The sky was dark, with only a faint smear of purple behind the jagged outline of the Qing Mao Mountain. A few stars had begun to peek through, scattered dimly around the crescent moon.
Below, the Gu Yue village was already settling into the deeper rhythms of night. Cooking fires dwindled, replaced by the soft, flickering glow of oil lamps behind tightly shut windows. On the main flagstone path cutting through the heart of the village, few people still lingered.
Those mortals who did scuttled quickly, heads bowed, eyes fixed on the ground before them. When they saw the lone figure approaching, they pressed themselves flatter against the walls of buildings, murmuring respectful greetings that were barely whispers on the cooling air.
"Good evening, Lord Gu Master."
"Blessings upon you, Lord Gu Master."
Backs bent. Elders nodded quickly and moved aside. Children were tugged away by their mothers, their small hands yanked from muddy puddles and pointed in other directions.
Gu Masters weren't rarely seen prowling the streets, especially younger ones affiliated with the Academy, but the ingrained hierarchy was absolute. Generations of harsh lessons had taught the mortals that deference was cheaper than defiance, and silence safer than complaint. A bowed head rarely attracted unwanted attention.
Ren Zu offered no acknowledgment to the greetings. His gaze was distant, fixed somewhere beyond the packed-earth walls and bamboo structures.
His pace was calm, unhurried. His expression might have seemed almost aloof. But beneath the surface, his thoughts moved fast, scraping like whetstones on steel.
Tsk… having to act like my own debt collector is annoying. I'd much rather be training.
He passed a vendor's stall piled with poorly cleaned beast bones. The stench curled at the edge of his nose, but he paid it no mind.
And I still have to swing by the Academy Store before going home. If that storekeeper tries to cheat me again…
He continued his steady pace, the sound of his cloth-soled shoes almost silent on the stones. The air carried the scent of woodsmoke, damp earth, and somewhere nearby, the cloying sweetness of night-blooming jasmine – a scent he'd always found vaguely funereal. A pleasant evening, most would say.
Ren Zu's hand itched near his hilt. Not from fear. Just habit.
To think it's been fifteen years already...
Fifteen years he'd walked these paths, breathed this air.
Fifteen years since he'd woken up screaming, not with the incoherent cries of a newborn, but with the silent, existential terror of a mind ripped from one reality and thrust into another, trapped within a weak, helpless infant body.
He couldn't recall the specifics of his past life – no name surfaced, no faces of parents or friends resolved from the mental fog. It was as if his soul, tumbling through the chaotic void between worlds, had been scoured clean of personal identity, leaving only the bedrock of general knowledge, scientific principles, historical awareness, and a vast repository of fictional tropes and narratives from his original world.
Earth.
That knowledge had been his lifeline. From the moment coherent thought returned amidst the bewildering sensations of infancy, he understood. Rebirth. Transmigration...
Reverend Insanity....
For the first few agonizing years, there was little to do but observe, learn the language, and plan.
His parents had died barely a week after he was born—caught in a beast wave that broke through the village's outer defenses. All he had left was his grandfather.
A small sigh escaped Ren Zu's lips, barely disturbing the air.
Grandpa Qin. A Rank two Gu Master, tough as old leather, weathered by decades of service to the clan, half-deaf and twice as strange.
Grief over losing his son and daughter-in-law seemed to have knocked something loose in the old man's head. One of his first acts, as far as the infant Ren Zu remembered, was arbitrarily changing his name.
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"Su Shao?" the old man had grunted one day, peering down at the toddler in front of him.
"Dull name. Doesn't suit you. From now on, you're Ren Zu."
When pressed, even years later, the old man merely shrugged his bony shoulders.
"Sounds better. More... significant."
Naming a child after Humanity's Progenitor, the legendary figure from whom all humans supposedly descended? It was a minor taboo, bordering on hubris, earning snorts and whispers from some clan members. But Grandpa Qin hadn't cared about whispers. He was a mid-tier Gu Master, respected enough for his service, and grieving enough to be granted a certain latitude for his eccentricities.
And so, Ren Zu he became.
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"Crazy old man…"
His grandfather had died two years ago, taken by yet another beast wave. Torn apart somewhere near the outer fields, or so they said. Ren Zu hadn't seen the body—just the burnt remains of a broken walking staff brought back by a patrol team. That had been the end of it.
He'd been thirteen.
Alone.
But not penniless.
The old lunatic had left him 600 primeval stones. All his savings, tucked away in secret caches and layered in ridiculous traps involving sour plum seeds and handwritten notes scrawled in illegible ink that read things like "Death to traitors!" and "I bite thieves!"
Ren Zu had found it all rather touching. In a profoundly unhelpful way.
For reference, a single primeval stone could feed a family of four for an entire month. Six hundred? That wasn't pocket change—even some rank 3 Gu Masters would have licked their lips at that haul.
Of course, it made sense. His grandfather had scraped and gathered those stones slowly over decades, never spending except when absolutely necessary.
Still, having that much wealth at thirteen, without a caretaker, was… dangerous.
While direct murder within the clan was forbidden, there were countless ways to 'persuade' or 'assist' a young, vulnerable clan member into parting with his inheritance.
Schemes, manipulations, trumped-up debts, offers of 'guardianship' that would bleed him dry... Ren Zu, with his Earthly knowledge of human greed, saw the pitfalls immediately.
So, he made the stones disappear.
In one week.
Gone.
He didn't buy a flashy gu—of course not. The awakening ceremony was only allowed at fifteen, and he wasn't about to waste money feeding a glorified leech until then.
No, instead of looking up towards the dazzling, powerful world of Gu, Ren Zu looked down, towards the base of the mountain, towards the sprawling collection of mortal villages clustered there like barnacles on a rock.
These villages housed the mortals who served the Gu Yue clan – farmers, laborers, craftsmen – essentially serfs bound to the land and the clan's whims. They provided the food and the manpower.
And periodically, they were ravaged. Beast tides, rampaging wild Gu worms, even internal conflicts spilling over – destruction was a fact of life. Homes were trampled, burned, washed away. And who rebuilt them?
The mortals themselves, of course, using meager resources, often living in squalor until they could erect new, flimsy shelters. No Gu Master would lower themselves to build mortal dwellings in exchange for handfuls of rice or vegetables.
And no one cared.
But Ren Zu had cared.
Not for them, of course.
For the opportunity.
When the heavens are cruel, the wise sow in the mud.
It was an old saying, and a true one.
Long story short, after greasing a few palms and handing over a few 'courtesy gifts' to certain bored elders, Ren Zu had managed to bypass the age restriction for property ownership.
Technically, a thirteen-year-old shouldn't have been allowed to own anything more valuable than a walking stick and a warm bowl of congee.
But primeval stones talked. And Ren Zu knew the language well.
With the bulk of the stones, he didn't buy land – the clan owned everything – but he funded the construction of sturdy, resilient houses in several farming villages. Not palaces, but solid structures of stone foundations, reinforced bamboo, and properly tiled roofs, far superior to the usual mud-and-thatch hovels. He hired mortal labor and oversaw the work himself.
And the mortals had flocked to them like starving dogs to meat.
He'd even kept the rent reasonable. At first.
Now, to a normal person, this would've been a bad investment. Beast tides hit every two years or so. Homes got flattened. Mortals died. Starting over meant more money, more time, more effort.
Overall, not a worthwhile investment
But Ren Zu wasn't a normal person. He was a transmigrator.
And he knew the exact date of the next beast tide.
The mortals—desperate for shelter—paid what they could. The clan took half, of course, since the mortals technically belonged to them. A tax, they called it.
He called it theft.
But that didn't matter. Even with the cuts, even with repairs, the primeval stones still dripped into his pockets like water through cracked bamboo.
And when the predictable period of calm persisted, and demand for his superior housing grew? Well, the rent prices naturally had to increase slightly year by year. Resource scarcity, maintenance costs... call it inflation. The mortals grumbled, but they paid. It was still better than the alternative.
Of course, if they refused or were unable to pay for too long...
Ren Zu's thoughts scattered as his feet carried him to a familiar wooden storefront. Standing before him was a modest but sturdy two-story building, marked with the Gu Yue clan insignia and characters spelling out "Academy Store". Faint light spilled from its windows.
He paused for a moment, adjusting his robes, his expression smoothing back into impenetrable calm.
The past is prologue. The future requires resources.
Unhurriedly, Ren Zu pushed open the wooden door and stepped inside.