[A.B.P.P.E.] Bk 2 - Chapter 73 - Means of Production

Yin Hu and the rest of the group sat around a campfire with chairs that had been brought out by Jin Bao. Ostentatious pieces of furniture that had gold inlaid into the design with the largest, most over the top throne for the fat cultivator himself. 

He shifted again, finding it the most uncomfortable thing he had ever had the misfortune of resting on. 

Not only was it hard, it seemed to stick into his lower back with something sharp and made his chest hurt for some odd reason. 

Whatever the problem was, Yin Hu hated everything about the chair. 

Alas, he couldn’t just pull out his lounging seat to rest on without going through an entire process to make sure Zhong Da kept the air of leadership around him. It was easier to suffer the worst chair imaginable for the time being until they escaped this place and finally went back into their private carriages. He would cover every inch of it with cushions to make up for this insult. 

Night had fallen and they needed to gather information from the cultivators of the caravan, yet it seemed impossible to isolate any one by themselves. 

Always in groups of three and refusing to converse on even small benign topics ever since they arrived and agreed to the final negotiations. 

Which forced this situation to happen if they had any hope of figuring out the landscape and best places to find disciples at. Their main goal had to be fulfilled or this whole thing would not be worth even a moment of having to listen to Jin Bao regale them of his adventures, deals, and the women he conquered. Just hearing the fat man’s voice made Yin Hu mentally cringe with every emphasis.

Yin Hu looked around the camp trying to find where the old cultivator, Shan Yue, had gone. 

Likely watching from a distance as Jin Bao talked their ears off. They were doing the same thing his party was trying to accomplish. Gather information and figure things out to make more important decisions down the line. Said decisions might be vastly different, but the process to get to them was nearly identical. 

Fortunately, they had Zhong Da to counter Jin Bao’s hustler abilities and Da Ruis for Shan Yue’s disappearing antics.

Both of which were surprisingly better than their foes or equal at worst. 

Zhong Da’s ability to match the fat man had been a good surprise Yin Hu had not expected. All of his plans to take over the negotiations, discussions, and information gathering process had been put on hold as he watched the constant back and forth between the two. Not that he enjoyed being part of it. 

He turned to look toward where Jun and Shui were sitting, whispering to each other about their training. They sat behind him and out of sight from the cultivators that sat on the other side of the campfire.

Yin Hu had made sure the group stuck together even in the most annoying situations. 

They could have waited back in the carriage with Wu Xui, but that meant separating them and weakening their overall unity and consolidation of power in territory Yin Hu considered as enemy lands. He looked back at the lady, she had covered herself head to toe after one look from Jin Bao had her gagging and nauseous.  One interaction was all she needed to suddenly dress up like a nun, not that she had ever worn anything that wasn’t modest.

Female cultivators tended to wear robes similar to their male counterparts. 

Zhong Da and Wu Xui took that a step further by almost always matching colors and style down to the hair-sticks.

“...a rise in the number of refugees being thrown out of the Demonic Bloc.” Jin Bao shook his head. “A political ploy to weaken our hold on the lands and sow discord amongst our own inhabitants and citizens of the lands we own.”

Zhong Da reacted with confused shock. “A dangerous ploy if done properly. How did you end up countering such a massive wave of malcontents?”

When did the conversation shift from how much Jin Bao was packing to this? Did I zone out for too long?

Yin Hu made a mental note to go over everything said and gathered by Zhong Da after the fact in case he missed something vital. Of course, he would play it as though he was helping the process out. Connect dots or something. He kept the same expression and slowly studied the faces of the rest of the cultivators sitting around Jin Bao. They mostly found logs and large stones to sit on rather than the ostentatious seats the Hu Clan had been provided. 

Each one had a stoic look frozen on them as they stared straight into the fire and refused to even shift slightly. 

God. These people are so fucking weird. They look like well maintained zombies and react like corpses. 

Yin Hu figured that was how they were trained to not give up any information unintentionally. It made sense if all interactions with other groups and cultivators was the same as what they had been going through. Especially if there were others as talented as Zhong Da and Jin Bao were at hustling and sneakily using their hustler abilities to fleece others without anyone ever noticing until it was too late. 

His one armed representative only showed more skills and talents the longer he stayed within their Clan. 

Yin Hu was fortunate to have found him in a transitionary state. Zhong Da would have been a menacing gang boss in a similar vein to Dong ZhenKang’s own Silver Mountain Gang. Dealing with another debacle of that level would have made Yin Hu go crazy just from the effort he would need to put into fixing Jun’s and Shui’s mentals after dealing with such fierce mental attacks. 

Their trauma looked relatively gone, but he knew better. 

Something like that was just hiding under the surface and waiting for any reason at all to take advantage of and appear again. 

This time he would be prepared for it though. 

Jin Bao smiled wide. “Our glorious Merchant Emperor privatized the production of food!”

Oh shit… The Ultimate Capitalists have a monopoly on what people eat?

“A simple thing that changed the dynamics of power and brought our Numb Hand’s Pavilion to the forefront. The rest of the Merchant Emperors rushed to do the same with their own fields of expertise, much to the consternation of everyone else!” Jin Bao guffawed. Slapping his thigh and struggling to breathe. “Except they can’t do anything about it!”

The conversation devolved after that into what he could only consider as propaganda and talking points that Jin Bao had been told to go through. 

Lawlessness in the world that only the Numb Hand’s Pavilion Merchant Emperor could solve. 

All the peoples were worthless because they turned to theft and banditry rather than being decent peoples and just accepting the many jobs their pavilion offered to them. Yes, things were expensive, but that was life. It wasn’t the best form of existence, but they fed their families and individually survived relatively fine. Working days and nights wasn’t as bad as they were making it out.

The worst one Yin Hu heard as an excuse for monopolizing the food production and then charging ungodly amounts was that not everyone was going to be rich and a famous trading merchant. It was a fact of life that some would be destitute and some would be prosperous in life.

Yin Hu sat there stunned the whole time, unable to gather his thoughts enough to even respond. 

Basic human decency had been thrown out the window for nothing but a few extra coins of profit that wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things. 

He couldn’t figure out how they gathered enough support to wage their war against the Demonic Bloc. 

Yin Hu heard the likes of Zi Zhen and others that drove fear into the hearts of the peoples and forced them into battle. These people didn’t try to do the same thing, and even made attempts to assume the persona of the Righteous Bloc. And without anyone to balance them, they were free to act as they pleased and do what they thought benefited them the most.

Whatever happened sixty years ago had shattered the status quo without any good meaningful change. Yin Hu wasn’t sure who to blame at this point. 

The way the Demonic Cultivators acted almost seemed more humane than what he was hearing from Jin Bao.

Yin Hu stopped himself there quickly. 

Nah. Not even close. I still remember the pyramid of living heads that Shui mentioned. Nothing could ever match that.