Chapter 356: Tao Ji Remembers the Debt of Kindness

Pan Yun: "Although you have the Sleeve's Cosmos, perhaps the Jade Space would be more useful—try it out."

Wang Feiyin took the box, opened it, and inside was a jade pendant; he played with it in his palm for a moment before smiling: "Thank you, little sister. Now, after breakfast, everyone should get back to their duties."

Pan Yun naturally went down the mountain to serve as temple attendant, meanwhile pondering the structure of the washing tub and the separator, as well as the power system.

In Wang Cong's words, "Power that doesn't require talismans to activate is best suited for common folk; what suits common folk becomes a popular product, and only then can you make money."

Although they no longer lack money now, who ever turns down more money?

Most importantly, doesn't Pan Yun want the convenience of 26th-century life?

Pan Yun went to Wang Feiyin for white paper, muttering to herself, "For my ideals, for a better life, I'm a model youth."

But of course, she couldn't rely on herself alone; Pan Yun decided to selectively copy the textbooks stored in the Spirit Realm for Wang Cong.

Wang Cong clearly had great talent in this area; wasting talent invites heavenly retribution.

Pan Yun descended the mountain with a large bundle of white paper; Pan Xiaohei trotted happily behind her, wearing a jade ring around her neck today.

The white jade ring hung gracefully against her chest, quite lovely.

She had just, with her meager feline cultivation, claimed ownership of the space; now she could stash little fish inside it instead of stuffing them back into her own body.

As Pan Yun walked down the mountain, she muttered to Pan Xiaohei, "Can your Spirit Realm get any more advanced? Can it just print out the data books directly?"

Pan Xiaohei sneered, "What's so advanced about that? Humans can enter the Spirit Realm and absorb these teachings like attending school; or they can sink their consciousness into the Spirit Realm to receive the knowledge—isn't that more advanced than printing books?"

Pan Yun: "Can even your sealed self do these two things?"

Pan Xiaohei fell silent.

Pan Yun cursed under her breath, "If you can't do it, don't brag—you made me actually consider pulling the Spirit Realm out of my spiritual platform and slapping it onto Wang Cong's forehead."

After a long silence, Pan Xiaohei said, "Maybe two more unsealings would suffice."

Pan Yun instinctively glanced at the golden progress bar on the Spirit Realm and said nothing.

Pan Xiaohei also fell silent.

The woman and the cat descended the mountain in quiet, saying not another word.

As soon as they reached the foot of the mountain, Pan Yun put on a bright smile and entered the Mountain God Temple with the bearing of a temple attendant.

On one side of the temple's altar lay a ragged, huddled figure.

Pan Yun bent down to peek; seeing the man was still alive, she slapped a yellow talisman beneath the straw mat he lay on.

Then she quietly sat on a chair by the door and pulled out white paper to scribble and draw.

On the mountain, Wang Feiyin saw his desk stripped bare and turned to warn Wang Cong, "You four go buy New Year goods—don't forget to stop by the bookstore and bring back plenty of white paper and blank notebooks."

Wang Cong: "Bound blank notebooks cost twice as much as plain paper, Father. What use do you have for bound notebooks? If you're not selling them, just use rough ones—we can cut and bind them ourselves."

Miao He raised her hand, "I can sew them together."

Seeing Miao Zhen: "I can make the covers."

Wang Feiyin: "... Aren't we rich now? Do we really need to be this frugal?"

Wang Cong: "Hasn't that always been our way?"

"But that was because we were poor..."

"We're not exactly rich now, and frugality is a virtue," Wang Cong said solemnly. "Father, don't be so concerned with appearances."

Wang Feiyin:... Is this about appearances?

It's about writing comfort and wasted time.

He scanned his four children and, resigned, waved his hand. "Fine, you earn the money—you decide."

Tao Yanbai hesitated before asking, "Master, should I go buy New Year goods too?"

Wang Feiyin: "You want to stay home and do chores? That's perfect..."

"No," Tao Yanbai also wanted to go out and quickly added, "Third Uncle is returning to Tao Village today—I mean, should I go with him?"

"No," Tao Ji stepped out wearing new clothes, a sword in hand, frowning. "Do whatever you want. Tao Village's affairs don't concern you."

Tao Yanbai immediately said, "Then I'll go to the county town with Big Brother to buy New Year goods."

Wang Feiyin sighed and waved them off. "Go, go—now I'm left alone on the mountain again."

Master Xuanmiao: "Little sister is at the mountain's foot. If you have time, Master, you should go down and keep her company."

Wang Feiyin rubbed his stomach and decided he'd visit little sister after lunch, when he got hungry.

Wang Cong and the others drove the Mount Sanqing ox-cart to the county town; Master Xuanmiao and Tao Ji took his horse and went to the big market to rent another cart for Tao Village.

Tao Ji was returning to Tao Village to avenge Tao Yanbai and to notify the village that Tao Yanbai had entered the Dao.

Strictly speaking, Tao Yanbai and Tao Ji were already two generations removed in bloodline.

Tao Ji had no direct relatives left in the world.

He lost his parents as a child; after his grandparents died, he became a stray in the village, begging for food. His ancestral farmland, house, and property were mostly gone.

He was too young then—only four or five years old—and didn't understand anything. By the time he realized it, he'd been driven out of his own home by some distant uncle several branches removed, forced to sleep beneath the wall.

His neighbor's house was Tao Yanbai's.

It was Tao Yanbai's mother who secretly gave him food now and then; only then did he survive, half-starved, in the village for two years.

Two winters later, a heavy snowstorm—bigger than the one on Mount Sanqing recently—froze Tao Ji solid in his straw pile beneath the wall in just half a night.

It was Tao Yanbai's mother who braved the snow, dug him out, and carried him into her house.

Tao Fu disliked Tao Ji, but his wife had already brought the child in, and since they were distant kin, he couldn't drive him out in the snow.

So he turned a blind eye and let him stay.

Because of that one act of tolerance, Tao Ji, despite hating Tao Fu's character, had helped him several times.

He knew that if Tao Fu had insisted on throwing him out back then, he would have died for sure.

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But what he was most grateful for was Tao Yanbai's mother—unfortunately, she died of illness just a few years after he left.

The closer they got to Tao Family Village, Tao Ji pointed at a spot and said to Xuanmiao, "That was where my sister-in-law was carrying me out to find a doctor when we ran into Senior Brother."

Xuanmiao glanced over. There was white, blanketing snow there—not thick, probably not even over the tops of one's shoes.

She knew Tao Family Village had not been kind to Tao Ji, knew that Tao Ji had made some sort of agreement with Tao Family Village because of Tao Yanbai, and knew that Tao Yanbai's birth mother had been good to Tao Ji—but she did not know exactly what had happened back then.

Tao Ji never spoke of these matters in front of people, especially not in front of her.

This time, though, Tao Ji was quite in the mood to talk.

He too gazed at that stretch of snow and said, "The snow back then was a lot thicker than it is now. I burned for a day and two nights. My sister-in-law tried everything she could think of, but my fever just wouldn't break. In the end she was about to carry me to the big market to find a physician, and we happened to run into Senior Brother, who was passing through."

"Senior Brother took one look and saw I had good innate talent, and wanted to take me as his disciple. My sister-in-law was terrified he was a kidnapper and refused to hand me over."

Xuanmiao: "So how did he end up tricking you into going with him in the end?"

Tao Ji smiled a little and said, "I had a high fever and went into convulsions. My sister-in-law was terrified, thought I was about to die—and honestly, I really was about to die. I felt like I saw a burst of dazzling, brilliant light, and inside that brilliance there was a ball of very, very bright white radiance, warm and gentle, and I just couldn't help walking toward it."

"But before I could step into that white light, Senior Brother pulled me back to life."

He had never forgotten that brush with death. "When my sister-in-law saw Senior Brother bring me back, she finally believed he was a Daoist physician, and handed me over to him."

"She told me then that I'd have a very hard time surviving in the village. Even if I grew up, I'd still spend my whole life toiling like an ox or a horse. Senior Brother looked capable at a glance, so she told me to follow him, learn some skills—maybe there'd be a whole different world out there."

Tao Ji paused here, then couldn't help smiling. "Senior Brother had only just sworn himself as a disciple of the Mountain God back then, and didn't really understand his own streak of bad luck yet. He kept wanting to bring me back to Mount Sanqing and take me on as his disciple."

"But after a bumpy journey back to Mount Sanqing and meeting Second Senior Brother, Senior Brother finally gave up on taking the two of us as his own disciples and instead enrolled us on the Master's behalf."

So Tao Ji and Wang Cong were only a few years apart in age, and the way they got along had no regard for seniority at all—because they really had grown up together since childhood.

Wang Feiyin had started out raising both him and Yin Song as disciples, but in the end he couldn't take disciples, so they could only be junior brothers.

But whether it was Yin Song or Tao Ji, every bit of their skill had been learned from Wang Feiyin.

Especially Tao Ji—what he studied was the Dao of Alchemy, and he essentially inherited Wang Feiyin's mantle. Named junior brother, in truth a disciple.

It was several years before he came down from the mountain and returned to Tao Family Village. By then his sister-in-law had already passed away, leaving behind Tao Yanbai, not yet five years old.

Watching little Tao Yanbai stumble his way into the vegetable patch, and—just like him at that age when he was starving—pulling off leaves to eat, gnawing on mud-covered white radishes, Tao Ji burst into tears on the spot.

Then he insisted on taking Tao Yanbai away.

Someone else's child—there was no way Tao Ji could just take him away with a word, even if the family raised him poorly or let him die. He was still their child.

Not to mention Tao Fu wouldn't agree—the clansmen of Tao Family Village wouldn't agree either.

In the end, the young Tao Ji and Yin Song, witnessed by the village head and the Tao clan elder, signed a written pledge guaranteeing they would properly raise and care for Tao Yanbai, teach him medicine, and promising that once he had learned the art, they would let him come home…

Only then did he take Tao Yanbai away.

Every time Tao Ji thought of this, he regretted it—he shouldn't have signed that pledge in the heat of the moment; he should have written a letter and called Senior Brother over.

If Senior Brother had stepped in, Yanbai would long since have become his disciple—how could he have spent ten years being tormented by the promise to "return home once he'd learned his craft"?

But the Tao Ji of now was no longer the Tao Ji of ten years ago.

He was now the domineering Niohuru. Tao Ji—as long as Tao Yanbai could come around and decide to enter the Dao, he wasn't afraid of the people of Tao Family Village at all.

The closer they got to Tao Family Village, the straighter Tao Ji's spine grew.

Xuanmiao glanced at him, brimming with fighting spirit, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly. She had already prepared some pills—if anyone fainted from his anger, she'd be ready to save them.

Fainting from anger was nothing; dying from anger would not be good.

Come on, Tao Family Village—welcome Tao Ji's gift of gab!

Today a tiny bit earlier than yesterday, tomorrow I'll keep nudging it forward. Stay strong, good night.

(End of this chapter)