“First Rank, Middle-Grade!”
Wang Ba stared at the plume of smoke, his eyes widening as a brilliant white light surged from within.
Though he had suspected it, confirming Alpha-Five’s grade still startled him.
Alpha-Five seemed quite unaware that he was Middle-Grade Spirit Poultry and rubbed ingratiatingly against Wang Ba.
Wang Ba tossed it a few discarded spirit insects as a reward.
Yet, as he watched the rooster peck at the ground, a pang of regret gnawed at him.
“A pity Alpha-Five is meat poultry, not a Spirit Beast that can fight. Having a First Rank Middle-Grade Spirit Beast to protect me would be wonderful.”
For reasons he couldn’t quite place, Wang Ba felt a lingering unease about the atmosphere in the sect lately.
It had been less obvious at Lu’s Grain Depot, but seeing the herb and talisman shops sold out had left him uneasy.
Still, nestled deep within the sect, he couldn’t imagine what kind of danger could possibly reach him here, let alone where it would come from.
He decided to stop overthinking it. Let the sky fall. The giants of the cultivation world could hold it up; it wasn’t his turn to get crushed yet.
Time flew by.
Five days had passed since Wang Ba successfully broke through to the sixth layer of the Physique Strengthening Scripture.
At the foot of the villa.
Old Hou stared at the extra buckets of chicken feed, scratching his head in confusion.
“What’s going on with you? Why is your feed usage jumping up and down like this? One day it’s a little, the next it’s a mountain.”
“You know I’ve been researching how to raise Spirit Poultry, so my feed use really does vary,” Wang Ba said with a helpless smile. “Leave those buckets here. It’s getting colder, so a longer fermentation won’t hurt.”
Wang Ba hadn’t hidden his ‘research’ from Old Hou. In fact, he had deliberately fed the old man information.
However, he strictly concealed the results.
He was preparing the sect for what might come later.
He wanted the powers that be to know that he didn’t just magically conjure a flock of Spirit Poultry overnight, but that there was a traceable, struggle-filled process.
If anything went wrong with Deacon Li, Wang Ba could rely on Old Hou’s loose lips to plant a narrative within the sect.
A second layer of protection.
Many menial chicken keepers hoped to improve their lot by raising Spirit Poultry, but almost none achieved results. Even if they knew about his work, most would not expect him to succeed.
This was his usual explanation, so Old Hou did not ask more. He lifted the feed easily and helped carry it up to the manor.
Seeing Wang Ba looking ready to dive back into his chicken coop, Old Hou shook his head.
“You really can sit here calmly! Haven’t you noticed something wrong in the sect lately?”
“Off? I think everything is fine. Why? Did something happen?”
Wang Ba’s heart skipped a beat, though his face remained a mask of dull ignorance.
Old Hou looked at him with frustration at his indifference, then put his talent for gossip to use:
“You don’t know? The sect is press-ganging people!”
Wang Ba looked baffled. “Press-ganging?”
“They’ve sent a group of laborers outside the sect to do hard labor!” Old Hou dropped his voice, leaning in.
“Hard labor? That doesn’t seem possible. Couldn’t the Immortals do it with a wave of the hand? Why would they need menial workers?”
Wang Ba thought for a moment, then cast a skeptical look at the old man.
“This isn’t that ‘Ascension Society’ filling your head with nonsense again, is it?”
“Shh!”
Old Hou frantically held a finger to his lips, his eyes darting left and right. “Keep it down!”
“I don’t need anyone to tell me! I saw it with my own eyes! Disciples from the External Affairs Hall were personally escorting the laborers out!”
He leaned closer, whispering urgently. “And I heard from the folks at the Clean Mountain Department that a Spirit Spring was discovered nearby. They’re likely being sent to dig it out!”
“Think about it. If these high-and-mighty disciples could really solve everything with a wave of their hands, why would they need us to shovel shit and feed their beasts?”
The resentment in his voice was palpable.
Wang Ba considered it. There was logic there. If Immortals were truly omnipotent, the profession of ‘chicken farmer’ wouldn’t exist.
“But what does that have to do with us? We belong to the Myriad Beast Department. The External Affairs Hall shouldn’t have jurisdiction over us, right?”
Wang Ba continued, his tone pragmatic. “Besides, I’m raising livestock. They can’t expect me to let all these chickens starve just to go dig a hole, can they? Do the Immortals not need their Spirit Chow anymore?”
His reasoning was watertight. Old Hou racked his brain for a rebuttal but found none. Flustered, he settled for righteous indignation.
“Anyway, I think those of us at the bottom, us menial workers, ought to stick together. Then no one would dare look down on us or bully us!”
“That doesn’t sound like something you’d come up with, Old Hou. Did the Ascension Society write that speech for you?” Wang Ba teased.
Old Hou glared at him, annoyed, and whipped his donkey into motion.
Not far away, he seemed to remember something, jumped down from the cart, and ran back.
He crossed the hundred-odd zhang in a flash, arriving in front of Wang Ba without a single bead of sweat or a heavy breath.
“I almost forgot the most important thing!”
Old Hou spoke rapidly, his face grave. “I heard the pig-raising Alpha Section and the cattle-and-sheep Beta Section are both suffering outbreaks! And right, over twenty farms in the Ding Section have been hit by Chicken Plague. You absolutely must be careful!”
Wang Ba’s expression finally cracked.
“Over twenty farms hit with Chicken Plague?! I remember the plague started over three months ago. Haven’t the Immortals from the Myriad Beast Department fixed it yet?”
He had heard Shopkeeper Lu mention outbreaks in some Ding Section manors, but had not expected more than twenty to be affected.
“I don’t know the details. I don’t deliver to the infected farms. I only found out because I saw piles of livestock carcasses at the Clean Mountain Department and asked around. Just watch your back!”
With that, Old Hou dashed off again. He had a tight schedule to keep.
Perhaps it was his imagination, but Old Hou seemed much more agile lately than before.
But that thought was quickly drowned out by the gravity of the news.
“Over twenty farms… This is trouble.”
Chicken plague was a general term for poultry diseases. In his previous life, Wang Ba knew the more familiar name avian influenza.
Even in his previous world, there had been no specific effective treatment. Disinfection, isolation, and large-scale culling were the means of stopping its spread.
If the Immortals here were just as helpless against it, the Rare Fowl in the Ding Section were facing extinction.
No, perhaps the entire Eastern Sage Sect would be wiped clean of poultry.
Wang Ba didn’t care about the sect’s financial losses. He cared that if the Rare Fowl supply collapsed, his plan to reach the tenth layer of the Physique Strengthening Scripture would be dead in the water.
Worse, his instincts were screaming that something didn’t add up.
“The Chicken Plague broke out three months ago. Logically, the sect should have noticed and intervened by now.”
“Yet, not only has it returned, but it’s worse.”
“Chicken plague, pig plague, and the diseases affecting cattle and sheep have different causes. Why would they all break out together by coincidence?”
“There’s… something very wrong here.”