“B-blessed Cultivator! You honour us with your presence! How may this humble chief aid you?”
Feng’s arrival in the village was hardly subtle, nor was his status as a cultivator something that could be hidden. If the two-metre tall flaming horse at his side or his expensive robes did not give his prestige away immediately, his qi certainly did.
Even the unawakened mortals of this sleepy village could tell when a powerful cultivation was among them.
His status as Young Master was more obscure, but that hardly made a difference. The village sentry had run off to get the village chief the moment they saw his blazing steed come down the path. It saved him considerable time as Feng assessed the settlement.
It was almost entirely populated by mortals. Less than a handful of them could cultivate, and the ‘strongest’ among them was the ageing village chief before him, who barely stood within the third Step of the Foundation Realm.
“I thank the elder for meeting me so swiftly,” Feng said, and the chief bowed even lower. “I shall be brief, so as to not take too much of your precious time. I have come to enquire about matters regarding your village’s harvest tax this year.”
Feng could sense the man’s nervousness, as well as the pungent fear that lingered from the surrounding villagers as they dropped everything they were doing and rushed into their homes. For some damnable reason, that annoying weight in his heart doubled, and Feng thought he smelled the faint stench of rusted chains and saccharine rot in the air again.
There was an eye in the shadows, judging his every move.
“This lowly one will, of course, do everything he can to help you, Honoured Cultivator,” the chief said, clasped hands shaking while sweat dripped off his brow. “It is simply… I had thought the matter of taxes this year was already settled months ago? I-I can assure you, a pair of disciples wearing the robes of the Beheaded Phoenix Sect had arrived to pick up the tithe…”
The chief no doubt thought Feng was here to extort more. Why else would a cultivator come to their meagre village, if not to take its resources for himself?
“The weak are ever prey to the strong. Mere playthings to plunder, rape, and feast upon–”
“Be silent,” Feng murmured. Something within him throbbed uglily.
“A-ah, I’m sorry?” The chief said, before paling and bowing lower. “I beg a thousand pardons, Honoured Cultivator! But this lowly one could not hear your words. It is my age, you see, I have had poor ears ever since—”
“I said, you are correct. It has been settled,” Feng replied soothingly as he schooled his expression. “I am merely here to follow up on a matter. The quality of the grain you have sent met the weight quotas, but further inspection found the produce to be of poor quality.”
The chief winced. “Honoured Cultivator! This humble village has already sent the best it has! Surely, you can overlook–”
“Calm yourself, I am not here to punish you.” Feng’s voice was weary. A familiar shade flickered again at his vision’s edge, but he ignored the apparition. “I came here to assess the situation, and I understand. Your harvest this year was exceptionally poor, was it not?”
It was obvious in the emaciated bodies of the villagers around them. Most of them looked ready to kneel over at any moment. If Feng concentrated his qi, he could sense the stench of death coming from more than a few houses.
The corpses were not buried, but stored.
That they had already resorted to eating their dead… Were it his choice, would he have preferred the flesh of his kin, or would he trade it for a less familiar body to lessen the grief?
“Your village was already undergoing a famine when our tax collectors arrived. Threatened by their words and presence, you were forced to give up more than what you could afford,” the Young Master surmised.
The village chief said nothing, keeping his head bowed. Beneath the pitiful display, however, Feng could sense the stirring of resentment and despair.
How many people was the elder forced to watch starve as he paid the village tithe? How many familiar faces did he have to butcher, after the Sect cultivators came and took away their hard-earned harvest? Harvest that the Sect would not even care for?
Feng did not know, and neither did he ask. Instead, he hefted two heavy burlap sacks from his mare’s pack saddle and placed them at the elder’s feet. “Here.”
“A-ah?” The elder blinked himself out of his stupor, before gingerly opening the bag. His eyes widened in shock. “This is–!”
Rice. Two large sacks of pure white rice, their shine indicating only of the highest quality; it was undoubtedly a far more princely variant of grain than the pitiful bags of millet the village had surrendered as taxes months before.
“Use this to feed your people,” Feng said as the chief looked on in shock. “I have already arranged for my disciples to send regular shipments of grain here to aid your village until your famine is resolved by the next harvest.”
“Y-your disciples?! But that’s… Good Sir, are you the Young–!”
“The Disciples that handled the collecting of your harvest have been punished for not reporting your situation. You will not see them again,” Feng cut in. Already, he was mounting back on his steed, unwilling to spend another moment there. More and more people were coming out of their houses, the elder’s loud exclamations and the sight of the rice overriding their fear of him. “Please distribute these to your people. It will not bring back your dead, but this Young Master apologises regardless, on behalf of his Sect.”
Stolen story; please report.
He turned and rode away, even as the elder shouted his praise of gratitude. Feng heard the desperate cheers of the villagers who rushed to see the bounty. More than a few broke down in tears. Yet neither the sound of their jubilation nor the pounding gallops of his steed could block out the mocking whispers in his ears.
“One in a thousand injustice. What does it matter?”
Even as the words were uttered by his lifeless heart, he thought the weight of it lessened a little. The Young Master breathed, reigning in his emotions before taking out a map detailing the territories of the Beheaded Phoenix Sect. The parchment was riddled with markings that he had worked out the night before.
Harvest records, population counts, tax ledgers, and trade transcripts. A thousand documents, read and sorted, that gave him an idea of the mortal happenings in the lands of the Beheaded Phoenix Sect.
Few cultivators cared for the mortals that toiled for the Sect, fewer still would ever help them. But many are the ones who would exploit those villagers, and even more were willing to completely overlook this abuse as ‘natural’.
Feng would have been one of them too, if he had a choice. But that damnable weight in his chest would not let him, and he had learnt long ago that ignoring that thing festering in his heart would lead to dire, fatal consequences.
“Alright then, you greedy thing,” he murmured to himself as he tucked the map back in his robe, his next destination set. “Let’s see how many I must aid this time for you to go back to sleep.”
The day was still young, and he had work to do.
~~~
“Honoured Cultivator! Please forgive the state of our village. It is simply that—”
“I am already aware. Your area was recently infested by Ear-Feasting Flies and the pleas for aid had been ignored for months. Direct me to the nest; I shall cleanse the rot personally…”
~~~
“Honoured Cultivator! I beg of you, bandits have been harassing our trade, and were even bold enough to raid our village! Our women and children have been taken, please—!”
“I have already dealt with the matter on my way here. The bandits have been slain, and the captives were taken to the nearest checkpoint east of here. Go and reclaim your people. I have also ordered the Outer Disciple guards there to prepare compensation for their laxity…”
~~~
“Young Master! It is you again! Please, it is shamelessly of me to ask once more for your aid after you helped us months ago, but—”
“The river dam has collapsed again, I can see. I shall personally prepare a ford for now to stem the flow. Materials and disciples will be sent to aid in the construction of a new one. The previous builders will be reprimanded for their slovenly work, and…”
~~~
On and on he went. Some villages were places he had not been to before. Others were frequent areas of visit during his monthly ‘charity’ work. Each settlement he went to had a serious problem that went unaddressed. Each one had their problems solved by the time he left, to the great relief and cheers of their inhabitants.
“Perhaps. But for how long? And after how much blood was split and bodies savaged, when some of their problems went ignored for days or weeks?”
By the time the sun reached its summit, he had personally visited over a dozen villages, solved just as many problems, and likely saved the lives of countless mortals. He was showered in praise, and his reputation among the common folk had likely risen once more.
But more importantly, the weight in his heart had noticeably lessened. Its pressure was now merely a tenth of what it was in the morning. The voice persisted, but its mumbles were barely audible now.
“You have failed to solve anything. The cycle will repeat.”
Feng sighed, making sure there was no one around but himself and his mare on the trail before he spoke aloud: “I did what I could with what I have. You cannot possibly ask more of me.”
“The root remains poisoned; the cause unresolved.”
“I have already punished the ones responsible. Despite my position, I cannot control the actions of every single one of my Sect’s Disciples. That they choose to act in a way that harms the mortal villages is a failing on their part, not mine!”
“More waste. More excuse.”
“I have already done my part. You will honour our silent agreement, and begone.”
“This is what we promised each other, Zhong.”
“That is not my name, and I do not know who you are, you—!” The Young Master sucked in a breath as his mare became restless at his shouting. He patted the beast's neck, murmuring soothing words in its ear.
Once it was calm again, he closed his eyes and whispered: “Leave me be. You are not real.”
When Feng opened his eyes, he flinched, as he saw a pale green eye staring at him from an inch away.
“Would that it be so simple…”
The phantom face of a woman he did not recognise kissed him on the forehead, before disappearing like the wisps of morning mist.
It took a long while before the Young Master got his turbulent qi back under control.
----------------------------------------
The Outer Provinces
The edge of human civilisation. A vast steppe of land devoid of qi or valuable resources. This is where most of the existing human population lives. A land of the mundane, where mystics are rare and the populace short-lived and ignorant of higher purposes.
Most of the people here spend their lives toiling away farming or weaving so that they may pay their meagre taxes to the Empire. Such worthless tithe are collected by whichever poor Imperial bureaucrat was ill-fortuned enough to be tasked with the loathsome chore, upon which they are then further burdened with the responsibility of figuring out a way to use the countless bags of banal produce to better the state of the region.
It is not an enviable task, and it is one of the main reasons why those from the Inner Province detest the Outer Provinces so much.
The only things that might be of any tangible merit within these impoverished lands are the Cultivation Sects that dwell there, which exist as the only means by which a denizen of the Outer Province may make a name for themselves by becoming a Practitioner of the Spiritual Arts — though their contribution to the Empire’s ultimate goal of creating an Immortal Utopia is debatable.
As of the current year, there are a hundred and eight Outer Provinces designated within the fringes of Imperial territory, with their total population encompassing half of the Imperial Empire’s citizens. It is often a widely contentious point within the Imperial Court whether the annexation of the Outer Provinces from the Empire — with many extremists even suggesting wholesale genocide as a form of mercy — would be more beneficial to achieving the Emperor’s vision of an Ascendant Humanity, rather than to allow them to languish.
Thus far, opinions are split on the matter, but with each passing year, more and more have begun to side with the voices of those favouring abandonment.
– Excerpt from A Citizen’s Guide to the Imperial Empire