Chapter 136 (Patreon)

I apologize for how long it took for this chapter to come out. I caught a fever over the weekend and gave me a headache as a parting present which interrupted my workflow something fierce, which is a problem because I'm already a slow writer as it is. I'm mostly recovered now, thankfully, Monday was just a bad day. Wednesday's chapter will remain on schedule. My apologies again for the delay.

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They had ascended atop a wooded hill and, from the cover of the brush, looked down on the trial grounds that Xie Jin had been so adamant about bringing them to.

On his hands and knees, Xie Jin looked toward the ruins with awe. “It’s beautiful.”

As a fellow enjoyer of architecture that had been dipped in time and left to dry in the seasons, Chen Haoran had to agree with him. Nestled within a valley was a large gray step pyramid, tall enough that clouds gathered around its top. Each layer had been coated with beds of moss, small trees, and crawling vines that bloomed with pink flowers. The layers were perfectly divided in half by a long unblemished staircase of green marble that led all the way to the top of the pyramid, where an open door flanked by two curling snake statues awaited. Cresting the edges of the pyramid’s square peak were two stone snakes devouring the tail of the other.

Around the pyramid were the remains of lesser buildings, both in scale and resiliency. In its shadow, whatever accent they were to be to the pyramid’s glory was instead a faded, forgotten thing. Now the remnant masonry and reliefs stood thrice hollow: by the people who abandoned them, by the jungle that invaded and stole away their furnishings, and by the march of time that had taken the rest. The air cracked intermittently with shards of rainbow color like the whole site had been covered in a dome of it that had now been shattered.

The decay was not a damning thing, however, instead, it added a decadent historicity to the near-untouched pyramid. The contrast in conditions created a tempting invitation to all who sought to satisfy their curiosities of times long past. It was old. It was awe-inspiring. It was beautiful.

“It’s occupied,” Bao Si dryly noted.

It was crawling with soldiers.

The Garrison had taken to the pyramid like ants to their ant hill. Red-clothed soldiers scurried amongst the ruins and the steps of the pyramid. Whatever they found growing on or around the pyramid was marked and guarded till dedicated personnel covered head to toe in silk coverings came and collected it. There were other less uniform masses of bone-wrapped Southerners and foreigners alike who scrounged the periphery like scavengers picking a clean corpse. In front of the Garrison troops, the cultivators were cowed and leery of engaging. When a meal was on the line, however, even a scavenger was willing to swipe at a lion. There were some collisions between soldiers and cultivators when a treasure of some kind had been discovered, often leading to short exchanges of flashy techniques until one side decided the trouble wasn’t worth it. It was less fighting and more like birds showing off their feathers. There were some deaths, however, unilaterally on the cultivator’s side when some hotshot overestimated their ability.

“But look,” Xie Jin said, pointing. “They’re letting anyone walk into the pyramid.”

It was true. Soldiers and unaffiliated cultivators alike ascended the stairs and entered the top of the pyramid without obstruction. Chen Haoran observed the back and forth of the treasure-seekers outside the ruins and the scramble of non-Garrison cultivators to enter the pyramid like it was a train on last call. He frowned. “It’s unorganized.”

Not the soldiers, of course. They moved with a discipline he viscerally recognized from the way his body flared with phantom heat. It was the situation itself that was a mess. Having been subject to the Garrison’s various curfews and checks his entire stay in Zumulu, he was surprised to see them allow such a disorganized state of affairs.

Phelps trilled softly, and he pressed himself flush to Chen Haoran’s back, claws digging into his shoulders. Chen Haoran had long drawn a cloak over him in an effort to hide the sloth, and evidently, Phelps decided it wasn’t enough as he became unnaturally still.

Chen Haoran looked up.

There were two men flying in the air. One stood ramrod straight with folded arms upon a sword. The other was wrapped in twirling purple and green silk streamers that flared out behind him in an artistic impression of butterfly wings. They were too high up in the air for Chen Haoran’s sense to judge their level, but he did not need it: Crystal Transformation Realms, the both of them.

Bao Si clicked her tongue. “What sort of checks do they need with two Crystal Transformations watching over? Once the trial is over, we’ll be lucky if they let us keep our storage bags, let alone anything we might gain inside the ruins.”

“They won’t go that far,” Xie Jin said. Hearing him, of all people, defend the Empire was a shock. “The Garrison still uses levied cultivators to explore other ruins and unknown areas. Who will work for them if they’re so openly robbed? They’ll take a cut of what we gain at most.”

“They’ll take the river and leave us a well more like,” Bao Si retorted. “We’ll go in and potentially risk our lives for a pittance to bring back to the tribe.”

“Then we just have to use the good things we find while we’re inside the trial,” Xie Jin said. “So long as we get stronger, it’s not a total loss.”

Bao Si scoffed. “So we just waste effects that could have been amplified from being turned into pills and medicines. No matter what, we’ll be suffering a loss.”

Xie Jin’s frustration was plain on his face. “What did you expect? This is the Empire. The fact we have the chance to get anything at all is a blessing.” He was bitter as he spoke. “Do I have to remind you that you chose to come along?”

“No,” Bao Si’s voice was low. “You don’t.”

Chen Haoran ignored them and weighed his options. Having to hand over what he gained wasn’t a real issue for him. It’d be impossible for anyone to find his real Rewards so long as they were in his Gift Space. That being said, how he would gift the resources he might find was the issue. Taking Phelps into the pyramid in front of so many Garrison soldiers ran the risk of someone recognizing him.  It wasn’t like there many other cultivators carrying around sloths, after all. Even if the Crystal Transformations didn’t know who he was, it just took one observant soldier who knew about the Stonebridge Auction to inform them. There was also the matter of the trial itself and whether it would even allow him to bring Phelps in. Even if he could bring him, depending on what sort of test these ruins contained, would he even have a chance to give Phelps anything? What guarantee was there that the rewards he’d get were even edible?

Leaving Phelps outside was an option, at least. The area was safe enough, and Phelps was smart enough to avoid danger. Chen Haoran could go in and hope that whatever he had when he came out was worth it after Gifting. If there was something in there that he desperately needed, then he could hire someone to fill his second Connection slot and gift it to them. That way lay potential future issues and pointed questions, however.

Well, worst comes to worst. He could probably get some decent Rewards from the plants in the area. Safety first, though. If he could get enough privacy to eat the Banquet Peach, it would be ideal.

“Alright,” Chen Haoran said. “Let’s fall back for now and do some scouting and try to find out more about the trial. If it’s worth it, then we can try. If it’s not, then we can see if we can’t get lucky and find something good outside.”

“Ah, juniors of the Black Bones.”

The three of them shared a sluggish moment. Xie Jin and Bao Si stared, and he watched their faces morph into frozen horror. Meanwhile, Chen Haoran was questioning himself on why he said something like that.

He didn’t.

“As the senior Shaman, allow me to extend my heartfelt thanks that you are joining us on this fine endeavor.”

His mouth moved anyway.

Phelps screeched in terror and flung himself backward before Liquid qi flooded out of Chen Haoran. The raging torrent doubled over and wrapped around him in a single coursing stream. The Yellow Dragon was roused from its cultivation stupor in an instant. Sensing the invasion, it let out a low, murderous growl that shook his body far more than any of its roars had done. It leapt directly out of his meridians, traveling straight through all his sinew and organs to his throat. Chen Haoran cast his wildly flailed his sense to find any hint of invasion or instruction in his body even as he flooded more liquid qi both to surround him and fill his head. He found nothing. His qi moved at his command. He could move all his limbs and feel through all his senses.

Yet his mouth still moved at a command that was not his own.

“I believe you will be more useful than most of the riffraff nipping to get a lick of wealth here— oh?”

The Yellow Dragon coiled around Chen Haoran’s throat and squeezed, abruptly cutting off the invisible invader. It glared toward the sky, and Chen Haoran’s vision blurred as a world of water and not water opened up to his eyes. There amidst natures roving currents on water qi was a noxious green crystal statue of a man. Behind him floated massive butterfly wings draped around his carved soldiers like a cape, each thread a poison made solid and woven. A golden glow emanated from the man statue’s chest where a golden scorpion sat atop his crystal heart and returned the Yellow Dragon’s glare with twelve indecipherable red eyes.

The crystal statue looked amused, and despite the Yellow Dragon’s efforts, Chen Haoran’s unnaturally voiced words not his own.

“Interesting, I figured you to be the easy one. While I do not mind being wrong, I would like to finish speaking. Behave.”

Chen Haoran clamped a hand around his mouth. Despite shutting his mouth, Chen Haoran’s voice somehow still escaped in the form of a sigh.

“Ah, the arrogance of youth. Young man, I have to admire your moxie. That being said….”

Chen Haoran’s jaw twitched open and then slammed shut hard enough that his teeth sounded like a sharp chime when they clashed together. There was a split second of numbness, and Chen Haoran finally opened his mouth under his own power—

—and screamed.

He bent over and fell to his knees, his liquid qi turning over in choppy waves as his control wavered. When he opened his mouth, coughing and howling, blood poured out into a puddle, and half of his tongue fell in the middle of it. The sight of stupefied Chen Haoran, enough that he even forgot his pain for a brief moment. His cocoon burst. Liquid qi flooded toward the frozen forms of Xie Jin and Bao Si. In the moment Chen Haoran failed the Yellow Dragon took over the reins, reasserting control of the out-of-control liquid qi and pulling it back into his body. It coldly glared at the crystal statue all the while.

“As I was saying.” Despite the grievous trauma, Chen Haoran’s voice still came out normally. “Consider yourselves conscripted. Cooperate with the Garrison inside the trial, and you’ll be allowed to keep 30% of the total number or value of what you may find inside.”

Xie Jin and Bao Si, now evidently frozen by something beyond fear given the lack of reaction on their part, said nothing and yet still gave the speaker that stole Chen Haoran’s voice an answer anyhow.

“Excellent! I recommend quickly entering the pyramid. While the Concealment Formation has been broken, the others are very much operational. Soon enough, the trial ground will attract the miasma from the Tenth Green Hell and fill the entire valley. I imagine it will be quite the stampede to join the trial once we inform hangers-on. Best of luck.”

With the presence’s final words Xie and Bao Si were released from their spell and they rushed to Chen Haoran.

“Brother Chen!”

“Chen Haoran!”

Chen Haoran sat numbly on his knees, pale and sweating bullets. He didn’t, couldn’t respond to them. His qi blunted the effects of the pain before long and almost immediately halted the bleeding, but it could not regrow a tongue for him. He needed his other Rewards for that and yet he couldn’t find the will to do so at all.

Bao Si dropped to her knees in his blood without caring how it ruined her dress. She scooped up his tongue with hands wreathed in purple miasma that turned an earthy yellow and covered it with both palms.

“Xie Jin,” she barked. “Revitalization.” Xie Jin’s own hands first glowed purple, then turned a spring green, and he wrapped his hands around Bao Si’s. The two miasmas mixed and combined into a dull yellow-green before Bao Si ripped her hands away and revealed a yellow-green tongue clenched between her fingers. She turned to Chen Haoran. “Open your mouth.”

Chen Haoran obeyed the order, and Bao Si stuffed his tongue back in, wiggling it around to ensure it was in place. The miasma they covered the tongue with spread throughout Chen Haoran’s mouth and the other half of his tongue. It was no longer poison, however. Now it was medicine. The Yellow-green miasma jumped from one half of his tongue to the other, and through that bridge, his qi surged and bolstered the framework the miasma created.

After an agonizing moment, Chen Haoran opened and closed his mouth. He swished his tongue around his gums and across his teeth. He licked his lips. He tasted blood and spat it out. In the span of minutes, Bao Si and Xie Jin reconnected his tongue like it had never been lost.

Bao Si and Xie Jin stepped back a few paces. Phelps slowly floated over to their side, his fur a bit singed but fine.

“Brother Chen?” Xie Jin quietly called.

Chen Haoran raised his arms and slammed them into the ground. The earth cratered, blasting away the brush and exposing long-buried roots of trees that now had no purchase and were sent tumbling over. Phelps reacted instinctively, pinching Xie Jin and Bao Si’s collars with his claws and floating them all away as the ground beneath them gave way and crumbled. Chen Haoran exhaled heavily with such force that the clouds of dust kicked up in the aftermath were blown away. He leaned back on his haunches, alone in the depression of earth he created.

“Fuck!”