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Noble Lords.

Nobility was a tricky thing in a world of medieval Chinese stasis. There has always been families that collected and sent wealth and power down their line through generations. But to actually have a formalized class of them? Not very Confucian, if you asked some.

And perhaps TOO Confucian if you asked others.

Given the vastly expanded years that people could live with the helpt of Cultivation, this was the most stable setup that it could land in; Essentially, the Empire was more Tang than it was Han or Ming at least in this one regard. Because if the Emperor couldn’t be the most powerful existence that a society called for, because Cultivators existed, why not tacitly admit that even political Power quite simply couldn’t be completely centralized?

Yet the Noble Houses were themselves collections of horrifying power.

The Yan Guard were but the people employed directly by the Yan family to protect its members and enforce its monopoly of power in the places where the Yan family should have it. Places where Yan members resided or held court, in other words. However, not every warrior employed by the Yan family was a Yan Guard.

No, by and far the people like Jun’s bodyguards were a tiny percentage of the military arm of his family.

The Emperor, if need be, could levy the Yan’s assets for his own purpose. Given how huge the world was, this hadn’t really happened since Jun was a kid, as the tithes the Noble houses sent to the Imperial Capital more than covered all but the most ambitious projects. Obviously, the Yan, if need be, could levy their own assets for their own projects.

And Noble Houses like the Yan saw far more need for it than the Empire ever did.

Just like Bandit Armies historically could get to the size of armies, so too could the Yan call up monstrous amounts of people to defend its lands. That or to work on civil engineering projects; a corvee was an attractive replacement for taxes if a village was going through hard times. And some villages always were.

But that was just the peasants. Cities, by far, held the most dense collection of power in Noble Land. Provincial families could be powerful off the connections and influence that they had over many villages, but it was in cities where merchants, the children of Magistrates, the families of generals, and anyone that REALLY mattered resided.

But the land of a Noble Family had many of both.

But it wasn’t a Noble family who controlled their lands. All power, delegated or otherwise, assigned or not, borrowed or stolen, belonged to a single person and ONLY through him the whole family.

In the Yan lands, that was Jun’s father: Aigou Yan.

The Yan Lord.

The distances that spanned every single inch of the Empire were so great, that actually getting across it on horse would have normally taken years for anyone that wanted to attempt it that way. But taking years to take stock of population census, taxes and conflicts would have made the sheer idea of an “Empire” laughable. So it was that royal roads cross-hatched every span of the empire.

Royal roads whose every single brick was etched and worked with designs that interacted with and used Chi.

A single authentic talisman went for more money than the average peasant would make in a year. You’d have to triple that if the talisman was actually useful. Yet every single part of the Royal Road was a talisman. Every brick. Every stone.

Every single part.

And to what end? To break logic, and reason and bend space. The road allowed anyone traveling through them to travel hundreds of leagues in mere hours.

Such was the Yan Lord’s power and influence that they were allowed to use these roads for their own purposes…so long as they only used the bits that crossed their lands.

Just the letter that Jun now had in his possession would allow him to travel through it to the Yan’s ancient familial hold. A journey that might have taken him 6 months, if the weather was good, if the times were fortunate, would now merely take him a few days.

Because the scarlet paper that had been covered in a gold leaf envelope had seals that would have been ruinously expensive to duplicate. Because just the paper was made of the sort of Chi rich plants that allowed invisible permissions and confirmations to be etched into them. Because the sort of people who had brought it to him, one of the Yan couriers, were themselves influential and powerful enough to only rank just below Yan family members.

Because the letter was from his father, Aigou Yan.

A man who had spoken to Jun a handful of times in his second life, and only then when the occasion called for it. A man who had represented authority even to someone who had already reached adulthood in a past life. A modern one at that. Someone whose attention Jun simply did NOT know how to handle.

A man who had not bothered with the pages and pages of greetings and double talk that was the standard among nobles. He had simply written two sentences on paper that would have bankrupted entire villages:

“Your Mother Xue is upset with you. We should speak.”

No frilly language. No columns of words to seem refined and educated. Just two sentences that, however mild, made it clear what this was: a summons.

A suggestion of this sort from anyone else might have really just been a suggestion.

From Jun’s father, it was a command.

So it was, Jun was going to travel to where he grew up.

“Are you sure about this, Young Master?” Jianjun asked him the next day.

“This Young Master doesn’t foresee being in danger, Captain,” Jun replied, “Well, not physical danger anyway.”

“Umm-” Jianjun didn’t quite know how to respond to that.

Jun sighed; this had taken him out of sorts so much that he was forgetting to omit his thoughts, “-I would feel at peace to know that you are here protecting this Young Master’s women, Guard Captain.”

Honestly, with Linguyn around Jun wasn’t really worried much. Say what you want about his pig girl, she could pack a wallop in her Boar form. No, in truth, his Guard Captain had displayed enough of a tendency towards being unlucky that Jun wasn’t entirely comfortable bringing him along to face his parents.

Jun would claim to not be a superstitious person, but some things were just ridiculous.

“I will endeavor to be worthy of such faith,” Jianjun seemed to be genuinely touched as he straightened and bowed.

“That said, I am going to need you to select the best of your men to be an interim Captain for this trip,” Jun went on as he walked back and forth.

Being one of his sons, Jun was not only allowed enough flexibility to not immediately pack his things up and travel back home the second he got his father’s letter. He was even sure he could have taken a few days before he made his way there.

But given how quickly he had answered the letter from Auspicious Fields, could he really afford to invite insult by comparison? His father was a busy man, but Jun could NOT assume that he hadn’t read up on him before putting pen to his letter.

Jun had given himself leave to at least spend one more night at home with his girls, but worry made it hard to do more than that.

He would have to leave today.

“This Jianjun shall interview and find the most able man for the task!” Jianjun pounded his chest and turned around.

“MEN!” he yelled as he walked towards the barracks, “TO ME MEN!”

It was nearing afternoon and every single one of the men was here. No, not even the patrols had yet headed out as they all awaited the traveling arrangement.

Linguyn, for one, saw an opportunity when she saw one. She had been more than happy to conscript all these available hands to finish the seeding, and had promptly half-bullied them into doing so.

The speed with which a dozen sweaty and dirty men lined up in front of Jianjun might have been due to that.

“Yes, Guard Captain?” they all huffed.

“Though this Guard Captain has known all of you almost a month,” Jianjun started as he walked by the men, imperiously giving them looks of consideration, “I can not, in truth, claim to have much insight into you. Not completely.”

“So perk up men!” Jianjun smiled at them, “For you have an opportunity to gain acclaim and commendations.”

“You merely need to convince this Jianjun of it,” his smile turned encouraging as he turned foot and headed for his office, “One by one, come into my office and we’ll talk about it.”

And then he stopped and sniffed the air.

“Though perhaps you should all freshen up and change into something-” Jianjun pursued his lips as he decided how to maintain the gravitas of his words, “More impressive.”

Jianjun was not Lou Tang. He actually had common sense and was merely very unlucky. However, given his previous problems with his men, he might as well have been channeling the dead Captain.

Incredulity and apprehension flowed through each of the men. They all looked at each other as if they weren’t quite sure if they should assume the worst-

“I am going with what I am wearing right now. No way is he going to find my ass appealing!”

“Fuck that; I am going to take a shit before going in and I am not wiping!”

“That’s fucking nasty. Just be ready to bolt out of there dumb ass.”

-but it appears they erred on the side of caution.

Jun considered stepping in and defusing this before it could turn into something stupid but…no, no, he was short on time as it was.

He had to get ready and he had women to bid goodbye to.

“Come back safe, Jun-er,” Xia requested with puppy eyes later on just as he was leaving his mansion for his ready carriage.

“Please be safe, my love,” Fu, his milf, dutifully lowered her head and said in soft enough a voice that Jun almost couldn’t hear it.

“Don’t die,” Linguyn ordered him with pursued eyes, her finger pointing at his chest.

“I’ll come back safely,” he promised Xia as he kissed her. She took advantage of the situation and pressed herself against him.

“I will be safe,” Jun promised Fu as he kissed her, and she allowed her soft body to be pressed into his arms.

“I will not die,” Jun smirked at Linguyn. The short woman growled and jumped into his arms to kiss him.

It had taken Jianjun a while, but he had selected an interim Captain. Merely four of his bodyguards would be traveling with him this time, but Jun wasn’t actually that far from a Royal Road.

A mere three days from his home, it would take Jun longer to get to the road than it would take to travel through it to the Yan Hold.

His women let him go and, in the room where people would normally use to take off their shows, Jun walked into his bodyguards.

All 12 of them, minus Jianjun.

They were all wearing armor and, although they had no weapons in their hands, Jun was immediately put on alarm as he took stock of them all.

Was…this a mutiny? Should he really have defused things a few hours ago? Fuck.

Without his spear, in a small room like this with his men armored as they were, it would be a hard fight. They weren’t what Jun would call good, but blood lust and blind luck gave the weight of numbers a lot of legitimacy. The fact that they had no weapons in hand must have meant that they wanted to take him alive, but how long would that last as he reduced their numbers? Thankfully, it made the fight doable.

Now Jun merely had to bring them to a position where their only choice was to lose.

“What-” Jun said in a very serious voice, “Is the meaning of this?”

All the men looked at him, then at each other.

They nodded in confirmation among themselves.

Then they threw themselves down onto the floor, their heads touching the ground.

“Please, Young Master,” they all cried out, “We cannot take it anymore!”

“....what?” Jun looked around trying to puzzle out what the hell was going on.

“Day and night, we dread, Young Master, DREAD what that egg fondler is going to do to us,” one of the men shuttered.

“Jianjun?” Jun asked in disbelief.

“Of course you wouldn’t believe us, Young Master,” another of the men sighed, “Jianjun knows precisely what to say to you.”

“But you must understand, lord, that Jianjun wouldn’t have been assigned here if something wasn’t wrong with him!” one more man pleaded, “If not us, please at least believe THAT!”

“Men…” Jun sighed, “What exactly do you want this Young Master to do?”

“Please, Young Master!” they all intoned.

“Have him reassigned!”

“I’ll-I’ll see what I can do,” Jun rubbed his forehead.

The men sighed in relief.