Aimless Ascension

This area was full of Earthly Qi, mostly to do with low human density and mountain formations. Something like that was quite rare, but not unheard of. Nobody powerful enough harvested the earthly Qi, making the cultivation flourish. There should be better land here to grow crops, where silver and gold rank crops grew. But all of that should be owned by some clan or sect.

Still, the land met most of Gale's requirements. Well, it was quiet and peaceful. There were only a few families living nearby, which was a downside, but Gale couldn't do anything about it. Then again, it's not like he lacked wealth. By only spending a little, he could help this lass a little.

"What do you think?" Xiaolin asked, apparent worry and hope jittering her face.

"How much of it do you own?" Gale asked, giving the out-of-care farm a long look.

Xiaolin perked her brows at him. "All of it," she said. "All 36 acres of land, though I'm only ready to sell the north portion of the land."

"36 acres," Gale repeated, turning towards her. Finding her nodding in confusion, he mused. "Looks like I miscalculated how wide an acre of land is."

Xiaolin grew worried hearing him. "Does that mean . . ."

"No," Gale said, "it's just that I'm a bit surprised. I grew up in a cramped apartment, but finding now I could afford such a vast land with just some pocket change made me feel . . . I don't know what to feel about it, to be honest."

Definitely not pride. He would have been if what happened to him didn't.

No point musing on the mistakes of the past. Gale turned his attention to the land again. He could practically open a small sect here if he wanted. And what grew rice? Or he could build an enormous palace and live like a king, full of vanity. Better, he could create a secret lair like a Batcave.

Not gonna lie, that does seem like something I want to do, but my days of fighting crime are over.

"Senior Gale?" Xiaolin called, finding him lost in thought.

Gale shook his head. "Yes, you're saying?"

Xiaolin bit her lips. "Do you want to go further?"

"Yeah, sure. Show me the land you wanted to sell."

That seemed to have brightened her mood. Xiaolin smiled brightly and looked behind to point out. "Do you see that scarecrow?" she asked, pointing at something that hardly resembled a scarecrow amid the hedges. "From there to all the way to that slope. A total of 12 acres, with 8 acres of fertile land."

"That seemed like a lot of lands," Gale muttered. "What do I even do with it?"

"Why, farm, of course?" Xiaolin paused, biting her lips. "I'm sorry, senior, I didn't mean it like that. I know farming is beneath you, it's just--"

"It's alright," Gale said, dismissing her with a wave of his arm. "I didn't mean it like that. And no; farming isn't beneath me. It's actually a lot better than what I've been doing before coming here."

"What is that?" Xiaolin finally let out a question out of curiosity. And for the sake of politeness, she added, "If you don't mind me asking."

Killing. A lot of killing. Gale, of course, didn't say that out loud. He considered for a moment to answer. "Becoming half the disciple my master wants me to be."

Xiaolin blinked and nodded as if it made sense. "Well, at least, you're not as useless as I am," she left the word in the air. Before Gale could ask anything, she followed up on the topic concerning the land. "Farming requires hard work, but that's nothing to a practitioner of spirit Qi. Senior, you just need to be a bit patient to grow crops."

"Well, it wouldn't be as hard as taking care of a herb garden," Gale muttered. He didn't know if it would help, but his master made him take care of the vilest herb garden for a few months for training.

"You can grow some common to rare herbs here," Xiaolin added promptly, as if it made the land more enticing for him to buy. "We had a small garden of common medicinal herbs, but with no one to take care of them, all of them were wasted. . ."

She sighed, staring at the absolute waste of her farmland. Her fists clenched tightly in frustration.

"You folks don't have the land lease system here?" Gale couldn't help but ask. "You know, an agreement where the landowner rents the land to someone else to farm in exchange for a portion of crops or whatever in the agreement?"

"We have that here."

"Then why haven't you leased it to someone of your trust?"

"They . . . they didn't want to take this land as a lease," Xiaolin said with clenched jaws.

Gale frowned as the matter cleared a little more to him. Since Xiaolin couldn't sell the land even at a lower price, leasing would be twice as difficult.

"I understand," Gale said.

Xiaolin blinked and nodded.

"Still, I'm surprised. Is there no one in the town with a functional spine to stand up to some entitled kid and his uncle or whatever?"

"Who said there weren't?" Xiaolin breathed heavily, evident indignation showing through her eyes. "But it took little to break a few spines of honest farmers."

"I'm sorry, I should have guessed."

"Uncle Shan—my father's friend—took the land on a lease, but bad things happened to him shortly after. In the end, we decided to sell some portion of it. Uncle Shan was an Iron-Ranked practitioner, who was a soldier in his time. One night, he was beaten on the verge of becoming a cripple for just trying to help me.

"Most people who wanted to buy the land gave up after that. They weren't spirit practitioners like you or Uncle Shan. They reached a boundary of cultivation for convenience, not to fight injustice. Later, a few showed signs when I dropped the price, but after a few cases of missing animals and burning crops, nobody dared to look this way anymore."

Xiaolin paused and looked at him straight, collecting her thoughts, uncertain whether she made the right decision saying all this to Gale or not. If Gale got scared hearing all that, then she would have to look for another person to sell, which she might never come across with the rumours being they were.

"Senior, I should have mentioned all this before telling you about the land." Xiaolin looked down, ashamed.

"Madam Wang already cleared some things to me," Gale added, which relieved Xiaolin somewhat.

"She told me to talk to you about it properly and that Grandma Yushen will help . . ." Her voice trailed off. She cocked her head at him again with a hint of hope in her eyes.

"Don't worry, girl," Gale told her. "I haven't fallen so low as to bend my knees to some arrogant snobs. I wouldn't even be half the disciple of my master if I do that."

"Thank you, senior." Xiaolin looked like she would start crying soon.

"The only one who can stop me from buying this land is me."