Second Patriarch: Rise Of The Liu Clan

After some asking around in the village, Liu Zhu gathered all the information concerning The Nine Gods that he feasibly could without consulting some sort of historian or priest on the subject. Some undefined time in the past, likely thousand of years ago, there were nine "gods in the form of beasts". Given the information Liu Zhu had these were probably just beasts which had gained sentience through some odd means, but the legends had long since gone out of control. At some point five of these "all powerful" beasts disappeared, causing the nine gods to reduce to four. The four remaining were the only ones with names and depictions- or at least ones that are common knowledge in The Northern Wastes. Eventually the last four beasts disappeared as well, and what was left behind was evidence that didn't quite prove they existed and lots and lots of religious iconography.

The four named "gods" were The Winged God, The Clawed God, The Horned God, and The Scaled God. The Winged God was depicted as a massive bird, hundreds of feet long. The exact species varied, but it was generally some tropical species with vibrantly-colored feathers that seemed to form a rainbow. The Clawed God was more vaguely depicted, but was most-often depicted as a wolf. No matter the species, wolf, bear, or something else, it was always large, although it was several times smaller than The Winged God, and its claws were ridiculously oversized for its scale. As for The Horned God, it seemed to be some sort of elk, moose, or deer. Apparently it was smaller than the other "gods", even smaller than The Clawed God, but its massive horns were supposed to be larger than the rest of its body. Lastly was The Scaled God, which was some sort of fish or sea serpent that was hundreds of feet long. No one Liu Zhu spoke to could name an exact species, which made sense if the beast it was based on was normally underwater.

Gathering this information served as a great way to kill time until Liu Zhu began his work escorting the village's herb gatherers. He finished his investigation the morning after his arrival in the village, around an hour before he was scheduled to leave. Without anything pressing left to do he passed the next hour cultivating. As he did so he faintly noticed that something felt off, but since he was unable to pin down exactly what it was he decided to just ignore the feeling, figuring that it was just him getting to used to training again. After all, he'd spent a month to consume that bead, and he had never gone that long without cultivating before. It wouldn't be unusual if he needed to "warm up" after taking such a long break from cultivating. As he brought his cultivation to a close he noticed a small group of muscular, tanned men. They were the village's herb gatherers, and he would spend the next week protecting them as they scoured the nearby forest for plants to trade to the merchants going to Border City.

The group set off at a brisk pace at first, as everywhere surrounding the village was more or less picked dry, but once they got deep enough into the forest for there to be relatively valuable plants, they slowed down. The men would search the surrounding area at a painfully slow pace, carefully brushing away the dirt to find plants clinging to the ground, sorting through bushes to find out of season berries, and sometimes even peeling away bark in suspicious places to reveal invasive plants growing under it. As they did this, Liu Zhu would bombard them with questions, trying his best to quickly learn about what they were doing and get some benefits from this job.

"So as I was sayin', the dry spots on the bark there showed it was lackin' in nutrition. Of course that could be for quite a few reasons, but when it looks like that usually cause something is leeching nutrients from the tree. And if you can't see a cause on the outside, then check inside. There are only a few things that cause that, and most of what does is worth some cash. You got it?" As the old man finished pulling a vine out from under the bark of a tree he glanced back at Liu Zhu, who was taking notes. He whistled and shook his head lightly as he went back to work. "Whoowee, I guess all you cultivators can write? Most of the ones in the village can too and I've always thought it seemed pretty handy." As the old man said this another one of the herb gathers laughed, a tinge of mockery in his voice. "Oh come on, why'd we need to know about all that? You pay attention, you learn everything there is to learn about herb gathering. Save that for the merchants and the cultivators." The old man put on an embarrassed expression before shaking his head. "Suppose so, suppose so. Anyways, next..."

The men were more than happy to talk about their work to someone that seemed interested, especially after they had been forced to stay near the village for the past couple weeks due to a shortage of cultivators to escort them. Small lessons like about the local flora continued throughout the day, and the sun slowly passed through the sky as Liu Zhu filled up his notebook with all the information he had gathered. The books he'd gotten at Border City had a wealth of information, but as he'd expected, they paled in comparison to the experience of a professional. These people may have been mostly illiterate and have lived in this village for their entire lives, but they did have a deep level of knowledge about their field, as extremely specific as it was.

Despite his interest in their work Liu Zhu only kept his partial attention on it, as the job he was paid to do was to protect these men. As their small group wandered throughout the forest he kept his eyes and ears peeled, taking note of anything that seemed out of place. A few times throughout the days he had to kill a vicious beast, but they were all rather weak. Still, they were more than enough to kill several of the herb gatherers if they approached their group unnoticed. Later in the evening, as they were about to stop for the day, Liu Zhu noticed a set of tracks that seemed to belong to a vicious beast. After a closer examination, he spotted a few more pairs. He immediately put away his notebook, straining his senses to detect danger, and that's when he heard a faint growling coming from several different directions. His first real challenge for the day was approaching.