Chapter 118 - A Day for Some (Patreon)

Sorry for the delay guys. Real life messing with the matrix.

[Table of Contents]

Su Haochen had it all planned out.

The cultivators seeking to regain lost face would arrive.

They would beat up the poor kid, possibly his family too.

Just before they could end things, though, Su Haochen’s Umbral Foxvine would leap out and make less out of the brutish men’s fortune.

He would show himself from the shadows, basking in the awes of the victims and the onlookers.

Using the magical bandages, he would fix the victims back up.

Then he would beat up whoever had let these thugs go.

In public.

The common folks would cheer, the corrupt nobles would lament.

Things proceeded as he expected.

The merchant and his mercenaries came, each with faces blacker than the bottom of pots, sporting wounds of various orders.

The prison was a rough place.

“Come out, mutt,” the merchant roared. He kicked the door of a dilapidated house open. It was a hut, really, and the door was a few planks of old wood tied together with straw.

“W-Who’s there!?” came a high-pitched voice from inside.

“Stay back,” another voice echoed. It was boyish, but older. “What are you doing? Do you want to be arrested again—”

A mercenary spat on the hut’s wall, then went inside.

“Stay back! No, keep your hands off of her, you per—”

Crack, something broke. It wasn’t a neck, Su Haochen wouldn’t allow that. But a broken arm was fine.

“Arrrghhhh!” A mournful scream echoed.

“Brother!” Another scream, the girl whimpered.

“Get out and receive yer dues, dog!” The mercenary who went in laughed.

The coolie was flung out of his house. The poor boy spun a few times in the air before landing on the ground. He bounced, then rolled a few turns until he stopped in the middle of the street.

Another of the mercenaries kicked him. A few ribs cracked, and the coolie flew a few feet.

He coughed out blood. A few ribs had broken, no doubt.

The first mercenary walked out of the house, his thick fingers holding up a little girl around seven years old by the neck.

“B-Brother,” the girl cried.

“Let her go—” The coolie was interrupted by a kick to his mouth.

“Shut your trap!” the merchant said. He was angry. Furious. Incensed! “Not even a cultivator, yet dare to make this daddy lose face!”

Kick, punch, stomp.

“Look here, you mortal trash!” the merchant shouted at the onlookers. The mortals of this part of the lower town, a slum really, looked on with a mix of emotions.

Horror, indifference, glee.

Life was tough here.

“This is what happens when you go against us lord cultivators!” Stomp, stomp. “Think that madlander mutt Ziyou Yung will save you forever? Think you can sleep soundly after making me lose face and cash?”

Kick, kick, kick.

“Nice sister you have. She’s fresh, aye?” the merchant said. “The brothels need fresh blood too. Barely enough to reimburse one-hundredth of the spirit stones I lost.”

One last kick, and the coolie flew again.

“Kill him—huh…” The merchant stopped.

The coolie boy had stood up. His arms and legs were twisted in weird places. His eyes had glossed over.

But he had qi.

A small wind rose.

Something awakened in his gut. It was the residue from the Green Turtle Black Veined grass.

Maybe it was older than they had claimed?

Spirit qi went from the grass into the coolie’s Temple Palace Dantian. The qi was tinged with earth, wood, and water. It had a small pressure to it. A small hollow image of a black turtle appeared behind the coolie’s head in Su Haochen’s eyes, but he doubted anyone else there had the power to see it.

He finished sending the report to the future Young Master. Ziyou Yung was interesting. His ideals were so naive, they clashed spectacularly with the status quo of this place.

It gave Su Haochen plenty of fodder to work with.

The coolie roared.

Good, he didn’t freeze up. Awakening in life or death situations sometimes led people to freeze up, then die. But most of the times, the ancient commandments in every Renyao’s blood would act on their behalf, choosing the fight response out of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.

The coolie ran forward towards the thug holding his sister.

“LET HER GO!!!”

He was a 1st stage Qi Refining cultivator now.

It wasn’t enough.

“You awakened,” the merchant said, his eyes going cold. “Good. Selling awakened slaves earns a bit more.”

The thug deftly dodged the coolie’s feeble, crushed fist, then kicked. The coolie flew off again.

He didn’t get up.

“Brother! Brother! Wuu wuuu!” The little girl cried.

[I guess it’s time. Sorry kid. I’ll make it up to you.] Su Haochen sighed. What he liked the most in the world was looking at the faces of people who thought they had won, only to have the tables flipped on them.

He liked going around, meting out justice. Not for justice’s sake, but to look at the abject terror on the faces of the sinners.

The disbelief. The denial.

Utter confidence in their power, their political might, the status of the clan backing them turned into naught before their very eyes.

The thankful look in the faces of the oppressed. The adorations they gave him.

Su Haochen didn’t know why he was like that.

But was he really a Su if he didn’t have a few screws loose?

At least he didn’t have the inferiority complex of Sis Yafeng.

He shuddered, [Or whatever array of mental fuckups Mistress Yaya has.]

He was about to order the Umbral Foxvine in the coolie kid’s shadow to leap forward.

But something happened.

Pearly light the color of melted diamonds dripped down from afar.

The evening sky was ablaze with waves of transcendence. An aurora of pure qi. The clouds turned into the color of rainbows, they roiled and coiled, spreading afar in each direction the eyes could see.

“Sanctification?” Su Haochen tilted his head.

The onlookers had noticed it too. As did the thugs and merchant.

“What’s happening?”

“The heavens! The heavens are angry. Kowtow!”

“Brother! Brother, open your eyes, please don’t leave me alone!”

“An immortal... it has to be an immortal!”

“Boss, do you feel the qi?”

All of them were wrong. Of course, they would be. They were uneducated. How the hell would they know about Sanctification.

This whole place was turning into a natural Sanctified Enclave.

[Mistress... Are you mad?!] Su Haochen gasped. His face went pale.

Lightning struck the merchant the moment he was about to chop the coolie's head off.

“AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

What was left when the light dimmed was a charred body.

Still breathing.

But all cultivation severed.

“I-It’s punishment from the heavens! Ahhh!”

“Mercy! Mercy!”

“Quick, light the incense. Kowtow. Old Wang, get the pigs.”

“R-R-Right! Sacrifice. The heavens are mad! Calm the heavens.”

It wasn’t the heavens that were mad, it was their Mistress.

Did she not know what she was doing? The implications? The absolute idiocy?

Millennia of the Su Fox Clan’s plans, risking to reveal it just for a tantrum?

“Heh. Oh boy.” The matriarch will be so mad. Su Haochen wanted to head back immediately and watch the spectacle.

More lightning struck the thugs one by one.

Tribulations left and right.

All cultivators that were acting against the Law, the Will of the Planar Consciousness were being punished.

There was a fire in the distance. The mortals ran out of their homes to worship the sky.

The whole city was buzzing, overflowing with fear, hope, and a million other emotions.

Perhaps only the Youjin and Zheng Clan, and indeed the forces from the Cultivation Sects and cultivators from the Dark Star Mercenaries, would know what was happening.

“Ziyou Yung, kid,” Su Haochen muttered as he wrote a message to Yung. He moved aside the barely living bodies of the thugs and merchant, wrapping the coolie in magical bandages with his Umbral Foxvines. “You don’t know how lucky, and heavens forbid, unlucky you are to be so loved.”

***

The matriarch of the Su Fox Clan, one of the most powerful cultivators on the plane of Last Ascension, and undoubtedly the most dreaded one, was so flabbergasted once more in a matter of days, that she could not believe her eyes.

As a Harmonious Heaven 3rd Realm powerhouse with a cultivation base at both the Eternal Dominion Spirit Qi Cultivation and Eternal Incarnation Origin Qi Cultivation realms, she had seen many kinds of people on her journey to the apex.

Smart people, crazy people, ambitious people, and foolish people.

But none, not even the mad emperors of lost planes she had killed and cult-leading devils she had devoured, was as insane and so absolutely deranged as her own foolish, spoiled brat of a daughter.

“Y-You idiot!” Her real body pointed a trembling finger at the six-tailed white vixen currently trotting out of the chamber. The vixen was dizzy, as if she had drunk too much wine while spinning in circles. The matriarch caught her in a tight grip by her tail and lifted her upside down. “W-why, good heavens, why are you like this? Why must you be so eye-wateringly disturbed, confused, and clan-sabotaging?”

“Mother. I think we have had this conversation before,” Su Yinzhen said. She was tired.

She had to meet Elder Brother Sun after this.

Another ordeal.

So a good rest was needed.

Su Yinzhen, dangling upside down, pawed at her mother with her four cute paws.

“Don’t act sassy with me.” The Su Matriarch was incensed. Her various transmission tokens had been going haywire with the amount of emergency messages she had been receiving from all over the Su Domain.

From the Inner Elders, Outer Elders, these Councils, those Inquisitors, and so many other parties.

Most of them didn’t even know what exactly the Su Princess had done.

But the qi signatures were clear. Even if for just a split second, those with eyes to see could glean that the Su Princess had asked [something], and the Planar Consciousness had replied.

“Tell them I have slain a Yaoguai, an Evil Wraith from under the depths,” Su Yinzhen said.

“Didn’t you talk with your little lover boy about the virtue of telling truths?”

“That’s me and him. What does it have to do with everyone else?”

Quite nothing. That would work. It was an obvious step to take, and the Su Clan had a few Evil Wraith locations marked away just in case hints of their plans had gotten out.

“Can you not guide my Su Tianya there, mother? My faithful Jadeblessed Mulberry shall do the deed. An Enclave in return is not too much to ask for from the Planar Consciousness, is it?” Su Yinzhen mewled.

“...it’s strange.”

“What is?”

“You have been acting out that weird imperial persona with the Royal We for so long. It’s disconcerting hearing you using first-person pronouns.”

The white vixen in her grasp snarled. She clawed at the matriarch while one of her tails, the Dao Aspect of the Nine Heavens Immaculate Lady, fluffed her good on the cheek three times. “It’s not an act!”

The Matriarch sighed. She let her daughter go. “Be a good girl and go to your father.”

The vixen whimpered.

“What? Do you think you can throw a tantrum like this and not be grounded?”

The vixen sniffled. “What else was I to do? Ziyou Yung shall not die. A random Harmonious Heaven Realmer can level that tiny Dim Gold City within minutes. Now they can’t.”

“Go to your father and confess your sins.”

“Mother—”

“It’s your fault for ruining it!” The Su Matriarch shouted. “I had this whole scenario planned out on how to test your little lover boy. Didn’t I tell you to leave it all to me? But look at you, madness incarnate! Do you know how much time it took to write it? Now with the Enclave, I have to scrap the whole thing and start from scratch!”

Su Yinzhen scoffed, “See? In the end, it wasn’t about the clan. You’re just a pot calling the kettle black.”

The Su Matriarch snapped her finger, and her daughter was transported away to her husband’s lair. Good riddance for the day, that stupid girl needed a good spanking.