Chapter 6: Spirit Rice (4)

Muchen froze in shock. His terror fell by more than half when he saw the rise and fall of the captive's chest. Whatever Xinyi had done, at least she hadn't killed anybody.

Xinyi hopped off of the body. With a gesture of her flipper an unseen force caused it to rise into the air and flip over. Much to Muchen's surprise, he recognized the man's face when it came into view. It was the waiter who had served them last night, the man he had bribed in order to get an introduction to the Hidden Fragrance Pavilion's owner.

Xinyi didn't seem to put silver in her eyes. She probably hadn't knocked this man out just to get back his bribe money. Probably.

If she noticed his suspicious gaze, she didn't show it. She was positively preening when she spoke. "He sneaked in during the dead of night. Hauled one sack off the cart and then tried to set the rest on fire."

Muchen frowned. He'd been worried about thieves ever since he took on such valuable cargo, but he'd never considered the possibility of arson. For this waiter to go to such lengths in order to destroy his possessions, he couldn't possibly be acting on behalf of the Hidden Fragrance Pavilion.

"To think that the waters are so deep in the restaurant business," Muchen said.

If he wasn't working for the Hidden Fragrance Pavilion, then he must be working for the Plum Blossom Kitchen. Part of the reason that they could command such high prices for their spirit rice was that they were the only game in town.

Muchen had known they'd be upset that he was threatening to break up their monopoly. He just hadn't expected that they would be so proactive about it. He'd expected any retaliation to fall on the Hidden Fragrance Pavilion long after he was out of town.

"Wherever there are people, there's politics," Xinyi said.

Muchen rubbed his chin in thought. He would have been devastated if all of his worldly possessions had gone up in flames. Now, though, he hadn't just dodged disaster. Thanks to Xinyi's efforts, he had an opportunity. The question was what he was going to do next.

By rights he could just report the crime and let the government officials deal with it, but Muchen wasn't about to let an opportunity slip out of his fingers without squeezing out as much profit as he could for himself.

"He was pretty bold, trying to destroy property under my protection," Xinyi continued, then sighed. "Tracking down his friends and family will be a hassle."

Muchen went into a coughing fit as he understood the implications of her statement. After a moment, he cleared his throat and brought his breathing under control. "Honestly, I'd rather try to use this to our advantage."

Muchen was no saint. Under the right circumstances, he could see himself wreaking bloody vengeance on somebody who had wronged him. Most of the time, though, he'd rather focus on how to improve his own life rather than ruin somebody else's.

Xinyi cocked her head, a skeptical look in her eyes. "Normally it's best to tear problems out by the roots."

Muchen forced out a chuckle. "I doubt there's anybody in this town that you really have to worry about. Besides, like they say, living well is the best revenge."

He'd heard the saying that power corrupts back in the modern world, but it wasn't until he came to Qianzhan Continent that he'd really seen the principle in action. Something about cultivation and the tremendous disparities it created in personal power led people to treat each other like dirt.

"Living well is revenge? That's ridiculous," Xinyi said, shaking her head. "Kill your enemy. Kill his family. Kill his friends. Kill their families. Refine their souls into a weapon powered by constant torment. That's the best revenge."

Muchen felt cold sweat running down the small of his back.

"Still, I hardly need to seek out the best revenge against a worm like this," Xinyi continued. "I'll leave the mortal matters to you."

Muchen's nascent tension headache went away as his whole body relaxed. He wasn't willing to put his life on the line for a bunch of strangers, but he was glad that he wasn't going to be forced to stand by and watch a scene of wholesale slaughter.

More than that, with Xinyi turning their captive over to him, he could focus on profit rather than vengeance. It was only the work of a few moments to shift sacks of rice around to create a little nook for the tied up prisoner. The blanket that he normally used to protect his cargo from rain was more than sufficient to hide the man from view. That done, he hitched Huichen to the cart and made his way down the road.

He received a lukewarm welcome at the Hidden Fragrance Pavilion. Muchen could see that the owner was still interested in getting hold of some spirit rice, but taking one night to think things over wasn't enough to reconcile him to the price Muchen was demanding. Even so, he wasn't going to turn down a chance to take a look at the goods.

Muchen drove the cart around the back of the restaurant. The owner shooed away the curious onlookers and led the way to a small courtyard. Considering what had happened last night, his actions were a case of locking the barn door after the horse already left, but Muchen still appreciated the thought.

Once they were alone, Muchen flipped the cloth back, revealing the bound form hidden underneath.

"Chao!" the owner said, the initial shock flashing by quickly and leaving suspicion in its wake. "What's going on?"

Muchen took a moment to study his captive. Trussed up and still unconscious, he didn't look like much of a threat, but he had still almost cost Muchen hundreds of taels. It wasn't enough to make him go on a murderous rampage, but he didn't feel any sympathy for what was going to befall him.

"I'm curious myself," Muchen said, "why one of your employees sneaked into the inn during the dead of night and approached my cart."

The owner pulled himself upright, raising his hands in a defensive gesture. "Surely you don't think-"

"He brought tools with him to start a fire," Muchen said. "It seems he didn't want our deal to go through."

He waited for a moment as the other man processed the new information. He found himself on the receiving end of an assessing, respectful look. Not that the man had ever treated him with anything less than perfect courtesy, but obviously Muchen's ability to capture a sneak thief so easily had raised the restaurant owner's estimation of him.

After all, guarding against thieves was not an easy task. Any lapse in vigilance provided a gap for a thief to sneak through. To not just detect a thief but also subdue him without raising any fuss suggested that Muchen either possessed martial abilities far above what would be expected of an ordinary merchant or the remarkable strategic acumen to determine precisely when the thief would arrive.

None of that was true, of course, but Muchen was hardly going to correct the misunderstanding.

"What do you want to do?"

Muchen smiled. "Well, we could turn him over to the authorities."

He threw the suggestion out there just to watch the other man tense up. Nobody wanted their dirty laundry aired in public, after all. For an employee of the Hidden Fragrance Pavilion to be implicated in such reckless and dangerous behavior would destroy the restaurant's reputation, even if they could avoid tangible legal penalties. Muchen was pretty sure that the waiter was a spy, put in place by the Plum Blossom Kitchen, but that kind of thing was difficult to prove.

No, the owner of the Hidden Fragrance Pavilion would want this handled quickly and quietly. Meanwhile, Muchen wanted to put some silver in his pocket. It was always nice when goals aligned.

"To be honest, though, I'd rather keep a low profile," Muchen said. "I'd rather conclude our business and continue on out of town."

The owner nodded slowly, his gaze shifting from the waiter to the sacks of rice around him. "Our business..."

Muchen grabbed one of the sacks of rice from the top of the wagon and lifted it with a grunt. Bringing it down to rest on the ground, he cut it open before lifting the sack again and presenting it to the other man for inspection.

"Wonderful," he said, his eyes lighting up at the sight of top class ingredients regardless of the overall situation, "truly wonderful quality. It's just... yesterday you asked for a thousand taels."

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Muchen smiled. While he thought a thousand taels was a reasonable price, all things considered, it was still an awful lot of silver. The Hidden Fragrance Pavilion was prosperous, but not so much so that its owner could take out four figures worth of silver on a whim. Considering the situation, though, he wasn't going to offer much of a discount.

"Eight hundred taels for everything on the cart," Muchen said. "Oh, and your good luck charm."

Cutting two hundred taels off the sticker price left Muchen with a healthy three hundred percent profit margin. He'd even sweetened the pot by tossing in a prisoner as part of the deal. Muchen thought he was being very humane, considering the situation.

"That talisman has been in our family for generations," the owner said.

"It's a broken fragment of a talisman with no spirituality of its own," Muchen replied. "Besides, with this much spirit rice on hand, who needs good luck?"

The owner chewed on his lip. "You must have it?"

"Unless you'd rather pay a thousand taels," Muchen said. "I don't lower my price without a reason."

His justification was nonsense, but his leverage in this situation was very real. While neither one of them wanted to take the unfortunate waiter to the authorities, the strength of that desire was very different. Muchen wanted to avoid the hassle and close the sale of his spirit rice so that he could move on to the next deal. The owner of the Hidden Fragrance Pavilion feared a massive loss of reputation and the destruction of his family business.

In all honesty, it was a mercy not to take the thousand taels and the talisman.

The owner hesitated, but his final decision was never in doubt. "Very well."

With that, the deal was done. The owner called over a few burly men from the back of the restaurant. They bundled the waiter inside first. No doubt he had several burning questions he wanted answered before the waiter went on to his final fate. Muchen didn't really care, as long as he got paid.

Once the waiter had been relocated, the men came back bearing silver and the plaque that Xinyi coveted. After that, it was a matter of moments to weigh the silver and unload the cart. Muchen was on his way back to the inn before the sun had even passed directly overhead.

"That fat man looked like he was going to cry when he handed over all that silver," Xinyi said. While she didn't lust after silver for silver's sake, it seemed she had a taste for the more competitive aspects of business negotiations.

Muchen glanced around to make sure he wouldn't look too odd, talking to open air as he drove his cart along. "Don't feel too bad. He'll make back at least twice that amount before he's done selling all of the spirit rice."

"Why didn't you ask for more, then?" Xinyi asked. "You don't seem like the type to leave money on the table."

"Well, I didn't want him to be too unhappy about handing that talisman over," Muchen said. "Really, though, there's a rhythm to these things."

He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. He'd never taken more than the single mandatory class on economics in college, but he'd spent enough time hustling for pocket money that he'd developed his own gut feel for how business was supposed to work. Of course society was better off if every transaction was win-win, leaving happy campers on both sides.

As an individual, on the other hand, there was an immediate reward from putting the screws to your negotiating partner any chance you got. Muchen didn't like to do business that way, though. Even in a transaction with a stranger, somebody he'd probably never meet again, it just didn't feel right.

"Everybody earns money by doing their part. I took the spirit rice and moved it to a place where people are willing to pay for it. Now he has to turn it into a cooked dish and find customers who will buy it," Muchen said. "He ought to get paid for it. I'm not the one who built a restaurant, built up a reputation, hired chefs, or any of that. If I took that share of the money, it wouldn't be any different from extortion."

He held up a hand to forestall the obvious question. "Sometimes you have to be a little tough, but I don't like to make a habit of screwing people over just because I can. Eventually you get that kind of reputation and turn into that kind of person.

That seemed to satisfy Xinyi. At least, she didn't say anything else before they made it back to the inn. Muchen balanced the plaque on top of his now much heavier cash box as he made his way up the stairs to his room. He took a moment to indulge himself, running his fingers over the stack of ingots. It was more silver than he'd ever seen in one place in his life, and it was all his.

Of course, to be a real mover and shaker he'd need to build up a lot more of a nest egg than that. Muchen locked the silver away once more and hid the box under his bed. On top of the bed, Xinyi had settled into a meditative pose on top of the fragment of turtle shell that he had gone to so much trouble to acquire.

Muchen shrugged. He didn't have anywhere to be right now. He moved himself into a more stable seated position for a bout of midday meditation.

He knew right away that something had changed. The gentle warmth that usually flowed into his body was replaced by a torrent of spiritual energy that was so thick Muchen could almost taste it. He didn't have much time to wonder what was going on before something shifted and he found himself hovering in midair.

He could see his own body still seated on the floor beneath him. He held his hand up in front of his face and had only a moment to study its translucent form before something hooked into his navel and yanked him upwards.

He passed through the ceiling without incident and accelerated, moving up through the clouds. It wasn't long before he was hovering over the Qianzhan Continent, enjoying the sort of view that he'd thought he had left behind in the modern world along with commercial air flight.

He dimly recalled seeing a map of the continent once, long ago, but no piece of paper could compare with a live view of the real thing. Not just that, but his eyesight had been enhanced. He could see motion down below.

When he focused on it, he could see a trickle of silver. It was moving from town to town, swelling from a stream into a river and nearly a flood before branching out along the major trade routes. Pulling back, he could see the entire network, silver moving and multiplying every which way as it moved through the arteries of commerce.

There were some oddities in the current. Places where silver was diverted down the wrong path, or sat stagnant where it should flow freely. As he stared at the land down below, he could sense a great truth, hidden in the ebbs and flows. There was something he needed to do, something he needed to learn.

Then he opened his eyes. He was back in his room, still seated on the floor.

The energy inside of him that usually suffused his entire body at the end of a session of meditation was on the move. It was drawing together, burrowing deeper into his body. It didn't stop until there was a warm ball, nestled behind his belly button.

More and more energy was packed into that little ball, until it felt like it was about to burst. Finally there was a crack, and a line of energy surged out of the reservoir to flow up towards his heart. Along the way it hit an obstruction. There was another build up of pressure, and another burst of energy pushed the line of energy up to his heart, where it turned and headed back for his navel. A final obstruction along the way was knocked down with ease, letting the line of energy hook back up with the original source.

The loop that had been cleared out hummed with energy, moving steadily around and back to that spot behind his belly button. When Muchen gave it a mental poke the energy in the reservoir rippled, looking to his new senses as though he had run his fingers through some bathwater.

"Interesting."

He looked up. Xinyi had finished with her own meditation and was regarding him with interest.

"What happened?"

"Your connection to the Great Dao. You did something significant, took a step along your chosen path in life," she said. "Most initiates find their way in weapons training and battle... I have to admit, I'm curious what you'll do with your merchant's dao."

Muchen smiled, the taste of success almost as intoxicating as the feeling of spiritual energy moving at his command. "The first thing to do is to go buy my next load of cargo."

He suited word to deed, standing up and preparing to go out. He'd accomplished all that he was going to through meditation for now, so there was no reason to continue just sitting around the room. After all, time was money.

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