I ran through the forest.
Not taking any mind to whatever animals could be around me. 'I'm so stupid.' I should have asked for advice before taking a deal with that pig of a bastard, Wan Cheng. I should have been more skeptical of a person willing to make such a quick deal with someone so young.
I was angry. I was too weak. Even among other mortals, I couldn't stand up for myself. First overseer Liang, now Wan Cheng, if it kept going like this, I'd be someone's slave before I was any sort of cultivator.
*Bam*
I wasn't paying any attention and struck my leg against a stone, tumbling over and rolling for a few metres, before crashing through branches and the trunks of a few thin trees and coming to a stop.
Breathing heavily, I lay there, cut and bleeding on the leafy ground, with no one around me. I smacked my fist against the land beside me. 'Damn it! I'd fought a spirit beast. I'd won.' And yet, I still couldn't fight against normal humans.
This was too slow.
If I were truly serious about my goal of becoming a cultivator, I'd have to be faster, and I would need more power.
There had to be a way.
***
Azul walked tiredly away from the house. The owner had kicked him out, along with his wife. This was the fifth time this had happened, and the sixth time this week.
He was looking for someone to take up the hunting mission for the pelts that the noble lady, Lady Vespara, had given him. All his hunters had welcomed him at first, willing to hear him out.
And why not? He guaranteed good, high-paying jobs and had a good reputation. At least when it came to his work, but as soon as they heard what he wanted them to do, they kicked him out.
Especially if their wives or children were around, no one wanted to die for a few extra silver. No matter how much it would change their life.
A few days before the Lady Vespara's butler had come to his house again, asking if he had found anybody willing to take up the task of hunting the Celestial Mirror Leopard. When he'd said no, the butler informed him that he only had a week left to find somebody.
The Lady was running out of patience.
Azul had tried to beg but the order had already been given: find a hunter or die.
Now, he had one last hunter in mind that he thought he could choose, his name was Qing Mu.
Azul knocked on the door loudly. Qing Mu tended to stay at the back of his house, where it was harder for him to hear anything.
In only two minutes, Qing Mu was at the door. He wore a thick fur coat over his dark blue robe and a similarly colored scarf to cover his head.
"Azul," he stared at him with dark brown, almost pitch black, deep-set eyes, "need something?"
"Yes, I—can you allow me inside?" Azul tried to warm himself by rubbing his crossed hands rapidly on the sides of his arms.
Qing Mu opened the door wider, "Come."
Azul let himself in, immediately going to sit by an already lit hearth in the middle of the house and helping himself to some warm meat buns.
The hunter came and sat down next to him, one arm on the table and the other underneath, ready for anything. Azul wolfed down two more buns before the cold stare of a hunter like Qing Mu got to him.
Ahem, mmm, "Yes, of course," he put the bun he was about to eat back on the table. "I have a good job for you. Pays well and all that. With your skill, you should be done fairly quickly. What do you say?"
The lines around Qing Mu's mouth deepened, giving him a more gaunt look, contrasting even more with his carved physique. "What job?"
Azul coughed some more, "Aaah, nothing to worry about too much, my friend, I just want you to get me something for a noble lady." Then he leaned in, putting his hand to his mouth and looking around, as if he was about to tell a secret, "It's for Lady Vespara of Liu Hong manor."
Qing Mu kept his position, not moving one bit, only blinking. "What. Job?" The man talked with slurred words and a low tone, everything was curt and was only designed to give the minimum necessary information.
Azul scratched his head, then his neck, then looked around, trying to lay his gaze on anything but the hunter in front of him. Ahem, "I want you to get me a leopard."
Qing Mu kept quiet, waiting for him to speak again. Azul gave it a few more minutes and nearly all the remaining meat buns before continuing again. "It's…I want you to get me a Celestial Mirror Leopard."
Silence.
Qing Mu looked at him, from head to toe, trying to make out whether he was using this time to have a laugh with him. He had never made jokes with him before. It had always been carcass and money between them. Qing Mu didn't understand.
"You…make joke?" He squinted, and Azul suddenly felt his robes get tighter. Especially around his neck. Qing Mu had a way of being…unintentionally intimidating.
Azul gave an awkward laugh, "No, no, I just got the command from Lady Vespara and immediately thought of you, my friend." He noticed the blank look on the hunter's face. "It will be a lot of money—"
"No."
"What? After all the money I've paid you over the years? How–"
"Get out."
"I refuse. How dare you say no to me? Do you not remember who I am?"
Qing Mu got up off his chair, and straight away, Azul recoiled, dragging his chair back over the hard, wooden floor. He had forgotten how big the hunter was as they were sitting down.
The hunter stared down at him. Eyes hard as steel, "I no ask again."
Azul gazed up at the man, debating whether he should do as he said or stand his ground. In the end, he swallowed down his pride and got up to leave. "Are you sure about this? I can negotiate. Is it the coins?" He clenched his teeth, worried about the coins he was about to lose. "How much do you want?"
All the while he said this, he walked backwards, to the door, looking at Qing Mu as he pleaded, and the hunter trailed him.
They finally reached the door. "Wait, please, I beg you. I cannot fulfill her order without—"
Qing Mu picked Azul up by the sides of his shoulders and carried him out. Dropping him on the damp, slightly frozen earth. Then closed the door. From the outside, Azul could hear the plank being plopped down onto the wooden brackets on the sides.
He had been locked out.
Azul rushed to the door, banging on it intensely. "Damn it Qing Mu! Don't expect any more orders from me. You understand? Huh?...Qing Mu?"
'Curses. What am I to do now? Everyone I could have asked either kicked me out or refused to see me when they heard I was coming.' For Azul, he couldn't think of anyone else who would want to see him.
He had exhausted all his connections. Anyone else he could call would be too weak to be able to do the job, the only solution would be to find some cultivator who could do it, otherwise he'd have to go back around and ask everyone he'd previously asked again.
'Damn that noble lady and her house for a thousand generations.' Azul clutched his robes, almost tearing them out. This was a cultivator's task, and the noble lady had asked him to find mortals who would do it.
Could it be done? Yes. Would it be done? Azul groaned in despair. He would have needed at least two people to get the job done. All of them his most highly skilled hunters. If only he could think of one—
Azul stopped. He was right in front of his tannery. A gray-furred beaver skin hanging right in front of him. 'If only I could get someone skilled enough to–.' But he halted the thought. He remembered that the boy was still on bad terms with him.
The last time they had talked was in Healer Po's apothecary because the fool had gotten himself almost killed trying to murder a spirit beast. There was no way, absolutely no way that the boy would agree to such a thing.
'But he's killed a spirit beast before.' Azul shook his head, trying to get the thought out of his mind. But it wouldn't leave him. To accept a noble's task and then to be unable to fulfill it. Especially as a peasant.
No matter who Azul was, or how many influential people he knew, he would have his head to hang.
No matter what, he had to get the job done. Immediately, he set out to look for the boy. He'd find him and convince him no matter what!
I sat in Big Randy's shop, drinking a hot mug of tea as Big Randy's wife, Michelle, tried to stuff me with freshly made pastries.
I had just come from Wan Cheng's camp and wanted to speak to Big Randy. I needed to find a way to get out of whatever contract me and him had. I had come here while Big Randy was still occupied with teaching an apprentice, and his wife had caught me.
Now, I waited here while she burnt my tongue with pastries, I didn't dare tell her it was too hot, or too mushy, or….
I stopped my train of thought. Big Randy was in the room, I almost ran towards him and hugged him.
"Ahh, madam, you're husband is here, let me stand up to greet him."
She smacked my hand away and pushed me back down to my seat. "Don't be silly, child, he can do without some greeting from his business partner." She took another pastry, this one was light green and had little dark squares stuck all through the baked dough. "Here, try this one," and she shoved the pastry in my mouth.
"Don't worry about it, Khan." Big Randy sat down on his chair. "What did you come here for?"
"I need to get out of the deal with Wan Cheng."
Big Randy's face immediately turned serious, and he looked at his wife. "My sweet tofu bun, please leave us."
She stared at him, then stared at me, "Hmph," and got up, "just make sure you tell him to see me before he leaves, I still have some new recipes I'm trying out."
"Of course, my honey pot," then they wiggled their noses at each other, and she sashayed out of the room, in full view of her husband.
Ahem, Ahem, "What happened?"
It didn't matter what happened, I had to get out of Wan Cheng's control. If it kept going like this, he'd send me to my death, and I'd just be another little village boy who died without knowing his place.
'No, not me, I had been far too passive for far too long.'
"Wan Cheng is exactly as you described him. If I keep working for him, I don't know what will happen."
I made sure not to tell him about how I was kicked out of the camp, I still had to keep my pride as a man. What I needed was strength. 'Even a lion cub is not shown respect by the gazelle.'
"I want a way to gain strength, if I have all the coins but people can still take it from me, or push me however they wish, what's the point?"
Big Randy scrunched his eyebrows and collapsed his hands together on the table, "Ahh, so did Wan Cheng push you around?"
He laughed, "Boy, there is no getting out of this. I told you before, didn't I? Sometimes the terms of a deal aren't the words that are spoken. If you make a deal with a swindler, what sort of goods should you expect?"
"I know, but that's why I want strength, I'll get my revenge on that man, all I need is—"
"You are not an idiot. You are a very smart kid, unless you suddenly gain levels in cultivation, or spend decades, building up the kind of influence and power that boar has, you're never getting revenge. So, what do you plan to do?"
I tilted my head back onto the seat. He was right, without a few decades or some sort of healing in my ethereal bridges, I was never going to be able to beat Wan Cheng. Not only that, but I was starting to rely on Big Randy far too much; I would have to find a way to do this on my own.
"What if–" I put my head back to speak, but then suddenly I heard a knock on the door.
Big Randy answered, "Come in."
It was Azul.
Big Randy immediately quipped with a slight scowl, "Well, well, I haven't seen you in a while tanner."
He turned towards me, gritted his teeth, and looked down, "I need your help."
"Hoh? I thought a man like you didn't need a F–" I almost said the word. That same insult he had used to describe me when I first decided to hunt for the beavers.
'Was this what I was coming to? All talk and no action? I sounded like a gossip.' I clenched my fists, all I had been doing so far was talk with Big Randy and deliver messages. The best I had done recently for my goals was to sell goods to the soldiers in Camp Yi.
If I kept going like this, I'd start to think of myself as the very thing I didn't want to be. I turned to look at Big Randy, who was staring at Azul with a tinge of animosity.
'Even with all the help he's giving me, my goals are my goals. My dreams are my dreams. He won't go out and accomplish them for me.'
I looked to Azul, "What do you want?"
Azul looked at me, surprised that I still wanted to talk with him, but he got straight to the heart of the matter, "I want you to hunt a Celestial Mirror Leopard."
Big Randy piped up, "Madness. Do you wish to kill the boy?"