Martial Arts: Starting with Upgrading the Dilapidated Temple

Chapter 132 Medicine Slave

It was noon when we returned to Jingquan Town.

The sun hung overhead, its heat as scorching as an overturned iron pot.

There were hardly any people in the town; even the bald, burly man collecting tolls at the gate had retreated into the shadows of the stone wall and was dozing off.

Xu Hao walked straight towards the spring.

The emerald green spring water was crystal clear in the midday light.

The poplar trees surrounding the spring have dense canopies like umbrellas, providing cool shade to a small patch of ground.

He squatted by the spring, his right hand dipping into the water.

The water is cool.

My fingertips traced down the stone wall of the spring and found a recessed crevice with something inside.

Hard shell, cool, and slippery.

Pull it outwards.

The black tortoise was pulled out.

A layer of green algae clung to the turtle's shell, and all four legs were retracted inside. A faint blue light flickered, more than ten times brighter than when it was soaking in the water bowl at the inn.

The turtle had gotten much fatter, and half a piece of unchewed seaweed was stuck in the crack of its shell.

He spent almost half a month soaking in the water, eating and sleeping all day, living a more comfortable life than him.

Xu Hao flipped the black tortoise over in his palm.

The turtle lay belly up, kicked its four short legs twice in the air, stuck its head out, stared at him with its black bean eyes, and opened and closed its mouth, sucking in and chewing the tail of the seaweed stuck in the seam of its shell.

"Alright, let's go."

The black tortoise seemed to understand, and it retracted its limbs, arched its head, and crawled into the backpack he had opened.

It moved more nimbly than a human, first finding the location of the water bag, then placing its four legs on it, resting its head on the bag's opening, and closing its eyes.

Sha Fanzi watched with a look of amazement.

"You hid it in the spring before?"

Xu Hao nodded.

Before leaving Longcheng for burial, he placed the Xuan Turtle here.

The Red Sands are dry and scorching hot. A black tortoise loses more vital energy in one day on the desert ground than it would in ten days in a normal environment.

Rather than taking it to the restricted mining areas and suffering with it, it's better to leave it in a spring and raise it yourself.

Sha Fanzi rubbed his chin.

"You know, you're both rough around the edges. You found a good spot for a turtle beforehand. But you're also meticulous—" He glanced at Xu Hao, who was covered in slag dust and dried, grayish-black sweat, "and you live like this—"

Xu Hao glanced at him.

Sha Fanzi wisely shut up.

Xu Hao filled his water bag and bought some dry food.

Sha Fanzi saw the man off at the town entrance. "Really going to Zezhou?"

"The Observatory is working over there. I need to go check it out," Xu Hao said.

"I can't interfere in matters outside the Red Sand Domain. But there's one thing I can do—if the old man surnamed Wei encounters trouble on his way to find his apprentice, I'll take care of him."

V

"And another thing," Sha Fanzi pulled out a piece of parchment folded several times from his pocket and handed it over, "this is a map of the route to the southeast."

"OK."

Sha Fanzi crushed a pebble with the tip of his foot.

"To get to Zezhou, you have to pass through Yongzhou. I've marked several red dots on this map; those are the checkpoints of the three major families of Yongzhou. Qin,..."

The Gu, Mu, and three other families control 90% of the medicinal herb business in Yongzhou. They plunder any outsiders who pass through their territory. Their private armies are no less powerful than regular troops.

"There's something else," Sha Fanzi paused. "According to information from our undercover agents, the Imperial Observatory mobilized a large number of pharmacists in Yongzhou half a month ago, and even sealed off several major medicine valleys belonging to the three major families. I heard they're refining something for Zezhou. Your journey here won't be easy."

Xu Hao unfolded the parchment, glanced at it, noted the route, and put it away.

"Understood." He climbed onto the black camel that had been prepared by the sand-turning machine.

"Until we meet again." Xu Hao pulled on the reins, and the camel strode off towards the southeast.

Two weeks later, the smell of sand and dust in the wind was gone.

The air began to become humid.

The Gobi Desert beneath our feet has turned into yellow earth, and in the distance, rolling green trees and forests appear.

We've arrived in Yongzhou.

The fertile land in the southern part of Tianqing Haotu is also a natural barrier for the Wandu Forest of Zezhou.

The climate here is suitable for plant growth, and it is rich in various medicinal herbs.

The roads in Yongzhou are difficult to travel.

It's not that the road conditions are bad.

On the contrary, the official road was built smoothly and evenly, with the loess soil compacted and the surface covered with gravel to prevent slipping.

A pavilion was set up every ten li, and a stone tablet next to the pavilion was inscribed with the place name and mileage.

It's a hundred times more comfortable than the desert and Gobi of Chishayu.

It's people who have a hard time walking.

The first checkpoint is located at a mountain pass where Yongzhou and Shuozhou meet.

A narrow pass, less than three zhang wide, is formed between two mountain walls, with a wooden watchtower perched above it.

Four people were sitting in the watchtower, dressed in matching gray cloth short jackets, with iron rulers strapped to their waists.

A family-oriented person.

The corner of the gray cloth was embroidered with a silver-leaved orchid, which was the symbol of the Gu family.

"Toll fee: three taels of silver. Martial arts practitioners will incur an additional five taels. Those carrying weapons will incur an additional ten taels."

A weasel-faced fellow poked half his body out of the watchtower, his eyes rolling over Xu Hao before landing on the hilt of the sword peeking out from under his cloak.

"Eighteen taels."

Xu Hao didn't say anything, but took out a small piece of silver from his pocket and threw it over.

It's of good quality, worth about twenty taels.

The man with the pointed snout and monkey-like face caught the silver, weighed it in his hand, took a bite, and waved for him to leave.

Their movements were as practiced as breathing.

After passing the pass, the hilly area unfolds.

The landscape is lush and verdant, with abundant vegetation.

The air was filled with a sweet, herbal scent, and there were more pedestrians on the street.

Most of them were farmers carrying medicinal herbs on shoulder poles, hunched over, with dark skin and sunken eyes.

Occasionally, one or two carriages would pass by, their carriages sealed tightly, each bearing a family's flag—the Gu family with a black background and silver orchids, the Mu family with a white background and cinnabar and aconite, and the Qin family with a red background and black heartbreak grass.

Xu Hao walked for most of the day and arrived at a town in the evening.

The town is called Liuyao Town.

It's not a big place, with about a hundred households, and a main street running north to south.

The street was lined with pharmacies, their signs packed tightly together.

However, most of the pharmacies were closed, with seals affixed to the doors, bearing the words "Gu family requisitioned, temporarily closed" in red letters and black ink.

There is an open space at the east end of the town.

There were more than a dozen wooden stakes standing in the open space, with a person tied to each stake.

Both men and women were present, dressed in tattered clothes, barefoot, with thick hemp ropes around their necks, the other end of which was tied to the top of a wooden stake.

The distance between a person and a stake is just enough to stand, but not enough to sit.

Herb-gathering slaves.

A square table was set up at the edge of the open space.

Two servants of the Gu family, dressed in short gray cloth jackets, sat behind the table, with a booklet spread out in front of them, registering something.

"This batch was delivered from the north yesterday," one of the servants said, flipping through a booklet without looking up. "Seventeen people. They've been screened. Two are at the Skin Polishing Realm, and the rest are all ordinary people. The Skin Polishing Realm ones will be sent to the Qin Family's Medicine Valley, and the rest will be distributed to the Mu Family's Ten Thousand Poisons Gully."

Wan Du Gou (Ten Thousand Poisons Gully)

Just from the name, you can tell it's not a good place.

Most of the people on the stakes had their heads down, saving themselves the energy to struggle.

There was only one—on the outermost wooden stake, a boy of about thirteen or fourteen, whose eyes shone brightly despite the mud on his face.

He didn't look down, staring at the passersby, his lips moving but no sound coming out.

Xu Hao walked past the edge of the open space.

The black tortoise poked its head out of the backpack, its eerie blue light sweeping over the wooden stakes before it retreated back inside.

He didn't stop.

It's not that we don't want to manage it, it's that we can't manage it all.

The drug slave system in Yongzhou was not a matter of just one town or county.

The Qin, Gu, and Mu families control the entire medicinal herb industry chain in the state. From harvesting to processing to sales, every link requires a large amount of cheap labor.

Drug slaves are the lowest-level components in this industry chain.

Killing a few servants is easy.

and then?

Behind them were hundreds or thousands of servants, and behind them were three powerful clans, and behind those clans was the entire power structure of the late Daheng period, rotten to the core.

He's not a savior; he's here to get things done.

But he remembered the face of the boy who didn't bow his head.

The only inn still in operation in town is called "Baicao Inn".

The name sounds elegant, but it's actually just a two-story mud-brick house with a shop in the front and a courtyard in the back. The owner is a fat woman with a face full of fat and a voice loud enough to shatter bowls.

"Ten coins for lodging. Meals are extra. Hot water is five coins a bucket." The fat woman wiped the counter with a rag, her eyes scanning Xu Hao. "Anyone carrying a knife must register at the hotel. Write down your name, where you came from, and where you're going."

Xu Hao gave a false name, stating that he came from Shuozhou and was going to Zezhou.

The fat woman paused for a moment.

"To Zezhou?"

"Um.

""

"Which way to take?"

"Southern Province".

The plump woman clicked her tongue and draped a rag over her shoulder. "The southern route is sealed off. The Gu and Qin families joined forces to seal it off half a month ago, saying they were acting on orders from above, forbidding anyone from going south."

Above.

"Which one?"

"Who knows?" The fat woman rolled her eyes. "Anyway, a group of people from 'above,' even bigger than the three major families, came. They were dressed in black, with bronze badges hanging from their waists, and they spoke in a sarcastic tone. The servants called them 'Masters,' fawning over them like dogs."

He wore black clothes and had a bronze plaque on his arm.

The Bureau of Astronomical Observation.

Xu Hao picked up the rough bowl of tea on the table and took a sip. It tasted bitter and astringent, but he drank it very slowly.

How many people came in this group?

The plump woman gave him a wary look. "Why are you asking that?"

"curious."

"Curiosity killed the cat," the fat woman said, her hands still busy. She flicked the rag and lowered her voice, "Three groups came. The first group, seven or eight people, went straight into the Qin family's medicine valley and never came out. The second group was larger, about twenty, carrying over a dozen cartloads of tightly sealed boxes, heading south. The third group arrived the day before yesterday, just four people, but their entourage was terrifying. Gu Changming, the Gu family's head here, who usually doesn't even give face to the county magistrate, personally led thirty armored guards ten miles outside the city to meet those four."

The head of the Gu family personally greeted them.

A member of the Imperial Observatory who could command a powerful clan in Yongzhou to come out of the city to greet someone must be of high rank.

Where are those four people now?

"The Gu Family Mansion." The plump woman gestured with her chin towards the south. "Keep going straight down the road at the south end of town, past three hills. But I advise you not to go—the Gu Family Mansion is a restricted area within a five-mile radius; anyone who trespasses will be killed without exception."

Xu Hao put down his teacup.

The tea dregs at the bottom of the bowl settled into a clump of dark green mud.

"You know all this very well."

A smile squeezed out of the plump woman's round face. The smile held bitterness, resentment, and a shrewdness that came from surviving long in chaotic times.

"My husband was conscripted into a drug slave three years ago and died in the Poisonous Ditch. His body was never recovered." Her voice was flat and emotionless. "I want to expose everything about them. But I'm just a shopkeeper; I can't do it. But you can."

She didn't finish speaking.

He turned and went into the kitchen.

Xu Hao sat in a corner of the inn and closed his eyes.

Within his sea of ​​consciousness, the Six Nails Suppressing Dragon Diagram slowly rotated.

The secondary nail light spot in the direction of Zezhou has changed its flashing frequency to once every five breaths.

It was a breath faster than when he left Dragon Burial City.

The Observatory is accelerating.

Their actions of conscripting pharmacists in Yongzhou, blockading the southern route, and transporting secret supplies can only be explained in one way:

Special medications are needed to remove the nail.

The Dragon-Suppressing Nail is an ancient seal.

It took the barbarian bone shaman more than half a month of blood sacrifice and sorcery to loosen it by two or three inches.

The Bureau of Astronomy does not take this route.

They used other methods to refine medicine.

What medicine to use and what to refine will only be known once you enter Zezhou.

But the southern route was blocked.

Xu Hao opened his eyes and looked out the window at the streets of Liuyao Town in the twilight.

At the end of the street, a black carriage without flags was slowly driving into the town.

Copper bells hung at the four corners of the carriage, but they didn't ring—the bell tongues were sealed with wax.

A driver sat on the shaft of the chariot.

He was dressed in black, with a bronze plaque hanging from his waist.

The fourth batch of vehicles from the Observatory of Astronomy.