For a moment, Yun Li considered striking out at the mysterious cultivator with her half-formed Fulmination Blade technique. It would destroy the inn, but such a loss might be worth testing this man who refused to even tell her his name.

  She wasn’t in the habit of attacking people, but something about him irked her. So, when she saw him facing away, she decided to give him a little shock. It was a common prank amongst the Storming Tortoise Clan…

  Yet he’d known she was there the whole time, even though she suppressed her qi as tightly as possible. To have such an instinct…

  Her Young Mistress could learn a lot from this man.

  “My apologies,” she said as she lowered her hand and dismissed her qi. “Merely a good-natured test.”

  He smiled, and she couldn’t place the emotion. There was something in his eyes. Something she didn’t understand. In all two hundred and forty-four years she’d been alive, she’d never seen a human smile like that.

  “Won’t you be joining us?” she said.

  “I’m afraid I must decline,” he said as he produced a dirty cabbage from inside the fresh black robe that Special Inspector Deng gifted him.

  He held the cabbage with white knuckles, as though he feared she might take it from him. Her qi surged. He dared presume she would lower herself to stealing a cabbage!

  The inn rumbled, and dishes cracked throughout the restaurant, but the man before her was unfazed.

  “Thank you for the offer of your hospitality,” he said as though nothing had happened. “But I’m afraid I have an urgent task to attend to.”

  It took an effort of extreme will, but she calmed her thunderous qi. One by one, the mortals in the restaurant started breathing again. She would have to spread wealth in compensation: her clan could afford the bribes, but not the bad reputation that would impact the upcoming Four Dragon Carnival.

  The stranger before her noticed the diners in the inn relaxing and seemed to relax as well. Was he one of the rare cultivators who sympathized with mortals? He clearly wasn’t an Imperial agent, nor did she believe he was from one of the local sects. Could he be a spy from a rival kingdom?

  He was a mystery.

  “May I ask who trained you?” she said.

  He glanced down at the cabbage.

  “I’d rather not say…”

  “I understand,” she said through clenched teeth. “I know you must leave, but the Yun Clan owes you a debt. I’d like to offer you a position within our clan. If you have any questions, I can —”

  “That’s quite alright,” he said with that same smile. “If it’s all the same to you, I am rather busy.”

  She felt a vein pulse in her forehead. He denied her offer? Everyone in the Black Tiger Kingdom envied the Yun Clan’s wealth. After all, the treasures of the Yun were as bright as the lightning of the Storming Tortoise.

  “Oh?” she said. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he said. “Thank you for the offer.”

  “Well…” Yun Lin said, at a loss for the first time in decades. “Before you leave, I must insist you take this.”

  She produced a small box from her storage ring and presented it to the stranger. He took it with a polite bow.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Inside the box lay an elaborate seal of jade and gold.

  “It’s a passenger seal for the Yun Clan’s Bright Floating Tortoise,” she explained. “We’re docked at Golden Egg City for the next month before we embark North up White Horse River.”

  His eyes widened at her explanation, and Yun Li felt intense gratification.

  “If you’re sure I can’t convince you to stay,” she said. “I’ll let you go on your way.”

  “Thank you,” he said with another bow. “Truly, this is a wonderful gift.”

  With that, he walked away down the stairs and out of the restaurant. The moment he was gone from her sight, he was gone from her senses.

  Yun Li clicked her tongue.

  “I hate mysterious men,” she said as she turned back to attend the dinner with her Young Mistress.

  ###

  I hurried out into the night air, not even daring to breathe. Of course, I didn’t need to breathe, or even pump my heart, which was lucky since shutting down all those bodily functions was the only reason I didn’t freak out when face to face with a damned Core Formation cultivator!

  Light and music and delicious aromas spilled out from the restaurant as though there weren’t deadly cultivators inside.

  I took a moment to catch my bearings. Figuratively and literally — for as I peered around the forest surrounding the roadside inn, I realized I had no idea where I was.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “You did good, kid,” Cabbagy said from within my robe. “That ticket is more valuable than a hot dinner. Though I’d say those hot women might be even more —”

  “Wait!”

  I turned around to see who shouted, and Chen Ai burst out of the upper-story window with her pack over one shoulder. She crashed down onto the ground beside me with a bottle of wine in one hand and a chicken drumstick in the other. Her blonde hair flailed around her as her body crackled with qi.

  “You’re not going anywhere without me.”

  “What?” I said.

  She took a large bite of chicken and threw the bone away toward the trees.

  “You saved my life,” she said. “So now I’m going to save your life.”

  “My life doesn’t need saving… does it?”

  She shrugged and adjusted the heavy pack on her back.

  “You’re a wandering cultivator, right? It’ll need saving eventually.”

  I frowned, not quite sure how to tell her to leave me alone.

  “You know, kid… she has an ox bloodline.”

  “Hmm?”

  “And she’s got a great fat pair of —”

  “Damn it,” I ground out. “I’m going back up to Sleeping Ruin Pass as soon as I figure out how to get there.”

  “I don’t know!” said the road in a cheerfully unhelpful tone.

  I squeezed my eyes shut against the insanity pressing in on me. This was the opposite of what I wanted when I first saw those campfires in the pass. A little bit of socialising with a farmer, maybe a travelling merchant. Not this.

  None of this.

  “I know the way,” Chen Ai said.

  “Huh?”

  “I know how to get to Sleeping Ruin Pass.”

  “You do?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Of course I do. I’ve been roaming this region for long enough to know my way around. I’m heading back that way as well,” she said as she pulled her robe aside to reveal a deep wound across her chest. It was healing, but still looked brutal. “I owe the Flawless Blade some retribution.”

  “Will you tell me which way to go?”

  “Better,” she said as she walked along the path in the opposite direction I was heading. “I’ll show you."

  “Fine,” I said. “Thank you.”

  She beamed a grin at me as she uncorked the large bottle of wine.

  “Damn, kid, you’re one lucky son of —”

  “I’ll throw you in a ditch, Cabbagy.”

  “Master, kid. Call me master.”

  ###

  It turned out that a Core Formation cultivator’s magical flying cloud flew a lot faster than I thought. It took two days of hiking along a forest road before Chen Ai and I reached the entrance to Sleeping Ruin Pass.

  “Told you,” Chen Ai said with a now familiar smugness.

  “Yes, you did.”

  We continued up the road, and Cabbagy continued whispering in my ear as he had the last two days. There was more to learning a martial art than I'd expected, and with every word I understood that I was scratching the surface of something far deeper. I tried my best to pay attention, but it didn't help that he was frequently distracted by our travelling companion. However, I refused to entertain any of his more graphic descriptions.

  After hiking for hours, we found the site of our first meeting.

  Even though the snake had died far from the road, her corpse was easy enough to find. Besides the trail of broken tree branches and churned dirt, there were also clouds of flies. Two days in the sun were enough for even spirit beast meat to start rotting, and the pestilent scavengers blotted the sky. A carpet of maggots squirmed on the forest floor as we picked our way closer.

  Fortunately, neither of us counted on using the snake for food.

  I was glad for the deer that Chen Ai caught the previous night. A single rock thrown by a Qi Condensing cultivator was as good as a mortal’s bow and arrow, and we’d eaten well. I’d also snuck away while she slept to eat a few more deer on my own. That larder in my soul didn’t feel quite right unless it was packed to the brim.

  “Disgusting,” Chen Ai said as she stepped around a bubbling puddle of spilled poison. “Do you think the scales are still any good?”

  We covered our noses and inspected the corpse. Despite the spoiled meat, the emerald scales still shone in the sunlight. I rapped them with my knuckle and found them as hard as ever.

  “You want to harvest this mess?” I said.

  She shrugged.

  “A wandering cultivator needs to find money somehow.”

  Cabbagy’s words rang in my head, though he didn’t speak to me at that time. The few days in the sun had left him worse for wear. I was starting to wonder how much time he had left.

  Chen Ai produced a well-used hunting knife from her seemingly endless pack and angled the blade against an opening in the scales.

  “I’ll cut and you pull,” she said. “We’ll have this snake naked before you know it.”

  It took hours, but eventually we walked away with enough scales to clothe a village and a beast core that looked like a grapefruit-sized lump of frozen grass.

  “A wood qi core of this size will fetch a decent prize,” Chen Ai said with a grin. “I told you it was worth cutting out.”

  “I never said it wasn’t.”

  “It was implied.”

  We walked away from the flies and the rot and found a river to wash our hands. The water ran fast and clear, showing the stones at the bottom and fish swimming against the current. We split ways for the moment, with me walking ahead upriver and leaving Chen Ai behind to wash her clothes and bathe in privacy.

  Once I found a nice spot, I spot cleaned Cabbagy, being sure not to wash away the dried blood that was structural. Once clean, I placed him on a sunlit rock to dry.

  “Kid…”

  “Yes, master?”

  “I’m not long for this world.”

  “Oh… no…”

  “Shut it you ungrateful… cough… cough…”

  Actual concern replaced my insincere frown.

  “Cabbagy?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He didn’t look fine. He was more yellow than green, and I’d started holding his leaves together with a string to prevent them from falling apart.

  “Kid, I want you to promise me something.”

  “As long as it isn’t repulsive.”

  “I would never… cough…”

  “What’s the request, Cabbagy?”

  “Master.”

  “What’s the request, Master?”

  “I want you to find my wife and tell her I’m…”

  “Tell her what?”

  “I’m… this is hard to say…”

  “You’re what, Master? Sorry? Annoying? Disgusting?”

  “Cough… hey, shut up! Tell her… cough… tell her I didn’t know it was her sister, and I never would have done that if I knew. I’m… I’m sorry.”

  “Her sister?” I couldn’t keep the disgust out of my voice. “What did you do?”

  “You don’t get to judge, kid! All us cabbages look the same!”

  I ignored the fact that he no longer had a cough.

  “I’ll find your wife and I’ll tell her,” I said. “But honestly, how am I supposed to find her when all cabbages look the same?”

  “You’re… cough cough… not allowed to say things like that.”

  I clenched my teeth to stop myself from shouting.

  “Sorry. How can I find your wife?”

  “She said she was done with dirt fields, and that she was heading off to the city where lights shine bright and anything is possible.”

  “So…”

  “I didn’t get an exact address! She was too busy throwing things at me… damn, she was hot when she was mad… just your type, kid. Hell, she was anyone’s type. That’s probably why she was so popular at her job.”

  I didn’t even want to ask what Cabbagy thought my type was, or why it would be a cabbage.

  Something he said jogged my memory, and I inspected the jade and gold seal that Yun Lin gifted me.

  “This is an entrance ticket to the Bright Floating Turtle. It’s supposed to be a grand place of entertainment. Maybe that’s where your wife went?’

  Cabbage gave his best shrug.

  “Could be, kid. Could be.”

  There was a distinct sadness in his voice, and so I knelt and bowed my head to the dirt.

  “Don’t worry, Master. I’ll find your wife and I’ll deliver your message.”

  “Tell her… cough… tell her that she always made me laugh, and that I wept when she left, and that... I’ve never forgotten how her curves captured the morning dew…”

  I couldn't tell what emotions passed through him, and I did my best not to intrude.

  “I’ll tell her.”

  “Good… good,” he said, and he seemed to age before my eyes, as though something vital leaked into the air. “Now, pay attention, kid. I’m going to teach you the next form of my Cabbagy Style!”

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