Dao of the Deal

Chapter 22: Tea (7)

Muchen ran through a few different slogans before his efforts were finally rewarded. A rough-looking man broke away from a gaggle of dock workers and made his way over to Muchen's stall. He gave the samovar a curious look before focusing his attention on Muchen.

"I can get my tea right away?" he asked.

"Of course," Muchen said. "A special blend, formulated according to an ancient recipe to promote wakefulness and clear thinking."

"How much?" the man asked.

Muchen expected he'd be getting that question a lot. He'd prepared a menu, but the literacy rate in the Qianzhan Continent was nothing to write home about.

"Twenty wen," he said, then rushed to continue as he saw his potential customer's interest fading. "You get to keep the mug, of course. And refills any time in the future are only five wen."

He gestured at the empty mugs he'd put on display. If they weren't worth fifteen wen, they at least weren't worth much less.

"What if I just drink it and give the mug back to you?"

Muchen considered it for a second. He wasn't eager to have to store dirty mugs somewhere in his stall, nor to clean them up again later. And he did want there to be some incentive for customers to take the mug home. On the other hand, it was a reasonable request. He didn't want to lose customers who were only put off by the inconvenience of carrying an empty mug around with them after they finished their tea.

"Six wen," he said.

"Not five?" the man asked.

Muchen shook his head. He didn't bother explaining any further. Six wen was a perfectly reasonable price for a cup of tea, and Muchen didn't want to have to waste time with dickering.

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"All right," the man said after a moment's thought, fishing six copper coins out of his pocket and handing them over.

"Excellent," Muchen replied, snagging an empty mug off the table and giving it a dollop of the concentrate from the kettle. "How strong do you like it?"

"Strong."

Muchen nodded, then opened the spigot on the samovar to fill the mug about three quarters of the way full. That was enough for the final product to be stronger than the average cup of tea without leaving so much space in the mug that his customer would feel like he was being cheated.

Muchen felt a hint of satisfaction deep in his body as he handed over the tea. He couldn't say for sure whether it was something mystical or if he was just happy to finally be in business. Either way, he was happy as he watched his first customer slug down the first cup of tea that he'd ever sold.

"Huh," the man said when he finished, setting the cup down on the table. "Not bad."

Well, it was a start.

It took a good quarter hour of work to attract his next customer. All in all, his first afternoon of tea sales was a mixed success. He managed to sell eleven cups of tea, just short of an even dozen. None of his customers spit out their drinks, at least not where he could see them. It wasn't exactly a rousing success, but then he'd already missed the best time to make sales. Anyways, he'd always known that this business would have to be built up bit by bit.

Also, while he didn't add much money to his lockbox, he did do enough work to undo the block that had been obstructing his cultivation. He could feel the change without even needing to meditate. He was buzzing with energy as he put away his stall. He was almost bouncing in his seat as he drove his cart to the Thousand Treasures Hall.

He greeted Master Huang with a wide smile on his face and attacked the books with vigor. The tomes that had embodied dry and dusty boredom just the day before now called out to him with the promise of hidden secrets behind every page.

His newfound enthusiasm for reading faded away after the first half hour, but physically Muchen was still feeling great. He made tremendous progress through the books, powering through without allowing himself to be distracted. Unfortunately, he didn't find any listings that were relevant to Xinyi's quest. He was nearing the end of his daily research session when an entry caught his eye.

The Stormbreaker. An unusually powerful sword, but by now Muchen had read about plenty of unusually powerful swords. The remarkable thing about this sword was that its owner was listed as the Long family. Muchen wasn't in the market for a sword, exactly, but he had kept an eye on the big ticket items being put up for sale at the coming auction and the Stormbreaker was nowhere among them.

He glanced over at Master Huang. The old man was leaning back in his seat, almost dozing off as he waited for the work day to end.

"Master Huang," Mucehn said, ignoring how he started awake, "what happened to the Stormbreaker?"

"The Stormbreaker?" Master Huang asked. His irritation at being disturbed faded away as he seized the chance to share a juicy bit of gossip. "You ask me, but who do I ask? Even the imperial guard has no idea where it is."

That got a raised eyebrow out of Muchen. He'd assumed that the government was holding back some of the choicest spoils of the Long estate, but Master Huang didn't sound like he was relaying a cover story. "How could it slip through their grasp?"

"The Long family lost their pillar of support when young master Chen fell," Master Huang said, "but not their eyes and ears at court. If they caught wind that their valuables would be confiscated, they could have hidden it in any number of places."

"Hid their valuables," Muchen said, "but not themselves?"

"It's easier to hide a sword than a person," Master Huang said. "It's not that easy for an entire family to pull up roots and flee."

That was a fair point. No established family would hit the panic button and evacuate the capital just because of an ominous rumor. For that matter, taking a drastic action like that might prompt punishment even if the original rumors had been false. Muchen was still a little surprised, though, that they hadn't tried to smuggle out even one or two members of the younger generation.

Well, maybe they had. It wasn't like the Emperor was confiding all of his troubles to Muchen. For all he knew, there was a frantic manhunt going on in the dark. Not to mention the search for Stormbreaker.

"Do you think it will turn up?" he asked.

"A sword like that is too precious to stay hidden," Master Huang said. "And too distinct to disguise."

The Stormbreaker was a spiritual tool that could be used by cultivators who were still building their foundation. The remarkable thing about it was that it could take in the wielder's spiritual energy and use it to sheathe the blade in lightning. In a pinch, the lightning could even be used as a ranged attack.

Ordinarily, cultivators couldn't incorporate elemental attacks into their repertoire until they had moved on to the Core Formation stage. Even then, it depended on how you built your foundation. Many cultivators wouldn't be able to match the performance of the Stormbreaker until they finished constructing their Golden Core.

Any weapon that let you cross cultivation levels was a precious treasure indeed. The Stormbreaker wasn't quite part of that elect group. It gave Foundation Building cultivators access to abilities that were usually only available to a select few cultivators in Core Formation, but a Foundation Building cultivator would still be at a severe disadvantage in a life or death fight with somebody in Core Formation, Stormbreaker or no.

Still, it was a potent tool. It was also, as Master Huang said, impossible to disguise. Some swords could be kept under wraps with a bit of cosmetic alteration, but all subterfuge would go out the window the moment a Foundation Building cultivator started throwing lightning around.

That was enough for Muchen to give up any wild ideas of searching the area around the former Long family estate for hidden treasure. He couldn't use the Stormbreaker now, but that wasn't the real problemhis cultivation was coming along nicely and he'd hit the Foundation Building stage soon enough.

The fundamental problem was that being rich and weak was a crime. Well, it might as well be, considering how cultivators behaved. In order for an actual Foundation Building cultivator to use the Stormbreaker without getting dogpiled by more advanced cultivators, he would need the backing of a formidable organization on par with the former Long family's might.

Xinyi was powerful, of course, but Muchen could hardly publicize her existence and live safely under the umbrella of her protection. As always, the best way to ensure his own safety was to keep a low profile and look like he was more trouble to rob than it was worth.

Some day, when his cultivation had advanced far enough to support it, he'd get himself a flashy weapon. By that point he might not even need it, but there was a certain romance to a really nice magical sword. Some things were worth buying regardless of the cold cost-benefit analysis.

Muchen took another look at the entry, just enough to give him a chance to identify the Stormbreaker if he happened to run across it when it wasn't shrouded by lightning. Then he got back to work flipping through pages and searching for anything that merited a second look from Xinyi. He got three quarters of the way through the book without finding anything and marked his place with a bookmark before knocking off for the day.

That muted sense of excitement started to build up again as Muchen made the trip from the Thousand Treasures Hall back to the Wang estate. Where the previous day he had approached the need to cultivate with dread, pushing through only out of a sense of obligation, now he was eagerly anticipating it. He just managed to maintain the proper social niceties on his way to his private courtyard and practically dashed inside, falling into a cross legged meditation pose as soon as he had some privacy.

He inhaled and felt the spiritual energy flow freely. It was a sensation that he had almost taken for granted before the last few days of stagnant cultivation. Now he treasured it, smiling broadly as he guided the energy through his meridians.

He hadn't made much profit today, but he had followed his dao. He was doing his best to open up a new market and explore a new business opportunity. Even if the silver wasn't yet pouring in, the heavens at least seemed to approve of his actions.

As he continued to circulate the energy, Muchen started to feel a tingling in the back of his head. There was no repeat of the vision of rivers of silver that had greeted him when he first connected to his dao, but it was an echo of that sensation. He felt connected to the capital in a way that he never had before, like a newly planted tree nourished by a steady trickle of silver. He could tell that there were more connections waiting to be explored between himself and his customers, though he couldn't quite follow the links just yet.

The hour long meditation session went by in the blink of an eye. Muchen was still riding high on the euphoric feeling of reconnecting with his dao when he came out of his trance.

He could still feel energy coursing through his body. Not spiritual energy, but just a positive buzz that had him feeling like he could go out and run a marathon. It was a stark contrast to how he had felt just a day earlier. Now that he had broken free of the gloom, he could look back and see how much of a pall had been cast over his life by his trouble with the permitting office.

It was good to be past such an irritating obstacle. On the other hand, it was a little alarming how badly he had been affected by what should have been a trifling annoyance.

"Xinyi?" he asked, eyeing the innocuous turtle shell that sat on the nightstand next to his bed.

It took a moment before she poked out her head. "What?"

"Following your dao helps speed cultivation, and cultivation helps you follow your dao," Muchen said. "It's a virtuous cycle. Does that mean that failing to follow your dao will have harmful effects?"

"You noticed?" Xinyi asked. "To step onto the dao is to walk forward on an eternal path. It's only natural that choosing to stand still will hurt."

Muchen thought back to all the stories he had heard of cultivators who preferred to solve every problem with violence. As far as he knew, almost every cultivator on the Qianzhan Continent followed a martial dao. If acting contrary to their dao caused the same sort of side effects that he'd been experiencing over the last couple days, then a lot of things about cultivator society suddenly made a lot more sense.

"It manifests differently at different levels of cultivation," Xinyi continued, giving him a speculative look. "For you to have noticed something already, well, I already knew you had an unusually close connection to your dao."

She spoke with approval, but Muchen couldn't help but feel a sense of foreboding. He never wanted to go through anything like what had happened over the last few days again. He thought back to Steward Fu, and wondered how many cultivators who stopped progressing along their dao turned to alcohol to dull the pain.

At least he had chosen to hitch his wagon to a sensible dao. Muchen hated to think what he would have gotten up to if he hadn't stumbled into the dao of mutually profitable exchange.