Chapter 145 - The Loud Peace of Plots

  Hao spent nearly five days in a state of near peace. It left a strange hollow void in the day he filled with more cultivation, busy work, and even less time in the peace he sought when he was in the Secret Realm.

  Cultivation had become a battle of its own; the difficulty had suddenly increased now that he was so close to the peak of a late stage. There was new pressure, too. One to keep up, and surpass, not just with people like Mo Bangcai, but even older generations, like Bangcai’s guardian, and even, just to be significantly better than himself from an hour ago.

  Studying new concepts and literature. He didn’t hesitate to scrounge up techniques other people used around him, not just Cultivation ones, but daily ones. How someone swept. Or how a worker in the medicine hall, like Meiqi, did stitches.

  Other than urgency, there was guilt; He had Meiqi and Zhengqi take a long walk every day to work on the buildings.

  Not that he forced them. But seeing them shiver when they arrived, even with their winter clothing on, felt like a punch to the gut.

  That all faded once the laughter started.

  “Fire, fire, fire,” Meiqi sang every time the two of them arrived. That shook Hao from his meditations every day of those five quiet days.

  That time was precious. The in-between was nothing but a hassle; every hall was busy during those days, dealing with the people that came back from the Secret Realm, oblivious to his participation, or so he thought they were. The only Sect member who knew was Li Tuzai.

  Eventually, after five minutes of thinking about it, he started taking apart old abandoned buildings he found while walking and reading.

  It felt like one of Tuzai’s mumblings. He was taking apart the abandoned parts of a sect to build a place where life could thrive, but there was always a catch in Tuzai’s words, another thing to keep him on edge.

  Why let something gather dust in stagnation when it can thrive in life after death and rebirth? He mocked Tuzai’s voice a few times as he peeled wooden boards from the old servants’ quarters.

  Five days. Nearly a week back from the Secret Realm, all of them full, busy, new songs from Meiqi when she and Zhengqi were not teaching him. Harsh lessons, good ones. Reality checks for him, though just for a moment, he knew it all, each person, another lesson.

  Hao checked with Tuzai often. Even though that seemed like a normal day, he didn’t miss the chance to teach something and then mutter about the dead, dying, or even splutter out a heaping lecture on killing.

  There was occasionally something useful between philosophical musing that sounded like an anti-nihilistic death worshiping whisper screaming the same tune. “I will show you some land animals. Quickly work while you learn their names.”

  Never had he gotten such a uselessly useful lesson from Tuzai. After he learned that the beast he butchered was a mutated demonic form of a creature called a Rhino, Tuzai taught him the best way to kill it, butcher it, and admitted he didn’t know how to cook.

  Hao, of course, didn’t miss the chance to learn about the beasts in his bag. If he knew about them, he could butcher them himself, and so he learned, leaving only the core blood to Tuzai.

  He got the core blood at least. Though when he tried to watch what Tuzai was doing, one of Tuzai’s ghost freak servants dragged him out by his collar.

  Tuzai did the whole beast. That netted Hao one good pelt he could have made into gifts. The robes he promised to two women, he felt guilty for calling servants and dragging them into his childish whims.

  As for the core blood, that was a whole process in itself.

  “Get in here, Hao!” Tuzai called him back into the room after he was dragged out. “Last time you drank it fresh, but if you plan to store it this time, you need a special container. There you can take that, but you…”

  “I have one,” Hao remembered clearly. Tuzai’s face actually shifted when he interrupted, removing the pill that was inside the transparent cyan medicine bottle he had since his servant days.

  Everything Solid stayed preserved inside the Spirit-Holding bag. So the pill he got from Senior Brother Que was safe, and its potency won’t dissipate much, if at all. As for the blood, the Drinking-Stone would devour it into the ocean like a crystal body, and he would lose it forever, getting World Energy in exchange. That was an unfair deal if he had heard of one.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  However, on the fourth and fifth days, he found that not everything would go well. The demand for Amethyst dwindled more than he expected. The sudden influx made them cheaper by the day.

  Not just in the Drifting Stream Sect, but in the other Sects that explore the Sect Realm, too. Their spread should have reached every edge of the Southern tip, even north to a place called ‘Break City’.

  Hao planned to sell a few. He was going to buy access to the floors of the library he had wanted to visit for a while. He threw that plan away when he saw he would get half the price he wanted with double the effort in finding a willing buyer, unless he sold to the sect, and that would make half his brain a dog’s, some he heard Meiqi say once.

  He settled for selling beast parts directly to the Forging Hall. They were the parts of least use to him; still, it was nearly shameful to sell them at the price they sold for.

  The little extra they gave convinced him. It was useless to them, Mortal coin, silver, and gold, but represented a bit of hope to him. The first thing he did was send half of it away; It was cheap to use Sect Points to have a letter delivered by a disciple who could fly.

  He was left with enough points for two things. Nearly a day in the library, and more than enough to make a request to the Forging Hall.

  Five days, and the quiet seemed loud. Familiarity seemed distant; even the sun and moons he knew so well felt odd when they weren’t making life harsher.

  Imagining daggers, and not seeing them, made Hao feel… Empty when he was not busy.

  *

  The sixth day came. Today was his day at the library.

  It was oppressively cold inside; it didn’t bother Hao much, he only noticed it because his breath was fogging his vision as he walked up the stairs.

  The woman who worked at the desk tripped twice while they walked. “Are you alright?” she asked him, pushing her scuffed-up hand against the carpeted floor.

  To which he swiftly replied, “I’m just fine here.” He offered her a hand getting up and directed her hand to the railing that curved with the tower wall. “I can take the key and go the rest of the way myself.”

  She blushed as if she were a young maiden. Yet the newly formed age spots on her cheeks, and her husband, downstairs, silently reading in the corner to himself, said otherwise.

  “No, it’s alright, it is my job now after all, I suppose I will spend the rest of my life here, just like the old He couple.” She muttered, pulling the key to the third and fourth floors back from his open hand.

  The words were like a punch to Hao. The quiet of the building, unable to hear Grandpa He humming to Grandma He as she rocked in her chair, the missing sound was loud enough to have an echo in the silent tower.

  “At least it’s someone who cares about the tower, not those people the First Elder sent here,” Hao said, looking back at her.

  “Oh, the First Elder sent someone here. Well, that can’t be, only the person with the ownership of the Young Leader’s Palace can assign who works in the Library. There is the guardian of Techniques and Secrets.”

  She stepped in front of him, twisting her hips in an agile manner that made her age appear deceptive.

  The key pushed in as she looked back. “That right belongs to the Second Elder or Lady Fang, as I used to call her. She was always pretty, that little nose.”

  At first, her face lit up, then the color changed to a pale disappointment. “But I heard she wears a mask now. She doesn’t wander the Sect anymore either. I wonder what happened.”

  “Anyway, the First Elder can’t put whoever he wants wherever. It’s a tradition, an old couple that failed to advance in thirty years takes the library tower…” Her words faded to a sad squeak as the library’s third-floor door opened.

  Hao was surprised; it sounded like a different person to him. Though the second Elder was beautiful and had a small nose in his opinion, the only thing she did was lurk on her Mountain Peak and sneak around at night. The last thing he could imagine was her walking around, though in her journal, she seemed a different person every five chapters.

  He wasn’t the same person he came here as, so it was nothing suspicious, but it was a curiosity.

  The old woman slapped his shoulder, “What are you standing around for? Head in, I will go unlock… Oh, never mind, bring this key back to me and don’t overstay your limit, dear—Ah, Senior Brother.” She threw the key to him, then hid her chuckle by placing a hand over her mouth.

  The woman was charming at least, in the sense that she may be a fair baker.

  Her husband downstairs was a different story. The scent of slaughter swam around him, his scars a collection uncountable on fingers.

  Yet his mind was deteriorating, similar to Grandpa He. Perhaps that was the fate of old Cultivators who failed to go beyond that limit, stuck in Reclamation. To sit in squalor, swimming in the aura of murder around you, your mind melting.

  Hao pushed it from his mind. He couldn’t let that be his fate; that would mean everyone around him died. The First Elder wouldn’t let him reach that age if he got the chance.

  He either had to win or run. Win what, he didn’t know yet, but pushing down Taoyi and the Fourth Elder was a start, and catching the eye of Senior Guan was even better.

  This Palace of the Young Leader caught his ear. I don’t need to get Guan’s or the Fifth Elder's attention; I need to get the Second Elder’s attention again. Fine, let’s begin.

  The enemy of an enemy was a friend. Those were the first words he read on the third floor of the library tower. He added a note on the piece of parchment he had in his bag. If your enemy is a giant, and you are one small man, make friends with a giant that dislikes the first as much as you, if not more.

  Someday, someone may read it.