Writathon Status: 35 Chapters, 74,691 Words.
Lei Lanfen had no idea what to do. The monster hadn’t seemed to appreciate kowtowing earlier, but perhaps that had been an act just like everything else. Regardless, some from of begging was her only hope.
“Please, Exalted Cultivator, this lowly one had eyes but couldn’t see Mount Tai. This lowly one deserves punishment, even death, but please, please spare my family!”
A horrible thought struck her. If she died, there was literally no one to take care of her mother and little Xiaobo. A death sentence for her was the same as a death sentence for all of them.
Zou Ai once again did the unexpected. Instead of lashing out with lightning from above, she rolled her eyes. “So dramatic this one. I hope Mei’er isn’t this bad when she reaches her teenage years.” Suddenly, she grinned. “Then again, it is a quite cute.”
If there was anything worse to Lei Lanfen than being executed and putting her entire family in jeopardy, it was being called cute. Were it not for her family, she would have given the monster a piece of her mind, all-powerful cultivator or no!
She must have done a poor job of keeping her feelings from showing on her face again because Zou Ai said. “See? Look at that scowl. So adorable.”
Heavens. Adorable was even worse than cute. So much worse.
“Your mother is suffering right at this very moment, though, so we should probably be on our way. Take us to her, dear, so Xiao Yanmei can get her healed.”
The monster was going to just ignore everything that had happened, including Lie Lanfen’s outburst? How? Why? And did she truly expect to be led to her very vulnerable family?
If nothing else, she could keep them safe by refusing to go.
“Now!” Zou Ai said, using the exact tone that Lei Lanfen’s mother used when she was at the end of her patience.
With no other choice, Lei Lanfen led them to her home, a crooked shack with numerous holes between the planks. Efforts to plug them with straw had resulted in some success, but the house still was almost impossible to heat during the winter.
Zou Ai grimaced as soon as she saw the place, and for a moment, Lei Lanfen was embarrassed. She soon straightened her back, though. It wasn’t much, but it was clean. And they did their best to keep it up.
“Mother is in the back room, Honored Cultivator,” she said through tight lips.
“I’ve gone from exalted, past esteemed, and landed all the way back down at honored. How the mighty have fallen.” Zou Ai’s voice was clearly on the edge of laughter.
Lei Lanfen didn’t respond. She was already way past being impolite. Honestly, she didn’t understand why she still lived.
Unfortunately, her misadventures with cultivators had led her to be forgetful, and she’d allowed the healer to enter first, meaning a stranger had just went into the house without little Xiaobo having any warning. Barely a second after the healer disappeared inside, the sound of loud crying reverberated.
Lei Lanfen cursed herself for a fool and rushed to the little boy, stooping down and pulling him into a hug. “It’s okay, Bo’er. Big Sister found people to help mommy. Oh and..."
She turned to Zou Ai, who had followed, with hopeful eyes.
One of the big bowls of rice and pork appeared in her hands. With a grateful nod, Lei Lanfen took it and gave it to her brother. He took a small bite and tried to hand the bowl back to her.
“No, Bo’er. The entire bowl is yours.”
His eyes went wide. “All of it? No sharing.”
“No sharing.” Lei Lanfen’s heart just about burst.
“What about Mommy?”
“Don’t worry, little one,” Zou Ai said. “Your mother will get her own bowl.”
His fears settled, Bo’er dug into the bowl, forgetting every table manner that he’d been taught. Lei Lanfen didn’t have the will to correct him. When he finished, he handed the bowl back, though, licked completely clean.
“If you can use it, please keep it,” Zou Ai said. “Otherwise I can take it.”
Lei Lanfen hesitated to take any more handouts, but if she was really about to be making five taels a week, the household would see a lot more food soon. And the bowl was much nicer than any of the ones they had…
“Please,” Zou Ai said, grinning. “Keep it.”
It wouldn’t do to refuse a Golden Core cultivator’s request, right?
Zou Yun tugged at his babysitter’s—no, probably the boy’s mother—arms and was lowered to the floor. He quietly and carefully approached Bo’er, who was staring at the strange people in their perfectly clean clothes without so much as a small rip.
Zou Yun held out his toy tractor. “Have.”
At first, no one understood what he meant.
He pushed the tractor into Bo’er’s hands. “You have.”
Bo’er had literally never owned a toy, having to make do with sticks and rocks or whatever else he could find. “You’re giving this to me?”
Zou Yun nodded firmly, and Lei Lanfen eyed Zou Ai for confirmation.
“Don’t look at me. It’s his toy, a gift from his unkie.”
Given everything that had happened, it wouldn’t have surprised Lie Lanfen at all if the “unkie” was even more powerful than the monster in her living room.
Regardless, the gesture was incredibly sweet. She cupped her hands toward Zou Yun. “Gratitude, little one.”
Bo’er, who had a habit of imitating her, repeated her gesture. “Gratata, little one.”
Zou Ai rubbed her hand over her face. “You two are absolutely killing me. Come back with me to the sect. I’ll give you a house and clothes and anything you need. All three of you.” Her tone was firm, but her eyes were moist.
It struck Lei Lanfen that, just because a person had power, maybe that didn’t mean they were a monster. She didn’t know what else to do, so she kowtowed three times.
“Gratitude, Exalted Cultivator, and I really mean it,” she said, once she’d finished. “You’ve already given us much, and I would not feel comfortable accepting more that I didn’t work for. With the pills and the job, we can survive now.”
Zou Ai let out a breath. “I can accept that … mainly because I have to. Not even Master would let me kidnap you to keep you safe.” A small rectangular piece of paper appeared in her hand. “That this. If you ever need me for anything at all, tell the System to bring you to the Rising Tide Sect. Once you get there, guards will ask you ‘the purpose of your visit.’ Give them to card and tell them to escort you to me. Understand?”
Though Lei Lanfen hadn’t wanted to accept any more handouts, she saw the card for what it was—a lifeline if life threw more at her than she could handle. She’d be an idiot not to accept it.
“Gratitude, Exalted Cultivator.”
“Gratata, Exult Cultvador,” Bo’er said.
Lei Lanfen and Zou Ai looked at each other, and both burst out laughing.
Then, the biggest and most welcome surprise of the day occurred—Mother walked out of her room.
***
Zou Ai entered the room with a lot on her mind. The entire building had been constructed—assembled? Moved?—for the sole purpose of council meetings, and the one that day would be something Master called a subcommittee meeting, focused solely on network progress and expansion.
Still, given the wide ranging nature of the project, most of the council would be present. Most conspicuously absent, of course, was Master, but he rarely attended any meetings, leaving the running of the sect mostly up to the elders.
Xiang Da was present, but he had one of his subordinates give the report on how the formations technology was progressing. Zou Ai suspected that he was as bored as the rest of them on that particular topic, hence leaving talking about it to his junior. It took a very special sort to get excited about optimizing a particular subarray to be more efficient.
Actually, it was lucky that Master wasn’t there. He was exactly that sort of person and could talk for hours about some small aspect of arrays. “Then I figured out that there was this one curve out of tens of thousands that was too sharp, so I…”
Zou Ai shuddered at the recollection.
Wu Hua went next, reciting page after page of metrics that were supposed to convey how much the lives of people on the continent had changed.
Once the woman finished, Yang Ru said, “Are there any comments on Wu Hua’s report?”
Zou Ai raised her hand and was recognized. “I don’t think numbers truly capture the full impact of what we’re doing. May I tell a story?”
“Of course, Junior Sister.”
“I met a kid yesterday. Bright girl. Obviously poor as dirt. She set off my mommy radar, as Master would say, as soon as I laid eyes on her. My gut told me that this was a child who needed help.
“The girl was so hungry that she nearly wept when I gave a fasting pill. She treated one of the small bowls I keep in my storage ring for my kids like it was a feast. All she wanted was a job, so she could earn money for her family to eat.”
Zou Ai wiped at her eyes. “It’s been over nine years since I’ve felt hunger pangs, and honestly, I almost forgot what living like that was like. Not knowing when or what you’d eat next. Just hoping that Mistress Zhong could somehow convince someone to donate enough for us all to have more than a few bites.”
She looked at Wu Hua. “There’s only one town left unconnected. When that last hub is completed, no one on the continent will ever not have access to the food or medicine they need.” Next she nodded to Huang Yimun and Jin LiJuan. “Your guards are keeping the villages safe, and your beastmasters have cleared out so much of the wilds, protecting travelers. Almost no one dies before their time.
“I think we should simply take a moment to appreciate how far we’ve come, from a simple idea to Master creating wondrous devices so it could happen to us all working together.” Zou Ai cupped her hands. “Gratitude. All of you.”
There were lots of smiles all around. They’d all seen the numbers, of course. Enormous increases in karma didn’t lie. But there was just something different about putting a human face on what people were experiencing.
She thought back to how expressive the young lady had been. The girl went from joy to absolute despair in an instant. Zou Ai couldn’t help but chuckle as she remembered other parts of the day.
“What’s so funny?” Yang Xiu said.
“The girl. Do any of you know Li Bo, really tall, really muscular guard?”
“The boy has a good head on his shoulders for his age,” Huang Yimun said. “F rank, but I wish I had a hundred more like him.”
“Well, the girl got really mad at him yesterday.”
“Whatever for?” Huang Yimun sounded quite perplexed.
“Bullying me.”
Yang Xiu snorted. “A Qi Gathering junior bullied you? I’d have paid to see that.”
“I guess the girl saw my size and thought I was about her age. Yun’er was on my hip, so she immediately assumed I was forced to babysit him while going about my other duties. Then, Li Bo calls me ‘Senior Sister,’ which had to be him teasing me, right?”
There were lots of snickers as the council members imagined the scene.
“Picture this little mortal girl, no taller than me, absolutely glaring at Li Bo, who outweighs her by a hundred pounds and a good foot taller. I think she might have tried to punch him if he would have said the wrong thing. And all to defend me.” Zou Ai couldn’t help it. She laughed.
“Anyway, we finally got her sorted with a job and showed her how to use the portals and healed her mother.” Zou Ai sighed. “Am I a horrible person for wishing she was an orphan? I was so ready to adopt her and her little brother. Honestly, I was about a half second away from kidnapping the whole family.”
Though everyone enjoyed her story, the meeting had to move along, and many reports followed. Zou Ai reported on pill production. Pan Xiaolian told them about injury and disease rates. And so forth. And so on.
“Thank you all for the status reports,” Yang Ru said. “The final item on the agenda is expansion.”
All eyes turned to Yang Xiu, who grimaced.