AIR Chapter 141-144

AN: Sorry about the week of no chapters. I had a busy week, but I got four chapters here and most of them are decently sized.

Chapter 141

I was tired when I woke up. It felt like my soul had gotten into a fight and lost.

Rest, the Tome spoke.

But something in my head told me to get up, it told me to start working.

I didn’t think he would go this far.

I was lying in the middle of a field somewhere. I had been stargazing, staring at all the pretty moons and twinkling stars.

“I’ve gotten a lot of books from a lot of libraries,” I whispered, head still aching.

Yes.

“And you are by far the worst of them.”

Knowledge is a burden, the damn thing said sagely.

“Can I return you?”

If you wish, although I would always be able to speak to you regardless of the distance. And besides, now that you have seen that gate and the Fisherman, my powers alone can not influence you. Nei Lo didn’t care to keep her influence on you so she let go, but I’ve convinced her to let you have the memory.

“The what?”

A God-Imperium owns themselves, even in your mind. If she wished to do so, she could undo the moment of your meeting in an instant and rip away any influence she had on you.

“When you say undo, you mean more than erasing my memory, don’t you?”

She would take the very event and make it not have happened.

I just laid there, still tired in ways I had never felt before. I ached in my core, it almost hurt to think.

His gift did come at a cost, though I believe it will be beneficial for both your soul and cultivation.

“I didn’t know souls could hurt like this,” I muttered.

That was not the cost.

A tingling sensation ran down my spine.

“What?”

He has changed numerous things about you.. Key amongst them being-

“No,” I cut in.

Your fate. You will now draw people closer to you, powerful people of all abilities and daos. 

I felt ill.

It was a fair trade. You looked at the Gate, a thing of great importance and if it weren’t for your mortal nature, you would have perished entirely. But you have seen both the Gate and the Dragon, and to see the Gate is to reach for it. Most see it at the cusp of the sixteenth, some earlier. You can feel it even now, can’t you? The urge to act, to move, the desire to grow and cultivate?

“I can feel it,” I whispered. “Was it- did he mean to do it, or was it just the consequences of looking at the Gate?”

Neither and both, but it would not have happened had you not looked at the Gate. It did not break you because the Gate itself is empty. It is merely the path, the doorway to Imperium. It has no nature except for the nature of Imperium. If your whole being had been there, you would have been driven mad with desperation. You would have known omniscience but not had it. It would be like going from what you are now to a mere germ unable to even think. Your soul would have withered and rotted through and through.

“But that didn’t happen,” I replied.

Yes, your soul was only destroyed and before that could even fully happen, the Fisherman touched it and kept it together. And by doing so, a bit of his nature leaked into yours. 

“Can I-”

No. It provides you with no benefits, just like Wukong’s nature or mine. It has only left a mark, a memory of the Gate and what you could achieve should you dare to try.

“Can I get rid of it?”

If you wish to be undone entirely, yes. Much like Wukong’s nature, the Fisherman’s nature represents a moment where he saved you from absolute destruction. You do not have the power to remove but even if you did, all you would find is death. 

I thought about it. Death didn’t sound so bad, not when I compared it to what might come next.

War.

Maybe in a thousand years, maybe in a million or a billion or some other number. But it would come in a finite amount of time, and when it did, I imagined the small bits of existence I had witnessed and imagined it broken and dead.

Or maybe nothing would change, and we would be like the worms beneath the earth, hearing the occasional explosion and the rapid beats of gunfire, but blissfully unaware and mostly unaffected.

The moment the war started, Tai Jey would come for me, and he would try to kill, if not torment, everything I had ever touched.

From the village to the girls to Nai and even Forn, a person I would struggle to call an acquaintance. I had done something and the consequences of it would be immense.

I could hear a monkey laughing in the distance. He was watching and being entertained.

I could see a Fisherman through the murky waters, staring down at me from the river banks.

And I could see the waterfall behind, threatening to drag me down if I didn’t keep swimming.

I hated cultivating. It felt like climbing up a mountain just to reach the summit and fight with the people on top.

But I wanted to do it. No matter how pointless it was, I wanted to climb. If I grew stronger, more people would live. More mortals would flourish.

I got up, closed my eyes, crossed my legs, and cupped my fist.

I was a frog in a well, and I liked it. It was quiet and peaceful. But I had been dragged out and forced into the pond, then the lake, then the ocean, and now I simply couldn’t go back.

********

When Forn looked out into the trees, she felt adventure. She saw a challenge that awaited her. She saw an eternity of struggle and waiting, fights with beasts and men alike. She had spent her whole life within the Cosmic Forest, and originally, she had planned to spend the rest of her existence amongst those trees, diving ever deeper and deeper.

She wanted to bathe in that growth, in that struggle of life. She wanted to prove herself. That was where she believed her story would be; that was where she was supposed to grow.

She loved that mixture of green and animal. She loved the stalking shadows, the chasing beasts. She loved the wildness of it all, the unrestrained death and freedom.

That was the forest to her, freedom.

But what that man had said stuck with her. What was the forest now?

Now, she looked at it and saw comfort. She saw home, her own backyard mostly. She would have to venture deeper into it, into the dangerous parts. She would have to risk her life, and even then, she wouldn’t really be growing.

She’d just be having fun.

Yes, it was fun mixed with danger and death. It was noble in a way, pushing yourself to the ends of your power just to prove to the rest of the world that you could. It was a cultivator’s way.

But it was also something she wanted to do. It wasn’t a challenge, it was a risk. She wanted to fight, and when you wanted to fight, well, it was still a fight, but it wasn’t a challenge. Not anymore.

The nobility of fighting came from the suffering, from the courage and grit required to do something that would risk your life. It came from not wanting to do something and doing it anyway. That was strength; that was grit.

What she wanted to do now was nothing more than fun, exciting, and, if she were being honest with herself, not all that risky activity. She was by her grove after all. Her father could sprint by and scoop her up before she knew what had happened.

She could run to him, plead to him, or wait for the situation to force him into action. The dangers to her were imagined at best.

She was just a child playing in the backyard of her home, poking at the local wildlife and calling herself a hero for it.

She remembered the man and how he had fought, how dirty it was and how efficient. That was a battle. He could have died while the beasts left her completely alone.

But he hadn’t died. He used trickery and deceit to win.

He fought like an animal, far more than her, at least. Animals fought dirty, hunting in packs and using every bit of skill they could. They aimed for the throat or belly, or even anus. They sprayed foul liquids and attacked with no pride or honor in mind, only victory.

And that was how the man fought.

He was older than her, excruciatingly so. He had climbed from the ranks of a mortal man to what he was now, and even if he was at his limit, even if he were to die today, he could at least say he had gotten there all on his own.

Could she say the same?

Chapter 142

When one looked at Lynoria, one found the center of all things.

Sun Wukong, he who split the Heavens, well he who split the Imperium into the Heavens and the Hells.

Then the Tome, the recorder of all knowledge, both physical and not. It was the divisor between order and chaos. It contained everything from the diaries of unknown mortal children to cultivation methods of God-Imperiums.

But the All Blade was the one that most people didn’t understand. Everyone understood the relative axis of Heaven and Hell, as well as the axis of Chaos and Order.

But a sword? What was a sword in the middle of?

This has been the debate of many scholars for too much time to write. They wondered and thought for eons. Some thought it was the middle of the axis of life and death. Others thought it was the center of tools, something that could kill and cut, but could also be used for cooking and cutting down trees.

Some considered it to be just a weapon. A God-Imperium level tool that stood to guard Lynoria at all times.

But they were all wrong.

The All Blade sat there, in the middle of an axis few really knew. It kept itself still on the thin line of things.

It wasn’t a sword. Well, it wasn’t just a sword. It was a cutting implement. It was a sharp thing and all sharp things cut.

Wukong divided the Heavens and Hells, the Tome divided Chaos from the Law Lands, and it took care of everything else.

Someone held it in the darkness. Not a God-Imperium and not even a God-King but a fifteenth rank old man, carrying the sheathed blade upon a white cloth. Some would look at the man with fear, assuming he was the master and thinking he had tamed or been chosen by the blade to be its wielder.

And they would be right, in a way. The Blade had chosen him not to be its wielder but its carrier.

The man was a living table. A man made tool for the tool made man.

Well, not man exactly, but something. Something thinking, something living, something cutting.

Wukong took the sword out of the man’s hands and gave it a light swing.

The sword howled with indignation, but Wukong ignored it.

“Wake up, wake up, you’ve been sleeping too long.”

I have not been sleeping, you arrogant ape! The Blade yelled. It wasn’t using a voice, not in the traditional sense.

It wasn’t really using words either, only aura, intentions communicated directly with qi.

But if it were using a voice, it would sound large and burly and powerful.

Wukong unsheathed the sword and studied.

“You seem asleep to me,” the monkey replied.

I am not.

Well, yes, not entirely, but most of you is inactive. The Tome noted.

Most of me is busy.

“Busy sleeping,” Wukong muttered.

Busy cutting through the middle of every other measurable axis in all of existence.

And that was what the All Blade did. It cut. If Wukong divided the Heavens and Hells and the Tome Divided order and chaos, then the All Blade cut everything else.

Lynoria was the center point of existence, the center of all things. But what did that mean? What could it mean? It was the halfway point of reality, the middle between two extremes, and two of those axes. But what about all the other things?

Things like light and darkness, things like water and fire, axis that were less commonly known but still extreme opposites of each other.

You could navigate the multiverse using those axes. But only the major two, the Heaven/Hell axis and the Order/Chaos axis contained the entirety of the multiverse.

Every other axis lacked at least one or two parts. Not everything had fire or water, and not everything had light or darkness. But every realm had some degree of measurable morality, even if it was neutral. And every realm had some degree of order. It was in the very definition of a realm.

And the All Blade was a thing of cutting, a thing of division and slicing strength.

And in that cut, in all of those cuts across the many axes, it placed Lynoria.

It was a celestial anchor point pinned to the center of existence.

“Any shifts?” Wukong asked the Blade.

Some, though not direct. Small changes keep us at the center of things, though. 

If you asked anyone to describe the multiverse for you, they would start with an analogy of metaphysical metaphors thrown in with a hefty amount of theories.

But to the Blade, it was all just an ocean. An infinite ocean, and an infinite amount of oceans, but all of them were made out of the same little drops, just arranged in varying positions. Lynoria was a single drop. The Blade kept track of all of those oceans and created a small little cut in their center. Then it dragged Lynoria there, plopping it there and keeping it still.

It was a bit of cheating, though. Lynoria wasn’t a half-fire half half-water mixture of elements, nor was it a perfectly half mixture of light and dark, so technically, it shouldn’t have been there.

But with the All Blade’s cut and the help of the Tome, it all fit. The Tome manufactured realms. If it needed a realm that was directly in the middle of the axis of light and darkness, it would make a realm, a single realm that would fit the criteria. Then, that realm would be shifted to face the entry point for that specific axis, and each realm would be like a door, a signal to let anyone on that axis know that Lynoria was there.

And as a nature of these various axes and infinite seas, you could see the droplets.

Or a better shift of metaphors would be to turn the drops into stars and sea each ocean as a sky.

A God-Imperium controlled their realm, affected to an unbearable degree. It was a part of them the same way hair was a part of a man. Any decision they made would be reflected onto it. It would shift and change.

It was why that boy had escaped Tai Jey, Wukong thought. An injured man meant an injured realm, and the boy hadn’t stolen the child. No, it had been taken under the hands of one of Tai Jey’s descendants.

The Divine Beast Emporium, for example, while still standing where it was on the Heaven/Hell axis and the Order/Chaos axes, had shifted slightly in some others.

This was, of course, proof of something.

The Tome had stated it, and even Wukong hadn’t quite believed him at first, but this proved it.

It was movement they were looking for and it would have been better if they found it. But they didn’t.

Reasonably speaking, if a man sided with the Hells, then he should have shifted closer to the Hells. His realm should have gone down to the Hells. He would change, and it would change with him.

If it didn’t, that meant one of two things.

One was that the realm was no longer under the control of Tai Jey, but how could that happen? Tai Jey was the Tamer, it was in his nature to control. He wouldn’t give up his realm to anyone unless they fought and took it from him.

The second option was the certain one.

And that meant that Tai Jey hadn’t sided with the Hells or the Heavens.

Axes didn’t come to be out of nowhere. They were a view of realms, an understanding of the conceptual sense. A division of nature. The sky was up, and the earth was below. The Clouds of Fate and the Sea of Death, natural opposites.

To not shift on that axis meant that Tai Jey is not supported by someone from just the Hells or just the Heavens. It meant that he had the support of both.

Chapter 143

There was a horrible association of evil with ignorance. The idea that being evil was some sort of intellectual fault, the concept that lacking empathy or good will somehow made a man intellectually disabled.

That was stupid, of course. Any decent man that evil leaked from the depths of humanity’s soul, as did good. People tried to square it off, separate it, and say it was something else entirely when it was, in fact, a part of them.

It was the fault of people, Yai Mien thought. It was the trouble with them. If someone separated themselves from evil and refused to understand those who committed it, they would never see it coming.

She walked around Oasis Town with a metal blade and a golden brown uniform. The uniform was old and resembled a soldier's robe. It was buttoned up on the left side, from shoulder to lower thigh. It had four cut vents, one at the front of her legs and one at the back.

It had a collar, too. One that stood upright and covered the lower portion of her face. That, along with the metal cone hat almost made her face invisible. Her long hair flowed out from her head and followed her as she walked through the streets.

And that’s what they were, streets.

“Come on, kid, we have one more place to check,” mumbled the old man ahead of her.

He was her commanding officer, Captain Mitz Jha. He was a mortal man about the size of a large boy hitting puberty. And he was old, so he was always slouching just a bit, one hand on a cane and the other on his back.

He moaned when he went up a hill and leaned back when he went down one.

He had been the Town Watch Captain for about fifty years, and he was the last one on the job. Oasis Town had been fairly well managed for a place with only a few thousand people living in it.

If anyone had a problem, they could go to Chin about it, and if he found you guilty of something nasty, he was liable to kick you out with the next merchant caravan and keep you waiting in jail till they come as well.

There were the occasional theft and disputes; in fact, there was quite a lot of that, but Captain Jha could take care of those on his own in his younger years.

If there was too much trouble, he could always hire some young men to be part-time constables. But there was never enough crime in Oasis Town for that to be a viable career option. Chin would handle most of the major disputes, and if he couldn’t figure out who was guilty, he’d go to that immortal and ask him for the right answer.

If you committed a crime in Oasis Town and if someone noticed and complained, it was only a matter of when you’d get caught not a matter of if.

That and the town’s policy of never letting anyone go homeless or hungry reduced crime rates by quite a margin. For Captain Jha, that was about three disputes a day with enough time for a meal and a nap between each. And most of those he solved by giving both parties some tea and begging them to be reasonable.

But that wasn’t working now.

Oasis Town was turning to Oasis City. The population was growing, soon to have fully doubled in permanent residents, and worst of all, they were all cultivators.

There were far fewer disputes over lost sheep leaving one flock and accidently joining another and more about thefts, damages, lies, conspiracies, politics, and all types of other things. And poor old man Jha couldn’t take it.

That was why Yai had joined the force. She found, caught, and beat a lot of the cultivators who chose to start trouble in the small- well, growing village. A few feet away, some man and woman were arguing, there was something about money and prices not kept.

They were both cultivators of the third rank and they seemed to be having a contest of insults. That was also common now. Mister Bill had banned violence formally, but duels of honor and insults were still allowed. Someone could beat you as long as they didn’t inflict too much physical harm to your person physically.

But that only bruised the pride, and one could do so much more with words to the pride than with fists.

So, the insults had started.

“You fat, greedy, no-good pile of a man. I don’t see how you walk with legs so thick, one must roll right over the other like a couple of chained-up barrels rolling down a hill.”

“I’ve never seen such disgraceful makeup. You look like you robbed a beggar for the dirt on his face and the disease on his genitals and smeared them all over that illness of a skull.”

“Just get away from me and walk slowly, lest you shake up the whole town with that pace.”

“Maybe you’ll fall in a mud pit and be all the cleaner for it then.”

“You right bag of lard!”

“Stop breathing so hard before your stench breath technique takes us all out now!”

Yai walked over to the two cultivators. Unlike mortals, she knew cultivator techniques differed from person to person and changed the way their bodies functioned. It was an active process that would change the entirety of a person’s inner being and sometimes the outer bits as well.

The large lady wasn’t fat, she was muscular. She had a hefty amount of muscle built up and a decent amount of fat on top as a reserve. It was a part of her technique, Yai assumed.

Fat to energy reserves were a common method of cultivation, even in the higher realms. Though they would be able to convert the matter directly into energy without waste, this woman’s technique had even a fraction of that efficiency.

And as for the man, he didn’t smell as much as overwhelmed. He was a spice maker, and his specific mixes of herbs and qi made the flavor of the stuff leak out into the air. It was valuable stuff around here, herbs. Mixing them was no simple manner either, it was part alchemy and part technique. His clan probably wasn’t a fighting one and relied on their culinary talents to contribute to whatever small time sect they came from.

“Enough,” Yai spoke, projecting her aura onto the two before they could start up another round.

Both man and woman, and now terrified instigators, turned their heads towards her with a bow.

“Apologies, great master-”

“We did not mean to-”

“Just keep it down and deal peacefully or move on,” Yai commented.

Both she and the old man walked forward. It was getting harder now, much harder. Yai had to walk with the old Jha because if she didn’t, situations like this were liable to turn violent.

And prideful cultivators who were afraid of the immortal weren’t able to restrain themselves when a mortal told them what to do. Just look at Chin, he was a cultivator now, and even then, he had to have Rin Wi or Mei Shan by his side for any negotiations.

People tucked away their pride, but they would bring it out when they thought no one was watching.

Jha nodded to Yai and walked on forward. She nodded back and smiled.

She respected the man, and not in the way an adult might respect a smart child. It wasn’t that haughty, ‘You did what you could, and for that, you should be proud,’ respect.

No, it was real respect. The man was old, he was tired, and he was certainly overwhelmed, but he kept the law, as little as it was in this village.

“The duty of an officer is to keep the peace, little Mei. Sometimes that might mean whacking somebody with a spear's butt other times it might mean listening to two men call each other thieves for half an hour. And Heavens forbid, sometimes a man kills or beats his child and wife and gives them a leopard’s skin of bruises. And sometimes you have to jail that man and feed him for half the year till the rainy season starts and ship him out of the village with the spear’s head. But we keep the peace, lass; we walk around, and we keep the peace.”

And while Yai wasn’t the sentimental sort, she found those words to be quite touching.

She had often heard many philosophical rambles from powerful cultivators. The long talk of justice or the lack of it. Something about the strong protecting the weak or ruling them, that was always what they thought about.

As much as they tried to deny it, they were still human, and a piece of that humanity- the good piece- would sometimes yell at them and tell them that they were doing the wrong thing. And when that happened, when they felt some sort of guilt or found a hole in their dao about their actions, they would speak, using big words and complex ideas to plug up the leak in their ship of morality.

But that wasn’t old Jha. He just had a job, and he would see to it.

“I think it's all hogwash,” Old Jha had said. “I mean, it's not all that complicated, lass. You know good, you do good. Sometimes it's hard, and sometimes it is disgustingly grey, but most of the time it’s black and white. I think if you're obsessed with the grey all the time, you’re just staring into the darkness and trying to say you can see the light. Sometimes you don’t know lass, but most of the time you do. And if you don’t know then ask others and think about it. That’s what the jails are for.”

She walked behind the old man, keeping a steady pace and smiling lightly. She did like this job, she found. She liked it quite a lot.

Chapter 144

And so a mortal and a near immortal walked down the streets, enforcing the law. The law was a little lacking and empty to enforce in truth. A small village like this ran more on conscience and common sense instead of a big book of written rules most of the time.

There were written rules, of course, but you’d have to beat around the dusty light tower and haul it out to consult it. And if you didn’t agree with it, you could probably scratch out and write a new one in without anyone being the wiser.

That was a problem, Yai Mien thought.

You needed the rules to be hammered out, particularly with a growing society like this. She could judge everything herself if she needed to. She trusted her own impartiality for the job, and everyone here would fall in line real quick with a fifth rank cultivator yelling down on them.

But that wasn’t her job, was it?

She didn’t make the rules. That was someone else’s job, the people’s, maybe.

She’d have to talk to Mei Shan about all of this, possibly Chin and Mister Bill as well.

They’d have to take a look through that old tome and come up with a fair system of punishment, maybe build a prison. Rin would just slap the rule breakers away towards the edge of the region at times, but that was no proper punishment.

Yai likes the more stringent methods. Throwing a criminal away was nothing more than tossing him aside for the next village and group to suffer over. Imprisonment was a good option, crippling their cultivation would work as well, depending on the crime. It was worse than death in some ways, but she had known many people who deserved it.

Yai tried not to think about those days. They all did. Mei remembered them and spoke of them more freely than the rest, but the Divine Beast Emporium was a name that had brought fear from her heart for a long time.

And now that she was here, now that she felt truly free from it.

It aroused fury.

She didn’t know when it happened, and if it had been a month ago or maybe two months ago, she wouldn’t have believed that it could have happened. But one moment, she was another slave working under her new master, and the next, she was a villager.

It was like Mister Bill had turned from a god to a person. Watching him walk around with the villagers, get chastised by Chin, be force-fed food by Medin, and even play a quiet game of cards with Po Pen.

It had all seemed like an act to the girls. Some sort of strange experiment or pastime. At best, he was a man playing with his pets. That was what they thought.

And even now, it didn’t really make sense. She couldn’t for the life of her understand why he was doing what he did.

But then she met Jha, an old man, a mortal. And she walked with him, talked to him, and worked with him.

And suddenly, she understood. It was never an act. It was never a game.

Then, the man had gone from godlike and mysterious to incredibly simple.

She would never have thought this would be the case. But something, maybe it was the air or the village or, more likely, Mister Bill himself. Something had changed her. She felt happy waking up, and though it had only been months, her past seemed so incredibly distant.

She was euphoric.

Yai walked through Cultivator Town. Captain Jha was back in the village, sitting down for his afternoon nap. He was getting older now. He had been old ever since Yai had met him, but he seemed all that much older these days.

It was as if the man was waiting for a replacement. As if the lack of a fellow watchman was what kept him going. When he was the only one doing the job, he couldn’t afford to miss a day, and it wasn’t like he could ask Chin Chin for another full-time guard. It would have been a waste of money in that small, peaceful town of his.

But now, there were more people, and most of them were cultivators. That was a complication, but it was one that Yai Mien was very capable of dealing with.

But she needed more people, more guards, and a decent book of rules and punishments.

For now, she could make do.

Cultivator town was an ever-changing place. It was mostly tents, and as such, it shifted its roads and scenery quite often. One of the few permanent fixtures was the brothel, aptly named Madam Rose’s Parlor.

The building had just been finished and it took up a nice large chunk of land. The lights would be on at all times, and there was always a group of people moving in and out of the place, a bit of shame and joy struggling to keep quiet on their faces.

Yai didn’t like it. She didn’t hate it either, but she knew the nature of the work. You generally never go down that career path with happiness and understanding. It was a job most women, even her at some point, had been forced into.

She watched as a burly half dwarf woman tossed a cultivator out into the street with amazing accuracy. The half dwarf was at the fourth rank, a high enough rank to settle anywhere within this region. Now that the man who was hunting Madam Rose was dead, they could have settled anywhere instead of this place. The Raging River Sect always hosted the strong passing cultivators. They had an immortal there about once every two years. It would be a passing merchant or a visiting delegation.

And those were some very rich customers indeed. Living in that region would gain them access to immortals if not fifth rank cultivators. Or better yet, she could go live with her brother Gai Fang. He was now the head of the Bloody Fist Sect and would protect her to the best of his abilities. Though businesses near a temple might be less than stellar, she at least had a reason to move.

But Yai knew why they chose this place.

There was an indescribable sense of safety here. It felt like a warm fire on a cold day. She didn’t know why and she didn’t know how, but when she was here, the world seemed to get better.

“Thief! Thief!” Someone yelled.

A small, fast blur passed at imperceivable speeds through the crowds. Yai blurred, and her afterimage thinned.

Her hands rushed towards the thief. The person dodged.

They dodged? Yai thought.

Now she rushed, pushing all she could into her legs and senses. She chased the blurring little thing, and yet somehow, it was getting away.

This time, she watched and focused, sensing where it would go, thinking about what route it would take.

Then she doubled and leapt. One of her, a false image, ran towards the thing while the other ran for where it would be.

The blur turned but was met with a strong pair of hands that lifted it up into the air.

Yai Mien stared at the guilty party.

Nai’s eyes watered. Her palms and knees were dirty with mud, and a giant piece of cake was shoved into her tiny jaw.

“Thief,” Yai Mien accused.

Nai shook her head desperately and pointed back in the general direction of Cultivator town. They had long since left it and ended up within the village proper.

I paid! I paid! Nai seemed to be yelling. I paid but she didn’t see it!

“Oh? Where’s the payment?” Yai asked.

An image came to Yai’s mind of a small Nai scuttling about the market at an untraceable speed. She checked every stall, smelled every food, and she did it more than once. The vendors hadn’t noticed, and neither had the shoppers.

Not even Yai Mien had noticed.

Eventually, she picked an item and put a whole first rank spirit stone into the lady’s money pouch, which was far too much for a piece of cake in Yai’s opinion.

Yai sighed and put the baby down onto the ground.

“Wait here, okay?” She asked.

Yai nodded lightly, taking care not to let the cake crumble with the action.

Yai teleported to the stall, much to the stall owner’s surprise.

“Ma’am, your product was paid for. Please check your money pouch.”

“My- my money pouch?” She said, falling back slightly.

“Yes,” Yai nodded.

The lady reached into her side pouch and opened it lightly, her eyes widening a little at the sight of one full spirit stone. She was a first rank cultivator, a cook that set up shop traveling caravans.

“Oh ye- yes. I see now,” she said with a deep bow. “But this is far too much. Would they like any more-”

Nai flickered over to the stall, but Yai Mien held her back. Yai stood there, holding the squirming baby by her shirt and raised her up to her chest.

“No, I believe one cake is enough for the day,” Yai replied.

Nai stared daggers.

“Do you have a permit for the shop, ma’am?”

The color drained from the lady’s face.

“A permit?” She squeaked.

“Yes, you don’t need one, but you could register yourself as a permanent vendor and own this stall stand if you wish to. The Sect is planning on building lodging for this area soon.”

“I- would I be allowed? I mean, so many other sects have already tried to-”

“Yes, ma’am. Most of those attempts have been by threats or coercion, and we do not take those lightly. Would you like for me to file one on your behalf?”

The small lady nodded.

“I will do so then.”

Then Yai left.

“See, now you can have those cakes whenever you want, as long as you pay. Understand?”

Nai nodded, cake still held firm between teeth.

“Now, eat that cake before we go to Medin and tell her that you ruined the new pants she made you.”

Nai let out a silent scream of horror, but Yai marched on, holding the baby in place.

Justice would be served.