Life as a Rogue Cultivator

Chapter 308:

Having walked far enough, Liu Xiaolou glanced back at the estate down at the foot of the mountain. From up high, it looked busy; people coming and going like ants. He wondered to himself: just how big is this war between Mount Maling and Mount Qingyuan going to get? Would they start rogue independent cultivators from other places too?As he mulled it over, he started paying closer attention to his surroundings. After covering another six li, he sensed some activity up ahead, so he leaped up to a high cliff to get a better look.

Sure enough, up ahead on the mountain path he spotted two guys. Definitely cultivators from Mount Maling. They blocking the road and shaking down anyone coming from the other direction. Anyone who showed signs of cultivation usually got detained by the them.

Since this spot was fairly far from the estate, the two Mount Maling cultivators were not escorting people back one by one. Instead, they were holding them until they had a group and sending them back together. By now, they had already rounded up five people. It was hard to tell where these rogue cultivators came from, but all of them looked crushed and miserable.

Liu Xiaolou figured it must’ve been pretty much the same back when the Zhanglong Sect had dragged him into their war all those years ago.

He smile to himself, feeling a rush of emotions.

He fished a straw hat and a face scarf out of his Qiankun Pouch, slapped them on without breaking stride. Then he headed straight toward them.

“Hold it right there!” one of them barked, pointing at Liu Xiaolou.

Liu Xiaolou had already sized them up. One was at the tenth layer, the other at the seventh, about the same as the old man and the burly fellow he had seen earlier. It seemed Mount Maling always used the same setup when rounding up rogue cultivators in the surrounding hills. A tenth-layer cultivator in charge, backed by someone in the late stage of Qi Refinement. With that lineup, plus the weight of Mount Maling’s name, it was usually more than enough.

If they happened to run into a Foundation Establishment cultivator, most would understand the situation. Out of respect for Mount Maling as a reputable orthodox sect, they generally would not make things too hard for the people carrying out the orders.

But Liu Xiaolou was not “most people.” He came from Wulong Mountain. And the way he did things was carved into his bones and completely different.

Because of that, these two bastards were about to have very bad day.

After a round of back-and-forth, Liu Xiaolou had secured the moral high ground. Here he was, a Foundation Establishment senior, getting forcibly drafted and outright insulted by two clueless punks who didn’t know who they were messing with. Naturally, that justified a bit of light punishment.

While handing out that “light punishment,” and since he could not be sure who any of the others really were, the remaining five people present were knocked out as well.

From this single round of discipline, he came away with 16 spirit stones, three bottles of pills, one low-grade mid-tier artifact, the Yellow Sand Umbrella, and nine other low-tier artifacts.

Liu Xiaolou handled things with efficiency in mind. He’d go through whatever steps were necessary, but he skipped any extra moves or chit-chat. Bottom line: get it done quick and get the hell out of there.

Generally speaking, when major orthodox sects went to war, they did not conscript cultivators at the Foundation Establishment level. Still, there were plenty of exceptions. Take the war between the Zhanglong Sect and Gengsang Cave back in the day. At the start, they only conscripted rogue cultivators in the Qi Refinement stage. Foundation Establishment rogues were not easy to recruit, and even harder to command once fighting broke out. But as the conflict dragged on and losses mounted, those concerns went out the window. When it came time to conscript Foundation Establishment cultivators, they did it all the same, with Golden Core elders personally overseeing things from the rear, driving the Foundation Establishment cultivators forward into battle.

Liu Xiaolou had also heard Su Xi mention that one year, when the Weiyu Soaring Crane Sect went to war with the Beiman Sect, both ranked among the top ten sects in the realm, each side conscripted dozens of Foundation Establishment cultivators.

So yeah, you can’t get too greedy in this game. He’d already scored big twice by slipping out of conscription. Twice was plenty. If Mount Maling caught on, even if they did not send a Golden Core elder, just dispatching an inner disciple at the mid or late Foundation Establishment stage would probably leave him in serious trouble.

So instead of pushing his luck and lining up for a third round of getting drafted, he just turned south and kept moving.

To the south was the Qingyuan Sect. If Mount Maling was conscripting independent cultivators, there was no reason Qingyuan would not do the same. So he figured he might as well leave the third and fourth rounds to Qingyuan.

In just one day, Liu Xiaolou blasted south over three hundred li, pushing like his ass was on fire. After all, this was three hundred li of interlinked mountains and rivers, cut through with ravines and gullies.

Following the North River southward, he eventually reached a place called Zhenyang Gorge. There, at the mouth of the gorge, he finally spotted Qingyuan Sect cultivators manning a checkpoint.

After watching for a long while, he cut down a few stalks of bamboo, lashed together a rough little raft, and tossed it into the river. He stepped aboard and let the current carry him toward the mouth of Zhenyang Gorge.

The checkpoint that the Qingyuan Sect had set up at Zhenyang Gorge was no small affair. They had posted a full six cultivators there to intercept rogue cultivators drifting down the river. Two of them were leaders at the peak of the Qi Refinement stage, backed by four more in the late Qi Refinement. It was a seriously strong lineup.

Zhenyang Gorge lay squarely within Qingyuan Mountain’s territory, so no cultivator passing through dared to openly resist. Everyone obediently surrendered and was herded onto a tall bamboo platform built over the river, where they waited until enough people had gathered to be taken away together.

When it came to conscripting rogue cultivators, the Qingyuan Sect was even more heavy-handed than the Maling Sect. Aside from letting a few cultivators from the Luofu Sect go, they pressed almost everyone else into service. That included most rogue cultivators and even quite a few disciples from prominent Lingnan families. Out of ten people they stopped, nine were taken. By now, the bamboo platform over the river held twenty or thirty people.

Liu Xiaolou, standing on his tiny bamboo raft, drifted into all of this head-on.

The Qingyuan Sect might be overbearing, but at least in their words they were far more polite than the Maling Sect, putting on a show of proper manners.

“Easy there, fellow Daoist. Please come over and have a cup of tea.”

Just like that, Liu Xiaolou’s bamboo raft got hooked by a few long poles with metal claws, yanked right up to the base of their stilted bamboo platform. Before he could even figure out what was going on, he found a teacup in his hands, the tea inside still steaming.

“Where are you coming from, fellow Daoist?”

“And where are you headed?”

“Which sect do you belong to, if any? Who are you affiliated with?”

“Do you have any past ties with the Maling Sect?”

Once the questions were finished, someone snatched the teacup from his hand. Having gotten the information they wanted, they finally dropped the polite act and showed their true colors.

“Take off the straw hat. And the face covering too. Don’t bring those filthy habits of you rogue cultivators in here. You hear me?”

Someone gave him a shove at the waist. “Up you go.”

Liu Xiaolou said, “I’ve got places to be, so I’ll pass on coming aboard.”

The other man replied, “Sorry, that’s not up to you. Get up there. Hey, what, you dare resist, fellow Daoist? You need to understand the situation. Qingyuan Sect and Maling Sect are about to go to war. Right now we’re conscripting every cultivator we can find to join the fight. If you keep being stubborn, there are consequences I’d rather not spell out. I told you to take off the straw hat and the face covering. Why aren’t you listening? Oof!”

With the “moral high ground” firmly in his pocket, Liu Xiaolou didn’t waste another second. He acted on the spot.

He threw out the Abyssal Blackstone Formation Disk first, trapping the four late–Qi Refinement cultivators inside and leaving them to entertain themselves with illusions. That left the two cultivators at the peak of Qi Refinement. Their positions were less than ideal. One was stationed on the raised bamboo platform, while the other was farther away, on a small boat about thirty feet off. That gave Liu Xiaolou the opening he needed to break them quickly.

He dealt with the one on the bamboo platform first, binding him directly with the Mysterious True Cord, hauling him in close, and sealing his Qi Sea. By the time the other realized something was wrong and leapt over from the small boat, he ran straight into the freed Mysterious True Cord. He was tied up mid-charge and slammed down onto the bamboo platform, making it sway violently. Liu Xiaolou sealed his Qi Sea as well.

A dead silence fell over the stilted bamboo platform. The twenty-odd cultivators who'd been stopped here from all over stared at Liu Xiaolou. Didn’t have a clue what to say.

Liu Xiaolou pointed at the crowd and bellowed, “I am a Foundation Establishment cultivator, and you people dared to conscript me. That is an unforgivable insult. If I don’t give you at least a light punishment today, how the hell am I supposed to face the rest of the cultivation world? Now, all of you, put down the bags you’re carrying. And your magical tools too. Put them down.”

Someone finally snapped out of it and tried to argue. “Senior, we were also conscripted by the Qingyuan Sect. We didn’t—”

Liu Xiaolou had no interest in listening. He knocked the man out with a single slap. “Everyone, put your bags and magical tools down. Right at your feet.”

Someone let out a yell, and the whole crowd scattered like startled chickens. Liu Xiaolou was still busy keeping the formation under control and never expected these guys to bolt so damn fast. He only managed to snag five or six with the Mysterious True Cord before the rest vanished. He couldn’t help feeling a pang of regret over the ones that got away.

A short while later, he stowed the Abyssal Blackstone Formation disk. The four Qingyuan Sect cultivators it had trapped, all late-stage Qi Refinement, were sprawled all over the place. No fight left in them at all.

Liu Xiaolou wasted no time looting them. All told, he scored over 30 spirit stones, four mid-grade magical tools, 12 low-grade ones, seven bottles of assorted spiritual pills, nine pieces of spiritual material, and a pile of gold and silver.

Once he was done, he hurried ashore. In the rush, he changed into a fresh set of clothes, then kept running south.

He figured he’d swing south around Qingyuan Mountain for a bit and see if there were any more “opportunities.” Building up the sect’s resources this way was actually working out pretty well.

By the time he reached the southern foothills of Qingyuan Mountain, dusk had already fallen. He was just starting to scout around for a likely spot when he suddenly felt something off behind him.

Liu Xiaolou’s instincts screamed at him. He shot forward nearly ten feet in a burst of speed. A long arrow slammed into the spot where he had just been standing, burying itself deep in the mud. Its fletching trembled violently, quivering against the ground.