Tian took a long moment to try and understand what he was seeing. The girl was dressed in rather good robes. They were a fine silk, bright green with gold trim and a blindingly white underrobe. All carefully tied and belted in place. Her hair was nicely cropped, but not decorated. There was a pendant on her waist too- a lovely blue stone, but what was carved on it he couldn’t tell. A noble child. Ji was holding her about as high as his neck. Any attempt to sneak a head shot would be intercepted.

Tian reached out with his senses, Counter Jumper running hard. No strange qi from the child. Hong remained herself. No hidden traps around the room, though several of the carvings and paintings were deeply cursed. Most cursed of all was the demon’s claw Ji was pressing to the child’s neck. Tian could see it had been cut from a true demon, not merely crafted into that shape. Some obscene crafter’s art had been worked on it to preserve and strengthen it, letting the wild-eyed heretic hold the finger flesh as a handle and use the long, dagger-pointed nail to stab with.

“This little monk is confused. Why would saving this little girl’s life be worth more than taking yours for the cause of healing the world?” Tian asked. He would prefer to save the girl. Of course he would! But he knew exactly what would happen if Ji made it to the nomads. He would become another heretic loose in the Redstone Wastes. The consequences of that would be awful. Who knows what resources and hidden knowledge he had accumulated?

“That is Ma Xiaobai, only child of the City Lord, and granddaughter of the Red Plume General that commands the border army garrisoned here. And the reason I’m here is to rescue her.” Hong’s voice was clipped.

“Ah. So my “help” with a diversion might not have been so helpful. I’ll have to make it up to her. Ma… I’ve heard that name before.”

“I see. Her death would cause a political problem.”

“It would make the city collapse! It would turn brother against brother, father against son! The army would leave and the nomads would storm in, looting, burning and taking slaves! The border of the Kingdom will be unguarded, Ancient Crane Mountain will be critically weakened, and I worked damned hard for fifteen years to make it happen! It wasn’t supposed to happen tonight, but you daoist pricks showed up to run a GOD DAMN AUDIT?! Who would believe that horseshit! Do you little shits know how much I suffered for this? Do you know how much I sacrificed?!” The spittle was flying from Ji’s mouth as he howled at the injustice.

“Thank you for relieving this little monk’s confusion, Benefactor. No.”

There was a pause in the room. Tian thought even Xiaobai was giving him a look.

“No? NO?! What do you mean, no?!”

“This little monk will be unable to kill this daoist sister, or escort you from the city. This child’s death will not spark a war. The city will not fall. You worked hard, but it is too late. The City Lord and the General know who to blame now. Their trust in the monastery will be damaged but not broken entirely, and it is in their interest that this city survives. This plan cannot work. May this little monk offer Benefactor another solution?”

Tian gently fed wood qi into the burning lamp in his crimson palace, stimulating the inviting light within him. It wouldn’t affect the people around him directly, but the sincerity of the compassion in his voice rang truer and truer.

“What then? Be quick, and no games. I startle easily, and get bored even more easily.”

“Benefactor must understand that there is no way he can leave this room alive. But that is not a problem for Benefactor, with the right preparations.”

“Fake my death?” Ji looked a little interested.

“No. Ensure that when you die, the Heavenly Demon will forgive your mistakes and honor you above all others. Give him cause to raise you up as an example of the rewards reserved for his best and most powerful generals. The sacrifice of this child will not move him. She won’t even fill the cracks in his teeth. You need something a bit more special.”

Tian smiled under his wicker basket helmet as he slowly removed his storage ring and let it drop on the ground. His staff dropped next to it. “The life of a living legend should suffice.”

The room got very still. Ji stared, struggling to understand what Tian was saying.

“It’s very simple. Benefactor has heard people yelling about this monk’s identity from the courtyard. He may even have heard of people like this monk in the past. You thought we were mere stories. But look, Benefactor, this little monk is here before you. You have the evidence of your own eyes, and the destroyed bodies of your guards. A level six monk that can kill three level nine mercenaries? What could he be but a legend? And Benefactor? Listen to this voice. Look at these hands.” Tian pulled up the sleeves of his robe, displaying his soft skin.

“This little monk is young, Benefactor. This little monk carries the hopes of many others. Hopes that he will be a hero of the people of this world, and a deadly enemy to the followers of the Demon.”

Tian let the silence fill the room, the light of his candle burning bright.

“You could kill a little girl and achieve nothing. Or you could kill this little monk, and change the world.” Tian opened his robes, exposing his chest. Tapping a spot a little left of center.

“Benefactor cannot change when this life ends. But he can change everything about how the next life will begin.”

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“Monk.” Hong’s voice was strained. He could see the spearpoint shaking. “Monk, this is not the right choice. It’s not even a choice for you to make. You came here because of me-”

“No. This monk has been killing Benefactor Ji’s subordinates as he found them in the city, working his way up to him. Our meeting here was merely fate.”

“Oh? Who died?” Ji asked. He looked distracted, thinking over what Tian said.

“A potter and a goldsmith. This monk confesses that, if he ever bothered to learn their names, he has forgotten them.”

“Oh, them. Hah. Yes. Not names worth remembering. I would have your name, though, Monk.”

“Benefactor Ji, does this little monk look like someone who owns anything of value? How could he own something as precious as a name? You may pick one for him if you wish.”

“No. You should die nameless too.” Ji threw Xiaobai at Hong. Only endless training and superb reflexes let Hong shift her spearpoint enough to avoid skewering the child. Tian saw the muscles bunch a second before the throw. He spread his arms wide, welcoming the stab. Ji smiled, his face becoming a manic rictus as he plunged the cursed finger into Tian’s chest. Tian’s hands slammed together on either side of the heretic’s head, obliterating it in a spray of blood and grey matter.

“BROTHER!” Hong dropped Xiaobai and caught Tian as he collapsed. She reached for the finger but Tian slapped her hand away.

“I made sure he missed my heart. If something is stuck in, don’t pull it out if you don’t know how you are going to stop the bleeding afterward. Get me my ring.” Xiaobai was crying. Tian reckoned that was fair enough, so he let her keep at it.

“The curse-”

“Does your big brother seem like someone who minds curses? Although, this one is,” Tian spasamed as his body seemed to burn with yin flames. “Pretty damn rough. Ring. Now!”

She grabbed it off the floor and shoved it into his hands. “Swear to me that this is a coincidence. Swear that this is some weird Jungle Rat Follows The Food coincidence and you didn’t come here because of me.”

“I swear. I told the absolute truth. I spent the morning eating with some brothers in the AH DAMN! DAMN! Ah! In the army, went clothes shopping, then started killing heretics. DAMN that hurts. How much does she weigh?”

“What?”

“Xiaobai! How. Much. Does. She. Weigh?”

“I don’t know, thirty pounds? Forty?”

Tian snarled and dumped two little bags out of his ring. “Two grains from the blue bag, half a grain from the yellow one. Make sure she swallows it.”

“What is-”

“Just do it already!”

Tian heard Hong getting to it. He focused on running Advent of Spring as hard as he could, pouring the combined curse qi and yang wood vital energy into the Hell Suppressing art. To say it hurt would be to cheapen the concept of pain. It was like every nerve had been frozen, then the cold became so intense, it burst into flames again. Then the fire turned into little beetles covered in barbs of hatred and started tunneling into his muscles, eating and destroying as they went.

The weapon was truly diabolical. He was barely keeping the curse under control. It wouldn't get better until the finger was out, but he needed to stay there for a while. He could handle the pain.

“She passed out! Brother-”

“Supposed to happen. It’ll knock her out for a few minutes and confuse her memories. She won’t forget entirely, but she will be very confused. Anyone checking will see the residue, think she got a much bigger dose a long time ago. The less she remembers about this, the better.”

Tian got the words out in a rasp. His mind was flying, putting together the thoughts he had been struggling with all day. He didn’t give a damn about dropping the Monastery in a mess, but he really, really didn’t want to drop his brothers and sisters into it. And he really, really, really, didn’t want to drop Liren in it.

Liren probably thought this was something that could be smoothed over between her Grandmother and the Long clan ancestor. Maybe some subtle favor trading, a little light blackmail, usual Inner Court things. But this wasn’t the Inner Court anymore. It scared, wounded people, lashing out and desperately defending what was theirs. Ready to kill to keep their rice bowl full. Ready to make examples, to scare off the other predators.

If Hong Liren was to blame for all this, then the Long clan would go to war. Why not? There wasn’t enough left of the Hong clan to even slow them down. Grandma Hong would get a knife in her back, or more likely several. And then it would all be hushed up as loose ends were tidied.

The Long family wouldn’t let a monstrously talented junior survive. Who would leave that kind of future danger for themselves? Especially if she were the one to blame for their troubles in the first place.

Better someone else take the fall for all this. A nameless madman, following his own dao path. Hong Liren was investigating Ji, but planned to intervene discreetly. She only stormed the building when she realized the mad monk was going to kill everyone.

A nice, tidy end. Well, it would be an absolute nightmare and the kind of political headache not a single damn person wanted right now, but as tidy an end as anyone was going to get.

He hadn’t been reading all those histories for nothing. All the stories of court dramas and betrayals had built up in his head. This kind of betrayal was very normal, apparently. He would explain all this to Liren, but there was the minor problem of searing agony to work through. And how to convincingly fake his own death, of course.

He certainly wasn’t going to die for the Sect. Not now. Not after everything. Worst case scenario, he’d grab Liren and run into the jungle. Everyone else was even better equipped to look after themselves than he was if everything collapsed.

“Alright. Alright. This is what we are going to do.” Liren was talking. Unfortunate. “We… we get Xiaobai out of here, and you out of here. There should be a way to signal the Windward Manor, even if we have to burn a few miles of grassland to write the characters big enough to see from the sky. We get you evacuated. Then the elder can-”

“No. What we are going to do is, you call your men in. They collect Xiaobai and see me lying here with a demon finger jabbed through my chest. You tell everyone that I, a nameless monk you have never seen before, was stabbed with a horribly cursed weapon. That I am functionally dead, but still fighting the curse. Once my heart stops beating, the curse will explode and taint the whole city. So you need to get me far, far away from the city and hide my body to prevent heretics from using it as a weapon. Or something. Just make sure they see me “dead,” and you get me out. I’ll stop my heart for a bit if I have to. I know how to do that safeishly. So just don’t screw up.”

“You said “safeishly.” Not safely. I heard you.”

“Brain damage has spread to your ears. Horrible. Do it now, because this is not as easy as it looooooookkksssss…. DAMN. Why are you still here?!”