Hot water. Cold water. Hot water. Cold water.

Shi frowned, finally retrieving her wet hand from the stream of water she’d been holding it under before twisting the lever closed, ceasing the flow of liquid.

The inquisitor turned around, taking in the ‘hotel room’ she’d been temporarily ‘gifted’ as a newcomer to Fortress City Five.

It was crude. The bedding was rough. The furniture basic. The food that came from the kitchen downstairs was simple and flavorless at best. And there were no servants to be found.

Not that Shi had expected there to be. Not when she was pretending to be a mortal commoner. The fact that she had been granted access to the earlier amenities was already beyond the scope of her usual expectations. Especially when it had been given freely, in order to obtain this room all she’d had to do was present her identification bracelet to the young woman manning a desk on the ground floor.

Those features in and of themselves would have been of note. Such largesse was without purpose.

And that’s before we get into the room’s more ‘exotic’ features, she thought.

Her gaze shifted to the copper piping overhead, from which a steady and comforting flow of heat constantly issued. To the clear glass windows through which she could see the town below. To where the ‘radio’ once sat with its little contained spirit. Then they shifted to the ‘shower’ in the stone bathroom behind her.

A peculiar device, with a function not unlike a bathtub, but with a wildly different means of obtaining the same result. Personally, she much preferred the sensation of being submerged in a tub of steaming rose tinted water, but she could see the utility present in the watering can shaped apparatus.

For a mortal, it would be a luxury beyond compare.

Her fingers ran along one of the pipes, deliberately slipping past the small grille that prevented it from being brushed against accidentally.

The metal was dangerously hot to the touch, but that was of little consequence to her given her draconic nature. Instead she found herself marveling at the smoothness of the metal. There were no imperfections or abnormalities that she could sense. If a blacksmith’s hammer had ever struck this design, she could find no trace of its passage.

Which was the sort of craftsmanship one only ever saw in a cultivator’s work. Honestly, it reminded her of home, of the sublime halls of the Celestial Palace. For indoor piping was not unknown to her.

The Celestial Palace had plumbing of a similar ilk, if using different materials and designs. And though she knew not what powered the heating of her new temporary home, she knew that the heating of the Celestial Court was provided by three shifts of fire-aligned cultivator servants. A coterie of young women whose only job it was to heat the great vats of refined spring water that sat in the Celestial City’s basement.

Or at least, the closest comparison that could be had in a structure that floated nearly a kilometer off the ground.

The retaining of those elementalists was considered a sign of great prestige and decadence in those few Sect Leaders that were given leave to visit the Empire’s most holy city.

…Yet this squat and ugly mortal dwelling had something similar.

Has our new friend created something similar to the Zodiac Seals? Shi wondered casually as she gazed out the window at the bustling streets below. Is that where all the North’s cultivators have gone?

She dismissed the thought the moment she had it. She sensed no ki in the water. And were there a cadre of enslaved cultivators below ground projecting heat up into the hotel, she would have felt it.

No, whatever was creating this warmth, it was not borne of ki.

Perhaps something akin to what the magisters use? She wondered, pulling out a charm.

Alas, the paper did little beyond curl slightly as she pressed it to the pipe, rather than turning a deep blue as it was meant to in the presence of ‘mana’. Or divine authority. Or aether. Or any of the other dozen barbaric ‘magic’ systems that existed beyond the borders of the Celestial Empire.

She sighed, once more stashing away the rather expensive charm amidst her robes.

Finally, she turned her attention to the comatose body on the bed. One of the guards of this quaint little fortress, stripped of his armor and weapon, which now lay beside him in neatly arrayed rows.

He’d not been difficult to lure back to her room with the promise of an illicit encounter. She’d played up her role as a naïve farm girl and the man had easily taken the bait. Someone would notice he was not at his post soon enough, and an effort would be made to locate the wayward guard, but that was fine with her. Preparations had been made for that eventuality.

As if on cue, there came a series of knocks at the door. Six taps in an uneven rhythm.

In a moment, her entire bearing shifted from that of a high inquisitor to a nervous mortal girl as she slowly unlocked and opened the door.

There he was. Her uncle. Sweaty and nervous, the man could not have looked more guilty of wrongdoing if he tried.

Fortunately, most would likely mistake said nervousness for discomfort in new surroundings after a journey fraught with peril.

“Do you have it, uncle?” she asked, gentle tones of a concerned niece hiding the iron inner core of her true being.

“Aye,” the man nodded eagerly as he revealed two small wine casks from behind his back. “They cost a pretty penny, but Imperial silver still works just fine here.”

She nodded.

Perhaps it had been some small risk to make a show of having such wealth and then spending it on wine, but it was not outside the realm of reason that a pair of farmers might make use of some of their stashed wealth to celebrate arriving safely at their destination.

“And the radio?” she asked, stepping aside to let him inside.

“The girl at the front desk looked amused when I gave her the thing,” the man said as he stepped inside. “But she took it back all the same. She said it wasn’t unusual for ‘newcomers’ to feel a little uncomfortable with the thing.”

She didn’t doubt it. After all, what peasant would be comfortable sleeping in the same room as a bound spirit? No matter how lovely the singing – in a foreign tongue she had noted - the risk of it escaping its bonds were too great.

Or, more pertinently to her, repeating anything it heard while within the presence of the inn’s guests.

She would know, sometimes she made use of a similar trick when presenting ‘gifts’ to dissident elements.

Her gifts usually came in the form of specially trained spirit beasts – typically birds – with a knack for repeating human speech. A little harder to source perhaps, but infinitely more malleable than spirits drawn from the lower realms.

Truly, the lord of this town was playing with fire by having so many distributed about his demesne.

Though, to give credit where it was due, the wards around the spirit had been such that she had been completely unable to sense its presence. Indeed, she’d nearly shattered the damn thing reflexively when the fool in front of her awoke it with a few button presses.

Hmmm, now that I consider it, I might have to revisit my earlier theory regarding cultivators beneath the city, she thought.

If the creator of the radio was capable of binding a spirit tightly enough that she could not sense it even when she held it in her hands, then it was more than possible that he could do the same with a cadre of cultivators a dozen li away.

That was a question for later though, for now she turned her attention to her ‘uncle’.

“Good, now take the wine and sprinkle it on his clothes,” she instructed, pointing to the comatose guard.

A crude method of covering her tracks, but she oft found that simpler methods trumped more complicated ones more often than not. In a few hours, she would remove the acupuncture needle from the young man’s neck and he would awaken dazed and confused. A state that would easily be mistaken for intoxication – especially with him smelling strongly of drink and missing some of his equipment.

“All of it?” The fool actually hesitated, reluctantly glancing between the wine and the guard. “These were a silver a piece. Surely we could-”

Shi’s icy stare put a quick stop to the greedy mortal’s foolishness, and he quickly hastened to obey her earlier instructions.

Satisfied, for now, she turned her attention back to the guard’s equipment – and the main reason she had gone through the trouble of abducting him.

For while many a noble scion might have considered the weapons of mortals beneath them, Shi was not one of them. There was a reason cultivators marshaled great armies of mundane men and women when they marched to war. In enough numbers and with the right equipment, they could prove surprisingly dangerous to even a profound level cultivator.

Shi and her inquisitors were far beyond that, but that was not true of most cultivators. Indeed, fully half of the Empire’s cultivators never truly made it beyond initiate, lingering in the first stage until their dying day.

With that in mind, ranged weaponry used en-masse was a particular threat.

And if Shi’s instincts had not failed her, then this weapon was a ranged weapon. The fixture that allowed a knife to be loaded to the front of the device was a trick. A backup tool. The evidence of which she could see in the lack of wear on the – admittedly fascinating – grooves that allowed the blade to be held in place.

By contrast, the interior of the device – filled with similar grooves – was well worn.

Something was moved through it regularly with great force.

It smells too. Sweet, she thought. Not like wine or perfume.

She paused.

…Like fireworks.

She’d seen a few in her time. They were more popular in the South than the North, but they were always a hit when the alchemist’s guild trotted them out for a celebration.

And weapons made using them had been considered before… before being ultimately dismissed as not cost-effective.

Someone obviously disagrees with that assessment though, Shi thought as she lowered the device.

Indeed, the crossbow-like trigger at the base of the design gave her some idea as to how the weapon functioned.

A volley of fireworks to scare the enemy followed by spearwork using the optional blade?

She could see the utility. It would be useful against mortals and beasts.

…It would be significantly less useful against cultivators who were accustomed to much more deadly and exotic threats than a little light and noise.

Though that may not hold true for Instinctives, she considered. After all, they act as little more than beasts and oft fall prey to the same follies.

Slowly her hand ran over the strange material that made up the stock of the device.

It felt like glass, but subtly different. More flexible. Warmer.

Slowly she picked up the device, nimble fingers slipping across it, as she moved through the series of motions that she’d realized ‘prepped’ it. It had taken a certain amount of trial and error, but the odd mechanism was ultimately less complicated than even the most basic puzzle box sold in the Central Provinces. Which was why it hadn’t taken her long to realize that something would click inside once she had unlatched one lever and pulled back another before pulling the trigger.

“The only question now are the bolts,” she murmured.

A quick flick through the unconscious guard’s many pouches unveiled what she was looking for. Though it was not in the form she’d expected.

Though to tell the truth, she had not known what she might expect.

The small round object she held now was not it. Nearly as long as a finger, it slid neatly into the hole that revealed itself once the device was clicked open.

Satisfied, she aimed the now primed weapon.

…Before thinking better of it.

If this weapon truly was some kind of firework launcher – and her sense of smell seldom lead her wrong – then it would be loud.

It was a minor risk, but one she had avoided until now as she flared her ki, willing silence down upon the room.

No noise would escape now.

…Technically, the technique was illegal given its relation to the misty-step style of cultivation – a style almost exclusively employed by assassins, spies and thieves - but her position within the Inquisition allowed her access to a number of scrolls deemed unacceptable for the Empire’s Sects.

Satisfied, she aimed the device at the brickwork of the adjoining bathroom, her ‘uncle’ watching her nervously. The fool attempted to say something, only to pale as his voice stifled in his throat.

Shi ignored him as she slowly pulled back on the trigger.

And nearly jumped as the thing kicked like a living creature in her hands, slamming into her shoulder with force enough to bruise had she been a mortal girl.

She barely noticed though. Her focus was entirely on the smoking hole that had formed in the bathroom wall.

She stared at it.

Then down at the bolt-thrower in her hands.

Then back to the hole.

She’d barely seen the bolt fly forth. It traveled faster than any arrow or crossbow bolt.

“And the force with which it struck…” she murmured silently as she darted from her bed to inspect the hole.

It was fortunate that the ‘hotel’ was solidly built, as the bullet had embedded deep into the brick work.

Almost unconsciously, Shi’s hand moved to her chest as she traced the ragged edges of the bolt-hole.

That was… dangerous.

Could she have deflected such a fast moving object?

Yes.

Could she have dodged it in flight?

With less certainty, but yes.

Could every inquisitor under her command?

Of that she was less sure.

And that went double for the traitorous sect members she had brought with her.

Her eyes flitted to the downed guard. He was no one special. A middle-aged man whose nose had reddened slightly from a propensity for drink – she had selected him because it would make her ‘alibi’ all the more believable.

He had some training. The calluses on his fingers spoke to that. But not much. He walked like a civilian with a weapon, not a man who had been training for years.

And yet he had one of these weapons.

Every guard she’d seen since entering this fortress had.

A tool given to the lowliest of servants… as easily as one would hand out a spear, she thought.

Suddenly, the total lack of cultivator defenders in the fortress made a lot more sense.

Not totally. She was still confident of her people’s chances even in the face of this new weapon.

…Though that begs the question, what other weapons of war might be hidden within this fortress?

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

Yao Tzuan was proud of his rank as Colonel. Not least of all because it meant he was in charge of the defense of the Jiang Shi fortress network while the Lady An and General Gao were away.

His wife was slightly… less understanding of the requirements of such a position.

Not least of all because it meant that he could count on one hand the number of nights he had spent in their marital bed since he’d taken on the position. Instead, he spend his days and nights rushing from one fortress to another putting out whatever fires had developed in his absence.

Sometimes literally.

And while the Lord Magistrate’s many devices were a godsend when it came to communicating with his more distant underlings, it was simply a fact of life that problems often required he be present in person.

The infiltration of their city by an Imperial aligned – and wasn’t that an odd thought? – group of cultivators was one such problem.

Not least of all because they were strong.

Very strong.

Strong enough that the dial for detecting ki had maxed out in regards to the woman whom he was now watching.

Fortunately, said woman was totally ignorant of his presence, given he was watching her through a screen from a bunker nearly two li away.

“And we’re sure she’s still ignorant of the cameras?” he prompted.

Captain Bi shrugged as she glanced up from her station, the woman stretching in a manner that might well have been quite distracting if Yao wasn’t already distracted by the events currently unfolding on screen.

“She got rid of the radio, but she’s not glanced at our cameras even once. As far as she’s concerned, they’re just fancy wall decorations.”

Yao sighed in relief.

Whatever technique the Magistrate used to mask his devices from the senses of lesser cultivators, it seemed they still worked on the woman he was rapidly beginning to suspect was the leader of these infiltrators.

While the others had registered in the upper echelons of the sensor dial’s capabilities, none other than her had actively maxed it out.

“And Len?”

“Still breathing.”

Good, good. As much as the man was in for a world of pain after being lured back to the infiltrator’s room, Yao didn’t want him dead.

Lashed, certainly.

Fortunately, only those who had been on guard at the gate and the people in this room were aware of exactly who and what their new visitors were, which meant he was in no danger of letting them know Jiangshi was onto them should their visitor’s investigation elevate to an interrogation.

Which Yao desperately hoped it didn’t.

He had standing orders to leave them be until the Magistrate arrived, but he didn’t know if he could be forced to sit still as one of his people was tortured.

It brought back uncomfortable memories of his time in Ten Huo, where the guard could do little but wait for a cultivator to vent their rage at the populace, powerless to intervene and actually uphold the law.

Frowning, he sank back into his chair, luxuriating in its unnatural softness.

It was better than his one at home.

Which, he supposed, shouldn’t have been too surprising. This chair hadn’t been built by the hands of kin after all.

His gaze twisted over to the fifth ‘person’ in the room – and the creator of the chair.

A spirit beast. Shaped like some kind of mix of spider and crab, it was nearly as big as a dog.

It hadn’t moved since he’d entered the room – and with luck wouldn’t until after he left.

He did not like spiders.

Nor crabs.

Unfortunately for him, it seemed he was alone in that distaste, as evidenced by the woolen hat that sat propped above the monster’s little head.

The women who crewed the ‘info-centers’ many stations were rather fond of the little beast, considering it some manner of communal pet. To the degree that more than once he had been forced to chastise them for ‘accidentally’ spilling crumbs on the ground for the little monster to scurry out and clean up.

Not just because it was untidy, but because it terrified him every time the horrendous little thing did so.

Looking upon the little thing though, it was strange to think that it had been the one to build the structure he was sitting in. Not alone. Of course not. As industrious as the little horror was, it couldn’t build an entire bunker.

No, it had been accompanied by… the swarm.

There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to when the swarm formed, scurrying out from the many houses and barracks they called home to form a great chittering mass that flowed through the streets like a flood.

It was horrifying to watch – a fact that wasn’t lessened by the fact that they exclusively moved at night.

Nor the fact that when they did encounter a kin in their sudden exodus, they simply flowed around them like a great wave breaking upon an invisible stone.

More than a few had been shot by terrified guardsmen – or bludgeoned by civilians - who were unaccustomed to the… oddness of Jiangshi.

Hell, Yao had been here since the beginning, and he still barely understood any of it.

Though that did not keep him from docking the pay of any man foolish enough to damage one of the Magister’s spirit beasts.

No matter how terrifying and grotesque they might be.

For they performed an invaluable function for the city.

In that they were the ones constantly expanding the city. Or rebuilding it if something wasn’t to their ‘taste’.

More than once, someone decided to build a home with their own two hands, only to have it torn down around them overnight.

Fortunately, the little blighters would rebuild it… but they would do so somewhere else.

As they did when they built this bunker, Yao thought. A mere month ago.

Still, as much as he hated the little blighters for creeping him out – he would be the first to admit that the city couldn’t survive without them.

It was expanding too fast. It had too many visitors and not enough homes.

Hence the ‘hotels’.

And the many mystical sensors within them.

Though Yao had been completely ignorant of them until he’d received an order over his tablet from Lady An to man a building that hadn’t existed a night prior to him receiving said order.

Sighing at the strangeness of it all, he glanced up just in time to see the cultivator blow a hole in the bathroom wall with Len’s gonne.

“Make sure to tell our people not to investigate,” he informed the nearest console operator. “We’ll pretend we didn’t notice that.”

They didn’t want to spook their prey prior to the Magistrate arriving after all.

“No need sir,” Bi informed him. “She did something… strange to make everything go silent. I doubt anyone heard anything.”

“Belay that order then,” Yao repeated, drawing a nod from the first woman.

They continued to watch in silence as the cultivator stared at the gonne. It was clear even through he screen that the woman had been spooked by the device.

As well she should be, Yao thought with a smile.

Though his musings were swiftly interrupted by the Captain. “Do we have any idea how long it will be 'til our reinforcements arrive, sir? Now that she knows about our gonnes, she may leave to inform… whoever she came here to spy for. It’s a worthwhile bit of info.”

Yao nodded. If that occurred, they’d be forced to move early to intercept the spy.

After all, waiting until reinforcements arrived so that they could take their visitors down easily was one thing, but just letting them escape with information on Jiangshi’s defenses was quite another.

“He said they’d be here within a day.”

“A day?” Bi prompted. “I… how?”

Yao just shrugged. “The general said something about a ‘train’.”

Though what exactly a train was, Yao had not a clue.