Book 4: Chapter 57: Nothing But Bad Choices
Tong Guanting hadn’t felt this kind of rage in centuries. It was one thing to, however unwillingly, accept the demands put on him by other nascent soul cultivators. That was a matter of mutual survival if nothing else. He had seen nascent soul cultivators battle once, nearly a thousand years before. It had leveled a kingdom. Not a city but an entire kingdom. That event had left an indelible mark on his soul and guided his actions. He was aware of just how dangerous it was for nascent soul cultivators to lose control. Not that he particularly cared if a bunch of mortals died, but too much death was bad for business. And if Tong Guanting loved one thing in the world, it was money. He was also aware that money was largely meaningless for someone like him. He didn’t need it to buy food or shelter. He doubted there was an environment anywhere in the world that could actually kill him. He only ate food because he wanted to. What few cultivation resources that existed for someone at his stage couldn’t be bought. Even so, he still loved money. He loved the way it looked. He loved the heft of it in his hands when he scooped up golden taels. He loved that it could buy him anything he wanted if he decided that he wanted something.
Somehow, that damnable boy had figured that out and seemingly made it his purpose to steal every last tael that Tong Guanting had worked so hard to get. He wasn’t hypocrite enough to say earned. He didn’t earn money. Earning money was for peasants, not cultivators. What was even worse was that the kid was good at it. He’d been systematically killing all of Tong Guanting’s employees, stealing everything that was worth more than a copper tael, and vanishing. No, that wasn’t the right word for it. He’d have to be able to be sensed to vanish. It was like that kid was made of smoke. He came and went and no one felt him. The very worst part was that the boy was doing it in Tong Guanting’s own territory. Not that he could act against the kid even there. The other nascent soul cultivators in the city had told him, in no uncertain terms, that they weren’t going to let him kill someone who was barely into core formation in a fit of pique.
He'd known when he tried to kill the kid out in the open that would probably happen. It had been a calculated risk and, like it or not, sometimes they didn’t pay off. He’d run enough gambling dens in his time to understand that sometimes the other people won, even if you thought you had the game fixed. Of course, when the other powerhouses in the city laid down that decree, Tong Guanting had never imagined the river of money that the kid was going to siphon away, to say nothing of the small mountain of corpses he was leaving in his wake. That name, the one that had sounded so ridiculous at first, didn’t sound ridiculous to Tong Guanting anymore. He felt like he’d slapped a giant, and the giant was slapping him back…much, much harder. If he’d had any inkling of the trouble he’d be bringing down on his own head when he originally agreed to kill that kid, he’d have never taken the job in the first place. With everything the kid was doing, he’d gone back to the other nascent soul cultivators to complain about the restriction. It was not going the way he expected.
Feng Bai laughed. “You want us to let you turn your power against that boy because he’s costing you money?”
Tong Guanting glared at the patriarch of the Steel Gryphon sect. “It’s not a joke. He’s bleeding me dry. He's killing my people by the score.”
“He’s one man,” said a sweet voice.
Tong Guanting turned his eyes on Lai Dongmei, hot words ready to spill from his lips, only for those words to catch in his throat. He had to look away from her almost immediately. Lai Dongmei, the matriarch of the Golden Phoenix sect, was so beautiful that it was physically painful for most people to spend more than a moment looking at her. It was unnatural to such a degree that even nascent soul minds rebelled at the very sight of it. Tong Guanting had often thought that she must have been heartrendingly beautiful even before she was a cultivator for what she became to be the end result. He expected that she was as close as he was ever going to get to looking at a goddess.
Lai Dongmei continued, “He’s a lone core cultivator, and barely that, against your entire organization. If he’s such a threat, send peak core cultivators after him.”
“I did!”
“And?” she asked.
“He hung them up on a wall like they were art.”
“In that case,” mused Lai Dongmei, with a cruel edge in her voice, “perhaps you shouldn’t have chosen a fight with someone you didn’t understand. Do you think a man gets a name like Judgment’s Gale because of his forgiving nature? As I understand it, he did give you a choice.”
“A choice? He told me to leave the city or else. I’m not going to let some core cultivator order me around.”
A slender, elegant man lifted a hand. Tong Guanting grudgingly turned to face the man. He hated Jin Bohai almost as much as he hated the boy. Jin Bohai had made his feelings about Tong Guanting perfectly clear several centuries earlier. The slender man had stated outright that the only reason he didn’t simply kill Tong Guanting was because Jin Bohai considered it beneath him.
“And we’re not going to let you take petty vengeance on a man more than a full stage below your cultivation because you were stupid. You’ve made half a dozen attempts on his life already. At this point, as far as I’m concerned, this is a disaster of your own making.”
“Then I intend to go and clean it up, personally.”
“No,” said Lai Dongmei. “We have been abundantly clear on this matter.”
“He’ll destroy everything I built.”
Tong Guanting couldn’t see it, but he could feel the smile on her face when she spoke.
“Yes, and won’t that be such a pity.”
“You intend for the boy to do what you cannot or would not,” snarled Tong Guanting.
“Yes,” said Lai Dongmei. “You are a cancer on the body of this city. If the boy can cut you out, all the better.”
“Besides,” said Feng Bai, “even if we’d allow it, you pathetic piece of trash, you can barely handle the student. You are in no way prepared to handle the storm of his masters. And they would come.”
For the first time in weeks, something other than rage filled Tong Guanting. “You mean, those stories are true?”
Feng Bai nodded. “They are. Do you think you’re ready to face down the wrath of my brother, the Living Spear, and Alchemy’s Handmaiden?”
It galled him to let the word slip between his lips, but he did it anyway. “No.”
“So,” said Jin Bohai, “sense has not abandoned you entirely. You have three choices. You can continue hurling your men against this Judgement’s Gale until he has killed them all. An eventuality that seems increasingly likely regardless of your choices. You can try to act against the boy directly, in which case we will stop you. Rather, they will stop you. I’ll simply kill you. Or, you can do as the boy demanded and run away with what’s left of your people. Personally, I hope you try to attack him again yourself.”
“So, I’m to have nothing but bad choices?”
“You speak as though you are due something more,” said Lai Dongmei. “You seek mortal riches above all other things. You built an organization that brings nothing but suffering to others. You are barely better than a demonic cultivator. I find it utterly mysterious how you ever managed to break into the nascent soul stage in the first place without becoming a demonic cultivator. Yet, it is that single bit of difference that has preserved your life and nothing more. You should take your life and be grateful.”
The ocean of loathing and contempt that Lai Dongmei poured into those words made Tong Guanting flinch. He knew better than to expect respect from these three. They had no more use for him than they did for a roach. They tolerated him, barely, only out of some vague acknowledgment of his cultivation stage. If they could be rid of him, though, they’d be happy to see it. If they could set the stage for someone else to destroy him, they were perfectly happy to do so. And even if they weren’t an immediate threat and deterrent to his desire to destroy the boy, the threat posed by the likes of Fate’s Razor, the Living Spear, and Alchemy’s Handmaiden was all but incalculable. He could run from them, but not forever. Still, if the boy died by someone else’s hand, or as part of a robbery gone wrong, that might be enough wiggle room to get everything that Tong Guanting wanted.
Before that, though, he needed to pay someone a visit and thank them for setting this catastrophe in motion in the first place. He couldn’t simply obliterate their holdings with a massive qi technique. The other people in the room with him would stop that. Still, he didn’t see any reason why he couldn’t just take a sword and kill everyone in their bloodline the old-fashioned way. He might not get them all before Feng Bai, Lai Dongmei, and Jin Bohai intervened, but he was pretty sure he could get most of them. Yes, it had been far too long since he exacted terrible retribution on someone. If he couldn’t get at Lu Sen, he could get at those who put Lu Sen in his path.
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