Unintended Cultivator

Book 8: Chapter 34: Politics (3)

Sen had completely discarded any notion of paying attention to the people who kept coming up to them. They all just kept talking. Not interesting talk, either, but just a geyser of words about whatever seemingly random topic popped into their heads. One man had gone into a ten-minute discourse about apples. That might have been interesting if the fool hadn’t just been making things up as he went. You didn’t grow up in a place called Orchard’s Reach without learning a few things about apples. After that, Sen just nodded occasionally, or made a noncommittal noise, or stroked his chin thoughtfully. Of course, it would also have been easier to pay attention if Lai Dongmei hadn’t been whispering in his ear about a whole variety of things that he would much rather be doing at that moment. Focus, Sen tried to order himself. This absurd exercise in boredom can’t last that much longer, right? He looked at the entire crowd of people who were all but shoving each other out of the way to get in front of him and Lai Dongmei. Sen sighed internally. I’m never getting out of here. Where’s a good assassination attempt when I need one?

***

Shen Mingxia was doing her best to maintain a calm front, but that encounter with Sung Kai had rattled her. The man had been handsome enough that she might have even been receptive to his advances, except he’d been aggressive and expectant. As though she should be honored by his presence. If arrogance had been the extent of it, she would have simply endured and forgotten about him at the first opportunity. Then, he’d made a veiled comment that he intended to take what he wanted from her. That had frightened her because he had the power to follow through on that implied threat. She hadn’t been sure how to react or to escape or at least to get someone’s attention. Except, it hadn’t been necessary. It seemed that Judgment’s Gale was good to his promises. She hadn’t had the faintest idea that his senses were that acute, but he had clearly been listening to the conversation. No sooner had the words passed from Sung Kai’s lips than Lu Sen had crushed the man to the floor from across the room. He walked over to them with a concerned expression on his face. She’d almost loosed a hysterical laugh when he’d all but stepped over Sung Kai to talk to her.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Well, I will be.”

“You’re sure?”

She offered what she hoped looked like a smile, rather than a grimace, and nodded. His expression turned skeptical, but he didn’t press the issue. Instead, he turned to Sung Kai. As she watched his face turn implacable, she again felt very, very grateful that this man had never turned his wrath on her. She thought he was going to kill the man. In truth, she wanted him to do it, but the damn king had to go and be all politically minded and save the bastard. Still, it was incredibly satisfying to watch Sen fling that man into the sky like the piece of garbage he was. There was a side benefit to that brutal display. People who had been circling around her, no doubt looking to try to learn about Sen from her, immediately lost interest. She found a wall to lean against and took her first relaxed breath of the evening.

***

I think that man is my new hero, thought Chan Dishi as he did everything in his power not to laugh out loud. He’d asked around about the various “ambassadors,” and Sung Kai had been the easiest to learn about. Mostly because everyone the man seemed to come into contact with hated him. There had been whispers of him forcing himself on women in the city, but he couldn’t find a way to confirm it, and not for a lack of trying. If he’d been able to confirm it, well, steps could have been taken. Steps that wouldn’t have jeopardized the tenuous peace that existed between the nations on this side of the Mountains of Sorrow and those on the far side of those lofty, continent-dividing peaks. It seemed as if that problem had more or less solved itself. As for the rest, they were just arrogant and disdainful, which was more or less what he’d expected to discover.

Although Lu Sen seemed to be doing just fine with that Kanshuni woman, especially after that heart-stopping beauty, Lai Dongmei, came in and started hanging on him. There had been a delicious moment when the ambassador looked like she might actually try to scratch out Lai Dongmei’s eyes. Sadly, the woman seemed to get hold of herself. Oh well, thought Chan Dishi, I guess it was too much hope that we’d get to see two acts of violencetonight. It was disappointing, though. These kinds of gatherings were, almost by definition, boring. A little brutality was just the solution to liven things up. He had been hoping that someone might try to kill the king, but he was pretty sure that nobody was going to try anything that stupid now. Not with Judgment’s Gale looming in the room.

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***

Wu Chia-Hao, patriarch of the House of Wu, maintained a stoic calm, at least on the outside. On the inside, he was barely controlling his panic. He had assumed that this Lu Sen’s reputation was more fiction than fact. Oh, everyone knew he was a cultivator who had appeared from nowhere out in the east of the kingdom, but commoners were always exaggerating about their folk heroes. It seemed reasonable that the man’s deeds had just looked more impressive to the uneducated masses. He was surely no more than a foundation formation cultivator who had saved a few villages from some spirit beasts. Maybe he’d wandered into some sect fight at the very last minute and gotten credit for putting an end to the fight. Having seen the man in person, now, Wu Chia-Hao believed. He believed all of it, which was a problem. He needed to leave this gathering as soon as possible. He’d set plans in motion to make things harder for the House of Lu. Plans that needed to be stopped. Immediately. There was simply no world where the House of Wu would survive a confrontation with that titan. A man like that didn’t need an army of house guards. He wouldn’t bother with the kind of proof that noble houses normally required for one house to act publicly against another. He would just come as a destroyer in the night and leave nothing in the wake of his passage.

***

“Quon,” whispered Fong Huifen behind the fan she held in front of her face.

“Yes, Mistress Fong?” asked the man, his face a mask of careful respect.

“I think that we need to find a way to ingratiate ourselves to that young man. What do you think?”

Fong Huifen waited patiently as Quon considered the question. Most people would have been stunned to see it happen. The matriarch of the House of Fong wasn’t someone you made wait. Yet, wait she did. After all, this was why the man was her most trusted servant. He actually took the time to think. He didn’t automatically agree with her. He always remained polite when he disagreed, which was why he remained alive, but he would disagree. Then, he would provide sound reasoning and acute insight. She had learned the hard way over the years that you simply couldn’t train all of those qualities into a person. The heavens knew that she had tried.

Quon finally spoke in a hushed tone that would not carry.

“It could be valuable if we were able to. His strength is undeniable. I’m simply unsure of how we can do so. What could we offer the man that he cannot simply acquire for himself?”

Quon made a good point. This Lu Sen clearly did not lack for power. Nor, by all accounts, was he short of wealth. Fong Huifen pursed her lips. What do we have that he does not? What can we offer that will make him, perhaps not friendly, but at least reliably non-hostile? She was at as much of a loss as Quon seemed to be. She honestly couldn’t think of anything, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t exist.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted, “but I think it would be well worth trying to find it, whatever it is.”

***

Consciousness returned slowly and brought an extraordinary amount of pain with it, which meant it took a little while for Sung Kai to understand why he was in a crater and covered with soil. When the events rushed back, his heart started to pound furiously in his chest. That crushing pressure, that terrible sense of wrath, like some malevolent god of death had abruptly turned their gaze on him. He started to shudder at the mere memory of it. He tried to push away the memory of two dark eyes, blazing like stars with unchecked fury, staring into him, through him, judging him like he was the most worthless, insignificant thing that ever crawled on the earth. He could still hear the words the man had said. Words that resounded inside his head like a command from the heavens.

“You should pray. You should pray that nothing happens to that woman. Because, if it does, running across those mountains will not protect you.”

There had been that sense of weightlessness and terrible speed. Then, there was only darkness. Sung Kai wanted to be furious. He wanted to be outraged at this treatment. He wanted to think he could go back and take his vengeance. Except, the anger wouldn’t come. The outrage wouldn’t come. The desire to take revenge wouldn’t come. All that came was fear. Fear that shook his soul and made his body tremble. Sung Kai looked up at the distant wall. A wall he had been thrown over, far over, from the very center of the sprawling city. Sung Kai didn’t know how much strength such a feat required, only that he didn’t possess it. The trembling became a shuddering. Every cultivator knew that there were some fights that, if at all possible, should be avoided. This was one of those fights. It was time to go home before that god of death changed his mind. Sung Kai forced himself to his feet, turned east, and started limping toward the Mountains of Sorrow.

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