This man had not thrown his weight around. He was probably of upright character. Liu Xiaolou watched him depart, full of respect, and clasped his hands in salute behind him.
But by dusk, as the sky darkened, those of poor character began to appear. They burst from the woods, rushed to the edge of the fields, swung their sickles to cut a few handfuls, then turned and ran, impossible to catch.
Liu Xiaolou was only at the Qi Refining third layer, not yet capable of sending his flying sword away from his body. All he could do was roar angrily at their backs and jump up and down, cursing them as "little bastards."
The final spirit field left him utterly stifled. It was robbed more than ten times in succession. The last time was especially infuriating: the other party's cultivation was clearly two notches higher, and he lingered stubbornly by the field. Liu Xiaolou charged him several times in a desperate fight, only to return empty-handed each time.
He could not beat the man, and cursing was useless. The other party simply kept his head down beneath a black scarf and harvested away, taking a full two fen of Liu Xiaolou's field before calmly tying it up and carrying it off. Liu Xiaolou had no way to stop him.
Fortunately, this was his last contracted spirit field. In all, a little over twenty catties had been taken, which would not affect the overall situation. He would just consider it dog food.
That night, after turning in the spirit grain, he was still short by just over a hundred catties. He had four sacks of spirit grain buried in a hidden place, totaling more than three hundred catties. Naturally, he could not hand them all over at once. When he made his final delivery tomorrow night, he planned to turn in another thirty or fifty catties. For whatever remained unfinished, he would pay silver to make up the difference—like spending money to buy rice. One catty of spirit rice cost two taels of silver. The price was high, but it was not something one could buy whenever one wished.
Back in the fields, Liu Xiaolou meditated and regulated his breathing for half an hour. Then, under the black wind and high moon, he wrapped a black scarf around his face and put on a bamboo hat.
What others could do, so could he!
He had long since picked his target. It lay at the southeastern end of the valley. Every night when Liu Xiaolou delivered grain, he passed over the mountain and could see which spirit fields in the valley had not yet been harvested. At the southeastern end was a large spirit field of over four mu, where the spirit rice still grew in neat, orderly rows, conspicuous as could be.
From halfway up the mountainside, he watched for a long while by moonlight. The spirit field was quiet and still, with no one in the surrounding wilderness. He did not know whether the Zang family had assigned no helpers here, or whether the helpers assigned here had not had time to harvest it. In any case, this was the one!
He waited patiently a while longer. When a patch of dark clouds drifted over and covered the brilliant moonlight, the night immediately deepened by several shades. The valley below became even blacker, nearly impossible to see one's hand before one's face.
"Let's go!" Liu Xiaolou bolstered his courage and leaped down, swift in movement and fierce as a tiger!
After several rises and falls, he reached the Foot of the Mountain. Bent low, he dashed forward with a whoosh, quickly arriving at the edge of the field.
Sure enough, he could not see his hand before his face. The perfect time to steal rice.
Liu Xiaolou crept into the field. Unable to tell exactly where he was, he endured the prickling rice awns and tossed out the Misty Incense Tendon. He immediately began pulling up rice. Each clump he uprooted, he threw into the basket on his back. Before long, it was packed full.
He backed several steps out of the paddy and nearly tripped over the ridge behind him, cutting a sorry figure. But he had no time to care about that. He dumped the rice stalks from his basket, tied them with a rice stalk, and temporarily piled them on the field ridge.
He returned to the paddy and continued working, going back and forth several times until he had cut five or six bundles.
As he worked, he kept raising his head to look at the sky. That patch of dark clouds was about to drift away, and moonlight would soon emerge again. When that happened, it would be best to retreat to the mountainside first and wait for another good opportunity before coming back down.
Just as he was pondering this, he flicked the Misty Incense Tendon forward—and missed. It had not wrapped around any rice stalks.
Before he could think further, he flung the Misty Incense Tendon farther ahead. This time it caught something. Liu Xiaolou poured true essence into the tendon and tugged it back...
A soft cry rang out beneath his feet. "Ow..."
Liu Xiaolou froze. Looking closely, he saw that what he had hooked back was not rice stalks, but a human figure!
The dark clouds drifted past, and moonlight spilled down once more. This time he saw clearly: it really was a person, with his Misty Incense Tendon wrapped around their ankle.
Looking across the paddy, he saw rice thieves in black face scarves everywhere. Like headless flies, they panicked and scattered wildly beneath the moonlight.
The person whose ankle was caught propped himself halfway up, reaching for the Misty Incense Tendon as he shouted at Liu Xiaolou in shock and fury, "You fucking idiot, don't you have eyes?"
Liu Xiaolou was equally horrified and had no time to tangle with him. He reeled back the tendon, took several steps onto the field ridge, grabbed up the rice ears he had harvested, stuffed most of them into his basket, clutched several bundles in each hand that would not fit, and swiftly ran into the forest.
When he climbed halfway up the mountain, he turned back, panting, and looked down. The rice field was already empty of people, harvested into a scattered mess. What had once been a neat field full of rice now had less than half remaining, mangled beyond recognition as if dogs had chewed through it.
"Those dog-thief rice stealers—there are fucking so many of them!" Liu Xiaolou spat bitterly, gazing regretfully at the ruined field. After hesitating for a moment, he finally left.
Too many thieves had set their sights on that field. The owners might well be alerted, and if he were caught red-handed with the stolen goods, the loss would outweigh the gain.
He found a secluded place and counted his haul. Five bundles in his basket, three in each hand—eleven bundles in all. Not bad at all!
Eh? Eleven bundles? If he remembered correctly, he had only harvested five or six bundles, hadn't he?
Looking more carefully, he saw that six bundles had been pulled up by the roots—those were his work. The other five had been cut off halfway up the stalks and were clearly much shorter. He had no idea who had done that.
This unexpected windfall soothed Liu Xiaolou's panicked nerves, and his mood brightened considerably.
He immediately got to work stripping the ears and winnowing away the chaff. He obtained roughly seven or eight catties, which he tucked into his basket with satisfaction before heading for his next target.
The next spirit field was somewhat more secluded, hidden in a mountain nook. It was only a little over one mu and rather long and narrow. Viewed from the mountain, it was blocked by a patch of large trees beside it and difficult to spot. If Liu Xiaolou had not gone down to relieve himself when passing by the day before yesterday, he truly would not have discovered it.
He crept above the spirit field, then leaped down onto a tree branch and gently parted the leaves to observe the situation.
At that sight, his heart could not help sinking.
Someone had already come to this spirit field. They had only just begun, harvesting about one fen of land.
Liu Xiaolou was somewhat annoyed and somewhat unwilling to give up. Focusing his gaze by moonlight, he saw that the person was a female cultivator. He could not make out her age, though her figure was graceful. The key was that she wore no black scarf over her face, openly harvesting with a longsword.
Since she had not concealed her face, this spirit field must have been contracted to her. Since her method was not to control a sword through the air, her cultivation had not reached the high stages of Qi Refining—not Layer 8 or above. Of course, few experts at Qi Refining Layer 8 would be willing to come work as helpers anyway.
After watching a little longer, he noticed that her longsword had never emitted sword light. Otherwise, why would she be harvesting rice ears so awkwardly? In other words, her cultivation had not yet reached the middle stages of Qi Refining—not Layer 5 or above.
If that was the case...
Was this not another splendid opportunity?
Liu Xiaolou wrapped the black scarf over his face again, silently jumped down from the tree trunk, and crept to the edge of the field.
Still several zhang from the field ridge, he crouched low and crawled over on all fours.