29-31

Chapter 29: The River and the Raft

Fen definitely had Booker's interest now, but he glanced sideways, towards the Sect. Wei Qi would be firing up the furnace now. He really didn't have time to engage in another side project. "Can we walk and talk on the way?"

"Of course." Fen said, nodding.

"I'm stretched thin, Fen. I want to help you – but I don't know if I have time. The Grasshopper Examination is in three days…"

"Naturally, I understand. How are you getting past Instructor Graysky? He'll never pass you…"

"I… I don't know yet, but I'll know." Booker answered uncertainly. In truth, it was a major fault in his plans. He'd been so busy that he hadn't had time to mend bridges with the Instructor, or try to find a way around being failed on sight.

"I have a suggestion." Fen stepped forward. "Rain, we can solve both problems easily. I'm going to break into Instructor Graysky's apartments."

Booker stopped immediately. "What?"

Fen swept past him, continuing, and turned back to say, "Rain, I'm going to rob his apartments. I need your help."

Booker's eyes narrowed. "Okay, next up– Why?"

"Rain, that I can't tell you. You know what it's like to have secrets, don't you?" Fen resumed walking, pulling Booker along after him.

"So you want me to break into an instructor's apartment on nothing but 'trust you'." Booker hissed, waiting until a cluster of disciples had walked past to resume, "That's a lot of risk. Where's the reward?"

"You mean the medicine isn't enough?"

"Fen, is that medicine going to be in my hand, or is it going to be a whisper about a rumor?" He insisted.

"Very well, I'll also share the secrets of the Sect." Fen promised. "Delicious ones. Things they wouldn't give to disciples."

"Alright." Booker sighed. "You have me. Only because I'm trusting you – and don't make me regret it."

Fen grinned. "I won't." He walked away, leaving Booker at the entrance to his laboratory.

— — —

Booker stepped inside to find Wei Qi slaving away at the bellows pump, stoking the furnaces. He had his sleeves rolled up and sweat was dripping from his brow. The young apprentice was using his foot to pedal the bellows, hanging onto a chain on the ceiling and pulling himself up and down to pump the bellows.

"Here." Booker grabbed the chain alongside him and together they got the fire blazing hot, raising the furnace to howling temperatures.

"It will… it will still be hours before they're done…" Wei Qi gasped out.

"But we'll at least have progress to show." Booker assured him.

"Greenmoon wants results on this… fast! I think he bet on this, and bet hard."

Booker nodded, stepping away from the furnace's billowing heat. He glanced down and saw an itemized list of everything they'd requisition for the laboratory. "You did this?" He asked Wei Qi.

"Yes, of course. I've inventoried the whole laboratory too." Wei Qi toweled off his face and pulled the top layer of his robes back on.

"That's excellent work." The average alchemist is dedicated in a way I can't even imagine. In a way I only begin to understand when I let myself feel the maniacal devotion Rain felt in his lifetime… Even little Sprout is a powerhouse in his own way.

"So what do we do now?" Wei Qi asked.

"I think we wait. Greenmoon will show up when he shows up…"

But as minutes turned to hours, Greenmoon didn't make an appearance. The furnace burnt down from raging flames to low embers, and they took out the purified and ash-coated tubes of salt with wooden paddles, collecting them on the floor in front of the furnace.

"Do you think he forgot?" Wei Qi asked eventually.

"No, I think he forgot on purpose. I gave him bad news on a delay, so he makes an impossible demand, then never shows up to check that we did it. It's just his way of yanking our chain." Booker said calmly.

"Brother Rain always knows which way the weather is turning," Wei Qi said with respect.

"Wei Qi, I have something I need you to do." Booker said, opening his bag. Froggy and Snips crawled out, hopping onto the countertop. "I want you to take them to the fighting ring."

"You…" Wei Qi paused. "Want me to take your beasts to fight?"

"No, I just want them to get a sense for the place. Snips is a smart beast. He'll know if there's any threats nearby." Booker shrugged. "Just go over, get a sense for the place. Tell me what you see."

Wei Qi seemed uncertain, but Booker added, "So long as you go there and come back, I'll owe you a favor, how about that?"

"Er, there is…" Wei Qi paused and rubbed his head. "One thing if I was wondering you could help me with…"

"What's that?"

"Some of the servants have… something of mine. I'm not a cultivator yet, I can't fight them all, but they're cripples like…" He cut himself off, sensing he'd said something wrong.

"I understand. You want me to talk to them." Booker nodded. "I'll handle it. Give me their names."

"Tong Chen, Dai Ya Quin…" Wei Qi seemed embarrassed by the whole matter.

"They'll soon stop bothering you."

— — —

Booker walked back to his rooms feeling confident. He was beginning to run low on time – there were four days before the auction, and three before the Grasshopper's Examination – but with his sleep replacement pills he had eight hours in his day that others didn't.

He lay down and folded his hands under his head, waiting to listen to the doors opening and shutting in the hallway beyond. If he hadn't already taken his sleep replacement pill, he would have soon drifted off to sleep – as it was, he hovered in a barely-lucid state, just able to mark the passing of minutes and have idle thoughts, like the moment right before you fall asleep when your logic becomes looser and looser.

When everyone was asleep and muffled snores echoed through the Sect, Booker rolled back onto his feet and shook the dreams out of his head. Folding his cloak and mask under his arm, he walked through the empty courtyards to where the Sect had an open green practice yard next to the wall, and tall trees.

From there it was a matter of pulling on his disguise, scaling up the tree, and jumping over the wall in two short hops, his feet briefly landing on the tiled top of the wall before leaping down into the alleys below.

Booker was beginning to like the city: not just feel its opportunities, or relish its freedom, but genuinely like Mantis City. It was full of boisterous characters and dreaming youths, full of excitement. The scent of spices and burning candles flavored the air as he made his way through the bustling city.

At the end of the city, the walls cast a shadow on the buildings built beneath them, and everything past the walls was poorer, cheaper, and uglier, a shantytown clustered around the walls in tents and hovels trying to gain some lingering protection from the Sect's presence. It was here that the docks were located, wooden piers and tied up boats bobbing in the slosh of the fast-flowing river.

And just as he'd hoped, Booker found a group of disciples about to set off. They were in a large, slow raft and armed with long hook-bladed polearms to fight off creatures below the water. Their job was to harvest and reset the massive pots that captured crawfish and eels from the riverbed. The task would take the strength of a full cultivator to complete, because even before being weighed down with the catch, each pot was a massive construction made out of reed and metal spikes: the reeds were woven into the basket, and the spikes were set on the lip of the lid, pointing inwards. A creature could easily brush past the spikes without harm getting in, bending them aside…

But anything that tried to get out the same way would discover a sharp reality to their situation.

As one of the disciples waded through the shallow water to untether their redwood barge from the dock, Booker stepped up before him.

"What do you want?" The disciple's sword-like eyebrows immediately narrowed.

"I'm an alchemist." He opened. "I know you catch all kinds of creatures in your traps, including ones the Sect isn't expecting and doesn't care about. I've heard you even hunt a little along the riverside. I can help you get good prices and extract the most value from anything you catch – the only thing I want in exchange is the right to buy the haul off you first."

The set of the disciple's face remained skeptical. "How generous of you."

"I'm looking for something in specific, which we're unlikely to find. But with the Sect locking down so many resources, it's my only route." Booker had been ready for skepticism, though. These were Sect-dwelling people, and they were used to everyone having a scheme or a con. The fact that Booker honestly didn't need anything from them but the chance to practice extracting valuable organs from monsters and complete his quest would have been too suspicious. "Surely you've had your own adventures and trials that have set you seeking something rare and improbable."

He'd noticed a difference in the way he spoke when he was the masked doctor. More authoritative. Longer words.

The disciple tilted his head. "What are you looking for?"

"A hundred year carp with three hearts." Booker answered smoothly. "The third heart is a longevity cure."

"Hmm." He turned back and shouted to the people aboard the raft. "Hey, this alchemist wants to join us! Cao Mei? Qin Ziwen?"

"Whoever, whatever, as long as he helps lift and doesn't get in the way!" The girl called back. The boy next to her checking the pots just shrugged and said,

"Why not?"

Booker took that as permission to help unmoor the boat and leap aboard, landing with a rocking sway beside them. As the last of the disciples – Dai Ji – waded over and pulled himself onto the boat, they used their polearms to push off against the mud and paddle into the center of the river where the current was swift and strong.

The sides of the river flowed past to either side, the current carrying them past roads, forests, and meadows. All was dark and nearly silent. Now and again, the sloshing of the river against its banks would be interrupted by a bellowing animal call from the forest, or a dark fin would slice above the midnight surface of the river before sinking back below.

Booker kneeled on the edge of the raft and – being careful to watch for any rising, predatory shadows – looked into the water beneath.

Enormous snails and crabs meandered across a flat bed of mossy stones. Silver-bright fish darted and ducked out of the raft's way. River beasts the size of dogs and cats sent the smaller fish fleeing in panic.

As they neared the first lobster pot, they pulled themselves out of the current and towards the shore, steering the ship by digging their spears into the bottom of the river.

They ground to a halt on the muddy banks and waded through tall grass to grab hold of ropes anchored to stakes dug into the solid ground past the bank, straining to hold onto something heavy that tilted and turned below the water. Qin Ziwen grabbed his hooked polearm and stuck it into the water, digging around until he got it hooked against the pot's side, and Cao Mei threw him a rope. "Here," she said. "Make yourself useful."

Booker nodded without speaking, and on the count of three, threw himself against the rope, straining hard to pull the lobster pot free of the heavy water. With three cultivators helping him, the task was still enough to burn the rough surface of the rope into his hands, dig his boots into the mud, and bring sweat budding to his forehead. The pot heaved up – slowly! – and sloshed, losing water weight to the thin spaces between the reeds. As Dai Ji let go off his rope, dashed around the pot and pushed with his full might, it rolled up onto shore and with a last heave they had it safely beached.

But the hard work was hardly over. They opened the latch on the back of the pot and out poured dozens of slick, night-black eels, eyeless with snapping jaws. The worm-like creatures poured in a jellied mass across the pebbles and mud of the beech, thrashing blindly as they sought about for water.

The three disciples walked among them, picking out young eels the size of normal serpents, which were still tender and pale, their skin yet to develop midnight pigment and thus, totally translucent like glass. They tossed these, the keepers, into a large cage tied to the side of the raft where they'd have enough water to breathe.

Glass-Bodied Eels

Intact // Dull Quality

These species of eel cultivate by devouring the qi in their mother and eating their way out from inside. As such, they are only potent as qi medicine early in life.

Beast Cultivation 10% (-)

Toxicity 20% (-)

Cultivation Boost 5% (+)

Temporary Water Adaptation 5% (Water)

But as the tide of eels subsided, sliding back into the waters, other things were revealed inside the pot. There were small green crabs, one of which Cao Mei immediately plucked up and began crunching between her teeth, offering another to Booker, which he wordlessly refused with a shake of his head. "Your loss." She said, tossing it into the air and catching it with her mouth. "They're delicious." She said, her voice interrupted by the smacking lips and the crunching of soft, undeveloped crabshell.

Dai Ji went through the fish inside – red carp, dull-eyed bottom-feeders, small silver-gray baitfish. Lifting them up by their tails he examined them and flung them back into the river. "Nothing worthwhile." He said.

Booker was happy to move on with the rest of them as they waded out to the raft, but Qin Ziwen caught him by the shoulder. "You're not a cultivator." He said seriously.

"No." Booker replied. "I never said I was. I'm an alchemist, and I can help you all profit."

Qin Ziwen released him, but said. "Just stay back if there's any danger, then. You won't help us by risking yourself, and if one of us tries to save you, we might both die."

Booker nodded, climbing onto the raft and offering his hand to help Qin Ziwen onto the swaying platform. He had already formed a good impression of Qin, who was a bit older than Cai Mei or Dai Ji, and maybe sixteen, with broad shoulders, a pudgy build, and an bowl-cut of glossy black hair, his face plain and somewhat craggy, so you could easily write him off and not notice the sharp eyes underneath the ledge of his caveman brows.

"How dangerous is this, really?" He asked.

"Depends on how well you can keep your balance. Hungry things will ram the boat sometimes, to see if anyone falls over the side. Even a cultivator won't survive hitting the water, nine times out of ten. The real danger is, sometimes nobody sees the thing coming in to ram us, nobody shouts a warning – everything goes from safe to deadly in a heartbeat." Qin Ziwen answered.

"If you'd have chosen a boat going out in the day, things would be much safer." Cao Mei chimed in. "Sometimes a bigger fish will go for the cage and all the catch inside, but mostly you can drive them off with a good few pokes." She brandished her hooked polearm with a devil-may-care grin.

"Truly, fishermen don't get enough credit." Booker said, with mild surprise. If the river really was this dangerous, then he had nothing but respect for the mortals who dared to try and make it their livelihood.

"Once you get out to deeper waters, your boats are bigger and you can tie yourself down." Dai Ji said as he sat down, chugging from a bottle of rice wine and offering it around the raft. Only Cao Mei refused, as she stood by the raft' till and watched the waters. "But by the same token, the monsters grow much bigger. You're less likely to die alone, but it's more likely the whole ship is eaten in one bite."

"You're knowledgeable." Booker praised, taking the rice wine and pushing up his mask enough to take a hearty gulp. The water was cold and the liquor made his body feel warm again.

"Me and Ji'er have made a pact! If we don't make it to the second stage by the time we're eighteen, we'll quit the Sect and become sailors on the Whitedragon River." Cao Mei declared proudly.

"Ah, it's all thanks to our Elder Brother, Qin Ziwen." Dai Ji was blushing as he bowed his head towards his senior brother. "He taught us everything about the river, and we've become converts to the sailor's lifestyle."

"I'm flattered, but really it's thanks to my Elder Sister, all the Elder Brothers who sailed this raft before her, and the ship herself.." Qin Ziwen said for himself. He reached out, patting the red mantis figurehead that curved up off the rudder below. "She's may sail like a barn, but she's actually the oldest ship in the Mantis Sect. Every board has been replaced but her soul is as old as the Sect's foundations."

"One moment." Booker said, and lowered his head, putting his ear against the boards of the raft. For a long moment he heard the rushing of the water underneath, the friction between river and vessel, the rumbling and splashing as the water carved its way over the bed of stones.

And then…

So faintly he could have imagined it…

Singing.

He straightened up, and although all three were looking at him oddly, he only said – "You're right. This ship definitely has a soul."

"I never doubted." Qin Ziwen laughed.

"I never doubted either!"

"Hey, me neither!"

Booker tilted his head back and laughed. It was easy to laugh, in that moment, because he felt no danger at all except for the river underneath. And that was only the danger of the world, of nature and beast, not the danger of humanity.

One you could learn to live with. One kept you constantly paranoid, worried about who you could trust.

Booker felt as if these people were sincere and good, and he was happy to have met them. More than anything, he was glad to know he could still see friendship in people, underneath the constant lies about his identity and the equally-constant pressure of paranoia.

They worked together for several more hours, hauling up the pots and collected the tender glass eels. One of the pots was occupied instead by a massive crawfish, often pleasantly relabeled as a 'river lobster'. It was the color of blood and the size of a great dane, and simply hauling the trap out of the river was such a massive endeavor that at the end, all four of them lay exhausted on the grass, huffing and panting as sweat drooled down their faces. Even Booker, who was objectively doing the least, felt as if his muscles had softened to jelly.

"Come on, we have to–" It was Qin Ziwen who stood up first. "– kill the damn thing."

"Fuck iiiit." Groaned Cao Mei as she rolled onto her feet. "Can we just kill it inside the trap? Thing must weigh a fucking ton…"

"We'll catch hell…" Complained Dai Ji. He was still on the ground as Booker got onto his feet.

"Let's catch it then." Qin Ziwen gasped. "I'm not going to let that thing out and kill it the proper way. It's heavy like a stone."

Grabbing their polearms, they began to hack and cut through the reed pots, stabbing down through the material to jab at the creature inside without having to let it out. Even though every surface was dripping with black river water, Booker saw blue sparks fly as the points of their weapons dented and slid off the creature's shell.

Finally, lifting his polearm out of the pot, Qin Ziwen shifted his grip and drew his weapon up, letting out a fearsome cry into the night sky before bringing the polearm hacking down. Booker saw the blade shine with qi and cut a moonsilver slash through the air. The basket was split open and the creature inside let out a pathetic squeal as its armor split open, yellow blood gushing across the ground.

It was a crawfish alright. A rust-colored, spiny lobster that turned black at the end of its segmented tail. The bottom half, split open and bleeding badly, came blindly thrashing out of the split remains of the pot. It thrashed back and forth a little and died.

Booker and Dai Ji hurried forward, helping Cao Mei back as the Qin Ziwen poured the other half out of the pot. Despite everything, despite losing half its body, it was still barely alive. Huge pitch-black claws snapped in the shallow water. Its face was a gruesome mess of twitching antenna, drooping whiskers, and gnashing mandibles.

"What a massive motherfucker." Qin Ziwen prodded it into turning over with the tip of his polearm. Its legs waved in the air.

"C'mon." Dai Ji passed Booker a knife. "We have to scrape the eggs off. We did the least, so we do the dirty business."

Together they rolled the tail over and, after Dai Ji positioned a bucket, began scraping away the large black eggs that were clustered there. Her entire tail was encrusted with them, held together by a slimy gel. As they slopped it out, Booker examined one of them. It was like a squishy black pearl.

River Crawfish Roe

Intact // Dull Quality

Roe from an old river monster. Used in spirit cooking and high cuisine, but originally part of an early form of cultivation.

Beast Cultivation 5% (+)

Toxicity 10% (-)

Qi Recovery 5% (Water)

Hardened Skin 5% (Earth)

"Eat one." Qin Ziwen said. "They're delicious."

Booker lifted his mask partway popped it into his mouth. It burst like a jewel of salt, lingering creamily on his tongue, with a faint mix of light flaky fish and rich butter. He felt the burn of qi on his tongue, sinking into his dantian, but somewhere along the way it… got lost…

Like a river without a clear path to follow it dispersed out to nothing.

"Nature's cultivation pill. Back before the Sect, these were how the first warriors of the valley cultivated." Qin Ziwen said enthusiastically.

"Let's sit a while and roast it." Cao Wei voted.

"Yeah, let's relax. As long as we bring in the roe they won't know if we leave a few traps at the end for tomorrow." Qin Ziwen agreed. He dug about in his robes for an iron seal, which flickered and burned with drifting embers as he pushed qi into it. "Grab some firewood."

They dragged together stumps and branches pulled from the pine trees, and the little green needles of the fir boughs curled up black as he put the iron seal to them, a flame instantly burning where the metal touched anything but his hand.

As they warmed their hands they set up the tail on a spike to cook. As they prepared to do the same with the head, Booker held up a hand. "Hold up. I have work to do."

"Oh, I've been waiting to see this." Cao Mei cooed.

"You'll want to eat the stalks of the eyes raw. They're a petty alchemical, not really worth making into a pill, but they'll lose whatever they have to give if you cook them. The brains are a little better, and I'll help you get them out." Taking a knife, Booker began to pry and separate the armored plates, cutting through the thin membranes between them. As he dug his fingernails around the plates of chitin, he pried up and there was a treasure of folded wet tissue underneath.

"Ewww." Dai Ji exclaimed, wincing.

"I'll pass." Qin Ziwen agreed.

"All the more for me." Cao Mei spat out, "And both of you are cowards." Without hesitating, she dug her fingers into the mess and scooped up a mass of fatty, yellowish meat, pushing it into her mouth and chewing. "It's delicious!"

Briefly glancing across to Dai Ji, Booker saw him looking queasy as Qin Zinwen whispered, "You kiss that mouth…"

"You two aren't free of it. You'll be having the eyestalks." Booker instructed sternly. "No sense wasting medicine."

The two of them grudgingly took the stalks and sucked off the glassy vitreous jelly at the top, wincing as the flavor spread across their tongue.

"A tour of delights with an alchemist on board." Qin Ziwen said.

"I'm going to explore." Booker said. "I'll bring back something nice for the fire." He reached into the shell and scooped away a chunk of red-and-white flesh.

"I'll go with you." Dai Ji said, instantly hopping up. "I've been practicing my hunting every time we have a chance to stray like this."

Booker said nothing, and together they took off into the forest of pines on the Sect's shallow eastern slope.

"So, mysterious man wandering the Sect…" Dai Ji began as they tread over a terrain made slippery by the raised, moss-encrusted roots of trees. "Why do you wear a mask?"

"I don't want trouble. The mask saves me some." Booker answered honestly. "Say, do you know what that mushroom is?"

"Oh?" Dai Ji paused, glancing at the cluster of white bulb mushrooms growing among the tree roots. "Oh, you're sharp. Those are mole-eye mushrooms, right?"

Booker nodded. Good for what the book calls minor sicknesses, which probably includes most things we would survive long enough for medicine to help us.

Dai Ji slid down and used his knife to pry the mushrooms up from the earth, dislodging their gangly root structures. "Hmm and this is vinegarwilt." He grabbed a bunch of hairy leaves from beside it. "Good once you sear off the hairs. Do you like vinegarwilt?"

It was essentially an edible weed that people ate when they might otherwise starve. Even among those, it was an acquired taste. Rain's only memory of it was from when they fled his home for the Sect.

He shook his head.

"I love it personally. For me, it's the taste of a good home stir fry."

In some ways…

I could have started a lot lower than Rain's position in life.

They both continued walking, taking turns pointing out herbs that would be good for the roast meat, mushrooms with a good flavor, and very petty alchemicals, the kinds used to disinfect wounds and ease the healing process in folk medicine. Booker naturally had the alchemy book on his side, but Dai Ji nearly kept pace.

In many ways the forest was a much more lively place than even Mantis City. There were ants crawling over every trunk, wood-boring beetles eat every tree, hosts of maggots on the dead wood that resulted. Predators ate the insects and life continued, the canopy full of small monkeys that watched them from among flocks of bright-feathered birds.

"Stop." Dai Ji said suddenly. "That's a Paintbrush of Omens." He indicated a tall flower that turned from deep red to a translucent orange, after climbing five feet into the air on a thick wooden yellow stalk covered by thin needle-sharp hairs. "Touch it and you'll have bad luck for a lifetime."

Paintbrush of Omens

Intact // Dull Quality

A valuable but deeply poisonous flower. Its thin spines inject anyone who touches it with a subtle venom, one that makes them exude a nearly undetectable smell that lures beasts.

Paralytic Poison 5% (+)

Toxicity and Potency 5% (+)

Cultivation Boost 10% (-)

Alluring Fragrance 15% (+)

"Not true." Booker said. "And it might mean good luck for us. Stay there and try to stay unseen. Keep your polearm at the ready."

He stepped forward, and pressed the piece of lobster meat against the spines of the paintbrush flower, letting it soak the poison in deeply before dropping it to the ground. He stepped back and scrambled to hide behind a tree alongside Dai Ji.

"Are you crazy?" Dai Ji whispered. "This is the kind of bad luck that can end your life. I shouldn't even be near you."

"It's not bad luck." Booker explained. "It's poison that lures beasts, contained within the needles. Since only the lobster meat touched them, now, the beasts will come looking for it instead of me." Just to clean off any trace that might have touched his gloves, he took out some of the washing powders he'd filled one of his pockets with and mixed them with water from a small rainwater collection among the roots, cleaning his hands until the cold water soaked straight through his gloves.

"Just wait." He promised.

Together they waited there, huddled and cold, until slowly Booker began to see a dark shape stirring in the brush. It made no move after arriving, only laid itself down against the forest floor so it was incredibly hard to see through the undergrowth.

After a little while longer, a large hawk dropped from the canopy to the ground and reached for the meat–

And in a single smooth leap the panther shot from the briars, landing with one paw slamming the stunned bird to the ground.

Dai Ji looked to Booker, gripping his polearm.

But Booker shook his head, and pointed up.

Because as the panther enjoyed its prey, a massive spider was descending the tree from above, its tree-green body and thin limbs blending into the canopy.

Chapter 30: Return to the Sect

As the spider descended the panther froze, sensing something wrong, but it was too late. The spider dropped, its legs making a cage, and its jaws plunged into the panther's neck from above. For a moment it held the panther, almost gently. The big cat was frozen, its limbs twitching. The spider's mandibles had caught it exactly in the place a mother cat holds its cubs, triggering a deep-rooted instinct to go totally still. Its weight was suspended from the spider's jaws.

And then the spider began to rise higher, tilting its abdomen underneath it to spray out a stream of silk. Booker watched with vile fascination as the enormous arachnid began to weave its prey into a cocoon. After a moment of horror, he wrenched his head away and gave Dai Ji the nod.

It would never be more vulnerable than this moment, cradling its prey.

Dai Ji was just as horrified, but now he mustered his courage, gripping the hooked spear.

As the spider spun the stunned panther about in its forelegs, tying it up, Dai Ji lunged out of hiding. Even as the spider lifted its head and unleashed the panther from its jaws, his polearm flashed down in a hacking strike, imitating Brother Qin Ziwen. It stabbed into the eyes of the spider…

For a moment Booker thought the strike was too shallow to kill.

But at the last moment, Dai Ji reversed his direction, moving with agility on the slippery tree roots. As he pulled back, the spider was wrenched off its spindly feet and went crashing to the ground. Dai Ji ripped the hooked spear free, lifted it up again, and swatted it down into the spider's underbelly.

For a minute more the legs thrashed.

But after that, the beast was dead. Booker crept forward from his position, approaching the twitching body. Dai Ji was panting, looking at the beast with disbelief. "It's massive…"

"We'll only have to carry parts of it." Booker reassured, stepping forward. "I'll handle the rest."

The book had instructions, very clear instructions, for him to follow. The legs and the thorax held nothing but juicy, tender meat, slightly infused with spiritual essences. But the abdomen was inedible, full of a grimy mix of blood and the byproducts of digestion, with numerous valuable organs inside.

"Throw that bit of lobster somewhere else." Booker suggested. "It's still exuding the same scent that drew them here."

"That panther… waited… it waited for something else to come. Do you think it's intelligent?" Dai Ji asked, pausing as he extracted the meat from the animals's claws.

Booker sighed. "Well, it was definitely dumb instinct in the spider's case. Nothing I know says either of these is intelligent. Still…" He reached over, pushing the panther onto its back and then rubbing his fingers about in the soft fur over its leathery belly. "I like cats, and I've always wanted to give a panther a bellyrub. So we'll save this one."

Not wanting to reveal his Furnace in front of Dai Ji, and not thinking of any particular excuse he could make to disappear and come back with a very convenient pill, he asked the book: how can I make a pill without a furnace?

Obligingly, the book's pages flipped to a solution.

He rose and got some milky furweed from a ditch nearby, climbing up into a tree and dropping back down with a bird's egg. "Pass me the honeysuckle we collected." He asked, and Dai Ji did so with a curious gaze.

Booker found a smooth enough surface of stone to work on, and cracked the egg open on it. He snapped the thick stems of the milky furweed and wrung the broken stalks, breaking them again and again at different points and twisting them about to keep the sturdy threads unbroken but press out as much of the juices as possible. He used them to mop up and soak in the egg, breaking the yolk and scrubbing up the thick runny yellow and translucent white.

When the mixture had fully absorbed the yolk, he lifted his mask enough to press the unpleasant mass into his mouth, added in the honeysuckle, and began to chew, stirring the mixture up by mashing it together between his teeth. The taste almost managed to make him gag, but the stinging tingle of the toxicity inside quickly numbed his tongue. When it was finished he spat out a paste.

"This is called a tongue-biter pill." He explained, his voice slurred by the numbness of his tongue. "Because you're supposed to bite your tongue and mix the blood into the concoction to make it stronger."

"I ain't never seen anyone but a witch make a pill that way." Dai Ji said. "Much less care about an animal. Nah, you're all kinds of witchy."

"Come to your own conclusions." Booker pressed the pill into the panther's jaws and massaged its throat so that the creature swallowed.

"You like cats. Who likes cats? Witches." Dai Ji continued.

Booker sighed, drew his knife, and bent down over the corpse of the spider. He dug his knife into the joints, separating unseen membranes, sinewy muscle that parted and gave way to butter-soft flesh below. As he removed the legs, there was a great deal of yellow blood. Insects were partially hollow, with a great deal of loose fluid inside.

Next he removed the thin point between the thorax and abdomen. It was gristly work, but he separated the meat from the alchemically valuable organs and glands.

The worst was yet to come as he dived into the abdomen, wincing at the grainy texture of the yellow blood washing down his sleeves as he dug out the silk glands, the poison sac, and the eggs, which were far more valuable than lobster roe.

He looked up at Dai Ji, who only said, "I don't think I can watch Cao Mei eat this. Not after seeing that."

"Maybe there's some place we can sell it?" Booker asked. He figured they must have a fence for their catches, since they were bothering to hunt at all.

"Ahhh…" Dai Ji scratched his head. "Come on and let's talk to Qin Ziwen."

Together, with Booker carrying the organs in a bloody sack and the legs of the spider cast over his shoulder, and Dai Ji hauling the thorax, they made their way back through the wood.

By the time they made it back, the lobster had turned golden and crispy-brown on the skewers. The other two were wolfing down the juicy brine-tinged sweetness of the meat, savoring every fire-warm bite.

"Ho, triumphant hunters." Qin Ziwen declared. "What is that?"

"Spider." Dai Ji declared. "No matter how qi-dense that meat is, we're selling it."

"Hmm…" For some reason, Qin Ziwen looked directly at Booker and asked. "Can you keep a secret?"

Booker shrugged. "If I can't the mask's not much good."

"I suppose not." Qin Ziwen agreed.

"He saved a panther, Brother Qin. He didn't need to do that." Dai Ji put in.

"Alright, alright." Qin Ziwen folded. "We'll go to see the Lao-Hain and sell this fucker."

— — —

They rafted down the river at a determined pace, pushing faster with their hooked spears whenever the river's currents slowed down even a little. Booker gathered that the Lao Hain were some ways past where they should be going, and they were ignoring their actual duties quite a bit to go out this far. Still, as long as they were back by dawn, their good haul so far would cover up for the pots they hadn't harvested. It wasn't as if anyone was coming out to check but them.

Soon, they came to a place where there were lights among the trees, and cookfires sent up smoke. It was a village among the trees, Booker realized as they rafted past one nest-like and spherical house, built around a living tree and connected to a neighbor by a walkway. Bright talismans of woven fabric hung below the houses.

Although Booker saw very few people about in the dark, he had the distinct sense they were being watched.

They came aground at a small docks, with one of the few buildings actually built on the ground across from them. It was a simple trading post, a wide reed hut with an open doorway that released the bitter, spice-drenched aroma of medicine.

They went inside, and Qin Ziwen whispered to a figure sleeping behind a counter: "Hey old lady wake your crazy ass up. We've got a hell of a catch for you."

"Oh, you brat, you would go and wake me up just when I was dreaming the most fantastic dream…" The figure rolled over, and slowly blinked awake. The old woman was scrawny and weathered, her skin drawn tight to the canvas of her spiny bones. Horns emerged from her forehead.

Is that… normal for the Lao-Hain?

Or some sign within the tribe?

He bowed his head respectfully as she climbed to her feet.

"Well at least someone has manners." She commented bitterly, lighting up a long bone pipe with a snap of her fingers. "What has the little shit brigade brought me this time?"

"Spidermeat and organs." Qin Ziwen declared proudly.

"Ah, of course you would wake me up for some heinous guttermeat like spider. Do you think that's worth ten liang, or should I stick to five?" She waved her hand dismissively.

"Nonsense granny you'll be lucky to walk away less than four hundred poorer." Qin Ziwen bulldozed through.

"Four hundred? What do you think you're holding, gold? It's not even a true spirit beast. It hasn't reached the first stage, it's nothing!" She hissed.

"Ah but as poor as it might be, it is spiritual food. You can't deny it that label. And look here! The venom and the silk sac, all the organs, all of them intact except the brain!" Qin Ziwen insisted.

"If I gave you fifty, I'd be a fool." By now, Booker was beginning to sense this was one in a long series of grudge matches. The way they flung insults was playful under a deep layer of deadpan sarcasm.

"But you're giving me four hundred, so what does that make you?" He countered.

"Seventy five." She vented the smoke from her pipe through her nostrils.

"Ah, but there's four of us today granny. So if I can't make it a neat four hundred, I'll have to do math."

Booker's attention was beginning to wander. He was noting more and more of the small details about the trading post. For one thing, the old lady wasn't the only one who had been sleeping behind the counter – her husband was still fast asleep, occasionally snoring.

It was a house of rich, elaborately-crafted goods. There were sealed silver jars that Booker saw had runes engraved on them, suggesting some secret power when given qi. There were arrows tipped with stones that glowered full of orange-y ember lights, like they were volcanic. Rugs hung on the walls and there were glass cases full of herbs.

It was the last that caught Booker's attention. Sitting in a bottle was a curled sprig of small, star-shaped lilac blossoms.

Dawn-Colored Lilac

Intact // Earth Quality

Hundred-year lilac gathered in the light of a dawn that shared its colors.

Meridian Cleansing 5% (Day)

Potency 5% (-)

Poison Purging 5% (-)

Alluring Fragrance 10% (-)

Booker smiled. This is an ingredient for my miracle pill…

They really have some good stuff here. The only problem is…

He glanced back to the ongoing negotiations, which had moved on to insulting the other party's intelligence, hygiene, and family now.

This place operates on tight connections, and as an outsider, they might not deal with me at all.

That was because the Lao-Hain were technically an outlaw group, and had to be suspicious of strangers, even if their feud with the Mantis Sect seemed largely a matter of the past. After all, the Mantis Sect let them operate only a few hours downriver.

Booker looked up, and saw massive fish and a slender gray-furred deer hanging from a rack, waiting to be butchered.

"Excuse me." He said, breaking into the conversation. Both Qin Ziwen and the old lady peered over at him, pausing the insults on their lips. "I'm here to practice my knife skills on the local animals. Would you mind if I helped butcher these for you?"

"Practice?" She snorted. "You'll destroy the organs and ruin the meat."

"I'm quite skilled. If I leave any damage, you can charge me for the animal.." Booker replied.

"He really is quite incredible." Dai Ji added. "Look, he cut the spider up for us!" He dropped the carcass of the spider's thorax onto the table.

She glanced at it briefly, dipping a finger into the hollow craters where the legs had connected before. "Hmm. Alright, alright, practice away– but if I see one slip you're paying."

"Thank you." Booker drew a knife and stepped up to the first fish. Inserting his knife he drew up along its belly, neatly opening it between the bones to remove the innards. It was surprisingly bloodless work, as long as nothing burst or ruptured, and he got all the guts out with one clean pull, peeling them away after separating the sinewy membranes that would hold them in place.

Laying the innards aside to yield out the valuable parts later, he moved to the gills, drawing up the plates that covered the open structure of the gill and cleaning out the bony and cartilaginous parts.

Untying the fish and laying it out, he cut into the flesh underneath the gills and drew neatly up to the top of the head, marking off where the filet would stop. From there it was simply a matter of making a clean cut all the way down, up, around, and back, carving the flesh from the bones.

Or…

It was as easy as saying that. Almost the entirety of skill in butchering a fish lay in this portion, in the ability to find the bones and strip every inch of flesh from them without ripping or tearing. It was a matter of precise touch, done completely blind and by feel. It was easiest with a more flexible knife…

However, Booker had the easy and confident knowledge of an expert, thanks to the book. His knife seemed to know exactly where to move, and his hand needed very little guidance from him.

He rendered the first filet so smoothly off the layer of bone that everything left behind was clean and white with barely a scrap of pink flesh left behind.

"Huh." An unfamiliar voice grunted. "Not bad. Not bad."

The other figure sleeping behind the counter had finally woken up; it was an old man, broad-shouldered and somewhat paunchy, who had an almost wild look to his face and his shaggy beard. His face was branded, not with the mark of a cripple but with the red of a Lao-Hain who had been caught within Mantis City. He grabbed the counter and sat up further, coming over limping on a bad leg. Booker immediately noticed the knife tucked through his apron; it was a knife made of chipped obsidian with a reflective black edge.

"But there's still a speck here and there. Let me show you something." He drew the knife and flipped the fish over, lining up to make the cut for the second filet.

But when he did, his hand moved so smoothly and so fast Booker could barely follow it. In one smooth motion he lifted up the whole half of the fish' flesh, not a speck left on the bones below.

"Ah, senior is incredible." Booker praised, feeling distinctly one-upped. "If you will forgive me for asking, is there nothing to it but practice, or is there some further secret I don't grasp?"

"No secret." The man grunted. "Divine will."

"Divine will…" Booker repeated.

"Don't they teach you anything? When your qi moves, it moves according to your divine will. When your hand moves, it moves according your divine will."

"And the knife can also move through divine will?"

"If you have a spiritual connection with the blade." The old man confirmed. "Which you don't I notice. Most men find it well before they reach your level of skill."

"Ah…" Booker paused. "Let's say I have a young talent."

"The self-taught usually have holes in their knowledge." The old man said, and glanced over to Qin Ziwen, who was arguing with his wife. "But if you've got that kind of ability, why rub shoulders with them? These little ones, they're alright, but the Mantis Sect is a den of vipers. Expect to be bitten if you linger long enough."

Booker followed his gaze. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Eh, you can finish the rest if you want. I'm going back to bed." Scratching himself, the old man lumbered back to his bed of animal furs, curling up like a bear.

Booker snorted with suppressed laughter, and went back to cutting the fish up to complete his quest.

He really got to the heart of the issue. No, it's safe to say he saw right through me. 'No spiritual connection with the blade.'

I'm sure I had a spiritual connection to the blade Master Ping gave me, but I threw that one away…

He sighed.

And for a minute there, before I killed Hu Bao… It really felt like I knew what I was doing. I knew what I wanted, I had a plan to get it, and everything was moving towards that goal.

But that's the exact logic that got Hu Bao killed. Thinking I could control everything…

Really, everything started to change when I got drawn into Greenmoon's orbit. He's right about the Sect, too. I'll never cultivate the way I want to unless I escape them or change them…

Pushing away these morose thoughts he quietly stripped flesh from bone, rendering out the alchemically precious organs as well, the float bladder and the gall and the half-formed shards of nascent beast core.

By the time he was done, so was Qin Ziwen, and while he hadn't gotten four, they'd settled at two hundred liang. As he doled out shares, Booker took his and went to the counter.

"Will you sell me that herb over there? The rather beautiful lilac."

"That one? Expensive taste, expensive taste…" She clicked her tongue. "But my husband seems to think you're someone worth speaking to. Rare, that. I'll sell it to you for a tael of moonsilver." One tael of moonsilver was about one thousand liang.

Booker paused, and drew out the bottle of sticky lotus thread he'd swiped from his laboratory in front of Qi Wei. "And this would cover how much of that?"

She took it and weighed it on a small scale, and pinched her left eye shut as she estimated… "Maybe one hundred…"

Booker held up his hand. "This is Sect quality. It should be five"

"Five? You think you're going to walk out of here with a brick of silver. Fuck me, like that's how running a business works." She croaked with laughter.

"Alas, I only know how a scale works. And even your scale reads that as five hundred liang worth of sticky lotus thread."

"Oh, fuck off with that. You know it's not worth five and I don't have the patience for some masked freak to get up in my business."

"Then cut the crap on your end and we can have this done with. Four is as low as I'll go." Booker insisted. "Give me three hundred for it now and take the last hundred as a down payment to hold the herb for me. I'll be back in a week."

"I can give you two walking and two held." She held. "If I'm trusting you that this is Sect quality, you're trusting me to hold your money for a week."

"I can do two now, and two down for the herb." Booker agreed.

She counted out strings of liang coins threaded through the hole in their middle, passing them to him, and Booker tucked them into his robes. Turning, he looked to the other three. "Are we ready to go? It will be dawn soon."

— — —

Altogether, in the dawning light, they sailed back up the river. The city was just waking up when they arrived back at the docks, and Booker bowed gratefully to the crew.

"I hope we meet again someday." He said.

Booker slipped back into the Sect that morning, and went to bathe himself off in his room, feeling the chilly water hit his skin and shock him into full consciousness. The sleep replacement pills were helping him run twenty-four seven, but it was clear that the mental exhaustion of doing so much in a day was going to be an issue.

I haven't been able to find the meditation state since…

Since Hu Bao.

He took another splash of water across the face.

Alright.

Time to face the day, and Greenmoon.

He made his way through the Sect to retrieve Wei Qi, knocking on Greenmoon's door and announcing, "We'll need to run about an hour of preparations, and then we'll be ready for you to observe."

"That will be quite alright." Greenmoon agreed.

As they stepped out, Booker turned to Wei Qi. The boy was looking distinctly dark-eyed and exhausted. "Are you okay?"

"It's nothing…"

"Have you eaten?" Booker asked again.

"No." Wei Qi admitted.

"Then come on. We have some time." Booker headed back towards the dining hall, Wei Qi nervously following behind him. Together they got into the back of the line and shuffled forward, collecting their bowls of congee.

It became slightly awkward as the cooks looked between Booker and Wei Qi, slopping out a plain bowl of rice porridge for one, and adding an egg, pickled vegetables, and bacon to the other's serving.

"Ah, where do we sit..?" Wei Qi asked.

"Well, you're less likely to get beaten up at the cripples table, and I might if I sit with the novices." Booker suggested. Wei Qi's a good kid. It's where do we sit, not leaving me and going to sit with the novices alone.

Together they slid their plates onto the massive eating table and sat down at the end. From a distant cluster of gossiping cripples, Sister Mei's voice cried out, "Brother Rain!" and she hurried over, dropping onto the bench beside to him with a worried look. "Brother Rain, where have you been? You disappear for nearly a week and now there's all kinds of rumors about you!"

"Sorry, Sister Mei. I've been busy for all kinds of reasons." He apologized. "I haven't had the time to sit down and eat."

"Hey, I think you– Do you want to trade bowls?" Wei Qi asked.

"Thanks, but I'm happy." Booker said.

"I'll take that egg though." Sister Mei happily reached over and poached the egg off the top of his rice.

"Hey!" A shout rang down the table. Brother Spider, the cripple Booker had found trying to steal from his room on the first day, had stood up. "How the fuck do you think you're going to show your face around here, huh? Rain, you snake, you spat on Master Ping's generosity! Don't think I don't know!"

"Oh, like you ever gave a shit about him being Master Ping's apprentice before! You sorry vulture, fuck off!" Instantly, Mei was on her feet.

Damn.

I knew it was coming, but I didn't expect it to be this bad. I guess Spider gets his revenge.

Others stood up, walking away or speaking angrily. Booker didn't pay much attention, he just ate his congee quietly as the argument continued overhead. "Sorry for the noise." He said to Wei Qi.

"Uh…" The boy stabbed at his porridge. "Did you… talk to Tong Chen?"

"I didn't realize it was this serious. I'll do it today." He promised. "Come on. Eat up and we'll get to work."

— — —

Salt-Lye Purification Rituals

A refinement ritual of laborious difficulty that can be performed on Earth-aligned ingredients by non-cultivators. Best understood as a primitive antecedent of modern techniques.

Bind rock salt in a bamboo tube and cook at high temperatures.

When the bamboo is completely reduced to ash and the salt has become solid, take the tube of ashen salt and lay it on a bed of pine wood.

Light the pinewood and let it burn down to embers and ash.

Begin a steady drumbeat. When the drum sounds its tenth beat, strike the salt with a rock hammer. Strike again every ten beats, continuing until no part of the salt is larger than a fine grain. This should take roughly one thousand strikes and ten thousand drumbeats.

Mix the salt with the ash and bind together by pouring in a mixture of molten fat and butter.

While the caustic soap formed by this mixture is cooling, place the refinemental materials in a bowl, and pour the cooling mixture over the refinement materials.

Place the bowl upside down and pour cold water over it to cool it.

When it is solid, chip away the soap carefully, as it will absorb moisture from anything it touches.

The ingredients should be refined.

If done correctly, material will be refined with a 0-30% success rate. The success rate depends on how well the beat is kept, the purity of the wood, and the spiritual density of the fat and butter. For best results use human fat and butter.

An hour later, they were sweating in the laboratory as the bed of pinewood burned away underneath the black crystals of salt. Greenmoon stood at a distance as they worked, examining the ritual through a three-eyed crystal lens that stood on a brass tripod.

"Alright, the fire should be low enough. Now we start breaking it apart." Booker grabbed a broom, reversed it, and used the haft to crush, break, and stir the salt crystals. Dai Qi used the soles of his thick boots, stomping the heavy bricks of salt down into the ash.

"No no no." Greenmoon called. They froze in place as he waved his hand dismissively. "No, no. This is wrong. All wrong!"

Damnit, what's the matter? I'm sabotaging the process, but how does he know that?

It has to be the lens he's watching us with.

"Sir, this is the process…" Booker said, helplessly. He could only play dumb, because right now, Greenmoon had all the information. "Can you say what we did wrong?"

"No." He clicked his tongue in irritation. "We have, for the day, the use of the Sect's one and only Three-Directional Lens. It can measure how the energies of heaven and earth move. And until now, it was steadily measuring an increase."

"Ah, so we're… guessing hot or cold?" Booker hazarded.

"Yes yes, roughly, yes." Greenmoon said with irritation. "And we've taken a major step off the path. The bamboo-purified salt, the pinewood, a very good infusion of wood into fire, but the steps are off from there. Try introducing some elemental earth at this time…"

"Right, elemental earth…" Booker scratched the back of his head. "I suppose we could try grinding it with stones…" Damn, of course, he's not useless at alchemy either.

"Yes, that might work." Greenmoon agreed.

"We have enough prepared salt for a few more tests. We can get on that right away!" Wei Qi volunteered, as Booker silently groaned.

"No, no. Finish this out. I need to see the whole ritual as it was written." Greenmoon insisted, putting his eye back to the lens. "The ritual is ruined, yes, but we can still observe where it fails. I suspect Master Ping has written his masterpiece with intentional traps for an inexperienced alchemist to fall into."

Or his apprentice is trying to slow you down.

Resentfully, Booker glanced to Wei Qi. "Alright, let's finish grinding it up. Then we mix it with the ash and form a soap with the fat and butter."

— — —

By the end of the day, Greenmoon had seen the whole of the ritual through, except for two key steps. Booker had withheld that it needed to be a stone hammer in rhythm, and he hadn't mentioned that the fat needed to be rapidly cooled with water.

But how long will it be until he finds new steps that hold the technique together..?

They stepped out of the room and bowed as Greenmoon walked past them. "Very good, very good." Greenmoon praised. "This is indeed a real refinement technique you've discovered. The details have been somewhat distorted, but the core principles are sound. It represents a true step on the Dao of Alchemy."

"We'll endeavor to clean this up." Booker promised.

"Oh, don't be so serious." Greenmoon said.

"Sorry, sir?" Booker replied, blinking.

"You're a talented young alchemist. You've just proved your discovery of a new alchemical technique. Yet all I see in you is doom and gloom." Greenmoon tutted, reaching out to take edges of Booker's robe and straighten them. It was a strangely concerned gesture, and Booker immediately clocked it for what it was: he was being rewarded for his good behavior with a glimpse of the caring, fatherly image Greenmoon exuded when he wasn't terrifying his apprentices.

"Thank you. I'm just… under so much pressure…" He said, feigning gratitude.

"I know, I know. But soon you'll be enjoying the fruits of your labors. And you'll see why we do this to ourselves." Greenmoon soothed. "I wouldn't be surprised if they make you a full disciple."

"I would like that." He admitted.

"And soon, you'll have it." Stepping away, Greenmoon departed down the hall. Booker waited until he was gone and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Brother Wei Qi, we'll meet up again tomorrow. I'm going to–" But before Booker could finish speaking, a group of novices stepped around the far end of the hallway. They were moving together with a purpose, and the way they looked directly at him…

He turned and two more were coming from the opposite direction.

Booker sighed.

"Wei Qi. Don't interfere."

Chapter 31: Birds and Stones

Booker wasn't sure how fucked he was until the last member of the group rounded the corner. It was the lanky apprentice with the shaved blonde hair, the one he'd dropped Zheng Bai's name to in the library.

Their eyes met. The asshole smirked.

Booker didn't like his odds, so he didn't make any sudden movements and tried to keep things on a calm, even tempo. "Greetings brothers and sisters." He said.

"Fuck you." The foremost novice simply swung his fist at Booker's chest.

But he was sixteen, and no cultivator. Booker simply caught his fist, stepped forward, and twisted it behind his back, tripping the boy to his feet and applying pressure to the arm so he was locked in place. "Do you want to tell me what this is about?"

"Zheng Bai… You owe Zheng Bai!" The boy gasped out.

Booker kicked him aside and jammed back with his elbow as another boy tried to jump him from behind. The jam pushed his elbow hard into an oncoming face, and there was a soft but gristly crunching sound as Booker felt fragile bone break.

"Ugh." He grimaced, kicking the second boy's feet out from under him. "Sorry about that."

As the two of them lay on the floor he glanced about, waiting for another attack to come. But the group had lost their cohesion. They no longer trusted that they could easily overwhelm him. Which wasn't to say they were cowards – they'd just realized the essence of the situation.

He might be a cripple, but they were just novices with no cultivation either. And in terms of the situation, he had two years on any of them. Not all of them were good fighters, either – most had been bought in by their silkpants families.

"Zheng Bai wants that recipe!" The cultivator shouted.

Booker's grimace twitched violently. These idiots…

Then this isn't even a real attempt to send a message.

His gaze swept up to the lanky apprentice. "Are you serious? You come after me and you bring children?" Booker spat out. "You're a cultivator, so act like it!"

The lanky apprentice's face reddened, and he let out a furious shout as he simply blurred down the hallway towards Booker. If he'd wanted to kill Booker in that moment, he could have. But his fist stopped an inch short, sending Booker staggered back into the wall by the force of the wind alone.

"You cocky shit." He followed up with a jab into Booker's guts. He had checked the punch early, stopping its momentum, but the blow still folded Booker double and sent the air rushing out of painfully closed lungs. As Booker coughed and choked, the boy grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the wall.

"You didn't come to kill me…" Booker spat out.

"I might still do it anyway." The boy's face was twitching, his lip hitching up with spasms of rage. "Zheng Bai says if you ever use her name again, she'll cut your fucking tongue out!"

"But… you didn't come to cut my tongue out, either." Booker repeated.

"No, you prick. I came to tell you…" He leaned in close. "Zheng Bai wants your new recipe. If you don't bring it to her in three days, we'll fucking castrate you and drown you in the river."

He dropped Booker, then grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back viciously, pulling until the ligaments strained and the joints were twisted backwards to their capacity, nearly coming out of their sockets. "Now fucking scream!"

"Dipshit… Zheng Bai… won't get shit if I don't have my arm… and Greenmoon… wants that recipe… too…" Booker groaned, biting back at the pain searing through his twisted arm. "You think… you break my arm… you slow him down… you think he'll stop at whipping you? Fuck… You'd be fucked both ways."

"Elder brother!" Wei Qi shot forward, skidding to a halt on his sandals beside them. "He's not kidding! Instructor Greenmoon's temper is viciously short with this project. He said that if we didn't have it done soon, he'd expel me! What do you think he's going to do if you delay us by breaking this cripple's arm? And if you're in with criminals, don't you think they'll do worse?"

"Cripples are brittle." The boy sneered back, but he must have thought better after a second, because he slowly released Booker's arm and let him pull free. "Is the message delivered, prick?"

"The message couldn't be clearer, although I think beating me up was your own idea." Booker agreed slowly, rubbing his arm. "I hope you got paid well to deliver it."

"I'll be learning from Zheng Bai's own apprentice." He said gleefully. "I can finally get free of this suffocating bullshit, sucking up and scamming for these idiot instructors."

"I hope you realize Zheng Bai isn't any more concerned for your well-being. You've just traded one form of toadying for another." Booker said, giving him a dark look.

"What do you care?" The apprentice sneered.

"Elder brother, you can beat my ass on behalf of a criminal dog and you'll still be the one who ends up dead if that same criminal decides to slit your throat. It's simply not a good bargain for you to be fighting me." Booker said. "I'm sorry for looking down on you, but you're a stupid motherfucker and someone's got to show some concern."

"You–" The disciple's fist rose–

Booker didn't step back. "I'm getting tired of you pricks. And right now, I know you can't harm me, because I'm more valuable than you. So what? Is your day ruined if a cripple doesn't flinch with fear when you walk by?"

The boy's face colored in with red, dumb fury, totally unable to speak for a moment until he closed his mouth and spat through gritted teeth. "You talk big now but you'll bow to Zheng Bai and I'll be there to watch." He turned away, and then spun around again, "And who do you think you're talking to like that, you cretin!? Like you're any better!"

Booker didn't say anything in return.

As the boy turned and walked away, Snips detached from his collar, lifting off in a flutter of bright pink wings. The lanky apprentice had been so distracted he'd never noticed Snips' poison claws touching at the back of his throat.

Would Snips' poison have killed him? Possibly – but probably not quickly. And he'd definitely feel the sting, no matter how I distracted him. If he reached up fast enough – that would be Snips crushed to a pulp…

It would have been another mess on my conscience, but what a shitheaded dolt.

Sighing and rolling out his back, Booker brushed back his hair and turned back to Wei Qi. To his surprise, the boy immediately ducked his head down, bowing his forehead against a folded double-fist, and apologized. "Sorry, elder brother! I know I should have kept my mouth shut, but I was worried he'd act before he considered the consequences!"

"No, I understand–" And you even try to spare my pride, by pretending my safety wasn't ever in doubt. You're a good kid, Wei Qi. Rubbing the back of his neck, Booker said. "You did the right thing, I just shouldn't have needed your help. In the future, let me deal with the consequences of things on my own, no matter how bad it gets. Do what's best for you."

The least I can do is avoid dragging you into this mess. It's got a shape, and that shape is a spiral.

Today I'm worth more to them alive. But as soon as the recipe is complete, they're free to attack me for it, and Greenmoon loses any incentive to help me instead of silencing me.

"I understand. I hope I didn't make a fool of myself."

"I only think better of you for stepping in where you didn't need to. But it's absolutely my place to see this through, without bringing you into it."

"If you don't mind me asking then–" Wei Qi finally lifted his head. "How bad is this? I heard a name, and I worry for what that name might mean for my own future."

Right. It might become his problem whether or not I want it to. So, I owe him some explanation.

Booker let out a sigh. "I did buy the pills Hu Bao accused me of using. But I had second thoughts, so I threw them away. The person who sold them to me, though, she wanted me to become an addict, dependant on her. I guess she's decided I still owe her." That was the closest he could give to the truth, and the most useful information he could offer to Wei Qi.

Wei Qi nodded slowly. "Truly, we are punished too much for simple mistakes."

Booker held back a humored smile. He didn't know how true it was – Booker hadn't even been Booker when he'd made that error. "That's how it feels sometimes. Then I remember how much of a mistake it is, going to a drug-dealer like her and letting her sink her teeth into me…"

He shook his head. "Be careful junior brother. Especially about getting dragged down by other people's business – none of what you heard today concerns you, if you're lucky, so do your best to put it into a corner of your mind and think as little of it as possible."

Once more Wei Qi nodded, and Booker left.

Goddamn nobodies. Zheng Bai wouldn't have been stupid enough to send a bunch of kids, so it's safe to say this was their own idea, and she just told them to deliver the message.

But it's a real problem for me.

If I go to Greenmoon immediately with this problem, he'll definitely protect me – it's just that protection will be a disciple watching over me, and keeping me from doing anything interesting. I'll be fully in Greenmoon's pocket then. Not where I want to be.

No, I have to do something to shake Zheng Bai…

Or better yet, catch her out and give her to the enforcers. She'll probably have friends among them, but the Sect won't let those friends shield her if she's caught stealing from the Sect's pockets. That's one rule the Sect will always enforce – the rule of the inside against the outside.

I just need to use that against her…

— — —

Booker made his way down to the courtyard by the gates, where the pillar of request tokens swung clanking and clinking like wooden bells in the wind. The medicine sellers were there as always, and today they had some entertainment, a small ring sketched in the sand where spirit beasts fought. They were the weakest kinds of spirit beasts, small insects, birds, and amphibians, but they brawled with an inhuman degree of stamina that kept the fights brutal and exciting.

But Booker didn't have much of a taste for blood these days.

He just figured that going here directly was his best chance of avoiding an uncomfortable encounter. The very same lanky, blonde-haired apprentice he had just finished brawling with usually hung out here, palling around with the medicine sellers.

That meant Booker's best chance of carrying out this transaction without interference was to head right here, before the lanky fuck composed himself and came back.

"Oh, you look fresh from the fight!" One of the toadies called.

Instantly Caihong's head was up, abandoning the fight and searching around for this new source of amusement. Booker held up a hand and a rueful grin.

"Did somebody finally decide that mouth of yours was too big?" She asked, grinning broadly.

"Didn't you teach me I should be more talkative? Share my secrets before you drag them out of me?" Booker replied.

"Mmm, not the lesson I would have taken away from it." She replied, lips pursed.

"Maybe that I should stop playing with sharks, then?"

"Maybe that." She agreed.

"Sorry, I seem to think I'm one of them."

She cracked a faint smile at that. "What are you here for?"

"I want beast blood. Good quality beast blood, the best you can get. I also want the ingredients of a Treasure Sensing Pill…" He took out a small list and handed over. "Ah, in case this catches your famous curiosity, I'm just trying to brew up a spirit beast."

"Hmm… Sixty liang, at least, and the more you can give me the better quality beast blood I can give you… And it will take a while."

Booker glanced sideways at the fight taking place beneath their feet. A two-tailed black scorpion was driving a massive mouse with an axolotl's delicate fleshy gills towards the edge of the ring.

"How about I throw into the ring and bet you a hundred liang?" He gestured at the duel. "And if I win, you make this job a priority. I need my things tonight"

"Hmmm…" She twisted her hair around a finger, considering. "Make it fun."

"Without killing either of them." Booker clarified. Sensing the time was right for him to make his appearance, Snips was crawling out of Booker's bag and up his arm.

"Now that's a bet."

He held up his hand, letting Snips caper back and forth atop his palm. "Think you can do it, little guy? Think of it like… like a training run."

Snips bobbed left and right in a rhythmic dance, flexing his claws up.

"Thought so."

He stepped towards the ring, balancing Snips on his palm, and then sent the little mantis off with a flick of his wrist, launching Snips high into the air where his pink wings could blaze like a halo around him and send him swooping down into the arena.

The fight was just reaching its crescendo – the mouse backed against the wall of feet surrounding it, the scorpion closing in – when Snips descended like a bullet, crashing full-force into the mouse and knocking it aside.

Instantly the scorpion shot forward, two tails plunging down. Snips turned and parried them with the back of one claw, knocking away the night-black stings as the force of the tail-strike lifted the scorpion's kicking back feet off the earth, curling its body like a bow bent back to fire.

Instantly the crowd's attitude had gone from the tight-breathed anticipation of the kill to roaring in surprise, in outrage, and in excitement.

As soon as its back legs reconnected with the ground, the scorpion shot forward and engaged using its gripping claws. Snips flashed back and came back around in a perfect aerial loop do loop, dodging up over the claws and flinging himself down onto the creature's back, capturing both tails with his claws and hanging on so they couldn't curl in enough to prick at him.

The scorpion froze. Even its dim insectile brain could register the threat. One move… And its tails would be ripped off.

"Tao, get him!" Somebody shouted. An instant later, Snips was being flung back and sent tumbling across the ground.

The mouse had made its way back onto its feet, and spat a line of briny water with great pressure.

With a flicker of pink and purple, Snips flicked his wings clean and shot back into the air. He spun once, twice over the battlefield, shots of pressurized water plunging up and arcing aimlessly overhead. The scorpion's owner was shouting orders, telling it to defend its previous opponent, and the beast was scuttling back to guard the mouse – the only one of the two who'd proven they could even hit Snips.

But the problem, as ever, was that they were simply too slow.

Snips rocketed past the scorpion's guard and slammed into the mouse with the knees of its bent, skinny legs, sending the mouse tumbling over and over. Before it could get back to its feet, it had been sent rolling away from its only defense, the scorpion.

Snips advanced!

His claws flashed up, and cut through the air where the mouse had been a second before. The mouse scurried back, terrified to its wits end.

Snips advanced once more… His claws flashed up and scythed down into the ground, barely avoiding decapitating the hopping mouse.

The mouse shivered from head to toe.

Snips advanced one final time, wings expanding out in a buzzing halo, claws lifting up to catch the midday sun…

The mouse turned tail and shot back up its owners leg, as the outraged boy shouted– "Tao! You coward!"

But Snips was already turning towards the second half of the fight. The scorpion, dark-bodied and low against the earth, born forward by a tide of scuttling legs.

A tail shot for Snips' throat. There was a lighting fast parry, the inner blade of his claw striking directly against the tail's poisonous, endoskeleton-covered barb.

There was a distinct cracking noise, so loud it could be heard over the crowd. The sound of chitin armor against chitin blade.

The tail was sent flying back, and the scorpion stumbled.

Once, twice, three times– this scene repeated. Sparks flashed as Snips simply demonstrated the overwhelming speed of his parry against the tail's double-headed offense. There was simply no way, no way at all the scorpion could overcome.

And when the exhaustion of this fact had etched terror and uncertainty into his opponent's mind–

Then Snips really started to show off. His wings flicked open, vibrating into a blur, but he didn't take off for any high-flying aerial show. Instead he lifted until his feet were barely off the ground, wings making the dirt shiver and fly up with the whirlwind they kicked up around him.

The scorpion attempted to stab out once more, and Snips simply skimmed away from the strike, dodging left while it went right. The next tail stabbed forward, and Snips performed an even more devastating counter – dodging left, then coming veering back in from the right, countering with a flying strike from its bladed claw.

Sparks erupted. The scorpion was sent flying back, landing and rolling onto its feet –

But even now the show was still ongoing. Snips flickered in a circle around the scorpion, strafing clockwise around it in a blinding fast ring. Even Booker, who prided himself on a sharp eye in a fight, couldn't track where the mantis actually was within that ring of blurred purple and pink.

And then Snips suddenly solidified out of the blur, slamming into the scorpion from the side. It was sent tumbling onto its back, clumsy armored legs clawing at the air, and Snips dropped from above to land on its exposed underbelly. His claws reached up high, ready for the decapitating strike.

"Stop!" The scorpion's owner shoved his way free from the crowd, reaching out a hand–

And he himself stopped when he realized Snips was already, absolutely, still. The mantis had come to stop the moment he had the enemy trapped, the killing strike ready.

"Come back." Booker called, and Snips hopped up, letting the scorpion squirm away as he flew back to Booker's hand.

The whole crowd was faintly staring, except Caihong and the other medicine seller, who were only exchanging amused looks.

"Can I count on having that beast blood by tonight?" Booker asked.

"You can…" Caihong admitted. "That's an impressive spirit beast."

"I know, right?" Booker grinned, reaching down to scratch delicately at Snips' wings. "If he keeps showing off like this, people will forget the Iron Cripple and start talking about the Iron Mantis."

She snickered, and Booker bowed a brief goodbye, Snips imitating the motion from his shoulder.

— — —

Today was a good test run… Snips can definitely do it, I just hate to put the pressure on Wei Qi…

But I can at least take care of his request before dragging him into this…

With such thoughts in his head, Booker was walking through the hallways of the Sect, until he came to the courtyards where the cripples dwelled. He was lucky to have his own apartment, a privilege of being chosen as an alchemist's apprentice. Novices and cripples without an apprenticeship dwelled in long barracks rooms, with no more personal possessions than what they could fit inside a wicker chest at the foot of their reed pallet beds.

Some of the barracks were tolerable: others were like small fortresses, where anyone who entered without a good reason was likely to be badly hurt, if not killed. The situation within was simply so violent that anybody who didn't quickly learn to be a fighter and a thief would be torn apart: a crude evolution left entire barracks as wild spaces within the sect's walls.

The cultivators paid no attention, because they could ignore these rules and territories at will.

As Booker opened the door to one such dormitory room and stepped inside, unfriendly eyes watched him from all corners.

Among the cripples, a dormitory is a tribe, and the whole tribe is ready to defend itself from outsiders. They have so little left that they'll fight brutally against anyone trying to take anything else from them – the fact that the property might have been stolen in the first place doesn't matter.

But I'm not here to fight.

At the end of the dormitory, he found the man he was looking for. "Tong Chen!"

The man was sitting on his bed, one leg bent against the reed mat and one pulled up, against his chest, right arm hanging over the knee. His face was craggy and pockmarked. "Brother Rain, the Iron Cripple…"

Booker couldn't help but notice the sneer in his voice.

"What do I owe this pleasure to?"

"Instructor Greenmoon has told me to look after my junior brother, Wei Qi. And Wei Qi says you have something that belongs to him." Booker wasted no time in saying. "I don't care why or how it was taken, only that it comes back home. I'll pay a fair price."

Tong Chen paused, and then said, "Do you know what you're buying?"

"I'm not sure you know what you're selling." Booker replied. "Why don't you show me? Let me see how bad the damage is. If you're really holding anything, it can only add weight to your side of the scale."

Tong Chen fixed him with a suspicious glare, but slowly reached back and pulled a set of folded papers from behind his reed bed. It was cheap paper, grainy and heavy with the slats of individual reeds still faintly visible where they'd been overlaid to form the uneven pulp. Booker took them and read.

Immediately, Booker furrowed his brow. It was a set of complete nonsense characters, written in the same way as the palatial script that the Mountain Sect favored, but completely alien in actual composition. The only thing he recognized was Wei Qi's tidy and unassuming handwriting. It was mindbending, trying to take in a foreign alphabet that looked just barely familiar enough to unsettle you.

After a moment he folded the paper, pinched the crease clean again, and went to put it into his pocket.

Tong Chen shot to his feet. "What are you doing!?"

Instantly the air of the stifled dormitory turned chilly. People were rising from sitting on their beds, and knives were starting to slip out of sleeves.

"You don't know what this is. It's in code. Therefore, it's worthless to you, no?" Booker replied calmly.

"Brother, you can piss yourself silly but it won't make it rain. This–" Tong Chen ripped the paper back out of his hand. "This is valuable, and I know that because it's in code! And because the boy panicked so hard when I stole it – you should have seen him. Of course, you can refuse me any consideration. You can say I'm a lump of stone who could never solve this – but would you say the same to the enforcers?" He waved the paper about, flaunting it. "They'll solve it, happily, or beat the answer out of the boy. And I'll be remembered when his secrets come out."

"Elder brother, I never accused you of being a lump of stone. No, I've given you respect and attention from the moment I've entered the room, which is how I've noticed you've been trying to trick me into telling you more about what these papers are from the word go." Although there were still people standing between him and the door, Booker only shrugged. The sense of being surrounded made the hairs on the back of his neck buzz with a nervous tension, but he refused to turn back and look at them directly. "You don't act like a man who's satisfied to be 'remembered' by our friends the enforcers…"

At 'our friends the enforcers' someone behind him snickered. Booker felt the mood loosen.

"And I get it. Wei Qi probably pissed you off before you stole from him, yes? What did he do?"

"He flirted with my sister." Tong Chen said. "Bastard made it seem like her ship had finally come in, then got cold feet."

"Tchh. Kids these days." Booker shrugged. "I know you'd prefer to rake him over the coals a bit, but trust that I'll get my due out of him if you pass this debt to me. The enforcers won't give you a fair share of what you've found, but brothers with the same brand should always pay each other fair, no? Give me the papers. I'll hold his leash, and you can be satisfied he's run ragged without having to satisfy yourself on whatever tiny payout the enforcers would share with you."

Tong Chen tilted his head, chewing at the edge of his lip like he still wasn't satisfied. He glanced past Booker's shoulder at one of the other men, and said, "Like a little patriarch, isn't he? He comes in here and thinks all problems can be solved."

The crowd chuckled.

One of them stepped forward, testing Booker's attention with the sway of a knife in his fingers. Snips shifted in his bag, and Booker held the lid of the bag down to keep him from escaping into the tense situation.

"I want one hundred liang." Tong Chen said, grinning.

"Well that's bad news for me. I don't have a hundred liang." Booker shrugged again. Admitting I have a hundred liang on me right now, would be like inviting them to stab me and see if two hundred falls out. No, they'd actually consider it a matter of pride to steal from me, if I'm stupid enough to deliver it.

"Wrong answer." Somebody called.

But Booker was still looking Tong Chen dead in the eyes.

This guy… He's just bored. He might have his reasons for hating Wei Qi in particular, but he's always on the lookout for someone to jerk around. That's why I have to be careful; I can't seem like an amusing victim.

I'll do well with him as long as I'm a valuable friend.

"I know where you can make more than a hundred liang." He said. "In fact, I know where you can make a few hundred liang so easy it will feel like a joke."

Tong Chen didn't seem impressed. "Then brother, feel free to tell."

"The Pearl Gambling House. Tomorrow, my team will be playing for the first time. They won't lose." Booker said in a tone of cold confidence "You can believe me or you can have your doubts, but be at the Gambling House. See if I told you anything but the truth."

Tong Chen's head tilted. "And what do you think the truth is worth?"

"It's worth a lot, if I keep cutting you in. Come on, I'm offering you a free taste. Just be at the gambling house and pay attention to the money changing hands. At the end of the night, just ask what you think of my words then, and whether I'm a friend worth having. I think you're going to see the light."

Booker could feel the pulse of the room, and it was getting slower. He'd given them a reason not to pick a fight, and that seemed to be what they were waiting for. It was no mistake that he'd given the whole room the tip on the gambling house – he was playing to the audience as much as Tong Chen.

Seeing hesitation on Tong Chen's face, Booker sensed his opportunity and turned. "I'll be going now. Think about what I said."

And he stepped forward, the other cripples parting to let him pass after a moment of hesitation.

They let him out through the door, and Booker continued walking until he was out of sight before finally letting out a sigh, and brushing a hand through his hair, straightening it. Snips escaped his bag the moment he lifted his hand, buzzing onto his shoulder, while even sleepy Froggy was poking his head up from the depths of the satchel.

"Sorry guys, I've been looking for a way out of this, but…" But it kills too many birds with one stone. "It looks like you'll have to fight tomorrow."

And the hard part will be doing it without killing anyone.