Wu Lanhua led her to the upper floors of the mansion, and out onto a balcony that encircled the building. The wide gardens surrounded it, and with the added height, she could easily see all the way out to the surrounding streets, and from there, to the rest of the town, terraces spiraling down below them. Below them, the other guests were starting to mingle together, with waiters and waitresses bringing out glasses of warm wine and plates of delicate, airy cookies. The head chef mentioned they had a formal name, though it avoided her at the moment - something foreign, starting with maca-, she was almost certain - and she resolved to look it up in the library, once she had her seal and could do research like a proper cultivator.

As they stepped out into the cold, windy night, she saw Wu Lanhua put on an overcoat and a pair of thick gloves, ones she clearly prepared in advance and left next to the balcony door just for this talk.

“Should you be leaving your guests to their own devices?” Qian Shanyi asked her, “You are the host, after all.”

“They aren’t the only guests of my estate tonight.” Wu Lanhua gave her a meaningful look. “My absence would not be missed quickly.”

They were speaking quietly, making sure that none below could hear them. Qian Shanyi leaned against one of the thick columns supporting the balcony roof, with her back to the gardens, and faced the merchant woman. Out of the corner of her eye, she kept a watch on Liu Fakuang, far away in the gardens where he was regaling a pair of merchants with a story. She made sure to turn her mouth away from him when she spoke - she wouldn’t put it past the spirit hunter to be capable of reading lips, even if he wasn’t looking in their direction.

Wu Lanhua just happened to stand so that the column concealed her from Liu Fakuang entirely, and she wondered whether it was a coincidence, or if her paranoia really was justified.

“I hope my cooking has been to your satisfaction?” Qian Shanyi asked to start off their verbal fencing on a neutral note.

“It was exemplary.” Wu Lanhua smiled. “A true credit to your cooking skills.”

The woman must have known she did much less than a third of the actual work - in fact, her largest contribution was simply suffusing the ingredients with her spiritual energy. This might have been a jab, meant to imply her cooking skills were mediocre, but if so, she did not take the bait.

“I cannot take much credit, I am afraid. I merely prepared the ingredients - your chef did all the rest.”

“That man is far too arrogant for his station.” She waved Shanyi off. “It will be good for him to know his place. Don’t try to diminish your contribution on his account.”

Qian Shanyi hummed noncommittally. Perhaps that explained some things, or perhaps it was merely another jab. It mattered little, in the end. She decided to go for a probe.

“I couldn’t help but notice that your estate is lacking an immortal chef,” she said, “surely a merchant of your station could afford to employ one?”

“You flatter me,” Wu Lanhua responded, “I am merely a minor regional trader of little fame or wealth.”

Qian Shanyi gave her a look. Being deferential was only to be expected, but that edged into outright lying.

“Besides, perhaps you underestimate your own value, honorable immortal Lan,” she continued with a smile, “immortal chefs are rare, even among you cultivators, and most of them do not travel so far out towards the frontier. They have little reason to. I had one in my employ - but he had sadly left us months ago, on his own business to a city downstream, saying he would return in time for our wedding.”

That…didn’t really fit. She was missing something, and for a moment, debated wherever she should hide her ignorance - but newly minted immortal chef Lan Yishan had plenty of reasons to be ignorant.

“If they get paid as handsomely as I am here,” she said, raising a curious eyebrow, “then surely many loose cultivators would jump at the chance?”

“Oh, some do.” Wu Lanhua nodded easily. “But not even one in thirty. Some lack the talent for it, others disdain the practice of cooking - but for most, it is an issue of trust. Would you welcome a stranger to cook for you? The techniques of honorable cultivators set them apart from us mere mortals, but this separation also invites suspicion, and those without the proper connections struggle to ever gain them.”

“Yet you have trusted me,” Qian Shanyi kept her eyebrow raised, setting the obvious proposal aside for now, “What a curious thing to do, for a stranger.”

“I simply thought I had a good read on you - and I was right.”

“I am a private person by nature, honorable merchant Wu.” She frowned. “I say little and reveal less.”

“Come now, there is no need to be so formal,” Wu Lanhua winked at her, “Just call me Lanhua. I practically feel like we have been born under one roof, gossiping over each other’s loves, sharing each other’s clothes... Is it so strange to trust my sister in spirit?”

“Gossip can be dangerous, if it comes to rest in the wrong ears.”

“And with whom would I have time to gossip? I do not want to bother my fiance with such trivialities, but I can also hardly share the secrets of my friends outside of the family, can I?”

That was probably about as good of a promise to not tell Liu Fakuang about her as she was going to get. Despite the inherent threat, Qian Shanyi felt perfectly relaxed. It felt good to spar with someone who knew what they were doing. With that small assurance in place, she felt it was time to get down to business.

“Then let us gossip, from one woman to another.” She smiled. “What was it that you wanted to know?”

“Oh, just to hear your story. The life in these frontier towns can be dreadfully boring - I hope you will indulge me?”

There was no way that was true, but she could play along.

Before coming to the estate, she had already decided on her cover story, built to suit her needs. Her first priority was getting Wu Lanhua off her tail so that she could safely leave town without her cover being blown. The distant second was figuring out whether she could borrow some of the merchant’s resources in her search for Wang Yonghao.

The trouble was that she could tell that Wu Lanhua wanted her for something, but had not laid out her demands in the open. It could be that she was simply looking to hire her on as an immortal chef, but that seemed doubtful. She had clearly used the pretext of this night to arrange this exact conversation, where both of them could talk in relative safety and isolation - if she simply sought an employee, there was no need to bother with this charade. This meant that her proposal had to be unusual, and potentially illegal.

Sadly, Qian Shanyi could not read minds. She would need to weave her tales blind, with only guesses at the other woman’s true intentions.

If she made herself seem too vulnerable, then Wu Lanhua might decide to push the issue, put her into a gentle armlock of unstated threats and implied blackmail. But neither could she claim to be secure and in no need of help, lest her entire story shatter into the dust of disbelief, for they both knew she stole her dress. Worse still, even if she managed to sell it, then it might simply invite a different type of interest from the merchant.

There was a razor-sharp line here: one where she made herself seem powerful enough to not be worth directly coercing, yet not so powerful as to demand a close alliance. Then she could take some gifts from Wu Lanhua under a promise of future profit, and vanish into the wind.

“I could tell you of my childhood, or of my path of cultivation, but that is not what truly interests you, is it?” Qian Shanyi raised an eyebrow. “You are wondering how I ended up in Xiaohongshan without any clothes to call my own.”

Wu Lanhua nodded at her, smiling with only her eyes.

“An unfortunate accident is to blame.” She shook her head. “I have been stranded in the wilderness for quite a while, and once I reached civilization, my robes could no longer serve me.”

She told the merchant an amended story of her adventures, avoiding any mention of Wang Yonghao or his inner world. Even though she trusted her rhetorical skills, it was best to keep to the truth, as much as was reasonable, and so she cut the events down to the bare essentials: after suffering a teleportation accident she ended up in the ruins of a sect with a malformed spirit vein, and managed to survive in the wilderness until she reached Xiaohongshan.

She spoke of the sect in casual terms, but she was sure that an experienced merchant like Wu Lanhua would realize the implication hidden between the words: she, and she alone, knew the location of an entire unclaimed spirit vein, one that she could share with any potential allies. In the end, this was all about a balance of leverages, and great riches were a solid lever.

“A wonderful story, honorable cultivator Lan, but I wonder how your companion fits into this?” Wu Lanhua raised an eyebrow, once her narrative had concluded. Her face seemed impassive.

“My companion?”

“The man you were with, when you rented a room at a tavern?”

So she knew about that. Qian Shanyi already figured it was fairly likely - it wouldn’t have been hard for Wu Lanhua to connect the dots, if her fiance simply told her about his day - and so made sure not to say anything that would directly contradict her story in the event the topic of Wang Yonghao came up. It was still worth trying, just in case it worked.

“Hm,” she said, “I suppose it would have been somewhat pointless to try to conceal this from you. No disrespect was meant, of course.”

“Of course,” Wu Lanhua said, with slight amusement in her voice. From anyone else, she would have expected resentment of the fact that she would try to hide something so major, but she could tell that the merchant woman would have looked down on her if she didn’t even try.

“I did indeed have an accomplice,” Qian Shanyi continued, switching seamlessly to her second story, “and the teleportation accident was anything but - we came to the ruins on purpose, though we did not expect to be stuck there with no exit. We knew where to find them, through methods that I must keep to myself.”

She wove her lies again, this time a story about a pair of cultivators on an expedition for riches, one that built naturally on what she told before - but as she went along, she saw the face of the merchant woman turn to bored disappointment.

“Perhaps I really was mistaken about you.” Wu Lanhua shook her head, pursing her lips. “A shame.”

“You do not believe me?” She raised an eyebrow.

“How could I question the word of an honorable cultivator?” She sighed, stepping out of the column’s shadow and smiling at someone far away in the gardens. “But the weight of the tales you spin is beyond what the thread of mere words can hold.”

“I could see how what I say may be hard to believe.” Qian Shanyi nodded. “But perhaps it would be easier if I showed you?”

She put down her backpack, and carefully took one of the swords out of it, unwrapping it from the silk that concealed it from the senses of cultivators. She was glad to see Wu Lanhua step back behind the same column she was using to obscure herself from the gardens - that meant the merchant still believed it was worthwhile to keep their conversation private. Once the sword was free, she flipped it over and handed it to the merchant, hilt first.

“I trust that Miss Lanhua would know how to appraise a spiritual artifact?”

Showing off the swords was an undeniable risk, but she felt it was a good bet. Wu Lanhua already guessed that Qian Shanyi was the very target of her fiance’s stakeout. The swords would give her proof, but ultimately, this mattered little for the true guarantor of Shanyi’s safety was the interest and calculation of the other woman - as long as that persisted, she would not tattle to Liu Fakuang. Keeping that interest afloat by whatever means necessary was of primary importance.

Wu Lanhua took the sword with great care, and Qian Shanyi saw the gloves on her hands shine with a gentle light, and felt spiritual energy flow into the weapon. Shanyi’s eyebrows rose: she expected her to know how to perform a basic appraisal - even her father could manage that much - but this was far beyond that. Wu Lanhua was no cultivator - those gloves had to be one of the rare tools that allowed an ordinary person to channel spiritual energy. Such channeling was, by necessity, much cruder than anything a cultivator could accomplish, and was a waste of spirit stones besides - but it was still invaluable, for the surface features could only tell you so much.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

She waited while Wu Lanhua calmly swept her hands over the sword, pausing at the key points along its length with practiced ease, watching glyphs and spiritual conductance lines shine with different colors on its surface. Where did she learn to do this? As far as Qian Shanyi could find out before she came here, she did not trade in spiritual energy goods, let alone weaponry. Perhaps her suspicions of illegal dealings were not as baseless as she thought.

When Wu Lanhua finished with her examination, she gave Qian Shanyi an appraising look and a slight smile. At least for now, her gamble seemed to have worked.

“I carry three more swords of a similar quality,” she said, kicking her backpack for emphasis. “I trust this makes my story more believable?”

“There are many places in the empire where one might obtain a sword or two,” Wu Lanhua mused, handing the sword over, and watching Qian Shanyi hide it back in her backpack, “yet perhaps it doesn’t matter. One cannot live by the sword alone - it seems to me that you are in need of a buyer?”

“Is that an offer I hear? Made to this humble, estranged cultivator?”

“Are there truly strangers in the world of coin?”

“What if these swords were stolen?”

“Are they?”

“No. But you had no way of knowing this.”

“I assure you, I have my ways of checking.”

“I must commend you on your relaxed attitude, Miss Lanhua,” Qian Shanyi said, crossing the arms on her chest. “What if I were from the empire, here to test your honor?”

“You are not from the empire.” Wu Lanhua laughed loudly, a sudden burst of sound among their quiet dialogue. “You don’t have the character for it. Besides, the imperial tax office might have long hands, but it moves slowly. If you really were an inspector, I would have seen the signs far in advance of your arrival.”

Qian Shanyi frowned. ‘Don’t have the character?’ What did she mean by that?

“An interesting attitude, for someone with a karmist shrine on their estate,” Qian Shanyi said, taking the opportunity to probe her, “I would have expected you to give a lot more face to the empire, what with the business around that so-called ‘heavenly mandate’.”

She scrunched her nose as she said the words, but it had to be done.

“The shine is not mine, but a gift I made.” Wu Lanhua waved her off, “I have never been much interested in cosmic questions. The world of men is much closer to me.”

A gift? What kind of gift is built on your own estate? And a gift to whom?

She considered pushing the issue, but by the time she made the decision the moment had already passed.

“It seems I was not wrong about you after all,” Wu Lanhua said, ignorant of what was going through her head at that moment, “and there is a fruitful ground for cooperation between us. My kitchen is lacking an immortal chef - would you like the position? It would make our future discussions far, far easier to arrange.”

She briefly considered hiding the truth, but decided against it.

“I am afraid I would make a poor chef,” she shook her head, “for I may have to leave town at any moment. You know about my accomplice - we have split up due to a misunderstanding. Once I find where he went, I intend to go after him.”

“Go after him?” Wu Lanhua raised her eyebrow. “For what purpose? Revenge?”

“I made a promise to help him with a certain problem, one I intend to keep.”

A complex series of emotions passed over Wu Lanhua’s face, finally settling on pity, her posture tense.

“There will be other…accomplices in the future, honorable immortal Lan.” She sighed. “That is no reason at all to throw away - or, at best, delay - our mutually beneficial relationship.”

“What are you implying?” she frowned.

“There are few things that lead to more mistakes than love and lust.”

Qian Shanyi blinked, and couldn’t hold herself back from laughing. Wu Lanhua watched her carefully, though some tension seemed to have left her.

“Love - oh sweet heavenbreakers, absolutely not!” She wiped away a tear from her eye, still chuckling. “The man is as transparent as a cup of water and as complex as a board, there is nothing there that interests me. No, that relationship is far more material.”

“I have seen men and women fool themselves as easily as taking a step off a cliff,” Wu Lanhua said, but she could tell that her worries have largely vanished.

Still, it always paid to push the envelope.

“If it is courtship you wish to speak of,” she said, purring and taking a small step forwards to put a hand on the other woman’s shoulder, “I much prefer those who have some hidden depths to them.”

Wu Lanhua’s gaze grew sharp, and she slid away with a step of her own.

“I have a fiance, honorable immortal Lan,” she spoke quietly, the cadence of her voice mirroring that of a slammed door, “one I have worked quite hard at acquiring. I would advise you not to sabotage my work.”

“Oh but the challenge makes it all the wilder, does it not?” Qian Shanyi chuckled. “Finding ways to hide, to get away with it, dancing just on the edge of possibility?”

The merchant’s gaze grew harsher still, yet curiously, she did not protest further.

“Oh I jest, I jest.” She laughed, stepping away. “Still, Lanhua, I hope that proves my point - and it’s about time you started to call me Yishan. This asymmetry of respect is starting to unnerve me.”

“If it isn’t attraction, Yishan, then why bother with the man?” Wu Lanhua said, visibly relaxing.

“I made a promise.” Qian Shanyi raised her eyebrows. “Is that not enough?”

“Come now.” Wu Lanhua waved her off. “Be serious. Those like us bend promises like wind bends grass.”

“Perhaps we are not as alike as you may think.” She frowned, “I take my promises quite seriously.”

“That simply moves the question backwards. Why give a promise in the first place?”

She couldn’t tell her the truth, obviously, and took a moment to come up with a plausible alternative.

“I intended to delve into more ruins in the future, and he would be a great assistant,” Shanyi said, “I still believe so.”

“There are hundreds of loose cultivators willing to do that work.” The merchant woman scoffed. “And with wealth, you can easily seek out the ones you like. If what you say is true, then whatever treasures he may have taken with him cannot compare to a spirit vein. It is pointless to chase after him - this is a waste of your time.”

They can, actually.

“Miss Lanhua, I have my plans and you have yours.” She frowned. “I have made no comment about your fiance, even though what you are doing - this emotional manipulation spanning years, with no end in sight - frankly disgusts me.”

“He benefits from it as much as I will,” Wu Lanhua said, crossing her arms. “Ask him how much of my money he spends on cultivation, and it will be proof enough.”

“It isn’t his choice. But my point is that even if we are alike in some ways, we differ in others. For me, a promise, given of my own free will, is important.”

“A lie if I have ever heard one.” Wu Lanhua scoffed. Qian Shanyi’s eyebrow twitched in response. She was starting to grow irritated at this line of questioning.

“Will you claim to know me better than I myself do?”

“How old are you?”

“Of what possible relevance is this?”

“Young, then, or you would have said.” A smile twitched on Wu Lanhua’s lips. ”I have decades of experience above your own, and I tell you that you are lying to yourself. At the end of the day, you will always choose your skin over that of a pawn.”

“This is nonsense.” Qian Shanyi crossed her arms on her chest. “I am not like you, Lanhua.”

Wu Lanhua sighed in exasperation.

“Do I have to spell it out, child?” she said. “You said you may vanish from this town at any moment - this means you think yourself on the cusp of finding your man, yet you did not name a date when you would leave. But if you knew of a way to proceed - some divination or tracking technique, no doubt - you would have used it already, so why are you still here? I would venture a guess that this technique has a cost, and for all your rationalizations about your promises, you are simply unwilling to pay it.”

“The cost wouldn’t be borne by me.” She narrowed her eyes. “That is why I am hesitating.”

“I can’t speak of cultivation, but every debt I have ever seen could be paid by either party.”

The words shook Qian Shanyi, and it took her a moment to stabilize herself. Wu Lanhua saw her hesitation, and a grin bloomed on her face.

“I am right, aren’t I? Perhaps you didn’t even think of the possibility? Subconsciously, you will always put yourself first - that’s who you are.”

Qian Shanyi pursed her lips in silence as gears spun in her mind.

“I thought of taking you on as a project.” Wu Lanhua shook her head ruefully, sighing. “I could teach you how to use your natural talent, shape it into a truly versatile tool. I am held back by my lack of cultivation, but you wouldn’t be so limited. Come on, abandon your foolish chase.”

Qian Shanyi looked away.

“I will have to think about this,” she said quietly. “Thank you for this conversation, honorable merchant Wu.”

“Take your time.” Wu Lanhua smiled. ”Find me in the gardens when you decide - and make sure to partake of the refreshments. They are, after all, exquisite.”

She watched Wu Lanhua retreat back into the house, picked up her backpack, and went on a walk around the balcony, heading to the other side of the house. What she said kept spinning in her head.

You will always put yourself first - that’s who you are.

Was it true?

How much of her desire to find Wang Yonghao stemmed from their deal being broken, and how much from her own selfish desire to use his resources for cultivation? She had to admit that the agreement they had, if it could even be called that, was made by putting him under a degree of pressure. And when she thought back on it, even if there was no deal in place - would she have not tried to find him anyways?

She didn’t think to pay the cost herself, even though the way to do so was obvious in retrospect. Didn’t even consider it.

She leaned against the balcony railing on the other side of the house, sighed, and stared into the starry skies. Wu Lanhua was offering her a way out - a life of relative luxury, with little threat to speak of.

But not a life that could challenge the heavens. Out here on the frontier she could, at best, advance into the building foundation stage. With Yonghao, the threat would be greater, but so would the rewards.

Was she willing to make that gamble?

“Fine,” she whispered to the skies, “I give up, you bastards and murderers. You win.”

She drew breath, and scowled.

“Heavens, you who gaze from on high,” she ceded through her clenched teeth, “you who slaughter thousands, who bleed and suck dry entire kingdoms, who would rather have the entire world burn than cede a single hair of your authority to us mere mortals, hear my vow!”

She spat on the floor. Small mercies, but at least the vows did not have to be polite.

“Grant me luck enough to find Wang Yonghao,” she lied smoothly, “across whatever lands he fled to, from your stores of stolen power. In exchange, I pledge that I will force him to cultivate as hard as he can for an entire month. The bastard owes me for leaving me in the lurch.”

She stumbled, feeling all the spiritual energy in her body drain to nothing through her spiritual root, vanishing in a direction askew to reality as the vow took.

For a moment, regret flooded her mind. The energy heavens took would not simply vanish - it would go back down in the form of tribulation lightning whenever another cultivator challenged the heavens, risking their life to ascend to a new realm of cultivation. Every person who made a vow to the heavens made the task of others that much more hazardous, that much more likely to fail - a stain on the world, making it worse for everyone involved. Fortunately, most cultivators would never stoop so low - even those who did not know their history would avoid helping the enemy that sought to kill you whenever they could.

The vows did not take most of the time - motives of the heavens remained mysterious, and what they chose to officiate and what they did not was a matter of guesswork - but she was not surprised hers did. She already suspected that they kept a tight watch on Wang Yonghao, and this seemed to confirm it. Fortunately for her, the Heavens could not read your mind - merely make guesses, same as any other person.

You could not fool blind luck, but you could fool the Heavens.

Her arms grew weak as for the first time in years all her meridians were fully emptied. The flow of spiritual energy ceased, and she felt the vow settle in the back of her mind, like a kernel of corn stuck in between teeth - always there, always bringing attention to itself, but easy enough to lose track of, with time.

She took her divination bottle out of her backpack, spun it, and half the dice were ones.

Spiritual energy in her body would regenerate, of course, and maintaining the vow itself would only reduce her reserves by a mere fraction. It would stay there, waiting for her to either complete the terms or violate them.

And when she would find Wang Yonghao and break off the deal she just made, she would have to face the heavenly tribulation.