Kepa Ying holds the playing card in both hands. It was shiny, but that was all she could tell about it. The beast says something as he gestures toward her clothes, and at the card she had dropped the money to climb after. Checking her clothing, there didn’t look to be anything wrong with anything she was wearing. They were just regular clothes, pieces of fabric to cover the general bits of whoever happened to wear them. It wasn’t as though she was fashionable and cared about what she looked like. That might have been the problem, now that she thought about it. Since she had just publicly declared herself as its disciple, they were no longer hidden in plain sight, and were subject to the needs of reputation and face. No powerful cultivator would want to be associated with a plain, poor looking disciple.

“My clothes are fine,” she says, huffily. Why waste money on clothes, when you could spend it on good things, like swords or snacks?

A coin rises up from the roof and presses itself onto her card, covering the picture on the top of if. As though a single coin would be enough to buy appropriate clothing for a disciple of an immortal! It was a five hundred coin though. That was pretty good. Even considering how much it cost to import cloth from other territories, five hundred gold would be enough to get an entire set of regular clothing, and a good set of shoes as well. How would a beast know what appropriate dress for a disciple would be anyway? She could buy some random things from a random shop, and keep the rest of the gold for useful things.

“You win,” she said, not taking her eyes off the money and the card, “I’ll go buy something now.”

Stepping across the bridge to the roof they had just come from, Kepa Ying doesn’t bother looking up from the treasures she has in her hand to pay attention to her footing, because she doesn’t need to. Even if she hadn’t completed body refining, she had at least gotten far enough that balancing on a thin board with her eyes closed was barely a feat of athleticism.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The fact that she could feel the pressure from the beast on her shoulder, ready to catch her if she fell off, was also a slight factor.

There was an explosion behind her at some point, but that wasn’t anywhere as important as shopping. Backtracking all the way across the roof segments to the alley where she had gotten mugged in the first place, she drops down onto the regular ground and continues along the path where she was originally going to explore before the unfortunate events took place. Imports usually came in from boats, so that would probably be where she would need to go to find some kind of outfit.

Water was sunward at this time of day, so she just followed the shadows toward the docks. The Primordial Grandmist Sect was across the bay, and they were the sect that had the best finished products. Using ancient technology, they converted the raw materials provided by the other sects through trade into armors, weapons, clothing, and delicious foods. Ideally, she’d be able to find both of the latter forms of finished product before it was shipped out to the various merchants that would resell it for a higher price. If she couldn’t do that, she could at least find out which of those merchants bought the best merchandise. Quality was best when you had money to spend, and this was more gold than she ever had before.

Several minutes later, Kepa Ying found a longshoreman who was willing to lose a chest of clothes in exchange for the five hundred gold. Dragging it into an alley, she goes through the box of cloth until she finds a robe that actually fits her. It was mostly white with some black outlining, and a belt with long dangly bits was already tied around the waist. A sash? She wasn’t sure what that thing was called. It would probably be a pain to retie that things, so she just slips the whole thing over her head, skirt end first.

That probably looked fine.