Unintended Cultivator
Book 11: Chapter 33: It’s A Trap

It proved much more annoyingly difficult to find a private place to have that conversation than Sen initially believed it would. People kept running up to them with messages for him or for the general. A situation the general seemed to take for granted, but one that Sen hadn’t completely come to terms with yet. That half hour of undisturbed time up on the wall started looking increasingly miraculous to him. Sen finally lost patience, lifted himself and the general on a qi platform, and flew them to the site of a destroyed building. With an impatient burst of qi, he pulverized the rubble and created a small galehouse. Leading the general inside, Sen erected a wind qi barrier around the building that would distort all sound inside and prevent any but another nascent soul cultivator from entering. Another flick of his hand sent small fireballs to hover near the ceiling, which gave the room a warm glow.

“Now,” said Sen, summoning two chairs from a storage ring, “tell me about this plot of Kang’s.”

The general seemed a little startled by Sen’s offhand display of power but recovered after a moment and took his seat.

“I suppose it does require some explanation,” said the general.

Sen had the feeling the general was trying to gather his thoughts, so he waited.

“Yesterday evening, one of Kang’s commanders came to me. A man named Sun Junfeng.”

Sen tried to put a face to the name. His memory had grown increasingly powerful over his years as a cultivator, even if it did still sometimes fail due to his own disregard of something. In this case, however, there wasn’t so much as a glimmer of recognition in his mind. He didn’t believe he’d ever heard the name before that moment. If he’d met the man, it had been without the benefit of an introduction. Avoiding a lengthy discussion with one of Kang’s cronies was something that Sen would normally have considered a good outcome. His own disdain for Kang and anyone associated with the man was now coming back to bite him.

He had no impression of Sun Junfeng, good or bad. That made it very difficult to gauge anything the man had said to General Mo. While Sen largely trusted Mo, he couldn’t forget that the general had his own very strong opinions about Kang. Mo was likely to believe anything bad that someone said about Kang, with or without proof. Not that Sen imagined that there would be anything as substantial as proof in a case like this. Only an idiot would plan a coup or mass defection and then leave suspicious letters and damning orders lying around to be found by someone with a hint of loyalty.

“What did this Sun Junfeng tell you?” asked Sen.

“He told me that he overheard Kang talking with some of his closest commanders. They were discussing whether there were any weaknesses inside the city they could exploit to seize the palace. Barring that, they were discussing where they might go if they simply fled the city with their forces.”

Sen frowned at that. What he was hearing wasn’t…It wasn’t rational. Even if, by some unforeseen miracle, they did manage to capture the palace, he could simply take it back from them. It wouldn’t be some massive undertaking requiring the rest of the army or calling in cultivators from friendly sects. He could do it by himself. He wouldn’t even need to do it himself. Any core cultivator could do it and probably leave no survivors. Hells, he’d give even odds to a properly trained foundation formation cultivator. Kang had to know that. Pride or not, all of the generals had to have seen cultivators in action. They must know that it would be utter folly to challenge him for the rule of the kingdom.

The prospect of Kang leading part of the army away was equally ridiculous. His own experience with armies was limited, but he did know about their travel speeds. He’d also been learning. An individual could slip away unnoticed into the night. Sen had done things like that himself. So, it wasn’t a challenge to his imagination to see a soldier with second thoughts pull it off. But thousands of men and women carrying everything they needed just to survive a few weeks could not. There was no chance of doing that unnoticed.

Sen wondered if Kang was relying on some kind of personal confrontation. Did the general imagine he’d make an impassioned speech and convince all those soldiers to throw away their lives on a doomed assault against Sen? Even if Kang’s closest staff and advisors might have been willing to do that, it seemed doubtful that the average soldiers would share that resolve. Many, if not most, of those soldiers also had family in the city. He struggled to imagine more than a handful being willing to abandon their parents, siblings, spouses, and children to follow Kang to a nebulous somewhere. Even if Kang had spun a story about a place of safety, there was still the problem that most people wouldn’t leave behind their families to die.

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It was possible that he was underestimating the soldiers’ loyalty to Kang and the other generals. They might have done things he didn’t know about to make the people under their command love them. Still, he struggled to imagine what they could possibly have done that would bond those soldiers to them that tightly. He could maybe see it if the generals had led them all to some seemingly impossible victory in war. However, there hadn’t been such a war for the generals to distinguish themselves that way in decades. That wasn’t even accounting for recent events.

After directly witnessing or hearing about what Sen had done to the spirit beasts, it seemed even more suspect that the soldiers would take up arms against him. The near-certainty of wholesale destruction would have been obvious to a farmer, let alone people schooled in violence. No, thought Sen. None of this makes sense. There has to be something else at play here. Sen was also startled that Mo had seemed to take all of this at face value. Was the man’s hatred for Kang truly so deep that he’d overlook the obvious?

Sen had to concede that it might well be. He’d been blinded by anger often enough to know that it could lead a person down a wrong path without much trouble. Yet, if Kang was playing some game here, Sen didn’t understand it. Did Kang know Mo well enough to be able to anticipate that he’d bring unfounded rumors to Sen’s attention? If he did, then sending one of his underlings with a ridiculous story about a coup would probably get the job done. But to what end? Was Kang aiming to make Mo look stupid and undermine Sen’s trust in the man’s judgment? That might be enough to make him a little skeptical of things Mo said about Kang. It wouldn’t be sufficient to make him lose trust entirely in the otherwise steady leader.

As Sen turned the problem over in his head, he realized that he didn’t know enough to understand the proper way to deal with the situation. He did, however, want to distance General Mo from whatever happened next. Whatever was going on, it seemed that Kang intended for Mo to be the face of it. He put on a thoughtful expression and nodded a few times, as though he was making decisions of great import. Maybe, I am, he thought.

“Thank you, General Mo. Leave this matter in my hands. I will see that it’s dealt with appropriately.”

General Mo gave Sen a considering look before he simply nodded and stood.

“As you will it, Lord Lu,” said the general with a bow.

Sen dispersed the wind qi barrier for long enough that Mo could leave before he put it back up again. Then, he directed an impatient look to one of the corners.

“So, what do you think of all this?”

There was a moment of silence before Misty Peak stepped through an illusion and directed an irritated look at him.

“How long did you know I was there?” she asked.

“Ever since you started following me around everywhere. So, a few weeks, I guess.”

“You knew this whole time?”

Sen rolled his eyes and said, “I grew up with a ghost panther as my best friend. Of course, I knew.”

Sen was overstating things. He wasn’t relying on some skill he’d picked up in his youth. His senses were just so much sharper that he’d felt something displacing air near him for a while. It hadn’t taken him very long to figure it out. Not that he planned to tell the fox-woman about that. If he did, she might figure out a way to prevent him from noticing.

“Why didn’t you just say something?”

“I didn’t see the need. You weren’t too much of a nuisance, and it’s always helpful to have an ally nearby. But now I need someone else’s input, and you’re conveniently here already.”

Misty Peak tried to glare holes through him before she huffed out an irritated breath.

“Well, it’s a trap. A pretty obvious one, at that.”

“Agreed,” said Sen.

“Isn’t that Mo guy supposed to be a general? Shouldn’t he have seen through that much of it?”

“Probably. There’s bad blood there. I don’t know what it is, but I think that Mo would outright murder Kang if he thought he could get away with it without consequence. I doubt he’s seeing the situation clearly. Do you have any thoughts on what the trap is, though?”

Misty Peak shook her head.

“I know it’s there, but not what it is. Since we’re both in the dark, it must be something specific to this kingdom. Maybe some mortal law that neither of us would know or care about? Whatever Kang is up to, I haven’t been here long enough to be able to pick apart those kinds of moves. Whatever way this plays out, though, you know it’s going to be trouble.”

“For who, though? Trouble for Mo? Me? The kingdom?”

“All three if things go the way they usually do for you.”

“I need you to do something for me,” said Sen.

“It’s about time,” said Misty Peak, smiling brightly.

“Not that,” said Sen, intentionally ignoring Lo Meifeng’s earlier advice to seduce the nine-tail fox.

“It’s not nice to get a woman worked up and not follow through.”

“That’s what you get for not letting me finish talking,” said Sen with a smirk.

“Are you sure you’re not really a fox?” asked Misty Peak. “Because you talk a lot like a fox.”

“I’m quite certain.”

“Fine. What do you need me to—” she started before she groaned. “You want me to go spy on Kang? He’s ugly. I don’t want to have to look at him all day.”

“Well, I didn’t say you had to do it. But someone needs to do it. On the off chance that he might actually be plotting some doomed coup or to steal part of the army, I’d like to know about it ahead of time.”

“Well, I do have a couple of foxes in the army camp. They haven’t reported hearing anything like that, but I didn’t have them watching Kang’s private meetings either. I’ll have one of them take a closer look.”

“Thank you. Your services are, as always, appreciated.”

“What will you do about this in the meantime?” asked the fox-woman.

“I’ll talk to someone who is well-versed in local laws and politics. If anyone can shed light on this, it’s Jing.”