Sen didn’t sleep straight through for a whole day the way he imagined he might. Instead, he found himself getting up periodically to make food, chat a little, and then go back to bed. As the hours of sleep slowly accumulated, though, Sen started to understand just how bone tired he had truly been. After the first day of sleeping way more than he was awake, he was finally rested enough to really feel how utterly exhausted he still was. Sen wanted to chalk it all up to his experience with the spring, but he didn’t really believe that. The kind of tired he was didn’t happen overnight or even over a few weeks. Now that he was clear of most of the threats he’d been under, he was sleeping off a year’s worth of stress and worry. Thankfully, the other three didn’t pester him about when they were leaving. Shi Ping seemed ecstatic that they’d only walked for part of a day. Then again, none of them were under pressure to find a fix to a problem that would kill them. Sen supposed that made doing nothing for a few days something that sat easier in their minds.
He had eventually remembered to ask the three for ideas about what to call the stone houses. Shi Ping, expressing his native laziness suggested that they call them stone houses. Falling Leaf had shrugged. When pressed, she said to call it shelter. It was Lo Meifeng who finally came up with a name that Sen hated, which he was sure meant that it was also going to be the one that stuck.
“You should call them galehouses,” she said.
He’d given her a flat look that had made her giggle.
“Galehouses,” said Sen in his least amused voice. “Really?”
She’d nodded enthusiastically. “It’s distinctive, which makes it easy to remember. Plus, it ties them to you. You might as well get credit for putting up very sturdy shelter in places that people might otherwise have to fight off spirit beasts with nowhere to run.”
Rather than respond to that, which would surely have involved yelling and possibly throwing things at Lo Meifeng, Sen rubbed his face with his hands and then went back to bed. They ultimately spent three days in the galehouse before Sen decided that he’d gotten enough sleep that he almost felt human again. Even that awful anger seemed to have receded or at least grown less insistent. As they walked away from the stone building, Shi Ping looked from Sen to the galehouse and back again.
“What is it, Shi Ping?” demanded Sen.
“You’re just going to leave it?”
“What else am I going to do? It’s not like I can take it with us. Do you want to try cramming that thing into a storage ring?”“I just thought you might dismantle it,” said Shi Ping a little defensively.
Sen gave the man an odd look. “Why would I do that? It’s not hurting anything. It’s not disrupted the local environment.”
“Well, aren’t you worried that someone will come along and, I don’t know, keep it?”
“Not really,” said Sen. “Not this far out from civilization. I expect people will use it the exact same way we did. They’ll take shelter for a short while, catch up on some rest, and then move on.”
Shi Ping frowned, and Sen waited for the man to say something else, but the fire cultivator seemed lost in his own thoughts after that. Maybe he just can’t wrap his head around putting in all that work and leaving it for someone else to use, thought Sen. Whatever the reason, Sen just soaked up the blissful lack of Shi Ping moaning about everything. When they stopped to eat lunch, which consisted of cold leftovers, Lo Meifeng gestured in a vaguely northern direction.
“Have you thought about how you’re going to approach the Golden Phoenix sect?” she asked.
Sen eyed her dubiously. That sounded like the kind of conversation starter that was going to end with her making a suggestion. They’d almost entirely avoided that kind of conversation up until now, and he’d been perfectly happy with that arrangement. He was tempted to tell her to mind her own business, but the answer actually was kind of her business. If he was going to do something stupid, like try to steal the manual, then she’d have to make one kind of plan. If he was going to do things in a less violence-inducing way, she’d make different kinds of contingency plans. Trying to push his knee-jerk disagreeableness away, he nodded.
“I’m going to try to treat it more like a business transaction than anything else. I’ll find someone in the city to serve as a kind of envoy for me, and inquire about what they want in exchange for the manual or a copy. If I’m very lucky, they’ll be willing to sell me a copy at only vaguely extortionate rates and we can all call it a day.”
Lo Meifeng looked a little startled, but she nodded along. “That’s probably the best way to handle it. Using a middleman helps keep them from focusing on what they might be able to get from you personally. In fact, if they think it’s another sect or a powerful independent cultivator, that’s for the best. They’ll just ask for resources. They’ll ask for a lot. You know that, right?”
Sen nodded. “I assumed they would. Why settle for a little when you can make a tidy profit?”
“I’m not sure you really understand what I mean. A lot to you is a very different thing than a lot to a sect. Even small sects control a lot of financial and cultivation resources. For most people, five hundred gold tael is an almost unthinkable sum of money. For a sect like the Golden Phoenix sect, that’s nothing. They spend that much on an order of rice. They’ll make that much carrying out one mission for the government.”
Somewhere along the line, Sen had gotten used to the idea that he had money. By most people’s standards, he supposed he probably looked rich. When he needed to buy things, as a rule, he could afford them without needing to do a lot of thinking about whether he could afford them. Yet, if what Lo Meifeng was saying was true, he might well be out of his financial depth with the Golden Phoenix sect. He almost certainly had more money waiting for him back on the coast. That money wasn’t going to be easily accessible unless Grandmother Lu had a shop in the capital. He didn’t know if she did, but he’d have to ask around. They might be able to extend him a line of credit and recoup the funds from whatever the business at large was holding for him. Even then, there would be practical limits. While the business in general might have a couple hundred gold pieces for him, somewhere, it didn’t mean that a particular branch of the business could get him that much.
“Well,” he said, “there isn’t much use speculating about the costs before I make contact with them. I can either afford it or I can’t.”
Lo Meifeng hesitated for longer than was normal for her before she said, “Feng Ming can afford it.”
“No,” said Sen. “I can’t lean on my teachers to solve every problem for me. It made sense with the demonic cultivators. They hate demonic cultivators. I knew that was something they’d want to do. This isn’t their problem.”
“I won’t pretend that I know Feng Ming’s mind, but I have to imagine that he’d prefer it if you got the resources you need. Even if it means leaning on him financially.”
“I said no. If I can’t secure a simple manual from a sect, I have no business being out in the world.”
“You have secured simple manuals from sects, which is the point. It isn’t a simple manual, and this isn’t some small sect. It’s a very rare manual and a very powerful sect. People get very strange about rare things, even when those rare things are stupidly dangerous. Maybe even especially when those things are stupidly dangerous. On top of that, you’ll be dealing with a sect that is absolutely steeped in its own arrogance. I know how you feel about that when it comes to sects. Even if everything goes smoothly, this is going to be expensive and personally challenging. You should use the resources you have available.”
“By resources, I assume that you mean yourself.”
Lo Meifeng took a deep breath. “By resources, I mean all of the resources you have available. Yes, I’m one of those resources, but I’m not the only one. When we get to the city, at least let me reach out to my contact there. Let me find out what, if any, financial support can be secured.”
Despite his misgivings about taking any advice from Lo Meifeng, Sen was tempted. If he could get that damned manual from the sect, even if it meant leaning on his master’s finances, it would solve so many problems. In the end, though, he’d meant what he said to Lo Meifeng. He could keep expecting his teachers to solve every big problem he ran across. At some point, he had to start taking responsibility for himself, and for fixing the problems that would inevitably crop up in his life and cultivation. He shook his head.
“No. I understand what you’re saying, but the answer is still no. I got myself into this particular mess with my body cultivation. It’s on me to get myself out of it.”
Lo Meifeng looked ready to yank out her own hair at those words, but she didn’t say anything else. He was grateful for that. He didn’t really want to have an argument with her about the subject. Before either of them could stumble into another difficult topic, Falling Leaf returned from one of her extended scouting adventures. Sen fixed her a plate of food, which the ghost panther-turned-young woman happily accepted. She didn’t immediately report anything, which Sen took to mean that they’d only face the usual assortment of dangers that she considered boring, such as low-level spirit beasts and possibly some bandits. After she finished eating her food, she looked at Sen.
“We’re being followed.”
For a few seconds, Sen’s mind went into full paranoia. Had the demonic cultivators found him after all? Then, a much more reasonable, if no less troubling thought occurred to him.
“Oh no, please tell me it’s not…,” started Sen.
“It’s the sect girl,” said Falling Leaf.
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