The chamber was silent save for the faint hum of Qi. Once, it might have been a great hall – banners, tables, guards. Now, only the marks of neglect remained. The walls were pitted, half-collapsed in places, but the roof still held, and that was all Gao Leng required.

  He sat cross-legged in the centre of the room, back straight, eyes closed. Across from him, the bandit – one of the dozens he had ‘seeded’ months ago – twitched silently on the cold stone. His body spasmed in a steady, agonising rhythm, eyes rolling back to show the whites. He made no sound. Gao Leng had crushed the man’s vocal chords with his Qi before the process began. The screaming was distracting.

  He focused, drawing the last threads of his invested Qi from the mortal. It felt raw, tainted. It always did. The energy gathered by a lesser vessel was never pure, always muddied by the filth of a mortal soul. But it was power, and that was all that mattered.

  This particular harvest was a good one. The man had lasted almost a full year before his body began to break down, the foreign Qi finally overwhelming the subject’s simple meridians. A full year of passively gathering ambient Qi, converting it, strengthening it. His initial investment, returned with interest.

  Slowly, deliberately, he drew it into himself, directing it toward his core.

  The core pulsed once, faintly unstable, and Gao Leng grimaced. His master’s handiwork still resisted him after all these years. It had been a marvel of artifice – a core built rather than formed – but no creation was perfect. It cracked under strain. It leaked when forced too far. The energy he absorbed filled the fractures, settling them, reinforcing what should never have existed.

  One day, it would be stable. One day, it would be his own in truth.

  The last wisp of energy left the bandit. The body went still, a dry, empty husk. Useless. Gao Leng opened his eyes and ignored it, already calculating his next move. His core felt… better. More stable. The ache had subsided, replaced by a feeling of fullness – but it was a feeling that would soon subside, he knew, to be replaced with an endless hunger until he could harvest once more.

  He rose, brushing dust from his sleeve, and walked toward the cracked window at the far end of the hall. The ruined fortress sprawled beneath him, a maze of broken courtyards and half-rebuilt walls. Below, his bandits moved – men and women strengthened by his investment, patrolling like loyal hounds.

  An ocean of Qi, just waiting to be harvested.

  Alas, his body could only handle so much at once. Tainted by mortality as each harvest was, he needed time to refine the energy he collected, smooth out the inconsistencies created by the substandard meridians the bandits used to gather his energy.

  His gaze lingered on them, thoughtful.

  The sects called him a monster, but how many spirit beasts had they slaughtered this year? How many cores had they ripped out to fuel their own advancement, how many rare plants stripped of their essence and spiritual roots turned into elixers? They saw a beast, felt nothing, and called it ‘righteous gathering.’ He saw a mortal – a creature of base, predictable urges – and did the same. Where was the distinction?

  In truth, humans were a far better resource. They were plentiful. They bred faster than any spirit beast. They were predictable. And they were, in his experience, far more cruel.

  He turned the thought over in his mind as he looked down at his hand. Traces of Qi still flickered faintly across his skin, settling back into place. The bandits, the fortress, all of it — a means to an end. Power should not be wasted, and mortals had more of it than they ever realised. He was doing them a favour, really. Giving them purpose.

  He smiled faintly at the thought.

  Once, long ago, he might have cared about the difference. Back when caring still meant anything. But he’d learned the truth early – that compassion was just another way to chain oneself to weakness. He still remembered the smell of burning wood, the sound of screaming, the sight of blood pooling in dirt. His mother’s hand, reaching. The laughter of the men who’d done it.

  And later, the silence that followed when he returned.

  Revenge had been simple. Beautiful, almost.

  He had never felt more alive than in that moment, standing over the ashes. That was the day he understood what power truly was – not righteousness, not duty, but control.

  Control over who lived. Who died. Who mattered.

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  The sound of a boot scraping on loose stone broke his reverie. He didn’t bother looking up – the faint, sour scent of her Qi, tinged with impatience and something like spoiled flowers identified his visitor well enough.

  “I believe I told you not to disturb me,” he stated.

  “I have important news,” a woman’s voice replied. “And don’t act like I have to follow your orders.”

  Well then, he thought to himself, as a flicker of anticipation flowed through him. It appears I need to remind dear Hui of her place. How… unfortunate.

  He turned to face her slowly, making sure that his disinterest was clear in the motion. “Oh?” he said softly, letting the tainted power of his core press outward, just a little. The air in the room thickened, became heavy, hard to breathe. “Should I take that to mean you no longer wish to obey the Master’s commands?”

  Hui’s face paled, the sour note in her Qi flickering with genuine fear before she got it under control. She hated the Master. They both did. But Gao Leng was his favourite, his attack dog. “Of course not,” she said, her voice stiff. “But this news is… significant. It affects the entire operation. It affects your operation.”

  Gao Leng let the pressure recede, just slightly. Better to wait until her guard was down for a more… direct reminder of their respective places. “Speak, then. And it had better be worth my time.”

  “It’s Qinghe,” she said, her frustration clearly mounting as her fear gave way to anger. “The city is a disaster. There was a fight – a big one. Reports are scattered, but it sounds like a Nascent Soul cultivator showed up and detonated their core.”

  Gao Leng’s expression didn’t flicker, but he turned fully towards her. A Nascent Soul? Here? That was not part of any calculation. “A core detonation? The whole city?”

  “Half of it, at least,” Hui said, her voice tight with suppressed rage. “The lower city, the docks… they’re gone. Just a crater. Four, maybe five Elders from the Ironwood Pavilion and Thousand Petal Grove are confirmed dead. The Azure Sky Sect’s pet Inner Disciple and that woman who runs the city are missing, presumed dead.”

  She took a step closer, her fists clenching. “Don’t you see what this means?” she snapped. “The port is gone! Our primary route for moving stock to the inner provinces is gone! How are we supposed to meet the Master’s quotas if we can’t ship the product? My entire operation relies on those routes.”

  Gao Leng was silent for a long moment. That… was admittedly a problem. To make matters worse, the Dead River Gang he’d enthralled to use as a disposable distraction had been wiped out before he could actually get any use out of them – and, more importantly, had been wiped out without any advance warning from the Master. A sign that the man was slipping, or was this a deliberate move?

  It was incredibly frustrating that he couldn’t be sure which it was.

  Which, actually, gave him an idea.

  “The matter in Qinghe is a minor nuisance,” he said calmly. “My contacts in the Secrts confirmed that they were planning a ‘hunt’ for us – clearly, you haven’t been as discreet as promised.” No need to tell her it was his own group that had been found. “Fortunately for you, the Master saw fit to arrange a gift for us. The sects are not looking for us. They are looking for a ghost. They will be so busy tearing each other apart over what happened in Qinghe, so terrified of this new player, that they will have no time to spare for a few missing bandits.”

  A lie, of course. This was a fluke, a chaotic, unexpected event. But Hui didn’t need to know that. She needed to believe in a plan. She needed to believe in the Master’s omnipotence. It was the only thing that kept her in line. He may be stronger than she was, but strength mattered little in the face of treachery or poison.

  Her eyes widened, fear and awe mixing on her face. “The Master… did this? Killed four elders?”

  “A distraction,” Gao Leng said with a shrug, as if dismissing a minor inconvenience. “To ensure our own work could proceed without interruption.”

  “But… without the port, our stock will build up. We have nearly two hundred ready for the next shipment…”

  “Then we will find a new use for them,” Gao Leng said, a thin smile touching his lips. “This chaos is an opportunity. The Sects will be blind. They will be so busy tearing each other apart over the scraps of Qinghe, so terrified of this new player, that they will have no time to spare for us.”

  He turned to face her, his eyes cold and flat. “Your harvest is nearly ready, is it not?”

  “Yes,” she said, hesitant. “But I thought the plan was to wait…”

  “The plan has changed,” he cut her off. “Recall the others. All of them. Tell them to begin the final harvest. Now. We will gather all our strength, all our resources, while the fools are busy chasing ghosts.”

  “All of them?” she whispered, the implications dawning.“They’ll think it’s a trap.”

  “They can think whatever they want. Tell them the Azure Sky has begun to stir again. That will be motivation enough.”

  “And if they don’t come?”

  “Then I’ll assume they no longer wish to be part of this. In which case, they’ll be treated accordingly,” he said, his voice dropping, a predatory hunger entering his tone. “The Master has cleared the board. It is time for us to make our move.”

  Hui held his gaze for a long moment, the last of her defiance crumbling, replaced with ambition. She gave a stiff, formal bow. “It will be done.” She turned and left, her footsteps quick, almost a run.

  GGao Leng watched her go. She was doubtlessly plotting his demise, trying to find a way to use the situation to her advantage. He could hardly blame her for it – he was doing the same thing, after all, just with higher stakes.

  The Master hadn’t warned him about the Dead River Gang. He hadn’t warned him about the Nascent Soul in Qinghe. This meant one of two things: the old man was becoming incompetent, or he was being cut loose. In the end, the distinction didn’t matter. The result was the same. The leash was off.

  He turned back to the window, staring out at the mortals holding a spark of his Qi in the courtyard below. The final harvest. With this much raw power, tainted or not, he wouldn’t just be patching his core anymore. He would have enough to shatter it completely. To burn away his Master’s flawed, artificial creation and forge a new one in its place. A true core, built from the lives of a thousand lesser souls, belonging to him and him alone.