Slavery was a concept that only existed on paper for Tian. He knew it existed, something perpetrated by the heretics of the Black Iron Gorge or some ancient dynasty that died drowning in its own sin. It was also, apparently, about twenty miles from Burning Flag City. Closer on some days, but never further than that.

“It’s a big part of why we are here. The border country really belongs to the Borski and the Reshuuk, and a few other big tribes. On paper, it belongs to the Kingdom and every time the tribes act up, the Kingdom dispatches an army and stomps ‘em flat. Usually, anyway.” Commander Attun’s tone made Tian think it wasn’t always quite so one sided.

“But there is a hell of a lot of grassland, not a lot of water, and no settlements worth mentioning. The tribes are less unified than you might think, so the army crushing one bunch might not mean anything to a different bunch. Bands raid each other all the time. Usually for horses, sometimes for women. Sometimes they raid another tribe or another band and they come away with more people than they need. Now, they could ransom them, or kill them, but the best results are going to be trading them for salt and weapons. The weapons they will use for raiding. The salt they sell to kingdom merchants for a fortune.”

The commander had a fresh cloth, dipped in cool water, draped over his eyes.

“I see. And, naturally, anyone not selling to the slave traders will have neither weapons nor gold.” Tian refreshed the commander’s cup.

“Exactly. Nobody’s stupid, so everyone trades. It’s made things a shitload more dangerous out here, but the Kingdom is barely doing more than keeping the roads safe. You guess why.” One of the aching soldiers leered nastily at Tian from over his teacup.

“Fiewer tribes to deal with both now and in the future, and they don’t really care what someone else does to get the salt so long as it reaches their merchants.” Tian said, doing his best to hide the screaming inside his head.

“Hey, look at the smart Tea Venerable! Except you missed part of it. There is another option for the tribesfolk- leave the steppes. Move into the city. Of course, they don’t know the language and can’t do any of the jobs here other than hauling, digging and carrying, but that’s fine. There is one place that will happily take every trained trooper with fighting experience and his own horses that the tribals want to give us.” The soldier's leer hadn’t gotten any nicer.

“The army.” Tian nodded. He was feeling a fury bubbling up inside of him. He didn’t know any of these people. It was hardly any of his business what they got up to. Yet the phrase “Wash the city in blood” did keep occurring to him.

“Yep. It’s how my family joined up. I’m third generation army.” Attun’s breathing had steadied out. “You are easy to talk to, Tea Venerable.”

“Well, it’s how this little monk gets by. He makes tea and listens to people.” The wounded and the dying, mostly. Injured by heretics who grew strong thanks to the rich city of Black Iron Gorge.

“Good monk. Most monks want to preach at you.” One of the troopers grunted. He also looked like he was ready to fall asleep where he was sitting. It was on the early side of mid-morning, still a long way from lunch, but the soldiers looked ready to sleep.

The five colored qi was spreading through them. Gently, very gently, but even nourishment needs to be digested. They would sleep deeply, and wake without the accumulated damage a soldier’s life brings.

“Very kind of you to say, Benefactor.”

“Promised you a meal. See the iron token hanging by the door? Take it to the chow tent. Cook’s will fix you up a bowl. Then you gotta scram. No civilians in the military district unless they are doing work.” The Commander waved Tian towards a token hanging on a hook next to the door. Stamped on it were the characters for “Ration.”

“Thank you Benefactor. Benefactor?”

“Yeah?”

“Some slaves escaped, this little monk is sure of it. How does the Kingdom handle them?”

“How it handles any homeless, half naked person who can’t speak the language. Badly. Sometimes someone takes them in. Mostly they don’t. But the Kingdom doesn’t do shit to help.”

Tian bowed, and collected the token. He hesitated for a moment by the door. “Would you mind if this little monk said a prayer for you?”

“Keep it short.” The commander stifled a yawn.

“May you be safe. May you always find your way home. May you never starve.”

Tian pressed his hands together and bowed. He didn’t consider himself particularly religious. Being a Daoist was simply how he understood the world, no different from declaring he worshiped gravity because it was always there for him. There was the Mad God problem too. But the soldiers had been very kind to him. He could at least offer them the comfort of a stranger’s good wishes. And it’s what a monk should do.

The cook was willing to dish Tian up a bowl of badly cooked rice and a bowl of worse stew. It was, however, free, which made it fundamentally good. Navigating the spoon under the head-covering basket was a challenge, but he was committed to the part. Besides, he didn’t want to show his face. The urge to kill was staying at a gentle simmer. Keeping the basket on gave him some distance and helped him calm his breath.

Tian silently hung the token back when he was done. They didn’t notice him. It was alarmingly easy to move through the gaps in their perception. He had come a long way since his brothers first took him out for a stroll.

The aches in the soldier’s bodies from three hard days of riding, the tension of overworked muscle, the stink of them, were all artifacts of mortality he had shed. He had found the tea borderline undrinkable. He could taste the dreadful storage conditions and the cheap processing the leaves had undergone. Worse, he was certain there was some kind of filler in there. It might even be grass, dried and processed along with the tea. And they enjoyed it. They couldn’t taste it at all.

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It was what it was. They were content with their lives, or they seemed to be. He certainly couldn’t improve them. Immortality was not a road everyone could walk. You needed that extra something, and you were born with it or had to do something immense to get it.

Could he stop the slave trading?

No. He could kill individual caravans, but it would take mobilizing the whole Kingdom’s army to stamp it out. And maybe not even then. The thing about nomads in all those history books was that they could just move away and come back once you left. As long as gold and steel were offered, there would be someone ready to sell their kin into slavery.

The real solution was to choke it off at the source. Once Black Iron Gorge lost its ability to buy slaves, people would stop selling so damn many of them. But that just brought him right back around to…

To being a goddamn idiot.

The passers-by enjoyed the rare sight of a wandering monk banging his basket covered head against the gatepost of the military quarter. Gently and carefully, so he didn’t damage it, but doing it anyway.

They were mortals. HE wasn’t a mortal. HE was currently living on a flying barge with a manor on top and a Heavenly Person Cultivator with who-knows-what capabilities. Fighting nomads was only frustrating if they could run faster than you, and mortals on horses couldn’t outrun the Outer Court, let alone an Elder. The frontier was large, but it was still a much, much smaller space to defend compared to whatever enormous chunk of the wasteland they had been covering. It should be doable.

It wasn’t just doable, it was obvious. Painfully obvious. If they could get Martial Uncle Ku to deploy alongside twenty five Earthly Person cultivators in the middle of the Redstone Desert for… what had it been, two weeks? It was a few days to the ambush site, that was for sure. Anyway, how much more willing would the Inner Court be if they could stage the same commerce raid inside the Broad Sky Kingdom?

Hell, the Kingdom would be happy too. Ancient Crane Mountain could sell the salt on through its own channels.

It was so damn obvious, he felt like other people must have thought of it. But the sect wasn’t doing that. So… why?

Tian squeezed his brain and produced not a drop of insight. It didn’t make a single bit of sense to him. He sighed and drifted out into the city. His monk disguise apparently wasn’t much of a disguise. He could stick with it all he wanted, but people still saw a kid underneath. Which wasn’t terrible. He just didn’t want to look like an immortal daoist. He dithered for a bit, then he decided he was overthinking it. There were people who sold clothes. He had money. It was an opportunity for a new experience.

For the very first time, at the age of fourteen, Tian would go into a shop and buy something. He boldly marched into a shop, looked around grandly, spun around and confidently departed. “Not a chance. It smelled disgusting in there.”

Wool, I think. Some people like that smell.

“Silk. Nice, inexpensive silk, or even linen. Linen would be just fine. Not something as expensive as cotton or brocade. None of this wool stuff.”

Plenty of options here. Might even be able to buy some used clothes even cheaper.

Tian bounced from shop to shop, always managing to find a reason why he couldn’t possibly buy something in them. By the time he was reduced to “Oily foreheads are proof of oily thoughts and untrustworthy merchants,” he knew he was being ridiculous.

He just felt awkward. He knew there was no reason to be awkward. It just felt weird to be walking up to a mortal and saying “Please take these tiny bits of metal and give me that shirt and pants that could keep a mortal alive in bad weather. This is definitely a worthwhile trade and in your interest. No, I don’t know how many stamped disks should be traded for it, I’m relying on you here…”

Things were much, much better in the sect. You need a robe so you get a robe. Don’t wear it out or damage it, the sect isn’t made of robes. But if you do outgrow it or damage it beyond repair, the sect can replace it because it’s only an ordinary silk robe.

Eventually he just squatted on the street feeling defeated. He had flown on giant birds. Fought enormous battles. Grappled with the very fundamental forces of the universe. Defeated by shop clerks.

A pair of soft soled felt shoes stopped in front of him.

“Venerable, I’ve watched you going in and out of a half dozen clothes shops, and you never seem to see something suitable. I have some coarse clothes I can donate, if that would work for you.”

“Benefactor is so generous!” Tian exclaimed. The benefactor in question was an older man, white hair streaking from his temples but still fit looking. His clothes were clean but not obviously fancy. There was an understanding look to his face, as though the older man had been through his own struggles. Tian thought he smelled a little familiar. Smokey, but not wood smoke. Or not just wood smoke. Then it clicked.

“Please come this way. My pottery workshop is a little closer to the wall.”

“Benefactor has his own pottery workshop? Ah, difficult. How can this little monk find more blessings for the heavens to shower upon him? Is Benefactor hoping for something in particular?”

“Hah. Well, good health and a long life is always welcome.”

“Truly, truly.” The peculiar smoke smell clinging to the potter’s body was faint, but quite unmistakable. He had only smelled it once before, but there was no risk of forgetting it.

The two walked down side streets and made their way to a neighborhood of workshops. Tall chimneys jutted out of every roof, and there was already a grey pall of smoke hanging over the buildings.

“The Potters Quarter is where our city gets its name from, did you know that, Venerable? All the rising smoke flattens out and stretches when the wind catches it above the city walls. Someone thought it looked like a burning flag in the distance, and here we all are.”

“This little monk learned something new. Has there always been a lot of potters near here?”

“Yeah. We have the last good river before the desert running past the city, and the soil here has a decent clay content. No call for high end stuff, but people always need new jars or roof tiles, things like that. Here is my place.”

They walked into one of the workshops. Tian noticed it was built like the buildings he had seen before- two thick exterior walls touching, creating a solid block of buildings facing the street. He asked the potter about it.

“Stops fire from spreading in a city where every square inch inside the walls is valuable, and bricks are cheap. Also helps deaden sound. Which is useful.” They had walked into the back of the shop. The room with the ovens had a heavy lock and chain sealing it.

“This monk can imagine.”

“No need to imagine.” The older man opened the door. There was a kiln in there. And a filthy table. And hooks, and long knives and a demonic face painted on the wall in some jet black pigment. “Kids really shouldn’t wander around the city unattended. All sorts of bad things can happen to them.” The older man shoved Tian into the room. Tian went with it.

“Does Benefactor know why wandering monks can travel without fear? Because sometimes people lay hands on monks and just explode for no reason.” Tian cracked his knuckles and chuckled, the fury in him stoked to a raging boil. “Well. There is a reason. Let this little monk show you.”