“You two will remain in the Manor for the next little while. I plan on giving Juniors Wang and Su some more time to work down in the city. They are digging up…” Elder Feng paused, her eyes growing a little hazy. “Painful truths. Our trip through the country might not be a peaceful one, unfortunately. Which is not good for healing.”

Tain was really doing his best to pay attention. It was quite hard looking away from the newly regrown ring finger on his left hand. The sudden loss of symmetry threw him, but he was entirely willing to put up with it in exchange for having an almost complete left hand. The questions “How?” and “Why?” clawed their way up his throat, but were firmly held back by his teeth.

She flicked her fingers towards the door. “I’m sure you have endless questions for each other. Don’t ask them. While I have trained myself to ignore a great deal that goes on around me, in truth, everything on, in and around the Windblown Manor is within my perception at all times. I would prefer not to learn things that I have no business knowing, even if you don’t mind telling me. I will say only this before I dismiss you. Junior Tian, you conducted yourself with virtue, compassion, and more cunning than I would have given you credit for. You are also playing with the kind of forces that destroy entire nations. Don’t do it again. Meditate on this. The next scroll you study will be relevant.”

Tian bowed ninety degrees. “As you command, Elder.”

She nodded lightly. “Junior Hong similarly conducted herself with compassion, intelligence, and the kind of guts that makes this old woman have some hope for the future. But suicidal courage is merely despair in heroic dress. You too should meditate on this. Otherwise, well done. Both of you.”

They bowed and left the study. As the door closed behind them, they turned, looked at each other, opened their mouths, then closed them again. The two laughed softly and shook their heads.

“Tea?”

“Not this time, thank you, Brother. How are you in the mood to make anything after… everything?”

“I’m not at all in the mood to do a damned thing.” Tian smiled, looking like he had bitten a lime. “I just didn’t feel like being alone for a while. Reading or meditating together would also be good. I… don’t really want to talk either, now that I think about it.”

“Sounds good. Common room?”

“Sure.”

They walked off, both feeling awkward. Tian couldn’t stop wiggling his ring finger, and Hong’s hand kept creeping up to rub her bald head.

“Do I look like a freak?” She asked. Liren tried to sound unbothered, but she wasn’t looking Tian’s way.

“No. You look like my sister. And if that Lin animal says anything different, I will use the full catalog of insults my brothers taught me, including the ones on the forbidden list.” Tian’s voice wasn’t quiet in the slightest.

“Hah. I have plenty of my own, thanks. Oh, congratulations on growing a new finger.”

“No problem. And thank you. I really do have a lot of questions. But I won’t ask.” He chuckled awkwardly. He idly wondered if more of her hair would grow back red this time.

“Grandpa, what exactly happened?”

Not the time for it. Just… Hong fought for you. She fought the fake Tribulation Lighting that might have killed you. I was too stuck into refining your body to have the energy to wake you up. I know you have saved her life a few times, and aren’t keeping score, but just be aware. She had a choice. She decided she would rather die defending you than live a coward that betrayed her brother.

Tian silently engraved it on his heart. She wouldn’t abandon Brother Fu. Wouldn’t abandon him.

“Hey, Sister Liren?”

“Yes?”

“You aren’t one of the rock throwers. I thought you were when we first met. But you aren’t. So,” Tian groped for what he wanted to say, and came up empty handed. “Sorry? Thank you?”

She laughed softly. “When we met, I WAS one of the rock throwers. It took my sisters some time to teach me better. Thank them, not me.”

“I will then.” Tian turned sharply away, and looked firmly down the hall.

“You could thank me too.”

“No, you are useless. Your sisters are the great heroes of the world, second only to my brothers.”

“OI!”

“Shh. We aren’t talking right now. Peaceful meditation. Let big brother show you how to be a good daoist.”

“Good daoist? Did you miss the bit where you declared eternal war on heresy?”

“I did no such thing.”

“Did.”

“Did not. Wars are organized. I don’t have a plan. Which is very daoist of me.”

“I have a literal stack of books on strategy that says you are wrong. Savor them. Marinate in the knowledge of your ignorance.”

The two bickered before slipping back into silence. It felt more comfortable this time. For Tian, anyway, he was informed that he was tapping his newly returned finger constantly, and in an irritating way. A fact he chose to ignore. After an hour or so, Tian thought it was a good time for some snacks. He was about to pull out a bag of cheap rice crackers, when his eyes shot open. “Oh no!”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“What is it?”

“I never got to try the food stalls!”

Tian used the quiet time to take stock of himself. His body had undergone another change. More subtle this time, aside from the sudden appearance of a new finger. His bodily condition felt superb. Exhausted, but superb. He could feel the vital energy flowing through him quickly and unimpeded. He thought he was drawing in more with every breath, too. But it was more subtle than that. Tian felt inexplicably right with the world. He groped for the words to describe it, and failed.

“Grandpa, I know you said it isn’t the time but-”

Tian, I have about enough energy left to keep from slipping into complete silence for a good long while. I really can’t tell you.

Irritating. Tian tried to shrug it off. To take his mind off it, he pulled out his notes on Imperial Heavenly Swallows. It was past time he cultivated a second dart. He was not quite at the point of being able to recall the dart to his hand, but he was getting very close. It also just took a damned long time to bind each dart, so there probably never would be a “perfect” time to do it.

Different acupoint this time, though still worryingly close to the heart. The time of day he was to do it was slightly different as well. It would still take about ninety nine days in total, which wasn’t ideal. Tian sighed and checked the calendar. The dates weren’t quite as strict. He could start this afternoon.

“Out of curiosity, and sorry if this is too nosy, but what did you do with the hairs we got off the caterpillar thing?” Tian asked Hong.

“Sold ‘em to a sister who wanted to make some arrows. It took a couple of trades, but I wound up with some very useful medicine for my body cultivation art.”

“Oh nice.”

“Can’t believe you picked darts. Javelins were right there as an option.”

Tian ignored the comment with dignity. Largely because he had no good reply. He just… didn’t want to have to toss a big stick around every time he wanted someone outside of rope dart range stabbed. Was that so wrong?

“What do you use for a ranged option?”

“Spear.” Hong grinned.

“Not a ranged option.”

“It is if you throw it.”

“So’s a chair. Why throw something they can catch and throw back?” Tian decided that an attack was the best defense under the circumstances. Besides, his eyes were slipping off the scroll he was theoretically reading, and he couldn’t settle himself down enough to do any introspective meditation.

They chatted about nothing much. Both knew what the other was doing. There was too much noise in their heads. Too many big emotions to try and sort through. Tian eventually gave up on the conversation and set to writing. His memory was excellent, but he wanted to lay out everything he had learned in his… had it really only been a day? No, it hadn’t even been that.

He hadn’t spent a full day in Burning Flag City. But neither he nor the city would ever be quite the same again.

He set it out plain on a clean sheet of paper, carefully painting his characters. First was a flat horizontal line the length of the page. A vertical line was drawn at either end. One was Black Iron Gorge, the other Ancient Crane Mountain.

Then he marked the steps. Salt to the wasteland nomads. Another vertical line. Wasteland nomads to steppes nomads. Salt and weapons are traded for slaves and food. Here Tian drew a line downward and noted the wars and slave raids between the nomad tribes. Back to the main line and another upward stroke. Salt for food and gold from the Kingdom traders. Tax money to the City and the Kingdom, another branching line downward. Another went upward too- the traders were often controlled by the sect.

He tapped his new ring finger, feeling what he was missing. First thing- more than salt came on those caravans. They had been utterly loaded with other trade goods when they did their commerce raid. More to investigate there. Second, those heretical practices came from somewhere. Did the heretics have their own version of wandering monks? Evangelists of evil?

It would make an awful lot of sense. How much cheaper would it be to send teachers than armies? Especially when you were spreading the good news- “Life eternal can be yours!”

Tian half closed his eyes. Didn’t one of the heretics call him a rich kid or something? Something about easy living and getting what he deserved? It really could be that simple. Envy. Resentment. “Why do the heavens favor these clearly unworthy people and not someone deserving like me? What makes them so special? Born with an immortal destiny? What’s that? Can you eat it? But there are other roads to longevity than the journey up the mountain…”

Sounded right. Sounded exactly right. It could be a self-funding operation too; a little dangerous, but the quality of life in the Kingdom was infinitely better than the wasteland. It probably wasn’t hard to find volunteers to go out and play “Ancient Masters” for the new crop of heretics.

He added it to another line on his sheet, but put a question mark next to the note. “Hey, how does the Monastery track heretics?”

“Not really sure. I think it relies on someone reporting heretical activity.”

Tian nodded. Completely passive. The more he learned about the Monastery, and for that matter, Daoism, the more he understood that passivity and silence weren’t just laziness or inattention, they were policy. The monastery didn’t contend with others within the Kingdom. It removed itself from the mortal world. Grubby matters were left for the servant disciples at the base of the mountain.

Tian included the Inner Court in that. They had seemed like impossibly lofty, godlike figures when he joined the sect. They were still vastly more powerful than he was. But the phrase “Servant Disciple” was branded in his brain. The Saintess had caught him right on the chin with that line. They really all were servants of the Monastery. You were part of the core, or you were sent to do menial labor. And even within the Monastery, there were still ranks and hierarchies. Someone was cooking the meals in the Monastery. Tian wondered who.

The longer he looked at his little branching diagram, the darker his mood became. His eye landed on the “merchants” stem. The Kingdom got its taxes, of course, and its salt, but was that really it? There wasn’t a single job in the entirety of Depot Four that didn’t have some element of graft in it.

“Different subject- how do Kingdom officials get a cut of the money from the salt trade? I’m not talking about border guards, I mean… City Lords, or some other big bureaucrat. Grand Duke whoever.”

Hong looked over at Tian. “Where are you going with this? You usually avoid this stuff.”

“Working out something.”

“I don’t know about the salt trade specifically, but for most merchant houses? Depending on just how big a muckety-muck they are, they can either get a regular fee, a percentage, or if they are a REALLY big power, like a duke or a civil servant who reports to the King, they might be offered shares in the company or chamber of commerce. A chamber of commerce can be considered a group of companies that work together to share markets, routes and suppliers, and to ensure they get favorable pricing when they buy and sell. A price war would be bad for everyone.”

“So at the highest level, the actual decision makers of the country are getting a percentage of the salt trade and all the business attached to the salt trade. And the King?”

“He has his own estates, his own business he invests in, and receives a certain amount of money in maintenance from the treasury every year. So he is also invested in the salt trade, just at one or two removes.” Hong saw where Tian was going with this and was clearly making connections in her own mind at speed. Tian added a few more lines to his chart, and added the notes.

“Oh. That’s why we are at war.” The picture was quite clear.

“Yep. Do you think Elder Fang would mind if I demolished a wall or four?” Hong asked.

“Ask Steward Pan, he’d know. If you will excuse me, I need to go throw up over the edge of the barge. For some reason it feels important that I puke on the Kingdom from a great height.”

The passive-by-policy Monastery had let Black Iron Gorge steal the whole Broad Sky Kingdom out from under the Mountain.