Sky Pride

There are few joys more pure than that of a child opening boxes. That balance of mystery and enticement- it’s a present, it’s going to be something good, but what is it? What could it be? Then they open the box and WOW! Look at this! Amazing! Next box please!

Tian and Hong had an entire caravan’s worth of boxes to get through, plus all the rings Tian collected from the heretics.

“Which do you want to open first?” Tian asked.

“You looted it. You pick.” Hong shrugged. There was a tightness in the corners of her eyes. Tian thought she might be hurting worse than she let on.

“Painkiller? I have some… well, it’s medicine for other things but if I mix some of them together they might do something?” Tian offered.

“You are bad at selling things.”

“Selling?”

“Never mind. What are you opening?”

“Um. The wagons had chests, but they also had some hidden compartments. The chests should be pretty fast to get through, I’d guess? Also there were lots of rolls of soft cloth.”

“I know you know what silk is.” Hong gave him a look. He looked right back.

“I do know what silk is. Which is why I didn’t say ‘There were lots of rolls of silk.’”

Hong wiggled her hand, then nodded. “Fair enough.”

Tian pulled out his string of looted storage rings, which caused Hong to start sputtering. “What the hell is that?”

“This is a storage ring. You can put stuff in it. You have one. Go on, try it. Imagine you are reaching-” Hong threw a clump of sand at him. “I really don’t understand what you don’t understand.”

“Why do you have a string of storage rings?”

“Because they are worth almost nothing when I turn them in for merits, and being able to carry more stuff is more good.”

“But they aren’t bound to you. Anyone can steal them.” Hong shook her head firmly.

“They can if they kill me. At which point they can get the ring that was bound to me too.” Tian shrugged.

“You know there are pickpocket arts too, right? Or just ordinary pickpocketing?” Hong upped her look game again. Tian was flustered. He didn’t have any room to escalate on the look front.

“What’s pickpocketing?”

“Stealing things from on a person’s body without them noticing? Literally picking things out of their pockets or from inside their robes.”

Tian’s eyes went wide. “Demonic art!”

Hong laughed. “There is a reason everyone just carries one or two storage rings.”

“I’ve wondered about them for a while, actually.” Tian frowned. “How do they work? Where do they come from? Do we make them in the sect?”

“I… huh. I don’t know.” Hong cocked her head to the side. “They are pretty common, but some are way better than others. I thought it might be the Divine Shapers Sect, but I really don’t know. They’re like cobblestones. They come from somewhere, but who cares where when they are so common?”

Tian stared at Hong. Unbeknownst to him, he had reached new heights of giving someone a look. “The magic rings that can hold a wagonload of goods inside of them and stay magically attached to a person even if their body is mostly dissolved so long as they are alive, just turn up.”

Hong rolled her eyes and looked away. “Obviously they come from somewhere. They aren’t free. But they can’t be that important if a lay brother can collect entire strings of them just by wandering around.”

Yeah. Why would anyone question that? That seems completely normal and not worth noticing at all. Said the ghost in the magic ring. Who is very proud of his good grandson, who has been doing awesome all day. I’ll help you sort through the loot and find the really good stuff, you just have fun opening boxes.

Sounded like good advice to Tian. He started dumping boxes out on the sand. “Let’s split the boxes. They probably have salt in them, but we should check anyway.”

“Why salt?”

“Black Iron Gorge makes salt. These guys were heading out of the desert.” Tian shrugged.

“Not the only thing they make.” Hong cracked open a box and pulled out a rather exquisite glass. “Do you know how much these are worth?”

“I don’t even know what that is! I can see your hand through it! What even is that? Can you cultivate with it?” Tian was riveted. The glass seemed to subtly distort Hong’s hand, like it was under water. She laughed happily.

“It’s a drinking cup made out of glass. Don’t ask me how they are made, I don’t know, but apparently it’s something mortals can craft. They cost an absolute fortune in Mountain Gate City, and they are even more expensive in the rest of the Broad Sky Kingdom. I haven’t seen them before either, but my mom told me about them. Apparently, we used to own a set.”

She smiled regretfully, then thoughtfully. She poked around in the box some more. “There are at least twenty cups in here. I wonder if I can buy them from the sect for cheap?”

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“Just take ‘em.” Tian shrugged. “Say it’s coming out of your share of the rewards. Write it down so the math works.”

Hong seemed torn, then smiled again. Tian thought this smile was a bit odd looking. “Why is it that the feral kid is strict about dividing the loot, but the disciplinary squad member wants to skim?”

“Because it’s not my loot,” Tian thought his voice was calm, but Hong whipped around to look at him. “This belongs to the dead brothers and sisters. We will make sure their wills are honored and they get every spirit crystal they are owed.”

Hong looked suddenly ashamed. “Sorry, Brother Tian.”

He waved it away. “It doesn’t matter. If you are short on spirit stones, I can help you think of something.”

“Oh, can you lend me some stones?” Her voice was teasing, but she sounded genuinely curious.

“No, I don’t have any. But I can help you think of things.”

She laughed. He didn’t.

“Wait, you really don’t have any?”

“What would I use them for, other than bribing the mission hall to keep senior Sima away from me? I don’t need anything from the crafters, after all. My rope dart is very good.”

Hong opened her mouth, then closed it again. Then- “It must be nice.”

“What is?”

“Not carrying so many people.”

The two got started opening boxes. Most of them were salt, as Tian expected, but there were five chests of glassware, four small sacks of pearls that Hong evaluated as “worth a small fortune in the right hands,” fifty pounds of various mortal drugs and assorted paperwork that appeared to be in code. There was also the carriage full of cloth, which included cottons, fine wools, beautiful silks and a variety of brocades. There was also, to Hong’s visible delight, two small chests full of gold and silver coins.

“The heavens have eyes! Even split between everyone, this is an absolute fortune!” She clapped. Tian had enjoyed opening the boxes, but internally he just shrugged. It was just stuff. Why get so excited? Not like you could buy anything with gold and silver. Maybe the crafters would take it.

“Time for the good stuff- the storage rings!” Tian split them between himself and Hong.

“I got a scroll with a picture of… someone… who looks friendly but the longer I look at it, the more evil he seems?” Hong held up a silk portrait of a smiling magistrate.

“Better than me. I have ten jars of blood. Human blood. I know it’s human because it’s labeled. ‘Xiao Bai, and a birth chart, ‘Xiao Wang, and a birth chart.’”

The two shook their heads.

“Any chance they exterminated a clan called Xiao?” Hong asked.

“It’s the character for ‘little.’”

“Of course it is. Hey, do you want… ten, twenty, forty, you want sixty rats?”

“No thank you, I am looking forward to the pork.” Tian shook his head. Twice baked pork was a rare treat in the temple. He could have rat whenever.

“I’m pretty sure these rats are bulging with some kind of Gu. I don’t know if that makes them better or worse.” She wiggled the ring enticingly.

“I guess it depends on the flavor. Oh, this is promising. A very cursed dagger.” Tian held up nine inches of greenish steel that had been shaped into a wavy pattern. The hilt had a snake head for a pommel.

“How do you know it’s cursed?”

Tian could feel the curse-tendrils drilling into his flesh, only to be consumed by the Hell Suppressing sutra and turned into pure vital energy. “It’s the feel of it.”

“Huh. You know that actually makes it more valuable, not less. Much, much more valuable. Enchantments usable in the Earthly Person realm are very expensive.”

“What? Really? What’s ‘permanently enchanted’ mean? Also- Cursed? Does that still count as ‘permanently enchanted?’”

“Close enough, probably. And what it says. It’s like a talisman built into something, but it always works unless the user runs out of vital energy. Sort of like the storage rings, actually, except worth something. It’s understandable that you wouldn’t have heard of them, Brother. The only reason I know about them is a Martial Uncle in the disciplinary squad used them as an example of tricky loot division problems. According to him, Ancient Crane Monastery’s crafting standards are very… Well, they aren’t that good. Compared to some other sects. So any time one of these turns up, there is a huge fight over it. That’s what he said, anyway.”

Tian pulled out his rope dart. It was beautiful. The rope looked simple, but hid a brutal saw system. The head was almost organic looking, like a blob of dark metal pulled to a leathally sharp point. It moved like a living thing in his hands, and he hadn’t seen much survive a few blows from it.

“I can’t imagine it. Well, I can, but...”

“That’s just what I heard.” She shrugged, then pointed at the dagger. “That dagger is pretty good evidence, though.” She shook her head. “These guys are broke as hell and clearly poured their whole fortunes into cultivating their gu, and one of them still managed to get a permanently enchanted dagger. Either they looted it from somewhere, or they bought it. EIther way, that makes magic daggers cheaper and easier to get than back home.”

Huh. Tian was about to put away the knife, when he paused. The knife was constantly feeding a thin stream of curse energy into him. The Hell Suppressing Sutra and Advent of Spring were constantly turning that into vital energy and nourishing his fleshy body. The knife was directly making him more powerful. Slowly, but constantly. The curse energy would be a problem when he wasn’t running Advent of Spring. But now that he was still healing wounds and running his cultivation art constantly? It was massively useful. It would keep on being useful when he was cultivating and healthy.

“When you say it’s more valuable than normal cultivator weapons… more valuable than a hundred spirit stones? Than a box of gold?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one for sale anywhere in the sect. It’s not at the Heavenly Person level, so less valuable than one of their weapons I assume. Definitely way more valuable than the box of gold. More than a very good flying sword? Apparently flying swords aren’t enchanted, exactly. I asked, and was just told ‘It's the materials and techniques,’ and then they shrugged.”

“More valuable than, say, the wagonload of cloth?” Tian didn’t know why flying swords weren’t considered enchanted either. Maybe because they needed vital energy to fly?

“Obviously. Why?”

“Because I can really use it.” He sighed. It really was too damn useful to him right now.

Hong was quiet, watching him. He weighed the dagger in his palm, and balanced it against several things. He heaved another, bigger, sigh.

“Please record this knife in your book of recovered loot. I will either buy it from my share when we get back, or will return it to be divided when we get back to base if my share isn’t enough to cover it.”

“You don’t have to, you know.”

“I know.” Tian searched for the right words, and couldn’t find them. How could he explain to Hong what he couldn’t explain to himself? But he felt Grandpa Jun hugging him and patting him on the back and calling him his good grandson, and he knew that Brother Fu would be proud of his choice.

He wasn’t a rock thrower. And that was reason enough.