Thirteenth day of the month Mistaiyo in the year 203 of the Sasuke Empire

The couple rode down the main road in the empire. The Emperor’s Road as travelers all knew it around the Sasuke Empire. Even some of those from beyond the empire knew about the massive well kept road. This was the only road that connected all the regions of the empire. Not only did it connect them all, but it was the only road that wasn’t dirt. All along the road, there were various rest areas with inns and restaurants and other creature comforts for the weary traveler. This couple was more than familiar with most of the stretches in the road.

The man was a short and rotund man with a balding head and a short kept goatee. The woman was shorter yet, and thick without being rotund as her husband was. Unlike his balding head, she had long curly black hair that she kept in a tight ponytail just down the nape of her neck. The back always seemed to be kept well in the bun while the curls dominated the front, which left her with, at times, look like wings that would blow in the windy days.

The man was Chen Jin, and his wife was Chen Mei. They both hailed from the South Western part of the Empire, the parts that fought especially hard when the Sasuke Family was on their conquest of manifest destiny.

The Chen’s? They cared little for the politics of the empire. All Jin cared about was bringing his craft everywhere that would have them, and above even that, the love for his wife. Mei cared little for the food her husband crafted. She had her own little business in the roving restaurant. She worked on selling magical items and weapons to various people who considered themselves martial heroes and cultivators.

They were both cultivators as well, in truth. Part of why Jin’s cooking was so sought after in the empire. He had a rare gift of being able to inject his aura into the food to not only make the food taste better but also to help along one’s path of cultivation. Mei was further along her path in the universe, while Jin never really cared for such things until he met and fell in love with Mei.

She was a young thief seeking refuge in his family’s restaurant. Just trying to hide out from the city’s guards and Jin became enthralled with the woman. He watched her fight her way out when the guards finally caught up with her. Armed with a simple negata and her powers over wood, she worked her way through a dozen guards.

Later that night, she had come back to the restaurant. She was met with his mother’s yelling and shouting at her for the mess she had made earlier that day. Jin came to her defense and soothed his mother’s rage. Not only that, but he could get her a room in the nearby inn under an assumed name. She was a cousin visiting from further north in the empire. While in the city, she showed up the restaurant daily and helped. This not only helped further smooth over mama Chen’s rage but also helped convince the guards she was not who they were looking for.

That was until Mama Chen found Mei was peddling her own wares in the restaurant on the side. Mama Chen believed this would bring them unwanted and unneeded attention. She had been there long enough, though, for Mei to return Jin’s feelings. When Mama Chen raged, they both left.

Mei had been squirreling away the coin she had earned both from her side business, and that Mama Chen paid her. Now on their own and when Mei believing in Jin’s cooking, they bought a carriage. Mei figured if they could get a carriage big enough with enough room, Jin could do his craft anywhere right from that carriage. After the purchase of the largest carriage they could find, and three oxen to pull it they had just enough money to get ingredients to start.

“Wait, why are you turning off the road?” Mei looked at her husband and asked him with a harsh tone.

“It’s a shortcut someone told me about. It’ll be alright, I have faith in the man who told me about the info,” Jin said with a confident nod as he worked the yoke and got the oxen off the main road and down a side road.

Mei glared at her husband, but finally shrugged. Whatever, she figured. If her husband said the man was trustworthy, then she’d trust in his judgement. She leaned back on the driver’s bench once more and groaned. “We need to save some money and try to make these seats more comfortable,” she grumped.

Jin just grinned and gave her a nudge. “You’re the wood cultivator. Can’t you just make the wood more comfortable?” He winked.

The glare returned, and she shook her head as she threw her arms in the air. “How many times do I have to tell you…”

Before she could continue on the rant, Jin, just laughed and reached over and patted his wife’s thigh. “Yes, my love, I know. I know. It doesn’t work like that.”

Her arms crossed against her ample chest, and she frowned. Her gaze kept forward, but the woman wore an angry look.

It didn’t take long once they turned off the road for the road to turn treacherous. The road bumped and had potholes and they ventured into woods that creeped and encroached towards the road. As they went, Jin, felt Mei’s anger grow as she bounced in her seat over a large pothole.

As they hit the bottom of the pothole, a large crack echoed through the woods. This caused Mei to groan out, exasperated.

“Oops,” was all Jin said as the carriage tilted a little towards the back when it lost its wheel.

“Yeah, oops,” Mei tsk’d and jumped down from the carriage.

Jin sat there and lowered his head for a moment and sighed before he shook his head. “Balls,” he muttered to himself, knowing he would never hear the end of this.

Mei had already started to grunt and groan before Jin hoped down to help his wife before she yelled at him. He walked around and they worked together to get the broken wheel off. The oxen shuffled a little and settled in since they had received a break from having to pull the overly large carriage.

“Should we just fix it or use one of the spares?” Jin looked up and wiped the sweat from his brow. One hand held the broken wheel upright, the broken piece left in the ditch.

Mei looked it over and shrugged. “It’s a good thing we made so much from those sumo wrestlers. We have lots of extra equipment for the moment,” she said as she went to the door in the back of the carriage and opened it.

Jin chuckled a little and nodded his head. “Yeah, but boy did they eat. Holy smokes, they ate as much as we’d normally go through in a full week. A full busy week!” He exclaimed and chuckled a little more.

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

Mei matched him and exited the inside of the carriage with a new wheel. “We’ll just replace it. No point in expelling the mana if I don’t need to. My core isn’t so large to just waste mana, and who knows what else we’re going to find down this shortcut of yours?”

Jin frowned and looked up at his wife. “I’m sorry, love, the man said it was a good road. He said it would get us to the manor in plenty of time, so we’d definitely be able to get some bottles of the soy. Do you want to turn around?”

Mei sighed and once Jin threw the broken wheel into the carriage, he hoisted the carriage up. His arms bulged as he lifted it high enough so she could slide the wheel on.

“Make sure you’re not lifting with your back, that’s all we need,” Mei directed and received a simple nod from Jin. “And no, we’ll never be able to get this turned back around and we’d lose more time and definitely miss the sale. Might as well forge ahead.”

Jin nodded his head. It made sense. Mei always spoke sense when Jin just followed and ran on emotion. She offered insight and thoughtfulness to their actions. Part of why they were such a good pair. Yin and yang. Opposites are always attracted.

He smiled and watched his wife slap on and spin the large wooden bolt to keep the wheel in place. Jin took her in as she grunted and worked. He woke up every morning still unable to believe they were married and that he got to wake up next to her every morning.

“The problem with this route is, we probably won’t run into any towns where we can sell some things and make some more coin,” Mei said and brushed off her hands on the deep brown and green robes she wore.

With the wheel in place, Jin could let go of the carriage and offered a shrug. “We have little in the way of ingredients, anyway. The wrestlers really drained the stockpiles,” he offered.

“Yeah, well, the other problem with not running into a town is that…” Mei had started but was interrupted by some laughing from deep into the woods.

The laugh was high pitched and shrill and had almost a manic tinge to it.

“Great,” Mei grumped as a dozen men and women revealed themselves positioned around the couple.

“What’s a lovely carriage like this doing this far off the main road? Don’t you know there're robbers and bandits in the woods?” The apparent leader of the gang took a further step towards the pair.

Jin gaped and pointed. “I trusted you! I thought you said this was a good road,” he said once he realized the shrill voice was the man who gave him the tip.

Mei just put her face in her hand as the man gave another of those shrill laughs. “It is great. It’s great for us. Not so great for you folks, unfortunately,” he said still as he laughed.

The man was thin with an unfortunate amount of hair between his eyebrows and in weird spots around his face. Long crooked nose which clearly showed he didn’t win very many of his fights, or maybe lost one particularly brutally. Small beady eyes looked over at the pair and darted between them. The one thing different about this man than the rest was that he was the one man in robes. Worn and threadbare as they were, they were in the style of cultivator’s robes. The inner cloth wrapped around and the outer like a long robe he left open. They didn’t look the best quality, much like the rest of his gang’s regular tunics and pants.

“You lot haven’t been particularly knee deep in business, huh?” Mei asked him as she looked around at the bandits.

The strike came without warning. No signal given to his troop, they all leaped in towards the pair. Various weapons revealed themselves and struck out. The last to act was the leader. The one that told Jin about this path, and he was also the only one with a proper sword. It was long and straight with a bounce to it. You saw little outside of the southwestern region. The tassel telegraphed his move as he swiped towards Mei.

In the blink of an eye, Mei held the very same negata he watched her use when they first met. The blade lifted and turned his as the blunt end of the staff came up and around and blasted him in the left temple. He yelled out when he was struck and staggered back. While Mei fought with him, she swiped around back and forth as she kept the rest of the wolves at bay.

Jin, while not as powerful or as strong of a fighter as his wife, could make his own way in the fight. He didn’t have a proper weapon for fighting; he had Mei. She was the fighter. He had the tools of his own trade, the tools of the kitchen. His right hand held the chef’s knife, a large thing that almost looked like a cleaver but without the curve or the hole in the corner. His left hand held his sharpening steel.

The first person advanced towards Jin. The woman armed with nothing more than a club pulled back and swiped it towards the man’s head. His own sharpening steel came up to deflect it as a sword of his own and the rotund man danced around her with a surprising amount of dexterity. People often forgot Jin was a cultivator as well. He may not have reached the spiritual realm as his wife had, but the fire of Kenichi raged through the cook.

When Mei and Jin were deciding what element and Kami Jin should pull his power from, Kenichi never seemed like the best fit for the chef. The man was a peaceful man. He didn’t particularly like to fight and mostly considered himself a pacifist. Mei reasoned, though, that the fire would come handy with his trade. Once Jin’s core converted from aura to mana, he’d be able to make fire anywhere, and what was the most basic tool for a cook than fire?

When Jin sat back and thought about he agreed with his soon to be wife. Not for the reasons she stated, but because, as everyone knew, wood grew and fueled fire. He smiled when he looked at Mei back then and nodded his head. For she was the reason he started along this cultivation path. To start to find and use the powers of the universe and prolong his life. If his life was longer, as hers was already going to be, then it would just be more time than he could spend with her.

The woman fell to the ground after he danced around her and struck her in the back of the head with the dull side of the chef’s knife. The thunk her body made when she hit the dirt shook him from his reminiscing about their past together.

Jin shouted with glee when he knocked out his first opponent just in time to turn and parry a man’s dagger with his chef’s knife and then thunk the heavy, sharpening steel on the man’s head. The man landed in the dirt right next to his female companion. He shouted once more and raised his arms in celebration before he looked over at Mei.

Mei did not seem to have as easy of a fight. While Jin could take two of them out of the fight without killing them, Mei had the rest of the bodies strewed around her. Not all of them were still breathing. Their leader, the bandit cultivator, had a pool of blood under him soaking the grass.

“Oh my,” Jin sighed.

Mei looked over at him, her robes bloodied and with small tears in it. She breathed heavily and looked at him sharply. She never liked when she took a life, but she was more willing to than Jin was in any fight that they was a part of. Her negata dropped to the grass, and she slung her head to the ground.

“I know,” was all she muttered sadly.

Jin smiled and walked over to his wife before he took her in his arms. He wrapped his heavy arms around her shoulder and she buried her face in his chest. She didn’t cry or really show any emotion. That was her way. She may have been a wood cultivator, but the woman was as hard as steel. Instead, she just embraced her husband and calmed herself. The mana roiled through her body after a fight and while he may have been the fire cultivator, his embrace calmed her.

“It is done, my love. We can not change what happened. May their spirits return to the universe and their next lives know more peace,” Jin said and rubbed her back.

He felt her head nod, and they stayed like this for a few more moments before they pulled apart and she looked up at him. Jin’s brown eyes looked into her multi colored eyes. Her eyes always fascinated him. They were mostly green, but the right had flecks of blue and the left had bits of blue. He loved looking into those eyes.

She pulled away and reached down to pick up her weapon, then just as fast as it had appeared, it was gone. “I don’t suppose these vagabonds had anything worthwhile. Let the forest have the dead ones. Let’s just get going, we make that sale,” Mei said finally and walked back to the front of the carriage and climbed up it.

Jin’s eyes went wide, and he nodded his head. “Yes, we have quite a way to go if we wish to make it in time,” he agreed as he rushed over and climbed up the carriage, his own tools gone now as well.