Unintended Cultivator

Tiu Li-Mei stared up at the wall of the Lu Manor and tried to still the trembling in her hands that had started the moment the king had ordered her to come here. Years. It had been years, and the thing she feared most in the world was still Lu Sen. And to make matters worse, he hadn’t done anything to her. At least, he hadn’t done anything malicious. In her head, she knew that what he’d done had been meant as a kindness. Yet, barely a week passed without a nightmare where she saw his terrible, beautiful face in her dreams. He looked at her with an almost surprised expression, like he’d just noticed her. He reached out to touch her arm. It always happened so slowly in the dream. Like the approach of some disaster that you know will destroy you, that you desperately want to flee but can’t. Then, he said the word. It was such an innocuous word.

“Peace.”

And it had come. That was the worst part. He had said the word and peace had descended on her like the heavens themselves had commanded it. She had been frightened, panicked, before that. The king, well, the prince then, had been in a fury. She’d known it wasn’t her fault. He hadn’t even blamed her. But she had seen that killing wrath in his eyes. It was a sight she had witnessed only a handful of times and wished never to witness again. His word was law for anyone who wasn’t a cultivator, and she was no cultivator. If he ever did turn that wrath on her, she wouldn’t survive the hour. It had been that thought in her head on that day that had fueled the fire of her terror. She’d left that room more frightened than she had been in many years, only for a boy to wash it all away with a word and a touch.

Part of her felt like she should have been grateful for it. It had been a kindness. It was clear from the expression on his face that he’d all but forgotten about her as soon as he turned away. The truth was something else entirely. As terrible as that panic had been, it had been hers. It might have been foolish but she’d come by it honestly, and he had replaced it with something else. Yes, he’d replaced it with calm and a sense of well-being, but she somehow knew that he could have replaced it with something else. He could have replaced it with anything. He could have made her love him, or desire him, or hate her prince. Tiu Li-Mei had never felt so utterly powerless before another being in her entire life. She wondered if an act of kindness had ever inspired so much fear before. She once again tried to still her hands even as shame welled up inside of her at the conversation she’d had with the king.

“Tiu, I need you to do something for me. I need a question answered. I would like for you to fetch me the answer.”

“Of course, your majesty,” she had said.

“Please visit Lu Manor. Ask to see the lord. Pose this question to him on my behalf. Are you almost finished? He’ll understand my meaning.”

Those words had frozen her. The very thought of standing in front of that man, a man who had, by all accounts, grown powerful almost beyond measure, had almost been enough to make her renounce her position. She had done everything in her power to avoid even being in the same room with him since she learned of his return to the capital.

“I would beg that you do not require this of me,” she had said.

The shame of those words would follow her to her grave, but she had been desperately seeking a way out of the trap that her king, wholly oblivious, meant to put her in. He had merely looked at her with that calm curiosity of his.

“Why?” he had asked.

If ever there was a sign of the trust he extended to her, that question was such a sign. Another king might have put her death on the spot.

“He frightens me,” she had admitted, baring her deepest shame before the man she respected more than any other in the world.

He had laughed at that. She thought she might die at the sound of that laughter. It was only when he spoke that she understood he had not been laughing at her.

“I think that speaks rather well of your mind. You would be a fool if you did not fear him, or at least fear what he can do. Even so, for reasons that he’s never bothered to explain to me, the man has also decided to be my friend. He certainly won’t harm you for relaying a question from me.”

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She hadn’t been able to speak after that. To say more would have been too much. He’d extended her enormous courtesy in simply asking her about why she would try to refuse such a simple request. If she continued to protest, she would either have to explain it all or be deemed incompetent. That would have been worse than death, worse than facing a thousand Lu Sens. Or so she had thought. Now, though, standing before those walls, those monuments to the power of Judgment’s Gale, she didn’t know if she could make herself approach them. Everything inside of her was telling that she needed to leave. No, she needed to flee from this place and the man inside it. Before she could act on that impulse, though, a figure emerged from the gates and crossed the street to stand in front of her.

She didn’t know him, but she wasn’t surprised that such a man would find himself in the service of Lu Sen. There was a certain coldness to him that made her think of a lounging cat. It was a lazy indifference that masked a predatory lethality. At the moment, though, this lounging cat was still lounging, even if his ears had pricked up a little.

“I am Long Jia Wei,” he said while offering her a slight bow. “Can I help you?”

Finally making her hands be still through sheer force of will, she returned the bow.

“This one is Tiu Li-Mei. The king sent me to speak with Patriarch Lu.”

The man fixed her with a penetrating look that left her feeling hideously exposed before he finally nodded.

“Very well,” he said, holding out a small token.

Tiu Li-Mei hesitantly took the token and asked, “What’s this?”

“It will allow you to pass through the defenses, temporarily. Now, if you’ll follow me, please. I will take you to him.”

While she forced her face to remain impassive, Tiu Li-Mei had to make herself follow the man. Her belief that she should have fled and simply accepted the dishonor was only reinforced when she felt something turn its attention on her. It was only after the token in her hand grew warm for a moment that the thing finally stopped paying attention to her. With a sick feeling, she realized that those were the defenses. Did he… Had Judgment’s Gale somehow brought this place to life? The very idea that anyone even could do something like that made Tiu Li-Mei feel tiny, insignificant, like a mote of dust before the storm. These were forces she, a mortal, had no business interfering with. The people in the courtyard were no less comforting. When she looked around, she was greeted with a wall of distrust and hostility, even from people she knew had once been proud members of the House of Xie. She pitied the person who came to this place looking for trouble because they would find it.

Moving inside didn’t make things any better. The servants there were more polite, but it was the kind of icy politeness normally reserved for those the servants knew their masters did not like. An even more chilling thought occurred to her. What if this was how they treated people they knew their master favored? After all, Tiu Li-Mei was known in the capital as one of the king’s trusted servants. The friendship between her master and Judgment’s Gale was not a secret. If they viewed allies with this much distrust now, what would it be like for those they viewed as enemies? She didn’t have long to ponder on that. Long Jia Wei was efficient, even if he made no attempt to engage her in small talk. She had been expecting it, hoping for it really. It would have been a welcome distraction. Yet, the man remained steadfastly silent. She couldn’t decide if he was feigning disinterest in her and the crumbs of information she might inadvertently drop or if he truly did not care.

She was led into a familiar room. She had visited the manor several times when it was still the Xie manor, and this had been where guests were kept waiting before being allowed to see the Xie matriarch. The decorations hadn’t changed much. There was a woman there who regarded her with a decidedly skeptical air. Long Jia Wei turned to her.

“Wait here a moment,” he said.

Then, he walked over to the door that led to what she assumed was now Lu Sen’s office. When he opened the door, a snippet of conversation between a man and a woman wafted out.

“Wait, you mean that woman who set up that idiotic trap?” asked the woman.

“One and the same,” said the man. “We should see if we can find her. I mean, she’s a thousand miles from here by now if she’s got any sense at all, but maybe she’s stupid.”

The conversation died down to a murmur before Long Jia Wei and a woman Tiu Li-Mei didn’t immediately recognize came out. The woman’s eyes ghosted over Tiu Li-Mei, and then seemed to dismiss her out of hand. That was a blow to her pride, but how was any mortal woman supposed to compete in a world where cultivation imparted beauty like that? Of all life’s unfairnesses, that one seemed the cruelest. As if it wasn’t enough to allow people superhuman powers, but to make them all beautiful as well. It was like they weren’t human anymore.

“You can go in now,” said Long Jia Wei.

Trying to take a deep breath without being too obvious about it, Tiu Li-Mei stepped into the dragon’s lair.