Twenty Three

Yin continued to savor her tea as Cui stormed into her tent, her guards outside doing nothing to stop the clearly enraged Marble Cloud Sect matriarch.

"You!"

Calmly, Yin placed down the tea she had been enjoying and turned to face her sister.

"Me?"

With a single swipe, Cui knocked the tea from the table. "Don't give me that, this has your handiwork written all over it."

Yin sighed as she looked at the mess the spilled liquid had made of the inside of her tent – including her sleeping roll.

"May I ask what it is that I'm being accused of?"

"My daughter!"

Yin cocked her head. "What of her?"

"She left two days ago." Cui slammed her hands down onto her sister's travel desk. "And now I know why."

Ah, how unfortunate. Someone had spoken. She'd have to find out who.

Ignorant of the byplay going on in her sister's mind, the clan leader continued. "You encouraged this act of madness. Plied her with drink before whispering in her ear, like you always do."

"As clan heir-"

"Don't give me that horseshit!" Cui cut her off. "I'm not an impressionable little girl. I know exactly what is expected of the clan heir – and rushing headlong towards a possible hidden master is not it. A situation like this requires caution. Diplomacy. For the first time in recorded history, the great wall has been breached. Instinctives and corrupted beasts ravage the land. The Empire is being pressed on all fronts. Now is not a time for the reckless wastage of yesteryear."

Yin thought it rather ironic that it was her sister saying this, given the number of mortals that had died on her watch in the last few months. Which she supposed was rather the issue with their clan matriarch.

She had a tendency to get tunnel vision.

Still, as she looked up at her sister, properly looked this time, she realized the woman was furious. Truly, deeply, furious. Angrier than Yin had ever seen her, and it would need just one errant word for that anger to translate into action.

It seemed she'd pushed a little too far this time. Then again, this was her sister's daughter. She usually kept her little schemes away from her own blood.

It was funny how things had changed since she'd been shown enlightenment. So many avenues had been opened to her. So much of what seemed unthinkable before was simply… natural now.

She sighed. It was a shame. She'd been hoping to confirm young Men's fate before making her move, but plans so very rarely went perfectly.

Idly, she tapped the bangle on her hand, stealthily pushing a little ki into it.

"I'm sorry, sister."

It was rather amusing really, how Cui stepped back in surprise. Not that Yin blamed her. Yin did not apologize often. Or at all really.

"Well, I should hope-"

Such was the suddenness of the attack that even Yin felt some surprise as a blade emerged from her sister's chest, splattering her with not a few drops of her sibling's lifeblood.

Annoying, but she'd forgive it.

After all, it had been an excellent stab. Bai's practice over the last year really showed through. She'd shown not a hint of her presence. Shown no killing intent, or leaked even a wisp of her ki.

For all intents and purposes, until a second ago, she had not been there.

It was marvelous to behold.

"Huh?" Cui coughed blood, the reality of the sword through her back only now catching up to her.

Part of that came from her surprise no doubt. She was in her own camp. Speaking to her own sister. Surrounded by allies.

At least, outwardly.

The reality was not so simple. After all, Bai was one of Cui's own guards. Picked by the matriarch herself to be part of her inner circle.

Already, Yin could pick out the sounds of distant battle in the camp. Shouts of surprise. The clashing of swords. The usual fare.

"Well done, Bai." Yin said, rising from her seat. "You will be rewarded for this. For now, help see to it that none of my sister's wayward supports escape."

Silently, the woman nodded, retracting her blade from her clan matriarch with a barely audible gasp from the woman in question. Then she was gone, out into the night.

Yin watched her go. She was a strange one. While others had become more uninhibited and boisterous under the effects of the blessing, the young guard had gone the opposite route. Nowadays, the formerly sunny young woman was silent, almost to a fault.

Had the previous personality merely been a façade, a cheerful mask that she showed the world?

Yin didn't know, but she was curious nonetheless.

"Why?"

Distracted from her thoughts, she turned towards her dying sister, whose hands were rather feebly grasping at her chest in an attempt to stem the flow of lifeblood. An ineffective attempt, if Yin were to judge, given the pool of the stuff that was even now gathering around her sibling.

"Why not?" she asked.

For that was all it was. Since she'd been shown the blessing, everything had become so simple. What had once been unthinkable now merely was. She had wanted power. She had wanted strength. Now she had the will to take it.

Her sister's life seemed such a triflingly small thing to pay in return.

"You have always been weak, Cui." Yin leaned down. "If not in body, then in mind. Always relying on me to shore up your foolishness."

"…I trusted you," her sister croaked, but Yin heard none of it.

"Not just that, but you lack focus. This little trip being a prime example of it. Not in our objective, but in our means to reach it. This journey should have taken a few weeks at most, had you the will to properly 'motivate' the mortals. Had you not felt the need to stop at every insignificant village to hunt down the beasts that have already picked them bare. Seeking out every spirit beast that crossed our path in the name of fueling your cultivation."

Yin felt her eyes change, becoming as goat-like as her ancestors, as she regarded her sibling, finally letting loose some of the iron control she'd maintained over her blessing.

"When a predator goes for the kill, it is with haste."

She reveled in the way her sister's eyes widened. "You!?"

Then she killed her. Not with anything as crude as a sword, but with her ki coated feet.

With a stomp. As was only natural.

Staring down at the corpse, her mouth salivated, the scent of blood on her palate, she reached down to-

No!

She shook her head, Wrestling down the urge to engage in the more… excessive desires of her newfound power.

Which was proving to be hard to control. Harder than she'd ever thought it would be. But the power it granted was worth it. And she could control it. She just needed more time. Time to meditate. To incorporate the foreign ki into her soul.

Standing back up, she ignored the jitters in her hand.

The next person to step into her tent was the second in command of her own guard, covered in blood. Her horns especially – which suggested… interesting things about her new combat style.

"Is it done?" Yin asked.

She could no longer hear the sounds of combat. Only the occasional groans and whimpers of the odd wounded soul. Likely mortals that had been caught in the crossfire. Her own people would have no reason to take prisoners.

The whole event had taken, maybe, thirty seconds. Which was a little worse than expected, but then again, the coup had originally been intended to be a few days from now. Unfortunately, her sister's discovery of her role in her daughter's disappearance had forced her hand.

"It is done," the other woman intoned.

"Our casualties?"

The other goat-woman nickered, quite literally – another side effect of the blessing. "The former matriarch's seven remaining supporters are dead. Four of ours fell taking them down."

Yin frowned. She'd rather hoped for this whole thing to be bloodless. At least for her side. Now their expedition had been cut down to less than half their starting number. The better half, certainly, but even the unblessed members of their retinue had counted towards their overall power.

They had even less if one included Men and her cronies. Which Yin didn't. Not for lacking power – of which the girl had quite a bit - but for being anathema to her cause.

"How did the mortals fare?"

Hopefully they hadn't lost too many. Not after suffering so many delays in their journey lugging them up here.

The other woman shrugged. "Some were caught in the crossfire. How many and which of those will live, the captain will tell me in the morning."

Left unsaid was that those who were now too injured to fight would not be counted amongst those that 'survived'.

Yin shrugged. She supposed it didn't matter anyway. Just so long as they had enough of a screen left for the coming fight. Assuming there was a fight.

Plus we need them to act as witnesses afterward, she thought, thinking of her ascension to clan leader after the 'tragic' death of her sister.

She doubted the other clan elders would look too deeply into it, but it sometimes paid to be doubly sure. To that end, the mortals would repeat the same story as the cultivators.

"And the rumors of what happened are already spreading amongst them?" Yin asked.

Her second nodded. "We were attacked by spirit beasts in the night. Some of the lesser cultivators were killed in the fighting. The clan matriarch was mortally injured seeing off the beasts, and has now retreated to her tent."

Yin grinned. "Good."

That was another advantage of the blessing. It allowed her people to undergo certain… changes prior to the fight. Sure, they'd had to wait for the moon to be high for it to work, but it was worth it.

Any mortal that had seen the fighting would report exactly what her second had just said; cultivators fighting spirit beasts.

"Well, it seems our course is set."

Her second bowed. "Do we return to the sect?"

"No." Yin shook her head. "We continue on to the village. We make sure my niece is dead."

She would brook no challenge to her claim as clan matriarch and leader of the Marble Cloud Sect.

"It was a good thing the girl left, her presence might have presented a problem."

Yin nodded at her second's words. While Men was not as strong as her – though she was closer than Yin might like - she was certainly stronger than her subordinates. Naturally, Cui had been stronger than them all, but all the strength in the world had not saved her from being taken by surprise by Bai's new gifts.

She smiled, happy to gloat. "Which was why I put the idea in the girl's head to press ahead, to impress her mother by bringing this rogue 'hidden master' down by herself."

Hopefully, she was already dead. That was of course presuming the man actually was what his people had claimed him to be. In all likelihood though, he was just a charlatan. A low level cultivator seeking to use the prestige that came with the title to claim that which was not his.

"Perhaps she's already subjugated him and we can pick them both up on the way to the village. A male cultivator would be valuable even if he was weak – and I think my loyal supporters deserve a reward for their part in bringing an end to my sister's tyranny."

Her second grinned widely at her words, a lascivious gleam in her eyes. It actually gave Yin rather conflicted feelings to look upon it. The woman across from her would never have been so obvious in her hungers before the enlightenment. She supposed it was just proof that her lessers were not handling the change as well as she was.

Then the other woman's face turned to a frown. "And if the hidden master really is what his people claimed he was? Lady Ren left before us and has not yet returned."

Yin scoffed. "Ren is a Merchant. The silly chit's likely attempting to ply this male with words and coin rather than taking him in hand like a true cultivator. Still… if he really is what his people claim, then we shall put him down. If I am to be the new sect leader, I cannot afford to be seen not to look after our territory."

The beast within her flared at the thought of interloper on her territory - and once more she had to wrestle it down.

Though she would need not do so much longer. As clan leader, she'd play the part of Imperial lackey for now - even as the cult of Instinct cut down the Empire from within. Then, when it came time to strike, they would do so without mercy or hesitation.

Just as they had done here.

She need only deal with this small distraction first.

-----------------

"Stop playing with them and bury them!" Sergeant Peng's roar carried quite nicely across the clearing outside of town.

Once upon a time, that would have been enough to have the other members of the militia scurrying to do, well, just about anything to avoid his wrath.

Those had been simpler days.

And to be fair, most of those present did exactly as he'd so politely asked. But of course, every group had its rebels. Those too stupid to shut up and fall in line. In this particular group, that was the Ru siblings.

"Oh come on, Sergeant, they're just begging to be thrown. Look, they curve." True to Deng Ru's words, the object he was holding did indeed curve when thrown.

Much to Peng's irritation. "Go pick that up! Your mother's plates curve too, but you don't throw them!"

Deng's sister, Gao Ru, laughed. "I also don't bury my mother's plates, sarge. So clearly, they're not that important if Lord Jack wants us to bury them. What's wrong with having a little fun with them while we get rid of them for him?"

"And I don't get why they all need their own hole. Wouldn't one big hole do?" Deng opined as he walked back with his recently thrown 'plate' in hand.

"Maybe they're like… graves?" Another nearby member of the militia said, before Peng's glare had the young woman quickly return to shoveling.

"For plates?" Deng questioned.

"Fancy cultivator plates," Gao said sagely.

Peng felt like throwing up his hands in frustration. Country bumpkins, the lot of them. One the master needed to take a harsher hand to.

"Aargh!"

"Ow!"

Unfortunately, the man wasn't present so Peng would act it in his stead, by clipping both siblings around the ear – none too gently.

Honestly, the pair of former hunters had always been rebels, but they'd only grown worse since basic training had ended. Sure, the militia still trained just as hard, but discipline wasn't held to quite as strictly. The members of the militia were allowed to be people once more. After all, you couldn't keep a man or woman to maintain that level of discipline forever.

They'd snap.

Or start acting like cultivators, he thought as he ignored the chastened forms of the Ru siblings returning to their digging.

He looked down at the 'plate' in his hands, before turning his gaze toward the carriage that was literally piled high with the things. They'd been digging holes all morning and yet they'd yet to make an appreciable dent in the pile. Predominantly because another cart had come by not an hour ago and refilled it.

It seemed the hidden master would not be content until the entirety of Jiangshi was surrounded by these tiny grave sites for his plates.

Peng shook his head. He hoped there was surely more to this than it seemed, but he'd be damned if he could make sense of it. For all that he was inclined to think that this was some form of clever device like the gonnes the militia now used, he couldn't help but feel a nagging worry that this was just… cultivator oddness.

And he knew all about that. He'd seen enough of it in his time in the city guard.

What felt like a lifetime ago – but in reality was barely a few months – he'd been a lifelong guard of Ten Huo city. Part of the South Eastern garrison, serving tangentially under the command of the Iron Wind Sect. Of course, after he was crippled while out on patrol by bandits, he'd been kicked out on his ass. By the time that strange lass, An, came around searching for people to hire on for her master, he'd been resigned to drinking what was left of his life and savings away.

That hadn't happened though – and he was eternally thankful to both the young mistress and her master because of it.

Now he lived in the Apart Ment. A place where the mortal residents lived like cultivators themselves, with running water, ki-lights and quarters warmer and sturdier than any mortal home in any district in Ten Huo.

Which was why he didn't begrudge the hidden master this seemingly senseless task. If the man asked him to dig a thousand tiny graves for these strange plates, this Peng would do without complaint.

More than that, he'd make sure no one under his command complained either. Not just for fixing his arm. Or for letting him live in the Apart Ment. Or even for paying him far more than a lowly mortal like he deserved.

No, he'd do it all for the new love of his life.

Ren.

Not the newly arrived merchant. No, he had little enough interest in women and their softness and frippery. Though Ren was no man either – even if Ping was more partial to those on those occasions where the itch took him.

Recently gifted to the militia and Peng specifically, Ren was half as long as Peng was tall and made entirely of steel and some strange substance called 'Fibe Er Glass'. The younger sister of his dearly departed Zhuan, she was far more temperamental and prone to complaining than her older sister – but all the more deadly for that fact.

After all, she was the younger sister and had far more to prove to the men and women of the militia.

The man was drawn from his reverie by the sudden clanging of the west tower's watchtower bell.

"To arms!" he shouted, unslinging Ren from his shoulder. "We're under attack!"

At once, the rest of the militia threw down their shovels, snatching up their gonnes as they followed his lead.

Unfortunately, they weren't quite quick enough. While the beasts of a few months ago might have been inconvenienced by the vast distance between the forest and the town, the warped abominations of today weren't stymied at all. Ping's eyes could barely track the wolf as it shot across the field towards a militiaman, its ragged fur studded with thorn-like protrusions that sparked and crackled with unknown energies.

Thinking quickly, Peng brought his gonne up, took aim at the animal and pulled the trigger.

He missed.

Fortunately, while this would have been a death sentence for the militiaman with his earlier, weapon, Ren was a different beast entirely.

No sooner had he fired and missed, than the circular mechanism at the center of the gonne turned, presenting a fresh bullet toward the barrel, ready to be fired at the foe. What was more, Ren could fire five more times before she needed to be reloaded even once.

Peng fired again, and this time hit the target dead on, the creature's filthy and unclean blood and pieces of bone exploded out of its side as it dropped to the floor, rolling to a stop at the stunned militiaman's feet.

Then and only then, did the other members of the militia start firing. Bringing down two more creatures, a rabbit and a goat as they appeared from the treeline. Still, it was too slow. Too slow by half. He'd be drilling them into the dead hours of the night for that.

Ow, he hissed, feeling a twinge in his wrist.

He knew what had happened even before he looked down. Say what you would about old Zheng, she was a mild mannered lass to the man that held her. Ren was not so sweet. For all that she spat death at the enemy, she also breathed fire on any that dared hold her too close.

To that end, Peng now had a small powder burn on his wrist that would need seeing to.

Still, it was worth it. Had he been using a different weapon from Ren, the militiaman nearest to the forest would be dead. Mauled by a wild and unnatural beast.

Really should have left a few men out as sentries, Peng thought.

He had hoped their distance from the forest would give them ample time to react to any threat. He had not accounted on just how fast these pseudo-spirit beasts were changing. They'd almost moved like cultivators.

Almost, he thought. Close… but not as graceful.

Still, it was enough to be a concern. Had the man on the watchtower not been on the ball, they very well may have lost more than a few people just then.

He'd have to do better going forward. They all would.

He turned as the bell on the wall started clanging again.

------------------

Jack ignored the gunfire.

He'd get concerned if he heard explosions. Predominantly because his people were having a firefight in a minefield. Sure, the mines weren't active, but if one went off… well, it wouldn't be pretty.

Perhaps it was for the best that those involved didn't know what mines were.

Which had been an intentional move on his part after Ren had commented just how free his people tended to be with information. Which he didn't particularly blame them for. Before he came along they were simple rural folk. And in his experience, people from small communities either tended to be shut off and disdainful of outsiders, or insanely gregarious and interested in them.

Jiang Shi tended towards the latter.

Which was why he'd started practicing a 'need to know' system. His people couldn't spill what they didn't know.

Instead, he turned his attention from the task at hand back to what he'd been dealing with before the bells started ringing.

Cannons. Or at least, a topic tangentially related to cannons.

He'd debated long and hard on the topic of cannons. Given he had a static fortification in the form of the wall, it made perfect sense for him to use them.

Yet, he'd delayed.

The reason was simple.

His issue lay not with the thousands of regular men and women now marching towards him. No, with the new six-shooter rifles, those poor bastards could be handled pretty easily by what his militia had on hand.

Plus, his newest explosive surprises.

No, his real problem were the twenty two cultivators accompanying them. And static artillery like cannons would be just too slow – in firing and reloading – to track the fast little blighters. At least, the kind he could create quickly would be.

Now, if he had the means to swap out cannons for machine guns, he'd do it in a heartbeat. He didn't though. Automatic fire was something that still eluded him. More to the point, he didn't have any time left to spend on trying to figure it out.

No, he needed to work on projects that were guaranteed to bring him results quickly.

He'd also realized he needed to stop ruminating on what he didn't have and focus on what he did. Which was a thought process that had given rise to ponderings on how to utilize the local brand of magic.

Was he going to start cultivating and beat the locals at their own game?

Fuck no, he thought.

Everything that had made it a bad idea a month ago was still true now. He didn't have years to spend on maybes. Sitting on his ass cultivating the greater mysteries of the universe. Hell, there was a decent chance he couldn't cultivate at all.

Lin couldn't – and she was female, which meant she'd had a much higher base chance than him.

As a guy, it was pretty much guaranteed he didn't have the capacity. Plus, he wasn't even from this reality, and no one was cultivating back home. Sure, a different reality meant different rules, but there was a chance the locals were just 'built different'.

…They were certainly a lot more attractive than average.

He shook his head. No, he was going to do what leaders throughout time had done.

Delegate.

Specifically, he was going to use his own ubermensch to beat the enemy ubermensch at ubermensching. Fire against fire. Punch wizard against punch wizard.

Though, given the numbers disparity, he figured he'd need to give his friendly demi-gods an upgrade. Which was where he'd found use for his own recently aborted cannon program.

"It's not very stylish," Ren opined skeptically as she stared at the massive block of metal he was holding.

He shrugged. "It's a cannon. They aren't built to do 'stylish' things."

Though it wasn't technically a cannon. Truth be told, it had a lot more in common with a rotary grenade launcher – given his recent recreation of six shooter technology. Though, a grenade launcher usually had grenades in it.

This did not.

Because impact grenades were another thing he wasn't totally sure of. Or at least, he wasn't totally sure he could create them without them exploding at the wrong time. And then he'd be down an ubermensch.

So he'd improvised.

"To that end, it's loaded with canister shot," he said, breaking open the latch to show her the red shells loaded inside the loading mechanism.

"Canister?"

He tried not to roll his eyes at her continued skepticism. For all that Ren was more open minded than most cultivators, she was still steeped in the 'traditional values' that came from living in the city. She wasn't like An, who's more rural origins meant that to her, a weapon was a weapon.

For Ren, ranged weaponry was the domain of the layman. They were things used by mortals attempting to kill cultivators – ineffectually – not cultivators themselves. Which seemed like a big missed opportunity to him, but he wasn't about to complain.

"Let me show you." He turned towards the brick structure he'd set up for his demonstration.

Fortunately for him, his suit allowed him to fire from the hip as he unloaded what was effectively six blasts of grapeshot into the target.

Which did not remain standing for long.

"Parry that, you fucking casual," he grunted towards that thoroughly shattered set of blocks.

Turning back to Ren, he was happy to see that she was, in a word, gobsmacked.

"That is rather impressive,'' she allowed. She cocked her head. "Was that an insult from your homeland, 'casual'? I don't think I've ever heard it used as such here in the Empire."

Jack froze.

"Homeland?" he croaked.

She smiled at him, though there was a hint of wariness in it. "Please, don't insult my intelligence. It's clear to all and sundry that you aren't from around here. You're too distinctive to have remained unnoticed for so long. You also do things too differently."

Jack nodded slowly. "And that's not a problem for you?"

She laughed, freely. "Hardly. It just makes you more interesting. And valuable. I have so many things I want to ask you."

She stepped forward, lightly placing a hand on his armor chest. and on his chest, her eyes dancing flirtatiously.

Jack found himself feeling a little hot under the collar in turn – until he remembered the woman across from him shattering his weight testing device with ease. That quickly threw a bucket of cold water over any plans he might have had to get to know Ren a little more intimately.

An was one thing, but Ren was another kettle of fish entirely.

If only, he lamented staring down at the woman's impressive assets.

"Then yes, I suppose it was."

The dog-woman cocked her head at his seemingly random statement.

"The comment. When I fired." He clarified.

Ren's eyes widened slightly as she realized, before a small smile slipped over her lips. "Ha, casual. I like it."

He shrugged. "Feel free to use it on our enemies."

"You know, I think I will."

He took a deep breath, before asking the question he knew needed to be asked. "Do you think you can do it? You and An?"

It didn't need to be said, what 'it' was. He'd agreed to handle the two top tier cultivators, but An and Ren would need to handle the small fry. And two against twenty weren't great odds.

Even if he intended to even them up as much as humanly possible before the fight began.

Ren's smile turned somber, before she glanced over to where An was practicing with her new pistols. She'd gotten good with them. Scarily good. The kind of good that made Jack want to label what she was doing now 'gun-fu'.

"Could you thin their numbers before they reach us?" Ren asked.

He nodded. "I have a plan. One I put into motion as soon as I find out where they're camped. I give it good odds of success. I doubt I'll get all of them, but it should definitely take some out of the equation."

Dead or crippled, it didn't matter which.

Ren nodded again. "I would say that without your tools, we wouldn't stand a chance – and I would already be packing up to leave." She paused. "With your tools though… maybe."

She looked up at him.

"Of course, all that depends on whether you can defeat the matriarch and her sister." She tapped his chest again. "I'm a businesswoman first and foremost. I won't waste my gold chasing a failed project. By the same token, I won't waste my life fighting for a doomed cause. That said, I feel you are an investment worth risking everything for, but only if there's a chance of victory."

Her hands turned into a fist. "Can you do it, Jack Johansen? Defeat two top tier cultivators?"

He didn't answer immediately. Instead he looked at a loading screen on his HUD. One that had been counting down from pretty much the first moment he knew what a cultivator was and what they could do.

It was something he'd hoped never to employ.

"I can."

He hoped.