After dropping Zhi and some pastries off with the girl’s mother, Sen dawdled a little in taking Ai back. He knew any of the nascent soul demigods wandering around his sect would gleefully take her, but he resented the necessity of it. He didn’t want to go and deal with matters that threatened to shake nations and reshape history. He wanted to eat dinner with his little girl and listen to her talk about her birds. If not for the silent Big Sister Lei and her worried glances, he might well have done exactly that. That’s what he told himself, at any rate. It was a fantasy. Someone would come along to bother him. Plus, Auntie Caihong would chide him for neglecting his duties. Even so, it was a fantasy that refused to go away. Unfortunately, the sect was close. There was only so long that he could drag out the walk back.

It was Master Feng who found them first. The elder cultivator, maybe the eldest cultivator alive, had known Sen for long enough that he was very nearly able to read the younger cultivator’s mind. He gave Sen a very brief, very serious look before he put on his grandfatherly smile and scooped Ai up into a hug. She gamely planted a kiss on the old man’s cheek.

“I got pastries,” she declared.

“You did?” asked Master Feng. “And who did you trick into taking you for pastries?”

“Papa,” said Ai.

“Oh, I see. That Papa of yours is pretty easy to trick, isn’t he?”

Ai thought for a second before offering an enthusiastic nod. Sen rolled his eyes.

“I’m not sure that’s helpful,” he said to Master Feng.

Master Feng lifted his chin and assumed a haughty air.

“I’m a grandfather. I don’t have to be helpful.”

“Duly noted,” offered Sen dryly. “Ai, will you please keep an eye on him for me? I don’t want him to get lost. His mind isn’t what it used to be.”

Lei, who apparently knew exactly who Master Feng was, looked positively horrified at this exchange. She probably expected the old man to strike Sen down where he stood for his insolence. Instead, Master Feng snorted out a little laugh.

“I’m sure she’ll keep good track of me.”

“I will,” said Ai with a serious expression, wholly innocent of the gentle sniping happening between Sen and Master Feng.

“Thank you,” said Sen, leaning down a little to plant a kiss on the top of Ai’s head. “You be good for your grandfather.”

“Okay, Papa.”

Sen felt his fist reflexively clenching and unclenching as he watched Master Feng carrying Ai away and chatting with the animated little girl. There’s no use being angry about it, he told himself. The situation won’t change just because you’re angry. He stilled his hand, and then he stilled his mind through an effort of will. It was both easier and harder than it had once been. Practice had made it easier, but the constant improvements to his mind, brain, or both had made it ever simpler to focus on more than one thing at a time. He could fume about something nonstop and still carry on productive conversations. Of course, being able to do that didn’t make it a good thing. In fact, he was almost certain that it was not a good thing. He wasn’t sure exactly how an obsession manifested, but he suspected that relentlessly rehashing something was one symptom.

Getting himself back onto an even keel was brief work once he committed to it. He hadn’t really wanted to give up that anger before. Not being inside the sect had given him a window to indulge that small bit of childishness. Now, though, he needed to be centered and focused. The things that were happening in other parts of the country, and likely across the continent, did matter. He couldn’t or wouldn’t let himself pretend those events would pass by his life and the people around him. Turning a blind eye would just mean that when the spirit beasts inevitably came for him, his family, and his sect, they would come with overwhelming force. Of course, they might come with overwhelming force tomorrow in a bid to rid themselves of several people who could cause them no end of trouble.

Then again, when he really considered it, he doubted that would happen. Sen knew that he certainly wouldn’t assault a place where he knew that Master Feng, Uncle Kho, and Auntie Caihong were all likely to be at hand. He supposed it was possible that with enough spirit beasts, they might eventually bring those three down. There would be an ocean of blood spilled before that happened, though. And the heavens alone knew what Fu Ruolan might do if spirit beasts started showing up in force. The town itself was still a relatively easy target. The walls were higher and thicker than they had ever been. They were also loaded down with some truly impressive and dangerous formations but those protections were limited. Even fueled by beast cores, the formations would eventually fail. The walls would eventually fall. All it would take was time and a sufficient number of attacks. The town’s real protection was the threat of nascent soul fury.

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Sen shook off those thoughts. If an attack on the town came tomorrow, it came tomorrow. They would face it. Until then, he needed to find out what information was available from the south. He looked at the woman he still only knew as Lei.

“I don’t think we did proper introductions,” he said.

It seemed the woman had been expecting something like that because she didn’t hesitate to clasp her hands in a gesture of respect and offer a bow.

“This one is Chen Lei,” she said.

“This one is Lu—” he started before trailing off at the raised eyebrow the woman directed at him. “Right. You know who I am.”

“I do, Patriarch.”

He resisted the urge to tell her to call him anything but that and said, “Take me to Sua Xing Xing, please.”

“Of course, Patriarch,” said Chen Lei.

He followed the woman through the sect. He never slowed to speak to anyone, merely offering the occasional nod. He hated it, but people expected this kind of thing from him. He had to look aloof, untouchable, almost a god in his own right, or so Auntie Caihong told him. He thought it was pretentious foolishness, but she’d immediately shook her head.

“You aren’t doing these things for you, Sen. You’re doing it for them. Acting that way is something they understand. It gives them a handhold for interacting with you.”

He’d stopped himself from arguing with her about it. He recalled a similar conversation with the matriarch of the Order of the Celestial Flame and what a disaster it had been when she had tried to do away with all the propriety in her sect. Part of him knew it served a purpose. It was probably a harsh necessity in larger sects that contained so many people that someone could spend lifetimes there without meeting them all. There would almost have to be ironclad social rules to keep order with so much cultivator pride in play. So, he nodded, acted aloof, and did his best to project the dignity he hadn’t when chasing the girls back in town. Chen Lei led him into what he’d come to think of as the administration building for the sect and into a room that held much of the leadership of the sect. He looked around at the grim faces and drew some preliminary conclusions about what kind of things he was likely to hear.

Rather than let himself get sidetracked into conversations he didn’t want to have, at least not at the moment, he focused on Sua Xing Xing. She looked tired, which Sen had considered next to impossible for any core cultivator who got even close to enough rest. There were bags under her blue eyes, although she had made a failed attempt to conceal that fact with some kind of makeup. Her odd red hair had a limp, lifeless quality about it. He thought back and tried to remember if she’d looked that way earlier. He couldn’t rightly recall. He’d been far too focused on spending time with Ai to pay much attention to anything or anyone else. Sua Xing Xing was standing straight. Yet, even that looked like it was pure artifice. It was a show that she was putting on in front of others, and that act might shatter beneath any kind of sustained pressure. Before he could think to say something, Sua Xing Xing caught sight of him. There was a look of relief on her face.

“Sua Xing Xing greets the Patriarch,” she said.

Almost everyone else in the room echoed that sentiment. Sen spotted Glimmer of Night in his human disguise and blithely ignoring everyone. The spider-kin held a piece of crystal up to a window and studied the rainbow-like result that came from sunlight passing through the crystal. He also seemed to be chewing on something. Sen decided that he didn’t need to know what the transformed spider had chosen to eat. That was the kind of question that he had learned often led to poor sleep. He inclined his head to the room. He saw Chen Lei start to make good her escape and a thought struck him.

“Stay,” he commanded in a quiet voice before addressing the room. “Hello, everyone.”

He walked over to the long table people were clustered around. Sua Xing Xing abandoned the seat at the head of the table, and Sen lowered himself into it. He gestured and almost everyone else sat. Glimmer of Night continued his study of whatever that crystal was doing to the sunlight, and Chen Lei had pressed herself against the wall next to the door. She looked like she wanted to be exactly anywhere else. That was probably a wise reaction considering everyone in the room outranked her in one sense or another.

Sen let his eyes pass over the people seated at the table. The looks of hope they directed at him were unsettling. He honestly had no idea what they expected him to do about things happening half a country away. Not only did he not know how to make that right, he didn’t know if any of it could be made right. Still, he did his best to embody certainty and confidence he didn’t feel. After all, much like the propriety, he wasn’t doing this for himself. He was doing it for them.

“Tell me what’s happened,” he finally said.