Lan Jin and Hu Gongniu finish packing the boxes under the heat of the sun while doing their best to ignore the pressure that the army camp gives off. In the background, Hu Shentian and Hu Qiuping watch Lan Jin closely, Hu Shentian with an unreadable expression on his face, and Hu Qiuping with undisguised curiosity as he wonders what it is that Hu Shentian had noticed.
Once the pack is hoisted onto Hu Gongniu’s shoulders the men set off through the tents again while heading for the dirt road that would lead them closer to the city. All the while, they notice that the formerly silent troops are now bustling around like so many armored bees as they work to disassemble all of the tents in the camp.
None of the four men speak a word as they travel through the camp, each step causing them to feel a degree of anxiety as they worry about being forced to stay in the camp for even a second longer. Thankfully, despite being stared at by hundreds of armed and armored soldiers as they pass by, they aren’t accosted any further and are able to easily leave the camp and arrive back at the dirt road that had brought them here.
After breathing a collective sigh of relief, Hu Qiuping is the first one to speak.
“Well, I never thought we’d come across the Immovable Legion trying to get back into the city.” Shaking his head, Hu Qiuping then says, “We were lucky the City Lord didn’t care much about us. That could have been a lot worse.”
“That guy was a fucking asshole,” Lan Jin says bitterly. “We didn’t do anything wrong and he still made us out to be criminals without understanding the full story!”
Hu Qiuping chokes and Hu Gongniu’s mouth drops open, but Hu Shentian looks at Lan Jin approvingly.
With a vicious smirk on his face, Hu Shentian says, “All of the nobility inside of the city are like that. They don’t care about right or wrong, they only care about their face, their family, and their position. Anything else can be overlooked.”
Hu Qiuping quickly cuts in, “Even if that’s true, there are some things that shouldn’t be said. Especially not so close to a military camp with the highest-ranking person in the city still inside it!”
Lan Jin and Hu Shentian both look back at the camp and look frustrated, but they don’t say anything else.
“We should hurry up and go. We’ve lost enough time as it is and now we have no choice but to bring Lan Jin to the Inner City to have him registered.” Hu Qiuping sighs. “Even after everything, the City Lord still decided to punish us.”
“How’s that?” Lan Jin asks curiously. “I mean, other than smacking Hu Gongniu and me upside the head.”
Shrugging his shoulders, Hu Shentian says, “It’s because you have to go to the Inner City to register as a cultivator.”
As they begin heading down the dirt road, Lan Jin asks, “Yeah, but how’s that punishment? Wouldn’t I have to do that regardless?”
“The important part isn’t that you have to go, it’s that you have to go tonight.” Hu Qiuping inserts. “But the Inner City gatehouse closes at night, so you have to get there within the next few hours or you’ll be stuck outside. That means we’re going to have to take a carriage, and the carriages that can get us to the Inner City quickly are all expensive. Then we have to get you registered and someone will still have to sell the natural treasures, which means we have to pay for multiple people to enter the Inner City since you won’t be able to find your way alone— In short, everything that could have been done tomorrow for a fraction of the cost now has to be done tonight at a premium.”
Groaning, Lan Jin says, “That’s some major bullshit.”
Snorting, Hu Shentian says, “And that’s exactly why all of the noble families are the same— any casual move of theirs can cause serious harm to people like us, but they still throw around their judgment without considering how it will affect anyone but themselves.”
“And that’s exactly why we shouldn’t talk about them,” Hu Qiuping scolds Lan Jin and Hu Shentian. “Just a small accident has already caused us to lose a large amount of profit. And that’s without irritating anyone! If we talk about it and get someone’s attention, then things will only get worse!”
After being scolded by Hu Qiuping, Lan Jin and Hu Shentian look at each other and grimace. But, after having experienced injustice together, Lan Jin and Hu Shentian both feel closer to one another.
***
It takes a little over half an hour for the four men to make their way to the tributary village outside of the city, but Lan Jin can’t help but feel odd looking at the long lines of buildings stretching into the distance. He has no clue how many buildings there are other than a lot of them, but there are row after row of them, and with the exception of several stone warehouses and a few stores and restaurants, all of them seem to be single-story earthwork homes.
Beyond them, he can only see a massive amount of farmland sandwiched between the buildings and a large wall in the distance. Though there are only a few miles between the buildings and the wall, the farmland stretches so far into the distance that Lan Jin can’t help but wonder just how many tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people are needed to work all of it.
However, what he doesn’t see makes him just as curious as what he does see.
“Where does the water for all of this land come from?” He asks the men accompanying him.
Glancing at the field in the distance, Hu Qiuping says, “Underground aqueducts. It’s said that one of the first things the Southern Earth Spine Kingdom did when they conquered this land was to send tens of thousands of body cultivators to dig out massive trenches deep beneath the surface of the land. All of the trenches connect to an underground river somewhere and the entire city and all of the land around it get water from there.”
Looking out at the field, Lan Jin’s first reaction is disbelief. But, after thinking about how large the River of Fate is, he decides to close his mouth.
Not too long after that, the four men arrive in front of the West Gatehouse and Lan Jin is awed once again. He had seen the wall from a distance, but as he got closer to it, the wall became more and more intimidating. Now, standing at its foot, he has to crane his head back to see the top of it over a hundred feet above him. That’s not even the most incredible part of it, though, as the wall is thicker than it is tall, and the gatehouse he is standing in front of leads to a fifty-foot-wide tunnel that stretches three hundred feet through the stone wall with numerous metal portcullises hanging from above ready to fall at any second. In addition, there are hundreds of tiny murder holes in the tunnel that make Lan Jin think that any invading army would have to be suicidal to even consider trying to enter the city through this point.
“How the fuck does anyone build something like this?” Lan Jin asks, frightened by the sheer size of the behemoth-like wall in front of him.
Grinning, Hu Qiuping says, “Where do you think the stone the body cultivators dug out of the ground ended up after they built the aqueducts? It had to go somewhere, right? In the end, most of it was used to build this wall that surrounds the entire city!”
Lan Jin shakes his head in disbelief. Just the part of the wall that is directly in front of him is mind-blowing. But when he looks to the left and right and sees that the wall does not end, he feels chills run down his spine as he wonders how many people and how much power were needed to make something this grand possible. Especially considering that everything had to have been constructed within the last fifty years.
Lan Jin’s questions go unanswered, though, as the four men quickly approach the gatehouse and arrive in front of a retinue of twenty men standing in a row. Each of them is wearing bronze chain armor, leather pants with bronze plates stitched in covering their vitals, and a bronze helmet that, for some of them, does not seem to quite fit properly. Compared to the thousands of men wearing black armor only a few miles away, these men were almost pitiful in comparison. Lan Jin still doesn’t want to be at the wrong end of their bronze spears, but if he had to choose between fighting twenty of these men and one of the men wearing black armor, he would choose to fight the twenty men.
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One of the men walks right up to Hu Qiuping with a big, fake smile on his face and says, “Brother Hu! It’s so good to see you! How was your trip? Did you meet any troubles on your journey?”
Hu Qiuping responds with a bitter smile. “Brother Ma! Aiya, you would never believe the kind of luck we had this time. We actually managed to find four Serpent’s Tail plants and even some Stonespit Berries!” Then, Hu Qiuping lets out a large sigh while shaking his head. “It’s such a waste, such a waste.”
“Brother Hu, what do you mean? How could it be such a waste? Did you lose everything?” ‘Brother’ Ma asks him.
Shaking his head, Hu Qiuping quickly rejects his thoughts. “No, no, no. In fact, we have everything with us right now. It’s just…” Sighing again, Hu Qiuping turns his head and looks back in the direction of the Immovable Legion. “We encountered some hardships on the way here.”
‘Brother’ Ma’s eyes widen slightly and he whispers conspiratorially, “What kind of hardships? Is there anything that might… effect the city?”
Hu Qiuping hesitates before shaking his head. “It’s not good to talk about, but… the Immovable Legion seems to be performing some kind of inspection just on the opposite end of the tributary village. We even got caught up in it on accident and the City Lord himself was bored enough to take an interest in us.”
‘Brother’ Ma’s eyes widen further and, his voice slightly bitter, he says, “This is great news for the city! It’s good that our City Lord can afford to pay attention to us little people when he already has so many things that require his attention.”
Shrugging his shoulders, Hu Qiuping lets out yet another sigh while nodding his head sadly. “Yes, but it seems that this time my brothers and I will have to suffer a little bit. For some reason, the City Lord thought we were trying to smuggle goods into the city. Now, to prove our innocence, we have to head to the Inner City tonight to report everything that we found… speaking of which, don’t you have a cousin who has a fast horse and a large carriage? It’s a little late, and we will have to move quickly if we want to reach the Inner City before nightfall.”
Nodding his head, ‘Brother’ Ma quickly agrees. “Of course! Let alone getting to the Inner City by nightfall, he could even take you to the capital by daybreak! But… there’s still the matter of the price. It’s a little inconvenient to summon him without any warning, who knows what other things he has going on…”
‘Brother’ Ma looks sincerely regretful, but when Hu Qiuping holds out two silver coins, he snatches them up with a big smile on his face. “Of course, I’m sure that whatever he has planned, he will understand that your issue is very important. The only problem is that you still have to pay the Jadewood box tax. I’m sure you understand, it’s not that I want to tax you, but the rules are the rules.”
Without saying a word, Hu Qiuping hands over another small silver coin and five large copper coins.
After receiving the coins and counting all of them, ‘Brother’ Ma lets out a hiss of air and says, “You really are suffering today. Let me go grab my cousin. It won’t take long.”
When ‘Brother’ Ma runs off leaving them waiting at the gatehouse with the remaining guards, Lan Jin turns to Hu Qiuping and asks, “What’s the deal with that guy?”
Shrugging, Hu Qiuping says, “He’s just a dog scrounging for scraps. He has a powerful master, though, so as long as it doesn’t become too obvious, then no one will say anything about it. If you meet him in the future, either avoid him before he can talk to you, or drop him a few compliments and he will walk away wagging his tail.”
“Gotcha,” Lan Jin says hesitantly. He didn’t really get the whole thing about ‘Brother’ Ma having a master, but he dealt with similar things in high school so it isn’t hard for him to accept everything else.
To his credit, fifteen minutes later ‘Brother’ Ma reappears riding in the back of a horse-drawn carriage with a shifty-looking man holding the reins of the plain brown horse in front of him. There isn’t anything remarkable about the man holding the reins, but Lan Jin does notice his bloodshot eyes and twitchy fingers and can’t help but think this guy is smoking something.
Despite his thoughts, as the carriage arrives in front of them and ‘Brother’ Ma jumps out of it, Lan Jin doesn’t hesitate to join Hu Qiuping and the others as they climb into it. The carriage is unimpressive, more a cart with benches and a tarp over it than anything else, but, as they begin moving, Lan Jin realizes that, even if ‘Brother’ Ma was exaggerating the speed of the carriage, they were still going at a fairly quick pace through the tunnel beneath the city’s wall. He’s not sure, but he thinks they have to be moving at around fifty or sixty miles per hour.
And though Lan Jin finds the pace they’re moving at to be unbelievable considering their mode of transportation, the wind that buffets his face as they quickly pass through the tunnel informs him that they really are moving at a ridiculous speed for being in a horse-drawn carriage.
Shaking his head at the absurdity, Lan Jin chooses to squint his eyes to block out the worst of the wind and looks out at the city in front of him instead.
Directly inside the city, the houses don’t look much different from the houses in the tributary village. They have a decent size— about 900 square feet each— and they are all single-story homes on both sides of the large road. However, despite seeing hundreds of small homes, Lan Jin can’t help but feel a little odd.
“Are there any stores around here?” Lan Jin calls out, his voice is loud to overcome the noise of the wind.
Turning to him, Hu Qiuping calls out, “There are, but you can’t see any from here. In the Eastern and Western districts of the city, everything is arranged in square grids. At the center of each grid is where you will find things like shops, restaurants, and other commercial properties. This is also where you will find the houses of low-level government officials and the homes of wealthier families. Along the peripheries, there are only these smaller homes.”
Lan Jin nods and asks, “Then are these the houses you said cost three silver coins per year?”
“Yes.” Hu Qiuping confirms. “But, if I were you, I would look for something a little better. You won’t be able to afford anything really nice, but I would recommend purchasing a smaller compound closer to the Central District— not in the Central District, but along the peripheries of the Eastern and Western districts. There are some decent-sized compounds that you can buy and they are close enough to the Central District that you can travel there easily, but far enough away that you won’t get caught in the disputes of the arrogant brats who think their parents' money entitles them to act like local lords.”
“A compound?” Lan Jin asks. “What type of compound?”
“A compound is just an enclosed property— usually with more buildings than just the main home. Every family who has even a shred of self-respect within the city owns a compound. For the larger and more powerful families, they even have compounds large enough to hold hundreds of people. Our families have compounds as well.”
“But why would I choose a compound over a house? I get that families like compounds, but I’m just one guy and my family is nowhere near here, and I don’t plan on marrying any time soon either. So wouldn’t it make more sense to buy a cheaper house for now and upgrade later if I need to?”
Hu Qiuping shakes his head. “Not exactly. It would save you money, but it would also cut off your route to advance in the city and make it nearly impossible for you to get married in the future. People around here care a great deal about a person’s background. If all you have is a small home and no backing in the city, then you are inconsequential. No one will bother looking at you twice, let alone make an effort to try and become friendly with you. And no family would allow one of their daughters to marry into a household with nothing to show for it, so if you did buy a smaller house, you could forget ever getting married to anyone but a common village girl or maybe a low-class courtesan.”
“A courtesan?” Lan Jin asks, stunned.
“Mm. And that’s only if you had the money to satisfy her.”
After that, Lan Jin shakes his head and leans back against the low wall of the carriage while watching as the buildings progressively grow larger as they approach the center of the city. So far, he had no good impressions of this city other than a general sense of awe at its scale, and even then it was the same kind of awe he would feel if he saw the pyramids in Egypt or the Great Wall in China. It was impressive, but only because someone did it and not because he wanted to spend a large amount of time near it.
Before long, Lan Jin begins feeling tired. Because he hadn’t had an opportunity to sleep while he was consuming the Red-Skinned Pears earlier, he ended up having to stay up for the last thirty-six or so hours.
Turning to the men accompanying him, he says, “I’m going to take a quick nap.”
When he receives a nod in response, he closes his eyes and enters the Omega Browser’s Space to see how many strands of purple mist he had collected in his rush to cultivate over the last day.
What he does not expect, though, is to see hundreds of strands of purple mist floating about within the Omega Browser’s Space. There are so many of them that he doesn’t even know how he should use them. He’s even worried that he might fall into some kind of weird, ecstatic coma if he tried to fuse all of them into the little star at once.
As he looks them over, an urgent message sounds throughout his mind as Moxian contacts him after being silent for the last day and a half.
“Lan Jin! Lan Jin! Hurry up and give me some more of that purple stuff! I think I have a way to figure out what it is! The more the better!”
Surprised by her sudden reappearance, Lan Jin looks at all of the purple mist inside of the Omega Browser’s Space and decides he might as well send her some. After all, it would take dozens of strands of purple mist for him to be able to search for anything worthwhile— and even then it might not be what he was looking for—, so if he sent her less than that and still got a result, then it would be worth it in his mind. And even if he couldn’t get any good information out of her, with her being far more experienced at cultivation than him, he might have to ask her for advice in the future and this would be a cheap and effective way to keep himself in her good books.
Satisfied that he probably wouldn’t lose out, he immediately sends a dozen strands of purple mist into Moxian’s blood bubble and can’t help but jerk slightly as Moxian suddenly lets out several loud squeals of delight that fill Lan Jin’s head.
“You alright?” Hu Gongniu asks him.
Without opening his eyes, Lan Jin yawns and says, “Yeah. I just… had a thought. Nothing important, though.”