57. Why Be a Hero When You Can Be a Middleman?

Wei Zheng. The Azure Dragon Tempering Method. Money that needed to look less like money.

Three threads I’ve been juggling for days. The week blurred as I chipped away at each problem.

The first dilemma: decoding the Azure Dragon Tempering Method. By day four, I am perhaps halfway through the transcription. Ling’er begins helping; with the Sacred Cosmic Bone, she can hold the cipher in her head while she reads the original jade slip imprint. She sits beside me at the inn, the cracked slip pressed to her forehead, my transcribed pages spread across the bed.

“The manual is advanced,” Ling’er says. “Too advanced.”

I nod. We don’t need another translation. We need context. I set down my brush.

“It’s dangerous,” I say. “Attempting it with gaps in understanding. Even for you.”

“Yes.”

I add this to my mental ledger. A new goal. A supplementary bloodline awakening manual. Something that fills the gaps the Azure Dragon author glossed over.

“We’ll find it,” I say. “But not yet. We take things slow. There’s no need to risk your well-being on a half-translated manual. Focus on your cultivation.”

She agrees. The manual goes back into my storage ring. Deferred. A locked door is still a door. We just need the key.

The second dilemma: Why hidden treasures were rarer in Celestial Jade City. The problem with hunting for ‘hidden dragons’ in Celestial Jade City was simple.

Everyone else was hunting too.

In Greenstone, in the satellite city, mispriced treasures slipped through because there were fewer eyes, fewer experts, fewer people with detection techniques and ancient lineage knowledge. A jade slip from a dyslexic dragon could sit in a clearance rack for years because no one who saw it had the context to recognize it.

Here, the context is everywhere. The low-hanging fruit has been picked. The middle shops still have occasional mispricing: a technique labeled common that is actually rare, a material misidentified by a merchant who deals in volume rather than expertise: but not the heaven-defying jackpots that fell into my lap before.

I’ve exhausted most of my luck. High-end shops price accurately. Low-end shops are trash. And the middle shops, the ones where the Gaze earns its keep, yield only modest returns.

The same is true for talent. Anyone with obvious cultivation talent has been recruited. Anyone with even modest spiritual potential has likely been tested, cataloged, purchased, sponsored, or exploited by the time they reach adulthood. The city’s systems are too efficient, too well-entrenched.

So I shift my search. I look among the people cultivators ignore.

Mortals.

Cultivator society creates blind spots. Cultivator merchants mostly trade with other cultivators. They consider mortal-facing business low-margin and beneath them. Selling grain to a farmer? Repairing a kitchen knife? Transporting preserved food across the province?

That is for mortals, for people without cultivation. This creates friction. And friction creates opportunity.

The margins are small. The work is slow. The relationships are social rather than transactional. Most cultivators do not have the patience or the interest. I have both. When most mortals interact with cultivators, they deal with outer sect disciples at Qi Condensation: young, impatient, eager to prove themselves, often condescending. I am Foundation Establishment. I do not need to prove anything. I can afford to be patient and listen.

I have also noticed something about cultivator merchants, especially those tied to major powers like the Crimson Dragon Alliance or Golden Vein. They are arrogant. Competent. Greedy. Networked. They will remember unusual buyers. They will report interesting patterns to their superiors. They sell information casually, the same way they sell pills and manuals. So I deliberately focus on mortals and low-level merchants. People who are not worth reporting. People who are grateful for attention from a Foundation Establishment cultivator. People who talk to each other.

And that relates directly to the third: meat sales as cover economy

What I thought was a one-off sale has become something else.

The restaurant owner who bought the spirit beast meat came back to me two days later, running after me as I wandered the shops. She wanted more. Her customers had noticed the difference. The meat was more tender, more flavorful, more nourishing. Could I supply her regularly?

I told her I would think about it. I thought about it. Then I started selling.

Small batches. Modest quantities. Nothing that would attract attention from larger suppliers, nothing that would require explanation. I am a minor sect leader from a backwater mountain. I hunt spirit beasts. I have a preservation technique; ice cultivation, rare in this region, useful for keeping meat fresh. That is my story.

The preservation quality is the differentiator. In a city this size, ice cultivators willing to sell their services are uncommon. Preservation arrays exist, but they are expensive, designed for sect-level storage, not for a restaurant’s daily supply. My Frost Manual techniques are modest, but they are enough. The meat arrives fresh. The meat stays fresh. The meat does not spoil.

I have found repeat customers. They want meat that is clean, consistent, affordable. Spirit beast meat, even low-grade, is better than anything they can get from ordinary butchers.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author’s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

I am not trying to maximize profit yet. A few silver here, a few silver there. Enough to create a plausible story. This will be the cover economy for my true wealth.

The manager in front of me is struggling. My eyes are steady, but inside, I’m terribly bored.

I have dealt with this man twice already. He is not bad at his job, just stretched thin, juggling too many responsibilities, his attention split between the ledger, the kitchen, and the constant stream of customers. His name is Li Wei, his establishment is modest, and his arithmetic is slow.

“The weight conversion,” he mutters, tapping the ledger. “You said forty pounds, but my scale reads thirty-eight. That’s two pounds short, which at your price comes to—”

“The scale is off,” I say. “It’s been off for three days. The counterweight is worn.”

He stares at me. “How do you know that?”

“I weighed the meat before I left. I weighed it again when I arrived. The difference is consistent. Do you think I am lying?”

He looks at the scale. At the meat. At the ledger. His brow furrows deeper, clearly weighing the ire of a Foundation Establishment cultivator over a few silver coins.

“And then there’s the delivery fee,” he continues, “which I forgot to account for last time, and the coin denominations, but the change—”

He is spiraling. I can see it. The embarrassment coloring his ears, the frustration tightening his jaw. He knows he looks incompetent. He knows I know. He is too proud to ask for help, too flustered to figure it out alone.

“Qiao!” He calls out, sharp and impatient. “Stop sweeping and count this.”

A young man looks up from the corner of the kitchen. He has been sweeping the same patch of floor for the past ten minutes, staying out of the way, making himself useful in the background. His robes are plain, patched at the elbows, his face unremarkable, except for a small scar across his nose. He sets the broom aside and walks over.

He glances at the ledger. Once. Then at the scale. Then back at the ledger.

“Three hundred and twelve silver,” he says. “Plus the delivery fee you forgot, four silver. Total, three hundred and sixteen. Payable in low-grade stones, which at current exchange rates… is three stones plus forty-six silver, or four stones with forty-four silver change.”

He says it flatly. Unhurried. Like he is reciting the weather.

The manager blinks. “Are you sure?”

“The counterweight is worn by three percent,” Shen Qiao adds. “The meat weight is correct. The scale is wrong.”

I calculate in my head. He is right. Exactly right.

The manager mutters something about checking and hurries off.