Book 8: Chapter 60: Lord Lu’s Justice

Book 8: Chapter 60: Lord Lu’s Justice

“You needn’t participate in this,” said Sen. “I almost think it might be better if you didn’t.”

“It’s kind of you to want to spare me,” said Grandmother Lu. “But I have to be there, and your people have to see me being there.

Sen offered a reluctant nod. She was likely right about that. He just didn’t like that he was making her a party to his revenge. It was like he was somehow making her less by associating her with something he expected was going to be gruesome. In the end, she had the right to make her own decisions. I should probably be grateful that she wants to show me her support. He turned to Long Jia Wei.

“The gates are sealed?” he asked.

“They are, Lord Lu.”

Lo Meifeng was already in the courtyard, making preparations for the first half of Sen’s demonstration of his unhappiness. That just left one person in the room. His gaze fell on Yeung Fen. The woman looked gaunt, and she flinched as soon as his eyes landed on her. Sen had been shocked when Lo Meifeng’s people had not only found the woman but dragged her back to the manor alive. He’d expected her to be long gone and far away by the time anyone knew that she was involved. If not that, then he would have thought she’d prefer to go down fighting. He knew that’s what he would have done. Still, he wasn’t one to bemoan a positive turn of luck. She had proven truculent about providing information. So, Sen planned to use today’s demonstration as one method to motivate her cooperation.

“Yeung Fen. I want you to pay close attention to what happens here today. Think of it as a window into the future. Your future,” he said.

He walked over to the door, dragging Yeung Fen along with a tether of air qi he’d wrapped around her neck. Her hands were bound by manacles that Sen had personally crafted and reinforced. He’d felt her laughable attempts to break them with her own qi, but she had not experienced his explosive growth in power over the intervening years. She was still in foundation formation, which meant that the only way she was breaking those bonds was if he gave her a hundred years of uninterrupted time to get it done. She stumbled along in his wake. Long Jia Wei and Grandmother Lu simply ignored her. He supposed that they’d already started thinking of her as dead and not worth the effort of giving their attention.

He pushed open the front door to the manor. There was usually a servant there, but almost everyone in the manor save for the children and their minders were in the courtyard already. As were a small number of people who were kneeling, hands tied, and watched over by hard-faced guards. These people were the most directly responsible for the attack. The ones who had done the most to bring the explosives into the manor. One had been separated out. He was the one who had actually lit the fuse. Sen intended to make him into the first example. With a negligent wave of his hand and a minor application of air qi, he drove Yeung Fen to her knees. Then, he walked out in front of the crowd of people, his people, and assumed a thoughtful expression.

“We were attacked,” he said without preamble. “It was unprovoked. Carried out by cowards who tried to hurt as many people as they could while avoiding anything so honorable as a direct fight. I know some of you were injured. Some of you lost people. I know your anger because it is also my anger. I also know some of you may have thought I intended to simply accept those losses. To ignore it because I’m a cultivator and those who died were not. You were wrong. These people you see behind me are some of the guilty. They are the ones who delivered this evil into our lives. Today, you will have vengeance. I will have vengeance.”

“I will leave the fate of those prisoners up to you. Should I execute them? Or should I leave them to your justice?”

There was a moment where nothing happened. Then, a man pushed his way to the front of the crowd, his face contorted with grief and rage. He ran toward the prisoners, screaming incoherently. That opened the floodgate. With very few exceptions, the crowd surged forward. Sen waited as his people vented their anger and loss on those prisoners. In other circumstances, he might have felt a twinge of pity for those bound men. Being beaten to death wasn’t a fast death. Even if it was a whole lot of people doing the beating. He kept an eye on things with his spiritual sense, waiting until the last flickering ember of life in the last prisoner went out.

“Enough,” he called out, his voice seeming to resonate from the very walls.

The enraged crowd fell back from what was left of the prisoners. They lurched drunkenly, as though they weren’t entirely in control of themselves.

“Today, we took our vengeance,” said Sen.

Some of it, at any rate, thought Sen. Enough for the crowd, I hope. Apparently, it was enough. The people in the crowd started cheering, or sobbing in each other’s arms, finally able to release emotions that had been held in abeyance. Sen sent out swift flames to deal with the prisoners’ remains. Then, he did something he hadn’t ever tried before. He manipulated the air above the manor. Clouds started to form, blotting out the morning sun. They grew thick and heavy as he drew water into them. He took great care not to let lightning form in the clouds. Suppressing it by force a few times.

“Now, let us be washed clean!” he roared.

The clouds overhead unburdened themselves. At first, there were just a few drops but steady rain soon descended from above. The crowd of people, his people, turned their faces up and let the water soak them. He let it go on for several minutes before he dispersed the clouds and sent a warm wind weaving around the courtyard, drying people and the stone around them in kind. Sen didn’t have a plan beyond this point. He sort of expected the people to simply disperse now. Instead, they all looked to him. He hazarded a quick look at Lo Meifeng and Grandmother Lu, but they were looking out at the crowd. Sen turned his eyes back to the crowd, only to see that people were bowing at him, and there was a whisper that grew into a steady chant.

“Lord Lu.”