Four
The Outworlder architects had outdone themselves in the end.
They’d put together everything in cones, tape, chalk, and spraypaint. Then walked around with Ash and the Earth Brides to build the entirety of the sect.
Section by section, area by area, they acted the part of overseer and foreman, directing where everything went. They also had several drones flying overhead to watch from above to make sure everything happened at a mathematical certainty.
It’d been odd to build a Star-fort disguised as a sect, with reinforced materials like sloped-steel, concrete, Qi lord formations, and laid in traps.
Only for other Brides and Cultivators who had been part of the Sheng Alliance come through, add more, and then proceed elsewhere. As if they were the polishing and sharpening crew.
After the first day, Ash had been mostly stuck in the center of the Sect and had been left to his own work. Which was to lay down the defenses to the Sect that was expecting of him. The same type of defenses he’d laid out at Sheng Island.
Scrivenings into the building itself made with his own Qi.
Carvings into the rocks, concrete, steel, and Qi, just as the Lord of the Graves once did.
As well as laying transference papers into objects and embedding cores into those materials. Changing the actual materials into intensely powerful things.
Formations to forcefully change the air-pressure and thickness of the air directly above the sect and all the lands that they controlled.
Where if someone were to approach it’d gradually get harder and harder to move through.
Once one crossed the perimeter wall that separated ‘sect area’ from the rest of the Foothills, the air would grow to such thickness that even Chunhua couldn’t push through it without burning a great reserve of Qi.
On top of that Ash had added a massive formation that, much in the way he had done so in Wahst, the formation would be drawing all the Qi nearby to this point. Drawing Qi in for the sect to use as it saw fit from the areas it controlled and right up to the borders.
Given how Qi flowed, it would also draw Qi from areas beyond the sect.
This also meant it would drain Qi from people.
Anyone who entered that wasn’t wearing a Bridal Ring, a Knight’s sword, or a Sheng Token, or a Bond of Sheng, the formation would start stripping the Qi out of them.
The speed would depend on their control and power, but it’d happen.
At the dead center of the sect, Ash dropped down a meeting place with a great number of seats. He turned it into an amphitheater that was circular. He also included small carvings that would enhance the speaker at the dead center to fill the entirety of the circle.
It was only a few minutes after he’d finished that, while Ash was taking a break and cultivating directly, that Jia approached him.
Having already linked himself into the Sect while cultivating, he’d felt her approach and knew it was her beyond a doubt.
“It seems you have already gotten the sect’s cultivation up and running,” Jia remarked. “It is like having a breeze wafting by. It is quite refhreshing. It reminds me of a whirlpool and your lower Dantian. A spinning mass of Qi that eventually makes its way to the center.
“You should put a Qi bank here,” Jia suggested and came to a stop beside him at the center. “Whoever becomes the Realm Lord for us will probably take this location as their ‘head of state’ or ‘capital’. A Qi bank here would provide them with extra firepower.”
“A good idea,” Ash agreed and opened his eyes slowly to look at Jia. She was dressed in a form fitting and flattering dress, that was also somewhat conserative.
Her hair was arranged perfectly and styled.
Her nails were manicured.
She was wearing some makeup.
“Either I forgot plans to take a beautiful woman to dinner, or you got a response from your family,” Ash intuited while watching the beautiful young woman. “You look gorgeous.”
Jia sighed, then laughed, a smile curling the corners of her lips.
“If we had time, I would crook my finger and tell you to take us to the bedroom,” began Jia. “But you are correct. I received a response. It was delivered with a demand I come back home immediately. That any delay would cause them to send people to retrieve me.”
“Well,” Ash said and then felt his mouth screw up into a frown. “I guess we’re going to go meet the in-laws today. Would you mind pointing out the ones I’m allowed to kill and which ones I’m not? You know me. I suck at not killing people.”
“I am indeed well aware,” Jia agreed with a grimace, sighed, then leaned down to kiss him. “Kill no one, please. They will do well to serve the Sheng later, that means they must survive today. It will be fine. At the worst, we will just go to the Hall. Our ever fallback point.”
“Makes me wonder why the Emperor didn’t use it himself,” Ash pointed out, looking at Jia.
“Pride? Ego?” She suggested. “Or he didn’t have the same ability that the Sheng does. Our beloved Locke.”
“Oh, that’s a good point. Haha. Maybe I’m the key? Or in this case, the lock. Come stuff your lock with your key and turn it’s mechanism a few times.”
Ash only smiled at Jia.
“Let’s go then,” he offered her. “Do they know we bought this land?”
“No, they do not. I only told them I had returned to the city and was staying at an inn. I had a Bride remain there and she has been watching for the arrival of any letter,” Jia explained with a hand wave. “Locke then read it without us even intercepting it.”
That’s about right.
I take it you’ve had Brides wander up to secret facilities in the modern world now? Ransacked them of information and data?
“I… yes. Tee hee. Oopsie doo. Your wife just happens to be neither mortal, or a spirit, but something altogether different. I’ve been using all that information to assist Si’Sha into bending the modern realm to our will. We won’t even have to forcibly take them over at this rate.”
Yep… that’s about right.
Also, let’s start creating Sheng Stones into Awakened Stones.
I’m sure you can start transferring them into this new version of currency.
I see no reason not to do that directly.
You can immitate it because of how amazing you are, right? My darling and amazing wife?
My sweetest Locke Sheng?
The other half to team Loshley?
“I… of course. Of course! I can. Not a problem. I’ll start converting it immeidately! I’ll get the balance right so they’re almost exactly one to one! Because I’m amazing.”
Because you’re amazing.
I love you.
I deep and fluttering pink like emotion fluttered about wildly in the hall, followed by a somewhat slow laugh.
“I love you, too,” Locke got out in a bit of a dreamy sounding voice.
***
Dressed in what Siu and Locke had picked out for him, then having his hair styled by them, Ash felt like he was probably as presentable as he was ever going to be.
“I wish we had time to stop at a bed,” Jia confessed, glancing over at him, her cheeks coloring faintly. “It is entirely unfair that you look this handsome right now. My cousins and sisters will almost certainly make eyes at you. I feel like I should leave a mark upon you to stake my claim.”
“It’ll be fine,” Ash murmured as they stood outside the large manse that the Fu family lived in. They were at the entry gate of the large building with it’s sprawling grounds. The property as a whole was easily six or seven times bigger than his parents home. “Think your parents will greet us, or the family head?”
“My aunt or uncle will. They are least in the family standing and my parents would likely be shunned at this time. My brother nor I ever came back, after all,” explained JIa. “Therefore the youngest of the current generation will be who greets us.”
“Am I allowed to flirt with your cousins, sisters, or aunts, if it’ll get us anything?” Ash asked. For all he knew, the next ‘head of the Fu clan’ would be a woman. An unmarried woman.
Cultivators very much enjoyed binding people through marriage as children would become legal claimants. The only thing that allowed it to come as far as it did, was Cultivators didn’t seem to mind sharing partners.
“No,” Jia said flatly. “Not under any circumstance. You will not flirt.”
Ash amended his previous thought to include ‘most Cultivators’. He’d found all those in his inner-circle actively policed it to make sure no new women arrived or were included.
Not that he could blame them for their vigilance.
“It’s because they love you. If you hadn’t forced them to band together as friends and sisters, they would’ve likely tried to kill each other to become the only woman in your life.”
Before Ash could respond tot hat, the gate swung open all by itself. Someone had clearly moved it with Qi from a great distance. Ash wasn’t quite aware of what type of ability it was, but he wanted it.
As well as that Qi communication technique.
Unfortunately, the market’s they’d visited hadn’t sold anything of use that they didn’t already know.
There was much to gain in this realm, but it wouldn’t be quick or easy.
Jia began marching forward. She had her head up, her spine straight, and she moved like a woman.
A woman who was returning home for a visit after being away for a while. Ash took up a similar style of walk and matched her step for step, letting her lead the way in this.
It was her family after all.
“I wish Mei were here,” Jia mumbled under her breath.
Ash couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows at that comment and turned to look at Jia.
“She’s my sister,” Jia immediately got out as embarrassed. “My true sister. She and I are-we’re sisters. I take strength in her.”
Their partnerships have become far more. How about you and Siu?
“We’re sisters. We talk constantly. I talk to her more than I do you, now. Even Tala and Moira have bonded like sisters. Na and Hui are close to that, but I think Na still… feels sad over Yue.”
We all feel sad over Yue.
No… word about her? No sign?
“Nothing I could call concrete. We did have one Bride nearly get killed by a strange group of people when she was following a lead on Yue. They attacked her when she entered and she only escaped by exiting into the Hall. Rou had to actually put her heart back together like a surgeon.”
Ash was somewhat shocked by that.
If it was indeed a lead for Yue, and these people were part of what she was doing, that meant Yue was more than happy to try and kill a Bride.
An organization she had helped found and had laid out a great deal of rules for. Some of the most ‘unhinged’ traditions the Brides had all came from Yue, in fact. Traditions they still practiced to this day.
“I feel the same way, Ashley. I think Yue does not mean us well anymore. But I don’t know why.”
Ash purposfully forced his mind away from Yue and on the task at hand.
When they’d made their way up to the front door of the manse, Ash found it opened and a maid-servant was standing beside the door with her head bowed.
Entering the manse, Ash came to a stop when Jia did and looked around.
There was no one there to greet them or meet them.
Only the maid-servant.
“Mao, did they send no one to receive us?” Jia asked archly. “If so, we will be leaving immediately. I may be somewhat of a lost daughter, but this is simply disrespectful.”
The maid-servant, apparently named Mao and someone Jia knew, flinched as if rebuked.
“They sent no one, Miss Jia and—”
Jia waved a hand, took Ash’s arm in her own and led him right back out the door.
The front gate to the estate closed even as they approached it.
To which Jia merely created a font of water and carried herself and Ash straight over it and to the other side. Then began walking along the road, away from the building.
“Well. That did not go half as badly as I thought it would,” admitted Jia.
Which left Ash grasping at what exactly she thought would be a bad meeting if not even being greeted was at this level.
“We will try again in a few days when they have decided to give us at least the bare modicum of respect,” Jia continued and shook her head. “This is fine. We have a meeting with the Luo family today as well. We can go early and see if they are willing to see us quickly. This is not—”
“You were not given permission to leave the estate,” boomed a voice from behind them.
Ash glanced over his shoulder and Jia came to a dead stop.
Turning around, Ash rejoined her as Jia turned around to face the speaker.
“I was not even greeted at the estate, so there was no reason to seek permission to leave,” Jia responded coldly.
Looking at the speaker, Ash found that it was a man in his late fifties. Someone who was very likely a elder to the Fu clan. There were a number of similarities in how he looked to Jia as well. It wasn’t exact, but more in the broad strokes.
“You received exactly the welcome that you were due given you left as you did,” declared the older man.
Ash pulled on his Dao to get a feeling for this situation. Because he often was able to glean a great deal of information about what a situation was given how they responded to the momentum of the Sheng.
“I left just now given that the welcome I was given was less than that given to a stranger. No one at the gate and a maid-servant at the door,” Jia said with a small shrug of her shoulders. “What exactly did you expect from me given that sort of a welcome?
“As to the first time I left. I did so because I was not treated as a family member, but a disposable resource. Considering how you welcomed me on my return, it seems my previous logic was correct.
“So, I left when I was but a child. I would rather not benefit from the resources of a family that saw me as a resource, I fled. I took only what was mine, sold most of my belongings, and made a life for myself.
“Now that I have my own resources, I have come back.
“If you somehow demand monetary returns for raising me as long as you did, I will gladly pay that back. Though I will remind you that I received no martial arts training, no resources, and generally only received room and board.”
The man seemed infuriated at Jia’s response. Truly bothered and angry at the words that’d been said.
The momentum of him was also starting to spin faster, as if he were going to oppose Jia.
Which was directly in opposition to Ash’s will.
A thick wave of Qi reached out to grasp at Jia and wrench her toward the Elder. It was likely much in the same way the gate was opened, just with a great deal more force now.
“None of that now,” Ash declared and took hold of the Qi with his own, redirected it, and altered it’s momentum. Sending it back to the sender at the full force it was put forward.
The wave of Qi slammed back into the Elder and sent him back six or seven steps. His boots skidding across the stones in the road as he battled against his own attack.
“Elder Ning, that was uncalled for and disrespectful,” hissed Jia in what was clearly anger. “Most disrespectful. I did not realize the Fu family had fallen this far that they would attack someone in the very streets of Anyi.
“Is that how the family of Fu is now? Is it something so threadbare in it’s respect for others?”
More than a handful of people had started watching the exchange.
With the sudden burst of Qi, a double score of individuals were now watching. Most of the people in this realm were sensitive to Qi, or were Cultivators themselves.
As he had found in every realm that had the fingerprints of the Emperor on it, the people were slow to help others, quick to watch and listen to drama, and swift if it was something they could benefit from.
“Jia Sheng, once Jia Fu, has asked you a question, Elder Fu,” Ash asked in a loud voice. He’d decided if the man wanted to throw attacks on the street, Ash would be more than happy to throw one back.
Just not a physical one.
The Elder’s face became a deep and dark scarlet color as his eyes flicked from Jia, to Ash, then the crowd forming. It was clear now he had realized his mistake had been to attempt something outside of his own family estate.
Ash watched as the man’s jaw clenched, flexed, and writhed. He was clearly grinding his teeth together and deeply unhappy with the situation. With his actions and what’d now been revealed to the city of Anyi.
The man composed himself, took up a more normal stance, then bowed respectfully to Jia. It was paired with a salute that Ash didn’t know or understand. Placing both hands together before himself and forming a circle with his index fingers and thumbs.
“My apologies, I have acted in bad faith and in a hasty manner,” the elder stated. “I would kindly ask for you to join me so I can offer you a good meal as an apology, as well as a personal gift of face from my family.”
Jia performed the exact same bow and salute, returning it in the same manner to the elder.
“My husband and I accept your invitation, Elder Fu,” Jia declared while Ash performed the martial salute he had always known. A fist pressed into the palm of his other hand which was held upright in a flat plane, paired with a bow. “I would ask that Deguo Fu and Lihua Fu attend as well as I have brought matrimony gifts and a bride price for my parents.”
“That would be… fine,” allowed the Elder and stood up. He had a fake smile upon his face and then moved to the front gate of the estate and then physically pushed it open, and held it open. As if he were the gate guard.
It was a show of respect to Jia and taking up a menial job on the part of himself, which would lower his own respect. The act itself was actually surprising to Ash.
Realizing that Jia was attempting to take the lead, he had no reason to step in front of her. Most of this she had already prepared him for as well as the gifts.
He’d even gone so far as to create golems for her mother and father.
Because while her parents couldn’t protect her from the whims of the family, they’d done what they could. It was why Jia had been absent for as long as she had been.
Years, in fact.
Her brother had been sent out by order of the family, not her parents. Her immediate family had done what they could to help her, she was a minor child in a minor branch of the family, however. They weren’t able to stand up to anyone without causing a massive problem for the whole of the family.
Jia stuck her arm through Ash’s and led him back onto the estate.
She paused in front of the Elder and met his gaze levely.
“Do take care, grandfather, Ning,” Jia murmured quietly. “My husband is a very late stage Awakened Mortal.”
“I still think she should tell them you’re a very early stage Sovereign Immortal but… not my family. Though, I’m currently baking our family. Congratulations, Ashley. You did it. You… gave me a baby.
“Now it’s me, Eira, and Xiuying all in the latter half of the first wave.”
Ash smiled at the Elder as his head turned toward Ash and politely tipped his head to the man. Who likely had already suspected Ash had a great deal of strength.
At least he should have, considering Ash had returned the Qi he’d thrown out at Jia, back to him.
All while having a minor temper-tantrum on the inside.
They’d talked about having a child, but he hadn’t agreed on it yet.
Locke would be Locke, however.
“Lord Sheng needs many children and many wives. This is expected.”
As if in response to her words, Ash felt his Dao shift a bit.
Expanding a little further.
Lord Sheng indeed.
Reaching up, Ash adjusted his outfit, placed his left hand behind his back, and kept pace with Jia as an equal.
With that shift in his mentality, his momentum and his Dao responded in kind.
It sped up.