Luxire Worse
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Dao of Fuck Off: Chapter 15 - Jumping Around
🕑 Added 2024-10-20 15:00:09 +0000 UTC“Esteemed Immortal. You requested to be informed when a Bone Frog was reported in the Bloating Corpse Fen.” the guard captain, Fui Lee, addressed me with a medley of emotions. He hadn’t yet adjusted to me treating him and his men like people, or to my penchant for working alongside the common farmers.
It had only been a few months, but that was plenty of time for me to slip into a pattern, and Province Lord Milan was as gracious a host as I could expect. I’d inquired about farmland that had been reporting difficulty and set up shop in the town to the slowly abating fear of the locals.
“I did indeed! One is pushing its boundaries then?” I answered without breaking my stride alongside the mortals.
“So it seems. My men can be ready for mobilization on the morrow.”
“Excellent! I’ll join you at dawn, then!” The parts of the frog were of little interest to me, but it had been far too long since I had a proper fight, which meant that backup was a wonderful plan. And letting them see what my real fighting style was would go a good way towards assuaging the delusion that their skill could take me out.
Sparring with them occasionally had given a few of them the impression that I was weak for a Pure Stone cultivator. Preventing them from doing something stupid with that delusion was a courtesy.
It truly feels impossible some days to overstate my disdain for politics.
The evening passed uneventfully after he departed and I chose to indulge a touch of theatrics by lounging in a tree overlooking their assembly point an hour before they started assembling. Something about the way the Fui was obsessed with presenting a front of extreme professionalism whenever he knew I was around just made me want to mess with him by catching him berating a subordinate for speaking their folly.
I was careful not to be noticed overhearing them discussing the bounty offers that were apparently circulating. But it seemed that more than one cultivator was offended that a ‘self-proclaimed god’ was in their land. And I hadn’t even made them look like idiots yet.
So as the dispatch squad of fifty men and women stood at the ready with their captain warning them yet again that slovenly behavior would not be tolerated no matter how much I encouraged it, I tossed ten apples to be impaled on the front row’s spears, visibly raising Fui’s blood pressure.
“It looks like everyone is here, then.” he ground out through clenched teeth. “Let’s get going then.”
“Quite right!” I agreed, hopping down with half an apple. “Best to get there before a wagon gets intercepted!”
That was something that amused me a great deal. Shipping used wagons despite the empire’s funding allowing for spatial rings. From what I’d picked up in rumors, the reasoning was that, as they were relying on cultivators for emergency aid, the wagons acted as signals that there was something that called for protection where a squad moving with a spatial ring could be mistaken for a simple redeployment.
I wasn’t convinced that it held up to scrutiny, but it was funny that the Empress apparently thought of the cultivators in her land like semi-trained guard dogs in need of conditioned symbols to do their job properly.
I kept myself largely professional for Fui’s benefit through the three day journey. A little ribbing and teasing could do him good, but doing more than prompting anxious stress release would genuinely endanger his men, and that was still the opposite of the point.
As we reached the edge of the fen, however, another cultivator was arriving from another direction and met me with a glare.
“You’re here for the Bone Frog?”
“I’m here for a good fight.” I answered with a smile. “I wouldn’t mind handing over the corpse if you’re looking for the core.”
She looked me over and raised an eyebrow. “You’re barely peak Pure Stone and you think you can handle a Bone Frog by yourself?”
“I do, yes! Though the imperial forces here are legitimate backup in case I misestimate the frog’s strength.”
The subtle offence that other cultivators took from me being honest about my own strength would never stop being funny, if only because so few of them knew why they were offended by me not insulting them.
“I am Shu Lu. I’ll accept your offer of softening one of my quarry.”
“I am Guang. Pleased to meet you, honorable Shu Lu.” I bowed slightly as her strength demanded now that we’d exchanged names.
“The purifier I’ve heard about?” she sneered.
“Rather likely. Shall we?” I cut off the line of questioning for now as the guards finished redistributing the weight of the wagon so it could come with us. Conveniently including ensuring each of them had their full set of javelins and spare sword on hand.
One thing I completely understood their envy of cultivators over was how Shu and I both had water-striding techniques that saved us the irritation of being knee-deep in putrid stillwater. I’m sure that my matching pace with them was seen as patronizing, but I wasn’t kidding about actually wanting their backup. I figured I had good odds alone, but there was no need to gamble just to sate my battle lust.
“So, ‘purifier’. Do you have a way of pinpointing your prey, or are we going to use the guards’ search pattern?” Shu said as we crossed the half-hour mark of wading.
I grinned. “Hey guys! I’m looking for the Bone Frog around here. Mind pointing the way?”
“What? Who are you even tal-” she trailed off as the water below us and the air around us started very subtly, but pointedly, flowing in the same direction, ahead of us and to the left.
“I’m on fairly good terms with most Earthly Spirit courts.” I answered. “Thanks, guys!”
“You’ve incorporated southern Hanoutu druidism into your dao?” she asked as we resumed walking.
“Not quite, but their teachings should get a devoted student appreciably close to my relationship.”
“What do you do differently?”
“I share dinner with them and respect them within their rules. Word spreads from there.”
“How do you share dinner with spirits?”
“Well, I invite them to manifest and treat them like any other guest. A mortal or cultivator could simply invite them to share in the essence of the meal and start a similar relationship.”
“Mortal or cultivator? What are you, then?”
“Ascended spirit. If your drain on the land is little enough that the Earth won’t strike you for it, the trick is remarkably easy to stumble upon.”
“Oh?” she sneered. “Do tell.”
“Mortal men have mortal souls, mortal bodies, and mortal minds.”
She fell silent at the implication that it really was that simple for several minutes. Then she shook herself “There must be a catch to it or the elders of my family would have ascended long ago.”
“The catch is that in ascending, you’re no longer protected by Heaven’s laws, so the Earth is free to smite you if you draw its ire.”
She snorted. “A likely story.”
“And the only one I’ve got. If you want to discuss ways to lie about it, I’m all ears.”
She was in the midst of giving me a challenging glare when we were interrupted by a menacing croak that rippled the water by several inches.
“Oh goodie!” I grinned as Jinghua Feng Ren appeared in my hand. “Back in a bit!”
Trusting the guards, at least, to set themselves up to assist me if I screwed up, I threw myself into the clearing with the massive frog and locked eyes with it. Malicious green light glimmered in the pupils, reflecting its ability to see through illusions by looking for the shen of its targets. Its mottled red-brown skin writhed as it turned slightly to face me fully and the dozens of human-femur sized bony spines sticking out from its hide rippled with their own power.
The impulse to charge it and try to end the fight immediately was put down as quickly as it rose. The most lethal trick these beasts possessed was why they were named ‘Bone Frogs’ instead of the more visually apt ‘corpse frog’. And while technically my bones weren’t mortal, their trick worked just fine on cultivators.
It croaked again and launched its green-barbed tongue at me with impressive speed. Not enough for me to fail to sidestep and slice along its length, but still impressive. Sadly, the thing was sturdy enough that my slice did almost nothing, starting my face peeling back into my battle grin.
A second launch of its tongue was met head-on by my spear, and I had to jump back to avoid getting the caustic blood spray on me as my spear ruptured its target.
The beast’s angered croak after it retrieved its tongue was an oddly pitiable sound compared to the rage of more iconic predators, but the existential threat in the tone was respectable nonetheless. Then the tongue, healed of the stab wound, shot out at me again and met my spear again.
“Yeah, I know it doesn’t stay out of commission.” I chuckled as the slimy eyes narrowed at me. “Nice try though.”
Its cunning wasn’t great, by all reports, but it seemed to realize that I was a threat instead of just prey, and its throat swelled menacingly with a deafening croak. Then it belched out a truly unnerving amount of black-grey smoke that stank of disease and death.
Then it jumped. My eyes couldn’t track it through the plague cloud filling the area, but it was hard to miss the sound of that much air displacing at once.
I drew my Flowing Spirit path around the edge of the clearing and sharpened my hearing to catch where the frog was aiming to land so I could stay opposite of it.
Before the sound of the frog, I caught the whistle of large darts and decided to be a third of the way around the clearing instead of where it was trying to herd me.
The boosh of it landing brought flashes of memory I’d thought lost to youth and my grin widened as I shot an Air Thrust over the oncoming surge of water. I’d worry about the memory later. For now, I had to keep this thing at a distance if I liked my bones in their proper place.
Keeping my distance proved almost too easy, even as I kept reminding myself that it was necessary. The damn thing just moved too slow to keep my full attention, even compared to the mortal martial artists. Its attacks were fast enough, but moving its bulk had full breaths of delay that gave my mind time to drift. The fact that it drifted at all was probably a result of its allure finding odd corners of purchase, but it still soured the fight for me.
Upon realizing that I -somehow- wasn’t enjoying a fight, I shot another Air Thrust at it, listened for its takeoff, and tore a clearing breeze through the area.
Now exposed in midair, the frog was quite an impressive sight, bone shards floating around it, ready to pepper the area and futilely corral me into its landing area where it could try to add my bones to its hoard.
Being able to see its trajectory properly, however, it was a simple stomp and an earth technique to raise a hardened stone spear through the fen soil where it promptly landed as I vacated its attack range.
The frog’s landing was poor, and my stone spike ruptured its gullet and gave it immense trouble in turning around to get a look at where I was. Instead of toying with the disappointment, I moved above it and threw my spear down through its brain before landing in a tree to watch it stop twitching.
Looking around, I saw that the mortals had been waiting past the plague cloud, at the ready if I’d bothered to lure the frog to them, and Shu was staring at me with an unreadable expression.
I took a few calming breaths and focused on my body and mind. I was feeling far more agitated than a disappointment should have left me, so I suspected I was affected by the toxins I’d dismissed as I breathed them.
Sure enough, I found an honestly elegant medley of Death-adjacent qi trying and partially succeeding in forcibly seeping into my system. So I took a bit to sort it out and memorize its composition in case I wanted to tinker with the concept later. Plagues weren’t my style, but I might wind up giving pointers to someone that used them.
“You are a strange one, Guang.” Shu finally stated as I finished expelling the disrupting qi. “Daring to stay within the plague cloud, even with a protective artifact, is more folly than I’ve yet seen.”
“Yeah, but if I start denying demon beasts their advantages, it stops being a fight and turns into a butchering. Like so.” I grumbled at the impaled frog. “Harvest away, by the way. That plague mix means there’s nothing I could do to make the meat taste good.”
“So if someone were to declare a feud with you, you’d just let them build up their forces?”
“Oh no. Sapient threats I treat like threats. Beasts don’t have much more than cunning, however, and it’d be a shame to deny them instead of face them properly.”
“I’d heard you played at being as meek as a mortal, not that you crave battle.” she asked in a backwards fashion as she started carving through the rancid gullet.
“I fancy myself civilized, so I act like it when I’m not fighting. If you happen to find yourself near a farm I’m tending, you’re welcome to ask after tea or dinner.” I smiled, burying the rest of my irritation. This was a cultivator that wasn’t stabbing me yet. That was worth something, even if the frog I came here for wasn’t.
“Say, you seem to be looking for cores for cultivation reasons. If you’ve got a lead on a beast that’d be a better fight than this guy, I’d be happy to offer aid.”
She stared at me for a minute before shaking her head. “One of the Hui is paying me well to collect cores for him. I’d rather keep the commission to myself.”
I let myself chuckle. “That’s reasonable. Do keep me in mind if one of your quarry threatens to be tricky. I’m thankfully bereft of political conflict, so I’ve been growing antsy too swiftly for my taste, so I’d count it a boon.”
“If a beast seems likely to give me trouble, I’ll look for you.” she agreed with a small smile that I took to mean she understood the sentiment.
And the dance of emotion on Fui’s face helped my mood immensely. I’d head back to the farm at my own speed instead of tormenting him further, but it was still nice to watch him realize that he’d marched all this way for what amounted to nothing.
---
Ling Huyin had started adjusting to travelling life. It had taken most of a decade, and she still despised it, but being on the run from the Fang that now controlled the entire eastern region of the continent did force her to adapt.
The first years were the roughest. Master Raka was very skilled at forcing the behavior he could tolerate, and she’d encountered that skill every time she started losing her temper with their lot. She’d only just started going months without biting reprimands when they encountered the hut.
As they studied the bastard Guang’s notes on fertilizer, it became clear that he wanted them to think he was going south. The Hanoutu lowlands were well known for their poor soil, and the extensive study on fertilizer was a glaring cue that he was preparing to go there and present them a remedy.
Neither Ling nor her master felt that such an obvious lead was likely to be what he’d hidden in the scrolls, but they hadn’t been able to glean more than that.
So they tried tracking the merchants he traveled with, only to find a dead end in the form of an entire town slain by a beastmaster.
With that second indicator that their quarry had business down south, and word of disputes between the southernmost Druidism temples and the north Hanoutu beastmasters stinking of Guang’s meddling, the two of them raced south to try to extract and kill him before he could escape.
Ling had initially worried about her master’s plan to offer their aid to the beastmasters. They were a sect of cultivators that had a long-established hatred of traditional cultivation, and instead tied themselves to demon beasts capable of fending off most incursions that the Fang and Fist had sent south over the past centuries.
Raka, however, had shown her why he was more feared than even the former Fang sect master. He never raised a fist to cow the beastmasters. Instead, he appeared before them and spoke.
And the beastmasters listened.
He stayed with them while sending Ling to hone her stealth and hunt out the rebellious druids that were openly declaring that Guang’s ascension meant that their meditations on the world were granted the Heavenly Mandate to rule the land despite the beastmaster’s strength.
Two years of infiltration and assassination, and Guang was nowhere to be found. Everyone she interrogated was certain he’d blessed them with victory, but none had met him directly.
But the worst part was the fertilizer.
The druids’ primary claim to legitimacy was an asinine argument about being able to produce more food for the demon beasts than the beastmasters who ruled the land.
Proving them wrong was trivial. Using Guang’s studies.
So it was that she and her master stood overlooking Snarling Fang City, having thwarted the rebellion and established allies for themselves, and felt their victory ring hollow.
Guang had never set foot here, but his methods won the day.
“We must not make the mistake of giving the smith credit for the kills of his blade in the hands of a warrior.” Master Raka finally announced cryptically.
Ling meditated on his words for a long moment before finding the relief he offered. While the teachings came from the man who killed her family, they were not his methods.
They had used Master Raka’s methods, armed with Guang’s teachings.
“He never would have supported the beastmasters.” she nodded. “It’s a blow against him using his own strength.”
“Quite right. We have reclaimed a measure of our time in this hunt.”
Right! Four months of studying Guang’s nonsense and losing his trail had sat poorly with both of them. Taking those teachings and using them for their own ends would ease that dissonance somewhat, instead of letting it fester as one of Guang’s poisons.
“I still desire to never touch another wagon of soil in my life.”
“On that, we are agreed.” Raka admitted with the faintest sigh. “The rumors indicate that he has been sighted in the islands of the northern ocean.”
“Is he seeking to shelter in the Shan Taiyan Empire?”
“With how much more oppressive they are than the Fang was, I doubt it. But I have sent a message their way to warn them of his methods in case he goes there. For now,” Master scowled like he’d been fed oversteeped tea, “There is another hut.”
“Must we spend time on them? There was no clue within the first, and it led us the wrong way.”
“And now we know that he will leave false leads, so he’ll leave genuine ones mixed into the next several. He played this type of game with me extensively over tea. His other foes who stopped listening fell for his traps with far greater regularity because they lacked his warnings.”
Ling slumped. “So if we catch up to him without having studied his huts, we’ll run face-first into traps that his huts will warn us about.”
“Just as that first hut has now warned us that the huts themselves will likely hold traps if one is seeking him. Yes.”
Ling accepted her master’s wisdom on the matter, and kept her further complaints to herself.
It would be worth it when they found the insufferable bastard and she got to peel that stupid smile off his face.
---
“Let me make sure I’m understanding this correctly.” I sighed at the cultivator I’d managed to offend without speaking to. “Your complaint with me is that I’m not hoarding resources, thus freeing more to assist you in your cultivation. But because I’m not putting on a big show about being better than you and feeling pity for you, that generosity feels like a slap to the Face, even though I’m literally just saying that my dao does not require those resources.”
“You are devaluing the treasures that elevate me! If you cannot learn their value and treat them with respect, I shall take your head!”
“Spend a season with a merchant, and you’ll know more about value than you do now.” I answered. “The logger does not pay for timber. The farmer does not pay for rice. Neither are reduced in value by this.”
“You would lecture this Zheng on value!” the idiot chose his grave and drew his blade. “You court death!”
I took a long look at his attendants, all mortals that had been listening and trying to figure out what was wrong with their boss for most of an hour. I looked at the teahouse proprietor, cowering in the back of the room.
Then I looked up at the man who was clearly expecting me to flip the table at him and begin the fight.
“Really?” I asked with an exasperated sigh. “You want to drag me back into killing cultivators with a fucking cliche?”
The idiot blinked and I slowly stood up and gestured for him to follow me outside. “I mean, I understand wanting to kill me, but it’s never going to work. Not when you’re only this much stronger than me. I’m not walking around being called the deathless immortal for nothing. This fight would barely be a polite greeting to death after my previous relationship with it, not courtship at all.”
I swayed as he lunged from behind me and tutted. “Wait until we’re outside. I want a formal witness to tell your family what happened. That way when they hunt me down, it’ll be because they’re as stupid as you, not because your servants lied to make you look good.”
“You Dare speak of the Zheng family like that!”
“They raised you, right?” I asked rhetorically as I stepped outside. “Ah, Fui Lee! The Zheng family requires an impartial witness for a death in the family.”
The guard captain’s temple throbbed as he registered that the young master was almost to the point of spitting blood. “Very well. What is the offense?”
“To my understanding, he’s upset to the point of chopping off his nose over my share of the region’s resource allotment.”
“The offense is your refusal to put treasures in your eye! You devalue everything thusly!”
“Yeah, however that’s different. I’ve already demonstrated my skill, but he’s too blind with rage to notice that he’s already lost, and seems to be counting on his offense to carry the match. I won’t be sparing him.”
Fui sighed and backed up. “I have heard the offense and recognize this duel as valid. You may begin.”
Zheng’s blade came for me again, and I swayed out of the way again, then stepped into his guard and jabbed him in the throat.
At Bronze core, he really should have had enough fights not to make mistakes like that, but I’d discovered that Empire cultivators were shy on raw experience, even compared to Fist and Spire cultivators.
Vines erupted from the ground around me in response to his qi flaring and tried to grab onto me. I danced around them and kept myself inside his guard just to make him realize how profoundly stupid this fight was. His uncle would be worth fighting, but not him.
Trying to escape me, he tripped on his own vines and I grabbed his sword and slammed it through his throat and into the ground.
Entertainingly, he didn’t die immediately, so I decided to let him have the chance. “Take that out and you’ll bleed out. I can patch you up enough that your family’s methods can save you. Just admit that you and your treasures are worthless, and I’ll spare your wasted life.”
“My family will hunt you to the ends of the earth!” he gurgled.
“And you’ll still be dead.” I deadpanned. “No amount of retribution will put your soul back in your body. Admit you’re worthless and you can join the hunt. Or die of blood loss while clinging to your pride. Your choice.”
I watched his anger fade as he realized that he wasn’t making it out of here without playing to my tune, and fear overtook him half a breath later.
“I, Zheng Hurin, and all of my treasures are worthless!” he cracked with plenty of time to spare.
“Well done! Now you can drop your complaint against me.” I pulled out some surgical needles and larger steel rods to help me close the worst of the damage. “Hold still. I never got the anesthesia recipe.”
Pulling the pooled blood away with a technique I stole from the Fang medics, I saw why he wasn’t dead. I’d only barely nicked the artery with how he’d been falling. A simple arterial wrap, a bit of sewing to close his throat back up, a dose of a coagulant I hadn’t used nearly as much since my escape from the Fang, and the bleeding stopped filling up the cavity.
“Be thankful for my days of actually courting death. I’m only good at this because people as skilled as you thought you were kept trying to kill me over real offenses.” I chuckled. “Now, make sure you don’t exert yourself over anything, get back home quickly, and they should be able to finish fixing you up enough to meditate yourself good as new.”
“I thought you weren’t going to spare him.” Fui asked as I stood up.
“I didn’t. Now that he’s seen the face of death and admitted that he’s worthless in front of it, he’ll have to reforge his identity if he wants to grow any stronger.” I grinned despite my still-niggling feelings of discontent. “It’s a poor murder that leaves a corpse.”
“So you planned to barely not kill him with that blow?”
“Oh, no. I’ve never fancied myself an expert murderer. He lucked out in only needing his relationship with value to die.” I laughed at the man’s irritation with my answer. “Cheer up! This is probably the last you’ll see of me!”
“What?”
“Harvest has finished, I’m done with my hut for the season. It’s about time for me to roam more. As long as you don’t get caught predicting my actions, you’ll probably live the rest of your life without seeing me again!”
“Weren’t you looking for a tutor position?”
“I’ve got an eye open for it, but I’m not going to go tell a noble that they’re raising an idiot and to pay me to fix their kid. There’s tact in these things. Nah, I’m going to focus on fixing up some farmlands and let nobles think it’s their own idea to ask me for other insights.” I chose not to point out that I’d never mentioned that to him or his men.
The look on his face as he realized that he’d been over-vigilant on that matter was a wonderful flavor of indignant frustration. Pointing out his misstep would spoil it.
“Do feel free to mention it to anyone who asks.” I finished instead. “And have a nice trip to explain to the Zheng patriarch why his son has a hole in his neck.”
“I’ll do that.” he gritted out and I waved and started a stroll.
It was kind of odd. I actually didn’t want Zheng Lao or Zheng Nima hunting me down because even if they were inept in direct combat, they were still both Silver core cultivators. But now that they were all but guaranteed to come after me for dickslapping their nephew/son, I was less uneasy about them.
Which made sense in one way. Now I knew where they stood, instead of having them in that hideous nebulous space of ‘they’re cultivators, so they’ll either want my head or my help’.
And given how steady imperial politics were in every rumor mill I’d tapped, that also meant that a third of the northern imperial cultivator families would be implicitly on board with killing me, just because the Zheng had good standing. Nowhere near the Hui, but then, nobody had standing near the Hui.
The Imperial Family dwarfed them by a factor comparable to how they dwarfed everyone else in this part of the empire. Which left them in an unenviable position if anything started going wrong. After so long maintaining their power, the Empress expected them to also control the antics of the lesser houses.
And despite being famous as a wastrel, Ko, whom I met briefly, was afforded the full respect of his family’s position for having lived up to that expectation. His nephew had been making progress, according to the rumors, so that was an incidental mark in my favor when they decided on joining the Zheng and do away with me.
After all, one man would always look far easier to deal with than whatever the Zheng pull on with their standing. Dramatically enough that I wouldn’t even really blame them.
And it wasn’t like I personally ruined families for trying to kill me, so they might not suffer much for it.
Catching myself musing in circles, I decided to visit the ‘requisitions office’ that I’d determined at length to, in point of fact, be little more than a cultivator observation outpost. The Empress did a wonderful job of hiding their real job inside the requirements of delivering cultivation resources, but this wasn’t my first life being surrounded by eyes.
“Ah! Master Guang!” the attending noble appeared with impressive speed. “Can I help you with anything today?”
“I’m done with the field, and I promised I’d let you know before heading off.” I smiled warmly. “I also figure it’s polite to warn you that the Zheng are likely to ask after me with pointed intent.”
“Oh? Did something happen?”
“Normal cultivator nonsense. It’ll be resolved between them and me, but they’ll likely come here to find me. So where’s a good location for a Face duel? Say.. South of here?”
The man stared at me, blinking in confusion. “A- Are you asking me where I would like you and the Zheng to fight?”
“Asking for your input, at least.” I smiled. “It seems courteous to repay the hospitality I’ve received from the Shan Taiyan imperial forces by at least hearing out which stretches of land are most convenient to run an offended Silver Core cultivator through.”
“To the south, you say?” His recovery was impressively swift.
“Yes. I hear there’s a dry, arid territory around there. Seems like a good land to study next.”
“Ah, the Scale-scrape barrens. Yes!” he lit up. “I cannot personally recommend spending any time down there. The ki is thin, outlaws have been using it to hide from imperial forces, and if I’m being honest, the dust in the air is just unpleasant against the skin. But if you’ve your own reasons to be down that way, I suspect that Province Lord Lung would thank you to simply avoid any of his established cities in your fights. And if you manage to take out an outlaw base, all the better.”
“The ki is thin enough that it’s worth mentioning?” I blinked. That was promising in a backwards way.
“I cannot confirm, myself, naturally. But every report I’ve heard from Lung’s offices states that the cultivators who station themselves there for security consideration complain at length about the thin ki and how it’s aggravating to try to cultivate while they’re between calls for aid.”
“Wonderful! I haven’t had a depleted region to work on before! Would you mind pointing out the requisition office that Lord Lung is likely to hear from fastest? It’d be rude to give him a heart attack by delaying news of my arrival when I get there.”
The noble - Tai! That was his name! - blinked at me before catching up to the fact that I expected the Zheng to come in aggressively with about the same speed as news could travel. “I’m sure he will appreciate the courtesy. Let me get the map out and I’ll gladly point you to his main requisition office!”
“Thank you! And if the Zheng do come to bother you, I will be heading there so that they can catch up to me. I might get caught up along the way, but they shouldn’t have to wait long for my arrival if they’re particularly angry.”
“Might I ask what you expect them to be angry about? You seem sure of their response.”
“Oh, I stabbed the heir in the neck and made him admit that he and his treasures are worthless.”
Tai stared at me, mouth agape, for almost a full minute before a servant appeared with the map and I realized part of my discomfort.
I hadn’t been fucking with people hard enough to baffle them. Now I could get on fixing that.
Comments
Xodarap4
Also compared to spiritual hippies that live life shying away from murder the Beast clans would probably be who Guang would support due to how they follow the wilds rules to grow and prosper. Course now that Guangs fertilizer recipes are shared with them they will share that prosperity with the entire land which helps the earth courts
Xodarap4
Guang has a problem with making life Surreal for Face cultivator culture
