“What a shithole,” Jack muttered.

Oh, the compound had been beautiful once, but that was now long in the past. The magistrate of Ten Huo had not been gentle with the former holdings of the Marble Cloud Sect. While the outer walls were surprisingly intact, the interior buildings were little more than burnt out husks.

The Scandinavian visibly winced as his eyes tracked over a spot where some of the stonework had melted like hot wax. As if it had been subjected to some truly incredible heat.

…No, the local head honcho had not been gentle at all when she brought the wrath of god down on this place. Some of it had actually collapsed backwards, into the brackish water of the riverfront.

Ren sighed.

“I warned you that rankling the Magistrate unduly with your words would not go unanswered.” The blonde woman gestured around them. “She likely gifted you this compound both as a reward and a punishment.”

Jack watched as the members of his militia searched through the more intact buildings, seeking to ensure that no squatters had moved in prior to their arrival.

“Because it’ll cost me an arm and a leg to fix this place back up again?” he said. “But it’s still a prime bit of real estate?”

He sincerely doubted that giant waterfront properties with a view across the river were cheap.

For just a moment, the blonde looked surprised, which was mildly insulting, before she nodded. “Just so. Either you fix this compound at no cost to her, fixing this blemish on her city, or you come to her for aid, putting yourself further into her debt.”

“Further?”

Ren simply smiled serenely. “She did just gift you the city holdings of one of the Ten Families. It is a not insubstantial service.”

“A burnt-out husk,” he deadpanned. “One I thought I paid for by bringing the Marble Cloud Sect’s ‘treachery’ to light? And killing two fucking weregoats?”

Ren shook her head. “Such would be the duty of any citizen of the Celestial Empire. A reward is to be expected, yes, but one of this size? It will have her be seen as exceedingly generous. A move she likely made to offset any discomfort the remaining sects might be feeling at the loss of one of their number. That it is a poisoned apple is irrelevant.”

“Any chance I can just return this gift? And do away with the debt accompanying it?” The woman just looked at him and he sighed. “Yeah, I thought not.”

Still, it’s not too much of a problem, he thought as he looked around. For the locals, this would be a bitch and a half of a job.

For him? Not so much.

“Gao,” he shouted. “We all clear?”

“We are, Overseer.” The man called back. “While the damage is extensive, there are no bodies.”

Well, at least there was that. The magistrate might have saddled him with a burnt-out ruin, but at least she hadn’t left him with the charred corpses of its former occupants.

Unless those former occupants didn’t leave behind bodies? He thought. Maybe they were reduced to ash?

“Should I see about contracting some local stone masons?” Ren asked, distracting him from his morbid thoughts. “It will be expensive, but the city is flush with manpower given the war. Should fortune favor us, the compound will be livable once more before the new year.”

Jack was hardly listening as he mentally ran calculations in his head. “And spend that time camping outside the walls?”

The city was packed – and he’d brought fully a quarter of Jiangshi’s militia with him on this trip. While he had a fairly decent little hotel to hang out in, it was a ‘cultivator only’ place.

His people were camped outside the walls with who knew how many refugees. And even with the dearth of targets available, he’d already lost two men since they’d arrived two days ago.

One had been carried off by a giant bat-thing, according to Gao. The monster had also spewed a purple gas that made people hallucinate. Which had accounted for the second casualty.

A victim of friendly fire.

It was enough to make him wish he’d brought An along, while simultaneously reminding him why she was needed back at Jiangshi.

Guns or not, cultivators had not become redundant overnight. Sometimes you really did just need to fight the unreasonably supernatural shit with your own unreasonable supernatural assets.

Which reminds me, Ren said they’ve got some kind of cultivator mercenary review board around here, he thought.

The woman in question tittered, returning his attention back to the topic of interim lodging. “There’s no need for that, Great One. I have a home within the city. You will not want for anything there.”

Jack paused to glance back at her. “And my people?”

She shrugged. “Unfortunately, my home is not that large. While there is some space in the servant’s quarters, most will need to either remain bunked outside the city – or try their chances at finding lodging within.”

The look on her face told him all he needed to know about what she thought his people’s chances of finding an opening with the latter were. And that she didn’t care.

It was a small reminder that for all that Ren was usually quite courteous to mortals, it was the kind of courteousness a workman gave his tools.

And tools could be easily replaced if misplaced.

Still, it wasn’t like it was a bad idea. Hell, his people likely wouldn’t even complain. As much as he’d done to raise their standard of living over the course of the last year, it was only to be expected that at the first sign the higher ups needing to tighten their belts, the lowers would suffer.

That was just how things worked.

Both back home and here, he thought.

Besides, they had guns. They only needed to survive a fortnight or so? That was about how long he thought it would take him to create a dwelling of any real worth.

…If he chose to work reasonable hours.

And chose not to use nanobots.

I could get it done in a day though if I just… didn’t sleep and used one of my precious few irreplaceable resources in this world to speed things up.

He glanced over to where his guards were all watching him. He had to wonder, how many of them would die if he chose to take his time? Carried off in the night by some strange creature?

He huffed, looking down at the ground.

Then he looked back up again, turning to Ren.

“Tell Gao to set a guard shift around the compound. And tell him to buy whatever he needs in the city to make staying outside the walls for…” He paused. “Let’s say one more night.”

Yeah, he could get this done overnight. It would be just like when he was back working triple shifts.

“And then tell everyone to clear out of here. Daddy’s gonna work some magic.”

It was almost comical, the way Ren paled as Jack’s microbots started billowing out of the gaps in his clothes. Some came from his backpack, but most, most were summoned by his inventory-system, drawn forth from the void between dimensions into real space by the same base technology that had stranded him in this world.

With them came other things.

Stone. Cement. Rubber. Copper. Steel. Glass. And just a few nanobots to tie it all together. All submerged in a writhing wave of chittering pea sized microbots.

And if the way Ren all-but power walked away from him toward the captain of his guard, it was comical when the members of said guard all-but sprinted from the ruined buildings, eyes wide with terror as the great black monster started devouring both wood and stone with a most unnatural shrieking sound.

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

“There’s a castle in the city.”

Lu Zhenya had been in the midst of breaking her fast, her fingers hovering over a rather delectable green onion pancake. A guilty pleasure of sorts for her, given the baseborn origins of the food, but one it seemed she would have to put off as she turned her attention fully to her underling.

“Sect Elder Xun,” she smiled serenely. “There exist a great many castles within our fair city. Please be specific as to which has you so worked up.”

As annoyed as she was at being interrupted in such a manner, it was unfortunately simply the way of things in the Jade Pavillion. While other sects might sneer at them for valuing skills beyond the ability to punch things well in their membership, that same valuing of diverse skillsets had lead to the Sect becoming amongst the most powerful of the families. Unfortunately, it also lead to the development of a rather more egalitarian power structure than most of their peers.

As evidenced by the fact that one of the sect’s elders felt she had an inborn right to burst into her office without even so much as a courtesy knock. The woman would pay for that later, certainly, but for now Zhenya was curious as to what had the woman so worked up.

“Well, we now have one more than we did last night,” Xun grunted. “That… new male used his strange creature to vomit up a castle.”

Zhenya quirked an eyebrow. “Vomit?”

The woman nodded. “Like a great snake. It swelled up and spent hours regurgitating a building at least thirty meters tall.”

Thirty meters? Ignoring everything else, that was not a small building.

“You say his beast did this?” Zhenya asked, a simple hand movement sending one of her ever present mortal servants out to confirm the woman’s words.

The presence of the castle at least, she thought.

“Aye, if the male did anything more than direct it, my servant failed to see it.”

“Hidden Master.” Zhenya corrected, absently. “Ignoring his unveiling of the traitors in our midst, I would say this latest feat has earned him the title, if nothing else.”

She was utterly unsurprised that Xun had apparently been having the man followed. In fact, the dog woman was reasonably sure that she was the only woman in the city who wasn’t.

Because she already had a tail attached to the man. One who nominally didn’t answer to her anymore, but the ties between student and teacher were not so easily severed.

Evidence of which stood right in front of her.

“Ain’t nothing hidden about what he did,” Xun grunted, Zhenya’s former teacher sounding downright sullen as she wiped a gray strand from her face.

“And yet my point remains,” Zhenya pointed out. “If I didn’t remind you now, you might well slip and embarrass the sect at a less opportune moment. Empress knows your manners have not improved with age, teacher.”

There was a reason her guards had seen fit to let the old woman break her fast. Not even the Jade Pavilion was so egalitarian to allow that right to just anyone, even a Sect Elder.

“Fair,” the old woman finally allowed. “Still, you’re avoiding the topic, student.”

“Thinking, teacher.” Zhenya corrected. “You should try it sometime.”

Xun shook her eyes. “Such a disrespectful student I have.”

It was a common lamentation from the woman, and one Zhenya easily ignored with long practice. And she had not lied. She was thinking.

A castle in a night, she thought. That is not nothing.

In fact, she’d never heard of a similar feat being performed.

Warriors were all well and good, but the Empire was rife with them. Crafters on the other hand were a far rarer beast.

Perhaps that is why the Arch-Traitor chose to attack us in such a roundabout manner? Zhenya’s thoughts turned to the war. Striking not where we are strong, but where we are weak.

Empress knew, as the head of the largest trade sect in the Northern Provinces, she was better positioned than anyone – sans the Magistrate herself perhaps – to see how much damage these animal attacks were causing.

The influx of materials they provided was useful, but cultivation aids did little to offset the growing food shortage. The city wouldn’t starve just yet, the food silos ran deep indeed, but it was a problem that was only going to grow.

Unless we come up with some strategy to reverse it, she thought, her mind turning to the mysterious foreigner in their midst.

A man that could build a castle in a single night. She could think of many uses for such a person. Far beyond the base carnal or monetary desires that likely guided her peers – though she’d not be above such things if the opportunity presented itself.

“Quit thinking with your cunt, girl.”

Zhenya paused to aim a gimlet eye at her foul mouthed teacher.

“I wasn’t,” she said primly.

“Yes, you were.” Xun continued with all the grace of a rampaging bull, which was rather fitting given her ancestry – a rarity in a guild predominantly comprised of dog-kin. “You used to get the same look in your eyes whenever that Bao boy was around.”

The unexpected reminder sent a small pang through the guild master’s heart. But it was an old wound, one long since healed over.

“Still do actually,” the older woman snickered.

This time the glare she gave her teacher had some real heat to it. “Thank you for informing me as to these new events, Elder Xun. You may leave now.”

The old woman raised her hands in mock surrender as she turned to leave. “All right, no need to get like that on me. I was just saying that there’s no need to go cunt cra-”

“Out!”

The foul old woman fled, a thrown paperweight chasing her out. None of the servants even raised an eye as Zhenya sat back down again, eye twitching furiously. It was nothing new after all. Her master had always had a talent for getting under her skin.

The guild master only spoke once she’d sufficiently calmed herself. “Liao?”

From the corner of the room, a well groomed young man who had thus far been silent, stepped forward. “Yes, mistress?”

“Pen a missive to my wayward student. Invite her to join me for tea this coming evening. Her new master may accompany her if he is so inclined, but it is not expected.”

To be honest, as much as some part of her wanted to meet the man face to face, it would be more convenient for her if her student came alone.

She’d be easier to influence that way.

“As you wish, mistress,” the man responded before leaving for the scribe rooms.

Zhenya watched him go before smiling.

It was time she finally got a proper accounting of this stranger in their city, and more importantly, how he might be enticed to lend his loyalties to the Jade Pavillion.

And she could only hope that her connection with her former student gave her an edge over the myriad other offers the man and anyone connected with him would be receiving in the coming day.

The Ten families had been content to wait, to offer the Hidden Master aid after he realized the state of the property he had been ‘gifted’ with.

To act prior to that would have seemed desperate. An unconscionable loss of face.

Now though?

Well, the foreigner had basically rung the dinner bell with this stunt – and the sects would come running to court the city’s powerful new player – both literally and metaphorically.

Face be damned.

Zhenya would bank on her relationship with her old student. She had little to no desire to wade into the figurative bloodbath that would result from so many powers vying for one man’s attention.

She would though. If she had to. Because the benefits were just that valuable.

“A castle in a night,” she murmured.

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

Jack took a deep breath as he strode once more into the audience hall. It was a lot emptier than the last time he’d been here. That wasn’t to say it was empty, but rather than the nine or so hardened guild masters that had been present last time, there were just a few robed cultivator flunkies floating about the place. There were even a few males present, everyone one of which seemed to be giving him the gimlet eye as he passed.

Pissant fairy boys, he thought, turning his attention away from the painted dandies to the mortal guards stood in each corner of the room.

In red tinted metal, the glaive wielding mortals were utterly stoic as they stood at their post. Unlike the sect and city guard, they were actually armored enough that Jack could easily have drawn comparisons between them and his own blue clad militia-guard.

Unfortunately, while his militiamen and women were many things, incredibly disciplined wasn’t usually one of them. They weren’t an unruly mob by any means, and the sergeants were more than willing to whip them into parade formation when needed, but ultimately they were still a collection of rural folk that had been rapidly trained into an army. They lacked the kind of hard edged duty-first composure that the Magistrate’s Red Guard had.

“This way sir.” The young servant leading him said. “The Magistrate awaits you in her personal office.”

Personal office? That was either very good or very bad, and as he followed his guide down one of the side corridors, he found himself tightening his fur coat around himself nervously. He’d been forced to leave his backpack at the door, which meant he only had a token amount of microbots on it.

He’d never felt more vulnerable.

Keep your cool Jack, he thought. It’s just like going to see the CEO. Same difference really. After all, if a CEO didn’t like you, he’d have been just as capable of wiping you from the face of the Earth as this woman is.

Of course, he’d never actually met a CEO. Or even a higher level manager, to be honest. He’d been a disposable goon for the Canary Core, not any kind of company man.

As the pair reached the doors to what looked to be the Magistrate’s office, he cursed the fact that he’d been riding high for their first meeting. He’d felt that his new microbots made him invincible. And he had admittedly been a little pissed by all the destruction he’d seen on his trip toward the city. As a result, his mouth had gotten ahead of him.

The Magistrate had been quick to wash away his aura of invincibility when she’d wiped a few hundred microbots from the face of existence with a single gesture.

Sure, he’d had more, lot’s more, but did he have more microbots than she did lightning? He hadn’t known then, but now he knew he definitely didn’t.

So he’d be on his best behavior. Sure, that was made harder by the fact that he’d just pulled an all-nighter - after hauling ass to the city so he’d arrive just on the heels of Ren presenting Yin’s corpse.

Nothing for it, he thought as the door’s to the office opened and he stepped forth to greet the magistrate. Just going to do the best I can.

He hadn’t known why he’d expected her to be sitting at a desk. Maybe it was the CEO comparison? Instead she was sat at another throne. A smaller one certainly, but still a throne, with two very formidable looking clerk types sat at desks in front of her.

Say what you would about the needless pageantry these cultivators seemed to like to indulge in, they knew how to put on a show.

“You certainly didn’t wait long to cause another stir,” the woman said, idly toying with one of her golden locks.

And it was golden, when he’d first met her he’d assumed it was a trick of the light coming from the windows behind her. It wasn’t. The woman’s hair quite literally glowed, emphasizing the glistening of the small scales golden around her eyes, serving as evidence to all that the woman before them was part of the Imperial Clan.

Part of the dragon-kin race.

He bowed. “After you oh so kindly gifted me such a generous bit of property, I thought it wise to show my appreciation by working to restore it to working order as quickly as possible.”

“Were only that all my underlings were so industrious,” the Magistrate chuckled. “Though I shouldn’t be too harsh. Not all of them have so able a helper as you.”

Jack said nothing.

“I find myself curious, is it with you now?”

Jack resisted the urge to wince as the microbots under his clothes tightened around him, likely acting on his subconscious fear.

That was a problem he desperately needed to fix.

“It isn’t,” he lied.

“A pity,” she sighed. “I would have liked to see it once more. It really is a fascinating creature. The likes of which not even my noble self has seen before.”

She shook her head, glistening golden locks gracefully falling about her face. “Still, as interesting as your recent feat is, that is not why I called you here today. Should you answer my questions to my satisfaction, I can assure you though that it will be revisited though.”

Jack bowed just a bit deeper, calling on Ren’s coaching. “This one lives to serve.”

The dragon-kin tittered. “As do all who live under the aegis of the Dragon.”

She gestured to one of the clerks in front of her and Jack’s eyes widened as the young woman produced something very familiar from beneath her desk.

His rifle.

This time, when his eyes flitted back to the Magistrate, she was not smiling. All of the playful energy that had been on display since he’d walked in had disappeared. Instead he was faced with a woman who he could fully believe had slaughtered an entire sect down to the last woman and child.

Single handedly.

“Do you,” she spoke slowly, enunciating each word, “have any idea how dangerous your little toy is?”

Oh, he had some.

…It was just a shame that the woman across from him apparently did too.