“The emperor has sent notice that you may fly at the expense of the government,” the man said.

“And I suppose that there are forms for that?” I said. “The kind that needs to be put into triplicate and all of that?”

The man sighed as if I had just taken away his puppy.

“Sir, you must be mistaken,” He said. “I’m from the office of travel and transport, not the Office of Management and Budget. Our forms are only required to be filled out in duplicate.”

His seriousness took me aback. In this shit hole of a town, to see the man was actually serious about his job and not fucking around was nice. However, he was asking for too much. There was a thing is too much paperwork.

The stack in front of him? That was it.

“Well, at least I have my sidekick with me,” I said, putting Egiya on the back.

“We’ll have those forms to you shortly,” she said.

She was immaculate. The vibes were definitely on with that girl. Her writing was his meticulous as her hair, makeup and nails. Not to mention that she had a set of robes that would have given Xueyie, our actress, a run for the money. As the brains behind the operation, she was making sure that I wasn’t going over my budget. Not that I had a reason to have money except for the victim fund.

I was a simple man. I ordered at the company store and kept it on the down low.

“I think they don’t want us to show up. Like the people that are here to help us? They’re actually not really a particular invested in their jobs,” I said.

“You can’t say that in front of them. That’s like telling people that you’re divorced. It’s not even a thing,” Egiya said.

“It’s totally a thing,” I said.

“Luck again that you have strange customs in your old world. You guys can actually be married and then not be married and not have a person die. That’s insane. But bringing it back here? That would never fly. Weddings? Marriages? Marriages are for life.”

She twirled a graphene pen.

“... And again, I think that you’re thinking about storybooks,” I said. “This isn’t a story. This is you and me and our two close friends heading on an expedition to find more of these demonic cultivators.”

Xiran, the newest recruit to the team, was still nominally an enemy that we expected could eventually turn in us. I knew in my heart hearts that she was still wrestling with the idea of her family doing the right thing and us stopping her. I didn’t know what I would have to show her to change her mind. There’s always we can kill before it becomes something that you’re not looking forward to, but you expect to be a part of your daily life. And I was speaking about the difference here between killing and murder. Murder is never okay. Killing sometimes justified, and it’s a war thing. And there was no genie of a convention here. They were going to use civilians. They were going to act out terrorist plots and there was no code of ethics to stop them from doing the most heinous thing. Possible.

Us? I might say the more evil, but we were at least lawful. Some girls might say that I was awful, but that’s on them. I’m outstanding.

“Now that we have an insider who’s turned, we’re going to get further in and see if we can recruit more. Or is it a counter recruit? I don’t know,” I said. “Speaking of which, has Xueyie decided to show up today? Or do we have to go to her after this?”

The guidance that we got from the Emperor's date was that we needed to be on the next ship out of here and that will be tomorrow morning. This gave me plenty of time to close up my affairs and talk to my people before we headed out. I knew I was going to take the three girls who had been with me from the start and the new one. I debated on taking Moon Fei, if only so it didn’t look like I was having a hero. He was not a cultivator. He had never broken through to the first realm and it was unlikely to for many reasons. At his age? I questioned his sanity. He was in his mid-twenties, probably, and still running the streets for the gangs. He would be in a valuable asset at the Capitol if he could find the right people to talk to.

I was also skeptical that he might have problems if he got into a fight with one of the demonic cultivators. He didn’t have the defense. But unlike his cousin Moon Xiru, He didn’t really have a job. This meant that if I paid him, this was his job. And I just gained a low-cost person assistant to help me out with everything that was going on.

“Do you want to walk over and check out what’s going on? Or do you think your mom needs you here?”

I didn’t want to touch on a nerve. She Kelly really wanted to go with me. Her dresses clearly had a codependent relationship with her mother that I was not going to get anywhere nearby. When I tell you it was a classic narcissistic bomb who wanted to make everything about her. Just that she had been so much more powerful before she broke her cultivation. Now, the formerly strong woman relied on the weaker one to do just about anything. It wasn’t really a problem unless it was.

We had all these classes in school about how stress can cause so many problems and how it basically eats away at you. Ellen was very stressful for Egiya because she demanded a level of work that was inconsistent with the girls’ goals.

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“I think I’ll say goodbye to Mom. We can head out.”

I met her outside, and we wandered back to the compound that had once housed the demonic cultivators. Now it was the rehabilitation clinic that Lorenzo was running. We had taken the girl Xiran there to see if she could be scared straight by seeing all the victims. It’s not like she would have readily seen this. In time, while she had cultivated the path of the demonic cultivator, she would have had to take another human’s life in order to empower herself. Now, she had broken her cultivation, allowing her to reform it. The Reformation process was still going through. If we could pump good blood into there to get it to go for, we needed it to be. She was going to be back in the first realm soon. But the thing that I want the most was to know if she was really going to be on our side.

“Have you seen her since last week?” I asked nonchalantly.

“I think that she’ll be a fine addition to the team. Unfortunately, I also think that we need to monitor her,” Egiya said.

It has decided that if we were to take her, someone would have to watch her and be her handler. Then the girls all photos blocked to decide that I was the one that was going to be responsible for them. As I was the strongest person and the most likely to be the one to put her down if something happened, it had become my job to watch over this girl. She couldn’t do much when she was sleeping and we again a pair of bracelets that would sap her aura and energy so she wouldn’t be able to use any of that while she was sleeping. But still. In time, we were all going to trust her or we’re going to have to kill her. She knew too much that either way; it was going to happen.

When we arrived at the training yard of the former Red Fang compound, a lot was going on. Unlike the other times that I’ve been here recently, it looked like they were hosting a lot of local talent as the City in Western Jewel decided what to do with these victims that had already been given a death sentence before, and we’re only now coming back to the realization that they might fully be alive.

I mean, I would buy all that for a dollar.

She looked rung out. Of all the girls in my growing evil operation, she was the most out and out, had been an evil princess and now was working for us. Or at least that’s what she claimed. Come to think of it, wouldn’t that make her a demonic princess?

If there’s one thing in this world that was constant, it was that there were no actual demons. They were demonic looking Spirit beasts, but the actual demonic sect was based on their pathway being evil. They didn’t make deals with demons or devils. They just killed people and used their bodies for fuel. The distinction might be small, but it was significant. I was going to be walking into some Cthulhu, like summoning circle worrying about new demons. We all knew what these animals were. It was just the way they showed up. That was the difference.

“Xiran,” I said, moving to see her directly. She looked up, hope blossoming in her eyes.

“Sir,” she said, kneeling. “My life is forfeit.”

Oh yeah, she was definitely going to need therapy. I think we were all going to need therapy. It was this morning before I saw the work that we did. Or in particular? She’d be betrayed by her family in a gruesome way. Luckily, we caught her at the right time, otherwise it might have been a problem. It sounded like they had set her up to trap or trap me. Of course, I wasn’t having any of it. Now, she was acting faithful looking faithful and I couldn’t read this in her head, but I was pretty sure that she was ready for us to come help her out of her rut and into the light.

“Well, that’s a start. How’s your training been going?” I said.

“My dantian and meridians have been reformed and I no longer can draw energy from how I did,” she said. “It’s honestly a relief to be like this. The moon clan thinks I would be a good fighter.”

“Game recognize game, little sis,” I said.

I reached out with my nascent soul, the intangible sixth sense that I now had basically caressed her and feel her cultivation pathway. Pathway. It was the most invasive thing that I could do. Short of stripping her down and doing. You know what? But she expected this for me. She knew I was going to check her cultivation path. The chances are that I would let her go free? That was not a thing. She had a long way to come back here and earn her trust. She had been working diligently with Lorenzo to get herself back to. If not good, at least to a place where she wasn’t a menace to society. I had a vested interest in her. Right before I went through the whole ordeal of taking down the nest of Red Fang cell members in district 40 of the Capitol, I realize I had no problem killing women who were inside of this game who it opted into it. But this girl? She grew up in this and she knew nothing else. When I pulled her aside and tried to take her out of the game, she will get it out. Now I had to pull up to my end of the bargain and get her out of this game. Having her as the hound dog to snap out of other Deborah Cultivator sales meant she had to do a fair bit of work before we were done. But we would dismantle the institution and brick by brick if we had to.

Starting with the closest places that we can get to by a ship, we were going to plot out a few spots and then see if we could get someone to use a higher level cultivation to transport us there. Apparently, there was an option to take a transportation pathway that would bypass the deed to use an airship to cross the continent. And with the North American continent going through the reported hell, that was a divine beast trampling all over it. I wanted to avoid those kinds of problems.

The kinds of problems that I wanted were the kinds where I had to sign between two different delicious street foods. And oh, wouldn’t you just know it? I had enough to buy both at the same time? Now I am fixed now. I had the chilling problem of having to decide which one to eat first. That was the problem I needed in my life.

Xiran represented the opportunity to do the right thing. She was hungry to get revenge on her family. Or at least she said she was. She was happy to follow my lead. Though I wondered what she said to the girl when I wasn’t around. I might be a noble son of a gun, but she? We were working on her.

Lorenzo came up and gave me a high five.

“She’s ready for you, man,” he said. “Just give her a chance and she will prove it to you.”

“I really want to. But now I got to ask you if you’re just trying to blow smoke up my ass into something. I will believe you but if I have to come back here because you were wrong? We’re going to have some words.”

“Relax, my friend. The last thing that I want is for you to be dissatisfied with the street women that you find out there they were trying to...”

“Once again, they’re not street women, Lorenzo,” I said.

“Well, all right? If you say so. Have you gone to any of Moon Xiru’s poetry bashes? I know that is not exactly what it’s called..”

“I have not gone to any poetry festivals, improv shows or even stand-up comedy out here, a possibility. I might start attending that kind of thing, but definitely not the improv class.”

There was nothing I hated so much in this world as an improv class. Either that or people that just jumped into improv, no matter what the heck was going on in their lives. It was something that was very popular. My kids were old enough to get out of the house throughout the day.