Just as Yise was about to enter a ritual-implement shop, an unfamiliar aroma brushed his nose.

'Food?'

There was ordinarily little smell of food along the Cultivators' shopping street. Cultivators above a certain realm had no need to eat, while those at lower realms simply ate in the ordinary people's streets. They gave off almost no impure energy, either, leaving the Cultivators' street strangely odorless. At most, a whiff of spiritual-herb tea brewed for a shop's customers would occasionally drift out.

Yet here was the smell of food. Rich, oily food at that.

As though entranced, Yise followed the scent. A small restaurant stood at the corner of an alley. Beside its door, neat standard-script lettering read “West Lake Immortal Cuisine,” with a boastful line beneath it: “West Lake Market Town's Only Immortal Cuisine Restaurant.”

He pushed the door open, and the rich aroma assailed his nose even more strongly.

"Welcome!"

Shown to a seat by the proprietor, he checked the menu. Prices ranged from three to ten spirit stones.

'Cheap.'

"One each of the red-braised pork, Dongpo pork, and Yangchun noodles."

"Coming right up!"

The proprietor immediately disappeared into the kitchen. Soon the sounds of heating oil, boiling noodle water, and a knife striking a chopping board emerged all at once. The dishes arrived on the table one by one.

Yise reached for the red-braised pork first. The thick chunks of pork gleamed with reddish-brown sauce. Each was as long as two finger joints, with a line of finely chopped scallions over the top. The meat parted tenderly at the mere touch of his chopsticks.

'Pass.'

In his mind, Yise handed the cook a tablet certifying his success. If only the man's realm hadn't been so low for his age, the flavor would have made Yise want to take him straight to Daemudo and put him to work as a cook.

There was a reason it was cheap, though. This immortal cuisine merely had its impure energy removed; it was food for pleasure, not something that aided cultivation. By that measure, even these prices weren't particularly low. He was a little disappointed, but still scraped every dish clean.

He might no longer feel hunger, but his sense of taste remained. In the moment that exquisite flavor traveled from his tongue to his brain, Yise felt alive.

"That was a good meal."

He gladly settled the bill and left the restaurant.

After watching a nearby troupe perform a face-changing show and a puppet play, he headed for a ritual-implement shop. He needed to hurry and find a flying ritual implement.

On the way, he changed course to visit an ordinary people's jewelry shop and bought a jade ring that would suit his master. He also discovered a spiritual herb that had unknowingly found its way into an ordinary herbalist's stock and placed it in his spiritual-herb pouch. The ordinary people's periodic market proved more rewarding than expected, so he wandered around for quite some time before heading back toward the ritual-implement shops.

He began browsing the shops in earnest. His target was Foundation Establishment ritual implements. Prices started at a thousand spirit stones. Each shop stocked only one or two, and even those varied widely in quality. He had to visit five shops before finding something he liked.

The Clear Shadow Sword.

It was a sword-shaped ritual implement, priced at fifteen hundred spirit stones. Having lost the hand axe that had been his primary weapon, he intended to try a sword, if only as a stopgap. A weapon was just something you held and swung, anyway, wasn't it?

He would have preferred an axe-shaped implement, since he was used to one, but apparently unpopular weapons like that required a custom order. Yise couldn't understand why they were unpopular. He rather pitied Cultivators who didn't know how satisfying an axe felt in the hand.

As he moved between shops, his divine sense picked up a familiar figure: Hui Dan, the first-star staff member from the External Affairs Pavilion. The orphan boy Giwon was with her. A moment later, a familiar voice reached him.

"Senior!"

Yise turned.

"There you are! I've been looking everywhere for you."

"Hmm? What for?"

"Ta-da! Look!"

Hui Dan brought Giwon forward from behind her. Clean and well fed, the boy looked much healthier.

"Hello, sir."

"Hello. You're looking well."

"I wanted to tell you I'm doing a good job with your commission. I kept asking the secluded-abode office when you'd come out, but you took such a long time!"

"I did."

"And not long ago, I found lodgings inside the West Lake Guild and moved Giwon and the children there. Their old home was far too dangerous."

"Thank you. You're doing well."

He really did seem to have chosen the right person. Pleased with his choice, Yise offered his approval.

"Right? On that note, Senior, are you still not interested in joining the West Lake Guild? The terms they're offering are incredibly generous. Perhaps you could at least consider—"

"Sorry. I'll be leaving for another region soon."

Hui Dan fell silent, dejected. Apparently he had become fairly well known here, too, if the local ruling power was sending a recruitment offer through a Cultivator he knew.

"I said I'd come by in five to ten years, but I might not be able to. Even so, I'm trusting you with them."

"Yes..."

Yise offered encouragement to the utterly transparent Cultivator, adding that she should raise Giwon well.

* * *

Only after scouring every ritual-implement shop in West Lake Guild territory did Yise finally find the flying ritual implement he wanted.

'Flying ritual implements are quite hard to come by.'

He committed this new piece of knowledge to memory as well.

The White Luan Boat.

It was a flying ritual implement shaped like a small boat, engraved with the image of a white bird. Large enough to carry two people, it cost forty-five hundred spirit stones.

'Expensive, though.'

Considering that the Divine Wind Cloud sold on the main mountain cost thirty-eight hundred and seated only one, the price was reasonably understandable.

"I'm not very fond of the color or shape. Don't you have anything else?"

"Unfortunately, this is the only one. I haven't heard of any other shops receiving flying ritual implements, either, so it's the only one currently available in West Lake Guild territory."

"I want one shaped like a cloud."

"You're looking for a flying cloud, then. I'm afraid you'll have to try another market town."

"No helping it. Could I try riding it?"

"Certainly, Senior."

The merchant took out the White Luan Boat and placed it at Yise's feet. After stepping aboard, Yise asked,

"How do I operate it?"

"Feed spiritual energy into it, then steer with your divine sense."

Yise set his foot on the White Luan Boat and channeled spiritual energy inside. It rose lightly, lifting his feet about a foot above the ground.

"Ooh."

The exclamation escaped him unbidden. He had wanted to ride a cloud, but a flying boat didn't seem so bad either.

He tried moving the White Luan Boat with his divine sense. But at that very moment, it stopped rising and flipped upside down, driving the crown of his head into the shop floor.

"..."

Yise stood up as though nothing had happened.

The merchant's face was expressionless, but his breathing was growing labored and his face was turning red. As though he were holding back laughter. His twitching lips suggested a desperate struggle to maintain his composure.

"You can laugh. I won't eat you."

"N-no, Senior. I wouldn't dare..."

"But isn't this thing defective?"

Yise sounded needlessly sulky. He wasn't nitpicking out of embarrassment; something really was strange.

"... Th-that shouldn't be possible."

A trickle of cold sweat ran down the merchant's face.

"We're a directly operated West Lake Guild shop, and this item was shipped by the guild itself. This type undergoes two inspections before shipment."

"How exactly am I supposed to steer it with divine sense?"

"I'm only at Qi Refining, so I don't really know what divine sense is..."

Yise nudged the White Luan Boat over with his foot. Then he tried steering it again and toppled onto the floor.

This thing really did seem defective.

"Y-you are going to buy it, aren't you? If you're still deciding, perhaps you could handle it a little more carefully..."

The merchant's eyes were anxious as he spoke, cold sweat continuing to pour down his face.

* * *

The White Luan Boat cut a white streak across the clear sky. Aboard the flying boat adorned with a white bird, Yise took out a magnetic compass to check his direction.

South, more than ten thousand li and several thousand beyond that. Across the vast territory of the Jeong Empire, all the way to the mountains at its far end where Daemudo's main mountain stood in the Three Kingdoms of the Peninsula. Even without knowing the exact bearing, he could reach the Three Kingdoms as long as he kept heading south. Whatever else he might forget, he remembered the coastline clearly.

Part of him wanted to visit other regions of the Jeong Empire. What he had seen in Hanrim City alone had brought home how different the Eastern Continent was from the Three Kingdoms of the Peninsula. What sights might await deeper in the empire's heartland?

More precisely, he couldn't let go of the thought that traveling around the continent might lead him to better ritual implements.

'There'll be another chance.'

His travels had already gone on too long. With his binding contract intact, the main mountain would know he was alive, but too long a delay could invite misunderstanding. He poured more spiritual energy into the White Luan Boat. The flying boat, which he had grown accustomed to by now, picked up speed.

Below his feet, the Jeong Empire's cities slipped past, tiny as models, while feathery clouds played on either side. Yise savored the wind aboard the White Luan Boat.

'... This is pleasant.'

He dimly recalled the days when he had bounded over mountainsides like a roe deer or water deer. How exhausting it had been to run everywhere, climbing mountains, crossing rivers, traversing ruins. At times he had wondered whether he was a Daoist at all, rather than a wild animal.

Now even that would become a memory of a vanished past. Yise gave a brief chuckle.

It happened then. An enormous divine sense touched his own.

The smile vanished from his lips. His divine sense hadn't even detected this enemy. Yet the enemy's vast divine sense had engulfed him as though swallowing him whole.

"Stop."

The voice did not ring through his ears. It was a message driven straight into his mind.

Yise immediately poured as much spiritual energy as he could into the White Luan Boat, forcing it faster. Instinct told him with absolute certainty that he must not be caught.

But his flight did not last long. Both the White Luan Boat and his body froze in midair. He could not move a muscle, as though struck by a paralyzing poison. Soon, a white-haired old man appeared from somewhere and approached slowly, floating through the air.

"You dare flee when I, a Patriarch, am speaking to you?"

The old man looked well past sixty. His robes were made of immaculate gray-blue silk, and a jade pendant swayed at his waist. Yet a menacing presence wholly at odds with his appearance poured from him.

"My apologies. I mistook it for an attack by a demonic Cultivator."

Yise greeted him respectfully.

"Who do you belong to?"

"I'm an independent Cultivator."

POP!

Yise's right eye burst. There was no warning whatsoever. His eyeball simply dissolved into a spray of dark blood within its socket, leaving empty darkness behind.

He did not scream. More vivid than the pain was the sense of danger. The peril born of the gulf between him and the old man sent a chill down his spine.

"An independent Cultivator barely past twenty, already at Foundation Establishment and riding a flying boat? Do not lie to me. This is the only time I will overlook your insolence."

"... How can an orthodox Cultivator persecute a junior without cause?"

"A cause is easy enough to invent."

The old man chuckled dryly and looked in the direction Yise had been traveling.

"You're heading south. Are you from Daemudo?"

"..."

"Then you must be a spy Daemudo has sent into the empire. As an elder who protects the Jeong Empire, I cannot let a spy leave alive. How is that for a cause?"

Blood trickled from the place where his eye had burst. Blood and cold sweat ran down from different directions, merging as they flowed.

'Can I survive this?'