Redux A Noble Regressor
 
 
The weight of the spear in his hand wasn’t as he remembered it.
 
 
Despite steeping himself in what was essentially Chinese philosophy for a whole lifetime, there were a few things that he remembered from his first life that the world had yet to prove wrong. Reality was, ultimately, subjective in a way that people in power denied and that Cultivators hoped. He was perhaps not the first to make this observation but-
 
 
This spear was heavier in his youth than it had been in his old age.
 
 
“Does the Young Master want us to pack up?” The leader of his guards, a fit enough man who was missing a single eyebrow, asked as politely as Jun had ever seen him do.
 
 
His carriage was parked in the middle of a meadow as Jun went through the same old boring forms of his second youth. The spear in a body as fit as that one had been felt like a wand in the hands of this time. As opposed to the unforgiving cudgel that they had been before the last time he’d died.
 
 
 He was thrusting into the air, ignoring his head guard for the time being, as he tested the speed and strength that his muscles had. It was amazing; His shoulders weren’t swelling from the simple circular movements that he was doing, and the soles of his feet didn’t ache as he kept his feet apart. His grip didn’t tire and his arms weren’t about to fall off. It was something, he decided, that he wanted to keep and not lose again.
 
 
“Yes,” he said as he thrust one last time, his feet not moving from where they were until he was done with the set, “I do believe this Young Master does.”
 
 
“Glad to obey master!” the guard said in a tone that might not have been mockery…but the bow that almost touched the ground certainly was.
 
 
“Very good,” Jun simply said he tried to not let his eyebrow twitch at the sight.
 
 
You’d think a whole life of being the deadweight of a noble family, a literal hedonist who deliberately went out of his way to do nothing with his life, would have gotten him used to this kind of shit. But as it turns out? He’d succeeded even beyond his reckoning because he never had to deal with this.
 
 
There was no need to “pack up” as the only thing taken out of the carriage had been the spear that Jun had pulled out to exercise with. The leader of his guard, whatever his name was…actually-
 
 
“This noble son doesn’t recall your name, Guard,” Jun told the man as he passed one of his twelve guards his knife on a stick.
 
 
“This one is Ren, Young Master,” the man with only a single eyebrow said with a degree of cheer that HAD to be faked. And who could blame him, right? He was serving nobility and so staged ass-kissing was better than no ass-kissing.
 
 
The only problem is that Jun, despite how he had made himself seen, wasn’t an absolute blathering idiot.
 
 
This man had essentially told him to hurry his ass up.
 
 
“Onwards then,” Jun dismissed him with a wave of his hand as if he couldn’t care less. Because that was what, as nobility, he had to behave like. An asshole who believed that the world owed him a favor.
 
 
The captain of his guard closed the door behind him and said something too low for him to hear to the rest of the guards, producing laughter that he did manage to catch.
 
 
Jun had always known that people didn’t care for him, that people assigned to him were people assigned to a dead-end career because they hadn’t fucked up enough to be killed but enough for anyone else to not want them around. But all that used to mean was that he was ignored. But then, that was in his second life when he had done all he could to not have to act in the absolutely depraved way that his family demanded.
 
 
Because being a hedonist was more morally defensible than being a proper noble in a world of Cultivators. But in the end, that hadn’t worked so well.
 
 
Because, as it turns out, apparently the lesson that whatever fucked up divine power that had made him reincarnate into a privileged family in this land was that the principles he had nurtured in his first nice, safe and boring modern life was that they were BULLSHIT.
 
 
So he had to repeat his second one again.
 
 
Joy.
 
 
Jun sighed as he felt the carriage moving. It wasn’t like he didn’t understand his guards. For the most part, in his second life, he never went out of his mansion or required anything of them. They never had to do anything but make sure no one broke into his secluded home and made a mockery of the Yan family. His making his guards come with him anywhere was a break from the easy post that, until he regressed back to the 24th year of age, all of his servants had shared.
 
 
And that, right there, was the problem: nothing should justify a lowly guard making fun of a grand member of the Yan family. And Jun shouldn’t be doing it for them.
 
 
Unfortunately for everyone involved, Jun wasn’t blind to the feelings of others and Jun couldn’t go into the city to buy the things he wanted without displaying guards and wealth. His family might literally not let him live it down if he did. That is, if someone didn’t take advantage of the fact that he’d be hauling what was a fortune to any peasant all on his lonesome.
 
 
And that meant he would have to joyously take hold of some of that noble entitlement and apply it here to them.
 
 
It took 3 whole days to travel from his secluded mansion to Peerless Prudent Pearl City. It wasn’t actually Peerless and it didn’t sell many pearls, but it was the center of trade in a small territory as big Texas.
 
 
True to normal ridiculous Xianxia scales, the “providence” that the Yan family ruled over was only slightly smaller than Russia, and the Yan family wasn’t even the strongest family in the Empire. Or even one of the strongest. That was just how large the Empire was. And the Empire didn’t even take up a whole lot of the space in this world.
 
 
That was just how big this world was.
 
 
Who knows, if it hadn’t been, maybe Cultivators would have destroyed by accident long ago? Honestly, he had never found out how it managed not to violate the laws of physics, but “a Cultivator did it” was as good as any answer.
 
 
Of course, the true seat of power in this territory was a City that no mortal could truly travel to and that, technically, didn’t altogether owe allegiance to the Yan family or even the Empire. Sects ultimately answer to no one but a stronger Sect, an old master/monster and, occasionally, the Emperor himself. So who did a City full of them answer to?
 
 
Heavenly Sky City lived up to its name in more ways than one but, thankfully, it wasn’t where Jun was traveling to.
 
 
No, he had mortal concerns with mortal answers.
 
 
Jun was a person who had reincarnated with all of his memories intact. He recalled being from the Earth in his first life before an honest-to-goodness truck ran him over in the middle of the street. That wasn’t that big a problem in retrospect, but it did cause him to utterly shit the bed in his second life. The fact that he was an isekai modern man, not the way he died. It was way better than starving to death while he was a penniless old man.
 
 
Which, huh, he did.
 
 
A whole life of only eating, fucking and spending his days away in a single mansion in the middle of nowhere as far as way from his family as he could had left him unprepared for when his family fell. Due to their scale, he had never imagined that it ever would, but at some point the most stupid, ignorant and lucridiours events had caused them to fall.
 
 
All Noble families fought among themselves but his had rolled natural 1s multiple times for all of them to be massacred until only he was left. Mostly because he was so useless that no one bothered to really look for him when he fled his mansion. But there was a lesson in being a fat old man that didn’t know any useful trades in a world stuck in a medieval Chinese stasis, and that was that it sucked.
 
 
People stole from him. Beggars fought with him over scraps. And, more than not, they won said scraps.
 
 
He had hated how his family treated those beneath them. But even slaves would readily take advantage of those who had no backing and no connection to them. It was he who was stupid for having assumed that it was anything but a dog-eat-dog world.
 
 
And then he was back to his 24th year of age, when his body was still toned from the mandatory family martial training and when he hadn’t sunk all his marriage prospects, all his family expectations and all his relations with them.
 
 
He was in the unique position of doing things again but with knowledge of a future that he had lived.
Which is why he was going to Peerless Prudent Pearl City. They had things on sale, things that would make waves and would eventually cause big splashes in time.
 
 
He grabbed most of the money that he had, he grabbed all of his guards and he set out on this trip as soon as he realized that he wasn’t under some prolonged hunger-induced delusion.
 
 
Still, he wondered what finally did him in. Did he finally starve to death in his sleep or did some other hobo stab him to death in his sleep to steal what little he had on hand? Heh, it didn’t matter.
 
 
He was back!
 
 
“The four days of travel must have been taxing to someone of your august personage, please, allow this servant to find a place for the Young Lord to rest,” the head guard once again overly respectfully asked the next day. Which was to say that HE, his head guard, wanted a place to rest.
 
 
“This Young Master is made of sterner stuff,” Jun replied with his nose high in the air, as if he had done most of the work coming here, “And he will not wait another second to arrive to the auction.”
 
 
“Ah, yes, of course, lord,” the head guard clicked his tongue.
 
 
They were crossing the gates of the City and Jun stuck his head out of the carriage to see the state of the streets.
 
 
It was early morning, so there weren’t many people there.
 
 
“Captain Ren!” Jun authoritative said.
 
 
“Yes, Young Master?” the guard forced himself to ask.
 
 
“Take out your whip and clear the rabble out of my way,” he ordered, despite there not being anyone in the way.
 
 
“I-it…of course, Young Master,” the guard almost faltered and Jun returned to his seat, satisfied.
 
 
“I do not hear whipping, Captain!” Jun called out and he pretended that he didn’t hear a sigh.
 
 
Being an asshole wasn’t something he took particular joy in, but if a noble didn’t behave like a noble then people wouldn’t treat them like a noble. It was why he liked his secluded mansion where he wouldn’t have to play these constant games. Truth be told, if he didn’t have the memories of his first life, this would all be second nature to him. But it wasn’t like it mattered anymore.
 
 
The head of his guard cracked his whip upon the sand every once in a while until they started to arrive to a bazaar.
 
 
Big buildings and streets lined up the road as people started to set up their wares, their foodstuff and their products. Things that only mortals would buy, like sharpening stones or kitchen knives to things that explained why this world had seen no need to technologically advance.
 
 
Treasures that would supposedly awaken a man’s Chi, pills that could magically chase away any cough, rare plants that could be used in alchemy and Cultivation. Things that First or Second class Warriors could use to make their climbs smoother in this world.
 
 
And then, there were the slaves.
 
 
Slavery as an institution was disgusting. He had once felt that yet now only intellectually did. But at the end of the day, did he care more about it than he did himself? He couldn’t say that he did. So he did what once couldn’t imagine doing, looked at the slaves being brought up and shrugged.
 
 
It sucked to be them.
 
 
“We are at the Auction house, sir,” the carriage slowed down and stopped in front of a grand building. Right, this was why he was here.
 
 
The Elixir of Manifold Spirit is what he was looking for though that was what it would later be called. It would be pricey even by his standards, but it would be out of the range of even his father’s once it was recognized for what it was.
 
 
For now, it was simply a clay bottle full of a liquid that was full of Elemental Chi. What element? He wasn’t sure he knew, but it would make a First Class Warrior out of anyone who drank it. It was, in essence, a minor Cultivation treasure that should have never been in Mortal hands. Things like that happened from time to time, but it was the equivalent of winning a lottery ticket.
 
 
In his old life, one of the merchant sons in the city would buy and propel his family to dominate many of their rivals all on his lonesome. It would make him into a lion battling the wolves of Peerless Prudent Pearl City’s merchant class.
 
 
It was a nice tale when he heard it. Only, he was now in the position to claim it as his.
 
 
So he strolled in with his guards to the auction house just as they were opening their doors. He looked their doorman in the eyes and, with all the weight of his family and power behind him, he made his demand. The Yan had the money to buy whatever they wanted. The Yan had the clout to demand it.
 
 
And he, Yan Jun, didn’t get it.
 
 
“We are so, so very sorry Lord Yan,” a representative of the auction house scurried before him, “The item that you were looking for, the pilfer of elemental Chi? It was bought just this week by one of our local merchants.”
 
 
“Ah, but the Xi family is doing very well these days!” he brightened up, bringing that point as if it were a good thing, “I am sure that if you ask them, they’d be more than willing to sell whatever a member of the Yan family wanted.”
 
 
Jun remembered that Elixir of Manifold Spirit was being sold at this auction at this time. But apparently, he just missed his mark.
 
 
Shit.
 
 
“But please Young Master,” the man all but begged, “Allow our Xan’s Auction house to handle your accommodations while you browse whatever you like!”
 
 
“I suppose I can abide for the moment,” Jun sniffed as the man sighed in relief and handed him a scroll containing all of their stock.
 
 
Next to the name of the item, there was a number outlining how much of it they had in stock. There was a lot number next to that, showing where it was, as well as the price attached to it.
 
 
It was mostly trash that he didn’t need, but the Elixir aside there were many other things he could get, right? That was merely the first one that came to mind.
 
 
Still, he thought of all the great things that had been sold through here as his eyes idly roamed the scroll.
 
 
Let’s see, a common plant would be driven to extinction within his lifetime once it was found to have minor Cultivating properties. It would literally be harvested to death after that.
 
 
There was supposed to be a sword here that supposedly belonged to a Demonic Cultivator of some sort? People made claims like that all the time to sell useless trash. Except that, in this instance, it would be completely true.
 
 
There was a vase that was supposed to contain the secrets to some long dead Martial foundation in its art but, augh, he had no idea how he would go about identifying it.
 
 
But there was MORE here that was valuable that he could get. He just had to think hard on decade-old memories to scrounge up what they were. This had been so long ago that-
 
 
“That,” Jun imperiously said as he pointed at the name of a slave in the scroll.
 
 
Nia Li, 15 years old.
 
 
It was hard not to be excited, but he remembered this name from around this time. She was a girl with a body of Extreme Yin, though no one at this time knew it. She would eventually be sold to a brothel that then was ransacked by some Cultivator or Sect after that was found out. The details of her eventual fate eluded him, but her value did not.
 
 
“Ah, my lord has a good eye for female flesh,” the man who had become a liaison to the auction house sagely nodded his head as if she were in front of them, “I can bring her to a private room for the Young Master’s examination if he pleases.”
 
 
“This Young Master will not be bothered by something as gauge as walking,” Jun waved his hand in disgust, “Bring her here.”
 
 
“Umm,” the man started sweating as he looked at Jun and his guards.
 
 
“I will not be “examining” her in public,” Jun clarified.
 
 
‘Right, yes, of course,” the man sighed as he started departing, “I will be right back!”
 
 
Nia Li, as it turned out, was a below-average height girl with a decent rack, decent hips and ass and a skinny form. But it was her face, more then anything, that justified her price.
 
 
Her hair was a pony tail that went to the middle of her back, and her eyes were big and blue. Her small nose was very cute and her lips were small but inviting. Her cheeks high and hollow and her slight eyes shined with a nervous energy. Her face was, in a word, beautiful.
 
 
He understood why her parents sold her to the auction house.
 
 
“Pay this the man,” Jun ordered his guards as if the notion of money going through his hands disgusted him. All the same, some of his guards nervously looked at each other before they went to get his chest.
 
 
“T-this Nia Li is thankful that you bought her,” the girl sweated as she curtsied to Jun, but he was studying his men as his chest was unloaded from the carriage.
 
 
“Indeed,” he replied and put a finger in her mouth before she could do the whole song and dance, “Now be a darling and be quiet for a second.”
 
 
“There are matters that call to me,” he said as two of his guards unlimbered the chest and reached for the list.
 
 
The nodded at the price in it before they quickly reached inside and pulled out the required taels out.
 
 
“Hold,” Jun said before they could shut the chest and looked inside.
 
 
And quickly found that he was missing as much as a third of all the money that he should have had.
 
 
He looked from Captain Ren to the soldiers holding his chest. All of them were nervous, but only one of them refused to meet his eyes.
 
 
Well then.
 
 
“Continue,” he said as if he hadn’t noticed anything.
 
 
“Do you need anything else, Young Master?” his connection to the auction house asked.
 
 
“That is all,” Jun said as he gestured at his new slave and she began to nervously walk towards his carriage.
 
 
“Captain Ren,” he said to his guard captain as they were out of ear shot of anyone his party.
 
 
“Yes, Young Master?” he said with the same overly polite tone that he had used so far.
 
 
“We leave the city at once,” he informed him, making his guards moan.
 
 
“And I want a list of our expenditures,” he then told him, making them all shut up.
 
 
“If that is your wish, Young Lord,” he said with the precipitation and caution that should have been in his voice all along.
 
 
Jun came to the city to buy things. Did they really think he would not find out?
 
 
Couldn’t they have waited to steal AFTER he had made his purchases?
 
 
Slaves were not the sort of thing a peasant could just own. Slaves were not the sort of thing just any merchant could own. Slaves were expensive and pretty girls like Nia even more so. It was easier to simply have servants whose pay you could divvy out through time than a slave who you had to pay a large sum upfront.
 
 
He was planning on buying more things but after this?
 
 
His carriage passed through the streets in silence as they went through the rows of peasants selling their daughters or their wives. Sometimes, things were just like that.
 
 
Xia Ni was content to let Jun simmer in silence and the Guards were also riding outside his carriage in silence.
 
 
Well, a girl with a body of Extreme Yin wasn’t that bad after all.
 
 
But he honestly wanted to get much more.
“This Xu Fen can attest to the quality of this woman!” a man, among many, yelled among those selling their family members and caused Jun to sigh.
 
 
“Stop the carriage,” he said and his guards, for once, jumped at his order.
 
 
“Y-young Lord!” the man bubble as Jun stepped beside him. Jun affected the stereotypical sneer that was expected of someone like him and looked at the woman that he was offering.
 
 
She was old by the standards of the era, looking to be about 36 years of age. Her tits were huge but, as far as the people of this world were concerned, that was all she had going for her.
 
 
Her hips were matronly, evidence that she had borne children, and her stomach had a slight bit of chub in it. Her hair was up in a bun and her face had a few lines that added dimensions to her face. But her eyes were a striking light brown and her hollow cheeks hinted at beauty that she had once had.
 
 
That she still had, in Jun’s opinion.
 
 
But that wasn’t why he stopped.
 
 
“This Young Master demands your name,” Jun informed her.
 
 
“Her name is Fu Si,” her husband immediately answered. Yeah, that fit.
 
 
“How many children?” Jun asked, because he had to be sure.
 
 
“Three, young lord,” the man said, “And she bore them all with no issue!”
 
 
“How many sons?” Jun demanded.
 
 
“...one,” the husband swallowed.
 
 
Yes, he remembered this. He remembered this story.
 
 
“Is he alive?” Jun casually asked.
 
 
“He didn’t die in infancy lord,” the man, gaining his confidence once again, nodded, “He is a strapping young warrior currently making his fame and fortune!”
 
 
Jun snorted; if that was true, the man would not be selling his wife.
 
 
The ironic thing was that it WOULD be true.
 
 
It would be a tale of revenge as a man who stepped all the way to be a First-class warrior who would come to kill the people who would eventually buy this woman. This son would eventually save his mother from a rather ugly situation.
 
 
But it could be Jun the one he eventually came to.
 
 
“Hmm,” Jun hummed as he looked the woman up and down, causing her to blush as he nodded to himself as if he saw something no one else did, “Yes, she will do.”
 
 
“W-wonderful lord!” the man exclaimed as he pushed his now ex-wife to him, “Now, for a woman as loyal as this who has given me no problems all my life? Why, my conscience would kill me if I demanded less than nine silver taels!”
 
 
“Y-you dare?” one of his guards choked, not in outrage but in honest shock.
 
 
Nia Li had cost 13 taels, but then she was young, pretty and spoken for by an actual auction house. Slaves were always expensive, but an old female slave should have not gone for more than half of what he was offering.
 
 
“I mean, obviously, since your august self obviously will only do the best to take care of her, I suppose I can bring that down to seven taels,” the man retracted as Jun quirked an eyebrow.
 
 
“Might as well make it free,” one of his guards spat.
 
 
“The heavens smile upon you today peasant,” Jun shrugged as if that much money meant nothing to him, “For today I am in a good mood.”
 
 
“Pay the man,” he ordered as he walked towards his carriage, only stopping to give his new plump older slave a look of expectation.
 
 
Fu Si jumped at hurried to enter his carriage.
 
 
“Endless praises be heaped upon your name my lord!” the peasant man hollered as he was handed out his payment, “A thousandfold and more!”
 
 
Jun departed the city not long after, his two new girl slaves in his carriage as his tired guards rode after him.
 
 
“This one is thank you for purchasing her, Young Master,” Fu Si introduced herself to him when she had gotten over her shock, “Might this one know what you want of her?”
 
 
Ah, right, Jun hadn’t really introduced himself to them.
 
 
“You are both going to sexually please this Yan Jun,” he told them. The sort of Dual Cultivation that would benefit him with Lia Ni required it. And if the First Class warrior that eventually came to “save” his mother found her happy and fat with his children, well, who was to say that he wouldn’t be well inclined to serve him?
 
 
“Like….right now?” Nia Li asked and looked away when both Jun and Fu Si looked at her.
 
 
“Do you want to?” Jun asked her.
 
 
“I-if that is what we are going to be doing anyway-” Nia Li tittered, “Why wait?”
 
 
Huh.
 
 
“We’ll wait for tonight,” Jun informed them.
 
 
He still had something to take care of.
 
 
Both Nia Li and Fu Si looked at Jun with fearful eyes when, that very night, he brought his spear into the carriage.
 
 
“Oh, don’t worry about this,” he told them as he patiently waited, ‘This isn’t for you.”
 
 
“If I may be so bold to ask,” his new milf swallowed in her mouth, “Who is it for?”
 
 
And before he could answer, they all heard a faint step in the back of his carriage. The sort that they would not have noticed had they been sleeping. Or fucking.
 
 
Jun allowed him to take three steps before he nodded to himself.
 
 
He pointed his spear at where he judged the right distance to be and then, moving his weight into his leading foot, he thrusted his spear forward.
 
 
The dagger head of his spear went through the lacquered wood of his carriage wall. The wood split but didn’t stop his blade tip until it met flesh and sunk into a chest.
 
 
“GAaaugh,” a voiced screamed as it tumbled down the outside of his carriage, crashing into the ground and then going very quiet.
 
 
By the time Jun opened the door, his guards were rousing from his tent and looking around them. Their eyes eventually settled on the bloody tip of Jun’s spear and the now dead guard outside his carriage.
 
 
It was Ren. He didn’t have armor on but there was a sword in his hand. Certainly, murdering Jun would have stopped him from auditing them, but he wondered if he realized what he was going to do after that?
 
 
He was not so reviled yet that the Yan family wouldn’t come after his ass.
 
 
“Pick a Captain from among yourselves,” Jun gestured at his eleven guards with his spear, “and clean this trash.”
 
 
He gestured at the now ex-captain with it.
 
 
“And please, don’t bother me for the rest of the night,” he imnperiously told them as he proffered his spear against his carriage and slammed the door behind him.
 
 
“Now,” he said to the two women looking at him with wide eyes, “Where were we?”
 
 
He didn’t have to say anything else to them.
 
 
They disrobed.