Volume 2-Chapter 8

Chapter 8

~~~Da Xiu~~~

Villages are odd. They are not bad and from what little I’ve seen of them they are not good either, instead they are incredibly odd.

I’ve heard city folk call towns a mix of villages and cities, but they are not, they are their own creatures and the comparison always felt off to me, because no two villages are the same even if there are some common themes.

Tai Su’s village was a military barrack focused on farming, it had a line of command, officers and the sort of discipline that’s present only during the drills is a fact of life there. Food times are regimented to a precision one uses to measure a light candle after. Dirt, despite the paths of the village being a mix of earth and stone is barely seen except when it’s raining and the quartermistress back home was less thorough with her inventory than the Su and Xiaoli matriarchs were with their daily allotment of rice.

Other villages were more disciplined than what I considered normal, even if I haven't managed to find one that is more so than the newly named Su Baozhai, and so, I've come to expect a certain level of discipline from villages.

This village however, was none of that, because it was nothing like the villages back home or the villages near the Seventh Yellow Hill Town or those near home.

This village was… “Lazy.” I grunted out loud.

It was the only word that fit.

It wasn’t just the fact that they became more active when the sun started going down, most villages even those near home were like that. No, the people themselves were moving lazily.

People have a reason, a fire as mother would call it, that gives them warmth and purpose, and that fire like all others has something that feeds it.

In Tai Su’s village that something is fear, it shapes them, motivates them and causes them to look at everything as a threat they need to be organized against. I can see the same fear in Tai Su and Bao Xiaoli, the way that fear is such a natural part of them that it is enough to disturb both me and Yu.

They are scared of frost, of the night, of being alone, of famine, of thirst, of strangers and of any change that they have not accounted for, but unlike most cowards I’ve met who would have broken under that fear, the home of the Su’s decided to look it straight into the eye and cut it into pieces one day at a time.

This village had no fire, no fuel pushed its inhabitants forward and their movements were done because the motions of life demanded it of them. Even the children here were moving in an almost lethargic way.

There was no urgency, no need to move and that made it the strangest village I’ve ever seen.

“Da Xiu.” Ya Xue greeted from behind me.

“Ya Xue.” I greeted back.

In front of us the village continued lazily moving. Some looked at the two of us standing to the side and observing them, but thankfully children were warned by their parents to not bother us and the parents wanted little to do with us.

“What do you think of our mission?” She asked me.

I considered her words, there was really only one answer I could give.

“It’s strange.” I answered.

“Yes, especially the reincarnator.” She replied and started nodding her head.

In front of us a child fell on the floor as it tripped on its own feet. The child and his fall were much more interesting than the reincarnator.

I was looking at them, the children, every single one of them. Not one of them looked older than four.

It was unnatural.

Back home there were seven years old playing with ten years old, teenage girls learning how to look after their children by first learning how to take care of their siblings and more. There was variation from town to town and some in tge villages, but here? All of the children were the same age.

There were a few four years old and some younger children that could walk or were held by their parents, and then there were adults with nothing in-between. The child that fell looked around and then rose and started running around again with his friends.

“Not truly, I am more worried about the wolf clan than the reincarnator.” I declared.

Left unsaid was that I wasn’t very worried about them either. According to elder Shen Xifeng their Patriarch was supposed to approach the end stages of the second tier, which put him at a respectable level of power, but he was still wolf clan. They most likely knew better than to start anything, unlike some of the other beast clans that sometimes eat people.

“Why aren’t you worried about it?” She asked me.

“All of us are but leaves falling from the tree of life. It does not matter if one falls from up higher like the nobles, or if they just pick themselves up and fly like the cultivators, we all fall.” I answered.

“ 'All that it matters is if we fall together.' by Ya Ma Liang, I didn’t know you were familiar with his works.” She said surprised.

I was more surprised she heard of the saying and knew how it ended it was a common one back in Southern Tiger Town among the bannermen.

“Never heard of him.” I admitted without shame.

“It and many others about the nature of life and how one should not care about the lives of others and instead seek to improve their own are attributed to him, albeit he collected them from other scholars who came up with them, that one is one of his most famous quotes.” She explained.

Bile threatened to come up my mouth and I quickly spat down on the floor to clear my mouth of the foul taste.

“Bah, just more scholars claiming they are useful. They’d claim they taught the sun how to rise if the Empress wasn’t there to tell them it existed before them. A bunch of wastes of food the lot of them.” I declared scornfully.

Now scholars are laying claim to common wisdom too, despicable creatures the lot of them.

“Scholars aren’t that bad, and they are important!” She declared.

“Some of them are, when they come with interesting ideas that help people, like Tai and how he found a way to make sense of foxish thought and translated ours into something they can use, but the vast majority of them? I’d rather not feed them to the pigs, because the poor creatures deserve to eat well at least before they become my meal.” I corrected.

Most scholars regurgitate whatever each other say as if it’s Wisdom from the Empress. The food cities waste feeding, housing and paying them to rewrite what someone else wrote could be used to forge more swords or perhaps pay some barbarians to learn how to make better swords. Everyone knew their thinkers were useful, as their scholars thought of useful things, like how to build fortresses and make better swords, not why metaphors explain things better when you change the shade of color you use to describe the green of a tree, or whatever other nonsense most scholars get up to.

“Do you think the same about Tai Su and his teacher?” She asked affronted.

I scoffed.

“Tai Su’s thinking is useful and it helped me understand why foxes acted weirdly, I don’t need to know why using a certain color expresses different emotions.” I clarified.

Foxes act as if villages and towns must earn their presence there, as opposed to them having to earn the right to accepted there. I never understood why until Tai Su and miss Hao Wen explained it to me.

They explained it me by having me think of two men. One chooses to become a smith, and once he becomes a journeyman he won’t go make nails to a place that does not use them, or without metal for him to work with. The second one, chooses to become a carpenter, because his village needs someone to help fix and make furniture.

The first one is a fox, they learn what they feel they are the best at and then they go towards where they can make a living, while the second one is a human that learns whatever his community needs him to learn. One needs to find a settlement that allows or even helps him do his profession, the other learns the profession his settlement needs him to and this split is where all other differences between human and fox thought comes from.

Knowing this is useful when you deal with foxes, and the fact no other scholar in one thousand years has managed to lay it down like this is just one more proof that the Empress should start purging the useless creatures, or at least stop paying for them to have lavish lifestyles.

“You don’t think it useful, and yet you use their wisdom. Some scholars try and do the same as Tai does and make the complicated simple, or explain complicated things in a way that can be understood.” She said.

‘I am using the wisdom of my village and my elders, not the wisdom of some pompous ink guzzler.’ I wanted to shout at her, but I am not dumb.

It will do nothing to convince her otherwise and it might cause issues between me and Tai Su if I started shouting at his women.

Instead I need to be, like Yu keeps asking me , more diplomatic. What a bother, you should just say what you think rather than have to tiptoe around issues. It helps with hunting wolves and it would help with discussing about important issues, but people get upset when you do that.

“They should do a better job then, or have a way to show when they are doing a good job or not. You can never tell when a scholars is productive and when they aren’t, and even when they’re not, they still don’t starve unlike honest folk.” I replied.

She sighed, as she realized she won’t convince me to change my mind the same way I won’t be able to change hers

Ya Xue was unlike most women I’ve met, because when given a reason to argue she won’t take it. Almost like a man truly, which I appreciated as a lack of drama is always preferable.

“Are you not freaked out about how people can just one day just become someone else and act as if the life they’ve lived mean little?” She asked as she switched the topic back to where we started from.

“No.” I answered.

The woman whined, which made me smirk. She was far too honest to not tease, probably why Yu wanted her as a concubine before she decided otherwise.

I am ambivalent on the concept. I have Yu, I don’t need more women, but if she wants or needs another pair of hands to help her, then I won’t say no.

“Why aren’t you?” She asked again.

“People are one continuous pattern. They won’t just change out of nowhere. Even reincarnated individuals, they are born with memory of their past lives, from what Elder Shen Xifeng told us they don't just magically become someone else. They will act the same way they’ve acted before and from what the village head said, the man was courteous, polite and accommodating, so I have no reason to think ill of him.” I answered, my tone becoming more neutral as I was growing tired of this conversation.

Ya Xue did not trust people that abandoned their family. From what little we’ve heard of the man, he did just that when he had no reason to, but that didn’t mean we needed to fear him. It meant that I am never trusting him to look after my family or to be a friend, but it doesn’t mean we need to treat him like an enemy.

Dealing with the world should be done in a simple manner, but it doesn't mean that the world is simple, it's the duty of men to make it simple and honest, because if they don't then things will remain evil and nuanced.

“How do you know that pattern is what you expect of him? How do you know he’s not dangerous, you heard how his past life was like?” She asked me.

“I did and I am wary, but I don’t look at any stranger as if he’s about to try and kill me just because they have some sharp tool they could do that with. While in the Empire, that Yang An Lu has acted like a respectful guest, so I will treat him as such until her does otherwise.” I declared.

You don’t mistreat people on guesses and maybes. My mother and grandmother always told me to treat other people as respectfully as I treated family and I always did. At least I tried to, until they started telling me that I should be even more respectful with strangers than with family for some reason.

Women, give them what they want and they still aren't satisfied. But speaking of women, where’s the other one?

“Where is Mei Lin though? I imagine she would be more interested in this sort of thing.” I asked her.

She was the one with the weird knowledge of how people reacted, she would be far better a conversation on this sort of thing.

Mt question made the woman blush.

Ah, I see.

“Mei Lin is doing as our senior asked her to.” Ya Xue said with a light blush.

I chuckled, Tai Su, you poor yet lucky man.

~~~~ Tai Su~~~~

There are few things better in life than having a woman moan beneath you in mindless pleasure.

With each thrust of my hips against the backside of the naked woman on all fours I could feel my own pleasure mounting.

“Harder~” Moaned the naked woman.

My hands dug deeper into her hips as my rod continued digging deeper and deeper into her depths, each thrust bringing both of us closer to bliss.

I grunted with each thrurst, each movement taking more from me than mere physical exertion.

Mei Lin started being able to passively draw out Qi from my body ever since she has started cultivating.

It wasn’t much, barely enough to even be called cultivation, but she was using it to ‘feed’ off my emotions, and every single shred of lust I was now feeling so was she.

“AAAaaaah” She shouted in bliss as she was brought to orgasm.

Her body was shivering in pleasure as I continued to pound into it. Just as her shivers were coming down, so did my own moment to orgasm.

I could feel her depths take into them all I could give it, be it emotionally, spiritually and physically, as the ice blooded took all my body could give with a hunger I could almost feel.

My hips failed me as exhaustion removed my ability to stand on my knees and I fell to the side of the woman who I’ve just finished exploring the depths of.

“Aah, ahh.” Came my voice through ragged breaths.

I was panting and shivering, because the more Mei Lin advanced in cultivation the more she ate out of my emotions, and now it seems that sex would feed her even more.

I was looking at the ceiling now, my burning skin being cooled off by the cold wooden floor, my breath coming through ragged breaths as my body sought to vent of excess heat and deal with a body wracked in pleasure.

“D-did Bao tell you to do it like this?” I asked her.

The woman had the temerity to giggle after she finished draining me dry.

Our former position was eerily similar of the position I found Mi Ping in and I don’t believe in coincidences.

“Yes, my Senior made it clear that I am to make sure that you are no tempted in any way by other women. The best way to do it is make sure that whatever position you see any of them in, you will associate with one of us and not think about other women.” She said, her voice carrying the same husky tone as a purring cat that had just caught its prey.

She took my seconds of silence as approval to rest on my chest, which I tacitly allowed by placing my hand on her back.

“I am not saying no in the future, I am not an idiot. But I want you to pick a better spot next time you feel like following Bao’s instructions on this matter.” I told her.

As a concubine, I do not have the right to actually order her around, only Bao has that right and she let me get away with a lot by making this woman dependent on me. Actually ordering her around would have been a step too far.

“I’ll try. It’s strange you know, I’ve seen concubines and they always looked miserable doing their duties, despite some of them living a good life.” She said simply.

I sighed, is this creature still hungry? I would have to be deaf to not hear what she was implying.

“I don’t know how to feed you the mix of emotions that would make you understand them, I am not a woman. If I were to guess as to the cause of those women’s misery? It’s the lack of control over their life.” I replied softly.

The woman started drawing circles on my chest now.

“I’ve seen far too many women that enjoyed being tied up and the helplessness that causes for that to make sense, especially as it’s the same women I am talking about.” She declared.

“Sex is sex, and women have a great deal of control over it as you are no doubt aware of. Just because a woman likes the feeling of being helpless when having sex, does not mean they like having another woman tell them what to do and then having to obey.” I explained.

Bao controls who I am having sex with and has a great deal of control about what is going on in our household. I however handle my household’s affairs with other households. If Bao says we’re having sex then we’re having sex, if she says she wants children then we’re having children.

The only reason her belly hasn’t started to swell yet, is because she wants both of us to Advance past the second tier, spend a bit mentally recovering from it and then making sure that our children are as safe as they can be. My arguments for resource stockpiling and paying our dues wouldn’t be enough now even if I felt like making them as elder Shen Xifeng and the books given to us by sect master Fu Jian made it quite clear that we can have as many children as we wish, as long as we are able to fulfill our duties to our pavilion or can provide certain services to the sect.

Me continuing my work with teacher Hao Wen and Bao being able o make formations would be more than enough for that to happen, and for that she needs to Ascend to the second tier.

“So most women don’t like other women telling them what to do?” She asked, confused.

I thought this was obvious. Is she trying to manipulate me by pretending to not know the obvious? It wouldn't surprise me, but there are things that are difficult to understand about human society one one can't feel emotions unless they are hand fed to them.

Women want agency, they want the ability to tell others how to be virtuous, what virtue means and to be seen as virtuous for doing it, but they absolutely hate it when someone does it to them. It takes a great deal of maturity to have a woman not only just tolerate another woman telling them what to do, but to be able to admit that the other woman is right and they were wrong. Unfortunately, most women aren't very mature from what I've seen, those in cities especially so.

“They like telling other women what to do, it’s a sign of social status, and being in a situation where you have little choice but to obey the orders of another woman means that your social status is incredibly low.” I explained.

“That, that explains a lot.” She whispered.

Yes, accruing social status explains a lot of what women think and do.

“Yes, it is why concubines would be miserable more often than not.” I admitted.

“Why wouldn’t they be? Why isn’t little Ya miserable?” She asked

Women are creatures of social status, the same way men are creatures of lust, it is why in Imperial culture, men regulate social status and women regulate sex because otherwise neither party would be able to regulate themselves. At least that's the theory that most scholars subscribe to and claim as the reason for why things are the way they were. I didn't fully agree, but I couldn't bring myself to voice dissent there.

I knew a losing battle when I saw one.

My breathing was starting to calm down now, and my body was slowly regaining its previous strength.

“Being a concubine allows women to focus on their hobbies and passions, if they find a senior that won’t order them around much… As for Ya Xue? I imagine she values having a lower position in a loving family to be worth more than being strong and independent.” I answered.

There are many types of women, and Ya Xue doesn’t strike me like the sort of woman to prioritize her social status unlike most women I've seen. For her, her social status simply is, what she cares for is how she is treated by her family, and Bao treats both her juniors more like unruly children than what I’ve been informed is normal. Normal being as servants that occasionally have to go have sex with a man whenever the wife is not in the mood.

“Yes, that was my read on her as well.” She said simply then went quiet

I enjoyed the quiet and peace and both of luxuriated in it, me more than her I imagined. Our robes were near us, not too far, but close enough that the Qi we were letting out of our bodies could nullify the Qi enhanced emotions in the air.

Formations are weird like that and our own are empowered by the same thing they are meant to stop from affecting us and somehow, despite them being further from us than the Qi they keep at bay, my nose is not inundated with strange smells.

“How is your mission with Ya Xue going?” I asked after a few minutes of silence.

“Eager to have another place to plunder Tai Su?” She asked teasingly.

I shook my head, one was more than enough and two were starting to stretch me thin. Bao was insatiable and Mei Lin demanded more than her during sex. Having a third woman will probably start sapping me of strength and leave me bedridden if she proves anything like the two of them.

“No, but I know Bao worries for Ya Xue, we speak about her issues plenty in private.” I admitted.

Ya Xue has gotten scared of physical intimacy once we left the sect. I don’t know why, but I suspect it’s because of her past betrothal and the way it was broken. I think she is scared of giving sexual or physical intimacy to others in fear that it will lead us to leave her if we are dissatisfied.

“Her fiance abandoned her after she gave him her maidenhead. Apparently he got another woman pregnant because he was sleeping around with another woman each day of the week. Now she’s scared that if she has sex and is bad at it we’ll abandon her. She admitted this a bit before I jumped you.” She explained.

I chuckled at the memory and the fact that it seems I was right and I felt something begin to stir, something that judging by Mei Lin’s wandering hand so did she.

“About what I was suspecting then. Do you have any idea how to help her? Or if what we’re trying with making her comfortable helps?” I asked.

I could feel myself grow hard again, as the woman gently motivated my rod to rise again.

“It’s not helping, if anything it’s making her more comfortable in the current arrangement of lacking that sort of physical intimacy. I told Bao that she needs to be more forceful if she wants to turn things around, but she refuses and I know you won’t be the sort of forceful I mean without Senior explicitly approving.” She said.

She thought that I had no opinion on the matter and that I would go for it if Bao asked me. It was cute regardless of how wrong she was.

We’ve had the same idea Bao and I, albeit I cannot remember which of us came with it first as we've played around the topic and the issue we both realized the other was thinking about. My answer once it was vocalized however was a resounding ‘Do it and we have nothing to talk about anymore, because you are not my wife anymore.’

I am perfectly happy to help Bao with her project with Ya Xue and even welcome her into my family, but I am not taking a woman against her will in an attempts to have her be more open to physical intimacy. The woman may get too scared to even bathe together with Bao much to her dismay, but I have limits and Bao knows it.

“Have you considered getting the two of them drunk and alone in the same room? Maybe add Yu Zong to the mix too in order to tempt her more?” I asked.

Her hand started going down and I felt the heat rise across both our bodies.

“I wanted to, but Yu Zong vetoed it. She said that alcohol might make things worse afterwards and Bao decided to leave that as a last resort.” She answered.

Getting Ya Xue willing to partake in physical intimacy is going to be a chore it seems. Words don’t work and the normal options of loosening her inhibitions or tempting her don’t work or some of us find them objectionable and unlikely to work.

“Whatever else you’re planning do let me know if I can help. But until then, I’ve finished recovering and I am ready for another round.” I declared.

I could feel that she too was ready for it.

“Perfect.” She purred as she started to rise and straddled me.

Her eyes were locked into mine as she lowered without a single hint of mercy on the rod she’s been hardening for the last few minutes.

She lowered herself on it without a single moment of hesitation and with the force to bruise the flesh of a normal man and I heard her moan as she started bouncing off my dick, her large breasts bouncing with each of her needy movements

“I am still hungry Tai Su, feed me all that you are.” She declared, each of her words deep and filled with need.

And I was ready to feed the hungry little demon, one thrust at a time.