Chapter 126 (Patreon)

Lin Nine’s reaction was a delayed one. He looked between Chen Haoran and the torn contract. He was still processing what had happened when liquid qi spilled from Chen Haoran’s hands and eviscerated the rest of the contract.

Lin Nine flinched and held the storage bag in a white-knuckled grip. “Sir? I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Chen Haoran shook away the paper scraps and let them drift to the floor. “What’s there to understand? I said you’re fired.”

Line Nine fell to the floor and prostrated himself. “I sincerely apologize if I displeased you in any way, sir! Please give me another chance!”

Despite ripping up the contract, there wasn’t any change in the Connection’s status. Chen Haoran shook his head. “It’s not meant to be. I didn’t notice before, but you have the same name as my last weasel of a manager. Looking at you and I only see his rat-like face. Don’t hold any hope of being my servant anymore.”

“Sir, please!”

Chen Haoran flexed a bit a qi. It was nowhere near the full extent of what he could bring to bear, less even than what he mustered as a Qi Realm, but just the promise implied in raising his Qi was enough to make Lin Nine turn several different shades of pale.

Lin Nine trembled and pressed his head to the floor. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He pushed the storage bag forward. “Please spare me.”

The golden light around the second slot dimmed further, and the Connection finally broke. The light was definitely new, or a least this was the first time he did something that affected it. It certainly hadn’t appeared when he and Lan Fen annulled their marriage. It was easy to figure out why. She wanted to do it and took the initiative in dissolving the relationship, not him.  What he could tell right now was that if he did things that went against the nature of the Gifting Power or against the wishes of the Connection then he’d lose gold light. The consequences of that were unknown, however. When he tried to focus on the slot, he couldn’t feel anything different about it. He could, on the other hand, feel an almost animal-like instinct telling him that running out of the golden light wouldn’t be good for it.

“Keep it,” Chen Haoran said. Now wasn’t a time to theorize. “I’m not so poor that I need to take gifts back.” He turned and walked out the door, pausing just long enough to look over his shoulder at the still-prostrate Lin. “Word of advice. Pay off your debts and skip town.”

“Thank you, sir. Thank you.”

Chen Haoran shut the door behind him, but he could still hear Lin Nine’s repeated thanks. This was the reality of a higher realm interacting with a lower one. Any and every innocuous action he took was treated as a matter of life and death by Lin Nine. Chen Haoran’s lips twisted into something that was at once ironic and self-deprecating. Even if it had been to help his act and ensure everything went smoothly, he had still become a cultivator of the like that had been constantly terrorizing him. Without his Gifting Power, he had no doubt he’d still be like Lin Nine right now. Perhaps even for the rest of his life. No, perhaps he was still no different than Lin Nine.

In the face of higher powers, Chen Haoran would be bowing right next to him.

—————————

The ferry they would use to travel up the Skyspear was much larger than the one he and Xie Jin used to travel the Machu River. Four hundred feet from bow to stern. Chen Haoran couldn’t find it in himself to admire it, though. Especially now when he was confident he could break the boat over his knee. At least Phelps seemed to enjoy it though he liked everything he’d never seen before. It was an honest, admirable curiosity.

Chen Haoran ran his hand along the silver-grey fabric of his new storage bag before opening it up and pretending to pull a Fathomless Pond pill from it to pop into his mouth. The Yellow Dragon was quick to snatch up the pill and began refining its energy without any further input from Chen Haoran, allowing him to leisurely gaze out at the mirror waters of the Skyspear while his cultivation grew.

“You alright, Brother Chen?” Xie Jin asked. He had come back from placing his luggage in their shared room. An issue Chen Haoran never had to bother with again now that he was effectively carrying a house-sized storage locker on his hip.

“I’m alright,” Chen Haoran said. “Is it that obvious?”

Xie Jin leaned over the railing. “A little bit. It doesn’t seem you enjoyed your alone time.”

“Well. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t fun either.”

“Bao Si tried following you,” Xie Jin said. “I stopped her, though.”

Chen rubbed Phelps’s head. “Did she now?”

Xie Jin frowned. “You’re not bothered by that? You wanted to be alone.”

Chen Haoran shrugged. “I left on my own to do something I wouldn’t elaborate on while we’re traveling to deliver an important message. Checking to see what I’m doing is just being responsible, especially since Bao Si is being groomed for leadership. I’m not surprised she would.”

“I figured you would be upset,” Xie Jin said.

“I try to look at things from other people’s points of view.” Chen Haoran raised his eyes. “Did you want me to be upset?”

“No! That’s not— I mean.”

Chen Haoran clapped Xie Jin on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure I’d be singing a different tune if I actually found her following me. I can be this casual about it now because you stopped her. Thank you.”

“Talking about me?” Bao Si rested her chin on Chen Haoran’s shoulder. Her breath tickled his ear. “All good things, I hope?”

Xie Jin sneered. “Is there any good thing to say about you?”

“Plenty of things,” Bao Si said. She passed her arm under Chen Haoran’s own and began ticking off her fingers. “I’m talented, powerful, of good background, beautiful and beautiful.”

“You repeated yourself,” Xie Jin said.

“Good things come in pairs,” Bao Si quipped.

A small laugh escaped Chen Haoran.

Bao Si smiled. “See? Someone gets it.”

Xie Jin shook his head in disappointment. Bao Si wrapped her arms around Chen Haoran. “I hope I didn’t offend.”

“What will you do if you did?” Chen Haoran asked.

“I wonder,” Bao Si mused. Her hand slid up his chest while her lips pressed close to whisper in his ear. “I decided to make a nightgown out of the Moon Moth Silk. I brought it along if you’d ever like to see it.”

Chen Haoran chuckled and took her hand in his own. “The walls of the boat are too thin for something like that.”

Xie Jin, who had clearly heard every word of what had been said, turned green. “I’m going to be sick.”

Bao Si sighed. “We really let a child come with us, didn’t we? I should have tried harder to convince Grandpa to keep you behind.”

Xie Jin scoffed. “As if that would have stopped me. You think I would have let you guys go without me.”

Bao Si narrowed her eyes but held her tongue.

“By the way,” Chen Haoran said. “I think Granny Jiang was telling the truth about that statue being carved from dragon bone. She’s not someone who would lie like that.”

Xie Jin drummed his fingers along the railing. “Like I said before, there is no dragon skeleton in the Basin. And the Basin is the only place you can find black bones.”

“There’s not even legends or anything like that?” Chen Haoran asked.

“Not in the Basin,” Bao Si said. “Or anywhere else, for that matter. True Dragons haven’t been seen in the South for millennia. They were hunted to extinction long ago. Around the same time as the Cavalry Spiders, I believe. They’re just too valuable.”

Xie Jin shook his head. “You’re wrong. The Snake King killed one.”

“That was a Flood Dragon, and it wasn’t even a native one. I would hardly count it.”

“A Flood Dragon is still a dragon. It’s not a Dragon-blooded beast you just pick up on the road.”

“Still—”

Chen Haoran tuned out the resulting debate. He didn’t think Xie Jin and Bao Si were lying, but they clearly weren’t right either. He had the evidence in his Reward space. Either there was a dragon skeleton in the Basin that neither knew about, or else there were other black bones in Zumulu. A part of him itched to pull out the dragon keel to see how the Yellow Dragon reacted to it, but he held back. Not only was this not the right place, but he also didn’t think something as prideful as the Yellow Dragon would tolerate another dragon very well.

All in due time, he supposed. He had plenty of other Rewards to play with in the meantime.

“Wait, Bao Si, what the fuck is a Cavalry Spider?”

“Well, it was a giant horse-sized spider.”

Oh hell no.

——————

The Skyspear was thankfully a much less eventful trip than going down the Machu River was. That did not mean nothing happened. That would be too strange for Zumulu where normal where transparent jellyfish, the color of the sky floating out of the water to surround the ship, were treated as a minor inconvenience. Where passing by a spike-covered tree impaled with screaming fish while the Kingfisher Bird responsible looked upon its butcher work with a grim eye was considered a passing curio. Of course, one couldn’t just sail a jungle river without mentioning the swarms of flying feathered piranhas. The new insane creations of nature made Chen Haoran quite glad for the times they met the insanities he was used to, like Hell Bugs.

Compared to the Machu River, however, it was smooth sailing. The Skyspear made no indication that it would suddenly come to life and want to speak to him. On the scale of sentient river, things like unique fauna and flora was barely worth mentioning. When Chen Haoran didn’t want to wait for the professionals aboard the ship to deal with various situations, he just flexed his qi and solved it himself. Otherwise, he just popped his pills and watched the sailors do their work, and Xie Jin rob them of the wages from said work through dice games.

While the Yellow Dragon processed the last of his Earth-Rank pills, he began switching over from the Scattering Petal Palm to the Blossom-Picking Palm. He passed the days away in this manner until the boat finally docked at Bendwater. The name was an interesting one in that it wasn’t interesting at all. The town was built at the bend in the water. That was it. There wasn’t much to say about it and even less reason to stay in the town, so as soon as they made the necessary resupply, Bao Si drove him and Xie Jin into the jungle.

Outside, the town was far more interesting in that it was the first time he had seen the jungle cower. Large areas had been clearcut to open up farmland of barely oats and turnips. It was the largest open flat space he’d seen in Zumulu at this time. Xie Jin quickly informed in of the reason why. The jungles around this part of Zumulu were considered temperate. Not for its temperature, it was still the same blistering humid heat, but for its nature. The Deep Jungle this place was not, and the danger was considerably lowered as a result. It was due to this that they traveled through it even faster. Shamans and Liquid Meridians made a potent combination for travel.

It was in this way that Chen Haoran finally laid eyes on the graveyard that used to be the Peachwine River.