Book 12: Chapter 17: Bolstering the Ranks

Book 12: Chapter 17: Bolstering the Ranks

Sen walked away while Chan Yu Ming fruitlessly tried to get his attention. Her efforts to also avoid drawing too much attention to herself fatally undermined that cause. Sen shook his head a little. He might understand, somewhat, where her hostility came from, but that didn’t make him eager to continue enduring it. Especially since he didn’t believe that her anger was entirely with him anymore. The last time they’d met, she’d engaged in what amounted to a suicide attempt by bringing grossly insufficient force to kill him. If he’d been a traditional sect cultivator, it probably would have worked. Most of them were so wrapped up in their supposed honor that they would have killed her at the first opportunity.

No, he was fairly certain that she was directing her anger at him rather than acknowledging that she was angry with herself. Angry about what? He supposed that there were a lot of possibilities. Maybe she was angry for not recognizing her father for what he was. Maybe she was angry for still loving the man despite what he was. Then again, she might be angry for not intervening when Sen had arranged for the man to die. She couldn’t have stopped Sen from killing the old king, but she could have stopped Jing. Her brother might be a skilled swordsman, but he was still a mortal swordsman. It would have been easy for her to intervene. Yet, she hadn’t. There were too many possibilities to be sure of the exact source. Of course, understanding that any of those might be causing her behavior and wanting to put up with that behavior were very different things.

He turned his focus toward the remaining members of the Clear Spring Sect. None of them looked happy about the situation, but there was an undercurrent of relief. He hadn’t bothered to ask what had happened. It was easy enough to understand the broad strokes, even if the details were obscure. They’d come under attack by spirit beasts and more than once. Their nascent soul patriarch had, no doubt with help from the sect elders, managed to fend off the most dangerous spirit beasts. The rest of the sect fought the lesser spirit beasts. They’d succeeded, but victory had come at a cost. The sect’s ranks were much thinner than what he remembered from his last visit. If things had continued on as they were, attrition would have killed the sect eventually.

If he were in their shoes, Sen would have been relieved to have any chance of survival. Even if that survival wasn’t offered for free. The sect member has formed a loose line, so he walked to the front of that and made his usual announcement. They would be offering vows to the heavens and returning any of the sect treasures that now belonged to him. That drew startled looks and several angry scowls. Two cultivators made to walk away. Sen targeted them with his auric imposition. They might just be unwilling to make the vows, but they might also be harboring sect treasures they didn’t want to surrender. They crumpled beneath that pressure. Sen used air qi to form bands around those two and dragged them over to him. He lifted them into the air and turned them to face him.

“You are, of course, free to leave,” said Sen. “You simply aren’t free to take what isn’t yours.”

He plucked a storage ring off the cultivator on the left. He looked inside of it, barely even registering the measures intended to keep someone from doing exactly that. He removed the only thing in the ring that seemed suspect. A jian appeared in his hand. He knew the moment he touched it that the weapon was powerful. Holding it up, he looked to the patriarch.

“Did this belong to the sect?” he asked.

The Patriarch walked over and held out a hand. Sen gave him the sword. The patriarch drew it, examined it for a moment, and then shook his head.

“No, Lord Lu. I don’t know where this came from, but it does not—” he swallowed hard. “It did not belong to the sect.”

“I don’t understand,” said the man.

“What is there to understand? You can go.”

“But the sword. You don’t mean to take it?”

“Of course not,” said Sen. “I mean to claim the sect’s resources. Not family heirlooms or prizes taken in battle.”

It was Sen’s turn to be shocked when the cultivator dropped to a knee and took the oath of service. Glancing around, Sen saw that much of the consternation on the faces of the other cultivators had eased. Oh, they thought I meant to rob them while also demanding service, realized Sen. He looked at the kneeling cultivator and gestured toward where Falling Leaf had summoned a chair. She was sitting there, chin propped up in a hand, and looking intensely disinterested. With her other hand, she was slowly peeling up strips of wood from the arm of the chair with tiny shadow claws. Sen wasn’t sure she even knew she was doing it. The cultivator rose and went to stand by the seated ghost panther. The man did position himself out of arm’s reach, though.

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Suppressing his smile, Sen turned to the second cultivator. Unlike the other sect members, she didn’t look relieved at all. If anything, she looked even angrier.

“You have no right to do this!” she shouted at him.

He could feel her qi clawing at the bonds that held her. He met her glare with a flat expression.

“You must have stolen something good,” he answered, making sure his voice carried.

He removed no less than three storage treasures from her person, one of them well hidden inside her robes.

“You bastard!” she shrieked.

“Quite possibly,” said Sen, unconcerned. “I never did know my father.”

The first two storage treasures held a lot of value. There was a meaningful amount of silver and gold. He also noted some decent natural treasures and a number of pills. He might have been more interested in the pills if he wasn’t certain he could make something better. Given the woman’s reaction, he suspected that at least a portion of what he’d seen had been stolen from the sect. But none of it was worth taking in his mind. When he turned to the final storage treasure, though, it contained only one item.

He summoned the pendant. It was an uncut blue gemstone held in what looked like a rough bronze setting. So much water qi spilled from the gem that it briefly overwhelmed the immediate area. Before Sen could comment, he felt a surge of killing intent and snapped his eyes to the Patriarch. He’d seen the man look regretful, pained, and even irritated, but the absolute rage that contorted the man’s face was something new. The Patriarch opened his mouth as if he meant to speak, but couldn’t seem to push the words past his throat. Instead, his hand snapped out. A wafer-thin blade of water removed the woman’s head. Sen raised an air barrier to shield everyone nearby from the spray of blood. The Patriarch stood there, chest heaving as if he’d just finished a hard battle.

“I take it that this belonged to the sect?” asked Sen, holding up the pendant.

From the uncomprehending looks the rest of the sect was directing at the pendant, he wondered if it had been a secret treasure. The patriarch shook his head and answered in a voice made tight by anger.

“No. That belongs to my family. I believed it was secure.”

Well, thought Sen, that explains the rage. He considered the pendant. It was a powerful treasure. Powerful enough that even a nascent soul cultivator could find a use for it. In fact, the longer Sen looked at it, the more perplexed he became.

“Why didn’t you use this to advance?” asked Sen.

“It can’t be used that way,” answered the Patriarch.

“Who told you that lie? I can think of at least three different ways, off the top of my head, that this treasure could do that with your cultivation.”

The Patriarch looked at Sen with a blank expression before he turned a furious look on one of the cultivators in line. The man in line took a step back.

“You told me it couldn’t be done,” growled the Patriarch.

“With all due respect, Patriarch, I am not Judgment’s Gale. I couldn’t do it. I don’t know anyone who could have.”

Sen examined the man in line with his spiritual sense and qi before he looked at the Patriarch.

“He’s not lying to you. He really couldn’t have done it. To be fair, I only know of three people who can. There might be someone on the other side of the Mountains of Sorrow. I’m not sure about them.”

The patriarch’s anger faded, and he said, “I see.”

Sen handed the pendant to the Patriarch. The man studied the treasure before he looked at Sen.

“No,” said Sen before the question could even be asked.

He might be willing to overlook the Patriarch’s betrayal from years before. Sen knew well enough that politics could be fraught, and he’d been no one in those days. Help a wandering cultivator and anger a powerful noble house that could make life difficult, or ignore the wandering cultivator’s plight. Anyone running that analysis would probably have done the same thing as the Patriarch. Sen might even find it in himself to forgive that decision, someday. But even forgiveness had limits. He would return the man’s property, but he wouldn’t help him advance. Not for free. Sighing at the mess in front of them, Sen removed a few pieces of jewelry from the woman’s corpse before he incinerated the body.

After witnessing him return an incredibly valuable treasure to the Patriarch, the rest of the sect seemed far more willing to make their vows and surrender sect treasures. He did lift an eyebrow at the contents of one woman’s storage ring. It was stuffed with alchemical ingredients. She blushed a little at his scrutiny.

“Alchemist?” he asked.

“Yes, Lord Lu.”

He gave the ring one last look before handing it back to her. There were several alchemists in this sect. It gave him an idea, but that would have to wait. Once he’d accepted the last of the vows, he made the Patriarch take him through the sect. Sen claimed everything that had a bit of value for an alchemist or formation master. He took most of the coin the sect had on hand and the majority of the better weapons. He left enough that the Patriarch could reasonably arm himself and pay for shelter if he found his way to safety. That done, Sen returned to the open area in the middle of the compound where the former Clear Spring Sect members were talking among themselves.

“You have an hour to collect your personal belongings. I suggest that you also take any tents and camping equipment you find. The march ahead is long.”

With that, he started toward Falling Leaf.

“What about us?” demanded Chan Yu Ming.

Sen turned to where the Patriarch and his friend’s sister stood.

“What about you?”

“Do you mean to just leave us here?”

“As opposed to what? Bringing you with us? I don’t trust him,” said Sen, gesturing at a wincing Patriarch. “As for you—”

“What about me?” asked Chan Yu Ming, her eyes narrowing.

“As for you, I’m simply not interested in dealing with your misplaced anger.”

Sen didn’t wait for the explosion of words he expected to come. He just continued.

“Also, I’m confident that a nascent soul cultivator and a core cultivator can take care of themselves well enough to get to the capital. We killed enough spirit beasts that they probably won’t bother anyone on the road between here and there for a while. So, I suggest you go there. I’m sure your brother could use the help.”