Jin followed the sage into the house. He had wondered on his last visit why the man lived in such a small, shabby space, when he was clearly a master of alchemy, and was paid well by anyone who used his services. This place was beyond what most people would call humble. Jin hadn't been in any other houses than this one and the one he shared with Xinya, but Master Xinya's house had been far grander (before it blew up), and he had seen in books the kinds of homes the people in the empire's big cities lived in. Surely the sage could afford a more comfortable life than this?
There was just one large room, and it was cluttered. There was nowhere to sleep. Jin knew that cultivators at the highest levels of corporeal conditioning and beyond needed very little, perhaps even no sleep at all. He didn't need much himself, especially since his mind had been reforged. Yet, it seemed sad for a person not to have a bed, even if they only used it as a place to relax and read, or to meditate in a sleeping position.
There was a stove, but Jin doubted that this was often used for food. There was a thick, cast iron pot on the flames now, in fact, but the strange aroma coming from it certainly didn't indicate anything edible. There was a wooden table, and four chairs around it. One of those chairs had been the one he had now twice been strapped to. He wondered if it would be the same one tonight.
Everything else in the room could be best described as miscellaneous, or mysterious. A pair of scales with some strange powder on one side, that somehow wasn't upsetting the balance despite the other side being empty. A battleax with an obsidian head, and a handle engraved with odd, faintly glowing runes. A leatherbound book thicker than any Jin had seen before, with words on the spine in characters Jin couldn't read. Jars of... parts of things. Old, tarnished chains that looked to have once been jewelry. Bookshelves and chests were covered in this kind of stuff, and lined the walls. And everything gave off that faint whiff of evil.
Jin stood in the middle of the room, waiting to be invited to sit.
This is no good. If I want to get on in the world, now I'm on my own, I have to stop wondering about everything and just ask people the things I need to to get my answers. How will I find out anything, otherwise, now I have no teacher? I may as well start with this old man - I already know it'd take a lot to make him kill me, since he's supposed to continue this reforging thing for whatever reason... And I already know he's not as sinister as he seems.
"Sage, please don't be offended, but I have questions," he began.
"No doubt you do. I may have answers, too. I expect you want to know about the Shi clan, and what their struggles have to do with you and your poor master... Sit down, boy - I have something to do here, and then I'll give you a healing potion for the damage you took in your fight with the goblin spirit. We can discuss these matters while you wait for it to take effect."
"Oh... thank you. I mean, yes, of course I am more than curious about all of those things, but... before that, please, if you don't mind, I actually meant I had some questions about you."
The sage, who was now over by the stove, looking into the pot with his back to Jin, stiffened a little. But he didn't say anything, so Jin went on.
"It's nothing all that important. I mean, you don't have to tell me anything, do you? But I spend so much time wondering what things mean or why they are the way they are, and, well, I used to just ask my master. Now I either have to ask other people, or never find out anything for sure, I guess, and... well, what I was wondering now is, why don't you live in a fancy house, somewhere nice? You are so powerful, and you must make a lot of money, so why would you live here in the forest? Is it because you like it?"
The sage turned around now and looked at Jin with the same scrutinizing gaze he had used when Jin had first suggested using the goblin spirit core, as if he was making a recalculation about something he had previously thought he had figured out. He shook his head quickly, as though clearing his mind of a doubt, and then he spoke in a sincere tone Jin had only heard hints of when he'd been talking about his own soul reforging.
"You will need to learn the times and places to ask questions that people may find impertinent, Jin. There are men with far higher opinions of themselves than I out there, who will not take your curiosity in the spirit that it's intended. That said, you're quite right - seeking out answers is an important habit to get into, especially with the path you're on... I am not ashamed to answer you this, on this occasion. It is not often anybody asks about what I do and don't like, these days, after all."
He almost sounded happy. Jin sat down on one of the wooden chairs - no longer thinking about whether it was the same one he'd sat in six years ago, or six years prior to that - and waited for the old man to carry on.
"Of course I don't like it here. Maybe living in a forest full of monsters is pleasant enough if you have the kind of lifestyle that Xinya strove to give you, but living alone like this, well, it is about as you might expect it to be. But I'm not here all the time. I have another place in the Imperial Capitol, where I can enjoy physical luxuries, though, when you get to my age - I'm 284 years old, by the way - the real luxury is just having people around who might surprise you or show you something new. I go there to keep up my connections and sell the things I have created at the auction house, but it is here that I do my work."
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He stopped working at the stove, and sat down across the table from Jin.
"The forest serves as both a camouflage, and a deterrent, hiding me from anyone greedy enough to try to steal my resources, and making sure nobody would be foolish enough to stumble upon me by accident. When you do special things, and you have special things, Jin, you are never truly safe. You need to understand that now, because the life you may well have ahead of you will see you being someone with your own things to protect, and with your own jealous rivals. I create pills and potions and elixirs that small clans would go to war over. Things that could give people great power, and which come at great cost. I therefore make myself, and my things, as hard to find as possible. When I am in the city, it is in disguise, and only those who know me best, and those who can be discreet, like the Wong clan who run the auction house, ever know my identity or trade."
"Is it worth it, though? It sounds like you make a lot of money, but you don't really have anything you want to spend it on. You know all the most powerful people, but you're usually alone. Why do you do it?"
No sooner than he let the words spill out, Jin regretted them. Just because the sage had indulged his first question, that probably didn't mean he could ask something so much more personal. Asking if someone liked where they lived was on a whole different level to questioning the very purpose of their life's work. He'd just got caught up in having this insight into the sage's life, and forgotten what manners Xinya had had time to teach him.
But the sage didn't look offended. In fact, he looked thoughtful, as if it was a fair question, and one he was considering his answer to.
"I don't just use my alchemy to make things that earn me money, and help other men gain power, Jin. If that were all there were to it, then yes, you'd be right, it probably wouldn't satisfy me anymore, and I probably would have changed course to a different lifestyle once I didn't find much need for the wealth, any longer. But, my work, especially the more experimental aspects of it, well, it has enabled me to learn some things that have helped us understand the very nature of ourselves, of cultivation, and of the reality we live in, in ways that nobody before me did. It is an ongoing work, but sometimes, new knowledge comes out of it, and that knowledge can help people. Always at a price, of course, but that is just the way of things in a competitive world, such as ours. And then, well, there have been more than a few times a trusted ally has come to me as a last resort, when they have been subjected to a poison or other deadly attack, and hoped I would be able to save their life. There are means for those I trust to find me even in this forest, and to get here quickly. I will always do my best to treat them. Sometimes, it is a success."
"That's what the tiger meant, I guess. He said that the beasts don't come near this house, because they know it is a place where beasts and humans can suffer and meet their ends. He said that was why there were goblin spirits here. I thought... I thought that meant you hurt people, or even killed them, in the course of making things. But I guess the people who suffer and die... they are those you are trying to help. And the beasts... you have to kill them, like you thought you had to kill the tiger, so you can use their cores to help people."
"I am not a wholly good man, Jin. Sometimes I have to make choices where not everybody wins. And, yes, sometimes I need resources for one act that will benefit one person, that costs the life of something else. Sometimes I do, regrettably, even need parts of human cultivators. But this is part of the agreement that anyone who gains the access to come here in an emergency makes with me. If I fail to save them, their remains are... well, I don't think I need to be so crass as to say it out loud. But it is as a result of this that I can perform certain alchemies that would normally be taboo, without having to kill humans. It is a balance I have made peace with."
Jin didn't really know what to say to that, but he found himself respecting the sage a lot more than he would have expected before today, when he had only the memory of the scary old man. He sat in thought, contemplating what the life of the sage was like, as the man tapped the ring on his finger - an Interspatial Ring like the one Jin had inherited from Xinya - and produced a pill.
"I will have to charge you for this - Soul's Haven pills are very rare, and expensive to make - but it will bring your soul back up to its current full strength in an hour. You'll need it before we can do the reforging, and without medicine, it can take months to fully recover from a soul attack, especially the first time you experience one."
He handed the pill to Jin. It was a small, golden capsule. He hadn't questioned whether Jin could afford it - he already knew he had all of Xinya's cubic crystals, and it seemed he knew Xinya would be good for it.
"How much? I am sure Master Xinya would have no problems with me spending her money in this way."
"20 cubic crystals. But, well, it's not really Xinya's money - that's part of what you'll need to learn now. You have had another benefactor your whole life, and the cost of all of the things you have had, including your reforgings with me, and all of your pills, well, the money went through Xinya, but was never actually hers."
"What exactly are you telling me?"
"Your master left a letter in my care to give to you in the event that she wasn't with you when you came for your soul reforging. It seems she put rather a lot of plans into place for that eventuality, doesn't it? It is sealed, so I don't know exactly what it says, but I expect it covers the parts I do know, at the very least. Maybe it's best if you read it now, once you've taken the pill. It will probably suit you better to learn your heritage from her, than from me."