41 - Chapter 40 - Day 1833

It had been six days since the news that Adya’s family and caravan were safe and on their way back. Parth had sent out one of his experienced units to meet the caravan and escort them back safely. If everything went well, they would be returning at some point today.

Things with her new cultivators had also been progressing well. After the cultivator who had attacked Evelin awoke, Adya had ordered him to answer all of Evelin’s questions then left them to it. While she could guess what had been said, Adya was unaware of the full details. What she did see was the complete change in attitude from Evelin. She had gone from a woman forced into serving Adya to a woman who was devoted to her, even more so than Jarel had been.

The benefit of the soul mark was that she could not be lied to. What that meant in practical terms was that it was easy for her to verify motivation and intent with some judicious questioning. Whatever Evelin had learned from Jarel, Thomas and the last cultivator, named Jory, had turned Evelin’s loyalties completely against her former employers.

In the past several days, Evenlin and Jory had been out hunting for other tier 6 cultivators. In that time, they had already managed to capture and turn another 2 tier 6 cultivators. Adya had been extremely worried about the speed with which the agents were being found and captured, but after interrogating the newly converted agents, Evelin had presented her theory on the reasons this was the case.

As it turned out, there were not three but 4 factions amongst the elders of the council of sects. The first was still the elder by herself, who had sent Jarel and others to find and help her. This was the smallest group. The second group had sent out assassins after her and were considered the biggest threat against her. This was the group that had ordered the killing of even other agents. They were also the ones Evelin was targeting for capture.

The third group was the ones that sent out the least powerful agents, a case of quantity over quality. Their orders were to capture the target, most like Adya herself, and bring her back for the elders to benefit from. They did not have orders to kill, but some were bloodthirsty enough to not need the orders.

The last group was sent out by the elders who still remembered their duty. This group was sent out to carry on their normal jobs and ignore the rest of the hunt and in fighting. Due to the eclectic group that Adya had fortuitously managed to turn to her cause, she had access to the reporting structure of all four groups. Her group was also able to identify as any of the four groups, while also being able to recognise the factions that were present in the human kingdoms.

Adya had made the executive decision not to target anyone from the fourth group. She had also prioritised the capture of everyone from the second group. With 4 tier 6s already under her command, and the said team continuing to scour the local kingdoms of all her hunters, Adya felt that she was well on her way to containing the problem for the time being. She needed time to put her wider plans into action. The ability to feedback bad search results to the awaiting elders would give her a bubble of protection at least for some time.

Adya had also made sure to report back the actions of the second group of elders to the other three groups, putting more pressure on them to reign in their agents. She hoped that would limit, if not stop the deaths amongst the agents. As much as her focus had been her reaction to being hunted, she acknowledged that the agents served a higher function in keeping unorthodox and demonic cultivators in check. If she were to allow this hunt to go on for too long, it would damage the agents to the point that they would no longer be an effective force. That would have dire consequences for the commoners across the whole of the continent.

Adya had spent her days in continuing her training, both her skills and physical training, and in her experimentation. She was also keeping her more outrageous behaviour under control. Once her family returned, Adya would need to present a more normal facade until she could implement her plans. For that she needed to keep growing her cultivator army and needed Sai back.

As per the original estimations, Sai needed another 40 days to complete the assimilation. In the meantime, Mai had added the additional data captured from the newly converted, as well as new understanding gained from implementing their own formations to the files Sai was processing. Until the process was complete, there was no way to tell how long it would actually take.

Dexter had continued to go out and convert the small number of tier 1 mana stones for Adya each week, as well as keep an eye on the contacts. Parth and Peter continued to work together to identify and suborn the spies operating within the family. By their estimates, they had already identified them all, with most having been converted. They were now working on following those links out to convert the controllers, with the idea of taking over all the spy networks in their entirety. The spy who had worked for the foreign royals had become an excellent asset and was fully supporting those efforts.

In short, things were going well, and that was putting Adya on edge. She did not trust the universe to not throw in another curveball.

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It was just after lunch that riders arrived with the news that the caravan was only a couple of hours away. The estate rushed to get ready for its arrival. Though used to being on the road, the attack and subsequent captivity would surely have had a massive impact on everyone involved. The healers were ready to provide whatever support they could. The scribes were ready to tally the losses, and record the damages.

In the early afternoon the clearly weary caravan pulled into the estate in a long bedraggled column. The retainers rushed out to take over the duties of caring for the animals and dealing with the carriages, as those who had been on the road were led away to be checked over. Baths had been prepared for everyone, as well as hot food and clean clothes. It would only be after everyone had been thoroughly checked that they would meet to hear the details of what had happened.

Jarel, not nearly as weary as the mortals, refreshed himself and then presented himself to Adya. Thomas was busy keeping any eye on the captured cultivator bandits.

“Welcome back,” said Adya. “I know you have had a slow ride back. I need a full report from the time you left me until now.”

“Well, Evelin and I left to recover your family.” started Jarel. “When we found the bandit camp again, Thomas had already scouted them out. They had nearly 600 men in camp, and your retainers were well secured. Apart from your family, they were being treated very badly. You are just lucky you had no female retainers as part of the caravan.”

“It took us a day to get in and secure the prisoners in one place.” continued Jarel. “I was left to guard them, while Evelin and Thomas started the slaughter of the whole camp. It took several day to kill all the bandits, and capture the tier 2 and tier 4 cultivators.”

“I assume some made a run for it?” asked Adya. “Did any get away?”

“No, we were through.” replied Jarel. “Not one of them got away, we killed them all. They made sure to loot everything of value in the camp, before we burned what was left down to ashes. We packed everything up, and sent Evelin to report back to you. The next day we started the slow journey back.”

“Where you asked any questions by members of the caravan?” asked Adya. “Also any trouble on the way back?”

“Yes, we were asked a lot of questions,” replied Jarel. “We told them we were from the council dealing with rogue cultivators. Once they realised who we were, the questioning stopped. It was a good thing you asked us to accompany the caravan, as there were 3 other attacks on the way back.”

“Any survivors or prisoners?” asked Adya. This level of sustained attack against her family made no sense.

“No, my lady,” replied Jarel. “With just the two of us we did not want to risk the safety of the caravan. We left no one alive, and only ashes behind us.”

“What is the total number of enemies killed?” asked Aday. “Also when are you bringing me the prisoners.”

“While we didn’t keep an exact count, we guess we killed around 1000 people total.” replied Jarel. “I do not know if there were any scouts or members of the groups who were doing something else, but everyone who came across us as hostile is dead. The prisoners, we are just getting them ready. They are in no state to come before you.”

“Excellent work,” replied Adya. “Go and get some rest. You deserve it. We can discuss the rest later.”

Adya watched Jarel leave her parlour. Even as a cultivator, he looked tired. She would let him rest a day before sending him back out to hunt her hunters. That left her concerned about who thought they would be able to challenge his family so openly. As much as she did not want additional attention, this was getting too brazen to ignore. If others took this as a sign of weakness, then the attacks would only increase. Adya would need to task some of her cultivators to investigate the reason behind so many attacks. There was no way that it was random or a coincidence.

Having given her family enough time to refresh themselves, Adya went off to find her wayward family.

She found them all in the private dining room, just about to sit down for a hot meal. Adya ran over and hugged her dad, then her brothers. While they were trying to put up a good facade, Adya could see the weariness and loss of confidence on all their faces.

“I am glad you are all safe,” said Adya. “I was so worried.”

“Hear that, even little Adya was worried.” joked Anik, the eldest brother, hiding his real emotions. “We thought you wouldn’t even notice, what with your head buried in your books.”

“Yeah,” said Arth, sounding weary. “How did you manage to even find us. I didn’t know that you even knew where this dining room was.”

Adya rolled her eyes at her brothers’ antics.

“I always knew where it was.” replied Adya. “I just didn’t want to catch stupid by coming in here. I guess I will just have to risk it this once.”

“Adya, don’t tease your brothers.” replied Gauri in a faux strict voice, the relief of having her family back evident on her face.

“Mother, even I don’t get into as much trouble as these two.” replied Adya sweetly. “I think you should ground them until they know not to get kidnapped on a simple trip.”

“It wasn’t our fault.” shouted both brothers in unison.

“See that Father, your sons think it was all your fault.” said Adya with mock seriousness. “Mother, I think you should ground my father too.”

Adya’s father grabbed her and started to tickle her in response. “All my fault is it,” he griped. “Ground me will you. Let’s see how you do that when you are being tickled.”

Adya started to shriek with laughter as she was attacked mercilessly by her father and brothers. No one wanted to discuss serious matters in front of a young Adya. So they spent the time playing around, laughing and joking, while their mother looked on in fond exasperation.