Chapter 27: Tea (12)

Chapter 27: Tea (12)

After a moment, Liling let out a dissatisfied harrumph. "You've put your mind on cultivation."

"Only for self-defense," Muchen protested. In the long run he was also interested in the idea of eternal life, but old age wasn't yet a pressing concern.

"I could pick up a set of scriptures from the market and try it out for myself," Liling said. "For self-defense."

"Your father...." Muchen said, trailing off into a sigh. As much as Uncle Haoyu wanted to avoid associating with cultivators, he'd never be too harsh on his only daughter. Whether Muchen would escape unscathed upon the discovery that he had led Liling astray was a different matter. "You shouldn't just believe everything you read in the books."

Muchen was hardly an expert, but now that he had some personal experience with cultivation he could look back on the books that he had read when he first started out and recognize that they'd been half filled with nonsense. He'd been lucky the meditative exercise he'd picked up had done anything at all. Even then, he hadn't made any real progress until he received personal instruction from Xinyi.

"You have any better advice for me?" Liling asked.

Muchen didn't reply immediately. He thought back to his own experience with cultivation. In particular, the frustration he'd felt when he'd been prevented from following his dao, and the excitement and relief when he'd finally gotten past that obstacle.

"Just, think carefully before you pick a dao," Muchen said.

"I know," Liling said, with the air of someone who had already spent some time reading a cultivation treatise, "I need to pick a weapon that's suitable for me."

"It doesn't have to be a weapon," Muchen said. "Your dao is the path that you'll walk for the rest of your life. You should choose something that makes you happy."

Muchen could only imagine how annoying it would be to be saddled for all eternity with an itch to carry out some onerous chore. Of course, the effort required to actually connect to a dao probably ensured that such a thing wouldn't happen, but he still felt better for having delivered the warning.

"It would help," Liling said, "if you could give me a proper lesson on cultivation."

"Bad enough if your father thinks I inspired you to try cultivating," Muchen said, shaking his head. "Besides, I don't dare to give lessons with my paltry abilities."

"Fine," Liling said, crossing her arms over her chest. Thanks to years of experience as a social animal, Muchen was confident that matters were not, in fact, fine. Unfortunately, he didn't know that there was anything he could do about it.

"Please be careful," he said.

"I don't see that that's any of your business," Liling said. She tossed her head and stalked off. Muchen considered for a moment offering to accompany her back to the family estate before deciding that discretion was the better part of valor.

He finished packing up and hopped onto the driver's bench. Xinyi's voice sounded in his ear a moment later.

"You have a lot to learn."

He shrugged. "I don't have the experience to give advice related to cultivation that's nearly as helpful as yours."

Xinyi was silent as Muchen navigated the next few turns. He almost thought she had dropped the topic before he caught her next remark, barely on the edge of his ability to hear.

"That novelhall.com

Muchen opened his mouth, ready to defend himself against the idea that he'd been expressing any kind of impatience, but caught himself. The last thing he wanted to do was distract Xinyi while she was in the middle of a delicate operation. Especially when she was helping him out.

The glow on the card changed color from a soft steady white to a flickering red. As he watched the red tint faded away, soon replaced by yellow, then green. The flicker slowed until it was a gentle pulse, then smoothed out until the card was surrounded by a gentle green glow.

"A cultivation technique," Xinyi said. "Higher level than I'd thought was still around on this continent, too."

"No wonder Heisan sought me out," Muchen said, "if he realized we were holding on to such a treasure."

"The more fool he for coveting his master's cultivation secrets," Xinyi said, shaking her head. "It would be useless for him."

"Why?" Muchen asked.

"The Storm Dragon scripture requires you to build your foundation using lightning aspected spiritual energy," Xinyi said. "Without an elder around who can feed you a gentle trickle of the stuff, all you can do is head out into a thunderstorm and try your luck."

Muchen winced. From everything that he'd heard, building a foundation was a complex and delicate endeavor. Not something he'd want to do while he was busy trying to survive being struck by lightning.

Although.... lightning was just electricity, right? It had been a while since Muchen took high school physics, but he thought he remembered a few ways to go about generating a gentle trickle of electricity. He wasn't sure how well that would translate into producing properly aspected spiritual energy, but it might be worth seeing if he could find some magnets on the market and conduct a few experiments.

Of course, all of that was a concern for the future. For now, the more immediate issue was how he was going to navigate his deal with Heisan.

"Do you think he really left the Long family?" Muchen asked.

Xinyi waved a flipper dismissively. "Rats leave a sinking ship. There's no shortage of servants who would love to step on their masters' heads in order to advance, if only they could find the opportunity."

"I don't know," Muchen said. "He couldn't be the one who hid the jade in the first place. Somebody must have trusted Heisan in order to share that secret."

Muchen couldn't help but conjure up the scenario in his head. A well established clan like the Long family would have branches scattered throughout the country. Even if the imperial troops tried to root out the entire family, it would be difficult to find them all. Perhaps there was some distant cousin of the main line out there with great talent who had been denied access to the main family's techniques in order to keep him from overshadowing the main line. Maybe he didn't even know he was related to the illustrious Long family. Not until a faithful servant arrived, bearing a heaven-defying cultivation technique and a mission of revenge.

"That doesn't mean he'll live up to that trust in the end," Xinyi replied.

Either way, given a choice Muchen would prefer to stay far away from this situation. Whether it was the Long family making a comeback and settling scores or the Emperor rooting out traitors, he didn't want to be in anybody's crosshairs. Unfortunately, it didn't look like he had a choice.

The problem wouldn't vanish even if he were to make Heisan disappear. He was pretty sure Heisan wasn't acting alone. Somebody knew where the jade had been hidden and had figured out that Muchen had it. They might not realize he had figured out the secret, but once Heisan vanished then the jig would be up. Muchen didn't want to live the rest of his life waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Can you make a copy of the information?" he asked.

"Of course," Xinyi said. "This would actually be rather suitable for you to build your foundation, if it weren't for the stringent requirements."

Muchen smiled. "Heisan will be looking to take advantage of us after the auction, once we're outside of the capital. It will be a good opportunity to alter our arrangement."

Only one question still tickled at the back of his mind: what did Heisan want from the auction? He'd obviously approached Muchen in the hopes of getting the cultivation technique away from him, but he was also clearly interested in the auction. If he had truly betrayed the Long family, then maybe he just wanted to use inside information to get rich. If he was a loyal servant, though, then there had to be more to it.

Finding the cultivation technique had solved a big part of the puzzle. Muchen had two more days to put the rest of the pieces together.