When I arrived at the manor the Ambassador was talking with several members of the family who were also going to the auction later. When I arrived they excused themselves and came to where I was standing. “Kev, this is Ji Dina. She will be staying in my box at the auction, so I wanted to introduce you.”
I bowed, “My name is Li Kev.” I said. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
She nodded. “So, will you be bringing your woman as well. Jiang, I think her name was? Fei told me about her.”
I scratched my head, a bit embarrassed. “She isn’t….We aren’t like that. We’re just friends.”
She smiled like I was making a joke. “Just a friend that sleeps in your room every night? There’s no need to be embarrassed. Just because she’s carrying another man’s child doesn’t mean she can’t train with you.”
“No, I mean, my dao companion.” I tried to explain nervously stammering out an explanation. “We promised that we wouldn’t have others while I was away from home, so…”
Dina laughed. “Union Sect? Now I feel sorry for you.” The Ambassador laughed as well, and I sighed. You would think he understood my situation, but he might not.
“I haven’t asked if she wanted to attend.” I said, finishing the conversation.
“Well, we are going into town to do a bit of shopping,” said the Ambassador. “Is she at the alchemist shop you were helping at?” I nodded. “Then we’ll go by and ask her.” With that, we left the courtyard for the shopping district.
They did a bit of window shopping on the way, but a few minute later we made it to the alchemist shop. I went inside, the two of them wanting to look at the nearby fruit stands, and went to where Jiang was making a batch of pills. “We were about to go shopping before the auction, and the Ambassador wanted to know if you wanted to come with us.” From the illusory symbol floating around the cauldron, and the fact that one side was sending off small amounts of a purple-black smoke, while the other was holding onto a golden-white smoke, I could tell that she was manipulating the yin and yang qi within a batch of pills, but wasn’t sure how she was manipulating them.
“I would love to go with you, but at the moment I’m very busy.” she responded.
“I assume this batch of pills is meant to treat the parasites?” I asked, and motioned to the cauldron. She nodded. “Can I ask what you are doing to treat them?”
She nodded again. “I am trying to make a level one qi recovery pill that only contains yang qi.”
“You hope that giving them almost pure yang qi, even the small amount in a level one pill, will poison the parasites?”
She nodded again. “You told us that someone you refused to name had lower levels because his fire cultivation technique had him absorb the rising sunlight, which is only eighty percent or so yang qi, and not as much as even an average quality level one pill. If I can reach more than ninety five percent purity, it should have a greater effect than that, I just don’t know how pure I can get it. And because the other two don’t know the taiji refinement art, I am the only one that can pure the yin qi from the pills until they learn it.”
I nodded. “So that is why they aren’t in the front of the store. They are learning it in the back from the copy I gave you.” She nodded. “In that case, I will come back just before the auction begins. Maybe you’ll be free then.” I pulled out all but one of my level one Rainbow fruits. “These have about sixty five percent yang qi. If you can make something out of them, maybe brain recovery pills or satiation pills, I can buy more later.”
She nodded. “They might be useful, but I’m not sure if I can preserve the effect in another pill. I can try, though. They only cost a tael each, so if they are useful I might buy a large number so that we can make cheap pills. As soon as the other two learn the refinement art, I’ll go shopping for ingredients that are mostly yang attributed from the other shops, and maybe a few grocers. Flat peppers are only level one spirit plants, but they are over seventy percent yang.”
I nodded, wished her luck, and said goodbye, then left the shop. “She’s busy at the moment, but we can come ask her again just before that.”
The Ambassador nodded. “In that case, we can return here later. Dina thinks we need new outfits, so she’s going to introduce us to a tailor friend of hers. It’s too late for a custom outfit, but he has several pre-made outfits that she really likes, so we can get one of those.”
We made our way over there, and I pulled Xiao out from my bag as I followed them. Dina petted him, and I gave her pieces of Rainbow fruit to feed him. He was acting like a normal bird, so I asked him about it telepathically. “Mr. Li told me that I shouldn’t let everyone know about my special bloodline, because someone might try to take me, so I’m pretending to be dumb.” I sent him the mental equivalent of a nod, agreement, and stored the pit of the fruit. When we got to the shop I asked him to stand on my shoulder, and he came over.
“You aren’t willing to sell him, are you?” Dina asked. “He’s quite a nice sparrow.”
I shook my head, “I can’t do that. I’ve got too much of a connection to him.” Knowing that he could understand me, I sent him a mental note that I was just pretending that he was a dumb bird too. I didn’t want him to think that I was actually considering that.
“In that case,” said the Ambassador. “Why don’t we go to a beast merchant and get you one?”
She nodded. “That’s a wonderful idea.” I knew he was going to end up spending a large amount of money on this woman, but he probably knew it too, so there was no point in saying anything. With the amount of money he was about to spend at the auction, whatever he spent on her would likely be insignificant.
Inside the clothing store there were many different extravagant dresses and robes. The display items were all gaudy in my opinion, but she wondered around gushing about all of them, like they were the most beautiful things ever. The Ambassador ended up watching her the whole time, acting like it was the most beautiful dress ever any time she tried on a new one. She ended up buying one that was covered in small water essence stones. Just the stones probably added a thousand stones to the price, if not more. The dress had three abilities built into it, as the dress maker had included several special materials in it. First, so that it could put a barrier around the wearer to protect them, it included pearls from type of fresh water oyster that put bubble shields around themselves. The pearls were spread out around the robe and would push away from them anything the wearer saw as a threat. Next was a water based healing technique that came from the skin of a river fish that could regrow its fin or tail if it was bitten off. Third was level four silk from river silk worms, who built their cocoons on the banks of spirit water rivers. While they were also seen in the wild around places like High River, these were raised in green houses which were kept at the correct temperature and moisture for the silk to be the strongest.
The dress cost over three thousand stones, and she was currently trying to convince the Ambassador to buy it for her. After a few minutes he gave in and did so. She then picked out a level four outfit for him, but it only cost one thousand eight hundred stones, and only had a few pieces of reptile skin for an Earth barrier on top of the sand silkworm robes. These silkworms buried themselves under the sand before building their cocoons, and their silk naturally stored Earth qi. They also bought me a simple robe made of normal level three spirit silk that only had self cleaning and self repair functions for two hundred. Except for theirs being a higher level, I actually preferred this to the others. The tailor tried to convince them to get me something made from fire silk, harvested from insects that lived within the mouths of volcanoes, but Dina said that there was no need, and I agreed. While it would be nice, I didn’t want something that would compete with my employer’s outfit.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
While they looked at shoes and accessories I asked the tailor how much basic robes made of fire silk and river silk would cost with just the two functions my robes had and he told me that they would only go for around three hundred each. I told him I might come by later, as I wanted to get a robe for Liza before going home, and he nodded, but continued to watch the high spenders.
After that they bought another thousand stones of accessories, spent a few stones on a level one dress for Jiang which could alter its size, and we left. Why he was buying this woman so many nice things, I couldn’t understand. While he might be attracted to her, there were much better looking women that were interested in him, such as Green Butterfly. So I asked him telepathically. “She is the favorite granddaughter of the family patriarch.” he responded. “A few thousand spent on gifts for her will help us save far more in trade with the Ji family in the long run.”
I nodded but she saw me. “You two are having a secret conversation behind my back, aren’t you?” she asked. “Care to tell me what you were talking about?”
The Ambassador seemed to be having trouble thinking of an excuse, so I spoke up. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t think you would be interested. I was asking him how his breakthrough went last night, as I got him the core formation pill he used.”
“Oh, I’m interested.” she said. “Did you manage to form a proper core?”
The Ambassador nodded. “Reasonably good. Average quality compression, so I have about ten or eleven percent more qi than a normal level four, but if I can find a better quality core formation pill I will try to buy it so that I can break my core and try to form a better one.” This likely meant that he had managed to form a core made of the fourth or fifth type of solid qi. That compression also made it easier to use the qi and increased the speed at which he could use it, so not only was his capacity ten percent higher, but the rate he could use it at was at least that.
“And the elemental properties?” I asked.
“High grade. I may be able to get it up to Master eventually, but I’ll probably break my core before then.” The better quality of the qi infused into his core, the better the effect it would have when he used it, much like using an essence stone as a source of qi. This qi was also added to the qi his core could normally store, but from what I read, it needed to be manually added, rather than naturally recovering to his maximum level like the core itself. That meant that he likely had fifty percent more qi that a comparable cultivator had, even if he had to meditate to reach that point.
We continued down the road to a place that appeared to be some sort of luxury pet store. All of the animals inside were spirit pets, at least half bloods, but they seemed to all be chosen for their looks, not for practical reasons. I even saw treasure butterflies in there, but they were being sold for five stones each. The shop was no doubt making massive profits selling to people with more money than brains.
After looking at over a dozen animals that seemed worthless to me, Dina settled on a Five Colored Dove, an animal whose only ability was to change the color and pattern of its feathers between white, black, brown, green, and yellow. It was probably meant as some sort of adaptive camouflage, but in an urban setting it was only something interesting to look at. She asked the Ambassador to pay the ten stones for it, and he did so. The shopkeeper even offered to do the companion contract for her for the ‘bargain’ price of only five stones, and she agreed, assuming he would pay for it as well.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” she said after the contract was over, “What do I need to feed it?”
“Well, they can eat a wide variety of grains and fruits.” the man said.
“Also insects.” I ‘helpfully’ added. She was starting to annoy me, as was the shop owner, so I thought I would throw a wrench into things.
“Insects?” she asked. “They’re a bit creepy aren’t they?”
The shop owner looked a little nervous. “Yes, but he is right that many birds like them.” He looked at me with a bit of annoyance. “But it doesn’t have to eat them.”
“Not all insects are gross.” I added. “Those treasure butterflies are insects, and they’re pretty.” I pulled out a treasure caterpillar. “They start out looking like this and then turn into something that nice.”
She seemed to pull back a little from the creature, but still looked at it. “Yes, it is interesting what such an ugly little thing can turn into. But you have a pet bird. What do you feed it? Other than Rainbow fruit, of course.”
“Oh, I bought him some wheat, and some berries, and sometimes give him a bit of the meat from what I’m eating. But his favorite is this.” I pulled out a male blue horror centipede and she jumped backwards and yelped slightly. I could tell she was uncomfortable, but the bird she held stared at it like it was the most delicious thing ever. “These are called blue horror centipedes. If they bite you, they will make you scared, and if enough of them do that they can make you so scared that you have a heart attack. Birds are immune though, so the centipedes just taste a bit spicy to them.”
“You aren’t honestly saying that you feed something so...creepy to that cute little bird are you?” she asked. The shop keeper looked a bit concerned, but also seemed like he was too scared to get near me. That was probably because he thought I might use the centipede on him.
“Oh, I don’t think they’re that creepy, you just have to be careful around them.” I said. I smiled and pulled Xiao out, then offered him the insect. He jumped happily, then slurped it down like he had the first time I offered him one. Dina seemed a bit grossed out by the action and the shop keeper shook his head. “Of course, that one was a feed animal I bought for him, and I had a servant contract with it, so it wasn’t a threat, but in nature they can be one. You don’t happen to sell any of those, do you?”
“Uh, no.” said the shop keeper. “They don’t exactly meet the aesthetic of our shop.”
“It’s fine, I know where I can buy more.” I looked at Dina. “Do you want me to go buy you some?” I pointed at the bird she was holding. “She seems to want one.” She looked between me and the bird, and occasionally at Xiao, trying to decide if she was willing to deal with those things to make her bird happy. Eventually she nodded. “Very well, please go get me some. I will have a servant feed them to her.”
I nodded. “Just make sure to make the servant a manager under the contract. Otherwise you might lose a servant if they don’t like the person.” She nodded. “In that case, if you want to look at designer beast bags so that you can carry her, I’ll go get some of those for her.”
The Ambassador, who had been bouncing between surprise and amusement the entire conversation, sent me a telepathic message. ‘What was that for?’ he asked. ‘I know she’s annoying, but if she doesn’t have a good time, it could hurt us in the future.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I said. ‘But when two greedy, worthless people start competing to see who can rip you off the most, it’s hard to control myself. It will mean that she takes better care of her pet better in the future, though, so in the long run she’ll be happier.’
‘Hopefully.’ he said, then spoke aloud. “Take the centipedes to the estate and make her maid the manager before returning here. She doesn’t need to carry the creatures with her.” I nodded and he gave me thirty stones, and I left for a somewhat honest spirit beast merchant.
As they cost half a stone each, I bought sixty for her, even getting him to throw in a cheap bag to haul them in, another twenty for myself, half male and half female this time, and went to the manor. Once I was there I found her maid, who also thought insects were creepy, and made her the manager. Only the owner could change that or override her control of them, so she was willing to touch them. After that she started getting used to them, as she could feel that they didn’t actually want to hurt her. Once she had gotten used to them I handed her “The Care and Feeding of Poisonous Insects”, which I got off of the demonic cultivator, so that she could learn to take care of them. I knew that she would probably copy down more than just the parts needed to deal with them, such as the parts about improving their power and training them, but didn’t care. This wasn’t an inherently demonic technique, so even though she was a level one cultivator, it wasn’t any more risky to teach her that than to teach her a combat technique.
I told her I would get the book back that night, and to copy anything she wanted to keep, and returned to the pet merchant. They had bought several accessories for the bird and I transferred the contract to her. Now that she could feel the general mood of the insects she seemed to realize that they weren’t evil, and didn’t want to hurt people. They mostly attacked humans and other large animals out of fear, and only attacked small animals for food.
As it was almost time for the auction we returned to the alchemist’s shop and asked if Jiang wanted to go with us. All three of the alchemist women seemed to be busy, but when Jiang finished, she agreed to come with us. The other two had learned the technique and they had mostly worked out how to make the pills, so her help wasn’t critical at this point. After running into the back to use the Cleaning technique and change into her new dress, she said goodbye and we left.
