Chapter 134

  Chin and I sat beneath a tree, each of us holding a small cup of tea. The tea had come from Hidden Viper’s region, it was a dried variant of a spirit herb. It had lost most of its potency but had aged itself in flavor.

  It was a delicacy. To take something so inherently valuable to most people and to kill it and let it wither, that was an extreme expression of wealth.

  I thought it was okay. Nothing too great but if you had a bunch of these things then it would be nice to make on occasion. But Chin hated the idea.

  “This is a waste,” he commented. “An alchemist could have made this into good pills or drinks. Could have cured a cold or fixed a sore back.”

  He was right. Most of the people here relied on alchemy for their health benefits and it worked better than many other forms of healthcare. People here focused on understanding the metaphysical ailments of the body instead of the physical ones. Oh, they still had germ theory and such, but their cures worked on a different level.

  If someone had a severe cold, fever, or infection, the best cure would be a minor poison. And it wouldn’t be something like cyanide or arsenic, it would be a qi poison. Something that could cause death to all organisms, humans, and bacteria.

  With proper dosage, it would hurt the person only minutely and kill most of the bacteria within their body. Of course, there were other parts, such as a drink that would coat the intestines and make sure their gut microbe would be fine along with a life position that would aid the person in gaining back their strength.

  Most people, mortals, cultivators, and immortals, relied on spiritual herbs and qi-based techniques to ensure their health. Even if you weren’t a cultivator, you still had meridians and qi.

  “It could have,” I said with agreement. “But just enjoy the tea, it is a gift. And you have a decent enough doctor staying here so there’s no reason to think about the medicinal waste.”

  Chin snorted and tasted the liquid a bit before swallowing it down. The gift had come from Rou Xin, one of the new cultivators who had decided to settle down here for a while. He was of the Hidden Viper Sect, his pale skin and black mouth reflecting their poisonous arts. But like any decent poison master, he could heal well and he had settled down in the area in exchange for being the local healer.

  Chin would give him a place to live, a local business, and a stipend and the boy would be expected to heal the villagers for free. He could charge the cultivators whatever he wanted though. It was a good deal, but it didn’t make sense for Rou.

  He was a noble, a direct son of one of the Hidden Viper’s elite, and whatever he could charge the cultivators here wasn’t enough to make up for what he had given up back home.

  But I knew why he left. The Hidden Viper was matriarchal, with their bloodline manifesting stronger in their women than in their men. But the poison aspect had manifested much stronger in this specific boy for some reason. He had a lot of Yin energy resting within his body.

  And in a matriarchal society, he was considered very valuable indeed.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The fellow was a jade beauty.

  He was running away from the myriad of suitors that awaited him back home. With a bloodline manifestation like that there was no way he could have had peace.

  “I just don’t understand it,” Chin said with the tea raised up to the sky.

  He took another sip and seemed to rinse his mouth with it before gulping it all down.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Tasting it,” he grumbled.

  “You like it?”

  “It’s okay,” Chin shrugged emphatically. “But I’d rather have the living thing.”

  I took a sip.

  “You know, they say that tea drinking goes back to the first moments of existence, back when the primordials had settled down and agreed on peace.”

  Chin nodded uncaringly while adjusting his bamboo hat to block the sun. Then he stopped and turned towards me very slowly.

  “How would a tree drink or an insect drink tea?” He asked with confusion.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

  Then Chin turned to look towards Nai.

  She was wearing a onesie and a small robe and was sitting in a meditative pose. Her hands were clasped together and her eyes were closed. She was chanting gibberish. The noise wasn’t even infused with aura to convey her intentions. She was just sitting there and making noise.

  In front of her was a raccoon, a crow, a badger, a skunk, and a handful of other rodents and critters. They tried their best to sit in a similar fashion, a few of them having flipped on their backs in the process. One poor turtle had embraced the position and brought its flippers together in meditation. It would rock sideways sometimes desperately trying to flip itself over but if anyone turned towards it, it would close its eyes and nod.

  Behind Nai was an old dog that was looking surprisingly spry for its age, tail wagging and eagerly waiting for her approval. Every now and again Nai’s eyes would open up, she would pet the dog and then continue in her meditation.

  “Yes, I suppose they have,” Chin replied.

  Far away on another hill were Rin Wi and Medin, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves while having a large and delicious picnic. The maidens were there too, also sipping on some of the same tea and eating light snacks.

  The work hadn’t loosened up, there was still a lot to be done, but we had all chosen to take a break from the rush. Well, Medin had chosen to take the break and everyone else had been forced to go along with it. Chin didn’t like it, but it was necessary. They had both been working almost nonstop for the past two weeks and whatever benefits their new first-rank bodies gave them weren’t enough for how much work they were rushing through.

  And a roughly automatic process is being implemented village-wide right now. Everything from the farming to the cooking was being done by everyone else and Chin and Medin would see how long they would last and what logistical issues would arise. So far everything from the food catering to the private policing was being handled somewhat efficiently.

  Though the cultivator policing was something else entirely. Chin had cut off setting up any new parts of the cultivator town for the day and some of them didn’t like that. A few had tried to raise hell for the villagers and when they did they suddenly found a giant of a man teleporting behind them.

  I had set up Gauntlet on guard duty when I left and the big rock golem had never left that post.

  The punishment wasn’t anything strict. He wouldn’t kill them or maul or even break their dantians. He would just teleport them, now how far depended entirely on their crime.

  One cultivator had tried to steal something from another cultivator and he found himself teleported just a thousand miles outside the region. He should still be able to navigate himself back to the region within the day or night by using the sky as a navigation tool.

  The murderous man found himself in the middle of the wilderness, surrounded by fifth-rank beasts on all sides and almost a million miles away from any sense of civilization. That poor third-rank soul had gotten eaten by an immortal scroll soon after arriving there.

  But even with Gauntlet executing painless yet cruel justice, everything was fine.

  The village people stressed a little under the wait, but for a moment, for a day, they would live.

  Chin sipped the tea, looked out to his village, and smiled.

  He exhaled.

  “It’s a waste, but I don’t mind the flavor,” he whispered.

  Then the old man laid back on the grass with a rare face of satisfaction and closed his eyes.