The Sect Leader System-Chapter 314: A New Position, a Set of Tasks, and a Tryst
Kang Ya-Ting was immediately admitted to Elder Dai’s chamber by her attendant. He cupped his hands. “Greetings, Elder.”
She sighed. “Why do you always have to cause me trouble? Don’t I already have enough on my hands with the tournament and a looming sect war?”
“Apologies, Elder Dai.” Kang Ya-Ting was honestly at a loss as to what exactly he’d done that time to complicate her life.
His face must have shown his confusion because she said, “It’s that note you sent me three days ago about Zhong Shoushan.”
Ahh. The spymaster must have been even more incompetent than Kang Ya-Ting had suspected if the issue was taking up a great deal of Elder Dai’s personal attention. He said as much.
“Incompetence I can deal with. Missing that our messages were being intercepted was incompetence. Not telling me about the growing relationship between the Jade Chameleon Sect and the Swift Blizzard Sect or about the mercenary Formations Master was something else entirely.”
Kang Ya-Ting raised his eyebrows.
“It was political,” she said. “Zhong Shoushan knows that you and I will get credit if Chao Su and the Rising Tide Sect do well in the tournament. If they fail, we’ll receive equal amounts of censure, and it turns out that his niece wants my job. He hid the information from us.”
Only years of experience kept Kang Ya-Ting from literally letting his jaw drop. “Is he mad? We’ve had two of our Golden Cores use the Trials Pagoda to advance to Nascent Soul. That’s way past the point of no return. If the Rising Tide Sect fails, the Poison Claw Sect won’t be far behind them.” The more he thought about the situation, the angrier he became. “Elder Zhong’s actions go far beyond simple politics. It’s a betrayal, Elder Dai. A betrayal!”
“Tell me something I don’t know. The Sect Leader himself agrees.” She let out a frustrated breath. “Zhong Shoushan has been removed from his position and is now on his way back to the main branch being accompanied by two members of the Punishment Hall. Before he was allowed to leave, he was forced to reveal the entirety of his spy network, which, unfortunately, was not nearly as extensive as the resources he’d been drawing suggested. Whether that is due to incompetence or malfeasance will be determined by Grand Elder Xai.”
Kang Ya-Ting couldn’t quite repress a shudder. If there was one person he did not want to get on the wrong side of, it was that man.
“So you have to determine who the new branch spymaster will be,” Kang Ya-Ting said. “I have a couple of recommendations if it pleases you, Elder Dai.”
“No, not needed at all. The appointment has already been made.”
“Oh? Who, Elder Dai?”
“You.”
“Me?” Kang Ya-Ting said. “I know nothing about spying. Why me?”
“You’re the one who has contact with the only agent who actually supplied us with information, so you get the job. The Sect Leader agreed. As for not knowing how to do it, my only advice is to figure it out.”
Kang Ya-Ting hung his head. He felt way too old to learn an entirely new position, especially one so important.
Elder Dai grinned. “It’s as you always say, hard work begets more hard work.”
If someone would have told Zou Tian the street rat that one day his actions would be responsible for a sect elder losing his position to the extent of being escorted from the city under the guard of two really mean and dangerous looking men, he’d have scoffed mightily. That version of him had been truly powerless.
Not so for the current him. He was respected by his peers and by Master, and he was doing important work. Given the reaction from the Poison Claw Sect, the three pieces of information he’d ferreted out apparently were even more relevant than he had suspected.
Based on the attitudes he’d witnessed in taverns, it was obvious that the Jade Chameleon Sect and the Swift Blizzard Sect, at least the contingents in Sixth Flawless Flowing City, were closely tied, probably allied.
The significance of the other two pieces of information was more in doubt. Was it possible that one of the two sects or a coalition of the two had hired the Formations Master for some purpose antithetical to Master and the Rising Tide Sect? Yes, but there was no evidence to support that conclusion.
A spy sometimes had to go on gut instinct and draw inferences based on scant intelligence, and Zou Tian had no issue with doing so. He was, in fact, doing exactly that in terms of his belief that the two sects were working together. A spy couldn’t simply declare something true just because the pieces fit, though.
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He had a bit less than two weeks before the Rising Tide Sect was scheduled to arrive in the city, a month prior to the tournament. In that time, he had certain priorities. Number one was to gather corroborating evidence regarding the Formations Master.
His instincts also told him that there was something significant about the square that the Swift Blizzard Sect members avoided. Number two was to find out more about that location.
There was also a private meeting of the tournament committee that would take place in about a week. Teng Wuying of the Jade Chameleon Sect, Mao Biya of the Swift Blizzard Sect, Kang Ya-Ting, and Qiu ZhenKang, the City Lord’s representative, would all be in attendance. Number three was to sneak into that assembly to view the players firsthand.
Zou Tian had a lot to do in less than two weeks. A lot to do.
Teng Wuying walked the tournament grounds frequently, a fact which occasioned little notice given his position on the steering committee. The event was a complex series of activities involving an incredible number of people. Simply managing the logistics was a formidable undertaking. Adding in the political realities of dealing with so many factions made the situation that much more difficult.
Needless to say, there was a lot to do, but preparations were luckily proceeding on schedule, mainly due to the efforts of competent underlings appointed by each of the Big Three sects and the City Lord.
Still, it didn’t hurt for Teng Wuying to keep an eye on things, especially considering his true priority for the tournament.
On that front, he’d recently noticed a troubling trend—members of the Swift Blizzard Sect were quite obviously avoiding a particular area. The particular area. None of them stepped foot into the square where the Formations Master Lei Bohai had set up the trap.
Random rank-and-file members should know nothing about that square. What was Mao Biya doing? Had she told them?
If so, that could be catastrophic. The more people who knew something, the more chance there was for that information to be disseminated. His first thought was that he’d need to change the site of the ambush.
Unfortunately, the arrays were already set up, requiring only an input of qi at a specific location to activate. Lei Bohai was only remaining in the city because he wanted to see his triumph over an upstart, enforcing a prohibition against one calling himself a Formations Master absent acknowledgement from the governing organization.
That group was highly selective about who they allowed to refer to themselves as such. Since Chao Su wasn’t registered with them, Teng Wuying had been able to hire Lei Bohai at a much reduced rate. Otherwise, he would have been way too expensive even to be considered.
Unfortunately, with the reduced rate came reduced control. Since the work was already done, there was nothing absent a truly obscene amount of greater spirit coins that would get the man to inscribe the arrays elsewhere instead.
No, the ambush site could not be altered, not if they wanted the advantage of formations on their side, and the irony of using the very method against Chao Su that he had used to defeat Ye Zhengsheng and Yan Mingxia was simply too delicious for Teng Wuying to abandon without a truly compelling reason.
Of course, it was entirely possible that Mao Biya had, for some inane reason that made sense only to her, blabbed to the entire branch of her sect about what was to take place in the square, meaning that moving the site would absolutely be necessary. In that case, he’d just have to forgo the formations. With the lineup of Nascent Souls he had ready to attack, the arrays shouldn’t be necessary.
There was a caveat to not needing the formations, though. Having the element of surprise on their side to spring the ambush before too many of the Poison Claw Sect’s grand elders joined in the fight was an absolute necessity.
Teng Wuying sighed. There was no choice but to find out from Mao Biya what her sect members knew. Depending on that information, they might have to change the ambush site, regardless. Maybe, just maybe, though, the situation wasn’t as bad as he feared and could still be salvaged.
Heavens! Why was he always saddled with incompetent help?
His plan had been to avoid his co-conspirator to the greatest extent possible prior to the tournament, ideally only seeing her during official meetings of the steering committee. And the topic was so sensitive that he didn’t trust any form of communication; he knew from experience just how likely those were to be intercepted, and codes weren’t foolproof. He’d have to chance an in-person meeting.
Through a series of coded messages, he’d arranged for the Swift Blizzard Sect branch leader to join him at a small, out of the way tea shop that had booths in a back room. They’d be unlikely to be spotted there, but even if they were, there wasn’t much that could be made of two friends drinking a cup of tea together.
At worst, anyone seeing them would suspect a romantic entanglement given the setting. Teng Wuying shuddered at the thought of a relationship with that woman, but his overall goal of obtaining the Trials Pagoda was too important not to use every available advantage.
Still, he’d much rather not be seen, so he kept checking to make sure he wasn’t being followed. There was a man, a mortal, whom he kept seeing. Ordinary face and clothes. Nothing suspicious. But something nagged at Teng Wuying about the guy.
Long before the tea shop, though, the man walked onto a different street and wasn’t spotted again. Teng Wuying chuckled. He fancied himself a spider in a web. A puppeteer pulling strings. Not an operative. The stress of keeping his plans secret was getting to him, thinking a mortal was somehow a threat.
The rest of the trip to the shop went fine, and he arrived a quarter hour prior to when Mao Biya was to arrive, both because the woman would have her pride seriously wounded if she got there first and so that he could prepare their booth with a silencing array.
Such was not uncommon for cultivators meeting and should not draw much notice. Better the formation draw attention, however, than for the contents of their conversation to be heard. It would, of course, also make the prospect of the two of them being secret lovers having a tryst more believable.
The things he did for money and power.
Teng Wuying settled in to wait for his co-conspirator, already dreading what idiocy she’d come up with.
