Book 10: Chapter 69: Do Not Disappoint Me

By the time Sen landed in the area where the foxes had been maintaining their illusions, it seemed that Lo Meifeng no longer required immediate assistance. He found her sitting against a wall. She looked pale, but his spiritual sense and brief qi examination reassured him that she was out of immediate danger. He eyed the cultivator standing next to her with a gimlet eye. He didn’t recognize the foundation formation cultivator. The fact that the man was staring at him in abject terror did nothing to make Sen feel better about his presence. He walked over to the pair and only spared a single word for the cultivator he didn’t know.

“Leave.”

The man hastily glanced at Lo Meifeng, who made a shooing motion, before he swiftly took himself elsewhere. Sen tracked the man’s position in his spiritual sense. He walked far enough away that he didn’t pose an immediate threat.

“You should be nicer to him,” said Lo Meifeng a little weakly. “He works for you.”

Sen glanced at the man, who flinched and moved even farther away.

“He does?” asked Sen.

“Well, he works for me. But since I work for you, he definitely works for you.”

Sen raised an eyebrow and said, “Since when do you work for me?”

“Don’t we

all

work for you now? I seem to recall Fate’s Razor saying something about that.”

“Oh,” said Sen, finally understanding. “I guess that’s true. I’m still not sure how that’s going to work, but we can talk about all of that later. What happened?”

Lo Meifeng leaned back and winced

“Before you got up from your nap, there was a bit of fighting. You might have noticed,” she said with a small gesture at the nearby devastation.

Many of the nearby buildings had been reduced to little more than charred wood and rubble. Sen couldn’t be sure how much of that had been the work of the spirit beasts that got inside the city and how much of it had been him. He had not been gentle when killing them.

“I did notice,” he said. “I meant, what happened to you? Why were you even out here fighting?”

She gave him a searching look before she said, “I thought it was what you would do.”

That startled him. She wasn’t

wrong

, exactly, but he never would have expected anyone else to make that choice. He wouldn’t have asked her to do that. He was even a little angry that she’d left Grandmother Lu without protection. He had to push back hard on that thought. She hadn’t left Grandmother Lu undefended. Lo Meifeng had just left her with less protection than he would have preferred. Those weren’t the same things, and she clearly hadn’t been out having fun. It also wasn’t like he’d been available for her to ask questions.

That she’d made that particular choice did surprise him. Lo Meifeng was not, as a rule, benevolent or soft-hearted. She’d read him right, though. He would have gone to protect the people who couldn’t fight if he’d been in a position to. He had protected them when the opportunity presented itself. Had she been trying to act in his stead since he wasn’t there to do it? Did she see it as a way to help solidify his political position? He just wasn’t sure what to make of it, but it wasn’t a question that needed an answer right that second.

“It is what I would have done,” he admitted.

“But you don’t think I should have,” she said.

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Sen wanted to agree with her, but he was very short on details. He couldn’t say for sure what he would have told her to do or asked her not to do at the moment she made that choice. Things were not going well in the capital when he’d finally emerged from his advancement. For all he knew, she’d thought things had reached a point where every core cultivator needed to be actively fighting. There hadn’t been a single nascent soul cultivator inside the city when he’d left the manor. They’d all been outside the walls fighting with very powerful spirit beasts. He recognized that he wasn’t in a good position to judge what she’d done. She’d made the choice. She couldn’t unmake it. There was no benefit in making her second-guess her decision-making.

He shrugged.

“I wasn’t there in any useful sense, and you’re not a fool. I assume you did what you thought was best at the time. It could easily have been the best option, considering how close to chaos everything was. I don’t know, and I’m not going to pretend to possess some insight I don’t. I think—” he hesitated. “I think it’s too easy to lay blame

after

you know how things turned out. In my experience, things are never that obvious in the middle of the fight.”

Lo Meifeng sagged in relief and said, “No. They never are. So, what now?”

Sen looked around again. Thousands upon thousands of people were drifting out into the city, no doubt looking to return to their homes or businesses. Homes and businesses that might not even exist anymore. There was going to be more chaos, if chaos of a less violent kind. They needed to get organized. Find out who no longer had shelter and make arrangements for them. Treat the wounded. Begin rebuilding with a much stronger defense in mind. There would be so many details, and Sen didn’t excel at managing those kinds of details.

Prioritize

, he ordered himself.

“For you,” he said, “the next thing is getting back to the manor and healing. Do you have enough elixirs?”

“I already took one,” she said.

“Take another. Then, sleep. This madness is only just starting. You should rest while you can. We’re all going to have a mountain of work on our shoulders very soon.”

She looked like she meant to protest, but winced again. She nodded in acquiescence. Sen pointed at the other cultivator who had been hovering at a distance.

“You,” he said. “Come here.”

The foundation formation cultivator scurried over with his shoulders hunched like he anticipated a blow. He stopped in front of Sen.

“Patri… Lord… Your maje…” the cultivator trailed off as he struggled to decide how to address Sen.

“Lord Lu is fine. Your job now is to make sure that she,” Sen pointed at Lo Meifeng, “returns safely to Lu Manor, gets some food, and gets some sleep.

Do not disappoint me

.”

The cultivator flinched and choked out, “Yes, Lord Lu.”

“Stop scaring him,” chided Lo Meifeng.

The cultivator's expression turned to one of pure horror as he looked at Lo Meifeng before his eyes snapped back to Sen. He looked like he expected Sen to strike them both dead. Sen took a deep breath. He supposed she had a point.

“What’s your name?” he asked the man in a gentler tone.

“Yang Mu Bai,” said the man in a voice that barely reached a whisper.

“Cultivator Yang, Lo Meifeng handles very important matters for me. It is crucial that she’s given time to heal. I’m entrusting it to you to ensure that she’s given that time. Do you understand?”

The man still looked like his bladder might let go at any second, but he nodded furiously.

“Good,” said Sen before looking around.

“What are you looking for?” asked Lo Meifeng as she pushed herself to her feet with a groan.

“Someone I thought was unreliable. I guess I owe her an apology.”

“The last I saw of that fox-woman, she was over that direction,” said Lo Meifeng with a wave deeper into the center of the city. “I think she was gathering up her people before anyone gathered their wits enough to do something unfortunate.”

Sen hated that people might prove so ungrateful to the foxes. They had unquestionably saved lives. However, people were people, and some of them would never see the nine-tail foxes as anything but spirit beasts that needed to die. It was sad, but he recognized the wisdom of what Misty Peak was doing.

He nodded and said, “Heal. But do it quickly.”

“I will,” said Lo Meifeng.

She managed to form a qi platform big enough for herself and Yang Mu Bai that rose high enough to avoid most of the rubble. It drifted more than flew, but it was in the right direction. He almost decided to take them back himself. He had enemies who might decide to strike out at him through Lo Meifeng, but he thought that there was probably a little time left before that kind of backstabbing got underway. It was coming, though. He knew that much. With so much uncertainty and limited scrutiny in the city, some people were going to look for a way to settle old debts.

I just hope they wait until tomorrow to start

, he thought.

I don’t want to have to execute anyone human today

.