Part 4
Meishen had anticipated a wait and so was not too anxious, or at least no more anxious than usual, to not hear from Disciple Hardy immediately. She spent her time between cooking sessions working on opening up that heart meridian, filling it with wood qi as much and as often as she could, and on improving her basic cultivation with the Sect’s Dreaming Earth Art.
The meridian was coming along nicely and would greatly improve her basic cultivation rate but also work with her other wood-aligned meridians to allow her to learn an appraisal Art. She needed a better way to assess her ingredients and while the finest of such Arts were a long way away from her, she had found a cousin art to the Firelight Watch that would work with her fire-aligned meridians and her wood-aligned ones to feel the quality and nature of organic materials by touch and sight. Not terribly well of course, her cauldron would be her best option for detailed analysis, but she could hardly use that on goods for sale at the market or on things found in the Grove.
Her study and practice of the Dreaming Earth was not so smooth. Her physical cultivation was slow and her focus on cooking meant she tended to progress her spiritual cultivation in fits and starts. A perfected recipe, a breakthrough with a cooking technique, the discovery of a new combination of flavours or some such, these things would help boost her mind and soul and would fuel her cultivation that way. It meant that the time between successes in the kitchen was often full of slow, hard slogs of meditation and breathing exercises, of painstakingly accruing the right blend of earth, stone and wood qi in her dantian drop by drop.
Add in the new challenge of learning to infuse qi into the storage formations of the cube and her Dewdrop Mint plant pot, and Meishen didn’t have time to worry about her newly ratified contract with the inner disciple. She was busy juggling half a dozen endeavours that each required all the hours in the day and then some and each needed to be worked on as soon as possible. She arose before the late autumn dawn each day and narrowly avoided falling asleep every evening over the table and her notes, the cube, and one time her dinner.
Little Verdure helped where he could, keeping a weather eye on her mint plant so she did not miss watering or tending to it, helping keep her other potted plants - mundane but still useful and cared for - growing healthily too. He spent a lot of time in his den outside though, behind her little garden - her collection of plant pots - in the loam and the mulch where the surrounding qi would speed along his own development. Meishen felt quietly certain that he would have his first shedding, the equivalent of stepping into the middle stage of the spirit beast equivalent of first realm, at some point over the coming winter. She would need to get a better handle on her work soon, and start preparing a proper hibernation spot for him to grow properly, safely in.
Another item for her list of tasks to do: source the spirit cores that Little Verdure would need, as well as more materials for protective arrays and arrays to support his growth.
She also needed to jot a note down for Nakki and Mii to apologise for not being able to make their fortnightly afternoons for tea and snacks or shopping any time soon. She would be far too busy to spare so much time and chances were that Naruki at least would also be busy. The winter contests were approaching and Naruki would be spending every spare second practising and cultivating like every other combat-focused disciple hoping to move up into the Inner Sect.
It was a week into this new, driven, hectic schedule that Hardy appeared at her doorstep again. Unannounced once more, there was simply another knock at the door one evening, while Meishen was trying to parse the meaning of a particularly oblique section from Elder Tola’s slip of horticulture. Something about the variation of qi absorption speed through roots and leaves due to varying levels of stored qi, the mechanisms of which Meishen was finding as intuitive as well… Well, it wasn’t intuitive. At all. She was half pondering if she just needed a cup of tea when the knocking at the door startled her out of her skin.
Narrowly avoiding rapping her knees on the underside of the table when the noise jolted her out of her reverie, she nevertheless scrambled to her feet and hurried over to open the door. Silhouetted against the twilight by the warm light of the cottage’s lamps, Hardy still appeared as some looming monolith rather than a person. An impression made none better by the misshapen silhouette he presented - as her eyes adjusted, Meishen saw the Leafstag carcass for what it was. She hoped she masked her surprise at both the unplanned visit and the stag both but somehow she doubted it. He didn’t strike her as the unobservant type and she hadn’t been prepared to hide her emotions quite enough.
“Greetings, Disciple Hardy,” she gave a polite bow, unable to quite take her eyes off what must have been the largest stag she had ever seen come from Leafbone Grove.
“Evening, Torrinden.” Hardy gestured to the carcass with a flick of the fingers on his free hand, “is there somewhere convenient to put this?”
“Ah, yes, if you could please come through to the kitchen,” Meishen lead the way through the main room, across the tiny hallway and into the kitchen. Her unanticipated guest said nothing as he followed her through across the cramped little hallway connecting the three rooms of the cottage with its worn plaster walls and faded hanging scrolls. She did notice that Hardy took care not to let the stag carcass catch on the door frame or walls, despite the breadth of its antlers. How he managed this successfully, she was not entirely sure but nevertheless, he reached the kitchen without incident where she would have struggled to get such a large burden through the narrow doorways unscathed.
“There will be fine,” Meishen gestured and there was no need for further detail, the hefty wooden slab of her butchers table and workbench dominated the compact but densely furnished kitchen. Hardy lay the leafstag down with evident care and then stepped back. He didn’t need to say anything, it was clear he meant for her to inspect the goods before she paid for them.
She started at the hooves, checking for injuries and infections along the fragile ankles which would affect the meat as much as the meat itself and worked her way up along each leg in search of imperfections and damage before working from the head down the flanks. Hardy assisted wordlessly in flipping the carcass over to allow her to check the other side and the spine. As expected, it was as perfect as could be - one small wound from where Hardy had felled the beast with what looked to have been a single sword thrust - and no other marks or injuries that would reduce the usable quantity of meat or reduce the sale value of the other parts. Meishen didn’t need to pull out a talisman of measures to know that the stag was a hundredweight in meat alone. Naruki had brought her a hundredweight including the bones, the hide, the antlers, yet this relative behemoth was double that. Even the vines around its antlers were bountiful in comparison to the previous stag and would surely fetch a princely sum at the market from eager alchemists.
Satisfied no end with the quality, which was beyond anything she ever thought she’d be working with as an outer sect disciple, Meishen did then pull a talisman of measures out of a little box on her packed shelves, with a brush from her storage ring it was a moment’s work to add the characters needed to direct the talisman to measure weight and then attach it to the stag. Unsurprisingly, the talisman slowly began to display the numbers, and within a few beats was proudly showing a measure of 212 weight.
“Call it two hundredweight.” Hardy said from behind her, clearly able to read the talisman over her shoulder.
“If you are certain?” Meishen turned to face him as she asked, unsure if this offer was genuine or not, it would make only 6 stones difference in his payment - a paltry sum to such a senior inner disciple - but most would insist on the full amount as a matter of course. Hardy simply shrugged. “Another bowl of stew wouldn’t go amiss if you feel it’d be short-changing me otherwise.”
Perhaps he really didn’t care about the monetary value, Meishen wondered briefly what it was he needed so badly from the Grove that he’d do this work so cheaply just to gain access. Not that it mattered to her but that it would last long enough for her to get better established in the sect and better supplied. “Of course,” She agreed readily to the older disciple’s suggestion, “I can give you some from my stasis box now, if you’d like?”
“I’d appreciate it.” He said, with barely a shrug.
The box was right there to their left, so Meishen fetched three portions immediately, each wrapped tightly in enhanced waxpaper and perfectly cold to the touch, as with all things kept outside the reach of time and energy. She offered these up in mute propitiation to this hunting god she seems to have earned the favour of, and while he stored them away in his interspatial ring, she also retrieved another box from her shelves, one that looked very inconspicuous among all the various pots and boxes of spices and herbs and cooking paraphernalia but was actually her lockbox. More secure than her ring, which might get stolen, and with greater capacity it held the bulk of her expensive items and her finances. The method of retrieval was much the same though, there was no need to open the box up, Meishen simply rested her palm on the top while the security arrays synchronised with her qi, then withdrew a single large spirit stone, this one gleamed a deep blue but was carved in the imperial style and marked with the imperial seal for a stone of 100 in value. It was a significant portion of the monthly stipend the sect issued to her and would have been painful to part with were it not for the unmatched bounty laid out upon the table before her.
“I am grateful for the quick delivery and for such quality,” Meishen gave Hardy a small bow with her hands holding the spirit stone out before her, just to make a point of how grateful she truly was. This was beyond her wildest expectations, especially for the almost comically low price agreed upon.
“You’re quite welcome,” he replied, as he stashed the last of the wrapped meals away in his ring. He lifted the proffered stone so gently from her hands that Meishen felt for an instant as if she was about to drop it and nearly clutched it back out of reflex. “Same again in two weeks?” He asked, nonchalant as if he hadn’t just furnished her with a month of meat already.
“Would you be able to forage for Demon’s Eye Shallots, Dewdrop Mint and perhaps any other seasonal vegetables, rather than hunt? If, if it is not too much to ask of course.” Meishen asked, a little nervous.
Hardy simply shrugged again, “certainly, if you’ll pay for a delivery of fiftyweight next week and again the week after, I’ll do it.” Meishen could have wept. All this meat this week and in a week more vegetables? The great spirits smiled on her, truly, that this strange disciple was so agreeable to helping her.
“Then please, if you could forage for that, I would be most appreciative.” Meishen for an instant considered offering more stew or even some baked goods if it would endear Hardy even more to the prospect of foraging for her rather than hunting, but decided that might be too much. That he would take portions of her work-in-progress stew in place of financial reimbursement, however slight, was best treated as an exception to the rule and not a sign of his general disposition in any sense. It was a gift enough that he’d agreed to this contractual arrangement at all.
“I’ll get it done,” was all Hardy said, before turning to leave. Meishen followed him out to the front door to see him off, privately glad he wasn’t the type to expect tea and sweetmeats after every transaction. She gave a final bow, hands clasped before her as stepped out the door onto her porch.
“Good evening, Torrinden.” He gave a polite nod and strode off into the night without another word.
At once exhausted and ecstatic, Meishen closed the door softly and returned to the kitchen, she wanted to go back to her studies or better yet go to bed, but first she had a carcass to dress. That stag was worth far more than the hundred spirit stones she had paid for it and she had no intention of letting this windfall go tot the slightest waste.
What followed was not the studious evening she had anticipated, but it was very productive. The meat was high quality and plentiful, the hide expansive and sure to sell well to an artisan, the vines from the antlers were draped over the bone spurs in great swathes of leafy, bounteous overgrowth and would probably bring an alchemist or two to tears. The work of taking all of these things apart into the appropriate parcels and bundles was laborious, difficult and above all messy. Meishen did it all without pause or hesitation, a smile on her face for every last moment of the hours spent at the butchers table.
Would that all of her contracts in future could be as profitable as this one was proving to be.
Indeed, the meat was exceptional, the hide and the rest of the stag sold for even higher prices than Meishen had anticipated - she made back half the cost of what she’d paid Hardy, the alchemists were still sweating over that assignment that called for leafstag vines it seemed - and so she could stock up on less urgently needed herbs, spice and consumables that she’d nevertheless been worried about her supplied of. She even secured an enhanced stone plate that drew in wood-qi to go under Little Verdure’s lair for while he was shedding to help his growth from an artisan willing to cut a steep deal if she would but sell the antlers to them at double what she had sold the last pair for.
This windfall lightened her steps for a full week, during which she finally had something of a breakthrough with feeding qi into the cube where suddenly the channelling seemed so much more straightforward than before, as if she had at last mastered the basic flows needed. Mer meridian was progressing nicely, as was her study of the Dreaming Earth Art for once. Most importantly, Meishen was already drawing closer to a perfected stew. The quality ingredients seemed much more accepting of qi infusion, allowing her finer control over the qi-centric steps in the recipe. She had applied, with no small amount of dithering and anxiety, to Elder Farafitti for an extension on the deadline for her recipe of just one more week, that she might make the fullest use of Disciple Hardy’s next delivery to make the best showing of the completed stew that she possibly could.
The approval had been given and Meishen had thrown her all at getting the last details ironed out. Naruki, Layfon, Nina and even their squadmate Sharnid whom Meishen knew only a little, all received stacks of wrapped stew portions. She had half the stag meat left only thanks to the beast’s prodigious size, any other amount would have been mostly depleted already with how many batches she had cooked up, tested, analysed and then given away to a friend. Each package of food came with a warning of course, not to eat it all at once for risk of interfering with one’s normal qi flows and even damaging meridians with an overly concentrated influx of earth and fire-qi but at the same time, to those currently using up vast amounts of their qi in training every day, the limits on how much could be safely consumed were higher than normal. Naruki had even dropped by with Mifi just to thank her for the food, it was very much helping the purple-haired fighter keep up with the more experienced members of her alliance and their greater qi reserves. Meishen had waved such gratitude aside of course, if not Naruki and Mifi, who else deserved the little help that she could give?
Mifi had hinted at wishing to know how Meishen had come about her sudden windfall in ingredients and spirit stones both, but Meishen knew better than to say a word about her contract with Disciple Hardy. Mifi specialised in intelligence gathering above all else and whilst she’d never do anything to harm Meishen’s prospects in the Sect, Meishen didn’t want to risk drawing the equally intelligence-focused Disciple Loss’s attention because Mifi had let slip she knew Hardy was hunting on Meishen’s behalf. Inner disciples could be so strange about being known to work with outer disciples sometimes, as if they didn’t like to admit they’d been in the outer sect themselves at one time. It wouldn’t be unthinkable for Loss to want to bury the information that his right-hand man had a side-job contracted with a mere second-year outer disciple.
Meishen instead divulged some choice gossip let slip by overeager alchemists too distracted by armfuls of leafstag vines about a certain outer disciple competing with another next month for a place under the tutelage of a particular Elder. Meishen hadn’t recognised any of the names involved but she had suspected Mifi would and indeed Mifi left as smug as a cream-fed cat. Perhaps too smug. Meishen hoped the news didn’t make it into the newsletter the other girl circulated among certain influential outer disciples. She had only meant to distract Mifi but perhaps that had been more of a juicy piece of intel than she had anticipated.
The work of quantifying the last details of the recipe combined with her new routine studies of qi transfer, tending to her garden and working on her base cultivation kept Meishen busy until, true to his word, Hardy knocked on her door once again. This time Meishen fancied she knew it was him and not one of her friends by the sound. No-one else would have such a decisive knock, she told herself as she hurried to answer the door.
“Evening, Torrinden,” the older disciple gave her what she suspected would often be his greeting. He quirked an eyebrow at her. She felt it was a comment on her lack of surprise as his presence this time, or maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part.
“Greetings, Disciple Hardy,” Meishen erred on the side of polity as she always did, and welcomed him into the main room of her cottage immediately, stepping back to let the hulking fighter through the door.
“Been cooking?” He asked, as he followed her through to the kitchen once more.
“Yes, I am working on perfecting the ratios of the seasonings.” Meishen explained, “it requires just a little more fine tuning.”
“Hmmmm,” the other disciple made a noise of understanding behind her as they stepped through into the kitchen. Meishen moved a large crockpot of steaming hot stew, a chopping board holding a freshly sliced loaf of dark bread and her testing cauldron out of the way so that the table was clear for Hardy to set out what he’d brought for her. As before, the quantity and quality both were exceptional, Meishen had to wonder how deep into the Grove Hardy was going on these hunting excursions to find such culinary treasures.
Two hefty bunches of the Demon’s Eye Shallots she had requested, three bushels of Dewdrop Mint, then two more of some of the most luscious bitterstem she had seen outside a kitchen preparing a noble feast, two bushels again of nectarleaf and then another of Lilypond Cress with its characteristic road leaves. There was even a bunch of wild Stoneye Potatoes and another of Heartblood Beetroots with their gruesome appearances and distinct smell.
“Might be able to get a few types of mushroom next week,” Hardy gave a half shrug, “found them but getting to them could be a challenge.”
“I would be happy for any mushrooms you could get, but any seasonal produce is of course acceptable.” Meishen made sure to stress the ‘any’, as she had no desire to seem demanding. That said, her mind was already whirling with thoughts of what she could try with a broader selection of fungi than those available on the market where the varieties on sale were usually alchemical in focus.
“’s no trouble.” He said, “I’m hoping to fight the beast that holds the area as territory either way.”
Meishen had thought it was perhaps to train himself on the Grove’s more ferocious inhabitants that Hardy needed such regular access, she supposed this confirmed it. Most preferred to train mostly against other disciples, wilier and more skilled opponents than any beast, but evidently Hardy preferred otherwise.
She was about to utter some banal platitude - the best she had to offer when she was not at all a fighter herself - but Hardy waved a hand in the general direction of the produce on the table and Meishen instead nodded. She had goods to assess and weigh. How she wished she already had that appraisal Art available to her but alas, she had yet to open the required meridian.
The hard way it was. She pored over the vegetables and herbs, each one as superb as the last. She could find not a single cause for complaint and instead found herself puzzled as to how a warrior who was well known for his rigorous training regimen and had an obvious knack for hunting should be so capable at foraging for wild produce, even in a place replete with such plants? A mystery she would probably never know the answer to, she told herself as she fetched a wicker basket from the bottom of her shelves to weigh the produce in. Not that there’s any doubt it’s at least twenty-five weight, she thought. Not when the potatoes were over ten weight on their own.
“Thirty-seven weight,” she read the talisman’s glowing numbers aloud, which would be eighteen and a half spirit stones. She produced these stones from her storage ring, even the polished shard that made for a half stone in value. Turning she held out the resulting handful of scintillant gemstone pieces only for Hardy to deftly pluck merely fifteen stones out of the bunch.
“I found your last stew to be very beneficial,” he nodded towards the still-steaming pot on the side. “If you’ve any spare, then consider that the rest of the payment owed.”
“Ah- Yes, I have plenty. But, would you like to have some of the fresh batch here and then take some of the preserved away after?” Meishen would not be the first to say the inner disciple was harmless in appearance. He was very much intimidating even now, but she felt that as long as she was polite and reasonable he would at least be civil. Not her first choice in dinner guest but not the last.
“I’d not impose on you,” Hardy gave her a mild look, “if you had plans, then I shall leave you be.”
“Not at all, please, it really does taste best fresh.” Meishen said, and only after realised she perhaps ought to have said ‘it would be an honour’ or ‘you would be a most welcome guest’ or some other suitably flattering platitude. Taciturn and very laid back in his approach even to mere outer disciples he may have been, he was still an inner disciple of the sect and one earmarked for great things. It would not to do begin treating him the same way she treated Nina, Felli and their teammates.
“Then I’d be glad to join you, Torrinden.” Hardy quirked his eyebrow as if he had some inkling as to Meishen’s sudden internal panic, even as the spirit stones vanished into his interspatial ring.
It was the work of but a quarter hour to see Hardy comfortably seated at the table in the main room, the produce stored safely and properly, Little Verdure woken from his evening nap to gnaw on a stag bone, and then serve up two portions of hot venison stew, warm bread and another dry wine.
Meishen knew plenty of her fellow disciples made a point of buying expensive wines and spirits to serve guests, and certainly they were happy to spend small fortunes on suitably flashy vintages. She found that the chosen varieties were always the same few though, and the rest languished on the shelves where she could pick and choose from all sorts of wines, liquors and such to find the right ones to pair with what she would be cooking. A fact that came in handy when she had to host unexpectedly. She rarely didn’t have a good beverage available to go with whatever she was serving guests and today was no exception.
Once more, Hardy proved neat but quick with his chopsticks. A heaped bowl and two thick-cut slices of soft bread vanished in record time. Meishen didn’t stint on his portion for dinner, she didn’t stint with fetching more from the stasis box to send away with him either. She made polite excuses while he sipped at the last of the wine and slipped away into the kitchen to put together some of the best food she had to hand for him to take away. Some cultivators naturally processed elixirs more efficiently than others, some could wring the fullest benefits of qi-infused food, and if Hardy was in that category then Meishen had a chance at building a longer term arrangement with him on the basis of food for materials.
Eight packages of stew, two loaves of bread that she had also had in stasis, and given that he had very graciously let slip three and a half stones of payment when he was already charging her shards to stones, a dozen breakfast pastries found their way to the top of the pile. These were a small assortment of the snacks she liked to make regularly and keep around for lunches on-the-go or with friends. A few meaty buns, some bean-paste buns, and then sweet glazed flaky pastries too. She hoped fervently that Hardy or his friends had a sweet tooth, that the sticky treats would be as appreciated as the savoury buns.
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