While Sen let Wu Chia-Hao think about those questions, he looked around the room. It was a surprisingly bare room, save for a few pictures that had been rendered in a style Sen didn’t recognize. Standing from his chair, he walked over to one of the paintings and studied it. It was a simple enough image, a still pond with a lone tree spreading its branches over the water. What made it unique was that the entire image had been rendered entirely in what looked to be black ink. Sen had no idea how the artist had accomplished the feat, having no practical experience with art himself, but he found he appreciated the quiet mastery it seemed to display.
“This is very nice,” said Sen in a conversational tone. “Who painted it?”
There was a pregnant pause before Wu Chia-Hao choked out, “My daughter, Wu Ningli.”
Sen nodded before he returned to the chair and sat down. He remained silent for a time and simply stared at the Wu patriarch. The other man tried to still his trembling hands by pressing them flat against the table.
“I didn’t have a family,” said Sen. “When I was a child. I grew up alone. On the streets. It’s hard for a person to appreciate what family truly means until they live without one. It’s given me a particular appreciation for those who have become my family, as well as those who enter into my service. I am protective of them.”
“I… I see,” said the Wu patriarch.
“I sincerely doubt that given how many people you sent out there to die at my hands. But you are a father,” said Sen and let that implied threat hang in the air.
Wu Chia-Hao’s eyes shot to the painting. Real panic bled into the man’s expression.
“I tried to stop it! I did!”
“When?”
“What?” Wu Chia-Hao almost shrieked.
“When did you try to stop it?” asked Sen before lifting a hand to stop the reply. “Don’t bother. I know when. You tried to stop it after you saw what I did to that fool ambassador. But I have to wonder, would you have cared at all about the people you condemned to die if you hadn’t been so afraid that I would come for you? I don’t think you would have. I don’t think you would have given it a thought. Which is why I prepared this for you.”
Sen summoned a stone vial from a storage ring and set it on the table between them.
“What’s that?” asked Wu Chia-Hao, his eyes fixed on the vial.
“Poison. And, unlike that garbage you tried to have used on me, I assure you that this poison will kill you. I made it myself. I’m a rather talented alchemist, you see. My interests normally run to using alchemy to heal, but I am capable of making poisons. And I was very motivated. I spent a long time thinking about all of the people you hurt while I crafted that poison.”
“Please, it wasn’t—"
“So, let me tell you what to expect if you drink this. You will die slowly. It will be excruciating. It will start in your hands and feet. You probably don’t know that much about human bodies, so I’ll impart a little wisdom. There are these things in your body called nerves. They let you feel things like heat, cold, and pain. This poison tricks your nerves into thinking that you’ve been injured. It will feel like your hands and feet are on fire. Have you ever been burned? Well, it’s just about the worst kind of pain a person can experience. That feeling will slowly creep up your arms and legs. It’ll make its way across your chest and stomach before it finally reaches your head. It will feel like someone has heaped red hot coals on your face. Not that you’ll know anything at that point. I expect the pain will have long since driven you insane by then.”
The pure horror on Wu Chia-Hao’s face finally manifested in words.
“That’s monstrous. Inhuman. It’s—”
“Silence!” commanded Sen before resuming his conversational tone. “You’re being rude. I’m not done explaining. Assuming you don’t lose your mind entirely, the next thing that will happen is that your body will start to rot. Normally, that’s a slow process, but I found a way to speed it up. You’ll get to watch your fingers and toes fall off. Your tongue will fall out not too long after. You go blind after that. The good news is that your sense of smell won’t go away. You’ll get to smell every last second of your body turning into a stinking, putrid heap of vileness that even your family won’t recognize.
“Eventually, you’ll lungs will start to decompose. That’s what will finally kill you. You’ll drown. You will drown in your own liquified flesh. Of course, it won’t be like drowning in the water. That’s pretty fast, as I understand it. You’ll get to savor the experience. If my estimations are correct, it should take you about three hours to drown once you finally get to that point. Think of this as a small taste of what you inflicted on others.”
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Wu Chia-Hao wasn’t even looking at Sen anymore. He was pushed back into his chair as if he could make himself safer by putting a little more distance between himself and the poison. His eyes never wavered from the vial. There were tears streaming down his face.
“You can’t do this to me,” the man whispered. “You can’t make me drink that.”
“Why not?” asked Sen.
“Because… Because I’m…”
“So noble?” asked Sen, the words all but dripping with acid. “Where was all that nobility when you decided to murder my people?”
“They were just…” started Wu Chia-Hao.
“Peasants? Well, by that logic you’re just a mortal,” said Sen in a bored voice. “To a cultivator like me, you’re a mayfly. What’s a few decades more or less?”
Sen let the man sit with that for most of a minute. The Wu patriarch seemed to shrink in on himself when the truth finally sank in that Sen could do whatever he pleased, and there was nothing to stop him. It was only then that Sen summoned a second stone vial from his storage ring. He put it on the table next to the first vial. He tapped his finger on the cork and spoke again.
“This vial also contains a poison. It’s painless. You’ll remain lucid for the rest of the day. More than enough time to say goodbye and appoint an heir. Then, you’ll get tired. You’ll simply go to sleep and never wake up.”
Wu Chia-Hao stared at the second vial like it was the hand of a god reaching out to save him. Sen had intended for it to look that way. Compared to days of excruciating, sanity-shattering pain, having your body rot, and drowning, a quiet death in one’s sleep had to look positively lenient by comparison.
“What do I have to do to get that vial? Tell me! I’ll do anything.”
“You can buy this vial,” said Sen, tapping it again, “with information. You will tell me everything about how the attack was arranged and who was involved. Do that, and I will grant you this single mercy.”
Word started to tumble out of Wu Chia-Hao’s mouth almost before Sen finished speaking. It was almost incoherent. There was no organization to the information. The man was just saying, screaming really, whatever came into his head that was related. Sen let the man get some of that out of his system before he lifted a hand to stop the flow of babbling.
“Start at the beginning. Was this your idea?”
“No,” said Wu Chia-Hao, openly weeping. “It wasn’t my idea. It was brought to me by someone. I didn’t know her, but I knew people she knew. People who wanted to get back at you.”
“What was her name?” asked Sen.
“Yeung Fen. She said her name was Yeung Fen.”
The name meant nothing to Sen, at least at first. The longer he thought about it, though, the more certain he was that he’d heard it before.
“Yeung Fen,” muttered Sen. “Why do I know that name?”
For some reason, it put him in mind of Lo Meifeng. Something they had done together. Wait, thought Sen, she was that woman back in that town with the strange name. Lin Wen’s Redoubt! That was the place. She set up that terrible ambush. Wasn’t she going to auction me off or something? Sen tried to remember the details, but he hadn’t put much stock in the whole thing. He’d honestly never thought he’d see or hear from that woman again. That had been back when Sen was still running scared from demonic cultivators. He’d have to ask Lo Meifeng if she could remember more about it than he did. That was a problem for later. He focused on Wu Chia-Hao again.
“So, once she brought you this idea, what happened then?”
It turned out that the House of Wu had mostly been responsible for delivering the cart of explosives. The explosives themselves had been provided, as had the idea for how to bypass Sen’s defensive formations. That was troubling. It would have taken a cultivator to spot the flaw in the first place. Although, in a city as big as the capital, he supposed that there had to be at least a few mercenary-minded cultivators with formation skills good enough for that. He’d like to thank that cultivator personally, but it wasn’t a high priority for him. It would just be nice. The Wu patriarch’s story didn’t actually provide a lot of additional information that Sen didn’t have, but he picked up a few names he hadn't known about before. There was one glaring absence in the story that Sen considered ignoring. He considered it and then rejected the idea.
“Well, that was all very interesting,” noted Sen.
Wu Chia-Hao reached a trembling hand toward the stone vial that would offer a painless death.
“There’s just one last piece of business,” continued Sen.
“What business?” asked Wu Chia-Hao, who seemed to have aged nearly twenty years in the space of the conversation.
“I want the names of all your family members that were involved. The ones you intentionally left out of the story. Otherwise,” said Sen, pointedly looking at the painting on the wall, “I’ll just have to assume that they’re all involved and act accordingly.”
A look of rage crossed Wu Chia-Hao’s face. Sen met that rage with an impassive blankness. The Wu patriarch’s hands closed into fists before his expression crumpled into one of defeat.
“Jidi. My son. He helped me to arrange things, but he didn’t know what we were doing. I didn’t tell him. He thought it was just a delivery that I wanted to make sure arrived safely. A way to curry favor with the new House of Lu.”
“I’ll be sure to ask him about it,” said Sen. “Who knows? He might even survive. Anyone else?”
Wu Chia-Hao came up with two more names of people he claimed were only peripherally involved. Sen had his doubts but even his anger had limits. He suspected that the death of Wu Chia-Hao would be enough of a message. Sen slid the second vial across the table. The Wu patriarch snatched it up eagerly, but then sense seemed to find him again. It was a painless death, but it was still death. The man hesitated.
“I can always take it back and give you the other one,” said Sen, reaching out as if he meant to follow through.
Wu Chia-Hao hastily pulled the cork from the bottle and, after another hesitation, he drank it.
“That was a good choice,” said Sen. “Now, walk me out. I want everyone to see you alive and well when I leave here.”