Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 27: Hard Talk (Patreon)

Before wringing everything he needed out of me, the old mummy in the silk robe at least allowed me to sit. And Bao Liu obligingly poured me some tea.

I was the only one drinking. They gave me an ancient porcelain cup as thin as paper. The old man had a sealed metal cup with a clear plastic straw instead of such a delicate beauty. He hadn't touched it yet. No other food or refreshments were offered, but even that brief tea pause gave me a moment to think about where to begin. The question had been far too broad.

"I call him a friend. What exactly would you like to know?" I asked, raising my cup to him in a small salute before the first sip. "Very good tea."

"Which of you is stronger?" the old man rasped, ignoring the compliment about the tea and waving Bao Liu out through the door with a flick of his hand.

I raised an eyebrow. He'd caught me off guard again.

"We've never fought seriously, and our last sparring match was over three years ago," I answered.

"But you were the first to form a complete proto-aura. You shared that information with my great-grandson. What did he give you for it?"

"Nothing," I said. "I shared it with all my friends. Free of charge."

Except Rene… though he hadn't paid for the information, either.

"Hmph!" the old man coughed. "The naive altruism of youth, or a subtle calculation on future obligations?"

The old man was starting to irritate me.

"The altruism of youth," I answered.

"My great-grandson has a rare luck, unlike my grandchildren. None of them ever managed to acquire such a selfless friend!"

"We selfless types prefer our own kind," I said, choosing not to call his grandchildren greedy bastards outright.

"You consider him selfless?" the old man asked, surprised.

"No. I don't consider myself selfless either, but I'm not self-serving, either. It's not a black-and-white situation. I won't share with just anyone I meet, but I can share with friends, if it costs me nothing. The same goes for Bao," I said, forgetting to add Feng. I'd grown used to calling him by surname, and constantly adding the given name felt unnatural.

"And that's not because you expect your friends to share with you in return?" the old man asked, with an unpleasant smile. His trembling hand raised the metal cup and latched onto the straw. A blood red liquid began flowing up through it.

The old man set the cup down and caught his breath. Even that small action had drained nearly all of his strength, though not his attitude. Restoring his mocking smile, he asked: "Tell me about that fight. The end of the first year. The one where my great-grandson nearly strangled his friend over a spot in the rankings."

"You're talking about the duel with Denis," I understand.

"The winner took everything, and the loser lost any chance of passing the selection," old man nodded lightly.

He paused, as though giving me a chance to dispute the facts. I didn't. The facts were true, word for word.

"You seem to already know everything."

"How selfless was that, really?" the old man pressed. "Doesn't it look as though he used that poor boy?"

"Bao didn't use Denis," I said. "They agreed to it together. Both of them were risking equally. Bao could just as easily have lost everything, including his place on the list. I don't think their lives were ever truly in danger, but they were risking their health.

"Denis wasn't weaker, and he wasn't a safe bet. You should understand that if you've watched a recording of the fight. Two friends simply decided it was better for one of them to make it through than for both to be eliminated. A fair deal and a fair fight."

"Ha…" the old man mused. "Or my great-grandson simply underestimated his opponent and very nearly paid for it."

"You seem to refuse to believe he's a decent person."

"Decent people don't accomplish much in this life," the old man snapped. In his anger his voice even lost its tremor, gaining strength. "I need a fighter with a cold mind, someone who won't let this family sink to the bottom! If luck is Bao Feng's only virtue, then he's useless to me!"

"You need someone like you?" I couldn't help asking.

"Precisely!" the old man answered. "A continuation of my bloodline and my spirit!"

"And where has your spirit led this family so far?" I couldn't hold back.

The silence that fell afterwards was longer than any before it. The old man's eyes blazed; his aura began leaking out more perceptibly, though still nowhere near enough to affect me. Along with it, the trembling in his hands grew worse.

"You dare…"

I cut him off. "Tell you the truth to your face? Yes!

"How long has it been since you last spoke with someone who isn't afraid of you?" I asked him. "You have that chance right now. So what will you choose? Should I be silent? I can be. You're not my friend, and I gain nothing from any of this."

"Speak!" the old man ordered.

"I've seen your estate," I said. "It can't have come cheap. All those paintings, vases, flyers. But that's probably nothing compared to what's spent just keeping you sitting in this chair. Renting a Flow Chamber is one of the most expensive services at the academy. And on Earth, with its low natural background, you must have to rely on crystals…"

I gave the old man a chance to interject, but he didn't take it. Alongside the trembling in his hands and the fury in his eyes, something else appeared: a tension in the jaw, barely visible even through the web of wrinkles.

"It's not my place to judge what someone else's life is worth," I continued. "Especially since it's your own money you're spending on it. But the one Bao who genuinely has a real chance of reaching your level, and even surpassing it, achieved that without any support from the family. And he did it by rejecting…" I didn't say ‘being a jerk’ "…the behavioural patterns typical of the rest of the Baos."

"The little shit just got lucky!" the old man barked, spraying spittle.

"More than fifty other Baos alive, no love involved in breeding, just carefully calculated political marriages. Sort of a eugenics programme for getting better cultivators, but he's the only one who got lucky?" I let the scepticism show. "What about Johansson? He's not even from a cultivator family, and he's already a Five.

"Pride is eating your family alive from the inside, not a lack of talent or bad genes. And while you sit here asking me whether Feng's mind is cold enough to lead the clan, the real question is something else entirely — whether your own mind is still flexible enough to admit that the way you've run this family for a hundred years no longer works."

The old man didn't answer right away. The trembling in his hands grew so bad he nearly missed the cup entirely when he reached for it. I watched him and thought that this old man wasn't ready for death.

Old Chen had accepted it long before it came, and he'd gone out with dignity: in battle, sword in hand, saving my life and, in a way, probably the whole of Earth, since it was his actions that had given Novak the justification to act.

Old Bao… was afraid to die.

I felt none of the dignity and honour in him that Chen had possessed. Perhaps it had never been there at all. His strength had already left him, and there was nothing left for the old man to do but watch the sand of life and time slip through his fingers and wonder how much longer it would go on.

What remained to him was power built on the wealth he'd accumulated over a lifetime, and the habit of obedience among the younger members. But even that was probably fading. It was no accident he was attended by girls who hadn't yet set foot on the path of cultivation. His power was absolute over them.

Though it seemed his sick old mind craved power over someone stronger, or else had decided that he'd live forever if he left behind a ‘copy’ to run the family in his style. That was why he disliked so much that Feng was a decent person.

That old man would have preferred the first-year Bao Feng. But that Bao Feng would never have stood a chance against this one.

Here was the thing: Bao Feng would live and Bao Zhui would die.

The Bao family was doomed to fall apart. They'd lose their greatness, their fortune, the weight of their name. They'd sink to the level of a merely wealthy family and go on living quieter, humbler lives, only occasionally recalling the name of their founder. A name that would also lose its former grandeur, since a Five was no longer a planetary top.

I looked the old man straight in the eye, into that place beneath the web of wrinkles where something still smouldered; something that once had known how to rage in earnest. Perhaps, if he'd still had the strength, those words would have cost me my health.

"You're not afraid for the clan," I said. "You're afraid that after you, nothing worth remembering will be left. If you make Bao Feng your heir, it'll look as though it's to your credit. Except he needs you far less than you need him."

The old man latched onto the straw. The red liquid flowed faster, until the cup ran dry and gaps of air began appearing in the clear tube, which then wheezed with emptiness. Evidently that was another stimulant keeping Bao Zhui in this world, judging by how greedily he tried to suck out even one more drop.

It looked as though my words had struck him straight in the heart.

He finished off the stimulant and went on staring at me with hatred for a long while.

I said nothing.

He said nothing.

And into that silence, like the hiss of a venomous snake, the door opened.

Bao Liu burst in with an expression of extreme distress, which the old man paid absolutely no attention to. He slammed his fist against the armrest and shrieked, finally finding someone to unleash his rage on.

"I fucking told you not to disturb us! I'm not fucking dead yet!"

His aura flared more perceptibly, almost under control, but it was still only crumbs of the power Stage Five ought to wield.

That was enough for Bao Liu. She dropped to one knee and bowed her head.

"Forgive the interruption!" she cried out, almost in pain, the words coming quickly, almost without pauses between them, as though she was afraid that if she stopped, she wouldn't find the nerve to start again. "Forty minutes ago, demons attacked through the wormhole. Reports say the attack has been repelled. We have no data yet on our losses."

The old man's aura erupted, almost reaching its peak. Bao Liu lost consciousness, but Bao Zhui himself clutched at his chest and began wheezing.

It seemed to be the final straw after the tense conversation. The old man's hands shook so violently he couldn't keep them on his chest and grabbed at the armrests instead. His entire body beneath the silk robe began convulsing in time with the tremor. His eyes started bulging from their sockets, and his mouth, like a fish's, began gasping for air.

I stood up, not knowing what to do.

I wasn't a medic.

I'd had a first-aid course. But it had been meant for treating young, strong cultivators with combat injuries, not crippled old men.

His bulging eyes reddened with haemorrhage and rolled back. Bao Zhui slumped in his chair like a broken doll. One more, barely visible drop of blood welled up from his right nostril.