+18 Volume 2- Chapter 6

Chapter 6

~~~~Ya Xue~~~~



The Uniforms of both bannermen and cultivators alike are a sign of status as well as armor.

For Bannermen, their armor and boots tell all that look upon them of their status, as well as protect them from the elements and enemy weapons, but they have to pay a price for that protection, that being weight. A bannermen's armor and weapons are heavy metal things that they need to carry everywhere and that only training and physical conditioning allows them to live and fight with them on for an extended period.

Cultivator Guzhuang Robes had none of those disadvantages, they were light, they offered far more protection thanks to their Alchemically enhanced materials and they even had formations weaved into them.

I could feel them even now, embroidered deep into the silver robes. Protection from Heat, Protection from Cold, Protection from Impact and most importantly Protection from Intent.

My legs burned lightly as we jogged on the dirt path, half my Qi-flow going to keeping the formations in my robes flowing and preventing me from truly going mad and in front of me Tai Su was much the same.

Around us, the fallow plains looked close to fully dying, as green was being drowned by the gold of a dying world. It will return as it always does and it will be the duty of the people living here to keep it out and keep the bonfire of civilization lit.

We were slower than we could be for reasons beyond Da Xiu and Mei Ling being unable to keep up with our top speed despite what they most likely thought. Our formations were sapping us of the Qi we needed to keep enhancing our running and yet we were still more able to run compared to our companions.

This was the difference between a Qi Gathering cultivator and a Qi Condensation one, despite both of us being first tier cultivators, a difference that will get greater and greater thanks to Tai Su's and I's faster cultivation speed.

"We are approaching the end of the road." Mei Lin declared.

I could see it myself, we were approaching the last village before the road was ending, albeit calling it a road was putting it generously. This was a compacted dirt path with some stones added in more than a road.

"Will we avoid the village?" I asked for the benefit of Da Xiu and Mei Lin.

Neither wished to admit it, but they were tired. Besides I already knew the answer.

Tai Su and I could actively empower our body and move Qi from one part of our body to another, while Mei Lin and Da Xiu could only place Qi from the air into the areas where they would be used.

"We can continue running." Da Xiu declared through gritted teeth.

He realized what my words mean and was already preparing a defense.

"We will eat dinner at the village and ask the village head if she knows where the wolf-clan is this time of the year. Their clan is nomadic and walks across a defined path and we don't know where they are along their circuit now." Tai Su replied.

Da Xiu grunted at that.

I knew the others did not like just how stark the difference in cultivation speed of Tai Su and I was compared to everyone else. I was told of it when we started, so it wasn't unexpected, but it was still annoying to see my friends not being able to keep up despite their hard work.

Hard work should always be rewarded and Da Xiu was a harder worker than most.

"We slow down to a walk to not scare the locals." Tai Su ordered.

The three of us started to slow down. For me it was an easy thing to do, just feed less Qi into my legs and as I did so the light burn I kept experiencing lessened bit by bit until it was gone.

Mei Lin and Da Xiu were not so lucky. For them the usage of Qi was a passive one, which meant that they needed to push their muscles far beyond ours so that their combined passive Qi use could combine with their physical effort and allow them to maintain the same speed as us in anything but short bursts.

The difference wasn't so large that they wouldn't be able to match us there, yet.

"Mei Lin?" I asked my fellow kept woman.

She was huffing lightly now that we stopped. So was Da Xiu, but Mei Lin rarely allowed such shows of weakness to show.

"I am fine, just a bit winded like after training, I am still not used to sustained effort." She answered.

I nodded at that, she was choosing the path of the Talisman Maker, which one of short bursts of effort and expendable materials, as opposed to that of a pure brawler like Da Xiu. If she merely chose it to find a way to have something in common with our senior's husband or if she genuinely found a use in such I didn't know. I doubt she would give me an honest answer and so I didn't even bother to ask.

"I am glad to hear you are well Mei Lin, but next time you and Da Xiu feel like you need to push yourselves to keep up tell us. You are no use to our group if you are one step away from falling fromm your feet." Tai Su interjected, his voice wearing a tiredness that had nothing with the physical.

"Tai Su." I said simply in an unspoken plea to drop it.

Da Xiu half coughed-half grunted in a plea of letting this go too.

Da Xiu had his man-pride for pushing himself, but both Mei Lin and I come from the city and, even as we intellectually know that Tai Su does not act like city-folk, our instincts tell us quite simply that useless things are not tolerated.

If you can't keep up with the work of others you will find yourself out of a job and be forced to work the worst jobs where you'll have to work on what nobody else will.

Years of being threatened with becoming sewer cleaner or worse, a compost-tender are hard to forget after all, especially when you saw and smelt how miserable the failures forced to work them are.

"Fine, I won't push, but it doesn't change the fact that when you feel that you can't keep up you tell me, because if you dare push yourselves too much, I am not above telling Bao or Yu Zong about it and then you won't have to deal with me being worried or disappointed anymore. You'll deal with two very disappointed women." He said, his words hitting like lightning.

"I will make sure nothing like it happens Tai Su." I declared.

Giving the others a quick look to show I was serious was met with silent nods. All three of us knew better than to have our senior or wife think we were doing poorly. It would start with concern and worry and things will only get worse as the two women would start trying to find where the issue is and neither understands pride or a desire to not be a failure, or the punishment that entails, as valid answers to pushing yourself to exhaustion.

"I am glad I made myself understood then." He said in a tone my mind interpreted as threatening, despite my ears disagreeing and calling it happy.

In front of us the village looked abandoned? Did something happen?

"Where is everyone?" Da Xiu asked.

Tai Su looked at the sky briefly before nodding to himself.

"At this time of the day this time of the year? Most are probably taking a nap." Tai Su said with a shrug.

"Why would they sleep now?" I asked.

We are a little past noon and right now should be the most busy period of the day, not one where one should be sleeping, and nobody would call a peasant lazy, everyone knew how difficult growing rice was as everyone did a bit of it to teach them humility when young.

"Harvest's over, the last fruit trees one can eat have shed their fruits, and their stockpiles are probably full. There's nothing to do right now and the weather is perfect to relax. There's probably one or two hunters or shepherds awake and hunting or looking after their flock, but nobody else has anything better to do than sleep. Most will wake up in an hour or two for social functions and because the children will want to play after taking a nap." Tai Su answered.

"Do you do that sort of thing with your family as well?" Mei Lin asked curiously.

Tai Su shook his head.

"No, not on most days at least, as I would train with father and Bao was a shepherd's daughter, so she would be with the flock or join me in training, or try and improve her calligraphy. We were a special case however, as we were preparing for something. Most people don't do that, they've already prepared for winter, all that is left is minimize effort so they consume less food as they await for winter."

"Is that a big concern?" I asked.

My experience with food was that there was never an actual lack of it, the prices simply grew until you can't afford it anymore, then greedy merchants start being beaten and told to do something useful like cleaning the streets and 'supply shortages' disappear and food still lasts until winter is over.

"Villages are where most food comes from, if they run out of it or lose enough of it, then they won't have anywhere to buy more from, nor will they afford to repair their tools for next harvest." Tai Su explained just as we passed by the first house.

I nodded at that and filled that inside of my mind and switched focus from his words to the house. It looked abandoned, which did not seem to be an uncommon sight in villages.

Tai Su's village certainly had plenty of them and I knew better than to ask again why they were empty as the only answer I got last time was silence.

"No assigned guard." Tai Su said simply once he reached the center of the villages.

The cool autumn air continue to roll around us, as the sleeping village continued to ignore the foreigners inside of it.

"Ya Xue, cease feeding your robe's formations and I'll do the same to my own. If we feel nothing wrong we look for the village head's home. If we do sense, we leave and inform elder Shen Xifeng." Tai Su ordered.

I gulped, fear invading the edges of my mind for multiple reasons. There is exactly one thing that is so dangerous that it could affect an entire village and that is cultivators, and the only cultivators nearby would be the wolf tribe. That wasn't the main reason I was fearful however.

Cultivating did not improve my issues, if anything it made them worse and it would continue to worse until I reached Qi Comprehension and my body would be passively infused with enough Qi to cause my ears to adapt to the stimuli.

My Qi stopped feeding the formations in my robes and suddenly the world became filled with the echoes of what is.

I could hear the dreams of a good harvest, of a beautiful sunset, of sweet nectar and of things I would rather not think about as my mind was inundated by the desires of one hundred people, their unguarded intent pouring into my mind like a torrent and I whined slightly in pain.

I don't know how the man who had to endure an even greater amount of information being poured into his mind managed to live past his sixties like this, and I am too scared to find out lest people demand that I do it from then on. I like not having to hear too much and slowly losing myself in the great sea of sound that the world turns into when my robes no longer cover up my senses.

I immediately started feeding the formations inside of my robes and the world grew quiet again much to my relief.

"Nothing unusual, just dreams and people dreaming of normal things." I reported.

"Same, the people here are much more sexually active than those back home, but nothing unusual." Tai Su did the same just after.

I could sense what they wanted to do and Tai Su what they were feeling and together we could get a rough image of what was going on in an area populated by humans.

Mei Lin silently gave each of us some pills from her small leather bag, which both of us took silently. They were meant to stop any internal bleeding, as Qi Condensation was the cultivation checkpoint where we were the most sensitive to our Water Meridian enhanced senses and the least able to resist them.

"Come, I think I know where the Village Head's home is, I could smell something similar to needing to hurry from up ahead." Tai Su said then started walking ahead.

It was as good a hunch as any, not like these homes looked like much to my eyes. They were well maintained wooden structures with prayers to the ancestors written on their doors, but there was little in the way of obvious wealth to indicate that one of them belonged to the leader of a small settlement.

The house we stopped in front of was little different compared to the others, but it had a white painted sign with black letters saying 'Village Head' in front of it.

Tai Su slid the door open and walked in and the rest of us followed.

Inside of it the unmistakable scent of sex met us. It cloyed the air like a dark miasma and I did my best to ignore it.

What I could ignore was the moans of man and woman that slowly started as we entered the central room. The moans came from the door to our left and Tai Su sighed and headed towards the door and gently opened it.

We were just behind him and could easily see the naked pale woman having her caverns plundered by a musclebound man that was little better. We know from our master's debrief of our mission that the Village Head is a woman and from the physical description we were given, this rutting animal seemed to be it.

"Village Head." Tai Su greeted with a light nod.

The voluptuous woman who should have been ruling this village better froze even as the man continued rutting inside of her.

There were a thousand things going through her own mind I imagine, but it seemed that her own pleasure too priority as her knees buckled beneath her and she moaned in both shame and pleasure.

"Aaaah~" She screamed as she reached a climax.

The naked man continued to be ignorant of our presence and took her moans as a reason to spank her naked bottom which caused another moan.

"We will await outside until you have finished your meeting Village Head, we apologize for disturbing you." Tai Su said and gently slid the door closed behind him.

I sighed, Mei Lin remained impassive and Da Xiu tried his best to hold in his laughter.

"Well at least we know where the assigned guard is now. Considering the hour I doubt she would have found anyone else active at this time of day." Tai Su declared tiredly.

"Or it could have been her husband." Mei Lin said.

"No reason it can't be both, as I doubt a Village Head would just invite whoever into their home." I observed.

"We can always ask when they are done making themselves presentable." Da Xiu said

Behind us the Village Head and her Paramour started shouting and I could hear a light thump as the screams of indignation got louder.

This mission was truly off to a rather unpleasant start.