Dao of the Deal

Any sect with serious aspirations had to be strong in three areas: its secret techniques, its people, and its physical infrastructure. Of those, a complete set of secret techniques was the hardest to come by. Muchen had acquired the Storm Dragon scripture in a stroke of good fortune. Pairing it with an electrical generator gave his nascent sect a standard method for its disciples to build their foundations and work on accumulating their golden cores. Together with the martial techniques Xinyi was willing to impart, he had what he needed to train up competent disciples.

Flower Mountain was on shakier ground when it came to its people. Muchen had gathered up a small group of disciples with potential. In time, if everything went according to plan, they could form the nucleus of a strong sect. As they were now, even calling Flower Mountain a sect would be a joke if not for Xinyi's presence.

Muchen had recruited Yize and Chuhua by appealing for their desire for a better life and offering an opportunity to make money. They had been interested when offered cultivation tips, but that was no guarantee that they would be willing to invest the effort to reach the peak of their cultivation potential. Also, if he were to encourage that kind of drive, there was every chance that they'd decide their best bet to excel would be to join a more established sect.

For now, he would have to check and see if they had at least been diligent in carrying out the money-making tasks he'd handed out. After that, he could sound them out on their interest in being part of his sect.

He was surprised at just how quickly he was coming to think of Li Village as his home. It was still a little place in the middle of nowhere, but it now housed a patch of land that belonged to him. Someday, maybe it would even be known far and wide as the birthplace of the Flower Mountain Sect.

For now, the Flower Mountain Sect was still very much a work in progress, as Muchen was reminded when he laid eyes on the earthen walls of the simple courtyard that held the only human dwellings on the mountain. He'd be upgrading the place soon enough, but seeing such primitive housing provided a reality check after all the dreaming he'd been doing about his sect's future.

Chuhua was ecstatic to see Huichen come plodding up the road toward their cabin, bursting out of the door before Muchen could even swing off of the driver's bench and talking his ear off about what she'd been up to while he was gone. He smiled and nodded along while he unhitched Huichen from the cart. From what he gathered, production of their perfume was going well, and Chuhua had by the way managed to open her second meridian.

"Well done," Muchen said. Considering her age, he wouldn't have been upset as long as she made an honest effort while he was away, but she'd accomplished far more than he'd expected. He'd been underestimating her because she was young, but after surviving together alone with her brother for so long Chuhua was more than capable of independent effort.

If she continued to develop along this trajectory, it would be one less worry on his mind when it came to assembling a group of core disciples. Or at least, all he would have to worry about would be if some other sect managed to recruit her away.

She preened under his praise, then rushed off to prepare a welcome home meal for the two of them. Muchen didn't stint on little luxuries like food and drink while he was away, but he still found himself looking forward to a good home cooked meal.

Yize returned home from his hunt while she was cooking. He was more restrained than his sister in his greetings. Muchen at first put it down to his stoic nature, but he was unusually quiet and withdrawn while they waited for dinner to be ready. When his third attempt to make small talk fizzled and died, Muchen decided that he might as well tackle the problem head on.

He gave Yize a steady look and waited for a moment until he had his undivided attention. "What's wrong?"

Yize looked away for a moment, then sighed. "I've let you down."

"What do you mean?" Muchen asked.

"I've barely managed to sell one box in ten," Yize admitted.

"You've stuck to the pricing I set?" Muchen asked.

Yize nodded. "Three taels per box, no discounts."

"Any issues with the perfume Chuhua has been making?" Muchen asked.

"I can tell it's better than anything else out there," Yize said, "and she made so much of it."

It obviously bothered him that he hadn't been as successful as his sister, but this much was well within Muchen's expectations. Three taels of silver per box was a lot. Their perfume was well worth it, of course, on any reasonable market comparison, but it was hard to convince customers that you were offering a premium product from a stall by the side of the road.

"You haven't let me down at all," Muchen said, giving Yize a friendly pat on the shoulder. "You've done well."

"Really?" Yize asked.

"Getting the first customer is the hardest part," Muchen said. "Now that you've sown the seeds, we just have to wait for those first customers to enjoy the benefits and for a new wave of customers to arise out of jealousy."

Without the power of social media Muchen couldn't bring to bear the full power of the "fear of missing out" strategy, but people always liked to gossip and compare themselves to others. What's more, perfume was a relatively simple and straightforward thing to show off.

Muchen was confident that Yize would find a more receptive audience with every trip he made to Jiulu City. To his mind the success of their perfume sales wasn't in question. The real question was whether to use the eventual popularity of the perfume to launch their own cosmetics store and sell directly to consumers, or to try and act as a supplier to already existing stores.

Running their own store would allow them to squeeze out every last wen of profits, but Muchen thought it might be a bit premature. Having Yize run new stock up to Jiulu town every month or so to sell as best he could was one thing, but running a store was a whole new level of commitment. It would be a lot easier to just sell wholesale quantities to existing stores.

"While we let the market develop, I have a new task for you," Muchen said. He filled Yize in on the details of the sales contract he'd negotiated up in Jiaoqu Town, before charging him with the task of delivery.

Fortunately, Yize hadn't channeled all of his frustration from his difficult sales experience into hunting. He'd also put a fair bit of energy into distillation. They had a nice stockpile of liquor to go with the pile of perfume boxes Chuhua had been building up. It was just enough to fill up the cart and make a trip up north.

He could even take a few boxes of perfume with him while he was at it and call on his established customers in Jiulu town on the way.

He had also managed to open another meridian. He wasn't quite keeping pace with how quickly Muchen had blitzed through the meridian opening realm, but it wouldn't be too long before it would be time to begin working on his foundation.

Before Muchen could push him for too many details, it was time for dinner. Muchen deliberately steered their dinner conversation towards lighter topics, sharing some slightly edited stories of his adventures on the frontier in exchange for the latest gossip around Li Village. He waited until they had all finished eating to broach the heavier topic.

"I plan to establish Flower Mountain as a cultivation sect," Muchen announced.

Chuhua and Yize both gave him curious looks. While Muchen was glad that they weren't objecting to his plans, he was a little disappointed by their lack of reaction. After a moment of silence, Chuhua raised her hand. He gestured at her to speak.

"Aren't we a sect already?"

"We are a business," Muchen said, "whose employees happen to cultivate."

"We work to make money for the group while improving our cultivation," Chuhua said.

"That's, fine," Muchen said, not wanting to get drawn into a debate, "if you want to just consider it a name change, that's fine."

He cleared his throat. Establishing the goal of their organization was important, but this next bit was going to be a bit more delicate.

"It's important to remember that we are part of an ancient, reclusive, cultivating organization," Muchen said, "which has only chosen to go public recently."

Muchen wasn't only emphasizing this point in order to support his earlier lies to Zihan. When the Flower Mountain Sect went out and interacted with other sects, they needed to project a certain level of gravitas.

Chuhua gave him a curious look. "Will we meet them?"

Muchen shook his head. "Not for a while. The important thing is to remember what I told you in case our new disciple asks you about it."

"A new disciple?" Yize asked.

"Yes," Muchen said, "she's from Jiaoqu Town, but she was very excited to come here and learn at our sect."

Yize raised an eyebrow. "Did you lure her down with, um, creative marketing?"

It was written on his face that he was worried Muchen was tricking a young woman with some kind of ulterior motive. At least he had been polite enough not to outright accuse him of lying. As much as Muchen appreciated that Yize was adopting his preferred vocabulary, he needed to nip this idea in the bud.

"Don't be ridiculous," Muchen said. "Xinyi was enamored with her talent and insisted on teaching her personally."

Tossing the blame to the right person was an important part of being in a leadership role. Actually, as a sect head, it might be the most important part of the job. It helped that in this case his statement was more or less true.

"What's she like?" Chuhua asked.

"You'll know when you meet her," Muchen said. "I don't want to bias your first impression."

With that, their division of labor for the near future was set: Chuhua would continue her efforts on the production line. Yize would deliver their products to their customers. Both of the siblings would cultivate diligently. It was all Muchen could hope for in order to get the sect on track.

For his part, Muchen would focus his efforts on establishing the third leg of the sect's support by upgrading their physical infrastructure.

He'd taken the first step long ago by hiring a man from Jiuliu Town to build a temporary brickworks at the back of the mountain. He'd been hard at work—as expected, since he was paid by the brick—and his first batch of bricks was ready to be used. Muchen wanted to build his electrical mill and he wanted to provide brick housing for all of the Flower Mountain sect's members.

The mill came first. For one thing, he was paying the team who built the waterwheel for every day they spent in Li Village. For another, Muchen was anxious to get the electrical generation going so that he could jump start his stalled cultivation.

The morning after he arrived, Muchen began his work as a construction foreman. That might not have been the right term. The people he hired from Jiuli City were experts, and the fee he paid them included taking charge of the design of the mill to which the waterwheel was to be attached. For that matter, the local men he hired to serve as manual laborers had enough practical experience to handle building a brick building without his supervision.

Muchen's technical knowledge was either lacking or superfluous. He mostly just stood around trying to look like he knew what was going on and reassuring himself that everybody wasn'[t just taking his money to skive off. It would be more appropriate to call him the site manager—perhaps the vice president of construction operations—rather than something useful like a foreman.

In any event, the mill went up quickly. The water wheel itself had been designed to be assembled on site, and putting up a building to hold the mechanism the wheel was driving wasn't a great technical challenge.

It was satisfying to see the completed building. Built out of brick, with a tile roof, it had a satisfying presence to it that rammed earth construction lacked. Muchen had left a positive mark on the landscape that would last for a good long time.

With that success under their belt, he bid farewell to the craftsmen from Jiuli City and set the locals to work building a set of brick residences. He picked out one of the Li patriarch's nephews to act as the foreman, promising him an extra half tael of silver a week in exchange for taking on the duty of keeping the rest of the men in line. After the first day of work on the houses proved that Muchen's presence was completely superfluous, he turned his own efforts towards finishing up his new cultivation room.

The waterwheel, driven by the river water with a level of force and consistency that a cultivator would be hard pressed to match, offered the potential for more than enough energy to purify the local spiritual energy. Muchen just had to rig up the infrastructure to turn all of that mechanical energy into electricity without electrocuting himself.

Well, without electrocuting himself too badly. One of the benefits of even Muchen's low level of cultivation was a level of durability that put humans back on earth to shame.

It took some trial and error, but eventually Muchen hit on a workable setup. A thick copper wire was arranged to wrap around his meditation mat, rising with each turn as it looped around three times. It then fed into a whole series of spark gaps, all braced on shelving that would be about head height when he was sitting down.

When he threw the switch that hooked the millwheel into the electrical system, it sounded like a thunderstorm had been summoned indoors. Muchen could tell that learning to meditate in such a noisy environment would be an ordeal in and of itself. He comforted himself with the thought that it would still be more comfortable than trying to meditate in the middle of an actual thunderstorm.

He turned his attention to Xinyi. She was focused on the ring of sparks. Muchen knew they'd achieved success from the grin on her face even before she turned and gave him a thumbs up.