The well-intentioned Chang Jun had just returned to the Qiu courtyard supporting Yao Qi when he heard the door of the northernmost rooms, which Xi Ping occupied, slam open. 

Xi Ping had a roll of bedding tucked under his arm. Without a word, he rushed out the door. 

Chang Jun called to stop him: “Shiyong, where are you going? It’s nearly dark, the courtyard gate locks at the Hour of the Dog…”

Xi Ping’s furious voice came on the wind: “Then—I’ll—die—out—here!” 

In his rage, Xi Ping had a mind to find a big stone and smash the half-puppet to pieces—if he hadn’t known that the half-puppet had originally been human, he would have done it already. 

Actually, he didn’t think he would be incapable of working himself up to kill a human being, but the half-puppet wasn’t only seemingly human, he was also a little thing the size of a fingernail. Towards a little thing like this, which he could have squeezed to death with a little effort, he couldn’t work himself up no matter how angry he was.

This lousy thing. He didn’t know to make the bed, dress someone, do hair, or anything; he did nothing but biting and rolling his eyes, and on top of that he was a glutton who had swallowed an entire box of blue jade in one go! 

Swallowing gold? No, this was swallowing several luxurious mansions at once! 

Pang Jian was so wicked it went all the way back to his ancestral tomb! 

Xi Ping ran up along the mountain path, knocking a patrolling straw child into a spinning top in the process, heading straight for Chengjing Hall, midway up the mountain. 

Chengjing Hall was where the Latent Cultivation Temple’s stewards kept watch. When the disciples had a problem, they could go to Chengjing Hall to ask an open-eyed shixiong or shijie for help. The approximate location wasn’t hard to find, but the little compound was tucked away in a bamboo forest. Xi Ping was a stranger here. He saw the roof of Chengjing Hall from a distance, but he went around several times without being able to work out where to get in. 

Overwhelmed with rage, he snatched up a straw child from the thicket, frisked himself, and came up with a crumpled guide talisman. He was just planning on “asking the way” when he heard a familiar voice behind him ask, “It’s already dark, what… Oh, you again?” 

Xi Ping turned his head. A cool breeze swept over him. Next, the image of a sword at the green-gowned living legend’s feet turned into countless shards of light, and he landed on the ground without disturbing a speck of dust.

“Are you a reincarnated cat? As soon as night falls, you start running around.” Zhi Xiu removed a bamboo leaf that had fallen on his shoulder. Then his eyes fell on the bedroll Xi Ping was holding. “What strong spiritual energy! What is that?”

One mark later, General Zhi was looking at the half-puppet, glowing blue as he lay on a little table in Chengjing Hall. He was silent.

On duty tonight at Chengjing Hall was a white-haired and white-bearded old half-immortal. His name was Su Zhun. He was said to be in charge of the discipline hall at the Latent Cultivation Temple. Though he attended to punishments, Elder Su’s appearance wasn’t fierce at all. He was always smiling. He looked more like a genial old uncle from next door. 

Su Zhun inspected the half-puppet. He looked up and asked, “How many spiritual stones did you just say this half-puppet ate?” 

“Around ten jin,” said Xi Ping. 

This was Elder Su’s first time hearing someone discuss spiritual stones in terms of jin. For a moment, he couldn’t quite make sense of the number. 

General Zhi said sincerely, “Last time outside of Jinping City, I wanted to ask you—kid, does your family have a private spiritual stone mine?” 

“No, actually,” Xi Ping answered honestly. “We have some jade mines and agate mines.” 

Zhi Xiu: “…” 

Elder Su: “…” 

Where had such an unworldly sprout of a young master come from?! 

“That’s not important,” the sprout of a young master continued to issue his infuriating views. “He’s eaten all of my spiritual stones, so what am I supposed to use? How am I going to…” 

Xi Ping had nearly let the truth slip out: “How am I going to write letters home?” Luckily, he remembered at the last moment that, on the surface, the Latent Cultivation Temple didn’t allow disciples to contact their families. He forced his words into a different direction. “Anyway, it’s just… Exalted, is there a way to make him throw them up?” 

“Now you're a disciple, call me shixiong,” Elder Su amiably corrected Xi Ping’s overly formal address. “A half-puppet doesn’t have a digestive system. Though we say they ‘eat spiritual stones,’ it’s different from the way we who haven’t attained inedia digest food. He wouldn’t be able to throw them up. But I don’t think he can digest so many spiritual stones at once. If we break all of his arrays and block his spiritual pathways right now, we can cut open his belly and get some of them back.”

Xi Ping: “…” 

The spiritual stones had already split the seams of the little half-puppet’s ugly pink jacket. Elder Su rolled up the ragged jacket a little, revealing his belly. Both sides of the half-puppet’s waist and his spine were made of special lumber and Moon Plated Gold; the rings of arrays on them, activated by the spiritual stones, were flashing in and out of sight. The skin of his belly, however, was human skin, distended by the spiritual stones inside. There was also a raised crooked scar on his belly, still rising and falling with every breath… letting the half-puppet’s warped and broken vitality leak out. 

Elder Su put both hands in his sleeves and said to Xi Ping, as though humoring a child, “Go get shixiong that knife, Yingbi, hanging on the wall. I’ll cut him open for you. Don’t worry, we’ll still be able to get some stones back.” 

Xi Ping looked at the half-puppet, then looked at Su Zhun. “Exalt… shixiong, doesn’t it say in the book that lumber and Moon Plated Gold are equivalent to a human’s flesh and bones?” 

Then wouldn’t this be the same as breaking his bones, snapping his meridians, then disemboweling him? 

Su Zhun nodded, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening. “Indeed.” 

“No, wait…” Xi Ping’s expression twisted several times. Falling apart, he pointed to the half-puppet and said, “Will his appetite always be like this? If I planted him in the ground, would he even pick all of the Xuanyin Mountains clean?” 

Su Zhun had only been teasing him. Hearing him blab like this, even daring to dispose of the immortal mountains, he quickly said, “Hey, you can’t talk like that!” 

General Zhi was still there! 

Zhi Xiu smiled. “A grown half-puppet consumes about as many spiritual stones as a cultivator. He probably won’t eat you out of house and home… and jade mines. But this half-puppet’s luck has been bad. His original master probably didn’t feed him well, only gave him a bit of spiritual energy to keep him alive. He must have been starved over time. That’s why he couldn’t resist swallowing your box of spiritual stones. If he isn’t starved in the future, he won’t eat like this again. Disciples have an allowance of three blue jades a month. Before opening your spiritual eyes, you won’t be able to use them up. If you give him one a month, that should be fine.” 

“Three a month, and I still have to give him one?” said Xi Ping. 

What do you mean I won’t be able to use them up?! The proximal goes through at least four a month! 

“Indeed,” Elder Su said approvingly. “As I see it, that evil cultivator’s handiwork is no good. This half-puppet is poor quality. The box of spiritual stones he swallowed is enough to exchange for a whole barracks full of true puppets. What would you want him for? No need to go to so much trouble. Cut him open, take back the spiritual stones, then buy a new one.” 

He beckoned, and the warding knife Yingbi hanging on the wall yieldingly fell into his hand. 

Su Zhun rolled up his sleeves and unsheathed the blade. “I’m old, my eyesight is no good. Let me see where to cut…” 

“Wait, wait…” Seeing Yingbi’s cold light falling on the half-puppet’s belly, Xi Ping instinctively reached out to block it. “Shixiong, wait.” 

Elder Su said, “If we wait any longer, the spiritual stones will be all gone.” 

Hearing this, Xi Ping glared at the half-puppet, feeling that he got more annoying the more he saw of him. 

But while he may have been annoying, Xi Ping couldn’t have a child disemboweled like a piglet over some stuff. 

So a breath caught in his throat that he could neither expel nor swallow. After a long time, he swept his sleeves fiercely and said, “Forget it!”

“What? Forget it?” Elder Su pretended to be surprised. “A hundred liang of blue jade, four or five thousand liang of gold? You’re giving up on them?” 

Xi Ping spent all his time out on the town. He knew that in Jinping’s south suburbs, a single copper coin could buy a pair of mixed grain flatbreads the size of your hand, and he had heard that a string of copper coins was enough for anyone to live on for a month. 

But while he wouldn’t say anything as demented as “Why don’t they eat meat if they don’t have rice?”, after all, he had never lacked for anything. In fact, in his mind, neither a hundred liang of blue jade nor a thousand liang of gold were as urgent as “When I run out of spiritual stones in a couple of days I won’t be able to write to my grandmother anymore.” 

He regretted it, but it wasn’t bitter anguish; mostly it was irritation. 

“I only said a few sentences to contradict Commander Pang that day… and it was about things he brought up! And he put this much effort into getting me in trouble! A hundred-year-old codger, sinking to my level—he must have a lot of attention to spare!” Xi Ping peevishly pushed the half-puppet in front of Elder Su. “I’ll donate him to the temple, you can order him around like a straw child or put him on display. I don’t want him anymore, anyway.” 

“That would be good.” Elder Su smiled. “This half-puppet has eaten so many spiritual stones at once. When he’s finished digesting, he’ll grow in intellect and size, and then maybe he won’t be so useless. Shidi, you aren’t donating a puppet, you’re donating a mountain of gold!” 

Xi Ping: “…” 

No way, that’s not fair! 

For a time, he was caught in a dilemma. Keeping this thing would be annoying, but if he donated it to the Latent Cultivation Temple, he would be a sucker. 

What was all this rotten business? It was about to annoy him to death! 

After a moment, Xi Ping stuffed the half-puppet under his arm and went back the way he had come. 

Anger stoked up the shiftless Viscount’s ambitions. He decided to work hard to improve himself. When he was powerful, he would stick Pang into a sack and beat him until he looked like a pig! 

If he didn’t get his revenge, then his name wasn’t Xi. 

Commander Pang wasn’t on duty that night. He had some rare free time. He ran a hand over his face, and his craggy countenance at once became average and unremarkable. He changed out of his sapphire blue robe, put on casual clothes, and went out to eat a late night snack. He went to the Phoenix’s Perch Pavilion. 

There was a wind on the Lingyang River, dispersing quite a bit of the fog. As soon as Pang Jian sat down by the window, he sneezed twice in a row. He wiped his nose and looked up, and just happened to see Cui Ji not far away.

Cui Ji was two hundred paces from the pleasure boat ferry crossing, its courtyard dense with ancient trees. There were no glazed tiles at the gate, and no big inscribed board. There was only a courtyard wall of dark grey stone, with snow-white gas lamps lighting the characters “Cui Ji” in the corner. Underneath was that commandingly wealthy little brocade carp imprint. 

Those without property didn’t even dare to look into that courtyard. 

Pang Jian suddenly sensed something. He stretched his spiritual sense to its limit and felt a thread of enmity that referred to him by name floating over from the west—the direction of the Xuanyin Mountains.

“Cursing me behind my back.” Commander Pang knew at once who it was and laughed carelessly. “Little devil, one day you’ll be thanking Grandpa Pang.” 

He had deliberately gone along with the tide and given the half-puppet to Xi Ping, and he had deliberately not warned Xi Ping to look after the spiritual stones. 

Jade had to be polished to have value. Taking snacks to the Latent Cultivation Temple as though he were going on a spring outing—it was obvious the kid was planning to muddle through. If someone didn’t make a bit of trouble for him, he might not even have opened his spiritual eye a year from now. 

The osmanthus duck came. Pang Jian was just about to dig in when he heard a dispute downstairs. 

He saw that a waiter was just driving off a teenage boy. “If you’re not going to buy a whole duck, you can buy half a duck—even half a young duck. Half a young duck is only two hundred coins, I’ll speak to the manager and have them give you the duck’s head for free. We’ve only heard of people who don’t want the duck’s head, never anyone who specifically bought the duck’s head. Perhaps you could go somewhere else to ask about it?” 

Though this boy was clean enough, his pant legs were already so short that his ankles stuck out. His impoverished appearance was at odds with the Phoenix’s Perch Pavilion. The people around them, hearing that someone wanted to buy a duck’s head, all laughed. Someone jeered: “Little fellow, can you even grow a mustache? Isn’t it a little early to be thinking about buying girls?”¹

Pang Jian glanced over and saw that this “little fellow” was actually a half-grown young woman.

The girl knew that she had revealed her unworldliness. Her face went red to the base of her neck. She lifted her head and stubbornly said, “My family eats duck’s heads. There aren’t many of us, we can’t eat half a duck, all right?”

The waiter squinted at her too-short pant legs and ragged cuffs. “Half a young duck won’t even fill our manager’s cat’s belly. What royal lineage do you belong to, with such an aristocratic appetite?”

The girl unconsciously put her hands behind her back. 

The waiter said, “If it’s not on the menu, we don’t sell it. If you really want to eat it, you can find someone who’s buying a duck and doesn’t want to eat the head, and ‘buy in’ with them.” 

Just then, a busybody knocked on his table, laden with the leavings of his meal, and said, “I have a duck’s head here. Who wants it? You’re welcome to it.” 

The girl became furious from embarrassment. She stamped her foot and loudly said, “The Phoenix’s Perch Pavilion won’t give you your money’s worth!” 

“Hey, what are you saying…” 

“The Phoenix’s Perch Pavilion is a big business, so it bullies its customers! It won’t give you your money’s worth!” Seeing the restaurant’s security guard walk over, the girl turned and ran. She bumped headfirst into a customer. The underbred urchin didn’t even apologize. As she ran, she called out, “They just said it themselves! Half a duck won’t even fill a cat’s belly!” 

“Oh, I’m so sorry, sir.” The waiter quickly held up the customer that the girl had sent staggering. “I don’t know where that lunatic came from at this time of night.” 

The customer dusted off his lapels in revulsion. “In my opinion, we ought to restore the ancient system, lock the city gates as soon as it gets dark, don’t let anyone in! What's to become of Jinping if we let that bunch of rustics from the south suburbs trample all over it like this?” 

As soon as he said this, echoes quickly sounded in the Phoenix’s Perch Pavilion. 

“That’s right! I heard a couple days ago that the refugees want to bring a complaint at court. They’ve gathered up in a big group in the south suburbs outside the city gate!” 

“What do they want?” 

“It’s about that old business of the land expropriated to build the Cloud Soaring Flood Dragon rails,” an informed individual among the seated customers said. “All these years, I don’t know why they’ve turned it up again… Well, anyway, it’s a pity. I went out of the city the other day, and I saw that crowd of refugees laying out their makeshift beds beside the canal with flies and mosquitoes buzzing around them. My goodness, looking from a distance, it was like a mass grave.” 

“I think there’ll be a big fuss this time. I hear the Crown Prince in the palace has submitted a petition pleading for forgiveness on the people’s behalf. It’s driving His Majesty out of his mind with rage.” 

“What’s he angry about?” 

“He wants to expand the Cloud Soaring Flood Dragon—didn't someone just come from the State of Chu out west…”

The Phoenix’s Perch Pavilion was an old establishment, not cheap, and the clientele were all somewhat wealthy—though they weren’t major figures; even the butlers of major figures weren’t so loose-lipped when they went out. Minor merchants and shopkeepers, managers of horses and carriages… and all that sort, what they liked best was to gather together to discuss major state affairs based on hearsay to draw attention to the breadth of their information networks. 

Pang Jian let it go in one ear and out the other, thinking of something else. He slowly poured himself a cup of wine, a little lost in thought. 

Just then, there was a clamor in the street. Someone cried out: “Quick, look, shooting stars!” 

Pang Jian looked in response to the voice. Several meteors  streaked across the sky, dropping towards the horizon.

In the Latent Cultivation Temple’s Chengjing Hall, General Zhi watched Xi Ping leave, puffing like a train, and couldn’t resist being amused. He took a cup of tea from Elder Su. “Pang Wenchang truly is wonderful.”

Elder Su said, “I brought up Wenchang myself, I know him, he’s very ungovernable. If he looks down on a person, he’ll go through the motions to their face, then turn his head and forget what they look like. If he didn’t set store by him, he wouldn’t be getting up to these little tricks—which family does this little young master come from?”

To look at these two, they seemed to be grandfather and grandson. When it came to the sect’s generational ranking, Su Zhun was only an outer sect open-eyed disciple; he had to politely call Zhi Xiu “shishu.” But there was a certain relaxed ease to their conversation that made them seem instead like old friends of many years’ standing. 

“An upstart family with no roots, quite a plain background. Recently he got drawn into a case. I thought he got on pretty well with Xiao-Pang. Heaven’s Design Pavilion probably wants to reserve him in advance… He’s really something. The inner sect hasn’t even made its selections, and he already wants to pick,” Zhi Xiu said, smiling. “So it was you who brought up that Xiao-Pang. And here I was wondering why when I asked whether he wanted a reception order, his tone when he answered was exactly the same as yours when you were young.”

Su Zhun’s expression was a little odd. “You asked him whether he wanted a reception order… Listen, little shishu, isn’t that going a little too far?”

Zhi Xiu was bewildered. “Huh?”

“Wenchang didn’t come up through the Latent Cultivation Temple, he opened his spiritual eye because of an accident. I didn’t want his talent to go to waste and asked you to vouch for him with the inner sect in order to get him made a disciple of record and enter Heaven’s Design Pavilion.” Su Zhun didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You just scribbled down a letter and then forgot all about it, but that child had your voucher mounted and took it everywhere with him. He was so grateful he gave over his whole life to Heaven’s Design Pavilion. Several times when he’d been snatched back from the jaws of death by his colleagues and was delirious with fever, he would clutch your voucher and say, ‘I didn’t let General Zhi down.’ Honestly, you do test a person’s feelings.” 

Zhi Xiu was a little embarrassed. “How could I know we had that connection…? He didn’t say anything, and I don’t go peeking at other people’s histories without a reason.” 

“What,” said Su Zhun, glancing at him, “is the rumor true? Will Xuanyin’s Four Great Pities lose one of their pillars?” 

“What rumor? What Four Great Pities?” said Zhi Xiu. 

“The rumor that you’re finally going to take a disciple, little shishu—the Dignitary of Fate High Elder’s direct disciple, Master of Flying Jade Peak. All the sect’s sword cultivators are crying to be the head disciple of Flying Jade Peak. But you, thirty years after taking over Flying Jade Peak, you still haven't opened the mountain seal. You threw together a cottage for yourself at the foot of the mountain and there you’ve been living. You’ve never even brought up the subject of taking disciples. ‘Little shishu doesn’t take disciples’ makes up one of Xuanyin’s Four Great Pities, along with ‘Master Lin doesn’t make tools,’ ‘Peak Master Wen doesn’t speak,’ and ‘Imperial Princess Duanrui doesn’t wear colorful clothes.’ Haven’t you heard of them?” 

“What are you talking about?” Zhi Xiu frowned. “Tell them to stop spreading those rumors. I’m of no value, they can say what they like, but they shouldn’t be disrespectful toward Duanrui-shijie.” 

Su Zhun asked, “What, are you really going to take a disciple? You don’t want any of the gifted sword cultivators running all over the mountains? You want a blank piece of paper to teach from the very beginning?” 

“I still don’t understand heaven and earth for myself, how could I be qualified to expound wisdom and dispel doubts for others?” Zhi Xiu sipped his green tea and waved a hand. “In a few days, Duanrui-shijie will be here to teach the disciples the You Xuan Jing.” 

“What? Eldest Imperial Princess Duanrui!” Su Zhun was startled. He involuntarily sat up straight. “Apart from the established foundation shixiong in residence, the Latent Cultivation Temple only has us half-immortals to handle odd jobs. We’re not significant enough to receive this ancestor.” 

“I understand, I’ll come ahead of time to receive her,” Zhi Xiu said. “I was responsible for recruiting this class of disciples. It would be rude not to help entertain the guest of honor.” 

“Does the princess’s Green Pool Peak have an eye on this class of new disciples?” Su Zhun said. “But I heard that she’s been in seclusion to become a consummate ascended spirit?” 

Zhi Xiu’s looked slightly thoughtful. “Yes, she’s come out.” 

“Well… She’s been in seclusion less than a century, right? Isn’t this a little sudden?” 

“The force of circumstance compels her. Nothing to be done about it.” Zhi Xiu shook his head. He wasn’t accustomed to talking about people behind their backs. He didn’t say much. After a moment of silence, he only said, “Mingyi, come to think of it, it’s a good thing you were so insistent on not entering the inner sect back then. You spent nearly two hundred years expelling evil and keeping the Way in the mortal world, and now you’ve found a quiet place to retire in your old age…” 

Su Zhun said, smiling, “Don’t talk nonsense, what do you mean I wouldn’t enter the inner sect? It was the inner sect that didn’t want me. If the inner sect had given me so much as a glance, I’d have packed myself up and shipped myself over… Ah, but on that subject, if you aren’t planning on taking disciples, why did you oversee the Grand Selection? It’s been so many years since an ascended spirit peak master left the mountains. Do you know that because you oversaw the Grand Selection, Luo-shixiong is terrified that it’ll harm your image if these disciples don’t perform well, and he’s planning to work them to death so they all open their spiritual eyes?” 

“Oh… There’s no need for that. I only received the sect’s orders to go handle an evil cultivator, and while I was there I brought back the provisional disciples to save someone else a trip.” Zhi Xiu paused, then gave a rough description of the business of the evil cultivator “Tai Sui” at the Blissful Village. “This person’s arrival was momentous. It disturbed the Sea of Stars. He had to be eliminated.” 

After hearing this, Su Zhun was shocked. “What did you say? Tai Sui? Tai Sui really exists? And you’ve seen him!” 

Zhi Xiu stared. “What, you know of him?” 

“I’ve heard of the title,” Su Zhun said hesitantly. “But… it isn’t a person.” 

“If it’s not a person, what is it?” 

“It’s a… a totem, a made-up evil god,” Su Zhun said. “The haunts in the mortal world have scant resources. They stick together. You know that.” 

Zhi Xiu nodded.

“They have all kinds of ways, and when they gather together, it’s to each other’s mutual benefit and assistance. There’s rarely a leader that everyone obeys, so they’ll often concoct a god like the Queen Mother of the West or Grand Duke Tai Sui and worship that god when they get together… It’s a ceremony. When you’ve worshipped together, it indicates that everyone is in it together. When I was at Heaven’s Design Pavilion, I once captured a group of haunts who worshipped ‘Tai Sui.’” 

“The conflagration burns on, the cry of the cicada is without end,” said Zhi Xiu. 

“Right, that was the line!” Su Zhun said. “‘Tai Sui’ is an image of a deity carved out of wood! What, did they bring that image to life?” 

The two of them exchanged a look, both their expressions rather grave. 

Su Zhun asked, “You said he disturbed the Sea of Stars. What happened?” 

The Sea of Stars was an abyss in the Xuanyin Mountain Range; it was said that you could catch a glimpse of fate there. 

But fate was so abstruse. A person peeking at heaven could accidentally end up caught inside and die where there was no place to be buried, so Xuanyin had issued an order forbidding its disciples from entering. Apart from the Dignitary of Fate High Elder Zhang Jue, even an ascended spirit peak master, if they hadn’t been summoned, was only permitted to go into the Sea of Stars once every ten years, and each time they went in couldn’t exceed half the burning of a incense stick, and they couldn’t glimpse their own fate. 

Zhi Xiu said, “It was the Sea of Stars that summoned Zhaoting and pointed me vaguely in the direction of the Dragon Vein. When I came down with Zhaoting, I saw that there was turbid energy and instability near Jinping… meaning that there were evildoers. The instability wasn’t strong. We thought at the time it must be an established foundation of the middle or late phase, but since this person had disturbed the Sea of Stars, there had to be evil practices going on. For the sake of security, my shizun told me to go have a look.” 

“Even the Sea of Stars couldn’t see how strong that haunt was?” 

“If it had, I certainly wouldn’t have arrogantly gone ahead on my own. My life is of no consequence, but the millions of lives in Jinping are no joke.” At this point, Zhi Xiu frowned again and said, “But a ‘near shed skin’ is going too far. I’ve seen Duanrui-shijie, when instructing her own disciples, suppress her cultivation to the open-eyed level, and the established foundation disciples still didn’t stand a chance against her—but that evil cultivator was taken down by a sneak attack from Xiao-Pang, a walker in the mortal world, along with a mortal child. But his cultivation was indeed late ascended spirit phase… The feeling it gave me was a little like someone who had used elixirs to boost their cultivation.”

“Elixirs are sand. They can boost a chicken coop or a pigsty up to the sky, but they can’t roof a building,” Su Zhun said. “If elixirs could make you an ascended spirit, how many peak masters would Xuanyin have?” 

“I know that…” Zhi Xiu was just about to say something when, suddenly, the fragmentary ringing of bells sounded in tranquil Chengjing Hall.

In the small courtyard, all the idling straw children moved without talismans to command them. They all turned to face the windows and tilted their heads back to look at the sky. 

Su Zhun pushed open the window of Chengjing Hall.

Meteors like arrows pierced the tranquil night sky. 

“Why would there be shooting stars in the southern sky out of nowhere?” Su Zhun murmured. “It’s a bad omen.”