CHAPTER 14 - Cannibalism

Within the inner circle of the capital, there was a large library. This library was owned by the Emperor himself, and within was held the greatest collection of publicly available knowledge. Well, the knowledge was technically publicly available, but the monthly fee for using the library totaled over a million platinum coins.

On the first floor of this library, in a corner dedicated to alchemy, a handsome tall young man was reading books. His pink hair streaked with red locks washed over his shoulder like a majestic sunset waterfall and his face was the picture of perfection.

The robes adorned his slender, yet muscular frame and folded in ways that invited one’s imagination.

He picked up yet another thick book, flipped it so fast the sound of the pages flipping sounded like a fart, and then put it right back on the shelf. Then he picked up another book.

Neave was rather salty. He had spent around a day or so experimenting and had already hit a massive wall.

Given that he wanted to leave golem creation for later, Neave flipped a coin to decide on whether he would be doing alchemy or blacksmithing first. The decision fell on alchemy. He did his best to attempt brute forcing his way into learning how to do it, but that was a complete failure.

He could sort of get things to work by combining his life force tendril with the potential of experimentation trick, but the results of this were limited. The core issue was that his knowledge of alchemy was simply too weak.

He burrowed through the walls with his worm form and sought libraries in the capital. There were many, but none were publicly open for free. When he paid the entrance fee for a few, he quickly learned that the knowledge was decent, but not quite satisfactory.

If he was going to go after knowledge, he may as well find the best source he could.

He was bounced from one library to another until he ultimately learned of this place. The greedy fuckers that ran this library wouldn’t allow for a one-time entrance payment but only accepted either a monthly fee or a yearly fee. There was even a lifetime fee for the low value of a hundred million platinum coins!

He had to pay a million platinum coins just to be able to enter. That was almost all of the money he had on his person. Both the money of the sect master and the elder he had liberated from their dimension rings wasn’t enough, even when put together.

He knew they must have more money hidden away somewhere in their sect, but he wasn’t willing to resort to thievery quite yet.

He sold a massive bag of monster cores he had collected and made up the difference for what he was lacking. Now he was broke.

Neave could yet again sell another rounded core, but if at all possible he wanted to avoid doing that. The last one he sold wasn’t fully rounded and even that was extremely valuable.

He wouldn’t want anyone to get suspicious of the cores too early. He had learned his lesson in Pavarrie. Neave wasn’t willing to deal with another pain in the ass hunt. If he ever had to get stuck in a hunt again, he would prefer to not be the one being hunted.

Now that he was robbed like this, he was going to get every bit of value out of that money that he could.

His perception ability allowed him to see the text much more clearly as he flipped the pages, his enhanced cognitive abilities were excellent for actually reading the text, and his dexterity surprisingly came in very handy for flipping the pages at an incredible speed.

He was doing a smooth version of the pinch-and-fold method for flipping pages. Usually, he wouldn’t even be able to see all the text as the pages flipped too quickly or the bend made it impossible to see the inner part of the book, but his enhanced perception took care of both of those issues.

He was also doing a bit of a sneaky boost to his cognitive abilities with thunder nerves and reinforcing it with life force.

There was something Neave had realized about life force as he was doing his alchemy experiments. He already knew this from before, but he had only now realized it may be a problem.

Life force had an impression of a person's age in it. He could tell roughly how old someone was by perceiving their life force. It just never hit him that others could do the same thing. He didn’t have to think about that either, since it was only from platinum rank onward that cultivators could perceive life force.

This was a big mistake. If Neave went around trying to disguise himself as persons much older than himself he would eventually be busted. He tried changing the impression of age within his life force, and while he could sort of do it, it proved to be incredibly difficult.

He could only change the impression by around a year back and two years forward. He didn’t understand why it was easier to do it forward than backward, but that suited his persona just fine for now.

He could also completely eliminate the impression of age, but he didn’t want to default to this since it would be far too suspicious. His veil over his life force and spirit was already likely to raise eyebrows, but he could at least justify that by claiming he had a spirit power.

Neave picked up another book and scrolled through it. At this point, he was already hundreds of books in, but he hadn’t even made a dent in the sheer volume of knowledge on the subject of alchemy. He had covered a good deal of the basics and was confident this would be enough to tackle the stuff he was dealing with currently.

But there was no way he would settle for anything short of squeezing this greedy library dry for every penny they took from him.

His unique combination of spirit powers allowed for an impossibly fast reading speed, but even with all of this playing into his favor, he still had to stop for a bit every twenty books or so.

It took a while for the knowledge to settle properly, and he felt that it wouldn’t fully integrate into a comprehensive skill for some time.

Now that he was hundreds of books in, a rough headache was starting to claw at his head. This wasn’t something that could be healed or brute-forced through, so he may just have to take a longer break this time.

Neave turned around. The room he was in currently, as well as every part of this library, had a lot of open space littered with tables. These tables had quite a few disciples, surprisingly so. The center of the capital must be immensely wealthy if so many people could afford this ridiculously expensive library.

Neave walked over to one of the tables and took a seat. He noticed that quite a few of the people around him were giving him scornful looks. Neave didn’t understand why. After a few minutes of sitting there, one of these people walked up to Neave’s table and sat in front of him.

It was a rather handsome young man, with glittery green hair and stupidly ostentatious robes. Neave hated this person just for their shitty fashion sense. Judging by what Neave’s spirit senses were telling him, this young man was roughly fifteen years old.

This was very strange given that he was on the second step of the golden path.

Neave wondered whether he had ever met anyone so advanced at such a young age. Not even while running around the streets of the center of the capital had he come across anyone so impressive.

It was so jarring Neave was wondering whether this person was faking either their age or their cultivation somehow.

The young man smiled pleasantly and after a short bit of silence, he spoke to Neave.

“Greetings. I do not believe I have ever seen you around here before. Do you belong to any of the major sects?”

Neave just wanted to ignore him, but he couldn’t miss the opportunity to mess with him a bit. He mirrored this young man’s pleasant smile and responded.

“No, I am not. I have arrived with my master in the capital just recently.”

The young man’s eyebrows shot up a bit at that.

“Oh, really? Are you from within the Yixine empire?”

“Yes, I indeed am.”

The two young men smiled pleasantly at one another. Neave was contemplating whether he should play a fool or keep up his dignified young master shtick. After weighing his options a bit, he settled on continuing the dignified persona.

He smelled an opportunity here. Whoever this was, they must be incredibly important. Regardless of whether they became friends or mortal enemies, Neave wouldn’t mind. But he would regret having the young man dismiss him as nothing more than an idiot.

Just off the top of his head, he could think of countless benefits of having a connection in the form of some haughty young master.

The young man asked Neave another question.

“What is your name?”

Neave used his thunder nerves ability to completely paralyze his face so he wouldn’t grin like a goofy idiot.

“My name is Deeze.”

“Lovely to meet you Deeze. My name is Dukean.”

Neave was surprised that this young man had neither asked for Neave’s sect name nor given his own. The young man continued.

“I have a bit of a question for you. Please, put your pride aside and answer honestly. Were you genuinely reading those books at that speed or was that just a show?”

Neave nodded with a proud smile on his face.

“Indeed, I was truly reading those books.”

“Hmm. I dislike doubting others, but such a feat would be beyond incredible. Do you mind if I test you a bit?”

Neave nodded. The young man handed him a book from his dimension ring. It was a very boring record about the history of a minor sect that existed seven hundred years ago. Neave did his speed reading trick again, flipping through the entire book in seconds. It was a truly boring book.

“Alright, can you tell me who elder Ioken was?”

“He was the alchemist of the clan rivaling the Polien sect. It was his concoction that crippled the young mistress of the Terrgo clan seventeen years before their downfall.”

The young man’s eyes shot up a bit and he nodded.

“That is incredible. If this wasn’t the only surviving record of this sect, I would have assumed you read it somewhere before. Just to confirm, you didn’t read it somewhere before did you?” He asked in a joking tone, to which Neave politely giggled and slightly shook his head.

Neave continued.

“I must admit, this book stood out as exceptionally boring to me. I have read plenty of books in my life, including records of long-gone sects, but this one stands out as particularly uninspiring even among them.”

“You aren’t wrong, but that is precisely the point. The vast majority of records about the downfall of long-gone sects tend to be boring. The downfalls of sects tend to be boring in general. But that is exactly why they are so important. The problems that tend to bring about the downfalls of sects are rarely spectacular. The greatest danger lies in those uninteresting details. The failing of a single disciple, poor financial management, terrible choice for sect premises, disagreeable trade policies. These things are all simple, mundane even, but far too many cultivators fail precisely because they overlook the mundane.”

Those words felt like a slap to Neave’s face. He was a little ashamed. He had judged this young man as yet another arrogant prick, but he had been nothing but respectful until now. It was only after Neave heard his own opinion echoing within this young man’s that he felt like he might not be worthy of scorn.

“I fully agree with that opinion. There is just one thing I would like to ask you. How do you feel about cannibalism?”

The young man blinked.

“I’m sorry? Cannibalism? That is… A rather unusual question if I have to say so myself. But alright.” He chuckled awkwardly and continued, “It is often dismissed as barbaric and even inherently evil, but as far as I’ve read on the topic it seems to be a bit more complicated than that. Take for instance the consumption of spirit beast meat. It is done very often and even normalized among humans. But spirit beasts can attain a humanoid form at higher ranks. When they are killed in their human form, they revert to their bestial form. But what if they didn’t? Would it still be acceptable to consume their flesh if they appeared human? It is often reasoned by humans that only evil spirit beasts get consumed, so it is alright even if they had been sentient. But what about spirit beasts consuming evil humans? That is frequently shamed and spirit beast sects get declared demonic if they’re caught doing it. The only reason why spirit beast sects tend to not care about humans eating spirit beast meat is that there are so many different forms of spirit beasts. Why would the canine care if someone ate a feline? If anything, assuming that they should care could potentially be seen as a form of speciesm. From a purely practical perspective, eating both high-rank human and spirit beast meat has very similar benefits, both for humans and spirit beasts alike. Perhaps that is precisely why cannibalism is taboo in the first place. Maybe it is fair to fear it since the benefits of doing it could incentivize killing members of one’s species. I would have to say that it is a problematic subject, but there are certainly cases where I could see it as at least not being fully immoral.”

Neave merely smiled and nodded at the answer. The young man lifted an eyebrow and smiled in return.

“I have to admit when you asked me this question I thought you were perhaps a little unhinged, but after answering it I can admit that one’s opinion on the subject is a great measure of how one deals with complex problems. I apologize for my prejudice. I would like to hear your own opinion as well.”

“I am personally rather pragmatic about it. Naturally, one shouldn’t go around killing anyone for personal benefit. But if someone must die anyway, their flesh should be consumed so they may atone for their transgressions.”

“Hmm… I must say, I am a little disappointed at how simplistic your view on this subject is. There is no nuance to it. By logical extension of your belief, then everyone should be eaten upon death.”

“No. Only those that deserved death.”

“And who exactly deserves death? This isn’t something that can be judged objectively.”

“I highly disagree.”

“And what exactly is your objective measurement for this?”

“Take, for instance, a young woman. She falls in love and wants to start a family. She marries and has seven children. Now take a mass murderer that has killed dozens of people. Simply put on paper, the woman is worth more than the man.”

“Those situations are pretty clear cut, but what about more complex scenarios? How would you judge the value of the life of someone who has killed seven people and had seven children?”

“I wouldn’t and couldn’t judge the value of a single life. Every life is worth the same, but not everyone is worth the same amount of lives. In this situation, under the assumption of neutrality of those who had been born and killed, this man deserves death.”

“That makes no sense. You are contradicting yourself. You claim that all lives are worth the same. In this case, his numbers add up to a zero. Why would he deserve death?”

“His numbers only add up to a zero if you don’t finish the equation. It would be easier if we knew the numbers of those he had killed, but if we assume neutrality, then the man must die. His children had already been born, but for as long as he is alive their worth in lives will be dropping. Not only will his parenting influence the way his children treat the lives of others, but others will also likely want revenge for those he had killed by targeting his children.”

Dukean sighed and continued.

“Again, even if we use this method of ‘objectively’ evaluating someone’s worth, there is simply no way to reliably calculate someone’s value in lives. It is a subject that is far too complicated to be treated so haphazardly. Who is to say that killing the man won’t send his children down the wrong path? Perhaps they will go down a path of slaughter and revenge. If we take the inherent logic of more lives being better and push it to the extreme, wouldn’t that mean that the only moral way to live one’s life would be to make as many children as possible? Wouldn’t a society that lived by these principles have something of an overpopulation problem?”

“It may seem very complicated but it truly isn’t. Your argument rests on the premise that we are only deciding on the fate of this one man. If we decided the fate of every single person everywhere, the math would be much more straightforward.”

“Alright, but what about the whole giving birth thing?”

“Okay, I admit that was a bit of a stupid argument.”

“Yeah, that it was.” Dukean chuckled.

“But it’s well, okay yeah, just omit that part.”

“Either way, your last point is fair, but there is a massive practical problem with it.”

“And what problem may that be?”

“Who could possibly have enough power to judge the lives of everyone everywhere? As far as we know not even the gods are capable of doing that. If you wanted to live by such a moral paradigm, you would have to be able to put it into practice first.”

Neave grinned.

“Well now… That is indeed an excellent point. Let’s just say that my opinion stands only if that hypothetical criterion is satisfied.”

“Well then… I should probably get going. That was an excellent conversation. I hope I see you around in the library these days.”

Dukean got off the chair, bowed a little, and walked away. Neave looked around only to see that the entire hall was staring at him in shock.

These rich brats are so fucking weird, I swear to the heavens.

Well now. It was time for Neave to continue his reading.