She stared at him in shock. She seemed emotionally crushed, and Wei Zian didn't understand why.
"Y-You'd rather attend alone than with m-me?" she asked.
By the Heavens...
All this time he thought Ao Jiao was coerced into this to monitor him, but what if she had wanted to attend with him? That...
She fled before he could formulate a response.
He cursed under his breath and buried his face in his hands. This is why he despised these kinds of events.
⋆⋆⋆
An hour later, Wei Zian was fairly certain Ao Jiao was no longer in the Grand Hall and that she wasn't going to return. He didn't really want to chase her through the sect grounds in the middle of the night, so he refrained from following her outside. Besides, what was he supposed to say to her? He wouldn't know where to begin. He considered returning to his quarters, but in the end, he simply climbed up onto the roof of the Grand Hall and gazed at the stars. He wouldn't get much sleep tonight anyway.
To occupy his mind, he silently named all the star formations and celestial constellations he could see. Due to his interest in astronomy as a child and the Celestial Observation classes they had in their first year at the sect, he knew quite a bit. It was a full hour before he ran out of stars to identify and describe.
Monday would be awkward. Wei Zian had no doubt their little drama had been overheard and would be the subject of gossip for several weeks. Considering that Ao Jiao was somewhat favored by most of the instructors in their training sessions, the Elders could very well decide to make his life more difficult in the days to come as well.
Curse it all.
It was the sound of ceremonial firecrackers that broke him out of his thoughts. It was midnight apparently, and the Phoenix Renewal Festival had officially begun. Wei Zian relaxed slightly as he watched various spirit lights blossom against the night sky, each exploding in its own unique pattern. It was beautiful. Most of them dissolved into quickly fading motes of light after the initial burst, but several remained whole and consistently bright, more like spirit flares than fireworks. They arced through the sky before dipping down and falling back to earth like falling stars. He frowned. Strange. Shouldn't they be exploding by now?
The flare falling closest to him slammed into a nearby disciples' residence building and detonated. The explosion was so loud and so bright that Wei Zian was momentarily blinded and deafened, stumbling backward and collapsing to his knees as the entire building shook beneath his feet.
Blinking away the spots in his vision, his ears still ringing from the sound of the explosion, Wei Zian scrambled back to his feet. He stared at the spot where the residence building once stood. Virtually the entire structure had been leveled, everything flammable in the vicinity of the impact was burning, and strange fiery apparitions were emerging from the epicenter of the destruction.
Wait a moment... that's his residence building!
He collapsed to his knees again as the implications hit him. If he had opted to remain in his quarters as he had originally planned, he'd be dead right now. It was a sobering thought. But what in the Eighteen Hells was happening here!? That was no firework, that's for certain! It looked and sounded more like a high-tier destructive formation technique.
It was hard to tell if it was simply a consequence of his hearing being damaged, but he noticed the faint sounds of celebration had stopped. Looking across the sect grounds, he realized that what had happened to the residence building wasn't an isolated occurrence, wherever one of the flares hit, it left devastation in its wake. He only had a few moments to consider this before he noticed another barrage of flares ascending into the sky from the distance. This particular barrage was not masked by festival lights, so it was obvious they were destructive spirit techniques.
They were under attack.
As the flares started dropping back to earth, Wei Zian began to panic. What was he supposed to do!? Fleeing blindly would be pointless since he didn't know what the flares were targeting. He could run straight into their area of effect. Wait—why should he do anything at all? There were dozens of powerful cultivators in the Grand Hall; he should notify them and let them handle this situation. He rushed back down into the hall.
He had barely stepped onto the stairway when he encountered Senior Sister Yun and Elder Kong.
"Wei Zian! What are you doing here?" Senior Sister Yun demanded.
"Err, I just went out for some fresh air," Wei Zian fumbled. "But that's not important right now!"
"I agree," Elder Kong said. "Disciple, what was that explosion? Don't tell me this is something you caused?"
"Hardly," Wei Zian said. "Some kind of spirit flares are falling across the sect grounds, destroying everything they hit. They look like some kind of powerful offensive formation technique."
Senior Sister Yun and Elder Kong shared a look before turning back to him.
"Go join Ao Jiao and the others in the Grand Hall," Senior Sister Yun ordered. "We'll investigate what's happening and activate the teleportation formations to the secure chambers if necessary."
They both pushed past him and rushed to the roof, leaving Wei Zian to stumble into the Grand Hall in a daze. Ao Jiao... Ao Jiao wasn't in the hall. She had left. Because of him. She was out there, perhaps already dead...
He shook his head and banished such thoughts. He took out his jade tracking talisman and quickly performed a spirit tracking technique to locate her. He wasn't sure if it would work, since the technique he used could only find people with whom you shared a "spiritual connection", in other words, close friends and family members. Thankfully, it seemed that being fellow disciples was enough of a connection for the technique to function.