Chapter 354: Five Mountain

Month 10

I had a little more trouble in Five Mountain Province. This place is a war zone, or at least that’s what it feels like. Okay, I’m exaggerating. The cities and villages seem peaceful enough, but I’ve been sticking to the wilderness as usual. The thing is, in Five Mountain Province, the wilderness is just crawling with cultivators. Or at least that’s what it feels like because of all the noise they make. There’s actually not that many of them, but it seems like they’re fighting non-stop around here.

I came here with an agenda. Five Mountain Province is run by an alliance of five great Sects. Each of them on their own is probably strong enough to run a whole province, but they instead chose to stay here and compete with each other. Each of the Five Sects are named for the mountain they reside on. The province is actually named for the Five Mountain Sword Sect Alliance and not the mountains they inhabit. They also really like to fight. The disciples of the ‘five mountains’ are constantly in competition with each other. They show a unified front against others, but their greatest competition is with each other.

I’m actually here to head to the Mount Song Sword Sect. Song Lu Tian somewhat owes me a favor, or at the very least I established a relationship with him in the past. Ruanfu still hasn’t come out to talk to me, but I’m still intending to send her and her family somewhere safe. With how highly ranked Song Lu Tian was in the past, now that around twenty years had passed he was likely to be even more powerful. Surely he could help me arrange a place for a bunch of Demonic Bird Beasts. What Sect wouldn’t want to be friends with a family of giant birds?

Month 11

I left the Mount Song Sword Sect a bit anxious.

Song Lu Tian was as straightforward and imposing as in the past. He didn’t seem to give a crap about the bounty on me. In fact he just laughed and said it was good for me. I’d seen the way things worked in Five Mountain Province, so I figured he was being serious. The Five Sects were extremely powerful, and it seemed they got that way from the constant violent competition of their disciples. They didn’t allow any other large sects, clans, or other groups to exist in their province. Even the Hatchet Gang had only a very small presence in the cities, everyone else who wanted to be a cultivator had to join the deadly training conditions of the Five Sects.

After I told him what I wanted his help with, he agreed immediately. In fact, he didn’t even need the help of the Sect. His own family would be happy to care for the Demonic Bird family. He wasn’t offended when I made him swear not to force them into anything or hurt them. In fact, he laughed and told me that even using them at the lowest level, as messengers, was valuable enough to make the deal. I didn’t want him to be in danger without knowing about it, so I started to talk about the Human Seals.

He stopped me and shook his head. It seemed he knew more than I did, and instead just told me to not talk about it.

I brought Ruanfu out again and that’s when we got into an argument. Song Lu Tian gave us the room, and I found myself trying to fill in for King. She did not agree to the arrangements I’d made. King died to protect me, and she said that was now her job.

Of course, that was not the way I wanted her to take that! Her Father died to protect me, but only because it was the only way to protect her and her family. I told her she was getting it all wrong. There was no way I could let her die for the same reason that her dad did. Even if I was killed, there was still a chance my soul could get away and I could be reborn. I didn’t tell her that I’d lose my cultivation method, since the Seed of Life was already gone, transformed into something else. I also didn’t mention how I’d no longer be able to use all those Heavenly Materials, at best I’d only ever have one or two like everyone else. I also didn’t tell her I’d either need to sneak into the Universe Ring in enemy hands, or travel all the way back to the Holy Flame Sect. Even worse, I’d have to make the whole journey as a spirit form, moving only at night and constantly getting weaker along the way.

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She was not swayed. I eventually compromised with her and got her to explain the situation to the rest of her family. Unsurprisingly, most of them chose to accept the deal. Not even half of the birds I’d caught had chosen to be King’s wives. The rest were still part of his plan to slowly seduce. Even so, King already had two dozen wives and twice that many children. He had been quite busy.

Ruanfu, her boyfriend Wanqian Lei, and three of King’s other wives all chose to stay. They also had 5 of King’s children, and they had already arranged for half the Hoplites to stay with them. The bug folk were quite easy to manipulate, so it wasn’t unexpected. The other wives and children along with a few hundred Hoplites stayed to live with Song Lu Tian’s family. They were quite pleased to get around a hundred Demonic Bird Beasts, and servants to care for them.

Month 15

I haven’t bothered to record anything lately. I never thought it was possible to be this exhausted. My Qi is endless, and with the constant hunting and fast regeneration my physical body is far from its limits. The fatigue is purely mental.

When I was young, I always heard the greatest barrier to a great cultivator was their own mental state. I had thought they were just talking about attitude. Don’t let the minor failures break your confidence. Don’t let the small setbacks become roadblocks on your journey. Just because you aren’t the strongest now, doesn’t mean you can’t be later. When I first learned that cultivators could take hundreds if not thousands of years to reach the peak of strength, I knew that training was a marathon, not a sprint.

I saw the other youngsters getting upset when their ‘classmates’ surpassed them. They’d get fixated on being second best, putting all their effort into beating number one. Inevitably, one or the other would get injured or they’d devolve into deep hatred and conflicts. It just seemed like the drama of teenagers with too many hormones and too much on the line. I was far too average to even hope to compete, but I like to think that even if I could, I wouldn’t. It just seemed like the cultivator version of petty high school cliques and bullying.

I was wrong. Well, not completely, I’m sure that other stuff matters too, but mental state must also refer to what I’m facing now. How can you keep doing the same thing over and over again, day after day, without going crazy? All I do is hunt, eat, and hide. It seems like an endless cycle. I tried to bring Ruanfu out to mix things up, but she seems a bit too… intense. She’s no longer that odd and funny girl from the past, the one that demanded I catch her pretty birds to be her future husbands. It seems her talk of protecting me wasn’t idle, and she’s way too committed to it. It unnerved me a bit, so I told her to keep training and put her back into the Inner World. Well, that is only after I promised to capture strong beasts for her to train by battling. She wouldn’t go unless I did.

It’s been nearly three months since then, and I feel like I’m on a treadmill. I stalk and track, hunt and kill. I rip into the bodies of animals and swallow them down. I found myself slipping into the mindset of a beast. So much blood and slaughter. Living on the edge. Hunt and be hunted. It felt too much like that time when I truly became a beast. I had lost my mind by merging with too many creatures too quickly. It scared me.

I had to start using the Human Seal at night to keep myself sane. I brought out a Hoplite to talk to, but that was even worse than Ruanfu. Instead, I found a better option. I didn’t just bring out one Hoplite, I brought out a whole group of them. With a group, they could talk amongst each other and their inane chatter became less annoying. Then with a flash of inspiration I brought out one of King’s children. They weren’t conversationalists, but I found that teaching them was a good way to distract myself.

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