, and adding the sauce and the mushrooms. Mu wished he’d spent more time with his family and prepared for the end.

Hong ladled out enough food for the whole group. Whistling, he sat down to dinner.

He looked at Mu and the cooks expectantly. With a shiver they sat down to eat.

Mu stared at the bowl of noodles with sauce in front of him. It sat there, waiting.

He grabbed his fork, screwed up his eyes, shut down all his qi-enhanced senses, and carefully, slowly, took a bite.

The noodles tasted normal.

The noodles tasted normal?

The noodles tasted normal!

With a cry of relief, Mu began to leap about the room, jumping for joy. The cooks joined him, their dance even more effusive than his - for even Mu, with all his qi-enhanced senses, could merely taste that Hong’s cooking had been wrong; they knew how he had gone wrong, and that knowledge would haunt them till the end of their days.

Hong continued to eat his lunch, entirely unconcerned with their joys and effusions. He wasn’t planning to let a little delight - finally, he could cook; finally, he could make the noodles he so loved - get in the way of him enjoying his meal.

When he had finished he put his cutlery down to either side of his plate with a contented sigh, wiping his lips with a napkin. Then, expression mysteriously pained, he got back to his feet and folded his arms into his sleeves. Steps slow, he left the room.

Neither the cooks nor Mu noticed him leave. They were still dancing for joy, spinning each other, pirouetting, singing songs of praise, and weeping in relief.

Hong shuffled down the streets and out onto a bluff overlooking the town, where he could be assured, if not of privacy, then at least of causing no one harm with what he was about to do.

Hong removed his arms from his sleeves, and brought them down in a flourish. He bowed to the east. “Shangdi, Lord of Heaven; this one honours you, and asks for your blessings.”

Qi now unconstrained, the blessings of Shangdi came quickly. Storm clouds rolled in, great pulsing things of dark grey, bloated bodies crawling to be born. They roared their fury as they surrounded Hong, ethereal winds lashing at him, rain sweeping down in jagged currents. Both hit with far more than the force of their physical counterparts, slashing and gashing Hong’s skin as they sought entry to his meridians and to savage his core.

Then came the lightning. Bolt after bolt after bolt after bolt, flashes of violent violet striking in precisely the same spot, one after another. Hong weathered it all, even as his robes turned to ash and his skin charred, enduring the desiccation of his organs and the blasting of his sight. Blind, unfeeling, aware of nothing save agony, he held firm, enduring the tribulation.

At last the storm had vented its fury; the lightning ceased, the thunder could be heard no more. The clouds dissipated, and in their place was only the sun. The pure yang qi shone down on the hellish figure below. Barely a skeleton, it was coated in a layer of ossified flesh, dried like papyrus. Its eyes stared, dully unseeing.

Slowly, the figure moved its arms, its burned skin tearing like paper. It ripped off the dead flesh, and from the pupa emerged - skin healthy, limbs firm with vigour, eyes glowing determinedly - the figure of Hong.

He removed the last of his old body until he was standing nude under the sun. Then, keenly aware of his immodest mode of dress, he rooted through the dead skin and bits of cloth on the ground until at last he produced his storage pouch.

Pulling out an ancient scholar’s robe and wangjin cap from within its dark recesses, Hong got dressed. Propriety, he knew, was the hallmark of virtue. It was only once he was fully himself that he stopped and took proper stock of his situation.

He probed his inner qi, feeling out his meridians, checking his dantians. His inner body unfolded like a map before him, one dotted with forests, lakes, and mountains. The situation was not good.

Hong narrowed his eyes. Another Orbit surmounted… no, two… or was it three? Three Orbits at once. It would not be long now… He had much work to do…

Calmly, quickly, unhurried now that he had unleashed the tribulation in a place where it would bring no harm, Hong returned to the inn. There he found the cooks and Mu sadly eating their now very cold noodles - a depression for which he felt not the slightest sympathy. It was their own fault for choosing to dance when there was warm food on the table. The sage measured his response in accordance with what the situation required.

Hong waited patiently until such time as Mu had finished his meal, then indicated that it was time for them to be on their way.

Let it not be said that Hong had been negligent in his job. Quite to the contrary, he had spent today learning cooking because he knew he had no work of note - his only task for the day was to travel several hundred li north, and meet with a regional governor to discuss various ways to improve the coverage of repair sects in rural locations, where the destroyed inns might not have a repairman pass by for some months.

The governor wasn’t expecting him until the morrow, and thus Hong had felt willing to delay his trip, secure in the knowledge that he could simply run faster to reach the meeting location in time.

Soon Hong and Mu were on their way, Mu flying on his sword, Hong gliding through the air. The newly enlightened noodle shop repairman took subtle, sliding steps as he sped by, the clouds falling back behind him. Mu wondered why he was having so much trouble keeping up with Hong this morning - even accounting for his hurry he was normally nowhere near this fast.

They were flying over a particularly rural stretch of land - one long isolated from the main thoroughfares of the Great Xuan, where cultivators passed but rarely and cultivation was more myth than object of study - when they saw her.

She was stumbling through the forest, her every move showing signs of exhaustion, her form torn and bleeding. One arm hung limply by her side.

She couldn’t have been more than twenty li distant. As one, without even having to look at each other, Mu and Hong descended to the earth. Landing half a li’s distance from her - and using the woods to hide their landing, so they wouldn’t scare her - the two men slowly walked towards the woman.

She gave a start as they came through the woods towards her, face terrified, and they raised their arms to show they would do her no ill.

“You can relax - neither of us mean you harm,” Hong said, “we see you’re hurt. Can we offer you assistance?”

It took a moment for the woman to register the words. She was clearly struggling - from exhaustion, from pain, from terror, and from rank confusion. Her clothes identified her as from East Avalon, the westernmost of the Great Xuan’s provinces and the region Mu and Hong were on their way to visit; though there were vague affinities between her dress and appearance and those of Mu’s, there was not the slightest similarity between hers and Hong’s.

She looked the Confucian scholar over in some bewilderment, but finally decided that help was help, even if it came from people who were in the wrong setting.

“Yes, I would be most grateful of your assistance,” she said, and gulped, “but not for myself, you see. I am fine. It’s the villagers who need your aid, for… for… for he is going to kill them!”