Unintended Cultivator

Sen just stared at Grandmother Lu for a little while as he tried and failed to understand what she meant. Sen had some vague ideas about what inheritance meant, but cultivators tended to distance themselves from those kinds of familial concerns. At least, that’s what Uncle Kho had told him.

“Inheritance is meant for mortals, Sen,” the old cultivator had said. “It’s a way for families to build wealth and retain property from one generation to the next. Cultivators disrupt all of that. If a cultivator inherits something, they might own it for the next thousand years. That prevents anyone else in their family from taking it and doing something productive with it. Even nobles who become cultivators give up their inheritances most of the time.”

With those words and no reason to expect that he’d have to worry about it, Sen hadn’t given the problem another thought. Yet, now, it seemed like maybe he should have dug a little deeper into it. He decided to start with the obvious.

“Grandmother, I don’t know anything about running a shop or a trading company.”

Grandmother Lu chuckled. “Oh, I don’t mean for you to run this operation. I expect that would be a terrible waste of your time and talents. Other people can do that work. No, I mean for this operation to serve as support for you.”

Sen poked and prodded at that last statement and came up empty. “I don’t really understand what that means.”

“That’s how I know you really need it. I’ve met some cultivators over the years, other than my parents, and they almost all had one thing in common.”

He waited for a beat before lifting an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“They didn’t understand how to deal with practicalities. Take you, for example. I expect that you’re probably strong enough to knock over a tree at this point. Maybe you can even summon up some fire or earth qi as well.”

Sen was more interested in where she was going than getting into a long discussion about his current abilities, so he didn’t try to correct her. “Yes, that’s likely all true.”

“Do you know how to send someone a letter? I mean, a plain, mortal letter.”

Sen opened his mouth to declare that he could obviously do that, except, he realized, he didn’t know how to do that. “I suppose I don’t.”

“I expect that you have some ideas about the value of things like beast cores and medicinal herbs, am I right?”

Sen nodded. “It varies from place to place, as I understand it, but I have a general idea.”

“Do you know how much an apple costs? Or where you’d buy feed for a horse? Or when the gates usually close for the night in a city?”

Sen frowned and thought back about all the things that he’d learned over the last few years. Grandmother Lu had a point. He didn’t know about any of those kinds of things.

“I don’t,” he admitted.

“I expect it’s worse for you than it would be for most people. You don’t even have regular childhood memories to fall back on. That’s where this little trading company comes in. It’s not that big yet, but it’s growing all the time. I have shops like this in several of the closer cities. We have small offices for research and purchasing in about a dozen more. Their main job is to be exactly what they are, shops and offices. But, their other job is to be a place you can go for practical help. They all have standing orders to make themselves useful to you if you should ever show up.”

Sen found himself moved by just how much thought Grandmother Lu had clearly put into understanding the kinds of needs he would have when he came down off the mountain. She’d even anticipated that he wouldn’t simply stay in Orchard’s Reach, but that he would venture out into the world as a wandering cultivator. She’s spread the net of her small business empire to make that journey a little easier for him. Sen almost thought that it had been unnecessary, but he wasn’t sure that was true. There were clearly a great many things he hadn’t known about and that the elder cultivators hadn’t really considered. He supposed there was a bit of a fault on both sides there. As his teachers, he thought it was part of their job to at least try to provide important information he might not have. On his part, he just hadn’t thought it through, so it never occurred to him to ask them about doing normal things. Auntie Caihong had even given him the tools to write letters. Still, neither of them had thought to talk about how to send those letters once he wrote them. He supposed that they’d all just been a little too focused on cultivation. Sen bowed to Grandmother Lu.

“Thank you for the consideration you’ve shown for my needs. Still, you shouldn’t have worked so hard. I was hoping that you’d be able to live in ease for a time.”

“Oh, I did for a while. You’ve never seen someone so bad at it. I ended up following my maid around all day, supervising her work. I’m sure that poor girl was ready to smother me in my sleep. This was the best thing that could have happened to me. Especially now that I might live for another fifty years. I have something to do every day. I have a purpose. I get to be helpful to my grandson, and I get to make myself a tidy little fortune in the process.”

“The business is doing well, then? The things out front seemed a little expensive for this town.”

“Oh, they probably are, but I wanted to be easy to find when you finally came down off the mountain. Plus, having this place lets me give all of those children out there somewhere to work. I don’t suppose you recognized any of them.”

Sen thought back about the employees he’d seen. None of them looked familiar, but it had been a while. Sen shrugged and shook his head.

“I can’t say I recognize any of them.”

Grandmother Lu waved it off. “No matter. I plucked most of them out of that same pit where that little hovel was. You could almost hear the howling from all those proper families who wanted their children to get experience here.”

Sen almost choked on his tea when he laughed at that. “I’d have thought that might cause some trouble.”

"It might well be if we were somewhere else, but the nobility here are very minor nobility. They’re really only better than merchants in name only. They ignored me at first, and then, when they wanted to do something about me, they found out that I was better at buying off the right people.”

Sen thought back to all those times he’d had to run away from noble brats intent on trouble of the more physical kind.

“Don’t you worry that they might hurt your employees or, I don’t know, destroy the shop.”

Grandmother Lu sighed. “It’s a possibility. I have people who keep an eye on the shop at night, but there’s only so much you can do. If someone truly decides they’re going to burn this place down, they’ll find a way. Of course, that’s a step I don’t think anyone wants to take. If they do, it’s like an open declaration of war. They don’t want me hiring people from somewhere else to get my revenge on them.”

Sen wasn’t sure he really believed something like that wouldn’t happen, but Grandmother Lu had more experience with those kinds of things than he did. He’d let her decide how best to handle it.

“Well,” said Sen. “I should get going. I’m sure you have things to do here, and we can catch up more tonight. I even have some gifts for you.”

Grandmother Lu laughed. “Oh, what a filial grandson you are. Very well, I’ll have Zhang Muchen take you back to the house and prepare a room. Unless you want to go exploring, of course.”

Sen shook his head. “The only thing I care about in this town is you. I don’t need to see it again to remember how much I hate this place.”

“I suppose that’s fair.”

Rising from her seat, Grandmother Lu led Sen back out into the shop proper. She waved off several of the girls who made to come over and, well, Sen supposed they’d try to be helpful. Instead, she found Zhang Muchen loitering near the front door. She gave him a few quick bits of instruction, told Sen she’d be done in a few hours, and sent them out the front door. Sen was ready to simply find a bath and relax a little, but it seemed the universe had other ideas.

“Street trash!” Someone roared.

Sen saw Zhang Muchen stiffen and followed the man’s gaze. There was a tall, young man standing perhaps twenty feet away, flanked by half a dozen people who all did look vaguely familiar to Sen. Sen sighed. He supposed it had been too much to hope that he could avoid this problem. Given that the mayor’s son and his hangers-on had been a thorn in his side all through his childhood, Sen supposed there was a certain balance in them being a nuisance now that they were all, in theory, adults. The question Sen didn’t have a good answer to was what he should do about the problem now that it was in front of him.