Chương 24: Chapter 23

"Very good. I suppose this can be enough for this council's first session. Dismissed, all of you. Elder Xing. Grandson. Stay a while." The Elders offered their respects and started filing out. A few had expressions set, already focused on the tasks ahead or the ones they left unfinished; others simply looked relieved to have avoided a punishment. They all made a speedy retreat, knowing better than to linger when the Founder said to scatter.

Wu Zetian pretended not to notice the suspicious glance Chen Liwei threw at Xing Xing. The matriarch was likely wondering why it was he the Ancestor asked to remain after the council. Was it a show of favor? A punishment? Secret instructions? She would puzzle over it, and Wu Zetian wouldn't have it any differently. First rule of top-tier management: keep them guessing. Her top subordinates could know her policies and understand her will, but they weren't allowed to see all of her and understand all her thoughts.

It would make her predictable, and predictable leaders were easily betrayed. Wu Zetian waited for the doors to close behind the retreating Elders before moving her attention from the Sun-Devouring Serpent. Her grandson, as always, did his best at looking poised and dutiful while hiding his nerve-wracking anxiety. He was better than average at it, but he made a poor figure compared to Xing Xing. The Sect Elder didn't show a shred of doubt, looking superb and in perfect control.

Why, you'd think he was the one who called for this meeting.

"Grandson."

"Yes, Founder."

"The Night General has supplied me with a full report of the Sect's military defenses, the same I sent to you. I'd appreciate your comment on it." Without missing a beat, Wu Nenqin produced a thick booklet.

"As far as I can say, it mirrors reality, Ancestor," the boy said. He eyed the booklet with a hint of awe.

"If anything, the General proves herself worthy of her fame." Wu Zetian hummed not-committally. So Chen Liwei hadn't tried to cheat her or hide any possible mismanagement. Which, considering the dreadful state of the Sect, made her a truly honest commander or just savvy enough to know she would unmask any attempt to lie. She was inclined toward the former. Pleasant, but it didn't change things.

"Apart from the Walled Moonlit Ring," she started mildly.

"The only defensive arrays still active are medium-level formations, just powerful enough to keep the Shadow Beasts of the Tableau at bay. No, the word active isn't right." She paused, glancing their way.

"The wide-scale and high-level arrays are gone. The Sect's current defenses are a piecemeal of bobs and pieces. Now, thankfully, the Grand Silent Formation is still present, but I wonder." She settled herself in a comfortable position, folded her hands on her lap and watched them with a calm smile.

"Why are the formations I set a millennium ago gone?" Wu Nenqin had gone paler and paler as she talked. By the end, he looked like the ghost of himself.

"Founder, I…" The young man paused, startled. Xing Xing had stepped forward, putting a hand on his shoulder. He smiled, the usual feral sight almost soft. Wu Zetian inclined her head, curious.

"Elder Xing?" The Elder's response was to fall into one of his grand, sweeping bows.

"'tis a great dishonor to speak poorly of the dead, honored Ancestor, and so I'd like to beg for your forgiveness before I start." To her own surprise, Wu Zetian was amused. Xing Xing was one of those grandstanding characters you couldn't help but love in some way. That is, until she gave him leave to speak. That was when the iron wolf hidden under the courtesy made its appearance.

"It's my nephew's father's fault." Unlike his refined self, Xing Xing's telling was stark and to the point. Wu Nenqin's father, Wu Zhan, was, mildly put, a complete idiot. The quintessential, arrogant fool born and raised in the lap of luxury and issues, he was the fifth out of the seven, and as such, never meant to take on the seat of Deputy Master. Wu Nenqin's grandfather, Wu Xin, was a great Master. Under his three-hundred-year reign, the Sect prospered in a way unseen since the times of the Ancestor.

But he wasn't a good father, especially not for children without much in the way of talent or intelligence. As a consequence, Wu Zhan had become a bitter drunkard. When death took his four siblings and he was suddenly the main heir, Wu Zin lacked the time or means to rectify his character: the old man's age got to him, and the Sect's throne was left to a boy who had never grown up and who felt the burning need to avenge himself on the family who scorned him by surpassing them.

Grandiose projects and foolish endeavors were the ways Wu Zhan squandered the Godless Night's riches. He dismissed officers and Elders who disagreed with him and surrounded himself with fools whose only quality was their skill in flattering him. Ridiculous ideas, so-called revolutions that brought nothing, projects that were badly led and badly thought out, and whole wars.

Three centuries his father ruled, and it took the son just thirty years to pull the Godless Night down the same way his predecessor had raised it. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. Under his rule, the Sect wilted. Only certain sections managed to retain part of their stability, like the Hand of Night under Chen Liwei and some parts of the Owl Talon. It took the Civil War to break him.

All the ringleaders of the rebellion came from the Loyalist Faction, as his toadies called themselves. Led by a Sima Zhi, they entrenched themselves in the Sect and then tore it apart in three nights of infighting. Xing Xing's features turned even more lupine when he remembered those grim times. The traitors were defeated and exiled, but the damage was done: the Godless Night was in shambles. Worse, Wu Zhan, the useless dolt, had fallen into despondency.

Closed in his idiotic gardens, he refused to accept reality, floating in a sleepless torpor. He died five years into the Siege, a selfish, foolish man whose passing nobody noticed, let alone mourned. It was because of him that the Godless Night almost fell. Because of him the Founder's great legacy was almost squandered.

And because of him the great Formations, each a priceless work of art crafted by the Ancestor herself, were gone: the fool had them sold off or transferred, because nobody would ever dare to assault the Sect's center of power. Even as she listened, Wu Zetian was surprised by the slow vitriol that infused Xing Xing's words. The Elder's deep voice never wavered or cracked, and his smile never dimmed, but his large hands had taken a claw-like appearance, as though he wanted to crush a skull beneath them.

He paused only to glance toward Wu Nenqin, the young man keeping his head down and his fists clenched. Then, Xing Xing started shaking his head like a troubled lion, claiming and claiming again that his beloved Nephew had nothing to do with his fool of a father, and that he was a true Wu. In him, the Night flowed strongly, and his will and soul were both strong and loyal to a fault. He was so deep into it, that Wu Nenqin's eyes turned misty, and he had to excuse himself for a moment. Even Wu Zetian was moved.

A little. Well, that put things into a clearer appearance at least. Thirty years may be nothing in the scale cultivators used to measure time, but it was still more than enough for a madman to pull down even a mighty state. Especially if there was already a bedrock of corruption for him to pull from. Xing Xing was right on throwing shade on the man, but Wu Zetian knew that reality was more complicated. The world of cultivation was too entrenched with nepotism, too dedicated to amoral hyper-individualism.

Wu Zhan had only been the catalyst for the worst sides of the system to reach the top. Problems, abuses and worse had existed even before him. The only difference was that while people may live in abysmal conditions, the Sect flourished. Her younger self may have approved. Her current self did not.

"I see," she said, folding her hands on her lap. A deep silence fell as Xing Xing bowed, stepping back. The Elder's cheeks had taken some color, but he still took the time to murmur something to Wu Nenqin's ear, the young man smiling ruefully. Wu Zetian let them. Inside, she was thinking back to the books she had read and the people she had listened to. When her previous self ruled, the Godless Night defined itself by its militarization.

The Sect was separated between those who served – the Disciples, the mortals – and those who were served – the Elder, the Ancestor and their favorites -. Discipline was iron-tight, but there was no true code of laws protecting the common people. The individual was left to the whim of the system, and what mattered, the only thing that mattered, was the prosperity of the Sect.

The individual was sacrificed, mortals and cultivators alike were squeezed for all their worth, while the upper echelons reaped the benefits of what was essentially a gigantic assembly line meant to produce soldiers, servants and ingredients to fuel the cultivation of the Elders and their mistress. Indoctrinated masses slaved and fought, blinded by the dream of one day joining the ranks of their betters and reaping the benefits of the system. A totalitarian, industrialist state in all but name.

Under the Deputy Masters, this state of things had changed slowly. Without the Ancestor to keep their ambition and greed in check, the Elders upped their intrigue and started chipping away at the Sect's wealth to fuel their own. Wu Xin may have done a good job keeping things together, but Wu Zetian didn't doubt the rot was long into setting. Wu Zhan had been the right puppet at the right moment.

Before him, the upper echelons used their lesser, but at least they served the Sect at the same time, qualifying its wellbeing with their own. With him, the corrupted elements, those who preferred to feast on the sect's wealth rather than serving it, took control. Nepotism increased until it was the norm, standards fell, discipline crumbled and abuses skyrocketed. The obvious result of a system that cared for individual power far more than ethics.

In the long-term, it was bound to fail as its leaders turned to care only for their interests. It was Heaven's luck that people of the old guard like Xing Xing and Chen Liwei remained: they made sure that the rot didn't eat up everything. But even they carried a type of mentality she wasn't fond of, one that measured worth in power and usefulness. What they remembered with fond nostalgia was and remained a state of things she didn't intend to bring back.

"Chin up, grandson," she sighed.

"It's not my intention to blame you or anything." Wu Nenqin said nothing. Looking like he had swallowed a rock, he just nodded. Wu Zetian felt the strong urge to hug, but circumstances weren't the right ones, so she forced the thought back.

"There will be changes," she said instead, taking her commanding tone.

"Discipline has fallen, and I intend to see it restored. You, Elder Xing, shall see it done. Draw up for me a member list of the Owl Talon. Choose the best and brightest and point out the foolish. I shall review it and decide." The Elder bowed, hand on his chest.

"About reasserting order, Founder?" He asked, sounding like he relished every word. Wu Zetian smiled.

"That, and more." She was thinking of ethical codes, workplace rules and conduct, all to curb the ridiculous hyper-competition that sapped the Sect's resources and had almost brought its end. And to curtail any of those pathetic abuses so that they wouldn't dirty her gaze ever again. Wu Nenqin and the siege may have done much to wipe the page clean, but work remained to be done. At the same time, Xing Xing wouldn't feel like he was being sidelined for Chen Liwei.

If there was something she had learned during her career, it was that for some people, ego was everything, and it needed constant soothing. She waved in dismissal.

"Go now. You have your orders, and I long for the dark and silent." The duo excused themselves respectfully, and Wu Zetian kept a surreptitious look on her gloomy grandson. Ah, one day, one day… She gestured, and even He Yuan left. Once alone, she sighed. She had done everything that could be done with words and orders. Now, it was time for the results to start showing themselves. There would be problems, there always were, but her cool under pressure could use the exercise, so that was fine too.

Now she needed only a few graphs to see the arrows going up and everything would be perfect…