Outworld Liberators-Chapter 177: Letting a Deaf Emperor Hear

"Does that mean..."

Goldman leaned in, voice dropping, face closing toward the ghost attendant’s ear as if the privacy array and its anti divination wards did not exist.

"My son will move mountains and seas. Is that right, venerable?"

Goldman was a mortal. Mortals loved extremes. He had seen a calamity. A mountain moved with hands.

Then Calyx had slapped that Aberrant silly with a staff like it was a naughty dog.

That kind of scene broke a man’s sense of scale, and it made every father dream too big.

The ghost attendant’s eyes stayed calm. Calyx answered instead, showing himself on the man’s back in an instant.

"Cultivation is long and arduous. If one does not get the nourishment one needs, then one will simply be another man in the crowd."

Goldman swallowed and understood at once.

The word nourishment meant money, time, teachers, pills, safety, and luck.

It meant a hundred things a mortal could lose overnight.

"Great Lord Calyx. This mortal humble mortal greets you."

Goldman was a merchant, with thicker skin than the rest. Not wanting to waste the moment of the Calyx, he asked.

"I remember there should be schools up there," he said. "When will that open?"

"Sharp eyes," Calyx replied. "However, let me let you in on a secret. Come closer."

Goldman leaned in again, fat face near cold skin.

"A tournament in the arena," Calyx said. "Let your son win, and instead of paying, he will earn discipleship. Something permanent. He will recognize a master, and even receive a given name."

Goldman stiffened.

"A given name. Is it that serious?"

His forefathers had given names. Names earned, names bestowed by masters. Goldman could have gained one too, once, but his father had been mortal.

Mortals could name a child, yes, but the superstition ran deep. A name from another mortal locked you into an ordinary fate.

Useless. Unlucky. As if you had agreed to remain small.

A name was best earned from a master.

Goldman rose, grabbed Almsgiver by the shoulder with trembling hands, and bowed.

"Thank you. We will keep it in mind."

This was another reason the Prescriptions and Recovery District mattered. Ghost attendants needed practice.

They needed to control hunger, to learn gossip, to mimic concern, to become more human than human.

Because them being ghosts was a secret no one was supposed to know.

In another private room, Tiberius sat again.

He had taken a liking to the Radeon Terraces for one simple reason. It did not compete with his business.

He also could not stop looking at the attendants. Envy sat in his eyes like grit. He kept probing them, drifting close, even bumping into one as if clumsy, testing the feel of their qi.

All of those he met were Nascent Embryo cultivators.

Their number, by his estimate, was in the thousands, maybe ten thousand at least.

An army with terrifying fighting capability. It made him envious.

It also made him quietly relieved. If another calamity rose, Eldric would not be lacking hands.

The ghost attendant finished examining him and offered advice that made Tiberius’s brows lift.

"It would be best that Master Tiberius uses less of the Blood Pill."

Tiberius leaned forward.

"Explain."

"It is because you use arts that require more qi than blood," the attendant said. "Your vitality is choking the qi lines within."

The attendant wrote instructions, neat and direct. One Blood Pill a day. No more.

Spend qi every day through martial practice until the channels stopped being smothered.

A month of this would show noticeable change.

Tiberius read it, then nodded. It was not bad advice. He had not broken through in almost a century.

He could afford to try something that did not cost him but time.

In other consultation rooms, people whispered into the attendants’ ears, secrets that were not theirs, illnesses described in vague words and careful angles.

It was always the same shape. They knew someone. An elder. A master. A spouse hidden away.

The attendants responded in tones that offered hope without offering lies.

"It can be cured," they said, each one phrasing it differently so it did not sound rehearsed. "However, it may take half a year, up to a decade."

That was already enough. Hope, priced in time, was still hope.

Soon the small talk soured into requests.

Not questions about herbs or fees. Questions about routes, about hidden passages, about how to move a decaying crippled body without anyone seeing.

They spoke like men hiring guards, only they wrapped it in soft words and pretended it was family duty.

The ghost attendants nodded when they heard secret passage.

When they heard pickup, their faces shifted. A pause. A faint dilemma, as if the request sat in a place their orders did not cover.

Eldric still sat on his small pillar, calm as a shrine. He lifted two fingers and waved, not at the crowd but at the air itself, sending intent outward like a hook.

Tiberius felt it tug him by the spine.

"Come with me," Eldric said. "I’ll let you in on something."

Tiberius hesitated. He could feel the shape of debt forming already. Still, he stood and followed.

Refusing a man like Eldric was how you ended up regretting why you even had pride.

Eldric led him into a quieter chamber where a floating globe hung above a stand.

The orb was studded with thousands of tiny lenses and mirrors, each one catching light and breaking it into sharp fragments.

Tiberius recognized the craft. Divination work. He was not versed enough to name it properly, so he kept his mouth shut and his eyes open.

"Want to hear something?" Eldric asked.

He handed Tiberius a cup of strong liquor. The scent alone made Tiberius’s tongue sting. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

He took it anyway and drank, because refusing gifts was another kind of insult.

The globe trembled. Not from wind. From intention. The lenses shifted in small coordinated movements, then stilled.

A voice rose out of the orb, thin at first, then clearer. It was not a normal voice. It felt filtered, altered, as if the speaker’s throat had been replaced by glass.

Still, the meaning carried, and Tiberius could hear it because his cultivation was high enough to catch the sound that hid under sound.

"Why not just employ services from Contractcrown of Plunder Alp if you want to have your crippled great grandfather escorted out?"

There was a pause, then a second voice, hesitant, tight with fear.

"It’s just..."

The speaker swallowed the rest, then forced it out.

"They divulge information to others if they knew."

"Isn’t there a contract?" questioned the attendant.

"I mean. Yes. There is. But still." The speaker’s breath shook. "I had a friend that died who travelled outside Goldkeep Crownmarkets."

Eldric’s gaze stayed on the orb. Tiberius’s jaw set.

"Go on," the attendant said, mild as if listening to gossip at a banquet.

"He-he is dead," the voice said, cracking. "The only ones he had contact with were two men."

"Both guards from Contractcrown of Plunder Alp. And..." The speaker faltered. "And he died a day after he arrived."

Tiberius felt the words slap him.

His reputation. His name. Dragged through dirt right in front of a senior he could not afford to offend.

Heat surged through his chest. The Sanguine Triumvirate Arts in his blood spun hard, his qi stirring a bloody cloud in the room.

His fingers curled around the cup until the clay creaked.

’My men,’ he thought, and the inner voice sounded ugly. ’My dogs are biting my hand.’

Eldric placed a hand on his shoulder, light but firm, a quiet warning to stay still. The blood cloud dispersed.

"There is more. Are you able to listen?" Eldric said.

Tiberius. These were unfiltered statements. He knew Eldric could see falsehood and deception better than anyone.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to listen.

The light in the globe dimmed. The lenses rotated as if the orb were looking for another throat to steal.

It trembled again. Another voice rose.

"Fuck them. Bastard contract cultivators from Contractcrown of Plunder Alp."

Another attendant’s voice returned, calmer.

"Why? What happened to him?"

"My son," the speaker said, and the word cracked.

"A once in a hundred years genius. No enemy of his own. Crippled."

The sob was not loud, but it was heavy. Every breath carried bitterness.

"He was even brought inside a fucking sack. A fucking potato sack."

Tiberius’s eyes narrowed. The story sounded absurd, but he still listened intently.

"What was his destination?" the calmer voice asked.

"He was about to join a top tier sect. I can’t tell the affiliation."

"I understand that. Do tell me what happened afterwards?"

The speaker’s grief turned sour.

"I drowned in alcohol after that. And my business was seized by rivals."

"What I was left with in mere three days were half a dozen carriages and horses."

This time Tiberius did not doubt his hearing. This was real. This was not one angry fool.

His people were selling dignity for profit, and the price was other men’s lives.

He started to rise, already thinking of punishments, already counting which captains would beg and which would deny.

The blood in him wanted to run. Old habits urged him to solve it the way cultists would.

Eldric stopped him with a small lift of the hand.

"How about we strike a deal?" Eldric said. "Something that would benefit the both of us."