- Location
- England
Congratulations on not dying.
Although, damn, this is so dead on Sufficient Velocity. Are there more people reading it on Royal Road?
Last edited:
Dao of the Web
- Thread starter CatVI
- Start date
- Original Novel Fantasy
Although, damn, this is so dead on Sufficient Velocity. Are there more people reading it on Royal Road?
Yeah, about 1000 followers and there are like 10 or 15 that comment daily.
Chapter 31 - Between ten mugs of beer
The world outside continued to move. Since the Youjin clan decided it was a perfect time to implement Yung's terms, they held no hands back.
In a few days, the most remarkable transformation had taken place in the slum. What was once composed of poverty and despair was now illuminated by the smiles of its inhabitants. In their eyes, Yung could yet see the doubt and uncertainty, but there was more than just that. In some places, colourful walls gradually replaced the dilapidated shacks that once littered the area. In others, the faint laughter from children playing echoed through dark alleys that were once deathly silent.
"Break the stream, lads! Don't let the water spill over." A man said, overseeing a group of madlander youths, both men and women. He was a mason by the markings on his traditional garb.
The madlanders were building a dam at a portion of the Dirt Stream, the polluted waterway that carried waste from the fiend butchery to the Red Hole, passing through the Madlander Slums.
It would filter out most of the garbage before it could wash downstream. At a distance, more madlanders were digging another canal.
"Wait up, brats!" A roar resounded.
A group of children ran out of a newly constructed stable at the entrance of the slums, raising neighs from tamed chaosfiends and with straws stuck in their knotted hair.
"Dun wanna! Why do we gots to do this study thing?" Replied a rebel boy, and the group scattered before the scholarly-looking madlander with the slick goatee could catch them.
"They'll come around by noon for the free food." A woman said, nudging the first man, who sighed. They locked up the stable and went another way.
Yung kept walking, the dirty cobblestone path under his feet gradually turning to proper roads. It was an illusion. The stones hadn't been replaced or repaired. Just scrubbed and washed, and that made a world's difference. Yung took in all the changes with a light, fluttering heart.
This is awesome! Right, Silky?
"Kii~."
He passed by the southern gate and entered the city's southeast quadrant.
The Baishui clan's territory, the white town.
Or, it was.
Madlanders ran to and fro, bringing cartloads of materials pulled by strange goat-looking chaosfiends. They neighed the same way as the fiends in that stable, and their convoy departed en masse from the slums with playing children at the ready, towards the clean white town to claim their new home.
The native ren were nervous, and Yung could feel the undercurrent of fear. But Free Sparrow's orders were strict. No fights broke out.
The city was yet heavy from the sudden cancellation of the sect recruitments. But for the madlanders, it was a happy day. For the eastern uptowners, it was a day they could dare to dream of a secure future.
And for the White town natives, it was a day when foreigners came in to take what was theirs.
The Youjin clan also sent guards to oversee the shift. Tens of thousands of madlanders would be moving in. So some chaos was unavoidable. But they did their best to minimize the harm.
Clothes were given out. Libraries were made public. The imminent return of the foxmoths was preached on every street corner, infusing the White town native population with a renewed sense of possibility, and diffusing their fear of the changing future as much as possible.
Above it all were paintings of the Fortune fox totem, plastered as the idol behind all the change.
Silky, you silly goober. Why'd ye not tell me it would feel this bad. Ugh!
Yung felt bloated. His xinqi came surging forth from all the worship faster than he could convert it to zhenqi.
For the first time since he could remember, he felt like a rich man. And it felt horrible.
After returning Youjin Chao's mirror fortress, he walked around the city to see if any shop sold xinqi storing jades, which could keep a cultivator's xinqi for later use like a battery. So that he could use them to relieve the burden of bloating xinqi, but none did. Only the Zheng clan had a supply, and they refused to open their gates to a barbarian.
"Stupid stuck-up nerds!"
"Kii!!!"
"You bet they have cooties."
And Yung didn't suddenly find a new xinqi artefact either. So he rolled around, constantly feeling like his bladder was about to burst. That's when the auction house called for him with new wares.
***
"We have been expecting you, Master Yung," the Dim gold auction house manager said. He was the same old elder with that impeccable smile on his face. If he had sat on a swivel chair and had a cat on his lap, he would look quite well suited for a Chinese triad Bond villain.
Yung sat down, dizzy. It's been a few days. He spent them talking philosophy with Nanya about life and love and sex. Only when she let him hold her hand did the xinqi pressure relieve itself. But the vixen was stingy with skinship. And she refused to give him anything for free without him returning the favour. Which, of course, boiled down to expressing his undying, true love.
At least she isn't trying to solve all my problems for me. Yung could appreciate the honest refusal.
Yung had thought to consult the foxfire creek heart sutra. He learnt that 'burning xinqi' willy-nilly wasn't a good thing.
Yung had tried nevertheless, then scrunched up at the extreme ball-kicked pain.
He had positively hollered at the news from the auction house. Apparently, they had heard of his plight. He'd sprinted over as fast as he could, squeezing his dantian and his legs, raising weird glances from women and children alike. If this were any other context, Yung would worry about his privacy. But talking context to a man with a bulging dam looking for a toilet was the best way to get punched.
Without touching the tea, Yung asked the crucial question, "Let me see the artefacts."
"Why yes, most certainly." The auction house elder called for a servant. An auction employee in elegant Youjin qipao pushed in a cart covered by a veil. The elder continued with a grimace, "We could only find four artefacts. And the one you seek might be problematic. You must understand, Master Yung, that we had to commit far more staffing to this at your urging."
"Got it, and I'm sorry for that." Yung wiped the sweat from his forehead. Om in, Om out. It was like holding in a sneeze, but worse. "Because of that Dusk valley lion king, two of the previous artefacts were ruined."
The sword was never found, probably flung away to some crack between rocks in the forest. The defensive bangle had shattered after protecting Yung's life from the Dusk valley lion king's enraged outburst.
Or was it Floofy… Su Nanya's doing? I don't think a normal houtian 1st grade artefact of the common class would've been able to shield me.
"Indeed, a means to protect oneself is necessary." The elder said, lifting the veil. The employee bowed, then stood by the door dutifully.
Another sword.
Yung hated swords.
And a short spear.
Correction: Yung hated anything that would force him to do close combat. He would do things the modern, American way from now on. With long distance ordinance.
At least it had a longer range than swords. But not by much, this one. It was pretty though. The short spear was a lightweight weapon with a glossy black wooden shaft adorned by intricate patterns of black and gold. Its slender silver surface exuded elegance, leading to a lethal, curved blade at the tip that gleamed with a silver sheen. The handle ensured a secure grip, featuring a solid metal guard for protection against slashing strikes. Its blunt butt enhanced versatility, allowing for effective parrying and disrupting the enemy's balance.
"Uncommon class, this one." The elder said, "Xinqi and spears are a rare combination."
Yung absentmindedly nodded, but his eyes lit up at the third artefact. A bangle identical to the one he had.
He picked it up immediately, then bound it with a bit of zhenqi. His xinqi flowed into the artefact, and Yung felt some pressure relieved immediately.
"Ahhhh," He couldn't help but moan out. It was the same feeling as finally achieving release after finding that one hidden underground toilet, releasing the waterfalls, and watching the steam rise up in utter bliss.
"We are pleased that Master Yung likes it." The elder commented with a smile. But that smile soon turned upside down.
"The fourth artefact, I fear, might not suit your tastes. Though it is the one you seek for your… condition, shall we say."
Yung gestured for the man to go on.
"You see, Master Yung, we acquired this from a mercenary. A stigmata building cultivator who responded to Youjin clan's call."
Despite all the boss mobs gathering there, the Youjin clan still planned on going after the foxmoths. Yung was quite happy with the turn of events. Recovering the foxmoths was a must, and he had been worried that the clan would turn tail after scouting out the situation.
But I do need to mass produce the newer version of the sound transmission tokens… A small price, but damn tedious… Wait, I can Fiverr it!
"This object, is a mystical artefact of the highest wrongness."
Yung sat straight in his seat, "A mystical artefact? You sure?"
Wrongness?
The elder nodded, "According to the mercenary, this item is one he acquired after slaying a mo cultivator."
Yung perked up, "A devil?"
"Precisely so." The elder said, "In a small village far to the east in a neighbouring kingdom, this devil made his cult."
"So the villagers were in on it?"
"It is more complicated than that," The elder wiped his forehead with a napkin, visibly distressed. "Cursed they were, but even so, they were truly the most heinous people I had heard of. They revelled in shame and sin. For them, no man was innocent; no woman was pure. They filled their filthy dens with depravity. All to feed this mystical artefact's never-ending unwholesomeness, may the heavens smite them all. But the good news is, after the master mo cultivator was slain with an epoch-changing battle, the villagers were released from the curse. Although I fear their community is ruined."
"… so, if I could see this artefact."
"Patience, Master Yung, for I must warn you. This artefact may be just houtian 1st grade, but by the powers that be, it had tainted good people far stronger. All mystical artefacts are of the epic class, and none are to be underestimated." The Elder took out a sealed box from the second row of the cart. He put it on the table and took out a key. After wiping it until shiny, he inserted the key into the keyhole.
With a clack and a click, two ledges opened. The elder grabbed them both and channelled his qi. The raw aura hummed like the low sound of a resting engine.
How elaborate.
The box opened to reveal the cursed mo artefact with all its glory.
It was a pink ring with a heart-shaped ruby.
Yung looked, then looked again. It was hazy, and there was something strange about it.
"Kii?"
"The pink heart ring," The elder shuddered, eyeing Silky with a doom-filled visage. He picked the artefact up with an inscribed clothe and passed it to Yung.
"I mean, it's fine, I guess?" Yung commented, turning it over. "Pink is a bit tacky, but to each their own." But even as his words tapered off, the ring in his eyes changed, and his heart rate quickened.
In his vision, the ring gleamed with a rosy hue that lasted throughout the night, evoking the image of blushing cheeks. A delicate scent, reminiscent of sweet candy, emanated from it, though it gradually faded the more Yung concentrated on it. Within the depths of the inlaid ruby lay a mysterious oil pool of blood-pink fire, its warmth exuding a strange soothing hymn. Like a lullaby, yet sung by a mother who had sinned. Yung felt it in his gut; the concealed darkness in the ruby led to treacherous paths, akin to a murky river flowing with unmentionable dirt.
"I kid you not, Master Yung, for this vile apparatus can send men, women, children, cows, birds, and even fiends into a spiral of unimaginable pain—"
"Oh, that sounds cool!"
"—and carnal pleasure."
"Gods dammit."
"It is a qi leech too. Constantly drawing upon the owner's xinqi, so its unending lust is satiated—"
"Oh so that's why you said this can fix my condition."
"—if it is not, it will send leg-numbing, bladder-spilling sensations back to its owner."
"…"
The elder took out more napkins to wipe his sweat and passed one to Yung, who graciously accepted. "It observes and records all sensual pain and pleasure in the surrounding. Stab wounds, burns, childbirths, coital bliss, and even, I dare say, especially, animals mating during the season. Even insects, even the fiends. Although it takes some moments to prime, discharge the blasphemous art inscribed in it at your foes, and they will feel the full brunt of all that is rotten and foul. Most defensive artefacts of similar quality cannot block it, as the pink beam-shaped art is disguised as a healing wave that nourishes both the body and soul. In Master Yung's case, for you cultivate faith qi, this blasphemous art will turn into a numinous one. But by our extensive testing, the vile effects seem to get sneakier. The worst part is, if your foe can withstand the attack, they become stronger!"
"And… it sends all this back to the owner if I cut off its qi supply?"
"A vile tool indeed, Master Yung. Though the artefact spirit has not been formed, there is potential yet, for it is a mystical artefact. Once in his life, the mercenary had plans to use it to his ends, but alas…."
"What happened?"
"He had run out of xinqi amidst an intense debate with a monk from a rival religious sect in the eastern part of the the Warring twilight region. The unfortunate man had discharged his filth with excretion and vomit, climaxed, and then bled out from his lower body orifices whilst moaning and groaning. All in front of a symposium of ten thousand reverents."
"Christ almighty."
"His master spat blood and had qi deviation. The cultivator was exiled from his sect, and now he lives as a hired hand thousands of li away from home. According to him, his chronic haemorrhoids had been healed after that incident, so had his knee pain and seasonal cold. But the price was too much to bear. For his social life. I would assume that he rushed here because of our auction house's call to buy xinqi artefacts and not Youjin clan's call to arms."
"And you guys bought it?" Yung was amazed.
"If anything, it has collection value, with a deep, disturbing history. Many a nobleman love this sort of trinket, given enough time. Besides, it merely costs five ironcast spirit stones. For a mystical artefact, it's a bargain."
Yung went silent. He rocked his feet and thought hard on the matter.
"It can use all types of xinqi and not just fear qi? You said its innate blasphemous art can be cast as a numinous art too."
"That is correct."
"I—I'll take it!" Yung said with gritted teeth. Come hell or high water, he needed to dispel the bloated feeling from his dantian, or honest to Moira, he'd pop.
In a few days, the most remarkable transformation had taken place in the slum. What was once composed of poverty and despair was now illuminated by the smiles of its inhabitants. In their eyes, Yung could yet see the doubt and uncertainty, but there was more than just that. In some places, colourful walls gradually replaced the dilapidated shacks that once littered the area. In others, the faint laughter from children playing echoed through dark alleys that were once deathly silent.
"Break the stream, lads! Don't let the water spill over." A man said, overseeing a group of madlander youths, both men and women. He was a mason by the markings on his traditional garb.
The madlanders were building a dam at a portion of the Dirt Stream, the polluted waterway that carried waste from the fiend butchery to the Red Hole, passing through the Madlander Slums.
It would filter out most of the garbage before it could wash downstream. At a distance, more madlanders were digging another canal.
"Wait up, brats!" A roar resounded.
A group of children ran out of a newly constructed stable at the entrance of the slums, raising neighs from tamed chaosfiends and with straws stuck in their knotted hair.
"Dun wanna! Why do we gots to do this study thing?" Replied a rebel boy, and the group scattered before the scholarly-looking madlander with the slick goatee could catch them.
"They'll come around by noon for the free food." A woman said, nudging the first man, who sighed. They locked up the stable and went another way.
Yung kept walking, the dirty cobblestone path under his feet gradually turning to proper roads. It was an illusion. The stones hadn't been replaced or repaired. Just scrubbed and washed, and that made a world's difference. Yung took in all the changes with a light, fluttering heart.
This is awesome! Right, Silky?
"Kii~."
He passed by the southern gate and entered the city's southeast quadrant.
The Baishui clan's territory, the white town.
Or, it was.
Madlanders ran to and fro, bringing cartloads of materials pulled by strange goat-looking chaosfiends. They neighed the same way as the fiends in that stable, and their convoy departed en masse from the slums with playing children at the ready, towards the clean white town to claim their new home.
The native ren were nervous, and Yung could feel the undercurrent of fear. But Free Sparrow's orders were strict. No fights broke out.
The city was yet heavy from the sudden cancellation of the sect recruitments. But for the madlanders, it was a happy day. For the eastern uptowners, it was a day they could dare to dream of a secure future.
And for the White town natives, it was a day when foreigners came in to take what was theirs.
The Youjin clan also sent guards to oversee the shift. Tens of thousands of madlanders would be moving in. So some chaos was unavoidable. But they did their best to minimize the harm.
Clothes were given out. Libraries were made public. The imminent return of the foxmoths was preached on every street corner, infusing the White town native population with a renewed sense of possibility, and diffusing their fear of the changing future as much as possible.
Above it all were paintings of the Fortune fox totem, plastered as the idol behind all the change.
Silky, you silly goober. Why'd ye not tell me it would feel this bad. Ugh!
Yung felt bloated. His xinqi came surging forth from all the worship faster than he could convert it to zhenqi.
For the first time since he could remember, he felt like a rich man. And it felt horrible.
After returning Youjin Chao's mirror fortress, he walked around the city to see if any shop sold xinqi storing jades, which could keep a cultivator's xinqi for later use like a battery. So that he could use them to relieve the burden of bloating xinqi, but none did. Only the Zheng clan had a supply, and they refused to open their gates to a barbarian.
"Stupid stuck-up nerds!"
"Kii!!!"
"You bet they have cooties."
And Yung didn't suddenly find a new xinqi artefact either. So he rolled around, constantly feeling like his bladder was about to burst. That's when the auction house called for him with new wares.
***
"We have been expecting you, Master Yung," the Dim gold auction house manager said. He was the same old elder with that impeccable smile on his face. If he had sat on a swivel chair and had a cat on his lap, he would look quite well suited for a Chinese triad Bond villain.
Yung sat down, dizzy. It's been a few days. He spent them talking philosophy with Nanya about life and love and sex. Only when she let him hold her hand did the xinqi pressure relieve itself. But the vixen was stingy with skinship. And she refused to give him anything for free without him returning the favour. Which, of course, boiled down to expressing his undying, true love.
At least she isn't trying to solve all my problems for me. Yung could appreciate the honest refusal.
Yung had thought to consult the foxfire creek heart sutra. He learnt that 'burning xinqi' willy-nilly wasn't a good thing.
Yung had tried nevertheless, then scrunched up at the extreme ball-kicked pain.
He had positively hollered at the news from the auction house. Apparently, they had heard of his plight. He'd sprinted over as fast as he could, squeezing his dantian and his legs, raising weird glances from women and children alike. If this were any other context, Yung would worry about his privacy. But talking context to a man with a bulging dam looking for a toilet was the best way to get punched.
Without touching the tea, Yung asked the crucial question, "Let me see the artefacts."
"Why yes, most certainly." The auction house elder called for a servant. An auction employee in elegant Youjin qipao pushed in a cart covered by a veil. The elder continued with a grimace, "We could only find four artefacts. And the one you seek might be problematic. You must understand, Master Yung, that we had to commit far more staffing to this at your urging."
"Got it, and I'm sorry for that." Yung wiped the sweat from his forehead. Om in, Om out. It was like holding in a sneeze, but worse. "Because of that Dusk valley lion king, two of the previous artefacts were ruined."
The sword was never found, probably flung away to some crack between rocks in the forest. The defensive bangle had shattered after protecting Yung's life from the Dusk valley lion king's enraged outburst.
Or was it Floofy… Su Nanya's doing? I don't think a normal houtian 1st grade artefact of the common class would've been able to shield me.
"Indeed, a means to protect oneself is necessary." The elder said, lifting the veil. The employee bowed, then stood by the door dutifully.
Another sword.
Yung hated swords.
And a short spear.
Correction: Yung hated anything that would force him to do close combat. He would do things the modern, American way from now on. With long distance ordinance.
At least it had a longer range than swords. But not by much, this one. It was pretty though. The short spear was a lightweight weapon with a glossy black wooden shaft adorned by intricate patterns of black and gold. Its slender silver surface exuded elegance, leading to a lethal, curved blade at the tip that gleamed with a silver sheen. The handle ensured a secure grip, featuring a solid metal guard for protection against slashing strikes. Its blunt butt enhanced versatility, allowing for effective parrying and disrupting the enemy's balance.
"Uncommon class, this one." The elder said, "Xinqi and spears are a rare combination."
Yung absentmindedly nodded, but his eyes lit up at the third artefact. A bangle identical to the one he had.
He picked it up immediately, then bound it with a bit of zhenqi. His xinqi flowed into the artefact, and Yung felt some pressure relieved immediately.
"Ahhhh," He couldn't help but moan out. It was the same feeling as finally achieving release after finding that one hidden underground toilet, releasing the waterfalls, and watching the steam rise up in utter bliss.
"We are pleased that Master Yung likes it." The elder commented with a smile. But that smile soon turned upside down.
"The fourth artefact, I fear, might not suit your tastes. Though it is the one you seek for your… condition, shall we say."
Yung gestured for the man to go on.
"You see, Master Yung, we acquired this from a mercenary. A stigmata building cultivator who responded to Youjin clan's call."
Despite all the boss mobs gathering there, the Youjin clan still planned on going after the foxmoths. Yung was quite happy with the turn of events. Recovering the foxmoths was a must, and he had been worried that the clan would turn tail after scouting out the situation.
But I do need to mass produce the newer version of the sound transmission tokens… A small price, but damn tedious… Wait, I can Fiverr it!
"This object, is a mystical artefact of the highest wrongness."
Yung sat straight in his seat, "A mystical artefact? You sure?"
Wrongness?
The elder nodded, "According to the mercenary, this item is one he acquired after slaying a mo cultivator."
Yung perked up, "A devil?"
"Precisely so." The elder said, "In a small village far to the east in a neighbouring kingdom, this devil made his cult."
"So the villagers were in on it?"
"It is more complicated than that," The elder wiped his forehead with a napkin, visibly distressed. "Cursed they were, but even so, they were truly the most heinous people I had heard of. They revelled in shame and sin. For them, no man was innocent; no woman was pure. They filled their filthy dens with depravity. All to feed this mystical artefact's never-ending unwholesomeness, may the heavens smite them all. But the good news is, after the master mo cultivator was slain with an epoch-changing battle, the villagers were released from the curse. Although I fear their community is ruined."
"… so, if I could see this artefact."
"Patience, Master Yung, for I must warn you. This artefact may be just houtian 1st grade, but by the powers that be, it had tainted good people far stronger. All mystical artefacts are of the epic class, and none are to be underestimated." The Elder took out a sealed box from the second row of the cart. He put it on the table and took out a key. After wiping it until shiny, he inserted the key into the keyhole.
With a clack and a click, two ledges opened. The elder grabbed them both and channelled his qi. The raw aura hummed like the low sound of a resting engine.
How elaborate.
The box opened to reveal the cursed mo artefact with all its glory.
It was a pink ring with a heart-shaped ruby.
Yung looked, then looked again. It was hazy, and there was something strange about it.
"Kii?"
"The pink heart ring," The elder shuddered, eyeing Silky with a doom-filled visage. He picked the artefact up with an inscribed clothe and passed it to Yung.
"I mean, it's fine, I guess?" Yung commented, turning it over. "Pink is a bit tacky, but to each their own." But even as his words tapered off, the ring in his eyes changed, and his heart rate quickened.
In his vision, the ring gleamed with a rosy hue that lasted throughout the night, evoking the image of blushing cheeks. A delicate scent, reminiscent of sweet candy, emanated from it, though it gradually faded the more Yung concentrated on it. Within the depths of the inlaid ruby lay a mysterious oil pool of blood-pink fire, its warmth exuding a strange soothing hymn. Like a lullaby, yet sung by a mother who had sinned. Yung felt it in his gut; the concealed darkness in the ruby led to treacherous paths, akin to a murky river flowing with unmentionable dirt.
"I kid you not, Master Yung, for this vile apparatus can send men, women, children, cows, birds, and even fiends into a spiral of unimaginable pain—"
"Oh, that sounds cool!"
"—and carnal pleasure."
"Gods dammit."
"It is a qi leech too. Constantly drawing upon the owner's xinqi, so its unending lust is satiated—"
"Oh so that's why you said this can fix my condition."
"—if it is not, it will send leg-numbing, bladder-spilling sensations back to its owner."
"…"
The elder took out more napkins to wipe his sweat and passed one to Yung, who graciously accepted. "It observes and records all sensual pain and pleasure in the surrounding. Stab wounds, burns, childbirths, coital bliss, and even, I dare say, especially, animals mating during the season. Even insects, even the fiends. Although it takes some moments to prime, discharge the blasphemous art inscribed in it at your foes, and they will feel the full brunt of all that is rotten and foul. Most defensive artefacts of similar quality cannot block it, as the pink beam-shaped art is disguised as a healing wave that nourishes both the body and soul. In Master Yung's case, for you cultivate faith qi, this blasphemous art will turn into a numinous one. But by our extensive testing, the vile effects seem to get sneakier. The worst part is, if your foe can withstand the attack, they become stronger!"
"And… it sends all this back to the owner if I cut off its qi supply?"
"A vile tool indeed, Master Yung. Though the artefact spirit has not been formed, there is potential yet, for it is a mystical artefact. Once in his life, the mercenary had plans to use it to his ends, but alas…."
"What happened?"
"He had run out of xinqi amidst an intense debate with a monk from a rival religious sect in the eastern part of the the Warring twilight region. The unfortunate man had discharged his filth with excretion and vomit, climaxed, and then bled out from his lower body orifices whilst moaning and groaning. All in front of a symposium of ten thousand reverents."
"Christ almighty."
"His master spat blood and had qi deviation. The cultivator was exiled from his sect, and now he lives as a hired hand thousands of li away from home. According to him, his chronic haemorrhoids had been healed after that incident, so had his knee pain and seasonal cold. But the price was too much to bear. For his social life. I would assume that he rushed here because of our auction house's call to buy xinqi artefacts and not Youjin clan's call to arms."
"And you guys bought it?" Yung was amazed.
"If anything, it has collection value, with a deep, disturbing history. Many a nobleman love this sort of trinket, given enough time. Besides, it merely costs five ironcast spirit stones. For a mystical artefact, it's a bargain."
Yung went silent. He rocked his feet and thought hard on the matter.
"It can use all types of xinqi and not just fear qi? You said its innate blasphemous art can be cast as a numinous art too."
"That is correct."
"I—I'll take it!" Yung said with gritted teeth. Come hell or high water, he needed to dispel the bloated feeling from his dantian, or honest to Moira, he'd pop.
praying
exuded
hole
people at home
were
Han
Chao isn't the one who used it
feint
Random extra quotation
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Chapter 32 - I'm glad we had this talk
Yung left the sword and the short spear with the house. Too cumbersome to carry, too many bad memories for his pacifist psyche.
Besides, Yung convinced himself rather forcefully, I don't have a storage artefact.
The auction house elder promised to prepare a xinqi-powered one the next time he visited.
Yung bound the pink heart ring. Immediately, he felt the change.
The excess xinqi drained away into the 'profane artefact of discord,' as the elder had referred to it last, and Yung felt like he had dumped the largest turd in his two lifetimes.
"Worth it!"
***
Su Nanya cast one disgusted look at Yung's new addition, then threw a pillow at him, "Loathsome pariah, remove your sinful intentions from our presence at once!"
"Wait, no, I didn't buy this for you."
"Perverted low-born. Lustful bandit. Beastly night crawler!"
Explaining his innocence consumed more time than Yung could tolerate. But as long as Su Nanya was holed up in his room, he'd have to make peace and be honest.
It's not like he hadn't tried changing his abode. But as was her power, the vixen promised to stalk until she got her validation. Or in her words, "We shall grant you our presence, and the utter pleasure to reject your heart!"
Said vixen now turned his room into a mini girly-girl palace.
"We commend your honesty. But it has occurred to us that you haven't spoken good of our beauty even once today." She said.
"Wow, you have a fluffy tail."
"We are pleased."
Yung sighed, then sat down. It had become their daily routine to talk about a particular puzzle. How to make Yung feel alright pursuing Su Nanya without her having to promise any commitment.
"If you want me to pursue you, you must also be honest," Yung said. He had a matter to reveal today.
"We are listening."
"You said you wouldn't subject your body to our 'ugliness,' but haven't you been doing it all along?" Yung stood up and pointed at Nanya dramatically, his face the image of an assured, cheeky grin.
"Have you been touching us in our sleep, you malevolent ne'er-do-well?!" Su Nanya bristled.
"I have, as a body pillow."
"You lie," Su Nanya scoffed, "You are weak as a worm. How can our supreme might ever fail to sense your advances."
"Hehe, hehehehe," Yung laughed, pushing the invisible glasses up his nose. "I have finally figured out your secret."
"We do not like your tone."
"You're Su Xiya in disguise!" Yung laid bare his accusations, and Su Nanya gaped.
"Pardon?"
"I know it. You two, I have never seen you in the same place even once. You both have Su and Ya in your name. While you have 'Nan', which means south, Floofy has 'Xi', which means west." And you both have the exact same sized celestial link, "The coincidences are too many. If you wanted to let me floof you, you could just be honest and—"
"Woof!"
Su Xiya crawled out from under the bed. She looked up at Yung with shocked googly eyes, then scratched the door. Su Yafeng opened it, and the floofy fox jaunted out.
Yung facepalmed, sitting down.
"Do you desire to wipe your perspiration, new servant?" Su Nanya asked, her voice mellow. There was something in it that ground Yung's gears.
He looked up, "Why are you sweating too?"
"What nonsense. Princesses don't sweat! This is but mere moisture attracted upon our fair skin after it fell prey to our beauty." Said the vixen as she hurriedly wiped said moisture.
Yung rolled his eyes and pondered what he should do.
He was in a position to change Su Nanya's mind about the sect recruitments. And it wasn't like the vixen was forcing him to do her bidding. Not really. If she wanted to, she could've blackmailed him by threatening to annul the Su fox clan's blood spirit contract, and he'd be absolutely done.
She did not. All she wanted was for Yung to feed her vanity.
In other words, she was being a selfish little bitch. That wasn't malicious, but it did cause problems for others.
Youjin Chao and Ziyou Ling had prepared for literal years, hoping to pass the sect recruitments. As had thousands of other youths from the city. Yung could give them a helping hand.
He could help Su Nanya out with her insecurities too.
So Yung chose to listen to his conscience despite his raging hormones begging him to play into Su Nanya's flirting, to push her down and suck those glossy red lips dry.
But after an intense emotional battle between man and beast, he chose to stay legal.
"The age gap is too much."
Su Nanya's fox ears perked up like they sensed big bad tigers under the bed.
"I… I really can't. Even if I really really wanna get my first ever girlfriend, the age difference is such a turn-off."
Silence.
Before the storm.
The old wooden bed frame released an ear-piercing crack, a noise that resonated throughout the room and seemed to shake the building's very foundation. The harsh sound was accompanied by the shattering of the window panes, breaking apart like a million delicate crystals tumbling to the floor, echoing the bed's demise in an eerie harmony.
Within mere moments, the pressure in the room surged, the air grew heavy and stifling as if an unseen force was exerting its wrath upon every object. The bedside table disintegrated, the decorative books reduced to fluttering pages dancing in the chaotic whirlwind. A vase that once sat gracefully atop the Chinese dresser burst apart, its glittering shards pirouetting in the dim room light. The force of the disturbance even ripped the hotel curtains from their hold, turning them into wild spectral apparitions flapping fiercely.
The frenzied spectacle didn't spare the wall-hanging paintings or the once-cosy bamboo couch either, which exploded into fragments, adding to the unsettling symphony of destruction.
Within the blink of an eye, everything was reduced to dust particles hanging in the air, frozen in a moment of shocking silence.
"Oh dear," Su Yafeng exclaimed, her voice carrying a tinge of adorable vexation. She held down her hanfu, treating the situation like she was merely contending with a slightly troublesome breeze.
Yung remained on his disintegrated bed in the midst of the violent disorder, seemingly untouched but deeply shaken. With his palms pressed against something soft, he clung to the only thing that hadn't crumbled.
Su Nanya, the eye of the storm.
But the vixen was angry.
Yung looked up with deeply disturbed eyes.
And Su Nanya screamed.
"Dare you call us old?!" She snarled, her golden eyes gleaming red, and the oppressive, heavy aura pressed onto Yung like the maddened nails of a wronged lover.
"M'lady is so wasteful." Su Yafeng said before closing the windows with her azure qi. The curtains were ripped, but she was a maid, and maids always had spare curtains on hand.
Yung swallowed, letting go of Su Nanya's marshmallow waist, then looked at Su Yafeng, who averted her gaze.
He quickly turned to the angry vixen again and hurriedly denied, "No, no, it's not you; it's me!"
"That is what all cowards say. That the problem must lie with their own unresolved inner demons. We reject such notions!"
"Christ! I literally mean my age, not some deep seeded psychological issue—"
"For there is no doubt, though we have reached our second century, our skin remains softer than infants'. Our hips tighter than—"
"Wait!" Yung raised his hand.
Su Nanya waited.
"You said you were two hundred years old?"
"We are not ashamed. Age is but a number."
"Prove it!" Yung felt two different things rising in his body. One on his mind, one on his lower torso.
"What right have you to distrust our words?!" Su Nanya said.
"If you prove it to me now and here, then I promise I will turn the oceans and mountains upside down if it means I can make you my girlfriend."
"That means nothing to us. What use would us being a female ally to one of such simple birth as yourself be?"
"Wife. Lover." Yung made a circle with his right thumb and index, putting his left pinky in and out of it.
Su Nanya looked at him with outright suspicion. She then brought out a crystal sphere from her storage artefact.
"You know of this, boy?" She asked as she injected qi into it.
A misty radiance shone inside the sphere before settling into a rune.
A character.
Displaying two-hundred and twenty-nine.
"I don't." Yung said.
"We would use this in the first phase of the sect recruitments. It is the apparatus that measures one's bone age." With a disgruntled pout, the vixen expounded, as if the very circumstance was utterly beyond her comprehension.
Yung went silent. He mentally berated little Yung to hanker down. If he were going to do this, he would do it properly.
Finally, all those books on dating, relationships, and romance would come to good use.
Sue Johnson, watch over me!
Yung—
"Oh boy."
—Yung chickened and ran out of the room.
***
For the second time that day, the Dim Gold Hotel quivered as though caught in the grips of an earthquake. Alarmed patrons and other guests dashed outside, glancing anxiously at the trembling edifice.
The shy waitress and the sweaty manager both stood outside with trembling legs. The Youjin guards gathered, sending sound and scene transmissions to other places. Even the chefs in the kitchen escaped, mid-cooking, with ladles and knives still grasped.
Yung felt a pang of guilt for disrupting their business. But he ran without looking back.
He ran past the jade slip shop where he worked, and across the upper town where every house had looms to weave Dim gold silk on their veranda.
He spotted Youjin Chun in the Dim gold citadel, the heiress looking behind her in confusion. But Yung didn't have the mind to talk.
He kept running; the ground under his feet turned from stone paths to brown topsoil, to finally weed-covered earth with scattered tombs.
Yung looked at his grandfather's grave. With everything happening, he'd forgotten to clean it recently. Silky rushed out of his dantian.
"Kii?"
"I'm fine. Thank you, buddy."
The critter chirped, then buzzed around its old home.
Yung cast his gaze upon his parents' final resting place. The graves, proud but worn by the passage of time, stood as silent sentinels amidst the overwhelming growth of nature. Incense sticks, their charred remnants testimony to prayers offered and tears shed, lay nestled in a bed of ash. The cinders scents, sweet yet hauntingly sombre, wafted in the air, mingling with the damp musk of the earth and the fresh tang of wild grass.
The vegetation had grown uninhibited, a sea of verdant that swayed gently in the breeze, a nature's lullaby for the departed souls. It was as if the grass was guarding the graves, a testament to the enduring cycle of life and death, growth and decay.
Heroism and cowardice.
A tiny wasp nest had found its home among the rough-hewn stones of the graves. It was nestled in one of the cracks. One wasp buzzed, then charged at Silky with lances bared.
Yung sighed, then picked up the stray broom leaning on the shrine and got to cleaning. Silky had no trouble fending off the flying interloper.
You promised her, Jung said.
In the heat of the moment! I really didn't think she'd… Yung replied. It was an excuse. He knew.
And Jung pointed it out. Are you going to break your words?
You don't get it. This isn't a novel where a princess will magically fall for a stable boy without rhyme or reason. It will get me killed.
More excuses. The Su fox clan means you no harm. They protected you until now, and they will in the future.
So what? Become a kept man? Run to them the moment anything goes wrong? Where's my pride?! Yung shouted.
Jung scoffed like he had heard the funniest thing ever. Since when do you, we, care about pride?
As of five seconds ago…. I really don't. Ugh, okay, you win. I just, don't know what to do from here.
We're the same person, Jung said. This is just us doing psychological self-talk to work the problem out.
Yeah, I guess you're right…
Yung kicked a pebble out of the way. He crouched down and pulled up the weeds encroaching on the graves. He'd leave the wasp nest for Silky; the critter had called dibs. Strangely, the foxmoth had stopped fighting with the wasps and seemed to be playing a game of tag.
It's like, this paralysing feeling, Yung said. Does she like me? Does she not? Am I being delusional, thinking I have a real chance? What if she rejects me like she said, and I become a laughingstock?
Jung paused at the confession, then pondered the matter. Men far wiser than us have gone insane overthinking stuff like that. Why not take her words at face value? She seems to be using us to solve her personal trauma, so why not lend her a helping hand? If it works out, great. Suppose it doesn't; then move on.
Wouldn't that be me taking advantage of her insecurities? Like comforting a drunk girl at a party after her companion left her? Self-help books are one thing, but approaching a girl in real life… It's scary.
I know. That's why we always take books with a grain of salt. We choose for ourselves what works and what doesn't. So choose, because you are a cultivator. What, exactly, do you want? Jung asked, exasperated. He hated this teenage part of himself that over-analysed every little issue.
I wanna put my face between her boobs and motorboat. Her arse too. I've been having wet dreams of losing my virginity to her. Gawd, I almost lost control of my hard-on back there.
Too honest! Jung gaped, speechless.
How can I be honest with anyone else if I'm not totally true to myself?
Point taken, Jung still facepalmed customarily. It was all happening in his head, so all manners were maintained. In actuality, nothing is standing in your way of dating her. If you're clear about your intentions, it's not taking advantage of her. She's not a child.
That's a great idea! Yung clapped. How about I ask her out on a dinner date first? Well, I need to explain what a date is. I'll say it's to get to know her better.
So that's that? Jung smiled.
That it is. I won't break my promise. Let's help Nyanya sort through her issues. Even if we can't use John Gottman's Seven Dating Principles, we can try Carl Jung's Analytical Psychology.
Can't shame our namesake, can we? I'm cheering for you. Jung smirked.
Because she's legal?
Heh. With that, Jung and Yung came to an accord, and the teen stood up.
Besides, Yung convinced himself rather forcefully, I don't have a storage artefact.
The auction house elder promised to prepare a xinqi-powered one the next time he visited.
Yung bound the pink heart ring. Immediately, he felt the change.
The excess xinqi drained away into the 'profane artefact of discord,' as the elder had referred to it last, and Yung felt like he had dumped the largest turd in his two lifetimes.
"Worth it!"
***
Su Nanya cast one disgusted look at Yung's new addition, then threw a pillow at him, "Loathsome pariah, remove your sinful intentions from our presence at once!"
"Wait, no, I didn't buy this for you."
"Perverted low-born. Lustful bandit. Beastly night crawler!"
Explaining his innocence consumed more time than Yung could tolerate. But as long as Su Nanya was holed up in his room, he'd have to make peace and be honest.
It's not like he hadn't tried changing his abode. But as was her power, the vixen promised to stalk until she got her validation. Or in her words, "We shall grant you our presence, and the utter pleasure to reject your heart!"
Said vixen now turned his room into a mini girly-girl palace.
"We commend your honesty. But it has occurred to us that you haven't spoken good of our beauty even once today." She said.
"Wow, you have a fluffy tail."
"We are pleased."
Yung sighed, then sat down. It had become their daily routine to talk about a particular puzzle. How to make Yung feel alright pursuing Su Nanya without her having to promise any commitment.
"If you want me to pursue you, you must also be honest," Yung said. He had a matter to reveal today.
"We are listening."
"You said you wouldn't subject your body to our 'ugliness,' but haven't you been doing it all along?" Yung stood up and pointed at Nanya dramatically, his face the image of an assured, cheeky grin.
"Have you been touching us in our sleep, you malevolent ne'er-do-well?!" Su Nanya bristled.
"I have, as a body pillow."
"You lie," Su Nanya scoffed, "You are weak as a worm. How can our supreme might ever fail to sense your advances."
"Hehe, hehehehe," Yung laughed, pushing the invisible glasses up his nose. "I have finally figured out your secret."
"We do not like your tone."
"You're Su Xiya in disguise!" Yung laid bare his accusations, and Su Nanya gaped.
"Pardon?"
"I know it. You two, I have never seen you in the same place even once. You both have Su and Ya in your name. While you have 'Nan', which means south, Floofy has 'Xi', which means west." And you both have the exact same sized celestial link, "The coincidences are too many. If you wanted to let me floof you, you could just be honest and—"
"Woof!"
Su Xiya crawled out from under the bed. She looked up at Yung with shocked googly eyes, then scratched the door. Su Yafeng opened it, and the floofy fox jaunted out.
Yung facepalmed, sitting down.
"Do you desire to wipe your perspiration, new servant?" Su Nanya asked, her voice mellow. There was something in it that ground Yung's gears.
He looked up, "Why are you sweating too?"
"What nonsense. Princesses don't sweat! This is but mere moisture attracted upon our fair skin after it fell prey to our beauty." Said the vixen as she hurriedly wiped said moisture.
Yung rolled his eyes and pondered what he should do.
He was in a position to change Su Nanya's mind about the sect recruitments. And it wasn't like the vixen was forcing him to do her bidding. Not really. If she wanted to, she could've blackmailed him by threatening to annul the Su fox clan's blood spirit contract, and he'd be absolutely done.
She did not. All she wanted was for Yung to feed her vanity.
In other words, she was being a selfish little bitch. That wasn't malicious, but it did cause problems for others.
Youjin Chao and Ziyou Ling had prepared for literal years, hoping to pass the sect recruitments. As had thousands of other youths from the city. Yung could give them a helping hand.
He could help Su Nanya out with her insecurities too.
So Yung chose to listen to his conscience despite his raging hormones begging him to play into Su Nanya's flirting, to push her down and suck those glossy red lips dry.
But after an intense emotional battle between man and beast, he chose to stay legal.
"The age gap is too much."
Su Nanya's fox ears perked up like they sensed big bad tigers under the bed.
"I… I really can't. Even if I really really wanna get my first ever girlfriend, the age difference is such a turn-off."
Silence.
Before the storm.
The old wooden bed frame released an ear-piercing crack, a noise that resonated throughout the room and seemed to shake the building's very foundation. The harsh sound was accompanied by the shattering of the window panes, breaking apart like a million delicate crystals tumbling to the floor, echoing the bed's demise in an eerie harmony.
Within mere moments, the pressure in the room surged, the air grew heavy and stifling as if an unseen force was exerting its wrath upon every object. The bedside table disintegrated, the decorative books reduced to fluttering pages dancing in the chaotic whirlwind. A vase that once sat gracefully atop the Chinese dresser burst apart, its glittering shards pirouetting in the dim room light. The force of the disturbance even ripped the hotel curtains from their hold, turning them into wild spectral apparitions flapping fiercely.
The frenzied spectacle didn't spare the wall-hanging paintings or the once-cosy bamboo couch either, which exploded into fragments, adding to the unsettling symphony of destruction.
Within the blink of an eye, everything was reduced to dust particles hanging in the air, frozen in a moment of shocking silence.
"Oh dear," Su Yafeng exclaimed, her voice carrying a tinge of adorable vexation. She held down her hanfu, treating the situation like she was merely contending with a slightly troublesome breeze.
Yung remained on his disintegrated bed in the midst of the violent disorder, seemingly untouched but deeply shaken. With his palms pressed against something soft, he clung to the only thing that hadn't crumbled.
Su Nanya, the eye of the storm.
But the vixen was angry.
Yung looked up with deeply disturbed eyes.
And Su Nanya screamed.
"Dare you call us old?!" She snarled, her golden eyes gleaming red, and the oppressive, heavy aura pressed onto Yung like the maddened nails of a wronged lover.
"M'lady is so wasteful." Su Yafeng said before closing the windows with her azure qi. The curtains were ripped, but she was a maid, and maids always had spare curtains on hand.
Yung swallowed, letting go of Su Nanya's marshmallow waist, then looked at Su Yafeng, who averted her gaze.
He quickly turned to the angry vixen again and hurriedly denied, "No, no, it's not you; it's me!"
"That is what all cowards say. That the problem must lie with their own unresolved inner demons. We reject such notions!"
"Christ! I literally mean my age, not some deep seeded psychological issue—"
"For there is no doubt, though we have reached our second century, our skin remains softer than infants'. Our hips tighter than—"
"Wait!" Yung raised his hand.
Su Nanya waited.
"You said you were two hundred years old?"
"We are not ashamed. Age is but a number."
"Prove it!" Yung felt two different things rising in his body. One on his mind, one on his lower torso.
"What right have you to distrust our words?!" Su Nanya said.
"If you prove it to me now and here, then I promise I will turn the oceans and mountains upside down if it means I can make you my girlfriend."
"That means nothing to us. What use would us being a female ally to one of such simple birth as yourself be?"
"Wife. Lover." Yung made a circle with his right thumb and index, putting his left pinky in and out of it.
Su Nanya looked at him with outright suspicion. She then brought out a crystal sphere from her storage artefact.
"You know of this, boy?" She asked as she injected qi into it.
A misty radiance shone inside the sphere before settling into a rune.
A character.
Displaying two-hundred and twenty-nine.
"I don't." Yung said.
"We would use this in the first phase of the sect recruitments. It is the apparatus that measures one's bone age." With a disgruntled pout, the vixen expounded, as if the very circumstance was utterly beyond her comprehension.
Yung went silent. He mentally berated little Yung to hanker down. If he were going to do this, he would do it properly.
Finally, all those books on dating, relationships, and romance would come to good use.
Sue Johnson, watch over me!
Yung—
"Oh boy."
—Yung chickened and ran out of the room.
***
For the second time that day, the Dim Gold Hotel quivered as though caught in the grips of an earthquake. Alarmed patrons and other guests dashed outside, glancing anxiously at the trembling edifice.
The shy waitress and the sweaty manager both stood outside with trembling legs. The Youjin guards gathered, sending sound and scene transmissions to other places. Even the chefs in the kitchen escaped, mid-cooking, with ladles and knives still grasped.
Yung felt a pang of guilt for disrupting their business. But he ran without looking back.
He ran past the jade slip shop where he worked, and across the upper town where every house had looms to weave Dim gold silk on their veranda.
He spotted Youjin Chun in the Dim gold citadel, the heiress looking behind her in confusion. But Yung didn't have the mind to talk.
He kept running; the ground under his feet turned from stone paths to brown topsoil, to finally weed-covered earth with scattered tombs.
Yung looked at his grandfather's grave. With everything happening, he'd forgotten to clean it recently. Silky rushed out of his dantian.
"Kii?"
"I'm fine. Thank you, buddy."
The critter chirped, then buzzed around its old home.
Yung cast his gaze upon his parents' final resting place. The graves, proud but worn by the passage of time, stood as silent sentinels amidst the overwhelming growth of nature. Incense sticks, their charred remnants testimony to prayers offered and tears shed, lay nestled in a bed of ash. The cinders scents, sweet yet hauntingly sombre, wafted in the air, mingling with the damp musk of the earth and the fresh tang of wild grass.
The vegetation had grown uninhibited, a sea of verdant that swayed gently in the breeze, a nature's lullaby for the departed souls. It was as if the grass was guarding the graves, a testament to the enduring cycle of life and death, growth and decay.
Heroism and cowardice.
A tiny wasp nest had found its home among the rough-hewn stones of the graves. It was nestled in one of the cracks. One wasp buzzed, then charged at Silky with lances bared.
Yung sighed, then picked up the stray broom leaning on the shrine and got to cleaning. Silky had no trouble fending off the flying interloper.
You promised her, Jung said.
In the heat of the moment! I really didn't think she'd… Yung replied. It was an excuse. He knew.
And Jung pointed it out. Are you going to break your words?
You don't get it. This isn't a novel where a princess will magically fall for a stable boy without rhyme or reason. It will get me killed.
More excuses. The Su fox clan means you no harm. They protected you until now, and they will in the future.
So what? Become a kept man? Run to them the moment anything goes wrong? Where's my pride?! Yung shouted.
Jung scoffed like he had heard the funniest thing ever. Since when do you, we, care about pride?
As of five seconds ago…. I really don't. Ugh, okay, you win. I just, don't know what to do from here.
We're the same person, Jung said. This is just us doing psychological self-talk to work the problem out.
Yeah, I guess you're right…
Yung kicked a pebble out of the way. He crouched down and pulled up the weeds encroaching on the graves. He'd leave the wasp nest for Silky; the critter had called dibs. Strangely, the foxmoth had stopped fighting with the wasps and seemed to be playing a game of tag.
It's like, this paralysing feeling, Yung said. Does she like me? Does she not? Am I being delusional, thinking I have a real chance? What if she rejects me like she said, and I become a laughingstock?
Jung paused at the confession, then pondered the matter. Men far wiser than us have gone insane overthinking stuff like that. Why not take her words at face value? She seems to be using us to solve her personal trauma, so why not lend her a helping hand? If it works out, great. Suppose it doesn't; then move on.
Wouldn't that be me taking advantage of her insecurities? Like comforting a drunk girl at a party after her companion left her? Self-help books are one thing, but approaching a girl in real life… It's scary.
I know. That's why we always take books with a grain of salt. We choose for ourselves what works and what doesn't. So choose, because you are a cultivator. What, exactly, do you want? Jung asked, exasperated. He hated this teenage part of himself that over-analysed every little issue.
I wanna put my face between her boobs and motorboat. Her arse too. I've been having wet dreams of losing my virginity to her. Gawd, I almost lost control of my hard-on back there.
Too honest! Jung gaped, speechless.
How can I be honest with anyone else if I'm not totally true to myself?
Point taken, Jung still facepalmed customarily. It was all happening in his head, so all manners were maintained. In actuality, nothing is standing in your way of dating her. If you're clear about your intentions, it's not taking advantage of her. She's not a child.
That's a great idea! Yung clapped. How about I ask her out on a dinner date first? Well, I need to explain what a date is. I'll say it's to get to know her better.
So that's that? Jung smiled.
That it is. I won't break my promise. Let's help Nyanya sort through her issues. Even if we can't use John Gottman's Seven Dating Principles, we can try Carl Jung's Analytical Psychology.
Can't shame our namesake, can we? I'm cheering for you. Jung smirked.
Because she's legal?
Heh. With that, Jung and Yung came to an accord, and the teen stood up.
Chapter 33 - Bye bye bunny
Yung decided to leave the wasp nest be. No need to disturb other people's homes. He stretched, and gave the place one last once over.
The graves looked proper now.
Yung stared up at the sky. The sun was about to go beyond the horizon. He decided to head back. He'd done Su Nanya wrong and would need to correct his mistake.
"Grr."
Suddenly, a strange rumble echoed from somewhere.
"What the?" Yung looked around.
"Kiiii!" Silky landed on his shoulder with a worried look. The wasps scattered in frenzied disarrays, like panicked peas fleeing a pod.
There, about fifteen feet away, the ground bulged up.
"Grrrr!"
More growls sounded. Yung was familiar with this noise.
A horn pierced upward from the heaving earth, long and curved, its colour a dull grey bordering on black rust. A mass of dirt rustled in its wake, shifting aside with a rumbling sound. And with it, the ground bulged and stirred as though a living creature was breaking free from within. More growls resounded, and the pungent smell of decay filled the air, thick as a dense fog, making Yung gag.
"Zombie rabbits…"
Yung muttered, covering his nose. But before the first of the beasts could fully reveal itself, he used total empathic isolation.
The wretched hornbeasts erupted from the burrows one after another, their rabbit-like forms with jug-like ears and pointed snouts screeching with bloodlust. They then looked around, sniffing the sulphur-tainted air, their glowing pink eyes squinting in confusion. A moment later, as if to protest their mark escaping, they bashed at the trees, emitting void-coloured qi as their black claws scraped against the ground.
I should've taken the spear, Yung lamented. Killing them isn't a problem now, though. Can I bash their heads in with a rock?
One of the voidfiends rushed towards Yung's mother's grave with an unearthly sound and chipped a side of the tombstone, incidentally breaking the wasp nest. Silky cried out in rage, but the owners of the home had already made their hasty departure.
Fuck me, Yung cursed. He picked up the broom and snapped its thistled end, leaving a splintered tip. The voidfiends didn't notice because, whilst in stealth, anything Yung picked up would also become isolated.
He warily approached the wretch that defiled his mother's grave, aimed at its neck, and brought the broom-spear down.
Squelch!
Three wet splatters rang out along with dying voidfiend screeches. Yung turned around, dropping the spear with the struggling zombie rabbit attached.
"Youjin Chao."
The taller boy couldn't hear him. He appeared at the entrance of the graveyard.
At Youjin Chao's feet lay two bisected wretched hornbeasts. More of the fiends noticed him and roared their rage.
Youjin Chao cut three in half mid-air and swivelled around before grabbing the fourth with his gauntleted arm. He squeezed. The fiend popped like a bubble.
But the fight was not over. More zombie rabbits had erupted from the earth, their maws revealing razor-sharp fangs, eyes aglow with fury.
Without a moment's hesitation, the battle resumed. The clash was a spectacle of motion and brutal strength, a scene punctuated by the slicing of air and the crushing of bone. Youjin Chao's agile movements cut down the monstrous bunnies mid-leap, and his powerful punches splattered them into a pulpy mess.
"Brother Yung, are you there?" The taller boy called out, looking at the broken broom-spear skewering that one fiend.
Yung took hold of the empathic link coming from Youjin Chao and manually rejoined it.
Immediately, Youjin Chao's red eyes snapped to Yung, then he nodded. He popped some qi boosting pills and brandished his sword towards the hopping horde in an arc.
The first row of fiends, mid-jump, were halved as though made of butter. Youjin Chao ducked, then kicked away, his sword dragging the dirt as he flew backwards right in time to avoid a dozen more hornbeasts coming from the sides.
What a monster, Yung thought to himself. He can't cultivate, but lower-level mobs are nothing to him.
It was then that Yung noticed the anomaly.
An enormous zombie rabbit, almost the size of Yung himself, was trying to dig out of one of the burrows. It shook the earth free with every twist of its ghoulish body, the putrid qi stretching off its width like a miasma.
"GRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAA!!!!"
It let out a piercing screech, a ghastly sound that echoed through the graveyard. Its lifeless ruby eyes mirrored the macabre dance—Youjin Chao locked in a lethal tango with its swarm. It thrashed and writhed in desperation, attempting to free its gargantuan form from the imprisoning earth. Yet, by the looks of it, its path to the surface would still demand more time and struggle.
Yung swallowed, then stared at the pink heart ring on his left middle finger with apprehension.
Let's see what this mystical artefact does.
Yung injected xinqi into it. The ruby glowed. A haze of strange emotions waved out. The qi gathered in an orb of concentrated power, which pulsed with every elapsed second.
The zombie-rabbit boss finally hopped out of the hole like a torpedo. The fiend bent its hind legs, muscles taut for a bulldozing charge.
The pink heart ring seemed to screech, crying both in pleasure and pain. It was time. Yung aimed the ring at the giant fiend as though he was the green lantern, and a heart-shaped beam the same colour pallet as the Barbie movie zoomed out.
The voidfiend was mid-stance in its jump, wind gathering in a vortex around its rusted horns. It had but one target, kill Youjin Chao in a single strike. It couldn't see Yung, nor sense the numinous art headed its way.
So the beam hit the fiend right in its midsection.
The big bunny screamed,
"GGRRRRRRRAAAAaaoooooongggg?"
And moaned, confused.
The voidfiend stumbled forward, its front legs buckling like sore knees. The muscles in its hindquarters shuddered in an unnatural rhythm as the beast collapsed to the ground, twitching and spasming, tendrils of purple-green slime oozing from its maw. It twitched again. Then it twitched some more.
Yung hit it again with a second pink heart beam after another long charge-up.
Yet the voidfiend continued to twitch, its movements pitiful and weak, too out of it to even dodge.
In a bizarre twist, its fur seemed to regain a peculiar sheen, a sharp contrast to its recent emergence from the dirt. Small, gruesome gashes that marred its purple-on-white coat —reminiscent of past battles— began to mend under the soft wash of the healing pink radiance.
Beneath its quivering form, the floor began to dampen with a noxious green liquid, a vile secretion from its healed lower body, thick like a sludge. The bunny wet the floor, Yung realized with horror, and the acidic substance hissed upon contact, sizzling against the cold stone, emanating a repugnant odour that filled the air.
Yung spotted tears in the voidfiend's ruby eyes, and looked away. For some strange reason, he felt profoundly ashamed.
In the meantime, Youjin Chao took care of the smaller beasts. He gave Yung a strange glance. Yung squirmed, about to get defensive, but chose not to speak. Silky patted his head, which made Yung feel even worse.
Youjin Chao walked to the bigger wretched hornbeast and put it out of its misery. Yung swore he saw a nod of gratitude in the fiend's ruby eyes as Youjin Chao plunged the sword into its neck.
"This one is at least a late stage houtian 1st order voidfiend." Youjin Chao said, and didn't ask for details; Yung was happy not to answer.
"Thanks," Yung said from the bottom of his heart, "I was in a bit of a pickle."
Youjin Chao gestured at the broom-spear and the dead fiend skewered on it. "You would've managed. Though it might have taken longer."
Yung smiled, "Credits are due where credits are due. What were you doing here?"
"I followed you. Saw you running out of the hotel… after which Fairy Su, well."
"Ah...ahaha. And then you waited here that long?" Yung hadn't noticed at all. But good thing he had only monologued his Jung self-talk.
"It looked like you had things to sort out," Youjin Chao said.
"That I did. Did Su Nanya do anything weird?"
"She, how should I say this…." Youjin Chao looked at him with a complicated gaze, "Rushed down to the restaurant floor and smashed every pot and pan. And chair… and table."
Yung slapped his head, "By Gaia. Okay, let's head back." He was about to, but then stopped, looking at the voidfiend remains.
"This is twice now that the graveyard was attacked. And these hornbeasts, they dug their way up." That might have been the case last time too.
"I fear there might be a voidrift below ground. We should notify the clan lest the underground farms suffer misfortune." The taller boy said.
Yung nodded. Voidrift, huh? Haven't seen one before. And if they only spawn fiends this weak, I could take a look.
The two walked back. The silence, to Yung, was pleasing. He now knew what he wanted to do regarding Su Nanya. He quite looked forward to it.
"Brother Yung, if I may ask a presumptuous question?" Youjin Chao suddenly said, stilling.
"Go ahead." Yung replied.
Youjin Chao looked him straight in the eye with his posture straight and chin pointed down,
"What have you done to make Fairy Su so distressed?"
Yung immediately went on guard. But he kept his face poker.
"Ugh, that's what I'd like to know."
"Does Brother Yung truly not know? I do remember you saying you were not emotionally interested in her. So I suppose you would not care." Youjin Chao said as if to reassure himself of the fact.
Yung neither denied nor confirmed. He knew the proximal cause, of course. It was because he'd run out. But what was the ultimate root reason behind Su Nanya's bizarre actions? He didn't have the foggiest.
Having a second opinion might be good. After all, I did have a weird talk about love and relationships with him. Yung decided to take advantage of Youjin Chao's probing questions. He read his Empathic link. Uncertainty. Envy?
Yung narrowed his eyes, asking his own leading question. "Then what does Brother Chao think of her?"
Youjin Chao, a main character he might be, shuffled uncomfortably in his steps, "Fairy Su is someone I look up to. There are tales about how she was born with a deficient physique yet crawled her way up the ranks. One step at a time, with cultivation far slower than her peers, she inherited the title of the Su princess. She showed the world that nothing is impossible!"
Yung didn't think Youjin Chao lied. But there was obviously more to that.
"What about her looks?" Yung said with a grin. "She's hella hot, right?"
Youjin Chao stammered, "I-It is not my place to comment on that, Brother Yung. Are you teasing me?"
Oops, Yung gave in. But he was pretty sure Youjin Chao might turn out to be a love rival. After all, he was the protagonist, and Su Nanya might be his primary love interest. Yung wondered if Youjin Chao's story was about a harem. There was Ziyou Ling, who had a crush on Youjin Chao. Not to mention the rumours about them around the slums. And Youjin Chun, the engagement annuler who regretted her actions dearly. If Youjin Chao was meant to regain his cultivation via Su Nanya's foxball, then it was almost a done deal that they'd be intimate somewhere down the line.
We can't have that now, can we? Yung thought it might be a good chance to prove precisely how flexible fate was and if, in this world, the individual's choice could well and truly reign supreme. After all, that's what immortal cultivation promised in all the strange sutras.
"I'm just curious, heh." Yung said, "Brother Chao looks so prime and proper. I wondered if even you have fallen to her charms. I mean, her attire screams seduction, if nothing else."
"Harem clothes are meant to do that." Youjin Chao said with slumped shoulders, "It has not done any good for her reputation. But only a fool would judge Fairy Su as lesser only based on her clothes."
The graves looked proper now.
Yung stared up at the sky. The sun was about to go beyond the horizon. He decided to head back. He'd done Su Nanya wrong and would need to correct his mistake.
"Grr."
Suddenly, a strange rumble echoed from somewhere.
"What the?" Yung looked around.
"Kiiii!" Silky landed on his shoulder with a worried look. The wasps scattered in frenzied disarrays, like panicked peas fleeing a pod.
There, about fifteen feet away, the ground bulged up.
"Grrrr!"
More growls sounded. Yung was familiar with this noise.
A horn pierced upward from the heaving earth, long and curved, its colour a dull grey bordering on black rust. A mass of dirt rustled in its wake, shifting aside with a rumbling sound. And with it, the ground bulged and stirred as though a living creature was breaking free from within. More growls resounded, and the pungent smell of decay filled the air, thick as a dense fog, making Yung gag.
"Zombie rabbits…"
Yung muttered, covering his nose. But before the first of the beasts could fully reveal itself, he used total empathic isolation.
The wretched hornbeasts erupted from the burrows one after another, their rabbit-like forms with jug-like ears and pointed snouts screeching with bloodlust. They then looked around, sniffing the sulphur-tainted air, their glowing pink eyes squinting in confusion. A moment later, as if to protest their mark escaping, they bashed at the trees, emitting void-coloured qi as their black claws scraped against the ground.
I should've taken the spear, Yung lamented. Killing them isn't a problem now, though. Can I bash their heads in with a rock?
One of the voidfiends rushed towards Yung's mother's grave with an unearthly sound and chipped a side of the tombstone, incidentally breaking the wasp nest. Silky cried out in rage, but the owners of the home had already made their hasty departure.
Fuck me, Yung cursed. He picked up the broom and snapped its thistled end, leaving a splintered tip. The voidfiends didn't notice because, whilst in stealth, anything Yung picked up would also become isolated.
He warily approached the wretch that defiled his mother's grave, aimed at its neck, and brought the broom-spear down.
Squelch!
Three wet splatters rang out along with dying voidfiend screeches. Yung turned around, dropping the spear with the struggling zombie rabbit attached.
"Youjin Chao."
The taller boy couldn't hear him. He appeared at the entrance of the graveyard.
At Youjin Chao's feet lay two bisected wretched hornbeasts. More of the fiends noticed him and roared their rage.
Youjin Chao cut three in half mid-air and swivelled around before grabbing the fourth with his gauntleted arm. He squeezed. The fiend popped like a bubble.
But the fight was not over. More zombie rabbits had erupted from the earth, their maws revealing razor-sharp fangs, eyes aglow with fury.
Without a moment's hesitation, the battle resumed. The clash was a spectacle of motion and brutal strength, a scene punctuated by the slicing of air and the crushing of bone. Youjin Chao's agile movements cut down the monstrous bunnies mid-leap, and his powerful punches splattered them into a pulpy mess.
"Brother Yung, are you there?" The taller boy called out, looking at the broken broom-spear skewering that one fiend.
Yung took hold of the empathic link coming from Youjin Chao and manually rejoined it.
Immediately, Youjin Chao's red eyes snapped to Yung, then he nodded. He popped some qi boosting pills and brandished his sword towards the hopping horde in an arc.
The first row of fiends, mid-jump, were halved as though made of butter. Youjin Chao ducked, then kicked away, his sword dragging the dirt as he flew backwards right in time to avoid a dozen more hornbeasts coming from the sides.
What a monster, Yung thought to himself. He can't cultivate, but lower-level mobs are nothing to him.
It was then that Yung noticed the anomaly.
An enormous zombie rabbit, almost the size of Yung himself, was trying to dig out of one of the burrows. It shook the earth free with every twist of its ghoulish body, the putrid qi stretching off its width like a miasma.
"GRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAA!!!!"
It let out a piercing screech, a ghastly sound that echoed through the graveyard. Its lifeless ruby eyes mirrored the macabre dance—Youjin Chao locked in a lethal tango with its swarm. It thrashed and writhed in desperation, attempting to free its gargantuan form from the imprisoning earth. Yet, by the looks of it, its path to the surface would still demand more time and struggle.
Yung swallowed, then stared at the pink heart ring on his left middle finger with apprehension.
Let's see what this mystical artefact does.
Yung injected xinqi into it. The ruby glowed. A haze of strange emotions waved out. The qi gathered in an orb of concentrated power, which pulsed with every elapsed second.
The zombie-rabbit boss finally hopped out of the hole like a torpedo. The fiend bent its hind legs, muscles taut for a bulldozing charge.
The pink heart ring seemed to screech, crying both in pleasure and pain. It was time. Yung aimed the ring at the giant fiend as though he was the green lantern, and a heart-shaped beam the same colour pallet as the Barbie movie zoomed out.
The voidfiend was mid-stance in its jump, wind gathering in a vortex around its rusted horns. It had but one target, kill Youjin Chao in a single strike. It couldn't see Yung, nor sense the numinous art headed its way.
So the beam hit the fiend right in its midsection.
The big bunny screamed,
"GGRRRRRRRAAAAaaoooooongggg?"
And moaned, confused.
The voidfiend stumbled forward, its front legs buckling like sore knees. The muscles in its hindquarters shuddered in an unnatural rhythm as the beast collapsed to the ground, twitching and spasming, tendrils of purple-green slime oozing from its maw. It twitched again. Then it twitched some more.
Yung hit it again with a second pink heart beam after another long charge-up.
Yet the voidfiend continued to twitch, its movements pitiful and weak, too out of it to even dodge.
In a bizarre twist, its fur seemed to regain a peculiar sheen, a sharp contrast to its recent emergence from the dirt. Small, gruesome gashes that marred its purple-on-white coat —reminiscent of past battles— began to mend under the soft wash of the healing pink radiance.
Beneath its quivering form, the floor began to dampen with a noxious green liquid, a vile secretion from its healed lower body, thick like a sludge. The bunny wet the floor, Yung realized with horror, and the acidic substance hissed upon contact, sizzling against the cold stone, emanating a repugnant odour that filled the air.
Yung spotted tears in the voidfiend's ruby eyes, and looked away. For some strange reason, he felt profoundly ashamed.
In the meantime, Youjin Chao took care of the smaller beasts. He gave Yung a strange glance. Yung squirmed, about to get defensive, but chose not to speak. Silky patted his head, which made Yung feel even worse.
Youjin Chao walked to the bigger wretched hornbeast and put it out of its misery. Yung swore he saw a nod of gratitude in the fiend's ruby eyes as Youjin Chao plunged the sword into its neck.
"This one is at least a late stage houtian 1st order voidfiend." Youjin Chao said, and didn't ask for details; Yung was happy not to answer.
"Thanks," Yung said from the bottom of his heart, "I was in a bit of a pickle."
Youjin Chao gestured at the broom-spear and the dead fiend skewered on it. "You would've managed. Though it might have taken longer."
Yung smiled, "Credits are due where credits are due. What were you doing here?"
"I followed you. Saw you running out of the hotel… after which Fairy Su, well."
"Ah...ahaha. And then you waited here that long?" Yung hadn't noticed at all. But good thing he had only monologued his Jung self-talk.
"It looked like you had things to sort out," Youjin Chao said.
"That I did. Did Su Nanya do anything weird?"
"She, how should I say this…." Youjin Chao looked at him with a complicated gaze, "Rushed down to the restaurant floor and smashed every pot and pan. And chair… and table."
Yung slapped his head, "By Gaia. Okay, let's head back." He was about to, but then stopped, looking at the voidfiend remains.
"This is twice now that the graveyard was attacked. And these hornbeasts, they dug their way up." That might have been the case last time too.
"I fear there might be a voidrift below ground. We should notify the clan lest the underground farms suffer misfortune." The taller boy said.
Yung nodded. Voidrift, huh? Haven't seen one before. And if they only spawn fiends this weak, I could take a look.
The two walked back. The silence, to Yung, was pleasing. He now knew what he wanted to do regarding Su Nanya. He quite looked forward to it.
"Brother Yung, if I may ask a presumptuous question?" Youjin Chao suddenly said, stilling.
"Go ahead." Yung replied.
Youjin Chao looked him straight in the eye with his posture straight and chin pointed down,
"What have you done to make Fairy Su so distressed?"
Yung immediately went on guard. But he kept his face poker.
"Ugh, that's what I'd like to know."
"Does Brother Yung truly not know? I do remember you saying you were not emotionally interested in her. So I suppose you would not care." Youjin Chao said as if to reassure himself of the fact.
Yung neither denied nor confirmed. He knew the proximal cause, of course. It was because he'd run out. But what was the ultimate root reason behind Su Nanya's bizarre actions? He didn't have the foggiest.
Having a second opinion might be good. After all, I did have a weird talk about love and relationships with him. Yung decided to take advantage of Youjin Chao's probing questions. He read his Empathic link. Uncertainty. Envy?
Yung narrowed his eyes, asking his own leading question. "Then what does Brother Chao think of her?"
Youjin Chao, a main character he might be, shuffled uncomfortably in his steps, "Fairy Su is someone I look up to. There are tales about how she was born with a deficient physique yet crawled her way up the ranks. One step at a time, with cultivation far slower than her peers, she inherited the title of the Su princess. She showed the world that nothing is impossible!"
Yung didn't think Youjin Chao lied. But there was obviously more to that.
"What about her looks?" Yung said with a grin. "She's hella hot, right?"
Youjin Chao stammered, "I-It is not my place to comment on that, Brother Yung. Are you teasing me?"
Oops, Yung gave in. But he was pretty sure Youjin Chao might turn out to be a love rival. After all, he was the protagonist, and Su Nanya might be his primary love interest. Yung wondered if Youjin Chao's story was about a harem. There was Ziyou Ling, who had a crush on Youjin Chao. Not to mention the rumours about them around the slums. And Youjin Chun, the engagement annuler who regretted her actions dearly. If Youjin Chao was meant to regain his cultivation via Su Nanya's foxball, then it was almost a done deal that they'd be intimate somewhere down the line.
We can't have that now, can we? Yung thought it might be a good chance to prove precisely how flexible fate was and if, in this world, the individual's choice could well and truly reign supreme. After all, that's what immortal cultivation promised in all the strange sutras.
"I'm just curious, heh." Yung said, "Brother Chao looks so prime and proper. I wondered if even you have fallen to her charms. I mean, her attire screams seduction, if nothing else."
"Harem clothes are meant to do that." Youjin Chao said with slumped shoulders, "It has not done any good for her reputation. But only a fool would judge Fairy Su as lesser only based on her clothes."
Chapter 34 - I love you, bro. No thanks, bro!
"Harem clothes?" Yung asked, confused. Is that what her skimpy bikini dress is? Right! That fat bastard Hong mentioned it too.
"Brother Yung is unaware? But you have been spending so much time with her." Youjin Chao said.
"I'm a peasant and a country bumpkin. I don't have a mysteriously powerful mother clan or a nobleman adoptive father to know what fancy clothes go on which social class." Yung joked, "Now, can you explain rather than point out my ignorance?"
"If Brother Yung is ignorant, then what am I?" Youjin Chao took the banter in good humour, "Harem clothes are what concubines wear in the inner palaces of the aristocracy. A most sacred place no other man but the lawful husband can enter if you don't consider the eunuchs. This odalisque inner palace attire is meant to stoke their husband's carnal desires constantly to—how shall I say it—display their allure and have a chance to sire a child as fast as possible.
"Each concubine does her all to dress more ravishingly than her sister-wives, for one step up in the competition to rule the bedchamber is to rightfully earn a better life for herself and her children. In many grand empires, even the cultivation methods of harem consorts are changed to shape their bodies as… desirable."
Yung rubbed his chin. Su Nanya's 'harem Clothes' were basically a lacey, micro-bikini g-string, covered with see-through silken shawls adorned with golden accessories only escorts would have worn in some cheesy Turkish spy flick back on Gaia, the fox motifs otherwise.
Su Nanya neither hid nor shied away from showing her butt and bust to the crowd. It was a near-naked streaking outside the beach, and Yung had long wanted to call the police for indecent exposure. It was so beyond the traditions of this conservative world that one had to think,
Why though?
In a world most definitely patriarchal. Where a women's purity, exclusivity, chastity, and modesty were valued above all, even if they were strong cultivators.
"Fairy Su's harem clothes are from the Radiant sun empire if I am not mistaken. It even bears the imperial family's sun insignia."
"I've heard of that place. Isn't it a large ren empire on the Gilded radiance continent? It borders our land bridge to the far north."
Youjin Chao nodded, "It's the oldest and greatest empire on the Last ascension mortal plane, despite fracturing in a civil war many thousands of years ago. I'd known its might even when I was at my mother's clan." The taller boy thought momentarily, "The Su fox clan, conversely, is matriarchal. But they are not immodest like the lustful demonesses of the mo sects. On the contrary, they take face and image exceptionally seriously.
"And although it is said that they were the ones to cause the Radiant sun civil war in the first place, their current alliance with the empire has been amicable as both are in bitter war with the Holy demonic empire. Even now, the previous Su princess is betrothed to a Radiant sun prince. And this former princess is Fairy Su's blood sister. It is publicly acknowledged that their relationship is amicable.
"So it has always been a mystery why Fairy Su, a headstrong fairy that disdains all men, would openly display herself to other males wearing an authentic Radiant sun harem dress. That is like a slap to their imperial face, not to mention how it might cause discord among herself and her sister."
"That bad?"
"It certainly is." Youjin Chao said, "I respect her for it. She is not afraid to defy even the greatest authority. If her actions are targeted to insult a certain prince or a duke, that person would be too humiliated to even go out in public." His eyes gleamed with a certain kind of light, "I think whichever person offended Fairy Su to receive such a slap in the face committed some manner of grave, unspeakable crime not only towards Fairy Su, but towards the Su fox clan as a whole.
"The fact that the Su fox clan has not removed her from her position despite Fairy Su's erratic behaviour, might mean that the fault originally lies with the Radiant sun empire's side. For throughout the past century, Fairy Su has shown far greater wit than to antagonise her own blood sister. She of course knows that intentionally causing discord in the Su clan's rule is grounds for execution by their assembly of sages. Not to mention the Radiant sun empire's feeble protests so far despite such a devastating loss of face. How utterly disgraceful, and as a man, I cannot help but pity them."
Yung felt uncomfortable at the yearning look on Youjin Chao's face. So he tried his best to hide his feelings and asked, "What makes you think that? At the end of the day, it's just a dress. And she's harming her own self-image more when she dresses like a bed-object. So would the Radiant sun empire even care?"
Youjin Chao grinned, "In the tales of minstrels, when two Radiant sun noblemen war, one thing they always do is break into their opponent's inner palace. For his rightful concubines to be defiled by the gazes of other men would be the greatest proof of the husband's lacking manhood and incompetence. Not to mention what fate the concubines inevitably suffer afterwards, in the hands of the brutish, berserk soldiers. It's an insult as great as killing one's parents. Blood feuds had lasted thousands of years, the husband's nine generations becoming the laughingstock of the upper society if vengeance is not taken. They would have to save the world to regain their reputation back. And even then, the gossip might never stop."
I don't like this Radiant sun empire, Yung decided before asking, "And what would happen if a concubine voluntarily reveals herself like Nyanya is doing right now?"
Youjin Chao flinched when Yung referred to Su Nanya with that cute moniker. But he tried his best to cover that up with a grim face, "I am not too sure. But I would wager a guess. In the best-case scenario, their cultivations would be shattered and their beauty disfigured before being cast out. The luckiest of the unfaithful concubines might get traded as sex slaves amongst the noblemen or barbarian tribes? Most would be executed outright, and if the concubine's clan does not apologise publicly with the highest reparations, a blood feud might be birthed between them and the husband's clan. And rightfully so!"
Can't know if I don't ask her, Yung made a note to himself. But before that, he had to clarify his stance to Youjin Chao. That would only be fair.
"Brother Chao, I can't tell you why Nyanya went nuts today in the restaurants. But maybe it's the same reason why she cancelled the phase one of the sect recruitments. And it's not because she thinks we're weak." Yung said.
"Are you sure?" Youjin Chao was taken aback.
Yung nodded, "Remember that talk we had in the restaurant when we first spoke?"
Youjin Chao affirmed, albeit with confusion.
"Nyanya overheard. She's just throwing a tantrum because I refuse to act on my crush. Maybe she's also throwing a tantrum with this whole harem dress thing?"
"Surely that is a joke?" Youjin Chao's eyes widened as he exclaimed. He took a deep breath, and any semblance of emotion left his face. He asked with absolutely calm eyes, "I suppose that could be the case. But more importantly."
"Yes?"
"Does Brother Yung desire to pursue her now, taking advantage of this so called 'tantrum'?"
Wow, so you can be sarcastic when you try! Yung scratched his cheek sheepishly, "I've gotten to know her better these days since she's been nursing me to health. She's not a bad girl, maybe a bit wilful. So I thought I'd give wooing her a try. That is her wish, too, after all, so how can it be me taking advantage of her? She's a legal adult that can make her own choices." Jung was quite thorough when debunking the previous line of logic, "I mean, what's the worse that can happen?"
"I see," Youjin Chao said, walking past Yung at a faster pace. The side entrance to the Dim gold citadel was in sight.
Youjin Chao turned around. The sunlight reflected off his red eyes like sparkling stars. The wind rustled his hair, a few strands sticking to his face. His frame was a perfect v-shape, with lean, ripped muscles under his aesthetically dusty robes.
"The worse that can happen is a slow, painful death, Brother Yung. Since you do not even know that, I cannot accept that you will be a good match for her." The main protagonist replied, making his stance clear too.
"Oh?" Yung acted surprised, "Do tell me why." He did not think Youjin Chao was threatening him.
"Brother Yung is a fine man. Smart, wise, humorous. So I think a calmer life would suit you more. Pastoral perhaps, without bloodshed."
"I agree wholeheartedly. No homo though. Not that anything's wrong with it."
"No what?"
"Ignore that. You were saying?"
Youjin Chao sighed, "Please take this seriously. For did you know, Brother Chao, that kingdoms have burnt for Fairy Su's hand?"
"I didn't." Yung was genuinely surprised this time.
"Many a hero have slaughtered kin and kings to have Su Nanya praise sweet words to them. Kings ruined their nation to hand her the treasures she sought. Countless prodigies have been killed by other jealous suitors when Fairy Su deigned to even speak a word of interest to them. Her suitors come from all over the world and all its continents, each more vicious than the other.
"After Su Yinzhen, the previous fox clan princess failed her lightning tribulation, Su Nanya inherited the Revival Crown. Having her hand is the same as having all the riches in the world. Wooing her is the same as fighting a never-ending war with the world itself. It is going against the heavens. Both politically, and literally."
"That sounds rather scary." Yung smiled.
"Brother Yung," Youjin Chao beat around the bush no longer, "I had wanted to ask for your counsel and support in vying for Fairy Su's hand. Because we are soulmates, she and I. I can feel it!"
"Youjin Chun will have a heart attack if she hears this."
"Irrelevant." Youjin Chao shot Yung's words down rather violently, "So, what do you think?"
Yung's smile didn't falter. He didn't avert his eyes from Youjin Chao's burning gaze either,
"I think," Yung said, "you want to make her yours."
Youjin Chao nodded, eagerness returning on his face. He might've taken Yung's words for agreement.
"You want to own her, like some object." Yung corrected Youjin Chao's misunderstanding with clear words, "Like whatever prince or duke might've wanted to own her into their harem. Whom Nyanya hates to such an extent that she'd smear her own reputation to shame his name every waking moment."
Youjin Chao opened his mouth, then closed it with a strange expression, "If I have her hand, of course she will be mine alone if that is what you mean by owning."
"Then will you be her's alone? Can you tell Ziyou Ling to her face that you can't make her a wife, even if you had made her a woman?"
"How do you—?"
"Everyone knows!" Holy shit, the rumours were true! And he admitted it. Yung had only hazarded a guess. "Why do you think Ziyou Maque treats you so well? Because he's expecting you to be his son-in-law."
"As an outsider, you cannot comment on my relationship with Ling. She knows I have to leave one day for the Violet horn continent and accepts that." Youjin Chao's eyes were steady. But to Yung, what he spouted were excuses, and Yung refused to acknowledge them as anything but. "Even when I was with Chun, Ling would always pester me that she would not mind being a concubine. And after my engagement was annulled, it was just one night. If Fairy Su, no, Su Nanya—"
"Leave Ziyou Ling if you want to pursue Nyanya in good faith."
"I do not want to make Ling sad. I know she will be happier by my side."
"That's impossible."
"In front of an iron will, nothing is impossible. Even the heavens will bow to unwavering resolve and courage. Su Nanya herself is the living embodiment of that proof."
"That's false on so many levels," Yung was amazed, "But I digress. Maybe you really do like Nyanya. But it's also true that she can help you greatly with your revenge. Or perhaps she can even restore your cultivation?"
"It is all of them, Brother Yung. One does not need a sole reason to like someone. There can be many."
Yung laughed. "Then I can't accept your intentions as ethical. All this time, you've been talking about you making her happy from your own perspective. It feels to me like you want Nyanya's hand because you can make use of her for your selfish ends. But have you thought even for a moment about what she might need? Emotionally, spiritually?"
"I believe that one day, I will be strong enough to meet their needs. Both Ling's and Su Nanya's."
"Why would you even say that?" Yung shook his head as though he'd heard a joke that wasn't funny, "Some things really are impossible, Brother Chao. There is no shame in accepting that fact." And decades of relationship science proved that impossibility. Sapient creatures didn't like sharing. Those who claimed they did, were nothing but avoidantly attached to the objects of their love.
From what Yung gleaned about Su Nanya's personality, her attachment style was highly anxious. She got jealous easily, played mind games, and quickly jumped to conclusions. Yung believed she needed a secure base, a stable foundation to heal her emotional wounds. But a couple with one partner anxious and one avoidant was more volatile than a hydrogen bomb. It would flame Su Nanya's insecurities until she lost all confidence in her beauty. In her self-worth.
For some reason, Yung hated that idea. He didn't claim to be the most secure person himself. Nor that he was a good match for Su Nanya. But by Moira's might, he was damn sure Youjin Chao wasn't. Youjin Chao carried so much emotional burden that it could fill an ocean.
No way will he put Nanya's needs before his. To him, revenge is the only thing that matters. And everything else is to that end.
Youjin Chao might be a beast when it came to fighting, but he was a naive teen regarding human relations. Unless the world itself conspired to bring Su Nanya and him together, Su Nanya would not give him the time of day.
No, even if the world does conspire, Yung glanced at the sky through the corner of his vision. He looked at the infinite golden threads crisscrossing through the heavenly firmament. He looked at Youjin Chao's celestial link, and wondered how strong he would have to be to sever it with thread cutting. I have the power to change fate.
"Brother Yung is unaware? But you have been spending so much time with her." Youjin Chao said.
"I'm a peasant and a country bumpkin. I don't have a mysteriously powerful mother clan or a nobleman adoptive father to know what fancy clothes go on which social class." Yung joked, "Now, can you explain rather than point out my ignorance?"
"If Brother Yung is ignorant, then what am I?" Youjin Chao took the banter in good humour, "Harem clothes are what concubines wear in the inner palaces of the aristocracy. A most sacred place no other man but the lawful husband can enter if you don't consider the eunuchs. This odalisque inner palace attire is meant to stoke their husband's carnal desires constantly to—how shall I say it—display their allure and have a chance to sire a child as fast as possible.
"Each concubine does her all to dress more ravishingly than her sister-wives, for one step up in the competition to rule the bedchamber is to rightfully earn a better life for herself and her children. In many grand empires, even the cultivation methods of harem consorts are changed to shape their bodies as… desirable."
Yung rubbed his chin. Su Nanya's 'harem Clothes' were basically a lacey, micro-bikini g-string, covered with see-through silken shawls adorned with golden accessories only escorts would have worn in some cheesy Turkish spy flick back on Gaia, the fox motifs otherwise.
Su Nanya neither hid nor shied away from showing her butt and bust to the crowd. It was a near-naked streaking outside the beach, and Yung had long wanted to call the police for indecent exposure. It was so beyond the traditions of this conservative world that one had to think,
Why though?
In a world most definitely patriarchal. Where a women's purity, exclusivity, chastity, and modesty were valued above all, even if they were strong cultivators.
"Fairy Su's harem clothes are from the Radiant sun empire if I am not mistaken. It even bears the imperial family's sun insignia."
"I've heard of that place. Isn't it a large ren empire on the Gilded radiance continent? It borders our land bridge to the far north."
Youjin Chao nodded, "It's the oldest and greatest empire on the Last ascension mortal plane, despite fracturing in a civil war many thousands of years ago. I'd known its might even when I was at my mother's clan." The taller boy thought momentarily, "The Su fox clan, conversely, is matriarchal. But they are not immodest like the lustful demonesses of the mo sects. On the contrary, they take face and image exceptionally seriously.
"And although it is said that they were the ones to cause the Radiant sun civil war in the first place, their current alliance with the empire has been amicable as both are in bitter war with the Holy demonic empire. Even now, the previous Su princess is betrothed to a Radiant sun prince. And this former princess is Fairy Su's blood sister. It is publicly acknowledged that their relationship is amicable.
"So it has always been a mystery why Fairy Su, a headstrong fairy that disdains all men, would openly display herself to other males wearing an authentic Radiant sun harem dress. That is like a slap to their imperial face, not to mention how it might cause discord among herself and her sister."
"That bad?"
"It certainly is." Youjin Chao said, "I respect her for it. She is not afraid to defy even the greatest authority. If her actions are targeted to insult a certain prince or a duke, that person would be too humiliated to even go out in public." His eyes gleamed with a certain kind of light, "I think whichever person offended Fairy Su to receive such a slap in the face committed some manner of grave, unspeakable crime not only towards Fairy Su, but towards the Su fox clan as a whole.
"The fact that the Su fox clan has not removed her from her position despite Fairy Su's erratic behaviour, might mean that the fault originally lies with the Radiant sun empire's side. For throughout the past century, Fairy Su has shown far greater wit than to antagonise her own blood sister. She of course knows that intentionally causing discord in the Su clan's rule is grounds for execution by their assembly of sages. Not to mention the Radiant sun empire's feeble protests so far despite such a devastating loss of face. How utterly disgraceful, and as a man, I cannot help but pity them."
Yung felt uncomfortable at the yearning look on Youjin Chao's face. So he tried his best to hide his feelings and asked, "What makes you think that? At the end of the day, it's just a dress. And she's harming her own self-image more when she dresses like a bed-object. So would the Radiant sun empire even care?"
Youjin Chao grinned, "In the tales of minstrels, when two Radiant sun noblemen war, one thing they always do is break into their opponent's inner palace. For his rightful concubines to be defiled by the gazes of other men would be the greatest proof of the husband's lacking manhood and incompetence. Not to mention what fate the concubines inevitably suffer afterwards, in the hands of the brutish, berserk soldiers. It's an insult as great as killing one's parents. Blood feuds had lasted thousands of years, the husband's nine generations becoming the laughingstock of the upper society if vengeance is not taken. They would have to save the world to regain their reputation back. And even then, the gossip might never stop."
I don't like this Radiant sun empire, Yung decided before asking, "And what would happen if a concubine voluntarily reveals herself like Nyanya is doing right now?"
Youjin Chao flinched when Yung referred to Su Nanya with that cute moniker. But he tried his best to cover that up with a grim face, "I am not too sure. But I would wager a guess. In the best-case scenario, their cultivations would be shattered and their beauty disfigured before being cast out. The luckiest of the unfaithful concubines might get traded as sex slaves amongst the noblemen or barbarian tribes? Most would be executed outright, and if the concubine's clan does not apologise publicly with the highest reparations, a blood feud might be birthed between them and the husband's clan. And rightfully so!"
Can't know if I don't ask her, Yung made a note to himself. But before that, he had to clarify his stance to Youjin Chao. That would only be fair.
"Brother Chao, I can't tell you why Nyanya went nuts today in the restaurants. But maybe it's the same reason why she cancelled the phase one of the sect recruitments. And it's not because she thinks we're weak." Yung said.
"Are you sure?" Youjin Chao was taken aback.
Yung nodded, "Remember that talk we had in the restaurant when we first spoke?"
Youjin Chao affirmed, albeit with confusion.
"Nyanya overheard. She's just throwing a tantrum because I refuse to act on my crush. Maybe she's also throwing a tantrum with this whole harem dress thing?"
"Surely that is a joke?" Youjin Chao's eyes widened as he exclaimed. He took a deep breath, and any semblance of emotion left his face. He asked with absolutely calm eyes, "I suppose that could be the case. But more importantly."
"Yes?"
"Does Brother Yung desire to pursue her now, taking advantage of this so called 'tantrum'?"
Wow, so you can be sarcastic when you try! Yung scratched his cheek sheepishly, "I've gotten to know her better these days since she's been nursing me to health. She's not a bad girl, maybe a bit wilful. So I thought I'd give wooing her a try. That is her wish, too, after all, so how can it be me taking advantage of her? She's a legal adult that can make her own choices." Jung was quite thorough when debunking the previous line of logic, "I mean, what's the worse that can happen?"
"I see," Youjin Chao said, walking past Yung at a faster pace. The side entrance to the Dim gold citadel was in sight.
Youjin Chao turned around. The sunlight reflected off his red eyes like sparkling stars. The wind rustled his hair, a few strands sticking to his face. His frame was a perfect v-shape, with lean, ripped muscles under his aesthetically dusty robes.
"The worse that can happen is a slow, painful death, Brother Yung. Since you do not even know that, I cannot accept that you will be a good match for her." The main protagonist replied, making his stance clear too.
"Oh?" Yung acted surprised, "Do tell me why." He did not think Youjin Chao was threatening him.
"Brother Yung is a fine man. Smart, wise, humorous. So I think a calmer life would suit you more. Pastoral perhaps, without bloodshed."
"I agree wholeheartedly. No homo though. Not that anything's wrong with it."
"No what?"
"Ignore that. You were saying?"
Youjin Chao sighed, "Please take this seriously. For did you know, Brother Chao, that kingdoms have burnt for Fairy Su's hand?"
"I didn't." Yung was genuinely surprised this time.
"Many a hero have slaughtered kin and kings to have Su Nanya praise sweet words to them. Kings ruined their nation to hand her the treasures she sought. Countless prodigies have been killed by other jealous suitors when Fairy Su deigned to even speak a word of interest to them. Her suitors come from all over the world and all its continents, each more vicious than the other.
"After Su Yinzhen, the previous fox clan princess failed her lightning tribulation, Su Nanya inherited the Revival Crown. Having her hand is the same as having all the riches in the world. Wooing her is the same as fighting a never-ending war with the world itself. It is going against the heavens. Both politically, and literally."
"That sounds rather scary." Yung smiled.
"Brother Yung," Youjin Chao beat around the bush no longer, "I had wanted to ask for your counsel and support in vying for Fairy Su's hand. Because we are soulmates, she and I. I can feel it!"
"Youjin Chun will have a heart attack if she hears this."
"Irrelevant." Youjin Chao shot Yung's words down rather violently, "So, what do you think?"
Yung's smile didn't falter. He didn't avert his eyes from Youjin Chao's burning gaze either,
"I think," Yung said, "you want to make her yours."
Youjin Chao nodded, eagerness returning on his face. He might've taken Yung's words for agreement.
"You want to own her, like some object." Yung corrected Youjin Chao's misunderstanding with clear words, "Like whatever prince or duke might've wanted to own her into their harem. Whom Nyanya hates to such an extent that she'd smear her own reputation to shame his name every waking moment."
Youjin Chao opened his mouth, then closed it with a strange expression, "If I have her hand, of course she will be mine alone if that is what you mean by owning."
"Then will you be her's alone? Can you tell Ziyou Ling to her face that you can't make her a wife, even if you had made her a woman?"
"How do you—?"
"Everyone knows!" Holy shit, the rumours were true! And he admitted it. Yung had only hazarded a guess. "Why do you think Ziyou Maque treats you so well? Because he's expecting you to be his son-in-law."
"As an outsider, you cannot comment on my relationship with Ling. She knows I have to leave one day for the Violet horn continent and accepts that." Youjin Chao's eyes were steady. But to Yung, what he spouted were excuses, and Yung refused to acknowledge them as anything but. "Even when I was with Chun, Ling would always pester me that she would not mind being a concubine. And after my engagement was annulled, it was just one night. If Fairy Su, no, Su Nanya—"
"Leave Ziyou Ling if you want to pursue Nyanya in good faith."
"I do not want to make Ling sad. I know she will be happier by my side."
"That's impossible."
"In front of an iron will, nothing is impossible. Even the heavens will bow to unwavering resolve and courage. Su Nanya herself is the living embodiment of that proof."
"That's false on so many levels," Yung was amazed, "But I digress. Maybe you really do like Nyanya. But it's also true that she can help you greatly with your revenge. Or perhaps she can even restore your cultivation?"
"It is all of them, Brother Yung. One does not need a sole reason to like someone. There can be many."
Yung laughed. "Then I can't accept your intentions as ethical. All this time, you've been talking about you making her happy from your own perspective. It feels to me like you want Nyanya's hand because you can make use of her for your selfish ends. But have you thought even for a moment about what she might need? Emotionally, spiritually?"
"I believe that one day, I will be strong enough to meet their needs. Both Ling's and Su Nanya's."
"Why would you even say that?" Yung shook his head as though he'd heard a joke that wasn't funny, "Some things really are impossible, Brother Chao. There is no shame in accepting that fact." And decades of relationship science proved that impossibility. Sapient creatures didn't like sharing. Those who claimed they did, were nothing but avoidantly attached to the objects of their love.
From what Yung gleaned about Su Nanya's personality, her attachment style was highly anxious. She got jealous easily, played mind games, and quickly jumped to conclusions. Yung believed she needed a secure base, a stable foundation to heal her emotional wounds. But a couple with one partner anxious and one avoidant was more volatile than a hydrogen bomb. It would flame Su Nanya's insecurities until she lost all confidence in her beauty. In her self-worth.
For some reason, Yung hated that idea. He didn't claim to be the most secure person himself. Nor that he was a good match for Su Nanya. But by Moira's might, he was damn sure Youjin Chao wasn't. Youjin Chao carried so much emotional burden that it could fill an ocean.
No way will he put Nanya's needs before his. To him, revenge is the only thing that matters. And everything else is to that end.
Youjin Chao might be a beast when it came to fighting, but he was a naive teen regarding human relations. Unless the world itself conspired to bring Su Nanya and him together, Su Nanya would not give him the time of day.
No, even if the world does conspire, Yung glanced at the sky through the corner of his vision. He looked at the infinite golden threads crisscrossing through the heavenly firmament. He looked at Youjin Chao's celestial link, and wondered how strong he would have to be to sever it with thread cutting. I have the power to change fate.
Chapter 35 - Riddles that the fox weaves
"I believe true love can cross all impossible boundaries." Youjin Chao stood firm on his beliefs. His self-confidence was applaudable, if nothing else.
"I'm surprised you'd have so much faith in 'true love' after what Youjin Chun did."
"She wasn't the one. How could our forced relationship have ever been committed when we weren't soulmates? But Su Nanya is."
"What does that even mean, soulmates? It sounds like nothing more than some gut instinct."
"It is not!" Youjin Chao shouted as if that proved his point, "I can feel her powerful yin physique wherever I am, no matter the time and place. It calls to me at each breath of every moment, even as we speak now. I am sure her yin seeks to awaken the yang physique I had lost ten years ago. To revive me, to set me upon my rightful path! Can you not see this, Brother Yung? This is for both our sakes. We are meant to be! As mandated by the heavens with my yang and her yin." Youjin Chao looked frustrated, unable to convince Yung to see from his point of view. He clenched his fists, "And I won't let anything, or anyone, stand in my way. "
Yin physique… Is that why my xinqi cultivates into zhenqi so rapidly when I hold Nanya's hand? Yung hid a smirk, "As I said, it sounds to me you wanna use her yin whatever like some cultivation resource."
"Why must you only see the worm in the apple? Our union will aid her in cultivation as much as it will mine. I will not only take but also give. That is a promise I can commit my heart and soul to. So who are you, a person without powerful yang, to judge our destined path?"
Defensive much? I'll have you know, my severed yang fire qi circulation technique made her moan the first time we met! Yung sighed, holding back the urge to get defensive himself. Well, Chao is a teenager.
Yung shook the irrelevant thought away, replying to Youjin Chao. "Yet here you are, refusing to commit all your love to one woman who loves you dearly. You want exclusivity from all your partners, but you refuse to reciprocate with the same. That doesn't raise confidence that you'll 'give as much as you take' now, does it?"
Youjin Chao was shocked, speechless for a good minute. He then said with a resolved nod, "If I am strong enough to make both Ling and Su Nanya happy, why should I settle for any less?"
Spoken like a true protagonist.
"It's all about you, isn't it?" Yung sighed once more; he grew weary of this conversation. So he replied with Su Nanya's signature phrase, "I utterly reject that. I'm sorry, Brother Chao, but looks like we might be at an impasse; so let's agree to disagree. It's almost evening, and I really need to get back."
Youjin Chao looked at him and laughed, "I am a cripple, you know? Even when I was engaged, people called me an ugly toad trying to swallow a graceful swan. It is flattering that you'd even agree to disagree as such, when I'm trying to swallow a phoenix now."
"It simply means I don't judge a person's worth by their social status, physical prowess, and cultivation strength alone, Brother Chao", Yung answered honestly, glancing at Youjin Chao's celestial link. "People are nuanced like that."
"Thank you. But alas, what a shame."
With that, they returned to the citadel, different thoughts churning in each teen's head.
They met with the good patriarch and spoke of the voidfiend attack.
Youjin Liu promised to look into the issue within the next few days. The Youjin clan's grain fields were underground, in the caverns below the Dim gold orchard and lake vicinity. They had recently been under fiend attack too. The patriarch set a plan to close the rogue voidrift with the elders. Yung expressed interest in joining. Not only to see the voidrift but also the Youjin farmlands. Or rather, farm caves. The whole concept was a doozy.
Yung then bade the patriarch farewell.
At the citadel's south entrance, the two rival boys stopped. Yung would head towards the market square and Youjin Chao towards the lower towns.
They shook hands,
"May the best man win."
"There's nothing to win here."
And then they parted.
Their relationship had subtly changed, but that's how the world worked.
Yung stared at the receding figure of Youjin Chao for a while longer.
"Kii!"
"I know."
Then ran towards the Dim gold hotel just as fast as he had run away from it that morning.
He'd done Su Nanya wrong.
After everything she did to help him, when he was a confused mess after transmigrating to this cruel, magical world. With only five gold coins to his name and a legacy clan out to exploit him, he would have ended up with fewer rights than an insect if Nanya wasn't there to shield him.
He would be a true ingrate if he dared to break his word.
As he had so eloquently lectured Youjin Chao, it was his turn to reciprocate. To give back equally what he had taken from the fair vixen.
***
"M'lady, good news." Su Yafeng tried to cheer up the mopping bundle of blankets sulking on the remains of the queen-sized bed.
"Leave us alone!" Came the aggrieve reply from within.
Nanya was mad.
Rightly so! The new servant had disregarded her as though she was not the fairest maiden in the land.
Usually, at this time, she would be spying on Yung with Su Yafeng's Azure gale vulpines, but all curiosity to do such had left her maidenly mind.
Under a dusk sky of deep orange and red, the golden glow of the horizon had spilt through the shattered window, illuminating the room. The sun's rays, twisting like a golden mist, had danced with cruel irony around Nanya's sombre nest of woollens. Almost as if they were taunting her, their serpentine movements evoked memories she had wished to bury deep within her. The spark of anger within her was fierce. Yet it wasn't entirely directed at her new, inexperienced servant who was merely a boy.
In truth, her rage was more reflective of her own self-loathing: a raw, painful emotion akin to taking a brutal hit from an ugly red fruit.
Nanya's tears flowed like the spring ocean under a night sky. Reminding her of the same horrendous stenches that had taken her beloved's heart away.
There was a knock on the door.
"Do not let him enter!" Nanya screamed neurotically.
"Come in," Su Yafeng opened the gate with the best smile she could force her face to make. She bowed at the panting boy; how utterly traitorous of the elegant 'gatekeeper' calligraphy on her hanfu! "M'lady has been awaiting your arrival."
"We have not!"
"Please do tell her what you told that Youjin Chao imbecile." With that, the maid was out of the room, closing the doors behind her. The Azure gale vulpines left in tow.
Ziyou Yung tiptoed forward and squatted by the heap of quilts.
"I'm sorry for not keeping my word," He said, his daydreams evincing genuine remorse. "I shouldn't have lied."
A violent aura exploded from the bundle, jolting the boy to his bones. But it left as fast as it arrived, followed by her self-deprecating voice.
"No, it was us to blame. We had expected too much, set our standards too low."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Ziyou Yung said with a humorous wince, "You calling me ugly again?"
"Is it not a fact? We had thought that if one even so unlovely as you would value us for what we represent, it would perchance give us peace of mind."
"I'm shocked! Really. First Chao, now you. Everyone is so honest today, admitting their deepest needs."
"We admit nothing!"
Ziyou Yung wiggled his toes, then stretched his arms. Before Nanya could figure out what he wanted, the madlander boy plopped beside her on the bed and yawned out loud.
"Whew, this bed is so fluffy."
"Such obvious claims. We only deserved the best, do you not agree?" Nanya peeked out of the fleeces, having applied jade powder to her face in the meanwhile. It would be unbecoming to show such maidenly weakness as a welled-up face to one's lesser. "One such of the servile class as you should indeed experience a sense of pride, perhaps even elation, to partake in this same exquisite fluffiness as we."
"Indeed, my lady. This particular amphibian toad is experiencing the pinnacle of fluffiness, I daresay, if I may be so bold to declare it myself." Ziyou Yung closed his eyes and raised his chin, mimicking an impression in an accent Nanya had never heard before. She was not amused.
The boy extended his hand, which Nanya cautiously accepted. As their palms met, the cycle reinitiated. Her peak 11th stage body refinement cultivation resumed, with the boy's strange jingqi again flowing into her.
"Why do you come to us?" She asked, trying her hardest to ignore the swell of guilt brewing within her heart. Here she was, wearing the inner court clothes of her beloved's palace, yet she shared the moment with a dark-skinned barbarian twenty times younger.
Oh how she hated Ziyou Yung's sharp words! How she detested this boy's clear eyes that seemed to pierce through her tulle veil of false emotions.
"I did promise to flip the heaven and earth to woo you! I gotta be who I claim to be." Ziyou Yung smiled with a toothy grin.
Nanya couldn't help but stare, "You merely promised to upturn the oceans and mountains, oh newest servant. We do believe the heaven and earth are too big for one such serf as you."
"Eh? Really? Well, let me be more ambitious and upgrade my ambitions. Heaven and earth it is!"
Nanya covered her face with her tail. It would not be ladylike to show a gentleman a giggle.
"You do not lie?" She asked, her golden irises quivering. "We cannot help but worry that when we reject you, you might go back on your words once more."
"Which words?"
"Your words of flattery, of how extollingly gorgeous and sensual we truly are in our unrivalled allure. The honeyed phrases you shall employ in the near future in your futile attempts to charm us."
Ziyou Yung's mouth hung open, and he laughed, "That's a problem for the future Yung! Right now, I can swear to the heavens that you are the most gorgeous and sensual woman in town."
Nanya pouted, turning away.
"City—I mean, the whole Last ascension mortal plane and beyond!"
She turned back, "You are forgiven."
"But Nyanya, why do you need me to say that? Shouldn't it be obvious?"
Nanya was stumped. Not at the servant boy's nickname for her he so casually ventured, but at his piercing question.
"Why indeed, we wonder. Perhaps hearing the truth from others would reassure us."
"Reassure you that you actually are beautiful? Or that others think you are beautiful."
"Is it not so that they bear the same meaning?"
Ziyou Yung thought for a while. He looked Nanya in her vulpine eyes, then reached out his other palm too. She blinked, but took hold of it with her dainty fingers nonetheless.
"Tell me, if you find this unpleasant." Ziyou Yung gently pulled her in and seated her on his lap. Nanya's heartbeat raced, threatening to break out of her ribcage. She was three thoughts away from sundering this audacious madlander fool to death. To run back to her beloved and beg forgiveness for her infidelity.
But she reigned in the urges and sunk into the gentle feeling of her jingqi ever so steadily morphing into zhenqi. It was nice, warm, and unhurried. Neither fast nor violent, as when her beloved embraced her with his extreme yang physique. When her heart would not stay measured, and her jingqi threatened to fulminate out violently with but a moment of distraction, agonising her blood and bones.
She quite liked the serene feelings this leisurely, slow, but oh-so-steadfast pace of cultivation evoked. Like the adorable moniker, Nyanya. She found it rather affectionate. So she would allow him to refer her as such in the coming days.
"What you think of yourself, shouldn't wholly depend on what others think." Ziyou Yung said, his strange voice flowing like mellow wine. "Naturally, it would be best to take into account the feedback from those who genuinely care about you. But to base your entire existence, your self-worth and value, solely on the opinions of others, I can't imagine living such a hard life." He entwined his calloused fingers with hers, yet his touch was not rough. Not rough at all, oh my!
Nanya buried her blush, asking, "But should we not correct others when they have the wrong opinion?"
"Maybe you can try. One person, a hundred? A million? How many people live on our mortal plane? And how many beyond?"
"It would be tiring." Nanya admitted, "Yet we find ourselves unable to tolerate transgressions left unresolved."
"I understand the feeling. I'd be hurt too if other people disparage me. Especially if 'other people' is a pretty lady, speaking ill to my face!"
"You dare accuse me of calling out your disagreeable countenance? But is it not a fact?"
"It's also a fact that you're the most beautiful girl ever. But I bet there was once a certain 'other people' who did something that went against that fact. Maybe he denied your charms. Or maybe, he chose another girl over you despite acknowledging your supreme allure?"
"…" Nanya pouted, turning away.
"Did it feel good?"
"It felt… as though a mo cultivator had violated our hearts," Nanya replied, turning back. Her shoulders lightened at the honesty, the first time in years. She revelled in her sinful confession, "We do not want to suffer the same again. Ever. It is too cruel for one such maiden as we."
Ziyou Yung's touch turned into an embrace. He held her, ever so softly. And Nanya felt a strange urge to lean onto him. The boy didn't have a tall frame or a broad back. But his shoulder was just the right height to rest her chin on.
"It hurts when others speak badly of me. Of us. But we are cultivators! Our emotions, our feelings; I believe from the bottom of my heart that we can master them. Even, no, especially love. When a loved one does something that we don't like, it's painful. But if we ask why we feel that pain, perhaps we can arrive at the answer we're looking for." Ziyou Yung spoke as quietly as he could. Nanya gave the foolish boy her unwavering attention, her gaze tender yet devoted.
"Is that not your biased view, oh servant so wise in the ways of love?" She found it in her heart to banter, and Ziyou Yung smiled with his eyes.
"If it works for me, who are others to judge? They'll only consider the world from their subjective position in life. Their opinions of us, of you, will be clouded by whatever events and circumstances led up to that point. It's not your problem to fix, nor your responsibility to shoulder."
Nanya savoured those words in her mind. She adored them, as the events of the past decades flashed past her eyes like a revolving lantern.
"We cannot accept that. There must be another reason for one so near to our heart, to hurt us so cruelly. If we are not truly deplorable, if we are not enough by ourselves, why would…."
"Why would, what?"
"Why would you men, such baseborn creatures, seek to plant your seeds in as many fair maidens as possible?" Nanya asked, her uncontrolled emotions gushing forth with her enraged voice.
"I'm surprised you'd have so much faith in 'true love' after what Youjin Chun did."
"She wasn't the one. How could our forced relationship have ever been committed when we weren't soulmates? But Su Nanya is."
"What does that even mean, soulmates? It sounds like nothing more than some gut instinct."
"It is not!" Youjin Chao shouted as if that proved his point, "I can feel her powerful yin physique wherever I am, no matter the time and place. It calls to me at each breath of every moment, even as we speak now. I am sure her yin seeks to awaken the yang physique I had lost ten years ago. To revive me, to set me upon my rightful path! Can you not see this, Brother Yung? This is for both our sakes. We are meant to be! As mandated by the heavens with my yang and her yin." Youjin Chao looked frustrated, unable to convince Yung to see from his point of view. He clenched his fists, "And I won't let anything, or anyone, stand in my way. "
Yin physique… Is that why my xinqi cultivates into zhenqi so rapidly when I hold Nanya's hand? Yung hid a smirk, "As I said, it sounds to me you wanna use her yin whatever like some cultivation resource."
"Why must you only see the worm in the apple? Our union will aid her in cultivation as much as it will mine. I will not only take but also give. That is a promise I can commit my heart and soul to. So who are you, a person without powerful yang, to judge our destined path?"
Defensive much? I'll have you know, my severed yang fire qi circulation technique made her moan the first time we met! Yung sighed, holding back the urge to get defensive himself. Well, Chao is a teenager.
Yung shook the irrelevant thought away, replying to Youjin Chao. "Yet here you are, refusing to commit all your love to one woman who loves you dearly. You want exclusivity from all your partners, but you refuse to reciprocate with the same. That doesn't raise confidence that you'll 'give as much as you take' now, does it?"
Youjin Chao was shocked, speechless for a good minute. He then said with a resolved nod, "If I am strong enough to make both Ling and Su Nanya happy, why should I settle for any less?"
Spoken like a true protagonist.
"It's all about you, isn't it?" Yung sighed once more; he grew weary of this conversation. So he replied with Su Nanya's signature phrase, "I utterly reject that. I'm sorry, Brother Chao, but looks like we might be at an impasse; so let's agree to disagree. It's almost evening, and I really need to get back."
Youjin Chao looked at him and laughed, "I am a cripple, you know? Even when I was engaged, people called me an ugly toad trying to swallow a graceful swan. It is flattering that you'd even agree to disagree as such, when I'm trying to swallow a phoenix now."
"It simply means I don't judge a person's worth by their social status, physical prowess, and cultivation strength alone, Brother Chao", Yung answered honestly, glancing at Youjin Chao's celestial link. "People are nuanced like that."
"Thank you. But alas, what a shame."
With that, they returned to the citadel, different thoughts churning in each teen's head.
They met with the good patriarch and spoke of the voidfiend attack.
Youjin Liu promised to look into the issue within the next few days. The Youjin clan's grain fields were underground, in the caverns below the Dim gold orchard and lake vicinity. They had recently been under fiend attack too. The patriarch set a plan to close the rogue voidrift with the elders. Yung expressed interest in joining. Not only to see the voidrift but also the Youjin farmlands. Or rather, farm caves. The whole concept was a doozy.
Yung then bade the patriarch farewell.
At the citadel's south entrance, the two rival boys stopped. Yung would head towards the market square and Youjin Chao towards the lower towns.
They shook hands,
"May the best man win."
"There's nothing to win here."
And then they parted.
Their relationship had subtly changed, but that's how the world worked.
Yung stared at the receding figure of Youjin Chao for a while longer.
"Kii!"
"I know."
Then ran towards the Dim gold hotel just as fast as he had run away from it that morning.
He'd done Su Nanya wrong.
After everything she did to help him, when he was a confused mess after transmigrating to this cruel, magical world. With only five gold coins to his name and a legacy clan out to exploit him, he would have ended up with fewer rights than an insect if Nanya wasn't there to shield him.
He would be a true ingrate if he dared to break his word.
As he had so eloquently lectured Youjin Chao, it was his turn to reciprocate. To give back equally what he had taken from the fair vixen.
***
"M'lady, good news." Su Yafeng tried to cheer up the mopping bundle of blankets sulking on the remains of the queen-sized bed.
"Leave us alone!" Came the aggrieve reply from within.
Nanya was mad.
Rightly so! The new servant had disregarded her as though she was not the fairest maiden in the land.
Usually, at this time, she would be spying on Yung with Su Yafeng's Azure gale vulpines, but all curiosity to do such had left her maidenly mind.
Under a dusk sky of deep orange and red, the golden glow of the horizon had spilt through the shattered window, illuminating the room. The sun's rays, twisting like a golden mist, had danced with cruel irony around Nanya's sombre nest of woollens. Almost as if they were taunting her, their serpentine movements evoked memories she had wished to bury deep within her. The spark of anger within her was fierce. Yet it wasn't entirely directed at her new, inexperienced servant who was merely a boy.
In truth, her rage was more reflective of her own self-loathing: a raw, painful emotion akin to taking a brutal hit from an ugly red fruit.
Nanya's tears flowed like the spring ocean under a night sky. Reminding her of the same horrendous stenches that had taken her beloved's heart away.
There was a knock on the door.
"Do not let him enter!" Nanya screamed neurotically.
"Come in," Su Yafeng opened the gate with the best smile she could force her face to make. She bowed at the panting boy; how utterly traitorous of the elegant 'gatekeeper' calligraphy on her hanfu! "M'lady has been awaiting your arrival."
"We have not!"
"Please do tell her what you told that Youjin Chao imbecile." With that, the maid was out of the room, closing the doors behind her. The Azure gale vulpines left in tow.
Ziyou Yung tiptoed forward and squatted by the heap of quilts.
"I'm sorry for not keeping my word," He said, his daydreams evincing genuine remorse. "I shouldn't have lied."
A violent aura exploded from the bundle, jolting the boy to his bones. But it left as fast as it arrived, followed by her self-deprecating voice.
"No, it was us to blame. We had expected too much, set our standards too low."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Ziyou Yung said with a humorous wince, "You calling me ugly again?"
"Is it not a fact? We had thought that if one even so unlovely as you would value us for what we represent, it would perchance give us peace of mind."
"I'm shocked! Really. First Chao, now you. Everyone is so honest today, admitting their deepest needs."
"We admit nothing!"
Ziyou Yung wiggled his toes, then stretched his arms. Before Nanya could figure out what he wanted, the madlander boy plopped beside her on the bed and yawned out loud.
"Whew, this bed is so fluffy."
"Such obvious claims. We only deserved the best, do you not agree?" Nanya peeked out of the fleeces, having applied jade powder to her face in the meanwhile. It would be unbecoming to show such maidenly weakness as a welled-up face to one's lesser. "One such of the servile class as you should indeed experience a sense of pride, perhaps even elation, to partake in this same exquisite fluffiness as we."
"Indeed, my lady. This particular amphibian toad is experiencing the pinnacle of fluffiness, I daresay, if I may be so bold to declare it myself." Ziyou Yung closed his eyes and raised his chin, mimicking an impression in an accent Nanya had never heard before. She was not amused.
The boy extended his hand, which Nanya cautiously accepted. As their palms met, the cycle reinitiated. Her peak 11th stage body refinement cultivation resumed, with the boy's strange jingqi again flowing into her.
"Why do you come to us?" She asked, trying her hardest to ignore the swell of guilt brewing within her heart. Here she was, wearing the inner court clothes of her beloved's palace, yet she shared the moment with a dark-skinned barbarian twenty times younger.
Oh how she hated Ziyou Yung's sharp words! How she detested this boy's clear eyes that seemed to pierce through her tulle veil of false emotions.
"I did promise to flip the heaven and earth to woo you! I gotta be who I claim to be." Ziyou Yung smiled with a toothy grin.
Nanya couldn't help but stare, "You merely promised to upturn the oceans and mountains, oh newest servant. We do believe the heaven and earth are too big for one such serf as you."
"Eh? Really? Well, let me be more ambitious and upgrade my ambitions. Heaven and earth it is!"
Nanya covered her face with her tail. It would not be ladylike to show a gentleman a giggle.
"You do not lie?" She asked, her golden irises quivering. "We cannot help but worry that when we reject you, you might go back on your words once more."
"Which words?"
"Your words of flattery, of how extollingly gorgeous and sensual we truly are in our unrivalled allure. The honeyed phrases you shall employ in the near future in your futile attempts to charm us."
Ziyou Yung's mouth hung open, and he laughed, "That's a problem for the future Yung! Right now, I can swear to the heavens that you are the most gorgeous and sensual woman in town."
Nanya pouted, turning away.
"City—I mean, the whole Last ascension mortal plane and beyond!"
She turned back, "You are forgiven."
"But Nyanya, why do you need me to say that? Shouldn't it be obvious?"
Nanya was stumped. Not at the servant boy's nickname for her he so casually ventured, but at his piercing question.
"Why indeed, we wonder. Perhaps hearing the truth from others would reassure us."
"Reassure you that you actually are beautiful? Or that others think you are beautiful."
"Is it not so that they bear the same meaning?"
Ziyou Yung thought for a while. He looked Nanya in her vulpine eyes, then reached out his other palm too. She blinked, but took hold of it with her dainty fingers nonetheless.
"Tell me, if you find this unpleasant." Ziyou Yung gently pulled her in and seated her on his lap. Nanya's heartbeat raced, threatening to break out of her ribcage. She was three thoughts away from sundering this audacious madlander fool to death. To run back to her beloved and beg forgiveness for her infidelity.
But she reigned in the urges and sunk into the gentle feeling of her jingqi ever so steadily morphing into zhenqi. It was nice, warm, and unhurried. Neither fast nor violent, as when her beloved embraced her with his extreme yang physique. When her heart would not stay measured, and her jingqi threatened to fulminate out violently with but a moment of distraction, agonising her blood and bones.
She quite liked the serene feelings this leisurely, slow, but oh-so-steadfast pace of cultivation evoked. Like the adorable moniker, Nyanya. She found it rather affectionate. So she would allow him to refer her as such in the coming days.
"What you think of yourself, shouldn't wholly depend on what others think." Ziyou Yung said, his strange voice flowing like mellow wine. "Naturally, it would be best to take into account the feedback from those who genuinely care about you. But to base your entire existence, your self-worth and value, solely on the opinions of others, I can't imagine living such a hard life." He entwined his calloused fingers with hers, yet his touch was not rough. Not rough at all, oh my!
Nanya buried her blush, asking, "But should we not correct others when they have the wrong opinion?"
"Maybe you can try. One person, a hundred? A million? How many people live on our mortal plane? And how many beyond?"
"It would be tiring." Nanya admitted, "Yet we find ourselves unable to tolerate transgressions left unresolved."
"I understand the feeling. I'd be hurt too if other people disparage me. Especially if 'other people' is a pretty lady, speaking ill to my face!"
"You dare accuse me of calling out your disagreeable countenance? But is it not a fact?"
"It's also a fact that you're the most beautiful girl ever. But I bet there was once a certain 'other people' who did something that went against that fact. Maybe he denied your charms. Or maybe, he chose another girl over you despite acknowledging your supreme allure?"
"…" Nanya pouted, turning away.
"Did it feel good?"
"It felt… as though a mo cultivator had violated our hearts," Nanya replied, turning back. Her shoulders lightened at the honesty, the first time in years. She revelled in her sinful confession, "We do not want to suffer the same again. Ever. It is too cruel for one such maiden as we."
Ziyou Yung's touch turned into an embrace. He held her, ever so softly. And Nanya felt a strange urge to lean onto him. The boy didn't have a tall frame or a broad back. But his shoulder was just the right height to rest her chin on.
"It hurts when others speak badly of me. Of us. But we are cultivators! Our emotions, our feelings; I believe from the bottom of my heart that we can master them. Even, no, especially love. When a loved one does something that we don't like, it's painful. But if we ask why we feel that pain, perhaps we can arrive at the answer we're looking for." Ziyou Yung spoke as quietly as he could. Nanya gave the foolish boy her unwavering attention, her gaze tender yet devoted.
"Is that not your biased view, oh servant so wise in the ways of love?" She found it in her heart to banter, and Ziyou Yung smiled with his eyes.
"If it works for me, who are others to judge? They'll only consider the world from their subjective position in life. Their opinions of us, of you, will be clouded by whatever events and circumstances led up to that point. It's not your problem to fix, nor your responsibility to shoulder."
Nanya savoured those words in her mind. She adored them, as the events of the past decades flashed past her eyes like a revolving lantern.
"We cannot accept that. There must be another reason for one so near to our heart, to hurt us so cruelly. If we are not truly deplorable, if we are not enough by ourselves, why would…."
"Why would, what?"
"Why would you men, such baseborn creatures, seek to plant your seeds in as many fair maidens as possible?" Nanya asked, her uncontrolled emotions gushing forth with her enraged voice.
Chapter 36 - Harem shmarem
"Holy hell, where'd that come from?" Ziyou Yung gaped, swearing like the woolly-headed halfwit he was.
"Listen to us, then speak!" Nanya removed her fingers from the boy's palms and cupped his surprisingly bouncy cheeks, pressing them together, "This is about some person else; a fair maiden of an unsung story we admire reverently, and not us. Are we clear?"
"Ah, sure."
"This fair maiden, oh so beautiful she is under the moonlight; how many a great man fell at the sight of her succulent lips and the heavenly sway of her hips. Yet she rejected them all."
"…"
"For she waited, for a hundred years and beyond, for her soulmate to return. Indeed, she awaited her valiant champion. Her hero."
Ziyou Yung cringed at the term soulmate. In his dreams, the boy wondered if it was just a coincidence that she was spouting the same soulmate narrative as Youjin Chao.
Nanya carried on with her melancholic melody.
Ziyou Yung listened with bated breath.
"He did return, yet with more brides of his own. He was the conqueror of clans, the slayer of devils. His name resounded far and wide across the Coiling zenith continent, and tales of his deeds crossed the oceans faster than the last starlight of the night."
"Sounds like a swell guy."
"Oh how her brave saved billions from the tyranny of dark sects; how he freed lost planes, hidden beyond the void to the clutches of the foreign gods. He ascended to spirit severing, then spirit assimilating in both lingqi and yuanqi. He is the golden son of the fates, the daochild of the age. And oh how he returned to his beloved childhood friend to keep a promise of unity despite time and tragedy. Despite having tasted other women."
"I'm hearing a but."
"But! When our fair maiden rejected her corrupted brave's sullied soul, he blamed her selfishness, her egomania! His other wives mocked the maiden a needy harlot. And such did the world, the masses, and even the heavens. Is the fair maiden wrong? Was she truly not enough to satisfy her one true hero?"
Nanya tried her hardest not to break down weeping, "Why… why would he not return alone? Why would he flaunt his defiled flesh and innocence, the touch he shared with other women—other cocottes—at our maiden's angelic face? So pure she is, so innocent her sin. Why do you men do this?"
"Uhh, I believe infidelity is a gender neutral thing—"
"Would you not do the same if you had the chance, oh new servant? Would you not want a blossom so divine as we, plucked in one hand," Nanya squeezed her servant's right cheek, "And perhaps a beauty of another kind in your other? Say, the wait maiden of this establishment who stalks your room night after night?" She squeezed his left cheek. A bit harder.
"She does what?!" Ziyou Yung lisped through his kneaded lips.
"Touch your heart and tell us, for we wish to know! Would you not seize it if you had the chance, to deflower as many fairies as your filthy mind wished. With their wholehearted love and unabashed acceptance?"
Ziyou Yung gulped.
Nanya could see his daydreams playing with the idea. Her golden eyes were unmoving, her fang biting into her lips and her brows trembling. She forgot her breath, ignored her guilt, and tightened her embracing legs around Ziyou Yung's hips. She asked the most crucial question, "Would you not want a harem?"
"Jesus fucking Christ and all good things Moira stands for, HELL NO!" The answer was immediate, without the slightest hint of hesitation. His spittle flew and spluttered on Nanya's face, giving her another rush of jingqi.
She was offended at how good it felt.
She was satisfied at how vehement his denial was.
She was mortified, fearing that by some arcane art, Ziyou Yung's dreams were lying to her.
So she screamed out her deepest protest, "Why would you not?" Her eyes glared defiantly. "How could you not? Is it not a true man to take what he desires? To have it all without ever losing someone precious to him?"
"First of all, I don't desire that." Ziyou Yung removed her hands from his cheeks with a jerk, saying, " I don't know about other men. And second, this imaginary male you speak of sounds like a coward who can't even commit to a single person."
"Nonsense! If he can master all the beauties under the heavens, why would he settle for anything less? Would it not be our fair maiden's absolute delight to give herself willingly to the singular best man in all of existence?"
Ziyou Yung shivered. The madlander boy was visibly shocked at, once again, finding the eerie parallel between her and the Youjin boy's beliefs.
He did not like that; Nanya saw such as clear as day. He didn't like that one bit. And Nanya adored how much he did not like that.
"By Gaia, no. No. NO!" The boy's denial got more extreme, "That is the stupidest—sorry. But that sounds terrible. Will those girls really be happy sharing a husband? I don't mean if they are supposed to be happy according to society or tradition, but would they be true to the word, happy? Touch your heart as I did mine and speak the truth. Would you be happy sharing?"
Nanya seethed, then boiled, steams of yuanqi leaving her flustered face. She wrestled with what was proper, fought with her inner voice, and lost horribly. The vixen could not find it in her heart to deceive herself, to deceive this strangely kind boy with half-hearted lies. She exhaled, settling into a frigid stillness.
"No way. He should have been ours!"
"I don't like sharing," Yung said, "And I don't like to be shared, even if most men might. That would mean my partner doesn't value me enough. That she's fine with whatever I do. That she doesn't care. And that is a huge problem."
"Pray tell." Nanya hoped he would. She hoped his honeyed mouth would never stop moving, that they would keep telling her that her feelings, for which she had felt utterly guilty for so long, ridiculed as petty and selfish by those her equal, were not wrong!
"If you want emotional and physical exclusivity from your many partners, but refuse to offer the same exclusivity in return to any of them, what does that say about you?"
"That the hero is too ambitious to be tied down by one mere mate?" So she replied, but even she didn't believe it. Something was changing in her heart, but she couldn't tell what.
"Christ, no. It means he is a weakling, a coward, and a slippery snake."
"Your voice suggests envy. It is revolting."
"I'm not jealous!" Yung exclaimed before speaking through a sad smile, "Listen here. You have these 'heroes' who assert they're too superior to settle for a single girl. That they simply can't 'help themselves' when they grow weary of the same fair woman, claiming it's merely their nature. That they just can't resist.
"They're deluding themselves! You see, Nyanya, these insignificant individuals are what I classify as narcissists. They've built an inflated self-image that requires constant affirmation from the words of others. They want to ascertain a certain something, at all costs." Ziyou Yung said, as his daydreams recalled a concept called "viral Youtube videos" of narcissistic people getting rejected in the most harmless ways and going absolutely mad.
"Then what ever is this elusive matter the narcissists would desire to ascertain?"
"That the world revolves around them. This baseless belief that, they are better than normal men. They deserve more and ought to give less. It is their heaven-mandated right to poise others to act according to their expectations. Meaning not only must they believe all their delusional crap, but others must too. But when others don't, they react violently, losing control of their actions and emotions."
Nanya put two and two together and squirmed in Ziyou Yung's arms, trying to get out and point at him, "You speak of us! This better not have been an elaborate scheme to critique our lovely reactions. Such a distasteful individual you are."
"No, no, okay. It's good that you see the parallels between yourself and this destructive narcissist of a hero who cheated on you."
"It is not we!"
"Oh, right. Okay, 'not you.' But I think your narcissism is merely over-exposed confidence in your looks. And see now; you're engaging in a long debate with me about the issue. You're trying to work things out in a healthy, organic manner. This 'fictional hero', on the other hand, is the opposite."
"How so, oh clever-tongued servant?"
"He runs from rejection. He fears his self-image might be false, so he covers his ears and surrounds himself with only those who will say yes."
"Such as his cocottes?"
"Exactly like those brainless harem bitches! And then he tries to force people who say otherwise to adhere to his selfish opinions like they should be a given. Like it's common sense, and you're the one who's crazy for not thinking that. Especially so if the naysayer is someone whose opinion he truly cares about; not care as in respect as an equal, but care as in he is the party who sets the terms in the relationship. He might manipulate them emotionally, such as making the maiden feel bad about her choice, body, and beauty. First covertly, then overtly."
"…. Truly so?" Nanya was shocked. It was as though Ziyou Yung was there when the tragic events had happened!
"Yeah. This fictional maiden may think the fault lies with her, but it's actually the douchebag manipulating her gentle heart. Suddenly, her not forgiving his infidelity is the maiden's fault. 'Oh, she is so selfish, so egoistic!' The maiden will first second guess herself, because indeed her entire worldview had collapsed. If things are allowed to continue for too long, this hero might even feel confident enough to physically abuse and exploit this fair maiden, whose faith in her own judgements wane day by day. Worse yet, rather than stand up for herself, she might eventually buy into this hero's narrative and lose faith in her own worth as a graceful maiden with independent thought. Because to rebel is to be hurt, and surrendering is so much easier. That…. would be the greatest tragedy."
"Tragedy." Nanya savoured those words. She wrote them onto her fractured, flawless soul.
"Indeed. It's not the maiden's fault for wanting to be loved, for wanting to feel good enough. It's all this twat of a hero's fault for being a needy, self-entitled, pathetic little boy."
"You are the boy! For we are more than good enough. We are the best!"
"I thought this was the tale of a fictional maiden?"
"It is!" Nanya said, then fell silent. The evening sun had set, and it was a crow's flight into the night. The stars gleamed ceremoniously in the sky, shining a soft radiance.
Like the tender lake streams, the moments flowed with not a hint of mercy as Nanya imagined herself in another man's embrace. In her hero's strong arms.
So many moons ago had she found her heart and lost it on the same day. The insults, the inadequacy. Her absent parents and doting yet traditional elder brothers.
She imagined the excruciating days passing; all the waiting and worrying had bore that rotten fruit. And she dreamt herself falling, swallowed by a murky pit of doubt. Of loathing. Of insecurity.
But she was in Ziyou Yung's arms, not the hero's. They were dirty, weak, and scrawny. And it felt oh so utterly delightful.
Thus the time flowed once more. The same gentle speed, but Nanya could hardly feel it pass. Her jingqi settled deep in her navel palace dantian as Ziyou Yung's warm hug scorched her mind. The zhenqi roiled with joy. With liberation.
Neither spoke, but the silence was comforting. Nanya would remember this day until the world mourned her immortal charm.
She wished to stay like this forever.
But her newest servant finally kept his promise. He began wooing her.
Yung's hands moved up, lightly brushing away a golden lock of hair from her face. He touched her chin, gazed into her eyes, and tilted her head ever so slightly up.
"Reject me. This is your last chance." The boy said with a grin, how audaciously daring his dreams were.
He fell silent, his words replaced by the intoxicating dance of their virgin lips. With a sensual urgency, he claimed her untouched yin in a deep, deep kiss that was a heady mix of spice and desire. He lingered there for moments that felt like eternity, staking his claim yet leaving her yearning for more. Then, in a crescendo of seduction, he drew back, leaving behind the tantalizing promise of his tongue.
"We had saved our chastity for all our lives. For our beloved fiancé. Our dearest childhood friend." She spoke, feeling the tears trickle down her face. It was a farewell to a love she would never feel again, "But he is now bedding other women."
"It's not your fault," Ziyou Yung murmured, capturing her lips once more, this time with a gentleness that belied the raw intensity of his previous kiss. His coarse lips left a mark on her tender red ones, a sweet sting she found herself craving. Boldly, her tongue ventured into his enticingly pungent mouth, claiming it as her own in a silent assertion of possession.
"What ever shall we do? Why have you made us sin, you creature of most vulgar nature? Now our beauty is soiled. Oh how we mourn our virtue." She hugged his neck, feeling the pleasure of xinqi coursing through her spine, and kissed her servant harder. "What shall you do, you wicked servant that corrupts us? Why does my conscience not cry?"
Ziyou Yung separated their entwined tongues, nicking his lips on her fangs. It didn't cut, and the sharp bite felt oddly arousing. The boy grinned, "Maybe listen to it?"
"Ah." The jingqi raged, as did her primordial yin. It entered her body through her tongue and dove down her spine to her most sacred spot. It built, refined, furnished, and gushed.
"We feel strange," Nanya's eyes glossed over, and her face blushed a deep red. Tears gathered in her eyes, and her nails dug into Ziyou Yung's clothes. Never in her life had she felt so strange. So desired! "No… ah!"
"Ahem." Came a shy voice. It coughed, and the doors rattled with the rude intrusion of an Azure gale vulpine.
Ziyou Yung's heart jumped in his chest, but Nanya grabbed his sleeves and sucked him in. Her seat upon his lap felt cold, and dampness spread where Nanya's thighs straddled his pelvis. The vixen didn't stop; she pushed him down and ravaged his mouth like today would be her last day to live.
Ignored, Su Yafeng stood by the door awkwardly. She coughed again, trying to get her lady's attention.
"Nanya, wait! Not in public—ugh!" The boy's desire waned. Unacceptable!
"M-M'lady, please. The matriarch is going to kill me!"
Nanya paid her maid no heed. She did not feel guilty anymore. Her jingqi flooded the bed, and she moaned out the most pleasurable sensation she had ever felt in her life.
"What the—" Ziyou Yung recoiled. Nanya tightened her clutching legs and stretched wide, her arms reaching for the sky and knees planting deep into the mattress. Her skin shone a hot, pink, molten gold.
"MMMMMMhhhhphhhhhhhhahnyaaaaaa~"
Her delicate nose elongated into a snout. She gasped, her human ears receding behind the newly grown golden fur. Her limbs shrunk and bent into a weird angle. Her palms morphed into paws, as did her feet.
Ten seconds later, an adorable golden fox was sitting on Ziyou Yung's chest, licking his face incessantly.
"Listen to us, then speak!" Nanya removed her fingers from the boy's palms and cupped his surprisingly bouncy cheeks, pressing them together, "This is about some person else; a fair maiden of an unsung story we admire reverently, and not us. Are we clear?"
"Ah, sure."
"This fair maiden, oh so beautiful she is under the moonlight; how many a great man fell at the sight of her succulent lips and the heavenly sway of her hips. Yet she rejected them all."
"…"
"For she waited, for a hundred years and beyond, for her soulmate to return. Indeed, she awaited her valiant champion. Her hero."
Ziyou Yung cringed at the term soulmate. In his dreams, the boy wondered if it was just a coincidence that she was spouting the same soulmate narrative as Youjin Chao.
Nanya carried on with her melancholic melody.
Ziyou Yung listened with bated breath.
"He did return, yet with more brides of his own. He was the conqueror of clans, the slayer of devils. His name resounded far and wide across the Coiling zenith continent, and tales of his deeds crossed the oceans faster than the last starlight of the night."
"Sounds like a swell guy."
"Oh how her brave saved billions from the tyranny of dark sects; how he freed lost planes, hidden beyond the void to the clutches of the foreign gods. He ascended to spirit severing, then spirit assimilating in both lingqi and yuanqi. He is the golden son of the fates, the daochild of the age. And oh how he returned to his beloved childhood friend to keep a promise of unity despite time and tragedy. Despite having tasted other women."
"I'm hearing a but."
"But! When our fair maiden rejected her corrupted brave's sullied soul, he blamed her selfishness, her egomania! His other wives mocked the maiden a needy harlot. And such did the world, the masses, and even the heavens. Is the fair maiden wrong? Was she truly not enough to satisfy her one true hero?"
Nanya tried her hardest not to break down weeping, "Why… why would he not return alone? Why would he flaunt his defiled flesh and innocence, the touch he shared with other women—other cocottes—at our maiden's angelic face? So pure she is, so innocent her sin. Why do you men do this?"
"Uhh, I believe infidelity is a gender neutral thing—"
"Would you not do the same if you had the chance, oh new servant? Would you not want a blossom so divine as we, plucked in one hand," Nanya squeezed her servant's right cheek, "And perhaps a beauty of another kind in your other? Say, the wait maiden of this establishment who stalks your room night after night?" She squeezed his left cheek. A bit harder.
"She does what?!" Ziyou Yung lisped through his kneaded lips.
"Touch your heart and tell us, for we wish to know! Would you not seize it if you had the chance, to deflower as many fairies as your filthy mind wished. With their wholehearted love and unabashed acceptance?"
Ziyou Yung gulped.
Nanya could see his daydreams playing with the idea. Her golden eyes were unmoving, her fang biting into her lips and her brows trembling. She forgot her breath, ignored her guilt, and tightened her embracing legs around Ziyou Yung's hips. She asked the most crucial question, "Would you not want a harem?"
"Jesus fucking Christ and all good things Moira stands for, HELL NO!" The answer was immediate, without the slightest hint of hesitation. His spittle flew and spluttered on Nanya's face, giving her another rush of jingqi.
She was offended at how good it felt.
She was satisfied at how vehement his denial was.
She was mortified, fearing that by some arcane art, Ziyou Yung's dreams were lying to her.
So she screamed out her deepest protest, "Why would you not?" Her eyes glared defiantly. "How could you not? Is it not a true man to take what he desires? To have it all without ever losing someone precious to him?"
"First of all, I don't desire that." Ziyou Yung removed her hands from his cheeks with a jerk, saying, " I don't know about other men. And second, this imaginary male you speak of sounds like a coward who can't even commit to a single person."
"Nonsense! If he can master all the beauties under the heavens, why would he settle for anything less? Would it not be our fair maiden's absolute delight to give herself willingly to the singular best man in all of existence?"
Ziyou Yung shivered. The madlander boy was visibly shocked at, once again, finding the eerie parallel between her and the Youjin boy's beliefs.
He did not like that; Nanya saw such as clear as day. He didn't like that one bit. And Nanya adored how much he did not like that.
"By Gaia, no. No. NO!" The boy's denial got more extreme, "That is the stupidest—sorry. But that sounds terrible. Will those girls really be happy sharing a husband? I don't mean if they are supposed to be happy according to society or tradition, but would they be true to the word, happy? Touch your heart as I did mine and speak the truth. Would you be happy sharing?"
Nanya seethed, then boiled, steams of yuanqi leaving her flustered face. She wrestled with what was proper, fought with her inner voice, and lost horribly. The vixen could not find it in her heart to deceive herself, to deceive this strangely kind boy with half-hearted lies. She exhaled, settling into a frigid stillness.
"No way. He should have been ours!"
"I don't like sharing," Yung said, "And I don't like to be shared, even if most men might. That would mean my partner doesn't value me enough. That she's fine with whatever I do. That she doesn't care. And that is a huge problem."
"Pray tell." Nanya hoped he would. She hoped his honeyed mouth would never stop moving, that they would keep telling her that her feelings, for which she had felt utterly guilty for so long, ridiculed as petty and selfish by those her equal, were not wrong!
"If you want emotional and physical exclusivity from your many partners, but refuse to offer the same exclusivity in return to any of them, what does that say about you?"
"That the hero is too ambitious to be tied down by one mere mate?" So she replied, but even she didn't believe it. Something was changing in her heart, but she couldn't tell what.
"Christ, no. It means he is a weakling, a coward, and a slippery snake."
"Your voice suggests envy. It is revolting."
"I'm not jealous!" Yung exclaimed before speaking through a sad smile, "Listen here. You have these 'heroes' who assert they're too superior to settle for a single girl. That they simply can't 'help themselves' when they grow weary of the same fair woman, claiming it's merely their nature. That they just can't resist.
"They're deluding themselves! You see, Nyanya, these insignificant individuals are what I classify as narcissists. They've built an inflated self-image that requires constant affirmation from the words of others. They want to ascertain a certain something, at all costs." Ziyou Yung said, as his daydreams recalled a concept called "viral Youtube videos" of narcissistic people getting rejected in the most harmless ways and going absolutely mad.
"Then what ever is this elusive matter the narcissists would desire to ascertain?"
"That the world revolves around them. This baseless belief that, they are better than normal men. They deserve more and ought to give less. It is their heaven-mandated right to poise others to act according to their expectations. Meaning not only must they believe all their delusional crap, but others must too. But when others don't, they react violently, losing control of their actions and emotions."
Nanya put two and two together and squirmed in Ziyou Yung's arms, trying to get out and point at him, "You speak of us! This better not have been an elaborate scheme to critique our lovely reactions. Such a distasteful individual you are."
"No, no, okay. It's good that you see the parallels between yourself and this destructive narcissist of a hero who cheated on you."
"It is not we!"
"Oh, right. Okay, 'not you.' But I think your narcissism is merely over-exposed confidence in your looks. And see now; you're engaging in a long debate with me about the issue. You're trying to work things out in a healthy, organic manner. This 'fictional hero', on the other hand, is the opposite."
"How so, oh clever-tongued servant?"
"He runs from rejection. He fears his self-image might be false, so he covers his ears and surrounds himself with only those who will say yes."
"Such as his cocottes?"
"Exactly like those brainless harem bitches! And then he tries to force people who say otherwise to adhere to his selfish opinions like they should be a given. Like it's common sense, and you're the one who's crazy for not thinking that. Especially so if the naysayer is someone whose opinion he truly cares about; not care as in respect as an equal, but care as in he is the party who sets the terms in the relationship. He might manipulate them emotionally, such as making the maiden feel bad about her choice, body, and beauty. First covertly, then overtly."
"…. Truly so?" Nanya was shocked. It was as though Ziyou Yung was there when the tragic events had happened!
"Yeah. This fictional maiden may think the fault lies with her, but it's actually the douchebag manipulating her gentle heart. Suddenly, her not forgiving his infidelity is the maiden's fault. 'Oh, she is so selfish, so egoistic!' The maiden will first second guess herself, because indeed her entire worldview had collapsed. If things are allowed to continue for too long, this hero might even feel confident enough to physically abuse and exploit this fair maiden, whose faith in her own judgements wane day by day. Worse yet, rather than stand up for herself, she might eventually buy into this hero's narrative and lose faith in her own worth as a graceful maiden with independent thought. Because to rebel is to be hurt, and surrendering is so much easier. That…. would be the greatest tragedy."
"Tragedy." Nanya savoured those words. She wrote them onto her fractured, flawless soul.
"Indeed. It's not the maiden's fault for wanting to be loved, for wanting to feel good enough. It's all this twat of a hero's fault for being a needy, self-entitled, pathetic little boy."
"You are the boy! For we are more than good enough. We are the best!"
"I thought this was the tale of a fictional maiden?"
"It is!" Nanya said, then fell silent. The evening sun had set, and it was a crow's flight into the night. The stars gleamed ceremoniously in the sky, shining a soft radiance.
Like the tender lake streams, the moments flowed with not a hint of mercy as Nanya imagined herself in another man's embrace. In her hero's strong arms.
So many moons ago had she found her heart and lost it on the same day. The insults, the inadequacy. Her absent parents and doting yet traditional elder brothers.
She imagined the excruciating days passing; all the waiting and worrying had bore that rotten fruit. And she dreamt herself falling, swallowed by a murky pit of doubt. Of loathing. Of insecurity.
But she was in Ziyou Yung's arms, not the hero's. They were dirty, weak, and scrawny. And it felt oh so utterly delightful.
Thus the time flowed once more. The same gentle speed, but Nanya could hardly feel it pass. Her jingqi settled deep in her navel palace dantian as Ziyou Yung's warm hug scorched her mind. The zhenqi roiled with joy. With liberation.
Neither spoke, but the silence was comforting. Nanya would remember this day until the world mourned her immortal charm.
She wished to stay like this forever.
But her newest servant finally kept his promise. He began wooing her.
Yung's hands moved up, lightly brushing away a golden lock of hair from her face. He touched her chin, gazed into her eyes, and tilted her head ever so slightly up.
"Reject me. This is your last chance." The boy said with a grin, how audaciously daring his dreams were.
He fell silent, his words replaced by the intoxicating dance of their virgin lips. With a sensual urgency, he claimed her untouched yin in a deep, deep kiss that was a heady mix of spice and desire. He lingered there for moments that felt like eternity, staking his claim yet leaving her yearning for more. Then, in a crescendo of seduction, he drew back, leaving behind the tantalizing promise of his tongue.
"We had saved our chastity for all our lives. For our beloved fiancé. Our dearest childhood friend." She spoke, feeling the tears trickle down her face. It was a farewell to a love she would never feel again, "But he is now bedding other women."
"It's not your fault," Ziyou Yung murmured, capturing her lips once more, this time with a gentleness that belied the raw intensity of his previous kiss. His coarse lips left a mark on her tender red ones, a sweet sting she found herself craving. Boldly, her tongue ventured into his enticingly pungent mouth, claiming it as her own in a silent assertion of possession.
"What ever shall we do? Why have you made us sin, you creature of most vulgar nature? Now our beauty is soiled. Oh how we mourn our virtue." She hugged his neck, feeling the pleasure of xinqi coursing through her spine, and kissed her servant harder. "What shall you do, you wicked servant that corrupts us? Why does my conscience not cry?"
Ziyou Yung separated their entwined tongues, nicking his lips on her fangs. It didn't cut, and the sharp bite felt oddly arousing. The boy grinned, "Maybe listen to it?"
"Ah." The jingqi raged, as did her primordial yin. It entered her body through her tongue and dove down her spine to her most sacred spot. It built, refined, furnished, and gushed.
"We feel strange," Nanya's eyes glossed over, and her face blushed a deep red. Tears gathered in her eyes, and her nails dug into Ziyou Yung's clothes. Never in her life had she felt so strange. So desired! "No… ah!"
"Ahem." Came a shy voice. It coughed, and the doors rattled with the rude intrusion of an Azure gale vulpine.
Ziyou Yung's heart jumped in his chest, but Nanya grabbed his sleeves and sucked him in. Her seat upon his lap felt cold, and dampness spread where Nanya's thighs straddled his pelvis. The vixen didn't stop; she pushed him down and ravaged his mouth like today would be her last day to live.
Ignored, Su Yafeng stood by the door awkwardly. She coughed again, trying to get her lady's attention.
"Nanya, wait! Not in public—ugh!" The boy's desire waned. Unacceptable!
"M-M'lady, please. The matriarch is going to kill me!"
Nanya paid her maid no heed. She did not feel guilty anymore. Her jingqi flooded the bed, and she moaned out the most pleasurable sensation she had ever felt in her life.
"What the—" Ziyou Yung recoiled. Nanya tightened her clutching legs and stretched wide, her arms reaching for the sky and knees planting deep into the mattress. Her skin shone a hot, pink, molten gold.
"MMMMMMhhhhphhhhhhhhahnyaaaaaa~"
Her delicate nose elongated into a snout. She gasped, her human ears receding behind the newly grown golden fur. Her limbs shrunk and bent into a weird angle. Her palms morphed into paws, as did her feet.
Ten seconds later, an adorable golden fox was sitting on Ziyou Yung's chest, licking his face incessantly.
Chapter 37 - A fox is a man's best friend
Nanya successfully broke through to the 12th stage of body refinement. But she hadn't had enough of her servant's qi yet.
"We demand more!" Her voice was squeaky, her eyes were scorched.
"M'lady… you messed up." Su Yafeng said with relief. "Come, you can get back to rebellious behaviours later. Please calm the Matriarch's fury first. And next time, use the pingtian grade warding talismans."
The maid picked up the fox Nanya, the adorable vixen chirping and squirming.
"Release us!" Fox Nanya bit Yafeng's hand to no avail. "We shall bite you!"
Su Yafeng gave Ziyou Yung a knowing look. Nanya bit the maid again.
The madlander boyfriend blushed, "I-I-I-I…." He bounced up like a plank, "I'sGottaGoSilkyWhereIsSilkyAhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
He dashed out of the room once more, exactly as he had this morning. However, the circumstances that framed his departure were a stark contrast, as if the day and night themselves had swapped roles.
***
Yung crashed down the stairs and kicked the door to his newly assigned sleep quarters open. He felt like his heart was about to burst.
"Silky!"
The critter flew out of his dantian. He grabbed the foxmoth and placed it outside the door,
"Go play with Floofy!"
Then slammed it close.
"Oh god!"
Yung clutched his trembling hands.
"I groped her boobs!"
His knees wobbled weakly.
"Jesus Christ!"
Then he touched his lips, nicked by Nanya's fangs. He touched his pants. It was damp, where the vixen had straddled Yung like a constricting boa. The wetness had a sweet, tangy aroma.
Like strawberries and grapes.
"Holy shit!"
The shock of what had transpired hit Yung like a tsunami.
"That was my first… first kiss!"
He collapsed on the floor, punching it with bravado.
"Awesome!"
Then he jumped onto the bed, shaking the pain away from the bruised knuckle.
"Oh god. Moira. Gaia. Mum! I kissed a girl!"
He rolled around, hugging his body, squealing like the teen he was.
"A girl kissed me!"
He ran to the window and opened it, screaming,
"I KISS—"
He closed the window.
"—ssed a girl. Om in! Om out… We snuggled. I snuggled a girl!" He felt his raging erection refusing to stay in his pants despite his meditative humming. "I-I gotta do my assignments. Wait, no. Miss Yafeng and Nanya always spy on me. I can't do my assig—I need a cold shower!"
Yung felt like his head would pop like a cork, and his heart would crawl out of his neck, dancing to Can't help falling in Love.
"Nyanya…" Yung muttered, weak, "She's so cute." It was funny how a simple kiss completely set possibility into certainty. He never imagined that with one sensual touch, the way he saw the fox maiden had transformed from merely a crush to…
To…
To liking Su Nanya—a lot. Was he that easy? Yung shook his head. He was definitely in love!
"Kissing her wasn't part of the plan." He remembered Jung's tactics: "I… need to ask her out on a date!"
***
Yung woke up before the sun, feeling hot and refreshed. A quick delve into his sea of consciousness revealed why.
"I broke through?"
The zhenqi lake had expanded by a fold, and he was officially in the 4th stage of the faith refining realm—no longer an early stage novice but a median stage one.
"I-is this what the extreme yin thing was about?" Yung grinned, then left the illuminated yet dark sea. His regular zhenqi conversion rate, even with the superior foxfire creek heart sutra, was barely one in a hundred thousand. But after a short time making out with Nanya, that rate shot through the heavens.
"Awesome," Yung laughed, then blinked, "I kissed a girl. Ehehehehehe."
He rubbed his teeth with a coal branch and gurgled with salt water. He combed his hair, then checked if his curly cow lick stayed in place. It didn't.
He stretched out his best pair of clothes, which was basically a Youjin garb courtesy of the hotel. Then he stretched his arms and howled. And snickered. And giggled.
The short boy did a power pose and bounced around. Like his bed hair, the spring in his steps would not go away.
Knock! Knock!
"Who is it?" He asked, hurriedly forcing a composure.
"It's me, lad." Ziyou Maque's voice came through.
Yung opened the door, only to find the corridor filled up with Ziyou Maque, Ziyou Ling, Elder Gangkai, Youjin Chun, and a dozen other unfamiliar people. They were radiating a threatening aura filled with bloodlust and excitement.
He tilted his head in confusion. Yung didn't feel threatened with Su Yafeng in the building, but who were these people?
"Good morning," Youjin Chun offered, and there was a "Sup!" from Ziyou Ling. Youjin Gangkai merely grunted.
"Sorry to bother ye this early in the morn'." Said the Free Sparrow gang leader. He was all bandaged up like a mummy and stood with a limp. But seeing him well enough not to carry a crutch around after so many days was a welcome sight. "We gotta discuss the foxmoth hunt."
"Oh shit!" Yung said. I forgot about that, with Nanya and all…. I kissed her. Ehehee!
"Kii!"
No Silky, I didn't suffer qi deviation. It's the opposite!
Yung shook his head to get the previous night's events out (for now) and said, "I don't think these many folks will fit in my room." He glanced at the strangers, "Hi?"
"Hello!"
"Well met."
"Cheers!"
A chorus of welcoming words came back. Yung gulped. These people had eyes filled with unfiltered greed; the Empathic links did not lie.
"It be fine, Young Yung. Care for breakfast? We'll talk in the restaurant." Ziyou Maque assured. Ziyou Ling and Youjin Chun were glaring at each other. Elder Gangkai fiddled with his wine gourd. The twelve-odd mean-looking fellas grinned.
"Cool, cool cool." Yung was feeling mighty hungry, "Let's go then. But, umm, they are…?"
"These fine folks," Ziyou Maque did the self-introductions, "are from the Dark star mercenaries. A group of fiendhunters, adventurers, and mercenaries renowned for their prowess in the Warring twilight region." Ziyou Maque said, "Their leader is a houtian 3rd realm powerhouse, and she's quite interested in this sound transmission token you've made. They took on the mission Youjin Liu put out."
"Oh, yeah…" I forgot about that too. Which reminds me, I also need to look into how the Youjin clan can edit captured footage in jade slips. "I heard there was a stigmata building realm mercenary too who came? Is he with you guys? I got this from the auction house recently." Yung showed the pink heart ring, and the dozen strangers visibly cringed, shying away.
"Ah, so you were the one who bought this nasty thing. Be careful with it, or your life and reputation will be over." One of the mercenaries said, "That man isn't part of our group. He bolted yesterday night, no doubt with a sack full of spirit stones from the auction house."
Huh? Was I fleeced? Yung thought it over as they made their way down the stairs. The ring constantly drained his xinqi for supposedly no purpose, but with the deluge of worship aimed at his totem every moment, the drain helped him.
He spotted the female wait staff who usually got his food, the girl acting innocently nonchalant, looking away. He read her Empathic link and paled. Scary! Never judge a book by its cover.
Then he saw Su Yafeng coming down from the opposite set of stairs leading up.
"Miss Yafeng." Yung greeted with no small amount of embarrassment.
"Ziyou Yung," She greeted back and curtsied, "If you could follow me for a second."
Yung froze, then looked at Ziyou Maque.
The gang leader sighed before saying, "We'll be waiting downstairs. Take yer time. Can't leave the Fox clan waitin'."
The others nodded too, but the mercenary group's Empathic links read an average of fear, reluctance, and wariness.
Youjin Chun opened her mouth to speak but closed it again.
"I-I'll be right back."
With that, they slowly climbed up. Su Yafeng in front, Yung behind. The boy subconsciously tried to make himself as small as possible.
Wait, why should I?
He straightened his back, puffing his chest out. The maid turned around, staring.
Yung tried not to slump again and asked, "W-What is it?"
Su Yafeng said nothing. There was a strange aura. Not threatening, but not welcoming either. Her link read utter confusion.
Huh.
"You broke through…."
Yung breathed loudly through his nose, face red like a tomato. He mumbled a question, "W-was that h-her jingqi?"
"Perhaps." She didn't confirm nor deny. The maid resumed climbing.
The silence lasted until they reached Su Nanya's queen's suit.
"Do not lie to her. Ever." The maid said, hands clasping the door handles. "Promise?"
Yung was confused but knew he could only answer in one way.
"You have my word."
"Good," With that, she opened the gates to the sacred castle, and Yung walked it.
Only to find no one there.
"Under the bed," Su Yafeng said.
Yung tiptoed inside the newly furnished room. It was amazing how quickly the hotel staff replaced all the furniture Su Nanya had broken with her tantrums. She is paying though, right?
Yung crouched and saw a human-sized burrito shivering like a spring under the bed.
What is it with the Su fox clan and hiding under beds after wrapping themselves up?
"Nyanya?"
"Eek!" Came out a cute exclamation.
"Eek?" Yung repeated.
The burrito stopped trembling, and a fox tail stuck out, followed by a pretty face.
"So the time has come." She asked tearfully, "Have you come to ravage us?"
"What? No!" Yung denied, "Maybe? What do you mean? You don't wanna see me?"
"Do not twist our words!" Su Nanya said, quickly crawling out and grasping his hand in a death grip.
Yung released a sigh of relief.
"Our jingqi is engaged to yours." Su Nanya whispered, raising Yung's heartbeat, "Yet we shall not accept you." The fox girl had an uncertain look on her face. But her Empathic link read guilt and… and pleasure? Adoration? What?
She likes me! No… Does she? She has to! Stupid Empathic links sending me mixed signals.
Yung screamed internally but didn't interrupt the girl.
"Yet," Her tiny lips mouthed, "our hearts cannot bear to reject you."
Phew!
"For if we did, then would you not be dishonest in your bid to woo us?" She asked, eyes upturned.
"If you rejected me, then I'd… I don't know. Be sad? Move on? I can't imagine wasting time on a woman without a chance of a committed relationship."
"We concur wholeheartedly! But not on you moving on. You are forbidden from such blasphemy." She tightened her grip around his palms; ouch. "Are we clear? We henceforth neither reject nor accept you… okay? We unaccept and unreject you!"
Does she mean she will string me along as a backup option? Or not? An ambiguous more than friends less than lovers relationship….where we kiss?
Yung sat up straight and asked, "That sounds kinda sexy…."
"It most certainly does not. We command you, henceforth, to refrain from describing our affairs in such a deplorably coarse manner!"
"Then how should I define it?"
Su Nanya went quiet. She looked at him with those fox eyes, examining his every imperfection. A warm, tingly feeling spread from their clasped hands and raised goosebumps on Yung's skin.
"Cultivation." Su Nanya said, nodding as if to assure herself. "How could one such low… we mean…. Blemished nose….my, how tricky…" She stopped. Deep in thought to find the right words.
Yung smiled. The vixen took what he had said about hurtful words to heart. That was great! Their relationship already had working boundaries. She respected his lines, so he would always respect hers.
Su Nanya thought it over and started out confident, articulating her flawless logic, "How could one with such a low cultivation base ever be our equal? Nay, we stand far above. Hence, from hereafter, the new servant is none but our… jingqi… partner." Her voice grew as quiet as a mosquito's buzzing by the time she stopped.
"Sex friends?" Yung's eyes were as round as circles. Jesus Christ. "Fuck buddies?"
Su Nanya bristled, "Hush, you unrefined being!" and covered his mouth. "We mean no such thing. We merely claim that while we do reject you from ever having our hand in marriage, we unreject your honest devotion to us, in… in complementing us in our path of cultivation."
That means the same damn thing! Yung roared, his heart beating like drums. But I'll take it!
"Exclusive jingqi partners." He said.
Su Nanya flinched, then pouted, "What ever do you mean?"
"Either I am your exclusive partner in the path of," Yung held in a snicker, much to Su Nanya's dismay, "dual cultivation—"
"Normal cultivation!"
"—normal cultivation, where we exchange jingqi. Or it's not worth it."
"We are not worth it?" Su Nanya gaped as though hearing the most sinful words ever uttered. Her face blanched, looking like she'd been betrayed.
"I mean, devoting my life to pursue you won't be worth your time," Yung explained slowly, "Or mine."
"Oho, well spoken." Su Nanya exhaled, and her stiff shoulders relaxed.
Yung continued shyly, "You can't do the things we do with anyone else, okay? L-Like yesterday."
Su Nanya let go of his hand and blushed. Yung hugged her, and she yelped but settled in the embrace without struggle.
"Deal?"
"We… we…"
"I don't want to share you with anyone. Not your fiancé, not some other guy with whatever yang body types. Not. Ever! At least when it comes to exclusive physical intimacy."
"We unreject it."
"Say it clearly."
"We…. Accept."
Yay! Yung's heart cheered like it had won the lottery. It had. He had! First goal secured. Now for the clincher.
"That's awesome! I love you." He didn't give her time to rest. He put his cheek on her's and started rubbing against it madly.
"Eeeeeeek!"
"I mean, I enjoy exchanging jingqi with you."
"V-Very well. You may proceed." Su Nanya squirmed in his arms, then closed her eyes and stuck her lips up.
Yung was tempted to give in. But a good foundation was the basis of healthy relationships. He needed to Mirandize his intimacy needs, relationship goals, and future expectations in clear, kind, non-needy words.
"But there's one more thing."
"Scoundrel! We knew it. You merely wished to use us for your ends." The vixen pushed against his chest.
"I also want to be your friend."
Su Nanya lost balance and almost clawed his skin out. Yung's new robe was ripped where she had scratched, but he wasn't injured.
"Friends? As in, that 'Girlfriend' notion the new servant had proclaimed, which meant us to be your lover? We shall not give you such benefits!"
This lewd girl actually wants to be friends with benefits with me, right?! Right? Right! Yung had trouble understanding Su Nanya's thought patterns. Why does every phrase this girl utters drip sexual innuendo? Indeed a divine talent.
"Friends," Yung said, "as in, I want our uniquely personal relationship to be grounded in unselfish support for each other's needs, well-being, and interests. I want it to be voluntary, where I am a friend for your sake and you for mine. If that involves some degree of intimacy, emotional or physical, then so be it."
"Friends." Su Nanya savoured the words as though she was licking a sweet sugary lozenge, and mouthed, "Perchance, my comrade? Ally. Companion?"
Yung nodded. "I want to start as friends that can talk to each other about anything and everything without feeling the need to play mind games or be defensive. A conversation partner. Someone I can feel comfortable depending on, and who feels the same for me. Whether in times of happiness or sorrow."
"We demand more!" Her voice was squeaky, her eyes were scorched.
"M'lady… you messed up." Su Yafeng said with relief. "Come, you can get back to rebellious behaviours later. Please calm the Matriarch's fury first. And next time, use the pingtian grade warding talismans."
The maid picked up the fox Nanya, the adorable vixen chirping and squirming.
"Release us!" Fox Nanya bit Yafeng's hand to no avail. "We shall bite you!"
Su Yafeng gave Ziyou Yung a knowing look. Nanya bit the maid again.
The madlander boyfriend blushed, "I-I-I-I…." He bounced up like a plank, "I'sGottaGoSilkyWhereIsSilkyAhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
He dashed out of the room once more, exactly as he had this morning. However, the circumstances that framed his departure were a stark contrast, as if the day and night themselves had swapped roles.
***
Yung crashed down the stairs and kicked the door to his newly assigned sleep quarters open. He felt like his heart was about to burst.
"Silky!"
The critter flew out of his dantian. He grabbed the foxmoth and placed it outside the door,
"Go play with Floofy!"
Then slammed it close.
"Oh god!"
Yung clutched his trembling hands.
"I groped her boobs!"
His knees wobbled weakly.
"Jesus Christ!"
Then he touched his lips, nicked by Nanya's fangs. He touched his pants. It was damp, where the vixen had straddled Yung like a constricting boa. The wetness had a sweet, tangy aroma.
Like strawberries and grapes.
"Holy shit!"
The shock of what had transpired hit Yung like a tsunami.
"That was my first… first kiss!"
He collapsed on the floor, punching it with bravado.
"Awesome!"
Then he jumped onto the bed, shaking the pain away from the bruised knuckle.
"Oh god. Moira. Gaia. Mum! I kissed a girl!"
He rolled around, hugging his body, squealing like the teen he was.
"A girl kissed me!"
He ran to the window and opened it, screaming,
"I KISS—"
He closed the window.
"—ssed a girl. Om in! Om out… We snuggled. I snuggled a girl!" He felt his raging erection refusing to stay in his pants despite his meditative humming. "I-I gotta do my assignments. Wait, no. Miss Yafeng and Nanya always spy on me. I can't do my assig—I need a cold shower!"
Yung felt like his head would pop like a cork, and his heart would crawl out of his neck, dancing to Can't help falling in Love.
"Nyanya…" Yung muttered, weak, "She's so cute." It was funny how a simple kiss completely set possibility into certainty. He never imagined that with one sensual touch, the way he saw the fox maiden had transformed from merely a crush to…
To…
To liking Su Nanya—a lot. Was he that easy? Yung shook his head. He was definitely in love!
"Kissing her wasn't part of the plan." He remembered Jung's tactics: "I… need to ask her out on a date!"
***
Yung woke up before the sun, feeling hot and refreshed. A quick delve into his sea of consciousness revealed why.
"I broke through?"
The zhenqi lake had expanded by a fold, and he was officially in the 4th stage of the faith refining realm—no longer an early stage novice but a median stage one.
"I-is this what the extreme yin thing was about?" Yung grinned, then left the illuminated yet dark sea. His regular zhenqi conversion rate, even with the superior foxfire creek heart sutra, was barely one in a hundred thousand. But after a short time making out with Nanya, that rate shot through the heavens.
"Awesome," Yung laughed, then blinked, "I kissed a girl. Ehehehehehe."
He rubbed his teeth with a coal branch and gurgled with salt water. He combed his hair, then checked if his curly cow lick stayed in place. It didn't.
He stretched out his best pair of clothes, which was basically a Youjin garb courtesy of the hotel. Then he stretched his arms and howled. And snickered. And giggled.
The short boy did a power pose and bounced around. Like his bed hair, the spring in his steps would not go away.
Knock! Knock!
"Who is it?" He asked, hurriedly forcing a composure.
"It's me, lad." Ziyou Maque's voice came through.
Yung opened the door, only to find the corridor filled up with Ziyou Maque, Ziyou Ling, Elder Gangkai, Youjin Chun, and a dozen other unfamiliar people. They were radiating a threatening aura filled with bloodlust and excitement.
He tilted his head in confusion. Yung didn't feel threatened with Su Yafeng in the building, but who were these people?
"Good morning," Youjin Chun offered, and there was a "Sup!" from Ziyou Ling. Youjin Gangkai merely grunted.
"Sorry to bother ye this early in the morn'." Said the Free Sparrow gang leader. He was all bandaged up like a mummy and stood with a limp. But seeing him well enough not to carry a crutch around after so many days was a welcome sight. "We gotta discuss the foxmoth hunt."
"Oh shit!" Yung said. I forgot about that, with Nanya and all…. I kissed her. Ehehee!
"Kii!"
No Silky, I didn't suffer qi deviation. It's the opposite!
Yung shook his head to get the previous night's events out (for now) and said, "I don't think these many folks will fit in my room." He glanced at the strangers, "Hi?"
"Hello!"
"Well met."
"Cheers!"
A chorus of welcoming words came back. Yung gulped. These people had eyes filled with unfiltered greed; the Empathic links did not lie.
"It be fine, Young Yung. Care for breakfast? We'll talk in the restaurant." Ziyou Maque assured. Ziyou Ling and Youjin Chun were glaring at each other. Elder Gangkai fiddled with his wine gourd. The twelve-odd mean-looking fellas grinned.
"Cool, cool cool." Yung was feeling mighty hungry, "Let's go then. But, umm, they are…?"
"These fine folks," Ziyou Maque did the self-introductions, "are from the Dark star mercenaries. A group of fiendhunters, adventurers, and mercenaries renowned for their prowess in the Warring twilight region." Ziyou Maque said, "Their leader is a houtian 3rd realm powerhouse, and she's quite interested in this sound transmission token you've made. They took on the mission Youjin Liu put out."
"Oh, yeah…" I forgot about that too. Which reminds me, I also need to look into how the Youjin clan can edit captured footage in jade slips. "I heard there was a stigmata building realm mercenary too who came? Is he with you guys? I got this from the auction house recently." Yung showed the pink heart ring, and the dozen strangers visibly cringed, shying away.
"Ah, so you were the one who bought this nasty thing. Be careful with it, or your life and reputation will be over." One of the mercenaries said, "That man isn't part of our group. He bolted yesterday night, no doubt with a sack full of spirit stones from the auction house."
Huh? Was I fleeced? Yung thought it over as they made their way down the stairs. The ring constantly drained his xinqi for supposedly no purpose, but with the deluge of worship aimed at his totem every moment, the drain helped him.
He spotted the female wait staff who usually got his food, the girl acting innocently nonchalant, looking away. He read her Empathic link and paled. Scary! Never judge a book by its cover.
Then he saw Su Yafeng coming down from the opposite set of stairs leading up.
"Miss Yafeng." Yung greeted with no small amount of embarrassment.
"Ziyou Yung," She greeted back and curtsied, "If you could follow me for a second."
Yung froze, then looked at Ziyou Maque.
The gang leader sighed before saying, "We'll be waiting downstairs. Take yer time. Can't leave the Fox clan waitin'."
The others nodded too, but the mercenary group's Empathic links read an average of fear, reluctance, and wariness.
Youjin Chun opened her mouth to speak but closed it again.
"I-I'll be right back."
With that, they slowly climbed up. Su Yafeng in front, Yung behind. The boy subconsciously tried to make himself as small as possible.
Wait, why should I?
He straightened his back, puffing his chest out. The maid turned around, staring.
Yung tried not to slump again and asked, "W-What is it?"
Su Yafeng said nothing. There was a strange aura. Not threatening, but not welcoming either. Her link read utter confusion.
Huh.
"You broke through…."
Yung breathed loudly through his nose, face red like a tomato. He mumbled a question, "W-was that h-her jingqi?"
"Perhaps." She didn't confirm nor deny. The maid resumed climbing.
The silence lasted until they reached Su Nanya's queen's suit.
"Do not lie to her. Ever." The maid said, hands clasping the door handles. "Promise?"
Yung was confused but knew he could only answer in one way.
"You have my word."
"Good," With that, she opened the gates to the sacred castle, and Yung walked it.
Only to find no one there.
"Under the bed," Su Yafeng said.
Yung tiptoed inside the newly furnished room. It was amazing how quickly the hotel staff replaced all the furniture Su Nanya had broken with her tantrums. She is paying though, right?
Yung crouched and saw a human-sized burrito shivering like a spring under the bed.
What is it with the Su fox clan and hiding under beds after wrapping themselves up?
"Nyanya?"
"Eek!" Came out a cute exclamation.
"Eek?" Yung repeated.
The burrito stopped trembling, and a fox tail stuck out, followed by a pretty face.
"So the time has come." She asked tearfully, "Have you come to ravage us?"
"What? No!" Yung denied, "Maybe? What do you mean? You don't wanna see me?"
"Do not twist our words!" Su Nanya said, quickly crawling out and grasping his hand in a death grip.
Yung released a sigh of relief.
"Our jingqi is engaged to yours." Su Nanya whispered, raising Yung's heartbeat, "Yet we shall not accept you." The fox girl had an uncertain look on her face. But her Empathic link read guilt and… and pleasure? Adoration? What?
She likes me! No… Does she? She has to! Stupid Empathic links sending me mixed signals.
Yung screamed internally but didn't interrupt the girl.
"Yet," Her tiny lips mouthed, "our hearts cannot bear to reject you."
Phew!
"For if we did, then would you not be dishonest in your bid to woo us?" She asked, eyes upturned.
"If you rejected me, then I'd… I don't know. Be sad? Move on? I can't imagine wasting time on a woman without a chance of a committed relationship."
"We concur wholeheartedly! But not on you moving on. You are forbidden from such blasphemy." She tightened her grip around his palms; ouch. "Are we clear? We henceforth neither reject nor accept you… okay? We unaccept and unreject you!"
Does she mean she will string me along as a backup option? Or not? An ambiguous more than friends less than lovers relationship….where we kiss?
Yung sat up straight and asked, "That sounds kinda sexy…."
"It most certainly does not. We command you, henceforth, to refrain from describing our affairs in such a deplorably coarse manner!"
"Then how should I define it?"
Su Nanya went quiet. She looked at him with those fox eyes, examining his every imperfection. A warm, tingly feeling spread from their clasped hands and raised goosebumps on Yung's skin.
"Cultivation." Su Nanya said, nodding as if to assure herself. "How could one such low… we mean…. Blemished nose….my, how tricky…" She stopped. Deep in thought to find the right words.
Yung smiled. The vixen took what he had said about hurtful words to heart. That was great! Their relationship already had working boundaries. She respected his lines, so he would always respect hers.
Su Nanya thought it over and started out confident, articulating her flawless logic, "How could one with such a low cultivation base ever be our equal? Nay, we stand far above. Hence, from hereafter, the new servant is none but our… jingqi… partner." Her voice grew as quiet as a mosquito's buzzing by the time she stopped.
"Sex friends?" Yung's eyes were as round as circles. Jesus Christ. "Fuck buddies?"
Su Nanya bristled, "Hush, you unrefined being!" and covered his mouth. "We mean no such thing. We merely claim that while we do reject you from ever having our hand in marriage, we unreject your honest devotion to us, in… in complementing us in our path of cultivation."
That means the same damn thing! Yung roared, his heart beating like drums. But I'll take it!
"Exclusive jingqi partners." He said.
Su Nanya flinched, then pouted, "What ever do you mean?"
"Either I am your exclusive partner in the path of," Yung held in a snicker, much to Su Nanya's dismay, "dual cultivation—"
"Normal cultivation!"
"—normal cultivation, where we exchange jingqi. Or it's not worth it."
"We are not worth it?" Su Nanya gaped as though hearing the most sinful words ever uttered. Her face blanched, looking like she'd been betrayed.
"I mean, devoting my life to pursue you won't be worth your time," Yung explained slowly, "Or mine."
"Oho, well spoken." Su Nanya exhaled, and her stiff shoulders relaxed.
Yung continued shyly, "You can't do the things we do with anyone else, okay? L-Like yesterday."
Su Nanya let go of his hand and blushed. Yung hugged her, and she yelped but settled in the embrace without struggle.
"Deal?"
"We… we…"
"I don't want to share you with anyone. Not your fiancé, not some other guy with whatever yang body types. Not. Ever! At least when it comes to exclusive physical intimacy."
"We unreject it."
"Say it clearly."
"We…. Accept."
Yay! Yung's heart cheered like it had won the lottery. It had. He had! First goal secured. Now for the clincher.
"That's awesome! I love you." He didn't give her time to rest. He put his cheek on her's and started rubbing against it madly.
"Eeeeeeek!"
"I mean, I enjoy exchanging jingqi with you."
"V-Very well. You may proceed." Su Nanya squirmed in his arms, then closed her eyes and stuck her lips up.
Yung was tempted to give in. But a good foundation was the basis of healthy relationships. He needed to Mirandize his intimacy needs, relationship goals, and future expectations in clear, kind, non-needy words.
"But there's one more thing."
"Scoundrel! We knew it. You merely wished to use us for your ends." The vixen pushed against his chest.
"I also want to be your friend."
Su Nanya lost balance and almost clawed his skin out. Yung's new robe was ripped where she had scratched, but he wasn't injured.
"Friends? As in, that 'Girlfriend' notion the new servant had proclaimed, which meant us to be your lover? We shall not give you such benefits!"
This lewd girl actually wants to be friends with benefits with me, right?! Right? Right! Yung had trouble understanding Su Nanya's thought patterns. Why does every phrase this girl utters drip sexual innuendo? Indeed a divine talent.
"Friends," Yung said, "as in, I want our uniquely personal relationship to be grounded in unselfish support for each other's needs, well-being, and interests. I want it to be voluntary, where I am a friend for your sake and you for mine. If that involves some degree of intimacy, emotional or physical, then so be it."
"Friends." Su Nanya savoured the words as though she was licking a sweet sugary lozenge, and mouthed, "Perchance, my comrade? Ally. Companion?"
Yung nodded. "I want to start as friends that can talk to each other about anything and everything without feeling the need to play mind games or be defensive. A conversation partner. Someone I can feel comfortable depending on, and who feels the same for me. Whether in times of happiness or sorrow."
Chapter 38 - Am I the Baddie?
"Friends." Su Nanya repeated one last time. She mouthed the word, rolled it around, then hugged him as if satisfied.
In their tender embrace, time outside flew without care.
The sky was adorned with soft hues of pink and orange. Tranquil clouds floated lazily in the distance, their procession instilling serenity. Peeking through the rifts in their parade, the golden sunlight cast a comforting radiance upon the land, igniting a breathtaking spectacle of gold and orange.
Amidst this visual symphony, a gentle breeze stirred, threading through the air with a promise of spring. Harmonious notes of fragrant blossoms and the elusive hint of the distant ocean danced on the breeze, a tantalising combination that mirrored nature's beauty. With the arrival of dawn, this floral sea breeze carried the melodies of chirping birds, muttering ren, and howling fiends, serenading the nascent day.
Thus dawn unfolded.
The window sash silently observed the transition, bathed in the radiant shards of sunlight piercing the drifting clouds, with curtains lightly dancing to the rhythm of the serene winds. It played an impartial role, filtering only the most luminous light and gentlest gust into the room.
The dawn's heralds cast their glow on the vixen cradled in Yung's arms, transforming her into a radiant beacon of passion, glistening in the newfound day.
She smiled.
In the room faintly bathed in the golden dawn glow, she beamed a smile that was, in Yung's two lifetimes, the most breathtaking he had ever seen.
"Then it shall be so." Su Nanya's tail swayed elegantly, yet with a noble sense of enthusiasm. She gently caressed Yung's curly hair, "We shall be friends."
She held the back of his head and pulled him in. As if drawn by a magic spell, his lips met hers ever so gently.
The qi flowed. The sun shone. The clouds roiled with the playful breeze.
***
Yung stared at his face in the large silver mirror. His lips were swollen like he was doing a social media challenge for clout. Plump, like water balloons, as though they were sucked on with a vacuum cleaner.
He sighed, then applied the healing paste Su Yafeng had given him, with the hand wearing the new artefact ring Su Nanya had forced upon his left thumb. The balloon lips soon returned to normal.
The culprit, Nyanya the kissing monster, ordered her maid around with a sulky voice.
"Ugly! Change such horrid floral designs. Do you not even have a leather alternative, incompetent maid? We wish for the winds to caress our thighs."
"Ungh."
"We are paying you for services. You shall not groan."
"Unnnnngggghhhh!"
They rustled and tussled with Su Nanya's harem dress, and after a long hour of waiting, the vixen appeared in all her clothed glory, twirling around the left, then twisting to the right.
She went from a two-piece micro-thong bikini…. To a two-piece red leather skirtini.
"How are we?" Asked the newly emerged foxy gal, her hair blonde and her eyes sparkly.
Yung showed a thumbs up with a screaming heart, "Cute." But not what I wanted! Sigh, okay, calm down, little Yung. Compromise now, design modern clothes later.
"We are, are we not?" She fluttered three-sixty once more, the skirtini stuck to her butt, hiding it from naked gazes and annoyed eyerolls, "After you had forced upon us your will, you envious boy, how could we not be?" Her voice had a triumphant yet dissatisfied undertone, and Yung could only reply with a broken grin.
An hour ago,
"Let's get rid of that," Yung said, removing his hand from Su Nanya's and pointing at her harem dress.
Slap!
"We knew it. Undressing and ravaging us is truly what you desire the most!"
Yung held his cheek in disbelief. The slap was light, but the misunderstanding stung, mostly because it was not really a misunderstanding.
"I didn't mean it like that," He defended his honour, "if you go around wearing your fiancé's," Yung paused, finding the term uncomfortable, "former fiancé's inner palace garments," he stared at Nanya to gauge her reaction. She was mostly playful. He continued, "then doesn't that mean you still think of the jerk all the time?"
"We do not. This is our sublime statement to smear his traitorous honour. To make him regret ever slighting us." She replied with righteousness.
"Let's do a small test," Yung said.
Nanya nodded, grasping his hand again and shooing her maid away.
"For the next minute, think about anything you want. Like your family, your favourite food, or even a song. But whatever you do, don't think about giant pink foxes. Okay, I'll wait."
Two seconds later, Nanya pouted, "Not fair."
"We can try as many times as you want. As long as you don't think about giant pink foxes, you win."
"We refuse to play. What a nonsensical game." She scrunched her nose and bit her nail, "You mean to insult us by saying we reminisce about our fiancé all day and night."
Former fiancé…. Well, one thing at a—wait, did I just steal Nanya from him? NetorareeeewwwooooooOOOhhhh my goddess and all things ugh—Jesus Christ no. No… Just no! One thing at a time.
"You don't love him anymore, do you?" Yung asked, terrified of the answer.
"May he burn in the infinite hells! May his heart get torn to pieces as he did ours! May he suffer from lost children and stolen lovers!" The vitriol in her voice was palpable. But after which, she stopped. A sad look clouded her face, "We… do not know. We do not want to love him."
Phew! Yung sighed in relief. Not cheating. The jerk cheated first. Su Nanya's primary relationship is definitely with me…. Am I deluding myself?
He cleared his thoughts with a hum and said, "Deliberate attempts to suppress certain thoughts actually make them more likely to surface. In this case, wearing his inner palace clothes mean you can't forget him even if you want to."
It was called the ironic process theory, and unironically, Yung didn't want Su Nanya to think of other men while kissing him. Actually, in this case, she might be the one cheating on her cheating fiancé with her 'jingqi exchanging definitely-not-dual-cultivation' with Yung.
God damn Gaia, I am not a third party in an affair! She deserves way better than being the brainless white moonlight of some narcissistic jerk with ten other wives…. This is gonna bug me forever, isn't it?
"Then what of our revenge? We want to make him regret it and suffer the pain we had." Su Nanya asked, feigning tonelessness.
Yung didn't answer immediately. He leaned in and kissed her, letting his hand take ample advantage of her ample plumpness. A minute later, apart again, Nanya glared at him defiantly.
"Do you want me to think about other women while we exchange jingqi?"
The vixen bristled, "We utterly forbid it."
"I don't want you to think of other men either. But your harem dress makes that impossible."
Su Nanya fell into a quiet introspection.
Her past actions aligned with her anxious attachment style, reacting with contrived jealousy when she felt her needs went unaddressed. It was a form of self-destructive protest behaviour. Anxiously attached people would obsess over their relationships like Su Nanya had so clearly done, responding dramatically to even the slightest perceived threat.
Yung, however, had no desire to engage in such elusive mind games to express his needs for intimacy. He recognised the importance of clear communication with the vixen. To alleviate her insecurities and provide a secure foundation for her to find mental stability. His intent was to eliminate room for undue speculation, knowing well the havoc it could wreak on her anxious mind.
It was a work in progress, so he needed to be totally honest.
After all, people couldn't read minds.
Moira could! I kinda can. And Nanya says she can too…Still, I need to articulate my concerns clearly.
"When you wear the Radiant sun empire's harem dress, people will connect you to that jerk. I don't want that. I also don't want other men to leer at your breasts and buttocks. They're mine!"
"My oh my." Su Nanya beamed, "Are you perchance envious? Do you wish to covet our body alone? Marvellous! But we shall only give you our jingqi, not our heart, okay?"
She leapt off Yung's lap and summoned her maid.
Yung rolled his eyes. Dad, Mum, sorry. The girl I like might be mildly psychopathic.
Soon the vixen was dressed just enough to cover her bust and butt area. She still had no clothes on anywhere directly touching her skin but her hip and chest, except for the golden chains that contoured her body alongside other piercings and ornaments. So she was just as exposed as she would be if she wore a negligee, but the see-through tulles and laces she fashioned today gave her a sanguine yet romantic aura, rather than the shameless lusty one.
The Radiant Sun insignia was nowhere to be seen. Su Nanya showed Yung a resolved smile, and he grinned back victoriously.
***
After changing out of his ripped robes, Yung came down carrying an elegant golden fox on his shoulder. Two other foxes scurried before him, discussing something with grave importance. Silky and Floofy glanced at Yung from time to time, then chirped at each other.
"If you're gonna stay in your fox form, why'd you take two hours just to do your makeup?"
"Because we are beautiful."
The golden fox replied with a royal yawn.
The restaurant floor was empty except for Ziyou Maque and Youjin Chun's group, and also the mercenaries.
The heiress looked visibly annoyed, while Ziyou Ling was to one side, kicking a dummy head football against a wall in a competition with two of the mercenary members.
Yung sat down beside Ziyou Maque. On his other side was Youjin Gangkai, and directly across, sat two mercenaries.
The first, a woman, was tall and fair-skinned, but her face bore the story of a battle-hardened warrior. A menacing scar carved a path down her cheek, interrupted only by a second scar that cut across her white left eye and pronounced Roman nose. Her hair, a midnight black laced with streaks of grey, lacked lustre. A sword was fastened to her back, and vambraces encased her arms. Her remaining raven-black eye locked onto Su Nanya with an unsettling intensity.
Beside her was a man, his visage concealed behind a bone mask inscribed with the words 'Dark Star.' His eyes, a piercing brown, stood out against the mask. He was built muscularly, his arms strangely elongated despite the loose-fitting clothes that hung on him, giving off an unusual metallic silver glimmer. Despite his strong presence, he seemed diminished, seated next to the taller woman. He carried no visible weapons.
Both exuded subtle yet potent auras, ones that rivalled the formidable presence of Elder Han Xinglou from the Malignant Moon Sword Sect.
"Other matters must be so important than us," Youjin Chun started with a scoff, "to leave our guests waiting. They are here to get the foxmoths back on your behalf; have you forgotten?"
After reading all their Empathic links, Yung realised that most of the people here were more or less annoyed. He understood waiting might be boring, but it was out of his hands.
Su Nanya answered in his stead, "Of course, we are far more important, headsman's daughter. Why would our new servant care more for mere commoners than us?"
Youjin Chun paled. Ziyou Ling missed a kick causing the ball to fly out of the window, a ruckus echoing outside. Ziyou Maque and Elder Gangkai stood up, bowing. The two scary-looking fellas from the Dark Star mercenaries did the same.
"We are honoured to be in your presence, Fairy Su!" The woman said, making herself as small as possible. "This unworthy one is An Ping, the current leader of our small mercenary group."
"An Xing." The man replied. He sounded reluctant but followed the woman's lead nonetheless.
Are they siblings? He said An Xing, which means 'Dark Star.' But is that his name or title?
"Please do excuse my husband. His upbringing lacks decorum but he means no disrespect."
A couple?
"We do graciously accept your deference. You may raise your head." Su Nanya said.
They did.
"Oho," Nanya wagged her tail and jumped down from Yung's shoulder. She trotted atop the table and neared An Ping and sniffed. "We do remember you. We have seen you with martial nephew Xiyue Wuzhong many a decade ago."
The woman clenched her teeth, pale, and An Xing's brown eyes twitched behind his mask.
"You are Xiyue Wuzhong's illegitimate daughter, are you not?"
"You're what?!" A mercenary member shouted, gaping. Everyone except Yung, who didn't know anything, and An Xing, who seemed to know about it, were shocked.
"That is correct. I have taken my husband's name."
"No, no no no. You need to answer this. You're the Westmoon king's sister?" Another mercenary woman interrupted but flinched away at An Ping's glare.
"We'll talk later. Nothing changes. I'm still me." An Ping said with a gentle smile, "Leave now, please."
The mercenaries nodded, but the mood had shifted. They went down the stairs one by one.
"We suppose it was a secret? Do forgive us." Su Nanya apologised.
An Ping answered with a strained smile, "I would've shared it with them soon, when my husband and I officially establish our sect. So you did us a favour."
Yung figured out the case from the context. King's sister, meaning An Ping was a grand princess of the Westmoon royal Xiyue clan.
"You may ask us for assistance in that regard. Consider it a gracious gesture from us, a token to redress the improprieties we may have caused. We do miss that audacious youngster from time to time. He was a superb chef."
"My father would've been flattered the hear that." Su Nanya's promise completely flipped An Ping's mood from sombre to elated. Even An Xing flinched, but in a good way. It was a promise from the Su fox clan's princess, worth any offence taken.
"Of course he would." Su Nanya said, "He had chased after our hand for so long, despite being a mere headsman of a backwater village."
"Where is he now?" Yung suddenly asked.
"Are you envious again? What a troublesome servant." Su Nanya scuttled over to him and cushioned herself on his lap. Yung ran his fingers through her silky fur, "He passed away after being killed by his own son and primary wife, the current headsman and headsman dowager of the Westmoon settlement. At the end of the day, he was a disloyal husband and got his just rewards." Yung stopped his caress, "Why must you stop? We command you to comb us. But do be gentle."
Yung snickered and continued, then looked up, hearing a clatter. "What?"
"Nothing. Not my business." Ziyou Maque closed his mouth and lowered his finger. The shattered clay cup splashed wine all over his bandaged hands.
Youjin Chun apologised for her out-of-place words from before. Her face was pale, but her eyes darted between Yung's finger and Fox Nyanya's fur like the mystery of the universe hid there.
Ziyou Ling pointed at Yung with a shaky index, then at Su Nanya, then at Yung again before kneading her temples and running out.
An Ping didn't show any reaction. Neither did her husband. But their Empathic link read disbelief, curiosity, and pity?
"Well, you've waited so long. Care to tell me what you want exactly?" Yung knew why they pitied him. Perhaps they thought he was another young dreamer like this Xiyue Wuzhong, doomed to fail. But he'd already stolen Nyanya's first kiss, cuddle, floof, boop, and snuggle. And he had no plans to stop—
I really should quit using words like 'stolen'….
In their tender embrace, time outside flew without care.
The sky was adorned with soft hues of pink and orange. Tranquil clouds floated lazily in the distance, their procession instilling serenity. Peeking through the rifts in their parade, the golden sunlight cast a comforting radiance upon the land, igniting a breathtaking spectacle of gold and orange.
Amidst this visual symphony, a gentle breeze stirred, threading through the air with a promise of spring. Harmonious notes of fragrant blossoms and the elusive hint of the distant ocean danced on the breeze, a tantalising combination that mirrored nature's beauty. With the arrival of dawn, this floral sea breeze carried the melodies of chirping birds, muttering ren, and howling fiends, serenading the nascent day.
Thus dawn unfolded.
The window sash silently observed the transition, bathed in the radiant shards of sunlight piercing the drifting clouds, with curtains lightly dancing to the rhythm of the serene winds. It played an impartial role, filtering only the most luminous light and gentlest gust into the room.
The dawn's heralds cast their glow on the vixen cradled in Yung's arms, transforming her into a radiant beacon of passion, glistening in the newfound day.
She smiled.
In the room faintly bathed in the golden dawn glow, she beamed a smile that was, in Yung's two lifetimes, the most breathtaking he had ever seen.
"Then it shall be so." Su Nanya's tail swayed elegantly, yet with a noble sense of enthusiasm. She gently caressed Yung's curly hair, "We shall be friends."
She held the back of his head and pulled him in. As if drawn by a magic spell, his lips met hers ever so gently.
The qi flowed. The sun shone. The clouds roiled with the playful breeze.
***
Yung stared at his face in the large silver mirror. His lips were swollen like he was doing a social media challenge for clout. Plump, like water balloons, as though they were sucked on with a vacuum cleaner.
He sighed, then applied the healing paste Su Yafeng had given him, with the hand wearing the new artefact ring Su Nanya had forced upon his left thumb. The balloon lips soon returned to normal.
The culprit, Nyanya the kissing monster, ordered her maid around with a sulky voice.
"Ugly! Change such horrid floral designs. Do you not even have a leather alternative, incompetent maid? We wish for the winds to caress our thighs."
"Ungh."
"We are paying you for services. You shall not groan."
"Unnnnngggghhhh!"
They rustled and tussled with Su Nanya's harem dress, and after a long hour of waiting, the vixen appeared in all her clothed glory, twirling around the left, then twisting to the right.
She went from a two-piece micro-thong bikini…. To a two-piece red leather skirtini.
"How are we?" Asked the newly emerged foxy gal, her hair blonde and her eyes sparkly.
Yung showed a thumbs up with a screaming heart, "Cute." But not what I wanted! Sigh, okay, calm down, little Yung. Compromise now, design modern clothes later.
"We are, are we not?" She fluttered three-sixty once more, the skirtini stuck to her butt, hiding it from naked gazes and annoyed eyerolls, "After you had forced upon us your will, you envious boy, how could we not be?" Her voice had a triumphant yet dissatisfied undertone, and Yung could only reply with a broken grin.
An hour ago,
"Let's get rid of that," Yung said, removing his hand from Su Nanya's and pointing at her harem dress.
Slap!
"We knew it. Undressing and ravaging us is truly what you desire the most!"
Yung held his cheek in disbelief. The slap was light, but the misunderstanding stung, mostly because it was not really a misunderstanding.
"I didn't mean it like that," He defended his honour, "if you go around wearing your fiancé's," Yung paused, finding the term uncomfortable, "former fiancé's inner palace garments," he stared at Nanya to gauge her reaction. She was mostly playful. He continued, "then doesn't that mean you still think of the jerk all the time?"
"We do not. This is our sublime statement to smear his traitorous honour. To make him regret ever slighting us." She replied with righteousness.
"Let's do a small test," Yung said.
Nanya nodded, grasping his hand again and shooing her maid away.
"For the next minute, think about anything you want. Like your family, your favourite food, or even a song. But whatever you do, don't think about giant pink foxes. Okay, I'll wait."
Two seconds later, Nanya pouted, "Not fair."
"We can try as many times as you want. As long as you don't think about giant pink foxes, you win."
"We refuse to play. What a nonsensical game." She scrunched her nose and bit her nail, "You mean to insult us by saying we reminisce about our fiancé all day and night."
Former fiancé…. Well, one thing at a—wait, did I just steal Nanya from him? NetorareeeewwwooooooOOOhhhh my goddess and all things ugh—Jesus Christ no. No… Just no! One thing at a time.
"You don't love him anymore, do you?" Yung asked, terrified of the answer.
"May he burn in the infinite hells! May his heart get torn to pieces as he did ours! May he suffer from lost children and stolen lovers!" The vitriol in her voice was palpable. But after which, she stopped. A sad look clouded her face, "We… do not know. We do not want to love him."
Phew! Yung sighed in relief. Not cheating. The jerk cheated first. Su Nanya's primary relationship is definitely with me…. Am I deluding myself?
He cleared his thoughts with a hum and said, "Deliberate attempts to suppress certain thoughts actually make them more likely to surface. In this case, wearing his inner palace clothes mean you can't forget him even if you want to."
It was called the ironic process theory, and unironically, Yung didn't want Su Nanya to think of other men while kissing him. Actually, in this case, she might be the one cheating on her cheating fiancé with her 'jingqi exchanging definitely-not-dual-cultivation' with Yung.
God damn Gaia, I am not a third party in an affair! She deserves way better than being the brainless white moonlight of some narcissistic jerk with ten other wives…. This is gonna bug me forever, isn't it?
"Then what of our revenge? We want to make him regret it and suffer the pain we had." Su Nanya asked, feigning tonelessness.
Yung didn't answer immediately. He leaned in and kissed her, letting his hand take ample advantage of her ample plumpness. A minute later, apart again, Nanya glared at him defiantly.
"Do you want me to think about other women while we exchange jingqi?"
The vixen bristled, "We utterly forbid it."
"I don't want you to think of other men either. But your harem dress makes that impossible."
Su Nanya fell into a quiet introspection.
Her past actions aligned with her anxious attachment style, reacting with contrived jealousy when she felt her needs went unaddressed. It was a form of self-destructive protest behaviour. Anxiously attached people would obsess over their relationships like Su Nanya had so clearly done, responding dramatically to even the slightest perceived threat.
Yung, however, had no desire to engage in such elusive mind games to express his needs for intimacy. He recognised the importance of clear communication with the vixen. To alleviate her insecurities and provide a secure foundation for her to find mental stability. His intent was to eliminate room for undue speculation, knowing well the havoc it could wreak on her anxious mind.
It was a work in progress, so he needed to be totally honest.
After all, people couldn't read minds.
Moira could! I kinda can. And Nanya says she can too…Still, I need to articulate my concerns clearly.
"When you wear the Radiant sun empire's harem dress, people will connect you to that jerk. I don't want that. I also don't want other men to leer at your breasts and buttocks. They're mine!"
"My oh my." Su Nanya beamed, "Are you perchance envious? Do you wish to covet our body alone? Marvellous! But we shall only give you our jingqi, not our heart, okay?"
She leapt off Yung's lap and summoned her maid.
Yung rolled his eyes. Dad, Mum, sorry. The girl I like might be mildly psychopathic.
Soon the vixen was dressed just enough to cover her bust and butt area. She still had no clothes on anywhere directly touching her skin but her hip and chest, except for the golden chains that contoured her body alongside other piercings and ornaments. So she was just as exposed as she would be if she wore a negligee, but the see-through tulles and laces she fashioned today gave her a sanguine yet romantic aura, rather than the shameless lusty one.
The Radiant Sun insignia was nowhere to be seen. Su Nanya showed Yung a resolved smile, and he grinned back victoriously.
***
After changing out of his ripped robes, Yung came down carrying an elegant golden fox on his shoulder. Two other foxes scurried before him, discussing something with grave importance. Silky and Floofy glanced at Yung from time to time, then chirped at each other.
"If you're gonna stay in your fox form, why'd you take two hours just to do your makeup?"
"Because we are beautiful."
The golden fox replied with a royal yawn.
The restaurant floor was empty except for Ziyou Maque and Youjin Chun's group, and also the mercenaries.
The heiress looked visibly annoyed, while Ziyou Ling was to one side, kicking a dummy head football against a wall in a competition with two of the mercenary members.
Yung sat down beside Ziyou Maque. On his other side was Youjin Gangkai, and directly across, sat two mercenaries.
The first, a woman, was tall and fair-skinned, but her face bore the story of a battle-hardened warrior. A menacing scar carved a path down her cheek, interrupted only by a second scar that cut across her white left eye and pronounced Roman nose. Her hair, a midnight black laced with streaks of grey, lacked lustre. A sword was fastened to her back, and vambraces encased her arms. Her remaining raven-black eye locked onto Su Nanya with an unsettling intensity.
Beside her was a man, his visage concealed behind a bone mask inscribed with the words 'Dark Star.' His eyes, a piercing brown, stood out against the mask. He was built muscularly, his arms strangely elongated despite the loose-fitting clothes that hung on him, giving off an unusual metallic silver glimmer. Despite his strong presence, he seemed diminished, seated next to the taller woman. He carried no visible weapons.
Both exuded subtle yet potent auras, ones that rivalled the formidable presence of Elder Han Xinglou from the Malignant Moon Sword Sect.
"Other matters must be so important than us," Youjin Chun started with a scoff, "to leave our guests waiting. They are here to get the foxmoths back on your behalf; have you forgotten?"
After reading all their Empathic links, Yung realised that most of the people here were more or less annoyed. He understood waiting might be boring, but it was out of his hands.
Su Nanya answered in his stead, "Of course, we are far more important, headsman's daughter. Why would our new servant care more for mere commoners than us?"
Youjin Chun paled. Ziyou Ling missed a kick causing the ball to fly out of the window, a ruckus echoing outside. Ziyou Maque and Elder Gangkai stood up, bowing. The two scary-looking fellas from the Dark Star mercenaries did the same.
"We are honoured to be in your presence, Fairy Su!" The woman said, making herself as small as possible. "This unworthy one is An Ping, the current leader of our small mercenary group."
"An Xing." The man replied. He sounded reluctant but followed the woman's lead nonetheless.
Are they siblings? He said An Xing, which means 'Dark Star.' But is that his name or title?
"Please do excuse my husband. His upbringing lacks decorum but he means no disrespect."
A couple?
"We do graciously accept your deference. You may raise your head." Su Nanya said.
They did.
"Oho," Nanya wagged her tail and jumped down from Yung's shoulder. She trotted atop the table and neared An Ping and sniffed. "We do remember you. We have seen you with martial nephew Xiyue Wuzhong many a decade ago."
The woman clenched her teeth, pale, and An Xing's brown eyes twitched behind his mask.
"You are Xiyue Wuzhong's illegitimate daughter, are you not?"
"You're what?!" A mercenary member shouted, gaping. Everyone except Yung, who didn't know anything, and An Xing, who seemed to know about it, were shocked.
"That is correct. I have taken my husband's name."
"No, no no no. You need to answer this. You're the Westmoon king's sister?" Another mercenary woman interrupted but flinched away at An Ping's glare.
"We'll talk later. Nothing changes. I'm still me." An Ping said with a gentle smile, "Leave now, please."
The mercenaries nodded, but the mood had shifted. They went down the stairs one by one.
"We suppose it was a secret? Do forgive us." Su Nanya apologised.
An Ping answered with a strained smile, "I would've shared it with them soon, when my husband and I officially establish our sect. So you did us a favour."
Yung figured out the case from the context. King's sister, meaning An Ping was a grand princess of the Westmoon royal Xiyue clan.
"You may ask us for assistance in that regard. Consider it a gracious gesture from us, a token to redress the improprieties we may have caused. We do miss that audacious youngster from time to time. He was a superb chef."
"My father would've been flattered the hear that." Su Nanya's promise completely flipped An Ping's mood from sombre to elated. Even An Xing flinched, but in a good way. It was a promise from the Su fox clan's princess, worth any offence taken.
"Of course he would." Su Nanya said, "He had chased after our hand for so long, despite being a mere headsman of a backwater village."
"Where is he now?" Yung suddenly asked.
"Are you envious again? What a troublesome servant." Su Nanya scuttled over to him and cushioned herself on his lap. Yung ran his fingers through her silky fur, "He passed away after being killed by his own son and primary wife, the current headsman and headsman dowager of the Westmoon settlement. At the end of the day, he was a disloyal husband and got his just rewards." Yung stopped his caress, "Why must you stop? We command you to comb us. But do be gentle."
Yung snickered and continued, then looked up, hearing a clatter. "What?"
"Nothing. Not my business." Ziyou Maque closed his mouth and lowered his finger. The shattered clay cup splashed wine all over his bandaged hands.
Youjin Chun apologised for her out-of-place words from before. Her face was pale, but her eyes darted between Yung's finger and Fox Nyanya's fur like the mystery of the universe hid there.
Ziyou Ling pointed at Yung with a shaky index, then at Su Nanya, then at Yung again before kneading her temples and running out.
An Ping didn't show any reaction. Neither did her husband. But their Empathic link read disbelief, curiosity, and pity?
"Well, you've waited so long. Care to tell me what you want exactly?" Yung knew why they pitied him. Perhaps they thought he was another young dreamer like this Xiyue Wuzhong, doomed to fail. But he'd already stolen Nyanya's first kiss, cuddle, floof, boop, and snuggle. And he had no plans to stop—
I really should quit using words like 'stolen'….
Chapter 39 - Fat but flexible
"We've done testing these," Ziyou Maque put the two sound transmission tokens Yung had created with Silky's special dim gold silk on the table. After Wang Lihou noticed their efficacy even in the Warring Twilight forest, they had removed their spiritual imprints on the artefacts and handed them to Ziyou Maque and Youjin Liu for testing.
"They send sound over the forest as though we still be in the city." Ziyou Maque said, "None of the usual distortions. One of my men travelled all the way to the ocean, and these still work. The same range houtian 1st grade transmission tokens get outside the land bridge, as though the chaotic spaces have none the bad effects." Yung could read the excitement in the gang leader's Empathic link.
"So you want me to make more of them?" Yung asked. Su Nanya had gone quiet on his lap but stretched like a tired kitten with each stroke. No kissing or licking necessary for the ridiculous dual cultivation benefits, as the xinqi in Yung's heart palace dantian was converting like salted butter in a blender.
"That we do. Lad. Ye don't know what a game-changing thing you've created here." Ziyou Maque replied with a grin, "So many good folks die in the forest because of the lack of communication. We have a rule in our fiendhunting guild to always keep at least one mate within eyesight. Always! Mostly out of sheer necessity, though it wastes so much of our hunting efficiency. But that's our guild. Most fiendhunting teams are disorganised. A tool that can let them and us contact not only each other inside the forest, but also with the support waitin' outside? It has the potential to flip fiendhunting on its head."
"You're talking about thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of tokens here."
"Millions, lad." Ziyou Maque dangled the carrot. "Think of all the xinqi ye can make. An' all the spirit stones."
Yung angrily raised his finger, wearing the pink heart ring, "You see this? I gotta wear this now, because the xinqi by all the recent social welfare changes gets sent directly to the fortune fox totem, and that's bloating me like a toad! Why'd I need more?"
"Well, just sayin' is all." Ziyou Maque said, "But ye can make enough to break through before the coming fiendhunt, yeah? Since with the sect recruitments here cancelled, we can take our time to prepare."
There was a sudden lull in the conversation, and everyone looked at Su Nanya. The golden fox rolled over on Yung's lap and yawned, "We, in our grace, have reconsidered our prior decree. Your humble village shall be bestowed its former status once more."
There were sighs of relief. But Yung could see the question in their eyes, wondering what was behind this bipolar fox Yao's erratic behaviour.
"That's gonna make the town rowdy again." Ziyou Maque broke the silence. But Yung read the joy in the gang leader's Empathic link clear as day.
"If I may intrude," An Ping said, "we are willing to pay for each artefact you refine for our mercenary team, Master Yung." She named a price, and Yung took in a deep breath. Wowza!
Then he remembered he was Su Nanya's gigolo and wouldn't be short of cash in the future. Probably.
"You Dark star folks move fast, heh?" He asked with a suspicious glint in his eyes.
"The fiendhunting sphere is all about speed. There are two houtian 3rd order and eight 2nd order fiends for us to hunt here." An Ping said with a polite nod. "Not to mention an opportunity to get acquainted with Master Yung."
"And my sound transmission tokens." Yung smiled. And my Nyanya. "Got it. Recovering the foxmoths is still a priority for Silky and me. I'll see what I can do."
An Ping showed a polite smile. While An Xing's expression was inscrutable with his mask on, Yung read a cautious satisfaction from his link.
Yung was growing comfortable with violating this mental privacy thing. He mused at the thought, then got up, "Let's head to the jade slip store then?"
"You will start crafting right now?" An Ping said, "It would be preferable if you could hand the artefacts over at least a few days prior to the hunt. The team can then have the time to practice our formations."
Ziyou Maque nodded, "Us and the Youjin clan too. Usually, we do fiendhunting in smaller groups, and there are many limitations because of the absolute communication barrier. But with this," He played with the two tokens in his hand, "we can gather armies. But that has its own weaknesses. The voidfiends might horde up if they sniff so many renyao in one place, so we gotsa prepare."
Yung shook his head, saying, "I don't have that much time. I gotta cultivate too," He wasn't talking about cuddling with Su Nanya, but practising with his artefacts and empathic abilities. And he had a particular project in mind. If it worked, he'd never have to care about xinqi and spirit stones again. He would spend his days merrily basking in his own self-righteousness on his throne of armchair philanthropy. "Gather everyone who can carve jade slips. We'll make a franchise deal."
They seemed to grasp Yung's plan intuitively at the mention of other jade carvers, but tilted their heads nonetheless. They agreed, and after a short meal, the group came out of the hotel and headed for the jade slip store.
Yung found Wang Lihou, as usual, tinkering with his void jades and spirit stones.
"Brother Lihou! They say you're a prodigy." Yung clapped the guy on his shoulder and praised.
"T-Thank you?"
The usually jovial boy was on his feet, nervous in the presence of many important people. Not only were there two houtian 3rd realm mercenaries giving off a threatening aura, but so were Ziyou Maque, Youjin Liu, and the two foundation building Youjin elders in charge of the clan's magic formations and artefact crafting.
Yung handed him a dumpling wrapped in paper, and Wang Lihou was game, his nervousness a thing of the past.
Yung then took out a spool of silk and put it on the table.
"How many tokens can be made with this much?" He asked the experts.
The elder in charge of crafting took the spool up, scrutinised it with her magnifying glass-like tool, and then gently placed it on the scale. She passed it to the elder in charge of formations after weighing it, who also held the spool in his hands and carefully looked at it from all sides; the lingqi between his fingers passed through the silk with precision. He answered, "Each token takes about a foot's length in dim gold silk. This spool can make about five hundred to six hundred tokens, I would say, taking failures into consideration."
Yung nodded.
"You wish to hand the production over to us?" Said Youjin Liu from the side. The good patriarch looked at Yung as though he was a sack of spirit stone potatoes.
"Yeah. You and Ziyou Maque and anyone else interested."
"I would suggest not sharing the secret technique to craft the special sound transmission token with other parties." Youjin Liu said, "Though I fear other powerful factions might wish to take it from you forcefully, as you have the Su fox clan behind you, few will ever dare."
Yung thought it over and floofed Su Nanya secretly. The golden fox chirped. But her coat wasn't as fluffy as Floofy's, so it wasn't the same, even though the zhenqi cultivation was far faster with the princess.
He noticed the jolted audience and stopped before coughing.
"T-There is no secret technique. You'll only need this silk."
"Surely that is a jest?" The crafting elder said with a frown. "I am aware of the test results. While these special tokens are nearly identical to the normal ones in appearance, their efficacy and functionality vary in incomparable amounts. Without a far more refined and efficient rune array, a mere increase in material quality cannot grant such an amazing result." She held up the spool of silk, "While this is amazing quality silk, houtian 1st grade epic class I would suggest. It's not enough—"
"That Silky's silk, by the way."
"By the heaven's, Lord yaoguai can—Oh, I do remember it attacking the patriarch quite vigorously with silk before."
"The one and the same."
"That…" The elder went quiet. "This one has not worked with yaoguai parts before. So I cannot say."
"Holy hell, this isn't a yaoguai part," Yung gaped at the sudden turn to grimdark. "Silky can spew them naturally, as long as you give him enough treasured fruits and herbs. The higher the natural qi content, the better. And grapes are the best."
Young signalled the critter, who flew up joyfully from Su Xiya's snout and landed on his palm. He passed it a grape, and Silky devoured it in seconds.
"Kii. Kyum. Kiiiii!"
In his link sight, he could see the foxmoth yaoguai also assimilating many null threads with each pulse of his xinqi.
Yung held up a small wooden stick-like piece from the workbench, the part the silk would be spooled around.
"Kyu!"
Silky got to work, taking a deep foxmoth breath and flapping his cute foxmoth wings, spitting fibre with strong gusts of qi.
"Woof!" Floofy cheered him on, and Su Nanya looked at the spectacle with utter amusement.
In less than five minutes, another spool of silk was created.
"Fascinating. Lord yaoguai is many times tinier than a normal foxmoth. Does his smaller output of silk depend on his size, or the amount of xinqi you share?" The formation elder asked.
"Can't know." Yung wouldn't share the details of null threads. He changed the topic, "I'd like you to see if this is workable, or if only I, as Silky's contracted, can handle it."
They didn't need another reminder.
The two elders sat on the central workbench reserved for the grumpy old man managing the shop. The croon was standing by a side wall with the other apprentices, trying to make himself as small as possible.
Wang Lihou, who was the magical formation elder's apprentice, also took a seat. As did Yung.
They took out their toolkits. The elders had ones with far higher quality. But they did something strange.
They channelled their lingqi, and twenty jade carving blades shot up in the air like flying swords, each with different types of tips and functionalities.
Wang Lihou also did the same, and he controlled three.
Yung squinted at the void jade in one hand and the blade in his other. He put them away and concentrated on speculating the show with a low grumble.
"Do not feel inadequate, oh dearest new servant." Su Nanya consoled him in her own strange way, "Your talents lie with your tongue, not in runes and crafting."
There was a cough, a crash, and several screams, followed by sharp intakes of air. Wang Lihou lost control of his blades, and the void jade he worked on smashed to pieces.
"She means my words! My eloquent oratory skills." Yung hurriedly explained, and the chaos stopped.
The jade carvers tried again for round two.
The tones of the elders' magical chants reverberated off the walls as their aged hands formed intricate symbols, resembling Mudras used in Yoga.
Yung watched intently as a dozen shimmering blades hovered above a line of jade stones and hummed to life.
Wang Lihou clenched his teeth, sweat dampening his neck and armpits, but his gaze remained fixed in intense concentration. The blades moved at lightning-fast speed, precise scalpel-like edges creating streaks of light from the solidified lingqi. In less than ten minutes, Wang Lihou had finished engraving his three jades with far greater accuracy than Yung could hope for.
The same amount of time saw the Elders go through three sets of ten jades without pause. The formation elder handed seven of his to Wang Lihou, who observed them with critical eyes and then returned them.
Ah, Yung figured it out. This was a show meant for the Westmoon grand princess and, more likely, for Su Nanya.
It was a talent showcase.
And Wang Lihou didn't disappoint.
Necessary lengths of silk were cut from the pool and dissolved in the alchemic liquid on the workbench slots. Wang Lihou and the elders put their hands on the input groves of the formation circuit and injected their qi in an intense yet steadfast fashion.
The room was silent except for the sound of the magic.
The liquid in all the slots vanished gradually, absorbed by the tokens. Finally, the alchemic process was completed with a last grunt of effort, and the sixty-three tokens were made.
The elders checked them out, "You are getting sloppy," The crafting elder told the formation elder, who had failed with two. The old man laughed in good humour.
Wang Lihou succeeded with his three. And Yung realised this was what an absolute prodigy was.
No cheats in the form of link sight powers, no mysterious soul contract with a mythical land god, nor an extravagant and sexy golden thigh to hug. Wang Lihou showed actual results for honest work.
The comparison created a complicated feeling in Yung's heart. But he noticed the shame and let it go. "Check if they work. You can't use one of the new ones to exchange spiritual imprints with a normal token."
They did work. Far better than the original two Yung had created.
"This much should be enough for the hunt? You can make more scene or light transmission tokens as necessary. After paying me, whatever you do with the silk is no longer my problem, as long as you stamp the fortune fox totem somewhere."
Ziyou Maque and Youjin Liu affirmed. The Dark Star mercenary leader smiled. She and her companion were currently the strongest force in the city, discounting Nyanya. So there was no need to keep them waiting. The faster they could adapt their strategies to the new equipment, the safer it would be for Yung when he recovered the foxmoths and, by extension, Su Nanya's occultic foxball.
"Since Brother Lihou and the two good elders worked, we'll split the spirit stones. Each merchant party both upstream and downstream will get a percentage cut of the profits." Yung proposed a cut division, which felt fair to his modern senses.
"How can that be?" Youjin Liu said, astonished. "This would not be possible without the special dim gold silk, which you monopolise. How can we be shameless enough to greed after that large a portion when you do this to benefit our Youjin clan!?"
"That's that, and this is this. Proper labour will have proper wages." Yung was adamant on this point.
"They send sound over the forest as though we still be in the city." Ziyou Maque said, "None of the usual distortions. One of my men travelled all the way to the ocean, and these still work. The same range houtian 1st grade transmission tokens get outside the land bridge, as though the chaotic spaces have none the bad effects." Yung could read the excitement in the gang leader's Empathic link.
"So you want me to make more of them?" Yung asked. Su Nanya had gone quiet on his lap but stretched like a tired kitten with each stroke. No kissing or licking necessary for the ridiculous dual cultivation benefits, as the xinqi in Yung's heart palace dantian was converting like salted butter in a blender.
"That we do. Lad. Ye don't know what a game-changing thing you've created here." Ziyou Maque replied with a grin, "So many good folks die in the forest because of the lack of communication. We have a rule in our fiendhunting guild to always keep at least one mate within eyesight. Always! Mostly out of sheer necessity, though it wastes so much of our hunting efficiency. But that's our guild. Most fiendhunting teams are disorganised. A tool that can let them and us contact not only each other inside the forest, but also with the support waitin' outside? It has the potential to flip fiendhunting on its head."
"You're talking about thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of tokens here."
"Millions, lad." Ziyou Maque dangled the carrot. "Think of all the xinqi ye can make. An' all the spirit stones."
Yung angrily raised his finger, wearing the pink heart ring, "You see this? I gotta wear this now, because the xinqi by all the recent social welfare changes gets sent directly to the fortune fox totem, and that's bloating me like a toad! Why'd I need more?"
"Well, just sayin' is all." Ziyou Maque said, "But ye can make enough to break through before the coming fiendhunt, yeah? Since with the sect recruitments here cancelled, we can take our time to prepare."
There was a sudden lull in the conversation, and everyone looked at Su Nanya. The golden fox rolled over on Yung's lap and yawned, "We, in our grace, have reconsidered our prior decree. Your humble village shall be bestowed its former status once more."
There were sighs of relief. But Yung could see the question in their eyes, wondering what was behind this bipolar fox Yao's erratic behaviour.
"That's gonna make the town rowdy again." Ziyou Maque broke the silence. But Yung read the joy in the gang leader's Empathic link clear as day.
"If I may intrude," An Ping said, "we are willing to pay for each artefact you refine for our mercenary team, Master Yung." She named a price, and Yung took in a deep breath. Wowza!
Then he remembered he was Su Nanya's gigolo and wouldn't be short of cash in the future. Probably.
"You Dark star folks move fast, heh?" He asked with a suspicious glint in his eyes.
"The fiendhunting sphere is all about speed. There are two houtian 3rd order and eight 2nd order fiends for us to hunt here." An Ping said with a polite nod. "Not to mention an opportunity to get acquainted with Master Yung."
"And my sound transmission tokens." Yung smiled. And my Nyanya. "Got it. Recovering the foxmoths is still a priority for Silky and me. I'll see what I can do."
An Ping showed a polite smile. While An Xing's expression was inscrutable with his mask on, Yung read a cautious satisfaction from his link.
Yung was growing comfortable with violating this mental privacy thing. He mused at the thought, then got up, "Let's head to the jade slip store then?"
"You will start crafting right now?" An Ping said, "It would be preferable if you could hand the artefacts over at least a few days prior to the hunt. The team can then have the time to practice our formations."
Ziyou Maque nodded, "Us and the Youjin clan too. Usually, we do fiendhunting in smaller groups, and there are many limitations because of the absolute communication barrier. But with this," He played with the two tokens in his hand, "we can gather armies. But that has its own weaknesses. The voidfiends might horde up if they sniff so many renyao in one place, so we gotsa prepare."
Yung shook his head, saying, "I don't have that much time. I gotta cultivate too," He wasn't talking about cuddling with Su Nanya, but practising with his artefacts and empathic abilities. And he had a particular project in mind. If it worked, he'd never have to care about xinqi and spirit stones again. He would spend his days merrily basking in his own self-righteousness on his throne of armchair philanthropy. "Gather everyone who can carve jade slips. We'll make a franchise deal."
They seemed to grasp Yung's plan intuitively at the mention of other jade carvers, but tilted their heads nonetheless. They agreed, and after a short meal, the group came out of the hotel and headed for the jade slip store.
Yung found Wang Lihou, as usual, tinkering with his void jades and spirit stones.
"Brother Lihou! They say you're a prodigy." Yung clapped the guy on his shoulder and praised.
"T-Thank you?"
The usually jovial boy was on his feet, nervous in the presence of many important people. Not only were there two houtian 3rd realm mercenaries giving off a threatening aura, but so were Ziyou Maque, Youjin Liu, and the two foundation building Youjin elders in charge of the clan's magic formations and artefact crafting.
Yung handed him a dumpling wrapped in paper, and Wang Lihou was game, his nervousness a thing of the past.
Yung then took out a spool of silk and put it on the table.
"How many tokens can be made with this much?" He asked the experts.
The elder in charge of crafting took the spool up, scrutinised it with her magnifying glass-like tool, and then gently placed it on the scale. She passed it to the elder in charge of formations after weighing it, who also held the spool in his hands and carefully looked at it from all sides; the lingqi between his fingers passed through the silk with precision. He answered, "Each token takes about a foot's length in dim gold silk. This spool can make about five hundred to six hundred tokens, I would say, taking failures into consideration."
Yung nodded.
"You wish to hand the production over to us?" Said Youjin Liu from the side. The good patriarch looked at Yung as though he was a sack of spirit stone potatoes.
"Yeah. You and Ziyou Maque and anyone else interested."
"I would suggest not sharing the secret technique to craft the special sound transmission token with other parties." Youjin Liu said, "Though I fear other powerful factions might wish to take it from you forcefully, as you have the Su fox clan behind you, few will ever dare."
Yung thought it over and floofed Su Nanya secretly. The golden fox chirped. But her coat wasn't as fluffy as Floofy's, so it wasn't the same, even though the zhenqi cultivation was far faster with the princess.
He noticed the jolted audience and stopped before coughing.
"T-There is no secret technique. You'll only need this silk."
"Surely that is a jest?" The crafting elder said with a frown. "I am aware of the test results. While these special tokens are nearly identical to the normal ones in appearance, their efficacy and functionality vary in incomparable amounts. Without a far more refined and efficient rune array, a mere increase in material quality cannot grant such an amazing result." She held up the spool of silk, "While this is amazing quality silk, houtian 1st grade epic class I would suggest. It's not enough—"
"That Silky's silk, by the way."
"By the heaven's, Lord yaoguai can—Oh, I do remember it attacking the patriarch quite vigorously with silk before."
"The one and the same."
"That…" The elder went quiet. "This one has not worked with yaoguai parts before. So I cannot say."
"Holy hell, this isn't a yaoguai part," Yung gaped at the sudden turn to grimdark. "Silky can spew them naturally, as long as you give him enough treasured fruits and herbs. The higher the natural qi content, the better. And grapes are the best."
Young signalled the critter, who flew up joyfully from Su Xiya's snout and landed on his palm. He passed it a grape, and Silky devoured it in seconds.
"Kii. Kyum. Kiiiii!"
In his link sight, he could see the foxmoth yaoguai also assimilating many null threads with each pulse of his xinqi.
Yung held up a small wooden stick-like piece from the workbench, the part the silk would be spooled around.
"Kyu!"
Silky got to work, taking a deep foxmoth breath and flapping his cute foxmoth wings, spitting fibre with strong gusts of qi.
"Woof!" Floofy cheered him on, and Su Nanya looked at the spectacle with utter amusement.
In less than five minutes, another spool of silk was created.
"Fascinating. Lord yaoguai is many times tinier than a normal foxmoth. Does his smaller output of silk depend on his size, or the amount of xinqi you share?" The formation elder asked.
"Can't know." Yung wouldn't share the details of null threads. He changed the topic, "I'd like you to see if this is workable, or if only I, as Silky's contracted, can handle it."
They didn't need another reminder.
The two elders sat on the central workbench reserved for the grumpy old man managing the shop. The croon was standing by a side wall with the other apprentices, trying to make himself as small as possible.
Wang Lihou, who was the magical formation elder's apprentice, also took a seat. As did Yung.
They took out their toolkits. The elders had ones with far higher quality. But they did something strange.
They channelled their lingqi, and twenty jade carving blades shot up in the air like flying swords, each with different types of tips and functionalities.
Wang Lihou also did the same, and he controlled three.
Yung squinted at the void jade in one hand and the blade in his other. He put them away and concentrated on speculating the show with a low grumble.
"Do not feel inadequate, oh dearest new servant." Su Nanya consoled him in her own strange way, "Your talents lie with your tongue, not in runes and crafting."
There was a cough, a crash, and several screams, followed by sharp intakes of air. Wang Lihou lost control of his blades, and the void jade he worked on smashed to pieces.
"She means my words! My eloquent oratory skills." Yung hurriedly explained, and the chaos stopped.
The jade carvers tried again for round two.
The tones of the elders' magical chants reverberated off the walls as their aged hands formed intricate symbols, resembling Mudras used in Yoga.
Yung watched intently as a dozen shimmering blades hovered above a line of jade stones and hummed to life.
Wang Lihou clenched his teeth, sweat dampening his neck and armpits, but his gaze remained fixed in intense concentration. The blades moved at lightning-fast speed, precise scalpel-like edges creating streaks of light from the solidified lingqi. In less than ten minutes, Wang Lihou had finished engraving his three jades with far greater accuracy than Yung could hope for.
The same amount of time saw the Elders go through three sets of ten jades without pause. The formation elder handed seven of his to Wang Lihou, who observed them with critical eyes and then returned them.
Ah, Yung figured it out. This was a show meant for the Westmoon grand princess and, more likely, for Su Nanya.
It was a talent showcase.
And Wang Lihou didn't disappoint.
Necessary lengths of silk were cut from the pool and dissolved in the alchemic liquid on the workbench slots. Wang Lihou and the elders put their hands on the input groves of the formation circuit and injected their qi in an intense yet steadfast fashion.
The room was silent except for the sound of the magic.
The liquid in all the slots vanished gradually, absorbed by the tokens. Finally, the alchemic process was completed with a last grunt of effort, and the sixty-three tokens were made.
The elders checked them out, "You are getting sloppy," The crafting elder told the formation elder, who had failed with two. The old man laughed in good humour.
Wang Lihou succeeded with his three. And Yung realised this was what an absolute prodigy was.
No cheats in the form of link sight powers, no mysterious soul contract with a mythical land god, nor an extravagant and sexy golden thigh to hug. Wang Lihou showed actual results for honest work.
The comparison created a complicated feeling in Yung's heart. But he noticed the shame and let it go. "Check if they work. You can't use one of the new ones to exchange spiritual imprints with a normal token."
They did work. Far better than the original two Yung had created.
"This much should be enough for the hunt? You can make more scene or light transmission tokens as necessary. After paying me, whatever you do with the silk is no longer my problem, as long as you stamp the fortune fox totem somewhere."
Ziyou Maque and Youjin Liu affirmed. The Dark Star mercenary leader smiled. She and her companion were currently the strongest force in the city, discounting Nyanya. So there was no need to keep them waiting. The faster they could adapt their strategies to the new equipment, the safer it would be for Yung when he recovered the foxmoths and, by extension, Su Nanya's occultic foxball.
"Since Brother Lihou and the two good elders worked, we'll split the spirit stones. Each merchant party both upstream and downstream will get a percentage cut of the profits." Yung proposed a cut division, which felt fair to his modern senses.
"How can that be?" Youjin Liu said, astonished. "This would not be possible without the special dim gold silk, which you monopolise. How can we be shameless enough to greed after that large a portion when you do this to benefit our Youjin clan!?"
"That's that, and this is this. Proper labour will have proper wages." Yung was adamant on this point.
Chapter 40 - Tinkering Paws
They argued back and forth and finally settled on an acceptable remuneration. Yung's portion was increased by a lot, which honestly he didn't really feel bad about. Setting best market practices wasn't his job. There were no anti-trust laws here, and how the market balanced itself was out of Yung's capabilities to fathom. They promised to hash out the details, such as the price of the end products, at a later date. It was then that Ziyou Maque also showed interest in joining the deal. The same went for the Dark Star mercenaries.
Yung would supply the silk, and the rest would be up to them.
"Now then, this is the modified smaller version of the fortune fox totem." I can feed the excess xinqi to the pink heart ring. It doesn't seem to have an upper limit as of yet. I'm sure it does, but that's a problem for future Yung.
He passed on the cartoonish sketch, enthusiastically explaining the deeper meaning behind Silky rolling upside down around a blue disk that was Earth.
The audience understood nothing but agreed.
The group exited the shop in a generally amicable mood, with Yung and Su Nanya at the head.
They dissolved, the Youjin patriarch leading his clan members towards the citadel alongside the Dark Star mercenaries, who had set base in the upper town. They would have much to discuss on the upcoming hunt and Westmoon kingdom matters. Ziyou Maque having to organise gang operations, also bid farewell. He still had a slight limp but assured Yung he'd be back in fighting shape by the time sect recruitments phase one ended.
Yung headed back to his room. He'd gotten a promise from Youjin Liu that a fully furnished workstation would be created in the Dim gold hotel for his exclusive use by this evening. Yung had plans to delve deeper into runes, arrays, and modifying captured light and sound in tokens.
He had plans for many things. He climbed up the steps happily, floofing Su Nanya and humming a tune. No, this is cultivation! I'm cultivating, okay?
Su Nanya scoffed, but was happy to let her servant pamper her.
Only to bump into a bright-faced Youjin Chao leaning against the wall in front of his door.
Before Yung noticed, Su Nanya had vanished.
"Brother Yung. Have you heard the news?" Youjin Chao greeted with a cold smile as Yung's eyes wandered to search for the golden fox.
Is she hiding under a bed again? Yung was dismayed. "What news?" Does he know I made out with Nyanya?
"Of the sect recruitments, of course!" Youjin Chao fist pumped, "Su Nanya qualified Dim Gold City again."
"…. You're fast," Yung said.
"The Youjin clan runners have been shouting about it all over town." Youjin Chao said, "with your totem in tow. Did brother Yung convince her somehow?"
"I may have had a hand."
"Are you really not going to partake in phase one?"
"Why would I? I've got a free pass."
"I would like to compare my talents to yours." Youjin Chao said with a fiery gaze, "It would only be fair, if Su Nanya is to make a proper judgement."
"She… already knows about my 'talents'," Yung said, my talented tongue, heh. "Besides, it's not healthy to compare yourself to others so much."
"Brother Yung, it is rather disheartening to see you treating this situation with such levity! Love, as you've pointed out, is an action. And by failing to show your best qualities proactively, you risk losing her favour. How regrettable that would be for you!"
I think Nyanya and I are way past that point….
"I won't lose! For I act with actions, not articulations." The taller boy grinned, proclaiming his plans like the world must hear them.
A talented tongue is needed for proper 'articulations.' Gawd I'm so cheesy! Yung tried not to blush.
"Well, then. That will be all." With those final words, Youjin Chao parted.
"Good luck with the sect recruitments!" Yung shouted hesitantly to the taller boy's back. "I'll cheer you on!"
Youjin Chao waved without turning. The stairway was dim, with the hubbub of the restaurant coming from below. With an assertive stride, the taller boy made his descent down the staircase. Each step was precise and assured, yet also carried an air of grace. He bore an uncanny resemblance to a cinematic hero: unyielding and brave, his posture resolute and undeterred, emanating an essence of dauntlessness. And his heroic stature was amplified against the contrast of the bustling activity below the stairwell, crafting a scene that could befit a superhero movie poster.
How cool, Yung thought, and dumb. Should I tell him about Nyanya and me?
"The yang stifles us so." Su Nanya said.
"You're back!" Yung jumped. Su Nanya brushed against his legs like a kitty. "Where did you go?"
"Under your bed. That obnoxious child's yang qi stench would not reach us there."
"…."
"We suppose you must have missed us dearly." Su Nanya said, waving her adorable tail.
***
The Youjin clan did as they promised, relocating an entire jade slip workshop to a large room in the hotel.
"Thanks!" Yung waved the workers, and the elder supervising the task, goodbye. He then looked at the new jade slips containing the runes, arrays, and formation techniques needed for his new project.
Sound, light, and scene capturing and transmission tokens. Six in total, with detailed breakdowns of each rune and array necessary to create the working formations.
"How is our tail?" Su Nanya asked, back in her yao form and leaning against Yung on a stool next to him. She glanced at the workbench with disdain, and whispered in his ears.
"Mesmerising!"
"Very well," With a poof, her yao form vanished into puffy clouds, and the little golden fox appeared. She went for the same pillow Floofy slept on and put it by the window so the sunlight would kiss her.
She curled up, going silent, staring at Yung's every movement like a super cute surveillance camera.
Yung got to work.
He took a scrying tool from the workbench and put a fresh void jade under it. In another, he placed a scene capturing token. He read, and then reread the instructions. With the jade carving blade, Yung carefully etched part of the formation loose on the token.
As Yung was unacquainted with the process, there were several unsuccessful attempts, resulting in the squandering of void jades. However, this didn't concern him as he hadn't intended to finish these to begin with.
"Done!"
He'd successfully isolated one of the arrays. He recorded it with a light capturing token, and on a separate paper scroll, he jotted down diagrams and notes with a bamboo pen.
Yung then shifted his focus to the scene transmission token, treating the sound and light capturing and transmission tokens similarly in succession. Eventually, he procured a fundamental jade slip, also known as the jade scroll token which was traditionally used for information storage, and mirrored the same process with it.
He isolated the parts of the formation responsible for qi supply, qi acquisition from the cultivator, storing the captured data, reading the cultivator's commands, and transmitting the information.
The instruction manuals for each of the tokens explained mostly the process and the function, but not the underlying mechanics. Such as, how each array in the formation connected to create unique results.
It took a few hours, and Yung stretched his arms and cracked his fingers with a tired moan as his work neared its end. He scanned the token with the light captures of all the isolated unique arrays one last time, smiling lightly.
"I'll call these… Functions." He wrote in big words at the header of the scroll.
It was tempting to equate the runes, arrays, and formations to programming languages back on Earth. But comparing it to a normal language such as English or Chinese would be more accurate.
Yung hadn't been able to find the equivalent ones and zeros for the runes. But nouns, verbs, and prepositions abounded.
Yet it was also true that these runes, although similar to a hieroglyphic version of Chinese, served an active, magical purpose. They were circuits in and of themselves, combining to create larger integrated circuits. When provided with enough power, or qi, they would display wondrous effects.
And now Yung had a basic list of building blocks he would work with.
Each function, or the unique isolated array, was a sentence. The component runes were the words. The special runes that connected these functions to create the formation of the tokens as a whole, were the punctuations, prepositions, and conjunctions.
And Yung had this distinct guess that the libraries, the compilers, and the interpreters that made all of this possible, were the grand dao itself!
"This array limits the quality of qi that the token can take… this restricts quantity," Yung scratched more 'words' and 'phrases' on the scroll. Adjectives, adverbs.
The basic manual for jade carvers also taught apprentices in a similar fashion. With the common Chinese used by the renyao here colloquially as metaphors and analogues. Yung opted to use a similar style, but using English and Python.
I don't need to reinvent the wheel. I can use techniques already in use here.
"How do you find our bosom, pray tell?" Su Nanya suddenly asked.
"Dangerous!" Yung said absentmindedly.
The vixen was back in her yao form. She strutted over, swaying her hips, and took a seat on Yung's lap with a pout. "You may not ignore us!" She put her hands around his neck and looked at the scroll with an amused expression.
"You may find such diagrams and breakdowns in any respectable formation master's collection. Why bother creating your own?"
"It's a syntactical problem. I like to use my own notes."
Su Nanya nodded, "This is a language we have not seen yet. Was it the soul contract that granted you such esoteric knowledge? Or have you dreamt of another's life?"
"W-What?" Yung gasped, panicking. Does she know?
"You think us a foolish fox!" Su Nanya huffed, visibly offended. "Is it not obvious that you have changed greatly after contracting the yaoguai? Was it the memories of past contractors that you have oh so shamelessly inherited? Or perchance a naughty glimpse into the planar memories of a lost, forgotten plane desperate to re-emerge?" The vixen squirmed, trying to find a comfortable spot to lean her body. "It matters not. We have no interest in such simplistic language. Look at these lines, these squiggles. Truly revolting!"
"H-Hehehe, y-yeah. Just a boon from the soul contract. Nothing too serious." Yung could feel his smile cramp despite his best efforts to keep a poker face. He wished he could share his past life with her. But he wasn't ready. Yet.
Su Nanya glared at him, then dropped the matter. She traced the functions Yung had arranged on the scroll with her dainty fingers as though she was tracing a line on Yung's thigh, before saying, "You wish to transmit written words."
"You can tell?"
"We are all knowledgeable!" Su Nanya was proud, her tail wagging happily, which in turn caressed Yung's cheeks with each swoosh of a swish. "How strange it is, dearest boy. Why would you wish to limit the functions of the light transmission token, to handicap it as such? This new formation appears to also contain the arrays for storing and retrieving merely the words written onto jade slips. On either ends. Peculiar indeed."
"It's to enable the token users to communicate instantaneously, in real time, through written words and designated symbols, instead of resorting to voice or transmitting entire scenes."
"Do explain to us," Su Nanya said. Her expression turned serious, "Not that we need you to. We merely wish to hear your voice. Understood?"
"Oh, sure!" Yung was flattered. It was amazing how coquettish this vixen could be, "Currently, when someone sends a transmission with a token, let's call it the transmitter, it has to be completely received by the recipient's token, the receiver, before the recipient can send a reply."
Su Nanya nodded, saying, "Indeed, we understand your point. With xiantian or pingtian grade tokens, the speed of transmission can be shortened substantially, as with range and overall efficacy."
"That's brute forcing it." Like powering an iPhone with a nuclear reactor. "The algorithm is trash! The manuals kinda elude to what xiantian grade tokens look like. If I'm not wrong, they use more power, larger formations cramped into smaller surface areas, and better materials. They're just a modified version of this basic algorithm. No innovation whatsoever."
"Alg—what manner of word is that?" Su Nanya tilted her head, confused. It was cute. "Do you mean the set of rules by which the formation operates?"
"Smart."
"We do suppose even the pingtian grade token follows this same... 'algorithm'. We see now. It certainly is a brutish metaphor." Su Nanya took a jade slip from her hip chain, squirming on Yung's lap as he did so.
The boy stilled, appreciating each second of the sensations. Whoa! His eyes went to the jade slip, the vixen dangling it in front of Yung's eyes with a seductive smirk.
Glistening with an ethereal shimmer, the token seemed to defy the norms of reality, transmuting light into a polychromatic spectacle that danced across its surface. Its form was a faint echo of a typical token, yet a closer inspection revealed a complexity that dwarfed its houtian counterparts. Thousands of facets adorned its surface, each meticulously inscribed with tiny arrays, together weaving a grand tapestry of power, a super formation if Yung had to name it. It was an intricate puzzle, pulsating with concentrated potency, a silent testament to its remarkable craftsmanship.
"Is that a pingtian grade one?"
Su Nanya nodded, "Merely so." She passed it to Yung, who took it reverently.
"The token, in its servile charm, captures our voice through the delicate dance of qi, finds the spiritual imprint destined for our words, and so dutifully carries our messages forth. Likewise, it stands ready to receive messages directed to us. Should we choose to lend our beautiful ear, we could perceive such changes in the briefest of moments. As far as our knowledge extends, this 'algorithm' applies to houtian, xiantian, and pingtian tokens without exception."
"I thought you were all-knowledgeable?" Yung asked.
"We are!" Su Nanya harrumphed, sending vibrations to where their bodies touched. Yung couldn't help but kiss that cheeky lips, much to the vixen's delight.
"That algorithm is the most basic form of a chat, or messenger app."
"App?" Su Nanya touched her lips with a blush.
"An application. A transmission formation if you will."
"Then does our dear servant think he can create a superior algorithm with your paltry village knowledge? We should admit, we do not despise such ambitions."
Yung didn't reply, letting his two hands do the talking for him. He grabbed the vixen in a hug and started feeling her up, "I'll show you who's boss!"
"My, mercy me! Such a malicious rogue. Why must you do this to us, you bandit?" The vixen giggled, letting the rogue have his way.
Yung would supply the silk, and the rest would be up to them.
"Now then, this is the modified smaller version of the fortune fox totem." I can feed the excess xinqi to the pink heart ring. It doesn't seem to have an upper limit as of yet. I'm sure it does, but that's a problem for future Yung.
He passed on the cartoonish sketch, enthusiastically explaining the deeper meaning behind Silky rolling upside down around a blue disk that was Earth.
The audience understood nothing but agreed.
The group exited the shop in a generally amicable mood, with Yung and Su Nanya at the head.
They dissolved, the Youjin patriarch leading his clan members towards the citadel alongside the Dark Star mercenaries, who had set base in the upper town. They would have much to discuss on the upcoming hunt and Westmoon kingdom matters. Ziyou Maque having to organise gang operations, also bid farewell. He still had a slight limp but assured Yung he'd be back in fighting shape by the time sect recruitments phase one ended.
Yung headed back to his room. He'd gotten a promise from Youjin Liu that a fully furnished workstation would be created in the Dim gold hotel for his exclusive use by this evening. Yung had plans to delve deeper into runes, arrays, and modifying captured light and sound in tokens.
He had plans for many things. He climbed up the steps happily, floofing Su Nanya and humming a tune. No, this is cultivation! I'm cultivating, okay?
Su Nanya scoffed, but was happy to let her servant pamper her.
Only to bump into a bright-faced Youjin Chao leaning against the wall in front of his door.
Before Yung noticed, Su Nanya had vanished.
"Brother Yung. Have you heard the news?" Youjin Chao greeted with a cold smile as Yung's eyes wandered to search for the golden fox.
Is she hiding under a bed again? Yung was dismayed. "What news?" Does he know I made out with Nyanya?
"Of the sect recruitments, of course!" Youjin Chao fist pumped, "Su Nanya qualified Dim Gold City again."
"…. You're fast," Yung said.
"The Youjin clan runners have been shouting about it all over town." Youjin Chao said, "with your totem in tow. Did brother Yung convince her somehow?"
"I may have had a hand."
"Are you really not going to partake in phase one?"
"Why would I? I've got a free pass."
"I would like to compare my talents to yours." Youjin Chao said with a fiery gaze, "It would only be fair, if Su Nanya is to make a proper judgement."
"She… already knows about my 'talents'," Yung said, my talented tongue, heh. "Besides, it's not healthy to compare yourself to others so much."
"Brother Yung, it is rather disheartening to see you treating this situation with such levity! Love, as you've pointed out, is an action. And by failing to show your best qualities proactively, you risk losing her favour. How regrettable that would be for you!"
I think Nyanya and I are way past that point….
"I won't lose! For I act with actions, not articulations." The taller boy grinned, proclaiming his plans like the world must hear them.
A talented tongue is needed for proper 'articulations.' Gawd I'm so cheesy! Yung tried not to blush.
"Well, then. That will be all." With those final words, Youjin Chao parted.
"Good luck with the sect recruitments!" Yung shouted hesitantly to the taller boy's back. "I'll cheer you on!"
Youjin Chao waved without turning. The stairway was dim, with the hubbub of the restaurant coming from below. With an assertive stride, the taller boy made his descent down the staircase. Each step was precise and assured, yet also carried an air of grace. He bore an uncanny resemblance to a cinematic hero: unyielding and brave, his posture resolute and undeterred, emanating an essence of dauntlessness. And his heroic stature was amplified against the contrast of the bustling activity below the stairwell, crafting a scene that could befit a superhero movie poster.
How cool, Yung thought, and dumb. Should I tell him about Nyanya and me?
"The yang stifles us so." Su Nanya said.
"You're back!" Yung jumped. Su Nanya brushed against his legs like a kitty. "Where did you go?"
"Under your bed. That obnoxious child's yang qi stench would not reach us there."
"…."
"We suppose you must have missed us dearly." Su Nanya said, waving her adorable tail.
***
The Youjin clan did as they promised, relocating an entire jade slip workshop to a large room in the hotel.
"Thanks!" Yung waved the workers, and the elder supervising the task, goodbye. He then looked at the new jade slips containing the runes, arrays, and formation techniques needed for his new project.
Sound, light, and scene capturing and transmission tokens. Six in total, with detailed breakdowns of each rune and array necessary to create the working formations.
"How is our tail?" Su Nanya asked, back in her yao form and leaning against Yung on a stool next to him. She glanced at the workbench with disdain, and whispered in his ears.
"Mesmerising!"
"Very well," With a poof, her yao form vanished into puffy clouds, and the little golden fox appeared. She went for the same pillow Floofy slept on and put it by the window so the sunlight would kiss her.
She curled up, going silent, staring at Yung's every movement like a super cute surveillance camera.
Yung got to work.
He took a scrying tool from the workbench and put a fresh void jade under it. In another, he placed a scene capturing token. He read, and then reread the instructions. With the jade carving blade, Yung carefully etched part of the formation loose on the token.
As Yung was unacquainted with the process, there were several unsuccessful attempts, resulting in the squandering of void jades. However, this didn't concern him as he hadn't intended to finish these to begin with.
"Done!"
He'd successfully isolated one of the arrays. He recorded it with a light capturing token, and on a separate paper scroll, he jotted down diagrams and notes with a bamboo pen.
Yung then shifted his focus to the scene transmission token, treating the sound and light capturing and transmission tokens similarly in succession. Eventually, he procured a fundamental jade slip, also known as the jade scroll token which was traditionally used for information storage, and mirrored the same process with it.
He isolated the parts of the formation responsible for qi supply, qi acquisition from the cultivator, storing the captured data, reading the cultivator's commands, and transmitting the information.
The instruction manuals for each of the tokens explained mostly the process and the function, but not the underlying mechanics. Such as, how each array in the formation connected to create unique results.
It took a few hours, and Yung stretched his arms and cracked his fingers with a tired moan as his work neared its end. He scanned the token with the light captures of all the isolated unique arrays one last time, smiling lightly.
"I'll call these… Functions." He wrote in big words at the header of the scroll.
It was tempting to equate the runes, arrays, and formations to programming languages back on Earth. But comparing it to a normal language such as English or Chinese would be more accurate.
Yung hadn't been able to find the equivalent ones and zeros for the runes. But nouns, verbs, and prepositions abounded.
Yet it was also true that these runes, although similar to a hieroglyphic version of Chinese, served an active, magical purpose. They were circuits in and of themselves, combining to create larger integrated circuits. When provided with enough power, or qi, they would display wondrous effects.
And now Yung had a basic list of building blocks he would work with.
Each function, or the unique isolated array, was a sentence. The component runes were the words. The special runes that connected these functions to create the formation of the tokens as a whole, were the punctuations, prepositions, and conjunctions.
And Yung had this distinct guess that the libraries, the compilers, and the interpreters that made all of this possible, were the grand dao itself!
"This array limits the quality of qi that the token can take… this restricts quantity," Yung scratched more 'words' and 'phrases' on the scroll. Adjectives, adverbs.
The basic manual for jade carvers also taught apprentices in a similar fashion. With the common Chinese used by the renyao here colloquially as metaphors and analogues. Yung opted to use a similar style, but using English and Python.
I don't need to reinvent the wheel. I can use techniques already in use here.
"How do you find our bosom, pray tell?" Su Nanya suddenly asked.
"Dangerous!" Yung said absentmindedly.
The vixen was back in her yao form. She strutted over, swaying her hips, and took a seat on Yung's lap with a pout. "You may not ignore us!" She put her hands around his neck and looked at the scroll with an amused expression.
"You may find such diagrams and breakdowns in any respectable formation master's collection. Why bother creating your own?"
"It's a syntactical problem. I like to use my own notes."
Su Nanya nodded, "This is a language we have not seen yet. Was it the soul contract that granted you such esoteric knowledge? Or have you dreamt of another's life?"
"W-What?" Yung gasped, panicking. Does she know?
"You think us a foolish fox!" Su Nanya huffed, visibly offended. "Is it not obvious that you have changed greatly after contracting the yaoguai? Was it the memories of past contractors that you have oh so shamelessly inherited? Or perchance a naughty glimpse into the planar memories of a lost, forgotten plane desperate to re-emerge?" The vixen squirmed, trying to find a comfortable spot to lean her body. "It matters not. We have no interest in such simplistic language. Look at these lines, these squiggles. Truly revolting!"
"H-Hehehe, y-yeah. Just a boon from the soul contract. Nothing too serious." Yung could feel his smile cramp despite his best efforts to keep a poker face. He wished he could share his past life with her. But he wasn't ready. Yet.
Su Nanya glared at him, then dropped the matter. She traced the functions Yung had arranged on the scroll with her dainty fingers as though she was tracing a line on Yung's thigh, before saying, "You wish to transmit written words."
"You can tell?"
"We are all knowledgeable!" Su Nanya was proud, her tail wagging happily, which in turn caressed Yung's cheeks with each swoosh of a swish. "How strange it is, dearest boy. Why would you wish to limit the functions of the light transmission token, to handicap it as such? This new formation appears to also contain the arrays for storing and retrieving merely the words written onto jade slips. On either ends. Peculiar indeed."
"It's to enable the token users to communicate instantaneously, in real time, through written words and designated symbols, instead of resorting to voice or transmitting entire scenes."
"Do explain to us," Su Nanya said. Her expression turned serious, "Not that we need you to. We merely wish to hear your voice. Understood?"
"Oh, sure!" Yung was flattered. It was amazing how coquettish this vixen could be, "Currently, when someone sends a transmission with a token, let's call it the transmitter, it has to be completely received by the recipient's token, the receiver, before the recipient can send a reply."
Su Nanya nodded, saying, "Indeed, we understand your point. With xiantian or pingtian grade tokens, the speed of transmission can be shortened substantially, as with range and overall efficacy."
"That's brute forcing it." Like powering an iPhone with a nuclear reactor. "The algorithm is trash! The manuals kinda elude to what xiantian grade tokens look like. If I'm not wrong, they use more power, larger formations cramped into smaller surface areas, and better materials. They're just a modified version of this basic algorithm. No innovation whatsoever."
"Alg—what manner of word is that?" Su Nanya tilted her head, confused. It was cute. "Do you mean the set of rules by which the formation operates?"
"Smart."
"We do suppose even the pingtian grade token follows this same... 'algorithm'. We see now. It certainly is a brutish metaphor." Su Nanya took a jade slip from her hip chain, squirming on Yung's lap as he did so.
The boy stilled, appreciating each second of the sensations. Whoa! His eyes went to the jade slip, the vixen dangling it in front of Yung's eyes with a seductive smirk.
Glistening with an ethereal shimmer, the token seemed to defy the norms of reality, transmuting light into a polychromatic spectacle that danced across its surface. Its form was a faint echo of a typical token, yet a closer inspection revealed a complexity that dwarfed its houtian counterparts. Thousands of facets adorned its surface, each meticulously inscribed with tiny arrays, together weaving a grand tapestry of power, a super formation if Yung had to name it. It was an intricate puzzle, pulsating with concentrated potency, a silent testament to its remarkable craftsmanship.
"Is that a pingtian grade one?"
Su Nanya nodded, "Merely so." She passed it to Yung, who took it reverently.
"The token, in its servile charm, captures our voice through the delicate dance of qi, finds the spiritual imprint destined for our words, and so dutifully carries our messages forth. Likewise, it stands ready to receive messages directed to us. Should we choose to lend our beautiful ear, we could perceive such changes in the briefest of moments. As far as our knowledge extends, this 'algorithm' applies to houtian, xiantian, and pingtian tokens without exception."
"I thought you were all-knowledgeable?" Yung asked.
"We are!" Su Nanya harrumphed, sending vibrations to where their bodies touched. Yung couldn't help but kiss that cheeky lips, much to the vixen's delight.
"That algorithm is the most basic form of a chat, or messenger app."
"App?" Su Nanya touched her lips with a blush.
"An application. A transmission formation if you will."
"Then does our dear servant think he can create a superior algorithm with your paltry village knowledge? We should admit, we do not despise such ambitions."
Yung didn't reply, letting his two hands do the talking for him. He grabbed the vixen in a hug and started feeling her up, "I'll show you who's boss!"
"My, mercy me! Such a malicious rogue. Why must you do this to us, you bandit?" The vixen giggled, letting the rogue have his way.
Chapter 41 - A rebel teen meets his match!
After the small break to wash away his stress, and the rush of relaxation from the 'cultivation' session, Yung started organizing the notes from what he'd gathered. He then created a basic flowchart for what his newly devised token would do.
In the jade slip's, the jade scroll token's mechanism, there were functions that could read the user's qi, translate it into words, sounds, and images, and then store it. In the light transmission token's working, one could send stored 'light' to another token. Which the recipient could view like a floating window in front of their eyes. And again back to jade slips, people could modify already stored knowledge with their qi, adding or removing content. The Youjin clan used the same technique to edit the sound capture. A spiritual non-linear media editor.
Combining all this, the token would send 'symbols' within a particular 'light construct', a graphical spiritual user interface, to the receiver side, who could then interact with this 'light construct' to send 'symbols' back.
The algorithm Yung could assemble right now was limited by the runes and arrays he was proficient in. But he could create a user authentication algorithm like OAuth 2.0 with the spiritual imprint mechanism. He could also make a very basic XMPP or WebSocket with the isolated arrays, or 'functions', he'd noted down.
He had no idea how to encrypt the messages as of yet, but that could be left for the future. He had plans to spelunk through the complete Youjin repository and, if push came to shove, pillow talk Nyanya. He was her gigolo after all.
Message delivery was straightforward. Yung could modify basic components of the 'transmission' mechanism to act like any of the basic transfer protocols.
He modified the flowchart. With the resources on hand and his limited knowledge of formations, it seemed doable at least. He didn't want to share algorithmic knowledge with this world just yet. As with his past life memories, he wasn't ready. Neither was the world.
Hours passed.
With a deep inhale, Yung wrote down the words,
"Chat token."
And circled it. Yung thought briefly, then stroke through the 'Chat' part.
"Messenger token."
People here didn't know what 'chat' meant. It was better to use ubiquitous language.
It still doesn't feel right, though, this name….
"Kii!"
Ah, no, ChattyFox sounds strange…
"Kyun!"
It's something a vixen would do? Who taught you that?!
"In our infinite grace," Su Nanya's demure tone broke Yung out of his intense debate with Silky, "we believe we understand what you wish to do, oh rebellious servant so dear to us." She said. She lazed on a fluffy mattress as Yung had gone to work, being fanned by her bored maid. "This… Messenger token… It is not for the fiend hunt nor for harvesting xinqi. You wish to propagate it to the illiterate commoners, to disrupt our traditions and rules."
Yung stopped writing, freezing in his tracks. Su Nanya watched him with an impassive look on her face, all her flirtiness gone.
"Why?" She asked. Her tails moved gently, but her eyes were sharp.
She expected an honest reply. And Yung would give one.
He sighed, "I thought you were a bumbling bimbo with how insecure you were recently. I'm shocked. No, really, stop scowling! I am praising you here."
"Unsavoury scum of cancerous morals!"
"Unsavoury? That's not what you said when we kissed—Okay, no need to scratch! Ouch!" Yung pushed the feral fox away to the best of his scrawny abilities before shouting out like an internet pirate, "Freedom! It's for freedom of speech!"
"Explain. Maid, dare you smirk behind your fan? You shall leave."
"Tsk."
"How utterly unladylike. Begone, sower of discord, we bid you to depart from our presence!"
"I'm telling the matriarch."
Yung sat straight, his arms clutched in Su Nanya's firm grip. He watched Su Yafeng vanish again with an azure gust, and grimaced.
"Have you gone to the slums?" He asked the vixen.
Su Nanya shook her head with disdain, "Why would we subject ourselves to such ungodly stenches? But we do suppose it is a slum no longer."
"The Youjin clan and the Free Sparrow gang certainly did change the situation drastically. The material side at least."
"Are you not satisfied, you oh so covetous lupine?"
"All I am saying is, perhaps if people could have a space where they can speak their minds without the threat of getting killed, then that would be amazing. To rid the non-material, existentially spiritual 'stenches' that plague… yaoren."
"What good could possibly come in letting the unlettered, gossipy commoners freely share their lopsided beliefs?"
"Look, Nyanya—"
"We shall not look. Do you wish to rebel against our fox clan?" Su Nanya cupped Yung's cheeks, then stretched them, kneading one side up and one side down as she growled—menacingly—with her adorable fangs.
Yung took a double turn, "Rebel? Where'd that come from?"
"These…. Messenger tokens, as you call them. We have seen them before implemented as secret communication channels for the ill-tutored peasantry. They gossip their complaints towards the monarchs like the cowardly vermins they are. Then organize into plagued nests before striking at our soft underbelly with their unrighteous evil!"
Yung gulped, "Your underbelly really is quite soft."
"We thank you." Su Nanya preened at the touch, then said, "Though indeed, we find it peculiar. If this covert communication is designed for the insurgent commonfolk, why, then, is it necessitated to employ written words? The majority of these future rebels, particularly the vast numbers, are devoid of education."
"Because it isn't meant for rebels!" Yung said with a tired groan.
Su Nanya's words made sense though. Since this token technology was nothing new, people might have used contraband versions of it to share their discontent with the ruling class in the past. As a member of the ultimate authoritarian regime, Su Nanya would undoubtedly have nothing to praise about such 'freedoms.'
Then maybe in case of anonymity, if everyone could—
Yung had an epiphany, and crossed out the 'Messenger' word and wrote down the new name. Su Nanya looked over his shoulder, the sweet fragrance tickling Yung's nostrils.
"Message board token?" Said the vixen. "How is such a name bifurcated from the previous?"
"For there to be true freedom of speech, people need the option to hide their identity. But for such a case, I plan to make what people share, and have shared in the past—their 'post' history— viewable for all. A 'freedom of information', if you will."
"Truly? Rebels wouldn't like that. Then what if these probable insurgents, mayhap they choose to not remain under the shadows. Would secrecy be permitted for such gossipers?"
"Again, this isn't for rebels! But normal folks. And I don't know… I haven't thought that far yet. But all I know is that if I can actually do this, then maybe the most common thing they'll talk about using the message board token is how cool my Nyanya is, and how sexy her butt is."
"Verily, we hold your words as utmost appreciative. But are you perchance jesting, we wonder?"
Yung pretended to be surprised, "How did you find out?"
Su Nanya pouted and pinched his cheeks again, "Do not insult our wise mind. Dare you do it once more and suffer our super fierce fury, simpleton of unbound rudeness. We shall punish you."
Yung smiled and spoke through his stretched cheeks, "Okay, I give. No, why did you stop? I don't think I was punished enough."
"…"
"A-Ahem. Actually, I do plan to implement one-on-one correspondence. That's what 'chatting' is. But that won't be the main feature. People will share their thoughts in the virtual 'safe space' I am trying to create with this thingy, which everyone holding a message board token can see, comment, debate, and critique on. Again to the previous point. I guess I can make two options? One for the user to share their thoughts with their true identity—need a way to validate and verify that though—and one where it is absolutely anonymous."
"Aha! Rebel!"
"If everyone can see how rebels organize, then I guess they'll have a tough time doing what they do best," Yung said, poking Su Nanya's pudding-like thigh. "Poking soft underbellies."
"And you plan to implement this from the very beginning?" The vixen flushed; her thighs were more sensitive to strokes than pokes.
Yung thought some more, and crossed out the name again. "Let's just call it a communicator token. Or just 'Communicator.'"
"But you stated you would enact a…a… private…. Correspondence too— ahn! Mmph! Stop it; your lust disgusts us!" Su Nanya clawed Yung's hand, which had been reaching down her skirt, and whooshed away. "N-Not there! You are no longer permitted."
"Nanya…." For once, Yung was shocked. The reaction had been fast and violent. He looked at his bleeding hand with a pale face. "I thought—"
"Not there!" Su Nanya screamed, "We… are not ready. We…" She tiptoed to him, grasping his slashed hand with a guilty look. "We didn't mean for this to happen." She opened wide, her long, pink tongue slithering out and licking Yung's wounded skin.
It glided delicately across Yung's wounds, and he could only observe in a trance as it coiled like a serpent, lapping over his injured skin before retracting. The sensation, cool and feathery, caused a peculiar tingling throughout his body, barely registering in his shocked mind before the wounds healed instantly. Su Nanya's lips stained a deep cherry red with blood, and she closed her golden eyes, facing down in guilt.
The spectacle was more erotic than horrifying, Yung admitted to himself with a strange kinky shame. Akin to a lover, after lovemaking, savouring the taste of her own sweet-sour saliva, perhaps too, with every lick of a lollipop by the bedside. The act, which seemed perpetual in its bloody consequences, was paradoxically intimate and playful even as the vixen made herself as small as possible.
"I'm sorry," Yung said, "I thought..."
Su Nanya took Yung's hand and put it on her head, "We are not ready…."
You aren't. Yung thought. He felt guilty assuming he could do whatever he wanted with her now that they were in this unclear 'relationship.' She dressed invitingly and flirted with fun. But she was a person, not a thing. They would have to talk more, and set better boundaries, and express their own needs without lies. "We'll take it slow."
Su Nanya nodded, "We express regret… we—"
"We'll take it as slow as you need. But Nyanya, violence isn't good."
"We didn't!… mean…to."
"I know. I overstepped too. But this is this, and that is that."
The two talked in quiet whispers, bodies glued together as each confessed their sins. As each forgave and vowed. Long into the day and deep into the night, the communicator thrown to the back of their minds.
***
After a few days of back and forth with the Free Sparrow gang, Dark Star mercenaries, and the Youjin clan, a satisfactory agreement about the improved transmission tokens was reached.
Today, Yung was back to tinkering with the communicator token, trying to get it to work like a bare-bones version of Reddit, without the abusive powermods and a dollar-hungry CEO of course.
They were in Yung's personal jade slip workshop.
He had skipped lunch as the work flowed, and Su Nanya was stretching her dainty limbs with an assortment of artefacts in front of her.
Fashioned in the likeness of a cauldron was a round silver bucket, dull yet detailed with intricate motifs around its rim. It radiated a soft, welcoming luminescence, akin to an enchanted hearth when a flame pirouetted within. Nearby, a petite iron pot basked in the playful flickers of its own orange light like a firefly. Lining the area on top of the counter the vixen had appropriated for her own use were glass jars filled with a rainbow assortment of herbs, sauces, and powders exuding an alluring aura, their vibrant spectrum contributing to the undercurrent of mystique in the romantically lit space.
As the lids of the jars were opened, the strong aroma of spice whiffed out; some were numbing, some hot and chilly, adding to the passionate ambience of the room. The fragrance was multiplied infinitely by the intense and delicious qi that radiated from each magical condiment.
Why all this?
"We shall cook!" So the vixen had said, making her maid cook.
In the jade slip's, the jade scroll token's mechanism, there were functions that could read the user's qi, translate it into words, sounds, and images, and then store it. In the light transmission token's working, one could send stored 'light' to another token. Which the recipient could view like a floating window in front of their eyes. And again back to jade slips, people could modify already stored knowledge with their qi, adding or removing content. The Youjin clan used the same technique to edit the sound capture. A spiritual non-linear media editor.
Combining all this, the token would send 'symbols' within a particular 'light construct', a graphical spiritual user interface, to the receiver side, who could then interact with this 'light construct' to send 'symbols' back.
The algorithm Yung could assemble right now was limited by the runes and arrays he was proficient in. But he could create a user authentication algorithm like OAuth 2.0 with the spiritual imprint mechanism. He could also make a very basic XMPP or WebSocket with the isolated arrays, or 'functions', he'd noted down.
He had no idea how to encrypt the messages as of yet, but that could be left for the future. He had plans to spelunk through the complete Youjin repository and, if push came to shove, pillow talk Nyanya. He was her gigolo after all.
Message delivery was straightforward. Yung could modify basic components of the 'transmission' mechanism to act like any of the basic transfer protocols.
He modified the flowchart. With the resources on hand and his limited knowledge of formations, it seemed doable at least. He didn't want to share algorithmic knowledge with this world just yet. As with his past life memories, he wasn't ready. Neither was the world.
Hours passed.
With a deep inhale, Yung wrote down the words,
"Chat token."
And circled it. Yung thought briefly, then stroke through the 'Chat' part.
"Messenger token."
People here didn't know what 'chat' meant. It was better to use ubiquitous language.
It still doesn't feel right, though, this name….
"Kii!"
Ah, no, ChattyFox sounds strange…
"Kyun!"
It's something a vixen would do? Who taught you that?!
"In our infinite grace," Su Nanya's demure tone broke Yung out of his intense debate with Silky, "we believe we understand what you wish to do, oh rebellious servant so dear to us." She said. She lazed on a fluffy mattress as Yung had gone to work, being fanned by her bored maid. "This… Messenger token… It is not for the fiend hunt nor for harvesting xinqi. You wish to propagate it to the illiterate commoners, to disrupt our traditions and rules."
Yung stopped writing, freezing in his tracks. Su Nanya watched him with an impassive look on her face, all her flirtiness gone.
"Why?" She asked. Her tails moved gently, but her eyes were sharp.
She expected an honest reply. And Yung would give one.
He sighed, "I thought you were a bumbling bimbo with how insecure you were recently. I'm shocked. No, really, stop scowling! I am praising you here."
"Unsavoury scum of cancerous morals!"
"Unsavoury? That's not what you said when we kissed—Okay, no need to scratch! Ouch!" Yung pushed the feral fox away to the best of his scrawny abilities before shouting out like an internet pirate, "Freedom! It's for freedom of speech!"
"Explain. Maid, dare you smirk behind your fan? You shall leave."
"Tsk."
"How utterly unladylike. Begone, sower of discord, we bid you to depart from our presence!"
"I'm telling the matriarch."
Yung sat straight, his arms clutched in Su Nanya's firm grip. He watched Su Yafeng vanish again with an azure gust, and grimaced.
"Have you gone to the slums?" He asked the vixen.
Su Nanya shook her head with disdain, "Why would we subject ourselves to such ungodly stenches? But we do suppose it is a slum no longer."
"The Youjin clan and the Free Sparrow gang certainly did change the situation drastically. The material side at least."
"Are you not satisfied, you oh so covetous lupine?"
"All I am saying is, perhaps if people could have a space where they can speak their minds without the threat of getting killed, then that would be amazing. To rid the non-material, existentially spiritual 'stenches' that plague… yaoren."
"What good could possibly come in letting the unlettered, gossipy commoners freely share their lopsided beliefs?"
"Look, Nyanya—"
"We shall not look. Do you wish to rebel against our fox clan?" Su Nanya cupped Yung's cheeks, then stretched them, kneading one side up and one side down as she growled—menacingly—with her adorable fangs.
Yung took a double turn, "Rebel? Where'd that come from?"
"These…. Messenger tokens, as you call them. We have seen them before implemented as secret communication channels for the ill-tutored peasantry. They gossip their complaints towards the monarchs like the cowardly vermins they are. Then organize into plagued nests before striking at our soft underbelly with their unrighteous evil!"
Yung gulped, "Your underbelly really is quite soft."
"We thank you." Su Nanya preened at the touch, then said, "Though indeed, we find it peculiar. If this covert communication is designed for the insurgent commonfolk, why, then, is it necessitated to employ written words? The majority of these future rebels, particularly the vast numbers, are devoid of education."
"Because it isn't meant for rebels!" Yung said with a tired groan.
Su Nanya's words made sense though. Since this token technology was nothing new, people might have used contraband versions of it to share their discontent with the ruling class in the past. As a member of the ultimate authoritarian regime, Su Nanya would undoubtedly have nothing to praise about such 'freedoms.'
Then maybe in case of anonymity, if everyone could—
Yung had an epiphany, and crossed out the 'Messenger' word and wrote down the new name. Su Nanya looked over his shoulder, the sweet fragrance tickling Yung's nostrils.
"Message board token?" Said the vixen. "How is such a name bifurcated from the previous?"
"For there to be true freedom of speech, people need the option to hide their identity. But for such a case, I plan to make what people share, and have shared in the past—their 'post' history— viewable for all. A 'freedom of information', if you will."
"Truly? Rebels wouldn't like that. Then what if these probable insurgents, mayhap they choose to not remain under the shadows. Would secrecy be permitted for such gossipers?"
"Again, this isn't for rebels! But normal folks. And I don't know… I haven't thought that far yet. But all I know is that if I can actually do this, then maybe the most common thing they'll talk about using the message board token is how cool my Nyanya is, and how sexy her butt is."
"Verily, we hold your words as utmost appreciative. But are you perchance jesting, we wonder?"
Yung pretended to be surprised, "How did you find out?"
Su Nanya pouted and pinched his cheeks again, "Do not insult our wise mind. Dare you do it once more and suffer our super fierce fury, simpleton of unbound rudeness. We shall punish you."
Yung smiled and spoke through his stretched cheeks, "Okay, I give. No, why did you stop? I don't think I was punished enough."
"…"
"A-Ahem. Actually, I do plan to implement one-on-one correspondence. That's what 'chatting' is. But that won't be the main feature. People will share their thoughts in the virtual 'safe space' I am trying to create with this thingy, which everyone holding a message board token can see, comment, debate, and critique on. Again to the previous point. I guess I can make two options? One for the user to share their thoughts with their true identity—need a way to validate and verify that though—and one where it is absolutely anonymous."
"Aha! Rebel!"
"If everyone can see how rebels organize, then I guess they'll have a tough time doing what they do best," Yung said, poking Su Nanya's pudding-like thigh. "Poking soft underbellies."
"And you plan to implement this from the very beginning?" The vixen flushed; her thighs were more sensitive to strokes than pokes.
Yung thought some more, and crossed out the name again. "Let's just call it a communicator token. Or just 'Communicator.'"
"But you stated you would enact a…a… private…. Correspondence too— ahn! Mmph! Stop it; your lust disgusts us!" Su Nanya clawed Yung's hand, which had been reaching down her skirt, and whooshed away. "N-Not there! You are no longer permitted."
"Nanya…." For once, Yung was shocked. The reaction had been fast and violent. He looked at his bleeding hand with a pale face. "I thought—"
"Not there!" Su Nanya screamed, "We… are not ready. We…" She tiptoed to him, grasping his slashed hand with a guilty look. "We didn't mean for this to happen." She opened wide, her long, pink tongue slithering out and licking Yung's wounded skin.
It glided delicately across Yung's wounds, and he could only observe in a trance as it coiled like a serpent, lapping over his injured skin before retracting. The sensation, cool and feathery, caused a peculiar tingling throughout his body, barely registering in his shocked mind before the wounds healed instantly. Su Nanya's lips stained a deep cherry red with blood, and she closed her golden eyes, facing down in guilt.
The spectacle was more erotic than horrifying, Yung admitted to himself with a strange kinky shame. Akin to a lover, after lovemaking, savouring the taste of her own sweet-sour saliva, perhaps too, with every lick of a lollipop by the bedside. The act, which seemed perpetual in its bloody consequences, was paradoxically intimate and playful even as the vixen made herself as small as possible.
"I'm sorry," Yung said, "I thought..."
Su Nanya took Yung's hand and put it on her head, "We are not ready…."
You aren't. Yung thought. He felt guilty assuming he could do whatever he wanted with her now that they were in this unclear 'relationship.' She dressed invitingly and flirted with fun. But she was a person, not a thing. They would have to talk more, and set better boundaries, and express their own needs without lies. "We'll take it slow."
Su Nanya nodded, "We express regret… we—"
"We'll take it as slow as you need. But Nyanya, violence isn't good."
"We didn't!… mean…to."
"I know. I overstepped too. But this is this, and that is that."
The two talked in quiet whispers, bodies glued together as each confessed their sins. As each forgave and vowed. Long into the day and deep into the night, the communicator thrown to the back of their minds.
***
After a few days of back and forth with the Free Sparrow gang, Dark Star mercenaries, and the Youjin clan, a satisfactory agreement about the improved transmission tokens was reached.
Today, Yung was back to tinkering with the communicator token, trying to get it to work like a bare-bones version of Reddit, without the abusive powermods and a dollar-hungry CEO of course.
They were in Yung's personal jade slip workshop.
He had skipped lunch as the work flowed, and Su Nanya was stretching her dainty limbs with an assortment of artefacts in front of her.
Fashioned in the likeness of a cauldron was a round silver bucket, dull yet detailed with intricate motifs around its rim. It radiated a soft, welcoming luminescence, akin to an enchanted hearth when a flame pirouetted within. Nearby, a petite iron pot basked in the playful flickers of its own orange light like a firefly. Lining the area on top of the counter the vixen had appropriated for her own use were glass jars filled with a rainbow assortment of herbs, sauces, and powders exuding an alluring aura, their vibrant spectrum contributing to the undercurrent of mystique in the romantically lit space.
As the lids of the jars were opened, the strong aroma of spice whiffed out; some were numbing, some hot and chilly, adding to the passionate ambience of the room. The fragrance was multiplied infinitely by the intense and delicious qi that radiated from each magical condiment.
Why all this?
"We shall cook!" So the vixen had said, making her maid cook.
Chapter 42 - Such useless an endeavour
Yung wondered if this was Su Yafeng's daily life. Being told to leave when she was an inconvenience, and ordered around at all other times doing whatever Su Nanya fancied at the moment.
Which was currently a portion of pork-like fiend meat.
Su Yafeng sliced an aged chunk of it into thin strips and brushed it with a lustrous red sauce, causing it to glisten. She then seared it on both sides with utter concentration, setting it sizzling and crackling until it turned a delectable golden brown.
As the fat around the edges lightly charred, it lent a smoky whisper to the meat's texture. Yung gulped; Nyanya pulled his face away.
Next, Su Yafeng sprinkled some mystery leaves onto the dish, and the army of bacon gave off actual harried screeches. As the dish was completed, the sweet and savoury aroma of the red sauce mingled with the smoky undertones of the seared meat, creating an intoxicating fragrance that tantalised Yung's taste buds despite his best efforts not to drool. Su Nanya found such lousy table manners unsightly.
"Eggs?" Asked the maid.
"I'll have two," Yung said.
"We shall feed you," The vixen commanded with a cooing song.
In that timeless instant, as Su Nanya gracefully held up a piece of bacon with her chopsticks and tenderly guided it into Yung's eager mouth, he conceded, and he confessed from the bottom of his heart - this exquisite flavour is worth crossing worlds for.
This wasn't merely food, but a delectable piece of culinary artistry, possessing a flavour profile that would make even the choosiest of epicures swoon. And miss maid had made it in mere minutes. Minutes! There she stood—grumpy and blank—unthanked by her mischievous mistress, without any knowledge of how her cooking had given Yung an idea that had the potential to change this world's future forever.
Or so Yung daydreamed, as time did not move.
Su Nanya picked up another piece, and Yung gobbled it down.
This wasn't just about the taste; the sensory experience was intertwined with the profound spiritual one.
As he relished the meal, the qi unfurled, a potent wave coursing through his being. It gushed down Yung's body, descending in a rush of heat, and effortlessly refined itself as it settled into his dantian. This unique intertwining of culinary and spiritual satisfaction rendered the meal an experience that transcended the ordinary, providing not only nourishment of the soul but also an elevation of spirit.
He licked his lips, then the chopsticks. His spirit was whole; he was complete. His flesh lay willing, and the food was there, inviting him in with its seductive aroma, as Su Nanya continued her girlfriendly duties with her vixenly adorable smirk.
Rich people food is incredible! Ah! This is the life… Will Nyanya slap me if I lick her fingers too?
"Kii! Kiki Kuuuu!"
Okay, next time, I'll tell Miss Yafeng to make a grape smoothie.
"Kyu!"
And as he appreciated all his luck for this second chance at life, time flowed once more.
"You shall need to create many pairs of this communicator if you wish to truly propagate it far and wide. Oh, how adorable you are. Can you not gulp such luxurious delicacy down without crying?" Su Nanya teased, eyeing her maid with gestures she thought were hidden.
Yung split the yolk apart with his chopsticks. He actually felt a bit shy being fed like a baby after the initial blissful feelings had passed. But Su Nanya gently slapped that hand away. It was the same hand she'd wounded, so the vixen looked guilty momentarily. But with Yung's smile, she harrumphed and picked up the egg and put it in a bowl of rice.
"Do you have any suggestions?" Yung asked.
"For this matter, we shall oversee your deeds. No rebellions, understood?"
"I wouldn't dare."
"Have you heard of a transmission array token?"
Yung shook his head and opened his mouth. In came the rice, egg, and bacon. A divine formula of salty, savoury, and starchy goodness. Whatever that powder Su Yafeng had used, it was way better than MSG.
"We worry that you had to grow up in such illiteracy," Said Su Nanya. "You have our sincerest regrets, oh servant dearest."
"Thanks, I guess?"
"The object known as a transmission array token, my dearest most foolish boy, is a form of a 'Master' token. It, in its complex grace, can link together hundreds, thousands, or even millions of transmission tokens, with the exact number reliant upon its grade. In the third phase of the sect recruitments, such a token shall be utilised by the sects to display the selection tournaments throughout the Moon Valley trade city for the eyes of all to behold. In your participation, we expect nothing less than stellar conduct, worthy of our standing. Are we in understanding? Say ahh~n."
"Aaaahn, yum. Clear as glass." Yung said, gulping down. Su Nanya beamed. He refused the wine and had juice instead.
Leaving the city meant endless travels, and Yung did not feel comfortable travelling to one place than another just to gather cultivation resources. He… felt unsure.
"A transmission array token sounds like exactly what I'll need." He looked at Su Nanya while licking the yolk off his lips, then cheered himself up. "Nyanya! I need your help."
"How decidedly audacious. We are not some cheap porter, nor your beast of burden."
"M'lady. Language."
"You don't have one?" Yung's said, trying to stop his maybe-girlfriend from firing her maid, "How about at least an instruction manual on how to refine one. Like these." He pointed at the six spread out on the workbench.
"We do not feel the need to carry around rune and formation guides. Such labour is for the common class, for they are poor, and we are not."
"I thought you were all-powerful?"
"We are!" Su Nanya said, putting a hand on her chest, "We simply have our priorities."
Yung thought for a while, "Won't phase one be displayed like phase three?"
"Now, why would the Westmoon headsman use their only unit for such frivolous usage?"
"No, I meant if the Youjin clan had one. I could—"
"A useless endeavour. Transmission array tokens are military artefacts in their essence. Only the apex clan in each village area possess them. Letting their subordinate clans freely organise such large-scale communications would be as foolish as giving the rebels the key to the kingdom."
Makes sense. Yung shook his head. It looks like I might face severe blowback if I want to make a public-use message board. With anonymity at that…
"What about the sects?" Yung asked.
"We suppose they do own such trifles. Perchance they have the manual too? For certain our martial nephew's Twilight blood palace does. And all other great sects. Though unless we put in a good word, why would they ever grant you a—"
"Nyanya! I need your help."
"Unhand me, barbarian!"
"I will clean up." Su Yafeng muttered, then with a swipe of her hand, the cooking and dining utensils disappeared. "I cleaned up."
"Maid. We will once more stay with our servant for the night." Su Nanya handed Su Yafeng the pingtian grade sound transmission token she had shown Yung earlier. "If mother dearest does summon our divine presence, say we are busy."
"Why can't you say it?" The expressionless maid growled. She actually growled!
"We are busy!" Su Nanya dismissed her with a wave of her hand.
"I can't." Su Yafeng said, then walked out.
"Such disrespect! Maid. Maid, are you there?" The vixen was taken aback, then stared at the vanishing figure, shocked.
Yung was amazed.
So Miss Yafeng doesn't take all her slave driving lying down.
"The gall of that maid." Su Nanya bristled, her tail puffing up.
"She cares for you," Yung said.
"We are aware," Su Nanya still pouted, "She is our cousin, after all." The vixen then looked at the transmission token with a complicated face. "Mother is annoying. She wishes for me to make peace with that traitorous, thin-skinned, infidel-fathered, whale-bedding—"
"Whoa, let's keep it at that." Whale bedding?
Yung remembered. Su Nanya had once said that her parents were absent during her childhood, or something along that line. He hadn't asked for detail. And figured today wouldn't be a good time.
"Are you not going to create this mystery token of yours? We await your failure." The vixen put the pingtian grade jade slip away, resting her head on Yung's shoulder.
"I'll have you know, the goddess of the fates blessed me with luck once!"
"We are pleased with your flattery. Do continue."
It's not you though, Yung mused, then frowned. I'm being rude here, aren't I? I can't disparage Nanya over Moira like that. Both… are important. For different reasons.
He followed the vixen's mandate, and worked with the jades again while his mouth spouted a machine gun of sincere yet generic flattery. After that show Wang Lihou and the Elders put on, he'd felt awfully inadequate as a refiner slash jade carver.
But it was fine as long as he created the first prototype and hashed out the rune array formations, or 'code' in this case.
"Ah," his hand slipped, and the jade carving blade made a cut where it shouldn't have. Yung threw the ruined void jade in the trash.
The array is too tight here. Yung consulted his notes, and tinkered with the design.
"Have we told you that your talents do not lie with formations, oh foolish servant?"
"You said it laid with my tongue," Yung spoke while starting the process from the beginning with a new void jade. His fingers moved carefully, and the steady stream of xinqi etched the jade with minute precision. He had been using his xinqi all day, but with the constant stream of worship and sneaky snuggles of cultivation, his battery was still good to go.
"You must really like my eloquent words, heh?" Yung joked absentmindedly. But suddenly, Su Nanya grabbed him by his chin and turned his head towards her. "What—?Mmppf."
Smooch!
"Wow!" Yung said, exhaling with a pop.
"We admit, your talents with your tongue are sublime." There was a cheeky glint in the vixen's eyes. "How are our lips?"
"Succulent." Yung's said as his heart raced.
"Do not ignore us for longer than our heart can bear," Su Nanya looked down, tracing Yung's palm with hers, "We can divine yaoren emotions, servant dearest, and we know you can too."
So she does. She is all-knowledgeable. Yung dropped the jade carving blade and put his tools away alongside the spirit stones and void jades. He'd failed more than ten times today.
"How amazing our similarities, is it not? Shall you be a dear and admit your previous wrongs? How your dirty mouth so unceremoniously claimed to that Chao insect that you shall not pursue us, for some esoteric emotional dissimilarity stops you so. How impudent, how utterly unforgivable."
This was going to be a long process. Both the communicator, and Nyanya.
It's fine. I like trial and error.
Yung took Su Nanya's hand and walked to the window. It was dark outside, with infinite stars dotting the night sky. The wind was cool, carrying the smell of dinner from the restaurant downstairs.
"Tomorrow, can you accompany me to Silky's shrine?" He asked with a beating heart.
"Is it this 'date' event you keep persisting upon us? This activity that 'girlfriends' bestow upon their jingqi cultivation partners?" The vixen asked with a tile of her head.
"I wish, maybe later. I hear the night bazaar during the sect recruitments is quite a sight." Yung said, "But no. It's something else."
"Pray tell?"
"It's my parents' death anniversary. My family grave is there."
Yung couldn't miss it even if there were voidfiends around.
Su Nanya didn't hesitate, "We shall console you. Come."
They hugged. Nothing more, but it did more for Yung than any other touch ever could.
The night passed, and after a dreamless sleep, Yung woke up snuggling a small golden fox.
Which was currently a portion of pork-like fiend meat.
Su Yafeng sliced an aged chunk of it into thin strips and brushed it with a lustrous red sauce, causing it to glisten. She then seared it on both sides with utter concentration, setting it sizzling and crackling until it turned a delectable golden brown.
As the fat around the edges lightly charred, it lent a smoky whisper to the meat's texture. Yung gulped; Nyanya pulled his face away.
Next, Su Yafeng sprinkled some mystery leaves onto the dish, and the army of bacon gave off actual harried screeches. As the dish was completed, the sweet and savoury aroma of the red sauce mingled with the smoky undertones of the seared meat, creating an intoxicating fragrance that tantalised Yung's taste buds despite his best efforts not to drool. Su Nanya found such lousy table manners unsightly.
"Eggs?" Asked the maid.
"I'll have two," Yung said.
"We shall feed you," The vixen commanded with a cooing song.
In that timeless instant, as Su Nanya gracefully held up a piece of bacon with her chopsticks and tenderly guided it into Yung's eager mouth, he conceded, and he confessed from the bottom of his heart - this exquisite flavour is worth crossing worlds for.
This wasn't merely food, but a delectable piece of culinary artistry, possessing a flavour profile that would make even the choosiest of epicures swoon. And miss maid had made it in mere minutes. Minutes! There she stood—grumpy and blank—unthanked by her mischievous mistress, without any knowledge of how her cooking had given Yung an idea that had the potential to change this world's future forever.
Or so Yung daydreamed, as time did not move.
Su Nanya picked up another piece, and Yung gobbled it down.
This wasn't just about the taste; the sensory experience was intertwined with the profound spiritual one.
As he relished the meal, the qi unfurled, a potent wave coursing through his being. It gushed down Yung's body, descending in a rush of heat, and effortlessly refined itself as it settled into his dantian. This unique intertwining of culinary and spiritual satisfaction rendered the meal an experience that transcended the ordinary, providing not only nourishment of the soul but also an elevation of spirit.
He licked his lips, then the chopsticks. His spirit was whole; he was complete. His flesh lay willing, and the food was there, inviting him in with its seductive aroma, as Su Nanya continued her girlfriendly duties with her vixenly adorable smirk.
Rich people food is incredible! Ah! This is the life… Will Nyanya slap me if I lick her fingers too?
"Kii! Kiki Kuuuu!"
Okay, next time, I'll tell Miss Yafeng to make a grape smoothie.
"Kyu!"
And as he appreciated all his luck for this second chance at life, time flowed once more.
"You shall need to create many pairs of this communicator if you wish to truly propagate it far and wide. Oh, how adorable you are. Can you not gulp such luxurious delicacy down without crying?" Su Nanya teased, eyeing her maid with gestures she thought were hidden.
Yung split the yolk apart with his chopsticks. He actually felt a bit shy being fed like a baby after the initial blissful feelings had passed. But Su Nanya gently slapped that hand away. It was the same hand she'd wounded, so the vixen looked guilty momentarily. But with Yung's smile, she harrumphed and picked up the egg and put it in a bowl of rice.
"Do you have any suggestions?" Yung asked.
"For this matter, we shall oversee your deeds. No rebellions, understood?"
"I wouldn't dare."
"Have you heard of a transmission array token?"
Yung shook his head and opened his mouth. In came the rice, egg, and bacon. A divine formula of salty, savoury, and starchy goodness. Whatever that powder Su Yafeng had used, it was way better than MSG.
"We worry that you had to grow up in such illiteracy," Said Su Nanya. "You have our sincerest regrets, oh servant dearest."
"Thanks, I guess?"
"The object known as a transmission array token, my dearest most foolish boy, is a form of a 'Master' token. It, in its complex grace, can link together hundreds, thousands, or even millions of transmission tokens, with the exact number reliant upon its grade. In the third phase of the sect recruitments, such a token shall be utilised by the sects to display the selection tournaments throughout the Moon Valley trade city for the eyes of all to behold. In your participation, we expect nothing less than stellar conduct, worthy of our standing. Are we in understanding? Say ahh~n."
"Aaaahn, yum. Clear as glass." Yung said, gulping down. Su Nanya beamed. He refused the wine and had juice instead.
Leaving the city meant endless travels, and Yung did not feel comfortable travelling to one place than another just to gather cultivation resources. He… felt unsure.
"A transmission array token sounds like exactly what I'll need." He looked at Su Nanya while licking the yolk off his lips, then cheered himself up. "Nyanya! I need your help."
"How decidedly audacious. We are not some cheap porter, nor your beast of burden."
"M'lady. Language."
"You don't have one?" Yung's said, trying to stop his maybe-girlfriend from firing her maid, "How about at least an instruction manual on how to refine one. Like these." He pointed at the six spread out on the workbench.
"We do not feel the need to carry around rune and formation guides. Such labour is for the common class, for they are poor, and we are not."
"I thought you were all-powerful?"
"We are!" Su Nanya said, putting a hand on her chest, "We simply have our priorities."
Yung thought for a while, "Won't phase one be displayed like phase three?"
"Now, why would the Westmoon headsman use their only unit for such frivolous usage?"
"No, I meant if the Youjin clan had one. I could—"
"A useless endeavour. Transmission array tokens are military artefacts in their essence. Only the apex clan in each village area possess them. Letting their subordinate clans freely organise such large-scale communications would be as foolish as giving the rebels the key to the kingdom."
Makes sense. Yung shook his head. It looks like I might face severe blowback if I want to make a public-use message board. With anonymity at that…
"What about the sects?" Yung asked.
"We suppose they do own such trifles. Perchance they have the manual too? For certain our martial nephew's Twilight blood palace does. And all other great sects. Though unless we put in a good word, why would they ever grant you a—"
"Nyanya! I need your help."
"Unhand me, barbarian!"
"I will clean up." Su Yafeng muttered, then with a swipe of her hand, the cooking and dining utensils disappeared. "I cleaned up."
"Maid. We will once more stay with our servant for the night." Su Nanya handed Su Yafeng the pingtian grade sound transmission token she had shown Yung earlier. "If mother dearest does summon our divine presence, say we are busy."
"Why can't you say it?" The expressionless maid growled. She actually growled!
"We are busy!" Su Nanya dismissed her with a wave of her hand.
"I can't." Su Yafeng said, then walked out.
"Such disrespect! Maid. Maid, are you there?" The vixen was taken aback, then stared at the vanishing figure, shocked.
Yung was amazed.
So Miss Yafeng doesn't take all her slave driving lying down.
"The gall of that maid." Su Nanya bristled, her tail puffing up.
"She cares for you," Yung said.
"We are aware," Su Nanya still pouted, "She is our cousin, after all." The vixen then looked at the transmission token with a complicated face. "Mother is annoying. She wishes for me to make peace with that traitorous, thin-skinned, infidel-fathered, whale-bedding—"
"Whoa, let's keep it at that." Whale bedding?
Yung remembered. Su Nanya had once said that her parents were absent during her childhood, or something along that line. He hadn't asked for detail. And figured today wouldn't be a good time.
"Are you not going to create this mystery token of yours? We await your failure." The vixen put the pingtian grade jade slip away, resting her head on Yung's shoulder.
"I'll have you know, the goddess of the fates blessed me with luck once!"
"We are pleased with your flattery. Do continue."
It's not you though, Yung mused, then frowned. I'm being rude here, aren't I? I can't disparage Nanya over Moira like that. Both… are important. For different reasons.
He followed the vixen's mandate, and worked with the jades again while his mouth spouted a machine gun of sincere yet generic flattery. After that show Wang Lihou and the Elders put on, he'd felt awfully inadequate as a refiner slash jade carver.
But it was fine as long as he created the first prototype and hashed out the rune array formations, or 'code' in this case.
"Ah," his hand slipped, and the jade carving blade made a cut where it shouldn't have. Yung threw the ruined void jade in the trash.
The array is too tight here. Yung consulted his notes, and tinkered with the design.
"Have we told you that your talents do not lie with formations, oh foolish servant?"
"You said it laid with my tongue," Yung spoke while starting the process from the beginning with a new void jade. His fingers moved carefully, and the steady stream of xinqi etched the jade with minute precision. He had been using his xinqi all day, but with the constant stream of worship and sneaky snuggles of cultivation, his battery was still good to go.
"You must really like my eloquent words, heh?" Yung joked absentmindedly. But suddenly, Su Nanya grabbed him by his chin and turned his head towards her. "What—?Mmppf."
Smooch!
"Wow!" Yung said, exhaling with a pop.
"We admit, your talents with your tongue are sublime." There was a cheeky glint in the vixen's eyes. "How are our lips?"
"Succulent." Yung's said as his heart raced.
"Do not ignore us for longer than our heart can bear," Su Nanya looked down, tracing Yung's palm with hers, "We can divine yaoren emotions, servant dearest, and we know you can too."
So she does. She is all-knowledgeable. Yung dropped the jade carving blade and put his tools away alongside the spirit stones and void jades. He'd failed more than ten times today.
"How amazing our similarities, is it not? Shall you be a dear and admit your previous wrongs? How your dirty mouth so unceremoniously claimed to that Chao insect that you shall not pursue us, for some esoteric emotional dissimilarity stops you so. How impudent, how utterly unforgivable."
This was going to be a long process. Both the communicator, and Nyanya.
It's fine. I like trial and error.
Yung took Su Nanya's hand and walked to the window. It was dark outside, with infinite stars dotting the night sky. The wind was cool, carrying the smell of dinner from the restaurant downstairs.
"Tomorrow, can you accompany me to Silky's shrine?" He asked with a beating heart.
"Is it this 'date' event you keep persisting upon us? This activity that 'girlfriends' bestow upon their jingqi cultivation partners?" The vixen asked with a tile of her head.
"I wish, maybe later. I hear the night bazaar during the sect recruitments is quite a sight." Yung said, "But no. It's something else."
"Pray tell?"
"It's my parents' death anniversary. My family grave is there."
Yung couldn't miss it even if there were voidfiends around.
Su Nanya didn't hesitate, "We shall console you. Come."
They hugged. Nothing more, but it did more for Yung than any other touch ever could.
The night passed, and after a dreamless sleep, Yung woke up snuggling a small golden fox.
Chapter 43 - The more the merrier
Silky chirped, sitting on Yung's nose. He felt the sadness radiating from the critter through their soul contract. The foxmoth had never met Yung's parents, but his shrine was located barely a few feet away from their graves.
Yung's grandpa, Youjin Bao, would always get drunk, crying and reminiscing about his daughter whom he had raised by himself, and his son-in-law, the cheeky madlander brat that used to clean the jade slip store and had the gall to seduce the apple of his eyes. Every year this day came around, Yung had to carry the old man back as he sang eulogies for their departed family.
Today would mark the thirteenth year since Yung had become an orphan. It had been awfully lonely. He missed his family dearly.
The boy looked at the small golden fox struggling to wake up. Not because he was using her as a plushie, but because it was yet not daybreak, and this vixen was a late riser.
"We shall not succumb to sleep." Nyanya mewled.
"Where's Floofy?" Yung asked Silky, who sent a mental image of a fluffy grey fox strolling through the market square with a large backpack.
"Kii!"
Floofy went to buy flowers, paper money, and incense.
Yung laughed, "How thoughtful." He had three foxes he could call friends now. Four if he counted Su Yafeng. But Miss Maid wanted to take the day off, and no threats Su Nanya made worked.
A sharp pain pierced his heart, but with a few more breaths, it passed by like the spring breeze. Yes, he missed his parents. The ones who died, and the ones who were left behind on Gaia. He missed his siblings, nieces, and nephews too.
But he just knew he'd meet many new friends in this cruel yet amazing world.
Yung poked Su Nanya's belly; the golden maiden had turned back into a yao as she stretched her dainty arms with an adorable yawn.
"Dear me. Such cold a morn." She smiled, drowsy tears in her eyes. Yung beamed back.
Maybe he could have a new family too.
***
Ling kicked the round 'football' straight into the net, and a bamboo whistle rang out.
"Goal! The score is 4 to 1," said the referee, one of her fiendhunting buddies. He then called out the time left, "30 breaths."
The opposite team, made of madlander youths around her age, tried their best to get in at least one more goal in that half a minute. They had scored the opening shot, but with Ling's superior gymnastics and her team's honed coordination, they were able to pull the rug from under them.
Ling loved football, this beautiful game. It was a spiritual experience, where the rules of the 'battle' were laid bare on parchment, and all she had to do was kick!
Yet despite that, she didn't know what to feel about the game's creator.
"Times up. Silver sparrows win."
Her teammates cheered. There were pats on the back and plans for another match a few days later. The players here were all of age and were part of one fiendhunting group or another, each awakened either in spirit or body. There weren't many of them compared to the whole madlander youth population, but they were all Ling's friends.
As for the unawakened, they had their own plays in different fields. Ziyou Yung was right in this regard, when he stressed that it would be unfair to play against them.
Ling had tried; it was boring. And no better than bullying, sullying the spirit of this lifewide sport. If, though, any non-hunter but awakened madlander wanted to play, she was fine to show them who was boss.
After all, the more the merrier.
Ling bade her friends farewell and headed for the waste weir at the mouth of the red hole. They would be breaking it down today. Since after Ziyou Yung had somehow forced the Youjin clan to finally pay more attention to the madlanders, the waste weir and junk heaps lining the slum roads became the first thing to go.
That was definitely blackmail. Why're Pa and everyone else acting all okay? Scammed by the fox clan my ass!
Waste from the fiend butchery was no longer thrown into the dirt stream. People were saying that, at this rate, the stream would be renamed. There was discontent from the ones that based their living off of the weir, but the Youjin clan and her father promised the angry mob that they would be given better jobs soon enough.
Usually, we'd beat them until they stopped complaining.
The waste from the fiend butchery was now carted off by boat upstream, towards the Dim gold lake. Where it would then be taken underground to the farming caverns. The Youjin clan had plans to expand their paddy fields twofold, in the south and in the east too. This was never considered a viable option before; the upfront investment alone would be astronomical. And for what? The betterment of the madlanders?
Yung had used a stick and a carrot, and now the whole town was dancing in his paws. Pa included. The paddy fields would expand, the homes would be repaired, and kids won't get skin demons from bathing in the stream water.
"We're doin' it in the count of three, ey? The weir's crumblin'!" Ling heard a voice.
"Keep at it, lads and lassies! Thirty stumps be left. No, you numb-wit, the left, pull'em from the left."
"Aye, like that. Steady, steady. Careful o'the splash."
These were the folks who protested a few days ago. Now they were merrily breaking the weir down, laughing and smiling.
"I'll give ye a hand!" Ling shouted. She rolled up her trousers. It was a leather garb with painted animals and flowers, contouring her hips beneath the madlander skirt she donned. She wore a short-sleeved upper wear above her navel; it was loose and spacey.
Robes never suited her. She only wore those complicated prisons faking to be clothes on special occasions.
Ling jumped down into the mud and waddled her way to the group. A madlander man handed her a hammer, grinning.
"When do you leave?" Ling asked.
"They'll be shippin' us by next thirdsday." Replied the man. He had an axe and, with a heavy grunt, chopped at the bottom of one of the weir posts. Ling spotted the metal nets left on the bank; they had already been removed and would be salvaged for some extra coin.
"The missus is expecting, though," Continued the man. "An' that nose-crunching Youjin fella said we'd get houses with new thatch that can cool itself in summer. Nice fella, that guy."
"What's that?" Ling pointed at one of the animal paintings drawn on the man's shirt. He, and most other madlanders, wore sun-dried madlander leather just like her.
The animal painting was of a fox-like creature rolling upside down on the western circumference of a blue circle.
Ling knew this. She wanted to ask why?
"This?" The man stretched that part of his shirt to spread it out, "Me daughter finger painted it. Says the Fortune fox gives us yummy food every day." The man laughed, "She ain't wrong."
"That she ain't." Ling echoed with a complicated heart.
The work progressed, and by the afternoon, the weir had been demolished. There was a loud cheer, some sombre but more joyful. A tradition of centuries gone just like that. But not without a promise of a new beginning.
Ling did not know how to feel.
They brought out fresh fiendmeat to grill. Pickled greens and moonshine from forest fruits joined the charcoal too. They made a bonfire by the shore. They danced and sang, about the mad heavens and about their new home in white town. Ling joined in, letting her emotions loose. By the time the party ended, a few new pairs were formed, and the older couples egged them on.
The evening was hot, and the couples were leaving for a night of fun. Some ugly new brats would probably see the light of day this time next year.
How envious… Chao, that stinky bastard.
She wondered if she should grab a man too. After all, the more the merrier.
She rose up, her mood worsening.
Liar. Stupid mug. When the boy finally moved to the slums a year ago, unshed tears trapped behind his red eyes, Ling secretly rejoiced at his misfortune. Good riddance, that Youjin Chun was as haughty as they get.
Now was her chance! Years of a crush since she was seven, so she would not miss this opportunity. She moved, warred, and fought like mad. And with a few sweet words, she then completely let herself go.
She took him in and let him cry. Inside, upon her soul. And how amazing it was, that wondrous but painful night. She said to herself, she wouldn't really mind if Chao had other side women. If he wanted to leave for this Violet Horn continent, that was fine too. She wouldn't mind….
Stupid me. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
After that night, nothing she'd said and done worked. The boy was a jagged rock bent on revenge. Bent on proving himself to who knows what.
Yet he never let her truly go either. Every time she'd try to move away, he would show just the right amount of affection for her to think, as she felt right now. Maybe he'll change. Maybe it'll take time.
Ling stopped in her tracks.
Maybe having a few brats could solve the problem? Not like Pa minds… But ain't it a true man who don't hesitate?
After all, the more the merrier.
Ling could care less about the sect recruitments. She would only participate because she wanted to follow Youjin Chao. To some sect, to some other region. To the Violet Horn continent.
Do I really? I'll miss Pa. Damnit, I dunno anymore!
Youjin Chao would definitely leave for his revenge or whatever.
After a quick dip in the red hole, Ling ran to her hut. It was something she built herself a few years back after she'd turned sixteen and moved out from her old man's place.
She changed into another set of clothes. These were made from softer fur and fiendskin. Not many could afford them in the slums, but it was something she had an alchemist refine for extra qi conductivity.
Ling then took out a scroll from one of the cabinets. On it were the designs for a newer hut.
A home.
The first time she made her hut, it collapsed during the first rainy season. She had to move back with her Pa, but the following year she asked for help from her friends, uncles, and aunties. They all pitched in, and now she was a proud house owner.
For the second time that day, she tried scribbling some lines on the scroll. She frowned.
Not like adding a room would do anything….
Who would live in it?
The next morning, she woke up early.
"That's not it! The spear has to go in a straight line for the first one-third length, then swerve straight down. Like this." She was at her father's dojo, teaching the kids the meteor spear martial art.
Not many of them could make the Dao shard for it. But she liked teaching these brats. They were so dumb!
"Yes, teacher!" The brats replied as one.
The early morning went by. When the lessons ended, the kids ran off to join the fun with other cohorts.
It was football time, and the more the merrier.
"You wanna referee?" Asked the other instructor.
Ling shook her head. She wanted to head to the market square and see if she could spot that bastard Chao. He appeared and disappeared at random these days, spending more time in the forest than in the slums.
Ever since he met Ziyou Yung, he had changed. Ever since he met the fox princess.
The road she took today took her through the eastern lower town. There were a lot more madlanders now compared to a few weeks ago.
Most were carrying carts, ferrying luggage and furniture to the white town. The Baishui had moved out. Now, the white town was her pa's territory.
And with the Youjin clan's runners shouting at every corner, giving out free stuff, the native townfolks were less wary.
"Goal!" She heard a shout.
A group of madlander children were playing football under some trees. The space was an empty plot of land surrounded by a broken wooden palisade. Local kids were peeking in from the side with curiosity in their eyes. One girl, about seven, mustered up her courage and approached the players, squeezing her hem.
"C-Can we play too?" She shouted. Whispered.
The madlander kids stopped, then looked at each other in confusion. There was fear and uncertainty. But before they could reply, an old woman, perhaps the little girl's family, came in running and dragged her away.
"Grandma! No, no no. I wanna play I wanna play waaaaaaah."
"Shush. They're filthy. You know your hair will fall off if you play with them?"
"R-Really?" The girl sniffed.
"Grandma won't lie." Said the old lady with warm eyes.
Ling sighed, walking away.
When she reached the market square, she didn't find the bastard. But she did see Ziyou Yung strutting down the road, maybe towards the upper towns.
On his shoulder perched a golden fox, brushing lazily as the sun kissed its tail. In front of him was another fox, grey and with a heaven-defying fluffy coat. Su Xiya, Ling knew, or Floofy as she was called. The grey fox carried a comically large pack on her back but skipped along with the tiny Lord Yaoguai floating behind, the foxmoth land god buzzing a strange song.
"Woof woof, woof woof!"
"Kii!"
"Woof woof arf."
"Kyu!"
The people on the street gave them a wide berth. There were whispers of fear, envy, and gratitude. No one dared approach.
The golden fox glanced at Ling, and then away. But she knew for sure that their eyes had met.
Ling thought for a while. She didn't want to offend the fox yao for she knew what they were capable of.
There was this one fox yao who liked to dress in all black. Maybe even stronger than the houtian 3rd realm, the creepy guy would run around the city three nights a week and beat up men who gossiped too loudly about the fox clan.
Ling didn't know what to think about that other than this Su Haochen guy was big trouble.
These fox yao, Su Nanya, Xiya, Yafeng, Haochen and the rest, every last one of them had a nut loose in their heads with feral squirrels running after it.
No good would come from trying to befriend them.
Su Nanya especially; she dressed more naked than a prostitute and had no shame showing her breasts and butt to random men. Ling, for the love of the mad heavens, did not know what the bastard saw in her.
And she's supposed to be a princess? How sinful!
Ziyou Yung, too, for that matter. Did these two men have no pride? To pander over a woman of no virtue. Did they not know how many thousands of other men in the city stayed awake at night to pleasure themselves while moaning this princess's name?
Probably not. But that Su Haochen freak sure did. He went around beating those men up too, the other four nights of the week.
Ling needed to figure the vixen out.
She stepped towards them, and Ziyou Yung stopped, looking back.
"Hey!" Ling said with pretend enthusiasm, "Where ye goin'?"
Yung's grandpa, Youjin Bao, would always get drunk, crying and reminiscing about his daughter whom he had raised by himself, and his son-in-law, the cheeky madlander brat that used to clean the jade slip store and had the gall to seduce the apple of his eyes. Every year this day came around, Yung had to carry the old man back as he sang eulogies for their departed family.
Today would mark the thirteenth year since Yung had become an orphan. It had been awfully lonely. He missed his family dearly.
The boy looked at the small golden fox struggling to wake up. Not because he was using her as a plushie, but because it was yet not daybreak, and this vixen was a late riser.
"We shall not succumb to sleep." Nyanya mewled.
"Where's Floofy?" Yung asked Silky, who sent a mental image of a fluffy grey fox strolling through the market square with a large backpack.
"Kii!"
Floofy went to buy flowers, paper money, and incense.
Yung laughed, "How thoughtful." He had three foxes he could call friends now. Four if he counted Su Yafeng. But Miss Maid wanted to take the day off, and no threats Su Nanya made worked.
A sharp pain pierced his heart, but with a few more breaths, it passed by like the spring breeze. Yes, he missed his parents. The ones who died, and the ones who were left behind on Gaia. He missed his siblings, nieces, and nephews too.
But he just knew he'd meet many new friends in this cruel yet amazing world.
Yung poked Su Nanya's belly; the golden maiden had turned back into a yao as she stretched her dainty arms with an adorable yawn.
"Dear me. Such cold a morn." She smiled, drowsy tears in her eyes. Yung beamed back.
Maybe he could have a new family too.
***
Ling kicked the round 'football' straight into the net, and a bamboo whistle rang out.
"Goal! The score is 4 to 1," said the referee, one of her fiendhunting buddies. He then called out the time left, "30 breaths."
The opposite team, made of madlander youths around her age, tried their best to get in at least one more goal in that half a minute. They had scored the opening shot, but with Ling's superior gymnastics and her team's honed coordination, they were able to pull the rug from under them.
Ling loved football, this beautiful game. It was a spiritual experience, where the rules of the 'battle' were laid bare on parchment, and all she had to do was kick!
Yet despite that, she didn't know what to feel about the game's creator.
"Times up. Silver sparrows win."
Her teammates cheered. There were pats on the back and plans for another match a few days later. The players here were all of age and were part of one fiendhunting group or another, each awakened either in spirit or body. There weren't many of them compared to the whole madlander youth population, but they were all Ling's friends.
As for the unawakened, they had their own plays in different fields. Ziyou Yung was right in this regard, when he stressed that it would be unfair to play against them.
Ling had tried; it was boring. And no better than bullying, sullying the spirit of this lifewide sport. If, though, any non-hunter but awakened madlander wanted to play, she was fine to show them who was boss.
After all, the more the merrier.
Ling bade her friends farewell and headed for the waste weir at the mouth of the red hole. They would be breaking it down today. Since after Ziyou Yung had somehow forced the Youjin clan to finally pay more attention to the madlanders, the waste weir and junk heaps lining the slum roads became the first thing to go.
That was definitely blackmail. Why're Pa and everyone else acting all okay? Scammed by the fox clan my ass!
Waste from the fiend butchery was no longer thrown into the dirt stream. People were saying that, at this rate, the stream would be renamed. There was discontent from the ones that based their living off of the weir, but the Youjin clan and her father promised the angry mob that they would be given better jobs soon enough.
Usually, we'd beat them until they stopped complaining.
The waste from the fiend butchery was now carted off by boat upstream, towards the Dim gold lake. Where it would then be taken underground to the farming caverns. The Youjin clan had plans to expand their paddy fields twofold, in the south and in the east too. This was never considered a viable option before; the upfront investment alone would be astronomical. And for what? The betterment of the madlanders?
Yung had used a stick and a carrot, and now the whole town was dancing in his paws. Pa included. The paddy fields would expand, the homes would be repaired, and kids won't get skin demons from bathing in the stream water.
"We're doin' it in the count of three, ey? The weir's crumblin'!" Ling heard a voice.
"Keep at it, lads and lassies! Thirty stumps be left. No, you numb-wit, the left, pull'em from the left."
"Aye, like that. Steady, steady. Careful o'the splash."
These were the folks who protested a few days ago. Now they were merrily breaking the weir down, laughing and smiling.
"I'll give ye a hand!" Ling shouted. She rolled up her trousers. It was a leather garb with painted animals and flowers, contouring her hips beneath the madlander skirt she donned. She wore a short-sleeved upper wear above her navel; it was loose and spacey.
Robes never suited her. She only wore those complicated prisons faking to be clothes on special occasions.
Ling jumped down into the mud and waddled her way to the group. A madlander man handed her a hammer, grinning.
"When do you leave?" Ling asked.
"They'll be shippin' us by next thirdsday." Replied the man. He had an axe and, with a heavy grunt, chopped at the bottom of one of the weir posts. Ling spotted the metal nets left on the bank; they had already been removed and would be salvaged for some extra coin.
"The missus is expecting, though," Continued the man. "An' that nose-crunching Youjin fella said we'd get houses with new thatch that can cool itself in summer. Nice fella, that guy."
"What's that?" Ling pointed at one of the animal paintings drawn on the man's shirt. He, and most other madlanders, wore sun-dried madlander leather just like her.
The animal painting was of a fox-like creature rolling upside down on the western circumference of a blue circle.
Ling knew this. She wanted to ask why?
"This?" The man stretched that part of his shirt to spread it out, "Me daughter finger painted it. Says the Fortune fox gives us yummy food every day." The man laughed, "She ain't wrong."
"That she ain't." Ling echoed with a complicated heart.
The work progressed, and by the afternoon, the weir had been demolished. There was a loud cheer, some sombre but more joyful. A tradition of centuries gone just like that. But not without a promise of a new beginning.
Ling did not know how to feel.
They brought out fresh fiendmeat to grill. Pickled greens and moonshine from forest fruits joined the charcoal too. They made a bonfire by the shore. They danced and sang, about the mad heavens and about their new home in white town. Ling joined in, letting her emotions loose. By the time the party ended, a few new pairs were formed, and the older couples egged them on.
The evening was hot, and the couples were leaving for a night of fun. Some ugly new brats would probably see the light of day this time next year.
How envious… Chao, that stinky bastard.
She wondered if she should grab a man too. After all, the more the merrier.
She rose up, her mood worsening.
Liar. Stupid mug. When the boy finally moved to the slums a year ago, unshed tears trapped behind his red eyes, Ling secretly rejoiced at his misfortune. Good riddance, that Youjin Chun was as haughty as they get.
Now was her chance! Years of a crush since she was seven, so she would not miss this opportunity. She moved, warred, and fought like mad. And with a few sweet words, she then completely let herself go.
She took him in and let him cry. Inside, upon her soul. And how amazing it was, that wondrous but painful night. She said to herself, she wouldn't really mind if Chao had other side women. If he wanted to leave for this Violet Horn continent, that was fine too. She wouldn't mind….
Stupid me. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
After that night, nothing she'd said and done worked. The boy was a jagged rock bent on revenge. Bent on proving himself to who knows what.
Yet he never let her truly go either. Every time she'd try to move away, he would show just the right amount of affection for her to think, as she felt right now. Maybe he'll change. Maybe it'll take time.
Ling stopped in her tracks.
Maybe having a few brats could solve the problem? Not like Pa minds… But ain't it a true man who don't hesitate?
After all, the more the merrier.
Ling could care less about the sect recruitments. She would only participate because she wanted to follow Youjin Chao. To some sect, to some other region. To the Violet Horn continent.
Do I really? I'll miss Pa. Damnit, I dunno anymore!
Youjin Chao would definitely leave for his revenge or whatever.
After a quick dip in the red hole, Ling ran to her hut. It was something she built herself a few years back after she'd turned sixteen and moved out from her old man's place.
She changed into another set of clothes. These were made from softer fur and fiendskin. Not many could afford them in the slums, but it was something she had an alchemist refine for extra qi conductivity.
Ling then took out a scroll from one of the cabinets. On it were the designs for a newer hut.
A home.
The first time she made her hut, it collapsed during the first rainy season. She had to move back with her Pa, but the following year she asked for help from her friends, uncles, and aunties. They all pitched in, and now she was a proud house owner.
For the second time that day, she tried scribbling some lines on the scroll. She frowned.
Not like adding a room would do anything….
Who would live in it?
The next morning, she woke up early.
"That's not it! The spear has to go in a straight line for the first one-third length, then swerve straight down. Like this." She was at her father's dojo, teaching the kids the meteor spear martial art.
Not many of them could make the Dao shard for it. But she liked teaching these brats. They were so dumb!
"Yes, teacher!" The brats replied as one.
The early morning went by. When the lessons ended, the kids ran off to join the fun with other cohorts.
It was football time, and the more the merrier.
"You wanna referee?" Asked the other instructor.
Ling shook her head. She wanted to head to the market square and see if she could spot that bastard Chao. He appeared and disappeared at random these days, spending more time in the forest than in the slums.
Ever since he met Ziyou Yung, he had changed. Ever since he met the fox princess.
The road she took today took her through the eastern lower town. There were a lot more madlanders now compared to a few weeks ago.
Most were carrying carts, ferrying luggage and furniture to the white town. The Baishui had moved out. Now, the white town was her pa's territory.
And with the Youjin clan's runners shouting at every corner, giving out free stuff, the native townfolks were less wary.
"Goal!" She heard a shout.
A group of madlander children were playing football under some trees. The space was an empty plot of land surrounded by a broken wooden palisade. Local kids were peeking in from the side with curiosity in their eyes. One girl, about seven, mustered up her courage and approached the players, squeezing her hem.
"C-Can we play too?" She shouted. Whispered.
The madlander kids stopped, then looked at each other in confusion. There was fear and uncertainty. But before they could reply, an old woman, perhaps the little girl's family, came in running and dragged her away.
"Grandma! No, no no. I wanna play I wanna play waaaaaaah."
"Shush. They're filthy. You know your hair will fall off if you play with them?"
"R-Really?" The girl sniffed.
"Grandma won't lie." Said the old lady with warm eyes.
Ling sighed, walking away.
When she reached the market square, she didn't find the bastard. But she did see Ziyou Yung strutting down the road, maybe towards the upper towns.
On his shoulder perched a golden fox, brushing lazily as the sun kissed its tail. In front of him was another fox, grey and with a heaven-defying fluffy coat. Su Xiya, Ling knew, or Floofy as she was called. The grey fox carried a comically large pack on her back but skipped along with the tiny Lord Yaoguai floating behind, the foxmoth land god buzzing a strange song.
"Woof woof, woof woof!"
"Kii!"
"Woof woof arf."
"Kyu!"
The people on the street gave them a wide berth. There were whispers of fear, envy, and gratitude. No one dared approach.
The golden fox glanced at Ling, and then away. But she knew for sure that their eyes had met.
Ling thought for a while. She didn't want to offend the fox yao for she knew what they were capable of.
There was this one fox yao who liked to dress in all black. Maybe even stronger than the houtian 3rd realm, the creepy guy would run around the city three nights a week and beat up men who gossiped too loudly about the fox clan.
Ling didn't know what to think about that other than this Su Haochen guy was big trouble.
These fox yao, Su Nanya, Xiya, Yafeng, Haochen and the rest, every last one of them had a nut loose in their heads with feral squirrels running after it.
No good would come from trying to befriend them.
Su Nanya especially; she dressed more naked than a prostitute and had no shame showing her breasts and butt to random men. Ling, for the love of the mad heavens, did not know what the bastard saw in her.
And she's supposed to be a princess? How sinful!
Ziyou Yung, too, for that matter. Did these two men have no pride? To pander over a woman of no virtue. Did they not know how many thousands of other men in the city stayed awake at night to pleasure themselves while moaning this princess's name?
Probably not. But that Su Haochen freak sure did. He went around beating those men up too, the other four nights of the week.
Ling needed to figure the vixen out.
She stepped towards them, and Ziyou Yung stopped, looking back.
"Hey!" Ling said with pretend enthusiasm, "Where ye goin'?"
Chapter 44 - Songs of Now
It was not the most comfortable of experiences. But to travel sitting upon her servant's shoulder was one of her most luxurious vanities, and shape-shifting her internal organs had solved the problem of mere balance.
Nanya, such graceful a being, flicked her cute ears, casting a tired glance at the madlander laywoman accosting her Yung.
"I think Chao's out training. He got hurt pretty bad a few days ago, but took some pills and says he's fine now."
"That sounds like him." Said her servant with a wry smile, hiding his disappointment.
This Ziyou Ling girl had a broken heart; Nanya could tell, the daydreams were but one of the clues. Such an ailment seemed to be the most common affliction plaguing the eligible maidens of this village, including herself.
This Ling girl, she had a tainted physique, though.
Perhaps her purity was stolen by a rogue man of yang? It was adorable to Nanya how the girl forcefully kept her spirits high, despite oh so clearly regretting her choices. Nanya, being the most generous princess, decided she should warn this maiden. Of the fickleness of the male machismo, of those who cultivated the extremities of yang. Lest the authority of their fair yin lay smeared on the bed.
At the moment, though, her worrisome mother needed to be refuted.
"Won't you at least meet him?" The Su fox clan's matriarch said, her tired voice coming from Nanya's pingtian grade sound transmission artefact. It was telepathic admonishment sent straight to her soul, as mothers were wont to do. "If nothing else, claiming parts of his extreme yang will all but guarantee that you'll pass the lightning tribulation this turn."
"We are no cheap harlot." Nanya huffed, the very notion disgusting her tail.
"Then why this madlander boy?" Her mother's sigh prickled her nerves. As if she had any right to say that! "A mere shell of a man. Your cardinal physique starts to waste with each touch you share. For what? Paltry gains in jingqi? Revenge? This is self-destructive, my foolish daughter."
"Yet you would ask your daughter to sell her honour for, mayhap, an even tinier step up in our graceful cultivation. To that promiscuous he-whore no less."
"Who taught you such language!?" The matriarch was aghast, and Nanya quickly shut her mouth. There was an awkward silence.
"A momentous step up, my daughter, for the jade empress calls the sun." Her mother continued, her tone lamenting. Nanya knew she was right, yet it was the spirit of the matter that was tiny. We are no cheap harlot!
The vixen could imagine the demure nine-tailed fox rubbing her temple on the other side of the landbridge, and smirked at the thought. Oh, how devious she was.
"So your honour would not be sold," Her mother said, "For he is the Radiant sun daochild. What better a man could you hope for?"
"One who is loyal."
"Yaya—"
"We are Nanya!"
"And that manner of speech. Since when do you use the royal we?"
Nanya swore she could hear her father trying to calm her mother down, but there was no need to answer her grand designs to the worrywarts. "We are more than one. It is but proper etiquette for those who are many such as we."
"… I worry for you. Your father and I don't want to see you waste your physique and future away for a tantrum."
"Surely that is a jest?" Nanya knew she should not say such hurtful words, but they left her dainty soul before she could control her rage. "Father and you, who left for closed-door cultivation the moment we were born? We were raised by maids and butlers for the first century of our lives! Where were you when we needed you the most? Yet here you are now, claiming your unjust ownership over our sovereign choices!"
"Yaya."
"Nanya! We will not repeat ourselves." She would not. She swore she wouldn't!
"Your aunts and uncles aren't your maids and butlers."
"Of course they are. They love it when we pamper their plays."
"No, then why does Feng'er contact me to vent for hours every night?"
That insolent maid! Nanya huffed and puffed and thumped her servant with her tail, "Tell us, mother dearest. What was the first matter you arranged for us in our whole elegant lives, after you had come out of closed doors?"
There was no reply, and Nanya couldn't help but feel guilty. But she needed to make her position to them transparent. Just as her servant had, to his own unfair maternal family.
"You officiated our engagement to that adulterous beast of a lowlife. For what? Some vague promise of political peace?"
"You weren't against it then." Her mother said.
"We must admit. He was a desirable man. But we did not expect infidelity, alas to our damsel soul."
"The Radiant Sun princes have the duty to sire as many children as possible, to nurture the best of their bloodlines. The possibility was always there, and you knew that. I had imagined you made peace with it ages ago."
"He was an outcast to his clan, a son of an unloved concubine. We took him in, such benevolent our mercy! He promised us his eternal love, lamenting the fate of his mother concubine in the imperial harem. We gave him our heart wholly. Yet! Yet that man delivered us his tainted body, no better than the imperial father he so detests." Of course Nanya was aware of princes taking concubines. But with their love, their unspoken promise, she had expected her fiancé to discard such an archaic rule. "It was our Su fox clan that sheltered him, nurtured him. Yet such is his face; he threw dirty water at our compassion. The gall, the absolute disrespect! And when he did so with all his misplaced miniature pride, why did you not support us in our righteous indignation? You wish to act as our mother after all this time, but your actions do not prove it. We do not need your conditional love."
"Since when did you have such a sharp tongue? Who has been teaching you these…." If the matriarch was offended, she didn't show it.
"We are no child that needs coddling!" Nanya said with a scorching tone.
The silence returned, and Nanya knew her mother would no longer press the engagement issue. For now, that is.
The vixen sighed. She knew her mother loved her, but sometimes, that love could be smothering, one-sidedly so. "It is our dear servant who opened our eyes. A mere shell he may be, he is yet infinitely better."
"… have you fallen in love?"
"What?" Nanya recoiled, then clicked her tongue as though she had heard the most chucklesome thing under the heavens, "Such riotous droll! Mother, we did not know your humorous side. We, such unattainable a maiden, to love a mere layman? Tut tut!"
"Yaya, I don't want to interfere with your life. I really don't. But I don't want you to suffer either. Looking at this boy's talent, he can reach the xiantian 1st realm at best? He'll live only a fraction of what you will."
"We are not in love." Nanya repeated, growling.
"I admit, his dao is strange. Something to do with fate and emotions? But that won't be enough to carry his cultivation. Neither will high quantities of xinqi. Sometimes, talent is what stands in between love more than anything else."
"You never listen to us!" Nanya finally screamed.
"I worry for you! I don't want you to make a choice you will regret. Not like this! I don't want to lose another child before I pass!"
The regret hit Nanya like a sledgehammer, and her servant stopped walking, looking at her with worry.
"We cannot regret. We would like it if you could trust our judgements more readily." Nanya said, calming down, "We prefer you not to worry."
"Well, I wouldn't be so worried if you were more responsible. When the effigy of Su Xiya was lost, how do you think I felt leaving you alone?"
"We shall recover our fifth occultic foxball soon. That wrong will be righted."
"There are easier ways to pass the tribulation. I want you to know, you can count on your father and me rather than doing everything on your own." Her mother said.
"We know." Nanya believed her. The matriarch's heart was in the right place, but not her actions. After all, the leader of the wealthiest clan in the world had too heavy a responsibility to always care for her wayward daughter. Nanya mused at the thought, then decided to pander to her mother, "We do love you, Mother dearest. Don't you know?"
"….What do you want?" A wary voice replied.
"You would send over some pingtian realm contraceptives for us?"
"You really love this boy, don't you?"
"We do not!" Her banter backfired, and she was left flabbergasted. "Yet even if we did, it is our choice." Suddenly she felt quite defensive, uncomfortably so.
"I will speak to you again tomorrow. I know this will fall on deaf ears, but if you lay with the boy, your cardinal physique will go to waste. Though perhaps your current one may benefit."
"You spend a king's bounty in pearlitecast spirit stones to actuate a nagging session with us every single day, and you talk of wastefulness? Do you not have other matters to attend to?"
"In fact, I do. Your father is furious and plans to erase that madlander boy from existence."
"Dare him, that old geezer! We will usher a heavenly vow never to speak to him again." Nanya was furious.
"…I will pass that on." Her mother said, sighing for the umpteenth time.
Nanya rolled her eyes. For the first chapters of her life, her parents were absent. When they returned, they were strangers, yet they treated their already adult daughter like she was a toddler.
As though they had been the ones to raise her, and now they would decide her fate.
She knew they loved her with all their heart. And their relationship was better now. But she would never give up her sovereign will.
"I love you too, my foolish daughter." With that, the Su fox clan matriarch severed the communication, and Nanya sent her gaze towards her dear servant.
Ziyou Yung was seated in front of an old tombstone, crosslegged. He had spent the morn clearing the place up with the broom her Su Xiya had purchased. The Ling girl helped where she could, but Nanya assumed that she herself was the reason why this madlander maiden tagged along.
The day was mournful, and Nanya would not deny it their tears.
By the grave site, the first batch of spring flowers blossomed quietly, but their colour was ever so sullen. The pollen that irritated her adorable nose had lost its strength too, replaced by the gratifying scent of wilting florescence.
The ocean breeze did not reach under the orchard canopy with their full obnoxious might, but the salty taste on her tongue remained constant.
Ziyou Yung clapped once, lighting the incense ball. The tomb was a sorrowful thing, Nanya thought. A sad slab of stone was the only way she could refer to it, carved with the names of her dear servant's parents. They might have once become Nanya's family had she the heart to give Ziyou Yung his selfish wish. Edges cracked, moss green growth on the surface that threatened to devour the solemn sanctity; the grey tombstone had long turned muddy.
Thin strands of smoke rose from the incense and dispersed in the air, and her servant dearest's prayer for good health, good fortune, and a good death fell on deaf ears.
A backwoods tradition no doubt. The boy did not even burn the paper money.
Nanya decided, she must do something heartening for the poor little orphan. Her ears twitched, and she sent a seething glare at the Ling girl. The madlander maiden had stepped on a twig, ever so slightly disturbing Ziyou Yung's asymmetrical euphonies.
The boy was no musical savant, and his sense of rhythm was criminal at best. But the tune he always hummed had a magic to it neither Nanya nor her Su Xiya could ever fathom clearly. The song danced with Ziyou Yung's dreams and emotions, but it was a dance new to this world. The grand dao stirred with each peak and trough of her servant's boyish voice, a heavenly rhapsody to Nanya's sublime eyes.
And this Ling had dared to disturb. Such a sin!
Her servant clapped again, and his voice grew mellow.
"O Great and wondrous Dao, we humbly do come,
To offer tribute to our parents' sacred lives,
Their love and wisdom, like the morning sun,
Has guided us through joy and pain and strife."
The ending verses to the Tapestry of Tribute, 'The Grand Dao's Embrace.' Nanya knew it by heart, for it was her Su fox clan that first sang this prayer upon the Void connecting land bridge.
"In death, they journeyed to your vast expanse,
Their spirits soaring with the winds of fate,
And now they dwell in realms of light and dance,
Beyond the veil that separates mortal from great."
A slight quiver in Ziyou Yung's voice, and he stuttered when saying 'beyond the veil.' Nanya wondered why, even though she had scried his daydreams. Who was her servant praying to? And why did he miss them so much, when he was but two years old when they had died?
"O Dao, we pray that you embrace their souls,
In your vast and radiant, infinite light,
And grant them rest, and joy, and lofty goals,
In your eternal presence shining bright."
The tune had changed. Inadvertently or perhaps intentionally. It was not a song Nanya knew; neither would have Ziyou Yung's parents. There was a small rustle by the graveyard, animals going to and fro. A mudmouse, showing its pointy head from a thicket of wild berries. It glanced at the three, then turned away, back to foraging and escaping the mudsnakes and the mudbirds. How small its life was, for it would never know the dao. Never live longer than two years of the sun and moon.
Yet even such a creature knew how to mourn its pack.
"And as we mourn their loss, we seek your aid,
To find the strength to carry on their flame,
To honour them in word and deed, and trade,
And keep alive the glory of their name."
Such was the verse for the mortals, the unawakened who could not cultivate.
Like the mudmouse, they would never achieve the dao. They would never strive for immortality. To live on through their deeds and in the memories of their family, friends, subjects, and enemies. There was something admirable about these short lives. Better to not cultivate and live to the fullest, than to cultivate and live sparingly, discarding their pride and honour for that one treasured herb and this one magical artefact.
Nanya could not relate.
Her mother's words echoed like a haunting ghost. That her servant would live a fraction of the time she would. That there would come a day she would not be able to kiss his lips, hear his words, and share his sorrow.
Nanya, such graceful a being, flicked her cute ears, casting a tired glance at the madlander laywoman accosting her Yung.
"I think Chao's out training. He got hurt pretty bad a few days ago, but took some pills and says he's fine now."
"That sounds like him." Said her servant with a wry smile, hiding his disappointment.
This Ziyou Ling girl had a broken heart; Nanya could tell, the daydreams were but one of the clues. Such an ailment seemed to be the most common affliction plaguing the eligible maidens of this village, including herself.
This Ling girl, she had a tainted physique, though.
Perhaps her purity was stolen by a rogue man of yang? It was adorable to Nanya how the girl forcefully kept her spirits high, despite oh so clearly regretting her choices. Nanya, being the most generous princess, decided she should warn this maiden. Of the fickleness of the male machismo, of those who cultivated the extremities of yang. Lest the authority of their fair yin lay smeared on the bed.
At the moment, though, her worrisome mother needed to be refuted.
"Won't you at least meet him?" The Su fox clan's matriarch said, her tired voice coming from Nanya's pingtian grade sound transmission artefact. It was telepathic admonishment sent straight to her soul, as mothers were wont to do. "If nothing else, claiming parts of his extreme yang will all but guarantee that you'll pass the lightning tribulation this turn."
"We are no cheap harlot." Nanya huffed, the very notion disgusting her tail.
"Then why this madlander boy?" Her mother's sigh prickled her nerves. As if she had any right to say that! "A mere shell of a man. Your cardinal physique starts to waste with each touch you share. For what? Paltry gains in jingqi? Revenge? This is self-destructive, my foolish daughter."
"Yet you would ask your daughter to sell her honour for, mayhap, an even tinier step up in our graceful cultivation. To that promiscuous he-whore no less."
"Who taught you such language!?" The matriarch was aghast, and Nanya quickly shut her mouth. There was an awkward silence.
"A momentous step up, my daughter, for the jade empress calls the sun." Her mother continued, her tone lamenting. Nanya knew she was right, yet it was the spirit of the matter that was tiny. We are no cheap harlot!
The vixen could imagine the demure nine-tailed fox rubbing her temple on the other side of the landbridge, and smirked at the thought. Oh, how devious she was.
"So your honour would not be sold," Her mother said, "For he is the Radiant sun daochild. What better a man could you hope for?"
"One who is loyal."
"Yaya—"
"We are Nanya!"
"And that manner of speech. Since when do you use the royal we?"
Nanya swore she could hear her father trying to calm her mother down, but there was no need to answer her grand designs to the worrywarts. "We are more than one. It is but proper etiquette for those who are many such as we."
"… I worry for you. Your father and I don't want to see you waste your physique and future away for a tantrum."
"Surely that is a jest?" Nanya knew she should not say such hurtful words, but they left her dainty soul before she could control her rage. "Father and you, who left for closed-door cultivation the moment we were born? We were raised by maids and butlers for the first century of our lives! Where were you when we needed you the most? Yet here you are now, claiming your unjust ownership over our sovereign choices!"
"Yaya."
"Nanya! We will not repeat ourselves." She would not. She swore she wouldn't!
"Your aunts and uncles aren't your maids and butlers."
"Of course they are. They love it when we pamper their plays."
"No, then why does Feng'er contact me to vent for hours every night?"
That insolent maid! Nanya huffed and puffed and thumped her servant with her tail, "Tell us, mother dearest. What was the first matter you arranged for us in our whole elegant lives, after you had come out of closed doors?"
There was no reply, and Nanya couldn't help but feel guilty. But she needed to make her position to them transparent. Just as her servant had, to his own unfair maternal family.
"You officiated our engagement to that adulterous beast of a lowlife. For what? Some vague promise of political peace?"
"You weren't against it then." Her mother said.
"We must admit. He was a desirable man. But we did not expect infidelity, alas to our damsel soul."
"The Radiant Sun princes have the duty to sire as many children as possible, to nurture the best of their bloodlines. The possibility was always there, and you knew that. I had imagined you made peace with it ages ago."
"He was an outcast to his clan, a son of an unloved concubine. We took him in, such benevolent our mercy! He promised us his eternal love, lamenting the fate of his mother concubine in the imperial harem. We gave him our heart wholly. Yet! Yet that man delivered us his tainted body, no better than the imperial father he so detests." Of course Nanya was aware of princes taking concubines. But with their love, their unspoken promise, she had expected her fiancé to discard such an archaic rule. "It was our Su fox clan that sheltered him, nurtured him. Yet such is his face; he threw dirty water at our compassion. The gall, the absolute disrespect! And when he did so with all his misplaced miniature pride, why did you not support us in our righteous indignation? You wish to act as our mother after all this time, but your actions do not prove it. We do not need your conditional love."
"Since when did you have such a sharp tongue? Who has been teaching you these…." If the matriarch was offended, she didn't show it.
"We are no child that needs coddling!" Nanya said with a scorching tone.
The silence returned, and Nanya knew her mother would no longer press the engagement issue. For now, that is.
The vixen sighed. She knew her mother loved her, but sometimes, that love could be smothering, one-sidedly so. "It is our dear servant who opened our eyes. A mere shell he may be, he is yet infinitely better."
"… have you fallen in love?"
"What?" Nanya recoiled, then clicked her tongue as though she had heard the most chucklesome thing under the heavens, "Such riotous droll! Mother, we did not know your humorous side. We, such unattainable a maiden, to love a mere layman? Tut tut!"
"Yaya, I don't want to interfere with your life. I really don't. But I don't want you to suffer either. Looking at this boy's talent, he can reach the xiantian 1st realm at best? He'll live only a fraction of what you will."
"We are not in love." Nanya repeated, growling.
"I admit, his dao is strange. Something to do with fate and emotions? But that won't be enough to carry his cultivation. Neither will high quantities of xinqi. Sometimes, talent is what stands in between love more than anything else."
"You never listen to us!" Nanya finally screamed.
"I worry for you! I don't want you to make a choice you will regret. Not like this! I don't want to lose another child before I pass!"
The regret hit Nanya like a sledgehammer, and her servant stopped walking, looking at her with worry.
"We cannot regret. We would like it if you could trust our judgements more readily." Nanya said, calming down, "We prefer you not to worry."
"Well, I wouldn't be so worried if you were more responsible. When the effigy of Su Xiya was lost, how do you think I felt leaving you alone?"
"We shall recover our fifth occultic foxball soon. That wrong will be righted."
"There are easier ways to pass the tribulation. I want you to know, you can count on your father and me rather than doing everything on your own." Her mother said.
"We know." Nanya believed her. The matriarch's heart was in the right place, but not her actions. After all, the leader of the wealthiest clan in the world had too heavy a responsibility to always care for her wayward daughter. Nanya mused at the thought, then decided to pander to her mother, "We do love you, Mother dearest. Don't you know?"
"….What do you want?" A wary voice replied.
"You would send over some pingtian realm contraceptives for us?"
"You really love this boy, don't you?"
"We do not!" Her banter backfired, and she was left flabbergasted. "Yet even if we did, it is our choice." Suddenly she felt quite defensive, uncomfortably so.
"I will speak to you again tomorrow. I know this will fall on deaf ears, but if you lay with the boy, your cardinal physique will go to waste. Though perhaps your current one may benefit."
"You spend a king's bounty in pearlitecast spirit stones to actuate a nagging session with us every single day, and you talk of wastefulness? Do you not have other matters to attend to?"
"In fact, I do. Your father is furious and plans to erase that madlander boy from existence."
"Dare him, that old geezer! We will usher a heavenly vow never to speak to him again." Nanya was furious.
"…I will pass that on." Her mother said, sighing for the umpteenth time.
Nanya rolled her eyes. For the first chapters of her life, her parents were absent. When they returned, they were strangers, yet they treated their already adult daughter like she was a toddler.
As though they had been the ones to raise her, and now they would decide her fate.
She knew they loved her with all their heart. And their relationship was better now. But she would never give up her sovereign will.
"I love you too, my foolish daughter." With that, the Su fox clan matriarch severed the communication, and Nanya sent her gaze towards her dear servant.
Ziyou Yung was seated in front of an old tombstone, crosslegged. He had spent the morn clearing the place up with the broom her Su Xiya had purchased. The Ling girl helped where she could, but Nanya assumed that she herself was the reason why this madlander maiden tagged along.
The day was mournful, and Nanya would not deny it their tears.
By the grave site, the first batch of spring flowers blossomed quietly, but their colour was ever so sullen. The pollen that irritated her adorable nose had lost its strength too, replaced by the gratifying scent of wilting florescence.
The ocean breeze did not reach under the orchard canopy with their full obnoxious might, but the salty taste on her tongue remained constant.
Ziyou Yung clapped once, lighting the incense ball. The tomb was a sorrowful thing, Nanya thought. A sad slab of stone was the only way she could refer to it, carved with the names of her dear servant's parents. They might have once become Nanya's family had she the heart to give Ziyou Yung his selfish wish. Edges cracked, moss green growth on the surface that threatened to devour the solemn sanctity; the grey tombstone had long turned muddy.
Thin strands of smoke rose from the incense and dispersed in the air, and her servant dearest's prayer for good health, good fortune, and a good death fell on deaf ears.
A backwoods tradition no doubt. The boy did not even burn the paper money.
Nanya decided, she must do something heartening for the poor little orphan. Her ears twitched, and she sent a seething glare at the Ling girl. The madlander maiden had stepped on a twig, ever so slightly disturbing Ziyou Yung's asymmetrical euphonies.
The boy was no musical savant, and his sense of rhythm was criminal at best. But the tune he always hummed had a magic to it neither Nanya nor her Su Xiya could ever fathom clearly. The song danced with Ziyou Yung's dreams and emotions, but it was a dance new to this world. The grand dao stirred with each peak and trough of her servant's boyish voice, a heavenly rhapsody to Nanya's sublime eyes.
And this Ling had dared to disturb. Such a sin!
Her servant clapped again, and his voice grew mellow.
"O Great and wondrous Dao, we humbly do come,
To offer tribute to our parents' sacred lives,
Their love and wisdom, like the morning sun,
Has guided us through joy and pain and strife."
The ending verses to the Tapestry of Tribute, 'The Grand Dao's Embrace.' Nanya knew it by heart, for it was her Su fox clan that first sang this prayer upon the Void connecting land bridge.
"In death, they journeyed to your vast expanse,
Their spirits soaring with the winds of fate,
And now they dwell in realms of light and dance,
Beyond the veil that separates mortal from great."
A slight quiver in Ziyou Yung's voice, and he stuttered when saying 'beyond the veil.' Nanya wondered why, even though she had scried his daydreams. Who was her servant praying to? And why did he miss them so much, when he was but two years old when they had died?
"O Dao, we pray that you embrace their souls,
In your vast and radiant, infinite light,
And grant them rest, and joy, and lofty goals,
In your eternal presence shining bright."
The tune had changed. Inadvertently or perhaps intentionally. It was not a song Nanya knew; neither would have Ziyou Yung's parents. There was a small rustle by the graveyard, animals going to and fro. A mudmouse, showing its pointy head from a thicket of wild berries. It glanced at the three, then turned away, back to foraging and escaping the mudsnakes and the mudbirds. How small its life was, for it would never know the dao. Never live longer than two years of the sun and moon.
Yet even such a creature knew how to mourn its pack.
"And as we mourn their loss, we seek your aid,
To find the strength to carry on their flame,
To honour them in word and deed, and trade,
And keep alive the glory of their name."
Such was the verse for the mortals, the unawakened who could not cultivate.
Like the mudmouse, they would never achieve the dao. They would never strive for immortality. To live on through their deeds and in the memories of their family, friends, subjects, and enemies. There was something admirable about these short lives. Better to not cultivate and live to the fullest, than to cultivate and live sparingly, discarding their pride and honour for that one treasured herb and this one magical artefact.
Nanya could not relate.
Her mother's words echoed like a haunting ghost. That her servant would live a fraction of the time she would. That there would come a day she would not be able to kiss his lips, hear his words, and share his sorrow.
Chapter 45 - Foxes are terrible therapists
A mortal lived less than a hundred years. One needed to at the least be in the xiantian 1st realm to gain any meaningful increase in longevity, since the longest a houtian 3rd realmer could naturally live was up to two hundred years.
If Ziyou Yung stagnated at the xiantian 1st realm with his laughable talents, paltry physique, and unorthodox dao, he might live up to three centuries with the help of elixirs. Unimaginable for mortals, yet a mere blip in Nanya's mind. Because for the pingtian, the millenniums were nothing but paper limits.
Would she have to honour his passing just like this, so many eternities into the future? Would she deign to even remember? Do we truly love him? This dirty little boy?
"Thus do we pray, with reverence and awe,
To the grand and wondrous dao, our guide and our law."
Ziyou Yung stood up, dusting his baggy trousers.
The sun had started its fall downwards, with the faraway sky engulfed in an orange light. As he walked to her with the yaoguai on his shoulder, the orange rays shone hard edges on his soil-coloured skin, giving rise to strange undulations in Nanya's abdomen.
Her Su Xiya brushed against the boy's legs, much to his delight.
"Floofy, you can't do that. Nyanya will be jealous."
Ziyou Ling flinched, but tried her hardest to hide such unfounded reactions.
Nanya could not help but sneakily smile. Oh, how devious she was! "It matters to us not." She said, "Our Madam Floofykins is merely a decade old. A child so beloved."
"Is she your sister? I really thought Floofy was you in disguise."
Nanya stilled, her heart thumping to a stop, "And why would you assume such peculiar notions?"
"I don't know…" Ziyou Yung scratched his head. His curly hair grated Nanya's sense of beauty, but some were simply born inferior. "I thought you wanted to spy on me or something. And when I floof Floofy, my zhenqi starts to convert. Wait…. This ain't jing—I mean, that kinda cultivation, right?"
"…. Foolish." Thank the heavens she was not in her yao form, or her face would have broken into a blush.
"So I can keep floofing her? You really won't be jealous?"
Her Su Xiya jumped on her hind legs and leaned on Ziyou Yung like a puppy. The boy laughed, picking the grey fox up before aggressively 'floofing' it.
"Do what you wish," Nanya's xinqi roiled like the violent seas. At this rate, it would only be a matter of time before her sixth ordinal body could break through into the meridian building realm.
Nanya lowered her head, remembering when she had wounded Ziyou Yung's hands for overreaching. She wondered if she could reject his advances if he tried again, on the precipice of her breakthrough.
"Y-Yung." The Ling girl spoke, after observing their conversation like a scared henling. "I mean, Fairy Su. T-This one has a matter she would like to d-discuss."
Nanya saw Ziyou Yung roll his eyes, and she was tempted to do the same. But for one such princessly as she, it would be unbecoming.
"Do try to be interesting, unfair maiden," Said the vixen. "If it is regarding the boy with the yang physique, we can guide you on how to rupture your bond, but not how to enchain his heart."
***
Yung didn't think now was the best time to give out love advice, not that he would, but since Ziyou Ling had helped him for so long with cleaning the graveyard, he decided that his alone time with Su Nanya could wait some more minutes.
Telling the madlander girl to leave now would be rude.
"By yang physique, she means Youjin Chao." Yung said.
Ziyou Ling nodded. Her fingers twitched nervously, but the girl got her words out, "I would like to know how to make Chao stop ignoring me." Her slight accent was gone. She was trying to sound prim and proper, but that just made her voice sound odd.
"Girl, do you not have ears? We are not interested in showing you the secrets to keep hearts, but perchance to shatter them into myriad fragments, if your plight pleases us." Fox Nyanya said, preening.
Ziyou Ling was stumped and sent Yung a pleading look.
"How about hearing her out?"
"Fine. Get on with it."
Ziyou Ling stuttered a smile, "Fairy Su can seduce a man and keep his attention without even trying! I wanna learn how to do that."
Ah, her accent is back.
"But of course. That is our divine talent. And so is to refute their love, which is our divine right. It is not such a simple art we could pass onto one such crass as you." The vixen said.
"B-But Chao likes you too. How did you do that?"
"As does every other man in this villagewoods city, oh unfair maiden. We do not understand your point. Mayhap, are you envious of us?"
Ziyou Ling shook her head, "I don't mind. But he keeps ignoring me! If I can learn how to keep his gaze on me like he looks at Fairy Su, then I'd be satisfied. But he treats me like…."
"Do proceed with your feeble attempts, such a pitiful, self-defeating maiden you are."
"… like our night together didn't happen." Ziyou Ling was embarrassed to confess that. Rightfully so, for even if madlanders were more open than the native ren, women were still expected to keep their 'purity' before marriage.
"We cannot ignore that." Su Nanya's foxy gaze turned serious. She thumped her tail on the ground, annoyed.
"You'll teach me how to seduce him?" Ziyou Ling's eyes lit up.
"Such insolence!" Su Nanya snarled, "We meant your very acceptance of the fact that you dare find it fine for this yang boy of yours to have multiple lovers!"
"I-I wouldn't wanna tie him down."
"Utter nonsense. You are but a mere beggar!" Su Nanya said, "What of you, then, oh unfair maiden? Would you be fine having several men to share the bed with?"
Ziyou Ling blushed at that, "I won't! It's not right."
"Why is it not?"
"B-Because I'm a girl? Women can't have multiple husbands."
"And you assume it is proper for men to pluck many a wife?" Su Nanya asked, incensed. There was a dark storm brewing beneath her words. Yung shivered; it made the cold spring wind feel much more frosty.
"Well…. Yeah?" Ziyou Ling replied.
"Oh, dear. Oh mercy me, oh this foolish, savage, unlettered barbarian!" Su Nanya snarled with a dizzy gait, "We must ask you this! Why would you even bear that notion?"
"I don't know. Because women, umm, have to be loyal. We…." Ziyou Ling searched for answers. But then, Su Nanya approached her, the vixen's aura rising up with each tiny step, and the madlander girl started backing away.
"Find your words. Carefully." Su Nanya growled low.
"Because It's always been like this!" Ziyou Ling clenched her fists, closed her teary eyes, and screamed. "The Zheng clan patriarch has ten wives. And most noblemen take concubines. For a woman to bed multiple men, it sounds wrong. No! No! Like, aren't we getting penetrated by t-their thing!? Would another guy even like a used, unchaste girl?"
Yung sighed. But he couldn't blame Ziyou Ling. Despite the millions of years of history, in this world's civilization, neither the feminist nor the sexual revolution were yet things that had occurred.
Su Nanya menacingly circled Ziyou Ling with all fours. "For when a man pierces a woman, you claim it marks us like we are an object to be had? What of the man! He too loses his primordial yang. Why would this yang boy of yours not be unchaste when you are?"
"It… it feels different, okay? Guys don't take anything away inside their bodies after t-the deed. We girls, we get the white stuff. And something snaps inside, and there's blood! I don't know; it just is impure. We break!"
"You are wrong." Su Nanya sighed, "Go back. We have nothing to offer you."
"F-Fairy Su." Ziyou Ling pleaded.
"Do not raise your voice at me. For you are worthless. You think you are unworthy of the expanse of love you offer this yang boy. That you are his lesser. And mayhap since you think so, you truly are such inferior a being, oh unfair maiden. We will not grant you your wish to create cheap trick to keep men tied like cattle."
"But you're so good at it!" Ziyou Ling's face was red as a ripe fruit. Whether because of embarrassment at herself or anger towards the fox, Yung didn't know. He couldn't yet read the empathic link connecting third parties.
"We are not merely 'good' at it." Su Nanya said, "We are the best at it. But why should we, such uncaring a goddess, be responsible for what men feel for us of their own selfish volition? This yang boy, or the infinite other men, what difference can they ever hope to make? Each more boring than the last."
"You don't know anything about him!" Ziyou Ling stomped angrily, her politeness gone. She was always headstrong, and it was the rare person indeed who could take Su Nanya's denigration as nothing but her way of speech.
"We know enough. These yang creatures, such is their infidel creed. Never satisfied with one loving mate." Su Nanya said with a melancholic tone, "Leave. Or we shall make you."
Ziyou Ling bit her lower lips so hard it bled. She sent a vitriolic look at Yung.
Why me!? Oh shit. She's crying.
The madlander girl ran away without another word.
Yung hoped this wouldn't sour the business relationship with Ziyou Maque.
"A maiden so poor she is, we do say. But we should assume as much, with her backswater education. So eager to give yet never to receive. To voice her needs, to demand for herself; is it so hard?"
"I actually think she doesn't want Chao to have other lovers." Yung sat down beside Su Nanya, the vixen shape-shifting back to her golden maiden figure. She took her usual spot upon Yung's lap, sitting demurely as she hugged his neck.
"Do you find us a mean maiden?" She asked.
"Being honest is better than not." He replied.
"How are our eyes?"
"Like priceless jewels."
Su Nanya pecked his lips, but before he could go in for more, she moved her head away with a smile.
"We dislike that this Ling girl intruded upon our cultivation; such a sorrowful interloper she is. Tell us about your grandsire."
"He was a jade carver. He taught me everything I know. Youjin Bao, that was his name. Grandma died at childbirth, so he raised my mother all by himself."
"And he raised you too, servant dearest. We do admire such an honourable man."
Yung tightened his grip around Su Nanya's waist; he didn't know why. "He did. He loved mother dearly. Every year on mother's birthday and on her death day, he would come here and blabber all night. Get drunk and cry. Not even during grandma's death day would he shed a single tear, but on this night..."
Su Nanya gently placed her palms on Yung's cheeks. "You miss him."
"I do. Grandpa was injured when the voidfiends broke into the lower town. Mother and father died, and he could only save me, but after that, Grandpa never really recovered. If only we had better medicine… But the clan didn't think he was worth it, with his cultivation crippled."
"Yet here you are, helping such an awful clan that had dared to wrong you."
"It was the previous patriarch that cast us out. When Youjin Liu took the helm five years ago, they called us back and gave Grandpa healing elixirs. But at that point, it was too late. Still, it helped him live a few years longer. I owe them a lot."
Smooch!
"How is our tongue?"
"Sweet like honey!"
"Do you dislike that yang boy? He wishes to steal us from you. Perhaps he might succeed?" The vixen twirled a lock of her hair with a twinkle in her eyes.
"Hey, I don't like that." Yung raised his voice, angry.
"H-He will never succeed!" Su Nanya flinched away, a bit ashamed.
"Don't say that. Ever." Yung shook his head while the vixen's head drooped.
He sighed, then ran his finger through her hair, "I think he is a… a friend. A business friend, the type that grows distant when our interests collide."
"A succinct way to put it. How eloquent." She said, carefully observing his eyes for any other reaction.
"Because he had some tragic things happen to him, he thinks the world owes him. I like his loyalty to brotherhood, but not his self-centred attitude."
"Is that not what makes him so supremely attractive? T-To other lowly females, we should say."
"That," Yung laughed, "and his face."
"Men of extreme yang have such countenances, enviable appeal to the lesser of their species no doubt. Like hot magma taken shape. It is not uncommon for uncultured maidens to swoon into their arms. It disgusts us so much! As though we had stepped upon a slimy fungus with our bare toes."
"H-Have you?" Yung gulped, "Stepped on slimy fungus?" He felt hot.
"…oh, there was this one time," Su Nanya replied with a distant look on her face, "While we were purchasing a book."
If Ziyou Yung stagnated at the xiantian 1st realm with his laughable talents, paltry physique, and unorthodox dao, he might live up to three centuries with the help of elixirs. Unimaginable for mortals, yet a mere blip in Nanya's mind. Because for the pingtian, the millenniums were nothing but paper limits.
Would she have to honour his passing just like this, so many eternities into the future? Would she deign to even remember? Do we truly love him? This dirty little boy?
"Thus do we pray, with reverence and awe,
To the grand and wondrous dao, our guide and our law."
Ziyou Yung stood up, dusting his baggy trousers.
The sun had started its fall downwards, with the faraway sky engulfed in an orange light. As he walked to her with the yaoguai on his shoulder, the orange rays shone hard edges on his soil-coloured skin, giving rise to strange undulations in Nanya's abdomen.
Her Su Xiya brushed against the boy's legs, much to his delight.
"Floofy, you can't do that. Nyanya will be jealous."
Ziyou Ling flinched, but tried her hardest to hide such unfounded reactions.
Nanya could not help but sneakily smile. Oh, how devious she was! "It matters to us not." She said, "Our Madam Floofykins is merely a decade old. A child so beloved."
"Is she your sister? I really thought Floofy was you in disguise."
Nanya stilled, her heart thumping to a stop, "And why would you assume such peculiar notions?"
"I don't know…" Ziyou Yung scratched his head. His curly hair grated Nanya's sense of beauty, but some were simply born inferior. "I thought you wanted to spy on me or something. And when I floof Floofy, my zhenqi starts to convert. Wait…. This ain't jing—I mean, that kinda cultivation, right?"
"…. Foolish." Thank the heavens she was not in her yao form, or her face would have broken into a blush.
"So I can keep floofing her? You really won't be jealous?"
Her Su Xiya jumped on her hind legs and leaned on Ziyou Yung like a puppy. The boy laughed, picking the grey fox up before aggressively 'floofing' it.
"Do what you wish," Nanya's xinqi roiled like the violent seas. At this rate, it would only be a matter of time before her sixth ordinal body could break through into the meridian building realm.
Nanya lowered her head, remembering when she had wounded Ziyou Yung's hands for overreaching. She wondered if she could reject his advances if he tried again, on the precipice of her breakthrough.
"Y-Yung." The Ling girl spoke, after observing their conversation like a scared henling. "I mean, Fairy Su. T-This one has a matter she would like to d-discuss."
Nanya saw Ziyou Yung roll his eyes, and she was tempted to do the same. But for one such princessly as she, it would be unbecoming.
"Do try to be interesting, unfair maiden," Said the vixen. "If it is regarding the boy with the yang physique, we can guide you on how to rupture your bond, but not how to enchain his heart."
***
Yung didn't think now was the best time to give out love advice, not that he would, but since Ziyou Ling had helped him for so long with cleaning the graveyard, he decided that his alone time with Su Nanya could wait some more minutes.
Telling the madlander girl to leave now would be rude.
"By yang physique, she means Youjin Chao." Yung said.
Ziyou Ling nodded. Her fingers twitched nervously, but the girl got her words out, "I would like to know how to make Chao stop ignoring me." Her slight accent was gone. She was trying to sound prim and proper, but that just made her voice sound odd.
"Girl, do you not have ears? We are not interested in showing you the secrets to keep hearts, but perchance to shatter them into myriad fragments, if your plight pleases us." Fox Nyanya said, preening.
Ziyou Ling was stumped and sent Yung a pleading look.
"How about hearing her out?"
"Fine. Get on with it."
Ziyou Ling stuttered a smile, "Fairy Su can seduce a man and keep his attention without even trying! I wanna learn how to do that."
Ah, her accent is back.
"But of course. That is our divine talent. And so is to refute their love, which is our divine right. It is not such a simple art we could pass onto one such crass as you." The vixen said.
"B-But Chao likes you too. How did you do that?"
"As does every other man in this villagewoods city, oh unfair maiden. We do not understand your point. Mayhap, are you envious of us?"
Ziyou Ling shook her head, "I don't mind. But he keeps ignoring me! If I can learn how to keep his gaze on me like he looks at Fairy Su, then I'd be satisfied. But he treats me like…."
"Do proceed with your feeble attempts, such a pitiful, self-defeating maiden you are."
"… like our night together didn't happen." Ziyou Ling was embarrassed to confess that. Rightfully so, for even if madlanders were more open than the native ren, women were still expected to keep their 'purity' before marriage.
"We cannot ignore that." Su Nanya's foxy gaze turned serious. She thumped her tail on the ground, annoyed.
"You'll teach me how to seduce him?" Ziyou Ling's eyes lit up.
"Such insolence!" Su Nanya snarled, "We meant your very acceptance of the fact that you dare find it fine for this yang boy of yours to have multiple lovers!"
"I-I wouldn't wanna tie him down."
"Utter nonsense. You are but a mere beggar!" Su Nanya said, "What of you, then, oh unfair maiden? Would you be fine having several men to share the bed with?"
Ziyou Ling blushed at that, "I won't! It's not right."
"Why is it not?"
"B-Because I'm a girl? Women can't have multiple husbands."
"And you assume it is proper for men to pluck many a wife?" Su Nanya asked, incensed. There was a dark storm brewing beneath her words. Yung shivered; it made the cold spring wind feel much more frosty.
"Well…. Yeah?" Ziyou Ling replied.
"Oh, dear. Oh mercy me, oh this foolish, savage, unlettered barbarian!" Su Nanya snarled with a dizzy gait, "We must ask you this! Why would you even bear that notion?"
"I don't know. Because women, umm, have to be loyal. We…." Ziyou Ling searched for answers. But then, Su Nanya approached her, the vixen's aura rising up with each tiny step, and the madlander girl started backing away.
"Find your words. Carefully." Su Nanya growled low.
"Because It's always been like this!" Ziyou Ling clenched her fists, closed her teary eyes, and screamed. "The Zheng clan patriarch has ten wives. And most noblemen take concubines. For a woman to bed multiple men, it sounds wrong. No! No! Like, aren't we getting penetrated by t-their thing!? Would another guy even like a used, unchaste girl?"
Yung sighed. But he couldn't blame Ziyou Ling. Despite the millions of years of history, in this world's civilization, neither the feminist nor the sexual revolution were yet things that had occurred.
Su Nanya menacingly circled Ziyou Ling with all fours. "For when a man pierces a woman, you claim it marks us like we are an object to be had? What of the man! He too loses his primordial yang. Why would this yang boy of yours not be unchaste when you are?"
"It… it feels different, okay? Guys don't take anything away inside their bodies after t-the deed. We girls, we get the white stuff. And something snaps inside, and there's blood! I don't know; it just is impure. We break!"
"You are wrong." Su Nanya sighed, "Go back. We have nothing to offer you."
"F-Fairy Su." Ziyou Ling pleaded.
"Do not raise your voice at me. For you are worthless. You think you are unworthy of the expanse of love you offer this yang boy. That you are his lesser. And mayhap since you think so, you truly are such inferior a being, oh unfair maiden. We will not grant you your wish to create cheap trick to keep men tied like cattle."
"But you're so good at it!" Ziyou Ling's face was red as a ripe fruit. Whether because of embarrassment at herself or anger towards the fox, Yung didn't know. He couldn't yet read the empathic link connecting third parties.
"We are not merely 'good' at it." Su Nanya said, "We are the best at it. But why should we, such uncaring a goddess, be responsible for what men feel for us of their own selfish volition? This yang boy, or the infinite other men, what difference can they ever hope to make? Each more boring than the last."
"You don't know anything about him!" Ziyou Ling stomped angrily, her politeness gone. She was always headstrong, and it was the rare person indeed who could take Su Nanya's denigration as nothing but her way of speech.
"We know enough. These yang creatures, such is their infidel creed. Never satisfied with one loving mate." Su Nanya said with a melancholic tone, "Leave. Or we shall make you."
Ziyou Ling bit her lower lips so hard it bled. She sent a vitriolic look at Yung.
Why me!? Oh shit. She's crying.
The madlander girl ran away without another word.
Yung hoped this wouldn't sour the business relationship with Ziyou Maque.
"A maiden so poor she is, we do say. But we should assume as much, with her backswater education. So eager to give yet never to receive. To voice her needs, to demand for herself; is it so hard?"
"I actually think she doesn't want Chao to have other lovers." Yung sat down beside Su Nanya, the vixen shape-shifting back to her golden maiden figure. She took her usual spot upon Yung's lap, sitting demurely as she hugged his neck.
"Do you find us a mean maiden?" She asked.
"Being honest is better than not." He replied.
"How are our eyes?"
"Like priceless jewels."
Su Nanya pecked his lips, but before he could go in for more, she moved her head away with a smile.
"We dislike that this Ling girl intruded upon our cultivation; such a sorrowful interloper she is. Tell us about your grandsire."
"He was a jade carver. He taught me everything I know. Youjin Bao, that was his name. Grandma died at childbirth, so he raised my mother all by himself."
"And he raised you too, servant dearest. We do admire such an honourable man."
Yung tightened his grip around Su Nanya's waist; he didn't know why. "He did. He loved mother dearly. Every year on mother's birthday and on her death day, he would come here and blabber all night. Get drunk and cry. Not even during grandma's death day would he shed a single tear, but on this night..."
Su Nanya gently placed her palms on Yung's cheeks. "You miss him."
"I do. Grandpa was injured when the voidfiends broke into the lower town. Mother and father died, and he could only save me, but after that, Grandpa never really recovered. If only we had better medicine… But the clan didn't think he was worth it, with his cultivation crippled."
"Yet here you are, helping such an awful clan that had dared to wrong you."
"It was the previous patriarch that cast us out. When Youjin Liu took the helm five years ago, they called us back and gave Grandpa healing elixirs. But at that point, it was too late. Still, it helped him live a few years longer. I owe them a lot."
Smooch!
"How is our tongue?"
"Sweet like honey!"
"Do you dislike that yang boy? He wishes to steal us from you. Perhaps he might succeed?" The vixen twirled a lock of her hair with a twinkle in her eyes.
"Hey, I don't like that." Yung raised his voice, angry.
"H-He will never succeed!" Su Nanya flinched away, a bit ashamed.
"Don't say that. Ever." Yung shook his head while the vixen's head drooped.
He sighed, then ran his finger through her hair, "I think he is a… a friend. A business friend, the type that grows distant when our interests collide."
"A succinct way to put it. How eloquent." She said, carefully observing his eyes for any other reaction.
"Because he had some tragic things happen to him, he thinks the world owes him. I like his loyalty to brotherhood, but not his self-centred attitude."
"Is that not what makes him so supremely attractive? T-To other lowly females, we should say."
"That," Yung laughed, "and his face."
"Men of extreme yang have such countenances, enviable appeal to the lesser of their species no doubt. Like hot magma taken shape. It is not uncommon for uncultured maidens to swoon into their arms. It disgusts us so much! As though we had stepped upon a slimy fungus with our bare toes."
"H-Have you?" Yung gulped, "Stepped on slimy fungus?" He felt hot.
"…oh, there was this one time," Su Nanya replied with a distant look on her face, "While we were purchasing a book."
Chapter 46 - Songs of then
Floofy broke out from under a shrubbery chasing a butterfly. Silky chirped from atop a tree, and the grey fox barked, climbing up like a cat. The sky had darkened, and the stars gleamed upon the firmament like specks of white paint splattered on an ocean canvas.
The air was colder, and the cries of the animals changed. There was the hoot of an owl, and the soft call of crickets. And with the cool came a mellow scent of mint, from the bluegrass and the budding leaves.
But it didn't disturb the graveyard.
Yung got to know about Su Nanya's mother. The vixen complained, and Yung lent her an ear. This honoured matriarch seemed to be rather controlling, according to her. But Yung came to the conclusion that her mother was simply trying to make up for lost time.
Time she had spent cultivating in some obscure cave, that she could have spent with her daughter. Yung could not imagine it.
Is this what immortality has to offer?
One moment, his child would be born. And within a blink of an eye, the child would be an adult.
The years they lost could never be regained, and the bond would never be the same.
Do immortals not think of the implications?
Su Nanya then spoke of her fiancé. She didn't give a name, but drew parallels with Youjin Chao. For they both were of extreme Yang, refusing to settle with one fair maiden. So self-centred, so self-righteous. An outcast given a roof, who then burnt the home down.
Yung speculated if the guy was another main character archetype. He sure sounded like one. Separated from his lover for many years, then back with a harem in tow? A red flag if he'd ever seen one.
He never wanted to meet the man. Definitely not because Yung was afraid! He didn't steal Su Nanya. No sir!
"Sing us a song." Said the cheery maiden playing in his embrace.
"I… People make fun of my singing. I don't have a good voice." Yung blushed.
Su Nanya pouted, "Dare you deny us our right? You did not have any complaints whilst you sang the Tapestry of Tribute." She whistled, and Floofy scampered down from the tree with Silky sitting on her snout. The fox curled up beside Yung.
Su Nanya had taken out a pipa in the meantime.
It was a magnificent instrument, nestled upon Su Nanya's lap, just as she sat on his. It wasn't uncomfortable at all, and with a slight move of her butt, she was settled in nicely. She held the bottom part with one hand, and strummed the strings with the other. Not that Yung didn't enjoy the soft body pressing onto him.
The pipa was both beautiful and enchanting. It was crafted from the finest materials that Yung couldn't name, with a polished, glossy finish that reflected the light of the moon and the stars, in a soft glow of gold and silver. The body was shaped like a graceful, slender hourglass, with curves that were both sensuous and delicate. The neck was long and slender, tapering off to a feeble point at the top, where the tuning pegs were inserted. There were fox murals curved upon the imperial brown shell, with gold lines streaming along the grain.
The strings of the pipa were magical, as they gave off a shimmering glow with each strum of Su Nanya's fingers. She didn't start playing yet, but the mere sound they created painted the graveyard in a hauntingly beautiful melody.
The fireflies showed themselves, and the spring flowers danced too, the scent of life in the air.
"Our dearest of servants, do sing the song you always hum." Su Nanya said, her eyes an innocent curiosity.
"Promise you won't laugh?"
"We are not so crude."
Yung knew that. Su Nanya was the most elegant girl in the world. He closed his eyes, then let himself go into the cool fleeting flow.
"You taught me the courage of stars before you left.
How light carries on endlessly, even after death."
His throat croaked. But he held the tears in. He saw his sister, Frankl, smile at him. But it was a broken smile. She was a strict sister, stricter than their mother. But Yung knew that in the whole wide universe, she loved him the most. And she cried for him the most. And she would miss him the most.
Frankl, she didn't like this song.
His brother Freud loved it though. He would sing along with equally deaf tones. He first heard this song live, at some concert by a kid. Or was it a Ted Talk? But after that, he'd shared it with Jung.
It had never left the paralysed man's heart since.
His other sister, Adler, liked the music more than the lyrics. She thought the lyrics were too depressing. Jung had spent nights arguing with her, that it was a song of hope! But Adler always insisted that since someone had to die to bring that hope, it wasn't hopeful at all. Jung thought Adler had missed the entire point. Or perhaps Adler could parse meaning in the music that Jung had missed?
Su Nanya played her pipa. With each crystal strum, The fireflies rained up in a gentle whirl of golden light, and the night birds stopped their calls to join the spectacle.
Yung sang, and sang, and finished the song.
"Again." Su Nanya said.
Yung loved it when other people loved the songs he loved. He hoped Su Nanya would become one such person.
"With shortness of breath, you explained the infinite.
And how rare and beautiful it is to even exist,"
So he sang. His mother had put him in a singing class when he was a kid. He gave up after one week. He also gave up the drawing class, and the karate class. The writing class stuck for a month, but the greatest success came from the cooking class.
Yung loved to sing. But he didn't like people hearing him sing. He felt self-conscious. But the point was moot since he had a habit of meditating while humming, whenever a stressful situation arrived, and people inevitably asked what he was doing.
Su Nanya adjusted her grip on the pipa, and gently stuck the strings in a rhythm Yung could not understand.
Then, something amazing happened.
The clouds moved away from the sky, letting the pearly light fall without any of the shadows.
"The moon is beautiful," Yung whispered, the Japanese saying slipping out of his mouth. With hues of deep blue and neon purple, craters abounded on its ashen surface. So different from Gaia's, yet so similar too.
"Again." Said the vixen.
The music tunes swam in the air, taking a life of their own. They searched for meaning, and found it in the stars. And ever so slightly, the sounds from the pipa matched the music of the song from Yung's past life.
He stroked Su Nanya's hair. It had curls going down, yet so silky at the top. His was curly too, but more a knot than not.
"I couldn't help but ask for you to say it all again.
I tried to write it down, but I could never find a pen.
I'd give anything to hear you say it one more time.
That the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes,"
Yung had never lost any family when he was Jung. He supposed for his family back on earth, he would be the first to go. Even his grandparents from both sides were alive, each almost reaching a hundred.
He would never see them again. Moira had cut the universes for good.
He would never hear his mother's warm voice, or his father's wise words. When he had lost his senses to his disease, his nephew ended up creating medical VR technology that sent sound straight to his brain. Yung regretted not thanking the boy more.
He would never get to talk philosophy with Frankl, never support their favourite football team with Freud, and never help Alder come up with new beats.
He would never read bedtime stories to his youngest niece, never talk dinosaurs with his youngest nephew.
"With shortness of breath,
I'll explain the infinite,
And how rare and beautiful, it truly is that we exist."
Yung didn't know how many times he sang Saturn, but the east sky had taken an orange glow. Su Nanya's pipa played on; with each pluck of a thread and twang of a cord, the music came to life. It fell into place in perfect harmony. Though it was far from the original music of the song, it was close enough. In spirit, in emotion.
Yung didn't feel tired at all. As the night passed and the next day broke, Su Nanya put the pipa away. She embraced Yung once more, keeping her gaze level with his. There was something lovable there. She smiled, her tears glistening like diamonds. "How was our melody?"
"Nostalgic." He replied. He had the best girlfriend in the world.
***
Yung stood in front of a large cave. Behind that rocky outcrop of the cave's entrance was a tunnel that delved underground. It was on the northwest bank of the Dim gold lake. Youjin Chao was there with him, alongside the cultivators from the Youjin clan, such as Youjin Chun, Youjin Gangkai, and a few others.
Ziyou Ling stood by the older boy's side, glaring as discreetly as possible at the small golden fox lazing on Yung's head. Su Nanya had shrunk down further and now actually resembled a plushie.
"This is one of the side entries." Said the grizzly-haired Youjin elder who was going to lead today's hunt, "Leads a tunnel under the earth, right below the branch family graves. After headin' down, the left fork goes to the rice fields. We got guards all over since the voidfiends been rampaging recently. We take the right fork."
"I heard there was another attack last night," Yung said.
"True," The grizzly-haired elder nodded, "Ruined three sections of harvest they did. The damn buggers. We leave now. The tunnels are crawling with the fiends, so be careful. We can't babysit you kids all the while."
The group of cultivators entered the cave, their footsteps echoed through the damp and eerie silence. The wooden support structure near the entrance gave way to natural rock formations as they ventured deeper. The rocks, once rough and jagged, had been smoothed out over time by the constant drip of water and the movement of man, as evident by the footprints of renyao crisscrossing the cave floor, mired occasionally by the imprints of large beasts too.
The flickering light from their torches cast dancing shadows on the walls, revealing intricate stalactites and stalagmites that adorned the cavernous space. The air grew thicker in wild qi with each step they took, carrying a pungent scent that mingled with the mustiness of the underground.
It was compost, Yung realised, as he gently placed a scented napkin on Su Nanya's snout. Miss Maid had given him some deep pointers about proper princess care, along with a supply of princess peculiarities.
The vixen sneezed, then went back to lazing.
The continuous water dripping added an eerie soundtrack to the jaunt, each droplet hitting the cave floor with a hollow echo. From a distance, faint roars of voidfiends travelled through the cave.
"They bring the wastes down this tunnel." Said a Youjin cultivator after seeing Yung look around with curiosity. She looked to be in her twenties, "Fertilizer for the fields."
"From the northern fiendbutchery?" Yung asked.
The woman nodded, "The clan's been working with the Free Sparrow gang to do the same for the southern butchery. But the caverns there aren't as big, with different soil compositions. It will take some time."
"I hear that most of the folks who used to work in the Dim gold mulberry plantation, with the foxmoths, were then given work in the paddy fields down here after the flock left."
"The clan expanded the fields as much as possible, since it feeds the city. But there's an upper limit." The woman shrugged, playing with a dagger.
"And now the fiends are ruining that too."
"Yup, so—" The woman stopped, and Su Nanya perked up on Yung's head. Floofy came running and circled Yung with low yelps, Silky flying like a dizzy bee behind her.
"Get ready. The beasties are here." The grizzly-haired elder called out, and every cultivator there, including Yung, hoisted their weapons and shields.
Youjin Chao popped a few pills, giving Su Nanya a discrete but hopeful look. Ziyou Ling gripped her spear; a slow current of yellow qi covered her tight arms. And Youjin Chun readied her thin sword, dim gold threads already forming with her lingqi.
Yung simply went stealth, taking care not to cut the empathic links with his allies in the process.
The first voidfiend came spearing in, rising a loud screech. It was bisected in midair by the dim gold threads crisscrossing the cave.
Tens of zombie rabbits followed. But the result was the same.
Every Youjin cultivator other than Youjin Chao had one manner or other of their Dim gold severance activated, leaving no room for resistance.
The group trudged down the wide tunnel as the dead bunny corpses littered the dark halls.
"SCREEEEEEE!"
Yet more fiends came without regard to their lives, emitting that nauseating stench in their locust-like horde.
Sometimes the ceiling would gradually lower, as did the walls narrow. But it would open up again, with the evident touch of renyao maintenance preserving the continuation of the dark path.
Youjin Chao dashed ahead of the group when the next large cavern appeared. It was a room with two forks. One on the right, the other on the left.
The older boy jumped like a missile into a group of maniacal rabbits, twirling in midair as his rusty blade rendered the fiends into ribbons. But when he landed, dozen more fiends dashed at him to return the bloody favour.
He blocked a few using his sword as a shield. Ziyou Ling's spear skewered the rest. The ones that tried to flank, the Youjin heiress took them on with elegant control.
When the room was cleared, Yung took hold of the surroundings. This was probably the fork the grizzly-haired elder talked about.
The left tunnel was walled up by a stone wall, with clear formations etched onto it. It glowed faintly, with a host of dead rotten voidfiends littering its base. These weren't killed by their group. Perhaps by whatever protection the wall offered?
They went to the right fork as planned. For a hundred steps, the path sloped down at a fifty-degree angle, Yung having to touch the wall for balance as he treaded the mossy floor.
When he entered the next cavern, the place was already littered with fiend corpses, and Youjin Chao was tying a herbed bandage around his wounded left wrist.
"It will heal," The older boy said with a dark expression.
The group took stock, and then down they went once more.
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Chapter 47 - Clans going into caves
The next cavern in their delve was bigger both horizontally and vertically, and finally, voidfiends other than the murder bunnies showed their flying faces.
In the dark of the cave, the putrid monstrosities stirred, their tomb-sized shapes vaguely resembling stingray corpses, concealed beneath too many wings reminiscent of bats. Half of which were deteriorating and hung limp, plagued by decay and perforations. Distorted countenances, disfigured by grotesque maws that covered two-thirds of their bodies obscured their tiny little eyes, of which there were hundreds. Horns twisted out from the positions where ears should rightfully reside, and each horn was oozing with purple fluid that dripped down with acid sizzles. And from the base of these horns, a sickly circuit of green and purple threaded through their body, pulsing periodically with uncanny void qi.
"Wretched chiropterans." The grizzly-haired elder whispered as the group prepared for the next phase of the assault.
The seconds seemed to pass with the sluggishness of years, and a peculiar stillness enshrouded the chamber, intermittently shattered by the fluttering of wings from the dark.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The first fiend noticed the intruders, and they screeched in unison; the otherworldly treble reverberated with a bone-chilling resonance, their wings producing a cacophony of skeletal vibrations as the flying horde dove at them with kamikaze-like madness.
As Su Nanya covered Yung's ears with her tail, the ringing stopped, and he went into empathic isolation. With expert coordination, the foundation building elders raised their blades up in the air, and a tsunami of dim gold silk zipped with an equal desire to kill!
The unstoppable missiles of flesh and bones met the unbreakable threads of gold, and the chiropterans fell in a rain of gore.
"… Uhh." Yung muttered, "They're pretty stupid."
The battle didn't last long, and the group moved on. Yung felt a strange sense of disconnect from the fiend's nightmarish appearance and their utterly moronic tactics.
"Doesn't it feel a bit easy?" Yung asked when Youjin Chao walked to him.
"The clan cleans these tunnels regularly, and has set methods to deal with each kind of fiend native to the region, Youjin Chao said, "I hear it was only yesterday that they pinpointed where the voidrift appeared. There was never a danger, since rogue voidrifts are quite common. But it is tedious, with most of the manpower and time spent on searching."
"These voidfiends are stragglers then?"
"Possibly, yes." Youjin Chao said, "Are you not going to fight?"
"I am a tourist." Yung replied proudly.
The older boy left confused after Su Nanya started glaring at him.
They went down cavern after cavern.
More fiends flooded their way, and as they got into the groove of the battle, the elders were content to let the younger generation handle the threats.
"Careful, this group has a general." The grizzly-haired elder shouted.
Among the flood of zombie bats and murder rabbits was a larger specimen, a bunny as big as a horse. It stayed at the back, eyes glowing a sickly pink.
Youjin Chao rushed towards it, carving a path of mangled blood, but the hornbeast general hopped away, using its brethren as a meat shield. Youjin Chao threw his sword, yet the wall of flesh blocked the projectile.
"This one's a bit smarter," Yung commented.
The next second, as the Wretched hornbeast general dodged Youjin Chao's attack again, it fell straight into Youjin Chun's web of blades. It screamed, struggling like a fly trapped within a spider's snare.
"Ah, nope." Yung corrected his mistake.
Ziyou Ling yelled, "Meteor Spear!" and a large hole the size of a fist burst apart on the fiend's head, the spear flying out from the other side.
"This is my fight!" Youjin Chao yelled.
"Eat shit, bastard!" Ziyou Ling shouted back.
Youjin Chun glared at Yung.
Again, why me!?
The slight altercation for stealing the last hit continued, but then the grizzly-haired elder threatened violence, and the group moved on.
The caverns went deeper. While it did, the mossy wall turned into unsaturated grey rocks, replaced by rust-brown fungus.
The air grew heavy, and the humid smell was of minerals and metal.
"We're near." The grizzly-haired elder said.
"Could you have not gotten the Dark Star mercenaries to help out?" Yung asked the Youjin woman walking behind him.
"This is a clan matter." She observed as Ziyou Ling quibbled with her heiress with a tired sigh. "The mercenaries were only paid for the foxmoth hunt."
"We're not actually going to 'hunt' foxmoths though. We'll recover them."
The woman nodded. "The danger doesn't warrant paying houtian 3rd realmers. The clan takes care of two or three of these random voidrifts every year. Unless it goes unnoticed for, say, decades, the fiends it can spawn are mostly houtian 1st order. Although, in case the voidrift was summoned by a stray xiantian voidfiend, that would be… unfortunate."
"Summoned?" Hey, woman! Can you not see Youjin Chao standing there with his ominous protagonist aura!? Stop jinxing us! Yung screamed inside, while Su Nanya stirred, looking at him strangely.
As did the Youjin woman, "I figure you don't go to clan school?"
"The previous patriarch was a bitch about it."
The woman stumbled, then laughed. There was rage hidden in it. "He was a sorry bastard, that's for sure. Clinging onto power like mad, spending all clan coins just to extend his pitiful skeleton of a life by a few extra years."
"Careful what you say." A middle-aged Youjin man spoke with a grim face.
"Oh, shut it. You know it's true! And what did that cost us? The whole dim gold silk trade, and my pet foxmoth. Poor Little Moonpaws, who knows what she's facing out there."
"… You really need to get married soon. Taking care of foxmoths won't make you a true mother."
"What do you know!"
"All I know is that it's a slippery slope to go down, especially when you dress them up in toddler robes."
The two quibbled for a while longer, and the woman spat. She picked up her pace as the Chao-Ling-Chun trio mowed down more small fry nightmares, then turned to Yung again, finally remembering to answer the question. "When a strong voidfiend, xiantian 1st order at the minimum, nests in a particular place long enough, the land's qi vein gets corrupted."
"They don't usually do that, do they?" Yung recalled what he had read in the scrolls.
"No." The woman said, "Typically, voidfiends spend their time hunting renyao or chaosfiends. That's their nature, which makes them the worst at stealth. They can't hide, nor do they want to, a noisy bunch of creeps. This lets us notice a rogue voidrift pretty early on. But very rarely, they hunker down. No one really knows why, but some say it's when they go to a kind of 'closed door cultivation' to break through."
"Don't the smell give them away?"
"Funny boy." The woman said, "No. The corruption of the land makes the space flimsy, as they say, and their stench gets masked. This is also easier for the void to reach out and tear open a voidrift. Hmm, you afraid? Haha. Relax. This time it's pretty safe, as safe as a voidrift can get, yeah. The clan scouted it out and the rift is pretty small with only one houtian 2nd order Wretched hornbeast guarding it."
A loud roar echoed down the tunnel like a sonic boom.
"Speak of the devil." The woman clicked out her dagger again and spun it.
The group entered another large space. Yung tried to calculate how the earth could possibly support such large spaces without crashing down to no avail. They had been delving for hours now, and this new cavern itself looked to be bigger than a mile in all directions.
Yung blamed it on qi.
The cavern was filled to the brim with Wretched hornbeasts and chiropterans. Tens of thousands, maybe more than that. An apocalyptic horde swarming the 'sky' and the 'land'.
On the other end of the cavern was a deep hollow, dark and ominous. Yung couldn't see what was there, but with the steady stream of voidfiends rushing out, he guessed it was the mysterious voidrift.
And this lady says it's safe! Yung immediately went into stealth.
"Such an unheroic man you are."
"Kii."
"Silky is right. Safety first!"
"Woof! Woof wuff."
As the one teen and three foxes discussed important matters, Youjin Chao approached him again, sheathing his rusty sword.
"You aren't gonna fight?" Yung asked the taller boy, who had sat down on a rock, thick-skinning through Su Nanya's scowl and applying a healing paste to his cuts and bruises. Ziyou Ling squatted beside him, being scowled at by Youjin Chun and scowling at Su Nanya in return.
Amazing! Women are such mysterious creatures…
The vixen princess turned her mean cute scowl at Yung.
"I enjoy a good fight," Youjin Chao said. "But I am not foolish."
The Youjin woman moved to the front with the middle-aged man and joined the other elders at the mouth of the cavern.
They got into a formation, weapons drawn in specific manners, and the lingqi and yuanqi dancing like aggressive partners in a tango.
Yung saw the magical formation elder, Wang Lihou's master, take the middle spot. On his left and right were two houtian 2nd order elder's each, including Elder Gangkai and the sharp-tongued middle-aged man. The dozen-odd houtian 1st order cultivators took their positions a step behind, including Youjin Chun and the talkative woman.
The magical formation elder chanted, his hands racing into various mystical mudras. Soon, the mudras became so fast that they appeared just a blur, and the mere essence of the movement seemed to 'snatch' the surrounding qi under the elder's control. Progressively, the rest of the Youjin cultivators also brought their own powers to the front, a cacophony of golden lingqi-formed threads rising like loose spools in a whirlwind. And the threads swirled around in patterns unknown, creating a large magical circle with each cultivator at a set position.
A battle formation, Yung realized, and it created a semi-spherical dome of murderous dim gold silk around the Youjin cultivators. A grinder blender of millions of razor-sharp wires, it emitted a chainsaw-like hum but at a much higher pitch.
"The Dim gold severance 9th form needs at least three cultivators at the same level," Youjin Chao explained, "But with five foundation building, two meridian building, and thirteen qi and body refining cultivators? This battle formation is strong enough to take on the Dusk Valley lion king easily."
The floor under the magical formation elder's feet shifted to make room for the dim gold silk, as if they were ground to fine dust with industrial machinery.
The voidfiends noticed the disturbance. They perked up like the zombies they were and raised ghastly echoes. The floor thumbed, and dust rose into the air despite the damp environment.
Yung took a step back. No matter how much he knew in his head that he was safe, the sheer number of voidfiends raised a primal fear in his bones. The fear of being outnumbered. The fear of the stench of the dead.
"The Youjin clan has perfected this formation for centuries. Despite currently not even having one houtian 3rd realm cultivator stationed in the city like all other great clans in the Westmoon kingdom have, not even the Xiyue royal family dares to strike at them directly. If all the Youjin clan cultivators formation up, then even a xiantian 1st realm powerhouse will have trouble breaking through. In fact, there was once a time some two hundred years ago that the clan had felled a xiantian 1st order chaosfiend without many sacrifices. With this very formation."
"Sounds scary." Yung was impressed.
"Hmph. A trifling trinket." Su Nanya said, "Stolen from The Multitudinous athenaeum valley, no doubt."
Yung swore he saw a couple of the elders flinch; the spherical murder dome shook for a second.
"H-Hey Nyanya! Don't agitate them!" Yung whispered his scream.
"How is our nose?" Su Nanya ignored it and wanted her vanity validated.
"Cute like a button." Yung gave in.
Su Nanya preened.
The voidfiend horde descended in a blur of chaotic motion. There were wretched hornbeasts, leaping and jumping, and wretched chiropterans, diving and swooping. The fiends came in all sizes, both small and large, from foot soldiers to fat generals, all with a savage thirst for blood in their ravenous eyes. They snarled, filling the air in the cavern with uncanny vibrations that shook the bone. They advanced, their wings and claws aimed straight at their prey.
The murderous dome of razor wires.
"Well, numbers didn't make them smart I see." Yung lamented. The fight was over.
The moment the voidfiends touched the dome, they were shredded like minced pork, splattering gore all over the place like dirty water balloons. Then even the blood and gore were ground to fine pollutants in seconds, creating a vapour of putrid mist.
Su Nanya covered Yung's nose again with her tail, and he reapplied the scented napkin on her snout.
In the dark of the cave, the putrid monstrosities stirred, their tomb-sized shapes vaguely resembling stingray corpses, concealed beneath too many wings reminiscent of bats. Half of which were deteriorating and hung limp, plagued by decay and perforations. Distorted countenances, disfigured by grotesque maws that covered two-thirds of their bodies obscured their tiny little eyes, of which there were hundreds. Horns twisted out from the positions where ears should rightfully reside, and each horn was oozing with purple fluid that dripped down with acid sizzles. And from the base of these horns, a sickly circuit of green and purple threaded through their body, pulsing periodically with uncanny void qi.
"Wretched chiropterans." The grizzly-haired elder whispered as the group prepared for the next phase of the assault.
The seconds seemed to pass with the sluggishness of years, and a peculiar stillness enshrouded the chamber, intermittently shattered by the fluttering of wings from the dark.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The first fiend noticed the intruders, and they screeched in unison; the otherworldly treble reverberated with a bone-chilling resonance, their wings producing a cacophony of skeletal vibrations as the flying horde dove at them with kamikaze-like madness.
As Su Nanya covered Yung's ears with her tail, the ringing stopped, and he went into empathic isolation. With expert coordination, the foundation building elders raised their blades up in the air, and a tsunami of dim gold silk zipped with an equal desire to kill!
The unstoppable missiles of flesh and bones met the unbreakable threads of gold, and the chiropterans fell in a rain of gore.
"… Uhh." Yung muttered, "They're pretty stupid."
The battle didn't last long, and the group moved on. Yung felt a strange sense of disconnect from the fiend's nightmarish appearance and their utterly moronic tactics.
"Doesn't it feel a bit easy?" Yung asked when Youjin Chao walked to him.
"The clan cleans these tunnels regularly, and has set methods to deal with each kind of fiend native to the region, Youjin Chao said, "I hear it was only yesterday that they pinpointed where the voidrift appeared. There was never a danger, since rogue voidrifts are quite common. But it is tedious, with most of the manpower and time spent on searching."
"These voidfiends are stragglers then?"
"Possibly, yes." Youjin Chao said, "Are you not going to fight?"
"I am a tourist." Yung replied proudly.
The older boy left confused after Su Nanya started glaring at him.
They went down cavern after cavern.
More fiends flooded their way, and as they got into the groove of the battle, the elders were content to let the younger generation handle the threats.
"Careful, this group has a general." The grizzly-haired elder shouted.
Among the flood of zombie bats and murder rabbits was a larger specimen, a bunny as big as a horse. It stayed at the back, eyes glowing a sickly pink.
Youjin Chao rushed towards it, carving a path of mangled blood, but the hornbeast general hopped away, using its brethren as a meat shield. Youjin Chao threw his sword, yet the wall of flesh blocked the projectile.
"This one's a bit smarter," Yung commented.
The next second, as the Wretched hornbeast general dodged Youjin Chao's attack again, it fell straight into Youjin Chun's web of blades. It screamed, struggling like a fly trapped within a spider's snare.
"Ah, nope." Yung corrected his mistake.
Ziyou Ling yelled, "Meteor Spear!" and a large hole the size of a fist burst apart on the fiend's head, the spear flying out from the other side.
"This is my fight!" Youjin Chao yelled.
"Eat shit, bastard!" Ziyou Ling shouted back.
Youjin Chun glared at Yung.
Again, why me!?
The slight altercation for stealing the last hit continued, but then the grizzly-haired elder threatened violence, and the group moved on.
The caverns went deeper. While it did, the mossy wall turned into unsaturated grey rocks, replaced by rust-brown fungus.
The air grew heavy, and the humid smell was of minerals and metal.
"We're near." The grizzly-haired elder said.
"Could you have not gotten the Dark Star mercenaries to help out?" Yung asked the Youjin woman walking behind him.
"This is a clan matter." She observed as Ziyou Ling quibbled with her heiress with a tired sigh. "The mercenaries were only paid for the foxmoth hunt."
"We're not actually going to 'hunt' foxmoths though. We'll recover them."
The woman nodded. "The danger doesn't warrant paying houtian 3rd realmers. The clan takes care of two or three of these random voidrifts every year. Unless it goes unnoticed for, say, decades, the fiends it can spawn are mostly houtian 1st order. Although, in case the voidrift was summoned by a stray xiantian voidfiend, that would be… unfortunate."
"Summoned?" Hey, woman! Can you not see Youjin Chao standing there with his ominous protagonist aura!? Stop jinxing us! Yung screamed inside, while Su Nanya stirred, looking at him strangely.
As did the Youjin woman, "I figure you don't go to clan school?"
"The previous patriarch was a bitch about it."
The woman stumbled, then laughed. There was rage hidden in it. "He was a sorry bastard, that's for sure. Clinging onto power like mad, spending all clan coins just to extend his pitiful skeleton of a life by a few extra years."
"Careful what you say." A middle-aged Youjin man spoke with a grim face.
"Oh, shut it. You know it's true! And what did that cost us? The whole dim gold silk trade, and my pet foxmoth. Poor Little Moonpaws, who knows what she's facing out there."
"… You really need to get married soon. Taking care of foxmoths won't make you a true mother."
"What do you know!"
"All I know is that it's a slippery slope to go down, especially when you dress them up in toddler robes."
The two quibbled for a while longer, and the woman spat. She picked up her pace as the Chao-Ling-Chun trio mowed down more small fry nightmares, then turned to Yung again, finally remembering to answer the question. "When a strong voidfiend, xiantian 1st order at the minimum, nests in a particular place long enough, the land's qi vein gets corrupted."
"They don't usually do that, do they?" Yung recalled what he had read in the scrolls.
"No." The woman said, "Typically, voidfiends spend their time hunting renyao or chaosfiends. That's their nature, which makes them the worst at stealth. They can't hide, nor do they want to, a noisy bunch of creeps. This lets us notice a rogue voidrift pretty early on. But very rarely, they hunker down. No one really knows why, but some say it's when they go to a kind of 'closed door cultivation' to break through."
"Don't the smell give them away?"
"Funny boy." The woman said, "No. The corruption of the land makes the space flimsy, as they say, and their stench gets masked. This is also easier for the void to reach out and tear open a voidrift. Hmm, you afraid? Haha. Relax. This time it's pretty safe, as safe as a voidrift can get, yeah. The clan scouted it out and the rift is pretty small with only one houtian 2nd order Wretched hornbeast guarding it."
A loud roar echoed down the tunnel like a sonic boom.
"Speak of the devil." The woman clicked out her dagger again and spun it.
The group entered another large space. Yung tried to calculate how the earth could possibly support such large spaces without crashing down to no avail. They had been delving for hours now, and this new cavern itself looked to be bigger than a mile in all directions.
Yung blamed it on qi.
The cavern was filled to the brim with Wretched hornbeasts and chiropterans. Tens of thousands, maybe more than that. An apocalyptic horde swarming the 'sky' and the 'land'.
On the other end of the cavern was a deep hollow, dark and ominous. Yung couldn't see what was there, but with the steady stream of voidfiends rushing out, he guessed it was the mysterious voidrift.
And this lady says it's safe! Yung immediately went into stealth.
"Such an unheroic man you are."
"Kii."
"Silky is right. Safety first!"
"Woof! Woof wuff."
As the one teen and three foxes discussed important matters, Youjin Chao approached him again, sheathing his rusty sword.
"You aren't gonna fight?" Yung asked the taller boy, who had sat down on a rock, thick-skinning through Su Nanya's scowl and applying a healing paste to his cuts and bruises. Ziyou Ling squatted beside him, being scowled at by Youjin Chun and scowling at Su Nanya in return.
Amazing! Women are such mysterious creatures…
The vixen princess turned her mean cute scowl at Yung.
"I enjoy a good fight," Youjin Chao said. "But I am not foolish."
The Youjin woman moved to the front with the middle-aged man and joined the other elders at the mouth of the cavern.
They got into a formation, weapons drawn in specific manners, and the lingqi and yuanqi dancing like aggressive partners in a tango.
Yung saw the magical formation elder, Wang Lihou's master, take the middle spot. On his left and right were two houtian 2nd order elder's each, including Elder Gangkai and the sharp-tongued middle-aged man. The dozen-odd houtian 1st order cultivators took their positions a step behind, including Youjin Chun and the talkative woman.
The magical formation elder chanted, his hands racing into various mystical mudras. Soon, the mudras became so fast that they appeared just a blur, and the mere essence of the movement seemed to 'snatch' the surrounding qi under the elder's control. Progressively, the rest of the Youjin cultivators also brought their own powers to the front, a cacophony of golden lingqi-formed threads rising like loose spools in a whirlwind. And the threads swirled around in patterns unknown, creating a large magical circle with each cultivator at a set position.
A battle formation, Yung realized, and it created a semi-spherical dome of murderous dim gold silk around the Youjin cultivators. A grinder blender of millions of razor-sharp wires, it emitted a chainsaw-like hum but at a much higher pitch.
"The Dim gold severance 9th form needs at least three cultivators at the same level," Youjin Chao explained, "But with five foundation building, two meridian building, and thirteen qi and body refining cultivators? This battle formation is strong enough to take on the Dusk Valley lion king easily."
The floor under the magical formation elder's feet shifted to make room for the dim gold silk, as if they were ground to fine dust with industrial machinery.
The voidfiends noticed the disturbance. They perked up like the zombies they were and raised ghastly echoes. The floor thumbed, and dust rose into the air despite the damp environment.
Yung took a step back. No matter how much he knew in his head that he was safe, the sheer number of voidfiends raised a primal fear in his bones. The fear of being outnumbered. The fear of the stench of the dead.
"The Youjin clan has perfected this formation for centuries. Despite currently not even having one houtian 3rd realm cultivator stationed in the city like all other great clans in the Westmoon kingdom have, not even the Xiyue royal family dares to strike at them directly. If all the Youjin clan cultivators formation up, then even a xiantian 1st realm powerhouse will have trouble breaking through. In fact, there was once a time some two hundred years ago that the clan had felled a xiantian 1st order chaosfiend without many sacrifices. With this very formation."
"Sounds scary." Yung was impressed.
"Hmph. A trifling trinket." Su Nanya said, "Stolen from The Multitudinous athenaeum valley, no doubt."
Yung swore he saw a couple of the elders flinch; the spherical murder dome shook for a second.
"H-Hey Nyanya! Don't agitate them!" Yung whispered his scream.
"How is our nose?" Su Nanya ignored it and wanted her vanity validated.
"Cute like a button." Yung gave in.
Su Nanya preened.
The voidfiend horde descended in a blur of chaotic motion. There were wretched hornbeasts, leaping and jumping, and wretched chiropterans, diving and swooping. The fiends came in all sizes, both small and large, from foot soldiers to fat generals, all with a savage thirst for blood in their ravenous eyes. They snarled, filling the air in the cavern with uncanny vibrations that shook the bone. They advanced, their wings and claws aimed straight at their prey.
The murderous dome of razor wires.
"Well, numbers didn't make them smart I see." Yung lamented. The fight was over.
The moment the voidfiends touched the dome, they were shredded like minced pork, splattering gore all over the place like dirty water balloons. Then even the blood and gore were ground to fine pollutants in seconds, creating a vapour of putrid mist.
Su Nanya covered Yung's nose again with her tail, and he reapplied the scented napkin on her snout.
Chapter 48 - Hello voidrift, my old friend
"The only disadvantage of this battle formation is that it destroys the enemy extremely thoroughly, with barely any materials left to harvest." Youjin Chao explained, appearing completely impassive at Yung and Su Nanya's PDA. Perhaps he did not know what PDA meant, but the boy's empathic link was as clear as day.
Shock, rage, scorn.
Yung went on guard.
The Youjin cultivators walked forward steadily. With each step they inched, their formation carved into the voidfiend horde like a hurricane of steel threads. The physical embodiment of the term 'offence is the best defence', the dome of wires left nary a blind spot for even the strongest enemy fiend to crawl through.
Some of the monsters tried to dash past the formation, to get to where Yung and the gang were lazily chatting away, but every time, tentacles of golden wires would reach out of the formation and mow the beasts to gore and dust.
Yung patted Su Nanya's tail which was covering his nose. It was fluffy and had a strawberry scent that cancelled out the putrid miasma.
The battle raged on one-sidedly.
There was a large Wretched hornbeast at the back. Pale purple light gathered on its temple horn, and the circuits of sickly green on its body lit up with an eldritch neon hue.
It aimed at the dome and fired a beam of void qi the colour of puce. The drill-shaped attack tore through hundreds of voidfiends, its own ally horde, before reaching the formation, where it clashed with the millions of dim gold silk wires. For a few seconds, the ear-piercing sound of metal scratching against granite rang out. The laser then fizzled out, having only pushed back the battle formation a few steps.
The Youjin cultivators were unharmed, and they moved forward again with grim determination in their eyes.
The fiends tried all they could, and the houtian 2nd order murder bunny shot a few more attacks. But it was to no avail.
The ending of the battle was as anti-climactic as the start, and with an hour of slow but patient grinding, lots of pills and potions having been taken to replenish their qi, the horde was no more.
The Youjin cultivators broke formation after mortally wounding the houtian 2nd order Wretched hornbeast, cutting open its abdomen as its guts poured out. They ganged up on it like dogs on a rabbit, and Youjin Gangkai struck the last hit, decapitating the fiend, head up.
"Houtian 2nd order material should not be wasted, and the battle formation would have, well, wasted it." Youjin Chao said. "The fiendcore can be refined into a foundation or meridian building pill too."
"What about stigmata building?" Yung asked excitedly.
"Oh, foolish servant of mine." Su Nanya tutted.
"Unfortunately, that isn't possible. Shenmo cultivation is too unique." Youjin Chao replied with a grin.
"Then is that one pill all it takes to break through?" Yung asked, a bit disheartened.
"If the cultivator has a stable foundation." Youjin Chao said.
"Why isn't the clan over-run with powerhouses then?"
Youjin Chao looked at Yung incredulously. Then he nodded as if understanding the problem, "We have run into the Dusk Valley lion king, and now this houtian 2nd order Wretched hornbeast. This might have given you the wrong impression Brother Yung, that such fiends are common. They are not. The clan can only retrieve such a fiendcore after months of planning a hunt in the Warring twilight forest or when they find a rogue voidrift such as this, and that's maybe once or twice a year.
"And even when they can slay such fiends and refine their core into a pill, the clan would need to have a 12th stage houtian 1st realm cultivator with a stable cultivation base. Out of the hundreds of clansmen, and thousands if counting all associate and dependant families such as guards and servants, perhaps only a handful of cultivators can reach that level in a decade. The clan usually sells the pill if they don't craft a houtian 2nd grade artefact with it."
"Makes sense."
After the fight was over, Yung walked towards the back of the cave. He'd finally see what a voidrift looked like in person.
"Indeed, that yang stench'ed busy boy is wrong," Su Nanya scoffed with utter disregard, "In our imperfect reality, such ill-mannered voidfiends are everywhere, plaguing our wonderful landbridge like the common vermin they." She said like a stern elder sister, hoping Yung would discard his lousy company.
"I think he was talking in the context of the area surrounding Dim Gold City." Yung said, rolling his eyes.
"The voidrift, is it safe?" He asked the Youjin woman who had been accompanying him as a guard and asked. She was resting on a stone, drinking from a vat of floral water, wiping the gore off her daggers.
"Not a fiend is sight. A good chance as any to see a voidrift. Your first time, yeah?" She said.
"Yes." Yung thanked the woman and turned around. But before leaving, he asked, "What's your name? I'm Ziyou Yung. And this imperial princess is the honoured revived grace from the south, Su Nanya, if you didn't know."
"Who doesn't! I am Youjin Linbi. You're a funny kid." She laughed, then waved him away. The vixen didn't even acknowledge the woman in the meanwhile.
Yung rounded the dark hollow, and came face to face with the construct.
The voidrift, as Yung had guessed from its name, was a distinct tear in the fabric of the cosmos. At first glance, it appeared unassuming. But when Yung activated his link sight with a nagging feeling in his palpating heart, it was as though it had revealed a glimpse into a dark, chaotic realm of deep nothingness filled with dead stars, and Yung stopped breathing.
Its irregular edges resembled frayed cloth, while its unstable and pulsating nature hinted at an inherent instability. From this rift emerged the grotesque voidfiends, their writhing forms and menacing presence instilling a primal terror into the air. Creatures of death being birthed from nothingness, with the sole mission to kill the alive. As each fiend dropped, a wire would kill it, ending its miserable existence. It was a conduit, this rift in the void, a manifestation of forbidden knowledge, eliciting a mix of curiosity, trepidation, and a deep-seated fear to whoever was foolish enough to approach it, by whichever dead god beyond the veil.
Surrounding the rift were mysterious tears, defying comprehension and shimmering with arcane energies of an infinite flavour of void and qi, slowly crystallising the very atmosphere near it into transparent lattice mounds.
Yung took it all in, the rift, the tears, the mounds, and his eyes quivered with sheer terror, making Su Nanya who was on top of his head, look on with worry. Yung didn't notice; his vision fixed on the portal as he raised a trembling finger at the dark unreal crack. It was unsaturated, with nothing but a silent void beyond. The dead stars were a lie, so were the fiends and the void.
For he had seen one of these before, in his last moments as Jung. In the virtual world his nephew had created.
The voidrift was nearly identical to the portal that had brought the bone god to Gaia. And then it carried Jung, who transmigrated into Yung.
***
The magical formation elder was the one who closed the rift. He pounded metallic stakes on the ground around the circumference of the space crack-while lighting strange incense and chanting weirder mantras, almost as if he were exorcising a house of foreign ghosts. The other cultivators helped, each holding up a corner of a new formation that surrounded the voidrift.
It looked like the process would take a while, as the voidrift closed very slowly. Like closing the zipper of a duffel bag with too many towels inside. If the towels were alive, had many eyes, and were out to kill you.
Still, Yung stared at the malevolent construct with bloodshot eyes.
If I jump in…
Su Nanya had climbed down from his head. She looked at him, then at the rift, then at him again, her eyes clouded with a blank light.
Yung had already bade farewell to his life as Jung, with his favourite song as his tribute, accompanied by his girlfriend's fantastic pipa. Finding a possibility, a possibility that there might be a way to…
To what exactly? If I jump in…
It felt as though he was cheapening his resolve. Su Nanya lifted her paws and nudged Yung's leg. The golden fox sat there, staring at him while gracefully waving her tail. Floofy joined her, as did Silky. They were worried, he could read.
…I'll probably die.
The voidrift spat out flesh-eating monsters. He was not strong enough to survive on the other side, and he couldn't expect Su Nanya and the rest to follow him. And why would they? So that he could go back to his paralysed fossil of a body again?
No, if I could just talk to Mum and Dad one last time. I…
Moira had cut off the connection between the universes for good. She said so! But it grated Yung's mind like an itch that refused to fade. Questions, questions, more questions upon questions.
Why did this voidrift look so much like the portal in the virtual world? What was that bone god exactly? Is… it possible to re-enact the process the bone-god had used?
Qi slowly rose from the stakes on the ground as the new formation came to life. The formation elder had sweat dripping down his forehead, but didn't look fatigued otherwise. His smile was radiant, like a craftsman in his flow state; he worked with gusto.
The qi, manifesting as delicate dim gold ribbons of energy, gracefully wrapped around the crack in the fabric of reality. With each careful flare of the formation, guided by the chants of the cultivators, the voidrift responded by closing further. And this gradual closure was accompanied by a draining of colours from the world in the cavern, as if life itself retreated in anticipation. The qi ribbons diligently weaved their tapestry of mending, until finally, the voidrift was sealed off nigh entirely. In its wake, only a small scar remained, which too would fade soon, if the mantra rhymes were to be believed.
It reminded Yung of fixing a glass tank with duct tape, water still trying to gush out. Hopefully, the results would be better.
The colours of the world shook, and a distorted ray waved out from the final visages of the scar.
"Cover your ears, oh boyfriend of mine." Su Nanya said, and Yung did so instinctively.
Just as the scar closed for good, a deafening screech echoed from the other side of this conduit of evil, accompanied by the delicate sound of shattering glassware magnified by a thousand folds. Yung's very body shook with the vibrations, and he closed his eyes too.
He waited, and a small fox brushed against his leg.
As the vibration smoothed, an ethereal aura radiated outwards, tingling Yung's skin, filling the cavern with an otherworldly glow that he could see through his eyelids. Yung opened them slowly as he uncovered his ears and witnessed an astonishing transformation: the cavern was now adorned with abundant crystal mounds, far more than there had been before. Almost thirty metres surrounding the location where the rift had been, was now casting a brilliant spectacle of light and shadow, as the colours had returned with seemingly extra contrast and saturation.
Most mounds were complete, standing about knee high, but some were cracked, their lattice falling apart, and unit cells scattering on the ground. Yung picked one of the cells up. It was a long, narrow, six-sided prism. As a jade carver, he recognised it instantly.
"A void jade." So this is what the scrolls mentioned! All these hundreds of mounds, how much is this worth in pure spirit stones? At least a few silvercast ones! Man, voidrifts are good business. No wonder the Su fox clan are the richest in the world!
Thinking about money was a good way to distract his mind from the possibility of going back to the before.
Su Nanya pouted, thumping the ground with her tail. "We, such sensible a girlfriend, shall not allow you to squander our wealth. Dare you not understand, oh foolish boyfriend?" She whispered, and Yung grinned. The vixen beamed back.
"Not a bad haul." The grizzly-haired elder stroked his fuzzy beard, a rare smile on his face. "Gather it up." He ordered his Youjin subordinates, who brought out large sacks with runes embroidered. They started butchering the fiends for fiendcores and carefully disassembling the lattice mounds for void jades.
"It's crazy how they appear out of nowhere." Yung asked no one in particular. Just a general observation about how crazy this world was, and how much his past world made sense, at least at the surface level where the Moira-like supernatural beings were not out about making scenes.
"The void jades?" Youjin Chao said, loitering nearby as if waiting for a chance to talk. "Some say it is the planar consciousness rewarding us for closing a voidrift. Others say the rifts are alive, and the void jades are like fiendcores. Both make little sense to me, even though they are the most prevalent opinions. Because when a voidrift is left open for long enough, void jades will grow like crystal trees on their own in the area. Who is the planar consciousness rewarding here? And which fiend would be foolish enough to expose their core outside their body?"
Yung thought for a bit, finding the questions uninteresting, and not because Su Nanya was smirking deviously after Youjin Chao had expressed them. "Do you know what's on the other side?" He asked, his eyes still on the vixen, but his inquiry pointed at the protagonist.
Shock, rage, scorn.
Yung went on guard.
The Youjin cultivators walked forward steadily. With each step they inched, their formation carved into the voidfiend horde like a hurricane of steel threads. The physical embodiment of the term 'offence is the best defence', the dome of wires left nary a blind spot for even the strongest enemy fiend to crawl through.
Some of the monsters tried to dash past the formation, to get to where Yung and the gang were lazily chatting away, but every time, tentacles of golden wires would reach out of the formation and mow the beasts to gore and dust.
Yung patted Su Nanya's tail which was covering his nose. It was fluffy and had a strawberry scent that cancelled out the putrid miasma.
The battle raged on one-sidedly.
There was a large Wretched hornbeast at the back. Pale purple light gathered on its temple horn, and the circuits of sickly green on its body lit up with an eldritch neon hue.
It aimed at the dome and fired a beam of void qi the colour of puce. The drill-shaped attack tore through hundreds of voidfiends, its own ally horde, before reaching the formation, where it clashed with the millions of dim gold silk wires. For a few seconds, the ear-piercing sound of metal scratching against granite rang out. The laser then fizzled out, having only pushed back the battle formation a few steps.
The Youjin cultivators were unharmed, and they moved forward again with grim determination in their eyes.
The fiends tried all they could, and the houtian 2nd order murder bunny shot a few more attacks. But it was to no avail.
The ending of the battle was as anti-climactic as the start, and with an hour of slow but patient grinding, lots of pills and potions having been taken to replenish their qi, the horde was no more.
The Youjin cultivators broke formation after mortally wounding the houtian 2nd order Wretched hornbeast, cutting open its abdomen as its guts poured out. They ganged up on it like dogs on a rabbit, and Youjin Gangkai struck the last hit, decapitating the fiend, head up.
"Houtian 2nd order material should not be wasted, and the battle formation would have, well, wasted it." Youjin Chao said. "The fiendcore can be refined into a foundation or meridian building pill too."
"What about stigmata building?" Yung asked excitedly.
"Oh, foolish servant of mine." Su Nanya tutted.
"Unfortunately, that isn't possible. Shenmo cultivation is too unique." Youjin Chao replied with a grin.
"Then is that one pill all it takes to break through?" Yung asked, a bit disheartened.
"If the cultivator has a stable foundation." Youjin Chao said.
"Why isn't the clan over-run with powerhouses then?"
Youjin Chao looked at Yung incredulously. Then he nodded as if understanding the problem, "We have run into the Dusk Valley lion king, and now this houtian 2nd order Wretched hornbeast. This might have given you the wrong impression Brother Yung, that such fiends are common. They are not. The clan can only retrieve such a fiendcore after months of planning a hunt in the Warring twilight forest or when they find a rogue voidrift such as this, and that's maybe once or twice a year.
"And even when they can slay such fiends and refine their core into a pill, the clan would need to have a 12th stage houtian 1st realm cultivator with a stable cultivation base. Out of the hundreds of clansmen, and thousands if counting all associate and dependant families such as guards and servants, perhaps only a handful of cultivators can reach that level in a decade. The clan usually sells the pill if they don't craft a houtian 2nd grade artefact with it."
"Makes sense."
After the fight was over, Yung walked towards the back of the cave. He'd finally see what a voidrift looked like in person.
"Indeed, that yang stench'ed busy boy is wrong," Su Nanya scoffed with utter disregard, "In our imperfect reality, such ill-mannered voidfiends are everywhere, plaguing our wonderful landbridge like the common vermin they." She said like a stern elder sister, hoping Yung would discard his lousy company.
"I think he was talking in the context of the area surrounding Dim Gold City." Yung said, rolling his eyes.
"The voidrift, is it safe?" He asked the Youjin woman who had been accompanying him as a guard and asked. She was resting on a stone, drinking from a vat of floral water, wiping the gore off her daggers.
"Not a fiend is sight. A good chance as any to see a voidrift. Your first time, yeah?" She said.
"Yes." Yung thanked the woman and turned around. But before leaving, he asked, "What's your name? I'm Ziyou Yung. And this imperial princess is the honoured revived grace from the south, Su Nanya, if you didn't know."
"Who doesn't! I am Youjin Linbi. You're a funny kid." She laughed, then waved him away. The vixen didn't even acknowledge the woman in the meanwhile.
Yung rounded the dark hollow, and came face to face with the construct.
The voidrift, as Yung had guessed from its name, was a distinct tear in the fabric of the cosmos. At first glance, it appeared unassuming. But when Yung activated his link sight with a nagging feeling in his palpating heart, it was as though it had revealed a glimpse into a dark, chaotic realm of deep nothingness filled with dead stars, and Yung stopped breathing.
Its irregular edges resembled frayed cloth, while its unstable and pulsating nature hinted at an inherent instability. From this rift emerged the grotesque voidfiends, their writhing forms and menacing presence instilling a primal terror into the air. Creatures of death being birthed from nothingness, with the sole mission to kill the alive. As each fiend dropped, a wire would kill it, ending its miserable existence. It was a conduit, this rift in the void, a manifestation of forbidden knowledge, eliciting a mix of curiosity, trepidation, and a deep-seated fear to whoever was foolish enough to approach it, by whichever dead god beyond the veil.
Surrounding the rift were mysterious tears, defying comprehension and shimmering with arcane energies of an infinite flavour of void and qi, slowly crystallising the very atmosphere near it into transparent lattice mounds.
Yung took it all in, the rift, the tears, the mounds, and his eyes quivered with sheer terror, making Su Nanya who was on top of his head, look on with worry. Yung didn't notice; his vision fixed on the portal as he raised a trembling finger at the dark unreal crack. It was unsaturated, with nothing but a silent void beyond. The dead stars were a lie, so were the fiends and the void.
For he had seen one of these before, in his last moments as Jung. In the virtual world his nephew had created.
The voidrift was nearly identical to the portal that had brought the bone god to Gaia. And then it carried Jung, who transmigrated into Yung.
***
The magical formation elder was the one who closed the rift. He pounded metallic stakes on the ground around the circumference of the space crack-while lighting strange incense and chanting weirder mantras, almost as if he were exorcising a house of foreign ghosts. The other cultivators helped, each holding up a corner of a new formation that surrounded the voidrift.
It looked like the process would take a while, as the voidrift closed very slowly. Like closing the zipper of a duffel bag with too many towels inside. If the towels were alive, had many eyes, and were out to kill you.
Still, Yung stared at the malevolent construct with bloodshot eyes.
If I jump in…
Su Nanya had climbed down from his head. She looked at him, then at the rift, then at him again, her eyes clouded with a blank light.
Yung had already bade farewell to his life as Jung, with his favourite song as his tribute, accompanied by his girlfriend's fantastic pipa. Finding a possibility, a possibility that there might be a way to…
To what exactly? If I jump in…
It felt as though he was cheapening his resolve. Su Nanya lifted her paws and nudged Yung's leg. The golden fox sat there, staring at him while gracefully waving her tail. Floofy joined her, as did Silky. They were worried, he could read.
…I'll probably die.
The voidrift spat out flesh-eating monsters. He was not strong enough to survive on the other side, and he couldn't expect Su Nanya and the rest to follow him. And why would they? So that he could go back to his paralysed fossil of a body again?
No, if I could just talk to Mum and Dad one last time. I…
Moira had cut off the connection between the universes for good. She said so! But it grated Yung's mind like an itch that refused to fade. Questions, questions, more questions upon questions.
Why did this voidrift look so much like the portal in the virtual world? What was that bone god exactly? Is… it possible to re-enact the process the bone-god had used?
Qi slowly rose from the stakes on the ground as the new formation came to life. The formation elder had sweat dripping down his forehead, but didn't look fatigued otherwise. His smile was radiant, like a craftsman in his flow state; he worked with gusto.
The qi, manifesting as delicate dim gold ribbons of energy, gracefully wrapped around the crack in the fabric of reality. With each careful flare of the formation, guided by the chants of the cultivators, the voidrift responded by closing further. And this gradual closure was accompanied by a draining of colours from the world in the cavern, as if life itself retreated in anticipation. The qi ribbons diligently weaved their tapestry of mending, until finally, the voidrift was sealed off nigh entirely. In its wake, only a small scar remained, which too would fade soon, if the mantra rhymes were to be believed.
It reminded Yung of fixing a glass tank with duct tape, water still trying to gush out. Hopefully, the results would be better.
The colours of the world shook, and a distorted ray waved out from the final visages of the scar.
"Cover your ears, oh boyfriend of mine." Su Nanya said, and Yung did so instinctively.
Just as the scar closed for good, a deafening screech echoed from the other side of this conduit of evil, accompanied by the delicate sound of shattering glassware magnified by a thousand folds. Yung's very body shook with the vibrations, and he closed his eyes too.
He waited, and a small fox brushed against his leg.
As the vibration smoothed, an ethereal aura radiated outwards, tingling Yung's skin, filling the cavern with an otherworldly glow that he could see through his eyelids. Yung opened them slowly as he uncovered his ears and witnessed an astonishing transformation: the cavern was now adorned with abundant crystal mounds, far more than there had been before. Almost thirty metres surrounding the location where the rift had been, was now casting a brilliant spectacle of light and shadow, as the colours had returned with seemingly extra contrast and saturation.
Most mounds were complete, standing about knee high, but some were cracked, their lattice falling apart, and unit cells scattering on the ground. Yung picked one of the cells up. It was a long, narrow, six-sided prism. As a jade carver, he recognised it instantly.
"A void jade." So this is what the scrolls mentioned! All these hundreds of mounds, how much is this worth in pure spirit stones? At least a few silvercast ones! Man, voidrifts are good business. No wonder the Su fox clan are the richest in the world!
Thinking about money was a good way to distract his mind from the possibility of going back to the before.
Su Nanya pouted, thumping the ground with her tail. "We, such sensible a girlfriend, shall not allow you to squander our wealth. Dare you not understand, oh foolish boyfriend?" She whispered, and Yung grinned. The vixen beamed back.
"Not a bad haul." The grizzly-haired elder stroked his fuzzy beard, a rare smile on his face. "Gather it up." He ordered his Youjin subordinates, who brought out large sacks with runes embroidered. They started butchering the fiends for fiendcores and carefully disassembling the lattice mounds for void jades.
"It's crazy how they appear out of nowhere." Yung asked no one in particular. Just a general observation about how crazy this world was, and how much his past world made sense, at least at the surface level where the Moira-like supernatural beings were not out about making scenes.
"The void jades?" Youjin Chao said, loitering nearby as if waiting for a chance to talk. "Some say it is the planar consciousness rewarding us for closing a voidrift. Others say the rifts are alive, and the void jades are like fiendcores. Both make little sense to me, even though they are the most prevalent opinions. Because when a voidrift is left open for long enough, void jades will grow like crystal trees on their own in the area. Who is the planar consciousness rewarding here? And which fiend would be foolish enough to expose their core outside their body?"
Yung thought for a bit, finding the questions uninteresting, and not because Su Nanya was smirking deviously after Youjin Chao had expressed them. "Do you know what's on the other side?" He asked, his eyes still on the vixen, but his inquiry pointed at the protagonist.
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Chapter 49 - Rice to the Occasion
"On the other side of the voidrift?" Youjin Chao was taken aback. "Not really. There are tales of cultivators going in, but not of them coming out that I have heard. However… sometimes, when a voidrift is closed, another rift opens in its place. Another kind of rift, to be precise."
"And there are tales of cultivators going in and coming out of these second kind of… rifts?" Yung asked again, while still in a childish stare-off with Su Nanya. The vixen growled.
"Portals, they call them. The Lost plane portals." Youjin Chao said. A bit away, Youjin Chun and Ziyou Ling were bickering while throwing creative insults, and Youjin Linbi was looking at the spectacle with interest.
"In most cases," The taller boy continued, "on the other end of a portal is a planar fragment. Sometimes these fragments appear even without portals. Part of a hidden world, perhaps once a vibrant plane like ours, now broken and forgotten. The strongest cultivators can even refine planar fragments into personal demi-plane artefacts.
"Rarer still, a portal may lead to the lost planes, those aforementioned hidden worlds themselves, still intact, yet no longer part of the grand dao. Brother Yung, do you know why our mortal plane is called the Last Ascension?"
"I tried to find out why, but the scrolls did not mention it," Yung said. He looked away from the petite vixen and finally turned to Youjin Chao. That seemed to anger Su Nanya even more.
"This is something my grandmother told me," Youjin Chao said, "She said that we are the last existing mortal plane."
"That can't be true." Yung was shocked. This doesn't match the Xianxia trope! But isn't Chao's grandmother a pingtian realmer? That's gotta mean something! Yung glared at Su Nanya again but looks like the vixen had no wish to explain these secrets to him. Yet.
Su Nanya threw one final contemptuous scoff at both the boys and went to hang out with Floofy and Silky.
"I cannot confirm the validity of it." Youjin Chao shrugged; his eyes were plastered on the leaving figure of the three foxes. "But according to her, after the Continent of madness became what it is today, our mortal plane lost all communication with the neighbouring planes."
"Ah, I get it now. The lost planes." Yung said. He was reminded of Gaia, but with a much grimmer undertone. The continent of madness was invaded by the void. The void beings, who use voidrifts that resemble the portal that brought me to this side. "Lost, literally lost, and figuratively. Lost planes are—"
"Planes overwrought by the void, corrupted and conquered." Youjin Chao completed his sentence, which felt kinda weird. "Just like the Continent of madness."
Brother Yung, there is a saying among the pingtian realmers. 'The path to heaven has been closed.' They say our plane drifts alone in the endless infinity, like a scared rabbit in a dark forest hiding from predators. That there is no heaven to ascend to, not anymore! That we are the final prey left... No one knows if we are truly the last bastion of renyao, but a million years of solitude proves nothing but." Youjin Chao's eyes turned gloomy, and his fists clenched white.
Yung wasn't feeling any better.
Portals that… lead to ruined worlds which have already been conquered by the void. Bloody hell, my head hurts. Was the bone god a void being? But it was already on death's door when it broke into the Gaia universe! Does the void have factions? Or… are there other powers in this universe that can defeat it?
Moira said there is a valence to the universes, and when a soul from one universe successfully observes the other, unless a soul from the observed universe also observes the first… Damn. This means that while invasions between universes are sporadic, when they do occur, it is downright lopsided, favouring the invaders way too heavily. They can go through from their home universe to the other side easily, and send more and more 'agents' to observe their target, tipping the scale heavily in their favour. The invaded side has to match that number just to break even! Cultivators who go through the voidrifts don't return, while the void can send eleventy-zillion voidfiends to this side every damn second.
OK, calm down, Yung. No need to over-speculate. Moira nipped the problem in the bud. Gaia, Earth is safe. I observed this side. Yeah… And she said this side is a 'lower dimensional universe', whatever that meant. Wait, since the bone god that appeared from the 'voidrift' observed the Gaia universe, and I observed this side in the Last ascension mortal plane, does that mean whatever place the bone god came from, and this mortal plane, counts as the same universe? Phew if true, unless the bone god wasn't a void being…
"Brother Yung, there is no need to be so afraid." Youjin Chao snapped Yung out of his rumination.
Yung looked at his hands, which were sweating. No doubt his face was the same too. But this isn't… He read the older boy's empathic link. Curiosity and disdain? What? Does he think I'm afraid of, ooh—I get it. I am afraid, but what does he think I am fearful of, I wonder? Heh.
Youjin Chao's eyes were full of determination. "Do not listen to what the pessimists say, Brother Yung. These are scornful cynics who have already given up! In actuality, if we truly are the last mortal renyao plane, then that means there is a whole empty 'heaven' out there for us to conquer! As such, finding a lost plane is what every adventurer dreams of."
"I can see why. Unknown wonders, mysteries to be solved, legacies of sects long erased by even time itself." Yung remembered the 'fictional' hero from Su Nanya's hypothetical tale. The hero, or rather, Su Nanya's 'former' fiancé, had freed lost planes in his long separation from the vixen. Whatever that meant, Yung would need to find out.
"The largest empires and sects have many lost planes in their possession. These are their backbones, for unlike the Su fox clan, they don't have a continent's worth of resources to monopolise alone. They populate them with their own people to gather what they need, to create new colonies." Youjin Chao said. "The Warring twilight alliance shares ownership of a single lost plane, too, from what I heard. I have heard it is a void-infested world without a drop of water. Perhaps I can go there when I join one of the big five."
"You sure are confident. Have you figured out a way to awaken your cultivation?" Yung asked, looking Youjin Chao straight in the eye.
The older boy was not phased. He chuckled, saying, "It is good that we managed to close the voidrift today, Brother Yung, but stragglers remain in other branch tunnels. I will join the hunt squad to cull them. Let us meet again in the coming days." He flexed his fingers, appearing confident, but the uncertainty from his empathic link oozed out like oil. Not about the hunt, Yung guessed, but about the coming phase one.
"On the day of the sect recruitments, the local powers will crowd the city, from the lowest gangs to the highest sects." Youjin Chao said, picking up his rusty sword, "But it will be a festival if nothing else. I am still holding onto your promise."
"Promise?"
"That you will cheer me on."
"Oh, that, yeah," Yung muttered, then nodded. And Youjin Chao bade farewell. He, alongside Ziyou Ling, rushed ahead of the group with the cull squad.
I did say that. Concerning phase one of the sect recruitments, not about Youjin Chao's crush on Nyanya. Said Nyanya turned slowly, her golden pupils glaring disdainfully at Youjin Chao and Ziyou Ling's retreating backs as they entered another tunnel with a team of Youjin cultivators. Youjin Chun and Elder Gangkai followed too, after paying their respects to her.
The rest of the group walked back the same way they had come, and soon they reached the fork where one tunnel had been blocked by a formation inscribed stone wall.
The wall was gone now.
"Would you like to see the paddy farms?" The grizzly-haired elder asked.
After the voidrift matter had been dealt with, the man's entire mood changed from strict to sunny. Perhaps that was for the better, as he was injured during the final fight; despite which, his excellent mood showed his fortitude. He had asked Yung that question, but Yung gathered it must have been aimed at the small golden fox he was cradling after shooing Silky and Floofy away.
He nodded nonetheless; he was a gigolo after all. They were led through the tunnel. Downwards, perhaps half again as far as the cavern where the voidrift had been. Silky was tired, he retreated into Yung's dantian, and Floofy dug up a glowing purple mushroom from somewhere and disappeared in one of the tunnels.
"Will she be alright?" Yung asked.
"Our Su Xiya will be far safer than that smelly yang boy and the unfair maiden in these tunnels," Nyanya replied.
"Smelly yang boy?" Yung would have giggled if that moniker didn't sound so lewd.
"We do find the yang stench excruciating. Ought that boy not stay away?" There was something aggrieved in her voice, and Yung cuddled her extra hard.
"He likes you." He said, gauging her reactions.
"We care not for it." Su Nanya huffed, then puffed, then looked away.
The cavern with the paddy fields was huge.
They started small, but even the littlest ones had offshoots of some underground river running through them. The rice was cultivated on the banks, with farmers taking care of the crop with unique tools and artefacts. Some removed the weeds, most of which looked like grass-sized ferns and mushrooms. They gathered them into baskets, which were then carried up by little kids, giggling and skipping. Some mixed fertiliser with the soil, taking care not to disturb the fields with crops near harvest. And others toiled the land with weird-looking ploughs strapped onto stranger-looking fiends.
With parts of the field golden, parts of it purple, and other parts green, Yung wondered what kind of wizardry the farmers were doing here. His agriculture knowledge was not really extensive, but he was pretty sure this wasn't how crop rotation worked.
The paddy themselves were strange. They looked like rice and came up to Yung's chest in height. But they had more ears of grain on each stalk than Yung had seen, even on the most illegal GMO back on earth. Not to mention that each ear was as wide as a corn cob, with the individual rice kernel as tiny as a modern husked Basmati grain.
Spirit rice, they called them. They had other regional names too, but that was the most common nomenclature used.
Most folks just called them rice, though.
They also glowed gold. As if their self-radiated light could substitute for the sun.
A lot of things glow gold in this world.
Yung eyed Nyanya, the golden fox walking between the aisles of the fields, lightly brushing past the paddy with her silky coat and elegant tail. A golden thread connected her to him, and to everything else. And her deep gold celestial link vanished beyond the veil, as did everyone else's.
The largest of the caverns Yung saw must have contained at least ten square kilometres of fields.
He met up with the elder in charge of farming. By this time, most of the other Youjin cultivators had left too, including Youjin Linbi and the sharp-tongued middle-aged man.
Yung looked on with his mouth agape.
These super caverns, there were multiple of these in this part of the underground, and according to the farming elder, the clan was working with the Free Sparrow gang to open up more paddy fields in similarly large but untamed caverns near the southern fiend butchery in proximity to the madlander slums.
"Most years, we can feed half a million ren without any issue." The elder explained, proud of his work. He was an alchemist too, in his words, but was more interested in growing herbs and grains than making pills.
Yung remembered Youjin Chao saying that last year, less than a thousand slum dwellers froze to death during the winter months. What about starvation and malnutrition?
Hopefully, this year would be different.
"And there are tales of cultivators going in and coming out of these second kind of… rifts?" Yung asked again, while still in a childish stare-off with Su Nanya. The vixen growled.
"Portals, they call them. The Lost plane portals." Youjin Chao said. A bit away, Youjin Chun and Ziyou Ling were bickering while throwing creative insults, and Youjin Linbi was looking at the spectacle with interest.
"In most cases," The taller boy continued, "on the other end of a portal is a planar fragment. Sometimes these fragments appear even without portals. Part of a hidden world, perhaps once a vibrant plane like ours, now broken and forgotten. The strongest cultivators can even refine planar fragments into personal demi-plane artefacts.
"Rarer still, a portal may lead to the lost planes, those aforementioned hidden worlds themselves, still intact, yet no longer part of the grand dao. Brother Yung, do you know why our mortal plane is called the Last Ascension?"
"I tried to find out why, but the scrolls did not mention it," Yung said. He looked away from the petite vixen and finally turned to Youjin Chao. That seemed to anger Su Nanya even more.
"This is something my grandmother told me," Youjin Chao said, "She said that we are the last existing mortal plane."
"That can't be true." Yung was shocked. This doesn't match the Xianxia trope! But isn't Chao's grandmother a pingtian realmer? That's gotta mean something! Yung glared at Su Nanya again but looks like the vixen had no wish to explain these secrets to him. Yet.
Su Nanya threw one final contemptuous scoff at both the boys and went to hang out with Floofy and Silky.
"I cannot confirm the validity of it." Youjin Chao shrugged; his eyes were plastered on the leaving figure of the three foxes. "But according to her, after the Continent of madness became what it is today, our mortal plane lost all communication with the neighbouring planes."
"Ah, I get it now. The lost planes." Yung said. He was reminded of Gaia, but with a much grimmer undertone. The continent of madness was invaded by the void. The void beings, who use voidrifts that resemble the portal that brought me to this side. "Lost, literally lost, and figuratively. Lost planes are—"
"Planes overwrought by the void, corrupted and conquered." Youjin Chao completed his sentence, which felt kinda weird. "Just like the Continent of madness."
Brother Yung, there is a saying among the pingtian realmers. 'The path to heaven has been closed.' They say our plane drifts alone in the endless infinity, like a scared rabbit in a dark forest hiding from predators. That there is no heaven to ascend to, not anymore! That we are the final prey left... No one knows if we are truly the last bastion of renyao, but a million years of solitude proves nothing but." Youjin Chao's eyes turned gloomy, and his fists clenched white.
Yung wasn't feeling any better.
Portals that… lead to ruined worlds which have already been conquered by the void. Bloody hell, my head hurts. Was the bone god a void being? But it was already on death's door when it broke into the Gaia universe! Does the void have factions? Or… are there other powers in this universe that can defeat it?
Moira said there is a valence to the universes, and when a soul from one universe successfully observes the other, unless a soul from the observed universe also observes the first… Damn. This means that while invasions between universes are sporadic, when they do occur, it is downright lopsided, favouring the invaders way too heavily. They can go through from their home universe to the other side easily, and send more and more 'agents' to observe their target, tipping the scale heavily in their favour. The invaded side has to match that number just to break even! Cultivators who go through the voidrifts don't return, while the void can send eleventy-zillion voidfiends to this side every damn second.
OK, calm down, Yung. No need to over-speculate. Moira nipped the problem in the bud. Gaia, Earth is safe. I observed this side. Yeah… And she said this side is a 'lower dimensional universe', whatever that meant. Wait, since the bone god that appeared from the 'voidrift' observed the Gaia universe, and I observed this side in the Last ascension mortal plane, does that mean whatever place the bone god came from, and this mortal plane, counts as the same universe? Phew if true, unless the bone god wasn't a void being…
"Brother Yung, there is no need to be so afraid." Youjin Chao snapped Yung out of his rumination.
Yung looked at his hands, which were sweating. No doubt his face was the same too. But this isn't… He read the older boy's empathic link. Curiosity and disdain? What? Does he think I'm afraid of, ooh—I get it. I am afraid, but what does he think I am fearful of, I wonder? Heh.
Youjin Chao's eyes were full of determination. "Do not listen to what the pessimists say, Brother Yung. These are scornful cynics who have already given up! In actuality, if we truly are the last mortal renyao plane, then that means there is a whole empty 'heaven' out there for us to conquer! As such, finding a lost plane is what every adventurer dreams of."
"I can see why. Unknown wonders, mysteries to be solved, legacies of sects long erased by even time itself." Yung remembered the 'fictional' hero from Su Nanya's hypothetical tale. The hero, or rather, Su Nanya's 'former' fiancé, had freed lost planes in his long separation from the vixen. Whatever that meant, Yung would need to find out.
"The largest empires and sects have many lost planes in their possession. These are their backbones, for unlike the Su fox clan, they don't have a continent's worth of resources to monopolise alone. They populate them with their own people to gather what they need, to create new colonies." Youjin Chao said. "The Warring twilight alliance shares ownership of a single lost plane, too, from what I heard. I have heard it is a void-infested world without a drop of water. Perhaps I can go there when I join one of the big five."
"You sure are confident. Have you figured out a way to awaken your cultivation?" Yung asked, looking Youjin Chao straight in the eye.
The older boy was not phased. He chuckled, saying, "It is good that we managed to close the voidrift today, Brother Yung, but stragglers remain in other branch tunnels. I will join the hunt squad to cull them. Let us meet again in the coming days." He flexed his fingers, appearing confident, but the uncertainty from his empathic link oozed out like oil. Not about the hunt, Yung guessed, but about the coming phase one.
"On the day of the sect recruitments, the local powers will crowd the city, from the lowest gangs to the highest sects." Youjin Chao said, picking up his rusty sword, "But it will be a festival if nothing else. I am still holding onto your promise."
"Promise?"
"That you will cheer me on."
"Oh, that, yeah," Yung muttered, then nodded. And Youjin Chao bade farewell. He, alongside Ziyou Ling, rushed ahead of the group with the cull squad.
I did say that. Concerning phase one of the sect recruitments, not about Youjin Chao's crush on Nyanya. Said Nyanya turned slowly, her golden pupils glaring disdainfully at Youjin Chao and Ziyou Ling's retreating backs as they entered another tunnel with a team of Youjin cultivators. Youjin Chun and Elder Gangkai followed too, after paying their respects to her.
The rest of the group walked back the same way they had come, and soon they reached the fork where one tunnel had been blocked by a formation inscribed stone wall.
The wall was gone now.
"Would you like to see the paddy farms?" The grizzly-haired elder asked.
After the voidrift matter had been dealt with, the man's entire mood changed from strict to sunny. Perhaps that was for the better, as he was injured during the final fight; despite which, his excellent mood showed his fortitude. He had asked Yung that question, but Yung gathered it must have been aimed at the small golden fox he was cradling after shooing Silky and Floofy away.
He nodded nonetheless; he was a gigolo after all. They were led through the tunnel. Downwards, perhaps half again as far as the cavern where the voidrift had been. Silky was tired, he retreated into Yung's dantian, and Floofy dug up a glowing purple mushroom from somewhere and disappeared in one of the tunnels.
"Will she be alright?" Yung asked.
"Our Su Xiya will be far safer than that smelly yang boy and the unfair maiden in these tunnels," Nyanya replied.
"Smelly yang boy?" Yung would have giggled if that moniker didn't sound so lewd.
"We do find the yang stench excruciating. Ought that boy not stay away?" There was something aggrieved in her voice, and Yung cuddled her extra hard.
"He likes you." He said, gauging her reactions.
"We care not for it." Su Nanya huffed, then puffed, then looked away.
The cavern with the paddy fields was huge.
They started small, but even the littlest ones had offshoots of some underground river running through them. The rice was cultivated on the banks, with farmers taking care of the crop with unique tools and artefacts. Some removed the weeds, most of which looked like grass-sized ferns and mushrooms. They gathered them into baskets, which were then carried up by little kids, giggling and skipping. Some mixed fertiliser with the soil, taking care not to disturb the fields with crops near harvest. And others toiled the land with weird-looking ploughs strapped onto stranger-looking fiends.
With parts of the field golden, parts of it purple, and other parts green, Yung wondered what kind of wizardry the farmers were doing here. His agriculture knowledge was not really extensive, but he was pretty sure this wasn't how crop rotation worked.
The paddy themselves were strange. They looked like rice and came up to Yung's chest in height. But they had more ears of grain on each stalk than Yung had seen, even on the most illegal GMO back on earth. Not to mention that each ear was as wide as a corn cob, with the individual rice kernel as tiny as a modern husked Basmati grain.
Spirit rice, they called them. They had other regional names too, but that was the most common nomenclature used.
Most folks just called them rice, though.
They also glowed gold. As if their self-radiated light could substitute for the sun.
A lot of things glow gold in this world.
Yung eyed Nyanya, the golden fox walking between the aisles of the fields, lightly brushing past the paddy with her silky coat and elegant tail. A golden thread connected her to him, and to everything else. And her deep gold celestial link vanished beyond the veil, as did everyone else's.
The largest of the caverns Yung saw must have contained at least ten square kilometres of fields.
He met up with the elder in charge of farming. By this time, most of the other Youjin cultivators had left too, including Youjin Linbi and the sharp-tongued middle-aged man.
Yung looked on with his mouth agape.
These super caverns, there were multiple of these in this part of the underground, and according to the farming elder, the clan was working with the Free Sparrow gang to open up more paddy fields in similarly large but untamed caverns near the southern fiend butchery in proximity to the madlander slums.
"Most years, we can feed half a million ren without any issue." The elder explained, proud of his work. He was an alchemist too, in his words, but was more interested in growing herbs and grains than making pills.
Yung remembered Youjin Chao saying that last year, less than a thousand slum dwellers froze to death during the winter months. What about starvation and malnutrition?
Hopefully, this year would be different.
Chapter 50 - Meat of the matter
There were a few caverns where the crops had been ransacked. The farmers sat on the aisles with forlorn faces. But they got up; they had families to feed.
"We'll be rebuilding them, young lad. The blasted voidrift may have caused a fair bit of damage, but fear not, for us farmers are a resilient bunch, ye see?" The elder in charge of farming said.
It was time to leave. It had been a long day, and Yung's mind was still on the 'portal'. He knew he was a nobody, even with Su Nanya's favour.
At his level of power and influence, he couldn't really delve into the mysteries of why this mortal plane was cut off from the rest of the universe, and if the nature of this 'cut' was similar to what Moira had done to sever Gaia off.
What even was the void in the first place? And why were there two types of fiends? If Yung could find a lost plane, would that be interstellar travel? Inter-planar travel?
Great shower thoughts indeed.
But he would need a shower first, and Su Nanya suggested that her queen's suite had the best in the 'village.'
The farming elder walked them up until they reached the surface. This was a different entrance than they had used when entering the underground world.
And as far as Yung was concerned, the above and underground actually were separate worlds, stacked on top of each other like poorly placed Lego blocks.
Why the city had not collapsed because of massive cave-ins, Yung had no idea. Qi was weird.
"With the sect recruitments right round the corner, the city be heating up. This old man likes it. Lively, no?" Said the farming elder.
"Won't it bring trouble too?" Yung asked.
"The fox clan is here. Who dares to be insolent?"
"You Youjin bunch really know how to talk." Yung sighed.
The elder smiled with half of his teeth missing. The wrinkles on his face covered his beady eyes too, giving his old face a jovial expression. "Ayo, I lived so long and only be waiting for me death now. My missus must be so lonely on the other side of the grand dao. I can't compare to you young ones." He watched Yung caress Su Nanya's fur and gave a knowing nod.
Yung rolled his eyes, then made his way through the fiend butchery. Already, lines of men were carrying up tons upon tons of Wretched hornbeast corpses from the underground.
He saw a large piscina-like structure of boiling liquid on one side of the butchery. Adjacent to it were rows of stone tables seemingly nailed to the ground, with men flaying meat off bones and tossing them expertly into the bubbling concoction. From beneath the surface of the liquid, the putrid blood would rise into a vapour, as if attempting to escape, before vanishing into it as if assimilated and detoxified.
On the opposite side of the piscina, women stood with long bamboo poles, the lower end equipped with netted baskets. With adept movements, they retrieved the meat from the liquid, now displaying the healthy hues of white and pink akin to raw animal flesh.
There were multiple such pools on the western periphery of the butchery, Yung noted. These ones were for the voidfiends. The chaosfiends were processed in the eastern side, where the shape and size of the piscinas were slightly different, as were the nature of the concoction which looked far less chemical-ly, and the inscriptions on the piscina structures that seemed to glow with far less qi. As the day neared its end, the fiendhunting teams carried in the haul of the day from the nearby Warring twilight forest.
The monsters were butchered, blood-let, and skinned, then de-boned to whatever extent the butcher could.
The innards were carried elsewhere, as were the excreta. The skin was to be tanned.
The fiend butchery was manned by ren hands, no fancy industrial machines or grinders. There were artefacts here and there, such as the piscinas, but mostly it was good people making a good living, feeding their brethren in the city.
Compared to the wanton cruelty of the twenty-first-century meat factories, Yung had little to criticise. He was a meat eater, and he had no guilt feeding on flesh either in this world or his last.
But some thoughts undoubtedly used to keep him up at night, Yung admitted. Fish had the cruellest deaths, as most died of suffocation to keep the 'freshness'. Pigs—animals often more intelligent, affectionate, and sociable than dogs and cats—were kept in a 2 cubic metre cubbyhole from birth to bacon. And chickens, the ones most often consumed, were literal babies less than six weeks old, the last two weeks of which they spent immobile because of their eugenically selected growth genes and the numerous alkaline burns on their bodies.
He walked, with Floofy and Silky in tow.
Hopefully, no one would complain if his diet consisted of murder bunnies and maniac pigs.
They entered the Dim gold citadel from the north entrance and proceeded towards the city centre. When he had left in the morning, the townsfolk had gathered with ladders and timbers, flowers and ribbons. Now, the street was almost unrecognisable, adorned with paper lanterns hanging from every roof corner and ropes embellished with paper flowers stretching across the sky.
In the central square, a large stage had been set up with a pedestal in the middle and an amphitheatre-style seating arrangement on three sides. Yung noticed members of Su Nanya's entourage present, not the fox yao, but the cultivators from the Twilight blood palace. They wore robes in varying shades of red, accented with black and green lines. Despite being chosen by Su Nanya, none of them had bothered to greet Yung in the past few weeks, and Yung hesitated to approach them as well.
They're supposed to be my future sect-mates, right? Shit why's that fat guy glaring?
Yung stopped staring and walked away.
The street was also filled with unfamiliar faces, grouped together with varying uniforms from various alien factions Yung had never seen before. During the sect recruitments five years ago, he could swear that there weren't this many 'visitors.'
Su Nanya yawned and explained, "They are lesser establishments from the local region, my dearest servant. Like scavengers of waste and carrion, they are here to pick out the leftover untalents. The aptitude test shall dutifully eliminate the failures, and our martial nephew's sect will choose the very best for the next phase, alongside the rest of the mediocre four of the Warring Twilight settlement. However, alas is your fate; we must admit that the 'best' offered by this village might not be at all worth mentioning."
"Well you found me," Yung grinned.
"Alas is our fate; we must admit our folly!" And Su Nanya preened.
They had a moment, and then Yung inquired, "So You're saying that even those who fail the test, their talents could be good enough for these local organisations?"
Su Nanya tilted her head and playfully raised her front paws, yelping, "You have heard the phrase, 'beggars cannot be choosers', have you not? Oh devious man with such slick a mind, why must you put mean words upon our tongue… We suppose that such low phrasing does hold true. It is difficult to understand what goes on inside the minds of the poor."
Yung asked, "Is that a good thing?"
Nanya replied with a cute jerk, "Perhaps, perhaps not. We are tired. How are our paws?"
Yung chuckled and responded, "Criminally cute."
And so he relished her cuteness, spending the entire day and well into the night with it.
***
Daybreak was just moments away, and the birds woke with soft chirps.
"You've made up your mind?" Youjin Gengxin asked. He was Chun's eldest uncle, a core formation realm cultivator from the Selenosilver Valley.
"I will not join the Malignant Moon Sword Sect," Chun answered.
"Then you will have to get in line." Youjin Gengxin replied. He was a tall man, even taller than her father. His physique reminded Chun of the Azure Deep Goldsmen, the ren tribe that ruled over the northwestern part of the Void Connecting Land Bridge under the Su Fox Clan's commands. He had frizzled black hair that had gone unkept for years, and striking blue eyes. A magnificent moustache sat under his large nose, contrasting with his clean-shaven chin and sharp jawline that could cut steel. Youjin Gengxin's bare chest displayed curly hair, of which he was proud and made sure others knew too.
However, Chun was never a fan of such overly muscular physiques, not when the bear hugs they offered at every reunion felt like she was being ground down with sand-paper.
"I will join the line like everyone else." Chun firmly stated.
Youjin Gengxin grinned, his teeth shining like stars, and said, "Good. I was against you joining the Malignant Moon snollygosters from the start. I'm glad you've come around! Guahaha." He patted Chun's shoulder, causing her to struggle to maintain her balance. "Are you finally making things right with the Youjin Chao brat too?"
Chun paused, stammered, and finally broke into tears.
"Oh... I guess not," Youjin Gengxin awkwardly raised his palm to pat Chun's head but then withdrew it, not knowing what to do. "D-Don't tell your father you cried, alright?"
"I-I'm sorry," Chun said through sobs. "I thought I could hold... what's a snollygoster?"
Youjin Gengxin explained, "Ay, it means a shrewd bastard."
"I'll use it too."
"Don't tell your father I taught you a bad word," Youjin Gengxin tried to make a joke, albeit a pathetic one. Nonetheless, Chun appreciated it and managed a broken smile.
"Father, that's what he said."
Youjin Liu, who stood behind Youjin Gengxin, rolled his eyes.
This Selenosilver Valley Elder had returned to his home clan for phase one, along with other clan members affiliated with various sects. He was at the houtian 3rd realm, a true and blue brute. Twelve were at the 2nd realm, doubling the clan's total power. Youjin Gengxin was also aware of their agreement with Ziyou Yung and had agreed to stay behind to address the Foxmoth problem with the Dark Star Mercenaries.
"Chun'er, you know you have the option not to do this," Youjin Liu said.
"I will follow Elder Brother Chao, whichever sect he chooses," Chun shook her head.
"Sect life isn't all that great, though. There's a lot of infighting and backstabbing. It's like putting all rival clans in one big basket, alongside talented commoners who want to seize our resources," Youjin Gengxin remarked. "Honestly, it ain't worth it before you're an elder, and even then..."
"I have made up my mind."
"Well, okay, fine, whatever you want," Youjin Gengxin said, shaking his hand as though annoyed. "Let's get going. I can already hear the noise from all the way out here. It should be starting in less than an hour, yeah?"
Chun freshened up her appearance, applying lustre rouge to hide her sunken eyes. She had cried to her heart's content the previous night, but the emotions kept surging up. She followed her father, uncle, and the clan elders all the way to the market square on clan chariots, intricately designed carriages pulled by houtian realm Windhorses.
Even though the sun had barely risen, the city was bustling with excitement. It was that magical time when twilight met daylight, and the streets felt alive, reminiscent of New Year's night markets. Thousands of stalls were set up along the roadside, showcasing various products. Parents patiently stood in long lines with their children, offering encouraging words. Both the lesser noble clans in their chariots and commoners on foot could be seen. Since the upper age limit was twenty-five, many youths and maidens also followed, hoping to catch the attention of a sect in the surrounding areas, if not the Big Five.
If not a sect, then at least a clan to be cultivated as a warrior or even marry in, or a merchant company to be nurtured as a powerful guard. Stone-faced mercenaries, fiendhunters, and sellswords also mingled in the crowd, perhaps tired of their current life or harbouring grand ambitions.
Chun observed it all with a gentle gaze. Then she noticed the madlanders, their nervousness evident as they exchanged fidgety glances with the "proper" citizens, who responded in kind. However, the strange fortune fox totem plastered on the walls prevented any hasty actions. Well, at least not too hasty, as insults were still exchanged from both sides.
"I don't like this. That fiendfogger Maque has taken over White Town," Youjin Gengxin expressed his concerns.
"Perhaps you should talk to Ziyou Yung about it. He's been introducing people to strange ideas," Chun suggested.
"Like what?"
"Something he calls 'equality of opportunity.'"
"Foolish," Youjin Gengxin remarked, and Chun agreed. "What are the Su Fox Clan planning? Does the Azure Deep Island know about this?" The northwestern overlords might already be aware, but the blood spirit contract couldn't be changed, and the Azure Deep Goldsmen were as much servants to the Su Fox Clan as anyone else breathing on the land bridge.
Chun stated as much.
"Either way, the contract is worth it in the long run, even if we have to accommodate some barbarians," Chun concurred. The Duan and Baishui Clans no longer made any demands, which was one good thing that came out of Ziyou Yung's utter humiliation of tradition.
They reached the venue soon, the sea of ren parting in awe like receding tides as the Youjin chariots approached.
The central stage area was not as crowded as the rest of the city, including the very near surroundings. The amphitheatre was reserved for the sect representatives, with the lesser-ranked local and semi-local sects occupying the lower platforms. The Dark Star Mercenaries and the Free Sparrow Gang were also present, though they weren't sects. They, too, sought new recruits, and used their ties with Ziyou Yung to full effect.
Ridiculous… Chun thought, and she saw her uncle's eyes turn grim.
"So Maque plans to take in non-madlanders?" Youjin Gengxin commented with an undertone of dissatisfaction. "Well, no matter. Take care, Chun'er. I have to sit with the guys over there. See them glaring?"
The towering man ascended the amphitheatre as though he owned the place, causing the mid-level powers like the Westmoon Kingdom and Duan clan sitting on the middle platforms to give him a wide berth. The Youjin clan, despite being the host clan, also occupied seats on the intermediate level.
Chun sighed, then looked at the highest platform where her uncle had taken a seat. There, the Big Five perched, looking at all with the solemn disregard they so dutifully cultivated.
"We'll be rebuilding them, young lad. The blasted voidrift may have caused a fair bit of damage, but fear not, for us farmers are a resilient bunch, ye see?" The elder in charge of farming said.
It was time to leave. It had been a long day, and Yung's mind was still on the 'portal'. He knew he was a nobody, even with Su Nanya's favour.
At his level of power and influence, he couldn't really delve into the mysteries of why this mortal plane was cut off from the rest of the universe, and if the nature of this 'cut' was similar to what Moira had done to sever Gaia off.
What even was the void in the first place? And why were there two types of fiends? If Yung could find a lost plane, would that be interstellar travel? Inter-planar travel?
Great shower thoughts indeed.
But he would need a shower first, and Su Nanya suggested that her queen's suite had the best in the 'village.'
The farming elder walked them up until they reached the surface. This was a different entrance than they had used when entering the underground world.
And as far as Yung was concerned, the above and underground actually were separate worlds, stacked on top of each other like poorly placed Lego blocks.
Why the city had not collapsed because of massive cave-ins, Yung had no idea. Qi was weird.
"With the sect recruitments right round the corner, the city be heating up. This old man likes it. Lively, no?" Said the farming elder.
"Won't it bring trouble too?" Yung asked.
"The fox clan is here. Who dares to be insolent?"
"You Youjin bunch really know how to talk." Yung sighed.
The elder smiled with half of his teeth missing. The wrinkles on his face covered his beady eyes too, giving his old face a jovial expression. "Ayo, I lived so long and only be waiting for me death now. My missus must be so lonely on the other side of the grand dao. I can't compare to you young ones." He watched Yung caress Su Nanya's fur and gave a knowing nod.
Yung rolled his eyes, then made his way through the fiend butchery. Already, lines of men were carrying up tons upon tons of Wretched hornbeast corpses from the underground.
He saw a large piscina-like structure of boiling liquid on one side of the butchery. Adjacent to it were rows of stone tables seemingly nailed to the ground, with men flaying meat off bones and tossing them expertly into the bubbling concoction. From beneath the surface of the liquid, the putrid blood would rise into a vapour, as if attempting to escape, before vanishing into it as if assimilated and detoxified.
On the opposite side of the piscina, women stood with long bamboo poles, the lower end equipped with netted baskets. With adept movements, they retrieved the meat from the liquid, now displaying the healthy hues of white and pink akin to raw animal flesh.
There were multiple such pools on the western periphery of the butchery, Yung noted. These ones were for the voidfiends. The chaosfiends were processed in the eastern side, where the shape and size of the piscinas were slightly different, as were the nature of the concoction which looked far less chemical-ly, and the inscriptions on the piscina structures that seemed to glow with far less qi. As the day neared its end, the fiendhunting teams carried in the haul of the day from the nearby Warring twilight forest.
The monsters were butchered, blood-let, and skinned, then de-boned to whatever extent the butcher could.
The innards were carried elsewhere, as were the excreta. The skin was to be tanned.
The fiend butchery was manned by ren hands, no fancy industrial machines or grinders. There were artefacts here and there, such as the piscinas, but mostly it was good people making a good living, feeding their brethren in the city.
Compared to the wanton cruelty of the twenty-first-century meat factories, Yung had little to criticise. He was a meat eater, and he had no guilt feeding on flesh either in this world or his last.
But some thoughts undoubtedly used to keep him up at night, Yung admitted. Fish had the cruellest deaths, as most died of suffocation to keep the 'freshness'. Pigs—animals often more intelligent, affectionate, and sociable than dogs and cats—were kept in a 2 cubic metre cubbyhole from birth to bacon. And chickens, the ones most often consumed, were literal babies less than six weeks old, the last two weeks of which they spent immobile because of their eugenically selected growth genes and the numerous alkaline burns on their bodies.
He walked, with Floofy and Silky in tow.
Hopefully, no one would complain if his diet consisted of murder bunnies and maniac pigs.
They entered the Dim gold citadel from the north entrance and proceeded towards the city centre. When he had left in the morning, the townsfolk had gathered with ladders and timbers, flowers and ribbons. Now, the street was almost unrecognisable, adorned with paper lanterns hanging from every roof corner and ropes embellished with paper flowers stretching across the sky.
In the central square, a large stage had been set up with a pedestal in the middle and an amphitheatre-style seating arrangement on three sides. Yung noticed members of Su Nanya's entourage present, not the fox yao, but the cultivators from the Twilight blood palace. They wore robes in varying shades of red, accented with black and green lines. Despite being chosen by Su Nanya, none of them had bothered to greet Yung in the past few weeks, and Yung hesitated to approach them as well.
They're supposed to be my future sect-mates, right? Shit why's that fat guy glaring?
Yung stopped staring and walked away.
The street was also filled with unfamiliar faces, grouped together with varying uniforms from various alien factions Yung had never seen before. During the sect recruitments five years ago, he could swear that there weren't this many 'visitors.'
Su Nanya yawned and explained, "They are lesser establishments from the local region, my dearest servant. Like scavengers of waste and carrion, they are here to pick out the leftover untalents. The aptitude test shall dutifully eliminate the failures, and our martial nephew's sect will choose the very best for the next phase, alongside the rest of the mediocre four of the Warring Twilight settlement. However, alas is your fate; we must admit that the 'best' offered by this village might not be at all worth mentioning."
"Well you found me," Yung grinned.
"Alas is our fate; we must admit our folly!" And Su Nanya preened.
They had a moment, and then Yung inquired, "So You're saying that even those who fail the test, their talents could be good enough for these local organisations?"
Su Nanya tilted her head and playfully raised her front paws, yelping, "You have heard the phrase, 'beggars cannot be choosers', have you not? Oh devious man with such slick a mind, why must you put mean words upon our tongue… We suppose that such low phrasing does hold true. It is difficult to understand what goes on inside the minds of the poor."
Yung asked, "Is that a good thing?"
Nanya replied with a cute jerk, "Perhaps, perhaps not. We are tired. How are our paws?"
Yung chuckled and responded, "Criminally cute."
And so he relished her cuteness, spending the entire day and well into the night with it.
***
Daybreak was just moments away, and the birds woke with soft chirps.
"You've made up your mind?" Youjin Gengxin asked. He was Chun's eldest uncle, a core formation realm cultivator from the Selenosilver Valley.
"I will not join the Malignant Moon Sword Sect," Chun answered.
"Then you will have to get in line." Youjin Gengxin replied. He was a tall man, even taller than her father. His physique reminded Chun of the Azure Deep Goldsmen, the ren tribe that ruled over the northwestern part of the Void Connecting Land Bridge under the Su Fox Clan's commands. He had frizzled black hair that had gone unkept for years, and striking blue eyes. A magnificent moustache sat under his large nose, contrasting with his clean-shaven chin and sharp jawline that could cut steel. Youjin Gengxin's bare chest displayed curly hair, of which he was proud and made sure others knew too.
However, Chun was never a fan of such overly muscular physiques, not when the bear hugs they offered at every reunion felt like she was being ground down with sand-paper.
"I will join the line like everyone else." Chun firmly stated.
Youjin Gengxin grinned, his teeth shining like stars, and said, "Good. I was against you joining the Malignant Moon snollygosters from the start. I'm glad you've come around! Guahaha." He patted Chun's shoulder, causing her to struggle to maintain her balance. "Are you finally making things right with the Youjin Chao brat too?"
Chun paused, stammered, and finally broke into tears.
"Oh... I guess not," Youjin Gengxin awkwardly raised his palm to pat Chun's head but then withdrew it, not knowing what to do. "D-Don't tell your father you cried, alright?"
"I-I'm sorry," Chun said through sobs. "I thought I could hold... what's a snollygoster?"
Youjin Gengxin explained, "Ay, it means a shrewd bastard."
"I'll use it too."
"Don't tell your father I taught you a bad word," Youjin Gengxin tried to make a joke, albeit a pathetic one. Nonetheless, Chun appreciated it and managed a broken smile.
"Father, that's what he said."
Youjin Liu, who stood behind Youjin Gengxin, rolled his eyes.
This Selenosilver Valley Elder had returned to his home clan for phase one, along with other clan members affiliated with various sects. He was at the houtian 3rd realm, a true and blue brute. Twelve were at the 2nd realm, doubling the clan's total power. Youjin Gengxin was also aware of their agreement with Ziyou Yung and had agreed to stay behind to address the Foxmoth problem with the Dark Star Mercenaries.
"Chun'er, you know you have the option not to do this," Youjin Liu said.
"I will follow Elder Brother Chao, whichever sect he chooses," Chun shook her head.
"Sect life isn't all that great, though. There's a lot of infighting and backstabbing. It's like putting all rival clans in one big basket, alongside talented commoners who want to seize our resources," Youjin Gengxin remarked. "Honestly, it ain't worth it before you're an elder, and even then..."
"I have made up my mind."
"Well, okay, fine, whatever you want," Youjin Gengxin said, shaking his hand as though annoyed. "Let's get going. I can already hear the noise from all the way out here. It should be starting in less than an hour, yeah?"
Chun freshened up her appearance, applying lustre rouge to hide her sunken eyes. She had cried to her heart's content the previous night, but the emotions kept surging up. She followed her father, uncle, and the clan elders all the way to the market square on clan chariots, intricately designed carriages pulled by houtian realm Windhorses.
Even though the sun had barely risen, the city was bustling with excitement. It was that magical time when twilight met daylight, and the streets felt alive, reminiscent of New Year's night markets. Thousands of stalls were set up along the roadside, showcasing various products. Parents patiently stood in long lines with their children, offering encouraging words. Both the lesser noble clans in their chariots and commoners on foot could be seen. Since the upper age limit was twenty-five, many youths and maidens also followed, hoping to catch the attention of a sect in the surrounding areas, if not the Big Five.
If not a sect, then at least a clan to be cultivated as a warrior or even marry in, or a merchant company to be nurtured as a powerful guard. Stone-faced mercenaries, fiendhunters, and sellswords also mingled in the crowd, perhaps tired of their current life or harbouring grand ambitions.
Chun observed it all with a gentle gaze. Then she noticed the madlanders, their nervousness evident as they exchanged fidgety glances with the "proper" citizens, who responded in kind. However, the strange fortune fox totem plastered on the walls prevented any hasty actions. Well, at least not too hasty, as insults were still exchanged from both sides.
"I don't like this. That fiendfogger Maque has taken over White Town," Youjin Gengxin expressed his concerns.
"Perhaps you should talk to Ziyou Yung about it. He's been introducing people to strange ideas," Chun suggested.
"Like what?"
"Something he calls 'equality of opportunity.'"
"Foolish," Youjin Gengxin remarked, and Chun agreed. "What are the Su Fox Clan planning? Does the Azure Deep Island know about this?" The northwestern overlords might already be aware, but the blood spirit contract couldn't be changed, and the Azure Deep Goldsmen were as much servants to the Su Fox Clan as anyone else breathing on the land bridge.
Chun stated as much.
"Either way, the contract is worth it in the long run, even if we have to accommodate some barbarians," Chun concurred. The Duan and Baishui Clans no longer made any demands, which was one good thing that came out of Ziyou Yung's utter humiliation of tradition.
They reached the venue soon, the sea of ren parting in awe like receding tides as the Youjin chariots approached.
The central stage area was not as crowded as the rest of the city, including the very near surroundings. The amphitheatre was reserved for the sect representatives, with the lesser-ranked local and semi-local sects occupying the lower platforms. The Dark Star Mercenaries and the Free Sparrow Gang were also present, though they weren't sects. They, too, sought new recruits, and used their ties with Ziyou Yung to full effect.
Ridiculous… Chun thought, and she saw her uncle's eyes turn grim.
"So Maque plans to take in non-madlanders?" Youjin Gengxin commented with an undertone of dissatisfaction. "Well, no matter. Take care, Chun'er. I have to sit with the guys over there. See them glaring?"
The towering man ascended the amphitheatre as though he owned the place, causing the mid-level powers like the Westmoon Kingdom and Duan clan sitting on the middle platforms to give him a wide berth. The Youjin clan, despite being the host clan, also occupied seats on the intermediate level.
Chun sighed, then looked at the highest platform where her uncle had taken a seat. There, the Big Five perched, looking at all with the solemn disregard they so dutifully cultivated.
Chapter 51 - Sect Recruitments Start!
At the apex of the amphitheatre, the imposing figures of the Big Five settled into their seats, adorned in intricately decorated garments that ranged from traditional robes to dazzling armour. Each of them carried a unique artifact, whether it was a sword, oar, cymbal, or claw, held firmly beneath their colourful sect flags and banners, befitting their esteemed statuses in their respective sects.
With stern expressions and eyes filled with contempt, they cast their gaze upon the line of candidates below, their scrutiny a blend of assessment and possessiveness. As the sunlight unfolded, the wind teased their sect flags, causing them to ripple proudly, their vibrant symbols of glory emanating an aura of power and wealth.
Meanwhile, the eager line of young aspirants in the crowd strained their necks, their yearning gazes surpassing even the hunger of a starved tiger in its fervour.
Chun observed the spectacle, and although she wished it was not so, her own heart also beat with undeniable excitement. The truly talented today would be given an offer to directly join the Big Five. They would yet have to pass the phases two and three, but that would be a mere formality, as no sect would be foolish enough to let their rivals claim a seed with potential.
The Big Five was a nickname, and according to Chun's uncle, it was far more imposing than their official title which was the Warring Twilight Alliance. They controlled the Warring Twilight Region, one of the 1,204 regions all under the rule of the northwestern land bridge hegemon, the Azure Deep Island, who were in turn beholden to the Su Fox Clan.
Which was why she glared at the vixen, hoping that the toxic in her heart was not envy.
Su Nanya took a seat upon her decadent palanquin in her immodest nakedness. Her long legs moved like sweet willows, as she basked the world in her glory under the Twilight Blood Palace's red, black, and green marked flags, a red palace inside a round green forest foliage, all set upon a background of the twilight night sky.
The vixen had a gold-red quilt-like cloth tied around her waist today. Yet the underthing-esque see-through coverings did little to dissuade men from staring at the unfair bounce of her mounds or the demonic sway of her hips. By her side was Ziyou Yung, sharing the same shade of palanquin. The madlander boy was being leaned on like he was an imperial throne on which only a queen could lay her body, yet he was making strange gestures in the air with a clearly annoyed face.
There he was, not giving anyone but the vixen any face as though he was her equal. While the Twilight Blood Palace took seats a half-step behind them, and their disciples were raging with red faces, their Spark Formation Elder was calmly standing behind Yung and Su Nanya as though he were a mere pawn. The scary maid was also there, fanning the two with an equally neutral expression.
Murmurs rose from all sides, looking at the strange scene. Chun had guessed from Youjin Chao's recent behaviour that he was aiming to capture the Su Fox Princess's heart.
It was a guilty thought, but she wished he would have bad luck. Just a little.
On the left to the Twilight Blood Palace were the Malignant Moon Sword Sect, headed by Elder Han Xinglou. They sat under a flag of a silver sword bisecting a crescent moon in half.
And there he was, the hated Duan Louheng. The youth stared at her with flames in his eyes, but Chun averted her gaze with an equal fire burning in her depths. She did not want to deal with the Duan heir now. But her lips were bleeding, and her father showed a worried expression.
On the Twilight Blood Palace's right were the Selenosilver Valley, who made their base around the Moonvalley Trade City area where phase two and three would be held this year. Chun's uncle was there, laughing loudly with his sectmates. Their icon was also a moon, but it was silver and showed only a third quarter, with the left side of the moon showing in vivid details but the right side obscured by a twilight fog. They had a historical bad relationship with the Malignant Moon Sword Sect, but according to many scrolls, these two were descendants of the same unnamed sect which perished thousands of years ago.
Duan Louheng's bid for her heart was also partly to alleviate this tension, yet selfish as she might seem, she no longer wanted to be a pawn to such politics. Instead, she would willingly slave away to be a pawn to her heart's desires! Consequently, the Selenosilver Valley could never accept her into their ranks if they, in the future, still intended to resolve their conflict with the Malignant Moon Sword Sect through words rather than swords.
The final two of the Big Five were the Victorious Tide Island, located near the ocean to the northwest, and they were a direct offshoot of the Azure Deep Island. And the Dawn Dragon Throne, the premier alliance of noble clans in the region. The richest of the five, and according to hearsay (her uncle), also the organization with the greatest local power.
Beneath the amphitheatre, a pedestal stood at the centre, its stairs descending towards the starting point of the aspiring candidates' line. It was set up with ivory wood and ebony steel, with an artifact that looked like a floating sphere rotating slowly, crystalline, sparkling like water on a sunny day. This was the orb that would divine bone age and spirit root affinity, dashing dreams for most yet giving a select few a taste of heaven. Above it, far up in the sky, was a huge mirror cast out by some strange light transmission token, and it seemed to cover the market square entirely. It showed the stage with clear details for all residents of the city to spectate. Most would have to get on the roofs for a clear line of sight, but by the murmurs in the crowd, it wasn't too big a price to pay.
Chun worried about how many houses would collapse, but then shooed away the silly thought. Her mood turning sombre again.
This screen was a last-minute addition by the Fox Princess, or so they said. Seeing the small fortune fox totem drawn on the top right corner of the mirror, she knew who the real culprit was.
Chun admitted, she did not like Ziyou Yung. He had no respect for authority and spat on tradition like it was a doormat. But, but! She could not lie to herself. She decided not to lie to her heart any longer.
It was another guilty thought, but she dearly wished the boy would woo the Fox Princess successfully, giving her Elder Brother Chao some much needed bad luck. Just a little.
"Chao'er is here," Youjin Liu said, snapping her out from her devilish thoughts.
Chun looked where his gaze landed, and saw the tall, handsome boy in line, about fifty people away from the start, standing with the dirty harlot Ling. Her eyes met his, but Chun saw obvious disregard as Youjin Chao cast his gaze towards Su Nanya. The vixen had joined Yung in making strange gestures in the air, with an equally annoyed face.
Chun had tried many times to speak with Youjin Chao in the recent days, but the boy ignored her like she was made of sand. Chun held back her tears and looked at the beginning of the line. She did not know why, but her mind needed to be occupied lest the tears fell again.
The nervous tick on the first girl's face was palpable to all. Chun recognized the girl. She was the daughter of the Dim Gold Hotel manager, working as a waitstaff there. She might have gotten the first spot because her home was literally across the street.
Many aspirants had camped nearby throughout the night for an earlier spot. The ones who came early might have wanted to get the tension over with, as soon as possible. And the ones who took their time, well, Chun didn't know what they were thinking.
The line was not really first come first serve, though. As the host clan, the Youjin talents—the ones who wished to go to the sects rather than remain under the tutelage of the clan directly—would go first, with Chun at the forefront. Doing this meant giving up her position as heiress to the clan, but Chun would not second-guess her decision. About half of the Youjin clanskin of qualified age would take the test, as they did in every sect recruitment in recent history. Later in their lives, if they wanted to retire and return, they could take on an elder position. But never as the clan patriarch.
Although for ridiculous talents like Duan Louheng, these strict clan rules were apparently negotiable, as the hateful man yet retained his official status as a the Duan heir despite being a legacy disciple.
Chun took a deep breath. She had talked with the scary Fox Yao maid the previous week. The Blood Spirit contract would not give her a free pass into the Twilight Blood Palace.
She would need to prove herself, just as Ziyou Yung needed to too, despite being Su Nanya's 'Servant dearest.' Chun found it profoundly unfair that the Madlander boy would get spoon-fed resources by the indecorous Fox Princess, despite fully acknowledging that she herself was a product of such unfair advantages. There was something wrong, seeing a madlander receive such gifts. Something dirty and untouchable—like a slap on the face.
Phase one will take the whole day. The last of the darkness left from the sky, and the gong that heralded the morn resounded through the town.
The Dawn Dragon Throne representative, a woman with violet hair and a short frame, took in the final wisps of the violet qi from the east with calm breaths, as did all the other disciples of the organization. She was the Flareful Empress, a bona fide Xiantian 1st realm Yuanqi cultivator, a Dao Vessel powerhouse. She was also the empress dowager of the largest of the seventeen kingdoms and empires of the Warring Twilight Region.
The Flareful Empress cast a glance at the indecorous princess. She narrowed her eyes, then opened her pale, violet lips.
"Honorable Fairy Su," she called Su Nanya with picture-perfect manners, "This old woman has a question she would like to ask. We ask for permission and are deeply apologetic for our insolence."
"You may speak," Su Nanya replied.
"I must admit, our sect recruitments are indeed a grand venture. We come together once every five years to celebrate our culture and traditions. However, I cannot help but wonder, why on earth would the Honorable Fairy Su want to associate her esteemed name with these dark-skinned savages? It is truly beyond me." The Flareful Empress's voice was carried by the wind for all to hear.
There was something proper in that statement, and something honourable in her courage to directly question the vixen royal.
As expected of the Flareful Empress. She won't let any wrongs go by, not to us nobles. Chun felt cathartic, despite knowing that the Flareful Empress's words could very well null the much treasured Su Fox Clan Blood Spirit Contract. She could not help it, her brain scolded her with logical admonishment, yet her heart sung, hearing basic truths be defended as was fitting.
She sighed, and her raven eyes looked down below.
The many hundreds of Madlanders standing in line, ready to take the sect recruitments for the first time in known history, recoiled in unison. It was an emotional thing, as though the very joy and hope that all these dirty monkeys' felt were sucked away, and all they could do was flinch. As did Ziyou Maque, seated with his lot at the lowest step of the amphitheatre.
The insufferable Ziyou Ling had hatred in her eyes as she looked at the Flareful Empress. The harlot said something to Elder Brother Chao, but the tall boy shook his head, and Ziyou Ling's eyes went wide in shock. The madlander girl glanced at the amphitheatre, and her gaze crossed Chun's.
Chun smiled sweetly, and then she looked away. No need to humour mutts for long.
The Flareful Empress finished her piece. The vast majority of the clans, such as the Duan, Zheng, and even Baishui, who had sent a representative despite their recent disgrace, bared their fangs with the Flareful Empress at the lead, their righteous indignation pouring out like a noble flood.
"Indeed," echoed an old minister from the Xiyue clan, "Madlanders are notorious for sowing discord and causing chaos wherever they go. As a proud member of the Westmoon Kingdom, I can say that we have already done enough by providing them with land to live on. I cannot fathom why we should even consider sharing our precious treasures and resources with these ungrateful snakes who may very well turn around and bite the hand that feeds them. It is simply preposterous! Look at how they evicted the noble Baishui from their lands, look at how they scheme and plot!"
"While I hold no ill will towards Fairy Su and her judgement, recent history has shown us that the Madlanders cannot be trusted. For we have paid in blood when we were foolish enough to do so. They orchestrated a rebellion in our Lunar Bird Dukedom seven years ago. If not for the Dawn Dragon Throne, then…" There was a treble of furious justice in this calm voice, and Chun recognized the speaker as part of the Lunar Bird ducal family. The young man continued with a raised fist, "It is no secret that they have a history of causing trouble and unrest wherever they go. I believe it is only right to be suspicious of their motives and to take any necessary precautions to protect ourselves and our domains from their harmful influence."
More dissident voices rose up, but the façade of politeness was maintained. They were trying to shame the Madlanders but not offend the vixen. Chun closed her eyes, smiling. In her heart, she kept agreeing with every word spoken, so she hid her expression lest her sin be known.
The likes of Ziyou Ling were thieving cats. And the likes of Ziyou Yung were men without shame and honour, only to know how to take advantage and repay goodwill with snide words.
But soon, Chun realized something was wrong. It had been some time since the last noble had voiced their grievances, but as was tradition, Su Nanya hadn't given her subjects a reply. Neither had Ziyou Yung, who was known for his snide remarks.
She looked up at the Madlander boy to gauge his reaction, and gaped, not believing her eyes.
Ziyou Yung ceased his peculiar hand movements, freezing in an unnatural pose reminiscent of a broken puppet. Lost in deep contemplation, as though the tsunami of rightful words had overwhelmed his small mind.
Yet, that wasn't it, as his brows furrowed, and his eyes rolled back as he emitted a peculiar, soft groan, with fast marionette-like twitches of his limbs. Engaged in an eccentric act as if to slap every high-born there, he meticulously cleaned his ears using a cotton-tipped feather, sighing with pleasure as his fingers rolled the plume.
With stern expressions and eyes filled with contempt, they cast their gaze upon the line of candidates below, their scrutiny a blend of assessment and possessiveness. As the sunlight unfolded, the wind teased their sect flags, causing them to ripple proudly, their vibrant symbols of glory emanating an aura of power and wealth.
Meanwhile, the eager line of young aspirants in the crowd strained their necks, their yearning gazes surpassing even the hunger of a starved tiger in its fervour.
Chun observed the spectacle, and although she wished it was not so, her own heart also beat with undeniable excitement. The truly talented today would be given an offer to directly join the Big Five. They would yet have to pass the phases two and three, but that would be a mere formality, as no sect would be foolish enough to let their rivals claim a seed with potential.
The Big Five was a nickname, and according to Chun's uncle, it was far more imposing than their official title which was the Warring Twilight Alliance. They controlled the Warring Twilight Region, one of the 1,204 regions all under the rule of the northwestern land bridge hegemon, the Azure Deep Island, who were in turn beholden to the Su Fox Clan.
Which was why she glared at the vixen, hoping that the toxic in her heart was not envy.
Su Nanya took a seat upon her decadent palanquin in her immodest nakedness. Her long legs moved like sweet willows, as she basked the world in her glory under the Twilight Blood Palace's red, black, and green marked flags, a red palace inside a round green forest foliage, all set upon a background of the twilight night sky.
The vixen had a gold-red quilt-like cloth tied around her waist today. Yet the underthing-esque see-through coverings did little to dissuade men from staring at the unfair bounce of her mounds or the demonic sway of her hips. By her side was Ziyou Yung, sharing the same shade of palanquin. The madlander boy was being leaned on like he was an imperial throne on which only a queen could lay her body, yet he was making strange gestures in the air with a clearly annoyed face.
There he was, not giving anyone but the vixen any face as though he was her equal. While the Twilight Blood Palace took seats a half-step behind them, and their disciples were raging with red faces, their Spark Formation Elder was calmly standing behind Yung and Su Nanya as though he were a mere pawn. The scary maid was also there, fanning the two with an equally neutral expression.
Murmurs rose from all sides, looking at the strange scene. Chun had guessed from Youjin Chao's recent behaviour that he was aiming to capture the Su Fox Princess's heart.
It was a guilty thought, but she wished he would have bad luck. Just a little.
On the left to the Twilight Blood Palace were the Malignant Moon Sword Sect, headed by Elder Han Xinglou. They sat under a flag of a silver sword bisecting a crescent moon in half.
And there he was, the hated Duan Louheng. The youth stared at her with flames in his eyes, but Chun averted her gaze with an equal fire burning in her depths. She did not want to deal with the Duan heir now. But her lips were bleeding, and her father showed a worried expression.
On the Twilight Blood Palace's right were the Selenosilver Valley, who made their base around the Moonvalley Trade City area where phase two and three would be held this year. Chun's uncle was there, laughing loudly with his sectmates. Their icon was also a moon, but it was silver and showed only a third quarter, with the left side of the moon showing in vivid details but the right side obscured by a twilight fog. They had a historical bad relationship with the Malignant Moon Sword Sect, but according to many scrolls, these two were descendants of the same unnamed sect which perished thousands of years ago.
Duan Louheng's bid for her heart was also partly to alleviate this tension, yet selfish as she might seem, she no longer wanted to be a pawn to such politics. Instead, she would willingly slave away to be a pawn to her heart's desires! Consequently, the Selenosilver Valley could never accept her into their ranks if they, in the future, still intended to resolve their conflict with the Malignant Moon Sword Sect through words rather than swords.
The final two of the Big Five were the Victorious Tide Island, located near the ocean to the northwest, and they were a direct offshoot of the Azure Deep Island. And the Dawn Dragon Throne, the premier alliance of noble clans in the region. The richest of the five, and according to hearsay (her uncle), also the organization with the greatest local power.
Beneath the amphitheatre, a pedestal stood at the centre, its stairs descending towards the starting point of the aspiring candidates' line. It was set up with ivory wood and ebony steel, with an artifact that looked like a floating sphere rotating slowly, crystalline, sparkling like water on a sunny day. This was the orb that would divine bone age and spirit root affinity, dashing dreams for most yet giving a select few a taste of heaven. Above it, far up in the sky, was a huge mirror cast out by some strange light transmission token, and it seemed to cover the market square entirely. It showed the stage with clear details for all residents of the city to spectate. Most would have to get on the roofs for a clear line of sight, but by the murmurs in the crowd, it wasn't too big a price to pay.
Chun worried about how many houses would collapse, but then shooed away the silly thought. Her mood turning sombre again.
This screen was a last-minute addition by the Fox Princess, or so they said. Seeing the small fortune fox totem drawn on the top right corner of the mirror, she knew who the real culprit was.
Chun admitted, she did not like Ziyou Yung. He had no respect for authority and spat on tradition like it was a doormat. But, but! She could not lie to herself. She decided not to lie to her heart any longer.
It was another guilty thought, but she dearly wished the boy would woo the Fox Princess successfully, giving her Elder Brother Chao some much needed bad luck. Just a little.
"Chao'er is here," Youjin Liu said, snapping her out from her devilish thoughts.
Chun looked where his gaze landed, and saw the tall, handsome boy in line, about fifty people away from the start, standing with the dirty harlot Ling. Her eyes met his, but Chun saw obvious disregard as Youjin Chao cast his gaze towards Su Nanya. The vixen had joined Yung in making strange gestures in the air, with an equally annoyed face.
Chun had tried many times to speak with Youjin Chao in the recent days, but the boy ignored her like she was made of sand. Chun held back her tears and looked at the beginning of the line. She did not know why, but her mind needed to be occupied lest the tears fell again.
The nervous tick on the first girl's face was palpable to all. Chun recognized the girl. She was the daughter of the Dim Gold Hotel manager, working as a waitstaff there. She might have gotten the first spot because her home was literally across the street.
Many aspirants had camped nearby throughout the night for an earlier spot. The ones who came early might have wanted to get the tension over with, as soon as possible. And the ones who took their time, well, Chun didn't know what they were thinking.
The line was not really first come first serve, though. As the host clan, the Youjin talents—the ones who wished to go to the sects rather than remain under the tutelage of the clan directly—would go first, with Chun at the forefront. Doing this meant giving up her position as heiress to the clan, but Chun would not second-guess her decision. About half of the Youjin clanskin of qualified age would take the test, as they did in every sect recruitment in recent history. Later in their lives, if they wanted to retire and return, they could take on an elder position. But never as the clan patriarch.
Although for ridiculous talents like Duan Louheng, these strict clan rules were apparently negotiable, as the hateful man yet retained his official status as a the Duan heir despite being a legacy disciple.
Chun took a deep breath. She had talked with the scary Fox Yao maid the previous week. The Blood Spirit contract would not give her a free pass into the Twilight Blood Palace.
She would need to prove herself, just as Ziyou Yung needed to too, despite being Su Nanya's 'Servant dearest.' Chun found it profoundly unfair that the Madlander boy would get spoon-fed resources by the indecorous Fox Princess, despite fully acknowledging that she herself was a product of such unfair advantages. There was something wrong, seeing a madlander receive such gifts. Something dirty and untouchable—like a slap on the face.
Phase one will take the whole day. The last of the darkness left from the sky, and the gong that heralded the morn resounded through the town.
The Dawn Dragon Throne representative, a woman with violet hair and a short frame, took in the final wisps of the violet qi from the east with calm breaths, as did all the other disciples of the organization. She was the Flareful Empress, a bona fide Xiantian 1st realm Yuanqi cultivator, a Dao Vessel powerhouse. She was also the empress dowager of the largest of the seventeen kingdoms and empires of the Warring Twilight Region.
The Flareful Empress cast a glance at the indecorous princess. She narrowed her eyes, then opened her pale, violet lips.
"Honorable Fairy Su," she called Su Nanya with picture-perfect manners, "This old woman has a question she would like to ask. We ask for permission and are deeply apologetic for our insolence."
"You may speak," Su Nanya replied.
"I must admit, our sect recruitments are indeed a grand venture. We come together once every five years to celebrate our culture and traditions. However, I cannot help but wonder, why on earth would the Honorable Fairy Su want to associate her esteemed name with these dark-skinned savages? It is truly beyond me." The Flareful Empress's voice was carried by the wind for all to hear.
There was something proper in that statement, and something honourable in her courage to directly question the vixen royal.
As expected of the Flareful Empress. She won't let any wrongs go by, not to us nobles. Chun felt cathartic, despite knowing that the Flareful Empress's words could very well null the much treasured Su Fox Clan Blood Spirit Contract. She could not help it, her brain scolded her with logical admonishment, yet her heart sung, hearing basic truths be defended as was fitting.
She sighed, and her raven eyes looked down below.
The many hundreds of Madlanders standing in line, ready to take the sect recruitments for the first time in known history, recoiled in unison. It was an emotional thing, as though the very joy and hope that all these dirty monkeys' felt were sucked away, and all they could do was flinch. As did Ziyou Maque, seated with his lot at the lowest step of the amphitheatre.
The insufferable Ziyou Ling had hatred in her eyes as she looked at the Flareful Empress. The harlot said something to Elder Brother Chao, but the tall boy shook his head, and Ziyou Ling's eyes went wide in shock. The madlander girl glanced at the amphitheatre, and her gaze crossed Chun's.
Chun smiled sweetly, and then she looked away. No need to humour mutts for long.
The Flareful Empress finished her piece. The vast majority of the clans, such as the Duan, Zheng, and even Baishui, who had sent a representative despite their recent disgrace, bared their fangs with the Flareful Empress at the lead, their righteous indignation pouring out like a noble flood.
"Indeed," echoed an old minister from the Xiyue clan, "Madlanders are notorious for sowing discord and causing chaos wherever they go. As a proud member of the Westmoon Kingdom, I can say that we have already done enough by providing them with land to live on. I cannot fathom why we should even consider sharing our precious treasures and resources with these ungrateful snakes who may very well turn around and bite the hand that feeds them. It is simply preposterous! Look at how they evicted the noble Baishui from their lands, look at how they scheme and plot!"
"While I hold no ill will towards Fairy Su and her judgement, recent history has shown us that the Madlanders cannot be trusted. For we have paid in blood when we were foolish enough to do so. They orchestrated a rebellion in our Lunar Bird Dukedom seven years ago. If not for the Dawn Dragon Throne, then…" There was a treble of furious justice in this calm voice, and Chun recognized the speaker as part of the Lunar Bird ducal family. The young man continued with a raised fist, "It is no secret that they have a history of causing trouble and unrest wherever they go. I believe it is only right to be suspicious of their motives and to take any necessary precautions to protect ourselves and our domains from their harmful influence."
More dissident voices rose up, but the façade of politeness was maintained. They were trying to shame the Madlanders but not offend the vixen. Chun closed her eyes, smiling. In her heart, she kept agreeing with every word spoken, so she hid her expression lest her sin be known.
The likes of Ziyou Ling were thieving cats. And the likes of Ziyou Yung were men without shame and honour, only to know how to take advantage and repay goodwill with snide words.
But soon, Chun realized something was wrong. It had been some time since the last noble had voiced their grievances, but as was tradition, Su Nanya hadn't given her subjects a reply. Neither had Ziyou Yung, who was known for his snide remarks.
She looked up at the Madlander boy to gauge his reaction, and gaped, not believing her eyes.
Ziyou Yung ceased his peculiar hand movements, freezing in an unnatural pose reminiscent of a broken puppet. Lost in deep contemplation, as though the tsunami of rightful words had overwhelmed his small mind.
Yet, that wasn't it, as his brows furrowed, and his eyes rolled back as he emitted a peculiar, soft groan, with fast marionette-like twitches of his limbs. Engaged in an eccentric act as if to slap every high-born there, he meticulously cleaned his ears using a cotton-tipped feather, sighing with pleasure as his fingers rolled the plume.