Where Immortals Once Walked

Chapter 164: The Wonders of Merit

He Lingchuan chuckled. “Heh, still keeping me in suspense?”“No, that’s not it.” Hu Min sighed. “It’s just really hard to put into words. I honestly don’t know what to say.”

Hearing him say that, He Lingchuan did not press him any further. As Hu Min said, if he continued to enter the Panlong Dreamscape, he would sooner or later see the Red General for himself. With that being the case, there was no need to rush.

His drinking companion grinned and said, “That question of yours? More than half the fresh recruits ask it. Some even join the army solely due to the Red General’s fame.”

“Where exactly did the Red General even come from?” He Lingchuan snatched up the last piece of pork crackling as he asked. “Don’t tell me that you don’t know even that?”

Hu Min said with a shrug, “I reckon only Lord Zhong could answer that question.”

The two of them laughed loud and long, blending right into the inn’s noisy clamor.

In this dream, He Lingchuan realized that he had shed his protective shell. It felt almost as if he were back in his student days again, chatting nonsense over skewers and soda, laughing freely without restraint.

It had been so, so long since he had felt this relaxed.

Perhaps that had been the case ever since he became He Lingchuan.

After eating and drinking their fill, Hu Min rose with a hiccup, paid the bill, and then dragged He Lingchuan out with him.

His lame leg slowed him, so he flagged down a donkey cart to carry them both to the Ministry of Merits.s of ledgers and registers along the walls.

Hu Min strode up to the window seat with a smile and said, “Merits Clerk Liu, I’ve brought a brother to claim his merit.”

The merits clerk put down his brush. “Name?”

Hu Min rattled it off, “He Lingchuan. On the third of last month, at Xiqing Gorge, he stayed behind to cover the retreat of Wei City’s civilians toward Panlong City. His unit was under the command of Colonel Xiao Maoliang.”

Merits Clerk Liu, practiced and efficient, headed to the back cabinets, flipped through a register, and quickly found the record. “Mm, He Lingchuan, not a local?”

He Lingchuan replied without blinking, “I’m from Tusu. I came here with the refugees.”

“The assessment says: fought bravely, acted with cunning. Your squad was small in number but inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, kept civilian casualties low, and—since the Red General personally endorsed it—the merit counts as great. By group merit, you are awarded: one wood house, thirty taels of silver, one set of light chainmail armor, two and a half kilos of cheese, five taels of chewing tobacco, and barely over a tenth of a hectare of middle-grade paddy fields in the Azure Ox District.”

He read the list smoothly, word-perfect from memory. “If you don’t want the house or the armor, you can exchange them for other goods.”

He Lingchuan beamed. “I’ll take everything as is. I won’t be exchanging anything. Many thanks!”

Hu Min accompanied him back out of the ministry, then the two hopped onto the same donkey cart, heading toward He Lingchuan’s newly granted residence.

The rewards were all portable. The house and farmland came as two deeds. As for the armor, he had already donned it. And those thirty taels of silver? Those came at just the right time. Without them, he would have been penniless in Panlong City, unable to take a step, and too shameless to keep freeloading off Hu Min.

The so-called “wood house” did not literally mean it was built of wood. Civilian housing in Panlong City was ranked in nine classes, from highest to lowest: silver, copper, iron, tin, lead, water, fire, wood, and earth.

He Lingchuan itched to complain.

Still, earning enough merit in one battle to skip past the lowest “earth house” class and directly receive a “wood house” was no small feat, especially for an outsider.

Still, even after gambling with his life, this was all he had earned. Clearly, in Panlong City, military merit did not come easily. It also spoke to how frequent and desperate the battles in the Panlong Wasteland were. One or two merits alone would never guarantee one a carefree life.

If a soldier wanted a better life for himself and his family, he had no choice but to fight with all he had.

The Green Ox District lay on the outskirts, and the donkey cart trundled along slowly. Hu Min yawned again and again, even nodding off twice. He Lingchuan, on the other hand, dared not close his eyes for fear that if he drifted, he would slip out of the dream, and who knew how long it would take before he could return.

After more than an hour, they finally arrived.

The moment He Lingchuan stepped down from the cart and stood before his allotted wood house, a strange daze came over him. For an instant, it felt like coming home.

It was a crowded block of commoners’ dwellings. Uneven dirt roads, rows of squat houses pressed shoulder to shoulder. One wall butted right up against the neighbor’s courtyard, and across the way, two families even shared a partition. At night, if one couple clapped their hands in bed, or the neighbor gave their child a beating, every detail would carry through loud and clear.

The house assigned to He Lingchuan had a sturdy enough wooden door, though the lock was temperamental—sometimes it opened, sometimes not.

Inside, the layout was painfully simple. There were only two rooms. One was for sleeping, while the other, smaller one was for cooking. Out back, there was a tiny courtyard, though “courtyard” might even be too grand a word for it. It was more like an air shaft, a crooked square squeezed in between neighbors, no more than five square meters in area. There was hardly enough room for a water jar, and it was boxed in by his neighbors’ walls.

“This is a wood house?” asked He Lingchuan. Truthfully, he felt a pang of nostalgia. Before he became He Lingchuan, he had lived in a cramped rental in a modern metropolis. That apartment was not much larger than this. “Then what does an earth house look like?”

Hu Min pointed at the water vat. “An earth house is just a single room, and it doesn’t even have this little courtyard.”

So, correction: the earth house was even closer to his old life.

Hu Min went on with practical advice, “The cheese and chewing tobacco are hot commodities at the market. If you don’t use them, you can sell them for cash. As for the paddy fields, if you don’t plan to farm them yourself, you can rent them out. The standard split here is forty–sixty; you take forty. But do keep in mind that Panlong City levies a ten percent tax, and that’s on you. If your holdings ever reach twenty thousand square meters or more, the tax doubles to twenty percent. If you want to bring it back down to ten at that time, you’ll have to spend more military merit.”

“Spend… merit?” He Lingchuan gave a bitter smile. “Who came up with all this trickery?”

“Commander Zhong.” Hu Min cleared his throat. “Merit’s a fine thing. The more you use it, the more you realize how scarce it is. You’ll see soon enough.”