Time came unstuck once again. Tian had sat with Brother Wong and worked through the astrological calculations, finding the right day and time to start cultivating Imperial Heavenly Swallows. Then it was just a matter of waiting. It was only a couple of weeks. And since he was waiting, he might as well work.

Tian tallied it up- he had his usual cultivation, but that was no stress. Then there was studying Imperial Heavenly Swallows, which was tiring. Then there was practicing martial arts which was fun and joyful but tired him out physically. And then there was his work as an orderly in the hospital, doing all the menial work and assisting the doctors with whatever they needed. The biggest thing he struggled with was studying medicine.

Watching brothers and sisters die, having to move past those who he couldn’t save because of his inadequate skills, haunted Tian. He had been given manuals to study, and there were doctors willing to test his learning. If he didn’t take advantage ruthlessly, he was letting down his Seniors’ good intentions, the brothers and sisters who would be counting on him, and he would be letting down himself.

His memory had always been good, and Grandpa Jun had been training him to make it better since he was six. Tian learned, impressing every word and picture into his mind like he was engraving copper plates. It just took time, and a hell of a lot of work. The work built stress.

To relax, he stepped up his usual practice of visiting his friends and acquaintances with tea and wine. The wine had become a major expense for him, but he felt it was worth it. He didn’t drink it, but he could see the pleasure it brought Sister Li or Brother Zhang, or even the brothers from West Town. Even Auntie Wu would accept an occasional jar, though she preferred tea.

The tea was a different problem entirely. Cheap tea leaves were easily available on base, in almost any quantity desired. Unfortunately, the ones supplied to the Outer Court were rough, bitter, and not nearly up to the standards of even the newest tea aficionado. Better tea had to be secured through connections, and Tian didn’t have any useful ones. The problem made him sigh a lot.

He was sighing as he placed a white stone down on the Go board.

“I don’t think your move is that bad, Brother Tian.”

“Mmm? But I’m surrounding three of your pieces, right? That makes it a good move.”

“Yes, but…” Brother Long let his black stone hit the wooden go board with a sharp clack, “You missed my column advancing over here, cutting off nearly a quarter of the board.”

“Ah. So I did. Somehow I keep forgetting it’s not just about surrounding the stones, but territory too.”

“Go is a game of grand strategy. It is studied by marshals and emperors in the mortal world, by sect leaders and grand elders in the immortal world. There is a reason why the sages consider it one of the four arts, while a game of battlefield tactics like chess is relegated to the commoners.” Brother Long sounded inexplicably smug about that. Tian couldn’t imagine why. From Tian’s perspective, Brother Long was one of those commoners too. Maybe he considered himself a sage?

“Maybe that’s why I am so slow at this. I tend to think very tactically, when I bother to scheme at all.” Tian half smiled, then sighed again. “But that’s not it. I’m almost out of my good tea, and I don’t know where to get more. Finding Autumn Fire tea last time relied on getting lucky. Now I just don’t know what to do.”

Brother Long gave him a funny look. Tian put a piece on the board. Brother Long snapped down another with just a glance at the overall situation. They played in silence for a few more minutes. Then Brother Long smacked his forehead and started laughing.

“Sorry, I forgot what you are like. Force of habit growing up in my family.”

“Brother Long?”

“Brother Tian, you know I come from the Long family, don’t you?”

“Yes? It is your name.”

Brother Long seemed to stumble for a moment, which Tian reckoned was a neat trick for someone sitting down. “No, I mean the Long family. The Four Treasures Trading Company Long family.”

“Sorry, never heard of them. I know you have a connection to a True Disciple parts supplier, but other than that, I don’t know anything about your background.”

The gentle looking Long seemed torn between laughing and crying. “We do a little more than that. Or as part of that. We are a merchant house, Brother Tian.”

Tian nodded. There was a pause again. Then Brother Long opted to just laugh. “I can get you tea. How much do you want, what do you want, and how much can you spend?”

“You can? How about wine?”

“As long as the tea and wine aren’t too precious, they can be found and purchased. And, no offence, but until the Treasure Weighing Magistrates make their determination, I don’t think you have enough spirit crystals for “precious.”

Tian nodded. He had earned a few extra spirit crystals putting in off-the-books overtime at the hospital, but the doctors had been good about not pushing it. These days it was Tian asking, rather than the battlefield demanding. He pulled out ten of his carefully hoarded spirit crystals and pushed them into Brother Long’s hands.

“How much decent quality wine and tea can I get for this? I don’t care if the wine is all the same sort, but a selection of different teas with instructions on how to brew them would be best.”

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“I have no idea, I’m not a merchant. I’ll send a message and arrange a delivery. An order this small is, cough. That is, Brother Tian, you can consider this a very minor matter. I am happy to help. Though are you sure you want to simply entrust me with your spirit crystals?”

“Are you going to cheat me?” Tian looked directly into Brother Long’s eyes. Brother Long must have seen something in there, because he shook his head firmly.

“How could I do that to a brother? And to cheat someone over a mere ten spirit crystals is… pathetic.”

Tian nodded. He had formed a life and death grudge with Sima over a few jugs of wine and some lost face. He set down his next piece on the board. “Yes. You are quite right, Brother Long. Brother Long?”

“Yes, Brother Tian?”

“Next time you go out of the Depot, bring me along. I’m worried about you. Brother Long? Has the choking disease reached the Depot? Do you need a doctor, Brother Long?”

In truth, the matter with Sima and, to a lesser extent, Martial Uncle Ku, were never too far from his mind. He could understand them. Martial Uncle Ku might even be, by some chilly logic, correct in his decisions. Tian just couldn’t accept them. He had no illusions about doing anything about his grudge, though. The lesson of Brother Wong and the Dawnlight Hawk was well learned.

That only went for Martial Uncle Ku. His “good brother” Sima was a different story. No matter how busy he was, Tian found two hours every day to practice his martial arts. The first half hour was spent maintaining his body’s condition. The rest of the time was sparring with everyone he could. Spear users, sword users, sabers, maces, even other rope dart users. (And what a furious annoyance that was. Their ropes often tangled, despite both of them using Snake Head Vine Body.)

Boxing was a particular focus. Sometimes, when he got stressed, he thought he could still hear the ringing in his ears from when Hong Liren slammed his head into the wall. It was good motivation. That, and the way the seniors looking for gifts and loans tended to crack their knuckles suggested pretty clearly how they intended to maximize Tian’s charity.

He wasn’t an unreasonable sort. They could punch him once, and he would pulp one of their kidneys. Fair. And hopefully, with a whole lot of practice, they would try to punch him, and he would liquify their thoracic cavity. He was prepared to be very generous with his poverty stricken seniors.

It was a busy and fulfilling time. When the day came to start refining his first needle, he was well prepared. Tian had his tiny cultivation chamber, his dart, and plenty of practice. It all ran smoothly. It was a little eerie seeing the transparent dart momentarily take on a faint pinkish tinge as it seemed to drink his blood.

Not even in the top hundred list of “weirdest, creepiest crap” practiced by an orthodox cultivator just in this hospital, never mind the whole base. Just go with it.

“Feels a bit… I don’t know. Heretical.”

Grandson, did you somehow manage to miss the fact that you have refined your own blood several times? It’s blood. There is a lot of it in you. Most of the magical items on this base are bound with a drop of blood. Blood is also necessary for the technology of the spell to work. It’s no more creepy than anything else. So stop worrying and focus.

The weeks passed into months, and Tian never set foot outside the gates of the Depot. A little market had sprung up on the base now that it was no longer on the front lines. Tian visited the market once a week, just to see if there was anything worth his buying and to broaden his horizons. He never did buy anything, but he reckoned it was the thought that counted. Probably.

His order of tea and wine came in, setting off a small storm of social calls to test everything out. To Tian’s mild consternation, his number of social calls increased. There were his own Brothers and Sisters from West Town, of course, but there were others too- people in the Quartermaster’s halls, crafter’s apprentices, mission hall clerks and even the other hospital orderlies. Not people that Tian was prepared to consider friends, but people he still saw almost every day around the base. It was hard to turn them down the first time, then they quickly became fixtures on his circuit.

Tian figured his conversational skills were still not up to standard, so he relied on his old trick of constantly asking questions and, if pressed for a statement, agreeing with what the other person was saying. This resulted in him learning all sorts of useless information about people and things. He didn’t know why people had the urge to tell him who was “calling the clouds and rain” together. He didn’t have the heart to stop them either. They looked so happy to tell him.

It wasn’t until he spotted some of his senior brothers doing basically the same things he was doing that he was doing that he put it all together.

Tian had, completely by accident, integrated with the local gossip circuit. This is why the Level Nines all seemed alarmingly well informed. They did this all the time. If they weren’t working or cultivating, they were visiting and chatting.

As he watched, he imagined Depot Four as a sort of model sized Mountain Gate City. You had the Inner Court running the show and mostly chatting within their own circle, then you had the Outer Court and all their little divisions. Each chatting and planning and plotting and trying to make or leverage connections to the Inner Court.

Tian, with his connections to both Martial Aunt Hong and Auntie Wu, plus all the doctors in the hospital, could be considered quite ‘rich.’ Combined with his habit of always appearing with drinks or snacks, it wasn’t a surprise that his circle was growing.

Even his connection with Brother Long was noted and considered valuable. It seems many had tried to cozy up with the young master of the Long Trading Company, but while the gentle gentleman might be a bit clueless about many things, he could spot social climbers, grifters and suck-ups coming five miles away.

Most reassuring of all was his cultivation. It was growing quickly, and Level Six seemed to be waving merrily at him. He sometimes wondered if his cultivation rate wasn’t accelerating. Then he realized it was accelerating. He got very worried about why that was until Grandpa Jun loudly reminded him to seriously consider what he was doing.

Tian was mopping the floors of the hospital, cultivating the Advent of Spring. A wood aligned cultivation art, which meant a solid stream of yang energy was flowing in constantly. The cursed dagger was tucked against the small of his back under his robes. It was constantly feeding a solid stream of yin curse energy into his body, to be absorbed by the Hell Suppressing Art.

Yin and Yang coming together, both running through that strange statue. A statue which practically screamed out for balance. If he only gave it yang or yin, it could only run at half power. But with both, his body was constantly being refined at maximum efficiency. Becoming more spiritual. Becoming better suited for cultivation.

It left him with complicated feelings. The ways he had accumulated this good fortune were bloody. A sharp contrast to the genteel teas and games of go, or the friendly spars with seniors. Still. Good fortune was good fortune.

One ordinary day, there was an enormous bellow from outside the Depot. An insect-like monster with dozens of legs came charging towards the gate, covered in thick blue-gray armored plates and dotted with blinding red eyes. It was enormous. Bigger than some of the buildings in the depot. Claws like scythes reached out from the front of it. A true monster of the deep wastes.

“Not to worry everyone. It is quite obedient. Call the Mission Hall and the Beast Tamers, I have good news to report.”

Martial Uncle Ku had returned.