Gao watched from the wall as thousands of men and women were drilled in the new ways of the army of Ten Huo. The mass of soldiers – for that was what they were now to be called – had been divided into training groups and were stretched from the walls of Ten Huo all the way to the distant forests beyond.

Forests that had been peeled back by the arrival of the Instinctive Horde months previous, the trees that had once formed the forest’s outer layer having been used as building materials for their camps. Or destroyed by Johansen’s big gonnes in the immediate aftermath of those camps being built.

Men and women moved from activity to activity, guided and harangued by members of the former Jiangshi militia.

And this isn’t even all of them, Gao thought with some trepidation.

Even if they’d had the manpower to train such a number, they couldn’t just empty the city of its guard forces overnight. No, this was only a fraction of the sect forces within Ten Huo, with the rest maintaining their usual duties policing the city from within.

The handover would not be quick or smooth. The retraining of the sects would be the work of months, if not years, and to that end they were being marched through this new training regime in shifts.

Even as he watched, two groups from rival sects almost ran into each other out in the field as their trainers argued over which group was to be attending which training activity.

Such clashes were not uncommon. This whole process had been designed in haste and had all the hallmarks of such an endeavor. The most prominent of which was that no one really knew what they were doing.

Not smooth at all, Gao thought.

Theoretically, the process would become faster as more and more former sect troops became familiar with the Jiangshi way of doing things, and thus able to retrain their fellows, but that was small comfort this early on in the process.

Honestly, the sheer magnitude of the task had the mortal man… doubting himself.

“Do you think we can do it, ma’am?” he asked, turning to An.

Theoretically, as high-general of the armies of Ten Huo, he needn’t add the honorific when speaking to the cultivator woman.

He outranked her after all. He outranked just about everyone short of Master Johansen himself. Including many of his advisors, old grey beards who’d been campaigning for the sects since before Gao was a boy. It was their wisdom he had been forced to lean on more than once.

Yet ultimately they answered to him.

A terrifying thought for a man that had been but a sergeant a year ago.

Some would say An was more suited to the position – yet she did not begrudge her master’s choice in him.

That was not to say An was entirely bereft of any authority. It had been decided early on that cultivators should hold an officer’s rank by dint of being a cultivator.

There was change and then there was upending society on a whim.

Ultimately, that rank had been left at lieutenant. Still an officer, which was just prestigious enough to afford them some respect and dignity, while not quite important enough for them to cause any real trouble on a strategic level.

The tactical level was a different story altogether, but Gao knew when to pick his battles.

With that in mind, despite the fact that An had been instrumental in the creation of the Ten Huo militia, technically she was a mere captain according to the new regulations of the Ten Huo Army.

An oversight that would certainly be fixed in the future, but for now it would have given Gao an excuse to lord his elevated status over her if he so wished.

He did not.

Even if he didn’t respect the woman greatly, he was too attached to life to develop any thoughts of forming any sort of professional rivalry with her.

“We can,” the short woman said distractedly. “They’re already fighting fit, experienced and reasonably disciplined. The main fight will be getting them accustomed to gonnes and the new chain of command.”

Gao couldn’t help but feel the cultivator was massively oversimplifying the problem. With that said… she wasn’t entirely incorrect. The sect guard forces weren’t coming to him as a barely illiterate mob of peasants. They were trained guards. Trained guards that were already accustomed to following orders and fighting.

It helps that we’re getting their officers too, he acknowledged.

He’d already decided to keep the ‘pre-existing’ chains of command intact. The sect troops would be divided into divisions based on their previous sect affiliations.

Something he knew Lady Ren wasn’t too happy about – as it left them more vulnerable to influence from their former masters – but he didn’t really see an alternative.

Master Johansen had demanded Gao forge the Sect troops into an army capable of defending the province from all contenders. Gao saw no way of doing that in the timeframe requested without making use of the Sect’s pre-existing officers and experience.

It was not ideal, but it was the best option he could think of.

Sighing, he glanced back towards An and saw the direction of her gaze – not out towards the training fields, but back towards the newly renamed ‘Steel Paw’ Compound – he knew that not all of the flippancy of her earlier statement was based on confidence.

Some of it was just out and out distractedness.

Ladies Lin and Huang, he thought.

It was amusing to think that only in the past few days that things between Master Johansen and the two had reached the level of intimacy. Most within the compound thought Huang to be Master Johansen’s woman from the moment she’d arrived – and Lin even longer.

It was only as part of Johansen’s inner circle that Gao knew the truth. Not through any out and out admittance on any party’s part, but merely through observation.

With that finally having changed, it seemed to have stoked some degree of jealousy on the part of both Ren and An, with the two having realized that they each had new rivals for their master’s affection.

And from that, a most unlikely alliance had formed.

An and Ren. Huang and Lin.

The outcome of such a conflict should have been clear, yet Gao could not confidently put his money on any party, were he prompted to do so.

Either way, he was staying far away from that powder keg.

Still, as he reached up to scratch at the scarred flesh of his cheek, he couldn’t help but feel some small tinge of envy at Master Johansen’s bounty.

More than a flower for each arm, the bastard has a flower for each limb, he thought without real heat.

He sighed and looked over the stone battlements of the wall, lamenting that such things would likely always be beyond him.

He knew what he looked like. He’d seen the way people cringed and reared back at the sight of his scarred and twisted visage. It was an experience common to any man or woman that beheld him and his fellow survivors.

Some were ‘lucky’, their burns localized only to their hands, knees, elbows and backsides – areas where cloth covered flesh had pressed against bits of hot metal that jutted about the insides of the doomed crawlers.

Some were not so lucky.

Gao was of the latter group. He’d slipped and fallen when he’d recoiled after initially burning his hand. His fall had resulted in him sliding his face across an armored plate that could have otherwise functioned as a frying pan.

He looked down at his upturned palm, eyes tracing the tracks and furrows in the pink and discolored flesh. It looked more like melted wax than anything living.

A flower on each arm? As I am I’d be lucky to attract a single blossom, he thought with cynical amusement. Not that I’d trust it if someone did show interest in me now?

They’d likely be little more than a spy or a social climber. A woman more interested in his title than the man who held it.

He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually felt the caress of a lover.

Before I was crippled the first time, he recalled. A city girl? Yin or something close?

He couldn’t recall her face or voice. It had just been another fling. He’d been a young attractive man with a good job. While women weren’t exactly throwing themselves at him he’d been popular enough.

That had all changed when he’d become a cripple. Bereft of a job or even a home to sleep in.

Perhaps his fortunes might have changed with his arrival at Jiangshi… but he hadn’t had the time. Not after Old Man Kang passed, and it seemed like the weight of the world settled on his shoulders.

I suppose I should be used to it by now, he thought. Being alone.

He wasn’t.

“Uh, Lord General?” A voice called, jarring him from his melancholy thoughts.

Turning, he gazed upon one of the many ‘radio operators’ that had joined him in his command post on the wall. There were two dozen of them, each sat cross legged in a meditative stance as they relayed and received orders from the soldiers on the ground through their comm beads.

One of those operators stood now before him, her posture slightly unsure as she regarded him.

A newer transfer, he thought as he watched her flinch near imperceptibly at the sight of his scars.

To her credit, it was a small thing, gone as quickly as it had come. He had only noticed because he was looking for it.

“Yes, private?”

She stood ramrod straight. “I am sorry to bother you sir, it’s just the Steel Paw, sir, they are… refusing to obey orders. Vehemently.”

An’s eyes narrowed slightly as she reached for the comm bead in her ear, but paused as Gao quietly raised a hand to stop her.

And was actually a little surprised when she obeyed.

“It’s fine, I’ll handle it, ma’am.” Gao sighed, reaching up to tap the comm bead in his ear, before turning back to the radio operator, taking on a far more authoritative tone. “Remain on standby until I’m done.”

The goat-kin stood ramrod straight before saluting. “Yes, sir.”

Gao nodded before turning around, gaze once more panning across the training fields as he sought out his most troublesome set of recruits.

“Lieutenant Qui,” he said calmly as he switched the radio to the squad’s frequency. “I am led to believe that you have begun refusing orders.”

The response was near instantaneous. “Yes! A refusal echoed by my sisters. This task is beneath our dignity.” She paused. “I mean, teaching mortals to disobey the order of their betters!? It’s madness.”

Gao disagreed. He thought it an incredibly important lesson. The Sect troops had spent their entire lives deferring to the closest cultivator at hand. Because to do otherwise was to court death in a very real fashion.

He didn’t blame them for that. It was a survival strategy he too had employed once upon a time.

It had to end though. And to that end, he had requisitioned the Steel Paw for a very important task.

They were to follow a colonel around as he toured the many training groups and give orders that ran contrary to his.

Anyone that obeyed the orders of a lieutenant over a colonel was to be punished with more training.

Thus far, a lot of people had been punished. And Gao imagined that would remain the case for days to come.

One didn’t just undo a few thousand years of societal conditioning overnight after all.

Still, his little exercise was seeing some small success already – and that was likely what was driving Qui and her cohorts up the wall.

Cultivators were a prideful bunch after all, and he’d known even before he’d given them his orders that they’d respond poorly to continually being ‘disrespected’. Hell, the fact that he’d been the one to give them those orders in the first place was likely a cause for upset.

“Is that so?” Gao hummed quietly. “And do you think I care, as your superior officer, what your thoughts on my training methods are?”

Silence filled the line.

“More to the point, do you think that your thoughts on my orders will keep me from punishing you for refusing to follow them?”

The silence continued.

“I have my finger on the button Qui,” he lied. “I believe our master was quite clear what the consequences would be for ‘taking even a single step out of line’.”

Perhaps he should have felt bad for what he was doing. He imagined that to most anyone looking in from the outside, what Master Johansen had done to the women of the Steel Paw was monstrous.

To Gao, it was simply business as usual.

In his role as a member of law enforcement he had given it some thought. And he’d come to the conclusion that people obeyed the laws of society for all sorts of reasons, be they monetary, cultural or sociological. Ultimately though, those considerations were secondary to the primary reason for lawful behavior.

A monopoly of force on the part of those enforcing the law.

Civilians obeyed guards because the guards were armed. Guards obeyed cultivators because cultivators had Ki. Cultivators obeyed the Empress because she had more Ki.

That was how society functioned.

The grey areas – thievery, rebellions, corruption – only ever existed in an area where that monopoly of force was diluted. Through stealth. Through counter-strength. Through laxity.

So the bombs that the Steel Paw now had in their heads…

Well, from Gao’s perspective, that was simply a more potent and immediate application of force.

“You wouldn’t,” Qui finally said. “Your master has invested too much in us. In our runic armor. Our spirit weapons. Our food. Our rooms. He would not see that investment wasted over a single act of rebellion.”

She sounded confident. Not entirely confident, he could hear some small inkling of doubt in her voice, but she was mostly confident. And clearly her peers trusted her because none of them were speaking out – and they all had comm beads too.

Even if Gao was sure that they too harbored their own small doubts.

Though they weren’t wrong to be confident. It was a well reasoned stance to take – if not without risk.

Alas, cultivators were no strangers to risk. Say what you would about them – and Gao would say a lot – it was not a path intended for cowards.

Unfortunately for him, their gamble would pay off. Gao wouldn’t kill them for something as small as this. They were right that they were just too valuable to just be eliminated out of hand for anything short of a direct act of treason.

He tiredly rubbed the bridge of his nose, agitating the scar tissue there.

That was the problem with death as a threat. It was an all or nothing option. One that saw the victim dead, but the wielder poorer for its implementation.

…Fortunately, Jack Johansen knew that too.

And had provided his loyal servant with the tools he needed to exact lesser punishments on rebellious cultivators.

“I understand you have nice beds.”

The sudden non sequitur seemed to take the cultivator off guard, as evidenced by the small intake of breath that rattled down the line.

“I do not understand,” the woman finally said after mulling it over for a time, no doubt searching for a reason for the sudden change in topic.

It amused him that she didn’t see it. It was obvious to him. Though he supposed that he was a military man, not a noble born cultivator.

“Nice beds,” he repeated. “Silk sheets. Goose feather pillows. Expensive stuff.”

“Are you requesting some sort of bribe, mortal?”

Gao laughed. “Not at all. Not because I wouldn’t want a bed as nice as you and yours have been supplied, but because you couldn’t give me them if you tried.”

Their was some indistinct muttering from the other line now as the women spoke amongst themselves.

“The beds that you sleep in. The fancy robes in your dressers. The servants that clothe you. The food that sustains you.” He smiled. “None of it is yours. You own nothing. Not even the clothes on your back.”

He drummed his fingers across the stonework in front of him, his eyes finally picking out the small cluster of cultivators down on the fields below. They looked so tiny from up here. So insignificant.

“All of it has been provided to you by the hand of Jack Johansen. And what has been given, can also be taken away.”

His smile only widened at the sounds of disbelief that echoed down the line. “He wouldn’t dare! We are… we are…”

She didn’t need to finish. He already knew what they were saying.

They were cultivators.

And they were.

But they were also…

“Nothing,” the High-General of Ten Huo interrupted. “The detritus of a sect that once questioned what Jack Johansen would and wouldn’t dare to do.”

The silence that echoed over the line was telling.

“Think in the future,” Gao finished. “Think on all the things you might have to lose when you make a wager with all you have on the line. You have more to lose than you can even conceive, and there are a great many steps you may yet fall between now and death.”

His fingers ran over the rough and misshapen tissue of his palms.

“We… understand,” Qui finally breathed.

“You understand, what?”

He could almost hear her gritting her teeth. “We understand… sir.”

He smiled. It was not a pretty thing. “Good. Now get the fuck off my line. I have an army to build.”

He clicked off the comm-bead and turned toward the two women waiting nearby. And while An had a surprised, but approving expression, the radio operator looked downright pale.

He nodded to her. “I trust the lieutenants shall be more pliable going forward.”

“Y-yes sir,” the goat-kin coughed.

He watched as she scurried back to her colleagues after throwing out a hasty salute.

And he turned back to the training fields, his hand clenching into a fist, the scar tissue pulling so taut it hurt.

Fates worse than death indeed, he thought.