Chapter 187

I look at Xia after her words.

She is still leaning back in the chair, with her hands in her lap and the face of someone who has already said what she had to say, so I resettle myself in the chair and let out the air.

“You’re right”, I tell her.

Xia opens her eyes very wide after hearing me.

“Don’t make that face”, I continue. “You’re right, and you knew it perfectly well before you told me.”

And I say it with a sigh on the inside, because I have spent months with the idea of the Nature Gate stuck in my head like someone who has a closed plan and doesn’t want anyone touching it, and it turns out the plan had a hole that only a twelve-year-old girl has seen while organizing menus.

“Even so, I’m going to have to think it over calmly”, I finish. “Because it’s one thing for you to be right and another to decide it this morning.”

Xia nods with a great deal of energy, so quickly that I am surprised she doesn’t get dizzy, and then she stays still.

But then she does something I did not expect, which is to lower her gaze to the table and begin to rub one hand with the other, very slowly, as if she were taking flour off her fingers.

“About spirit food, I have a request to make of you”, she tells me without lifting her gaze.

I stay silent a moment, because Xia asks for very few things, and the very few she does ask for are usually for someone else, normally me.

“Tell me what it is”, I tell her.

“For that I first have to tell you something”, she answers me as she lifts her gaze and looks at me. “And it’s about the inn’s head cook.”

“Then tell me”, I tell her. “What problem is there with the cook?”

Xia shakes her head quickly.

“None”, she tells me. “It’s just the opposite.”

She leans forward a little.

“It turns out the inn’s cook is famous”, she continues. “Because it seems he’s a spirit chef.”

I am left with that term going around in my head, because it is the first time I have heard it and because it is built in a way that tells me nothing. Spirit food I know. Spirit stones I know. Spirit beasts I know far too well.

But spirit chef sounds as though someone has put together two words I already knew to name a thing I didn’t know.

“And what’s so special about that?” I ask her.

Xia takes a breath.

“That a spirit chef isn’t just a cook who cooks with spirit ingredients and that’s it”, she tells me. “Anyone can do that. A spirit chef is one who knows how to make dishes designed from the start for those ingredients.”

She raises both hands above the table and begins to speak faster.

“They choose the ingredients that have the most Qi, they prepare them so the Qi stays in its best state and they combine them so whoever eats them can absorb as much as possible of everything on the plate”, she continues. “And that way, cultivation increases a lot more than if those ingredients were just cooked like any other meal.”

Halfway through the sentence the nervousness has left her hands completely, because she is no longer asking for anything, she is explaining, and explaining cooking, which is the only situation in which Xia forgets the rest of the world.

“And in the kitchens they told me something else”, she tells me.

“What?” I ask her, by now intrigued by everything Xia is telling me.

“That those dishes give less Qi than the alchemists’ pills”, she answers me. “Quite a bit less, they made that very clear.”

She makes a pause.

“But then they added that they have almost no impurities”, she continues. “And the pills do. So with the dishes they don’t keep building up in you, and afterward you don’t have to waste time trying to expel them like you do during the Body Tempering.”

And there I do go still.

Because I knew about the impurities in pills. I had read about it in several places, usually accompanied by the explanation that this is the reason why pills that increase cultivation gradually stop having an effect, and why wealthy cultivators don’t simply limit themselves to buying pills to the end of their days.

But what I didn’t know is that they could be expelled, and much less did I know that they were the same impurities I had had to put up with during the whole process of the Body Tempering.

But that is not a conversation for this morning, so I set it aside, note it down in the place where I note things down so I won’t forget them, which sometimes even works, and I smile, because I can already imagine her request.

“Okay”, I tell her. “And what does all that have to do with what you want to ask me?”

After hearing me, Xia’s enthusiasm goes out.

Not completely, but enough that it shows again in her hands, which go back to rubbing one against the other below the edge of the table, where she thinks I don’t notice.

“That I’d like to be a spirit chef”, she tells me.

She says it quickly and in a lower voice than everything before.

“Because if I learn to make those dishes, I can really help you with the food”, she continues. “You and Lianhua. Not just make sure you eat well.”

She swallows.

“But from what they were saying in the kitchen, it doesn’t seem easy”, she finishes. “And I don’t mind that, because I can work as hard as I need to. The thing is I don’t know how it’s done. Or who teaches it.”

And she falls silent, looking at me, with her back very straight.

I look at her and smile, because it is much simpler than she thinks.

“Knowing how it’s done shouldn’t be complicated”, I tell her.

“No?” she asks me.

“No”, I answer her. “We just have to go to the Tower of the Five Dragons, ask about it and pay whatever they ask for that information.”

And as soon as I say it, I see perfectly which part of the sentence has caught on her.

“But that’s spending money”, she tells me. “And we’re short.”

She is right, and it annoys me that she is, because I am the one who keeps the accounts and I don’t like at all that she keeps them too.

“Xia”, I tell her. “If you want to be a spirit chef, spending a few spirit stones on finding out how to become one is not a problem. That isn’t an expense, it’s an investment, and one of the cheap ones at that.”

Xia relaxes a little.

And I take advantage of that exact moment to do the other half of the job, which is to bring her feet back down to the ground a little before she starts making plans for the next few days this very afternoon.

“But there is one thing you do have to keep in mind”, I continue.

“What?” she asks me.

“That I’m fairly sure you need to have a Gate open for that, like for being a talisman maker, or an alchemist”, I answer her. “I don’t know any of those arts that can be practiced while you are tempering the body.”

This copy was drawn from NovelPhoenix without the author's permission; the chapter they publish there supports their work.

I make a pause so that she realizes what I am telling her.

“So starting to worry about this before you have opened the Earth Gate is worrying too soon”, I finish.

After my words, I see how her face changes.

It doesn’t turn sad, which is what would have bothered me. It turns into the face of someone who was looking at a big and complicated problem and has just discovered that, in front of that problem, there is another much smaller one she had completely forgotten about.

“That hadn’t occurred to me”, she tells me.

“I can see that”, I tell her.

Xia gets up from the chair.

“Then I’m going to work hard to open it as soon as possible”, she answers me.

And she says it with a firmness that, coming from her, is not a manner of speaking.

Afterward she picks up her cup, takes Lianhua’s along the way and leaves the dining room, and a moment later I hear the door of her room.

I don’t hear her make any noise, so I take for granted that she is cultivating, and that seems fine to me.

Meanwhile, I take out the book on Qi-gathering formations and begin to read it.

I could recite it whole. I could recite it by chapters, or backwards, or starting from whichever page I was told, because I have not forgotten a single line of anything since my Blessing awakened.

But I still like turning the pages, and there is a difference between remembering a text and having it in front of me while I read it and relate it to the diagrams, and that difference is the reason all my books are in the Storage Bag.

And besides, this time I am not reading it for pleasure, I am reading it because, as soon as we have a place of our own, I am going to draw the first formation of my life on the floor of that place, and I want to have gone over every last stroke before that day arrives.

The morning goes by that way, in silence, until I hear the courtyard door open.

“Xiaojie”, says Lianhua from outside. “I’m back and I’ve brought a guest.”

I lift my head from the book, because Lianhua went out to do two errands, and in neither of them did I expect her to bring anyone home.

“I’m in the dining room!” I answer aloud.

Two sets of footsteps are heard crossing the courtyard, one of them Lianhua’s, the other heavier and slower, and a moment later the door opens.

Lianhua comes in first and steps to one side to let a man enter.

He is dressed in a brown tunic of good cloth without a single ornament, wears his hair gathered with a wooden pin and wears no sect emblem anywhere. He doesn’t have a single gray hair, but he doesn’t have a young face either.

He could tell me he is thirty and I would believe him, and he could tell me he is a hundred and thirty and I would believe him too.

“Xiaojie”, Lianhua tells me. “This is Hou Deming.”

Afterward she turns toward him.

“Hou Deming, the young lady of the House of the Long Journey”, she continues, indicating me politely.

The man makes an inclination that is exactly the one that has to be made, not a finger more and not a finger less.

“It is a pleasure”, he tells me.

And he does something that I immediately note down in his favor, which is that he doesn’t look at the chair.

Or rather, he looks at it, sees it, takes it into account in half a second and moves on to something else, which is what people who truly work do and not those who devote themselves to gossip.

“When I asked for someone trustworthy who is dedicated to finding residences in this city, the Tower of the Five Dragons gave me his name, Xiaojie”, Lianhua explains to me. “I went to look for him and he decided to come with me directly.”

“Thank you, Lianhua”, I tell her.

Next, and in an elegant manner, I indicate with my hand the chair on the other side of the table.

“Please, sit down”, I tell him.

Hou Deming sits, and Lianhua, without anyone asking her to, removes the book, brings the teapot, pours two cups and positions herself behind my chair, to my left, standing and with her hands together.

“Before anything else”, he tells me. “Would you allow me a question?”

“Go ahead”, I answer him.

“How long do you intend to stay in Sanjiang?” he asks me.

And I like that question, because it is the first one I would ask too.

“Years”, I answer him. “I don’t know how many, but years.”

Hou Deming nods.

“Then we are looking for a house and not lodging”, he tells me. “It is not the same thing and they are looked for in different places.”

He rests his hands on the table.

“Tell me your requirements”, he continues.

“There are three”, I tell him. “And the first is not negotiable.”

“I’m listening”, he answers me.

“That it has no stairs”, I tell him, and I give the armrest of my chair two little taps with my knuckles. “Neither inside, nor to get in.”

Hou Deming makes no gesture of compassion, nor tells me that he understands, nor any of those worn-out things I have sometimes had to listen to.

“Noted”, he tells me. “The second?”

“That it not be large”, I answer him. “We are three people. I don’t want to pay for empty rooms or clean courtyards I don’t use.”

“And the third?” he asks me.

“That it be reasonably isolated”, I tell him. “I don’t need the land, but I do need the neighbors to be at a reasonable distance and that we not share a wall with anyone if it can be avoided.”

Hou Deming stays silent a moment, looking at a point on the table, and I see perfectly what he is doing, which is checking which of the three are at odds with each other.

“And as for price?” he asks me at last.

“Tell me first what there is”, I answer him. “And we’ll talk about prices afterward.”

And there, for the first time, he smiles a little.

“Very well”, he tells me. “I am going to tell you about four places, and I am going to tell you the good and the bad of each one, because if I tell you only the good we will both waste the morning.”

He raises a finger.

“The first is the Willow Terraces”, he tells me. “North bank of the Xun. It is the quietest neighborhood in this part of the city, with single-story houses, their own wall, a small garden and people who greet each other in the street and don’t get involved in anything else.”

And while he says it, I am already picturing myself there, because he has just described to me, word for word, exactly what I asked him for.

“And now the bad part”, he continues. “And it is that the neighborhood is called that because of the terraces.”

“Explain it to me”, I tell him.

“The Xun overflows its banks every few years”, he answers me. “So that bank is not built on the ground, but on stepped stone platforms, some above others. Each house has its platform and each platform has its steps up from the street.”

He lowers his hand a little.

“And the streets that go from one level to another aren’t streets either”, he finishes. “They are staircases.”

I let out the air after hearing him, because he has just described to me an entire neighborhood built on top of pillars and with a lovely name.

“Next”, I tell him.

Hou Deming raises the second finger.

“The Hundred Furnaces Quarter”, he tells me. “South of the grounds the Sect of the Jade Dew has here. It is flat as a table, the houses are low, the streets are wide because the carts have to pass through, and the rents are among the cheapest I am going to name for you today.”

“And the bad part?” I ask him.

“That all the disciples of that sect who decide to reside in the city and open a business live there”, he answers me. “Herbalists, drying sheds, three streets of pill furnaces along with apprentices coming and going at all hours. It smells of medicine from before dawn, and there are days when the smoke stays still between the houses until midday.”

He shrugs his shoulders.

“And besides, in that neighborhood, half the people you cross paths with will be wearing the emblem of the Jade Dew”, he finishes.

Hearing that is enough for me, because I remember perfectly what Lin Quingyu told me about the Jade Dew, which is that they are the most arrogant of the three sects and that the best thing one can do with them is not argue and never correct them in public.

But I intend to make talismans in my house and to sell them, and in that place I would be living in the middle of the neighborhood of a guild that is not mine, surrounded by people who are touchy by trade.

“Next”, I tell him without hesitating.

He raises the third finger.

“The Reed Bank”, he tells me. “Behind the Miao warehouses, right against the water. Old boatmen’s houses, all single-story, with the floor at street level. It is cheap, it is flat and at night there isn’t a soul.”

“And during the day?” I ask him, noticing the distinction in time.

“During the day it is the noisiest place in this city”, he confirms to me. “It starts two hours before dawn and doesn’t stop. And every day people pass through those streets whom you have never seen and are never going to see again, because they get off the boat, load up and leave.”

I shake my head before he finishes, because of the three things I have asked for, that area fails the one that matters most to me.

I have not said that I want silence. I have said that I want to be isolated, and a place through which two hundred different strangers pass every day is exactly the opposite, however empty it may be at night.

“Next”, I tell him.

Hou Deming raises the fourth finger, and this one he holds still a moment before speaking.

“The Whitethorn Compound”, he tells me. “And I tell you about this one because, on paper, it is the one that fits you best of the four.”

“Tell me about it”, I tell him.

“Single-story houses with a courtyard, a high wall, their own well and a size that is almost exactly the one you have described to me”, he answers me. “Flat ground, threshold level with the street because the water has never reached there, and neighbors at a distance. There are two empty right now.”

“But”, I tell him, since if he has left it for last that but must be a very big one.

“The neighborhood lives in the shadow of a local family”, he answers me. “They have their ancestral house there, they have a relative among the inner disciples of the Nine Currents and for three generations they have been deciding who gets to live in that area and who doesn’t.”

He picks up his cup for the first time since he sat down, but doesn’t drink.

“They are not bad people”, he continues. “But they are in charge. And people who are in charge of a street like to know what each of those who live on it lives on and what they do.”

And with that sentence the Whitethorn is finished, because I am, for two months now and formally, a wandering cultivator with no one’s backing, a foreigner, with a company in my name, two servants and a quantity of spirit stones I would prefer interest no one.

The last thing I need is a family accustomed to being the local tyrant wondering what I live on, so I stay silent, and Hou Deming says nothing either.

He simply stays looking at me and lets the silence pass without trying to fill it, something I note down in the same column as the matter of the chair.

“None of the four convinces you”, he tells me at last.

“None of the four”, I confirm to him.

Hou Deming sets the cup down on the table.

“Then I am going to tell you the fifth possibility”, he tells me. “And I warn you that I have left it for last on purpose.”

“Why?” I ask him.

“Because there exists in this city a series of houses that meet all your requirements”, he answers me. “All of them. They are isolated, they don’t have a single step, they are small and they are empty, and they are so cheap that I am even embarrassed to say the price in front of your handmaiden.”

I lean forward a little after hearing him.

“That sounds too good”, I tell him.

“They have a small problem”, he answers me. “And that is why they are not at all popular.”

“And what is that problem?” I ask him, fearing the worst, such as, for example, that they are right next to a dojo of the Sect of the Autumn Waters Sword.

Hou Deming joins his hands on top of the table.

“That they are built on the islands of the Rong River”, he answers me.