by Charles Dean
“That’s great progress,” Lars said, putting a hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “Keep working hard. The sky is the limit if you have focus and discipline.”
Two things you lack, but hey, they need to learn to do what you say, not what you do.
I . . . I have . . . Nah, you’re right. Lars felt nostalgic as he thought about the lazy days of his life.
“So, that auction, it’s tomorrow night. We have everything ready for it. What do you plan on doing until then?” Su Ryeon asked.
“Who is she, master?” Matthew shot Lars a toothy grin.
“I was just going to take a bath, maybe get some clothes that don’t look like . . .” Lars replied to Su Ryeon, ignoring Matthew, “and, you know, lie around staring at the sky. All stuff that shouldn’t put you in any danger.”
“Master, is this your . . . Is she a new slave you purchased?” Jill asked, her face souring.
“It doesn’t matter who she is. You two need to be working. You’re so far behind me in strength that it just won’t do at all,” Lars said, shaking his head. “The student is supposed to surpass the master.”
“I don’t think that’s the case when we’re about the same age,” Jill replied. “I think, in this case, you’re supposed to stay ahead of us, or you’ll lose face.”
“Whatever. If you don’t get stronger, I’ll have to disown you and get a disciple who is more diligent,” he threatened jokingly. But given how pale Matthew and Jill’s faces became at those words, he had a feeling they didn’t get that he was joking.
“Right, umm . . . Right away,” Jill said hurriedly. “I’ll go practice right away.”
“Me too, master,” Matthew said. He turned to leave but then stopped, turned back around, and gave Lars a full bow. “Congratulations on your new woman. Your taste is good as always,” he added before following Jill over to the center of the yard in front of the guest house and sitting down. Lars didn’t know what the two of them were doing, but he guessed it was important to their cultivation based on how earnest they seemed and how constipated their faces appeared.
“Welp, would you like me to show you to the hot tub first? I’m going to be hopping in it as well, but all things considered, I don’t think you’re that shy,” Lars said.
“A full stage? Is that . . . a full stage in a day?” Su Ryeon asked as she looked over at Lars.
“Yeah, do you want to become my disciple too?” he asked.
“Would it let me reach the Qi Condensation Stage quicker?”
“Yeah,” Lars replied. He trusted that Ophelia’s method would be better than anything Su Ryeon had ever practiced on her own.
“Then yes. Yes, I want to become your disciple as well,” she said.
“Can we start after tomorrow? I need to bathe at the very least, and I’d like to relax a little.”
“Ah, right. Yes, master,” Su Ryeon said, giving Lars a weak bow that had none of the form or composure of Matthew’s or Jill’s. “I look forward to your lessons.”
Even though her composure looked half-hearted, her words at the very least sounded sincere, Lars thought.
She must have understood exactly what Lars was thinking—or noticed something in his expression—since she immediately apologized.
“I am sorry, master,” she said, kneeling down and giving Lars a proper kowtow. “Forgive your new disciple her impudence. I look forward to your tutelage. Please instruct me well.”
“Fine, I’ll write you something up after my bath,” Lars replied.
“Another one?” came a voice from the house as Desdemona walked out of it. “You picked up another slave? I thought you were against the idea of slavery. You seemed it at the very least.”
“This was not on purpose,” Lars clarified.
“Are you sure?” she asked before adding, “Whatever. Like I care. Build a whole harem of beautiful women for all I care.”
“You have a slave already, master?” Su Ryeon asked.
“Yeah, but this one . . .”
“I’m one he took on purpose,” Desdemona said for him. “I’m the one he’ll never let free. Ever.”
“She’s from the Sect of Falling Flowers,” Lars told Su Ryeon.
“The sect that raided your village? What? They raided your village, so you stole one of their maidens?”
“That’s . . . about the gist of it.”
“That is impressive, very impressive.” Su Ryeon nodded as she stroked her chin. “You’re very daring. Few people would be caught dead stealing a slave out from under a sect. I can’t imagine they’ll let that slight go.”
“Oh . . .” Lars, who hadn’t once thought about that possibility, pursed his lips as he tried to piece together the possible outcomes. Now, he was terrified. He might show up tomorrow at the auction, and they might demand justice from him—even though they had been the ones to attack his village and not the other way around—before he ever even made it into the building. They might kill him on the spot, enslave him, or slowly torture him. He had no idea what type of reprisal they might inflict on him for his action. The only thing he knew with any certainty was that if their information network was even half as good as The Owner’s or Bok Kyu’s, then they knew he had one of their outer sect disciples as a slave.
“Freaking hell . . .” Lars cursed under his breath. At the moment, the only potentially good outcome he could see to this situation was that they might only demand some monetary compensation for the loss of a disciple, potentially the value of the herbs she might harvest over a few years.
“You had thought of that, right?” Su Ryeon asked.
“I . . . uhh . . .”
“You freaking moron!” Su Ryeon smacked Lars’s shoulder. “How are you going to ask me to call you master when you aren’t even smart enough to know the basics?! Maybe you should kowtow and call me master! I swear, are you just trying to get yourself killed? Is that brain of yours just always calculating ways it might almost die from ticking off the wrong person? Think, Lars! Think! There is no way we can go there now. That’s just asking to get killed. Instead, we need to find a way to buy that mother of yours via proxy without the sect realizing what we are doing.”
“Hey!” Lars snapped. “I’ll think of something . . . maybe . . . but one way or the other, we are going there. I am not about to let my mother spend the rest of her days as a slave. That woman raised me, and I’ll be damned by every god in existence before I let my mother fall to harm!”
Su Ryeon sighed. “You just had to be a mama’s boy. Okay, okay. We’ll figure something out, but I want that cultivation technique before you take the bath.”
“Fine,” Lars grumbled.
“I mean . . . why don’t you just send one of those two new disciples of yours?” Desdemona asked. “The mutts are both practically on your leash as is. You should get some mileage out of them.”
“Do you think someone who knows who I am and that I have you wouldn’t also know where I’m staying?” Lars asked.
“Ah, right,” Desdemona replied. “Well, whatever, I’m gonna go cultivate then.”
“You do that . . .” Lars said, his mind racing as he tried to think about how to handle the situation. I’m not going to die right at the finish line, am I? He half-expected Ophelia to answer with some remark about how he should just kill a few thousand cultivators in their sleep, but that didn’t come. This time, only silence followed, leaving him to stew in his thoughts alone while trying to find a maid or servant that might bring him paper and ink so he could transcribe a cultivation method for Su Ryeon. It was an eerie silence, as if even Ophelia were thinking about what to do.
Freaking hell . . . Lars frowned. I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to leave my mother to a pack of wolves.
Chapter 13
Name: Lars
Level: 7
Power: 2500
Speed: 3059
Fortitude (HP): 4500
Resistance: 4500
Unspent: 3705
Elemental Abilities
Toxin Qi: 2217
Lunar Light Qi: 2015
Fire Qi: 1077
Wind Qi: 997
Earth Qi: 563
Wood Qi: 467
Ice Qi: 376
Metal Qi: 280
Lightning Qi: 218
Water Qi: 115
Unassigned Qi: 325
Abilities
[10] Advanced Reading Level 2 [22,001/2,000,000 Words Read]
[10] Knife Hand Level 2 [1/10 Unaware Combatants Killed]
[160] Toxin Immunity Level 7 [3/10 Toxins Consumed]
[N/A] Unyielding Ice Veins [No Level]
[N/A] Falling Water Dancing over the Moon [No Level]
[N/A] Flame of the Pill God Level 6
[15000] Slave Lord Level 1 [0/100 Slaves Impacted by Skill]
Item Skill Progressions
Enslavement [3/5 People Enslaved]
Active Quests
Go slap yourself!
You have got to be kidding me, Lars grumbled to Ophelia as he lay on his back, staring up at the sky.
You’re the one who refuses to use a single command. If you had, then a night with two girls might have turned out to be something a man goes to sleep at night dreaming about, not . . . whatever that was.
Right?! Right?! There really is no proper term or way to describe what the hell happened. It was all, ‘Oh, look, everything is fine. You got three people, one bed, and a nice cozy floor . . .’
And yet you’re sleeping outside on the grass while they are still fighting over who rests on the floor in the room you were given. Not them. You.
The other option is what? Listening to them bicker all night? Deal with a verbal tiger fighting an intellectual lion? Lars asked. He could still remember the way Su Ryeon had dissected Desdemona in front of him.
I mean, I was enjoying the show. It was like reading an Internet flame war from the olden days, one of humanity’s great treasures. I especially liked the part where Su Ryeon managed to make Desdemona blush and then brought her to the verge of tears within a few seconds. That woman has a very talented tongue.
Lars waited a moment after Ophelia finished and then asked a question he never thought he would: What? You’re not going to throw in some sly remark about how she might be able to put that tongue to better use? You’re not going to remark about how it’d be better if they fought butt naked with pillows? Come on, Ophelia, where is my usual headcase horndog?
Su Ryeon just wasn’t wrong. Desdemona is dead weight, a liability. No matter how much she trains, no matter how hard she works, she’s always going to be a second-best option. Sure she might outpace you if you stop killing people, and she might be useful to you a week, a month, or a year down the road if you stop your vicious vagabond of doom act, but . . . Lars, no matter how fast she runs, she’s never going to outpace people who are starting at a much farther point ahead of her. You could buy a Stage 7 Qi-Gathering Cultivator today at that auction—even a few of them with the money you have—and then just cut her loose.
I’m not going to kill her, Lars said.
Fine. I’ve come to terms with that, but you could send her off to be a baker, let her live her life without you. She doesn’t need to cultivate; she doesn’t need to do anything.
Did you not see how proud she was to show off the reddening feathers of hers when she came in at the end of the day? How happy she was with her progress? Why can’t you just let her have this? It’s not like we don’t have the money to feed an extra mouth.
You might have the money, but you don’t have the peace of mind or security. You’re wondering how to stay alive tomorrow at the auction in case that sect of the fallen fools comes dumbing up your day. Well, haven’t you considered the obvious answer? Buy security. That . . . owner of the gambling place must know people. You could buy security for yourself easily.
Weren’t you the one who was talking about growing soldiers around us?
Disciples—with influence. The Neukdaegalbi Clan may be small and third rate at the moment, but they have a name that stretches back practically to the founding of this city. That can be useful. It doesn’t even cost you anything to leech their hospitality and build up a pawn for the future.
Lars didn’t feel like continuing the argument. In his head, there was no way he was going to just toss Desdemona out on her tail. He had taken responsibility for her, and that was that. But he could still recall her face when Su Ryeon asked why someone of Lars’s strength would “ever need a low-rate failure of an herb collector from a has-been sect who couldn’t even cut it as a proper cultivator when given the same opportunities as every other sect brother and sister in her situation.” It was just a simple question, but the moment it was asked, that blush from her being the center of attention due to her rapidly improving physique had shattered into a pale canvas of a pair of cheeks, seemingly good for nothing more than framing falling tears.
After a few minutes of silence, thinking about how devastating the idea of not being useful had been to Desdemona, Lars threw up his hands in defeat. Fine, you’re right. Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, I’ll go fetch some guards to keep me safe at the auction. I don’t care how expensive they are. It’s better than dying, Lars told Ophelia.
He had hoped for a more permanent solution, but as Ophelia pointed out, he only needed to stay safe until he reached the campus of the sect he had just been admitted to.
You know your life in that sect isn’t going to be as bad as Desdemona’s was at hers.
Because I’m “promising” to them? Lars asked.
Exactly. How many people your age are as strong as you? Cultivators live an abhorrently long life, but most don’t look that young because most never make it to the later stages even of the Qi-Gathering Stage before they’re fifty. You’re barely two decades old, and you’re stronger than most are at four or five decades. You’ll be fine. They’ll treasure and nurture you.
What do you think they’re going to do, though, when they realize that I can’t get stronger without killing people? It’s not like there will be cultivators lining up for me to kill at the sect.
If you told them the condition, which I highly advise against, they might sic you on entire villages until you reach a certain strength. They aren’t a charity, and sects aren’t known to treasure life. I recommend that, if you want to keep your conscience clean, you don’t say a word about that.
Then how am I supposed to fake it as someone valuable enough to be cared for . . .
Lars, you’re putting the cart before the horse. Let’s get your mother first. Get yourself a week of protection and have them take you and your mother to the sect. It’s the best plan. It’s the only one I can think of that doesn’t end with you being skewered or beaten to death in the middle of the street right outside the casino.
Okay. Wake up, go to the gambling house, buy some protection, and then get my mother. Easy peasy, Lars told himself as he closed his eyes, letting the darkness wash over him and blanket his anxieties.
-----
The next day, Lars was surprised at how agreeable The Owner was. She had actually anticipated the issue and was able to get a sort of two-for-one special for Lars when renting bodyguards for defense.
“I have adequate protection,” Lars told Su Ryeon who was walking at his side. “Is there any reason you’re coming with me?”
“Because your adequate protection might betray you. If that’s the case, then at the very least, I want to ferry you to safety.”
Aww, if something goes wrong, she’s going to be the knight, carrying you off like a damsel in distress.
Can things go wrong? Lars thought back, but he was unable to stop the image of Su Ryeon, dressed up in the plated knight’s armor that Ophelia had shown him more than once while telling him fables as a child, carrying him off while he wore the dress instead. It was embarrassing to think about, and Ophelia’s cackle didn’t help at all.
“Well, was there any reason you had to . . . wear that?” Lars asked, noting she w
as still wearing the beautiful flower-crested dress she had been wearing when they got back yesterday, except it had a few wrinkles from a poor attempt at hand washing that must have happened earlier in the day, something that wouldn’t have occurred if she had just let the staff handle the dress instead.
“Because I’m in disguise,” Su Ryeon replied, puffing her chest out proudly.
“I’m not sure it’s much of a disguise if every person we’ve passed has stopped to look at you.”
“I meant my role. I’m disguised as your date,” Su Ryeon said.
“Ha! Like anyone will buy this second-generation, ugly-faced young master landing a beauty like you,” scoffed one of the two bodyguards, a cranky old man that went by the name of Daniel.
“Gonna have to agree with ol’ Danny boy on this one,” added the other guard, an equally old man by the name of Weatherly, laughing along with his friend at Lars’s appearance.
As annoying as the jabs were, Lars didn’t mind the two of them at all. The Stage 2 and Stage 4 Qi-Condensing Cultivators that he had hired to protect him—each cost 500 gold pieces a week—were very welcome additions that let him breathe easy as he walked back into the casino, where it turned out the auction was being held, for the second time of the day.
“If you really wanted to look like you could afford a fine beauty like this tailless lass here, you shoulda tried dressing the part—maybe thrown on some chains, or bracelets, or rings. Something to showcase that wealth of yours,” Daniel continued.
Weatherly laughed. “Yeah, what’s up with the all white? Are we at a funeral? Did someone die? Could you not wear something more colorful than a funeral robe?”
“Who knows? Maybe it’s his funeral he’s going to. He wouldn’t be hiring us, after all, if he didn’t have reason to believe someone was going to kill him,” Daniel remarked.