It turned out the Builder was an idiot. He was used to dealing with nobles and their petty ploys, and had believed Aaron to be the same. That marked him as too quick to jump to conclusions, which was a common trace of arrogant people, as the man had repeatedly shown himself to be. Aaron had given him the benefit of the doubt, that he might just pretend to be prideful with his comments calling himself awesome. Unfortunately, that hadn't paid off.

Aaron just told the man to do his job. He had failed the test and lost the opportunity of a lifetime — to join the Ironblood clan. He would regret that soon enough.

The mechanic engineer Aaron wanted to hire, who was supposed to have arrived yesterday, was the polar opposite. Instead of giving excuses, he prostrated before Aaron as soon as he arrived.

"Praise be to the Herald of Light!" he said.

He was a short, skinny, twenty-five-year-old male with black short hair, a messy black beard, and blue eyes. His white and blue clothes were elegant and probably expensive, but he didn't care about them at all as he lied on the dusty floor outside the tower. He only cultivated Qi, which was still at the One Star level.

"Tom Tanton, I presume?" Aaron guessed. He had seen a picture of the man in his house when he had gone looking for him.

"You honor this lowly one by speaking his dirty name with your most holy mouth, o herald. How may this insignificant one serve?"

"You can start by rising, looking at me, and talking properly. I like submission from my followers, some would even a bit too much. However, I dislike abusing said submission, and I see self-depreciation as abuse. You're forbidden from prostrating before me unless you're showing undying gratitude or trying to repent from something terrible you did. You're also forbidden from talking about yourself in the third person."

The man took a few moments to react to those words, but he eventually stood up and looked at Aaron's chest. Looking him in the eyes would be too much still, it seemed. "Your will is this one—" He stopped himself. "Your will is my command, herald."

Aaron nodded. "Good. Now, to business. The most important thing I need is a mechanic trapdoor on my top floor. Here's the blueprint." He took a copy out of his ring and offered it to the man, who respectfully received it with both hands while bowing. "Unfortunately, it'll only be rebuilt by the evening, so you can just design the trapdoor for now and give me a quote for it. If you do that quick enough, take the opportunity to also design some defensive main doors for the tower."

The man widened his eyes mid-bow and bowed even lower. "Herald, please allow me to offer my services as a gift!"

"Very well, but I insist on paying for the materials you use."

Receiving such gifts was commonplace once you had enough status. On Earth, that meant money, political power, or influence. In cultivator society, that usually meant personal power or having a say-so in a powerful clan. Few powerful cultivators paid for occasional simple services. After a certain threshold of power, only recurring work or service done by other powerful cultivators required payment.

Aaron was used to that. He saw the man's tribute as a way for the man to get closer to him. That was common and made everyone happier.

It also went without saying that the man would gain some privileges as a willing, guilt-free tributary. The king's tribute had only made Aaron forgive his sins, but this man had just "bought" some credit with Aaron. In the future, he could make requests out of Aaron. Depending on factors such as the value of his past tributes, their regularity, and his sincerity, Aaron might just help the guy.

Not that Aaron expected the man to be a tributary for long. If his work was satisfactory, Aaron would take Tom into the Ironblood clan. It always paid to have a mechanical engineer at hand.

"It shall be as you will it, herald."

"I'll leave you to it then. If you need money for the materials and can't find me, find the king instead. He should be close to the ruins of the palace or paying penitence." The king hadn't been happy that Aaron had gotten the best Builder in town under his service while the palace needed to be rebuilt, but he had said nothing. Instead, he had found other Builders. It would take the palace a few weeks to be rebuilt.

"Yes, herald."

"Have a good one," Aaron said, nodded, and left.

He had promised Lana he would return to her, and it had already been a whole day since.

"What am I to you, Patriarch?" Lana asked as soon as he entered the room.

She looked into the abysses he had for eyes as he replied without missing a beat, "A maid and a potential romantic interest."

She teared up. "What does that mean?"

He smiled tenderly, sat on her bed, and took her hand into his. It sent shivers through her body. "I am old, maid of mine. Older than this world. Older than some of the stars in the skies. That doesn't mean I'm wiser than everyone in all subjects, but I'm certainly more experienced, and with experience, even a slow learner finds some wisdom.

"I admit I understand the secrets of Time and Space better than the human heart, but I understand the heart enough to know it can be deceitful. Don't take me wrong, some feelings are worth pursuing, and many of them give us the drive to move on when nothing else does. But giving in to some of them will lead to disaster more often than not.

"Lust is one of the most deceitful feelings, a desire so overwhelming you can think of nothing else. I have fallen to adulterous lust before, and I almost lost my first wife that way. She loved me, and she forgave me. It made me forever humbled and was my first contact with true love.

"Anger is a double-edged sword; you're as likely to reap good as you are to reap bad from it. It can push us forward, but as easily suck us into a never-ending cycle of death and despair. I have also fallen to it before, and the universe wept for it. I don't regret it, but it's a sword I wield with care.

"Passion can bring good more regularly than not, but still has hidden dangers within. When you lose yourself to passion, you... well, you lose yourself. You don't see what must be seen, you ignore what must not be ignored. Some people will live in passionate fevers that won't end until their partners die. Most will wake one day to find the flame of passion gone, to find out the target of such feeling is not as perfect as they believed. This often leads to a painful separation, though sometimes it also leads to rediscovery and happiness. A few will set expectations that, when not met, will bring terrible agony.

"I have also fallen to passion a few times. It brought me my first and second wives, but it also delivered me to the claws of a terrible woman who used me to bring ruin to those who didn't deserve it. Nowadays, I sniff out any such flame before it can be born, for I'm too powerful. If I were to lose myself in the madness of passion, who knows what could become of the universe? I'm free in my power, but freedom without responsibility is debauchery, decadence, and just plain sad to see.

"So I might have fallen for you if I had allowed myself to, but I haven't, nor shall I," he said softly.

Lana started crying. The Patriarch touched her face and dried some tears then kept talking.

"And then there's true love. Not passion, not lust — love. As I said, my first wife's forgiveness was my first contact with it.

"Where I come from, the scholars of the past categorized love in four categories. Roughly speaking, family love is what you feel for parents, children, and siblings; friend bond is what you feel for friends; romantic love is a kind of more rational passion; and unconditional love is, as its name suggests, given unconditionally. What I call true love would be the romantic love that can get the closest to unconditional love. It is a love of forgiveness, of grace, of sincerity.

"But such love is not a feeling. It can bring feelings with it, yes, but true love is action. Most of all, true love is a decision.

"You can decide to love your family or not, and if you do, you will show it through your actions. A smile here, a hug there. Likewise, you can decide to love a partner or not, and shall show it through your actions. Some comforting words here, a passionate kiss there.

"But above all, true love, for me, is also onto death. There's no leaving your partner. The only exception is infidelity, but even then, my first wife showed how wonderfully close to unconditional love her love for me was. It shames me to admit that I wouldn't have forgiven her for betraying me, not even after she did it for me. I still have a long way to go. I assure you I at least learned not to betray though.

"So, if one day I decide to love you, Lana Seccos, I will love you forever or until one of us dies. And I mean forever. I'll show it with actions, I'll show it in ways you can't imagine, I'll show it every day to the rest of your life. Not that I won't treat you well as a potential partner either. We can do many things even as that, all kinds of things, barring the three things I consider exclusive to an official partner, to a wife: living together, having children, and declaring you my official consort. I will treat you well, and you will feel cared for, but that is all I can offer for now. It's up to you if that will be enough for not."

He smiled sadly. "I wanted to have this conversation under the light of candles in a romantic dinner. You were absolutely ravishing in that red dress, by the way. Alas, the world wasn't so kind to us. Still, I'm glad we talked. If you want to try us, you must leave your position as a maid, for clan rules forbid direct bosses and subordinates from developing a relationship." He clenched her hand. "I'll await your decision. Think well, there is no rush."

Lana thought about that. She tried hard to understand what the Patriarch was saying, but she couldn't.

Maybe she was just too young to his absurd words of having lived longer than stars. Maybe she was just blinded by her passion for him. Maybe she had never felt true love before and couldn't identify it.

Whatever it was, she couldn't agree with him. The feelings inside her told her otherwise. They told her he was being too rational, overcomplicating things that were much simpler. She liked him and wanted to be with him. If he liked her back, that would be enough. Not every attempt at a relationship had to be an attempt at something bigger, longer, eternal. They could just have a go at being together as more than friends and see if things worked out.

She wanted the Patriarch, and it would be wonderful to marry him for sure, but she had never considered it a make it or break it type of deal. Almost making it and finding it better to part ways was also an option for her.

What made her conflicted about her opinion was that it came from things her more experienced Priestess friends had taught her. She took it to heart because of said experience. But wasn't the Patriarch claiming to be even more experienced than them?

Then again, if feelings and love, actions and decisions, forgiveness and madness could only be learned from experience...

Maybe she just needed to experience it to find out the truth for herself.

"Patriarch," she said. He looked at her. "I officially request to leave my job as your maid."

He smiled widely, and there was true happiness in that smile. He was happy she had made that decision. He might be over-rationalizing things, but he wanted her, and that was enough.

"Your request is accepted. Henceforth, you are just a common member of the Ironblood clan."

"Now, would you please stop talking for once and kiss me?"

The radiance of his smile could've outshone the sun. Their faces approached. Her heart was beating so fast she thought it would burst out of her chest.

It wasn't her first kiss, but it was the most wonderful one she had ever had.