Rise of a Matriarch (Patreon)

Been out of it all week, and I'm feeling guilty, so here's another peek at a potential future project. This one was weird. It just started coming to me and I had to write some of it out to make room in my brain. I see it as a long, slow, slice-of-life cultivation novel, where the heroine isn't much interested in fighting but marries a cultivation junkie and raises a bunch more cultivation junkies and slowly rises to a position/cultivation level of power and influence. It may or may not have sex scenes. 

Anyway, here goes:

From the city’s walls, those watching could tell the battle was over, but not who had won. There was a hushed pause, that extended into an awkward silence as everyone waited to learn if salvation or destruction was to be their fate.

Eventually, someone went to investigate. Che Fu, Master of the Lions of Everlasting Vigilance sect, took flight to learn what had taken place. Though he was Master of his sect, he had been unable to take part in the battle. Lesser cultivators would only have served as fuel for the fire that burned in the veins of the Enemy. Actually fighting had been reserved for the strongest of them all, the Sect Champion, Lau Meng. Che Fu had been relegated to evacuating the fortress that stood guard over the pass through the mountains.

Had stood guard, for it was gone now. It would have to be rebuilt, assuming there was still a pass to guard. There would be time, though, for the monsters that it defended against were gone, at least for now. A vast area had been swept clear of life by flames, frost and other forces. Only fresh cliff faces and rubble remained.

And a man, standing in a shallow yet wide depression that resulted from everything around him being scoured down to the bedrock. It was Lau Meng, and Che Fu let himself feel the slightest spark of hope.

He didn’t approach, of course. Instead, he extended his senses, searching for any sign of the Enemy. Only one trace remained. Disturbingly, it came from Lau Meng, but it was… faint? No, he realised, it was far away.

Dropping to the ground in front of the still figure, he continued to analyse what he was perceiving.

“Lau Meng? Are you whole?” he asked, fearing the answer.

Lau Meng remained still for a moment, but finally croaked out a response.

“My old friend…” he said slowly. “I fear you may need to kill me.”

* * *

“I still think you should have killed me,” Lau Meng grumbled. He laid back in his carrying-chair and sipped his tea.

“The Demonic Qi is contained, is not?” Che Fu said without concern. “It fades and will eventually be gone.”

“Eventually!” Lau Meng snorted. “It could take a century or more, a century spent like this!”

He gestured, both to himself and his surroundings. To someone who didn’t know him, it would have been a puzzling statement. Lou Meng appeared to be in the finest of health, and the surroundings were the exquisitely prepared grounds of the Inner Sanctuary of the Everlasting Vigilance Sect. A thousand sect members toiled each day, hoping for just a glimpse of this treasured garden.

“A century is nothing to a cultivator of your calibre,” he reminded his peer gently. “You can use the time to pursue activities other than cultivation and combat.”

That was Lau Meng’s problem, of course. For him, even a day spent not training was a tragedy. The man was natural cultivation genius, going from a lowly Outer Initiate to Sect Champion in just seventy years. Che Fu had been born to the elite inner circle and been given every advantage. He was acknowledged as a cultivation genius himself. At a mere one hundred and twenty, he had earned his place as Sect Master. Lau Meng, however, had surpassed him effortlessly.

He would have been Sect Master by now, were it not for his total lack of interest in the position, and his lack of qualities that were not concerned with combat.

“Other activities?” Lau Meng snorted, disdainful of the idea. “Like calligraphy? Flower-arranging? Tea appreciation?”

“Any or all of those would be a worthwhile use of your time,” Che Fu said, unperturbed. “Otherwise, painting, poetry or the study of history would help balance your… extremely focussed contributions to the Sect.”

“I don’t recall you complaining at the time,” Lau Meng grumbled.

“And I am not complaining now,” Che Fu said calmly. “I’m just pointing out options for you to occupy your time.”

“Bah! Is what I say to all that.”

The two men gazed across the grounds and savoured the tea. To a mortal the tea was such a strong source of Qi that it would be a coin-toss if the mortal died or ascended to the next grade. For immortals like themselves, it was merely a pleasant drink. Che Fu observed Lau Meng closely with Qi, examining his emotional state. Judging the moment was right, he struck with his real suggestion.

“You could always get married, raise some kids.”

“What? You’ve gone crazy, old man,” Lau Meng shook his head.

“The sect will always need new blood,” Che Fu pointed out. “Your own self serves as a reason why. To come from the outside, without any advantages, and yet rise so far. Imagine what your children might achieve.”

In truth, the children of a great cultivator rarely did as well as their father. Genius was rarely inherited in its entirety. However, a large group of descendants of powerful cultivators tended to throw up geniuses at an elevated rate, which was what the Sects were built on. The larger the group, the stronger the Sect was. Lau Meng knew this as well as anyone, but hadn’t actually considered how it applied to him.

Now he was, and whatever his faults, it could not be said that Lau Meng was not devoted to his Sect.

“I hadn’t planned on having children before I ascended,” he admitted. “I suppose that was selfish of me.”

Che Fu raised an eyebrow. “You have not been celibate all these years, surely you have children already?”

Lau Meng frowned. “I was raised without a father,” he said. “I wouldn’t bring a child into this world without committing to raising it. I always made sure my seed was empty before releasing it.”

“Commendable,” Che Fu said. His friend always had the oddest ideas. “Does that mean you’re considering the idea?”

“That’s… no, it’s impossible,” Lau Meng said, shaking his head. “Where would I even find a wife?”

Che Fu rolled his eyes. When Lau Meng wasn’t cultivating, he was out in the world seeking ‘righteous combat’. Righting wrongs, overthrowing petty tyrants, slaying monsters… Nor was he averse to sleeping with the damsels and battle maidens he saved — or fought. To Che Fu’s certain knowledge, the man had left a trail of enthralled women across the Empire.

“Leaving aside that any unmarried woman in the Sect would beg to be granted your seed,” he said, “We have received over a dozen marriage proposals from different Sects since your battle.”

“What? Who?” Lau Deng exclaimed with alarm. “What did you tell them?” he said more thoughtfully.

“Naturally, we told them you were in secluded cultivation and that we would get back to them as soon as possible.”

Lau Deng sank back into his lounging chair with relief.

“That won’t delay them long,” Che Fu pointed out with amusement. “It’s only a matter of time before some of them make their way here to see for themselves.”

Lau Deng narrowed his eyes, trying to determine if there was a threat in those words. There certainly could be, and if word leaked out about his incapacity… the Sect would protect him from attackers, but it might actually aid suitors.

“It would be wise to decide, one way or another, before that happens.” Che Fu’s face was the picture of innocence.

“Just who are these proposals from, anyway?” Lau Deng asked.

“The most prominent practitioner among them is Ling Meng,” Che Fu said, extracting the message slips from his pocket space and passing them over. Transcribed from messages encoded in Qi, they were the fastest way of communication in the Empire, though prohibitively expensive for anyone other than the Empire and the Sects.

“She wants to kill me,” Lau Deng stated.

“She was very clear that she wants to marry you,”

“That’s how she wants to kill me,” Lau Deng said. “She knows it's the only way to get me to lower my guard.”

Che Fu sighed as Lau Deng went through the messages, making faces at each one.

“None of these seem like the mothering type.”

Che Fu kept his face carefully expressionless. While he hadn’t met all of the fairy maidens who’d sent messages, those that he had were extraordinarily beautiful and accomplished young ladies. The reputations of the others were no less favourable. If he didn’t have three wives of similar calibre, he would be dying with jealousy of the options that Lau Deng was considering, and then discarding.

“If you do not wish for a heaven-sent beauty with infinite cultivation potential, then perhaps you could consider the lesser Sect members?” There was no accounting for Lau Deng’s eccentricities, but marrying a Sect member would actually be better for the Sect. A beauty from outside the Sect did have advantages, but it would link the new bloodline to whatever Sect that she came from, which might cause trouble down the line.

Lau Deng considered his words. He cast his gaze away from the beautiful grounds, down the mountain to where the bulk of the Sect lived. Beautifully crafted walls and carefully placed trees were in the way of course, but they could not impede the gaze of someone who had attained the Realm of Infinite Strength.

“There are a number of comely women down there… but I cannot see clearly enough. Help me Che Fu.” He held out his hand and expanded his Qi.

Che Fu raised his eyebrows. He could count on the fingers of one hand the times that Lau Deng had asked for help. But it was clear what the man was attempting, so he linked hands, and his own Qi to that of Lau Deng.

Lau Deng’s problem was that he could not generate enough Qi to perform the feats that he was used to. But with Che Fu’s Qi at his disposal, that was no longer a problem. As ever, Che Fu was astonished at the fine control that Lau Deng exhibited. It was all too easy to think of Lau Deng as a brute that only cared for combat, but he was once again reminded that both observation and control were key elements of a successful battle.

Under Lau Deng’s control, Che Fu’s Qi spread out, encompassing the entirety of the lower mountain. Lau Deng left the higher reaches, where the Elders cultivated, alone but everyone on the mountain lower than them felt the touch of his Qi.

For a moment, everyone — student, servant and master alike — paused. It was normal, in the course of the day, to feel the touch of someone’s Qi perception brush against you. A student lacking control, a master uncaring of the proprieties of the lower orders. This was different — feather-light and yet all encompassing. No mere touch, it felt like their very souls were being scanned.

Everyone felt it, and then everyone noticed that everyone else felt it at the same time. Even as people reacted, Lau Deng let his personal signature flavour the touch. Not everyone recognised it, but the Masters did. They sent out a pulse of re-assurance to the lesser cultivators. This was Sect business, not an attack.

The servants and the students went back to their duties, while the Masters glowered, unhappy at their cavalier treatment. There was no one willing to speak against the Champion though, so all they did was grumble.

Paying no attention to all of this, Che Fu and Lau Deng gathered up the torrent of sensation that resulted from all this. It was too much information for one man, even one of their elevated cultivation, to comprehend. Che Fu managed the first line of defence, filtering out the men and the women too old or too young for childbirth. An image of the souls of every available woman on the mountain made its way to Lau Deng, who did… something.

Rather than go through each woman in turn, he… twisted the data, entwining it with some aspect of himself.

Is this man really only one grade ahead of me? Che Fu wondered. To exhibit such control, while maintaining the seal… and what is he even doing?

Whatever it was, it resulted in the majority of the images being discarded entirely. Forty-six images remained, forming a cloud around the crippled cultivator. But one image was in the centre of the cloud, and it what that image that Lau Deng focussed on.

“That one,” Lau Deng said. “She shall be my wife.” He collapsed back into his chair and closed his eyes. He released his grip on the Qi, allowing Che Fu to carefully retrieve the image of the chosen bride.

“Are you sure?” Che Fu asked, but Lau Deng had gone into meditation. The exertion had strained his control of the seal and he needed to focus all his attention on it.

Che Fu returned his attention to the soul image. It held no physical information, but it was the work of a moment for him to match it to one of the women downslope. A few mental exchanges with his head of household and he quickly knew everything there was to know about the woman. He shook his head with amusement.

“Very well, old friend, I shall arrange it.”

* * *

Chian was used to waking in the pre-dawn, but they came for her much earlier than that. It was still dark when the maids shook her awake and dragged her out of bed.

“Get in the bath, girl!” The command came from the Head Maid, Fianla. Chian tried to ask what she had done wrong, what was going on, but no one would answer her.

As a punishment, it seemed strange. Chian was used to bathing with a wash cloth and a basin. Sometimes the water was hot, but not always. To be fully immersed in a piping hot bath and scrubbed with expensive soap would normally have been a heavenly reward.

But this was definitely a punishment. The girls washing her all had spiteful looks on their faces, and they wouldn’t answer any of her questions. The scrubbing of her skin may not have drawn blood, but it felt like it. She wasn’t exactly popular, but she hadn’t been expecting an all out attack.

The torture didn’t stop at the bath either. In the dawn’s early light, she was dried, and her skin was anointed with some kind of scented oil. Her hair was combed and brushed — the girls missing no opportunity to pull painfully at her hair with every knot — and also oiled and perfumed.

All the while, the maids made spiteful comments. Calling her a pig and a cow, pinching and shoving her when she didn’t move fast enough. Chian cried at first, but after a few hours had gone by, she was simply numb.

The second bell had rung by the time they moved on to her dress. It was an elaborate, expensive creation, the sort of thing that Chian would be punished for touching under normal circumstances, and here she was being sewn into it. The stiff, brocaded and embroidered fabric made it hard to move, but since she got yelled at every time she tried to, it was the least of her concerns.

The makeup was the final step, and here the taunting finally had to stop, as her tears and flinches would spoil the artistry of of the maid painting her face. Chian was commanded to not move, to not even blink, and she did her best to comply.

At no point was Chian shown a mirror, but if she had been she would not have recognised herself. By this stage, she had been bullied and terrified into silent compliance, no longer begging for either relief or some hint as to what was going on. As instructed, she shuffled onto a sedan chair and was carried out of the room.

There was a lot of shouting going on outside. At first, Chian thought that the crowd might be calling for her head, but as the chair was carried outside, the masses cheered! They were… happy?

The crowd parted for the bearers, as Chian made her way down the street. To her astonishment, two servants of the sect started tossing out small silver coins to the cheering throngs.

Confused and petrified, Chian sat still on her chair, as she was carried up the street to the most important building in the Sect compound. Any other action seemed likely to get her punished. As the chair made its way up the steps into the Great Hall of the Sect, she began to have second thoughts. It was too late to run though. There was no way that she could move two steps in this dress before being intercepted.

The Great Hall was filled with the luminaries of the Lions of Everlasting Vigilance. Chian didn’t know any of them, of course, but she recognised from the decorations on their robes that she was in very exalted company. The urge to stay still warred with the urge to throw herself off the chair and kow-tow, but she stayed where she was.

Hoping to avoid notice when she was clearly the centre of attention of the entire hall was foolish beyond measure, but it was all she had. Like a rabbit in the light, she froze as she was carried up the centre of the hall and placed behind an alter, facing the entire crowd.

Beside her was another chair, occupied by the most beautiful man Chiara had ever seen. Cultivators were famous for their good looks, but this man seemed to have been sculpted out of white marble by the gods themselves. Only his red-brown tousled hair gave him away as not actually being a statue.

He was dressed in robes just as expensively decorated as hers and he wore three rings of what Chian assumed were immeasurable value. His eyes were closed and he sat, unmoving.

Is he dead?, Chian wondered. Someone else in elaborate robes was speaking, but he had his back to them, addressing the crowd. Chian tried to follow his words, but he was speaking in the Courtly dialect, which she found hard to follow. Instead, she snuck glances at her possibly dead companion.

Her ‘likelihood of corpse’ assessment came to an end as the speaker in front of them turned around to face the pair. Still speaking in Courtly dialect, he said something that might have been supposed to be reassuring to Chian.

Whatever it was, it was wasted on Chian, because the dead guy suddenly placed his hand on Chian’s!

He’s not dead? Chian gaped at the hand that had suddenly appeared on hers. She was still clutching the arm of the chair with a death grip, but the surprise and the warmth of his hand made her relax her grip.

The man in front spoke again, something about Gods and blessings. He took an elaborately braided red cord and tied it around their wrists. Then he addressed the crowd once more, and everyone cheered.

Wait a minute, I know this ceremony. Chian’s mind struggled to catch up with events. The red braid was familiar, she knew it was, but her panicked mind would not supply her with the answers she needed.

Just when she was starting to feel close to remembering, her chair was suddenly picked up again. At some point it had been attached to the not-dead man’s chair and they were picked up together and brought around to the front of the altar. They were set down again on a low platform that hadn’t been there when they’d entered, and a table was placed in front of them. Chian watched as tables were set up all along the centre of the hall and the ceremonial chamber was transformed into a feasting hall.

When they brought out the food, Chian started to think that she might not be in trouble after all. It couldn’t be bad if there was food, right?