They endured. There was no other option for any member of the Liao Clan. At noon the next day, they conducted another purification ritual. Different Elders joined this ritual. Only Hua and her grandmother remained standing, though Hua was left shaking and sweating. There was more than one considering gaze watching those elders who bore the Generation name Shen fail to stay standing whilst their junior stayed to complete their duty.


    The story of a son named ‘Long’ of the Wei Generation had begun. It need only be a rumour for now. She had the silver hair and the lightning. One might assume her a girl or they could see a son of great beauty. Power and reputation would make it the latter, make her lord in truth and not just by declaration.


    It was why Hua was visiting Old Ren. She now had the authority to acquire more power.


    The Alchemical Pavillion shared space with the healing house. The pungent waft of vile herbs was a constant that offered no comfort. She’d had her fill of these herbs the first time something had gone wrong on the training grounds and each time since. She was long since sick and tired of the pungent odour.


    Old Ren was not particularly old, only a few years younger than the Shen generation, but he carried himself with the grouchiness of someone older than her grandmother. Hair white from age grew in patches on his wrinkled head. His beard was equally patchy, though mostly from—


    A shower of embers erupted. Old Ren leaned back before they could consume much more of his beard. He coughed once, waving away the eruption of smoke with casual indifference.


    “Who ruined my experiment by opening that damned door!”


    “Your crimes against everything good and decent blow up enough on their own,” Hua said, unbothered by his aggression. She wasn’t Weiji to get bullied by everything. “You only have yourself to blame, Old Ren.”


    “That you, Hua girl, or are you one of Xiao Jiu’s other kids? Too many of you to keep track. Heard some nonsense about a dragon showing up. Signed me up for some work I don’t care about. I’m not doing it! I say I’m not doing it. I’m on the verge of synthesizing a new medicine. Tell the dragon to fly away.”


    “That would be me. You may know me as Lord Liao Weilong.”


    “Then you fly away and don’t come back,” he groused, squinting his eyes. “Don’t care about none of the politicking. Didn’t care with your grandmother or your father, won’t care with your grandchildren. Now what do you want?”


    “Pills.”


    “Already sent out the allotments for the month. You get the same pills as everyone else in Qi Gathering based on how many Meridians you have unlocked. Getting a title don’t change my rules.”


    She handed over a permission slip signed and sealed using the Liao Clan Seal. The Lord’s Seal. A seal only Hua had access to. He scoffed, throwing the permission slip straight into the fire. It crackled with the latent Qi in the slip.


    “Both Qiqi and Shenhe’s allotments? Couldn’t even wait for them to be buried before siphoning their allotment? And who needs these cleansing pills? Bah, you children, thinking pills will get you through everything. Well, let me tell you, popping pills is just a fast way to a deviation.”


    “Doesn’t that mean your pills are bad quality?” she teased.


    “I will poison your pills if you ever say that again.”


    He went into his backroom and came back with two pouches. He left them on the table and told her to leave with them, returning to his experiment. Hua took them without issue. She was used to his antics. Healing pills, Qi-restoring pills, and spiritual cleansing pills. The standard compliment.


    Old Ren lied about not being involved in politics. Hua tended to get the best pills given to those of her rank, those pills with the fewest impurities likely to be given to an Elder. What the Elders received was notable only in their quantity, not in their quality.


    At only six stars, there weren’t any pills Old Ren could produce to help Hua advance. But what he made could stop one from degrading. Even then, just having a source of Qi to draw on after exhaustion was the difference between dying in battle and enduring against another opponent.


    One couldn’t make a pill greater than their rank, which limited how powerful a pill could be, and Qi Gathering Alchemists faced the same issue anyone in that rank dealt with; giving away Qi was permanent. Any loss needed to be cultivated again. Unless one had a great catalyst like a Cauldron, it was unavoidable.


    Weak as they were, these pills were still ruinously expensive. Hua got better ones not because she was a prodigy, which she was, or because she was her father’s favourite child—her brother held that title—but because her grandmother supplied the Qi to alchemize and refine her allotment.


    Even with all the Qi in those pills, it didn’t come close to saturating her seventh meridian. It filled it as much as a bucket of water could fill a well.


    ***


    It was later in the evening as she read over her father’s records, searching for any secret correspondence that may have been missed, that she was disturbed. A single sharp rap against the partly open oak door was all the warning she had before Liu Xin entered.


    “We’ve managed to find the Magistrate, my Lord,” Liu Xin told her without preamble. She liked that about him.


    “Greetings to you as well, Liu Xin. I thought you had run off when you went missing for so long.”


    He bowed. “Apologies. Your work didn’t seem to require my assistance. I spent my time getting acquainted with your clan.”


    With the benefit of sleep, a few meals, and the safety of knowing a Cultivator supported him, Liu Xin looked much better. He still had inklings of grey at his temples—perhaps an early onset of them—but the wrinkles had been mostly smoothed out. In clean clothes, and looking healthy, he went from plain to mildly attractive even to Hua.


    “Where was the Magistrate?”


    “Unconscious for the past week. Smoke inhalation before he got picked out of the rubble. Without his regalia, people didn’t recognise him. He’s up and about now.”


    Good, someone with genuine authority, not the aides and soldiers who would shuffle responsibility around endlessly to avoid having to make decisions.


    “Who gave you the order to organise a search for the Magistrate?”


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    “You had wished to speak to him. This servant simply worked to do your bidding.”


    “And you weren’t doing it at my grandmother’s command? I find it hard to believe since she said she would take a personal interest in your training.”


    “Lord Weilong is as wise as the honourable Liao Furen.”


    If he was a spy, then he was a bad one. Had her grandmother possessed a single suspicion, she would have removed his head with her Hummingbird Blade. Cut through his neck and left a crimson smile trailing in the wake of her silver hair. After torturing him. Hua wasn’t a fan of torture if only because she would rather avoid needlessly getting blood on her clothes.


    Hua had chosen to accept that he was just hitching his wagon to the Liao oxen, binding his fortunes to hers now that his old life had been murdered and burnt down. Or burnt down and murdered, she wasn’t certain of the exact order. Either ended with his fellow scholars dead and only what few books he could carry in his leather satchel.


    “Well, let’s go pay him a visit.”


    She made her way to the Entrance Gate, Liu Xin following closely behind. People aggressively moved out of her way and looked away from her glance too fast for Hua to tell if it was fear or if it was respect. Never mind that her eyes could see things divine and saw their expressions with startling clarity in the few moments before they turned away. She chose to believe it was not genuine apprehension and fear from people who had known her all fifteen years of her life. Fear, not of her whims, but of something deeper, sharper than a leopard’s claws, crueller than the bite of a knife in the back.


    It was easier to not pay attention to one of her cousins turning around the moment they saw her. Easier to believe they had simply forgotten something and were running to fetch it.


    “Do you expect the Sealord to keep to your bargain?” Liu Xin asked, drawing her from the pit forming in her gut. “He does not seem the type to keep faith with others.”


    Admittedly, it wasn’t so much a bargain as a threat to the man’s life. Hua had told the Sealord to behave himself or lose his life for daring to make Hua do his dirty work. After inflicting so great an embarrassment on her pride as a Cultivator, he was incredibly lucky to be as connected as he was. She was bitter to have learned she could have killed him without anything more than her grandmother’s fleeting annoyance.


    “He’ll try to wriggle out of it, no doubt. Zhang Pi will have an unfortunate accident sooner or later.”


    “Shall I put people on it?”


    “You have people now?”


    “I might. How much of the school survived will determine the size of my network. There were never many of us, but we had favourable relationships with many individuals of disrepute. Enough to have something of an information network.”


    “Well, you have a thousand silver taels to make use of.”


    “Only if your Lady Grandmother approves. She was of the view that you should not be allowed to make purchases greater than twenty silver at a time. The Clan treasurer was very much threatened into agreeing with this sentiment.”


    “Of course she would do that. I’ll threaten him into doing what I want when we get back. He usually does the bidding of whoever threatened him last. An irritating sort of consistent inconsistency. But yes, hire whoever you need to protect Zhang Pi. No, not simply that, make it known that I will hold the Sealord accountable for anything that happens to Zhang Pi, no matter the cause. That should force him to act to protect Zhang Pi if only to protect himself.”


    “And should the threat come from Cultivators?”


    From your Clan, he was truly saying. “Then I’ll have a Sealord to drown and a fool with a spirit root in need of destroying.”


    “As you say.”


    “What I don’t understand is why the Sealord simply didn’t kidnap Zhang Pi and sell him into slavery somewhere in the far west. After threatening him, burning his warehouses down, three murder attempts and trying to send a Cultivator to his doorstep, slavery would have been faster and made him a profit.”


    “The Sealord loathes slavery, my Lord. He is known to cut off the right hand of any slaver he meets.”


    “But the murder, torture, and arson are perfectly acceptable?”


    “Yes,” Liu Xin said dryly.


    It was a bewildering moral system. Hua couldn’t understand how to square away the difference. They were all just different means of controlling a person and inflicting your will upon them. Hua would never accept being a slave because she would never accept a master and be too weak to break her yoke. It was the providence of mortals to bow as slaves. But even if one had been a slave in the past, going around and cutting off mortal hands felt needless when you could cut their throats faster and deal with the problem directly. It was vanity in Hua’s mind. Just as she would one day have the Sealord’s metal and jade arm, so too did he desire hands of his own as trophies.


    “I should find out if we use any slave labour.”


    “Oh?”


    “I wish to watch the Sealord choke on his hypocrisy as he lets me do as I please. I could go buy some if we don’t have any slaves already.”


    “My Lord, do you truly believe dealing with mortal slave owners is worth your momentary entertainment? You would be dealing with salespeople, and I promise you, nothing could be worse for you.”


    “I could make you do it.”


    “Your servant would have to take an abrupt and extended leave of illness, unfortunately.”


    That was her plan foiled spectacularly. Hua would not be dealing with any mortals attempting to sell her something.


    “We should go,” she said suddenly.


    “My lord?” he asked but Hua was already fleeing at a fast walk.


    A Qi signature was approaching rapidly. Its familiarity had her speeding up. If she moved quickly enough, maybe she could avoid—


    “Halt!”


    Never mind, there would be no avoiding anyone willing to shout that loud or jump their way down a few flights of stairs.


    And fail at their landing.


    Cousin Weiji tripped, stumbled past the stairs entirely, and only barely caught himself by crashing into a tree. Hua… she just sighed and pulled him up. There was no helping some people. Certainly, no helping that tree that was bowled over.


    Hua plucked a red-leafed twig caught in his hair and patted him down. He’d avoided any bruises but left the tree tottering dangerously. “Try not to die going down the stairs.”


    “Thanks. Sorry.”


    “Anything for my favourite cousin.”


    “Now, where do you think you’re going?”


    “Out.”


    “If you think for a single moment that I will leave you alone with this peasant then you know nothing of me.”


    “Let,” she said imperiously, stretching the word. “Who are you to think you let me do anything?”


    Weiji glared at her. Actually glared, with genuine annoyance and anger. Hua nearly startled. Nearly. She was rather curious where he would go from this.


    The deep bow was an unexpected move. “My Lord Liao, I am loyal, but some things cannot be borne. Not for the heir and not for our acting Lord. To go unaccompanied with a peasant, a man who is not even out-clan or a vassal, says things about our family and our allies. Please, allow us to serve as we are meant to.”


    “Young Mistress Hua could go where she wished without being accompanied.”


    “Young Mistress Hua went where she pleased within the bounds of the city under the purview of the Hummingbird Blade and the Radiant Thunder Body, patrolled by the soldiers who owed fealty to Liao coffers. When she went to challenge martial schools, she went with her honoured Aunt Qiang and a dozen soldiers besides. Even within this city, your honoured father, the Liao Patriarch did not go unaccompanied by his attendants and even Clan Elders.”


    She knew this. Hated it but understood it. The inefficiency of ceremony, the wasted words of courtesy. Soft power, one of the few things Qi could not replicate so easily.


    Hua sighed. “Get up already. You act like you don’t share Grandmother’s blood equally with me.”


    “This humble Weiji worries that the honourable Lord Liao has forgotten his family tree. Though the Lord Weilong has taken the name of the same Wei Generation as I, he might as well have chosen to take the Shen Generation name as my honoured grandfather Shenyu.”


    She hadn’t but it wasn’t of any importance. The Shens were old, and she was not. That was all that mattered.


    “I had hoped not to make a production of visiting the Magistrate.” Weiji paled which meant she had made another mistake. She explained, “The people will be outraged if they see Liao dressed in their finery whilst their homes are destroyed. I would rather not incite a rebellion when I need them working the fields.”


    “The peasants will know that Liao remains powerful and spread that story. Even if they spit and curse a display of wealth, they will still speak of wealth, of power, of a Lord worthy of his name. Do not give up your power for petty reasons, Lord Liao. It is unworthy of you and it dishonours Liao itself.”


    “Fine, do whatever you please,” she resented.


    “I’ll see to it.” He gave her a smile and then turned his glare to Liu Xin. “You, peasant, if you think you are an attendant, then come so I can put you to work.”


    “On the matter of the Magistrate,” Hua added.


    This time, Weiji sent her a glare as well. “Fine, on the matter of the Magistrate.”


    Was this truly to be her life, dealing with battles between those loyal to her? At least, she knew Weiji was loyal. He’d always liked her. Assuming she could give Liu Xin whatever he wanted without paying too great a cost, that was another person loyal to her exclusively.


    “Don’t make a massive production of this,” she warned.