“Right,” Hong Xin said. “Now, I’ve heard on good authority that you’re very skilled at hiding things. I want you to hide the rest of the world away from their contract enforcement specters. To blind them, in a way. I want you to make it so that they’re blissfully unaware as their hosts divulge every precious secret.”
Wang Jun paused briefly when he heard this. Then he continued to sip tea. “Where did you hear such a rumor?”
“I heard from a friend of a friend that you’re a special person who can give up his lifespan to obscure even fate itself,” Hong Xin said. “Compared to that, this should be a piece of cake.”
“It might work,” Wang Jun said. “Though I’m deeply disappointed in whichever close friend divulged this secret of mine.”
“Once you’ve hidden their specters, I’ll have them swear other oaths,” Hong Xin said. “This way, I’ll be assured that they’re telling the truth.”
Wang Jun rapped his finger on the jade table. “To what end?”
“Excuse me?” Hong Xin asked in surprise.
“I want to know why,” Wang Jun said. “Hiding their oath isn’t required to eliminate or silence them. The information you get will only be temporally useful and outdated.”
Hong Xin’s eyes flickered to Bai Ling, her silent advisor. She nodded slightly, giving Hong Xin the go-ahead. “We’re planning on using the information to infiltrate the Spirit Temple. We’ll use what we discover about the soul trade to catch them in the act and cripple them.”
Wang Jun continued tapping his fingers. Bai Ling served tea as he sat, deep in thought. It seemed he could help, but it might be difficult to convince him. While Hong Xin didn’t want to reveal herself, she would if she had to.
“This wouldn’t be an employer-employee relationship,” Wang Jun said finally. “What I’m looking for is a partnership. You may not know this, but our family has also been entangled in the soul trade as well. It isn’t worth it to deal with you if we get caught up in whatever you’re planning.”
Now that was a surprise.
“What did you have in mind?” Hong Xin asked.
“I will hide their specters at my expense, but in return, I want all information you gather from the Spirit Temple,” Wang Jun said. “Who works there, what they do, and who they deal with. Everything.”
“Anything else?” Hong Xin asked.
“Time,” Wang Jun said. “I need time to act on the information. Someone in my family is dealing with them, and I want the opportunity to expose him to our elder council but hide it from those outside our family. Once I’ve done that, you can do whatever you want to them, and I’ll have no other demands, whether it be information or otherwise.”
“I can’t give you indefinite time,” Hong Xin said, shaking her head. “I can give you a year.”
“Five,” Wang Jun countered.
“Three,” Hong Xin said. “That’s the most I can give. If this operation fails, it will be very difficult to expose them in the future.”
“And who will you expose them to? The Church of Justice?” Wang Jun said, raising an eyebrow. “Fine. Three years it is. But I’ll give you some free advice: Don’t trust others to do your work for you. If you need to kill someone or stop something, do it yourself, and do it cleanly. Otherwise, you’ll just end up being disappointed.”
“I’ll take your advice under consideration,” Hong Xin said. “Do we have a deal?”
“We have a deal,” Wang Jun said. They shook hands on it. Only the heavens knew if contracts held any weight with him anyway. “Now let’s see what your prisoners have to say.”
Chapter 20: Destiny’s Strings
The rest of the evening was quite eventful for Wang Jun. The prisoners, he discovered, hadn’t been kept in comfort. Their clothes were ragged, and they hadn’t bathed in months. He could tell at a glance that their cultivations had been crippled, and their restraints were less to prevent them from escaping and more to prevent them from committing suicide.
They’d had a way out, of course, but that way involved getting their souls consumed by an evil spirit. They’d never taken it, meaning that as desperate as they were, they weren’t foolish. Even reincarnating in a lesser realm was preferable to losing your existence.
Once he’d obscured their contracts, they were only too willing to sign a new one. They only had one condition: a painless death. Their cultivations had already been crippled, and the Red Dust Pavilion would never allow their freedom. It was better to simply end their miserable lives and enter the cycle of reincarnation.
The sun had yet to rise as he jumped from shadow to shadow on his return to the Jade Bamboo Headquarters. No one had seen him come or go. As he traveled, he couldn’t help but think of the mysterious headmistress. What did she look like under that glamour of hers? Why did she seem so familiar? Fooling his eyes was one thing, but fooling his heart? Very few things could do that. He was half convinced that he knew her, but he dismissed that as wishful thinking. After all, he could count the number of actual friends he had on two hands, and none of them fit her description.
Wang Jun entered his bedroom and walked over to his work desk. He tossed a few black runic coins on the table. Nothing, as always. His divining abilities had greatly deteriorated since his return. Either fate was so muddled it couldn’t be predicted, or every one of his targets had found a way to shield themselves from his scrying. That included the headmistress, whose fate he’d just tried to divine.
Since he was unable to sleep, Wang Jun sat at his desk and pored over some documents. Only a few were business documents—Wang Bing and Elder Bai took care of most of it now. These were auditing documents he’d secretly obtained to perform his own inspection. No sense in spooking his target.
He worked
