56. Is It Wrong to Woo a Middle-Aged Blacksmith with Gardening Tools?

The next morning, I leave her at the inn.

“You’ll cultivate,” I say. “A better use of your time than following me through shops and asking questions to people who won’t answer them with you there.”

She doesn’t argue. She’s already cross-legged on the bed, eyes closed, the heat of her cultivation warming the room around her. I leave. The eastern district is the same as yesterday; crowded, busy, full of mortals and Qi Condensation cultivators going about their lives. I walk slowly, my pack half-empty, ready to fill.

I buy. I haggle. A sack of grain from the grain merchant. I let him win on the price, then come back an hour later and buy another sack from his wife.Tomorrow, they’ll remember my face. A length of rope from the stall near the corner. The seller is an old man with arthritis. He talks for ten minutes about his daughter, who moved to the northern district, who never visits. I stop at the blacksmith’s forge; where they make horseshoes and nails and the occasional kitchen knife. The smith is a large woman with shoulders like a mine support. She complains about the price of charcoal. I agree that charcoal is too expensive. We bond over shared resentment of fuel costs. I buy a dozen horseshoes. With how minimal the purchases were, they don’t even amount to three low-grade stones. The sect will need them eventually, maybe. Or I’ll melt them down. I don’t know. Either way, the horseshoes have already done their real job: they gave me ten minutes with a smith who now remembers my face.

By midday, I have bought enough to fill half my pack. Useful supplies, mostly. Things the sect would need eventually. Things cheap enough to be forgettable. A cultivator carrying rare jade slips drew attention. A cultivator carrying rice and rope became part of the street noise.

But there is one thing I am doing that matters more than the purchases.

I am building relationships with the merchants, smiths, waitresses and laborers. The ones who see everything because no one thinks they’re worth hiding from. The ones who talk to each other about the things they see.

I sell some of the preserved spirit beast meat during our travels to a restaurant near the edge of the district. The owner is a young woman with quick eyes and a sharper tongue. She tests the meat; smells it, touches it, tastes a small piece raw.

“This is good,” she says. “Where did you get it?”

“Hunted it myself. Preserved with cultivation techniques.”

She looks at me, then at the meat. “You’re a cultivator.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re selling meat to a restaurant.”

“Times are tough.”

She names a price. I nod. She pays. The profit is minimal; about one low-grade stone worth of coins. But by the time I leave, she knows three things about me: I sell good meat, I don’t cheat weights, and I don’t talk to mortals like furniture.

A few hours later, I find a small restaurant near Wei Zheng’s shop. A narrow room with six tables and a kitchen in the back. A waitress is wiping down the counter. She is young, maybe twenty, with tired eyes and the particular wariness of someone who has learned not to expect kindness from strangers.I order noodles and she brings them. The noodles are ordinary. The broth is thin. I eat slowly. Then I ask.

“I’m looking for information about a craftsman in the district. Wei Zheng. The craftsman near the tannery.”

“The one who makes the candle hats?”

“… No. The other one who runs the tool repair.”

She stops wiping the counter.

“Why?”

“I have a weapon that needs repair. He won’t take it. I’m trying to understand why.”

She looks at me. At my robes, my bearing, the way I hold myself. A cultivator. Asking about Wei Zheng.

“There was an incident,” she says. “Years ago. I don’t know much.”

I slide a few coins across the counter. She looks at them. Then at me. Then at the coins.

“I’m not asking for trouble,” I say. “I’m asking for understanding.”

She takes the coins.

“… His son. Maybe ten, twelve years ago. Had some talent. Enough for martial arts. Joined a sect. He was excited. Wei Zheng was proud.” She pauses. “Something happened. The boy died. Cultivator business, they said. An accident during training, I think. They sent his things back in a box. Wei Zheng never talked about it again.”

She looks at the coins in her hand.

“He used to make weapons. Before. Good ones. People from the cultivation district would come to him sometimes. He had a reputation.” She shrugs. “After his son died, he stopped. Said he wouldn’t make weapons anymore. Only tools.”

I sit with this.

“The sect,” I say. “Do you remember which one?”

She thinks, her brow furrowed. “Something… Iron? No. Stone? Ironstone? No.” She taps her fingers on the counter. “Iron Heart. Iron Heart Valley Sect.”

I nod. “Thank you.”

She tucks the coins into her apron and walks back to the kitchen.

I leave the restaurant and walk. I let my feet carry me while my mind works.

The author’s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Iron Heart Valley Sect. I’ve never heard of it. Not one of the major powers. A minor sect, probably. Wei Zheng’s son had some talent. Then he died. And Wei Zheng stopped making weapons.

I think about the angle I need to take. At first, I considered money. Frostbite is a Nascent Soul-grade sword. Even damaged, restoring it partially would be worth several high-grade stones. Enough to make a man like Wei Zheng wealthy many times over. But this man is clearly not moved by money. He repairs axes for farmers and shovels for gardeners. He lives in a narrow shop with a cold furnace and a faded sign. He could have had wealth but he chose not to, despite his talents. The other alternative is intimidation. Threaten him. Coerce him. Use the power gap between a Foundation Establishment cultivator and a mortal to force compliance.

I dismiss that immediately. Not because it wouldn’t work, it might, fear is a powerful motivator, but because it’s terrible. It’s the kind of thing the worst cultivators do. The kind of thing that made Wei Zheng stop trusting cultivators in the first place.

Money would not move him. Fear would only prove him right. Which left the worst possible strategy.

‘Sincerity.’