This Venerable Demon is Grossly Unqualified

I'm not an expert on urban planning, but I don't think it's unfair of me to say that Xianyang was a giant mess. It started out positive, the outer wall of the city wasn’t colossal or anything, but it was the height of three men. Sure, a core formation cultivator could leap right over it, but nearly twenty feet of dull yellow stone was an imposing barrier for mortals. Three individual gates were set in the south wall, the largest commercial one fully wide enough for three wagons to clear customs at the same time. I followed the posted signs to the third gate, marked with the characters for ‘daoist’.

A young woman greeted me, flanked by a pair of guards in well burnished bronze scalemail. Each of the guards bore a heavy steel halberd, while the young woman carried a sort of clipboard, a wide piece of wood with a single sheet of paper stretched tight across it, and a brush.

All three were lower realm cultivators, I could feel qi intentionally exuding from all three of them, saturating the open space beneath the gate. A weak preceptory technique designed to mimic spirit sense perhaps?

The young woman audibly gulped as I approached. This did seem like a rather stressful job.

“Welcome to Xianyang. May I have your name, honored daoist?”

“Fang Tao.” I lied. She jotted down some characters on her clipboard, not even bothering to confirm the spelling.

“Realm?”

“Core formation.” I had no idea if that was true or not, but none of these three were in a position to gainsay me. They were definitely all below the midpoint of foundation establishment at most.

“Affiliation?”

“None.” I lied again. I felt like a Republican congressman filling out a financial disclosure statement. Worst case, I’d just run anyway. I rather doubted they’d send an elder after me and risk a fight demolishing half the city because I lied on my paperwork.

“First time in town?”

“It is.”

“Right then.” She said, launching into a clearly practiced speech. “As a cultivator, you’re exempt from the entry fee. His imperial majesty, Qin Longwei, requests that you register with the Ministry of Daoist Affairs if you intend to remain in town for longer than a year. He also requests that you limit the usage of any superhuman movement techniques to streets and lanes dedicated for such transit, and that you refrain from roof-jumping or flight after the close of the Dog’s Hour, unless you are leaving the city. Failure to comply with such rules may result in penalties.”

“I understand.”

“Do you require directions to any location or person?”

“I had hoped to visit the Sleeping Fortune Brokers.”

“Their primary office is located on the north end of Shennong’s Plaza. You can reach it by following the Gold Road, and turning north where it meets the plaza. Look for the statue of Shennong. Would you like a guide?”

“I would not.”

“Have a pleasant stay. If you require further assistance, any Ministry of Daoist Affairs office will be happy to provide it.”

I nodded, and walked through. She didn’t even remark on the fact that I was openly carrying a sword, or stare at the small bloodstains on my chest. It was clear foreign cultivators were largely handled with kid gloves here. Or, at least ones at my level were. It made sense, an actively hostile relationship with us would be a nightmare. I figured as it was, most probably just bypassed the gates anyway and hopped the walls. From my conversation with Qin Wenyan and Zhao Xue, I’d gathered that the Heaven-Piercing Spear School was at least comparable in scope to the Pathless Night, and that Qin Longwei was an absolute monster, likely far beyond my current cultivation. I wasn’t sure how he compared to my own sectmaster, but I certainly wasn’t going to attract his attention. Wang Li hadn’t been a true challenge, but he’d caught me off guard a few times. The power and speed of that Kingfisher’s Hunt of his had blown right past my guard, only the simple fact that I was at least a realm above the former inner disciple had saved me from serious injury. Even then, my wounds had taken the rest of the night and part of the morning to heal on their own without a pill.

If an inner disciple could land blows on me, even superficial ones, drawing the attention of an emperor was out of the question. I was not about to start the sort of trouble that might risk drawing him out of the palace where he allegedly was in closed door cultivation.

While the cultivator gate had been empty, all three gates let out onto the Gold Road, and it was anything but. To my right, another sign marked ‘Daoist’ adorned a set of stairs, which led upwards. I ignored them, stepping out onto the Gold Road itself. The road was wide here, even wider than it had been on its approach, easily forty feet across. Carts and pedestrians alike moved across the road in every direction, the road’s sheer size the only thing keeping the chaos from turning into a colossal traffic jam. As I progressed further, I was able to see where the stairs marked daoist lead, they opened out onto the roof of a building, which flowed into a sort of half road, half aqueduct structure, farther above the bustle of the city. It was clever, a sort of overpass where cultivators could run at the speed of cars without turning pedestrians into meat jelly. It was also immediately apparent that there weren’t all that many turnoffs, the aqueducts were individual highways, not a full road system. I supposed that was where all the rooftop running came from, the last mile or so to a cultivator’s destination.

I shuddered, imagining what it must be like to be a mortal thief here. Want to run the rooftops to get to a given building? Not only is there a curfew on being up there, you might run into a random cultivator breaking it. Perhaps even one who didn’t want there to be any witnesses to him flouting the law.

By the gate, buildings were laid out in roughly a grid pattern, with streets between. There wasn’t a fixed size to them, like you’d see in a modern city. Sometimes it was four three story tenement blocks, standing back to back, completely filling the space. Other blocks were hodgepodges of houses with no rhyme or reason to them, stacked aside and atop each other like a toddler’s building blocks. And sometimes the block was simply a single compound with a large courtyard, walled off from the chaos of the city. I passed shops and restaurants, often adorned with massive signs. The fashion seemed to be two or three characters for the proprietor’s family name, and then a pictogram for what they did or sold. But just as much commerce occurred within the street as behind closed doors, vendors set up elaborate carts every few feet along the Gold Road, hawking everything from the classics like meat on a stick to stranger goods, like live songbirds in bamboo cages, and great gallon sized ceramic jars of butter.

I felt like I should pick up a stick of whatever meat that was, I had the money, but to be quite honest, I didn’t trust it. I felt absolutely no need to test my cultivator constitution in that particular manner.

On a whim, I left the Gold Road, picking a side street at random. I would always be able to find it, it's sheer size and the skywalk above it made it easy to see from any distance.

As I progressed deeper into the city, order slowly gave way to madness. It was a subtle thing at first. The first true sign of dysfunction was the sewers. They were present, just like they were in the wealthier areas by the gate, open topped ditches that flowed with a perpetual thin stream of water, intended to wash away all the crap people dumped in there. But as the houses got smaller and the manors disappeared, small blockages caused by people tossing rubbish in the sewers became more common.

As the stretch worsened, so did the organization of the city. I saw animals butchered and hung to dry, blood heedlessly pouring out onto the street itself. I passed a tannery. A bloody tannery. The literal archetypal example of things we don't place within a residential district. The smell of chemicals and rot singed even my qi-enhanced nose-hairs. Where was it? Directly between a residential building and a hospital. Or, perhaps a hospice. There was a heavy aspect to it, the telltale air of a place where people go to die.

I'd seen worse, in photographs and on televisions, but never in person. It wasn't a hopeless place though. A pair of women haggled in front of the butcher. Some children played boisterously in the street, a great crowd chasing a single ball. I watched as one slipped on the patch of half-dried blood beneath a hanging goat, staining his shorts a dark red. A woman, his mother probably, shouted at him from an open window. A dozen eyes watched me surreptitiously, all fearful, all hungry.

I left, heading back towards the main road. It felt wrong to look away. But it felt wronger still to watch and do nothing.

It took the better part of an hour to reach Shennong's Plaza. It reminded me a little of Rome, a great paved space in the shape of a rounded oval, dominated by a colossal bronze statue of the God of Agriculture. He was portrayed as a boisterous fellow, barrel chested with a great belly. His head was human, but bull's horns emerged from his forehead, scraping the sky as he threw his head back in laughter. A pipe hung precariously from his open mouth. A cape of woven grass, sculpted from bronze with painstaking care, and a great staff that looked like actual wood completed the image. It was quite a heroic look, for a deity of the hearth. I wondered if he was real, if he lived still. Was he a myth, like back home, or a cultivator of godlike power?

The Sleeping Fortune office was easy to find. It was a big boxy building, with a facade of painted red bricks. The door was flanked by twin gold painted statues, one a much smaller rendition of Shennong, harvesting a stalk of bamboo, the other a fat man resembling a laughing buddha, in the process of catching a fish.

Walking in, I found myself in a space not unlike a bank lobby. It had all the classic features, just subtly different. The attendants standing behind counters wore robes, instead of suits. Instead of benches and armchairs, there were red-lacquered couches with thin cushions and ornately carved backs. Instead of security guards in gray with tasers, a pair of cultivators in sky blue robes carried formidable looking glaives. I took a seat on one of the empty couches, scanning the signs by the service counters looking for one that was appropriate for ‘daoist seeking to buy rare natural treasure’.

I really hoped I wouldn’t need to participate in an auction to get what I wanted. Anything but an auction. I very much did not need to offend some young mistress whose childhood friend would declare a vendetta against me for ‘bullying’ her by being willing to pay more money for something she wanted. It felt like a silly scenario, but then until last night, a total stranger challenging me to a duel because ‘in strife the worthy rise’ had felt like a silly scenario too. I hoped Wang Li didn’t cut himself too badly on all that edge. I also hoped he’d survived that last kick. I’d rather lost my temper at the end there, and greatly misjudged my strength.

“Ahem.” A well dressed man sitting across from me coughed.

“Yes?” I turned to face him.

"It is customary, when conducting business in the empire of Qin, to wear robes that have only the holes that they left the tailor’s shop with. And to wash them, after getting blood on them."

My stomach sank. I genuinely felt bad about that, these gray robes had been barely passable before I added two new holes and matching bloodstains. Unfortunately, Elder Hu owned literally nothing except this set of rags that wasn’t black with red trimming. The single most demonic color combination in the world.

Fuck. Suddenly it hit me, all the small hints coming together. Black robes, living in a pocket realm, the sect isn’t even marked obviously on our own maps. We were demons, weren’t we?

I’d never seen any humans being turned into pills, or corpse refiners, or blood based cultivation techniques, but then I’d never gone looking for them either.

Shit, maybe I was the blood cultivator? Su Li had called me the ‘Crimson Saint’, that day we’d first met.

“Are you deaf as well as color blind?” The merchant snapped.

“Sorry, I was lost in thought.” I replied a little sheepishly. I really needed to look into that, when I returned to the sect. And perhaps figure out whether running was a valid option or not.

I was more than a little pissed at myself right now. I’d just walked into a fancy establishment wearing bloodstained robes, and I hadn’t even thought about it. Sure, they were small bloodstains, it wasn’t like I was drenched in the stuff, but they were still bloodstains. I had just assumed it would be fine, that my status let me ignore social conventions. It’d only been a week, and I already was starting to just ignore rules because I could, because nobody would dare hold me to account. I could leave, go buy actual clothing and come back later. It would only be the slightest bit awkward. If I waited six hours, most of these people wouldn’t be on shift any more.

“Don’t apologize, buy some robes next time. If you’re shopping here, you can afford clean clothing.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man in red and gold robes approaching us.

“Honored cultivator, this Ming An would be happy to assist you with any business that you have with the brokerage, if you would care to follow me.”

Shit, I’d missed my opportunity to bow out. I nodded, and followed Ming An into a small office.

“Fucking cultivators.” The merchant muttered quietly, but not quietly enough to escape my hearing. “Can’t even be bothered not to track blood into an auction house.”

I didn’t respond. He wasn’t wrong.

“Tea?” Ming An asked, as we sat down.

“No thank you. I traveled through the night to get here, and I only have a few hours to find the goods I came here to purchase, before I must begin my return journey.”

Ming An nodded as if this was a reasonable itinerary. “I will endeavor not to waste any more of your time then. What can the Sleeping Fortune do for you?”

“I’m looking for a natural treasure appropriate for a cultivator in the late qi condensation to early foundation establishment stages that exudes lunar qi.”

“I see. The brokerage does trade in such items, however they are typically earmarked for monthly auctions. The Glass Flower Sect has an open purchase order that covers all non demonic yin-aspected natural treasures, so in the interest of fairness, we hold such goods to ensure a supply is available for the open market.”

And, of course, to eke as many spirit stones as possible out of the Glass Flower Sect, I was sure. It was tempting to ask about the demonic treasures that he’d implied existed. It felt like the wrong move though, far too early in our relationship to even hint at being open to purchasing such a verboten item, to say nothing of the risk it might pose to Su Li to cycle from something like that.

“I see. When will the next auction with such goods on the docket be?” I asked.

“Two weeks hence.”

“That is unfortunate, such a timeline is not compatible with my pre-existing commitments.”

Silence hung between us for a few moments. I allowed my body to fall into that absolute stillness that being a cultivator made all too easy. Opposite me, Ming An continued to breathe and blink. I wasn’t gonna threaten the guy, but I wasn’t above applying a little pressure. They had the goods, I had the money. They had recognized me as sufficiently powerful to merit special service. There was a deal to be made here. It was just a question of finding the angle.

“I had been informed that the Sleeping Fortune Brokerage were the premier merchants of such items in Xianyang.” I finally said. “It is unfortunate that I shall need to look elsewhere to purchase what I need. I had hoped that this might be a mutually profitable meeting.”

I left it there for a beat, before beginning to slowly rise.

“Please, honored guest, wait a moment. It might still be possible to make a deal.”

I paused exactly where I was, halfway through the motion of standing up, playing up the unearthly demeanor of a cultivator as much as possible.

“We have, at times, made exceptions to our policy of holding such treasures for auction, for exceptional customers.” He continued slowly. “While we do not have such a relationship with you yet, rare indeed is the rule that coin cannot bend.”

I very pointedly did not smile. In fact, I allowed the slightest ghost of a frown to grace my face as I sat back down.

“I have no interest in being fleeced.” I said bluntly. “But I am not unaware that purchasing an item in advance of the auction would demand a premium above even what the winning bid might be expected to fetch, to compensate you for the loss of the inventory, and any potential difficulties with the Glass Flower Sect.”

Ming An smiled widely, and I suddenly wished that I’d done more market research before coming here.

“Shall I have our inventory brought out, then? That we might discuss specifics.”

I nodded, and Ming An sprang into motion.

Natural treasures were brought out in carts, in ones and twos. On the far side of the door, I heard what I suspected was additional security assembling outside. It didn't seem like an unreasonable precaution, given the value of the goods paraded before me. I suspected the contents of my storage ring were worth far more, but it was a not insignificant display of wealth.

Several treasures, I eliminated right away. One glass mirror felt cold and terribly sad, as if it had witnessed tragedy from a great distance. A phial of water emanated lunar qi as pure as the full moon itself, but it felt transient and hollow. I didn't trust it to retain its charge long term. That one seemed like it might be a potent aid in breaking a bottleneck, between its purity and edible form factor, but it wasn't the long term cycling treasure I was looking for.

My spiritual sense was an inexact, fumbling, thing. I strived to quantify the type and volume of qi being emitted from each object, and largely ended up making decisions on vibes. As I eliminated objects they were taken away, until we were left with one.

In the end, I picked a mirror. Or rather, a shard of one. It didn’t have the overwhelming sense of tragedy the first mirror exuded. Instead, it emanated a pure, but subtly different sort of lunar qi, perhaps associated with a particular phase of the moon, and a sense of something I couldn’t quite place. It was definitely related to the shattering of the mirror, but it wasn’t sharpness, or sword qi, or loss. Finality, perhaps? Or severance? It seemed much more suitable for Su Li’s sword cultivation and vengeful quest than the other options.

I'd wanted two choices, having options made negotiation easier, but in the end I was only really interested in one treasure. It was less than ideal, but taking a position you aren’t willing to follow through on is a dangerous move. I wouldn’t have wanted the first mirror or the phial even at half the price of the shard, to say nothing of some of the treasures that felt hollow, like they might run out of qi soon.

Unfortunately, then came the hard part. Numbers. I hated negotiating prices, but if I was being honest, I wouldn’t say I was bad at it. Certainly, I’d had enough experience in job interviews during my near two decades in the workforce, a lifetime ago. And that’s all a salary is really, your price, what it costs to rent a man.

One of the worst pieces of advice about negotiation floating around out there, is never give a number first. Instead, any good business school will tell you what you really want to do, is anchor high. You throw out a number that was aggressive, one high enough you’d be happy if they accepted it and ended things there, but low enough to be plausible. Or vice versa, if you were on the other side of the table.

Unfortunately, I had no idea what recent comparable items had auctioned for, so I’d need to let Ming An anchor.

In the end, they had brought out the tea set as I browsed through items. I took a sip, watching Ming An closely.

“This treasure satisfies my requirements.” I said, pointing towards the small shard of glass, roughly half the size of my hand. “Do you have comparable sales information already, or do you need time to collect it?”

“Given your short timeline, I took the liberty of having the correct volume of sales brought in earlier.” Ming An said, hefting a colossal book onto the table next to the shard. “Let’s see, natural treasures, yin, lunar, third class.” He murmured, quickly flipping through the pages of the book. “Six sales in the last year, most to the Glass Flower Sect, fetching between thirty and seventy standard spirit stones. Including the fee for an off cycle sale, shall we call it seventy five spirit stones?”

Damn. That was steep. I only had 632 spirit stones in my storage ring, I’d counted them like sheep when I was trying to fall asleep last night.

He turned the book towards me, so I could see the records myself. I doubted I could argue price here, not without calling the honor of the brokerage itself into question. But a lesson anyone who buys a home in a hot market learns is that if you can’t argue what comparables go for, you can always argue the good itself is substandard. I scanned the listings quickly, trying to parse the tiny characters for faults I could leverage.

“Third class is suitable for foundation establishment cultivators?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“That strikes me as very generous grading, this piece is certainly at the lower end of the third class. Shall we say an even fifty spirit stones?”

Ming An consulted the spec sheet that had come in with the small piece of glass.

“If only barely, it is indeed of the third class, and it’s been noted to show no sign of depletion. I think seventy stones remains more appropriate, given the trouble the house is going through.”

“It’s certainly of quality, but I don’t think it’s comparable to this treasure.” I said, pointing at the one that had gone for seventy stones, which was marked as class 3+, a little curve above the character for three indicating its superlative quality. “It’s not purely lunar aspected either, its conflicting natures makes it less efficient to cycle. Shall we say fifty five?”

“Ah, but the honored customer chose this one specifically. I think sixty five is more appropriate.” Ming An said, locking in the price. We were moving by the same increments, in the same direction, we’d already agreed on sixty, the rest was just theater. It was a lot, but easily a price I could afford. I’d just always been a frugal individual, so making such a big purchase without knowing how much my regular income was scared me. If the old Elder Hu had spent freely, and 600 was only a few months worth of income, that was fine. If it turned out that I only drew a nominal salary from the sect and it represented a large percentage of his personal savings, then every little glowing rock counted.

“Satisfying my particular needs doesn’t make it more valuable on the auction block. I would be happy to pay sixty stones for it.”

“I hope that this is the beginning of a fruitful relationship.” Ming An said with a downright predatory smile. Yeah, I got fleeced. There was no changing that now though, not without walking away from the deal entirely. I should have gone for forty or forty five originally, settled at fifty. “The Sleeping Fortune thanks you for your patronage.”

A spirit stone, I learned, as we began counting out money, was standardized in the Qin Empire as a stone of average quality weighing one one-hundredth of a catty. A catty was within the ballpark of a pound, so that put the average spirit stone at some fraction of an ounce. The result was that most spirit stones for trade were slightly smaller than a marble.

Purchasing things with them was a painful experience. Ming An brought out a scale and a small table with a formation carved into it. I took stones out from my ring, two or three at a time, and he first placed them on the formation, which lit up one of several colors to signify the specific grade of the stone, then he weighed them on the scales. The whole thing took nearly as long as the negotiations, almost a quarter of an hour. I came out a little better than I expected, sixty spirit stones was actually only forty one of the smaller stones in my ring. I was quite curious, how much some of the bigger, more powerful stones were worth. I was paying with what looked like shiny pebbles, but my ring held some pieces of glowing glass larger than my fist.

We finished our tea, exchanged some very generic pleasantries, and I was ushered out of the office with the fragment of a mirror ensconced in my ring. They’d offered me some waxed paper with a weak preservation formation for an additional stone, but if my ring was good enough to stop time and keep jelly from rubbing off on other objects, I suspected it was more than capable of holding a low grade natural treasure.

As I wandered out into the chaos of Xianyang, I felt aimless. No, not aimless, I had twelve hours of running, some drinks with a pair of fearless mortals, and a lesson to deliver the following day. I had an aim, a goal. But I felt disassociated. This was a strange and wonderful city, but it felt like I was viewing it through a screen, unable to touch it in any way that mattered. I didn’t need food, sitting down at a restaurant felt like a dangerous indulgence in a city that housed the Heaven-Piercing Spear Sect.

I wondered, if the feeling was a symptom of my situation, of the unseen dangers I kept trying to bumble my way through. Or if it was simply how a powerful cultivator felt, disconnected from mortality. Or, a dark thought bubbled up from the pit in the back of my mind, it was a product of the Hu Xin that was, the influence of the remnants of his mind, or perhaps his cultivation itself. I’d felt so good when I fought against Wang Li. Even the farce it was, I’d felt more alive than I had all week as I struggled to read his movements and block the thrusts of that spear. When he’d stabbed me, beyond the pain I’d felt a wild joy bubbling up inside me. When I’d reached out blindly and cut the whole world around me, it had felt glorious. Like that moment, that act, had been what I was made for, the culmination of my existence.

I breathed in, and let the feeling fill me. I smiled, a small thing only visible at the corner of my lips. Then I breathed out, and forced it away again.

It scared me. It scared me even more than the formless fear of being discovered that made me second guess every decision. Because I’d always liked the violence, even as a mortal discovering that boxing did not come as naturally to me as wrestling did, getting continually bopped in the face. Now, with the power to cut into mountains flowing through me, I loved it. And I feared what that love might bloom into, if I let it.

I had never been a cruel man. But had I ever really had enough power that cruelty was an option before?

As I walked down the Gold Road, I realized there was one other thing I could do here. One stop that was worth the risk of running into a city cultivator. It was amusing, how much I was suddenly looking forward to a task I’d dreaded in my last life.

I turned, making my way toward Madame Chao's Fine Clothing.