Chapter 10: Two Villages Away
“The Prefect’s cultivators are strong. They can punch through walls, but they’re nothing more than weapons being guided by someone else.”
Hao sat across from me on the hillside, the crater between us like a period at the end of a sentence. We’d been talking for an hour. I’d laid out the cultivation principles, the meridian system Mother had taught me, the village assessment, the timeline, as well as the looming threat.
Everything except the transmigration.
He didn’t need that, and I wasn’t sure he’d believe it anyway.
“So what are you saying exactly?" Hao asked.
“I’m saying that they're hammers to a nail, and we need to build that a hammer can’t break.”
Hao looked down at the crater. “And you want to build that something.”
I nodded. “I want to give this village the tools to not be a nail.”
He was quiet for a while. The stars had come out fully now, sharp and cold above the ridge.