Chapter 372: First Steps into the Monster State

Seventh Arc: The Monsters’ Ideal State I

Catching the very tail end of the fifth month, the Stone Gate Merchant Caravan crossed into Beijia’s territory.

The sky was clear and the air crisp. Vast fields stretched endlessly on either side of the road, crops lush and vivid green. Farmers bent over at their work, weeding.

He Lingchuan was studying the plants as they passed.

They were not rice, not wheat, and not even tea.

“What are they growing here?”

It was not that he could not tell the five grains apart. When he had helped his father survey the counties around Dunyu, he had spent plenty of time running back and forth through fields and farmlands. He had learned to recognize the usual crops just by looking.

But this plant, he truly had never seen before. The scale alone was astonishing, with at least several dozen hectares, all planted with the same thing. They had been walking for over two hours and had not seen a single other crop.

𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Second Boss Shi, who was right beside him, said, “Tobacco leaves.”

“Huh? This is tobacco?” The answer caught He Lingchuan off guard. “With land this flat, I thought they’d grow staple crops.”

“This red soil isn’t good for grain,” Shi Congshui said with a laugh. “But along the border, good land or bad, it’s all planted with tobacco. Almost every monster king’s fief grows it. This stuff’s worth far more than food.”

“Then do they grow grain at all?”

“Of course they do. The monster state is enormous, with countless fertile fields. You think they’d run out of food?” Shi Congshui laughed. “There’s no need to worry about them.”

As He Lingchuan looked over the tobacco fields, he suddenly recalled the chewing tobacco He Chunhua had distributed to his subordinates before he entered Xia Province. Those were finely made, had excellent flavor, and were mandatory imports.

“The State of Fu has to buy this too, right?” He remembered the faint look of helplessness on his father’s face. Yuan and Beijia had signed an agreement, and there was no opting out.

“Of course,” Shi Congshui said. “But people in the State of Fu already like chewing tobacco. There’s no need for quotas; merchant guilds fight over this business.” He pointed back at their own caravan. “We deal in it too.”

One of the Stone Gate Merchant Guild’s key businesses was supplying the southern lands of the Baoshu King with cage beads, round balls used to seal the mouths of bamboo tobacco tubes.

Only after his explanation did He Lingchuan understand that even among chewing tobaccos, the quality and packaging varied greatly between different monster kings’ territories. In the southern domain of the Baoshu King, tobacco tubes were sealed with cloud-incense wood. This wood not only prevented the aroma from leaking, but was itself fragrant. As it aged inside the bamboo tube, it imparted a new layer of flavor to the tobacco.

Over time, this became a defining characteristic.

However, cloud-incense wood was rare within Beijia itself, while it was relatively common in the State of Fu. As a result, Fu had developed dedicated cloud-incense wood plantations, supplying the southern lands of Baoshu with processed cloud-incense wood beads, also known as cage beads, as accessories.

They would have loved to call them “dragon beads or pearls[1],” but taboo conventions made that impossible.

The Shi brothers had struggled for years before finally spending a fortune to secure contracts for two such plantations. They carefully cultivated, harvested, and processed the wood, delivering supplies to the southern lands of Baoshu three times a year.

Those unassuming wood beads should not be underestimated. They propped up no small number of merchant guilds back in Fu.

And this was only one industry under a single monster king in Beijia. It was not even a core pillar.

Along the way, the Stone Gate Merchant Guild followed the outer edge of the Demon Nest Swamp, crossed the border, and entered the territory of one of the thirteen monster kings, the Baoshu King, also known as the State of Baoshu. With the guild’s backing, He Lingchuan passed through customs smoothly, encountering no obstacles.

In fact, the checkpoints were astonishingly lax. The customs officers were a few ape monsters, none taller than a human. Their mouths were fringed with white fur, and they yawned constantly. They were clearly quite elderly. After collecting the road tax, they barely glanced at the people or cargo before stamping the papers and waving them through.

Once past the checkpoint, He Lingchuan asked Shi Congshui,

“Even the border checks are this sloppy?”

Yuan’s borders were notoriously strict. If you did not grease palms, you would be harassed endlessly.

“Customs here is about efficiency,” Shi Congshui said, pointing behind them. “Look how many caravans there are. You think they can afford to dawdle? Besides, Beijia’s road tax is low. What’s the point of holding people up?”

Back on the Hongya Route, He Chunhua had been the one collecting road tolls, albeit with an official title. He Lingchuan knew perfectly well how high the taxes around Hongya Route and Heishui City were. Merchants screamed bloody murder every time, and families like Liu Baobao’s were always trying to evade or shortchange them.

Now he learned that the Baoshu King’s state charged only one-fifth of that amount.

Second Boss Shi added with another laugh, “Of course, some checkpoints used to invent extra fees and squeeze people harder than the official tax. But since the current Grand Tutor took charge, there’s been a major crackdown. Tens of thousands were thrown in prison, and things are much cleaner now.”

No wonder this trade route is packed with traffic. It’s even livelier than the main road outside Shihuan City.

He Lingchuan also noticed that the road beyond the checkpoint was the widest and flattest official highway he had ever seen. It was wide enough for seven carriages to travel side by side.

Sure, the plains were flat, and roadbuilding was easy here, but most states still would not put in this much effort.

After another four hours, the silhouette of a town appeared ahead. The roadside was no longer all tobacco fields; there were finally some more conventional crops.

“Eh? Monsters?”

He Lingchuan immediately noticed something unusual about the plow oxen in the fields. Not only did they have two tails, but their bodies were immensely powerful. They were at least twice the size of ordinary water buffalo. Each probably weighed two and a half to three metric tons, making them look like low, moving houses.

When humans stood beside them, they seemed tiny by comparison.

He Lingchuan had hunted these creatures on the Chipa Highland before. Once they went berserk, they could level an entire village. In the two months after the descent of imperial nectar, patrols had frequently encountered such feral ox monsters.

Yet here they were, harnessed to plows and obediently working the fields.

Naturally, their plows were enormous as well, each with four plowshares. The oxen walked in front while two or three people followed behind to guide or simply supervise each of them. The people really did not need to do much, as the oxen even turned on their own. The efficiency was astonishing.

Judging by their smooth movements and coordination, these ox monsters had clearly been doing farm work for a long time.

Seeing him stare, Shi Congshui laughed. “Everyone looks like that the first time they come to the monster state.”

He Lingchuan withdrew his gaze. “I suppose my horizons are too narrow.”

After all, his medicine ape could refine pills, the octopus at the Panlong City’s Bureau of Invigoration could probe meridians, and the ape monsters at the checkpoint handled customs. Monsters doing human jobs was not strange at all.

With no more than two hours left before sunset, the caravan decided to stop in the town for the night and continue in the morning.

He Lingchuan found everything fresh and fascinating, glancing around constantly. The town itself, however, was not much different in scale from those in Yuan. Humans still made up the majority of those inside the town. There were about 1,300 registered local residents, including a little over 70 monster residents. In addition, there were more than 400 visiting merchants.

Being close to the border, the town was clearly accustomed to traffic. Eateries, smithies, post stations, and inns were all well supplied.

There even seemed to be a market today.

The route was familiar to the Stone Gate Merchant Guild. After arranging the logistics, Second Boss Shi was just about to invite He Lingchuan out for drinks when loud clangs of a gong rang out from the town center. “Execution at the street entrance! The execution’s starting!”

Second Boss Shi exclaimed, “What great timing. We actually caught a death sentence being carried out? I’ve traveled this route over thirty times, and counting today, I’ve only seen this twice.”

He Lingchuan shook his head. “That’s hardly good fortune.”

No sooner had he spoken than a little girl of six or seven ran past him, her cheeks flushed, pretty and lively. She giggled as she dragged her mother forward.

“Hurry, hurry! We have to get front-row seats this time!”

“Slow down...” Her mother stumbled.

The girl complained, “Last time A’Dong got the very front. He said afterward that blood splashed all over his face!”

He Lingchuan looked around at the townsfolk gathering nearby. Every one of them was smiling and chatting, some even gossiping idly.

It was as lively as a festival.

The execution ground ahead, however, was unlike any he had seen elsewhere.

In most places, executions were carried out on raised wooden platforms, with criminals brought up to be hanged or beheaded.

Here, at the street entrance, there was a huge earthen pit, sunken about a meter and a half below ground level. It might once have been a fish pond. Stains clung to the bottom.

He could tell at a glance that they were dried bloodstains.

A crowd had already gathered around the pit. No wonder the girl said that without grabbing the front, you could not see anything. It turned out that this execution required spectators to look down.

At this moment, constables escorted two prisoners out, their hands and feet shackled. The execution supervisor announced their grave crimes and proclaimed that, by divine grace, they were sentenced to the “devouring punishment.”

He Lingchuan misheard it as the “stone[ref]The word they used for devouring (噬 | shì) sounds somewhat similar to stone (石 | shí) punishment,” assuming they were to be stoned to death. Given the sunken pit, it would be convenient for hurling heavy rocks. Stoning was, after all, an ancient method of execution.

The two prisoners trembled like sieves, their faces ashen.

One of them wet himself on the spot. The crowd pointed and shouted, “He pissed himself! He pissed himself!”

Someone outside yelled, “The executioners are here! Make way!”

The crowd parted instantly, not daring to delay in the slightest.

Two thunderous, heart-shaking roars rang out as two enormous figures pushed through the people, striding in as if no one else existed.

They were two gigantic tiger-like creatures. Their bodies resembled fierce tigers, but their forelimbs were longer and more powerful, their hind legs slightly shorter. Their shoulder height exceeded a meter, and they were even bulkier than ordinary tigers. Striped patterns ran only along their backs.

Just the paws pressed into the ground were three times the size of an adult man’s palm.

He Lingchuan had never seen this kind of monster or beast in Yuan, but he recalled illustrations from some travelogue. These creatures were called pseudo-tigers, and they were fond of hunting massive beasts like rhinoceroses and elephants.

They clearly did not reject human flesh either. The way they stared at the prisoners was the very definition of “tiger-eyed and covetous.”

Only then did He Lingchuan realize that the execution supervisor had meant devouring rather than stoning, and it was devouring in the literal sense.

One pseudo-tiger licked its lips. One of the prisoners immediately collapsed in fear.

When the constables tugged at him, they realized he had already fainted.

The other prisoner was also shaking uncontrollably, but when the constables lowered their heads, he steeled himself, clenched his teeth, and with a loud bang smashed his head against a pillar.

The sound rang out sharply.

He Lingchuan heard a crack and knew from experience that the man’s skull had split. The prisoner dropped instantly, blood quickly spreading across the ground.

The constables hurried to check his pulse. After a long moment, one reported to the execution supervisor, “He’s dead.”

The surrounding townsfolk let out a chorus of disappointed sighs.

With one living man gone, the spectacle had lost much of its appeal.

1. Note the similarity in writing between dragon (龙) and cage (笼). Also, the Chinese word/character for pearl and bead are the same, namely 珠. However, I decided to go with cage beads as wood pearls aren’t really a thing. ☜