CH2: A Town Happily IN Bondage

Black stone buildings with slanted roofs built with superhuman strength filled the small walled city outside the mine. He had turned in his spirit stones for a sweet 2000 merit points. That brought his total well over 985,500, more than enough to pay the 100 merit points per person monthly fee to keep their collars from shocking them to death.

The town was bustling despite the sword of Damocles hanging over everyone’s head. People can get used to anything if they have enough time. Merit points changed hands fast on the streets as miners made their way out in the early morning while shop owners presented their wares. The real merit points weren’t in mining but in selling to the miners. Zack used his grilling skills to sell attribute-enhancing food to the public and raked in the merit points.

Zack stopped by a technique shop and looked through what they had. Only trash techniques would ever find their way on the market in their slave town, but he was hoping to find something halfway decent that wouldn’t ruin an 11-year-old’s foundation. He had enough merits points to buy Su Jun’s freedom and a spot in the White Flash Entry Trials. Age 16 was the cutoff for entry, so they had time before she was too old to enter.

The only good thing about living in a Xiaoxia world was the meritocratic nature of the world itself. Make enough money, and even a slave could rise to the top, but only if their positions where they were weren’t too important. Zack took 20 trips a month into the mines and came out with 1000+ every trip. He was responsible for a big chunk of the mine’s production. If their mine was unproductive, they would be dispersed to other mines and possibly separated.

Forty days a month, ten months a year, and a maximum of 500,000. It costs roughly 250,000 to free a child, 500,000 to free a woman, and 1 million to free an adult male. A spot to participate in the entry trial of the White Flash Sect costs 5 million merit points. He had already purchased Su Jun’s place and could buy her freedom and send her to the sect anytime.

Zack didn’t know why he hesitated.

The shelves on display didn’t have much promise to them. He didn’t know all the Kanji used by cultivators. He knew enough to get by and make employment contracts. Su Lin was better at it than him and did most of the paper work.

An older man missing a few teeth approached with his hands behind his back. With his long white beard and hair tied in a top knot, he looked like an old master.

“Do you need help finding anything?” The man was a regular who liked his meat rare. He held his hand behind his back because a raptor bit it in the mine, and he had to cut it off. Before his cultivation stalled, he was a hotshot prodigy and took out a loan to buy enough pills to push a breakthrough. He used his knowledge to create techniques but wasn’t a master. The debt collectors from the sect sent him to the mines to pay off his debts, but he preferred life here.

That was the story Zack heard from the man’s friends. His enemies merely called the old man a talentless dog scamming the fools who dreamed too big for their stations. Personally, Zack thought it was only envy. As a man who lived with the disease for most of his adult life, he knew the signs.

“I’m looking for something for Su Jun. She needs to be prepared for the entry trial.” Zack said.

“That girl is so energetic. Maybe this hummingbird style will let her burn off some energy.”

 Zack looked at the technique. It was all about quick pinpoint chi attacks meant to tear the enemy apart one step at a time. The speed was meant to overwhelm them. He understood it somewhat, but he didn’t use chi.

Their collars made starting the practice difficult for a talented childlike Su Jun Zack, who had no shot and didn’t want to split his focus. Neural plasticity was a thing, and Zack was very set in his ways.

Zack shook his head.

He would have to do the song and dance before this guy would show him the good stuff. “I have eyes but can’t see my friend. If you say it's good, I believe you, but I am no amateur in shopping. Let me set this one as what I will buy if we find nothing better. You have hundreds of different techniques here.”

Zack scanned through dozens of scrolls, but they only had animals on them. Each style was meant to mimic an animal.

“Do you have any wasp styles? A single deadly strike may work better. I’m unsure if Su Jun has the stamina for the hummingbird style.”

“Yes, kids these days are so lazy. Wasps are deadly, but they use poison, and chi can only gain one affinity at each stage. The White Flash sect has their ideas on what affinities she needs to be successful.” The man took on a conspiratorial look. “Have you heard that Corrupteran Intercity Alliance spies were found in a border town near here?” Zack gave the man a raised eyebrow. Was he serious? “Swear on my ancestors. They say it's going to be war. Maybe wait a year before sending Su Jun to the White Flash Trials.”

Corrupterans were superorganisms that merged their flesh with other creatures and absorbed them, supplanting their consciousnesses. They lived in the inner cities of some of the larger cities in the tamed lands, joining sects and blending in well with humankind. Only every few years, some were caught, and that only happened when the creatures were ready to breed. Well, hopefully, they were safe in the prison camp. Corrupterans preferred their prey, young and nubile. Supposedly, the sects had plans to deal with the problem before it got out of hand.

“Did you hear about the new shipment coming in all young men and women with more debt than they can handle?” Zack asked.

“Those predatory lenders, I swear I would like to get my hand around their throats. Kids shouldn’t be allowed to borrow so much money. The temptation is too great.”

“I agree the temptation is too great,” Zack said.

There was a scroll with a bear about throwing opponents and using their weight to gain leverage. He liked it well enough to contemplate practicing it himself. The breathing technique was also interesting. He never put much stock in cultivation. It seemed like a lot of effort to divide his focus. But with so much happening, maybe it was time to branch out.  

“You’re a cultivator. How much harder is it to cultivate with these collars?”

“The difference is the heavens and earth. When Su Jun gets hers removed, she will appear as a great prodigy with her strengthened will.”

He recalled Su Lin complaining after their intimacy about contraceptive techniques being more difficult with the collar. Neither of them wanted to bring a child into this situation.

“Thanks for the chit-chat. I’ll take the scroll with a bear on it. She’s a small thing. Throws and submission holds will help her more than striking with her strength.”

“Are we talking about the same girl who tosses boys her age and older like toys?”

“She’s hit puberty, and they haven’t, that’s all. It's normal for her to appear stronger and bigger than kids her age.” Zack said.

He wouldn’t admit that his grilled food increased her potential and flat attributes. Even without a system, the benefits were obvious. Stronger people mined more and came to him for more food, paying him merits and increasing his coffers. They brought more merit points into the town, and more buildings were built that were taller than ever.

The mayor even increased their taxes to pay for under-twelve welfare. Kids with collars and no one to pay their merits got to live. Everyone gnashed their teeth at the taxes, but no one liked seeing the corpses of children on the streets. Zack had several people working in his restaurant who grew up in the slave town and never saw the inside of the mine.

Zack hated taxes and socialism, but he hated seeing dead children more. After learning about the corrupterans and what he feared, maybe it would have been better if they died clean. It was horrible, and he hated himself for thinking about it. As he limped through the streets and saw children happily playing, he hated himself more.

He stepped on his street, which had concrete blockier housing, and a girl-shaped missile lunged for his chest. In her new blue dress, Su Jun wrapped her arms around his belly as he grabbed her and spun the giggling girl around. They approached the crowded streets, where people parted in his wake as he went home. It was good to have such loyal customers. Men stood in small circles, eating their rice bowls vigorously.

Unless Zack made it himself, the meat didn’t give any attributes bonuses. Fortunately, he could make it, and the staff could reheat it or bread and fry it.

“You’re getting strong next time; you’ll knock me over.” Was this the girl the old shopkeeper was talking about? He barely felt her run into him. She was so frail. “Now that I see you are fine, how is your mother?”

“Mom is minding the shop. Our regulars were mad that you didn’t open yesterday. Did you find any rare treasures in the mine?”

“Just three raptors for the grill.”

He would need to remove their poison sacs and see about concentrating their poison into something more potent. Already, the venom running through his veins was on its last legs. That was a shame. He liked how it distracted him from his hip pain with little spikes of agony through his body. But when he saw Su Jun’s bright brown eyes his heart melted. Talking with Ling Gao could wait a day at least.

Something concentrated should take his Heat Resistance and Regeneration skills to the F grade. That was where skills got their first little changes. Every grade altered a skill; depending on the individual's choices, two seemingly identical skills could become vastly different.

They arrived at the middle-class side of town, where some kids tossed an approximation of an NFL regulation football around. He hadn’t expected the game to become popular, so he made sure it was called football. He planned to spread it around long before anyone else arrived to spread soccer as football. It was the most American thing he could do without bringing guns to the world.

Su Jun looked between him and the kids, tossing the ball. “Go play. I’ll be home for a long while, and I need to talk about grown-up stuff with your mother.” Su Jun made a disgusted face before running off and intercepting the football. He saw her foot imprinted in the concrete and shook his head. The subpar building materials they were stuck using were ridiculous.

Zack reached down and gently crushed the stone into powder. There was something wrong when a bit of caress from him completely powdered stone. He slapped Su Jun’s butt harder than he treated the concrete. He raised an arm and frowned as his veins finished their transition from green to blue once again until they could hardly be seen. That was just great. His little buzz was gone until he could condense some venom and inject it.

He jumped with his good leg and landed on the balcony overlooking the lower floor of his restaurant. There was no need to disrupt customer traffic. Zack went downstairs, where Su Lin was busy sewing together and purchasing clothes for Su Jun’s arrival at the sect. She glanced up from her work and smiled while quickly finding a stopping place to her work.

Their manager, Chen Chun, and other staff took care of the day-to-day. Zack only ever went out and cooked when he had something new to add to the menu. He went to the supply closet, opened a gate, and dumped enough white rice to refill their larder fully.

Within his Demi-Plane, he had absolute control. He could farm with his will alone, and Demeter’s Touch was a skill that got results, much like his grilling skill did. There were other skills he would like to get, but he wanted to reach the F grade first.

That had been his plan when he used his will to farm and carve out the land. In those days, he reaped levels like his rice harvests. Herds of various monsters roamed his Demi-Plane, some interbreeding and creating true monsters. He saw a three-headed reptile with wings born from a raptor and a tunnel hydra through his ever-growing omnipotence over his realm. Where the wings came from, he had no idea. Maybe they both had some latent dragon in their ancestry. He named the new species Gigadra and happily took the reins of it through his Monster Tamer Skill. Zack found a dying bear from the Bael Orchards and delivered it to the young Gigadra, butchered and ready to be eaten. He even ground the meat to make it easier for the little monster. The monsters stared up at the heavens as if they could see him; it was cute.

Demi-Plane G: 919/99999

Sometimes, he did things that radically increased his levels but had no idea how to replicate the feat.

“Did you find what you were looking for in the mines?” Su Lin asked.

Zack slowly pulled his mind from his world before he answered. “I saw my brother and his son. They told me to be greedier, I think. I was burning alive mostly, but I found something nice on the way back.”

“We are almost selling food at a loss. If you didn’t cheat, we would go under. Shadow Bat men came by and threatened Chen Chun, and I’m worried about sending my daughter to the sect. Are you sure it’s the best decision?”

“It’s the only one that gives her a chance. You could leave this place, too.”

“No, my place is here with you. Don’t free me and send me away,” Su Lin said.

He raised a hand before she could start the argument again. “You already won. I’m not sending you away; I would miss you too much and probably melt in the mines if I didn’t have you to return to.” She was going to be free and Zack was going to send her away but he wouldn’t frame it like that. Su Lin won after all.

“You shouldn’t go so deep. You’ll wake the dragon, and then where will we be.”

“Free, I guess, if the dragon can burn hot enough to melt out collars,” Zack said.

Su Lin rolled her eyes at him. “People talk about what they see in the depths. They say they see the people they’ve killed and those who betrayed them. You see your family. What did they do to you?” Su Lin asked.

“Don’t go there. I relived it once already, and I don’t need to do it again. Let's say we hurt each other, and I wasn’t open enough about how I felt. The name Sin is a punishment for not being a good brother,” Zack said.

“It means to do wrong by a god.”

“No, Jason isn’t a god, or he wasn’t last I checked. But for people like him, godhood isn’t a big leap.” Zack said.

“You aren’t weak. Are there more people like you back in your homeland? Could you call on them?”

“If my brother knew about this place, he would kill anyone involved in the slave trade. That’s who he is. Jason, the hero, wouldn’t stand for it.” Zack said.

“We could free ourselves and find a life. You don’t know that the sect will refuse you freedom.”

“I’ll work on it if I can free you and put you up in one of the cities first. You know what’s about to happen.”

“It's all anybody talks about. A new war with the Corrupterans, they are always bloody.”

“You aren’t naïve enough to believe there will be a war. That’s far too costly, and the elders in the big sect don’t want to waste good cultivation resources when they have a simpler solution.” He was sure that soon, the price of freedom would increase exponentially. Getting Su Lin out early might be his only opportunity to get her out. But he had to sell it as he had planned.

“So, we’re going to buy your freedom first, and you’re going to buy us a lovely home while I get five times the price of my freedom and get out of here. Crane Peak is a nice place with big walls and tattoos for the citizens to prove they aren’t Corrupterans.” Zack said.

It was the perfect hunting ground for the monsters, so he mentioned it first. Su Lin never liked his first suggestion. That was also a little far away from Su Jun.

“I think Dove Peak would be better. While it doesn’t have the walls, the elders keep their families there.”

It was also where Su Jun’s father lived. He was, after all, of the Ji clan and a member of the White Flash sect. While he hadn’t been seen in some time, he had all the makings of an MC and should return. If he knew his tropes, he'd come running when war rages and he learns of his daughter's endangerment. He wanted to get her out of danger before they parted ways.

Reality didn’t care about his love, fears, or hate. It was a brutal bitch that would take from him every chance it had. He had a good eight years to get his head back on straight. Zack felt he was in the home stretch, but he had to dig deeper into the depths.

He only needed to check a few things off before then. First, he needed to upgrade his Heat Resistance and Regeneration to F grade and get the upgraded skills. Then, he would go into the depths themselves and discover what lurked within. After that, hopefully, his collar would be gone, and he could deal with the corrupteran threat.

Within his demi-plane, a hundred years passed for everyone on the outside, giving his lands all the time they needed to change and the monsters to grow. Some cultivated, while others hunted and grew strong. A few lived in his world's harshest lands, battling nature and growing with each generation. His Gigadra was only one example of the evolution of monsters in his world.

Insects fed on the falling lightning bolts in the land where lightning fell like rain. This experiment could lead to his freedom. Perhaps he will enter his demi-plane again, cut the connection to this world, and force open a Gate to another.

Zack had enough pots set to boil to open a soup kitchen, but he would rather move his loved ones away from the immediate danger he saw coming. Maybe he wasn’t seeing the whole board, but from where he stood, it looked like the prison camps were about to be turned over to the Corrupterans as free food.

“So, you will follow me to Dove Peak?” Su Lin asked.

“Yes, I'll be there when I get my collar off.”

That would also allow him to stow her away in his demi-plane, far from potential enemies.

“Well, let's break it to Su Jun that she will be free and join the sect.”

Zack grilled raptor meat and cabbage and served them over rice with soy sauce. The meal was good until he added some unfertilized raptor eggs for protein. The eggs were perfect for building strength.

After the meal, when Su Jun was a little ball of energy ready to try out her new scroll, Zack coughed to get her attention. “So, Su Jun, your mother, and I were talking, and we decided to free you and send you to the White Flash Sect trials.” 

He expected her to be overjoyed, maybe a bit teary-eyed about leaving but happy to be free. Instead, she acted like any other 11-year-old girl with a home and friends. “Why would you do that to me? My friends are here?”

“It's for the best; you’ll make new friends and grow strong, and you could even become immortal,” Su Lin said.

“I hate you; this isn’t fair.” She turned between them. Then focused on Zack. “I thought you loved me.” Su Jun said.

That hurt.

She left the table and ran for her room. Su Lin sighed. “I’ll go talk to her.”

Zack nodded, “She’s going to run away. I’ll wait for her in her favorite hiding place. Tell her I’m at the gym.”

“Do you want to tell her we decided to give this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to someone else? And she can marry Bo Chun.”

“I heard of his father, the fishmonger. He sells poisonous fish to people.”   

“She hates his older sister, and they constantly fight.” Su Lin said.

He was more surprised that those kids weren’t zapped to death. People exchanged their hard-earned merit points for fish caught in the flooded tunnels.