Despite how eager Ren had initially seemed when he mentioned his ‘idea’, the cultivator was awfully hesitant to actually explain it.

  Instead, he’d suggested they collect the cores from the corpses of the spirit beasts around them first, just in case another spirit beast was drawn to the area. Jiang couldn’t exactly refute the logic, so he agreed with a minimum of grumbling.

  Honestly, Jiang had to admit that he’d gotten a little excited at the prospect of harvesting upwards of forty cores. Sure, these spirit beasts hadn’t exactly been strong, so each individual core was unlikely to sell for much, but quantity had a quality of its own.

  Unfortunately, the reality of the situation turned out to be much more depressing than he’d thought; his final, indiscriminate attack hadn’t just shredded the bodies, it had also cracked most of the cores. By the time they’d finished poking through the corpses, Ren was looking more than a little green from the smell of blood, and they had a grand total of eight cores.

  “Well, it’s better than nothing,” Ren said in about the least optimistic tone Jiang had heard from him. The other cultivator looked down at the blood on his hands – rummaging through an animal’s innards was never going to be a clean process – and grimaced in disgust.

  To his credit, he hadn’t shirked the duty of checking the bodies. The cultivator stood up, wiping his hands on a patch of relatively clean moss before picking up one of the cores and holding it up to the sunlight filtering through the canopy. It was small, cloudy, and chipped on one side.

  “First realm, second stage mostly,” Ren sighed, turning the object over in his fingers. “Maybe a couple of third stages in the mix, but the quality is poor enough that we’ll probably get paid the same as a second stage core anyway. With the market in Biragawa flooded like it is… we’d be lucky to get thirty or forty silver apiece for these. Maybe less for the damaged ones.”

  Jiang did the math in his head and scowled. Even at the high end, that was barely three gold total for the entire batch. It wasn’t nothing – three gold coins were enough to live on for a while – but considering he had almost died, and definitely knocked himself unconscious from pain, the return on investment felt pitifully low. At this rate, he’d need to wipe out a dozen packs just to afford a consultation with an alchemist, let alone actually buy a pill.

  “Here,” Jiang said, handing him another two cores so they both had four.

  Ren blinked, looking up at Jiang with confusion. “Four?” he asked.

  “Half of eight is four,” Jiang said, feeling a little impatient. He just wanted to get away from the smell of open bowels. “Unless you’re telling me my math is wrong?”

  “No, the math is fine, it’s just…” Ren trailed off, looking from the cores to Jiang and back again. He seemed on the verge of arguing, but eventually just shook his head and tucked them into his pouch. “Never mind. Thank you, Brother Jiang.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jiang said, turning back towards the way they came. “You can tell me this great idea of yours on the way back. The smell is giving me a headache.”

  Ren hurried to catch up, falling into step beside him. “Right. The idea.” He paused, clearly trying to order his thoughts. “Well, to understand it, you have to look at the economics of our situation. As you know, cultivation is a pit that you throw money into in the hopes that power comes out. Pills, spirit stones, arrays, weapon maintenance… it all adds up.”

  Jiang made a noise that could be taken as agreement.

  Ren nodded vigorously, acting like Jiang had enthusiastically agreed. “And for wandering cultivators, it’s worse, because we don’t have a sect subsidising us. We don’t have elders handing out resources because we have ‘potential’ or because we’re tied to a lineage. Everything we have, we buy. Or we steal.” He paused, then added, a little embarrassed, “Or we get lucky. Which, I will admit, is a nicer way to put it.”

  He glanced at Jiang, smile flickering back to life. “Honestly, I can’t imagine how much you must have spent to reach the second realm without backing. You must have had some very fortunate encounters.”

  There was a note of wistful envy in his voice. Jiang glanced at him sideways.

  “I suppose that makes sense, though I haven’t really used any cultivation resources myself,” he ventured.

  Ren slowed half a step, as if he’d misheard. “You’re joking,” he said eventually.

  Jiang raised an eyebrow. “No. Why?”

  The cultivator opened his mouth, closed it, then ran a hand through his hair hard enough to disturb the neat tie at the back. “That’s—” he started, and then the sentence collapsed under its own weight. “That’s… discouraging.”

  Jiang blinked. “How is that discouraging?”

  Ren let out a laugh that was more disbelief than amusement. “Because if you can reach the second realm without resources, that either means you’re absurdly talented, or I’ve been doing everything wrong, or the heavens have personally decided to spit on me. I’ve spent my family’s fortune on foundation establishment pills and meridian cleansers just to hit the sixth stage, and you’re telling me you just… breathed your way to the second realm?”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Jiang felt a twinge of awkwardness. He hadn’t meant to upset the man. “I’m sure you can manage it too,” he offered, though he knew it sounded hollow. “You’ve got… technique. That water thing was impressive.”

  Ren sighed, shaking his head as if physically dislodging the gloom. “You’re kind, Brother Jiang, but we both know raw power wins fights. Still,” he straightened up, his expression shifting back to something more business-like. “Talent aside, we are currently in the same boat regarding funds. You need money to heal your meridians – which, as I said, is going to cost hundreds of gold – and I need money to push for the next realm.”

  Jiang felt the shift in tone – he suddenly felt like he was talking to a merchant trying to upsell him on more expensive furs.

  “Fine,” he said warily. “We need money. That was not a revelation.”

  “The problem,” Ren continued, ticking points off on his fingers, “is risk versus reward. We just saw it back there. We fought a pack of weak beasts. Individually, they are worth almost nothing. Together, they are a threat that nearly killed us. If I had been alone, I would be dead. If you had been alone… well, you might have been fine, but if you’d missed any beasts with that technique of yours, you would have been in trouble.”

  Jiang nodded. He didn’t like admitting it, but it was true.

  “So, the logical solution is to form a team,” Ren said. “But that carries its own risks. If you team up with strangers, you have to worry about them stabbing you in the back for your share of the loot once the fighting is done. Or, more commonly, if there is a disparity in strength, the stronger cultivator demands the lion’s share of the profit. It’s standard practice. If we were a typical group, you – being in the second realm and having scored the most kills – would have demanded the majority of those cores.”

  Jiang’s gaze flicked briefly to the pouch at his belt, where the four cores sat. So that’s why Ren had seemed surprised at the number of cores he was receiving. He’d expected Jiang to take more than half.

  If he was being totally honest with himself, Jiang hadn’t even considered taking more than half. They’d been in the same amount of danger, and while Ren hadn’t had as great an impact on the fight as Jiang had, it wasn’t for lack of effort – not to mention if Ren hadn’t been here, it was entirely possible Jiang would never have found the tracks and figured out the beasts were in the trees in the first place.

  “That seems… inefficient,” he said after a moment. “If people don’t get the same rewards, they shouldn’t be expected to face the same risks.”

  “Exactly!” Ren beamed, pointing a finger at him. “That is exactly what I mean! You understand the value of a sustainable partnership. But most cultivators are too short-sighted, or too arrogant. They view power as more important than anything else, and thus the more powerful cultivators take the majority of the rewards while everyone else fights over the scraps – ignoring how even weaker cultivators can contribute in other ways.”

  Ren seemed… rather passionate about this. Probably because he was one of those ‘weaker’ cultivators, and thus got the short end of the stick any time he teamed up. In fairness, he did have a point – and it was clear what the logical conclusion to his arguments was.

  “I’m assuming you want to team up, then?” Jiang asked, cutting to the heart of the matter.

  “Well… yes,” Ren replied, some of the energy leaving him. “You have the strength to kill things I can’t, even with your current injuries. I, on the other hand, have some savings that we can use to cover upfront expenses, like some medicinal pills for your meridians and better equipment, and I also have contacts that can get us information on where the more valuable spirit beasts are. If we work together, we can hunt more efficiently and make more money.”

  Jiang studied him. “You want to front the costs? That seems… risky, on your part.”

  “To an extent,” Ren said, holding up a placating hand. “I’m not made of gold, but I can cover the basics. Some healing salves, maybe a low-grade meridian soothing pill to take the edge off. Enough to keep you fighting without passing out.”

  “And in return?”

  “In return, you agree to hunt with me for the next two weeks. We split all profits fifty-fifty, regardless of who gets the kill.” Ren’s expression grew serious. Surprisingly, the expression suited him. “And we aim for higher-value targets. No more squirrels. We hunt beasts in the late stages of the first realm, maybe even early second realm, if we can find them isolated.”

  Jiang frowned. It was a generous offer. Suspiciously so. Ren was taking all the financial risk upfront on a partner he had met less than an hour ago.

  “Why?” Jiang asked bluntly. “You’re taking a big risk. I could take the medicine and leave. Or I could be useless in a real fight – and those squirrels don’t count as a real fight.”

  Ren sighed, his shoulders slumping slightly. “Because I need to advance,” he admitted. “I won’t say why, but… I need to join the tournament and fight in the Second Realm division.”

  Jiang raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t the tournament start in a week or two? Reaching the Second Realm from the sixth stage is… ambitious.”

  Even with the advantages of the Pact, Jiang wouldn’t be confident in matching that pace. Then again, maybe cultivation resources really did make that much of a difference – there had to be a reason why everyone seemed to be crazy about them.

  “Reaching it naturally would be impossible, certainly, but with the right resources – and with the necessary funds to purchase them – anything is possible. They say that the Heavenly Sects in the heart of the Empire can make pills that will take a child from the beginning of the First Realm to the peak of the Third in a single day.”

  Ren smiled dryly. “That’s probably just a tall tale, sure, but you take my point. And yes, I know that rushing advancements can impact my foundations and leave impurities that will hamper my cultivation moving forward, but what use is potential if it is forever unrealised? I need to reach the Second Realm before the beginning of the tournament, or the path of cultivation will be closed to me.”

  Jiang wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that, partially because Ren was talking about things he didn’t really understand – like using resources left impurities that made cultivation harder? Why did anyone use them, then? – but mostly because the other cultivator was looking quietly emotional, and Jiang had never been the best at dealing with people like that.

  “Fine,” Jiang said. “We’ll work together and split things fifty-fifty.”

  Really, there were no real downsides on his part. He needed to earn money anyway, he would be getting a bunch of the benefits upfront, and if anything went wrong, he could always just ditch Ren. He wouldn’t feel good about it, of course, but the option was there.

  Ren’s face lit up with relief. “You won’t regret it! I swear. We’ll be swimming in gold.”

  “One change, though,” Jiang added.

  “Name it.”

  “I don’t want the medicine yet,” Jiang said. “I can manage the pain for now. Instead, I want you to use that upfront money to buy me something else.”

  Ren blinked. “What?”

  “A bow,” Jiang said simply.

  He had been using weapons he wasn’t comfortable with since he had become a cultivator, but it was finally time to return to his area of expertise.

  It was time to become a hunter again.