The battle didn’t last long after that. The dao angel burst into immortal and Rin Wi took it all back. She cycled the qi through and through and the dao realigned itself with her being and she stepped into the immortal realm.

Her sisters wept. They were all hugging each other as they watched, crying visibly at Rin’s declaration. Then Rin stepped forward, leaping through the dragon gate and into the immortal realm.

Very standard cultivator stuff.

Then she came down, her face carrying a sad but accepting smile.

All her sisters ran out to hug her, crowding the girl and clinging onto her now immortal form. There was more crying, more hugging, lots of smiling and questioning as well.

After a few minutes of emotional reactions, Rin walked up to me and smiled. I smiled right back.

“Thank you for your guidance Mister Bill,” she said with half a bow.

“No problem,” I replied. “That was one hell of a therapy session though, real violent.”

Rin Wi smiled and nodded.

“If only we could all beat up physical manifestations of our traumas,” I joked.

Again, Rin Wi smiled and nodded.

“Thank you,” she repeated.

Rin Wi clearly wanted to say more, but I just shook my head.

“You’re welcome,” I replied. “You don’t need to say anymore.”

Rin Wi looked at me, smiled, then nodded.

The walk back was quite loud, possibly the loudest the girls had ever been in my presence. There was lots of chatter and lots of questions, all aimed at Rin, and a decent lecture that came from Mei revolving around proper preparation and actions one should take when ascending.

They just talked to one another, almost forgetting me entirely.

Progress comes in small doses I guess.

Once we got to my house, the girls split apart, heading to their own residences nearby. They had gone and constructed their own places, all of them scattered through the valley for their convenience. I was willing to let them live with me at first, but their consistent unprompted aid got really annoying really fast. There were only so many “honored masters” a person could take.

Gauntlet stepped out to greet me at my destination.

“How is she?” I asked the poor golem.

Gauntlet held up a small enchanted cage with a bed and a sleeping baby inside of it.

“No tantrums?” I asked.

The golem shook his head.

“That’s good,” I muttered.

Babies were hard to deal with. Super babies who could crush mountains in their sleep were worse. The average fifth rank held a tremendous amount of power. They could flatten cities and change landscapes. Put all that into a ten-pound baby with a primordial bloodline and beast-like instincts and you get a terrifyingly powerful super baby. She could probably smack an immortal down without much of a struggle.

So even if she was asleep, without any control over her power, a misplaced fart could spell genocide for this whole region.

I opened the cage, gently bringing the slumbering child out of there.

“How ya feeling?”

“Uggah.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Uggah uggah!”

I nodded and pulled out all the food Medin had left me. The child crawled out at the speed of sound and suckled it all down in an instant.

A second later the child lay there, rubbing her stomach and sitting next to a clattering plate that was still spinning from her instant devouring technique. The baby burped before squealing in joy, crawling back to her cage, and sleeping again.

I didn’t know much about super babies, but I knew that babies slept a whole lot and this one was no exception. The qi within her had yet to completely settle and her body was still making adjustments to itself every day.

Which was sort of like a baby, in a way. But it was also just like a cultivator consolidating their power after a recent rank-up, and I assumed it was a mixture of both at the current moment.

“Keep charge then,” I said to Gauntlet with a nod, and Gauntlet nodded back.

********

Mo Whe of the Void Blade sect sat spread and comfortable in his chair. He had purchased it from a crafting sect, one of the best in the empire, and among all he owned, this large cushioned seat was his most prized object.

This was because Mo was a bureaucrat. Most of his time was spent on his ass anyway, and the way Mo saw it, if he was to sit down for most of his life, then it might as well be the most enjoyable thing he did. Not that Mo minded his job. No, Mo loved his job.

Most of his brothers had fought one another, a few of them dying to get themselves to be the next in line for the Patriarch’s title. His father, Long Whe, was a proud and powerful leader but also pants as loose as a canyon, though Mo would never tell him that. The man had fathered approximately fifty-six children and had over seventeen wives and concubines.

“Spread the seeds and may the strongest blossom!”

That was what his father had said about his children. A little animalistic of him, Mo thought, but it was the way things were. It was the way cultivators were. His father, his grandfather, and his great-grandmother had all been the same way. His great-grandmother had already ascended to the higher realms, seeking her chances at strength with another sect and his grandfather was planning to do the same.

His father now led the sect as the patriarch and in planning for his realm ascension, had told his children to prove themselves worthy of leading the clan and possibly one day, even the sect.

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Mo Whe did not prove himself worthy. In truth, as soon as he heard the news, he plotted ways of proving himself unworthy. He didn’t want to lead or show responsibility, he wanted to be one of the old uncles of the sect that stayed around for a million years leaching off the sect and rotting in the corner.

That was Mo Whe’s dream, to be a fat old man sitting in a comfy chair, and finally, with this job, he had reached it.

He had been assigned to govern over a small group of a thousand regions, most of them boring and useless, some of them lacking even a single immortal. It was the backwoods of the continent, the boonies. All the land had empty qi and even emptier regions.

To a person seeking power and prosperity, it was a curse. There were no accolades to be found here, only boring old middle management work for the empire.

But it was perfect for Mo Whe. It was an easy job and it was the easiest job he could get while still having the position of a scion. Reports came in and he glanced at them, and more importantly, he rarely had to report anything to the higher-ups himself.

He’d have to host a passing guest every decade or two, some members of another clan flying through the region on their way to somewhere else, but most of the time it was quiet and comfortable.

Mo sank deeper into the cushion.

“Quiet and comfortable,” Mo muttered.

“Minister Whe?” A servant spoke.

Mo rose, ready for dinner and sniffing the air in anticipation. When he smelled nothing, Mo opened his eyes to see a servant standing in a bowing manner and offering him a scroll on a jade green plate.

“What is this?” Mo asked.

“A report came in Master Whe, just now delivered through a personal runner.”

“A runner?” Mo spat.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Not a teleport?”

“No, my lord.”

Disgraceful. Mo thought.

What barbaric barren region would dare to send in a report outside of the official times? If they couldn’t afford to teleport a scroll all the way here, then they should at least have the decency to bother him during official business hours.

Mo grabbed the scroll and cut through the metal golden seal with his nails. He opened the thing, reading through its contents immediately.

Mo groaned.

Why? Why did this have to happen now?

An unregistered immortal, while unimportant, was a chore.

“Did they send anything else along?” Mo asked.

“Yes your lordship,” the servant replied, holding up a small ornate box.

Mo flicked his finger, opening the thing and pulling out a rather dull-looking piece of jade.

“Good,” Mo said with a nod. “Run this through the local archives and see if there are any matches. Report back to me immediately after you get the results.”

The servant nodded, taking the piece of jade and the scroll back along with him.

A rogue immortal was nothing scary, not to the Void Blade sect, but a rogue immortal was still in many minor ways, a threat. The jade piece they’d sent over contained the immortal’s qi signature which could be used to cross-reference with the Void Blade Sect’s database to determine if the man was known by any other name.

It wasn’t perfect of course. Many immortals hid from their gaze, a consequence of the Sect’s ambivalence rather than ignorance. Most immortals simply weren’t worth cataloging, and an immortal who hid in an unnamed region was likely to be the same.

A servant stepped, one Mo wanted to see this time. She was beautiful and draped in cloth made from a spirit sheep’s wool. With her came several others each carrying plates that burst with qi-filled delicacies. The smell danced on Mo Whe’s nose and the woman, knowing what he wanted, came and sat on his lap.

“Would you like me now or later my lord?” The vixen asked.

Mo Whe smiled as he touched her, his hand making its way to her inner thighs.

“Later my beauty.”

The girl pouted.

“Oh, but I will be ever so lonely, unwanted and unloved, by my lonesome.”

“Oh nonsense. Come! We shall eat together! There’s no need for tears!”

The girl giggled affectionately and pulled him into a kiss that was placed half on his lips and half on his cheek.

This temptress, Mo thought.

Not a minute later, they both had their food laid out on the table, Mo eating at one end of the table and his lover indulging quietly at the other end.

If Mo were a smarter man, he would have noticed her eyeing him as ate, her hand merely moving over the food and barely consuming it.

If Mo were a shrewd man, he would have noticed how she came to him today, instead of the normal practice of him seeking her.

But Mo was neither smart nor shrewd, just lazy. And the woman managed to inspect him to her liking unnoticed.

“Gu Xin, my love, tell me how the food tastes,” Mo Whe asked the woman.

“It’s delightful,” she replied. “But not as delightful as you.”

Mo Whe beamed at the compliment and Gu Xin giggled in response. She didn’t know how the man hadn’t picked up on her obvious information-gathering techniques. She’d been blatant on numerous occasions, but either he knew and didn’t care or he cared but didn’t know. Gu Xin suspected the latter.

It wasn’t as if the Void Blade Sect had any obvious secrets hidden in this area. You’d be lucky enough to find a decent fifth-rank cultivator out here, much less a decent immortal. But still, Gu Xin was curious and Mo Whe relented, even going on a tirade about these backwoods cultivators and their total lack of manners in this regard.

Gu Xin had smiled, nodding along with his rant and validating his irritation. But in truth, it was a struggle to not call him out on his lazy governing. The nameless region was nameless by nature, they couldn’t muster up enough spirit stones for a long-distance teleport, much less an interregional teleport.

Each region was tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of miles away from one another. And the runner, who was probably the fastest man they had, had movement techniques that even Mo Whe’s servants wouldn’t even bother learning. Of course, their interruption was mistimed. But at least they did their duty of reporting the changes to the empire.

Gu Xin smiled, not letting her face betray her thoughts, but Mo Whe wouldn’t have noticed either way. The man was far too self-indulgent to see anything past his face and status.

Gu Xin smiled and continued the charade, till she eventually guided the man to his bedchambers afterward and paid the price for her curiosity.

After the deed was done, Gu Xin only had to wait a minute till Mo Whe slumbered. She knew that once he began snoring, it would take an earthquake to wake him up, and she would be free to leave his side.

Gu Xin frowned before she even left the bed. That was bad demeanor. She shouldn’t be revealing her emotions around her target whether or not she believed they were asleep, especially one of Mo Whe’s rank.

But she couldn’t help it. The man was perfectly unbearable. All he did was sit and eat and wave away the numerous reports from the regions he was supposed to govern. He treated his position like a child treated their meal, picking and tossing the bits he didn’t want until only the unhealthy vices and deserts were left on the table.

Gu Xin couldn’t stand it. All that power yet so little action.

She walked through the manor, winding through its wide corridors and servant-filled abodes. It was large, almost half a mile in length and width, all unnecessary, all indulgent.

She finally escaped the self-centered lair, making her way outside of the residence, and seeing the open green clearing and the night sky that stood above it. A spillage of sparkling dots decorated the backdrop and a cascade of moons stood on top of them.

Ah Marin was impossibly big. Its weight drew in stars and planets into its orbit, some large and some small. The seven major stars that rotated around the planet provided a strange day and night pattern for the planet, painting it with alternating zebra stripes of day and night. And nights like this, a true night when the edges of the horizon didn’t leak the pink glow of another sun were rare, only coming around only a few times a year.

Gu Xin pushed, channeling her qi into a movement technique. Her legs rebelled against the earth and within a moment, she was in the clouds. Mountains flashed below her as her body flew through the skies.

A hundred miles, a thousand miles, ten thousand miles, all passed beneath her in an instant. Her qi split the air, gently moving it aside for her body to glide through. Finally, she slowed down and touched down gently on a sand-sloped beach.

Gu Xin looked toward the night sky. She had traversed tens of thousands of miles, but the sky didn’t care, it glittered just the same. The same stars and moons greeted her as if she hadn’t left at all.

Except for one. One small and almost dust-like planet shining dullly at the edge of the horizon. Even Gu Xin, who could see a thousand miles out with clarity, had to circulate an advanced sight technique to catch a glimpse of it.

It was so small compared to everything else around it that no one beneath the fifth rank would ever be able to see it, even if it orbited right above them.

From here the moon looked to be colored a dull earthly brown, but Gu Xin could see what they were, even from millions of miles away. Even when she couldn’t actually see the planet-sized ball of chains that held her master, the image of them still burned clearly in her mind.

She would be disappointed to see her now, groveling and low at some scion’s beck and call.

“Master Fey Lin,” Gu Xin whispered. “One day I will free you, or one day I will die.”