Sen stared down at the corpse that used to be Chen Aiguo. It took Sen a moment to realize that he was waiting for something to happen. Heavenly rebuke? Overwhelming emotions? Neither happened. If the heavens were troubled by what he had done, they were keeping it to themselves. As for emotions, Sen did feel some regret. It had been a pointless and avoidable death that served no one’s ends. Chen Aiguo had not accomplished his goals and never would again. The mayor hadn’t accomplished his goals, whatever those had been. Sen gained nothing from the man’s death either, save perhaps a bit of unnecessary proof that he’d been taught the jian by someone truly gifted. The only thing that Chen Aiguo’s death accomplished was leaving one less cultivator in the world. Sen looked around the market.

There were faces pressed up against windows or staring out of mostly closed doors. There was no awe or envy in their eyes this time, just fear. After a moment of consideration, Sen decided that was appropriate. In some ways, the fight with the mayor’s son and his hangers-on had been more of a demonstration of Sen’s skills than anything else. After all, however injured, everyone had walked away from that fight. Only one man was walking away from this encounter. That changed things. Sen supposed it might change things for a lot of people. Chen Aiguo might have had family somewhere. There could be friends out there who would miss him or, Sen sighed, try to avenge him. Lives had been changed by Sen’s actions, in subtle or profound ways, yet he struggled to muster strong feelings about it. In the end, he simply hadn’t known the man. His only interactions with the man had been filled with anger, violence, and threats. Perhaps there were people who would mourn Chen Aiguo, but Sen wasn’t one of them.

Sen did take some comfort from the fact that the man hadn’t announced that he was part of a sect. That was a level of trouble Sen had no desire to bring down on his head if he could avoid it. Although, a sect might prove more reasonable about the whole thing than the mayor. Sects understood the Jianghu. The story of Chen Aiguo challenging a wandering cultivator and losing would largely absolve Sen of lingering trouble. As Sen thought back, though, Chen had mentioned something about a clan. He desperately hoped that he hadn’t managed to set off a blood feud after being off the mountain for less than a week. While Master Feng would probably find some kind of morbid humor in it, he expected that Auntie Caihong would be a little disappointed in him. Sen wasn’t sure what Uncle Kho would think. If the man thought as poorly of cultivator clans as he did of sects, he’d probably tell Sen to go on a killing spree and carve his name into the nightmares of the next ten generations of that clan. When he thought about what that would mean, he put it firmly into the last resort category.

Shaking himself out of his musings, Sen discovered that Falling Leaf had trained him well. He had already taken the man’s dao, sheathed it, and put it away in his storage ring. He claimed a purse of coins and similarly stored those. Sen found a jade seal in one of the man’s pockets. He didn’t recognize the seal, but he hadn’t really expected to recognize it. It could have come from a lot of places. Still, it might have some value eventually. The last thing that Sen took off the body was a storage ring that Chen Aiguo had hidden in an inner pocket of his robes. Sen didn’t inspect the ring, just slipped it into one of his own pockets for later examination. Even Sen knew that you didn’t go through the trouble of hiding something in a place where you could feel it every time you moved if it didn’t contain something of value. While it might be of personal value only to Chen Aiguo, Sen had his doubts.

He did note a few disapproving looks from the townspeople. He was not impressed by the way their morals shifted from moment to moment and day to day. Oh, yes, let a homeless child get beaten. That’s fine. Let a man stand alone against seven attackers. That’s acceptable. Loot a body? Oh, for shame, that’s deplorable. Sen expected that their disapproval had more to do with disappointment that he’d beaten them to it than any actual moral qualms. At the end of the day, he had fought. He had killed. The spoils were his by right and natural law. Why should he leave it for someone else? When he’d completed searching the body, or at least as much as he planned to do, he stood up and walked toward Grandmother Lu’s shop. Then, he heard someone shout.

“You aren’t just leaving that dead body there, are you?”

He heard inaudible grumbles and murmurs of agreement and until he turned to face the rest of the market. Then, near-total silence reigned, save for a bird in the distance that remained blissfully unaware of the day’s events. Sen let his gaze travel over the people, who all looked away or lowered their heads.

“I did not bring this man here. He was sent. Take it up with the man who sent him,” Sen said in a carrying tone.

Then, Sen very deliberately looked in the direction of the mayor’s manor. Many of the people who followed his gaze looked confused, craning their heads back and forth to try to see whatever had drawn the cultivator’s attention. Sen saw understanding flicker across enough faces that he was satisfied. Word would spread that the mayor had sent a cultivator to try and assassinate someone. It was something Master Feng would have done. The story wouldn’t be enough to destroy the mayor by itself. After all, a story is just a story. It would make the man’s life infinitely harder, though, because people would believe the story. People would want to believe the story. After that, they’d trust the mayor less. They’d take their business elsewhere. Oh, none of it would be too obvious. Yet, over time, it would isolate the mayor and his family. It would strain their finances. Then, in a generation or two, the mayor’s noble family would find themselves living as commoners.

Sen hadn’t set out to learn how to do something like that. He’d just heard Master Feng and Uncle Kho discussing how this noble house or that royal family had come to ruin. It was only after Sen asked for more details that Master Feng explained how he had engineered those disasters. He told Sen that the details varied, but the essential story was always the same.

“Here’s the thing, Sen. You only need one seed of doubt planted firmly in the people’s minds. After that, they’ll water and nurture that seed for you. Then, you just come back every once in a while to sprinkle a little fertilizer onto things. Once a noble house or a royal family truly loses the people’s trust, it’s just a waiting game. People are strange. They don’t ever really trust their rulers. So, it doesn’t take much to sever those bonds.”

Sen wasn’t sure when he’d decided that the mayor and his family had to go, but he’d committed himself to it with that not-so-subtle look toward the mayor’s manor. Of course, that assumed that the mayor was smart enough to cut his losses. If he kept pushing, well, Sen was just about out of patience with the mayor, his son, and the town of Orchard’s Reach. With one final glance at the remains of Chen Aiguo, Sen turned his back on the corpse, and the townspeople, and walked back to Grandmother Lu’s shop.