Book 3: Chapter 59: Trading Tales (3)

Book 3: Chapter 59: Trading Tales (3)

Sen ended up making breakfast the next day since he was up first, or at least the first to wander out into the main room. It was always hard to gauge how long any given cultivator would sleep because there was no good way to gauge how long it had been since they last slept. He’d been getting regular sleep recently, so sleeping for a few hours had almost been an indulgence. It had been a chance for his mind to rest, though. He was still pondering the problem of Falling Leaf. The casual way with which she’d disrobed had caught him off guard. After a moment of aesthetic appreciation for the lithe young woman, though, he’d gone into healer mode. There was something off about her, something that twinged his cultivator senses. If she did that to him, she’d likely do it to others. It turned out that it wasn’t something physical. She looked like a normal human woman. Well, she looked like a normal human woman cultivator with all that entailed, albeit one with green eyes. Having ascertained that it wasn’t some physical trait he was picking up on in some barely conscious way, he suggested she should put her robes back on.

Her face twisted in unhappiness, and she said, “But they’re uncomfortable.”

Understanding had dawned at that point. No wonder she seemed so eager to undress, thought Sen. He supposed clothing of any kind was still relatively new for her. Not so new that she’d adjust her clothes all the time, but new enough that she’d likely take almost any excuse to get rid of them if she could. He suppressed a laugh before it could form. It wouldn’t do to laugh at her discomfort. He could even appreciate it a little. He remembered all too well how uncomfortable he’d been that first year as a cultivator. Granted, Falling Leaf wasn’t precisely new to cultivation, but she was new to being a human cultivator. He was once again confronted with just how much she’d sacrificed for him. He picked up her robe from the floor and handed it to her.

“It’s not generally appropriate to be undressed with someone of the opposite sex. It’s a culture thing.”

Falling Leaf sighed and started putting the robe back on. “The Caihong said the same thing. I hoped you wouldn’t care.”

“It’s not so much that I care. It’s more that it’s distracting. Undressing that way in front of a man is usually interpreted as a desire to,” Sen tried to think of the right term to make it clear, “mate.”

Falling Leaf stared down at her half-dressed body and grimaced. “Why would anyone want to mate with this? It’s so unsightly.”

Sen did laugh at that, which drew a perplexed look from Falling Leaf.

“I assure you that human men will not find you unsightly. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed that already.”

Falling Leaf shrugged. “Most of the human men I spoke to were screaming.”

“Screaming?”

“In pain. In fear. We were not gentle with the demonic cultivators. Especially not when you disappeared.”

“I see,” said Sen.

He was a little startled at Falling Leaf’s nonchalant viciousness. Then again, she was a cat at heart. She finished putting her robe back on and gave Sen a look.

“There. Is that less distracting?” she asked, loading the word distracting with seven kinds of doubt.

“Yes. Thank you. I understand that you might have been harsh with the demonic cultivators, but what about the other human men you spoke with?”

“I did not.”

“You didn’t what?”

“Speak with them. I left that to the,” she took a very obvious pause, “to Ma Caihong.”Trace the lineage of this substance back to the dawn of Nøv€lß¡n★

“You didn’t speak to them at all? Surely some of them must have spoken to you.”

“They did.”

Sen wasn’t sure exactly how going to bed with someone would be part of a political game, but he trusted that Auntie Caihong knew what she was talking about.

“So, I should seek out Fu Ruolan instead, if the Clear Springs sect doesn’t have the manual?” Sen asked, a little dubious.

“That woman is...difficult, at the best of times. Still, she might actually be the better choice here.”

Ma Caihong gave Master Feng a look that suggested she thought he’d suffered a massive head injury that was affecting his judgment. “That woman isn’t difficult. She’s insane.”

“She’s not insane,” said Master Feng. “She’s strange, but her reason is intact. It’s her emotions you can’t be sure of.”

“Still, sending Sen to her is ill-advised, at best.”

Sen had gotten used to this kind of bickering between the two over the years, but it never led anywhere productive, so he cut them off. “I have three possible options for finding the manual I think we all agree I won’t survive without. The Golden Phoenix sect, Fu Roulan, and the Clear Spring sect. Since it seems like there’s only a slim chance the Clear Spring sect has it, I need a second option. It’s either the capital or Fu Ruolan unless one of you has a line on another place I could get it. Do you?”

There was some hedging and vague talk about possible locations, at least two of which Sen knew were mythical, but the takeaway was that they didn’t have a better plan. At least, they didn’t at the moment.

“Okay,” said Sen, “so given the two options that I realistically have available, which is better? Which carries more risk?”

There was more grumbling and hedging.

“It’s a coin toss,” said Uncle Kho after five minutes of additional bickering from Master Feng and Auntie Caihong. “The risks in the capital are more numerous, but they’re diffuse. No one there is, to our knowledge, specifically looking for you or to cause you trouble. If there is trouble, though, it can come at you from a lot of different angles, all at the same time. Plus, negotiating with the Golden Phoenix sect is going to be troublesome. They won’t want to give you that manual or a copy of it without extracting something very valuable from you. Either some kind of service you absolutely won’t want to do or some kind of nearly impossible-to-find treasure.

“With Fu Ruolan, who is crazy by the way, the risk is very specific and very direct. If you make a bad impression or simply catch her on the wrong day, it’s very likely that she’ll kill you or punish you in some terrible way. If you make a good impression or catch her on the right day, you could walk out an hour later with what you need. Assuming you can find her at all, which is not guaranteed. No one really knows where she lives, just a general area she roams in. So, either option has a high risk of failure as well.”

Sen looked over at Falling Leaf. “What do you think?”

“Insanity is always a danger to avoid,” she said with utter certainty.

Sen waited for more but that was apparently the entirety of her thoughts on the matter. Trying to hide his reluctance, he looked to Lo Meifeng. “How about you? What do you think?”

Lo Meifeng shifted uncomfortably as everyone looked at her, but she plunged ahead. “I don’t know anything of value about Fu Ruolan. I thought she was a cultivator ghost story until today. I mean, honestly, an insane nascent soul cultivator? It sounds like a story you’d made up to scare outer sect disciples into behaving. So, in practical terms, I’d be more useful to you in the capital, but I don’t know if that makes the capital a better choice.”

“Do you know anyone in the capital?” Sen asked.

It had sounded casual enough, a natural follow-up to her statement, but she knew what he was really asking.

“I have some contacts there, but no one I’d consider close.”

Sen nodded and weighed his options. He hadn’t done well in cities so far. It was just a flaw in his personality. He wasn’t flexible enough, not willing to bend enough to suit the whims of those who saw themselves as powerful. He could try to keep that in check if he had some warning, but if someone just started acting like he owed them something because they were breathing in the same vicinity as him, he’d fall back to form. He knew it. On the other hand, his last experience with a crazy person living out in the middle of nowhere hadn’t gone very well, either. Plus, it sounded like he’d only have a fifty-fifty shot at surviving an encounter with Fu Ruolan. That was assuming he could even find her in the first place. Granted, wandering around in the wilds didn’t sound so bad to him anymore now that he wasn’t going to be on the run. Falling Leaf would probably love it. Lo Meifeng would probably hate it, which made it sound more appealing to the small part of Sen that was petty. Of course, the goal wasn’t to punish Lo Meifeng but to get a manual that would help keep him alive.

“I’m going to need to pick your brains about the capital,” he announced.