"Welcome, young apprentice," Qingzi said, her voice like honey and smoke. "I've been expecting you. You seek something, I presume?"
The twelve legs unfolded like a spider's. It charged.
She sat atop a moss-covered boulder in the center of a clearing, her legs swinging lazily. Her attire was unlike anything the righteous sects wore—a flowing dress of deep, bruised purple, embroidered with silver threads that seemed to shimmer like starlight. Her hair was a cascade of obsidian, held back by a simple jade pin.
It was no man. It was a press .
