Night Job

I had never seen much of my family even when I was a child. I only knew we were constantly travelling, and sometimes I would even be placed under the care of a "family friend", who were frankly all very eccentric and usually left me on my own. But I knew both my parents were powerful cultivators, and they also encouraged me on the path to cultivation. Unfortunately, one day while under the care of a "family friend", I heard both of them perished outside. The "family friend", a rather nice lady, suddenly looked very panicked. After giving me a few things and not telling me much, she sent me to a random city in the secular world "for my safety" and said I wasn't to come back to Kunwu or contact her again until I became powerful enough to protect myself.

I was 9 at the time, and not knowing how to make use of the items she gave me, I wandered around from street to street, occasionally buying food, and sleeping in alleys. At that time, I had always led a nomadic lifestyle usually around Kunwu, and had no idea how the secular world worked. One day, I saw a young man with white hair being chased in a high-level cultivator's fight. Although I was unable to help, largely, I saw him cast an art, and fall somewhere around my area. The chasers were unable to locate him, strangely. Although penniless (the lady gave me spirit stones, and I couldn't take those out in the secular world), I had some magic pills on me my parents gave me for healing, and I went to help him. By the time I reached him, his appearance was rapidly changing from that of a young man to a wrinkly, crumpled and shriveled old man. I fed him the pill, but he explained he was at the end of his life and entrusted me with the one item he was protecting, a cauldron and told me never to take it out in front of others.

Then, he cast another art on me. When I woke up, I was muddy, on the streets again, and he was nowhere to be found, though I knew his cauldron was now in my possession. I had been running a high fever and was drifting in and out of consciousness. That was when Old Man Zhao found me. I had already been on the path of cultivation in the first place. After I got a place, I read the jade slip the man left me. It turned out to be a manual for pill concocting, and included many recipes. That was when I started concocting pills.

Currently, other than a few items the lady gave me, which I couldn't make much sense of, as well as the man, I had a sizeable number of jade slips I couldn't comprehend, a small number of spirit stones, as well as about 1000 taels I had scrimped and saved over the years. Now, adding the 2000 taels and 5 spirit stones Old Man Zhao gave me, I could stay home for a couple years and not work. Satisfied, I tied my Qiankun bag underneath my clothes. I rested for a while, revised a bit of a cultivation spell book I had borrowed from the bookshop, and headed out to my night job.

My night job was postal delivery. This job was a bit more dangerous, as it required me to cycle around the city at night, dropping off parcels before the sun rose. Although I was faster, stronger and had better instincts than mortals, it was still an exhausting job. I collected my parcels at the depot, and set off on my route. Every night was a different batch of parcels, and we earned taels by the number of parcels delivered. Although I was just an Aura Refining cultivator in the 8th level, I was able to pick up 3 times the number of parcels as other deliverymen and finish the job within 4 hours. Since the job started at 10pm, I would be done by 2am. Meanwhile, the bookshop job started at 10am and ended at 6pm.

After collecting the parcels in my Qiankun bag, I practically flew on my bike, using light body technique. I would use my divine sense to sense for any obstacles or people in my path so that I would be able to anticipate them. Upon approaching my stops, I would fish the parcel out and drop it lightly on their doorstep using a spell. After finishing all my deliveries, I returned to the depot to mark off my timeslot and report my deliveries. Yu Xi, a youth of about 17 manned the depot at this time. "Amazing. Cultivators are really another thing." he said, as I marked my sheet. I smiled. "I just do what I have to do to survive." I said. He was doing the same thing. Which child would usually go out and work at night, if not to pay for food and rent? Yu Xi was also doing the same thing, only he was practically an adult already, and a man. Meanwhile, 12 year old little girls normally didn't do so. After working here for 3 years, we had developed some good rapport.