Dao of the Deal

After a moment, Liling let out a dissatisfied harrumph. "You've put your mind on cultivation."

"Only for self-defense," Muchen protested. In the long run he was also interested in the idea of eternal life, but old age wasn't yet a pressing concern.

"I could pick up a set of scriptures from the market and try it out for myself," Liling said. "For self-defense."

"Your father...." Muchen said, trailing off into a sigh. As much as Uncle Haoyu wanted to avoid associating with cultivators, he'd never be too harsh on his only daughter. Whether Muchen would escape unscathed upon the discovery that he had led Liling astray was a different matter. "You shouldn't just believe everything you read in the books."

Muchen was hardly an expert, but now that he had some personal experience with cultivation he could look back on the books that he had read when he first started out and recognize that they'd been half filled with nonsense. He'd been lucky the meditative exercise he'd picked up had done anything at all. Even then, he hadn't made any real progress until he received personal instruction from Xinyi.

"You have any better advice for me?" Liling asked.

Muchen didn't reply immediately. He thought back to his own experience with cultivation. In particular, the frustration he'd felt when he'd been prevented from following his dao, and the excitement and relief when he'd finally gotten past that obstacle.

"Just, think carefully before you pick a dao," Muchen said.

"I know," Liling said, with the air of someone who had already spent some time reading a cultivation treatise, "I need to pick a weapon that's suitable for me."

"It doesn't have to be a weapon," Muchen said. "Your dao is the path that you'll walk for the rest of your life. You should choose something that makes you happy."

Muchen could only imagine how annoying it would be to be saddled for all eternity with an itch to carry out some onerous chore. Of course, the effort required to actually connect to a dao probably ensured that such a thing wouldn't happen, but he still felt better for having delivered the warning.

"It would help," Liling said, "if you could give me a proper lesson on cultivation."

"Bad enough if your father thinks I inspired you to try cultivating," Muchen said, shaking his head. "Besides, I don't dare to give lessons with my paltry abilities."

"Fine," Liling said, crossing her arms over her chest. Thanks to years of experience as a social animal, Muchen was confident that matters were not, in fact, fine. Unfortunately, he didn't know that there was anything he could do about it.

"Please be careful," he said.

"I don't see that that's any of your business," Liling said. She tossed her head and stalked off. Muchen considered for a moment offering to accompany her back to the family estate before deciding that discretion was the better part of valor.

He finished packing up and hopped onto the driver's bench. Xinyi's voice sounded in his ear a moment later.

"You have a lot to learn."

He shrugged. "I don't have the experience to give advice related to cultivation that's nearly as helpful as yours."

Xinyi was silent as Muchen navigated the next few turns. He almost thought she had dropped the topic before he caught her next remark, barely on the edge of his ability to hear.

"That too."

ooOoo

Over the next few days, almost everything went according to plan. Muchen accomplished everything he had initially set out to do in the capital. His tea business had held steady and showed signs of sustainable growth. The workshop finished building the equipment he would need to run his factory in the countryside. He put together the final list of spiritual tools that might help restore Xinyi's cultivation base. He even managed to open his seventh meridian.

The only thing he could do was figure out what Heisan's angle was. With two days to go before the auction, Muchen was feeling the pressure. He was lying in bed after his evening cultivation session, unable to fall asleep, when the thought occurred to him: he hadn't had any luck figuring things out from looking at Heisan's choice of target. Maybe he'd have better luck trying to puzzle out the plan starting from Heisan's chocie of partner.

Muchen didn't lack for self-confidence, but even so he was well aware that he was far from the best choice for this kind of thing. For one thing, he'd never met Heisan before. There was no real trust between them. For all he knew, Heisan had picked his name out of a hat.

No, that wasn't quite right. Heisan had already known who Muchen was before they met. He'd known that Muchen was a frequent guest at the Thousand Treasures Hall. He'd also known that Muchen had purchased a secondhand batch of clothes that had originated from the Long family estate.

Muchen was far from the only person interested in the Long family auction. Even if Heisan only wanted to work with people that he thought would be easy to rob, there were still dozens of choices. Muchen's tea stand may have made him uniquely approachable, but that hardly made a difference for a scheme on this level.

If there was anything that made Muchen unique, it was his purchase of the Long family's secondhand clothing. But why would Heisan care about that? Muchen had needled the man, but he didn't seriously think he had any kind of prurient interest in such things.

As far as practical use went, there wasn't much. The clothes simply weren't that valuable. Muchen expected to make a profit from selling them, sure, but it was hardly the sort of gold mine that would warrant any kind of serious scheming or potential violence.

Unless there was more to the clothing than met the eye.

Muchen fetched out the trunk where he had put the clothing away for safekeeping. It took a bit of doing, but he soon had the dresses laid out on his bed for inspection.

There was nothing special about them at first glance. Well, the pawn shop wouldn't have sold them to him if they were an obvious treasure.

Muchen began checking over the dresses one by one, looking for secrets. It was tricky work. Between the frills, embroidery, and decorative adornments, each dress had plenty going on to distract the eye. He had to focus carefully and check inch by inch for anything out of place. It was tiresome work, but he was willing to work hard when it came to securing his own safety.

He finally found something suspicious on the seventh dress he checked. There were stitches present on the cuff of the right sleeve that didn't serve any obvious purpose. Muchen rolled the thick fabric between his fingers. Now that he was focusing on it, there was a lump there that was out of place. It was too subtle to be seen by the naked eye, but he could feel something there.

Muchen studied the dress for a moment. This was something he'd been hoping to sell for five taels some day. Part of him wanted to find a skilled maid who could open up the stitching on the cuff without doing any damage to the fabric. That way it could be stitched back up and sold for full price.

He sighed and pulled out his pocket knife. This secret had better be worth more than a few taels of silver. He cut open the fabric of the sleeve, carving through the thread that had held together two layers of fabric. He was careful not to let the knife run into the hidden lump. The cut didn't turn out quite as neat as he would have liked, but at least he didn't carve out any swatches of fabric. A skilled hand with a sewing needle would be able to fix it up like nothing had ever happened.

More importantly, he had access to his prize. He fished it out with his fingertips. Whatever it was, it was cool to the touch. He pulled it free, revealing a translucent piece of jade. It was roughly the size and thickness of a credit card. It looked lovely, but Muchen couldn't imagine that such an oddly shaped piece would be particularly valuable as jewelry.

He looked closer, but no inscriptions were visible on the surface of the jade. Whatever secrets it was hiding were buried deeper than he could see.

"Interesting find."

Xinyi had poked her head out of her shell and was staring intently at the jade. Muchen held it out to her. A moment later the jade floated out of his hands and moved to hover in the air in front of Xinyi. Her eyes took on a soft glow that was soon matched by a similar glow radiating from the jade card.

"It's an information storage device," Xinyi said. "The contents are locked to the blood of the Long family."

Muchen looked at the jade with fresh eyes. A genuine spiritual tool, even if it was rather niche in application, was worth quite a bit of money in its own right. Not to mention that the information stored within had to be quite valuable to be put under such thorough protection.

He sighed. It was a pity they didn't know what was stored inside. It would make bargaining with Heisan much more straightforward.

"Be patient," Xiyi said. "It's not as easy as I make it look to open one of these up while leaving the seal intact."

Muchen opened his mouth, ready to defend himself against the idea that he'd been expressing any kind of impatience, but caught himself. The last thing he wanted to do was distract Xinyi while she was in the middle of a delicate operation. Especially when she was helping him out.

The glow on the card changed color from a soft steady white to a flickering red. As he watched the red tint faded away, soon replaced by yellow, then green. The flicker slowed until it was a gentle pulse, then smoothed out until the card was surrounded by a gentle green glow.

"A cultivation technique," Xinyi said. "Higher level than I'd thought was still around on this continent, too."

"No wonder Heisan sought me out," Muchen said, "if he realized we were holding on to such a treasure."

"The more fool he for coveting his master's cultivation secrets," Xinyi said, shaking her head. "It would be useless for him."

"Why?" Muchen asked.

"The Storm Dragon scripture requires you to build your foundation using lightning aspected spiritual energy," Xinyi said. "Without an elder around who can feed you a gentle trickle of the stuff, all you can do is head out into a thunderstorm and try your luck."

Muchen winced. From everything that he'd heard, building a foundation was a complex and delicate endeavor. Not something he'd want to do while he was busy trying to survive being struck by lightning.

Although.... lightning was just electricity, right? It had been a while since Muchen took high school physics, but he thought he remembered a few ways to go about generating a gentle trickle of electricity. He wasn't sure how well that would translate into producing properly aspected spiritual energy, but it might be worth seeing if he could find some magnets on the market and conduct a few experiments.

Of course, all of that was a concern for the future. For now, the more immediate issue was how he was going to navigate his deal with Heisan.

"Do you think he really left the Long family?" Muchen asked.

Xinyi waved a flipper dismissively. "Rats leave a sinking ship. There's no shortage of servants who would love to step on their masters' heads in order to advance, if only they could find the opportunity."

"I don't know," Muchen said. "He couldn't be the one who hid the jade in the first place. Somebody must have trusted Heisan in order to share that secret."

Muchen couldn't help but conjure up the scenario in his head. A well established clan like the Long family would have branches scattered throughout the country. Even if the imperial troops tried to root out the entire family, it would be difficult to find them all. Perhaps there was some distant cousin of the main line out there with great talent who had been denied access to the main family's techniques in order to keep him from overshadowing the main line. Maybe he didn't even know he was related to the illustrious Long family. Not until a faithful servant arrived, bearing a heaven-defying cultivation technique and a mission of revenge.

"That doesn't mean he'll live up to that trust in the end," Xinyi replied.

Either way, given a choice Muchen would prefer to stay far away from this situation. Whether it was the Long family making a comeback and settling scores or the Emperor rooting out traitors, he didn't want to be in anybody's crosshairs. Unfortunately, it didn't look like he had a choice.

The problem wouldn't vanish even if he were to make Heisan disappear. He was pretty sure Heisan wasn't acting alone. Somebody knew where the jade had been hidden and had figured out that Muchen had it. They might not realize he had figured out the secret, but once Heisan vanished then the jig would be up. Muchen didn't want to live the rest of his life waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Can you make a copy of the information?" he asked.

"Of course," Xinyi said. "This would actually be rather suitable for you to build your foundation, if it weren't for the stringent requirements."

Muchen smiled. "Heisan will be looking to take advantage of us after the auction, once we're outside of the capital. It will be a good opportunity to alter our arrangement."

Only one question still tickled at the back of his mind: what did Heisan want from the auction? He'd obviously approached Muchen in the hopes of getting the cultivation technique away from him, but he was also clearly interested in the auction. If he had truly betrayed the Long family, then maybe he just wanted to use inside information to get rich. If he was a loyal servant, though, then there had to be more to it.

Finding the cultivation technique had solved a big part of the puzzle. Muchen had two more days to put the rest of the pieces together.