Chapter 166: Chaos Green Lotus
In the Changsheng Tower, Ji Prefecture Prefect Yan Hong was sitting high at the banquet with many guests. Among these guests were people from Immortal Sects, as well as military generals under his command. This Ji Prefecture military general was said to have a great-grandfather who was also a tiger general of Da Yao; now he had inherited his father’s business and was performing his duties in Ji Prefecture.
Yan Hong raised his jade cup: “Come, come, let us drink a cup together to clarify the mountains and rivers for everyone.”
As his words fell, many guests raised their cups together and drank. Then Yan Hong raised a second cup. He held his arm straight, and when extended flat, his long sleeve fell down like a door curtain. At this time, he complimented the sects that came to assist: “Thanks to all you immortal masters, otherwise our Da Yao would not know how many years it would have been poisoned by that thief Wu Fei of the Wu Family!”
The leading senior disciple of Wangheng Sect: “Governor, you are mistaken. This is His Majesty’s wisdom, noticing that plague qi is rampant under heaven, which led to this grand event of us fellow daoists jointly investigating the mountains and rivers.”
Everyone drank together again. In the third round, Yan Hong raised his cup toward the military family scions in his own camp and encouraged them.
Under the music of strings and pipes playing in unison, alluring but not seductive maidservants filled the cups for the seated guests one after another.
This military general was a scion of the Long Family’s military family. Sixty years ago, the Long Family was the leader of a troop dispatched by the Imperial Court, and in recent years their duty has been to guard the armory.
Guarding the armory is a quite important position. In the Southern Border, Wu Fei arranges such positions very cautiously, giving them to disciples who are disabled and unable to achieve merit.
The “blood reward” for this position in the Wu Family is absolutely not low, and in relevant military conferences, they get to sit in the front. Family members are arranged in the large compound, and whenever fresh fruit and such things are transported from the Southern Border, their uncles and elder brothers sometimes get a share, and those guarding the armory have an equal share.
This sharing of fresh fruit was initially a “little activity to relieve cravings” funded by Wu Fei and various internal families. Every year, Wu Fei specially dispatches trusted people from his own family to go on business trips in the south. When working on statistics for the train’s northern and southern line carriage empty load rate, this group of personnel would seize the idle time in the transportation off-season, charter a carriage, and transport some local specialties back to the North.
But in recent years, within the Wu Family Army’s current system, it has changed flavor, equivalent to the Son of Heaven dividing sacrificial meat. Only those qualified can share, and those who can participate in sharing the meat are also a symbol of “staffing quota.”
The intention of Wu Fei’s arrangement is to ensure that people in these “core positions” are all within the circle, so that even if there are any complaints, they can be known immediately within the circle. Humans are social animals, and when it comes to major events like camp defection, there must be a complex mental journey. Wu Fei: Grasping these mental journey signs can enable preventative measures.
However, at Yan Hong’s side, the Long Family’s military family was ordered to guard the armory, but because they were “martial husbands,” they were excluded by the noble families led by Yan Hong for a full few decades, and not invited to various banquets. Meanwhile, the Long Family, in order to integrate into the circle, continuously adapted to the elegance here. A few generations ago, Long Family members were pointed out for their sitting posture when seated, and then their drinking etiquette. As a result, after Long Family disciples learned so many elegant etiquettes from childhood, what they still lack now is a pledge of allegiance.
Note: While the Southern Border noble families dare to hold such high-spec private meetings and exclude some people at the same time, every time Wu Fei discovers it, he imposes tax on them according to the list! Letting these piggy banks know what “people fear fame, pigs fear fat” means; and merchants do not have such public salon conferences, so the children of these merchants will not have overly dense social interactions, and in their actions of maneuvering and transforming wealth, they will not form “tight-knit team” organizations, and without an organization to shelter their monopoly on gaining wealth, wealth will dissipate after two generations due to the breakup of the older generation’s interpersonal channels.
And in Ji Prefecture, it is completely upside down! A bunch of good-for-nothings make the military family scions spend several generations of effort to integrate into their circle.
But whether the military family can truly integrate is not certain. For example now, this Long general still has to submit a pledge of allegiance.
Ji Prefecture Prefect Yan Hong, at the invitation of many “commoners” in Chong Land, is going to Zhenzhou to “uphold justice,” so he needs military strategists, otherwise he would not even rank the Long Family in this position.
…However, in chaotic times, the version has changed…
Before Wu Fei returned to Tianchi City, he had already sent people with tokens to convey orders, mobilizing the main corps to assemble at the old home.
The more than a dozen sects originally on the periphery of the Lingnan area also set up a great feng shui array. On the white clouds, cultivators led by the sect’s Golden Core masters rode spirit boats and planted array flags across a hundred-li-long mountain range. They pinched incantation gestures to command the land and mountain gods to cooperate in scheduling.
These land and mountain gods were also sect disciples in their lifetimes, leaving birth temples during local travels in their youth to be enshrined by the commoners; after death, the sect reported to the Imperial Court, so they were sealed in various places, thus of one mind with the sect.
These immortal families created massive mist barriers in the Lingnan area. However, these Immortal Sects did not expect Wu Fei to arrive so quickly.
The defensive focus of this heaven and earth array is on the planar dividing line at the array boundary, creating phenomena like massive clouds and rain to block communication, but the array does not defend above the Nine Heavens or below the Nine Serenities.
Above the Nine Heavens, eastern wind scatters stars like rain; below the Nine Serenities, earth fire surges and burns the mountains.
When the arrays of various major sects were impacted, the cultivators presiding over feng shui across three thousand li of mountains and rivers suffered all at once.
On the peak of the array base mountain Jiuniu Mountain, Shaoyang Sect’s array master Hidden Abyss Daoist felt something. He looked at the granite under his feet, and suddenly a crack appeared beneath him. As a feng shui master, he needed to stand on the mountains to measure, and his foot fell into the rock crevice, but before he could pull it out, the rock suddenly closed, clamping his palm dead tight.
“Ah” A heart-wrenching scream echoed in the empty mountain wilderness, causing the surrounding wild animals to look up toward the peak.
But immediately after, this daoist priest sensed something abnormal, turned his head to look, and saw the feng shui compass beside his foot spinning wildly. He hurriedly pinched a grand incantation to summon the mountain god and land spirit.
However, at this time the entire mountain body was shaking as if being tickled, rustling non-stop. The animals that had looked up panicked and fled chaotically in the jungle, like grasshoppers startled in the grass.
In the distant mountain god temple, a great fire broke out, and the statue inside turned to powder! When the mountain god croaked, he did not know why the upper realm constellation wanted his soul to scatter.
He looked down at the shaking mountains and rivers and calculated that a transcendent power was rushing up from deep within the earth. “Earth Escape”? This cultivator’s first reaction was this, but he immediately denied it; earth escape could not achieve all this.
Compared to earth escape, this hot sliding from deep within the earth was like the difference between a butterfly flying low and a meteor gliding in the sky.
The shaking of the mountains and rivers grew more intense and continuously spread within a range of over a hundred li. Hidden Abyss Daoist felt that this shock was diffusing along the array across three thousand li of mountains and rivers. He suddenly sensed something.
Struggling to pull out his foot, barely activating the object-driving technique, Hidden Abyss Daoist took the compass and calculated, discovering the true cause of the mountains and rivers shaking was the appearance of “military killing intent” in this three thousand li mountains and waters great array. His mind buzzed; in this uninhabited place unreachable by the Human Realm, how could “military killing intent” appear?
Moreover, this military killing intent was not ordinary; now it could create such a grand scene of collapsing the three thousand li mountains and rivers feng shui great array—this killing intent must at least come from a famous general who dominated multiple prefectures.
After the time for a cup of tea, the mountain body began to landslide, like dominoes, with huge stones rolling down the entire mountain range. Mountains and waters arrays generally do not backfire, but once they do, it is a top-tier heavenly disaster. The Wangheng Sect feng shui grandmaster sealing Chong Land in the due north direction was directly smashed dead by a boulder, and the supreme treasure Fan Tian Seal suppressing the mountain range’s dragon head had cracks precisely extending to right below this treasure. The cracks sucked in the Fan Tian Seal, array flags, and a series of array treasures like slurping noodles. Then the cracks instantly closed. The entire mountain body suddenly came alive, opening a greedy little mouth and making off with the cultivators’ magic treasures.
As Wu Fei’s shuttling drew closer and closer to the surface, vermilion bird celestial phenomena also appeared above the ground surface.
Qingyuan Sect’s sect leader, seeing this hot flame auspicious cloud, recognized it as the “cloud qi” that appeared in Bohai Prefecture from one of the Wu Family twins, and immediately said: “Everyone, the Wu Family’s military strategist has arrived; block him, do not let him touch that evil thing.”
…The person wrapped in blue cannot recognize the filth on themselves…
As the ground surface above his head drew closer, Wu Fei faced a choice: whether to return to Tianchi City or Lelang City. For this, Wu Fei decided to have the troops land in Tianchi City, while he landed in Lelang City; for this, Wu Fei had the peacock open a “teleportation gate allowing him to travel between the two places” between Lelang City and Tianchi City.
Below Lelang City was a patch of green patterns. Although he could not smell it, he felt a filthy aura; and this pattern was faintly connected to the evil moon high in the sky, a connection like in a celestial body model where a high-density neutron star draws silk and peels cocoon from a low-density but massive star through accretion.
Wu Fei: “Land.”
But the peacock rubbed against Wu Fei’s head, unwilling to drop even a single feather there.
Wu Fei then said to it: “Stop about six thousand zhang away from there, that’s all.”
The peacock hesitated for a moment, seeming to want to persuade Wu Fei not to go to that filthy place. As a sacred bird, it does not land in places without treasures, let alone a manure pit.
Wu Fei sensed the peacock’s hesitation, stared at that place, and activated the exchange system.
Xuan Chong: “System, Baidu for me how to clean up this thing.”
System: “Requires one academic credit to exchange. Yes or No?”
Xuan Chong: “Yes.”
The system’s hourglass seemed to turn twice, seemingly picking and choosing in the bag of treasures, finally selecting one after comparing some things.
Xuan Chong: “What are you picking? Whatever you have, give it to me!”
System: “One academic credit can only exchange for something worth one academic credit. Those few cost over 1%, 3% academic credits, um, cannot let you take advantage. This one, worth 0.86 academic credits, rounded up to one for you.”
Xuan Chong gritted his teeth and said: “Whatever the price is, that’s the price to pay.”
System: “Door-to-door delivery requires a delivery fee; just say if you want it or not.”
Xuan Chong gritted his teeth and nodded: “Want it!”
The system completed an unknown space fold, and then in the feeling of Xuan Chong’s head seeing stars, he saw in his perception a seed-like thing existing, then this object reflected in his palm.
Xuan Chong: “What the hell is this?”
System: “Guaranteed you will not be affected by the pollution below; go, you have been strengthened.”
…System: Tsk tsk, how about giving him a bit more? No no, still need to test firm materialism belief….
Wu Fei appeared in the center of Lelang City, then saw sick people, streets full of soldiers with syphilis robbing. And the commoners nearby were fearfully dodging these pustule soldiers.
Wu Fei shouted loudly, and these soldiers froze, then looked at Wu Fei and dared not move for a moment, recognizing the Wu Family’s number two figure. But they did not kneel immediately, instead giggling foolishly as they walked over, vomiting on the ground while walking, watching Wu Fei’s reaction. Having witnessed the collapse of order, they did not believe Wu Fei could restore order.
Wu Fei recognized the leading squad leader; back when he was making snake jerky with snake meat, this guy was staring at him eating snake meat. Now this fellow had gotten fat, with a few more sores on his face, but even turned to ash he would recognize him.
The squad leader laughed while saying: “Young Military Master, the old marshal is gone, you came; fight together with us for the old marshal.”
Wu Fei put on a mask, and at the same time flames radiated from his body to the maximum, a green dot appearing in his palm—this was the “exchange item” reflected on Wu Fei.
The squad leader came over and grabbed Wu Fei’s hand; that red pustule wriggled like a living thing trying to crawl along Wu Fei’s palm and spread to the side. The soldiers originally awed by Wu Fei’s identity showed “nothing special” expressions.
But the next moment, with brilliant light shining from Wu Fei’s chest, as if green veins pierced into the red pustule, then the red pustule began to darken and scab over.
Wu Fei narrowed his eyes halfway, raised his head, and in his perspective, through countless starry skies, saw in a scorching planet something sprouting.
Here, the squad leader who tried to transmit the plague to Wu Fei had all his blisters burst open, but instead of pus flowing from the breaks, cyan-white flames like arc welding erupted.
Wu Fei grabbed this guy, making him roll on the ground in pain, not settling down for a good while.
Wu Fei patted the dust off his hands, then walked toward those soldiers. Facing these pustule soldiers, he slapped back; the fellows who had just shown smiles on their faces had their smiles stiffen, each slap sending red sores and flesh flying. But the next second these wounds ignited, Wu Fei’s palm like a match touching a firecracker—whoever he touched burst into flames.
Back then, the Vermilion Bird purified the Southern Border exactly like this: burning all heretics once; those who endure are purified, those who cannot mean the child is not strong enough. Because the burning was too painful, and only one in ten survived, the Southern Border hundred clans’ ancestors secretly picked up and ate the ash dropped from the Vermilion Bird, which could also restore human form and pretend they had been burned.
After Wu Fei “rub rub rub” lit up this entire street, Wu Fei was neither corrupted nor polluted. The blood filth on his palm fell to the ground like ash, dust to dust, earth to earth.
These sick soldiers hurriedly knelt toward Wu Fei with fear and hope.
Wu Fei, stepping on the squad leader who first grabbed his hand to invite him to join, stomped his head hard with his foot: “Get up for me, the Wu Family does not raise cowards!”
The squad leader struggled to crawl up and said fearfully: “Military Master, Wu Kaichuan, reporting.”
Wu Fei gave him another big slap, roaring: “No spirit, say it again!”
The squad leader could only shout: “Report Military Master, I am up!” Wu Fei slapped him twice more for guidance. The loyal Wu Xiao Que dared swear on Da Yao’s auspicious qi: these two slaps had no personal grudge, they were to remind him to properly discipline his soldiers.
One by one on the street, the commoners knelt disregarding their illness, and the marks on their bodies began to smoke.
…Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river, do not bully the young poor….
At this time, at the other end of the galaxy far away in this universe, an apparently ordinary celestial body motion was taking place.
Originally, neutron stars were accreting massive celestial bodies one by one. Like massive celestial bodies nourishing neutron stars.
The massive celestial body weakened bit by bit, eaten clean. Despite initial mass far greater than the neutron star, the density difference in this binary system, with continuous mass loss, slowed the massive celestial body becoming a red giant. And the neutron star would greatly extend its lifespan through this nourishment.
In this unique orbit, the neutron star’s negative entropy greatly increased.
Under physical laws, “life” proliferated on the neutron star.
Looking closely, on this neutron star’s scorching surface, lotus flower patterns appeared! The lotus patterns symmetrically distributed along the powerful magnetic field on the star, blooming and closing as the neutron star and its massive companion star’s orbit drew near and circled.
Thus this thing is codenamed Chaos Green Lotus, part of this universe’s ecology.—Every neutron star is the silt of stellar death, and the green lotus falls into this silt, roots into lotus rhizome, grows lotus leaves, then condenses lotus seeds.
As the neutron star finally explodes, the explosion energy scatters the lotus seeds in all directions; many lotus seeds will choose other promising stars to sprout, lurk and develop until their nuclear fusion collapse end moment, then flower and bear fruit.
But there is also a special case: when a planet harbors “star gods” such super beings, the lotus seed is happy to follow the star god to develop on the planet for a while, especially if the planet hosting the star god juvenile has civilizations such complex information aggregates.
The lotus seed at hand was forcibly space-folded here by “unknown power” (system). It is falling toward Wu Fei as coordinates; before landing, it scanned the Xi Ren Star situation and found Xi Ren Star now has a special situation: some magical moons orbiting.
These moons manifest little mass in the real universe, but “information” seems connected to thousands—no, tens of thousands of planets infected (corrupted) by the same type of information; to the lotus seed, worth a bite.
Xuan Chong did not know why his own system named this “evil-repelling” thing “Chaos Green Lotus”.
The exchange list described it as: “This item’s medicinal effect clears heat and reduces fire, no, rises from silt unstained.”
Indeed, able to accelerate decomposition of the most corrupted substances back to interstellar dust—isn’t that clearing heat and reducing fire?
The system noted in small print: “This is a good thing worth 0.86 academic credits; from the galactic core delivered to your hand, secure packaging alone takes 0.14 academic credits.”
