Having cleared an eternity's worth of reports, Tsea-gong finally consulted in private with his Arch-tenant over the finances. Whilst never pleasing, the man had at least grasped how best to deliver bad news in a manner Tsea-gong could deal with. Options, and most of those options only put in place to reveal there was always something worse to choose from.

Ivory, armour, bone, hide, parchment, Ki meats and a meagre trickle of basic rune stones. All had were doing well in sales, especially the rune stones, but the best sales as always came from the Alchemical resources of slain Beasts. The problem was they weren’t being harvested fast enough and where quotas were met, quality was being called into question. Tsea-gong was banking on far higher sales for a speedy recovery of the Watch.

“You summoned me?”

“Prime Elder Jee, yes I did.” Tsea-gong looked up from the inventory figures with a frown.

“Some time ago actually. It seems the meal I intended for us to share has already been taken away. I hope you can understand that I too am pressed for time. I need you to stop what you’re doing and head over to the PujuKan carving station.”

The Prime Elder grimaced in distaste.

“My delay is in part, thanks to the High Sect coming through on their promise and sparing as many healing potions as they could. I have just overseen and rationed out all there was to be had. Why are you having a Prime Elder visit the lowest and filthiest of our servants? Do you realise the efforts I will have to go through to decontaminate before returning to my duties? What of the lives of…”

“You won’t be returning to your duties.” The Shogun interrupted.

If he let this old crone get her way in a single conversation, she would run roughshod all over him.

“I beg your pardon?” Jee coiled like a snake ready to strike. “Do not think I am as easily replaced as Choa-peng?” She scoffed.

“If he is replaced it is a matter of bickering Elders too set in their ways to relinquish Standing that has no place in the Watch. I hold only to rank and have not demoted the man. And you Doyen, are the finest of all our Medics and the Watch is lucky to have you.”

“Really Tsea-gong, Flattery? Do you intend to make all the old women blush as you throw them around camp like washerwomen?”

“Old Witch more like it.”

Tsea-gong kept his thoughts to himself. Time was short and he intended on helping personally this night should any abominations arise early. His men needed to see him.

“Necessity demands this of me, Prime Elder Jee. Tonight is our third and final night to harvest all we can of alchemical reagents, lest they expire or succumb to Ki taint.”

“There is still a full day before the Red Wave arrives Tsea-gong and its four days before the potency of reagents begins to significantly wane. So long as the corpses have been drained properly.”

“That they have Doyen, but we need that day to sell them. Our customers require that window to process them for themselves.”

“And your men need me tending to their injuries far more than their purses, Tsea-gong.”

The Salamander put his fist through the table in a sudden burst of rage. “You will do as you are told! I am sick to death of you Prime Elders reaching above your stations. I don’t care what opinions you have of yourselves, you are entitled to what I allow and nothing more!”

The Arch-tenant picked himself up off the floor and stood off to the side. The confusion on the man's face brought Tsea-gong to instant regret. He had only meant to slam his fist on the table, not shatter it and have the Tenant fall over in fright.

Shockingly, Prime Elder Doyen suddenly reached over the broken table and gripped his face towards hers. Delving into his eyes with a surgeon’s precision.

Tsea-gong recoiled at the audacity of the old hag, his outrage evident. However, his tongue stilled as he realised his freedom had done nothing to stop her surgeon's gaze. At a quick glance at the Arch-Tenant, he realised he was watching her and not his Shogun. So too were his Preafects slow to react.

“I sense no corruption in you Shogun. Infact I would say your body and meridians bear a remarkable similarity to the rejuvenation of a true Noble I once examined. And that was mere days after she Ascended the final rank.”

Tsea-gong almost cursed himself. Ofcourse she knew about his situation. She would have been the first person the Arch-tenant ran to for help. The Prime Elder of the Healers knew it all.

Of everything he had been catching up on, this was the one subject he had pointedly avoided. By the Fourth hell, she probably knew more about it than him.

“Do not presume my wrath unjust, or my patience for wilful disobedience eternal, Prime Elder. My Body and Spirit are quite fine.”

“Indeed they are, but the third realm of Man is the Soul, Tsea-gong and I can only conclude that this rise in wrath against all your Council is in a soul afflicted. What troubles you, Shogun? What did you see?”

Tsea-gong shivered, then angrily summoned the servants to clear this mess and bring in a replacement table. This was not the time to deal with intoxicated visions. First, he needed his house in order.

“What more can you do for our injured, now that you have administered the healing potions? Are your Disciples incapable of handling a bad reaction or poor growth recovery? Do you think I would ask this of a Prime Elder if it were not essential?”

“As the Prime Elder of the Healers, my first priority is to the wounded, Shogun.”

“That Doyen is where you are wrong. Your first priority is to your Shogun.”

Prime Elder Jee stared at the Shogun with icy neutrality. The man had become more difficult to manage with each passing victory. Ironically far more so now when he should need her most.

“I recognise that look, Doyen. Know that I am a different man from the young Cultivator who was made Shogun. My Primes have had much time to acquire freedoms and personal ambitions of their own. I am not robbing you of them, yet, merely reminding you of the truth. You will do as I command when I command and anything else you desire, comes second to my Will.”

“Now, you need not commit to the harvesting yourself. But I absolutely need you to share your best methods for extraction with our pujuKan butchers. That they harvest expediently and effectively.”

“There are also some new creatures set aside that I want you to fully dissect and report on. It would stand to reason that the Taker would leave her boons in the dead. Take some of your students who can draw pictures and bring copies of anything you find of interest.”

“Pictures are going to be the least bit of help to a Butchers station or your Tenants. They need the correct tools for proper harvesting of mutagens and Ki formations, without them the reagents will always be poorly. I would have imagined you were aware of this after the fortune you spent on the Rune Artisans tools.”

The Salamander exhaled gently, beseeching the Giver to grant him strength. Setting up that Rune Artisan had been an absolute headache.

Who had ever heard of diamond-tipped tools? That damned rock could somehow be just as expensive as the finished product itself.

The tools had done nothing to increase what were already optimal sales. It was student recruitment on the trade he needed.

Tsea-gong had already made public that any wishing to study under the Watch’s solitary Rune Artisan, would receive five times the pay an ordinary soldier was offered. And this would only increase with experience. The problem was it was just as dangerous a profession as soldiering, lacking all of the glory.

To have a Master missing three fingers and no eyebrows was an eye raiser itself. No one wanted their fingers blown off carving a Beast Core. It was dangerous enough carving a single Rune for the Grenades and assessing their metal pins for activation.

Their Rune Artisan had been quite adamant these were the easiest and shortest of runes to carve. Anything else required three or more runes engraved in perfect synchronicity.

“We do as we must, Prime Elder Jee. Anything that helps us move forward, but a list of surgical tools sounds as expensive as it does peculiar in the hands of pujuKan. However, if you compile one and leave it on my desk I shall have a look at it. Doyen, you know what I am after.”

“Your insight into anything you could use to enhance or further the Watch’s healing capabilities would be most beneficial.”

“I am a trained Apothecary Tsea-gong, not some child-eating Witch or drug-addled Alchemist. It is bad enough that you send me to the butcher station with the hopes of discovering a recipe for some Elixir. Shall the Heavens open and bestow onto me the insight of crafting a real Pill?”

Tsea-gong rewarded her sarcasm with a deadpanned look of his own.

The Watch did have a Pill. One they had invented themselves and affectionately termed the ‘Salamanders Wrath’. Not a true Pill in the slightest, it was an assortment of stamina and painkiller powder wrapped up in fish gut. The last thing in the world a Cultivator could do with it, was Cultivate.

But as an advertisement for recruitment, it worked wonders. Besides that, the Watch possessed all the recipes there were to be had for fast-acting powders. Which was to say, not much at all. Most livelihoods in Qaelang were based on trade secrets going back generations and wrapped up in powerful families.

“Very well, my Shogun. I shall do this, although I make it known I am not all pleased by it. By the time I am done with them, the Watch may refer to the pujuKan as Artisans in their own right.

Tsea-gong scoffed.

“You would become as popular as Won-Shik’s dog.”

“I do hope you are not referring to the Grand Master who delivered his entire stock of healing potions to save the lives of thousands of our warriors?”

“I know of no such Grand Master to do such a thing and nor do you, Prime Elder. I remind you only the Noble Houses are licensed to trade in Elixirs.”

“But if there were such an individual, I would imagine his payment to be sufficient enough to shake the Heavens. To say nothing of the staggering amounts of labour required just to harvest the obscene amount of resources sufficient to satiate the appetites of an Ancient Sect.”

The Prime Elder of the Healers sniffed with an air of disapproval.

“Clearly there is a lack of gratitude at all levels of Qaelang.”

“Gratitude is reserved for going beyond one’s duty, Prime Elder Jee. Do this for me without complaint, that I might be gratuitous and not some trusting fool.”

Just then there was a disturbance at the entrance of the tent as his guards heralded the return of Bo and Cai.

“Finally!” Tsea-gongs relief was evident as his Preafects entered after with a large sack over their shoulders. “Doyen you may go.”

“Doyen we were looking for you!” Cai exclaimed as he sauntered in.

Worrying Tsea-gong could smell the spilt blood immediately as well as an unholy stink coming from the bag that was spilt out on the floor ungraciously.

The broken creature that tumbled out had his hands bound in thick cords of Hippus hide, the only item upon him not stained with filth. Both eyes were freshly swollen shut and his lip so savagely split that only the most expensive of healing balms would cover up the scar that formed.

As his Preafects placed the prisoner on his knees before the Shogun, Tsea-gong noted the young man was a mixture of caked blood and filth from his face down. His shirt tattered and frayed from where a whip had clearly bitten into him and the vacant stare upon his face, no different from corpses whose eyes had not shut.

The young man's complete lack of interest with his situation, evident. There was nothing left of the man who had saved his Shogun.

“This is the Seedling? What happened!?” Tsea-gong barked at his Diaymo’s. “Why were you looking for Prime Elder Jee?”

“We found him like this Big Brother,” Cai threw his hands up defensively. “Apparently our hero here has no respect whatsoever for his Seniors. But that seemed a recurring theme as his guards also appeared to lack civility needed when questioned by Bo.”

Tsea-gong gave them both an unimpressed look, scowling at Bo as his Preafects fell back.

“Did you kill them, Bo?”

“Ofcourse not Big brother, you wound me. By now everyone has heard your decree. The final say in life and death is yours alone.”

“Then why are two of my Preafects covered in blood?”

“Ah, well, see. That’s why we were looking for Jee,” Bo stammered for words.

“The guards were overcome with a serious bout of suicidal arrogance and…” Bo indicated the two bloody Preafects. “They carried them on our way to healers. We felt it vital your Word should stand unimpeded.”

Tsea-gong sighed heavily, pinching the brow of his nose.

“The healers promised they’d make a full recovery,” Bo added cheerfully.

“After you threatened them,” muttered Cai. “Doyen, if you are finished here, we really hope you could make your way back over as soon as possible.”

Bo and Cai exchanged confused looks as the Doyen clearly gave Tsea-gong a look of pure smugness. The Shogun in turn fixed them both with a death stare.

“You may go, Doyen. But you have only as long in the medical tent as it takes for you to assemble a group of your Disciples in the task I have set you. Thank you.”

The Prime Elder clicked her tongue in irritation bowing to leave. He knew she wouldn’t abandon a patient to die just to spite him, but he was still irritated with his Daimyo’s for putting him in a situation where he might lose face.

Tsea-gong felt his skin suddenly tingle in alarm as the Tent flap opened in Jee’s departure. Outside, through the gap he spied a large group of monks with two Abbots waiting amongst them. Their eyes locked.

“Aw Shi-bal,” Bo cursed under his breath. “I’m sorry big brother, we tried to lose them.”

Tsea-gong could have cursed the gods himself.

Merciful Giver, this is not the strength I requested.