Chapter 72: Let Him Work Here in Your Place

Chapter 72: Let Him Work Here in Your Place

There was no question of harvesting her now.

We might very well be in the same line of work.

And her sentence was almost served. Better to let her simply wait it out.

Wei Liuqing—I drew a checkmark beside her name and told the jailer, “Move her to a private cell. Don’t crowd her in with the others anymore.”

Back at the yamen office, I sat behind the judge’s desk, thinking. No new prisoners had come down in some time, and I felt I had already gathered a fair harvest. I could keep waiting here like a hunter beside a rabbit hole, but it seemed too great a waste of time.

So I withdrew to my quarters and lay alone on the bed to think.

I began gathering my force of consciousness to shape a soul-state avatar, then sent it up above ground to wander in and around the castle. I wanted to find King Qinguang and take my leave—tell him I meant to see more of the world beyond this place. I had never intended to stay here forever, let alone take up an official post.

But search as I might through the Hall of the Ten Yama Kings and the Merit Officer’s Office, I could not find him. No one else knew where he was either. I went looking for City Lord Feng Du instead.

He, too, was nowhere in the City Lord’s Castle.

Fine. I would not trouble myself over it.

I took up the Judge’s Brush, leapt up through the vertical shaft, and flew to the small iron door. I pointed the brush at the lock. It would not open. I pushed at the door several times more. It would not budge.

Were they trying to shut me in?

I returned to my quarters and sent my avatar out again to search.

If they truly meant to imprison me, I supposed they had reason enough—they governed this place on behalf of the Shadow Pavilion, and I was, by rights, their enemy. But surely they owed me some word of explanation.

So while my avatar searched, I used the Judge’s Brush to lift the punishments of a few people I judged not to be so terrible after all—the fat merchant in Steamer Prison, Yang Renhu, and the rank-ten woman named Wei Liuqing.

After nearly two days, my avatar finally found Feng Du in the Northern Yin Fengdu Office.

He broke into a smile the moment he saw my avatar approach. “Your luck really isn’t bad, is it? You actually uncovered the secret. And your force of consciousness has grown this much already?”

“What’s the meaning of sealing the iron door of the Eighteen Levels of Hell?” I asked.

“I had it sealed,” Feng Du said. “Because I want to keep you. I think you’d make a fine judge down there.”

“Why? What makes me so suited to it?”

“Think about it,” Feng Du said. “If I let you go free, you’re nothing more than a rank-eight Grandmaster of the Ziyun Sect—hardly free even then. Why not stay with me instead? Here you’d eat well, live well, and earn more than any rank-eight Grandmaster in the Ziyun Sect ever could. Look at yourself—you’ve barely been down there any time at all, and your force of consciousness has already grown this much. I need managers of high rank badly right now. Ever since the day you fought King Qinguang to a draw at weak rank five against his rank ten, I knew I wanted to keep you. And if I keep you here, the Ziyun Sect won’t dare say a word about it.”

“And if I refuse?” I said. “At worst, I abandon this virtual body and let my consciousness return to my true body in the real world. I’m not afraid of being cast out.”

“That may be true,” Feng Du said, “but I don’t think you’ll want to give this up. What I’m offering is a fine post. This is the best place in existence to grow your force of consciousness. I know you’d rather wander—but that’s only chasing novelty, chasing pleasure. That’s not why you really came out here. Your purpose should be to make yourself stronger. If you tire of it down there, your true body can return to the real world whenever it likes, or you can register another shell and come back to the virtual world under a different name. As for this—I intend to keep the Song Chenfeng body…