Wen couldn’t help but feel slightly nervous as she followed Master Johansen deeper and deeper into the network of hallways and staircases that existed beneath his compound. A network of hallways and staircases she had been entirely ignorant of.

For while all knew of the Master’s mystical hidden workshop where he birthed the many beasts and tools with which he outfitted his people, she had heard not a single rumor of this strange… catacomb they were now walking through.

It was a little eerie to look upon honestly. Hall after hall of perfectly identical halls illuminated by mystic lights that burned with a light that was far too clean to be any kind of lantern.

The Ox-Kin shuddered at the thought of getting lost down here. Trapped in a maze of identical hallways forever.

Fortunately, they were not without a guide. A helpful spirit occasionally chimed instructions from overhead.

Wen couldn’t help but be suspicious of it though. While she had complete faith in her master’s ability to wrangle beasts and monsters alike to his cause, spirits had a certain… reputation for trickery and illusions.

Almost imperceptibly, she hastened her pace so that she was a little closer to the broad back of her guide.

“Don’t worry,” Master Johansen chimed from ahead, his gait unchanging. “We’re nearly there.”

…Though apparently her actions were not nearly as subtle as she had hoped – or she had simply been fooling herself by thinking that a cultivator as great as Master Johansen wouldn’t be able to notice her slightest movement.

“In future you’ll be using an automated trans-kart for trips like this, so it shouldn’t take too long, but I figured that might be a bit much for your first jaunt down here.”

Wen had no idea what a trans-kart was, but she nodded along anyway. She had not had many dealings with cultivators beyond the time the man across from her literally plucked her from the street, but to hear her fellow can-beast caretakers talk, that was the correct response to any cultivator ‘strangeness.’

Smile and nod, she repeated in her head.

“Alright, we’re here.” The man stopped beside a set of double doors that appeared no different to her than any of the dozen others they had passed on the way here.

She kept her mouth shut though, as with a single gesture against the tablet on the wall, the light above the opening switched from red to green, and the doors opened with a quiet whoosh.

Wen stared.

Not at the doors. As strange as it was, she was familiar with those. She had spent weeks passing through a similar set each morning on her way to work at the cannery. She even had her own talisman for supplicating the spirit guarding those doors.

No, it wasn’t that small show of magic that captured her attention, but the great mass of white and green beyond it.

Plants.

Little more than leafy buds now, but they appeared healthy enough.

When the Hidden Master had proclaimed that he was taking her to oversee a farm, she had been overjoyed. That joy had turned to confusion when, rather than journeying beyond the city walls, they had traveled deep underground.

That joy returned once more as she followed the cultivator – careful not to bang her horns on the doorway as she passed through - into the massive white room. The ceiling above was filled with odd blue lights and the room itself was covered in plants neatly arranged on white racks that stretched from wall to wall and floor to ceiling.

Strangest of all, those plants were being tended to by long spindly white arms that zipped about on wire frames overhead.

The first comparison that leapt to her mind for the strange creatures were spiders, but as she watched them flutter about the plants with quick twitchy movements, she found that bees seemed the more apt comparison.

Neither truly concerned her.

Her work with the great flatulent and wheezy can-beast had inured her to strange new creatures – and no self-respecting country woman would ever shy away from something so small as a mere spider or bee.

That was not to say that she wasn’t cautious. For all that it was a docile and dutiful beast, the canner was a callous and thoughtless thing, perfectly content to snag a finger, clump of hair, tail or even a hand if any worker were so foolish to place such a thing near any of it’s ever-chomping mouths.

As more than one worker had discovered after allowing their attention to waver unduly in the creature’s presence.

Which was why she made sure to keep a weather eye on the chittering insectile creatures as she followed the hidden master along the clearly marked aisles that crisscrossed the room.

“So,” the man said calmly turning to face her. “What’s wrong with all this?”

Wen hesitated. A dozen answers leapt unbidden to her lips, but not one would cross that threshold. As a result, the silence stretched as the hidden master simply watched her.

After a full minute had passed, he sighed.

He sighed. “Listen, I’m trying to be gentle here. From what the foreman has told me of your time in the cannery, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. He said you were a woman who knew when to speak and when to listen.”

Despite herself, Wen swelled with pride. She worked her in her role packaging the leavings of the great can-beast, and it was a joy to see that her efforts had been recognized.

The Hidden Master continued, hand brushing over the nearest set of buds. “More importantly, he said that you’re familiar with growing… leafy stuff.” He paused. “I’m not. I can setup the system, but I’m both too busy and too unfamiliar with it all to actually maintain it.”

His gaze pinned Wen in place. “That’s where you come in. I brought you down here to run this whole system and point out any obvious flaws. That’s all pointless though if you’re too afraid to speak to me.”

Wen took a deep breath.

Then she spoke. “Everything.”

She flinched, in preparation for some kind of outburst in response to her hubris. But none came. Master Johansen hadn’t so much as twitched. He simply stood there with a placid expression.

Emboldened, Wen continued.

“Down here there’s no soil. No sun.” She gripped the nearest leaf, finding the surface of its flesh both bouncy and smooth. Not dry and crinkled like she’d half suspected. “Have these plants been moved down here recently?”

He shook his head. “No, they were grown down here.” He tapped the glass beneath the plants. “And this water is functioning as our soil.”

Wen shook her head. “My lord, rice paddies need irrigation yes, but the plants need soil. The roots draw strength from it. Without it…”

He raised a hand, stopping her. “Ok, this is good. You’re pointing out issues as you see them. For the next few minutes though, I’m going to need you to trust me.”

The Ox-Woman nodded cautiously.

“The lights up there will act as our sun.” He tapped the glass. “Likewise, this water is like soil. It’s rich with the food plants need.”

Wen wanted to argue but knew it was folly. “As you say, my lord.”

“It’s fine to be skeptical,” he continued, clearly picking up on her thoughts. “I wouldn’t want you down here if you weren’t. Just… try to keep an open mind at first. After a few months I’d be happy if you came to me with problems as you saw them. Until then, I need you to get accustomed to this new… method.”

She glanced up at the lights overhead.

Fake sun, she thought. Fake soil.

She could accept that.

For now.

In truth, it was amongst the least strange things she had seen the Hidden Master create.

“…For the moment then, you simply wish for me to confirm that these plants appear healthy?”

A wide smile swept across the cultivator’s face.

“That’s exactly what I want you to do.”

Wen nodded, before moving across the room, poking at plants at random, inspecting the tangled mess of roots that she could see in the water beneath.

“They seem healthy,” she admitted reluctantly. “Very much so.”

Indeed, had she and her husband grown such a crop in their own paddies, they would have been bursting with pride.

Yet it stung her pride to admit that this strange unnatural method of farming had merit. Not least of all because it had come from a cultivator.

Cultivators were the sword of the Empire, but the Empire could not exist without its stomach. Without farmers like her. For all their strength, cultivators needed mortals.

As evidenced by the continually rising price of food in the city.

It was a small thing, but it was a point of pride for many a mortal that for all the airs cultivators put on, they could not survive without the hardworking common men and women of the Empire.

Only it seems that they can, she thought as she glanced around the room and its many mystical implements. Has that always been the case? Were we ever truly needed?

She was about to say more, only to jump as a slurping sound came from the wall across from her. Glancing back at her guide, he only smiled lightly and pressed a button, making the wall peel back like the opening of an eyelid.

To reveal fish. Suspended in a glass tank. It was actually a rather intriguing sight.

Certainly, Wen was not unfamiliar with fish. She’d gutted, descaled and cooked thousands over the years. Rarely though did she seem them in such clarity when they were alive. Yet now she could see dozens of them, just swimming about in their artificial home.

It was rather relaxing to look upon.

And as she watched, a smattering of food scraps – from last night’s supper if she didn’t miss her guess - were dropped from a hatch into the water. Which the fish set upon with great enthusiasm.

Clarity struck.

This was a fish ranch – and as she looked at the pipes leading down from it, she could see that they fed into the containers for the plants.

“This is where your fertilizer comes from,” she murmured. “We feed the fish our scraps. They create fertilizer for our plants. We eat the plants. Which creates more scraps for the fish.”

How the plants survived with just water and no soil, she did not understand, but this at least made sense to her.

Though…

“Wouldn’t kin dung be better?” she asked. “That is what most people use.”

Jack shrugged. “Perhaps.”

She smiled, happy to have found at least one suggestion that wasn’t immediately dismissed – and to have not been immediately reprimanded for making it.

She glanced about the room. At the long racks of healthy plants. At the fish that were feeding them. At the insects that she now realized were tending to the buds, plucking away dead leaves.

“Why do you need me?” she finally asked. “Really?”

The Hidden Master had said he was unfamiliar with plants, but this system… it was beyond anything she could have imagined. Her suggestions on how to improve or maintain it would be as dust upon the wind.

“I wasn’t lying,” the Hidden Master shrugged his broad shoulder. “I’m really not familiar with growing plants. There was every possibility you’d come down here to find them all dying of some local strain of disease I was ignorant of.”

Wen opened her mouth, before closing it. “Truly?”

“Yep,” the man gestured to the insects. “These things are smart, but dumb.

Smart, but dumb?

Ignorant of her confusion, the man walked over to the nearest creature. “They know to do one thing and one thing only.”

Then he casually reached out and tore off one of the poor beast’s finger.

The Ox-kin resisted the urge to shriek at the sudden act of violence, yet as she stared, she saw their was no blood issuing forth from the animal’s stump. Merely a few sparks, as if from a dying fire. Nor did it shake and holler in pain at the sudden loss of its limb. It continued its work as if the limb remained.

All it succeeded in doing was knocking a plant out of its holding, spilling it down into the water below. Then it moved onto the next. And the next. And the next. In no time at all, four sets of plants had been ruined by the wounded creature.

The Hidden Master snorted, before calmly reaching over and pressing a button, which resulted in the creature going limp.

“See?”

Wen nodded slowly. “I… think I understand.”

“Good. Because food for the entire city is soon going to be riding on you and people like you.”

---------------

“So you’re banishing me?” she asked stoically, staring down at the sheaf of orders she had just been handed.

The pair of them were situated in the man’s office in his personal compound rather than the Imperial Palace.

Given what she knew of the outlander, Shui doubted that would change with his elevation to Magistrate.

Johansen glanced up at her from behind his desk, the chair he was sitting on somehow refusing to give way beneath the massive bulk of his armor.

I suppose I should be thankful that he considers me enough of a threat to greet me in armor, Shui thought as her eyes roamed over the man’s bodyguards – Lady’s An and Ren.

Individually neither would stand a chance against her. Combined, Shui liked her odds still. With Master Johansen backing them up though?

No, that was not a fight she thought she could win.

Though their presence confirmed something she had long privately suspected, Johansen’s power was more of a strategic asset than a tactical one. Whatever means he had used to destroy the former Imperial Cavalry and Silver Paw Sect, it likely took time to set up.

No, he was no duelist.

Which she supposed was to be expected, given that he was a craftsmen first and a warrior second.

Still, despite the helm the man wore, their was no mistaking his sardonic expression as he regarded her. “I’d say it’s a pretty merciful punishment, all things considered.”

It was. It was a far more merciful fate than she would have received from any of her peers.

Still, that small part of her that had leapt at the opportunity to become Magistrate, and that same part of her that had refused to relinquish it once she lost the Divinity’s favor, prompted her to dig just a little deeper.

“Merciful? Or Pragmatic?”

The orders she’d just been handed were not simple. They required her to take a mixed force of cultivators and ‘Jiangshi militia’ north to begin the construction of a fortress spanning the mountain path there.

It was a task that would take years using conventional construction techniques. Once constructed though, it would block the only remaining easy avenue into Ten Huo Province.

Just getting there would take the better part of two months though. And the journey would be fraught with peril. Beasts both mundane and spirit occupied the lands beyond the city, and Instinctive raiding parties would no doubt be seeking to use the pass.

It was the kind of job that would require an experienced commander.

“Yes, you are correct.” Johansen confirmed her suspicions without preamble. “You’re too valuable for me to simply execute out of hand. Because of your little skirmish with Huang, you’re one of the few people on the planet with experience commanding both cultivators and gonnes.”

“Why not send your precious mortal? The scarred one.” Her teeth peeled back into an amused sneer. “I’ve heard you’ve made him a general now?”

“That.” Jack grunted irritably. “That little mocking smile is why. I could send a purely mortal force but that would require that I strip too many of my soldiers from the city. So I need to supplement them with cultivators. The problem with that is that you’re all snooty cunts who would cause Gao no end of trouble if I shoved you into his chain of command.”

“’You’ cultivators?” Shui chuckled. “You make it sound like you’re not one of us.”

The man just shook his head. “I’m a craftsmen. Not a warrior. In the eyes of most of you, I might as well be mortal.”

Shui shrugged. The man’s words were a little exaggerated, but their was a hint of truth to them.

“Why not the her?” Shui inclined her head toward the black haired tiger-kin, who scowled back at her. “Your apprentice.”

The man’s gleaming helm considered her. “I want her here. And I want you gone. This is a convenient way for me to achieve both.”

“Hmmm.” Shui pretended to consider it. “And what’s to stop me from just running for the hills the moment I’m out of the city.”

The armored man shrugged. “What was stopping you from running while you were in it? I’ve certainly not been keeping tabs on you.”

He hadn’t? She didn’t know whether to be offended by that. Was he that confident he’d defanged her political movement? Or was the Divinity back in the city? It had only been through a stroke of luck on her part that she’d received news that the Tiger Divinity was approaching the city, an event that would require the Rooster to go out to intercept them.

She'd taken her shot. She’d failed. She could live with that.

“I’ll take your job and I’ll build your fortress,” Shui stood up. “After it’s done though, I want the slate to be wiped clean between us.”

“That will take years,” the man pointed out.

“Exactly.”

The man seemed to consider it for a moment, before nodding. “Fine, build the fortress, defend the northern pass for a period no longer and no less than five years, and I’ll consider your second attempted coup to be a thing of the past.”

Shui grinned wickedly as she gripped the orders in her hand. “And you’ll let me take you out to dinner.”

She resisted the urge to chuckle at the way the other two women in the room bristled and her new leader froze in his seat.

“We’ll see,” he muttered.

“That wasn’t a no,” Shui whistled innocently as she turned to leave.

Though she stopped just shy of the door as Johansen called out to her. “…Oh Shui, I nearly forgot. There’s one last thing I need you to do for me before you see Gao about supplies for the trip.”

“What’s that?” she asked as she turned around, only to pale as found herself staring at the largest needle she’d ever had the misfortune of laying eyes on.

“Call it an insurance policy of sorts,” the man murmured as he clicked something into place at the base of the peculiarly gonne shaped implement. “Ideally, you’ll never have to find out exactly what this is.”

Behind him, his two apprentices were grinning widely.