AIR Chapter 77-79

AN: So tired, been writing all night. Sleepy. Good night.

Chapter 77 Chieftan Part 1

Chin chewed on a sugar cane out in the middle of a field. The sun was hidden and the clouds were full. 

“It’s going to rain soon,” he muttered. 

“How’dya figure?” The farmer next to him asked. 

“It just will,” Chin replied. “Get packed and clear the fields, and tell everyone to get inside. This one will be a heavy one.”

The young lad nodded and made his way to the surrounding fields. That was Chin’s doing. He had set up a messenger system. This one lad would go to a field and warn them about the weather, two from there would do the same for someone else, and so on and so forth. 

That was the way it had to be done with this rainy season. The Kong Clan were arrogant bastards. The rain would come quickly and flood them all otherwise. The Void Blade Sect ruled the Empire along with the Imperial Family, and they were in charge of the weather throughout the lands. Someone had to be, otherwise most of the land would become inhospitable. 

Chin had asked Mister Bill how they managed such a thing, not because he cared of course, but because the information might help with the farming. It hadn’t. 

At a few points across the vast empire, someone would be sent out and they would create clouds that would then propagate all over the empire. These points were called storm points and they were strategically located to cover the entire empire in rain for a few months out of the year.

Now most clans would have the decency to spare whatever resources they had and take their time in producing these clouds, creating the proper amount of them over a certain period of time. 

The Kongs did no such thing. Their rainy season would last two and a half months at most, one and a half at worst, and they would compensate for that by overproducing the necessary clouds. Every rain was a storm and every storm was a flood. They actually overproduced rain in truth. There would be five the amount of rainfall in one Kong season than in any other clan’s doing. 

Flooding was a problem, as was the shortness of the season. 

Chin didn’t plant much during the rainy season, few crops could grow during that time and few more could withstand the flooding. Most of the farmers and village would be busy serving the hoards of merchants that were passing through. And today was no different.

Standing from a hilltop, Chin could see the tens of thousands of pack beetles littering the place. They were large beasts capable of carrying thousands of pounds of goods, most of which were for mortals. But something was different now, there were more people and yet somehow fewer people.

The pack beetles were used by mortal traders or people of the first and second rank, transporting goods from one side of the Great Desert Strip to another. And those traders had the most to move. 

Clothing, food, spices, herbs, books, and all other manners of mortal goods came through here, and they took up space. But cultivator goods like jades, spirit stones, cultivation scrolls, pills, spiritual herbs, beast parts, and weapons, were small. 

One of their swords could be worth one full-third-rank spirit stone. It would be made out of a magic metal of some sort and it could slice through rocks and trees as if they were air. And there were a lot more of those types of traders coming through now.

Single cultivators on the backs of spirit beasts would come trampling through the region with a single chest or one of those storage space devices. There was a fourth rank on the back of a tiger everybody seemed to be afraid of, and a fifth rank who kept trying to talk to the maidens. 

Rin Wi had smacked that one red and bloody, and the poor bastard had nearly popped. 

He reminded Chin of a tomato by the end of it all. 

There were more cultivators now and Chin was visibly annoyed by that. He grabbed the equipment, along with the other aids, and they all said their goodbye. 

“Goobye Mister Chin!”

“We’ll see ya tomorrow Mister Chin!”

“Make sure to stay off the fields for the night, Mister Chin!”

Chin just nodded. No one took offense to that, they all knew better. 

Chin walked back to his home, where his amazing wife stood waiting for him with a plate full of food. 

His amazingly stubborn wife. Three minutes later he was on his third plate. This was his punishment, he had forgotten to come in for lunch and he hadn’t finished his breakfast. 

Thankfully the woman let him go after that and he went outside to fetch some water from the well to bathe with. 

An hour later he was clean, full, and tired. It would have been the perfect time to go to bed.

Chin sighed. He could not. He put on his robes, the uncomfortable ones with the fancy collar and embroidered tree, and went to fetch Rin Wi. 

“Rin, let’s head out,” he stated. 

Rin Wi was in the kitchen, cutting up some ginseng into a pot. 

“Chin,” a voice boomed. 

Chin frowned. 

“Rin Wi was just making some tea here, want some?” 

Mister Bill sat at the table with a cup waiting expectantly. Medin sat with him, talking to him and also hounding him to eat as well. 

“Chiny,” Medin stated. “Where ya heading out at this time of night?”

Chin glared at Mister Bill, who was now sipping his tea and looking in any direction other than him. 

“To deal with the cultivators he brought in,” Chin stated. 

“I didn’t bring them in, they came here by themselves.”

Chin kept glaring. 

“You want me to kick them out?” Mister Bill asked. 

He did. 

Chin didn’t want to talk to cultivators. He wanted to sleep, then he wanted to farm, but because of that old bastard he now talked to some prissy guy in robes. 

But he couldn’t say no. These talks would only benefit the village, not hurt them. And as the village chief, the burden of negotiation fell upon him. 

“Let's go,” Chin stated looking directly at Mister Bill.

“Who me?” Bill stated, feigning a reaction.

Chin didn’t elaborate.

“Why do I have to go?” The man whined. 

Chin just glared in response. 

“Fine, but Rin is coming with and so is Mei.”

Chin shrugged. 

“Rin, go get Mei Shan.”

Rin, the ever-silent, nodded. 

Chin liked her. She had taken to cooking like he had taken to farming, and she had now become Medin’s shadow, working alongside her and sharing tea and gossip with the woman at any time. 

They had clicked, like an old pair of friends. Medin often told him that Rin Wi reminded her of Chin. She said the girl talked little and cooked a lot, and that she had little tolerance for cultivators. 

Chin liked that. He had started taking her to the cultivator encampments as security. A few of them had threatened Chin and a lot of them had flown off into the wind.

Rin had taken one fellow and spun him around by his legs so fast that she had started a small tornado in the place.

She had a name now, Chin had heard. A title, The Silent Guard of The Immortal Oasis Sect. 

Chin just thought of her as the local police. Over the weeks, more and more people had been calling the girls in as authorities, often to mediate. 

And the one with the most talent for that was Mei Shan, followed closely by Rin Wi. She had become the defacto arbitrator of any dispute within the valley. She was always fast and fair, always. 

The other day Chin had been approached by two villagers, one yelling about his sickly dog claiming the other had poisoned it. Mei Shan had quickly figured out the truth, and had even cured the dog, and stated, as a punishment, the neighbor wouldn’t be allowed to have his own dog for a year. 

When the perpetrator rebelled against that, stating he needed his herding dogs to make a profit, she continued to threaten to take his sheep as well. And he could use the dogs for herding, as long as he rented them from Chin. They’d go back to being his within the year and half the income would go to the grieved party while the other half would go to village income. 

Both parties accepted the agreement and the culprit wallowed his way back home. 

She was a good lady, a smart lady, and one capable of resolving most situations. Her presence within the village had lightened Chin’s shoulders mightly. Rin Wi was all well and right but Mei Shan was a natural leader. 

Honestly, he was thinking about making her a village elder and he doubted anyone would have a problem with it. And with the sudden rise of population, they were bound to experience, Chin was slowly growing fonder of the idea. 

Chapter 78 Chieftan Part 2

Chin walked with a frown. 

A cultivator came to him to talk, a third rank. He bowed to Rin and Mei but he was completely oblivious to Mister Bill. Everyone was. 

Chin sighed. 

“Oh well, the members of the Immortal Oasis Sect are here,” someone cried.

The makeshift streets parted in front of him and people looked. 

They didn’t look at him though, only through. To them, he was a decoration, an extra. Something to do with politics or face, a servant maybe. All they truly saw were Rin Wi and Mei Shan and he was like the dust on a pearl. 

Chin didn’t care. He walked through the crowd, leading the four of them into a courtyard-like area that had been kept just for this type of occasion. There was a tent at the center of it. It wasn’t a bad tent, but compared to all the lavish shades and beautiful fabric the other tents were made of, it was practically rags. 

Chin walked towards it. This was his meeting station. It was where he met with cultivators and merchants, people who wanted to settle down her and set up shops. There was an immortal here, after all, one that did not allow violence. A lot of cultivators knew this, but the news had yet to soak into the region's mind. 

Immortals were gods to these people, even if someone stated it, that didn’t mean it was true. But it was only a matter of time before that changed, and even now, many flooded his village. 

It was to be expected. 

Chin felt a hand on his shoulder. 

“Wait a minute,” Mister Bill said. 

Rin Wi walked past him and stood firmly in front of the tent. 

“Come out!” She yelled. 

The tent flap opened to reveal a man behind it. He looked tired, partially asleep, and ragged. He opened his mouth and yawned and Chin saw teeth as black as night. He had blond hair and wore strange striped robes. 

Behind him was another man, this one was awake and well-dressed. His clothes were simple but prim. His robe folded in on itself in the most proper way possible and everything about him seemed just right. 

Except for his eyes. The man had something dark over his eyes, something glass-like held up by two thin metallic bars that hung on his ears. Another metallic bar covered the bridge of his nose, connecting the dark glass circles. 

“Now those are some expensive shades,” Mister Bill commented. 

Chin didn’t ask. He knew better now. It was either a cultivator’s phrase or some strange thing from another world. 

“Are you the guy in charge?” The man with black teeth asked. 

He had looked at him. The man had looked not at Rin or Mei but rather at Chin, and he was clearly at the fourth rank. He should have been able to sense their power. 

Chin nodded. And the man with black teeth rubbed his head lazily. 

“They said this is where I would find the village chief, they didn’t warn me about the security though,” the man spoke. 

He looked the two women up and down, and while that would have been an insult to some, Chin could sense nothing but admiration from his gaze. 

His aura was open and unkempt and his emotions were not hidden. Respect, admiration, envy, and a little bit of fear. 

It was strange. 

Chin had met many cultivators; none were nearly as open as this one. He had only recently broken into the first rank, but even then, of the cultivators he had met none were as open as this one. 

It was overwhelming, like a stew with too much spice. 

“Right, well I wanted to set up shop here and I guess I fell asleep waiting for you. Oh, and this guy decided to wait as well,” the man spoke, pointing at the well-dressed man behind him.

“Who are ya?” Chin asked.

“Rou Xin,” the man replied. 

Informal, quick to the point. Chin liked that. 

The girls stared at him with light suspicion and worry. Why’d they do that, Chin wondered. Weren’t they stronger than him? Mister Bill was still staring at the other man behind him, eyes glistening in curiosity and his tail waving slowly behind him. 

“What’s your business?” Chin asked. 

“Uh, medicine. I was hoping I could settle down here and start selling some medicine here,” the man replied.

“Got any baggage?” Chin asked. 

“Baggage?” The man asked. 

“Any assassins or sects that are after ya?” Chin clarified. 

He’d had a few of those, criminals trying to hide from their punishment underneath him. Some he allowed, if he sympathized with them, but others he tossed out with no remorse. Well, Rin Wi did the tossing, but he nodded along from the sidelines. 

“No one’s after me,” the man replied. “Maybe my family but, they already know I’m here.”

“Do they wanna kill ya?” Chin asked. 

It was an absurd idea, a family wanting to kill each other, but Chin had to ask. These cultivators were strange folk. 

“Nope,” the man replied cheerfully. 

“And who would yer services be to?” Chin asked. 

“Anyone really,” the man replied.

Chin thought about this for a second. They already had a doctor who sold herbs and treated people. But she was old and her back ached worse with every growing day. She had children and other people who helped run the shop, but they weren’t nearly as capable as her. 

But Chin would be weary of placing the entire village’s medical needs upon one stray cultivator. That would be stupid and short-sighted. 

“You can live here and work here, as long as you provide some texts and teach some students three times a week,” Chin finally said. 

“Students?” The man asked. 

“Our doctor’s getting old and she’s wanted to retire for a while. You can take over her shop with her permission and teach her students while you do so.”

“Teaching mortals?” The man said, mouthing the words curiously. “How interesting. I’ll do it.”

Then the man stuck his hand out to Chin and without flinching, Chin shook it. 

Rin and Mei still seemed tense for some reason. 

“Mei Shan can get you sorted out for the night and she’ll talk to our doctor for you,” Chin said. 

“Thanks!” The man replied. 

“And you?” Chin asked, looking at the second man. 

“I’m just passing through, seniors,” he replied, giving a formal bow to Rin and Mei. “How long are we permitted to stay here?”

“As long as you like if you pay for room and board. If you want to live here though, you’ll have to book that through Mei.”

“I see,” the man replied suddenly staring intently at Chin. 

“Just head up to the inn over there and ask for a long-term room. We just finished building a few yesterday. There should be one available right now.”

The man stared at Chin for just an instant more before nodding and heading off. Several other cultivators who had been listening in on the discussion also made their way to the inn. 

The building was being done by Madam Rose and her people, along with Bri Lou. The girl seemed to like working with her hands so Chin had assigned her to the local carpenters within the village, and she seemed to be leading the operations, wanting to build taller and taller buildings. 

Chin didn’t know if they had the resources for that, but she and Xi Lu had gotten into talks about sewers, and underground tunnels exclusively for waste management. Apparently all the big cities had them and Bri was insistent on building them before the expansion could grow too far.

It had been months since the girls had arrived but they had all taken to the village nicely. 

Chin smiled for just the slightest second at that thought. Then he walked into the tent to start on the business. There was a lot to listen to, a lot to plan, and as much as he didn’t want to do it, he knew Mei Shan did.

He couldn’t read the girl for the life of him, but Rin Wi had told him that was the case. 

He had been annoyed back when they’d been dumped at his doorstep, but now he couldn’t imagine the village without them. They were vital to the place, and more importantly, they were valued. 

More and more villagers wanted to hear Rin Wi’s recipes and have Mei Shan judge over their disputes. Xi Lu and Po Pen were an odd but pleasant pair to see wandering the streets and talking. 

Lin Tai was always busy in the forest doing Heavens know what, but she came back smiling nowadays, and she talked to him and the other villagers with a smile. 

They all stiffened up around cultivators though, and they practically turned to stone around Mister Bill. He scared them, instinctively. 

Every one of them except for Rin Wi started acting differently around that man. 

And that made Chin feel something he had never felt towards the old cultivator, pity. 

The man meant well, he always meant well. He always cared. He was a strange fellow, true, but he wasn’t scary. For all his power, he was just an old and lazy hermit who came down for dinner once in a while. 

Chin sighed. 

If he believed in the gods, he would have prayed for those girls. But then again, the gods were the ones who had done this to them in the first place. 

Chapter 79

I sat cross-legged staring out into a field of flowers, and I watched. In the distance, thousands of miles away from me was a man. 

I could have used a lot of words to describe this fellow, powerful, angry, resilient, persistent. 

But none of those would be enough. 

He leaped forward banging his fists against the doors of immortality, and once again he was rejected. 

Mad would have been a good word for him, insane maybe.

But I would call him sad. 

A false immortal was a person who had managed to gain an unaging body, something that would persist for millennia but did not have the dao to persist. 

Ah-Min Tah, I had asked about the strongest person within the region back when I had first talked to Cai, but now that I was looking at him, I felt nothing but pity. 

The body could persist. It could be fixed, healed, remade, and rejuvenated, but the soul was such a delicate thing. 

The man pounded against eternity once more, and eternity did not care. 

The pursuit of cultivation was a beautiful thing. Cultivators themselves could be disgusting, but cultivation, cultivation was beautiful.

To push yourself beyond the edge and into the depths of infinity, to seek an absolute existence and rely on nothing but your own strength, there was beauty in that. That was the beautiful side, the thing Wukong represented, determination and power, independence and freedom. 

There were also virtuous souls who sought power, not for themselves, but for the world. They sought to be a force of good and to make the world change for the better. I wasn’t one of them, but I admired them. 

And there were the evil bastards, the selfish animals who fought to control all they could and use everything as they pleased. They were repulsive, but beautiful in their own way. Even though they were admirable in their attempts, a great evil was still great after all.

But this, this failure I looked at. This made me sad. 

I had watched him for three whole days, during which he had failed to break through the gates of immortality five hundred times. 

Only to immediately try again afterward. His failure didn’t register, not anymore. 

Maybe he had been growing at some point, changing each attempt to better push against his mortal coil, but he would not shed it.

Immortality wasn’t a light thing. It could not be brute forced, at least not by him. 

By living beyond your allocated time, you wore down your very existence. The body then became an anchor giving you more time and if you could manage it, it would become an island. An esoteric healing technique, a strange energy, a sacred artifact, something to keep not aging and alive. 

After that you’d assume you had all the time in the world. You’d be a bit lazy, then you’d be smart and try to make it into the immortal rank there. And a few would make, a lot would die, this poor bastard did neither. 

Then for the first time in your life, you would feel another thing age. Your soul, your very mind would wither, you would forget lovers and children, lifetimes would slip away like the memories of an errand. First events, then people, then language, and eventually, even whatever dao you had left. 

Time, it was the dementia of the soul. 

I sighed and took a breath, then I moved. 

The man, no, the thing saw me and in its primitive little brain it sensed what I had. It knew what I was, and it striked. 

I dodged and kept dodging. It kept attacking, and sometimes I would block, if only to save any innocent below us. 

After three days, he withered. His qi was all but spent and his soul was all but empty. 

He stood on the ground, glaring hatefully at me for a moment before his eyes lit up. 

“I… lost,” the man noted. 

It wasn’t just an admission of defeat, it was the admission of defeat. It was apathy and complete concession.

The man stood there for a moment, then looked at me. 

“Am I complete?” He asked. 

“No,” I replied. 

“Oh,” then he stared for another moment. 

“I feel complete,” he added.

“You’re not.”

“I…see.”

Even now he wasn’t a man, just a shadow of one. This was the dream before the slumber, a last thought before death. 

The man’s eyes widened, then he looked at me and laughed. 

“You wouldn’t happen to have any clothes on you by any chance, would you? And a shaving knife if you got one, and some soap maybe, and could you carry me to a river?”

There was a sad joy within his words, an acceptance. 

I nodded. 

I took him to a river where he bathed himself clean. I gave him a sharp blade to cut himself with and I let him wear fine clothes made with beautiful fabric. 

He looked good after that. He looked civilized. 

“I failed,” the man finally said, staring sadly at the sky. 

“You failed a long time ago,” I replied.

The man nodded, still smiling at the sky. 

“Do you… do you know my name?” He asked. 

“Ah-Min Tah,” I answered. 

“Ah-Min Tah,” he spoke, sounding out the name as if he were saying it for the first time. 

“I can’t believe I ever forgot that,” he chuckled. “And my sect?” 

“They left long ago.”

“Did they now?” He asked. “Do you know their names? Did any one of them ask about me?”

I simply shrugged. 

“To have outlived them, what a strange thing it is. Though I haven’t outlived them have I?”

I shook my head. 

“I don’t remember much. I remember struggling. I remember living. I remember my third rank tribulation and I remember, I remember trying. It’s strange, I thought there’d be more than this. Even if I died I always thought it would be in battle, noble and proud, not… not this.”

His eyes didn’t shimmer, his voice didn’t quiver, and the words left his mouth like plain description. 

“Would that have been better, I wonder? Death by the sword?”

Then he turned to look at me. 

“Would it be better?” He asked. 

“You can’t kill what’s already dead,” I replied. 

“Haha, yes. I suppose you can’t,” he laughed. 

He sat there for a bit more before talking again. 

“I… I remember I had a cat when I was young. A small little grey fellow. I was horribly heartbroken when it died. I cried for weeks then. I wonder if that’s why I tried to be an immortal?” He asked. 

“Is it?” 

“I don’t know,” he chuckled. “But if it was then, what a silly little reason to have lived for.”

“Do you regret it?” I asked. 

“I don’t know,” he laughed. “At least, I don’t think so. What a curious thing.”

Then as the flames died out, they shined. 

“I don’t,” he spoke. “I don’t regret it one bit. I regret the way I went about it, but I don’t regret it at all.”

In his final moments before death, he smiled.

“What a wonderful thing it was.”