“It’s just all so… boxy. A big square, well, a big rectangle, then smaller squares inside the rectangle for the City Lord’s compound, the military camp, squares for market places, squares to keep horses and cattle inside the walls, warehouses arranged into blocks of squares, then homes and shops, arranged in rectangles smooshed into bigger rectangles, all organized and quartered by big roads, which then sub divide into less-big roads, which then subdivide into small roads, then subdivide into alleys, all just making big boxes out of small boxes and small boxes out of big ones.”
“Brother, I have to ask, are you okay? Do you need to take a break? You have been going through the medicine for hours now.”
“Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay? Who isn’t okay these days? I love boxes. Did I complain about the boxes? Is it a problem that all the houses look completely identical and are seamlessly merged into boxes called blocks which are then merged into blocks of blocks and called a district, inside this block shaped Burning Flag City? Everything looking the same is very soothing, unlike this heap which is full of different things most of which don’t have shapes that words exist for and whose origins are mercifully unknown.”
“Why don’t you fix us a cup of tea. You like tea. Or play your flute for a bit. It’s been a few days since you last played.” Liren’s voice was very soothing, her hands soft as she guided Tian away from the mountain of unidentified blood, bugs, herbs, incense, oils, ointments, preserved (hopefully animal) parts, pills, powders, potions, mushrooms, wood, and a brass orb six feet in diameter with a lid held down by enchanted chains. When you put your ear to it, you could hear the sound of wind in the trees.
“No, what? Why? Don’t you love trying to guess codes? I love guessing codes. It makes perfect sense to encrypt the labels on all the jars of medicine and things. Why, if there is an emergency, it would be a matter of mere minutes to find the right code book, look up the necessary cypher, and start decrypting them. Much better than risking some orderly selling pills on the side. Could you imagine that? An orderly selling pills on the side? Ahaha haha. HAAHAAAA-”
“There there, there there. It’s okay. We killed everyone responsible. It’s all okay.” Liren hugged Tian’s head to her chest, gently rubbing his back.
“I’ll eat a mountain of poison again if I have to, but I won’t eat mystery organs. I won’t!”
“Shhh. It’s okay. It’s all okay. You’ve worked hard. Rest now.”
A few rounds of soothing herbal tisane later, followed by a good long flute practice session, Tian felt almost human again. Many things had become apparent after the battle at Fort Askarmand, and even more emerged once they started sorting through the loot. The slave fort held the most insanely valuable pile of wealth either of them had ever seen firsthand. Presumably the Ancient Crane Monastery’s treasury held more, but neither of them had ever been anywhere near that. The slave fort was a stopover point on a multinational trade network overseen by mercantile-minded heretics. It held ferocious amounts of wealth. All of which would be used to buy or sell, or be remitted to Threadcutter, of course, but plainly, it was important to have plenty of inventory on hand.
This was, as was appropriate for daoists, both a good and a bad thing. It was good, in that they could firmly wave goodbye to their shortage of resources. They were now better set up than a minor sect. An admittedly low bar, as many minor sects didn't even have a Heavenly Person ancestor, but it was still damn impressive to Tian and Liren. It was bad in that they were now holding a) the contents of the Long Family warehouse and b) several warehouses full of goods from the slave fort. Less than one percent of all that was useful at the Heavenly Realm, but so what? Didn’t a mosquito’s leg still have meat on it? And the Heavenly People in the Wasteland of Song are hungry.
Deadheart had been an enormous bloodsucker, and everyone knew it. Sooner or later, probably sooner, someone would come looking for them. It was therefore imperative to turn wealth into strength as quickly as possible. Hence sorting through the mountain of fingers-crossed-medicine.
Something in there should be, must be, useful for their cultivation. Or maybe they could use it as a weapon or something. Liren had been making great strides sorting through the talismans, but nothing was clearly labeled, and they hadn’t managed to find the codebook that explained the coded labels yet either.
Tian did find a usable staff, one that would hold up to a decent amount of abuse, but… for reasons he couldn't quite put his finger on, he didn’t love it. Not that he loved his current staff either. The snake headed vine staff thing he looted from the shaman a while back was better, but it was too long for his tastes. He would make do.
On the armor front, things were much more promising. The mermaid silk underrobes had so far proven themselves, and did not need replacing. They each took a heart-guard mirror, several defensive talismans, a pair of wrist protectors, and a pair of mildly enchanted shoes. It wasn’t quite a suit of armor, but for Heavenly cultivators, it was generally considered a luxurious assortment.
There was a truly eye-watering selection of wines, some of which seemed safe for human consumption, and an even smaller number whose purpose appeared to be medicinal. Tea, naturally, was available in significant quantities, though it did give Tian a distinctly queasy feeling. Ultimately, he set it aside. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it, but…
He didn’t have a good reason for the “but.” He could accept using the herbs and medicine, and was delighted to use the equipment and talismans, but he didn’t really like the idea of eating or drinking the food. He would if he had to, but since he didn’t have to, it would be offloaded at the first opportunity.
He spotted Liren being furtive by the side of the house, her back turned towards him. “What sneaky thing are you up to?”
“Won’t tell! And don’t peek either.”
He grinned. “I’m going to peek.”
“Don’t! Really. Please. I’ll be mad.”
Tian snorted. “That’s just cheating. Fine, fine. I’ll just… go back to Mount Mystery Meat, and all the wondrous herbs that grow upon its mist-wreathed slopes.”
“Very poetic.”
“What poetic, look, this gallbladder is condensing mist. As is this glass tube with the grey eyeballs in it. And this coral looking fungus, though that’s not a white mist, more of a toxic, bloody smelling, faintly reddish mist.”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“Poisonous?”
“Kind of? Not so much that it troubles me any. It’s still Earthly, though I think it wasn’t far from the Heavenly realm. Screw it, I’ve already identified all I could. I’m going to look through the books. That, at least, I can sort of understand.”
Between the several heretics and Deadheart’s storage, their collection of random manuals had grown mighty. At least in volume. In terms of actual quality? Not so much. The shamans didn’t use storage items, so there was nothing gained there, unfortunately. He’d have to make due with what he found. Which was actually a little more interesting than he had initially believed.
“Heart Crushing Needle Art, Six Sense Sealing Technique, Suffering of Jue, Night Hunting Vulture True Law… There must be ten needle arts, all told. That’s amazing.”
Heretics. Not a shock they would be into hidden weapons skills. Take a look, there might be something in there you can use. Maybe not the whole art, but you never know what will spark an idea. I’d check the rest of the books first. My treasure instincts are blazing right now. There is so much relatively endurable stuff in here!
“Wait, really?” Tian had long since learned how to translate from “Grandpa” into “Modern Living People.”
You think all those pills are trash? They aren’t. Neither are the natural treasures. Say what you like about heretics, but their determination to acquire ingredients regardless of the price someone else has to pay is impressive.
“Is it?”
No, not really, I’m just trying to cheer you up. If they were really trying, they should be getting way better stuff. There is a particular soul strengthening concoction that requires finding a tormented evil spirit, healing its mind, returning it to divinity, then torturing it back to the point of evil and insanity, THEN collecting its ghost tears. The whole process usually takes a month or so, just for a component of a draught used by garbage tier heretics with ambitions. It has to be a female ghost, incidentally, for reasons I have never bothered understanding. A sentence which, if considered even briefly, would tell you how ankle-biting crazy, but determined, some of these scumbags are. This collection is frankly half-hearted and lackluster by comparison to such pure-quill insane determination to pursue power at all costs.
“It’s good to know the pills are genuine, anyway.”
Some of ‘em, yep. Read the books first, then I’m going to show you a few little treats those “kind people” left just for you.
“That draught any good?” Tian was morbidly curious.
Do you think anyone, even heretics, would go through that much trouble if better options were available? Good is relative. So is desperation. Get reading.
The remaining manuals were an odd grab bag of weapon arts, a few spells that didn’t rely on weapons at all, perception spells, movement spells, even some farming spells. Nothing that one could use as a cultivation art, nor anything that would have to do with raising gu, or binding demons, or summoning ghosts, making zombies, crafting poisons or the like. Tian couldn’t understand it, until he finally did find something unquestionably heretical in the heap. The medical manuals.
He had spent an awful lot of time learning how to keep the blood inside the body. So had the author of “Methods of Devotion and Refinement.” Tian was trying to keep people alive. So was the unnamed author. Tian wanted to make them healthy and whole again. The author wanted to prolong their suffering. Methods of Devotion and Refinement was clearly intended to be part of a set, all with the goal of creating perfect sacrificial offerings for some manner of demon or evil spirit. From what Tian could infer, it was possible, with the right methods, to completely free a human body from its bones and muscle, leaving only a suffering mass of organs, nerves and blood vessels. It was a laborious process, requiring immense dedication and care from the practitioner-surgeon.
The diagram at the front of the book, of organs floating in a glass tank, eyeballs connected to a brain, was horrifying. What made it almost hallucinatory, what made Tian feel like he was going to faint or throw up, was that the artist carefully drew a mirror in front of the tank. The eyes had no eyelids, nor muscles around them. They couldn’t look away even if they wanted to. It wasn’t enough to commit the atrocity. The victim had to be endlessly aware of what you had done.
Tian didn’t read it. He didn’t care about how many lives he might be able to save with the knowledge contained within. If he wasn’t willing to taint his body with a heretic’s food, he could never taint his dao with their medicinal arts. In front of Liren’s bemused gaze, Tian burned it, mixed the ashes with water, dried them with qi, then insisted she incinerate what remained with the hottest yang flame she could manifest, until even the ashes were reduced to indistinguishable dust.
“Why? Just why? I get that they don’t have money or resources, but so what? Cruelty doesn’t help cultivation, and kindness is free. So why?”
They’ve been telling you why this whole time. Your senior brother explained it the night you killed Blood Cleaver Wang or whatever his name was. Zihao, you live in a world that is both feudal, and has genuine immortals. At least, immortals as a peasant understands that word.
“That proves that Daoism is the right answer! Which means compassion, frugality, humility-”
And who showed the heretics those virtues? The kingdom talks about them a lot. Talks a lot about righteousness, and human kindness. How much has it shown? From a heretics perspective, what is someone with a spirit root but someone born into wealth and power?
Tian paused and tried to wrestle with the enormity of the thought. It was too much. He changed the topic.
“I think I’m going to skip the pills, Grandpa.”
Don’t be so hasty. You now have a decent sized library of trash grade manuals. You definitely shouldn’t start practicing them, but you definitely should be reading them to incorporate ideas into your own arts. I guarantee things start to click for you now. You won’t be making first rate arts, or even third rate, honestly, but I’d be shocked if what you come up with isn’t at least fifth rate. Stick with it. Good things will come from your hard work.
On a different, but related, topic, while the medical manuals are atrocious, these pills are actually pretty orthodox. Probably looted, or traded from within-normal-tolerances alchemists. I’ll point out the jars to grab. Let’s start with the green top, blue body with the red band running around the neck of the bottle. That’s the one. Cheap bums couldn’t even spring for a jade bottle… anyway. Open it.
The pill that rolled out was a dreamy blueish green. Tian imagined a forest that somehow grew underwater. He wondered what it would be like to be a fish, swimming between and beneath the branches of a bodhi tree.
Beast core pills. They take the elemental cores some beasts condense, and then refine them with herbs and other things to enhance their potency or remove toxins. Remember how you took that mantis creature’s poison core? This is like that, but better. Your Darknorth Sea Art can use it to refine your elemental body more easily. As a result, you will, among other benefits, have access to more qi, and be very slightly more resistant to spells. I want to emphasize the words “very slightly” here. It’s part of Heavenly cultivation- the stronger you get, the less the direct qi attacks of weaker people affect you. But it’s never zero, within the same realm anyway.
Grandpa patted his back. You wanted to turn loot into power. Here you go! And hey, there are even some pills that will help Liren. So get to eating, Grandson. Can’t have dessert without eating your vegetables first.