Shui well understood why Imperial officers often rode horses into battle despite cultivators often being faster on foot than their mounts.

Unlike mortal warriors who gained a myriad of benefits from being mounted atop a small mountain of horseflesh, cultivators actually lost out on a number of their natural advantages when saddled with some manner of war-mount.

The true benefit of a mount, where a cultivator was concerned, was that they provided a raised vantage point from which to survey the battlefield. It also allowed the common warrior on the ground to be able to see their leaders over the heads of their fellows and draw courage from their presence.

At least in theory.

More to the point, a well-trained warhorse – while invariably expensive - was considered a point of prestige in most cultivator circles, despite their limited value in combat itself.

Unless that thoroughbred happens to be a spirit beast, Shui mused as she gazed upon the mount of her foe.

Stood across from the gates of the city, a white flag held in the hands of one of her two companions, the High-Inquisitor cut an imposing figure astride her bone white destrier. Ignoring the fine robes the woman was dressed in – no doubt enchanted with numerous defensive charms – the woman’s mount alone was likely worth enough to beggar an entire sect.

An expense the Cavalry of the Empire had proven time and time again to not be entirely foolhardy.

Shui could still remember the grisly toll Huang’s bodyguards had inflicted on the Instinctive Hordes beyond the walls of Ten Huo. Aided by Jack Johansen’s artillery, certainly, but there was no denying that no other formation within the city inflicted anywhere near the same number of casualties on the enemy over the course of the siege.

Nor suffered so few losses in return.

Tribesmen. Guard. Cultivator. Champion.

It didn’t matter. The hooves of the Empire’s specially bred spirit beast mounts would trample them all the same.

Right up until Jack Johansen destroyed their entire compound with a single devastating technique. Mounts and cultivators both.

Still, even by those lofty standards, Shui could tell that the High Inquisitor’s horse was something else.

It’s definitely somewhere in the Profound realm, she thought. Which is just plain absurd for a beast of burden.

Truly, the largesse of the Celestial Throne knew no limits.

…With that said, Shui still liked to think she had the better mount.

She particularly enjoyed the way both the Inquisitor and her steed twitched minutely with each footfall of her mighty crawler.

One would think the woman had just watched a statue come to life as she stared up at the hulking form of Shui’s mighty beast.

Well, technically it was Gao’s crawler – just as he was technically in charge of the city’s defenses – but none of Johansen’s people were foolish enough to present the man as such for this meeting.

That would just invite assassination attempts. Or at least, more than the usual amount.

Which was why it was her who had the ‘honor’ of riding out to meet her opposite number for the second round of ‘negotiations’. Both sides had now tasted the other’s intent and technique, and thus it was time for words to be bandied once more.

A series of events that would be repeated over and over until such time that a compromise was met.

That was how the Imperial Throne negotiated. It was as much a form of limited war as it was true diplomacy.

“Your fortress lies in ruin,” Shi finally rallied, drawing herself up, even if her gaze kept flitting towards the crawler. “Your weapons reduced to slag. Your armored cultivators forced to flee. That is but a taste of the whirlwind you will summon if you continue on your course.”

“That is a sword that cuts both ways Inquisitor. As I’m sure you know, my lord has many fortresses. The loss of one troubles him not at all. Can you say the same for your own acolytes? For any cultivators lost so far in your posturing? I think not, when the Breach demands ever greater forces to defend her.”

Shi leaned back in her cupola. “And that is ignoring my lord’s own hand. Make no mistake, curiosity summoned him out here to meet you the first time, but he has not deigned to do so a second. The bulk of his power – and Ten Huo’s cultivators – lie far from this mere border fort.”

Shui enjoyed the way the woman’s eye twitched at the words ‘border fort’. Fortress City Five would be a small town by Imperial reckoning.

Smiling, she continued on. “That is why you yet breathe, despite your temerity. The fact that staining his hands with your blood would be yet beneath my lord.”

Shui knew that was definitely bullshit. While Ten Huo’s magistrate was powerful, the more she interacted with him, the more clear it had become that while the man might have power on scale with a Divinity… it was diffuse.

Gonnes. Walls. Fortresses. Crawlers. Canned food. Artillery.

All those things were expressions of his power, and they were mighty, but few would be of any real use in a straight up duel. To that end, Johansen was a craftsman even more specialized than the ox.

Which shouldn’t have been too surprising honestly, she thought to herself. He is after all ultimately a man.

Men were craftsmen and healers. Women were warriors. Why would a Divinity be any kind of exception to that universal truth?

Indeed, despite his defeat of the Red Death, Shui was reasonably sure she could take him in single combat - provided he chose not to summon whatever item it was that he used to defeat the Red Death.

Fortunately or unfortunately, whatever tool it was that he used to ignite the skies above the city in that climactic duel, she was reasonably sure it was limited.

Reasonably.

The man’s ability to create and repair things on a short timescale had surprised both her and Huang before. And it would hopefully surprise the Empire too. The woman across from her didn’t know it, but the damage done to Fortress City Five’s defenses were already being repaired. It would take a few days, but it would be done.

Repairing the damage done to the town’s morale will take slightly longer, but that was something Shui had some familiarity with. Already she was organizing feasts in celebration of ‘seeing off’ the Imperial attack, reframing the narrative to turn it into a triumph. She’d done it before after similar clashes. Indeed, keeping mortal forces from fleeing the field in the face of overwhelming losses was as much the role of a decent general as strategy and tactics.

Of course, one purpose of today’s negotiations were to make sure the enemy didn’t attack again during said celebrations. She’d done that before as well. And she had little doubt the High Inquisitor had too.

“Ah,” Shi’s expression turned somewhat gloating. “If that is the case your lord is welcome to strike me down here and now. I am more than happy to die in the Empress’s service. Not least of all, because doing so will rouse our own Divinity to action.”

Shui deliberately kept her expression placid.

“The Rooster.”

“Just so,” the Inquisitor smiled. “It should not surprise me that you can sense her presence. Perhaps that is why your lord has chosen not to act? Rather than apathy, is it caution that stays his hand? Indeed, perhaps that is why he has fled back to his ‘center of power’?”

Shui deliberately said nothing. She was well aware of the Rooster’s true allegiances. And while she liked to think herself a fairly decent politician despite her reputation as a blunt instrument, if anyone might glean her true thoughts from an off-hand comment, it would be the woman across from her.

So it was that her enemy’s grin widened, as if she’d won a point.

…Though, with that said, who was to say that the Rooster had not once more changed her allegiances in truth? The Divinity had turned traitor once—why not a second time?

Or would it be a third? Shui thought. Given that it was me who was once promised the Magistrate of Ten Huo?

Even amongst Divinities, the mercurial nature of the Rooster was known.

Nothing to be done about it now though, the pig-kin thought. If she has, we’re doomed. If she hasn’t… we’re probably still doomed.

“Yet the Empire is not without mercy,” the Inquisitor continued. “Your lord has done us a service by securing Ten Huo against the Traitor’s horde. More to the point, he defeated her foreign Divinity in open combat.”

She paused, gaze roaming over the crawler Shui stood in. “And while the tools and beasts he has summoned have proven little defense against the might of the Empire’s true daughters, they were not without merit.”

Shui smirked. She didn’t blame the woman for being interested in Johansen’s toys. She was trying to hide it, but given that Shui had been in a similar position not all that long ago, it wasn’t too hard to see.

And her interest made sense. The Empire didn’t lack for powerful cultivators. Even ignoring the peak level cultivators it could call upon, it also had ten Divinities to its name.

Even if those immortal and timeless beings were both difficult to direct and slow to muster.

Yet even then, a single super being could not protect an entire province. For all the strength they might bring to bear again at a single point, there was simply too much ground to cover.

That was why the enemy’s opening move had been so devastating.

Beasts. Mere animals. Even driven to frenzy they had not the power or the numbers to truly threaten even a rural sect – let alone a city.

But the mortals that supplied them? That built those cities? Tended to those cultivators? Fed them? Formed their armies?

Only the most deluded of immortals believed that the Empire could survive without its peasantry. And while Shui had little pity or empathy for her lessers, she still recognized their value and utility.

Something Jack Johansen’s tools increased easily a dozen fold. Not only would their proliferation through the Empire increase the might of its armies – they would also free up thousands of cultivators. As it stood, Shui would not be surprised to learn that almost a third of the Empire’s might was out roaming across the countryside, culling what seemed to be an endless tide of animalistic carnage in an attempt to allow their serfs to farm the land unmolested.

By contrast, Ten Huo’s cultivators remained within the walls of the city. Ready like a clenched fist, the outlying farms were protected not by ki and steel, but by farmers equipped with trinkets built of iron and powder.

Certainly, some were still lost each month to the now transformed beasts that had begun to become more common than not, but for the most part the rural farms and villages around the Ten Huo province were self-sufficient.

The Empire needed that.

It needed it dearly.

“Join us,” Shi continued. “Journey north with me and I shall plead your case before my mother. A certain amount of censure will be guaranteed, but so too will mercy. Even ignoring your other skills, a male Divinity is a rarity worthy of safeguarding for the good of the Empire. You may live in comfort for the rest of time. If he only abandons this foolish attempt at conquest and bows before the rightful ruler of this land.”

“Very well,” Shui bowed slightly. “May I have a moment to think on your words?”

The other woman nodded.

Shui turned away from the other, before tapping her throat and the small mystic device there.

“Well, you heard it boss,” she subvocalized, her words completely inaudible beyond the confines of her throat.

“Hmmm,” Jack’s voice in her ear hummed, some strange clicking sound evident in the background. “Comfort for the rest of time does sound good. If there weren’t so many issues inherent in that statement. Like being stuck as a breeding cow for the rest of my life. You know, if they don’t just kill me straight out once I’m in their power. Or feed me into the Breach like they want to do with Yating.”

“You sound busy,” Shui noted as she heard something slam into place.

“I am.”

Though it was noteworthy that he said nothing beyond that. Indeed, he sounded distracted. Which was good, because Shui hated to think that her lord had actually declined to take part in these negotiations himself because he genuinely did think he was above it all.

Because then they might truly be doomed.

Though it was a mystery as to what it was he’d suddenly dubbed so important that he’d disappeared last night, flying out of the city and back towards Jiangshi.

…A move that had not been great for the morale of the Fortress as the idiot didn’t even think to hide his escape from the prying eyes of the citizenry. Indeed, she’d spent much of the morning quashing rumors that the fortress’ lord had abandoned it.

Something that An’s presence had been incredibly useful in. For while the people of Jiangshi and its surrounding fortresses knew of and respected Jack Johansen, Shui had quickly discovered that it was ultimately An who had brought them all together.

By contrast, Jack was a somewhat distant figure to the people of these forts.

Yet for all that… It was clear from his actions throughout the time he’d been in the Empire that he cared for the mortals under his protection. Feeding them. Protecting them. Seeing to their comfort.

Shui didn’t understand it. Not at all.

But then, she didn’t see the appeal of gardening or calligraphy either, and knew a number of cultivators that were much more fanatical about those than Jack was about mortals.

The point was, she knew the man on the other end of this device would not have simply abandoned the field out of apathy.

He was planning something.

“Stall for time,” the voice in her ear called, as if to reinforce her thoughts. “I just need a few days to… get this thing ready.”

“And what ‘thing’ is that?” she asked.

An unnatural hiss came from down the line, though one that clearly didn’t originate from the throat of Johansen. “Gao knows what I’m doing. If he thinks you need to know, he’ll tell you.”

Shui’s eye twitched.

If Gao was so important, why wasn’t he the one out here negotiating with the genocidal fanatic?

It was a thought that was beneath her – as she already knew why that wasn’t the case – but she had it all the same. Not least of all because she knew the man himself was also listening into this conversation, yet made no move to dispel her ignorance.

She grit her teeth, before smoothing her features and turning back to the Inquisitor. “An interesting proposal, High Inquisitor. One that, after a moment’s thought, I have decided is ultimately beyond me to answer. A ceasefire or continuation of hostilities was more within my expectations of this meeting. To that end, I shall dispatch a messenger at once to inform my lord of your terms. Though as you might imagine, this will take a few days, even with a cultivator’s speed, reaching Ten Huo from here…”

“I hardly think that necessary,” Shi interrupted, her red robes fluttering in the wind. “Not when you can tell him here and now.”

Shui stilled. “I know not what you mean?”

“Those devices. at your throat. And in your ear.” The woman cocked her head. “At first I thought the former a scar and the latter a piece of jewelry. But while the former is in keeping with my experiences of you thus far, the latter was far outside my expectations of the… rustic persona you have created.”

Shui resisted the urge to snarl. She’d just ‘politely’ been called a bumpkin.

“Indeed, I might not have noticed it if it weren’t for those additions striking me as odd. The slight flutter of your throat from behind. Or the way your body moved as if you were listening to the voice of another.”

Internally, Shui swore.

“Tell me, Is that a technique of his, or another of his devices? Because I must say, the more I see of them, the more of an idea I get of how your lord operates. It makes me wonder if it was perhaps a device that slew the Red Death in turn. If it was, I would be most curious to see it.”

“I know not what you-”

“Please,” the Inquisitor’s words held all the sharpness of a blade. “Do not attempt to deceive me with falsehoods. Neither of us has the time. Each moment is precious, and my mother’s mercy is not without limit. More to the point, my attention is needed elsewhere. I would have your lord’s answer. Here and now.”

“You do not know that my lord is listening. Even if my scar and earring were some manner of… mystic device, it might be possible I am speaking to another man in town, arranging for a messenger.”

“But you are not.” Shi shook her head. “And even if you were, you need not bother dispatching a messenger. Either he is in the town and a messenger is redundant, or he is not and I can instead convey the message to him myself – with the added emphasis provided by burning this rebellious structure and all within it to ash.”

Shui frowned. “You would increase the chances of all out war between us because you are impatient? On a hunch? Because my throat twitched a little?”

Shi laughed. “From where I am sitting, the burning of a fortress would decrease the chances of an all-out war between us and your lord. I have oft found that relying on a man’s fear is a surer bet than his wroth.” She paused. “And yes. Yes I would.”

The pig-kin did not doubt that.

For just a moment, she wondered if they might have been better served playing along with the Empire until they’d built up more strength in secret.

Of course, after a moment’s thought she realized it was a moot point. The cat was out of the bag when the Red Death died. The Empire wouldn’t have failed to notice it and would have wondered why.

And while the Rooster might have claimed credit for the kill, it would have been suspicious at best.

The clash of two Divinities was not subtle. Even months after the monster’s death, the residual… not-quite ki from his death throes floated about the province like a cloud on the wind. Yet not a hint of Yating’s killing intent was mingled in with it.

Never mind the Empress’s orders to march what was left of Ten Huo’s power up toward the breach, leaving the city defenseless, Shui thought.

That order had tested the very limits of Imperial authority… and found it wanting.

…Though only because another option revealed itself.

Two rebellious Divinities. One domestic. One foreign.

Without them… Shui didn’t think she’d have led her city down this path. Better to die fighting the Empire’s enemies than at its hands.

“I…”

“Alright, you caught me.” Johansen’s voice issued forth from the crawler beneath her. “I’ve been listening.”

The Inquisitor’s two companions twitched at the sudden voice coming from the great beast, but the woman herself simply raised an eyebrow.

“Lord Johansen, this one assumes that you are not actually within the confines of this beast? Rather, as I suspected, you have the means to convey people’s voices across a great distance?”

“…You are a smart one. That’s annoying.”

The red robed woman smirked. “I apologize, though if you would only bow your head to the rightful ruler of this land, I would not be averse to allowing you the use of that intelligence. Once this… unpleasantness has been forgotten.”

Johansen laughed, and he sounded honest. “Tempting. Very tempting.”

Shi smiled eagerly and Shui could almost see gonnes dancing behind the woman’s eyes.

“Unfortunately, I’ve become rather attached to being my own boss,” Johansen said without even a hint of tact.

The smile crumbled.

“With that said, you weren’t wrong when you mention time being precious. After all, while we’re both here at each other’s throats, the Great Enemy swells ever further in power. And they’re a threat to us both.”

The Inquisitor nodded cautiously.

“So neither of us can really afford to just… tear into each other. I mean, I’m an optimistic guy, but I don’t think I can take the Empire if you really came at me.”

“Just so.”

“With that said, I’m pretty sure I could bloody your nose. Significantly.”

Shi laughed. “The great one was not wrong when he called himself optimistic. Should the Empire wish it, your city would be little more than ash and glass within the month.”

“I imagine the Instinctive Horde and the Red Death thought much the same. And I’ve only gotten stronger since that little showdown.” Shui enjoyed the way Shi stilled as Johansen continued. “Tell me, how many Divinities can the Empire spare right now? How many millions?”

Shi said nothing.

“You’ve got Yating hanging around, so I suppose that’s one. Now you just need an army or two. And they’d need to be bigger than the last one that came round here. A lot bigger. I’d say at least three million. And I’d throw in an extra two Divinities to be sure of the result. Because I bet it’d suck if you tried to retake the Breach from your Arch-traitor, only to find you’re a god or two short.”

Shi stayed silent for a long moment.

“What do you propose?”

She could almost hear Johansen smile.

“A means to hash this out while conserving our strength. So, three days, three duels. You win even one and the province is yours.”