37. The Art of the Deal: Sect Leader Edition

I spend the next day going through the motions. The tedious tasks of sect management bring me back to a hint of normalcy: supply inventories, disciple progress reports, mine production logs. Old Chen’s kitchen accounts. Mei Lin’s herb garden yield (I told her the accelerated growth was a side effect of spirit beast blood I’d been experimenting with as fertilizer. I’m never telling her the truth). The familiar rhythm of running a sect.

But my mind isn’t on any of it.

I have a problem.

Ling’er cannot keep her concealment for long. I watch her during morning practice, moving through the forms with that perfect, controlled mediocrity. Her “clumsy” moments are strained now. The slips are calculated: she’s not pretending to be weak, she’s acting weak, and the effort of acting is starting to show.

It’s simply too impractical to pretend she’s Qi Condensation when she’s already beyond even me. And more than that, it’ll build resentment. The disciples aren’t fools. They see her leading body refinement, helping with techniques, always being better. They don’t know the truth, but they sense something. That gap between what they see and what they’re told will fester.

But I’m not just planning the reveal. I’m running through scenarios the way I used to approach strategy games. My past-life is fully engaged.

Information asymmetry. Perception management. How to reveal a truth so that each piece of information makes the next one easier to swallow rather than harder.

I get out my notebook.

Ling’er finds me at my desk that evening, a plate of dumplings in her hands. She’s supposed to be in the disciples’ quarters, but she’s learned to slip away unnoticed.

“Master? Old Chen sent extra. He said you skipped dinner.”

I grunt, not looking up.

She sets the plate beside my elbow and peers at my notebook. Her brow furrows.

“What is that?”

I glance up. My notebook is open to a page covered in diagrams—flowcharts in messy English, notations in modern Chinese.

“Strategy,” I mutter, returning to my work.

“Master,” she says slowly, “are you… planning how to tell everyone about me?”

“Yes.”

She eats another dumpling. “It looks like you’re planning a war. I can’t read any of this.”

“The human psyche is a war, Ling’er. A war between what people want to believe and what they’re afraid is true.”

I pause for a moment, trying to explain my thinking.

“The disciples can accept a prodigy if they have three things.”

She settles onto the stool beside my desk, plate in her lap, watching me with those brown eyes.

“First: a story that explains your advantage without erasing their own effort.” I tap the flowchart. “You didn’t get this strong because they’re weak. You got this strong because your potential was dormant. Because you worked hard. Because the training methods we’ve all been using awakened something in you. Their progress is real. Your progress is just… different.”

She nods slowly.

“Second: evidence they’ve already witnessed with their own eyes.” I flip to another page, where I’ve listed moments from the past weeks. Linger helping Wei Chen with his fire technique. Ling’er leading body refinement. Ling’er’s ‘unusual observation’ that improved everyone’s cultivation. “You’ve been helping them for weeks. You’ve made them better. When they look back, they’ll see that your strength was always there—they just didn’t recognize what it was.”

She’s quiet, eating dumplings.

“Third: a moment of genuine awe that feels earned rather than manufactured.” I set down my brush. “Not a demonstration of power. Not you showing off. Something that makes them feel privileged to have witnessed it. Something that makes your strength feel like a gift to the sect, not a threat to their place in it.”

Ling’er considers this. “Like when Wei Chen had his breakthrough? When I raised my level to push him?”

“Exactly like that.” I point at her. “He didn’t resent you for being stronger. He was grateful you pushed him. That’s the feeling I need to create. Not ‘Ling’er is stronger than me.‘ But ‘Ling’er’s strength helps me be stronger too.‘”

She smiles, small and satisfied. “That’s smart, Master.”

“It’s manipulation.” I lean back in my chair. “But it’s honest manipulation. You do help them. You will push them. I’m just controlling how they perceive it.”

She eats the last dumpling and brushes crumbs from her lap. “When will you tell them?”

“In a tournament.” I close the notebook. “You’ll fight properly. No more pretending to stumble. No more calculated hesitations. Let them see what your technique actually looks like when you’re not managing it down to their level.”

She’s quiet, waiting. She’s learned not to fill my silences.

“By the time the finals come, they’ll already know something is different. Jun will notice your transitions are too clean. Mei Lin will notice you’re reading her before she moves.” I tap the cover of the notebook. “I won’t need to convince them of anything. They’ll have convinced themselves. And after the final—” I pause, choosing my words. “I’ll make a confession. The tomb. The wealth. The private training. I’ll tell them I saw something in you from the beginning that no one else noticed.”

“And they’ll believe that?”

“They’ll believe it because they’ve already seen it. The tournament is the evidence. The confession is just the explanation.” I lean forward. “But people need more than explanation. They need a moment. Something they can point to and say — that’s when it changed.”

She waits.

“I’m going to present you with a pill. I’ll tell them it came from the tomb; a Foundation Establishment pill, saved for exactly this moment. A sect leader officially recognizing his most talented disciple, giving her the final resource she needs to break through.” I meet her eyes. “In reality, I’ll spend the next two days making a very convincing fake.”

She blinks. “A fake?”

I shrug.

“Ice-shelled. Something that looks like it costs more than this sect earns in a year.” I allow myself a small smile. “And when you take it, you release what you’ve been suppressing. Controlled. Just enough. Foundation Establishment; First Stage, not Fifth. Something believable. Something with a story attached.”

She’s quiet for a moment, turning this over. “So they think the pill did it.”

“They think the pill did it,” I confirm. “The talent was always there; they’ll have spent three hours watching it in the tournament. The treasure from the tomb gave you the final push. And their sect leader, who saw something no one else could see, invested everything in making that moment possible.” I pause. “None of that is a lie. That’s what makes it work.”

She nods slowly. Then, quieter: “And after this… I don’t have to be small anymore?”

“After this,” I say, “you can be exactly as large as First Stage allows.”

A beat of silence.

“It’s still not everything,” she says.

“No.” I don’t pretend otherwise. “It isn’t.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She looks at her hands. “I’m tired of being small.”

I study her for a moment. The girl who can uproot trees and melt boulders and see the fundamental threads connecting all things, sitting in my quarters eating dumplings, tired of pretending she can’t.

“… Do you know the story of the frog in the pot?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“If you drop a frog into boiling water, it jumps out immediately. But if you put it in cold water and heat it slowly—” I gesture vaguely. “It doesn’t notice until it’s too late.”

She frowns. “That sounds unpleasant.”

“The disciples are the frog,” I say. “Right now the water is cold. They know you’re better than them, they’ve known it for weeks. But it’s been gradual. Bearable. By the time you’re openly Foundation Establishment, they’ll have adjusted to every step that came before it. The heat rises slowly.” I pause. “If you revealed the Fifth Stage on them today, they’d jump out of the pot. They’d never recover from it.”

She’s quiet, processing this with the seriousness she brings to everything.

“So First Stage is the next step,” she says.

“First Stage is the next degree. And then, in time, more.” I meet her eyes. “I’m not asking you to hide forever. I’m asking you to let them adjust. There’s a difference.”

She looks at the closed notebook. At the candle burning low between us. At something I can’t see, somewhere past the wall.

“How long?”

I don’t answer immediately. The honest answer is I don’t know. I don’t know how fast the disciples will grow, how quickly the sect will strengthen, how soon the world will notice regardless of what we do. But she’s twelve years old, and she’s been performing weakness for months, and she deserves something better than I don’t know.

“Not forever,” I say. “I promise you that.”

She holds my gaze for a moment. Then she nods—small, certain, the nod of someone who has decided to trust a promise. She stands, collects the empty plate, and heads for the door.