Sen sat at the head of a table and stared at the wall. He’d stopped hearing anything that anyone was saying at least an hour earlier. It was supposed to be a meeting to discuss how best to manage the latest batch of cultivators that had shown up looking for entry into the sect. Soon after returning from setting up Grandmother Lu in the capital, Sen had adopted a policy that no cultivator looking for entry into the sect would be seen on arrival. Some of it was simply Sen directing money into the purses of the townspeople. The volume of travelers coming and going had picked up enough that a second inn had opened up in town, as well as two small restaurants. People with more refined palates had told him that the food at them was only adequate. It was an assessment he’d been forced to agree with after visiting. He still made a point to eat at one or the other at least once a month. It seemed to help attract business.
The other reason no cultivators were seen immediately was simply to test their patience. If they couldn’t endure waiting a few weeks, they likely couldn’t endure the discipline necessary to succeed as cultivators beneath Sen’s admittedly grueling standards. He knew that his standards were unreasonably high because he had been told so by more than one of the people seated at the table around him. He also knew why they were unreasonable. They’d been forged under Master Feng’s even more unreasonable expectations. Knowing all of that, Sen refused to relinquish them. He had no desire to bring anyone into the academy who would simply crack beneath the pressure and expectations. Better to send them away disappointed now than to send them away broken later. Sen recognized that a cruel-to-be-kind approach looked only cruel to the people on the receiving end, but he had yet to find a better way.
It also gave Sen and the other members of the academy that he at least vaguely trusted to observe the would-be candidates. While word had spread that mistreating the townspeople was both an automatic disqualification and a short road to a brutal correction of that behavior, people were people. It was easy enough for almost anyone to hide their natures for a day or two. Most people fell back to their habits after a week or two. Long Jia Wei had proven particularly effective in ferreting out people that Sen wouldn’t want around. In two cases, the man had simply killed the cultivators and disposed of their bodies.
The first time, Sen had demanded an explanation. Long Jia Wei had calmly explained that he found the cultivator beating a local shopkeeper for the grand offense of expecting to be paid for his wares. Sen had personally visited the shopkeeper, apologized for the event, tended to the man’s wounds, and reimbursed him for the lost business. The second time it happened, Sen had only asked if the offending cultivator had it coming. He’d taken Long Jia Wei’s yes for an answer. When Sen had followed that up by asking if anyone needed to be helped or compensated, he’d been told that someone had already been dispatched with the appropriate healing aids and money. Sen had almost asked for more information but decided he needed to extend some trust to the people who worked for him. If Long Jia Wei said it was being handled appropriately, he’d take the man at his word.
If only everything could be that easy, thought Sen as he forced himself to start paying attention to the people at the table. Except, it wasn’t everyone at the table. It was just two people. Two people who had been the source of more of Sen’s wasted time than anyone else in the entire academy. On the right side of the table was the burly Tong Qianfan. He was on his feet, leaning over the table with a belligerent look on his face. He was one of the people Sen had brought back with him from the capital, recruited with some caveats from one of the smaller sects there. He was largely in charge of the foundation formation cultivators and their various teachers. On the left side of the table, looking cool, calm, and utterly dismissive of Tong Qianfan, was the diminutive Yan Shu. She had been directed to Sen by one of the only people at the Soaring Skies Sect that he was likely to listen to, Elder Deng. She had been given the thankless task of trying to usher qi condensing cultivators to the foundation formation stage.
The pair had taken an immediate dislike to one another. Tong Qianfan considered Yan Shu as nothing but an incompetent from some backwater sect. She considered him a useless, mindless brute who only had one answer for every problem. Hit it until it breaks. Sen knew this because he’d heard her say it to the man’s face. What had followed was, in Sen’s opinion, an utterly humiliating display in which Tong Qianfan tried to strike the woman, only to have her beat him within an inch of his life. He never even came close to landing a blow on her after that first attempt. Since then, the pair had locked horns over nearly everything from lesson plans to what food should be provided to the mortal and cultivator students who attended the various classes available at the academy. Their current argument had started over how to handle a dispute between two students and descended into what seemed to be little more than viciously barbed insults.
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“Of course, you think that. You ignorant buffoon,” said Yan Shu. “Any solution that doesn’t involve someone getting injured is too complicated for your third-rate mind to understand.”
“Don’t talk down to me, you overbearing bitch!” roared Tong Qianfan.
“Enough,” said Sen, using a bit of qi to make his voice resonate.
He decided he’d overdone it because not only did his voice resonate, but the table, the chairs, the walls, and probably the bodies of everyone in the room did as well. Utter silence fell as Yan Shu and Tong Qianfan seemed to recall themselves and where they were. Both cast guilty looks in Sen’s direction and went a little pale at what they saw on his face.
“You two, stay,” said Sen, pointing at Yan Shu and Tong Qianfan. “Everyone else, get out.”
There were precisely zero protests as the rest of the people at the meeting fled before the obvious anger in Sen’s voice. He actually preferred that to the usual round of last-second questions and people hanging around simply to bow to him or call him patriarch or whatever other nonsense crossed their minds. He fixed Tong Qianfan with a hard look.
“Sit down,” he ordered the other man.
The burly man dropped into his seat immediately. Sen let the silence stretch out for a long time. Instead of speaking, he just looked from one to the other, and then let his gaze settle on something in the middle distance. When he did finally speak, both of the other cultivators jerked a little.
“The entire reason for having people in your positions is to make my life easier,” said Sen. “I cannot handle every task that needs to be done in this place. I need people I can rely on to handle those things. I need people who are actively invested in doing that well, both because it benefits the students and it makes my life easier. So, let me ask you this. When you two spend an hour screaming at each other every time we have a meeting, do you believe you’re making my life easier?”
The pair traded glances.
“No,” said Lan Shu.
“No,” muttered Tong Qianfan.
“Do you believe that your constant bickering, in public, is providing any benefit to the mortals and cultivators that you’re supposed to be setting some kind of example for?”
“No,” admitted Lan Shu.
Tong Qianfan mumbled something that might have been a no. Neither of the cultivators would meet Sen’s eyes. Intentionally wanted to keep them off balance, Sen switched topics.
“Do you like it here? Do you want to stay?”
The subject change had the intended effect because both of them blinked a few times. Lan Shu managed to keep the confusion off her face, while Tong Qianfan wore his confusion openly.
“Yes, Patriarch,” said Lan Shu, apparently recovering a little faster.
“I do, Patriarch,” said Tong Qianfan a beat later.
“It doesn’t look that way,” said Sen. “As of right now, I’m inclined to send you both back where you came from. It’d be a huge hassle to replace you, but I still think it would be less of a problem than keeping you here. So, you have one day to settle your dispute. Short of killing each other, I don’t care how you do it, but you will not do it in front of the students. If one of you does kill the other, don’t be here tomorrow. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Patriarch,” the pair said in unison.
“Good. As for the bickering students, send them to me immediately. I’ll deal with it.”
Both Lan Shu and Tong Qianfan abruptly looked very nervous. Sen didn’t know if he looked like he might do something drastic to the students or if they were worried he was going to find out that the dispute was something very stupid. They both looked like they were about to protest, so Sen cut them off.
“Do you not know what immediately means?” asked Sen.
The chastised cultivators shot to their feet, offered hasty bows, and departed the room without ever managing to look directly at each other.
Sen shook his head and spoke to the empty room.
“I really hope they don’t kill each other.”