After meeting the three men, Lan Jin quickly discovers that Hu Shentian and Hu Qiuping don’t want to make any effort to communicate with him. In fact, Hu Qiuping walks off toward the stream and sits down with his back against some bamboo before beginning to meditate. In the meanwhile, Hu Shentian sits down near Lan Jin and makes a point of not saying anything while instead casting frequent glares at him every time Lan Jin happens to look in his general direction.

Hu Gongniu, on the other hand, disappears for a few minutes before coming back with a large, oiled-leather rucksack with a wide bamboo frame. Lan Jin had seen his dad’s rucksack a few times and this one was much larger than what his dad had, so he was surprised that the giant of a man could carry it so easily since Lan Jin knew his dad’s rucksack had often held more than sixty pounds of gear inside of it.

Lan Jin was even more surprised when Hu Gongniu gingerly placed his rucksack down near Lan Jin’s hole in the foothill and walked over to where Lan Jin was kneeling down by the fire in an attempt to make it large enough to grill his fish.

Taking a quick look at Lan Jin and the fish sitting in a bamboo container full of water nearby, Hu Gongniu asks, his voice slow but clear, “Are you good at catching fish?”

Lan Jin nods his head while feeding another strip of split bamboo into the fire. “I guess so. It didn’t take me long to catch those two. Why? You want me to help you catch some fish?”

Hu Gongniu nods his head slowly. “Yes, but only if you do not mind. Qiuping normally takes care of these kinds of things, but Shentian and I are not so good at hunting or fishing.”

From the side, Hu Shentian shouts, “What do you mean I’m not good? If you want me to catch you some stupid fish I will catch you as many stupid fish as you want! I don’t need an outsider to catch my food for me!”

Without even waiting for Hu Gongniu to say anything, Hu Shentian stands up in one quick, fluid motion before walking over to the stream.

Next to Lan Jin, Hu Gongniu lets out a short sigh and shakes his head once before turning to Lan Jin again. “Can you still catch some fish for me? Shentian speaks his mind easily, but if we have to leave the fishing to him, he will spend several hours trapping all the fish or not catching anything at all.”

Raising an eyebrow, Lan Jin asks, “Would he really try to catch all the fish?”

Hu Gongniu nods his head. “Shentian has many great qualities, but the quality he demonstrates most is his ability to accomplish things that others cannot. If others see an obstacle, Shentian sees a path forward. Where others see hard work, Shentian sees an opportunity.”

With a snort, Lan Jin asks, “So he’s good at making things more difficult than they need to be?”

Hu Gongniu gives Lan Jin a weak smile and says, “Shentian is very driven.”

Lan Jin grins and suddenly finds the idea of catching a few more fish to be very fun. After all, it would give him a chance to rub it in Hu Shentian’s face. He didn’t know him well, or hardly at all for that matter, but he was already a little irritated by him.

“So, Hu Gongniu, right? How many fish do you need?”

Nodding his head, Hu Gongniu says, “Three is good, and six is better. But please do not overburden yourself if you cannot catch them. We brought along our own provisions. It’s just that eating fresh food is better for the body than eating preserved food. And try not to encourage Hu Shentian. He may… he always seeks to overcome adversity. Imagined or otherwise.”

“Say no more!” Lan Jins stands up and grabs his fishing spear. “I’ll catch you as many fish as you need.”

As Lan Jin walks toward the stream, Hu Gongniu looks at his back and then at the more-distant figure of Hu Shentian who was examining the stream. He seems to consider something for a moment and then lifts one large hand to rub his bare scalp before turning his attention toward removing several clay jars from his rucksack.

Lan Jin arrives at the stream with a smirk on his lips as he eyes Hu Shentian who doesn’t seem to have started catching any fish yet.

The two men don’t say a word to one another and stand several dozen feet apart, one with a pensive look on his face and the other with a confident glimmer in his eyes.

Not wasting any time, Lan Jin steps into the water, his bare feet sinking into the dirt along the edge of the stream and his eyes train upon the numerous fish swimming in front of him as he holds his spear with its pronged tip pointing toward the water. It’s not even a minute later when Lan Jin plunges his spear into the stream for the first time, successfully piercing through the side of a silver-scaled fish before retracting it and removing the dying fish from its prongs.

He dashes the fish against a rock on the side of the stream to put it out of its misery before looking at Hu Shentian out of the corner of his eye. Hu Shentian clearly noticed Lan Jin catching a fish so quickly and he even looks irritated because of it, but he doesn’t stop examining the stream despite his irritation.

Lan Jin pays it no mind, happy to get under Hu Shentian’s skin after he had been so rude to him, and continues spearing fish. On average, he catches one silver-scaled fish per minute, and before Hu Shentian even starts doing anything, Lan Jin finishes catching all of the fish requested of him by Hu Gongniu.

Turning to the side, Lan Jin grins at Hu Shentian and says, “I already caught the six fish Hu Gongniu asked for, so feel free to go back up!”

However, contrary to Lan Jin’s expectations, Hu Shentian doesn’t say anything and only looks a little more irritated.

Not bothering to spend more time by the stream, Lan Jin takes a couple of trips back to and from the fire to bring the six fish up to Hu Gongniu. He’s satisfied when Hu Gongniu is surprised by how quickly he returns with the fish, but he doesn’t make a big deal about it because he had only put in so much effort to get a rise out of Hu Shentian in the first place.

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Before he has a chance to say anything, Lan Jin hears the splitting of bamboo and turns around in time to watch Hu Shentian begin felling stalk after stalk of it. Amazingly, he even uses the edge of his spear and each thrust cuts down a single bamboo stalk.

Though, despite it being amazing, Lan Jin cannot help but wonder what he is doing while also turning his head to look at the large pile of bamboo already laying on its side by the base of the foothill. When he looks at Hu Gongniu to ask him a question, he finds that Hu Gongniu is focusing more intently on the fire than he strictly needs to.

Moments later, Hu Qiuping shows up, a look of frustration on his face as he asks Hu Gongniu, “What is Shentian doing?”

Barely audible, Hu Gongniu says, “He said he would get me as many fish as I need. I had hoped he might not do anything if we already had the fish, but… Should we stop him?”

Hu Qiuping looks at the six fish Lan Jin had just recently brought up and the two fish that Hu Gongniu had gutted while Lan Jin was catching the others. Lifting one hand, he begins massaging the bridge of his nose and then sits down grumpily.

Shaking his head, Hu Qiuping says, “There’s no point. If he doesn’t get this out of his system, he will be insufferable for the next several days. At least if he does this now, he will be too tired to complain when we’re walking back to the city tomorrow. We might as well just let him do it and make him wake up early to fix it.”

“Do what?” Lan Jin asks.

Hu Qiuping grimaces slightly and then responds, “He’s probably trying to block off the entire stream to make it impossible for the fish to get by. That, or maybe he’s trying to build several fish traps. But given how much bamboo he has already cut down, I’m leaning more toward him blocking off the stream.

Lan Jin turns to look at Hu Shentian again and notices that he has already cut down more bamboo in the past few minutes than Lan Jin had cut down after several hours of hard work.

“Does he really need all that bamboo to block the stream? It isn’t very wide.” Lan Jin asks, finding the whole situation to be rather absurd.

Hu Qiuping looks at all of the bamboo building up by Hu Shentian and his grimace reappears. “How did you catch your fish?”

Blinking once, Lan Jin doesn’t know why Hu Qiuping is asking him this, but he truthfully narrates everything from grabbing his spear to walking into the river, catching the fish, and then bringing them back to Hu Gongniu.

Hu Qiuping’s grimace grows as Lan Jin tells his story, and by the time he finishes, Hu Qiuping can’t help but let out a groan.

“He’s probably trying to catch as many fish as he can without even getting his feet wet. If I have to guess, then all of the extra bamboo is so he can make something to walk on so that he never has to step into the water.”

Lan Jin looks between Hu Qiuping, who is leaning back and covering his face with both hands, and Hu Gongniu, who is shaking his head slowly, and can’t help but feel dumbfounded.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me. That is the dumbest shit in the world!” Lan Jin says, feeling frustrated just thinking about how far Hu Shentian is going just to one-up him.

Neither of the men reply, but Lan Jin can tell from the looks on their faces that this isn’t the first time Hu Shentian had done something like this.

Not knowing what else to do, Lan Jin sits down with them and begins to chat about random things while the sound of bamboo splitting fills the background.

***

While Hu Shentian busies himself with his self-appointed task, Lan Jin learns a bit about the three men. As it turns out, though they had the same last name and called each other brothers, they weren’t actually related. Instead, they just had a similar background.

“More than fifty years ago, when the Southern Earth Spine Kingdom was expanding its territory, the kingdom received heavy resistance from the native tribes of the region. During those days, none of the tribes understood what Qi cultivation was and they lacked the cultural values to develop into a proper society. So instead of developing properly, they devoured the flesh of vicious beasts and tempered their bodies in order to survive and dominate their territories through the strength of their bodies. Consequently, when the troops of the Southern Earth Spine Kingdom encountered the native tribes, they found that for every tribal they killed, they would lose two or three soldiers, and, in the worst cases, they sometimes lost entire platoons or even entire companies to the more powerful Body Cultivators.”

Hu Qiuping shakes his head as if he was remembering something he had personally gone through despite his evident young age.

“Despite winning large amounts of territory, the Southern Earth Spine Kingdom quickly realized that their losses were becoming unacceptably enormous. So they came up with a different strategy and chose to offer incentives to some of the tribes they had encountered less of during their expansion. Our tribes included.

Among the incentives, our ancestor’s tribes were offered land and citizenship within the growing kingdom. In addition, our ancestors were each granted high-level Human cultivation practices. In return, all they had to do was fight for the Southern Earth Spine Kingdom as the spearhead of a battalion. Since the tribes normally fought among each other in the first place, our ancestor’s tribes viewed this as receiving a free gift and naturally accepted.”

Hu Qiuping explains the course of the war and how, with the aid of the Body Cultivators from the various tribes they brought under their banner and after numerous bloody battles, the Southern Earth Spine Kingdom eventually succeeded in claiming all of the lands that had once belonged to the various indigenous tribes in the region.

“After the fighting was done and everything began to settle down, our ancestor’s tribes encountered a problem, and that was that they didn’t traditionally have surnames. Instead, they just referred to themselves as members of a particular clan. So, rather than using the names of their all-but-disbanded tribal clans as their surnames, our ancestors chose to use the names of the battalions they fought under as their new surnames. For the three of us, because our ancestors fought under the Furious Tiger Battalion, we all have the surname ‘Hu’.”

Nodding his head, Lan Jin finds the story to be interesting and informative. Not only did he learn a little bit about the recent history of the Southern Earth Spine Kingdom, but he also learned about the differences between Qi Cultivation and Body Cultivation.

Apparently, Body Cultivators cultivated something called ‘Blood Essence’ to increase the strength of their physical body while Qi Cultivators, predictably, cultivated ‘Qi’ in the hopes of becoming one with the world. Between the two of them, Body Cultivators were more powerful than Qi Cultivators of the same level because Body Cultivators had excellent stamina and could release a larger amount of energy over a prolonged period of time. Meanwhile, Qi Cultivators were still capable people, but until they had broken through to the Meridian Opening stage, a Qi Cultivator fighting against a Body Cultivator had the same feel to it as a child trying to attack an adult. However, despite being less powerful, Qi Cultivators were far more prestigious and valued because they could learn mystical abilities that defied common sense and even had the chance to become Immortals with a bit of luck and a lot of effort.

Learning about Body and Qi Cultivation made Lan Jin more interested in trying both of them out, but all he could do for now was slowly work on Qi Cultivation as he had not yet searched for the Great Desolates Body Transformation. In addition, it seemed as though Body Cultivators needed to consume a large amount of vicious beast meat in order to transform their blood into Blood Essence in the first place, and the only vicious beast Lan Jin had ever seen was disintegrated by the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame.

Lan Jin begins looking forward to the future as he waits for Hu Gongniu to finish cooking the fish, and he feels even more excited as he realizes that Hu Gongniu is also cooking some kind of flatbread out of wheat and he’s even using different spices in the process of cooking everything.