“Zhan, hurry it up boy! I’m freezing over here!”
“Almost done Uncle Zhu!” I yell at the gruff man sitting in his carriage.
Heaving, I pull out the last bundle and toss it up onto my sack, one twice the size of my torso and stuffed with carrots. Shifting the pack, I cross the barren fields picked clean over the past few days and head to the carriage the farmer is waiting at.
“Took ya’ long enough. Wei! Come over and help me,” he grunts as he reaches down to grab the pack I face towards him, his son coming from within to help pull it up with the bit of strength his small frame has.
I roll my shoulders and gaze around. Uncle Zhu’s home looks hollow without the people that made it one, especially with nothing but empty fields surrounding it. Looking to the edge of the property, a couple of Uncle’s neighbours look to be finishing up as well, outlines of other farmhands picking the crops in the distance.
“Alright Zhan, that’s everything, get in and let’s head to the city. Can’t wait to sit by a fire in the family home and eat my wife’s food after so long,” the man sighs in anticipation as I climb into the carriage.
I roll my eyes exaggeratedly at Wei as I find space between the crops, the boy giggling, “Uncle, you’ve been saying that ever since Auntie went ahead to your family home, why don’t you ever tell her you want to eat her food to her face.”
“Yeah Dad, you always say Mom’s food doesn’t taste like Grandma’s!” The boy innocently adds in though his giggling gives him away.
“Bah! Your mother can’t take praise with grace!” He huffs, snapping the reins. “I compliment her stew once, and next thing I know, it’s stew for breakfast, lunch and dinner! For three cursed weeks! Said she was ‘perfecting the art’ like she was some culinary immortal!”
I snort at his description of the caring Auntie who always made extras of her amazing food for him.
Leaning back, I rest my eyes as Wei scrambles over to his father to steer the oxen.
Hours rumble by until dirt gives way to stone, and Wei shakes me awake. The sun previously breaking the horizon is now setting behind the city in the distance, colouring it in golden light.
Blue Poppy City, surrounded by large walls with smaller ones sectioning it into three areas. At the very center is the Long Clan’s palace, the clan that have ruled the city for… however long. I just know it’s a very long time because they like to brag about it.
Outside the compound though is then where high-class live, home to merchants, guards and the craftsmen of the city. Finally, where we’re heading is the most populous district where we ‘lesser’ peasants live, modest wooden houses with wide streets for carriages and thankfully clean. No-one wants to see what happens if a cultivator steps in something they don’t like.
Lining up in the line of carriages heading in, mostly other farmers stuffed to the brim with crops moving in for safety for winter, it takes a bit before we get to the massive gate.
Imperial guards wearing shining black armour with silver highlights, sharp spears and sheathed jians manage the flow of traffic, though quickly as there’s not much but produce to look at.
The sharp-eyed guard takes quick a look at our faces and the crop-stuffed carriage before waving us through.
The oxen pull us through the packed street. Carriages and people going in all directions, though calmly given the patrols through the streets keeping the large population in check. Passing by merchants hawking wares, we pull off the main road and go through smaller, quieter ones though not less packed until we pull into the courtyard of a larger building where oxen and cows are stabled.
I jump out as people emerge from the building and stables, fondly greeting Uncle Zhu. Wei laughs as a couple cousins his age come bounding to him.
Leaning against the carriage, I watch as the family reunion continues, at some point Auntie appearing, smiling as she leans into Uncle Zhu as he talks with who seems to be his brother.
A few minutes pass before remembers me and comes over with his wife in tow.
“Thanks a lot for your help Zhan, couldn’t deal with those damn spiritual crows without you,” he says as he hands over a jingling bag of coins.
I wince as I remember the claw and peck marks those bastards left on me as I shooed them off from the piles of harvested crop. Though I take sadistic solace in the memories of me braining the few that came too close to my shovel.
“No problem Uncle, it’s what you paid me for.” Raising the bag, I can tell from the weight it’s about enough to be his pay, but I know the couple wouldn’t short-hand me.
“And thank you for all the delicious meals, Auntie, especially the stew you made,” Uncle Zhan straightens and matches my discreet grin with narrowed eyes while his wife beams happily.
“Oh, why thank you Zhan, I couldn’t not make you food with all the work you were doing for us,” she pats my cheek fondly.
“Oh! Take this as well,” she thrusts a little pouch made of cloth into my hands. “You said you just turned 16, so this is just something sweet I whipped up for you. Good luck and I hope to see you around.” She gives a final pat before gliding away to pull her son’s cheek, the boy’s clothes somehow completely covered in mud in the five minutes since we arrived.
I grin brilliantly at Uncle Zhu as he keeps glaring at me before huffing and slapping my back, “Like I said, you did good work. If you need work in planting season, I’ll take you on as a hand again.”
My grin turns genuine and I bow to him in thanks who reciprocates with a nod, and I take that as my cue to leave. Ruffling Wei’s hair as I pass by, the boy waving goodbye, I step back out onto the packed street and shuffle away.
Nibbling the bean pastry Auntie gave, I weave through the familiar cobbled streets, dodging animals and wandering hands looking to get payday.
So, at two coins a day for 13 days that’s…
I count on my fingers, restarting once before I calculate it right.
26. With the 40 I had, that’s…66. Old Feng takes 20 every month for winter, so I can only stay for… three months.
I click my tongue at that, absently kicking a stone near the wall of the city.
That’ll leave me high and dry at the peak of winter. Breaking into the fourth stage of Body Tempering got me another coin a day, but I’ll need to ask the old man for another job.
Grumbling, I walk into the seedy bar that I’ve known for years, ready to pester an old man to make some money as the first flurries of winter start to fall.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
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Weeks of dull labour slip by with my coin purse barely heavier for it, not many jobs available with hundreds of thousands of people all stuck in the city, so all that’s left are the… less desirable jobs.
I heave up the loaded shovel of manure and toss it into the exposed hole down into the sewer, straightening with a grunt I stretch my back after tossing in hundreds of pounds of animal waste down.
The roars of the beasts clawing and fighting against the defenders on the walls became background noise a month ago once the snow started and the monsters came looking for food. Though after hearing it every year, it’s nothing special. Not to a few of the others shoveling their own piles down into the hole though, flinching at being so close to the danger.
Wiping myself off thoroughly with the provided soap and water, I leave the others to shovel their piles, most being a stage or two lower than me, and grab the coin I’m owed before leaving.
Fourth stage, took on the most physically demanding work at the orphanage and at jobs to reach the stage an average person doesn’t get to for some extra coin, and here I am, shoveling manure of all things.
Grumbling in my head, I get startled by a booming voice coming from the market I’m walking through.
“Peasants!” Looking over, I see an Imperial soldier standing above the crowd someone’s cart, a few other soldiers surrounding him and stoically keeping the crowd back who don’t need much encouragement to stay away from the men stronger than them all and holding sharp sticks.
The man in charge wearing only a slim breastplate inscribed with gold over a billowy purple hanfu and bar any other armour, blandly looks down on those listening with his piercing eyes. And by look down, I mean he’s quite literally looking down on us by standing on the carriage and tilting his face up a bit to be extra arrogant.
Great, a Long cultivator.
“The peerless cultivators of the Long clan and soldiers of the Empire have safeguarded this city, crushing beasts with impunity!” He claims with haughty pride, “However! A few of you wretches at the fourth stage or above shall be granted the honour of serving the Long clan and our glorious city, joining the skilled labourers in repairing the city walls the next time the monstrous beasts retreat with their tails between their legs.”
Most in the crowd shuffle on their feet and exchange glances with one another and the air turns heavy.
Regular peasants never hit the fourth stage, typically staggering at the third for their lives. Those doing hard labour, like me, hit the fourth, maybe the fifth, but they’re typically skilled labour, apprenticed under others.
However, the main reason everyone’s nervous is because unless you’re at the seventh stage and wearing armour, essentially an Imperial soldier, there’s a high chance for you to die on the walls much less outside them to repair them.
But… those of us of lower standing but high enough cultivations, for example us orphans, need to grab any chance they can get to make it to the next day. But I hear a lot about those that don’t come back so that’s a hard no from me.
“Grovel in gratitude, for the patriarch himself deigns to offer you seven coins a day, more than you peasants deserve.”
Uh oh. Money.
“If you wish to bathe in the Long clan’s generosity, crawl to the nearest guard tower on the walls at dawn,” he ends before dropping down and walking off with his squad, the crowd parting before him as no one wishes to catch the cultivator’s ire.
I shouldn’t do this. The monks always say that greed always leads to damnation.
But they always ask for alms with their sermons…
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So much for monk wisdom, damnation is just waking up stupid early to hang off a wall with a pot.
This is stupid.
I repeat the it in my head like a mantra as I scrape some of the clay like material out of a pot and lather it over the crack in the wall. I take a moment to watch in fascination as the wall somehow molds the clay to the exact same texture and shape as the stone, making it seem like nothing happened, never gets old seeing something so mystical.
“Zhan, you still alive?” A voice says from above the wall where he’s safe, unlike me.
“For now,” I wearily respond. “Pull me up a bit.”
The man does so, the ropes keeping the plank I’m sitting on suspended over the side of the wall pulling me up through the pulleys to a higher point in the crack.
All along the wall, and presumably the other four walls, are other workers suspended over the wall repairing the cracks formed from the relentless waves of monstrous beasts.
The last wave died off sometime in the afternoon yesterday, though if you looked long enough at the forest line kilometers away you could see shifting shadows. Luckily there’s only been two deaths!
…that I know of.
“Oh no,” the man pulling me from the wall mutters as I hear the faint ringing of a bell.
I glance sideways and spot a flock of monstrous birds dipping below the wall’s edge, diving toward the wall beside us.
Everyone stops working and we watch in silence as some of the beasts are struck down by arrows or retreat to the sky. But a cluster of the beasts raise away from the wall, surrounding something I can barely make out before they drop it.
A man, or what’s left of him falls from the sky, vanishing behind the wall before he lands.
I grit my teeth as the bells slowly fade away, the flock either dead or gone and we grimly get back to work.
“Hmm?” Looking up, the crack goes up higher and veers to the side, but oddly the crack looks like it skips two of the large bricks making up the wall, leaving them untouched before continuing.
Shrugging and about to continue patching, I catch something shift out the corner of my eye.
“Liu!” I hiss as I grab the trowel tight, “Pull me up!”
“Wha-“
An eye opens in midair, right where the crack should be.
“Now Liu!” My voice cracks as the air shimmers and the head of the monstrous beast emerges, a grotesque thing that can distantly be called a chameleon. It bares its razor-sharp teeth and flicks its tongue, clawed feet sharp and ready to cut me open.
Liu finally gets the message, and the chair gets pulled up at a fast pace, but that’s what it was waiting for as it hisses and starts scrambling towards my rising chair.
I hear other screams ring out, I don’t know if they saw it or there’s more, but I don’t care as I scream at Liu to hurry up.
I grab the near empty pot and hurl it at the monster, but it goes short. The beast lets out an unnatural hiss as it scrambles above me, trying to intercept my lift. I scream myself hoarse as the monster half my size bites down at my head but I twist just in time.
The chair keeps rising, but the monster’s too close, too many claws, too many teeth, so I use the only weapon I have and jam the trowel into its eye. It shrieks and drops its full weight onto the chair, making the wood groan and the rope jerk to a halt, hearing Liu struggling above me.
“Gah!” I cry out as it lands a clawed foot onto my leg and clamps down.
Pushing away the pain for adrenaline fueled anger, I roar as I pull out the trowel and slam it in again, deeper. It lets out a croaking hiss, but its still doesn’t die. Not yet. Beasts don’t die as easy as humans and they have even more strength than those on the same stage, much less higher as it proves it by ripping its head away, wrenching the trowel from my grip.
Before it can spot my arm and bite, I drop my elbow into its snout. No real damage but hopefully enough to stun it but its not enough as I see it open its mouth and going for my torso-
Thunk thunk
Two arrows appear in, punching straight through its scales, one to the heart and the other the brain, killing it immediately.
The panic subsiding a bit with the beast staying limp within my lap, I release a hiss and start feeling the pain of having three claws in one’s leg, the lizard still stubbornly clinging to me on the ride up the last few meters to the top.
Up top I get greeted by half a dozen sharp spears firmly pointed in my direction held by the guards stationed on the wall.
One takes a firm step forward and uncaring of me, plunges his spear into the corpse’s remaining eye. Confirming its dead they all relax and lower their spears, behind the cluster of armoured soldiers I can see Liu’s pale face gaining some colour once he spots me alive, if not uninjured, as the soldier pulls the corpse off my chair and the claws go with it as well.
I let out a groan of pain and slam my hands over the bleeding holes in my leg and Liu gets a chance to come forward and help me out the chair.
With nothing trying to kill me, I can pick out the bells ringing along the wall, dying out soon after I notice. Looking to the side, I can see other clusters of soldiers surrounding the other pulleys, most of those that went down seem fine, but I can see a few that look half-dead and a couple empty or broken seats.
“All workers off the wall!!” The voice crashes like thunder. A soldier, likely the commander, bellows out from the central tower on the wall, one a good half kilometer away from us and still able to make my chest rumble from its power.
His order gets a response by the roars and rumbling of thousands of monstrous beasts deciding to restart their siege of the city.
With Liu supporting my weight, we push through the bodies of workers rushing to get off the wall and making way for the lines of soldiers heading back up to defend the city.
The wave is at full blast once we’re a hundred meters away from the wall, maybe even beyond the usual as the roars and screams sound far louder than usual. Thankfully they left a pair of soldiers to take us to the apothecary haphazardly built in a cleared square for us peasants, which is of course filled to the gills, but the mere presence of the soldiers gets them scrambling to make space and me into a bed.
Last I see is Liu’s face as I pass out from blood loss on a hay bed.
