Chapter 74: What Goes by Night (1)

Chapter 74: What Goes by Night (1)

After a discussion about where it would be best to have the fight, should it come to a fight, Grandmother Lu decided that she’d rather it happened at the shop. When Sen asked her why, she shrugged and said it would put fewer people in danger. Nobody lived in the shop, while she had servants at the house. The argument came when Sen insisted that he stay at the shop, while Grandmother Lu returned to her home.

“Why in the world would I agree to something like that?”

“Two reasons. The first reason is that, if they send people to the house, you have a far better chance of protecting those people than they have of protecting themselves. I’m sure that Zhang Muchen and your other servants would put up a fight if they had to. Are any of them actually trained to fight? I mean trained like us.”

Grandmother Lu scowled. “No, they aren’t. I didn’t think it’d be necessary. More fool me.”

“The second reason is that if I have a better chance of defending myself if I’m here alone. If it’s just me, I don’t have to worry about accidentally injuring someone on my side. That means I can strike as hard as I need to with no second guessing.”

Grandmother Lu did not look happy about it, but Sen could tell that she was coming around on his way of thinking. While she’d gotten back much of her vitality, enough that she could wield those fans in a calm back room, it wasn’t the same thing as going up against other cultivators in a full-on fight. Of course, Sen didn’t know they’d send cultivators or how many there might be, but it seemed wise to assume that’s what would happen. He just hoped that Chen Aiguo was at the top of the pile of local cultivators. Again, Sen couldn’t know that was the case, but the man had been training the mayor’s son. That suggested that he was the best the mayor could find. As long as they didn’t send too many people at that level, Sen felt like he had a good chance of holding his own. Of course, there was the problem of keeping one or two of them alive. He needed to find out who sent them. Sen shrugged that thought away. That was definitely a problem for later.

He spent the rest of the day doing his best to stay out of the way. Although, he did take a little time out to eat the pineapple buns with that Bai girl. The buns were amazing. He decided that he’d need to get the recipe for Auntie Caihong. It was the exact kind of thing that she liked. When he mentioned something to Bai about needing to meet her mother so he could get the recipe, the girl had seemingly lost the ability to speak and ran off. Then, Grandmother Lu had glared at him. Sen just shrugged at her. It wasn’t like he knew what had sent the girl running.This chapter made its debut appearance via N0v3lB1n.

When the day finally ran its course, Sen made a big show of being seen outside. All of the girls seemed to want to hang around and talk at him, but a combination of Grandmother Lu’s stern looks and the hour saw the girls safely off to their homes. Finally, Grandmother Lu announced that she needed to go home. Sen waved goodbye to her, then looked around the largely abandoned market. He assumed that someone was watching, so he wanted them to be absolutely sure he was still at the shop. Then, he stepped back inside, closed the door, and locked it. Sen was surprised by the change in how the shop felt. When there had been customers and all the employees inside, the shop radiated a strange kind of aliveness.

“Just give us the money, you bastard,” shouted one of the foundation formation cultivators. “That’s all we want.”

Sen found it a little ironic that he actually found moving through the shop in his qi-created shadows easier than doing it in the semi-darkness of natural light. With his shadows touching everything, he knew where everything was. That made it very easy for him to find one of the qi condensing cultivators. There was a little bubble around them where his shadows couldn’t reach. It felt like some kind of fire technique to Sen, not that it mattered. By the time they realized that he was close, his jian had already passed through their back and into their heart. Sen twisted the blade to ensure maximum damage. The only thing that left the shadows was his jian’s blade. With one person down, Sen engaged with them again.

“Tell me who sent you. Whoever tells me, I’ll let leave.”

“We’re not telling you anything. Now, give us the gold!” The same foundation formation cultivator yelled.

Sen wrote that one off as hopeless. He also decided that he needed to pick up the pace. The shadow technique was very effective, but he could feel it sapping his qi reserves at an alarming rate. The second qi condensing cultivator died as easily as the first. The third actually gave him a little trouble. Sen didn’t know if he made a noise or if the woman’s spiritual sense was a bit more finely tuned, but she was ready for him. He very nearly lost an ear to a slender, sharpened bolt of ice that shot past his head. That would have been bad enough, but she also yelled.

“He’s over here!”

Sighing, Sen stepped into the small area of control that the woman had managed to exert to escape the pure inky blackness of his shadows. The woman had a dagger in each hand. To her credit, she didn’t hesitate. To her misfortune, neither did Sen. Two quick flicks of his jian sent the daggers flying from her hands. Then he struck her across the side of the head. She went down in a limp heap. Reaching down, Sen seized the back of her robes and lifted the woman up off the ground. He moved so that he was directly in the path of the uncooperative foundation formation cultivator. He held the woman up in front of him like a literal human shield and jumped forward into the foundation formation cultivator’s sphere of influence. It was just a moment of hesitation, a brief instance of distraction from seeing the woman, but it was all the time Sen needed. He drove his jian up through the woman at an angle. It exploded through the woman’s chest and, using the other cultivator’s forward momentum against him, sank into the man’s throat. The man staggered back, trying to hold his damaged throat closed while he stared at Sen with confused, disbelieving eyes.

Sen jerked the jian from the woman’s body and let it drop to the floor. He didn’t need to be subtle anymore. He closed on the injured cultivator, batted away a hastily thrown punch, feinted with the jian, then kicked the man’s legs out from under him. The injured cultivator had barely hit the floor before Sen’s jian pinned him to it. With that, Sen let the shadow technique drop. The last cultivator had been trying to get to them, but she stopped cold when she saw the bodies. Sen could see her doing the math. They’d been in the shop for less than three minutes, and now she was the only one left.

“So,” said Sen, drawing his jian out of the corpse on the floor. “We should talk about who sent you.”