While winter froze over the land, warm blood linked our veins

[fanoperator]

There were an immense amount of stairs to be climbed to obtain an audience with the Sect Leader of QingheNie.

It wasn’t even halfway up the mountain that cradled the palace-fortress of the Nie Sect, the building complex they called the Bujing-Shi, which translated to “Unclean Realm” despite the strict military tidiness that reigned in the place. Qinghe City pooled around the base of the mountain like a lady’s skirts, fortified by massive walls on three sides and the mountain behind, a jewel in the mountainous Qinghe region.

Any of the locals could be prevailed upon to explain that the barracks, training grounds, and reception halls of the Unclean Realm occupied the lower slopes of the mountains, and above it were the private palaces of the Nie Clan family who ruled the Sect and the region.

The interior of the Qinghe Reception Hall was the least ostentatious of any of the halls of the great clans the English might have visited before coming to Qinghe, but the Sect Leader who sat at the head of it was the most intimidating by far. A massive iron saber stood in a vertical rack to one side of him, where another Sect Leader might have placed his wife, while a timid and pretty younger man stood beside him in the place for an heir.

Half-hiding behind his fan as he watched the strangers, Huaisang’s eyes flicked over them all with fascinated interest, eyes lingering on some of the more handsome ones and wondering about how they all managed to be so unbelievably hairy.