Chapter 116 - Land God (Patreon)

[Table of Contents]

Chapter 116 - Land God

The ‘official’ punishment ended up being a fine of one Ironcast Spirit Stones and ten floggings each.

The actual punishment should have been prison time for at least two years. Maybe if the criminals were mortals, that would have been the case. In which, ‘locked up’ would be forced labour in a mine or labouring in the forest.

But the merchant and his guard of mercenaries were proper cultivators, one and all.

They did good business in the city. So the city should look after them.

“Keep your heads low, and don’t you dare cause any trouble before scramming,” said the warden of the cells. He patted his enormous belly, balancing his butt precariously on a tripod chair with his fat feet propped up on a table.

The merchant nodded.

There was a furious look in his eyes. His veins bulged. The warden wouldn’t peg hypertension to kill a cultivator, but with a loss of face this big, nothing was impossible.

He laughed, spittle flying all over.

The burly mercenary had something to say. One of his comrades put a hand on his shoulder and shook their head. He scoffed, then climbed up the stairs out of the penitentiary following the merchant.

The facility was located on the border of the Eastern Upper town, the Zheng clan territory, and White Town, the former backyard of the Baishui clan. The latter had been chased away, with the Free Sparrow Gang taking over a majority of their business. But the people living there didn’t answer to them.

They were ren after all, not madlanders. Not yet.

The warden scowled at the thought.

“Are you sure that’s fine?” a jailer asked. He was a new hire. A freshly minted 1st stage Qi Refining cultivator picked by the clan during the recruitments. He didn’t have enough talent to be anything heaven-defying, not even city-defying, but the lad had more than enough use to mind the jails.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” the warden said. He threw up a pouch and caught it again. The spirit stones inside clanked against each other. There were four more Ironcast spirit stones inside.

He’d been bribed. It took money to reduce sentences.

Nothing new.

The warden picked his nose with his fat pinky and clicked his tongue, “The lot was just unlucky is all. Probably have to do business in the smaller towns east of here for a while.” He then glared at the new hire. “And you’ll be unlucky if you keep loitering here. Did you check the locks?”

The boy scrammed. Grunt work started with checking the formations on each cell. He received some tutelage about what was proper and what was not, but with his cultivation, figuring out the improper was still hard.

As he worked, though, a seed of doubt remained within his mind.

Those mean-looking folks earlier were not the time to let go of a slight.

The jailer lad shrugged. None of his business.

***

In the branch family graveyard, Yung played with Silky for three hours straight.

He would throw a grape.

The Foxmoth Yaoguai would catch it in midair and gulp it down. He would buzz back, lick Yung’s cheek, then ask for more.

“Ki!”

It’s been four days since Nanya left. Yung would spend the mornings in the meditation chamber of the Dim Gold Hotel.

His mid-days roaming around the city doing nothing.

His afternoons playing with Silky until it was evening.

“Can I meet Elder Brother Chao?” Youjin Chun asked.

“I can’t help you with that,” Yung replied. He threw another grape. This time, another foxmoth had the gall to try and intercept it.

Silky covered himself in a dome of Heart qi and bashed the offender away before eating his prize.

Each of these grapes cost half a lesser spirit stone. They were heaven and earth treasures bought by the Dim Gold Hotel from the boat caravans coming from the East.

Trade had gone up by miles apparently, thanks to the mere presence of the Su. But some were coming after word of the Lost Plane spread, from other kingdoms, and even other regions.

Yung had to meet with a few.

“I have not seen you with the Honourable Revived Grace recently,” Youjin Chun said, “Usually, she would be a fox pup on your head or arms, but now here you are, mopping alone. Did she finally leave behind?”

Yung hoped he masked his flinch well.

“It is not my place to say this, but… perhaps it's better for you to know your place?” Chun’s words were merciless, “The fox princess’s favour ran dry. She’s a dream, and you wake up from them. You don’t have the talent to keep dreaming.”

“Who has?” Yung asked. What a loaded question.

“… Of course, only someone with a Harmonious Heaven grade talent like Elder Brother Chao can dream so big.”

“And you’re fine with that?”

“He deserves better than me,” Youjin Chun said. “I just want a small part of him, that’s all.”

“Haven’t you considered that others might not want to share? It’s called having self-respect.”

“You!”

“Me!”

Yung threw another grape. Silky chirped happily. Youjin Chun rolled her eyes.

“Keep wasting time with Lord Yaoguai, Land Gods can afford to waste time. But can you?” Youjin Chun said, “If the Su Princess doesn’t show herself with you soon, people will start to talk. This has happened before. She favours a hero for a while, but does she lack of men? How arrogant it is to think you alone can take all her time. Perhaps she has already found another hero to favour already.”

“Was that a threat—?” Yung stopped. Something about what she said tripped a wire in his brain. “Say that again!”

“W-What!” Youjin Chun flinched. She took a step back, then glared, “It’s the truth. Do you think with the number of people you’ve offended, you can keep being nonchalant without the princess’s favour? If news comes of the Princess spending her days with another man now, the Youjin Clan alone cannot prote—”

“Not that!” Yung said, “Before!”

“… keep wasting time with Lord Yaoguai?” Youjin Chun was properly confused.

“Yes!” Yung grinned. He was so stupid! He had been trawling through the archives searching for a method to fix his crappy foundation. But he was going about it the totally wrong way.

Yung clenched his palms into a fist and started pacing in circles, his mind hard at play.

“Have you finally gone mad? Does her absence bring you this much fear?” Youjin Chun said. The girl had been overseeing the renovation efforts of the Dim Gold Orchard. A few hundred meters away, many Orchard Workers were gently placing foxmoth caterpillars and unhatched pupae on the mulberry trees. “When can I see Elder Brother Chao again?”

“Later!” Yung waved her off.

“At least tell me where he is being kept!”

“I will, in two weeks! Maybe. No promises!” Yung said, a bit annoyed now. “I’m thinking! Leave me alone or I’ll tell Nanya you bullied me.”

“Pathetic.” Youjin Chun spat before walking away.

“Kye?” Silky asked. He was tucked in Yung’s hair, patting his forehead with his two frontal paws.

Yung took a while to answer. He was making a game plan now. First, scour through the archives of the Youjin clan. Maybe get the Zheng clan to open up too, since they were the local experts of Heart qi.

… and after Nyanya came back, ask for her help and guidance.

“Silky,” Yung said, “What the hell is a Yaoguai? And why do they call you a Land God?” The little critter buzzed and chirped and said he didn’t know. Yung grinned wider. He didn’t expect a proper answer. But maybe, just maybe, he could make a breakthrough in his situation with learning more about his second best friend after Nanya.

Silky bit his earlobe with his serrated bug teeth.

“Ou-Ou-Ouch! Okay, okay. First best friend. Bros before hoes!” Yung said.

“Kyi.” Silky nodded.

“I’m telling the mistress.” Su Yafeng said.

Yung screamed.

Silky hid.

Su Yafeng smiled.

***

“Miss maid,” Yung said, “What’s a Land God?” He brushed the ancestral gravestone of his family, cleaning it of the dead moss and dust.

Then he stopped.

His family wasn’t buried here. At least, he didn’t think so. Those crystallised skeletons in child’s poses weren’t his grandparents, nor his parents.

“Graceful Wind Graveyard,” Miss Maid said, sipping tea. She sat on a mat, elegantly laid out atop the grass. “Land gods are gods of the land.”

Yung stared at her.

She stared back.

This went on for a whole minute.

“They are usually Yaoguai. Do you know what Yaoguais are?” Su Yafeng said with an elegant nod.

Yung shook his head. Silky flew atop Miss Maid’s metallic blond hair and perched with interest.

“They are spirits of stuff.”

“Miss maid…”

“Grant me a moment. I can most certainly explain such simple concepts. If the mistress can with her weird dialect, then I can too,” Su Yafeng glared at Yung, “I am a hundred times better than the mistress.”

It was a statement. It sounded very insecure.

Yung looked at his Communicator Token. A message had just come in from Su Haochen.

Yung sighed.

This rotten world.

Then waited.

“When sapient creatures worship another, the worshipped being may gather Heart qi. They, if lucky or talented enough to somehow awaken the Heart Palace Dantian, shall become a Divine, or Devil, Cultivator,” Su Yafeng said.

Yung knew this part.

“In ancient times, the world was filled with superstition—don’t lean on the gravestone. That is bad luck.”

Yung sat on the picnic mat beside the maid.

“In times antiquity, many a tribe would worship mother nature itself rather than a particular person. This would generate Heart qi too, but this Heart qi would not go to any one being. It would go to whatever was being worshipped, even if it was a stick, a door, or the concept of a bird or fire or rain. After many years of Heart qi accumulation and mysterious changes, these objects and abstract concepts would be deified into Yaoguai, birthing a unique soul.”

“Kye!” Silky’s eyes widened, and he craned his head up. But the critter didn’t have much of a neck, so he rolled over backward on Su Yafeng’s head.

To him, this might be the same as learning about the birds and the bees.

Yung shook his head. His mind was distracted.

“Yaoguai can range from deified rocks to an actualised concept of an adorable tribe of Foxmoths,” Su Yafeng said, “One thing they all have in common, is that their jurisdiction is usually limited to a certain concept, and only in certain place, there are many Land Gods of the Forest all over the plane after all. And each Yaoguai has to strictly follow the rules of their concept.”

“Would Silky’s concept be Foxmoths?” Yung asked. If that was so, then would Yung have to be a Foxmoth cultivator to utilise this avenue of power, whatever that even meant?

Foxmoth Farmer?

Werefoxmoth?

“Perhaps. It is never that simple,” Su Yafeng said. “If it was before you two had made the Soul contract, then I would say Foxmoth and Silk. But with the Yaoguai’s power being reset to near zero, and your own influence on Adorable Lord Silky, it would not be strange for the concept to change. Does anything come to mind?”

Yung thought for a while. His eyes reflected the world made out of transparent Null Threads, Golden Celestial and Empathic Links, and many different wires of myriad colours that Yung didn’t know anything about.

Other than the fact that they denoted some sort of Emotional Connection.

“I think so. What exactly is a Soul contract?” Yung asked.

Su Yafeng went silent again. Her face was expressionless, but there was a hint of annoyance there. Of course, Yung only knew about this because of her Empathic Link.

Miss Maid really cares about face. Yung thought, And I seem to have given up all shit about privacy.

“Benevolent Yaoguai are called Land Gods. But there are other types. One such is the Evil Wraiths.”

“Kye!” Silky gasped.

“To kill a Land god is to bring about calamity for one’s bloodline. To kill an Evil Wraith is to bring fortune for the same,” Miss maid said. “Yaoguai are unique. Some scholars say they are the children of the Planar Consciousness, some say of the Grand Dao. They appear to either reward the faithful or punish the heretics. Either way, there has been one truth about Yaoguai since time immemorial.”

“And that is?”

“A Yaoguai is immortal,” said the maid. Her tea had run out. She steeped more in a ceramic teapot, “They can be sealed, restricted, bound, and captured. They can be killed, their minds can be erased. But their ‘concepts’ are eternal. Even if one Yaoguai is killed, the very memory of the Yaoguai’s existence shall bring another identical one back. Evil Wraiths and Land Gods, through myths and memory and legends, they appear and reappear over and over again. Though they are not the same being anymore at first, forgetting their grudges and gratefulnesses, if we suppose one day Lord Silky were to perish, perhaps a few millennia later, another identically adorable Dim Gold Foxmoth Yaoguai would appear in these lands. To perform the duties imposed upon them by their very concept and the worship they receive. If they cultivate to be strong enough, they may even regain memories of their previous manifestation.”

“Silky! Wow, you’re so awesome,” Yung said.

“Kye Kyeyiwe!” Silky rolled on Miss Maid’s head with joy.

“But Yaoguai want to live too. To die would mean to lose their accumulation of power and, more importantly, their very identity. And even if they manifest again, who knows how much time would have passed? So, often, before a Yaoguai perishes, they offer to tether their soul to another willing being. In this way, power may be lost, but memories are not.”

“… and that’s a Soul Contract.”

“Correct,” Miss Maid said, “Am I better?”

“… I-I love my girlfriend.”

“My explanations.”

Yung gave her a thumbs up. “Very concise and succinct.”

Miss Maid nodded appreciatively. “Your assumption was right. Haochen should be contacting you soon.”

No sooner had she said that, another message beeped Yung’s communicator.

<Su Haochen: They’re here. I think they wanna beat up the poor kid real good.>

Yung sighed, this time far more tiredly. He was testing people here, the same way Nanya tested him. He was testing this very world.

And he was disappointed.