To be sold to such an unsightly monster, surely this is the end of the Pimao Jingzhi!

I never wanted to be a concubine! All I know how to do is play the flute! Will he kill me if I don’t please him?!

Is he listening to my thoughts right now? That’s what that barbaric woman from before said, but surely he can’t peer into so many minds at once.

He must have forced Lady Mei Li to marry him against her will. Why else would she wed such a hideous creature?

Those thoughts, along with numerous others – both present and future – bombarded Lex as he entered the banquet hall, the assembled foxes immediately prostrating themselves before him.

A few, however, didn’t bow down.

Closest to him was a blue-haired vixen with four tails – a future where he asked her name told him that she was called Wenwen – whose cheeks were bright red, giving him a carefree smile and even waved at him before taking a hefty pull from a small jug. Ah, I hope he’s brought more liquor. I’m almost out!

Opposite her was another vixen who hadn’t touched her forehead to the ground. Instead, sitting with her legs folded under her, the single-tailed fox-woman with silver fur and hair – Teumessia – hid the lower half of her face behind a small folding fan that she’d produced from somewhere, gazing at him from behind it. Are you peering into my thoughts, my lord? Has this silver tail caught your eye? It’s my curse, but it could become your blessing, if you wish it to be.

Lex ignored both of them, instead walking toward the far end of the hall, where Yuyan and her daughters were likewise bowing down.

In the time it took him to get halfway there, almost a half-dozen scanning spells had been turned on him, all of them cast silently and without the slightest gesture.

Of those, two came from Nayao, Yuyan’s eldest daughter who had protested Mei Li’s decision to turn her clan over to him. The first was designed to detect numinous energies that the target’s soul emitted, with the second being a specialized form of mind-reading to look – not at the target’s thoughts – but at any thaumaturgical architecture currently stored in their mind.

Another came from Teumessia, being another inquiry into his thoughts, this one designed to detect only thoughts concerning covetousness and desire.

The others were all simple cantrips, coming from several other foxes intermingled with their fawning comrades, designed to let the caster see into the magical spectrum, all with the area of coverage being targeted directly toward him.

It was all Lex could do not to laugh.

Not a single one of their spells reached him.

It wasn’t because of the numerous wards and protective enchantments he’d wrapped himself in, nor did they fail because of his dark magic; as it was, not a single one of their feeble attempts to learn more about him made his eyes glow, his mental defenses not activating.

It was that such weak magic was incapable of affecting him anymore.

That had been a side effect of the brief altercation that had taken place after he’d summoned the seven lesser titans that had been Adagio’s creditors. While the spells they’d used had all been potent applications of magic – like the other foes he’d fought since shedding his mortality – the same couldn’t be said for the reinforcements they’d summoned. Amidst the storm of attacks that had been sent his way before the brawl had turned into an orgy, several had elected to use minor spells, albeit with a great deal of adroitness.

But regardless of how skillfully they were utilized, all of those spells had proven futile, collapsing in on themselves as soon as they’d touched him.

It hadn’t been a complete surprise. More than a few of the ice creatures that Kryonex had dragooned into his service had tried to attack him with weak cryomancy, to no avail. He’d seen them – not just in the present, but in the future – fall apart once they came into contact with him, but the threat of the demigod’s presence had been sufficient that he’d put that aside for later consideration.

The brief battle in the demiplane he’d created had been that consideration, confirming what he’d suspected.

He was completely immune to low-level magic.

In hindsight, that was only to be expected. As a titan, his existence was more substantive than the universe around him, meaning that aspects of reality needed sufficient power in order to have any hope of affecting him. That was as true for magic as it was for physical damage, meaning that even without bothering to acknowledge such spells, they’d be powerless to interact with him unless he wanted them to.

Precisely how much power they needed to be able to overcome that passive defense was still unclear, but from what Lex could tell it was enough that Equestria’s native unicorn wizards wouldn’t have been able to. Only the alicorns – able to overcharge their spells via reservoirs of magical energy – and, likely, spellcasters of legendary prowess such as Star-Swirl the Bearded, would have been capable of doing so. And even then, they’d need to contend with all of his myriad other defenses.

The foxes of the Pimao Jingzhi, by contrast, didn’t seem to be capable of anything so grand.

Taking note of their paucity of magical talent, Lex strode past Yuyan, pausing for just a moment as he came within reach of her.

Alone out of all the foxes gathered there, she was the only one disciplined enough to keep her thoughts in check, inwardly reciting a mantra meant to promote calmness and equanimity.

“You may all raise your heads,” announced Lex, speaking in Tianyu as he moved to the end of the banquet hall. A thought was all it took to create a throne of black crystals there, large and imposing, and the combination of his speaking their language and his powers was enough to send their thoughts into further disarray.

“Before anything else,” he announced as he sat down, “allow me to apologize for Sirrush’s rudeness toward you earlier. She was a poor choice of a messenger, and my beloved wife’s clan deserved to be treated with greater respect.”

Yuyan, still filling her mind with that mantra, smiled at him. “Those words are honor enough, my lord. We have already been gifted not only with a xianxia to lead us, but one who has elevated my dear niece to the exalted status of nine tails. To show such respect to us over such a trifling matter only places us further within your debt.”

“There is no debt between members of the same clan,” replied Lex, easily plucking the words out of Nayao’s mind. Her mother might have been able to prevent him from finding out what she was thinking, but the five-tailed vixen wasn’t as composed as Yuyan was. “As the husband of the Pimao Jingzhi with the most tails, and having received you all as her gift to me in honor of our marriage, to regard you with anything less than my fullest esteem would be an insult to her.”

By now, the foxes were all breathing easier. Almost all of them were encouraged by the discourse he was having with Yuyan, and many were daring to hope that he would reverse their clan’s prolonged decline.

But not all of them were reassured.

“However, I cannot overlook the fact that you were all brought into my service with almost no advance notice, and without having made your voices heard,” he continued. “That is why I wish to make myself available to all of you now, to reassure your fears and answer any questions that you may have. Should anyone here find themselves unwilling to place their faith in me, then if they so wish, I will release them from the Pimao Jingzhi.”

“There are none here who would be so crude as to deny you after all that you have done for us,” answered Yuyan immediately.

Lex, however, wasn’t willing to let the point go so easily. He wanted to make sure Mei Li’s clan was comfortable in his service, but they would also need to accept that his will was paramount now.

“Be that as it may, I make the offer nevertheless. Anyone who wishes to leave the clan will be allowed to do so. Provisions and money will be granted, and transportation to a locale of your choice will be given to you, all without any...marks of shame being inflicted upon yourselves.”

It was all he could do to finish that last part without gnashing his teeth, his foresight and thought-reading suddenly making him aware of what his words were going to make several of the assembled foxes think about.

Specifically, the males.

Of the twenty-eight members of Mei Li’s clan, twenty-two were vixens. The remaining six were todds, though given their slight builds and effeminate features, Lex would have been hard-pressed to have figured that out if he had still been mortal. Particularly since all six shared a common feature.

They had all, without exception, been castrated.

But that shocked him less than how all six were suddenly nervous – no, were suddenly terrified – that he would use his magic to restore what they’d lost.

It was perverse enough that, although his outward expression didn’t change, Lex was nevertheless completely stunned.

Querying futures where he pushed them for answers, it took Lex only a moment to come up with them. Apparently their culture had long since institutionalized the practice of having a household’s male servants neutered if they were ever inducted as honorary clan members. While it wasn’t uncommon for households to employ todds that hadn’t been castrated – who were always foxes with no clans of their own, since otherwise they wouldn’t have been available to hire – such males were just that: employees. Contractors who were entitled to no loyalty or consideration beyond the job that they had been paid to do.

For such foxes, being taken in as members of a clan was something to be fervently desired, both for the security a household offered and the prestige it conferred upon them. A fox without a clan was relegated to the bottom of their society, with no hope for advancement short of founding a clan of their own. And that was so difficult, drawing down the wrath of established houses who didn’t want another competitor, that most foxes regarded it as being effectively impossible.

As such, sacrificing their ability to have children – something they’d be unlikely to have the chance to do anyway (at least among their own kind), since vixens with no clan were likewise preoccupied with trying to increase their own status, and males with no household were regarded as having no prospects – was seen as a small price to pay by most clan-less todds.

The result was that all six of the males here wanted quite badly to remain eunuchs.

And as galling as it was, Lex knew that he had to respect their decision.

His moral code left him no choice in the matter. He’d been able to justify reading the minds of everyone around him only through a combination of personal necessity to fulfill his duties and allowing individuals to voluntarily opt-out of his presence. Neither of those were true for the todds who’d elected to be neutered. Quite the contrary, there was a strong vested interest in his government not interfering with individuals’ decisions – outside of certain, highly limited areas – concerning their own bodies.

He couldn’t even claim that they were mentally unfit to make such decisions, the way he had with Sonata and Aria to get around the Night Mare’s proscribing his having formal romantic relationships. Unlike the Sirens, the todds’ attitudes were entirely in keeping with their native culture, and no matter how odious he found it, they were still sane by any conventional definition of the word.

“Our lord is too kind,” murmured Yuyan. “Then, are there any here who wish to take advantage of his generosity and leave the clan?”

No one spoke up, and in their thoughts Lex could hear every single fox emphatically refusing his offer.

“As you can see, to remain in the service of such a noble being is the only wish of all of the Pimao Jingzhi,” continued Yuyan after several seconds of silence. “Which is why I would like to present to you, as proof of our devotion, with our clan’s greatest treasures.”

Next to her, Nayao bit her lip. “Mother...”

“Nayao,” answered Yuyan evenly. “As my eldest daughter, I would like you to give our lord the Nine Methods of Earthly Formation.”

There was only the slightest hesitation in the five-tailed fox before she nodded, standing up and bowing deeply to Lex before reaching into a pocket – one which had been enchanted with an extradimensional space – and pulled out a large, ornate book.

“Please forgive our lack of ceremony in proffering this to you,” announced Yuyan as her daughter moved up to the edge of his throne and kneeling down, holding it out to him. “Our flight from our home left us with no choice but to stow our valuables on our person.”

“I take no offense,” replied Lex, picking up the book...

Only to freeze as, in his foresight, he got a look at what was in it.

This is...!

Author's Note

Meeting with the Pimao Jingzhi, Lex begins to acquaint himself with his new foxes, only to be shocked by the gift they give him!

What is written in the Nine Methods of Earthly Formation? Is Lex horrified by what its pages contain, or overjoyed?