Unintended Cultivator

Sen rose into the air and let his spiritual sense expand around him lightly. Misty Peak was close enough that it only took a second or two to find her. He flew in her direction and then descended into a group of very nervous-looking people. They had gathered in an area that was mostly clear of the human mortals. No doubt as a means of spotting an attack more easily, should one come. He recognized some of them as the nine-tail foxes who had been at the house Misty Peak had bought for them. They all looked at him with wide eyes and obvious apprehension. He was a little amused to note that they did a better job of hiding their fear than Yang Mu Bai had managed. Misty Peak watched him with eyes that lacked the others’ fear but that were still cautious. After all, he’d gotten what he wanted from them. This would be the time if there was going to be a moment of bitter betrayal.

“Lord Lu,” said Misty Peak while performing a respectful bow.

The rest of the foxes took a beat longer before they mimicked her with varying degrees of success. He wondered if it was just anxiety or if they didn’t deal much with cultivators until they got stronger. Sen inclined his head to Misty Peak, and everyone straightened up. They all watched him intently. He focused on Misty Peak to limit how uncomfortable he felt with so much attention on him.

“Sun Linglu,” he said, opting to use the name she used for everyone other than him.

There was the tiniest little twitch at the corner of her mouth. A brief recognition that he was at least paying lip service to her wishes. Now that he was standing in front of them, Sen realized he didn’t know what to say. He just blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“You kept your word,” he said. “All of you did.”

The foxes all seemed a bit startled by that, as if they’d forgotten that they’d actually held up their end of a precarious bargain. Misty Peak cocked her head a little and gave him a questioning look. She clearly expected something else, something more, and he wished he knew what it was.

“Thank you,” he said as a way to buy himself a few more seconds. “Many would have died for nothing without your aid. I will not forget this.”

“Well, you kept your word in the end,” said Misty Peak with a pointed look at the sky.

“Of course, Lord Lu,” said the fox-woman with a devious little smirk that made Sen unaccountably nervous.

She issued a few orders to the other foxes that mostly amounted to go stand over there, and then an opaque dome formed over the two of them. Misty Peak swayed on her feet and almost collapsed. Sen moved with his qinggong technique and steadied her. There was a glassy look in her eyes that he recognized. It seemed that Jing hadn’t been the only one pushing himself harder than he should have. Sen ignored the niceties and examined the fox-woman’s condition. She wasn’t injured, but he was shocked she’d managed to stay on her feet. The woman was drained on almost every level that he could discern. If she’d kept going the way she must have been over the last few days, she would have collapsed.

He summoned a chair from a storage ring and gently pushed her into it. He summoned a bowl of stew that was still steaming and put it into her hands. Her eating had a disturbingly mechanical quality to it at first, but something like life slowly seeped back into her expression. She began eating faster and faster. There was a primal, almost ravenous quality to it. He plucked the empty bowl from her hands and replaced it with another. By the time that bowl was gone, she seemed to have regained some of her usual self. She looked down at the empty bowl, then up at him. She sighed.

“And here I was hoping to impress you,” she said.

“I was impressed,” said Sen, gently taking the second bowl from her. “I’d have been more impressed if you’d thought to eat something recently or gotten an hour of sleep in there somewhere.”

“Honestly, those kinds of things didn’t seem that important.”

Sen summoned a chair of his own and sat down. He examined the contents of one of his rings before he settled on an apple. He ate it slowly, more out of raw tiredness than any appreciation of the fruit itself. He dropped the core on the ground.

“Will you take them and leave?” he finally asked.

“Is that what you want?” she asked with a neutral expression.

“It’s probably safer,” he countered.

“Safer?” she scoffed. “And where would we go to find this safety?”

Sen didn’t have a good answer to that question. They would probably be safer at his sect, but they’d have to get there first. That was a shaky proposition at the moment. He could probably go back without that much trouble, but getting anyone else there was a different thing.

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“So, you want to stay?” he asked.

“What I want is to survive. I want them to survive,” she said, gesturing toward where she’d told the other foxes to wait. “That hasn’t changed.”

Sen was painfully aware of what a vast distance might lie between where they were and achieving that goal. He wasn’t even sure it was a goal that there was any hope of achieving. He could give orders, but there was no guarantee that they’d be followed after he left the capital. A course of action he’d have no choice but to follow. It wasn’t even the same as it was with the spirit beast oxen. The oxen were just out there in the world somewhere. The foxes would be a constant presence, both visible and vulnerable. If there was going to be any chance of keeping them alive, he’d have to do some things he didn’t want to do. Misty Peak deserved to know that before she made her decision.

“If you stay,” said Sen, “I’ll have to use you. I’ll have to use them. You probably have some goodwill built up with the mortals, but you’ll have to help if you want to maintain that goodwill. Even if you do, I still can’t promise that you won’t be attacked.”

Misty Peak leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. She rubbed her face with her hands.

“I know,” she said. “That is what it is. We knew that when we stayed. Well, I knew it. I think the rest of them know it now, too. Mass slaughter has a way of clarifying things for people who don’t normally see beyond their self-interest. They finally understand the kind of ruthlessness we’d be up against if we tried to go it alone. There is no future down that road.”

“I’m not sure how much future there is following me. We’ve been very slow getting our feet under us, as recent events have clearly proven.”

“You seemed to handle them pretty well,” said Misty Peak.

“Looks can be deceiving. Plus, I won’t be on every battlefield. I can’t win a war this big by myself. It’s happening across the entire continent. Other people will have to figure out ways that they can win battles without me.”

“Nobody is going to want to hear that.”

“It doesn’t matter what they want to hear. It’s a fact.”

“Fact or not, I’ll take the slim chance of hope over no hope at all.”

Sen grunted at that. It was a hard thing to argue against. The two of them sat there quietly for most of a minute, each consumed with their own thoughts. Misty Peak finally broke the silence.

“You know my people aren’t really cut out for the kind of battles that you’re likely to be fighting.”

“That thought had crossed my mind. I doubt that’s the best use of their particular skills, anyway. Although, I probably could use a few of them for scouting roles. Assuming you have anyone who can handle an unsupervised role like that, and who is also likely to prove reliable.”

Misty Peak chewed on her lip before nodding slowly.

“I think I can find a few who meet those requirements. Probably. What about the rest?”

“Did you meet Lo Meifeng?” asked Sen.

“Briefly. Why?”

“She’s going to be in charge of spying for me. It’ll mostly be in the capital, at least to start.”

“You’re going to spy on your own people?” asked Misty Peak.

Sen eyed her and asked, “Do you think I shouldn’t?”

“I definitely think you should. In fact, you need to be spying on them. I’m just surprised that you think you should. It’s a very—” she hesitated.

“Tyrant thing to do?” asked Sen with a wry smile.

“I wasn’t going to put it quite like that, but yes.”

“I am a tyrant. My goals may be benevolent, but I’ve seized power. Jing might have blithely accepted it, which definitely made things easier to start, but there are plenty here who will want to seize that power for themselves. I don’t want to be out fighting for the next five or ten years only to come back and find all my allies dead. Then, I’ll have to seize power again and execute a whole lot of people. Except, when that’s all done, I won’t have anyone I trust left to foist my responsibilities onto.”

Misty Peak laughed and said, “So, you’re already thinking about how you’re going to get out of doing the work when this war is over?”

“Well, I figure I should plan for the worst and the best.”

“And you’re not worried about sharing all of this with me?”

“I would have been a week ago.”

“But not now?”

“But not now,” said Sen. “You and your people held the line even when it had to look like a smarter move to run away. Also, by your own admission, your future prospects are at least marginally better with me.”

“True,” said the fox-woman. “So, you want us to be spies for you? Assassins? What?”

“Either. Both. I guess that depends on how cold-blooded you think your people can be. It’s not like all of them have to be willing to kill. I expect that will be something that you and Lo Meifeng need to come to an agreement about. Probably on an individual basis for each of the foxes.”

Misty Peak nodded as she thought it over.

“We are ideal for that kind of work, but how does that protect us?”

“Before, if you were just working for me, it wouldn’t have. Not beyond whatever fear my name instilled. Now, I’m in charge of everything, including the bureaucracy. I can do things like create an organization that gives you an official status. We’ll call it the Bureau of Seed Management or something equally dull. I can also pass laws that make it a monumentally bad decision to kill any of you. Granted, we’ll want to keep it mostly quiet, but accidentally let word slip to the right people, meaning people who might want to make examples of you, that it will mean unmitigated disaster for them.”

“You know that you’ll almost certainly have to follow through on those threats at least a few times, don’t you?”

Sen sighed and said, “I do. I expect that there’s going to be more of that than I’d like in the immediate future. I don’t see a way to avoid it without undermining myself.”

“Well, I guess you’ve hired yourself a bunch of spies.”

“Huzzah,” said Sen without much enthusiasm.

“So, about this spying,” said Misty Peak.

“What about it?”

“Will it involve things like seduction?”

Sen blinked and said, “I have no idea. Maybe. Why?”

“Well, I might have neglected those skills these last few years. You should probably let me practice on you. You know, while we have the chance.”

“Oh, by the thousand hells.”

“You wouldn’t want me to die just because I’m out of practice, would you?” she asked with a smoldering look in her eyes.

Sen shook his head and said, “I am way too tired for this.”