Chương 181: Chapter 182: Demonic Aura

Leo sat cross-legged on a flat stone on Skyhome's eastern face, eyes closed, when footsteps crunched toward him. He'd been recording Cranesong since dawn. His brain felt like someone had stuffed it with wet cotton.

"Leo Chen." It was Tianyi. He didn't sound happy, but at least he didn't sound bitter. Progress. Leo opened his eyes. Tianyi stood three feet away, expression unreadable. He was holding something in his right hand. A poster. He stared at the poster. Looked at Leo. Looked back at the poster. Squinted his eyes.

"What's going on?" Leo asked.

"Nothing." Tianyi reached into his storage ring and produced a second poster. Leo snatched the first one from his hands. The paper was cheap. Mass-produced talisman stock, the kind street vendors used for advertisements. Someone had painted a portrait in the center. The man in the portrait had a square jaw, heavy brows, and the kind of thin mustache that belonged on a bandit king. He looked forty, maybe fifty, with a sneer that could send children hiding behind their mothers.

Below the portrait, bold characters warned: BEWARE: BOSS LEO CHEN Leo stared at it. The man in the painting stared back.

"This doesn't look anything like me," Leo said. Tianyi was quiet for a moment too long.

"You don't have a mustache," he said finally.

"That's all you have to say?" Leo scanned the list of crimes beneath the portrait. Brutal violence against subordinates. Eyewitness accounts confirm that Boss Chen beat one of his own men until the victim's face was unrecognizable. Betrayal of humanity. Has sold human interests to the Bat Lords in exchange for exclusive access to their guano. Destruction of the Iron Rhinoceros Sect and Crimson Lotus City. Someone had scribbled beside the third item in fresh, angry ink: And the Pond Gazing Sect.

At the bottom, a final warning: All associates of Boss Chen carry his demonic aura. Cultivators are advised to maintain a safe distance from any member of the Ammo Sect.

"Demonic aura?" Leo looked up.

"What demonic aura?" Tianyi winced.

"Everyone who returns from a shift at your guano factory reeks of a terrible smell. It has become so severe that nearby cities have refused to house your laborers within their walls." Leo's stomach dropped.

"Is it that bad?" He stood, brushing dirt from his robes.

"Where do they sleep? Should we build dormitories? We have the wheat to fund construction. I can talk to Zhang Wei about..." Tianyi held up a hand.

"It is not worth the expense. The problem is not that the laborers cannot cleanse themselves. We provide T1 laundry talismans after every shift." His mouth twitched.

"Your laborers have discovered the talismans sell for three copper each at the Stonehaven night market. They pocket them instead of using them." Leo didn't know what to say.

"Additionally, they have realized that spiritual beasts flee from anyone carrying the scent of the guano pits. Many of them, upon completing their shifts, are immediately hired by merchant caravans as escort guards. Your workers spend their nights on wagons, earning a second income while they sleep." Leo had wanted to build his laborers dormitories. They didn't need dormitories. They'd evolved past dormitories. He hadn't expected the laborers to optimize their own body odor into a second income stream.

You had to respect the hustle.

"This one leaves you alone for a few months, and this is what happens?" Tianyi's voice cut through Leo's thoughts.

"Your operation is an offense to common sensibility. Anyone within ten li can take one sniff and know that you are up to no good."

"The smell is necessary." Leo angrily stuffed the poster into his storage ring.

"Saltpeter is the critical ingredient. No saltpeter, no gunpowder. No gunpowder, no cannon. When the zombie invasion comes, you'll be impressed. We'll use mortal materials to produce firepower equivalent to T3 or even T4 attacks." Tianyi shrugged.

"Whatever you say. It is your reputation being dragged through the mud." He paused.

"Not mine." Leo opened his mouth to argue. Tianyi continued.

"Regardless, this one came to inform you that the cultivators of the Heavenstone Sect have escalated their efforts. They are spreading word of your misdeeds, paying false witnesses to testify about your cruelty, and speaking loudly in teahouses about your wasteful expenditure of spiritual qi." Leo winced. On the way back from the guano factory yesterday, he'd flown on Sunshifter to save time. He'd thought his reputation couldn't get any worse.

"So are we having trouble hiring laborers?" Tianyi's face grew ugly.

"This one wishes that were the case. It would make more sense. Instead, the Ammo Sect's building in Stonehaven has been flooded with applications. Zhang Wei cannot leave his office without tripping over desperate cultivators waving their credentials." Leo stared at him. Tianyi's voice shifted into a higher register, miming a desperate applicant.

"If Boss Chen disciplines his own men with such severity, what fate awaits those who move against him?" He shrugged.

"In times of war, cultivators seek shelter beneath the cruelest blade." Leo's jaw went slack. His reputation as a violent psychopath was attracting applicants.

"Anyway." Tianyi straightened his robes.

"This one knows you spoke with Mike Ross and Vivian yesterday about raising wages." One tael of grain for a day's work. The bare minimum to maintain Foundation Establishment cultivation. It had seemed wrong when Vivian explained the numbers. It still seemed wrong now, even if his workers had apparently figured out how to monetize their own stench.

"Zhang Wei has a proposal for you." Tianyi produced a jade communication talisman.

"However, he is currently overwhelmed with work. Somehow the old man is even busier than you are. If you wish to speak with him, you will need to travel to Stonehaven." Leo reached into his dantian and pulled out Sunshifter.

"Sounds good. Let's go." He glanced back. Tianyi hadn't moved.

"Tianyi. Are you coming?" Tianyi looked at Leo. Then he looked down at his own robes. He sniffed his sleeve. His nose wrinkled.

"This one spent only a brief time in your presence." He sniffed again, more carefully.

"Surely that is not enough to..."

"The poster is propaganda, Tianyi. I smell fine." Tianyi did not look convinced. He produced a T1 laundry talisman and activated it. Clean spiritual energy washed over his robes. He sniffed his sleeve again and frowned. He followed, but kept his distance the entire flight to Stonehaven.

The walls of Stonehaven rose from the horizon. The city had grown since Leo last visited two years ago. Where Leo remembered a large settlement encircling the profundity's fog wall, a megacity now sprawled across the valley floor. Four concentric walls ringed the fog, each taller than the last. The outermost wall stretched so far that its ends disappeared into the horizon. And the traffic was considerable. Refugees packed the road below.

Thousands of cultivators trudged toward the city in ragged columns, their robes dusty. Many shuffled forward on walking sticks that had clearly been spiritual artifacts once, before the formations carved into them went dark from qi starvation. Leo and Tianyi approached the nearest inspection station. A young guard in the pale blue robes of the Heavenstone Sect spotted them and straightened.

"Halt." He extended one hand.

"State your purpose in Stonehaven."

"Trade," Leo said.

"We're meeting a business associate." The guard's eyes narrowed. Something about Leo's face seemed to bother him. He studied Leo's features, then glanced at a poster tacked to the guardhouse wall. His face went pale.

"Captain." The guard's voice cracked. He grabbed his superior's sleeve and pointed at Leo.

"Captain, I think that's Boss Leo Chen." This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. Leo's stomach dropped. The captain was a thick-necked man with a truly magnificent mustache. Black bristles swept outward from his upper lip in perfect symmetry, waxed to needle-sharp points that extended a full inch past his cheeks. He turned from the merchant he'd been questioning.

"What are you babbling about?"

"Boss Leo Chen." The young guard jabbed his finger toward Leo.

"The demon of the guano pits. The man who beat his own subordinate until the victim's face was unrecognizable." The captain's expression didn't change. He walked to the guardhouse wall and ripped down the poster. He held it up beside Leo's face. Leo tried to look young. Innocent. Harmless. The captain's gaze moved between Leo and the portrait. The portrait stared back with its calculating sneer, its heavy brows, its thin bandit mustache.

"It's not him," the captain announced. The young guard sputtered.

"But Captain..."

"Look at this cultivator." The captain gestured at Leo's face.

"Smooth as a baby's cheek. Not a whisker in sight." He jabbed the poster.

"Now look at Boss Chen. See this mustache? This is the mark of a true villain. A man of authority. A man who commands respect through his facial hair." Leo's eye twitched.

"Captain," the young guard said slowly, "he could have disguised himself. By shaving off his mustache." The captain recoiled. His hand shot protectively to his own mustache.

"How dare you." His voice dropped to a horrified whisper.

"I only meant..."

"A cultivator's facial hair is the culmination of decades of careful cultivation!" His mustache quivered with indignation.

"Each whisker represents years of spiritual refinement! The length, the thickness, the precise angle of the curl! These are not things a man discards lightly!" The young guard wilted.

"Do you truly believe," the captain continued, his voice rising, "that Boss Leo Chen, the most feared bandit in the Savage Mountains, would shave off his mustache simply to sneak past a gate inspection?" The young guard looked at the poster. His eyes drifted down to the list of crimes beneath. He swallowed.

"You're right, Captain." His voice had gone very small.

"It must be a different person."

"Obviously." The captain slapped the poster back onto the wall. Then he turned to Leo with an expression of deep sympathy and patted his shoulder.

"Do not let my subordinate's words trouble you, young cultivator. He does not understand that some cultivators suffer from... deficiencies." Leo's face went very still.

"Deficiencies," he repeated.

"Genetic abnormalities." The captain nodded sadly.

"Some men, through no fault of their own, are simply incapable of growing proper facial hair. It is a tragic condition. Nothing to be ashamed of." Leo's jaw tightened.

"I am nineteen years old," he said.

"Of course, of course." The captain's expression shifted to a look of pity.

"Give it time, young cultivator. Perhaps in another decade or two, the heavens will favor you with a few whiskers. Until then..." He turned to the young guard.

"You." His voice sharpened.

"When did you last review the Guidelines on Harmonious Conduct?"

"Captain?"

"The Guidelines on Harmonious Conduct! The manual that every guard is required to study on treating fellow cultivators with dignity!" The captain jabbed a finger at the young guard's chest.

"Did you skip the chapter on hereditary afflictions? Did you miss..." Tianyi grabbed Leo's sleeve.

"Let us go." Leo let himself be pulled forward through the gate. The captain's voice faded behind them, still lecturing the young guard about proper etiquette when addressing the physically challenged.

"Do not let it trouble you," Tianyi reassured him.

"These things take time. The heavens work at their own pace." Leo glanced at Tianyi's face. Also smooth. Also bare.

"I don't even want facial hair," Leo muttered. A merchant passing on their left stumbled. They kept walking.

The Ammo Sect's Stonehaven office was busier than Leo had ever seen it. Cultivators packed the entrance hall, clutching jade tablets and credentials, voices overlapping into a wall of noise. An employee near the door spotted Tianyi and straightened.

"Superior Shen." He gestured toward a side corridor.

"This way. The old man is expecting your friend." They followed him through a narrow passage and up a flight of stairs. The noise faded. By the time they reached Zhang Wei's office, Leo could almost hear himself think. Zhang Wei looked terrible. Dark circles shadowed his eyes. His topknot had come loose on one side, and ink stained both his sleeves to the elbow. Jade tablets covered his desk in overlapping layers. Several had slid off the edge and lay on the floor.

But when he saw Leo, something like relief crossed his face.

"Young friend." He rose from his chair.

"This elder has been waiting. Sit. Sit down. We have much to discuss and this elder's patience has been worn to a thread." Leo had known Zhang Wei for years now. They'd first met at Redstone Crossing, back when the group needed flak cannon shells. Somewhere along the way, the old man had become indispensable. He handled most of the organizational work for Leo's group and hired most of their laborers. Tianyi excused himself, and they talked for nearly an hour before getting to business.

Eventually, Zhang Wei swept a space clear on his desk with both arms. Tablets clattered. He didn't flinch.

"Young friend wished to discuss wages. Good. This elder has spent three weeks drowning in complaints and would very much like someone else to drown for a change." He began setting down jade tablets in a row, slapping each one onto the wood with more force than necessary.

"Currently we employ over ten thousand cultivators across four roles. Each role is a different headache. Each headache is worse than the last. Raising wages will not fix any of them, and this elder will explain why before you suggest it, because you will suggest it, and this elder does not have the energy to argue." He slid the first tablet forward. CHARCOAL AND SULFUR PRODUCTION"The least desirable work." Zhang Wei's hand swept across the tablet.

"Cutting trees. Burning them. Hauling ash. Mining sulfur deposits in caves that smell only slightly better than your guano vats. Do you know what kind of cultivator takes this job?" Leo opened his mouth.

"The kind with no other options!" Zhang Wei answered himself.

"The kind who would rather chop wood than starve. They are miserable. They complain constantly. They tried to unionize last week. Unionize! As if this elder does not already have enough problems!" He caught himself. Took a breath.

"However." He held up a finger.

"This is also the role requiring the least trust. The workers make their daily quota, they receive one tael of wheat. No more, no less. They cannot steal charcoal. They cannot sell ash. The job is wretched, but it is simple, and simple is the only thing this elder can manage right now." He slid the second tablet forward. TRANSPORT"This job is more desirable." Zhang Wei's expression shifted.

"We need cultivators to load caravans and escort materials to Gustav Mountain. Since we always send a representative carrying your identity token..." He winced at a painful memory.

"... the mission is extremely safe. No beast dares attack." Leo was surprised to hear that his identity token was that powerful.

"For the first portion of the journey, before the caravans enter beast territory, other cultivators pay to join our convoys. They seek safety in numbers. The profits from these passengers are split among all transport workers." The third tablet. GUANO PROCESSING Leo winced.

"It's the most desirable job, isn't it?"

"The laborers earn money in their sleep! Is that not a wonderful arrangement? They wake up richer every day! Merchant caravans fight over the privilege of hiring them! The beasts smell them coming from ten li away and flee as if chased by a Nascent Soul!" He stood up from his chair.

"This elder receives a thousand applications a day from cultivators who want to transfer to the guano pits. A thousand! They line up outside this office! They bring gifts! One of them offered me a spiritual chicken!" He gestured wildly at the door.

"What am I supposed to do? Tell them no? So they can go complain to the other ten thousand workers that this elder plays favorites?" Leo had no good answer. His first instinct was to expand guano processing operations. More saltpeter was always a good thing. But you couldn't make gunpowder with only saltpeter. If he doubled the guano workforce, he'd need to double everything else to match. His second instinct was to pay premiums for undesirable work. But that created its own problem.

The charcoal and sulfur roles were the simplest. The lowest trust. The jobs you gave to strangers you'd never met. Did it really make sense to pay those workers the most? To have the newest, least proven laborers earning more than the veterans? Zhang Wei wasn't finished. He set down the final tablet with both hands, carefully, as if the wood might crack. GUSTAV MOUNTAIN CONSTRUCTION"This," he said quietly, "is the real problem." He sat back down.

"Gustav Mountain lies deep in the forbidden lands of the beasts. There is nothing there, young friend. No cities. No markets. No teahouses where a man can sit and feel human for an hour." He folded his arms.

"It is stone and wind and spiritual beasts who tolerate your presence only because of a token someone else holds." Leo began to see the problem.

"The journey takes days on foot." Zhang Wei shook his head.

"Even if we pay people double, triple, they only accept the work to build up savings. Then they quit. They take their savings and go work the guano pits where they wake up with coins in their pocket." His voice hardened.

"And this is catastrophic. Gustav Mountain is the most critical role. It requires the highest trust. The kind of trust that takes months to build and one stolen spiritstone to destroy." The beasts still regularly recharged T2 and T3 spiritstones at Gustav Mountain. If a laborer decided to pocket a few and disappear into the mountains, Leo would have to cover the loss himself. A worker with savings was a worker with one foot out the door.

Pay them extra, watch them build up savings, and eventually they'd realize that a few T3 spiritstones could fund their escape and retirement. Worst of all, the truly loyal workers, the dedicated ones, were all competing for guano processing duty. No one wanted to help build their mountain. Leo thought about asking a Nascent Soul Lord to come and reshape the mountain in an afternoon, but realized why that wouldn't work. Gustav Mountain wasn't just walls and cannons. It needed workers. Soldiers.

People willing to defend it when the zombies came. You couldn't build battlements and expect the stone to fight. You needed to cultivate your forces slowly. Test them. Prove their loyalty before trusting them with your life.

"So." Leo looked at the four tablets.

"What's your plan?" Zhang Wei reached into his storage ring and produced a fifth tablet. This one was larger than the others. More ornate. The characters carved into its surface had been filled with silver ink. CONTRIBUTION POINTS"We copy the structure every proper sect uses. Ranks. A system of advancement. Contribution points that cultivators accumulate through labor and loyalty." This was how the military worked on Earth. Soldiers were paid in merits and dollars.

"More importantly." Zhang Wei leaned forward.

"People prefer to be paid in contribution points. Do you know why?" He answered before Leo could.

"Because points cannot be stolen! They cannot be lost in a robbery, gambled away in a teahouse, or confiscated by bandits on the road! They exist only within sect records, redeemable only by the cultivator who earned them!" And if a laborer deserted, their points stayed behind. Zhang Wei hadn't said that part out loud. He didn't need to. The system was elegant. Create a currency that only has value within the organization. Make the best rewards available only through contribution points.

Suddenly every laborer had an incentive to stay, to accumulate, to prove themselves. Leo himself had been tricked into fighting three hundred Nascent Soul Lords in the Catacombs because his hard-earned 'bonus merits' would disappear if he didn't.

"So you want to expand the Ammo Sect?" Leo asked.

"Formalize what we already have. You're the leader. We could just..." Zhang Wei cut him off.

"The Ammo Sect is just a name!" His hand chopped the air.

"A name your retainer Kevin scribbled on a building in a language no one here can read! Although this elder is nominally the leader, whenever this elder gives orders, they look past this elder's shoulder to see if you are standing behind him!" Leo opened his mouth. Zhang Wei pulled a scroll from his storage ring before he could speak and unrolled it across the desk. The paper kept going, spilling over the edge and curling onto the floor. It was a petition.

Thousands of names in cramped handwriting, signatures and stamps crowded into every available space. Some names had been squeezed into margins. Others were written sideways along the edges where the main columns had run out of room. At the top, a single sentence had been written in bold characters: WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, PETITION BOSS LEO CHEN TO ESTABLISH A FORMAL ORGANIZATION"This arrived on this elder's desk this morning." Zhang Wei's voice was quiet again.

"Ten thousand names. They want ranks. A system of advancement." He sighed.

"And most of all, they want to know that the cultivator standing beside them has been tested and proven. They want a foundation of trust." Leo's chest tightened. He was nineteen years old. Foundation Establishment. A guy who'd been playing Flying Aces a few days ago. Now thousands of cultivators, most of whom were probably over a century old, were asking him to build an organization that would determine whether they lived or died. He wasn't ready for this. He didn't want that responsibility.

This was supposed to be only a game. Something to help him be a better Flyer. But people weren't asking him to start something new. They were asking him to formalize what already existed. Tens of thousands of lives already depended on him. They had for months. The only question was whether he'd acknowledge it. Leo looked up and met Zhang Wei's eyes. Zhang Wei looked back at him. He had watched Leo grow from a teenage desperado into someone ten thousand people trusted with their futures.

He had even drafted the petition himself.

"They want you to form a gang." Leo's brain stalled.

"A what?"