It was all too convenient for Strong River to find such an unlikely ally at this exact juncture. Even Ebon Dirge, who had pulled on the strings to make it all happen, was somewhat surprised by the ease at which the elder had danced to his tune.

In the overall picture of things, the ancient murderer still wanted to speed up River's departure from the Flowing Water clan. The increasing madness of Elder Wave was the primary thrust of his plan, but not the sole one. Since Dirge was bound to be spending a great deal of time as a spirit body, he decided to branch out in his experiments in manipulating the thoughts and actions of others around the young man.

The fundamentals of honing emotions and arranging mindsets remained in place: the dark spirit could amplify or dampen existing thoughts and feelings in a person, and he could even tamper with their memories, but he could not create something from where there was nothing. This was true even were he recovered enough to deploy his own Path of Sin, let alone these lesser arts.

Elder Cloud did have the core of self-loathing that he exposed to River as well as the certainty about his own mortality and a sense of fatalism around the clan's fortunes. The man had spent his entire life dedicated to fighting for the clan only to look around and see corruption. What the old man had not expressed to River was that his current plan was also a matter of spite.

Elder Cloud and the current clan chief were contemporaneous cultivators. The latter had been given a more comfortable path as a youth, being fed the resources of the clan and groomed for the leadership. Cloud had to fight for his resources and had sustained several internal injuries throughout his career. There was a thread of resentment buried in all this, the thoughts that had he received the same opportunities as the chief, he too would have transcended the Human Realm and stepped into the exalted sphere of those who could tap the magic of essence.

Bridging that gulf was a fundamental difference. Even the lowliest cultivator who obtained an Earth Grade physique and opened any of his meridians would experience a lifespan double that of a Human Realm warrior. Looking back and seeing that all his hardships had earned longer life and youth for his lifelong rival while his own span was to end soon, how could the old man not have some hatred, some willingness to engage in a little bit of destruction?

River was an excellent conduit for this retaliation. The boy shared many of the same resentments and, had his fate gone differently, he would have ended up far worse than Cloud. But the boy needed to be pushed harder if he was to surpass the elders and become eligible to tear down the chief himself. This aligned with Dirge's own purposes.

This situation was where the implantation of false memories was also useful. Elder Cloud's mysterious map was nothing more than the standard map of the nearby vicinity, but Dirge fed Cloud a memory based on the knowledge of a very specific encampment that one elder would visit in the night. When the boy received the map, there would be nothing special about it, of course, but since boy was an illiterate, he would rely on Dirge to interpret and supply the details. The boy planned and did many things without deep consultation, but the assassin's spirit had deliberately nurtured the need for him to always consult him when it came to navigation.

Letting the boy and the elder continue their now-silent walk, the kindling well stacked there, Dirge turned his attention elsewhere to fan the flames.

Somewhere else in the clan compound, Elder Wave was beside himself in a full wash of intense emotions. His beloved nephew, the instrument he was shaping to seize control of the clan one day if he could not manage it, had returned to him from his hunting trip as a dried-out torn-apart corpse in a wooden box. The one person in the clan who was present when this happened was none other than the one person he so wanted to wring out in that very moment: Strong River.

Elder Wave was also the only person, unbeknownst to River, that could string together the events. Wave had seen the corpses of that very first pair of thugs that River had drained out. Now, Wave's own nephew had returned from the hunt as a corpse in much the same condition.

Emotions, thoughts, calculations, options all whirled in the man's mind. Lacking a proper heir, he could only rely on himself. Relying on himself, he needed something to make his breakthrough possible. Requiring that catalyst, he understood it was present in the form of whatever River had acquired. But River was defended by one elder and temporarily under the protection of the one man in the entire clan outside the chief that Wave could not cross: Elder Cloud.

He could expose the matter of the corpses to the clan, but that was certain to draw the chief's attention. The chief, although at a higher level, was nonetheless obsessed with his own bottleneck, and would snatch the opportunity. Wave would get his vengeance, but he would only widen the gap between himself and the chief.

He couldn't sit on this for very long either. The other elders already were gaining the same kinds of suspicions that Wave himself held about the boy, and any of them could try and act, creating a stronger rival. He could not ally with any of them, not even Pearl, on this one.

This left Elder Wave with a single direction in which to turn: his hidden allies in the Dragon's Den. While the loss of the men was an insignificant matter to an organization like theirs, they would still have be interested in repaying the debt if they knew the details. An organization like the Dragon's Den wouldn't last very long if it neglected such things.

Wave could obscure the matter of the boy's advancement while still implicating him and invite his direct allies to intervene. Then it would become a matter of separating the boy from the clan and dealing with him before anybody else noticed. If the child went missing, well, he was of a surly nature, his disappearance could no doubt be written off as him becoming a runaway.

His thoughts guided in this direction by the ghost of a divine assassin, Elder Wave dismissed his servants for the night and prepared to head out to his rendezvous point with his bandit contacts.

That nudge given, Dirge returned his attention to the boy. He and Elder Cloud had just made their way back inside the clan's compound and were entering the old warrior's house now. Touching on River's thoughts, the old murderer could tell the boy remained disturbed to a degree by the elder's revelations, even as excitement bubbled inside him about obtaining a useful ally.

Dirge had noticed a fatal flaw in the boy's way of thinking: he had an extreme mean streak and a very large dose of paranoia, but that paranoia only extended so far as the boy was not getting his own way. River was too accepting of good fortune and let down his guard whenever it appeared to be rearing its head.

The ghostly assassin waited for River to get situated with Elder Cloud, obtaining the map and the prepared explanation about the hill encampment. The boy put the puzzle pieces together and acquired that particular burning fervor that arose whenever the Dragon's Den was mentioned. That was always another reliable fulcrum for pushing the boy around.

After the elder departed, River immediately donned the dark clothing the old man had provided him with. He left the map behind, though.

"Mister Black?"

"Yes, River?" Dirge knew what the boy would angle for next, but one had to dance the dance.

"Do you have a read on that place Cloud was talking about?"

"Oh-hoh," Dirge feigned jollity, "of course, young man. And I have even spotted their very special guest right now departing the clan to make his visit."

"You think you could lead me there, then?"

"Mister Black, grand navigator of heroes!" Dirge feigned a sigh and a grumble -- he had long since perfected this kind of mock indignity even as it reinforced his role -- and then feigned surrender. "Of course, my young friend. I should start charging you for this, you know."

"Where would you keep the money?" The boy could be a smartass sometimes.

"It's a figure of speech, River. I can't have you taking me for granted, after all."

"Of course, Mister Black. Of course."

As the young man and his ghostly mentor left Elder Cloud's house and departed into the night, Dirge could not help but wonder if the boy even recalled the price to which he had agreed upon at their very first meeting. The price which he would one day pay.