There’s little to do on the road but walk and talk.

Occasionally they’ll meet travelers, but they tend to bow and avoid them, a few are bold though, and those usually make for good conversation. If only to hear their own personal microcosm of the world. Tantra has discovered that peasants make for the best storytellers, everything they describe is raw and real, not like the fancy tales nobles curate to seem refined. She assumes there are exaggerations, likely even outright lies, but it doesn’t stop the tales from being enjoyable. Whether it's about crop rotations, general gossip, or the rare tale of a passing cultivator.

Like her, now that she thinks about it.

Maybe she’ll be in a few stories now, ‘the cultivator with the mangled arm’, hmm, she doesn’t like that much. A lot of first impressions were made while her arm was healing and/or infected. Not very graceful of her but what could she have done? Hide away until it healed? Still doesn’t stop her self conscious side from pestering her like a petulant child.

Speaking of petulant children.

“I wanna drink too!” Erick pouts, “It’s not fair.”

The girl beside him giggles as Rorick barks out a laugh.

“No can do laddie, this is the good shit for the grown shitters.”

“Etra isn’t grown,” Tantra points out.

“I’m grown enough you prissy bitch.”

“Etra, I am in possession of a club the size of your body, please don’t tempt me to use it.”

Etra snorts, “do it pussy, you won’t.”

Kisrin smacks her on the back of the head.

“Hey! What was that for!”

“Drunkenness is no excuse for…for…hmmm, unkindness?”

“You’re thinking of rudeness,” Tantra says blandly.

“Yes! Marvelous, you are a shining light amidst a sea of idiocy Tantra.”

Yorin hiccups, “you two should just get together already.”

“Don’t be silly,” Tantra says, “Kisrin is simply-Erick!”

The boy looks at her like a startled deer, carrying a bottle of wine under one arm.

“You put that down young man, or what I'll do to you will make Rakan’s training seem tame.”

Erick grumbles and puts the bottle back as Rakan giggles.

Yes, Rakan is giggling, alcohol makes people weird.

Rorick chuckles as he takes a sip of his wine, “you lot are a funny bunch for cultivators, most I’ve talked to are more about honour and face.”

“Met a few, have you?” Rakan says, “and you’re still alive? Good for you.”

Rorick waves him off, “oh they’re not so bad, so long as you don’t do anything to offend. Hell’s, Ephelia’s mother is a cultivator, oh how I miss that woman, but the journey seems to call to your folk like the bleat of a deer calls to wolves.”

Rakan raises his bottle, “as is only proper!”

“That’s stupid,” Yorin grumbles, “why not settle down? There’s no rule forcing us to move around.”

“Maybe you’ll get it someday kid,” Rakan says, “the journey has a way of…finding situations of growth lets say, also stay in one place and you make yourself a pretty easy target.”

“Target for who?”

“Nobles mostly,” Tantra chimes in.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“What’s a no-ble?” Ephelia asks.

“Stuck up cunts,” Etra replies.

The girl tilts her head, “what’s a cunt?”

-

“Uuuugh, why doesn’t cultivation deal with the damned hangovers?” Etra groans as she clutches at her head, “It deals with everything else.”

“Firstly,” Rakan starts, “you’re not that far along, secondly, the amount you drank would challenge even my liver.”

Etra scrunches her brow, “Is that where hangovers come from?”

“Nope!” Yorin says, “the liver’s just the thing that gets rid of the wine…right?”

Tantra nods proudly.

“Please don’t talk so loudly, how does that not hurt?”

Yorin shrugs, “I don’t get hangovers.”

“Lucky bastard.”

Tantra chuckles as they walk along the path, unfortunately Rorick was headed in the opposite direction, so they had to part ways. Still, it was nice to talk to someone who isn’t constantly afraid of her, even if that fear is well warranted. Cultivators don’t exactly have a stellar reputation, and a lot of the stories aren’t even exaggerations.

Immortals have burned down villages for the pettiest of reasons, and similarly cultivators have killed with the most ridiculous reasoning. She finds it kind of funny, in a dark way, they want to kill but are too cowardly to face things that could fight back and present a challenge, so instead they target the helpless.

She doesn’t know how such people have the gall to talk about honour after slaughtering helpless peasants. Not that she’ll point out the hypocrisy, she isn’t looking to die.

“Hey, what’s that?” Yorin says as he points to the side.

All eyes turn to see what looks like a moose with a light blue coat walking towards them. It has more than a few scars where fur doesn’t cover it’s hide, but all of them seem to accentuate its features rather than detract from them. Its stride is slow, but it’s also long, which evens out the pace. Other than the coat and the glowing eyes there isn’t really anything of note about the moose, Tantra just shoulders her club in preparation but Rakan puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t” he says simply.

Tantra, confused, turns to look at him and sees something new on Rakan’s face.

Is that fear?

The moose stops in front of them, snorts out a greeting, and bows its head. Rakan reciprocates.

“Greetings, honoured beast.” Rakan says.

The moose lets out a low rumble in response. It brings its head forward and considers them, eyes twinkling a bright yellow.

“Rakan, what’s going on?” Etra asks nervously.

Rakan doesn’t respond, keeping his head bowed low as the moose goes to sniff him. It huffs and moves on to Tantra, who tenses up, but all it does is take another short inhale through the nose, and another huff in…disappointment?

Is some random beast disappointed in her?

She doesn’t know how that’s going to go over with her pride, but she chooses to ignore that for now as it does the same with all her friends, eventually stopping at Erick. It takes a deep breath, and its eyes widen with delight, even letting out a happy rumble.

Erick, shaking like a leaf, gets his cheek licked, and there is a slight glow before the moose raises its head and walks off.

Tantra just turns her head to Rakan, extremely confused.

“What was that?”

Rakan sighs, “we, really, need to unlock your Qi senses girl. That was a divine beast.”

All four pairs of eyes turn to stare at him.

-

Tantra doesn’t know how to feel about meeting a divine beast, especially so randomly on the road. She expected them to live deep in the radius of a foci, not jaunting around in the countryside. The fact that a person can meet what is essentially the beast equivalent of an immortal entirely by chance seems a little ridiculous. Though apparently it does happen, from how Rakan seems to be taking all this in stride as he reported their encounter to the captain of the guard in Forikikam.

Which is a quant city to say the least, about the same size as Barakan, except there is one notable quality. Well, two, but only one that matters. The city’s in possession of a free market!

“Fifteen gold girl, I can’t go any higher with pelts this damaged,”

“Hmmm, maybe I should ask someone else then? Surely proper hide from proper beasts would fetch more than that, considering its market value.”

“I don’t know what market value is, kid, I’m just a tanner, and I’m telling you I can’t take these at twenty.”

“Eighteen then.” Tantra nods, “since I am feeling generous today.”

The tanner sighs, “eighteen it is.”.

He hands over the coin that Tantra happily pockets into her new coin purse. It’s actually from this very tanner, and it’s quite well made, even enchanted with preservation scripts somehow. The tanner must either have really good connections, or is extremely talented.

Array script work can be done by absolutely anyone who knows the basic words, but to get it to do anything like the auto-repair function of her robes you need decades of study to understand and perfect the letters and curves.

Then there’s Formations.

She shivers.

Only cultivators have enough time to learn how to handle that.