Book 4: Chapter 55: What Honor?

Book 4: Chapter 55: What Honor?

Two days, several healing elixirs, and a lot of sleep later, Sen felt more like himself again. Shi Ping seemed horrified at even the possibility that a nascent soul cultivator might attack them, while Falling Leaf seemed ready to storm out of the inn to find someone to kill. Sen told them both to just sit tight while he ran an experiment or two. His first stop was to see the prince. He was, not surprisingly, aware of Sen’s recent adventures and not particularly pleased.

“Do you know how many people died during that little escapade of yours?” demanded Prince Jing.

“No,” said Sen.

“Thirty-seven people. Those are just the ones we know about.”

“I am sorry about that, but I was only involved directly in two of those deaths. Both of those people were cultivators who came to attack us. I wasn’t the one knocking down buildings.”The birth of this content finds its genesis in Nøv€lß¡n★

“I know. That was Tong Guanting.”

“Is that his name? Burly cultivator with a beard.”

“Yes. He’s the head of the Shadow Eagle Talon Syndicate.”

Sen nodded. “I thought he might be, but I didn’t know for sure.”

“You didn’t know!” shouted the prince. “Do you routinely get attacked by people you haven’t met?”

Sen thought for a second. “Actually... Yes. It happens with an almost dreary regularity.”

The prince had seemed to be building up to what he probably meant to be an extended screaming or lecture session. That admission on Sen’s part seemed to bring that all to a crashing halt as the prince just stared at him.

“That really happens to you? Random people just attack you?”

“I don’t know how random they are, but people I don’t know or haven’t met before do attack me all the time. Some of that just goes with being a cultivator but not all of it. I’ve made some enemies.”

“You don’t say,” said the prince, rolling his eyes with theatrical flair. “If you don’t mind me asking, did you feel that you didn’t have enough of them here? Decided to make a few more?”

“This one isn’t on me. They attacked me first, unprovoked, while I was having a breakthrough in my cultivation. Then, they attacked me again with no provocation. At that point, I told them to get out of the city or I’d do it for them.”

“That seemed like a good idea to you? You didn’t think there might be repercussions?”

“I assumed there would be repercussions. I obviously didn’t expect them to knock down a building and kill a bunch of mortals.”

“So, now that you have their attention, why in the hells did you come here?”

“I’m testing a theory. I think Tong Guanting overstepped his bounds the other day. If I’m right, he won’t lift so much as a finger in my direction.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“Then, he’ll probably kill me the minute I leave this place. I doubt he’d dare level your home just to get at me. No cultivator wants an all-out war with a mortal army. It’s worse for him because he has an organization.”

“Why does that matter?”

“For someone like me, I can just grab my people and slip away into the night. Sure, an army could chase me, maybe even catch me, but I’d have a lot of advantages. You can’t do that with an organization. Plus, once word got out that the mortal authorities were moving against him, every cultivator with a grudge would come out to take their vengeance. It’d be a bloodbath.”

“Why did they attack you in the first place?”

“I assume someone pointed them at me. I only had the one chance to ask, and I was so busy making threats that I forgot about it.”

“You said you were attacked more than once. Why did you only have one chance to ask?”

Sen tilted his head a little to one side as he studied the prince. For a second or two, he thought the royal was mocking him. Then, Sen realized that the prince probably hadn’t done that much of his own fighting over the years.

Sen sighed. “I guess it was too much to hope that little project would go smoothly. I can’t imagine that Chan Yu Ming took it well.”

“She did not,” said the prince with an amused smile. “As I understand it, there was massive water damage to a large portion of the palace. It’s going to cost my father a fortune to have it all repaired in time for the ceremony.”

“I take it your mother declined to help?”

“No. In point of fact, the word is that she made a very strong, very pointed argument in support of Chan Yu Ming marrying literally anyone except someone from the house of Choi. Some of the options she offered as better than a Choi included a goat, a toothless beggar, a piece of driftwood, and a random houseplant that she pointed at.”

“A houseplant?” snickered Sen.

The prince nodded. “Yes, by all accounts, she was in fine form that day.”

“And your father didn’t want to hear it?”

The prince shook his head, although Sen read it more as disbelief than anything else.

“He just told mother that the matter was settled. She was none too pleased by that.”

“So, this is going to be harder than everyone expected,” said Sen.

“It appears that way. Although, honestly, I’m not sure what could change father’s mind at this point. It might be better if Yu Ming were to simply be, let’s say, carried away by a roguish cultivator hero.”

Sen shook his head. “I’m not kidnapping your sister, even if I’m pretty sure she’d love it.”

“What?”

“Nothing. The point is, I don’t want a mortal army chasing me halfway across the kingdom. When’s the ceremony happening? I need to know how long I’ve got to work with.”

“Six weeks.”

“Alright. I’ll see what I can come up with on my end after I deal with my current crisis and, hopefully, after I get that damn manual.”

“On that subject, I have inquired with the Golden Phoenix sect about the manual. They’re being unusually reticent about it. I assumed they’d simply come back with a list of demands. Instead, it’s like they don’t even want to acknowledge it exists.”

Sen frowned. “The person we sent to approach them about it has, as near as I can tell, been getting the same treatment. I wonder what the issue is?”

“That, I don’t know.”

“I appreciate you making the effort.”

“You’re welcome. So, what was the other thing you wanted to talk about?”

Sen took a deep breath and plunged forward. “I’m planning to kill everyone in the Shadow Eagle Talon Syndicate and assassinate Tong Guanting.”

At first, the prince just looked flabbergasted. His eyes were wide and his mouth was hanging open. After a little while, though, Sen saw the spark of amusement in the man’s eyes. Then, the laughing started. Sen just nodded. He understood.

“Yeah,” said Sen. “I know.”

“That certainly won’t do anything to reinforce your reputation as a merciless divine wind sent to cleanse away the wicked.”

“The irony isn’t lost on me, your royalness.”

“Your royalness,” he wheezed between fits of laughter. “I’m going to have to use that. Yu Ming will hate it.”

“Just don’t tell her you got it from me.”