Cultivators.

Xin’s father had always warned him to never get involved with cultivators. That they brought nothing but trouble to ‘decent’ common folk.

But of course, he’d said much the same thing about Rat-Folk, Dog-Folk, Merchants, and any man or woman who looked like any part of their ancestry could be traced to the far south.

…So Xin had never put much stock in the old man’s words.

And after a pair of cultivators had heroically jumped in to save his town – he had thought to put even less. Sure, the tiger girl was a little prickly and the armored hidden master a little odd, but that was supposedly par for the course for cultivators.

Compared to being ripped apart by a horde of angry animals, a little bowing and scraping was a small price to pay. Really it was little different from dealing with the Empire’s tax collectors.

Or so he had thought…

Now though, I can’t help but wonder if the old bastard was onto something, he admitted within the privacy of his own mind.

He was guiding Master Johansen down the old path toward the mine just outside of town.

Or is he mayor Johansen now? Or am I still the mayor and he’s… something else? Military governor, perhaps? That’s what they have in the cities, right? With the sects?

He didn’t know and he dare not ask.

“Just down this road?” Master Johansen asked.

The armored man was utterly at ease as they walked past the dense forests that surrounded Jiangshi. Xin wished he could say the same. Instead, the events of the last two weeks had turned the once relaxing and familiar forestry around them into a source of nightmares and paranoia for the people of Jiangshi.

Xin was no exception. Because despite what many chose to believe upon seeing him, he was not a particularly brave man. He may have been born with the body of a half-ox, but as his wife always liked to say, he had the soul of a bureaucrat. Which he liked to think was a compliment on her part. An acknowledgment of his careful and considerate nature.

Probably.

“Yes, Master Johansen,” he said warily.

Fortunately for Xin’s peace of mind, the armored man failed to chastise him for calling him by the wrong title, so hopefully he hadn’t made a mistake on that front. Though even as he had that thought, the half-ox sighed internally.

This whole thing was supposed to have been simple. They’d had a predator problem. The cultivator was supposed to fix it.

Hell, he had even considered himself lucky at the time. After all, it wasn’t often that a cultivator passed through Jingshi. To hear it told, the last time such a thing had occurred was in his grandfather’s time, collecting levies to deal with a clash between sects.

So for one to show up at the inn just as they were having trouble with some unknown beast… well, it had seemed at the time like the heavens were shining upon him and the rest of the village.

Oh, how wrong they were…

“This is the mine,” he said somewhat inanely at they entered the clearing that contained the mine’s entrance.

It was not a particularly picturesque sight. Discarded tools lay strewn about from where the miners had been forced to flee the animal attack. Near the entrance lay an overturned ore container. And to add insult to injury, what appeared to be the biggest shit he’d ever seen stood dead center of it all.

I suppose we have the wolf to thank for that, he thought wryly. Marking its territory or some such.

Still, for all the carnage strewn about, Xin would admit that it was odd to see the place empty. And it would remain so for the next few days while the townfolk of Jianghsi focused instead on repairing the walls and butchering the meat of their attackers.

After all, the mine could wait, but the meat and fur would spoil unless it was taken care of promptly. Make hay while the sun shines, and all that.

“Alright.” The cultivator said, jolting Xin from his melancholy. “Thanks for guiding me here. You can leave.”

The dismissal was as obvious as it was offhanded. Not that Xin was about to complain. The less time he spent in the cultivator’s presence, the better it would be for his already frayed nerves.

Which was why he could only pray that the other one wasn’t still gorging herself in the inn’s dining hall when he returned. How any one person could eat as much as the half-tiger woman did, he had no idea.

------------

Jack grinned as he surveyed the mine. It had worked. They’d bought it. As far as anyone was concerned, he was one of these ‘hidden masters’.

What exactly that meant, he still wasn’t entirely sure, but he’d like to think he had the broad strokes down.

Best as he could tell, they were punch-wizards who lived in seclusion in the name of punching better. As opposed to the more normal type of punch-wizard who tended to live in a compound full of other punch-wizards and their ‘mortal’ servants.

Also, punch-wizardry was a thing. Proper martial arts shit. Ki and heavenly energy and meridians and all that crap.

Which was certainly better than Cthulhu world, but still not ideal. Because to hear that tiger lass talk about it all, there were people in this world that could shatter mountains with a punch and fling lightning around like it was going out of style.

And one of those scary bastards lived in a city not nine days from here. Along with entire sects of people with similar, if lesser, abilities.

Which meant his HEV was not the invincible bastion against the troubles of the world he’s hoped it was. Though to be fair, he’d kind of already suspected that after clashing with that wolf of unusual size.

…Still, despite all that, he was still a relatively big fish – even if there were plenty of much bigger fish hanging around. Ones that could apparently snap him up without even breaking stride… or stroke…

…Paddle?

The Scandinavian man shook his head. His point was, he’d apparently have to be careful in his execution of what he was tentatively starting to call… the plan.

What was the plan?

Simple. Power, money and women. If he was going to be stuck on this world, he was going to make it as livable for himself as possible.

A little self serving, perhaps, but he’d never claimed to be a deep thinker. Or a philanthropist. Or particularly good at long term planning…

He wouldn’t have ended up in the Canary Mining Core if he was.

No, the Canaries tended to attract people whose ambitions – or debts – outstripped their desire for personal safety. Because it took a certain level of opportunism or desperation to sign up for a tour of service mining on a world that was actively in the process of collapsing – as a result of said mining.

Jack liked to think of himself as being predominantly in possession of the former trait. Even if he would fully admit that the latter was far more likely what was stamped on his personnel file.

After all, it also took a certain amount of blind ambition to start planning out the creation of your own personal kingdom in a world full of magical fist wizards and dragons, when all you had to your name was a second-generation mining rig and a fairly spotty understanding of the technology you were planning on introducing to the local populace.

Because he would fully admit that he had less than zero idea of how one actually went about making a musket - or even a halfway decent cannon. He was a miner, not a soldier – and he knew for a fact that the strictly civilian orientated database loaded into his suit wouldn’t have the blueprints for either.

Which was why the first thing he needed was a base of operations while he found his feet. And Jiangshi fit the bill quite nicely. Rich metal veins. A pliable populace. And it was just isolated enough for him to get set up before news of his actions reached anyone who might prove a problem for him.

So let’s get started, he thought eying the nearby ore stockpile as he fired up the nanoforge on his back. With any luck I can get my first mining drone built before night rolls around…

As such, it was with a song in his heart and a jump in his step that he started pillaging the natural resources of the land in the old age old and prestigious name of personal gain.

Hi ho, Hi ho, it’s off to work we go…

------------

“The mine is sealed.”

Xin blinked sleepily as he looked up from his wife’s bowl of congee. One advantage of being mayor was that he was not compelled to rise with the sun like most of the village was. An indulgence perhaps, but one he allowed himself.

So he was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he stared blearily at the man that had strode into his kitchen.

“What do you mean, sealed?”

“Sealed.” The man, who Xin now realized was clad in a miner’s overalls, reiterated. “As in, it’s got a great big fuck-off metal barrier across the front.”

Xin felt a headache forming as he looked back down into his rice porridge. It seemed he’d been lulled into a false state of security over the last three days.

For all his talk of owning the town, the cultivator had spent surprisingly little time in it. Oh, he had returned on that first day for an hour to grab something to eat from the inn, but since then no one had seen hide nor hair of him.

Some of the more outspoken – or perhaps just duller – members of the community had suggested that the powerful cultivator had simply… wandered off.

Leaving the prickly tiger-woman behind in the process.

Which Xin could admit, would not have been too out of character for the mercurial beings that were cultivators. At least, according to what stories managed to percolate out to their little village. Stories that his own recent encounters with cultivators had proven to be in no way inaccurate.

One of them was as prickly as a hedgehog, while the other was as unpredictable as a squirrel at night.

Either way, with the mine being the man’s last known location – and most of the populace otherwise occupied - the people of Jiangshi had been content to simply steer clear of the place. Because, as grateful for his and the tiger-woman’s actions as they might have been, rare was the mortal that stood comfortably in the presence of cultivators.

Unfortunately, the window of time in which they could reasonably afford to avoid the town’s main source of income had come to an end today. With the walls all fixed to the best of their ability and the animals butchered and ready for storage, it was time for the miners to return to their real vocation.

…Only it seemed that their resident lightning throwing cultivator had not vacated the premises in the intervening three days like most of the village had been hoping.

Xin sighed, idly running a hand across one of his horns. “Alright, let me get my shoes on and I’ll meet you down there.”

With any luck, this wouldn’t prove too difficult to resolve.

------

The scene he arrived at as he strode down the path to the mine was about what he expected.

Almost all of the village’s miners were milling around the clearing, occasionally throwing glances toward the mine entrance or the path back to town. They were a group of big burly men, time below ground lending well to a stout, if slightly pale, physique. And yet they looked like a group of children waiting for their parents to arrive to resolve some issue or other as they waited for him.

Not that he blamed them. He’d probably be content to wait too if it meant someone else would arrive to deal with the crazed shenanigans of a cultivator.

Alas, that wasn’t an option for him.

“Alright, get out of the way you louts,” he called out to the group surrounding the entrance to the mine. “Let me get in there and see what we’re dealing with.”

Obligingly, if not without some muttered grumbles, the group of men shuffled aside to let him past. Which gave him a full view of exactly what they’d all been staring at.

A metal wall.

It covered the entirety of the entrance to the mine. Bizarrely devoid of any the ripples from the forge, the only features in the otherwise blank wall was a bizarre square grill off to the right hand side that held a small glass circle with a circular symbol below.

What strange cultivator magic is this? he thought.

“It speaks.”

“It what?” Xin asked as he turned to the familiar rotund form of foreman Zhen.

“It speaks.” The man spoke with his typical laconic drawl, seemingly unperturbed by the absurdity he was spouting. “When one of the boys approached, the voice of the cultivator issued forth from it.”

“…What did it say?”

Zhen shrugged. “Just that it wanted to speak with the ‘mayor’. To get this ‘whole thing sorted out’.”

Xin’s frown only deepened. Had the cultivator sealed himself inside the mine? He’d heard stories about them doing things like that. Like bears hibernating for winter, only with meditation instead of slumber.

He certainly hoped that wasn’t the case, because that would be a problem.

…As if the giant metal wall he’s some how erected in less than three days isn’t already a problem, he thought.

“So I just go up and… talk to it?” he asked.

One of the miner’s present stepped forward – a younger lad. “The, uh, voice said to press the circle under the grill to get the master cultivator’s attention.”

Xin nodded, turning towards the metal wall. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward with what he hoped appeared to be confident steps. It was important for a leader to appear confident after all. Even if his state as the defacto leader of Jiangshi had been put in doubt in recent days. Still, the fact that the cultivator had referred to him as the mayor at least somewhat suggested that his role hadn’t been entirely usurped.

He pressed the button.

And waited.

Five seconds became ten. Ten became twenty. Twenty became a minute. By the three minute mark, Xin was beginning to feel at a loss as to what to do.

Did he press it again?

He didn’t particularly want to do that, but he was also all too aware of the expectant gazes of his people behind him.

Fortunately, a voice rang out from the wall just as he began to raise his hand.

“Apologies for the wait.” The voice of Master Johansen gave much face by saying those words to him – and for just a moment Xin felt this might all be resolved amicably. “I was just working on something in the back. Still, I’m glad to see you’ve come down to see me, Mayor Xin.”

He felt a little ridiculous as he bowed to the door, but he figured it was best to err on the side of caution. “Oh great cultivator, you called, and this lowly servant has answered.”

“Yeah,” Master Johansen drawled after a slightly uncomfortable pause. “Thanks for that. But you see, here’s the thing. I kinda called you down here to tell you that your boys are going to need to clear out for now. I’m doing stuff with the mine.”

Xin paled. It was as he’d feared.

The mine was the lifeblood of the town though. Much of their tax was taken in pure ore. It couldn’t be closed.

He bowed deeper. “Please forgive this lowly servants impertinence, my lord… but the miners need to work. The trade of iron and other metals are integral to the function of our home!”

From behind him he could already here the beginnings of resentful muttering. Because unlike the cultivator’s proclamation that he would ‘conquer’ Jiangshi, his latest actions could not be dismissed as boastful gloating.

After all, cultivators were known to be boastful and prone to making outrageous claims. Or at least, that was the narrative Xin had spent the last three days pushing, lest one of the village’s more hotheaded residents do something… foolish.

He couldn’t downplay this though.

This sealing of the mine and obstruction of work was not a harmless boast. It was a direct threat to the livelihood of the men present.

…And they would not let it be threatened without complaint. Which was why he needed to speak fast, lest the fools to his rear rouse the insane man to his fore to violence.

“If they are unable to work, the family’s of the men behind me will go hungry.”

Which was both true and untrue. Sure, as mayor, he’d feed them in the short term. A town like their's didn’t survive without people pulling together. It was why everyone had pitched in to help with the butchering of the animal meat when it became clear that Lin the butcher could not handle it all himself.

So they had a surplus of food – of which the miners could rightly claim some.

From there, there was still work to go around. A number of people had been injured during the attack and were still recuperating. The outlying farms could use the extra hands the miners would provide.

…That wouldn’t last forever though. The village of Jiangshi could only soak up so much extra manpower.

And a town like theirs could ill afford mouths that did not work. Especially not when Guo An had claimed that more attacks, like the one that had nearly destroyed their town, were all but guaranteed.

That last fact weighed on his mind – and was only part of the reason why he wasn’t too resentful of the insanely powerful cultivator’s claims to ownership of the town. Or at least, he hadn’t been. Until now. Because the loss of the mine would kill the town as surely as any beast attack – if only more slowly.

“Damn. That quickly?” The cultivator’s peculiar accent echoed through the wall. “I would have thought you could all find yourself something to keep you occupied for a little while. At least for a few days. Farming or some shit. Never thought you’d all be living paycheck to paycheck.”

Oh… that was… good? He had no idea what a ‘paycheck’ was, but the man’s words seemed to imply that he was aware of the importance of a mortal’s daily toil.

Had he underestimated the man?

Before he could say anything else, the Master Johansen continued. “Alright, I guess I’ll have to rush my plans forward a bit.” His voice suddenly increased in volume, carrying to the nervous crowd of miners behind Xin. “Listen up lads. I’ll need to borrow your mine for the foreseeable future, but don’t worry, I won’t be robbing you of your livelihoods without leaving you any recourse. There’ll be jobs in the future. Paying jobs.”

Xin nodded slowly. Yes, that was good. Though he wondered what those jobs were? Did the man need servants? He didn’t know how well the men would respond to that. They were miners. Frontier men. Not dainty city folk accustomed to bowing and scraping to every pale faced cultivator or noble that crossed their path.

Sure, they town had been cowed by Master Johansen’s recent show of power, but Xin didn’t know how long that would last. Eventually someone would slip up.

“Alright, you lot should return here tomorrow. I should be ready for you then.”

Xin bowed – because he couldn’t help but feel that the other man could see him despite the wall between them – and was about to turn to leave, when the Master Johansen’s voice called out to him once more.

“Oh, by the by, do you have any soldiers in your village? Current or former?

Soldiers? Xin paused. His grandfather had once been called up to serve in a levy, along with a few other youths of the time, but none had since. Nor did they have any ‘full-time’ guards like they had in the city.

“Nay, master cultivator,” he admitted.

“Drat. I suppose I’ll have to put Guo on that.”

As if summoned by his words – and for all he knew, she was – Xin heard a murmuring behind them. Guo An walked imperiously through the crowd - no doubt fresh from her three-times daily depleting of the inn’s larders.

“Oh good,” Master Johansen said, “There she is. Tell her to come in on your way out.”

Xin nodded, hastily stepping away from the wall.

“Mistress Cultivator, Master Johansen has reques-”

“I heard.” The woman said simply, stepping past him without breaking stride.

Then, to both his and the collected crowd’s astonishment, the wall opened down the middle. Sliding to each side, the ‘doors’ revealed an interior that most assuredly was not that of the mine shaft that had been there three days previously. Instead, he got a glimpse of a brightly lit hall, with smooth stone walls and floors.

Then the doors shut once more – and returned to appearing for all the world like a single impenetrable slab of iron. Xin could only shake his head at the Cutlivator ridiculousness. Though now that he looked closer, he realized he could see a tiny seam between the two slabs of the sliding doors.

Silence reigned in the clearing.

“So, do we just… leave?” Xin turned to see foreman Zhen standing at the front of the crowd, seemingly disaffected by the absurdity they had just witnessed.

Still, Xin latched onto the small oasis of reasonableness. “It seems we have little choice in the matter. For the foreseeable future, it seems that Master Johansen has laid claim to the mine for his own ends.”

Zhen stared at the doorway, a small almost imperceptible frown tugging at his lips. Then he spat on the floor.

Which was about as close as Xin had ever seen the unflappable man get to throwing a temper tantrum.

“Master Johansen has promised jobs as recompense for occupying the mine,” Xin said commiseratingly.

“What kind though?” Another man asked, glancing between Xin and the doors. “I’m a miner. My daddy was a miner. His daddy was a miner. It’s all we know.”

Around him, other men echoed their agreement.

Xin could only shrug. “Given his question about soldiers, I imagine it will be guard related.”

The crowd seemed, if nothing else, slightly mollified by that. Which Xin could understand. Sure, they were unhappy about the loss of their primary vocation, but they all had family back in the village too - and the need for more protection was clear to all.

Hell, almost all of those present had been involved in the defence of their home not three days back.

Seizing on that thought, Xin continued, subtly cajoling the crowd to get moving back toward town. “This move by the cultivator is likely just a passing fancy on his part. I’m sure he will get bored of hanging around us mortals soon enough and return home. Until then, we need only reap the benefits of his protection. Once he is gone, the mine will be returned to us and all will be as it was.”

Of course Zhen, the taciturn bastard that he was, had to poke holes in his perfectly palatable narrative. “That’s assuming he takes down those ‘doors’ of his before he leaves. Because I’ve got no idea how we’d go about pulling them down if the need arose.”

"Dig around it, perhaps?” One of the younger men suggested.

Another piped up. “How do you even think he made it anyway?”

“Well he sure as shit didn’t use Fat Gren’s forge.” A third pitched in.

“I heard cultivators can bend the earth to do their bidding.

Xin could only relax as the conversation turned to far more esoteric topics. Because so long as they were talking about that, it meant no one was raising the possibility of trying to force the cultivator to do… well, anything.

Which meant that, for now at least, they’d continue to avoid disaster.

“I’m also mildly curious as to Master Johansen’s plans for this ‘guard force’ of his.”

As tired and cynical a soul as he was, he could admit that some small quiet part of his imagination flared at the thought of receiving training from an actual cultivator.

Glancing around his compatriots as they continued the walk back to the village, he couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t the only one?

It would certainly go some way to explain the ease with which the miners around him had accepted the loss of their main source of income.

Well, that and an innate desire not to be vaporised by an offended cultivator…