Chương 102: B3 Chapter 16

Fu Daxian awoke shivering and alone, just the way he liked it. He stretched languidly in his bed, staring at the door. He always slept better alone. A small irony, for a man in his profession. A bandit was only alone when they were on watch, or pissing. For three and a half years, he and his men had worked together, slept together, drank together, and on rare occasion even browsed the willow lane together. And now, he had a room.

A place to lay his head that none of his fellows knew about, and all of winter paid up front. Couldn't have had that as the boss. The boss always had to know what his men were up to, if he wanted to stay the boss. That meant never straying far, always being able to look over their shoulders. Part of him thought it was a fair trade. His gang, for a little peace and privacy. Fu Daxian had felt like a big man with his gang. Not that he'd been one. He'd not even thrown his weight around that much.

He only robbed travelers. He'd have never made it a season, if he bothered the locals. But he'd felt big. His wealthy cousins had watched their mouths around him, and even tossed the odd spot of work his way. His fake division of the Road-Clearing Society had been happy to work both the black and white paths, so long as the silver spent.

They'd stolen documents, threatened merchants, moved trees out of the road, hunted feral hogs, and even helped with the harvests in years when the trade that took no capital provided returns in line with their investment. Fu Daxian had been someone. Most of Huangsongyu had known of him, known he was someone that deserved respect, even if they'd not known exactly why. Fu Daxian lay in bed a little longer, enjoying the chill of the late autumn morning. Now he was nobody. And it didn't feel so bad.

It was nice to not have real responsibilities. To do what he was told, instead of having life and death weighing upon his shoulders. It was such a stupid way for everything to all fall apart. He'd done work for Fu Yi. The two of them were distant relations, third or fourth cousins half a generation removed. Everyone in Huangsongyu should have known that Fu Daxian's men wouldn't have stolen his livestock. He'd have had no hope of selling it.

Even butchering and eating that piglet without being found out would have been a struggle. Men like that assistant magistrate who had never killed an animal in their lives didn't understand just how much mess any sort of butchery demanded. Sure, he'd hoped his cousin would compensate him for showing up with his missing pig. But he wouldn't have withheld the animal over something like that. Unfortunately the official had an idea in his head, and Fu Daxian had a pale young hog in his possession.

And all those men and women who had kept their mouths shut when things were going well remained silent when the heavens turned against Fu Daxian. Maybe he could blame the monkey. It had obviously released the pigs. Maybe he could blame the pigs. They'd asked for it, apparently. Maybe he could blame the entire zodiac while he was at it. Most of his men would have, if they'd known. Fu Daxian rolled out of bed, through his door, and down into the anonymous press of the early morning crowd.

Perhaps it was better to feel like a big man, than to actually be one.

"Stupid boss," he grumbled to himself, "forgetting that the rest of us need to sleep." His heart wasn't in it. He'd slept plenty. They'd just been working on the second roof, the one for what was now the workshop, until quite late, and he and the boys had been out drinking later still. If Fu Daxian was to be honest, he was mostly just upset that his favorite pork bun stall had already sold out for the day.

Suffering through an inferior bun, Fu Daxian found his leisurely stroll brought to a sudden halt by a closed gate.

"Huh." He muttered.

"I thought the furry bastard said he'd be open." Fu Daxian let himself in. He had a key, and so did Sun Guiying. The new boss was lax like that. Trusting. He found the others in the courtyard, familiar looks on their faces. Ruo Ping and Sun Guiying had always been hopeless at making themselves useful without clear directions. No initiative. Hong Bo was there too. Fu Daxian still didn't know what to make of the old man. He was almost certain he was mortal. But that almost annoyed him.

"Where's the boss?" Fu Daxian demanded.

"What are you standing around like chickens for?"

"I thought he was with you." Ruo Ping said.

"I haven't seen him today."

"He didn't have the two of you watch the shop while he browsed the market?"

"No. Perhaps he has cultivator business?" Sun Guiying ventured.

"He doesn't tell us everything he does." Fu Daxian grunted. Like the boss would just leave his shop unattended. That wasn't the sort of monkey he was. He was trusting, but not stupid. Word was starting to get out, and a locked gate did not protect wealth best measured in spirit stones.

"Go check the market, Brother Sun. Brother Ruo, check the two other buildings."

"I already looked—""Again." Fu Daxian wasn't the boss any longer, but when he put the old steel in his voice, Ruo Ping struggled to remember that. That voice had always been Fu Daxian's favored weapon. It'd parted more fools from their purses than his careworn saber ever had.

"Hong Bo, you're with me." Fu Daxian waited for his men to disperse, before turning his glare upon the old beggar. If he was a cultivator, he'd show his colors eventually. They were all big men, cultivators, even the ones who liked their quiet.

"You think Brother Chengse is indisposed."

"I don't feel like explaining his face to those fools." Fu Daxian snapped in correction.

"You are ill-tempered this morning." Fu Daxian just grunted. He wanted to say something clever, but he wasn't a very clever man. Just an ill-tempered one. So instead he threw open the door of the shed the boss had mistaken for a domicile. He was already rehearsing speeches in his head, for when some customer noticed the monkey nesting there. Something about a vow of poverty with exceptions, or a secret hidden realm on the shed's nonexistent second floor.

"Huh." Fu Daxian didn't think anyone could sleep like that. That only left two explanations, and the monkey didn't look drunk. The boss sat cross-legged, hat resting on one knee. One palm was in his lap, the digits twisted in some vague impression of a hand sign. The other hand rested on his foot, the fingers interlaced with the monkey's exposed toes. There was no way that was a real cultivation position. But it was hard to mistake the combination of serenity and absolute focus plastered on the monkey's face.

The beast looked like a stone statue, carved by some eccentric immortal, so perfectly still one could not even discern the rhythm of his breath.

"Is it so surprising?"

"Don't act like you know what's going on."

"Is it not obvious? Brother Chengse is in closed-door cultivation."

"Well, we already opened his door."

"We should close it again then." Hong Bo suggested reasonably. Fu Daxian sighed. This was what working for a cultivator was going to be like, wasn't it? Someone had to handle things when the boss was wrapped up in cultivator business. He supposed he wouldn't get to be nobody for very long.

"Eh. None of us will starve if he takes a day off. We can open the shop tomorrow. I'll... I'll find something for the boys to work on. Maybe those broken doors, or the main hall's paint." Thunder boomed overhead.

"Something inside. Good thing we got the second roof done yesterday." They did not open the shop tomorrow.

"How long will he stay like this?" Hong Bo shrugged uselessly. Fu Daxian took in a deep, slow breath, then shoved it out his nostrils like it owed him money. Heavens be his witness, if he found out that Hong Bo was a cultivator too and was just committed to his act, Fu Daxian was going to... Fume so impotently at him.

"We just opened. He can't sit in a shed all week. I've seen people walk up, see the locked gate, and turn away. We're actually starting to get interest." Hong Bo gave him that irritating little not-quite-a-smile of his.

"I'm sure it will all work out."

"Everything always works out. Until it doesn't. I spent over a week talking the boss up in every wine shop I could find. I spent my own silver doing that, to get the boss those first few customers. We can't afford to waste what little momentum we have." Hong Bo just hummed, as if this all wasn't his problem. Fu Daxian gritted his teeth and swallowed the words on the tip of his tongue. It was one thing to needle the old man to see if he could get him to drop his mask.

The words coming to mind at the moment were not exactly measured probing. Fine. Hong Bo didn't want to help. Fu Daxian would hold things together, just like he always did. He ran through all the issues that might arise without the boss in his head.

"I'm taking this. Might need it."

"Brother Chengse is very attached to that staff."

"Yeah? Well Boss Big Hat can take it back from me when he wakes up." A scream shattered the quiet of the morning. Fu Daxian was on his feet in an instant. He knew that noise. He did not know why Sun Guiying's parents had chosen to inflict a woman's given name upon him, but there was a certain feminine quality to his shock that proved the choice surprisingly prescient.

"Brother Sun!"

"Get it off me!" Fu Daxian was tempted to let Ruo Ping overtake him, but he shoved the younger, smaller man aside.

"Get your rod, idiot!"

"Right!"

"Help!" Sun Guiying screeched.

"It's—Fuck, the stupid cunt has my leg!" Fu Daxian barreled into the workshop, swinging the boss's staff like he was a real martial artist, and not a coward pretending at violence. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Fu Daxian had no idea of the craftsmanship that had gone into Yang Nianzu's gift to his son. He did not know that the white waxwood had been dried in the sun for three years.

He had no idea that it had been soaked for days in a solution made from silkworm cocoons. He had not the foggiest of inklings of the many blessings that had been lavished out upon it, the purification it had undergone by smoke and water, accompanied by prayers that the Young Master of the Yang Clan might one day find himself true evils to smite, appropriate targets for his prodigious appetite for bloodshed. All Fu Daxian knew was that when the monkey struck the ghost with his staff, it felt it.

So he clubbed the ghost in the face, good and hard. The unclean thing reared back, the beastly flesh of its face melting like wax where the blow had landed. It shrieked like a fox in heat, eerie and shrill, foul mist pouring forth like boiling blood.

"Did you think only the cultivator had teeth?" Fu Daxian hissed.

"This is our house now." Bloodshot eyes narrowed, and the shifting thing charged at him, only to screech as Sun Guiying flung a great handful of salt upon its back. The ghost screamed like a wounded animal. But it did not flee like one. It fell upon Fu Daxian with the weight of a mountain, driving him back out of the workshop. Only the boss's staff, driven between slavering jaws, kept the apparition from ripping his face off.

Mist-wreathed claws tore through Fu Daxian's jacket, ghosting through his forearms to open ragged gashes across his chest.

"Motherless dog fart!" Fu Daxian roared, struggling to free his arms. How was a thing of smoke and curses so damnably heavy! He refused to die here! Ruo Ping's peachwood rod fell upon the ghost like Lei Gong's hammer. He raised the rod for a second blow, but the ghost's form blurred, and suddenly he was striking at Fu Daxian's bloody chest instead.

"Idiot!" Fu Daxian coughed through the pain.

"Sorry!"

"Where did it—""Snake!" Ruo Ping screeched, hopping backward. Fu Daxian rolled blindly, feeling scales against his arm. He dropped the staff, his head filled with images of flashing jaws. Ruo Ping let loose a pained shout. When Fu Daxian reclaimed his feet, he saw blood pouring from two brutal punctures in Ruo Ping's calf. By all the gods, that was a big snake. Near as thick around as his thigh, and longer than he stood tall. They should have just left. Taken all the valuables and retreated to an inn.

But, Fu Daxian hadn't wanted to abandon the boss, to surrender all the work they'd done to repair what the ghost had defiled. Fu Daxian lunged for the staff, but the snake whirled, wreathed in smoke. The staff clattered away, and the ghost took again its twisted mockery of the human form, stalking Fu Daxian on all fours like a hungry dog. He shivered as it circled him, its hips bending in ways no man's should. Fu Daxian saw Brother Sun emerge from the workshop, but his leg looked even worse than Ruo Ping's.

"Scatter." He commanded.

"Out the gate. It didn't get my leg. I'll keep it busy." The ghost growled, the sound all the eerier coming from a human looking throat. It lurched toward Ruo Ping as he limped by, but Fu Daxian stepped back toward the staff, reclaiming its attention. The ghost circled, cutting off his path to the weapon. Fu Daxian suppressed a smile. He just had to make it to the shed. Give the boss a good shove. Daoist Big Hat would probably be furious.

Fu Daxian had already interrupted his mysterious 'enlightenment' once, he really doubted the monkey would be so understanding the second time. But better beaten and cast out than dead. They'd paid blood and earned nothing except a few cries. This wasn't working. The ghost was watching the wrong hand; the real threat was only a dozen strides away. Then Fu Daxian saw him. When had he gotten behind the ghost? Fu Daxian hadn't even heard him move.

"It is not a dog that blocks my path." Hong Bo said quietly, spinning the boss's staff between his fingers. The ghost spun, turning to face the one man not yet limping away from it.

"But it barks like one."

"Careful!" Fu Daxian cried, as much to distract the hungry spirit as to give warning. The ghost leapt like a wolf. Fu Daxian scrambled for the shed door. And Hong Bo just smiled. He didn't swing. The staff's spin just smoothly transitioned into a blow, taking the ghost across the jaw. It dove forward, shrugging off the strike, but Hong Bo turned as it did, delivering a backhanded thrust to the throat at close range, wielding the staff like a cane. That at least gave the unclean thing pause.

But an instant later it was a snake again, leaping off the ground like a carp surmounting a waterfall. Hong Bo caught the snake as if twirling a noodle around a chopstick. A quick spin sent the snake flying into the courtyard wall. Fu Daxian watched, stunned, as a massive smoking raven found itself swatted from the sky, and that wild-looking corpse got its legs swept out from beneath it. No matter what shape the ghost took, the old beggar found an angle to chastise it.

He wasn't too fast for Fu Daxian's eyes to follow. His blows did not shatter stone or shake the earth. The staff just writhed like a snake in his hands, every jab and flick steadily beating the mist out of the ghost as if it was a dusty rug. Fu Daxian hadn't even noticed he'd stopped fleeing. He knew it! He knew there was something strange about that beggar. Fu Daxian swallowed, remembering how they'd first met.

"I have not the authority to declare that there shall be no dogs under heaven." Hong Bo said.

"But no petty ghosts will make trouble before me." There was no flash of fiery light, none of the glimmering sparks that marked the boss's qi. But there was no mistaking the series of blows that followed for anything other than a profound martial art. Fu Daxian could track each motion, but felt as if ten men were delivering them. He could see the strokes, but he'd not comprehended how one was delivered before three more had been launched. Three. Five. Twelve.

Fu Daxian lost count at seventeen, but the storm of blows continued, even as the ghost fled back into mist, Hong Bo somehow continued to find something to strike at, drawing pained vibrations from the steadily shrinking cloud. And then it was over, and the four men were left staring at each other across the mess of a courtyard. After a long moment, it was Fu Daxian that broke the silence.

"Did it get into the boss's supplies?"

"No." Sun Guiying answered.

"I found it clawing at one of the lockboxes. It likes silver too, apparently." Fu Daxian grunted.

"Good." Everyone's eyes inevitably drifted toward Hong Bo. Strangely enough, Hong Bo's eyes drifted toward the ground. Slowly, he set the boss's staff against the wall.

"Good weapon." The old beggar said lamely.

"Works even better than peachwood."

"Is... That supposed to be happening?" Fu Daxian asked Hong Bo.

"How should I know?"

"You're still on that?" Hong Bo scowled at him.

"Not every mortal martial artist is a cultivator."

"Mmhmm."

"I do not have a spirit root."

"I don't even know what a spirit root is!" Fu Daxian shot back. He thought he might've had something there, but Hong Bo just stared blankly back at him. Fu Daxian felt his cheeks redden a little, so he changed the subject.

"Is it... Safe? Being this close? Does he need help?"

"How should I know?"

"If you don't know anything, then go wait with the others!" Fu Daxian snapped. The beggar of course did no such thing. He just stood there, leaving Fu Daxian to figure out if this new development required action. It was hard to breathe in the shed. And it wasn't for the smell of the place, though the boss's fur did get a little wet the prior night. The roof had leaked, leaving the monkey and his expensive robes more than a little damp when dawn broke.

Fu Daxian had toweled down the area as best he could without disturbing the boss's cultivation, then sent the others out to purchase a tarp. And now there was this. Qi. Fu Daxian had never been able to sense qi. Not like cultivators were supposed to be able to. Some men spoke of feeling strange things in solemn places, or feeling breath upon the back of their neck when a cultivator rode through town. He had never been one of those men. He'd kept well clear of the spiritual and the strange.

It wasn't hard, men usually had to seek out such things, and he had been born with a modicum of sense in his head. The first time he'd felt qi had been when the monkey had come for them. But it'd been a distant and subtle thing, like the shadow of a mountain on a summer day. The force of it directed at others, from the way they'd reacted.

The other cultivators had been sharper presences, but so distant that if not for the gouts of flame and cries of battle, he could have dismissed the sensation at the back of his neck for mere nerves. Here and now, he could feel the monkey's qi. It was impossible not to. The boss's power was pouring out in heavy waves, pressing down upon his shoulders like physical weight. Heavy and warm and... Shifting. People could feel it from the street. They'd gotten complaints. They'd also gotten prospective customers.

People heard the rumors. They dismissed them. They saw the sign. They ignored that too. But then they'd felt that qi. And some of them had apparently been born without the sense that Fu Daxian had, because despite the locked gate, some of them knocked, or called out inquiringly. Fu Daxian wasn't sure which one was making his stomach sink more, the angry words or the money they weren't making.

"We need to do something about this." Hong Bo raised an eyebrow.

"Do we?" Fu Daxian just sighed. Somehow, knowing the old man could have dismantled his old gang without breaking a sweat did not make his presence any more intimidating. If anything, he found himself less jumpy around the beggar. Whatever he was, he cared enough not to let Fu Daxian get eaten by a hungry ghost, or to allow anyone to disturb the boss's cultivation. If he didn't want to help more? Well, it always fell to reliable old Daxian to get things done, didn't it?

"Boys!" He called, stepping out of the shed.

"We're opening the shop!" The boss had been shut up for the better part of a week. Five dreary rainy days, he'd not moved an inch. His bowl, polished from a half coconut, was filled with rice. Fu Daxian had made the rice himself two days ago, in case the boss woke up hungry in the night. That rice was slightly translucent and very crispy now. He'd replace it tomorrow, with something less perishable. One of those sausages the monkey liked. The boss would wake up when the boss woke up.

They needed to strike while the iron was hot.

"Do you know anything about medicine?" Hong Bo asked reasonably, following him like a shadow.

"No. But I can read."

"Brother Chengse only labeled his finished pills."

"It can't be that hard. You've seen the boss with people. If he can sell them, so can I. Besides, good wine fears no deep alley. What does an immortal doctor's medicine have to fear from a bandit's clumsy words?"

"Do these contain huangqi?"

"This small steward cannot answer that for you."

"Are these safe for women?"

"This small steward cannot answer that for you."

"When will the physician be back?"

"This small steward cannot answer that for you." Fu Daxian was getting a lot of mileage out of that phrase recently. He knew almost nothing. He couldn't fill prescriptions, let alone write them.

"How much for a month's worth of Golden Book Kidney Pills?"

"That, honored customer, this small steward can help you with." Fu Daxian said with a grin.

"Twenty wen per pill, or forty for one tael of silver. That's almost a thirty percent discount if you purchase in bulk."

"That's more than Apothecary Hu sells them for."

"Trust me, the quality speaks for itself. Once you try them, you'll be a believer. If you don't want to purchase them, someone else will." The man frowned, but Fu Daxian just moved to help the next customer. If the rumors he'd spread about the shop had been embers, the monkey's cultivation had been oil upon the fire. The whole street was filled with rumors about the mysterious daoist that had settled in this little corner of Huangshi.

The fact that entirely organic rumors about the medicine's efficacy were beginning to spread certainly didn't hurt either. They only had four products to sell. The two big earners, the kidney and penis pills. Some sort of decoction powder that the boss had just written was 'good for sick people'. And finally one that just said 'good for women and blood'.

Sun Guiying had named them Daoist Big Hat's Tonifying Decoction and Dang Gui Blood Tonics respectively, after poring through the monkey's limited notes, which were mostly written on scraps of broken furniture for some reason. But what they did have, there was no shortage of. The monkey was an absolute pill demon. He must have been keeping those pots of his in constant motion and not sleeping since moving in. Sun Guiying had reported a total stock of more than three thousand pills and two hundred doses of decoction.

Entire sacks of herbs had already been transformed into pills. And now, Fu Daxian was watching those pills turn into piles of copper and silver.

"Steward Fu! We need more packets of decoction!" Sun Guiying shouted.

"I'm supposed to be giving you orders." Fu Daxian muttered, taking the excuse to slip into the workshop anyway. Sun Guiying was a better salesman than him. He was also still walking with a limp, after the ghost had bitten into his leg. It just made sense for Fu Daxian to be the one to go fetch more stock. He wasn't feeling very threatened by Brother Sun anymore. Fu Daxian was the one who kept the ghost from stealing their money, the one who got the shop open, the one who kept the boss comfortable.

It was all the better if he fetched inventory. He could ensure the books stayed straight, make sure nobody cheated the boss. Not that the two who'd stayed had ever been the ones he'd really watched for theft. If business kept going like this, he'd have to talk to the boss about putting them on a regular salary. None of this a piece of silver here a piece of silver there nonsense. They'd earned almost forty taels of silver today. Sure, they had expenses. Ingredients would need restocking. But that was...

That was more money than Fu Daxian's gang had earned in most seasons. In a single day.

"It all works out in the end." Fu Daxian muttered to himself, lifting the small chest of folded paper packets.

"Because Old Daxian makes it work out."

"Boss!" Ruo Ping almost slammed into him, as Fu Daxian shoved the workshop door open with a shoulder.

"I told you, it's Steward Fu when customers are here."

"Yes, Steward Fu. But we have guests."

"I know. Guests that need more decoctions."

"No. Guests, like the boss. Cultivators. And an official, maybe."

"Maybe?" Fu Daxian peeked over the younger man's shoulder. He paled at the sight. A muscular man in tattered yellow robes, with a string of massive wooden beads around his chest. An old man with a stern brow and a well-groomed beard, wearing green robes and an official's hat. A pair of young men in matching crimson silk stood behind them.

"Right. I'll handle it. The shop is full, so I'll receive them here. Just... Give me a moment, to get some tea going. Then bring them in." Fu Daxian felt lightheaded. This was not a situation he was equipped to handle. Green robes, so a lower ranking official, but that could mean as high as a county magistrate, seventh rank. To the common folk, every official was effectively high ranking. The man in yellow was probably a wandering cultivator. The other two could be clan members.

He didn't know the great families of Huangshi as well as he should, to know whose color was crimson. But why had they come together? His breathing was fast. His hands trembled as he dusted off one of the ancient tea sets that had come with the haunted manor. This was not an appropriate environment for receiving guests of such stature. Shit. The workshop didn't even have tea. All the things the monkey had directed them to purchase, and that wasn't one of them. The workshop door slid open.

Fu Daxian turned slowly, heart in his throat. Hong Bo stood there, sporting that infuriating little grin of his.

"I thought you might appreciate an extra set of cups, with so many guests. I also took the liberty of retrieving some of my personal stash of tea. It is nothing special. But Daoist Big Hat himself purchased it. With your funds, I believe." Fu Daxian was too relieved to care.