On the sheltered southern porch beside the Tier 1 Lukewarm Basin, the night air was mild, scented with cedar heartwood and the lingering freshness of wild mint.
Here, protected from the enthusiastic splash zone of Xiao Hei’s cannonball by a screen of polished black bamboo, Su Ling’er sat cross-legged upon a raised platform of smooth storm-cedar planks. The wood beneath her was delightfully warm, heated from underneath by the gravity-fed copper chimney pipes that carried spent stone water toward the terrace gardens.
The Nine-Tailed Celestial Fox Maiden wore a loose lounging robe of cherry-blossom silk, lined with soft white fleece along the collar and wide sleeves. Her raven hair, usually pinned in elaborate office crowns adorned with jade hairpin seals, hung freely down her back in a silky curtain, brushing against her waist.
Spread out behind her in an amazing, panoramic fan were her nine glorious tails.
Each tail was nearly five feet long, covered in thick, impossibly soft fur that shone like newly fallen winter snow. At the tip of each tail, delicate silver hairs caught the dual soft glow of the silver moon and azure moon, glittering with faint, natural sky runes. In battle, those nine tails could weave spatial illusion arrays capable of disorienting entire immortal armies. But tonight, they lay luxuriously across the warm cedar deck, twitching with lazy, rhythmic contentment.
