Sen watched as Xie Caiji’s face twisted with the knowledge that this wasn’t over yet. He wasn’t just going to kill her and be done with it. Ever since the rest of the Xie household had been brought out, he’d had a nagging sensation he was missing something. He started moving his eyes from face to face, really looking at them. He almost passed over the man before an old memory surfaced. It had been so long ago, and seemed so comparatively trivial now, that he almost let it go. Almost. The other man must have seen the decision on Sen’s face because qi flared as the cultivator made a run for it. One lazy qinggong technique and a kick to the back of the man’s head later, and the escape attempt was over. Sen grabbed the man by the ankle and dragged him, face down, so they could have their little discussion in front of the whole family.

“Gong Jun De,” said Sen, finally letting go of the man’s ankle. “Well, well. So, who is the peasant now?”

The man glared up at Sen with fury and scorn in his face. With that expression, he was much more recognizable as the same man in Sen’s memory.

“You’ll always be a peasant!” snarled the man.

“Probably,” said Sen. “Still, it has been such a long time since you tried to have me killed at the Clear Spring Sect. I was very eager to talk to you after, but you ran away. Like a coward. Exactly the way you tried to do just now. I’ll admit, I was shocked that the House of Xie sent people to kill me. I didn’t have any quarrel with your house. I certainly didn’t care about your house. But seeing you here, it all makes sense now. Sending others to do your dirty work is just procedure around here it seems. Gong Jun De, though? Not Xie Jun De? Some scandal I should know about? Are you a bastard in truth as well as behavior?”

Sen had never seen it before. In fact, he’d thought that whole thing about spitting blood was just a colorful if odd turn of phrase, but Gong Jun De actually started to leak blood from his mouth. What Sen couldn’t decide was if it was rage over an insult or fury at being so publicly called out as a literal bastard. Gong Jun De shot up to his feet.

“I challenge you to a duel of honor!” screamed the man, bloody spittle flying from his lips.

Sen did something he’d seen Lo Meifeng do once when she’d wanted to make a point. He grabbed Gong Jun De by the face. Sen jerked his hand down hard. Gong Jun De’s face hit the ground before the rest of his body caught up. Sen planted a foot on the back of the other man’s neck and brutally shattered a half dozen techniques the man tried to throw at him. There was a pool of blood on the ground around Gong Jun De’s face when the pain from repeated backlashes seemed to take the fight out of him.

“Be quiet now,” said Sen. “Peasants should know their place. Isn’t that what the nobles are always saying? If that holds for peasants, it goes double for worthless dogs. I mean, you didn’t even try to defend your home.”

Sen felt a movement at his side and glanced over at Long Jia Wei. The assassin was giving the assembled crowd a dispassionate look. His eyes shifted down to Gong Jun De’s prone form.

“Shall I dispatch him for you, Lord Lu?” asked Long Jia Wei.

“Yes,” said Sen, lifting his foot off the man’s neck.

Gong Jun De turned a horrified look up at Sen. Then, the life went out of the man’s eyes as Long Jia Wei used his daggers to remove the man’s head in a series of movements so fast that Sen doubted anyone but he had seen them. Sen hadn’t planned on doing any of that and the whole thing made him feel a little ill to his stomach, but it had served a purpose. He had seen the defiant looks on some of the faces in the crowd. He could almost hear them thinking that this didn’t apply to them. That they, at least, were still nobles. Sen had just shattered the illusion. He hadn’t just killed a noble. He’d killed a cultivator noble. He hadn’t even done it himself. He’d delegated the killing to an underling like the whole thing was a dirty task beneath his dignity. There were no more looks of defiance in the crowd. All that was left now was the dawning horror that this was all real. This was happening. Their lives as they understood them were over, and all that awaited them was a world of manual labor and angry peasants with grudges.

“Where were we? Oh, that’s right,” said Sen, locking eyes with Xie Caiji. “You were about to tell me who knew. Who participated?”

The woman tried to gather herself before she said, “It was just me.”

Sen heaved a great, theatrical sigh and said, “Who are the servants here? Step forward.”

There was a lot of hesitation and hushed murmuring, but people who were obviously servants did eventually step forward. Sen picked out two people who were clearly not servants hiding in the back and trying to pass themselves off.

“Long Jia Wei,” said Sen in a voice that carried.

“Yes, Lord Lu.”

“If those two Xie cowards,” Sen pointed at the offenders, “don’t rejoin their family in the next two seconds, kill them.”

“As you say, Lord Lu.”

Their eyes going wide and blood draining from their faces, the two men scrambled back from the servants. One of them tripped over something and, rather than stand again, he simply started shoving himself away from the servants with his legs. Sen scanned the assembled crowd, trying to make a best guess, before he made his next, well, he supposed it was a proclamation.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“You servants,” said Sen, “take the children inside. Anyone under the age of thirteen. Keep them away from the windows.”

No one moved for a few heartbeats before a woman’s voice rang out.

“You heard the man. Get the children inside.”

It was one of the servants, although one with some authority based on the way the rest of them sprang into action, herding or just carrying every child they could grab and fleeing into the building. The senior servant shot a look at Sen. It was a complicated thing. There was rage in those eyes. She hated him for what he was doing. There was also gratitude that he was sparing the children from something that was likely to be truly ugly. When the door to the manor swung closed with a bang, Sen knew that he was going to have to bury any sense of compassion or mercy he felt. He needed to know.

“Tell me who, or I kill them all,” he said to Xie Caiji.

She just stared at him for a while. It was long enough that he thought she meant to call what she must mistakenly believe was a bluff. Her eyes drifted from his face to the people standing around her, her family, what she had probably also mistakenly believed was the cream that the kingdom had to offer. If she believed that Sen wouldn’t cut them all down because of reasons like that, she was sadly mistaken. Eventually, her eyes landed on the body of Gong Jun De. She stared at that corpse for a long time before she looked at Sen, seemed to recognize his willingness to do exactly what he’d said, and she fell back on the last resort of the doomed.

“If I tell you, will you let the rest live?” she asked.

Before Sen could get a word in, a man near Xie Caiji shot a look of pure venom at her and screamed, “You bitch!”

The man lunged toward her, murder in his eyes, and a few others followed suit. Sen traded a cultivator-speed look with Long Jia Wei, who shot forward and wove through the crowd like a particularly lethal fish. Everyone that had made a move on the older woman fell dead within a second of each other. The crowd started to panic as lifeless bodies started falling around them, but Sen let a sliver of a sliver of his killing intent wash over them. Everyone froze. He walked over to Xie Caiji as he pulled his killing intent back.

“Who else?” he asked.

“What about the rest?” she whispered.

“I’ll give them a chance to live,” he said. “Which is more than your assassins would have given the people who were with me.”

The woman nodded and then pointed out three other people. Long Jia Wei didn’t need to be told what to do. Sen was happy to see that the man made it quick. Sen regarded Xie Caiji and asked the question he’d been putting off.

“Why? I never would have come for your house if you hadn’t done this. I honestly didn’t give a damn about you or politics. So, why?”

She seemed to weigh the question before she shrugged.

“To weaken the king. To seize the throne.”

“So, you did it for power?”

“Yes.”

“Was it worth it?”

The woman flinched and took another look around. She looked at the wreckage that used to be the front gates. She looked at the bodies. She looked at the faces of her family, some of them numb with shock, some of them openly afraid, and some of them streaked with tears. Family that she had robbed of their futures with one terrible, ill-conceived decision.

“No,” she answered. “So, is it my turn? Will your man kill me as well?”

Sen shook his head and said, “I’ll do it.”

He reached out and touched her forehead. His qi flooded into her and just made everything that made her keep being alive stop. She crumpled to the ground. Sen considered that limp form on the ground before he shook his head and walked far enough away that the whole crowd could see him.

“Now, I have to decide what to do with the rest of you.”

An older man stepped forward, his face slick with sweat, and said, “The guilty have been punished. Surely, there is no need for more death.”

“I punished the people who were guilty of things done against me. Do you really expect me to believe that the rest of you are moral paragons? No, it seems far more likely to me that if I investigate even a little bit that I’ll discover all of you as worthless as this one was,” said Sen, kicking Gong Jun De’s body.

A lot of very scared looks got passed between people when Sen suggested he might investigate what the rest of the House of Xie had been up to. It wasn’t evidence, but it was enough to tell him that he’d been pretty close to the mark. On the other hand, it wasn’t practical to kill everyone else. Even if he did just give up on sleep, he could never deal with all of the work that went into running all of the holdings and operations of a house like this. In truth, he needed some of these people to stay. He just wanted them all thinking he would prefer to slaughter them and that letting them live was only a whim, a final kindness extended to the woman he’d just killed right in front of them. A kindness he might immediately retract if they annoyed him.

“I suppose Long Jia Wei’s arm will get tired if he has to murder all of you,” Sen muttered loud enough to be heard, but like he was talking to himself. “Fine. I suppose that I don’t know that you deserve death.”

A collective sigh of relief went through the crowd.

Sen continued, “But don’t imagine for a moment that you’re going to leave here just to start plotting against me. You only live by my sufferance. You will all take oaths to the heavens to never knowingly act or speak against me or the House of Lu. You will vow never to encourage others to act or speak against me or the House of Lu.”

“That’s completely unreasonable,” shouted someone from the back of the crowd, who seemingly thought that Sen couldn’t see him.

Sen activated his qinggong technique and all but materialized next to the man. He leaned in close.

“Do I strike you as a reasonable man?” Sen asked in a deadly whisper, then he raised his voice. “You will take the vow, or you will not leave this place.”

Sen walked back to where he had been, the Xie family falling back before him. He turned to look at them.

“I may allow some of you to stay and enjoy the protection of the House of Lu, provided you can actually do something useful. And assuming you’ll take additional vows to faithfully, conscientiously, serve the House of Lu,” said Sen, watching some of the people grow angry at what he was suggesting. “Your children, however, will remain under my care. Consider it my acknowledgment of your basic natures and a surety against the possibility of you finding a way to circumvent your vows. Those who choose to serve the House of Lu may, eventually, even be permitted time with their children again.”

The angry whispering came to an abrupt halt. The threat was crystal clear, even if they didn’t know it was completely hollow. Behave, and your children will shelter comfortably beneath my not-inconsiderable protection. Do anything I don’t like, and they’ll be close at hand to bear the brunt of your sins.

“Now,” said Sen, “who wants to make a vow? And who wants to help Long Jia Wei perfect his dagger techniques?”