Two days, several healing elixirs, and a lot of sleep later, Sen felt more like himself again. Shi Ping seemed horrified at even the possibility that a nascent soul cultivator might attack them, while Falling Leaf seemed ready to storm out of the inn to find someone to kill. Sen told them both to just sit tight while he ran an experiment or two. His first stop was to see the prince. He was, not surprisingly, aware of Sen’s recent adventures and not particularly pleased.

“Do you know how many people died during that little escapade of yours?” demanded Prince Jing.

“No,” said Sen.

“Thirty-seven people. Those are just the ones we know about.”

“I am sorry about that, but I was only involved directly in two of those deaths. Both of those people were cultivators who came to attack us. I wasn’t the one knocking down buildings.”

“I know. That was Tong Guanting.”

“Is that his name? Burly cultivator with a beard.”

“Yes. He’s the head of the Shadow Eagle Talon Syndicate.”

Sen nodded. “I thought he might be, but I didn’t know for sure.”

“You didn’t know!” shouted the prince. “Do you routinely get attacked by people you haven’t met?”

Sen thought for a second. “Actually… Yes. It happens with an almost dreary regularity.”

The prince had seemed to be building up to what he probably meant to be an extended screaming or lecture session. That admission on Sen’s part seemed to bring that all to a crashing halt as the prince just stared at him.

“That really happens to you? Random people just attack you?”

“I don’t know how random they are, but people I don’t know or haven’t met before do attack me all the time. Some of that just goes with being a cultivator but not all of it. I’ve made some enemies.”

“You don’t say,” said the prince, rolling his eyes with theatrical flair. “If you don’t mind me asking, did you feel that you didn’t have enough of them here? Decided to make a few more?”

“This one isn’t on me. They attacked me first, unprovoked, while I was having a breakthrough in my cultivation. Then, they attacked me again with no provocation. At that point, I told them to get out of the city or I’d do it for them.”

“That seemed like a good idea to you? You didn’t think there might be repercussions?”

“I assumed there would be repercussions. I obviously didn’t expect them to knock down a building and kill a bunch of mortals.”

“So, now that you have their attention, why in the hells did you come here?”

“I’m testing a theory. I think Tong Guanting overstepped his bounds the other day. If I’m right, he won’t lift so much as a finger in my direction.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“Then, he’ll probably kill me the minute I leave this place. I doubt he’d dare level your home just to get at me. No cultivator wants an all-out war with a mortal army. It’s worse for him because he has an organization.”

“Why does that matter?”

“For someone like me, I can just grab my people and slip away into the night. Sure, an army could chase me, maybe even catch me, but I’d have a lot of advantages. You can’t do that with an organization. Plus, once word got out that the mortal authorities were moving against him, every cultivator with a grudge would come out to take their vengeance. It’d be a bloodbath.”

“Why did they attack you in the first place?”

“I assume someone pointed them at me. I only had the one chance to ask, and I was so busy making threats that I forgot about it.”

“You said you were attacked more than once. Why did you only have one chance to ask?”

Sen tilted his head a little to one side as he studied the prince. For a second or two, he thought the royal was mocking him. Then, Sen realized that the prince probably hadn’t done that much of his own fighting over the years.

“Because everyone else was usually dead by the time it was over.”

It was the prince’s turn to study Sen for a moment. “How many people have you killed since you’ve been here.”

“I don’t count them. I can tell you it’s been more than I wanted to kill when I came here.”

“How many did you want to kill?”

“None. I came here to get that manual, not get into fights to the death or start a feud with a criminal sect. I was hoping to avoid killing anyone while I was here.”

“So, that’s not really something you’re good at?” the prince asked.

“Apparently not. I did have other reasons for coming here.”

“I’m glad you didn’t risk the lives of everyone here just to satisfy your curiosity. I think I’d have to be very angry with you if you did something like that.”

“No, if I just wanted to satisfy my curiosity, I’d have found some open-air market and done some shopping. Right out in the open, but also an easy place to run away from.”

“Isn’t running away dishonorable?”

“Probably. Honor isn’t usually at the top of my list of concerns when people come looking to kill me. If I need to run away to find myself an advantage, I’m perfectly willing to do it. Generals do it all the time, except they call it a strategic retreat or a tactical withdrawal. I guess it sounds better than, we ran away and will try again later when the odds favor us more.”

The prince laughed a little at that. “I’ve never heard it described quite that way before.”

“My teachers didn’t really believe in pretending one thing was something else.”

“So, you won’t die to preserve your honor?”

“What honor?” asked Sen. “I don’t have to worry about reflecting badly on a great house or noble family. One of the privileges of being an unimportant orphan is that I can ignore all of that. I don’t have to stand and fight against impossible odds just because someone will say nasty things about me if I refuse.”

“You’re not worried you’ll get an inaccurate reputation?”

“I already have an inaccurate reputation. If someone wants to publicly announce that I’m a coward or an honorless dog, I’d welcome it. Anything that blunts that Judgment’s Gale reputation is a good thing in my mind.”

The prince raised an eyebrow at Sen. “You don’t enjoy being a noble folk hero?”

“I don’t. It’s occasionally useful, but no one can ever really live up to those stories, can they? No one is ever as wise, noble, generous, or kind as the stories would make them out to be. I’m certainly not.”

“Is that what they say about you?”

“It isn’t, but the point stands. People tell those stories because they need or want something to believe in. So, they make their heroes into an ideal. The thing they’d want their hero to be, instead of whatever they actually are.”

“What do people say about you?” asked the prince.

“I haven’t checked in on it recently. The last time I did, they were talking some kind of nonsense about how the heavens sent me to be some kind of righteous wind that scours away the wicked.”

“Oh,” said the prince with a sour expression. “I can see why you wouldn’t enjoy that kind of reputation. It’s almost a foregone conclusion that you’ll fail to live up to it.”

“Exactly.”

“Very well. What did you come here to discuss.”

Sen opened his mouth to speak, and then really thought about what he was going to say in context. He shook his head and changed his mind, deciding to start with the second thing.

“Have you heard anything from or about your sister?”

Prince Jing winced. “I have, and it’s not good news. My father has decreed that her wedding will move forward.”

Sen sighed. “I guess it was too much to hope that little project would go smoothly. I can’t imagine that Chan Yu Ming took it well.”

“She did not,” said the prince with an amused smile. “As I understand it, there was massive water damage to a large portion of the palace. It’s going to cost my father a fortune to have it all repaired in time for the ceremony.”

“I take it your mother declined to help?”

“No. In point of fact, the word is that she made a very strong, very pointed argument in support of Chan Yu Ming marrying literally anyone except someone from the house of Choi. Some of the options she offered as better than a Choi included a goat, a toothless beggar, a piece of driftwood, and a random houseplant that she pointed at.”

“A houseplant?” snickered Sen.

The prince nodded. “Yes, by all accounts, she was in fine form that day.”

“And your father didn’t want to hear it?”

The prince shook his head, although Sen read it more as disbelief than anything else.

“He just told mother that the matter was settled. She was none too pleased by that.”

“So, this is going to be harder than everyone expected,” said Sen.

“It appears that way. Although, honestly, I’m not sure what could change father’s mind at this point. It might be better if Yu Ming were to simply be, let’s say, carried away by a roguish cultivator hero.”

Sen shook his head. “I’m not kidnapping your sister, even if I’m pretty sure she’d love it.”

“What?”

“Nothing. The point is, I don’t want a mortal army chasing me halfway across the kingdom. When’s the ceremony happening? I need to know how long I’ve got to work with.”

“Six weeks.”

“Alright. I’ll see what I can come up with on my end after I deal with my current crisis and, hopefully, after I get that damn manual.”

“On that subject, I have inquired with the Golden Phoenix sect about the manual. They’re being unusually reticent about it. I assumed they’d simply come back with a list of demands. Instead, it’s like they don’t even want to acknowledge it exists.”

Sen frowned. “The person we sent to approach them about it has, as near as I can tell, been getting the same treatment. I wonder what the issue is?”

“That, I don’t know.”

“I appreciate you making the effort.”

“You’re welcome. So, what was the other thing you wanted to talk about?”

Sen took a deep breath and plunged forward. “I’m planning to kill everyone in the Shadow Eagle Talon Syndicate and assassinate Tong Guanting.”

At first, the prince just looked flabbergasted. His eyes were wide and his mouth was hanging open. After a little while, though, Sen saw the spark of amusement in the man’s eyes. Then, the laughing started. Sen just nodded. He understood.

“Yeah,” said Sen. “I know.”

“That certainly won’t do anything to reinforce your reputation as a merciless divine wind sent to cleanse away the wicked.”

“The irony isn’t lost on me, your royalness.”

“Your royalness,” he wheezed between fits of laughter. “I’m going to have to use that. Yu Ming will hate it.”

“Just don’t tell her you got it from me.”