There was a part of Sen that exulted at seeing the blinding happiness on his daughter’s face as the sky monster swooped through the air. The rest and much bigger part of Sen found himself horrified at the speed of the Fenghuang. That was to say nothing of their distance from the ground. He reminded himself over and over again that this was nothing new. Ai had ridden the spirit beast countless times and never fallen to her death. Something he had no choice but to attribute to the Fenghuang’s care. It’s not as though Ai could have saved herself if she fell.

However, those reminders did practically nothing to keep him from flinching every time the sky monster took a particularly hard turn in the open air so very far above the sect. He still forced himself to smile and look happy every time Ai turned and waved at him. He’d resisted the urge to ride the Fenghuang himself as an extra bit of safety. He was certain that the spirit beast would have allowed it, but Ai liked to see him flying. So, Sen did his paternal duty and flew nearby while his daughter did life-threatening things. It was good for him to practice his flying if nothing else.

He supposed it was probably also good practice to suppress the urge to scream at the Fenghuang to land immediately and never take his daughter flying again. Not that he’d been short on chances to practice suppressing the urge to scream at people during his stay in the capital. There had been opportunities for that on a daily basis. But a little more practice could only help him perfect the art of biting his tongue. That had been another hard lesson he’d learned. There always had to be a balance between inspiring fear and providing people with emotional reasons other than fear to keep following him. I never imagined being a tyrant would involve trying so hard to work around other people’s emotions, thought Sen.

Shaking off that distracting notion, he flew to catch up to the Fenghuang that had gotten a little farther away than he would have liked. He could see Ai looking around for him. She gave him an excited wave when she finally spotted him closing the distance. He got close enough that he was more or less floating next to Ai.

“We should race!” she shouted. “Let’s go, Big Bird!”

Before Sen could strangle that terrible idea, the Sky Monster sped away at what had to be twice its former speed. He could hear Ai’s delighted shrieks carried back to him on the wind. Damn it, he thought, once again torn about how to feel. After a moment of intense internal debate, he settled on a simple takeaway. Daughter’s happiness is good. He still hated the rather obvious danger involved, but keeping that idea centered in his mind made the whole experience a little easier to handle. Slightly adjusting the amount of qi he was feeding into the technique, he shot after them.

He’d decided that he couldn’t really call it a qinggong technique anymore. It might have been based on a qinggong technique, but he thought it had evolved into something sufficiently different to require a new name. For the moment, he was just calling it the flight technique. The name was lacking in pretty much every way except for accuracy, which is why he hadn’t said it out loud to anyone. Cultivators needed most things to have stupid, extravagant names before they’d take them seriously.

His technique name didn’t have a single dragon, mountain, or ocean in it. He’d tried to come up with something more colorful. When the best name he came up with was Dragon Flying Over the Mountain by the Ocean, he accepted that he was ill-suited for the task. Someone other than him would need to name it. As he once more closed the distance with the sky monster, he wondered if he could hire

someone to name it for him. There had to be someone in the sect who excelled at coming up with colorful turns of phrase. They would probably sell their services for a natural treasure or three and do it with a smile.

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“Yes,” muttered Sen to the open air. “I don’t need to do it. I just need to find a good mercenary for the job.”

Sen noticed Ai looking back at him with wide eyes and saw her mouth moving. For anyone who didn’t have his superhuman levels of hearing, the words would never have reached him. For Sen, it only took a little concentration to pick the sounds out of the howling winds.

“Hurry! Hurry!”

It had never been a fair race. As fast as the Fenghuang was, and it was very fast, it couldn’t compete with Sen’s speed. He had too many advantages, which was why it was so unfair that he was going to lose the race. In a few years, when Ai was older, he might be able to justify winning the race. There could be a useful lesson in it, someday, but he wasn’t living in someday. He was living in the right now. If he won the race, it would just make his daughter feel bad for no good reason. That was why Sen repeatedly came close to Ai and the Fenghuang but never quite seemed to catch up with them. He let it go on until his daughter made the wholly arbitrary decision that the race was over.

“We win!” she shouted as she threw her hands into the air.

The sky monster slowed down enough that Sen could catch them. He flew up so that he was next to Ai again.

“We won, Papa!” she announced to him.

“You did win! Good job,” he told her with a big smile.

He ignored the way the Fenghuang cocked her head to look back at him with one eye. She certainly knew that he’d lost on purpose. That was fine, as long as she didn’t reveal that minor secret to Ai. Sen thought the chances of that were small. For reasons of her own, the spirit beast was devoted to his daughter. Telling the truth about the race wouldn’t serve any purpose. He made a big show of looking around. The blue of the sky had become dark enough that it was firmly into evening. It was past time to return to the ground and see to it that everyone got something to eat. Ai clearly recognized the expression because she slumped a little.

“Do we have to?” she asked in a sad voice.

She was looking at him with eyes that seemed to have grown twice as big. He wondered where in the thousand hells she’d learned that expression. If he’d been a weaker man, he might have given in instead of taking five full seconds to really think about it.

“I’m afraid so, little orchid,” he told her.

“Okay,” she said in the universal tone of defeat.

“Don’t be so sad,” he told her. “It’s time to eat delicious things.”

She perked up at those words. Sen worried that he might be feeding her too much, but he suspected that someone would have chided him for that if it were the case. With a much more enthusiastic expression, she patted the neck of the sky monster.

“Okay! Time to go down!” she shouted.

It wasn’t exactly an immediate descent. They’d flown miles and miles away from the sect. If he hadn’t been with them, that distance would have concerned him. Of course, if he hadn’t been with them, they probably wouldn’t have gone so far. The flight back was slower, but they didn’t take their time. Sen was amused to see that the Fenghuang couldn’t simply drop straight down the way he could. Instead, it flew in large circles that brought it down to the ground. He adjusted his own pace so that he remained even with the spirit beast. Once they landed, Ai had what looked like a brief conversation with the sky monster. The spirit beast paused long enough to incline its head to Sen before it launched back into the sky. He walked over to Ai.

“I would have fed her, too, if she stayed,” he said.

“She likes to hunt,” said Ai with a shrug before her eyes lit up. “Auntie Caihong! We raced!”

“You did?” asked Auntie Caihong, her eyes twinkling. “Who won?”

“I did!”

“Congratulations,” said the elder cultivator, who seemed to be having an increasingly difficult time hiding her mirth. “You should go take off your flying robes, little one.”

Ai looked down at her damp robes before she ran off to the galehouse.

“She won, did she?” asked Auntie Caihong.

“Of course, she won. What kind of a monster do you take me for?”

Auntie Caihong smiled and rested a hand on his arm.

“The very best kind.”