Chapter 123 - Gathering Mummies

[Table of Contents]

For a moment, Yung was stumped at the short man’s words. From their conversation, it wasn’t an impossibility that a bystander would conclude that, however you framed it, it really seemed like mortals weren’t worth punishing.

“That’s nonsense. Every life is worth equal consideration from the heavens. After all, the reason why the heavens punish the cultivators is to protect the mortals, too!” Yung said, trying to hide a bout of panic. He was never good at pulling bullshit out of his arse, but today was a special day.

Besides, even if the heavens currently didn’t protect mortals, the Enclave might. And with what Yung was planning, the powers that be definitely will in the very near future.

At least in Dim Gold City.

But the short man wasn’t convinced. He shook his head and walked inside the facility with a bucket. The water inside it sloshed from the jerks. What a cultivator needed with a bucket, Yung didn’t know.

The tall, old worker shot the short man’s back an annoyed glare, then turned to Yung with an apologetic smile. “Don’t mind the good lad. He had some bad run-ins, aye? Everyone’s got a story.”

The old worker was a cultivator too, but he didn’t wear Youjin colours like the short man or the young jailer.

“I don’t mind. I appreciate honest doubts,” Yung said. He then pointed at the young jailer, who was still kneeling with tears, snot, and dirt covering his face. “Let’s hear you recount all the wrongs you’ve seen committed by the warden.” He then turned to the onlookers. “You all too, you can speak to me without fear. Today is the day the heavens make past wrongs right.”

“The warden’s part of the Youjin Clan. You might be safe after making them lose face, Ziyou Yung, but what about the rest of us?” A familiar voice. A familiar face.

It was the old guard captain. The old man had a lost look on his face, and Yung’s grin fell. “Did you know that after those mercenaries bribed their way out of this place, they went to kill the coolie boy and his sister?”

The old guard captain didn’t reply.

“If it weren’t for measures I had taken, they would have died.”

“In the first place, if it weren’t for your meddling, they wouldn’t have been targeted!” The old guard captain immediately realised his mistake, and his wrinkled face blushed. “At least the sister would’ve been safe!”

“I doubt it.” Yung chuckled. “With how things are now, even if you run and hide and do nothing, that might be enough for cultivators to feel like they ‘lost face.’ One-sidedly, selfishly, as if it was an excuse to terrorise mortals.”

Their back and forth resounded through the area. It was like a gentle broadcast, but with each of Yung’s words, faces grew sombre.

Not all cultivators were shit. Among them, the weaker ones and the odd strong ones did not grow arrogant enough to sever their mortal bonds so easily. They cared, really they did.

But most were. Qi was a potent drug. It stroked your ego like no other. Once you had qi, only the heavens and other stronger cultivators would make one feel humility. And even then, weren’t most cultivators planning on ‘defying’ such things? Their betters, the sky above, in the name of immortality?

“Something must change! And the Su Fox Clan can make that change happen. Perhaps not everywhere; they might not be willing to meddle throughout the whole kingdom. But if it’s one tiny Dim Gold City? Mark my words. One day very soon, not even Harmonious Heaven Realm powerhouses will dare to hurt a single orphan kid. They won’t be able to afford the price!”

<Undaunted Darkness: Technically, with the Sanctified Enclave, that change already happened. But I think you’re misunderstanding things here. Most mortals won’t gain much from an Enclave.>

<Yung: Miss Maid already told me. Let’s do what I can first and ask forgiveness later if Nanya doesn’t like what I’m doing.>

<Undaunted Darkness: It’s not the mistress who will get mad. Auntie is gonna blow her top. She’s very peculiar about face.>

<Yung: Speaking of which. I heard from Nanya that it takes a ridiculous amount of spirit stones to communicate with your Su Clan’s Revival Sword Tower. I’m curious, how much did it take for you to talk with the matriarch?>

<Graceful Wind: There’s a thing in a... place you cannot see. Above us. So not much.>

Yung looked up. The old guard captain had nothing to say, while the other old man, the worker, maintained an uneasy smile.

Yung extended a hand toward the kneeling young jailer. “Can you help me?”

The young jailer looked at Yung’s palm, then at the heavens. His gaze crossed those of the facility workers and their families, all wearing complicated expressions.

He felt something stir inside of him.

The young jailer nodded and grabbed Yung’s palm.

A low gasp echoed around them.

There! That feeling again!

The young jailer felt a bubbly sensation in his tummy. It wasn’t a sense of justice or pride in getting in the good graces of an important person like Ziyou Yung.

No. It was more primal than that.

“Big bro is so fearless,” a pretty lass said from a row house.

“I-Is he gonna be safe? Won’t the big cultivator guys beat him up?” said a middle-aged man, half-drunk half the day.

“It’s fine. Fine. That madlander kid’s more audacious, but he ain’t spoke lies yet,” another man said.

Gossips. Whispers. Murmurs.

Attention.

It was pure, concentrated attention. The good kind. The bad kind. The ugly and beautiful kind.

It made the young jailer’s spine tingle.

He loved it!

He tried his best not to grin creepily and stood up on wobbly knees. “T-This lowly one will tell ya everything!”

“Good,” Yung said.

<Graceful Wind: There is something wrong with this boy. His pulse rate is strange. His eyes spin as though he has had illicit drugs.>

Yung didn’t notice anything strange but read the Empathic Link. Nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe expectation? Perhaps a bit of fear and tension? But it was better to heed Miss Maid’s words. “I want the truth, and only the truth. Don’t make stuff up. If you do, then don’t blame me for what happens.”

“There are no lies that will come out of my mouth, Sir Yung!” the young jailer said.

“…P-please don’t call me sir.” It made Yung feel not like Yung.

“The warden liked to take bribes from prisoners. But even after stripping them of their homes and wives, he would go back on his promises. I’ve been here for three days, but I already saw this happen twice!”

Gasps rang out.

“He took bribes, not only from the prisoners, though! Two days ago, he took some spirit stones from one of them lower town gangs to keep some rival fellas locked in longer, even though just that morning, he took spirit stones from these rival folks first!”

“So that’s what’s goin’ on!”

“Despicable. I knew that fattass was nasty, but this…”

The young jailer kept going. “I’ve seen him turn the cultivation-suppressing formations of some jail cells off. He let some bigshot criminal from a foreign sect keep cultivating, even though that guy had ambushed a Youjin Clan-affiliated merchant caravan on the way to the city!”

[Good.] These were the testimonies Yung needed.

After enough truths had been laid bare, Yung interrupted the young jailer by tossing him a roll of magical bandages. He had got some from Su Haochen earlier.

“Wrap the warden up in this. It’s going to keep him alive, at least. He hasn’t atoned for his sins yet, so he can’t die,” Yung said. He pointed his thumb at a cart pulled by a strange mule-like chaosfiend. He’d purchased it on the spot from a random merchant at the bazaar after leaving Wang Gangbao’s place. Su Haochen was feeding the mule herbs of inordinate power. “Throw him on the cart afterward.”

The young jailer did so with more enthusiasm than was appropriate.

After this episode, Yung and the two foxes, Su Haochen and one other guard, moved south. The warden wasn’t the only ‘sinner’ hit by lightning in the area, after all.

“Today, I will make past wrongs right. The heavens command so!” Yung said as he sat on the seat next to Su Haochen. “Youjin, Zheng, Madlander, those without a surname and those with. There is nothing to fear if your hands are not stained. But if they are, then be prepared to pay the price!”

Yung’s voice travelled with the wind through alleyways and windows. It reached hundreds of meters beyond and circled back from where it had started. From the penitentiary, a small crowd followed him.

They started with whispers, hoping to see the commotion that was to come, but after a few hundred meters, they ended up cheering.

Dim Gold City had many cultivators, and among them were many worth getting smitten by the heavens.

“Bring me the sinners! Tell me your story! Let the city hear it in solidarity,” Yung said.

And the people answered.

From a nearby tavern, a trio of burly dudes threw a burnt man in front of Yung’s carriage.

“He’s a scion of the Zheng clan, yet he took another man’s wife after killing the husband!” one dude said with sobs. “It was our fourth brother! Fourth sister killed herself three days in the Zheng clan! Sir Yung, give us justice!”

“How despicable! Throw him in the cart,” Yung shouted in shock, the crowd looking on, mirroring his disgust.

They moved on, and the crowd grew bigger.

At the end of White Town, a rabble of beggars—young boys and girls—dragged a charcoaled man in a sack through the dusty roads.

“H-He sold my big sister! He sold Little Mi and Big Ning and Small Po! Big brother madlander, c-can you tell mummy and daddy I’m still here?” a young girl no older than ten cried.

“A Youjin cultivator.” Yung clicked his tongue. “How low could he fall to kidnap kids as slaves?” He wasn’t expecting this, barely resisting the urge to spit on the charred face of the trafficker. “What’s your name, little girl? If your parents are still in the city, I will find them.”

“Send a runner! Send a runner and tell the world that these kids still live!” the young jailer shouted, his voice so loud that many guessed some kind of cultivation trickery was going on.

But that didn’t stop many young men with fast legs from volunteering.

The crowd cheered after they finished roaring in anger.

Yung moved on, and the crowd swelled further.

Three streets down, there was a man, half-naked, half-eaten.

“H-Help.” He collapsed. “T-That evil… place… sucks men dry!”

Yung followed the trail. It was a brothel. And—

“...To think the whole establishment would be a den of void cultists.”

“It can’t be! Beauty Song and Fairy Lan!”

“Evil. The scholars rot and women wilt. Evil is in the air, and the heavens grant us mercy!”

The crowd was shocked. This was a famous hangout for scholars and beauties in White Town. No one could have guessed it was so ugly under the veil of makeup and perfume.

In the rooms and basement, there were many skeletons without skulls. Youths had gone missing months before. And collapsed through the hall were burnt, yet breathing, bodies of purple-veined courtesans.

Monsters in ren skin.

“Wrap them up. They were probably part of the group that caused the voidfiend rush years ago. Throw them on the cart!”

With Su Haochen driving, Yung, the foxes, and the townsfolk went around all of White Town collecting one horror story after another.

A thief who collected more than coin, reaping souls with a devilish art.

A daughter that sold curses in the name of alchemical pills, putting parasites in her ‘patients’ to siphon Spirit Qi.

A benevolent school teacher who taught kin-slaying rather than ancient classics.

And that was just the beginning.

By the time they reached the madlander slums, there were more than thirty mummies on the first cart, a good haul from White Town.

The crowd now numbered nearly a thousand. More wanted to join, but today, Yung had a voice that reached all. Word spread faster than they travelled, and soon enough, the whole Dim Gold City was abuzz.

<Graceful Wind: There are some who are trying to protect their tribulation’d kin.>

<Undaunted Darkness: On it. Wow, this is fun. You have the best ideas, kid.>

<Yung: Is it?>

<Undaunted Darkness: Lord Thunderboom the Magnificent is a hard steed to direct, but life is more part of the journey than the destination, is it not?>

Su Haochen tossed another priceless medicinal herb. The mule-like chaosfiend snatched it out of midair and farted.

<Undaunted Darkness: Thunderboom!>

<Yung: Okay, that was pretty funny.>

Their cart was full. Yung politely requisitioned another one; the good courier was more than happy to give it. The young jailer tied it behind the first one.

They entered the madlander slums with enough fanfare to rock the banks of the Red Hole.

Surprisingly, Ziyou Maque wasn’t there.

“S-Sir Yung. Would it be alright to wait a few good moments? Leader Free Sparrow is busy putting out ‘flames,’ but the one ahead is a bit complicated. Perhaps it would be wiser to handle things—”

“This is for the better. Today is a day of redemption and punishment. If sins come to light, it will only make life easier for madlanders in the future.”

The executive from the Free Sparrow Gang sighed and stopped impeding their path.

In the yard of one of the minor dojos, there lay sprawled about twenty mid-sized bodies. Alive, of course. But broken.

Young adults, but mostly teenagers.

There were three grownups too, the instructors of the dojo.

All had been hit by heavenly thunder.

“The heavens had forsaken us once, so we reject such justice!” cried a madlander woman, who was the proud mother of one of the teens. She was being restrained by another group of madlander women. She hoarsely shouted, “For years, they kick us, spit on us. They take our cash and throw us trash. So what if we fight back? So what if my son made them suffer? It’s a good thing, isn’t it?”