Chapter 157: Suspicions (Patreon)

“You want me to not pursue the demonic cult?”

Head Elder Luli scratched the back of his head.

“You must excuse me, honored elder, that must sound like a strange request. You see, it’s just… my people have already spent much time tracking the cult and I’m confident that we’re close to catching it. It would be a waste of your valuable time to concern yourself with the matter.”

Liu Wei had expected Elder Luli’s request to be somewhere between directly supporting him as the Burning Thorns Sect’s next patriarch and taking care of the demonic cult quickly before quietly leaving. This was something else entirely and Elder Luli’s words were a truly thin justification for such an unusual request.

So, he used the easiest possible means of pressuring the man to say more: He kept silent while shooting him a questioning look.

“Ah… you see… I must admit that that is not all. You see, honored guest… this cult has murdered our patriarch and so many of our elders… I consider it a matter of both my personal honor and that of my sect that we are the ones to bring them down.”

Another weak, if slightly better explanation. Liu Wei slowly nodded. He doubted that he would get anything more out of the man right here without having to drop some of his own act. For the man he was pretending to be right now, such a request could only be met with one response.

“Very well, Elder Luli. I shall let you handle the matter as you see fit. But since you have me forgo the honor of being the one to slay the cult, and you seem to care so much about my time, I hope that you will help make sure that my stay here is a productive one.”

“Oh… Oh, of course!”

Tang Luli seemed taken aback by the immediate pressuring for more bribes for a moment, but quickly caught himself.

“We wouldn’t have it any other way, honorable elder! We shall support you as much as we can for as long as you grace us with your presence here!”

Liu Wei stroked his beard and put on a satisfied grin.

“That reassures me, Elder Luli. I see that yours is a most admirable sect.”

“Your words honor us too much, Elder Wei, but we shall strive to live up to them.”

The remainder of the evening went off without anything more of note happening, leaving Elder Wei plenty of time to organize his thoughts. When the festivities finally died down deep in the night, he was guided to a small but elegant pagoda far on the outskirts of the sect. It fit what he had asked for quite well, being isolated from any other buildings by a swath of forest, and would suit his purposes here.

Before retiring to his cultivation for the night, Liu Wei went over his thoughts one more time.

Tang Luli’s reasoning for wanting him to leave the demonic cult alone still felt flimsy to him, but the talk of honor had brought a more plausible idea to his mind. Hunting down demonic cults was rarely a profitable use of time for soul cultivators on its own, since whatever cultivation resources a cult was able to procure were usually of low quality and quickly consumed by their cultivation.

The reason most sect’s cultivators would still be eager to pursue any cults that were found was that eliminating them was seen as highly prestigious and presented an easy way to improve relations with any locals potentially endangered by the cult.

In this case, considering what this demonic cult had done to the Burning Thorns Sect, a cultivator that eliminated it would earn a large debt from the sect as a whole. If they were an elder of the sect itself, they would almost guarantee to secure the sect’s full support for the succession struggle. That was at least a somewhat more reasonable explanation for Elder Luli’s desire to handle the matter himself.

The theory had a flaw though: This cult had already managed to kill a cultivator of the Dao Contemplation Realm as well as most of the sect’s elders. What made Tang Luli think that he could defeat it that easily?

They had avoided to attack the sect outright, instead resorting to ambushes and assassination for now, suggesting that they were probably not in a position to face the sect’s forces directly. Even so, what they had done already required an extensive amount of strength. For the Burning Thorns Sect, which had already suffered so much, a direct engagement would undoubtedly come with massive costs, even if they could win. Tang Luli had to be aware of that and since he was already the most likely candidate to become the next patriarch, this seemed like an unnecessary risky path forward to his ambitions.

That all was to say: The Burning Thorns Sect’s lead elder was either dangerously naïve, or extremely suspicious, and he had a hard time believing the former.

His instincts also told him that this whole situation had to have something to do with the assassination at the Lunar Peaks Sect, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was yet.

At the very least, Liu Wei was certain that his excursion to the Burning Thorns Sect would not be for nought. He had pretty much all possible suspects for the assassination of Yifei Xia right under his eyes here and plenty of unusual circumstances to investigate.

He spread out his soul sense to make sure that nobody was monitoring him before summoning some specialized paint and powdered spirit stones from his spatial ring and getting to work putting up a rudimentary sound barrier formation on the floor of his new residence. This wouldn’t be the most thorough work and nothing he’d trust fully on its own in an environment like the Lunar Peaks Sect, but it would be enough to prevent the sounds of his zither from escaping the room for a couple of weeks.

When he was done, Liu Wei sat down in the center of the room and summoned his zither. So far, he had kept up his cultivation pace during his banishment, and he wasn’t intent on changing that unless absolutely necessary.

As it stood, he would reach the ninth stage in about five years from now. While he had sworn to not try and aim to use cultivation as the sole solution to his problems, this was not something that he could not afford to fully ignore either. The Pillar Families’ recent actions, whichever was or were responsible, presented a notable escalation of their conflict. If this continued, he needed to prepare himself for what could be ahead and cultivation was the most secure way of doing that. Balancing his addiction with what might become necessity to his faction could turn into a tricky act, but he had to keep the option open at least.

Liu Wei’s fingers danced over the zithers strings as he dove into the Dao of Fire. The strong fire Qi of the surrounding inspired entirely new tunes and rhythms in him as he let the world dance to his melodies.

…

A presence at the edge of Liu Wei’s soul sense pulled him out of his meditation. Judging by the light filtering in through the pagoda’s windows it was early morning, just before sunrise. He played a few finishing tunes on his zither and finished up his cultivation. When the last remnants of his melody had rung out, he returned the zither to his spatial ring and deactivated the sound barrier.

He then waited patiently as the presence cautiously approached his residence. It was a small presence, hardly distinct from a normal mortal’s and Liu Wei sensed no ill intent from it. Having reached the front door, there was a short pause before the visitor hesitantly knocked.

Liu Wei opened the door to find a young boy in disciple robes standing before him. When he saw him, the boy froze up for a moment before throwing himself into a deep bow.

“I apologize for disturbing you, honored elder! I was told to hand you this!”

The boy held out a small paper scroll, while still keeping his head lowered.

“At ease, boy.”

Liu Wei accepted the scroll.

“Can you tell me who this is from?”

The boy glanced up.

“I- I… I don’t know, honorable elder. They didn’t tell me. I apologize.”

“It’s alright. Don’t worry.”

He inspected the scroll. A message from someone who didn’t want their identity to be known. Interesting.

“Thank you for bringing this to me.”

He summoned a level two spirit stone from his spatial ring and handed it to the boy.

“Here, for your troubles.”

The boy accepted the stone and stared at it as if he had just been handed a priceless treasure. It seemed to take him a while to remember that he was still in a conversation.

“Thank you, honorable elder!”

He bowed again, even more deeply than the first time.

Liu Wei gave him a friendly nod of dismissal before turning his attention to the scroll in his hand, pulling it open. It contained a short message in carefully calligraphed letters.

Honored Elder Wei,

I apologize for this unconventional means of contacting you, but I do not want it to be known who I am, should this message not reach its desired recipient. If you desire to know so, I am sure you have some means of finding out yourself. For my purposes it is enough to tell you that I am one of this sect’s elders.

To be frank with the plea I want to make: Please do not follow Elder Luli’s suggestion to leave the demonic cult alone. I do not know his reasons for making it, but if he truly believes that our sect is equipped to deal with this cult on its own, he is terribly mistaken. He is severely underrepresenting the danger that we are currently in. As it stands, we won’t make it for much more than a month or two before disbanding, should the assassinations not stop, and I have no confidence in Elder Luli’s ability to make that happen. He should know so himself, after he stayed away from the sect for over three weeks after the patriarch’s death, only to return with empty hands.

Thus, my plea: Do not abandon us in this time of need.

I cannot outbid or even match Elder Luli, all I can do is appeal to your conscience as a fellow cultivator of the Dao of Fire. Word has reached me that you are a man of great generosity and benevolence, so that remains my hope.

With deference,

A deeply worried elder.

Interesting. Most interesting.

Besides the fact that this apparent elder’s assessment was the same as Liu Wei’s, one particular thing had captured his full attention.

The message claimed that Tang Luli had been gone from the sect for three whole weeks following the death of Patriarch Sha. If this was true, it was a vital piece of information: If one made haste, three weeks was enough time to travel to the Lunar Peaks Sect and back on horseback. The timing also matched up pretty much perfectly.

Liu Wei would need to confirm this claim. He rolled the scroll back up, only to realize that the young disciple was still standing before him, suspended in his bow.

“Oh, excuse me. You may leave.”

“Yes, honored elder!”

The boy turned on his heels and disappeared thrice as fast as he had come. Liu Wei stood in the doorway for a while, looking after him. He reminded him of the disciples at the Training Hall. He wondered how things looked for them, back at the sect. Hopefully, beyond the expected amount of corruption from Elder Zheng Rong, everything was fine.