Two days passed as Qian Shanyi was slowly growing stir-crazy.

She wanted to, needed to cultivate, but all the spiritual energy she could spare went into her cooking, and she couldn’t justify making her dishes worse simply because of her own deeply ingrained habits. Even as it was, she was barely managing to scrape by, and tended to run completely dry by the time the night fell - the city wasn’t like the world fragment, where spiritual energy was so dense she could easily recover her entire reserves in only a dozen minutes. Sword exercises she did each morning helped only so much: without spiritual energy coursing through her meridians, it was simply not the same.

To get her mind off it, she went to visit the public baths, and paid for a private room for herself. It set her back one and a half yuan, a full day and a half of her salary - an outrageous price for a mere hour - but she no longer cared.

The room was small - only a couple meters to the side, tiled with patterned ceramics, and with a mosaic of a cultivator slaying a demon beast up on the ceiling. She couldn’t recall anything similar from any myths she knew, so perhaps it was a local story, or simply made up whole cloth by the artist.

The rest of the room was pretty bare, with only a single bench alongside one of the walls, and most of the floor taken up by a pool of heated water, the basin sloped gently on one end and just long enough for a person to comfortably lay down in.

Dim light streamed in from slits above the door, leading back into the corridors of the bathhouse, and sent strange water reflections dancing across the walls. Right next to the door was a sand clock, and she flipped it over to keep track of how much time she had left.

She quickly undressed - leaving her sword and jade slate on the bench - put her clothes into a basket and pushed it out through a small door back into the corridor, where a servant would pick them up to be washed, cleaned, dried and brought back well before her bath ended.

With a tired sigh, she walked into the pool of water, and laid down on the stones. Hot water felt like liquid bliss on her skin, and she closed her eyes, letting stress slowly wash out of her.

The need to cultivate constantly banging in the back of her head was only a part of it - her attempts to find Wang Yonghao had all but hit a dead end. The worst part was that her divination idea was producing results - just not enough to actually work. She had been fruitlessly spinning her bottle throughout the days, on the assumption that his luck might vary by the hour, and noting down the results on a sheet of paper. It was good that she decided to keep records: without written data, she would never have noticed the effects, no matter how good her memory was. When she was concentrating on the search, she was rolling markedly more ones, twos, and sixes than would be expected - not enough to tell anything at all was occurring with a glance, but enough that with a bit of math, she could prove it wasn’t mere chance after hundreds of rolls.

She supposed she should be glad her crazy idea worked at all, but the effect was so slight as to be all but unusable. That is what made it all the more frustrating: if she got nothing whatsoever out of it, she could have made her peace, and focused on trying to find rumors about Wang Yonghao from traveling merchants, or looking for another path forward. But as it was, she always felt that it was just on the cusp of working, and couldn’t quite get herself to call off the plan entirely.

To top it off, she had a very strong suspicion of what could make it all snap into place, but to do that, she would need to go directly against her principles. Wang Yonghao’s luck was quite clearly centered around making him cultivate - so if she pre-committed herself towards forcing him to advance in realm, as opposed to merely thinking of how her presence might indirectly strengthen his cultivation, she suspected his luck would immediately begin to cooperate. She could even seal the deal with a heavenly vow, if the need called for it.

But of course she didn’t want to force him. It was, after all, ultimately his decision how to advance his cultivation, or wherever to do so at all - going against it would be the exact thing that made her blood boil. Perhaps if she was on the verge of death she would have done it, but not as she was now. And that meant this path was largely closed to her.

You could fool the heavens, but not blind luck.

Despair filled her mind at the thought that she might be stuck, running in place, merely working to make ends meet, and she submerged her head underwater to keep a hold of herself, blowing bubbles to the surface. How often could she cultivate, working like she did? Perhaps one day in five, if she limited her expenses as much as was feasible? The building foundation realm would remain forever out of reach.

She was caged just as surely as if she went back to her sect - it is just that this cage had an open roof.

She couldn’t even write to her parents. Not only was it dangerous - she was sure the sect would surveil their mail in some fashion, and who knew what they could discover if she sent more than a single letter - but the thought of telling them she gambled, lost and still couldn’t return was unbearable.

She stayed underwater until her lungs started to burn and then surfaced, breathing deeply. Perhaps she could find a way to earn a lot more money - become a merchant guard, or something of that nature. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…

She relaxed again as she washed herself with soap, finally starting to feel clean as opposed to merely adequate, circulated Crushing Glance of the Netherworld Eyes to put color back into her hair, and got out of the bath, putting on a bathrobe provided by the establishment. The sand clock near the door said that she still had ten minutes remaining, so she closed her eyes, resting on a bench near the wall of her small private room and waiting for her clothes to come back.

For now, there was no need to think of that future. The local imperial offices told her her new seal should be ready tomorrow, and by then she could expand her search beyond this town. If she could find some rumors of Wang Yonghao passing through, then she might be able to find him without any need for divination.

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She drew stares as she returned to the ramen shop from her trip to the bathhouse, but she was used to that. Her beauty was noted by many customers at her father’s store while she worked there, and it only became more pronounced once she became a cultivator. Refining your body with spiritual energy didn’t just make it physically stronger and more resilient against damage - it also normalized most biological functions, and gave you a significant degree of control over them. Until a cultivator got into the building foundation stage, this merely meant better digestion, mildly stronger resistance to disease and poisons, an ability to stop your hair and nails from growing, and other small things - but it did tend to lead to clearer and smoother skin, stronger and denser hair, and more controlled fat distribution, which, in turn, meant that cultivators tended to be more beautiful than average.

There were exceptions, of course - one of her sect Elders was famous for having ruined his hair due to what Qian Shanyi privately considered to be decades of an abominable disdain towards safety precautions when working with “safe” alchemical concoctions - but they did not affect the overall trend much.

What she wasn’t used to was that some moron decided to tag along after her from the bathhouse. She wasn’t sure what he was planning, as she didn’t reciprocate his attempts to call after her near the baths, but perhaps he got foolishly brave from seeing her walk around without any guards. This had only rarely been a problem for her back in the Golden Rabbit Bay - nobody was stupid enough to approach a cultivator wearing sect robes with a sword at their waist without a good reason. Only on the rare days when she dressed down to visit some gambling parlor without revealing herself as a cultivator did she have to suffer the occasional annoyance of such “courtship“.

Her sword was wrapped in a piece of fabric she borrowed from Old Chen, and she carried it in her hands as if it was a mundane package, so it wasn’t surprising the idiot felt safe, not knowing she could run him through at any moment. She could have worn it in the open, for some women certainly carried swords around - but if you saw a jade beauty armed with a sword, then chances were you were looking at a cultivator, and that would bring a different type of attention to herself, one that she didn’t need.

She circled a city block to make sure he was still following her - he was - and then led him into the narrow alleys of the docks, broke line of sight, and vanished by quickly parkouring up onto a rooftop, crossing the line of buildings, and dropping down into the next street over. She briefly considered breaking his leg - or at least threatening to do so - to teach him a lesson about wasting her time, as well as about trailing other women from the bathhouse with unclear intentions, but then he might talk, and she needed neither rumors about a mysteriously strong woman in a green dress, nor an investigation into the case of assault.

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In the evening, she finally sat down with old Chen to look at his financial books, to figure out how much he owed her for the extra sales that came from customers ordering more food due to the spiritual energy making it that much more delicious. He readily agreed, saying that it was crownday, the start of a new week, and thus a perfect time to work with money. She personally did not care for that old superstition - she knew from her experience processing mail for Elder Striding Phoenix that various subcontractors and branches of their sect did their accounting on all sorts of days - but she thought it would make a karmist like old Chen a lot less obnoxious to talk to, and she needed every advantage in that regard that she could get.

What she saw in his books surprised her.

It wasn’t anything major, but she had counted the number of dishes sent out of the kitchen every day, and so she knew exactly how much the revenue the restaurant should be bringing in. She had worked here for four days so far: twice, she left for several hours around noon and couldn’t be sure, but on the other two days, the figure in the books was lower than it should be by about five percent, and thus so was her bonus pay.

She glanced over at the old Chen. There was no reason for him to underestimate his own earnings - the empire only taxed him on his land, not his sales. That left one obvious culprit.

She waited until the day was over - and until old Chen stopped proselytizing to his flock. When she heard the people start to disperse, she left the kitchen through the window to avoid meeting anyone else, and caught up with Xiao Li. The little waitress jumped as she tapped her on the shoulder, and Qian Shanyi raised an eyebrow at her.

Stolen story; please report.

“Jumpy, aren’t we?”

“Honorable - uh, I mean, Yishan,” Xiao Li laughed, “I was still thinking back on what was read today. Was there something you wanted with me?”

“Just taking a stroll before bed,” she said, shaking her head, “I hope you don’t mind if I join you?”

“Oh, not at all!”

To get the waitress to relax a bit, she spoke about some of the real cultivation stories from the empire’s founding - not the trash that karmist would bring up. Xiao Li seemed to enjoy it.

“I did actually want to talk to you about something, Li,” Qian Shanyi finally said, once she felt the waitress had calmed down enough, “Are you stealing from the restaurant?”

The waitress jumped up again, yelping as if she was bitten by a wasp, looking around in a panic.

‘N-no?“

“You are a terrible liar.”

“I am not lying!”

“I counted the dishes,” Qian Shanyi continued calmly, “and I know how much money the restaurant got. I suspect you aren’t telling old Chen about some of the orders, but get the kitchen to prepare them, and pocket the pay. Do you have another explanation?”

Xiao Li breathed in shallow breaths, her eyes flickering between Qian Shanyi’s eyes and her hands. Finally, she saw the waitress deflate entirely.

“So what, will you chop off my arms now?” she said, sniffling as tears started to roll from her eyes.

“Why would I do that?” Qian Shanyi blinked in confusion. She didn’t even bring her sword with her, figuring it wasn’t necessary for a short stroll, and she could still defend herself with her sandal daggers if the need called for it.

“Because I a-am a thi-ef? Old Chen said - ”

“The empire doesn’t punish thieves this way,” she pursed her lips in disappointment. What was that man telling the people who came to listen? Perhaps she shouldn’t have avoided his lectures after all. “And I am not the empire. I didn’t even tell old Chen about it.”

Xiao Li looked up at her with hope in her eyes.

“You di-didn’t?”

Qian Shanyi sighed, and came closer to put an encouraging hand on the waitress’s shoulder, only to have her close in and bury her face in her chest. What a mess - she didn’t expect it to blow up this badly.

“There there, you’ll be fine,” she said, patting her on the back, “I just wanted to know why you did it.”

It took a while for her to calm down.

“I have a little brother,” she said, still sniffling, “he is sick, but I don’t earn enough to buy him medicine.”

She wrung her hands.

“I - I promise I won’t steal anymore, but please don’t tell Chen! Without me working here, we’d both be out on the streets!”

Qian Shanyi stared at her before sighing. Originally, she just wanted to know what was going on - her agreement with old Chen meant that by stealing from him, she was also stealing from her, and she figured she could get the waitress to pay her a cut to keep quiet, for as long as she was working here. Depending on where she’d have to travel to find Wang Yonghao, she might need every fen and yuan. This, though…

“I won’t tell anyone, Li, and I don’t care if you steal more,” she shook her head, “But if your brother is sick, then let’s go see him. I am not much of a healer, but I know enough about the basics to tell you what to ask of a doctor and how much it should cost, so you don’t get screwed when talking to a merchant.”

Xiao Li opened her mouth in shock, but quickly gathered herself up, and led her further into the streets of Xiaohongshan.

“Why don’t you care that I steal?” she asked as they walked, “I-I mean I appreciate it, of course, but Chen always said cultivators exist to enforce the heaven’s will, and stealing is one of the Nine Great Transgressions - ”

“Chen has no clue what he is talking about, Li,” Qian Shanyi interrupted her, adopting a lecturing tone, “To cultivate is to rebel against the heavens - this principle lies at the heart of all modern cultivation. If I blindly enforced anyone’s will but my own - heaven or otherwise - I wouldn’t be a cultivator, I would be a lapdog. You need the money more than Chen does, so why should I punish you?”

They walked together in silence for a while.

“My name is Ling,” the waitress said quietly, “Li is my family name, but people started calling me little Li, and now everyone assumes it’s my name because I don’t correct them. It’s easier that way.”

Qian Shanyi did think it was a strange name, but kept quiet.

Xiao Li glanced up at Qian Shanyi.

“You are a very strange cultivator, Yishan, but please call me Ling.”

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In the morning, Xiao Li’s - or rather, Li Ling’s - behavior towards Qian Shanyi changed subtly compared to the previous days. She was a lot more relaxed, and not once did the waitress have to stop herself from referring to her as an honorable immortal - they were finally on a proper first name basis. They also talked a bit more about history, and for once, Qian Shanyi felt like she was really listening and thinking about what was being said. She could only hope she managed to put a few cracks into the surface of karmist propaganda around her mind.

Her musing on how to further push Li Ling’s burgeoning education was interrupted when she heard loud cursing followed by a crash from the main room of the restaurant. Someone must have started a fight.

She briefly debated what she should do, before deciding that she might as well save Chen’s furniture from being wrecked. Her seal should be ready later today, and once it was, she would most likely leave the town right away - there was no longer a need to conceal the fact that Lan Yishan, an immortal chef taking her first steps on the dao of cooking, worked at this particular restaurant.

She grabbed a towel and marched into the main room, wiping off her hands still wet from washing vegetables, and took the scene at a glance. Two young men - neither of them a cultivator, thankfully - were wrestling on the ground next to an overturned table, with Li Ling watching in horror not far from them. Old Chen was berating them from behind the counter, but wisely kept his distance away from the pair - his old bones probably wouldn’t have survived a glancing blow from either of them.

She had no such concerns, and approached the pair casually, whistling shrilly to get their attention, but they seemed to be too focused on each other. Oh well, she tried.

A couple targeted kicks to the solar plexus of either man later - she didn’t even have to use spiritual energy, just time her strikes well - and the pair was lying down peacefully, gasping for breath. She picked one of them up by the collar and brought him outside - his futile struggles against her grip leading nowhere while he still could barely breathe - and set him down on the ground, taking the time to dust him off as much as she could.

“Apologies, honored customer, but I had to stop your mighty duel before you would have destroyed the rest of the restaurant,” she said, helping the man stay upright. Color was slowly coming back to his face, and he scowled at her. She returned it with a smile, “What brought this on, if I may ask?”

“That bastard Liu Shishou dared to take my seat, and then insult my wife,” he gasped, “how was I supposed to let that go?”

“I see. Liu Shishou has been a menace at our restaurant for quite a while,” she nodded, pretending to know what inane drama he was talking about, “I again apologize for kicking you, but you understand that I have to give face to all our customers. How could the other people know which one of you was in the right? If I openly sided with you and simply threw him out, nobody would patronize our restaurant anymore.”

She leaned forwards conspiratorially.

“But honored customer, I made sure to secretly kick him twice as much as you,” she winked, “Besides, let me offer you a much better seat outside - in this beautiful weather, would you want to be cooped up within a stuffy room where smells from the kitchen would disturb your meal? Let Liu Shishou suffer on his lonesome.”

She motioned towards one of the tables on the open square, and waited until he nodded in agreement. Knowing that his rival was getting the worse seat seemed to really placate the man.

She made sure to get his name before she returned inside, ready to solve the other half of the puzzle.

Liu Shishou was standing down on all fours, slowly managing to get up off the ground while Li Ling berated him, still not daring to approach. She crossed eyes with the waitress and winked at her, closing in on the other man and giving him a hand to rise up.

When he saw her face he recognised her, and actually tried to throw a punch. She caught his wrist and squeezed just tightly enough to cause pain, brought her face in close, and flashed her eyes with Crushing Glance of the Netherworld Eyes so that only he could see it. His face contorted in a mix of pain and shock, and she patted him on the back with her other hand.

“Honorable master Liu, I humbly apologize for kicking you, but you understand that I have to give face to all my customers, right?” She lowered her voice so that only he could hear, “It was quite discourteous of you two to start a fight in my establishment.”

“That bastard Zheng -”

“- is as sinful as a pig is dirty, I know. He had been terrorizing our humble restaurant for a long time - do you think I do not know your suffering? But how could the other people know which one of you was in the right? If I openly sided with you and simply threw him out without giving you a kick too, nobody would patronize our restaurant anymore.”

She leaned closer still, pitching her voice conspiratorially.

“But honored master Liu, I made sure to kick him three more times than you on your behalf,” she winked, “Besides, I made him sit outside in the wind, where his noodles will get cold and tasteless. Why not let him suffer alone while you enjoy a warm meal here?”

She reached behind herself and flipped one of the chairs lying on the ground with her foot, sending it just behind Liu Shishou, and helped him sit down. She nodded to Li Ling, helped her put the table back up, wiped her hands off again, and headed back towards the kitchens.

“Oh, Lan Yishan! Is that you?”

She glanced over at the corner of the restaurant, and was surprised to see Lanhua, soon-to-be wife of that spirit hunter. She was dressed completely differently from how she saw her last time: her hair covered by a headscarf, wearing robust dark green clothes suitable for a sailor instead of a dress, and a solid pair of boots. Her eyes, though, remained just as cold and calculating as before. Qian Shanyi approached her carefully, letting surprise show on her face.

What in the netherworld’s name was she doing here?

“I believe we haven’t been properly introduced. My name is Wu Lanhua, I happen to be an insignificant merchant of little note,“ the woman smiled at her, which just unnerved her more, “would you have a couple minutes to talk to me? Our last meeting ended somewhat poorly.”

The name Wu stirred something in her memory, from back when she visited the local postal office and read a lot of information about the surrounding area. Wasn’t this the wealthiest merchant family in town?

Qian Shanyi glanced over Wu Lanhua, and then the rest of the tavern. Why did she come here? There was no way this was a coincidence - there must have been a hundred dining establishments in Xiaohongshan, and a woman this rich should have had her own cooks besides. She glanced at her table: there was a kettle of tea, but no food. A slight chip on the handle of the kettle was familiar - it had been sent out of the kitchens a good twenty minutes ago. If the woman was going to eat, she would have received her food already - but who came to a ramen shop just to drink tea?

That meant she had to have come here specifically to talk to her. But about what? And how did she even find her? She never told anyone where she worked.

Worry started to flood her veins again. Was this some kind of revenge for her not so subtly implying Liu Fakuang was cheating on her?

Or, perhaps, did she get fully discovered?