“You should be able to move freely in the city again,” said Sen, “Although, I recommend being a little cautious. There are a few Shadow Eagle Talon Syndicate members floating around. If they’re smart, they’ll pack up and go or work very hard to find something else to do. But people aren’t always smart.”
Lo Meifeng gave him a searching look. “You really pulled it off.”
“Yes.”
Shi Ping caught up with the conversation then. “You killed that nascent soul cultivator?”
“I did.”
Lo Meifeng and Falling Leaf seemed to take that in stride. Shi Ping looked like he thought I was flat-out lying to him.
“How?” demanded Shi Ping.
Sen gave the man a wan smile. “I didn’t answer when three nascent soul cultivators put that question to me, so I don’t think I’ll tell you either.”
Shi Ping frowned, eyed Sen, and asked, “It’s really safe to go back out?”
This time, it took Sen a moment to catch up. He rolled his eyes. “Yes, you can go back to the brothels if you really must.”
Shi Ping gave Sen an assessing look.
“You went off for a five-day vacation with Lai Dongmei. You don’t get to judge me.”
Sen’s immediate reaction was to tell the man off, but he didn’t feel like he had a lot of room to criticize. Especially not after he’d taken Lo Meifeng to task for judging how he spent his time. He felt like there was a difference between what he’d done and what Shi Ping planned to do, but it would just start a fight that Sen didn’t feel like having.
“Alright. I hear you,” said Sen, trying to be conciliatory.
“Good,” said Shi Ping, who sounded more surprised than pleased. “Now, hand over some of that money you stole.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because we were the ones who had to hide in this house, praying that your insanity was going to work, with no way to even keep tabs on what was happening. I think that deserves some compensation. Plus, are you really going to pretend that you need all of it?”
Again, Sen felt like there was probably a principle that he could cower behind to avoid paying for Shi Ping’s time in a brothel. Again, he recognized it as a fight that he might be able to win, but one that he just didn’t want to have. Waving a hand over the table, Sen extracted half a dozen bags of taels from one of his storage rings. They made heavy thumping noises as they dropped onto the table. The wood of the table actually groaned a little beneath the weight.
“Divide it up as you see fit,” said Sen.
Lo Meifeng and Shi Ping took an active interest in inspecting the bags and moving some of the taels around. Falling Leaf only gave the bags a cursory look, then just waited for the other two to finish. They each made two bags disappear into storage treasures. Shi Ping beamed at everyone.
“I’ll see you all eventually,” he announced, and promptly left the house.
Lo Meifeng shook her head. “You realize he has enough money now to basically live in one of those brothels for about a year.”
Sen shrugged. “It’s his life. I keep trying to make him into someone more like, well, us. It’s clearly not working. Honestly, I’m not even sure why I thought it would. You can brute force change in yourself if you want it badly enough, but you can’t force that kind of change on someone else. At the very least, I won’t keep pouring time and energy into him if he’d rather go whoring. I don’t have the time for that. I’ll do one last thing for him that I’d said I do, but then he’ll have to decide who he wants to be.”
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“Then, we’ll leave this terrible place soon?” asked Falling Leaf, hope burning hot in her eyes.
It was the most life Sen had seen in her in weeks. He’d been distracted, but he’d noticed the listlessness of the transformed spirit animal. It was only a theory, but he was starting to think that she needed to be somewhere that the land hadn’t been quite so thoroughly civilized. He nodded.
“Yes, we’ll leave this awful place very soon. I only have two things left to do here, and then we’ll go.”
Shame burned in his stomach at the lie, but he kept it off his face and out of his voice. It’s for the best, he reminded himself. She may hate you for it, but it’s for the best. He summoned another bag of taels and deposited it in front of Falling Leaf.
“Why don’t you get us some provisions.”
It only occurred to Sen after he’d thrown the money on the table that it was a ridiculous sum for provisions. Falling Leaf could probably buy out entire warehouses of food with what he’d just offered her.
“And anything else you think we need or that you want,” he added.
Falling Leaf eyed the bag dubiously, but it seemed the promise of imminent departure was enough to get her excited. She grabbed the bag, stored it, and announced that she was going to get them everything they’d need. Lo Meifeng gave Falling Leaf a bemused look as the former ghost panther headed for the door.
“She seems happy,” noted Lo Meifeng.
“That’s not very surprising. She hates it here even more than I do,” said Sen.
“Do you? I wouldn’t have guessed it.”
“Very much so. I only really came here for one thing, which I didn’t get. The rest of it was just,” Sen searched for the right word, “incidental. Now that I know the manual isn’t here, I can’t wait to leave. The people, the sects, the politics, all of it brings out the worst in me. There are just too many things here I don’t like, which makes it very easy for me to make bad choices.”
“Like fighting with nascent soul cultivators?”
“For example. Or picking fights with people who are trying to talk sense to me.”
“Listen, Sen, I was,” Lo Meifeng began.
“Right. You were right. I didn’t think it through. I didn’t think about how it might affect the rest of you, or how many enemies I might make. At the time, I don’t even think I cared. I just saw something that I wanted, and I acted. It was the same with Tong Guanting. The only difference there was that I saw something I wanted gone.”
“Those weren’t exactly the same kind of situations. Tong Guanting was sending people to kill you.”
“Yeah, there was that little detail.”
Lo Meifeng’s expression looked like she was biting into something sour. “I may have been a little judgmental about the Lai Dongmei situation.”
“That’s true,” agreed Sen with an emphatic nod.
“Don’t be an ass.”
Sen smiled and held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry.”
“So,” said Lo Meifeng, “I assume you’re ready to do whatever it is you’re planning to do about the Chan Yu Ming situation.”
“I do need to do something about it, but I’m not sure what. I thought that Tong Guanting butchering the house of Choi would have put a stop to the wedding. I’d also thought about asking you to help me make Choi Zhi Peng just disappear one night.”
“Well, that’s certainly a workable plan,” said Lo Meifeng, perking up. “Quiet and low risk. Who gave you that idea?”
Sen rolled his eyes at her. “Very funny. I thought it was a workable plan, too, until the wedding was still on after Tong Guanting paid them a little visit.”
Lo Meifeng frowned. “That is strange. The house of Choi doesn’t exist anymore in any meaningful way. There’s no good reason for the royal family to marry anyone to that family now.”
“That’s what I thought, but they’re moving forward anyway.”
“Well, if there isn’t a good reason, that just means that there’s a bad reason we haven’t seen. Probably some kind of indiscretion that no one wants made public.”
“You really think it’s blackmail? I thought about it, but blackmailing a royal family seems like a huge risk for a noble house.”
“Not really. The royal house could probably have crushed the house of Choi in a straight military conflict, but they weren’t in a military conflict. If the royal family decided to purge the house of Choi that way, they’d have to explain it. If one of them did something that they don’t want anyone to know about, they might decide that it’s more practical to just buy the Choi family off with whatever they’re asking for.”
Sen thought it over for a while. “If that’s the case, then I’m not sure there is a next step to take. Short of finishing the house of Choi off, which is a step I’m not prepared to take.”
Lo Meifeng laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s always a next step to take. You even had the right idea.”
“Which was?”
“We start by taking Choi Zhi Peng. We just have a nice, long talk with him before he discovers exciting new opportunities in his next life.”
“You’ve done this sort of thing before?”
“Lots of times. This won’t even be that hard. I’m usually up against cultivators, not mortals.”
“In that case, I’ll leave the planning in your hands. Otherwise, it’ll turn into some kind of catastrophe.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. The earth will probably open up beneath us, and we’ll find ourselves stuck in some outer region of the hells with no way to escape.”
“Okay, that’s just a ridiculous-,” Lo Meifeng trailed off as she gave Sen a strange look. “No. You’re right. I’ll handle the planning.”