Of all the things that I had never expected to do, talking to the father of one of my comrades was high on the list of possibilities. It was so fresh that I hadn't even expected to have to identify the man.

To be so close to the father of an enemy? Even a former one? And then have them pull some charm on one of my crew?

He had just been tipped off and shown up. That was very similar to what I expected the red fang to do. Of course he was here to see his daughter, and who could blame him. Even though she wasn't the one receiving the award, she had a large part in helping us do what we're doing. In fact, I was beginning to think that maybe I need to ask him some question about formations.

I sidled up next to the elder Kang. "Is there a formation that can make a portal to...."

His grey mane miraculously stayed in place. "There's a formation that can transfer someone between worlds, yes. It's very complicated. Basically no one below the fifth realm is able to achieve that with any amount of success. I have done it exactly once."

He rubbed his hands together. The smudges remained.

"But it is possible so this is something I could do, with enough training?"

I itched to get out of the area and take him someplace secure. Some place where I couldn't be overheard by random cultivators would be great. So long as I was here? I was a target. They knew where to find me so it wasn't like I was going to be 'running away.'

I just wasn't going to wait all day just to be told when to speak to the emperor. If they came to me and talked to me great. Otherwise I was going to slowly get us away from the center of the court and see if we can make our way out.

"Are you a fighter, Mr. Kang?" I said. "Because your daughter has become a hell of a fighter. She's grown in leaps and bounds even only since I met her."

"Is that so?" He said, eyeing her. Egiyas was there in our orbit. It felt like I was playing out a reverse betchdel test and failing badly.

"She's done so much for the victims as well," I said.

Under our fatherly gaze she flowered. I was expecting her to be meek and submissive or something but no she liked the bit of attention that we gave her. Or maybe it was seeing a father after so long and having the image of her father and her mind stuck at a place where she was actually thinking that they had a good relationship. I didn't know what they were talking about before, but she seemed to be somewhat happy. I want the image of a person. We think we know clashes with the actual person. That's when it begins to be a problem. She hasn't seen this man in a long time and she was probably romanticizing who he was in relationship to her. Who she was since then had changed significantly. I wouldn't put a pastor to impress him with some new path technique or a manual that she had made herself. The girl had been copying down some of the high grade path techniques to make duplicates for sex around the city. She ain't even Days before I even met her. And now, she was advancing in her formations as well.

Sometimes, I forgot about her because she was only in the second realm. Even so that still meant she was still strong as hell.

Despite that she had an outside effect on our group's work. It wasn't that she just dealt with the mooks that the Red Fang threw at us. She also knew a lot about the formations, enough to get us out of trouble once or twice.

She got us into trouble using her knowledge almost as many times, but I'm not going to fault her for that. She really did her job well and then when she was done with that; she worked for me at least well enough that I retained her. Of course she would have to do something graduous for me to drop her, but that was all well and good. In the short term, she was one of the few women that I trusted with my life and as she doted upon her father, I realized that she have been missing something for a long time. I wasn't that something, I might joke around.

I pretend that I'm her adopted dad but real dad? He really had a hold on her.

"Do you need to stay around for anyone?" He said.

"I would actually like to leave now. My handler was yelling at me before I came up to see you guys," I said.

"Shocking of the person that yells about protocol was yelling at you for any reason," Min said, from Egiyas arms.

"Just because he yelled about protocol doesn't mean that he comes from a broken home. I mean he did but that's besides the point," I said.

People started coming out with food trays and I was delighted. Unfortunately there was no bagels and cream cheese. Even though there was a significant amount of delicious goodness, I had to come tell myself with cheese and crackers or the cultivator equivalent of it.

I expected them to roll out some sort of pills or something like that and then I would be asked which ones I wanted to snort and then the entirely serious Butler would grind them up and present them to me. And this would be entirely played straight and everyone around would be like. Why isn't he doing this? And I'd be like is this the worst joke ever?

That fully melded with my idea of how upper crust cultivators would be. They would also ban those same drugs to the lower classes intentionally to get people into private prisons or something.

I realized that I was zoning out and I got back into it. This is not the time or the place for me to drop my guard. I could see the chancellor walking around and the line of people who wanted to speak to the emperor was long, but neither of them are close enough for me to think that they were going to talk to me. I wasn't going to get it on the line, if the man wanted to talk to me I would do it later.

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That bitch better have my money though.

"I hear that there's a cash prize for what you did?" The elder kang said.

"There is a cash prize and dividing that between my group because they've all been so helpful. I couldn't kill them all by myself. I couldn't even find them all by myself. These guys? Especially your daughter? They made this possible. And never forget that, Egiya."

I flash her a warm, welcoming smile and she smiled back. She's come a long way. For a long time, she wouldn't smile and she would always belittle herself and now it felt like she was a member of the team and she would actually take a compliment. And despite being smart and knowing all this stuff, she did not feel inferior.

Like honestly, she wasn't even good enough for imposter syndrome in her own mind. I can't imagine that. All she had to do was stop letting those inside thoughts out into the world. We had worked on this a lot and right now I was reaping the benefits. Not nearly as much as she was but I would have to ask her later.

Main things that I'd asked her to do was to figure out some of the kind of complicated formations that we didn't know much about. There were several in place that she could not make heads or tails of.

Then I heard the problem child talking.

" Do you want to know why I hate mortals? They're leeches. All they do is drag us down and try to give us more and more tasks to keep them safe. We build up walls to keep the spare pieces out. We expend our energy to create crops for them to eat. We make so many sacrifices for them because they are weak and we are strong. Honestly, they're a burden upon us all. I do it because I have to but against these guys? I wonder if I should continue to do so. I've already got the accolades I've always wanted thanks to the chancellor. Now, I need them to think about what else they can do for me."

The strong cultivator was speaking with two men in particular and he was definitely trying to be overheard at least by me. I knew what he was doing. He had taken his time to etch him closer to try to get underneath my skin. He did I knew something about him that he didn't want anyone else to know. He also wanted to get me alone. I was not going to give him that chance.

Here? I was safe right now.

I was thinking about how I was going to have to have moon fei clear out our rooms before we even got there. It was part of the regular everyday protocol to switch rooms but now I was going to have to have him switch hotels.

The addition of the elder kang meant that we were going to have to do our best to keep him safe as well. He wasn't a fighter, clearly. He quite as clearly looked like he spent his time behind computer even though I knew that a lot of his energy went into formation work.

You probably saw anyone who was an immortal or had yet to come and spotted for himself. I wondered how much energy he could. It get out of immortal cultivator though. That might be beyond his abilities. Or it might be the exact thing he needed to advance to one of the higher tier realms and go through trials and tribulations.

At some point in time, if I stuck around I was expecting to have to fight heaven itself. That might not be exactly what was going on, but I got the sense that no one ever wanted to talk about their trials. I wanted to hear about them, but no one was offering. Mr. Kobayashi in the back was monologuing and I wasn't having it.

"Can we go now?" Min said, snatching up half of a tray of biscuits. "The sexual tension between me and a hot meal is rising to an unacceptable degree."

"Your spirit beast certainly talks very well for herself," Egiya said. "But maybe let's not talk about sexual tension here in the court, yeah?"

I tended to agree with her on a lot of things, this in particular.

"Let's get going if we're all done then," I said. "I see a fifth realm enforcer that works for the protocol office."

Surprisingly everyone followed me that way. It was good and I was more like a goose that was leading them someplace than anything else. But it was slow going through the crowd. Every so often I could hear a snatch of monologue from Kobayashi. He's really going to have to think about where he wanted to be interred.

His time here was definitely limited. Very soon. Now someone realize that he was on the wrong side and it didn't matter what the emperor said. If you were found killing people for sport or just to power up, you are not going to last long. If you came up against me? You were not going to last long. If you came up and monologued nearby me to try to get me to give into something that you were doing? Then you already have lost. He had lost when he had taken on that tattoo. Now, it was just coming to get him.

It was going to bite him in the ass and he had no idea. I smiled, thinking about how much money I would get if I'm turning in a cultivator of a higher realm than I was. Was it too much to hope for enough money to get this guy to make me a formation back to Los Angeles? Maybe but I was hoping for a lot. They'd give me much and I am going to request much because I was tired of sitting around while my girls were probably back at home bawling their eyes out about losing both of their parents.

Would I offer Maxine a trip back as well?

Probably, But then again she left me because she wanted more adventure in her life. And I was the boring stable guy. That did not bode well for our continued divorcee lifestyle.

You know what everyone always asked how , but very few people ask how your divorce is going. Mine's going pretty shittily because my ex-wife decided to show up at the same place that I had been reborn at. She could have at least had the common decency to go through a portal to a different world or something, but no, she was here.

She was here and I was here and it was enough of a problem that I was now thinking about ways to leave this world to get away from her.

It wasn't selfish to think about myself. I thought about myself a lot. It was selfish for me to think about her first. She made it very clear that we were not an item. We were not together and not only that she had left us. I had moved It had to have been an effect of being close to that high realm cultivator. It was really being very obvious that he was doing something. on. I had a girlfriend before I was sent here. Things were getting serious. Then I made a bone-headed mistake with Lauren and we broke up.

Now? I was happy with my new girlfriend and I was living a life that well. Not ideal. Was pretty darn good. I missed all my family but I was going to be taking steps to get the back. As we got closer to the protocol guys, I could feel the tension evaporate.

It was very evident that he was doing something, especially as we got out his fear of influence. For him to now affect us, he would have to affect the dozens of people in between us and that was unacceptable to him. He wanted to kill me. That was sure, but he did not want to be found out or to be pegged as the killer. That would destroy his image and if I was guessing correctly he would not be top cover for any demonicultivator activity. For sure. If somebody was found out to be a demonicultivator they would be killed on site, but this guy? He might be able to give them insider information so they could run away from a potential raid or if they could reorganize and split. I knew that there was somebody at the top of this chain. I just didn't know where they were.

It had come to my door. I wasn't entirely sure where to find the man who could fix this, but I knew that the portable office would be very interested in this and if not, I was going to have Moon Faye get the blue robes involved. The fifth film cultivator would be a difficult thing to fight, especially if they focused on martial prowess.

With this one focusing on social prowess as far as I knew, he might be a bit weaker. I might be able to match him but he was on his home turf. The home terrif advantage was undeniable and the fact that he didn't even pretend. It was like he knew that I knew but he wasn't sure why. I was absolutely certain that he would have me killed as soon as he could if I didn't do something to stop it.