Chapter 111 - Yung and his weird miracles

A 'miracle' happens when the wishes of the worshipper and of the worshipped align.

Using Faith qi and True qi as the fuel, reality itself is changed in minuscule ways to lead to a desired outcome.

For Yung, who was merely in the 6th stage of Faith Refining Realm, the miracles were not anything that could truly be called 'divine.'

He had just walked in. That’s all.

The sweaty father-in-law, this slimy old man with no pants and strange fluids on his fingers, rushed at Yung with a bashful, beastly roar at the sudden intrusion.

But not a second later, the man tripped on the extended foot of the scared woman who was under him. The wife of his son, presumably. The old man fell back and rolled twice on the ground, hitting a corner of the wooden frame of a bed.

There was a soft squelching sound.

When he stood up, his erect thingy was broken into the shape of an Allen wrench. Blood dripping, purple like a brinjal.

The slimy old man's eyes rolled back. Foaming from the mouth, he passed out.

"…Evil powers," Su Haochen said, impressed. "I refuse to believe this is a coincidence."

Yung was pale.

He had a new disguise now, a new face and donning shabbier robes. No one would make the connection with Ziyou Yung.

His reputation was still safe.

Shaking his head, Yung placated the timid woman who had bruise marks all over her body by repeating what he had said to the coolie.

"I’m working for Ziyou Yung."

The woman broke down, crying. She couldn’t tell her husband. He was filial. He wouldn’t believe her.

"Have you tried?" Yung asked.

The woman shook her head. Too afraid, pushed into a corner.

Many people in Yung's old life would question assault victims like this. "Well, why not just tell the police?"

It wasn’t that easy.

These people were usually completely cut off from their friends and families. Many times, they were financially, socially, and even emotionally dependent on the perpetrators.

It took a lot of courage to speak out.

Especially in an old, archaic world like this one.

Loss of face, shame, bullying.

"They’d say I seduced him," the woman said. She was right. Women were always deemed to be in the wrong in cases involving sexual misconduct within a family.

It was a private family matter! Why air dirty laundry? If she was virtuous, this would have never happened!

All she could do was pray to a small picture of the Fortune Fox Totem she’d hidden under a sheet of cloth every night.

Yung took in a deep breath.

The guardsmen came. The old captain was there too.

"Another face… don’t tell me you plan to do this all day?"

"My mistress is mad at me, so I am spending time like this, trying to do some good in the world," Yung replied.

The father-in-law would be punished appropriately. Not by the unspoken rules of this society, but by the rules of law.

….it’s a pity no such law existed. But the next best thing were the Youjin Clan laws. Yung added a note to his jade slip.

// Get someone to draft an actual codex of law.

The old captain spoke, "You can't take care of that wench forever. If her husband disowns—"

"She isn’t a cattle. Better keep her safe, okay?" Yung said with a grin.

A vein bulged on the old captain's forehead. This was plain bullying.

But he complied.

Yung checked his internal reserves of True Qi. Usually, it was something that a cultivator should never use unless truly pushed to death.

But with miracles, Yung had zero control over the process.

As expected, his True qi had decreased.

He took out the jade slip again and inputted the issue. Note taking was the first step to success after all.

// No control over True Qi process in addition to low control over circulating it. Feels like moving half dried clay through a paper straw.

Yung sighed, once again realising how poor his foundations were.

His problem was truly unique. Too unique.

Not only the part where he cuddled with Nyanya to level up, but also all the worship his totem constaly received.

Most Faith qi cultivators of the plane refined their own faith, inside themselves, as though honing one’s will to the extreme. The Zheng clan of Dim Gold City was a clan of such cultivators, immersed in the Confucian way of Heart qi.

Perhaps they would end up as Uber narcissists by literally feeding their egos so much, but who in this strange world of cultivation wasn't?

Yung knew he was being dramatic here. Dramatically judgemental.

The totem of a Faith qi cultivator who used external worship could strip away much of the raw emotions that came with such worship. Likewise, Faith qi cultivators who used internal worship had similar contingencies too.

It was written clearly in the Foxfire Creek Heart Sutra.

In the process of Faith qi circulating through the yin creek meridians and the yang fire meridians, then being purified and compressed into True qi, and by extension, a Foxball, the Faith qi cultivator could indeed detach himself from even his own emotions.

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A similar mechanism would most certainly be present in even the most crudest Faith qi cultivation manual.

Only Fear qi cultivation disregarded this step, taking in all negative emotions to cultivate oneself into a Heart Devil.

But for Faith qi cultivators, most of them could become functioning adults if they wanted. Just because his girlfriend was like that didn’t mean all people in positions of power were wacky.

But then again, 'if they wanted' - that was the key here. Nanya, clearly, didn’t!

Yung chanted a quick mantra to calm his rage.

There were sects out there and religious factions that harvested worship, both from direct disciples to create a sort of 'feedback loop of worship,' and from the masses that lived in the sect's territory, where there was less of a loop and more of a suction.

The masses were divided up like resources. Or rather, their worship was.

Outer sect disciples got a few tens to some hundreds, inner sect disciples got thousands, and core disciples and the like of elders received the worship of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, depending on the size of the sect, clan, and territory.

Usually, they offered nothing back other than perhaps protection from Fiends with a generous helping of tyranny.

The main point was, even with a totem and perhaps even an altar, it usually took a certain level of cultivation base, willpower, and other esoteric metrics to handle progressively large amounts of worship. For tens of thousands, at least the Imperfect Heaven 3rd Realm, the Creed Formation realm was needed.

Yung was doing that as a 6th stage Faith Refining cultivator.

Granted, Yung had some serious help.

He had no altar, yes. The Dim Gold Auction House was still in the process of transporting it back.

What he had was a perverted artefact in the Epic Class, like the Pink Heart Ring.

He had Nanya’s sensuous body. The best cultivation supplement a man could have.

And he had his Soul Contract with Silky.

That added extra complexity.

Yung wasn't a normal Faith qi cultivator. He gained his cultivation because of the Soul Contract, not by his own talents and training.

The very beginning was accidental, and it was a cascade of confusion from there.

The good thing was that because of the Soul Contract, large parts of the worship he received, about half, would go to the critter.

Silky said he ate it all. The little guy liked to float around on the golden lake in Yung's Sea of Consciousness after his meals.

Because of this, and the Pink Heart Ring, Yung hadn’t exploded yet.

But also because of this, the critter was growing stronger at an absurd pace, too.

Yung and Silky's cultivation were linked.

One could not progress without the other.

But conversely, if one progressed, so would the other.

Silky's absurd speed of cultivation also boosted Yung's by a large magnitude.

It was the best positive virtuous loop any other cultivator could hope for.

Snuggle with a foxy vixen under the blankets? It was every single ‘single’ cultivator’s wet dream.

A cute mascot thing that was something like a god and boosted your cultivation? Yung must have saved a country in his past life. Considering Moira and the Bone God creature, maybe he had.

Worship from tens of thousands of people because of good deeds he forced a feudal clan to commit? The heavens rewarded the just, and under the Su Clan’s heavens, Yung was the most righteous!

A triple buff! Each legendary level passive skills, titles, and achievements that gave him +1000% exp gain.

When Yung realised all this, Yung had cried tears. Look at this luck! This fortune!

Yung, a transmigrator, was definitely important people. He might even be one of the protagonists of this world.

The problem was, all this luck had picked Yung by the collar and dropped him on a floating platform in the sky.

Exp gain was boosted to late game levels. But his wisdom and dexterity remained in the single digits. All he could do was increase his total MP and MP regeneration, not even his HP.

Yung did not have to work at all to get there. But now that he needed to go places, he didn’t know what to do to climb higher, nor what to do to climb lower.

Below, there was the hell of an excruciatingly slow grind. Retrace each of his True qi 'steps,' reconstruct his cultivation while trying his hardest not to progress.

Above, keep on doing what he had been doing. Zoom through the ranks until he was hard stuck on Faith Refining 12th stage for decades. Maybe try to force through with pills, immortal herbs, fiend cores, or ox balls.

Be a complete incompetent househusband.

Nanya would allow it.

But Yung didn't want that. Because Nanya had made it amply clear too why that was not a good idea.

Yung needed power.

But he didn't want to go full murderhobo, falling to the level of barbarity of this world's ethics, where being willing to go to any and all lengths for a five percent increase in strength was seen as a virtue.

Power came in many forms. There was the power of pure cultivation base.

Using 3rd realmer power to bully 2nd realmers, but being weak against fellow 3rd realmers.

Yung did not want that.

He needed the power of finesse.

Or the power of tricks.

The church back on Earth had called Science a demonic trick for centuries.

Yung needed that science.

Methods, tricks, algorithms. Now was the time to look back to his old world for inspiration of the scrolls of the current world were useless.

He added another entry to his notes.

// See if I can get Silky to somehow… Bottleneck my cultivation so that it doesn't increase beyond the 6th stage for now.

If it succeeded, Yung wouldn't have to worry about forcefully suppressing his stage and could focus on reviewing his existing cultivation, while trying to come up with other creative ways to further his plans. Mainly focusing on what we remembered from all those hours of being a vegetable in a hospital, immersing himself in the internet.

Yung and Su Haochen walked through the lower town from east to west, north to south.

By afternoon, they had 'apprehended' around a dozen wrongdoers.

Petty thieves.

Loan sharks.

Shoplifters.

Frauds.

Each time, Yung would start by giving his 'victims' a chance to back down.

No one did, and so Yung would fight.

There were even opponents who weren't cultivators. One was a Madlander strongman who had wanted to leave a stall without paying.

"See this?" The man had said, showing a crudely tattooed imitation of the Fortune Fox Totem to the proprietress of the stall. "How dare you filthy natives ask this father for payment. Do you want me to tell Ziyou Yung, my boss? Do you want the fox clan to purge your family? You should be thankful—"

Yung hit the guy in the stomach with the shaft of his spear. The strongman keeled over.

It was quite a novel experience, trying to convince the lower town natives that the strongman was taking advantage of the current political climate.

Apparently, he wasn't the only case. Yung made another note to look into that. The old captain showed a complicated face when called over again.

Another mortal opponent was an actual thief, an orphan.

Even after being captured, the teen, a Ren native with nothing but rebellion in his eyes, refused to speak a single word, just sitting there.

Yung walked into another alley, following Su Haochen's lead.

There was a mugging going on. The mugger slapped the wall beside a scrawny middle-aged man's head so hard that the wall cracked.

As usual, Yung started with an olive branch, "This brother there. The Youjin clan guarantees work for all. So why must you bully others out of their wealth?"

"Huh? Whaddya do ya want, son?" The mugger spat. "Get outta here before I gut you." He spun a dagger around his fingers while making a nasty grin with his scarred face.

Yung grimaced. Su Haochen's whisper came from a shadow, saying that the man was a 3rd stage Blood Refining realm cultivator.

No need to speak anymore. Yung readied his spear, and putting some Faith qi into his heels, he rushed towards the man.

"Madlander rat!" The mugger screamed. "This daddy's part of the Long Snake Gang. Ya think you can walk into my street, point that spear at my chest, and tell me what to do?!"

His muscles bulged up as he circulated his Origin key. Holding the dagger, he pulled his hand backward as Yung approached.

Yung struck with the spear, aiming for the jaw. He had learned that one good hit there, even if it was weak, would knock most folks out. Without too many side effects, hopefully.

"Long Snake Pounce!" The mugger shouted, thrusting his dagger. For a moment, it was as if a snake was pouncing towards Yung's chest.

But Yung could see a null thread that connected his own throat to the mugger's Empathic Link turn red. Rather, it was a deep scarlet.

The mugger was going for the kill.

And the scarlet thread, it was a Thread of Intention, the power Yung had gained rather suddenly during the delve.

Yung had thought they were special kinds of Empathic Links. Maybe they were, as after some careful observations during today's fights, Yung noticed that each Thread of Intention would originate from the target's Empathic Link itself, rather than being an independent Empathic Link.

Like a sub-link, a string split from a woven rope made out of many such strings.

At first, they would masquerade as null threads, the transparent threads that connected everything to everything, the very foundation of reality as Yung knew it, in his strange Moira-given Link Sight.

Only when someone would feel either malice or goodwill towards Yung would these null threads turn either scarlet or teal.

Like right now.

And such Threads of Intention were more refined than the typical Empathic Links. They would connect to a part of Yung's 'being,' either in the physical or metaphysical sense, showing what part of Yung someone liked or disliked.

And reading those, Yung could fight!