The woman called Meng Qi possessed tremendous strength. After Meng Peijiu's orders, she made two trips and dragged away all the reeking, bloodied Shaking Ape meat and weaponry that had been piled up like a mountain, looking to weigh around two tons.
When the courtyard door was pulled shut by Meng Qi and closed with a creak, Peng Jun's ramrod-straight body finally relaxed slightly. He let out a breath, his rough face etched with deep helplessness as he turned back and said:
"Ah, you two little ones should have just told me if you wanted to sell goods. Why did you go and call that little ancestor over?"
Autumn wind swept across their clothes as Qin Yi looked up with confusion and asked:
"Can we not go to her? Isn't Meng's Clothing Workshop the largest black-market merchant under Immortal Guest Lodge?"
Peng Jun hesitated at the question, raised a hand to rub his chin in deliberation for a moment, then still chose to tell the truth:
"That's true, but it's also not entirely accurate. Their family actually has more of a cooperative relationship with the old master. The largest black-market merchant fully subordinate to Immortal Guest Lodge is actually that casino on the eastern side of town."
Cooperative...
Qin Yi's dark pupils flickered as he continued asking curiously:
"But didn't Granny Meng flee here as a refugee?"Peng Jun's expression turned strange as he shot back:
"Huh? Who told you they fled here as refugees?"
Qin Yi glanced meaningfully at his sister beside him.
Ruan Su blinked a couple of times, let out a soft snort, and turned her gaze away.
Qin Yi: "..."
Seeing the expressions on the two kids' faces, Peng Jun fully relaxed, laughed heartily, reached out to pat Ruan Su's shoulder, and explained to Qin Yi:
"Not many people in Immortal Guest Lodge know about this. It's normal that Little Su wouldn't. Granny Meng has connections in the capital of the Later Tang Kingdom and can provide sales channels for the old master... Just remember not to spread this around."
Qin Yi didn't doubt the truth of Peng Jun's words. Earlier he had seen clearly - when the man had stood up for the siblings, his body had been completely tense, even trembling slightly. He was clearly afraid of fully offending that young woman surnamed Meng.
He could probably count as half one of their own. Worth pulling to their side.
With his decision made, Qin Yi very solemnly clasped his hands and bowed deeply to the man:
"Uncle Peng, rest assured. And thank you for speaking up on our behalf earlier."
"..."
Looking at the steady, proper etiquette before him, Peng Jun was momentarily stunned, then found it somewhat amusing as he vigorously ruffled Qin Yi's hair and said with hearty laughter:
"You little rascal, that Brain Disease of yours was pretty well acted before? Small body but a big brain, you've got a future!"
Having said that,
Peng Jun hesitated slightly, then reminded them:
"Also, you two little ones should avoid dealing with that family of women as much as possible, especially that Granny Meng. If you find any more private goods, just come straight to me. I'll contact Old Xie at the casino for you. With me around, he wouldn't dare cheat you. If there's nothing else, I should head back to report. After all, the old master only instructed me this morning to butcher the Shaking Ape."
Qin Yi nodded, glanced at the now-empty courtyard, and asked:
"Uncle Peng, what about that half of a little girl that was in the courtyard earlier?"
At this, Peng Jun's expression grew complicated. He sighed softly and shook his head, saying:
"I saw she was just a little child who died so horribly. I wanted to let her rest in peace, so I picked up a few of the larger pieces and took them to the mountains to bury her in a pit. It's about half a li north of your little courtyard."
Qin Yi thought for a moment, then nodded.
Death was cheap in this world anyway. But when he had time, out of courtesy, he would go burn two sticks of incense for the rich girl as thanks for the gold coins she had dropped.
After Peng Jun left, the courtyard was left with only the siblings.
Ruan Su first drew a few buckets of water from the well and briefly washed away the blood smell in the courtyard, then turned and headed to the kitchen to brew Qin Yi's medicine and prepare lunch.
Qin Yi returned to the living room.
The room was somewhat dim. Sunlight filtered in through the doorway and the window lattice, and the air carried a faint musty dampness mixed with the smell of blood. That conical wooden stake hanging inside the doorframe was no longer swinging like a swing, just hanging there silently, blocking quite a bit of light.
Sitting properly at the square table, Qin Yi opened the yellowed ancient book.
Thanks to that young woman surnamed Meng's reminder, he could now be quite certain that this ancient book was definitely a cultivation manual. Not just an ordinary internal cultivation technique either, but one that involved the training methods of Calamity Seeds.
Calamity Seed.
That was the derogatory term used by those in the know in the Central Plains to describe people like Ruan Su.
This was also why Qin Yi had told Nie Junyue that children like them were better at hiding themselves than adults.
If they were ever discovered by those people, kids like them would vanish from the face of the earth. On the journey south, many of the children Qin Yi had picked up had disappeared exactly that way.
For a stable dynasty, the mass emergence of children like Ruan Su had an almost devastating impact on the foundation of its rule.
Just as Qin Yi couldn't estimate what kind of stats his sister would possess the moment she truly came of age, those in power calling them 'Calamity Seeds' was actually quite fitting.
But according to Qin Yi's deductions, this was merely one stage within the tide of the times.
The birth of Calamity Seeds could not be predicted or stopped, and they were direct wielders of violence. A dynasty could not systematically reject them from the top down the way it could suppress the budding of new ideas.
And if you didn't want to die, the only option was to change.
Discovery, rejection, suppression, chaos, struggle, compromise and acceptance, and finally the complete establishment of a new system.
On the surface, the various dynasties of the Central Plains were mostly still in the stages of rejection and suppression toward 'Calamity Seeds.' But behind closed doors, they were surely already far beyond that.
The old master's attitude was one piece of evidence...
The autumn mountain wind brushed across his face under the morning sun. His brain was spinning at full speed, draining his energy, and waves of drowsiness crept in unnoticed. Qin Yi's head uncontrollably drooped once.
Instantly, Qin Yi snapped to alertness and stood up.
When the body relaxed, the exhaustion accumulated by this frail frame surged up all at once.
But he couldn't sleep yet.
The old master's matter still hadn't been resolved with a countermeasure for Ruan Su, and now a Meng Peijiu with unclear intentions had suddenly appeared.
There were too many things at home that needed his handling, his thinking, his solutions.
Suppressing the drowsiness, he turned and took out a stack of rough paper from the cabinet in the corner of the room. He picked up a writing brush and lightly dipped it in the prepared ink. The brush tip touched the paper with a soft scratching sound. When Ruan Su came out of the kitchen carrying the brewed medicine, Qin Yi had just finished writing the last character.
Ruan Su set the medicine bowl on the table without asking what he was doing, and softly commanded:
"...Drink."
Qin Yi picked up the bowl and chugged it down in gulps.
His sister was very attentive, always blowing on the medicine to cool it before giving it to him.
The medicine went down his throat, bitter, but before long, a warm, tingling sensation spread through him, greatly reducing the pain in his body. It wasn't just pain suppression - the medicine was taking effect, healing the damage his internal organs had suffered last night.
This was also why Qin Yi had never stopped Ruan Su from spending money to treat his Brain Disease.
Materials from monsters and certain unique herbs had raised this world's medical standards remarkably high.
Of course,
enjoying such medicine came at a terrifyingly high price.
Seeing him obediently finish the bowl, Ruan Su nodded with satisfaction, picked up the bowl, and returned to the kitchen.
His gaze fell back on the ancient book. Qin Yi stared at the unfamiliar characters on the title page, a faint, barely perceptible dark light flickering continuously in his pitch-black pupils.
The various nations of the Central Plains each had their own languages and scripts, with differences far greater than dialects. But they should all stem from the same origin, counting as different branches of the same language family.
Whenever he arrived at a new place, through observation and listening, Qin Yi could learn the local language to a decent degree. He had also attempted to learn the scripts, but time and material conditions were far too limited.
Apart from ancient Shu and Great Qin, he had only a superficial understanding of the scripts of most other nations.
But Qin Yi was quite certain that the characters in this ancient book before him did not belong to any script he had ever seen.
The very structure of the characters differed greatly from those he had seen in the Central Plains. So greatly that they seemed like creations from a completely different language family.
Standing on a small stool, Qin Yi stared unblinkingly at the title page of the ancient book, then took a deep breath. He pinched the writing brush beside him and, stroke by stroke, wrote out two characters on the rough paper in Shu script.
Heresy.
He couldn't read it, but this script, it seemed he could translate.