CH7: Rebellion?

The door to his barn creaked on rusted henges against the backdrop of falling ice. Visible steam rose from the breath of his cattle stuck with their heads in their feeding trough. A quick turn of an iron bar was all he needed to lock them in place. He poured a heavy helping of mushroom-mixed grain and corn for his new cows and gave his bull a more mundane feed designed to help his growth. A cold wind beat suddenly against the barn's wall rattling the loose lead roof and threatening to blow them off. He shivered enough to feel his teeth chatter from the thin walls.

Silas bushed the young brown long-horned heifer. John was kind enough to purchase on credit for him while it munched on the wild mushrooms. After a few bites, the cows started searching them out, and if they weren't already locked into place, there might have been a fight over the fungi.

He remembered stories of domesticated reindeer shoving psychedelic mushroom users over to drink their pee. While the substances weren't of the psychedelic kind, they were a little poisonous. Silas hoped to use the cows to filtrate most of the poison and gain the benefits. Originally, he had his array of spirit energy-collecting seals on the cave wall and stalactites dripping pure, concentrated spirit energy onto mushrooms. His next step had been to eat tiny cuttings of the mushrooms, but that was inefficient. To that end, he came upon an idea.

Vikings who went berserk in battle fed mushrooms to deer and drank the animal's pee. While he planned to distill the water out of the cow pee, the idea was similar. Cows didn't cultivate, so while a negligible amount of spiritual energy would stay with them, most would pass through their system. From there, he would evaporate it and collect the vapor in distillation before drinking it.

"Tis not my business, but why art thou feeding poisonous mushrooms to thy cows?" Cletus asked.

The rugged high yellow man grew his curly black hair to nearly cover his ears connected to a thick beard. Cletus's thick hair must have been excellent protection against the cold. As an overseer of the Grisham Plantation, Cletus was easy to trust. Cletus knew when to question his boss and when to let matters slide. This apparently was a time to question.

"Mayhap, I'm trying to find a cure for poisons," Silas said, recalling how antivenom was created from horse blood.

"Methinks that we are beyond doubting thou from the posts that glow well into the night and under the light of the noonday sun. We share a common enemy, and I work for thee. But, if thou can't trust me, then who? Does cousin John know?" Cletus asked.

Secrets of cultivation weren't easily shared, not that leaving bread crumbs could hurt. On the other hand, the techniques to cultivate spiritual energy would spread quickly if given to untrustworthy people. Cletus was an excellent overseer, and the men purchases to work on his farm by John respected the man. Not one had tried to run so far, whether that was because of the beast outside or a sense of honor. Silas bet on the former.

It would take years of knowing Cletus and the five slaves after being freed to consider bringing them in. Nevertheless, holding a monopoly over cultivation was a powerful advantage, and he wasn't willing to give it up until he felt comfortable with it.

"John knows less than thou, and I plan to keep it that way. Tis my business, and who I tell is my decision. Lambast me with words if thou will, but my patience is finite. I expect fidelity from thee until my crops art harvested. For now, know that thou art safe in my lands. Tell me when the wagon is full, and I'll take it to town to trade for more supplies. Until then, I have more posts to place." Silas said.

Cletus gave Silas a hard look but clearly knew he couldn't do anything. The cross clutched in the man's hand was telling it was too bad the idol wouldn't do anything useful. Besides, Silas wasn't a demon and wasn't sure if Christian demons existed outside of odd ancient names for mushrooms and former deities of enemy nations.

"Why treat cows so well if thou plan to poison them?" Cletus asked.

"For me, they art poison, but cows are large, and the cuttings are small and dried. Methinks a cow will handle the immaculate shroom far better than I."

He called it immaculate because, at the time, that was its identity. With it, a certain amount of spiritual identity existed that couldn't be quantified. To the people of the current world, mushrooms popped up, and no one knew why. It made housing spiritual energy in the shroom easier than water to collect spiritual energy. The next step might hasten his cultivation or prove a dead end.

…

Silas sat in his warm shack while fumes from the distillery made their building smell like piss. Tiny droplets of distilled water were collected along the instruments before dropping into a separate collection jug. He listened to the dripping-like coins clinking in his money bag. Every drop felt full of spiritual energy, even if most of the dried piss remains carried some as well. That was ok; after distilling the cow urine, he had clean water that he decided to rename spirit water. Once the latest supply was finished, he took the jug and took a long-satisfied drink.

When he didn't have the acrid taste of pee fill his mouth, Silas knew he hadn't messed up any of the tubes. There was no cross-contamination to ruin his drink, so he drank his fill. He cultivated the influx of pure spiritual energy without the cramping that came with eating mushrooms.

By morning he had hit the 60% mark, and he was certain to reach even greater heights in a few more days.

Silas looked over his land at the new posts covering the ground, adding to the protections. With any luck, the bear hollow wouldn't manage to break through the fence again. Every little gain he made in his cultivation also increased the strength of his seals, but only if he carved them anew. To get better results, he would have to replace the fence or everything that had seals carved and filled with hog's blood.

There was a noticeable difference in having over 60% of his veins cultivated. He could feel them pulse and gather passive spiritual energy from the air. His muscles felt stronger, and splinters had a harder time getting through his skin when carving.

With every step forward, there was one back. The horses, cows, and pigs were giving Silas strange looks. Dotty, his favorite old nag, had broken into the barn, had more than her fair share of the grain bag, and had started bulking out. He measured her three times and even had Cletus do it for him. Dotty was half a hand taller than before, and her back legs were more muscular. She also gave him odd looks that horses shouldn't be able to pull off and often watched him work.

As for the cows, they continued eating the mushrooms as normal but waited for him before they peed. As a result, he never had to follow them around with his bucket; they understood what he wanted and made his research easier.

As for the hogs, they had taken to lining up when he needed blood, which was disturbingly convenient. He might feel bad when he had to make bacon from them.

Ultimately it wasn't the animals that were the step back; they were a step forward. Every little bit of time saved was something he could devote elsewhere to reach the first stage of cultivation and protect Silas's farm from the hollow.

The step back was the slave slamming Silas's favorite ax in a post, repeatedly tearing up his hard, if obsolete, work. While it was a post he would have to replace eventually, Silas wasn't in a hurry since it was one of his latest posts. The overseer and the other slaves were together with a donkey and some straps. All the while, ice fell, the men looked miserable, and their eyes glazed.

Silas figured the wooden post had absorbed some of the spiritual energy from the seals and strengthened itself enough to make chopping it up with a mundane ax difficult. Instead, he used his aura like a ghost to pick up an apple and cut into it with a knife. The cutting had shown some promise, but it was a little sour for his taste despite the hint of spiritual energy he could sense within it.

With barely a week since they arrived, his slaves had already rebelled even though he promised them freedom at the end of their task. At first, he thought they might have had something going on, like cabin fever, but the fenced-in area was huge. Furthermore, Silas kept his entire farm inside his fence, so that couldn't be the reason for the rebellion. His second assumption was that he was dealing with religious fanatics; they were puritan slaves. While that one was the most logical, he held off on it until he understood the problem better.

He washed down the sour apple with some cool spirit water and cultivated it as it settled in his stomach. While the apple made for a poor breakfast, the cool, clean taste of the spirit water was excellent, as always. Distilled water was always excellent.

There were six of them, counting his overseer, and he was only one person. While they could be under the control of the hollow, Silas didn't think it was likely.

He decided to step out of the safety of his piss-smelling shack and see why they wanted to pull the floorboards out of their life raft.