Chapter 15- Struggling Mountain Folk

Tian looked enlightened. He slowly nodded, stroked his chin with a small smile, then went back to his breakfast of chicken and chillies paired with glutenous rice. He drank his particularly fiery red tea with a quiet satisfaction, though the tea didn’t suit the food at all. He couldn’t complain about the pairing. He needed a heavy-yang diet.

“What?” Liren asked. Her breakfast was tofu and young cabbage washed down with a bowl of soy milk, and in Tian’s opinion, it was considerably less appealing than his own. The way she was enviously looking over his plate supported his opinion.

“Pardon?”

“You looked smug. Why did you look smug?”

“I did no such thing.”

“You did. Give me some chicken as a fine.”

“Smuggery is not a finable offence, if it occurred, which it didn’t. And it’s my chicken. Doctor’s orders. Drink up your nice soy milk, it’s nutritious.”

“Oh, hello Doctor!” Liren looked up and started to put down her chopsticks. Tian started to look over, but in a stunning reversal, Liren darted forward, her sticks diving for a big piece of chicken.

“Naive!” They were intercepted and deflected by Tian’s chopsticks, which had only seemed to leave the field.

They battled a half dozen rounds over breakfast, each declaring the other the lowest sort of villain. It wasn’t until they returned to the practice fields that Tian explained what made him smile over breakfast.

“I figured out what part of Moon Crossing the Lake is training brainpower.”

“Oh?” Liren looked curious. “I wondered. Everything so far seems focused on body control.”

“Yes, because we are cheating. Or at least we are doing something that the creator didn’t expect. We usually rely on our sense of the elements moving through a body to read what the opponent is going to do next. Most people can’t do that. On the other hand, everyone has some amount of brainpower, and even if we can’t intentionally use it at the Earthly Realm, we can be sensitive to it.”

Liren thought about it for a second, then nodded sharply. “Become sensitive to the attention your opponent is using, because their minds will indicate where and how they will attack… kind of. It works better if they are using a particular art, I suppose. Then, since Moon Crossing the Lake is all about reactivity and yin, you don’t try to get ahead of the attack, you just ride it out and counterattack once it is spent.”

“Essentially. We can already do something like that, but better.”

Liren grunted. “Makes sense. What should we do if someone attacks with arrows or something?”

“What would you do now?” Tian rolled his eyes.

“Point.”

“And…” Tian looked troubled. “I wanted to ask you about buying something.”

“It’s your money, Brother Zihao, why ask me about it?”

“I’m asking if it’s a good idea, not for permission.” Tian clarified, and Hong gave a satisfied nod.

It was a delicate balance. Tian was very happy leaving the trading to his sister, which quickly evolved into her being the treasurer of their duo. This worked well for both of them, most of the time, but it did put Liren in an awkward spot on the rare occasions when Tian did want something expensive. On the one hand, it was their money, collectively. On the other hand, they were cultivators and humans, keenly sensitive to anything that whiffed of being taken advantage of. If she was the one spending down their accounts most of the time, it created the sort of imbalance that turned siblings into sworn enemies. Likewise, being the person who had to say
“No” all the time was an unpleasant burden, and bred resentment.

Liren had just spent a comparative fortune on her new spear. Tian buying something expensive therefore had her wholehearted support.

“Buy it.” Liren said, her voice firm.

“I was asking if it-”

“Buy it.”

“Attack talismans, or controlling talismans or some kind of portable device usable with yin, purchased from the Wangs?”

“Buy it. Them. All of them. Bring a bucket and tell Sister Su to run their production line straight into it.” Hong’s voice didn’t waver.

“That… I know we got a bunch of merits and things for turning in the manuals, but-”

“Brother, do you understand just how valuable those were? Suneater might have been third rate in the Eight Directions Palace, but he would have been an Elder or higher in our sect. If he even condescended to have anything to do with us in the first place, the snobby prick. Those manuals were what he was going to rely on to restart his cultivation from the ground up.”

“Eh?”

“Yeah, the scholars tore ‘em apart and it was pretty clear what he had in mind. A strong yang qi cultivation art, two brainpower… shen… cultivation arts, a sword controlling art which had the scholars sweating and fighting off the sword cultivators as they worked, Moon Crossing the Lake, and a body refining art. The body refining art, incidentally, is useless for you and I, as what we have is just better. The qi refining art might be useful for me in the Heavenly realm but-” The two shared a look. She would have a better art from wherever she got the Ten Suns Godslaying art from. As for Tian, he had no idea what a pure yang qi cultivation art might do to him. Advent of Spring was intended for Heavenly Realm cultivators in the first place, so his vital energy cultivation needs were met. He wouldn’t change it.

“We don’t use swords, either of us. So other than Moon Crossing the Lake, those manuals were a bust for us until we reach the Heavenly Realm. However, for quite a lot of people, a body refining art that lets you process various types of minerals and imbue them into a physique is fantasticly valuable.” Liren concluded.

Tian jolted. “Wasn’t there a manual that was about material refining?”

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“Yep. How to process almost any type of stone into a fine powder while retaining its essential characteristics, suitable for use with the body cultivation art.”

“Ah. It occurs to me that Brother Wang cultivates earth aligned arts, but lacks any powerful body cultivation methods. At least so far as I know.” Tian stroked his chin in a thoughtful, and definitely not smug, way.