Chapter 136 — The Imperial family
.
.
The name reached the Imperial palace on a Tuesday.
Not through official channels — through the mouth of a merchant who had been in the inner city when the underworld's dungeon broke open above ground and the golden light split the sky. He told it to a guard. The guard told it to a steward. The steward told it to the family secretary who brought it to the morning briefing in the east wing where the Imperial family conducted the business of governing a Republic that called itself Imperial without technically being one.
The briefing room was wide and cold — marble floors, high windows, the kind of room built to make the people sitting in it feel like the decisions made inside it had permanent weight. Three senior family members sat at the central table. The family head — a man in his late fifties, cultivation at the late stage Master Realm, the specific bearing of someone who had held power long enough that holding it had become indistinguishable from being it — sat at the head.
The secretary placed the report on the table.
The family head read it.
Set it down.
"The Golden Jade." He said.
"Yes." The secretary said.
"It appeared."
"Yes."
"And it chose—" He looked at the name in the report. "Socrates Trueblood."
"Yes."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"Who is Socrates Trueblood." The family head asked.
Nobody answered immediately. Which was itself an answer.
"Find out." He said. "Everything. Quickly."
---
They found out within a week.
The full account assembled itself from multiple sources — surviving disciples from the Northern Gladiator Guilds, Heavenly Pavilion members who had been in the underworld, traders who had been in the inner city when the Frost Castle fell. Each account slightly different in the details and identical in the substance.
A non-cultivator. Young. Son of the Trueblood clan — a house that the Imperial family's institutional memory filed under *diminished, non-threatening, surviving*. He had entered the underworld as a punishment of some kind, or perhaps as a test, the accounts disagreed. He had survived. He had fought Asura clan core members. He had conquered the Frost Castle. He had killed the Asura King.
The Asura King.
The creature that had been the Lord of that dungeon for decades. The number one ranked being in the underworld's inner city. A Grandmaster.
Killed by a boy who had entered the dungeon at Foundation Establishment Realm.
The family head read the assembled account in his private study and then read it again. Then he called his council.
"The jade cannot be legitimately ours if it has recognized someone else." His legal advisor said from the left side of the table. "The token's recognition is absolute. There is no precedent for overriding it by force and maintaining legitimacy afterward."
"I'm not asking about legitimacy." The family head said. "I'm asking about practicality."
"Practically—" the advisor said. "The boy is currently recuperating in the Northern Gladiator's compound. He hasn't woken up. He has no political allies beyond his clan — which is small — and the Guilds, which are powerful but not as powerful as a coalition."
"Build the coalition." The family head said.
"The Ashur clan—"
"Diminished but willing. Their losses in the underworld give them motivation."
"The Hercules family—"
"Old resentments. They'll join."
The family head looked at the assembled faces around the table.
"We send the demand first." He said. "To the Northern Gladiator. Hand over the boy and the jade voluntarily. If he refuses—" He straightened in his chair. "Then we explain to him very clearly what refusing means."
---
The demand reached the Northern Gladiator on a Wednesday morning.
He was in his training compound's main hall — a long low building that smelled permanently of earth and old stone, the walls lined with the accumulated artifacts and records of a career spent climbing to the top of what the Hellenic Republic's power structure produced. He read the demand standing up.
Set it on the table.
Stood there for a moment.
Then called for his communications officer and dictated his response.
*Socrates Trueblood is the Young Master of the Northern Gladiator Guilds. The Golden Imperial Jade has recognized him. The Guilds stand behind that recognition completely and without qualification. Any attempt to remove him from Guild protection will be treated as a declaration of hostilities against the Guilds and all their allied members.*
He signed it.
Sent it.
Then sat down and thought carefully about what he had just committed himself to.
---
The Trueblood clan's announcement came three days later.
Not written — spoken. The clan head stood in the courtyard of the Trueblood family's main house and said it to the gathered family members and the representatives of seven neighboring houses who had been invited to witness.
"Socrates Trueblood is the Young Master of the Trueblood clan." He said. His voice was steady in the way of someone who has been saying difficult things for years and has developed a specific relationship with the difficulty of them. "The blood of this family runs in him. The jade recognized him. And this clan stands behind him — fully, publicly, and without reservation."
One of the neighboring house representatives raised his hand.
"The Imperial family—"
"Will do what the Imperial family does." The clan head said. "And we will do what the Trueblood clan does." He replied at the face that had asked the question. "We survive. We endure. And now — apparently — we produce someone worth surviving for."
---
Judas went to the Bajwar family on a Thursday.
He didn't bring gifts or leverage or an entourage. He arrived at the Bajwar family's receiving hall alone, his golden fan in his hand, his white robe clean, and sat across from the family patriarch at a table that had hosted negotiations of considerably more elaborate staging.
"You've heard about the underworld." Judas said.
"Everyone has heard about the underworld." The patriarch said.
"I was there." Judas said. "I'll tell you what the accounts leave out."
He told it plainly. The calamity. The Gold Tier Boss. What Socrates had done to White and Black when the storm came and the inner city gate was sealed and the people outside it were going to die. What Socrates had done to the Elders. What had happened in the Frost Castle.
He told it the way it had happened. Without embellishment. Without the frame of persuasion.
The patriarch listened without interrupting.
When Judas finished the patriarch was quiet for a long moment.
"The jade chose him." He said.
"I watched it happen." Judas lied... He just have to make the story believable. "The Northern Gladiator reached for it first. It moved away from him and went into Socrates."
Another long silence.
"My family's name." The patriarch said. "The Bajwar Secret Art — you carry it."
"I do." Judas said.
"You learned it from us."
"I did."
"And you went into the underworld with this boy."
"I did."
The patriarch looked at Judas for a moment. At the fan. At the expression on his face that carried something that wasn't quite loyalty and wasn't quite debt and was somewhere between the two in a territory that didn't have a clean name.
"We join the Guilds." The patriarch declared and Judas bowed...
'Junior brother... Better remember this favor..'