The clearing was quiet.
Lianhua's fox ears went sideways.
Zhen Ying pressed her lips together.
"'Fine,'" they said. Not together—staggered, the specific staggered quality of two women who have been performing a competition and have both independently decided, on a fractional delay, to cease performing it.
Chen Yun looked at this exchange with the flat attention of a sword cultivator cataloguing technique.
Wei Lingyue looked at Madam Lin with something that was close to recognition—the grey eyes reading a woman who had achieved authority through the oldest cultivation method, which was simply refusing to relinquish it.
"'She's the actual First Wife,'" Wei Lingyue said. Very quietly. To Chen Yun.
"'I heard that,'" Zhen Ying said.
"'I know,'" Wei Lingyue said.
"I need to leave," Cang said.
The clearing did the thing it always did.
