Chapter 17: News

It took them a week just to find a place that resembled something of a real house. It was in the western part of the city, a bit far from Lei’s stall in the Eastern Square, and other than the usual cracks the place looked clean enough that it warranted not much of a work before they could start living in it.

The trouble was, as expected, the group of children that’d be living with Lei. The owner of the house, a grizzly grannie who apparently had a dozen houses like this round the block, refused to give the place for the normal price when she saw the kids and upped it nearly twice before Lei had managed to convince her.

They even had to throw Master Li’s name in the mix, and gave her the six months of rent which came to about five hundred eighty copper coins. After buying the furniture and basic necessities Lei had to sigh deeply when he found out that he was only left with a meager hundred coppers.

But when he saw the children running across the big living room, chasing each other and laughing without a care in the world, that sting from having paid hundreds of coppers just to get some housing in the city drifted off of his mind.

Snake dutifully checked the four-roomed wooden house, which was by all means a big place for Jiangzhen standards, and had decided who’d sleep where in the manner of an experienced older brother. Though there were some grumbles from the others about how it wasn’t fair, they were soon silenced by the spicy noodles Lei had cooked for them as their first meal.

Not everything was on the right track, however, as on the first day of their new life, just after sundown, Fatty Lou came bearing news.

“Which one do you want first?” he asked right after he looked at the house, clicked his tongue, and poured himself some tea before settling on the new couch. “The good or the bad one?”

“Give me the good one,” Lei said and craned his head toward the stairs to see if the little devils were trying to eavesdrop on them. He eased into the couch after that and leaned closer to Fatty Lou. “I’m all yours.”

Fatty Lou glanced into his eyes, lingered for a second, and just as Lei thought the man would spill the beans he instead decided to take a sip from the tea. Lei smacked him on the head.

“Speak!”

“Uh,” Fatty Lou grunted, turned, and sputtered, “A-Alright. We’ve got a winner! The word just came from the Adventurers’ Guild. Looks like a cultivator has brought some spiritual herbs this morning.”

Lei blinked at him. “You’re serious?”

“Damn serious!” Fatty Lou nodded with strength. “Our friend, Brother He has told me that it was a woman, and a strong one. At least stronger than the cultivator he’d served a year ago.”

“Strong…”

Now that could go both ways, to Lei’s thinking. A strong cultivator could provide them with a heap of spiritual herbs, but it was a question of whether his spiritual cooking would be effective enough to keep her on the hook. And even if the dishes could keep her interested, there was no way of them knowing if the woman would try something fishy, like suddenly deciding to find ‘the spiritual chef’ behind the dishes.

“How strong are we talking here?” Lei asked.

“I don’t know about that, but according to Brother He she was spirited, joyous, and a little crazy, but not in a bad way. Supposedly, when she saw there was a mission about spiritual dishes she almost wept in joy.”

“That sounds… Strange.”

“Anyhow, we’ll get the herbs tomorrow morning,” Fatty Lou said and flashed a bamboo slip from his pocket. “Here, Brother He gave me a list of herbs. Thought you’d want to check them beforehand.”

Lei took the slip, and the bamboo crunched when he opened it wide. The crooked characters were inky black, but other than that there wasn’t any problem as he could easily read the lines.

“What the hell is a Rootremedy?” Lei asked when he read the first line. “It says Mortal-grade, low-quality, and three stalks.”

“Some sort of root, obviously,” Fatty Lou said, and scoffed when Lei looked at him. “Don’t give me that look. You were the one who said anything spiritual would do the trick.”

Keeping his hopes up, Lei checked the other lines and came out sighing when he finished all of them. Rootremedy, Gnarled Souls, and last but not least, Pettydiggers.

What the hell with these names?

Now he could throw these herbs into a mix and hope for the best, but he wasn’t sure how the system would respond to that. Though he didn’t have enough chances to test how the [Essence Enchantment] skill really worked, he doubted he could make a dish spiritual by just adding, say, spiritual mint or salt, the usual seasonings.

His gut also told him that if he wanted to get that spirituality from any dish, then the spiritual ingredient should serve as the base or the main ingredient. The Spirited Fried Rice had been cooked with spirit rice, after all, not spirit eggs or spirit green onions.

The extra touches will add to that effect, no doubt, but the main ingredient is still a problem.

“So, what do you think?” Fatty Lou asked. Seemed Lei’s silence had tensed him a little. “Can we do this?”

“It’s hard to say.” Lei rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I can only think of two solutions. Either we’ll find some information on these herbs, or I’ll taste and try them to get a real sense about them. I refuse to believe these herbs are that unique to leave me helpless. They are herbs, after all, no?”

“Sure,” Fatty Lou said with a frown of a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Then he chuckled, “Or we can always visit the Library to see if they have something in the books.”

“You like to keep me on the edge, don’t you?” Lei sighed tiredly before nodding. “Library, it is. We’ll go there first thing in the morning.”

Fatty Lou’s face darkened not long after as he clasped his hands in front of him, and leaned closer. “About the bad one…”

Lei stared straight into his eyes, waiting. When it came to bad news he had a gift in him that made it easy to turn the tiniest of thoughts into great storms that took hold of his mind.

“You remember the thugs we beat the other week?” Fatty Lou said gravely, to which Lei nodded. He went on, “They let their boss out. Not even flogged the bastard, just gave him a pass.”

“What?” Lei’s eyes widened. “What about the others? Did they let all of them—“

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“Just the boss.” Fatty Lou waved his hand at him. “I’ve heard they’re going to hang one of them in Minister Zhao Square, tomorrow at noon. The others will be flogged ten times before that. But not their boss.”

That was disturbingly familiar for some reason. The tiny fries would pay the price for their masters. Small wonder why the news didn’t spark any sense of rage in Lei. Thinking about it now, that bastard of a boss did look way too calm in the Guard Station for a prisoner.

“I’m thinking if we’d done bad to give them straight away to the guards,” Fatty Lou said, clenching his hands. “I don’t know, at least we could’ve broken his nose or something.”

“That wouldn’t have changed anything.” Lei shook his head. “Not like it’s our problem now, is it? We’ve got a good place here, and we taught that fool a good lesson. I don’t think he’s going to try something stupid again.”

Fatty Lou stared at him and sighed. “You don’t know these people at all, Brother Lei. I don’t know how things were in your place, but here, in Jiangzhen, we tend to keep grudges.”

“What do you mean?” Lei asked.

“I’m not sure,” Fatty Lou said. “But best we keep our eyes open, that’s what I’m thinking. Expect the unexpected, sort of.”

“Right.”

Lei rose from the couch and took the teacups and the pot from the table before putting them into the water bowl by the kitchen counter. He then checked the other pot. Couldn’t say he liked the tea they served in Swirling Frog, but a homebrew was something entirely else, so he was making sure to keep a pot ready at all times.

“You’re staying?” he asked as he took the pot out from the stove.

“Well, what do you think?” came Fatty Lou’s voice from the living room. “We’ve work to be about tomorrow.”

Lei’s eyes strayed to the bottles of wine he shoved on the top shelves, then back to the teapot. His hands lingered for a second before opting for the wine. Tension, to his thinking, was best dealt with in equal measure.

……

Lei gurgled awake with a good splash of cold water at his face, floundered to his feet, and jerked his eyes open, staring about himself in full panic before finally registering the face of Fatty Lou.

The bastard was smiling.

“Weak,” Fatty Lou said as he placed the now-emptied cup back on the table, turned, and gave him a cloth. “Here, take it. You know you’re snoring like a beast, don’t you?”

Hardly a surprise, Lei thought, as he regarded the three bottles of wine that stood on the table. Some strong stuff they were making here, but it was equally delicious that Lei couldn’t stop even as the world had started turning around him.

It was only after he wiped his face with the cloth that he got aware he’d spent the night in the living room. Probably why he got a bastard of a pain jabbing up his back. Though he must admit, this young body of his soul-brother was by all means a steal. Every part of his former thirty-year-old body would’ve been screaming at him right now.

Once he gathered his head enough to see the world as it was, Lei then sloshed the foul taste in his throat down with some water and got back to his room to fix himself a different set of clothes.

On his way to the room, which was just around the staircase and directly facing another room that housed four little devils, a hurried set of steps pricked his ears as Snake came running near him.

“Hold it,” Lei said, rubbing the back of his neck as he waved a hand at him. It did little to ease the budding headache. “Didn’t I tell you to not go running around the staircase? It’s dangerous.”

“Big Brother Lei,” Snake said, bowed his head, which made Lei sigh once again, before gesturing at the back door. “Little Ji said his stomach hurts. I was about to get him something to eat.”

“Oh, is it now?” Lei raised an eyebrow at him. “He doesn’t have a fever or anything like that, right?”

Snake nodded. “Just a pinch of pain, he says.”

Can be those spicy noodles. I told you to not eat too much of them.

Lei sighed. “Alright, get him some bread, and I’ll buy a chicken on my way back to cook him a soup. Remember, nothing’s as good as a soup for an upset stomach. Especially a chicken soup.”

After that, he changed into a new robe, a brown one he fixed with a leather belt around his waist, and then they trudged out into the morning with Fatty Lou.

Waking up to the bustle of a city was something entirely else, Lei had to say, though it was a bit odd to be away from those ruins and the wreckage he’d come to see as his home. He couldn’t hear the chirping of the birds here, but people made up for it as they got about with their lives.

I wish Old Ji wasn’t that stubborn. No matter what I said I couldn’t convince him.

That was the thing with old people. You never had quite a hold about how their brains functioned. And it wasn’t like Old Ji had lost a grandson or any descendant to that assault. No, as far as Lei knew the man always lived alone in that house, which miraculously stood its ground against a cultivator’s nuke.

Fate, he told me. Strange thing.

Lei shook his head as they rounded the corner, and came up before a lively square. The Western Square was rather different than the Eastern one, as this one was often frequented by long lines of people who wanted to get the best deal with furniture or other household needs.

The workstations covered most of the space, sprawling before the shops. It was by no means a usual practice for these people to work outside, but because the bloody sun had always managed to find every single crack round the wood to seep into their shops, cranking up the heat in these already cramped places to the roof, they opted to work outside where they could at least find some solace in the breeze.

It’s good marketing too. That’s what I always say. You have to show people your worth to earn that respect. It also helps with prices.

And with their dependable jobs, they got quite the attention from ladies. Sweaty, bulging muscles certainly help, Lei thought as he stared at a young man, probably his age, cutting a newly-felled tree with a saw, a group of ladies chuckling as they stole glances from his bare-chested figure.

They had to pick their steps through the square as the demand for the woodwork, and masonry were at an all-time high. It was the best season to patch the cracks, fix the foundations, or add a porch to your place as the winter had a nasty side about it, or so Lei heard.

“This library,” Lei said when they eased into an alley, and found his breath under the shades. “How big are we talking here?”

“You’ve never visited the place, eh?” Fatty Lou glanced at him.

Lei stared at him. “And you have, I presume, from your tone? Didn’t know you’re a bookworm, Brother Lou.”

“Bookworm?” Fatty Lou said. “That’s an odd way to say it, but yeah, I’ve been to the place a couple of times to seek out some knowledge about the Immortal Path. I was in the cultivation phase of my youth, you know, the usual kid stuff when you try to fly on a stick, pretending it’s a spiritual sword, bowing to your Father as if he’s some secret Master. Those were the good days, but everything changed when an old bastard measured my not-so-great talent to tell me I don’t have what it takes to become a cultivator.”

“Must’ve been tough,” Lei said.

“Well, not that tough, no. Not when you have dozens of children beside you who share the same fate. I was twelve years old, I think, but I clearly remember they only accepted three kids into the Empire’s Own, and another one to the righteous sects. Something about the sun, was it? Yeah, that sect had a strange name…”

“I didn’t know the Empire sent its people to places like Jiangzhen,” Lei said.

Fatty Lou glanced at him. “You really don’t know? I was in Lanzhou, not Jiangzhen. Our glorious Empire doesn’t have the workforce to reach every single city in this damned Empire, Brother Lei. Hence why you’ve to risk the trip to even have a chance to get your talent measured.”

“You can always go about with the sects, though,” Lei said.

“Sects…” Fatty Lou sighed deeply as he ducked under a stray rod that swayed from between the shutters of a window. “Not like it’d change anything. Talent is talent no matter where you go. You can’t expect to become an Outer Sect disciple when you’ve ten spirit roots like me. Now, I could’ve joined one as a butcher, but working for a sect is a whole different matter.”

“True.” Lei nodded, though he didn’t know what that ‘different matter’ really was. His xianxia knowledge suggested that the sects were, well, sects. Cruel places where might was the only thing that mattered. Even harming, or killing fellow disciples was allowed oftentimes, but Lei wasn’t sure if the same was also true for the sects in this world.

“Trust me, I’ve thought all about this stuff way too many times before,” Fatty Lou said with a hint of exasperation in his eyes. “There’s no doubt that to climb through the ranks of the Immortal Path one needs the guidance of a master, but a sect should be the last option for us unless we’re left with no other choice.”

That was wise of him. Lei didn’t plan on joining a sect any time soon, not if he had no other choice. They could always apply to the Governor’s Office to get a cultivator license, which would give them the basic cultivation manual, and that would be enough to at least cover the Body Tempering Stage. Granted, to get a license they would first have to become Body Tempering Stage cultivators.

There are way too many changes here. A cultivator license… It’s oddly ancient, and modern at the same time, as if someone had interfered with the way of this world.

“What do you think about it, eh?” Fatty Lou’s words took him away from his thoughts,. He was squinting up at the building that towered before them. “Quite the building, right?”

Lei blinked to clear his mind and followed Fatty Lou’s gaze before his eyes widened.

Now that is some building, alright.

……