The Overlord of Puluo

Juan controlled their body as she cleaned the wounds on Meng and Little Shan.

The three of them shared a single body. Apart from the wounds on their faces, every other injury belonged to all three of them, so no matter whose wounds Juan cleaned, they all felt the same pain.

Meng felt horrible. ”Our problem is that we are not united. Liang Zhenjiao treated us that badly, yet some of our own people just stood there watching, too afraid to even lend a hand.”

Juan sighed. ”The land deity did show us some mercy. If he had not held back, who knows how many of us would have died.”

Meng said nothing.

Another three-headed person came over and sat beside Juan. The elderly woman in the middle was the one in charge, with a middle-aged woman on her left and a young girl on her right.

”Juan, that land deity didn’t show us any mercy. He was ruthless just now.”

The elderly woman, who just spoke, was Ma Huifang, though everyone around her usually called her Aunt Fang. All three of her heads were female, which was quite rare among the three-headed people.

When they reached Kinless Township, Juan had gathered people like her together, hoping they could settle there. Aunt Fang, however, had refused to go. When it came to certain matters, she clearly had more experience than Juan.

Juan did not agree with her. ”Aunt Fang, that land deity had the upper hand, but then he suddenly stopped. That means he was holding back against us.”

Ma Huifang shook her head. ”There were more than fifty of us fighting him just now, and he still had the upper hand. But what if another fifty had joined in? What about another hundred? Do you really think he could have held out against that?”

Juan still disagreed. ”Aunt Fang, I have spent time outside before too. A land deity isn’t fighting all by himself. They have subordinates under them!”

”I know they have subordinates, but how strong are those people really? Most of them are only at level one or level two of the Terranean Layer or at most level three to five. Anyone stronger than that usually becomes a roaming aberration instead. Why would they be willing to serve under a land deity? Even if he called out every last person under him, could they really stop all of us?”

Juan froze for a moment. ”Aunt Fang, are you saying...”

”Things have already come this far. We might as well fight for it. You saw what happened just now. When Liang Zhenjiao pushed us too far, we fought back. We might not have won, but we still scared him half to death.

”If fifty people are enough to scare a land deity, then with all three thousand of us attacking together, we can kill one.”

Juan frowned deeply. ”No. We can’t do something like that.”

Aunt Fang frowned as well. ”Then what do you think we should do? We have behaved ourselves all this way, yet we have been toyed with, deceived, and pushed around again and again. We have cared about other people and followed the rules, but now we are the ones starving to death. Has anyone cared about us?”

Juan shook her head. ”I promised our benefactor that once we escaped, we would keep following the map. If we do that, someone will definitely take us in.”

”We have to survive long enough to get there first. A lot of our people couldn’t continue going yesterday. They all stayed behind by the roadside. They said they just needed to rest, but really, they were waiting there to starve to death.”

Juan said nothing.

The middle-aged Aunt Fang on the left spoke up. ”Juan, the way I see it, we can keep following the map and looking for somewhere suitable while finding food along the way. The two don’t interfere with each other.”

Juan knew perfectly well what she meant by ”finding food.” She meant taking it by force. ”How exactly do we do both at once? I don’t understand.”

The young Aunt Fang spoke next. ”We will go to the next place and ask if they are willing to take us in. If they are, we won’t ask for anything else. We will consider them our benefactors, settle down, and live peacefully under their protection.

”If they won’t take us in, that’s fine too. We will ask them for something to eat. At the very least, they should give us some grain. Even someone as important as Pan Dehai gave us food, so we are not asking for too much. But if they won’t even give us that, and they humiliate us like that bastard in Kinless Township or trick us like that bastard Liang Zhenjiao, then we don’t need to be courteous anymore. If we have to fight, we fight. If we have to take it by force, we take it by force.

”Juan, you have been out in the world before. You know how hard it is just to find a way to survive. If we keep playing nice, we are really going to die.”

Juan lowered her head and said nothing.

Meng spoke from beside her. ”Sis, I think Aunt Fang has a point. We can’t keep going easy on people anymore.”

Juan shook her head. ”The Border Controllers are already chasing us from behind. If we start fighting the land deities too, we will have enemies on both sides. Wouldn’t that doom all three thousand of us?”

The elderly Aunt Fang shook her head repeatedly. ”Girl, if that happened, that be great! At least we would die quickly! We are already as good as finished. I would rather die by the blade than starve to death!”

The middle-aged Aunt Fang added, ”Juan, now that we have made it out of Convict City, if we want to stay alive, some things about our temperament are going to have to change.”

***

”Miss Chu’s temperament has changed. She’s changed so much I barely recognize her anymore.” As they walked toward Proper Village, Ma Wu chatted idly with Li Banfeng.

Li Banfeng scoffed. ”How much could she possibly have changed?”

”You’ll understand when you see her. She’s really not the same person she used to be.”

”I don’t want to see her,” Li Banfeng said as he waved a hand dismissively, then turned and called back to Zuo Wugang, ”Tell everyone behind us to keep close. This is marshland, and it’s hard to cross.”

More than seven thousand plots had already been activated in Qiu Luoye’s territory. Ma Wu had experienced land activation before, but activating up an entire fifty-kilometer stretch and turning it all into a single territory was something he had never experienced in his life.

It was not just him. Even if his father, Ma Chunting, were here, he would never have imagined such a thing.

”Old Qi, I still can’t believe this is real. You are completely insane. You actually pulled off something like this. Back then, even with the Lu and Chu families working together, they couldn’t activate even five kilometers of land.”

Li Banfeng said, ”That’s exactly what I can’t figure out either. We managed to pull this off, but only about thirty percent of it was thanks to our own abilities. The other seventy percent was because Qiu Luoye was looking out for us.

”With the strength the Chu and Lu Families had back then, why wouldn’t the land deities let them activate the land? If they had succeeded, the two families certainly had the ability to develop and maintain the domain. It would have been nothing but beneficial to the land deity. So why were they so determined to stop it that they even had to kill Chu Shaoqiang?”

Ma Wu lowered his voice. ”I only heard about this from my fourth brother recently. Apparently, there was more going on behind the scenes. Chu Shaoqiang wasn’t killed just because of the land activation. It seems the Border Controllers had a hand in it too.”

Li Banfeng’s cheek twitched. ”The Border Controllers already stick their noses into everything in Proper Land, and even after we get to New Land, those bastards still won’t leave us alone. Is there anywhere they can’t reach?”

”Forget the Border Controllers for now. Old Qi, I was thinking about this land all night and couldn’t sleep. If it really does become Proper Land, what kind of business do you want to run here?”

Li Banfeng smiled. ”We are the first batch of landowners. We can run whatever we want.”

”I actually asked around about that,” Ma Wu said. ”The first batch of landowners are different. The rule about receiving protection after spilling blood still applies. With that protection, no one will dare give you trouble over your business in the future.”

Li Banfeng shook his head. ”You mean give us trouble. The business belongs to both of us.”

”Old Qi, you fought for this place yourself. I can’t possibly...”

”Without you backing me on the business side, where would I have gotten the capital to fight for any of this? Better to think about the future and how well we can manage this domain.”

Ma Wu’s voice trembled slightly. ”I don’t know what good fortune I earned in a past life to have met you in this one. Old Qi, I... I think that within our lifetime, we should be able to build this place up into something like Medicine King Gully.”

”That’s not enough. It has to be more prosperous than Medicine King Gully.”

”If we really put our backs into it, maybe we could make it into another Blackstone Slope.”

”Blackstone Slope is not good enough.”

”Don’t tell me you are aiming for something like Greenwater City?”

”That depends on what we brothers can pull off!”

Ma Wu was thrilled, but the deeper they went into New Land, the more obvious the practical problems became.

Qiu Luoye’s territory was not shallow land. It didn’t border any existing Proper Land. What would it mean to have a patch of Proper Land completely surrounded by New Land?

Ma Wu couldn’t even picture how that would work. Nothing like this had ever happened in Puluo Province.

Would anyone really cross mountains and rivers just to live in a city buried deep within the New Land?

Still, there was no point dwelling on such discouraging questions yet. The land activation was not even finished, and they still had no idea where they were going to find the ten thousand people they needed.

When they reached Qiu Luoye’s territory, Miss Chu came out to meet them. The half-a-kilometer and one-and-a-half-kilometer plots were already activated, and she was preparing to activate a two-and-a-half-kilometer plot.

Activating such a large plot took a lot of preparation. Miss Chu was covered in dust and grime, and Li Banfeng almost did not recognize her. Ma Wu, however, thought she looked quite attractive.

”Miss Chu, it has been hard on you.”

”Young Master Wu, it was not that bad.” Miss Chu smiled, then turned to Li Banfeng. ”Big Bro Qi, it has been a while.”

”Yeah!” Li Banfeng answered and immediately prepared to leave.

Miss Chu called after him. ”There are a couple of things I want to tell you in private.”

Li Banfeng nodded. ”Go ahead. You guys take your time.”

Ma Wu stopped Li Banfeng and said, ”Old Qi, Miss Chu wants to talk to you.”

With no choice, Li Banfeng followed Miss Chu to a quiet spot. ”What did you want to talk to me about?”

Miss Chu lowered her head with a shy smile, then slowly looked up at him. ”You just left without a word and abandoned me all alone at Bitter Greens Manor?”

Li Banfeng stared at her in surprise. ”You went to Bitter Greens Manor to cultivate. I am not an Ascetic Cultivator, so what would I stay there for?”

”Because of you, I cannot even count how many beatings I have taken from Granny Bitter. How are you going to make that up to me?”

”Take it up with Granny Bitter. What does it have to do with me?”

”You ungrateful bastard!” Miss Chu lunged at Li Banfeng and wrestled with him.

Hearing the commotion, Ma Wu came over. Miss Chu immediately let go of Li Banfeng and put on a bashful smile. ”Big Bro Qi, you are far too impatient.”

Impatient? What exactly did she make it sound like they had been doing? Li Banfeng thought. He straightened his clothes, then looked at Ma Wu. ”You said she has changed. What exactly has changed about her?”

Ma Wu had no idea what Li Banfeng meant. Miss Chu had changed so much. How could he possibly not see it?

Li Banfeng did not want to see Miss Chu again, so he turned and walked away.

Miss Chu followed him, speaking in a soft voice. ”Big Bro Qi, your second aunt asked me to give you a message. She said you have not visited her in a long time.”

”Cut the crap. Since when did I have a second aunt...” Li Banfeng suddenly stopped. His tone toward Miss Chu immediately softened. ”Ah, well... Miss Chu, please tell my second aunt that once I get through this busy stretch...”

Miss Chu shook her head. ”Whatever you have to say, you should tell her yourself. Your second aunt is always telling me that debts have to be repaid.”

Li Banfeng laughed heartily. ”The old lady is being too formal. I am her nephew. What’s a little debt between family members?”

Miss Chu added, ”There was something that your second aunt often said. She said you are badly in need of some discipline, so you better not wait until she comes out to find you herself.”

A chill ran down Li Banfeng’s spine. He was still wondering how to persuade Miss Chu to take a message back to Granny Bitter when Qiu Luoye came over.

Qiu Luoye glanced at Miss Chu. ”Is she your lover?”

Miss Chu blushed. ”You’re embarrassing me to death.”

Then she turned and walked away.

Li Banfeng was genuinely curious. How did she manage to put on such a convincing act?

Qiu Luoye turned to him. ”Brother, we have a problem. Have you heard of Convict City?”

Li Banfeng shook his head. He really had not.

Qiu Luoye explained, ”Convict City is part of the Three-Headed Fork. Nothing but monsters live there, and a group of them has escaped.

”They have already reached the edge of our territory and are causing trouble. I will go deal with them. If we can talk things out, we will. If not, we fight. I will leave the land activation to you. I probably will not have much time to spare over the next few days.”

Qiu Luoye turned to leave, but Li Banfeng stopped him. ”Big Bro Qiu, don’t rush over there. I am afraid things will go badly if you do.”