“No. They weren’t too terribly difficult, just expensive.”
“Alright. I’ve already gone ahead and purchased all the reagents I think you’ll need in advance.
“We can buy whatever else you need when we get to where we’re going. We’ll be looking for medicinal pills. Healing of the meridians or the Dantian, to be exact.”
“Got it,” Yue said.
“Next… Ash. Just how much can you do? From what I can gather from looking at your companions, and what you’ve done, I can’t get a gauge on your limitations.
“You seem to hold a great secret that removes the limits others face.”
“Oh, uh. I can make transference papers of almost anything. Alchemy, woodworking, blacksmithing, pottery—lots and lots of things.”
“Yes, but you seem to be able to enhance and repair others as well. Moira and Tala are prime examples of that, I would think,” Gen said.
“Errr, yeah… I can fix some things. Depending on what the problem is, I can modify the Dantian. I can also modify the meridians and a bit of how everything flows together.”
“Could you show me an example?” Gen asked. “I ask because I think we could gather even more strength, but it’s very dependent on what you can accomplish and how it’s done.
“As an example, it wouldn’t be very effective if you had to enslave someone for you to be able to work on them.”
“Yeah, that seems pretty limiting. Only being able to modify things I own. Ah, no, it doesn’t work like that.
“It really just comes down to if I can put together a pattern that will shape what I want to happen,” Ash said.
“A pattern?” Gen asked, leaning forward on his cane.
Tala stood up suddenly and turned her back to everyone.
“Here, I’ll show you what he can do.”
Reaching around herself, she pulled her tunic up to her shoulders.
Black fur ran along her sides and across in small patches, but the scars on her back were bright white.
Visible and flawlessly carved into her flesh.
It was a flowing shape and guidance of power.
In a way, it looked rather artistic after having healed over.
“This is… Ash did this?” Gen asked.
“Yes. He did the same to me, though I think it’s a different pattern,” Moira added.
“It is. Yours was a conversion; hers was an enabling,” Ash said, feeling odd discussing his abilities.
“A Fated One indeed,” Mei murmured, her eyes flashing as she looked to Ash.
Gen coughed and stood up straight, his feral grin locking into place.
“Yes, that’s what I needed to know. My plan is very simple. We’re going to venture off to what is called the sect of the Open Hand. It’s where masters, elders, and disciples go who are unable to participate any further in the sect but do not wish to live with the masses again.”
Gen was nodding his head, looking more and more excited with his own words as he spoke them.
“There are many people there who owe a blood debt—owe pain—to the Deng family. If we could repair them, heal them, they would become an army for us.
“Some of them were even elders of the Inner Sect.”
Oh.
Well.
I suppose if we could get more people just like Gen, this would certainly be easier. Wouldn’t it?
“We will leave as soon as possible,” Jia said.
“I’ll go ahead with what I need to do,” Yue said.
“Likewise. I believe I can make the drop tomorrow evening, which they wouldn’t pick up until the following morning.
“We should be able to get this moving by the day after next, and they won’t have the info until we’re on the road,” Mei said.
“That’s the plan, then,” Moira said. “Unless someone has an objection of some sort?”
Everyone shook their heads.
And like that, they had a direction and a goal.
Thirty
Ash looked around himself as they walked past the city gates of Jinhai.
In the end, they’d decided on traveling by horse. And having one for each traveler in their group.
Ash wasn’t quite sure it was a great idea in retrospect. Or at least for him personally, since his ass and hips were so sore.
Thankfully though, horse riding was over for now.
The horses were now stabled outside the gates, and Ash would be walking around the city.
Gen had indicated that in his experience, it was easier to get out of a city on foot than it was on horse.
And if a horse was outside the gates waiting for you, all the better.
Ash made no argument with that logic either.
We did make good time, though. Using horses.
Even if it feels like someone took a saw to my nethers and everything is just a raw mess of broken bones and glass.
With that thought, he had to concede that they hadn’t just made good time, but very good time. Such good time that they had leftover rations that would probably go bad before they left.
“I didn’t think I’d be returning here so soon,” Yue said, her eyes focused on the street in front of them.
“You have traveled through these parts before?” Jia asked.
They were walking in a small, tightly packed column as they moved through the city.
“I lived here,” Yue murmured. “My brother and I. With our mother and father. Grew up here.”
Crossing through a main intersection, Yue lifted a hand down to the right.
“The inns are down that way. At least, the ones we want to stay at. Anything elsewhere in the city can be problematic,” Yue said. “And that’s a nice way to put it.”
“How very… colorful,” Mei said after several seconds passed in silence.
“It’s home. Or, it was. I guess,” Yue said.
“Right now it’s a place to restock,” Gen said, guiding them down the road Yue had indicated. “We’ll pick up everything we need to make it to the Open Hand’s cloister. I don’t think we’ll be here longer than a day or two.”
“Open Hand? You explained it a bit before. Can you offer any more insight?” Ash asked.
“Open Hand. Where those who served the sect were retired when they couldn’t do anything more and had no family to care for them,” Gen explained.
It really wasn’t much more than Gen had said previously.
“In other words, those who have reached a dead end and would be willing to make a move to retirement,” Jia summarized.
“Exactly. We need power, and we’re offering them a way out,” Gen confirmed. “It’s a fortunate encounter for them. One that would never come around in a normal lifetime.”
Ash wasn’t about to argue that point. He agreed with it.
He just wanted to know more about these people.
“Does it matter?” Locke asked suddenly. “If they were murderers, child killers, and rapists, would you spurn their assistance? Whatever they are, they’re power. Power that can be turned into a sword to point toward the Deng family.”
“Master Gen,” Ash said as they continued down the street. “I would ask, are these people who would be no better than the Deng family? I would hesitate to proceed if they would represent us no better than the Deng family’s monsters.
“No offense, Mei.”
“None taken,” Mei said, her voice sounding tired and sad. “I would caution the same as you, even. If we enlist those who would commit the same atrocities as the Deng family, would we be any better?”
Gen grunted. “I’ll think on that. Maybe we put some restrictions on their oath on their cultivation.
“It sounds naive to me on the face of it, but… you’re right. If we’re no better than Deng, we’ll be the next one. Sheng instead of Deng.
“And then we’ll create a new Ashley Sheng with a different name that would fight us.”
“One is enough,” Jia said.
“Speaking of enough, how many of these o
ld swords are we looking to recruit?” Mei asked.
Ash looked to Gen and paused as Yue slipped in at his side. She caught his eyes and then made a small head gesture to fall to the rear of the column. Or so he interpreted it.
Letting Moira and Tala pass him, and getting a look from each as he did so, Ash fell to the rear of the pack. The conversation continued on with strategy and planning for what they were going to do.
Ash wasn’t the mastermind here, so he didn’t mind not being part of it.
“Thank you,” Yue said after everyone had gotten a few feet ahead.
“Of course. What’s up?”
“I wanted to ask you for a favor.”
“Name it. All you have to do is ask, and I’ll do it for you,” Ash said with a smile.
Yue was always so earnest and dedicated to his needs—he didn’t think he could deny her anything at this point.
“Ah… ok. Uhm, I want… I want to go visit my family while we’re here. I want you to come with me. If you don’t mind,” Yue said.
Her family? I thought she didn’t have any.
Actually, we never really asked. We knew about her brother, but that’s it.
“Sure, but could you give me some background first? What happened with your family? How’d you end up where you were?” Ash asked.
Yue looked pained now, and she glanced around them.
“Alright. But… not here. And not with other people around. Just you,” she said finally.
“We can do that. Let’s figure out what inn we’ll be staying at, let them know we’re leaving, and then we’ll go wherever you want.
“It’d be foolish to not let them know we’re going,” Ash said.
Reaching out, he set a hand on her shoulder.
“We’ll talk, figure out what to do, and go from there. It’ll be fine.”
***
Yue sat across from Ash as he sat down at the same time. Smiling, she touched the plate that had been set in front of her and shifted it around a little.
“I always wanted to come here when I lived here. But the prices were far too high for me to do anything other than dream about it,” Yue said. Tapping the center of the plate with a fingernail, she smiled to herself. “These plates alone are worth more than what my parents made in a month.”
Ash smiled at that and wondered how he was supposed to know what was available to eat.
Anywhere he’d ever eaten at usually only offered one or two things. He’d never sat and eaten at somewhere like this.
“I… have no idea what to do here,” Yue said suddenly.
Looking at her, Ash could only laugh at the look on her face.
“Given that I’m sure they have new clients wander in through the door on any day, I’m certain someone will eventually come over and tell us what to do,” he said. “In the meantime, how about you talk to me about your parents. Sounds like they weren’t exactly well off.”
“They weren’t. No,” Yue said. Resting her elbows on the table, she put her head in her hands. “Father was a day laborer.
“He wasn’t literate, either. Could read enough to know if he was being cheated, but little beyond that. Numbers were the same for him.”
Ash didn’t find that surprising in the least. Literacy wasn’t common at certain levels in the general population.
There were much more pressing concerns, like eating and surviving.
Reading and writing only did so much towards that end, when the best job you could hope for was moving boxes.
Or selling your body.
“Mother… Mother was a seamstress. She worked any odd job involving cloth she could find,” Yue added, as if picking Ash’s thoughts from the air. “She was rather proud of the fact that she’d never had to sell herself by the hour.”
A young woman came over and smiled at them as if no one else existed.
“Welcome! Today we’re serving steak, a salad, and some vegetables. All fresh and prepared with spices and herbs.
“We also offer a paired wine with the meal,” said the young woman. “It’ll be three squares per person.”
Ah. So it’s just like the others, but they only sell one item. Seems a bit over the top for such a thing.
Ash pulled out seven squares and laid them down on the table in front of the woman.
“Two then, and an extra square for you.” Ash returned her smile and then directed his attention back to Yue.
The waitress scooped up the squares and immediately scurried away.
“Please, continue,” Ash said.
Yue tapped her fingers along the table.
“Father got hurt. He was moving a crate from one warehouse to another. He loaded it onto a rack and… something happened,” Yue said. Her voice was starting to crack a bit. “They never could really tell me what happened at the time. Long afterward, we found out. A cultivator had struck a post to test his strength, and it shattered.
“Which brought down the shelves Father was working under. He was crushed, of course. Both his arms were broken, and we couldn’t afford medicine or a healer.
“We’d gone into debt to buy the house we were living in, and no one would give Mother credit.”
That… all sounds terrible and like something that happens more often than I’d ever like to know.
Except that only leaves one avenue to make money, soooo…
Smiling, Ash waited patiently. He didn’t want to rush Yue, but he did want to know what he was walking into when going to visit her family.
“Mother was going to do what she had to do. She had two children to feed and a husband who needed her.
“Except that it never came to that,” Yue said. Her eyes slowly unfocused until she was staring at nothing.
Into the deep, dark middle ground between them that people only saw when they’d lived through too much.
“The same cultivator who had injured my father was apparently punished by the owner of the warehouse.
“He paid a visit to our home and… killed both my parents, and destroyed our house,” Yue said, her voice going toneless. “My brother and I weren’t home at the time. We were at school.”
“We could probably dig up who did it. If they’re weaker than we are, we could take his head and offer it to her as a present,” Locke said.
It was strange to Ash. Locke didn’t really take an interest in the people around Ash very often. At least not more than enough to harass Ash about it.
“I like her. She’s spunky and a fighter. She’s also cloyingly devoted to you,” Locke elaborated.
“What ah… what rank was the cultivator—do you know?” Ash asked.
“His rank? Uhm. No. I don’t. I mean—” Yue blinked, her eyes refocusing on Ash’s dinner plate. “I should. I should look into that. I should find that out. With the resources I have now… with who my friends are… I might be able to pay him back.”
“If it’s within my power, I’ll take his head personally and deliver it to you,” Ash said.
Yue visibly shook for a second, and her eyes darted up to Ash’s.
“You would?”
Ash nodded rather than responding.
The young woman appeared with two platters of food. She set one down in front of Yue, and then the other in front of Ash. She immediately followed it up with two large bottles of what Ash assumed was the wine.
“Ah, here you are, sir, miss,” said the woman, her hands clutched in front of her. “Please let me know if there’s anything else you need at all.”
Before they could respond, she dashed off again.
“She thinks you tipped her to try and sleep with her, or to get her to stay away,” Yue said, picking up the knife next to her plate.
“Huh. I see,” Ash said. “Whatever. Time to see what’s so special about this steak.”
“It’s from a magical beast. It’ll be similar to cultivating or taking pills that would enhance cultivation,” Locke said. “Considering this is your first time eating such a thing, it’ll be interesting t
o see what the results are. If any.”
Oh. That’s actually rather interesting.
Taking the knife and fork that were next to his plate, Ash skewered the steak and began cutting into it.
It didn’t have any toughness to it, and it seemed to part easily at the touch of his knife.
“Seems it’s cooked well,” Ash murmured. Looking up, he saw Yue apparently trying to imitate what he’d done. She was holding her knife and fork awkwardly, but she was making progress.
Ah… fingers, spoons, or chopsticks. Forks and knives seem to be reserved for special situations or higher-class meals.
Which… now that I think about it… is a bit odd, isn’t it?
Putting the chunk of meat into his mouth, Ash began chewing steadily at it. It had a gamey flavor and started to fall apart easily as he chewed it.
The spices and herbs definitely added to the overall taste.
In fact, it was one of the singular most tasty things he’d eaten since arriving here.
Then Ash felt strange Qi flowing from the meat into his body. It pooled around in his meridians before shooting straight into his Dantian.
Freezing solid for a second, Ash watched his core. He wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but he didn’t want to miss it.
“We’re currently rank seven. Your Qi is as dense as it can be, and your training speed is quite slow and low due to our cultivation method,” Locke said, as if expecting questions from Ash.
Bright-red Qi flowed into his Qi Sea. No sooner had it touched the sea, the color of it drained away until it was pale and ghostly. Then it all vanished into the depths of the sea as if it had never existed.
“Based on what we gained from that, what’s left on your plate, and what it did, we can expect no change from eating this meal. It is clearly beneficial, however, and I would recommend we change our diet to a magical-beast-only menu.”
Something to ask Yue later, then.
***
“I’m nervous,” Yue said as they walked down the street to her aunt’s house.
“Understandable, but unnecessary. I’m here, and nothing can harm you,” Ash said.
“I know. But she took us in when no one else would.”
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