I sputtered.

"Fei, I was led to believe that this was a reputable dealer," I said with a flat face. Fei mimed being fake shocked.

He really was a bad actor.

Xiru straightened, finally pouring two cups for each of us.

"The tea is free. The information costs something."

Xiru palmed a sleek black implement and began to comb his hair.

"How much, then?" I said, expecting him to ask for a favor or something. Maybe he had a fetch quest in mind for me?

"May the Dao forgive these hasty overzealous foreigners."

Perhaps I was a bit too eager, but with a game overlay and what seemed like a city of a million martial artists, I wanted to be as safe as possible. You would understand, given how every third or fourth person looked like they were given private lessons by Bruce Lee. I was a bit paranoid.

"Listen, Sir, I have been more than reasonable. And maybe I am from a more aggressively forward culture but if someone takes me to see a tea guy, I expect to at least get the offer to buy some tea. So, my apologies if I came off too harshly at the beginning."

I drew out one waan.

"I believe that this should suffice as a down payment for what I am asking you for. I am not asking for much, I just don't want to present myself as a dumbass."

Xiru sighed the fatherly sigh of someone who had come to accept what was about to occur no matter what he had said.

"Very well. This one accepts your kind offer."

He took the small coin, palmed it and then to my utter surprise, handed me a wooden chit the size of a coin.

"You have impressed me with your patience. Not many cultivators would wait half as long as you did, yet so many...ah it is of no matter."

I sensed something in his tone that I may have missed.

I sipped, finally getting a mouthfeel for the flavor.

"Is...damn this is good tea."

"You are welcome. This one is pleased to have only the highest quality. It takes a suite of keen senses to find it."

I drank the entire package in. The smell, the taste all brought me back to an idyllic time in my life. Before kids, after my internship...I was free and the world was my oyster. It was a brief period and I relished the freedom I had.

"This one is going to go on a limb and say that the cultivator is from a far distance away," Xiru said.

This was more or less the truth and I made a mental note to stick as much to the truth as possible.

"Yes. You could say that."

"Welcome to our fair city, then. With Moon Fei as your handler, this one feels like you have made a good choice."

I gave Fei a glance. He had been mostly quiet during this exchange. Had I been adopted? Conscripted? Nah. He was working for me now. Probably. At the very least he was on the payroll.

"I take it that... You work full time in this business, then?"

"That would be correct. I grew up in the culture and decided to not,"*leaf*"leave."

The earworm bothered me.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

I didn't have the foggiest as to where it came from. My brain tended to send me things when I was on autopilot. I needed a second to gather my thoughts. What the heck was I doing here? I was looking for information, trying to get my bearings in the situation. What was the situation again? Oh yeah I had been dumped unceremoniously into a situation outside of my wheelhouse.

"Fei, I think can give me the basic information that will help me not stand out."

I have no idea what skills I will need to use to survive here and the more I kept talking to these two, the more that I realized that I was leaking information to both of them.

I clamped down. Trust is a two way street and I was on a skateboard.

"What we can do for you is keep you informed. It would help, if you were able to return the favor as well."

I nodded, trying to follow along. I was definitely not trying to think about every leaf related joke I had ever made.

"You want a favor, do you?"

This was the first time that I had been asked to do something that wasn't joining a demonic sect.

"Not that the cultivator would be able to do something about it, but an operation like this... It requires a constant churn of informants. Especially good are those with nascent souls, or those unknown to anyone. The Tea brokers union is willing to pay fairly for services rendered."

There was so much in those dense words that I was tempted to refuse outright, but I had a feeling that the task wouldn't be too much.

"What do you want?"

"If the cultivator is willing to accept, there is a new store that has opened up. The store sells tea directly to consumers. This one needs to understand their operation."

His flat affect made me think that he was soberly asking me to stakeout a tea shop.

"You're kidding, right?"

"This one does not joke around, honored customer. This is an abomination, selling brewed tea directly to customers? Instead of doing it the traditional way, through a buyer like myself? Someone who cultivates the best leads and leaves!"

He smashed a fist into a wooden wall next to him.

“It could drive small shops like Moon Xirus into the ground," Fei said, his face a twisted mask.

"I am honored you have asked me, but I... Can everyone tell when someone is a cultivator?"

That should be a basic enough question for Xiru.

"For most people who failed to achieve the Qi Gatherer stage, they could tell unless you are able to suppress your dantian or..."

Xiru gestured to Fei. Some kind of question with his hands.

"There is a trainer that the Moon clan retains, one that could teach you to suppress your qi so as to appear like all other men. It is a technical expression of the illusion path, one appropriate for rank beginners to use. Without being a cultivator myself, this one couldn't say more, but it could be arranged. We can call upon him, if you intend to accept more work."

I was reticent to sign up for something, but to get some training? I would do a few gigs for this clan. I mean what's the worst that could happen?

Xiru gave me a little overview of the city of Western Jewel. He explained that there were a larger than normal amount of cultivators, roughly one third of the population had attained the first or second of the realms, the first of which I was at. I was at the foundation stage, where cultivators learned to draw in aura from the ambient energy of the world, and turn it into qi energy. In order to advance I would need to put in a fair amount of work.

I sighed. It was time to put something into studying the environment and the people that lived here.

I resolved to take a note of what I knew, but still wished that I had paper to write this all down on.

It was a simple thing, really. I had hoped to gather more information about this place and keep a low profile. I had ideas about what would be going on, but nothing really concrete. There were warring sects here.

I didn't really want a part of that. To be sure I didn't really want to be here at all, so far from my family, but if I was going to be here I might as well try and survive long enough to find my way home. I owed my daughters that much at least.

So when the messages started piling up, I looked at them a bit askance. I could be doing any number of terrible faux pas by even opening the wrong invitation. I had to tread lightly and in this I needed a man on the inside.

"This clan, the turtle shell shockwave clan, they want me to learn how to… make shockwaves with qi?"

"It's simple, as this one is certain that you know, to learn a technique and absorb it as one of your very best. These turtle shell guys are the best they are at what they do. They however only do one thing."

I was reminded of the parable of the fox and the hedgehog. The fox knows many small things, and the hedgehog knows one big thing. It was a bit this way in my personal practice where people came in thinking that they were the fox, jack of all trades as it were, never realizing that they had specialized a ton into one niche area a long time ago. Or vice versa, the person who was trying to process the trauma of realizing that their parents were out and out narcissists and that was a core memory from their childhood.

Core memory is probably the wrong word. It wasn't that the human experience crystallized around one or two things. We weren't replicants whose memories were tied up in our bid to appear human. The human neural network, the brain pilot of the human mecha was clear about that. Nodes formed into pathways around related activities, and memories were malleable, sometimes changing the more you told one story.