An assortment of cultivators moved through a wide, long wooden hallway situated in one of the Kang Clan’s administrative departments. The walls were barren, devoid of anything except office door after office door. As Shao Qing and Tao Yun made their way back down the hallway, lower-level cultivators and administrative assistants gave them a wide berth, unaware of their identities but afraid of offending them.
“Red Wall City… Red Wall City…” Tao Yun muttered to himself as he glanced at a map he’d pulled out from his interspatial pouch, a relatively rare artifact which distorted the space inside. Shao Qing’s and Tao Yun’s interspatial pouches were both about the size of a small room on the inside- useful, but still rather constrained in size. Now that Shao Qing thought about it, it would be worth getting a bigger one in the near future; whenever he left the Kang Clan he’d probably be taking more than a room’s worth of stuff with him. ...Although he guessed he didn’t need all of his reference books now.
“Ah, there it is. Should be a few days to get to Red Wall City even if we fly all day.” Shao Qing quietly hummed to himself as he thought. Since they’d be travelling constantly he wouldn’t get much work done with the Contract-Breaking pill even if the journey took longer. He needed to delay beforehand. “We can apply for a flying artifact. It should speed up the trip a bit.” Tao Yun shook his head. “No, no, I’ll take my sweet time getting there, have some fun. Hell, I want to stop at Hitu City for a few days on the way back, it sounds like a good time.”
Hitu City… from what he recalled that was a gambling hub. Shao Qing wasn’t terribly interested, but he didn’t mind. “Sure. I’ll need about a week to get ready for the mission though. You mind?” Tao Yun shrugged. “I don’t, but your boss might. If we wait a week there might be another death.” That was certainly unfortunate, but he needed to figure out how to make the Contract-Breaking pill safe for human consumption. He didn’t really have time to worry about one or two unacquainted people thousands of miles away right now. Hopefully they’d be careful after the first few killings. “It’ll be fine. The Kang Clan doesn’t have much of a presence there, they just govern the place and collect taxes. We can take our time.” “Hm. Guess I’ll see you in a week then.”
Shao Qing returned to his workshop alone. He needed to work quickly. This mission was the perfect opportunity to break Tao Yun’s contract, and he wasn’t going to let go of it. If he did it here then it’d be much more difficult to get Tao Yun to eat a pill than after a battle, and if something went wrong there’d be no time to account for it. Ideally he needed to be somewhere far away from the Kang Clan when he tried to break Tao Yun’s contract.
On the off-chance the pill didn’t work and Tao Yun figured out what it was trying to do, Shao Qing would need to capture him until the contract could be broken. That was almost impossible to do here without their fighting attracting attention. On the other end of the spectrum, if the pill accidentally used too much force and alerted the Kang Clan to the contract breaking, then he’d need time to fake Tao Yun’s death and make them think that’s why the contract was broken. Or if that couldn’t work then… well, he didn’t want to think about the other option. He would feel bad if that happened to Tao Yun, he was a nice enough fellow.
Putting negative thoughts out of his head, Shao Qing returned to his work. Currently the Contract-Breaking pill output too much force, and fine tuning it was a task that would take two or three months. He’d have to take a more heavy-handed method. If he couldn’t reduce the force to exactly what he needed, then he could just make it significantly weaker. There’d be a chance it wouldn’t work, but at least it wouldn’t risk maiming Tao Yun’s soul. Plus, he could always just give him more pills until it worked.
It took six days before Shao Qing got a product he was happy with. 8 pills, each having a roughly 30 or 40 percent chance of breaking the soul contract. He estimated they also had a small chance, roughly one or two percent, of causing lingering damage to the soul, but at least it wouldn’t be major. It was a risk he’d just have to accept. He needed an accomplice.
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“The countryside really does look nice from above.” Shao Qing mused to himself as the two of them flew towards Red Wall City. Tao Yun interrupted his sightseeing. “I’m going to go over the plan one last time. Interrupt me if I get anything wrong. Got it?” “Alright.” “We arrive at Red Wall City with cultivation suppressed and check into a hotel. You keep a lookout while I set up hidden formations around our hotel room. We inform the city lord about our plan. After that we go investigating about the serial killer, hopefully attracting his attention. We head back to the hotel room, you direct that... clone thing of yourself to a government building down the street, the city lord takes care of hiding it, and hopefully the killer attacks thinking there’s only me left in the room. If he doesn’t attack on the first night, rinse and repeat.”
“That sounds about right.” Tao Yun glanced back at Shao Qing, who was still watching the countryside pass by. “Are you sure that will work? That thing doesn’t look all that humanlike to me. Just a bunch of wood parts and paint.” Shao Qing snorted. “It doesn’t look like much right now, but it will work. Don’t look down on the Shao Clan’s techniques- I just need to run qi into it and focus for a while. I can’t make it speak or get sensory input from it without some annoying alterations, but it should look like me. It’s just going to go down the street and collapse into paint afterwards, so you don’t need to worry about it.”
The two lapsed back into silence as they drew nearer to Red Wall City. Given the situation the mission was relatively safe, but it was still unpleasant to deal with. Hopefully they’d be able to wrap it up in one or two days.
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Their view began to shift from woods to villages and farmland, and after that from farmland to towns. It took only a couple of hours for them to reach the massive urban sprawl of Red Wall City. Their namesake Red Wall surrounded the city from three sides, with a similarly red mountain making up the back wall of the city. Beyond the wall the outer city spilled outwards, the constant traffic of men, wagons, and beasts of burden visible from above.
Once the two neared the inner city’s wall they slowed down and began dropping in altitude. Flight was banned in the inner city besides a few exceptions, and they’d rather not anger the guards before they talked to the city lord. As they landed a nervous-looking guard approached them, a few others in tow. Shao Qing curiously probed their cultivation. The leader was at the bottom of the Dantian Creation realm, Qi Refinement, while the rest were at the lowest Body Tempering realm. Somewhat underwhelming, but expected. Red Wall City was fairly large, but it couldn’t really be called a cultivator’s city. Including the city lord appointed by the Kang Clan, the Soul Foundation cultivators living here probably didn’t exceed three.
After paying a small amount in the country’s currency the guards stamped Shao Qing and Tao Yun’s hands and allowed them in. The two had to hold back their laughter as they did so- it was procedure so neither of them minded, but the guards’ faces were all scrunched up as they spoke with them, afraid of accidentally angering them.
Once the two were through the gate, they couldn’t hold back anymore. They started laughing at almost the same time. “Did you see that short one in the back? He was staring at the clouds the whole time.” Tao Yun’s smile widened.”I think the guy in charge was the funniest. He tried to keep up a tough look but just couldn’t manage it.”
It took a moment for the two of them to calm down. “I feel kind of bad for them. Someone must’ve ruined their day before to be that afraid.” Shao Qing frowned. “Probably. Sometimes it’s a pain to find reasonable people…” He trailed off as he looked around. “If I’m remembering the map, the hotel we’re staying at should be down the main street. Follow me.”
There wasn’t a single structure in Red Wall City that could rival the aptly named Skybrushing Hotel in terms of height. It towered above the rest of the buildings on the street, reaching a height of over 200 feet. This height would normally be very difficult to reach, but upon a cursory examination Shao Qing could tell that it was reinforced with some expensive spiritual materials. He lingered at the entrance trying to determine what it was before hesitantly going to check-in. He could tell it was some type of spiritual bamboo, but couldn’t narrow down the exact type. Not that it was his expertise- he supposed he’d just have to ask later.
The two were staying in a suite on the hotel’s sixth floor. It was pretty high up, but even without flight it was possible to reach from a surrounding rooftop. A good place to be ambushed. Shao Qing kept an eye on the surrounding area while Tao Yun began to set up formations. Over the coming hours, they began to build up. A reinforcement formation for the room so that it didn’t collapse while they were fighting; a slaughter formation to attack anyone who got trapped inside; a restraint formation meant to stop anyone from fleeing; and so on and so forth. Most of these were somewhat crude, but as the two weren’t planning to stay here for weeks, it was the best they could do. Whether the formation was solid or hastily put together wouldn’t matter too much when they just needed to delay the killer.
Eventually, as morning moved into afternoon and afternoon into evening, Tao Yun finished setting up all the formations. The initial formations didn’t take too long, but the concealment formation meant to hide the traces of formations afterwards took quite a while. They didn’t know much about the serial killer, so it was best to be careful with things like that- if they thought something was odd and backed off then it’d be nearly impossible to track them down.
With the formations set up, the two of them went to visit the city lord. The walk to his manor took them across the city, towards a government district placed against the mountain overlooking the city. After showing the Kang Clan’s tokens to the guards they were immediately let through.
A wrinkled man with greying hair greeted the two of them with a smile. “Welcome, welcome. I’m the city lord, Dong Bao, you’re the helpers sent by the Kang Clan’s higher ups?” Tao Yun waited for Shao Qing to do the talking. “That’s correct. I’m Quasi-Grandmaster Alchemist Shao Qing, and that’s Formation Quasi-Grandmaster Tao Yun. I assume there are concealment formations arranged for our privacy?” The old man ushered for the two of them to take a seat before sitting down himself in a large, red armchair.
“Of course there are. I called in a favor and a Grandmaster arranged it personally. Nothing said in this room will escape to the outside.” After saying this, the city lord’s smile dimmed and he took on a stern look. “Quasi-Grandmaster Shao, Quasi-Grandmaster Tao, what’s the plan?” “We’ve already checked into the Skybrushing Hotel and set up an array of formations in our room. Starting tomorrow we’ll begin investigating the sites of the serial killings and making our presence known. Since we entered the city our cultivation has been suppressed, so we should look like easy targets. We just need your assistance on a few points.”
City Lord Dong Bao waved a hand. “Speak. If I can help, I will.” “It’d be helpful if you made our presence known tomorrow. You could make some sort of announcement like ‘divine investigators’ you hired arriving in order to solve the serial killings. Make it clear that our role is as investigators and that we’ll be working together to capture the killer, not that we’ll be subduing them ourselves. A bodyguard at Middle or Late Acupoint Opening might also help, to make us seem weaker. Make sure they return here at night though, and that their return is easily visible.
“Easily doable. Anything else?” “One more thing. According to the map we have a building down the street from the Skybrushing Hotel is a government building. Could you secretly station some men there that are loyal to you? I’ll be sending something similar to a puppet there that looks like me. This is so that it looks like Tao Yun is alone in the hotel room, but once it gets out of my sight I can’t do much with it. I need your men to hide its remains in a closet or something. And place down a tarp so it doesn’t get the floor wet, it’s mostly paint.”
Dong Bao thought for a moment and nodded. “I can arrange it in time. I’ll hide a guard there in case the killer decides to strike there instead. If that’s it-” Tao Yun interrupted. “One more thing. We also need some spirit stones to maintain the formations in the hotel room. There’s not enough ambient qi.” After a short pause the city lord continued. “...That can also be dealt with. I suppose you’ll come in the morning then?” “Yes. Have a good night.”
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By the time the two of them left the sky was dark. Tao Yun glanced at Shao Qing. “You’re used to talking?” He amended his statement a moment later. “-er, not talking in general, but the formal kind?” Shao Qing shrugged. “I guess. The Shao Clan was about the same size as the Kang Clan and I dealt with it pretty often. Not that I’m used to it anymore- tired of that. But more importantly…” Shao Qing stared at Tao Yun. “Our talk wasn’t that complicated and we weren’t vying for power. I was just passing on instructions.”
“Instructions, whatever, I don’t care, it’s difficult to deal with.” “You’re just too blunt about it. Use some subtlety.” “Mmm… I guess. Wanna grab dinner?”
Well, he was hungry. “Sure.”