Chapter 417: A Path to Survival

Pan Dehai's threat was clear. If the three-headed people refused to listen, he would force them out of the Ridges of Bottomless Stomachs.

Each of the three heads had a name. The adult man on the left was Meng, while the adult woman in the middle was Juan. She controlled their shared body most of the time. The child on the right was called Little Shan.

Meng was enraged. "Pan, you think two days without food will scare us? Even if we starve to death right here, we are not leaving until you give us an explanation!"

Pan Dehai nodded approvingly. "Now that's some backbone. Since you are all such virtuous people, this old man will gladly oblige."

With a wave of his hand, the sacks of grain on the ground vanished.

Juan, the head in the middle, hurriedly called out, "Master Pan! We were wrong. Please don't hold it against us. Give us the grain, and we will leave as soon as we have eaten!"

Pan Dehai sighed. "Normally, once someone tells me they don't want something, I would never offer it again. But I'll make an exception today. Take the grain."

As soon as he finished speaking, the sacks of grain reappeared on the ground and Juan responded with such profuse words of thanks.

Pan Dehai waved a hand. "Don't thank me yet. I have given you the food, but I am not letting you eat before you leave. Get moving now. Once you are fifty kilometers away, you can stop and eat."

Pan Dehai was worried that once they had eaten enough, they would regain their strength and cause trouble. If he made them travel fifty kilometers first, they would be too far from the Ridges of Bottomless Stomachs to come back looking for trouble. After all, running another fifty kilometers on a full stomach just to come back here would only leave them hungry again, making the meal they had just eaten pointless.

Meng still refused to let the matter go. Once Pan Dehai had disappeared, he lowered his voice and spoke to Juan. "Let's find somewhere to secretly eat first, then come back and fight that old bastard. We can't just let this go!"

Juan shook her head. "Don't do anything stupid. Take the grain and let's go."

"What gives him the right to..."

Juan lost her temper. "Keep running your mouth and I will sew it shut! What do you think we are? Who do you think you are? We are escaped convicts who are worse off than stray dogs with nowhere to go, and you still want to pick a fight with a local land deity? We have got some food now, so let's find somewhere else to settle."

Meng gritted his teeth. "Where else can we go? Go back to Convict City?"

"We are definitely not going back to Convict City. I would rather die!" Juan took out the map and studied the markings. "We will go to Kinless Township. If we are careful with the food along the way, we should have enough to make it there."

"Then let's hunt!" Meng said bitterly. "Little Fu and the others saw plenty of deers in the forest yesterday. If you hadn't forbidden them from hunting before, they would have taken some down."

Juan frowned. "I said no hunting before, and I still mean it. We absolutely cannot hunt anywhere along this journey. Our benefactor specifically warned us not to."

While they were talking, several more three-headed people came over. "Juan, can we enter the Ridges of Bottomless Stomachs?"

Juan shook her head. "There's no place for us there. We are going to Kinless Township."

"Will Kinless Township take us in?"

"Let's go give it a try."

***

More than three thousand three-headed people divided up the grain and slowly trudged through the snow.

The wind was vicious. Every half kilometer or so, another handful of them toppled into the snow. Those who could still scramble back to their feet did so and carried on. Those who could not were left exactly where they had fallen.

High above them, Pan Dehai hid himself in the air and quietly watched the long procession crawl away.

He was terribly curious about two things. Firstly, how in the world had more than three thousand three-headed convicts managed to get all the way from Convict City to the Ridges of Bottomless Stomachs? And secondly, where on earth were they planning to go now?

***

"New Land is so difficult to cross. So how on earth did they figure out their way to the Ridges of Bottomless Stomachs from the New Land? We didn't even know such a path existed!"

Pan Dehai was not the only one wondering. Several scouts sent by the Border Control Office were creeping along behind the three-headed individuals, and they were wondering the same thing.

"Who cares how they figured out their way here? Commissioner Liao has already warned all the land deities throughout Proper Land. None of them would dare take these people in."

"What about New Land?"

"They aren't creatures of the New Land. What would they even eat out there? And even if they somehow found food, do you really think any land deity in New Land would dare take them in? These three-headed people are powerful fighters. Who knows what they might do?"

***

With the little grain Pan Dehai had given them, the three-headed people somehow managed to drag themselves all the way to Kinless Township.

The local land deity of Kinless Township did not appear in person. Instead, she sent a middle-aged woman named Qiao Shaofen to meet Juan.

Qiao Shaofen took one look at her. "You all will have to go somewhere else. We can't take you in."

"We only came because we need somewhere to settle," Juan pleaded. "Anywhere will do. Just give us a place to stay."

"Kinless Township is for people with no ties and no attachments," Qiao Shaofen replied. "There are more than three thousand of you, and you all want to live together. Wouldn't that break our rules?"

Juan hurried to explain. "Then we won't live together! We can scatter ourselves around the township. We won't even contact one another again!"

Qiao Shaofen still shook her head. "Even if you live apart, you all came from the same place. You can promise not to speak to one another, but in your hearts, you will still want to stay together. That means you have ties and attachments. Kinless Township can't take people like you."

"We can sign a contract! We will swear never to have anything to do with one another again. Please! I am begging you. Just put in another word for us."

Juan dropped to her knees. Qiao Shaofen looked helpless. "I will go back and discuss it with Madam. I'll give you an answer afterward."

"All right. We will wait. Thank you, Sister Qiao."

As long as there was even the tiniest scrap of hope left, Juan was determined to cling to it.

They waited another two days. At last, Qiao Shaofen returned to the boundary line and found Juan waiting there. "Madam has agreed to let you stay."

Juan was filled with such joy, but unfortunately, Qiao Shaofen had not finished speaking.

"But Madam gave me one more instruction. Not everyone can stay. The thing Kinless Township fears most is trouble, and men are hot-tempered creatures. We won't take any of them."

Did that mean half of the three thousand people would have to stay outside Kinless Township?

This was not that simple. It was hard to define the gender of the three-headed individuals as their bodies were built in a very peculiar way.

Juan chose her words carefully. "When you say men and women... are you judging by what we have got down below?"

Qiao Shaofen shook her head. "It doesn't matter whether the body is male or female. What matters is whether the mind is male or female. A woman's body with a man's mind is still going to cause trouble sooner or later."

This made things much more complicated. Each person had one body and three heads. Which head would decide the gender of the individual?

Juan tried again. "So as long as the one in charge isn't a man, that should be enough, right?"

Qiao Shaofen shook her head once more. "Madam was very clear. If there's a man among you at all, you can't stay."

Juan's head began to buzz.

There were more than three thousand of them, and every single person had three heads. In most cases, those three heads were some mixture of men and women.

Were there any with three female heads? There were and they made up only a little over ten percent of the group, which was around three hundred people.

According to Qiao Shaofen's rules, only about three hundred of them qualified as women.

Three hundred was still better than none. Juan was prepared to let those three hundred stay, but Qiao Shaofen had yet another condition. "If you want to live in Kinless Township, you must really have no ties or attachments. You can't come here carrying your relatives around with you."

Meng, the head on Juan's left, glared at Qiao Shaofen. "What nonsense are you coming up with now?"

Qiao Shaofen frowned, "Is this the way you should be talking? What do you mean by nonsense? These are the rules of Kinless Township!"

Meng snapped, "Then tell me this. We all have three heads. How exactly are we supposed to sever those attachments?"

"Of the three heads, only one can remain."

The three-headed people who had been hoping to enter Kinless Township stared at her in horror. Juan was too stunned to speak.

Meng roared, "You are telling us to cut off our own heads?"

Qiao Shaofen nodded. "If you can't bring yourselves to do it, I can find someone to do it for you."

"You bastard! You are absolutely rotten! If you didn't want us here, you could have just said so. Why toy with us like this?" Meng tried to charge at Qiao Shaofen, but Juan fought desperately for control of their shared body and held him back.

Qiao Shaofen fixed Juan with a cold stare. "If you can't sever your attachments, then I can't help you."

With that, she turned and walked away.

Snow continued to fall heavily. Juan sank to the ground, tears slipping down her face.

Little Shan, the child's head on her right, tried to comfort her. "Don't cry, Big Sis. We will find somewhere else to go. Please don't cry. I promise I won't complain about being hungry anymore."

Juan eventually got back to her feet, studied the map, and led the group onward through the snow.

After trudging another dozen kilometers through New Land, Little Shan began nodding off again and again. He looked as though he was close to giving out.

"Little Shan, don't sleep. Big Sis will find you something to eat soon. Whatever you do, don't fall asleep!"

"Mm... won't sleep... won't sleep..." Little Shan mumbled. His words were already beginning to slur.

A fierce gust of wind swept across the snow, and the entire group stopped. The three-headed individuals had exceptionally sharp senses. They knew that someone was coming.

Juan looked up and saw specks of green light scattered through the air. She knew at once that a land deity had arrived.

A man's voice drifted down from above. "You have had a difficult journey. Since you have come all the way into my territory, perhaps you and I were meant to meet. Would you like to settle here and make this place your home?"

Juan raised her head toward the green light. "Good sir, may I ask your name?"

"I am Liang Zhenjiao, the land deity of this territory."

Juan looked around at the others before turning her attention back to the lights. "Sir, you would really be willing to take us in?"

"That is exactly what I plan to do."

Juan hesitated. "But we are not from the New Land. I am afraid we won't be able to find anything here that we can eat..."

"Don't worry about that. A few days ago, some Agrarian Cultivators came through here to activate land. They planted quite a few crops from Proper Land, and I have brought some for you to try."

With that, Liang Zhenjiao let out a long, resonant call. GONG...

It sounded just like a grandfather clock striking the hour. When the chime faded, a pile of millet appeared on the ground.

"Go on, have a taste. See if your bodies can handle it."

Juan snatched up a handful of millet, stuffed it into her mouth, chewed a few times, and swallowed.

Her eyes lit up. "We can eat it! Sir, we can live on this grain!"

Liang Zhenjiao chuckled. "HEK HEK HEK! If you can eat it, then all of you can stay. For now, come and have a proper meal in my territory ."

Meng still couldn't quite believe it. "You would really take us in?"

After everything they had suffered along the way, after being turned away and mistreated time and again, Meng found it difficult to believe that a land deity could simply be this kind.

The ghostly flame floated in the air for a moment before saying to the crowd, "I genuinely hope for you all to stay. There's plenty of everything here except houses and this winter is terribly cold, so could I trouble you to build a few? You would have somewhere to live, and my people would have more houses too. Then we could all live here together quite nicely."

Juan agreed at once. "Say no more. We will do it!"

Liang Zhenjiao laughed. "What a straightforward young lady! Everyone, eat first. Once your bellies are full, we will get to work."

After the meal, Juan really did lead the three-headed people straight to work. The three-headed people were tremendously strong, and they worked hard. In only two days, they built more than five hundred wooden houses across Liang Zhenjiao's territory.

Juan made a simple plan. They would keep two hundred houses for themselves and give the other three hundred or so to Liang Zhenjiao as gifts for taking them in.

However, Liang Zhenjiao seemed a little troubled. "Everyone! There are many people living in my territory. I am afraid there aren't enough houses. But then, if I asked you all to work even more, I would feel terrible about it."

Juan quickly replied, "That's no trouble. We will build another five hundred! Just give us something to eat."

"Then I will have to trouble you all again."

Another two days passed, and the three-headed people finished building another five hundred wooden houses. By now, there should have been more than enough housing for everyone.

However, Liang Zhenjiao still seemed troubled. "Everyone! I counted the food supplies yesterday, and I'm afraid we still don't have enough to feed everyone. I have already asked the Agrarian Cultivators to work harder, but there are only a few of them. They can't possibly handle all the farmwork by themselves."

Juan answered at once, "Leave it to us!"

Liang Zhenjiao sighed and said, "I really can't bring myself to ask you all. I feel really sorry."

Juan said nothing more. She led everyone out to clear the land, and over the next ten days, they cleared vast stretches of land for farming. She thought that would finally solve the problem, but Liang Zhenjiao soon looked troubled again. "Grain takes time to grow. I have gone over the numbers again and again these past few days, but our food still won't last until the harvest."

Juan looked at him anxiously. "Then tell us what else needs doing. We still have plenty of strength to spare."

Liang Zhenjiao let out a long sigh. "I have already asked far too much of all of you. I will give you some more provisions. Take them and find somewhere else to settle, somewhere with plenty of water and food."

Author's Note:

PS: It is so difficult to find a way to survive. Just what crime had they committed to deserve this?