Chapter 282

  Moon Lake (VIII)

  By the time kids were done, the area looked... pristine.

  Honestly, scarily so.

  For a moment, I doubted my own memory of there being quite a few dismembered corpses decorating the landscape just a little while ago. Now? Now there was only nature, golden and glimmering.

  Why are they so good at this? No, scratch that: how are they so good at this? Did Long Tao teach them?

  ... he did, didn't he?

  The awkward bit now was Wei and his friends, who were firmly planted on their knees as acts of begging--per their own words--to let them live. They'd sworn an oath not to divulge what happened here, and they'd done it precisely nineteen times now.

  Is it sort of like interest? Where oaths compound? Ah, who cares?

  Though I tried to reason with them the first few times, recognizing they were a lost cause, I just left them alone, as I had a feeling my head would explode from trying to deal with them.

  There was some good news, however--we, and by we I mean the kids, managed to snag all the spatial rings, and, well, there were quite a few things in them. But, most importantly, there were Spirit Stones--lots and lots of Spirit Stones.

  I haven't asked Lao Shun for any, as I didn't want to fall into the bastard's debt, and the kids didn't ask any of me--despite the fact I knew they needed them--but now, I was finally out of the red. I had some wealth to my name.

  And before distributing it all, I wanted to do something.

  Something I'd been wanting to do for a while but never had the opportunity to.

  I wanna ride the chariot.

  God, I wanna say it out loud so bad, but I just know these guys would make fun of me. In their heads, yes, but still... I would know.

  "For a change of pace," I took out the small box from one of the rings and injected it with a bit of Qi before tossing it at the open space. It practically flickered into existence, turning into a wood-laden construct with four golden wheels. It was long and curved, with windows peeking inside without any curtains. There were no horses or any other beasts at the front, but there was a rather visible, sputtering array of light laid beneath it.

  It encompassed the size of the entire thing--which was about the size of a van, give or take, and which made me worry we'd have to all squeeze in there like rats.

  "W-what is this, Master?!" Dai Xiu and Xi Zhao were the first to walk up and investigate, while the others could scarcely hide their shock. Chiefly our three new friends, who looked so pale I was confident they did it on purpose--taking out a handful of white powder from somewhere and slobbering it over their faces.

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  "It's a flying chariot," I explained, turning toward Lao Shun, who also seems to have powdered his face. Huh. Maybe it's the fashion. "I forgot I had it up until now."

  "... you, you forgot having this?" Lao Shun asked with a rather dry voice.

  "Wouldn't have mattered even if I remembered," I said. "This thing sucks up Spirit Stones, and, well, I didn't have enough to make it run. We still don't, truthfully, but we deserve a bit of a rest, so we'll take it for bits of the journey."

  Without waiting any longer, the kids yanked open the doors and climbed inside, inspecting it. Even Xing Feng joined them, with only Long Tao and Rayce holding back, as Wan Lan went inside posing as a 'babysitter', though her excited face betrayed her intentions.

  "... you three, if you keep kneeling like that, I'll run you over with the chariot." I said to the still-kneeling trio, yanking them from their daze.

  "M-Master Lu, you, you won't kill us?" I noticed something funny--the way people call me has this mean tendency to evolve. Not an hour ago, I was a Fellow Daoist to him, and he probably even looked down on me a little bit. Now, he was avoiding my eyesight and treating me with more fear than he probably treats his own Master.

  "... why me?" I asked, turning toward Lao Shun and Long Tao. "I didn't kill anyone, did I? So, why is he asking me?"

  "You have the face of a mean killer, Master," Rayce said with a faint smile. "It's only natural they should fear you."

  "Not just the face, but the voice too." Oi, old-ass alchemist, why are you joining this crap?! "The kind that would haunt one's nightmares, even."

  "If you say a word, Long Tao," I said. "I will immediately forget my entire parental lineage."

  "..." My preemptive strike left him a bit peeved, but he stayed his tongue, and I was happy. Well, as happy as can be with these gremlins trying to get a rise out of me.

  'cause that's what they're doing. They figured it was easy enough to get 'funny reactions' out of me, so they try. Oh boy, do they ever try.

  "You're still kneeling."

  "A-ah, sorry. We're up, we're up," they finally stood up, dusting off their dirtied knees and curiously glancing over at the chariot.

  "Get inside. We'll set off soon."

  "Y-yes!"

  "Are you sure about letting them live?" Lao Shun asked as they entered the chariot. It looks like it behaved similarly to the tent--in that there's far more space inside than the outside would indicate. "Though oaths are a powerful thing, a mind can always be scryed."

  "You're asking me to kill three kids who were about to put their lives on the line for us?" I glanced over at him for a moment before looking away.

  "... kindness is beautiful, Lu," he said. "But it's like a sheet of paper. Whatever's written on it matters only so long as we make it matter."

  "Fitting, then. Because it matters to me."

  "... fair enough," he chuckled. "You really are an odd specimen."

  "Do you regret coming along?" I asked.

  "Oh, every day," he smiled. "But--"

  "--you would have come along a thousand out of a thousand times."

  "Am I that predictable?"

  "No, you're just that stupid, like the rest of them."

  "I know hundreds of men who would kill to have their Disciples respect them as much as yours respect you," he said. "It's not stupidity, Lu. It's something you earn."

  "..." I fell silent as he went over and boarded as well, with Rayce stealthily following along, leaving behind only Long Tao and me. I already knew he had something to say, as he would have otherwise been the first one to enter the chariot just to find the best spot in it. "Do you think we should kill them, too?"

  "We?"

  "... you."

  "Heh," he chuckled, stopping by my side. He was growing up--stupendously quickly, actually. When I met him, he was a scrawny, five-foot-and-a-change little kid, but in just over a year, he was almost six feet tall and filling out. Ugh. Filling out. Such a weird way to put it. "I also think you should stop being as kind, though for entirely different reasons."

  "And what's that?"

  "If you don't, soon there will be hundreds of Disciples swarming you, and even if we rob the heavens and the earth, there will not be enough Spirit Stones for us all."

  ... hey.

  Did he just say something nice?

  Oh my God, he just said something nice! He immediately walked away, effectively ending the conversation, but... he said something nice to me again! Entirely unprompted, too!

  ... at least I think it was nice. No, no, no room for doubts--it was nice, and that's that.

  Whatever.

  Let's see what flying in a freakin' chariot feels like.