Scripture of Days Past

Chu Qiguang turned to Fine Silk and Fish Egg and instructed, ”You can speak. Let her know that you can understand her.”

Qiao Zhi, Fine Silk, and Fish Egg all turned to him with stunned expressions.

”It’s fine,” Chu Qiguang reassured. ”She’s really stupid and easy to control.”

”I’m not stupid!” Ergou’s sister objected. ”Mom says that I’m the smartest kid in the entire village! Hold on, did you just say that they can speak?”

”Shut up!” Fish Egg immediately yelled. Those two words carried all his pent-up frustration from the past three months. ”Stop talking!”

”Holy meow! I can finally speak! I’ve been dying to say something!” Fine Silk wailed.

Ergou’s sister was ecstatic. She joyfully picked up the two cats and began stroking and kissing them.

”Don’t ever tell anyone that these cats can speak, do you hear me?” Chu Qiguang instructed with a stern expression. ”Otherwise, they’ll be taken to the Daoist temple and burned to death!”

Ergou’s sister immediately clutched the two cats to her chest with an anxious expression.

”Why would they burn cats? Are cats really good to eat?”

”I’m not good to eat at all!” Fish Egg hurriedly yelled.

”Once cats are burned, they’ll die, and you’ll never be able to see them again, so you must never tell anyone about this, not even our mother,” Chu Qiguang warned. ”Fish Egg and Fine Silk will continue to keep you company, but if you tell anyone that they can speak, they’ll run away and never come back.”

This was a test from Chu Qiguang for Ergou’s sister. If she could keep this secret, then perhaps she could be useful to him in the future. In any case, with the two cat fiends keeping a constant eye on her, she won’t be able to get herself into any major trouble.

”I won’t tell anyone!” Ergou’s sister promised with a firm nod.

After returning home with Ergou’s sister, Chu Qiguang gave Ergou’s mother ten taels of silver to cover their living expenses.

Following a night of cultivation, he set off back to the Azure Sun County to assemble the cat and dog fiends. Along the way, he noticed that the construction on a Daoist temple had already begun on the Wang Clan’s grave site. Not only were there many workers toiling away, but there were also women cooking meals for them, providing many employment opportunities for the people of the Wang Clan Village.

The Daoist temple wasn’t paying them much, but this additional income already made up a large percentage of what the local villagers could earn through farming, so the workers certainly weren’t complaining.

After returning to his residence in Azure Sun County, Chu Qiguang gathered all the cat and dog fiends for a debriefing.

”I found a fantastic plot of land in the mountains. It’s a secluded paradise that has yet to be discovered by the imperial court. I want to establish a village for fiends there to accommodate all fiends who don’t want to live in the outside world. It’ll be a utopia where all fiends have land to farm and food to eat. Do any of you want to go there?

”It’ll be a village solely for fiends, so you’ll no longer have to hide. You can speak and run around as you please, and no one will capture you or try to eat you. On top of that, I’ll teach you all to plant cotton, build houses, weave textiles...”

The dog and cat fiends were astonished by what they were hearing.

After a brief stunned silence, Old Tu stepped forward with his son, Little Tu, then said in an embarrassed manner, ”I... I want to go there with my son, but we don’t know how to farm.”

”That’s fine, I’ll get someone to teach you,” Chu Qiguang promised.

Big Head began rubbing himself up and down Chu Qiguang’s leg as he yelled, ”I don’t want to go anywhere, Godfather! I want to be with you forever!”

White Rice and Lulu were absolutely aghast at his shameless, sycophantic display.

In the end, a total of seven dog fiends expressed a desire to go to the new fiend village, while not even a single cat fiend volunteered.

”Why would we go farm when we can have ready-to-eat food served to us here every day?” White Rice scoffed.

”All the mud in the mountains will make my fur dirty,” Lulu sneered.

After the debriefing, Chu Qiguang instructed all the cat and dog fiends to conduct a county-wide search for other fiends and tell them about this new fiend village. In seven days, they would all gather on the rear mountain behind the Wang Clan Village.

***

Several days quickly passed by.

In a forest outside South Gully Town, the northernmost town in Azure Sun County, a middle-aged man with a thick beard and dressed in gray samurai attire was listening to a report from his subordinates. All of them were dressed to look like ordinary farmers or merchants of the Great Han Empire.

”We searched the county town, but Lin Nan is no longer there. From what we heard, he physically assaulted some bailiffs from the county office to avoid forced labor, then ran away. After investigating further, we learned that a homicide case took place a few months ago, and the culprit was a fox fiend. Later, the county office discovered and recovered the fox fiend’s body. The incident happened around the same time as Lin Nan’s disappearance, so it’s very likely that he was the deceased fox fiend.”

The bearded man stomped a foot down in frustration, blasting a huge crater into the ground as he snapped, ”That bastard! He’s completely ruined my plans!”

A subordinate began, ”Tsukikage-sama—”

”Refer to me by my Han name while we’re in the Great Han Empire, and drop the ’sama’ honorific as well,” the bearded man interjected.

”Yes, Brother Chu. I’ll keep that in mind going forward,” the subordinate replied. ”Even though Lin Nan is most likely dead, we learned from some of the local dog fiends that a new fiend king has appeared in Azure Sun County, and he’s currently gathering all of the fiends in the county with the intention of moving them into the mountains.”

”Oh?”

The bearded man’s eyes instantly lit up. His name was Tsukikage, and his Han name was Chu Youtian. He was a wolf fiend that had been sent here by the Great Qian Empire.

He and his subordinates were all innate enlightened wolf fiends, born with the ability to take on human forms. They had been sent here with the mission of establishing contact with Lin Nan to further strengthen their foothold in the Great Han Empire.

This would allow them to gather more intelligence from the Great Han Empire and perhaps even steal some technologies and cultivation arts. Ideally, they would also kidnap some Daoist priests who were skilled in pill refinement or skilled workers in the fields of textile weaving and blacksmithing, then take them back to the Great Qian Empire.

There were multiple teams of spies just like theirs that had infiltrated the Great Han Empire, and they had spread themselves throughout the Great Han Empire’s northern Spirit, Yong, and Jing Provinces.

”I didn’t think that someone else would try to rally all the fiends of Azure Sun County before us,” Chu Youtian mused. ”This certainly saves us a lot of effort. If we can force their king into submission, then we’ll immediately seize control over all the fiends of Azure Sun County. If we can have those fiends gather intelligence for us, then our job will become much easier. Where can we find them?”

Chu Youtian was a fifth-state martial artist, and his subordinates consisted of three third-state martial artists and one at the fourth-state. They were all elite warriors of the Great Qian Empire. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been deployed here.

”They’ve agreed to meet on the rear mountain behind the Wang Clan Village about four days from now.”

”Good,” Chu Youtian said with a pleased nod. ”In that case, we’ll just have to wait four days.”