Conflict Over Some Flowers

Returning to the cave, Hong Wu gleefully shared her successful growth in her Combustion Configuration with Yan. The news brought with it exciting implications. Using naturally occurring fiery spiritual qi, both of them could advance rapidly through Scorched Bones. Yan had all but given up on the body cultivating technique up to this point due to its slow speed. Hearing that Hong Wu was only four ribs shy of a full rib cage sparked some jealousy with in Yan, but also rekindled some hope in her that the Combustion Configuration could, in fact, be useful.

This glimmer of hope came with one huge caveat, merit points. So far as the two girls knew, the only means to find fiery spiritual qi was to use the Hall of Craftsmen. At fifty merit points a day, the girls would be unable to save up for more than two or three days a month each.

This coupled with the fact that they now needed to venture into the mountain's forest proper caused some worry to sprout amongst the two.

"We've gotta go out there at some point, now's as good as any."

Seeing no way to argue against this, Hong Wu agreed that it was time to venture out into the unrestricted zones in the forest. Hong Wu noticed when she walked past a certain point near the boundary her sect token gave off a dull light followed by some small ripples appearing in the air around her.

"I wonder, what would happen if we didn't have these tokens and tried to walk through?"

"Don't worry bout that, just make sure ya don't lose yours."

Continuing onward the two began to comb the forest for anything of value. This was Hong Wu's time to shine. Hong Wu studied the Initiate Apothecary ad nauseam to make sure they did not miss out on any plant or fungus of note.

The girls spent the entire next week scavenging just outside the boundary of the Drifting Clouds Quarters. They ran into fellow cultivators on two separate occasions. Both times the other party was alone and seemingly uninterested in the activities of the two girls.

The first time they met a young boy around their age with a sallow appearance. From what Hong Wu could tell, this boy did not seem like a cultivator. There was a barely noticeable aura coming off of his body; Hong Wu placed him at about the second level of Qi Condensation. His sickly appearance and absent-mindedness made him seem more pitiful than anything else. He brushed passed the two girls without even looking up from his feet, muttering to himself about needing to obtain more grasses for a senior brother of his.

The second time they encountered someone was an older male of middle age. This man acted more frantic than the boy from before. This man appeared to be a little more powerful, but not by much. Hong Wu guessed he became stuck at the bottleneck between the third and fourth layers of Qi Condensation. When he noticed the two girls he froze. He stared at the pair with an odd expression of hostility mixed with terror. Before Hong Wu could say anything, the man sped away in the other direction.

Perplexed by the disciple's behavior Hong Wu asked Yan, "What do you suppose that was about?"

"Who cares? There's nothing here. Let's keep movin."

The girls continued their progress through the forest when they came upon a small pond hidden amongst the trees. Taking a closer look Hong Wu's face brightened immediately. Floating in the middle of the pond were three lily flowers with pale brown petals. "Fair Mud Lilies!"

From what Hong Wu had learned in Initiate Apothecary, Fair Mud Lilies were incredibly valuable alchemic ingredients due to their versatility. These flowers held water, earth, and wood elements making them useful in many different recipes. Their usefulness brought with it a high demand for them. While they were not necessarily rare, they only grew under certain conditions making them difficult to cultivate. As such, the market price in the Cloud District Exchange was a whopping twenty-five merit points per flower.

"Valuable?"

"Yes, but I have to be careful when harvesting them. I need a few minutes."

Before Hong Wu could make her move towards the pond a voice called out from behind, "Those are mine! Stay away from them!"

Turning to the source of the voice, Hong Wu saw the same middle-aged cultivator she encountered earlier in the day. The man had the same look of fear as before, only now it contained a madness that overpowered the fear. "You followed us, they're ours!"

The man ignored Yan's yells and moved his line of sight over to the flowers; greed took over. He began to make a B-line straight for the flowers when Hong Wu stepped in his way. Yan circled around to his side, readying a pincer attack. She exchanged a menacing glance with the man and warned him, "We found them first; you get your own flowers!"

These words caused the man to show some trepidation, but rather than back off he gritted his teeth with indecision. After a second of deliberation, the man charged Hong Wu with a howl. Reaching into his robe he pulled out a paper slip with queer scripts written on the face of the paper. Yan readied herself by summoning her flying sword from her bag of holding. At the same time Hong Wu summoned three frozen blades and pointed them directly at the man. Trying to appeal to his reason, Hong Wu cried, "Stop!"

Her last warning went unheeded as he muttered a quick scripture which caused the paper slip to ignite at the top. With a decisive move, the man tossed the paper slip towards Hong Wu. As the paper slip hurtled towards Hong Wu, it ignited itself completely into a fireball. Shocked, Hong Wu commanded her three blades to intercept the fireball. The three frozen blades made contact with the fireball at the same time causing an explosion, knocking Hong Wu off her feet.

"Hong Wu!" Yan cried as she rushed to help Hong Wu.

Dazed, Hong Wu tried to sit up on her own. The wind knocked out of her, she gasped laboriously barely able to voice two words, "The flower."

Spinning back around, Yan saw the man had taken advantage of the situation to charge towards the pond and rip out one of the three flowers. Before he had the chance to reach for a second, Yan sent her flying sword towards his outstretched hand.

The man let out a miserable howl as blood sprayed from the stumps of where his pinky and ring finger used to be. He shot the girls a vicious look before quickly bounding away into the woods and disappearing from sight. Yan moved to give chase, but Hong Wu grabbed her arm to stop her. "Forget it, let's get the remaining flowers and get out of here."

"He attacked you!"

"I'm fine. I just had the wind knocked out of me for a second."

"But he has-"

"It's just a flower. He already paid two fingers for it. Do you want to kill him over a plant? Let him have it. We don't know this part of the forest. He probably does. We can't waste our time trying to hunt him down."

Yan showed disapproval of what Hong Wu said, but didn't bother to argue further. Hong Wu harvested the remaining two flowers and the pair headed back to the Drifting Clouds Quarters.

On the way back Hong Wu thought about their experiences with others in the forest and became curious. "What was with him? The other guy too they were both acting weird, almost like they were frantic to find something."

"Who knows? You're the one that stopped me remember? Not our problem right?"

"Yeah, not our problem" Hong Wu agreed as they passed through the barrier.

Little did they know this was a rather difficult problem that greatly involved their interests.