Sua Xing Xing had not been trained to panic. Like all cultivators, she understood well the supreme necessity of control. All was chaos and swift death without the steadying hand of control. Yet, as she had stood in that strange room with the spider-kin, a room filled with beast cores modified in ways she did not understand, she had felt her control slipping away from her grasp like a fistful of water. She had listened with mounting shock and dread to the reports that had come in, the tallies of the dead, and the pleading for assistance. She had known it was coming. She had been warned it would be terrible. She had not grasped the full weight of it. Nor was she as immune to the horror of it as she might once have been.
Her connection with humanity had grown dim over the long years. It was largely seen as a blessing by sects. An insulation from the losses of mortal family and friends. Lu Sen had changed all of that. He had handed her work that forced her to work with the mortals, to interact with them, to see them in their daily lives. She had watched him shower love on his adopted daughter and her mortal friend. The ice that held her heart in its cold grip had, almost without her noticing, melted away. She wished that it hadn’t because this war was a truth from which she could not turn her gaze. It was coming for them all, and she could have used that cold heart to shield herself from the pain of it.
As the day wore on, she knew that she would have to call for him. This was news that the Patriarch needed to be made aware of. The sheer scale of it made it impossible to delay for long. It was a necessity that he would not thank her for. The premium he placed on his time with his daughter was beyond measure. Cutting that short for any reason was something that she wouldn’t have risked for anything less than what had happened, lest she find herself on the receiving end of a fury she could not weather. So, she had sent people to find him and summoned the leadership of the sect. They had, for once, gathered swiftly. No doubt sensing the urgency that she herself had passed on to the messengers. They had bombarded her with questions that she brushed aside. They would not receive word before the Patriarch, regardless of how entitled they felt to it.
She had still braced herself for a storm to enter when Lu Sen did. Instead, the man was that calm control that she had felt draining away from her all day. The swell of relief she felt at being able to hand this disaster over to someone else, anyone else, was nearly enough to make her lose her balance. She didn’t think Lu Sen could bring this madness to heel. Not really. Sua Xing Xing didn’t believe that any person alive could single-handedly accomplish that feat. But maybe, just maybe, he could give them direction in this nightmare. A place to start, and a place to focus their efforts.
“Tell me what’s happened,” he said.
His voice was steady, a stable rock to cling to in the maelstrom. She felt his eyes on her, patient, waiting, and expectant.
“Patriarch,” she said and then faltered.
How can I explain this? Has there ever been war on this scale before? She supposed that it didn’t matter. She would have to find the words because he needed to know. She took a deep breath and tried to quell the qi roiling inside of her.
“Patriarch,” she repeated, her voice steadier. “The spirit beasts have begun their war. We have reports that dozens of small villages and towns to the south have been utterly destroyed. Assaults on larger towns and cities continue as we speak. Thousands are dead. Maybe more.”
There was an explosion of noise in the room as the leadership of the sect shouted questions, denials, and other things she couldn’t even understand. It was just a swell of sound that brought her explanation to a halt. She tried, briefly, to speak over them but gave it up as hopeless. Lu Sen’s eyes narrowed, and he spoke.
“Silence.”
The world shuddered at that word. The very walls around them seeming to reflect it back at them over and over, driving it into their bones, their minds, and their souls. Words died in people’s throats before they could form and silence descended. Seemingly satisfied, Lu Sen nodded to himself. Sua Xing Xing felt a qi technique dispelled and the echoing word ceased driving itself into them. The man turned his dark eyes on her again.
“Continue, Sua Xing Xing. I don’t expect that you’ll be interrupted again,” he said in a mild tone.
She had little doubt that seemingly offhand suggestion would be taken as absolute law. However controlled the Patriarch might appear at the moment, it was just as clear that his patience for foolishness was nonexistent on this day. She had no intention of being the one to test that extremely limited resource. Based on all the mouths she saw pressed into flat, white lines, no one else planned to be the one to see what Lu Sen would do if his patience ran out.
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“Yes, Patriarch.”
Lu Sen steepled his fingers in front of him and closed his eyes, but she did not mistake that relaxed posture for inattention. She looked at the others in the room and found that there was an even split between those staring at her and those staring at the Patriarch. She took another breath and continued.
“As I said, the death toll is in the thousands, at least. That’s just from the information we are receiving from those you blessed with the communication cores. At present, the beasts are not attacking the capital, Emperor’s Bay, and a few other scattered cities, but rumors are already spreading in those places. We assume that those with communication cores have shared what facts they have with others and that the information has begun to leak.”
Lu Sen flicked a hand as if dismissing something trivial.
“That was inevitable,” he said. “Unfortunate, perhaps, but inevitable. The news was always going to spread. This is too widespread. We couldn’t have kept it secret even if we wanted to.”
“Of course, Patriarch,” said Sua Xing Xing. “As a result, there is chaos in the cities. Some people are trying to flee, although only the heavens know where they mean to flee to given how little information there is. There are riots in parts of the capital. It isn’t clear if those riots were spontaneous or somehow planned. It seems unlikely that the spirit beasts would have recruited human allies, but the possibility cannot be dismissed.”
Lu Sen frowned and opened his eyes. He seemed to be looking into some great distance, his mind working at a problem only he saw.
“It’s better to assume collusion and discover that we’re wrong than to assume innocence and be wrong about that,” he finally said before a look of concern displaced everything else. “Is there word from my grandmother?”
Sua Xing Xing nodded. She was relieved to be able to focus for a moment on one of the very few bright spots in this parade of misery.
“She sent word that all members of the House of Lu who were in the capital have been recalled to the manor. The manor gates have been sealed.”
“Good,” said the Patriarch, the concern melting away. “We’ll need to send at least a few reliable cultivators there to help reinforce the manor. The defenses should hold against any mortal threats, but we can’t rely on them to stop a focused spirit beast attack should they breach the city. Will you see to that?”
“I will,” she said.
She relayed what scarce few other facts they had, mostly just specifics about towns and villages she’d never heard of before having been wiped clean from the world. Then, she fell silent.
“What word do we have about our,” Lu Sen seemed to chew on the word for a moment before he said, “allies? Have we heard anything about how the sects are responding?”
“We have heard directly from a few sects. The Crimson Blade Sect, along with several sects in Emperor’s Bay contacted us to say they were not under attack, at least not at the time they contacted us. We’ve heard nothing from the Clear Spring Sect or the Order of the Celestial Flame. The Golden Phoenix Sect confirmed things about what was happening in the capital. The reactions have been… They’ve been mixed. Some sects wanted to mobilize immediately. Others are taking a wait-and-see approach. None of them said anything about coordinating with the mortal forces in the kingdom.”
“Fools,” muttered Lu Sen. “We’ll survive together or not at all.”
“Patriarch,” said Sua Xing Xing. “What would you have us do?”
He was quiet for several long seconds before he started issuing orders. They were nothing particularly brilliant. He commanded that they double the number of cultivators keeping watch on the walls. They were to distribute what information they had about when and where the spirit beasts were acting. If possible, they were to coordinate any rescue efforts in the areas where the spirit beasts had come and gone. Honestly, they were orders that Sua Xing Xing could have given herself if she’d been less caught up in her own sense of doom and despair. Even so, they gave her a sense of direction and purpose that had been absent from her since the moment the reports started flooding in. I suppose that’s what a leader is supposed to do, she thought.
With her part done, she sat down and listened. Lu Sen entertained a few questions from the rest of the leadership, but he quickly shut that down. The questions were either things that no one could answer yet, or they were designed to elicit some direct attention from the Patriarch. She couldn’t tell if they were angling for comfort or vying for favor, and she didn’t have the mental energy to engage with that idiocy today. The Patriarch soon dismissed the leadership with orders to come back the next day with helpful suggestions about what they potentially could and should do given that the world was now on fire. She went to join them but was stopped by a gesture from Lu Sen. Soon, it was just him, her, and another cultivator she vaguely recognized. He waved that woman over to the table.
“Sua Xing Xing, this is Chen Lei. She’s going to be your new assistant.”
Before she could raise an objection, he lifted a hand to forestall her.
“I’m sure you’re about to tell me that you don’t need an assistant, but you’re wrong. Even I can tell that this is only going to get worse. We’re all going to be getting stretched very thin. You need someone to help you manage all of the things that are going to get pushed onto you by circumstance.”
She very much wanted to object but forced herself to think about it. Did she want to object because she really didn’t think she would need the help, or was it that she wanted to get all the credit with the Patriarch? When the embarrassing answer to that became clear, she considered her own state. She was tired. She’d been tired even before this war became immediate and real. She didn’t expect that was going to get any better anytime soon, either. She said the only thing she could.
“Yes, Patriarch.”