A man in a round robe that screamed bureaucrat walked into the breakfast place and saddled up next to the chief inspector. It was apparent that the chief inspector was waiting for this man and also apparent that the man was late. Now, I didn't know if this was intentional or not, but he looked like he wanted to give us something and I was reasonably certain than this man was at first realm or so and definitely not demoni cultivator.

He put a stack of papers onto the table.

He turned to the chief inspector, nodded and then turned to me. He had been playing for time, like he was going to give me a subpoena to appear in court or some of the shit. As soon as I could buy take it back? I would. There might be a s*** ton of people in the demonic cultivator hunting circle, now that I dislodged their biggest nest, but we were going to have to let the guys at work there handle this. Handle this. It would be very quickly evident how many were actually demonic cultivators and how many weren't, especially with the interrogators who had a good idea of who was already on their side. I was going to offer them to go through and check several hundred members if they could arrange it, but I wasn't going to give that without bit of payment.

He turned to me.

"I'm Freud, aide to the comptroller. I'm sure that wondering why the chief inspector brought me here. I brought you the important forms that will let you requisition your pay for killing these demonic cultivators. I just need you to fill out all these in triplicate and send them back to the office of the management of the budget and you'll get your pay within five to seven business days," the man said.

"Nice to meet you," I said. "I see that this isn't listing all of our captures or kills here?"

He scanned the list.

"Sir, please fill these out to the best of your ability."

It wasn't very often that government bureaucrats came to me to have me sign forms for money, but I was going to accept that.

Bureaucracy was always a little bit of a work in progress.

There had to be some leeway in the amount of things the government workers could do, but also they needed to do their function. And if this guy's function was to travel the places to make demonic cultivator killers happy, I was pretty sure that I was now getting the very important person treatment.

"I'll have these forms back to you within..." I regarded the chief inspector.

"Half an hour," he said.

"...Ten minutes," I replied.

Egiya copied my word effortlessly. Her dao of forgery would be world class, if she ever decided to do anything like that. Not that anyone in a mentor role would try to do that for her. Nope. That definitely wasn't something that anyone would try to get her to do, ever.

"All right, so in order to forge this correctly," I said. "You need to imitate my signature."

"I'll remind you of the chief inspector is right here," Freud, the man from the office of management and budget said.

"All I'm having to do is copy these forms so that I can sign it multiple times really easily. I would never ever suggest that she was going to sign for me. All she's doing is making clear where I need to sign. You have given me just enough to keep me busy for some reason."

We took the five minutes to sign the forms, completely surprising the man and the chief inspector with how fast we were doing things.

"Alright, that is done," I said. "Now if you both don't have anything else for us, we are going to make our preparations to head back to Western Jewel."

Both men looked shocked. Neither of my companions nor my spirit beast stirred. They knew the deal.

We came in, we kicked ass, and then we left. We had a hot trail and now we didn't have the benefit of that hot trail, so we were going to pack it at in. If our handlers wanted to come back with us that was on them.

"Cultivator Pidge, the emperor has requested that you report on your findings," the aide said. "As such we will be in contact."

"Well you can have your people call on my people," I said.

"Send a message through the Western Jewel branch of the Moon clan," Lee said.

Egiya wrote down the clans address and gave it to Freud.

We said goodbyes and let them go. It was not even that great of a breakfast. But the sausages happened to be one of the best sausages I've ever had. Yeah I stole some from my girlfriend, wouldn't you?

---

"This money feels great, mostly because I got it from betting against you both and winning," I said.

"You knew that they were coming," Min said, well inside of throwable range above my shoulder.

"Yes, but they knew that I might know that, so it's on them to make a bad bet," I said, waiting for the line at the ticket booth to die down. "You know that there's this line that my dad likes to sign from this rapper- Win the Superbowl and drive off in a Hyundai- and I have never felt it more than here."

"A hyundai?" Egiya said. "One of those iron golems? You had those on earth?"

"They uh what...?" I said.

"Iron golems. Ancient. Made by a dynasty prior to the current emperor? Before Tigers used to smoke?"

Lee nudged me.

"You seriously haven't heard of hyundai?" Lee said. "You've told us about divorce but not golems."

"Well, uh in my world that's a type of car, which is like a cart but with a motor that makes it move fast."

The line moved exactly enough to infuriate me.

"Why would you need a fast cart? You can always run faster than a cart," Egiya said.

"Normal humans in my world are nowhere near this strong. They definitely aren't this fast, either," I said, stepping forward less than two paces. The capital took queues seriously.

We were four people away from getting tickets when they finally explained how yes they were real things and this wasn't some elaborate joke at my expense. Then they asked me about what a superbowl was and I had to just sigh.

---

We spent our time on the airship resting. I was going to need some time. I was feeling that expenditure of energy but I was also feeling burnt out. I knew that I was about to have some heavy conversations with the Mandarin and that was going to be the easy one.

I didn't know if he was going to go on a hunt and try to bring me along. He seemed happy enough with the presence that my recovery team was doing. I decided to delay meeting with the Mandarin until I could do a full download with Lorenzo. When we got back we went to the Kang residence first to speak to Ellen and drop off her daughter in one piece.

That was when we caught Lorenzo scandalously drinking tea with the woman. Now I know that she had a husband somewhere, but I had never seen hide nor hair of the man. I wouldn't put it past him to be a gentleman and I was glad that he had a friend now, but it felt odd.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"So your girl? The moon clan has been working on breaking her cultivation," Lorenzo said after offering me some street meat. "They think that they can undo the damage to her dantian and put her on a different path. She seems like she would be receptive to hunting demonic cultivators down."

"I would be honored to tell her about my path. I don't think that it will give her the ability to see the mark, but..." I said.

"Oh, that's the other thing. She can see them now. The taoists are going to do...well the closest thing I can say to what it is... it's like skin surgery. They're extracting the bit with the tattoo and that bit is going to be sent to..."

The elder Kang coughed as she searched for the word.

"To the office of management and budget," Ellen said.

Of course it would be something like that. And of course you would know immediately. As a previously high-ranking cultivator, she knew where in the city. She knew the offices and I was going to have to get back with Moon City to see if we had any buddies there that he could talk to. Every single time that they asked me to fill in my paperwork. I just wondered where I went. With a filing somewhere? They weren't putting into a computer. Was it just going someplace just to go someplace. It felt inadequate. Like the actual level of bureaucy did not rise to the task that I was given. I killed some one cultivators. I want to claim a reward. It was well established that I do these things. They know that I do this. So what the heck's going on and why do I have to fill out all the stuff to get my money?

"We expect you to spend all afternoon filling out forms to get your reward transferred from the capital to here," Ellen said. " It's a shame that you only found a few. But you did expose their hideout and maybe some of the victims will be able to come back with some better information."

"Every single cultivator that you took down is now on some blacklist somewhere, meaning they won't be showing their faces anytime soon," Lorenzo said. "They are not going to be happy about this. But the fact is that they don't know who you are. Your anonymity is your greatest strength."

"Well thank you for that. I feel like finding the one guy with the curly hair in the city will be very easy if you just paid any attention. But everyone is just so self-absorbed that it just doesn't happen," I said. "It would be great if I could just rely on people to do their jobs."

"We can all hope that dearie. It's never going to happen. Only my wildest dreams do I feel like the governments will actually do a job promptly in the right way. If I ever see it done that way? I'm going to assume that I have gone off the deep end."

I didn't want to think about what would put her in the deep end. After losing basically her husband's attention and having her daughter run all around following me, she had enough out of life. Her daughter was doing great on my tutelage though and I expected that she would hit the third realm far faster than she would have otherwise. The fact that she even got to the second world was due to a lot of work we had been doing together.

"And I'm sorry but your daughter was amazing, I would always love to have her work with me. You should be so proud of her. I know that I am."

I swear that mothers love to hear that more than anything else. It was her son and she didn't have any sons, she might have acted differently but Sgt got a little bit choked up. Lorenza battered around the back as she just held back to yours. I could tell that I probably should have said that one. Her daughter wasn't in the room, but oh well. If I'm proud of you, I want to tell you I'll let you know often. It's something that you deserve. In her case? She was now trying to get the idea of what she wanted her mom to be and the actuality of what her mother was and realize that those were two different things.

If she wants that relationship with her mother, she needs to understand that she was not going to get that fantasy mom. She was going to get this woman.

Sure. She was old and broken and flawed but she was supportive. Sure. She rarely left her block but she liked it where she was.

So did Egiya. Of course that one was far younger. It took us a few minutes. Say our goodbyes and then it was just the two of us. I was going to stay with them and I was heading back to the place where I slept for dinner with my girlfriend. We are walking through one of the districts that I've been through many times and new like the back of my hands. I grabbed her hand with my hand and it felt like the most lewd thing that you could ever imagine.

Just out in front of everyone. I was letting her know that I liked her.

Honestly I could have dropped trail at any other time and felt more comfortable doing that in the middle of nowhere.

We went back to the moon clan and got a hard refund. Once we talked to the clan elders, I took her back to my room and debriefed her as well. Thankfully, she was wearing one of the best sets of lingerie I just seen at resting bitch lace and I was just a really happy guy.

"So this works for you?" She said, checking me out.

I took off my robe. The top one felt a bit loose.

"This is good. You don't understand that. That's my ex-wife's shop and it's kind of weird that you go get your lingerie from her right?"

She ran a finger off my chest. I was like that, I was not paying attention to anything at all except for her. And by the time we were done? I was sore in so many places that I just just lay there for a while. Surprisingly, she did all the work. She was really getting bold about what she wanted and I was loving every second of it.

Once we're done doing all that, we went back to cuddling and I went back to my existential trade about having to talk to the Mandarin. I did not want to talk to him.

I really didn't want to give a report at all but if they kept coming here to talk to me, I was going to have to. That meant that at some point in time I was going to have to actually talk to them to save myself the hassle of doing the opposite.

We spent the night wrapped up just naked arms and legs, a mess of lust and love crossbreeding into some nefarious purposes. It was well worth the trip and I advise all people to from time to time get time with their girlfriends and just let it happen.

If the bureaucracy of the Western dual government had one point, it was this. They wanted to drown a man in paperwork. I feel like I give him enough interviews that they could write this s*** down for me. But no, they wouldn't. Every single top-tier inspector had swung by my place. Usually they came with a friend or two.

And one instance, I was actively en flagrante with my girlfriend. It was not the best time but we had to clean up quickly.

Every single time I repeated my story and every single time I checked to make sure that they were not one of the demonic cultivators. It sounded like what they were doing was drip feeding me every single member of the blue rose to make sure that they were on the right side and then because of that one cultivator in the the Red Fang sect that didn't have a tattoo, they were testing everyone's cultivation.

A one-two step to make sure that every single person was the exact person that they thought they had. No one was going to be able to hide this. I was surprised at how many inspectors they had. I mean of course a mature police force needs a certain amount of people to be detectives and solve crimes and shit but in the end how many did you need? Inspector here. Kind of meant something more like a sergeant back home. The blue rose didn't have a detective division or a non-uniform division. They just all had the same authority so long as they were strong enough.

They also had to be smart enough. So once you had enough brains and brawn put together, you might make it to be an inspector. To make it a chief inspector, it was an even bigger leap and they were only about a dozen of those. Each one was at least third realm, which is saying something because not everyone passes through the first threshold or the second threshold.

What I found out almost universally is that they were very skeptical of my methods. They liked the results, but I was a black box to them. The inputs came in and the outputs came out but they didn't understand and I didn't care to teach them as apparently I had figured out how to impart my knowledge. It had to do with where I was from and my spirit bond.

The fact that I could Bond a spirit beast and use that spirit beast 's abilities to figure out who was a demonic cultivator led to some clashes between the blue robes and the Moon Clan.

The moon clan was all but ordered to try and direct their spirit beasts to bond with whomever was willing and able to be cleared for the duty.

The spirit beasts had many to say about that. I heard the talk of unionization mentioned several times and it made sense to me. And a place where everything of any substance was done through collective bargaining, you had to expect that intelligent creatures would try to do the same thing.

When Min presented the spirit beast with demands of the blue rose. She almost got laughed out of the clan itself. It took them nearly two weeks to warm up the day's idea and then another three weeks before they were willing to offer up the first of many bonds. I laughed every time that the blue robes tried to strong arm the moon beasts into doing things.

They were not used to this and it was clear that the blue robes had a very heavy hand.

At the same time, work on the victims continued and it became apparent that a lot of them were able to get to the third realm with some work. Many of their dantians had been examined and seemed to be more pure than the average person of their realm. This meant that if we wanted to we could have brought them on board.

A small group of the victims began to branch out from the post-traumatic stress training. Xueyie was leading them through martial arts exercises to calm their inner demons so to speak. When the first one made a breakthrough to the second realm we cheered. When the third one did we began to take notes.

If there was something about them having lived through a trauma of that type, I would be absolutely terrified to see their growth as a result.

It was pretty clear that the singular event had changed them. So much that they were all ready for what had to be the next realm or higher.

The Taoists and the Moon Clan began to see the value of installing a trainer within their ranks after that.

It was something that I'd never expected. It was welcome, of course.

So there it was a month and a half after getting back and I was finally feeling like myself again. All my bones were healed. I had a new girlfriend who was amazing. Even Min was less snippy.

All in all, things were looking up. I even got time to work on my cultivation and that felt great. All in all, things were looking up.

So of course that was when the summons came from the emperor.

---

THE END VOLUME 2.