B3 Chapter 22

Orange-crest left the hall in a daze.

One hundred and twenty spirit stones. It was a tremendous amount of money. More than he could imagine anyone ever needing, for purposes other than cultivation. Orange-crest was not entirely certain that every natural treasure he had ever used or consumed would sum to such an amount. No, the Monkey Refining Bath had been rather expensive. More money than that had touched his fur. It was still a lot.

The number hung over him like a shadow.

Beneath his hat, orange-crest smiled. It was a sunny day in Huangshi. A little shade against the bright winter sun was not unwelcome.

Pei Zihao had extended him credit. The official might not have thought of it quite in such terms, but it was what he'd done. Credit, what Yan Delun had denied that outer disciple, but that merchant had extended the boy he berated.

A debt was something you could only owe, if you belonged. If you could be expected to linger, for months or years, to pay it back. The great blazing eyes of the empire had stared down at his little hat, and decided that stone was not worth overturning. That whatever worms squirmed beneath it were a worthy addition to the garden they cultivated.

Perhaps the metaphor was escaping him, but orange-crest was in a thoughtful mood, a pleased mood. The Azure Mountain was not his home anymore. But, it had not been unique. There were other places, where humans would accept the strange and the hairy, if he was bundled up correctly.

It seemed to the monkey that there was only one thing to be done, after being extended such a welcome.

Orange-crest called upon his qi, coaxed it from the stolid and resistant nature that had held Pei Zihao's crushing spiritual sense at bay. Gentle pulses drifted through his meridians, his qi changing and being changed in turn. Gleaming metal, born from patient earth. The monkey let strands of gold slip between his fingers, almost feeling the coins that would one day come to him. Feeling the debt, the weight of the sum he would one day relinquish to Pei Zihao.

That was an aspect of gold, of yin metal: connection.

Orange-crest gently reeled his power back in before others began to feel it. He let the power drift back to his chest, filling his dantian. The monkey imagined Grand Elder Tian's gift, the gleaming scar on his spirit, floating in a sea of qi-like-wine.

He wandered like that for a time, letting his power steep. Qi tea. Perhaps he would wash away a little more of his protection. But perhaps he would gain something in the process. That too, was the nature of gold. What was earned existed to be spent. It could not connect, if the flow of gold was only ever in a single direction.

Perhaps an hour later, the technique was ready.

Orange-crest stopped in the middle of the road. He lifted his hands into a position that felt natural, sleeves before his face, hands not quite touching. His head drifted back, as profound power filled his body.

"Out of the way!"

"What's he doing?"

"Does the daoist need to..." The man speaking trailed off, blinking. "Sneeze?"

Orange-crest heard none of this. The monkey's head was filled with the echoes of a power that had sought and succeeded in defying heaven in the least of measures.

With such profundity at his command, the monkey did the only thing that made sense.

He closed his eyes, and snorted furiously. Snorted hard and long, like he was trying to suck back in a particularly recalcitrant booger, in the same moment pushing a great surge of qi through meridians too small to bear it.

Orange-crest's nose burned. He felt like he'd tried to sniff inside a pill furnace, or inhale the ghost that haunted his property. There was a tremendous pressure where the monkey's eyes met, like a great serpent was lodged in his sinuses.

"Is he all right?"

"What would we do if he wasn't, offer him some water?"

The monkey's eyes snapped open.

Orange-crest could smell everything.

There was blood and money in the air. Not what he was looking for. Orange-crest sniffed, tracking a sharper scent. Not the crushing empty weight of fate. Something cleaner, sharper, mustier. As mundane as fate was rarefied, yet just as capable of exalting lives, or destroying them. The promise of his first art, the one nearest to his heart, that could only truly be practiced in a place worth calling home.

Orange-crest's fate-filled nose led him to a wide and squat building. Dark wood, weathered soft by moisture within and without. Disreputable-looking men congregated around the entrance, some nursing saucers, others fondling clubs.

Fearless, the monkey followed his nose right through the closed door, heedless of the cries that rose up around him.

"And what do you think you're doing!" A man with hard eyes asked, reaching for steel. "I do not know you, and this is no public establishment. We have a state license. I don't care who you are, you'll regret making trouble here."

Men rose from their perches, in the manner of a pack of monkeys confronting an intruder. They took in the sight of the creature before them, faceless and unafraid. And many of them found reasons to sit back down.

The monkey stepped close to their leader, and explained what he was doing.

"You want to purchase what now?" The hard-eyed man asked.

The silver dripped easy from the monkey's paws, fat raindrops of fortune.

"We don't sell to the public. And we definitely don't sell those."

The monkey said nothing. He just tapped one of the ingots of silver. It could speak for itself. The man looked round at his companions. His blade fell. His hand rose, sweeping the ingots into a pocket.

"Get out of here." He blustered. "Consider it a mercy that I don't take you to account for busting in here. Our jiuqu are a secret recipe of the — a secret recipe."

Orange-crest nodded silently. These men had backers, and pride. He understood that. But they'd taken his money. He understood that too.

The warehouse was filled with jars stacked three high, forming a maze of narrow alleys just wide enough for a man to walk between them. Orange-crest took off down one at a light jog, then leapt, easily clearing the vessels stacked higher than the height of a man.

Orange-crest landed atop a stack of vessels, putting all his weight on the lip, as to not immediately crush the lid. Predictably, the heavy jar immediately began to tip. Orange-crest kicked off, but not hard, putting just enough force into it to counterbalance the tipple.

"Stop." The monkey whispered, targeting not the vessel beneath his feet, but the one in front of him.

A quick scramble, and his second leap carried him deep into the warehouse, where only wine waited. Whispers sprung up, as the monkey vanished into the darkness beyond the reach of the scant few oil lamps that illuminated the windowless compound.

"Dog farts." The man in charge muttered, staring at the dim orange glow that emanated from the direction the stranger had leapt. "Fucking cultivators."

Orange-crest smiled beneath his hat, waiting deep in the bowels of the warehouse.

Half an hour later, the man in charge of the brewery found him, a small jar in hand.

"You're still here."

"You still have my silver."

"Fine. Be that way." The man thrust the jar into the monkey's paws. "You didn't get these from me. You don't sell anything you make with them. I don't want trouble with my bosses. You don't want trouble with them either. If their cultivators come down here, heads are going to roll, and yours will certainly be among them."

"Don't worry. I'm a thirsty fellow. This wine will be just for me. And my friends. You could be one, if you wanted to. I make good wine. Spirit wine, even."

This chapter is published on the NovelPhoenix site by its author, but the copy shown here was made without consent.

The hard-eyed man scoffed.

"Do you take me for some sort of wine ghost? This is a job. I don't do it to make wine, I do it to make money. But if you ever come here again, I'll make you regret it."

Orange-crest bowed his hat in half-hearted apology, but his mind was racing. A wine ghost. It was a phrase for one who indulged every day, but it gave him ideas. Wine being serious enough business to justify state licenses and cultivator backing. Perhaps he'd chosen the wrong trade to start with, if money was his goal.

"I won't trouble you again." The monkey promised. "And I'll make my own recipe, before selling anything. I just need starters. Can't get my usual, in this city."

He should have brought some Fourfold Marked Green Rotworms with him. He'd find the weeks it would take to visit Mount Yuelu eventually, once things were stable. Or pay spirit stones, if he found someone selling them in the city.

"Well? What are you waiting around for?"

"Rude." The monkey chittered quietly. "But thank you."

Orange-crest looked up, and imagined himself atop a distant row of jars.

"Fucking cultivators." The man repeated, staring right through the invisible monkey in front of him.

Stepping outside the brewery, back into the cool air, orange-crest found it was nearly evening. A fiery orange stained the skies as he began making his way back to the shop.

His technique was nearly expended. The power was still crude, weak, and wasteful. Only possible because of the rapidly dwindling power of Grand Elder Tian's inheritance. But orange-crest felt he was on to something. He would keep focusing on cultivating his sense of smell in the weeks to come.

Yet, even though the great burning blockage in his nose had dwindled to a small ember, the scents of fortune and conflict vanishing, orange-crest still smelled something interesting.

He followed his nose to a surprisingly cozy-looking shop. Its tables overflowed the storefront, spilling out onto the street. Piles of ginger, strange crispy looking dried worms that smelled of salt, alongside similarly dehydrated lizards and fishes. A remarkable selection of mortal herbs, not as exhaustive as an apothecary's but impressive for a grocer.

And what he'd come for, what he'd smelled from a distance.

Fruit.

The vendor had so much fruit. Fresh and dried alike, every sort of fruit orange-crest had ever seen, and many he hadn't. The shop had all of the Seven Fruits of Mount Yuelu, everything he'd seen in his master's pantry. It even had the odd little furry fruits with the green flesh he'd once seen in Grand Elder Shen's testing-dream, kiwis.

"Can I help you, fellow daoist?"

The monkey looked up. He could feel the gentle qi of the shopkeeper. The man was not especially powerful, only standing at the fourth stage of Qi Condensation. But that was still far more than orange-crest had expected of such a modest looking shop. This was not the cultivator's ward, and the man's shop was hardly a third the size of his own store, to say nothing of the rest of the estate he rented.

"You run this store?" Orange-crest asked.

"I do."

"It is very nice."

"I am glad that it pleases you, senior. This one is Mo Yi."

Mo Yi was not a young man. His hair was like dirty snow, ever so slightly more brown than white, flowing easily down his back. He wore his beard short and his mustache long. Orange-crest could not help but compare him to Hong Bo; all humans of a certain age did tend to look rather similar. But where Hong Bo was at peace with his scruffiness, roadworn even when he'd recently washed, Mo Yi looked like he would fit in anywhere. Neither elegant nor plain, fearful nor imposing.

"I am Daoist Big Hat." Orange-crest offered.

"A pleasure."

"Fruit is a pleasure." Orange-crest murmured, his attention already drawn back to the many piles. "Where do you get it all?"

"Oh, here and there. There's nothing you cannot find, if you walk far enough."

"Are these coconuts?" Orange-crest asked, hefting what he was fairly certain was not a gigantic kiwi.

"They are."

The monkey sniffed. He couldn't smell much. He looked at the price. Expensive, for a fruit, even one so hefty. Reasonable, for a monkey with his coinpurse.

"I'll take one." He couldn't really carry much more than one, not with the jar full of wine-pellets. Not if he wanted room for anything else.

"Of course."

"I thought they did not grow here?"

"They do not." Mo Yi said. "I have some small skill with storage and preservation formations."

"Oranges!" The monkey cried, sighting a pile the color of his hair.

"Yes?"

"I—"

Orange-crest thought better of explaining why these foreign fruits were significant enough to merit an exclamation. He purchased several instead.

He thought Hong Bo would appreciate them.

Fu Daxian was closing up the shop when the boss returned.

Truth be told, he'd half expected to end the day with his hands shackled, or on the run from the law. The boss was not exactly the sort of person who typically mixed well with officials.

He'd considered running. Decided he probably should run. It was the prudent decision. For some reason, he'd gone to work anyway. He'd woken up, bought a pork bun, stuck a talisman Sun Guiying insisted did something on the box the boss insisted contained the ghost, and then sold pills all day. Fu Daxian didn't know if it was faith, or fatalism, that had settled upon his shoulders. But he did know the pile of silver in the shop's back room had grown by fifteen taels today.

Of all the scenarios he'd envisioned, the boss returning with his arms filled with exotic fruit was not among them. The boss's extra hands, glowing orange, were even out, carrying an unlabeled jar at the monkey's side.

Fu Daxian took a deep breath.

"Boss. I know you said you aren't familiar with money, but I also know those are not cheap. We still need to restock all those herbs you used. Not all the shop's income is pure profit."

"You worry too much, Steward Fu." The boss said. Fu Daxian could practically see the monkey's impish smile beneath that hat. "Orange?"

Fu Daxian accepted an orange. Refusing his share of the purchase wouldn't refund it.

"Help me carry these?"

Fu Daxian did as he was asked.

"Just because you can afford something does not mean that—"

"The fruit is an investment." Boss Big Hat cut in.

"Boss, I am not entirely convinced you know what that word means. A pill furnace is an investment. Repairing the windows is an investment. Fruit is not an investment. You eat it, then it's gone."

"No faith." The boss muttered, his hat sliding back and forth. "Just you watch. I eat fruit, and shit investments."

"Boss." Fu Daxian set the lone coconut down on a table. "What happened?"

Are we all going back in chains? Fu Daxian didn't bother to say the words. For all his flippancy, the boss seemed to understand full well what it meant to defy the empire. He could not help but wonder what had happened, for a wild animal so fearsomely powerful to have acquired such caution.

"It was fine. Did a little trickery. Borrowed some reputation. The penalty was only a fine. And I know the laws now. Won't break them again."

"Boss. How much was the fine?"

"Don't worry about it."

"Orange-crest." The boss stiffened at the sound of his name. "How much was the fine?"

"More than a pill furnace."

Fu Daxian's stomach fell. A pill furnace was not cheap. The boss had quoted the cheapest at seven spirit stones, more than a modest property in the country. The prices rose steeply from there.

"How much more than a pill furnace?"

"Less than a Dustfall Pill."

"Boss!" Fu Daxian took another deep breath. The damn monkey was going to give him ulcers. "I thought you trusted us. I can't help you, if you don't confide in me."

"One hundred and twenty spirit stones."

Fu Daxian tried to swallow, but he found that he'd somehow forgotten how the relevant muscles worked. That was a number and a unit. He could wrap his head around the arithmetic. But it wasn't a sum that real people dealt with. Three thousand and six hundred taels of silver. That was a number for officials and clan heads, a number that accompanied things like storied bounties or military detachments.

"Boss." Fu Daxian had not the slightest idea what he was about to say next.

"No."

"No?"

"No." Orange-crest said firmly. "Get the others. Brother Sun. Hong Bo, if he's here. We're not going to talk about numbers. Pei Zihao gave me a decade, before I must pay him. That is a very long time. We have a decade. I have a plan. And tonight, we will do other things."

Fu Daxian stared at the monkey he had chosen to follow. It was easy to forget, what he was. Just how utterly insignificant his own strength was before the boss's. He didn't even know the monkey's limits, but he'd seen the boss carry stacks of tiles that had to weigh hundreds of jin almost effortlessly.

The boss had a plan. Fu Daxian had concerns.

When he'd been the boss, would he have appreciated a subordinate questioning him as he'd been about to question the boss?

Probably not.

The boss was right. The fine would still be there tomorrow. He would come to the boss when he had solutions, or at least ideas.

Fu Daxian got the others. Hong Bo turned out to be hanging around the workshop, layabout that he was.

Orange-crest offered them all oranges. Once everyone had settled in and begun to peel their fruit, the monkey used his art to seal the workshop against intrusion.

"It is time, that you begin to learn my true arts."

Sun Guiying's eyes widened. "You're going to teach us alchemy?"

"You cannot be serious." Hong Bo muttered. "I understand that you are not conventional, but a daoist's techniques are not things to be lightly shared. For all your talent, you know not what karma you sow with such an act."

"Alchemy?" The boss laughed. "I suppose I should teach you that too. No, I said my true arts. We're going to make wine."

There was silence in the workshop.

To Fu Daxian's surprise, he was the one that broke it.

"You know, I thought you were joking, when you kept mentioning wine. You spoke of it, but never drank with us, before the others left. And you made us purchase all those jars, but you never used them."

"I was sad." The boss said, as if that explained everything. Fu Daxian supposed to him, it did.

The boss leaned back on his stool, balancing precariously. He took his hat off, resting it on top of his knee. Fu Daxian could not help but think he looked simply ridiculous, bundled up in that daoist's robe, whenever the hat came off.

"One must do things in their proper order." The monkey mused. His Phantom Paws extended to grab the jar he'd brought with him. "You need to brew wine, before you can drink it. But you need to gather fruit, before you can brew wine. But before one gathers fruit, they need a place to let the wine age."

The boss grinned.

"Making wine is for home. Now that I have one, I can do it. And since it is also yours, you can help me."

None of the humans knew what to say to that.

The boss opened the jar.

"These are jiuqu." The monkey explained, pulling one of the little whitish-pink pellets out to sniff at it. "My master told me of them, but I've never used them before. He once read that you need them for rice wine, so I got some. They have the yeast that goes in fruit wine, but lots of other things too. Every brewer has their own secret recipe."

The three men watched as the monkey took a bite out of the little pellet.

"Eugh." The boss muttered. "Don't do that. These taste really bad. I see why they go in rice wine. Definitely some anise in there, maybe some cinnamon. Very bitter. Almost a little meaty, but drier than a week-dead worm in high summer."

The boss's nose scrunched up violently.

"And the taste doesn't go away." He complained, stuffing his face with orange slices. "My secret recipes are better. But I can't find the things I need for them yet. So we'll learn, together."

"I'll take notes." Sun Guiying volunteered. "That way we'll know what went into every jar."

Fu Daxian sighed. This seemed like a waste of time.

"Good, good. Hong Bo can go carry jars, and Fu Daxian can boil some rice. But first, very important question." The boss rubbed his paws together. "We must all decide together. If Ruo Ping comes back with something interesting, something not suited for medicine, and I make spirit wine with it. Orange, or coconut?"