While villages and towns pockmarked the countryside along the road, even the fast-traveling cultivators might only see one every other day out in the vast stretches of land between major cities. As the distance to the capital dwindled down to the point where they were only a few days out, the density of villages and towns increased substantially. This conformed to Sen’s experiences with other cities, where the city proper was supported by a network of nearby farming villages and towns that specialized in raw material production, such as mining or milling. Yet, he'd never seen that sharp spike in supporting villages and towns begin so far out from a city before. He eventually pulled Chan Yu Ming aside.

“You said you grew up in the capital.”

Chan Yu Ming, who had grown even more withdrawn as they approached the city, gave him a wary look. “I did. Why?”

“How big is the capital? I mean, how many people live there?”

“The capital is huge. It covers a dozen miles in any direction. There are millions of people living there.”

Sen shook his head as he tried to imagine a city that large and so many people crammed into it.

“How do people navigate something like that?” he asked.

Chan Yu Ming visibly relaxed when she realized that Sen was looking for the kind of prosaic information that any new visitor to the capital might want. She got a reflective look on her face, then she started speaking.

“Most of them don’t. The capital is one city in name only. It wasn’t always this big, but it swallowed up the surrounding towns and communities as it grew. That’s the way most people identify themselves. They don’t say, I’m from the capital. They say that they’re from Mist Hill or Clover Vale or any of a dozen other sections of the city that used to be a separate town or village. Most people never really leave the part of the city where they’re born. They spend their entire lives in that one small part of the city.”

“That sounds restrictive,” said Sen.

“It isn’t. They can find everything they need or want from food to work to what passes for luxuries without leaving. Think about it. If everyone and everything you’ve ever known, understood, or loved, can be found within ten minutes of walking from your home, why would you leave?”

“I guess that’s fair.”

“They aren’t forbidden from leaving, either. They just don’t. At any rate, the true capital is at the heart of the city, where the royal palace and noble houses are located. Outside of that, you’ll find a ring of government buildings where the bureaucracy operates. Once you move beyond that ring of bureaucrats, the city starts to divide itself into distinct areas. Most of the city is fairly safe, especially for a core formation cultivator like you. The only people likely to start trouble with you are sect members, and even most of those will tread carefully with wandering cultivators who are at core formation.”

“That’s surprising. I’ve come to expect a lack of restraint from sects in their dealings with wandering cultivators.”

“It’s a delicate balance. Cultivators are often dismissive of mortal governments and their affairs, but they can’t do that in the capital,” she said, giving him a pointed look. “Imagine the kind of damage that an unrestrained fight between two core cultivators could do in a place where buildings are four stories high and right on top of each other. It would only take a handful of mishandled techniques to kill hundreds of people, destroy dozens of buildings, and disrupt the local economy for a generation. While the government can’t directly penalize the sect without an even greater loss of life, it can make life exceedingly difficult for the cultivators.

“After all, you must import everything you use in the city. That’s as true for a sect as for a merchant. Now, imagine if everything you try to bring into the city gets held up at the gates for two months. Sects can find themselves suddenly paying a fifty percent import tax. Merchants can suddenly become unwilling to do business with them unless they pay outrageous service fees. Any one of those things might not inconvenience a sect too much, but if you pile them all up, all at the same time, life becomes very hard, very fast, even for cultivators.”

“So, the sects keep their people in line better to avoid all of those inconveniences and greater expenses.”

“They do. It doesn’t entirely stop young cultivators from making foolish choices, but the threat of those sanctions makes sects very strict with their younger members. You should make a point of staying away from the part of the city called Crane’s Rise, though.”

“Okay,” said Sen. “Why is that?”

“It’s where the criminal element in the city operates from. They more or less control that area.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Criminals control an entire part of the city? In the capital? Why doesn’t the government just, I don’t know, clean them out.”

“It’s been tried. Dozens of times over the history of the kingdom. It doesn’t work.”

“What does that mean?”

Chan Yu Ming gave Sen one of those looks that very much made him feel his actual age. “You can’t end crime. As long as there are things that people want that they aren’t supposed to have or simply don’t belong to them, there will be crime. Sweeping out the organized power structures just opens the door for chaos as new would-be crime bosses vie for power. Instead, the government tolerates their nominal control of that one area, in exchange for them operating very quietly everywhere else in the city.”

“What happens if some criminal group ignores that rule.”

“Then, the government steps in and destroys that organization, usually with help from one or more sects.”

“Why would the sects get involved?”

“Cultivators become criminals, sometimes. It takes a cultivator to stop a cultivator unless you want a street full of dead city guards or soldiers.”

Sen nodded his understanding. “Thanks for your explanation. I don’t suppose you have a map of the capital, do you?”

“I never thought to get one. It wasn’t really like I needed a map. Besides, they’re not that reliable anyway.”

“True. Alright, I’ll leave you to your plotting.”

The tiny bit of calm that had come over Chan Yu Ming vanished in an instant. She gave Sen a smile that she probably thought looked cheerful, but came across as sickly. He almost felt bad for her. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she didn’t want to get married, or at least she didn’t want to get married to whoever her family had picked out. It was equally clear that she hadn’t figured out a way to make her plan work and conform to Sen’s expectations. The part of him that took a bit of joy out of acting against expectations almost wanted to help her. If he was being honest with himself and he didn’t have the certainty of death looming over him, he probably would have played along for his own amusement. Ever since Falling Leaf had informed him of the literal deadline he was working under, though, he hadn’t been indulging those impish impulses the way he might do in other circumstances. So, instead of asking her about her clearly failed planning efforts, he fell back to walk with Lo Meifeng.

“You’ve been to the capital before?”

“I have.”

“We’ll need somewhere to stay while we’re there. I’ll also need somewhere to offload some beast cores that won’t get me robbed the second I leave the place.”

Lo Meifeng thought for a moment. “Finding lodging isn’t that difficult. Finding good lodging at reasonable prices, and I’m talking reasonable for the capital, is something else. It all really depends on how high your standards are and how much risk you want to take on.”

“I’d prefer somewhere we won’t be sharing our accommodations with rats and insects, can get baths, and where they make decent food. Not having people try to rob us in the middle of the night would also be nice.”

She nodded, “So, basically, anywhere that I’d willingly stay.”

Sen looked over at her and offered a half smile. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“There are plenty of those places in the city, but it’s always an open question about whether they’ll have open rooms. You can waste a lot of time going from place to place to find accommodations. It’ll take less time to find you alchemy shops where you can sell those cores. Most alchemists keep their mouths shut when people come in selling good beast cores. They want you to come back with more cores.”

“That’s good to know,” said Sen, thinking hard.

Sen knew what the obvious solution to the lodging problem was, he just didn’t love it. The obvious solution was to let Lo Meifeng travel ahead of them and make arrangements. There was still a part of him that thought that was a great way to get set up for some kind of betrayal. Still, he supposed he had to start extending trust somewhere. If he couldn’t trust her to find them rooms, the whole experiment was going to collapse in no time.

Sen didn’t let himself sigh before he said, “I assume you know the places with the best odds of meeting our needs.”

“I do,” said Lo Meifeng cautiously.

“Then, you should go ahead to the city first and make arrangements.”

Lo Meifeng’s face was frozen for a moment before she said, “I can do that.”

Sen extracted a bag of coins from his storage ring that had a mix of different types of taels and handed it to her. “Is that enough to get started?”

She briefly opened the bag, tilted it back and forth to get a sense of what it contained, and then closed it. “Yes, that should be more than sufficient.”

“We’ve got, what, about three more days to get there at this pace?”

“Yes,” said Lo Meifeng, “something like that. Assuming you don’t run into some kind of trouble you can’t get yourself out of.”

“Hopefully, we won’t run into that kind of trouble. Is that enough time?”

“It should be more than enough. I can meet you or have someone meet you at the southern gate three days from now.”

A bit of the old paranoia spiked inside of Sen, and he ruthlessly beat it down. “That sounds like a workable plan.”

Lo Meifeng glanced up at the sky, judging how many hours of travel she could reasonably complete before it got dark enough to make travel inconvenient. “I should leave now. If I make decent time, I could be in the capital by tomorrow evening.”

“I won’t hold you up then,” said Sen.

“Three days, then,” she said and started to move away at a significantly faster pace.

“Lo Meifeng,” he called after her.

She looked back over her shoulder, her face devoid of expression. “Yes?”

Sen had intended to issue a threat or a warning but changed his mind. “We likely have enemies there already. Be cautious.”

Her fixed expression softened into one of muted surprise and relief. “I will.”

Then, she was gone done the road, making liberal use of her qinggong technique. Sen stared down the road after her as his concern over whether he’d made a mistake warred his determination to at least try to repair that relationship. He felt more than heard or saw Falling Leaf come to walk by him.

“That was hard for you,” she said.

“It was,” he admitted.

“Good,” she said.

“Good? Why is that a good thing?”

“Doing the difficult things refines your will and resolve.”

“Do you feel like I’m lacking in those areas?” he asked with a bemused smile.

Falling Leaf tilted her head to one side and said, “No, but you can’t have too much will or resolve.”

“No, I guess you can’t.”