“No, no I don’t have to help. In fact I’m greatly inclined not to, given the stunning irrelevance of the last two things I’ve ‘had’ to do, as they applied to my actual job.” Hong said, his tone dull but his words vituperative. He’d had more than enough to do with thinly-related plotlines that had little in common with the nature of his job, i.e. the repairing of noodle shops.

“The monsters have destroyed the noodle shop!” The magistrate cried, but something about his tone made Hong suspicious.

“Which noodle shop?”

“…Xufu O'Paddhyhaddy's.” The magistrate replied, his eyes glancing about nervously. Hong, still suspicious, got up and walked to the door. He opened it and looked down the street.

Xufu O'Paddhyhaddy's Tavern and Noodle Shop (Home of the Finest Beer and Bucatini in the Great Xuan) was perfectly fine.

Hong narrowed his eyes at the magistrate. The magistrate started to sweat.

“Well, not that Xufu O'Paddhyhaddy's. The other Xufu O'Paddhyhaddy's, of course.”

“What other Xufu O'Paddhyhaddy's? Wang never mentioned owning a second establishment to me.”

“Well, maybe he forgot,” the magistrate tried. Hong scoffed.

“Forgot! He and I have written paperwork together. Suffering like that forges bonds that are stronger than blood.”

Magistrate Su folded. “Okay… it’s the old store, the one that closed decades ago.”

“Well if it’s closed, then who cares if monsters destroy it? A noodle shop without noodles is like a body without a soul.”

The magistrate’s mouth flapped up and down like a fish as he desperately tried to connect the crime to noodle shops. Just as he was on the verge of giving up, however, Mu saved the day.

“What monsters? If it’s in town it should be safe, at least from monster attacks - cultivators, of course, are an inevitability.”

“An excellent question - we don’t know. There was a spatial distortion, and the entire building warped into a quasi-numerical space. None of its angles make any sense, its walls are moving in patterns and shapes that no wall should form, and the foulest gibbering echoes from strange corners all the way down the street. But while some sort of creatures are clearly there - their voices have been heard yammering, their feet seen clacking over the wooden floors - we have yet to be able to get a clear sight of them. Nothing we do has any effect on the structure, and-”

“Wait, what did you just say?” Hong interrupted, a weird glow flickering in his eyes. The magistrate shrunk back involuntarily from the look of hunger, like a tiger that had caught sight of a wounded antelope.

“Nothing we do has any effect on the structure. Whatever cultivation technique they’re using - or formation, or talisman, or art - the building is entirely impervious to harm. The door is sealed; we cannot get in, nor can we smash the windows.”

Hong said nothing, but began to shake strangely. Mu stroked his magnificent beard, thinking.

“You say you can’t get in, but if nothing is getting out, does this really matter? Maybe Hong is right.”

“It’s not the monsters leaving that’s worrying, but who else is in there with them - some cultivators were seen entering the building shortly before the weird spatial distortion occurred, and are probably still inside.”

“Still, if the distortion was caused by their disturbance-”

“We’re going,” Hong declared. Mu blinked.

“I beg your pardon-”

“A technique that can keep cultivators from destroying noodle shops!” Hong swore aloud, his eyes glazed over. He was completely unresponsive to external forces, as strange pressures within him began to move.

“Oh, how I have dreamed of uncovering those secrets - a technique that would allow a noodle shop to forever remain unmolested by the perversions and deprivations of cultivators. Sure, there are talismans, and formation arrays, but both are simple measures and easily surmounted, unless you waste fantastically rare and unsustainable materials. But just think, just think how reality would change if we found a technique that would let noodle shops rest in safety from their ancient foes.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

He stood up, slapping his payment for dinner (plus a tip) on the table, and began striding towards the door. His footsteps were unusually jaunty, his energy effusive, and Mu found himself struggling to keep up.

“Come, Mu - we’re going to that noodle shop, and nobody can stop us!”

The magistrate just stood there, dumbfounded, and then realised that he’d successfully found an excuse to go home.

So he went. You know what they say - when the going gets tough, the tough go home. (Where the heart is.)

Hong and Mu, for their part, also went. They went all the way down the street, made two lefts, then three rights, up the river, down the stream, across the bridge, under hill and over hill, in a circle, and up three slopes. Then they stopped to ask someone for directions.

No longer lost, they went to the old part of town, where the original Xufu O’Paddyhaddy’s had been, until it had encountered one cultivator too many and never been rebuilt. (The current Xufu O’Paddyhaddy’s - Home of the Finest Beer and Bucatini in the Great Xuan - was named in honour of its spiritual predecessor).

Sure enough, the shop had passed beyond the bounds of normality. The ruined, wrecked facade of the old building was gone; a noodle shop now stood in its place, but not one that fit in any earthly architecture. Weird, many-angled corners wrapped themselves around the walls, the spaces between the walls had grown to encompass the windows, and the door yawned overhead with a mouthful of teeth.

It resembled a full haunting, except the strongest ghostly abode would give way to cultivators eventually. This one clearly wasn’t, based on the cultivators hammering on it futilely. Their blades sparked and banged against the solid shadows twisting about the structure, the sparks flickering through the dark until they vanished into the sky.

Laughter and cackles echoed from the building as the cultivators strove in vain to break inside, and Mu could see strange shapes moving through the black. Whatever it was possessing this building, it was no ghost. No ghost could bend the fabric of the Heavens to their will, incorporating their technique seamlessly into the landscape.

It took Mu only a moment to realise why the cultivators couldn’t break in - one could no more damage or dislodge that noodle shop than one could break through the bounds of reality. Not impossible, but certainly beyond the skill of the average cultivator.

Hong had realised this just as well as Mu had, but unlike Mu, his eyes shined. Sure, it wasn’t indestructible, but a noodle shop that could only be destroyed by a cultivator nearing his ascension may as well be invincible.

The more powerful cultivators had better things to do than annihilate innocent noodle shops.

Why the cultivators banging on the noodle shop couldn’t understand the futility of their actions was beyond Mu, until he saw their garb and realised they must be too weak to know.

Hong’s left eyebrow raised as he saw the cultivators wasting their time, and he tapped one on the shoulder. The cultivator gave a start when he recognised Hong, and stopped screaming about how the inhabitants of the restaurant were courting death.

“Y- you- you’re Hong Yu, right? The noodle shop demon?”

“No, I’m Hong Yu, the noodle shop repairman. You’re looking for the other guy,” Hong deadpanned, to the cultivator’s confusion.

Hong tucked his arms into his sleeves. “You’re members of the Mystic Lima Bean Sect, correct?”

The disciple of the Mystic Lima Bean Sect nodded nervously, hoping Hong wouldn’t decide that his slip up with the ‘demon’ label was a form of courting death.

Hong continued, his tone perfectly tranquil, as if the cultivator had never insulted him. “Then may I safely take it that Ms. Xian Xinyue, Young Mistress of the Mystic Lima Bean Sect, is inside the building?”

“Yes, with the others,” the cultivator replied.

Hong motioned for him to explain who those ‘others’ were.

“Yes sir, it’d be Yuan Shi, plus six other cultivators. I’m afraid I don’t know their identities.”

“And did they all go in together?” Hong prompted. The cultivator flushed as he realised Hong wanted more details than just their identities.

“No, sir. We were on our way to the abandoned noodle shop for- uhh- it doesn’t matter, when the Young Mistress saw Yuan Shi entering the restaurant before us. For some reason she gave a cry of rage at the sight of him, then set off after him at a breakneck pace, leaving us behind.

“We tried to pursue her, but before we could six cultivators with an insanely powerful aura soared out of the Heavens on flying swords. Sensing the futility of confronting such powerful foes we stepped back, and watched as they walked into the restaurant after Xian.

“We were just debating what to do when the ruins of the noodle shop gave a great convulsion, and this happened. We’ve been banging on the wall ever since.”

“You can stop now. It isn’t doing anything,” Hong observed, and walked up to the wall. He placed one hand on the twisting shadows, and closed his eyes, feeling the structure of the qi.

At last he stepped back. The cultivator who’d given them the narration gulped.

“So, is there no way into the building? Is our young mistress doomed?”

Hong blinked in surprise. “No, of course not. Observe.”

He went and knocked on the door, and politely asked, “Hello, can I please enter?”

The great maw opened wide, exposing a black cavern within. Mu shivered as he watched the saliva drip down the door frame.

Hong whistled and walked through the door. He turned to Mu. “Coming?”

Mu steeled himself, and entered the endless black.