I arrived on the outskirts of a large city. My arrival point was, perhaps predictably, an alleyway in a rundown area. I was alone, had no money, had no knowledge of the local area, and had no real sense of where I should go from here.


    Was my decision to jump ship from the Su Clan rash? Maybe, but I could make it work.


    “System, what is the cost of moving my reset point to here for the next few resets?”


    Cost is dependent on the number of resets. Calculating for three resets. Cost 210 credits.


    Okay, that just meant I needed to make at least Martial Disciple 2 before I met an untimely end so I could afford the teleport back here after I died. With three Qi Gathering Pills, that would be as easy as breathing. The problem was, I didn’t have a cultivation technique I trusted. In the future, I definitely needed to pick one up from the system. Or maybe better, learn to appraise cultivation techniques.


    Before I could do any of that, though, I needed to rest. It was still the middle of the night, and I didn’t fancy wandering around the streets of an unfamiliar city in darkness. I adjusted my robes so they wouldn’t get too dirty from resting on the ground and sat down to get a few hours of sleep. I had to trust that the system dropped me in a truly out-of-the-way location.


    <hr>


    First step, get money. This was something I had prepared for. Now, I just needed to find a shop where I could sell some pills. I left the alleyway and began searching the streets.


    The area I was in was definitely what I would consider the slums. Houses were in terrible disrepair everywhere, old women had laid out blankets to set up make-shift vegetable stands, and men could be seen butchering livestock on the street.


    I was both annoyed and gratified that I did not, in fact, stand out from the crowd as I walked the streets. The fraying robes I had worn since coming to this world fit right in with everyone else in this part of town. Unfortunately, I doubted I would be able to sell pills worth several silver in this kind of location. I needed to find higher-class clientele.


    The terrain the town was built on was somewhat hilly, which worked to my advantage. I found a relatively open hilltop and surveyed what I could see.


    Really, it was larger than I had expected. For some reason, I was expecting a small medieval village with a population in the low tens of thousands. Instead, what I saw was significantly larger and more advanced in both size and scope.


    Most of the buildings were cramped two-story affairs, with the occasional three-story dotted around. From what I could tell, there seemed to be two major centers of affluence. One was centered around a palace complex of dozens of buildings surrounded by towering walls. The other was centered around a massive, towering, steeped pagoda that had to be at least eight stories tall.


    I took another look around, to see if I could find any other landmarks. That’s when I saw it. Behind the palace, up in the forested hills, was what looked from here to be another large building complex.


    “If I were a betting man, I would say that is the damn compound I’ve been trapped in. Which would probably make that,” I said, mentally noting the palace, “the Su Clan’s property. I guess I know where not to go.”


    I headed to the massive pagoda.


    <hr>


    I moved through the streets of the city with purpose. I had no desire to draw attention by rushing, but I also wanted to give off the appearance of a man with a place to be. This… somewhat worked.


    After exiting the slums and moving into the more lower-middle-class area, I still didn’t look too out of place. Once I got to the upper-middle-class areas, I definitely no longer looked like a member of the general public. However, I did a decent job mimicking a working-class man making his way through the area on business. I may have received the occasional odd look, but no one stopped me and asked what I was doing.


    I was lucky in that the area directly around the pagoda was not too upscale. There were some walled-off areas nearby, but I didn’t need to approach them.


    It took me a few hours to make my way to the pagoda, but the sun was still high in the sky. I had high hopes that I would be able to sell my pills, find an inn, and settle down before darkness became a problem.


    I had no idea what the pagoda I had seen actually was. All I knew was it looked like an important location, so I was pleasantly surprised that when I arrived, I saw a steady trickle of people both entering and exiting the building. They were grouped in twos and threes, and they were dressed like any other person on the street. So, it seemed like it definitely was a public building of some kind.


    I climbed the wide, marble stairs. The entrance was two sets of large double doors with all the doors propped open. On either side of the doorway stood a tall, wide, muscular man with a no-nonsense expression. One gave me a glance but turned away after a brief look. I walked inside.


    The inside of the pagoda was a huge, massive room. There were counters everywhere, holding everything from herbs, to weapons, to camping supplies. At a quick glance, it looked like the pagoda could contain anything one might need.


    As I stood near the entrance, taking in the sight of it all, a young woman wearing a formal, light-blue qipao dress with silver embroidery walked up to me. She looked me up and down with a severe sneer on her face.


    “Can I help you, sir?” she asked.


    “Uh… yeah, I would like to—”


    She cut me off, “Can you even afford anything here? We don’t give out charity here.”


    “No, I mean, I want… I have something to sell.”


    Some of the customers had begun watching at this point. They were all smiling and snickering.


    “What could you possibly have to sell? Get out of here before I have security throw you out.”


    “But… alright,” I said, disappointed. This actually seemed like the place I needed to be, but I didn’t have the clout to enter. Maybe I should work on my appearance, but I didn’t have the resources for that. I could probably get better customer service elsewhere, but this place shone with an aura of importance.


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    As I was exiting the building, one of the guards shoved me from behind.


    “Don’t come back,” he said with a growl.


    I walked away with my head hung low as the people around me laughed.


    After walking a solid block and a half away, I ducked into a small side alley. When he shoved me, the guard had stuffed a piece of paper into my collar.


    Hey, circle around the left side. You’ll find a pub there called The Dragon’s Breath. Go through the alley, and behind the pub, there is a side entrance to the pagoda. Just walk on in.


    This was… strange. Was it some kind of trap? Surely they weren’t in the business of robbing their poorest prospective clients. Shrugging, I decided to just go with it. The worst they could do was kill me, after all. I followed the directions and quickly found the aforementioned door.


    To enter before, I had walked up a flight of stairs to a grand entrance. This door led directly into the marble foundation the pagoda sat upon.


    “Hello, welcome to the Blue Wind Pavilion!” said a cheery voice.


    I looked and found the same girl that had been so dismissive earlier. What was going on… The confusion must have shown on my face because she was quick to tell me.


    “Sorry about earlier. That’s how the regular customers expect us to behave, and you know what they say, give the customers what they want. Sorry you got caught up in it. Usually, young men who walk into the front entrance wearing ragged clothes are extremely wealthy. Most of the actual poorer folk know to take this entrance,” she said with a wink.


    I was shocked. “You treat people like that because they are rich?”


    “Oh, yeah, of course. Everyone always fights over who gets to yell at the people who come in looking like beggars. With a little luck, you can earn a year’s commission in less than an hour!”


    “What?! How?!”


    “Whenever you get a rich guy dressed like a poor man, if someone looks down on them for being poor, those guys love to slap people in the face with their money. ‘You think I’m poor? I’ll buy everything in this shop!’ That kind of thing.”


    “That, that actually works?”


    “All. The. Time.”


    “So… you thought I was rich?”


    “Oh, no, no. Not at all,” she said with a laugh. “I knew you were genuine right away, but we still need to keep up appearances for everyone else, right? Anyway, enough rambling about sales tactics. What can I do ya for?”


    I felt like this place was giving me whiplash.


    “I, uh, I want to sell some pills,” I said, fumbling to take them out of my robe.


    She took the bottles and inspected the pills.


    “Hmm. Mid-Purity Basic Qi Gathering. Efficacy looks decent. Alright, I can give you three silvers each for them.”


    “What? They’re worth ten!” They had to be. If the System had been wrong…


    “Yes and no… Their efficacy is decent, but it’s only in the high 80s, so we can’t sell them in this store. We guarantee 90% or more. Also, we only sell High-Purity pills here. We will pass them to a smaller branch, and they will sell them for ten silvers. So, you see, you can’t exactly expect us to pay you nearly that much, right?”


    “Oh, uh, right…”


    “Now, looking at you, you are a Martial Disciple 1 who just got awakened, right? And you’re here. Selling pills that could be used to improve your own non-existent cultivation, right? So, where did a guy who looks little better than a beggar get two precious pills? Why is he looking to sell them off? Why, and this is an interesting question for me, did such a person not know that he shouldn’t have bothered trying to come in through the main entrance?”


    She gave me a smile. “These, I’m guessing, are the questions you don’t want me to ask. Therefore, the price is three silvers.”


    “Actually,” I replied slowly, “those are questions I don’t mind answering. This is my first time in the city, I don’t have a cultivation technique, so want to get enough money to buy one, and I made them myself.”


    “Ooo, a sixteen-year-old boy without any cultivation is able to concoct Mid-Purity pills? I’d really like to see that!” she said excitedly.


    “Uh, okay?”


    “Lovely, follow me.”


    She began walking through the building. This floor was much more cramped than the expansive area above. We passed by several areas with all sorts of knick-knacks squirreled away into wooden boxes. There were a few other people here, but nothing like what I had seen above. If anything, this part of the building gave me the feeling of a low-rent pawn shop.


    “Okay, let’s see. One blue peony,” she said grabbing a flower and tossing it to me. “That will be 50 coppers. I’ll put it on your tab. Come. Come.”


    We continued walking for a bit longer.


    “Alright, here you go. Lowest-grade alchemy workshop. That will be 2 silver per hour. Sorry, but we don’t rent them out for shorter time slots,” she said cheerfully and consolingly. “Now, go ahead, let me watch.”


    This whole encounter felt so strange. I honestly couldn’t tell if she was mocking me or legitimately believed in me. I think she was doing her best to do both simultaneously so that whatever happened, she had acted correctly.


    Performing alchemy while someone watched was a new form of pressure, but my decades of practice guided me through, even if I was somewhat nervous. I only had one chance here, and I couldn’t afford to screw up. I went slowly. Burning away the tainted strings with all the focus I could muster.


    Before, in Rudy’s workshop, efficiency was most important to me. I wanted as many pills as my energy could create, so I was willing to lower quality to get quantity. That was a bad play here. No need for quantity. One good pill was all I needed.


    I burned through way too much energy, but I was satisfied with the result. I handed the pill over to the curious young woman who quickly began analyzing it.


    “Sigh,” she said airily, “I guess it was too much to hope to see a boy without cultivation make a Mid-Purity pill. Still, at least you could make a High-Purity one. Hmm. I guess since you could at least make something, I should give you some kind of benefit. How about 10 silver for the high and 5 for each mid? So, 20 silver total. That’s about as high as I can get for you. Minus your expenses, that comes to 17 silver 50 copper. Deal?”


    “What? Huh? Yea… I mean, deal.”


    “Great.” She smiled. “Here you go. Do you need anything else?”


    “Can I use this room to make more pills?”


    She laughed, “You did pay for an hour here. It’s your time to waste. You can even buy some more ingredients from us if you want, and we will definitely accept any Mid-Purity or higher pills. But let me ask you, do you have the energy to make any more?”


    “Uh…” I had expended nearly 80% of my reserves. “No, I guess not.”


    “So,” she asked again, “do you need anything else?”


    I thought about it. I weighed the bag of coins in my hand. 17 silver. It should be more than enough to rent a room and feed myself. Worst comes to worst, I could come back here each day and make a couple more pills to sell. I could get by…


    “What’s the price of a fire qi cultivation technique?”


    “Hmm, cultivation technique… What kind are you looking for? I assume a Rank 1 technique since you’re a Martial Disciple? How good of one do ya want? Low-Yellow? Peak-Yellow? Profound? Higher? We may not have it here, but the Blue Wind Pavilion can source items from across the entire Nine Rivers Continent!”


    “Yellow?” I asked. “What do you mean by Low-Yellow and Peak-Yellow?”


    She gave me a funny look at that question. “Cultivation techniques are both ranked and graded. Rank 1 is for Martial Disciples, Rank 2 is for Martial Masters, and so on. Within a Rank, they are graded into Yellow, Profound, Earth or Heaven, then further divided as Low, Mid, High, or Peak.”


    “But… why those names? Why Yellow?”


    “The heavens are profound, and the earth is yellow,” she said in a practiced cadence. “It’s from the poem The Thousand Character Classic, you know?”


    As she spoke, the language knowledge I had purchased from the system activated in overdrive to resolve the translation. She had only spoken four words, “天地玄黃.” Heaven, earth, profound, yellow, but the meaning behind these four words was immense. It was a description of the cosmos and its grandeur.


    “So, Heaven is the best, then Earth, Profound, and the worst is Yellow. Alright…” I said, struggling out of a slight daze, “What is the, uh, cheapest?”


    “Cheapest, eh?


    “I could let you have a Low-Yellow one for 10 gold, but I doubt you want it. Nasty side effects on that one. Lowest priced technique I would actually recommend? Say, 50 gold. It’s still Low-Yellow, of course, but it’s a bit better,” she said, nodding. “Want to take a look?”


    “No… no need.”


    “Alright, anything else?”


    I sighed… “Yeah… Yeah, I guess there is. I would like to make a deal.”


    “Wonderful!” she said excitedly. “Let me take you to the boss.”