Book 10: Chapter 2: Displacement
Even getting the displaced villagers into temporary shelter turned out to be a monumental and time-consuming task. There was a lot of, to Sen’s thinking, needless confrontation about that temporary housing. Granted, it was little more than a warehouse that might be used to store grain. It was short on luxury, but it was protection from the elements and well-stocked with food. Plus, all that complaining happened after Sen and Cao Kai-Ming explained, repeatedly and at length, that more permanent homes were available. It would just take a few days to get everyone settled. Sen eventually concluded that the villagers were being aggressive because they were tired, far from home, and unhappy about both things. He just couldn’t find it in him to care. He’d protected them for the entire journey. Time he would much rather have been spending with his family, or training, or helping to plan strategies to survive the war.
“Enough,” he said.
It wasn’t a shout but multiple types of qi carried that word through the air and the stone beneath their feet. He knew from experience that everyone would have felt that word in their bodies. The room went silent. The overweight man, although much less overweight than he had been at the beginning of the journey, who had been agitating about everything froze in place. He wasn’t the only instigator, but he had been the loudest and the closest to where Sen stood. Not that any of them had directed their ire directly at him. Most of them had seen him casually kill more than one spirit beast and cut down bandits with ruthless efficiency. Of course, they didn’t need to direct those complaints directly at him to make sure he heard them. The instigator turned and found Sen glaring at him from about ten feet away. He flinched back from the glare and found something on the floor to hold his attention. Sen swept his gaze across the big open space and found a whole lot of people suddenly unwilling to meet his eyes. He raised his voice so it would carry.
“I realize that this is not ideal. As I said before, though, it is temporary. Houses, shops, and farmland have all been prepared for you. There simply is not enough time to get all of you into those places today. People from my sect and the town will come tomorrow to begin organizing that effort and, no, preference will not be given to any particular person or occupation. However, those who make nuisances of themselves,” said Sen, locking his eyes on the overweight agitator, “will be moved to the end of the line. So, for tonight, eat and rest. The next few days will be hectic.”
The quiet and not-so-quiet complaining did not resume after that announcement. Sen gave it another ten minutes before he went outside and took a deep breath to settle himself. It wasn’t just the villagers that were bothering him. He didn’t want to be dealing with them anymore. He’d been putting up with them for weeks now, and he’d reached his limit. He’d never had any connection with those people save for that one brief meeting with Cao Kai-Ming. While he was glad that he had taken the time and expended the effort to save the ones he could, he was beyond ready to be done with the task. The worst part was that he probably would have liked some of them but the wall between mortals and high-ranked cultivators made it impossible. He hadn’t even tried during the trip. Whenever he drew near, conversations died and people grew nervous. Just live with it, he told himself. It’s all you can do.
The colors on the horizon told him that, somewhere along the line, they had transitioned from afternoon into evening. With the villagers more or less settled, he thought he was finally free to leave them behind to manage on their own for a while. He supposed that had been true from the moment they reached the warehouse. He just wasn’t cruel enough to leave the task of wrangling them entirely to Cao Kai-Ming. She had more than done her part in keeping the mortals safe on the trip. She might have been more invested in it than he was, but she could have just left the work to him. He was the famous, dangerous one. He’d also been the more powerful of the two. It stood to reason that he could exert more authority than she could.
She also could have followed orders and nothing more. Sen knew perfectly well that the Twisted Blade Sect had been a place where that sort of behavior was expected and encouraged. While almost all cultivators learned to fight, some were better at it than others. Some were more suited to it than others. Cao Kai-Ming was not a master of combat. She specialized in finding plants for alchemy. She just needed to be competent enough to fight off spirit beasts or, more often, stealthy enough to escape them. That lack of supreme skill and talent hadn’t stopped her. She’d jumped into the fighting whenever it happened. It had honestly been more work for him since he’d needed to keep an eye on her as well as everyone else, but it was the thought that counted.
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“You’re frustrated with them,” said Cao Kai-Ming as she joined him outside.