Liren found Tian behind the boarding house, carefully pointing out bits of dirt to his fascinated audience of kids. There were only five of them, but they had enough disbelieving wonder for twenty.
“I know it doesn’t smell like anything now, but I guarantee you, practice for a week and give the dirt a sniff. Under piles of old trash is the best, but you never know what’s going to start smelling good. Then you eat it. Dirt, trash, whatever. Once Gourmet starts going, so long as you keep practicing it, your body will turn that good smelling stuff into medicine. But only for you, it doesn’t work if someone else eats it.”
“Lies! Priest Tian is a liar!” A daring boy yelled.
“I shall prove it!” Tian scooped up a bit of dirt. “See this clump? Now, I’m healthy, so it doesn’t smell like much, but if I sniff,” He sniffed. “There is a little bit of the good stuff in there.” Tian popped the dirt into his mouth, chewed twice, and swallowed. The kids went “Eeew!” as expected. Tian carried on regardless.
“I’m going to be honest with you. The texture never becomes nice. It always just feels gritty, and it can hurt your teeth if you chew it too much. Wash it down with water, that’s my advice. Also, it can’t replace food all by itself. You do still need to eat properly. It’s a medicine and will help keep you healthy, like the calisthenics."
“Does it really work?” A different boy asked in a whining tone that, were the person he were speaking to not a respectable daoist cultivator, would inspire immediate thoughts of percussive pedagogy.
“It does. Little Bu, right? You are… ten?”
“I’m six!”
“Right. Yes. I was definitely as big and strong as you when I was six. For sure.” Tian nodded with great conviction. Liren eyed the utterly ordinary Little Bu, then eyed Tian. There was a great deal of white in that eyeball. A moment later, her shoulders sagged.
“Alright, once more through the forms, then everyone gets a bun and their candy for the cleaning job. I don’t know how many days I will be here, but if I am here tomorrow, there will be buns for those who practice, and a meat bun for the child who shows the most improvement.” More tempting than honey were the words of Tian.
After the kids were given their food and sent on their way, Tian walked over to Liren. “There will be a couple dozen “miraculous recoveries” in the next week. While I would certainly love to take credit, it was really them healing themselves. At most, my acupuncture and administration of medicinal tea just helped things along.”
“And really?” Liren had found herself a wide brimmed hat, with a thick veil that went all the way around. Tian could see through it, but mortal eyes wouldn’t be able to. The familiar ache pulled at his heart, but what could he say that he hadn’t already said?
“It was tiny bits of mountain lettuce, mixed with the duckweed and carefully diluted, combined with the acupuncture, and ultimately, for seven of the patients, the Demon Pulling art. Most of them would have recovered with adequate nutrition, even if I didn’t get involved.” Tian smiled, his lips tight against his teeth.
“If they got adequate nutrition.”
“Yes. If.”
The silence settled around them, cupped in the sounds of the city.
“It’s not a famine, yet.” Liren shook her head. “Plenty of food. It’s just that prices have gone way up because everyone sees what’s coming, and nobody’s stupid.”
“The patients mentioned prices being up. A lot of them mentioned bandits and rebels. That, and a lot of merchant houses collapsing. The Imperial Court, to their immense shock, have discovered that not all their merchants have been obeying Imperial law. Particularly in regards to things like applicable taxation rates, the salt trade, the sale of slaves, permissible terms for loans, the maintenance of private armies, arming those private armies with forbidden weapons and armor, the use, possession and sale of illicit goods, murder, robbery, arson, theft, rebellion, rape, improper sanitation, failing to observe public holidays, defaming the Imperial Family, heresy, and selling short weight of grain. This is a brief summary, you understand.” Tian’s voice grew increasingly dry as he ran through the list.
Liren laughed. “Listed in no particular order. Well, I’m very nearly as shocked as the Imperial Court. Not as shocked, but very nearly.”
Tian nodded, his face grave. “Who could possibly have foreseen such corruption? And who could possibly have known?”
“The civil service does sort of leap to mind.” Liren’s grin turned nasty.
“The civil service is currently jumping like fleas on a hot plate, according to Madame Rou. Who is one of the patients I treated. It seems that there is less a reformation and more an enthusiastic culling of the Imperial Bureaucracy underway. I don’t know that this exact moment was the best time for it, but it’s when it’s happening.”
Liren grunted, then changed the subject. “I couldn’t track down the disease. Or… I could, but it’s everywhere. If there is a single point of origin, I can’t find it. Not sure how it’s being spread either. I did make contact with the local Heavenly cultivators, of which there are three. They are all loose cultivators who settled in this area, just living quietly and cultivating their dao.”
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She gave him a flat look, making him snort.
“They don’t operate a shop or anything, but they meet once or twice a year and swap any excess they might have accumulated. Naturally, they are more than happy to trade for what we might have stumbled upon. Particularly if what we have stumbled upon is spirit stones. Never enough of those.”
“Did they say that as a group, or individually?”
“Individually, though the message was essentially the same. We aren’t welcome to stay, but we are very welcome to trade as we pass on through.”
“Will they give us any trouble if we are here for a week?”
“I don’t think they would care if we are here for a year, so long as we don’t take a single breath of qi that might otherwise have landed in their lungs. Let alone a single spirit stone. I don’t have much to judge against, but I’d bet they are the survivors of sects that were wiped out or collapsed.” Liren’s mouth twisted. “I know the look of someone who once had money, but needs to scrounge and economize these days.”
Tian nodded. “Speaking of, should we go looking for your granny?”
“No.” Liren didn’t elaborate. Tian flashed an empty smile. Liren’s relationship with her grandma was, at best, based on interests.
“I want to spend at least a couple of days here. I have an idea.” Tian flicked a finger in the direction the kids ran off. “We should swing back to Doctor Jin’s place. He had tiger bone wine on display. He must know how to make it. I can’t imagine just shoving the scraped and boiled bones in the wine is enough.”
“You want to teach those stretching exercises you were demonstrating.”
“Yeah. They really work, you know. I’m not kidding. They saved my life.”
The two walked down the street. Tian nodded at the beggar, who cupped his fist and nodded very politely back. Tian’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Speaking of life saving, we should stock up on food while we are here. Particularly steamed buns. I’ll need a lot of them.”
Liren smiled at that. “Already hit three grocery stores. Let’s hit some bakeries too.”
“Lets.” Tian blew out a long sigh. “I just turned immortal-ish, and somehow, there isn’t enough time for everything.”
“Immortal-ish? And what do you mean, not enough time?”
“Well, we still have a life span, it’s just a very long one. I want to spread Calesthenics and Gourmet. It’s going to save a hell of a lot of lives. It might even push back on the spread of the plague, if enough people take it up. Then I want to work on a palm art. I have an idea about how to make my own art, but it’s only an idea. Then I want to start practicing that staff art. Then we need to rush down south and see if we can’t find Hanshen. And I need to be cultivating Heavenly Realm level Imperial Swallows darts, and properly elevate my usage of the art to the Heavenly Level. Then we need to cultivate. Constantly cultivate. And adventure. And find the other half of Teacher’s disciple. And slander Venerable Earth’s Blessings. And find new teas. We need to get that silk woven into armor or robes. And…”
“I get it!” Liren laughed. “Well, we can’t delegate most of that, but you can delegate teaching those stretching exercises of yours. Those kids won’t cut it. You need adults, and organized adults. A school, for example. Or a sect.”
Tian laughed softly. “Or the Civil Service.”
“Honestly? Yes, especially them.”
The streets were busy, now, as evening closed in. People rushed home, not wanting to linger in the wine houses and restaurants. The food was rushing out of the groceries, too. Oil and vinegar sellers shouted that they didn’t know when they would get more in, so buy now. Peddlers yelled out offers to sharpen knives, while fish merchants reminded everyone of how cooling and nutritious river fish could be.
“It feels so alive.” Tian hadn’t realized he had spoken until the words had escaped for a few minutes. “Every time we come to a city, it is so overwhelming, and noisy, and scary, but so alive. You can feel it vibrating under your feet. That struggle to grow. Like a jungle of people.”
They wandered through the streets, in no particular rush. The bakeries had closed for the evening, but the restaurants were just starting to really get going.
“That dragon ranking guide-”
“Rising Dragon-Phoenix rankings.” Liren supplied.
“Right, them. Wasteland of Song edition. Which suggests that other places aren’t wastelands.”
Liren shrugged. Then frowned. “Oh… now that’s interesting.”
“Isn’t it? Makes you wonder what a real cultivator city looks like. Can you imagine a place where the peasants are in the earthly realm and the townsfolk are Heavenly Realm, with the wealthy in the Human Realm and nobles in… whatever comes next?”
Liren shook her head, smiling. “It would make shopping a lot easier. I have no idea where we are going to get that silk woven.”
“I’m still trying to figure out what the hell to do with that mushroom. I mean, it’s seething with earth and metal qi. We have to use it for something.”
Tian watched a street performer balance on one hand and fling darts at a wooden target with another. Still balanced on one hand, he drew a folded paper fan from inside his robe, opened it with a flash, and flung it upwards. A brilliantly thrown dart pierced the folds from left to right, pinning it closed again. The crowd burst into applause, tossing copper cash at the performer’s feet. The performer had a raggedy look to him, a beggar, perhaps, with two small sacks hanging from a strap across the front of his chest.
Tian’s eyes narrowed, watching the show. “You know I read everything very carefully.”
“Ancestors, do I know. Everyone on the mountain, everyone, the damn hegemons on the mountain, know. They probably know across eight kingdoms. ‘Don’t let that kid read,’ they tell each other. ‘You don’t know if he’ll end up believing what you taught him.’”
“Ho ho.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Moving swiftly along,” Tian said, determined to ignore the probable truth of what she was saying. “I remember a certain something I read when I was looking at dart arts back at Depot Four. And some things my brothers mentioned in passing.”
“Oh?”
“We need adults, who are organized, and used to teaching. Adults who have experience with body conditioning exercises. Most crucially, adults who are willing to eat dirt. If I remember correctly, and I do, the beggers of the Broadsky Kingdom have their own sect. I think I’m going to introduce them to a new saint and monastic order. Medicine Saint Jun, and the Street Sweeping Mendicants. They left a couple of manuals behind, you see, and I think it would suit beggers well.”