Laughing River frowned as he thought about the ghost panther kit. While his transformation skills weren’t the same as those used by other spirit beasts, he would have been willing to bet that he knew as much about the process as any spirit beast or cultivator alive. Yet, he hadn’t been able to crack the mystery of why she couldn’t change back into her original form. It was equal parts frustrating and intriguing. Every piece of knowledge he had gathered said she should be able to move back and forth freely with her beast core as advanced as it was. When she attempted the transformation with his guidance, it had certainly felt like the process started. However, it also felt like something intervened directly to prevent it from taking hold. Whatever that something was, he’d never seen the like before. He couldn’t figure out if she had employed some variant path to accomplish her original shift or if, as unlikely as it seemed, some power had helped it along but at a price.
The kit had seemed disappointed by the failure. He couldn’t rightly blame her for that. Being in a human form had its advantages. There was no question about that. It was hard to put a value on something like thumbs or passing unnoticed through cities. Despite those advantages, there was a deep comfort to be found in resuming one’s original form. Laughing River rarely did it around others because he knew the effect it had, but even he would change back sometimes. It just felt right to have dirt, grass, and snow beneath one’s paws. For all her understandable disappointment, Falling Leaf had come across as wholly unsurprised by the turn of events. It was as if she had known all along that it was a hopeless endeavor and went along only to humor that human boy.
Laughing River paused at the word boy and shook his head. No, he thought. Boy is definitely not the right word for that being. After what he’d seen Sen do, what he’d seen him endure, he wasn’t sure what word would be the right word to apply to him. He just knew that boy was a word that fundamentally failed to capture the reality. However, he knew that the ghost panther’s transformation problem was going to vex him and vex him until he figured it out. He just feared that he wouldn’t find the answer until after he ascended, at which point it wouldn’t be any use to the kit. If there were any hard and fast rules to ascension, the only one he knew was that there was no coming back. Having waited far longer than he should to pursue his own ascension, he was uniquely qualified to understand just how unforgiving the world became to those who overstayed their welcome. He couldn’t imagine that the situation would be more friendly to anyone who came back.
There was still a little time left to him before things turned utterly catastrophic, though. At the very least, he needed to go and pay his people a visit. Set the history straight. There might also be a bit of ruthless assassination in there somewhere, as well, given the lies that people had been telling about him. He supposed that was his own fault. He’d just felt so guilty after the slaughter of all those nine tail foxes who followed him to that cursed gathering. The idea of facing his people after that failure had seemed like too much. He could admit now that it had been a mistake. It would have been hard to do but not impossible. He’d given himself the gift of a little bit of cowardice just to discover now that it was a gift covered in poison. At least he’d learned about it soon enough to put some small pieces of it right.
All he needed to do was collect that spatial treasure from Sen. He didn’t expect that it would be too much trouble. He had held up his end of the agreement. He did wish he’d been able to do more for the ghost panther, though. She wasn’t happy in her human body, even if she’d resigned herself to it. It was too bad, really. She was terribly fetching as a human. His granddaughter could learn a thing or two about shaping a human body from her. He had been harboring some vague hopes that she’d succeed in capturing Sen’s attention. Securing even a little bit of whatever freakish luck he had would be a profound boon for the nine tail bloodlines as a whole. Unfortunately, she’d misread him. They both had. He had been too manipulative with Sen, while she had been too aggressive. Sen did appear less overtly hostile to Misty Peak. He seemed to regard her more as a nuisance than anything else. Not the most auspicious start but something that she could recover from if she worked at it.
He looked up to see the serving girl setting food down at his table. He directed a smile at her that made the girl’s ears go pink. Not that he’d do anything about it. Some prey was simply too easy to catch. One had to maintain standards after all. He glanced around the common room. The inn owner had replaced most of the broken furniture from the fight, even if much of it was mismatched. Laughing River wondered if the man had gone from house to house buying whatever he could from the townspeople. He supposed that was a viable short-term solution. The motley assortment simply offended Laughing River’s aesthetic sensibilities. He reminded himself again that this was a small, rural town, not a major city where nearly anything could be had at a moment’s notice if you had the money. I cannot fathom why anyone would choose to live here, he thought. Fu Ruolan must have chosen this spot. It was the only explanation he could come up with for why they were there at all.
He’d eaten most of his food when he saw the door open. Sen walked in holding a darling little girl in one arm. She looked around with open curiosity and zero fear. Not that she needed to fear much with a protector like Judgment’s Gale keeping an eye on her. Sen put the girl down, and she immediately walked over to the biggest, most grizzled man in the common room. She stared up at the man who gave her a startled glower.
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“What’s your name?” she asked with a bright smile.
Laughing River watched in rapt fascination as the little girl innocently leveraged the power of cuteness to charm a man who looked like life had beaten him mercilessly with the stick of hardship. The man remained silent and still for a few seconds before the hard lines in his face softened into a gruff smile.
“I’m Dai Bao. What’s your name, little one?”
“Liu Ai,” she said suddenly looking shy.
Awe. That was what Laughing River was feeling right at that moment. It was undiluted awe at how effortlessly that little girl achieved what a nine tail fox had to work so hard to accomplish. Sen walked over and gave the girl a fond smile.
“Don’t bother the man, Ai,” he told her.
“Oh, she’s no bother at all,” said Dai Bao, casting a dark look around the room that promised dire consequences if he didn’t like what he heard next. “Is she?”
There were hasty head shakes and a general exclamation that the little girl was joyously welcomed by all. The little girl, Liu Ai, giggled and then clambered up onto a chair at Dai Bao’s table, earning another gruff smile from the man. Sen gave the scene a skeptical look before he seemed to decide, correctly in Laughing River’s opinion, that Dai Bao would casually murder anyone who decided to bother his new friend.
“Are you hungry?” Sen asked the girl.
She nodded enthusiastically at him.
Sen turned an inquiring look at the gruff man. “Do you mind if she sits here? I don’t want her to trouble you.”
“No trouble at all,” said the man.
Sen retrieved a snack for the girl from the very nervous inn owner and set it down in front of her.
“I’ll be right over there if you need me for anything, okay?” Sen asked the girl.
She nodded at him before turning her attention to Dai Bao.
“You want one?” she asked, holding out a piece of fruit.
That’s it, thought Laughing River as the gruff man took the fruit with a grandfatherly smile. She owns that man for life, now. Laughing River forgot all about the little girl right then because that was the moment when Sen focused on him. Every finely-honed instinct for danger that the fox had ever developed suddenly started screaming at him that bad things were incoming. He met Sen’s eyes as the cultivator approached and started scrambling to understand what had changed. Laughing River had seen more warmth in a frozen lake. Not that he thought that Sen could actually beat him in a fight, but he was pretty sure the cultivator could injure him after that display against the horde. The only thing that kept the fox from deciding he was needed elsewhere was the conviction that Sen wouldn’t start a violent confrontation with a child so close at hand.
Sen sat down across from Laughing River and just stared with those cold, cold eyes for an uncomfortable number of heartbeats. Then, in an act that seemed to be happening almost against his will, Sen summoned a box from a storage ring and pushed it across the table. Laughing River eyed the box with more than usual caution. He didn’t need to open the box to know that it was the treasure he needed. He didn’t reach for it. Instead, he lifted an eyebrow at Sen.
“You seem rather out of sorts with me.”
Sen's expression didn’t change at all. “What gave it away?”
“The overwhelming impression I get that you’d like to bury your jian in my eye. Dare I ask what prompted this change of heart?”
“You really don’t know?” asked Sen.
“I really don’t.”
“You took my friend and left.”
“Yes, I took her away from the humans to practice.”
“You took my friend and left without bothering to provide so much as a clue about where you were going or when you might be back,” said Sen through clenched teeth.
Laughing River realized, yet again, that he had misread Sen. He’d assumed since they had an agreement in place, Sen would understand that he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that deal. If nothing else, Laughing River had too much to lose if things went wrong. Of course, that all hinged on Sen trusting him to keep his word. That all fell apart if he assumed that Sen didn’t trust him. Under those conditions, it would look incredibly suspect to just leave with his friend without providing a note or message of some kind.
“You clearly know I did everything I could to help your ghost panther friend.”
“I do know that which is why I’m giving you the spatial treasure as agreed. But that’s not really the point, is it? You could have done anything to her. You could have taken her somewhere dangerous or somewhere she couldn’t escape. You could have tricked her into thinking that you were me, for a while at least.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” said Laughing River.
“You didn’t do that. Given your history with me, I think saying wouldn’t stretches credulity.”
The fox almost fell into the trap of trying to defend himself, but he’d been dealing with humans for a long, long time. The anger Sen was feeling was driven by very real fears, even if Laughing River didn’t know the exact nature or source of those fears. Both anger and fear would fade with time as better sense eventually took hold. He had made a mistake. He just had to trust time to make that clear to Sen. Trying to convince him of anything now was a lost cause. Instead, he just nodded and took the spatial treasure.
“I’ll leave you to your business,” said Laughing River.
“It would probably be best if we don’t see each other for a while,” said Sen. “Give my temper and my nerves some time to settle.”
“I expect the townspeople would appreciate us not destroying everything they’ve worked to build here.”
“My thoughts as well. They don’t deserve that.”
“Until I see you again,” said Laughing River.
The fox left the inn immediately, not wanting to compound the problem he had inadvertently created. He’d hoped that trying to help Falling Leaf would mend things a little, but it seemed that had been too much to hope for. Even so, Sen had handed over the treasure with no fuss. There would likely be time to fix things later. If there was one thing that ascended spirit beasts and cultivators had, it was time. Until the day arrived to have a more rational exchange, Laughing River would deal with his own people. There was plenty of work to be done on that front.