Cursed Mountains and Seas

Chapter 103 Imported Treasures: Silver for the Benevolent Servant, Gold for the Wicked Master
At this time, the Pu family ancestral home was already in a state of desolation, and some of the nearby branch family members had also been brought here for centralized custody.

Strangely, although many of them were trembling with despair, the main branch of the Pu family, who had distinctive Semu characteristics, did not collapse. Instead, they had a strange sense of calm as if they had seen through life and death.

Under the direction of several elders of the highest rank, they entered the inner courtyard, which was surrounded by high white walls on all sides.

The outer courtyard of the ancestral home was guarded by a large number of guards recruited from outside the clan and faith.

Although they were nominally caravan guards, they were equipped with a large number of sophisticated muskets, scimitars, and even small cannons, making them far better armed than the garrison troops outside.

Among the guards, a young man who looked about five parts like Pu Shouying anxiously turned the gemstone ring on his hand.

He paced back and forth, asking the butler beside him for what seemed like the umpteenth time:

"Has the master's life lamp gone out?"

The butler answered respectfully as always:
"Young Master Haiyun, still nothing."

The fire was dim and could go out at any moment. Sacrificing several servants with blood could not restore the life fire; it could only strengthen the holy seal in the master's soul.

The old servant deduced that the master's soul was extracted and imprisoned by a master while he was still alive, and his physical body would not die for seven days.

If it were a normal accidental death, the soul should have returned to the family temple immediately.

The phrase "openly repairing the plank road while secretly crossing the Chencang pass" (a Chinese idiom meaning to feign an effort to gain advantage while secretly advancing) describes how the Pu family fell into enemy hands, leading to the exposure of the Pu family's biggest secret. This alone is enough to explain everything.

Now, we can no longer afford to be complacent and hope that the old man can create a miracle.

Now there is only one path left to take.

Before the arrival of the imperial envoy of the Great Zhao Emperor, a ceremony was held to shed the physical body and send the souls of the main lineage members back to the realm of the gods.

Pu Haiyun, the second young master of the Pu family, who was responsible for guarding the family in Citong Port, finally had no choice but to accept this desperate measure.

"This is the only way."

"May our private guardians hold out until the ceremony is complete, to guide the spirit of our ancestor, Pu Gengshou, to descend and carry our souls and the treasures accumulated over the years to God's kingdom."

As he spoke, he took out two coins, one gold and one silver, from his pocket.

Upon seeing this, the eyes of the surrounding Semu guards, including his old steward, all lit up with a glint of light, some silver and some gold.

When he looked at Pu Haiyun and the gold and silver coins in his hand, his face was full of unwavering loyalty!
Pu Haiyun exclaimed in admiration:
"Good baby!"

In a shadowy corner of the courtyard, the malevolent spirit crawling in the darkness silently praised the action:
"Good baby!"

The combination of his three abilities—[Stargazing], [Debt Collector], and [Miser]—is most effective for treasure hunting and ransacking.

He resolutely avoids places with warnings of danger, but he'll come running wherever he smells treasure.

From afar, one could see two obviously strange precious metal coins in Pu Haiyun's palm.

The second young master of the Pu family was only a seventh-rank official and had no resistance to Wang Cheng's coveted goods.

"Rare Goods: Silver Coins [Silver Good Servant], Gold Coins [Gold Evil Master]"

Gold and silver are both benevolent servants and wicked masters! This complete set of amulets and talismans originated in a Western civilization with a strong commercial atmosphere, and its level is equivalent to the treasures of a prefecture in the Great Zhao Dynasty.

You can spend gold and silver to hire all kinds of creatures, such as people, animals, monsters, ghosts and gods, to work for your master.

effect:

【Silver Servant】: After signing an employment contract with the employee, as long as the agreed wages are paid regularly each month, the other party must act as a servant, disregarding family, kinship, love, friendship, health, and rest, and forcefully prioritize meeting all the employer's work requirements with the spirit of an ox or horse.

【Golden Evil Lord】: Similar to the Silver Benevolent Servant, but even more domineering.

By lending someone an excessive amount of wealth in advance (called "loan sharking" in the Great Zhao Dynasty), the person is forcibly transformed into a slave to money, and forced to spend the rest of their life struggling to repay the loan.

They become slaves, working for ten, twenty, thirty years until death, never daring to rest, catch their breath, or think. No matter how much they are exploited, they will not leave.

How to use:

Goods that can be used as wages, such as copper coins, gold and silver, grain, folded cloth, damp pepper, sappanwood, moldy grain, etc., are bathed in the precious light overnight and then distributed to the other party.

The amount of wages and excess wealth paid depends on the value of the person being hired, and both have quantity limits; the more powerful individuals hired, the fewer the required number.

Upon seeing the description of this set of talismanic charms, Wang Cheng's pupils couldn't help but contract slightly.

Even though he had lived two lives and seen the world, he suddenly had a feeling that he had regressed from the "civilized" feudal era to the "barbaric" slave era.
"If you accidentally sign a contract of servitude with them, can you still be considered a human being?"

Wang Cheng recalled that during the recent Battle of Yuegang, quite a few people in the gentry faction fleet surrendered.

However, even though the crew members on Pu Shouying's ship were first affected by the "Imperial Concubine's Incense," and then a few stubborn resisters were extracted by the evil spirit and subjected to the "Transformation into a Maiden" technique, they were still affected.

Despite enduring immense physical and psychological pain, no one surrendered; they fought until the very last man was gone.

"At that time, Suolongjing needed reinforcements, and I didn't pay much attention to the details before selling all their corpses."

It now seems they were likely turned into absolutely loyal slaves by Pu Shouying using the "Silver Good Servant" and "Golden Evil Master." However, this system is far too wicked; it's definitely unsuitable for using on one's own people, but it's quite suitable for recruiting some wavering peripheral groups.

Wang Cheng isn't worried at all about whether he can get the job.

The Pu family still owes the Cai Shui Wang family a life-or-death debt that has not been repaid. If the other party is not careful, the "debt collector" can take away his treasures.

"When will you be able to pay it off? You'll at least have to compensate with the equivalent of a second-rank living ghost or deity, right?"

This was the most valuable loot he could obtain without taking any damage after going around in circles.

Once you get your hands on it, you can pay wages, hire laborers to make more money, lend money at exorbitant interest rates to make money from money, and finally, the debt collectors will squeeze every last drop of money from the debtors. These three abilities form a closed loop.

Just thinking about it makes me feel guilty that I should hang the streetlights.

Then the evil spirit slithered along the crack in the door, hiding on the only way from the outer courtyard to the inner courtyard, looking into the mysterious depths of the inner courtyard.

The Pu clan members gathered from various parts of the courtyard to a standalone white building, and under the direction of several elders, they knelt down one after another.

"This looks like a family temple."

I just heard them say they're going to God's Kingdom.

However, in this world, the underworld is nowhere to be found, Yin and Yang are in a state of chaos, and the mountains and seas are the boundaries. A small number of believers who have accumulated good karma can enter the Taoist temple of the Earth God to reside in, but they will disappear without a trace after their lifespan is exhausted.

Where is their divine kingdom? Can it truly be retrieved from across mountains and rivers to take these people's souls away?

After Wang Cheng and the others had mostly gathered at the family temple, they took a stroll through the luxuriously constructed inner quarters.

Using the criteria of not being too conspicuous and not being able to trace him back to his origins, they secretly amassed a batch of floating wealth worth approximately twenty to thirty thousand taels of silver.

The Pu family has been wealthy for hundreds of years; they could practically squeeze oil out of any handful of soil.

However, even with Wang Cheng's current treasure-hunting skills, he is not immune to making mistakes.

Among the treasures he saw along the way, besides gold and silver melon seeds, jewelry, and precious fabrics, there were also a considerable number of extremely valuable items belonging to women in their private quarters:

A dozen or so horns of different sizes, carved from the finest jade.

Seven or eight Burmese bells with fine chains, made of gold and silver on the outside and containing mercury beads inside, will vibrate continuously when shaken. Each one is worth four or five hundred taels of silver at market price.
The biggest find is a large vehicle made of rosewood and white jade. If we find a suitable buyer, it should sell for ten or twenty thousand.

As a virtuous gentleman and a legitimate maritime merchant, Mr. Wang immediately put all these things into his pocket for money.

After all, having developed the "money power" that ranks first in the weaponry rankings, how can we not stockpile sufficient ammunition?

It's just not appropriate to share it with Sister Yunxiao; we can discuss that later.

Returning to their original spot, they coldly watched as the Pu clan initiated a ritual never before heard of.

Hundreds of people knelt in a circle around a large, seven-candelabra made of gold.

The highest-ranking elder in white robes took a small piece of gray wax from his carefully treasured gem box and added it to the central candlestick.

As it slowly melted, it also tinged the candle flame with gold, then continued to pulsate and grow larger, gradually forming a vertical eye-like portal.

Wang Cheng subconsciously hid in the shadows, confirming that the candlestick was nothing special, but the wax was quite remarkable.

The raw materials are clean beeswax, holy water, holy oil and holy incense, and it is engraved with a lamb pattern, which believers call "lamb wax".

This sacred object is extremely precious and is blessed only once every seven years.

The highest grade of these is called "Martyr's Wax," which is gray in color and is one of the sacred relics made by mixing the ashes of martyrs with holy wax and holy oil.

Lighting this lamb's wax allows for the initiation of descent without any complicated rituals.

Wang Cheng immediately understood the Pu family's trump card.

—Our family is in peril, and we respectfully request our ancestor to come out of seclusion!

This was, after all, a large family that had been passed down for three or four hundred years. They even adapted to local customs and acquired the cultivation system of divine officials, secret scrolls and Taoist books, eventually rising to the position of a high-ranking official in a prefecture.

Even though it's difficult to cultivate to the top three ranks, and even more difficult to be deified after death, theoretically, after hundreds of years, there will always be one or two ghosts or gods still existing in the world.

"Judging from this scene, their ancestor who cultivated himself into a god obviously did not become a folk belief of the Great Zhao Dynasty and erect a temple gate and mountain in Citong Port."

Instead, it was assimilated into other forms of existence by some force outside the Three Officials Alliance system.

Just as Wang Cheng was hesitating about whether to retreat first, a thunderous sound of horses' hooves rang out from the end of the long street outside.

The imperial guards roared in unison, their voices shaking half the city:

"The White Scale Guards are ordered to exterminate the entire clan; all other personnel, please retreat!"

(End of this chapter)