Chapter 141: Better to Be a Sect Slave Than a Dead Rogue

Upon hearing at least some good news from the captain, everyone immediately perked up.

However, An turned around and traced the Qi flows originating from the Pure Sky artifact.

When he turned back, he noticed the captain staring intently at him, his eyes fixed on him.

“We need your help repairing it.” The captain opened his palm and showed everyone the sphere.

Before An could say anything, the captain activated it.

A projection immediately appeared in the air, displaying a series of images.

The first several dozen frames showed moments from the first attack. They showed An standing in front of the enormous fallen Pure Sky, shaped like a tuning fork, and recording the runes in his book.

The next scene shifted to today's attack. The images showed him studying the engine itself, specifically the runes on the surface of the protective barrier behind which mountains of spirit stones were stored.

“As it happens, you're the only rune master among the surviving crew. You have to repair the artifact. I believe it- no. I know you can do it... All our lives depend on it...” After deactivating the sphere, he crushed it in his hand, destroying it along with all the recordings.

“In return, you can ask for anything you want. Even if I don't currently have it, I promise that once we reach the nearest fort, you'll receive whatever you ask for...”

An stared into the captain's eyes without revealing any emotion while simultaneously reading his true feelings.

‘People really are dangerous... Dealing with a Golden Core cultivator is incredibly risky when you're this weak, even if he's injured. Especially when he's clearly plotting something...’ He could sense the tangled mess of emotions brewing inside the captain, enough to make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

Anger was mixed with reluctance, which gave way to greed and panic, all culminating in a warped sense of hope. Knowing that the captain himself understood that his life was hanging by a thread, An realized that all those emotions could push this man into doing something utterly desperate or sinister.

‘Eh... I have no choice. I've already decided to stay with them... Besides, if things become too dangerous, I'll simply hide, and even this captain, especially in his current state, won't be able to track me.’

After thinking it over, An nodded. “All right. I'll try to repair the runes around the artifact... But I don't know how long it might take.”

“Captain! You shouldn't trust him! We don't even know who he is!” Su Mei stood up, but Old Mo finally decided to intervene and grabbed her hand, shaking his head as he tried to calm her down.

“I agree with Young Master Su.” Feng Min nodded while looking at Su Mei, but continued in a condescending tone, speaking with arrogance and authority.

“But we have no choice. Without a working Pure Sky, we're all finished... He has to start working immediately.”

Hearing that no one supported her, Su Mei wrinkled her nose and abruptly turned away, walking farther from the group.

“Please forgive my Young Master Su. Today has been too... eventful. I apologize!” Bowing slightly to the captain, Old Mo followed after Su Mei.

….

Ignoring the outburst and understanding perfectly well that everyone was still tense after everything that had happened today, the captain turned toward the nearest group of people, many of them ship workers tending to those with physical and psychological injuries.

“Sergeant Oluye!” The captain shouted toward the workers.

A head immediately appeared above the crowd, followed by the rest of the man's body.

The man looked to be around seventy years old, with a slightly crooked back and neatly shaved gray hair covering his head.

The old man quickly made his way toward the captain as best he could and bowed. “Sergeant Oluye, reporting! Awaiting orders, Captain!”

The captain nodded and gave him an order. “Escort Mr.-”

He pointed toward An with an open hand, expecting to hear his name, but when he saw that the young man sitting before him had no intention of introducing himself, the captain sighed.

“Escort this young man to the Pure Sky artifact. While he works on the repairs, your task is to help him with anything he asks for. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!” Sergeant Oluye replied immediately.

‘Hm... so you really are plotting something bad after all...’ All this time, An hadn't taken his eyes off the captain, specifically his Qi flows.

He could sense numerous negative emotions directed at him, constantly being suppressed by the captain himself.

An understood that if the captain hadn't been so badly injured, he wouldn't have asked for help so amicably. Either he had been forced into it, or, if he had refused, this same captain would most likely have gotten rid of him without a second thought.

Standing up and waving his hand, An gestured for the old man to come closer. “Let's go, old man Oluye.”

“Captain.” Bowing once more, Sergeant Oluye hurried after An, grumbling as he followed.

“I'm not an old man. I'm a sergeant.”

….

After waiting until An and old man had moved far enough away, Feng Min frowned.

“I'm not sure he can be trusted. Even putting his origins aside, his rudeness and arrogance know no bounds. Does he think that just because he has a device hiding his true strength from us, he can behave however he wants? I won't tolerate such disrespect...”

Gripping the hilt even tighter, he tried to calm himself, realizing that his pent-up emotions were getting the better of him.

Captain Bongromonte gave Min a sidelong glance. “Don't worry. As soon as he's no longer needed...”

In a quiet, calculating voice, the captain brought Feng Min's emotions back under control, and the latter immediately smirked while looking toward the ship.

….

Walking ahead, An turned his head back. “Aren't you too old to work on a ship like this?”

The sergeant snorted. “Old? Who are you calling old? I've still got plenty of strength left!”

After finishing his boast, the old man continued in a quieter voice.

“Though my body really does remind me of my age, I'm still a cultivator at the peak stage of Qi Condensation. So I manage just fine. And besides! One cruise's salary is enough to live it up for several months in the most expensive brothel in Shen-Long City! Ha!”

“Shen-Long City?” An glanced at the bird walking beside him.

“Huh? How can you not know the main trade center of the central region? A city that, on paper, is neutral territory between the demonic and righteous forces? A city built to contain the conflict between the three factions? A city whose foundation was first laid more than a thousand years ago? No? You've really never heard of it?”

Shaking his head as though disappointed by the young man's lack of worldly knowledge, he continued. “I'm starting to doubt more and more whether you really have what it takes to repair the Pure Sky, young man...”

An really had never heard of Shen-Long City.

He didn't know about any cities within the central region of the Beast Lands at all.

All the books in the sect that contained any information about those places only described the dangers. Not a single one mentioned thousand-year-old cities.

Approaching the ship, An pushed off the ground and floated upward. Turning around, he looked at the old man still standing below. “Need some help?”

“Ha! Even if you're obviously much higher than me in cultivation, that doesn't mean you can look down on this old man!”

Taking a golden rope from his spatial bracelet, which covered almost his entire forearm, he swung it and threw one end over the side of the ship.

“Hoo! HA!” Bracing his feet against the hull, he began climbing upward like a mountaineer.

….

An decided not to wait for him and almost instantly reached the stern, directly above the Pure Sky artifact.

‘It's not certain that I'll be able to repair this enormous metal tuning fork just by fixing the rune chains... If the problem lies within the artifact itself, in its structure, then all my efforts will be for nothing... Still, there is a chance to study the entire chain of runes up close, down to the smallest details.’

“Cluck!” Baldi, flapping his wings at hummingbird speed despite his enormous weight, did everything he could not to fall.

Slowly but surely, he managed to make it up to the ship's side.

‘I never thought chickens could fly.’ An sent out a burst of Qi, wrapped it around the bird, and pulled him several hundred meters toward himself, almost the entire length of the ship.

“This is the first time I've seen you fly.” Looking at the disheveled and exhausted bird, An smiled.

“Baawk…” With his tongue hanging out and breathing like a heavy smoker, Baldi went limp like jelly across the stern when An released him.

“Hoo…” At that moment, Old Oluye finally caught up with them and hauled himself over the side.

Bending over and bracing his hands on his knees, he tried his best to control his heavy breathing. “Ahem! That wasn't even that difficult... I c-could do that a hundred times, back and fo-forth!”

“You'd only need to do it twice to spit your heart out, old man.” Looking almost across the entire ship at the exhausted old man, An shook his head, then sat down in the lotus position and took out his rune book.

Ignoring the jab directed at him, the old man slowly approached the two of them and, without hiding his curiosity, looked over An's shoulder into the open book.

“Huh! You really are a rune master!”

“No. I don't have any official status related to runes, only alchemy.” An shook his head while speaking to the old man and simultaneously studying the runes in his book and on the artifact.

“Heh, you really are a sect disciple.” The old man rubbed his nose with a knowing smile and sat beside him, taking out his pipe and a small pouch.

“What do you mean?” An became interested in what exactly had revealed his former affiliation with a sect.

Without hurrying, the old man packed tobacco into his pipe and replied.

“Only sects grant official statuses related to the Non-Combat Paths. Even these distinctions are used mostly among sects and groups closely connected to them. Apprentice, Practitioner, Master...”

Clenching the pipe between his teeth, he lit a small stick with his Qi and used it to light his tobacco.

“Among ordinary or wandering cultivators, and even among most mid-sized clans and families, it's customary to divide masters by rank, again because they have dealings with ordinary cultivators. For example, if you're an alchemist and can prepare first-rank pills, then you're a first-rank master, and so on... Well, you get the idea.”

Suddenly thinking about something, An turned toward the old man, who was already smoking like a locomotive, and asked. “Have you ever studied runes?”

The old man merely shook his head.

“When I was young and served the clan itself, I was given a chance to study the art of talismans. But the clan charged outrageous fees for materials and lessons, eh... In the end, I only managed to learn bits and pieces about the craft, wherever I could.” He sighed with a tinge of sadness and even a slight hint of anger.

Remembering old scars, the old man took another long drag from his pipe.

‘Hm, I thought he'd at least be able to tell me roughly how rune rankings are divided... After studying them for so many years, I still don't know what criteria are used to divide them into ranks, or what the corresponding statuses are, like in a sect...’

Even while in the sect, An had never heard any official information about rune rankings, unlike alchemy.

Although there were plenty of books about runes in the Scripture Pavilion, he hadn't seen any point in spending time on them because his mind had been occupied with something completely different back then.

“Was everything really that bad under the clan?” Not getting what he needed, An changed to another subject that interested him just as much.

“Ha! Working for a clan is like slavery! Oh...” Raising his hands with the pipe between his teeth, the old man got carried away, but then suddenly remembered the mark on An's neck and fell silent.

“Don't worry. It's not some forbidden subject for me. Go on.” An smirked without taking his eyes off the book, occasionally glancing at the toppled Pure Sky in front of him.

The old man nodded, and the young man before him grew in his estimation.

Adjusting his pipe and taking a deep drag, he continued.

“For people without support or great luck, the chance of entering the path of cultivation is almost zero... Only people like me, whose families have served clans for generations, get the chance to begin cultivating by selling their souls and bodies to a clan... In the end, you're nothing more than a puppet without an opinion of your own.”

An suddenly interrupted him. “Strange. When I was in the sect, I saw many wandering cultivators who lived and worked for the sect.”

Switching the pipe to other corner of his mouth, the old man almost laughed.

“Worked for the sect? Ha! They don't work! They serve! They're no different from my situation. Only they serve families connected to the sect. More likely, they belong to the family of some Deputy Leader of your sect.”

Taking the pipe from his teeth, he looked over the ship.

“All wandering cultivators are servants of clans. If someone finds out that you're not of noble birth, that you're a cultivator who doesn't belong to anyone... First they'll torture you until you tell them where you obtained or found your technique. Then they'll execute you publicly in the square, in front of everyone... First tearing out your sense organs, sometimes even cutting off your genitals regardless of your sex, and finally cutting off all your limbs while keeping you alive. And only after they take your heart, that still-beating heart, will they finally cut off your head...”

Clenching the pipe, he only stopped when he heard the wood crack.

Realizing that he'd nearly ruined his expensive pipe because of his emotions, the old man began grumbling to himself.

‘What the fuck? How can there be such total control? I don't remember anything like this from the novel- From the novel?’

Horrified by what he'd heard, An completely forgot about the runes and looked at the old man, but suddenly froze.

Just mentioning the novel made a cold knot tighten in his nonexistent gut. He felt as though an instinct deep within was telling him that something was wrong.

Immersed in his thoughts, he went over everything he could remember about the novel. Each time he recalled a part or fragment of the story, nothing strange happened.

However, the moment he pieced all those memories together into one coherent story. He immediately felt that something was definitely wrong.

Something deep inside him was trying to tell him a vital truth, but he couldn't figure out what it was or quite grasp the thought.