“If you did not want to, you would not be speaking with us.” Li Yao offered Lord Wen a smile, bowing again as she re-introduced herself. “I’m sure there is some agreement we could come to.”
“For the loss of an entire village?” Lord Wen snorted. “Is the House Lee offering their support?”
Li Yao’s eyes widened, and Wu Ying saw the growing smirk on Lord Wen’s face. Lord Wen was playing with them.
Rather than let the others speak any further, Wu Ying stepped forward, drawing Lord Wen’s sneering focus again. “This is between you and me. They are just here as my…” Wu Ying glanced at Yin Xue and then Bao Cong before changing the word he was going to use. “Companions.”
Lord Wen snorted, his disdain clear. Yet Lord Wen flicked a gaze to the three nobles in quick order before stopping on Tou Hei, and he bit off whatever acerbic comment he might have voiced. “What do you offer then, Wu Ying?”
“Cultivator Long,” Wu Ying quietly corrected Lord Wen.
He watched as the nobleman narrowed his eyes and smiled when Lord Wen grudgingly corrected his words. It was a minor victory, but it did assert Wu Ying’s standing. He was no peasant, but a cultivator in a Sect that required respect. He was not bargaining as a peasant to his Lord and landholder, but one of near equals.
“At this time, you know what I want,” Wu Ying said. “Perhaps it will be easier if you tell us what you desire.”
“And why should I name my price when you are the one who wants to buy?”
“Most merchants do,” Wu Ying said. When Lord Wen’s eyes narrowed at the insult—comparing him to a lowly merchant[9]!—Wu Ying continued speaking. “But as you know, my means are limited. Even so, we are speaking. So there is something that you want from me. And my companions.”
“What I want is for my village and lands to be unmolested. Can you do that? Can you stop the army?” Even as Wu Ying shook his head, Lord Wen continued. “Of course not. Even having you guard my lands from a raiding party is more than can be expected of the five of you.”
Wu Ying inclined his head in acknowledgment of the point. While Lord Wen was not a prosperous nobleman, his lands were still large enough that the group would be unable to patrol all of it. Perhaps they might be able to stop one or two intruders, but if the army itself arrived, they would have to pull back.
“How bad is it? With the Wei army?” Yin Xue interrupted. “They’ve never done permanent harm.”
Wu Ying pressed his lips together. Permanent. That was only from the view of a noble. Too often, they’d taken rice, seed, food. Slaughtered animals or stolen horses. It left the villagers bereft of everything but their houses and whatever rice they had managed to hide or had been left untouched. Still, there was truth to the words too. They rarely killed, took slaves, or burnt down residences.
“This time it’s different,” Lord Wen replied to his son. “This time, they are destroying what they cannot hold. They are taking slaves.”
There was a joint hiss at his words. That was not entirely new news. Rumors had floated as far as the Sect itself of a change in policy. The closer they got, the more details had been offered. And slavery was not unknown, though it was not practiced in the State of Shen or, normally, the State of Wei. That it was happening now…
“Why?” Yin Xue asked.
“Money,” Bao Cong answered for Lord Wen. “Wars are expensive. For us. For them. And the appetite of Cai has grown. They need more slaves every year as they expand eastward.”
Wu Ying frowned and cudgeled his brain for information on the State of Cai. Farther east and north of Wei, it was blocked from expansion by a small mountain range and the river that flowed between the pair. So long as the state of Wei held both, it stymied the State of Cai’s expansionist tendencies to the west. It helped that expanding to the north and east was easier too. But so long as the State of Cai expanded, it needed slaves.
“And you’ve confirmed they are taking slaves?” Tou Hei said, speaking up.
“We have,” Lord Wen said. “Most of the villages close to the border have been emptied. Lord Yu is suffering. The king has indicated he will aid him, but there’s only so much that can be done. His largesse will run out soon.”
“Then why care if I take my family away?” Wu Ying said, eyes narrowing.
“Because it is not guaranteed the army will reach us. For your family—for the village—to leave in time, they will have to depart at least a few weeks before the army arrives. I am giving up my village for a risk. And even if the raiding parties come, not all of my villages will be hit. The tradeoff is poor.”
“For you,” Wu Ying said flatly.
“That is what matters.”
Wu Ying bit his tongue as he stopped himself from retorting. He forced himself to draw a deep breath, to find calm before he spoke. “Then we come back to the question. What do you want?”
“From you?” Lord Wen stood. He walked to the door and only turned at the border of the room, offering the stunned group a taunting half-smile. “Coming?”
The group scrambled after the sauntering Lord. They went down one hallway then another, heading deeper into the building itself until they reached a new room. Within, multiple scrolls and books sat on bookshelves while the clear daylight streamed in from open windows. Dominating one side of the room was a wooden table, while the other side had lounging chairs for easy reading. It was to the table that Lord Wen walked. Wu Ying was surprised to note a map of the country and the State of Wei were laid out. On it were multiple markers—simple carvings of the words Wei and Shen.
It took little thought to realize that the map and figurines denoted the positions of the armies. Of as much interest to Wu Ying were smaller carvings of carriages and little boats placed along different trading routes. Those, Wu Ying estimated, were likely merchants Lord Wen had interest in—or maybe even the conveyances of a branch family.
“These are current?” Wu Ying said.
“As of yesterday,” Lord Wen said.
The group crowded around the table, taking in their first clear view of the situation. One further addition that Wu Ying spotted was the use of a thin, light purple paper that was bunched and cut apart, to indicate areas the armies had traversed. In that way, a clearer history of the war was available.
“Not that close,” Wu Ying said with relief. His gaze had been drawn to the only Wei army—one of three that had deployed—that might threaten the village. A quick glance showed that a second army was stalemated at a river crossing, and the last army was running unchecked before the city of Yu.
“What happened there?” Li Yao said and pointed at the last army carving. A short distance away, the marker for the army of Shen sat, but it was behind the army of Wei.
“A play on spies. The Wei general supplied us the wrong information, sending our army in the wrong location. By the time they learned better, it was too late,” Lord Wen growled. “They will only catch them when they have begun besieging the city of Yu.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Tou Hei asked. “Surely the city can hold?”
Lord Wen shrugged. “Maybe. There are rumors that the army holds a Nascent Soul cultivator within.”
The group winced. If a Nascent Soul cultivator took action, the walls would not hold. No city could afford to build their walls with spiritual material, so the only reinforcement city walls received were from formations. Activating a formation was expensive and required a sacrifice of materials and spirit stones, so most cities never activated the ones they had in play. More than that, most cities did not invest in formations powerful enough to stop a Nascent Soul cultivator.
“But they couldn’t hold it, could they?” Li Yao said worriedly. The little cultivator leaned forward and stared at the terrain. “They’d have to strike and move on, in fear of being caught out.”
“Unless they entered the city and repaired the walls,” Yin Xue corrected her. “Then they could hold within and force our army to besiege our own city. Then they could have their reserves come to relieve them.” Yin Xue pointed at the fourth carving that sat behind Wei’s borders, just waiting to reinforce.