"By the Heavens, did you hear? The Yiling Patriarch has been invited to the Discussion Conference in Qinghe!" Gossip was, by far, the fastest way for information to spread. "What! Whose idea was that!?" It was not the most accurate or most reliable method, but people were people, and the tedium of daily life would always bore them. "I heard it was the Nie Sect leader's suggestion." ---------- After thirteen years in the Burial Mounds, the Yiling Patriarch finally makes a public reappearance. Civilians are scared. Cultivators are outraged. Sect Leaders are concerned. Wei Wuxian has been too quiet, they say, and nobody knows what dark horrors the Burial Mounds may now contain. Wei Wuxian wouldn't quite call them dark horrors, but the description wasn't too far off. (tl;dr Wei Wuxian lives, raises a whole gaggle of demonic cultivator children, and the cultivation world panics.)

After decades of watching Xanatos play Imperial politics and neglect his family, right up until Tura's death, Granta decides to take revenge on his father. The best way to do that is to make sure Xanatos never reaches the throne he covets, and for that purpose, Granta proposes a marriage alliance with one of the top contenders for the crown and Xanatos's political enemy, the vicious and deadly Marshal Commander Cody. Granta has it all meticulously, ruthlessly plotted out, with no room for error. It's too bad that falling in love with his husband was never part of the plan.