Sheng watched the joyous and giddy mortal stumble around his compound’s courtyard with a complicated expression.

“His equilibrium seems askew,” his wife observed from behind him. “Does he have nerve damage?”

“No, his nerves are fine. Better than fine even.” Glancing up, he watched as the man that had limped into his clinic on a pair of rotten old crutches fell face down onto the cobblestones, laughing all the while. “His body is simply re-acclimatizing itself to having two legs once more.”

Lang observed the man clinically as he unsteadily clambered to his feet, politely declining the offered hands of his medical attendants – other mortals like him. “None of our other patients suffered from similar symptoms.”

“That’s the rub of it all, isn’t it?” Sheng flicked the sleeves of his robes, a nervous tic he’d had since he was a mere aspirant, and one his wife undoubtedly noticed given the way the corners of her mouth ticked up. “Our usual patients could measure the time they’d been without a limb in hours. There was nothing to relearn.”

He eyed his companion. “Though with that said, he is a mortal. A certain level of clumsiness is to be expected.”

She nodded slowly. “Of course.”

“I didn’t expect it to work, you know.” He breathed. “Not truly. I expected there to be some last minute complication. Some tribulation from the heavens. But there wasn’t. It was as any other wound I’ve encountered.”

“Simple?” Lang raised a single delicate eyebrow. “I can still see the sweat upon your brow, husband.”

He shrugged. “I said simple, not easy. It was as draining as any other regeneration I have performed.”

The pair watched the mortal try to jog, his steps unsure, but with each passing minute they grew more steady.

“You should have tested this on a pig,” Lang observed.

“And waste my carefully martialed ki on a farm animal?” Sheng scoffed. “A mortal is one thing, a beast is quite another.”

Besides, as mortals went, this one was quite wealthy. A merchant of some renown who had apparently lost his leg below the knee while leading a merchant caravan years ago.

Sheng would profit from this. Not as much as he would have done had he loaned his services out to a sect based cultivator, but something was better than nothing.

And nothing was all that he would have received had he tested the Magistrate’s theory on an animal.

“I’m saying that you should have tested this new technique of yours on an animal because now we might have to kill him.”

The good mood Sheng had been carefully martialing through their conversation dimmed somewhat at that.

Seeing that she’d got his attention, Lang continued. “The merchant is a man of some renown. People will notice when he leaves this place with two legs when he entered with one. And before long, news of that feat with reach the ears of powerful people. People who will see the opportunity this technique represents. And when they come for the creator of it, they will not be dissuaded with a simple ‘no’.”

Sheng frowned. “You think they would attempt to steal it from me? Attack a healer unprovoked? And risk the wrath of the Jade Fur Sect?”

As well as a dozen other sects. No one wanted to set that kind of precedent. Semi-independent healers were a valuable resources to all sects because they offered their services to everyone who could pay.

Otherwise they could well be seen as a rival asset to be eliminated.

It was for that reason that Sheng often made deals with the Silver Paw Sect – when they’d still existed – despite their ongoing rivalry with the Jade Fur Sect.

Lang gestured with a single a hand. “For a technique like this? I can think of many who would consider the increase in animosity worth it. In the short term, this technique would be incredibly useful. In the long term it’s priceless.”

Sheng scoffed. “It feels shameless to call it a technique. The opening act of it could be performed by a mortal butcher had one the need.”

Some part of him still chafed that he had not thought of it first. Another, smaller part of him, was glad he hadn’t.

For what would that say about him and his dao? To damage a patient to better facilitate healing? It rubbed him the wrong way. Even though he knew it was to aid in healing, it ran in contrast to his Dao as a healer.

No… he’d never have thought of such a… barbaric solution in a hundred years. The idea was anathema to his cultivation.

“Butcher or not, it’s a prize too sweet to be shared,” Lang said.

Sheng nodded. The ability to bring crippled cultivators back to their peak. Certainly, the same could be achieved through the attainment of an insight, but those were few and far between.

Most only ever achieved two.

And making such progress in one’s cultivation is even harder when missing a limb, Sheng thought.

In the violent world of immortals, two opportunities to undo one’s mistakes was not nearly enough.

That was why he was paid a healthy retainer to be kept on call by a number of powerful women in the city. Day or night. Rain or cold. It mattered not, he would cross half the province if one of those women needed it – lest he be seen to be in violation of the contracts he held.

Regenerating a limb… it was no small feat. The sweat on his brow, the ache in his veins and the emptiness in his core were all proof enough of that.

I can only pray that things remain quiet over the next few days, he thought tiredly.

“So, do I need to dispose of the mortal?” Lang asked quietly. “And the attendants?”

Sheng frowned, ignoring the man himself and the fact that Sheng would have to return his money for ‘botching the procedure’ – with the understanding that advertising that fact would go poorly for the mortal’s relatives – the loss of two good attendants was a thought he did not savor.

Good help was so hard to find after all.

“Not yet.” He shook his head. “We can hide his recovery by keeping him confined to the compound for now. People may notice his absence, but we were discrete in smuggling him in. And we instructed him to inform no one of where he was going.”

A condition that many might have found suspicious, but the mortal had been eager enough to see even the possibility of his leg being healed that Sheng had felt no deception in the man’s paltry ki when he’d agreed to the deal.

Besides, the excuse they’d used that the compounded needed to maintain face was not untrue – already they’d taken a hit in prestige from the magistrate bringing in his new ‘high general’ and the other scarred mortals.

“That won’t last forever,” Lang noted.

Sheng nodded, even as he sighed internally.

“It won’t need to. I intend to announce the capabilities – if not the means – of this new technique as soon as possible.”

Lang stared at him. “That sounds like a course of action that will cause us more trouble than simply letting the mortal run wild.”

Sheng felt something inside him die as he muttered his next words.

But what choice did he have?

“Not if I attribute the creation of this technique to our dear magistrate.”

And in doing so throw himself under the man’s protective umbrella – at least where the secrets of this technique were concerned. Any who looked upon it with envy and see an opportunity to attain it through him would be forced to make an enemy of the Magistrate in doing so.

Something that not even the most foolhardy of sects within the city would do carelessly.

The lesson imparted by the Silver Paw still hung keenly in the minds of all.

“That is…” Lang paused, surprise twisting her features as she regarded him cautiously.

“Unexpected?” He mirthlessly smiled back at her. “While I am aware, dear wife, that I am a little vainglorious and something of a drama-queen, even I know my limits.”

Sheng watched the mortal stumble once more, unaware of just how close he had come to being disposed of out of hand. “Besides, it’s the truth. I might have performed the technique, but the impetus for it came from that man.”

He still didn’t like the outsider. The man had entered the city and thrown nearly a thousand years of history and culture on its head. Set Imperials against Imperials. And killed at least a few of his acquaintances – and former lovers – when he’d destroyed the Silver Paw.

Women who’d likely known nothing of their newly elevated Sect Leader’s plans.

“Yes, I’ll heap the praise and the trouble onto our new magistrate,” he decided. “His shoulders certainly seem broad enough to hold them.

He could admit to feeling a certain amount of petty joy in his old years as he imagined the other man’s face when a horde of crippled cultivators beat down the door to his fortress.

Of course, knowing him he’d find a way to turn it around, he lamented.

No matter.

So long as the trouble stayed away from Sheng’s compound, he was content to let the outlander do as he wished.

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

The Crawler – not Barrel! – Jack was riding gave him an excellent vantage point from which he waved down at the eager civilians crowding the streets below. Large chunks of the city had turned up to view the unveiling of the city’s newest – and only – train station.

And though they had no idea what a train was, that did little to dim their enthusiasm, cheering loudly as his small convoy drove past. Or rode past in the case of the Steel Paw.

The cultivators had little time or patience for the noisy machines of the Ten Huo Army and much preferred to ride around on horses.

He had a feeling it was the noise more than anything, as he watched the quintet of women riding ahead of his machine flinch minutely in time with the massive vehicle’s heavy steps.

A notable disadvantage of having so many enhanced senses, he noted with some satisfaction.

Satisfaction not derived from any kind of sadistic pleasure at the cultivator’s suffering – because whatever they’d been before, they were his people now – but because it boded well for Lin’s latest project.

“Though that does have me wondering how An puts up with it?” He mused aloud as he stared out at the newly promoted Colonel, riding along at the front of the parade on her much beloved motorbike.

It made the diminutive woman look even smaller than she was, given that the horses behind her dwarfed her – and the less said about the Crawlers and Barrels behind them the better.

Still, no matter how much Ren insisted on it, the tiger-kin refused to give up on her bike.

Though Jack had to wonder if her insistence wasn’t in fact borne of the fact that it was Ren insisting she changed. For all that they had an impromptu Alliance against his harem’s ‘uppity mortals’, the pair’s rivalry was still just as strong as it had ever been.

“It’s a technique.”

Turning, Jack found himself staring into the ever disinterested gaze of the city’s lone Elf.

Elwin had surprised him by choosing to come along on this parade. Normally it took a small miracle to get her to even venture beyond the boundaries of the section of the compound she’d set aside for her mages in training.

Stranger still though, she’d insisted on sitting with him on his ‘parade crawler’.

Alone.

It was an unusual show of possessiveness from a woman that almost seemed… disinterested in him otherwise.

“A technique?” He echoed, having to speak loudly to be heard over the roar of the crowd and the thudding of the crawler’s many feet.

“She hardens or ‘reinforces’ her inner eardrum, husband.” Elwin confirmed. “To help with the noise. Apparently, she thought up the technique while reading one of your ‘biology’ books. It’s a skill she plans to pass onto the Silver Paw at some point, given that they’ll be working closely with your military for the foreseeable future.”

Jack nodded slowly, his continued waving at the crowds below abating for just a moment as he turned his full attention on the elf.

“And do you know that?” he asked. “I’m pretty sure you’ve said less than fifty words to An in the time I’ve known you.”

Indeed, the only member of Jack’s harem that spoke regularly with the elf was Lin. A social butterfly, the dress-wearing woman was not.

She eyed him. “My students of course. They often have to hear your latest acquisitions complain while they reapply the hodgepodge of protective charms you had me add to their armor.”

Jack nodded slowly. That made sense.

“And here I thought you might have struck up an unlikely friendship while I wasn’t looking?”

The elf’s smile was all teeth. “With the blood knight? I think not. Even if I am whiling away the time until you tire of this place – or are driven from it – I’ve more productive ways to spend my time.”

Jack would have complained about the insult towards An if he didn’t know the disdain went both ways. An was not a subtle woman. She’d made it clear that she considered Elwin a fragile coward who used trickery and distance to achieve her goals.

Which made him wonder how he wasn’t tarred with the same brush, given that his method of combat ideally had more in common with Elwin’s than An’s.

Then again, when have any of my fights gone ideally? He thought.

Most of them had left him battered and bruised, with his armor hanging on by a thread.

“Growing that attached to your students are you? It seems I barely see you these days with how busy you are with them."

It was rather amusing, how Elwin managed to make a snort seem elegant. “Hardly. You set me to a task. I am fulfilling it. Unlike your other… conquests, I feel neither the need nor the compulsion to return to you every five minutes to ensure you have not forgotten me. If another ten years pass and that looks to be the case, rest assured, I will remind you of your obligations to me.”

Jack hummed at the rather stark reminder that Elwin operated on a different timescale to most people. Cultivators might live longer than mortals, but that longevity was – with a few exceptions – amount to about three centuries.

About a third more than Jack’s own expected lifespan.

By contrast, Elwin could live to be a thousand.

Which made it all the more amusing how childish both she and Yating got when debating the merits of ice cream against cake.

With that said, I haven’t seen our resident Chicken God in a hot minute, Jack thought. Not since he gave me that tongue lashing over the Steel Paw’s implants.

The immortal was still about. Jack’s sensors had confirmed that much, but he wasn’t talking much.

“So, if you’re not here to remind me you exist, what brought you out here today?”

“I am here to point out a mistake you will soon be making.”

“What mistake?”

“The minotaur. You’re growing fond of her.”

“Minotaur?”

Elwin rolled her eyes. “It’s a beast from the southern isles. One that looks like a humanoid bull.”

“I know what a minotaur is,” he said with a raised hand.

“You do? How?”

He bit his tongue at the accidental slip, but continued on. “Never mind. A slip of the tongue.”

One that had come from his surprise that this world apparently had actual minotaur in it.

Elwin still looked interested, and a little suspicious, but after a moment she seemed content to let the matter drop. Though Jack knew it would undoubtedly come up again later. Maybe in a few months or a year.

“You can’t keep her,” the elf said finally.

Jack scoffed, though his heart wasn’t in it. “Wasn’t planning to. And I don’t like her.”

Even to his own ears, his words sounded mulish.

“Yes, you do. You see a kindred soul in the beast… for some reason.”

Jack wanted to deny it, but that would be a lie. So he tried a different tactic. “I was thinking of using her as counterweight against the Imperial Diplomatic team that’s coming. You know, pretend she was a negotiator from the Monkey trying to bring us around.”

Not that he’d ever side with them, even if they really were trying to bring him around, but he figured some competition at the negotiating table might have been able to force a few more concessions from the Empire when they came calling.

Though the look on Elwin’s face told him exactly what she thought of that idea.

“That has to be the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

Then she said it aloud. Just to be sure.

“…I thought it was pretty good.”

Elwin shook her head in disgust. “Genius with contraptions you might be, Jack Johansen, but I now see why you keep the dog and the dragon around. You’ve got all the political smarts of an orc.”

Ah, so orcs existed too.

That was cool.

And Jack might have been a little bit more offended if what Elwin was saying wasn’t absolutely true.

Well, ignoring the fact that I’m not actually a technical genius either, he thought with a small internal smile.

Plus, there was the fact that she’d chosen to have this conversation somewhere where no one would overhear them. That spoke to an attempt on her part to ensure her words didn’t in any way lower the esteem of his underlings in him.

So, yeah, he wasn’t about to rip her head off for being honest with him. He let Lin get away with worse after all.

“Have you not seen how the locals react to even a hint of the idea of something being ‘instinctive’? By presenting the idea that you were even considering an envoy from the enemy, you’d all but hand the city over to the Imperials when your own people overthrew you.”

Jack bit his lip, before conceding the point.

He’d seen a few gangs collapse because they felt that their leadership were getting just a bit too chummy with their corporate contacts.

Accepting gigs from a corpo was one thing – becoming a lapdog was a different matter altogether.

“Keeping the minotaur around would be poison to your cause. As would releasing her, even surreptitiously.”

Jack looked over the side of the Crawler, to the cheering crowds below. “So what, you want me to kill her?”

To his surprise though, Elwin actually laughed. “Hardly. I’m your betrothed. Were I incapable of sparing your heart the hardship of this choice, then I would hardly be worthy of the title.” She leaned up toward him. “No, you can keep your pet alive. All you need to do is ‘exile’ her back to my homeland.”

Jack cocked his head. “Isn’t that the same as releasing her?”

“Given that she wouldn’t be likely to come back as an enemy later down the road, I can’t imagine so.” She leaned back again. “And have you heard the locals talk of their precious empire? To hear them speak you’d think nothing existed beyond the shores of this dank little continent of theirs.”

Jack couldn’t deny that there was a hint of truth to that statement. Hell, he hadn’t even known lands beyond the Empire even existed prior to meeting Elwin.

“That’s… not a bad idea.” He found himself smiling at the thought. “Thanks Elwin.”

The woman actually flushed a little as he smiled at her, gaze turning quickly to the side.

“It’s no great hardship,” she muttered. “It is not as if I do not benefit. Uncultured as she may be, she is a powerful warrior. With an exotic origin and fighting style. Her presence within my father’s court would serve as an ample reminder that I have not disappeared either – and give weight to my claims of finding a husband.”

Jack nodded along as the elf continued to list reasons as to why she hadn’t just helped him out of the goodness of her heart.

Then paused as something came over his radio.

“Shit.” He muttered.

Elwin paused in the middle of her diatribe to stare at him – and he belatedly recalled that she was the only one of his ‘harem’ to disdain a headset.

Throwing her an apologetic glance, her explained. “It seems we might have to cut the train ceremony short. I’m getting reports from Jiangshi that ten different cultivators have infiltrated our forts there by pretending to be refugees.”

Elwin’s gaze immediately sharpened. “Ten? At the same time? That cannot be a coincidence.”

“No,” Jack murmured, more glad than ever that he’d installed the same sensory apparatus he used to make anti-cultivator shells into the gates there. “No, it’s definitely not.”

The only question was, who were these mysterious infiltrators?

Imperial? Instinctive? Or some new unknown threat.

Either way, the Jiangshi forts didn’t have a means of handling ten cultivators cleanly.

Oh, they could do it, but Jack would prefer to see it resolved without a bodycount in the triple digits. Something that would definitely happen if he sent the militia to deal with a bunch of cultivators alone.

Though I suppose it really depends on whether my people could get the drop on them. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t tell me who sent them and they’re here. Which means talking. And if I want to negotiate, I’ll need someone of the right ‘status’ to do it, he thought.

Which meant either himself, his harem or the Steel Paw.

Immediately switching channels, he got in contact with Gao, though as he did, he found himself glancing up as the gleaming black steel of a distant steam engine finally came into view.

I suppose it’s lucky that the trains are finished then, he thought. Though the cargo people are probably going to be pissed that they’ll have to be unloaded so we can fit a different type of cargo into them for their maiden voyage.

Fortunately for them, they had a little time.

Jack needed to make a quick side-trip.