Book 3: Chapter 28: Political Moves and Horrible Searches |
Yin Hu stared at the two men standing before him in the courtyard.
Neither moved, spoke, shifted, fidgeted, or even seemed to be breathing, which was less remarkable for Da Ruis than it was for Zhong Da.
The recruitment ledgers sat on the table between them. Seven days of entries. Seven days of setting up in the slums, processing candidates through the orbs, running Da Ruis's older methods, and filtering the results through the threshold criteria that both men had spent an entire evening debating, refining, arguing over, nearly coming to blows about, and then presenting to him with the unified confidence of two people who had found common ground in the simple act of making his life harder.
The threshold had been reasonable.
He'd agreed to it too.
Minimum elemental purity of C-rank or above. Body cultivation ceiling in the top fifteen percent. Cultivation potential that suggested at least Liquid Core was achievable within a natural lifespan without miraculous intervention. Willingness to relocate. No active warrants from the Merchant Emperor's enforcers. No Demonic Cultivation taint above trace levels since Yin Hu could remove it all through purification processes.
It was all reasonable… No. It was sensible to keep and apply...
More importantly it was achievable given the sheer volume of refugees packed into the slums and the surrounding camps. Hundreds of thousands of displaced souls, many of whom had been cultivators or children of cultivators before IronArch City fell. The numbers alone should have produced dozens of viable candidates.
And yet here Yin Hu stood with a final tally that sat at the bottom of the last page in Da Ruis's impeccable handwriting.
Not one or a handful that needed further evaluation.
Not even a borderline case they could argue about over tea.
Zero.
Ta Rae's branches had gone still above him. The Demonic Spirit Tree could read the room better than most people Yin Hu had met on this planet. Its cup sat untouched beside the pot, leaves angled away from the table, trunk pulled tight against itself like a child trying to become invisible during a family argument it wanted no part of. It had sensed the tension as thought it was a sentient creature that had complex thought…
Which by this point was becoming extremely obvious… You don’t go over and console a child, Shui during her punishment, without having a certain level of sentience.
Yin Hu looked at Zhong Da.
Zhong Da's jaw was clenched and he gulped too. His single hand gripped the pommel of his borrowed blade hard enough that the leather wrapping had compressed into a permanent indent matching his fingers. His eyes were fixed on a spot somewhere past Yin Hu's left shoulder, locked onto the courtyard wall and refusing to make direct eye contact.
Yin Hu then looked at Da Ruis.
The ghost had re-donned his full concealment despite being within the privacy of the courtyard. Mask, gloves, cloak, hood. Every layer of fabric pulled taut across his translucent frame. His quill hand trembled against the closed ledger. A faint shimmer rippled through his form every few seconds, cohesion slipping and then snapping back together like a candle flame caught in a draft.
Neither had anything to say.
Both were shivering like he was about to execute them.
Yin Hu closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Are you saying that it's now impossible to recruit in this city?"
Zhong Da and Da Ruis both gulped, audibly and in unison. The synchronicity would have been impressive under different circumstances.
Da Ruis's elbow moved, a subtle jab into Zhong Da's ribs that the one-armed man absorbed with a flinch. His throat bobbed a second time and he stepped forward. It was nothing more than half a step as his boot scraped the stone and stopped.
"Y-Yes, Patriarch…"
Yin Hu's left eye twitched behind his closed lids.
"And pray tell," he kept his eyes shut because opening them felt like it would result in property damage, "why is that?"
Zhong Da's grip on his pommel shifted.
Yin Hu could hear the leather creak under his growingly intense grip.
"T-The largest Neutral Bloc clans in the city have banded together, including the Merchant Emperor's own clan. They've moved to block any and all attempts at recruitment within the city limits and the surrounding slums. Driving traffic away from our testing sites and warning people off. Threatening consequences for anyone seen lining up by boycotting them and their families. No marriages, so buying from them, selling to them, no access to bureaucratic systems, or land rights."
"Why?"
Da Ruis spoke this time, his voice muffled behind the mask but steady enough to carry. "It's a common tactic, Patriarch. Standard practice when a foreign force enters a dominated city or territory. They consider it theft. Stealing talent from under their noses. Any candidate that joins an outside clan is a candidate that doesn't join theirs, doesn't serve their interests, doesn't strengthen their position, and doesn’t fight for them in wars either. The Neutral Bloc clans have been doing this to each other for decades from my observations and research into the matter. They've simply turned the mechanism on us."
Yin Hu's eye twitched again.
"So the line of hundreds that stretched around the block—"
"Gone," Zhong Da said. "Since yesterday morning. Not a single person showed up today. The beggars told us the Neutral Bloc enforcers have been making rounds through the refugee camps and spreading word that anyone caught associating with the Hu Clan's recruitment drive would be blacklisted from entry into the city proper… Permanently."
"They can do that?"
"The Merchant Emperor controls the gates, Patriarch. He controls who enters, who leaves, who trades, who eats, and who starves. For the refugees outside those walls, a blacklisting and boycott is a death sentence delivered on paper instead of by blade."
Yin Hu opened his eyes.
Both men took a half step backward, involuntary. Their bodies moving before their minds could override the impulse.
He looked at the empty courtyard around them. The lanterns swayed in the evening breeze. Ta Rae's branches hadn't moved. The tea sat cooling in the pot, untouched by either tree or man. Somewhere beyond the walls, the distant sounds of Cultivator Row carried on as they always did. Disciples training, masters lecturing, kids shouting with every backflip, boards being broken, elders shouting, and even the rhythmic crack of a new dojo that had formed with five hundred students throwing punches that shook dust from rafters three blocks over.
Yin Hu hadn’t bothered to check in and see what had happened, nor did he care.
As long as the girls weren’t in trouble, then everything would be fine… except for one little thing.
The only reason Yin Hu had come here was now pointless. They had gained a total of zero recruits.
Days of work and hundreds of candidates processed. A threshold set by two men who knew more about clan building than he ever would and the result was a fat, round, absolute zero staring up at him from the bottom of Da Ruis's ledger in handwriting so beautiful it made the failure feel like calligraphy.
I could lower the threshold…
The thought arrived and he killed it before it finished forming. He'd agreed to their criteria, publicly, and in front of both of them. Changing it now, after a week of finding nobody, would tell every person in this city and beyond that the Hu Clan's standards bent under pressure. That their Patriarch's word lasted exactly as long as it was convenient. Which was an image he did not want to garner.
Both of them had been right about that.
Yin Hu couldn’t help but hated that they'd been right about that.
I could force the issue. Zhong Da is strong enough to make the Merchant Emperor respect us right? Maybe I can somehow figure out a way to tap into my sealed Dao again?
He killed that thought faster than the first. Starting a war with the ruling power of a city he needed to operate in was the opposite of the quiet, careful approach he'd committed to. The Ancient Being persona worked because it implied threat without delivering it. The moment he delivered, the persona stopped being a shield and became a target.
I could leave.
That one lingered.
Pack up, load the cart, vacate the home and shop, grab the girls, Zhong Da, Wu Xui, Da Ruis, the greedy tree, and the surly ox. Head for the next city or next territory, somewhere the Neutral Bloc hadn't consolidated their stranglehold on every warm body with a functioning meridian system.
Start fresh there and try again.
Except the Hu Clan lands were occupied by Demonic Cultivators and Zi Zhen's forces. Hu Rong was out there alone dealing with God knows what. The world's strongest cultivators were dead or missing. The planet had just undergone a Qi shift that was still rippling through every living thing on its surface. And somewhere in the back of his mind, the old beggar's words about Zhong An's shattered Heart Stone sat like a splinter he couldn't reach.
Leaving meant abandoning the only major population centre within reasonable distance of the Hu Clan's ancestral territory.
It also meant that they would have to scrap their entire plan and make a new one. Which he didn’t want to commit to.
Leaving also meant admitting that the Merchant Emperor and his Neutral Bloc cronies had won by doing nothing more than telling refugees to stay away from a table with two orbs on it and a surly ghost that grew more surly the longer he found no talent to recruit.
No. What are the girls going to think if their old man, which I’m not that old, just gave up? I can’t raise two little cowards who are afraid of everything.
Yin Hu picked up his tea and took a sip. It was lukewarm. Ta Rae hadn't been maintaining the temperature because said tree was still frozen in its "please don't notice me" posture with every leaf angled away, trunk compressed, silver sheen slightly less bright, and branches tucked so tight it looked like a particularly anxious shrub.
He set the cup down and looked at both men, letting the silence stretch until they couldn’t handle it no more.
"Da Ruis."
The ghost straightened so fast his hood slipped backward. "Y-Yes, Patriarch?"
"The forest and surrounding wilderness. The mountains to the north and the river valleys to the east. How far can you range from here without it being an issue or you getting caught by arrogant young masters like last time? Also figure out what to do with the White Rabbit–"
Zhong Da shivered slightly.
Yin Hu didn’t notice.
“–I know you said you left it back in the forest… That isn’t good enough. Keep it with you and if you enter the city, bring it too.”
Da Ruis nodded. "Considerable distance, Patriarch. My range has expanded significantly since you… since the Sparring Instance was established. The anchor point gives me flexibility I didn't have before. I could cover a hundred miles in any direction without issue. Two hundred if I pushed. Though taking the White Rabbit would cut the distance some, but not that much."
"Good. I want you scouting every stretch of forest, wilderness, cave system, and river basin within your range. You found those hatchlings and cubs before, the high-grade potential ones, phoenix-heron chicks, spirit beast pups, whatever else is out there that the Qi shift might have awakened."
Da Ruis's posture changed as the trembling stopped and his quill hand steadied against the ledger and his translucent form solidified by a visible degree. The ghost was in his element again. Talent scouting, searching, and finding the unfindable in fields of debris. "I can do that!"
"Then go. Start tonight."
"Yes, Patriarch." Da Ruis bowed, deep enough that his mask nearly touched the table. He gathered the ledgers, tucked them beneath his cloak, and then faded into the shadows near the eastern wall. His form dissolved into the darkness between heartbeats, gone before the lantern light could catch the edges of his departure.
Zhong Da remained. His eyes had finally found Yin Hu's and held there. "You're not leaving the city?”
"No." Yin Hu shook his head.
Zhong Da's shoulders dropped an inch. "We don't have the numbers, Patriarch. Even if Da Ruis finds a dozen spirit beast candidates in the wilderness, they'll be infants. Cubs, chicks, pups, and whatever else they’re called that need years of nurturing before they can hold a blade or guard a wall or do anything beyond making messes that someone has to clean up."
Yin Hu stared at him.
Shit man. I need a tide of disciples to take care of everything. Not more disciples that need taking care of!
The irony hit him like a runaway cart lead by a certain well mannered ox. He was trying to build an army of protectors and instead he kept accumulating dependents. Jun and Shui needed guidance. Zhong Da and Wu Xui needed advancement. Da Ruis needed supervision. Ta Rae needed tea and constant threats of deforestation. Hu Rong was a thousand miles away doing something that was probably going to give him a headache when the report finally arrived. And now he was about to add a nursery's worth of baby spirit beasts to the roster.
His grand vision of a wall of cultivators, Qi, swords, and flesh standing between his family and the dangers of the world was looking less like a fortress and more like a daycare centre with delusions of grandeur.
A daycare centre run by an Ancient Being who can't access his own cultivation, staffed by a ghost, a one-armed family man, a tree with a tea addiction, and two teenage girls who are currently… I don’t even know what they’re doing right now… Wu Xui is the only one between us that is actually applicable and anywhere near decent at anything we have set up so far.
Yin Hu picked up his cup and drained the lukewarm tea in a single gulp.
Ta Rae noticed the empty cup. A single branch extended from the canopy with glacial caution, wrapped around the pot, and poured a fresh cup. The branch retreated to a respectful distance and waited. Leaves angled toward him in a posture of maximum deference and minimum greed.
He took a sip and it was still lukewarm.
The tree hadn't heated it.
Yin Hu had taken to using mortal kettles and pots to let Ta Rae feel involved by heating the heat. "Ta Rae."
Every leaf snapped to attention.
"The tea is cold."
The tree shuddered as its branches curled inward, then extended toward the pot. A faint pulse of Qi, silver and warm, flowed from the trunk through the branch and into the ceramic. Steam rose from the spout within seconds. The tree pulled back and waited, vibrating with the anxious energy of a servant who had failed a basic task and was now overcompensating.
Yin Hu took another sip. It was perfect.
He set the cup down and looked at Zhong Da. "Quality over quantity. That's what you and Da Ruis told me and that's what we're doing."
"Yes, Patriarch."
"In the meantime, keep the shop open and our presence visible. Let the Neutral Bloc think they've won."
Zhong Da's eye flickered. He bowed once and turned toward the gateway.
Yin Hu leaned back in his lounging chair and closed his eyes.
Ta Rae's branches descended in a slow canopy above him, blocking the last of the fading light. A leaf drifted down and landed on his shoulder, then another. The tree was shedding comfort the only way it knew how, one leaf at a time, like a child patting a parent's arm because it didn't have the words for what it wanted to say.
He let them accumulate.
Zero recruits. A hostile political apparatus. A potentially broken orb. A city that doesn't want us here. Two girls loose in the wild. A ghost hunting baby animals in the dark. A one-armed swordsman cultivator as my shopkeeper cover. A tree that drinks more tea than a sect of monks. And me, sitting in a very comfortable lounging seat, drinking tea, planning the girls development, and hoping my attempt at building some confidence and independence in them isn’t going to backfire in my face spectacularly…
He opened one eye and looked at Ta Rae.
The tree had snuck a branch toward the pot again. The tip hovered a quarter inch from the spout, frozen mid-theft, every leaf on the offending limb pointed in a direction that screamed "I wasn't doing anything."
Yin Hu closed his eye.
"Pour yourself a cup, you greedy tree."
The branch plunged into the pot so fast it created a small splash. Tea sloshed. Ceramic clinked.
The sound of a tree drinking with the restraint of a man who'd been told he could have water after being denied for days filled the courtyard.
Yin Hu listened to it and let the evening settle around him.