Second Patriarch: Rise Of The Liu Clan

Looting the battlefield took several hours, and during this time Wolfden Village began moving, gathering all of their officials and funds. It was time to pay the cultivators. Besides the trouble that would naturally arise from leaving a bunch of cultivators waiting for payment for an extended length of time, there were a couple of other reasons that the village was eager to get payment done with as soon as possible. The first was so that they could begin sorting out their internal affairs without any outside influences, and the second was to help recoup some of their losses from the beast horde. Everyone was in a good mood with the beast horde vanquished, and despite various other economic losses the beasts hadn't affected the village's stores of alcohol in the slightest. The inner village was also more or less converted into a bunch of inns to contain all the fleeing civilians and hired cultivators. If there was an ideal time to make some of their money back selling food and drink, it was now.

Some of the cultivators began to leave the battlefield and headed towards the inside of the village, eagerly awaiting their payment. Said payment was based on one's combat strength, reported kills, and observed kills, and ended up roughly corresponding to how useful one was during the beast horde. The combat strength portion was obvious and easily verifiable, and reported kills were up to the cultivators to track during the battle. Sometimes they'd bring parts from the strongest beasts they killed as proof, but it wasn't a requirement. As for observed kills, the village had set aside small numbers of cultivators to observe the battle and take down notes on cultivators while tallying up how many beasts they saw them killed. The system wasn't completely accurate, but it reduced fraud greatly and was shown to save villages several times the money lost in casualties by keeping small numbers of cultivators on the back lines.

Liu Zhu's squad left the battlefield as the pickings began to thin out, taking their place in a massive line of cultivators waiting for payment. It moved at a slow but steady pace as each cultivator reported their information and provided any needed evidence. Most of the line simply made small talk while waiting, as watching everyone get paid wasn't particularly entertaining. The exception to this was if a cultivator reported far above their observed kills, as this could result in an amusing scuffle. Since that could cost them all of their payment this happened very rarely. As for cultivators reporting far below their observed kills, this was similarly rare, and seeing someone cause an incident over it was impossible. Obviously a cultivator wouldn't deflate their kills on purpose, and even if they did the village had no reason to correct them. Wasn't that just donating their wages to them? Why would you look a gift horse in the mouth?

Liu Zhu occasionally glanced at the front of line as he waited. Most of the cultivators were being sent away with maybe five gold coins, which from his biased perspective wasn't worth anywhere near the risk of participating in the beast horde. Still, they seemed happy, so he supposed the rates wouldn't be adjusted any time soon. All of Liu Zhu's squad members got between 5 and 10 gold coins, and Liu Zhu got 28 gold coins and some change for his participation. It was significantly higher than the rest of his squad due to his cultivation, but it was honestly worth very little to him. Even before he'd broken through to Flesh Tempering and his income had gone through the roof, he'd could easily save up that much while sitting at home. He'd long understood the difference in wealth between normal cultivators and the family clans, but this was the first time it was shown this clearly to him and he was in a bit of a shock. It difference in resources between them and him seemed nearly as massive as the difference between the top juniors of the Five Families and himself.

After collecting his payment Liu Zhu's squad went to a nearby tavern. Liu Zhu left them for a bit, promising to return after he thanked Feng Jun for all of the help. His search took a bit, but eventually Liu Zhu found him still sorting through all of the corpses on the battlefield. When Liu Zhu approached Feng Jun paused to greet him, his equipment and body still caked in mud and dried blood from the day's battle.

Feng Jun mumbled a greeting in Liu Zhu's direction, still focusing on cleaning up the battlefield. "Senior Brother Feng, thanks for your help in assembling my squad, I appreciate it." Feng Jun's tone was exceedingly neutral as he replied. "Don't feel indebted because of it, I understand how much of a pain it is in your circ.u.mstances. I started working here around your age with an even lower cultivation and it was a massive pain in the a.s.s. Just don't f.u.c.k yourself over while you're here and I won't regret the effort." As Feng Jun spoke he continued to loot the animal corpses despite the fact that most of the valuable body parts were taken, effectively looking through the scraps.

"Are you interested in investigating the source of the beast horde? A group is heading towards the epicenter now that it's cleared out. Should take about a week. It's unlikely, but there might be some great opportunity there. Beast hordes don't just happen for no reason after all." Feng Jun casually threw this out while looting. Liu Zhu frowned slightly as he replied. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested, but if there are any benefits there won't the Dantian Creation and Acupoint Opening cultivators split it up among themselves? There's not much of a point." Feng Jun shrugged in response. "Sure, but luck matters just as much as strength sometimes. Even though it's not likely, there could be benefits they couldn't monopolize, or possibly ones I find myself that they've missed. Of course on the other hand there could be nothing, but that's the nature of being an independent cultivator. Chances come once in a blue moon, so we have to strive for them. Throwing away a chance to get ahead for the easy, guaranteed route will only doom us to failure. No matter the results we need to put our lives on the line to seize every chance we get - it's not like we're born with the resources to cultivate. Even if we were, this problem would reappear eventually, when those resources were too few to support our cultivation. If I just settled making some money doing work in the wastes and scraping what resources together I would likely reach Meridian Opening before I die, but I'd never go beyond that. That's why I try to build all the connections I can and seek all the opportunities possible while I'm here. I may not be able to become a powerful master, but I have faith that I'll be able to reach Qi Refinement or Qi Emission some day far in the future."

Feng Jun sighed to himself before repeating his question. "So, are you interested?"