“You’re taking this all a lot more calmly than I might have expected.”

Jack idly glanced up from the bowl of nuts he’d just been enjoying to regard Shui. Sat amidst the quiet hubbub of Fortress Five’s command center, the woman was still looking a little paler than was normal for her, but other than that and the bandages around her torso, he’d have been hard pressed to say that she’d had six kitchen knives pulled from her torso less than two hours ago.

And they weren’t shallow stabs either, he thought. A few of them were to the hilt.

“Why?” He asked quietly, regarding the drone feeds displayed on the many screens at the front of the room. “Because I’m not running around like a headless chicken, terrified of this Inquisitor’s reprisal? Or lambasting you for getting your shit kicked in?”

She winced a little at his phrasing.

“I suppose, yes?” she allbut whispered, throwing a wary glance at the mortal women manning the nearby communication terminals. “Panicking is the normal response to someone finding out they’ve got an Inquisitor coming for them. And raging about letting her escape would be pretty normal too. Surely you remember Huang?”

He certainly did.

The woman casually decided to murder Gao when he – foolishly – took responsibility for his people’s failure to protect what she had thought were irreplaceable artifacts key to the defense of the city. They weren’t. They’d just been a bunch of bog-standard artillery pieces.

With that said, yes, Jack could totally imagine the dragon-kin taking Shui’s failure to capture Shi poorly.

But he wasn’t Huang.

This hadn’t been some rote task like setting up a production line. It had been a fight against an otherwise unknown foe. And Shui had come up short in the heat of the moment.

That was life though.

Hell, he technically had been running support during the fight – having zero desire to tangle with a woman who was more skilled, faster, and stronger than him – so he was at least partially culpable in the operation’s failure.

“Meh,” He shrugged.

The pig-kin stared at him for just a few moments. “Meh?”

He popped another nut into his mouth. “Meh. Shit happens.”

She stared at him for just a few moments longer, before breaking down into chuckles. “You’re a strange one Johansen. With tits of steel.”

Jack didn’t so much as twitch at that slightly abnormal phrasing regarding his anatomy. He could only assume it was a distinctly local turn of phrase.

She continued. “I guess that explains why you’re still as cool as a cucumber even though we’ve now got the High-Inquisitor gunning for us.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You realize we’re rebelling against the entire Empire, right?”

“Yes, and of the possible responses the Empire might have had to our attempt at secession, siccing the Inquisition on us definitely counts amongst the worst.” She paused. “With that in mind, I’d not blame you for having second thoughts about this whole thing.”

He scoffed. “If I were the kind of guy to sweat that kind of thing, I wouldn’t have taken us down this road in the first place.”

Shui snorted. “Yes, but there’s saying you’re going to do something and then actually doing it. Part of me was a little worried you’d back down when someone with authority came around to actually call you on it. As a man, a valuable man, you might have been able to get away with it. Most likely after the rest of us had been strung from the walls of the city.”

He glanced at her in disbelief. “Weren’t you the one who started us on this path when you deposed Huang?”

“No,” Shui muttered. “I started us on this path when I received a messenger ordering us to march what cultivators and guards we had left into the breach. Prior to that, I was happy to play regent. Unfortunately, the Empire didn’t leave us much of a choice but to rebel.” She paused. “You know, once outright rebellion became a bit less suicidal with the Rooster backing us. And you.”

Huh… that was a slightly less power-hungry answer than he’d been expecting.

His own logic for rebelling against the Empire had been much more simple.

The opportunity was there.

Well, that and the fact that I didn’t want to say no to Yating, he thought. Easier to appease the walking nuke in the room with you than the ten across the continent and all that…

He drummed his armored fingers across the nearby table. “You’re not exactly filling me with confidence in our chances here, Shui.”

The woman shrugged, wincing minutely as the movement jostled her injuries. “Well, this rebellion was always us making the best of a less than ideal set of circumstances. I’m here to fight to the last, but I fully expect it to all end in tears. The Empress might be busy right now, but it’s still the Empire.”

Jack cracked another nut between his teeth. “I dearly hope you haven’t been spreading that sentiment around.”

She actually looked a little offended at that. “Do I look that stupid?”

Stupid, no. Impulsive, yes.

He remembered their first meeting and the rather forward propositions that occurred. He also remembered her trying to play political games with him after he killed the Red Death.

All of which he liked to think he conveyed through the expression he aimed at her, making the woman huff and cross her arms.

“No, I’ve not made any of my more defeatist sentiments known. I’m a warrior and a general. I know how valuable morale is.”

Jack nodded slowly. “Good. Besides, I don’t have any real reason to be afraid of this Inquisitor.” He leaned forward. “Because you know what I’d do if she showed up here tomorrow with an army – and was no longer interested in ‘negotiating’?”

“What?”

He smiled. “I’d run like hell.”

“What?”

“I mean, we rushed over here to try and capture Shi before she gathered too much intel about our defenses. Beyond that though…” He waved his hand. “There’s nothing particularly special about this fortress. So why would I risk getting myself killed defending it?”

“You’d abandon this town?” Shui eyed the nearby workers – who undoubtedly had family here – as she spoke quietly.

Jack wasn’t worried. He had more than enough experience talking about sensitive topics in public plates to know that the hum of the nearby machines meant they couldn’t be heard.

“Yes and no. I mean, if I were completely ready to abandon this fort, I wouldn’t have had Gao rush over here with just under a thousand of our elites. I plan on doing my best to shore this place up for an attack. With that said, this whole fortress was designed as a roadblock against an attack. Not a bulwark.”

He eyed the drone feeds on the far wall. Feeds that were still tracking a distant flying figure. And as he watched, a lightning bolt lanced up from the figure, reducing the screen to static.

“Eye-five is down. Still no visual on the enemy camp.” Lin’s calm voice reported from the overhead speakers. “Moving Eye-Six into position three hundred meters back from Eye-Five’s position.”

“Jiangshi proper is where I’d make my first stand,” he announced.

And only really because that was where a good chunk of his industrial capacity was. Beyond that, the large town’s only real values were its populace and farming capacity.

The first of which Ten Huo outclassed, and the second of which was slowly being outclassed by his burgeoning hydroponics farms beneath the city.

Which was to say, if need be, he could abandon Jiangshi as well.

“I mean, I don’t think you could argue that if our foe really wanted and brought a reasonable number of troops with her, she could take this fortress.”

Shui nodded grudgingly, her strategic mind coming into play. “As you said, it really depends on what forces she’s brought with her for these ‘negotiations’. Given how fast she responded to Yating’s meeting with her fellow Divinity, I can only imagine she traveled with a purely cultivator strike force. Now, if she actually intended to negotiate – after spying on us, that means we might have already wiped her retinue out by killing those spies. If not, she might still have anywhere from two to a hundred cultivators back at her camp.”

Jack shrugged. “Well, let’s err on the side of caution and assume she has two hundred cultivators to her name. Mostly regulars and a half-dozen elites.”

Which was to say cultivators with a level of cultivation equivalent to that of a sect elder or leader.

Which was frankly a ridiculous number for her to have martialed on short notice. At its peak, the entire city of Ten Huo boasted about a thousand cultivators – two thirds of which had already marched North to join the Imperial Army at the breach before Jack even teleported onto this world.

“Given you’ve cut the sects of your army and can only currently call on those rejects from the Iron Paw.” She eyed him as she said those words. “We have all of ten cultivators of middling talent here in this fortress. With that in mind, even with your gonnes and crawlers, then yes, I believe they could take this fortress without too much trouble.”

Jack nodded. “They’d take losses in the process though. We’ve got nearly three thousand rifles here in this city. You fill the air with enough metal and some of it’s going to land.”

“I cannot argue that,” Shui allowed. “While my own experiences at the Northern Pass – and during the coup – have found that gonnes lose some effectiveness in running skirmishes, they are absolutely deadly when employed from a static position.”

Well, that’s mostly because you lot don’t really have any response to that because of your weird aversion to ranged firepower, Jack thought. Which was another part of the reason why the Imperial Clan is so feared – their ability to range destructive lighting from on-high.

Of course, he knew the reason for said aversion was borne from the fact that cultivator archers just… didn’t exist. And if a cultivator couldn’t do it, clearly it was not worth pursuing.

Which… wasn’t an entirely unfair stance to take, given that prior to his arrival in this world, training up mortals for actual battle – rather than garrison work - was kind of a waste of resources. In an open battle, two dozen well trained and armored mortals would fall to a cultivator’s blade about as easily as a mob of civilians wielding farming equipment.

Elite guards existed of course, but they existed to make policing settlements easier, where they would mostly be up against mobs of civilians wielding farming equipment.

“Honestly, I still find it rather strange to think of mortals as a genuine threat when they are without cultivator support,” Shui mused.

Jack nodded. “Well here’s hoping that even with Shi having seen our gonnes, she’ll still suffer from that kind of dissonance.”

Though given the speed with which she’d fled from his militia gunline the other night, he wasn’t entirely hopeful of that being the case.

“Right, and this is just one of our fortresses.” Jack continued. “We’ve got a dozen more spread out between here and Jiangshi. And Jiangshi proper behind them. And our foe would lose a few of their people each time they took one. So even if we did nothing, our opponents lack the means to reach Ten Huo right now. If she waits for a few months to summon an army, that might change, but we both know the Empire doesn’t have time for that.”

The fact of the matter was that his little rebellion was an afterthought. Sure, he likely warranted a little more interest than usual because of his defeat of the Red Death, but ultimately the Empire had bigger fish to fry.

If they didn’t, the Empire could slaughter all of us tomorrow by dumping ten divinities on us, he thought with cynical amusement.

All the gonnes in the world wouldn’t save him from that. Hell, it wouldn’t save him from a single divinity if Yating’s confession regarding his weakness was true.

With that in mind, it was only said immortal’s caution when dealing with any kind of unknown threat that kept one of them from just… moving from city to city, razing them to the ground.

The only thing that’s keeping them from killing all of us is how much they might lose to the Instinctive’s while doing so, he thought.

With that in mind, it was actually kind of terrifying that the Divine Monkey had somehow stalemated all of her ‘siblings’. A feat that not even the death of her draconic ally seemed to have reversed.

Which genuinely begged the question… how?

All the trickery in the world wouldn’t be able to make an eleven on one divine smackdown any less of a curbstomp.

No, there was likely something going on up near the wall that he didn’t know about…

“That is… a rather clever strategy. To bleed the enemy through a series of assaults. They cannot replace cultivators, while we can easily replace our mortal forces.”

Jack nodded, deliberately not wincing at the idea that their strategy for a hypothetical Imperial assault was basically just to turn it into a war of attrition.

Though admittedly, it wasn’t his strategy.

It was An’s.

She was the one who’d built this ring of fortresses. She’d also formed the armies that manned them.

…She’d also made sure to settle the family’s of said army in the fortresses they were defending.

All the better to make sure they fight to the last to defend them, she’d said at the time.

It was a kind of ruthlessness that Jack couldn’t see Gao employing. And a reminder of why An was not ultimately in charge – even if she’d soon be promoted to a near peer position.

Jack was by most standards an ambitious and monstrous son of a bitch who was quite happy to profit off the misery of others in the name of getting ahead. With that said, he preferred that to be option number two rather than the first port of call.

Jack nodded. “The only question remains is whether Shi will continue her assault in order to try and gain an upper hand in her negotiations, or if the loss of her people will be enough to bring her to the table without more loss of life.”

Because if she chooses the former, then the only ones who’ll really benefit are the Instinctives, he thought. Whether the Empire chooses to drown us in bodies or crush us by relocating a few Divinities…

Jack paused.

He’d just had a thought.

An idea.

One that was frankly… quite mad.

“Excuse me,” he said hurriedly as he stood up. “I have to go.”

“Wait, I-” Shui started to say, but he ignored her as he rushed out of the command room.

He had something he needed to repurpose.

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

Shi resisted the urge to sigh as she set down in front of her camp. She’d spent hours flying around trying to shake the… peculiar flying beasts that had chased her from the fortress.

Her fingers still tingled from letting loose so many lightning blasts.

“You’re back early my lady?” One of her acolytes greeted, the young woman bowing deeply in supplication, uncaring of how the dirt marred her red robes. “Was this divinity a fraud as you suspected?”

“Summon the Rooster, she has been keeping things from us.” Shi said without preamble, accepting a water flask from a nearby acolyte as she released the straps of her backpack.

Another acolyte caught it before it hit the ground.

With any luck, she’d have an opportunity to change out her ‘peasant garments’ before…

“What things?”

The High Inquisitor didn’t jump, though she did note that a number of her acolytes stiffened at the arrival of the Divine being.

She dismissed them with one hand, freeing them to return to their duties ‘overseeing’ the other cultivators in the other part of the camp. In moments, Shi was alone with the Rooster, but for the acolyte holding her backpack, whom she bid to stay.

“You did not think to mention this?” she asked, pulling the gonne from the pack.

Even partially disassembled to better fit, the long pipe that made up the front of the device was unmistakable.

Rather than react at her unsubtle accusation, the Rooster merely cocked her head, exhaling a long draft of smoke from her pipe. “Should I?”

“Given that just about every mortal in that fort had one, I would imagine so, given that you have spent the last few months ‘liaising’ with our new foe.”

“And why would I pay attention to the tools of a mortal?” The Rooster asked, with all the outwards signs of bafflement.

Shi resisted the urge to curse. “Because this tool is one that allows a mortal to challenge a cultivator.”

The High Inquisitor did not miss the way the acolyte holding her pack stiffened at those words. Fortunately, her people knew better than to repeat her words carelessly. The capabilities of their foe would remain a secret until such time as Shi chose to reveal them.

“Really?”

Shi threw the weapon aside. “And this fortress? And the others like it? Did you fail to notice those as well?”

The Rooster just smiled.

Shi grit her teeth. The worst thing about it was that she genuinely didn’t know whether the Divinity genuinely hadn’t noticed or if she was just being difficult.

Both were equally probable where divinities were concerned, given their… lack of interest in the mundanities of reality.

A thousand years of life did not equate to a thousand years of wisdom.

Fortunately, Shi had something that never failed to sharpen a reticent founder’s focus. “I could report this kind of dereliction to mother.”

She enjoyed the way the ancient being stiffened. It was always amusing to see ‘untouchable immortal’ cower when an Imperial Scion cracked the whip.

The moment passed quickly though, before Yating took another puff of her pipe. “Do what you will. My ‘failings’ are hardly worthy of mention in the face of my successes. This Outlander has not moved beyond the borders of this province. I have stalemated him with my presence and made clear the Imperial reaction to his ongoing presence. If I have missed a few middling details in the process of carrying out those duties, then that is simply the price that has been paid for my success.”

She paused. “I am nothing if not a loyal servant to the Celestial Throne.”

Bah, Shi knew the real reason for the Rooster’s subservience. And she was one of maybe ten in the entire Empire to do so.

To that end…

“Then you’ll have no problem joining the next assault on this fortress.”

This time there was some genuine amusement in the Divinity’s smile, as if she was gazing down at a precocious child. “And clash with someone who killed a divinity? Alone?”

“Does the mere possibility of danger thin your blood that much? Are you that much of a coward?”

It was a risk to speak to even a leashed divinity as brazenly as she was, but Shi found herself quite past caring. The past year had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt just how useless the founders of the Empire had become.

They had three. Three of eleven present at the breach. It was downright shameful. And no matter how much she petitioned her mother to track down the others and drag them out of hiding, her mother refused to give her leave to do so.

The one in front of her merely smiled at her provocations. “One does not live as long as I by taking risks, half-life.”

This. This was the reason why she hated Immortals. They were all cowards. Cowards who dared not even consider acting in a way that might risk their lives. Never mind the fact that this Outlander may not even be a true divinity.

Even Murm, who was outwardly the most loyal of the bunch, was little more than a paper tiger. A pathetic enforcer and messenger who only ever entered combat when the odds were entirely stacked in her favor.

Which made the fact that Yating had been willing to ‘delay and threaten’ a being ostensibly capable of killing her suspicious.

Indeed, Shi was growing more and more sure with time that the Divinity had killed the Red Death – after being given no other choice – and then propped up another as an invader and ‘divinity killer’ in the name of keeping her away from the frontlines for longer.

Though with that said, if this Johansen was indeed a fake, the Rooster had chosen a convincing proxy. Even if her escape from his clutches meant he was perhaps lacking in true combat power, his ability to raise fortresses and design weapons such as the firework launcher were nothing to sneeze at.

The Empire could use that power.

“I could punish you for refusing,” Shi grunted.

Sure, she did not control the brand herself, but mother needed little prompting to act on her behalf. Shi could have a messenger across the empire within the month. And while that was a long time for a kin, it was barely a minute for an immortal.

Which was one useful thing about the long lived beings. You could threaten them with something that would take months or even years to manifest and they’d react as if it might happen at any moment.

…Though some part of her came to regret that fact as a wave of killing intent washed over her. The acolyte nearby fell to her knees immediately, even as Shi thought to stay upright. And even then, though she managed to stay standing, she felt the very blood in her veins quicken as her breath froze in her lungs.

Yet, she did not waver, staring into the eyes of the furious immortal.

An immortal who must have seen something there, as in a moment the killing intent abated, and Shi found she could breathe once more.

“Damn fanatic,” the Rooster muttered – sounding tired, of all things. “You may report my reticence to risk my life to make yours easier to your mother. She may do as she wills.”

Shi frowned.

“I will.”

It seemed she’d be performing this assault without the chicken. She could push no further.

“Though if you are determined to sit out the next assault like a coward, I would command you be ready. For if I fail this assault then you will be called upon to remind our foe of the strength of the Empire.”

The Rooster scoffed. “I just told you, I will not risk myself against a being that managed to cull a divinity.”

Shi nodded. “Fortunately for you and your cowardly ways, the risk to your life will soon be minimized.”

That caught the Rooster’s attention.

“The Tiger and the Ox will be coming south within the fortnight.” She grinned.

Those were the orders she had given before she left for the Northern Provinces. Orders that were only to be countermanded if she sent a message commanding them to be so.

And nothing she’d seen tonight had convinced her to do so.

For while she was willing to once more test the Fortresses’ defenses in the name of hopefully chastising this ‘foreign divinity’, it never hurt to have a backup plan.

Even if that backup plan would cause the loss of many lives on the frontline.

That was simply the burden of command.

Across from her, Yating frowned, the coward no doubt terrified that either their ruse was coming to an end or that they might actually have to defend the Empire which they helped build.

Then another expression came across their face, one that Shi struggled to place.

“Murm and Linxing, huh?” The Rooster turned to stare at Shi. “One would think that with all of us being needed, our Empress would spread the workload around more. There’s eleven of us after all. Yet she seems to be leaning on poor old Murm a lot.”

Shi kept her expression utterly placid, her ki unmoving.

“Be ready when your time comes. We need not want to spend a moment longer here than needed.”

She needn’t have bothered. The Immortal was already gone.