Exhaustion was finally overwhelming Liao Hua. She had long since consumed the last pill Cousin Weiji gave her. If she had to guess, it had been two or three days since everything went wrong.


    Some of that time was difficult to account for.


    The daze after she had been struck by lightning. Those first shambling steps helped along by Qing—beloved, we will dance again—into the devastated city and the initial search for survivors amongst the corpses because Qing cared too much for mortals. The earth betraying them and their descent into the darkness hell. Qing, her true world, disappearing into this false world. The gods had drowned Hua simply to separate her from her oldest friend. Hua had drifted aimlessly, indifferent, until a spark of rage gave her the impetus to ascend and emerge from the dark waters of the Liao River, born again in vengeance.


    Each moment since then had been an unconscious act of allowing her fury to emerge in a way that didn’t involve slaughtering half the city in her grief.


    The merchants had been a fun problem to unleash her fury. By fun, she meant simple. And by simple, she meant a casual display of lightning and thunder and bloody corpses to remind people just who they paid taxes to. Captain Ciao of the Imperial Garrison had overstated the degree of problem, and subsequently the height of enjoyment.


    Hua had still managed to leave a slew of corpses in her wake.


    It helped somewhat.


    Maybe.


    There had even been a welcome surprise in the form of the first member of her Clan. Oh, sure, it was a lower member with no real authority, but that was fine since she was accompanied by Clan soldiers. Clan soldiers and members of the vassal houses. Enough to establish further order in the Counting House and bolster her natural authority which was struggling on account of her ripped and torn clothes that wouldn’t have been suited as rags to clean an outhouse in the average slum.


    “The Clan endures, Young Mistress,” her relative reassured for the third time, aggressively ignoring the matter of Hua’s eyes. “I promise on my life that the compound remains standing. Our Clan is not so weak as to perish from only the world breaking.”


    They had claimed a room in the Counting House for their own use. Her aunt had taken one look at Hua and forced her away from observers. Found water and forced her to at least scrub some of the blood off her face and hands and neck. Cloaked her in a travel robe and pushed a bowl of food in her lap.


    Hua could not have figured out how she was related to the older woman if a sword was placed at her throat. Cultivating extended your life. Having children late for a Cultivator could mean fifty or it could mean a hundred and twenty. Intermingling bloodlines further confused it. They just tended to give a title based on relative age. Her relative had wrinkles around her eyes and Hua did not, so aunt was appropriate.


    “Then why did it take so long for me to see anyone? If I hadn’t sent Weiji, would you have come?”


    “Yes. Always. But we needed to take care of our home before we bothered with the mortals.” Her aunt smiled, placing her hand over Hua’s. “When Weiji returned with word that you were doing the necessary work to bring order, we could rest easy. So, thank you, Young Mistress, you have saved more Clan lives than you could know.”


    If Hua wasn’t hollowed out, she might have wept. They drove her mad, and made her contemplate murder, but she loved her clan. If Qing had been the true world, then the Liao Clan had been the lightning sparking in her veins, so fundamental that it could not be denied. Their loss would have devastated her.


    With the tiniest flickers of hope, she returned to her food and devoured it without much thought. Her aunt left her after a time, satisfied Hua wouldn’t get up to any trouble in an office. And if she did, there were enough Liao soldiers to… stop her was excessive, but at least make her pause for a few seconds before causing a problem.


    Even then, Hua knew not to harm the Counting House. Not because of the merchants or anything like that. She didn’t care whether those mortals lived or died. The Counting House remained as one of the few places where paper money was respected, stacked in neat reams where she had been able to glimpse it. That thought lodged into her head again. Money used as fuel. A priest threatening a father for silver. The question of value, repeated again and again in the back of her mind.


    Light and incense flooded the room as the door opened a crack. After three knocks, Liu Xin entered. He approached and knelt beside her seat. He was a pretty enough man. She found she preferred it when his hair was unbound, and the subtle wave was revealed, reddish tones glinting in the light. He had also found a change of clothes. For a moment, she felt a profound bitterness at that fact. She was still in her scruffy clothes beneath the travel cloak.


    “Young Mistress, a situation is developing.”


    “Does this situation involve an outbreak of monsters from legend?”


    “No.”


    “Does it involve an invasion from the Yu or Zhao Clans?”


    “Also no.”


    “Have the Imperials declared us all traitors to be put to the sword? Are the merchant’s mercenaries actively enacting a coup at this very moment? Maybe a resurgence in the Yellow Caps so that Liao might stand sentinel once more?”


    “Unfortunately not, Young Mistress.”


    “Then, Liu Xin, why are you wasting my time by telling me?”


    “Because this is important enough for me to bring it to you even though it pertains to mortals.”


    He said that word with an affected disdain, subtly mocking her. He did not agree with her stance. That was fine. If he truly had an issue with it, he would grow strong enough to challenge it. And in so doing, he would divorce himself from mortality and understand her view.


    “Explain.”


    “A person of importance to the city’s economy has gone missing.”


    “Why do you think I care about this? People go missing all the time, especially now. I can’t spare the effort.”


    “It is Lady Song who has gone missing.”


    “Do you mean the eldest daughter of Sealord Song, head of the Song Fleet? The same Song family that owns half the warehouses in this city and a third of the docks along the entire Liao River. Do you mean the Song family that transports half the grain in and out of this city? Or are you going to put me out of my misery by telling me it’s another Lady Song?”


    “Unfortunately, it is that Lady Song.”


    Hua closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. It was always something with these mortals. The moment you looked away, they caused chaos.


    ***


    The journey to the dockyards reinforced Hua’s belief that all mortals should die a violent death. It had taken her days to establish some semblance of order and now, she was being summoned by a mortal. A mortal! As though anyone but the hero and legends she called family had a right to do so.


    In her fury, she left new corpses in her wake. There was always a foolish mortal just around the corner.


    The Liao River was tinted a bloody red as it reflected the sun obscured by smog. It had risen and swallowed whole parts of the city. The wide river that had sustained trade and watered farms had both betrayed them and saved them from fire. Water gave and it took mercilessly.


    A monstrously large ship was lashed by thick, rusting chains to the supports of a squat building on the shore. The berth it should have called home was swallowed by the Liao River. Occasionally, the wooden beams of the dock became visible as the river surged and lulled. Teams of men were pulling another ship ashore. On the deck, some mortals throwing out water with wooden buckets. The masts of the ship were charcoal ruins, consumed by flame likely started by a lightning bolt.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    The ship lashed by the great chains to shore was a true hive of activity. Hua made her way past the sailors and guards, only needing to throw one person into the angry river that bore her family name to make a point, before ascending the gangplank.


    Ships were not her forte. Give Hua a good horse any day of the week instead of these strange things that obeyed the tides and ocean. She’d rather walk the breadth of the continent than spend a day on sea. She had lightning in her veins, not salt.


    The deck contained a myriad of burly men, many irritated that Hua had thrown a fellow sailor into the ocean since sailors were notoriously bad swimmers. Her target, the new cause of her problems, had made a throne room of the upper deck near the steering wheel.


    “Leave us,” she commanded as she approached, pitching her voice with a little qi. Her spiritual channels twinged like hot pokers were being pushed into her flesh. Her Qi had been overstrained. If she wasn’t as great as she was, Hua would have been in a violent Qi deviation by now.


    But enduring deviations was in her blood.


    The man leaning against the railing looked over his shoulder. Only after a gesture with his false arm did the sailors obey. Liu Xin pointedly stayed, taking up a spot near the stairs to watch for spies. Good.


    “Liao Hua, is that you under all that filth? What would your grandmother say if she saw you?”


    The Sealord Song was a leather-faced man in his middle years. Toughened by years at sea, he held no fear far Cultivators and did not lower himself. Carried himself with the dignity of a man who called death a close friend, chest out and utterly undaunted. He had a belly, one of the signs of great wealth that even the most austere men found themselves falling to.


    He carried one sign of defeat and that was in his false arm. The Sealord had turned loss into a symbol of wealth. Crafted of beautifully engraved jade and delicate metal, his arm was a marvel of engineering. It sought not to hide the loss but rather to make art out of the steel bones and golden tendons. The back of the hand possessed the pattern of his trading flag in ruby and diamond. White jade fingers were wrapped in bands of steel and gold, articulated by tiny formations and powered by ruinously expensive Qi stones.


    One could live like a king for a year if they sold the raw materials of the prosthetic. When the Sealord Song died, Hua planned on acquiring that arm. Mostly as a trophy. A reminder that even the greatest mortal was just another thing to be acquired by a Cultivator.


    Hua sat with as much dignity as she could muster. She did not look up at him though he stood, and instead gazed past him at the churning river and the distant fields on the other bank. The Sealord could stand as much as he pleased.


    “Grandmother would commend me for setting the city to rights instead of sitting on my ass all day long, Uncle Song.”


    The Sealord was too important not to be known by the Liao Clan. He was a frequent drinking partner of her grandmother and her father had invited him to the clan compound a few times in her youth. His name reached even the distant Zhao Clan, whom her brother had journeyed to a month ago, and who lived far enough that Brother Weijiang wasn’t expected to return for another month before this chaos. If a civilian name was known to distant Cultivators, you made sure you gave them some face, even if that face was simply remembering their name.


    And heeding their summons, Hua thought, fists clenching beneath the table.


    “After you and yours fucked the city with lightning, I’d expect you to fix it. Whatever ritual you were doing broke some of my warehouses and nearly capsized a ship.”


    “We did nothing to incite this.”


    He looked over his shoulder to her, pushing off from the railing he was leaning on. “You sure? Those eyes of yours—”


    “Are just a matter of luck. Proof I survived the same lightning that destroyed your warehouses. Nothing more. This was a surprise to all of us.”


    “Gods of deep salt, I hope you’re lying to me. Fuck me, I won’t even be upset if you’re giving me the runaround, because that means at least someone knows why we were thrown overboard with anchors tied to our balls.” He blinked, then glanced Hua up and down. “Or tits. Anchors on our tits and balls.”


    “Please stop being childish.”


    “Not even a flinch. Which means you’re really telling the truth and you people didn’t do this.”


    He collapsed into his seat. Poured her a cup of baiju in a glass tumbler. The clear liquid took on the colour of the burnt sky.


    “Where’d you get glass this nice?”


    “The pirate I liberated it from said it came from somewhere out west. Beyond the Demon Forest.”


    “So what, they sailed through leviathan-infested waters for some glass? I should start selling immortality elixirs if people believe that.”


    “Crazy bastards, those pirates. Probably lying, but they always have good alcohol. I bet good money it’s just some glassmaking technique that was lost and then found again. Old techniques from the Age of Heroes pop up now and again. I certainly didn’t find any of the trade outposts they claimed when I ventured west of the Empire. But it got me some nice tumblers. To crazy pirates,” he said, raising his glass.


    “To your pirate friends.”


    She raised her glass and toasted with him. The glasses made a beautiful clinking sound. I should steal these.


    The baiju burned on the way down. Terrible alcohol for a truly beautiful piece of glassware. Hua directed her agonised Qi to break down the alcohol. Alcohol was just a weak poison. Easy to purify.


    “Now, we’ve shared a drink, so I think you can be honest with me. It was them Yu bastards who managed this, yeah? It’d be just like them to ruin our lives.”


    “They spend their days on their backs looking at the stars and playing with their swords,” she said flatly. “I doubt they learnt how to bring down lightning while on their knees or how to destroy part of a mountain by fitting in just the tip.”


    “That you said that with a straight face is a miracle.”


    “Now that we’re done with the childhood tedium, why exactly am I here? And I’d like an answer, not a digression.”


    The Sealord nodded and carefully put his glass away. He filled Hua’s again from the red clay jar.


    “His name is Zhang Pi and he’s decided to cause me problems. You see those warehouses? Mine. You see the ones with the stupid green sign, the small, impotent ones? Those are his. Trying to compete with me. Now usually, that isn’t a problem—I just buy out my competitors—but this man is stubborn. Very stubborn. Send my boys to visit him and he doesn’t flinch. Offer him more money than is reasonable, he doesn’t even look at the pile of taels. Maybe I burn one or two warehouses down, but that’s fine, just the cost of doing business. He has other warehouses. I can handle him having a few warehouses. Six months go by without him doing anything. I think everything is good between us. Surely, after six months, he’s learnt to coexist like a reasonable person.”


    He paused dramatically.


    Hua sighed dramatically.


    “And then what does he do?”


    “He got into bed with the mercantile guilds and next thing I know, he’s signed a deal for naval vessels. Ships! Do you hear me,” the Sealord snarled, slamming his beautiful mechanical hand against the table. The glasses rattled dangerously. “He’s planning on getting ships and kicking me out of the river trade! Then he comes to me, offers a merger that amounts to letting him fuck me dry, and even asks to marry my girl to make it proper and official. Like I’d let a conniving rat marry the light of my life. Especially one who chose to attack me out of nowhere.”


    Hua finished her glass of baiju. She’d need more alcohol to endure this. Had she ever let another mortal speak this long in her direction without a very good reason?


    “Let me guess, he did something stupid while the earth was breaking.”


    “Exactly. He goes and kidnaps my baby girl. Gets past all my useless guards. And now he wants to discuss the deal again. That scoundrel thinks he can force me into negotiations by doing this. Well, I won’t have it! I want that son of twelve fathers dead! No, I want him here so I can beat the shit out of him myself. I’ll rip his balls off and feed them to him. Make sure he chokes on them. He thinks he can come at me like this! For no reason? He’s dead.”


    Yes, obviously this has nothing to do with your monopoly on the river trade. Or threatening the man with your goons. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to force you to negotiate.


    The Sealord choked on his spit. Hua would have offered praise to the gods if she wasn’t on violent terms with them, but she was so grateful for the interruption. She let the Sealord cough his lungs out while she drank peacefully.


    “And where exactly is your daughter now?” she asked before he could continue ranting.


    “He’s holed up with her in the Crimson Leaf Pagoda. My baby girl, locked up in a brothel. The travesty. Any good man will think her ruined.”


    “Uncle, why exactly don’t you just send your men to deal with it? I see enough of them pulling boats out the river. You could storm any building you wished.”


    “Because the Red Light District is run by that criminal Blue Hand Zhu. Let me tell you, he was born with more knives than sense, and that was before he armed enough thugs with knives to take over a small town. My sailors will just be target practise. And if I try to bring a hundred men with me, your soldiers, and whatever’s left of those Imperial fucks, will cut us down.”


    None of this was making sense. She’d played weiqi with professional cheats who didn’t steal yunzi stones as blatantly as Uncle was spinning his lies. And when the stones from the weiqi board were returned, they didn’t dare keep her yunzi stones with them.


    Do not kill the man who runs the largest merchant fleet based in your hometown. Do not kill the Sealord who your grandmother probably likes and probably has a use for. Just pour yourself another drink and swallow this bullshit.


    “Well, I could just tell my soldiers not to interfere and let you do what you please. I doubt the Imperials would attempt anything if they saw a wave of blue letting you pass.”


    The Sealord’s flesh arm twitched. He reached for the jug to hide that tell and poured himself another drink. “You know them. Can’t trust an imp not to attack for no reason. They start more riots and rebellions than they stop.”


    “I’m in contact with an Imperial Captain. He’ll listen to me.”


    “I don’t think the message will be as clear if it doesn’t come from a nightmare with silver hair.”


    “I’ve never been much of a messenger.”


    “Haven’t you ever heard of doing a favour for friends?”


    “Have you met my family? We don’t do favours.”


    He laughed. “Yeah, that’s fair. You’re a bunch of hard bastards.”


    “So, how did you plan on handling this if I wasn’t around?”


    “You see that ship over there, the one that near capsized? It had a shipment of fireworks. They’re wet now, but if they weren’t, good odds I’d have burned down the Red Light District to get my way. Lucky the ocean prevailed before my temper got a hold of me.”


    “And what do I get out of this?”


    “I’ll owe you a favour. Imagine a favour from Sealord Song. I can get you anything in the province and out of it. And I’ll throw in all my sailors to help with the city. Even call in a few of those bastard captains holed up in their warehouses and boats hoping to wait shit out.”


    Hundreds, maybe thousands of mortals helping instead of doing whatever it was they usually did in a disaster. Maybe enough hands for Hua to return to the clan compound without worry.


    Liao Hua’s skills were optimised for violence. She could lead a platoon of fighters easily enough, but ask her to handle triage or rescue operations, and she was practically useless.


    “Fine, I’ll go visit a brothel.”


    Her ancestors would never forgive her for this.