85: Chapter 85 Neighbors

At dawn the next day, Jiang Yan awoke from his meditation.

The Spirit Gathering Array had been running all night, and the concentration of Spiritual Qi in the cultivation room was thirty to forty percent higher than outside, but the dark purple vortex within his Dantian had barely changed.

After reaching the Middle Stage of Qi Refining Level 6, relying on this thin Spiritual Qi to meditate meant his cultivation speed was as slow as trying to dig through a mountain with a spoon.

He felt the flow of spiritual energy in his Meridians; it was slow, steady, like a deep pool where the current was barely perceptible.

He rose from the stone bed and pushed open the door.

The morning mist had not yet dispersed in the courtyard.

The mouth of the stone well was veiled in a thin, grayish-white mist, and the dew on the well's rim had condensed into round beads of water that trickled down the stone railing.

The withered moss in the cracks of the bluestone slabs was saturated with night dew; stepping on it no longer made a rustling sound, but instead felt slightly slippery, producing a very faint squelch as his soles pressed down.

The branches of the crooked locust tree outside the courtyard wall poked halfway over, its leaves washed oily bright by the morning dew, glistening with a damp luster in the morning light.

The air held a cool, stony scent, mixed with the faint smell of sulfur rising from the well water.

Just as Jiang Yan walked to the center of the courtyard, the door of the stone house to the east opened.

A female cultivator walked out from inside.

She was about thirty years old, wearing a moon-white Low Grade Dharma robe.

Her face was beautiful, her brows and eyes gentle and indifferent, and her skin had that pale, indoor-cultivated complexion, unlike the rough, reddened skin of Loose Cultivators who hunted demons and were buffeted by mountain winds.

Her hair was loosely tied back with a plain silver hairpin, with a few stray strands hanging by her ears, which she absentmindedly tucked behind them.

Qi Refining Stage 5. Her spiritual energy fluctuations were steady and soft, and the speed at which her spiritual energy flowed through her Meridians was neither fast nor slow, like a pot of soup simmering on low heat on a stove.

It lacked the sharp, exposed Killing Intent of demon-hunting Loose Cultivators, appearing instead like the mildness cultivated from years of hunching over a desk drawing Talismans indoors.

She also saw Jiang Yan. She was slightly taken aback at first—the fine lines at the corners of her eyes crinkled for a moment, then she smoothed them out into a perfectly measured, faint smile.

"Are you a new neighbor? I saw a formation light up in the west yesterday." Her voice was neither high nor low, and her tone was natural, like someone casually asking an acquaintance at a vegetable market, "What are you buying today?"

"Zhang Yu. I just moved in yesterday." Jiang Yan gave that same fake name, his tone flat.

"Liu Ruyi." She returned the greeting, a very faint smile pulling at the corners of her mouth, though the smile lines vanished almost as quickly as they appeared. "I have lived here in West 17 for three years. Are you an Alchemist or an Artifact Refiner?"

"I have a rough understanding of Artifact Refining."

"No wonder." Liu Ruyi's gaze swept over his hands.

Jiang Yan's fingertips had faint burn marks from contact with spiritual fire, the skin surface tinged with a very pale, dark red.

"The person who lived in the west of this courtyard before was also an Artifact Refiner; later, he saved enough Spirit Stones to move to a Medium Grade Immortal Cave. There is still a scorch mark in the corner of that room where his refining furnace burned the wall."

Her tone held a trace of envy when she said this, but it wasn't deep.

It wasn't the kind of jealous covetousness, but rather a soft sigh of someone who had looked down at their own life and then looked up at someone else's.

"Are you a Talisman master, Fellow Daoist Liu?"

"Just trying to make a living." Liu Ruyi's tone was flat, carrying a hint of self-deprecation as the corners of her mouth dipped down and then quickly snapped back up.

"A Low Grade Tier 1 Talisman master. Drawing Fireball Talismans and Golden Light Talismans is fine, but my success rate for Medium Grade Talismans is less than thirty percent.

I take on some odd jobs at the Spirit Talisman Pavilion, barely enough to pay the rent. In good months, I can save ten or so Spirit Stones; in bad months, after paying rent, I only have a few Spirit Stone fragments left in my pocket."

She deliberately emphasized the words "Spirit Stone fragments," as if mocking herself or perhaps finding humor in her hardship.

Jiang Yan nodded, not continuing the conversation.

He knew the cost and profit of Talismans well—a Fireball Talisman cost less than two Spirit Stones to make, the Spirit Talisman Pavilion bought them for about three, and a Loose Cultivator selling them at their own stall could get up to four.

If one drew one or two hundred a month, after deducting rent and daily expenses, there should be quite a bit left over.

The two walked side by side toward the courtyard gate. The morning mist flowed slowly beneath their feet, and the water vapor from the stone well mixed with the cool scent of morning dew, permeating the courtyard.

"Fellow Daoist Zhang, you are new to Black Stone City, aren't you?" Liu Ruyi asked again. Her gaze swept over Jiang Yan's robes.

A plain gray-blue long robe, devoid of the spiritual energy fluctuations of a Dharma robe, with no Sect or Family markings on the cuffs or collar.

"I arrived a few days ago."

"Then you must be careful, Fellow Daoist." Liu Ruyi's tone lowered slightly, and her pace slowed as well.

As she spoke, she glanced out of the corner of her eye toward the courtyard wall, as if afraid of being overheard. "Although Black Stone City has the rules of the Li Family and the city's law enforcement team is indeed effective, the Li Family doesn't care about affairs between Loose Cultivators once they leave the city. When you go out to purchase spiritual materials, keeping your wealth hidden is of the utmost importance.

Two months ago, a new Loose Cultivator was targeted outside the city. Not only was his Storage Pouch robbed, but his Dantian was destroyed, and he was thrown into a ravine, where he was gnawed by wild wolves until only half a skeleton remained."

She pursed her lips when she said "half a skeleton"; she wasn't trying to scare him, she genuinely found the matter disgusting.

"Thank you for the warning."

Liu Ruyi stopped at the courtyard gate and looked back at him. "I take work at the Spirit Talisman Pavilion in the east of the city. If you need any Talismans, you can come find me. Between neighbors, the price is negotiable."

Jiang Yan acknowledged this, watching her walk east along the alley.

Her figure gradually receded into the morning mist, the hem of her moon-white Dharma robe dragging a faint shadow across the bluestone path.

Jiang Yan withdrew his gaze and turned to walk toward the market in the west of the city.

The morning mist gradually dispersed.

The sun rose above the eastern ridge, sunlight piercing through the lingering mist and casting blurred patches of light onto the stone road.

The shops on both sides of the street had long since opened.

A few Loose Cultivators who hunted demons were squatting at a street corner, dividing last night's spoils.

The corpse of a Wind Wolf had been carved into several pieces and spread out on a piece of oilcloth; the wolf pelt had been half-peeled and hung on a wooden rack nearby, the wolf bones had been picked out and stacked into three piles, and the wolf fangs were packed separately into a coarse porcelain bowl.

The smell of blood, mixed with the cooking smoke from the breakfast stalls along the street, drifted halfway down the street. A few Loose Cultivators waiting to buy wolf bones squatted nearby, clutching Spirit Stones in their hands, haggling listlessly with the leader of the demon-hunting team.

The first stop for his purchases was the Songfeng Medicine Shop opposite Tiancao Hall.

This shop's frontage was a circle smaller than Tiancao Hall's, and the characters on the signboard were written directly onto a wooden board with an ink brush—no gold tracing, no inlaid borders, just three simple characters.

A string of dried medicinal herbs hung from the lintel, including angelica, astragalus, and a few pieces of tree bark whose names he didn't know; they swayed whenever the wind blew, emitting a mixed scent of herbal medicine.

The shopkeeper's surname was Zhou; he was a tall, thin man with high cheekbones and deep-set eye sockets, his two eyeballs spinning rapidly within those sunken orbits.

When Jiang Yan entered the shop, he was using a small scale to weigh some poria; the scale beam was as steady in his hand as if it had been welded in place. Finally, he set the scale on the counter and lifted his eyes to scan Jiang Yan.

"What are you buying, Fellow Daoist?"

Jiang Yan handed over a list.