Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way - Chapter 73

Half a month had passed since Gu Suihan first arrived at the mine. By this time Gu Suihan had broken their spirits and they were on the verge of a mental breakdown as they continued to mine the Spiritual Stones like a group of zombies.

Sun Miaozhi had wisely chosen not to say anything about the situation.

“Sir, this is the other manager who did not come on your first day here. I’ve brought him to see you.” At nearly noon, Sun Miaozhi brought a thin but muscular middle-aged man who had a rather depressed look in his eyes. His slightly hooked nose made his brown eyes look even more prominent.

“Explain yourself.” Gu Suihan continued eating his lunch without even raising his head, and did not ask the manager to sit either.

“Sir, one of the elders in my family was very ill that day and I went to the market to buy medicine with the Spiritual Stones I had saved up. That’s why I didn’t come that day.” The middle-aged man looked a little nervous and kept both his head and waist bent. He didn’t dare to look Gu Suihan in the eye at all when he spoke.

“Sun Miaozhi. Is he telling the truth?” Gu Suihan clapped his hands and Taohua brought him a handkerchief. He wiped his hands and threw the handkerchief onto the table, then looked expectantly at Sun Miaozhi, who was sweating profusely.

“S-sir, it’s true. Manager Han has been working faithfully all this time, but the aunt who brought him up all by herself suddenly fell very ill a few years ago, so he would take leave every now and then.”

“What illness is she suffering from? Even a cultivator’s pill can’t cure it?” Gu Suihan narrowed his eyes and pointed to the space in front of him. Taohua went to get another two sets of chopsticks and two bowls of rice.

The two older men exchanged careful glances, then sat on the edge of the stool. They did not touch the chopsticks, saying that they had already eaten.

Gu Suihan couldn’t help but smile a little when he saw how frightened the two men looked and didn’t force them to eat. He motioned to Manager Han to continue his story.

“Sir, I don’t know what’s wrong with her either. I’ve saved up quite a lot of Spiritual Stones over the years as a manager and spent them on several cultivators in hope of finding out what the problem is. All of them told me that she has lost her Earth Hun[^note1] and she has to find it at the place where she lost it.

“But I don’t even understand how she could have lost it. My aptitude is very poor and I only managed to hit Qi Activation after cultivating for more than ten years. You need to be at least a Foundation Establishment cultivator to have enough Qi to split exactly one Hun out like this. Besides, my aunt is always home and she doesn’t go out anymore. I suspect someone at home has done something to her, but after I conducted an investigation, I couldn’t find any suspicious people.”

Manager Han looked really upset, but he would also steal glances at the silent Gu Suihan from time to time. He had checked with Sun Miaozhi before coming and learned that Gu Suihan could fly without the help of anything, so this young man was definitely at least at Foundation Establishment. He was now hoping that Gu Suihan could help him out with this problem.

Gu Suihan tapped a finger gently on the table and frowned slightly as he murmured, “The Heaven Hun and Earth Hun are on the outside, and only the Life Hun is on the inside. The Seven Po and Seven Emotions are transient. The spirit of one at Nascent Change can become a supreme-ruler.”

His voice sounded very far away and seemed like he had gone through many vicissitudes.

“What does that mean?” Sun Miaozhi and Manager Han exchanged glances. Neither knew what Gu Suihan was talking about at all.

“Sir, could you tell us what you mean?” Manager Han finally got down on his knees and pleaded with Gu Suihan, his voice cracking a little. It seemed he was genuinely very worried about his aunt’s health.

Gu Suihan smiled faintly and there was a glint in his eyes. “Your aunt didn’t lose her Earth Hun. Someone has laid a curse on her, cutting off your aunt’s connection to her Earth Hun. I wouldn’t say it’s very hard to do something like that, but there are only a few ways to do this to an ordinary person.”

“A curse?” Manager Han repeated these words and looked like he was in deep thought.

“Some cultivators describe it as having your Earth Hun being taken captive. That’s the way cultivators in the Way of Ghosts do it. Also, it’s not possible for one to remove just one soul without anybody noticing unless they are at least at Origin Core. This place isn’t very poor and secluded, but it’s not a place filled with haunted or evil creatures either. I don’t see why a cultivator in the Way of Ghosts would care about this place. So, my conclusion is that someone laid a curse on her. You can go think about who it could be.”

After that, he motioned to Taohua to see Manager Han out, while he spoke to Sun Miaozhi.

“Tell me how many Spiritual Stones can be mined from this mine every year, how much our expenses are and how much we have to pay every decade,” said Gu Suihan in a leisurely manner as he glanced at the older man.

Sun Miaozhi felt his heart sink and began to sweat even more profusely now. After hesitating for a long time, he suddenly fell to his knees and said in a trembling voice, “There used to be a lot of managers and supervisors, so even though we can mine about 7,000 Spiritual Stones or so, our expenses alone are half this amount. The Seven Kill Sect hasn’t sent any disciples here to guard the mine for a long time, so we also have to spend some on bribing some people from Qingguo. Also, many of the managers and supervisors pilfer some. Having 3,000 Spiritual Stones left at the end of everything is considered not bad. The last time we had to pay the sect, we paid 30,000 or so. Sir, please forgive me! I will not do this again!”

“Pilfering a little is normal, there’s no need to beg for forgiveness,” said Gu Suihan flatly. “From now on, you and Manager Han will get 200 Spiritual Stones a year, and the rest will get nothing. If those people from Qingguo make trouble for you, just kill them on the spot. This country is so tiny, anyway.”

Sun Miaozhi was relieved that Gu Suihan wasn’t going to kill him, but he was also terrified of Gu Suihan’s plans.

Gu Suihan did not say anything about increasing the payment to the sect, so he was probably going to keep the balance for himself. In short, he was going to take 4,000 for himself every year, which added up to 40,000 over ten years.

He wasn’t going to let things stay the same around here. To him, even though Qingguo was a country of a few million people, they were nothing compared to the country of Fenglin, which was the hinterland of the Seven Kill Sect.

Besides, if Qingguo really made him unhappy, he had a million and one ways to destroy this tiny country. He could poison them, lay a curse on them, and more. Cultivators could wipe out ordinary people so easily.

But he figured that after their last conversation, the king would likely tell certain key figures about Gu Suihan’s temperament, and nobody would try to make trouble for him.

“You can leave now. You can give a little more food to those who are willing to mine. Those who work hard and are strong can have more, while the young ones and elderly ones who are about to die don’t need too much. I can’t afford such high expenses,” Gu Suihan instructed Sun Miaozhi via telepathy just before Sun Miaozhi stepped out. The cruel practicality of these words made Sun Miaozhi shudder.

“Young master, don’t you think you’re being a little too hard on them? If they don’t have enough to eat, they won’t have enough energy to mine either,” said Taohua in a soft voice. She felt bad for the workers.

He gently patted her little head and said, “If they aren’t useful to me, they would be facing a bigger problem than just not having enough food to eat. Do you still think I’m being hard on them?”

In other words, the fact that he had spared their lives was already something they should be grateful to him for. If they weren’t still useful, they would have become nutrients for Questioning Heaven by now.

Taohua’s supple body shuddered. She recalled how Gu Suihan always handled matters all this time and decided not to speak anymore.

“We’ve got a good show coming up.” Gu Suihan turned to look out of the door with a mocking smile on his lips. He didn’t notice the sadness in Taohua’s eyes as she left the room.

—

At night, Gu Suihan leaped over fences and went round countless streets like a ghost, and quietly arrived at a luxurious home. This estate consisted of three small buildings and a front yard each. It was late, but all the lights were still on.

This was the house of Manager Han, the one who came to apologize earlier that day. It was obvious that he had pocketed a good number of Spiritual Stones as a manager since he managed to build such a big house for himself.

Earlier that day, Gu Suihan had sensed something amiss when he heard Manager Han describe his aunt’s condition. Logically speaking, a cultivator who could lay curses would have just wiped out Manager Han and his family at once. Why bother leaving someone half alive? The family could still find someone to help them, or her condition might attract the attention of someone like Gu Suihan. That would be bad news for the cultivator.

He pasted a Presence Concealing Talisman and a Qi Quietening Talisman on himself, then quietly walked into the house. Those who cultivated in the Way of Martial Arts had very active Qi and were a lot more sensitive to the presence of other beings. It was better to be careful.

It was late at night, so Gu Suihan easily found a sleepy guard on duty. He dragged the guard to a shadowy corner and knocked him out. He used the moonlight to study the unconscious man’s features carefully, then his face and body suddenly began to change.

A few seconds later, Gu Suihan looked exactly like the guard. He changed into the guard’s clothes and walked back out again. The only difference was the alertness in Gu Suihan’s eyes that the guard did not have.

The Clacker’s Comfort Food Booth

Today’s snack recommendation:* https://lorenz-snacks.com/pomsticks Squee I love pomsticks they’re so yummy! They aren’t too expensive and I always have some around. Also it isn’t half a bag of air. MSG: *****

[^Note1]: Earth Hun, Heaven Hun, Life Hun, Seven Po, Seven Emotions

These were briefly mentioned in Chapter 7, pasting it here again. Author will go through in better detail on THEIR idea of the Huns and Pos, so…wait for it?

Other Miscellaneous Terms

Hun and Po (魂魄 húnpò) – the dualistic components of a soul. Hun is the spiritual, intelligent, and Yang component of the soul. Po is the physical/corporeal, animalistic, and Yin component of the soul. Upon death, the Hun component goes to the afterlife, while the Po component remains and rots away in the corpse. In Daoism, the soul is said to consist of three Hun and seven Po (三魂七魄).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hun_and_po

Ten “souls” of sanhunqipo 三魂七魄 “three hun and seven po” is not only Daoist; “Some authorities would maintain that the three-seven “soul” is basic to all Chinese religion”. During the Later Han period, Daoists fixed the number of hun souls at three and the number of po souls at seven. A newly deceased person may return (回魂) to his home at some nights, sometimes one week (頭七) after his death and the seven po would disappear one by one every 7 days after death.

Three hun may stand for the sangang 三綱 “three principles of social order: relationships between ruler-subject, father-child, and husband-wife”. Seven po may stand for the qiqiao 七竅 “seven apertures (in the head, eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth)” or the qiqing 七情 “seven emotions (joy, anger, sorrow, fear, worry, grief, fright)” in traditional Chinese medicine. Sanhunqipo also stand for other names.