Chapter 996: Qi Sapping Ticks
Learning about the scheme of the City Lord Kulung made Lin Wu feel a little amazed.
‘So there are indeed method like these too… not only can they prevent a rebellion from happening, they can also keep on growing their own strengths.’ Lin Wu thought to himself.
“And what are the thoughts of the commoners?” Lin Wu questioned, “do they not dislike this?”
“What are mere commoners to question the will of the Hu clan heirs? They will do what they are told. In exchange, they get protection and their livelihood is secured.” City Lord Kulung answered.
“Hmm… I see.” Lin Wu indeed didn’t see much trouble in the city.
The level of crime seemed to be below average and there wasn’t any shortage of food either. The people seemed to be mostly satisfied too. One could say that other than the people losing their spirit qi, they were actually doing decently.
But Lin Wu knew that just this much information wouldn’t be enough thus he kept on asking more details to the man.
From him, he learned that this method of administration wasn’t actually that rare and it wasn’t just the Tenth Heir that was doing this either. In fact, all the heirs had such cities under them and would gather tributes in the form of spirit qi.
At the crux of all this though were the beasts called as the Qi Sapping Ticks.
These were originally a type of a parasitic beast that wouldn’t get too strong. They had little to no intelligence and would live by their natural instincts. And like City Lord Kulung had said, derived their nutrition mainly from the qi they sapped from the people.
The thing was though, normally a Qi Sapping Tick wouldn’t even be able to suck more than ten wisps of spirit qi. Just that alone would be enough to swell them up and kept them fed for over a month.
But the Qi Sapping Ticks that the City lord raised were special. Not just those, but all the Qi sapping ticks used by the Hu clan were the same. They had been bred especially for draining and accumulating spirit qi.
Over many years, they had finally gotten them to reach a point where they could accumulate spirit qi equivalent to that of a Dao Shell realm cultivator. This didn’t actually mean that they were at the Dao Shell realm though.
In fact, their bodies were very weak and even a child could kill them. The same applied to their intelligence too, it was the same as normal ticks. Thus controlling them was rather easy for the Hu clan.
And the method to do so was kept safely within the hands of the heirs.
Just this alone was not all though as the actual method of ‘Harvesting’ the spirit qi from these Qi Sapping Ticks was secret too. If someone tried to forcefully take the qi by killing them, they would get nothing. The spirit qi accumulated within their bodies would simply dissipate.
In order to protect these ticks, they were kept in secured spaces and under great protection. After all, they were quite literally the cash cows of the ruling power. In fact, Kulung wondered just how did Lin Wu even sense them as they were supposed to be hidden away.
No spirit sense should be able to detect them due to the isolating arrays.
“Hmm… You said these are tributes for the tenth prince? So when do you pay them?” Lin Wu asked next.
“The… Qi Sapping Ticks are almost ready. We let them gather spirit qi until all of them reach the Dao Shell realm. Very rarely do we let them accumulate spirit qi until they reach the very peak of the Dao Shell realm. At that point they become unstable.” City Lord Kulung replied obediently.
He had no idea what kind of monster he was facing and had given up on knowing more. By now, he just hoped that he would get to live and not turn into a meal for the monster.
‘Its aura is inhuman… it doesn’t seem to be like any other beast I’ve seen or heard about either… Heavens! Now that I think of it… isn’t the bloodline aura of the Tenth prince weaker than this monster too?’ City Lord Kulung was having some terrifying thoughts.
The more he thought about it, the more he felt like the monster in front of him was some ancient being that had awakened.
On the outside though, he tried to keep a straight expression and made it seem like he was doing his best to answer. He didn’t want to offend the monster and get eaten after all.
After a few more questions though, Lin Wu asked something that made the man have a bad feeling.
“Tell me, how does the tribute go? Do you send the ticks to the tenth heir or someone comes over?” Lin Wu asked.
“Well, it depends on just how fat the ticks are. If they have accumulated too much spirit qi, they are unsafe to transfer. At that point, the tenth heir will have to come down here himself. But our ticks are not at that point.
They can barely be considered to be the equivalent of Shell Genesis Stage of the Dao Shell realm.” Kulung replied.
“Is that so? Well that makes things easier.” Lin Wu smiled widely sending shiver down the city lords spine. “Tell the Tenth Heir to come over. Tell him that the ticks are fat to the point of bursting.” He ordered.
“That… that cannot be done.” Kulung felt like his premonition was turning true by the second. “I mean, we need to send proof that they really are at that level. Without proof the tenth heir will not come here.” He explained.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. You truly will have fat ticks.” Lin Wu said before looking up.
~RUMBLE~
The ground shook and six holes appeared above them.
~THUD~THUD~THUD~
And from these six holes fell in the Qi Sapping ticks!
