Learning that cultivators are quick to kill for face, I immediately look up the crime rates in Qiang City. The results are… concerning.

From extortion to blackmailing, assault to mutilations, corruption, kidnapping, and even murders, Qiang City has it all. This city makes the Scarface and Punisher movies seem tame.

From what I can see, the Qiang City is actually a relatively peaceful place. Relatively being the operative word. The crime rates in many other cities throughout the Shi Empire are so high that I can hardly believe the Empire is still functioning.

Supposedly, the Qiang City has been required by the Emperor to have no crime in order to prevent discord from allowing incursions from the south of the Empire to affect the its internal affairs. As such, people who are found guilty of breaking laws, any laws, in the Qiang City receive severe, or even capital, punishment.

Of course, rather than working as the Emperor likely intended, the law instead gives the city’s nobility the right to ‘legally’ attack anyone who turns against them. All they have to do is demonstrate some evidence that shows them as acting to ‘protect’ the interests of the Empire and they have broad permission to behave however they want.

This results in several families within the city, including the Gang family, abusing their authority in order to gain whatever benefits they can. They behave, in the sense that they don’t do anything openly violating Imperial law themselves, but in the few minutes I’ve been reading over the city’s crime information, I have found dozens of things directly connected to the Gang family.

I even manage to remember the name of the guy from the arena as he is one of the people fairly notorious for ‘cracking down’ on crime within the city. He’s assaulted people, crippled others, executed ‘criminals’, kidnapped, and raped.

When it comes to the first three, nothing ever sticks because there is always evidence pointing out that the other party were violating the law and could, therefore, be freely punished under Imperial law.

But when it came to the kidnappings and rapes, it’s as simple as no one being willing to report the crimes that have taken place. The only people kidnapped are young women, and even girls, from weaker families; both cultivator families around the periphery of the Inner City as well as commoners in the Outer City.

For a while, I think that no one would report these crimes because they’re afraid of retaliation. While that’s probably also true, I’m able to find a few pages from someone’s diary that do a much better job at putting things in perspective for me.

I feel slightly guilty for reading through it, and I wonder how the hell I get diary pages with the Omega Browser, but I do it anyways because I’m part curious and part horrified by what I read.

It is something written by a man from the Outer City named Li Ming whose daughter was kidnapped nearly seven months ago. He wrote the entry in his diary a few months after the fact. According to it, his twelve year-old daughter was kidnapped one night and, after he managed to inform Captain Lu of the city guard, his daughter was found dead hanging above his bed with her stomach torn open and her own intestines being used as the noose to tie her to the rafters.

Li Ming didn’t know how she got there, he only remembered that he was out looking for her in the Outer City when he had a lapse in memory that lasted long enough for him to somehow return home and end up in his bed.

If that was all, it would have been bad enough.

His wife was found to have suffocated on something. As to what it was, I can only see drops of blood, ink splotches, and tears covering that section of the page. When things are legible again, I can read a few words, ‘that bastard’s seed still inside it, the ends hanging from my dearest’s lips’.

He finishes writing shortly after, his last words a question. ‘Would my silence have saved their lives?’

I don’t even want to read the report of the guard who found the scene later, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he found three bodies instead of two.

My mood is sufficiently ruined as disgust and outrage fill me.

I wonder why no one seems to be doing anything about such horrible crimes being committed in the city. When I look into the Gang family, I quickly uncover the reason.

The Gang family is effectively a hand belonging to one of the Four Imperial Dukes. Specifically, they belong to a branch family related to the Eastern King, King Lei. Unlike the Qiang family that is only a vassal of King Wei and only commands a small amount of his attention, the Gang family seem to have their lips firmly pressed to King Lei’s ear.

King Lei doesn’t seem to be capable of directly acting out in King Wei’s territory, but he doesn’t seem to mind throwing around his power to protect his extended family. This can be seen through multiple instances of the Qiang family receiving official orders to cease various investigations into the Gang family.

However, this doesn’t mean that the Qiang family is any weaker than the Gang family, just that they cannot act against them without stirring up more trouble than they can handle.

The Qiang family has been given the order to execute any noble found to have commit crimes of an egregious nature. The problem is that they need proof, proof that they can never find because they are always ordered to stop searching.

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The entire situation is a complete clusterfuck, but nobody seems to be willing to do anything to fix it.

When I remember that I’m probably someone who pissed off the psychopath likely responsible for raping and murdering a young girl, I feel a sense of dread filling my chest. Physician Bing is strong, but he already admit that he is only one of the strongest people in this city and not the strongest person. Can he even help me with a family like that?

I bite the skin of my right hand’s index finger while trying to decide how to solve this problem. If it is as simple as getting evidence to turn the Gang family in, then I might be able to manage that. But the problems would come when I try explaining how I got the evidence. There’s no way I could reasonably explain my sources when my sources are all inside my head.

Then there’s the question of, if I do manage to do something, what would happen with King Lei? Would I be going from dealing with a big problem to dealing with a huge problem? Where would this rabbit hole end once I jump down it and would I be alive when I hit the bottom?

“What am I supposed to do about this sort of situation?” I hiss around my finger.

I can think of a few possibilities, but each one is more dangerous or reckless than the last. First, I could go for broke and give the Qiang family the evidence they need to convict and execute the worst offenders from the Gang family. This might put me in the good graces of King Wei and the Qiang family, if Qiang Yu doesn’t manage to make her family hate me instead, but it would expose me as having knowledge I probably shouldn’t have access to. I doubt I’d get lucky enough that everyone I meet will be like Physician Bing.

I could also try blackmailing the Gang family into silence. This would reveal to them that I know their dirty little secrets and have evidence of it, but it would also upgrade me to ‘extreme liability’ on their radar. If I do this, I’d probably be taking a huge risk in the hopes that mutually assured destruction are enough to deter them.

If not that, then I could just take a wait-and-see approach. I’m not completely certain that the Gang family, Gang Feng in particular, are going to be doing anything in retaliation for the other night. Most of what happened was because of Qiang Yu, after all. Plus, they might hesitate to do something with Physician Bing around. This way doesn’t seem too unreasonable, but I don’t want to be jumped one night while hoping that everything is fine.

If nothing else works, I could also run away. It would be a cowardly option, and probably a smart one considering how weak I am and how powerful everyone else seems to be, but it is an option. I’d just be abandoning my morals to do it…

“The biggest problem is that I’m so weak,” I mutter before picking up my cup of tea and taking a sip. The waiter left a while ago to attend to his other duties leaving me alone to ponder, eat, and drink.

The biggest detractor to my power, or complete lack of it, is that I haven’t had the appropriate time and don’t have the resources to increase it. I know the path that I need to take, but I’ve only finished one step on a journey of a thousand miles. Even if I’m willing to work hard, I currently lack the ability to do so.

Well, maybe that’s not true. I don’t lack the ability, I’m pretty sure I could cheat my way through most problems. The only problems I can’t cheat my way through are the ones that exist outside of the confines of my body.

“That’s actually a lot of things I can’t cheat…” I give myself a dismal chuckle that does nothing to improve my mood.

“But I can cheat indirectly,” I realize. “I need to get stronger in order to be safer, I need money in order to get stronger, and even without pill refining, I can figure out what sells in Qiang City and provide it.”

I begin looking through the Omega Browser for any information I can find on QIang City’s economy. I’m sadly surprised when I’m not surprised by what I find.

Even worse than what I’m used to in America, people in the Outer City barely qualify as making a fraction of a single percent of the city’s wealth… and the Qiang City is a fairly poor city in the Empire due to the fact that it exists to serve as a shield against invasions.

Even the Qiang family, a family without the backing of someone like King Lei, easily possesses enough wealth that they’d be the equivalent of a family with assets exceeding one hundred million dollars back on Earth. They might not be the richest family on the block, but they have enough businesses in the city distributing talismans, qi crystals, and more mundane necessities— at least insofar as their businesses in the Outer City are concerned— that they will never go hungry barring extreme misfortune.

The Gang family has significantly more wealth and deals with weapons, has toes in the distribution of poor-quality pills, is edging in on the talisman trade, and seems to receive a good deal of wealth from family outside of the city.

Most of the noble families don’t have the exaggerated amounts of money as the Qiang and Gang families have, but they do still have a reasonable chunk of the city’s economy in their pockets.

The real big slices of pie belong to the Golden Sun Auction House and the branch of the Pill Pavilion in the city.

The Pill Pavilion takes up nearly fifteen percent of the city’s economy all on its own, but the Golden Sun Auction House is practically the entirety of the Qiang City’s economy. It has its hand in so many places that over sixty percent of the trade within the Inner City is all because of the Golden Sun Auction House’s existence. They sell everything from weapons, vicious beast parts, treasures, special tools, cultivation manuscripts, rare talismans, and more.

They also provide certain services, but they’re things like information distribution which I think might be slightly dangerous for me to get involved in.

The main thing they offer that I’m interested in are their cultivation manuscripts and this is for one simple reason; cultivation manuscripts on the Mortal grade are all written by hand!

This was never apparent to me before now because I’ve used the internet for everything, but seeing what the Golden Sun Auction House has available for their auctions shows me that any cultivation manual at or above the Bronze grade are all inscribed inside of what look like rectangular pieces of jade.

The Mortal grade manuals, on the other hand, are written by hand on beast hide, scrolls, and even sheets of metal. But the main thing I care about is that they look to be things I can replicate.

Replicate in the sense that I can copy ones that they don’t have and sell it to them, not in the sense that I’m going to steal their shit and sell it back to them.

The biggest detractors to doing this are almost banal in their consideration; I need something to write on, something to write with, and a little practice drawing so I can make the same squiggly characters and portrayals of people on the cultivation manuals that the Golden Sun Auction House has available.

The pros definitely beat out the detractors, though, as even Mortal grade cultivation manuals can sell for upwards of ten large gold coins for mid-ranged manuals. The more expensive Mortal grade cultivation manuals can start raking in qi crystals if the auctions for them go well.

At this point, I’ve already internally decided to go through with this plan, but before fully committing to it I want to get Physician Bing’s feedback. I can probably vet the Golden Sun Auction House on my own, but I’m pretty sure I remember Physician Bing admitting to having experience working with them.

Nothing beats real world advice for real world problems.