Benton rarely got truly angry, but the idea that the Town Manager and his enforcers were so corrupt that children were suffering irritated him a great deal. For them to actively take their greed so far as to actually rob an orphanage, though? That was beyond the pale. Benton was infuriated.

He marched directly into the Town Lord’s palace and into the private cultivation chamber, not stopping to be announced.

“Friend Su. What’s wrong?” Fatty Ren looked nervous.

“I killed one of your enforcers.”

“Enforcers?”

There was no deception written on Fatty Ren’s face. He really had no idea who the enforcers were.

Benton took a deep breath. Though the Town Lord should have been responsible for the welfare of his citizens in Benton’s opinion, cultivators didn’t always view mortals as important. Blowing up at Fatty Ren wouldn’t help anything. Neither would creating a fireball technique on the fly and literally blowing him up.

“How exactly did it come about that you were appointed Town Lord?” Benton said.

“Well, the previous Town Lord was a member of the Righteous Rain Sect and was killed in the fighting, so the previous Town Manager tried to get everyone organized in the days following the attack. It wasn’t going well, though. There was a lot of chaos. A mortal merchant who had dealings with the sect happened to be near the gate when I returned, and he told me about all the horrible things that were happening, how terrible the Town Manager was, and how much new leadership was needed.”

“Let me guess,” Benton said. “The merchant convinced you to be the Town Lord and to appoint him to be Town Manager.”

“No. Not at all. I had to plead with him to replace the old Town Manager.”

“Uh, huh,” Benton said. “Let me guess, the merchant is named Yu Xieren?”

“Yes! Do you know him?”

“Let’s just say that I know of him.” Benton shook his head. “And that was twenty years ago?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Benton sighed. “And how do you think things have gone since?”

“The reports I get are that things are going as well as they can be. Tax collection is falling, as is the population, but I don’t know what we can do about that. The Town Manager tells me we have a lot of problems because we lost the sect. He says a lot of stuff about economics and trade goods and inflation and high unemployment and things like that. He assures me, though, that the people are as happy as they can be under the circumstances and that he’s doing everything he can to make things better.”

“I see. And when was the last time you saw any of the town for yourself?”

Fatty Ren looked slightly chagrined. “I’ve been cultivating. A lot. The Town Manager said that the best thing I can do is be strong just in case anyone tries to attack us, and I’ve made enormous progress. Until I got bottlenecked, anyway.”

Enormous was the right word.

Benton couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The so-called Town Lord literally had no idea what was going on in his own town.

“Look, I’m going to be straight with you,” Benton said. “Times are really tough in Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town. Earlier today, I was at an orphanage ran by a single woman that had more than fifty kids. Fifty! And they all were so thin from a lack of food that they looked like a stiff breeze would knock them over. Their clothes were filthy and tattered. It was one of the saddest sights of my life. But then I discovered something worse.”

Fatty Ren looked like he was hanging on every word as if his life depended on it.

“I donated some money to the woman at the orphanage,” Benton said. “Not much. Just a thousand taels. And when I left, two men who the citizens of your town refer to as enforcers told me they planned to take that money.”

“Where were the Town Manager’s men?” Fatty Ren said, seeming angry for the first time in the conversation. “They are supposed to make sure things like that don’t happen.”

“They were the Town Manager’s men.”

Fatty Ren’s face went blank before he finally said, “Oh.”

“You’ve been played. Yu Xieren is robbing this entire town blind for his own enrichment. He’s living in the fanciest mansion in town, one that looks far more well maintained than your palace, and sending his men out to take whatever they want. There is no law here, only him and his thugs.”

“I see.”

Benton paused for a moment, reminding himself that getting mad at the man in front of him, while justifiable, would probably not be helpful. “It’s good that you at least see the problem, but what are you going to do about it?”

“I … I don’t know.” Fatty Ren paused. “Can you kill Yu Xieren?”

“Easily, but I think that’s a horrible idea.”

“Why?”

Benton sighed again. “Because this is your town, not mine. I can’t be your problem solver. I have my own responsibilities. If you ever get in a jam that you can’t handle, call on me by all means, but this situation is one you can get under control yourself.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Oh. Okay.” Fatty Ren looked lost.

Benton felt sympathy for the Town Lord. He just wanted to cultivate and to eat, desires that conflicted greatly with the responsibilities of a role he’d accepted and yet was so profoundly unsuited to fill.

If his incompetence was only harming himself, it would be one thing, but lots of people, children, were suffering because of it. Benton had to do something for their sakes.

“I guess I could offer some advice?” Benton said.

“Please!”

“The cultivators from your sect that you told me about, the ones who were in the Qi Gathering realm when you found them, do you trust them?”

“With my life. They are my only sect brothers and sister that I know still live. They would never betray me nor I them.”

“Good,” Benton said. “Send a servant, one you trust, to them with a message to visit your palace. When they get here, explain what has happened. Have them execute the Town Manager and those of his thugs as they see fit.”

“I can do that!”

Well, at least he was enthusiastic now that he’d been shown a path forward.

“Great,” Benton said, “but getting rid of the Town Manager is just the start. It ends things getting worse, but you need to turn the ship around. Do you have a way to contact anyone in the Sixth Flawless Flowing City?”

“Yes!” Fatty Ren said. “I have messenger talismans.”

Benton knew what they were in theory but hadn’t been able to find any for sale. The devices recorded a user’s voice and flew to a location as directed. The recipient’s name was printed on the outside of the device.

The talismans were the cultivation world equivalent of email, just a lot slower and more expensive.

“Fantastic. Contact Elder Kang Ya-Ting of the Poison Claw Sect. Tell him everything that has happened. You can trust him. Leave nothing out and make sure you tell him that you’re contacting him because I told you to. Ask for his assistance. Tell him you need someone trustworthy to take over as Town Manager and a score of men to fill law enforcement roles. Got it?”

“Yes, Friend Su.”

“Good. I’m going to find some helpers for Mistress Gong at the orphanage and return there to feed the kids lunch. In the meantime, you’ll get started on your tasks?”

“Yes, Friend Su.” Fatty Ren paused. “There is, perhaps, one misunderstanding between us that I wish to clear up.”

“Oh?”

“Regarding the Qi Gathering cultivators. I meant it as I said it. They were in the Qi Gathering realm then and are still in the Qi Gathering realm now.”

Sects only accepted talented recruits. At the very worst, the Righteous Rain Sect would have accepted members in the D range. A single one of the four remaining members getting stuck in the first major realm would be unusual but not unheard of. For all of them to get stuck like that made no sense.

“What?” Benton said. “After twenty years? How?”

“The attacks damaged their cultivation, reset them back to mortals and made it difficult for them to advance at all after starting again. Even with years of efforts and all the resources we could find and afford, the best of them has only managed to reach the seventh minor realm.”

For what Fatty Ren reported to be true, those four sect members had to have had their cultivation damaged when they were attacked those twenty years ago. There was only one way that type of damage could have logically happened to all of them.

There it was. Proof. The two sects had both been attacked almost exactly twenty years apart by demonic cultivators.

Benton blew out a breath. “Understood. Thanks for telling me that. I’ll catch you later and we’ll talk about the sect grounds, okay?”

Fatty Ren cupped his hands, “Gratitude, Friend Su!”

Benton felt a little better as he exited the palace. Things weren’t any better in the town yet, but it was possible improvements would start occurring in the near future. Assuming that Fatty Ren wasn’t just putting on a huge act, of course, but Benton didn’t think that was the case.

Anyway, he needed to find helpers for the orphanage, and from what he’d seen so far regarding employment opportunities, candidates for any paying job should abound. The problem was that Benton knew almost no one who could help him find good people to fill those positions.

Almost no one wasn’t no one, though, and he rushed to Peng Zhen’s shop. As Benton had suspected or at least hoped, the shopkeeper knew several women who would be glad to accept a job taking care of children as long as there was steady pay involved. He also knew of someone trustworthy enough to hold funds and pay for the orphanage’s expenses with it.

Benton gave over another two thousand taels to Peng Zhen for that purpose. The shopkeeper promised to go immediately to get the four women who would be working there.

A villager who made five silver taels a week was doing well, but the town was in really bad shape. Inflation was probably running rampant. Best to double that. So, fifty taels a week for salary, counting Mistress Gong. Another hundred a week or so for food? Seemed high, but better to overestimate. Add another fifty for clothes.

His two thousand taels should last at least ten weeks, especially since he’d directly given another thousand to the orphanage already. He made a mental note to head back to the town before then to check on things.

Or he could just leave more money. The problem was that he didn’t one hundred percent trust that all the funds would be used for their intended purpose, and he didn’t want to create a new Yu Xieren.

The village couldn’t be more than six hundred miles away. At a sustainable running speed of fifty miles per hour, he could make it to town in a day. A long day, but a day.

Fine. He’d just commit to doing that.

His tasks finished, he went to the orphanage to tell Mistress Gong the good news.

“You!” she said as soon as he walked in the door. “What did you do?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific. I’ve done a lot of stuff.”

“Don’t give me that young man! The children told me that two enforcers were waiting outside for you, but the money you left is still here. A thousand taels. So, I’ll ask again. What. Did. You. Do!”

“It sounded more like an exclamation than a question that time.”

Mistress Gong was not amused, and her glare would have put even Evelyn’s to shame.

“I killed them.”

Her jaw dropped.

“It’s okay, though. I went to the Town Lord and explained things. Hopefully, things are going to be changing around here quite soon.”

The town was going to need a new lord if things didn’t do just that.

When Benton eventually got Mistress Gong calmed down, she got riled right back up again when she found out about the help that was coming and the funds she’d have available in addition to the silver taels he’d given her directly.

At first, she was excited, but eventually, she narrowed her eyes. “What do you want?”

“I want to see these kids happy, healthy, and well fed.”

She stared at him for a moment. “Okay. I actually believe that. But you want something else.”

“Well, I would like to take ten of the older kids with me when I leave tomorrow.”

“I’m not even going to ask what you need them for. I should ask. I feel terrible for not asking, but I don’t really need to know. You promise it’s not for something weird or dangerous or … whatever?”

“I swear that I will do my best to provide them with the opportunity to live a long, healthy, ethical life.”

“Well, your promise and a tael will buy me a meal down at the tavern, but I guess I haven’t got much choice.”

“Fantastic. Let me take a look at them, and I’ll tell you which ones I want.”

Man, he really felt like he was buying these kids, even to the extent of picking the features he wanted like he would a car. If he wasn’t positive that he was acting in the best long-term interests of these kids, he would have felt like total scum of the earth.

But he was so he didn’t.