"First, to prevent the Yun family from taking revenge on you guys, I'll just set up a formation around the village." I nodded to Lan Bei Er. "Could you please take care of those dudes' wounds? And offer them a job under the Lan family. They don't seem like they can return to the Yun family now."
"We'll get killed by Master Yun," the leader of the cultivators confirmed with a croak. He sighed and lowered his head, and even though the shadow swords had dissipated, the wounds on his thigh and arm remained debilitating. "You might as well kill us now."
"I would rather have you work under us." An idea came to my mind. "You guys will now be stewards of this village and other places. Since I'm setting up formations, I'm going to need you to operate them. If the Yun family comes here again, you'll activate the formations and drive them away. This village is now under the protection of the Lan family."
"We were always supposed to be under the protection of the Lan family," Chun Liu muttered. "Fat lot of good that did us."
"But you didn't have formations before," I said, already moving to the borders. Lan Bei Er trusted what I was doing and hurried over to heal the former Yun family bodyguards. "Don't worry, you'll see what I mean this time."
It took about thirty minutes or so for me to set up a formation, but when it was done, a shimmering blue barrier formed a dome around the village. One of the cultivators who used to be employed by the Yun family, Chen Chao, was assigned as the operator.
"This is the eye of the formation," I explained to him, showing him a few rune-embedded rock in the center of the village. "Infuse your qi into it, and you should be able to activate it and wield it however you want. I mean, it's always activated, but with an operator, you can probably repel a small army."
"I'll do my best. I won't let the Lan family down!" Chen Chao saluted.
"I can't believe you actually won them over," Lan Bei Er whispered to me. I shrugged and kept my voice low.
"Well, between an option where you'll survive and an option where you'll die, it's an easy choice to make, isn't it? People tend to choose the option that gives them benefits, especially if the other decision is a dead end."
"That's true." Lan Bei Er giggled. "You really might be able to win the hearts and minds of people."
"That remains to be seen." I turned to Chun Liu, the village chief. "You don't have to pay tribute or whatever to the Yun family. If they come for it again, use the formation to protect yourselves, and also to contact me. I'll deal with them."
"Understood. We can't thank you enough. In return, we will…"
I raised my hand. "The Lan family doesn't need tribute or favors or whatever. You already pay taxes to the castellan of Azure Cloud City. Therefore it's our responsibility to protect you. In fact…" I bowed deeply, causing him to panic and wave his hands frantically. "We should apologize for this lapse. If we had known, we would have taken action sooner."
"No, no…it's our fault for not reporting it in the first place…!"
Neither of us was naïve enough to think that he could have reported it. The Yun family's retribution would be huge, and if I wasn't the one receiving the report, the Lan family or their staff wouldn't do anything for fear of hurting the relationship with the Yun family.
Unfortunately, now that I had killed Yun Jian Ren, that relationship was now in jeopardy.
"We'll check on the other villages too, just to ensure that they aren't suffering from the same thing," I said.
"Thank you once again." Chun Liu bowed, almost deeper than mine from earlier. He turned to Lan Bei Er. "We'll definitely support the young miss in the upcoming election! We're sick and tired of being pushed around and bullied by those Yun family and Cang family bastards! The Lan family has to remain the castellan!"
"I'll be counting on you," Lan Bei Er said, lowering her head gratefully.
Then we were off to the next destination. This time, we ended up on a small village located atop a mountain. The villagers there appeared to eke out a rough living through hunting or gathering herbs and food from the sparse vegetation growing along the slopes of the mountain, which presented some difficulty of their own. They didn't have much resources, which was a major problem.
"Why not move?" I asked the village chief, a very young man called Shan Huo.
"Because we are close to these partners." Shan Huo whistled. A gigantic golden eagle swooped down from the sky to land next to him. More of them flew about, darkening the skies momentarily. Shan Huo smiled. "We are friends with the golden eagles. They have a nest up there, and we protect them from other humans. In return, they help transport us everywhere…when we need to make a trip down the mountain or go to the city for trade."
He sighed and shook his head. "Unfortunately, we don't have much stuff to trade. There isn't much on the mountain. In fact, we don't even have enough water, so we have to…"
At his words, another golden eagle soared overhead. A younger girl was riding atop its back, precariously balancing two containers of water. She called out and waved as best as she could.
"Brother!"
"Shan Mei!" Shan Huo waved back with a smile. He then nodded toward the direction where she and her golden eagle had flown from, and I could see a river near the foot of the mountain. "Everyday we will have to fly down to collect as much water as possible for the village."
I thought for a moment. "I might just be able to solve your issues for water."
"Huh?!" Shan Huo almost jumped at that. "Really?! How?"
"Well…through the ingenuity of modern engineering…"
Both Shan Huo and Lan Bei Er stared at me blankly, but I was already hopping down toward the river, using Shadow Step to descend as quickly as I could and moving from shadow to shadow. I was nowhere as fast as flying on a golden eagle, but it was swifter than walking…though it consumed a lot more qi and energy.
Fortunately, I had plenty of qi and energy to spare, thanks to Heaven and Earth Formula.
Reaching the river, I did a few mental calculations, and then grabbed some wood to start carving them into a miniature water wheel. I wasn't an engineer, unfortunately. I was a historian. But thanks to learning history, I was aware of how humans had tried to shape the environment to overcome difficulties. I just needed to find a way to channel the flow of the water to the village on the mountain.
I needed to do some trial and error, though. Using the currents of the river to keep the wheel spinning, I then tried to see how to direct and pour the lifted water into an artificial reservoir at the top of the mountain.
"How about this?" I asked the curious villagers, who were staring at my miniature water wheel. I grinned. "You just need to make a bigger version of this."
They all exchanged a few glances, and then nodded in determination before starting to get to work. While they did so, I also set up another formation, assigning one of the cultivators from Yun Jian Ren's bodyguard entourage to operate it.
"This is a hybrid defensive formation that also generates water, just in case my water wheel idea doesn't work," I explained. "Activating it would use the natural qi in the mountain to produce a clean spring of water."
"Why don't we just use this instead of your water wheel?" Shui Shan, the guy I assigned to operate the formation, asked in puzzlement.
"Because it's always better to have two options than only one," I explained. "If one fails, then you have a backup plan. What happens if the formation gets destroyed, or you're not around to operate it because you have to go home or something? The defensive properties are passive and will always be online to defend the mountain village, but to produce water or trigger the offensive segments, the formation needs an operator."
"Okay, that makes sense." Shui Shan nodded determinedly. "Please leave this place to me!"
Then I returned to helping build the water wheel. It took a few days, but we were finally able to construct an enormous water wheel that fed a steady supply into the artificial reservoir I had dug out. The villagers on the mountain began cheering and celebrating when they saw the consistent flow of water filling up their tank. None of the water was wasted, though. The moment the tank was full, the excessive water would flow back to the water wheel and keep it spinning.
In time I would use it to generate electricity, but I didn't know how to do that. Like I said, I wasn't an engineer. I was a literature and history student.
"Thank you very much!" Shan Huo cupped his hands and bowed his head. "We owe you so much! If there's anything we can do to repay you…"
"Nah, you're citizens of Azure Cloud City. Taking care of your problems is the castellan's job." I observed their village. "Also, there's problems we still need to solve. Like poverty…"
"We don't have much here on the mountain for trade or jobs," Shan Huo admitted.
"I'll think of something," I assured him. "In the meantime, keep an eye on the water wheel and let me know if something's not right."
"Okay!"
Right after the ordeal with the mountain village, I got ready to descend when I saw Lan Bei Er hurrying toward me anxiously.
"Bad news, husband! We need to return to the Lan manor as soon as possible! Master Yun has found out about his son's death, and he's demanding an explanation!"
"That took longer than I expected," I remarked dryly, having expected the summons earlier. I guess in this era, information took too long to be transmitted. Furthermore, the bodyguards who were supposed to protect Yun Jian Ren did not return at all, so the Yun lord didn't receive any reports regarding the demise of his son. He probably assumed that his son was playing around in the red light district, sleeping with women and doing the usual raucous and illicit activities this whole time, only to be slightly worried when he didn't show up for a few days and finally deigned to dispatch someone to look for him.
Only to finally discover that he was dead.
"Don't worry, we have all the evidence of Yun Jian Ren's crimes, and witnesses to testify that I was only acting in self-defense when he tried to kill me."
Everyone who was involved was on my side, so I wasn't worried about that.
"If Master Yun was someone who cared about justice, he wouldn't let his son run rampant in the first place! He will definitely seek revenge!"
"Then I guess another legitimate self-defense is in order."
"This isn't a joke!" Lan Bei Er stormed.
"I wasn't joking." My wife was about to protest, but she saw the expression on my face and shivered, falling silent. "If he wants to play villain with me, he'll find out what it means to be a real villain."
Taking the heavenly carriage back to the main city proper, I caught sight of a convoy of merchants gathered at the gate, arguing with the guards. Asking the chauffeur to set us down next to it, I then hopped out to check on the situation.
"What's the matter?" I asked, glancing at the guards. "Is there a problem?"
"No," the leader of the guards replied with a shake of his head. "We're letting them through after inspection. But the merchants are complaining about their products."
"Yeah…" One of the merchants came forward sullenly. "We took weeks to get here from Viridian City, and now our perishable products and food have all spoilt. No matter how much preservatives we used, the long journey from one city to another makes it tough for us to transport food and their perishable products over!"
"We're debating whether we should bother entering Azure Cloud City, now that most of our products are spoilt. Given the amount of stuff we have left for trade, it might be better for us to turn back instead." Another merchant sighed bitterly.
I glanced at their convoy, which made use of horses and conventional carriages instead of the flying ones that cultivators used. Obviously cultivators weren't going to bother themselves with transporting goods and products between cities, and kirins weren't that common where every merchant convoy could have one. Additionally, they were super expensive. Only the major families could afford them.
However, an idea was taking shape in my mind while I studied the products rotting in their wagons.
"You know what, you should just go into Azure Cloud City first. I'll look for you later…I think I might have a solution for your problems. So after I'm done with my current business, I'll discuss it with you guys."