Once the path was decided, Wen Lambo had felt no urgency on his journey to Fringe Town. He knew that when he arrived he would be the strongest cultivator in the area with the possible exception of their First Elder. Fringe Town was one of those odd, backward places that had to be protected from too much power. Not all spirit fruits could be ruined by the mere presence of cultivators, but Soma was said to be a particularly sensitive crop. If he caused too much trouble, the Soga would report him to the Azai and he would become a fugitive instead of merely an outcast. He wasn’t particularly worried about that. The Blessed Lands were wide and deep, and he didn’t intend to spend days or weeks in the village, just long enough to avenge himself on the Jin family.

The Yellow Brick Road ended abruptly, giving way to a simple dirt path with wagon ruts on either side. Had the engineers of the Middle Kingdom run out of bricks, or had Fringe Town not existed when the road was constructed? Wen Lambo supposed it didn’t matter exactly why the yellow bricks went no further, it was a sign of how little the Middle Kingdom thought of places like this. He could do anything he liked here.

A part of him knew that wasn’t true. In any given region, there was a certain level of chaos a rogue cultivator could cause without serious reprisal, but if he exceeded that level, the consequences would be as inevitable as the progress of the sun beetle across the vault of the heavens. Killing a few low level pure artists, stealing a bit of Soma for good measure, that was the sort of thing that got reported to the clans. An enforcer, or a small party, would be sent out to deal with the offender. Wen Lambo was himself the sort of man the Azai might have sent to handle a small-scale violation.

The culprits would be killed, their bodies displayed like scarecrows until the next fool decided to try to stir trouble and ended up replacing them. However, if they ran far enough and fast enough, they could escape justice. Wen Lambo considered himself more than capable of running far and fast.

That being said, there were certain crimes that were egregious enough to attract the attention of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the clans. It took time for the news of such events to work its way up the channels, as no one wanted to be responsible for disturbing the meditations of a truly powerful cultivator with anything less than absolute necessity. But once that line was crossed, there could be no true escape. It was said that pure artists at the highest levels of cultivation could follow the trail of a man whose feet had never touched the ground. Fortunately for Wen Lambo, he wasn’t planning on burning down the Soma fields, just making an example. There would be no call for such a hunt, and he would be free to adventure for the rest of his life with the weight his shameful treatment lifted from his shoulders.

The village was different than he expected. For one thing, there were odd structures spaced around the perimeter, some small, and some twenty or thirty feet tall, but all following the same essential pattern. The towers looked like corkscrews, and he at first assumed they must be wards of some kind, but as he approached he saw that there were no scripts along their surface. They weren’t structures at all, really, but carvings. Someone had taken to stripping trees of their limbs and bark, and then cutting screw-like grooves into them from top to bottom.

At first there were only a few, but when he was within a mile of Fringe Town the forest simply stopped. Hundreds or thousands of trees had been denuded this way, a host of wooden spikes rising from the earth in every direction. Spiral patterns had been dug into the soil around the trees, growing thicker and more numerous the closer they were to the village proper, and most of the spiral trenches had been filled with rocks or gravel to preserve them. There was no grass of any kind, no shrubbery, no livestock. Laborers were at work extending the project even then.

Wen Lambo stopped by a woman in a straw hat. She was on her knees pressing gravel into one of the fresher spirals and smoothing it with her hands. There were no stars on her arms, and she didn’t look up at him when he stood over her. He supposed this wasn’t technically a disrespect, and she had no idea who he was or how far he had advanced.

“You, what are you doing?” He nudged her with his foot, and her eyes raised, taking in his tattoos, his stance, his imperious demeanor, and somehow seeming unimpressed. The woman’s face was dirty, and her gaze was tired. She didn’t even bow.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“I serve the will of Titanus,” she said.

“Titanus?” The name sounded foreign. Who in the Blessed Lands would have taken the name of a foreigner?

“Is that your First Elder?” Wen Lambo asked.

“The First Elder is dead,” she replied, and then returned to her labors as if he wasn’t there. Wen Lambo was so shocked by her behavior that he didn’t kill her. Something very strange had occurred in Fringe Town. Was it possible that the Azai clan didn’t know about any of this? Had Lady Makoto not seen it for herself?

Wen Lambo left the woman to her labor and entered the village. The houses were strange, every one of them three stories or more, and circular, more like silos than homes. There weren’t many people about. He saw more laborers, but none of them were cultivators, so he didn’t deign to engage with them.

Then he saw the fields, or what had been the fields. Hundreds of acres of Soma plants had been chopped down, and there was evidence of great bonfires that had been left to smolder after they had run out of fuel.

How was this possible? The First Elder’s death was one thing, but this? Surely a crime of this magnitude would bring the wrath of the Azai down on this place in force. It had to be recent. But was this the doing of a single mad cultivator, some old hermit who had come down from the mountains courting death, or a rival clan?

What he had seen so far suggested that it was the former. A rival clan would want the fields for themselves, and they wouldn’t be interested in busying the populace with cosmetic changes. But if this was the work of a single mad cultivator, someone who had appeared suddenly and slaughtered all who opposed him, then why were there so many men and women meditating in the ruined fields?

Among the ashes of the bonfires, there were cultivators. Every one of them was clad in armor the likes of which Wen Lambo had never seen. Metal plates, or lacquered wood, and all of it traced with more complex forms of the spiral patterns he had seen on his way into the village.

No one had challenged him yet, but as soon as he stepped onto the field, one of the meditators rose from their seat among the ashes and came to meet him. Wen Lambo waited at the border, as it was proper for the pure artist of higher status to be approached rather than seek an audience like a supplicant. The young man was filthy, covered in soot, even his armor. As he came close, Wen Lambo saw that the plates didn’t seem to be strapped together so much as embedded in the skin.

A flesh artist? It didn’t make any sense. Why would a flesh artist be wearing metal?

“My name is Wen Lambo,” he brought his left arm to his chest, wrist up, giving a full view of his marks. “I demand to know what happened here.”

The boy had only one star on his arm, but he did not seem intimidated in the slightest. Wen Lambo thought he might have to make more than a few examples to get this town back in the proper order, but if he dug out the sour root that had caused all this, the Azai clan would surely be grateful. Perhaps he would not have to be an outcast after all.

“We serve the will of Titanus, first servant of the Eternal Dragon.”

“Eternal Dragon? What sort of title is that?” Actual dragons existed, of course, but they didn’t descend on backwards little villages, or if they did, they didn’t leave behind cultivators to talk about them afterward. It was said that the sages of old had communed with dragons in the process of developing their paths, and then killed the beasts to prevent the same secrets from being sought by other immortals. In the modern era, dragons were the rarest of all sacred beasts, and they spent centuries in hibernation. Signs that even one of them was active was worth the attention of a clan lord, or even the leaders of the eight great sects. For a cultivator to refer to himself that way signaled the most appalling sort of arrogance imaginable.

The boy smiled. “It is no title, stranger, it is the truth. One day soon, all of the Blessed Lands will know that name. If you are wise, you will join us. All those who oppose Titanus and the Dragon will fall.”

Wen Lambo swept his foot out before him, then drew it back into a defensive stance. “Tell me your name, junior.”

The boy’s smile only widened. “You don’t believe me? If you see reason today, remember that it was Jin Jammu who showed it to you.”