Unintended Cultivator

After a brief discussion and a quick meal, Sen accompanied Grandmother Lu back to her shop. She wasn’t comfortable simply carrying around anything as valuable as beast cores. It turned out that she didn’t have a storage ring of her own, which Sen found odd at first.

“I don’t deal with many things that would call for them. Oh, they’re terribly useful things, but a well-guarded caravan gets the job done just as well. Plus, if you look around the shop, I deal with mortal luxury items. High-grade silks are valuable, but if someone wants qi work done on their silks, they can find someone to do that work for them. We don’t keep stores of medicinal herbs or that sort of thing, which really do need a storage treasure. Frankly, sticking to mortal luxuries keeps us from being too enticing to thieves. We do have a few small storage boxes, for those rare occasions when we really need one, but that’s very rare indeed.”

In the back of his mind, Sen thought that perhaps he could find a storage ring for Grandmother Lu out in the world somewhere. It might make for a fine new year's gift at some point. In the meantime, though, they maintained a brisk walk from the house toward the shop. Sen smiled to himself at Grandmother Lu’s sure and pain-free steps.

“What’s it like?” He asked.

“What’s what like?” She asked, giving him a baffled look.

“Going from how you were to how you are now. What’s it like?”

“Oh, that. It’s like,” she ruminated for a moment, “being set free.”

Sen pursed his lips as he tried to make sense of that. “I guess I don’t know what that’s like.”

“Well, I don’t suppose there’s any reason you should. When your body starts giving out on you, it’s like you’re stuck in a cage. The older you get, the more things go wrong, the smaller the cage gets. Getting back some of what I lost, it was like someone opened the door to that cage and invited me out.”

“I’m happy for you, grandmother,” said Sen. “I’m glad you get another chance to, well, live life the way you want to.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I lived a good life by most measures. I had a decent husband who loved me. I had healthy children who went on to start their own families. It was only at the end that things really went wrong for me. Still,” she looked down at one of her hands, “I am grateful to have a chance to do something more. Some people, when they get older, they’re ready to journey into Diyu and embrace reincarnation. Some people, people like me, they want more, to have done more, to have been more than they were. I actually get that chance. I’m going to make the most of it, free from yesterday’s sins.”

They fell into a comfortable silence after that. Sen’s entry into the shop caused a bit of rustle among the girls who were there. Sen noticed Grandmother Lu rolling her eyes and muttering something about “having a talk” with him. He was about to ask her what they needed to talk about when the round-faced girl from the day before rushed up to them. She saw Sen looking right at her and managed to trip over her own feet. Sen took a quick step forward and grabbed her by the arms. He steadied her on her feet and then stepped back.

“Your mom makes those great mooncakes, right?” He asked.

The girl just stared at him with her mouth a little open until Grandmother Lu reached out and snapped her fingers right in front of the girl’s face.

“Did you need something, Bai?”

The girl blinked, blushed furiously, and nodded. “My mother asked me to send her thanks to the young master for his kind words. She also asked me to give these to you.”

The girl held out a small cloth bundle. Curious, Sen took the bundle and untied it. Folding back the cloth, he found several small buns that gave off a smell that was equal parts sweet and tart.

“These look delicious. What are they?”

“Pineapple buns. Has the young master never had them before?”

Sen shook his head. “Well, I certainly can’t eat all of these alone. You’ll have to eat them with me later.”

“I, I, I would be most honored to share them with the young master,” said Bai, who had gone the color of a tomato.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Grandmother Lu look upwards as if she was beseeching the heavens. What’s that look all about, Sen wondered. Glancing around the shop, he saw several of the other girls giving Bai baleful glares. What are those looks about, he wondered. Grandmother Lu took a very firm hold of Sen’s arm and pulled him toward the back of the shop.

“Thank you, Bai,” she all but growled over her shoulder before glaring at Sen. “I need to get you out of sight before there’s a murder.”

Sen let himself be pulled to a back room, where Grandmother Lu tried to glare a hole through him. Sen tried to understand what he’d done wrong. He’d tried his best to be polite to the girl. He thought he’d succeeded, but maybe he’d overlooked something. His obvious and complete lack of comprehension seemed to soften Grandmother Lu’s temper. She shook her head and gave another of those imploring looks upward.

“We will need to have a very long talk about young women later. For now, let’s have a look at those beast cores.”

Sen dutifully began pulling beast cores out of his ring. Grandmother Lu almost automatically rejected several of them, while setting aside six. Sen put the rejects back in his ring and then took a hard look at the ones she had set aside. A glimmer of understanding took hold and he pointed at the stones in turn.

“Earth qi. Air qi. Fire qi. Metal qi. Earth qi. Water qi. Nothing unusual. Nothing unique.”

Grandmother Lu nodded. “I can reasonably sell an earth qi beast core or an air qi beast core without raising a lot of eyebrows. They’re common enough that I could have come by them in several very plausible ways. An ice-attributed beast core? A metal-wind core? Nobody just has cores like that lying around unless they’re a sect or maybe a very successful alchemist. People mount full expeditions to find those kinds of things. I don’t even know how much you should ask for something like that. Be very, very careful who you tell about those cores, Sen.”

Up until that moment, Sen had been working from the assumption that all of those cores were more or less of equivalent value. Now, he knew that he’d been underestimating the wealth in that ring. It made him nervous to be wearing it out in the open, but he couldn’t see a better option. He didn’t dare just leaving sitting in a drawer somewhere. Not even at Grandmother Lu’s home. He suspected that her servants were probably honest, but one moment of curiosity with a storage ring could test that honesty to the breaking point. Sen sighed. He’d need to offload those cores for his own safety, but he’d have to do it very carefully. He watched as Grandmother Lu put two of the cores into one storage box, and the other four in a second storage box. She vanished from the room for several minutes before she came back with a heavy pouch that gave off a faint jingle whenever she moved it too fast. She placed both the storage box with the four cores and the pouch of money into a heavy sack. The other storage box disappeared into a locked cabinet.

“I’ll see that your,” she rolled her eyes, “friend gets that sack. I just hope he’s smart enough to take it straight to his father.”

Sen shrugged. “Either he is, or he isn’t. I promised I’d help. It’s on him to actually put that help to good use.”

Grandmother Lu and Sen stiffened at the same moment when a powerful surge of qi passed through the shop. Sen just knew what was coming and it made his heart sink. A part of him had expected it, but another part had hoped that his display from yesterday would have bought him a bit more time.

“Lu Sen! Come out and face your death!”

Grandmother Lu gave Sen a look that was equal parts furious and afraid. “What is this nonsense about?”

Sen sighed. “Yesterday’s sins, I’d imagine.”

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