Cultivating Common Sense In A Xianxia World Chapter 34: First Stones

The River Fork Academy was finished in the first week of winter. Right on schedule.

The cultivation hall walls had gone up by the tenth day of autumn work, single-storey, running north-south along the river side of the training ground. The clinic building followed, connected by the covered walkway Fen had designed without being asked.

The classroom at the gate end had been complete since before the foundations cured, because Fen worked the way he worked and nobody told him to wait. The last section of plaster dried on the cultivation hall's interior the morning the first frost ca.

Standing at the training ground's center and turning slowly, it looked like what I had wanted it to look.

The cultivation hall faced the river, the zones laid out from flat practice ground near the water to the hillside impact structures, each space was distinct and legible.

The closest comparison I had from either life was a dojo, which I was thought to appear inviting and holy.

Gao Ren had opinions about everything and was right about most of them. Ru had opinions about everything and was right about the rest. The two of them had spent three weeks arguing which I began to realize might have been their own way of companionship.

His daughter Gao Shu worked alongside them from the first day, carrying stone and mixing composite and asking questions that Ru answered with kindness.

The Wei brothers ran the heavy labor with the sa effort that they brought to everything.

Shan Pei managed the timber framing with four of the Luan cousins and finished two days ahead of schedule.

Ma and Tao hauled ridge clay before sunrise without complaint.

Zhao Jun mixed composite every morning without being asked.

When the last wall was plastered and the walkway roof was on, I told Luan i we were having a feast.

She said she had already started cooking.

The feast ran into the night.

Ru and Gao Ren stood near each other through most of it and shared a cup of rice win. Three weeks of shared problem-solving had built a grudging respect, or in my eyes, a relationship.

Shan Pei carried Gao Shu on his shoulders until she fell asleep on them, at which point he stood very still for the rest of the conversation as if nothing had changed.

Hao's youngest child fell face-first into the grass and required consolation from Wei Ru.

The Wei brothers started a stone-skipping competition at the river's edge that Duan won and made wonder if Hao had been teaching them.

I sat with Suyin in the midst of the revelry on the low wall and watched the firelight move across the cultivation hall's new walls.

"It looks good," she said.

I nodded. "It does."

She had two cups of rice wine in her hands which she had brought to without saying she was going to. She handed one to and kept the other and we both took a sip at the sa ti.

"Mother would have liked this," I couldn’t help but say it as I stared a the finished building. It was a very humbly built school but, I couldn’t help but think that Mother would have especially loved the clinical wing.

Suyin looked at the walls and gave a soft smile. "She would have also made sure that everyone was well fed."

I smiled at the remark because it was true.

"Don’t forget that she also asked to look after you," Suyin said inbetween sips.

I stared at my cup as I rembered her last monts and felt my heart sink into my stomach. “Yea…”

"I'm reminding you because I take what she said very seriously, and it’s why I’m telling you to drink up.”

A chuckle escaped my lips at her words. "Is getting to drink wine your way of looking after ?"

"Yes, it is, because you don’t know how to relax and I intend to teach you how,” She took a sip and gave a refreshing sigh of relief.

She then gave a once over and touched her cup to mine. "Liang, drink."

I drank. The wine was good, better than last year's, which ant Wang Su's supply lines had reached sowhere with better grain.

The fire in the courtyard had dropped to a steady burn, and Shan Pei was still standing with Gao Shu asleep on his shoulders, talking to Zhao Ping in a low voice so that he didn’t rouse Gao Shu awake. In the distance I heard Hao laughing at sothing one of his wives had said.

I looked at the cultivation hall's walls, and in turn I couldn’t help but wonder about the unfamiliar roads on the map that Commander Xu had given .

"I need your help with sothing," I said suddenly.

Suyin raised a brow. "Right now?"

"Yes. It's sothing that has been bothering for quite so ti.”

She looked at . "What kind of sothing?"

"It’s an area on the map that I can’t place. Co inside and I’ll show you.”

She stood, looked back at the feast, then turned to look at once more. "You know, when I said that I wanted to make sure you relaxed….I kind of ant more than just drinking."

"I know, but we can do that anyti,” I said in a casual manner as I walked toward the house.

There was a mont of stunned silence before Suyin follow behind .

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"I don’t care if that’s the wine talking, I’m still going to hold you to that!" she said in a sing-song voice.

She followed inside. Her face, when she ca through the door, was a deep color of red, and she set her cup down and did not look at directly.

I spread the map across the table and weighed down the corners.

South of Hekou's position, below the hill tribe territory, there was a notation I hadn't seen on any garrison docunt or administrative chart. A thin line running from a cluster of villages in the Qinghe eastern territories down through a corridor in the southern highlands and back north again. It didn't connect to any garrison road and it didn't pass through any nad settlent. It terminated near a river confluence two days' ride south of Hekou.

That’s what I pointed to. "That line. What do you think about it?"

She leaned over the map and the color in her face settled. Wei Suyin had a sharp mind and she was good at putting pieces of information together, it ca with her work in dicine.

"That's not a garrison road," she said while cupping her chin in thought. "It runs through the hill tribe territory, and it may be near where Shan Pei’s tribe is from if I’m not mistaken.”

I looked at the southern highlands notation. Shan Pei had co from sowhere in that country before the border campaign brought him to Hekou. He never talked much about it and it was out of respect that I had not pressed him.

"If you ca north from Qinghe's eastern villages through the hill country and followed the river system, then you would co out near our position. Soone using that route would bypass every garrison checkpoint on the main road."

"It might be a road that’s old enough to predate either Lord's network,” Wei Suyin observed.

"Which also ans information moving on that route doesn't move through Wen's office either,” I said.

She straightened up from the map. "But we don't know who uses it, or if anyone still does."

"No." I traced the line one more ti. "But we know soone who might."

She looked at . "Wang Su."

"He's been running routes through this region for several years. He knows the roads he doesn't take as well as the ones he does. That's how rchants stay alive in contested territory." I folded the map to the Qinghe border section.

"If there's a passage through the southern hill country that cos up near the river fork, he'll know about it. Or he'll know soone else who does."

Suyin looked at the map. "He also moves through the eastern garrison circuit. If Qinghe is repositioning forces, he'll have seen the signs."

I studied the map and let a sigh escape . "Which ans we have two things to ask him."

"He won't just tell us," she said. "Not if it feels like we're mining him."

"No. We need to give him sothing first." I looked at the map. "Supply manifests and administrative notation, that's what he would find valuable because it allows him to gauge the market."

Suyin nodded. "He'll take that." She pulled the map toward her and looked at the southern section again. "I'll ask about the southern passage and you can ask about the garrison.” Then afterward she quickly added, “But what if he doesn't know about the southern route?"

"Then that’s valuable information for us too." I folded the map back into its oilskin. "Either way we know more now than we did before."

I put the map back on the shelf. Outside, the feast was winding down. Hao's voice carried over the wall while calling one of his children over for bed.

"When does Wang Su co back through?" she asked.

"In eight days," I began to say. "He runs the eastern circuit before the first frost. He'll be through here on his way back north."

"Then we better be ready by then," she said, and went back to the feast.

Wang Su arrived when the frost began to stick onto the ground.

He walked the completed school before he said anything else. He stood at the cultivation hall entrance and gave the clinic room and classroom a once over before walking back to where I stood and said: "This is not what I expected."

My gaze remained fixed on the school. "What did you expect?"

"A larger training ground with a weapon’s wrack. Instead, looks like a school of thought, not a school of combat."

"It’s possible to do both," I said, and left it at that.

He accepted this my words and we settled the trade business: paper and ink, iron surplus pricing, and a clinic consultation he described as personal.

In the evening, Wei Suyin invited him to stay for a al.

The Luan cousins had cooked.

Wang Su ate happily and Wei Suyin sat beside him while I sat across from him.

We had agreed the night of the feast: she would take the southern contacts angle, I would take the garrison east, and neither of us would push until he had sothing he wanted to tell first.

We had also agreed on what we were offering.

Before the al ended I ntioned the supply manifest notation, field report formats, and map annotation standards.

Wang Su's eyes moved when I described the supply manifest notation. He said he might send two of them before winter.

That was the register we needed.

Halfway through the al he paused and looked at both of us.

"You two are very well organized," he said.

Suyin refilled his cup without comnt. He picked it up and kept drinking.

By the ti the household cleared, we had the eastern picture: garrison unit rotations west, harvest yields down twelve percent in the second ring, road traffic east of the contracted settlents were dropping.

Qinghe's northern campaign was consuming more than the original projections, which ant Lord Shen Yuan couldn't redirect forces south before late winter at the earliest.

As we talked, Hao took the children inside and the Luan cousins drifted to their respective spaces. Wei Suyin poured a third cup and sat back down.

"Wang Su," she said. " What do you know about the southern territories? Do you know anyone who moves through that region?"

He shot us both a look before taking a sip of his tea and putting it back down.

"Why do you want to know?" he asked.

"Because what we're going to need information that doesn't travel through garrison roads,” Suyin said.

Wang Su stared into his cup and took his ti before replying.

"Most rchants who try the southern routes don't co back," he began to say. "The ones who do tend not to talk about it. The territories south of the Nanyu line are called the Maw by the people who've seen them. There are terrifying animals that roam there called Ridge Creatures, yet they are just the small ones. The roads that exist down there are old, and the things that use them aren't human."

He set his cup down. "I don't go there. I have never gone there."

Suyin leaned in: "But you know soone who does, right?"

"I know one person." He turned his cup in his hands, deciding how much of the calculation to share. "She operates out of Nanyu and moves through the Maw on routes nobody else has mapped, which ans she has access to information that exists nowhere in any administrative record, because no administrator has been foolish enough to travel the road it ca from."

He took another sip. "She is not easy to approach. She doesn't take introductions unless it cos with sothing she hasn't seen before."

"What does she want for information?" I asked him.

"As I said, she wants things that she hasn't encountered before." He looked at the table. "I am telling you this because you asked, and because I don't know what you have that would satisfy her. She has seen a great deal."

Suyin shot a look and we both realized what we had in our possession to offer.

"We have a stone from the ridge caves,” I said.

Wang Su's attention narrowed. "What kind of stone?"

"It’s a stone made from compressed qi. The ambient field in the cave deposits has been concentrating and compressing for a very long ti. The pressure produces a crystalline formation that I doubt can be found anywhere else. It’s quality can only be sensed by cultivators."

Wang Su seed generally surprised by my description, which was sothing I took as a good sign.

"I defintely haven’t heard of anything like that," he admitted.

He understood. If he didn't know what it was, then there was a chance that she wouldn't know either.

He was quiet for a long ti. The last of the feast sounds had settled outside.

"She won't agree to a eting without a description first," he said. "She decides from the description alone whether it's worth her ti. If it isn't, you don't hear from her again." He drank from his cup one last ti and set it down.

"She'll respond through her own channels, in her own ti, and then you wait." He looked at Suyin. "And you prepare yourself for the possibility that she cos in person rather than sending a letter, because that is what she did with the last introduction that was worth her attention."

Suyin nodded once. "We'll prepare."

Wang Su pushed back from the table and stood. "I'll write tonight."

He went to find his sleeping quarters.

Suyin and I sat at the emptied table. The feast coals were still warm through the courtyard doorway.

If spirit stones carried that kind of weight, then they might function as currency in the southern territories. In turn, there’s a possibility that we could use it as leverage to form an alliance….