Unintended Cultivator-Chapter 46Book 10: : That Lunatic

While Lo Meifeng poured Grandmother Lu a cup of tea, Sen found a comfortable-looking chair and promptly slumped into it. The price for all the masks he’d been wearing over the last day had caught up with him. He wasn’t just mentally tired. It bordered on exhaustion, which was frustrating because his body still felt just fine. It seemed to him that those costs ought to be shared equally across body, mind, and soul, but it seemed the universe didn’t work the way he thought it should. As usual. Grandmother Lu gave him a mildly disapproving look, but there wasn’t much energy behind it. If anything, it came off more like a reflex. Sen just leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and basked in the glory of not having to think about anything for a few moments. He wasn’t sure if the other two were taking pity on him, but they let him stay there in his semi-catatonic state for most of five minutes before either of them spoke.

“I met someone who, well, let’s say that she was interesting,” said Grandmother. “She called herself Sun Linglu.”

Sen leaned his head forward again, opened his eyes, and frowned. That name sounds vaguely familiar, thought Sen. Where have I heard that before? It took him a few seconds of sifting through memories before it all came rushing back. Grandmother Lu was talking about Misty Peak. Sen groaned as he rubbed his face with his hands. Of all the people to come crawling out of the shadows, she was a person-shaped headache he did not have the time or energy to deal with at the moment, or possibly at any moment.

“Oh, by the thousand hells! What did that lunatic want?” asked Sen.

Grandmother Lu and Lo Meifeng shared a glance that came far too close to amused for Sen’s taste. He eyed them both suspiciously. They looked back at him with near-identical expressions of innocence. That was how he knew that this was going to be nothing but trouble for him.

“Well,” said Grandmother Lu, stretching the word out, “she seems to be trying to decide if she should expose the fact that some of her people are in the capital.”

“Why in the gods’ names would she do something that ridiculously stupid?” asked Sen as he wished they were discussing anything else.

“She seems to think that they could help with the defense of the city,” said Lo Meifeng.

Sen started to brush off that comment when his brain finally moved past his residual annoyance with the fox-woman and started considering if that was true. The nine-tail foxes were experts with illusion magic and, no matter which way Sen turned it over in his head, there was no denying that such skills could be useful in the fight ahead. Of course, that usefulness didn’t make it a safe or good idea for them to expose their presence in the capital. Sen’s grasp on power wasn’t even close to complete. In more certain circumstances, he could simply command that they be left alone. In present circumstances, they might all be hunted down and killed before he even heard anything about it. They were spirit beasts, after all.

The fact that Sen knew with a fair degree of certainty that they weren’t going to side with the spirit beasts preparing to attack the city was almost irrelevant. Those kinds of subtle distinctions were often lost on a mob of angry people. And it would only take one person with a grudge and a bare smidge of charisma to set a mob like that in motion. People in the city were scared. Give them a target that they could focus all of those fears onto, and the city would go up in flames. Hells, he thought, if I were in command of those spirit beasts outside, I might have sent someone into the city to trigger something like that on purpose.

Plus, it wasn’t like just the nine-tail foxes would die in an event like that. Some of them probably would, but he’d be willing to bet that far more regular mortals would get accused and murdered. It would be very hard for anyone to prove that they weren’t foxes short of dying, getting cut open, and there not being a beast core inside of them. The more Sen thought about it, the worse the scenario sounded. No, he thought. I need to make sure that they don’t come out of the shadows. As soon as that thought passed through his head, Lo Meifeng weighed in.

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“I think you should let them help,” she said.

“I’m just going to assume that you’re drunk and ignore that comment,” said Sen, shooting her a withering glare. “Otherwise, I’d have to assume that you’re trying to get a lot of people killed who don’t need to die.”

She held up a placating hand and said, “I know it’s a risk.”

“It’s a recipe for riots, accusations, and retribution killings.”

“You’re not wrong,” said Grandmother Lu. “It could easily turn into that.”

Lo Meifeng frowned at Grandmother Lu and said, “I thought we were going to try to convince him.”

“We are, but it’s foolish to pretend that he’s underestimating the risks. Things could turn very ugly, very fast, and not just for the nine-tail foxes. Is he wrong about that?”

Lo Meifeng let out a resigned breath and said, “No. He’s not wrong.”

“I know I’m not wrong,” said Sen. “Which is why—”

“But you are underestimating the value they could offer in the fight ahead,” said Grandmother Lu.

Sen had to grind his teeth to keep from snapping at Grandmother Lu. His mind kept flashing back to that plague village and all of the dead there. He kept imagining houses in the city filled with the corpses of nine-tail foxes and more houses filled with the bodies of innocent mortals. He kept seeing mobs of scared, angry people lashing out at their neighbors and friends. It would be so easy for it to happen. Even the slightest misstep could set it off. It might not even take a misstep. Still, Grandmother Lu clearly saw some possibility that he had missed. Something valuable enough to risk exposing the presence of the foxes. He forced himself to calm down. He couldn’t let his own fear drive him to a bad decision either. Just because it could go wrong, it didn’t mean it would go wrong.

“Very well,” he said in a tight voice. “Please explain what could possibly justify the risks.”

Grandmother Lu gave him a thoughtful look before she said, “Even if this battle goes well, it’s a near certainty that some spirit beasts will get into the city.”

Sen knew she was right, but he’d been trying not to think too hard about that possibility. When it did inevitably happen, there were going to be a lot of deaths. He couldn’t stop that. No one could.

“I know,” he said.

“At that point, the biggest threat will be to the people who are not fighting. The people on the walls won’t be able to abandon that fight to fight the spirit beasts in the city. You also can’t leave large numbers of soldiers in the city just for that. You need as many people on the wall or near it as possible, right?”

“That does seem to be the case, yes,” agreed Sen.

“So, how do you protect people when you can’t protect them?” asked Lo Meifeng.

Sen stared at her and tried to make sense of the question. It seemed like some kind of strange riddle that couldn’t be answered. However, he had to assume that this particular riddle did have an answer that involved Misty Peak and her people. He supposed his mind was still too tired to find the path to the solution, so he took the easy path.

“How?” he asked.

“You hide them,” said Lo Meifeng. “You hide them behind illusions.”

And there it was. The thing that justified all the possible risks. Sen knew that fox illusions weren’t perfect but he doubted that perfection was needed for this situation. He imagined their illusions would be particularly effective against savage, blood-crazed spirit beasts that hadn’t become sapient yet. The spirit beasts might smell something, but the odds of an attack that killed hundreds went way down if they couldn’t see the helpless mortals. None of which made Sen hate the idea any less. He had his issues with nine-tail foxes and Misty Peak, in particular, but he’d be asking them to expose themselves to an obscene level of potential danger from without and within. It bordered on unconscionable. Bordered. If there weren’t so many people at risk, he’d never have even entertained the idea. Sen rubbed his face with his hands again. If this went wrong, he wasn’t sure he could live with it.

He looked between the two women and said, “Don’t you think it’s asking for too much?”

“Without question,” said Grandmother Lu.

“It’s a ridiculous amount of risk for them,” said Lo Meifeng. “Although, I don’t think she’s offering for our sakes.”

Sen narrowed his eyes and said, “Explain.”

Lo Meifeng seemed to think about how to phrase things before she gave up and shrugged.

“I think she’s doing it to impress you.”

“Now, I’m definitely telling her no,” he said.

“Regardless of her reasons,” said Grandmother Lu, “it could save many lives.”

Sen felt an almost irrational urge to say no to all of this. He genuinely believed it was a terrible idea, at least for the foxes in the city. If they did it, they stood to gain very little except some gratitude and possible favor from him. That might prove valuable in the long run, but he doubted it would ever be valuable enough to make the immediate dangers worth it. But he couldn’t just ignore a chance to keep the casualties to a minimum. Closing his eyes and steeling his nerves, he asked a question that he thought might damn him.

“Do you know where she is?”

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