The messenger nodded and left. Wang Jun traced the boy’s progress back to the elder council room, where he said words and left. Unfortunately, Wang Jun couldn’t quite make out who was there. The room was distorted, a powerful presence obscuring everything. His eyes widened. Could it be?
The room around Wang Jun melted, merging into shadows. The messenger boy yelped as Wang Jun emerged from the ground beside him. Wang Jun ignored the boy and marched toward the double doors to the elder council, pushing them in. Rage filled his eyes when he saw what was there: the Patriarch sipping tea at a table. A woman in purple sat to his left.
Hong Xin.
A collar had been placed around her neck, and her eyes were red from all the crying she’d done. There were red marks on her wrists where her manacles had dug into her flesh as she’d sought to escape. And her cultivation—no, the lack thereof—stood out especially. He shook as he realized that it had completely vanished. There were many devices that could hide such things, and many qi-restraining devices that could hide the cultivation of a captive. Such tricks had no effect on him, however. She wore no qi-restraining devices, for her cultivation was completely gone.
“What. Have. You. Done?” Wang Jun said, stepping forward. Each step crashed soundlessly, cracking stone and splintering wood. Every shadow in the room danced as they leaned in toward his target, Patriarch Wuling.
“Tut-tut-tut,” Patriarch Wuling said, holding up a black dagger.
Wang Jun shook again. This wasn’t a normal dagger, but a soul-stealing sacrificial dagger from the Spirit Temple. Anyone killed by it would have their soul bound to the wielder, to do with as he pleased. That included locking it away, never to see the cycle of reincarnation again.
“How dare you,” Wang Jun said. “First you send me on a wild goose chase. Then you give me an impossible challenge. Now, you kidnap her? Where has your humanity gone? Are you still even human?”
“Stop right there where I can see you,” Patriarch Wuling said, standing up. “And before we continue, I’ll have you know that I’ve fed her a poison, one that requires a rare antidote every day. I have commissioned the Spirit Temple to curse her three separate ways, all three of which detect tampering. The Ancestor himself, at great expense, has also placed a life-dependency bond on this woman. Should Wang Ling die, she will die with him. Furthermore, this isn’t a trigger, but a constant feed. Absence of his presence sending a constant signal to her will result in her death, so cheap hiding tricks before stabbing him in the back won’t work.”
He walked out from behind the table, leaving Hong Xin on the chair. She seemed absentminded, not quite there. Was she drugged? Was she incapacitated so she couldn’t convince him to abandon her? That only made him even more angry, and it took the entirety of his self-control—along with the reminder that if he killed him, Hong Xin would likely die—not to stab the man in the throat.
“You,” Patriarch Wuling said, “have been very a bad boy. You’ve been operating in the shadows, threatening, killing, blackmailing. You’ve also been operating a legitimate business, one that brings in so much money that half the elders are willing to back you.”
“So you decided to collect a hostage,” Wang Jun said bitterly. “To rein me in.”
“It wasn’t those things I mentioned that forced me to do this,” Patriarch Wuling said, gritting his teeth.
Wang Jun could see them now, clear signs of agitation and stress. Something had happened recently, something that was outside of his control. Moreover, he could see several hundreds of bloodred threads connecting the man to another entity. Some were thin, but three were thick, unbearably so. It was a thread of karmic debt, and the debt he owed was massive.
“You’ve done some things, planned some things. I don’t know how you did them, but these things happened, and our entire family is in jeopardy.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wang Jun said.
“DON’T BOTHER WITH YOUR LIES!” Patriarch Wuling yelled in a rare outburst of emotion. “There was the business with the Spirit Temple in town. Fine. You killed a few Spectral Assassins, and that’s something I can compensate with money. You decided to kill a few nobles, blackmail some others. I can live with that. What I cannot live with is you messing up three hundred years of careful planning.
“You sent someone. I don’t know who, I don’t know how. But someone snuck into our Southern businesses and somehow managed to destroy a heavens damned Spirit Temple, Shepherd included, an entire Blood Master Monastery, traveling transcendent included, destroy half the Ji Kingdom’s army garrison, broke Bastion Wall, and provoked a fight between a demon monarch and the king of the Ji Dynasty, who is now mortally wounded.
“And finally, blew up half his palace, killing very important political figures from around the South in the process. That doesn’t even count the vast resources we invested in the Blackthorn Conglomerate that were raided from the vault. There is no karma leading back to a perpetrator. Our agents are dead. Karma only flows one way, and that’s to me and Ling. And you and I both know that there’s no one else on this continent who can do this except for you and that wretched, freeloading master of yours.” After letting it all out, Patriarch Wuling took a deep breath, let it out, and cracked his neck. “From now on, you’re on a leash.”
“You will free her,” Wang Jun said.
“I will not,” Patriarch Wuling replied. “I’ve also identified her family members, dredged up your past history with her. Some of your mutual acquaintances are beyond my reach, but I swear to the seven lords of heaven and the seven lords of hell that if you so much as step a toe out of line, I will kill her and everyone she’s ever known.
