Real Person Lingxiao. Fairy Shuangmiao. Daoist Lord Sifang. Wuji Zi… This was way too old-fashioned.
Qin Shu checked the gift lists, scanning the long string of grandiose titles used by the human cultivators, and found himself wanting to laugh.
The servants were even more stereotypical. They seemed as if they had stepped straight out of several thousand years ago and had never seen a smartphone in their lives. Not only were their clothes and appearance extraordinarily old-fashioned, even the way they treated Qin Shu resembled the attitude of masters toward low-ranking servants.
The reason was simple. Qin Shu was not a yao, much less an aquatic yao. There was no possibility that he belonged to the Dragon Palace’s legitimate retinue. Judging by appearances, he was nothing more than an ordinary laborer without background or connections, so his status was lower than theirs.
That was right. Even bootlickers came in ranks.
After seeing how Fengdu operated, Qin Shu was almost numb to this sort of thing. He was not particularly surprised. If anything, he simply found the entire setup hilariously archaic, and that only made him more curious about where this whole collection of ancient-fashioned human cultivators had come from.
Ordinarily, they made no noise whatsoever in cultivation circles. Their names were absent from ancient records and historical texts. Even after the resurgence of spiritual energy, they had shown virtually no activity.
And yet Dragon Mother considered them honored guests. Interesting…
When dealing with this sort of stereotypical old-fashioned servant, Qin Shu saw no reason to hold himself back. He carried the boxes of gifts into a small side chamber near the main hall. While he was at it, he stole several glances into the central hall. The lavishness nearly blinded him.
Severe light pollution. Perhaps in an effort to emphasize true-dragon legitimacy and the Dragon Palace’s wealth, the overwhelming majority of the interior decoration was made from pure gold: golden bricks, golden pillars, golden thrones, golden dining tables. Even the little dishes and tea served to the guests had glittering flakes of gold scattered over them.
A thousand-year-old clam spirit did not escape either. Its shell had been painted with a layer of gold. It sat there with its gilded shell opened wide, exposing the clam flesh within, while a soft cushion threaded with golden silk had been laid over the flesh.
Fairy Shuangmiao was currently seated gracefully upon it. She lived up to her title, beautiful as an immortal, her demeanor distant and cool. A white jade wine cup rested in her hand, and whenever she chatted or drank with the other guests, she lightly covered her mouth with her flowing sleeve.
Alive. Cultivator. Old-fashioned. Not an evil cultivator.
Qin Shu’s gaze swept over every human present. Using See Through, he rapidly gathered what information he could, then turned his attention to the yao cultivators. His eyes immediately paused on Liu Yang Yang.
That guy was already happily eating.
Once ox yao transformed into human form, every one of them became broad, muscular men or imposing, powerfully built women. With Liu Yang Yang’s physique mixed among them, he blended in almost perfectly. Add some wine and side dishes and there was practically nothing out of place.
The only flaw was that Liu Yang Yang still looked a little nervous. His shoulders were not relaxed enough, his control over his aura was mediocre, and occasionally dragon qi leaked out.
After all, this man had only just had dragon bone implanted.
When the operation finished, Liu Yang Yang’s spine had stubbornly glowed gold straight through his flesh for half an hour. Together with Chen Shui, he had essentially become a walking lamp. No number of layers of clothing had helped.
Pei Zhao had taught them how to suppress the dragon qi, but not even half a day had passed yet. Liu Yang Yang clearly had not mastered it.
This was the Dragon Palace. Occasionally sensing dragon qi was perfectly normal, but if it kept leaking out intermittently, eventually someone would notice something wrong and trace the source directly to Liu Yang Yang.
Qin Shu thought for a moment, then pulled Yuanbao out and sent a voice transmission. “Yuanbao, see Liu Yang Yang? Go find him secretly. Don’t let anyone else see you. If his smell gets too strong, bite him. Oh, and give me a live broadcast of what’s happening in the main hall.”
Real-time broadcasting was apparently too troublesome. Yuanbao crawled slowly down from his palm with obvious reluctance.
Qin Shu raised an eyebrow. “Do this properly and I’ll give you an entire jar of canned gu insects when we get home.”
The words had barely left his mouth before Yuanbao shot away like lightning. Less than half a second later, it landed in Liu Yang Yang’s hair, nearly making Liu Yang Yang choke on his tea in fright.
Fortunately, what had dropped into his hair was not some ordinary centipede. It was the centipede he knew better than almost any other.
“Liu Yang Yang says, ‘Brother Qin, I love you.’”
With food dangling in front of it, Yuanbao became unbelievably enthusiastic and immediately began transmitting Liu Yang Yang’s muttering in real time.
Qin Shu: …
Qin Shu nagged Yuanbao like a helpless father. “You don’t need to tell me every single thing he says. Just stay there and don’t let him eat too much. See the pretty woman across from you? Remember her? That’s Chang Liu Yi. If anything uncontrollable happens in the hall, don’t come looking for me first. Go directly to her and explain the situation. Got it?”
Qin Shu gave instruction after instruction until everything was perfectly clear. Only then did he feel comfortable leaving Yuanbao in the main hall.
Dragon Mother had not yet appeared. She should still be in the sleeping quarters. Liang Ming Yue’s child was there as well. They would have to wait until the banquet officially began before approaching and investigating.
Qin Shu did not rush. First, he rapidly finished his assigned tasks. Then, carrying the wine and small dishes Huang Yu Yuan had secretly sent over, he ducked behind an artificial rock formation near the warehouse with several of the old-fashioned servants.
Time to slack off.
The moment there was food and alcohol, Qin Shu’s status in their eyes rose dramatically. At last, they were willing to strike up conversations with him, chatting casually and boasting about everything under the sun. This was exactly the sort of thing Qin Shu excelled at.
After pretending to drink while actually getting several servants drunk, and somehow becoming sworn brothers with them in a muddled imitation of the Peach Garden oath, he managed to dig up quite a lot of useful information.
Where their masters lived. What techniques they practiced. Which mountains and cultivation grounds belonged to them. Their income sources, interests, and connections to Dragon Mother. Everyone was afraid their own master would be outshone by the others, and with alcohol loosening their tongues, the boasting became increasingly unrestrained.
Eventually, Qin Shu had another realization: Dragon Mother really was not a good person.
Every human cultivator invited here was an important business partner.
Daoist Lord Sifang refined pills. Real Person Lingxiao forged artifacts. Fairy Shuangmiao was an expert in formations and talismans. And the cultivator with the outrageously arrogant title of Wuji Zi was apparently an extremely accomplished divination master, personally performing fresh divinations for Dragon Mother and her trusted subordinates at every birthday banquet.
The cultivators supplied pills, artifacts, and similar goods, while the Dragon Palace supplied the raw materials. And where did those materials come from? From yao cultivators. Their bodies were treasures from head to toe.
Qin Shu listened as the drunken servants casually discussed “goods,” yet they spoke about the yao cultivators used as “goods” as though those beings belonged to an entirely different category from Dragon Mother herself. They enthusiastically debated which type of yao core produced the best Rejuvenation Pills. Qin Shu had to work very hard on his expression management to keep from frowning.
Their acceptance of it was astonishing. Unreasonable. They barely seemed human themselves.
Though, historically speaking, perhaps that made sense. In more ancient eras, humans themselves had been divided into commodities of different grades. Even these servants counted as property, or more precisely, as things owned by their so-called immortals.
Qin Shu stopped touching the exquisite snacks. He had lost his appetite, but he made no attempt to change their minds.
These people had been born and raised inside isolated cultivation compounds. They were hereditary servants and had never truly walked through the modern human world. They might not even possess ID cards. No matter what opinions Qin Shu tried to explain, they would probably sound like fantasy.
So he could only blend in. He fabricated a false background loosely connected to Daoist Xu and took the opportunity to extract every scrap of information he could.
The servant belonging to Daoist Lord Sifang provided the most crucial clue. During the past six months, the Dragon Palace had ordered three times its usual quantity of pills, and the selection was unusually broad.
Rejuvenation Pills for healing wounds and illness. Spirit-Restoring Pills for replenishing spiritual energy. Three Purities Pills for repairing soul power. And one particularly extravagant hallucinogenic pill called Three Thousand Worlds.
The name alone sounded expensive, and its function matched it perfectly. After swallowing the pill, the user would, for the duration of its effects, seem to live through lives within three thousand worlds, traveling through them and experiencing them. Supposedly the illusion was so realistic that even the strongest soul cultivator would enter a prolonged daze after taking one and struggle to distinguish truth from falsehood.
Its greatest use was helping cultivators near a breakthrough gain insight and cross bottlenecks, allowing them to wander through mortal realms and immortal paradises without leaving home, experience lives that did not belong to them, and draw understanding from those experiences.
No actual risk of near-death, yet still a chance to break through one’s bottleneck. It was easy to imagine how popular Three Thousand Worlds was on the market. Qin Shu tentatively asked about the price and discovered that one pill cost enough to buy an apartment in Jiangcheng.
An absurd super-luxury item. And Dragon Mother had purchased one hundred and twenty-eight pills from Daoist Lord Sifang this year alone.
The strangely specific number existed because Daoist Lord Sifang had opened his furnace repeatedly this year. He had nearly worked himself to death from exhaustion, and even then, that was all he had managed to produce.
“Aiya, Her Ladyship still thought it was too little. The divine official she sent kept insisting our cultivation ground was hiding stock. We explained it over and over, but they wouldn’t believe us,” the drunken servant said with the tone of someone complaining while simultaneously bragging. “I bet inviting my master here this time is partly to shake him down again. Pick him up and give him a few good shakes. Maybe a couple more Three Thousand Worlds pills will fall out! Hahahahaha!”
Everyone laughed along, and the conversation gradually became more daring. Eventually, they even began speculating about Dragon Mother’s human appearance. None of these servants had ever personally seen her, but that did not stop them from imagining in elaborate detail: a beautiful woman past fifty, an aloof, icy beauty… Dangerous topic. Extremely dangerous.
Qin Shu’s eyelid twitched. He immediately withdrew from the drunken servants’ slacking circle. If Lady Ma overheard this, all of them would probably be beaten until their front teeth disappeared.
The intelligence gathering had been a lengthy form of spiritual torture, but Qin Shu had obtained one very interesting lead. That made it worthwhile.
“Three Thousand Worlds…” he murmured, hurrying back toward the main guard contingent while continuing to think.
Dragon Mother probably had not bought all those pills merely to break through bottlenecks or improve her cultivation.
Judging from the pattern of her increasingly extreme behavior, there was another possibility: she was addicted.
And addiction meant weakness.
Someone who remained trapped in hallucinations for too long would eventually lose the ability to distinguish reality from illusion. Even a god was no exception.
While he was deep in thought, Lady Ma suddenly approached without making a sound and slapped him twice on the back. Thump! Thump!
Qin Shu had already noticed her coming. He took the opportunity to pretend he had been startled. Coughing twice, he smoothly let the heavy gift chest in his hands slip free, and Lady Ma caught it effortlessly with one hand.
“Pay attention. What are you spacing out for?” Her tone was stern. She turned and gently set the gift on the ground, yet her expression was much softer than Qin Shu had expected. “You’re not bad. You look tiny, but your stamina’s good. Your body’s sturdy, and you’re willing to work…” She looked him over. “In a while, we’ll be carrying Her Ladyship’s palanquin. Want in?”
“I… I can carry the palanquin too?!” Qin Shu’s surprise this time was completely genuine. “Commander Ma, I… do I even qualify?”
“If I say you qualify, you qualify. Those brats smell too strong. Either they’re lazy troublemakers with no proper bearing, or they’re too ugly to put on display.” Lady Ma sighed. “Don’t shrink up like that. Stand straight!”
“Understood!” Qin Shu immediately straightened his back and stared at her with bright expectation.
“That’s better. That’s the spirit we need.” Lady Ma gave a satisfied snort. “You want the real reason? You’re handsome.”
“…” Qin Shu grinned. “Hehe. I know.”
“Good. At least you know. Anyone carrying Her Ladyship’s palanquin has to look presentable, clean, fair-skinned. Otherwise we’d embarrass her, wouldn’t we? Unfortunately, young people in the Dragon Palace these past few years have been… uneven. A complete mess. Other than Huang Yu Yuan, I can’t find a second one that meets the standard.” Lady Ma shook her head. “So this benefits you, little human. Well? Doing it or not? If you mess up, they’ll chop your head off.”
“I’ll do it! Commander Ma, just tell me what to do.” Qin Shu wore an excited expression, clumsily cupping his hands in salute as if he were genuinely thrilled by this wonderful opportunity and desperately suppressing his joy.
“Good. Stop doing grunt work. Wipe off your sweat. Go to the side hall and ask Little Carp for some fragrance. Change your clothes and come find me.” Lady Ma snatched the wooden identification token from Qin Shu’s waist, formed a seal with one hand, and added a fresh layer of dim light before tossing it back into his arms. “Go, go. Hurry. The performances have already started. We’ve got half a shichen left to train. We’ll go over the etiquette later.”
Elio’s Notes: The available raw has a two-character gap immediately before “etiquette” in this line, so the English keeps the wording deliberately conservative rather than guessing the missing text.
“Thank you, Commander Ma. Your great kindness…”
“Stop dragging your feet and spewing useless nonsense!”
Qin Shu was chased away, thoroughly pleased, holding his identification token and curiously examining the new layer of dim light.
From that brief glance alone, he had already memorized the hand-seal sequence Lady Ma used and even figured out the basic logic behind modifying access permissions for the side hall. Ever since meeting Yuxu, Qin Shu’s understanding of hand-seal techniques had become much deeper.
He himself could not use them, because he could not perform spells at all.
But as long as he understood the process, he could probably imitate the technique well enough to teach someone else. Preferably someone intelligent.
“Brother A-Yuan. You there? In an hour, are you carrying Her Ladyship’s palanquin too?”
“Yes. We’ll meet in the side hall.”
Huang Yu Yuan was clever. Qin Shu hardly needed to explain anything before he could roughly infer what had happened. He knew Lady Ma had taken a liking to Qin Shu’s face.
He immediately abandoned whatever he had been doing and went to meet Qin Shu in the side hall.
The hall was nearly empty. Only several beautiful little carp lounged lazily inside, studying Qin Shu with raised brows.
Supposedly they all carried faint traces of dragon blood, which made them distant relatives of dragon descendants. Within the Dragon Palace, they were therefore trained as ceremonial attendants. Since this inner palace was ruled entirely by Dragon Mother, even male carp were raised as female attendants. Once they wore elaborate robes, other species could hardly tell the difference anyway.
The carp attendants did not have much dirty or exhausting work to do, yet their status was far above ordinary yao cultivators. After all, if even one of them cultivated successfully, there was a chance it might leap through the Dragon Gate, and that alone could raise the status of the Jiangcheng Dragon Palace another level.
Higher status, less work, too much free time, and nowhere to vent it. Naturally, people became comfortable with being sharp-tongued. Little carp were apparently no exception.
Before Huang Yu Yuan arrived, they ordered Qin Shu around while dressing him in cumbersome ceremonial clothing. He nearly died from the effort. Because he moved awkwardly, they clicked their tongues at him more than once. Because his hair was too short for the crown, they nearly criticized him without end.
Fortunately, Huang Yu Yuan was exactly the sort of man who perfectly matched their standards of beauty, and his background was impeccable.
The moment he stepped into the side hall, the oppressive atmosphere vanished. The little carp immediately surrounded him. With astonishing casualness, they began straightening their elaborate skirts and jewelry, showing off the smooth, beautiful scales on their bodies as they glittered beneath the water.
“Ladies, ladies, if I could trouble you…” Huang Yu Yuan did not even finish speaking before their bell-like laughter drowned him out.
Qin Shu quietly sighed with relief. He took the opportunity to sit down and rest, with absolutely no intention of rescuing Huang Yu Yuan. Instead, he quickly contacted another crucial person.
“Senior Yuxu. Senior Yuxu, where are you?” Pretending to adjust the collar sitting awkwardly against his chest, Qin Shu once again tried calling her. “They left you quite a large seat in the main hall. You’re behind Daoist Lord Sifang. Honestly, that seems a little disrespectful.”
“No matter. I don’t have much respect for etiquette either. I didn’t even bother bringing Her Ladyship a gift this time. I came empty-handed.”
This time, Yuxu finally answered. Her voice remained calm. “Fellow Daoist Qin need not worry. There’s no need for any additional action yet. I’m studying the formations in the rear palace. The layout is slightly different from last time. I’ll deal with that first. I know this place better than you. The treasury is in the southeast corner. The sleeping quarters are in the north, facing south… Fellow Daoist Pei mentioned it to me. Save the child first.”
“Got it. Good luck, Senior. I’m about to go carry Dragon Mother’s palanquin.”
“…What?” Yuxu sounded genuinely stunned. “You’re carrying her palanquin? How did you get in there?”
“I’m handsome. If Dragon Mother decides to do something to me because of that, even better. It’ll distract her. Whatever happens, no matter how big the commotion gets, don’t worry about me. Take the child and run.” Qin Shu took a deep breath, then quickly added, “Oh, right. I learned a little about how they modify the access permissions on the identification tokens. You should be able to use it…”
Before he could finish, music and dancing erupted from the main hall.
The little carp surrounding Huang Yu Yuan immediately scattered. They hurriedly performed one final inspection of Qin Shu’s clothing before pushing both men outside. “Wait outside the hall! Her Ladyship’s palanquin is almost here! Where did the other two lazy palanquin bearers run off to?! Tell them to get over here immediately!”
In the chaos, Qin Shu nudged Huang Yu Yuan with his elbow and lowered his voice. “Quick. While they’re not looking. I’ll teach you the hand seal. Help me increase the access level on my token.”
“Ah. All right…” Huang Yu Yuan jolted back to attention and immediately focused, learning the sequence from Qin Shu.
Smart yao really did learn quickly. By the time two tall seahorse women arrived, Huang Yu Yuan had already hurriedly altered Qin Shu’s token to the maximum level of access.
The two women were dressed exactly like them: ceremonial robes beneath thin white-and-gold armor, essentially decorative military attire. Beautiful enough for ceremony, but still imposing enough to display the Dragon Palace’s power and dignity.
Seeing that the palanquin had not yet arrived, Qin Shu activated his social skills and successfully struck up a conversation with both women.
He learned that they were from the Eastern Sea. One was named A-Gui and the other A-Dao. They were essentially permanent professional staff for large banquets. Because they were tall, well-built, good-looking, martial, and capable of fighting, they had secured stable jobs professionally carrying palanquins for major figures beneath the sea. The pay was excellent.
And with the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea missing, if they did not come out and work, they would not have money to eat.
“Seniors, is there anything especially important I should watch out for while carrying Her Ladyship’s palanquin? Brother A-Yuan should be fine, but this really is my first time doing this. I’m afraid I’ll offend one of Her Ladyship’s taboos.” Qin Shu deliberately made himself look nervous.
Hearing this, the seahorse named A-Gui rubbed her chin and thought. Then she genuinely remembered something. “Never mention Her Ladyship’s husband in front of her. You must act as though he does not exist. Otherwise, Her Ladyship… the consequences are difficult to predict.”
“Understood. Completely understood.”
So mentioning her husband made her lose her mind.
Qin Shu absolutely had to find an opportunity to bring him up.