Book 3: Chapter 30: Learning a Valuable Lesson |
The reports came in waves.
Patriarch Guo's network moved first as his disciples in plain robes fanned out through the western slums with the care of people who had been told to gather information by their Supreme Leader in Green and the absolute terror of people who knew what happened to the last group that wandered too close to the previous Demon's territory without an invitation.
They went in groups and never alone. Carrying fully loaded out gear that included robes, weapon of choice, loud wood sandals, and a small banner of pale green in case anyone asked who they were and what they were doing…
Which happened to be a lot of people, mostly because they talked to everyone they could reach.
Merchants, beggars, street sweepers, the women who washed clothes in the river shallows at dawn, the children who ran messages between districts for copper coins, the guards who stood at the intersections between the inner city and the slum border, bored and underpaid and more than willing to talk if someone brought them something warm to drink.
Everyone they could get their hands on.
Patriarch Liang's people covered the eastern slum perimeter. Patriarch Fen handled the river district. Sho's students, broad-shouldered and earnest, worked the refugee camps outside the walls where information flowed as freely as the mud between the huts. Duan sent nobody because Duan was ninety years old and had decided that his contribution would be sitting in the compound's corner, eyes half-closed, listening to the reports as they arrived and saying nothing until he had something worth saying.
Jun respected that more than she wanted to admit.
The first batch arrived before sunset.
"The Red Demon came through one day without warning," she told the disciple who'd bought a few apples he didn't need. Her eyes kept darting left and right, scanning the crowd for blue robes or serpent tattoos or anyone who might report her words back to people who no longer existed as a threat but whose shadows still loomed large in her memory. "Didn't see it happen… nobody did. One morning the Serpents were collecting, next morning they weren't. Their whole building was empty, doors hanging off the hinges, blood on the steps, but not much. Definitely not enough for what you'd expect. I went there to make sure I paid my dues so they don’t hurt my family. That I did. I swear I did, if anyone asks, make sure you tell them that I did…"
She paused and adjusted the bruised pears on her display.
"Haven't paid a single coin since, nobody's come to collect. Not a single soul came to threaten me. Nobody's even looked at my stall sideways lately, first time in six years… I didn’t say that though. All I said was I tried to pay and am looking to pay and wouldn’t dare not pay because I love my stall and my family and love paying all the coin they ask for… okay?"
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A family of five living in a lean-to constructed from salvaged timber and stolen canvas near the river bend was the next source of viable information.
The father had been a carpenter in IronArch City before the fall and his wife had been a seamstress. They had more children than any family should have and most of them where under ten, the youngest still nursing. They'd arrived at YellowHearth City eight months ago with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the desperate hope that walls meant safety.
The walls had not meant safety.
The Broken Fist Collective had claimed their block within a week of their arrival demanding protection fees and labour conscription.
The father had been forced to repair the gang's compound walls for free, twelve hours a day, while his family huddled in their lean-to and prayed he'd come home with all his fingers intact.
He hadn't… twice.
The disciple who interviewed them noted that the carpenter's left hand was missing the ring finger and the pinkie. Old wounds that had healed poorly, the stumps scarred and slightly crooked in a way that suggested they'd been removed with something dull rather than sharp. Meant to maximize pain and suffering as a form of punishment for anyone that dared make a mistake.
"It came through like a storm," the carpenter said. He sat on an overturned bucket with his daughter on his knee and wife standing behind him with both hands on his shoulders. His remaining fingers drummed against the bucket's rim in a rhythm that might have been nervous or might have been something closer to wonder. "The Broken Fists had been getting louder all week. Celebrating something and drinking. Fighting each other in the streets because they'd run out of people to fight. Then one evening the noise just... stopped."
His wife squeezed his shoulders.
"Next morning, their compound had a new banner. A faded, pale, red cloth with a hammer on it. Looked like a mushroom, honestly." A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "The men who used to kick down our door for payment were standing in formation in the courtyard. Hands at their sides acting like they were soldiers or something. Maybe disciples of the honorable dojos in Cultivator Row. I heard about that too… Something about an Angel in Green Descending from Heaven–"
"And since then?" the disciple interrupted.
The carpenter looked down at his daughter.
She was playing with a wooden toy he'd carved from a scrap of pine. A little fox with oversized ears and a crooked tail. His eight remaining fingers had made it with more care than anything he'd built for the Broken Fists in eight months of forced labour.
"Since then, nobody's touched us or for coin. Nobody's conscripted anyone for anything. The streets are..." He searched for the word. "...quiet. The good kind of quiet. The kind where you can hear your kids laughing instead of grown men screaming in the den of absolute terror filled silence."
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A few women who had been held in a building near the Black Nail Gang's territory refused to speak to the male disciples entirely.
Patriarch Fen sent a senior female student instead, a woman in her fifties with kind eyes and a voice that carried no judgment.
The report she brought back was short.
Two pages and nothing more
Jun read it once in absolute horror, set it down, and didn't pick it up again.
The women were free now.
That was the only detail that mattered and the only one she allowed herself to dwell on because the alternative was dwelling on the details that preceded their freedom and those details would make her do something she'd regret in front of over a thousand witnesses.
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After that was a baker.
Fat, sweating, chubby cheeked, terrified of everything, but specifically terrified of a girl who had eaten every sweet in his shop and declared them all unfit for consumption.
He spoke rapidly and without pause, words tumbling over each other like a landslide.
"She didn't hurt me! Not once! She was upset, yes, very upset, the cakes were apparently terrible which I take personal offence to because my grandmother's recipe has been in my family for four generations and nobody has ever…” He shook his head hard for the dozenth time that conversation. “...but she didn't hurt me! She just... looked disappointed. And then she left. And then she came back with an old man. And then she left again. And then the gangs started falling and I thought we were all going to die but instead nobody's robbed me in a week and my wife can walk to the market without an escort for the first time since we moved here."
He paused to breathe and shake his head for the thirteen time since the conversation had started a few minutes ago..
"Is she really a demon? She seemed more like a very angry little girl who wanted cake."
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The guards were the most illuminating.
Patriarch Sho's students found them at the intersection checkpoint between the inner city's western gate and the slum border. Four men in mismatched armour that had seen better decades, leaning against a guardhouse that listed fifteen degrees to the left and had been propped up with a wooden beam that was itself propped up by a second, thinner beam that was propped up by nothing but optimism.
A couple of the four spoke freely enough.
Standard observations delivered with the professional detachment of men who had learned to see everything and care about nothing.
Mostly because none of them wanted to get transferred to the night shift at the eastern sewage gate.
Crime reports were down, muggings had dropped from a dozen daily incidents to two in the past week, both of which turned out to be domestic disputes rather than actual robberies. Street fights had all but ceased in the western districts and the body wagons that rolled through every morning to collect the previous night's casualties had been making their rounds half-empty for a few days consecutively.
"Used to be five, six dead every morning," the senior guard said. He was a thick man with a nose that had been broken so many times it had given up on maintaining a consistent direction and simply pointed wherever it felt like on any given day. "Fools who thought they could stand up to the gangs, merchants who refused to pay, kids who wandered into the wrong alley, refugees that didn’t know any better, and some idiots that thought take two classes at a dojo made them a dragon under heaven. We'd load them onto the wagon, file the report nobody read, and do it again the next day–"
He scratched his crooked nose.
His friend chuckled at the nose scratching which earned him a glare.
"–as I was saying, haven't loaded a single body in few days. First time that's happened since I took this post eleven years ago."
The fourth guard had been quiet through the entire exchange. Younger than the others, maybe mid-twenties, with a jaw that kept clenching and unclenching like he was chewing on words he couldn't decide whether to swallow or spit out. He stood slightly apart from his colleagues, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the slum sprawl beyond the checkpoint.
The disciple noticed and waited.
The young guard's jaw worked a few more times. His eyes cut left, then right, scanning the street, the rooftops, the windows of the nearest buildings. Checking for ears that didn't belong to the conversation. His colleagues had drifted back to their posts, attention already elsewhere and the interview forgotten the moment it stopped being interesting.
The young guard leaned forward.
His voice dropped to something barely above a breath. "If you ask me..." He glanced over his shoulder one more time confirming that the senior guard was out of earshot and the other two were busy arguing about whose turn it was to fetch lunch. "...this Red Demon has done more for the city in a week than the Merchant Emperor has done in the past year."
The words hung in the air for a moment.
Then the guard snapped upright, shoulders back, chin level, expression blank, arms at his sides.
The transformation was instantaneous. A man who had said nothing becoming a man who had never considered saying anything. His eyes went flat and professional.
Utterly, completely empty of opinion.
He looked at the disciple. "You didn't hear that from me."
His gaze held for a few seconds to drilling the point home with the intensity of someone whose career, pension, housing assignment, and continued possession of all his original teeth depended on those six words being taken seriously. Then he turned and walked back to his post without another word.
Jun sat there in silence.
The compound was equally as quiet at this point in the day. The afternoon drills had ended an hour ago and the over one thousand cultivators had dispersed to their respective quarters, dojos, homes, shops, and whatever corners of Cultivator Row they'd claimed as sleeping space. The five patriarchs sat in their semicircle with their faces arranged in varying degrees of the same form of confusion expressed differently.
They'd gone looking for a monster and found the opposite instead.
Jun took a deep breath and held it.
“M-Maybe this is all a plan of the Red Demon?” Guo started, but silenced himself quickly when he noticed Jun’s glare. “O-Or maybe not.”
She let it out and with it came the entirety of the weight that had been heavy on her shoulders. One she had recognized the instant her suspicions on the Red Demon’s identity had formed the day prior. And now, all of that tension fled out of her systems and into the air around them.
Relief flooded to replace it.
It wasn't the worst case scenario. The gangs were conquered, yes. The criminal underworld of an entire city district had been unified under a single banner with a crooked mushroom-hammer, yes. Her twelve-year-old sister had built a private army of nearly two thousand armed cultivators in less than a week, yes.
But nobody was dead.
No one was hurt.
The people in the slums were safer because the extortion had stopped, the kidnappings had stopped, the bodies had stopped piling up on the morning wagons, women walked to markets without escorts, children played in streets that had been killing fields a week ago, and a carpenter with eight fingers carved toys for his daughter instead of repairing gang compound walls for free.
Shui hadn't killed anyone.
Shui hadn't even fought anyone based on the reports.
Which were confusing, but the sentiment had remained the same through out the rumors and stories she had been getting since the morning.
Jun's chest loosened by a fraction as the burning in her face cooled from volcanic to merely scalding.
She's still an idiot. A reckless, impulsive idiot who has no concept of consequences or scale or the fact that Ancestor is going to find out eventually and when he does the resulting explosion will be visible from the next heavenly body in the sky. But she's an idiot who saved people instead of hurting them and that... that counts for something. I hope it does when Ancestor finds out.
"Thank you," Jun said to the five patriarchs. "All of you. The information is thorough and appreciated."
Guo looked up from his notes. "Young Mistress, what do we—"
"I need to think, you all are dismissed."
The five old men hesitated for a brief moment before they all gathered their things, stood, bowed, and filed out of the room. Not a single word was said between them as they waited for her verdict and what she planned on doing. The door closed behind Patriarch Duan, who was the last to leave and the only one who paused at the threshold to give her a look that might have been understanding before he shuffled into the hallway.
Jun waited until their footsteps faded.
Then she waited until the compound settled into the ambient quiet of early evening.
Distant voices, a dog barking somewhere, merchants shouting somewhere from a stall that was clearly illegal, and the faint crack of someone practicing their one-two combination against a wooden post because they'd taken to the drills with the obsessive dedication of a convert.
She stood from the table.
Her sword shifted at her hip as she turned toward the door.
The She-Devil hummed sensing her intent before she'd fully formed it. Her hand found the door handle and she pulled—
"Where are you going?"
Jun's hand froze on the wood.
Wu Xui stood against the far wall with her arms crossed and head tilted. Her expression arranged into something that looked like a disapproving parent, but Jun knew that tended to be Wu Xui’s normal expression when she was trying to change peoples minds about something… Mostly because it was super effective. She'd been there the entire time, silent and still, a shadow that breathed and occasionally smiled in ways that made Jun's life progressively more impossible.
Jun turned to face her. "What do you mean where? Weren't you listening? You know exactly who this is and we can't let her keep going. I'm going to drag her back to Ancestor and he's going to deal with this… all of this," Jun waved her hands around her. “He’s going to know and deal with it, consequences be damned.”
"That isn't a good idea."
"Why not?"
Wu Xui pushed off the wall and took a few steps forward. Her arms uncrossed and her hands settled at her sides. "Because you speaking with the Patriarch collapses everything you've established here and everything she's established there. Immediately–”
“That’s the whole point.”
Wu Xui continued as though she didn’t hear Jun’s rebuttal. “–before either of you can fully set the foundations."
"Senior Wu Xui." Jun's voice dropped. And she squared up to Wu Xui, not an ounce of the young lady that she was, the embarrassment that flushed her cheeks, or the indecisiveness that had coated her actions recently. This was no longer Hu Jun, inner court disciple of the Hu Clan, but rather Hu Jun, Guardian of the Last Hu Clan Descendant. "I don't give a shit about this or anything else when Hu Shui is in danger."
Wu Xui eyes narrowed as she let out a kind smile.
Genuinely, unmistakably kind.
The sort of smile a mother gives a child who has just said something brave and slightly naive all at the same time. It reached her eyes and softened the hard edges of her face, which made her look, for a brief moment, like the woman Zhong Da had fallen in love with rather than the Blood Demoness who had nearly skinned a merchant alive for offering twenty copper coins on a priceless spear.
"She isn't in danger."
Jun blinked as the heat that radiated out of her faltered for a moment. "How are you so sure?"
"Because me and hubby went and checked on her a few days ago." Wu Xui's smile held steady. "The old beggar is protecting her."
Jun's eyes widened as she mimed words… Only to take a step back and give Wu Xui an incredulous look. "T-That can’t be right. The red and silver—"
Wu Xui nodded.
"What? How? Why? I-I don't understand?"
"We aren't sure either." Wu Xui shrugged. "But it's the truth. Lord Husband had a talk with him and the stakes were made very, very clear." She paused and made sure Jun saw her expression clear.
That kindness didn’t quite fade, but something else had taken form behind him.
A certain terror that Jun understood after being around her Ancestor for so long. She had never been subjected to it, but she had seen monsters of unimaginable power tremble at his mere attention without an ounce of his power and cultivation released… Which now that she thought about it, she had never sensed him release any of his cultivation at all even when he was doing miraculous things like slapping the cultivation out of a Calamity level monster.
"No one wants to see our Patriarch angry, Lady Jun. No one."
Jun closed her eyes and walked back to her seat, already memorizing the layout like the back of her hand. Wu Xui was her guidance, she trusted her to think beyond the surface level that Jun was capable of currently. She dropped into the chair. Her sword clattered against the armrest. The She-Devil went quiet, sensing that this was not a moment for battle come.
Jun sighed and opened her eyes, staring out of her window at the pale green banner on the far wall. The gorgeous Jian with its white tassel stared back. "Then what do you suggest?"
"Give her space to make informed and guided decisions,” Wu Xui walked to the table and sat on its edge. “The old beggar is a good teacher regardless of his... many faults."
Jun's nose wrinkled at the word many. That stench had taken her a day to clean out of her nostrils.
It had to be aided by Qi.
"Plus, from what he's told Lord Husband..." Wu Xui's voice softened further. "Shui seems to have a good head on her shoulders and a lot more mercy in her heart than any of us expected. You heard it yourself from the reports. Not a single death or even a single crippling. Not even a broken bone that wasn't set and healing within the hour. She's terrifying people into being better and it's working, Jun."
Jun sighed once more.
She could still see Shui sitting on the steps of the eastern wing with her knees pulled to her chest and her chin resting on top of them. Red-rimmed eyes with a jutting lower lip and Ta Rae dropping leaves on her head while trying to comfort her. The image of a girl who had been scolded into stillness by an Ancestor whose disappointment hit harder than any technique in existence.
That same girl had conquered nine gangs without throwing a punch, freed women from captivity without drawing her hammer, stopped the body wagons from filling without spilling a drop of blood, made a carpenter's daughter safe enough to play with a wooden fox in a street that used to kill people.
And much, much more. These were the only tales that had made it to the reports or gathered by her agents.
Jun opened her eyes. "I don't like it."
"You don't have to like it."
"If anything happens to her—"
"Then Lord Husband and I will be there before you finish that sentence. We've been watching and we haven't stopped watching since the first gang fell." Wu Xui reached over and placed her hand on Jun's forearm. The touch was warm and carried the quiet authority of someone who had already done the worrying, processed it, and come out the other side with a plan. "Trust her a little. She's earned it."
Jun’s fingers drummed against the table's cracked surface, finding the split her thumb had made earlier and tracing its edge.
The She-Devil stirred, offering nothing but waiting.
It was hard to see Shui as anything but the little child she had been taking care of for so long now.
"Fine," Jun said. The word tasted like swallowing a live coal. "For now."
Wu Xui squeezed her forearm once and let go. She slid off the table and walked toward the door with an unhurried stride. Her hand found the handle and she paused, looking back over her shoulder. "For what it's worth, Lady Jun… You would have made a terrible Green Angel if you'd gone charging into the slums tonight to drag your little sister home by the ear. Angels don't have veins popping out of their foreheads and hands."
Jun looked down at her hands.
The veins were, in fact, quite prominent.
Wu Xui left.
The door clicked shut.
Jun sat alone at the head of a table in a compound that housed over a thousand cultivators who called her Young Mistress and Green Angel and Lady Matriarch and a dozen other titles she hadn't asked for or wanted. Her little sister was a few districts away commanding an army of reformed criminals under a banner with a crooked mushroom-hammer.
All the while, her Ancestor was sitting in a courtyard drinking tea with a greedy tree, blissfully unaware that both of his disciples had accidentally built competing paramilitary organisations within the same city in under two weeks.
Jun put her face in her hands.
This is fine. Everything is fine. Ancestor doesn't know. As long as Ancestor doesn't know, we can fix this. We can fix all of this. Somehow. Eventually. Before it gets worse.
The She-Devil offered a single, unhelpful observation from the depths of her consciousness.
It was laughing again.
Almost as if to say that their Ancestor had already known and was giving them a chance to turn themselves in. Like criminals on the run.