Ren Li leaned against the counter of the weapon shop and tried his best to look like a bored patron rather than a man who was currently watching half his remaining savings being weighed in the hands of a stranger.

  Never let anyone know how much something matters to you.

  As much as Ren hated to admit it, his father’s advice had proved true more often than not. Across the room, his new companion was testing a bow. It was the third one the shopkeeper – a burly man with forearms the size of his head – had handed him. Ren didn’t know much about bows, but to his eye it looked like a fine weapon, inscribed with faint, glowing lines of script designed to channel Qi into the arrow.

  Jiang – despite Ren’s light prodding, the young man hadn’t supplied a family name – raised the weapon into a practised-looking stance and drew the string back, holding it at full draw for a moment before easing the string back down without firing.

  “Too light,” he said, handing the bow back to the shopkeeper. “The draw weight is negligible. If I put any real force behind this, I’d snap the string or crack the limbs.”

  The shopkeeper frowned, crossing his massive arms. “That’s a standard cultivator’s recurve, lad. It’s designed to channel Qi, not muscle. Those fancy techniques you lot use do all the killing – bow’s just how you deliver them.”

  Ren winced at the bluntness, hoping Jiang wouldn’t take offence. The mysterious young man seemed more surly than arrogant, but then Ren was a cultivator himself, albeit a weaker one, which meant he was afforded a modicum of respect. For a mortal to speak that way, though…

  To his minor surprise – and relief – Jiang didn’t seem bothered in the least.

  “If I wanted to kill something with a technique, I’d use a technique,” he said dryly. “No point wasting a perfectly good arrow to do it. No, I need a bow with some proper draw weight. Something that hits hard because it’s heavy, not because I’m pumping it full of essence.”

  The shopkeeper stared at him for a long beat, his expression unreadable beneath the thicket of his beard. He grunted, the noise somehow conveying approval. “Hm. Finally, someone who wants a proper weapon, not a fancy toy. You want kinetic force? I’ve got kinetic force. Wait here.”

  He turned and lumbered toward the back room, muttering something about “damned glowing toothpicks” as he shoved aside a heavy leather curtain.

  Ren watched him go, then shifted his gaze back to Jiang, drumming his fingers on the wood of the counter as his mind raced. The request for a heavy bow made sense, tactically speaking. Jiang’s corruption was severe – the talisman he’d used had almost burnt itself out before being able to confirm that the corruption wasn’t originating from Jiang’s dantian – and relying on Qi-heavy techniques obviously caused him significant pain. Shifting the burden to physical strength was a smart workaround.

  But it also begged the question: just how strong was Jiang?

  Ren’s eyes traced the line of Jiang’s shoulders. He wasn’t bulky like the shopkeeper, but there was a density to him that Ren associated with high-level body tempering manuals. To draw a bow capable of harming a Second Realm beast without Qi assistance required a monstrous amount of torque.

  And the corruption…

  Ren bit the inside of his cheek to keep from asking. The curiosity was eating him alive. A wandering cultivator from a “small village” didn’t just stumble into that kind of spiritual damage. It was too potent, too concentrated. It spoke of a direct confrontation with something truly dark.

  In Ren’s mind – fed by a lifetime of reading heroic epics under the covers while he was supposed to be studying trade routes – the scenario played out in vivid detail. Jiang, defending his village from a rogue demonic sect. A desperate last stand. A forbidden technique used to save the innocent, leaving the hero scarred and forced to wander the world in search of a cure. It was tragic. It was noble. It was exactly the kind of story Ren wished he was a part of, instead of just the guy holding the coin purse.

  He looked at Jiang again, trying to spot the hero beneath the scowl and the road dust. Jiang caught his eye, arching a questioning brow.

  Ren quickly looked away, pretending to be fascinated by a rack of spears. If his father could see him now – standing in a second-rate weapon’s shop, partnering with a village hunter who carried enough corruption in his veins to kill an ox, betting his future on a scheme to slaughter high-level beasts in less than a fortnight – the Patriarch of the Li Merchant House would likely have an apoplectic fit.

  While having a cultivator in the family would be a cause for celebration, thanks largely to the boost in reputation it brought, it shouldn’t have been him.

  Ren was the eldest son. He was the heir. He was supposed to be in the counting house, learning the trade routes and the art of the deal, preparing to take over a legacy that had been built over four generations. One of his siblings becoming a cultivator would have been incredible. Having the heir become a cultivator made the line of succession… complicated.

  Worse, Ren was good at being a merchant. He’d always enjoyed talking to people, and forming relationships was half the job of a merchant house.

  But Ren hated the idea of spending his days making business deals. He hated the ledgers. He loved the stories – the tales of wandering immortals, of swords that cut the sky, of defiance against the heavens. He had confirmed his Qi sensitivity in secret, stolen away in the night with a bag of gold and a head full of dreams, convinced that he was the protagonist of his own epic.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Reality, as it turned out, was significantly less romantic.

  The cultivation world was brutal, expensive, and filled with people who would slit your throat for a spirit stone. Ren had plateaued at the sixth stage, his resources dwindling, his progress stalled. The tournament was his last chance. If he could reach the Second Realm – if he could just prove that he had the potential to be something more than a merchant – he might catch the eye of a Sect. He might validate this whole foolish crusade.

  If he failed… well. He would have to go home. He would have to crawl back to his father, admit he was wrong, and spend the rest of his life counting coins while his younger brothers and sisters lived the life he wanted.

  His spiralling thoughts were thankfully broken as the heavy curtain swept aside, and the shopkeeper returned. He was carrying a long bundle wrapped in oilcloth, cradling it with a reverence he hadn’t shown the other weapons.

  “This,” the shopkeeper grunted, laying it on the counter with a heavy, solid thud, “is Ironheart Oak. Sourced from the deep groves in the Northern expanse, where the trees drink metal from the groundwater. It’s been sitting in my vault for three years because nobody has the spine for it.”

  He unwrapped the cloth.

  The bow inside was ugly. That was Ren’s first thought. It was dark, the wood almost black and finished with some kind of resin that looked vaguely like dull rock. It lacked the elegant curves or gold inlays of the cultivator weapons on the walls. It was thick, brutal, and unadorned. The string wasn’t the usual braided silk or wire; it was a thick, dull cord that looked like tendon.

  “Black River Serpent sinew,” the shopkeeper said, tapping the string. “No inscriptions. No formations. Just wood that gets stronger the more Qi you put into it, and a string that wouldn’t snap if you hung a building from it. You want draw weight? Look no further.”

  Ren watched as Jiang reached out slowly, almost reverently, and took the bow from the counter. He hooked two fingers into the string and began to draw.

  Slowly.

  Very slowly.

  Ren felt his own shoulders tense in sympathy as Jiang’s back and shoulders engaged fully, muscles standing out beneath his travel-worn clothes, and for a brief moment, Ren wondered if this bow’s draw weight was too high. Then Jiang exhaled slowly and continued the draw, inch by inch, until the string rested just shy of his cheek.

  He held it there for a heartbeat, then carefully eased the string down, exhaling a short breath. He looked at the bow, then at the shopkeeper. A rare, faint smile touched his lips.

  “I’ll take it,” Jiang said. He looked at Ren. “How much?”

  The shopkeeper crossed his arms, his eyes gleaming. “Eighty gold, and that’s me being generous. The sinew alone is worth forty.”

  Ren straightened up, smoothing his robes and feeling – much to his chagrin – like he was in his element. “Eighty gold?” He looked at the bow performatively, letting a touch of disdain colour his expression. “Master Smith, please. I respect the craftsmanship, truly, but let us be realistic. Look at the dust on the oilcloth. This isn’t premium stock; it’s a paperweight you’ve been trying to offload for three years.”

  “Doesn’t change the material cost,” the shopkeeper growled.

  “It doesn’t,” Ren agreed. “But an item is only worth what people are willing to pay for it, and this is dead stock, Master Smith. It’s taking up space where you could be storing something that actually sells.”

  He tapped the dark wood. “You want eighty for a paperweight? I’ll give you thirty, and that’s me being generous.”

  The shopkeeper bristled, his face reddening. “Thirty? That’s robbery! I already told you, the sinew alone cost me forty! I can’t let it go for anything less than seventy-five – lower than that, and I’m losing money!”

  Ren plastered on a vaguely offended expression and leaned forward, ready to bargain.

  — — —

  “I can’t believe you got him down to forty gold,” Jiang marvelled, hefting the weight of his new bow and trying to keep the grin off his face.

  For the first time since leaving Qinghe, he felt armed. No more fumbling around with a sword that still felt vaguely unnatural in his hands – he had a proper weapon now.

  “Forty-five, including the arrows,” Ren corrected, though he looked inordinately pleased with himself. “Armour-piercing heads aren’t cheap, and you’ll need them if we’re hunting Second Realm beasts. But yes. Forty for the bow itself was… acceptable.”

  It was downright exorbitant, is what it was, but Jiang wasn’t about to argue – especially because he wasn’t the one paying. Then again, considering how much money they were looking to make, forty gold was barely a drop in the bucket.

  “Right,” Ren said after a few moments, clearly unable to contain himself any longer. “Now that we’ve taken care of equipment, the next step is information. But the information we need isn’t something we can get from any random broker. No, we, my friend, are going to… the Black Dragon.”

  He paused after saying it, looking at Jiang expectantly, clearly waiting for a gasp of awe or at least a flicker of recognition.

  Jiang just blinked. “Okay.”

  Ren glanced sideways at him, brow creasing faintly. “You’ve… heard of them, right?”

  “Sure,” Jiang answered with a shrug. “I was there yesterday. Got the tip about the village from them. Nice tea, weird doors, weirder people.”

  Ren spluttered for a moment before recovering. “Right. Okay, fine. I suppose that saves me the speech about their reputation,” he muttered, recovering his composure with a quick smoothing of his robes. “In that case, I’ll head over there now and secure the scrolls myself. No point in both of us waiting around while they compile the data, and I suspect I can talk them into a bulk discount if I’m alone.”

  Jiang didn’t argue. He had no desire to return to the weirdly hollow building unless absolutely necessary, and he certainly didn’t mind letting Ren handle the boring parts of the job.

  “Works for me,” he said. “We’ll need to coordinate the time for tomorrow, though. I have an appointment at first bell.”

  He didn’t elaborate, and to Ren’s credit, the merchant didn’t ask. In the cultivation world, asking about private business was a good way to lose a hand, and they didn’t know each other well enough for casual prying regardless.

  “Second bell, then,” Ren agreed easily enough. “At the North Gate. That should give us enough daylight to reach the foothills by noon.”

  He hesitated then, his gaze flickering briefly to the heavy bow slung across Jiang’s back before darting away again. There was a sudden tension in his posture – a flicker of nervous realisation that he had just handed over a small fortune in weaponry to a man he barely knew, who now had every incentive to simply vanish into the city and never show his face again.

  Jiang saw the doubt, clear as day, but he didn’t say anything to assuage it. Words were wind, after all. He’d prove he was trustworthy by showing up.

  “Second bell,” Jiang confirmed with a sharp nod.

  He turned and walked away, leaving Ren standing amidst the evening crowds, looking like a man wondering if he’d just made the worst investment of his life.