There was only so long that any kind of crowd could watch some kind of public humiliation before they would get disinterested for one reason or another, and this applied to the people of Paragon, the crowd that gathered there after having heard of an incoming fun display, and even the Greats that had been looking on at it. In the eyes of the latter especially, they already had their prize, and could enjoy her however they liked.

For them, the only real issue would be that the trophy belongs to those that had earned it, and thus it would need to be sent over to the Great Ping Family’s residence for their amusement.

“Judging by Ping Wu’s message, he had expected to find some fortress of that pathetic Rebel in the sands. Perhaps he completed the procedure and then went out to try and capture it…” Chu Zhong pondered, completing her cup of tea just as the crimson-haired woman was removed from the stage and brought to the back.

“We shall hold another Life Spark Sensing ceremony when the month is up, sister, as seems to be the new tradition,” Chu Wu said, “If only the other families weren’t so incompetent, it would be relegated to the pages of history alongside the pathetic Fight of Yin.”

“That would truly be magnificent. The common pests of the world seem to lack the knowledge of what they are doing, and the lives they are endangering with their petty rebellion. As soon as they stop acting up and submit, so many of their organisations can disband, and perhaps their Yi City shall not be torn to the ground,” Chu Zhong smiled, rising elegantly from her seat, “I would like to watch her be placed on the transport, if you would not mind, brother. It is a shame that our fellows at the Ping family prefer their slaves without injury, or else I would have loved to tear a thing or two off her body.”

“I have no objection,” her brother replied as he also stood up, unfolding a decorative fan as he did so, “But I must disagree on your preference. The best thing to watch crumble is a great tower, without a flaw to be seen, not something full of holes and missing pieces. In my eyes, the satisfaction is simply not as great.”

“If you say so, brother,” the female member of the third generation of the Great Chu Family turned away and headed out, her brother following her.

Together, wearing their simple robes, only the mirages of their anchors attracted any attention, but the common folk could barely understand cultivation itself while those with some attainment in planar energy had no choice but to assume it was some technique that they had practised. Even without the proper understanding of what one observed, the instinctual terror instilled by some many anchors facing someone at once were enough to dissuade most foolish minds from interrupting them.

As a result, any crowds they approached parted, any people that were in their way had no choice but to get out of it before their lives were lost, and any that would otherwise prey on people ran off before they could become the hunted.

It was a delightful experience in their eyes, one that brightened their mood slightly after the earlier discussion of the Life Spark Sensing ceremony. Although it had been meant to be put away with many other tools and weapons that they no longer used, the sudden damage to their people and unexpected deaths gave them no choice but to be more vigilant.

With such a straightforward walk, they arrived at their destination in little time, coming into a large barn that covered up a wagon with two large planar beasts at its helm. In the back was space for all kinds of things, the items usually being transported from district to district, but in this case, a certain crimson-haired woman was also being loaded on. Of course, in this case, rather than being permitted to walk in on her own or being instructed to do so, loading implied simply picking her naked form up and throwing her into the wagon, doing so with only enough care not to damage anything else with her hard skull and skin.

They walked in just as that was about to happen, although the sudden entry of the two of them prompted the driver of the wagon to let the woman in his hands fall to the ground as he went to bow to them.

“Is there anything that you require?” he asked right away.

“Proceed with the rest of the loading, wretch. I wish to remind that woman’s body that she had chosen to go against the wrong people.”

The driver, not a member of any Great Family but merely someone that they had intimidated into their service with their aura, making him transport something that the Greats had no time for, didn’t dare to question a single thing and went right to placing the rest of the goods into the wagon, trying his best to shut out whatever sound or sights might occur as a result.

He had some experience in transporting people like this in the past, which he had hoped to leave behind as particularly shameful history and not return to only a week later, and he knew that when someone’s energy was being delivered somewhere, they wouldn’t usually make it to their destination without a few bruises at the least, and without a complete ‘facial reconstruction’ at most. Naturally, nobody would be kind enough to alter the face of another in any positive light, so that phrase was merely an overly abstract thing to say about hitting someone in the face enough to completely reshape it and their skull.

It was not something he wanted to see, no matter how mild it might be this time.

Chu Zhong approached the woman on the ground, who lay there motionless save for her breathing, and kicked her side in order to flip her onto her back.

“What a tough skin this one has,” she said to her brother while she removed her shoe, “If this is without her cultivation, I wonder what kind of stone she resembled with it. Ah, if her cultivation could still be rebuilt, alongside that mind of hers that must have been so confident, then I would love to see it and chip away at her flesh…”

“Sister, what an unnecessary thing to say. If that was possible, we would not parade these fools around so readily.”

“Indeed, but it would be most exciting, don’t you think?”

While they spoke, Chu Zhong imbued planar energy into her leg and foot, then slammed it down with as much force as she could muster onto the crimson-haired woman’s neck, enjoying the slight degree of a proper reaction that she finally received.

“If Ping Wu did leave a wisp of will within you, then look at me now, woman. This is where you should have been from the start, beneath our feet, being there just for us to play with you as we desire, not trying to start up stupid conflicts. What a foolish girl you were… and it is truly a shame that you can’t say anything. I would have loved to hear it, whether you’d try to look strong as your filthy neck was being crushed, or-”

“Sister.”

“Hm? Ah, of course, she does still need to breathe. I had gotten a little carried away, it seems,” Chu Zhong smiled, removing her foot from the woman’s neck just for a moment before slamming it back down, “There, that should be fine, right?”

“Yes, but we should not delay this much longer. You know how our friends at the Ping family can get when they are agitated. It is certainly a funny thing to watch, but there is only so much fun that we can have in a single day, and with a single person,” Chu Wu said, taking his sister’s hand, “If you wish, I am sure one of the worms will gladly supplicate themselves for your amusement outside, and that once the Ping have had enough of her, they will allow you to take her apart, piece by piece.”

“They are not fond of letting go of their toys, brother… but I shall hold back. Driver!” Chu Zhong called out, causing the driver to nearly drop the item he was bringing on to spin towards her, “Load her on.”

“T-This very moment!” he replied right away, placing that which he was holding into the wagon as quickly as he could without damaging anything, then picked up the woman from the ground and tossed her in as well.

Once again, he couldn’t help but notice but sturdy every part of her felt, and how there did not seem to be a single trace of injury besides a slight red mark upon her throat despite the sheer degree of force with which she had been struck several times. He did not know of the Great Families, or of the true identity of the figure he now had on that wagon, but it must have been someone truly impressive.

After he had loaded her, he turned to find that the two had left the barn, leaving him to his own devices, but that did not mean that he hesitated to continue going even for a second. He did not know how they did it, nor whether his intuition was even correct in this case, but he suspected that they could tell exactly what he was doing, and perhaps even what he was thinking, from very far away, much further than the spiritual perception that they should have possessed. As someone that was only in the first realm, he barely had enough understanding of that to avoid it, so he did not dare to act against those that were even more powerful than typical third realm cultivators.

 

Some time later, the wagon was loaded, and the planar beasts, a pair of terrifying wolven bears that had enough strength to carry the cargo and enough speed to do so at a reasonable pace, were awakened, with them giving him a hungry glance before turning away.

It seemed that he wasn’t even worth their attention, not to mention that of their owners.

Fortunately for him, the beasts did not seem intelligent, nor were any of the terrifying people accompanying him out of the district. That meant that as soon as he was some distance from the district’s wooden walls and the defensive line of trees, he was able to relax rather than becoming tenser, as he usually would on the outside.

Typically, he would only have weak beasts to pull whatever cart he was able to use, but those wolven bears were clearly far more powerful than him. He had been told to loose one if there was an attack that his ‘pathetic strength’ couldn’t handle, and that he would be able to leash the beasts again so long as he didn’t display complete ineptitude, so all that was left for him was to ensure he kept heading north-west, and that he didn’t forget to follow the instructions that he had been left with at the end of the trip.

As could be expected from travelling through the open plains of the savanna in the north, there was not much for him to be doing, so he inevitably started glancing back.

There, he was able to see the body- no, the living woman that he had thrown on, sitting there in some vague resemblance of conscious activity. Her head was vaguely turned towards the bars of the wagon that permitted just a little bit of light inside, but whenever the light struck her eyes, it seemed to be absorbed into their void, as if her very soul had vanished. It was rather unnerving to be constantly looked at, regardless of that fact.

“So… are you actually alive, or just unusually warm?” the aging man asked after some time, earning no response at all. Given how little she had reacted then her throat was being crushed, he wasn’t surprised by that, but it did give him an idea.

He had nobody to speak to properly, to engage in conversation, but that did not mean that there was nobody who would listen to him. Perhaps the woman could still understand his words and might even wake up somehow and give him a reply by the end of the journey if she had been fed with something to cause her mind to vanish, which would eventually be bound to expire.

While he had heard mention of wisps of her will from the two scary people ordering him about prior to this, he had no idea what that meant, nor whether it would be something permissible if she did suddenly wake up and regain consciousness. It might go against the desires of those for whom he was being forced to work, and he would then need to explain his actions to the people at his destination, or otherwise flee and hope that, with her mind returned, this woman would be able to do something against them and wouldn’t wish to strike him down as well.

Due to this dilemma, he found himself wishing that she would and would not awaken at the same time, that she would and would not turn out to be alive and well… as well as someone that was effectively a living corpse could be.

“Heavens, this is too much… I swear, when this is done, I will finally stop delivering weird things to weird people, and will settle down with my family… My wife already had three kids, and all of them are missing me greatly,” he shared, glancing back to find no sign of recognition yet again, emboldening him somewhat, “You know, those people just didn’t feel right. Their words and actions were one thing, but there was something worse about them that I couldn’t put a finger on. I wouldn’t know what it was, as little as I know about the world and cultivation and all that, but if I had a choice, I would have never worked with them! Never! Their money, absent as it is, be damned!”

There was still no word from the back, so he continued.

He went through his fears and suspicions, his life with his family, all of the jobs he had taken on at this point, and everything else that he could think of. Even with fast and powerful beasts, to cross to another district without a wagon that floated over terrain still took quite a long while, and one of those was essential.

With wheeled methods of transportation, bringing across fragile things, or anything that shouldn’t be shaken excessively, the driver included, causes the highest possible speed to go down drastically so that every small bump on the road doesn’t turn into a quake of the earth for the goods.

However, when something floated and thus avoided terrain, all that mattered was speed and the stamina of whatever was pulling it through the world, meaning that the journey that he expected to take more than a single day could be cut down to a few hours of the wolven bear creatures running at the highest speeds they are capable of through the savanna of the north. It would have been better for him, and possibly for the woman he was bringing with him, but whoever had recruited him seemed a little too stingy to offer something like that.

The driver also questioned the identity of the people that had forced him to act, and whether they were part of some organisation, and whether they were high up in its hierarchy or if they were some lowly and insignificant grunts that could only get their kicks out of bossing around people even lower in status than them. In his eyes, that would be particularly dangerous.

After all, if they were someone of importance, then their activity, the beasts and everything else that they had shown him would be somewhat natural, but if some organisation could bring all of that, including their strength and eerie aura, to a bunch of mere grunts, then he would be rather terrified. Most organisations tended to have stronger members on the top, excluding certain assassin groups where the master of the assassins was merely controlling them through some specific technique and could be as low as the first realm, so if the weakest were this powerful, the strongest might be far too much for him to even look at.

As one might expect, such a line of thought was rather scary to the driver, someone with little personal experience in fights and scary individuals having any kind of ire directed at him, so he switched topics quickly.

 

“… and so, my father looked at me and said, ‘Son, I will go out to purchase a few incense sticks.’ He left, and I had never heard from him again,” the driver said, his tone partially torn between a melancholy and joking one, but as he glanced back and found his only listener in the exact same position as when they had started their journey, with the same emotionless face and blank eyes, both were inevitably lessened somewhat, “Uh… I don’t know who you are, but I am sorry for you… Never mind that.”

He looked away quickly, since he was finally seeing the landmarks that had been mentioned to him, so he moved his attention away from the living corpse of a woman.

Although his words were honest and direct, he was somewhat afraid of what might be done if they were heard by whoever was meant to receive the goods, and also couldn’t be sure whether a single thing that he had said so far had been heard by anyone. The woman never reacted, no matter what he did or said, to the point that he would have believed it if someone had told him she was some kind of strange statue made of a soft and warm stone, while the two wolven bear creatures pulling the wagon never reacted to anything but were unnerving him more and more as he got closer to his destination.

It would have been much safer to remain quiet on the rest of the journey, but he had been too bored in order to permit him that. Now, however, there was only a little bit further to go, and he could manage just a little bit of silence.

After all, the moment that he was done, he could return to his home, and then promise to never go out again, whether for wine or incense sticks, as his father had done before him.

By now, they were close to the Ping District, but he had been told not to proceed onto the roads towards it but instead to turn away, heading towards the mountainous region to then find a very specific passage through them into a clearing. These instructions had been vague when he had heard them first, but now that he was where he was meant to be, he did understand them just well enough to find his way through the hills and rocks and bring himself and the wagon through a particular narrow road. There were likely quite a few like it but judging by the way in which the wolven beasts restrained their own movement while clearly responding unnaturally, they must be familiar with the area.

Indeed, after a short while he emerged into a clearing, and saw exactly where his clients were residing.

A tall mansion stood there, standing amidst a field of short, trimmed grass that ended at the entrance of the clearing, having clearly been planted there by someone. It was expansive, but the outside was limited in terms of the usual flourishes that the wealthy would feature on their property.

It was somewhat bland as a result, but if looked at without such a comparison, the building had just enough to be pleasant to look at, dissimilar from cheaper homes that couldn’t be fully decorated or painted and overly expensive ones that did so far too much, cluttering the shape and basic architecture of the residence. Without every visual feature that would typically catch one’s attention before them, he could clearly see the central doors, the small set of stairs that led up to them, the individual windows that were darkened from the outside but likely transparent from within.

The driver was hardly an expert in such residences, hence he could hardly ponder much more than that as he approached it on the designated circular road, although he had been to a few distant homes and mansions during his earlier years to give him just a little insight. Out of everything that he had seen before, voluntarily or otherwise, this was perhaps the place that looked most comfortable to him.

Still, he wouldn’t live in such a place, since it would be far too large for him, his wife, and his kids. They would likely get lost around the house whenever they left their rooms, which would just be terrible.

Finally, after a lengthy period of silence that the driver found difficult to endure after spending almost every moment of the rest of the journey babbling on about every little thing that popped into his head, likely sharing quite a few more embarrassing stories with the lifeless woman in the wagon than he had originally intended, he and the wagon got around to the closest point to the residence along the circular road.

To proceed further, they would need to go down the smaller path, but it looked to be unsuitable for a wagon and beasts. Fortunately, the quandary of whether to sit there and delay or to drive forward and potentially affect the grass around the path, both of which could be terrible things to do in the eyes of those that owned this property, was quickly solved for him as two figures emerged.

Both looked to be siblings, as they shared the same black hair and eyes, and even their every step was synchronised and smooth, as if they had practised this very walk a thousand times. They wore plain enough robes, the kind of thing that one might see in most districts where robes were fashionable, with a single Ping (平) character on their chest in much the same fashion as the Ping family that the driver was familiar with. With the way that the people at the Chu District were also much alike to the usual Chu family, he was almost convinced that he had been made to participate in the deals between two districts without even knowing it.

Whatever the truth was, these two made their way over to the wagon, and to the nervous driver.

“You have brought our goods safely to us, old man?” a woman said, surrounded by the same mirages as the other two but with a strange flame-like haze between some of them, “Any trouble on the journey, or was it smooth?”

“I-it was perfectly smooth, I assure you. Not a single bandit, beast or breakdown.”

“That is good to hear. In a place like this, people do tend to go missing, but it would be a shame to see that happen when you have done such a… decent job, old man,” a man with the same oddity occurring around him said, “Come now, step down from there and we will take care of the rest. Ping Fu, would you handle his reward?”

The driver had been a little nervous up to this point, since their words sounded rather ominous, but the mention of a reward broke down his wariness somewhat. He wasn’t even expecting to get paid, so to be outright rewarded was rather fantastic in his eyes. With that being his primary focus, he got off the wagon’s seat and followed the woman away from the road and path, with the two of them heading onto the grass, answering that earlier question of his at the same time, since the woman in front of him had no concerns with stepping onto it as she liked.

When he was some distance from the wagon, the woman turned around and smiled at him, instantly causing a feeling of alarm to ignite within him.

“Afraid, are you? Too late for that, old man. Begone,” she waved her hand.

An incredibly powerful force pushed against his neck and throat, one that seemed to both crush and cut, one that his aging body could only endure for a second before his head was separated from his body with the crushing and tearing of muscle, bone and skin, blood splattering all over him and the grass around him.

Rather than being stained by him, the short green grass beneath his feet, and right below his head, suddenly surged, the individual stalks of grass gobbling up the blood and flesh that landed onto them. His skull and bones posed some resistance for a little while, but even they were quickly devoured by the grass, which grew at a rapid pace where it had been fed. The rest remained no higher than a centimetre or two, but the place where the most nutritious parts of his body had been grew almost to a metre in just a few minutes.

Ping Fu admired the tall grass for a few moments, smiling as the tallest stalks began to gain vein-like red lines passing through them.

“We must remember to thank the Chu family for this. An excellent distraction once we get something even more pleasant. Is she in there, Ping Chao? Is everything as the letter described?” she asked, glancing back at the grass as she said, “And we must get one of the servants to trim this again.”

The two wolven bears eyed the flesh eagerly when it had fallen to the ground, but once the immense stalks of grass began to grow out, they suppressed their initial desire and remained still.

“Indeed, we should, but the condition of the woman appears to be what we were expecting. She should respond to our Empty Core Resonance method, at which point the last wisp of will within her can be revealed as well. Truly, your son had done a wonderful deed for us in her enslavement,” Ping Chao said, heading over to the back of the wagon and opening it up, “Everything else also appears to be in order. The Chu did not forget a thing. Now, would you like to do it, or should I?”

“The last time, you had given me the pleasure, so I shall let you do it. I can’t wait to see her expression.”

The man nodded and raised his hand, a strange formless and colourless energy amassing within it as he waited for a few moments, then clicked his fingers. Within the wagon, the crimson-haired woman suddenly straightened her back.

“Come out, Yi Wei. Take a look at your new masters.”

With partly stiff and mechanical movements, the woman rose and navigated through the various things in the wagon, emerging into the light of the rising sun quickly. However, her eyes had gained a single drop of consciousness, glowing amidst the dull grey of the stone mountains around the clearing in the mountains, and actually moved to observe their surroundings, whereas before she had only met the eye of the Great Chu Family’s third generation. When they focused upon Ping Chao, an unmistakable hatred flared up within them.

Despite that, she could do nothing other than what she had been ordered to do. With only a single trace of consciousness, that was all that she could muster.

“What a delightful sight, Ping Fu. It appears that your son had indeed done well. We should certainly commend him when he returns, although I do not think that he will require far more than the one he captured to amuse himself,” Ping Chao said, grinning at the sight, “Ah, this disgusting thing believes that she can meet my gaze… That is not something the like of you can do! Down!”

Her head jerked downwards as to obey his instruction, satisfying the man for now.

“In that case, let us take her inside and provide all of the instructions she requires so that she may join the other servants. I shall go and invite the Bai and Luo families so that they may also join in the celebration…”