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4.11 - Responsibility and Return
🕑 Added 2024-08-22 22:00:08 +0000 UTCWith the bounty of the mine safely tucked away in their storage treasures, He Yu and Tan Xiaoling returned to the surface with the miners in tow. Tan Xiaoling said she was going to make one last sweep of the overseer’s hut and the surrounding area just to be certain there wasn’t anything she’d missed. Among the remains of the hovels that had once housed the miners, He Yu spied a few meager provisions. Half-full sacks of rice, a couple of banged-up cooking pots, and a mix of other miscellaneous and mundane implements for mortal life.
He instructed the miners to gather up whatever they could carry. As Golden Core immortals, he and Tan Xiaoling had little need for such provisions to survive. The food or drink they carried in their storage treasures were heavily fortified with qi, making it wholly unsuitable for mortal consumption. A mere sip from Tan Xiaoling’s tea or He Yu’s wine would cause a backlash so severe as to kill a mortal instantly. He Yu only hoped that the pitiful amount of food would be enough for them to make it to a settlement.
It didn’t take long for the miners to gather up what little there was. While he awaited Tan Xiaoling’s return, he asked one of them about it. He was told that every couple of weeks, some cultivators would arrive with supplies. Usually between one and three of them. They only brought enough to last until they returned, most likely to ensure a more difficult escape. They would leave with whatever spirit stones had been mined since they’d last come.
He Yu did his best to ask a few more pointed questions, designed to tease out any information about the Court without giving anything away. It didn’t take long before he realized its futility. The miner was a mortal, after all. Wholly ignorant of the world of cultivators, and the forces that moved within it. To him, the overseer and the cultivators who made the deliveries were much the same—beings of unfathomable power who held his life in the palm of their hand. He Yu supposed the miner wasn’t too far off in that assumption.
The only mention that He Yu thought even slightly worthy of note was that those responsible for the deliveries seemed uniformly deferential to the overseer. It wasn’t surprising—if the mine provided advancement resources to the Court, it seemed reasonable that whoever they put in charge of it would be someone of status. Of course there were no names, but at the end of the miner’s description, something caught He Yu’s attention.
“Wait,” he said. “That last one, the one you said only started showing up within the past few months. Tell me more about him.”
The miner did as he’d been told, describing a lean and dangerous-looking cultivator. He tended to dress simply, more like a street thug than the typical well-appointed robes common among cultivators. He Yu tried to tease out as much as he could, asking about the cultivator’s presence. The miner gave him a blank look at that, and He Yu mentally kicked himself. Of course a mortal wouldn’t know what he was talking about.
He shifted tack, asking about weapons. The cultivator carried none, but of course he wouldn’t. He’d have a storage treasure. Still, He Yu managed to tease out a few more useful details. Although without more information, he couldn’t be certain. From the description, the newcomer sounded an awful lot like Cui Bao. His appearance at the spirit stone mine lined up with his departure from the sect well enough, at least.
By the time Tan Xiaoling returned, the miners had all gathered what they could. With the two immortals in the lead, they turned their feet to the west. He Yu and Tan Xiaoling had held a quick discussion about how best to handle the mortals once they left. Although they weren’t certain exactly how far inside the Mo clan’s territory they were, or where exactly the border with the sect’s territory lay, they quickly agreed it was best they head toward unambiguously friendly land.
If they happened upon a settlement along their route, they’d drop the miners off there. If it were a town of sufficient size, they’d be able to contact the Ministry of Information and send word to the sect about the miners. That had been He Yu’s suggestion, as he didn’t want to simply leave them to their fates once they’d reached safety.
“They’re not your responsibility,” Tan Xiaoling said. Although she didn’t disagree with his desire see the mortals to safety, it was clear she didn’t understand, either.
“What sort of hero leaves those who can’t defend themselves to their fates?” he asked in return.
It was nearly a quarter of an hour before she spoke up again. “I suppose you have your Way. It’s not for me to understand, or follow.”
“A little charity wouldn’t hurt, though. Besides, Li Heng always talks about how nobles have a duty to those weaker than themselves, too.”
Tan Xiaoling shook her head, but said nothing.
They continued walking through the scrub lands among the hills. The terrain here was rough going, at least for the mortals. Had the miners not been along, He Yu and Tan Xiaoling could have simply used movement techniques to pass through the dense thorny undergrowth that clung to the gullies running between the rugged, stone-strewn hills that rose to either side of the path they’d chosen. Or they could have leaped from hilltop to hilltop. Were He Yu alone, he could have traveled in much the same way he had when he’d gone to the southern forest, using his movement technique to soar over the difficult terrain.
As it was, He Yu mostly served as a sort of trail breaker. His guandao turned out to be well-suited for the task, given its reach, and his command of wind qi ensured any stray shrubs or debris was sufficiently cleared. It made for easier going for the mortals, meaning that having a dozen emaciated miners in tow didn’t slow them down any more than it absolutely had to.
When the sun finally dipped towards the earth in the west, they sought out a suitable spot to stop for the night. Neither Tan Xiaoling nor He Yu had the sort of experience that Chen Fei had with finding a good camp, but several of the miners did, and they eventually found a spot that was relatively sheltered. As the miners set about to prepare simple meals for themselves, He Yu and Tan Xiaoling climbed a hill a short distance away. It was about time they went over what they’d found in the overseer’s hut.
The first thing Tan Xiaoling produced from her storage treasure was a rolled up bamboo scroll. “It looks like a ledger of some sort,” she said as she unrolled on a nearby rock she’d sliced the top off to serve as a table. “I can’t read it, though.”
He Yu joined her and gave it a look. The characters were all standard, but their meaning was nonsense. Their arrangement certainly suggested that it could be a ledger of some sort, but that was about the most sense he could make of it.
“A code?” he asked.
She nodded. “Most likely. The Ministry of Information would be the best place to look if we wanted to break it. Although I suspect this is the sort of thing Senior Sister Yi would have expected us to recover.”
“Well, it’s not nothing,” He Yu said. It was a bit disappointing, but what had he expected? A detailed and clearly labeled map with a big circle marking the Sunset Court’s main hideout? Of course not. They wouldn’t be so hard to track down if that was how they conducted their business. “What else did you find?” he asked.
She pulled out a bundle of dried herbs next. “I’m no alchemist, but I know a thing or two about herbs. These are certainly potent, but I’ve no idea what they actually are.”
Potent was certainly one way to describe them. The concentrated medicinal qi He Yu sensed in them meant they would easily fetch incredible prices at the sect market, even if he couldn’t identify them either.
“We should probably turn these in as well,” he said, if with some reluctance. “If they’re rare, their source might help us find other members of the Court.”
“I was thinking much the same thing. Especially given that they’ve not been used, considering the last thing I found.” With that, she produced a pill furnace.
It was rather small as far as pill furnaces went, with a complicated formation script covering its surface. Although he wasn’t anything of an alchemist himself, he did have some passing experience with metals due to the time he’d spent around his father’s forge growing up. The furnace had been crafted from some unfamiliar metal. Despite the furnace’s mysterious construction, it was clear to see why Tan Xiaoling had thought it significant to mention, along with the herbs.
“If he had such a furnace, he must have been an alchemist of sorts,” He Yu said. “So why didn’t he make any use of such high quality herbs?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Tan Xiaoling asked. “I’m no expert in these things, but I’d guess the furnace alone is worth at least half a year’s worth of our stipend from the sect.”
“Senior Sister Yi will want to see this,” he said.
“Agreed,” Tan Xiaoling said as she swept their finds back into her storage treasure.
“Is that all?”
“All that’s worth mentioning. There was quite a bit of loot inside the hut, but nothing anyone of modest means couldn’t easily acquire just about anywhere. We can look over it when we have the chance to divide our spoils.”
This was, perhaps, the first time that He Yu didn’t feel too bad about taking resources from a defeated foe. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact the overseer was dead, either. Back at the sect, the back and forth of duels and the consequential ebb and flow of resources had become somewhat routine, but he still felt at least a twinge of guilt when he took from another to restock what he’d previously lost. That he needed the resources didn’t change the fact that the person he was taking from needed them too. Nor did it change the fact that it always felt like robbery, even if it was expected.
The overseer was different. He’d been, in every sense of the word that He Yu could think of, a villain. One worthy of defeat at the hands of a hero. He’s slaughtered an innocent in cold blood—for no reason other than an assumption that it would get under He Yu’s skin. It had certainly done that, and more. Taking what they could from such a creature seemed only a fitting reward for defeating him. The bounty of heaven delivered for making the world that much safer, that much more just.
“Everything alright, there, Senior Brother?” Tan Xiaoling asked.
He Yu blinked as broke out of his reverie. He searched her features for a moment, trying to figure out if she were teasing him or not. It was always hard to tell with her, given the way she almost constantly wore a half-smirk when she wasn’t visibly angry or fighting. Then there was the way her tone always seemed to border on mocking. He couldn’t manage to arrive at a solid conclusion.
“I don’t know if that’s necessary,” he hedged.
“Senior Sister Yi did specifically mention that you’re the one in charge here, number five-sixty-seven.”
Now he was certain she was making fun. “You’re fewer than half a dozen ranks behind me,” he said. Tan Xiaoling had since reached five hundred seventy-one, and if his troubles with resources persisted would likely surpass him soon.
“Still behind you,” she said with a soft laugh, her familiar hard edges rounding out for a moment. “Don’t worry about it too much. Leadership suits you, though.”
He Yu had to check again. This time, he was certain that she wasn’t making fun. Her smirk was gone, and her tone was about as serious as it ever got when she wasn’t trying to kill someone.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“I don’t think you give yourself enough credit,” she said. “You take to it well, and without complaint, whenever it’s thrust upon you. Don’t think I’ve forgotten how well you handled things in the west.”
He hadn’t forgotten a thing about that. “I don’t want subjects,” he said without entirely meaning to. The temptation of Jin Xifeng’s power had stayed fresh in his mind ever since he’d seen himself then, lording over all those around him. Nor had he forgotten the hollow emptiness of it all when he looked at it with the true judgment of an emperor.
“Leadership isn’t about lording yourself over others,” Tan Xiaoling said. “Maybe that’s how many of the nobles do things here in the empire, but I learned differently.”
He Yu perked up a bit at that. “When we were in the wilds,” he began. He wanted to explain what his misgivings were.
Tan Xiaoling held up a silencing hand. “I was there,” she said. “I think we all felt and saw things we’d rather not have. Not the least of us, Li Heng.”
Something in He Yu’s chest unclenched at that—something he’d not really even known had been there. On some level, he knew Li Heng deeply regretted the way he’d behaved then, but hearing it from Tan Xiaoling—given how close the two of them were—was a comfort he’d not known that he needed. It was also a comfort that he hadn’t been the only one tempted by the offers of the Sunset Empress.
“But,” Tan Xiaoling said, turning back to her earlier thread, “perhaps I ought to explain what I mean about my home. I’m sure you know the Jade Kingdom is a harsh land. Just how harsh I don’t expect a citizen of the empire to truly grasp. Especially not one from the south.”
He Yu tried not to let himself feel stung at the last part, but she was right. Aside from the areas around the Shrouded Peaks, the south of the empire had some of the most qi starved lands. A spirit or beast could only grow so strong here. Consequentially, the south was some of the safest territories outside the lands surrounding the imperial capital itself.
“The Jade Kingdom consists of exactly one city—my home. Otherwise, it’s just tiny settlements protected by a handful of experts. The remaining land is wild and untamed. The White Desert and the Jade Mountains produce spirits and beasts far more advanced than what is common here. My family must be constantly vigilant. For the good of the kingdom, we protect our people. To be a member of the royal family is to be responsible for the lives of tens of thousands.”
He Yu stared at the expanse of stars above, saying nothing.
“You took up that responsibility today, and you did so willingly,” she added before finally falling silent.
He still said nothing. As her retreating footsteps faded, he looked to heaven and thought long about her words.
