“Lord Lu, the cultivator Judgment’s Gale, and his escort, Honorable Shen Mingxia,” announced the man at the door.

Hsiao Jiayi looked over, her curiosity burning. She’d heard so much about this man, this folk hero, this cultivator turned house patriarch in a land where cultivator noble houses simply did not exist. The stories had been ludicrous. Wild tales of impossible victories over sect elders when he’d been nothing but a foundation formation cultivator. Stories of him vanishing into the deep wilds and battling beast tides, sometimes single-handedly, and sometimes with a green-eyed jade beauty. Stories of him colluding with a nine tail fox princess to steal heavenly treasures from ancient ruins. Stories of villages saved, bandits punished, and clandestine meetings with ancient spirit beasts who guided him through advancements. Oh, she was sure that bits and pieces were true. He’d probably fought some outer disciple who called himself an elder where others could hear it. Maybe the man had robbed a grave somewhere. Perhaps he’d met a nine tail fox and no doubt been swindled by them. But no man could possibly be as interesting as the stories made this man out to be.

When he stepped through the door, though, all thoughts fled. Her heart started racing wildly. She’d never seen a man that beautiful before. Oh, he was still a man, a towering figure, the loose robes unable to fully conceal the heavy muscle beneath, but his face… It was what she imagined gods would look like. Too perfect to look at. Too perfect to be real. It took her an agonizingly long time to tear her gaze away from him. She focused instead on the woman who was with him. She was lovely, helped along in no small part by the outrageously expensive dress she wore, and that beautiful diadem, but it was still beauty within the bounds of humanity. Yet, her loveliness was a flickering candle next to the blistering sun that was Judgment’s Gale. Hsiao Jiayi risked another look at the man, and it was not better the second time. With another painful effort of will, she forced herself to look away. She didn’t know how that woman with him could stand there looking so calm.

As much as she wanted to not pay attention to the man, to spare herself that quiet agony, she couldn’t help but look again. She watched as he gave a respectful nod to the king. She coped with his appearance by doing what she’d been trained to do. She evaluated him. There was genuine warmth in his expression when he looked at the king, which meant the stories of a friendship were probably accurate. When Lord Lu swept his gaze around the room at the gathered nobility, that warmth was gone. It was replaced by a disdain that bordered on hatred. Then, his eyes landed on her. Her breath caught in her throat. There was an intensity in those dark eyes that could set forests ablaze. He seemed momentarily startled as he looked at her as if he was seeing something he didn’t expect. Then, his eyes moved on and she was able to breathe again.

When her father had ordered her to come here, she’d taken it as both a punishment and reprieve. So far from home, she would be largely free of the machinations of her father. The constant drive to make her useful in the way he wanted her to be useful. Something she had evaded through sheer determination and a little bloodshed. She had calmly murdered one suitor who had failed to understand that their parents’ political intrigues did not include her willing participation in his fantasies. That act had been what finally managed to half-convince her father that she would not be pushed into a marriage she didn’t want. Of course, the price for that had been never-ending travel to serve as his ambassador. Assignments that, as often as not, she was sure were designed to maximize the danger she’d be in. If she wouldn’t let herself be married off, then her death would be a fine excuse for another war.

This assignment wasn’t one of those, but it was still punishment. Being trundled off to the far side of the Mountains of Sorrow to talk with some mortal who imagined he was a king. As if the sects here couldn’t take control in a heartbeat if they wanted to. As near as she could tell, they just couldn’t be bothered with it. She wasn’t even sure that it was the wrong approach. Letting the mortals think they had some control did seem to be easier than enforcing cultivator control. If nothing else, it was less bloody. Even so, it felt unnatural to her, like some kind of gross inversion of the natural order. She had simply braced herself to get through this with as much dignity as she could muster, and then she would return to a place where things made sense. Maybe, if she was lucky, she might even be able to go home if only for a little while. Even if she’d personally heap gold and cultivation treasures on anyone who killed her father, she did miss the rest of her family. What was left of it. Most of her brothers had died on her father’s battlefields. Most of her sisters were either dead or married off. Even so, she could only see them when she was home, which happened all too rarely.

Of course, she had not expected such upheaval during her visit to this backwards nation. Now, though, she wasn’t sure what she should do. Part of her wanted to go and talk to this cultivator who had wrought such change in this theoretically mortal kingdom. The other part of her quailed at the very idea of having that man turn his full attention on her. It wasn’t that she didn’t want that attention, but that she wanted it too much. She chastised herself mentally. She didn’t know the man. She didn’t know anything about him that hadn’t come to her secondhand. If even half the stories were true, he was some kind of monster. No, that desire was just her body telling her lies. She had taken one look at him and reason had been bypassed by a primal urge to drag him somewhere private and have her way with him. She’d been so caught up in her own thoughts that she’d completely lost track of time and her surroundings. It was only when a man spoke to her that she truly came back to reality.

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“I don’t believe we’ve met,” said the man. “My name is Lu Sen.”

Hsiao Jiayi froze in place for a moment as anticipation and dread warred inside of her. It was him. She braced herself mentally before she turned to face the man. It barely helped. She had to make herself breathe. The only saving grace was that the intensity in his eyes had faded into something like distant, polite interest. That thought was immediately displaced by frustration. She didn’t want him to be distant. She was taking too long to answer him. She was making a fool of herself, yet there was no impatience on his face. It dawned on her then that this reaction must be normal. It had happened so often that he was used to having to wait for people to muster their minds enough to string words together. She took hold of herself.

“Hsiao Jiayi. I’m the ambassador from the kingdom of Kanshun.”

He nodded, but there was no immediate sign that he recognized the name. She felt a little pang of annoyance. How could the man not have ever even heard of her home?

“Did it take you long to travel here? I understand the journey over the Mountains of Sorrow is—” he hesitated for a moment, seeming to look for the right word. “Taxing.”

She couldn’t help the small sigh that escaped her lips.

“It was unpleasant. Not a journey that most would take willingly, I should think.”

“Did you travel alone?” he asked, glancing around curiously. “No guards? No entourage?”

“None were provided, which is for the best. My duties often require me to move quickly. Guards and servants would only slow me down.”

“I understand,” he said.

She got the strangest feeling that he wasn’t just mouthing those words out of politeness. If the stories were true, he often traveled both alone and with companions. Now that her mind was operating again if not precisely at its best, she felt for his cultivation level. It was higher than her own. If she had to guess, he was peak core formation, but it felt odd to her. It was like his cultivation was somehow deeper than it had any right to be. He shot her a vaguely amused look.

“Curiosity satisfied?” he asked.

She felt her blood run cold. The man had noticed her quiet intrusion. One of the reasons why she had survived so long running errands designed to kill her was how subtle she was in her use of qi and her spiritual sense. She had surveyed nascent soul cultivators without so much as a flicker of recognition on their part. Yet, this man had noticed immediately. That was a chilling level of awareness.

“I apologize for my rudeness,” she said.

The man shrugged in a way that suggested he really didn’t care. Then, his eyes went out of focus for a moment before they focused again. That intensity was back, and she couldn’t find the strength to look away.

“A moment, please,” he said.

Then, he turned his head and looked across the room. Her gaze followed his to where the woman he’d come with had been all but backed into a corner by Sung Kai. He had also been sent from the other side of the mountains as an ambassador, although she knew that he’d been chosen almost entirely to temporarily rid his kingdom of a problem. She felt something rouse itself in Lu Sen, and it was like some great leviathan had woken from a ten-thousand-year slumber and was stirring. A moment later, Sung Kai let out a cry like a wounded animal. The man slammed down to his knees and blood started to pour from his mouth, nose, and ears. It was a terrifying display of strength. Sung Kai was a powerful cultivator in his own right, and he’d been brought low between heartbeats. Lu Sen calmly walked across the now deathly silent room. He spoke to the woman in white, who looked simultaneously relieved and alarmed. She nodded in answer to some question. Seeming satisfied, the man turned his attention back to Sung Kai, who was thrashing and convulsing on the floor.

The reassuring demeanor he’d worn when speaking to his escort evaporated. In an instant, that silly name, Judgment’s Gale, didn’t sound silly at all. His face was carved from stone, like a statue that captured the essence of enraged divinity. He stared down at Sung Kai with eyes that promised things eternal and ghastly. Hsiao Jiayi was certain that Lu Sen meant to end Sung Kai then and there. Yet, before the grisly work could begin, the king intervened.

“Expel him, if you must, but I would appreciate it if you didn’t kill him. It could prove troublesome,” said King Jing.

Judgment’s Gale glanced at the king and gave a small nod. Hsiao Jiayi knew that it was not an expression of subservience, no matter what anyone else at the gathering might think, the king included. It was a man agreeing to the request of a friend. Rather than crushing the life from Sung Kai, or whatever he had planned to do, Lu Sen reached down and seized the other man by the throat. He dragged the still thrashing and convulsing man toward a wall and, with a wave of Lu Sen’s hand, Sung Kai’s blood was burned away from the floor. Hsiao Jiayi stared in awe as the wall seemed to melt away like water, exposing an exterior courtyard. Lu Sen lifted Sung Kai and spoke to him briefly before drawing back and hurling the other man into the sky with nothing but brute strength. Then, as if nothing had happened, Lu Sen walked back into the room, the wall restoring itself behind him. He looked at the king.

“He’ll land outside the city wall. It won’t kill him.”

The king looked a little startled but nodded.

“I appreciate your restraint.”

Lu Sen nodded to the king and then walked back over to her, the look of distant, polite interest back in place on his face. He picked up their conversation as if there had been no interruption.

“How are you finding it here? I understand that things are different where you’re from.”

She struggled to find words but managed to stammer something.

“It’s been more eventful than I expected.”

“Oh? How so?” asked the man, his face a picture of perfect innocence.