Koi, Facing the Human Tribulation

When An Weiyan arrived at the fields, stretch after stretch of farmland, painstakingly reclaimed into neat plots by the common folk, lay before him.

The tender shoots in the fields had grown quite a bit taller.

The streets he had seen earlier in Linbei County had seemed somewhat desolate, but once An Weiyan came outside, everything seemed to fill with life all at once.

The common folk were working in the fields.

Some children nearby had also carried water over to irrigate the fields.

For these common folk, as long as they were given a patch of farmland, they would work harder than anyone.

An Weiyan inspected the area, then bent down to look at the tender shoots in the fields. Their lush green growth was increasingly pleasing to the eye.

Judging by this, the crops were growing very well indeed.

Previously, the common folk had said that the soil here was already terribly barren, and feared that nothing would survive.

With fertilizer, however, that was not much of a problem.

An Weiyan made a round of inspection, feeling rather as though he were surveying his own domain.

Once he finished his round, An Weiyan returned to the government office. With nothing else to do, he began reading the poetry collection in his hands again.

Having read so much of the poetry collection lately, An Weiyan did feel that he had changed considerably.

Aside from what the Earth God had told him before-that demons and monsters rather liked eating people like him-which made him somewhat uncomfortable.

As for everything else, An Weiyan felt there was nothing bad about it.

A tributary of the Wu River.

At that moment, beneath the waters of the tributary, a giant Koi King looked at her five children before her, a troubled look appearing in her humanlike eyes.

"My children, by my reckoning, it is time for you to face your human tribulations. But the Human Race is weak now, and there is no telling how many places have humans penned up by demons, monsters, and evil spirits."

"In the past, even after facing your human tribulations, you would have had a good chance of surviving. With your bloodlines, even leaping through the Dragon Gate someday would not have been impossible. But now, how are you to face those human tribulations?"

The Koi King looked at her children, weighed down with worry.

These were her five most gifted children, with her fifth child, a daughter, bearing the coloration of a Red-Gold Dragon Phoenix.

Her fourth child, a son, was a Five-Colored Dragon Phoenix.

Her third child, a daughter, was a Robed Dragon Phoenix; her second daughter was a Silver Scale Autumn Jade; and her eldest son was a Nine-Marked Dragon.

These five children possessed extraordinary bloodlines. Once they passed their human tribulations, they truly would have a boundless sea in which to leap.

But those extraordinary bloodlines also destined the human tribulations they had to face to be exceedingly difficult.

For ordinary koi, their human tribulations amounted to helping someone turn misfortune into good fortune, and then they were done.

But passing the human tribulation would not be so easy for these five children.

Even facing one human tribulation might not be enough. They might have to face many more before they could be considered successful.

"Mother, don't worry. We're koi to begin with, so of course we can turn misfortune into good fortune!"

Hearing this, the second daughter, Silver Scale Autumn Jade, immediately answered, then flicked her exceedingly beautiful tail.

The fiery-red fifth daughter swimming on the right immediately spoke coldly when she heard this.

"How could it be that simple? I've heard that plenty of our kind who faced their tribulations before died! They were either cooked and eaten by humans, or seen through by those demons and eaten as nourishment!"

"All those people of the Human Race out there can't even get enough to eat now. If we're hooked while facing our human tribulations, do you think they'll cook us and eat us or not?"

Red-Gold Dragon Phoenix flicked her trailing tail, looking exceedingly restless and uneasy.

She knew what things were like outside now.

She thought of her bloodline: once she had enough opportunity to grow, she would be able to leap straight into the highest ranks of the Demon Race.

Yet they had to face human tribulations.

While facing their human tribulations, they could not use their Law Power.

With their Divine Sense trapped inside their bodies, they would become fish awaiting slaughter.

Under such circumstances, how could she not feel restless?

A few days earlier, she had surfaced and gone to look around several places. In every one of them, people could not get enough to eat.

When people could not even feed themselves, how could they possibly survive if they truly faced their human tribulations?

Then all the Law Power they had painstakingly cultivated would vanish like smoke and clouds.

Beside her, the silver koi, the second daughter, was immediately rather frightened by these words as well.

"Th-then what should we do? Can we just not face those human tribulations? We could just hide here in the river..."

They were koi to begin with and had always been extremely lucky. If they kept hiding in this river, hardly anyone would be able to threaten them.

Hearing this, the Koi King looked at her silver-bodied daughter, knowing that her second daughter had always been rather timid.

Sometimes, merely hearing some disturbance on the river's surface would send her into a panic, searching for a hole to dart into.

Now that she had heard she might be caught and eaten after facing her tribulation, how could she not be frightened?

"These human tribulations are ordained by Heaven. We are merely a few insignificant koi. How could we change that? Before, being koi allowed us to turn misfortune into good fortune every time in this river. That already showed how abundant our fortune was."

"But these human tribulations absolutely cannot be escaped."

At this point, the Koi King sighed again and again.

"Sadly, our koi lineage has no other outstanding members. We are unlike those other demon races who have penned up some people of the Human Race. When their offspring face their tribulations, they can rescue them from those people."

One reason the Human Race was now imprisoned by demons and evil beings rather than eaten outright was that those beings needed people of the Human Race to help their offspring pass their tribulations.

With those people of the Human Race penned up, their offspring naturally had some assurance of passing their tribulations.

Sadly, these koi had neither such ability nor such members of their kind. Thus, facing their human tribulations truly meant nine deaths and one chance at life.

Moreover, with bloodlines so rare, the human tribulations they had to face would be incomparably difficult.

Even now, she did not know what her children would have to do to count as having passed their human tribulations.

Hearing this, Silver Scale grew even more frightened and tried to burrow into a crevice between the rocks beside her.

As the eldest brother, Nine-Marked Dragon was much steadier than the others. Listening to all this, he gave no indication of his thoughts.

He merely floated at the very front, perhaps still thinking about how he should help his younger brother and sisters through this ordeal.

As long as they could get through this ordeal, special beings like them truly could become existences at the very pinnacle of the Demon Race.

The Koi King's gaze swept over her children one by one. Thinking of the current circumstances of the Human Race, she felt utterly desolate.

If her Law Power could reach the heavens, she might well cripple her own cultivation to help her children survive this tribulation. Alas, she could not.