In my practice I had a lot of people who were there for one admitted reason that we had to kinda work around. Normal people who for whatever reason waited until the end of our time to drop a bomb and then scurry.

I was staring at a red flower, with thin petals like spider legs. It's curious look and the fact that it had appeared with the second invitation from the Red Fang sect led me to believe that we were still in the carrot phase. The reality that this Sect was treating me like a cross between a pledge and a hunk of meat reminded me of Joe, who dropped the bomb that he'd had a daughter who died in a car crash in one of those little truth bombs.

I had no doubt that I would be receiving the equivalent of a recruiter dropping by soon.

The flower on its own was beautiful, a stark earthy tone. Around it I felt an aura that I breathed in deeply. Earth tones mixed with a longing that couldn't be met.

Aura by itself wasn't much different than air. The fact that it suffused everything around me in various combinations of earth, fire, water, metal, and wind-to name a few types- meant that I was able to smell when the preponderance of aura changed.

It was almost certainly the reason that my gatherer skill has advanced so quickly. The place was thick with aura once you knew what it was.

Fei has said that cultivators usually focused on one path of aura, generating a single type of qi from it, something that made me think this was very common knowledge. Or total bullshit. Look, I had heard enough Tai Chi masters tell me straight up bullshit that my meter was calibrated.

The red spider lily changed the aura directly around it. It had its own strong qi, one that degraded over time. Or was it an aura? I wasn't sure.

I didn't know if qi degraded into aura, or if the two were just related. Either way, the thumbprint of the aura was a distinct thing that I felt like I could read after a while.

Plus my reading kept telling me little things when I got to it.

When I tried to read up on the Spider Lily, I got a little explanation of what it was from a note in the corner of it. I was grateful that I was able to get at least something.

**Spider Lily-Signifies the passage to the afterlife and rebirth in the Dao.**

I'm not going to lie. I paused for a long time there looking at my scrolls.

When I saw the words Red Fang together it hadn't made me take notice. But then this Red Spider Lily on top of it made me think that something nefarious was going on. I didn't want to say the V words but I was going to see if I could get some garlic from my dealer.

The fact that it only took one day for me to get two invitations to meet with the Sect meant that they were serious.

Fei had off that day. Accordingly, we met for breakfast which is where I showed him the paper. The place we met at was of course, across from the tea house I was to stake out. A bustling front end of the house delivered little jade plates with stuffed pork buns and rice balls. Safe to say, I was happy with the setup.

"Young master, this... They want you to join their Sect. You're going to accept, right?"

"That's exactly the problem. I don't know everything about them. Like who are they and what do they represent? Is this an illicit organization?"

Moon Fei stroked his long straight hair nervously.

I'd noticed that almost everyone has some sort of long hair, either in a top knot or some incredible up do. I hadn't been looking for anyone, but this was the longest that I had spent just people watching and talking .

"When saying illicit, the cultivator refers to the laws of heaven, correct?"

I squinted.

"The... Laws of heaven? Isn't there a local government here?"

"Well, of course. Mandarin administers all of our bureaucratic needs. They represent the heavenly emperor and enforce his will."

"Now I am more confused. So there are laws, just ...?"

"What use are laws when cultivators are so strong that they can only be stopped by stronger cultivators?"

"How do you settle disputes then?"

Moon Fei cocked his head before swallowing a whole pork bun.

"How did the young master settle them before? It is the same way.”.

That was fair.

I thought back to how I talked to Lauren about things. We never really argued, in fact I had a problem with her not expressing herself. She kinda got along to get along a lot. Even with my girls, she tried to go with the flow.

It didn't bother me until I saw her with her son, gentle parenting him. They didn't settle arguments, they were the exact example that I wanted to be with my girls. Back when they were young, I was constantly struggling and it got to them sometimes. They were happy and healthy teens now but that feeling I’d had for years- that no one was coming to save me- still lingered.

I tried hard to make a firewall between my work life and my girls but it wasn't until I started my internship and began to practice what I preached. Even then...sometimes I wished I could go back and not be who I was. It was definitely Hubris. I shouldn't have set that thought out to the world. That was stupid.

I caught myself out of my hyper focus on how I used to settle things. I resolved last night to try and pretend that I had been a local all along.

"That is fair. I thought that it would be different here. I must have been mistaken. Also, Fei, I've known you for what, two days? Do you always talk in the third person?"

"This one...Young Master, this one just wishes to show the proper deference."

I frowned.

It was disorienting the first day, but on the third day it was beginning to get to me. True, I felt calmer and stronger than I ever had before, but the silver lining was just that: a lining. It didn't matter if the rest of the painting was shit.

"If I ask you to speak to me not in the third person, would you be able to do that?"

"This one does not want to cause offense."

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

My lips tightened.

"It is not just for the young master to decide. Other cultivators might get the wrong idea."

I realized that I wasn't thinking about his perspective. He would have to navigate this world in a far different way than I did. I needed to put myself into his situation.

"I'm sorry. That wasn't very kind of me. I wasn't thinking about how you felt at that moment, I was just annoyed."

Fei nodded. Across the way, a queue of sheepish looking men and women lined up for tea. The shopkeeper, a pale woman, opened up the front door of the Red Lily Tea house.

"Tea houses aren't common here?"

"For certain, no."

"Hmmm."

"How uncommon are they?"

"This is the first one that has opened."

"The first one that you have heard of, or the first one, period?"

His look betrayed him.

"The first one period? How..."

"Tea was such a personal thing. Selling it to any passers, it's just uncouth. Kids these days have no respect for tea traditions."

My jaw dropped in mock sarcasm.

"You don't say."

"This one does say! In fact these...oh the cultivator is joking around."

He immediately caught on, to my chagrin. When I wasn't being a helpful therapist, I tended towards hyperbolic sarcasm. It helped me cope in the past, often to the detriment of previous relationships. Also cunning being tied to joking around and getting him on my side was definitely noted.

The line swelled. I was sure that it would wrap around the block if there was someone doing traffic control, but it was probably the work of a handful of people to make the volume of tea required to appease the masses.

I imagined how different it would have been if instead they were selling coffee or espresso. Cultivators would go crazy for that stuff. That or Blue Ox, the energy drink that I chugged down frequently.

Hey, it's only a problem if you let it be a problem. I could quit at any time. I hadn't had one in roughly two days. So what if that’s how long I had been in this world?

"The point is that this line of people rushing through tea, it's a blight upon our community."

"How much money do you think they're making?"

I hadn't had a look at the prices. Neither had Fei. Our stake out was amateurish at best.

"Fei, we should get on the line."

It was his turn to mine being shocked. The way that he tilted his head and looked up would have been scary if the man wasn't so goofy.

"We should patronize this abomination? May the heavens strike this one down if-"

"Fei, it's just a store. Stop faking indignation so we can get to the bottom of this."

He pouted. The man actually pouted as we walked to the line, which thankfully had started to pick up pace. I clinked some of my coins together, subconsciously.

Fei looked like he wanted to protest. I gave him my dad-liest glare. He relented.

Then there were only two people in front of us, and it was clear that we would have to do something when we got to the front. That was when I realized that the menu was in a language I couldn't read.

"Fei," I intoned,"Read me the menu, if you would, that'll be a great help."

His stoic face once again turned onwards as he nestled his arms into his robes. It was like a power pose except for someone who was the opposite powerful. He was vaguely looking towards a woman in flowing blue and pink robes. She was thankfully turned away from us, and oblivious.

"If this one were to do that it would betray this one's values."

I sighed.

It was snap decision time. When push came to shove I just decided to get the same thing the guy in front of us got.

"Two berry Oolong please," a man with a killer beard said. His beard said daddy, but his tattoos said prison. Or at least if he was American it might have. Here they said that he was a lilting spring flower caught in a cascade of reverie looking into your eyes on oh, here’s wonder wall.

"Name?"

"Huxu Wenshen."

Behind the last patron, I practiced my request. In my younger days, the anxiety about having a perfect social poise and not ticking my parents off had gotten me into therapy. They were narcissists, which had driven me up the wall. Not only were they super successful, but they expected me to be successful as well. It was like walking around in wet socks: preferable to not be in the situation, but if you're in a swamp, unavoidable.

"Two berry Oolong," I said, attempting to mimic the man's voice exactly.

"Name?"

"Pidge."

Behind the counter, a frazzled man looked wired and tired at the same time. His cortisol was probably whacking him upside the head, and it looked like he needed to hire help badly. Not me, but some poor sap.

He held out a hand for money, noticed something, then his eyes went wide.

Oh. That was right. I am a cultivator, or at least my new friends said so.

I sighed. I supposed it was a bit distracting.

Shit.

I didn't want to make a scene, but it appeared that virtually everyone in front of me was not. I swear that the candles flickered on and off. All in all, his expectations of the tea shop made me feel like I was seeing him try to leave a review of a brothel.

As he accepted the tea into his hands, his quivering palms gave the game away. I knew he was a tea fiend, even if he didn't want to admit it to himself. Even if getting tea from a shop wasn't the most Orthodox way to enjoy tea. The traditionalist inside of him was fighting against the terrible incongruity of fast food.

Fei grumbled his ass off as we took our mugs, sipping the tea. The packed store had dozens of booths and seats that were taken. We took our mugs and found two seats at a particularly long table. I wanted to say that we were people watching, but instead too many people just clamored for seats. It was time for us to try and get to the bottom of this.

The man behind the counter could have been made from pure unadulterated dopamine, with how fast he moved. I am willing to admit that I was kinda impressed with how fast he moved. He was a cultivator, or at least if not at the first realm like me, then something comparable.

I had a sudden urge to try and examine the man, thinking that maybe the my arriving here would give me some investigation or identification skill. Sadly nothing popped up. In fact it was pretty bad at telling me anything except for where I was as a cultivator. I could feel that on my own, given some training. But in this economy? Who had time to train?

No me, for sure. I might devote the evening to going through some qi gathering practice though. It couldn't be so difficult. Drinking the oolong tea made me think that I had this in the bag.

"It's not terrible."

His admission felt unearned, but I agreed.

"It tastes like quality. Whoever brewed this knows how to get the most out of every kettle. They could take an inferior tea leaf and produce a passing tea with it."

"If they knew the secrets of the tea masters."

"That's a big if, right?"

Fei nodded.

"I have a feeling that a lot of information here is tightly controlled."

"Tea masters control their craft even closer than the Sects hold their path manuals. It is unheard of for someone to steal a brewing technique, as they are never written down, but many people steal from others' path manuals wholesale."

It was while the two of us sat there sipping on our tea that a group of monks walked in. Their clean orange robes stood out against the backdrop of the mass of people bustling around the large tea shop.

They briefly spoke to the man at the counter before pulling out several large posters and a thick paintbrush. They covered it with a sticky clear substance from a large can. They then slathered the posters against the wall, about five in a row horizontally. When they were done, all eyes were on the three monks as they put the glue brush away.

I looked at Fei, trying to gauge a reaction.

"Taoists," he mumbled when they were out of listening range,"another group reaching for power."

"They're a religious group?"

"On the surface, but the rumors indicate otherwise."

Fei winced.

Yeah he shouldn't have said that. At least not out loud in the middle of a crowd.

I gave him the dad look. He shrank.

"I think we need to leave."

He obliged.

We put our mugs down leaving only our tea and the indentation in the floor cushions as the last remnant of our presence.

Fei led the way, taking us on a random walk through the streets. I wasn't entirely certain if we were being followed, at least until five blocks away when it was readily apparent that someone was keeping pace.