79. Immutable Supreme Sealed Soup Vessel

The first real day of travel begins before sunrise.

Celestial Jade City is behind us, hidden beyond hills and distance and the thin morning mist clinging to the low ground.

But distance is only distance once I believe the things behind me cannot reach forward. Hollow Scale reached from debt offices to the sky itself. A few hills and a night of hard travel are not enough to make me trust the road, so we don’t take roads when we can avoid them. We keep to uneven paths where cart wheels have not carved ruts into the earth. Old hunter trails. Dry streambeds. Narrow cuts between scrubland and low hills.

Ling’er ranges ahead. Sometimes I see her as a flicker of pale robes between trees, a small figure moving with impossible lightness over stone and root. Sometimes she vanishes entirely.

Wei Zheng says nothing. He walks with his tool chest held against his body, shoulders bent forward, jaw locked in stubborn refusal to admit discomfort. That lasts half an hour. Then his breathing roughens. I take the chest from him without asking.

He glares at me. At the next stop, he tries to take it back.

“No,” I say.

“It is mine.”

“Yes. And I am carrying it. You will slow us down at this rate.”

His mouth tightens. For a moment, I think he will argue. Then he looks at the uneven path ahead, at the exposed roots and loose stones, and chooses hatred over conversation.

We keep moving.

There are no pursuers within range. I check anyway. The Gaze flickers over distant travelers whenever we cross near them. Woodcutters. A farmer and his son. Two mortal hunters with snares and a skinny dog.

No Hollow Scale. No new cloud-hawk. No hidden Foundation Establishment hunters sliding through the trees.

Nothing.

Still, my shoulders do not loosen.

Numbers are easier than memory, so I count while we walk. Tournament winnings. Silver Hall profits. Shen Qiao’s information sales. Meat sales. Stones taken from Hollow Scale’s hunters. Then the deductions. Ten mid-grade for the tournament tickets. Inn rooms. Bribes. Damages. Information fees. Wei Zheng’s materials. Deliberate betting losses. Shen Qiao’s debt purchase. Food. Supplies.

The final number shifts a little depending on how I value mortal silver and leftover supplies, but the rough figure remains stable.

‘Eight mid-grade stones after all I’ve spent and lost.’

For the Coiling Dragon Sect, that number should be absurd. It is enough to renovate the sect. Enough to expand our current operations twice over. It is more free capital than the sect has held at once in decades.

It should feel like victory, but… after Celestial Jade City? After watching high-grade stones move through the tournament like water through a mill? Amounts that make Elder Frostheart’s belongings feel like a pittance?

Eight mid-grade stones are a fortune, and at the same time, absolutely nothing. Somehow, the most valuable things I brought out of the city were walking beside me. Shen Qiao begins adjusting our pace before I ask him to. At first, I think he is only tired. Then I notice the pattern. He watches Wei Zheng’s breathing, counts the length of our rests, notes how much water the old craftsman drinks, and begins suggesting stops just before Wei Zheng’s pride would force him to lie.

“We should rest after that bend,” Shen Qiao says.

Two mortals change everything.

Ling’er and I could move quickly; turning weeks of travel into days if we abandoned caution. But with Wei Zheng and Shen Qiao, every route becomes a calculation. How long can they walk? How long can they be carried? How often do they need water? How much noise do they make when frightened, exhausted, or thrown over a shoulder at cultivator speed?

By midday, I decide we have crossed the threshold where immediate pursuit becomes less likely than delayed pursuit. Safe is too generous a word. But distant enough that running at full desperation may do more harm than good, so we slow. The hollow we choose for camp is tucked between two low ridges, screened by brush and a cluster of pale-barked trees. A dry streambed curls nearby, its stones smooth from water that has not passed through in weeks. From the road, the hollow is almost invisible. Ling’er circles the perimeter once, then twice. I set a small concealment formation between three stones. One to make us less interesting to a passing mortal or beast. Wei Zheng lowers himself onto a flat rock and Shen Qiao kneels near the packs, already sorting what little food we can spare for the evening.

I look at the supplies.

Grain, dried meat, salt, and two boxes of spirit beast meat samples we never sold. Sufficient for a normal group.

Unfortunately, Ling’er is here.

“I’ll hunt,” she says before vanishing into the brush.

While my disciple hunts, I forage around the hollow. There is not much, but plenty for one who knows what to look for. A patch of sharp-leafed river mint near the dry streambed. Bitterroot bulbs beneath the pale-barked trees. A handful of peppergrass growing between stones. The Gaze confirms what my basic herbal knowledge suggests.

I gather what I can. Shen Qiao helps after watching me for a few moments, though he keeps holding up plants for confirmation before touching them. Wei Zheng stays seated, pretending not to rest. His eyes follow my hands as I clean the herbs and set them aside.

A whisper brushes my mind.

‘Master.’

I pause.

Ling’er’s sound transmission is clearer now than it was yesterday. Less like a voice thrown into my head, more like a thought placed beside my own.

‘I caught a snake.’

I look toward the brush.

‘Only one?’

‘Only one. This area is a little empty.’

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

That is unfortunate, but not disastrous. A snake, depending on size, can stretch a meal if cut into a stew. It should feed the mortals, at least. Ling’er may have to eat mostly rice and sample meat. We’ll have to hunt again tomorrow.

“Ling’er caught a snake,” I say.

Shen Qiao relaxes by perhaps half a finger-width. Wei Zheng exhales through his nose. Then I hear something heavy drag across stone.

I stand and walk toward the sound. Past the thornbrush, past the pale trees, down toward a shallow depression in the earth, Ling’er is waiting beside the snake.

The “snake” is longer than I am twice over.

Its body is thick as a support pillar, covered in dull green-black scales that shimmer faintly with qi. Its head has already been severed and sits several paces away, frozen solid inside a chunk of ice. Ling’er has hung part of the body over a low branch and is bleeding it into one of our spare basins with the calm focus of someone preparing vegetables.

I stare.

Behind me, Shen Qiao makes a small sound after seeing what Ling’er brought back. Wei Zheng’s eyes are nearly bulging out of their sockets. For a brief moment, the two mortals stand shoulder to shoulder in perfect unity. The bond of men who have realized the young girl they are traveling with can casually drag home monsters larger than market carts.

I understand them. I am also frightened. I have simply grown used to being frightened after the fact.

“Ling’er,” I say.

She looks up, bright-eyed. “Yes, Master?”