“So if you’re some super strong monster cultivator, why don’t you have any money?”
Raika rolls her eyes at Jin, carrying her bundle of shaped bones through the streets of Wuyan village. “So you just assume everyone strong is rich? Or do you think all monsters have giant hoards, secreted away deep in some cave?”
He frowns. “So you are like a spirit beast?”
She laughs this time, loud enough that some of the farmers passing by them startle. “While I’m sure there are spirits beasts with mountains of gold and Qi stones, I’ve never met one. And… I guess a little. Maybe more than you, at least. How else do you think I got so tall?”
She’s been pretty blunt about herself for the most part, direct and honest but in a way that she can pass off if anyone starts asking too many questions. For all her growth, she still doesn’t feel like a cultivator, her Qi emanating from her like a fog rather than as bright central pools. The renewed curse ritual reduced it further still, to the point that even to her own senses, she usually smells like someone in the Qi-Gathering realm at the most. Still, it’s not necessarily safe to go dropping tidbits that might get a cultivator or Imperial authority called, like if someone thought she belonged to some faction of rebels or was a hidden master. Better they just see her as a strange race, like someone beast-blooded, than as what she is.
“Ok… but I mean, don’t all strong people have tons of money? That’s how sects start, right? And how they can get, like, magic swords and stuff.”
She shrugs. “Well, I’m not that strong, for one thing. Second, I don’t have any magic swords, and I think sects are pretty stupid. And third, I don’t have any money. So now I sell bone charms.”
Jin grumbles at her obvious evasion. “Don’t you have friends that are really important or something? Like that lady you always mention, Maen?”
“Other people have their own lives, kid, and letters aren’t exactly quick, even nowadays. Sending messages through oracles or crystals costs money too, don’t they?”
Jin pouts further at the semi-answer, and she laughs, spreading her blanket out onto her usual spot as they finally come to it. “Why all the burning questions, kid? Unhappy with the new bed and my cooking?”
He doesn’t say anything for a bit, but eventually breaks as she finishes setting out her wares. They’re here early enough that her regulars aren’t around yet, this time of morning still full of daily chores one undertakes living in a village. He sits down beside her with a flop, grumbling.
“Cause I don’t know like anything about you. You showed up in the woods, and you saved me, and then I watched you talk with like, some kind of super ghost. You’re super strong, and you talk about crazy stuff with Sister Li Shu, but then you don’t have any money, and we’re still in this same dumb village.”
She looks over at him, tuning her senses. She’s been keeping her synesthesia on all the time now, but that requires some rebalancing yet again, which makes for a tricky balance, seeing and feeling and knowing so much about everything. She can taste the shape and movement of people that have passed through the taste of the ground, which she can freely switch between seeing and smelling. It doesn’t take nearly that level of focus to tell that the kid is freaked out. Giving him a place to stay and saving his life can only get one so far in the face of long-ingrained survival instincts. She can’t fault him for that, honestly.
So… yeah. Might as well.
“I was a cultivator once.” She ignores the feeling of his heartbeat picking up, excitement and anxiety meeting curiosity. “Not a very good one. Got my ass kicked a lot, and my sect didn’t have a lot of resources for me. Big focus on slow-moving patience, plant-based techniques, that sort of thing. But I stuck with it. Poor girl from a poor farmer’s family. When the sect found out I could cultivate, they took me away. Never saw my parents again. They both died in the winter a few years later.”
She cracks her neck, making a popping sound loud enough that Jin flinches, but he keeps quiet. She takes another breath. It’s… it’s not easy to talk about. But it’s easier. That’s something.
So she presses on.
“I knew I wasn’t very strong, but I had my convictions. Convictions I still keep for the most part. When an Imperial cultivator tried to bully me out of a reward I got in a tournament, I stood against him. Said I’d work for him to make up the lost value of the object, that I’d work hard to find him a suitable replacement. It was one of the only good cultivation resources I’d found in years, and it was mine. I won it.
“So… he beat me within an inch of my life.”
The kid stays silent. Raika notices there’s a bit more of a crowd, now, some of her regulars arriving, but they’re keeping their distance still. Rapping knuckles on more than one occasion earned her a little space, it would seem… or maybe they’re just listening.
That’s fine. She takes a breath, low and slow.
“I got back up. He beat me again. I got back up, and he beat me again, harder. And when I got back up one last time… I don’t know. Maybe it was his version of respect. Maybe it was spite. But he reached inside me and broke my cultivation.
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“I still can’t touch Qi directly, not really. Had to learn how to be again. Spent a good year and change living as a beggar on the streets, crippled in soul and body… but… eventually, I pulled my way back. Met some new friends. Had a couple of lucky and fucked up encounters. And now I’m here.”
For a little while, there’s silence… and then she lifts her head back up. Brings herself back to the moment, and all that.
There is a small, frail old woman standing in front of her, offering her a cookie.
She blinks. Shakes her head a bit. Blinks again.
The little old woman who smells of bread and young children, likely a grandmother, in her last stages of life, stands in the crowd. One of her regulars, maybe, but she’s never paid them much attention. She can smell the liver damage, see under her skin how her blood shifts and flows, taste how the colors of her miniscule Qi float through her body. If she wanted to, she could taste the cataracts in her eyes and physically feel the sound of the old woman’s tendons creaking with old age.
And she’s holding out a cookie.
“Very brave of you, dearie,” the woman says, her voice weathered and high. “To make it through tough times is a struggle and a joy, and here you are, helping the young.”
The woman waits, expectantly.
Jin squirms a bit, and some members of the crowd seem a mix of confused and anxious themselves.
Gingerly, she takes the cookie. Under the old woman’s continued insistent gaze, she takes a bite.
Her eyes widen a bit.
“Oh. This is really good!”
The old woman smiles wide, the little bit of Qi she has brightening almost visibly as she does. “Good of you to notice, dearie! It’s an old family recipe. My grandmother made it for me when I was a little girl.”
“It’s got… is that lavender oranges?”
The woman’s eyes brighten. “Good taste, young lady! I grow them myself. My pride and joy, ever since that idiot son of mine became a wastrel!”
She yells that last part, the sound surprisingly loud coming from someone so old and frail. From somewhere down the street, a vaguely masculine-sounding voice yells something back, which would be unintelligible if not for Raika’s senses.
“Love you too, mom!”
Raika just gives a little laugh, the old woman giving a self-satisfied smile as she does. “Awfully sweet of you, letting little Jin help with your trinkets, dearie. Good deeds should be rewarded.”
Jin blushes and grumbles. Under his breath, but she hears him say something like “what’s it to you, ya old hag,” but there’s no heat to his words. Some of the others in the crowd laugh softly, the overall atmosphere kept light, and Raika laughs at the kid’s clear embarrassment.
“My apologies if my young disciple has caused you trouble in the past,” she says, bowing where she’s sitting. “He’s a daft little shit, and we’re still training his manners.”
This draws a larger chuckle from the crowd, and an approving nod and glimmer in the eye of the old grandmother. “I applaud you for taking on such an impossible task, dearie. This old Nan Su admires you taking on such a problem child.”
Jin grumbles again, scooching further back into their alley, which draws only further mirth, but most of the crowd takes pity on him. By this point, the old woman, the young man that smells of lumber and the two young mothers coming in to take their pick of her cheaper items. She still hasn’t found anyone who can or wants to buy her “fractal” pieces, but that’s no big deal, she’s not really making them for profit anyways.
As the “crowd” disperses, Raika makes a note of paying closer attention to the town. She’s had other things on her mind, but it’s a bit shameful to realize she’s only just now discovered the name of a woman who’s been visiting her weekly for months now. Today, instead of focusing her senses inward, she pushes them out, expanding her perception gradually to encompass more of the town.
It gets dizzying in moments, but with a flicker of blood flow and Truth, she connects to her new “processing” brain, and the strain immediately lightens. It still overheats fairly quickly, and it’s nowhere near done, but it’s enough for smaller things like this. Three subminds in tandem activate, and though she can feel her nose begin to bleed, she can cover it with her scarf easily enough.
Submind 1: Material sensory unit
Submind 2: Immaterial sensory unit
Subming 3: Additional processing.
The knowledge filters into her easily, in vast quantities that she couldn’t process before. It’s still clunky, the subminds needing time for neurons to develop, but it works.
She examines the streets around her, feeling the echoes of those who have come by in the lingering scents in the air, in the feeling of heat and the ripples of Qi and air pressure. She can feel their shapes, sizes, the overall weights of those who have moved through, of the whole town, really. She expands a bit further, and the buildings come into focus, set up haphazardly but well. Even here, Imperial standards have reached, and brick and mortar makes up even the simplest of houses. She can see traces of fingerprints and imprecisions in the construction, the roots and grasses of hardier plants trying to fight their way through the cracks, the leftover oils and scents of skin and fires and cooking over years and years.
There’s a smaller, squat building with one massive central room, and she tastes the shape of books and scrolls stored carefully in it, marking it as the school. There’s a slightly taller building, still shaped just like all the others, just with a squat second story, which she assumes to be the mayor or elder’s home
She expands further, and begins to pick up the edge of the fields outside the town, just part the border wall. The wall is sturdy, but easily broken by any average spirit beast, yet it keeps out bandits and animals just fine, she assumes, and the fields, while shallow, have plenty of growth in them. Maybe a few too many bugs, here and there, and it does look like there’s an area that could use some reinforcing around the rice paddies.
She senses Jin come closer, worried, and allows herself to notice the scent of blood leaving her nose (and eyes, now). She wipes them off quickly, pulling her senses back down to a more manageable level.
“Are you alright?” the kid asks.
She smiles, shifting away any leftover blood back into her body. He blinks at the sight, but she just nods.
“I’m fine. Just tried something new is all. It’s kind of crazy how many people there are in such a small place.”
Jin scoffs. “This place is tiny though! I know everyone already. I hear in the big cities, there are millions of people. Wayun Village is nothing.”
She has to admit, not long ago she might have said the same thing. The Hungering Roots sect was never particularly big, but she mostly grew up there, and afterwards, she spent her time in Paleblossom city, and then in the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect, and then in Imperial Palaces, and always, she was focused on herself. Now, with a little bit of room to breathe, and her new senses, she has to face a new truth:
The world is big.
She sighs.
“Maybe you’ll get it someday, kid,” she tells him. “I’ll make you a deal, though. If you can sell three charms, we’ll stop to get fresh noodles on the way home. Sound good?”
He brightens up almost immediately.