Chương 9: Girl With the Conch Shell Hairpin

Rowan Righteous Mountain City had its busy days - the New Year, the anniversary of the sect's founding, the autumn harvest. Deepwhale Pier looked like all of them happening at once, on every street, at the same time. In his city, cultivators wore fine robes, were from wealthy, well-known families, and had a noble bearing. Mortals labored and pinched pennies. The line between mortal and cultivator here was far more blurred. A mundane fish stall had a protective talisman on it, the characters glowing gold.

Vendors sold strange boot-shaped fruits which promised longevity. A young lady swept through the streets inside a gauzy palanquin held up by four large men, and none of them possessed qi. Yet, Rowan also saw a hunchbacked grandmother, the straps of her sandals worn to threads, harrumph and continue her walk on a nearby rooftop with a short hop when the plaza became too crowded.

"Is cultivation more common here?" asked Rowan in awe.

"Not really." Ash turned his head and smiled.

"Deepwhale Pier is just a trading hub, is all. A lot more resources to go around. Everyone, at some point, will have eaten a weird fruit, or sucked down an elixir. The men that pull the levies for example have tattoos giving them the strength of an elephant - but they are still mortal." Rowan nodded in thought. Until he reached the Qi Refinement realm, where the strength and ability of cultivators truly diverged from anything mortals could do, he would need to be careful.

He shouldn't overestimate himself just because he had a Qi Sea.

"How much is this?" a girl asked, holding up a hairpin made from a pinkish-white conch shell.

"Fifteen taels for you, pretty miss!" said the young boy manning a stall on the side of the street.

"Sure!" Rowan winced. The bigger the city, the bolder the scammers it seemed. Ash pulled him towards a large establishment. An explosion of noise and delicious scents met them.

"Come on, this is the best spot in town! I'll treat you!" They walked inside. Ash ignored the line, going up to the head attendant. He proudly held out his sect token.

"We'll take the Jade Lotus Lounge." The man gave him a polite smile. Though his eyes scanned over their clothes a few times with a hint of judgement, he ultimately led them three stories up to the top floor of the building without a complaint. Rowan admired the room. The walls were wooden panels embellished with jade and gold illustrations. From the front, you could look down all the way to the floor of the establishment, where an acting troupe was performing a dance number from some play.

"Our special today is the tenderest pork loin cooked in-""We'll have one of everything," Ash said, waving the waiter away.

"Wait—make that two of everything." As the piles of dishes started arriving, Rowan couldn't help but feel envious of his cousin. The lavish meal, the clothes, the sapphire hair crown. Ash was swimming in money while Rowan was struggling to afford a single scripture at his sect.

"So, brother," said Ash, stuffing his cheeks, "why have you come to Deepwhale Pier?" Rowan looked at the spread of dishes, so vast a few teetered on the edges of the table. He sighed.

"You have my father's manual." Ash froze. Then, he swallowed the food in his mouth, and slowly began twirling noodles around his plate.

"I see…" A few expressions flickered across his face, eventually landing on frustration.

"I think I understand." Rowan waited for the boy to say more but Ash's face continued to grow darker, eyes flashing as he lost himself in thought.

"Please explain, brother," said Rowan.

"I don't know what you're thinking."

"Of course, I knew the manual was Uncle Pyrus's. But the way dad explained it, he said that when Uncle died, he left the manual for the clan's library, and the patriarch decided to let me try cultivating it, as I had the best talent of our generation. From what you just said, from your presence here… I'm getting the feeling that my father said that for my convenience," he said grimly.

"Your father left it to you, his son, didn't he? It's rightfully yours." Rowan was unsure what to say. He didn't realize Ash would take his side so readily.

"I don't know all the details. My mother was in charge of the family's holdings for a while, but she was always ill, and now she's dead." His eyes hardened.

"If she had exchanged a rank-four manual for something, I don't know what it is." Both of them knew exactly what that implied. A rank-four manual was priceless. Blackscale Sect might not even have such a treasure, let alone Righteous Mountain Sect. So how could it be traded away into the wind? If it must be exchanged for, there would at least be a mountain of spiritual herbs and artifacts at their door. There was no way Rowan wouldn't have known what it was.

"Still… how can I give it up now? I've already started training from it. Accumulating Dry Fire inside my Qi Sea. There are no other Dry Fire arts in the entire sect. My path either ends here, or I'd have to shatter my cultivation and start over from scratch." Ash slumped in his seat.

"Tell me what to do, brother. I don't want to do wrong by you, but I also don't want to throw away years of progress…" If anything, Ash was understating how disastrous shattering his cultivation was. Cultivation wasn't like waking up one day and deciding to wear different clothes. Once your Qi Sea was fully formed, if shattered, you would be dealt a massive spiritual wound that you could never recover from without expensive healing pills. The damage was more severe the greater your cultivation.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Rowan thought then of that crippled Core Formation expert, Lieren Nostraga, who had turned to demonic methods to heal himself. At that high level… even pills might not work.

"I don't want to inconvenience you. Could we both not learn from the manual?" Ash pulled out a jade slip and handed it to Rowan.

"Please, give copying it a try. I've never been able to manage it." Rowan looked at the slip with pinched brows. He pulled out the half-finished essay from his sleeve and flipped it over, trying to write the first verse of The Supreme Grand Codex of Dry Fire.

"Dust and dust, in yellow and red. Water does not cross the great divide," Ash said - from memory, as Rowan read the words. Simple enough. His fingers flexed and trembled around the quill. What was the first word again? A blot of ink fell, sliding down the sheet. Suddenly, it was like he'd forgotten how to write. He could see the profound words from the jade slip in his mind.

He tried his hardest, but the moment he went to write a single letter, the concept of language escaped him, and then he couldn't remember anything from the slip at all.

"There's an enchantment on it," said Rowan numbly. Ash nodded.

"I'm sure it can be broken, but usually the price is to hand over a copy to the person that does it." Rowan cursed.

"There's a bloodline enchantment on it too. My master once asked to take a look, and she said it was blank. As far as I can tell, only people closely related to Uncle Pyrus can even read it. Makes me wonder how—" The doors flew open with a bang. Rowan hid the jade slip in his sleeve, away from prying eyes. The head attendant practically fell into the room, bowing profusely.

"Many apologies, young masters, but I must ask you to vacate the Jade Lotus Lounge. It's been specifically requested by a group of very important guests." Even as he apologized and prostrated himself, there was a smug glint in his eyes, like he'd thought the Jade Lotus Lounge had been too good for them all along.

"You can pay for your dishes on the way out." A handful of waiters approached gingerly, but they were hesitant to clear away the dishes. None of them were cultivators and none of them looked happy to be there. Ash's face burned cherry red.

"Don't you know who I am? I'm a disciple of Cavern Lady Dawnshard, a Qi Refinement Master!" The waiters didn't move closer, choosing to shuffle their feet and avoid eye contact. The head attendant chuckled audibly. Rowan also felt indignation from the blatant disrespect, but he was new to the city, and felt like it wasn't worth making enemies. He wasn't like Ash, who felt comfortable invoking the backing he had at the local sect.

Even in Righteous Mountain City, Rowan didn't really use the Helsing name or his sect standing for clout. He would really prefer not to get into another fight and he hoped no one would start one.

"Oh. I was wondering who dared to occupy our hangout spot. Seems like it was merely an Ash Helsing." A group of four young sect disciples stood at the Jade Lotus Lounge's doors, their deep blue robes neat and trimmed in silver. Whereas Ash had a white sash around his waist embroidered with two silver carp, the needlework delicate and gleaming with protective spells, the disciples wore sashes with three. Mid-stage of Qi Condensation, thought Rowan.

If the sashes didn't indicate a clear rank difference between them and Ash, then their expressions of superiority did. Ash chuckled, terse and mean.

"You guys really stooped so low as to bully mortals into letting you barge in? Is there any line you won't cross?" The disciples surrounded the table and began to sit down. A tall, lean teenager who looked the same age as Rowan even threw his arm around Ash's shoulder.

"Like I said, this is our spot. You know that. How is it our fault that you don't know your place?"

"Don't touch me, Quentin!" Ash sprung to his feet, knocking his chair askew. Another shorter, stockier boy picked the chair up and dragged it to the balcony, sat down in a slump, threw his booted feet onto the lounge railing and tilted his head to stare at Rowan.

"Who's this? Someone you hired to be your lunch companion?" he asked Ash.

"Personally, I would've gone for a girl, but…" He gave a loud yawn. A third boy, who looked younger than the rest, did not sit, but instead stared at them nervously, cooling himself off with a beautifully painted fan with one hand and fiddling with the rings of many colors that adorned the fingers of his other. A plump girl sat down next to Rowan and helped herself to a chicken leg.

"What's your name?" she asked Rowan, fluttering her lashes and smiling up at him with her cheeks still full. Rowan quickly followed Ash's lead, backing away from the table. The waitstaff, getting a better sense of the changing tides, hurried in to clear away dishes. Quentin slapped the hand of a waiter trying to take the dish in front of him.

"Leave them. We'll do our fellow sect brother a favor and polish these off for him." Ash leaped forward, trying to snatch the dish from Quentin, but in a split second his cousin's head was suddenly submerged in a plate of spinach. The group laughed. Quentin removed his hand to clutch his stomach, laughing so hard he was wheezing. Rowan grit his teeth. He couldn't just stand by and watch as his cousin got bullied. Did everyone think the Helsing name meant so little?

He was halfway through pulling his sword from his sleeve when Ash rushed over and stopped him, flicking a leafy stalk off his cheek.

"Don't be stupid - put that away." Ash took a deep breath.

"We're all cultivators with sects behind us. All they can do is push our buttons a little. There's no need to escalate." He paused, his eyes finding a bowl of soup on the edge of the table. Rowan caught his meaning.

"But we don't have to sit here quietly and accept it, do we?"

"As long as it doesn't go too far? … No." They shared a deep look, eyes flashing. Ash smacked the lip of the bowl he'd been eyeing upwards, sending hot soup splashing across the three seated cultivators. Rowan followed by kicking the edge of the table beneath it, hoping to cover them with food. But he'd kicked it harder than he thought, or the table was flimsier than expected, because most of the dishes and cutlery ended up flying over the balcony and raining down into the dining room below.

A few short screams and a flurry of cursing sounded. The actors performing on stage stopped mid-sentence, staring up at them in horror. The waiters, and the smarmy head attendant, were already nowhere in sight. The disciples sprawled against the edge of the balcony, gasping and sputtering. Voices erupted from below. Wood scraped against wood as chairs were pushed back, wiser mortals sensing an imminent fight between cultivators and using the opportunity to dine and dash.

Ash stood over the three cultivators, smiling magnanimously.

"How's the house special?" Rowan narrowed his eyes. Wasn't there a fourth- Someone gave him a rough heave, and Rowan felt his feet leave the ground as he hurtled over the balcony.

Rowan fell for what felt like ages as he stared back at the patrons of the surrounding lounges on the top floor, then at the wide-eyed horror from the private tables on the second floor, then at the slack-jawed actors on the raised platform they were performing on, and then into the silver eyes of an incredibly beautiful girl with a conch-shaped hairpin as his cheek met a side of roasted quail and he crashed through her table. He grimaced, sitting up.

The quail slipped out of his hair and landed next to him with a wet plop.

"I was going to eat that," she said.