Chapter 127 - Reactions

I will give an update on my plans for Dao of the Web in the next chapter.

[Table of Contents]

“Ridiculous,” said Youjin Gengxin. The Core Formation cultivator crossed his muscular arms, nose flaring. His wounds from fighting the wretched emissary were all but healed, his powerful form flexing with power. Yet his fingers gripped his biceps and eyes rolled, looking away from Ziyou Yung’s projection in the sky. “He coddles people like a loving mother, telling loving lies about how the world is supposed to be.”

“Give it enough time, and maybe the world will break his naïve bones. It isn’t a bad thing,” the Flareful Empress replied.

Gengxin cocked his head at the woman, pupils narrowing into points.

He did not expect the Unfolding Heaven Realmer to reply to his musings. Is it the new pet? Sheesh, women. Whenever the powerful cultivator played with the little lemur lass, her eyes would be alight with joy, and she no longer glared at everyone in proximity with lethal origin qi flared.

“Will it? With the Su Princess around?” Gengxin carefully raised his doubts. “The Revived Grace will let her toy play. She’s always done so before, so no reason to stop now. She doesn’t care what harm the toy’s actions cause.”

“Are you worried about your little clan?”

“The Youjin clan is Liu’s. I care not for it. What I worry about is the toy’s appetite.”

The Flareful Empress angled her chin up. The little lemur lass pointed at a bug, and the empress’s palm pressed down on the creature’s head before it could open its mouth. She then tilted her head full of violet hair at Gengxin. Go on, as if to say.

“With all due respect, Fellow Daoist Flareful,” Youjin Gengxin tapped the side of his temple, “for the Su Princess, our Warring Twilight Region is nothing but a playground. Even if to us, it is our world. It won’t be strange if she gives the region up to the madlander boy just because. And with the boy’s backward ideas, our very way of life will be threatened.”

“From toy to boy, are you afraid of the azure wind?” The Flareful Empress’s voice echoed with a contemptuous legato.

“That is beside the point.”

“We bow to the azure wind. And if the wind carries the boy, we shall bow to him.”

“Don’t you care about the Dawn Dragon Throne? About your son and the legacy of your empire?”

“This one does. Such care is not opposed to the Su Princess’s whims.”

Youjin Gengxin opened his mouth, but his jaw muscles cramped, so he closed them again.

Why is she so calm? The Flareful Empress was a cultivator who cared the most about traditions and face. She called Ziyou Yung out during the Sect Recruitments. But now…

This was a jarring shift.

Did getting her face slapped awaken something in her? There were people like that.

“Your face could offend, Youjin Gengxin. You must be a terrible mahjong player,” the Flareful Empress said.

“Fellow Daoist, it is not good to accuse without proof.” Icy wind touched Gengxin’s neck. Can she read minds?

“The world is the playground of the strong,” the Empress, a regal monarch and the strongest local cultivator present, said with her eyes looking at the heavens, her gaze lost toward the stars as if her memories had travelled back to the past.

She caressed a woollen wristband. Barmaids around the Dim Gold City wore these too. To mark them as the owner’s favoured. Hands off to ruffians. “One day, you are happy in your ordinary life.” She said, “The next, it is turned upside down on the whims of the strong. Emperor, peasant, maid, queen, does it matter at all? Answer this, Youjin Gengxin. Do you care what effects your actions have on the mortals?”

“I am no devil cultivator. And neither the Youjin Clan nor the Selenosilver Valley—”

“Do you hesitate to take a treasured jade from a mortal’s unwilling grasp? To uproot the entire clan of innocents for the offence of one murderous kin?”

The jaw cramp returned.

“You feel it’s your divine right to take the jade. You rage with a shut mouth as you do now, when the mortal’s immortal grandfather shows up with a sword to your neck. You feel like the unjust victim when the immortal grandfather tries to take your own treasured jade as compensation.”

Even a fool could see where the Empress was going with this. Genxing’s cheeks stung, and maybe if he looked away, the other cheek would sting too.

“You are strong. The mortals are weak. You are weak, the Su are strong. That is all there is to it. That is all there has been, and all there will be.” The Flareful Empress gently brushed the lemur’s fur, but the small fiend flailed, trying to escape the grasp to chase after the firefly. It cooed at the unjust situation.

It was weak. The Empress was strong.

“It is better to accept this now, Youjin Gengxin.” The Empress let the lemur go, and the creature bounded after the bug with quick, adorable hops. “Until the Revived Grace says otherwise, we are the toys, and the boy is the child who just got a present.”

***

“What do you think? Is this a good thing or bad?” Youjin Liu asked the clan elders.

They sat at the ends of a long wooden table. The maids brewed tea, others played flutes and zithers. They were courtesans of scholarly virtues, the best in town. Some lustful men had their eyes glued to their busts.

Youjin Liu’s wife sharpened her words with ink on a scroll, seated beside him. Her eyes scanned those present, and the lustful gazes retreated.

“We lay our foundation in the Enclave, and we are untouchable,” said one elder, slapping the table.

“Our fate dangles on that madlander boy’s whims,” added another. “My daughter is of age, and blood far enough to be moral.”

“You fool! You wish to steal the Su princess’s bed warmer? Do you have a death wish for the clan?”

“A man can have one or two concubines.”

They argued like children.

“If it was the Su clan itself, I would have no problems. But I can’t accept bowing down to a madlander.” Another elder gritted his teeth, his voice drowning the others’.

“Ziyou Maque broke through,” Youjin Gangkai said with a grunt. “If not for the boy, we would have to bow our heads to a more cunning hawk.”

“The patriarch’s elder brother—”

“He has no official affiliation to the clan. You wish to beg and break tradition?”

When replies were not found, wine was drunk, as if that was an answer.

“Leader Free Sparrow only broke through because he accompanied Yung. As did we,” Gangkai continued. It was rare for the man to speak so much. “And soon, some of us may break through too. Although the 3rd realm is far away, it is on the horizon still.”

“It’s as Elder Gangkai says,” Youjin Liu sipped tea, then placed the cup down without making a sound. The stress from the day washed away, as did the fear that the lightning would suddenly strike down.

Everyone was twitchy. Even the sombre Gangkai and quiet Youjin Yetu.

No one wanted to lose their cultivation. Today, many of their family and friends had. People they had shared tea with in many past events.

They were branded sinners today, humiliated in public, then locked away.

Is this how mortals feel, in the presence of cultivators? Not knowing when calamity will strike? Did I feel like so too when I could not cultivate? Liu savoured the thought like the poisoned apple it was. No, the clan was there.

“Whatever the case, our road is straight.” The patriarch declared, leaving no room for objections. “Don’t hold back, fund the celebrations. Help the Dark Star Mercenaries settle in. Clear a road to the Graceful Wind Fortress.”

The door to the meeting room opened, and the auction house elder walked in. He could hardly hold in his grin as he sat. “The Water Merchants are here. They will open a branch.”

There was a buzz. Water Merchants, an abbreviation for the Gold Sea Deep Waters Chamber of Commerce.

Now there’s another hegemonic power on a par with the Su here. Youjin Liu held back his grin.

Water merchants only opened branches in places that mattered. The Madlander Abyss to the south, the cities of the Radiant Sun Empire to the north. The capital of the Dawn Dragon Throne, the luxurious Moonvalley trade city.

And now, Dim Gold City too.

The Xiyue are going to freak out. This basically means the Youjin clan’s territory matters more than the royal chambers of the kingdom.

“They barter with the Lost Plane,” Youjin Liu said. “If we aren’t careful, the name of the city might change soon. More powers will show up, none of whom we can offend.” He chugged the tea down, falling back to his fiendhunter days. The heat singed his throat, waking him up from the boring past years.

“But they are new, and we already have Ziyou Yung’s favour.” Liu spoke, “He is a boy who talks reason, though his actions may be motivated by naïve emotions.”

“That makes it easier.” The auction house elder said.

Youjin Jiashui put the ink brush away and showed the paper to her husband. It was a list of things she would do with their daughter during the celebrations.

“The new paradigm is already here. If we follow its trend, the Youjin will rise. If we don’t, we will be replaced,” Liu said.

The murmurs grew, and more plans were made. He left them to it. Some agreed, some didn’t.

Liu left the room, Jiashui trotting behind him like a happy chick. He would follow the paradigm with his wife and child, even if the rest of the clan didn’t.

It was about time he broke through to the third realm, before that Maque could rub it in his face more.

***

The cell had a bed upon which Chao sat, a place to remove waste covered by a bucket, and a small window in the wall through which he could see the unchanging stumps of the trees outside.

Ziyou Yung’s voice came in through it.

“The Sects and clans will foot the bill. So come with me and let us make merry.”

With that, the azure wind left.

If it wasn’t for his special sight, Chao would not have been able to see the magical messengers.

The wind came and went, as did the snakes in the shadows, who were more watchers than passerby.

They spied on him whilst he slept. They didn’t know that Chao never truly slept.

He gazed at the red eye of the sun in his dreams.

Youjin Chao let his three qis circulate throughout his body. His eyes were closed, legs crossed, and as Ziyou Yung’s voice disappeared, his attention shifted inside.

The hours dragged on. If an observer were there, they would see a red glow of fire permeate the cell.

Morning came, and the red glow disappeared.

Youjin Chao opened his eyes.

The manifestation of red qi burned the gunk on his body off, leaving behind red ashes. They were the remnants of the impurities in his blood.

He clenched his fist, then opened them again. Popping sounds echoed.

“12th stage…” Youjin Chao muttered. He was at the peak of the realm now.

Of both Spirit and Body cultivation.

Whose memories are these? Chao saw a past he did not know he had lived, a life of war and valour. Of failing to attain the dao, wishing to live again in death.

The memories were not the paltry specs of information Youjin Fuqiang had left behind. He could use them as evidence at best in his future investigations.

These memories, though, blood-soaked and burning, they were from the eye.

His eye.

When Youjin Fuqiang had tried to take over Chao’s body, something had broken before its time.

A shackle put in place by the very Grand Dao itself, meant to protect and nurture its child.

A Dao Child.

Only now did Chao get why his grandmother called him that.

It was a special moniker. It meant truth.

It meant power.

I am the Dao Child of Blood and Fire, of the Evil Eye of the Crimson Sun.

One day, Chao would take his revenge on the Huagou Clan. And the world would behold his power.

His mind was filled with the eye, Su Nanya, Ziyou Yung, and — “What do Fiery Wine Lemurs eat?”

A firefly flew past the window.

Chao went back to meditation. He failed to notice the Mirror Fortress, bound by runic chains that sealed its power, rustle, as if to move away from its awakened owner.

***

Ziyou Maque drank away like a thirsty camel.

He was a 3rd realmer now. A big boy.

Then why does it feel so shitty?

He burped. The wine was too weak to numb him to his doubts and sorrows. His Spark Formation Origin Qi cultivation would not let him get drunk.

“Boss, what do we do with the widow?” shouted a gang member.

“Give her a stipend, and put her name on the victims' list,” Maque said. “No way she knew what her husband was up to.”

The husband was a cultist. He was a team leader of the gang and now a husk of char in the prisons.

“Aye!” the gang member said and sprinted off.

Too much paperwork, aye. Maque didn’t look forward to the coming days. It would be all about the Sanctification related cleanup, long and boring. The only saving grace was perhaps, his gang was rid of much filth now, of the void kind.

Ziyou Maque lounged on the roof of his house slash dojo, the headquarters of the Free Sparrow Gang.

His eyes glared at the moon as if trying to make it go away.

It stung, the memories of his dead wife.

Oh, if she could see him now.

She’d laugh. Then slap my arm. Then… then…

A 3rd realmer. She would have been so proud.

If only—

“Boss! There’s a runner from the Youjin Clan. Asks us if we wanna do this sponsor thing.”

“Our slums gonna be two-thirds of the teams for the football matches. If we don’t sponsor, who will?” Maque downed another gourd of wine and shouted the orders.

“Old news, old man. The Zheng and Youjin are recruiting strong mortals with quick legs.”

“Sponsor! Get the tailors to make’em domineering… what’s it called, ‘jersey’ robes? Have them paint the gang insignia on all sides.”

“Aye.”

Grunts came and went. Houses to clean, ledgers to mark.

Let’s be lazy. Maque threw the wine gourd at a gang lackey and the poor sod got the message.

Finally, peace. The hours went by with the rustling cool wind in his braided hair. The moon dipped lower; the sun rose from the other side.

“What plans do you have for the slums?” asked his guest. “As a Spark Formation cultivator, you deserve to be more than a mere gang leader.”

“And what’s a fancy-pants sect elder like you doing, caring about mere a gang leader’s business?” Maque said.

“Work with us.” The plump elder of the Victorious Tide Island said.

“We all work for the Su.”

“We can give you the techniques and the resources to reach the next realm.”

“So can the Su Clan, and by my reckon, don’t you folks have only one Dao Vessel cultivator? Grand Elder whatshisname.”

“You aren’t Ziyou Yung. The Su Clan doesn’t care for all madlanders equally.”

“Why do you want my help then if I ain’t the kid?”

The elder from the Victorious Tide Island tossed Maque a jade slip. In it, there was a spear-based martial art relating to underwater volcanoes.

Maque read the brief description. It went well with his Dao aspect of the Pyroclastic Calderabreaker.

To read the whole thing, he would need to break the seal on the slip.

It would create a business tie with the Victorious Tide Island. He would be an honorary elder.

“This Enclave and the Lost Plane in it are Su property now. But the Azure Deep Island needs to be in the Lost Plane.”

“Why?”

“It’s an ocean world.”

“I’ll have to tell this to Young Yung.”

“That is alright with me. The Envoy from the Azure Deep Island would meet him soon anyway,” the plump elder said.

There was a slight pause.

“Do you know what the boy is up to?”

Maque laughed and broke the seal. He couldn’t tell for the love of the mad heavens.

***

“Well Silky,” Yung rolled his sleeves up to his upper arms and took out his jade carving knives, “looks like we’re making the radio first.”