Li Fang walked through the town with the two children at either arm, laughing and pulling her every which way.

They were tiresome, dragging, and made Li Fang’s arms hurt a little, but she couldn’t help smiling through it all. She’d been like a mother to them for most of her life, raising them from the slums by herself. And while she hated those hard times and mourned the childhood she lost, she couldn’t stop feeling sheer, unimaginable joy when she saw them happy.

They had aided her as much as she had aided them. Without them, without a reason to push onto the light, Li Fang would have starved in some back alley long ago.

“Li Fang! Li Fang! Can we have braised ribs for the night?” Gai Fang asked.

“That would take too long, Gai. How about beef stew tonight?”

“And dumplings?” Gai asked.

“Only if you remind me to buy some on our way back,” Li Fang replied.

Gai Fang nodded vigorously and smirked at Liu Yong.

Li Fang smiled, acting oblivious to the plan she had overheard them make right in front of her.

They eventually made it to the stone cutter. He had a small shack-like building just a mile from the city square. The area itself seemed innocent and had a decent amount of fair trade going on, but that was just a farce. The main lifeline of this market was black money, largely prostitution and alcohol.

Strong Fist City was under the direct rule of the Bloody Fist Sect, a Buddhist cultivator group. And even though they were the law and the highest authority within the area, they had the same flaws as other large sects. They didn’t care to govern. In fact, to the Blodoy Fist Sect governing seemed to be a burden instead of a privilege.

They had refused a city for centuries, choosing instead to have a small supply town at the edge of the mountain. But it had recently exploded in population and commerce and the Bloody Fist Sect hadn’t intervened in the infrastructure or trade.

They only policed in the dumbest ways possible. You couldn’t get away with ‘immoral actions’ as they called it, but they were monks. They went about clearing away any petty theft they could find, but that was the most immortality they knew. As long as you refrained from open violence, you would be unlikely to catch the monks' eyes.

Li Fang suspected that someone higher up on the Sect ladder knew what was going on. The Bloody Fist Sect was unconcerned with mortals, not stupid. They had to have noticed the sudden increase in their sect members seeking out mortal pleasure.

Sex, gambling, drinking, all of that had been subtly growing beneath the clean skin of the city, and a lot of the younger monks were taking part in it. That was also another thing she had noticed. There seemed to be a lot more monks spending spirit stones lately.

It put her on edge.

“Hold onto me now,” Li Fang said to the children. “Don’t let go!”

Both Gai Fang and Liu Yong looked up at her in curious confusion.

“We won’t,” Gai Fang replied.

“Mhm, we won’t let go!” Liu Yong added.

“I might forget about the dumplings if you do,” Li Fang added.

She felt both of their hands tighten around hers. And with a good grip, she walked into the stone cutter's place. The half-dwarf sat at his desk, his hands inspecting a spirit stone with an extended glowing monicale. In front of him stood a group of mortals, a family, holding their hands together in anxious anticipation.

“Looks full,” the dwarf spoke.

“I knew it!” The father spoke.

Stone cutters, aside from cutting up spirit stones, also traded in spirit stones as well. A spirit stone full of qi was useless to a mortal, but to a cultivator, the qi within a spirit stone was what made it valuable. Without qi, a spirit stone was a useless piece of shiny rock.

So if a mortal managed to find a spirit stone that had yet to be drained of its qi, the best thing they could do was trade it in for dull stones.

It was a strange system. Dull spirit stones rotted, eventually turning into dust over a century. Fresh spirit stones could only be made by cultivators or mined from the deep layers of the earth, hundreds of miles below the ground, which was also a thing only cultivators could do.

This ultimately meant that all economic resource was passed down from a cultivator’s hands. Whether mined or made, spirit stones could only come from cultivators and the full ones were only useful to cultivators or certain high-up mortals.

“Ten dull stones and a handful of silvers, that’s the best you’ll get for this,” the dwarf stated. “I’ll give you fifteen.”

“I thought a full spirit stone was worth thirty dull stones?” The woman asked.

“Thirty dull stones two years ago. Nowadays you’d be lucky to get ten for a full one.”

“Twenty, and nothing less,” The man replied.

Li Fang saw the dwarf’s eyes shine in satisfaction. She felt pity for the family. A full spirit stone, while being worth a little less nowadays, would have caught them nothing less than twenty-three dull stones at any other stone cutter.

They must have been new here, not knowing the prices of stones or goods. The old dwarf would rip them off a little before they caught on and inevitably switched to a different cutter.

The large dwarf, sighed, after having paused long enough for consideration.

“Fine then, twenty dull stones for this full one-”

“With them, all cut to tenth silvers and the butts attached,” the father interrupted.

The dwarf scowled.

“Now that's a bit much for”

“The man down the street said this could go for twenty-three uncut dullards. With the cut, he said it’d be twenty-one dullards. All tenth cuts too. The problem is he won’t have them till next week, business is booming he said. ”

The dwarf stared at him for a moment.

“Oh, alright. Twenty dull stones, all cut into tenths.”

The father nodded happily in agreement and the dwarf stumbled back behind and into the backroom with a frown.

“And that kids, is how you bargain! Never believe a stone cutter’s first prices. Always wear them down, bit by bit you’ll get them right in no time.” The man said to his children.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Li Fang smiled and nudged her own fledglings, making sure they were listening. She gave them that common motherly nod, the one that said ‘Now that’s an important thing to know for the future.

Gai Fang nodded lazily and Liu Yong was already focused, listening in to the man’s instructions.

The dwarf came back with a sack of spirit stones and handed them over to the father, who was not hiding his look of satisfaction.

“Happy then?” Gong Bao grumbled as the man counted out the silvers one by one on the counter in front of him.

“Incredibly,” the man said, pushing out his hand for the dwarf to shake.

Gong Bao waved the man away, and the man turned around with a smile, gathered his children, and walked out of the door.

“You still profited, didn’t you?” Li Fang asked as she walked over and put two spirit stones onto his desk.

“Yes. I did,” Gong Bao grumbled. “But not enough for it to matter. The man got all of his silvers exhanged in one day and I got happy over nothing.”

Li Fang laughed as she watched the wide man go into the back of his store and exchange the uncut stones for the silvers. Stone cutting was time-consuming labor from what she understood. Spirit stones were hard but brittle. Cutting them up into circular shapes required time and consistency.

Even the best stone cutters were open only two or three days a week, dedicating most of their week to the physical labor of cutting stones.

It was all very complicated money stuff.

He came back with sixteen-tenth silvers, which Li Fang counted and placed into her satchel.

“Are we gonna go get dumplings now?” Gai Fang asked, tugging lightly at her hand.

“Yes, we’ll go get dumplings now,” Li Fang replied to the children.

They left the stone cutter and made their way to the local food market, just a few blocks away. The children talked about their favorite flavors, arguing between pork and beef, Li Fang wouldn’t have minded getting them both.

She did have the money after all.

“Why does a whore walk in my city?” A voice echoed.

The world stopped, the children froze and a cold grip seemed to have grabbed onto the air itself.

A monk strolled in front of her, calm and unabiding.

“Filth made flesh,” the man whispered. “Die.”

And then the world began to move again.

Li Fang collapsed, pain burned through her body and her soul ached in agony.

One of the children fell with her. Liu Yong, she guessed.

I hope she’s not hurt, She thought.

Then, she was done.

********

Madam Rose finished telling us the story, speaking slowly at times and rushing through the ending with a stifled voice. Her aura blazed in grief and sadness.

“Li Fang died that day, and for a long time, I didn’t know why or how. She was with us one moment, then she wasn’t. The apothecaries told us it must have been some disease, something she picked up from work. I knew what she did, even though she thought I didn’t but I knew, and I believed it.”

Liu Yong clenched her hands for a minute and closed her eyes, hoping to hold back the tears.

“But then that monk came. He said his name was Gai Lu and that he’d come to our aid. That we were noble children hindered by a devious woman. He had the same first name as Gai Fang, and that seemed to bring them together for some reason.”

Lui Yong chuckled.

“But I knew he was lying. I knew it from the moment I saw him. I never trusted him, but we had no choice but to accept his aid. Gai Fang went into monkhood, changing his name to Gai Jin eventually. I had no talent for nunhood and followed in Li Fang’s footsteps, taking care to not let Gai Fang know.”

Another small pause came, followed by a gulp and a clearing of her throat.

“I thought that would be the end of it. But then, one day, Gai Fang was declared Gai Lu’s disciple and Gai Fang was revealed to have an immense talent for the Bloody Fist Arts, having a deep lower dantian as they say.”

“I see…” I mumbled.

She nodded.

“I knew it too. Right away I knew it. I ran back to the apothecaries and the funeral men and this time they told me the truth. They said her heart had burst and that her lower dantian had been shattered by some kind of qi attack. They said she had died due to a cultivator's attack, and that the monkhood had collected her body before it could be buried, and burned it without any investigation. That had never made sense to me you know. Strong Fist City was a Buhhdist city, even dead beggars would be given some type of service at the temple. But no, they had just burned Li Fang. Burned her, as if they were trying to hide something.”

Tears fell from her eyes, cascading in small droplets off her face.

“But I kept quiet. I kept quiet and tried my best to live on. I found a cultivation method that worked for me and became the head of a brothel nearby. And I tried to make peace with what had happened but… but Gai Fang didn’t accept it. He told me to leave the brothel and to go with him back to the monastery, to find a good husband and settle down.”

“He said ‘I can’t bear to see my sister disrespect herself like this. Li Fang wouldn’t have wanted this for you.’”

Another cold silence filled the room.

“That was when I told him. He didn’t believe me at first. He insulted me, called me a whore and a liar. But the more I spoke, the more he understood… and eventually he stormed off, heading for Gai Lu himself.”

Lee Hang made his way around the desk and gave the woman a gentle hug, though the action seemed to bring little comfort.

“And Gai Lu is hunting you for this?” I asked.

“He is. I don’t know what happened that night but Gai Fang- or I suppose I should say Gai Jin was locked up for some crime and I fled the city that very night.”

“You can stay,” I finally said to the poor girl.

“But the Immortal-”

“The immortal does not like Gai Lu. There is no open animosity but he does not like the man’s presence, stay for as long as you like. But make sure to contact the mortals about the place and figure out the setup of where you’ll stay.”

Madam Rose nodded, relief awash on her face.

Word got around the brothel pretty quickly. Everyone in the brothel had some understanding of Madam Rose’s situation, though I doubted they had the full picture.

A part of me was annoyed, the old solitary Dane part that hadn’t quite rotted away yet. But another part of me was happy, which was something new.

It wasn’t like Dane hadn’t done good in his time. Dane- I had cleared out numerous evil foes, wiping out whole sects of human-eating psychos at times. But fighting evil was one thing and protecting good was another. Dane had fought evil when he could hurt it, not for the sake of being good but for the sake of killing evil.

It had always been more of a moral instinct, like stomping on a cockroach or slapping off mosquitoes, an act with no sacrifice. But protecting people, well protecting people was something new entirely.

“How certain are you?” Lee Heng asked me.

“What?”

“How certain are you that the immortal-”

“You felt that qi didn’t you?” I asked in reference to Rin Wi’s little trick.

“Yes,” Lee Heng replied.

“He was listening that whole time,” I whispered.

Lee Heng’s eyes widened and he stood still in place.

“I- I-”

“Relax,” I cut in. “He really doesn’t care about honorifics and all that stuff.”

Lee Heng loosened up, but only slightly.

“Oh. I almost forgot why I came looking for you,” I said pulling out a thin piece of paper and handing it to Lee Heng.

“I need these as soon as you can get them. The villagers are expecting a sudden, possibly permanent, population increase and they could use a few qi beasts to help with the labor.”

Lee Heng looked at the list carefully.

“This looks costly,” he mumbled.

“Yeah, I’m sure the brothel will be happy to pay it off,” I answered.

Lee Heng nodded lightly.

“If the Immortal of the Great Desert Strip truly cares about the mortals in this valley, then gifting them should please him.”

I figured he’d see it that way. Paying him wouldn’t have been a problem, but sometimes you needed to let people think they offered something in the transaction for them to accept.

Selfishness was assumed, and kindness was questioned.

Chin generally left the cultivator dealings up to me so I doubted he would oppose the bargain. I could tell he’d been waiting on my opinion about the whole thing and now that I had vetted out the situation.

I slipped out of the camp, this time fully hiding my presence from everyone else, and walked till I was near the edge of the forest.

I went up to a hill that oversaw the village and all its people and sat down.

Then, I looked. I let my senses cover the whole region and searched for every monk I could pinpoint. I saw their little mountain and I saw their city at its base. Then I saw Gai Lu, his aura in complete disarray.

He sat cross-legged in a meditative pose trying to calm himself down but to no avail. Fear boiled through his mind mixed with anger and shame.

Then I looked again, somewhere on the outskirts of the region, a few thousand miles away from Strong Fist City sat a man. He stood there washing his hair over a small pond. His skin was a dark brown and his hair was bound into dreadlocks.

But the most interesting feature was his fists. His fists were darker than the rest of his skin, scarred in a way but also different. The Bloody Fist Sect was a group of fighting monks, and their cultivation techniques revolved around breaking their hands through trauma and healing them in an improved fashion. The strange scar tissue that was left behind was different, more durable, and thick.

It was as if their skin had been replaced with that of a spirit beast.

And this man had those traits.

Gai Jin, I assumed.

I blinked and stopped looking.

I guess that was why the monk had tried to get me to kill him. He’d rather die a virtuous monk who stood up to an arrogant immortal than a corrupted bastard who was slain by his own pupil.

Oh well, that’s got nothing to do with me.

The boy was out for vengeance and in the state he was in, he could take Gai Lu ten times over.

I just hoped he chose his actions wisely.