Unintended Cultivator V8: Chapter 33 – Politics, Part 2 (Patreon)

Hsiao Jiayi worried that she might not be able to continue the conversation if she wasn’t allowed a moment to regain her calm. Fortunately, there was a commotion outside the main door into the room they were all occupying. Someone was arriving and, by the noise, it was someone important.

“Lai Dongmei, matriarch of the Golden Phoenix Sect,” choked out the man at the door.

Hsiao Jiayi turned to look. This was another person she had heard stories about, although stories of a different kind. The stories about Lai Dongmei centered on all of the tragic, doomed loves she inspired. As with the tales about Judgment’s Gale, she had largely discounted those stories. Cultivator beauty was nothing new. It was to be expected of those in the nascent soul stage, even if there were freakish exceptions like Lu Sen. Yet, the moment Hsiao Jiayi laid eyes on Lai Dongmei, she felt a stab of almost instant hatred. No living creature should be allowed that kind of beauty. It was impossible, unearthly beauty. If Lu Sen was the sun, this woman was the moon.

The matriarch gave the king an almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgement, and then her eyes fixed on Lu Sen. She… Walked wasn’t the right word for it. There simply wasn’t a word for someone moving with that much grace. It was almost comical watching people try to speak with her, only to have the woman move past them like she was in an empty room and the singular item of interest in it was Judgment’s Gale. Hsiao Jiayi realized that the only person who hadn’t turned to look, who hadn’t been instantly enthralled, was Lu Sen himself. He was just looking at her, his expression expectant. He had asked her a question, but it was just gone from her mind, blown away like an errant leaf in a hurricane. Lai Dongmei arrived and didn’t hesitate for a second as she pressed herself against the man and kissed his cheek.

“Hello, lover,” said the matriarch, running a finger down the front of Lu Sen’s robe. “I see you dressed up for the occasion. I very much approve. It makes you look positively delicious.”

Hsiao Jiayi felt a completely irrational flare of jealous rage take hold. She knew it was irrational. She knew it was stupid. She’d had a five-minute conversation with this man. And none of those facts mattered in the slightest. It still took every ounce of her restraint not to attack the other woman. A reaction that was not helped in the slightest when he looked at that unfairly, wretchedly beautiful woman. There was something there in his eyes, something that smoldered. Something that she wanted to see there when the man looked at her, instead of that infuriating distant politeness. Lai Dongmei finally deigned to look at her then.

“Oh, I see you’ve met the princess.”

“Princess,” said Lu Sen, his expression going positively icy as he drew out the word. “I thought you were some manner of ambassador.”

Hsiao Jiayi didn’t understand what had just happened. All she knew was that a single word had left a frigid shell where at least vague friendliness had been before.

“I am,” she said with too much haste. “It’s what my father does with willful daughters who refuse to marry the disgusting scions of his political allies. He sends us away.”

Her mouth snapped shut. She knew she was talking too much, saying too much, all because she hated the way he was looking at her. It shocked her to see sympathy on Lai Dongmei’s face. Not that other woman backed away from Lu Sen in any way. She had a clear agenda and wasn’t going to be swayed from it. But, still, the sympathy was there. A kind of understanding of what it meant to be a woman with power or near to it. A recognition of the difficulty of forcing men to recognize that they had value beyond bearing children or serving as pawns. None of that sympathy or understanding could be found on Lu Sen’s face, though. In fact, she couldn’t read anything at all there anymore. He was as blank as a piece of stone. He simply inclined his head to her.

“If you’ll excuse me, your highness, I should meet the other guests.”

Then, they were gone, and Hsiao Jiayi felt like an ocean of weight had been lifted from her. Alone, Lu Sen and Lai Dongmei were each enough to render people incoherent. Together they were something truly terrible. Beauty like that was a silent tyranny over the hearts and minds of others. She only had to watch the reactions of the people they interacted with to see that. People weren’t talking to them, so much as fawning over them. People who had been hardened and sharpened by years in the brutal arena of court politics were gushing like schoolchildren. Their eyes bright with joy because, for a few minutes, those almost inhuman, luminous creatures were deigning to look at them and listen politely.

If Lu Sen and Lai Dongmei had the ambition to do so, they would hold the entire continent in their hands. People would fall over themselves to swear allegiance to them. Kingdoms would line up to support them. Some people had to build empires on mountains of corpses and rivers of blood. Those two would be able to build one on blind infatuation. With a start, Hsiao Jiayi realized that they probably both knew that on some level. Given that one had contented herself with being a sect matriarch, and the other had only gotten involved with politics after what rumors said was an entire series of unbelievably stupid personal assaults, they clearly didn’t have the ambition. A surge of palpable relief washed through her at that thought. Empires built on violence could crumble, but she doubted one ruled by those two would ever fall. 

She looked over to the king, who had been largely forgotten and abandoned as everyone scurried to get their moment with the sun and moon that walked among them. She would have expected him to be infuriated at being upstaged this way. Instead, he looked amused. He whispered something to the queen, who giggled and nodded in reply. They clearly knew something that she did not about this situation. She realized that she’d been looking at them for too long when the king and queen walked over to her. Hsiao Jiayi offered a shallow bow. The rules for this sort of thing were complex. She was a cultivator, which automatically made her of higher standing than a mortal king, but she was also a foreigner, a guest really, which meant she owed him some deference. It made calculating the appropriate depth of her bow difficult. The king inclined his head. A measure of respect that also looked a little uncertain. It seemed he was struggling with the particulars as well, which made her feel oddly better about the whole situation. The man glanced over to where Lu Sen and Lai Dongmei were effectively holding court like an imperial couple.

“What do you think of our Lord Lu, Ambassador Hsiao?” asked the king.

She weighed her answer carefully. There were many politically adroit options available to her. Vague, empty statements that would sound meaningful but convey nothing of her true thoughts. She had long-since mastered the art of uttering such hollow sentiments with sincerity. However, this entire situation was abnormal, absurd even, bordering on the ridiculous. She felt unbalanced, and worried that adding meaningless banter to the situation might push the whole event off of some kind of cliff she couldn’t see. Hsiao Jiayi rejected all of the political niceties and elected to share a rare piece of unpolished truth.

“I think that man may well be one of the most dangerous people alive,” she said, eying the royal couple with a critical eye. “Yet, the two of you seem oddly unperturbed, your majesties.”

The king and queen shared a brief look. There was nothing sinister to it. She had seen similar looks pass between hundreds of married couples. A sort of shorthand that developed over time that they employed largely to remind each other about shared jokes and to make decisions about how to discipline their misbehaving children this time. The king looked at her, that same amused expression surfacing on his features.

“That’s because I know something very important about that man that tells me I have very little to fear from him.”

“Really? I don’t suppose you’d care to share.”

“Oh, it’s no great secret. Anyone that spends any time at all with him will figure it out. I’m not worried because he’s about as interested in ruling as I am in being a potato,” said the king with a knowing smile.

Hsiao Jiayi went to reply and found herself bereft of words. How was someone supposed respond to such a peculiar statement? And he’d said it with such benign certainty. She was doubtful that she would have felt so certain that a man who could probably kill everyone in the room, with the exception of Lai Dongmei, wasn’t a threat. In fact, she was confident that she would have viewed him as an existential threat. After all, the man could effectively behead this nation and claim it for himself with one swift murder spree. Having finally met the man and witnessed his response to Sung Kai, she was confident he was more than capable of carrying out such an act. Especially after seeing the profound disdain in which he held the nobility here. She didn’t know where it sprang from, but it ran deep. She thought that there was a part of Lu Sen would likely enjoy killing everyone here, save for the royal couple, his escort, and the woman whispering things in his ear that turned that smoldering look in his eyes into a bonfire.

“Perhaps,” said Hsiao Jiayi, “but disinterest isn’t the same thing as unwillingness.”

The king nodded.

“True enough, but he has other priorities. He’s a—” the king paused then.

She could almost watch as the man mentally substituted one word for another.

“He’s a cultivator, after all. Aren’t you all worried about ascension?”

Hsiao Jiayi shifted her gaze to Lu Sen.

“That man doesn’t seem like he’s worried about anything.”