The Undying Immortal System-Chapter 431 – Life 111, Age 16, Martial Disciple 5

The Undying Immortal System-Chapter 431 – Life 111, Age 16, Martial Disciple 5

Our targets were located in Iron Sand Village, a small settlement south of Black Point City. After cross-checking the position of this village against the details on our mission slips, we guided our carriage in a broad arc, circling wide to approach from the east.
As I had hoped, the sight of our battered, worn-out carriage was too tempting for the local vultures to ignore. Just as the rooftops of Iron Sand Village appeared on the horizon, movement rippled through the roadside scrub, and a dozen ragged men burst from hiding, their tattered clothes flapping like banners as they spread out to encircle us.
YuLong and the others stepped out of the carriage in unhurried silence, while I jumped down from the driver’s seat to join them.
The bandits, sensing nothing amiss in our apparent calm, crept closer. There were no shouted threats or demands for coin, just a barely audible chuckle as they closed in around us. Their leader, a stocky man with a Peak Disciple cultivation base, drew his sword and pointed it at the ground before his feet, a silent order to hand over our valuables.
“What… do you want?” I asked, my voice quivering.
The bandit leader laughed and pointed at the ground once more.
Meng LuYao scooted over to JiuLi and hugged the other girl. “Please… don’t hurt us.”
Again, the bandits only laughed.
We continued on like this for nearly a minute, trying our best to coax the bandits into stating what they wanted, but they only responded with more silent gestures and mocking grins. Finally, I sighed and looked over at YuLong. “All right, unconscious it is.”
At my signal, YuLong and Kan, who had been retreating step by step, pivoted in unison and reached beneath the carriage to grab their guandaos. Then, they lunged forward, blades sweeping out in swift, practiced arcs that cut through the surrounding bandits before the men even realized that the ambush had been reversed.
The fact that this group hadn’t shouted any demands at us was enough to prove that they were smarter than those we had faced previously, but this faint glimmer of cunning didn’t translate into combat ability. Against Kan and YuLong, both of whom had advanced to Martial Disciple 5, they never stood a chance. In mere moments, the last of our opponents hit the ground.
It would have been a clean fight, except for one problem. After unblocking a few of his acupoints to access his qi, Kan lost control. Instead of merely knocking his opponents unconscious, he tore into them with brutal precision. Blood sprayed across the dirt as he struck again and again, lost to the impulses coming from his cultivation technique.
When the final bandit fell, Kan turned toward us, his face set in a feral grin.
Before the boy could do any real harm, YuLong flashed forward with a simple movement technique and seized him. Then, once he was restrained, I stepped in and struck a few precise points along Kan’s arms and torso, forcibly resealing his acupoints. As the young man slumped, exhausted, I used a wisp of soul power to send him into a deep slumber.
With Kan now safely restrained, I tossed a truth stone down beside the head of the bandit leader, who still lay trembling on the ground, wide-eyed with terror at what he had witnessed. “You stopped our carriage in order to rob us, correct?”
“N-No, my Lord. We… we didn’t,” he stammered, inching backward.
The truth stone turned pitch black, so I sent a pulse of qi through it, resetting its color.
“After robbing us, were you planning to kill us?”
He shook his head violently. “No, I swear it!”
Again, the stone darkened, forcing me to reset it once more.
I tilted my head to the side in feigned curiosity. “Have you done this before?”
“I… I… We…”
“Yes or no.”
“No, Lord.”
The truth stone dimmed a third time, fading to a deep, accusing black.
I exhaled slowly and looked toward YuLong. “That’s all we need.”
YuLong gave a grim nod, and together, we moved methodically through the unconscious men, ending each life with practiced efficiency. Then, we collected their heads in a sack, which we tied to the roof of our carriage for later verification.
Once everything was secured, I caught a troubled look in JiuLi’s eyes, so I signaled for YuLong to take the driver’s seat, while I climbed into the carriage to join her, Meng LuYao, and the still-sleeping Kan.
After several long minutes of silence, JiuLi finally spoke. “Was it truly necessary to kill them all?”
“No,” I said, slowly. “We could have left them crippled, unable to harm anyone else, or we could have dragged them back to the outpost and let the Bureau handle it. If we had wanted to, we could have even paid the village a fee and taken them in as our own, retraining as members of our sect. Killing them was the crudest option available to us.”
“Then… why?”
I looked out the carriage’s window, staring at the rolling, grassy hills. “If we crippled them enough that they couldn’t do any further harm, they would have been killed by those they had previously harmed. If we took them back to the Bureau, they would have been executed. The only path that didn’t lead to their deaths was us recruiting them. Would you trust such people to watch your back during a fight? Safer to end things here and now.”
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JiuLi looked down at her hands as she kneaded her fingers together. “This… it just doesn’t happen in Chang’an.”
I let out a soft snort. “Yes, it does. Chang’an doesn’t have many bandits, but it has its fair share of criminals. They might not be executed directly, but when they’re placed on the front lines during a beast invasion, it’s an execution all the same.”
As the carriage continued its slow crawl forward, Meng LuYao turned to face me. “Fang, why are there so many bandit groups around here? It seems… disproportionate. Is something about the outpost drawing them here?”
I shook my head while gesturing at Kan. “No, think about it. If we weren’t here to help him, how long would it take for Kan to get his name listed in the Bureau’s mission ledger? This is how the system is designed. Countless young men and women are drawn to the outposts to become cultivators. Then, when they’re driven to madness, they get listed in that ledger and become contribution points for the next groups that show up. The Bureau is probably happy if even one team out of a thousand is able to survive long enough to become an eight-star sect, especially around these parts.”
JiuLi latched onto this explanation, sensing a thread of hope. “If it’s just cultivation madness, then we
can
help them, right? If we destroy their cultivation bases, they’ll go back to being normal.”
I shrugged. “It’s possible. This might even be a way for you to become the domain’s next hero. But is it worth it? Cultivation madness or not, those men were killers, and it would have taken more than just removing their cultivation bases to fix them. You might have been able to save them. You might have even been able to turn them into valuable members of our sect, but that would have taken time. Is it worth setting aside everything you might hope to achieve in this life to help a few bandits?”
Is it worth helping them when, the next time I die, they’ll return to being exactly who they were? JiuLi didn’t have any answers for me, but it had been unfair of me to expect them. All we could do was continue moving forward.
Iron Sand was a small village of only a few hundred people, which made the second of our tasks rather easy. While the mission slip didn’t contain any information about what the ‘flowerpicker’ looked like, it did state that he was a dark cultivator, and in the Heroes Domain, that wasn’t exactly common.
While I scanned everyone we came across with energy vision, Meng LuYao checked them using her blessing, and it didn’t take us long to find the person we were looking for. With a Martial Master 1 cultivation base, he should have been more than capable of evading us, but he was afraid of violating the Saint’s rules by attacking a group wearing white sashes, and his hesitation gave us the openings we needed to subdue him.
Once the man was thrown to the floor of an abandoned hovel, I handed Kan my truth stone and allowed him to handle the questioning. A few minutes later, the man’s head was separated from his body, and he joined the bandits atop our carriage.
As we began walking back into the village, JiuLi turned and stared at this bag of bloody heads. “Ancestor… Fang. Who decides what counts as a crime? Who decides what punishment each crime deserves?”
“The local Lords, mostly. Kings and Emperors can pass down mandates, but Rulers are ultimately in charge of what counts as a crime in their lands.” I glanced at the bag, my expression dark. “These men were not punished for ‘crimes,’ though. The Bureau’s missions fall under the direct authority of the Saint. If the Bureau accepts a mission against you, there is rarely any punishment other than death.”
JiuLi nodded in thought. “But what if… What if there wasn’t a mission? What if we found a bandit or a…
flowerpicker
on our own?”
I pulled the truth stone from my belt pouch and held it up to her. “We would have to verify for certain that they were what we claim. Then, we can do what must be done. We wouldn’t get any rewards, since it wouldn’t be a mission, but we also wouldn’t be punished. Our sashes would protect us from the locals, and a under truth stone would protect us from the Bureau.”
As JiuLi thought about this, YuLong and I led the others through the village to gather information on the final group of bandits. Unlike the first mission slip, this last one had little information about the bandits’ actual location, so we were forced to hunt for them on our own.
Strangely, none of the villagers we talked to were willing to give us any information on this group. They were happy to point us in the direction of the bandits that we had already taken care of, but no one would talk about this second group. When asked about them, the villagers seemed worried, but I couldn’t tell if they were worried for themselves, or if they were worried for the bandits.
Realizing the villagers wouldn’t talk, we gave up on questioning them and drove our carriage out through the southern gate to search for the bandits ourselves. However, we didn’t get far before a group of ragged men emerged from the roadside brush, spreading out to block our path.
As before, I joined YuLong and the others as they exited the carriage. This time, though, the bandits didn’t try to surround us. They kept their distance, forming a loose line across the road, with a middle-aged man at their center.
“I hear you’re looking for us,” said their leader, a Peak Martial Disciple with a
much
better cultivation base than those we had fought so far. “Anything I can help you with?”
After glancing at my teammates, I pulled the truth stone from my belt pouch and tossed it to the ground between us. “Sure. Why did you stop us?”
The man chuckled, amused for some reason. “To stop you from killing off my crew. If you're willing to just walk away, that’d be for the best. If we have to fight, well… maybe I can drive you off, or maybe you can kill me. Either way, it should give the boys guarding the other paths out of the village plenty of time to escape.”
More worried about this group than the other bandits we’d fought, Kan and YuLong had already retrieved their guandaos, but they hadn’t yet started forward.
JiuLi stepped up next to me and narrowed her eyes at this bandit leader. “Have you been robbing people? Have you killed them?”
The man didn’t flinch as he answered with perfect candor. “Yes, ma’am, we have.”
“Why?”
The man’s expression hardened. “Because they serve that beast in human flesh who calls himself the Lord of Black Point City. Anyone who works for that swine deserves to be slaughtered.”
“But–”
Before JiuLi could continue, I placed a hand on her shoulder and moved her behind me. Her questions were starting to destabilize the bandit leader’s mind, and I wanted to avoid that, if possible.
“If your only aim is truly to overthrow the local ruler, then your deeds could be considered those of a minor hero. Are you and your men willing to follow us back to the Broken Spear Outpost and face a Tribunal? If you prevail, you’ll no longer have to worry about appearing on the Bureau’s ledgers.”
The leader shook his head, a touch of sorrow in the movement. “No. If we go to the outpost, we’ll be killed. Better to take our chances here than march willingly to the chopping block.”
Next to me, JiuLi gave an involuntary shudder. “Ancest— Fang, can we…”
I nodded and took a deep breath. Then, I waved a dismissive hand at the bandits in front of us. “Leave.”
As I walked forward and picked up my truth stone, I kept a careful eye on the group in front of us, but they didn’t take any hostile actions. We would need to this conversation to the Bureau, and we wouldn’t get any contribution points for the matter, but we at least wouldn’t be punished for it, either.
Before leaving, the bandit leader paused and gave me a solemn nod. Was letting him go the right thing to do? Maybe not, but killing him wasn’t worth the injury that it would do to JiuLi.

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Chapter 431 – Life 111, Age 16, Martial Disciple 5