B3 Chapter 24

A leaden mist hung low over Huangshi, stained and dragged to earth by the smoke of countless human cook-fires. Orange-crest sat atop the roof of his dwelling, lying back to stare up at the shrouded heavens.

Spring was coming. Orange-crest could almost taste it in the air, in the way the mists cleared earlier each morning, the way the smells of the market changed, as shoots of spring bamboo and greens made their way into stewpots.

But spring was not quite here yet, and the monkey found he did not wish for winter to end. Lying there on the roof, the mist felt like a blanket, muffling the rising sounds of life, mundane and fantastic. Orange-crest found his paws drifting into a hand sign, interlinked and asymmetric. He breathed in, and tasted the city. The stale summer wood, and the dry dung some supplemented it with. The clean, moist air from the distant mountains kin to his first homes.

And the qi that came with them, grand and humble. It wasn't much, just enough to restore the power the monkey had expended the prior day, but it was honest cultivation.

Orange-crest had cultivated for an hour or two each day, over the last few months, but he'd made no appreciable progress toward the ninth stage of Qi Condensation. Rationally, the monkey knew each stage was said to be more difficult to attain than the last. And they had been. But previously, he'd always felt it was just a matter of time before he advanced.

In Qi Condensation, the process of cultivation was simple. One drew qi into themselves and circulated it. The greater volume of qi, and its movement, steadily expanded the amount of space in the body for qi to occupy. The walls of the dantian would flex and stretch, the pressure would slowly shatter blockages, revealing meridians one had never known they'd possessed.

Eventually this process would cease. One would feel like they could take in no more qi, without bursting. All they needed to do was endure, and push through, and their qi would ripple and convulse, and then fall in upon itself, becoming denser and more profound, more liquid and more alive.

And then one began the process all over again, the increased strength of their qi allowing for further development of what Li Xun had called the subtle body, the whole of one's qi-network.

Eight times, that process had worked. Pills, wine, spirit stones, and time in the Fathomless Well and Holy Land had all helped, but orange-crest had rarely felt like he emerged from a cultivation session without any forward progress.

But right now orange-crest wasn't making progress. He cultivated. His qi circulated, pressing hard against his meridians. But the new channels that opened were thread-thin and rare. Where once he'd found great veins spanning entire limbs, now he considered it a good week if he opened a tiny capillary in one of his fingers.

The monkey knew the solutions to his problem. His issue was one of volume. He simply needed more qi, to make any more progress. He either needed to stop using his qi entirely, to enter closed-door cultivation and only focus on accumulation for a year or two. Or he needed external aids. And no small volume of them.

"Stupid bottlenecks." Orange-crest muttered. Apparently this was how it felt not to be a prodigy. He didn't like it. He should figure out how to become a prodigy again as soon as he could. It didn't seem healthy, to live like that, forever.

Perhaps an hour passed. The winter sun burned away the thickest of the mist. Orange-crest cultivated until the sense of wasting his time ate away at the peace of the morning. The monkey rolled off the roof, falling heavily to the ground.

Daoist Big Hat rose, and straightened his robe. The daoist looked round, laying his eyes upon all his kingdom, and found it good.

The courtyard had been transformed into a sparse maze of pots, standing proud in the mist like squat little demons, ready to trip the unwary. There was no rhyme nor reason to their organization. Some of the most valuable sat tucked away in corners, or dangerously close to the door. Orange-crest knew most of them, their contents and history, their progress and destination. And the few he'd forgotten, Sun Guiying had written down somewhere.

He walked them now, picking out a few jars to test. After some consideration, he settled upon three of them. It wasn't good to poke at wine too often. Disturbing a fermentation was like waking up a monkey in deep slumber. They'd still get their rest, but they would be more cranky in the morning than if you'd allowed them to keep their foot pressed into the small of your back all night.

Unfortunately, sometimes you had to wake the wine up to ask it about its dreams. Orange-crest found he usually learned more dissecting a failure in progress, than he did opening up a jar in the morning and scampering off ready to retch from the stench of rot and acid.

The monkey that, in his heart of hearts, still answered to the name Li Hou, was coming to wish he'd made an academic study of brewing upon the Azure Mountain. Without Fourfold-Marked Green Rotworms, and his long practice with them, he was not getting the most consistent of results. But the greater part of orange-crest wasn't entirely displeased. There was a thrill in mastering an art all on your own, in learning by dozens of measured trials what a hidden master could have told you in an instant with an exasperated laugh.

Almost every skill orange-crest had was owed to someone else, from his martial skills, to his daoist magics. Brewing alone, was truly orange-crest's. He'd been helped along at times, but never carried.

The first wine he checked was the spicy one. He was thinking of calling it 'A Monkey's Evening Breath'. No concerns of rot there, it hadn't grown any stronger in alcohol for weeks now. Orange-crest sniffed at it; he knew better than to taste it. It was drinkable, in the most technical of senses, but that wasn't what it was for, and the experience wasn't exactly pleasant.

The monkey frowned, as the hairs in his nostrils singed. The wine smelled the same as it had last time. Unfortunate; that meant there was probably no sense in changing out the slices of ginger floating within. The liquid had absorbed as much of their essence as it could. He could dissolve a few more Crimson Ember Lozenges, but the last set had taken forever to dissolve. The wine was probably as complete as it could become without some extremely flammable spiritual herbs, or orange-crest learning the human art of 'distillation'.

Orange-crest pulled a fraction of a ladle's worth, and set it in a bowl. He pulled a little bit of powder from a pouch in his inner robe, and rubbed it between two fingers. It was no Quaternary Heart-Fire Pill, but orange-crest was still proud of his Crimson Ember Lozenges. A small pulse of qi travelled down his arm, and then, there was fire.

Not too much of it. No great burst of flame, sadly. But the wine burned, a steady consistent little fire dancing atop the dark puddle. The alcohol alone was not nearly strong enough to have borne steady combustion. A stiff drink, certainly, but far from the distilled terrors his master had mentioned.

Orange-crest smiled, and pulled the jar into the workshop. Unfinished, but certainly usable.

The second jar the monkey chose had only been going for a few weeks, but he was guardedly optimistic. Coconuts were delicious, a truly unique taste among fruits. Sweet, tender meat, coating tongue and teeth when you bit into them. Surely a coconut wine would be divine.

The monkey cracked the lid of the jar, and immediately dry-heaved.

No.

Solid white chunks floated in a thin liquid, ink-dark in the confines of the vessel. Splotches of off-green, and a deeply unsettling smell; like a furry animal bathed in milk and dried in the summer sun.

Orange-crest sealed the jar, and set it to the side. Fu Daxian could dispose of that later. He'd buy him some buns in apology.

He could already see the note he'd write in Sun Guiying's log. Pure coconut wine was a clear failure. His next step would be to start the process with fruit he trusted, or try toasting the coconut over the fire first. Persimmon and roasted coconut sounded promising, if it would ferment. Orange-crest had added plenty of jiuqu, he knew it wasn't the fermenting agent that was wrong, it was something about the strange nature of coconut that was impeding the process.

It was with some trepidation that orange-crest approached the third jar. This one did not sit out in public, where any foolish vandal might theoretically provoke orange-crest's wrath by tampering with it.

This jar sat in the deepest part of the monkey's workshop, sharing its space only with the jar that contained the ingredients Ruo Ping had brought that were too poisonous to do anything useful with.

Orange-crest's first attempt at true spirit wine, without the aid of pseudo-gu.

As far as the monkey knew, outside of his gu-fermentation, there were said to be two ways to make spirit wine.

The first method was simple: ferment spirit rice. Or perhaps spiritual fruits, if one had enough of them to fill an entire vessel.

That wasn't tenable for orange-crest. Spirit fruits didn't last too long on the shelf. Few of them made their way to orange-crest. The monkey suspected most of them were eaten by the pigs who found them. He didn't begrudge them this, orange-crest tended to eat most of the ones that made their way to him. He was strong enough to digest them, and the modest injections of qi were welcome aids to his stagnating cultivation.

A borrowed chapter appears here without permission; readers support its author by using the author's official page.

Spirit rice, meanwhile, could last on a shelf. But it was just too expensive to purchase. It was sold in three grades: silver, gold, and true. The names were very human, a great joke that they all took seriously. Silver and gold grade spirit rice cost as much as an equivalent volume, not weight, of the metal the grade was named for. True-Grade Spirit Rice, meanwhile, was traded for identically sized sacks of spirit stones. It was said to be suitable for making wine powerful enough to intoxicate any cultivator beneath Nascent Soul.

Orange-crest might have afforded enough Silver-Grade Spirit Rice to attempt a single batch of wine, but if the wine soured, he would have been left destitute. And he had no idea if his vessels and jiuqu were up to the challenge of such a mash.

So that left the second method, fermenting mortal grain with spirit herbs. Less common, because it demanded mastery of both fermentation and alchemy. Spirit herbs might also be valuable, but orange-crest had them, and had concerns about selling them. The only people who would purchase them would be other cultivators, and despite man's laws, powerful cultivators had a habit of looking for alternative ways of acquiring anything that they did not wish to pay for.

It was with some trepidation in his stomach that orange-crest began peeling the seals off the jar. That had been one of his clever ideas for this batch, to seal the vessel, but not its contents, with the Immobilizing Spell. If the qi released by the various spirit herbs could not escape, surely more of it would eventually end up in the wine.

Orange-crest was confident. But he'd wagered a great deal on the success of this single jar. Most of the more human-palatable spirit herbs the porcine brothers had found for him, in fact.

A great pulse of qi surged forth, fragrant and verdant and violent. Orange-crest's smile was short-lived, interrupted by a sudden fear of discovery. Like his breakthrough, even mortals would be able to smell the profundity of this scent. The rumors could bring the tigers he feared.

Orange-crest spread his legs, settling into a low stance, and clapped his hands together. His qi surged, moving in patterns he'd not practiced in earnest in over a year. His mouth opened, and he tried to drink in the sky. Wind whipped through the workshop, setting the dry racks to rustling, and the unsecured cabinets to chattering complaint. The Drunken Phoenix's Breath was not a broadly applicable technique. But it was a terribly convenient thing, when one ran into a problem it was suited for.

Orange-crest's chest expanded to its maximum capacity, then stretched a little further still, the monkey doing his best impression of a bullfrog. Orange-crest swallowed, holding his breath, A Stone Monkey Carves Himself running in overdrive.

Two minutes later, the monkey let out a burp that shook the workshop. He felt warm all over, and absolutely flushed with vitality. Simply inhaling the wine's fumes had done almost as much for orange-crest's advancement as a half-morning of dedicated cultivation.

If that wasn't a positive sign, the monkey didn't know what was.

"Boss?" Came a heavy knock, courtesy of orange-crest's surly right-hand man.

"Alchemy things." The monkey lied.

"Dammit, boss. I refuse to believe that it is a common belief among immortals that small explosions are an essential part of the practice of alchemy."

"There are many schools of thought about alchemy." Orange-crest answered more honestly. "Believe me, when I say that you would find my master's even more frightful than mine."

"Well knock it off, I'm opening the gates soon."

"Consider me knocked off."

Fu Daxian did not dignify that comment with a response, leaving orange-crest to contemplate his work in silence.

A gentle haze still emanated from the spirit wine, a glimmering mist all its own, imbued with a power so calculated it felt almost natural. The five elements, yin and yang, all carefully cut and measured into balance.

Orange-crest scooped himself a cup, then closed the jar.

He took a deep, mundane breath, savoring the scent. It was a good scent.

He sipped at the wine, and frowned.

It wasn't bad.

It was almost as powerful as the Two-Worm Monkey Wine he'd made for his master and his martial uncle, and far gentler on the spirit and palate alike. Eight different kinds of spiritual herbs had gone into this batch, along with a pair of spirit stones, two pecks of good rice and half a dozen talismans. The taste was gentle and balanced, the qi placid enough even a mortal human could chance imbibing it without risking deviation.

It was excellent wine, worthy of any table. But orange-crest still found himself a little disappointed, it didn't live up to the sheer volume of resources he'd invested into it. Or rather, it wasn't an improvement over his best work. A more expensive way of reaching the same place, at best.

Orange-crest didn't waste the saucer. There was an art to drinking spirit wine, one he was still a novice at. The experience was as much enjoyment as it was cultivation, and the monkey let his fears and disappointments wash away as the gentle qi flooded his already overfull meridians.

Half an hour later, pleasantly buzzed, orange-crest revised his opinion.

It might have been too expensive, but this was good wine. It tasted like times bygone, being illicitly drunk on Li Xun's roof. Mo Yi would appreciate it. If orange-crest was lucky, he wouldn't be the only one.

Just this once, orange-crest decided to take the rest of the morning off. He poured himself some water, and considered.

Conservatively, this jar of wine was worth twenty or thirty spirit stones. Spirit rice was expensive, but spirit wine was even more dear. Guts and Brawn had taken about two months to gather all the herbs that went into it. Those six talismans had taken two weeks' worth of qi to empower, and paying for all the sundries that went into the wine had cost perhaps a month of orange-crest's time. Most of that was the spirit stones, rice was free in comparison.

Orange-crest was advancing rapidly in the Dao of Business. Assuming those numbers held, that was what, a potential profit on the order of a hundred spirit stones a year, if he sold it all? He wasn't planning to sell all of it, but that remained its worth. It was certainly enough for a pill furnace. Enough for him to consider funding his advancement to Foundation Establishment within five or six years, allowing for expansion of his operations, refinement of his recipes.

It was only right that much of that profit accrued to him. Only his experience, and Li Xun's teachings, had allowed orange-crest to brew it. Choosing those herbs, inking those talismans, purchasing that jiuqu, his men and pigs could not have managed that.

But something about the whole arrangement still felt wrong. Several weeks ago, on a quiet night rolling pills in the workshop, Hong Bo had asked orange-crest a simple question.

"Are you forming a sect?"

The monkey had agonized over the answer for weeks, lost sleep for it.

The idea gnawed at him. He had seen the glory and the ruination in the human idea of sects. For all its flaws, the Azure Mountain Sect was a worthwhile thing, and the earth was greater for its existence. Orange-crest had hated at first the idea of a master, before coming to love his own. Could he come to feel the same way about having disciples?

Orange-crest was not certain that he could.

He was not Li Xun. He had not watched a century pass, walked the broad world and read books enough to form a mountain. How could he be responsible for others as his master had been for him?

Orange-crest did not want to create a sect. He was certain of that.

But what he was creating was in some ways uncomfortably sect-shaped. He provided stipends and protection, both in the form of reputation, and pockets full of immobilizing talismans. He taught what he pleased, as he pleased. He even dispatched 'disciples' on missions, taking the fruits of their labors as his and providing them pittances and promises in return. His men and pigs lacked for nothing they needed, but it was his pockets that were most lined by their collective labors.

None of them would argue, if he declared all the profits from this jar of wine his own.

None of them could, if he disagreed.

And none of them would walk away, for serving beneath him was still more pleasing to them than standing alone.

Orange-crest could see himself decrying the title at every turn, and still ending up the master of something that any honest man could call a sect. It would only grow over time. Mo Yi was his next target, but Fu Daxian had already made noises about recruiting more staff for the shop. And orange-crest could not believe, that there were not more instinctive cultivators who lived among humans that deserved freedom. He'd simply not looked, for fear of the fact that if he saw them, he would not restrain himself.

And orange-crest wondered, if that was what he wanted. A tiny little sect, protected from the rot that seemed endemic to such organizations by his own incorruptibility. It seemed arrogant. But wasn't he?

The monkey had not had an answer for Hong Bo.

He still didn't.

The letter inviting Mo Yi to join the monkey for spirit wine and business chatter sat upon the table of the workshop, sealed, but undelivered.

It would be easy, to choose.

Entice a distributor, sell the wine through him, buy the furnace, make real pills, double the stipends, pocket the difference. Twenty-odd taels of silver a month, including the pigs' food. Hong Bo didn't even regularly claim the stipend orange-crest already offered him. The resulting profit would probably be closer to four or five times an Azure Mountain Inner Disciple's allotment than twice it. Easily ten stones a month, perhaps over twenty if his pills had similar margins to his wine.

He wouldn't even need to falsify the accounts. All he had to do was not add a new column.

Orange-crest lay back upon the floor. There was never a chance he would have done that. He just wasn't that sort of monkey. Not even red-eyes or quick-fingers would be that conniving, if they understood the concepts.

But even if he shared the proceeds, this sort of business would not be conducted without bloodshed. And mortals were so much better at shedding their blood than Stone Monkeys.

Orange-crest didn't want to be a Sect Master. So he asked himself an obvious question. What would a Sect Master do? He'd never met Ren Yuhan, but his master had told him stories.

The monkey came up with an answer. And then orange-crest decided to do the opposite of that.

"But they're not for slaughter." Ruo Ping protested.

"But if they're not for slaughter, why are you taking them into the city?" The guard demanded.

"I don't know. The boss wanted them in the city. I'm just his man."

"You can wait in the meat row. That's where livestock goes."

"I tried." Ruo Ping protested. "They keep asking me what butcher they're going to, but they're not for slaughter. They said they can't finish the paperwork without a final destination. So they sent me to you."

"Well, just make a butcher up. I don't handle livestock."

"But that would be a lie. I can't lie to a clerk."

"You can't keep pigs in the city either. You won't tell them a butcher's name. You won't give me a good reason. I can't help you, unless you help me put things in order."

Guts grunted quietly. Ruo Ping privately agreed, this was nonsense. There was no rule against bringing pigs into the city. Hundreds of people did it every day.

"He's hungry." Ruo Ping lied. "Can you just tell me who I need to talk to to fix this?"

"I already did."

Brawn's whining bleat drew glances. The frustrated pig simply pushed forward, forcing Ruo Ping to drop his lead, lest he be pulled along in the pig's wake. Several hands inched closer to weapons, at the sight of a boar whose shoulders stood above a tall man's waist in so obvious a state of agitation, stomping toward them.

"Brother!" Guts cried out. Ruo Ping knew that one.

It took a moment, for Ruo Ping to process the sound Brawn had made. It was the same sort of whine that Brawn sometimes made when Guts insisted on overfilling Ruo Ping's pack. Something relating to things of value, or the wasting of time.

"Oh." Ruo Ping clapped his hand to his forehead. "You should have just told me you needed tea money."

He clapped a small handful of copper coins into the guard's hand, chasing after the massive white boar.

"I didn't—"

The man at the gate thought better of his complaint. A little consideration kept the earth and heavens in proper order, after all.