A giant pile of gold coins lay in the village square, several times taller than Lao Chen. It was half the size of most of the village houses. Amidst the coins were shiny weapons and jewels enough to last the village a thousand lifetimes if they all lived lavishly, even. Behind it, surrounded by practically every villager, was Lao Chen.
“I have encountered great fortune, and as such, I have decided to leave this village, but I will not leave without giving something of equal value.”
The entire village was quiet. Pin drop silence. All eyes were on him.
Shoving his hands into his bag of holding, he produced the two scriptures. “From the corpses of two ultimate experts, I salvaged these riches as well as these two cultivation manuals. It is my hope that in my absence, our village may find eternal happiness.”
Still, there was silence, which caused Lao Chen to frown somewhat.
Out from the crowd walked the village chieftain, an old man two decades his junior, wearing leather armour and a bow at his back. With hard eyes, he stared at the riches and shook his head.
“We cannot accept this. You say that these two cultivators had died, but who is to say that their ilk will not come to collect their lost treasures?”
Lao Chen knew this question would come, but as much as the villagers grumbled in denial at the chieftain’s words, they rang true. “These two cultivators died in the vicinity of the village. Even if we all flee together, we are still under suspicion. We are in danger, regardless of whether we use these heaven-sent treasures. Teach our children to cultivate, our hunters to use these weapons. We only have this one chance. Make use of it.” Lao Chen monologued. Despite his peasant status, he could wax poetic like the best of them, having lived a lifetime reading stories of peasants, nobles, kings and emperors.
The chieftain hesitated for a moment, steeling his gaze as he nodded. “Starting today, this village is under lockdown. No one is to travel to town or stray away from the mountain range. All children below the age of 20 will be subjected to cultivation training from today, but what I want you all to do now is to load the gold into the silo for the time being. There will be no sneaking of with any money, I trust. Each and every one of us are now able to become dragons among men! Believe in yourselves!”
The villagers had fire in their eyes. For the first time in their lives, they mattered. They all had the chance to rise up from the dung of mundanity. Raising one hand in the air, they roared.
They quickly got to work, loading all of the artifacts, gold and jewels into the silo.
Finding a couple of lumberjacks without anything to do, the chieftain issued new orders. “Cut wood for a new building. We are going to make a space for our youths to train. Get chopping!”
While everything unfolded, Lao Chen looked around at the abandoned village. He gave away all of his treasure, aside from his bags of holding and the bo staff. He heaved a long sigh and realized that he did a great deed, smiling as tears threatened to run down his cheeks.
Turning around, he was shocked to see his brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, grand-nephews and grand-nieces kowtowing before him, much to his shock.
“We apologize, Ancestor!” They shouted in unison.
Lao Chen was at a loss of what to say. “Wha- get up, please, please! What is there to apologize for?”
His brother raised his head in shame. “We did not invite you to live in our home, forcing you to sleep outside. I am eternally apologetic, brother. Please forgive me!”
Lao Chen frowned. “H-hey, that’s not it at all. Even if you’d have invited me, I would still prefer sleeping with my flock. I like being a shepherd, brother Zhen! Please don’t lower yourself for me,” he pleaded, helping the old man up. “I haven’t been the most productive individual of our family, and you have had every right to look down on me. I should apologize for all these decades with you looking out for me.”
Lao Zhen sniffled as he hugged his brother. “The same humble boy with a flair for the dramatic. You will never grow up, will you, you man child?”
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The two brothers hugged, and his family stood up from their kowtowing positions to hug their benevolent, albeit aloof family member.
Closeness. That was what he felt. The closeness of having a family that loved him, and he loved them, too.
And that was when it hit him.
He quickly dropped to a lotus position, startling his surrounding family as he got to meditating on the truth he just discovered.
His core sea was bloated and large, but although he knew more power lay in the horizon, he couldn’t seem to get it to grow any bigger, but that was where he erred.
It wasn’t about volume. It was mass.
With this train of thought in mind, he compressed his core sea with as much effort as he could, holding onto every stray wisp of Qi, compressing it. The usually transparent core sea became cloudier and cloudier as a film of white encompassed it.
Once he got as far as he could, he held.
Several hours later, he awoke from his trance, feeling younger as the impurities of old age left him gradually like a morning mist.
He had blankets covering him, and there was a miniature bonfire providing the heat, in the middle of the town square where people waited with bated breaths to see what their benefactor had achieved.
He stood up slowly, shaking off the pins and needles on his legs. He felt at his face, disappointed to see that the wrinkles that marred him were still present.
Yet, he felt younger. His body was, now, pretty much in the same state as it was in his early twenties, save for his old appearance. He walked with a spring in his step, his joints were flexible and lubricated, and he felt hungry. Hungrier than he’s ever had, actually. He fell down flat, groaning in pain.
“Food... I need food... please,” he pleaded, his voice parched. Quickly, a multitude of people made their way through the spectating crowd with plates of food and jugs of water in their hands.
Lao Chen barely waited for the plates to touch the ground as he stuffed himself full with meat and vegetables and rice, washing it all down with a hearty chug of water.
Once satisfied, he promptly fell asleep, in the middle of the townsquare, unheeding of the faux pas.
Both the chieftain and his brother slapped their foreheads in exasperation. “What a man child.”
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The chieftain had a simple job, and one passed down from someone most capable of being one to a successor of their choosing. Their job was not a complicated one. The chieftain imposed no taxes on the people, not that he expected anyone of the penniless peasants to pay at all, but it wasn’t because of a sentiment or because they could not afford it anyhow.
No, it just wasn’t done. Whoever decided that the village would no longer have any taxes made sure that all future chieftains would know. The village kept little to no permanent records, so anything that occurred before the last two centuries are a void.
His duties were basically overseeing village funds and moderating resources as well as rousing particularly lazy village members into action. Nothing more, nothing less. Every chieftain was also expected not to allocate more resources to themselves than necessary. There was also the occasional errand run to the nearest city to buy special kinds of supplies only available on the outside world. Other than that, like every chieftain before him, the prime directive was to not let a villager out, and not to let an outsider in. For centuries this has passed, and this was his only mission in life.
Well, until this blessing disguised as a giant headache. If it wasn’t when Lao Chen dropped a hill of gold in the middle of the village square, or when he revealed cultivation manuals for everyone to enjoy, he knew that this village would never be the same when the final tally came.
“Please don’t make us count it again,” pleaded Lao Ying, Lao Zhen’s eldest son. “We have counted it twice over and my boys are getting weary. Gold is heavy, you know.”
“Is… is it truly this much?” The Chieftain repeated his words.
“One gold bar is worth a hundred gold slips which is about 5000 wen. This, you know. If our mathematician is corr- Our mathematician is correct, Chieftain. He swore up and down, and his claims has been corroborated multiple times. Ehm… yes, the total amount of gold bars are about six million, five hundred and seventy two thousand four hundred and ninety eight. And that’s only what we can put a price tag on, aside from the, and the mathematician has checked, the piles of notes totalling at about three quarters a billion wen. The collateral – the swords and the weapons and the jewels… that could easily be worth twice as much… or not. Honestly, we’re peasants, chieftain. We can’t make exact assumptions.”
The chieftain nodded slowly. His old world was crashing down on his feet, and it took him every bit of his mental prowess to not tear his hair out in complete desperation.
Then again, he was a leader. And the main criteria of being a leader was mental strength. Gathering his mind, he initiated the orders.
“With this money, resources will never again be a problem. We don’t face a problem of too little money, but too much. No one should catch wind of this, otherwise it might spell calamity for all of us. At any rate, we shall rebuild and re-educate. Besides cultivation training, everyone should be literate by the end of this decade such that we reach peak efficiency.”
The chieftain grabbed a quill from his desk and a parchment. “Now, what I want in particular…”
The chieftain began to run Lao Ying through his new development model, and after almost six hours and dozens of parchments later, Lao Ying left the room with a smile on his face.