Cultivation Nerd (xianxia)

Chapter 185 - Press X For Doubt

 

After saying that to him, the bronze-armored man stared at me, frowning. But after cycling through several expressions, he finally settled on a nonchalant, expressionless mask.

“How did you notice me?” asked the bronze-armored guard.

“To me, it was stranger that people didn’t notice you guys running around,” I answered.

There was no need to lie, but it was better if a potential opponent had no idea about even the simplest things about me.

The armored guy’s muscles twitched beneath his armor, his limbs shifting and fingers subtly moving. He wasn’t bad at hiding his emotions, but I had dealt with better actors. That comment about a red cloak had clearly thrown him off.

His thigh muscles twitched as if he was preparing to run. But before he could even attempt any movement technique, I interlocked my fingers to form a strange hand seal, instantly erecting a bluish barrier around us with just a thought.

The bronze-armored man clenched his hand into a fist—the only part of his body, aside from his head, that was visible past the bronze armor.

He eyed the barrier cautiously and asked, “Are you an outsider?”

An outsider? I felt he didn’t mean it the way many might interpret it. He knew I had come from outside the city—that was why he had been following me around like a baby duck.

“Not exactly,” I shrugged, leaving my answer vague.

The guard sighed. “Only those from the Gold Immortals bloodline can naturally see those who have made a deal with the moon.”

“A deal with the moon?” I inquired.

“I literally can’t speak about that,” the guard winced. “But I can tell you that the immortal who built this city wasn’t known to have children outside the city. Not that he cared about such things—an immortal is like a god who does whatever catches his whim. Occasionally, some wander into the city, unaware of their bloodline, and are weirded out by how everyone acts like they don’t notice us—the bronze guard and the little rats.”

As he spoke, beads of sweat accumulated on his forehead, which I stared at as if I were looking directly into his mind.

He told a nice story, but it was too convenient for my liking as if he was giving me an excuse just to play along. We both knew the game we were playing; there was no reason to clown around. If I were in his position, I might have come up with a story to make the other guy feel comfortable, too.

“You’re sweating,” I said. “Are you feeling nervous for any reason?”

The man opened his mouth to answer, panic flashing across his face, but he hurriedly closed it, licked his thick lips, and seemed to ponder something.

“What is your name?” I asked. It seemed like he wasn’t going to answer, and there was no use wasting any more time on this if that was the case. I tried to play it off casually but was also under a time limit.

“Qin Niu,” he answered.

“Qin Niu…” I muttered his name, looking him up and down before staring at his face. This was to give him the illusion that I was trying to memorize his face, but I had already done that. “What is really happening here? What’s up with the arrays, people following every newcomer, and all that? To me, it looks like the city is hiding something big.”

“What city isn’t hiding something big?” The guard chuckled nervously. But when he noticed I wasn’t laughing, his expression hardened, and he shot a piercing gaze at me. I thought he might attack for a moment, but then he continued, “There are certain rules in this city—unwritten and often unspoken. They’re not something a Qi Gathering Cultivator can handle. Even I don’t know how deep the hole you’re trying to look into goes, but one thing’s for sure: it’s very deep. You’re investigating things you really shouldn’t be.”

He was right, in a way. But I had learned enough about immortals through the ghost. I knew they weren’t truly all-knowing, especially when they had isolated themselves from the outside world.

This city was something the Gold Immortal had built. But from studying its history, I had a feeling he hadn’t been too involved in its management for the last few thousand years. Almost as if he didn’t care about it or had grown bored with it.

What else could it be when the guy didn’t appear even when Goldwatch City was on the brink of destruction? And as the guard said, I was just a Qi Gathering Cultivator. I was hard to notice as long as I didn’t push too far. Ironically, investigating these kinds of things would be more difficult if I were a Foundation Establishment Cultivator or stronger.

“Oh, true,” I agreed. “But if this were to blow up in my face, I’ve got a little trick up my sleeve.”

That was technically a lie. My so-called trick was just Song Song, and she couldn’t do much if I were to die. But she was smart enough not to retaliate, and no matter how much time passed, Song Song was vindictive enough to be a thorn in Goldwatch City’s side.

Of course, I would always keep things from getting that far and would step down before it came to that.

I understood the mindset of the little man. This might be a cultivator world with older traditions and all that. Still, history often gave the illusion of being more honorable in the past. More often than not, the same people from back then were still the same today. It was even more literal in this world due to people living so long.

The little man often acted stupid and loyal to survive, like a guy at an office job acting nice to his bosses despite the lousy pay they gave him.

Unless this guard enjoyed sneaking around, watching people eat, sleep, and shit, he’d been dealt a bad hand. The chances of him having strong loyalties to the people who put him in this position were extremely low. His loyalty extended only as far as his fear of his superiors. But if I showed him these superiors weren’t all-knowing, then it was time to play.

If he was loyal to an organization that had screwed him over, then he was just dumb. And no plan could survive contact with stupidity.

I waved my hand, a simple gesture that drew a sack filled to the brim with spirit stones from my storage ring. There were a bit over five hundred spirit stones in the sack.

“Of course, I’m not cruel enough to make a deal, threaten you, and leave you with nothing. If somebody did all that to me, I’d at least want to be compensated,” I said.

Qin Niu tensed, looking on guard, and instinctively flexed his Qi. But it was useless as I approached him, each step echoing through the silent, stony road, and placed the sack of spirit stones into his hand.

When his hand touched the sack of spirit stones, Qin Niu seemed to drift off into his thoughts.

“You see all these nice houses around here? With that sack in your hand, you’re the richest among them,” I said.

Of course, unless a particularly well-off cultivator lived in one of them. But adding that would ruin the momentum of the speech.

“It’s better if we all walk away from this happy,” I told him.

Labeling someone a traitor, unloyal, or schemer was easy. But from Qin Niu’s perspective, he was a guard who had been dealt a bad hand, probably landing this position due to a low dice roll—something arbitrary that would inevitably feel unfair. Now, someone was offering him benefits just for saying a few things. There was also the implicit threat that he wouldn’t leave here alive if he refused.

I didn’t have the stomach for murdering a random guy, but he didn’t need to know that. If he refused, I’d leave the city before he could report to his bosses. Once outside, Goldwatch City had no authority to order the Blazing Sun Sect to give me up.

And if they tried, well, I’d been thinking about taking a trip and exploring the world anyway. With the timing of the Blazing Sun Immortal’s heavenly calamity drawing closer, things were bound to heat up in the Sect.

The guy stopped staring at the spirit stones and tied the sack to his belt with a robe.

“Just to make sure no one notices your newfound wealth,” I said, waving my hand as if about to perform a Jedi mind trick, but instead created a miniature barrier around the sack. “This will last about two or three days, so make sure you find a place to stash this capital.”

Now that the bribe was done, it was time to ask some questions. “Anyway, what do you know?”

“I don’t know as much as you might think,” the guard admitted, looking more reassured now that the bribe suggested I likely wasn’t going to kill him to cover my tracks. “I also used to be one of those beggar kids. That’s where the children who roll low at birth end up. If I didn’t have a semblance of cultivation talent, I wouldn’t have become one of the bronze guards. But no matter my talent, the chances of me rising higher are slim due to my initial roll at birth.”

“What happens to the kids after they grow up?” I asked, regretting the question as soon as the words left my mouth.

It wasn’t like I could do anything for them. Judging by how the guards treated people who rolled ones when trying to enter the city, I could only imagine what happened to the kids. I didn’t need to know something I couldn’t change, especially if it would only lead to sleepless nights.

“They manage Cheap Bars, or if they’re lucky, they might end up running an underground tunnel bar,” he said.

“Cheap Bars?”

“They’re places the beggar-looking kids use to get around. They also serve cheap booze, which is why people call them Cheap Bars,” he explained. “While the bars technically exist, an outsider won’t even be able to see them, even if they’re staring straight at the entrance.”

This city’s structure was fascinating. Clearly, the immortal who built it had a vision for what he wanted it to be, and so far, it seemed he had achieved it. But I didn’t have time to discuss this with the bronze-armored guard—someone might notice if I kept him in one place for too long or if people saw me talking to nobody. Besides, I doubted a guard would know how the higher-end operations worked.

Instead, I got straight to the point and asked, “When was the last time Goldwatch City suffered a major tragedy, an attack, or a break in its peace?”

For a second, the guard seemed confused by my question. But he quickly remembered that I’d paid him to answer, not to question my questions.

“About thirteen years ago, when I was a kid,” the guard replied. “It stood out because bad things usually never happen in Goldwatch City.”

Fuck! The immortal who built this city was still alive?!

Before I learned about heavenly calamities, it seemed like every immortal was dead or had ascended to a higher realm. But now, it looked like they were all still alive!

This complicated things so much!

“What happened?” I asked, trying to maintain a calm facade despite the internal turmoil.

“That day, a dark cloud flew over the city, raining down golden lightning. Some say they saw a two-headed snake made of lightning come down and try to destroy the city,” the guard shrugged. “But old folks always make stuff up.”

I recalled what I’d read in the library about this city’s history—this incident wasn’t mentioned in the history books. 

How many other things the books had omitted or deliberately misdated?

One event stood out in the history book: something that happened over a century ago caused the lake near the city to form. This indicated that the Gold Immortal was still alive.

Now, the question was whether I should continue snooping around after learning that. Clearly, the presence of an immortal in the city had cut short whatever schemes or plans I had. But how short were those plans going to be?

I felt like a kid trying to see how much he could get away with.

 

A/N: I don’t know if I have said it before, but to be able to get into the mindset to write characters without making them come off as just there for the plot, I always write a short backstory on paper, and about thinks they like, dislike, their favorite foods and all that. 

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