Sen had ground his teeth when Lo Meifeng first dispatched riders to visit a few, very carefully chosen sects. He ground his teeth every time he thought about it. Sects had been the source of so much unhappiness and pain in his life. The idea of doing business of any kind with them felt wrong. Unnatural. Almost a violation of something sacrosanct. Yet, after hearing just a little bit about how things were on the far side of the Mountains of Sorrow, he knew that they truly were the lesser of two evils. And like or not, his own choices had led him to a place where he had to consider things like what the lesser of two evils were. Given a choice between sects that enforced some level of restraint on their members and cultivator nobility who were perfectly happy to treat mortals like slaves, he would take the sects. It didn’t make employing them feel any better to him, though. That was why he had left that work almost entirely to Lo Meifeng.
If he’d left it to himself, it never would have gotten done, and it needed to get done. He’d required a fast way to secure those distant Xie properties and holdings in the short term, while he assembled at least semi-reliable mortal forces to go and hold them in truth. As Lo Meifeng had explained to him, repeatedly, and at length, using sects was the only realistic option. All of the other options meant marching forces across the kingdom. Forces he still didn’t have or at least not in sufficient numbers. They had recruited a fair number of ex-soldiers and a few mercenaries who had managed to get past Lo Meifeng and Grandmother Lu's rather incisive questioning. Of course, even if he had been able to find enough men with the right skills immediately, sending them out in large numbers was the kind of thing that always drew attention. Word would spread ahead of them. People would talk. There would be vicious fighting to reclaim every bit of territory.
All of which could be sidestepped by sending out a comparatively small force of cultivators. Only other sects would question it when cultivators moved, and they wouldn’t take an active interest unless those cultivators made a nuisance of themselves. Sen shook his head and tried to shove his unease to the back of his mind. He’d been having this same argument with himself every single day. In the end, it all came down to a simple question. Do I trust the judgment of the people around me? Sen did trust their judgment. In part because they had earned that trust, and in part because he knew that his poor relationship with sects was at least partially his own fault. He had decided early on that sects and everything to do with them was bad. That had bred a kind of arrogance in him. He was dismissive of sects, which he knew infuriated sect members. Knowing that, he acted dismissive of them anyway. Not that sect disciples needed much excuse to start trouble, but he had never helped the situation. And then, he’d used their negative reactions to his disdain for them as proof that sects were indeed evil. It was a tidy little circle of justification he’d made for himself.
Except, now, he wasn’t in a place where he could indulge that kind of juvenile thinking anymore without hampering his own plans. The world was more complicated than the simple either-or he’d been applying to sects. He’d met people from sects who weren’t terrible people. People who did have honor, and who did care about doing the right thing, even if he’d had to remind some of them of that fact. The truth was that sects were made up of people. Some of them were undoubtedly awful. Some of them were undoubtedly good. Most of them were probably in the middle somewhere. The same as all the mortals Sen had met over the years. It was just easy to see sect cultivators as evil because the power they held made them so much more deadly and destructive when they did turn out to be huge piles of garbage masquerading as a person. Sen stood up from the table where he’d been staring blankly at paperwork for at least twenty minutes.
“I have to stop doing this to myself. It’s done. Rehashing it won’t change anything,” Sen announced to the, for once, empty room.
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A moment later, the door popped open and Pan Shiji stepped inside.
“Did you call for me, Lord Lu?” she asked.
Sen was almost positive that she knew he hadn’t called for her, based on the faint blush that crept into her cheeks when he raised an eyebrow at her. He’d also figured out that nothing short of an explicit order not to come into the room would keep her out. An order he forced himself not to give at least six times a day. She’d never done anything wrong. She’s just creepy, thought Sen. There was something unhealthy about her fixation on him. He’d never seen anything quite like it before, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Yet, it also didn’t seem like a big enough issue that he should bother his already overworked friends, family, and acquaintances with it. So, he put up with it and hoped that it would go away on its own. Since she was already there, he turned to the table and gathered up the work that he managed to finish before his daily descent into second-guessing choices he already made. I should ask Jing if he has these kinds of problems the next time I see him, thought Sen. He handed the scrolls over and shooed her out of the room.
He walked over to the window and looked down into the courtyard. He saw guards doing what he assumed were normal guard things. They had even gotten uniforms… No, it’s called livery, Sen reminded himself. He didn’t know why they had to call those uniforms livery instead of just calling them uniforms, but he hadn’t cared enough to dig into the reasons. He also saw people coming and going through the gates, most of them carrying out tasks about which he knew nothing. He honestly found it a little distressing how much activity was being carried out in his name, or at least in the name of the House of Lu, about which he was wholly ignorant. He suspected that most of it consisted of the type of mundane tasks that he’d delegated back at his academy. It was the not knowing that ate at him. When he’d asked about it, he’d been firmly told by both Lo Meifeng and Grandmother Lu that the work didn’t need his attention. Pressing the matter had simply resulted in being told that his interference would only slow the work down.
Part of him understood their point but it still sat poorly. It’s only going to get worse, he thought. Every bit of that property and those businesses those cultivators will go claim for you will be another thing you can’t oversee directly. It didn’t take any special insight to see that it was too much for any one person. It’s too much for any ten people. This was why noble houses had small armies of servants and staff. It was why the kingdom had buildings full of bureaucrats, to say nothing of armies that had their own structures and officers and bureaucrats. Thoughts like that made Sen feel very small, tired, and overwhelmed. It also made him hate being in this city all the more. He missed Ai so much it felt like a stab wound that refused to heal. He missed Auntie Caihong and Uncle Kho. He even found himself missing Fu Ruolan and her instability. He missed Falling Leaf almost as much as he missed Ai. He knew it had been the right decision not to bring her back to the capital. She was happiest in the wilds and places close to it.
Oh, but what he wouldn’t have given to have her with him. Above all others, he trusted her. Not to give him advice or guide him in these complex political decisions. She wouldn’t have cared about any of this maneuvering he was doing beyond how much or how little danger it put him in. But if the danger came, she would stand beside him and face it. It was a certainty, a fact, a foundational truth in his world. That was the sort of certainty, the kind of loyalty, that you could not pay for. He knew it made him stronger by its mere presence, and he knew it helped keep his emotions stable. He also knew that the only reason he hadn’t abandoned this entire venture already was the constant assurances from Lo Meifeng and Grandmother Lu that he would be free to go back north soon. He wouldn’t be able to stay away from the capital forever, but the prospect of even a temporary respite kept him going. If soon doesn’t turn into tomorrow very quickly, though, I’m leaving anyway, thought Sen. I’ve already been gone for far longer than I ever planned. Slightly cheered by that promise to himself, Sen went back to the table and picked up another scroll.