55. I Tried to Find a Hidden Dragon but Only Found a Mad Senior and His Candle-Hat

I establish a set of commandments for myself for this expedition. Internalized and made into instinct.

Never buy too much from one shop.

Never buy only rare things.

Make ten mundane transactions for every unusual one.

Use different districts. Spread the purchases. Spread the attention.

Build relationships before moving large value. Let them remember your face before they remember your stones.

Create visible income before visible spending. The new mine vein. A few good trades. Nothing that invites questions.

Assume every merchant talks to someone.

Act as though someone is watching you at all times.

The lower-end shops are clustered near the eastern wall, where the buildings are older and the streets are narrower and the merchants have been selling the same basic supplies to the same local customers for decades. The prices are fair. The quality is modest. Nothing here would interest a major sect or a wealthy cultivator.

‘Perfect.’

I buy salt first. Twenty pounds, coarse grain, packed in oiled cloth. The merchant is an old woman with missing teeth and a sharp eye for hagglers. I let her win on the first round, push back on the second, settle on a price that makes her feel clever. She wraps the salt without comment. Ling’er plays bored servant girl beside me, one finger already assigned to signals. She looks distracted. A servant girl bored by errands. But I gave her orders. The Sacred Cosmic Bone is working, sweeping through the crowd, reading threads, cataloging faces. She scratches her nose—a signal. All clear. I move to the next stall.

Cloth. Bolts of undyed cotton, suitable for training robes or bandages. I buy twenty. The merchant asks if I’m outfitting a small army. I tell him I have a large family. We settle on a price that is fair for both of us. Ling’er touches her ear. Someone watching, but not with ill intent. A passerby, maybe. A merchant from a neighboring stall. No threat.

I buy more books. Basic educational materials. History, geography, the kind of foundational knowledge that every sect should have but mine has been lacking. The bookseller is a young man with spectacles and the particular intensity of someone who loves his stock more than his customers. He tries to sell me a treatise on the migration patterns of spiritual beasts in the eastern provinces. I buy it. He looks pleased. I look like a minor sect leader building a library.

Ling’er scratches her nose as she pores over the book I gave her. All clear.

I buy cooking oil. Dried beans. A sack of rice. Old Chen will appreciate the variety. I haggle over the price of the beans for five minutes, not because I need to, but because the man across the street has been watching us for too long and I want to see if he follows. He doesn’t. He yawns and walks away. The eastern side of Celestial Jade City is no less crowded, but the texture of the crowd changed. Fewer cultivators. More mortals. The auras here are Qi Condensation at best; laborers, minor merchants, families who have lived in this district for generations and never seen the inside of a sect.

This is where craftsmen work. Not the ones with waiting lists of cultivator clients. These are ones who repair pots and sharpen blades and sell wooden bowls to people who cannot afford jade.

I ask the first shopkeeper, a woman selling iron nails from a barrel, if she knows a craftsman named Wei Zheng.

“Wei Zheng?” She wipes her hands on her apron. “There’s a Wei Zheng three streets over. Tell him Liu sent you.”

His shop is small, crammed between a dye-maker and a tea house. The window displays elaborate porcelain, vases painted with cranes, bowls glazed in celadon, a teapot shaped like a sleeping cat. The man behind the counter is middle-aged, with clay under his fingernails and a kind face.

“Are you Wei Zheng?”

“I am.” He smiles. “Looking for something special? I just finished a set of tea cups inspired by the—”

“I’m looking for a craftsman who works with spirit tools. Weapons. Artifacts.”

His smile fades. “Oh. Apologies, cultivator. No, that’s not me. I do pottery. Decorative, mostly. I’ve fixed a few low-grade formation lamps, but nothing like what you’re describing.”

“I was told you were a craftsman.”

“I am a craftsman. Just not that kind.” He gestures at his wares. “This is my craft.”

I look at the porcelain vases. The painted cranes are lovely. The glazing is even. This man is good at what he does… but it’s not what I need.

“Apologies for the confusion. Do you know anyone in the district who works with spirit tools? Named Wei Zheng?”

He thinks. “There’s another Wei Zheng. Further east, near the tannery. He builds… devices.” His face makes an odd expression, like he’s eaten something sour. “Are you sure you want to find him?”

“I’m sure.”

He gives me directions. I thank him and leave. The tannery is easy to find, the smell announces it from two blocks away. The workshop is a shack behind it, leaning against a wall, its roof patched with mismatched tiles. A sign above the door reads “Wei Zheng’s Wonder Emporium: Inventions to Rival the Heavens.”

I knock.

The door swings open. The man who stands there is wild-haired, wild-eyed, wearing a robe covered in pockets and straps. He is missing two fingers on his left hand.

“Ah! A customer!” He grabs my arm and pulls me inside. “You’ve come at the perfect moment. I’ve just finished my latest masterpiece—”

“What do you make?”

“Everything! Anything! The heavens themselves will tremble before my genius!” He gestures at shelves lined with… objects. I use the Gaze on the nearest one.

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“You’re Wei Zheng?” I ask, as I assess him with the Gaze. Perhaps it’s best not to judge a book by it’s cover.

… I suppose that sometimes, there is no hidden dragon to be found.

“Thank you for your time.”

He looks disappointed. “At least take a candle-hat. Free of charge. I have too many.”

I decline and leave. The door closes behind me. The smell of the tannery settles back into my lungs. Two Wei Zhengs. Neither of them right. I stand in the street, staring at the tannery, and try not to feel defeated. The sun is past its peak. The afternoon is fading. I have been searching for a ghost for hours now, following the trail of a dead man’s journal, and I have found nothing but potters and madmen.

“Master?”

Ling’er’s voice is quiet. She is not looking at me. She is looking across the street. I follow her gaze.