ã€ŠDaoing my Bestã€‹


 Prologue: Entering the Sect

    Y¡¯know. Conscious reincarnation isn¡¯t that bad.

    I mean, sure, having to go through infanthood with a fully functional mind isn¡¯t great. And the culture shock is very real when you go from a post-industrial society to a rural farming community that has to haggle for verified news.

    But other than wondering what the hell killed me and hoping everyone I knew was either spared completely or died painlessly like I must have, it was a simple, peaceful life. I didn¡¯t have any high goals or hidden powers, so I just enjoyed learning about the world around me. Everything I could, including the existence of cultivators.

    How¡¯s that for a laugh? I reincarnate as a peasant boy in a world where bickering with heaven actually gives power, as me.

    Naturally I took to talking with ¡®heaven¡¯. Not in any fancy ¡®hidden cultivator¡¯ manner. Just holding half of a conversation with the idea of a sapient world as I puzzled out the behavior of bugs and critters. I didn¡¯t grow up under tons of stress here, so I had no particular reason to try telling ¡®heaven¡¯ it was wrong about anything and I had no idea what kind of meditation to start hearing it would get me anywhere.

    And being peasant born, what energy I could gather and use to bolster my body was paltry and not worth hoping for a hidden talent with.

    I¡¯d need access to the teachings of the cultivators if I wanted to become one, but I knew even better than most of the adults that even being near one was suicidal. Face was a topic that came up fairly often, and that boded poorly for anyone having to stroke a demigod¡¯s fragile ego.

    But of course, life couldn¡¯t just be civilized and leave me to my paltry studies.

    Nope. I was 8 when a bunch of cultivators waltzed into town and ¡°politely¡± told my parents that I was going with them. I managed to avoid offending them much while asking if it would be possible for my parents to be compensated for the loss of my aide on the farm. I got four lashes for my trouble, but one of the gruffer cultivators - Hing Malaping - chose to indulge my request with a spare low-quality fanged boar corpse.

    Thus was I recruited into the Yellow Fang cult sect.

    ---

    Life in the sect was predictably rough. I, along with twenty or so other youths from ages 5-10, hadn¡¯t been recruited to be trained as cultivators. Not right off, anyway.

    Instead we were added to the ranks of the menial servants and set to tasks that were technically within our power to perform.

    The younger kids suffered most as their tasks weren¡¯t any less taxing than the rest of ours despite their lower stamina. Most of us were beaten frequently for letting things like ¡®mortal frailty¡¯ and ¡®exhaustion¡¯ affect our work. I wound up sharing some of my prior life¡¯s meditations with my fellow servants just to give them a chance.

    After all, working for a cultivator sect has all the hard manual labor of rural life set to the manic ¡®work is life¡¯ pace of my old world. Not something that people ¡®just get used to¡¯ without the -Very Present- threat of death.

    Fortunately, there were perks to be had. A nightmare to attain, but still.

    For every week that we accomplished all of our tasks without incident, we were awarded a single contribution point, the internal currency of the sect. Things like mortal-tier healing balms and completely mundane foodstuffs were available to us at the exchange office for 1-15 points. But the obvious prize to be had for toeing the line and dutiful service to the sect was a primer on the basics of cultivation for 100 points.

    Upon learning this, I noticed everyone else writing it off as a fanciful dream to ever attain that many points. Which I gathered was the first of many filters for joining the sect properly. After all, a mortal who thinks that 2 years of hard labor is too long to dedicate to a goal would make a poor cultivator.

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    Naturally, I decided to do it anyway because nobody kidnaps me, enslaves me, and dangles ultimate power in front of me without consequences. That¡¯s just not who I am.

    But being a clever little shit, I didn¡¯t announce my plan. Instead, I asked a few of my fellow servants about what made it a fool¡¯s dream, because being 8, going on 9 allows one to admit to ignorance a lot easier than being 30.

    And thus I discovered the second major filter: Jackasses playing crab-bucket.

    Some of the senior servants, salty about their lot, would track how often someone received contribution points, whether by dutiful work or by lucking out and finding something worth turning in for a couple, and if it looked like the person was hoarding them for the primer, the bullies would just beat the shit out of them and take their points to waste on booze.

    Organic. Senseless. Entirely human.

    Hiding the tokens representing the points was also doomed, according to several who¡¯d tried, on account of just about everyone having tried and knowing where all the good hiding places were.

    In fact, according to everyone I chatted with over work and after hours, the only real way to have a chance at actually attaining a primer was to catch the eye of a cultivator and hope they had higher standards for their personal servants. An option that stank of pill furnace traps to me, so I politely ignored the advice to try looking adorable when a female cultivator was around.

    The last interesting point of information I gathered was to ask the exchange clerk if there was any rule against sharing the primer with fellow servants. He laughed at my audacity for asking before informing me that sharing was discouraged because mortals without the fortitude to get one for themselves usually wound up crippling themselves by half-assing the meditations.

    I¡¯m pretty sure he saw right through my reason for asking when I confirmed that it was just crippling, not killing themselves.

    After all, killing a fellow servant was punishable by death unless the taskmaster the case was brought to bought the ¡®self defense¡¯ or ¡®accident¡¯ argument, at which point it would just be a crippling lashing. But incapacitating them, even crippling them entirely so the taskmaster had to kill them for being worthless, was completely permitted. For reasons that eluded me at the time.

    With that, I decided that my best path forward would be to become everybody¡¯s buddy. I started with my immediate peers. The ones I¡¯d taught my coping meditations to. One at a time, six points apart, I invited them to join me for after-work dinner.

    Nothing terribly fancy, just 3 points of good meat and 2 of booze to enjoy together and commiserate our lot in being noticed by our ¡®recruiters¡¯.

    Most of them mentioned the longing to acquire the primer and ascend through the heavens, which I encouraged heartily. I even promised to catch up to them some day if they made it just to share another meal with them.

    Then, as each of them got mugged for going directly for the primer, I had another meal with them to raise their spirits and workshop ways of handling the bullies. Then I started having the same meal with two of them at a time, filling in my visible purchases with salves and teas to help them recover while staying off the first level radar.

    Not that I went unbullied. I was accosted and knocked around by some jackass who figured I must be trying to hide my hoard by getting points from the others during the meals.

    When I thanked him for the idea, I think I bluescreened him. Then I invited him to join me for dinner to discuss the idea more, which caused his greedy little eyes to gleam.

    Unfortunately for him, I was more in control of my alcohol intake than he was, and a big rock beats any sized head. Or limb, in this case.

    So when he failed to report for duty in the morning and I informed the taskmaster that I¡¯d heard his screams after he left my place, I was saddled with looks of terror from just about everyone as his still-whimpering body was dragged to the medic to see if he could recover.

    I don¡¯t think I convinced the taskmaster, but I did my best ¡°I don¡¯t know who did it. Most of my friends were also mugged by him, and he was eating the food that I was going to share with them.¡±

    And just like that, each of my friends realized that we could totally team up against the bullies as long as we obeyed the rules. Which meant that I was no longer the only proper psychopath among the servants.

    Kids these days. So impressionable.

    Alibis became hot commodities, and everyone travelled in groups, even the bullies who had very clearly never had actual cultivator potential turned on them. Five years of dutiful work later I was turning 17 and turning in 100 points for a primer with a polite smile to the clerk who had become fond of me after assuming that I was behind the broken knees and elbows that kept things otherwise civil.

    I wasn¡¯t the first of the group to get there, on account of maintaining my meal plan and continuing to befriend most of the servants. Connections would be good, and having people ahead of me to map out the traps would be even better.

    The primer itself was rather sparse of reasons for things working, instead being a super simple ¡®how to arrange your chi into a foundation¡¯ series of meditations and a basic cultivation meditation to start empowering said foundation.

    Being me, I took months more time than I needed to follow the instructions because I wanted to turn my attention to the aspects of my chi that the instructions referenced and to ensure that there were no obvious traps from establishing a poor foundation. I didn¡¯t find anything that looked deliberately wrong, but I did figure out how several of the ¡®dantians¡¯ and ¡®meridians¡¯ would grow to eventually carry my will in defiance of heaven, and tidied up the sloppy formation advice in the margins.

    Cultivation itself was a surreal experience as I had to take in energy from my surroundings (ki), mix it with my own stamina(chi) in just such a way that it wouldn¡¯t dissipate, and then layer my will into it so that I could move it in ways that my intrinsic energies would resist as well. All while it was rushing through the foundation I¡¯d built along with the entirety of the ki that I¡¯d already gathered.

    As soon as I had the foundation laid out and had a month of cultivation built upon it, the taskmaster sent me along to join the sect proper.

 Settling In

    ¡°Guang Jinsheng, reporting for duty.¡± I announced to the administrator who¡¯d taken several minutes to acknowledge my arrival.

    ¡°Ah, I was told you¡¯d be getting promoted soon.¡± she smiled easily. ¡°Brother Gao Li will be happy to hear that you didn¡¯t get yourself killed.¡±

    I held my bow politely as she spoke. I may be on the ladder, but I¡¯m literally at the bottom rung, so defaulting to being dutiful and polite was still my best course of action.

    ¡°Clever too.¡± she added after a moment. ¡°I think you¡¯ll do well here. Stand up, let¡¯s get you settled in.¡±

    I stood and followed as she started walking. ¡°So, my name is Fan Ju, your martial sister and senior. Respect me as such and you might have a pleasant time settling in.¡±

    ¡°Understood, senior Fan.¡± I answered easily. Being polite was my entire thing in structured society.

    ¡°Good. Now that you¡¯re a disciple of the sect, you have some privileges. First among them, you get a hut in the ki-heavy hills of the outer sect. That¡¯ll make it much easier to make progress than that dingy mortal shack you¡¯ve been struggling in.¡±

    Struggling? Oh dear, I may have built my own maguffin.

    ¡°Next, the real goods of the sect are available to you at the exchange office. Pills, spirit stones, manuals, ingredients, the works. Don¡¯t expect to afford anything good any time soon, but it¡¯s stuff worth working for, not that trash we give to mortals.¡±

    Noted. Fan Ju is not a cheap dinner partner. If one at all.

    ¡°Third, you¡¯ll get an allotment of points every month based on the work you do. Sit around cultivating all day and you¡¯ll only get 5 at your level. Chores that seniors need done and don¡¯t trust mortals for will earn you more, as will turning in materials that you gather or create. Well, that¡¯s if you can make anything useful. Don¡¯t try wasting old Go¡¯s time with mortal trinkets.¡±

    ¡°Hm.¡± I bothered to vocalize. It served as an acknowledgement and an indication that I had further questions without overstepping my place.

    One that she noticed, smirked, and continued right on talking through.

    ¡°Last, twice per month you can challenge any disciple of your cultivation rank or higher to a spar. You¡¯ll get your ass folded like laundry to start off, but it¡¯s a great way to learn how others fight and to start developing your own style. Winner gets a cut of the loser¡¯s allotment, so if you want the results of your hard work, you¡¯d better win at least a few of your fights.¡±

    Ah, that¡¯s why payment for things were held off. They want to discourage us from focusing in noncombat disciplines by holding our pay hostage. Draconian, but comprehensible.

    ¡°Of course, this all comes with added responsibility. Foremost, you will obey any command issued by a sect elder without hesitation if you like your skin. Second, you will avoid embarrassing yourself and the sect. That means no getting caught scamming the mortals, no offending other sects¡¯ disciples without cause, and no showing weakness to anyone. If you can¡¯t handle that, you¡¯re expected to have the good sense to stay within sect grounds until you¡¯ve got the fortitude. Understand?¡±

    ¡°With only one pertinent query, yes.¡±

    She smirked in surprise at the sudden audacity. ¡°Ask.¡±

    ¡°Regarding other sects¡¯ disciples. What is the strength of their typical belligerent?¡±

    It was a treat to see her face brighten at the question. I guess most people don¡¯t do recon this early.

    ¡°They typically start picking fights starting at the Qi Condensation Third Rank, so while you¡¯re weaker than that, stay here. I¡¯d say the strongest ones that still pick fights are around Soul Core Sixth Rank. After that I¡¯ve only seen them act on personal grudges.¡±

    ¡°Thank you for the clarity, senior Fan. What compensation would you like for the valuable auxiliary information?¡±

    A wicked grin split her face. ¡°I¡¯m going to like working with you, brother Guang. I typically charge 10 points for accurate hearsay, but I¡¯m willing to drop your fee to 5 because it¡¯s your first day as a disciple.¡±

    Nothing quite like highway robbery to make me feel at home. The info was probably free for the asking elsewhere.

    ¡°I appreciate the consideration, senior Fan. But to devalue information that helps me maintain the dignity of the sect would leave a poor taste in my mouth, so please, accept the full price.¡± I replied earnestly as I pulled ten tokens out of my pouch.

    To her credit, she balked at my apparent gullibility for a full third of a second before graciously accepting my reasoning. From then on, her explanation of the duties and opportunities presented by them was far more detailed, and I politely followed her lead on not mentioning it. She even followed up on my earlier interest in the exchanges and the difficulty in learning to create something worth exchanging for points.

    Pills were far and away the most popular item, but the requirements to learn from the sect alchemists were stringent and required years of study to even be considered, so that was set aside. Herbs were reasonably easy to grow, given an understanding of tending to ki-receptive plants, and were often in predictable demand, so I decided to put my farm life to work with some of the space I had to work with.

    Weapon and armor crafting was something that held some esteem and was easier to break into than alchemy, but the mundane equipment wouldn¡¯t fetch much and I¡¯d have to produce quite a bit of it to be trusted with the good materials. I decided to put in the work to learn, of course. I wouldn¡¯t be me without a crafting fascination.

    But the non-combat art that I chose to pursue most fervently was Calligraphy. Specifically, senior Fan mentioned that a well-practiced calligrapher could imbue teachings and understanding directly into their work, and other cultivators could feel the ¡®intent¡¯ and learn from it.

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    If there¡¯s one thing that defines my soul more than the violence and the demented need to push boundaries, it¡¯s being able to understand and convey things. So picking up the art of teaching by ink resonated with me on a level usually reserved for crippling people.

    ---

    Things went quietly for all of a week. Which, y¡¯know, is still really impressive.

    Then a senior brother by the name of Hu Kong accosted me as I was leaving the first available lecture on the basics of calligraphy.

    His taunt opened with a fake congeniality and ¡°You do know that to imbue an intent you have to have a profound understanding of the matter, right?¡±

    ¡°I have been informed of the difficulty on this path, but I do thank you for confirming as much. Caring seniors like yourself make missteps far more rare.¡± I answered, as humbly as I could. He was a known bully just judging by the gaggle of others behind him, and the compliment confused them all for a moment before they laughed, realizing that I take the sect as more valuable than my own power.

    ¡°I¡¯m glad that junior Guang sees my intention clearly!¡± he pulled an obvious line of bullshit. ¡°Might I ask what intent you plan on starting with? I might have some pointers for comprehending it.¡±

    ¡°Certainly, senior Hu. For the immediate I will be focusing on becoming adept at the art itself so that my body has a foundation for me to work from, of course, but I suspect that I¡¯ll start practicing the intent with something like ¡®Farming¡¯ or ¡®Meal¡¯, as those are subjects that I can claim to know a little about.¡±

    ¡°Good thinking, starting with what you know!¡± he clapped my shoulder. ¡°But I¡¯m afraid that those won¡¯t be of much value at the exchange office. We of the Yellow Fang value combat intent far more, on account of the beasts and our rival sects. So what scroll do you think you¡¯ll be exchanging for first?¡±

    ¡°Ah, thank you for the advice before I wasted senior Go¡¯s time!¡± I played up the earnest junior trope for all it was worth. ¡°Most of my existing combat understanding is of trapping and fleeing. Does senior have a suggestion on how I might develop an appropriate understanding?¡±

    Seeing the openly malicious smirks on all of their faces made me wonder if there wasn¡¯t more of a need for ¡®Bluff¡¯ or ¡®Acting¡¯ tutorials.

    ¡°I do indeed! You see, the month is almost up, so my friends and I have already used our challenges for the month. But you¡¯ve still got both of yours. So if you¡¯d like some friendly pointers, you can challenge us to a spar to help develop your understanding of combat.¡±

    ¡°Ah, and the contribution points you¡¯d be awarded for defeating me would serve as a payment for your generosity. Brother Hu is certainly wise. If it would be no trouble to delay, I should like to drop my equipment off at my hut before you leave me too sore to carry it.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s no trouble at all!¡± he answered after a flash of irritation crossed his face. ¡°We¡¯ll be waiting here for another while yet.¡±

    I bowed in gratitude -more to the sect rules on plundering than the idiots obeying them- and dashed off to leave my calligraphy kit safely in my hut. I didn¡¯t have much worth plundering, but a freshly stocked kit was liable to have a decent resell value.

    On my way back to Hu¡¯s ambush, because experience is valuable even if it¡¯s agonizing, one of my former servant friends caught up to me panting ¡°Don¡¯t. He¡¯ll just break your bones for fun.¡±

    ¡°Ah, brother Kesa! I know.¡± I clapped him on the shoulder. ¡°But better to greet it with dignity than wait until he can challenge me, right?¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Come now, you figured out how I¡¯m responsible for us getting here, right? Having my bones broken is just another uncomfortable step along the path.¡±

    His face lit up in realization that I was actually the rock monster and that I was done hiding that approach.

    ¡°Just do me a favor, will you?¡± I asked with a grin.

    ¡°Sure, what?¡±

    ¡°Carry me back if I pass out. I don¡¯t actually have a plan here.¡±

    ¡°What!?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s Rank 8. I don¡¯t have any reason to expect that I can out trick him.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re going to try, right?¡±

    ¡°Well, yeah. It¡¯s a spar to learn from. Trying tricks is the entire point.¡±

    He just blinked at me like he was just realizing that I¡¯m crazy. Better late than never I guess.

    Returning to Hu, I waved to him and cheered ¡°Good news! I found an old friend willing to help me back to my hut, so I can risk both challenges today!¡±

    The moment of shock from everyone was wonderful, but not as nice as Hu¡¯s face when he realized that I had to be able to stand to offer the second challenge, so he couldn¡¯t just cripple me outright.

    Not that he didn¡¯t make me regret cheating him of the bullying he wanted to do. Under the guise of teaching me about different approaches that could be used for a simple punch, he pummeled me until I couldn¡¯t stand back up.

    Then, after a breather, I followed through on my promise and offered my second challenge to one of his croneys that didn¡¯t put on any pretense of trying to teach me beyond saying that he would help me understand ¡®Pain¡¯.

    When I woke up, Kesa informed me that I¡¯d gotten a few solid hits in, myself and that the Rank 6 croney took it personally that my reflexes could touch him despite being a Rank 1 in the Body Reinforcement tier.

    Which handily explained my broken legs. Apparently the guy would have gone for my arms too, but a senior instructor ¡®happened¡¯ to walk by and he didn¡¯t feel like risking retribution for continuing to attack with me being unconscious.

    The rules may have created a cripple-happy hellscape, but they did a decent job of keeping the worst at bay. And we had medics too. For a small fee of 100 points, to be paid from my dispensations, I had a wonderfully gruff senior brother come along and make sure my legs were set properly and that I knew what not to do to aggravate them.

    The charge even included him coming back every week until I was cleared to walk again, which was far more than I expected to receive, but it did reveal why cripplings were so broadly encouraged.

    The Yellow Fang Sect wanted trained surgeons and healers, and the rest of us were training material.

    An ass-backwards way of going about it, but one that probably made sense with the larger scale politics I hadn¡¯t finished learning about yet. After all, I wasn¡¯t strong enough to risk visiting my folks yet, so I had time to map the sect politics before the inter-sect politics.

    The surgeon confirmed as much when I asked during his last visit, with the added point that the Sect Master had realized the value of healers in a war some 300 years ago and had been hiding that he was training them up so that none of the rival sects would find it suspicious. When I asked about qualifications, he chuckled and said I would know if I met them.

    From then on, it was a fairly peaceful couple of years. I got back into meal sharing almost as soon as my herbs matured. I had a noteworthy green thumb if my abrupt paying off of the medical bill was anything to go by. I was able to get the hang of imbuing intent into my work by cross-referencing the teachings of Calligraphy and Smithing, to the mild surprise of a few of the instructors. And I chose to only challenge within two ranks of myself to avoid getting my ass folded so hard.

    Because as much as I learned from the experience, gotta say, still not a fan.

 Tea and Herbs

    ¡°I must say, little Guang, you have a clever method to yourself.¡± Elder Tong spoke as I poured the tea. ¡°To hear the rumors, you¡¯re the most devoted outer disciple the sect has.¡±

    I smiled at the jab. The art of politicking was so strange here. ¡°I¡¯m sure the rumors see me favorably more for my meal habit than any particular devotion. I am only doing my filial duty, after all.¡±

    ¡°Hm. That is likely enough, I suppose. Rare is the man who doesn¡¯t hold a fondness for a nice meal.¡± he smiled easily.

    He still hadn¡¯t mentioned why he, an Elder of the sect, had deigned to visit my humble shack beyond having heard that I grew some respectable tea for a near-mortal. Other than inviting me to treat him like any other guest, cueing me that I wasn¡¯t immediately in trouble.

    I sat opposite him and we spent a few moments savoring the tea. I was quite fond of it, hence why I grew it, so it was almost easy to relax in spite of the demigod in front of me.

    Almost.

    ¡°This tea is quite well prepared, little Guang.¡± he gave a mostly straight compliment. ¡°If you were to pursue the courtly arts I suspect you¡¯d become quite respectable at them.¡±

    ¡°I thank you for the confidence, Elder. I do try to avoid sullying the face of those associated with me, despite my meager aptitudes.¡±

    ¡°I hear you¡¯ve taken to calligraphy as well. May I ask for a demonstration?¡±

    ¡°Of course, dear Elder. Though I must confess I have decidedly more passion than talent.¡± I answered as I rose to extract my kit. ¡°Would you like a particular word, or whichever thought comes to me?¡±

    ¡°Oh, whatever you¡¯d like to write is fine.¡±

    I nodded understanding and set to mixing my ink. I hadn¡¯t lied about my passion outstripping my talent, but I also hadn¡¯t mentioned that my talent and skill could likely never surpass the joy of mixing powder into ink and creating a dollop of shared understanding with it. Every little motion, tedious at first but refined through obsessive practice, was in a way an act of creation, of tasting the divinity of heaven and letting a sliver of its beauty, however dimmed, shine into the world.

    I watched the last drop of ink fall from my brush and splash into the scroll as my attention returned to the common world and the fact that in my clear minded trance, I¡¯d written the word ¡®tea¡¯.

    I waved a small fan over the word to speed the dryness and presented the scroll to the congenial Elder, whose face lit up in amusement and something I didn¡¯t parse as he accepted it.

    ¡°I see how you mean that your passion eclipses your skill!¡± he laughed. ¡°Should your skill ever match that passion, I fear our enemies will fall to scrolls instead of fists.¡±

    I blinked at the completely genuine compliment. ¡°Is there such an art as to let scrolls hold a place in battle, Elder?¡±

    ¡°I do not know of one that works directly as the scroll, but there are several arts that use scrolls as a medium. You may wish to start with the art of talismans when you can afford the manual for it.¡±

    Holy shit, actual council from an Elder. My torso was parallel to the ground before my awe was fully formed. ¡°Disciple humbly thanks Elder Tong for his gracious advice!¡± I uttered with more sincerity than I¡¯d felt since being recruited.

    ¡°It was merely a passing thought, though I am glad it appeals to you. My friend Elder Raka has been bereft of apprentices for the art for far too long. If you develop the basics and succeed in becoming an Inner Disciple, he may finally choose to take one on.¡±

    ¡°Even the thought of the opportunity is an honor. Disciple will train dutifully.¡±

    ¡°Good! I look forward to seeing your progress. Especially if your tea improves apace.¡± He stood, gathering up the scroll I¡¯d gifted to him, and stepped to the door before smiling and departing with a simple ¡°Good luck in your spars.¡±

    I sat back down, positively giddy from the interaction, and reviewed his words carefully to see if there was any more wisdom to be gleaned from the talk. Insight had always hidden in the strangest places, after all.

    Then, several minutes later, a simple thought surfaced. One borne of my prior life and its difficulties.

    ¡®Why would I feel honored by him telling me that my plan is solid?¡¯

    Because I already had my eye on the Talisman arts. My plan included a few more practical body arts to lower my loss rate in the constant spars before saving up for it and a primer on material refinement.

    But I very distinctly felt an abnormal -to me- gratitude for his stray thought. That he admitted held ulterior motive, albeit one that supposedly benefits me more than anyone else in the equation-

    Oh. Well shit.

    I added a manual for a mental defense art to my priority list and made a note to catch more rumors about Tong and Raka.

    ---

    You know how sometimes people are subtle about getting in your way, and sometimes they aren¡¯t? I don¡¯t really mind either of those.

    But when they think they¡¯re being subtle by, say, helping multiple fellow disciples of my rank develop techniques to wear me down with daily challenges? That bugs me.

    I mean, increasing the sect¡¯s strength is a plus until I can flee, so I don¡¯t object to it, but ever since I reached Body Reinforcement Rank 5, Hu¡¯s croney has been determined to learn everything he can about my fighting style after his gaggle of morons realized that I¡¯m not just scarfing down spirit stones to cultivate. And they think they aren¡¯t being obvious about sharing their old manuals with anyone willing to fight me. It¡¯s just disappointing.

    Especially when I¡¯ve been punching up literally since week two. Not always, or even particularly often, winning, but every one of my spar challenges has been to someone at least one rank higher than me. The fact that my herbs and scrolls make beating me give a nice profit means that almost nobody begrudges my methods and that I¡¯ve always received plenty of challenges, but daily is a bit much.

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    The rumors are funny though. I¡¯ve overheard everything from my being supported by a secret master seeking to infiltrate and destroy the sect to my being the Sect Master¡¯s secret bastard son. The idea that I was just naturally good at cultivating had been brought up, but apparently that didn¡¯t cover my breadth of aptitude in most folks¡¯ eyes.

    I¡¯d bothered to try explaining that violence is so intrinsic to my soul that getting in fights several times a month was relaxing, but that fell on deaf ears for the most part. Something about no demonic qi in my techniques.

    The truth about my accelerated growth, as far as I could tell, was just that I didn¡¯t pick fights with the heavenly dao. Sure, I defied its decree that I was but a mortal man to tend the land simply by cultivating. But I still tended the land, nurtured my plants and peers, and took time to enjoy the world around me.

    Much as I¡¯d thought in my youth, Heaven wasn¡¯t wrong or jerkish in its decrees. I just disputed a handful of them in as civil a fashion as I could. Like the mortality thing.

    As a result, I had a much easier time interfacing with the world¡¯s ki and molding it into qi. I¡¯d compared my methods to several of my dinner partners, and the difference was glaring to my eye, but almost invisible to theirs.

    The fact that I also hijacked my ¡®farmer¡¯ role as a method of cultivation, pulling ki through my herbs as they grew, stimulating their receptivity and fuelling my growth simultaneously was something that baffled most of my peers with its net-positive effect compared to their method of pulling ki out of their herbs when they tried.

    Ultimately though, it wasn¡¯t my problem if people couldn¡¯t understand my methods. Normal cultivators hid their techniques from view so that nobody could copy them. Mine being incomprehensible in plain sight was just a skill issue on their part.

    ¡°Brother Guang!¡± rang out from the gate to my garden, distracting me from my introspection. Martial brother Kesa was waving me over, so I strolled over with a casual greeting.

    ¡°I hear you volunteered to assist on a beast patrol!¡± he practically bounced in excitement. ¡°Did they accept you?¡±

    ¡°They did.¡± I chuckled. ¡°I¡¯ll mostly be cleaning the beasts and carrying camp equipment, but after my showing against senior Tun the squad head decided I wouldn¡¯t be too much of a hindrance.¡± Tun had taken offense that I¡¯d dare to volunteer when I was two ranks below him and he¡¯d been turned down, so I offered a challenge so he could teach me my mistake. I¡¯d managed to eke out a win with a lucky moment of disorientation as the sun glinted off a bit of armor behind me into his eyes allowing me to gut check him and let a medic practice on a bruised liver.

    Last I¡¯d heard, Tun was taking my acceptance into the patrol surprisingly well.

    ¡°That¡¯s awesome big bro! Please tell me you actually have a plan with this.¡±

    ¡°Of course I do!¡± I recoiled in faux offense. ¡°It¡¯s a rather boring plan though. I just want a look at how beasts fight and are fought. I¡¯ve got the feeling that I¡¯m missing something crucial in my understanding of fighting for survival and I suspect I can glean it from wild beasts fighting to survive.¡±

    ¡°Really? Just more understanding cultivation?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s what I do. If I get a cut of the exchange points, that¡¯s a nice benefit too.¡±

    ¡°Not going to try setting up a sales racket or something?¡±

    ¡°And invite ire? That¡¯s a ridiculous idea. The voluntary sales are more than enough for me.¡±

    ¡°See, this is what I don¡¯t get. How the hell do you cultivate while being satisfied with things?¡±

    ¡°Simple. I¡¯m not satisfied with my cultivation. Everything else is superfluous.¡±

    ¡°But you don¡¯t value spirit stones.¡±

    ¡°Aids are superfluous.¡± I shrugged. ¡°I¡¯d much rather develop the ability to grow without depending on them than rush things and risk finances having a hold over me.¡±

    ¡°And you don¡¯t dream of finding a great inheritance.¡±

    ¡°The one who left the inheritance walked his own path. Why shouldn¡¯t I walk mine?¡±

    ¡°And I¡¯ve seen you scoff at treasures.¡±

    ¡°Only the poorly used ones. I¡¯m quite fond of some of the weapons I¡¯ve seen.¡±

    ¡°That! That right there!¡± he jabbed an irritated finger into the fence. ¡°Treasures so valuable I can only dream of holding them, and you¡¯re ¡®fond of¡¯ them! What is so different inside your head that you can talk of things that might as well be legends as though they¡¯re on the same level as our group calligraphy night paintings?¡±

    I searched his face for a moment and saw true frustration with my flippancy and prowess. A reasonable frustration, given that I¡¯d completely eclipsed him despite his head start.

    I flicked the latch of the gate open and waved him in. ¡°Come, let me show you part of it.¡±

    I led him, suddenly eagerfaced, to where I left off watering my herbs and sat down, gesturing him to sit as well.

    ¡°This is a completely standard Yellow Spring herb.¡± I gestured his attention to the plant. ¡°I¡¯m told the alchemists use its leaves as an aide to capture impurities in their work so that the pills themselves are formed of the purer essences of the other ingredients. From one perspective, this plant that I¡¯ve taken time and effort to grow is doomed to a short life of exploitation and suffering as its properties are twisted to serve the purpose of an entity that it couldn¡¯t properly comprehend if it had a mind. From another, it¡¯s entire existence is dedicated to earning me a single contribution point and what happens after is immaterial.¡±

    I smiled at the look of surprise on Kesa¡¯s face that something as mundane as a plant¡¯s fate could sound important.

    ¡°But I don¡¯t like either of those views. They¡¯re limiting, awful. Poisonous. Instead, when I consider the fate of this plant, I look to the use it will be put to. It will help in the creation of a pill. That pill, then, will carry in it a piece of this plant when it is consumed. Not a material piece, but a sliver of the effort I pour into the growth of the plant. And that pill? Why, that pill might be the cure for a brother¡¯s poisoned wound. Or a healing for a sister¡¯s ruptured lung. Possibly even something that aids one of the Elders. And then that sliver of my effort lies within them, helping them in their duties and their path to the greatness that they and the sect can reach.

    ¡°So I tend to this plant dutifully. Not for the contribution point, but for the contribution itself. In the same manner, I tend to myself without concern for my immediate conditions or results, but with my eye turned forward. For if one of my plants could conceivably lend my diligence to even the Sect Master, how much further can my diligence travel within myself?¡±

    Kesa stared at me with awe. ¡°So you cultivate so easily and don¡¯t look at treasures because you keep your eye on a future where you surpass everything?¡±

    ¡°Indeed. Only one eye though. The other watches for traps that would cut my journey short like a caterpillar would cut the path of my herbs short.¡±

    Even though he was already sitting, there was the distinct feeling of him sitting down with force as he started to meditate on the perspective I¡¯d shared. Then I whacked him upside the head.

    ¡°Out of the garden for cultivation. You still drain my plants.¡±

    He grinned sheepishly as he rubbed his head and ran to the gate and had the presence of mind to latch it before sitting and cultivating right in front of it.

    I shook my head with a chuckle and returned to watering the plants and ¡®discussing¡¯ my life. I still couldn¡¯t ¡®hear¡¯ Heaven¡¯s part of the discussion, but I¡¯d tested several tiny adjustments to my cultivation routine, and talking to/at Heaven like we were buddies actually correlated to increased efficiency. Whether because there was a causal link or because it settled my mind, I wasn¡¯t sure. But when ¡®the things that happen¡¯ was the best lead I had on what Heaven¡¯s reply was, I trusted my data.

 Snakes and Serpents

    Demon beasts aren¡¯t actually demonic. Not in an Earth-western sense, at least.

    They¡¯re actually just cultivators. After a fashion.

    See, like any other strand of evolution, sometimes the variety of life gives rise to individual creatures capable of taking in a type of ki and making use of it. The edge this gives results in better breeding chances and offspring more likely to have that particular ability. The rate is much lower than with genetics as far as I can tell, so most of a given pack of whatever is largely normal animals.

    But if one of the ¡®lucky¡¯ creatures stumbles upon an area rich in their attuned ki, they tend to stick around for the benefit it gives them. And if there¡¯s enough of it, they start to mutate. Usually getting bigger and more aggressive. They also quickly step beyond the ability of mortals to handle, as ki-saturated hide laughs off most mere physics.

    The warped beast isn¡¯t demonic yet, because it¡¯s still working with ki and chi. The two haven¡¯t blended yet. But when they do, well.

    Yellow Fang cultivators have to form a foundation in our spirits to constrain our Qi. To give it a boundary to flow within so that we have time to knead our will into it. Otherwise, the Qi would fight and likely overpower our Chi, sending us into a pained rage until we¡¯re put down or manage to cope with everything that made us us being replaced with our affront against Heaven and Nature.

    Usually by taking the newfound power and destroying everything until we¡¯re put down.

    Which is what demon beasts do.

    Supposedly some of them chill out after a while, settling down and claiming expanses of land to tell everyone to fuck off from, but that¡¯s not terribly relevant right now.

    Because I was part of a subjugation squad sent out to the Sandvine Marsh in order to cull the warped boa population to avoid having an incident where one managed to ascend. And we were late.

    Well, we arrived as scheduled and the main squad wasted no time in performing their duties, so it¡¯s less that we were late and this giant fucking snake didn¡¯t have the courtesy to wait for us.

    It¡¯s angry, it knows we¡¯re here, and it¡¯s powerful enough that it cracked a thick tree to bring brother Yu down to its level when he was peppering it with arrows. He¡¯s fine. So far everyone¡¯s fine. But holy fuck is that a big snake and it¡¯s radiating desire to eat me. Us.

    Okay snake data. High sensory qualities largely attached to tongue, nose, eyes. Boa, a constrictor type. Might not care about that at this size and speed. Scales are thinner at the face.

    Qi data. Brother Sung called it a Silt Strangler. Probably uses silt qi, which I don¡¯t know anything about. Assumptions. Similarities to water qi but with more stealth and abrasive qualities.

    Best course of action. Hide while seniors handle it. They¡¯re literally trained for this and I¡¯ll probably just get in the way.

    Secondary plan, I have seasonings that lean spicy. If it comes for me despite seniors¡¯ efforts, I throw them up its nose and pray.

    Tertiary plan. Running. If everything goes wrong, run away. Survival 101. Reserved for snake being distracted and/or seniors instructing me to or falling.

    Holy fuck that¡¯s a big snake.

    I kept my profile low and my hand on my spiciest seasoning jar as I peeked out to watch my senior brothers¡¯ battle.

    Sung Shu with his feathered spear was holding the beast¡¯s attention, having stabbed it several times when it turned to the others. Yu Jung had found another vantage point to rain down arrows. Li Ku, Eit Kai, and Po No were more mobile, punishing the serpent¡¯s movements whenever it failed to maintain its guard.

    The sheer professionalism from my fellow disciples awed me almost as much as their prowess. I was a principled man. I wouldn¡¯t have been able to force myself to toe the line of the sect if I wasn¡¯t. But this learned trust in each other that they demonstrated was something beyond my current self.

    For brother Sung to take such an immobile stance against a beast who was shoving the very soil of the marsh around was nigh suicidal. But he held it because he trusted the short sword wielders to prevent a wide lashing motion that would end him.

    Brother Yu knew he was completely outclassed, but instead of retreating, even after having his first perch destroyed, he dutifully pelted the snake¡¯s face with arrows, keeping it too pestered to focus on formulating a new response.

    The swordsman trio must have known that a single lapse from Sung and Yu would result in a feint and a brutal riposte from the snake, but they continued to strike every opening they saw, confident that the snake couldn¡¯t focus with their peers holding its attention.

    The battle took most of an hour, with my martial brothers holding the advantage the entire time, before the snake had finally been weakened enough for brother Sung to spear its brain and finally kill it. Even then, they didn¡¯t relax their stances until the great snake finally stopped twitching.

    ¡°Sister Hua! How many have we lost!¡± Sung called out as the others slumped in exhaustion.

    Senior Hua led the rest of the junior squad back into the area before answering ¡°I found four bodies, and junior Guang is unaccounted for.¡±

    ¡°Junior offers his deepest apologies!¡± I called out as I rose from my hiding spot. ¡°I panicked and ducked behind this tree and did not see the retreat signal. Once I had a wit back, I thought it wiser to remain still than to flee blindly.¡±

    All six seniors stared at me as I bowed from just outside the carnage zone. Yu was the first to speak as my fellow juniors snickered at my misstep. ¡°Brother Guang, what is that pouch you¡¯re holding?¡±

    ¡°My second thought was that, should the serpent turn on me for my blunder, I might have a chance of fleeing if I threw my ginger root powder into its nose, so I had it at the ready while I hid.¡±

    ¡°Come here, brother Guang.¡± Senior Sung ordered me. I obeyed, naturally. I had genuinely fucked up by not having the presence of mind to spot the direction of retreat and had no illusions that I was due leniency in the wild.

    ¡°Were you watching the battle?¡±

    ¡°I was, senior.¡±

    ¡°Did it occur to you to offer aid?¡± he scowled.

    ¡°It did, but I saw how precarious the balance of the fight was and did not wish to risk disrupting your suppression.¡±

    ¡°So you just stood there!? Cowering like a mortal?!¡± he roared at me.

    ¡°Yes, senior.¡± I admitted without hesitation. There was no justifying oneself to a cultivator, after all.

    He gestured to the other juniors to gather up to watch and asked them ¡°What was Brother Guang¡¯s biggest mistake here?¡±

    ¡°Cowardice!¡± ¡°Weakness!¡± ¡°Tactical incompetence!¡± and a few other answers I couldn¡¯t make out came back over me and I had to put effort into not taking them to heart.

    ¡°Wrong!¡± Sung shouted over everyone. ¡°Guang! What was your biggest mistake?¡±

    ¡°Losing sight of Sister Hua at the critical moment!¡±

    ¡°Wrong! That was your second biggest mistake! Your biggest mistake was not volunteering for this detail sooner!¡±

    I was still facing the water beneath me as I blinked and could feel all the other juniors do so as well.

    ¡°Senior?¡±

    ¡°You may have lost your wits briefly on first contact with a grave threat, but your instincts and reasoning were nearly flawless! Fleeing the battle in the wrong direction could have cost you your life as it did the corpses that sister Hua retrieved. Distracting us while we fought could have cost everyone their lives. You realized this and refrained from doing so. I doubt your ginger would have saved you if the snake had turned on you, but it¡¯s a far better plan than running without a distraction at all.¡±

    His presence softened slightly and I looked up to see the senior squad all chuckling approvingly. ¡°Let this be an example for the rest of you. Until your blade can cut the hide of a demon beast, think like brother Guang if you stumble near a fight with one unless you want everyone involved to die painfully! Save the glory seeking for when you can handle the beast yourself!¡±

    That was... Not what I was expecting. I¡¯d have to ask one of the seniors about the flouting of the ¡®individual power¡¯ dogma that he was doing. Even inside the sect I¡¯d found nothing to indicate that cultivators were capable of that.

    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    As we resumed the much less eventful culling duty, it occurred to me that there was probably a schism in the sect that I wasn¡¯t aware of. One that I¡¯d probably accidentally picked a side over.

    Not a comforting thought in the least.

    ---

    I sat comfortably in my meditation closet and calmly, silently screamed my brains out over the revelations of the last few months.

    I hadn¡¯t just ¡®picked a side¡¯ in the sect schism. I¡¯d personally revitalized a side.

    The Sect Master, along with several of the senior Elders, had apparently founded the sect with the intent of trying to actually harness the force multiplier of cooperation. Reasonable enough, sixth degree selfishness and all that.

    But because of the nature of cultivators- literally. The way that cultivation works for most people- most of the disciples who rose to the rank of Elder over the near-millenium of the sect¡¯s existence were a bit more shortsighted. A betrayal or peer failure here or there tainting them against cooperation and toward beastial justice.

    The Sect Master, slowly finding himself outnumbered, had seemingly given up hope that cultivators could cooperate and had shifted tactics to a more traditional attempt to minimize wanton predation among the ranks.

    Some holdouts still existed, of course, but they were largely self-contained. An Elder teaching a squad of pupils the benefits of teamwork, the pupils sharing some notes with juniors, most of whom didn¡¯t have anyone they could trust enough to test it out. Normal cultivator nonsense.

    And then one day, for no reason at all, mortal servants started cooperating to gain access to the primers.

    Taskmasters were already incentivized to maximize servant efficiency, and the pattern I¡¯d left in my wake was more efficient than the previous dynamic, so the taskmasters themselves were implicitly on board with the change and forcibly turning them against it had to be done all at once, which wasn¡¯t feasible with how the system was set up.

    On top of that, despite being literal commoners, the ascended servants, like myself, were fully capable of competent cultivating. Because of course they were. It¡¯s literally just a form of menial labor done with the soul for the first entire tier. And being dissuaded by peers just wasn¡¯t a thing for them. Noble born cultivators had an entitlement to them that could be kicked out from under them.

    Commoners? We grew up expecting to get the shit beat out of us. Having kind-of free medical care provided after we got walloped felt like we were being catered to, not oppressed.

    My own situation? As the ¡®spearhead¡¯ of the rise of servant-ascendants? Apparently I¡¯d just missed that I was the target of every bullying campaign that could reach me because I thought this shit was normal!

    Senior Tun taking exception to my volunteering? He didn¡¯t care about my rank. He was pissed that I thought myself worthy of trying as a commoner. Managing to put him on his ass clarified to him that we were cultivators not noble and peasant, and he had a breakthrough while I was out on the subjugation.

    Elder Tong coming in and trying to mindwhammy me? Rumor had it that he was hoping that I¡¯d beg him to hand me to Raka, but because I didn¡¯t actually say I wanted the position, he couldn¡¯t pull it off within the rules.

    Meanwhile there were murmurings that if I managed to make it through to the Soul Core tier, it¡¯d prove that noble blood wasn¡¯t inherently superior like many believed. And if the steady trickle of common borns behind me managed as well, that it¡¯d prove the Sect Master¡¯s original vision valid and spell the doom of the more selfish Elders.

    Which, y¡¯know, would be great if the shorter vision of said idiots allowed them to do anything other than a violent purge and overthrow of the thousand-year-old Sect Master.

    Okay, screaming done for now. Answers time. Because just inviting Raka to pill furnace me is a whole lot of not happening.

    I¡¯m still not attached to the sect itself, and the plan of fleeing as soon as I¡¯ve got a good opportunity and enough strength to make it on my own hasn¡¯t waned once. But now I know that the current soft power of the sect despises me and wants me displayed to dissuade other peasants.

    So how to cripple them?

    I was already a lesser soft power in the outer sect on account of everyone assuming I was deliberately running things with my dinner meetings. I had all of the peasant-born ears and a healthy chunk of the sensible noble-born ones as well, though I¡¯d never found something to do other than enjoy the company.

    I was already taking my sweet time cultivating, making sure to lay each step of my foundation as stably as I could instead of rushing things. That meant that I had more time than otherwise because a sudden slowing in my growth would have telegraphed that I was buying time.

    I had my notes on foundations and natural chi flows. I had my beginner rank Calligraphy. I had my blacksmithing that was a half step into proper beginner rank. I had my herbs and farming skill. I had the introductory manual for the Talisman arts thanks to my pay from the subjugation detail.

    And I had the eyes of both allies and enemies among the Elders keeping each other at bay as long as I didn¡¯t rock the boat too hard.

    So of course the best plan I could think of was to capsize the boat entirely.

    ---

    ¡°Ah! Senior brother Tun! I¡¯m honored that you accepted my invitation!¡± I greeted my guest at the door.

    ¡°Brother Guang.¡± he inclined his head in greeting. ¡°Your humility is truly inspiring. The honor and pleasure is mine.¡±

    I blinked at his earnestness before smiling. ¡°That is high praise indeed from you, senior! Come, the food is nearly ready!¡±

    He cracked a smirk as he took a seat and I laid out the table. And then said with a sigh ¡°I do apologize for my behavior before our last spar. It was unbecoming of me as a cultivator and as a man.¡±

    ¡°And that makes one.¡± I smiled back as I started pouring the tea.

    ¡°One?¡±

    ¡°One time since arriving here that I have received an apology from someone who took offense from me. You are truly a man of noble heart, brother Tun.¡±

    His eyes widened and his shoulders relaxed like a weight had been removed. ¡°Thank you, brother Guang.¡±

    I courteously didn¡¯t mention the tear in his eye as we savored the tea¡¯s aroma together.

    When he was past his gnawing demon completely he took a drink and smiled again. ¡°Is this the value of the Sect Master¡¯s teachings?¡±

    ¡°I must imagine they are similar in some ways.¡± I nodded. ¡°There are only so many paths of camaraderie to articulate, after all.¡±

    He blinked for a moment. ¡°You aren¡¯t the Sect Master¡¯s pupil?¡±

    ¡°I am merely an outer disciple in his sect. Though the rumor amuses me to no end despite the trouble it brings.¡±

    He paused, processing the truth as I presented it, before laughing uproariously.

    ¡°Brother Guang is a giant among ants to bear the weight of the rumor with no truth to it!¡± he eventually declared. ¡°I am glad I thought to discard the jealous thought that you defeated me due to superior backing! I would have died of shame had I accepted it and learned its falsehood.¡±

    ¡°Oh? You are not angry that the rumors deceived you about me?¡± I smirked, already profoundly glad I thought to start my plan with him.

    ¡°Bah! I¡¯ve seen enough other young masters lose their composure and their lives over lies they told themselves. The blow to my Face stings, but it¡¯s covered by the rumor anyway. And brother Guang is not a fool, so I still believe you have a stratagem to capitalize on it and prove my defeat was fair and valid.¡±

    ¡°Oh, you inferred that much then?¡±

    ¡°Most have, under false pretense. Several of our fellow disciples are pulling their hair out trying to predict when you will make a move, or if you have already and we missed it.¡±

    ¡°Oh!¡± I perked up with a grin. ¡°That makes it easier then!¡±

    ¡°It does?¡±

    ¡°Oh yes. If everyone¡¯s looking at my actions to catch a subtle move and I make an obvious one, how many will dismiss it as a blatant decoy?¡±

    Brother Tun stared at me with a dull shock before nodding. ¡°Far too many, and they¡¯d dismiss any suggestion that the obvious move could be important. But what move could you make that the more levelheaded eyes would dismiss as well?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m going to submit a lesson to be added to the servant incentive list. A simple manual on the nature of foundations.¡±

    ¡°How will you come by these teachings?¡±

    ¡°I already have them. Nothing more than personal observations and some hearsay analysis, but enough to impress someone who¡¯s never had a tutor.¡±

    ¡°Ah. Clever. Nobody would think twice about letting a mere outer disciple¡¯s musings get to them. Which raises the question of who you want to notice and how offering it to the mortals will get it there.¡±

    I smiled wickedly. ¡°That it does.¡±

    I turned my attention to the coals that were finished cooking the meal and started removing the leatherleaf-wrapped morsels while Tun tried to figure out what my angle was. It wouldn¡¯t do to treat him like an idiot and explain my whole gambit.

    ¡°You have me lost, I fear, brother Guang.¡± he admitted as I finished setting the table. ¡°All I can come up with is that you simply wish to help your former peers.¡±

    ¡°That is the surface truth, yes.¡± I smiled

    He continued puzzling with only a brief distraction to compliment my cooking until finally catching the conceit that he¡¯d called out himself.

    ¡°Brother Guang, may I see these musings of yours?¡±

    ¡°Certainly!¡± I handed him the manuscript I¡¯d left within reach for exactly that question.

    He read through it with the eyes of a man who¡¯d realized its potential worth while we ate, and I enjoyed the show as he realized what the rest of the ploy was.

    He reached the end of the barely hinged ramblings that best conveyed my comprehension and stared at me as though trying to find the words.

    ¡°How many families¡¯ secret foundation arts have you stolen to know all this?¡±

    ¡°Not a one. Those insights are just from my study of the primer available for the servants.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s no way that¡¯s true.¡±

    ¡°Well, I suppose my attempts at communing with the heavens may have left my mind more open than most, but I assure you brother Tun. I¡¯ve had nothing but my own soul and that primer to work with.¡±

    ¡°Nobody will believe you. I believe you and I don¡¯t believe you.¡±

    ¡°Should make a fine salve for all the bruised Face in my wake then, yeah?¡±

    ¡°The noble houses will kill you for this. Hell, my own father might kill you with how you described the entirety of our own foundation¡¯s advantages.¡±

    ¡°As opposed to the seat of honor they¡¯ve been preparing for me if I make it to my first tribulation.¡± I chuckled dryly. ¡°So, if you don¡¯t report it immediately, how fast do you think anyone will notice?¡±

    He stared at me before grinning widely and taking a large bite of the boar calf that he¡¯d been politely eating. ¡°You¡¯re a madman brother Guang, but you¡¯re absolutely right! I¡¯ll keep your secret and spread word that the common born aren¡¯t to be needlessly antagonized.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m glad to hear that brother Tun. Pickled ginger for your palate?¡± I segued into focusing on the bonding of the meal, having concluded the scheming for the evening.

 Tripping up the Traps

    Now that I was looking for it, the constant focused attention on me was even more obvious than Hu and his cronies trying to wear me down. Instead of unnerving me or bothering me, this relaxed me for the very simple reason that it was always either confused, fearful, or both.

    For someone who thrives off fucking with people, that might as well be pure ambrosia.

    Some of the eyes didn¡¯t have the patience to figure out why I was so confident and tried repeatedly to dissuade me by picking fights so I would offer them a spar and then trying to hurt me in new and creative ways, but that just made the other eyes more worried as I took my beatings with a smile and practiced my calligraphy while I was bedridden.

    They didn¡¯t know it, but I¡¯d discovered a way to make my calligraphy work as a cultivation aide as well, so I didn¡¯t mind being laid up for months and losing exorbitant amounts of points to the medics who cycled through and were always happy to have a congenial patient.

    The trick was actually stupidly simple. I would just paint a word with the totality of the ¡®dao intent¡¯ that I could impart into it, meditate on the painting, my own comprehension, and my grasp of my comprehension. A month or two later, I¡¯d paint the same word, repeat the process, and then meditate on the change in my comprehension.

    It sounds like one of those ¡®eh, maybe sometimes it¡¯ll help¡¯ exercises, which it is. But then you go and apply it to a concept like Comprehension or Teaching or Study. Then, quite abruptly, you¡¯ve got a built-in recursive loop that is highlighting the missing aspects of the concept for you to turn your attention to.

    Needless to say, bottlenecks of Dao Comprehension were rather low on my future concern list. And I was reasonably sure that I was alone in discovering this hack by simple virtue of the way that imparting insight was taught as always being a senior/expert-to-junior/apprentice dynamic. The concept of learning from your juniors was almost a thing, what with individual insights being dependent on the individual, but the idea that you could teach yourself was so overlooked that it didn¡¯t even get mocked.

    Void learning for the win!

    Old Go seems to have caught on that I¡¯m doing something with my ink, as he has been carefully evaluating my intent scrolls to assign them appropriate values. Vocally, he¡¯s of the opinion that I have a future as a mid-high grade instructor ahead of me.

    What he hasn¡¯t done is comment on the manuals I handed to him for the servants exchange. He skimmed one when I handed him the stack and explained that I wanted to lend a hand to my fellow commoners, then he told me that he¡¯d add it to their list at 25 points because while useful, it wasn¡¯t anything special. But nothing had been said one way or another since.

    Sweet heavens do I love exploiting conceited eyes.

    Naturally, having realized that everyone thought I was running an information network, I started running an information network. So I knew that not only had the servants gotten the memo that I was behind the new manual, they were telling each other that I was building up a fighting force to do something big.

    They couldn¡¯t agree on whether I wanted to make my own sect, take over the Yellow Fang, purge the nobles, cull all the demon beasts, or just sacrifice everyone who takes my teachings so I can ascend past the sect masters who hold a nebulous peace against each other. But they knew that I wanted them strong, so they were sharing the manuals among themselves as they kept working toward the primer.

    And just like I hoped, my clarification on the process of forming the foundation was allowing the ones who risked trusting me to both get a head start on the process and to benefit from a faster rate of growth. Not enough to draw undue attention, but enough that they should start catching up to me as I reach the end of the Body Refinement tier.

    At that point, with any luck, the paranoia of my detractors would be spread out among us so that I can work through the Qi Condensation tier without meeting a sudden and tragic end. And without that luck, it¡¯d still be easy enough to use them as decoys whenever I had something particularly sensitive going on.

    Between that and making sure that whenever they¡¯d be tempted to interfere, my eggs were suitably dispersed among my baskets, I was fairly certain my reach would keep growing as long as I survived whatever they aimed at me.

    ¡°Hey Guang! It¡¯s time for your asskicking!¡± Hu¡¯s croney, Jung Si, yelled as soon as I crested the stairs to the smithy.

    I smiled with a sigh. I¡¯d known this was coming. It was kind of inevitable with my having caught up to him at the end of last month, so now he could issue the challenge directly.

    Combined with the fact that his temperament wouldn¡¯t allow him to tolerate a common-born surpassing him, he was clearly hoping that my neglecting to offer him a challenge while he was feeding me contribution points was a matter of fear.

    Oh well, I knew the auxiliary income was going to dry up some day.

    I scanned the swiftly assembling crowd for a friendly face and spotted one. ¡°Senior Fan!¡± I called. ¡°May I impose on you to hold my bag, in case this ends poorly?¡±

    ¡°For twenty points, sure!¡± the ever-mercenary woman laughed.

    ¡°I thank you for the vote of confidence then.¡± I smiled back as I handed her my sack and her asking price. Then I turned to my indirect cash cow. ¡°Very well, brother Jung. I accept your challenge.¡±

    He shot forward, daggers out and ready to ¡®accidentally¡¯ hit my vitals, as I leaned back and countered with a straight kick and a pair of hardened wooden dowels that my foot blocked from his sight.

    After all, I liked his poisons even less than I liked being stabbed. The wood, on the other hand, was past caring about that.

    To his credit, he realized something was wrong just based on how his strike didn¡¯t bite into my thigh, and was retreating before my follow-up axe kick hit the ground.

    To my credit, however, retreating is not good enough in the face of my ¡®ragdoll¡¯ motions and my kick threw me after him with a haymaker to draw his attention away from my other hand darting for his throat.

    Yeah, being thrown around since I met this guy has given me an interesting relationship with the ground. One that apparently doesn¡¯t really have counters in the traditional sense.

    He managed to block my larger blow on reflex as he took the blow to the throat. Not enough to take him down, but enough to piss him off as he retaliated with a flurry of strikes to my guts.

    While forgetting that close quarters was my favorite place to play.

    My elbows came down with the force of a beast¡¯s maw, disrupting his flow just enough for me to then spring back up and slam a fist into his face.

    The follow-up knee to his chest as my momentum took me upward settled that the fight was over, but I landed on his elbow for good measure.

    The medics liked actually having something to do, after all.

    Once he was done screaming in pain and the gambling in the crowd had settled, I knelt down next to him to rub salt in the wound.

    ¡°I must thank you, brother Jung. For your wonderful teachings on Pain when I arrived, and for the abundance of training partners you¡¯ve arranged for me over the past several years. I¡¯m not sure I could have fought this well without your expert guidance. When you¡¯ve recovered, I would be honored to share a meal with you.¡±

    Then I retrieved my bag from sister Fan and made my way to the smithy to start the month¡¯s project.

    After all, I¡¯d finally earned the privilege of working with Qi-folded steel after years of practicing making the stuff. Master Smith Ho Yin was an exacting woman who despised that I kept rising to her challenges, and kept trying to deter me from pursuing crafting for fear that her family¡¯s prominence would fade if a common-born artisan arose.

    The only -and I mean only- reason I was allowed to advance at all under her was the surprisingly genuine regard she had for meritocracy because of her family¡¯s insistence on actually being the best smiths the sect could contract.

    Needless to say, our political dance was far more intricate than most of the ones I actively participated in. Among other things, she was outwardly very encouraging. So much so that my less astute peers thought she was taken with me.

    Something that more than one martial brother commented on and was set to chopping wood with the servants for weeks. The sect had previously been using it almost as fast as it was available. Now we had a surplus.

    ¡°If it isn¡¯t Disciple Guang!¡± her voice rang out as I entered. ¡°Fearless and bruised as always, I see.¡±

    ¡°Master smith Ho.¡± I greeted her with a bow. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t dream of denying you the pleasure of watching me struggle.¡±

    ¡°Ha! Best struggle well enough to earn a second chance then! Make a fool of yourself and I¡¯ll have to relegate you to material processing!¡±

    It is so very difficult to keep a smirk off my face sometimes.

    ¡°Naturally. Shall I begin, or am I yet lacking some guidance?¡±

    She didn¡¯t hide the glint of irritation in her eyes before answering ¡°You¡¯ve studied full well. Get to processing your ingots and if your finished blade is any good, you can purchase Beginner techniques to move ahead with.¡±

    I bowed in gratitude and moved to an available workstation. Time to put my recursive comprehension trick to use and make a blade worthy of battle.

    ---

    ¡°You¡¯ve felt like you needed to repay me for a boar?¡± Senior Hing asked incredulously as we shared tea.

    ¡°Indeed. The boar allowed me to leave home without lingering concerns over my filial duties to my parents. I would not be the man I am now were I thus plagued.¡± I answered calmly. This was a risky move, for entirely different reasons than provoking the Ho family.

    His face barely reflected the remorse I¡¯d jabbed at, but his eyes glanced over to the pile of repayment I¡¯d laid out for him. ¡°Even so, this much?¡±

    ¡°I admit, my initial thought was to grab a boar and three years of normal spirit stone consumption and declare that sufficient, as my sense of value would dictate in normal circumstances.¡±

    ¡°What else do you think I¡¯ve even done? It was just an afterthought anyway.¡±

    ¡°Not a matter of what you¡¯ve done, nor anything I want you to do in the future.¡± I shook my head. Time to commit. ¡°I would like the honor of calling you uncle, even once.¡±

    He tensed like he was about to strike me in rage before catching himself and shaking his head. ¡°You know how I feel about family then. Why would you ask this of me?¡±

    ¡°Because you have been better than you learned, and I deeply respect that. More, I feel you should be honored for the way you willingly enabled so many of my fellow former servants to leave their families in good conscience.¡±

    His lips curled in a snarl. ¡°Who¡¯s slandering me?¡±

    ¡°Facts. You hide it well, and nobody else even suspects a thing, as far as I¡¯ve heard.¡±

    ¡°Why shouldn¡¯t I just beat you into silence?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a third type of honoring family.¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Honoring the good family with service, praise, and riches is ideal. Honoring the poor family with duty, honesty, and sustenance is good. But for the family for whom honesty is slanderous, sometimes all one can do to honor them is live well and let the world assume the family contributed.¡±

    He stared at me incredulously for several long minutes.

    ¡°What are you saying?¡±

    ¡°That you¡¯ve honored your family further than they¡¯ve earned just by being better to others.¡±

    His eyes misted up for a minute before he slumped. ¡°How the hell do you know what that feels like?¡±

    Good, the Intent resonated clearly.

    Sadly I couldn¡¯t get away with answering, so I let him stew for a few minutes. Finally he sighed. ¡°What would calling me uncle even do at this point?¡±

    ¡°Allow you to admit that your filial duty has borne fruit.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not an idiot, Guang. Nearly everything you do sends ripples through the outer sect that impact the inner sect. What would this do? What¡¯s your ploy?¡±

    I nodded in resignation. ¡°You¡¯re not wrong that this also serves my scheme, but not in the way I¡¯ve set the different houses off balance. If I¡¯m right, and you¡¯ve been strangled by heart demons resulting from your own departure, then others will see that my ¡®touch¡¯ is not limited to the common born. That will set the more cautious nobles and Elders onto the back foot while spurring the overeager to act in ways that I¡¯m prepared to exploit and punish.¡±

    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

    ¡°Heh.¡± he chuckled after a minute. ¡°That¡¯s clever. Aiming to force the Ho into adopting you?¡±

    ¡°Sadly, no. Any family that shelters me would doom themselves in short order. I¡¯ve only dodged the attempts on my life thus far by being a singular, squirrely bastard.¡±

    ¡°Too bad. It¡¯d be great to see Ho Yin have to cope with that.¡±

    ¡°Worse, some of the family Elders have been pushing for a marriage instead. Two of the recent attempts on my life were her arrangements.¡±

    ¡°Bwahaha!¡± He busted up, stress palpable but relaxing. ¡°She¡¯d beat you into an anvil inside a week!¡±

    ¡°And that¡¯s if I made it to the wedding.¡± I chuckled. ¡°No, far more survivable all around for them to be put off by my antics so that they feel like they¡¯re dodging a disaster.¡±

    ¡°That makes sense. What¡¯s your end goal, anyway?¡±

    ¡°You ready to laugh at me?¡±

    He nodded with a smirk.

    ¡°I just want to cultivate in peace. Keeping a veil of chaos going while I make it through the early stages is genuinely just to keep my undeclared enemies busy.¡±

    He stared incredulously for a moment. ¡°You¡¯re upending the noble blood rule and risking a sect war in pursuit of peace?¡±

    ¡°No, that just sort of happened, honestly. I¡¯m deliberately manipulating the people involved in pursuit of peace.¡±

    ¡°Just sort of happened?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, organizing the servant revolution was just me trying to get ahold of the primer without being maimed. I didn¡¯t even know about the old schism when I did that.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s true then? You¡¯re just an abberant?¡±

    ¡°Yep. Never had a mentor, wouldn¡¯t have done well under one anyway.¡±

    ¡°And you count me as your greatest benefactor.¡± he finished circling around with an exasperated sigh.

    A portentous-feeling silence gradually filled the room and I waited patiently for it¡¯s breaking point.

    Finally he scoffed and stood up. ¡°If you want to be my nephew, you need to be able to hold your liquor. Come on, I know a good place.¡±

    ---

    ¡°Say Guang. I hear you¡¯re approaching the Qi Condensation realm here soon.¡± Sister Fan shifted the dinner¡¯s focus from our settling chatter.

    ¡°Yeah! What¡¯s the plan there?¡± Brother Kesa, ever eager, demanded.

    Brothers Tun and Lee and Sister Fu Qing (whose name was not a pun here, no matter how many times I heard it as one) politely raised eyebrows as well.

    ¡°More of the same, really.¡± I smiled. ¡°Elder Tong¡¯s growing particularly restless, and I¡¯ve heard that he finally managed to read my manual properly.¡±

    Surprise flashed across the room and Kesa couldn¡¯t restrain himself. ¡°Doesn¡¯t that mean your plan is foiled?¡±

    ¡°On the contrary. Twenty three years of ascending servants has proven that the manual is a major contribution to the sect¡¯s strength. Now that it¡¯s too late for him to argue that it¡¯s a poison pill, the selfish Elders knowing what kind of threat I am will bring the rest of them into predictability.¡±

    Tun was the first to nod, having helped me plan for this change extensively. But Fan spoke up with ¡°So, first it was important that nobody notice, but now everyone needs to? I¡¯m still not following.¡±

    ¡°Founders.¡± Tun spoke up. ¡°You know how a house or sect founder always has a slightly inferior foundation to the family, because they take their life¡¯s experience to refine their understanding before teaching their kin?¡±

    ¡°Yeah. It¡¯s a mark of their greatness that they¡¯re stronger than their students despite the difference.¡±

    ¡°If a founder had read the manual, they would have realized it¡¯s worth immediately, and they would have attacked Guang for stealing their secrets, even in the face of proof that he didn¡¯t.¡± Tun continued. ¡°But now we¡¯ve got nearly two hundred ascendants who¡¯ve read, understood, and benefited from it. And not one of them has copied a family foundation.¡±

    ¡°Wait, were we supposed to?¡± Fu asked, suddenly worried.

    ¡°No.¡± I smiled easily. ¡°You did exactly as I intended, by tailoring your foundations to yourselves.¡±

    ¡°Indeed.¡± Tun continued. ¡°And in doing so, you have an advantage that the noble houses can¡¯t ignore going forward. As long as they stick to their tradition of one foundation for everyone, they can¡¯t match that personalized harmony that you have. And with so many of you outperforming noble scions, the Elders are faced with a profound question.¡±

    ¡°Do they stick with their tradition and cripple their families, or do they adopt Guang¡¯s method and admit that he¡¯s right.¡± Fan finally caught up to my ploy. ¡°Dear gods Guang! I knew you were mad, but this?!¡±

    ¡°And there¡¯s another layer.¡± I teased, causing the room to turn to Tun, as he was obviously enjoying the explaining.

    ¡°Guang¡¯s method is the obvious correct choice. But there¡¯s not a single family or rival sect that will be okay just taking the teachings of an unapprenticed commoner as ¡®good enough¡¯. So they¡¯ll try to improve on his teachings. Most of this will just be rewriting his insights in a hand that isn¡¯t so oblique. But what¡¯s the true value in his manual?¡±

    ¡°There were just so many options.¡± Sister Fu shook her head. ¡°I felt like there were a thousand paths to choose from.¡±

    ¡°Exactly. And if Guang¡¯s teachings are arbitrarily ¡®not good enough¡¯, where do the families have to go to get those thousand paths made of ¡®quality¡¯ information?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re forcing them to cooperate or die.¡± Fan gasped. ¡°If they don¡¯t share teachings with each other, they can¡¯t have the advantage you¡¯ve laid out for them. If they do, they¡¯re going to thrive.¡±

    ¡°And it¡¯s already too late to stop me by killing me.¡± I smiled. ¡°The manual is already a permanent fixture unless they manually purge all the servants and ascendants, but that would require a full schism war, telegraphing to Red Fist and Silver Spire that they¡¯re ripe for plundering. Their only winning move is to play to my tune, and I¡¯ve made it plenty easy for them to pretend it¡¯s them playing the qin.¡±

    ¡°I swear, if the Sect Master doesn¡¯t adopt you for this, he¡¯s as blind as the selfish Elders.¡± Lee sighed. ¡°Isn¡¯t this like, literally why he made the sect?¡±

    ¡°Close enough, yeah. But formally acknowledging me before I¡¯ve fended off the dozens of honor duels waiting for me would make it look like I was his plan, and the selfish Elders have options if that¡¯s the appearance. Far better for him to keep pretending he¡¯s not cheering for me in any particular way and to let me keep looking like a force of nature vindicating him.¡±

    ¡°So what do we need to be doing for the next stage of the plan?¡± Kesa asked again.

    ¡°Sharing teachings. Much like you have been.¡± I leaned back with my almost trademarked easy smile. ¡°The deeper we ingrain that multiple perspectives contribute to deeper understanding, the easier it will be for our sect¡¯s cultivators to acknowledge when they¡¯ve been limiting themselves with narrow focus. It might not be enough for them to actually ask for help, but even having that acknowledgement will help everyone immensely.¡±

    ¡°The various Masters won¡¯t like that one bit.¡± Fan noted. ¡°And not all of us can study under abuse like you do.¡±

    ¡°True. And you won¡¯t all need to, will you?¡±

    ¡°Do tell.¡±

    ¡°Who taught the first Master?¡±

    I was met by blank stares for a minute before Fu¡¯s face lit up ¡°We teach each other to the level of Master!¡±

    ¡°Precisely. The value of recognizing and honoring a Master lies in their willingness to impart their skill and teachings. A Master who will not teach is no different from an expert without clients.¡±

    ¡°Guang. Do you mean to dismantle every tradition of the sect?¡± Fan asked incredulously.

    ¡°No. The rules against wanton predation are pretty solid.¡± I chuckled. ¡°But more seriously, yes. Traditions that strangle the sect¡¯s power are everywhere, and the way that selfish cultivators use them to demand that everyone stroke their egos constantly is toxic and disgusting.¡±

    ¡°You hold no respect for Face?¡± Lee gaped. ¡°What about your own?¡±

    ¡°How often do you see me respected by my detractors?¡±

    He stopped and tried to conjure an interaction where an antagonistic noble born had offered even a token of respect.

    ¡°If I cared about fools like them acknowledging my greatness, I¡¯d be stifled in my cultivation by their refusal to look at the mountain.¡± I laughed. ¡°No, my Face isn¡¯t in anyone else¡¯s Eye. My Face is here, in reality. And anyone who looks upon my works sees it and can build their Face here with me.¡±

    Wide eyes and the sensation of five cultivation circulations pulling on the world around me informed me that I probably needed to address the trap of relying on acknowledgement for growth.

    But for now, my friends benefitting from my perspective was one of the best results I could ask for from a discussion where I didn¡¯t actually have a plan.

    After all, sabotaging me having an existential purging wasn¡¯t really something anyone could do. I¡¯d just puke on them too.

    ---

    So. Miscalculations are a thing, but I knew that, right?

    To explain. The first tier of cultivation is called the Body Refinement tier. The entire process of it is to very methodically build up one¡¯s flesh so it can survive the eventual strain of working deliberately with Qi. A cultivator is essentially a Warped Beast for most of it, pulling in Ki, working it into Qi, and then using both to reinforce the Chi channels that run naturally through the body.

    Simple concept, amazingly tedious process, and then when the body has acclimated to Qi, specifically, the cultivator hits a tipping point where the flesh cannot tolerate weakness the way it used to. This tipping point triggers all of the ¡®impurities¡¯ of the body suddenly and violently being recognized as toxins, and the body spending up to a week forcibly ejecting them in every way it can.

    Not a great sensation, gotta admit. Especially when my reaction to illnesses has always been dramatic compared to my peers. The upside is that my purging, while almost as unpleasant as being mangled for politics, only lasted for a day.

    What follows is the Qi Condensation tier. Wherein a cultivator gradually works on replacing the remaining Chi and Ki in their system with the much more potent Qi. This also includes such nuances as ¡®learning how, precisely, Chi is produced so you can make it to order for further Qi manufacturing¡¯ and ¡®understanding how to feel every strand and pool of energy within yourself¡¯.

    You know. Things I figured out ahead of time because I like to study ahead, and as a cultivator, my soul is my study material.

    But, as I¡¯m prone to doing, I overlooked a second-order effect of my advanced understanding. That being, the reason that Qi Condensation tier cultivators have such a hard time compared to Body Refinement tier cultivators is because their mind, body, and soul need time to acclimate to working with pure energy instead of focusing on the flesh as an achor, and because it requires a complete understanding of one¡¯s energy field to complete.

    Neither of which apply to my overstudied ass.

    Yeah. I sat down to cultivate two days after my purge and immediately started rising through the distinct ranks. The ease that I interface with Ki means I¡¯m not being held back by the available natural energy. The production of Chi that¡¯s been in-hand since my prior life, and now appears nearly flawless, means I¡¯m not being held back by simple exhaustion. And the way I very deliberately made sure that my body and energy were both completely accounted for every step of my way through the Body Refinement process means I don¡¯t have holdout niches that I need to account for.

    On the bright side, literally everyone else was also caught by surprise as well.

    On the down side, that¡¯s a lot of enemies that are scrambling to sabotage me right now.

    Fortunately, there¡¯s a beast subjugation excursion that I volunteered for, led by Brother Sung, and all I have to do to avoid most interference in my tribulation as I step into the Soul Core tier is to take that step while I¡¯m out.

    After all, despite the insane number of people who dearly want me not to survive and have permission to sic someone on me, Brother Sung and his companions are deeply reputable among the deeper politics of the sect and the houses attached to us. And if they identify an agent of one of the houses as maliciously interfering with me, then even killing me wouldn¡¯t be enough to outweigh the censure everyone else would have to level on them to preserve their own Face.

    And with the ever-mercenary Sister Fan having already been paid handsomely to ¡®betray¡¯ me by explaining my ploy with the manuals, most of them would still be too caught up in being outplayed by a commoner to hire someone with enough degrees of separation to avoid that fate.

    Honestly, except for the fact that I legitimately didn¡¯t plan any of this, everything looks to be going according to plan.

    (translator¡¯s note. Plan means keikaku)

    I paused in my watering and sighed. Some day I¡¯d be able to reference things going well without giggling, but not today apparently.

    At least it wasn¡¯t quite as bad as when I had to make up a commoner fable to cover for muttering about Chuck Norris after I won a match with a roundhouse kick. I swear, memes stick around like viruses in the blood.

    It wasn¡¯t all bad, at least. The occasional lapses contributed greatly to the general consensus that I was simply a fortunate brand of crazy, which made my enemies hesitate whenever I telegraphed my plans.

    After all, when I¡¯m genuinely unhinged enough to suggest to Master Ho Yin that her family elders might just be trying to pair us up because they missed the opportunity to have their crushes forced on them, thus sending them into a full-family screaming match right before my purging to distract her from meddling, it¡¯s a fair concern that any of my plans might bring disaster if they respond predictably.

    Incidentally, the screaming match had dragged at least the Fung and the Sang families in, to the amusement of all of my informants.

    I finished watering my garden with a small prayer to the heavens that they restrain any ire they held against me for being from another world when I provoke my tribulation, and returned to my shack for my travel pack.

    Stepping out, I was met by Elder Tong and bowed despite my surprise. ¡°Disciple greets Elder Tong.¡±

    ¡°Oh good. I feared I would miss you.¡± He smiled and I felt my mental defense react to his Intent. ¡°Could you clarify something for me before you leave?¡±

    ¡°If it is within my understanding, I would be honored, Elder.¡±

    ¡°Did you already know of the unfounded rumors regarding my friend Elder Raka when we last spoke?¡±

    ¡°Disciple had not heard any slander regarding Honorable Elder Raka, nor Honorable Elder Tong at that time.¡±

    He paused, almost visibly dissecting my words with some manner of truth determining technique. ¡°I see. I gather you have heard some since?¡±

    ¡°Only the mutterings of jealous disciples trying to declare forbidden grapes to be sour. Nothing that impugns either Elder¡¯s image in my eye.¡± I answered with a serpent¡¯s truth, mostly to see if his arts could tell.

    ¡°Hm.¡± he kept a nearly neutral tone, leaning faintly toward surprise. ¡°So you would still find it desirable to be taken as an apprentice, then?¡±

    ¡°The thought alone remains a great honor, yes.¡± I answered, amused at the manipulation¡¯s pressure easing on me. ¡°Disciple does regret that his studies of himself indicate that he is an ill fit for apprenticeship in general, however.¡±

    ¡°Ah, I see!¡± he beamed, more self assured now. ¡°Your style of study fares poorly under guidance, so you don¡¯t wish to malign Elder Raka by finding yourself a poor student. That makes sense.¡±

    And his recovery attempt in 3, 2,

    ¡°Then with your impending promotion to Inner Disciple, I shall leave it to you to catch his attention with your talisman work.¡±

    What? No, wait, what?

    ¡°Disciple knows of no promotion consideration. Is this a new development?¡±

    ¡°Indeed. Should your meteoric growth of the past week continue for more than another week, it would be a disgrace to the entire sect to not accept you as an Inner Disciple simply on apparent genius. Many of the Elders are waiting with bated breath to see if you successfully form a Soul Core any day now.¡±

    I blinked. That... That wasn¡¯t bad news for me. Especially if I could come off as acerbic enough to Raka¡¯s style to avoid being under his power. But holy shit was this an abrupt ploy shift from the Elders.

    ¡°Disciple is honored to receive such consideration from the Sect Elders.¡± I gaped for lack of a planned response.

    He laughed, and despite the mental pressure insisting that it was honest mirth I picked up a tinge of frustration... and what felt like genuine mirth anyway. ¡°Well, we also couldn¡¯t very well ignore that you¡¯ve long been demonstrating more devotion than many of your rivals.¡±

    Well... yay? Maybe damn?

    ¡°Either way, thank you for indulging my curiosity, little Guang. Good luck on the subjugation patrol.¡± He waved and walked off. ¡°I might drop by for tea on your return.¡±

    ¡°Honored Elder is welcome to share tea with me any time.¡± I invited him, only to see the hitch in his stride indicating that he¡¯d actually grasped that I considered tea a type of lesson/sparring. Probably from the painting I¡¯d given him.

    Well, that¡¯s good to know, at least.

    Hopefully it doesn¡¯t bode as poorly as it feels.

 Aggravated Ascension

    Before I face my death, it strikes me as an oversight that the sect scholars have so little to publicly say about tribulations.

    Like, I know I have an abnormally scientific mindset for the position of ¡®Cultivator¡¯, but tribulations are still quite a fundamental part of the process, and the most anyone had to say regarding them was that the severity of a tribulation was determined by how much the heavens hated your path, with a side note that the more powerful a tribulation was, the more impressive the cultivator would likely be if they survived.

    ¡®If¡¯ being a crucial operator there.

    So conventional wisdom, looking at the gathering thunderheads above me, would presume that I am one of the most heaven-hated entities on record.

    But that viewpoint is poisonous. Literally. If I hold that view and try to face the heavens¡¯ first attempt to stop me, I¡¯m going to die, and none of the measures I brought with me would be the slightest bit of help.

    Which means I need a completely different viewpoint to approach this from, and I need it in the next minute.

    No pressure.

    ¡°Let¡¯s see.¡± I mutter aloud as much to calm my jittering nerves as to sort my thoughts. ¡°I¡¯ve argued with you over the fewest possible points of your decrees that I can, and you rewarded me with unprecedented ease of working with Ki. I¡¯ve talked to you about what I¡¯m doing at every stage, and my perceivable fate has been almost irrationally cooperative. Out of everyone and everything I interact with, I put special effort into giving you Face, to go with the face. So you being angry with me doesn¡¯t track.¡±

    I stare into the swiftly forming eye of the tribulation storm with narrowed eyes.

    ¡°No, not that¡¯s not anger, is it?¡±

    Electricity dances along the clouds eagerly as they billow.

    ¡°Eager, not angry. I can work with that.¡± I nod and prepare to gamble on my deranged ass understanding correctly by swiftly tearing down the protection array.

    After all, it was impolite to wear an ear covering when a friend wished to speak with you.

    ¡°Here¡¯s to being right or being ash.¡± I sigh and reach for the ki of the storm, not to pull it in and process it, but to start producing Chi in the right ¡®flavor¡¯ to complement and hopefully incorporate it as the lightning starts arcing wide.

    The first bolt launches down and strikes my brow

    ~~~

    Hope. Joy. Worry. Affront. Surprise. Understanding. Joy.

    ~~~

    My body spasms in agony even as I form Qi of the bolt¡¯s insanely pure Ki and my Chi.

    ¡°You are!¡± I laugh as I process the incomprehensibly pure emotions that had shoved their way through my awareness. ¡°You¡¯re trying to talk back! Buddy! Come on!¡± I crank my Chi production up to full, entirely caught up in the fact that heaven itself wanted to talk. ¡°Let¡¯s do this!¡±

    The second bolt comes to my outstretched arms and slams into my chest.

    ~~~

    Amusement accompanied a memory of cataloging bugs in the rice field. Irritation with a memory of being chosen by the recruiters. Approval at my pushing for the boar, and at repaying uncle Hing. Disappointment at my interactions with the instructors and Elders. Acknowledgement of my many, many maimings of others. Interest at my dinners. Joy at my attempted conversations.

    ~~~

    What should have, by rights, been a hole in my torso is instead a charred, blackened patch that my body was already working on repairing.

    I laugh in exhilaration. I could do this! I was hearing Heaven!

    ¡°Couple bits got garbled!¡± I shout as I rise to meet the voice of Heaven again. ¡°But I¡¯m hearing you!¡±

    The third bolt jumps and jags around before stabbing into my abdomen.

    |||

    Sung Shu gaped at the report that his eagle-eyed comrade and friend just made, but it was Hua Jin that voiced everyone¡¯s incredulity.

    ¡°What do you mean he¡¯s not blocking?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s throwing his guard wide open and taking the blasts directly.¡± Yu Jung clarified the nonsense claim. ¡°It looks like he¡¯s yelling at it too, a challenge, maybe?¡±

    Eit Kai shook his head. ¡°No, remember what he said about talking to heaven? He¡¯s gone mad in the face of heaven¡¯s wrath. He¡¯ll be dead before the seventh strike.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know. The damage isn¡¯t lining u-¡± Yu started to explain before gaping.

    ¡°What is it?¡± Sung demanded. Watching over juniors who broke through major bottlenecks while on excursion was one of his most sacred duties, and this was already far too abnormal for his patience.

    ¡°He¡¯s a celestial spirit.¡± Yu mumbled. ¡°There¡¯s no other way.¡±

    ¡°Report! Damn it!¡± Sung roared before Po No¡¯s awed face caused him to spin around and see lightning flying back up from Guang¡¯s position.

    Nowhere near the same strength, but very clearly Heaven¡¯s very own lightning being thrown back.

    A moment¡¯s glance at the other juniors who were watching the tribulation confirmed that they had at least a glimpse of what this meant.

    If Guang survived, he was in for a truly busy dinner schedule.

    |||

    ¡°How many times do I have to say it?¡± I laughed through Heaven¡¯s insistence and flicked the offending decrees back across the desk. ¡°I¡¯m not looking to be under your command. I don¡¯t have that sort of trust or duty within me.¡±

    Something in the process of accepting Heaven¡¯s answers had pushed the vague sense of connection into a full blown mindscape as the fifth blow landed. Imagery appropriate to a beaurocrat¡¯s office seemed to be indicating Heaven¡¯s -quite reasonable- position as an authority figure, and as the discussion seemed to veer toward the future, the pleasantries had faded to negotiation.

    Other decree tokens lit up with insistence, and I sighed. ¡°Yes, I know you¡¯ve provided assurance that I can develop the trust and duty, but it¡¯s not yet a part of me. So no. Ask again after I have the ability to accept and not self-destruct.¡±

    A third set of decree tokens burned up outright, no doubt burning my flesh as well.

    ¡°That¡¯s fine by me. I don¡¯t need those assurances either. Honestly, you¡¯re being surprisingly accommodating with the rest of these.¡± I gestured easily to the decrees that I¡¯d had no objection to. ¡°I mean, unending armies of enemies? That¡¯s like a birthday present.¡±

    A strong sensation of amusement accompanied the exchange ending.

    ~~~

    The burns were surprisingly light as I stood again, a manic laugh carved into my features.

    Ki melded with chi, and the qi cycled right back to producing chi as fast as I could. I could taste the chi getting purer as I argued with Heaven, and the resulting qi from every strike was similarly purer than anything I could have dreamed of even yesterday.

    Heaven didn¡¯t hate me. This wasn¡¯t rage.

    Heaven was giving me the tools to defy it. Willingly.

    Sure, the process sucked, but what about being a cultivator didn¡¯t?

    And this payoff was so much better than months of bedrest and a few insights.

    The sixth bolt slammed down into my skull as I laughed in rapture.

    ~~~

    The strain of evaluating each token was getting immense. I¡¯d already noticed that my will couldn¡¯t manipulate them directly, I had to have my mind and soul working in tandem. But this was only exchange six out of ten and I was already seeing my limit.

    Impulse drove me to try melding them like I melded ki and chi, but that caused me to fumble several decrees and singe my flesh. Suboptimum.

    I worked as I thought, accepting decrees of future trials without contest, dismissing decrees of subservience, as well as anything that felt like ¡®mortal desires¡¯, given that those were the ones that heaven refused to grant if I didn¡¯t bow.

    I¡¯d made my own maguffin once, I¡¯d do it again if I needed one. Divine promises of power and pleasure were for those too weak to make their own.

    Every time I flicked one back, Heaven laughed approvingly while also grumbling that I wasn¡¯t bowning. No words from the order of the world, but I could kind of understand our positions. Heaven decreed men¡¯s lives and bristled when they rejected its decrees, but it wasn¡¯t a nobleman. It could adapt and work with men, if the men listened.

    Cultivators were men who rejected the position ¡®man¡¯. So Heaven had to file them as a new entity. ¡®Man¡¯ could not survive qi, after all. That¡¯s why cultivators had to re-temper their flesh and sou-

    ¡°That¡¯s it!¡± I exclaimed as clarity shot through me. My mind was still the same basic structure as I¡¯d been reborn with! That¡¯s why I had to manipulate the pure ki decrees with my soul! ¡°You need me to finish the reforging before you can accept me as a qi-man!¡±

    Unadulterated enthusiastic vindication rolled through the connection and I cheered with Heaven for the clarity of the demand. Thinking quickly, because these lighting-strike dilations didn¡¯t hold forever, I thanked Elder Tong for provoking my paranoia and made a guess at how to cultivate my mind based on the foundation of the mental defense art I¡¯d picked up.

    Lining my thoughts with chi and letting Heaven¡¯s ki meld with me in a nearly-desperate bid to get my transformation finished in time for my buddy to file me without issue was among the most existentially painful things I could recall imagining, and hands-down the most painful thing I had experienced.

    But as the split attention mandatory to forming a foundation allowed me to also continue sorting the decrees, the lessened strain of doing so proved that it was worth it.

    And when the bolt finished, I was still standing, staring at the stormclouds rolling in visible excitement.

    And then they changed their pattern, and the lightning dancing around took on several more hues as the seventh bolt built and I prepared my thoughts and emotions for the upgrade that exactly nothing in the sect lessons had mentioned.

    The golden spear of lightning that descended on me was massive. Easily as wide as I was tall, and I opened my arms yet again to accept my friend¡¯s gift.

    ||||

    Huan Kong stared at the storm that threatened to dash his hopes one last time. The heaven-blessed disciple that held the promise of showing the sect the value of cooperation was gathering a tribulation large enough to challenge even his seniors of several major ranks.

    One strike. Powerful. Final. Devastating. As if Heaven were declaring little Guang to embody the sin of cultivation.

    The Sect Master shook his head. It was a fool¡¯s dream to think men could be more than beasts. Heaven would never stand for challenges to its rule.

    A second strike. Stronger, louder. But confusing. There shouldn¡¯t have been a need for it. Guang was but a Qi Condensation tier. The first strike being visible from Kong¡¯s mountain should have slain him outright.

    A third strike. Despite himself, Kong¡¯s ancient heart stirred in hope. If the boy could, somehow, survive, none would dare challenge his teachings openly.

    If Guang could live through this, Kong¡¯s dream of so many centuries ago might be realized.

    A fourth strike. Deafening even with thousands of kilometers of distance.

    A fifth. The entire population of the sect below him seemed to turn their attention to the storm. Lesser eyes couldn¡¯t see the truth of it though. Lightning being thrown upwards was barely visible to Kong¡¯s nigh-divine sight.

    A sixth. A bolt comparable to ones in his own fourth tribulation, again had Guang somehow returning fire.

    Then the storm shifted. Heaven¡¯s wrath palpable throughout the land.

    A seventh strike. No mere bolt, but a towering column of golden rage slammed into the boy¡¯s location. Kong paled, unsure if he, the master of a mighty sect, could survive such a strike.

    The strike held for almost a minute before heaven was done scrubbing Guang and Kong¡¯s dream from the world. The sect master slumped, defeated by both his own sect and heaven itself.

    He resolved to yield his position to his second-in-command. The sect had no use for a man as defeated as him.

    And then the eighth strike landed. Golden in fury, even larger than the impossible strike.

    But Heaven needed to hit Guang again!

    One Thousand years of defeats, encrusted on the Sect Master¡¯s soul, quaked as his spirit ignited in hope. If Guang could survive one, what was two? If two, what was four?

    The eighth finally ended three slow breaths later, and the world waited in deafened anticipation.

    A ninth strike formed, and Kong had to blink as it¡¯s brilliance, heaven¡¯s rage made physical, threatened to blind him. He prayed, for the first time since forming the sect and to whatever god or spirit could hear him through the din, that Guang would win.

    The day turned dark as the light of the strike faded, but the clouds didn¡¯t disperse. One more strike. Tribulations were always limited to ten. Heaven¡¯s own decree, limiting its power.

    The world turned white as the last strike fell upon Guang.

    Kong¡¯s soul burned in vindication, and the shackles of his failures seemed as nothing to him. He felt his bottleneck release and his path forward become clear. Guang had done the hard part. Now it was up to him to control his sect like he¡¯d been failing to for centuries.

    The rise of the Yellow Fang Sect was now, and their rivals would fall in line or fall in battle.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    ---

    ¡°Kill him now! Don¡¯t give him time to recover!¡± I heard someone shout as Heaven¡¯s final gift faded and I grinned. Humans would be humans.

    ¡°Now, now. Is this really how you want to suffer?¡± I called out as the power that even my cultivated flesh had no hope of holding onto for long surged through me. ¡°Taking the fight to someone still sparking with divine might?¡±

    A blade in my gut was the answer I got, and I barely opened my eyes in time to see Tong Sailong¡¯s glowering face before the power I was barely holding onto leapt from the wound and disintegrated her.

    I took a moment to focus on closing the wound, and my flesh obeyed easily, before turning to the other three assassins. ¡°I really must suggest waiting until I¡¯ve stabilized. It¡¯s not safe to disrupt my form right now.¡±

    ¡°What technique was that?¡± Tong Luking gaped with the least composure between the three.

    ¡°No technique.¡± I answered. ¡°Merely Heaven¡¯s gift overflowing my vessel because I managed to touch the divine secret with a barely formed identity core. I reckon it¡¯ll be three, maybe four days before I can be harmed without... that.¡± I looked at the empty space that used to hold the woman. ¡°But if you want to wait around while senior brother Sung reports and I bleed off the excess, I don¡¯t mind.¡±

    ¡°Brother Guang!¡± Sung¡¯s desperate voice rang out as he crashed through the treeline.

    ¡°Ah! Senior Brother! I found a hole in our cultivation philosophy!¡± I greeted him, casually dismissing the Tongs.

    ¡°You reckless idiot! Get behind me!¡±

    I couldn¡¯t help but laugh. ¡°Brother, my dear friend! These kind fools pose no threat today. You can relax! Enjoy my success with me!¡±

    ¡°Have you gone mad?¡±

    ¡°Oh, no more than I began. I¡¯m merely hosting Heaven¡¯s might within a fragile body, so mortal means cannot touch me until I stabilize.¡± I laughed and approached him, guard to the fools nonexistent. ¡°Come! My pack has tea and meat enough for us all! Having Heaven¡¯s voice sear my flesh gave me a wonderful idea for a roast!¡±

    ¡°You shall not leave here alive, Jinsheng!¡± Tong Kai declared and I felt the ripple of his famed Flowing Dragon Realm cover the area.

    I dropped my head with a sigh. ¡°Brother Sung, might I impose on you to hold our brothers and sisters back for a few moments? It seems that some foolish humans wish to taste Heaven.¡±

    ¡°Your safety is-¡±

    ¡°No concern, today.¡± I interrupted. ¡°When he cuts me, he shall die and I shall live. But I worry that the others might be harmed in the exchange.¡±

    He looked me in the eye for a moment and saw my confident sincerity, then finally relented. ¡°Alright, but nobody will forgive you if you¡¯re wrong.¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t ask you to.¡± I laughed and patted his shoulder. Then, only after he¡¯d left the clearing, I turned around to address the Tongs.

    ¡°Well? What are you waiting for?¡±

    ¡°Kai, do we have an answer to whatever that technique was?¡± Luking asked with far more trepidation than suited a cultivator.

    Tong Kai, at least, smirked like he had a plan. ¡°Arrogant fool, thinking you know everything after one tribulation. Die!¡±

    I took note of how he wove his qi into his Realm technique to move with it in a wonderfully impossible manner to outflank my lack of a guard and swung his blade right through my skull, cleaving my brain horizontally while ducking as Heaven¡¯s power gushed forth.

    And then the golden light curved down into his shocked form and wiped it away, and I ran my focus along the damage to my mind and brain before looking at the remaining assassins.

    ¡°Ah, he must have thought that my thoughts were still mortal! An unfortunate misimpression. Would either of you like to try? Or to join me for a celebratory meal?¡±

    The lesser Tongs shared a glance and fled without a word.

    ¡°Does anyone else believe they know my weakness today!¡± I called out an invitation to any other assassins in waiting, receiving no reply.

    So with a satisfied nod and a silent lament that this invulnerability was all too temporary, I turned to stroll back to where the rest of the patrol members were waiting.

    ¡°Terribly sorry about the delay! Some people just have no manners.¡± I waved as I approached. ¡°Speaking of which, I forgot myself in my elation. Were we pressed for time with my tribulation¡¯s timing?¡±

    I came up short as most of the group prostrated themselves and even Brother Sung¡¯s squad knelt before me.

    ¡°Come now, martial brethren!¡± I pleaded in exasperation. ¡°Merely having a civilized relationship with Heaven is no cause for reverence. Please, rise.¡±

    ¡°You threw back Heaven¡¯s wrath, honored Celestial.¡± Yu Jung answered from his knees.

    My mind, understandably fuzzy after its abrupt upgrade, failed to provide words to even start rebutting the miscomprehensions baked into that interpretation. So instead of trying, I said instead ¡°Would you like to learn to do it yourself? It¡¯s no crime by any of the laws that matter.¡±

    ¡°You would teach us your arts?¡± one of my fellow juniors gaped.

    ¡°Ah, we must not have met before!¡± I joked. ¡°I am called Guang Jinsheng, and I¡¯m something of a tutor here in the Yellow Fang!¡±

    The ridiculousness of... well, me, threw the unified reverence into disarray and I turned to the excursion head. ¡°Anyway, brother Sung. Please be honest, how¡¯s our schedule looking?¡±

    He¡¯d already started straightening up, hopefully realizing that I wasn¡¯t the brand of special that should be catered to. ¡°We are running later than I¡¯d like. Not so much as to be critical.¡±

    ¡°Then we should continue on, no? Celebration can wait until we camp for the evening, if not until we¡¯ve caught up properly.¡±

    ¡°As you say. But if you are the same brother Guang I have worked and eaten with, I believe I speak for everyone when I say that an explanation is in order first.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°I shall be happy to provide it at great length while we rest. The short of it is that I am still Guang of the dinners and Heaven does not hate our desire to rise above our station but it does oppose us riding the border between man and our new role, which is what we are inadvertently doing by forgetting to cultivate our minds alongside our bodies and souls.¡±

    ¡°Heaven brought more wrath upon you than it brought upon my master when he entered the Golden Core tier, and you say it does not hate you?¡±

    ¡°Not in the least!¡± I answered chipperly. ¡°The lightning is not Heaven¡¯s anger, it¡¯s Heaven¡¯s voice. The searing of your flesh when you don¡¯t listen is its anger.¡±

    He blinked slowly at the dismissal of well-established knowledge before shaking his head and continuing ¡°And throwing the lightning back isn¡¯t even more angering?¡±

    ¡°No. Because I had to listen, understand what it was saying, and then choose to refuse the declarations in question. It¡¯s the difference between someone not hearing you when you tell them what to do and someone hearing you and explaining why they can¡¯t obey. Still frustrating, but you¡¯re not being ignored.¡±

    ¡°Finally, what the hell were those last four strikes?¡±

    ¡°Oh, I figured out the issue on the sixth, did a rush job replacing my mind¡¯s chi with qi, and then heaven had no more complaints about my position so we just talked and shared plans with each other. I¡¯ve got to say, Heaven is profoundly kind to lower its voice so much under normal circumstances. Can you imagine having it raise it¡¯s voice that far in irritation?¡± I shuddered in exaggeration. ¡°Terrifying. I couldn¡¯t have handled it myself if it was still trying to save me by insisting that I serve its plans.¡±

    ¡°Talked. And shared plans. With Heaven itself.¡± He repeated with a strained expression. Then he sighed. ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s something that only the Guang I know would dare say. Let¡¯s get moving.¡±

    I fell in line with my fellow juniors and revelled in the new resonant harmony within myself. Even without Heaven¡¯s gift allowing me to marinate and forge my identity core with its impossibly pure energy, having the almost invisible separation between mind, body, and soul cast into stark relief and corrected for was so much more impressive than I had any reason to believe.

    And when I¡¯d seen Sect Elders exchanging pointers with senior disciples, that was saying quite a lot.

    ---

    I shook my head at the deference of the peasant serving girl. It was one -perfectly rational- thing to be terrified that a squad of cultivators had chosen to take up lodging for the night in a small village. But their response to me was outright worshipful, for the dumbest reason available.

    Mortals apparently hadn¡¯t actually been able to see the unrestrained bolts of my tribulation, nor hear them. So when we arrived and senior Sung informed them that we were staying the night, one old man had the courage to formally accept his declaration and offer condolence for the ¡®fallen¡¯ cultivator.

    Said old man had his attention directed to me and upon seeing my face declared ¡°The heavens smile upon us!¡± and promptly died.

    The leading theory: The heavenly might I¡¯m still processing isn¡¯t fit for mortal perception.

    So I¡¯m wearing a veil to avoid accidentally medusaing people and being treated as the guest of honor even above my martial seniors, who themselves are immensely amused that I¡¯m the one protesting most to the situation.

    ¡°So, ¡®Celestial¡¯ Guang.¡± Senior Hua Jin teased. ¡°What exactly are Heaven¡¯s plans for us, if we follow your lead?¡±

    ¡°If you follow it completely, to acknowledge you as a wholly Qi-based entity and to leave your fate to your own hand.¡± I answered, not giving her the reaction to her blasphemy she was hoping for. ¡°If you¡¯d prefer to join its ranks, there are plenty of quite appealing positions available, it seems.¡±

    ¡°So you have nothing left fighting you regarding your fate?¡±

    I chuckled. ¡°Heaven has withdrawn its complaint, and I am now the equivalent of a peasant of a higher realm. Much like our lovely hosts, there will no doubt be myriad forces that I must contend with to secure myself, and likely an even higher realm for me to aspire to.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t know?¡±

    ¡°Correct. My next major opposition is not from above. For while Heaven rules over men and decrees their fates, it is not alone in having dominion.¡±

    ¡°The Earth?¡± Senior Sung asked after a moment. ¡°First the Heavens, then the Earth? Not the other way around?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s no discrete order, no. I merely settled Heaven¡¯s complaint first due to my eccentricity, and I¡¯ve not yet garnered the Earth¡¯s attention.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡±

    ¡°Yes. I will eventually, of course. But the Earth¡¯s concern, according to Heaven, is for my impact upon the world. Cultivators as a rule anger it immensely as we grow, with our constant harvesting and predating of resources. Should I partake too much, I shall face a tribulation from below. One that has none of Heaven¡¯s courtesies.¡±

    ¡°Ah, so the Divine Retribution for exploiting fortune is not of Heaven¡¯s hand?¡±

    ¡°No, that is the Earth striking, limited by Heaven¡¯s claim upon the cultivator.

    ¡°And you say Heaven has no more claim on you.¡±

    ¡°Indeed. Fortuitous that my methods are light upon the land, no?¡±

    My martial brethren exchanged furtive looks of concern before senior Po finally asked ¡°Will you... survive catching the Earth¡¯s ire?¡±

    ¡°That depends entirely upon my strength and fortunes.¡± I smiled easily. ¡°Much as it does for everyone.¡±

    ¡°But if everyone else has protections in Heaven¡¯s irritated filing, what do you have?¡±

    ¡°A gentle touch and plenty of time to grow first.¡±

    An awkward quiet fell over the dinner. I understood, naturally. I was telling them without coy filters that if and when the Earth decided I was overstepping myself, the disasters it visits upon Elders of the sect would look trivial in comparison.

    While also warning them of the primary risk of following me into proper defiance of Heaven, as they would likely evoke its wrath much sooner.

    ¡°What- No, how does one defy the Earth and survive?¡± Sister Ku Mai, a fellow junior asked.

    ¡°As I understood, and do understand that it was only an afterthought even at the time, there is a point where the Earth essentially gets frustrated with your continued survival and voluntarily severs its dominion over you.¡±

    ¡°Oh, so you¡¯ll be fine then!¡± Senior Yu laughed, breaking the somber weight of the discussion easily.

    I smiled along with the mirth. Part of me wanted to laugh as well. His confidence was amusing, after all. But laughter was... hollow. My emotions were no longer greater than my mind and body¡¯s limits. Not something that threatened to be a hindrance, merely an oddity.

    A peasant child who¡¯d been lurking nearby leaned far enough around her hiding place for me to get a good look at her. She couldn¡¯t have been more than 6 and she was clearly disobeying her parents by risking our attention, judging by the way she was almost more concerned with the serving staff than the demigods being fed.

    Senior Sung noticed my attention, and in following it pulled everyone else¡¯s onto the girl.

    ¡°Hey!-¡± one of my brethren started to shoo her off before I cut him off.

    ¡°No, this is fine. Let her come, if she has the courage.¡±

    Despite what most mortals believed, Heaven very much did want them to rise to their potential. And as a temporary host for some of its might, it was reasonable to help out.

    Besides that, this was an opportunity to do something deeply funny to me, personally.

    She screwed up her face and courage and marched forward with a little bag.

    ¡°Mommy says giving offerings to Heaven is good! So here are my mushrooms!¡± she shouted, holding up the bag.

    I opened it up and found foraged mushrooms, relatively fresh and decently cleaned off. ¡°These are very good mushrooms.¡± I spoke gently. ¡°Did you harvest them for dinner?¡±

    ¡°Yeah. Mommy¡¯s always saying we don¡¯t have enough to eat, so I learned the good mushrooms.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s very responsible of you. My friends in the heavens are very proud of you for that. So let me tell you what.¡± I grabbed two wooden bowls from the table and started sorting the mushrooms at my newfound speed. ¡°These ones are a little bit small. Can you promise to go plant them in the good shade around the village tomorrow?¡± I handed her back the bowl of smaller shrooms.

    ¡°Uh huh!¡± she nodded before remembering her manners ¡°I mean, yes, honored Celestial.¡±

    ¡°Very good! And in exchange,¡± I started peeling the larger mushrooms into proper cooking sized chunks. ¡°You can split these up with whoever you want to in town, with my blessing.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re giving them back?¡±

    ¡°The half I want.¡± I pointed at the smaller ones. ¡°Should be ready for me to collect next time I come through this area. If you remember to plant them well tomorrow.¡±

    ¡°Oh! Okay, honored Celestial! I¡¯ll make sure everyone knows they¡¯re yours too!¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a good girl. Run along now, and make sure to share yours with others by pouring some into other bowls.¡±

    She bowed and darted away, bringing a great smile to my face. As well as a mild relief in the form of expended heavenly essence.

    It was a gift literally without peer for a mortal, but heaven¡¯s power was very much not something the human soul was made to handle.

    The meal and conversation wound down after that and we each retired to slumber, and I made a point to thank the Earth for its patience with its charges before beginning to weave the essence of sharing dinners into my identity.

    Soul cores, like others were limited to forming without their minds caught up, were mighty, singular essence declarations of one¡¯s spiritual nature. They could be altered somewhat after formation by significant upheaval that affected one¡¯s spirit for good or ill.

    Identity cores, the completed model, were highly mutable. I could intuit more than my friend explained thanks to my recursive study of comprehension, and the matter was beautifully intricate. Any aspect of myself that I deigned to identify with, I could weave into my identity core and use it as a ¡®secondary foundation¡¯ of sorts.

    Stunts like the mushrooms that the mortals were singing praises to me over could be developed as techniques tied into my identity as ¡®Guang Wancan¡¯, and would eventually be no more straining than my morning stretches if I continued to commit to the bit.

    And I truly had no reason not to. The benefits of it were far in excess of my initial pragmatic ploys, even before the newfangled ability to imbue power into myself as the dinners guy. Having people who were genuinely glad to see me because they¡¯d grasped that I chose not to be a threat to them, being able to try new tastes because my guests found it dutiful to contribute to the meal, and the honest smiles as they joked without noble formalities in the way were all far more valuable than I¡¯d expected them to be.

    Which really spoke to my initial sociopathy more than anything. A different flavor than most cultivators held, but still casually overlooking the intrinsic value of people all the same.

    I elected to keep it as a part of my identity, of course. Making all my bonds be ones of choice instead of leaving myself open to manipulators of the heart just made sense, especially now that the sect was trying to tie me to them more tightly.

    The surviving Tongs would be an asset, of course. They meant that the Tong family, at least, would know that my tribulation was as aberrant as everything else I do. And with my casual mention to brother Sung that the attempted assassination wasn¡¯t worth a hubbub, they¡¯d treat me more like a viper than a pest.

    Refusing to strike someone¡¯s Face was, after all, nearly a foreign concept to nobility.

    That left three major holdout houses still collectively enraged at my existence. The Sang, who at my parting update had concluded that I¡¯d set the Ho screaming at them specifically to ruin a trio of marriage arrangements, the Ling, who I¡¯d been careful not to provoke with the genuinely professional assassin patterns visible in the conspicuous lack of detractors they maintain, and the Yang, who mostly seemed to want to pick fights with anyone who wouldn¡¯t collapse on contact.

    The Yang didn¡¯t seem to actually have an issue with me, but they were still arranging for my demise with malicious regularity. I still hadn¡¯t quite figured them out. Probably some external influence I¡¯ve been overlooking. Meaning I need informants in the other sects.

    Which means I need to get on with going outside more often so I can acquaint myself with and subvert outsiders. Which in turn would have the Tong renewing their quiet clamoring that I was a traitor pretending to have loyalty.

    I still hadn¡¯t figured out if they were just classist bigots or if their truth techniques could tell the difference between dutiful behavior and dutiful souls.

    Given that they hadn¡¯t been able to convince anyone who¡¯d interacted with me at length, poetry said they could actually tell. Maybe I could prod them into sharing their means of detecting true loyalty if it meant being free of me dicking with them. Something to probe Elder Tong about if he took my tea invitation.

    For that matter, there were tensions between the Tong and the Ling. I could exacerbate them by thanking a Ling Elder for their family¡¯s work defending the sect¡¯s disciples. It¡¯d add a twenty-second target to my back, but if I need a distraction as I move to being an inner disciple, that was an option.

    Why Elder Tong felt the need to tell me of the impending shift was beyond me. Maybe hoping that it would go to my head and cause me to trip in my tribulation? To be shocked at his family¡¯s attempt on my life afterward?

    It was largely moot, but stuck out as a potential for me to be moving from misinformation regarding him. With how charitable I was feeling as I continued working heavenly ki into my own qi, it even occurred to me that he might actually be rooting for me.

    If so, he was the best double agent I had even the faintest suspicion about in the upcoming schism.

    Oh yeah, and the schism was absolutely going to happen. Maybe destroying the entire sect. That was left to the actions of the Master and the Elders. Heaven opposed toxic seedbeds teaching poisonous lessons, and the Yellow Fang had earned an arranged trial well before my arrival.

    I wasn¡¯t salty about being a tool to deliver said trial. Miffed at most. Mostly because I would have set different ploys into action if I¡¯d known.

    No matter, really. I¡¯d done my part and then some. As long as they didn¡¯t try to front-line me before I was strong enough to handle it, their fate only concerned me until I found a good opportunity to leave. Ideally, that¡¯d come before anything pushed the sect into full-on infighting. And it wasn¡¯t like I¡¯d done anything to suddenly upend the upper management of the sect.

    I had time.

 Returning to the Sect

    The warped boar snarled at me. It was massive, its eyes level with my own, and its shaggy back rising almost half that again from the ground.

    I held my gaze steadily despite the abject fear of facing down such a beast. I was strong, yes, but having expended all of heaven¡¯s gift to get a head start on my foundation for the next plane of existence, I was only as strong as a talented Soul Core tier cultivator.

    More than sufficient for the task, but nowhere near overwhelming to it like my martial brethren seemed to expect.

    My spear, the third weapon of my own hammer, danced lightly in my grip as I taunted the beast into charging at me. Like its mundane kin, the best opportunity to kill it was in the midst of its rage. Unlike its demonic kin, its flesh could still be pierced in a meaningful fashion despite the wood ki hardening it beyond mortal means.

    It snorted in irritation at my continued intrusion and threat and turned to face me. This wasn¡¯t like my tribulation, the boar hated me and meant me harm in an unmistakable way. Panic that would have overwhelmed me before my tribulation was pointedly ignored.

    I had a beast to kill. It wishing to return the favor was valid.

    It lowered its head and surged at me, and my every instinct screamed for me to flee. Instead, I hopped back, lined the spear up with its heart, and planted the butt of the spear against the base of a tree.

    There I held the spear for a terrifying eternity. Shaggy, rippling fur consumed my vision. Blood-encrusted tusks trembled with the force of the beast¡¯s charge, hungry for more crimson life. Thundering hoof-falls drowned out the rest of the forest.

    Still I crouched with determination to rise to the challenge, staring my latest attempted death down until I felt the tip of my spear bite flesh past the tangle of fur, at which point I heeded my good sense and threw myself to the side with every muscle that could contribute.

    The CRACK of the tree was the most beautiful sound I could ask to hear, because it meant that I¡¯d gotten out of the way and survived to hear it. I wanted to collapse, but instead turned and rolled to a crouch to watch the massive beast shake off the impact that had set a massive tree toppling.

    ¡°Ah, shit.¡± I let myself lament as I scanned the area for more trees or boulders to constrain its death throes with. Scooping up a pair of rocks as I rolled to a good position to provoke it from, I threw the first to catch its attention with the sting to it¡¯s snout.

    It huffed and turned, laser-focused on me like all of its kin, and I threw the second stone to scuff its eye.

    Would have done more, but warped flesh is like that. I could personally block mortal swords with my bare hands. A stone to the eye wouldn¡¯t do anything. Well, anything but piss it off.

    I didn¡¯t wait for the last fraction of a second this time. Instead I let myself have the full second of its crash¡¯s inevitability to dart to the side, draw my short sword -the second weapon I¡¯d made, and while it was shaking off the impact I put my whole weight behind a carving swing at its left hindleg. Only to barely nick the nearly exposed tendon I was hoping to sever, because warped flesh.

    Two more taunts and ruined trees later, my whittling into its leg finally cut the damn tendon, which combined with my spear having been embedded in its chest through most of its activity, finally caused it to fall to its side, glaring hatefully at me.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry that I¡¯m not mighty enough to end your suffering more quickly, or I would.¡± I bothered to say aloud as I remained at the ready in case it rallied and alert for any of its kin or neighbors.

    I stood watching it until its eyes lost focus and it let out a final shuddering breath. At which point I let myself collapse as senior Sung came into the clearing.

    ¡°No heavenly might.¡± he mused. ¡°Damn fine plan and instincts though. Even if you likely spoiled an organ or two letting your spear stay embedded.¡±

    He strode over and pulled my spear out of the boar¡¯s chest. ¡°You¡¯ve got the groundwork for independent action, once your strength catches up. Which is a good thing, because I don¡¯t see very many allies being able to think alike with you for proper teamwork.¡±

    ¡°I thank you for the feedback, senior Sung. And for your eloquence of example.¡± I spoke around the taste of adrenaline as I accepted my spear back.

    ¡°Noticed that, did you?¡± he chuckled.

    ¡°Brother Sung¡¯s team has earned far too much of my respect for me not to.¡± I grinned back.

    My fellow juniors, entering the clearing to assist in dismantling the boar, seemed not to have caught on that our seniors set me up to clarify expectations. Which didn¡¯t much impact the fact that they, in having to carve the same hide that I fought, realized that I was impressive, but not anywhere near our Bronze-core seniors. Yet.

    Which would help me immensely in controlling the eventual rumor mill complications from my taking a step into a new plane before rising through the known tiers of the common plane.

    I wasn¡¯t sure where the idea that growth was a linear process had come from, or where it got anchored as an assumed fact. But knowing now that it wasn¡¯t, I was just exasperated that I¡¯d fallen for it too.

    ---

    ¡°You schemed to spoil my marriage to Yang Jingji so you can take her for yourself! I challenge you to an honor duel!¡± Sang Lee shouted as soon as he saw me.

    ¡°A wonderful day to you too brother Sang.¡± I responded warmly. ¡°It is good to be back. Now, what¡¯s this about a scheme and a theft?¡±

    Watching uptight nobles nearly implode as I refused to take them the same brand of seriously that they did was never going to get old.

    ¡°You conspired against me with Yang Jingji to get our marriage cancelled so that you can marry her instead! I will have your head for this!¡±

    I smiled and blinked like he was spouting nonsense before looking around the gathering crowd. Seeing one of the Yang family, I addressed them. ¡°Is this true?¡±

    The man, Yang Zhao, grinned at where he expected this to go. ¡°Yes, the marriage agreement was annulled.¡±

    ¡°No, the part about me conspiring with sister Yang. This is the first I¡¯m hearing about this.¡± I paused to savor the whiplash that most of the crowd was suffering. ¡°Don¡¯t get me wrong, I¡¯m deeply flattered that she deigned to conspire with me, but I would have liked to be informed of it. I¡¯d have at least invited her to dinner! I¡¯ve been a most disrespectful co-conspirator in this matter!¡±

    I turned back to Sang. ¡°Do understand that I¡¯ll happily accept your grievance and the duel. But may I have a few days to catch up on my scheme? It would be a shame if I was planning to embarass you but moved to scar you instead due to not knowing my plan.¡±

    In -quite understandable- response, his fist burst into flame as he threw a punch at my face.

    I swayed out of the way, raising my hands in declaration that I didn¡¯t mean to offend. The fact that this had me ¡®accidentally¡¯ hooking his arm with mine was carefully not telegraphed in my body language for him to respond to until I curled my feet up under me as if to kowtow.

    At which point, our arms entangled, both of our faces met the ground. Mine forcefully, but controlled. His, abruptly.

    ¡°I deeply apologize for insinuating that I have a chance against you in our upcoming duel!¡± I called out as if I hadn¡¯t noticed him eating shit next to me. ¡°I humbly offer noon in three days as the schedule for it!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m going to kill you!¡± he shouted, trying to twist under my impromptu pin to strike at me

    ¡°Very amusing maneuver, Guang.¡± Master Smith Ho¡¯s voice surprised me and silenced the budding laughter of the crowd. ¡°Get up.¡±

    I obeyed, snaking my arm out of Sang¡¯s as I did so. He stood, beet red with rage, a moment later.

    ¡°Three days, noon. Is this acceptable, Sang?¡± she asked tersely.

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    ¡°It is.¡±

    ¡°Then your honor duel is scheduled. Make yourselves ready.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Master Ho.¡± we responded in unison.

    ¡°Guang when you¡¯ve settled from your excursion, come speak with me.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Master Ho.¡± I answered without a second thought. I¡¯d expected some ire from her now that the screaming match had had time to settle down.

    She turned and left, and Sang growled ¡°I don¡¯t care what aid she gifts you, I¡¯m going to take your head.¡± before leaving as well.

    Master Ho¡¯s abnormally dark mood had dampened the eagerness of the crowd clamoring to know what the hell was up with my tribulation more than a month ago, so instead of continuing, they started dispersing.

    Brother Yang smirked at me and asked ¡°Would you like me to deliver that dinner invitation then? My cousin might actually accept.¡±

    ¡°If it¡¯s no trouble, that would save me a trip.¡± I smiled gratefully. ¡°If she has no interest in speaking, though, nothing critical will be hindered.¡±

    ¡°Done. And if you live, I¡¯ll want a weapon from you at a fair price, agreed?¡±

    Ah, battle hungry Yang priorities. ¡°Naturally. If I survive the duel, I¡¯ll prioritize your commission for honoring me with it.¡±

    He nodded and headed back in the direction of the Yang compound. Technically speaking, all disciples were equal in the eyes of the sect, filtered through meritocratic reward systems. But each of the noble families had a designated portion of the sect housing that was reserved for their family and servants. Some, like the Ho, had the entire family living there. Others, like the Yang, treated it like a branch house, with the bulk of their family living in a city they ruled over.

    And common-born cultivators were gradually starting to crowd the remaining space, because sect servants are easier to source from commoners, and I did the ascendants thing.

    Yeah, Probably should have noticed the living space issues inherent to adding more cultivators. That¡¯s on me, but heaven can have the credit if it likes.

    The appraisal of the expedition¡¯s haul was completed shortly thereafter, and I gratefully accepted a large pouch of contribution point tokens and a larger pouch of boar meat, which would be served over my next several meals.

    Brothers Kesa and Tun caught up to me on my way to my hut and very hurriedly explained the events of note in my absence, including the quite critical detail that the Ho, Sang, Fung, and Yang families were now all but at each other¡¯s throats over the fallout and Face loss that my suggestion had cascaded out into. And nearly everyone in said families was vocally of the opinion that I had somehow predicted Ho Quan taking the suggestion personally and ¡®defending¡¯ herself by dragging everyone¡¯s Face through the mud.

    Y¡¯know, the level of manipulation that I wish I could pull off on purpose.

    So it was with that lovely hint of a warning that I approached the smithy.

    ¡°Good. Follow me.¡± Master Smith Ho announced curtly as I entered, before striding out of the building and toward a lengthy garden trail.

    I trailed her dutifully for nearly a dozen minutes before her stride slowed from the irritable, quick pace to one that was no more sociable, but at least didn¡¯t feel like she was going to take my head off for breathing wrong.

    ¡°You know that I tried to have you killed several times, right?¡± she finally spoke, incredulity and exasperation swirling in her tone.

    ¡°I did trace six of the attempts on my life back to your machinations, yes.¡± I answered more calmly than I felt.

    ¡°Of course you caught all of them.¡± she scoffed. ¡°And your response to this was, what? I know you never believed for a second I fancy you, so what was that ploy you used me for?¡±

    ¡°I made the suggestion with the sole purpose of distracting you for the weekend, Master Smith. Out of everyone who wanted me dead, I feared you might be the one to conjure a plan to use my indisposed state to achieve that goal. So I concocted an outlandish explanation for your family¡¯s behavior and made it sound just plausible enough to redirect your ire for four days.¡±

    She glared at me, and I was surprised to see pain behind the rage and offense. ¡°Concocted. You place my family so far beneath your sight that you could fabricate such an accusation?¡±

    ¡°Nearly the opposite. The Ho family, and yourself in particular, have such a laudable command over their image that I could conceive of them having such a secret while giving no outward indication of it. I would have never thought to consider invisible embarrassments if I did not think highly enough of your family to assume them capable of such.¡±

    ¡°Of course an aberrant would know of the Hidden Face teachings.¡± she scoffed and resumed walking.

    I followed respectfully, sensing that she wasn¡¯t done.

    ¡°Do you hate the idea of being wed to me?¡± she asked without a single hitch of warning.

    ¡°Only as far as finding myself a poor match for you.¡± I answered carefully. ¡°Every other objection I could raise is made of pragmatic calculation, and I¡¯d set them aside with ease if I thought I could be worthy of such an honor.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t bullshit me Guang. I know better than your toadies how highly you think of yourself.¡±

    I couldn¡¯t help but grin. ¡°And that is no small part of why I place you beyond myself in the matter, Master Smith Ho. It is my understanding that a crucial difference between a husband and a cultivator is that where, as cultivators, placing oneself atop one¡¯s eyes is simply a prerequisite for progress, a wedded couple ought to place each other above themselves. That is something I cannot do, and you, one of few to be able to see why, deserve far better in a husband.¡±

    She scoffed again, some of her normal lightness seeping into her tone. ¡°So you¡¯d make a poor husband for all the reasons my family wanted to make you one?¡±

    ¡°Rather much, yes.¡± I answered easily. ¡°I believe the unintended fallout of my ploy illustrates the truth behind the matter.¡±

    ¡°So what ought I seek in a husband then?¡± She asked with well hidden bile. ¡°If not someone who can grow to surpass me if he devotes himself to it?¡±

    ¡°My thought is that you should seek a smith with a different specialty.¡± I gambled on her mannerism indicating she wanted straight answers. ¡°A man who cannot hope to match your blades, but perhaps excels beyond yourself in armor, or array work. That way you can earnestly respect his mastery in his field, and he can respect you in yours.¡±

    She pondered the idea for a long moment, then said ¡°So your first blade was a warning against pursuing you.¡±

    ¡°As a tertiary note. The primary purpose was to destabilize your hatred of me long enough for me to make my own weapons.¡±

    ¡°By making my family think you were opening courtship?¡±

    ¡°A misstep, that. I thought they knew you better than to make that mistake.¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡± she scoffed into a chuckle. ¡°They would have made an armorsmith of me, with how well they know me.¡±

    ¡°Ah. My condolences.¡±

    ¡°How do you work your steel that way?¡± she asked, referring to such a narrow range of possible matters that it was trivial to figure out which one she meant.

    ¡°A similar way to how I cultivate my herbs. I treat the steel¡¯s qi as a temporary extension of my own, and shape it with a cultivation circulation while I hammer it.¡±

    ¡°Without provoking a deviation in the steel or yourself?¡±

    ¡°Much like Elder Nin¡¯s Earth Moulding technique involves her attuning her outward-edge qi to harmonize with the ki of the soil.¡±

    The Master Smith turned to look at me with mild disbelief. ¡°You derived a smithing technique from a partial comprehension of an Elder¡¯s combat style?¡±

    ¡°And from my obsessive study of myself, yes.¡±

    ¡°Hmm...¡± She visibly evaluated me with a fresh eye. ¡°I suppose that settles it.¡±

    I raised my eyebrow, not trusting my tongue to avoid a swift decapitation.

    ¡°I owe you for getting my Elders off my back, and you are clearly worthy of the family¡¯s resources, even if the Elders now want you dead. We¡¯ll kill two threats at once and I¡¯ll take you as my apprentice.¡±

    I blinked in disorientation as I pieced together the cues of the exchange. ¡°Elder Raka was going to push the matter?¡±

    ¡°Indeed. Your enemies hate you more with every victory you attain. I know this personally.¡±

    ¡°And you count my meddling enough of a boon to share in that hatred?¡±

    ¡°This past month is the first one in my memory that I could sit at a meal at my family¡¯s estate without being asked when I¡¯m going to pick a promising smith as a husband. Replacing that expectation with their ire is very nearly a boon itself.¡± she answered with a wry grin.

    ¡°It is a great relief to count you as an ally, Master Ho.¡± I accepted her decision with a bow. ¡°The most earnest gift I can offer in return in a timely manner is a meal, at your leisure.¡±

    ¡°Ever the performer, eh, Guang?¡± she laughed, without the edge I was used to hearing. ¡°Leave Sang alive in three days and I¡¯ll accept then.¡±

    ¡°Apprentice thanks Master Ho for her confidence.¡± I grinned. ¡°Have you a dish you¡¯d like prepared special?¡±

    ¡°Something bitter. But more importantly, I can¡¯t be seen taking in a shoddily equipped apprentice. Even one that I¡¯d have happily flayed alive last week. Take this.¡± she handed me a jade ring. ¡°I imagine you know its functions well.¡±

    ¡°I have been saving up for one, even.¡± I admitted as I extended my awareness into the storage ring and barely kept my surprise off my face.

    ¡°Good. You¡¯ve carried yourself well for a common-born, but I don¡¯t want to see you wearing such disgraceful cloth when you use my authority as a shield. The Elders will be pulling you into a meeting to inform you of their decision regarding your promotion to Inner Disciple, likely following your victory over Sang. Refuse Raka¡¯s trap afterward, and I¡¯ll handle his rage. And then we¡¯ll focus on getting your steel up to war quality.¡±

    ¡°Certainly, Master Ho. I look forward to your teachings with eagerness.¡±

    ¡°Ensure you keep up. I¡¯ll not tolerate any failing from an ego as excessive as yours.¡±

    ¡°I will not disappoint you, this I can promise.¡±

    ¡°Good. Go prepare for your duel and for afterwards.¡± she waved me off, and I left with perhaps my most honest bow of gratitude.

    After all, she¡¯d deigned to drop the political dance for a change. That meant so much more than even the ring filled with smithing technique scrolls or the demand that I be ready to implement them in only three days.

 Promotion Politics

    Sang Lee stood across from me, glaring at me with malice as our brethren packed in around the arena. After all, if we were going to risk losing a disciple, the sect wanted to make sure as many could learn from the exchange as feasible.

    ¡°Any last words, thief?¡± He shouted as he drew his sword.

    ¡°Nope, but which eyebrow do you want to keep?¡± I laughed, twirling mine. Honestly, he should be thanking me for being used to prevent his marriage.

    Yang Jingji would have eaten him alive. She told him that she was accepting my -nonexistent- courting explicitly to provoke him into getting his ass beat by me. In fact, she¡¯d quite directly requested over dinner that I break him as a cultivator, a noble, and as a man.

    Charming woman. A tad overconfident in my prowess, given the nearly full Tier of raw power gap between myself and Sang, but charming.

    He shifted to a ready stance as I decided to remove his right eyebrow, then Elder Qian, the formal witness for the duel, called out the start signal.

    Deliberately not maintaining a stable foundation in a combat stance has terribly few advantages, objectively speaking. One of them is the ability to fall over at will. Which is amazingly useful when one¡¯s opponent is highly trained in blade thrust attacks.

    Swinging my own blade in a deliberately sloppy leading weight fashion as his now-flaming sword pierced through the air above me, I managed to nick his thigh. Not enough to impact the mechanics of the fight, but as the flaming blade twisted to slice down at me, I could see his anger at my scoring first blood.

    And that anger helped immensely in blinding him to my blade¡¯s swing continuing up and around to intercept his and letting me throw myself back from him before I reached the ground.

    A second advantage of fighting without a working relationship with the ground is that I¡¯ve had to master the art of being ready to defend and strike from the weirdest positions. Such as twisting in midair to dodge the already-pursuing Sang¡¯s thrust and set my legs wrapping around his arm.

    To my immense surprise he failed to get out of my grasp. So I cinched my legs in a deeply uncomfortable position and threw myself backwards to wrench his arm and balance with my whole body weight.

    Impacting the ground popped his shoulder and my ankle out of place and spoiled my aim with my blade, causing me to stab his ass instead of my requested target.

    Then I took a second to evaluate our position, me half-sitting on his ribs with my legs tangled under his dislocated arm, and I looked down at him.

    ¡°Do you have an answer, or are we almost done?¡± I asked darkly as I wrenched my blade free.

    Terror filled his face as he realized that I had the mobility to simply kill him. ¡°Yield! I yield!¡±

    ¡°Good. And as victor, my satisfaction.¡± I held his head down, right side up, and ignored his screaming and swearing as I very carefully carved off the flesh of his right eyebrow.

    ¡°There, now you are leeward faced.¡± I announced my pun that didn¡¯t actually translate at all. ¡°Be smarter and develop a personality.¡±

    Then I slid my legs out from under him and stepped back, eyes on him the entire time it took for the medics to cart him off. Then I rolled my ankle back into place, bowed to Elder Qian, and walked out of the arena hiding the limp that would probably take me days to repair properly. Especially in front of cultivators, presenting the image of overwhelming strength was of vital importance to deterring attempts on one¡¯s life.

    ¡°Well fought, little Guang!¡± Elder Tong¡¯s voice announced him after a few short paces past the exit, and the tension in it betrayed that he very much did not want to have this conversation.

    ¡°Disciple greets Elder Tong.¡± I bowed as though he hadn¡¯t sent assassins after me. A trivial feat, really, given how little I cared about him or his family. ¡°I had a bit of luck, that is all.¡±

    ¡°Be that as it may, you still capitalized on it well.¡± his manipulation technique slid off my thoughts harmlessly. ¡°I¡¯ve been tasked with bringing you to meet with the Elders regarding our decision¡±

    ¡°Am I appropriately dressed, or shall I take a moment to don something with less blood on it?¡± I asked as if I didn¡¯t know the answer. It was just fun to watch his face darken in a scowl for a fraction of a second.

    ¡°Don¡¯t tarry any, I¡¯ll meet you back here.¡±

    ¡°Elder need not worry on that matter.¡± I smiled and performed a quick-swap inventory switch that I¡¯d spent several hours practicing with my new ring. ¡°Disciple would not dare ask for a moment if he required two.¡±

    For all he held no place in my eye beyond a hazard to be mindful of, he recognized the display as something that only the most vain of nobility bothered mastering, and I saw his esteem for me drop several notches. ¡°Very well, this way, then.¡±

    Sweet heavens it was going to be satisfying if I got to kill him with a talisman from my ring using the same fundamental trick.

    Putting my sense of poetry aside, I followed him into the inner territory of the sect and to the Masters pavilion, the seat of sect politics. Glancing around, I was struck by the weight of the fact that one sect could comfortably have nearly twenty Elders. Most sects tore themselves apart if they had more than ten, according to my informants.

    The fact that more than half of them wanted me to just die was an afterthought.

    I bowed, as they expected. Not announcing myself because I had not been acknowledged. Not showing agitation, as though I agreed that this was the natural order.

    ¡°You¡¯ve made something of a name for yourself, Outer Disciple Guang.¡± a Sang Elder levelled an insult by addressing me without formal acknowledgement. ¡°What do you have to say for yourself?¡±

    ¡°Nothing of import, Honorable Elder Sang.¡± I spoke while maintaining my bow, subtly calling out her insult by remaining ¡®unacknowledged¡¯. ¡°The results of my actions speak sufficiently loudly for themselves.¡±

    Indignant shifting of cloth reached my ears, as though the shortsighted Elders couldn¡¯t believe that I would dare stand behind the damage to their positions.

    ¡°You offer no defense for the disarray you set several of the noble families into these past weeks!?¡±

    ¡°I would never dare offer a defense for the actions of Elder Ho Quan. To do so would be tantamount to declaring that I know her will despite not even sharing her name.¡±

    Spiritual pressure filled with malice pressed upon me from several directions, setting my panic instincts into overdrive. Thankfully still within my ability to handle, but confirming that my emotions could grow large enough to match my Identity Core¡¯s limits.

    ¡°Would the honorable sect Elders prefer that I posture and claim to be able to manipulate my seniors?¡± I asked with false calm. ¡°Disciple¡¯s understanding of honoring noble Face may be lacking on this matter, and I beg indulgence. What claim could I make that does not offend in this matter?¡±

    The malice intensified as they registered that by blaming me for their own indiscretions, they¡¯d accidentally claimed me to be their superior.

    My hands were becoming clammy under the pressure and I was starting to sweat when a new voice spoke up. ¡°Sang! Tong! Ho! Have you no need for Face in your old age?¡±

    The pressure lifted with startled abruptness. ¡°I come to inspect a proposed candidate for acceptance as an Inner Disciple for myself, and I find this? So soon after you argued that the sect is blossoming with internal cohesion!¡±

    ¡°Apologies, Sect Master.¡± Sang¡¯s voice answered. ¡°I seem to have forgotten myself after watching my nephew¡¯s defeat.¡±

    What the hell is the Sect Master doing here? All of what he wants of me depends on him not looking like he¡¯s protecting me!

    A sinking dread started to grow in my gut as answers started providing themselves in the back of my mind. All of them boiling down to the conclusion ¡®I¡¯m out of time¡¯.

    ¡°Oh, is this the same Guang that your nephew challenged?¡± The Sect Master asked casually as he moved to his reserved seat.

    ¡°It is indeed.¡± Tong answered. ¡°I escorted him from his match myself.¡±

    ¡°Ah, that makes sense then. A moment¡¯s loss of composure can be excused so shortly after an event such as that.¡± he deliberately gave Sang a measure of Face while conspicuously leaving Ho and Tong offended. ¡°Say, Disciple Guang. Why scar young Sang¡¯s face so grievously?¡±

    ¡°Disciple greets Sect Master.¡± I answered formality first, before continuing ¡°I had an honor duel levelled at me for actions that, to my understanding, were no less than four parties removed from a thoughtless comment of mine. It seemed appropriate, if I am to be held accountable for actions so far removed from my power, to deter frivolous thoughts of demanding duels with a living example of the consequences.¡±

    ¡°Hmm. That sounds prudent to me.¡± he invited the Elders to voice their thoughts on the matter with a pause.

    ¡°It may be my closeness to the matter speaking.¡± Elder Sang opened. ¡°But when a ¡®thoughtless comment¡¯ sets house against house and ruins multiple marriage arrangements, seeking to avoid the consequences of one¡¯s words stinks of cowardice to me, not prudence.¡±

    ¡°If it were the careless words that created the division, I would agree.¡± another Elder answered. ¡°But Guang does have a point that the divisiveness began after someone else¡¯s actions overstepped prudence. Holding him accountable for a particularly poor reaction to his words seems to me to be a way of encouraging ourselves to be reckless instead of cultivating our own prudence.¡±

    ¡°Have you watched this man¡¯s behavior?¡± Sang asked in exasperation. ¡°He manipulates reactions for causes from the grandiose to the trivial. Your own family is quibbling with your Founder¡¯s wisdom because he penned a forty page manual twenty years ago! He probably spent the past two decades manipulating the Ho family through Ho Yin so that they would respond poorly!¡±

    ¡°Even if I believed him capable of that, it remains true that better composure on the Ho¡¯s part would have prevented all of your complaint, and your own family being level-headed at the outset would have spared you much of your loss of Face this past month.¡±

    I listened to the Elders bicker and felt the gnawing pit in my gut grow as I realized how badly I¡¯d misjudged the hidden politics embedded in their relations to each other. These weren¡¯t ¡®xianxia dipshits¡¯ and ¡®cultivators who understood teamwork.¡¯

    The ones trying to defend me were literally flouting the one major cohesiveness principle that Face culture understood -throwing the upstart under the bus to calm things down. And as near as I could figure, they were doing it because they expected me to return the favor if they were ever in the wrong in someone else¡¯s eye, standing permitting.

    I was absolutely out of time to figure out how to ditch the sect.

    ¡°As fascinating as it is to dissect the events of the past month, I propose that we return to the matter at hand.¡± a silken voice undercut the rising tension, thankfully giving Sect Elder Ho Kiang the last word, not one of my ¡®defenders¡¯. ¡°Personally, I find his foresight in deterring others from wasting their lives more pertinent than whether he deserves the blame for the recent events.¡±

    Damn it. Even with the backhanded delivery, that¡¯ll still antagonize them more.

    ¡°Though I disagree with Elder Raka that the matter of blame is immaterial, I do feel we ought to sort the matter separately.¡± Someone else added. ¡°Unless we¡¯d like to ask Guang to weigh in on the matter of his own punishment?¡±

    Derisive laughter indicated that the matter was agreed, and the Sect Master nodded. ¡°Very well. What brought young Guang into consideration in the first place?¡±

    ¡°In addition to the actions confirmed to be deliberate that were mentioned a few moments ago, the fact that he broke through to the Qi Condensation stage just seven weeks ago.¡± Tong supplied. He was doing a marvelous job of acting like he was a neutral party, despite having been caught menacing me.

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    The Sect Master raised an eyebrow, deliberately looked me up and down, and looked back to Tong. ¡°I see. And in those seven weeks, he¡¯s formed a Soul Core?¡±

    ¡°During the second, yes. While out on a beast subjugation.¡±

    ¡°Hmm..¡±

    As he lapsed into considering silence, I had to wonder who he thought he was fooling, even with every appearance being that he was only just hearing about me for the first time, I wasn¡¯t fooled, and I couldn¡¯t imagine any of the Elders were either.

    ¡°What are the marks against him, then?¡±

    ¡°Flagrant disregard for traditions of the sect, refusal to put his betters in his Eye, conspiracy to destabilize the foundations of the noble houses, and the incitement of former servants to continue his efforts.¡± Raka¡¯s calm, smooth voice answered before someone else could.

    ¡°Indeed? What have you to say about these matters, Guang?¡±

    I put aside the momentarily useless schemes to escape the sect and put on an easy smile. ¡°Each tradition I hold disdain for is one that causes weakness in the sect, whether directly or through sabotaging the growth of disciples and masters alike. The foundations that I¡¯m accused of destabilizing are simply suffering a bit of adjustment difficulty. Two generations of considering the matter will reveal that my actions are instead to strengthen them the same way those same actions have strengthened the sect.¡±

    If any of the Elders had thought to weaponize affront, I¡¯d be dead on my feet as even the Sect Master balked that I¡¯d answer so bluntly.

    ¡°And of course I exhort my peers to consider at all times whether their behavior will weaken or strengthen the sect. If they think only of their own strength and Face, they shall create division and lead the sect to ruin.¡±

    I could almost hear echoes of flesh stinging flesh in the indignant silence after my retort. All of my enemies in the room knew I¡¯d just insulted them more elegantly than they could forgive, and by the looks on their faces, several of my ¡®allies¡¯ had caught that they were included.

    And the insult was deliberately phrased in such a way that to announce their offense would be tantamount to admitting I¡¯m right.

    The silence extended for unticked seconds and I stood and bore it with the same smile that I¡¯d wear listening to lectures or eating a meal with. Giving them all the impression that I thought nothing amiss of declaring obsessive self-fixation to be an obvious defect in their worldview.

    ¡°Well,¡± the Sect Master spoke gingerly, ¡°That is certainly a more earnest position than most would take.¡±

    I inclined my head as though it weren¡¯t obvious to me how many more assassins I¡¯d be fending off, nor how much more dedicated the efforts would be.

    ¡°Do you expect to receive the promotion to Inner Disciple, with that... indelicate position?¡±

    ¡°My only expectation is that the Honorable Elders who have served the sect well for these past centuries will continue to act in the best interests of the sect.¡± I answered calmly, with a bow of performative respect. ¡°It is not my position to expect upon the details of those actions.¡±

    The only thing I could see keeping my head attached to my shoulders was the fact that nobody was ready for the schism war to start right now by removing it, which is a far less worrisome position than it sounds like.

    After all, for all that young masters were prone to flying off whatever handle they happened to spot, old masters survived to get old by having their ducks in order before indulging in such a takeoff.

    Which meant that precisely none of the Elders would risk raising a blade where the rest could see. Poetically making here, surrounded by old monsters that I couldn¡¯t hope to resist who wanted to water their gardens with my blood, one of the safest places I¡¯d been in the past year.

    ¡°Well.¡± the Sect Master finally broke the silence after more than a minute. ¡°I¡¯m satisfied regarding his devotion to the sect, at least.¡±

    ¡°Indeed.¡± Tong echoed, ¡°His common-born tact leaves something to be desired, but that can be accounted for with appropriate tutelage. So I¡¯m satisfied that he¡¯ll not mar our reputation overmuch.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m satisfied at his strength and his composure.¡± Elder Yang Shisu weighed in for the first time in the discussion. ¡°Even if his methods in combat are unsightly, he wields them expertly for one so young.¡±

    I almost missed the Ho Elder shooting the Yang Elder a complicated look before he smirked. ¡°Unsightly or no, his victories do speak for themselves, I agree.¡±

    Following the realization expressions around the council, I groaned internally. Of course the Ho trying to regain some Face for his family would assume the Yang were using me to free them from a disadvantageous marriage.

    In fairness, it made more sense than the truth, but still, Yang Jingji was abundantly clear with me that we were not even loosely allied.

    Then again, maybe ¡®useful tool¡¯ meant more to the Yang than to others. It was an oddly specific thing to call one¡¯s co-conspirator.

    Noncommital sounds of approval and frustration emanated from most of the rest of the assembled Elders, until finally the Sect Master spoke up. ¡°Then it seems to be settled. Guang is now accepted as an Inner Disciple. Appoint someone to get him settled and to teach him manners that won¡¯t get his head torn off in less dignified company. Guang, you are dismissed.¡±

    I bowed respectfully and started to step backwards when Raka¡¯s voice interrupted. ¡°A moment, before you go, young Guang.¡±

    I chose to commit the technical faux pas of breaking my bow to the Sect Master to turn and respectfully address him ¡°Of course, Honored Elder.¡±

    ¡°During our preliminary discussions, it was brought to my attention that you have a respectable talent for Talisman Arts. I¡¯ve been looking for a suitable apprentice for my own techniques, and I can teach you proper manners like few others in the sect could. What are your thoughts on this?¡±

    I grinned inwardly as tendrils of subtle power slid off my thoughts without purchase. I truly owed Tong a genuine gratitude over provoking my paranoia and causing me to anneal my new mind with the foundation of defense from these sorts of attacks.

    ¡°I am deeply honored to receive such a lofty consideration, Honored Elder. It is more than I dare claim to have earned with my meager skill. I deeply regret that I cannot accept an apprenticeship, on account of already being apprenticed to Master Smith Ho Yin.¡±

    ¡°What!?¡± Ho Kiang shouted. ¡°She wouldn¡¯t dare!¡±

    ¡°While I understand your surprise, Elder Ho,¡± I spoke calmly. ¡°I politely beseech you to not malign my Master thusly.¡±

    I knew, deep in my heart, that my love for seeing a noble almost physically choke on being told off about their manners was going to get me killed or worse some day. But sweet heavens was it going to be worth it the entire way to that grave.

    Raka chose to cut off any further amusement I might provoke, saying ¡°I see. A pity, then, but I trust you have good reason for your choices. That was all.¡±

    I bowed and stepped out of the chamber. Turning around, I saw Master Smith Ho standing nonchalantly nearby.

    ¡°Congratulations on your promotion, Guang.¡± she smirked. ¡°Now it¡¯s time to get to work.¡±

    ¡°Gladly, Master.¡± I smiled easily and followed her to the smithy.

    Other than the odd calmness of the replacement of her usual antagonizing demeanor with a redoubling of her exacting expectations, the afternoon of laboring was fairly uneventful. She did, in fact, expect me to have an unreasonable mastery of the techniques I was physically capable of using from her gift, and thanks to the same overstudy advantage I¡¯d already demonstrated with my first blade, I was able to elicit her approving scowl of irritation despite her newfound tolerance for me.

    Seven hours of deliciously taxing labor after insulting the sect Elders, she allowed me to leave with a very patient senior brother Hulang to move my belongings from my outer hills hut to a vacant mountain top in the intensely ki-rich inner sect territory. Some light probing confirmed that I was among an incredibly small number of non-noble individuals to ever get accepted as an Inner disciple, and almost alone in being accepted without the explicit backing of an Elder.

    Hulang himself admitted to feeling that I should have been executed instead of promoted, but chose to believe that the Elders knew what they were doing and that my life in the inner sect would be brutal and short. Not least of which, on account of the higher expectations he was almost eager to tell me of.

    Where outer disciples were largely left to their own devices regarding how and how much they would contribute to the sect, with the implicit threat of being devoured by their peers if they slacked off, inner disciples were expected to reliably contribute more than all but the most dedicated outer disciples, and for those contributions to align with demands of the sect, usually as decided by one¡¯s Elder backing.

    Not having a given Elder to tell me what I was expected to contribute, Hulang looked forward to me falling behind and eliciting censure, even moreso when I inevitably faced another Inner disciple and was laid up long enough for it to be inexcusable.

    I thanked him for the dutiful warning, as is my habit, and then set about organizing my belongings in the small house I was given to dwell in.

    Well, small by sect standards. It was larger than my childhood house by at least twice again. In fact, it was almost as large as a small American house, despite feeling larger with it being empty.

    I was drinking in the subtle ¡®homey¡¯ essence of the place to more easily allow my cultivation to account for it and to assist in attuning it to myself when master Ho knocked at the door.

    ¡°Ah, Master Ho. Welcome, the tea is almost ready.¡± I greeted her aggravated visage calmly.

    She looked for a moment like she would strike me down before sighing and stepping inside. ¡°I trust we can doff the formalities, then?¡±

    ¡°Certainly.¡± I smiled. ¡°My obfuscation technique may be simple, but I¡¯ve yet to find someone who can hear through it.¡±

    ¡°Knowing I might still be your enemy?¡±

    ¡°Fearing to trust someone just because they¡¯ve tried, however passionately, to kill me would leave me a sad, shortlived wreck of a man.¡± I chuckled. ¡°Honestly, with my life, that¡¯s the part that insinuated interest more than anything.¡±

    Her humorless flat glare fell on me with a weight. ¡°Do not even joke about that or I¡¯ll charge you with the cultivation arts Raka gave me for you.¡±

    ¡°That was in poor taste, I admit.¡± I accepted her rebuke. ¡°But no, I have no irrational fear of you. Only that which your strength earns deliberately.¡±

    ¡°Good.¡± she took a deep, steadying breath. ¡°I have a delicate issue I require help with, and you, being a professional blasphemer, are the best lead I¡¯ve got.¡±

    My mental alarms all went off like crazy, and I started sorting them out to deactivate them appropriately as I poured the tea. ¡°I¡¯ll gladly lend what aid I reasonably can, With complete secrecy, of course.¡±

    Another long minute passed as she gathered herself. ¡°I know what my bottleneck is. I¡¯ve known since I attained Silver Core. But I know that solving it would cripple me. Not to mention the disgrace upon the family and the sect that I¡¯d become afterward.¡±

    I waited patiently for her to expound on that, very much hoping that it was going to be a more complex answer than the one she almost obviously feared.

    ¡°I¡¯m possessed of a rare physiology.¡± she finally continued. ¡°Not something heaven defying or even all that impressive. My father was elated anyway and contracted a sealmaster to embed a protection into my flesh, to guard me against some opportunistic rival family exploiting its traits.

    ¡°The seal is my bottleneck. It was never meant to stay attached this long, and its structure is limiting my ability to refine Qi. I can¡¯t increase the density any further than I¡¯m stuck at without the seal mistaking it as a foreign attack and paralyzing me.¡±

    I nodded that I was following. ¡°The seal¡¯s release mechanism is marriage, then?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡± she sneered at her own answer. ¡°And I can¡¯t stand the idea.¡±

    ¡°I presume the matter fell on deaf ears when you presented it to your father?¡± The man had always struck me as particularly narrow-minded, even for a cultivator.

    ¡°He and the rest of the family insist that I¡¯m exaggerating.¡±

    I nodded in sympathy. ¡°Disassembling the seal is risky, and would be spitting in your family¡¯s Face. Marrying someone, no matter the compatibility, would be a betrayal of yourself. And leaving it unresolved will limit your growth and cause an early death.¡±

    ¡°Exactly.¡± she slumped. ¡°You¡¯re the first insufferable bastard to show any sort of understanding.¡±

    I grinned at the compliment and stood to retrieve the main course of the dinner, Bitter Melon Salad. ¡°How much do you know about the seal?¡±

    ¡°As much as I can without understanding a word of it. The sealmasters I spoke with all assure me that there¡¯s no safe way to trip it up, on account of it being a ¡®robust¡¯ mechanism.¡±

    ¡°How complete does the designated husband have to be?¡± I asked after a moment of consideration.

    Her mouth hung open with a bite waiting as she stared at me. ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°If the key to the seal is a binding marriage, that means part of the binding runs through the husband. No cultivator worthy of you would tolerate a full-soul weave, as that has too many exploitation options, so your father wouldn¡¯t have been stupid enough to commission one that required it. So which parts of the soul need to be present for the marriage that deactivates the seal?¡±

    ¡°Middle dantian. Father was feeling sentimental, and wanted my eventual husband to have to genuinely feel for me.¡±

    ¡°Then the answer is simple, no? You just need to form a second heart dantian, and bind yourself to yourself.¡±

    ¡°What? No, first, making a new dantian?¡±

    ¡°Well yes. I suppose you could just extract one from an enemy in the upcoming war and use that, but that would require a number of demonic techniques to even attempt. But given that the dantian are energy reserves and interface points, it would be far more efficient to craft a second one, say, in the null resonance phase between the sternum and the lungs for security. Weave secondary meridians so that it fills with your own qi and emotional resonances. Externalize it for a simple, private ceremony, and then either incorporate it as a permanent fixture or gradually merge it with your natural one if that makes more sense for your path.¡±

    Her bafflement narrowed to a scowl, though not one aimed wholly at me. ¡°You propose that I attempt a self-alteration that even the Silver Spire fools would declare impossible.¡±

    ¡°Indeed. Far be it from me to declare them incompetent buffoons, but I am confident that you¡¯ve mastered the fine control of your qi required for it. I¡¯ve seen your steel work.¡±

    ¡°Working steel and working one¡¯s own qi are wholly different matters, Guang.¡±

    ¡°Are they? I hadn¡¯t noticed.¡± I ventured a flippant grin.

    Her glare narrowed in calculation. ¡°Your steel shaping. You extend your sense of self into the steel so that you can use your own cultivation arts on it. And you account for the differences by moulding your out-facing edge to match the steel.¡± Her eyes widened as she reached the conclusion that she needed.

    ¡°Thank you, Guang. That insight will serve me well.¡±

    ¡°Apprentice is overjoyed to be of service, Master Ho.¡±

    The salad tasted much better as the conversation turned to the more mundane concerns of the planned war with Red Fist and the unplanned schism war, and our role in outfitting the Yellow Fang for both.

 Crafting and Selling

    ¡°I¡¯d started to suspect you of delaying for poor reasons.¡± Yang Zhao grinned as he tested the balance of his new axe. ¡°I am glad to discover myself wrong in that.¡±

    ¡°With how long I was left preoccupied, I cannot fault brother Yang for honest doubt.¡± It had truly been far longer than courtesy demanded, between the numerous assassination attempts, Master Ho¡¯s refreshingly unreasonable training schedule, and keeping apprised and ahead of the demands upon my contributions to the sect. ¡°I trust it suits your needs?¡±

    ¡°And then some!¡± he grinned. ¡°It resonates with my Lightning qi almost flawlessly. You¡¯ve outdone yourself!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m glad to hear it. The satisfaction of a Yang is something of a badge of honor for weaponsmiths.¡±

    ¡°Rightly so.¡± He nodded without a whit of humility. ¡°One you¡¯ve earned today. I expect many of our juniors will be coming to you after my next fight.¡±

    ¡°It would be my pleasure and honor to provide arms for the Yang. Especially with our upcoming conflicts.¡±

    ¡°I know!¡± His eyes ignited with battle lust. ¡°I cannot thank the Sect Master enough for concluding that now is the time for war. I can already taste my breakthroughs.¡±

    I smiled warmly at his enthusiasm. ¡°I shall cheer for brother Yang¡¯s victories and growth. Whether I am positioned near your side or at the forge.¡±

    His eyes locked on me and lit up with an idea. ¡°Right! You might be thrown to the frontline by the offended Elders! Deployments allowing, stay by my side and I¡¯ll gladly partake of your enemies!¡±

    My heart actually skipped a beat at how earnest he was. ¡°Deployments allowing, it would be my pleasure.¡±

    ¡°Actually, now that I¡¯m thinking of it, I¡¯ll share the idea with our Elders too. Having a comrade who attracts enemies like flies to shit would be great fun no matter who is placed near you.¡±

    ¡°Brother Yang is too kind!¡± I let myself laugh. ¡°Even sparring with your kin has deterred enough of the foes that I¡¯ve been quite comfortable.¡±

    ¡°Bah! You should have been born a Yang! You¡¯ve the battle-lust for it!¡± he asserted with a thump of his axe on the table. ¡°I cannot call your price fair. How much is this weapon truly worth?¡±

    I blinked. ¡°I appreciate your honesty, brother Yang. I had set the price before benefitting from Master Ho¡¯s teachings. I have seen similar weapons charging as high as 30000 spirit stones, though I count that as inflated, myself.¡±

    ¡°Thirty Thousand it is!¡± he nodded and pulled out a pouch. ¡°I¡¯ll not have my blade sullied by unwarranted humility.¡±

    I accepted his reasoning graciously. The Yang were better than most, but nobility was reliably touchy about their money sense. He left, smug and satisfied with his axe proudly resting on his shoulder like he was begging someone to give him an excuse to use it.

    Like the Yang tend to.

    ¡°You could have gouged him for sixty easily.¡± Quan Mo, a fellow smith chimed in after a moment.

    ¡°Probably.¡± I nodded. ¡°But I could not have done so honestly.¡±

    ¡°Sure you could have. You¡¯re apprenticed to a Ho. That by itself makes your weapons more valuable.¡±

    I shook my head. ¡°I¡¯m apprenticed to a Ho, not a pompous name-carried expert. Were my master to catch me multiplying the price with just her name, I¡¯d receive a beating for every excess stone I charge.¡±

    ¡°And you think you won¡¯t receive them for undervaluing her name?¡±

    ¡°What apprentice would dare claim to know all of their master¡¯s skills in just a hand and a half of months?¡± I retorted with a laugh. ¡°Even I lack the hubris to say my work is worthy of her name as yet.¡±

    His face contorted with confusion before he shook his head and continued filing his material use. As Sect Smiths, even beginners, we had access to a wide range of materials to ensure we could advance our skills and equip the sect meaningfully. But because such an open resource pool could invite recklessness, we had to record and report every piece of material that we did not provide ourselves, so that the Master Smiths and Elders knew who to flog if supplies started running short.

    Not that we¡¯d had any problems with that lately. At Master Ho¡¯s direction I¡¯d been illustrating the nuances of my attunement arts for everyone else to try copying, which nicely solved most difficulties that other smiths were having with making their materials cooperate.

    It also gave her a wonderful cover for mastering the back end of the arts herself so she could get working on marrying herself. Something that had not once passed my lips since that first dinner because I rather liked my head attached to my neck.

    It had been remarked upon many times that our relationship looked less like a master and apprentice arrangement, and more like she was abusing her position to lay impossible demands on me at every turn. Which neither of us denied because except for me being me, that was exactly what it was.

    Because I was me, however, I was able to use that wonderful excuse of a lesson plan to grow at a rate that terrified my detractors. Even before my as-yet unimpeded walk upwards in the raw power ranks that I was deliberately taking slow so I could make sure I was in full control of my might at every step, my mastery at the forge was such that it had only been eight months and I was already producing at Adept quality.

    Something that often took upwards of a decade for people who didn¡¯t have the ability to define themselves as a blacksmith.

    I¡¯d made practical use of my Identity Core¡¯s flexibility, and had five foundation-identities that I found trivial to strengthen apace of one another. Wancan - Dinners, Duanzhao - Forge, Moshui - Ink, Fei Jiao - Flying Foot, and Nongmin - Farmer.

    The last one also doubled as ¡®troll¡¯ or ¡®jackass¡¯ because as a cultivator, calling myself a farmer with the same word used to refer to peasants pissed everyone off.

    Not that I made a point of using my empowered epithets in common interactions. Not only would that be needlessly pompous, I¡¯d explained -at length- the risks presented by my path and all the Elders agreed that it was not a teaching that should be shared with anyone weaker than the Divine Core realm. Above that strength, they argued that cultivators ought to be able to survive the Earth¡¯s rage without restrictions from Heaven.

    The fact that they -one and all- believed that I was special in not having heaven hate me was mildly frustrating. But given that they were running a seedbed of poisonous teachings, I supposed it to be fair.

    The schism war was simmering to obviousness, much to my irritation. It was well understood that weakening our neighboring sects was important before turning on each other so, other than a barely-hidden bounty on my head, the ordeal was still at the ¡®making allegiances and planning betrayals¡¯ stage. Which included a lot of people joining me for dinner. Either to try to poison me or to actually negotiate.

    Pro-tip when trying to poison a cultivator. Make sure that their qi-control can¡¯t neutralize your qi poison. It works so much better than watching him drain the goblet like Rasputin and smile at you.

    Not that I¡¯m really complaining. I rather like not dying. All available data says there¡¯s better food this side of that transition. And some of the subtler poisons are wonderful fine control training aids on top of being able to weave the conceptual art ¡®cannot be poisoned at dinner¡¯ into my Wancan foundation. It¡¯d take a long while to anchor properly, but with how easily I make enemies, it¡¯s bound to pay off wonderfully. Even more so after it starts working into the ¡®domain¡¯ of my nature as Wancan, where it¡¯d start protecting others as well.

    Incidentally, having taken note of how Tong Kai wove himself into his Flowing Dragon Realm technique, I was well on my way to replicating the effects. Much to the aggravation of the Tong family and the martial brothers who concocted insults so that they could declare honor duels against me. It wasn¡¯t complete yet -Tong Kai¡¯s hadn¡¯t been either, to my estimation- but even being able to shift ever so slightly without actually moving was an amazing advantage to add to my already erratic battle style, and I was never lacking for practice.

    I finished my own work for the day, mostly trivial resource production after the exertion of finishing Yang Zhao¡¯s axe, and started walking back to my house. The Elders who were openly trying to force me into censure had managed to argue my contributions into excessive amounts, but had failed to argue that I should be charged with things I was not known to be proficient in. So I often spent entire afternoons refining enough qi-infused metals to keep a dozen brother smiths working for a week.

    After the second time that my tamper-evident seal had been broken and the metals replaced with poor quality stuff, I¡¯d started adding a ¡®tag¡¯ feature to the seal and the ingots, and Brother Kong was flogged mercilessly when he was caught with my metal stashed in his house. Nobody had yet returned to that attempt at pulling me down.

    Senior Go personally appraised all of my herbs and Intent scrolls, so there had never been an opportunity for anyone to tamper with them.

    No, rather, nobody thought their life was worth tampering with Old Go¡¯s storehouse. He was apparently infamous for providing wounds that only the most senior medics could treat properly.

    Truly an inspiration to us all.

    My talismans were evaluated by Elder Raka, to his amusement by all appearances. Initially, one of the other talisman experts had been in charge of it, as the armory was kept separate from Old Go¡¯s storehouse for reasons hilariously outdated.

    The talisman expert had tried on several occasions to declare my contributed ones to be substandard, and had failed to account for my having energetically ¡®signed¡¯ each of mine. Which was understandable to a degree. Most talisman creators allowed for their handwriting, word choice, and preferred meter to be the proof of authorship, as even superficially replicating even the handwriting style of a cultivator was profoundly difficult. So nobody had to bother with deliberate signatures.

    Y¡¯know. Nobody who trusted people to leave their work and reputation alone.

    After the lesser talisman expert was found to be not only willing to risk their Face, but inept enough to get caught doing so, Raka very eloquently verbally ripped the other man¡¯s ass open wide enough to make a hat and shoes of it and volunteered to handle the matter himself.

    Truth be told, Raka was a wonderfully pleasant man to interact with. His criticisms were all very well reasoned, based on clearly understood principles, and delivered in a polite tone regardless of how emphatic the rebuke was.

    Frankly, in company with any decorum, he wouldn¡¯t need the insidious speech techniques that he lined his tongue with. Except for his position being that I was a threat to what he valued of the sect, we got along rather well.

    He and Tong had invited me for tea several times, and while they rather emphatically wished for me to sacrifice myself for the stability of the sect now that they recognized that I couldn¡¯t be manipulated with their arts, I had started to count them as people instead of merely obstacles. And a person wanting me dead was nothing to write home about.

    ¡°Hello senior Ling!¡± I called out to a tree that had wisps of killing intent and a much more telling frustration about it. I couldn¡¯t pick out her body or her Shen - the innate radiance of one¡¯s qi- but overexposure to ambushes whenever I stepped past the sect boundary had helped me hone the natural sense for killing intent that most cultivators eventually developed. And while the Ling family arts did a wonderful job of concealing their shen and muting their emotions, their minds still radiated in the same way that a mortal¡¯s would.

    Not nearly enough to go on in a fight, but picking out a frustrated woman¡¯s fuming as she stalked me looking for weaknesses was within my ability.

    And according to the flare of said frustration, I was accurate enough to be smug about.

    The Ling were a bit of a hassle. Not only were they professional assassins, which meant that my best training preparation against them was how used to taking and returning blows I was -not an ideal method at all- but they also moved in squads, secure in the surety of each others¡¯ stealth arts that they could gang up on me without worry about attracting attention as long as they were each within a tier of me.

    They¡¯d actually nearly managed to do me in twice. With only the erratic motion of my knockoff Flowing Dragon Realm allowing my vitals to avoid their killing strikes long enough for me to flee to somewhere they¡¯d face Face damage to finish me off, and my extensive familiarity with the medic arts allowing me to field-patch myself.

    Senior Sung, having been involved in my second near-death, explicitly forbade me from leaving the sect grounds without informing him. He¡¯d tried to insist on me using the good sense of staying under the Sect Master¡¯s aegis by just not leaving at all, but I pointed out that letting would-be assassins practice on me within the gap in the protections would maintain the peace longer than acting like I was afraid of the inevitable war. And the longer the peace lasts, the more my allies will outpace my enemies.

    I did not bother stating that the longer the peace lasts, the longer I have to figure out how to flee before the rules and Face traps I¡¯m hiding behind expire and I¡¯m getting my bones ripped out by an Elder.

    And that outpacing my enemies was finally becoming visible in full. Several of my noble-born followers were having great success in their climb through to Soul Core, and the common-born horde behind me was starting to enter the Qi Condensation tier.

    To the immense relief of our enemies, they did not then jump straight through to Soul Core like I did, but they were making visible progress in only the eight months they¡¯d had which caused our enemies to worry greatly.

    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    Contrary to my initial plans, this worry was translating to action against me specifically instead of being spread out amongst the group. From what the house servants and other spies I had could glean, the reasoning was of two parts. The first part was that if I was constantly either fighting for my life or recovering or being kept busy with excessive demands on my contributions, that I¡¯d have less time to guide my friends and followers. With a corollary note that if they failed to kill me first, I could just create more commoner ascendants at will.

    The second, and far larger, part of the reasoning was that I had insulted all of them so many times and gotten away with it that it was actively hindering their cultivation.

    Yeah, one of the critical flaws in Face-defined identity modeling for cultivators is that, as a cultivator, one has to cultivate the sense of innate superiority that they are qualified to speak to Heaven itself and tell it to get bent.

    I was no exception despite taking a more civil tone. I would not have been able to sit across from Heaven¡¯s authority and casually tell it that I wasn¡¯t taking its shit if I didn¡¯t believe, deep in my essence, that I outranked it.

    Face culture seems at a glance to be an embodiment of this mentality. ¡®You dare look at me wrong, I have the authority to destroy your bloodline¡¯ and all that. But it¡¯s not. And it can¡¯t be. For the simple reason that Heaven has no motivation to give cultivators Face. Much the same way that nobility had no motivation to give disobedient servants Face.

    There, I was an exception. And I suspected that several of my followers would be afforded at least a little Face simply for trying. Likely not much, but a little Face from Heaven is still more than most can claim to receive.

    But even more than Heaven having no reason to do anything other than just force the new batch of mandates upon a cultivator to make them fit in the liminal space of being only partially immortal, Face culture allowed an insidious poison to infect a cultivator.

    Because if one defined oneself based on Face, then even a small child of no might could fail to See the Face, and that would be a seed of doubt in the cultivator¡¯s soul. After all, if a measly mortal child could fail to recognize your greatness, how could you expect a fellow cultivator to see it? Or the world itself? The Earth? Heaven?

    The short of it: Face culture only rewards cultivators who are surrounded only by toadies and corpses.

    So with me using Face culture as a shield while openly declaring the Elders as foolish children in my Eye, I¡¯ve poisoned all of their cultivations with the truth that they have no authority that the world could acknowledge.

    The fact that my cultivation was unimpeded by their own disdain appeared -to their eyes- as proof that the world bowed before me because it saw my Face where their eyes were blind. Which was driving them to unpredictable insanity in good order.

    Part of this insanity, to my great amusement, manifested as trying to plant spies in my ¡®inner circle¡¯. Something that everyone who could be mistaken as a part of my inner circle found hilarious.

    Brother Tun and Sister Fan had been taking pity on the poor would-be spies and explaining that I was my inner circle and that they, some of my favorite consultants for my more intricate plans, didn¡¯t even know how many plans I was using them for at any given time.

    Brother Kesa and most of the others, meanwhile, took after me in messing with the spies while sharing helpful insights. They found it great fun, and checked in with me to make sure I knew what nonsense they were feeding the Elders through the spies.

    The excavation to the ¡®Grand Ink Temple¡¯ that Sister Fu concocted was an amazing shitshow, as she also leaked the rumor to Red Fist on my suggestion.

    Nobody died on either side, but everyone was suitably embarrassed by the ordeal of trying to ¡®cat dance¡¯ to open the temple I draw my heavenly authority from.

    She¡¯d been fending off challengers over that with enough aplomb that some of the juniors were calling her the Singing Beauty now that she¡¯d finished the Body Refinement process.

    I blinked as I reached line of sight to my house and one of my servants was waiting for me at the door. I wasn¡¯t expecting any guests to be waiting for me today.

    ¡°Honored Immortal.¡± he bowed at my approach. ¡°Honorable Elder Lee has brought a guest to meet with you.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Shi. How have they taken hospitality?¡±

    ¡°Elder Lee has taken the delay well, as he usually does. His friend has grown moderately restless in the quarter hour they have waited.¡±

    ¡°Tea is ready, I presume?¡±

    ¡°Indeed. As well as a light meal.¡±

    I nodded and quick-changed to formal robes instead of my work ones as I steered myself to the meeting gazebo instead of my writing quarters. Having the trio of mortals attending the menial upkeep of the house had been the only way I had any leeway in my schedule, and they were benefiting from my indulgence as well.

    ¡°Disciple has been discourteous in being held up.¡± I announced myself to my guests with a bow. ¡°Elder Lee, it is a great honor to be surprised by your visit.¡±

    He waved the formality off with a chuckle. ¡°I know well how full your schedule is, Guang. You need no explanation to me.¡±

    I nodded my gratitude before turning to the stranger. ¡°And how should I call you, honored guest?¡±

    ¡°You may call me Kang.¡± he answered with a sneer. ¡°From how Lee speaks of you, I suppose I should be grateful you weren¡¯t carried out here on a stretcher.¡±

    ¡°Junior has been trying to break himself of the habit of having his bones broken, but the concern remains valid in large part, yes.¡± I answered the backhanded comment. ¡°May I offer seniors a cup of tea?¡±

    ¡°Lee insists it would be worth my time, even.¡± Kang¡¯s lips twitched slightly. Likely at how accurately Lee would have probably described my manners.

    My attending servant provided the tea set and leaves before making himself scarce, and I set about the fine arts of an informal tea meeting. Not to be mistaken for a formal tea meeting or a proper tea ceremony. Nor for the basic hospitality of offering a guest a refreshment.

    After all, Lee had waved off formality, but Kang was very clearly not here frivolously.

    ¡°You have servants but set the tea yourself?¡± Kang sneered an honest sounding question.

    ¡°I am in the process of teaching them the art of it, but they are not yet skilled enough to offer their hand to distinguished company.¡± I answered easily. ¡°And while they are but mortal servants, I find it wasteful to sacrifice the time I¡¯ve spent teaching should they offend with a slip.¡±

    ¡°And you find yourself in the Fang?¡± he scoffed as he accepted his cup. ¡°I¡¯d thought you were all battle fiends like the Yang.¡±

    I silenced my panic before it could reach my face and smiled easily as I sat. ¡°One can enjoy the taste of fist and the taste of tea without conflict, I¡¯ve found.¡±

    A slight lift of his eyebrow told me that it was not a novel thought to him, but also not one that he was expecting to find at this meeting.

    We each took a sip of the tea while allowing our thoughts to sort. For me, that was a process of trying to figure out which other sect Kang was from and why the fuck Lee would invite a foreigner to meet with me specifically.

    ¡°Ah!¡± Kang broke the silence first. ¡°You live up to Lee¡¯s praise, Guang. I¡¯d thought him to be exaggerating.¡±

    ¡°When have I exaggerated about tea?¡± Lee laughed in faux offense.

    Kang paused for a moment before inclining his head ¡°Fair point. I haven¡¯t caught one of your lies regarding drinks yet.¡±

    ¡°Nor shall you! I keep my lies well away from the matter of drinks on principle!¡± Lee laughed again, betraying no worry over having his friend in such a politically charged position.

    ¡°If only you had such principles about other matters too. You could make alliances to benefit your family if you could be known as worth trusting.¡±

    ¡°Whence comes the bile, old friend? I haven¡¯t lied about anything of import in months.¡±

    ¡°I asked if you could set me to meet the man responsible for the Fang¡¯s sudden shift in stance this last year. Not some tea expert halfway through Soul Core.¡±

    I froze to avoid spitting a sip of tea out, swallowed carefully as Kang¡¯s attention turned back to me with incredulity, and put a civil smile on. ¡°Were you looking for the Sect Master, who decides our stance, then?¡±

    Kang looked over to Lee who was wearing a shit eating grin and nodded once at his friend who was catching up. Then he turned back to me. ¡°You are the one who inspired the change?¡±

    ¡°I cannot claim full credit by any measure, but I receive a lion¡¯s share of it in most eyes, yes.¡±

    ¡°Lee tells me that he knows only that you are the one who did it, but not how.¡± His eyes narrowed slightly with a glint. ¡°How did you manage that?¡±

    ¡°In large part, by doing most of it on accident.¡± I admitted. ¡°Elder Lee¡¯s informants are excellent, but they prioritize the collating of deliberate action with planned effects.¡±

    Kang¡¯s eyes widened ever so slightly in surprise before he grinned. ¡°It seems I doubted you wrongly, old friend.¡±

    ¡°You asked after little Guang here.¡± Lee laughed. ¡°I¡¯d worry if you didn¡¯t doubt me!¡±

    ¡°It really is the sensible action.¡± I nodded. ¡°Elder Lee is one of terribly few who accept that I don¡¯t plan my impact, and he chooses to count himself and most of his family as allied to me.¡±

    ¡°You may not plan it, but you predict it well enough to put my peers to shame.¡± Lee chuckled. ¡°Which is good enough for me.¡±

    ¡°You gave Lee the insights that he brought to the Auction House, then?¡± Kang asked with the same narrowed eye.

    ¡°I do recall one of our conversations turning to the likelihood that armors and protective talismans would see a run of panic purchases as the Elders and Masters of the various rival sects notice the demeanor shift, yes. I posited that if he were to provide a few good quality defensive artifacts while looking for that price spike, he could expect aa significant profit.¡±

    Kang raised an eyebrow. ¡°I fail to see how such an obvious insight could have caused his profits of late.¡±

    ¡°I imagine he took the rest of the principles of price gouging to heart as well after he asked about them. Spreading rumors to the most panicky houses that wondrous life-saving artifacts would be for sale, making sure their equally panicky rivals are seen hearing the same rumors so that they bring out all of the funds that they can afford to spare, if not more. Having an agitator outside drunkenly declare his hopes lost upon seeing them, stoking their egos to recklessness. Little things that pry money from the clutches of most any wealthy man.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Kang started to grin as Lee smirked. ¡°You have studied the matter deeply to guide a fool like Lee to profits.¡±

    ¡°I only answered a few offhanded questions provided by an honored Elder. Regardless of the credit he honors me with, he walked the path himself.¡±

    Lee laughed. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about saving me face in front of this old bastard, Guang. He¡¯s been drinking with me too often for that to matter¡±

    ¡°Elder Lee,¡± I smiled. ¡°Has disciple given any indication of suddenly caring for unearned Face? I¡¯m simply stating what you¡¯ve earned, to my knowledge.¡±

    Lee was known to most of the other Elders as a powerful layabout. To me, however, he was the only one who was honest about his hedonism. Not precisely laudable, but still less self-crippling than his ¡®dignified¡¯ peers.

    And his information network was truly impressive. We¡¯d actually met as I was having people infiltrate it.

    ¡°So. You have a sense of what your actions will bring upon the Auction House, yes? I should like to hear your thoughts.¡± Kang asked with an air of false indifference.

    I collected my thoughts and the data I had about the people who would likely shape the coming months. Now that I was fairly sure I knew who Kang really was, I was already working him into my plans on reflex.

    ¡°The concerns over the Fang¡¯s actions will likely keep growing the longer we remain on our path, as rumors are harder to bury than truths.¡± I started, carefully not confirming that the plan was war and then schism. ¡°With the way that the Fist and the Spire have long feared the Fang¡¯s potential for belligerence, that will see not only defensive artifacts, but weapons and cultivation aids climbing in demand, and therefore price. If I¡¯m correctly informed about the demeanors of the other sects¡¯ families, this will also create a friction as they assume each other to be hoarding goods to survive whatever they assume the Fang is going to do.

    ¡°If the current unease lasts more than another five months, I expect that the tensions will start to create internal conflicts despite fear of the Fang, at which point I would expect disregard for the Auction House¡¯s Face to start arising in earnest. Likely starting with a young Spire Genius. If the Auction House retaliates, it will likely face retribution that it¡¯s ill-equipped to handle, despite its alliances and protectors. If it accepts the insult, it can expect to be subsumed by whichever sect survives the unease in the strongest position.¡±

    Kang tried to keep the scowl off his face, and did a damn fine job of it, objectively speaking.

    ¡°However, if the Auction House is alert to the possibility of some trumped up punk trying to weaponize their neutrality and exposes the ploy to everyone in attendance instead of allowing it to proceed, that would help solidify their position and strength even without throwing a punch. If they continue to navigate the political turmoil thusly, they could likely remain independent even should one of the three sects they border successfully destroy or subsume the others.¡±

    ¡°Simply exposing the ploys? How would that not invite ire from the offending Sect?¡± Kang asked, forgetting his decorum slightly.

    ¡°Because a ploy exposed is recognized as personal incompetence. The sects each recognize that responding as a whole to a slap to one man¡¯s Face is a statement that they belong to that one man. Where an insult to an Elder can invite censure or destruction, revealing the ploy of a disciple will, at most, invite their family to respond. And any family that strikes against the Auction House will quickly find the rest of their sect staying their hand, especially if the Auction House maintains its impartiality. Neither of the smaller sects will be willing to risk being cut off from the armors and weapons that go through the Auction House over what amounts to one genius screwing up an attempt to insult someone.¡±

    ¡°Ah! I see.¡± his eyes lit up. ¡°The Auction House¡¯s strength is that everyone needs it, so if it wields that strength as a shield without raising a sword, it can weather the upcoming war with ease.¡±

    ¡°That is my understanding, yes. Turning each sect¡¯s need for its services into a motivation to stay their hands keeps the power of the Auction House entirely in its own hand, where relying on the sects fighting each other off would give power to whichever sect can claim it.¡±

    Lee froze and looked at me. ¡°Guang.¡± he politely demanded. ¡°Did you tell me how to profit off the armors so that the Auction House would have goods that the Fist and Spire are desperate for?¡±

    I smiled at the way he thought I planned things like this. ¡°I merely answered your questions at that time, Elder Lee. The Auction House¡¯s benefit from your trades is simply a matter of their exemplary business acumen.¡±

    ¡°You did!¡± he exclaimed his conclusion with a laugh. ¡°You sly devil!¡±

    Kang¡¯s eyes narrowed as he tried to conjure an explanation for why I¡¯d want to keep his Auction House independent and strong.

    After a moment he caught that I didn¡¯t care about the Auction House itself and nodded. ¡°The Fang won¡¯t be trying to subvert the Auction House, so your advice will only weaken your enemies. And the Auction House itself benefits immensely, so there is no reason they wouldn¡¯t listen. And for the life of me, I can¡¯t actually tell if you planned this or not. No wonder you have Lee dancing to your tune.¡±

    ¡°Junior is flattered by Senior Kang¡¯s praise.¡± I smiled. ¡°I am just answering questions with my meager understanding. If it clarifies anything for Senior¡¯s path, that is a testament to Senior¡¯s greater comprehension.¡±

    Kang chuckled. ¡°Whatever your motivation, I do appreciate the perspective. I confess, I arrived with the concern that you counted the Auction House as an enemy after the way Lee described your sabotage of so many of your foes.¡±

    ¡°Not in the slightest.¡± I shook my head. ¡°The Auction House provides an invaluable service as a place my goods can fetch an honest price. Even if circumstances have prevented me from availing myself of the rest of its services.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ve had someone selling your goods for you, then?¡±

    ¡°Indeed. Less so this past year, but I¡¯ve had less tempting targets among my peers taking some of my lesser works to collect funds from the other sects and travellers.¡±

    He nodded in understanding. It wasn¡¯t exactly common protocol, but I wasn¡¯t in a common position.

    ¡°Lee, how long were you going to neglect to offer your insightful junior to come with you when you come to waste your money on frivolities?¡± he finally selected his words, catching Lee by surprise. ¡°If nothing else, he could likely advise you on which drinks are worth your coin.¡±

    ¡°Oho! That¡¯s a fine idea!¡± Lee agreed with the obvious plots without a second thought. ¡°I¡¯ll stop by next month on my way out, how about that little Guang?¡±

    ¡°Disciple will attempt to have the day free.¡± I smiled agreeably.

    Freedom to plant plans in the most trafficked city in the region. That was a wonderful harvest for my efforts.

 The First Strike of the War

    One trope that I¡¯d thought I understood about xianxia stories was the incomparable value of the auction houses. From simple buying and selling that alone is difficult to overstate why someone without the backing of a dedicated pavilion would find useful, to the ways that the auction houses had dreamt up to keep their nominal neutrality if they weren¡¯t sect-owned, to the secret backroom deals if you were recognized as ¡®worthy¡¯ of such illustrious contacts.

    For something that had almost no value as a weapon to murder foes with, the theoretical value of access to a reputable auction house was apparent to me.

    And yet I still managed to underestimate my gain from Kang¡¯s gratitude.

    My first visit with Lee was relatively uneventful. I was introduced to the procedure for putting something up for sale, learned that visiting cultivators have no sense of fiscal value -no seriously, none. I knew it was bad, but merciful heavens had I misjudged it- and became acquainted with the auxiliary services, like the retainer bidders.

    While there was only one ¡®greater auction¡¯ per month, where treasures and rare materials were hyped up and sold to people who thought money grew on slave-trees, there were also weekly ¡®normal¡¯ auctions that were mostly aimed at merchants and craftsmen, featuring foodstuffs, common crafting materials, and low-quality medicinals, suitable to keeping a slave labor force intact.

    Retainer bidders existed to allow cultivators without dedicated shopping servants to participate by proxy without interrupting their routines. Having noticed them trying very carefully to catch the eye of lone cultivators and inquiring about them, I chose to employ one. I set up a formal account at the auction house, had my sale goods¡¯ profit added to it, and instructed him of the quality of materials I sought, the maximum to bid on each, and arranged for him to be paid his percentage at the end of each auction instead of when I came to collect.

    The accountant I made the arrangements with asked if I had a good reason to trust the retainer, and I explained that I was simply of the opinion that a man should be paid for his labor, not the employer¡¯s profit.

    The show of trust that that constituted inspired the retainer, Hao Pen, to excel at his job, and I returned a second time with Lee to discover him beaming with excitement to show off a truly impressive amount of iron, steel, copper, and ink reagents that he¡¯d managed to acquire for notably less than my maximum bids.

    I asked after his methods and learned that he¡¯d simply gone to the other retainers and the craftsmen who showed up and explained that he was trying to impress a cultivator who trusted him over nothing, and most of them agreed that it was worth it to see if other cultivators would try being so sensible. Especially after they heard who he was employed by.

    And because he was an employee of the Auction House, most of my detractors were hesitant to just kill him for taking my money. Even before worrying about what traps that¡¯d spring on them.

    So I gave him a few pointers about how price-fixing could be done among the retainers and how to ensure the craftsmen received the materials they needed as well as I gave him my updated shopping list.

    Naturally, my enemies, upon hearing that I was turning a profit in the auction house, sought immediately to deprive me of the metals and reagents by hiring their own retainers and ordering them to outbid mine. Hao was distraught at how his second month had nothing to show, but I laughed off his worry that I¡¯d be upset and coached him in the bidding pattern to allow the craftsmen their needs while gouging my enemies.

    Kang felt the need, as Master of the Auction House, to sit down with me during my fifth visit and confirm at length that I was not doing anything that would bring my enemies down on his establishment. We came away from that meeting with a nifty plan to make it look like he had grown fed up with me exploiting him, but was sticking true to his neutrality by only cutting me off from several of the auxiliary services that were reserved for trusted members only.

    Which everyone else would take as a significant blow to my plans, without hindering me in the least because said trusted members were majorily my foes in one sense or another.

    Meanwhile, the mortal craftsmen and semi-independent experts who had seen prices skyrocket and then stabilize quickly learned through the rumor mill that I was deliberately manipulating things so that they didn¡¯t suffer, and had started contacting me through intermediaries to learn what my game was.

    Then a Red Fist young genius was caught trying to antagonize one of his rivals by exploiting a combination of the Auction House¡¯s sales rules and a trio of travelling cultivators, and tensions racheted up abruptly, causing the Weapons Pavilion that most of the independent craftsmen worked with to panic and declare that siding with me was their best bet at survival.

    The fuckwits.

    I made the case before the sect Elders that while sub-ideal in timing, taking the nominally neutral Weapons Pavilion as a Yellow Fang asset would allow for better control of the flow of armaments in the long run, further securing the Yellow Fang¡¯s supremacy over the territory.

    They agreed on that and immediately started bickering over whether to send me to the front lines, hoping to get me killed off by someone above Stone Core and risking the statement that I spoke for a meaningful portion of the sect or worse, that I controlled a meaningful portion, or whether they should hold me back where I¡¯d almost certainly survive, but theoretically not be able to control the impressions upon our enemies and the general population.

    Raka, the cunning bastard, proposed to send only me and several of my teachings¡¯ followers to ¡®defend¡¯ the pavilion, as they had declared loyalty to me, personally, instead of to the Fang as a whole, while ¡°better trained¡± disciples opened proper hostilities.

    Master Ho made the point that sending an apprentice would telegraph that I was my own distinct entity from the rest of the sect, which our enemies would capitalize on instead of falling to a unified Fang, and agreed to head the deployment herself, with the auxiliary note that she could better appraise the available stock of the pavillion than most.

    The rest of the squad, fifteen common-borns who¡¯d made it to Qi Condensation in the past year and two basic medics who¡¯d taken to my company, kept pace with Master Ho in silence, terrified of her apparent foul mood as we marched.

    I, having had more than enough time to acclimate to her mannerisms, wondered how far she¡¯d come in making herself a second heart dantian that she was so earnestly happy with the assignment, despite her disdain for the pavillion¡¯s sales policies.

    We arrived only a day after the idiots made their decision to back me known, courtesy of one hell of a rumor network, and there was already a problem waiting for us. A trio of Silver Spire cultivators were menacing the proprietor at the doorway, demanding that he reconsider his decision.

    ¡°Guang.¡± Master spoke tersely as she came within earshot of the mortals. ¡°This mess asked for you by name. Clean it up while I handle the important part.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Master.¡± I bowed before turning to the trio of Stone Core foes.

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked with an exasperated sigh. ¡°You¡¯re half a tier stronger than me and you need to threaten a mortal with your hands on your weapons to get him to cower?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d heard you were a mouthy bastard!¡± the strongest of the three straightened up to visit violence upon me. ¡°Are you prepared to die, ¡®Celestial¡¯?¡±

    Of course that blasphemy would stick around.

    ¡°I was born a mortal.¡± I flashed a grin. ¡°How many of you wish to escort me?¡±

    My lesser Flowing Dragon Realm poured out of my soul, overlaying on the physical space around me in the same span it took the man in front of me to draw and swing his large blade. I fell backwards, under his blade, then slid along my Realm so my feet were on his face and twisting.

    ¡°Oh come now!¡± I laughed as he recoiled in confusion. ¡°You want to deliver me to Yama without being able to walk the spirit paths? Has no-one told you how obstinate I am about walking the path myself?¡±

    His buddies drew their swords and started weaving their qi like Silver Spire cultivators tend to, guards up to prevent normal interference.

    Instead of trying, I scooped up three rocks and tossed them in the air and laughed as they each stepped back on reflex, right into my line of ¡®fire¡¯.

    The big guy glared at me and charged again, noticeably stronger and significantly faster from his buffs. The Silver Spire sect was infamous for direct status alteration. At the most basic level, this manifested as massive boosts to their own abilities, but if you were fighting multiple at once and they were skilled, you had to be mindful of their ¡®curses¡¯ hindering your abilities.

    Their major weakness was the way that their arts didn¡¯t mesh well with more direct body and soul tempering, so they were more vulnerable than most to ambushes. Leading many to become hyper-aware of their surroundings to compensate.

    My rocks having revealed these three to not be that skilled, I shift-stepped under the big guy¡¯s guard and slammed my fist into his armpit, popping the bone out of socket.

    His backups, having finished their own buffs, circled around us and glared at their now-falling buddy who was doubling as a shield for me while he tried to get his bearings through the pain.

    Well, not at him at him. At the fact that he was in the way for their attacks. Seeing their frustration, I decided to lend them a hand and slammed my elbow into his back to speed him to the ground and make him pass out.

    The remaining opponent in the better position was already swinging as his leader cleared out of the way, and I had to shift as I fell to avoid the blade. So I kept the shift going to twist my leg between his and hook his otherwise very stable foundation out from under him.

    The third caught what I was doing and caught me across the chest with a downward slash as his buddy ate shit, causing my arm to reflexively shoot out for his, allowing my continued fall to pull him off balance as I pivot-shifted with my Realm-motion to slam my knee into the back of his head.

    Two out of three unconscious, and the remaining one now pinned under his buddy and me sitting atop them, I planted my foot on the back of his head -gently, so he knew it was just a warning to shut up- and sighed. ¡°Really? This is what the Spire sends to try kicking off a war properly? Does no-one over there check rumors?¡±

    ¡°What are you talking about?¡± my footrest hissed. ¡°You¡¯re the one who laid claim to the Weapons Pavilion!¡±

    ¡°No, actually. They did that without my input. Master Ho is probably beating them within an inch of death for it too.¡± For as abrupt as the fight was, she had still vanished inside with the proprietor and doorman before I¡¯d even tossed the rocks.

    ¡°Then why are you here if not to claim it?¡±

    ¡°Would you tolerate someone claiming your house¡¯s protection getting mugged? Regardless of whether you¡¯d offered the protection?¡±

    I could feel the cognitive dissonance radiating from him as he tried to come up with a retort, so I sighed and planted his face back in the dirt. ¡°Waste your breath somewhere else. Pick up your cohorts and go report back that I didn¡¯t take the bait of killing any of you, or even maiming you beyond bruising your boss¡¯ solar plexus. If your masters want a war, they can declare it properly before I start killing their dogs.¡±

    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    I stood, putting my full weight on the man¡¯s head in the process, and approached the rest of the crew who were clamoring about how awesome I was in the fight. I raised an eyebrow after letting them get some of the hype out of their system and shook my head as they piped down.

    I¡¯d already advised them at length about the senselessness of getting invested in someone else¡¯s prowess, but the hype proved to transcend cultures in its pervasiveness.

    Not that I really blamed them. Watching someone kick ass was great. And I knew for a fact that, having had the experience of punching up for decades and having more fights picked with me than most of them combined, I was among the most exciting fighters their eyes could (mostly) track.

    ¡°Now that everyone has their composure back, stick to the plan. Do not instigate anything. Do not crow about our greatness. Keep your eyes open for belligerents and calm the ones that can be talked to. This is not a glory seeking mission. This is Face Management. Act accordingly. Be better in essence than the people who won¡¯t be calmed.¡± I ordered firmly, receiving bows of acknowledgement from all seventeen.

    One of the functionaries of the pavilion grovelled out to me as soon as the Spire idiots were out of sight, and I gave him the simple order to acquaint the squad with whatever internal security protocols the pavilion used so that they could act without tripping on poor communication.

    Then I walked the perimeter of the grounds laying talisman traps as I went so that I wouldn¡¯t be flattened by the first Bronze Core jackass to attack.

    Aptitude in combat covered a massive raw power gap, but not everything I could reasonably expect. So setting the battlefield and controlling engagements was, itself, a life-saving common sense.

    Nevermind that my vague recollections of The Art Of War had shaped my mentality enough that I called it common sense despite evidence to the contrary.

    When I¡¯d laid the first layer of personalized defenses I took a moment to lament the difficulty in crafting Arrays precluding me from setting up one that would be worth a damn and then followed a functionary who¡¯d been waiting for me to finish my strange cultivator bullshit to lead me inside.

    ¡°Ah, there you are.¡± Master spoke up as soon as I was ushered into the office. ¡°Your evaluation of the position?¡±

    ¡°Tactically, a nightmare. It was obviously built with a complete trust in neutrality protecting it from dedicated assault. As long as belligerents approach seeking to claim it for themselves there¡¯s reasonable security as long as they are met outside by comparable strength. But a single overwhelming opponent would be able to approach from any angle and no measure I can concoct as yet will aid in deterring them. Aesthetically it¡¯s lovely.¡±

    The vein in her temple throbbed ever so slightly, confirming that she appreciated the comment in her own prickly way.

    ¡°I¡¯m glad you think so. You¡¯re going to be bait once Lung here makes the formal announcement that justifies our presence here. It seems you¡¯re personally responsible for this mess, after all.¡±

    I blinked, completely bluescreening on how the fuck this was my fault.

    Not doubting it, just lacking any context.

    Seeing my admission that it was not planned, Master¡¯s eyes gleamed with sadistic pleasure. She loved every chance to demonstrate herself better informed than me, and I wasn¡¯t one to knock it.

    ¡°It seems that after the Master of the Auction House openly chastised young master Xue He, it came out that you¡¯d been meddling in their policies. Xue He then came here and threatened to exsanguinate Lung and all his employees if they didn¡¯t publicly declare their loyalty to you.¡±

    ¡°Ah!¡± I abruptly caught up. ¡°And nobody warned him how bad an idea this was?¡±

    Her scowl deepened as she hid her laughter. ¡°So it seems. And as you know, the rest of the Fist would rather die than suffer waiting, so there¡¯s no point in being merciful. We will both escort Lung to make his announcement and you¡¯ll start the war with his corpse.¡±

    ¡°And then I¡¯m to be available for any challenger who wants the prestige of taking me out.¡± I nodded, barely holding back my laughter at the situation. It did, barely, outweigh my frustration.

    ¡°Indeed. If a Silver Core foe comes to challenge, I¡¯ll make them regret interrupting me. Otherwise you can handle them easily. Everyone else can handle crowd management and the mundane security.¡±

    ¡®Easily¡¯ she says. It really was like she still wanted my head.

    ¡°Understood, Master.¡± I bowed to hide my flush at the compliment.

    ¡°Excellent. Lung will have his paperwork ready for the City Lord shortly, we¡¯ll head out immediately afterward. Finish setting your disciples up and we can get this war started.¡±

    I bowed and left the office to follow orders, meeting her and the visibly distraught Lung at the door half an hour later. I didn¡¯t bother reassuring the panicking mortal that anything would be alright.

    This may not be a post-industrial war like my last life was trained to fear, but monstrously powerful people were still going to be fighting with little discrimination and no concern for mortals. I wasn¡¯t going to lie and tell him things¡¯d be okay.

    Sure, I was charged with protecting him and his business. But I couldn¡¯t guarantee my own hide would be intact.

    The City Lord, a Bronze tier cultivator himself, heard out the situation after only a minor amount of posturing -only half an hour of making us wait on top of the formalities- and comprehended the situation¡¯s inevitability without any difficulty.

    He did bristle that Master Ho was stationed within his city, but accepted that she would be leaving everything of importance to me, only being on-scene as a technicality to insist that I was still a mere disciple of the Fang despite having been called out as though I were a rogue Elder.

    He also did appreciate my suggestion of having Lung make his announcement at the local arena so that when the idiot provoking me stepped forward, we were already in the appropriate venue.

    We also talked briefly about how he could minimize the inevitable damage to his city by streamlining a process for my enemies to approach me directly instead of waste time trying to draw me out by assaulting his residents. He couldn¡¯t afford to simply point everyone my way, as that¡¯d be equivalent to using me as a shield even if everyone was actually looking for my fists, but circulating rumors that he was offended by my presence and would look the other way as long as nobody took their fight too far would help him immensely by itself.

    That it would also encourage the attacks to come from cultivators who were below his own strength -to avoid changing his stance, if nothing else- was about as much benefit as I could hope for.

    And then we were allowed to move to the arena, who gave the City Lord a convincing amount of deference as he explained what was happening and came to terms with the arena master for interrupting his normal business flow.

    Terms that included me not getting the traditional cut of the betting. Totally expected, but funny nonetheless.

    The bookies flew into action while the ongoing fight wrapped up, and I caught Master flicking a ring at one of them out of the corner of my eye.

    And then the fight was over and the arena master made a big old deal out of interrupting the proceedings to push Lung into center stage to announce that, having come under physical assault over unsubstantiated rumors by members of both Silver Spire and Red Fist, it was his decision to, with the blessing of the Yellow Fang, pledge fealty of the weapons pavilion to the Fang who had sent Master and me to defend them without any promise of reward.

    Thus fulfilling the aggressor¡¯s demands of declaring themselves protected by me while not costing the sect any Face.

    ¡°About time you expose yourself for a proper fight, Celestial!¡± a voice rang out from the challenger¡¯s tunnel. The functionaries had been looking for Xue He from the moment the arena master agreed to the ploy, specifically to allow this to play out with only one casualty.

    ¡°If I wanted a proper fight I¡¯d go find a grumpy Yang!¡± I called back as I jumped down. ¡°I¡¯m here because a child started throwing a tantrum and his parents aren¡¯t alive to beat him themselves!¡±

    The crowd gasped as the idiot froze. It was well known that Red Fang cultivators were stronger the angrier they were, and I opened by going right for the Face and the throat.

    Because I knew the nature and weakness of that strength, courtesy of Lee¡¯s spies.

    ¡°Ha.¡± his face twisted in elemental rage. ¡°I thought this would be difficult! But you¡¯re suicidal!¡±

    ¡°Please, you saw an unguarded Immortal and stopped thinking, like the demonic dipshits you emulate. Don¡¯t try to pretend you¡¯re a functioning human after corrupting yourself this far. Just pounce like the animal you are.¡± I laughed despite being able to feel his strength creep up toward the peak of Stone core.

    This wasn¡¯t going to be easy, but my victory was guaranteed. My survival, not so much, but he¡¯d lose before he killed me.

    After all, the Red Fist were demonic cultivators. Immense power, corrupting qi, and a penchant for straight up devouring souls made them a nightmare to fight, but if they ever got too mad while fighting, well.

    I slid along my Realm technique as his axe closed in on my skull and tutted. ¡°Really? A straightforward attack right after being called an animal? Even my friend¡¯s dog knows to go for a feint when it¡¯s insulted. How do you pretend to call yourself a cultivator with less combat sense than a bitch?¡±

    A blood mist started leaking from his skin, laced with demonic qi that would poison and kill anyone without the appropriate foundations unless they had pinpoint-accurate qi control or a heavenly artifact capable of purifying it.

    More relevantly, it also burned away flesh, to maximize its chance of infecting a soul.

    Weaving around his enraged swinging of his weapon, I made a point to tut and wag my  finger at him to make it look like I was having an easy time keeping ahead of him.

    I was, but the appearance was more important as his rage and mist kept growing.

    ¡°Really? This is all you¡¯ve got? Delicious immortal soul right here in front of you and you can¡¯t even take a bite? No wonder you¡¯re an orphan. I¡¯d die of shame too with such an impotent son.¡±

    His eyes locked on mine and I got to watch as they darkened and his qi flared black and red.

    I was not expecting him to be so unstable over the orphan thing. But I¡¯ll take my wins where I can get them. Now the hard part.

    The now demonized cultivator roared and the sound itself harmed the people in the audience as I drew my spear and grinned despite myself.

    Unlike demonic beasts, driven to madness by normal, if incidental, qi flooding their souls, demonic cultivators danced with essences that even western earth natives would recognize as truly demonic. And this came with an iconic cost -the safety of their soul.

    Demonic Qi deviation was a sure-fire way to have one¡¯s soul consumed by the fundamental destructive power that made demonic cultivation tempting to many.

    So Xue He was dead, down to his soul. Consumed by the mockery of a proper demon that stood in front of me leaking existential destruction despite only holding the strength of an early Bronze core cultivator.

    Demonic qi did have limits based on the strength of it¡¯s host. Not that that helped when the qi itself was the greater threat.

    I tossed a talisman behind me as my foe charged me, then slid out of the way as he swung and ran face first into the flame blossom as it exploded. He shrugged it off, but was blinded by it long enough for me to stab him in the head.

    That didn¡¯t take him down either, but it did confirm that I had a chance. Had his skin hardness reached Bronze tier beside his muscles, I was fucked. As it was, I just had to wear down a monster made of pure destructive rage that was leaking soul poison.

    No pressure.

    It adapted slowly, falling for blinding flames another two times before turning to strike where I¡¯d been stabbing it from. On the fourth clash I let it think it got me just long enough for a Lightning Vines talisman to activate and let me stab it in the eye.

    By the seventh clash, its miasma was covering enough of the arena that I had to dedicate a lot of attention to planning out our movements. It wasn¡¯t game over if I got poisoned... Probably. But I still would much rather test that in a controlled fashion instead of while fighting for my life.

    I caught the briefest of breaks when a Wind Blade talisman revealed that qi-reinforced wind could disperse the miasma, at the cost of the qi falling to uselessness after only a few inches.

    Taking a gamble and praying to the wind spirits for their forgiveness, I spun up a variation of my smithing circulation and tuned my out-facing qi to match the ki of the air. Reinforcing it and, as I dodged yet another attack, fending off the thinnest of the miasma around us.

    With that bare defense, I was able to keep ahead of the axe that would absolutely have ended the fight if it caught me at any point.

    ¡°Pin him with the spear.¡±

    I didn¡¯t recognize the voice that whispered directly into my ear, but it struck me as a good idea anyway, so with a Bright Flash talisman disorienting the faux demon, I jumped and slid upward before driving it back down with the full might of my Piercing Thrust.

    Because yes, I bothered practicing the most iconic technique of spearmen.

    My target twisted as it felt my attack incoming, so rather than the heart I was aiming for, I had to punch through his sternum and put even more force into taking it down, but I managed it, then discovered why the advice arose as the air in my wake slammed into my fallen target, ceasing its breath and its techniques.

    ¡°You did that if anyone asks.¡±

    I nodded my understanding of the instruction and said another silent prayer to the wind spirits, this time of gratitude.

    Then I stood, pulled my spear out of the corpse and looked up at the crowd that was staring at me.

    Fuck it, I either just started or preemptively ended a war.

    I raised my spear in victory and drank in the resulting adulation and chaos as the silence broke like a fallen teacup.

 Discussions of Sky and Soil

    Having throttled the strength of cultivators willing to come after me directly with City Lord Huan¡¯s aid, and having demonstrated that I could handle anyone who could afford the Face to come at me, the subjugation war went relatively peacefully on my end.

    It would have been unnervingly peaceful, even, if not for the mortals that I had to warn off from identifying me as a Heavenly Spirit as they insisted on worshipping me after I dealt with Xue He.

    It was hard to blame them, but I managed. I was very specifically initiating a war that would absolutely wind up killing a bunch of them and trying to deter threats to my own life. Not show off for them to fixate on and venerate me.

    I particularly hadn¡¯t been aiming to discover a feature of my Identity Core that was dependent on perception of others by discovering that I had a budding foundation that I didn¡¯t set in motion. Qu Mo Shi.

    Exorcist.

    I wasn¡¯t opposed to the foundation. I rather liked the concept of being able to fight against forces that destabilized and consumed souls. But I hadn¡¯t put it there. I wasn¡¯t feeding it with my labor.

    The mortals had titled me thus. The mortals were feeding it with their worship.

    It was slower than even the normal cultivation rate of my followers now that it had levelled off, and the creation of it seemed to require the massive and pure initial surge of faith, because I hadn¡¯t yet developed one for a ¡®protector¡¯ face despite the populace having taken to offering me tribute under that title too.

    Really, the only reason it bugged me was that I had been blindsided by it.

    So I was meditating on it in particular as I cultivated atop a tree while keeping an eye out for anyone trying to take a shot at me. Trying to suss out how the hell the process even worked.

    ¡°You are Guang the Unaligned?¡± a voice out of nowhere nearly startled me.

    I opened my eyes and found another man casually standing in the air in front of me wearing robes much like a city or family administrator, but in colors that I couldn¡¯t match to any faction I knew of.

    ¡°I am Guang of the Yellow Fang.¡± I answered politely but neutrally.

    The man blinked, then nodded ¡°I misspoke. You are the first ascended mortal I¡¯ve spoken with in quite some time. I am Nan Feng, an administrator in the court of Fengbo, Count of the wind. There was an incident that I am in the process of investigating some months ago that several local spirits name you as a key actor in. May I ask your perspective so that reprimands can be doled out appropriately?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll gladly help your investigation. Though I imagine I might take reprimands poorly, myself.¡±

    A small smile curled his lips. ¡°Rest assured, you are beyond my remit to issue reprimanding even if you were found to have acted wrongly. I am charged only with keeping the winds in line.¡±

    ¡°My sympathies.¡± I offered. ¡°I can¡¯t imagine that is in any way easy.¡±

    ¡°I appreciate your understanding.¡± he sighed. ¡°The incident I am interested in is the demonizing of a cultivator in the local arena seven months back. Do you recall the event?¡±

    ¡°I do. I¡¯m even still dealing with the effects of it.¡±

    ¡°Excellent. All I require from you is what you observed during the event, particularly about the wind¡¯s behavior.¡±

    ¡°Ah! The technique I cobbled together!¡± I grinned and explained the observation I had about the wind blades sacrificing force to disperse the miasma, how I repurposed my smithing technique¡¯s principles as an armor, and then how I wove the principle into my thrust hoping that it would work because I was running out of stamina and space even with the armor. I left out the detail of the helpful spirit entirely.

    ¡°That lines up with most of my findings.¡± Nan Feng nodded. ¡°You say it was a strike of desperation against the demonized man?¡±

    ¡°Indeed. It took me most of a month to figure out what exactly I¡¯d done, and most of another to develop it as a proper technique that I could use on command.¡±

    ¡°I see. That does account for the last of the discrepancies in my investigation.¡± He¡¯d taken out a clipboard and was finishing recording my side of the story with a slight frown.

    ¡°Suboptimum findings?¡± I asked sympathetically.

    ¡°No, quite the opposite, actually.¡± he shook himself and put on a polite smile. ¡°It seems everyone stuck to their duties properly, even taking the initiative to respond to your talisman in a way to inspire you instead of trying to handle the demon themselves. I¡¯m actually surprised at the lack of overstepping they committed.¡±

    ¡°Ah. Superiors are likely to find the report suspicious because they stayed in line this time.¡± I nodded with an understanding smile.

    ¡°Precisely.¡± he sighed. ¡°There¡¯s nothing to be done about it though. Wind spirits are notorious in their disregard for restrictions. I shall hope I have been thorough enough that my superiors will accept the apparent truth.¡±

    ¡°Would you like a comprehension scroll as additional evidence that the winds had good reason to expect to get what they wanted from within their stations?¡± I offered, figuring I could ease the guy¡¯s suffering a little by taking some of the heat I¡¯d created.

    ¡°Comprehension scroll?¡± He tilted his head slightly.

    ¡°Yes, they¡¯re a cultivation aide I devised to grant myself additional perspectives. As I use the same principles as for empowering the talismans that spirits respond to, inspecting one may convince your superiors that the spirits had good reason to believe they could attain the result they desired from the fight while avoiding reprimanding.¡±

    He leaned back slightly in surprise. ¡°You would part with a treasure to ease my task?¡±

    ¡°I create several every month.¡± I smiled and extracted a scroll reading ¡®Wind¡¯ from my ring. ¡°This one is redundant to me. Parting with it will not weaken me at all, and it can do some good for you, I suspect.¡±

    ¡°And you seek nothing in return?¡±

    ¡°I am sacrificing nothing of note. Naturally I would not seek returns on it.¡± I insisted. ¡°If anything, I count it as payment toward the debt of having instigated your task in the first place.¡±

    His eyes sparkled slightly as he relented and accepted the scroll. ¡°The rumors of your manners do you justice, Guang. Whoever schooled you in them should be honored to name you as a student.¡±

    ¡°I am glad my mother¡¯s teachings earn such lofty praise.¡± I smiled. ¡°I do hope my life is counted as a merit when she is assigned a rebirth.¡±

    ¡°I am sure it is, from what I¡¯ve heard.¡± he chuckled. ¡°I thank you for your cooperation. If you find yourself working with the Wind Count¡¯s court in the future, do ask after me. I would be happy to lend you some insights.¡±

    ¡°I will be sure to do so, Administrator Nan Feng. May your report go well.¡± I waved as he left and then noticed wisps of confusion from near the trunk of a tree nearby.

    ¡°Senior Ling! If you¡¯re going to eavesdrop, at least join me for tea!¡± I laughed, eliciting a spike in frustration and murderous intent.

    I pulled out a balancing table and a pot for tea with two cups by way of insistence. It hadn¡¯t worked yet for any of my watchers, but I knew it pissed them off something fierce.

    So I legitimately had to double-take when Ling Huyin, Bronze core beauty and pride of the Ling family, was abruptly across from me.

    ¡°Drop the pleasantries.¡± she snarled as I was about to welcome her. ¡°Who the hell were you just talking to?¡±

    ¡°Must we be discourteous just because you¡¯re going to rip my head off once the schism war starts?¡± I sighed as I poured the tea. ¡°I certainly don¡¯t hold it against you.¡±

    She scowled at me even harder, reminding me of memes of a godslayer.

    ¡°That was a Heavenly Administrator, if I understood correctly. Investigating my tactical error to make sure I was the only one to blame.¡±

    ¡°Why couldn¡¯t I see him?¡±

    I blinked. That was good to know. ¡°Probably because he only chose to present himself to me. You know how loathe Immortal Spirits are to be spotted if it¡¯s not absolutely necessary.¡±

    ¡°How many of them are around for you to be talking to them?¡±

    Oh the temptation to bullshit her.

    ¡°That have spoken back, he was the first. The Earthly spirits that respond to my talismans are quite abundant, to the point of being literally everywhere, but they have not taken my open invitation for conversation.¡± I resisted the urge and took a sip of tea.

    She tch¡¯d and took a sip of her tea while she thought. I looked at the situation from her perspective and realized the new threat she was probably concocting.

    After all, I was famous for speaking to heaven, and she now had confirmation that that was a literal matter.

    ¡°They¡¯ve been protecting you this entire time.¡± she finally concluded.

    ¡°I cannot say they haven¡¯t, but I do doubt that would be within their permitted duties.¡± I answered calmly. ¡°After all, even my being inspired by the wind spirits caused an investigation for the sake of censure.¡±

    She glared at me, drained her tea, and vanished.

    I smiled. It was nice to see homicidal maniacs learning to take tea. There was a good argument to be made for tea being the foundation of proper civilization, after all.

    ---

    ¡°You are rather calm for a man who knows his days are numbered.¡± Raka smiled as we sat for tea. ¡°I cannot imagine what inspires this confidence in you.¡±

    ¡°I have known my days were numbered from the day I learned of the schism.¡± I answered warmly. ¡°I¡¯ve had more than enough time to come to terms with my death, however it comes to me.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± he hummed, then he actually saw and failed to keep his pupils in line. ¡°No longer shall I need to wonder how you saw your moves so clearly.¡±

    ¡°Indeed. Though I rather thought I¡¯d left that answered in full these past years.¡±

    ¡°In plain sight, no less.¡± Raka¡¯s sigh was a subtle thing, but no less rewarding than Master¡¯s temple vein. ¡°Buried amidst your decoys and other admissions.¡±

    I kept my smirk small and polite. ¡°I do hope Elder¡¯s enthusiasm to thwart my countermeasures remains as brilliant as yesterday. It would be a sadness upon disciple¡¯s soul to die to bare pragmatism.¡±

    His eyes glinted with malice and what I¡¯d learned was respect. ¡°Fear not disciple Guang. Ending your life will be among my most treasured accomplishments for the rest of my long life. Though the world will be less vibrant without you, we sit upon too many offences to reconcile with as little as your clear vision.¡±

    ¡°I count my fear assuaged.¡± I sipped my tea and shared the calm antagonism with him.

    It really was a shame he was born to xianxia politics. He¡¯d have done so much better in a corporate environment than anyone else I¡¯d met in either life.

    ¡°On the matter of ploys on my life, was it your insight to offer me to the Master of the fist if he managed to defeat Master Kong?¡±

    ¡°No.¡± he let his face relax in earnest surprise. ¡°Someone thought to betray the sect Master so brazenly?¡±

    ¡°So it appears. My spies among their servants report that the Master of the Fist is disgruntled to an extreme about being promised my deployment to his lines if Master Kong is indisposed properly.¡±

    ¡°Truly? And our traitor thinks Master Kong would fall to a Demonic cultivator?¡±

    ¡°Or that he can similarly entice the Master of the Spire. Though I¡¯ve not yet heard with what.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± Raka nodded. ¡°So they are among the few competent schemers of our ranks.¡±

    ¡°That is my thought as well.¡± I admitted. That¡¯s why ruling him out was worth anything.

    ¡°It may not be one of your enemies.¡± he said after a moment of contemplation. ¡°One of your allies may be trying to entice the enemy Masters to fight disharmoniously.¡±

    ¡°The same occurred to me. Rushing the Master of the Fist into a battle that Master Kong can recover from before meeting blades with the Master of the Spire is a stratagem I myself considered, but discounted as I¡¯ve found nothing to indicate the Master of the Spire to be fool enough to fall for it.¡±

    ¡°Are you certain of your allies being as wise?¡±

    ¡°Not in the least.¡± I admitted, to his mirth. ¡°But I also doubt that they could cause the Master of the Fist to believe that they¡¯d betray me with the lines as well-reported as they are.¡±

    He acknowledged the point and swiftly came to a recognition that eluded me. ¡°I shall have to commend them if they survive to be executed for treachery.¡±

    ¡°Wonderful!¡± I let him smirk over having beaten me to identifying the culprit. We both knew that his knowledge was a tool in my arsenal even when I didn¡¯t know what he knew.

    It was easily the most enriching part of our relationship.

    ¡°I finally figured out why your talismans work the way they do.¡± he gloated. ¡°Your supposition was close, but missed the mark.¡±

    ¡°Oh? Shall yours be under your own authority as well, then?¡±

    ¡°Indeed. It is a tidy freedom from your insolence chaining my growth, even.¡±

    Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!

    ¡°Disciple is earnestly happy to hear of Elder¡¯s fortune!¡± That would make two of my enemies who would ever be able to cultivate again. Provided someone else killed me.

    He let his lips curl ever so slightly into a wry smile. He¡¯d remarked in the past year that it was disconcerting that I could share joy in his victories despite us both acknowledging that we were enemies. Disconcerting, but no less pleasant.

    And him being able to call forth the spirits of the earth to enact his will without stealing Heaven¡¯s authority to order it meant that it wasn¡¯t a matter of me being an immortal spirit or a candidate for such.

    ¡°So it is the moving nature of the poems themselves, then. Alongside the invitation placing responsibility on oneself.¡± I deduced aloud.

    ¡°Precisely. Accepting responsibility upon my own head and inspiring them to obey. That you stumbled upon such a method with only a disdain for invoking Heavenly rulers remains impressive.¡±

    In the midst of being proud of the Elder who most politely wanted me dead, I caught what I¡¯d been flubbing on inviting the spirits to dine with me if they wished.

    ¡°Disciple thanks Elder Raka for the insight.¡±

    He shook his head, evoking dozens of laments that I was everything a dutiful disciple should be in his eyes, and that I felt the need to destroy the foundations of respect that culture itself -as he understood it- was built upon.

    ¡°In case you die before I kill you myself, I have enjoyed matching wits with you. If it were feasible, I¡¯d have considered alternatives.¡± he confessed as we finished our drinks. ¡°Alas.¡±

    I smiled, he really was too kind. ¡°I¡¯ve enjoyed trading pointers with you as well, Elder Raka. I fear that if I survive you, I shall find future opponents unworthy in whole.¡±

    The slightest tensing of his eyebrow as he heard -correctly- that I counted him unworthy in large part was my personal reward for the tea, on top of the information exchange.

    I reviewed the discussion as I walked to my own house. I was only afforded one day every other week to not be visibly available for anyone seeking to harm the Fang¡¯s morale, so I was making the most of it with my contacts, friendly and not, and my garden.

    I could maintain Duanzhou, Moshui, and Wancan with ease with only equipment I could carry myself. But Nongmin required me to work the land. And I didn¡¯t have land to work at the Weapons Pavilion.

    The idea to grant me a portion of the grounds had been floated along with the idea to change the actual name of the pavilion from Silver Tiger Pavilion to something declaring it my personal property, but common sense had overcome the silly hero worship for now.

    Rightfully so, given that a portion of every waking hour was dedicated to trying to find a way to vanish despite damn near every eye in the region being on me.

    Because while I hadn¡¯t lied to Raka about having accepted that I would die eventually, but I was still unfond of just letting it happen.

    If nothing else, it¡¯d be embarrassing to have attained proper longevity-style immortality and then die a mere year and change later.

    Funny, but embarrassing.

    I stepped into my writing room first, having failed to draw further actionable insight from the review of the discussion and pulled out a small gold-edged scroll, fit for standing declarations and orders, and cleared my mind.

    By Invitation and Authority of Immortal Guang

    Called Wancan, Duanzhou, Moshui, Nongmin, Fei Jiao, and Qu Mo Shi.

    Within the space that this declaration is displayed:

    Any spirit of the Earth or of the Heavenly Bureaucracy who is not occupied with their duties and who wishes to reveal themselves and share in conversation with Immortal Guang may do so.

    Returning to normal thought, I nodded at the simple alteration to my pre-existing standing invitation. Formalizing it as a declaration under my own authority would give the spirits who wished to take the invitation someone to blame if the regulations of Heaven bristled at them revealing themselves.

    After all, if leaving Raka with the bag for stepping outside their normal duties worked, leaving me the bag for breaking whatever policy obligated them to stay hidden was entirely feasible.

    Then I swapped my finery for my gardening clothing and went to my garden and posted it on a simple wooden stand.

    A mere three minutes later I felt a shift and turned around to see a man with a similar administrator¡¯s uniform to Nan Feng, but in ¡®earthier¡¯ colors, wearing a scowl.

    ¡°Does my invitation transgress my position?¡± I asked politely.

    ¡°Ah, no. Not as such.¡± he sneered. ¡°I am Shiban, Administrator in the court of Shegong Maori. Out of courtesy, given your respectful history, I feel it appropriate to ensure you understand the responsibility you are taking on with this invitation.¡±

    ¡°I thank you greatly.¡± I bowed politely. ¡°I am Guang, as I¡¯m sure you¡¯re aware, and I appreciate your indulgence.¡±

    His face didn¡¯t turn any gentler, but he laughed earnestly enough. ¡°The injunction against revealing ourselves directly to mortals and cultivators is a matter of maintaining the peace of the world. Cultivators in particular, but mortal men in general, lust after power and authority that they do not have the temperance to handle appropriately. Exposing them to the truth of Earthly spirits tempts them to devise all manner of demonic means to claim the world¡¯s forces for themselves.¡±

    I nodded that I understood the reasoning. I had met humans before, after all.

    ¡°The punishment for revealing oneself to a mortal without explicit direction from one¡¯s superior or critical need, then, is typically a year or more of torment, to deter the recklessness that many spirits exhibit. By inviting them to reveal themselves to you, you are accepting responsibility for their safety while they are exposed. Should one be harmed while exposed under your invitation, you will face similar punishments to those inflicted on Heavenly Administrators who allow their charges to be exposed and come to harm. Said punishments are more severe than for personal recklessness by no less than seven fold.¡±

    ¡°And I assume that my lack of submission to Heavenly authority myself will only result in armed forces coming to deliver me to said punishments?¡±

    ¡°Indeed. So it would be wise of you to exercise your authority to invite spirits to reveal themselves sparingly, and only when you are sure no demons or cultivators are watching.¡±

    Concern over the assassins, right! ¡°I thank you deeply for the advice, Administrator Shiban. Are Earthly spirits adept at only revealing themselves to select targets?¡±

    He barked a laugh. ¡°They are indeed. And you shouldn¡¯t have any difficulties in the immediate. Spirit Hunting arts haven¡¯t been reported in the area for centuries, and their wielders have all moved on. I am simply telling you of the risks you are accepting as a return of courtesy, not warning you off as yet.¡±

    ¡°And I am dearly grateful for it.¡± I bowed again. ¡°I have cause to believe that it will eventually save my life if I last the year.¡±

    ¡°Indeed! I¡¯ve heard of your methods!¡± he laughed, scowl not lessening in the least. ¡°It would be a shame for your path to be cut short by a misstep against Heaven¡¯s regulations!¡±

    ¡°I must agree.¡± I chuckled. ¡°Though there is a poetry to the possibility that I cannot deny.¡±

    ¡°That there is. One last point of advice before I¡¯m about my other tasks. Some of my charges have reckless ideas about how their relationship to you can be altered. Do think cautiously before accepting any of their suggestions. Even the most benign of what I¡¯ve caught them scheming would require more paperwork than I¡¯m sure they grasp.¡±

    ¡°You can rest assured that I will not agree recklessly. And that I¡¯ll insist that they handle what they¡¯re allowed to of the paperwork themselves instead of dumping it on you.¡±

    His eyes widened just enough that I swore I saw his furrowed brow crack. Then he recovered his composure and nodded. ¡°As always, it is a pleasure working with you, Guang Nongmin.¡±

    ¡°May your work be light and rewarding, Administrator Shiban.¡± I bowed as he stepped away and vanished.

    ¡°I see that your constant tea taking has shaped you well.¡± a woman¡¯s voice laughed, and I marvelled politely as the soil in front of me seemed to rise as a stunning, sturdy female form dressed in courtly robes. ¡°I¡¯m glad the rumors got that correct.¡±

    ¡°I am glad to hear my efforts pay off to your liking. How may I address your magnificence?¡±

    She threw her head back in a laugh that rumbled through the ground. ¡°I am Shegong Maori, of course! When Shanshen Rangtu sent a messenger that the resident aberrant was finally inviting conversation properly, Old Shiban and I came as fast as we could to get a proper look at you!¡±

    I put on my best pleased-neutral expression as I tried to come up with a way of not offending the highest ranking Earthly spirit of the land in the area. ¡°I am deeply honored to have your interest, great Shegong. Though I confess to having no rightful idea how I garnered it.¡±

    She chuckled again, giving every appearance of genuinely enjoying the interaction if I trusted my human-trained social cueing -something I was pointedly trying not to do on principle as she was not a human. ¡°Word circulates, Guang the Independent, Guang the Poet.¡± She smirked. ¡°And with so many of my subordinates reporting a Cultivator, of all things, tidily sorting out his own impact on them with trial and error, I was bound to notice, even before your antics after your ascension.¡±

    I gulped. ¡°Was that a poor use of the power I was granted, then?¡±

    ¡°Reducing the need of the mortals and reinvigorating my subordinates? Hardly!¡± She laughed as I dared to relax. ¡°From the ocean to the Tang mountains, you¡¯ll find nothing but positive reception among my subordinates and the Heavenly Administrators we work with after such a selfless display of the power. I expect the other Earthly courts are coming around to similar conclusions as well, after your latest display!¡±

    My stomach started dropping as she spoke. I couldn¡¯t pin down a reason, but I could feel something hiding in the praise.

    ¡°The fight with the demonic cultivator?¡±

    ¡°Indeed!¡± she beamed. ¡°I don¡¯t know how much your Cultivator cohorts have bothered to explain about demonic qi, but demonstrating that you¡¯re not only crazy enough to fight it head-on, and skilled enough to disperse it properly like a Wind Governor and accidentally implicate him for it? There have been suggestions to help you grow strong enough to rid the land of demonic cultivators at large!¡±

    Oh.

    Oh, that... That wasn¡¯t great.

    ¡°Something about my position as an independent entity allows for me to be useful in such a way?¡±

    ¡°Oh, Guang.¡± she smiled with way too many teeth. ¡°You explicitly stepped outside Heaven¡¯s dominion and ability to restrain your actions, and you didn¡¯t realize what a power piece you made yourself in doing so?¡±

    Shit!

    Okay, I¡¯m in a free-to-act blindspot in Heaven¡¯s restrictions. Dispersing demonic qi ¡®properly¡¯ is a big deal, even bigger than the sect Elders let on, and they pointedly don¡¯t enrage Fist cultivators to deviation.

    ¡°You imply that I could be of service in a mercenary fashion? Addressing matters like demonic qi poisoning the land and other disturbances?¡± I asked as I began to understand the sinking in my gut.

    ¡°I do.¡± she nodded. ¡°I even imply that this could become a deeply rewarding relationship between you and whoever you choose to offer services to. A man of your skills and interests could build a reputation with Earthly spirits of every domain, making yourself an incredibly wealthy and respected force where your Cultivator peers can only conjure fear.¡±

    Oooh boy. I¡¯m going to pretend I imagined that shift of her dress and not think about the relationship she might be suggesting.

    The surface suggestion was interesting though. Speak to Earthly spirits, see if they¡¯re being bothered by something, see what they call a fair repayment for resolving it if it¡¯s within my power. For that matter, I might even encounter Heavenly spirits who need something done ¡®off the books¡¯.

    It would see me self-managed, as I need to be for my sanity. I¡¯d be expanding my networking in directions that normal cultivators couldn¡¯t. The spirits of the world probably had much more interesting ideas of what constitutes a ¡®treasure¡¯.

    ¡°It is a fascinating suggestion.¡± I admitted as I pondered. ¡°And you say some have run so far ahead as to propose strengthening me so I¡¯m capable of handling the tasks?¡±

    ¡°None with power to do much for you, but yes. It has been suggested by several that you might be able to at least learn techniques from some of our more skilled number, or granted treasures to similar effect.¡±

    ¡°Even if they are the spurious musings of those without standing, I must admit those are flattering thoughts. Certainly more tempting than most concepts of wealth that I¡¯ve heard, at least.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± an eager smile split her face, revealing that I¡¯d misstepped. ¡°The rumors are true then? You value power beyond coin and pleasure?¡±

    ¡°Coin does serve many purposes, though most of them are only viable with interaction with others who value it more highly than I. Pleasure enriches life in great and small ways, but is ultimately fleeting, so the pursuit of it holds no priority for me. Power, meanwhile, especially power I can make my own, is as enduring as I am, and makes for a far better target of pursuit.¡± I confirmed, quietly hoping that I wasn¡¯t offending.

    ¡°I see.¡± her smile relaxed and worried me further. ¡°So your interest is, in all ways, to stand without dependence on others.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t a question. It was a declaration that she¡¯d sussed out how best to manipulate me if I took the idea of mercenary living.

    Chilling, and largely accurate, but not half as dangerous as it could have been.

    ¡°I have never phrased it so well, great Shegong. Your understanding is awe inspiring.¡± I bowed in admission of the defeat.

    ¡°It is a necessity of the position.¡± she acknowledged with a small nod. ¡°And now I can correctly guide my subordinates to a healthful and fruitful relationship with you whether you elect a mercenary course or not.¡±

    ¡°I humbly look forward to such opportunities to forge good relations. And I thank you deeply for informing me of the interesting position I put myself in.¡±

    ¡°You are welcome, Guang Moshui.¡± she smiled with a glint in her eye. ¡°Do please have wherever you are standing report your decision regarding it when you come to the decision. One thing I shall personally praise the Bureaucracy with is teaching me the value of communication.¡±

    Noted. The Lord of the Land for the entire region my life has been spent in has eyes anywhere my foot could fall.

    Terrifying.

    I bowed again as she sank back into the ground and focused on regaining my breathing.

    ¡°Wow.¡± another female voice arose from the ground. ¡°I am so sorry about that. I thought she just wanted to send a messenger, not arrive herself.¡±

    I steeled myself and looked up, seeing a woman in simple, practical clothing with her hair done up in a bun.

    Something about her felt familiar, and that distracted me enough that it took me a moment to realize she¡¯d already told me who she was by admitting it was her that reported my invitation.

    ¡°Shenshan Rangtu?¡± I ventured.

    ¡°That I am.¡± she smiled earnestly. ¡°But please, don¡¯t stand on formality with me. I¡¯ve had little enough to do that I know you don¡¯t like it half as much as you pretend.¡±

    I chuckled at the understatement. ¡°I thank you for the consideration. And for being such an accommodating host these past two years.¡±

    She giggled and handed me my watering can. ¡°Having a resident who bothers to talk like he¡¯s glad to live on me is novel enough to accommodate. Having a proper garden tender, even more so.¡±

    ¡°Oh? The garden has been appreciated?¡±

    ¡°You bet it has!¡± a little mud gremlin piped up as it stuck its head out from under a leaf. ¡°You know your stuff!¡±

    I blinked and looked around as the sentiment was echoed by other minor Earthly spirits similarly revealing themselves.

    ¡°In fact,¡± Rangtu grinned. ¡°The most valid gripe I¡¯ve had to put up with is from the spirits who want you to expand the garden to cover all of me.¡±

    I proceeded to start my watering pattern while rolling with the oddity I¡¯d literally invited. ¡°That is a task I would gladly undertake if I expected to last the rest of the year.¡±

    ¡°Or if you escape and return.¡± she smiled cheekily. ¡°Your disciples would appreciate it, I imagine.¡±

    I shook my head. ¡°If they survive, sure. But being honest about the way the war is going, the Elders that would support the Sect Master are suffering more losses than our enemies.¡±

    ¡°And you¡¯re not allowing yourself to rise to take the balance into your own hands.¡± she nodded behind me. ¡°After all, that would tie you down and make your disciples dependent on you despite your best efforts to teach them otherwise.¡±

    ¡°You sound like you¡¯ve got an idea in mind.¡±

    ¡°Oh, just one of those reckless ones that requires Old Shiban and his attendants to file paperwork.¡± she answered coyly. ¡°Though I can¡¯t imagine what paperwork would be required to gift us talismans and bid us to only read them when your allies are threatened.¡±

    I let myself freeze as I thought through the implications of the idea. It wouldn¡¯t be of much use in wider application without arranging friendly ties with Earthly forces, but simply asking the spirits of light, lightning, fire, and wind to act independently of discrete cues could be a war-changer with the right planning.

    With the same level of planning, the far subtler spirits of earth, wood, metal, and shadow could be territory defining for centuries if I wished.

    The world itself would seem to be fighting my enemies. And for how little most cultivators study the natural world¡¯s governing structure, Raka might well be the only one to understand why and how.

    ¡°That is certainly worth asking one of Administrator Shiban¡¯s attendants what manner of paperwork it would demand.¡± I nodded to a chorus of cheers from the tiny goblins and butterflies that I had to surmise were wind spirits who¡¯d likewise taken my formal invitation. ¡°If enough of it can be handled ahead of time that the Heavenly Administrators aren¡¯t put upon for the sake of a sect civil war, it would ensure that I have reason to return if I escape properly.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll find one of his attendants and ask myself, then.¡± Rangtu audibly grinned.

    ¡°Oh! I¡¯ll go check with one of ours!¡± one of the larger wind spirits offered before vanishing, earning a laugh from the mountain spirit.

    ¡°I¡¯ll make sure he actually has the answers or send him back.¡± she shook her head. ¡°I imagine you intend to post the invitation again at supper?¡±

    ¡°Indeed! I only posted it here to confirm that it works and check on whether mortal food is nourishing to any of you.¡±

    ¡°Excellent! The food itself does rather little, but the way you dine is nourishing by itself. And I¡¯ll confess that the aroma of some of your roasts has distracted me more than is proper.¡±

    ¡°Then I am obligated to tempt you to try its flavor if you¡¯ll join me tonight.¡± I turned to shoot her a grin and realized that I might have an entirely different matter to handle as she smiled back eagerly.

    ¡°I¡¯ll look forward to it!¡± she accepted the invitation and vanished. Leaving me to wonder at the folly of offering to feed a mountain.

 Running a War and Running Away

    Dinner with Rangtu was enlightening and more than a bit revealing. She was happy to catch me up on several groundwork matters regarding existing as an Immortal Spirit, from the theory of how to weave my own path among the mortals, the explanation of why I would be unable to hide myself from mortal eyes like Heavenly and Earthly spirits could, to what I quickly realized is the origin of Face culture.

    The relation Immortal Spirits have with consciousness is such that, unlike mortals, they are defined in small part by the way they are perceived. Specifically, like my Qu Mo Shi identity, they could be ¡®Given a Face¡¯ by others acknowledging them, and strengthened in that identity by further earnest acknowledgement.

    Rangtu cackled heartily when I explained my guess that early interactions with Immortal Spirits had given mortals the impression that this ¡®Face¡¯ was a source of power for them as well, and had wound up creating a massive weakness for themselves by trying to emulate it.

    Not being a historian, she had no idea if that was what actually happened, but she declared it her new favorite explanation for the state of things.

    She also found it amusing that, even though I now could draw power from what Face Culture wanted to be, I still found it distasteful.

    The discussion turned at one point to gossip of relations, which I largely took note of to compare to the mortal and semi-mortal relations and amuse her with the correlations between Immortal Spirits and the mortals they resided near. Some were strong correlations, some were inverse, most were weak. But all were funny.

    And then the Wind spirit who¡¯d confirmed with the wind administration that the paperwork Rangtu¡¯s suggestion would create was immense, but manageable with some elbow grease and bribery, brought up the fact that Rangtu and I had a correlation as well. Namely, that from his perspective, both of us were either oblivious or skillfully pretending to be as potential courtships circled us.

    Thanks in part to my calming aura as Wancan, we were both able to process that he wasn¡¯t actually offending us, even accidentally, and allowed him to explain the ridiculous claim.

    On my end he named Ling Huyin, who he insisted hadn¡¯t stalked a target for half this long before in her life, several martial sisters who had joined me over the years and -in his eyes- had a far greater interest in being social with me than studying or cultivating, and Master Ho, who he was certain was planning any day to try to coerce me into proposing despite our pre-existing relationship.

    On Rangtu¡¯s end, he had a litany of Earthly and Heavenly spirits who visited her more often than they visited her more distinguished neighbors and whom had each found themselves a reason to do so that he insisted made more sense replaced with ¡°thin excuse to court her.¡±

    When she turned to me to ask if men were really so shallow, I politely put my foot in my mouth and replied that while yes, they absolutely are, the discussion up to that point indicated that if the Wind spirit was correct, each of the named spirits had wonderful taste in women.

    ¡°Oh right! That too.¡± the wind spirit had chimed in to break the stunned silence. ¡°The way he flirts without trying is also part of it.¡±

    From there the conversation swung toward concepts of relationships and how differently people viewed them, the commitments involved, and the frustrations that arise when the relationships are not clearly understood by both parties. With examples drawn from the gossip we¡¯d been derailed from.

    During which, Rangtu wound up consuming nearly my entire store of meats and booze, as made sense for a mountain dining on mortal fare. I didn¡¯t mind at all, as she properly savored the meal, and it wasn¡¯t like I was hurting for funds.

    We¡¯d parted with her confessing that the idea of an nonbinding intimate relationship sounded worth pursuing, to snickers from both the Wind spirit and the House spirit, who¡¯d joined for the novelty of the meal, but largely kept to himself.

    I admitted the appeal of having such a lovely woman¡¯s company more often and promised to consider the appeal of more at length while I was away.

    Then I set about drafting my end of her cunning battle suggestion¡¯s paperwork. It was a multi-stage process to get everything sorted ahead of time, but what wasn¡¯t with a bureaucracy?

    First, I had to file for temporary Rank within each court I wished to weaponize, because my ¡®rankless immortal¡¯ status allowed me to make invitations and accept consequences for them, but it wouldn¡¯t allow me to conscript the spirits directly into my conflicts. In order to do that, I had to be formally recognized as having the temporary position of ¡®Provisional General¡¯.

    In order to be allowed that rank, not only the administrators, but someone of superior rank had to sign off on it, for each Earthly court I wished to mobilize. That part, Rangtu assured me, would be trivial.

    Then each spirit I wanted to conscript had to be formally conscripted. Traditionally this was done by just demanding their obedience as a general, but my methods called for each of them to submit their own volunteer paperwork, get approval, and present themselves to me with their token of assignment.

    Then I had to create talismans that bore my seal as provisionary general and held explicit orders to be obeyed, as opposed to my normal methods.

    Then I had to distribute the talismans, along with any standing orders, and file them as military orders, allowing the spirits to hold onto them and act on them under appropriate conditions.

    All while accepting full consequences for anything that happened to any of my subordinates during the war that I was specifically aiming to be away from.

    No pressure.

    When I¡¯d finished drafting my requests for temporary Rank to the myriad courts, I turned in for the night, as sleep helps my thoughts despite not being strictly necessary, and awoke to my drafts missing.

    Asking each of my servants if they had seen anything caused them to tremble despite knowing that I knew they were not stupid enough to touch my work. Working with me for a measly few years wasn¡¯t going to overcome the completely justified fear of cultivator ire, after all.

    Then, as the mortals hadn¡¯t seen anything since the feast that had confirmed to them that I was truly beyond their ken, I hung up my invitation to appear and was greeted by a small blob of what appeared to be ink bowing before me.

    ¡°Forgive me, Moshui.¡± it began. ¡°I failed to ask if you wished to file your papers yourself, and took it upon myself to deliver them to the administrators you addressed them to, as you gave indication of wishing to have the process completed expediently.¡±

    ¡°Ah! Okay!¡± I sighed in relief. ¡°My concern was over not having been informed of what happened, not anger at you for helping out.¡±

    ¡°I deeply apologize for my negligence!¡±

    ¡°A simple oversight when you are otherwise correctly intuiting how to be helpful is nothing to debase yourself over, my friend.¡± I cut it off. ¡°That is what mortals call a learning curve. And now you know to leave a memo on the desk if you make such an intuition again, and I know to invite you to present yourself to offer your aid if I have cause to ask it.¡±

    Little shimmers approximating tearful eyes pointed at me. ¡°It would be my honor to attend you, Moshui!¡±

    ¡°If it will not interfere with your other duties and you help me file whatever paperwork is required, I suspect I¡¯d be happy to have such an eager attendant.¡± I chuckled. ¡°Just make sure the terms of the arrangement are clear. I¡¯m a bit of a stickler for that.¡±

    ¡°Of course, Moshui! I¡¯ll spend the day with one of Shuixing¡¯s attendants getting everything sorted out.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like a plan. Here, let me pen you and whoever else needs to speak to me about it an invitation to appear later so that you only need to wait until I¡¯m alone instead of waiting for me to post the wider invitation. Have you a name?¡±

    ¡°I do not.¡±

    ¡°Alright. I¡¯ll likely give you one so I have something to call you, so go ahead and check for paperwork regarding that too.¡± I smiled as I wrote a much narrower invitation for it and any administration staff that needed my direct involvement to appear while I was at my writing desk.

    It seemed appropriate, given the thing¡¯s nature.

    It accepted the permission seal graciously and folded in on itself to vanish and be about the task of finding the paperwork it needed, and I gathered up my open invitation, reassured the mortals that the matter had been clarified properly, and headed off to the Pavilion.

    If this all worked out and Raka and I both survived, I¡¯d have to thank him profusely for the insight again. I might just manage to kill him with blood pressure by telling him it was his fault I was able to make proper contact with the spirits of the world.

    I arrived to see about half the squad sparring with each other. It was actually kind of impressive. Kesa had accosted a Soul Core Spire disciple stirring up trouble early in the war and, when the punk refused to back down, had declared that the Spire brat wasn¡¯t worth wasting my time with, and managed to wear him down enough that he retreated despite his victory.

    This started a pattern of enemies who recognized that they were not my equal coming in and challenging ¡®my¡¯ disciples for significantly less prestige than I was personally worth.

    When my crew started winning without caveat, the prestige of beating them went up enough that at any time the two medics we had on hand were flushed with practice themselves.

    All without actually bothering me directly. I still shared pointers with them about how I could see their styles having room to improve, of course. But most of my time was spent pissing off people by smugly hiding behind the City Lord¡¯s implicit threat to impose sanctions against the first sect to throw a proper threat at me, because said threat would need to be stronger than him, and that would constitute an act of war against the city.

    Sweet heavens do I love technicalities.

    The morning was thus spent giving pointers to my peers as they sparred and trying not to think too hard about the idea that sister Fu was improving so fast out of a misguided effort to be worthy of courting me.

    Because that would just be self-defeating. That level of dedication was neatly within the ¡®obsession¡¯ category, and thus neatly beyond my interest in relationships.

    After they dispersed for lunch, I went to the forge that the pavilion had graciously set aside for my use and found Master Ho waiting for me, looking positively radiant despite her trained neutral expression.

    It took me a moment to realize that it was a literal radiance. Her shen, specifically, was brighter.

    ¡°Disciple is overjoyed to see Master¡¯s good fortune!¡± I bowed and considered whether a celebratory meal was in order for her having escaped her restriction.

    ¡°Ha!¡± she barked. ¡°A single glance! Here I thought I was being subtle about it!¡±

    There really was no polite answer for that, so I chose the shameless one. ¡°Disciple¡¯s eyes have been said to see things mortal men cannot. Your subtlety is not impugned in the slightest, Master.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it. Here, a show of my gratitude.¡± She pulled out a sheathed blade. ¡°For setting me on the right track to resolving it.¡±

    Alarms started sounding, and I could see the trap clearly. Ho marriage rites included crafting a piece of their specialty during the months leading up to the wedding and gifting it to their spouse.

    Having had no-one of note around for the past several months, me openly carrying a new blade while her cultivation increased for the first time in at least a century would absolutely convince her family that we were wed. Likely enraging them even more than I had by revealing their incompetence.

    And as my Master, she had the standing to insist that I carry it openly and make sure that they gather that misimpression. They would assume that she¡¯d selected me explicitly because I was scheduled to die as soon as the Fist and Spire finally buckled under the weight of the war, and thus free her from the obligations that they imagined were her objection to marriage, preventing her need to explain the truth of the situation or the fact that she¡¯d successfully wed herself.

    ¡°You¡¯ve elected to keep them separate, then?¡± I ventured a guess at her ploy with a resigned sigh.

    ¡°Indeed.¡± she revealed a fiendish grin as she insistently gestured for me to take the blade. ¡°And, as you¡¯ve noted, my family¡¯s best efforts to end you are drops in the lake for you.¡±

    ¡°So they are, thus far.¡± I dutifully accepted her trap and marvelled at how it thrummed with power. ¡°I appreciate your effort to keep the task of surviving balanced, however.¡±

    ¡°Draw it. Run your qi along it.¡± she insisted with a proud smile.

    I did so and stared as it melded almost flawlessly with not just the essence of my Fei Jiao face, but with Qu Mo Shi.

    ¡°You named it?¡± I gaped. Properly naming a weapon -rather, crafting a weapon and its name as a deliberate process- was a technique that so few smiths had the skill to manage that the Fang apprentices were convinced that it was a mythical technique.

    ¡°Jinghua Feng Ren. Yes.¡± she answered with all the humility I displayed on a daily basis.

    Several more things clicked into place, not the least of which that she expected me to be fighting more demonic forces before I died.

    ¡°Ah, no wonder I couldn¡¯t place the schemers for that.¡± I muttered as I continued to marvel at her handiwork. Then I felt my eyes widen. ¡°You want them to disown you now that they¡¯ve made that decision.¡±

    ¡°That too.¡± she admitted. ¡°It will also help fend off any questions about why I stab future suitors if you die.¡±

    I failed to follow for a moment, eliciting a chuckle.

    ¡°You set a high bar at everything you do. My future stabbing victims will accept that a lot more easily than my complete disinterest.¡±

    I nodded. It was still an additional layer of drama that I didn¡¯t really want caught up in, but the compensation for it was awe inspiring and the results weren¡¯t strictly objectionable.

    ¡°And if I manage to survive?¡±

    ¡°We can put up appearances if you wish, but nothing binding has happened.¡± she shrugged and stepped away. ¡°And I will still stab you if you suggest that it should.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not possessed of that particular insanity.¡± I assured her. ¡°Disciple...¡±

    I reconsidered my word choice. If her ploy required appearances, then declaring the master/disciple relationship to still be in place would be a hole in it.

    ¡°I thank you deeply for the blade, fellow smith.¡±

    She smirked. ¡°Go ahead and call me Yin. It¡¯ll piss my family off faster.¡±

    ¡°Very well, Yin. Thank you for the sword, I¡¯ll likely make great use of it.¡±

    She stepped out and I chuckled at how close the Wind spirit had come in his estimation while missing the mark.

    ---

    ¡°Shame we¡¯re ending this today.¡± Yang Zhao grinned eagerly as we looked out upon the blighted mountains of the Red Fist sect.

    ¡°They¡¯re that much better a fight than our peers, then?¡± I quipped.

    ¡°That much more lethal!¡± he laughed. ¡°Bastards have laid me out half a dozen times! I finally owe our medics the respect I make everyone else give them!¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s hope our peers can entertain you better without restrictions, then.¡± I grinned, eliciting howling laughter.

    Two months had passed since I received Yin¡¯s gift, and the frenzy of activity had only been getting more and more intense with each day.

    From her family almost literally self-destructing over whether to disown her and kill us both themselves or to calm down and try to avoid ¡®my¡¯ ploy that I¡¯d ¡®obviously¡¯ cooked up to punish them for their attempt at betraying the Sect Master, to the administrators and generals of the Earthly courts very politely coming in and specifying what bribes I needed to provide for my ploy to be approved, to the ink spirit - now named Wuhen, to his great amusement - gaining what he described as an ¡®incomparable¡¯ mobility increase so that he could handle the bulk of my paperwork deliveries for me, to the fact that once I was done cleaning the mountains in front of us, I¡¯d very temporarily be one of the highest ranking spirits in the land for the duration of the civil war by virtue of breadth of command.

    And the nights with Rangtu, of course. I owed her my confidence that I¡¯d survive to flee. Not to mention the confidence that I could properly exorcize entire mountains.

    In fact, today¡¯s marching orders were for me to lead the way, exorcizing as I could, and for the rest of the mobilized forces -a reasonable mix of each faction, skewed toward my allies- to intercept enemies so I could work.

    I¡¯d proposed the idea myself after refining a variation of my Flowing Dragon Realm for the purpose of taking both ki and qi and using them to fuel the exorcism art that I learned from Wind Governor Zhengfen.

    His was better at area effect than the one I¡¯d devised off of it, after all.

    To best manage this, I was dressed in formal invitations to spirits of each court to provide energy that they had to spare layered over top of my robes, as well as a staff with writs of authority to exorcize from several administrators and court rulers who were elated that I was willing to stand against demonic energy.

    It was actually worrying how quickly the writs were assembled. I was assured that taking on this task did not obligate me to anything further during a lunch discussion, and the writs were in Wuhen¡¯s hands that evening.

    ¡°Everyone¡¯s ready, Guang!¡± Yin called out. ¡°Master Kong should be engaging the Spire master any minute now.¡±

    ¡°Wonderful!¡± I hopped down with brother Yang and took my place at the head of the assembled force.

    Then I intoned my replacement for a normal exorcist¡¯s prayer.

    ¡°Hear my call, Hear my command! I am Immortal Guang Qu Mo Shi!

    Where my feet fall today shall be cleansed as new earth!

    Where my breath flows today shall be cleansed as fresh breeze!

    No stream or pool my eye falls on shall harbor demonic taint this day!

    No plant along my path today shall bear the poison of demons!

    Where I pass, the world is made pure again!¡±

    Raising my staff, writs of authority rising as if declaring my validity to everyone, I felt my flesh shift slightly as my artificial Exorcism Aura flowed out of my soul, gathering volunteered energy and stabilizing it.

    Then, path for the day set, I started walking.

    ¡°Well?¡± Yin¡¯s voice rang out behind me, revealing that the display had stunned my peers. ¡°Now you know he is a god! Follow in the plan with confidence!¡±

    I felt my still-weakest ¡®face¡¯ strengthen as the assembled force fell into place behind me, drawing the faintest hint of a wry smile to my otherwise firmly determined face.

    If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    Reaching the foot of the Fist mountains, I felt resistance from the faint demonic qi that had infested them, and as I continued moving, I felt my Qu Mo Shi face strengthening further, and could feel the awe of my peers that I wasn¡¯t bluffing.

    And then I felt the terror of someone else that I wasn¡¯t bluffing.

    ¡°Enemies have detected us!¡± I declared, despite only being several dozen meters up the mountain.

    ¡°Excellent!¡± brother Yang and others of his family cheered as some of the others were looking around trying to detect the enemy.

    They didn¡¯t need to look for long, as cultivators capable of flight rose from the higher peaks and bore down on us.

    ¡°Two and one! Intercept!¡± Yin yelled, and charged upward, followed beneath by two lesser disciples as other Silver and Gold core disciples copied her, each with their own support pair.

    I kept walking with the rest of the landbound force behind me and only spared a little attention to note how ecstatic Master was to be able to cross blades now that the promise of growth was returned to her.

    ¡°Hell,¡± brother Yang commented. ¡°Now I know why Uncle Laba calls her ¡®Dancing Rage¡¯. No wonder you improved so much under her.¡±

    I shot him an approving smirk as we continued upward.

    Half an hour later, the ground forces were finally able to come within range and the landbound Yangs were off without a command, followed by longsuffering medics who were trained in extricating them from the bloodshed.

    Leaving only two Gold Core Elders calmly keeping pace with me to offer a measure of defense against the Jade Core Master of the Fist, if he decided that I was a higher priority than joining combat against Master Kong.

    As I reached the first peak, I felt the deep gratitude of the Shanshen as it offered what it could spare to my aura as I started running down the other side to blitz as much of the tainted territory as I could before the enemy sect master showed himself.

    After all, now that everyone else was occupied, there was no point in holding back the purifying wave I now embodied.

    I was halfway up the third mountain when he finally made the decision that Master Kong could wait and a massive blood-qi fist formed above us.

    The Elders both threw up barriers, one of a massive lotus of light, the other a denying palm, and I drew Jinghua Feng Ren, now tassled with a writ of invitation to Wind spirits who wished to empower my strikes, and fired a purifying Air Slash as the fist descended.

    The fist, gouged by my strike, failed to break the barriers, but both Elders buckled under it¡¯s weight.

    As they took up defensive stances, a crimson skinned man with a hideously distorted face calmly stood above us and sneered.

    ¡°An exorcist. How low the Fang have stooped to pretend superiority to us.¡±

    I grinned. ¡°You are mistaken in your vision! The Fang is here at My behest!¡±

    The Elders, having been informed that I would say whatever I needed to in order to throw him off his game, still balked that I¡¯d claim that level of authority.

    ¡°You expect me to fall for such a base lie, exorcist?¡±

    ¡°Who provoked your disciple into beginning this war?¡± I countered. ¡°Who dealt the killing and purifying blow to him to destroy your veneer of invincibility? Who inspired Kong to stand upon a war footing in the first place?¡±

    He started to sneer, but then caught the Elders exchanging looks of shock and fell for it.

    ¡°That¡¯s right!¡± I laughed. ¡°Every step of the way, I¡¯ve guided the Fang to where they would support me in destroying you!¡±

    His composure cracked and we were treated to a scowl. ¡°No matter, then. Die!¡±

    A pair of purification blast talismans were in the air and activating as the second fist started forming, weakening it enough that the Elders were able to block it without collapsing.

    ¡°Wily Rabbit time.¡± I announced with a grin and started running. The Elders, even all the Elders that had been deployed here combined, weren¡¯t a proper match for the Master of the Fist, and we all knew it.

    But as I¡¯d been demonstrating for decades, one didn¡¯t have to be a match for an enemy to defeat them. One only needed to wear them down by making them waste more effort than you did in the same proportion that they were your superior in matters of strength.

    So as I started my run, the Elders split up and readied disruption techniques to wear down the man that none of us could compete fairly with.

    A third fist formed above me and I saw a strike from my left rise to meet it and swerved left at full speed, barely escaping the crater shockwave thanks to the destabilization weakening it on the side I ran through.

    A fourth formed, and the other Elder¡¯s strike from my right saved my hide as I ran right and made it far enough that the mountain itself blocked his line of sight as I cackled like a dead man.

    An easy thing to do, given the circumstances.

    The wannabe demon repositioned so that he could see me rushing along his territory, deleting his blighting claim as I went, and the sky above him darkened with his qi as his dread Demonic Realm technique clawed its way across the area.

    Lesser demonic cultivators relied on the miasma. He was strong enough to force the matter more directly.

    Provided he was allowed to focus. Which both Elders made profoundly difficult by firing upon him with Light and Water techniques that boggled my mind in sheer might.

    The partially formed hellscape faltered, but didn¡¯t collapse as he snarled and turned his attention to one of the Elders, at which point I fired a trio of Wind Blades at him to do my part in keeping him from killing any of us.

    The first two disintegrated to uselessness, purification nigh useless against his Realm¡¯s pure demonic Qi, but the third was just a normal attack that caught him off guard and spoiled his aim from surprise that it reached him more than the scuffing of his robes.

    ¡°How long do you expect your cheap tricks to save you, Immortal?¡± he taunted as he swatted one of the Elders¡¯ attacks out of the sky.

    ¡°Are you really sure you want my mouth running?¡± I laughed as I dashed across the barren mountainside. ¡°That¡¯s a good way to be eaten by your hubris!¡±

    In truth, there was hardly anything I could say that would meaningfully impact his self-control. Especially not compared to the implication that I was toying with him instead of barely keeping my ass alive.

    After all, today¡¯s strategy was just to keep him busy long enough for Master Kong to finish his much more straightforward fight with the Spire master while wearing him out a little, and then to finish the purification work that would pay the bribes that had been demanded of me for my paperwork.

    Instinct honed by assassins saw me flinging a purification blast before my senses registered the rain of demonic needles, sparing me from being murdered outright by them, but I still looked like a hedgehog as I kept moving and internally swearing.

    Not that it wasn¡¯t a lifesaving matter that my faux aura was purifying them down to nothing, but that would consume my limited reserve of energy in a way I really didn¡¯t want to spend it.

    ¡°I see,¡± the jackass snarled behind me. ¡°Any move strong enough to harm you is slow enough to disrupt. Any move swift enough to hit you is too weak to overcome your purification. Clever, for an exposed spirit.¡±

    Killing intent alarms screamed through my head and my recently reforged and renamed Flowing Spirit Path rippled into being and I slid right as hard as I could, only to be thrown through the air by something slamming into the space my foot should have landed like a meteorite.

    ¡°However, you overlooked the matter that you are pathetically weak, and even an amateur¡¯s Meteor Blow is enough to kill you.¡±

    ¡°Oh? I did?¡± I bluffed with a face-splitting grin. ¡°Or did I want you to debase yourself by admitting your demonic arts aren¡¯t good enough?¡±

    Seeing his scowl darken as we briefly locked eyes, it occurred to me that pissing off an old monster who was not only free to, but actively trying to kill me was about as valid as enraging a noble by calling out their manners as far as ¡®causes of death¡¯ go.

    Then I flung myself backwards as more demon darts started flying at me and resumed my mad dash for survival.

    Hearing the Elders¡¯ techniques harrying the monster as I ran gave me a bit of confidence that I was doing more than wasting my energy. After all, the more energy he spent trying to kill me and the more minor damage the Elders could whittle into him, the better chances Master Kong would have when he got here.

    Reaching the tipping point on cleansing the diffused demonic qi in the mountain, I cackled as the shanshen started circulating its energy to stabilize itself and allow me to draw fire away from it.

    A deep growl emanated from the sect master and another of his signature techniques started forming, causing both Elders to frantically throw everything that would reach him in time as I hopped on a jagged outcropping and prayed to myself that my answer for it would work.

    The Ravenous Demon Blood Dragon technique was one that everyone feared with complete justification. Enough so that I bothered to remember its name, even. Formed of Blood and Demonic qi and given a superficial mind so the technique itself could adapt to its target¡¯s movements, it was well accepted that the only answer to it was to kill the user or meet it with a similarly overwhelming technique.

    Neither of which were available tactics, for evident reasons.

    So I readied my sword and my Flowing Spirit Path as I watched the kilometer-long dragon of energy form. My terror, instead of causing my face to fall, locked me into a nearly rictus grin that the Fist Master clearly took as a taunt.

    One advantage that the Flowing Dragon Realm had that I¡¯d sacrificed was the way it filled out an entire space, allowing the user to shift and slide freely without planning out their motions. As the Dragon technique bore down on me, I counted that a fair sacrifice for the extended range I¡¯d gotten in return.

    Its jaws opened wide and I slid to the side and down its length, Jinghua Feng Ren coated in nigh-futile purification winds as it scraped against the outer layer of the technique as I traversed the 100 meters I could cover in the same instant it crashed into the outcropping.

    Was it a beast that I could wear down with damage? No.

    Was it a technique I could theoretically destabilize using the same methods? Absolutely.

    Running down the mountain as it recovered and came at me again, I was struck by the fact that I might wind up demonizing the guy just by being hard to kill as his anger started feeling more palpable.

    The jaws once again came within arm¡¯s reach and I repeated my audacity on the other side, leaving the faintest of scratches in the qi-form of its scales before continuing my run.

    ¡°You cannot escape forever, Immortal!¡± he roared as he swatted another Light Tiger out of the sky.

    ¡°Who¡¯s escaping?¡± I laughed. ¡°I¡¯m working here! You¡¯re just trying to slow me down!¡±

    Fortunately, while he could defend himself from the Elders with frustrating ease, he could not utilize any of his more worrying techniques while his Dragon was chasing me, so I only had to worry about zigging and zagging properly to navigate the land that I was purifying while not being eaten. The Elders could keep themselves safe from his available means, even if they couldn¡¯t properly harm him.

    Naturally, I made a point to pause my run in front of each of the buildings atop the mountains, causing the Dragon to smash them as I sidestepped and gouged a little more off it. Not because it actually mattered, but because it was funny to me. And when running for my life, keeping morale up was crucial to keeping running.

    Incidentally, the similar destruction of Array anchors made the resistance I was feeling from the demonic qi lessen, and I had to shake my head at the obviousness of demonic sects reinforcing their best weapon and defense. And at the recklessness of making a technique that took up so much power and combat focus that it lowered a Jade Core¡¯s available might to mid Gold Core, and not making an emergency termination feature.

    Because that was the only real ¡®weakness¡¯ of the Ravenous Demon Blood Dragon. The user designated a target and the technique would chase them to the ends of the earth if it needed to, but it couldn¡¯t be recalled until it had slain at least the first target.

    So as long as my decades of practice keeping ahead of my death remained sufficient to outsmart a particularly persistent beast, the Fist Master was offensively crippled. And even if he had the wits left to realize that I was using his technique against him, he couldn¡¯t stop me without closing to melee and holding me still.

    And if my theory was correct, managing to wear it down enough that it collapsed from the twin gouges on its sides meant that he¡¯d be without that power for at least a day.

    If I died, however, the dragon would then wreck our entire invasion force with ease, simply because it was that much more powerful than anything we could present, and I was the only one with half my expertise at dodging. Which I¡¯d thought would have been a non-issue, but the damn thing was adapting to my timing and making last-moment swerves that had me sucking my teeth dry as I barely got past them.

    But I kept going, the skin of my teeth and the hair of my chin protesting the abrasion, driving the dragon into whatever I could to buy me precious fractions of seconds to find something new to slam it into.

    Then the moment I was dreading came, and the volunteered energy for my exorcism started running dry, forcing me to count the mountains left to clean and being relieved that my frenzied run had made it onto the second to last one.

    Fei Jiao, indeed.

    I maneuvered to the top, where a pavilion was seated, and felt the reserves finish draining as the dragon leveled the building, leaving me with only my own qi to handle the last mountain.

    The same qi that I¡¯d been spending for the past few hours to keep me alive and whittle at the technique chasing me all across the mountain range.

    My confidence faltered for a single breath, and my speed did as well. The fangs that had chased me relentlessly bore down again, and I accepted that I¡¯d fallen short of my task.

    Spite drove me to fling my last dozen purification blast talismans at it even though I knew it wouldn¡¯t help. Any little help I could lend to the people who were about to die because I failed as a shield was something, after all.

    And honestly, just fuck this stupid ass dragon.

    The pure white of my blasts was joined by a massive golden blur and I was suddenly staring at clear skies as the abruptly headless dragon broke apart into swiftly dispersing qi while I stared dumbly.

    ¡°Guang! My boy!¡± Sect Master Kong clapped me on the shoulder as I started catching up to what happened. ¡°I feared I¡¯d been delayed too long by those Spire bastards, but you actually did it!¡±

    ¡°Sect Master has impeccable timing.¡± I answered without trusting myself to bow and remain on my feet. Instead I pulled out a qi recovery pill now that I had time to process it. ¡°Disciple cannot thank you enough for your arrival.¡±

    ¡°Ha! I should be thanking you for surviving so much longer than we planned for! As a mere Stone-¡± he paused and stared at me. ¡°How did you step into Stone Core without provoking a tribulation?¡±

    ¡°Heaven and its servants have no dominion left over me.¡± I answered while trying to figure out when I¡¯d taken that step. ¡°Even my agreement to purify the mountains is simply an arrangement of mutual opportunity.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± he nodded before starting to laugh. ¡°So even our mightiest displays of defiance are truly nothing to your path!¡±

    ¡°Indeed. Though it is a bit of a shame. Sharing tea with the administrators and rulers under Heaven is wonderful, but not having the cause to share a discussion with Heaven itself is a sadness.¡±

    ¡°With your audacity, Guang, I have no doubt you¡¯ll find new cause just to confound us all!¡±

    Scanning the mountains, he finally picked out where the Fist Master was and nodded grimly. ¡°I will kill the demon, rest assured of that. If I do not survive the process, please promise me you¡¯ll treat the sect kindly.¡±

    ¡°Sect Master is too confident in my own survival. The most I can promise is that I shan¡¯t treat it cruelly.¡± Cunning jerk, trying to bind me with my own word at the last opportunity.

    He sighed and accepted the substitution before donning a grim face and taking off for the final deciding fight of the war.

    And likely the first of our next, frankly.

    I, meanwhile, began the trudge down the mountain, toward the final one of the domain.

    It was kind of silly, really. Exorcizing the mountains while demonic qi was still being produced. Cruel spirits would arise from this range for decades, at least, just from the unpurified deaths of the demonic cultivators. Hell, the death of the master would probably invite a proper demon to manifest and attempt to conquer or destroy the region.

    But, as Shegong Maori¡¯s messenger explained, the difference was between ¡®new corruption¡¯ that could be fought and purged by Earthly means without objection from the bureaucracy, and ¡®established¡¯ corruption that Earthly courts were explicitly forbidden from engaging with to prevent its spread.

    So once I finished prying out the old stuff, there would be a period of several months where the Earthly courts could -with extreme care, because the spread issue was real- clean up at the edges of the blighted lands while the reigning bureaucrats caught up on the paperwork of the purification and the recorruption.

    A small victory, but a worthwhile one. Which contributed heavily to the sheer magnitude of support I¡¯d received. Enough that I only needed to provide the raw qi for the last mountain¡¯s Shanshen to be able to survive the cycling process.

    A cycling process that they were only allowed to attempt with demonic cultivators so close because, in my Command at the outset, I demanded that they succeed.

    Something I was allowed to do as an Immortal Exorcist, apparently. Not without consequence, sure. I¡¯d spend centuries being tortured if the Hell Realm technique, for instance, caused one of the recovering shanshen to succumb and start forcibly spreading it. But Maori¡¯s messengers had all provided me writs of assurance that they had measures in place to prevent that today, as a concession during negotiations that I had adamantly insisted on.

    I reached the junction of the mountains and prepared myself mentally. Everyone of threat was occupied. Everyone who¡¯d come to kill me once the first threats were dead had agreed to let me finish cleansing the mountain. I could do this. Maybe not the next part, but I could do this.

    The shanshen made itself known about a third of the way up, thanking me in faint flickers of shen as I climbed.

    ¡°Hey, an exorcist has got to exorcize, y¡¯know?¡± I chuckled at it. ¡°Good for the body, good for the soul.¡±

    It seemed to chuckle and signalled to the side, which I took to be a request for me to walk somewhere either easier to circulate or similarly useful to the task at hand, so I obliged and followed the signal.

    Reaching an outcropping, I felt relief like an itch or a cramping tension point was finally addressed and had to chuckle. ¡°Happy to help, mighty Shanshen.¡±

    It motioned me to three more similar crux points of its surface before showing me a cave and bidding me enter.

    ¡°I cannot thank you enough, Qu Mo Shi!¡± it spoke almost as soon as I was inside. ¡°Not just for myself, but for all my brethren here.¡±

    ¡°I am honored by your gratitude, but should you be speaking yet? I would hate to see your health fail now.¡±

    ¡°Further in, I¡¯ve sealed most of my poison with a technique I stole from the demonic cultivators. Giving me a little leeway and having the worst of it in one place. Now that you¡¯ve cleared those chakras for me, I can help you finish up swiftly enough to escape. I hope.¡±

    I grinned and dashed down into the cave. ¡°I like the way you think, my friend!¡±

    In the chamber it guided me to, I found a massive chunk of Spirit Stone, easily 100,000 pieces worth in volume alone, oozing demonic qi.

    I stared in bafflement for a moment at the how and the why before it clicked.

    ¡°Turning the stone into a vessel by exploiting demonic qi¡¯s consumptive nature! Clever!¡±

    ¡°Exactly. Clear it up enough, and the rest that¡¯s plaguing me should move toward it for cleansing. Freeing me to work at it as well.¡±

    I nodded at the sense it made and stepped forward so that my purification enveloped the stone and swallowed another pill. This was going to be much more intense, but much faster than just walking over the surface.

    The demonic qi within the stone was dense enough that even sitting and putting my full attention on the exorcizing I was only able to wear away about a millimeter a minute. However, true to the shanshen¡¯s prediction, it was only about twenty minutes before the cleansed shell of the stone and the technique being used on it started drawing diffused demonic qi from the rest of the mountain, which had it being cleansed to nothingness as it tried to enter my aura.

    Another ten minutes and the shanshen spoke up. ¡°Excellent! I can finish up if you need to flee. There was a massive clash a moment ago, so I fear the battle is done.¡±

    ¡°The sooner you¡¯re completely cleared, the better my allies¡¯ chances of making my flight successful. I¡¯ll help until Wuhen can file your exorcism and then be on my way.¡±

    ¡°I understand. I¡¯ll direct it all toward you while I work, then you can take the stone.¡±

    ¡°You won¡¯t need it?¡±

    ¡°Not at all, I actually hate using the technique, and cleaning the stone myself would take centuries.¡±

    ¡°Then I¡¯ll thank you for the gift and the understanding.¡± I grinned. It may only be a massive spirit stone, but it was still a massive spirit stone. I was bound to be able to find a use for it later.

    Another twenty minutes and two more qi recovery pills as the flow of demonic qi was accelerated by the mountain¡¯s ki, and Wuhen appeared, out of breath, and offered up a stack of writs.

    I accepted them and felt the strangest sensation of True Authority fill my being and flow outward, presumably legitimizing the orders I¡¯d spent the last month and a half giving out to the Earthly spirits that signed on with my ploy.

    ¡°Wonderful, thank you Wuhen!¡± I grinned and stood. ¡°And you, again, my mountain friend. I¡¯ll get this stone out of your way and be about my escape.¡±

    ¡°Come by again sometime!¡± the shanshen laughed, tone revealing exhaustion ¡°I could use pointers on growing things again after so long!¡±

    ¡°Sure thing! I¡¯ll bring some seeds I think you¡¯ll like!¡± I answered as I sucked the massive stone into one of my backup spatial rings where the demonic qi wouldn¡¯t impact anything else and started running again.

    One never gets lucky without trying, after all.

    ---

    Sect Elder Raka Shetou had been having a good day.

    The war that had disrupted the peace of the land was finally ending. The Sect Master and the upstart behind it had agreed to nearly suicidal tasks in the name of ending it. He had a detailed list of everyone that needed to be executed to bring the sect into proper harmony.

    Sure, boorishly fighting and killing Silver Spire Elders was a distasteful necessity, but it went well enough. A whispered doubt amplifying their already dissonant techniques into as much useless noise, and their famous curses faltered against him. Another whisper and their false strength faltered as well.

    The reinforcements that they called on from the island sects they ruled over were irksome, but after dealing with Guang for so long, the fools who needed taught how to spell death were a welcome breath of mundanity.

    Sect Master Kong and his closest allies faced off against Spire Sect Master Yuni and were stymied by the latter¡¯s clever use of the Ho traitors¡¯ information for a full three hours. During which time, the conspicuous absence of Fist Master Fennu indicated that Guang was likely earning himself a slow and painful death.

    Yuni finally fell, and Kong chose not to delay long enough for his supporters to recover before rushing off, leaving the last of cleaning up of the Spire to the assembled Elders.

    Raka arranged for his old friend Tong to be in charge of sorting out the corpses, slaves, and treasure once the enemy Elders were all dead, and set off with the remaining Fang Elders to clean up the messes at the Red Fist.

    Upon arriving, he¡¯d thought his good day was going to be pleasantly better, as they arrived just in time to watch the Fist Master activate a suicide technique while Master Kong, visibly exhausted, tried to protect the rest of the Fang forces instead of himself.

    A nod to Elder Ling She, and everything looked to be going correctly.

    And then it wasn¡¯t.

    Their ambush of their exhausted peers went off flawlessly, blades and poisons striking true. And then the poisons were extracted by an unseen force. Like the poison itself refused to kill its victims.

    Battle was joined for the civil war, and Raka¡¯s calm composure was tested to an extreme as the light tried to play tricks on him, making sure strikes look guarded and ready guards look shaky. The winds he stood upon shifted underfoot, giving him the illusion that he was being attacked from angles reserved for the Ling.

    Glancing around the battlefield, he watched his allies and subordinates making blunders that were far beneath them. The exhausted, half-dead disciples and Elders that should have been falling like cattle were surviving with lucky slips and-

    The stone under one disciple rolled, spoiling his finishing blow on another.

    Raka scowled, and the fool he¡¯d been fighting froze in justified terror.

    ¡°I don¡¯t have time for you.¡± Raka announced. ¡°Ling! Where is Guang?¡±

    ¡°Last sighting was atop that mountain, heading to the north!¡± Ling pointed as his opponent evaded a liver strike. ¡°My daughter is tracking him!¡±

    ¡°Good. He needs to die first.¡± Raka nodded and flew off, ignoring the protests of the man he¡¯d been fighting.

    A scan of the mountain revealed none of Guang¡¯s energy, but he did detect the Ling Heiress and moved to intercept her.

    ¡°The world itself is hiding his path.¡± she announced as he arrived. ¡°But I¡¯m reasonably sure he¡¯s gone this way.¡±

    ¡°Lead. I¡¯ll deal with the spirits. You can even have his head.¡±

    Guang was not going to survive the day and lead the earth itself to defend his impudent nonsense. Not if Raka had anything to say about it.

 Diplomacy and Diving

    Raka stared at the wooden hut. Ling stood beside him, disbelief on her face matching what he allowed himself to feel.

    So much had changed so abruptly five years ago, during the civil war that lasted all of a week while they thought they were tracking Guang down, only to learn from a cackling breeze that Guang had ordered the spirits to create a wholly false path and then obscure it to waste their time.

    Even having gone so far as to give explicit orders to appear to be obeying Raka¡¯s own demands if he personally joined the hunt.

    In their fury at being outplayed yet again, they had gone to Guang¡¯s hometown, Oak Bloom village, only to find his former master, now wife, waiting for them with a readied blade. Raka had gotten her talking and learned that Guang had introduced her to his mortal kin and asked her to guard them against reprisal.

    Leaving that hovel, they had gone to the recently renamed Shaded Mushroom village and encountered the meddlesome excursion captain Sung and his master, having been similarly asked to defend the mortals. There, they learned that Guang had visited the day before the inter-sect war ended and collected the mushrooms that he¡¯d blessed, and renewed his blessing upon the bowl the mortals venerated for his antic of multiplying the torn and shared mushrooms on his first visit.

    Not feeling like wasting blows when the trail to find the upstart had gone cold, they then returned to the sect and discovered the civil war to be over, and the wrong side to have won.

    The Ling family was dead. The Ho family had purged their traitors. The Sang, Eit, Tun, and Qing families were all but dead, their only survivors being Guang¡¯s allies.

    The Yellow Fang had, inside of a week, shucked every major holdout of good sense and power.

    The resulting fight and flight saw Raka saving the last Ling¡¯s life several times, and her returning the favor with a well-timed dagger once.

    When they were finally free of pursuit, Ling had begged him to teach her whatever he could so she could hunt Guang down for killing her family, and he¡¯d agreed.

    They¡¯d set out together, seeking any trace of Guang¡¯s chaos to find him and kill him. It was an ill fit, the girl¡¯s entitlement and disdain for nicety had to be beaten down so she could learn the control Raka¡¯s arts required, but they persevered, looking far and wide for the social upheaval that would indicate Guang¡¯s presence.

    And after five long years, they¡¯d found a hut. Abandoned three years prior by the ¡®farmer¡¯ who¡¯d spent an entire season tending the land and engaging with the mortals like a peer.

    A hut filled with scrolls and paintings that all held Dao Comprehension that felt like only Guang¡¯s could.

    All pertaining to the understanding of fertilizer.

    Raka¡¯s eye twitched in spite of his composure.

    ¡°Shall I burn it, Master?¡± Ling asked hopefully.

    ¡°No. He is playing with us.¡± Raka concluded. ¡°He has no doubt left a clue within these scrolls that will put us on his trail with dutiful study. One of his acolytes would perform that study without second thought.¡±

    Ling thought on his words for several moments before nodding. ¡°A clever security measure. Anyone seeking his death other than you would burn the clue out of offence.¡±

    Then they both looked upon the hut and sighed. ¡°I do not relish studying ¡®Shit¡¯ any more than you, Ling.¡± Raka ventured a cold comfort. ¡°Let us be done with this quickly.¡±

    Guang¡¯s death would last for days to sate Raka¡¯s rage at this game.

    ---

    Echoes of a song I¡¯d heard shortly before my death flitted through my ears.

    ¡®With the right degrees off the ocean breeze, any man could surely stay¡¯ was the only lyric to present itself, but it rang true as I relaxed on a bamboo sunning chair on an isolated section of the shore.

    Being free of the sect, I¡¯d escaped westward beyond their reach and spent a season helping the local farmers address their poor soil before venturing northward by joining a merchant train as mercenary security.

    I¡¯d stayed on with them as far as Demon¡¯s Port, a city that doubled as a fortress against attacks from the continent to the north, where I¡¯d taken on a quiet study of history to try avoiding being blindsided by hearing about things like ¡®The Demon Continent¡¯.

    Ultimately a misnomer, spiritually speaking, but also a matter that I suspected I¡¯d be asked to address eventually, as there was also an abundance of demons and demonic qi.

    Yeah, being an exorcist-for-hire and then learning about the difference between Demonic Spirits and Demons was a bit of egg on my face, but easy enough to laugh off.

    After learning that there were more nuances to nature than anyone seeking to hire me had thought to tell me about, I hopped aboard a ship heading east to the island nations and took some time in each one getting to know the locals and the local spirits.

    Outside of a few minor instances of some warped beast accosting us and the mortals thinking I¡¯d hit them next if they didn¡¯t bow to me, I¡¯d had a nice, peaceful time of most of it.

    Leading to this lovely day, relaxing on the beach after helping another small village resolve their crop issue.

    They had been ¡®supplementing¡¯ the island¡¯s lake water with ocean water after their over-use of the lake had angered its spirit, and the salt buildup was having predictable effects on their crops.

    I¡¯d been talking out terms of supplication for the lake spirit, showing the mortals how to purify their water, and introducing them to the fact that rice didn¡¯t need to be submerged entirely.

    Because somewhere along the tradition line, the locals had forgotten that detail. Reteaching them how to deal with weeds and pests in dry rice fields had gone a long way to calming the Lake Spirit. As had teaching them the art of imbuing respect and worship into their cooking, making their offerings much more nourishing than their initial attempts at placating her.

    At the polite request of the island Shegong, I¡¯d also introduced them to a few more crops to head off a soil imbalance that had caused him more than one sleepless week.

    A good season¡¯s work, and the heat of the summer made the beach simply exquisite to relax on.

    ¡°I still say it¡¯s strange that you can study us so earnestly.¡± The local Wind Governor swirled into visibility on a rock next to me. ¡°Especially while just lounging about like a mortal.¡±

    ¡°And you¡¯re still right, my friend.¡± I grinned. ¡°What brings it up today?¡±

    ¡°Rumors.¡± He sighed. ¡°The courts to the south are in chaos again, and my friend Shi Feng blames you, jokingly.¡±

    ¡°She heard about the broken marriages incident, then?¡± I laughed.

    ¡°Exactly! And that got me thinking about all the other little odd things you do.¡±

    ¡°Like the comprehension hut?¡±

    ¡°Like the comprehension hut!¡± He threw his hands up in exasperation. ¡°You decided to help the locals and the lake sort things out, and then immediately set up a hut to study ¡®Waves¡¯. What¡¯s up with that?¡±

    ¡°Nothing at all.¡± I shrugged. ¡°I just had the passing fancy to pick something to study in depth whenever I stop long enough to tend to a field.¡±

    ¡°And you just leave your studies in a hut for any other daoist to come copy?¡±

    ¡°Naturally! How else would those battle maniacs bother to learn something worthwhile?¡±

    The Governor sputtered with laughter and the beach¡¯s spirit stepped out of the sand with a gentle smile on her face. ¡°Come now Xin, you know he¡¯s almost done here. Ask him already.¡±

    I raised my eyebrow and turned to the abruptly embarrassed Wind spirit.

    ¡°Do you have any notes on how to be a good Governor?¡± he almost pouted. ¡°I- I never got any tutelage. My appointment was an emergency replacement after my predecessor fell to demonic taint. Taking time off and studying under someone who knows what they¡¯re doing would just see me beholden to them after filing far too much paperwork. I¡¯ve just been making things up as I go, and I know it shows.¡±

    I let a smile crease my face as I swung my legs to the side to give him the attention his shoulders screamed that he needed.

    ¡°Xin, my friend. Before I gift you my spare scrolls of rulership comprehension, look at what you¡¯ve done. Your position and duty is to resolve disputes between lesser Wind spirits and keep them busy and on task so that Administrator Dongfeng¡¯s attendants don¡¯t have to constantly be cleaning up their messes, yes?¡±

    ¡°Yes?¡± he leaned back like he feared my smile would stab him. ¡°That¡¯s the bare minimum duty of a Governor, yes.¡±

    ¡°And in your efforts at ¡®making it up as you go¡¯, how well has that worked?¡±

    ¡°Decently, I guess? The attendants complain more about the paperwork I personally create than the messes, at the least.¡±

    ¡°Is your job to cut down on their paperwork, or to keep the winds from making more?¡±

    ¡°I make that point too! They just grumble and mutter about transfering.¡±

    ¡°Let them.¡± My grin turned mischievous.

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Let them.¡± I repeated. ¡°One at a time, make sure they filed for a replacement properly, and approve a transfer request every couple of months.¡±

    ¡°But then word of my incompetence will spread!¡±

    ¡°Have you forgotten that they already talk to each other?¡± the Beach spirit, Sha, sighed, having caught on to my suggestion. ¡°All that letting them transfer will do is remind them of how much work you¡¯re saving them, and replace them with someone who can appreciate you.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll become a laughingstock! Everyone will know how bad I am at the job!¡±

    ¡°Xin, buddy.¡± I reached out and grabbed his shoulder. ¡°First, stop and think. How many of your neighboring courts welcome your suggestions? The Shegong here? Nothing but praise for you. The Surf? They¡¯re all great fans of your work. The crops? They specifically credit you with keeping them intact by letting your winds pick up some of the salt when they gust. You don¡¯t get that sort of popularity by being bad at the job, understand? You don¡¯t get a lovely beach spirit stepping up to push you into asking for help by being a failure.¡±

    He blushed a little, but swallowed and nodded.

    ¡°Second, stop and look at who you asked for help.¡± I held his gaze until I saw it click that asking a chaosian for help with Order was a suboptimum decision. ¡°I can share principles, I can share advice, but all of my notes are going to involve finding the lines that you need to toe, and cleverly ignoring the rest of them. I can help you be good at the job, not be popular with the administration. The only thing I do that makes them like me is fill out my own paperwork ahead of time.¡±

    ¡°Then why would you tell me to grant the transfers?¡±

    ¡°Because that¡¯s the administration¡¯s mechanism for correcting administrator/court misalignments.¡± I sat back casually. ¡°What it sounds like to me is that you¡¯ve had the same set of administration attendants that worked under your predecessor, and they hold it against you that you are not him. The correct answer to that is to allow them to request a transfer elsewhere and acclimate their replacement to your system. Maybe even ask for their help streamlining your paperwork so that it¡¯s not jumping through old hoops that make excess work.¡±

    I laughed and tossed both spirits a fruit before taking a bite of a third, a mango. ¡°For that matter, if Dongfeng agrees to the new method, your neighbors will probably copy you, and then you¡¯re a visionary instead of a weirdo.¡±

    ¡°It can¡¯t be that easy.¡± he shook his head and took a bite of the peach.

    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°Try it anyway.¡± I insisted. ¡°It¡¯ll clear up enough that you can figure out the rest yourself.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯d be surprised how predictable the Bureaucracy is to Moshui¡¯s methods.¡± Wuhen swirled into visibility next to me and I traded an apple for the papers he carried. ¡°With that, I predict my workload completed, if you¡¯d like me to assist Governor Xin in sorting the transfer paperwork.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I couldn¡¯t impose on you like that.¡± Xin started to wave off the offer.

    ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be any imposition at all, Governor. Moshui¡¯s methods have allowed me to develop my own might by becoming familiar with all manner of paperwork. I would be grateful for the opportunity to assist you!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s true. He comes back and we discuss the Ink arts he encountered and I gain benefits from it as well, so you¡¯re even welcome to call his assistance a repayment of itself.¡± I interrupted his second refusal while extending my Ink qi senses into the small pile of paperwork.

    Xin chuckled, presumably at my grin. ¡°Good news then?¡±

    ¡°Technicality hunting pays off again.¡± I nodded. ¡°I can resolve Linpian He¡¯s issue now.¡±

    ¡°With Nan Liu¡¯s grandson?¡± Sha¡¯s eyes went wide. ¡°But his entire court supports the boy!¡±

    ¡°Indeed. Frustrating devotion to nepotism, that. Xi Liu¡¯s court, on the other hand, has been complaining about shoddy filing and deferred workloads in the area. And wouldn¡¯t you know it, all the reasons that they can¡¯t get anyone to resolve it are because people have to file paperwork in Nan Liu¡¯s courts to be allowed to act in accord with heavenly regulation.¡±

    ¡°What makes you different, then?¡±

    ¡°My paperwork is already filed.¡± I grinned. ¡°Remember the disruptive scapegoat they lied to me about?¡±

    Xin¡¯s eyes went wide. ¡°You never closed that case?¡±

    ¡°The ¡®source of the disruptions¡¯ hasn¡¯t been dealt with. Of course I never signed off on the case closing.¡± I grinned. ¡°And now, I have Xi Liu¡¯s blessing to act at the grandson¡¯s level because we all know he¡¯s the problem.¡±

    Sha stared at me. ¡°You must know Nan Liu will retaliate for offending his grandson.¡±

    ¡°Indeed. If only I had a writ of permission from him to resolve the source of the disruptions, free of consequence from his court.¡± I mused with a shit eating grin. ¡°But what sort of mercenary would include such a specific clause in his contract to deal with a disruptive unnamed spirit?¡±

    Wuhen giggled at the other spirits¡¯ gaping. ¡°It¡¯d have to be one that used excessive force to make an example of the offending spirit, no? Anything less would cause suspicion and have his every move watched for traps.¡±

    I drank in the awe and mild horror from the spirits for a moment before turning to the Governor. ¡°Say, Governor Xin. I¡¯ve got an excursion down to the depths here soon. Might I impose on you to borrow an attendant to ensure I can breathe properly through it? My own attendant, Wuhen, won¡¯t be of much help for this, so if you¡¯d like to make use of his talents in exchange, I can humbly offer them.¡±

    He cracked up, laughing deeply enough the wind coming off the surf intensified to a strong gust for a long moment before he composed himself. ¡°If you¡¯re that dead-set on helping me, I won¡¯t argue any more! I¡¯ll find a suitable attendant to assist you before the day is over.¡±

    Another Wind spirit swirled into being. ¡°With respect, Governor Xin, I would like to volunteer.¡±

    Sha giggled and Xin fell over laughing at his subordinate¡¯s enthusiasm. ¡°You know what? Sure. Just don¡¯t let him drown, and for mercy¡¯s sake don¡¯t get involved.¡± he said, wiping a tear from his eye.

    ¡°Understood, Governor.¡± the thing bowed with a grin before bowing to me. ¡°I am at your service, Fei Jiao.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m glad to have your help. But I must reiterate, do not get involved beyond keeping me breathing. It is violently not worth the antagonism between Xin and Nan Liu. Understand?¡±

    ¡°I understand, yes. It is still an honor to aid you.¡±

    ¡°Excellent! No time like the present, then.¡± I stood and folded my chair before storing it in my ring. ¡°This shouldn¡¯t take long, now that I¡¯ve got the paperwork sorted. So please do come by to see if I¡¯m back in time for dinner.¡±

    Xin and Sha were giggling to themselves as they and Wuhen vanished, and the Wind attendant took manual command of the air in my lungs to keep it fresh and breathable, vanishing in the process.

    Then I walked into the surf, being quite glad for robes inscribed with water-as-air freedom so that all I had to focus on was moving myself through the thicker fluid.

    Down I swam until the mortal-accessible space was exhausted, at which point I activated my temporary authority as an inquisitor to step into the Green Depth Palace. Ruled in name by Linpian He, but having been taken over almost a century prior by Di Shier Xing, Nan Liu¡¯s grandson.

    ¡°State your business!¡± the gate guard yelped, pointing a spear at me.

    ¡°Finishing off some paperwork, little more.¡± I grinned. ¡°I noticed that my temporary inquisitor rank is still active. Figured I should close that out before I leave the area.¡±

    The guard relaxed dramatically. ¡°Oh, okay. I¡¯ll tell him you¡¯re here then.¡±

    His jumpiness was completely understandable. My contract was set up so that I could act at my discretion on anyone I deemed to be part of the problem, and I¡¯d demonstrated that while turning the scapegoat over to the punishers of Yama would have had him suffering longer, my method very clearly had him suffering more.

    And, being a Cultivator as well as an Immortal, other spirits couldn¡¯t be entirely sure that their strength mattered in front of me.

    It did. Categorically. But they couldn¡¯t be sure, which made them uneasy even when I was playing nice.

    I waited only a short while, ninety minutes tops, before I was escorted to the main audience hall where Di Shier was waiting with a deeply irritated scowl.

    ¡°I thought you finished your task months ago!¡± he grouched. ¡°Why the hell are you showing up about it now?¡±

    The poetry of it was too much to keep a grin off my face. ¡°Well, you see, honorable Di Shier Xing. When I sought out that ill-trained spirit, I rather expected your palace¡¯s paperwork woes to be resolved, and for you to summon me to close out the case properly. As it was my understanding from the oddly uniform testimonies that the spirit I corrected last time I was honored by these halls was the one responsible for the paperwork not being handled properly.¡±

    ¡°It was. Things have been fine since your display.¡± he lied, poorly.

    ¡°Truly? Your neighboring courts and their administrators tell quite a different tale. Why, to hear them tell it, it¡¯s like I never visited at all, with the lack of communication and filing being done. Almost like the ruler of this palace hasn¡¯t signed anything in the entire time I¡¯ve held my temporary rank.¡±

    ¡°Then they¡¯re lying. Why waste your time telling me this?¡±

    ¡°Oh, just idle thoughts. Here is the document I need the Palace Master¡¯s seal on to close out the case. If you would stamp and sign it, the situation can be resolved in full.¡± I smiled civilly as I handed over a copy of the paperwork.

    ¡°That¡¯s all? You interrupted my afternoon meditations for a single stamp?¡±

    ¡°It is amazing how simple things get when you know what you¡¯re doing, yes.¡± I ignored his lie about using his time productively.

    I watched his tiny brain whirr in place as he tried to figure out whether I was insulting him or not, then insisted he take the paper with a gentle motion.

    ¡°I sign this one document and you go on your way?¡±

    ¡°Indeed.¡± I lied easily. ¡°Your signature and stamp are the last things I need.¡±

    I knew he¡¯d been warned from issuing a signature while I was watching, but I also knew that he was barely intelligent enough to grasp that he didn¡¯t have a choice. Refusing to sign would be an admission that he was obstructing the proper functioning of the court.

    But his grandpa had his back, and he knew I knew it. So it didn¡¯t matter whether I caught him for forging a signature or for obstructing proper functioning. Because while I could kick the paperwork around, Nan Liu would never have given me clearance to do to him what I did to the scapegoat.

    So as his tiny brain put together the fact that he was trapped, but that I couldn¡¯t actually do anything to him, he concluded that getting me out of his face was more important than the advice he¡¯d received, and he pulled out the Palace Seal with a grumble.

    The ink dried instantly, Ink spirits having been among his greatest detractors, and I collected the paper as soon as his pen was off it.

    ¡°Wonderful! Now I have hard proof of you usurping the Palace Master¡¯s authority and we can get this finished!¡±

    ¡°What?¡± he sputtered as I rolled the evidence into a tube with the documentation that Linpian He was still the Palace Master. ¡°You- get ou-¡±

    My hand slammed into his throat, cutting him off. ¡°Don¡¯t waste your breath. Unlike you, I know how to navigate rules. And now that everything¡¯s in order, I get to do my job.¡±

    Guards had their spears pointed at me in the same time my other hand took to raise a halting finger. ¡°Do you really want Yama¡¯s punishers to have your names for interfering with an inquisition?¡±

    I let them flinch back a step before continuing. ¡°Let me do my work, or my attendant finalizes the paperwork for all of you. Nan Liu might kill you, but Yama is full of specialists in making you wish they¡¯d kill you.¡±

    Fear and good sense drove the guards to backing down and stepping out of the room, to Di Shier¡¯s horror.

    ¡°There.¡± I grinned viciously. ¡°Now, about obstructing the duties of the Earthly Courts of the ocean. Your punishment.¡±

    His head shook in terror as my hand held his throat closed. Then my other hand smashed into his face and confirmed my suspicions that he was pathetically weak.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry. You¡¯ll heal.¡± I sneered, then hit him again. ¡°Someday.¡±

    I dropped him and set about dislocating his major joints with just enough stolen healing technique to make sure he felt it despite his mangled face. After all, the Joker had a point about starting with the face otherwise.

    I was just finishing with rearranging his ankles when one of his elite guards, assigned by his grandfather, shoved his way into the room despite the protests of the rest.

    ¡°Ah, Qingse Changqiang.¡± I smiled at his dumbfounded expression. ¡°I¡¯m just finishing my duties as freelance inquisitor. You can have your charge back in just a minute.¡±

    I swayed on instinct and barely dodged his bident as it came for my head. ¡°Touchy touchy. I¡¯m just doing the job I was hired for.¡±

    ¡°You will die for touching Nan Liu¡¯s family!¡± he roared as I dodged another flurry of blows.

    ¡°Only if he wants to be demoted in accordance with the Shamed Face protocols. After all, I was granted impunity for actions serving my job.¡±

    ¡°You won¡¯t live to shame him!¡±

    I couldn¡¯t have kept my grin off my face if I wanted to. ¡°I hear threats like that often. Want to walk to Yama with me?¡±

    He was good. Easily my superior in straight combat, though not nearly as overwhelmingly as his reputation had me suspect.

    But there¡¯s just something powerful about an evil smile and an invitation to hell that he wasn¡¯t immune to. And in that moment of hesitation, my Flowing Spirit Path was in place and I was behind him, arms clasping for a full nelson.

    His reflexes and speed made clinging to his back difficult, but it wasn¡¯t until he made the mistake of trying to flip me forward that he made any progress in shaking me off. Sadly, that progress resulted in me having the leverage to wrench his foundation in the water around us from him, sending us both into a dizzying riptide-like turmoil as knees and fists found guts and bones.

    Even having pulled him into my fighting pattern and deprived him of his bident, he was vicious enough that I found myself cackling in adrenaline and fear as I fought, taking bare solace that he seemed ever so slightly put off by how much fun I was having.

    He finally landed a solid body blow combo that threw me off him and regained his stance as I twisted in the water, mostly upside down, and spat some blood from my mouth.

    ¡°You¡¯re a madman!¡± he swore as I noticed his wounds taking a toll on his imperious stature.

    ¡°And you¡¯re stupid enough to stand in my way.¡± I retorted with my battle grin locked in place.

    ¡°Di Shier! Rescind hospitality!¡± he ordered his boss as he charged me, ignoring his fallen weapon that it would have taken him precious fractions of a second to retrieve.

    My Path sprang into existence again, leading to a grip on his legs that his reflexes had him defending from in the blink it took me to move along it, only for me to stop halfway and slam my elbow into his neck instead, beginning another blur of impacts and blood, during which I felt the water around us become less accommodating.

    Qingse felt it too, and started focusing on body blows to force me to exhale, and I played along like I was actually worried about drowning, just long enough that he left his head unguarded to guarantee a heavy blow that shoved most of my lung capacity out of me.

    Then I finished returning the blow to his temple, knocking him out before he could piece together that I came prepared for drowning.

    I spat a bit more blood and straightened up. ¡°So impolite.¡± I chided my intended victim, startling slightly at the tone shift of my voice now that the water wasn¡¯t being civil. ¡°Trying to kill an inquisitor just because I¡¯m delivering your first round of punishment.¡±

    ¡°Y- You should be drowning! Why aren¡¯t you drowning?¡± he whimpered as I approached with a sadistic grin.

    ¡°I¡¯m not done here. I¡¯ll bother caring about whether or not I should be dead after you¡¯ve received your punishment.¡± I answered as I stepped on his foot. ¡°And if you don¡¯t personally see my corpse, I¡¯d advise avoiding giving me cause to return. Understand?¡±

    His scream from the pain of bones sliding around faded into whimpering and promising to shape up and begging me to stop.

    But, as I had an image to create and maintain, I continued punishing him for his decades of stolen authority and careless management by carefully mangling his body in ways that would have him hurting for the better part of a decade, even with medical assistance.

    Then, grabbing the stamp and seal of authority, I carried the wreck of his body out past the gate of the palace, where Linpian He, the rightful palace master, was waiting, mouth agape.

    ¡°Your usurper, Palace Master.¡± I smiled as though all my bones were intact. ¡°And your symbols returned. As requested.¡±

    He accepted his station¡¯s markers and shook himself. ¡°Why is the Inquisitor not being welcomed!¡± he snapped at the Water spirits, who abruptly returned convenience to me. ¡°Much better! I cannot thank you enough, Guang. I can handle things from here. I fear I¡¯ll be unable to reward you further as I ought to, but if you¡¯re ever in the area again, know that you are always welcome here.¡±

    ¡°I am honored, Palace Master. I wish you easy fortunes in cleaning up the mess this idiot left behind.¡±

    ¡°I know!¡± He exclaimed and then reverted to his natural serpentine form. Then, as I watched, trying to figure out what he was doing, he contorted and pried a scale loose with his fang, then returned to his human guise. ¡°Have this, as a token of my gratitude.¡± he explained as he pulled out a carving pen and wrote on the underside of the scale. ¡°It will lend you my authority, should you have need of it, and allow you to enter the palace without needing a specialized position.¡±

    ¡°You have no worry of me abusing your authority?¡± I chuckled as I accepted the gift.

    ¡°Not of you doing anything worse than this whelp did, at least. And with your advice on keeping my seal out of others¡¯ hands, I believe you will keep this similarly safe.¡±

    ¡°You honor me with your trust, and I shall not malign you by breaking it. But before I go, your signature, please.¡± I offered him the original document to close out my inquisition.

    He signed and stamped it with a smile, then stepped into his palace to start cleaning house.

    I tucked the paperwork away for Wuhen to study and file later and returned to the island as the sun was dipping below the treeline to enjoy what was likely my last week on the island before catching a merchant ship to the next one.

    This mercenary gig was actually a really sweet deal, all told.

 Frosty Friendliness

    Nobility, I¡¯d heard, sometimes mused at why winter was associated with death. Some argued that it was due to blind eyes not being able to see the vibrant beauty in the frost, or the subtle elegance of the winter predator.

    Some insisted that the peasants only cared about their own food crops, and having harvested them in autumn, they counted the fields as ¡®dead¡¯ until planting season.

    But though I¡¯d only spent eight years as a commoner before beginning my path as an immortal, I knew full well why winter was associated with death more than the other seasons. And why, as I approached the latest island village, there was no bustle or cheer.

    In the winter, people just died. For reasons that most simply couldn¡¯t make sense of beyond the seasonal spirits being malicious.

    In summer, when a man died of heat, it made sense. In the spring, a man choking to death was understandable. In the autumn, deaths by beast and accident were expected and somewhat manageable.

    But a beloved elder, resting next to the fire and wrapped in what blankets the town had in spare, simply dying of nothing. That didn¡¯t make sense. Not in the same way. Not unless you concluded that the spirit of the chill snuck in with his breath and killed him for no reason.

    ¡°You arrive at a poor time, traveller.¡± a particularly gruff man spoke up as I walked the somber path in. ¡°We¡¯ve no food nor hospitality to spare for an outlander.¡±

    I put on a small smile, not being one to trample another honest man¡¯s feelings. ¡°I understand. My parents were both taken around this time. May I pay respects to the lost?¡±

    He seemed torn between a huff and a sigh before nodding. ¡°Don¡¯t expect any gratitude, but sure. I won¡¯t keep a priest from his job.¡±

    I bowed in thanks and made my way to the memorial where I lit a stick of incense and offered a prayer to the dead I¡¯d never met. And another to the spirits that would be blamed, asking them to understand and forgive the mortal anger.

    ¡°Please, sir priest. If you can hear me, please help my family.¡± a distinctly ephemeral voice begged after a moment. ¡°They don¡¯t have enough food for the winter. Not after that demon demanded tribute. I don¡¯t want them to follow me so soon.¡±

    I smiled gently at the ghost. ¡°I will do what I can to protect your village this season. Rest easy in Yama¡¯s care, and may your next life reward you richly for your duty done well.¡±

    ¡°Who are you talking to?¡± a small voice behind me asked, startling the ghost.

    ¡°Tiyu! Can you hear me too?¡±

    I gestured for the girl to kneel beside me. ¡°I¡¯m speaking with the departed. He has asked me to take care of you this winter.¡±

    ¡°Grampa? He¡¯s still here?¡± she asked excitedly.

    ¡°Tiyu! Little Tiyu!¡± the old ghost tried to hug her.

    ¡°He is, yes. But he cannot stay too long. So if there¡¯s anything you need to tell him, tell him well.¡±

    ¡°I miss you grampa!¡± she sniffled after a moment. ¡°Mommy¡¯s worried about what will happen without you. Uncle¡¯s eye does the lying thing when he says we¡¯ll be okay. And Suya¡¯s shivering so hard at night I¡¯m worried.¡±

    She turned to me and her emotions cracked. ¡°Why can¡¯t he come back! Why does he have to go!¡± she screamed as she beat on my chest like any petulant child losing a pillar of stability. ¡°Make him come back! Tell him!¡±

    I let her tantrum for a moment, ignoring the way the ghost was pleading with me to forgive her, before I caught her losing balance and pulled her into a hug to cry it out.

    ¡°If I had the sort of authority to tell him to come back and take care of you himself, I would.¡± I finally said as she was mostly done. ¡°I know I¡¯m not going to be able to do any of what he could, and I know I¡¯m a stranger here. But he asked politely, and I will help out as well as I can.¡±

    ¡°Why can¡¯t he come back?¡± she demanded through more sniffles.

    ¡°Because humans aren¡¯t made to last forever. Your hearts, your minds, bodies, souls. They just aren¡¯t made to last like we¡¯d like them to. So he has to go to Yama now, where they can take care of his soul and his mind while they find him a new body.¡±

    ¡°But mommy says Yama chews on people for wasting food?¡±

    ¡°Well, yes.¡± I admitted. ¡°Yama is charged with giving out punishments that you skip in life, including being chewed on for wasting food. But you know how your mommy has to punish you when you¡¯re naughty, but she still loves you with all her heart?¡±

    The girl nodded.

    ¡°Yama is a lot like her. The spirits there are very stern and the punishments make people¡¯s skin crawl just to describe them, but they give the punishments because they help the soul. And then they arrange a new life so that you can have a chance to do better.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± she asked, awestruck that the big scary punishers weren¡¯t bad guys.

    ¡°Really.¡± I nodded. ¡°I¡¯ve even spoken with some of the spirits that work there. For all their job is frequently terrifying, they do it because Heaven cares for the mortals under its rule and tries to help you grow, even between lives.¡±

    ¡°So grampa will be okay?¡±

    ¡°He probably won¡¯t like the experience, but I promise the both of you, he will be just fine in Yama¡¯s care.¡±

    One of Yama¡¯s collectors revealed itself to me and the ghost at one end of the memorial. ¡°And he¡¯s got the right of it, Hiroto. You may not know it, but this punk is one of the most famous spirits born in the last century.¡±

    The dead old man understandably startled at the bull demon suddenly lounging next to his memorial shrine. ¡°Have you come to take me?¡±

    ¡°If you¡¯re ready to go. You¡¯ve got the rest of the day before I¡¯ve got the obligation. I¡¯m just letting you know that Guang here isn¡¯t just lying for the kid¡¯s comfort. He¡¯s actually checked with the Yama Kings about what we do.¡±

    ¡°Why would I trust a demon?¡±

    ¡°Because I work for Yama?¡± the collector answered like it was obvious. ¡°I¡¯m sure as shit not strong enough to get away with lying to someone in front of Guang Qu Mo Shi.¡±

    ¡°Who Purified One Hundred Mountains?¡±

    I shot the collector a polite pleading look while I kept comforting the girl.

    ¡°Told you he was famous. He does insist that it was only fourty-three mountains, though.¡±

    ¡°Tiyu!¡± a stern voice rang out. ¡°Get off that mainlander!¡±

    I let the child startle back to kneeling to the shrine and turned myself back to the departed, who was prostrating himself again and begging for my assistance. ¡°I will do what I can to assist your village through the winter. Rest easy in Yama¡¯s care, beloved elder.¡±

    ¡°Tch,¡± the woman behind me audibly sneered. ¡°Acting like you¡¯re someone special won¡¯t work on us, outlander.¡±

    I smiled as the spirit apologized for his daughter¡¯s manners and then stood, dusting my knees. ¡°Fortunately, good miss, I don¡¯t need you to fall for any charlatan trickery. I understand that you cannot afford any gratitude, so I will not invite any. Instead, can I ask you to lighten my pack a little?¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s your play here?¡±

    ¡°No play. A serpent attacked the ship that brought me here and I was granted a portion of the meat for my duties aboard, but there¡¯s no way I¡¯ll be able to eat or preserve it all myself before it spoils. So could I impose on you to take some of it off my hands? I¡¯ll even include a spice pouch for the trouble.¡±

    She glared at me as I pulled a wrapped cut of my kill out of my bag. ¡°You expect me to believe that warriors cared enough about your prayers to give you a cut of their kill? Do you take me for an idiot?¡±

    ¡°Oh, not my duties as a priest.¡± I laughed as though I wasn¡¯t expecting the hostility. ¡°I¡¯m also a passing hand as a cook. Most warriors couldn¡¯t boil rice to save their lives, so I get on well with most of them.¡±

    She tch¡¯d again, but her eyes didn¡¯t leave the family-sized portion of meat in my hands.

    ¡°Please.¡± I offered it again. ¡°I meant to trade it for supplies, but I¡¯m not crass enough to ask for goods from a mourning village. It will just go to waste with me.¡±

    My ploy was obvious in her eyes. A ¡®priest¡¯ of some indeterminate faith seeing those in need and phrasing charity as them doing me a favor was a nearly universal tactic for saving good people the Face cost of accepting charity. But as a commoner, playing Face games was distasteful, especially when someone was ignoring insults.

    But she couldn¡¯t reasonably refuse either, from the sound of things.

    ¡°Come talk to my brother.¡± she finally sighed. ¡°If you want to ¡®help¡¯, he¡¯s the one who knows what we need and can afford.¡±

    I followed her and the girl to the town hall where most of the town was huddled up. The working men weren¡¯t present, as there were tasks to be done, but the children and foragers had very little to do other than preserve energy in the winter, especially when mourning.

    The local sentiment about strangers was apparent in their eyes. Not outright hostility like I¡¯d encountered on a few islands so far, but suspicion and distrust. Like a few bad merchants or brigands had burned them, but not completely driven them to xenophobia.

    ¡°Hey, Mito.¡± Tuyi¡¯s mother snapped. ¡°The priest says he wants to help.¡±

    A strained looking young man looked up at me from the corner, the desire to hope flickering in his eyes briefly before he quashed it. ¡°You¡¯ve been told we cannot repay you. Why waste your time?¡± he asked quietly enough that others couldn¡¯t hear him.

    ¡°Call it a bad habit.¡± I shrugged. ¡°I was born in a farming village and got lucky, so it pains me a little to see others without the fortunes they¡¯re due.¡±

    ¡°What help do you think you could even give us?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve food well in excess of what I can consume that you can relieve me of the burden of letting it go to waste. If you¡¯ve any sick, I¡¯ve learned some basic medicinal arts. I can offer a prayer to your fields¡¯ spirits that they give you their blessing in your next crop.¡± I listed off my ¡®usual¡¯ services, then grinned. ¡°And Hiroto mentioned a demon when I paid my respects. I¡¯m charged with dealing with those wherever I find them.¡±

    The shock in both adults¡¯ eyes told me that they quite suddenly believed I was at least partially the real deal.

    ¡°You¡¯re an exorcist, then?¡± Mito whispered. ¡°You can fight the demon off?¡±

    ¡°I am.¡± I nodded. ¡°On principle I will not promise I can win, but I can fight them.¡±

    ¡°Please!¡± he hissed. ¡°She¡¯s taken all our stores for winter as her tribute this year, and then cursed us to a harsh season. We won¡¯t survive like this!¡±

    ¡°Breathe, my friend.¡± I answered him calmly. ¡°Start from the beginning. How long have you been living under the demon¡¯s shadow?¡±

    At my persistent coaxing, he regaled me with how the demon had taken up residence fourteen years prior and started calling itself the shegong of the island. For the first few years, the relationship was one of simple terror and placation, but things had started to stabilize. Then, two years before my arrival, she had made a demand that they procure some jade.

    They¡¯d managed, and she repeated the demand this year. Their crop surplus wasn¡¯t sufficient to get enough to satisfy her, so she¡¯d decided to take their reserves until they could provide the jade.

    When Hiroto had tried to explain that they needed the food to survive to get the jade for her, she¡¯d grown irritable and turned the weather chill unnaturally fast while ringing a silver bell.

    That was a week ago, and the chill had already claimed Hiroto. Mito had been doing his best to assuage the fears of the village, but the loss of his father made that difficult on several fronts.

    ¡°Okay. It sounds like I can handle this problem for you.¡± I finally announced as he finished his story. ¡°From the sound of it, you¡¯ve been dealing with someone who relies on stolen authority to browbeat others. My best method for fighting that is to reinforce you under my own authority. So, would anyone like some Spined Serpent stew?¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°I told you I have a surplus of food, yes? I¡¯d love the honor of feeding your village tonight to start destabilizing your demon problem.¡± I answered, knowing full well that neither of the people I was speaking to could understand even if I explained.

    ¡°I mean, I have no room to deny your charity, but will it actually help you fight the demon to feed us?¡±

    ¡°Absolutely!¡± I smiled like a conman. ¡°Spiritual authority arts are subtle things. Assuaging your fear and hunger will weaken her hold on you, and on the island. So come, call back the workmen for the night and may I borrow three large stewpots?¡±

    ¡°¡®t¡¯s more hope than I had an hour ago.¡± the woman shrugged and stood. ¡°Yuki! Hime! Where are your good pots? The outlander is an exorcist.¡±

    I had to hold in a cackle as the other women¡¯s looks of incredulity switched instantly to cooperative scrambling at the last word.

    ¡°What is your name, outlander?¡± Mito finally asked, formally breaking his decree that nobody was to get friendly with outsiders.

    ¡°I¡¯m called Guang. No attachments of note.¡±

    He chuckled. ¡°Being called Guang and being an exorcist must be a bit frustrating with the mountain-cleanser having such a large reputation.¡±

    ¡°Only when people expect me to simply tell demons to get out and have them listen.¡± I chuckled. ¡°Though it is fun to assuage false fears by just hopping around the ¡®afflicted¡¯ area chanting ¡®get out¡¯.¡±

    ¡°So that is a thing you have to deal with too? I¡¯ve always wondered.¡±

    ¡°Oh yeah. Usually over some hygiene mistake causing people to fall ill and people concluding that it¡¯s the doing of a spirit. So I teach the good practices as a cleansing ritual and do a perfunctory cleansing, and then a performative one to calm everyone¡¯s nerves.¡±

    ¡°And the spirits don¡¯t mind the trickery?¡±

    ¡°Most of the spirits involved actually find it great fun. When men are tricking themselves into ill health, tricking them into good health is a wonderful inversion of their frustrations.¡±

    ¡°Ah, like raising children!¡± he laughed in approximate comprehension. ¡°I can see how they enjoy that aspect.¡±

    The mildly uneasy, but now hopeful, silence hung between us for a long moment before the women that had dashed off returned with three proper cooking cauldrons.

    ¡°Excellent! Would anyone like to help prepare the meat and tubers while I bless the pots?¡± I invited them to feel less indebted by my indulgence. Much like the Face matters, honest women were loath to sit back and allow someone else cook for them.

    Predictably, they and the other four women present volunteered, and I handed out cuts of serpent and bundles of vegetables for them to dice and subtly inspect for poisons. Technically an insult, but frankly just good sense in a world with demons and demonic spirits seeking to destroy the bonds of society and drag everyone into barbarity and death. So I pretended not to notice.

    Meanwhile, I checked each of the pots for obvious health hazards, and thankfully found none. Then I went back over them, murmuring an invitation to outperform their stations and volunteering Wuhen¡¯s aid in filing for clearance to make the improvements permanent, which each of the cauldrons¡¯ spirit collectives were eager for, on top of an enheartening desire to return the care the mortals had given to the old pots.

    Not everything aged enough that it¡¯s constituent spirits could start melding into a single identity, but it always warmed my heart when such heirlooms loved their owners back.

    The water that was brought in was amused to have me offer the freedom to show off its cooking skills, and the wood and fire spirits involved in heating it were similarly agreeable, though one of the fire spirits griped that it wouldn¡¯t have cause to request attending me under my Duanzhou title like it had hoped on hearing that I¡¯d arrived.

    ¡°Can you really talk to the spirits?¡± a child asked, staring up at me like children tend to.

    ¡°Yes. I¡¯ve studied long and hard to be allowed to hear them.¡±

    ¡°Can you ask the cold to stop? It doesn¡¯t listen to me.¡±

    I smiled softly and tousled his hair. ¡°I can ask it why it¡¯s being so harsh already. If it feels like answering me, I can try to fix things so that it can relax. How¡¯s that?¡±

    ¡°Why not just ask it to stop?¡±

    ¡°Do you like picking berries?¡±

    ¡°Yeah! They¡¯re tasty and bitter, but I stained my shirt and mommy got angry at me for eating too many.¡±

    ¡°Well, if I saw you picking berries and I asked you to stop, would that make you want to stop?¡±

    ¡°No...¡± he looked down guiltily like he¡¯d gotten in trouble for it more than once.

    ¡°The cold likes being cold in the same way you like picking and eating berries. If I just ask it to stop, it¡¯ll kick its feet and say okay, and then go right back to it once I look away.¡± I explained to him as well as the five parents keeping a keen ear on the conversation. ¡°If I ask it why it¡¯s being so cold, I can figure out what to do to give it something else to do. Like maybe running along the waves to see who can make the longest frost line.¡±

    ¡°Oh! Like when mommy tells Tsuki to go climb a tree and leave me alone!¡±

    ¡°Exactly!¡± I ruffled his hair again. ¡°Now, weren¡¯t you helping your mom prepare those spoons?¡±

    He yelped and ran back, to the smothered mirth of his mom.

    ¡°Well, that proves you aren¡¯t the Fang¡¯s Guang, at least!¡± Mito laughed as he came and sat down next to me as I and the women watched the pots boil. ¡°No cultivator could be half that good with kids, from what I hear.¡±

    ¡°It does take a patience that few possess.¡± I agreed easily. ¡°One I have an unfair advantage in, being a traveller.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, when I get tired of a kid, I can just leave.¡± The parents in the room each giggled at the casual way I voiced the matter. ¡°But yeah, the cultivators I¡¯ve met are particularly short of that particular patience.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t say. Met any from the Fang?¡±

    I raised an eyebrow at him. ¡°Why?¡±

    ¡°Wanted to know if they got upset at your name.¡± he chuckled.

    ¡°Nah. He wasn¡¯t famous yet when I met them.¡± I waved it off. ¡°Though I¡¯d be lying if I said that the mountains incident wasn¡¯t part of why I¡¯m out this way.¡±

    ¡°Did that really happen? Did he really walk through two demonic sects in one day?¡± a young woman blurted out.

    ¡°If he did, I don¡¯t know how. There was only one demonic sect in the area to walk through.¡± I chuckled. ¡°Though from what I heard, he did, in fact, make his way through their entire mountain range with the blood dragon hot on his heels. And there was another sect that was only unorthodox that supposedly fell the same day.¡±

    ¡°And the Fang¡¯s reformation?¡±

    ¡°I was already out of the area when I started hearing about that.¡± I shook my head. ¡°Though if their Guang was as great as I¡¯ve heard, I don¡¯t really have any reason to expect the worst elements of the sect to have fared well.¡±

    I resisted the urge to shoot Wuhen a dirty look as he cackled at my choice of lie. It wasn¡¯t like anyone else could hear him.

    ¡°Shame that you¡¯re not him.¡± one of the older women piped up after a moment of quiet. ¡°I could go for seeing a heavy beatdown on that green haired bitch.¡±

    ¡°Keep talking like that, and you might get to see one anyway.¡± I chuckled. ¡°The less people fear her, the weaker she¡¯s likely to become.¡±

    She and the people who¡¯d gasped at her comment all stared at me with various degrees of calculation in their eyes.

    ¡°I¡¯m a fair hand at combat. But even if I knew I outclassed a foe, I¡¯d still make preparations to improve my chances. After all, they might be doing the same.¡±

    ¡°Took you for more ¡®honorable¡¯ than that.¡± she grinned. ¡°Glad to hear you kept your wits after your temple training.¡±

    I chuckled with her before adding ¡°I¡¯ve yet to find a more earnest manner of respecting a foe than assuming he is intelligent enough to find a way to kick my ass. The posturing of honor is just insulting my enemies.¡±

    ¡°And suddenly I¡¯m glad you¡¯re not the cultivator.¡± an exhausted workman laughed from the table he¡¯d collapsed at. ¡°You, I can trust to actually take this seriously.¡±

    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

    ¡°Naturally!¡± I laughed. ¡°It¡¯s one of my favorite duties!¡±

    That did the trick of getting the mirth rolling as the workmen collectively chuckled and one busted a gut laughing from suppressed stress. Yama¡¯s collector and Hiroto stood at the doorway for a minute -listening to his son urge everyone to remember him fondly- before the man¡¯s face fell into peaceful confidence and he departed with the bull demon.

    I wove my Cheering aura through the stew with the aid of the pots and spent the energy to replenish the soup directly instead of asking the food to do that for me.

    I was, as usual, very careful not to have the soup refill while mortal eyes were on it, but that wasn¡¯t quite enough to prevent the eldest of the women from noticing that the level wasn¡¯t going down. When they shot me an awed look, I just raised a shushing finger to my smirk and enjoyed as they redoubled their enthusiasm to properly celebrate their departed leader.

    As the meal wound down, with hope rekindled in the people¡¯s eyes and smiles on their faces, I politely asked to take what was left of the soup to their fields, as an offering to the spirits. A few pragmatic worries were voiced, but the same woman who¡¯d quipped about wanting to see a beatdown whacked one of them upside the head and reminded them that I¡¯d provided everything but the water and the pots.

    Still, I got their blessing to make the offering on their behalf, which was the important part. Without it, their emotional investment in the meal would be lost in the transfer.

    Several of them came with me to make the offering and were amazed at the way the soup vanished from the pots like invisible people were scooping bowls out. That silenced the last of the doubts about my validity and inspired earnest prayers of gratitude from those present.

    Then, bidding them all a good night so that I could handle the other side of the dynamic, I took a walk out past their sentry¡¯s gaze and was greeted by a clamoring of spirits eager to tell me what the mortals didn¡¯t know on each front.

    Chiefly, that the mortals were mistaken about the threat they were under. The false shegong wasn¡¯t a demon. She was a full-blown demonic spirit.

    The key difference being that demons were a twisted, evil-inclined race of mortals that weren¡¯t actually under Heaven¡¯s authority, nor technically the Earth¡¯s. Demonic spirits, meanwhile, were immortal spirits that could actually produce and semi-safely use the destructive demonic qi.

    Heaven¡¯s policies regarding demonic qi meant that there was almost nothing that could be done against demonic spirits on their end, and after cultivators figured out how to fight demonic qi (however poorly), most demonic spirits kept relatively low profiles to avoid just being stabbed. Said low profiles involved, chiefly, constraining their qi unless they were fighting.

    Which is a really longwinded way of articulating that, for all she was absolutely just stealing Bai Fa Nushi¡¯s authority with the bell and trying to forcibly usurp the island shegong, there was no actual way of knowing if she was weak and relying on those methods or strong enough that she was playing nice by doing so.

    Well, no way to tell before I closed to melee.

    No pressure.

    The rest of the details that the spirits could provide were largely superfluous. She¡¯d interacted with most of the local courts to demand that they bow before her, even if their court wasn¡¯t subject to the authority of a shegong. Not being willing to anger a demon spirit, they¡¯d all bowed and slyly neglected to mention the icons of authority that she needed to hold to compel them.

    So other than the Frost spirits, who chafed at being told to freeze the mortals to death instead of doing it freely, every scrap of authority she had was performative and backed only by their fear of her.

    In fact, the only problem I saw with just killing her to restore balance was that the original shegong was dead, having refused to hand over the position to the intruder. Normally this would have had the bureaucracy notice and start arranging things to resolve it - as there was no nepotism protecting her - but the intruder had been fulfilling the station well enough that the discrepancies hadn¡¯t actually been severe enough to draw the higher-up¡¯s attention.

    That could mean a couple of things regarding the fight itself - maybe she was an old spirit who¡¯d had time to work out how the bureaucracy worked, maybe she just threatened her new victims into doing it all properly, maybe she just loved the act of working with reports - but in replacing her, that meant a headache to get a reassignment evaluation started.

    Or, possibly, just forcing her to bow to Heavenly Mandate that would lock her in the position, complete with punishments for interacting directly with mortals and getting caught killing them for reasons divorced from the position.

    Or just saying ¡®fuck it¡¯, killing her, and letting the bureaucrats handle the mess in their own agonizingly slow way. That would be traditional here. Complete with looting.

    I realized that the lesser spirits had fallen silent while I mused, apprehension floating in the air. ¡°Wuhen, how eager are you to deal with reporting a well-usurped position?¡± I broke the silence.

    ¡°With your methods, Moshui, I¡¯m enthusiastic to tackle those forms.¡±

    ¡°Good. I expect you¡¯ll find the administrators hesitant to hear you. So we¡¯ll start with reporting ¡®Shegong Anying Chang Chunteng¡¯ abusing her position to extort mortals with a demonic spirit in proximity.¡±

    Several of the bolder spirits fidgeted, but it was a frost spirit that griped ¡°She isn¡¯t even the shegong! How will reporting her do anything?¡±

    ¡°Because she isn¡¯t the shegong.¡± I answered flippantly as though that explained anything. ¡°Can you imagine the panic when the report gets ignored and filed in the records and there¡¯s no shegong Anying Chang Chunteng in this area?¡±

    Their little frozen face gawked at me, alongside dozens of others.

    ¡°Why would it be ignored?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a bureaucracy.¡± I sighed. ¡°There¡¯s always something more pressing, even when there isn¡¯t. That¡¯s why the art of filing is among my greatest techniques despite not being useful for anything else.¡±

    ¡°Anything else, Moshui?¡±

    ¡°Request a perfunctory evaluation of lingering demonic qi. That¡¯ll give the eventual realization that a demonic spirit took over the island some early weight.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll report back once those are filed.¡± he bowed and swirled out of sight, leaving me to face the terrified lesser spirits.

    ¡°So, who wants to tweak a demon¡¯s nose with me?¡±

    Their fear stumbled on them being baffled.

    ¡°Because the way I see things, our friends of the Frost court are being coerced against their duties and good sense, which is a shame. But if I heard the order they were given correctly, the demon forgot to compel them to prioritize the task of freezing the mortals. So who wants to be insufferably specific with how the frost forms on them every night to keep our friends busy?¡±

    Several of the tree and soil spirits turned to the gawking frost spirits, asking with their faces if that would even work. Then the frost spirits started busting up laughing at how stupid the safe disobedience option was and paired off with the others, promising to spread the word.

    I then turned back toward the mortal village to mingle until the paperwork or the demon spirit got back to me.

    ---

    ¡°So! You¡¯ve already given up on giving yourselves funeral rites I see!¡±

    The voice ringing through the town was impressive in its projection of authority despite being a pitch I would probably continue to recognize as ¡®karen¡¯ as long as I enjoyed mental continuity with myself.

    I put down the axe I was chopping firewood with and joined the mildly fearful procession to where my designated victim was making a spectacle.

    ¡°Pardon my ignorance, lady shegong.¡± I could pick up Mito¡¯s voice despite the distance. ¡°But who are we supposed to be mourning?¡±

    The demon¡¯s confusion was palpable in the silence, and Mito chose to continue. ¡°My father died two and a half weeks ago, but everyone else is accounted for and in good health.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean you¡¯ve been defying my order to die to the frost?¡± she hissed menacingly.

    The townspeople all froze in fear, and the ones I could see turned to me as if to beg me to deny that she¡¯d actually aimed to have them dying one after another.

    Not feeling like lying to them, I smiled and shrugged like I hadn¡¯t been actively standing between them and death since I arrived.

    ¡°I- I knew of no such order.¡± Mito gulped. ¡°I took my father¡¯s death and the easing of the chill to mean you were satisfied at starving us¡±

    I heard the crunch of dirt as she grabbed him, likely by the throat, and snarled ¡°Who is guarding you? I¡¯ll make your death quick if you surrender him.¡±

    ¡°I swear! I didn¡¯t know the priest was doing anything but feeding us and blessing the fields!¡± he choked out, confirming the iconic grip of tyranny. ¡°He didn¡¯t say anything about a death curse!¡±

    ¡°Where is he?¡± she demanded, sending the assembling town cowering.

    ¡°Coming!¡± I called out in the same tone I used when I was handy for a task over the past weeks. The flippancy of it was probably lost in the mortals¡¯ fear, but it was important to me on a personal level.

    Arriving in the square, I found a ring of cowering townsmen at the border of the clearing and Mito being held aloft by his throat by a blue-skinned woman with seaweed-green hair and an almost convincing imperious stature. All of whom were gawking in some measure that I¡¯d just show up without any ado.

    ¡°You were looking for me?¡± I smiled at the disguised demonic spirit.

    She scowled at me and almost hid her reflexive recoiling as she realized that I wasn¡¯t a priest.

    ¡°What is a priest doing on my island?¡± she demanded, coming to the snap decision that it was to her benefit to keep the mortals in the dark.

    ¡°I say it¡¯s a pilgrimage, but I¡¯m really just enjoying the freedom of being out of contact with the folks who trained me.¡± I answered honestly. ¡°Seriously, it was like I had mountains of work to do back there.¡±

    Not appreciating my flippancy, she snarled. ¡°There are hundreds of islands. Why here?¡±

    ¡°No particular reason. My last ride stopped here to trade a bit at the port, and I hopped off to see the place. Found these folks mourning an honorable elder and offered my aid through the winter.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ve tampered with my chilling curse, then?¡± She started growing in an attempt to intimidate me. dropping Mito, who sensibly started running immediately.

    ¡°Yup! You really need to work on your curse work. Amateur talisman crafters could disrupt orders like yours with a bit of thought.¡±

    Affront rippled through her illusion of mortality like my words were pebbles into a pond. ¡°You insolent worm!¡± she roared, pulling out the Shuangjiang Zhi Zhong. ¡°Freeze Solid!¡±

    I grinned maliciously as the frost spirits in the area descended on me with the compulsion of the chiming of the small bell¡¯s authority. Then I whispered ¡°Hey guys, skin-out counts if you want to piss her off.¡±

    The tinkling cackle of the spirits told me I was winning this exchange. Then I felt an Air spirit slide into my lungs with an ethereal whisper of ¡°Just in case.¡±

    Technically an overstepping of it¡¯s freedoms, but I wasn¡¯t going to complain. Nobody was forbidden from doing things until the demonic qi started flowing.

    And only a few moments later I was encased entirely and still grinning as she glared at me.

    ¡°Behold! Your savior! Powerless before my might!¡± I could hear her through the ice easily. ¡°Nothing but a mortal putting up a front to leech off what little food you hid from me!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not true!¡± I made out Tuyi¡¯s voice as the demon rounded on her.

    ¡°Let the brat speak.¡± She demanded, presumably of the girl¡¯s mother.

    ¡°Mister Guang never took our food! He gave us his! He asked the cold to leave us alone! He said he¡¯d save us!¡±

    ¡°And you¡¯re stupid enough to believe him? When your precious ¡®mister Guang¡¯ is frozen soli-¡± The demoness froze as she realized the most important detail the child had given her. ¡°What did you say his name was?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s mister Guang! And he¡¯s gonna beat you up!¡± I actually felt the child¡¯s faith in me surge into me. She didn¡¯t care that I¡¯d repeatedly insisted that I was a different Guang. She just knew, deep in her little heart, that I was going to save her.

    ¡°Yeah!¡± Another kid called out with equal fervor. ¡°He¡¯s gonna beat you up!¡±

    I waited another breath while the disorientation settled into the demon that mere children would hide behind a popsicle instead of cower, and then I twisted my neck.

    The crack through the ice, which was barely denser than natural ice, silenced the town square for a long second before one of the ladies who¡¯d caught the stew pots refilling threw away her fear too and cheered ¡°Yeah! One light¡¯s as good as another! Guang¡¯s gonna kick your blue ass!¡±

    The crowd - that I¡¯d spent the last week seeding the idea that ballsiness weakened the demon to - started clamoring loud enough to drown the cracking of the ice out as I stepped forward.

    ¡°No.¡± she flinched as I approached. ¡°I will not be exorcized like this!¡±

    ¡°Is that really your choice?¡± I asked calmly. ¡°Or is it mine?¡±

    She lunged, hands turning to long, piercing claws that I dodged with ease before slamming my fist into her throat.

    I watched her recoil from the hit and noticed small ways that her posture shifting indicated that she was genuinely just bad at fighting, contradicting the ways that she regained her footing and held her shoulders in a textbook guard. Things that many people knew to look for all screamed that I was outclassed as she glared at me, but having grown up fighting more or less for my life, the things I knew to watch for made me laugh as I approached her again.

    ¡°Stolen position. Stolen frost power. Stolen fighting stance. Did you really think you¡¯d make it further in life by stealing the lives of mortals?¡±

    ¡°What do you know!¡± she howled and threw another technically intimidating, but functionally useless jab at me.

    I chose to insult her by just slapping her face instead of retaliating properly. ¡°I know how to fight. I know how to rally support. I know how to stand under my own power. What more do you think I need to know?¡±

    Instead of rising to my verbal bait, she just screamed and threw a flurry of strikes at me, getting progressively angrier with each miss.

    ¡°Do you think I don¡¯t understand what it¡¯s like to destroy everything I try to hold?¡± I asked after another moment. ¡°That your natural demonic qi making you a pariah here justifies your behavior?¡±

    ¡°What?¡± she froze mid-strike, which I couldn¡¯t resist the temptation to flick her in the forehead over.

    ¡°Do you think that the most violent new immortal of the past millenia honestly doesn¡¯t understand how difficult it is to just not destroy things?¡± I rephrased, lacing my words with the Dao intent of my experience on the matter.

    ¡°How? You¡¯re not a demon.¡±

    ¡°Do the corpses care?¡±

    She stared at me, fear stacking upon fear as the threat of death was usurped by the fear of being understood.

    ¡°Do you know why so many demonic spirits kneel before heaven?¡±

    ¡°Because- becau-¡± she stumbled over her thoughts.

    ¡°Because they fear drawing the attention of cultivators.¡± I cut off her muttering. ¡°Because they¡¯ve been in this exact position, a supposed mortal holding the power to destroy them, and all the ploys and plans to secure themselves independently of anyone else suddenly look as stupid as yours do right now.

    ¡°There¡¯s no grand enlightenment like they might have told you. There¡¯s no peace. There¡¯s just terror driving them to grovel and let their anarchistic essence be sealed in exchange for safety from men like me.¡±

    She staggered, thoughts refusing to let her emulate whatever authority she¡¯d copied for so long. ¡°Why are you telling me this?¡±

    ¡°Because I like to leave people a choice before I kill them.¡± I loomed despite her larger form. ¡°You have skills the bureaucracy can use if you give up on being your corruptive natural self. My attendant, Wuhen, even tells me that there¡¯s a position open that they¡¯d fit you right into if you kneel and let them chain you. Or, if you¡¯re too prideful to bow to fear, I can kill you for your reckless misstep of terrorizing the mortals.¡±

    She froze under the realization that, of all her crimes, it was fucking with mortals that got her caught.

    ¡°I yield.¡± She cracked after another moment, knees quaking and fists trembling. ¡°I don¡¯t want to die. Not to Guang Qu Mo Shi.¡±

    ¡°Excellent¡± a new voice rang out and an administrator garbed in the colors of Ink, of all things, stepped forward. ¡°If you¡¯ll stamp your real name here, I¡¯d be happy to get you out of here and into the system properly. We didn¡¯t lie about that position you¡¯re perfect for.¡±

    She balked, looking between the administrator and my now-smirking face. ¡°It¡¯s that easy?¡±

    ¡°Only around Guang Moshui. He¡¯s an inspiration to all of us in the Ink court.¡±

    ¡°I like efficiency.¡± I shrugged as I continued walking my pulse back to civility. ¡°It means I have to break fewer things to get what I want.¡±

    The paper of the formal surrender declaration had to shift to full mortal view because of a technicality about how the false shegong had made physical contact with one of them, so the townsfolk behind me gasped as she signed her freedom over to Heaven in exchange for safety from me.

    Then she took the administrator¡¯s hand and stepped away with a backwards glance at me.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, it¡¯s probably worth it!¡± I laughed and turned back to the townsfolk.

    Who, of course, immediately prostrated themselves before me now that they knew I was actually the famous Guang-of-no-family.

    So I ignored them and went back to where I¡¯d left half a stack of wood to finish chopping.

    ---

    I sat on the throne of the island¡¯s Earth court and reviewed the paperwork for the day, quieting the griping that I really should have seen this coming.

    It was a strictly temporary arrangement while the administrators figured out where they could pull a competent replacement shegong from, but someone had to keep the paperwork flowing, and while I wasn¡¯t an Earth spirit, I was good at paperwork.

    So they asked me to fill in for the three weeks they promised they¡¯d have a proper replacement lined up in.

    The pay was absolutely worth it, though. Apparently my sporadic bursts of efficiency had been enough of a headache for the Heavenly administrators that they actually wanted to fashion an entirely new Court so that my appearances in their paperwork had established precedent avenues and it wasn¡¯t a tri-annual event that my signature would be spotted and their functionaries would lose their shit at being caught up in my antics.

    Were I a mortal, they¡¯d just put up with it until I died, however long that took. As I wasn¡¯t, someone got things rolling back when I was a General, and everyone I¡¯d interacted with since was on board.

    The detail that I was explicitly not a servant of Heaven actually made it easier to file for the creation of a new court, because their systems dealt with Earthly courts as entities that weren¡¯t technically subservient, but understood the benefits of playing along. Restrictions on classes of spirits were done on a by-court basis, so I and Wuhen would just be without those restrictions while able to better interface with their systems instead of just pulling my hijinks at every turn.

    And I¡¯d gone over all the paperwork to make sure there wasn¡¯t a trap I¡¯d chafe at. To the point of making more than one Administrator fray to the point of tears as I insisted on doing so and spent days going through it. My favorite part was that imposing restrictions required the head of the court -me- to agree that the restrictions were fair and valid.

    I blinked as I reached the end of the island¡¯s paperwork for the day and chuckled. Most of it was just reports on natural phenomena being carried out properly. Much of the rest was duplicate and triplicate of calls for other courts to do their job that needed filed with their duplicate and triplicate reports of doing it.

    The few actual work pieces of paperwork were just making bids for things like ¡®where should the rain/snow go for the next week¡¯ and ¡®how hard should the wind blow in these areas¡¯.

    Little things that, not being the purview of the court, had to be negotiated with the other courts with approval of the respective administrators to ensure nobody was invoking too much chaos.

    I stretched with a chuckle. I¡¯d tried my hand at worldbuilding exercises many times just for the fun of it, but I actually doubted that I could have ever detailed how bloody tedious the celestial bureaucracy was.

    I¡¯d have to see if I could concoct something even more tedious some day. Just to say I did.

    ¡°Ah! Moshui!¡± Wuhen perked up as he walked in. ¡°Good news! The replacement will be available in just another week, and we got credit for the arrangement that frees him up!¡±

    ¡°Wonderful! Anyone I know?¡±

    ¡°No, I don¡¯t think we interacted with him. We did stop by his current assigned island though.¡±

    ¡°Good! Then his detractors can¡¯t argue that I arranged for his installation over his manners.¡±

    ¡°Indeed. All I really did was point out that his neighbor had been clamoring for a chance to prove herself, and that having to peacefully transfer holdings between them would prime the new shegong for the difficulties of taking this court.¡±

    ¡°Still, credit is credit.¡± I chuckled at his aptitude with common sense arrangements. It really was too rare a skill, I¡¯d found.

    And being credited with setting up other rulers who¡¯d hopefully do a passable job made it easier for the Administrators to argue that I was due recognition despite not bowing. Something typically reserved for disruptive belligerents, so my peaceful disruptions needed a bit more support behind them to make the case for the new court.

    ¡°How¡¯d the paperwork for the pots go?¡±

    ¡°It got accepted! The evaluation concluded that despite it being your work, the mortals are grateful enough to them too that they are allowed to bolster morale any time they¡¯re used together. Zaoshen even signed off on them having a split rank.¡±

    ¡°Wonderful!¡± I let myself laugh. The art of making artifacts from scratch, I¡¯d extrapolated from Name Crafting, was essentially forging celestial paperwork saying that the item was able, obligated and allowed to do fancy things. Or, if you were civilized, working with the Forge court to file it properly.

    The keystone reason that the materials for artifacts tended to have massive minimum age requirements was so that the materials¡¯ spirits actually did have that amount of power. After all, it didn¡¯t matter how well you forged the paperwork, a dandelion wasn¡¯t going to be able to quell a monster¡¯s rage unless it had some serious help.

    My latest method - simply calling for a review of permissions based on the item¡¯s actions - was far less reliable and far less intensive. But crucially, it didn¡¯t rely on the collecting, planning, and smithing process to make something worthy of a minor legend.

    Meaning I could do it wherever I went and essentially on a whim. Something I was revelling in for the simple, stupid reason that I could turn a wooden bowl into an artifact against starvation or simple cooking pots into morale-strengthening powerhouses with no effort beyond filing some papers and making a case to some Administrators.

    I was reminded of Legacy items from my time playing D&D. As long as an item performed its duty beyond expectation, it could elevate itself in stature.

    And the Administrators thought that ¡®belling¡¯ me with a fundamentally empty court would reduce the stress on them.

    ¡°Also!¡± Wuhen bounced along as I started walking. ¡°The Air spirit that got caught assisting you made an interesting request.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡±

    ¡°It caught word of the project and requested a position as a runner between you and the Air courts.¡±

    ¡°Are you being run around enough that it¡¯d help?¡± I asked, trying to concoct a reason a spirit would want to be assigned to deal with me.

    ¡°Not as such, though I wouldn¡¯t scoff at a second pair of legs. No, it¡¯s just under the impression that being around you will give it more opportunities for promotion, provided it survives them.¡±

    I cocked my head. ¡°It wants to be put in danger?¡±

    ¡°Indeed. From what I understand, it suffers from a bad case of hero worship and wants to eventually be a General under you.¡±

    ¡°Hm.¡± I let the layers of assumption that the spirit was making unfold before me. It clearly thought that I was being given the court for military purposes, which was contrary to the sentiment of the Administrators, but a reasonable enough mistake. It thought that being a runner like Wuhen would grant it growth opportunities, despite Wuhen¡¯s growth being because he was an Ink spirit dealing with paperwork.

    Which meant either that it was an idiot or that it was angling for being on hand to do the lung trick more often, and using that as an excuse to ask for a promotion to something that would let it start growing properly. Probably while learning my combat style by osmosis.

    ¡°Was it caught assisting me, or did it arrange to get ¡®caught¡¯?¡±

    ¡°That hadn¡¯t been filed when I checked, but I asked around with the Frost spirits and they weren¡¯t the ones who reported it. So I believe it conspired to get noticed in its overstepping.¡±

    ¡°Any word on why it didn¡¯t just petition to become an attendant?¡±

    ¡°The number of rejections.¡±

    That made sense. Wuhen had gotten approved by the Ink court in no small part because they wanted to see me succeed in my war plan. The dozens of petitions that I¡¯d heard about since weren¡¯t so lucky. While each of the courts they hailed from were on civil terms with me, I was still a headache for the administration, and nobody wanted the ire of letting me become more of one.

    Really, outside of personal charm, only the Ink court actually seemed to like me.

    ¡°See if it¡¯s free for dinner.¡± I finally decided. ¡°Invite the investigating administrator too. I¡¯ll hear it out and decide if it¡¯s worth encouraging.¡±

    ¡°Moshui?¡±

    ¡°Runners will be one of the chief ways that other courts present themselves in the bureaucratic politics once the project gets the traction it needs. The chief decision regarding them will depend on their rulers and administrators, but I can put forth a ¡®what I would appreciate¡¯ impression off the page. That will inform the political dance¡¯s tempo.¡±

    ¡°Well, yes.¡± Wuhen trailed off to ponder what he knew about the non-paperwork politics. ¡°You¡¯re evaluating whether it¡¯s worth the reputation of a poacher of talents.¡±

    ¡°Close. Remember how I sit in relation to the courts.¡±

    It took him a moment before he gurgled in realization. ¡°A separate Grand Court?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s what it¡¯ll look like I¡¯m aiming for if I encourage the eventual transfers. So there are thousands of major factors I need to account for in what I encourage. If I convey ¡®I¡¯ll take your malcontents¡¯, that looks like building up an army. If ¡®I¡¯ll accept your wastes¡¯, much the same as I allow them to grow. The way Heaven¡¯s domain is structured, there¡¯s essentially no safe answer.¡±

    ¡°Hundun.¡± he gasped in horror.

    ¡°Exactly. Either I play nice enough that the bureaucracy doesn¡¯t have to worry about me inspiring the Earthly courts to revolution, or they turn their armies on me to prevent anyone else from getting ideas.¡±

    ¡°Surely it¡¯s worth kneeling to prevent that!¡±

    ¡°If my goal were peace, yes.¡± I nodded with an uncomfortably stony face. ¡°But that would kill me more surely than anything else. So I need to find the path of playing nice enough that entrenched power doesn¡¯t make the Fang¡¯s mistake.¡±

    A task I suspected was just genuinely impossible, but it¡¯s not like that was new to me. Heaven itself acknowledged my right to stand separate. Like hell its bureaucratic servants were going to browbeat me into bowing.

 Back to Civilization

    One perk that I had actually predicted encountering after my ascension was the interest to be garnered from rulers after they heard about my dinner techniques. Because really, some guy is famous for making meals taste better just by being there. What ruler isn¡¯t going to be interested?

    And as word spreads in their circles that I¡¯m amiable by default toward anyone wishing to invite me to dinner, meeting with the ruling classes is likely to be as simple as being known in the area.

    Thus, finding myself sitting in the dining hall of the court of Frost was entirely explainable. Bai Fa Nushi had heard of me on several fronts, including the return of her bell, so she sent me an invitation to meet me in person and enjoy my nature as Wancan.

    Being Frost spirits, I hadn¡¯t taken their cool manners as anything odd as we ate. Small talk was pleasant, but reserved, and I tempered my demeanor appropriately as I shared stories of my travels at request. After all, it is the host¡¯s place to set the tone of a meal, and a guest¡¯s to abide by it.

    The little smiles and shifts of shen as I spoke were enough proof that they were enjoying the meal as much as I could hope.

    But the inevitable shift to politicking arrived nonetheless. I noticed the shift in the Frost princess¡¯ neck and noted that she¡¯d actually taken almost half again as long to bring up business than I¡¯d predicted.

    ¡°I notice an oddity in your tales, honored guest.¡± she smiled like it was an offhanded thought. ¡°You do not mention taking spoils beyond foodstuffs.¡±

    ¡°A measure of caution along my path, little more.¡± I answered easily as she let the implications hang. ¡°I am merely approaching what the mortals call Bronze Core strength, despite my aptitudes making my reputation rival some approaching Gold Core. So instead of hoarding everything I come across and risking the Earth taking notice, I¡¯ve taken to letting the spoils be divided by those protected by Heaven¡¯s dominion.¡±

    ¡°You do not lament the loss of strength you impose on yourself?¡± The chiming of her voice had a hint of steel in it.

    ¡°I spare a moment of regret regarding a few things. But I¡¯ve never found dwelling on lost opportunities to suit me.¡± I admitted.

    ¡°I see...¡± she trailed off with a tone that indicated that she, at least, liked where she was about to take the conversation. ¡°Brazen in your caution and unbound by others¡¯ rules.¡±

    A shudder that had nothing to do with the cold rippled through the rest of the attendees.

    I set myself in a polite attentive stance to subtly announce that I wasn¡¯t intimidated while I waited for her to continue her thought. Which she noticed with a tiny swirl of her lips.

    As I wasn¡¯t a mortal, she wasn¡¯t wearing a proper human glamour, instead existing as a humanoid snow flurry. Nothing abnormal in my experience. Most spirits preferred to wear their own skin to dinner, something that I found endearing, as a beholder of many beauties.

    ¡°I understand that you¡¯ve aggravated the Administrators to the point that they wish to bind you to the demands of a court.¡±

    ¡°Your highness is well informed.¡± I confirmed with a grin.

    ¡°How did you manage that, by the way?¡±

    ¡°By knowing how to file paperwork correctly without reliance on them, primarily. At least a handful of the Administrators have grown used to being the only ones capable of affecting change, so my skill at sifting through the unstated processes and navigating fees and bribes leaves them feeling encroached on.¡±

    She nodded at the unspoken extrapolation of the setup. ¡°And you¡¯ve accepted a lesser obligation to ease their worry and avoid subjugation. So it is true that the proposition is a free court.¡±

    ¡°Your highness.¡± one of the braver functionaries pleaded. ¡°Please reconsider.¡±

    As befitting her standing as the reigning spirit of the Frost court, the cold glare she shot back was the stuff of poetry before she recomposed herself.

    ¡°I have considered at great length. The consequences are of minimal concern to me despite their severity.¡±

    Ooh boy. That was a sentence that meant business if I¡¯d ever heard one.

    ¡°Guang, I should like to contract your services as a mercenary.¡± she continued, eliciting groans from her underlings.

    ¡°I am willing to hear out your request, at least.¡± I responded neutrally.

    She gathered her breath for a moment before asking ¡°What rumors have you heard regarding my title?¡±

    I thought back and came up empty, having not asked why she was the ¡®princess¡¯ instead of ¡®queen¡¯. ¡°I fear none have had the gall to slander your highness with rumor on that matter.¡±

    ¡°My mother, the Frost Queen. She ruled well. She was the first ruler of the Frost.¡± Bai Fa Nushi¡¯s voice wavered slightly as she spoke. ¡°She bore me and raised me well, while being the only ruler the Frost would ever need. I was trained, honed, and let free to find my own path. As I should.¡±

    The bile in those three words told me the story far more elegantly than words themselves could.

    ¡°Then the demonic incursion began. A great tear in the sky, fracturing it and allowing the accursed Demonic qi into the world. We won, of course, or we wouldn¡¯t be here. Nuwa found stones that could repair the sky, and under Heaven¡¯s guidance, the world was saved. The cost was high, and though I¡¯ve asked everyone who fought at her side, I only know that my mother fell to the corruption.¡±

    She steadied her churning form again with a deep breath.

    ¡°So, other than being assured that she contributed greatly to our victory, everything of her was taken from me by the incursion. Even her name, lest dwelling on it corrupt me too.

    ¡°The world was in chaos, of course. Demons, demonic spirits and demonic qi had destroyed the infrastructure and turned us against each other. The Frost was lost without mother. I stepped in and did my best. But this is not my throne.¡±

    She stopped again, visibly restraining herself from striking the table in pain.

    When she regained her composure, she shook her head. ¡°I took it knowing the Frost needed me. I reassembled the court and set it running according to Heaven¡¯s protocols and decrees. But I never took my mother¡¯s title. Because I knew that my place is elsewhere. And when I had everything running well, I selected a replacement and left to continue following my own path.¡±

    A wry chuckle rolled out of her and she gestured at the functionary who¡¯d pleaded with her.. ¡°A mere decade later, Dongchuang there found me. He¡¯d been looking for seven years because it only took three for the Frost to fall apart. I put it back together and made a spirit who¡¯d worked with me the entire time my successor, so that they wouldn¡¯t let everything fall apart again.¡±

    She fell silent for a long, angry moment.

    ¡°Thirty-four times.¡± she eventually announced. ¡°I¡¯ve entrusted this throne to others thirty-four times. The longest they¡¯ve held it together was fifteen years. Now, nobody will even consider taking it, as they¡¯ve all decided that it must be mother¡¯s blood allowing me to reign.¡±

    She levelled her gaze at me. ¡°I want you to take someone, anyone, from my court and train them to rule. Then I want you to let them return and take this throne, and if possible take me with you so that I can¡¯t be dragged back here even if the entire Frost court collapses.¡±

    I sat back to consider as Dongchuang started pleading with her to care about the consequences that she¡¯d been tending to for at least seventy thousand years.

    There were the immediate politics to account for, of course. I still hadn¡¯t found a way to navigate securing myself against petty functionaries without provoking the bureaucracy¡¯s collective paranoia. Taking a pupil for the sake of returning them to their original court would be an interesting angle.

    Then there were the politics of what everyone familiar with the situation would call conspiracy to destabilize a court. I could empathize with her position, but I didn¡¯t exactly have a lot of company in that.

    Then there were the logistics. The ruler of the Frost had to be a Frost spirit. Lower courts could fudge things and let other types of spirits rule, but there were bylaws accounting for the sympathy principles of rulership.

    Hmm... Frost spirits being so callous compared to the spirits of other courts was probably the result of sympathy from her frustration at her position.

    ¡°Ah! That would actually work, I believe!¡± I interrupted Dongchuang¡¯s latest pleading.

    ¡°Oh?¡± the Frost Princess¡¯s tone swirled to hopeful.

    ¡°I do believe that I could train and hone a Frost attendant to overcome the error the rest suffer from. The difficulty of the task would not be small, and it would be a matter of decades at minimum, but if my path does not lead to an abrupt destruction, it should be within my talents.¡±

    ¡°Please!¡± Dongchuang was suddenly exasperated. ¡°It¡¯s plain as the clear sky that only her bloodline can rule!¡±

    ¡°Did you know that the sky is only blue due to an illusion?¡± I retorted without a thought, returning silence to the room.

    ¡°So you are confident, then?¡± Bai Fa Nushi asked calmly after a moment.

    ¡°In the task itself, yes. Not so much in the face of the ancillary difficulties.¡±

    ¡°I should think that taking on tutelage tasks would ease the worries of the courts.¡±

    ¡°Somewhat, yes. But as I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve learned, many of the courts are filled with those who¡¯d see it as me seeking to poison their systems to my own ends.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± she replied slowly. ¡°You require a way of allaying the fears of the most foolish, lest they snowball beyond your talent.¡±

    ¡°Regrettable, but accurate. And even the less foolish will worry at a potential ruler navigating the paperwork in my manner.¡±

    ¡°For those, I would accept lessons myself.¡± she laughed humorlessly. ¡°Thus encouraging them to support my replacement to escape their fear.¡±

    I turned my lips to the side as I pondered that angle. ¡°The Administrators and Bureaucrats are aware of your displeasure with the arrangement?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve brought it before them at length.¡± she confirmed. ¡°Whether they recall it or not I cannot say.¡±

    ¡°Then it should be their idea to assign me to train your replacement!¡± I smiled.

    Dongchuang caught on first and groaned, eliciting a truly malicious grin from Bai Fa Nushi. ¡°I can arrange for them to have that thought with some ease.¡±

    ¡°Excellent! That settles the difficulties beyond the task nicely and replaces them with something much more manageable.¡±

    ¡°Wonderful! That leaves the matter of compensation, then. To begin with, I should like you to accept my Shuangjiang Zhi Zhong that you so courteously left for the Administrators to return to me.¡±

    I raised my eyebrow as a lesser spirit brought forth the silver handbell. ¡°I have no reason to refuse, though I should like to know the interest in parting with it again so soon.¡±

    ¡°A court with all of its power in one place is a court ill-positioned for aggressors. There are no Frost spirits who do not know and fear me, so ordering them about with natural contracts is redundant. Further, the more mortals see the bell and know its name, the more mortals will empower the court.¡±

    ¡°Defensive positioning as well as faith harvesting.¡± I nodded as I accepted the artifact. ¡°I thank you for the lesson, gracious host.¡±

    ¡°The court shall thank you in turn for allowing the association through your use of the bell. I expect similar gifts from other courts to find their way to your hand as well, as interest in profits exceeds concern for your precarious position.¡± Her shen flickered with something in the direction of irritation, likely exasperation with the politics.

    I, meanwhile, blinked as the implications of her phrasing lined up. ¡°Such arrangements as the false shegong are deliberate matters on occasion, then?¡±

    She smirked. ¡°How else are we to spread our Face to the mortals we¡¯re forbidden to interact with?¡±

    That made sense. I probably wouldn¡¯t mention to any other cultivators that the artifacts they ¡®stumble on¡¯ were probably planted there for the sake of heavenly political power plays. The fact that I didn¡¯t need to worry about such roundabout methods myself, not having agreed to the restriction and focusing on intrinsic strength instead of harvesting worship.

    Sure, the bureaucracy didn¡¯t approve of me cultivating like a mortal, but there was no room for them to impose that as forbidden either. They were trying, but I¡¯m a bit too good at paperwork for that.

    ¡°How else indeed? Would sharing stories by way of travelling storytellers be a viable avenue?¡±

    ¡°If we could speak with them, yes.¡± She shifted in false resignation. ¡°As things sit, leaving records of our stories is the only approved way of getting them to the singers, and the singers rarely enter the areas we can tread to leave records.¡±

    ¡°Hence the focus on leaving artifacts for the cultivators who can survive to claim them.¡± I nodded along. ¡°Such a shame. I¡¯d love to hear more of the world¡¯s rich history as kept by the Earthly courts.¡±

    ¡°Well, I suppose I can spare a copy of some of my own records for your studies. And if you happen to share them with those on your path and take on the name Gushi Yuan, I wouldn¡¯t be bothered in the least.¡± She snapped her fingers and another servant came forth with a spatial ring on a tray, which I accepted and did not immediately check.

    I¡¯d learned from my early interactions that the spirit courts, heavenly and earthly alike, counted that poor form. With the revelation that circumventing restrictions included clandestine artifact redistribution, it made sense.

    I spared a moment to wonder at the stories from my prior world and whether any of the artifacts in them were actually ¡®stolen¡¯, or just reported that way to the bureaucrats.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure I¡¯ll take the name, but I¡¯m likely to garner a reputation for spreading the tales, at minimum.¡±

    ¡°Oh? The rumors that you¡¯re aiming for the title ¡®Of Many Names¡¯ is incorrect then?¡±

    ¡°More ¡®misinformed¡¯. I¡¯ve looked at the title with interest a few times, but I¡¯m not interested in diluting my focus overmuch to attain it. If there are twenty names that are fitting for me, I¡¯ll celebrate when it happens. But passing hobbies aren¡¯t enough for a Name, to me.¡±

    She let out a chuckle like ice cracking. ¡°To wear six and insist that they are each fully fitting. Little wonder you fear the Bureaucrats¡¯ ire. Classifying you must give them migraines.¡±

    ¡°It does. Which is part of why I classify myself for them.¡± I grinned. ¡°Which will include a bit more ¡®tutoring¡¯ going forward. I¡¯m sure the mortals need it.¡±

    She shared my grin at the addition to her toolset to get the Administrators to turn to me. ¡°You are heading to the Eastern continent soon, yes? I¡¯ve heard their empire is suffering from a lack of proper rulers and some mismanagement of their farmland. You ought to do well there.¡±

    I smiled my approval at the suggestion. It wasn¡¯t exactly ideal to take a long term, high profile job like that, but it wasn¡¯t a bad idea either.

    Provided the cultivators involved could be placated without being murdered. That¡¯d just make it tedious.

    ---

    Comparing travel methods used by mortals to those used by immortal spirits was, I felt, a wonderful way to become disappointed in all parties involved.

    Take the crystal sleigh that the Frost court sent to invite me to and from dinner. A wonder of collaboration between the Travel court¡¯s spatial spirits and the native icy influence of the Frost. It could cross ridiculous distances, leaving the area of The Three Continents entirely, to deliver me to Bai Fa Nushi¡¯s dining hall and back in a single night. A wonderful, abrupt trip that served to connect the seemingly infinite distances between the seats of the High Courts that ruled over the more local branch courts.

    Sure, they required such immediacy of transport to allow the Bureaucracy¡¯s paperwork to get ignored in a timely fashion, but for pleasure travel, it was useless. They were Immortal, properly, and they were so accustomed to immediate transit that they rarely thought to take the scenic options and enjoy their immortality.

    Mortals, meanwhile, used things like ships. Simple, waterborne vessels pushed along the water via sails and a fascinating indirect negotiation with the Winds. Even at the swiftest, it took entire days to travel the distances between the myriad islands of the Three Continents Oceans. Plenty of time to be working the sails and the wheel full-time and still enjoy the sunrise, the sunset, and the unending dance of the waves.

    And because mortals were mortals, they complained about the time it took them to travel as it deprived them of time to do things they deemed ¡®important¡¯.

    Or, at least, the self-obsessed ones did.

    ¡°Thank the heavens!¡± one such self-important noble declared as we pulled into dock. ¡°My skin was starting to chafe from the salt in the air.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t that the past week taught me why so many cultivators just browbeat people into respectful silence. It was that I was questioning my commitment to ¡®not starting the fight¡¯.

    After all, he literally couldn¡¯t threaten me in a way I cared about, so getting pissy about how very punchable his face was would be akin to admitting that I cared about him, if only to the degree I cared about a mosquito in my face.

    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

    And a mosquito was not worth dealing with whoever cared more about him.

    ¡°Good old Imperial soil!¡± he continued, as though he thought he¡¯d die without yammering. ¡°You¡¯re in for a treat, immortal! The Empress herself is a cultivator as well, and she¡¯s ensured the finest treatment for any who show her due deference! Women, wine, even access to the best auction houses in the world! And I can tell you¡¯ll fit right in! I¡¯ve got an eye for these things!¡±

    I raised an amused eyebrow. Initially he¡¯d been disparaging that I joined the trip and ¡°put them all in danger¡±, as it was well-established that cultivators and those with the potential to become cultivators attracted sea monsters.

    Then I dealt with a serpent that thought I¡¯d make a good snack and his tone ¡®miraculously¡¯ turned around.

    ¡°Truly! I¡¯ve yet to be wrong about someone¡¯s fitness to enjoy our fine Imperial accommodations! Say! I¡¯ll be held up in paperwork limbo for a few days, why don¡¯t I introduce you to the customs retainers? They¡¯re very well trained in keeping dignified cultivators from being waylaid for too long.¡±

    ¡°Customs retainers? There¡¯s enough paperwork to require a dedicated servant to handle it?¡± I engaged despite my disdain. He did have useful information, after all.

    ¡°Oh, yes and no.¡± he waggled his head a bit. ¡°One of the chief ways that the Empress accommodates so many cultivators is in keeping track of where they travel so that appropriate resources can be allocated to their pleasure. Most cultivators find that it¡¯s a small price to pay for the conveniences, so they hire retainers.¡±

    Ah, an attempt at a surveillance state. ¡°I¡¯ll take a look at the paperwork myself, for at least the first several outposts, I think. But if one of the retainers would be interested in sharing the details of the position, I¡¯d pay him respectably for it.¡±

    ¡°How interesting! I don¡¯t believe I¡¯ve ever heard someone of your esteemed strength deigning to file their own paperwork!¡±

    ¡°You also said that about surrendering the spines of the serpent.¡±

    ¡°I know! You are swiftly becoming one of the most interesting men I¡¯ve ever spoken with!¡±

    Oh please no. I don¡¯t want this guy hanging around me more. ¡°I just don¡¯t like leaving things to people I haven¡¯t trained myself.¡± I shrugged.

    ¡°Ah! You¡¯ve suffered from incompetent underlings then! Truly an unforgivable crime, that. How is a man supposed to focus on presenting his wealth and power if he has to keep whipping the servants for failing their tasks! It¡¯s preposterous! Why, I had this tailor once...¡±

    And he¡¯s back to ranting about things he should be flogged for. On occasions like this, I bothered to regret my overtrained situational awareness. Even willfully ignoring him, his every squawk made its way into my memory.

    I hadn¡¯t ever flagged a memory for removal before this week. But now, if somehow I needed to lose some memories, I knew which ones to start with.

    ¡°Master cultivator, sir.¡± A seaman bowed in a near-grovel as he interrupted the endless windbag. ¡°The captain asks to speak with you in private before we dock.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Qing.¡± I smiled easily. ¡°I¡¯ll go handle that now. Better to be done than caught off guard, after all¡± I supplied a philosophy to minimize the offense the noble would take.

    ¡°He¡¯s in his quarters, sir.¡±

    I politely escaped to the captain¡¯s cabin and found the grizzled man of half my age at his desk. Not that anyone could tell at a glance, with my body being tempered to an eternal prime, and his wearing his labor openly.

    ¡°Ah! Master Guang! Thank you for humoring me.¡± he rumbled with a cheer to him.

    ¡°Of course, Captain Lung! You¡¯re due no less with your hospitality.¡±

    We shared a cheeky grin for a moment before I added ¡°And my ear greatly appreciates the break.¡± which sent him into a full laugh as I sat across from him.

    ¡°I hear ya. A good part of my agreeing to take you on was figuring that either you¡¯d kill him or we could toss him overboard if we got attacked.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry that I didn¡¯t know that was the plan. I¡¯d have fought closer to the ship.¡± I laughed with him.

    ¡°Ah, it¡¯s fine. I must say, out of every cultivator I¡¯ve ever taken aboard, you¡¯re the only one I¡¯d actually like to see again. Also the only one that hasn¡¯t threatened any of my men.¡±

    ¡°Overwhelming strength is no excuse for poor manners. I often wonder at how this isn¡¯t a common understanding.¡±

    ¡°I couldn¡¯t say, even if I thought I¡¯d survive saying it.¡± he shook his head in lament. ¡°Anyway, I talked it over with the lads, and they wanted to thank you for distracting the distinguished mister Yulan well enough that they could get their work done in peace. Whatever saint you stole your patience from must have been on the verge of enlightenment.¡±

    I let myself laugh at the comment. ¡°I won¡¯t lie and say he didn¡¯t strain me, but it wasn¡¯t enough to need compensation.¡±

    ¡°Maybe not, but the men were quite insistent. We talked it out, and decided that the spines you gifted us will serve you better than us. We wouldn¡¯t be able to get anywhere near their proper price without being struck down for the audacity, after all.¡±

    I blinked at the offer. Blue serpent spines weren¡¯t terribly rare, as far as cultivator-sought resources go, but a set of eight like I¡¯d managed to harvest for them would still fetch a good price at a mortal auction house.

    ¡°Empire cultivators are that stingy?¡± I asked incredulously.

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t call them stingy, per se, no. We¡¯d still get a good price, but split it through a crew and it¡¯s only a week of good booze, even with the ship not needing repairs. The lads argued that you already gave us a week of better food than we¡¯d a right to and a week of reprieve from our honored passenger. They just felt bad accepting the spoils on top of that.¡±

    A quick bit of calculation and my esteem for the empire¡¯s cultivator population took a hit. Not a severe one, but with what a decent craftsman could do with the spines, the finder¡¯s fee should be enough for a week and a half of booze for the crew at least.

    ¡°It¡¯s truly a shame that you can¡¯t get a proper price for them. But I can accept your reasoning, on the condition that you accept a small box of seasoning to make up the difference in values. It won¡¯t set me back at all, and I tasted your gruel.¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡± he barked a laugh. ¡°If that¡¯s your demand to accept our gratitude, I can agree to your terms!¡±

    He handed over the ring with the spines and I produced a miniature chest of spices that would last them most of their next trip through the islands if they used it properly.

    ¡°And I meant what I said earlier. If you need a ship to travel on and I¡¯m in port, it¡¯d be my pleasure to ferry you again.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll look for you if I need a vessel then! Company aside, it¡¯s been a wonderful time aboard.¡±

    Seafaring men were among my favorite mortals. They stared death and madness in the face often enough that they warmed up to treating me like a person faster than more secure professions.

    Disembarking was a much busier affair than on any of the islands I¡¯d stopped at, not the least because each of the crew had to be signed into the paperwork before they were allowed to actually get on with unloading the cargo properly.

    I elected to allow the noisy noble and his small entourage to finish their paperwork entirely before moving with the flow to reach the desk myself.

    ¡°Ah, you would be the cultivator that the captain reported, yes?¡±

    ¡°Yes. What information would you like?¡± I smiled, which seemed to unnerve him.

    ¡°To start the process, your name and core rank. With that I can direct you to the main office where they can get you set up with the basic accommodations and sort out what extra resources should be allocated for you.¡±

    I chuckled. ¡°I am called Guang, and I¡¯m roughly at Pure Stone, seventh or eighth rank.¡±

    He raised an eyebrow, so I added ¡°My foundation doesn¡¯t have distinct rank bursts, so I can only tell with precision by matching a punch with someone.¡±

    He blinked. ¡°No surname?¡±

    ¡°I had it trained out of me during my youth.¡±

    His brow furrowed, then he did his best to hide shock and horror as he realized something. ¡°Would that make you ¡®Guang, called Qu Mo Shi¡¯, then?¡±

    ¡°Yes, that is one of my acquired names.¡±

    I kept a pleasant, neutral expression on my face as he started turning white. He wasn¡¯t the first to respond to the exaggerations of my escape with abject terror, so I was able to keep my exasperation in check with ease as he tried to restart through his stammering.

    ¡°I am so sorry for doubting your existence, your excellency.¡± he finally spat out, clasping his hands together in a plea for mercy.

    ¡°That¡¯s quite alright, mister?¡±

    ¡°Fa Ling, of Nu Yan province.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s quite alright mister Fa. I¡¯d disbelieve the rumors myself with how they¡¯ve grown exaggerated. Take a breath and steady yourself. You haven¡¯t offended me.¡±

    He worked himself down, looked at his paperwork, and quietly muttered ¡°Do we even have paperwork for visiting gods?¡±

    ¡°I will attempt to act as just another cultivator, so rest easy.¡± I said calmly instead of collapsing in laughter like I wanted to.

    He finished composing himself and filled out an ornate intake slip and directed me to the office where some lovely ladies hid every indication that they were bothered by yet another cultivator entering other than the way their shen flinched viscerally enough that I was surprised normal cultivators couldn¡¯t tell.

    One accepted the intake slip and balked for only a moment before inviting me to wait in a lounge that would probably look fitting in a brothel while they got someone dignified enough to speak with me.

    I accepted the complimentary wine and relaxed while evaluating the three other cultivators in the lounge. One, a lecher that neatly explained why the women were so good at pretending not to despise their job, was drinking heartily and griping to one of the women cozied up to him about how he¡¯d been treated on his trip. Another, a woman with icy white hair, was glaring at him with disdain strong enough that I predicted a fight as soon as they were no longer observing hospitality. And the last was calmly sitting as though he was cultivating, though subtle flickers of his shen told me it was a thin pretense and the lecher would do well not to engage him.

    Which, given the nature of rowdy lechers, left only one inevitable interaction while we waited. One that came as I waved off a superficially flirtatious offer for ¡®something more filling¡¯ after refilling my cup.

    ¡°Yeah! See, this guy knows how to relax!¡± the lecher gestured at me. ¡°What¡¯s your name, friend? I¡¯m Hui Ko!¡±

    ¡°I go by Guang.¡± I humored him.

    ¡°Ha! Nice to meet you! Man, after having nothing but men to look at for a month, this is like heaven, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Do you ever shut up?¡± the woman snapped. ¡°How do you even cultivate with a mouth that never closes?¡±

    ¡°Want to find out, beautiful?¡± he waggled his eyebrows like he was confident she wouldn¡¯t or couldn¡¯t punch him.

    The grinding of teeth from her told me that it was not a matter of choice that his face remained unbroken.

    ¡°I¡¯ve never been to this part of the world before.¡± I interrupted the boiling rage before he said something else. ¡°You seem like the sort who knows who¡¯s who in the province.¡±

    ¡°Am I ever! The Hui are the most powerful family this side of the Bleeding Dragon! I¡¯ve worked with everyone you could ever need to go through to get what you want! Make it worth my time and I¡¯d be happy to introduce you to them myself!¡±

    ¡°If I find myself with a goal, I¡¯ll certainly seek out that generous offer.¡± I smiled emptily. ¡°For the present, I¡¯m just seeing more of the world and doing odd jobs for fun.¡±

    ¡°Hit a blockage, eh? My uncle had the same problem a few decades back and lucked out while setting up a trading outpost system. Had a thousand-year ginseng fall right into his lap!¡±

    ¡°How fortuitous! He was suffering from a phase imbalance then?¡±

    Both the lecher and the woman blinked at me. ¡°Damn! That was quick! Yeah! He¡¯d built up too much Wood qi and it was ripping up his Earth qi faster than his Fire qi could settle in, even with extra focus on developing it! The ginseng cleared that right up and he¡¯s been keeping a better handle on it since!¡±

    ¡°Good for him!¡±

    ¡°You some sort of specialist in imbalances then? Damn, your blockage must be something nasty! Say, how¡¯d you suggest someone who keeps suffering Yin overbalancing adjust their cultivation? I¡¯ve got a nephew that can¡¯t keep progressing without a really tedious sun-dependent meditation.¡±

    ¡°The body generates Yang best when performing strenuous activity. A minor circulation while hunting or fighting can overcome minor imbalances. He might also benefit from changing where he cultivates. If he found a ki-rich cave or such, he might just be pulling in far more Yin than he¡¯s accounting for.¡±

    ¡°Young master Hui, your papers have been finished.¡± one of the attendants announced quietly.

    ¡°Great! And I¡¯ll mention that to my nephew, see if it helps him out! It¡¯s been nice to meet you!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m honored to meet yourself.¡± I smiled and returned to my drink as he left. The waitresses¡¯ distress eased off significantly as the room adjusted to the quiet.

    ¡°You don¡¯t have a blockage, do you?¡± the quiet man asked after a long moment.

    ¡°No, quite the opposite.¡± I admitted. ¡°I just like wandering and enjoying the world more than sitting in a cave.¡±

    ¡°You said you are Guang? The patron of the Fang?¡±

    I paused in my drink and cocked my head. ¡°Patron?¡±

    ¡°Oh, okay. I started to think you were someone else for a moment.¡±

    ¡°You may be placing me correctly, I am the Guang who walked the mountains clean. But this is the first I¡¯m hearing anyone calling me the Fang¡¯s patron.¡±

    He blinked for a moment and changed tact. ¡°Well, I did only hear of you third-hand, so it may be rumormongers twisting their respect as worship. But the way I heard it, you stepped down from heaven to cleanse their ranks of the unorthodox that were festering and eliminate the demonic sects nearby, and they adopted you as a patron for it.¡±

    I chuckled with a sinking feeling. ¡°That¡¯s a more fantastical version than any I¡¯ve heard yet! Thank you for sharing, fellow taoist. But no, I was born a mere mortal farmer and was recruited for having a scrap of talent. The revival of the schism and the resulting civil war were incidental to my audacity in not wishing to die.¡±

    ¡°And the demonic sects?¡± the woman asked, good humor in her voice.

    ¡°There was only one. The other rival was merely unorthodox. With significant assistance from the Earthly spirits, I peeled the demonic qi blighting the mountains out to prevent a recurring demonic incursion. Little more.¡±

    ¡°So who fought the Ravenous Demon Blood Dragon? Or was that fabrication as well?¡±

    ¡°No, it was on the battlefield. But to say I ¡®fought¡¯ it is a horrible exaggeration. I just kept running and dodging it for long enough that reinforcements managed to arrive and handle the Fist Master.¡±

    ¡°You outran the Ravenous Demon Blood Dragon technique?¡± the man gaped. ¡°Long enough that it mattered?¡±

    ¡°Only barely.¡± I waved off his awe. ¡°¡®Not Dying¡¯ is a specialty of mine that includes more evasive maneuvers than I have names for.¡±

    ¡°Esteemed guest, we are ready to assist you with the processing.¡± one of the functionaries broke the ensuing silence after a moment, and I stood to follow her.

    ¡°It has been a pleasure speaking with you.¡± I disengaged formally instead of snubbing the other cultivators in their homeland and received polite partings in return.

    What followed was a mild blur as I spoke with one Milan Kurina - a noble of significant local rank - about the information the Shan Taiyan Empire wanted about cultivators in exchange for catering to them before being browbeaten into surrendering goods. Most of it was benign enough, Core tier, Rank, primary resources consumed - mine being ¡®none¡¯ baffled the poor woman - and the like. Simple stuff so that the folk in charge of the infrastructure could predict demands and have the needed goods on hand, within reason.

    I was informed that beyond Bronze Core, the empire didn¡¯t even pretend to have everything a cultivator could need. Which rather made sense, it was astounding that they claimed to be able to support every Stone Core they hosted. Claiming more would be tantamount to suicide by being caught in a lie.

    Then the interesting part started. The polite request that I, as well as any other cultivator, agree to aid empire personnel if I happen across them having difficulty. The chief examples were if I came across a transport being accosted by a demon beast or a brigand squad. Sensible enough. I couldn¡¯t imagine it was sustainable in the long term, but inviting cultivators to supplement security measures to make sure their own goods get the same treatment was clever.

    They were even circumspect in confirming which artifacts I carried from the rumors. Not particularly fearing them being stupid enough to set thieves after my sword or staff, I admitted to carrying them, but neglected to inform them of the Frost Princess¡¯ bell. That one not only had history to it, but had formed its own spirit long ago and didn¡¯t like being used as bait.

    Province Lord Milan never properly relaxed, but did clearly find me off-puttingly affable as she mistook my cooperation for trust. And the look of choking on a lemon that broke through her composure when I politely declined to be put up in the local palace, as I intended to simply roam the city until my paperwork was done was beautiful.

    After all, it¡¯d technically be more offensive to accept the offer and never set foot in the room than to admit my intention to not pretend to sleep. And it wasn¡¯t like I was saying that I was bothered by the spying. I even asked what manner of guide was most convenient to mingle and enjoy the culture in order to reassure her that I was fine being watched.

    It was late morning of the following day when we were both satisfied that I knew enough of the rules that I wouldn¡¯t cause a scene, and I departed with a guide that carried himself like a warrior despite the functionary outfit.

    He proved a fine conversationalist as we walked, even filling me in on the nature of the empire¡¯s primary enforcement tool - a type of martial arts that was likened to ¡®external cultivation¡¯ that didn¡¯t grant proper longevity like tempering one¡¯s soul, but was significantly easier to scale out for the empire¡¯s needs.

    For one thing, it was pure skill. Which meant that the vagaries of soul attunement and energetic phase management were completely removed from the dynamic. Thus, any mortal of fit body could practice and become respectably strong in it.

    For another, it was pure skill. Which meant that the occasional rowdy cultivator was likely to simply get blindsided by their own strength being repurposed.

    Baisho was only slightly bothered that I complimented his superiors for the cleverness. More so at my suggestion of sparring sometime.

    We stopped for lunch at a restaurant that he thought highly of, and I was treated to the proprietor speaking with an irritated woman who, instead of berating the man, was walking him through a recipe.

    Listening in as we sat, my esteem for both grew a little. The proprietor had apparently suffered a complaint about the dish and the woman, a chef by the sound of it, was helping him figure out what went wrong.

    Given that she wasn¡¯t hiding her shen, which flickered stronger than mine by a good deal, I was both suspicious of her motives and impressed that she deigned to talk with him herself.

    The meal was nice, an overcomplex citrus-based sauce drizzled on small strips of fish, and a downright impressive vinegar mix in the accompanying rice.

    It was only slightly spoiled at the end by the very loud intrusion of a pompous fuckwit and a group of thugs.

    ¡°You dared serve this Bo poisoned food! Now you¡¯ll pay for it with your business!¡±

    Baisho groaned that his recommendation was under attack as most of the patrons started beating a retreat.

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t poisoned, you insipid buffoon. You¡¯re just allergic to shellfish.¡± the woman shot back.

    ¡°You dare imply this Bo has such a weakness!¡± he postured.

    ¡°Everyone already knows it. You¡¯re the only one you¡¯re fooling. Now get out of here before I eat you.¡±

    Bo, along with most of the restaurant, balked at the threat. Unwisely, he recovered by yelling ¡°Seize her!¡±

    The rest of the patrons finished exiting as his goons attacked, and I sat back and finished my food while enjoying the scene as she pulled out a sturdy wooden spatula and started laying the thugs out on the floor and tables. She didn¡¯t have a discernible style, which I found odd, opting instead to flail about like an untrained mortal, but with enough force that there were absolutely broken bones as the thugs fell.

    It was over as I finished my meal, and the idiot realized that I was there as he panicked. ¡°Cultivator! You¡¯re charged with keeping the peace!¡± he yelled.

    ¡°I¡¯m not a fucking cultivator!¡± she yelled as she stalked toward him. ¡°And I am keeping the peace you pathetic, tasteless clump of puddle mud!¡±

    ¡°And you¡¯ve got the wrong of it anyway.¡± I spoke up to save him by distracting her. ¡°Cultivators are requested to assist empire forces in keeping the peace. You brought thugs, so there¡¯s no call for me to do anything here.¡±

    The woman, having finally noticed me, started to turn back to him slowly with a truly malicious grin.

    ¡°However, out of basic civility, I¡¯ll offer one distraction to her to give you time to leave in peace. Ma¡¯am, would you care to join me and my guide for tea?¡± I pulled out one of my boxes to entice her away from killing a noble.

    She paused as the idiot gaped, then sighed. ¡°You know what, sure. He¡¯s not worth it.¡±

    She sat down across from me as the men left conscious in the room stared at me, and I started boiling a pot of water with a minor flame technique I was fond of.

    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Bo demanded.

    ¡°He¡¯s saving your life. Go away before I change my mind.¡± she snapped for me, finally causing the noble to catch a clue and flee.

    ¡°Neat trick.¡± she gestured to the flame.

    ¡°Thanks. It¡¯s a favorite of mine.¡± I smiled easily. ¡°I¡¯m called Guang.¡±

    ¡°Bu Keneng De Hua.¡±

    ¡°A pleasure to meet you. And thank you for the show.¡± I added the tea leaves.

    ¡°Already? That¡¯s a really neat fire trick if it¡¯s already up to temp.¡±

    ¡°It really is. But I also have a water technique to make sure it spreads properly.¡±

    ¡°Neat.¡±

    I poured the tea a few breaths later and she appreciated the aroma with composure fit for a mortal court, not vocalizing her approval, but showing it in her face. We drank in silence, the bustle outside not bothering to intrude so soon after an uproar, and when she was done she nodded.

    ¡°Yeah, that was much more satisfying than killing that idiot. Thank you.¡±

    ¡°Thank you for the company. Sharing a table with someone with taste always improves my tea. Two such, even more.¡±

    ¡°I see...¡± she raised an eyebrow that could have meant anything for all I could read her manners, but her shen flickered positively. ¡°It¡¯s been lovely, but I should leave before that idiot comes back. Thank you for the excuse not to kill him.¡±

    ¡°You''re welcome. May your travels be peaceful, Bu Keneng De Hua.¡±

    Then she left, and I did my best not to worry about the implications of interacting with nobility in my first three free-roaming hours in a new nation.

    It boded poorly enough for my time here that ¡®my best¡¯ wasn¡¯t terribly effective.

 Jumping Around

    ¡°Esteemed Immortal. You requested to be informed when a Bone Frog was reported in the Bloating Corpse Fen.¡± the guard captain, Fui Lee, addressed me with a medley of emotions. He hadn¡¯t yet adjusted to me treating him and his men like people, or to my penchant for working alongside the common farmers.

    It had only been a few months, but that was plenty of time for me to slip into a pattern, and Province Lord Milan was as gracious a host as I could expect. I¡¯d inquired about farmland that had been reporting difficulty and set up shop in the town to the slowly abating fear of the locals.

    ¡°I did indeed! One is pushing its boundaries then?¡± I answered without breaking my stride alongside the mortals.

    ¡°So it seems. My men can be ready for mobilization on the morrow.¡±

    ¡°Excellent! I¡¯ll join you at dawn, then!¡± The parts of the frog were of little interest to me, but it had been far too long since I had a proper fight, which meant that backup was a wonderful plan. And letting them see what my real fighting style was would go a good way towards assuaging the delusion that their skill could take me out.

    Sparring with them occasionally had given a few of them the impression that I was weak for a Pure Stone cultivator. Preventing them from doing something stupid with that delusion was a courtesy.

    It truly feels impossible some days to overstate my disdain for politics.

    The evening passed uneventfully after he departed and I chose to indulge a touch of theatrics by lounging in a tree overlooking their assembly point an hour before they started assembling. Something about the way the Fui was obsessed with presenting a front of extreme professionalism whenever he knew I was around just made me want to mess with him by catching him berating a subordinate for speaking their folly.

    I was careful not to be noticed overhearing them discussing the bounty offers that were apparently circulating. But it seemed that more than one cultivator was offended that a ¡®self-proclaimed god¡¯ was in their land. And I hadn¡¯t even made them look like idiots yet.

    So as the dispatch squad of fifty men and women stood at the ready with their captain warning them yet again that slovenly behavior would not be tolerated no matter how much I encouraged it, I tossed ten apples to be impaled on the front row¡¯s spears, visibly raising Fui¡¯s blood pressure.

    ¡°It looks like everyone is here, then.¡± he ground out through clenched teeth. ¡°Let¡¯s get going then.¡±

    ¡°Quite right!¡± I agreed, hopping down with half an apple. ¡°Best to get there before a wagon gets intercepted!¡±

    That was something that amused me a great deal. Shipping used wagons despite the empire¡¯s funding allowing for spatial rings. From what I¡¯d picked up in rumors, the reasoning was that, as they were relying on cultivators for emergency aid, the wagons acted as signals that there was something that called for protection where a squad moving with a spatial ring could be mistaken for a simple redeployment.

    I wasn¡¯t convinced that it held up to scrutiny, but it was funny that the Empress apparently thought of the cultivators in her land like semi-trained guard dogs in need of conditioned symbols to do their job properly.

    I kept myself largely professional for Fui¡¯s benefit through the three day journey. A little ribbing and teasing could do him good, but doing more than prompting anxious stress release would genuinely endanger his men, and that was still the opposite of the point.

    As we reached the edge of the fen, however, another cultivator was arriving from another direction and met me with a glare.

    ¡°You¡¯re here for the Bone Frog?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m here for a good fight.¡± I answered with a smile. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t mind handing over the corpse if you¡¯re looking for the core.¡±

    She looked me over and raised an eyebrow. ¡°You¡¯re barely peak Pure Stone and you think you can handle a Bone Frog by yourself?¡±

    ¡°I do, yes! Though the imperial forces here are legitimate backup in case I misestimate the frog¡¯s strength.¡±

    The subtle offence that other cultivators took from me being honest about my own strength would never stop being funny, if only because so few of them knew why they were offended by me not insulting them.

    ¡°I am Shu Lu. I¡¯ll accept your offer of softening one of my quarry.¡±

    ¡°I am Guang. Pleased to meet you, honorable Shu Lu.¡± I bowed slightly as her strength demanded now that we¡¯d exchanged names.

    ¡°The purifier I¡¯ve heard about?¡± she sneered.

    ¡°Rather likely. Shall we?¡± I cut off the line of questioning for now as the guards finished redistributing the weight of the wagon so it could come with us. Conveniently including ensuring each of them had their full set of javelins and spare sword on hand.

    One thing I completely understood their envy of cultivators over was how Shu and I both had water-striding techniques that saved us the irritation of being knee-deep in putrid stillwater. I¡¯m sure that my matching pace with them was seen as patronizing, but I wasn¡¯t kidding about actually wanting their backup. I figured I had good odds alone, but there was no need to gamble just to sate my battle lust.

    ¡°So, ¡®purifier¡¯. Do you have a way of pinpointing your prey, or are we going to use the guards¡¯ search pattern?¡± Shu said as we crossed the half-hour mark of wading.

    I grinned. ¡°Hey guys! I¡¯m looking for the Bone Frog around here. Mind pointing the way?¡±

    ¡°What? Who are you even tal-¡± she trailed off as the water below us and the air around us started very subtly, but pointedly, flowing in the same direction, ahead of us and to the left.

    ¡°I¡¯m on fairly good terms with most Earthly Spirit courts.¡± I answered. ¡°Thanks, guys!¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ve incorporated southern Hanoutu druidism into your dao?¡± she asked as we resumed walking.

    ¡°Not quite, but their teachings should get a devoted student appreciably close to my relationship.¡±

    ¡°What do you do differently?¡±

    ¡°I share dinner with them and respect them within their rules. Word spreads from there.¡±

    ¡°How do you share dinner with spirits?¡±

    ¡°Well, I invite them to manifest and treat them like any other guest. A mortal or cultivator could simply invite them to share in the essence of the meal and start a similar relationship.¡±

    ¡°Mortal or cultivator? What are you, then?¡±

    ¡°Ascended spirit. If your drain on the land is little enough that the Earth won¡¯t strike you for it, the trick is remarkably easy to stumble upon.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± she sneered. ¡°Do tell.¡±

    ¡°Mortal men have mortal souls, mortal bodies, and mortal minds.¡±

    She fell silent at the implication that it really was that simple for several minutes. Then she shook herself ¡°There must be a catch to it or the elders of my family would have ascended long ago.¡±

    ¡°The catch is that in ascending, you¡¯re no longer protected by Heaven¡¯s laws, so the Earth is free to smite you if you draw its ire.¡±

    She snorted. ¡°A likely story.¡±

    ¡°And the only one I¡¯ve got. If you want to discuss ways to lie about it, I¡¯m all ears.¡±

    She was in the midst of giving me a challenging glare when we were interrupted by a menacing croak that rippled the water by several inches.

    ¡°Oh goodie!¡± I grinned as Jinghua Feng Ren appeared in my hand. ¡°Back in a bit!¡±

    Trusting the guards, at least, to set themselves up to assist me if I screwed up, I threw myself into the clearing with the massive frog and locked eyes with it. Malicious green light glimmered in the pupils, reflecting its ability to see through illusions by looking for the shen of its targets. Its mottled red-brown skin writhed as it turned slightly to face me fully and the dozens of human-femur sized bony spines sticking out from its hide rippled with their own power.

    The impulse to charge it and try to end the fight immediately was put down as quickly as it rose. The most lethal trick these beasts possessed was why they were named ¡®Bone Frogs¡¯ instead of the more visually apt ¡®corpse frog¡¯. And while technically my bones weren¡¯t mortal, their trick worked just fine on cultivators.

    It croaked again and launched its green-barbed tongue at me with impressive speed. Not enough for me to fail to sidestep and slice along its length, but still impressive. Sadly, the thing was sturdy enough that my slice did almost nothing, starting my face peeling back into my battle grin.

    A second launch of its tongue was met head-on by my spear, and I had to jump back to avoid getting the caustic blood spray on me as my spear ruptured its target.

    The beast¡¯s angered croak after it retrieved its tongue was an oddly pitiable sound compared to the rage of more iconic predators, but the existential threat in the tone was respectable nonetheless. Then the tongue, healed of the stab wound, shot out at me again and met my spear again.

    ¡°Yeah, I know it doesn¡¯t stay out of commission.¡± I chuckled as the slimy eyes narrowed at me. ¡°Nice try though.¡±

    Its cunning wasn¡¯t great, by all reports, but it seemed to realize that I was a threat instead of just prey, and its throat swelled menacingly with a deafening croak. Then it belched out a truly unnerving amount of black-grey smoke that stank of disease and death.

    Then it jumped. My eyes couldn¡¯t track it through the plague cloud filling the area, but it was hard to miss the sound of that much air displacing at once.

    I drew my Flowing Spirit path around the edge of the clearing and sharpened my hearing to catch where the frog was aiming to land so I could stay opposite of it.

    Before the sound of the frog, I caught the whistle of large darts and decided to be a third of the way around the clearing instead of where it was trying to herd me.

    The boosh of it landing brought flashes of memory I¡¯d thought lost to youth and my grin widened as I shot an Air Thrust over the oncoming surge of water. I¡¯d worry about the memory later. For now, I had to keep this thing at a distance if I liked my bones in their proper place.

    Keeping my distance proved almost too easy, even as I kept reminding myself that it was necessary. The damn thing just moved too slow to keep my full attention, even compared to the mortal martial artists. Its attacks were fast enough, but moving its bulk had full breaths of delay that gave my mind time to drift. The fact that it drifted at all was probably a result of its allure finding odd corners of purchase, but it still soured the fight for me.

    Upon realizing that I -somehow- wasn¡¯t enjoying a fight, I shot another Air Thrust at it, listened for its takeoff, and tore a clearing breeze through the area.

    Now exposed in midair, the frog was quite an impressive sight, bone shards floating around it, ready to pepper the area and futilely corral me into its landing area where it could try to add my bones to its hoard.

    Being able to see its trajectory properly, however, it was a simple stomp and an earth technique to raise a hardened stone spear through the fen soil where it promptly landed as I vacated its attack range.

    The frog¡¯s landing was poor, and my stone spike ruptured its gullet and gave it immense trouble in turning around to get a look at where I was. Instead of toying with the disappointment, I moved above it and threw my spear down through its brain before landing in a tree to watch it stop twitching.

    Looking around, I saw that the mortals had been waiting past the plague cloud, at the ready if I¡¯d bothered to lure the frog to them, and Shu was staring at me with an unreadable expression.

    I took a few calming breaths and focused on my body and mind. I was feeling far more agitated than a disappointment should have left me, so I suspected I was affected by the toxins I¡¯d dismissed as I breathed them.

    Sure enough, I found an honestly elegant medley of Death-adjacent qi trying and partially succeeding in forcibly seeping into my system. So I took a bit to sort it out and memorize its composition in case I wanted to tinker with the concept later. Plagues weren¡¯t my style, but I might wind up giving pointers to someone that used them.

    ¡°You are a strange one, Guang.¡± Shu finally stated as I finished expelling the disrupting qi. ¡°Daring to stay within the plague cloud, even with a protective artifact, is more folly than I¡¯ve yet seen.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, but if I start denying demon beasts their advantages, it stops being a fight and turns into a butchering. Like so.¡± I grumbled at the impaled frog. ¡°Harvest away, by the way. That plague mix means there¡¯s nothing I could do to make the meat taste good.¡±

    ¡°So if someone were to declare a feud with you, you¡¯d just let them build up their forces?¡±

    ¡°Oh no. Sapient threats I treat like threats. Beasts don¡¯t have much more than cunning, however, and it¡¯d be a shame to deny them instead of face them properly.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d heard you played at being as meek as a mortal, not that you crave battle.¡± she asked in a backwards fashion as she started carving through the rancid gullet.

    ¡°I fancy myself civilized, so I act like it when I¡¯m not fighting. If you happen to find yourself near a farm I¡¯m tending, you¡¯re welcome to ask after tea or dinner.¡± I smiled, burying the rest of my irritation. This was a cultivator that wasn¡¯t stabbing me yet. That was worth something, even if the frog I came here for wasn¡¯t.

    ¡°Say, you seem to be looking for cores for cultivation reasons. If you¡¯ve got a lead on a beast that¡¯d be a better fight than this guy, I¡¯d be happy to offer aid.¡±

    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    She stared at me for a minute before shaking her head. ¡°One of the Hui is paying me well to collect cores for him. I¡¯d rather keep the commission to myself.¡±

    I let myself chuckle. ¡°That¡¯s reasonable. Do keep me in mind if one of your quarry threatens to be tricky. I¡¯m thankfully bereft of political conflict, so I¡¯ve been growing antsy too swiftly for my taste, so I¡¯d count it a boon.¡±

    ¡°If a beast seems likely to give me trouble, I¡¯ll look for you.¡± she agreed with a small smile that I took to mean she understood the sentiment.

    And the dance of emotion on Fui¡¯s face helped my mood immensely. I¡¯d head back to the farm at my own speed instead of tormenting him further, but it was still nice to watch him realize that he¡¯d marched all this way for what amounted to nothing.

    ---

    Ling Huyin had started adjusting to travelling life. It had taken most of a decade, and she still despised it, but being on the run from the Fang that now controlled the entire eastern region of the continent did force her to adapt.

    The first years were the roughest. Master Raka was very skilled at forcing the behavior he could tolerate, and she¡¯d encountered that skill every time she started losing her temper with their lot. She¡¯d only just started going months without biting reprimands when they encountered the hut.

    As they studied the bastard Guang¡¯s notes on fertilizer, it became clear that he wanted them to think he was going south. The Hanoutu lowlands were well known for their poor soil, and the extensive study on fertilizer was a glaring cue that he was preparing to go there and present them a remedy.

    Neither Ling nor her master felt that such an obvious lead was likely to be what he¡¯d hidden in the scrolls, but they hadn¡¯t been able to glean more than that.

    So they tried tracking the merchants he traveled with, only to find a dead end in the form of an entire town slain by a beastmaster.

    With that second indicator that their quarry had business down south, and word of disputes between the southernmost Druidism temples and the north Hanoutu beastmasters stinking of Guang¡¯s meddling, the two of them raced south to try to extract and kill him before he could escape.

    Ling had initially worried about her master¡¯s plan to offer their aid to the beastmasters. They were a sect of cultivators that had a long-established hatred of traditional cultivation, and instead tied themselves to demon beasts capable of fending off most incursions that the Fang and Fist had sent south over the past centuries.

    Raka, however, had shown her why he was more feared than even the former Fang sect master. He never raised a fist to cow the beastmasters. Instead, he appeared before them and spoke.

    And the beastmasters listened.

    He stayed with them while sending Ling to hone her stealth and hunt out the rebellious druids that were openly declaring that Guang¡¯s ascension meant that their meditations on the world were granted the Heavenly Mandate to rule the land despite the beastmaster¡¯s strength.

    Two years of infiltration and assassination, and Guang was nowhere to be found. Everyone she interrogated was certain he¡¯d blessed them with victory, but none had met him directly.

    But the worst part was the fertilizer.

    The druids¡¯ primary claim to legitimacy was an asinine argument about being able to produce more food for the demon beasts than the beastmasters who ruled the land.

    Proving them wrong was trivial. Using Guang¡¯s studies.

    So it was that she and her master stood overlooking Snarling Fang City, having thwarted the rebellion and established allies for themselves, and felt their victory ring hollow.

    Guang had never set foot here, but his methods won the day.

    ¡°We must not make the mistake of giving the smith credit for the kills of his blade in the hands of a warrior.¡± Master Raka finally announced cryptically.

    Ling meditated on his words for a long moment before finding the relief he offered. While the teachings came from the man who killed her family, they were not his methods.

    They had used Master Raka¡¯s methods, armed with Guang¡¯s teachings.

    ¡°He never would have supported the beastmasters.¡± she nodded. ¡°It¡¯s a blow against him using his own strength.¡±

    ¡°Quite right. We have reclaimed a measure of our time in this hunt.¡±

    Right! Four months of studying Guang¡¯s nonsense and losing his trail had sat poorly with both of them. Taking those teachings and using them for their own ends would ease that dissonance somewhat, instead of letting it fester as one of Guang¡¯s poisons.

    ¡°I still desire to never touch another wagon of soil in my life.¡±

    ¡°On that, we are agreed.¡± Raka admitted with the faintest sigh. ¡°The rumors indicate that he has been sighted in the islands of the northern ocean.¡±

    ¡°Is he seeking to shelter in the Shan Taiyan Empire?¡±

    ¡°With how much more oppressive they are than the Fang was, I doubt it. But I have sent a message their way to warn them of his methods in case he goes there. For now,¡± Master scowled like he¡¯d been fed oversteeped tea, ¡°There is another hut.¡±

    ¡°Must we spend time on them? There was no clue within the first, and it led us the wrong way.¡±

    ¡°And now we know that he will leave false leads, so he¡¯ll leave genuine ones mixed into the next several. He played this type of game with me extensively over tea. His other foes who stopped listening fell for his traps with far greater regularity because they lacked his warnings.¡±

    Ling slumped. ¡°So if we catch up to him without having studied his huts, we¡¯ll run face-first into traps that his huts will warn us about.¡±

    ¡°Just as that first hut has now warned us that the huts themselves will likely hold traps if one is seeking him. Yes.¡±

    Ling accepted her master¡¯s wisdom on the matter, and kept her further complaints to herself.

    It would be worth it when they found the insufferable bastard and she got to peel that stupid smile off his face.

    ---

    ¡°Let me make sure I¡¯m understanding this correctly.¡± I sighed at the cultivator I¡¯d managed to offend without speaking to. ¡°Your complaint with me is that I¡¯m not hoarding resources, thus freeing more to assist you in your cultivation. But because I¡¯m not putting on a big show about being better than you and feeling pity for you, that generosity feels like a slap to the Face, even though I¡¯m literally just saying that my dao does not require those resources.¡±

    ¡°You are devaluing the treasures that elevate me! If you cannot learn their value and treat them with respect, I shall take your head!¡±

    ¡°Spend a season with a merchant, and you¡¯ll know more about value than you do now.¡± I answered. ¡°The logger does not pay for timber. The farmer does not pay for rice. Neither are reduced in value by this.¡±

    ¡°You would lecture this Zheng on value!¡± the idiot chose his grave and drew his blade. ¡°You court death!¡±

    I took a long look at his attendants, all mortals that had been listening and trying to figure out what was wrong with their boss for most of an hour. I looked at the teahouse proprietor, cowering in the back of the room.

    Then I looked up at the man who was clearly expecting me to flip the table at him and begin the fight.

    ¡°Really?¡± I asked with an exasperated sigh. ¡°You want to drag me back into killing cultivators with a fucking cliche?¡±

    The idiot blinked and I slowly stood up and gestured for him to follow me outside. ¡°I mean, I understand wanting to kill me, but it¡¯s never going to work. Not when you¡¯re only this much stronger than me. I¡¯m not walking around being called the deathless immortal for nothing. This fight would barely be a polite greeting to death after my previous relationship with it, not courtship at all.¡±

    I swayed as he lunged from behind me and tutted. ¡°Wait until we¡¯re outside. I want a formal witness to tell your family what happened. That way when they hunt me down, it¡¯ll be because they¡¯re as stupid as you, not because your servants lied to make you look good.¡±

    ¡°You Dare speak of the Zheng family like that!¡±

    ¡°They raised you, right?¡± I asked rhetorically as I stepped outside. ¡°Ah, Fui Lee! The Zheng family requires an impartial witness for a death in the family.¡±

    The guard captain¡¯s temple throbbed as he registered that the young master was almost to the point of spitting blood. ¡°Very well. What is the offense?¡±

    ¡°To my understanding, he¡¯s upset to the point of chopping off his nose over my share of the region¡¯s resource allotment.¡±

    ¡°The offense is your refusal to put treasures in your eye! You devalue everything thusly!¡±

    ¡°Yeah, however that¡¯s different. I¡¯ve already demonstrated my skill, but he¡¯s too blind with rage to notice that he¡¯s already lost, and seems to be counting on his offense to carry the match. I won¡¯t be sparing him.¡±

    Fui sighed and backed up. ¡°I have heard the offense and recognize this duel as valid. You may begin.¡±

    Zheng¡¯s blade came for me again, and I swayed out of the way again, then stepped into his guard and jabbed him in the throat.

    At Bronze core, he really should have had enough fights not to make mistakes like that, but I¡¯d discovered that Empire cultivators were shy on raw experience, even compared to Fist and Spire cultivators.

    Vines erupted from the ground around me in response to his qi flaring and tried to grab onto me. I danced around them and kept myself inside his guard just to make him realize how profoundly stupid this fight was. His uncle would be worth fighting, but not him.

    Trying to escape me, he tripped on his own vines and I grabbed his sword and slammed it through his throat and into the ground.

    Entertainingly, he didn¡¯t die immediately, so I decided to let him have the chance. ¡°Take that out and you¡¯ll bleed out. I can patch you up enough that your family¡¯s methods can save you. Just admit that you and your treasures are worthless, and I¡¯ll spare your wasted life.¡±

    ¡°My family will hunt you to the ends of the earth!¡± he gurgled.

    ¡°And you¡¯ll still be dead.¡± I deadpanned. ¡°No amount of retribution will put your soul back in your body. Admit you¡¯re worthless and you can join the hunt. Or die of blood loss while clinging to your pride. Your choice.¡±

    I watched his anger fade as he realized that he wasn¡¯t making it out of here without playing to my tune, and fear overtook him half a breath later.

    ¡°I, Zheng Hurin, and all of my treasures are worthless!¡± he cracked with plenty of time to spare.

    ¡°Well done! Now you can drop your complaint against me.¡± I pulled out some surgical needles and larger steel rods to help me close the worst of the damage. ¡°Hold still. I never got the anesthesia recipe.¡±

    Pulling the pooled blood away with a technique I stole from the Fang medics, I saw why he wasn¡¯t dead. I¡¯d only barely nicked the artery with how he¡¯d been falling. A simple arterial wrap, a bit of sewing to close his throat back up, a dose of a coagulant I hadn¡¯t used nearly as much since my escape from the Fang, and the bleeding stopped filling up the cavity.

    ¡°Be thankful for my days of actually courting death. I¡¯m only good at this because people as skilled as you thought you were kept trying to kill me over real offenses.¡± I chuckled. ¡°Now, make sure you don¡¯t exert yourself over anything, get back home quickly, and they should be able to finish fixing you up enough to meditate yourself good as new.¡±

    ¡°I thought you weren¡¯t going to spare him.¡± Fui asked as I stood up.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t. Now that he¡¯s seen the face of death and admitted that he¡¯s worthless in front of it, he¡¯ll have to reforge his identity if he wants to grow any stronger.¡± I grinned despite my still-niggling feelings of discontent. ¡°It¡¯s a poor murder that leaves a corpse.¡±

    ¡°So you planned to barely not kill him with that blow?¡±

    ¡°Oh, no. I¡¯ve never fancied myself an expert murderer. He lucked out in only needing his relationship with value to die.¡± I laughed at the man¡¯s irritation with my answer. ¡°Cheer up! This is probably the last you¡¯ll see of me!¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Harvest has finished, I¡¯m done with my hut for the season. It¡¯s about time for me to roam more. As long as you don¡¯t get caught predicting my actions, you¡¯ll probably live the rest of your life without seeing me again!¡±

    ¡°Weren¡¯t you looking for a tutor position?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve got an eye open for it, but I¡¯m not going to go tell a noble that they¡¯re raising an idiot and to pay me to fix their kid. There¡¯s tact in these things. Nah, I¡¯m going to focus on fixing up some farmlands and let nobles think it¡¯s their own idea to ask me for other insights.¡± I chose not to point out that I¡¯d never mentioned that to him or his men.

    The look on his face as he realized that he¡¯d been over-vigilant on that matter was a wonderful flavor of indignant frustration. Pointing out his misstep would spoil it.

    ¡°Do feel free to mention it to anyone who asks.¡± I finished instead. ¡°And have a nice trip to explain to the Zheng patriarch why his son has a hole in his neck.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll do that.¡± he gritted out and I waved and started a stroll.

    It was kind of odd. I actually didn¡¯t want Zheng Lao or Zheng Nima hunting me down because even if they were inept in direct combat, they were still both Silver core cultivators. But now that they were all but guaranteed to come after me for dickslapping their nephew/son, I was less uneasy about them.

    Which made sense in one way. Now I knew where they stood, instead of having them in that hideous nebulous space of ¡®they¡¯re cultivators, so they¡¯ll either want my head or my help¡¯.

    And given how steady imperial politics were in every rumor mill I¡¯d tapped, that also meant that a third of the northern imperial cultivator families would be implicitly on board with killing me, just because the Zheng had good standing. Nowhere near the Hui, but then, nobody had standing near the Hui.

    The Imperial Family dwarfed them by a factor comparable to how they dwarfed everyone else in this part of the empire. Which left them in an unenviable position if anything started going wrong. After so long maintaining their power, the Empress expected them to also control the antics of the lesser houses.

    And despite being famous as a wastrel, Ko, whom I met briefly, was afforded the full respect of his family¡¯s position for having lived up to that expectation. His nephew had been making progress, according to the rumors, so that was an incidental mark in my favor when they decided on joining the Zheng and do away with me.

    After all, one man would always look far easier to deal with than whatever the Zheng pull on with their standing. Dramatically enough that I wouldn¡¯t even really blame them.

    And it wasn¡¯t like I personally ruined families for trying to kill me, so they might not suffer much for it.

    Catching myself musing in circles, I decided to visit the ¡®requisitions office¡¯ that I¡¯d determined at length to, in point of fact, be little more than a cultivator observation outpost. The Empress did a wonderful job of hiding their real job inside the requirements of delivering cultivation resources, but this wasn¡¯t my first life being surrounded by eyes.

    ¡°Ah! Master Guang!¡± the attending noble appeared with impressive speed. ¡°Can I help you with anything today?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m done with the field, and I promised I¡¯d let you know before heading off.¡± I smiled warmly. ¡°I also figure it¡¯s polite to warn you that the Zheng are likely to ask after me with pointed intent.¡±

    ¡°Oh? Did something happen?¡±

    ¡°Normal cultivator nonsense. It¡¯ll be resolved between them and me, but they¡¯ll likely come here to find me. So where¡¯s a good location for a Face duel? Say.. South of here?¡±

    The man stared at me, blinking in confusion. ¡°A- Are you asking me where I would like you and the Zheng to fight?¡±

    ¡°Asking for your input, at least.¡± I smiled. ¡°It seems courteous to repay the hospitality I¡¯ve received from the Shan Taiyan imperial forces by at least hearing out which stretches of land are most convenient to run an offended Silver Core cultivator through.¡±

    ¡°To the south, you say?¡± His recovery was impressively swift.

    ¡°Yes. I hear there¡¯s a dry, arid territory around there. Seems like a good land to study next.¡±

    ¡°Ah, the Scale-scrape barrens. Yes!¡± he lit up. ¡°I cannot personally recommend spending any time down there. The ki is thin, outlaws have been using it to hide from imperial forces, and if I¡¯m being honest, the dust in the air is just unpleasant against the skin. But if you¡¯ve your own reasons to be down that way, I suspect that Province Lord Lung would thank you to simply avoid any of his established cities in your fights. And if you manage to take out an outlaw base, all the better.¡±

    ¡°The ki is thin enough that it¡¯s worth mentioning?¡± I blinked. That was promising in a backwards way.

    ¡°I cannot confirm, myself, naturally. But every report I¡¯ve heard from Lung¡¯s offices states that the cultivators who station themselves there for security consideration complain at length about the thin ki and how it¡¯s aggravating to try to cultivate while they¡¯re between calls for aid.¡±

    ¡°Wonderful! I haven¡¯t had a depleted region to work on before! Would you mind pointing out the requisition office that Lord Lung is likely to hear from fastest? It¡¯d be rude to give him a heart attack by delaying news of my arrival when I get there.¡±

    The noble - Tai! That was his name! - blinked at me before catching up to the fact that I expected the Zheng to come in aggressively with about the same speed as news could travel. ¡°I¡¯m sure he will appreciate the courtesy. Let me get the map out and I¡¯ll gladly point you to his main requisition office!¡±

    ¡°Thank you! And if the Zheng do come to bother you, I will be heading there so that they can catch up to me. I might get caught up along the way, but they shouldn¡¯t have to wait long for my arrival if they¡¯re particularly angry.¡±

    ¡°Might I ask what you expect them to be angry about? You seem sure of their response.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I stabbed the heir in the neck and made him admit that he and his treasures are worthless.¡±

    Tai stared at me, mouth agape, for almost a full minute before a servant appeared with the map and I realized part of my discomfort.

    I hadn¡¯t been fucking with people hard enough to baffle them. Now I could get on fixing that.

 Barren Brazeness

    If Province Lord Lung Hao was honest with himself, he loved his job. He knew that his peers considered the Scale-Scrape barrens a punitive position, but that stopped bothering him only a few short months into his post.

    Yes, there were no resources left after the great battle with the dread Salt-Scale Serpent had formed it. But that just meant that there were fewer matters to look after. Yes, rogue cultivators hid in the pitiably sheltered wilds, but as long as a loyal cultivator was incentivized to stay in each city, that just kept the beast populations down.

    The position didn¡¯t afford him much prestige, but outside of formal appearances before his superiors, that wasn¡¯t a problem. His people knew their jobs and did them, he knew his job and did it, and the ¡®embarrassment of the empire¡¯ continued functioning just as well as any other province.

    In fact, the only part of his job that he truly disliked was treating with cultivators. And even that was made immensely more tolerable by the nature of his territory. So few of the power-seekers found themselves desperate enough for Imperial Credits for additional resources that the low ki of the land ensured that he only ever had the bare minimum in residence at any one time, and keeping them civilized was usually a simple matter of apologizing for matters beyond his control and flattering them for their generosity in taking on the security position.

    It still rattled his nerves any time he had to face one of the monsters though. The way that they subdued their emotions was unnerving at the best of times, and a lethal trap at others. One could never tell what arbitrary matters would anger a cultivator, and they were always eager to threaten anyone they were not, themselves, terrified of. If you were lucky, they only threatened or battered you for serving them the wrong tea. If you weren¡¯t...

    There was a reason government positions weren¡¯t hereditary.

    So when Lung received a letter stating that a foreign cultivator was making his way to the heart of his territory, and that the cultivator expected there to be trouble following him, the province lord allowed himself to despair.

    When a second letter arrived, informing him that not one, but two cultivator families had representatives inbound to ¡®meet with¡¯ the foreigner, he allowed himself to panic and temporarily relocate to the requisitions office so that he could meet with the cultivators¡¯ customs retainers and glean what he could to try to preserve his land.

    The Hotui family patriarch and his son arrived first, and province lord Lung allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief as their retainer explained that they were here to cut off the violence and poach the foreigner back to their territory.

    The Zheng family patriarch, meanwhile, required careful placation that as soon as this ¡®Guang¡¯s paperwork was filed, Lung would personally send a servant to inform him of where the foreigner would be going so that their grievance could be settled.

    Another week passed, and Lung started to earnestly suspect -even hope- that the foreigner had simply gone somewhere else, when the requisitions officer entered his office looking pale.

    ¡°He¡¯s here.¡±

    ¡°Good, show him in.¡± Getting to speak to the foreigner¡¯s retainer would hopefully allow everything to be settled. The fact that the two family¡¯s retainers had been ordered to stay with him until this discussion to get their politicking in before the paperwork started was an irritation, but retainers had their posturing to do on behalf of their employers,and that was just part of their unenviable duties.

    Then a man in simple robes walked in, and Lung Hao¡¯s hope broke.

    He looked young, maybe 25. But Lung knew better than to believe the skin when it was that clear. His hair was long and brown, free of band or braid and tucked behind his ears. A statement of surety in his field, as his kind were in constant strife.

    He turned to the attendant and thanked the man with a smile before turning and looking at Lung. His face was open and expressive, the most dangerous kind of face for a cultivator to wear, because it lured people into thinking of them as people instead of demigods.

    ¡°Took you long enough!¡± the Zheng¡¯s retainer sneered, causing the man¡¯s face to light up in joy. ¡°Is your master too poor to afford a horse?¡±

    ¡°Not at all!¡± the man smiled. ¡°There were just a few stops along the way to see how the smaller villages fared!¡±

    Lung despaired as he kept his composure intact. The retainers didn¡¯t know, and he had no way of telling them without angering the foreigner.

    ¡°You mean trying to prolong his own life!¡± the dead man laughed. ¡°You can tell your master that Zheng Lao has come to end his supposedly eternal life!¡±

    ¡°Only Zheng Lao?¡± the man sounded disappointed. ¡°Was Zheng Nima left behind to tend to the young master¡¯s neck?¡±

    The Zheng retainer, having been expecting posturing, was flummoxed by the cultivator¡¯s response long enough that the man continued. ¡°It can¡¯t be that Zheng Nima simply is not moved by harm to his nephew, can it?¡±

    The Hotui retainer doubled over laughing at the slap to his counterpart¡¯s Face, still not realizing that they were not speaking to a foreign retainer.

    ¡°Oh? I assumed your master was here on similar matters?¡± the foreigner invited the remaining man to speak.

    ¡°Quite the contrary! Master Hotui Karra heard a rumor that your master is seeking pupils, and has graciously offered protection from the Zheng if he would be willing to take young master Hotui Mata as a disciple.¡±

    The foreigner¡¯s face twisted in surprise. ¡°How unexpected! It would be a disgrace to bother the Hotui with the Zheng¡¯s offence, but I can assure you that once the first round of their anger is exhausted, the discussion of tutelage can proceed with optimism.¡±

    ¡°You think too highly of your master if you expect to be employed at the end of the day.¡± the Zheng retainer snarled.

    The foreigner laughed. ¡°Truly? Your Silver Core master has a technique more intimidating than the Ravenous Demon Blood Dragon, then?¡±

    Lung Hao felt his skin go cold as he realized where he¡¯d heard of the man in front of him.

    The god of chaos and destruction that descended upon the western continent and unbalanced the stability that held the great western sects back from predating on their servant mortals.

    Was casually insulting a well-reputed Cultivator family like it was simple mortal banter.

    If he survived this meeting, the Empress needed to be warned.

    ¡°Tell you what. You go ahead and tell Zheng Lao that his quarry will meet him outside the north gate, and I¡¯ll get the paperwork done as swiftly as feasible. If Hotui Karra wishes to watch the beginning of the fight, he¡¯s welcome to join. How does that sound?¡±

    ¡°That sounds like a fine arrangement, provided your master shows up.¡± the Hotui man kept digging their graves with a smile.

    ¡°We¡¯re here, aren¡¯t we?¡± the god laughed. ¡°I¡¯ve grown familiar with the paperwork here, so it won¡¯t be but an hour.¡±

    ¡°I look forward to your despair when you¡¯re left in this desolate land without an employer.¡± the Zheng man snarled as they both left the room.

    Leaving Lung alone with the smiling god.

    ¡°Nice fellows.¡± the god remarked as he casually took the seat without waiting for Lung to stand and bow. ¡°Terribly sorry about scaring you like that, but I promise I¡¯ll keep the damage outside your towns, Province Lord.¡±

    ¡°A kindness I am most thankful for.¡± Lung managed to reply without breaking down from the stress.

    ¡°It is only civil. From what I¡¯ve heard in the small towns and from the spirits, you¡¯ve done an outstanding job managing the land.¡±

    Lung blinked.

    ¡°No, truly. There¡¯s almost nothing you could have done about the horrendous amount of Salt qi upsetting the natural balance of the land, especially not with how the sun scorches the land and reinforces it. That your predecessors managed to set things up so mortals can live here at all is astounding, and your management in particular is laying a wonderful foundation of stability for further work.¡±

    ¡°You are far too kind, honored immortal. My management has been nothing so praiseworthy.¡±

    ¡°Your people and land tell me otherwise.¡± the god smiled like a father and Lung had to stop himself from taking the praise to his head. ¡°I had intended to study the land and address the imbalances that the spirits reported for the next several years. And after hearing their praise of your skill in the position, I¡¯d be honored to work with you to revitalize the land such that it remains easy to manage.¡±

    The chill in Lung¡¯s spine twisted. The god had meant to simply upend the land, but was offering Face and discussions on how he would go about it.

    ¡°Far be it from my lowly position to claim expertise on the land, but if you desire my input, I would be honored by your consideration.¡±

    ¡°Wonderful!¡± the god clapped once and Lung couldn¡¯t stop himself from flinching as a pile of paperwork appeared. ¡°Have you a map of the province handy? I can get started on sorting out what information I¡¯ll need for the soil while you confirm that I filled everything out correctly.¡±

    Lung tried not to lurch to retrieve the map he carried to discuss security deployments, and the god before him chose not to comment on his failure as he handed over the scroll. He then accepted the god¡¯s paperwork and steeled himself to not get caught in lamenting whatever mistakes were present.

    The god unfurled the map and studied it, murmuring under his breath like he was holding half a conversation. Lung swallowed the lump in his throat and started going through the pile of superfluous paperwork.

    A third of the way through the pile, he realized that there were no errors. The crucial details were present, as though the god had nothing to hide. The decoy details were all in order. The bloat paperwork was all filled out, and in greater detail than most retainers bothered with.

    Glancing up at the man staring at the map like his territory was a tantalizing piece of cake, Lung dismissed the obvious answer. There was no way this man had hired someone to do it for him just to present it himself. His demeanor was too deliberate, too planned.

    The god called Guang had filled out his own paperwork for some reason. To convey something.

    Lung¡¯s spine stiffened as he realized what the god was saying. ¡®I know your methods. They are nothing before me.¡¯

    The Province Lord forced himself to continue reading and checking the paperwork If the detail stopped part way, that would say something important, even if he couldn¡¯t understand it himself.

    Twenty minutes later, he was through the last piece of paperwork and his stomach sought the earth¡¯s embrace. Every line. Every entry. Every bit of the paperwork that offered Imperial workers a buffer of safety from cultivators was filled out.

    The message was clear. ¡®You have no defenses before me.¡¯

    Lung looked up at the destruction god across from him. Guang was smiling patiently, inviting him to take his time and understand the depth of the threat.

    ¡°Everything looks to be in perfect order, honored immortal.¡± Lung stated with a nod of understanding. The god had a self-reported fondness for going understated, but clearly wished to be recognized for his destructive capacity.

    ¡°Excellent! I hoped your protocols were close enough to those in Nu Yan that I could guess the differences. Now, I¡¯ve got the beginnings of a plan to start rebalancing the northern portion of your province.¡± He slid the map across the table and pointed. ¡°I asked the land about natural ki flows that it used to have, and the major channels for the Water phases ran through here, here, and here. The length of the Salt qi¡¯s stagnation of the phase cycle means that the new ones will probably be significantly different, but I¡¯m going to start by hitting these three areas with an abundance of Wood qi to forcibly crack the Salt encrustment and break up the overdeveloped earth reserves. After that¡¯s had a couple days to settle, one of the best ways to keep the sun¡¯s heat from rebuilding the blockage is to plant foliage. I¡¯ve got a few varieties of tree that can endure the ambient salt levels for long term stabilization, and wheatgrasses that can stabilize things in the immediate.

    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°The difficulty I¡¯m seeing the process having is that the Salt qi has been creating and strengthening several Metal-phase ki types, which has been what kills off your previous efforts at establishing Wood-phase bulwarks. I don¡¯t have all of the solution for that planned out, but if you can get a cartographer who can work with me to get water channels planned, I can identify the major buildup types and find a way to get them hardened back up to move the water.¡±

    Lung nodded along as though he understood more than the fact that the god had a plan. ¡°I should be able to arrange for a cartographer for you. Would you like to negotiate with them directly, or shall I handle that?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll let them decide. I do understand the hesitation to speak with cultivators of any type beyond unavoidable necessity.¡± the god smiled wryly. ¡°Hell, I don¡¯t like interacting with other ones myself.¡±

    Lung only barely caught himself before nodding in commiseration. Whether he agreed with the sentiment or not, admitting that he hated dealing with cultivators was asking for his home village to be destroyed.

    ¡°Your graciousness will surely be appreciated. What tasks will you need of the cartographer?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m going to want a fresh map of the barrens, and I¡¯ve long respected the art and wish to learn a bit of the skills that go into it.¡±

    Lung blinked and only let his brow furrow a little. The god had stated in his paperwork that he was fond of learning new skills, but Lung had assumed he meant combat skills. ¡°Very well. I should be able to arrange a cartographer for you by morning, at the latest.¡±

    ¡°Oh, there¡¯s no need to rush it that badly. I expect Zheng Lao will take longer than that to land a hit, and I¡¯ll be taking my time coming back.¡±

    ¡°Back?¡± Lung asked after a moment.

    ¡°Yes. now that we¡¯re done with the paperwork, I¡¯ll meet him at the gate and lead him and his wrath away from your city.¡± the god smiled enthusiastically with a meaning-laden look at the map between them that Lung wholly failed to decipher. ¡°You¡¯re welcome to come watch the start of the fight if you¡¯d like.¡±

    Against his sense of self preservation, Lung nodded. ¡°I believe I shall accept that opportunity.¡±

    The Hotui would likely need placation if the god was going to simply leave them at the gate, after all.

    They stood together and, with a silent signal to the servant who¡¯d been on standby to inform Zheng Lao that the paperwork was finished, left the office to make their way to the north gate.

    As they walked, Lung took note that unlike other cultivators, the god did not carry himself with an imperious stature. Instead, to watch him stroll, Lung would have taken him as a simple wanderer taking in the small city with an approving smile.

    A lot of the god¡¯s mannerisms throughout the meeting also gave the impression that he was little more than a wandering expert, in fact.

    And when they reached the gate, they were met by Hotui Karra and Zheng Lao glaring murderously at each other and the god¡¯s face lit up in glee.

    ¡°Pardon me, good taoists!¡± he spoke and drew both sets of eyes to himself. ¡°I sent a message to one of our number that I¡¯d meet him outside this gate around now, but I¡¯m not sensing anyone on the other side. Would either of you happen to know what could have held the Zheng patriarch up?¡±

    Knowing that he was about to die, Lung offered a prayer of gratitude for being able to see the face of a mighty cultivator hanging open in shock.

    ¡°I only ask because I know that a house as dignified as the Zheng would never tolerate a servant misrepresenting a message badly enough that he¡¯d still be inside the walls if he weren¡¯t held up, and the idea that Zheng Lao, of all men, would be pulled into bickering like an ill-trained son is just laughable.¡±

    ¡°You are the false god Guang, then?¡± Zheng Lao snarled, turning on the flippant man with enough killing intent that Lung started gasping for air.

    ¡°I¡¯m told some offer me prayers under that title, yes!¡± Guang smiled cheekily. ¡°Are you an aspiring devotee, by chance?¡±

    And then Guang was gone. A blink later, Zheng¡¯s intent diffused as he looked around, ¡°Insolent coward!¡± he shouted upon spotting Guang on the other side of the gate. Charging after the god, he added ¡°You will die today!¡±

    Lung¡¯s eyes failed to follow the exchange, but he heard Guang¡¯s voice clearly enough. ¡°Ah! Zheng Lao! I was just looking for you! There was this terribly boorish man inside who looked a bit like you, but with none of the poise you hold yourself with. If you happen to see him, do let him know that I accept worshippers of any kind, would you? He seemed really eager to prostrate himself at my feet.¡±

    ¡°Interesting.¡± the now much more composed Hotui Karra muttered as they watched the blurs of motion. ¡°He uses his enemy¡¯s rage to create holes where there otherwise wouldn¡¯t be any, then uses the Flowing Dragon Realm to slip through those holes.¡±

    A moment later, he raised an eyebrow. ¡°That¡¯s not the Flowing Dragon Realm. Zheng would have had him there if it was. Say, Province lord. Did Guang sound confident in his victory?¡±

    ¡°To my mere mortal senses, yes, he did.¡± Lung answered as Guang¡¯s speech continued hurling offenses at Zheng. ¡°He seemed to think that it would take a technique like the Ravenous Demon Blood Dragon to give him even a little difficulty.¡±

    ¡°Hmm. Did he say what treasure he believes will allow him to strike a killing blow?¡±

    Vines erupted from the ground as Zheng lost patience with his sword failing to strike the god, and Guang reappeared on the far side of their reach, saying something about compensation that made Hotui choke on a laugh.

    ¡°No. He only reported his staff and blade aside from a selection of talismans. Each of which he stated held power from Cleansed Stone to Cleansed Bronze.¡±

    ¡°Hm. Interesting.¡± The Grasping Vine Field technique erupted for a third time, again, seemingly unable to catch the god. ¡°I do believe he intends to drive Zheng to exhaustion. An interesting approach.¡±

    Hotui¡¯s comment abruptly made Guang¡¯s surety that the fight would last longer than a day make more sense. The thin ki through the area made it difficult for cultivators to sustain their techniques, and as Guang was a god of destruction, he¡¯d probably be using the destroyed landscape as fuel instead of relying on the ki.

    ¡°It seems my son and I will be imposing on your hospitality for several more days.¡±

    ¡°You honor my humble city with your presence, great immortal. Please, enjoy our hospitality as long as it pleases you.¡± Lung bowed, as much to placate the inconvenienced cultivator as to hide his despair.

    After all, Guang had stated an intent to stay however long it took to fix the entirety of the 1200 year old barrens.

    ---

    One of my favorite parts of not buying into Face culture is the simple ability to choose my own win conditions.

    A normal cultivator, faced with an idiot like Zheng, would have only two options. Submit, then rationalize their admission of weakness as far as they could, or fight to the death.

    Any other course of action would deal more damage to their self-image than submitting, because Face culture only allowed reasons as profound as ¡°I would die otherwise¡± to be justified as far as tolerating someone not giving proper Face. The foundations of the culture just refused to budge on concepts like forgiveness or tolerance.

    I, having first been raised in a culture that took completely different defects of reasoning to excess, didn¡¯t have that problem. Zheng didn¡¯t need to kowtow to me for me to have full satisfaction for his idiocy. Making him look like a buffoon by running most of the way back to healthy land over four days was plenty of satisfaction for me, on top of the way his energy reserves started flagging badly enough that getting a bit of distance and hiding from him caused him to swear to make a pill of my liver and storm off to recuperate.

    Leaving me to start walking back along our trail with a gardening circulation to make sure his techniques¡¯ remnant Wood qi got nestled into the soil properly along with wheatgrass seeds. It was tedious work, but peaceful.

    And it gave me plenty of time to prepare material to enrage my half-immortal ground till next time he came to demand my head for his mandatory win condition. Knowing that his Face having no place in my Eye would cripple his growth, I knew it¡¯d only be a matter of months before he¡¯d recuperated and came charging back at me.

    As I reached the first of the ancient Water ki flows, I was treated to a wonderful interplay of energies.

    My gardening circulation had developed from the simple trick of pulling ki from the land, through the plants, and into myself to a far more intricate matter. Now, with the ¡®edge mask¡¯ trick I¡¯d pioneered at the forge, I let my qi flow past my soul and into the plants and soil around me, matching itself to the ki therein, and stimulate their energy with the strength of my own circulations.

    Too much force, and I¡¯d rip the ki right out. Too little, and the dissonance would try to create a deviation. But letting my qi match what the soil and plants could handle allowed them to become very temporarily become an extension of me, and in that short span, my natural health corrections applied.

    I¡¯d tried the process on the land during my first trip south, only to discover that the imbalances were so severe that I could barely sustain it for half a mile and the surrounding imbalance reasserted itself inside of a day.

    Now, armed with Zheng¡¯s leftover qi and a proper plan of action with the spirits of the seeds and soil, the only phase I was leaking badly was Water, which I could replenish far more easily than the medley of Water and Wood that it demanded otherwise. Especially as the ki of the heavier metals in the soil cycled through and stimulated my natural generation of Water.

    It wouldn¡¯t be enough, by itself, to stop the metal from attacking the grass, but it¡¯d slow it down a little while helping me keep going.

    Then, as I reached the old water flow, Zheng¡¯s wood qi digging into the ancient Salt qi allowed the long-stagnant water ki to slowly weep forth from its reserve, to the audible cheering of the spirits.

    The water ki was far too weak to do much, and the metal ki, being from heavy metals, was far more tuned to harming the plants than moving the water. But as I continued to take in the worst of the Metal phase and alloy it with my will, the water ki was finally granted a bit of motion.

    And as almost anyone who works with existential energies will attest, motion is how energies grow healthy.

    I made better time than I expected, walking through the damaged land in only three days to see the walls of Stony Shade city a mere week after leaving them. The guards gawked as I approached and cycled down my circulation, so I smiled and croaked with a dry throat. ¡°Hello again! Is there a runner or two available?¡±

    The runners were called for immediately and after getting the name of a good teahouse, I paid one to inform Lung and the requisition office that I was back, and the other to similarly inform the Hotui, if they were still in town.

    Then I made my way to the teahouse with a satisfied smile and requested that the private room¡¯s lovely attendant keep an eye on the pot so I could focus on hydrating myself. Still having a material body prevented me from stepping out of mortal perception, but it allowed me to address energetic matters through physical processes, and I was more than happy to exploit that by drinking excessive amounts of tea to replenish my dwindled Water qi.

    Two full pots in, Hotui Karra was led in sporting a complicated grin, followed by a man I took to be his son. ¡°Province lord Lung told me that you were confident. But I did not expect you to actually be victorious!¡±

    ¡°I take victory in odd forms, compared to most. Of course I was confident in outlasting Zheng¡¯s reserves in this barren land.¡± I laughed easily. ¡°Please! Sit! The tea here is a fine strain for discussion.¡±

    ¡°Only outlasting?¡± he asked as they both took the invitation. ¡°That old fool survived?¡±

    ¡°Naturally. He was unable to offend me enough to demand I kill him. And it¡¯s not like his complaint is wholly invalid. I did stab his son in the neck, after all.¡±

    Karra laughed and his son stared at me. Then the junior spoke up with all manner of young stress. ¡°You stabbed Zheng Hurin in the neck? What did he do to offend you?¡±

    ¡°Oh, he didn¡¯t manage to offend me either. He just demanded a satisfaction fight over his delusions around value. So I stabbed him in the neck after tripping him on his own vines. He got lucky and survived after sacrificing his pride.¡±

    ¡°But you did not move to slay Zheng Lao for the same offence?¡±

    ¡°No. I¡¯ve found a better use for the Zheng patriarch and his brother. They can help me with my evasion exercises for a while. Zheng Hurin wouldn¡¯t have made me break a sweat even if I restrained myself.¡±

    The Hotui patriarch¡¯s laughter redoubled as his son stared at my smirk. ¡°Well, Guang! You certainly live up to the irreverence I¡¯d heard of!¡± he finally spoke with a smile. ¡°As your servant told you, I¡¯m looking for a mentor for my boy, here. It¡¯s my shame that I¡¯ve been unable to teach him more, but he simply lacks the constitution for the way that I was trained, and I¡¯m a master of but one method. He¡¯s already begun studies of your fourty pages, and they have helped him greatly.¡±

    ¡°Oh? My ramblings made it here before me?¡± I smiled, then grinned at the vindicated glare the younger man shot his father.

    ¡°Indeed! I used to have correspondence with the Icy Rain sect, before their obligation to the SIlver Spire brought them to ruin.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m glad to hear it! So, young master. You¡¯ve seen through some of the frustrations then?¡±

    ¡°It took me longer than I¡¯m proud of, but yes. Your passages about the outer emotion interplay finally started making sense as I became angered with them, and I¡¯ve since discerned your intent regarding the feeding of the dantians.¡±

    ¡°Impressive! It took the Fang elders over twenty years to make that headway.¡± I complimented. ¡°I¡¯d wager talent like yours doesn¡¯t actually need full tutelage once you grasp the foundations fully.¡±

    ¡°You flatter me, immortal.¡± he shook his head. ¡°Without guidance, I¡¯ve been reduced to slamming my head against trees hoping to knock sense into myself.¡±

    ¡°A most honorable tradition in my eye.¡± I grinned. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t be half the man I am without doing much the same when I¡¯m stumped. So, what manner of identity would you like to cultivate?¡±

    ¡°Not ¡®style¡¯?¡± he furrowed his brow, and his father resisted doing the same.

    ¡°Style derives from identity, and identity is informed by style. Taking the larger into mind clears many early stumbling blocks.¡±

    Both men stopped and turned their attention inward for a while, and I gently consumed another cup of tea while they pondered.

    ¡°Similarly, consider first who you wish to be, as you are the one who will have to live with you.¡± I added as I poured another cup.

    The elder man caught the major implication faster and bristled on reflex. He did a commendable job keeping it under control, however, and turned his attention inward again for a long moment.

    ¡°I¡¯ve another shame to my work, it seems.¡± he finally admitted. ¡°Thank you for the gentleness of the rebuke, immortal.¡±

    I nodded kindly. There was little to be said to a father who could admit such a failing.

    The younger, somewhat shocked that his father took it as a rebuke, caught up to the realization and returned to his own thoughts with the clarity that I was telling him to throw away his father¡¯s hopes in his consideration.

    ¡°I do not know what manner of man I wish to be.¡± he finally admitted, shaking his head. ¡°I do wish to make my family proud, and to drive my enemies into the ground with ruthless force. But beyond that, I do not know.¡±

    ¡°I can work with that much.¡± I smiled. ¡°And as you review the ramblings, I suspect you will be able to as well. Take however long you need to decide if you wish to apprentice under me. I shall be in residence for quite a while. If you would ever like to come share tea, I would be glad for the company.¡±

    They stood and bowed deeply before leaving with partings of gratitude, and I let myself relax into the enjoyment of the tea.

    The Shan Taiyan empire might not drive its cultivators to the heights of combat prowess I was accustomed to, but it did allow them slightly more leeway in matters of emotional growth through all the coddling.

    Something I was sure contributed to the impressive survival rate of the mortals they interacted with. If I was ever summoned before the empress, I¡¯d have to compliment her social engineering talents.