Chapter 115 - Silence (Patreon)

This needs to be edited one more time. But I am on a trip in Sweden :(

[Table of Contents]

Chapter 115 - Silence

The valley was transformed into a sprawling fort within a span of three days. Among the workers, there were strong mortals as well as weaker cultivators. To prevent any further incursions from the Lost Plane, the Dark Star Mercenaries were given the responsibility of guarding them on an extended mission.

It was the nature of the Lost Planes: voidrifts spawned near their entrances with higher frequency.

That meant danger, and also rewards.

Already, An Xing and her team had taken care of one voidrift that spawned strange crab-esque creatures.

The tall, scarred woman, with her sword strapped to her back, now stood on the peak of one of the surrounding hills. With her were Lanky, Soupy, Hairy, and Leady, the four troublemakers.

An azure gust swirled before them, settling into the shape of a fox maiden.

A fox maid.

Tall too, but not as tall as An Ping. Gracefully braided hair, blonde with a metallic blue hue. She wore a hanfu, with letters spelling ‘Graceful Wind’ written boldly on the front.

An Ping distinctly remembered that this maid had black hair the last time they met.

She decided it wasn’t her place to ask. She got down on one knee, as did everyone else, and bade their salutations. A cultivator whose realm she could not see through deserved due respect.

“This one greets Lady Su Yafeng,” An Ping said.

“R-Rise,” the voice came. And they did.

The maid sounded excited for some reason, as if she had always wanted to say those words. Her cheeks were flushed even though her face was otherwise expressionless.

An Ping went into detail about the current state of affairs, just as she did the previous two days.

Void jades, cores, fiends. Unknown cultivators, darkening skies, and one envoy from the Victorious Tide Island that had entered the other side.

The valley where they were at had no official name; different maps listed it with different monikers: Hundred Caves Valley, Grand Bandit Liu’s Den, Four Fears Crossroads.

The Fiend Hunters called it Liu’s Den.

“Unacceptable,” Su Yafeng said, “Graceful Wind Valley.” She sounded guilty.

And giggly.

An Ping nodded. Su Yafeng, the Graceful Wind of the Revival Sword Tower. Indeed a powerful cultivator, naming whole places after her in her mistress’s absence.

…it might be time to change the name of their mercenary group too.

“The formations on the palisades will take yet more time to complete. Perhaps a week. But for now, most of the tunnels leading to the lost plane have been collapsed and etched with obfuscation and defensive formations, with only a few strategic tunnels that go through major caverns remaining. But I fear we would need more manpower for a proper perimeter.”

“… Do you think m’lady will mind if I call the fort Graceful Wind Fort too?”

An Ping thought for a moment.

“Definitely!” Soupy said from behind, “That Su Princess named her palanquin the Nyanwagon. I heard that madlander boy say so.”

“… that was Yung,” Su Yafeng said. “It’s a good name.” She looked at An Ping.

“I-I am of the same opinion.” An Ping meant the name of the fort, not the palanquin.

Su Yafeng smiled, “Good. We’ll have the sects send their disciples. It might be rowdy, but the Su Clan counts on you. And don’t worry about the envoy, the Victorious Tide Island Elder has informed me.”

An Ping kneeled again, “We thank the Su for their grace. My lord brother sent a letter. He wishes to deploy troops.”

“Good. The garrison here shall be named Graceful Wind Garrison. I’ll be back tomorrow. In three weeks' time, get your sect writ from Mister Yung.”

With that, the vixen was gone. And An Ping was one step closer to creating her own sect. No longer will they be mercenaries wandering the lands like exiles, but a proper organization with roots and homes.

“Do you think she’ll make us name it Graceful Wind Sect?” Leady asked.

The four looked at each other. Honestly, An Ping wouldn’t mind. But then again, what was this strange feeling of defensiveness welling up inside her chest?

***

Yung walked the streets, rubbing his chin and glaring at nothing. He went over what had just happened.

“I broke through.” He was in the 7th stage of Faith Refining now. From Median to Late stages.

No! Not that. Yung shook his head.

He bumped into some guy carrying a large clay vat of water on his head, perching it atop a turban like head-wear made of cloth.

“Look where yer going!” The guy spat, shoved Yung back, then walked away.

“He’s dead. That was Ziyou Yung,” a bystander said. Others agreed.

Yung touched his shirt. It was damp; the guy had been drenching in either wet or sweat.

He shook his head again and walked.

Nanya, she said she accepted my apology. But… I wonder how much thought she gave it… Yung pondered, she tried to play it off… I never got the chance to accept her apology. I brushed it off back in the caverns. And I was too shocked to give her a response when she said she was going to meet her fiance.

It was as if there was a feral crab pinching Yung's heart.

And balls.

I should have accepted it. She tried so hard.

What a mess. The conversation definitely could have gone better.

Yung had written a whole script the previous night. Today, while he was stalling time by going around doing vigilante justice, he had been organising his thoughts.

So that when he saw Nanya, he could articulate them properly.

At first, it had gone well.

But he didn't expect such a strong reaction from his girlfriend when he demanded a simple sorry. In the cavern, she was quick to bow, but for whatever reason, she became super defensive today.

At the end of it, even Yung realised that he was being a total jerk.

And now his girlfriend was off meeting her ex.

Is this that? In modern-day self-help, they always said that a guy should learn how to be more vulnerable. More open with his emotions.

But then when a guy took that step, suppose they cried or asked for help and showed their ugly weaknesses, their partner would suddenly lose desire for them.

Damn women! Yung grumbled.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't!

He opened up about how hurt he was. Nanya immediately went rigid and stone cold. As if she'd lost all sexual attraction to him.

She broke down crying. Kissed him once and flew off. It pissed Yung off!

The feeling of tightness returned. What was she going to talk about with her scummy ex? She said she would demand an apology. But why?

Because he hurt her feelings. Yung tried to convince himself. She wants to see if she can forgive him for hurting her feelings. But she won't get back with him. She can't. She's... My girlfriend.

“That’ll be two silvers,” the vendor said, brushing soy sauce on three skewers of mystery meat.

“Nonsense! Wholesale meat is cheap as twigs now. I heard they hunted enough fiends to feed three cities.” Yung bargained, “One silver.”

“One silver, five bronze.”

Yung handed over an oval-shaped silver Westoon coin, and one bronze with the character for ‘5’ and ‘Xiyue’ written on it.

He bit into the meat. The juice leaked onto his tongue as he chewed.

“Yum.” It was savoury and sweet. Not bad.

Nanya said she didn't want to kill Yung. In the moment, Yung didn’t really get it, but now he was panicking. Why the hell would that even come up? Did she feel so disappointed in him that she wanted to erase away their history? Literally.

Yung shuddered. He of course knew that Nanya wasn't the only one at fault.

She grew up like that. Selfish, petty, vain, unhinged.

No parental love during her formative years. Centuries of waiting for her childhood friend, only to be cucked. Then being manipulated into thinking it was her fault for not going along with the hero.

It would be weird if her screws weren't loose.

But the problem was, Yung liked stability. He swooned over it. He craved it.

He had always thought of himself to be realistic if it ever came to love. A girl with a similar background, economic status, and education level. A girl who had a loving relationship with her family, especially her father. Not too many emotional baggages, not too many entanglements, as in, previous relationships.

Because while having a few previous relationships might mean she had the experience to know what worked and what didn't for her, having too many failed relationships meant, for whatever reason, she was incapable of holding down a stable love. She would have more history, more time to have accrued wounds, heartbreaks, mistakes. In other words, baggage.

Nanya had only one. That lasted for centuries.

With that much baggage, she'd need to buy three extra seats on the train!

The past Jung would have never even thought that a girl like her would be his first girlfriend.

But.

But!

Damn does the trope work. Yung sighed. 'Manic pixie dream girl.'

He was an avid reader of romance in his past life. He liked drama and complications. But he was always realistic enough to separate fantasy from fiction.

But here he was now, dating the most manic girl of them all, one who could see his daydreams, and although she wasn't a pixie, she was a damn hot vixen.

“It's infuriating! But the trope works. Fuck,” Yung muttered.

He needed to give his relationship with Nanya a huge think-over. Were they even right for each other? Was it worth to push it, try to make it work?

Of course it is. Realistically speaking, he'd be dead without it. But again, should he be so materialistic about the gains? So selfish?

Yung hated this about himself too.

Nanya was unhinged and vainglorious. If their relationship were to work, she needed to learn how to be kinder, at least to him.

But Yung too needed to change. He needed to be braver. Less of a hypocrite with double standards bigger than Mt. Tai. He needed to be proactive.

He needed to accept the reality of this world from his heart.

In other others, he needed to stop being a little bitch.

The first step to that, he had to stop blaming everyone else for his own problems.

I blamed Nanya again, didn’t I. Yung sat down under a tree; it was on the bank of the White Stream, part of the Dim Gold River that cut through the city from west to east.

These clans named everything after themselves.

Yung wanted Nanya to apologize. But he did a bad job framing it. Sometimes, how you said something was more important than what you were saying.

In this case, Yung had inadvertently criticised Nanya. Then he became super defensive.

Two of the four horsemen of the relationship apocalypse.

“I messed up,” Yung said.

“That you did, son,” an old man who was fishing by the stream said. “My dog pissed under that tree.”

Yung cursed, then stood up. The ground was dry, but still, yuck.

He searched for a bin to throw the skewers away but then remembered this was another world.

He didn’t want to litter, though. So he stored them in his storage ring.

Nanya was right. Yung was no better than her ex.

The apology had to come from her! He could not, and should not, manipulate her into saying sorry.

But then, isn’t being honest with our feelings and needs what communication is all about? Yung scratched his head.

If he couldn’t trust pop-psychology books on love and sex, then what could he trust? Podcasts? There were none!

Real life was different from written letters. Every girl was different. He couldn’t apply behavioural science based on statistics of a population onto an individual. Not less an extremely unique individual like Nanya.

A cat crossed the street in front of Yung. It looked at him, then hissed before running into an alley.

Yung stood in front of the gate to the Dim Gold Citadel. He walked in, then strolled through the courtyards. Soon, he spotted Youjin Chun and Youjin Gangkai.

The burly cultivator was training the raven lass.

Yung watched alongside other Youjin youths.

It’s so complicated. This was Yung’s first relationship. But it’s fine… I don’t want to break up. She doesn’t either. We’ll just have to... See what we can do. Yung decided, from today, he’d spend an hour a day meditating on his relationship with Nanya. What he did wrong, what he felt like she did wrong, and how he could communicate his feelings relating to that with kindness.

…okay, maybe fifteen minutes is more realistic. Yung tutted.

“Ziyou Yung! Where is Elder Brother Chao?” Youjin Chun spotted him. The other Youjin youths had raised whispers after Yung had joined the spectators.

The raven-haired heiress stomped her way to Yung and demanded with a mean glare. Pearls of sweat lined her forehead, her hair was tied into a ponytail.

“He’s fox property now. I don’t know where he is.”

“Elder Brother Chao is his own being! He isn’t property!” Chun yelled.

“Then he should not have stolen Nanya’s foxball,” Yung said. But he knew that realistically, if he was in Chao’s position, he might have done the same.

According to Miss Maid, without the aid of the Foxball to awaken Chao’s Spirit Root, he would have died. At least, most normal people would have died. But then again, in Yung’s mind, Chao was a protagonist. Normal logic did not apply to him at all.

Although, if the situation were such where survival didn’t depend on it, Yung knew that he could not bring himself to pocket Nanya’s stuff so shamelessly. What Chao would do, Yung didn’t want to assume. Actions spoke louder than words after all.

In any case, Yung wanted to take his girlfriend’s side in public no matter what. That was being a good boyfriend, right?

Yung rolled his eyes. That was too cheesy even for himself.

Youjin Chun gasped, offended. Yung saw tears welling up in her eyes.

“Can I at least see him? Can you pass that on to the Honoured Revived Grace from the South?” The heiress's voice went weak with every word spoken.

Yung nodded. Then walked away.

Come to think of it, Nanya cried too. Yung realized something. He had immediately agreed to Chun’s request when the girl welled up.

Tears. What a terrifying weapon. In an argument, when one party cried, they would immediately turn into the ‘victim’ of the narrative. And becoming a victim gave them power over their ‘oppressor,’ the other party. If this other party was a rational being, they would definitely feel guilty. So in a sense, the oppressor was the real victim here.

Nanya had cried, after which Yung had started feeling confused. Was he wrong? Was he right?

Was Nanya using her tears as a weapon to make him feel bad and admit his wrong?

He did feel bad. Mighty bad!

Was his girlfriend manipulative and devious enough to use tactics like that consciously?

... Well, she did use a honey trap on him before.

Could it be that she was doing it unconsciously?

... it was possible, considering her emotional baggage.

Damnit! I’m criticising her again! Yung ruffled his hair and kicked a bucket. Why’d she have to go meet her ex…