Dao of the Deal

After Xinyi cowed the quarrelsome elders, the rest of the meeting went smoothly. Muchen had to take over and smooth some ruffled feathers, but he didn't mind playing the good cop to Xinyi's murderous cop.

The funny thing was that her evident willingness to wipe out a whole family for annoying her proved their bona fides as much as her raw power. In a world where might made right, if you didn't act like you had the right to trample over anybody in your path people would tend to question your might. Muchen was just glad that they'd been able to surmount that hurdle without any actual blood being shed.

The betrothal was successfully called off, and Zihan was announced to anyone who would listen as the newest disciple of the Flower Mountain sect. They even had a nice little celebratory banquet. All in all, it went about as well as could be expected.

Muchen was feeling great until the next morning, when he discovered that Xinyi was serious about taking Zihan on as a student.

"It's going to be hard enough to build up our business operations," Muchen grumbled, "without having to build up a fake sect at the same time."

He hadn't made any firm plans for what to do once they got the betrothal canceled. He'd figured that as long as Zihan got access to a decent cultivation technique, nobody would mind if he waited a decent interval and called off the whole discipleship. Now it looked like he would have to build up their desolate mountain into a sect to fit the image he'd painted as part of his scam.

"Fake sect?" Xinyi asked. "Not with me as the elder."

They were packing up their belongings at the inn. Well, Muchen was packing while Xinyi watched. With all of their business in Jiaoqu Town complete, it was past time to head back to their home base.

Muchen would at least have some time to get his act together back at Li Village. Zihan would need a month or two to get her affairs in order before making the journey south to join their sect.

"Building up a real sect is even more ridiculous," Muchen said.

"Is it?" Xinyi asked. "With you, Yize, Chuhua, and now this Zihan girl, you have a decent set of core disciples. You even have a secret scripture of your own."

"A copy of a stolen scripture," Muchen said.

"How do you think most sects get started?" Xinyi asked. "It's a rare genius indeed who comes up with his own scripture in a moment of inspiration."

Muchen frowned. His plan had always been to get rich, then to use his accumulated wealth and power to smooth out his road of cultivation. He'd appreciated all the help that Xinyi was willing to provide, but he'd always hesitated to build his long term plans around her.

If she was willing to stick around and carry on the role of sect elder, then building his own sect might be possible. He wouldn't have the structure of sect elders and sect leadership to look to for guidance and protection, but he'd also be free to do things his own way.

He was tempted. Excited, even. Building his own organization called to him. He'd always rather invest in himself than pay money to somebody else. The only problem was the potential reaction of the other sects.

In Muchen's original plan, he would have come to a sect as a VIP disciple. With plenty of money paid out and the prospect of more money to come, the sect he chose would have every incentive to treat him well.

Of course, mortal cash could only go so far in swaying a sect's behavior, but as long as Muchen didn't offend anybody and did his best impersonation of a diligent student, the sect would want to keep the money flowing in. With everybody's incentives pointed in the same direction, his path to immortality paved with silver would be more or less free from potholes.

Now, though, he was looking to set up a competitor. If the Qianzhan Continent as a whole was a dog eat dog world where the strongest fist gave you the strongest right to speak, the competition between sects was the purest, most uncompromising version of that brutal competition. When dealing with mortals, cultivators would at least show a little restraint, either out of some notional respect for karma or just to ensure the birth of the next generation of cultivators.

When it came to dealing with a weaker sect, though, all of that went out the window. Mortal merchants had to worry about the occasional bandit raid, but sects targeted each other with bandit-like behavior on a large scale and didn't even feel like they were doing anything wrong. It was just testing their dao and winnowing out the weak.

Signing up for a sect would have exposed Muchen to that world to some extent, but he would have been safe enough nestling into a large sect that did more of the raiding than the being raided. He could also shield himself with his status as the goose that laid golden eggs: in the worst case, he'd just have to start paying for decent treatment by a different sect.

With his own sect, though, the responsibility for guaranteeing his personal safety would all fall on him. He glanced over at Xinyi, still gloating over his misfortune. Maybe it wouldn't entirely fall on him. It wouldn't be appropriate to have the sect's mysterious elder fight every battle, but her presence would at least keep him from being squashed like a bug by the first golden core cultivator to come along.

Also, it wasn't like he could expect a full scale invasion just by identifying Flower Mountain as a sect. Bandits only raided when there was wealth to be looted. For the first few months, maybe years, the sheer obscurity of their sect would protect them. Would that be enough time to build up a force formidable enough to keep the wolves at bay?

Maybe.

If he was smart about things, though, even if they did face an insurmountable obstacle, he ought to be able to talk things down from a wholesale slaughter into a mere hostile takeover.

By the time they set out on the journey south, Muchen had basically talked himself around to the idea of running his own sect. Of course, in the immediate future his priorities wouldn't change. He needed to ensure that their business was booming and that his own cultivation was progressing. Everything else came in second to that.

They were half an hour on the road when Muchen realized he had forgotten something.

"The bracelet!" he said, snapping his fingers.

"What about it?" Xinyi asked, holding up a shimmering piece of jewelry for him to see. Its shimmering turtle shell pattern was just as it had been described in the books. Even from a distance, Muchen could feel the power lurking within.

"How did you get it?" he asked. He'd been meaning to see about buying it from Zihan once the betrothal was set aside, but he'd gotten caught up in the flow of events.

"When I visited Zihan to explain her future as my personal disciple, I happened to mention that I liked the look of it," Xinyi said. "She handed it over as a meeting gift.

Xinyi gave the bracelet a contemplative look. She had to be happy to get it back and take another step towards recovering her cultivation base, but it was still a physical reminder of the abuse she'd suffered in the past.

"Her only request was that I don't wear it around her," she continued. "Too many bad memories."

Muchen grinned. That wouldn't be a difficult request to grant, considering that the bracelet would cease to exist in a few days. Though something else that Xinyi had said caught his attention.

"Personal disciple?"

Xinyi nodded. Rather than respond immediately, she looked off towards the horizon. They were all alone as they made their way through the woods, the clopping of Huichen's hooves and creaking of the wagon the only sound.

"It's a shame to waste talent," Xinyi said. "I couldn't in good conscience leave such a promising seedling in such poor soil."

Muchen hummed in agreement, suppressing a smile. It was rare for Xinyi to show such a human side.

"Don't get too complacent," Xinyi said. "You're going to have to work hard if you want to keep your cultivation edge, sect leader."

Muchen grimaced. It was fine for a sect to have an elder or two who outstripped the sect leader's abilities, but it would be a little too much for their brand new disciple to surpass him within a few months of being recruited.

Well, he'd always thought competition brought out the best in people, even if he usually preferred the bloodless competition of the marketplace.

ooOoo

The wagon was noticeably lighter on their journey home than it had been when they set out, but Muchen's coin purse was heavier. Besides the silver he'd raked in from selling his high proof spirits, he'd also come away with four spirit stones from his participation in the hunting expedition. He could have taken his share of the spoils more directly, but he didn't have any use for a bunch of monster parts.

Spirit stones served as the currency of the cultivation world. He wouldn't be able to buy too much with just four of them, but every savings account had to start somewhere. Besides, in a pinch he could use them to boost his cultivation.

He didn't need the boost at the moment, though. When they were still a week out from Jiulu City, Muchen finally finished clearing his final meridian. The life and death ordeal in the northern wastes hadn't done much to spur his cultivation, but his steady efforts under Xinyi's tutelage, not to mention the little boost he'd gotten from his liquor sales, was enough to push him forward.

Muchen didn't know precisely what kind of schedule sect disciples were supposed to measure themselves by as they progressed. He did know that the meridian opening realm was expected to last a couple of years. His own progres, then, was quicker than average, though he didn't know if it was the speed of a talented student or the blazing pace of a true prodigy.

Xinyi deemed his efforts adequate, at least. Muchen took that as a compliment. At her level it was probably hard to distinguish a meridian opening cultivator from a mortal. If he was progressing fast enough that she wasn't visibly disappointed with him, then he was doing something right.

Unfortunately, that would be the last bit of progress he would experience in his cultivation until he could get his mill built. To start building a foundation needed more than just aimlessly absorbing spiritual energy. Everything in the foundation building stage had to be done according to your cultivation scripture if you didn't want to risk some kind of cultivation deviation.

In order to proceed with the Storm Dragon scripture, he needed an environment with reasonably pure lightning natured spiritual energy. He was lucky that he was able to build such a thing, instead of needing to set off into the wilderness on the vague hope of finding a natural wonder. Still, it would be a good few weeks at least before he could start taking his next steps on the road of cultivation.

Of course, that temporary plateau didn't mean a break from training. Xinyi had upped the intensity of his martial training ever since they left Jiaoqu Town. She claimed that as a sect leader, he couldn't be allowed to drag down the name of the Flower Mountain sect. The fact that the sect existed only in name at the moment wasn't nearly enough to get him off the hook.

While he didn't enjoy waking up sore every morning, Muchen didn't complain about the grueling training regimen. Now that he was on course to run his own sect, conflict was more of a matter of when than if. He hoped he would be able to resolve everything through peaceful negotiation, but he needed to be ready in case things went wrong.

What did wear on him a little more every day was the stagnation in his cultivation. He had grown used to the slow, steady improvement he'd enjoyed almost since he arrived in the Qianzhan Continent. To be stuck in one place felt like he was sliding backwards.

The only saving grace was that he knew that this lull would be temporary, and he knew what he needed to do in order to break out of it. Even better, when they arrived at Jiuli City he found that the workshop had finished building the framework of his precious waterwheel. The team he'd requested was ready to make the trip to Li Village and build his first key piece of cultivation infrastructure.

Even without a sect to bribe, silver could be used to pave his path forward.