Once I received the money I returned with Ji Bo to the rest of the caravan. I had gotten a copy of the wanted posters for every know associate of Liu Fan that had a bounty and, once I was with the others, I checked all of the surviving bandits against the list. As we would only get ten stones for a level two and one stone for a level one, if the bounty was more than that Ji Bo wanted to turn them in here. That way we could maximize the money we got for them.
Three of the men happened to have bounties on them, so I went with him to turn them in. Once we were finished, the money was distributed to the men based on their contribution to the battle against the bandits, so that they could spend it on entertainment. I asked the ambassador and Jiang if they wanted to go shopping with me, but the ambassador turned me down. He wanted to go look at jewelry on his own, and hopefully buy his wife something. Each of them only got sixty or so taels from the bounty, but that would be enough for some high quality gifts.
Jiang, on the other hand, didn’t know what to spend it on, but she was willing to walk with me. A few of the people gave us looks when we left together, but I ignored them. They probably assumed we were together, but that obviously wasn’t true. We were just friends.
I decided to go to the book store first. This city had people working twenty seven earth hours per day, so all kinds of stores were open at night. It was also a major trade hub, and many caravans preferred to trade quickly, then leave, requiring service buildings to remain open. While fewer stores were open at night, the city had adequate artificial lighting, what appeared to be some sort of fuel based lanterns, so the streets weren’t empty no matter how late it became. I briefly examined one of the street lamps. It had a drawer at the bottom and a water reservoir at the top, with a valve that controlled the rate water dropped into the drawer. If I wasn’t mistaken, this was a version of those mining head lamps that were used in the early 1900s, where water dripped onto calcium carbide to produce acetylene gas. This showed that they were far more technologically advanced than I thought.
We entered the all-day book store and started looking around. The place also seemed to function as a library, as there was a sign above the front desk that stated that those who had a membership could borrow one book at a time for a monthly fee of one tael. In order to get an account, though, you had to have a member or member company vouch for you and prove you lived in the city, so it was apparently only available to locals, likely those that worked for certain companies or knew important people.
Because they functioned as a library as well as a book store, they had at least two copies of every book in stock, one on the shelf and the rest in the back, and would order more any time the stock got too low if it was a book they wanted to keep in stock. They appeared to have over two thousand books in stock, which were separated into multiple categories. The shelves at the front of the store seemed to be non-fiction, covering everything from martial arts, to philosophy, to mathematics, to languages, to theories on cultivation or machines. Many of the more technical books made me think that they wouldn’t be out of place in pre-world war one Earth. When I saw that no book was priced at more than five teals, however, I knew that I needed to buy all of these books.
While the price of books outside the valley was dozens of taels each at a minimum, they were made from much higher quality materials, including high grade paper. There, even the books meant for mortals were made of the same materials a petty quality cultivation manual would use, so the cost was unavoidable. Here, however, the book covers were made of basic leather, and the pages were of a crude quality tan paper that was roughly on par with paper bags on earth, only much lighter in color. They reminded me of pulp magazines, where they lowered the quality to be able to sell them for as low of a price as possible.
I went to the front counter and asked for the manager. I knew that my order would be too big for a normal employee to handle. Once the manager came to the counter I made my request. “How much would it take to buy a copy of every book in the store?” The man looked surprised. Even the rich people of the city would only buy every book of a specific section which interested them. The Temple purchased every book on religion and philosophy, for example. The physicians and apothecaries purchased every book on medicine. The engineers and colleges purchased every book on machines or mathematics or science. One noble woman purchased every romance novel. But no one had purchased their entire stock.
I explained that I was a cultivator from the outside world, and wanted to provide the people of my sect with general reading materials. The fiction works would be loaned out for entertainment. The educational works would be used to teach them about the various topics. I was a scholar, and believed that they should be have access to this knowledge even if they didn’t require it for their cultivation. The manager nodded, then ordered all of his employees to start boxing up a copy of every book they had. They would pack them in wooden crates, and I would have to arrange for the transport of the crates myself. I told him that wouldn’t be a problem, as I had storage bags. While I couldn’t make much use of them while in the valley, they should have enough qi inside of them to store the crates until we left the valley.
It would take him several hours to pack up everything, but he totaled up all of the merchandise. They came to just over nine thousand seven hundred taels. I gave him one of the ten thousand tael notes and told him that he could keep the excess, as this would be a lot of work. He thanked me, and asked me to return in three hours.
We left and started walking down the street again. “If you want to read any of those books, I can let you read my copy.” I said to Jiang. “I know you were browsing the shelves before.”
She shook her head. “Some of them looked interesting, but I’m not much of a reader. Maybe I will look over them after we get back to the White Tiger sect. My kids might want to read some of the fiction ones.”
I nodded. “If nothing else, I should have a copy of all of the medical books made for you and Five. That way you can be more effective as a physician.” She nodded and we kept walking. She went into a tailor’s shop and tried on a few dresses. They seemed too expensive, but I told her I would pay for them. They looked really good on her, even considering that they were maternity dresses, and it would be a shame if she didn’t buy them. “But you shouldn’t spend all of your money on me.” she said.
“These vouchers only have value in the kingdom of Trilon.” I told her. “They are worthless outside the valley. If we don’t spend them, they will just go to waste.” I knew that I would likely end up selling them to Ji Bo, who came through the valley on business, or to the White Tiger Sect, who hunted beasts north of here, past Crystal Summit. They flew around the valley whenever they traveled there, but could probably detour to here to stock up on supplies. At wholesale prices, these vouchers probably wouldn’t sell for more than seventy stones each, meaning the twenty nine I would be keeping would go for two thousand and thirty stones. If I had to spend a few stones to make a friend happy, I wouldn’t mind doing so.
After trading in the voucher for thousand tael vouchers and a few hundred taels of gems, we went next door to the jewelers. We met the ambassador there, who was buying several bits of jewelry for his wife. I looked over some of the ones that were left. They had everything from diamonds to emeralds, even some pearls, and a wide variety of natural woods and stones, even a few bones and some ivory. Jade was a fairly common material to make jewelry from here, and depending on the color could have a wide variety of values. I wasn’t sure what Liza would like the most, so I picked out ten things that I liked, from rings to necklaces to earrings, and bought them all. One was a golden jade ring with a large diamond on top. I was fairly sure that wood essence crystals were a variation of diamond, as diamonds were pure carbon. If that was true, then I might be able to embed an effect in the jade of the ring, and give Liza a ring that would heal her if she was hurt. I would just need to do some research. If I couldn’t figure our how to do so it would still make a nice ring. It was a mortal grade material, after all, so it might not be possible for me to infuse enough qi in it to give it the desired effect without damaging it.
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After Jiang bought herself a few small things we left. As a chef she was interested in the local foods, and as an alchemist she was interested in the local medicine, so the food merchant just down the road seemed to be a good place to stop. While he had several cookbooks, which I bought her, and large amounts of all of the dried and preserved ingredients she would need, he didn’t have any seeds unless you counted edible seeds like grains and sunflower seeds, which could technically be planted. We bought around a ton of preserved food, including some exotic spices she had never heard of, and went to an apothecary. The seed store wasn’t open at night, as it was outside the normal planting season, so we wouldn’t be able to buy seeds for the normal food crops. The apothecary, however, might have seeds for the medicinal plants.
Once we entered the apothecary Jiang took charge of the conversation, asking the older woman that ran the store many questions about her process. The woman was technically a daoist witch. That was what they called people who used their daoist magic to control other lifeforms. In her case, though, she would use it to make plants grow faster, or kill invasive insects or fungi or diseases, or make the useful parts of a plant grow much larger than they naturally would. While her abilities could effect humans, she never used them on humans. The only spell she did used on humans was a paralysis spell which she learned to deal with shoplifters.
Upon learning this I asked the woman for copies of her spells. While it took some convincing, as well as revealing that both of us were cultivators and thus knew how to responsibly use such power, she eventually agreed. Jiang also wanted copies of books on medicinal herbs and how to prepare them, so we bought two copies of each of them, one for Jiang to keep and one for me to take with me. After getting two sets of each type of seed she was willing to sell us, I paid her more than she asked, in thanks for answering all of our questions, then left.
Enough time had passed that I was able to return to the book store and pick up my order. I took several storage pouches out and sorted the books into them. There were too many non fiction books for one pouch, so I put the STEM books in one and all other books in another. The three pouches worth of fiction all just went in whatever bag I was using when I got to them. I knew nothing about the genres here, so I wouldn’t be able to sort them properly anyway.
After gathering everything I thanked the man for filling such a large order and returned to the group. They were all in a nearby inn. While some of them had already left for bed, most were drinking or talking. I had done everything I wanted to for the night and went to Ji Bo. I offered him two hundred and eighty thousand taels worth of vouchers in exchange for two thousand stones and, after calculating that it was the equivalent of one hundred and forty taels per stone, he agreed. Normally, the exchange rate floated between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and thirty per stone if you could find someone willing to trade, so this deal earned him a bit of a profit. Much of his expenses on this trip would be in mortal currency, and he would have a large amount of free space on the return trip, so he could just buy mortal grade items, especially food and alcohol, and sell them once he left the valley. Many of the villages we ignored on the way to the valley would purchase mortal food if it was available, as it was usually cheaper than spirit food, and they didn’t need their food to contain qi. He didn’t have the stones at the moment, but once we turned over the goods to the main branch of the family in Crystal Summit he would have more than enough.
Once we were finished I went to the bar. “How much would it cost to buy everyone here a drink?” I asked the bar tender. He calculated that if they got the middle-quality drinks it would come to just less than one hundred taels. I handed him a thousand tael note and told him to use it to pay for whatever drinks or food people wanted until it ran out. If there was any left over, he could just apply it to the room fees, and if there was still money left, give it to Ji Bo, I suspected that our bill would total just more than or just less than one thousand taels, but didn’t care.
After he announced that I would be covering everyone’s tab tonight, everyone cheered, and I waved at them. I didn’t really want to drink, so after one glass of rice wine I went upstairs. I might not sleep tonight, but the quiet area would allow me to meditate on my new lessons.
When I got there Jiang was already there, wearing only her inner robe. It was basically a pair of shorts and a tank top, but the locals treated seeing someone only wearing it about the same as Earth people treated seeing people in their underwear. I didn’t really care, though, as I didn’t see it that way. “I assume Ji Bo decided to put us in the same room?”
She covered up at first, then realized that I wasn’t staring at her. “Yes.” she said, a bit embarrassed. “He assumed we were together.”
I nodded, and started removing my outermost layer. I was wearing four of them, including outer robe, middle robe, inner robe, and underwear, so this was the equivalent of a coat. “I don’t mind if you stay.” I said, then pointed to her robe that was hanging over a chair. “Getting ready for a bath?”
She nodded. “I was thinking about it.” she paused for a moment and smiled. “You weren’t thinking of trying to join me, were you?”
“Oh, no.” I said, blushing a bit. This time I actually was embarrassed. I had done so with Liza a few times, but that was completely different. “Well, when you are done we can train a bit more.”
She nodded and ran into the bath room. I took off my middle robe, as well as my boots with small rocks in them, then sat down on a pillow. They didn’t have any kind of gathering array like rooms outside the valley, so I didn’t need to sit anywhere specific. My feet were hurting considerably, as I had left the rocks in them while I walked around town. This meant that I got considerable practice with my training by learning to not react to them. Now I was able to sit still without them stabbing into me and focus on fixing the damage.
This time I was careful to remove all of the qi from the immediate area where I would be focusing, so that the mental force didn’t mix with it, and then made sure that I was only focusing my mind on the area, and not any of my qi. I focused on the sore area in the sole of my foot and willed the blood vessels to open up. None of the rocks had been capable of actually breaking my skin, even if I stomped my foot, but they were able to push on my blood vessels and nerves, inflicting pain and impeding blood flow. So I focused on one of those areas. After what felt like a long period of time but was probably only a minute or two, the area seemed to relax and grow warm, and the blood started flowing better. I switched to a different location and repeated the process until all of the areas were better. After that I started working on my concentration by scanning for flaws again.
I didn’t get far, though, as Jiang left the bathroom and sat a pillow across from me, then sat down. I noticed that she had only dressed up to her inner robes. “Ready to train, then?” I asked. She nodded, and I noticed that her hair was still a bit damp. I held out my arms and she grabbed them.
This time I sent in two squads of five extremely weak opponents. At first she found it difficult to handle so many enemies at once, but eventually she managed to push me back. I had almost managed to get to the center of her chest, but she gathered her troops and pushed me back. It took another hour for her to push me back as far as her shoulders, and another to push me out completely.
When we were finished she looked exhausted. “Good job.” I said, and she nodded.
“Thanks.” she said. “I’m out of qi, though. And here I can’t refill it.”
“Do you have any recovery pills?” I asked and she nodded. “Probably a good idea to take one, then.” She nodded again and took one, then started meditating to absorb it. I started meditating as well, though I returned to training my memory and willpower, as I didn’t have any profound experience to incorporate into my cultivation base the way she did.
