Chương 58: 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. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. 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. I activate the Gaze. Shen Qiao - Mortal Age: 26 Spirit Root: None Cultivation: None Constitution: Abacus Mind (C-grade) - Mental constitution. Enables automatic calculation of sums, margins, weight conversion, risk estimates, and transactional probabilities. Does not require conscious effort. Cannot be turned off. Current Status: Clerk/sweeper.

Debt-bound to the establishment. Underpaid. Underestimated. Verdict: No cultivation future. Significant commercial future if properly backed. My heart does something. A recognition. The same recognition I felt when I saw a diamond among the piles of coal in those manual shops.

'Jackpot.' No sect would fight over him. He was someone cultivators would overlook because he doesn't fit their categories. A human calculator. This is bigger than a hundred sales of spirit beast meat. Bigger than the stones I've been slowly accumulating. I wait until the manager leaves. Until Shen Qiao is alone, stacking crates near the kitchen door.

"Do you want a better job?" He looks up. His face is careful. The particular caution of someone who has learned that offers from strangers are rarely what they seem.

"I have a job."

"I know. I'm offering a different one." He sets the crate down. His hands are still.

"What kind?"

"Proxy. Someone who can negotiate contracts, manage sales, keep ledgers. I have product. I need buyers. I don't have time to find them myself."

"What product?"

"Preserved spirit beast meat. Boar and deer. High quality. Freshness preserved by ice cultivation." He looks at the crate of meat at my feet. Then at me. Then at his hands.

"... Why me?"

"Because you did in three seconds what your manager couldn't do in five minutes. Because you noticed the worn counterweight. Because you calculated the exchange rate without checking a table." He is silent for a moment.

"... I'm working off a debt," he says.

"They let me sleep in the back. For my keep. I can't just leave."

"I'm not asking you to leave. I'm asking you to do work on the side. Evenings. Early mornings. Whenever you're free."

"You want me to work for you while I'm still working for him."

"I want to give you a chance to prove whether you're worth hiring full-time. The rest is up to you." He thinks about this. I can see the calculations happening behind his eyes. Not the automatic arithmetic, but the human kind. The weighing of risk and reward.

"What's the trial?"

"One week. You act as my proxy. I give you samples." I gesture at my storage ring.

"Deer and boar meat, wrapped and sealed, covered in thin ice. You find buyers: small restaurants, medicinal kitchens, places that serve laborers. You negotiate contracts. You report buyer names, quantities, and behavior to me. I handle delivery and payment."

"And my cut?"

"Commission per sale. We'll negotiate rates after the trial, if you prove yourself." He looks at me. His expression stays careful, but his posture loosens.

"You don't know me," he says.

"I could steal the samples. Disappear. You'd never find me."

"You could. But you won't."

"Why not?"

"Because one stolen crate is worth less than recurring business. I think you've already calculated that." He is silent for a long moment.

"When do I start?" I reach into my storage ring and produce the samples. Wrapped in oiled cloth, sealed with a thin layer of ice, packed in small baskets that fit neatly in his arms. The baskets hold enough to tempt a buyer and too little to justify a betrayal.

"Now," I say.

"First buyers by tomorrow evening. I'll come here to find you." He looks at the baskets, then at me.

"You're trusting me," he says.

"I'm giving you a chance to prove whether I should."

"... I'll have the report tomorrow." He turns and walks back into the kitchen. The baskets are balanced in his arms, the ice glinting faintly under the lantern light. I watch him go. The street is crowded. The noise is constant. I turn and walk toward the inn. The sun is setting and there is still work to do. But I found something today. In a city full of dragon hunters, I'd just found something they'd all walked past. I smile in quiet satisfaction. The hunt continues.