The cold wind of the valley struck the outer balustrade, stirring the hem of Zhì Yuǎn's raw cotton tunic.
Below them, the tree canopies stretched until they vanished into the white mist. Beneath the palm of Zhì Yuǎn's right hand, the living wood of the railing kept that slow, deep beat rising from the roots sunk into the earth far below.
Lī'ya took her eyes off the upper dome and pulled the edge of her own sleeve. The fluffy tail lost its soft sway and dropped a palm's width.
"We don't need to go up and talk to my father right now," she murmured, turning back and pointing at the vegetal arch they had come from. "Rhōk said Elder Vhōl has been waiting for four days, didn't he? If I take any longer, that old man will show up at my door. Let's go to the formations wing first."
Zhì Yuǎn took his hand off the cold wood and followed her back into the dimness of the gallery.
A few steps from the entrance, two tall men with slit pupils and heavy robes that clashed with the light clothes of the tree's residents crossed a side corridor without greeting anyone.
"Are there other tigers like the old man selling grains?" Zhì Yuǎn asked, his dry voice echoing cleanly from behind the wild maple mask.
Lī'ya glanced at the empty corridor before answering in a lower tone:
"That old man with the grains is different. He's lived in the tree for a thousand years. These others came with the delegations from outside." She adjusted her skirt as she walked. "The Red Leaf Clan rules all the half-humans and half-beasts of this world, but the pure Spiritual Beasts have their own territory divided among five hegemonic clans."
She stepped around a higher root in the floor.
"Since the gathering of young talents that happens every century is approaching, the leaders of those five clans and the representatives of the human alliance went up to the dome to settle the rules. That's why my father and mother haven't appeared down here all this time."
"Half a century of stalling, your cousin said," Zhì Yuǎn commented. "I imagine the suitors came along."
Lī'ya's ears flattened back at once. Her small face twisted into a grimace of disgust.
"The older ones who seek arranged marriage at least deal directly with my father and don't bother me on the way," she grumbled, her tail giving an irritated whip against her own leg. "The problem is the son of the Tiger chief. That mountain of meat has been in the tree for a whole week looking for me."
She let out a short huff and crossed her arms under her chest.
"Why do you think I left Elder Vhōl waiting four days in the formation chamber? Every—"
"Because you're in love with me?" Zhì Yuǎn cut in, without turning his face, his voice so dry it almost sounded like a serious question.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her face reddened all the way to the ears, and she scowled with a fury that the tail swinging behind her betrayed completely.
"Every time I leave, that idiot shows up in the middle of the path," she continued, louder than necessary, without looking at him. "I've been refusing him for over fifty years, but he acts like he already owns me just because he has a few decades on me and a little more cultivation."
"Doesn't he have a name?" Zhì Yuǎn asked.
"Léi Hǔ," Lī'ya answered, wrinkling her nose. "They even copied the name from humans, but they still have the nerve to look down on us."
Zhì Yuǎn tilted the mask in a short nod and kept walking beside her.
To reach the formations wing on the eastern face of the trunk, they took a teleportation array, but the final stretch passed through a wide, open square between three main branches, where the inns of the visiting delegations stood and other arrays linked to the upper levels.
Earlier, on the commercial walkways of the edge, the reaction to seeing them together had been only surprise and whispers among vendors.
Here, the weight was different.
As soon as Lī'ya and Zhì Yuǎn crossed the entrance arch, the conversations near the arrival platforms began to die down.
The news from the lower walkways had already risen ahead of them. On the other side of the square, a group wearing embroidered silks of the human clans stopped mid-step. The gazes left Lī'ya's reddish tail and drove straight into the wild maple mask on Zhì Yuǎn's face, measuring the rustic cut of the raw cotton tunic and trying to guess which human family that fellow had come from. Closer to the columns, warriors of the beast lineages in human form stared at the couple without hiding their hostility.
Lī'ya pretended not to see anyone. She lifted her chin and quickened her pace toward the eastern exit, keeping her shoulder almost against Zhì Yuǎn's arm.
Twenty steps remained to the exit corridor when the smell of the air changed.
The humid scent of sap and moss was cut by a hot breath of iron and scorched fur.
Lī'ya's ears shot up in a jolt. The hairs of her tail bristled from base to tip.
"Damn it," she murmured, losing her poise in the blink of an eye. Her small fingers seized Zhì Yuǎn's sleeve hard, pulling him toward a narrow stairway on the right. "He really came. Let's go down through the lower gallery—"
The heavy thud of boots crushing the living wood of the northern bridge cut across the square.
The servants and visitors who were near the entrance arch hurriedly made way, retreating to the sides of the inns.
A man came marching through the center of the walkway, followed a few steps behind by two warriors of the same lineage.
Even in human form, Léi Hǔ stood almost two heads taller than Zhì Yuǎn. The muscles of his shoulders, chest, and arms were exaggeratedly large and bulging, stretching the dark leather vest as if they were stones trapped under the skin. Short hair, of a scorched yellow, covered the wide head, and two vertical golden pupils swept the square with open fury.
Lī'ya froze in place. Seeing there was no more time to enter the stairway without running in front of all the delegations, she released Zhì Yuǎn's sleeve.
The clingy, flustered way she had with him vanished from her face. She straightened her back, lowered her chin with coldness, and took half a step to the side, placing her own body subtly in front of Zhì Yuǎn.
Léi Hǔ stopped five steps from them. The broad chest rose and fell, blowing hot air through the nostrils.
"Seven days, Lī'ya!" Léi Hǔ's thick voice echoed across the entire square, without the slightest decorum. "I've been sending messages to your cabin for a week! Your guards told me you were locked up preparing infusions and arrays!"
He raised his heavy arm and pointed his finger directly at the mask on Zhì Yuǎn's face.
"And now your whole clan is saying you spent the month hiding a human inside the house and even put your mark on him?! What kind of joke is this?!"
Lī'ya's ears lowered against the red hair, but her voice came out firm and cutting:
"What I do inside my house is none of your business, Léi Hǔ. I don't owe explanations to you, nor to your guards."
"None of my business?!" Léi Hǔ took a heavy step forward, making the board under his boot crack. "My father is up there with yours discussing the terms between our clans right now! I waited half a century for you, refused females from all the great lineages, and you give yourself to some random human in front of everyone?!"
"I refused you dozens of times!" Lī'ya shot back, her emerald eyes lit with anger. "If you don't understand something so simple, that's your problem! Now get out of the way, Elder Vhōl is waiting for me!"
Léi Hǔ's jaw locked with a dry snap.
The slitted yellow eyes left Lī'ya and rose, fixing for the first time directly on Zhì Yuǎn's fox mask.
Through the narrow slits, Zhì Yuǎn saw the tiger's vertical pupils run up and down his body searching for any trace of Qi, come up empty, and, an instant later, pure contempt twist the square face.
"He's not even a cultivator…" the growl came low from the bottom of Léi Hǔ's throat. "You traded me for a hollow piece of meat that needs to hide behind your skirt, Lī'ya?!"
"Shut your mouth!" Lī'ya took a step forward, energy already rising to her pale hands. "You're inside the Sky-Tree, Léi Hǔ! If you try to lay a finger on him—"
"I don't need to lay a finger on him," Léi Hǔ cut in, breaking into an ugly grin as he took one more step toward them.
The air around the tiger's broad shoulders began to tremble with a dry heat, and a muffled rumble of thunder vibrated under the living wooden floor, carrying the weight of his lineage to crush the human to his knees right there.
Lī'ya's face lost its color.
She raised her hands to erect a barrier, but before the protection rose, Zhì Yuǎn set his hand on her delicate shoulder.
Without any hurry, he pulled Lī'ya half a step behind him, placing her at his back, and took a step forward to face the giant through the two dark slits of the wood.