She arrived just as they were finishing loading their three carts. It had taken her longer than she thought to get ready. With their help she quickly loaded her cart and they set out for Fisher.

  “You know, I could probably make these things fly.” she said about half way up the mountain. “It worked on a boat.”

  “Probably really expensive.” said one of the boys.

  “Probably about twenty stones.” she replied, “But we could move faster and not have to move them by hand.”

  The older boy looked at her like she wasn’t thinking clearly. “Like he said, too expensive.”

  When they got to where they were going Shen asked Ponma about it. “Yeah, they are right. Too expensive. Not enough benefit to justify the cost.”

  “But that’s not that much.” she replied, then thought about it. Shouldn’t they have fixed up their town a bit? She didn’t even see anyone with the utility items she sold at the shop, and the road wasn’t even paved. Some of the houses even needed to be repainted.

  Ponma looked at her like he couldn’t understand, then seemed to realize something. “Oh, I get why you’re saying that. You made a lot on the special blossoms, are making a bit on your investments here, and are making a stone a day making relics. That’s only a few days worth of work for you. But for them, even the adults don’t make a stone per day, and they make less than that.”

  “Really? Why don’t we pay them more, then?”

  “Because then we wouldn’t be able to keep the business going. With the price increases, we pay about eight points a day for the supplies, and then sell them for ten. Stones cost eight each, so with the forty or so small and ten or so large we sell per day, we earn fifteen stones per day in profit. That might sound like a lot, but we have rent, we’ve been borrowing the carts, so I need to pay for them, and I’m saving up to expand. I know I’ll need to give them a raise soon, though, so we might only break even on the small ones before long.”

  “Then how much more could we afford to pay them?” Shen asked.

  “Maybe a point more per jar. Or a half more per haul for the adults. That would put us right at the break even point on the smalls, and we would only earn money on the larges. I was hoping to put that off until the price of stones goes up to nine each, which will probably happen in ten to fifteen days the way things are going now. That way we can still earn a point each on the jars, for about eight stones a day.”

  Shen nodded. “Still, I feel like we should do something. If they realize they could make more money elsewhere, they’ll leave.”

  “Well, most of them don’t want to work elsewhere, but with the price of things going up, I guess we need to.” He thought for a minute. “If you are willing to invest a bit more so that we don’t have to rely on the daily profits to expand, I can probably give them that raise right now. But we really do need to expand and diversify. With only one product our business isn’t stable.”

  Shen thought about it, then took out a bag of one hundred stones and handed it to him. “I don’t have much more, but if this is enough we can go ahead and do that now.”

  Ponma nodded and put the money away. “Sure, I’ll go tell them. In the mean time, selling those special blossoms would help us out even more. At least, if the company actually earned money from them it would.”

  Shen nodded. “I didn’t even think of that. From now on, I’ll let you take ten percent from my cut to add to the company. After all, it’s the company that’s selling them.”

  Ponma nodded and Shen loaded her bag with jars before heading off for the center of the lake. Until she had talked to him he was worried about the business’s finances. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to pay people more. He knew he was paying them too little now that the cost of living had increased, but if he gave them a raise the company would be stuck selling nothing but Water Blossoms for the next several months while he saved up enough to expand into something else. Now that he had convinced Shen to take less, though, he could make this work. Maybe he could even afford to upgrade some of the equipment. He was certain that Shen could make something that would speed up the collection, but that would be expensive. Perhaps it would be too expensive to make it economically viable, but he would have to try.

  He wrote a note listing the new pay rate in red ink and posted it on the storage barn. Everyone gathered there in the evening to get paid, so they would be sure to see it when they did. Once he was done he started loading up one of the carts with jars so that it could be taken back. The cart held ten jars, so they would need to make five trips per day to haul them back. With only three carts, that meant that two of them would need to make two trips. Ponma generally loaded up the carts of his two helpers and had them take the jars to the warehouse after Middle Meal. Of course, Shen would add a cart to that, but as she used their backup cart she could haul them back herself.

  Out on the lake Shen carefully filled four jars with Late blossoms and two with Peak, as they were the same size but only about half as common. She had a tiny bit of vinegar left, but thankfully had remembered to bring an extra few drinking gourds to put the excess in. She returned to the barn around Middle Meal to unload her bag into her cart, then ate some field rations, reloaded her bag, and flew out again. She saw the sign on the barn, and nodded.

  By the end of the day she had managed to put ten jars into her cart, plus another six in her magic bag, eleven Late and five Peak in total. That would come to a sell price of one hundred and five stones. Shen agreed to only take one per jar, leaving the rest with the company for now. After all, the faster they expanded the more stable things would be and the more they would make in the long run.

  After they had unloaded all of the jars at the warehouse Shen asked Ponma about his plans for expansion. She might have brought in more than the rest of them today, but the area she was harvesting was quite small compared to the area where the smaller flowers were, so she knew that would only last a few months if they were to gather there every day. She had at least remembered to not pick all of them, leaving a few behind just like gathering wild spirit plants, so that they could grow back.

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  Ponma’s first idea was to have someone go out and gather the flowers in Shen’s area for ten or twenty days, so that they could build up some savings. Even if he paid them one stone per jar the company would still earn a huge amount of profit. The main problem with that was that it wouldn’t last, so it couldn’t be a main income stream.

  His second idea was to compost all of the vines that were being hauled out of the lake. When spirit plants were composted they retained most of the chi in them, turning into spirit compost, which was used to make spirit plants grow faster. He was certain that Farmer would want to buy it, but wasn’t certain how much it would cost to take it there and if they could earn a profit doing so. He would have to do some research.

  The next idea was to try and farm some other aquatic spirit plants in the lake. The main problem with this was that he didn’t know why their weren’t any to begin with. Did the Water Blossoms get too numerous at one point and choke them out? He didn’t want to plant a new crop only to have it die before harvest, as he would take a loss.

  Then there was the idea of doing the same thing with spirit fish or other aquatic spirit animals. He just wasn’t sure where to get them. He knew that the fishers occasionally brought in spirit fish, so their had to be many in the lake, but wasn’t sure why they weren’t the dominant type of fish in the lake.

  He had other ideas, like farming some of the wild spirit plants, but that wasn’t really close enough to their current business idea and would probably best be done in Farmer instead of here in Fisher.

  “A lot of those are about spirit plants.” Shen said and he nodded. “I think we need someone else’s opinion. Mae would know a lot about spirit plants and growing them. Maybe we should ask her what’s in demand, as that would be the biggest market.”

  Ponma liked that idea so they went to the cafeteria and asked Mae. She was able to tell them about the prices of certain plants and the compost, which sold for one stone per cart load. Ponma thought that they might be able to make ten trips a day to the gardens in town and maybe four to Farmer per day, so they could earn a profit doing so if they had the compost. The cost of plants varied wildly, but as she wasn’t used to growing any water plants, she asked that they come by the shop some time and talk to her bosses.

  The next day they did just that. Once they were finished hauling jars up to Fisher they returned to town. Ponma didn’t have a flying sword so they had to walk, and decided to bring the carts back and return with more jars when they were finished.

  Ponma and Shen arrived at the Alchemist shop ten minutes later, the trip being relatively quick as the wood district where the warehouse was located was beside the water district where the shop was. When they got to the shop they went inside and saw many bottles of pills on the shelf, but didn’t see anyone working the front of the shop. “Hello?” called Shen, and Mae stepped in from the back, holding a mortar and pestle while grinding something in it.

  “Hey Shen, Ponma.” she said, continuing to grind. “The sisters are currently working on a batch of pills, so it’ll be another fifteen minutes or so before one of them can speak with you.”

  “That’s fine.” Shen replied. “I’m surprised you didn’t have to hire extra people. Master Chen has hired five new people since I started working there. Shouldn’t you have someone to watch the front?”

  “Oh, that’s technically my job, but I had to run into the back to grab some stuff. We’ve been busy, but not enough to justify hiring someone just to watch the front.”

  Ponma pointed to the mortar and pestle. “What you making?” he asked.

  “Oh, this is a Water Chi pill. Just one of the cleansing stage blossoms you guys gather and some dried spirit grass.” She pulled the pestle out and some blue-green goop with bits of grass in it dripped off. “The sisters said that I’d be able to work on the Gathering stage pills once I could make one hundred of these in a day without a failure, so I’m trying to get as much practice as possible.”

  Ponma nodded. “Are you guys using the early and middle Gathering blossoms or the better ones?”

  “Oh, the sisters managed to get a jar of those Late stage ones and are practicing with them. In fact, they are working together on a batch right now.”

  Ponma nodded and he and Shen started looking around the store with Mae following them to answer questions. The shop had all of the basic pills in stock, as long as they were of the Cleansing or Gathering stage. They also had a few Foundation level pills, but they were all stored behind the counter. Shen noticed that, while they had elemental pills for all five elements, the water pills were half the price of the others.

  “Out of curiosity, is there a pill to speed up cultivation?” Shen asked.

  “Depends on what’s slowing you down.” said Mae, setting her mortar on the counter. “Unlike Cleansing phase, where you just need to remove the toxins, Gathering requires you to build up the maximum level of elementally balanced chi in your dantian. This requires you to get used to purer chis of the five elements and build up the walls of your dantian and meridians so that they can withstand that purity of chi. We have pills that can help with both issues, but unless there is a specific reason that your dantian or meridians aren’t letting you advance, they’ll be the equivalent of giving a pain killer to someone that worked out too hard. They help with the blowback, but your hard work is really what let you advance faster.” Mae looked at both of them. “You are already at peak, though, Shen, so those probably won’t do much for you, but Ponma is still Late Gathering, so they might help him.” Mae was middle Gathering, so she wasn’t as far behind them as Shen thought she would be.

  “Actually,” said Shen. “I’ve found that, while I hit full pressure at about seven and a half percent, I can still increase the pressure I can adapt to. So far I’m at about nine and a half percent, and I plan on pushing it as high as I can before advancing.”

  “I was wondering why you hadn’t advanced yet, despite being at peak for so long.” said Ponma. “If I remember right, you are a Nascent talent, right? So you shouldn’t have a major bottleneck until you try to advance to Immortal.”

  “That’s right.” Shen responded. “You two and Danka are Foundation, though, so I guess I’ll keep advancing faster than you.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” Mae responded. “Danka hit Peak ten days ago, and I hear he’s going to try and advance soon. He actually came in to ask about Late Gathering elemental pills so that he would have higher purity chi for his advancement.”

  Shen nodded. “I should probably talk to him, then. I had something I was wanting to make for you guys that would help him, but never got around to it.”

  “Really? What is it?” asked Mae, but Shen shook her head.

  “You’ll have to wait and see. It won’t be much of a present if I tell you what it is.”

  Mae nodded and two identical looking blue-haired twenty five year old women walked out of the curtain separating the front and back of the store. Shen was only able to tell them apart because one had a pony tail and the other hadn’t tied up her hair. “So, you are the two people that farm the Water Blossoms?” the one with the pony tail asked, and Shen nodded. “Well, thanks for bringing in better quality ones. The Early and Middle ones weren’t really challenging us any more. If there wasn’t a good market for them, selling them to the sect, I would probably cut back on how many pills I made from them out of boredom.”

  Shen considered telling her about the Foundation stage blossoms but decided against it. If they were practicing with Late stage they likely wouldn’t have any use for them.

  The woman held out her hand. “I’m Lin Ku.” the woman said and Shen and Ponma shook it.

  “Lin Kyu.” said the woman with straight hair, also holding out her hand. Shen could tell that Ku was middle Foundation, while Kyu was late Gathering like Shen.

  After all of the introductions were out of the way, Kyu spoke. “So, you guys want to know about farming spirit plants? We can answer a few questions for you, but you really should buy a few books on the subject and read them. The subject is a bit too complex to cover in one conversation.” She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to Ponma. Shen noticed that it was much lower quality than the talisman paper the relic shop used. She knew that this was because the paper maker uses the material that isn’t good enough for talismans to make note paper for people, though it only sold for a point per ten sheets, whereas talisman paper sold for a point per sheet.

  “Do you need any plant in particular?” asked Ponma after looking over the list of books. “What about spirit compost?”

  “Well, Mae usually handles the garden, but I’m sure we can use a few wagons of compost.” said Ku. “As for the plants, we need more elemental ones, especially those outside the normal five elements and the higher quality Gathering ones. If you can get seeds for Foundation or Nascent plants we would love to buy the plants, but they tend to be really hard to properly farm, so I doubt you’ll be able to grow them.”

  “So, like Sun Orchids?” Shen asked, and the sisters looked surprised.

  “Yes, exactly. I assume you saw some out in the woods?” asked Ku.

  Shen didn’t want to tell her that one of the Dragons she knew grew them, so she just nodded. Unfortunately it didn’t look like Shen would be able to get any bulbs from the dragons for them, so she would have to try and gather them from the woods.

  After another ten minutes they finished the conversation and said goodbye, then Shen and Ponma went to the library to buy the recommended books.