Chapter 873: On the Way Home (2)

The road from Yunnan to Sichuan was, surprisingly, well-packed and fairly comfortable.

Sichuan was a low basin surrounded by high mountain ranges, while Yunnan was a plateau perched up on top of those ranges.

The difference in elevation between the two regions reached roughly six hundred and fifty jang, and that enormous drop didn’t taper off gradually.

It appeared all at once, like a cliff edge you suddenly discovered you were standing on.

Separate from how dizzying it was, it couldn’t help but be a spectacle.

The mountain road, winding in endless zigzags, unfurled downward and downward and downward—like the writhing of an infinitely long snake.

And the vast Sichuan Basin spread out in full view, all of it laid bare at once.

This must be what it feels like, standing at the edge of the world and looking down.

Qing couldn’t tear her eyes away from the view.

That cluster of tiny black dots far in the distance—was that Sichuan’s Chengdu? Chengdu County?

The fact that real buildings looked smaller than grains of millet, and you couldn’t even see people...

Mm. Yeah. From a place this high—look. Best show ever, you trash—

“Could you get down?”

A heavy bass cut off Qing’s masterpiece line.

Mm. It had been a memory from her old world that had surfaced for once, but... it wasn’t like she missed it now, or felt it was a shame to lose it.

Still, wasn’t it strange how, every now and then, she remembered?

Like how dreams sometimes dragged up childhood friends you’d completely forgotten, or some military-service cohort you’d never cared about in the first place.

If you couldn’t actually pull it out whenever you wanted, but human memory was still more sensitive than you thought... then if she meditated properly, maybe she could recall the martial might those Manifest Realm martial artists had displayed—

“At minimum, answer me.”

The voice dropped even lower, a growl.

Qing clicked her tongue lightly and finally spoke.

“Mm. What if you think of this as training too? Look at Jegal. He’s practically thrilled.”

“Huff... huff... this is... a novel stimulus. When I return to my family, I’ll need to think about equipment.”

Supporting the wagon with his back, shuffling down the mountain road step by step, Jegal Ihyeon exhaled hot breath into this bitter cold.

He was holding up the wagon while restricting his internal energy, training his physical body—external training.

Honestly, the hardship of traveling by wagon between Yunnan and Sichuan started right here, at this mountainous barrier—this endless downhill.

Because a wagon was far more dangerous on a downhill road than an uphill one.

A surprising fact:

Even primitive, ancient Central Plains wagons had brakes.

It was a simple principle—wrapping the axle with leather and cloth to make it harder to roll.

And if your wagon didn’t have a brake mechanism like that, then under strict national law you got flogged.

Very thoroughly.

The Central Plains, unexpectedly, was strict about wagon safety standards.

It had been that way since roughly two thousand years ago.

Back in those truly ancient dynasties, they even evaluated wagon drivers with both a practical test and a written exam—administering what amounted to humanity’s first driver’s license test.

And if you failed that primitive ancient driver’s license test four times, you were permanently barred from taking it again and sentenced to forced labor.

If anything, the standards were stricter than in Qing’s homeland.

Anyway, if you just used the primitive ancient brake, then on a packed road—stone laid down and filled in—you could simply ride the wagon straight down and it was fine.

But mountain roads were trickier, because if the wheels slipped on dirt, you could have a serious accident.

So people got off the wagon.

You had to keep a close eye on the horses and tend to them properly.

And if there was a supply cart and the like, it was best to have people hold it and go down together as much as possible.

Meaning: get down and help.

Not climb up on the wagon and sightsee.

The truth was, Qing was usually diligent in front of other people.

If you tried to slack off and cheat your way through things, the comfort only lasted a moment—and what you earned was sharp looks and more gossip behind your back.

Maybe it’d be different if you were alone, but hurting your relationships just to be comfortable for a minute was stupid.

And yet, mm... she felt like she finally understood why everyone had always been so desperate to cheat their way out of things....

Following Daoist Master Gilun’s advice, all the way until they reached the very edge of Sichuan land, Qing had worked hard, passionately, with her whole heart, to do absolutely nothing.

Of course, Daoist Master Gilun had every right to feel wronged.

He’d only told her to do what her heart wanted—not to sprawl out and become a hopeless waste of air who did nothing.

But Qing had her reasons.

Except... once you did nothing for long enough, it was like—

You just kept doing nothing.

Time passed meaninglessly like this, and it felt comfortable, and the thought of doing anything at all was annoying enough that her heart simply wouldn’t move.

And if her heart didn’t move?

Then she shouldn’t do it, right?

Then, suddenly—

“Wait. This is weird. Why are you only doing this to me? Nanna’s here too. Nanna never did anything in the first place. Same with Iri.”

They said the one who farted was the one who got mad.

This was exactly that.

It was childish beyond belief.

They’re slacking too, so why is it only me!

In reality, when it came to hauling baggage or getting the wagon down a slope—those kinds of miscellaneous chores—Tang Nanna naturally excluded herself as if it were obvious.

Because the unofficial princess of Sichuan had never done such chores in her life, and had never even had the thought that she should.

Seol Iri often got excluded from miscellaneous chores too, but in her case it was closer to: she was so useless they didn’t make her do anything, because she couldn’t.

This was one of humanity’s sad traits.

Someone who always works hard and helps well becomes branded in other people’s minds as, naturally, “a good person.”

So people assign them work as if it’s only natural.

And someone like Tang Nanna, who always slithers around with a shameless face and does nothing, gets categorized as “a person who does nothing.”

So people just click their tongues once and look away with a displeased stare.

And someone like Seol Iri, who can’t help even if she wants to, gets waved past naturally with a, ugh, fine, just keep breathing.

So that’s why people say working hard is a loss.

But is it really?

Working during the time you’re supposed to work isn’t really a loss.

Doing more work than other people in the same span doesn’t suddenly make you collapse from exhaustion, or cut years off your life, or grind your living down into ruin.

That simply didn’t happen.

So “working hard is a loss” is, in truth, nothing more than a cowardly excuse for laziness.

However.

There was one exception.

Overtime.

If the result of working hard was that work started appearing in the time you weren’t supposed to be working, then from that point on it became a massive—fatal—problem.

It was also one of the atrocities many businesses committed in Qing’s homeland.

So if you worked for a place like that?

You absolutely had to hold the mindset that working hard only made you lose.

You had to keep the iron principle that you come first, and focus on your health and your own development rather than the company.

Anyway, after hearing such a childish complaint, Peng Daesan’s words caught in his throat.

Because it was childish—yet it was true.

But admitting it with a “well, fair enough” felt like losing, so instead he tossed out a single line.

“Are you asking me to lower myself to their level?”

“...Ah.”

Qing snapped wide awake.

Right. No. That wasn’t it.

Qing hopped down from the roof in one smooth motion.

Because her heart whispered to her.

No matter how firmly she’d decided to do nothing, there was still a minimum dignity a person had to keep—minimum value.

I can’t be the same level as Gunyeong and Nanna. I can’t.

Normally, this was where Tang Nanna would bare her teeth and snarl—what’s wrong with me, and why are you only making our Qing work—and pull out a poison vial from her sleeve.

But Tang Nanna had been so deep in the joy of reading lately that—

So she really wasn’t just someone who slacked off all day.

Even at her young age, there was a reason she’d become a master of medicine.

Who would’ve thought she had this side of her—this ability to completely immerse herself and obsessively focus on studying?

Mm.

Come to think of it, lying around doing nothing didn’t actually feel all that comfortable either.

She had no clue how she was supposed to escape the Transformation Realm and pass into the Manifest Realm—and was now really the time to be lazily kneading Heema’s chest?

And yet, the longer she did nothing, the more the annoyance piled up.

Her heart got more and more impatient, time flowed by while she did nothing, and somehow it all felt increasingly uncomfortable.

For now... it seemed like she needed to put Daoist Master Gilun’s advice aside.

Emptying yourself was fine, but shouldn’t she at least smash something first—starting with the status window—and then empty herself to her heart’s content...?

If Daoist Master Gilun had known, he would’ve pounded his chest.

That’s not what I meant, he’d say, bursting with frustration.

******

So the endless descent continued.

The downhill road twisted for so long that there were even established encampment sites—places that essentially said, Sleep here and go on tomorrow.

No matter how much of a martial artist you were, hauling a wagon loaded with books down a mountainside had a limit to how fast you could go.

And only after camping out for one night did they finally set foot in the Sichuan Basin.

Unlike the mild Yunnan lands where double-cropping—depending on the area, even triple-cropping—was possible, Sichuan land was a fairly chilly winter.

And so, on a winter day—on the last day of the twelfth lunar month, one day before the year’s final day—

They finally arrived at Chengdu’s most prestigious house:

The Sichuan Tang Clan!

Sichuan! Since she’d already stopped here once before, omitted.

Sichuan’s Chengdu, Chengdu! Also omitted!

And thus: Sichuan!

And thus: Chengdu!

The Tang Clan mobilized its entire direct-line family to greet a rare and valuable guest.

Tang Nanna was the Tang Clan’s most precious child.

They said if you bit each of your ten fingers, there wasn’t a single one that didn’t hurt—meaning, all children were equally precious.

But some children were more equal.

Especially when it was son, son, son, son after son, and only after all that did a precious youngest daughter finally appear—such a child was even more equal than equal.

And Qing was that precious daughter’s one and only friend.

To Tang Clan elders who were starting to worry about their daughter’s personality, was there anything more reassuring than the fact that she had even one friend?

Of course, even aside from that, Qing was the Tang Clan’s special-grade guest—

The Tang Clan’s benefactor.

This was the Sichuan Tang Clan, with a rather petty family maxim: repay kindness twice over, and repay resentment ten times over.

The reason it sounded petty was because it wasn’t an absolute measure—it was a relative one.

When repaying kindness: do it at twice the level other houses would.

When repaying resentment: do it at ten times the level other houses would.

Either way, it guaranteed at least double the courtesy toward a benefactor... but—

For some reason, their hospitality was completely broken.

“Don’t turn the page yet. I haven’t finished reading.”

“No, Uncle—are you really this slow at reading? I’ve read it three times already and you’re still not done?”

“You little punk, wait till you get old. Your eyes get dim. Ah, fine. Fine. Next page.”

“Hold on. What the hell is that character? Who writes like this? Is that the ‘leave behind’ character, or the ‘send away’ character?”

“No, older brother. In context, it’s obviously ‘leave behind,’ isn’t it? You have to leave the broken-down components in the body. Sending them into the body would—hm? Wait, is it ‘send away’?”

“I thought it was ‘send away.’”

“I read it as ‘send away’ too.”

“Isn’t it ‘leave behind’?”

It was an absurd sight: the Tang Clan Lord with a book spread open, and behind him a crowd of direct-line relatives swarming in, all devouring lines of text together.

It started because of the cart of books the Heavenly Flower Sword had brought.

And among them, sitting there like a provocation, was a title no poison-arts practitioner could possibly ignore:

How to Break Past the Limits of Poison Arts

It was a book that had been enough to make even Tang Nanna stop slacking off and become obsessed, so how could the Tang Clan Lord possibly resist the temptation?

And so, without realizing it, he picked it up as if possessed and opened it.

And the Supreme Clan Lord, who’d peeked over thinking, Our benefactor has arrived—what is this clan lord doing getting distracted by a book? got captured by the lines.

And then the former clan lord and the current clan lord were both ensnared at once, so the direct-line members of both the former and current generations—who’d wandered over to see what kind of book could bewitch them—had their eyes go wide at the same time.

The hosts had brought the whole family out to greet their guest, and then—ignoring the guiding and welcoming entirely—they all stood there reading together in harmonious unity.

“...Mm.”

“...Mmm.”

“...Ahem.”

In Central Plains customs, pointing this out in a moment like this would be an outrageous act that severely damaged the host’s dignity.

So as the guest, there really wasn’t much she could do besides make her presence known with a small sound that said, We’re here.

This absurd guest reception only returned to normal because Tang Nanna—who had immediately gone inside to change clothes—suddenly wondered, Why isn’t our Qing, my Qing, coming in? and came out looking for her.

“What in the world are you all doing?! Our Qing is here—what kind of disgrace is this?!”

“Hk.” “Huh.”

Anyway—thus: the Sichuan Tang Clan!

Distance remaining to home—after stopping by Chengdu, it had increased a bit from fifteen hundred li.

Now: two thousand li.