Neither seemed enthusiastic about the fact, both giving half-hearted affirmations.

“And you’ve agreed to help Tems with things while you’re here?”

“Normally, I wouldn’t involve myself in the matters of another sect, but I owe it to my late uncle to intervene. He’s only been gone for a decade or so, and yet his sect has been facing crisis after crisis. How can I just ignore an outright invasion from another power when I happen to be in the area?”

“Why do you need my assistance then?” said Kalvin, turning to Tems. “Belren has over a hundred people on his side.” Seeing the elder’s sudden wariness, he felt a light sense of satisfaction. The powers of the Western Isles tended to look down on the mainlanders, even the Thebes Empire and the CMA, so it was quite pleasant to give the man a shock. Thankfully, he had a unique talisman sewn into the inner layer of his tunic that stimulated his spiritual sense in a way that allowed him to sense anomalies in his surroundings, such as inexplicable instances of wind resistance in places where only open air resided.

“Because I need to be certain,” said the sect master, ignoring his cousin’s sudden vigilance. “Of the ten people we’re targeting, only five of them are causes for concern. To be honest, most of them are quite weak. Prodigies for their ages, certainly, but not strong enough to give my sect any trouble.”

“Then why all the fuss?”

If Tems were still holding his bottle, Kalvin had no doubt that he would have smashed it. Why is he so angry?

“One of his elders jumped ship,” sighed Belren, who seemed to disapprove of Tems’s loss of composure. “May Asten, a great elder.”

“Is she really worth all these efforts? I’d wager that the three of us could take care of her down in a matter of minutes.”

“She’s a lot stronger than she originally let on. Not only did she kill Jameson, but she also killed Tegan. From what I’ve seen, she can match someone with a higher cultivation than her, possibly by two levels.”

This came as quite a shock. He had already known that May had killed Jameson, but Great Elder Tegan? That man had been the strongest member of the Falling Rain Sect, and easily the most renowned.

So she could go up against someone at the sixth level of Genesis, and possibly someone at the seventh. Kalvin made sure to hold May Asten in a higher regard, wondering how much money it would take to bribe her onto his side. For a cultivator as strong as her, he wouldn’t mind parting with several million spirit stones. Even ten million wouldn’t be an unreasonable sum.

“Even so, the three of us could still take care of her.”

“Not just her. Del—the White Rogue is also on their side.”

“How can that be?” Kalvin was genuinely surprised. “She’s never been affiliated with any group.”

“She helped May kill Tegan.”

This complicated things, although only slightly. The White Rogue was one of the most powerful people on the mainland, and also one of the most infamous. A merciless fighter, she was known to have a short temper and a tendency to solve her problems with bloodshed, even the most minute of them. It was said that she hadn’t spared a single enemy in her lifetime, something that she was infamous for, and her actions only served to corroborate this claim. Princes, kings, sect masters, merchant lords—there wasn’t one power structure on the continent that hadn’t suffered at her hands, the devious woman always managing to slip away completely undetected no matter what drastic actions she had decided to take.

Seeing how red Tems’s face had become, Kalvin wondered after his relationship with these two women. The sect master seemed to view their allegiance with his enemies as a personal matter, and judging by his erratic behavior it had developed into on object of obsession for him.

Tems, Tems. You’re just as transparent as ever.

There was betrayal in his face, along with hurt and malice. Since Kalvin doubted that either of the women in question would have had romantic feelings for such a childish man, the cause for such anger could only stem from one-sided affection. Kalvin found this laughable, though he didn’t show it. Sure, the White Rogue and May Asten were beautiful women, but even the most simple-minded man knew not to pick a thorny flower. Was Tems really allowing the prestige of his sect to plummet further for the sake of a petty sense of spite?

Kalvin put on a confident smile, for he was set to benefit greatly from this exchange regardless of the truth of the matter. “About this matter, as I said before, I’ll agree to your terms. Only, you need to bring the promised payment along with you.” Sending him a mental message so that Belren wouldn’t hear, he added, “And you’ll have to break your blood bond with it to show your sincerity. Then you can hand it over as soon as we’ve completed our task.”

“That won’t be a problem.”

Tems’s outward response earned him a bit of Kalvin’s ire. The man clearly wasn’t in his right mind, but putting up with his lack of tact was a small price to pay for the chance to obtain the Falling Rain Sect’s most sacred treasure.

“If there’s nothing else, I’ll be returning to my camp.” Kalvin approached the entranceway, his subordinates following in unison. “Send for us when it’s time to set off. You know where we are.”

With that, he took to the skies above Wilton and led his followers away from the city and over the healthy countryside of the large island. Every now and then they would spot scars on the earth that hadn’t been filled in or fixed, remnants of the conflict that had sparked his collusion with the rulers of this territory.

“I can’t believe that Tems is as foolish as they say,” laughed Kester, his big chest heaving as their group flew over the aquamarine waters of the vast lake that surrounded Weston. “Just to take care of a small group of cultivators, he’s giving you the Desolate Spirit Tower?”

“It’s ridiculous,” said Julian, his thin face flushed with rare excitement. “Such a priceless treasure, all for a task that you can complete with just a small number of your summoned spirits. I really didn’t think that this trip would yield such big results.”

“I told you,” said Kalvin, who had smelled an opportunity to make money after he’d heard about the troubles taking place in the Falling Rain Sect’s territory. “Though I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting such a harvest.” With future success in mind, he gave each of his subordinates a spatial bag that contained 20,000 spirit stones as well as twenty of the sect’s famous flying swords. “Once we obtain that tower, there’ll only be more rewards for you in the future. I hope that you can continue to serve me well.”

“Of course, of course,” laughed Kester, who stowed away the bag with fast hands. “It was the right choice following you, Mr. Merchant Lord!”

Kalvin didn’t mind that his direct subordinates spoke to him in a casual manner when nobody else was around. On the contrary, he encouraged it. He did so for the same reasons that he constantly shared small portions of his spoils with them, to ensure that a sense of loyalty was fostered between them and to incentivise hard work among their ranks. This was only the case for his strongest supporters, however, as he would never permit such familiarity with say, the other members of his retinue.

Their camp came into sight a couple of hours later, a vast stretch of wagons, pack animals and canopied tents that hugged half a league of coastline along the lake’s southern edge. Over 25,000 people were spread out in a wide stretch, all of them members of his personal forces and thus a part of Merchant Lord Angram’s faction within the CMA.

“A grand sight, isn’t it?” he couldn’t help but say, struck by a sense of pride as he observed all of the merchandise and manpower that he had been able to save from the wars in the Easterly Kingdoms.

“Aye, that,” said Kester. “Hard to think that most of ‘em down there are just employees from your holdings in the south.”

Three thousand of those below were mercenaries at the Integration stage, part of a private army that Kalvin had personally raised in his early days in office. The main force had swollen to over sixty thousand soldiers over the years, though most of these were widely dispersed throughout his territories on North Island, which he had avoided throughout the war in fear of being targeted like the other members that had chosen to operate out of their states.

“The other caravans should catch up to us within a few weeks,” said Julian, who had been tasked with overseeing the logistics of their withdrawal from the south. “As I recommended before, I suggest that some of these head west to bolster our business in the northern provinces of Thebes. It would be a waste to send so many materials back to the island.”

Kalvin shook his head, enjoying a nice breeze from where he floated over eight hundred paces above the ground. “Our first priority is consolidating our stock of supplies and our remaining manpower. After that we’ll look into the areas on the continent that are most likely to be receptive to the merchandise that we’ve pulled out from the south, and then we’ll compare our existing infrastructure and network systems in each region so that we can decide on the most viable choice.”

“As you say, then.”

“Yes, as I say.”

Smiling down at his retinue, Kalvin wished more than anything else that Tems would hurry up and initiate the operation. He wanted to get his hands on the Desolate Spirit Tower as quickly as possible, and was already pondering over different ways to use the new acquisition to lift his standing within his faction and within the organization as a whole.