It was a little after lunch and two other people had shown up in the town. Jin didn’t like them much. The man was full of himself. He was some sort of alchemist from up north next to the capital. His assistant was fine, but she let him walk all over her. Just because someone was a master’s apprentice didn’t mean they had to go to every beck and call of their master. Or well, that’s what Jin thought, anyway.

  Mei thought they were fine. She was mostly just trying to make business connections with the man. Moritoshi was the man’s name. A mouth full that Mei fit the man’s pretentiousness. She didn’t like that either about him, but she had dealt with worse people. If she could make deals with the man, she could start carrying alchemical supplies too, which would be something.

  All the representatives from the various sects and organizations were there exploring the remains of the town. There wasn’t much to see outside of the weird, starry night splatters. The pair had already cleaned up from the lunch and were just looking around, keeping their distance from the various who’s who of cultivators.

  They stood in what might have been the town square of the town. Mei had her naginata held at the ready just in case anymore of whatever did the damage was still around. Jin stood next to her with his vegetable cleaver and honing steel.

  “We really should find you better weapons,” Mei commented.

  Jin just shrugged. He didn’t care about fighting. The chef would rather just cook and live a peaceful life. He still didn’t feel quite right about the fight they had with the bandits on their way to the auction to get the soy sauce.

  “Come on, maybe we can find Silas’s shop?” Mei whispered and patted her husband’s shoulder.

  “Who?” He asked and looked at her curiously.

  Mei tsk’d and clicked her teeth with her tongue. “The artificer. He’s bound to have treasures in his workshop we can claim. I doubt he’s still alive after…” she trailed off and held her hands out, motioning to the splatters and slightly damaged buildings.

  Her husband put his hands on his hips and shrugged. “It doesn’t really look that bad, does it? It’s not like we’ve found any dead bodies.”

  She nodded and looked around with another shrug. “Well, it’s not like there’s anyone here to stop us from claiming anything.”

  “Other than the more powerful cultivators,” Jin reminded her.

  She clicked her tongue again. “They aren’t that powerful.”

  Jin looked at her doubtfully. He knew she was much more powerful than he was. The man still hadn’t broken through the spiritual realm of cultivation yet. He had to work on his body. With that thought, he sighed and looked at his gut.

  Mei rolled her eyes and walked away from him. “I told you your gut doesn’t matter. Who trusts a skinny chef, anyway? Cooking is part of your path. You will go far.” She said, reading her husband’s mind.

  He sighed and shrugged. “Maybe. Alright, how do we find this workshop?”

  Not that Jin really wanted to rob anyone, but he did like making his wife happy. Plus, he could find food and supplies to make the dinner. Mei shrugged at him. “We wander around and look. They’re all at the houses along the base of the mountain. I guess that’s where the elders lived.”

  Jin nodded, and they left the square. They skipped the building in the middle of the square. It looked like the village’s town hall. There wouldn’t be any food or treasure in there. Or well, that’s what Mei told him when he went towards it.

  “Where else would a town put their treasures?” He asked.

  She rolled her eyes and just walked away from him. “This town doesn’t have any treasures. Silas Zhao was probably the one in this place. Mortal treasures aren’t what we’re looking for.”

  He nodded and followed her down the stone road towards a long run of buildings that had a cover over their fronts and in between them that connected it. It had to have been the shopping area, Jin figured. He pointed at it while Mei walked over to what looked like random houses.

  “Think these look like shops. Maybe his workshop was there?” Jin pointed them out.

  Mei only looked at them for a minute and then waved them off. “None of them look like a foundry. You go look though, see if you can find anything good.”

  Jin nodded and walked off. He gripped his knife and honing steel a bit harder. They hadn’t seen anything so far, but he didn’t want to be caught with his pants down. He still wondered why they hadn’t seen anything. Nothing so much as any kind of body. Not a human body or monster or spirit beast or anything.

  “What did this?” He asked himself as he looked at one of the big splashes of glittery night. He may have still been in the body formation stage of his cultivation journey, but he reached out with his spirit. Just because he didn’t have mana and he couldn’t control the aura of the world didn’t mean he could feel things.

  He got an odd sensation from it. It felt almost like a sort of aura. Like any kind of the various auras people could cultivate to grow their power. He frowned and narrowed his eyes at the splash. That didn’t seem right, though? This didn’t seem like an aura from an element of the world, it seemed like the night sky. Jin looked up towards the bright cloudless sky and sighed.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  He was right about them being shops. As he explored the different buildings, he found a clothing shop, a general food store that sold rice and grains and the like, then he also found a bakery, a butcher, and then the last building was a candlestick maker. All sorts of food he could pillage to feed everyone while they were here and resupply his stock. This was good. Very good.

  He gave himself a satisfied nod and then left the row of shops to go get some baskets or sacks to carry stuff away in. It had been about an hour since he left his wife and his grip relaxed on his makeshift weapons. There wasn’t anything dangerous in the village. He was positive there was no living soul in the village at all outside of the people trying to figure out what the disaster exactly was.

  On his walk back to his wagon, he looked for Mei. Hopefully, she hadn’t gotten into any trouble trying to pilfer things. He secretly hoped she didn’t really find anything at all. At one of the last buildings before the edge of the town where the wagon was parked, he found his wife’s weapon leaning next to an open door.

  “Mei, why would you..” he trailed off and headed for the open door.

  He walked in and recognized the front counter as a shop counter. When he looked around, he saw various weapons hung on the wall and a few pieces of armor. A blacksmith. He nodded his head at the forge and anvil.

  He squinted and looked around. “Mei, are you in here?”

  As he scanned the shop, he realized there was power here. These weren’t regular mortal weapons. He stepped up and inspected a sword, squinting. He didn’t see it at first, but there were small etchings in the blade and hilt of the sword. Runes. There were runes inscribed onto the sword.

  “Mei, did you see this? What do you-” He stopped mid sentence and realized he hadn’t found her yet. Jin frowned and walked away from the wide, straight sword, wondering what it did and who would use such a wide blade.

  He walked deeper into the shop and past a workbench with different tools a blacksmith would use. Eventually, he found a sliding door that was half open. When he opened it the rest of the way, he frowned again. Then his eyes went wide. The room was plain, with just some hooks on the wall and then a water barrel and a bench. It was a sort of break room. His eyes went wide, though, for what was on the ground.

  Not on the ground, but on the ground. There was a door in the ground that was open and a rug was thrown aside. He poked his head down and called his wife’s name.

  “Yes, yes, I’m down here. Come look!” Mei called back.

  Jin looked around and put his weapons on the bench, and then carefully went down the narrow, steep staircase. He was nervous, and in his nervousness, he chatted. “I found this broadsword up there. It was probably as wide as my thigh. Can you imagine using something like that? What do you think it does?”

  “It flies. Nevermind that,” she cut him off.

  He didn’t even have time to look shocked at the idea of an actual flying sword before she directed his attention to a pedestal. The entire room was full of things that were shiny, and even Jin could feel how powerful the things in the room were. The chef’s mouth hung open and looked at the gems and jewels. “What’s all this-”

  “Nevermind all that. That’s all trash compared to this,” Mei interrupted him again and pointed.

  “I don’t think it’s trash,” he said and frowned and finally walked over behind her to look at what had grabbed the woman’s attention.

  Mei was standing in front of a plain wooden work table. Some of the colored gems and rocks were on the table, but in the middle was a large hunk of a metallic-looking rock. It was gray and dull but was smooth and had a bit of a silver gleam to it if you looked at it the right way.

  “What is it? It just looks like a rock,” Jin said and huffed. “The flying sword seems much more interesting.”

  Mei sighed and put her face in her hands. “Jin, my poor, wonderful husband.”

  Jin looked affronted and stared at her with his mouth hanging open. “What?!”

  “It’s adamantine,” she breathed.

  Jin frowned and ran through the various words for different rocks and metals he knew and finally shrugged.

  “It’s…” Mei looked for the word and then turned to grab Jin’s robes. “Strong.” She stressed the word. “Magically strong. You’ll never find a stronger piece of metal. It’s said to also conduct aura pretty easily.”

  “Oh,” Jin said and felt a little let down. There was a literal flying sword up in the shop, and gems and jewels down here. What was the big deal about a piece of strong metal?

  “Or so I’ve been told. I’ve never actually seen a piece of it, and this is a raw ore of it. It can be shaped into anything if you find the right blacksmith, no…” Mei stopped and corrected herself. “You’d have to find another artificer. Maybe some high tier cultivator that’s a blacksmith would have the strength.”

  That’s when they heard noise above in the foundry. The other cultivators were here and talking about the various things on the main floor of the shop. Mei looked up at Jin and grinned that devilish little grin. Her eyes locked with his and she reached for the piece of ore.

  “I’m sure they wouldn’t notice,” she started.

  Jin’s eyes went wide. “That’s valuable, right?”

  Mei nodded.

  “It’s not ours,” Jin stated.

  Mei shrugged and picked up the piece of ore. Even for the cultivator, it was heavy and she gave a soft grunt.

  “Mei, no, what if they find out? They’ll get mad.”

  Mei shrugged again and put the ore in a pocket in her robes. “They’ll never know.”

  “This must have been Cultivator Zhao’s foundry,” a female voice said. “His rune work is incredible.”

  “Yes, he was a great arcanist and artificer, one of the best in the Empire,” came a pretentious male voice.

  Mei rolled her eyes and held the rock in her pocket as she walked up the stairs. Jin tried to steady his breathing and followed her up. They aren’t doing anything wrong. They weren’t stealing an incredibly rare and expensive piece of ore from a village that was empty.

  “Take a look down here. There are gems and such. He had a little secret basement,” Mei said and pointed down the stairs after Jin walked up and moved out of the way.

  Taimei’s eyes went wide, and he got a greedy grin. “Oooo,” he coo’d.

  The assembled cultivators went down the stairs and Mei called down to them that they were going to go look for food supplies. Moritoshi gave them a dismissive wave before he followed the others down.

  “Yes, alright, whatever,” the alchemist huffed.

  Mei practically ran from the shop and almost forgot her weapon. Jin grabbed his knife and steel and followed her, then yelled to her. His wife came back to grab the weapon and then they both made for their wagon.

  “What are we going to even do with it?” Jin asked his wife once they were safe inside his little rolling kitchen.

  “What can’t we do with it?” Mei grinned.

  Jin’s eyes went wide as he looked at his wok. “We could make a new wok, you know I need a new one.”

  Mei’s mouth went wide, and she stared at her husband incredulously.

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  Hiroshi, Tale of a Sumotori

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