Kai hesitated. The last few hours had been a whirlwind of chaos, and the last thing he wanted was another conversation—especially with Cheng Gong. Yet, the scholar had proven invaluable in navigating Biragawa’s labyrinthine bureaucracy earlier at the gate. And, more immediately persuasive, the rich aroma of spiced lamb stew curling from the bowl at Gong’s elbow was impossible to ignore.

  With a resigned sigh, Kai approached and settled onto the bench across from the magistrate. The warmth of the nearby hearth seeped into his stiff muscles, and the scent of Szechuan peppercorns—pungent, tingling, faintly citrusy—made his stomach tighten in anticipation.

  "Try the mutton," Cheng Gong said, as though sensing his thoughts. He tapped the rim of the large serving bowl with a neatly trimmed fingernail. "The cook claims his peppercorns are imported directly from the south. A bold flavor—much like the company you keep." A smirk played at the corner of his mouth as he ladled a portion into a smaller dish and pushed it toward Kai.

  Kai accepted it with a grunt. "I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you’d be tied up with the guard captain until tomorrow."

  Gong waved a dismissive hand. "The captain was efficient. I gave my account, pointed him toward the bandits you so generously trussed up, and made certain to omit… certain details." He punctuated the statement with an exaggerated wink. "No, the real delay was with the city clerks. I spent hours groveling for a scribe’s position—sorting tax records, drafting decrees, anything to keep my hands busy. But it seems people don’t require scholarly skills the same these days." His voice was light, but Kai didn’t miss the tightness in his jaw.

  "That bad?"

  A humorless chuckle. "Worse. I also received… troubling news." Gong’s fingers tightened around his cup of wine, his gaze distant. "My teacher, Jin-Soo—he’s dead. Murdered in Wuyuan City. They say a southern refugee boy stabbed him, but…" He trailed off, shaking his head.

  Kai studied him—the rigid set of his shoulders, the way his thumb rubbed absently at the rim of his cup. Grief, fresh and raw. And beneath it, disbelief.

  "I’m sorry," Kai said quietly. "From what I’ve seen of you, he must have been a good man."

  "The best." Gong’s voice was thick. "That’s why I don’t believe it. Jin-Soo spent months advocating for the southern refugees—feeding them, sheltering them, arguing their case before the city lord who’d rather see them vanish. He was… kind. To a fault." His knuckles whitened. "Those people adored him. So why would one of them kill him?"

  The fire crackled between them, casting long shadows.

  “I don’t think it was as they say. Wuyuan is a tinderbox," Gong said bitterly. "And my teacher was holding a torch. I begged him to leave with me, but he refused. Said his place was there, with the people who needed him." He lifted the cup, then set it down again without drinking. "Now he’s gone."

  “I think you mentioned something about corruption in Wuyuan’s leadership when we first met,” Kai said between mouthfuls of stew. The peppercorns burned his tongue, but the heat was a welcome distraction. “Is that what you meant?”

  Cheng Gong’s expression darkened. “Yes. City Lord Wu despised the refugees from the start—claimed they were draining resources, spreading disease, all the usual excuses. But my teacher…” He paused, jaw tightening. “Jin-Soo believed he could reason with him. They were old friends, or so he thought. While working in the administration, I uncovered documents—orders to round up the refugees and sell them into slavery.”

  Kai’s hand stilled, his spoon hovering over the bowl. Fragments of memory surfaced: the merchant Sato’s oily smile, the way his eyes had lingered too long on Lu Bu’s as if inspecting livestock. “That explains a few things. When I was in Wuyuan, a merchant tried to buy Lu Bu from me. Called it ‘indentured servitude.’”

  Gong let out a derisive snort. “A convenient loophole. Calling it indentured servitude gets around slavery laws. Merchants had been exploiting it for months, targeting the desperate—debts ‘paid off’ with a lifetime of labor. The administration was finally going to crack down… until the refugees arrived.” His voice turned venomous. “Suddenly, City Lord Wu decided to look the other way. Then he went further. He planned to use the city guard to forcibly seize refugees and ship them south in bulk—sold like cargo to some noble with deep pockets.”

  Kai’s stomach twisted. “Wait. They’re being sent south?”

  “That’s what the documents indicated.”

  “That’s impossible.” Kai set down his bowl with a sharp clack. “The southern territories are under the Righteous Alliance’s rule. Slavery isn’t just illegal there—it’s punishable by death. If someone was dumb enough to buy slaves, the Alliance would raze their lands to the ground.”

  "Well, I don't know what to tell you," Gong said, swirling his wine cup. "The documents I saw clearly indicated shipment south."

  Kai's fingers tightened around his bowl. "Then whoever's buying them is either a fool... or something far worse." The stew's spices turned to ash in his mouth as the realization settled in his gut like a stone.

  He mentally catalogued the southern laws. While the Righteous Alliance officially banned slavery, Kai knew their justice system had its shadows. 'Penitent labor' for wayward cultivators—breaking rocks in spirit-sealed mines, hauling sewage in punishment robes—walked that fine line. But those were punishments reserved for cultivators who broke cultivation laws. For mortals? They would never put them into 'Penitent labor'. The Faceless Judges showed no mercy to those whole enslaving mortals. Entire sects had been erased from history for daring to trade in mortals. Their ancestral halls burned, their bloodlines severed root and stem.

  Yet one group flouted these laws openly.

  "That city lord of Wuyuan..." Kai's voice dropped to a growl. "He's signing his own death warrant if my suspicion is correct."

  Chen Gong's cup halted mid-air. The magistrate's eyes widened like a scholar spotting a rare manuscript. "Explain."

  "Only demonic cultivators would risk this." Kai's thumb traced the rim of his bowl, remembering the charnel stench of a raided demonic sect he'd seen years ago—the flayed skins still hanging from prayer wheels. "And if they're involved, the Righteous Alliance won't just knock on Wuyuan's doors. They'll burn them off their hinges."

  Gong frowned. "But righteous cultivators never venture this far north—"

  "They will for this." Kai's chopsticks snapped against the table. "The Alliance tolerates many things, but supplying fresh victims to demonic sects? That's not just crime—it's sacrilege. As much as I don’t think they always live up to the title of ‘righteous’, they still won’t stand by and let mortals be sacrificed for blood rituals."

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The color drained from Gong's face. "Sacrifice? You mean those people would be—"

  "Death would be mercy." Kai's voice turned hollow as unwanted memories surfaced—a mission as a young cultivator who came across the brutal scene they'd found too late, where demonic cultivators had left their victims still breathing, still screaming, their souls trapped in flesh carved with blades like living sculptures. "Demonic arts require suffering as much as blood. The longer, the better."

  Gong stood so abruptly his bench toppled. Patrons turned to stare as he gripped the table's edge, knuckles bone-white. "Then we must act! We can't abandon them to such—"

  "I can't." The words tasted bitter, but Kai forced them out. He pushed his half-finished stew away, appetite gone. "I'm just one man. And I can't go south. My... history with the Alliance makes that impossible."

  A weighted silence fell. The tavern's noise seemed to recede, patrons going back their own conversations, leaving only the crackle of the hearth between them.

  If Kai was alone and a braver man, he might be inclined to do something. But, he now had too many people that relied on him now. And, he wouldn’t put their lives at risk to head back south.

  "You're a rogue cultivator," Gong whispered at last, voice carefully neutral. When Kai didn't deny it, he continued: "Most cultivators who come to Zan are. It’s only a question if you are more evil or a good kind of rogue cultivator. I assumed, given how you handled those bandits, you lean more towards goodness." His gaze flicked to Kai's hands—the telltale callouses of sword training no common mercenary would have. "You could've killed them effortlessly. Yet you showed restraint."

  Kai met his eyes. "Does that trouble you?"

  "Should it?" Gong righted his bench with deliberate calm. "Rogue cultivators are like scholars—some seek truth, others only power. You saved my life when you could've left me to die and asked no reward from me in doing so. That tells me enough." He poured more wine, hand steady despite the tension in his shoulders. "But, I can’t let this be. I’ll send out a bunch of letters to every leader I can in Zan that I know. Hopefully, someone will do something."

  Kai studied the earnest scholar for a long moment before sighing. "You're a good man, Gong. Better than most these days." He swirled the dregs of his wine, watching the firelight dance in the cup's depths. "Whoever you contact, tell them to pass word to the Righteous Alliance. They'll raze the entire city government if demonic cultivators are involved."

  Gong's lips quirked in a tired smile. "Don't undersell yourself, Kai." He reached across the table to refill both their cups. "My teacher Jin-Soo used to say no good deed goes unrewarded in this life or the next." The scholar's fingers lingered on the wine jug as memories clouded his eyes. "Speaking of rewards... There was a bounty posted for those bandits you subdued. The captain needs to verify they're properly detained, but the purse should be paid in three days' time."

  Kai's eyebrow arched. "Do they pay in spirit stones here?" His thumb unconsciously brushed the empty pouch at his belt - a cultivator's habit from years of dealing in the south's currency.

  Gong barked a laugh that drew glances from nearby patrons. "Spirit stones? In Zan?" He lowered his voice, leaning in conspiratorially. "Those might as well be dragon teeth here. The bounty's in Biragawan local currency- enough to feed a man for half a year."

  "Keep it then." Kai waved a dismissive hand. "I won't be here to collect, and you clearly need the coin more than I do."

  The scholar fidgeted with his sleeve, an uncharacteristic hesitation in his normally poised demeanor. "Actually... There's something I wished to discuss." He took a fortifying sip of wine. "I notice you've taken on a disciple..."

  Kai's cup froze halfway to his lips. The air between them grew thick as river mud.

  Oh, no. Please don’t say what I think you're about to say. Kai thought to himself.

  “I was wondering if you would be willing to take another…” Gong pressed on, words tumbling out like stones down a mountainside. "With my teacher gone and Wuyuan in turmoil, I find myself... untethered." His fingers traced the worn wood grain of the table as if reading forgotten scripture. "You've seen my skills - I'm literate in three scripts, fluent in northern trade dialects, and I've memorized every major trade route through the-"

  "Stop." Kai's voice cut through the tavern's warmth like a blade of northern wind. The firelight cast jagged shadows across his face as he studied the scholar. What he saw troubled him - not just ambition, but that desperate hunger he'd seen in young cultivators right before they made their first fatal mistake. "Those romantic cultivation tales you've read? They leave out the important parts. Like how it feels when your first qi deviation cracks your ribs from the inside. Or what happens when you outlive your friends due to your increased lifespan."

  The lamplight flickered between them as Chen Gong set down his cup with deliberate care. His voice, when he finally spoke, was low and precise—each word weighed like ink on a scribe’s brush. "With my teacher gone and Wuyuan lost to me, I find myself... without an anchor." He did not gesture, did not lean forward—only unfolded a scroll from his sleeve with the solemnity of a funerary rite. "His last letter. The courier said city guards watched him bleed out for hours."

  Kai exhaled through his nose. The scent of spiced lamb turned cloying. "And you think cultivation will balance those scales?" He rotated his wine cup, watching the dregs swirl. "Meridian channels don’t care about justice. Qi deviation won’t distinguish between vengeance and ambition."

  Gong’s stillness was unnerving—not the tension of suppressed emotion, but the quiet of deep water. "I think," he said after a measured pause, "that a scholar’s brush and a cultivator’s sword are both tools. One records history. The other alters it." His fingertips grazed the scroll’s edge. "Teacher Jin-Soo believed words could change Zan for the better. I want to prove him right. But, I don’t think words alone are enough. I need power behind those words."

  The fire popped. A drunkard laughed somewhere. Kai studied the man across from him—the ink-stained fingers resting motionless on the table, the composed set of his shoulders that belied nothing. This wasn’t the desperate hunger of would-be cultivators he’d known.

  "You’ve read plenty of cultivation stories, a lot of them fiction I’m sure," Kai said. "Those who walk the path of cultivators very rarely die peacefully."

  Gong’s nod was slight, acknowledging rather than agreeing. "The ‘Records of Jade Mountain’ cites an eighty-three percent mortality rate for self-taught practitioners in the first year." A beat. "But you’re not self-taught."

  Silence stretched between them, broken only by the hiss of fat dripping into the fire. Kai found himself unnerved by Gong’s patience—the way he waited like a scribe expecting a superior to finish reviewing his work. No pleading. No posturing.

  "Zan’s qi is thin as a beggar's gruel," Kai finally said. "I’ve no spirit herbs, no ancestral manuals. Just scars and bad memories."

  Gong inclined his head. "Scars are lessons written on flesh. I’ve spent a lifetime deciphering harder texts."

  Kai exhaled slowly, watching the candlelight flicker across Gong's composed features. The practical advantages stacked neatly in his mind: Gong's familiarity with the local dialects, his connections among minor functionaries, even his unassuming scholar's robes that drew less attention than his own clothing. All useful tools for survival.

  Then the bitter aftertaste of recognition rose in his throat—this calculus of costs and benefits, weighing a man's life like coins in a merchant's scale. How many times had he seen sect elders make these same cold equations? "This disciple's bloodline is promising, but her family connections are troublesome..."

  The candle guttered as a draft slipped through the tavern's ill-fitted shutters. Kai rubbed his temples. Perhaps there was another way to measure this. Gong had kept his promise and not revealed their secret to the local guards. Didn't that loyalty deserve more than being appraised like livestock at market?

  Protection, Kai reconsidered. Not just what Gong could offer them, but what their group might shield him from. A scholar alone in these times was like a single character ripped from a scroll—meaningless and easily discarded.

  "Fine," Kai said at last, meeting Gong's steady gaze. "But understand—I won't dress this in pretty lies. The road ahead is hard, and Zan's earth is barren for the path of a cultivator." He tapped his empty cup on the table for emphasis. "I'll teach you what I can, but make no mistake—you're not choosing an easy life."

  Gong's nod was as measured as a scribe marking a margin. "Better a meaningful sentence cut short than an empty volume that spans decades."

  Kai snorted, but couldn't entirely suppress the grudging respect that stirred in his chest. The man had spine, he'd give him that.

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