Lan Jin is surprised by the chopstick that flies across the garden and nails the chicken to the ground. Unable to help it, he turns around quickly and spots a beautiful woman glaring at him and the Great Physician, and when he considers what she must have seen when she showed up, he finds that he really cannot blame her. If he had been the one to walk into the room only to find two people watching a burning chicken letting out terrifying cries while running around like crazy, and all while they were standing under a strange, purple cloud, he probably would have called animal services, a therapist, and a priest… and not necessarily in that order.
However, Lan Jin notices that the Great Physician doesn’t seem to care about the woman’s arrival at all, instead, between looking at the still-burning corpse of the chicken, the dozens of damaged natural treasures in his garden, and the purple cloud floating tens of feet over their heads, the Great Physician seems, reasonably, distracted.
But, for Lan Jin, that means that the fairly angry woman who just showed up to witness this nonsensical situation has no one to focus on but him.
“You? You’re that pest Lan Jin that just showed up?” She looks him over and scoffs. “Unbelievable. You’ve been in the city for less than a day and already it looks like a portent of doom is hanging overhead!”
Lan Jin wisely keeps his mouth shut, but his eyes drift to look at the purple cloud and he has to admit that it looks a little ominous. Although it is uneven and very sparse in many areas, it is still around thirty feet in diameter and it blocks out a large amount of sunlight, casting shade over a decent amount of the Great Physician’s garden. And, if his neighbors happen to be looking up right now, they are probably terrified about its sudden, unnatural appearance.
If Lan Jin hadn’t known it was actually providence and a good thing, he would also be concerned about it. As it stands, knowing what it is, he just feels a little awkward about it.
He really doesn’t know what to say, though. Technically, he is the one who bears the most responsibility for the cloud appearing overhead because he is responsible for the key factor that allowed it to come into existence, the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame. But, the one who really created the cloud was the Great Physician who unleashed a horrifying amount of Qi directly on the chicken. Granted, the Great Physician had no way of knowing the Qi would be purified so quickly— even Lan Jin hadn’t known that such a massive amount of Qi could be instantaneously purified— but the purple cloud never would have happened without the Great Physician’s ‘assistance’.
And considering that the cloud should be harmless, the entire situation is just one small accident that got blown a little out of proportion based on how apparent the cloud is. But, the problem is, the woman shouldn’t have seen that it was his flame that started this mess. So she either knows the Great Physician well enough that she knows he can’t be the one responsible for this, or she is singling out Lan Jin for some reason that he isn’t aware of.
Lan Jin doesn’t think it is because of his appearance— or rather, he doesn’t think it is because of his physical features. Though she scoffed at him when she was looking him over, it wasn’t while she was looking at his hair or his face, it was when she was looking at his clothes. But even if Lan Jin knows many people base their first impression of someone on their clothes, the woman’s comment toward him seemed more personal than a first impression could account for.
The problem is, he isn’t sure what he did to irritate her. He’s never even seen her before! And he’s well aware of that fact because she is one of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen— he even doubts he’d be able to forget her if he tried to.
“How the heck did I manage to piss her off? Is she just venting on me? It doesn’t seem like it. Maybe she’s related to someone from last night?”
Thoughts begin running through Lan Jin’s mind and he tries to figure out how he already managed to cross this unknown woman. But, try as he might, black hair, pale skin, and brown eyes are fairly common features in this city. And though he’d met many people since he arrived, he can’t remember anyone who looks like her.
Looking toward the Great Physician, Lan Jin hopes to ask for help. However, his hopes are immediately quashed as he realizes that the Great Physician is no longer next to him. Instead, while Lan Jin had been struggling to figure out the situation, the older man had walked closer to the burning chicken and was, even now, rubbing his chin while examining it closely.
Turning back to the angry woman who is now glaring at him with her hands on her hips, Lan Jin coughs and says, “Excuse me, ma’am, but, did I offend you?”
“Offend me?” The woman lets out a guffaw and then narrows her eyes at Lan Jin. “No, not at all! It’s my daughter who you’ve offended!”
“Daughter?” Lan Jin thinks to himself.
He’s only come into contact with two girls since he arrived in the city, literally in both cases, but neither of them looks like this woman. Qiang Yu, though pretty, lacks the presence that this woman has, and even after just a few hours have passed, he cannot remember what her face looks like. Not only that, but she has curly brown hair, hazel eyes, and tanned skin. He’s pretty sure she gets those from her dad, but without her being here, he can’t recall her features well enough to know if she looks like this woman in any way.
On the other hand, he can clearly recall the dumb donkey, Lulu, and all of her features because she managed to get his attention by kicking him twice and arguing with him for a while. But even though she has straight black hair, brown eyes, and even pale skin, her small face has nothing in common with this woman.
In the end, Lan Jin finds himself confused.
“Ma’am, I’m not sure who your daughter is. May I ask your name?”
He asks as politely as he can, not wanting to give the woman who could toss a chopstick like a ninja would a kunai knife a reason to be angrier with him.
“Really?” She asks in clear disbelief. “You don’t know who I am?”
Feeling awkward, Lan Jin shakes his head and wonders if he should have paid more attention to those two girls last night.
“Sun. Mei. Rong.” The woman says three forced syllables that strike at Lan Jin’s very heart… and he still has no clue who she is. Her name, though intimidating with the way she said it, means absolutely nothing to him.
He figures one of two things is going on. The first is that this woman is Lulu’s mom and she is pissed at him for calling her daughter a dumb donkey. But, he thinks it wouldn’t fit Lulu’s temperament very well— if anything, with how vindictive she came across while sneering at him as she left the Martial Testing Pavilion last night, Lan Jin thinks she’d sooner hunt him down and beat him up herself rather than getting one of her parents to confront him for her. Plus, though he doesn’t know Lulu’s last name, with a mom like this, there is no way she’d be so short.
But that just leaves the second option, and it’s to assume that Qiang Yu, a girl who doesn’t share any obvious features with Sun Meirong, is her daughter. But the problem with that is that Lan Jin doesn’t know how he might have offended her. He had asked her a couple of questions she wasn’t happy about, but she didn’t answer them and he didn’t try to force her so it should be water under the bridge.
In the end, Lan Jin decides to guess which one of them is Sun Meirong’s daughter and he hopes that he doesn’t get it wrong.
“Is your daughter’s name Qiang Yu?” He asks hesitantly. His guess is based entirely upon his presumption of Lulu’s character, but when he hears Sun Meirong’s next words, he nearly lets out a sigh of relief at having guessed correctly.
“Who else?” She asks him as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Lan Jin doesn’t respond to that. By virtue of a good guess, he saved himself from a bit of trouble. But now he had to figure out how he offended Qiang Yu.
Unfortunately, other than those last two questions that caused Qiang Yu to be visibly angry, she didn’t seem to express herself very much throughout his entire encounter with her.
Nervous, Lan Jin asks, “Is she upset that I asked her what she was planning on doing with the spirit stones?”
“A question?” Sun Meirong asks, confusion evident in her voice. “Something so petty is worthy of my daughter feeling wronged? Is my daughter such a shallow person— WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
Sun Meirong’s eyes go wide and she shouts loudly at the Great Physician behind Lan Jin. Turning around, Lan Jin’s mouth drops open as he watches the Great Physician send an unending stream of red Qi into the still-burning remnants of the chicken.
As he does so, a massive plume of purple mist escapes into the air, darkening the sky and making the already large purple cloud grow rapidly. From thirty feet in diameter and sparse enough to see the sky in certain places, it quickly grows to more than a hundred feet and has a thickness to it that makes it impossible to see through no matter where Lan Jin looks.
Lan Jin doesn’t know what to make of the Great Physician’s actions, but though he feels incredulous at how absurd the scene is, he quickly becomes jealous as the older man pulls out a few spirit stones and, with a wave of his palm, pulls all of the purple mist down out of the sky and into them.
“ARE YOU INSANE?” Ignoring Lan Jin, Sun Meirong walks past him and toward the Great Physician who she begins to dig into. “DO YOU HAVE NO SENSE? YOU ACTUALLY MADE SUCH A HUGE DISTURBANCE INSIDE OF THE CITY? DO YOU KNOW HOW PEOPLE WILL REACT?”
Rather than giving Sun Meirong an acceptable response, the Great Physician turns to her and looks confused by the fact that she is there in the first place.
“Hmm? When did you get here?”
All of a sudden, the garden goes quiet.
The Great Physician’s confusion only lasts for a few seconds. But as he visibly reflects on the situation, he starts to look embarrassed and he even hides the purple spirit stones behind his back in a poorly-concealed attempt at hiding his transgression. Then, as he opens his mouth to say something, Sun Meirong begins shouting at him in earnest.
It goes on for long enough that Lan Jin thinks about running away while Sun Meirong isn’t paying attention to him, but with his fire still burning in the garden, he doesn’t think he can actually get away. So, instead of running, he begins considering what he just learned about the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame and how dangerous it really is.
From the moment the fire touched the chicken’s body, it was doomed. Regardless of what it crashed against, how it moved, or how much of its body was burned away, the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame stayed glued to it and continued to expand as the poor bird could do nothing but scream out its agony.
Even worse, Lan Jin doesn’t think it was the burning of its flesh that caused it so much pain. The flame was burning away every part of the chicken indiscriminately, but there was no heat to it. So objectively speaking, there shouldn’t have been anything to feel. Instead, the pain the chicken experienced was likely caused by signals misfiring in its brain as the nerves in its body slowly disappeared. But, if it was just that, then the chicken shouldn’t have been in so much pain just from the fire falling on its feathers. At the very least, it should have taken a moment for the pain to start as the fire slowly reached its nerves.
But that isn’t what happened at all.
The pain was immediate.
That implies that something Lan Jin couldn’t see was being burned. And, as far as Lan Jin knows, people, and presumably animals, can be divided into two parts: their body and their soul. And if it wasn’t the chicken’s body that caused it to experience immediate, excruciating pain, then Lan Jin can only infer that it was the chicken’s soul that was hurting.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Lan Jin feels a little squeamish at the thought that he could burn away someone’s soul if he is negligent with his fire, but the thought only lasts for a moment as he realizes that the only way he would use his fire against a person is in self-defense. And in that case, he hopes it hurts them badly enough that whoever it is is too incapacitated by the pain to continue attacking him.
Though, he does become a little concerned over the idea of using the Auspicious Tri-Colored Flame in a crowded place. Even if he hasn’t tested it out extensively, the fact that the flame ignores water means that the first method most people would use to get rid of it would be absolutely useless. As for using Qi to control it, that thought was just laughable after seeing what happened to the Great Physician’s Qi.
Lan Jin watches the Great Physician and Sun Meirong out of the corner of his eye as he moves quietly through the natural treasures in the garden and approaches the last remnants of the burning chicken. They are only a few feet away from him, and the Great Physician clearly notices his movement but says nothing as he stands in silence and listens to Sun Meirong. But as for Sun Meirong, she seems too distracted by yelling at the Great Physician to notice him right now, so he scoops up some dirt and pours it over part of the flame. For a moment, the action seems to show some results as he can no longer see it burning. But, several seconds later, the part of the flame that he buried burns through the dirt and continues licking away at the bones of the chicken.
All of a sudden, Lan Jin’s own flame terrifies him. There are two methods people normally use to get rid of a fire: dousing it with water, and smothering it. But even for such a small flame, neither of those methods seems to work. If he loses control of it in a populated area, then every person the flame manages to touch is practically guaranteed a very painful death sentence. And unless someone has a method to control it that he doesn’t know about, the only thing that could save them in that situation is either cutting off the limb the flame is attached to, or Lan Jin being able to get to them fast enough to remove the flame. But, even then, if he is right and it actually burns the soul as well as the body, then he isn’t sure that just cutting off a limb will save them. And even if it does, what will happen after a part of their soul is burned away?
Lan Jin doesn’t know, but given that he believes the most important part of a person is their soul, he knows it can’t be good.
Lan Jin ponders the dangerous but beneficial nature of the flame for several minutes before he starts to feel uncomfortable and he can’t help but turn his head only to notice the Great Physician and Sun Meirong looking at him. The Great Physician doesn’t seem to have any expression on his face, he just seems to be patiently waiting for Lan Jin to finish his thoughts. Sun Meirong, on the other hand, has a baffled expression on her face as she looks between Lan Jin, the Great Physician, and Lan Jin’s flame.
Lan Jin has no clue what her expression means, but not wanting to accidentally affect the Great Physician or Sun Meirong, he decides to summon the purple flame back to his palm before sending it into the Omega Browser’s Space.
Nodding his head, the Great Physician coughs once to clear his throat. “It seems as though our little test got ahead of us.”
“Little test?” Sun Meirong scoffs. “All of this was just a little test? You risked stirring up tensions in the city for a little test? We’ll be lucky if your neighbors don’t think you’re concocting some strange poison gas! Your reputation in the city is already suspect! Everyone assumes you’re either a vengeful madman or an eccentric old quack who has been ostracized by the Inner City!”
Her voice rises gradually as she continues talking, and she is once more on the verge of yelling at the Great Physician by the time she finishes.
For his part, the Great Physician seems completely unfazed by the wife of the City Lord. Lan Jin doesn’t know exactly what the reason is, but something about their appearance right now makes him feel that Sun Meirong frequently yells at the Great Physician. Considering that she didn’t yell at him as well, he doesn’t think it has anything to do with her personality. Instead, he thinks it probably has to do with their relationship. And when he recalls the Great Physician’s response when he asked if the woman they were waiting on was his companion, he begins thinking that maybe they’re related somehow.
Other than both of them being tall, they don’t exactly look like share the same features. But once the thought enters his head, Lan Jin can’t seem to shake it and he becomes more and more convinced that they’re related.
Sun Meirong continues digging into the Great Physician for a few minutes before finally turning back to Lan Jin.
“And you! Don’t think I don’t realize you have a part to play in this mess!”
She glares at him, and Lan Jin can’t help but feel wrongly convicted. Sure, he went along with things, but this was all the Great Physician’s idea in the first place! And it isn’t like any real harm was done— except to the Great Physician’s garden, but it was his idea to use a live chicken in the first place so that’s his fault. In fact, considering what was released into the air was pure providence, he could even argue that they, though unwittingly, did a good thing.
Probably.
Thankfully, the Great Physician comes to Lan Jin’s defense by speaking the same words Lan Jin was thinking.
“Come now, it’s not as though we caused any harm. If anything, we’ve offered the city a small benefit. I used a small amount of that purple mist last night and found that, though the effect was small for my level, it was capable of enriching my spirit.”
“And?” Sun Meirong asks, her voice crisp. “So what if it helps you? What does that even matter? What about the people around you who have no way of knowing it isn’t a bad thing? And don’t think I don’t know about the side effects of consuming that purple mist! My little trinket gave me one of the Stone Prophet’s spirit stones to test before she consumed it herself— a matter I still haven’t settled with this pest, by the way— and it caused me to feel a great degree of elation. But did you know that this substance will be unwittingly absorbed by whoever comes in contact with it? My little trinket lost control of her emotions because she attempted to absorb a small amount of the purple mist from the spirit stone and the large part of it immediately flowed into her body!”
Suddenly, Lan Jin realizes exactly how he ‘offended’ Qiang Yu, and if he’s right, then she’s not actually ‘offended’ at all. Instead, she’s probably just extremely embarrassed and her mom found out about it. He doesn’t think it’s his fault, and had Sun Meirong not mentioned it, he probably wouldn’t have ever thought this was the reason. For that matter, even Sun Meirong didn’t seem to be treating it seriously— she definitely brought it to his attention, but judging by how she was brow-beating the Great Physician into the ground, and considering that she was the wife of the City Lord, then things could have been a lot worse for Lan Jin than for Sun Meirong to be slightly annoyed with him.
“So not only has this little pest affected my daughter, but if any of that mist comes into contact with the city’s people, then who knows how they will react! Will they assume that something so intense is a good thing? Regardless of the emotions they feel? Or will they think that the purple cloud floating above the home of a known pill-refining madman is something harmful?”
Sun Meirong doesn’t stop there, and she continues berating both of them for their actions for quite some time before she finally stops to take a breath. Then, she begins ranting, but it sounds as if it’s mostly to herself.
“I honestly cannot believe this. A little pest shows up and causes so many problems in so little time. Do you know that people are questioning whether he is connected to my household already? Because my fool of a husband didn’t bother sending me a missive until later last night, I was caught completely off-guard when I started receiving letters asking me who he is and why my husband took an interest in him!”
“Speaking of my husband,” Sun Meirong turns to glare at Lan Jin. “Did you tell my daughter’s handmaiden that my husband was smoking a pipe?”
Two thoughts run through Lan Jin’s head the moment Sun Meirong asks him her question. The first is, “What the hell is a handmaiden?” And when he looks at Sun Meirong’s eyes burning with rage, the second thing he thinks is, “I am so fucked when the City Lord finds out I threw him under the bus.”
Lan Jin gulps.
“Ye-yes, ma’am.”
“Hah!” Sun Meirong laughs, but no humor can be found on her face. “That man thinks because he’s away from the house that he can do whatever he pleases? Not while I still live!”
Sun Meirong’s expression darkens further the longer she is left to her own thoughts, but finally, she turns toward Lan Jin and says, “As for you offending my daughter, I will let her deal with you. And as for that cloud you and this quack made, there is no law against what you did because no one has ever been stupid enough to use their spiritual flame to light a chicken on fire before. But that changes now. If I find that you are using that flame in an uncontrolled manner again, I promise you, you will have me to deal with. Do you understand?”
Lan Jin nods his head quickly.
“Good.”
Turning toward the Great Physician, “As for you, hand me one of those spirit stones. I will be sending it to my mother to ensure that you are not putting some sort of poison in your body.”
The Great Physician lets out a chuckle. “I don’t need a little girl to tell me what is good or bad. I am far older than your mother, and I am far more skilled at determining what is and what isn’t poison.”
Sun Meirong’s face darkens further. After a few seconds of silence, she says, “Very well. Then I will tell Mistress Huo that you are trying to rush toward death by putting an unknown substance in your body.”
All of a sudden, the Great Physician looks like he is about to have a convulsion and he glares at Sun Meirong. But, seeing her resolute expression, he scowls at her before handing her one of the purple spirit stones he had been holding behind his back.
“Get lost. I have things to do and you are getting in my way!” He says grumpily.
“Hmph!” Sun Meirong sniffs, and turning her back, she walks away without another word.
Lan Jin shakes his head, not really sure what just happened, but when he looks at the Great Physician who seems to be brooding, he doesn’t know if he should ask him to clarify.
However, the Great Physician notices Lan Jin’s confusion and says, “Mistress Huo is… a very close and dear friend of mine. That little girl would worry her needlessly, and since there is no reason to do that, I might as well prevent the situation from occurring by making a small sacrifice.”
Lan Jin nods his head slowly and decides not to guess about the Great Physician’s relationship with ‘Mistress Huo’.
After a moment, he asks, “Is she really sending a spirit stone to her mom? I feel like if she’s worried about poison, then that’s something she should have done before letting her daughter absorb one just like it.”
Shaking his head, the Great Physician lets out a sigh. “That little girl might send it to her mother, but it has nothing to do with poison. That was just an excuse she used to get her hands on it because she can’t do the same thing I did.”
“Oh…” Lan Jin narrows his eyes. “But… why is she sending it to her mom then?”
Shrugging his shoulders, the Great Physician says, “Most likely, to win some sort of benefit for her daughter.”
Looking at the Great Physician and the spirit stones held behind his back, Lan Jin says, “Any chance I can—“
Before he can even finish his question, the Great Physician chuckles.
Sighing, Lan Jin says, “Yeah… Figured.”
Lan Jin feels a little weird about the situation because it is his flame that allowed it to happen, but of the three people present, he is the only one who didn’t get anything out of it. But, as he thinks things through, something else starts bugging him.
“So… You made it seem like I should learn the limits of my spiritual flame because I could use it to save my life so I thought my spiritual flame would take anybody by surprise. But, when the City Lord’s wife showed up, she seemed surprised about the situation but my spiritual flame didn’t bother her one bit. Are they pretty common around here?”
“Spiritual flames? No. Not at all. Even in large sects, clans, and other organizations, spiritual flames are very rare. So that little girl was very shocked when she realized you have a spiritual flame. She just hid it well enough that you didn’t notice it.”
“Oh. But, if it’s so rare, why did we start running tests when you were waiting for her to show up? She is the person you were waiting for, right?”
The Great Physician coughs into his hand and looks away without answering.
Not knowing what to think, Lan Jin lets out a sigh.
“Can you at least tell me if I going to get in trouble for having my spiritual flame?” He finally asks, hoping that, at the very least, the City Lord’s wife knowing about his spiritual flame won’t be a problem in the future.
Turning back to him, the Great Physician asks, “Why would you?”
“I just figure rare things are valuable, and considering it can help people with their spiritual energy, she might want to take it.”
All of a sudden, the Great Physician snorts. “Take your spiritual flame?” His words shake as he holds back his laughter. “The first word of ‘spiritual flame’ is ‘spiritual’. In other words, it is attached to your spirit, your soul, the very thing that makes you yourself. Even if she wants it, she would have to take you along with it. And given that everyone is watching her family to see who her daughter will end up marrying, that is not an option for her.
“Not only that, but I think you are grossly overestimating the value of your spiritual flame based on its effects. Though the purple mist it creates is beneficial, it comes at a rather exaggerated cost. To generate it, a large number of natural treasures or spirit stones will need to be sacrificed. That means that life-saving pills that could have been refined won’t be. Talismans that could have been crafted for use in the defense of the city will be forgotten. Treasured weapons that could have been given to the soldiers of the city will remain unforged.
“In general, unless she forgets all of her and her family’s responsibilities as the caretakers of this city, then the benefits she could gain from your flame would be meager at best.”
Realization dawns on Lan Jin and he’s just about to acknowledge the Great Physician’s words when he remembers something.
“But… didn’t you just use a bunch of Qi to create a huge cloud of purple mist? Couldn’t she do the same thing? Is she not a cultivator?”
The Great Physician shakes his head. “What I did was sacrifice some of my cultivation and store the result away in spirit stones so I can test it later. But I can afford to do that because my path of cultivation is already over and I have no pressing matters that might require me to be at full strength in the near future. As for that little girl, she still has her future ahead of her and many matters to attend to. If she were to sacrifice her Qi to do the same thing, she would be harming herself for the sake of questionable benefits. She might be able to turn a profit off of it with enough effort, but with so many people keeping an eye on her family at all times, she cannot afford to lose any of her foundation even if it might lead to something good in the future.”
“That makes sense.”
“Mmm.” Then, the Great Physician looks Lan Jin over and says, “You really should go get better clothes. What you have on makes you look a little ridiculous, and that’s forgiving the fact that you cleaned them very poorly.”
Sighing, Lan Jin says, “Yeah, I know. I’m planning on going after this.”
“Well, in that case, I won’t keep you. But, I will recommend you go to the establishment called ‘New Star Boutique’. The owner has an excellent eye and a steady hand. I’ve never been disappointed with any of his work, and though his store is located in the Eastern District of the city, he is far more capable than many of those braggarts who claim to sell treasured robes and dresses in the Inner City.”
Happy for having received the referral, Lan Jin says, “Thank you, I’ll check his store out first.”
Then, with nothing else to say, Lan Jin finally heads out of the Great Physician’s compound nearly an hour and a half later than he had originally planned.