Chin and I walked through the village and made our way through the place. It was a little empty with most of the villagers having gone to do their part for the merchants and such. It was always quiet during the rainy season but this season it was almost dead silent during the noon hours of the day.

  There were the faint noises of children running around somewhere, playing hide and seek throughout the place. Occasionally an adult would come by and tell them off for running around the place so brazenly. There were open shops and empty houses out here, and curious children could find their way into all sorts of trouble.

  But the children avoided Chin like mice running from a barn cat, so we didn’t see them much, if at all.

  “What do you need me for again?” I asked Chin.

  The last time he had dragged me out to somewhere, it was to plow a field. The time before that had been to weed a garden and the time before that had been to castrate a bull.

  I didn’t mind the work. I could do it all faster than the speed of light, but Chin was never satisfied. When he asked me to do stuff, it was always to get me to work rather than him needing things done. The field didn’t need to be tilled, but Chin hated it when I was lazy. He didn’t need help castrating a bull, he just wanted me to help for the sake of helping. If I did anything instantly, it just made him all the more angry and sour.

  He was the antithesis of apathy. He didn’t just want to do something for a reason but wanted to do something for the sake of doing it. He had calmed down on that recently and I had started working on my own affairs as well.

  I had been getting ready, pushing myself, and a few other things in preparation.

  I hadn’t said anything to Chin but I could tell he knew I was up to something. He could tell that something was taking up my time and in response, he had seemed to ease his own nagging.

  “I need you to listen to Po Pen and Xi Lu’s idea.”

  “What idea?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  There was an unfamiliar frown on his face. Chin Chin was the king of frowns, a master of them, but this was a particular type of upset. Something was bothering him and he was unable to justify it, so he had brought me in.

  I was the mediator.

  “You know, Mei Shan is probably better for this type of thing,” I commented.

  Chin’s frown deepened.

  “I’ve already talked to her,” he replied.

  “And you didn’t like her answer?”

  “Just tell me what you think when you hear it,” He shrugged.

  I nodded. I had a vague guess as to what this was about but I would entertain it. It would probably be mostly theater for Chin. He was a good man but he wasn’t infallible. He was stubborn and insistent on his own ways. If he thought he knew better it would take a literal god to convince him otherwise, which was probably why I was here.

  “This is important,” was all he would say.

  I sighed and kept on walking. Ten minutes later we were past the outskirts of the village and on the opposite side of cultivator town. We were near the edge of the desert now and the smell of shit leaked everywhere.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Chin scrunched up his nose and sniffed.

  “It was never this bad before.”

  “Enhanced senses means enhanced smell,” I replied.

  “Can you smell this more than I can?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “From the village?”

  “From everywhere. The girls can smell it too, as can Nai.”

  Chin’s already deep frown deepened.

  The desert was at a lower elevation than the valley. To enter the village, you’d need to go uphill for quite some time. The change in elevation was the reason this giant latrine was here, to begin with. The poop, whether from the merchant's beasts, merchants, or mortals themselves, was all gathered here. For about a few miles out, you’d see giant clumps of shit in various states of rot. Chin would normally have it all buried on a field somewhere as fertilization, but that would be after Po Pen had processed it.

  The processing was as simple as it was harsh. Bacteria lived in feces and those bacteria needed to be killed. Po and his helpers would trudge a few miles out into the desert during the night and lay out all the feces onto a set of flat rocks. Then during the day, the rocks would cook the feces and all of the bacteria within it would die.

  The whole process was simple, but extensive and tiring.

  We approached the building where Po did his business so to speak.

  “Honored Master,” Xi Lu spoke.

  She was wearing a blue and green set of robes, something simple from this region, the Hidden Viper most likely. I knew the girls were trading with some of the merchants for clothes and jewelry. It seemed strange to me as they could have made things of higher quality with their own hands, but they seemed to enjoy it.

  Po Pen wore his usual brown-grey robes, along with an unfitting green scarf wrapped around his neck. It looked out of place, even when compared with Xi Lu’s clothing. It was high quality and even had false meridians inscribed into it.

  I smiled.

  “Xi Lu,” I greeted.

  The formalities were still there with her but they were from politiness rather than fear. Most of the girls didn’t seem to be afraid of me anymore. I could lie to myself and say my personality was having a beautiful impact on their mental well-being but that wasn’t true.

  The real reason was due to my dao. It was officially past the immortal realm and had trespassed into the seventh rank. That meant its effect would become more prominent as time went by.

  She gave Chin a kind but stern smile and Chin’s frown loosened up a bit.

  “And Po Pen,” I added. “The first rank treats you well.”

  The small giant smiled slightly and nodded. The scarf was a gift from Xi Lu. The first rank was difficult but it was all about foundation and control. Po had just recently advanced and I doubted he had enough control over himself to limit his own sense of smell.

  But the scarf with a simple filtration array fitted him wonderfully.

  “Everyone’s a cultivator,” Chin said. “Even the dog and the crows.”

  Xi Lu ignored it and held out a large piece of parchment. They were blueprints, large dug-out caves that would extend deep beneath the earth.

  Sewers.

  I looked through them, glancing lightly at each page until I got a good grasp of what Xi Lu was trying to do.

  “Ah,” I replied. “These are very large sewers. You want to build sewers that big because you expect the village to become a city and believe it would be easier to start digging now and Chin wants to wait.”

  “It’s not that simple-” Chin began.

  “And Chin doesn’t like it because the expanded sewers don’t only imply an influx of cultivators but an influx of mortals as well.”

  “And-” Chin tried to add.

  “And sewers wouldn’t allow him to harvest the feces for fertilizers.”

  “Yes, also-” Xi began.

  “Xi expects cultivator poo will act much differently than mortal poo and doesn’t want to use feces as fertilizer anymore. She would rather employ earth-based techniques and maybe some fertilizer instead of the current process.”

  Po scratched his head.

  “Yeah Po, a lot of differing opinions.”

  I took another look at the blueprints.

  Truthfully, Xi was right. Chin was a cultivator and sooner or later, he could make an apple tree grow out of a rock if he wanted to. This whole process of using feces could become obsolete. She wanted to make the village more efficient and prepare for the possible influx of people that might be coming this way.

  And Chin refused to throw away all that he knew just to rely on cultivation. I had to practically force him into the first rank. It seemed strange to obsess over this, but it was different for Chin.

  It was change, change to the most fundamental thing he knew, farming.

  I reworked the blueprints, changing some sections and keeping others the same, while erasing some parts and adding new ones.

  “Well, I have a compromise,”

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