Not a minute after leaving the cave, Yang Xiu realized that it would be faster to return to the sect, portal to whatever hub exit was nearest Seventh Brilliant Raven Town, and fly from there. And she could, of course, turned around to take the quicker route. The longer route offered her a benefit she couldn’t pass up, though—more time to firm up her plan.
Both navigating via various landmarks and flying on her sword were second nature by that point, tasks she could perform while thinking about other things.
One particular thing dominated her mind or, rather, one particular person—Fang Bao. He was the Town Lord and Mayor of Yang Xiu’s hometown. The dual title wasn’t uncommon. Just like Senior Brother Fatty Ren, any mayor who was recruited into the Emperor’s faction became a minor noble, usually at the lowest rung—a town or village lord.
The sad thing was that Fang Bao wasn’t considered a bad leader by most of his citizens. The elders could certainly recall worse. There was some corruption, as existed basically everywhere, but it wasn’t egregious, just some extra coin from the town’s treasury making its way to merchants who had his favor who returned some of the largess back to him. Most mayors behaved in a similar fashion.
He was deemed fair when doling out judgments and punishments, and his guards kept order without excessive bullying. Taxes were set at reasonable rates, and the town’s economy prospered. The man didn’t even seem to have a wandering eye—no mistresses or concubines that anyone knew about.
Ironically, it was that very dedication to his family that brought about the problem. The mayor’s lady wife had much trouble conceiving, and it wasn’t until her early forties when she bore their one and only child, Fang Wei.
The couple were joyous when mother and son emerged for childbirth perfectly healthy and threw the largest celebration the town had ever seen. Unfortunately, in some ways, that celebration never ended.
Fang Wei could do no wrong. If he pushed down another kid, it was that other kid’s fault. If he wanted a certain piece of candy or toy, one of his parents or a guard would buy that piece of candy or toy. If he wanted a toy another child played with, he would get that toy, one way or another.
As an adult, Yang Xiu could understand how such treatment would spoil a child to such an extent that it warped his way of thinking. Understanding, however, did not excuse his actions.
Fang Wei wanted her and could not have her. First, he threatened, and when that did not work, he acted. Yang Xiu and Yang Ru had been at their Uncle Yang Shen’s farm for the day, and when they returned in the evening, they’d found their parents murdered.
That arrogant asshole hadn’t even tried to hide his involvement. He’d even left a note.
Marry me, or the same thing will happen to everyone you care about. Your brother. Your uncle. Your aunt. Your niece and nephews. And finally you.
Watching Master kill Fang Wei had been incredibly satisfying. The biggest downside was that she hadn’t been allowed to stab him herself.
The big question that was currently relevant, though, was—how complicit were Fang Bao, and his wife?
Yang Xiu didn’t know for sure. She and Yang Ru had fled the town as quickly as they reasonable could upon finding the bodies and the note, but some facts stood out to her:
- Everyone in town knew that Fang Wei was fixated on her to an unhealthy degree, and the mayor and his wife did nothing to resolve the situation.
- The council of elders refused Fang Wei as a match for her, and the mayor didn’t enforce the ruling as he would have with any other refused match.
- The note implicating Fang Wei was left with the bodies which were discovered by the Town Guard. To the best of Yang Xiu’s knowledge, Fang Wei was never arrested or charged with the crime.
- At least a day and a half passed before Yang Xiu and Yang Ru had gathered their meager supplies together and escaped the town. During that time, there was no word of Fang Wei being punished or pursued by the Town Guard.
- When Fang Wei caught up to Yang Xiu and Yang Ru, he had members of the Town Militia with him. He should have had to go through official channels to obtain the services of those men.
Master always said that the “state” had the burden to prove its case “beyond a reasonable doubt.” And honestly, her facts probably didn’t meet that standard. Still, it seemed obvious to her that the mayor turned a blind eye before the murders and supported his son even after them.
As a cultivator in the Golden Core realm who had the permission of the Emperor’s faction to act as she willed, the only burden that mattered was to be convinced that the man deserved his punishment. Unfortunately in this case, she respected her master too much. The mayor would be punished, but unless he gave her cause, he would not be executed.
Oh, how she hoped he gave her cause!
Eventually, the town came into view, and even after nearly ten years, it still looked the same. Mostly. The wall was clearly rotted in several areas. Some buildings were in dire need of paint. Even the garden for the Town Lord’s Manor wasn’t in great shape.
Actually, the town looked a lot different. Sure, ten years was a long time, but why weren’t they keeping up with maintenance?
She pushed the question from her mind as it didn’t matter. The sect had sent members of Zou Tian’s top secret Intelligence Hall into the town undercover, as they had with all the other settlements picked to be used for portals. Fang Boa was still the mayor. His wife still lived. There was nothing in the report of anything out of the ordinary.
Yang Xiu had two options for how to approach the manor. One, she could fly in on her sword, openly displaying her power from the very beginning. Or, two, she could approach casually dressed as a mortal and see what happened.
Both held merit, but how the mayor treated her when he thought he held power over her would be revelatory.
Option two it was.
She landed far outside the town walls and used her +6 Ring of Disguise to change into peasant wear, an outfit she kept on hand when she wanted to visit shops without being bowed down to constantly. Besides that ring and two others, one for spatial storage and one for contingency, the only other cultivator gear she wore was the dispenser at her waist.
Through much testing, the junior members of the Rising Tide Sect had discovered that the Nascent Soul realm talismans they carried were seriously overpowered for most messes they got themselves into, but there was a huge flaw. Finding one card that you absolutely needed immediately in a stack of hundreds of other cards was not easy.
One issue was the operation of the spatial storage devices. Pull a stack of cards? No problem. Pull a jian? No problem. Pull a longsword? No problem. Intent was all that mattered. Pull a particular card that was almost identical to a thousand others inside the ring? Problem.
The array used when Master constructed the storage rings wasn’t sophisticated enough to read the title of a card.
Master tried to fix it, of course, but there were only so many arrays that even a Formations Master like him could fit onto one device, and all the other functions took precedence. Thus, the solution was for him to create a separate storage device just for the cards, and it worked great. The small piece of metal was unobtrusive and could be pinned wherever the user wanted and held up to hundreds of thousands of talismans. And the function was super easy. Simply direct a bit of qi and your intent at the dispenser, and the card you wanted appeared in your hand.
Another minor flaw existed only in the perception of the junior sect members in that they felt the talismans created by Master were too valuable to use. He, of course, felt that they were relatively trivial to make, and he’d rather they be used than his sect members suffer.
The solution was to have several Foundation Establishment realm members learn talisman making. A different member would learn a skill that was useful and have it be inscribed onto a card, which could be sold in the Contribution Points Shop. Both the skill user and the inscriber earned points, and other sect members got cheap, useful one time effects.
Thus, when Yang Xiu drew message talismans from her dispenser, they weren’t the blue dragons that Master created but rather normal messages akin to what every other sect used, based on a common technique that every apprentice scribe from the Administration Hall learned. They weren’t as fast or as secure as the origami dragons, but they were much less expensive than the priceless treasures Master handed out.
Since Zou Tian’s report had been quite thorough, she pulled out a list of council members and scanned the population list for names of families she recognized. By the time she finished, over fifty discrete papers were on their way to various parties.
Perfect.
After a brief pause to give the people time to receive the messages and hopefully act on them, Yang Xiu steeled herself and walked to the gate, bowing slightly when she got there and saying to the pair of guards, “This one is Yang Xiu, a former citizen of this town. I’d like entrance please.”
“Yang Xiu?” one of the guards said. “I remember that name.”
He disappeared into a guard shack, where he ruffled through some papers. When he came back out, he shouted, “Apprehend her!”
“May this one ask what for?” she said as the other guard moved behind her to secure her arms, tying them with a rope.
“Murder.”
“Oh no! That sounds serious. May I ask who I am accused of murdering?”
“Your parents. You’ll hang for your crimes, girl. If there’s anyone worthy of execution, it’s someone guilty of parricide.”
She definitely agreed that the person guilty of murdering her parents deserved the worst of the worst. Too bad he was already dead and that his death had been so quick.
They began pushing her through the gate.
“Where are you taking me?” she said.
“To the mayor. Your crime was so bad that there was a note on your page instructing us to bring you directly to him if you were captured.”
Yang Xiu hid a grin. Perfect. If she had been forced to drag them there, it would have given away her feigned weakness. Which wouldn’t have been a disaster or anything, but she really wanted to see how the mayor responded.
Though the fact that she was arrested on sight said a lot.
Walking at the pace of a mortal was excruciatingly slow and seemed to take hours, but by the time they reached the manor, quite the crowd had grown outside. They stood outside a gate that was manned by two additional guards.
As Master would say, she loved it when a plan came together.
Yang Xiu cupped her hands to a few people she recognized, somewhat depressed that many of the former elders had already passed on. A decade was a long time for a mortal.
When the guards tried to push her through the manor’s front gate, she held her ground. From their perspective, it must have felt like shoving a mountain.
“I’d prefer that the mayor sentence me here in front of the councilors.”
Between their strange inability to move her and her words, the guards quickly gave up. After all, how were they to respond to that? No, prisoner, the mayor wants to deal with you privately away from the eyes of the council?
The council had little authority compared to the mayor, but if he annoyed them enough, they could make his life difficult. And not giving them any face in a situation like the one she’d orchestrated was a good way to get on their bad side.
One of the gate guards ran inside, and when he returned, both the mayor and his wife accompanied him.
“Yang Xiu!” the mayor yelled. “I sentence you to death!”