The woman was staring at Sen like he’d stepped out of some particularly horrible legend or nightmare. Even in the relative darkness, she looked pale. Sen did his best to distance himself from the idea that these were human beings. Some part of him simply loathed this aspect of being a cultivator, while another part was simply resigned to the idea. He’d been back in Orchard’s Reach for all of three of four days. In that time, he’d handed out serious injuries to seven cultivators and killed five more. Even worse, he hadn’t gone looking for any of it. He sincerely hoped that this was somehow the byproduct of him having grown up in the town, and not a herald of things to come. They came here looking for trouble, Sen reminded himself. They knew what you did to Chen, and they came anyway. They brought this down on their own heads.

The woman seemed to master her fear a little bit because she jumped straight into demands.

“Who in the eighteen hells are you? You’re not just some wandering cultivator. Are you really even a foundation formation stage?”

Sen gave her a level look. “Who sent you?”

“I want to know who you are!”

“Lu Sen.”

“That’s not-,” she began.

“I just killed four people,” said Sen, disrupting the rant he suspected she was about to start. “I don’t enjoy killing people. In fact, on the whole, I’d prefer to avoid it altogether. On the other hand, I am out of patience with this town. So, I only intend to ask this one more time. Who sent you?”

Sen loosened his grip on killing intent just a little bit when he asked the question. It was a fraction of what Sen had hit Chen Aiguo the day before. Even so, the woman let out a little cry of pain and staggered.

“The mayor,” she said. “It was the mayor who sent us.”

“Good. Where did the money come from?”

Sen saw her hesitate and loosened his grip on his killing intent a little more. The woman dropped to one knee and held onto one of the tables as though her life depended on it. When she looked up at Sen, he could see light reflecting off wetness leaking from her nose. He assumed it was blood. She wiped at the wetness with the hand she wasn’t using to stay semi-upright and grimaced.

“I don’t know,” she said and raised a hand to stop Sen from growing angry or more impatient. “I have suspicions, but I don’t know.”

“Real suspicions?”

“Just guesses.”

Sen made a noncommittal noise as he studied the woman. He debated simply killing her. It was the simplest choice. Yet, he’d killed enough to last him for the rest of his life already. Killing her wouldn’t solve anything, not really, just possibly make his life a tiny bit easier. That seemed like a bad reason to kill her to Sen. He pulled out the satchel, removed a handful of the golden taels, and set them on a nearby table. Then, he put the satchel away. He gestured at the gold.

“You work for me now. My orders are simple. Take the money. Leave. Immediately. Tonight. Don’t come back. If you stay out of my way, I’ll leave you alone. If you ever come back here or trouble my grandmother in any way, though,” said Sen, letting the threat hang.

“You’ll kill me?”

“I’ll hunt you.”

Sen didn’t give any additional information, but she seemed to understand the gist that being hunted would be infinitely worse than simply being killed. He watched as her eyes drifted, almost in defiance, from his face to the gold coins. Even that handful of coins was likely more than her entire family would make in years of steady work. Her eyes shot back to him.

“Where will I go?”

Sen shrugged a shoulder at her. “I truly do not care. Just pick a direction and leave.”

When the woman hesitated again, what was left of Sen’s exhausted patience frayed just a little bit more. His hand tightened around the hilt of his jian. His body leaned forward, just a touch, to give him more speed when he moved. Sen felt his face harden into a mask of resolve. That collection of small changes was apparently all of the reassurance that the woman needed that Sen’s offer came with an incredibly small window of opportunity. Her eyes went wide, and her mouth started moving.

“I’ll go,” she nearly screamed at him. “I’ll go!”

“Then, do it,” Sen snarled through clenched teeth.

Visibly shaking beneath the combination of Sen’s steely glare and his killing intent, the woman pushed herself to her feet. She walked over to the table with an unsteady gait and picked up the money. She didn’t quite meet Sen’s eyes when she tried one last time to glean some kind of information from him.

“Did someone send you here?”

Without even acknowledging the question, Sen lifted his jian and used it to point.

“The nearest city is that way,” he said before a thought occurred to him. “What is your name?”

It looked like she needed to drag the words out against her own will, but she finally whispered, “Shen Hua.”

“You have ten minutes, Shen Hua. If I find you inside the town walls after that, the deal is off.”

It seemed that Shen Hua believed him. She took the opportunity and ran out of the shop. Sen used his spiritual sense to track her motion for as long as he could. She took off in the direction Sen had pointed and didn’t waver for a moment. He thought that showed surprisingly good decision-making on her part. He questioned his own, though. She might actually keep her word, but Master Feng said it was bad business to leave live enemies behind you. They had a way of turning up at inopportune moments down the road. Sen’s problem was that he didn’t know how to distinguish true enemies in this situation. He’d been mostly sure that she was just hired help and not some loyal servant to the mayor. She’d been bought off for a lot less than she’d been sent to retrieve. When given the opportunity to cut and run, she’d done it.

The next person might well decide that a suicidal charge in defense of the mayor would gain them some advantage in the next life. Much to his surprise, Sen felt a bit of empathy with those powerful cultivators who, when deeply offended, simply destroyed everything. If he killed everyone that worked for the mayor, he’d get all of his enemies. Of course, he’d get all of the people who weren’t his enemies, too. Sighing, Sen cleaned his jian and then checked the bodies. It was a mostly fruitless exercise. He picked up a few weapons he might be able to sell, but there were no storage rings or purses to be found. Then, he dragged the bodies outside and piled them up in the market. He wasn’t going to leave them to rot inside Grandmother Lu’s shop. He took a little time and cleaned up the mess as well as he could.

While he expected that the brunt of things had happened at the shop, he didn’t want to leave things to chance. He made the walk back to Grandmother Lu’s. He could hear the sounds of fighting before the house was even in sight. Sen took off like an arrow loosed from the string. He hurtled into the semi-enclosed courtyard and took things in at a glance. On one side of the courtyard, Grandmother Lu was defending the maid from attackers. On the other side of the courtyard was…Falling Leaf! She was crouched protectively over the still form of Zhang Munchen. The big cat had her teeth bared as a large figure menaced her with a spear. Off to the side, he saw another attacker with a bow in hand, nocking an arrow. It put Falling Leaf into an impossible scenario. Sen knew full well that the big cat could dodge an arrow, but she couldn’t do it without abandoning the man on the ground.

Whatever sense of restraint that had stayed Sen’s hand at the shop evaporated in an inferno of rage. He didn’t even remember crossing the distance between him and the spear wielder. He just remembered the sound of the man’s spine snapping as it folded around Sen’s foot. Then, the sight of the body crashing through the stone wall. He felt the change in air pressure and grabbed an arrow out of the air. He turned to face the bow wielder, and the man flinched at whatever he saw on Sen’s face. There was a blur of motion and Sen had driven the arrow into the archer’s eye socket. Then, Sen spoke two words that he had never, ever imagined would fall from his lips.

“You dare!”

He summoned his own spear from his storage ring. As soon as its reassuring weight was in his hands, he changed his cycling pattern. He pushed that new qi into the spearhead and blue-white energy crackled around the metal. It cast the entire courtyard in an eerie glow. He saw the two attacking Grandmother Lu try to disengage. That wouldn’t do. He triggered his qinggong technique and shot across the courtyard like a human lance. The lightning on the spearhead reached out ahead of the tip of the spear. It immobilized one of the attackers, who could only scream and watch in mute horror as Sen descended on him like Wrath’s favorite son. The spear punched through the man. Sen tugged it free without any effort and spun on the last attacker. Yet, freed from the burden of multiple attackers, Grandmother Lu had taken her own vengeance.

“Is that all of them?” Sen asked.

At Grandmother Lu’s weary nod, Sen released the lightning pattern, and the courtyard returned to shadow.