Bailey Matutine
(Verified Pooka)
- Location
- Pelican Town
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Yeah, we already established that this duel took place at the *edge* of the world.
Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade And Tax Evasion
- Thread starter Winged_One
- Start date
- Original Novel Fantasy
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Kinda makes you wonder how many edges of the world are in the center of the world, huh?
Tonguing his face-hole then.
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You're doing it on purpose now.
Yes, but Jian Wei isn't Shizhe. So his nephew getting a well deserved humiliation after years of letting the issue fester is basically just deserts.
Remember, he doesn't even know if his nephew is alive. Right now, he's reacting to the fact that his nephew, who he knows is far too proud to ever surrender, has been disarmed.
Right now, he thinks that shizhe's crippled or worse. He thinks he's talking to his nephew's killer.
He is completely unaware that she crafted an elaborate plan dedicated to humiliating his nephew as effectively as possible with the absolute minimum level of harm possible, helped along by his nephew abusing stimulants without sleeping for days in a futile quest to win a duel through beast taming. He has been kept in the dark by cowardly attendants.
On top of that, shanyi is aware that this has a chance to piss Wei off, and has done the necessary calculations to figure out the possible reactions the sect elder would have to his spoiled brat eating a bit of crow.
The fact that she gets to be the bearer of bad news and directly spin the fight, her reasons for it, and how his nephew fucked up and deserved getting his ass beat is a bonus in this situation. She even has leverage for the fact that Wei has suffered an embarrassing lack of control, when as a sect elder he should know that if his favorite nephew died in a duel or was further crippled he'd have heard more than some minor rumors about some kind of duel.
His nephew is in fact safe. The central cause of his outburst is invalid.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Yeah, but that won't help if Shanyi doesn't tell him before he fucking kills her.
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
Shanyi is gambling on "he's not going to kill me right away", and that seems like a fair gamble given that he's known as a reasonable man and she is willingly presenting herself at his mercy that he'll give some time to explain. And given that the last line is basically "I want an explanation from her" but phrased angrily, she seems to know her stuff
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Jian Wei's greatest failure is that not one person in his organization trusted his judgement and intelligence enough to defy his orders and brief him on Jian Shizhe's duel with Shanyi.
Kai Merah
Hound Hearted Hedonist
- Location
- Somewhere in the corners of my imagination
That is a good point. Everyone in the sect knows he just got back, and likely wouldn't have had a chance to hear about The Duel yet. And then the Victor of The Duel wants to talk to him. And nobody decided to tell him what happened? Is this a Someone Else's Problem happening?
Maybe the guy who was supposed to update him properly on The Duel didn't realise Shanyi was coming that day. So boss comes back, sees letter from that promising cultivator, and hears she's finally ready to talk business with him. Great! Sends minion to let her in, and minion doesn't say shit because he figures Updater Guy would have already updated boss, but Updater Guy didn't realise boss needed that update quite so soon.
Chapter 75: Flense Your Mind, Your Back Unbowed
Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
Author Note: Want to read further ahead? You can find FOUR patreon-exclusive posts, as well as SIX more chapters, over on my patreon, for a low price of 3$.
Thanks to all my patrons (FaintlySorcerous and 66 others)! If you are one and would like to be credited by name, please send me a message.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details. You can also ask personal questions to the characters, and get their answers.
Thanks to all my patrons (FaintlySorcerous and 66 others)! If you are one and would like to be credited by name, please send me a message.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details. You can also ask personal questions to the characters, and get their answers.
Qian Shanyi watched Jian Wei lift the lid on her box. She saw his eyes widen in shock, a predictable flurry of emotions passing over his face. She braced herself. It was barely enough.
His spiritual energy blew out of his body like a storm, blanketing the room, swirling all around her. It was the hand of death clutching at her throat, the weight of the grave crushing her alive, the sharp blades of a thousand swords tearing her apart. Her muscles froze in sheer, animal terror in front of a predator far, far greater than she ever hoped to be. Mere shrimp in front of a shark.
"What is the meaning of this?" Jian Wei said, his voice like the hiss of a blizzard, cold gaze piercing down to her very soul.
And in the middle of it all, she felt his name, the mark, the image of the sunlight dancing across the waves, without stopping. Inevitable and inalterable, a law of nature carved on the very fabric of the world: that this sunlight would dance, and it would dance forever, through storm and nature's fury, each ray as sharp as a razor, piercing through the clouds and burning all that would stand against it into dust.
This man was the Elder Ever-Dancing Sunlight. Of that there could be no question, for the world itself would buckle before a second could arise.
Such was the weight of a Daoist's name.
A true Elder, then. Not just a formal title.
How many did he slaughter, until other cultivators have bestowed it upon him?
She forced her hand to raise the cup to her lips, straining against the pressure. She had to pour spiritual energy into her muscles to keep her arm stable, but the tea in the cup still shook with pathetic little waves.
Terror is of the mind. A sword that misses even by even the smallest fraction draws no blood.
Like a dam against a flood, a fortress of cold calculation snapped in place within her own mind, keeping the terror at bay.
She took a casual sip. She had to project an image of certainty. If he wanted to terrify her into submission, into begging him to stop, he would need something more than a Daoist name.
He wouldn't dare strike me.
She expected fury. Wanted it, even, to build her own image. She knew the risks, and found them acceptable. She just had to follow her own plan.
He wouldn't dare violate the fourth edict.
This would solidify the lie of the Sky Void Island sect. A loose cultivator would never risk provoking the fury of a sect Elder - which meant that if she did provoke it, she couldn't be a loose cultivator.
He could snap my neck as easily as scratching himself.
Irrelevant. This was the terror speaking. He hadn't attacked her - all his spiritual energy alone could do was scare her.
She still couldn't breathe. Only enough air in her lungs to speak a single sentence.
"Jian Shizhe is fine," she said, keeping her voice from shaking through pure force of will. "Barely even scratched, though his pride may never recover."
The pressure lessened, but only a fraction. At least enough for her to draw another breath.
She inhaled slowly, carefully, before continuing. Wouldn't do to run out of air, now. "Three days ago, he tried to force his way into my room," she said. "where I was half-dressed and my partner laid naked. Where our sect secrets were laid out in the open."
She planned this entire speech well in advance. A careful scaffold, all built on top of a single question.
What did Jian Wei want?
She looked into the eyes of death, and made her own eyes shine back with pure defiance. "If I was anyone else, you would have come home to a slaughter post put through your gates, our sects already at war," she spoke with the precision of a refiner's hammer. "This sword is a gift, taken out of his hand in a righteous and honorable duel. It is a symbol that I do not see Jian Shizhe's foolish actions as those of his sect. But before we can agree on any deals, I implore you to decide what to do with that sword - and I only see two options."
Jian Wei kept staring at her silently. Waiting for her to finish before he would pronounce his verdict.
What did Jian Wei want? He was the uncle of Jian Shizhe, and his direct Elder. He was the Elder of the Northern Scarlet Stream sect. He built it, and was growing it, step by step, like a careful gardener.
This meant he wanted Jian Shizhe to be safe. He wanted his sect to be safe, and growing in power.
So what happened when these two allegiances were put at odds?
An opportunity.
She reached into her robes, and drew out another letter, setting it on the table. She tried to move her hand quickly and smoothly, to conceal the tremors. She didn't think it worked. "A formality," she continued anyways, forcing the words to keep flowing out of her dry throat. "My personal statement that this was merely a personal disagreement between the two of us, and that I do not hold the Northern Scarlet Stream sect responsible. That is the first option I see. You may take it, and I will leave this town, and that would be the last you hear the name Qian Shanyi."
Jian Wei held her stare calmly, the pressure around her not easing at all. A waste of spiritual energy, so precious for a building foundation cultivator - but her mind would still buckle before he ran out. She was already feeling her self-assurance fraying at the edges, the sheer threat eroding her mind, bits and pieces of her conviction cracking off, never to return.
He wouldn't dare strike me.
He wouldn't have to. His disciples can do his work for him.
Treacherous thoughts, bubbling up from her subconscious. There was a reason, an argument for why he couldn't, she remembered thinking it through before, but now, in the moment, it all felt so far away, logic dripping through her fingers like so much water.
She just had to stay strong until they were done. If she couldn't even withstand a little bit of terror, how could she claim to rebel against the Heavens?
You can't. You can't at all. Go back to your sect before he KILLS YOU YOU FOOL -
She strangled another treasonous thought, but they were coming one after another, faster and faster. Eventually even her own mind would give out.
If her body didn't break first. Mental and physical, two pressures, acting in concert. Her muscles strained to keep her back straight, neck unbowed. For now.
"Honorable cultivator Qian," Jian Wei spoke finally, and, without so much as moving a finger, flicked the letter she set down on the table with his spiritual energy, sending it sailing directly into his hands. His tone had not warmed, but it was patient, as if talking to a child.
Children die so easily. Just one hard shake, and snap goes the neck. Just like yours.
"I have extended an invitation because I expected us to discuss matters as fellow cultivators," Jian Wei continued, "But instead, you bring me this." he gestured to the sword in the box, as if it was a dead rat, dragged in by a particularly stupid cat. "You threaten war - in abstract, yet the threat remains. You enter my house and tell me such grave things about my own cousin. And yet you speak of it all as if you are doing me a favor."
Qian Shanyi breathed slowly, carefully, her muscles working overtime against the pressure around her. If she was a real ambassador from a real sect, doing this to her would have been an insult - but what she put in front of Jian Wei would have been one as well. It balanced out, in a sick sort of way.
It felt like these metaphorical balance scales were attached to her skull. One ton on each side of her head, just about crushing it with the tension.
Jian Wei broke the seal on her letter with one finger and unfurled it, eyes quickly scanning the page. Only two paragraphs of text. "If you had simply defeated Shizhe, none of this charade would have been necessary," he continued, looking back up at her, the letter tossed casually back onto the table. "So would you kindly tell me what it is you did to my direct disciple?"
For all that his voice barely changed in tone, the threat in it was like a slap across her face.
He doesn't believe me, he knows I am not from a sect, just humoring me -
"I have humiliated him, as he had humiliated me," she replied immediately, refusing to look away from those cold eyes. She couldn't hesitate here, or she would collapse. She already had to spend a chunk of her spiritual energy just to manually keep her back upright against the pressure, fortification of her muscles alone no longer sufficing. "I made him kneel and apologize for what he did. That is why I am afraid that the honorable Elder may lose some face if our sects were to simply work together. Even if I were to dance through every street of Glass Ridge, singing that this was merely between me and Jian Shizhe, some face would still be lost. I do not think it would be right, so I would prefer to leave town entirely."
"I see." Two quiet words, like an echo out of a grave. Jian Wei tapped a finger against his cheek, considering her words.
Her neck creaked, as seconds stretched out, each one an individual torture. In a distant corner or her mind, rage started to build. She could tell that Jian Wei had already calmed down, and whatever shock she imposed on him was long gone. At this point, he was just fucking with her, seeing how long it would take for her to crack, secure in his knowledge that even if her sect came asking, he could explain his actions.
He knew that no refinement stage cultivator could resist a building foundation one for long, knew that if she broke, what she said afterwards would be utter nonsense, knew that what she did to Jian Shizhe was likely deserved, and yet he still chose to pressure her, as a fucking negotiating tactic.
"I suppose that explains what you meant by the second option," Jian Wei finally said, as if not even noticing the state she was in. "That I would claim you acted on my orders, to discipline him in my place?"
"Yes," she said, failing to keep her teeth from grinding. She reached into her robes again, but her left arm would no longer rise, muscles spent entirely, spiritual energy unstable due to her terror. She had to reach in with her right, an awkward angle - but better that than begging him to stop. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction.
She drew the second envelope, and tossed it underhand in his vague direction. Jian Wei's spiritual energy caught it out of the air, bringing it to his eyes. "It would be," she said, pausing to draw breath again, "better, for everyone. For Jian Shizhe, for Northern Scarlet Stream, for you."
"I do not think Shizhe would agree," Jian Wei said idly, calmly sipping his tea while he read over her proposed agreement, backdated to when they last met.
"He is spiraling," Qian Shanyi snarled, losing control of her voice for a moment. Her vision started to swim. Her ribs were being crushed - with each breath, she barely had enough left for a full sentence. "A bird with both broken wings. He needs a lesson before he splatters against the ground. If I simply leave - he will see this as pointless injustice. Get worse."
Qian Shanyi felt something give in her side, a sharp spike of pain. Hopefully not her ribs. She put her hands on her knees, locking herself into a single, stable position. She'd deal with it later.
"If this is a lesson," she continued, "he may yet learn. That his actions reflect on the sect as well. You would not lose face for what I did - you would gain face, for solving a problem that was there for months - years."
"Hm," Jian Wei said, playing with his tea cup. "So neatly spoken, yet I can't help but notice that you have not brought this up the last time we met. I can't help but notice that you chose the time of the duel just before I returned - all so that I could not intervene. In other words, I can't help but notice," Jian Wei said, leaning forwards, across the table, the swirl of spiritual energy so much denser right next to his body, like a cloud of nightmares made manifest. "That I am talking to a swindler."
- he knows he knows he knows HE KNOWS HE KNOWS HE KNOWS HE KNOWS -
Qian Shanyi held herself from flinching back. Her vision was starting to black out entirely. "You have already been swindled, Elder," she ground out through clenched teeth, her patience entirely spent. "Will you cry like a child, or accept reality?"
For a moment, she thought she was going to die.
Then the tension vanished all at once, as if it was never even there. If Qian Shanyi wasn't already sitting down, hands on her knees in the most stable position, she would have collapsed from the contrast.
"I have not heard a refinement stage cultivator be this defiant in years," Jian Wei laughed easily, leaning back as if she had just told him a hilarious anecdote. Qian Shanyi's vision started to come back, and she saw the slight grin playing on his lips. "You have been very well trained. Please send my commendations to the Elders of the Sky Void Island sect."
"I will be faithful to your intentions," Qian Shanyi said neutrally, trying to glue her mind back from the scattered fragments. Now that the pressure was gone it was threatening to tip over into exuberant euphoria, which would be its own danger.
She couldn't afford to crack now, after having withstood that storm. She needed to go back over the conversation, figure out what each of them said, what it all meant.
"I have been very surprised that a refinement stage cultivator was sent here as an ambassador, but I can see why you have been picked," Jian Wei said, rubbing his chin. "So I have already been swindled, hm? I suppose I have been, by my own sect no less, to find myself in such a situation. I can't turn back time, that much is true - the only thing we can do is move forward."
Jian Wei picked up a writing brush, dipping it into an inkwell on the side of the table, and quickly wrote out a letter, before sliding it to her side of the table.
She looked at it warily, not reaching to pick it up, mostly because she didn't trust her arms yet. It was a permission slip, granting her access to most of the sect facilities. Her heart fluttered in her chest, but she kept it from showing on her face.
He knows? Bah. He doesn't suspect shit.
"Your statement is appreciated," Jian Wei continued, ignorant of her internal battle. "But as Jian Shizhe's elder, I am afraid it is still my responsibility, that I have allowed it to get to this point. I hope this will go some way towards making amends for this misstep, and for letting my emotions get away from me in our talk." He paused, setting the writing brush aside. "I will think about your proposal, and question some witnesses. A couple hours, at most. In the meantime, please, enjoy a rest in one of our gardens."
Qian Shanyi shook her head. "I thank the Elder for your kindness, but that would not not be necessary."
Jian Wei raised an eyebrow at her. "Bravery is admirable, but not when it leans into stupidity," he chided her, "I kept expecting you to speak up, but it seemed that you were going to keep pushing up until you were dead. You should rest, not insist you are still whole after resisting my pressure."
Rat-fucking bastard. He was just testing me?
"This here cultivator thanks the Elder for the provided pointers," she said, speaking in a way so opposite to sarcasm that she hoped her real meaning came across. "Yet is it not said that a swan knows best the shape of their own wings?"
"The swan in question is bleeding out of her nose."
Qian Shanyi touched her nose. It really was bleeding. She didn't even notice.
At least she didn't piss herself in terror, so small mercies. Even if it would have served Jian Wei well, for his office to stink after putting his full pressure on a refinement stage cultivator. On a guest.
"It is still not necessary," she said stubbornly. Her spiritual energy settled down by now, and without any major injury, she had no problems controlling it. She wove her rope control technique around her robes, making them hug her curves, stiffening up. She slowly stood up, letting her robes take up some of the tension from her tired muscles. "I shall rest in my own rooms."
Jian Wei arched an eyebrow at her, but she held his gaze. "Very well," he relented. "I will send a runner."
Qian Shanyi bowed just a bit short of what was respectful, and left.
"So how blown are we?" Wang Yonghao asked, when they returned back to their rooms. They walked together, with her grabbing him by the waist for a bit of extra support.
She raided the Healer's chambers in the Northern Scarlet Stream sect for some basic recovery pills - since Jian Wei had ever-so-graciously volunteered to give her access - but they weren't all that quick to work.
"What do you mean?" she asked, too mentally exhausted to parse through the question. She needed a nap. In fact, she was going to start right on it, as she hopped directly into bed.
"Our legend?" Wang Yonghao asked, leaning against a wall. "Did he figure out who we are?"
"Oh," she said, closing her eyes. "We are fine. He took the bait."
"You came back white as a sheet, barely walking on your own. With dried blood under your nose."
"That's how you know it worked great," she said, yawning. "He…wanted to test me, or something. That I resisted so long - I think it…convinced him, I was…trained by a sect…"
She trailed off. Where was she going with it? Her mind felt too sluggish.
"But if you think we should flee," she said, yawning again, hugging one of the pillows to her chest as she curled up under the blankets, still fully dressed. "Then just pick me up and flee. But this here honorable cultivator will be napping now."
She didn't even hear his response.
She woke up an hour and a half later to Wang Yonghao poking her in the side.
"There's a runner," he said, as she blinked away the sleep. "Says he's there for you."
After her nap, she felt almost completely refreshed, and so she hopped out of bed, strolled to the doors, and took a letter from an outer disciple who waited for her. She broke the wax seal - Jian Wei's personal seal, at that - and scanned through the contents, walking back into the room.
"Told you it worked," she snorted, handing the letter to Wang Yonghao. "Jian Wei wants to re-negotiate the terms, an hour from now."
"What does that mean?"
"It means he took the bait," she said, shrugging. She hopped back into bed, lazing on top of the covers. "He wants the deal, just not at the terms I have given him. But the only reason to ask for a re-negotiation is if he still wanted the overall deal - and I don't care that much about the specifics."
She asked for an amount of glassware appropriate for a sect - but they didn't actually need anywhere near that much. Even if they got less than half, it would be enough.
The letter also said she'd have to serve as an instructor for Jian Shizhe for several weeks. Annoying, but it would give more cover for their story, and if she could get away with hitting Jian Shizhe on the head with a training stick, all the better. They haven't yet exhausted all the benefit they could draw from the town, after all.
She could almost imagine Jian Wei's calm tone as he justified the decision. "It is only natural for the one who brought up the issue to be the one solving it," he'd say. Very economical.
She'd even be paid for her effort, though only a perfunctory sum, into an account in the Thrifty Bat Bank that Jian Wei wanted her to set up. He seemed set on making all their transactions go through it, sword payments included. She vaguely recalled this bank as being linked to him in some way - perhaps he wanted to put her finances where he could keep watch over them.
Frankly, all Qian Shanyi could think of was that it would give them a sect recommendation for a bank account, something she would have otherwise needed an entire scheme to acquire. It's not like she could simply walk in and ask for one. Jian Wei could watch the account as much as he liked - simply having one would make interacting with other sects so much easier, and getting an account in a different bank afterwards would be child's play.
She'd still try to extract some other concessions out of him in exchange, of course. No need to tell him she was glad he was playing into her hands.
"I still don't understand it," Wang Yonghao said, looking her over. "When you explained it before - I thought if you got attacked, we'd be running away."
"If we got attacked by ordinary disciples, yes."
Wang Yonghao looked at her weirdly. She arched an eyebrow at him. "Riiight," he said slowly, "Instead, you got attacked by an Elder. Which is…better, somehow?"
Qian Shanyi snorted, rolling her eyes. Her rage faded after the nap, and it was easier to look back on what happened with a more rational outlook. "Wasn't attacked. Just pressured a bit."
"Right, yeah, very different," Wang Yonghao replied sarcastically. "Common sign of a polite conversation, when someone comes back on shaky legs and with blood dripping out of their nose."
"It is, as far as the Empire is concerned," she explained patiently. "He couldn't kill me, not with the fourth edict hanging over his head. Couldn't duel me himself, obviously, since he is building foundation and I am refinement stage. His disciples could - but unless he knew for sure I was lying, it'd just make him seem like a sore loser. As long as there was a bit of uncertainty, he wouldn't have risked it, not until he could question the witnesses, ask more about my supposed sect."
Qian Shanyi paused, thinking it over. "Really, I was quite safe in that room."
Easy to say now. It didn't feel that way, not when she was in the middle of it.
"You still got pressured," Wang Yonghao said, clearly unconvinced.
"Yeah, that rat fucking bastard did do that, and if I had my way, I'd break his legs for it," she grumbled, "I didn't expect him to have a Daoist name, so didn't think it would affect me nearly as much. Didn't think he'd decide to test me to destruction, either." She grimaced in disgust. "Playing Heaven's advocate, some morons would argue that gifting an Elder the sword of their own disciple would be a great humiliation, and a bit of retaliation was to be expected."
"Is that why you think he did it?"
"No. I could say he wanted to see if I would crack - perhaps admit I was sent by his enemies to trap him, or vice versa, see if someone else could make me break his trust. But frankly, I think he just saw an opportunity to take some of his fury out on me. But I suppose I am lying to his face and arguably scamming his sect, so it would be a bit hypocritical of me to complain of unfair treatment."
"And then, after doing that… He still wanted to deal with you?"
Qian Shanyi shrugged again. "Why not? I still wanted to deal with him. His sadistic streak has little influence on business."
"I just mean, why not throw us out of town entirely?"
Qian Shanyi waved her arm in the air vaguely. "I told you it was always a possibility. But I didn't think it was likely. It's…" She sighed in frustration. "How do I explain this?
She thought for a minute, before turning on her side, facing Wang Yonghao head on. "Okay, so think about a human mind as a squid."
An incredulous look. "A squid?"
Qian Shanyi nodded. "Yes, a squid, swimming in murky waters, looking for food, hiding from predators."
Qian Shanyi formed one of her hands into what she thought looked a bit like a squid, her fingers for tentacles. With a moment's thought, she circulated the Crushing Glance of the Netherworld Eyes, and drew black eyes on the back of her hand, and little suckers on her fingers.
"There are currents that pull this squid in different directions," she continued, making the squid move around in the air, "and shapes far away in the waters, that could be food, or could be danger. And this squid has to decide whether to go left - and throw us out of town - or right, and take my deal. A current of greed pulls it right: I've dangled a lot of money in front of him, as well as weapons I know he needs. A current of embarrassment pulls it left: I have humiliated his cousin, his direct disciple. That I've spared his life makes this current weaker, but it is still there."
Wang Yonghao leaned forward, clearly engaged by her puppetry. Very visual learner, this one. "Right," he said, "So whichever current is stronger, that way the squid will swim?"
Qian Shanyi shook her head. "Not necessarily. It's harder to swim against a current, but by no means impossible, and the squid is looking for food. Out in the distance, it sees something - is it sunlight glinting on the water, a cloud of plankton, or a great whale, ready to swallow it whole?"
A moment's thought, and a glowing cloud of light appeared in the air, just to the side of her squid-hand. "The squid sees us donate a massive amount of tribulation materials as if it was nothing," she continued, "Could loose cultivators do this? Of course. Could a loose cultivator have a rare healing technique that let her recover in time for a duel? Could she defeat sword saint Jian Shizhe, despite being of a lower realm? Absolutely. These are all just shapes out in the water, any one of them could be anything at all. But take them all together, and they start to make a picture, that of a sect that fell from power but still holds plenty of secrets within their coffers. One it would not be worth trifling with."
She formed the cloud of glowing light into a crude silhouette of a fish, and made her squid-hand turn towards it, adding a hungry slant to its eyes.
"For some people - like Jian Shizhe - their squid is carried on the currents, almost blind to the shapes far in the distance," she continued, "Others, they want to get close before making a decision. Jian Wei had spent most of his life building up his sect. He wouldn't risk it all on a maybe, nor let Jian Shizhe ruin it, and he could see the logic in my words. So he swam right."
Her squid hand moved right, towards the glowing silhouette. "But sometimes," she said conspiratorially, "the shapes are false, cast by a ravenous Illihveli. And then the squid gets eaten."
Her other hand came from below, large white teeth drawn on her fingers. The jaw chomped down on the squid, and thrashed about, before the squid fell limp, and she dragged it under the blankets.
"Open up your inner world," She said decisively, standing up from the bed. "If Jian Wei wants to meet with me in an hour, I don't want to waste it on laying about. We still have to prepare the scales and the lift."
"And then, we'll go and eat that squid."
Every time she says this i think of Foghorn Leghorn
BagFullOfLizards
Some bag, mostly lizards
- Location
- A bag
Using her technique to draw eyes on her squid hand was ridiculously cute 😂
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Eat that horse with her, wang yonghao.
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/FTCM9AiVdEA?si=sa_Q9l-uSfqNNlH6
I'm not sure which part, if any, of the fact that it was a duel 'to death or surrender' and that Shizhe would not have surrendered without such a humiliation and that he's been leaning on the implicit threat that he himself would kill anyone who wins a duel 'to death', he is failing to understand. (Or why he is saying this if he does understand all that)
There is no "simple defeat", Shizhe closed that option.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
1) The elder may simply be ignorant of that particular detail, not yet knowing everything that transpired around the duel.
2) You might be misreading the tone of the statement. "If you had simply defeated him, none of this would be necessary" can be read as berating our gal: "why didn't you just defeat him, you idiot?" But it can also be read as a simple statement of a counterfactual: "if, hypothetically, you had done X, then none of this charade would be necessary, therefore you did not do X, but rather something else."
Remember that the elder's next question is (to paraphrase) "what did you actually do to Shizhe?" I think he is simply thinking out loud when he says "if you had simply defeated him."
Ivan the Not-so-Terrible
AH MEW CHEEKI BREEKI I V DAMKE
- Location
- Mikonyan’s USSR
Junior, I say, junior - lose face, junior? You're about to lose your face if you don't acknowledge this here senior brother!
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Dang. Forget laser beams that explode cities or strength that lets them juggle mountains, this is how you make someone seem powerful. Drill down to what it means for someone in this setting to be powerful, then find a unique way to express it. Something the audience has never seen before, or at least that they haven't seen a thousand times.
This is the kind of point you can only get in literature. Visual media rarely give you such clear access to the main character's thoughts, and when they do it feels more jarring than it does here.
Torn between pointing to this as another example of how Shanyi's overwhelming terror emphasizes the Elder's power, and making a joke about how of course he knows you're a swindler, Shanyi, you usually don't try to hide it.
All due respect, sir, but what kind of refinement-stage cultivator did you think would be sent to negotiate with a building-foundation-stage elder?
It strikes me that Shanyi is a lot more comfortable being subjected to casual violence than Yonghao. There's a limit, of course, but Yonghao is notably squeamish about pretty much any sort of violence. Even if it's business-as-usual and "only" results in exhaustion and a mild nosebleed.
This probably comes from a mixture of Yonghao being more sheltered as a kid and being exposed to a lot of serious/for-keeps violence in his adulthood, but it's still interesting.
Man, I wish I could do that.
Kai Merah
Hound Hearted Hedonist
- Location
- Somewhere in the corners of my imagination
Hmm. I wouldn't say his childhood was sheltered. But I think it was very... Mortal. He became a cultivator through lucky chances rather than being taught by someone in a sect to deal with cultivators from other sects and rogues. So he is a cultivator in power, but not in culture, and I have strong vibes like Heaven was making sure he remained uneducated so he could keep giving offence and encouraging all those life and death duels and killing all those pesky cultivators who insist on defying Heaven.
Basically, Yonghao and Heaven are in an abusive relationship where Heaven showers him with gifts while at the same time keeping him isolated, constantly making him feel insecure and unable to reach out for help lest that 'help' die to 'mysterious circumstances', otherwise known as Heaven's will. Keeping him from even being aware that that help could be available.
- Pronouns
- She/Them
Not beating the toxic yuri allegations... not one bit
Chapter 76: Hoist Your Fate On Chains Of Logic
Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
Author Note: Want to read further ahead? You can find FOUR patreon-exclusive posts, as well as up to EIGHT more chapters, over on my patreon.
Thanks to all my patrons (FaintlySorcerous and 66 others)! If you are one and would like to be credited by name, please send me a message.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details. You can also ask personal questions to the characters, and get their answers.
Thanks to all my patrons (FaintlySorcerous and 66 others)! If you are one and would like to be credited by name, please send me a message.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details. You can also ask personal questions to the characters, and get their answers.
The fifth warehouse of the Northern Scarlet Stream sect was a quiet place, air still and dry, dust swept away by the daily flow of goods and the brooms of sweepers. Dim light came down from specially engineered slits cut into the walls - safeguarding sensitive goods from direct sunlight. They let in just enough air to keep the large room ventilated, keeping moisture and wind out through the shape of the openings alone. Stacks of crates occupied most of the space, kept within zones outlined on the stone floor in red paint, leaving open passages more than wide enough to walk through.
Three pairs of footsteps broke up the quiet. Guo Hu, an outer disciple of the Northern Scarlet Stream sect, Wang Yonghao and Qian Shanyi, heading toward one of the corners.
If only there were more hours in the day and less things taking up her time, Qian Shanyi would have gone over this warehouse with a careful eye and a wax slate to take down notes. The entire building was like a perfectly balanced shovel - nothing out of place, and every little nail serving a key purpose, all without using a single drop of spiritual energy. Those windows were only a small part of the whole - she still couldn't figure out why their footsteps did not echo, even though it seemed like they should. Deep mysteries of engineering.
"And finally… Ah, yes, here, honorable immortal -" Guo Hu said, tapping the lid of one of the crates. It was almost a cube, a meter to each side, with a detailed paper label nailed down on top. "The glass cauldron. Five hundred liters, as discussed, together with tubing and valves."
"Thank you," Qian Shanyi said, bowing slightly. This was to be the star of their collection - she couldn't wait to take a look at it. "Is there a place where we can inspect the merchandise, away from prying eyes? We have some tests we would like to run, to make sure it is fully suitable."
After the excitement of the duel, and negotiating with Jian Wei - twice, now - Qian Shanyi sorely needed to relax, let her hair down, and do something with no risk to her life, limb or sanity. And so they decided to head to the warehouse, inspect the glassware she had just haggled over, and write down instructions about where it was supposed to be shipped.
And then they were going to steal it, from themselves, and make sure nobody ever found out. A nice, calm, uneventful heist, with everything going according to plan.
"Of course," the disciple said, bowing back. "One of the processing rooms can be made available."
"These tests may take some time," Qian Shanyi warned. "Perhaps well into the night. Would it be alright for us to occupy it this long?"
"It is no trouble at all," the disciple said, shaking his head. "We have three processing rooms, and no large deliveries are expected today."
"Thank you," Qian Shanyi said, moving to the side of the crate. She placed a long roll of fabric she had been carrying on top, together with a couple bags, and crouched down. "Yonghao, if you don't mind, help me carry this."
"Ah, honorable immortal, perhaps it would be best if our workers…"
"We'll be done faster if we help you," Qian Shanyi said, lifting the crate and maneuvering it into the passageway. For her newly strengthened muscles, it felt light as a feather. "I have a meeting in the evening, so I would like us to start as soon as we can."
They needed the glassware for about a hundred different reasons, but they couldn't simply buy it from a store. If someone kept track of them, they would know that neither Qian Shanyi nor Wang Yonghao had any reason to purchase hundreds of kilograms of specialized glassware, nor any place to store it.
Through her deal with Jian Wei, Qian Shanyi solved the first half of this conundrum: she wasn't purchasing this glassware for herself, she was purchasing it for her entire sect. That left only the second half. They have faced a familiar problem with the rabbits, but glassware could not be eaten, could not vanish without a trace, which left only one option: theft.
It took them only ten minutes to move the crates through the wide gates on the side of the warehouse and into an adjacent processing room. It was only ten meters to the side, with shelves along the walls - full of chains and hooks for moving the crates, instruments, hammers and nails, and a stack of wooden boards up against one of the walls, next to a sawing table and a tall ladder. The stone floor was swept clean, practically spotless except for occasional pitting and scorch marks, where some alchemical fluid had been spilled a long time ago.
The room was well-lit, much more so than the warehouse - with two skylights, and a long row of glass windows along the top of the wall, just above the gates leading out into the street beyond. The walls were wooden, but fairly thin, and the shuffling of the town gave the room a cozy atmosphere - murmur of conversation, click and clack of hoofs and sandals, the soft creak of boots, and a quiet whine of hinges from some distant door.
Right between the two skylights, a railing was bolted to the ceiling, stretching across the room and then back out into the warehouse. A pulley hung down from it on a pair of steel wheels - to help the ordinary workers lift and move the heaviest goods around when necessary. Two more pulleys hung from the ceiling on large iron hooks at the sides of the room.
Qian Shanyi thanked Guo Hu and the three other workers he called in to help them move the crates, and carefully wheeled the warehouse doors closed, chaining them shut. Wang Yonghao did much the same to the doors on the other side of the room, leading out into the street.
"Windows next," Qian Shanyi said decisively.
They brought a large spool of the cheapest fabric they could find with them for this exact purpose, and she helped Wang Yonghao unfurl it and cut it into shape, eyeballing the size of individual windows. They didn't need to be very precise.
Ordinarily, there would be no reason for someone to try looking inside to find out what they were doing - but with the Heavens out there, it was best to be careful. Picking up a hammer and some nails from the shelves, she headed to the windows facing the street, while Wang Yonghao took care of the skylights.
Ten more minutes of awkwardly balancing on top of a ladder later, hammering the fabric to the window frames, they were done. All sources of vision blocked, the gates locked shut, with another piece of fabric covering the narrow gap in between. Even if someone wanted to look in, they wouldn't be able to.
Unless they used some kind of divination technique, of course, but they couldn't ward against everything. Not yet.
With the windows blocked, the room fell into darkness, only a scant few rays of light piercing through the fabric. Qian Shanyi lit two oil lamps she brought along to help them see better, setting them around the room. Cultivator vision was more than sufficient to navigate in the borderline darkness, but she still didn't want to stub her toe on the edge of a crate by accident.
Their heist plan was very simple. They would bring the crates into Wang Yonghao's inner world, unpack the glass, replace it with plates of stone or wood of equal weight, and then seal the crates back up. As long as nobody else opened the crates again, they would never even know that the glass had vanished.
By the time she was done with the lamps, Wang Yonghao had already arranged the noise-muffling and spiritual energy-gathering formations in two concentric circles and opened his inner world. The gently scintillating rainbow membrane that covered the entrance portal took on an almost psychedelic quality in the darkness.
Qian Shanyi could only guess at what that membrane did - though she suspected it might have been one of the reasons the Heavens could not look inside. It stopped the flow of air and light - there was even a bit of a resistance when they passed through it, which Qian Shanyi thought was down to a mild difference in air pressure. Practically speaking, it mostly meant that if she wanted to look inside, she had to poke her head through the membrane every time.
Wang Yonghao was just about ready to dive in when Qian Shanyi had waved him over. He gave her a surprised look. "What?"
"Don't bother with our lift," Qian Shanyi said, gesturing to the pulley on the ceiling. "They have a better one, and our tripod still requires work. If it cracks, or slides into the portal… I'd rather not take the risk."
Seeing Wang Yonghao's disappointed expression, she hurried to clarify. "We'll still need it eventually, just not today. Lifting something in or out of your inner world - hardly a rare occurrence. But we've only had a couple days to test it, and if we drop a crate from thirty meters up, it'd be all for nothing."
That seemed to cheer him up, at least, and he closed his world fragment. While he was busy moving the talismans below the central pulley, Qian Shanyi headed off to the side of the room, one of her oil lamps in hand, to take a look at the chains. The ceiling in the warehouse was only six meters tall, and the chains were sized accordingly - they would need to link several of them in sequence, to get thirty meters of length.
"Could you take the ones off the other two pulleys?" she asked Wang Yonghao. "I think we'll need them as well."
Linking the chains together with carabiners took the two of them all of five minutes, most of which was due to Qian Shanyi needing to pause to write down a list of equipment they were borrowing, so that they could put everything back more or less as it had been. Nails and hammers were one thing - blocking the windows was only expected, if their tests would include sect secrets. Using the chains, on the other hand, might reveal more than they wanted to.
Once they were done, the long chain reeled in and pooling on the ground, Qian Shanyi tied her rope around her waist, and handed Wang Yonghao the other end. He raised an eyebrow at her - this wasn't a part of their plan.
"Tie me to that hook," she said, gesturing to one of the pulleys they were not using. "If I'm going to be working here alone, I want a safety line."
While Wang Yonghao was busy with the rope, Qian Shanyi laid on the ground next to the entrance portal into his inner world, and poked her head inside.
She saw Linghui Mei in the bath - washing her hands and feet, not even taking her robes off. She looked fully human again - out of an overabundance of caution, just in case a small fraction of her jiuweihu musk might be left on the crates.
While Qian Shanyi and Wang Yonghao had been running around town, dealing with the duel, Linghui Mei had been stuck inside, with little to do except work on their farm. She had finished plowing the bean farm, planted the saplings, and started work on the coop for the rabbits.
For now, all the rabbits frolicked together - but as time went on, they would need to separate them to keep the population from exploding, young females away from the males, children away from adults, and males being fattened up for slaughter away from everyone else. This meant they would need several coops, large enough for the rabbits to have plenty of grass to eat; but to start with, they needed at least one, just to keep the rabbits away from the bean farm.
Since neither of them knew how much grassland the rabbits actually needed to feed themselves, they decided to start with a coop ten meters to the side, up against the edge of the world fragment. If it seemed that the grass couldn't keep up, they'd add more sections from there.
But the rabbit fence had been a long-term concern. Today they had to focus on the glassware, and for that reason a dozen square meters at the center of the world fragment have been paved with rough plates of stone. If they lowered the crates down onto the ground, unpacked them, and some blades of grass had gotten stuck to the bottom - it would have broken some of the illusion they were trying to create. An obvious loophole to be closed.
Linghui Mei nodded, heading towards the center of the world. They agreed on a very simple division of labor: Qian Shanyi would lower the crates, Linghui Mei would carefully unpack them, while Wang Yonghao would weigh the glass and cut stone block replacements of equal mass.
"What do you want to start with?" Wang Yonghao asked, once Qian Shanyi raised her head out of the world fragment.
"The cauldron, definitely," Qian Shanyi said immediately. "It's the heaviest crate by far. Best get it over with."
Wang Yonghao nodded. "Yeah, that's what I thought too. I'll help you attach it."
Wrapping the chains around the heavy crate might have been a little difficult for the ordinary warehouse workers - but for the two cultivators, it was simplicity itself. Within a minute, they had it secured, and Qian Shanyi began to lower it into the portal, slow and steady. Wang Yonghao descended alongside it, keeping a hand on its side just in case.
On his shoulder, he carried a bag of instruments - a pair of crowbars, hammers, and a small box of extra nails, for the work down below. Since they were already in the warehouse, they figured they might as well use the good tools. The knowledge that they could not keep them ached Qian Shanyi, but such was life.
Once Wang Yonghao vanished through the portal, Qian Shanyi had to work by feel, carefully letting out more and more of the chain until it went slack. They've reached the bottom, then. She took out a piece of thread and tied it around the chain link in her hands - so as to remember the length - and carefully approached the entrance again, kneeling down to look inside.
Linghui Mei and Wang Yonghao had already unhooked the crate from the chains, and were carrying it towards the hut, to free up the delivery spot. Qian Shanyi quietly rose, and began to reel the chain back up.
The work proceeded steadily, repetitive motions of chaining the crates and slowly lowering them into the world fragment quickly blending together, and Qian Shanyi's mind started to drift. She thought once again about the future - Jian Wei told her that he'd like her to visit the sect in the evening, for a meeting with his disciples. And Jian Shizhe would be among them.
He had roped her into teaching Jian Shizhe in the end, so she had to come up with a plan, think about what she could even do with him. Her professional pride wouldn't let her sleep if she didn't at least make an effort, even if the man was as blind as a mole with two separate bags over its head. An amicable relationship with Jian Shizhe was almost certainly unrecoverable after what she did, but that simply meant she would have to take a different approach, more confrontational -
Her foot slipped just as she was turning away from the entrance, and she instantly snapped back to reality. Her hands whirled, trying to catch her balance, and fingers just barely caught the edge of the entrance portal before she fell inside.
Blinding sunlight. Someone screaming in terror. Sharp yank on her abdomen, and then she wasn't falling anymore.
"Shanyi!" she heard someone shout from down below. Wang Yonghao, probably, but with the blood hammering in her ears she wasn't all that sure.
"I'm fine!" she shouted back, her heart beating a mile a minute. Good thing she had that safety line. She was hanging only a couple meters below the entrance to the world fragment, spinning around on the safety rope wrapped around her midsection. "Just slipped a bit."
Did I scream? Oh sweet heavenbreakers, I am the one who screamed.
She breathed out, grabbed onto the rope, and started to climb back up. Passing through the entrance, she carefully got her feet under herself, and rolled onto her side, far away from that damnable falling hazard.
Okay. I am okay.
She took a minute to calm down, poked her head back inside to tell the others not to worry, and got back to work. They still had a third of the crates to go.
But no more multi-tasking. She'd think about other things after she was done.
Only about half of the equipment she bargained for was already in the warehouses of the Northern Scarlet Stream sect. The other half would have to be custom-made over the next few weeks - which suited Qian Shanyi just fine. She still wasn't sure whether they were going to repeat their heist, but even if not, it could serve as cover for what they already stole today.
Once she was done with her part of the job, she decided to take a break, and slid down into the world fragment. Unlike falling, moving of her own volition always gave her a bit of a rush, and she was grinning from ear to ear by the time she touched the ground, the chain rattling slightly beneath her fingers.
Wang Yonghao was busy weighing the glass, fussing over a large set of scales they built on top of their hut: one beam tied down on top of the roof, sticking out half a meter past the end, and a second beam balanced crosswise on top of a stone fulcrum. One of the crates was now chained to the left side of the scales, while on the right side was a wide board, with variously weighted stone blocks piled up on top.
Linghui Mei was nearby, unpacking the glass and shaking the wood shavings out. She had three new crates already lined up for Wang Yonghao as soon as he was done with the current one, while another two stood aside, lids nailed back, ready to be lifted out of the world fragment.
The weighting was something of a bottleneck in their process. They only had one set of scales, and working with it was a bit awkward. They didn't have any convenient containers for the glassware except for the crates it already came in, and this meant they had to weigh it in the crates. To do that, they first had to unload each crate individually, before attaching it to the scales to balance out its empty weight. Then they had to put the glass back into the crate to find an amount of granite that weighed the same. On top of it, the crates were filled with wooden shavings, which made the whole process quite messy.
"I wouldn't make the same mistake twice," Qian Shanyi grumbled self-consciously. "Besides, I had a safety line."
"And if it broke, or it snapped your own back in the fall?" Linghui Mei snapped back, "When will you start caring about your own life?"
Qian Shanyi gave her a baffled look. "What is it you mean, Mei - that I do not care about my life because I slipped by accident, or because I thought to use a safety line?" she asked sarcastically. "Because neither of those makes a lick of sense. If you have an actual problem with what I am doing, then come out and say it."
Linghui Mei snorted and turned away, and did not say anything whatsoever.
Qian Shanyi had been getting a strange feeling from the jiuweihu even before the duel; she had been neglecting her meditation, making little pokes at Qian Shanyi during her training. Not quite antagonistic, but snippy. Before, she had too much on her mind to properly handle it - but no longer.
"Is this about the duel?" Qian Shanyi asked, making a blind guess. "You barely reacted when I told you I won - I thought it was because Wang Yonghao had told you already. Did you not think I should have gone?"
"What does it matter what I think?" Linghui Mei said bitterly. "To cultivate is to rebel against the heavens, isn't that what you always say? You cultivators are always busy either killing yourselves or someone else." She sighed, rubbing her face. "I am sorry, but… can we talk about something else? What is our plan?"
Qian Shanyi silently raised her eyebrow. She really wanted to push this topic now, before it became a much larger problem - but it would require a bit of subtlety.
"The plan is mostly unchanged," she said after a moment, deciding to back off a bit. She glanced at the water clock that Linghui Mei put up on the grass next to the scales. "I have a meeting with Jian Wei and his disciples in… about half an hour. Hopefully you two can finish up with the crates in the meantime, and then we could leave our shipping orders, and head back to the tavern for the night."
Wang Yonghao put another small block of stone onto his side of the weights, and they finally seemed to balance. "Why did you want to ship them out, again?" he said, turning around.
Qian Shanyi gave him a tired look. "I swear I've explained this twice already."
Wang Yonghao shrugged. "Maybe," he said, taking the stone blocks off the scales while Linghui Mei dealt with the glass on the other side. "But you say so much that I honestly forgot."
"You should try writing things down next time," Qian Shanyi grumbled. "I want to ship them out because it would make no sense for our sect to keep them stored here, all packed up. Someone might get curious, open a crate, or drop and crack one by accident. It's a running risk." She paused, letting her words hang for a moment. "And, of course, we'd also have to keep paying the costs for the warehouse space, which I have no interest in. We are running short on money as it is."
After shopping for pills, buying the medicine for Linghui Mei and the fortifying baths for Qian Shanyi, they were left with only around fifty three spirit stones. More than enough for the foreseeable future, but it was best to be economical.
"But that will still be true even if we ship them, right?"
"We'll be shipping the crates to Blooming Plum Warehouses, in Golden Rabbit Bay," Qian Shanyi explained patiently. "The owners steal from their clients. Their workers steal as well. Whatever we ship there, we might as well be tossing into a bottomless hole, as far as anyone else is concerned."
"You know them?"
"Not personally - through my father, rumors among the merchants back home. They are a pair, husband and wife. Their marriage is a long-running affair of self-hatred and misery, and both steal from each other - I even started a discreet betting ring on when they would divorce." She sighed wistfully, memories clouding her eyes. "I hope my dad took it over after I vanished."
"You have gambled on other people's marriage?" Linghui Mei said, giving her another glare - this time, one of scandalized anger - before turning away with a huff.
"Why wouldn't I?" Qian Shanyi asked, confused. "It would have been better for both of them if they did. And it's not like I was going to push them one way or another."
She did consider it, but in the end decided against it. Rigging the bet would have made for a great payout, but there was just no way to get away with it cleanly.
While they talked, Wang Yonghao and Linghui Mei finished with the glass tubes, and were now loading the crate with the stone plates - burying them deep in the wooden shavings, careful to arrange them evenly, to keep them from shifting around.
Qian Shanyi, in the meantime, headed over to look at the already unloaded glassware. It was arranged in loose lines on the grass next to the hut, the glass cauldron taking center stage, like a general surveying their troops. It was cylindrical, precisely a meter in height and eighty centimeters wide, with a hemispherical bottom ending in a glass valve - for decanting the contents. On its sides were a pair of solid handles, for suspending the apparatus, and another five valves, arranged in a spiral, top to bottom.
"Of course you'd know a bunch of thieves," Wang Yonghao said. "How do they even stay in business?"
"They have low prices, lots of space, and so out of towners often make the mistake of storing goods with them, and most of the time it's fine - it's not like they steal every shipment. They'd never get away with it." She continued her line of thought, looking over the beautiful cauldron. She opened one of the valves in curiosity, and the glass stopper slid softly in its housing, like silk over her fingers. "Just pilfering off the top."
"And then what?"
"Once our crates will be in their possession, and our advance on the storage runs out, they'll open them up to sell some of our goods to pay for our own rent," she continued, glancing back at the other two. "It's standard practice - and find out that the glassware is missing completely. Then each will assume the other one must have already sold it off, and neither will believe any protestations to the contrary, until they both decide to cover it up, doing our job for us." She paused, thinking it over for a moment. "If I was in their place, I'd burn down a section of the warehouse, and claim the glass was lost in the fire. We might even get some payout out of it, if they get scared of offending a sect."
"Won't that link back to you?" Wang Yonghao asked. "Shipping to Golden Rabbit Bay, the betting ring?"
Qian Shanyi rolled her eyes at him. "Yonghao, half the rivers in the entire province flow towards Golden Rabbit Bay. More than three hundred thousand people live in it. It would be odder if we didn't ship our goods through there, at some point. As for the betting ring, half the merchants in port were in on it - it took some effort to keep it secret from the pair, or they'd have raised quite a stink. There's nothing there."
"So much effort for just some glass," Linghui Mei grumbled.
"Some glass?" Qian Shanyi turned around to stare at her incredulously. "It's not some glass, it's alchemical hardware most smaller sects only wish they could lay their hands on."
She picked up one of the smaller flasks next to her, and bumped it against the side of the cauldron with a satisfying, happy clink. "There are three pillars of modern cultivation - spiritual cultivation, refining, and alchemy," she said in a lecturing tone. "Cultivators may be the sabers of humankind, but a saber cannot swing itself without a hand to guide it. Alchemists supply us with pills and medicines essential for our advancement and health, while refiners refine our weapons and artifacts, as well as the tools the alchemists use. In turn, cultivators gather spiritual herbs and slay demon beasts the others use for their craft. A triangle, where each vertex supports two others."
"I've seen a saber that could swing itself, actually."
"That's not the point, Yonghao."
"And where do talismans fit into this?"
Qian Shanyi sighed in exasperation. "It's just a saying, not a treatise categorizing all cultivation. Don't think too deeply about it."
With the stone plates loaded into the crate, Wang Yonghao and Linghui Mei carefully unhooked it from the scales, and moved it aside, onto another platform of stone plates. Linghui Mei picked up a hammer to nail the crate lid back in place, while Wang Yonghao started to balance out another empty crate on the scales.
"Alright," Wang Yonghao said, "So you want to try your hand at alchemy? I guess you would be the type to spend days mucking about with beakers."
"I think you'd make a good alchemist, actually," Qian Shanyi said casually. "One of the big limits to alchemy is the cost of experimentation - you can only try so many things with the most precious Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures before it becomes prohibitively expensive, even though most of your experiments will produce nothing of interest. But with your luck, if every experiment would produce either a brilliant success or a catastrophic failure…"
She trailed off, seeing Wang Yonghao's face start to turn pale. "You don't have to, of course," she said instead of mentioning more of her theories. "We have far more spiritual energy to play with, compared to an ordinary sect. Even without your luck, I could do much - figure out exactly how to deal with dead air, at least. That would be my first project."
Qian Shanyi put the beaker down, and rose, heading to the kitchens. "But that is for the weeks ahead," Qian Shanyi said, going back to the question Linghui Mei asked her. "More immediately… Tomorrow, I'll meet with Li Zhong from the Thrifty Bat Bank about an account, and see if I can set the process of registering our sect into motion. Then I'll be mostly free, aside from needing to spend some time every day forcing Jian Shizhe to ascend beyond the cockroach stage of morality. I'll finish up the last of my baths, and then -"
"Of course you'd go back to those demonic baths, karalhi n'gara!" Linghui Mei cursed, glaring at her again. "No sense of self-preservation, like I've said."
"I -", Qian Shanyi paused, blinking at Linghui Mei in confusion. That was far too sudden. "What? The baths are medicinal. They fortify my body -"
"You scream like a slaughtered pig when you take them," Linghui Mei snarled, and threw her hammer down on the ground in frustration. "You tie your own hands behind your back so you don't scratch your face off! Nothing will convince me that this is healthy."
Wang Yonghao stopped his work for a moment to look at them, an eyebrow raised, but quickly turned back to the scales. Didn't want to get in the middle of an argument, it seems.
"I told you why I needed the damnable baths!" Qian Shanyi said, annoyance creeping back into her tone. Mostly at herself, for somehow failing to catch… whatever this was. "My body has started to lag behind my meridians, and I need it to catch up -"
"And then what?" Linghui Mei said, "Will you smash your head against a stone wall for five months to harden your skull? Break your own bones with a hammer to cultivate their strength? All cultivation is insanity at its core."
Something familiar shifted in the back of Qian Shanyi's mind, but now wasn't the time for it. She squinted at Linghui Mei, trying to figure out what was up with the jiuweihu. She was furious, that much was clear, but there was a hint of something else there. But of what?
"What?" Linghui Mei snapped at her calm, analytical expression. "Nothing to say, cultivator?"
"This isn't about me," Qian Shanyi responded. "You didn't worry nearly as much when we discussed my duel, training for it. This only started once I began with the baths -"
And then it clicked in her mind, and Qian Shanyi slapped herself on the forehead, wondering how she ever missed it in the first place. "This is about your children, isn't it?" she said, "You are worried they'd have to go through the same thing, to learn to cultivate, to solve the circulation problem? That's also why you have been slacking on your meditation?"
Linghui Mei's snarl grew, but she didn't object. "This cure looks worse than the disease," she said instead.
"But I told you - ugh, why didn't you just ask -" Qian Shanyi groaned, stopping herself. Of course she wouldn't think to ask. She told Linghui Mei that the jiuweihu wouldn't need these baths, but she didn't explain why, because it was not relevant, and the explanation was complex. The petulant jiuweihu, on the other hand, seemed to have a block about appearing ignorant, and so simply made more assumptions instead of speaking up. Again with the teaching expectations she didn't share.
"Look," Qian Shanyi said forcefully, starting over again. "First of all, none of the jiuweihu will be getting any medicinal baths at all well into the future. It took alchemists many decades to develop the recipes to the point where they could be safe, reliable, and effective for humans, but even now, a fortification bath is still a major shock to the system. Your physiology is different - maybe you'd just die if you tried, and even if you survived, there is no way to predict the effects. But even if you could take them, you wouldn't have to do it. Most cultivators don't bother, because they can't afford good ones. Out of those who do bother, most don't brew them as hard as I do, and then it doesn't even hurt!"
"Really?" Wang Yonghao asked curiously, turning around. "I thought all baths were just like that."
"Of course you'd think that," Qian Shanyi grumbled, but whirled back towards Linghui Mei. The jiuweihu was still glaring at her, arms folded on her chest, but her fury seemed to have abated. "And I only brew them hard because I want to eventually break into the building foundation stage! I am not Yonghao with his stupid luck, I can't afford to lose any advantages. Fewer baths of a higher concentration lead to much more fortification before the effect begins to fade entirely - a bit of temporary pain is nothing."
"Well how was I supposed to know that?" Linghui Mei snapped. "I thought you cultivators go through the harshest training, so that only one out of a dozen dozens can hope to see the dawn, or something like that?"
"Ask! With your mouth! Like I told you to - " Qian Shanyi shouted back, raising her arms in frustration, before the words Linghui Mei said caught up with her and she shut her mouth, another realization snapping into place in her mind. "Wait, did you say a dozen dozens?"
"What of it?" Linghui Mei said, her glare intensifying again.
Qian Shanyi couldn't help it, and a giggle escaped her mouth as all her frustration fled her body at once. "It's - it's from an adventure novel," she said, still giggling, "one of the best of the last decade, Sever The Sky, about a cultivator that is sent back in time to when Gu Lingtian rebelled against the Heavens. I didn't know you read them."
So was the bit about smashing heads into walls, come to think of it - though that one was from a different novel.
Something broke behind Linghui Mei's eyes. Her lips trembled, a grimace passing over her face, before her teeth clenched, lips pulled back into a snarl. Her hands curled into claws of their own accord, though not transforming. "I do not," Linghui Mei growled, a sharp, guttural sound unfitting for her human guise escaping her throat. "Read your vainglorious trash!"
"But how else -"
Linghui Mei turned on her heels, and stormed away, past their kitchen table. There were not a lot of places to hide in the world fragment, but she hopped over the fence surrounding the rabbit coop, and vanished from sight.
Qian Shanyi ruffled her hair. The idea of Linghui Mei reading Sever The Sky was absolutely comical, but what did she step into this time?
"What's gotten into her?" Wang Yonghao said quietly, coming over. "You weren't even asking anything bad?..."
Qian Shanyi sighed, putting her hands on her hips, looking after Linghui Mei. "Hard to guess," she said, matching his tone. She wasn't sure how good Linghui Mei's hearing was in her human form - perhaps she could hear them. "All of those novels are really -" she made a vague gesture. "- glorifying of cultivators, you know how it is. I wouldn't have expected her to read them. Perhaps she simply heard the quote from someone else, or maybe it's a guilty pleasure." She glanced at Wang Yonghao out of the corner of her eye. "You wouldn't like those novels either, and in her position…"
Turning fully to Wang Yonghao, she frowned. "You know, I keep expecting you to talk to her about your own experiences being chased around, but you never do. Why is that?"
"I've been busy," Wang Yonghao said defensively. "Training you for the duel and all that?"
"Yeah, yeah. I am not blaming you. Just making an observation."
"- I'm not that great at talking to women in general, and she is not the easiest person to talk to," Wang Yonghao continued. "Especially with how she treats me compared to you."
Qian Shanyi looked Wang Yonghao straight in the face. He had his lips pursed, a petty curl to them. "Yonghao, if you are avoiding talking to her because you think she's too hot -" she began.
"What?!" Wang Yonghao said, scandalized, more than loud enough to carry all across the world fragment.
"- then I will beat you with a stick. Be sensible, for the love of me."
Wang Yonghao scowled at her, fire in his eyes. "I don't love you!"
Qian Shanyi snorted, some of her cheer coming back. "Shame. You should, I am adorable, except when I am not. Like right now." She tapped a finger against her cheek. "You know, you'd make a good couple. Lonely cultivator who can never settle down, jiuweihu who must always travel? Perhaps I should play matchmaker, see if she'd like you."
"Shanyi, if you do that, I will beat you with a stick!"
She snorted, heading to the kitchens. "Very well. I'll make something to eat, and then see about apologizing. What are your thoughts on rice?"
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I love these tiny world building details and the accompanying character foibles. They're just one small part of what makes these characters so real in a way that so few cultivation stories manage to accomplish.
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Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
When you put it like that, it's no wonder Shanyi's friendship and philosophy of cultivation are good for him.
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Even when doing "relaxing," low-stakes work, Shanyi finds a way to squeeze in cunning stratagems. There is no reason she couldn't lower the other crates carefully, too, but the thread is cleverer and maybe a couple seconds faster, so she does it.
This is a poor hill to fight that battle on.
Completely separate worlds.
Or worse, rigged it.
I'm on Yonghao and Mei's side. Mei has seen one kind of cultivator herb bath, and if Yonghao has seen more, they were being taken by cultivators at least as ambitious, single-minded, and/or crazy as Shanyi.
Shanyi has specifically noted that she does not want people to think they have one of those, most recently:
Admittedly, the reason she doesn't want people to think that hasn't been mentioned in several months.