A God in a Xianxia world

Chapter 30 - Family Discussions (2)

While Tom was speaking with Adam, there was another discussion occurring within the Cardinal estate.

In a large meeting room in the estate, several elders of the clan were gathered. The reason for their gathering was precisely because of the incident the previous night where Tom was attacked.

"What are we going to do about this? Twice now, my son has almost been killed by these people. I want action" Gerald said agitatedly to the patriarch of the clan; Lucian Cardinal, A man in his late 50's with short grey hair and a lean figure.

"And what exactly do you want me to do? We already started a search 3 months ago, after the first time, but we haven't turned anything up. Plus your son bashed his attacker's face in so badly that he's completely unrecognisable, we don't exactly have much to go on"

"At the moment, we can only continue on how we've been going. We'll conduct a search of the city, rattle a few doors, question some petty criminals, but apart from that, there's not a lot we can do" replied Lucian in a calm manner.

"I understand that" Gerald said in frustration.

"But we've even stopped the searches for the bandits. I don't want to sit here doing nothing while the people trying to kill my son are left to operate unhindered"

"You know the situation's not like that, Gerald" said Emery, trying to calm down his brother.

"We haven't stopped all the searches Gerald, but, we were turning up nothing and there's a limit to how long we can keep sending so many people out of the city every day. It was causing far too much disruption and it wasn't getting us anywhere, so we had to scale it back. You know that" Lucian explained calmly.

"But as soon as we did that, these bandits! Crept out of where ever they were hiding and started raiding along the roads again" said Gerald animatedly, voicing his unhappiness at how the situation was being handled.

Those present, sympathised with Gerald. The whole bandit situation had left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. They too, weren't happy that as soon as they pulled their forces back the bandits had become active again, attacking people travelling on the roads. They wanted to resolve it as quickly as possible but that was hard to do when they couldn't even locate the people responsible.

The elders present also couldn't blame the usually calm and serious Gerald for lashing out like this. After all, whatever else they could say about the man, Gerald was a person who deeply cared about his son. Many of those present had lost a loved one over the years; be it their parents, their partner, and for some, even their children, so they could sympathise with Gerald, whose son essentially had a target over his head.

"That's not necessarily a bad thing. While we were out searching, they had hidden themselves away very deeply. It's unlikely we would have found them. We only found one of their hideouts by chance and paid a high price for underestimating them, a mistake we won't make again" Lucian said, receiving nods of acknowledgment from around the room.

Although the clan knew that bandits operated in the North West and they periodically made efforts to deal with them, they had severely underestimated the strength and scope of this particular bandit group. Previously, the clan had assumed the group was just slightly larger and more well organised than regular groups, but, the discovery that they had qi condensation level warriors in their midst had come as a complete shock to the clan. At most, they assumed that the bandits would have peak level qi expansionists; a qi condensation realm warrior was outside of expectations. After all, when it was so easy to earn a living and live comfortably as a qi condensation level warrior, why would they stoop to this level of banditry.