Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Chapter 863: A Small Price for Peace

The muscular thugs smiled cruelly and stepped forward to grab the terrified girl. They moved with the practiced ease of men who broke bones for a living. Mei squeezed her eyes shut and braced for the rough hands that would drag her away into a nightmare."Wait." Li Yu said. His voice was not loud but it carried a strange resonance that cut perfectly through the ambient noise of the street.

The thugs paused and looked at the young man standing beside their target. The cruel enforcer raised an eyebrow and placed her hands on her hips.

"If you take my guide right now, I will be completely lost." Li Yu said calmly. He did not shift his stance or reach for a weapon. He simply looked at the enforcer as if she were a mild inconvenience. "I am new to this city and I need her to show me the rest of the sights. You can take her later when she has finished her job with me."

The enforcer stared at him for a long moment before letting out a sharp, barking laugh.

"You must be joking." The woman scoffed. She waved her hand dismissively toward her thugs. "That is not a good enough reason. I do not care if you get lost. We have a debt to collect. Keep going boys. Grab her."

The thugs took another heavy step forward.

"Do you really want to do this?" Li Yu asked. His voice dropped slightly in pitch. The air around him suddenly felt incredibly heavy. "It seems like you are taking quite a risk just to capture such a weak girl. What would you do if I killed you all right here and destroyed your entire organization."

The thugs froze in their tracks. The casual nature of the threat hit them harder than a flared aura.

The cruel woman was taken aback as well. She stared at Li Yu with a mixture of confusion and sudden wariness. In the cultivation world, people did not make casual death threats over hired help unless they possessed the power to easily back it up. She could not understand why a clearly wealthy tourist would stand up so fiercely for a slum girl he had just hired for the day. She was just a common guide and she was completely replaceable.

"You would risk the wrath of the city guards over a street rat." The enforcer asked cautiously.

"I asked you a question first." Li Yu replied mildly. "But let us avoid the mess. What is the amount owed."

The woman frowned. She quickly calculated the sum in her head. She did not want to push a potentially dangerous young master too far but she still had a job to do for her bosses.

"It is a small sum." The woman admitted. She named the required amount of spirit stones. It was an amount that would crush a slum family but it was less than what Li Yu had casually tossed onto a single roulette spin the night before.

Li Yu did not even blink once he heard the amount. He reached into his robes and pulled out a plain leather pouch and he tossed it casually through the air. The enforcer caught it and opened the strings. A bright glow illuminated her harsh face. The pouch contained the exact amount she had asked for in high quality spirit stones.

"There." Li Yu said. "The debt is paid. Now give me the paperwork for the debt."

The woman quickly pocketed the pouch. She cleared her throat and looked slightly uncomfortable.

"I do not have the paperwork on me." The enforcer lied smoothly. "I just do the collecting. The master ledger is kept elsewhere."

"You are lying." Li Yu said flatly as his eyes hardened. "Is there even a debt at all or are you just extorting the weak. If you do not produce that debt paper right now, I will have no choice but to take my money back, forcefully. There are plenty of bystanders on this street who can agree to my story. I was robbed in the open using fake debts by local thugs."

The cultivators walking down the street had already stopped to watch the confrontation. At the mention of a robbery, several people murmured in agreement. The city guards were utterly ruthless against unauthorized thieves. If a wealthy tourist claimed he was robbed and pointed at a group of known slum enforcers, the guards would execute them without a second thought to maintain the city's good reputation.

The enforcer began to sweat. She realized she had walked into a trap.

"I have the paperwork." The woman quickly admitted. "I swear it is a legitimate debt. But it is only kept back at our headquarters. We do not carry the original contracts on the street."

"Then lead the way." Li Yu commanded. "We are going to get it."

The woman gritted her teeth but nodded. She gestured for her thugs to fall back and she turned to walk down a side street. Mei grabbed Li Yu's sleeve and her hands were shaking violently.

"Young master, please." Mei whispered frantically. "We cannot follow them. Their headquarters is deep in the lawless zones. It is incredibly dangerous for people like yourself."

"It is going to be okay." Li Yu said as he offered her a comforting smile and gently patted her trembling hand. "They are not going to hurt you. I just want to make sure the paperwork is destroyed so they cannot bother your family again with it. Stay close to me."

Mei swallowed hard but nodded. She didn’t know why but she trusted him. He had already performed one miracle for her family and now he was stepping into the shadows to perform another.

They followed the enforcer and her thugs away from the bright avenues and into a very shady part of town. The polished white stone quickly turned to cracked grey pavement. The luxury storefronts were replaced by illegal gambling dens, illicit pill shops and brothels that operated on the absolute fringes of the city's tolerance.

The cultivators loitering in the alleys here had cold and hungry eyes. They watched Li Yu and Mei walk past but none of them dared to intervene when they saw the local enforcers leading the way.

The group finally arrived at a blocky grey building surrounded by high walls. The heavy iron gates were guarded by men holding spears. The enforcer led them into a dingy main hall filled with rough looking cultivators drinking cheap alcohol and counting piles of coins.

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Mei pressed herself as close to Li Yu as possible. The atmosphere in the room was incredibly oppressive. The men stared at the young girl with predatory smiles.

"Wait here." The enforcer grumbled.

She walked into a back room and returned a few minutes later holding a piece of thick yellow parchment. She slapped it onto a wooden table in front of Li Yu.

"There." The woman said. "The blood contract. Read it yourself."

Li Yu looked at the document and then stepped aside so Mei could read it. Mei leaned over the table. She traced the characters with a trembling finger. Her eyes stopped at the bottom of the page where a faint red thumbprint was pressed into the paper next to a messy signature.

"It is my brother's signature." Mei confirmed quietly. A wave of sadness washed over her face at the realization that her brother was causing the family even more trouble. But then her expression hardened.

She looked up at the enforcer. "But he was kicked out of our family three years ago. My parents officially disowned him when he started stealing from us to pay for his gambling. We should not have to pay his debts."

The enforcer just laughed loudly. The sound echoed through the dingy hall and several of the thugs chuckled along with her.

"That is a family matter, little bird." The woman sneered. "It is not my problem if you disowned him. Blood is blood. When a debtor runs away, we squeeze the closest relatives until the money comes out. That is how the real world works."

"It does not matter anymore." Li Yu interrupted. He picked up the yellow parchment and he channeled a tiny fraction of his Qi into his fingertips. The paper instantly turned to white ash and scattered across the wooden table.

"The debt is paid." Li Yu said while looking directly at the enforcer. "If I see you or any of your people near her family again I will not bother asking questions."

The enforcer swallowed hard and took a step back. While they could easily bother the family once again once this man leaves, it wasn’t worth the trouble because the amounts were indeed so small. If she really got into serious trouble over such a small amount, it wasn’t worth it at all. She nodded once to signify the business was concluded.

Li Yu turned around and walked out of the shady headquarters with Mei hurrying closely behind him. They navigated the dangerous streets until they were safely back in the wealthy districts.

"I am so incredibly sorry, young master." Mei apologized as soon as they stopped walking. She bowed so deeply she almost hit her head on his knees. "I brought so much trouble to you today. You should not have had to pay for my foolish brother."

"It is not a problem, Mei." Li Yu said gently. He reached down and pulled her upright. "It was just a small sum and now the issue is resolved for now."

"But the money..."

"Consider it an investment." Li Yu smiled. "Listen to me closely. You need to let your parents know what is happening right now. Tell them the debt is paid and the contract is burned. Then you all need to move out of that area as soon as you can. Those thugs might leave you alone or they could come back. Either way, the slums are no place for you and her family."

Mei nodded rapidly as she understood completely. With the debt officially gone, they could use the massive tip from last night to buy a proper home in a more secure district. They could finally start over.

Li Yu reached into his spatial ring and pulled out a small jade token. He handed it to her.

"This is a communication token." Li Yu explained. "If you run into any more trouble or if those people try to go back on their word, you channel a bit of your Qi into this token and I will find you."

Mei took the jade token and held it against her chest. "Thank you. I will never forget your kindness."

"Go home to your parents." Li Yu said as he waved his hand gently. "We can finish the city tour another time."

Mei bowed one last time and then turned around. She sprinted down the street toward the slum district. She had to tell her family the incredible news. They were finally free.

Li Yu watched her disappear into the crowd and he felt a sense of satisfaction. He didn’t always help others randomly but each situation was different.

His thoughts drifted back to when he left slaves in a cage in a city and simply kept going. He couldn’t be there to babysit them or an individual. Mei however, had a family and parents that could take care of themselves. They just needed a little bit of help and the amount spent made no difference to him. It was the easiest form of help he could give and it could really make a difference in all of their lives.

‘It was a good day for a good deed.’ Li Yu thought to himself as he turned around and began to wander the city on his own, looking for a place to get some food and perhaps watch a few arena matches.

Mei ran faster than she had ever run in her entire life. Her lungs burned and her legs ached but she did not stop. She ducked through the familiar alleys and hopped over the muddy puddles of the slum district. She could not wait to see the look on her mother's face when she told her the debt was completely erased. She burst through the heavy canvas flap of their patched tent.

"Mother! Father!" Mei yelled excitedly.

The tent was completely silent. The small wooden crates they used as chairs were empty. Her parents were not there, they were likely both off working their grueling shifts to try and maintain the illusion of poverty for the slum lords.

Only her frail grandmother was inside. The old woman was lying on her thin straw mat in the corner of the dim tent.

"Grandma." Mei said softly. She walked over and knelt beside the mat. "The debt is gone. The young master paid for it so we don’t need to explain the money. We can leave this place today."

The grandmother slowly opened her eyes. She looked at Mei with a glazed unfocused expression. She opened her mouth to speak but instead a terrible rattling sound echoed from deep within her chest.

Suddenly, the old woman violently lurched forward.

She coughed with a sickening wet force. A massive splatter of dark black blood erupted from her mouth and stained the dirt floor. She fell back onto the straw mat and began to seize uncontrollably.

"Grandma!" Mei screamed. All the joy and hope instantly vanished from her body. Absolute terror took its place in an instant.

She grabbed the old woman's hands. They were freezing cold and covered in a strange sticky sweat. The grandmother coughed again and more dark blood spilled down her chin. Her breathing became incredibly shallow and erratic.

"Help!" Mei shrieked at the top of her lungs. She dropped the hands and scrambled backward. She rushed out of the tent and into the muddy alleyway. "Somebody! Please help me! She is dying!"

The slums were a harsh and unforgiving place but they were also a tight knit community that helped each other out when possible. The people here knew that survival required watching each other's backs.

Several doors opened immediately. A burly man wearing a stained blacksmith apron ran out of a nearby shack. A middle aged woman carrying a basket of wet laundry dropped her load and rushed over.

"What is wrong, little bird?" The blacksmith asked frantically.

"My grandma." Mei sobbed. She pointed a trembling finger into the dark tent. "She is coughing blood. She is not breathing right."

The blacksmith did not hesitate at all. He pushed past Mei and ducked into the tent. He emerged a few seconds later carrying the frail seizing woman in his massive arms.

"We need to get her to Old Chen." The blacksmith grunted. He adjusted his grip on the old woman. "He is the only doctor in this district who will not charge us just to open the door."

"I will clear the way." The middle aged woman said firmly.

Mei followed closely behind them as they ran through the winding alleys of the slums. The locals parted quickly when they saw the blacksmith carrying the woman.

Mei clutched the communication token Li Yu had given her so tightly that the jade dug into her palm. She prayed to every god she knew that her grandmother would survive the journey.