Chapter 842: Beware of the Chicken (Patreon)

A/N

Sorry for the late chap. This one took a lot longer to write because it's a big chap, but I think it's a nice place to end for the weekened.

Chapter 842: Beware of the Chicken

For a man who had reached the upper echelons of power in this world and had now been reduced to the lowest of the low, it made a strange amount of sense for Elder Molric to pick a village that had no name on any official map to live what little he had left of his long life.

It took four days of travelling on foot to arrive at the bottom of a shallow bowl of farmland that was made up of maybe fifty houses, all of which were built with mud walls and thatched roofs. In the centre of the village sat a well, the sole source of water responsible for fulfilling the thirst of less than two hundred people. The site for entertainment was an inn with a loose sign that mainly acted as a tavern for the locals, since few outsiders chose to wander this far out away from civilisation.

What was interesting to note was that the world-changing event that had taken place now almost three weeks ago hadn’t made any real difference to the people living here. After all, no one here cultivated, and they weren’t rich enough to worry about how the sun being replaced and the two academy powerhouses losing their status overnight would affect trade. No, their focus had always been on living the simple life, ensuring that they had the bare necessities to get through the day. The wheel still needed cutting. The goats still needed shouting at. And the hunters still had to head out into the wild.

Honestly, a part of me wished I could retire in a place like this, so it didn’t come as a huge surprise to me that my master would, but I’m sure he picked it for very different reasons…

Out. I want out.

Even though the message through my soul bond didn’t arrive as words, I understood what my vine buddy was trying to say. For the past hour, there had been a pressure building inside my inner world, and it had been Yggy making it known just how excited it was to see its creator.

“Just a little longer, buddy.”

That clearly wasn’t a good enough response because the pressure turned into a push.

“Give me a few minutes and I’ll let you out. I promise.”

That was enough to stop the vine from trying to force its way out, instead, it curled around the Ancient Oak’s root and sulked. I didn’t have the chance to check up on it because a voice hissed behind a water barrel.

“Is that him? Is that the one that Ma said not to talk to?”

For a second, I froze, thinking that I had somehow been recognised.

Before I had set out on my way here, I had used the faintest application of Golden Sun energy to change my appearance so that I would appear as a middle-aged man to those without any cultivation.

Usually, I would need to hide from only cultivators, but everyone in the world now knew what their ‘hero’, Tomas, looked like. And for some reason that I still hadn’t figured out, mortals were more likely gawk at me across the street with their jaws dropped like I was some zoo animal that had escaped.

“No, it can’t be,” a softer voice responded. “He’s not grey enough.”

“I’m not talking about him!” The other voice fired back. “That one that lives at the end house.”

Without turning my head, I let my spiritual sense scan my surroundings and immediately found three figures crouched behind the barrel. The only reason I hadn’t sensed them before was because they weren’t displaying any malicious intent. Not to mention that I hadn’t been aggressively scanning, looking for threats like I usually did in this world. Which meant it was pretty easy to overlook those without any trace of cultivation.

The one in the middle was likely the leader, it was a tall girl around the age of eleven, her hair unevenly chopped and short, and in her hand was something she clearly thought was an intimidating sword.

On her right side was a brown-haired boy with big, wide eyes and a swollen lip. On her left side was a smaller girl who was mostly all nose.

“My uncle says he’s a ghost,” the boy whispered. “And that he’ll eat me if I don’t finish my dinner.”

“Ghost?” The tall girl’s head snapped to her right side as an incredulous look appeared on her face. “I’ve seen him eat soup, how can he be a ghost?”

“Who said ghosts can’t eat soup?”

"Everyone knows ghosts don’t eat food like normal people!"

"You…you don’t know that. You just want me to say yes because you’re bigger than me!"

As they fell into an argument on what classed someone as a ghost while the little girl helplessly watched, I bit my cheek to stop myself from smiling at the innocent, carefree life of children. With a shake of my head, I kept walking until I got to the part where the houses thinned and the fields began, and then I stopped in front of the end house that the boy was referring to before. 

From the conversation I had overheard, this was clearly where the old lunatic lived. I didn’t even need to spend any spiritual energy to confirm it because the kids had abandoned the cover of the barrel and were running up to me with red faces.

“Hey, you! Uncle! Stop!”

The tall girl skidded to a stop between me and the door with her stick held out sideways, acting as a barrier that wouldn’t hold back Turnip, let alone me.

“You…you can't go in there,” she panted.

“Oh?” My right eyebrow arched. “And why not?”

“He's a ghost!” The swollen-lip boy shouted. “He’ll eat you. No one will ever see you again!”

"No, he's mad," the tall girl cut in, shooting a look at the boy that said, ‘shut up’. “I heard that he does experiments, and that he’ll do one on you if he catches you.”

I looked at the timid girl to see what her opinion was.

“He’s weird,” the girl said eventually, looking down, struggling to meet my eyes. “He…he turned Nina’s chicken purple.”

“Purple?” 

“Yes.” the big nose girl nodded.

That was unexpected. I had thought the elder would have had better ways to spend his time than terrorise the village’s farm animals.

“I…I think I’ll be okay, I can take care of myself better than a chicken can.”

The girl shook her head, then held out her hands to show me the size of the chicken, which apparently had been the size of a large dog. What the hell were they feeding that thing? If anything, they should be telling me to beware of the chicken. It was clearly some sort of abomination to begin with!

Shaking the image out of my head, I crouched down so I wasn't looming over them.

“Thank you all, but I need to go in there,” I said, resting my forearms on my knees. “There’s something I need to do.”

“Fine. Fine. If you’re going to see the old man, then listen to this,” the tall girl lowered her stick and put her hands on her hips before beginning her lecture. “Whatever you do, don’t hold anything, because he’ll ask you to. I know he will. Just don’t. And if he asks you to stand still and that he won’t hurt you, run and don’t look back!”

"Okay,” I nodded slowly, wondering what the elder was truly up to. “I can do that.”

“Oh, and don’t look at the green thing in the pot.”

“The green thing?”

They all nodded at the same time. Apparently, this was one thing they all agreed on, apart from the elder being a dangerous madman that needed to be avoided at all cost.

"It's got arms," the swollen-lip boy whispered. “And it likes to fight. It tried to jump out of the window once to grab me. It said it was going to pick me up and threw me up and down.”

“It can’t talk,” the tall girl slapped the boy’s shoulder. “Don’t lie, or I’ll tell Auntie Leena.”

Before they could get into another argument, I spoke. 

"Thank you. I didn’t know any of this. I think you three just saved my life.”

The tall girl's chest puffed up so fast I thought she'd float.

"You don’t need to thank us," she said. “We do that. This is nothing. We’re going to be hunters one day and protect everyone in the village!”

As the others nodded seriously, I dug into my sleeve and pulled out three coppers.

“This is for the warning,” I smiled, putting one in each hand.

"Ma says don't take money from strangers," the small girl said, even though her tiny fist was already around it.

“She’s right,” I nodded seriously, putting my hand out. “I’ll take it back then and give it to the old man who lives in that house.”

“No,” she shook her head, her hands going to her chest possessively. “Ghosts don’t need money.”

“Off you go then before I change my mind,” I laughed.

Not needing to be told twice, they scattered like leaves on a windy day.

Holding back a sigh, I heard them arguing about how they were going to spend the coins. Still crouched in the dirt, a smile appeared on my face. It was nice that the world was at peace and kids could just be kids, arguing about what sweet to buy. That was one of the reasons I did what I did, so the children didn’t have to grow up in an apocalyptic world where they had to betray each other just to get a loaf of bread.

Straightening up to my full height, I looked at the door standing before me. I took a deep breath to steady my nerves, then I pushed it open, only to be hit by a barrage of frustration.

“—that’s not the same as the red,” a voice was saying. “How many times do I have to tell you? Hey! Are you even listening? Look at it. No, don’t look at me, look at the color of it, you overgrown pincushion. Does it look angry to you? No, it doesn’t. That’s the problem. It doesn’t have an opinion!”

The cottage that the old man had chosen was quite simple, it only had one room. On the far wall, there was a bed, but from all the glass jars, copper coils, dried plants, papers, and who knows what else placed on it, it clearly wasn’t there to be slept in. The same could be said for every other surface in the room, they were covered in equipment or chalk diagrams drawing runes, everything in here had one purpose, and that was experimentation.

In the middle of it was a wheelchair that had been built out of a farm cart. Calling it ugly would be nice, it had two big wheels off a barrow and a seat somebody had padded with sacking. The seat was currently occupied by my master, who was wrapped in a blanket that stopped where his legs would have started had he had them.

Had it been as easy as channeling some blue sun energy or golden sun energy to regenerate them, I certaintly would have. Unfortunately, Beric's sword had cut off the actual concept of having legs, and it had cut it off so brutally that even using the Sect Master's karmic technique wouldn't return it. So, until he was able to regain the concept of standing and walking, a wheelchair would have to do.

But that didn't stop the elder from being his old self. The old man was pointing a piece of chalk at a beefed-up potted cactus that was sitting on the table, deliberately facing away from the elder.

“Oh, come on, now you’re going to sulk?” Elder Molric sighed. “Constantine, look at me. I am the one without legs, I should be the one sulking, not you!"

That didn’t have the result that the elder wanted, the cactus actually turned another two degrees away from him.

“You…you’re going to be like that?” the elder stared at it, his eyes reddening. “Fine. I don’t need your help. I’ll do it myself. But don’t expect me to put your name down when it succeeds. You won’t even get an honourable mention!”

Watching my master in the middle of an argument with an overgrown houseplant released some of the tension that had been building up in my chest on the walk over here, because I’d half-expected to find a broken man.

Everyone knew that cultivators who lost their power usually didn’t survive for much longer, they would sit in a room, stop eating, stare into space, and completely detach from reality until the little spark of life remaining within them was snuffed out.

But Elder Molric was nothing like that, the man was never going to stop, not as long as he had a breath left in him.

“Close the door, boy,” my master’s head turned in my direction. “You’re letting the cold in.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“Well, you’re not giggling like a little child, so you’re clearly not one of those snotty brats.” He wheeled himself around with two hard shoves. “And who else is there to pay this old man a visit?” His eyes then narrowed as he looked me up and down, and for some reason I sensed that he could see through my shallow disguise despite having no cultivation of his own. “You…you’re thinner! Are they not feeding you at that monastery? Monks. They eat leaves and call it discipline.”

“You know that cultivators don’t need to eat like regular people,” I pointed out.

The elder ignored my comment and mumbled something under his breath about how the monks were out to eat his plants. Shaking his head, he dropped the chalk to pick up a dusty box that had a purple intricate rune carved in the centre.

“Here,” he said, pushing it towards me. “Hold this for a second, and whatever you do, don’t move.”

“The kids outside told me not to hold anything…”

“Those brats. They ruin everything!" He scowled. "Is it that scrawny girl with the stick?”

“Yeah, that's the one.”

“That child is a menace,” he dropped the box on the floor and picked up the chalk to wave at me. “Ever since I moved here, she hasn’t left me alone. She threw a stone at my window, and when I asked her why, she said, 'to see what you'd do.' Can you believe the audacity? Back in my day, they—”

“Why do they think you’re some sort of ghost?” I cut in.

“It’s because I told them I died, and I don’t have legs. That’s their idea of a ghost. How primitive." He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “If I had been a ghost, this village would be the last place that I would haunt. I would find Avery’s descendants and spill all her dirty little secrets.”

That did sound like something my petty master would do in between his experiments in the afterlife.

“So,” I said, changing the topic. “What have you got going on here?”

“Are you talking about all of this?” he asked, gesturing over at the array of plants scattered around the room. “This is nothing, boy. This is simply the beginning. Look at that one. It’s dead. That one is worse than dead. That one killed a radish. The Golden Sun does not bite, boy, that's what nobody understands. Red bites. Blue lies to you and then bites."

“I think that's probably because it's not corrupted like the others.”

“I know that. I saw you use my vine to hang that sun in the sky, you don’t need to be smug about—”

Before I could respond, my soul bond once again came to life, and the pushing returned stronger than ever before.

“Alright, buddy. You can come out.”

If Yggy came out in his full form, that would have taken the roof off and caused collateral damage that I didn’t want to deal with. So, instead, a six-foot vine slithered out of my sleeve and hit the floorboard, before shooting across the room.

“What in the—”

Yggy went straight up the side of the wheelchair, wound itself twice around the old man's chest, and squeezed.

“You,” Elder Molric cried out. “You absolute traitor. When I was imprisoned in my own body, I thought Hiron had killed you. I was never going to forgive that fart. Do you know how happy I was to see you come out of nowhere in that cursed valley!”

With a purr of pleasure, Yggy vibrated, tightening around the elder.

“Look at you,” he whispered, getting one shaking hand up to rub the length of the vine. “Look at the way the red, blue, and gold energy run through you. Boy, do you see this? Do you see this masterpiece?” He leaned back and laughed at the ceiling. “This is my creation. I made this. Everybody else made saints and headmasters, but I made a vine that devoured two suns.”

With a smile, I decided to stay silent and let the elder have his moment. His words were true. Had it not been for the elder creating Yggy in the first place, I would never have had a medium to defeat the corruption. More importantly, I wouldn’t have a buddy to accompany me throughout this never-ending cultivation journey.

The elder opened his mouth, clearly intending to continue his monologue, but then behind me the door slammed open and a woman’s voice called out.

“Master, the storage rune is full. I've told you four times that we need to find a way to make a new one with golden sun energy. I had to carry all of it from Nina’s by hand. I dropped the ash twice, and there's a giant chicken stalking me. It’s the purple one. I lost it, but I think it knows—”

My spiritual sense had already informed me of who it was when she was a hundred feet away from the house, but I turned around to get a good look at her. There was a young woman walking in sideways with her arms wrapped around a crate of jars, there were stacks of papers wedged under her chin, and wire-framed glasses were halfway down her nose, looking like they would fall off any second.

It was Professor Thara.

When she saw me, everything stopped, and the papers slid out from under her chin and went everywhere.

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