Four Perils
Four Perils — An assassination contained in the Yokai Realm
At Shizaistrath, Empress Ai No Miko greets the Hero with relief: she feared that the assassins sent after her family might have targeted them too. The Four Perils crossed the sea from the Wuji Empire to kill her and the other Jade Descendants, including Admiral Shen Zheng, her grandfather. Miko happened to be in the Yokai Realm when they pursued her. Her presence lured the creatures inside, and she sealed the way back. Their poisonous aura now threatens the realm containing them. Their miasma is already twisting the surroundings.
Miko does not attribute the attack to Yiren himself. Based on the Hero’s account of the Emperor of Steel, she believes his nobles released the beasts in his absence, while admitting that their precise motive remains speculation. Zheng offers a possible political explanation: the emperor he knows as Zhao has effectively vacated the throne, and a new regent may want to eliminate the threat they perceive in Miko’s mixed blood. His account identifies the Perils as instruments the aristocracy uses against people accused of treason. The threat is real, but the identity of the person now directing it remains unresolved.
Four Perils — The Silver Garden’s cultivated evil
Zheng calls the imperial palace the Silver Garden, a city-sized home for the immortal royal family, nobles and sages. He once walked its halls for centuries without shame, his judgment clouded by a haze he now struggles to understand. Its luxury depends on immortal servants who starve and labor endlessly. His question is no longer whether that arrangement is magnificent, but why he ever accepted it. Remembering the palace means acknowledging his own place inside a system built on other people’s suffering.
The court’s greed, cruelty and violence found a pious disguise in daily feasts honoring Melchior, Avatar of Metal. Zheng describes the Four Perils as concentrated evil made into beasts. He believes the land meant them to punish the court, but the sages captured and tamed them instead. On that interpretation, even a consequence of oppression became another weapon for its beneficiaries. Zheng is ashamed of the creatures’ continued existence; his account of the land’s intention remains his belief, not an independently established judgment by Lore itself.
Four Perils — Taotie and the appetite that never swallows
The developed counterattack focuses on Taotie, the Peril of Greed and Consumption. Zheng says it does not kill from hunger or a need to survive. He has watched it tear and bite without swallowing, preventing others from having what it considers its own. In his description, its body is almost incidental: Taotie is a mouth for causing harm, an embodiment of the Wuji court’s appetite. Miko’s quest requires one Da He Ding Vessel from the creature and awards a Taotie Emblem. The confrontation addresses the threat’s first developed form, rather than proving that all Four Perils have been overcome.
Miko turns the lesson toward her own nobility. She was born fortunate enough never to know poverty so severe that she could not eat, while hunger is only a minor inconvenience to the Isles’ nobles. If they treat that privilege as an entitlement to indulge while others suffer, she warns, they could produce a Taotie of their own. The evil is not safely confined to a foreign court. Defeating its manifestation matters only alongside recognizing the habits that can create it again.
Four Perils — Three threats still waiting
The remaining native quest entries are marked “Coming Soon,” with descriptions rather than developed conclusions. Hundun is described as destruction born from disorder and a failure of leadership. Qionqi embodies the violence, rage and brutality of a vindictive court, threatening to drive the Yokai into a frenzy. Taowu comes from sadistic cruelty and the desire to control others, an evil Miko locates in humanity itself. Zheng’s menu also names Hundun, Qing Qi and Tao Wu, preserving the source’s different spellings. These are warnings about the other Perils, not accounts of three further victories.
Miko must also protect the cycle over which she presides: she says Yokai are born in this realm and return here to reincarnate. Although she understands that she may be able to create new Yokai, she refuses to treat that power lightly while the Perils’ miasma contaminates their home. Her Shikigami cannot yet shoulder the task, not because they lack strength or experience, but because their bonds with her are still too weak. She hopes that following the Hero’s example will help those relationships grow, and wishes a guarded Kitsune would open up to her. Containing the assassins has bought time; the material leaves the larger struggle unfinished.