AIR 134-135

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. 

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. 

Chapter 135 Sewers Part 1

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.

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,”