BOOK 11: CHAPTER 55: LU SEN’S WORLD

When the last of the idiots who had attacked the city were finally marched by, Sen heaved a sigh of relief. The mind-numbingly boring, vastly irritating task was complete. There was nothing left to keep him from his home. Before he could gather his qi to fly away, Auntie Caihong placed a hand on his arm while giving him a searching look.

“I am happy to see you, Sen, and Ai will be overjoyed, but why have you come? And why without letting us know?”

“I’d meant to come back quietly and surprise Ai. I just wanted to see her, not be drowned in sect business. I wasn’t even going to tell Sua Xing Xing I was here. Although, I suspect she might have discovered it anyway. I also never imagined that all of this stupidity was waiting for me here. If I’d known, I would have informed you that I was coming. As for why I came to visit,” said Sen. “My sanity.”

He might have said more, but Auntie Caihong just nodded in a way that told him she understood his exact meaning with those words.

“Well then,” she said brightly. “We should go see Ai.”

Sen walked over to Grandmother Lu and created a qi platform beneath them. He didn’t feel the need to carry Lai Dongmei the trivial distance he meant to go. Speed wasn’t a factor now in the way it had been on the trip from the capital. He just wanted to make sure that Grandmother Lu wasn’t left behind. As he rose over the city, he felt the telltale surges of qi that alerted him that Lai Dongmei and Auntie Caihong were following. He did make a point to mask his presence, though. He worried it was almost inevitable that he’d get intercepted, but he didn’t need to make it any easier for people to locate him. As they passed low over the rooftops, Grandmother Lu looked around with sharp eyes.

“You didn’t really do this place justice when you described it to me,” she said with a mock glare.

“To be fair, it’s grown since I was last here.”

“And you’re in charge of all of this?”

“The last time I checked, people think I’m in charge of everything,” he said with an amused smile.

Grandmother Lu made an annoyed sound and replied, “That was pushed onto you. This is something you built.”

“I didn’t build this. I was just here and things happened around me.”

“Yes. I’m sure that's exactly how other people would describe it,” said Grandmother Lu while she rolled her eyes.

“Well, you know how people like to tell stories.”

They passed over the outer wall of the small city, and Sen landed them a little bit away from the sect entrance. He’d meant to bypass the sect entirely, but he’d seen that the walls and formations had been strengthened. He’d designed the foundations of those protections and thought that he could simply step straight through them without hesitation, but he wasn’t confident that the same would be true for Grandmother Lu or Lai Dongmei. The last thing he wanted was for someone to do something idiotic because everyone was still on edge. He grimaced and then started walking toward the gate. As they approached, the guards who were on duty immediately fell to their knees and pressed their foreheads to the ground.

“We greet the Patriarch,” they shouted in unison.

Sen checked the urge to yell at them to get up. He couldn’t do things like that anymore, as much as he might want to.

“Rise,” he commanded.

The pair stood and traded a look.

“I will inform Elder Sua that you have—” one started to say, only to be cut off by a sharp gesture by Sen.

“You will inform no one. Sua Xing Xing is well aware of my arrival. I am here to see my daughter. I do not wish to be disturbed by anyone. For any reason.”

“Yes, Patriarch!” the pair shouted while bowing deeply.

“You shouldn’t have worn the blue robes,” teased Grandmother Lu.

“I know,” said Sen with a shake of his head. “I swear I’m going to have an entirely new set made up in silver or green or any color but blue.”

Turning his attention back to the guards, he gestured at the gates. He could have opened them himself, but he’d learned that was yet another thing

he wasn’t supposed to do. Apparently, it made people feel useless. So, he waited impatiently even as they hurried to open the formal entrance into the sect. Now that he was finally so close, he could barely refrain from racing ahead to see Ai. But this was also the first time that Grandmother Lu was going to meet his daughter. He had to be polite about that if nothing else.

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***

Lai Dongmei truly hadn’t known what to expect when she’d invited herself to come on this trip. She’d only done it to irritate that fox-woman, who had been just a bit too smug about her hollow victory. Sen had told her about his spy’s advice to seduce the fox. Lai Dongmei had even seen the advantages of it. She hadn’t told Sen that. He was clearly uncomfortable when even discussing the idea, and she suspected that the actual event hadn’t looked much like a seduction. Lai Dongmei hadn’t even managed to muster any jealousy. It wasn’t as though there were any agreements between her and Sen. Nor were such agreements common between cultivators. Advancement had a way of breeding envy, which she had learned from hard experience was the fastest way to poison love.

No, she just hadn’t liked the way the fox was strutting around and decided to do something about it. It had worked, too. She’d made a point to tell the nine-tail about the excursion herself and relished the frustration on the spirit beast’s face. Of course, after doing all of that, she’d been more or less committed to actually making the trip. There were excuses she could have made. The work of a sect leader was never truly done, merely postponed. Sen would have accepted those reasons without question. But she had to admit more than a passing curiosity about this sect and the child who could so thoroughly own a man like Judgment’s Gale. After all, this was Lu Sen’s world in truth.

She hung back a little as Sen very obviously led them around areas where people were likely to congregate. Not that they avoided sect members entirely. Those interactions were a revelation. It was clear that many of the normal rules of hierarchy so common in sects were not practiced here. People were polite to their seniors, but there was none of the cringing obeisance she’d come to expect. Of course, there was politeness, and then there was Sen. What she saw in the sect members’ eyes when they looked at him wasn’t respect. It wasn’t even awe. It was an almost religious reverence.

More surprising was how patient Sen was with them, even though she could tell that he wanted nothing more than to be on his way. He would take a moment to speak with them, ask after their cultivation, or even offer insightful advice after the briefest examination of their cores, dantians, or qi channels. It would never have occurred to her to do such a thing in her own sect, but the absolute devotion these people clearly felt toward the man suggested he was doing a lot of things right.

The sect itself was not as she’d expected either. She’d imagined a handful of small buildings and perhaps a few dozen members. She had not imagined this sprawling complex of buildings and the hundreds of cultivators she could feel scattered across the ground. There was a dearth of late-stage and peak core cultivators, but she hadn’t missed that she couldn’t see anything inside of the buildings. At least, she couldn’t with a passive sweep of her spiritual sense. Who knew what was hidden in those buildings? She refocused her attention when Sen came to an abrupt stop. She followed the line of his gaze, and a few things came into sharp relief.

She now understood the meaning behind Alchemy’s Handmaiden’s description of a pack of hunting dogs. She had grown very adept at taking the measure of people at a glance, and the small group of people she saw were pure predators. Her own sect had a few like them, and she would normally have been appalled at the sight of such people caring for a pair of little, mortal girls. Yet, these two little girls were clearly not afraid.

They had cheerfully made this group of murderers part of their play. One little girl was throwing snowballs at the man Lai Dongmei had identified as the group’s leader. The other girl was drawing something in the snow with a stick while directing several other murderers who were also drawing in the snow with sticks. It was all a bit surreal. Yet, for the casual air around them, she saw that every single one of those cultivators was keeping a sharp eye on their surroundings.

She looked at Lu Sen and saw that he was simply watching the scene in front of them. He wore a complicated expression that he replaced with a broad smile. She glanced back to where the girls were playing and saw the leader pointing in their direction. One of the girls let out a shriek and started running at them.

“Papa!”

The other little girl was only a few steps behind with her own cry of, “Uncle Sen!”

As Lai Dongmei saw the look of unalloyed joy on the face of the little girl who had shouted Papa, she thought she understood better why Sen was so devoted. How could anyone not be devoted to someone who loved them that unconditionally? She watched as Sen crouched down and opened his arms wide. The girls crashed into him with an explosion of words and tears. As for the man himself, he simply closed his eyes as he held the girls. To Lai Dongmei, it looked as if every burden weighing him down had been instantly swept away by the hand of a god.

“That’s what you’ll always be competing against,” said Alchemy’s Handmaiden softly.

Lai Dongmei turned to meet the elder cultivator’s eyes. There was compassion there, but also an absolute resolve.

“I’m not competing for his affection,” said Lai Dongmei.

“No?”

Lai Dongmei assured herself again that she wasn’t afraid of Ma Caihong. She was just being appropriately cautious about a more powerful cultivator who happened to be one of the old monsters. That was all. The fact that said cultivator looked very obviously unconvinced by her words wasn’t making her shiver in fear. It was just the cold weather.

“I’m too old for such frivolous things,” said Lai Dongmei before gesturing at Sen, who was being led away with a little girl on the end of each arm. “And I’m wise enough to know that there is no competing with that.”

Before she could think of anything else to say, there was a sound from above that vaguely resembled the cry of a bird of prey. At least, it would have been if birds of prey could shake the very earth with their cries. Lai Dongmei looked to the sky and, for a moment, she refused to believe her eyes.

“Is that a Fenghuang?” she asked in disbelief.

“Yes,” said Alchemy’s Handmaiden in an unconcerned voice. “It’s Ai’s pet.”

Before she could formulate a response to that bit of madness, a mighty cheer rose up from all around the sect compound.

“The sect has also adopted it as a—” Alchemy’s Handmaiden paused before shrugging. “Well, I suppose the whole sect has adopted it as their pet as well.”

Lai Dongmei shook her head in an attempt to regain her composure, only to have it shattered as another nascent soul cultivator landed right in front of them.

“Fu Ruolan,” said Alchemy’s Handmaiden.

“Where’s the boy?” demanded the infamously mad nascent soul cultivator.

“He’s with his daughter and his niece.”

“Oh, well, yes. I suppose that’s as it should be,” said Fu Ruolan before turning a gimlet eye on Lai Dongmei. “Another doe-eyed cultivator waif? Is he recruiting them now?”