"Who hit you?"
Jiang Yi's voice was quiet, his tone low.
Yet He Laohun shuddered as though burned, abruptly turning his head and hiding the swollen, reddened half of his face behind his shoulder.
He tried to force out his usual devil-may-care grin, stretching his mouth so wide it nearly reached his ears, but his voice was painfully dry:
"N-no one! We were just fooling around... Yi, we really were just fooling around. I bumped into something! It's nothing. Don't ask... don't bring trouble down on yourself!"
"He." Jiang Yi's tone remained calm. Only deep within his eyes did that tiny glimmer of fiery nature, cultivated through the Lesser Forging Origin Fire-Control Art, leap beyond his control, blazing sharply.
"I'll ask you once more. Who. Was. It. That. Hit. You?"
Duty Officer Yang had been right. A Demonic Dao lineage was no warm, harmonious family of fellow disciples.
The beasts of burden at the bottom could band together rather than harm one another because there was no fundamental conflict of interest.
But climb a few steps higher, and trouble could easily land on your doorstep.
Just look!
He had only been an Inspection Officer for a few days, and trouble had already caught his scent and come looking?
Jiang Yi lowered his eyelids, concealing that fiercely dancing glimmer of fiery nature as he looked at He Laohun, who wanted only to keep the peace.
None of yesterday's swaggering boastfulness remained in He Laohun. His back bent like a shrimp, he waved his hands repeatedly:
"It really is nothing! Yi, you don't know... before I joined the Qianji Sect, my whole family were tenant farmers for a Qi Refining Clan.
"One of the clan's young masters loved watching people slap themselves for his amusement... for a peck of rice, my father knelt beside a field ridge and slapped his own face-smack, smack-more than a dozen times... he thought I hadn't seen. Afterward, he even told me happily that the master had shown kindness, and our family could have another full meal that night."
He clutched the two cornmeal buns in his hands, long since gone cold, and lowered his head, not daring to look at Jiang Yi as he rambled:
"Later, my father worked himself to the bone and rented another few mu of Spirit Fields from the clan's master. He toiled like an old ox, wishing he could split every bit of Talisman Money in two to spend, and somehow managed to send me to the Dao Academy in town.
"There were seventy or eighty pupils at the Dao Academy. I was the oldest, and I knew nothing. The teacher thought little of me, too.
"I wanted to learn more characters and read more Daoist books, so all I could do was curry favor with those young masters from town every day, copying scriptures for them in exchange for a little paper and ink... there was a dog hole in the back courtyard. I remember once, two young masters from great clans made a bet. One said nobody could possibly squeeze through..."
Humiliation colored He Laohun's voice, yet he still forced a smile:
"I was spineless... for fifty in Talisman Money, I bent down, lay on the ground, and struggled to squeeze inside.
"As soon as I got through, I heard someone say I certainly couldn't squeeze back... so I-I turned around and crawled back from the other side... one trip there and back earned me a hundred in Talisman Money."
The kitchen was utterly silent. He Laohun went on talking:
"Those two young masters doubled over with laughter. There I was, covered in dirt, crawling on the ground and picking up my Talisman Money one piece at a time... in that moment, I suddenly understood how my father had felt when he knelt on that field ridge and slapped himself... I swore to myself that I would rise above the rest!
"For my first two years in the Qianji Sect, I was just like you, Yi-willing to suffer, willing to work hard! In the third year, I finally managed to leave the mountain once and visit my hometown... my parents were both gone. Those few mu of Spirit Fields were still there, with my second maternal uncle farming them.
"That young master who loved watching people slap themselves had already become the clan's master. He praised my father as a fine farmer and even asked when my term of labor would end. He said the clan had plenty of fields now and could spare a few mu for me to farm..."
"I gritted my teeth and came back up the mountain, swearing I would die before becoming a tenant farmer who had to live at another man's mercy! I saved desperately, covering other people's shifts, just to scrape together enough Talisman Money to attend a single lesson on an inner peak!
"I worked until my vision went black, hoping only to learn a little real skill, to turn my life around and stand upright as a person... but it was too hard!
"Yi, why is it so hard for people like us to straighten our backs?"
He Laohun's voice grew quieter and quieter, as though his strength were being drained away bit by bit. The cornmeal buns clutched in his hands fell to the ground.
Jiang Yi sighed softly, but could find no words of comfort.
Even without the Heavenly Book, he could roughly guess what had happened.
It was nothing more than those two jackals, Zhang San and Dong Si, trying to make trouble for him.
But they feared offending Yang Xun, the Quenching Room's Duty Officer, so they had vented their anger on He Laohun, an easy target.
"I dragged you into this, He."
He Laohun's throat had seemed blocked before. At Jiang Yi's words, his shoulders shook violently, and broken sobs emerged from his bowed head...
Before long, perhaps the bitterness pent up for decades had surged to the surface.
He Laohun suddenly seized Jiang Yi's arm and wailed:
"Yi! I'm spineless! Zhang Chao and Dong Ba tried to force me to trip you up... when I refused, they made me crawl between their legs!"
"Yi, I've lived all these years. Why am I still so spineless? I want to cultivate the Dao, too. I want to never crawl through a dog hole again, to straighten my back... but-but why is it so hard?"
He Laohun's chest heaved like a broken bellows, rasping with every breath.
After holding it in for so long, he had finally broken down, yet still dared not cry too loudly. He merely clung to Jiang Yi and repeated:
"Yi, I can't bear keeping it bottled up!"
Jiang Yi stood quietly where he was. That glimmer of fiery nature seemed to be pressed down, silently dissipating.
He slowly crouched, picked up the dusty cornmeal buns, blew on them, and pressed them back into He Laohun's hands.
"A few hundred years ago, even the ancestors of Northern Mang Ridge's mightiest sects and Dao clans endured circumstances like ours.
"He, just watch closely. From now on, no one on Crimson Flame Peak will be able to make trouble for us!"
Early the next morning, before Wavelooking Peak's bell had rung, a crowd of Mortal Laborers gathered outside the Labor Affairs Courtyard.
Compared with their usual listless numbness when reporting for work, they looked rather cheerful today, each rubbing his hands as though anticipating something.
There was only one reason.
Today was payday!
After a month of backbreaking toil, they would finally see Talisman Money enter their pockets. How could they not rejoice?
When the bell rang out among the peaks, the Labor Affairs Courtyard's gates opened, and a young Daoist attendant with red lips and white teeth called:
"Line up properly! No pushing and shoving. There's enough for everyone!"
Then the three young Daoist attendants had the Inspection Officers settle the payments according to the tallies.
"Zheng Dajiang, one hundred hours, twelve hundred in Talisman Money... He Laohun, one hundred and twenty hours..."
Jiang Yi swiftly counted out and distributed the money. He had only just become an Inspection Officer, yet showed not the slightest unfamiliarity with checking ledgers and calculating wages, earning repeated nods from the young Daoist attendant beside him.
Over by Zhang Chao and Dong Ba, by contrast, squabbles and arguments kept breaking out, an irritating racket to listen to.
It took a full two hours before all the Talisman Money was finally distributed.
Jiang Yi held a stack of Talisman Money. It was made of talisman paper and came in three types according to denomination.
One was yellow, ten was purple, and a hundred was red.
The use of talisman paper as currency was supposedly due to the Southern Continent's scarcity of spiritual potential.
Talisman paper was easy to carry. Recognized by the Dao traditions, it also possessed a trace of spirituality and could be used for drawing talismans, writing, refining artifacts, and fueling fires, so it was not without value.
These various factors made it widely favored by the lineages; it circulated broadly and could be seen everywhere.
However, Jiang Yi had also heard that on the Eastern Victory Continent, where the Immortal Dao governed the world, some wealthy cultivators used Spirit Stones directly. That alone showed how lavishly they spent.
Jiang Yi gathered his Talisman Money and tucked it into his robe without sparing Zhang Chao and Dong Ba another look.
"What did I tell you? That Jiang fellow has no reason to stick his neck out for He Laohun and provoke us for nothing!"
Seeing Jiang Yi leave without picking a fight, Dong Ba spoke smugly.
"We still need to take precautions. The dog that doesn't bite is the vicious one!"
Zhang Chao's gaze was dark as he instructed:
"Let's not split up over the next few days. Don't give him an opening!"
A vicious look surfaced on Dong Ba's dark face. Baring his yellow teeth, he grinned:
"I'd rather he overestimated himself and gave me a chance to let off some steam!
"We meant to give him a cut of the money, but he couldn't recognize a good thing! And that He Laohun is a lowborn wretch, too, insisting on clinging to Jiang and licking his ass crack!"
Zhang Chao shook his head.
"Don't underestimate him, Brother Dong. I hear he's already reached the Qi Refining Second Stage, and he's still young. Better not make an enemy of him beyond reconciliation.
"If he gets lucky one day and climbs to the Fifth Level of Qi Refining, we'll have plenty of suffering in store."
Dong Ba scoffed. His term would end in another few years, and then he would leave the mountain, return home, and live free and easy.
First, he would slaughter the entire family of the head constable who had once put him on a wanted list, then find a good spot and go back to ruling a mountain stronghold.
He would live to seventy or eighty before croaking, and this journey through the world would not have been wasted!
"A barefoot man doesn't fear a man in shoes. What the fuck have I got to fear!"
Dong Ba spat and uttered a rustic saying.
Before you continue