Chương 14: Chapter 13

The mirror was a useful trinket. To any viewer, it appeared as a person-sized sheet of dark glass. Oval-shaped, gleaming with an inverted radiance that sucked light instead of giving it, it could be mistaken for a hole into reality. But apart from that, it was inert, an eerie thing without much in the way of functions. To Wu Zetian, it was the way she looked over the world. The Night was the direct manifestation of her Qi. It flowed from her like breath and everything it encompassed fell under her purview.

It was the result of her very personal Domain, but what interested her at the moment was the level of information it brought her. The Night was her arms, thrown around the Sect in an embrace that was as comprehensive as it was all-encompassing. Everything that dwelled in it, be it beast, person or object, appeared in her perceptions as a definite point, a series of parameters she could touch and see and analyze at leisure.

A staggering amount of information flowed into her mind as a result, letting her see Qi macro-flows movements in the atmosphere, Elders going over their duties, Disciples struggling to complete tasks, and critters hiding in floorboards. All with the same sharp precision. It was unfair, really. Better than any surveillance network could ever hope to accomplish, especially because her perceptions let her bypass the material and look at what lies underneath.

It was so detailed that even her Immortal-rank senses struggled to process it all in a meaningful way. The Mirror fixed it. Bound to her Qi, the artifact received the data and processed them in a format that was far easier for her to see and understand. It reminded Wu Zetian of a supercomputer, receiving information and turning it into statistics. With it, her vision was absolute.

A mouse couldn't breathe in the Wu Plateau without her knowing the quantity of air taken from the atmosphere, the number of blood cells charged with carrying it and the health of the heart muscles that moved it. It would be very easy to abuse this, a wicked part of her noted. In her previous life, she had grown very familiar with seeing people as numbers. It was obvious, in a way. Business was never personal, and the distance was a prerequisite for any sweeping decision.

At best, she could categorize them into assets or threats. That was the extent of any emotional involvement. With this, numbers weren't enough. People were ants, scurrying in her terrarium with their silly little concerns, with their silly little frustrations, with their silly little powerlessness. Cute generally, funny at best, inconsequential always. Not ants. Grains of sand. Trodden upon if you don't look. Easily dismissed. She had lived by that creed. It was necessary, obvious.

She couldn't be what her father wanted her to be if she stopped to consider things like feelings, human connections. What a load of bull. All she found on that road was emptiness. Far too late for her previous life to mend. Quite on time for this one. Wu Zetian observed the image reflected in the Mirror. Her grandchild was hurrying toward her throneroom, proud poise barely hiding the trembling. Watching him put a sharp ache in her chest. He reminded her far too much of him …

Turning, she reached out to scratch the Sun-Eating Serpent's head. The creature coiled at her side, shadowy forms all but indistinguishable from the gloom that surrounded them. They stirred at the touch, though, a hum vibrating happily on her fingers. I want to do better, Wu Zetian thought, smiling faintly. She had long given up on the idea that this might be a dream. It was too vivid, too real. Which left the obvious: it wasn't.

And if it wasn't, if this was to be her new life, it would have to be fixed in a way that was satisfactory for her. She was too used to getting her own way, wicked old woman that she was, and wasn't going to change her ways now. But she had learned her lesson. This time, there would be more than emptiness, more than loneliness. For her, and for all who lived and depended on her. She didn't know why, out of anybody else, she was the one who received a second chance. But she wouldn't waste it.

Which only meant that it was time to get back to work. Real work. She had been busy, but busy never ended. She was very proud of her work ethic, yes. With a hum, Wu Zetian moved through her palace. First, she wanted a look at her closest collaborators. If that was the right word. The Yan Luo Crater was densely inhabited. Thousands of shadow elementals and half-material creatures floated in its unearthly darkness.

Spiders wove webs of dark lights on its walls, while pale-eyed things skittered among the crevices, feeding over each other and the Qi flowing from the deep. The Shadow Dragon Vein at the bottom sustained the whole ecosystem just as much as her own emanations did, but the creatures were so entwined with her Night that they were hers, through and through.

They weren't good enough to replace Cultivators: the strongest among them reached Golden Core, yes, but their reach was generally limited to the Night's domain, which made them into an effective policing force, if a temperamental one, and little else. They were simply too savage to be used as anything different from a hammer. And anyway, they were a resource to be harvested first. Inner and Direct Disciples hunted the creatures for resources, Cores and materials, and the Elders could summon them to restore order.

But they were an inside force, their use sharply limited to internal issues. The Three Guardians were an exception. Thanks to Wu Zetian's extensive tinkering, each was intelligent, loyal and more than a match for a mid-grade Nascent Soul Cultivator. But just like their lesser cousins, they were slaved to their purpose and rarely strayed. Only the Sun-Devouring Serpent, being her Artifact Spirit, escaped the mold. And then there was the Monster. But that was a question still in need of an answer.

They'll serve, but a Sect needs human flesh and blood to thrive. Case in point, her family. The word still stirred something complicated in her chest. She forced it back for the time being, focusing on considering things clinically. The members of her family owed everything to her. They had been moulded from childhood to embrace filial piety and look up to their Ancestor. That made them, and their vassals, the most trustworthy among those she could call upon. Wu Zetian's attention flitted among them. Wu Nenqin.

Talented, effective, dutiful. A born leader. She followed him as he made his way across the city, nodding in approval at his actions. Now, if he could improve his self-esteem and stop doubting himself… This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. Wu Lin. A veritable genius. Thirteen years old and on the verge of making her breakthrough to Core Formation.

Wu Zetian had met her earlier, when she had taken personal care of her recovery, and the little bundle of joy may have just shot her heart through. She watched her dash across the city, trying her best to make herself useful. It was difficult to reconcile the image with the child who sniffled and cried when she thought nobody was looking. Her problem was loneliness, buried under a sense of duty a child her age shouldn't bear. And then… Wu Yan. Quite the taboo, it seemed, even to mention her.

The eldest Wu was a problem child, and her exile from the Sect seemed to have already been set in stone, far before the siege's start. Mmmh… we'll see. The Wu family, main, cadet branches and household troops, included roughly two hundred Cultivators, with only a few Core Formation Elders and the rest being Peak Establishment Formation guards, cadet children and sworn vassals. No Nascent Soul, which put well into perspective how deep the Clan had suffered. Haoran was the lone exception.

A Mid-Upper Nascent Soul, he was arguably the strongest warrior the Sect had at its disposal. Gan Nim would have likely lost against him. Why, the old man was one of the very few who noticed her attention. Someone of his stature could have had much. Instead, he remained a simple vassal. A conundrum to be sure, one she felt a flicker of anticipation at the idea of unraveling. I said my family is the most tied to the Sect. But is that true? After the battle, Wu Zetian knew better than to linger.

She knew too little about the world around her. The memories she had inherited from her previous self were out of date by almost one millennium. So, she had done the only sensible thing: sequestering herself, reading books, talking with people who were low-profile or naive enough not to notice her prodding and watching the Sect's people through her Mirror. Now, she wondered about the need for that level of paranoia. The Chen and Xing Clans were tied to the Godless Night by more than blood.

Their culture, their identity, their very soul; they were all reflected in the Sect's body, to the point that they were ready to die with it. The Chen were… numerous. Dozens of branches, families and sub-units, all interwoven into a network of hundreds of parents, brothers, sisters, cousins and adopted siblings.

It was deliberate: the Chen actively practiced matchmaking to preserve and reinforce the bloodline, with good and less good results, balancing it with a politics of intermarrying in the many lesser families tied to them by oaths of loyalty. They suffered from that very common sickness called Being the Number 2 and Thinking I could Do a Better Job. Still, their ambitions were held in check by their loyalty.

They identified entirely with the Sect's more military aspect and sent their children to the military academy en masse. Why, their own households and tangled family tree were organized like an army. Imagination was not their strong suit: they specialized in producing warriors and generals. If Wu Zetian had to hand them something was that they were resilient: the Chen had been on the frontlines for centuries, and their numbers never went below three digits. Tough as cockroaches and just as defiant.

Their Matriarch contended with Haoran for the title of strongest, but the closest to her came up short. All the Shadow Elders produced by the Clan had died, even if they maintained a numerous group among the Elders, and the Hand of Night leadership was almost entirely composed of them and their toadies. In proportions, they had the fewest Core Formation cultivators, but made up for it in sheer manpower and reach. The Xing were interesting.

A tight-knit Clan, they held their cards close to their collective chest, allowing only a select few into their confidence, and only a select few of those into their family. Barely a dozen in total, yet they included a Sect Elder, three Shadow Elders, no member beneath Core Formation and four incredibly promising Core Disciples. Wu Zetian knew the type. Discreet, understated, yet with a disproportionate amount of influence. The Xing fit the mold with their web of alliances, favors and debts.

It was a capital they built thanks to their grip on the Blackflame Forge and among the assassins of the Owl Talon Den. These were the most obvious Clans to require her attention. A few lesser ones did the same to a lesser degree. The Qin, Chu, Zhang, Ling, Shi and Xian were all powerful, important families with a long streak of service and powerful vassals and family members in their employ. Together with the Chen, they were the Seven Great Clans, the Sect's most important groups.

Even if times had caught up to all of them. A variable number of sub-lineages, lesser clans and families formed a strata beneath, but apart from a cursory glance at their general predisposition, these were mostly beneath her notice. As for the mortals, they were inconsequential. One lesser Clan, the Liu, was charged with overseeing all of them. What a strange world. Here, life meant very little unless it was backed by force. A consequence of excessive potential, maybe? Musing for another time.

Wu Zetian's consciousness moved quickly among the Sable Lotus Palace's halls, registering alliances, rivalries, preferences, ambitions, who was in the employ of whom, and who would die before betrayal. After cross-referencing everything with the Clans' influence over the Sect's organizations, she found herself with a reliable summary of her Sect's inner politics. She memorized everything, her Immortal mind devouring every scrap of information like a shark with bait. Mh, so efficient. Almost unfair.

It takes the fun out of it. Not like it solved all her problems. The Godless Night's infrastructure was a mess. The Sect thrived on three things: assassins and spies for hire, Night Qi-infused artifacts and resources extracted from the wild lands and the parts of the Province most touched by the Night. After decades of siege, all those activities were effectively reduced to zero.

The Blackflame Foundry had been converted almost entirely to repairing what was already present, with a minimal stock left for new products. The Scavenger Guild had the manpower only for gathering missions in the Yan Luo and then, only at a very basic level. And most of the specialized warriors that had been the pride of the Sect had been slain during its long decadence. That was not to mention the number shortage.

The Godless Night had boasted hundreds of thousands of Cultivators in its heyday, with more than a dozen Nascent Soul sages and almost one thousand Core Formation experts. Millions of mortals had lived in the Crater's outskirts, or in the cities that dotted Qinghai Province, protected by grand arrays and the weapons of the immortals in black. The Sect's influence had extended over Dragon Veins, sealed realms, training grounds and forbidden sites. Its power had cowed the barbarians that surrounded it.

For all purposes, the Sect had been an independent realm, able to advance its demands to more powerful neighbors and to lord over the lands around it. Now, that grandeur was gone. The Sect's influence didn't extend beyond the Wu Plateau. Qinghai Province had been wrecked by the demonic cultivators' depredation. Everything that had been conquered in millennia of work was, for all the meanings of the word, lost. The Godless Night's membership rolls were depressing.

In all, twenty thousand Cultivators made their living atop the Plateau. Of them, three belonged to the Nascent Soul Realm and eighty to Core Formation. The rest was a motley mass of Qi Condensation apprentices and Formation Establishment warriors. Hardened by fighting, no doubt, but nowhere near enough to make the city feel less than a deserted ruin, or to keep infrastructure moving. Or to ensure safety. Because of course, exterminating the Twelve Demon Alliance had not by any stretch extinguished possible dangers.

There were plenty of threats out there, some of which were easily even a match for her own power. So many problems, and yet… Wu Zetian smiled lightly, petting the Serpent, enjoying their little purrs. Anticipation welled inside of her, one she hadn't felt in a very long time. This world, Tianjin, was easily far more cutthroat than everything she had ever experienced. In here, might made right, with little to nothing in the way of regulations and laws to offer protection.

But she thrived on challenge, and she never backed down from holding on to what was hers. And this, well, it was hers, wasn't it? It didn't hurt that there was a whole new landscape spreading before her, one she was very keen on exploring for all that it was worth. A world of riches and chances for growth. Maybe, even true immortality; it tickled her greed just the right way, old wicked woman that she was. And she could try her hand at management again, why not?

She nodded slowly, scratching the Serpent beneath his scaly chin, to their delight. And then, there was something for her to protect here. A nation-spanning organization, again, but people as well. People she wished to know and see and maybe spoil. Just a little bit. And… she wouldn't mind some of that wealth going to her beloved ones this time. In the supernatural gloom that filled the Deputy Master's private chambers, Wu Zetian smiled faintly. Well, this is stimulating, mh? Anticipation ran through her like Qi.

A polite knock broke her reverie. Not really. She was following that presence since he stepped foot outside his residence.

"Come in." The doors of her apartment opened just as the Night retreated back into her, alongside the Sun-Eating Serpent. Her grandchild stepped in. All awkward respect and dutiful attempts, he was very cute, she decided.