56 Chapter 56: The Honored Dead

The corpse within the coffin was incorporeal, a phantom that was almost see-through and intangible. It hovered – or he, for he was clearly a man – hovered above the bottom of the coffin, looking very peaceful. He didn't disappear or crumble away like most other corpses did, though. Instead, he glowed brighter when exposed to the open air for the first time in centuries…or even millennia.

To my surprise, the Nine Yang Divine Flame manual, the bow and arrows in my storage device resonated strongly with him. I took them out and they immediately transformed into beams of light and flew into the spirit, allowing him to absorb them.

"Hey!" I protested. Obviously I wasn't very happy about the dude taking what belonged to me. I went through a lot of trouble and risked my life to obtain those treasures. I would feel aggrieved if they were taken away for free like this.

Fortunately, my hard work was rewarded. The spirit, after absorbing all three of my treasures, turned and bent to me. His intention was clear.

He was displaying his willingness to become my summoned spirit.

"All right then." I smiled and stepped forward, extending a hand toward him. Once again, it would take a long time to nurture and cultivate him, but I was sure it would be worth it. "Thank you, my friend. I'll take you up on your offer. We'll be working together from now on."

After that, Mu Rong Shu and I quickly departed the tomb. Xiao Hei was incapacitated, needing to assimilate all that qi he had devoured. I had no idea what he was going to do…after all, hellfire was yin qi, and he consumed a lot of yang qi. How did that even work? No wonder he looked like he was in pain.

Most likely, poor Xiao Hei was going to be out of commission for a while. Well, he deserved a good break after all that fighting, so I left him to it.

Mu Rong Shu and I were grateful that we could finally leave the damned tomb. The entire place was as hot as hell. We stumbled out of the superheated tomb, hurrying toward the forest and back toward civilization. Wiping the sweat off our faces and arms, we then chugged down some water before resuming our journey.

Then we went home.

"That's a good haul!" Mu Rong Lao exclaimed when we met him back in my antique shop and passed him some stuff. He nodded at many of them. "Solar amulets, Nine Yang weapons, fire-type treasures and talismans, even a Nine Yang Fire Array! This will all sell for a lot! As I said, you will definitely get eighty percent of the profits!"

"We are earning so much money, yet we don't really do much with them," Mu Rong Shu remarked with a frown. I shrugged.

"What do you want to do with the money?"

"…good question." Mu Rong Shu shrugged. "We already have the weapons and equipment we need, we have a nice house, you have a car…so yeah, it's not like there's anything to spend on."

"People these days are too materialistic." Mu Rong Lao snorted. "Ignore them. They are obsessed with material things like luxurious villas, branded clothing, limited edition sports cars and the like. They equate wealth and material objects with success and happiness. To me, honestly, those are so superficial and shallow."

"I have my wife," I said, hugging Mu Rong Shu to my side. "That's all I need to be happy."

"Yeah, but that won't be a proper son-in-law story if you don't become the world's richest billionaire, dominate all the top families, become a god-like cultivator and rule the globe," Mu Rong Lao said dryly. "You need to have more ambition, man."

"Why?"

"Because readers say so."

"Screw the readers then." I still remembered an edgelord reader demanding that I murder anyone who attacked me, including Huang Hong Lin, who was now a stalwart ally along with her brother. Apparently because it was a bad habit to show mercy and spare people's lives because they would return in future to try and kill me again. Even though this was modern society and most people were a lot more civilized than that. But no, apparently cultivation story rules worked differently, even for modern societies and people should just mercilessly slaughter each other.

These readers should really come to understand the weight of a life before so casually talking about killing and being ruthless and merciless. Eliminate threats before they could become a problem in future? Who were you to decide that? Who were you to judge who deserved to live and who deserved to die? It was one thing if I killed someone during combat in self-defense, but it was quite another to take someone's life when it was completely unnecessary, especially since I had already defeated him. Normal people would wise up and stop bothering me after that, but apparently readers had read so many cultivation stories that they became out of touch with reality and thought that real people behaved the same way as two-dimensional villainous caricatures with no depth, believing that every single person out there was going to take revenge on me because I "humiliated" them by defeating them, be ungrateful for showing mercy and sparing their lives, and would be obsessed with trying to murder me. They didn't know that such flat, two-dimensional villainous caricatures behaved that way only so the author was justified in having the protagonists murder them, because he wanted to fulfil the sick, edgy fantasies of killing whoever he didn't like.

These readers had been led to believe that the whole world was evil, that people didn't deserve a second chance, that everybody was out to get them and murder them…all because they bought into the cultivation stories' "might is right" and "strong eat the weak" nonsense, never mind that such principles were highly impractical and unrealistic. The whole point of society was to pool everyone's strengths and resources together so that nobody gets left behind. The whole idea of civilization was to create a better world for everybody. I wasn't naïve enough to think that the world was equal, that everyone could be happy or that nobody got left out and suffers, but at the same time I wasn't going to buy the whole nihilistic nonsense about how humanity is evil and should be wiped out in order to save the world, how we should look out for ourselves and to hell with other people, or some edgy bullshit like that.

Do people still suffer? Yeah. Are the poor being exploited by the rich? Yeah. Corruption continues to exist. People abuse their power and positions. Bad things still happened to the vulnerable. But that was not a bloody excuse to go off to the deep end and justify you bullying other people. That was not a bloody excuse to become selfish and refuse to help people. Nor was it an excuse for you to murder people by pushing forth the "kill or be killed" bullshit. I don't know what country some of these readers live in (maybe Indonesia), but in the several countries I had worked and lived in, nobody randomly walked up to me and tried to kill me for no reason. Like, seriously. Where did these readers get their twisted image of the world from?

Oh, right. Cultivation stories. But they had to learn to separate fact from fiction, distinguish between realities and wish fulfilment revenge fantasies, and even understand that not all cultivation stories operate on the same damned rules. What? That cultivation story (Rebirth of the Urban Immortal Cultivator, Against the Gods, etc.) has the protagonist ruthlessly murdering people because they tried to kill him, and if he lets them off, they will swear revenge and try to kill him again in future? Then read those bloody stories instead. This wasn't Rebirth of the Urban Immortal Cultivator or Against the Gods or Peerless Martial God or whatever. This was a story set in a more realistic world where people didn't go around trying to kill others for no bloody reason other than because he was "trash" or he happened to be the protagonist.

Jesus Christ, that was a long rant. Sorry.

"Anyway, just because other stories have their cultivator protagonists ascending to godhood and ruling over the world with unlimited wealth and strength doesn't mean I have to follow them. I am not them. I am not in some wish fulfilment power fantasy cultivation story. I'm just a regular guy who wishes to live happily with his wife. So fuck all that godhood nonsense and ambition."

"That's not going to stop people – especially other summoners – from attacking you, though."

"Oh, don't worry about that." I pushed my glasses up my nose. "If people attack me, I will kill them. My goal in the Spirit War is to minimize casualties, help Huang Hong Lin get into the Spirit Realm, and stop all the needless bloodshed."

"What are you, Emiya Shirou now?" Mu Rong Shu rolled her eyes. I smiled and shrugged.

"Yeah, see, that's the thing. People come into this story expecting ruthless, merciless cultivators who go around murdering their opponents…but this is much closer to Fate/Stay Night than all those trashy cultivator stories who love their strong eat the weak and might is right nonsense."

"Why don't we start calling the Spirit War the Holy Grail War now?"

"What are you guys even talking about now?" Mu Rong Lao stared at us, confused. I hastily shook my head.

"Sorry, nothing important. We were talking about…uh, an animation we watched together."

"Right." Mu Rong Lao decided not to ask for more details. That was the wise choice. He rose from his seat, patting his storage device. "I'll start selling these treasures for you. But seriously, you should do something with all that money. Invest in a business or something. I can recommend a financial consultant or something. You should buy shares of a company and become a major shareholder. You don't have to run the company, but you can at least profit…"

"And what are we going to do with even more profits?" I asked dryly. That stumped Mu Rong Lao.

"I don't know. Buy a luxurious villa that's worth a few billion yuan? Upgrade a new car?"

"Don't wanna. I like the place we are living in. There's only two of us, why do we need such a big villa for? Also, I like my Toyota. Why should I change it for some other car? Just to show off? No, as long as I can drive to my destination, all I need is a reliable car."

"Maybe we should just donate all the cash to charity," Mu Rong Shu suggested. I nodded.

"That's a great idea."

"You…" Mu Rong Lao sounded exasperated. He shook his head. "Okay then. Up to you."

"Well…you did give me an idea, though," I admitted. I turned to my wife. "Do you mind if I take a significant portion of the money and invest it into research? I would like to fund the research for a group of scientists and researchers."

"Sure. But what sort of research do you want to fund?"

"Two types." I held up my fingers, smiling. "First, environmental research…cleaner energy, restoring derelict land, agricultural research to reduce methane and carbon content in the atmosphere. Second, space travel…hopefully I can fund someone's research to develop an Alcubierre warp drive or faster than light spacecraft."

"Oi…" Mu Rong Lao sulked. "The readers won't be happy about this. Those have nothing to do with cultivation."

"Oh, come on!" I threw my hands up. "You and the readers say that, but look at all the stupid son-in-law and urban cultivator stories! The protagonists waste millions of money on luxurious items like villas, sports cars, buying malls or entire companies, showing off to the public by buying an entire store's worth of handbags and branded clothing for their wives and girlfriends, but even though those have nothing to do with cultivation, they are fine with all that?!"

"…well…that's…"

"Besides, who says it has nothing to do with cultivation? Maybe they will use divine treasures and spiritual qi to produce generators that use cleaner energy. Converting spiritual qi into electricity, for example. Maybe there's a divine treasure that can generate the energy required to propel the spacecraft to faster than light speeds or generate the Alcubierre bubble. Then we'll eventually have forty millennia of cultivation. Who's to say it won't happen?"

"All right, all right." Mu Rong Lao threw up his hands. "You win. I'll be going now."

He then left, with both my wife and me sending him off. After her grandfather disappeared from view, Mu Rong Shu turned to stare at me.

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah. Dead serious."

"Hmm. Okay. I'll support your decision then." She smiled. "But in exchange, you've to accompany me to a music store tomorrow. I'm buying a new instrument."

"Sure!" This was an opportunity for a date with my wife, so I wasn't against it. As she pointed out, this was give and take. Since she supported me, I was also going to encourage her with everything I got.