The two young masters met in the middle of the market street, roughly three paces apart, in front of a fish stall.
It was, Qian Fan thought, an excellent location for a confrontation. Very dramatic. Slightly damp.
“Wang Batian,” said Qian Wudi.
“Qian Wudi,” said Batian.
Wang Batian was taller, broader, and dressed in dark red robes with gold threads at the cuffs. He wore three rings, which Qian Fan suspected were two more than he needed, and carried a folding fan in weather that did not require one.
Behind each young master, their lackeys formed neat rows.
“Young Master Wudi is invincible!” shouted four voices.
“Young Master Batian is peerless under heaven!” shouted six.
“You have six,” Qian Wudi observed.
“I have six,” Wang Batian agreed.
“Last month you only had four.”
“Last month,” said Wang Batian, “I was a lesser man.”
* * *
Qian Fan settled onto an upturned basket behind the cart, folded his arms, and prepared to enjoy himself.
His father had already begun quietly moving the clay bowls to the back of the stall, with the calm efficiency of a man who had been through several of these.
“How bad does it usually get?” Qian Fan asked.
“Depends,” Qian Hou said. “If they only insult each other, we’re fine. If one of them draws a sword, then the fish sellers join and start throwing things.”
Out in the street, Qian Wudi lifted his chin. “Hmph, I heard you failed to reach the 9th layer again.”
Wang Batian’s fan snapped open. “I heard the Testing Stone gave you blue.”
“Mystic Grade,” Qian Wudi said proudly. “Heaven-shaking.”
“Young Master Wudi is invincible!”
“I also got blue.”
“Young Master Batian is peerless under heaven!”
“Mine was a deeper blue.”
“Young Master Wudi is invincible!”
“Mine lasted longer.”
“Young Master Batian is peerless under heaven!”
“That’s not how it works.”
“That,” said Wang Batian, “is exactly how it works.”
Qian Fan pressed his fist against his mouth and stared very hard at the radish.
Noise pollution…
* * *
[Host! Two excellent customers! 🎉]
I can see that.
[Would you like a Credit Check? 🤔]
Obviously.
[Credit Check: Qian Wudi]
[Assets: One jade hair ring, one new sword, an allowance of 20 silver taels a month]
[Liabilities: 3 unpaid tailor bills, 1 unpaid restaurant bill, 1 “loan” from a cousin he has forgotten about]
[Income: None. Subject does not work]
[Repayment Behavior: Poor. Subject expects others to pay.]
[Risk rating: HIGH]
[Recommendation: Maximum rate permitted! 😊]
Qian Fan’s eyebrows rose.
Twenty silver taels a month.
Qian Xiaotian’s household lived on one.
[Credit Check: Wang Batian]
[Assets: Three rings, one folding fan, one spirit beast (a duck)]
[Allowance: 25 silver taels a month]
[Liabilities: See above, plus one very large bill from a poet]
[Repayment Behavior: Poor. Subject buys whatever Qian Wudi buys, but more expensive.]
[Risk Rating: HIGH]
[Recommendation: Maximum rate permitted! 😊]
A poet?
[Young Master Batian commissioned forty verses about himself; he has only paid for six. 😊]
A spirit beast that is a duck?
[It is a very expensive duck. 😊]
* * *
In the street, the argument had escalated to purchases.
“This,” Qian Wudi announced, drawing a sword from his belt, “is Froslight. Forged in the Long Clan’s own workshop. Eight silver taels.”
The crowd murmured in appreciation.
Appraise, Qian Fan thought.
[Appraisal complete!]
[Sword: “Frostlight”]
[Grade: Ordinary steel, decorated]
[Market Value: 3 silver taels]
[Note: The blue tassel costs 2 silver taels and 100 copper coins. 😊]
Qian Fan made a small, strangled sound. His father patted him on the back without looking away from the street.
Wang Batian unhooked something from his own belt. “This is Duskcloud. From the same workshop. One hundred silver.”
[Appraisal complete!]
[Sword: “Duskcloud”]
[Grade: Ordinary steel, decorated]
[Market value: 3 silver taels]
[Note: Identical to “Frostlight”. Different tassel. 😊]
Qian Fan lowered his head into his hands.
Somewhere in the Long Clan’s beautiful sandalwood store, a clerk was making one hundred and seventy-four silver taels of profit off two idiots who thought they were rivals, and neither of them would ever know.
That, he thought, is the most impressive thing I’ve seen in this world.
I want that.
No. I want more than that.
I want the village idiots to come back next month and buy a third sword.
[Host, your heart rate has increased! 😊]
Wang Batian, sensing that swords alone would not win the afternoon, raised one hand.
“Poet.”
A thin, exhausted man in ink-stained robes stepped out from behind the six lackeys, unrolled a scroll, and began to read in the voice of someone who had not been paid in four months.
“The young master of the Wang Clan stands like a mountain…his gaze scatters clouds…his stride is admired by, ah, cranes—”
“Cranes?” said Qian Wudi.
“It’s a metaphor,” said Wang Batian.
“It’s a bird.”
“Poetry,” Wang Batian said coldly, “is wasted on some people.”
The poet, who had stopped reading, looked hopefully at his employer. Wang Batian waved him back behind the lackeys without a word about money.
[Host, that poet’s unpaid balance is now 34 verses. 😞]
Qian Fan felt a distant, professional ache in his chest.
Qian Wudi, refusing to be outdone by a man with rented culture, snapped his fingers.
The four lackeys shifted formation.
It was an actual formation. They moved in unison, two stepping back and two stepping wide aside, so that their master stood at the point of a small, dramatic triangle. After getting into formation, fireworks exploded in the background.
“YOUNG MASTER WUDI IS INVINCIBLE!”
Somewhere in the crowd, a child clapped.
They reminded Qian Fan of Superhero Sentai shows after they were done transforming, which he used to watch back when he was a kid in his past life.
“The Heaven-Shaking Wedge,” Qian Wudi announced. “We have been practicing.”
“You have been practicing standing,” said Wang Batian.
“We practiced for two weeks.”
“I see…Practiced for two weeks to look like idiots.”
* * *
Then Qian Wudi produced his trump card.
He drew a folded slip of yellow paper from his sleeve and held it up between two fingers, letting the afternoon light shine through it.
“A Heavenly Guard Talisman,” he said. “It blocks one attack from any cultivator below Foundation Establishment. Fifty silver taels.”
The crowd made an impressed noise.
Appraise, Qian Fan thought wearily.
[Appraisal complete!]
[Item: “Heavenly Guard Talisman”]
[Grade: Paper. Red ink.]
[Effect: None.]
[Market Value: 2 coppers]
[Note: Someone has drawn a very confident circle on it. 😊]
Qian Fan looked at the sky for a moment and tried to make peace with the world.
Wang Batian’s fan snapped shut. “Fifty silver. For paper.”
“For protection.”
“I could buy a hundred of those.”
“Then buy them.”
And that, Qian Fan would think later, was the moment the afternoon truly went wrong.
* * *
Because Wang Batian turned to the nearest stall, which happened to belong to a small, elderly trinket seller who had been having an extremely ordinary day, and pointed at a dusty green pendant hanging from a string.
“That,” he said. “How much?”
The old man blinked. “Th-three silver?”
“I’ll take it.”
“I’ll take it for four,” said Qian Wudi.
The old man’s mouth opened.
“Five,” said Wang Batian.
“Six.”
“Ten.”
“Twelve!”
The trinket seller’s hands had begun to tremble. The crowd had gone completely silent. Somewhere behind him, Qian Fan heard his own father whisper, “Heavens.”
Appraise the pendant, Qian Fan thought.
[Appraisal complete!]
[Item: Green pendant, glass]
[Market value: 40 coppers]
Forty coppers.
“Fifteen silver,” said Qian Wudi.
“Twenty,” said Wang Batian, “and I’ll wear it in front of your clan’s gate.”
Qian Wudi’s face went red. “Twenty-five!”
Wang Batian paused.
Then he lowered his fan, smirking, and said. “It’s yours.”
Qian Wudi stood there holding a piece of green glass worth forty coppers, for which he had just agreed to pay twenty-five silver taels, in front of half the market, because the alternative was letting another boy have it.
The trinket seller had to sit down.
Qian Fan sat very still on his upturned basket.
He had read about auctions in his last life. He had watched people bid up sneakers and concert tickets and small ugly paintings, and he had always thought it was a kind of madness that happened to other people, far away, with money that wasn’t his.
He had never seen it happen four steps in front of him, over a piece of glass, between two spoiled men who would both go home and tell their fathers that they had won.
Twenty-five silver taels, he thought. From forty coppers…
That’s a six-thousand percent margin.
[Host! Your heart rate has increased again! 😲]
Shut up.
[Would you like to sell them something?]
Qian Fan looked at the two young masters, then at the weeping trinket seller, then at the dusty herbs on his own cart.
Not yet, he thought. But someday I’m going to build a room where this happens on purpose.
* * *
The duel of purchases might have gone on until sunset if Wang Batian’s spirit beast hadn’t joined in.
It came waddling out from behind his lackeys: a large white duck with a faint golden sheen to its feathers and the unhurried confidence of an animal that had never been told no.
“Behold,” Wang Batian said, “my contracted companion. A Golden Dawn Spirit Drake. Two hundred silver taels.”
The duck walked directly into the fish stall and bit a fish.
“He is still young,” Wang Batian said.
Qian Wudi’s lip curled. “A duck.”
“A spirit drake.”
“It is eating a dead fish.”
“He is absorbing its essence.”
Somewhere in Qian Fan’s chest, something old and professional stirred and said: that man will buy anything.
The two groups drifted along the street as they argued, and eventually the whole procession passed the Qian family’s cart.
Qian Wudi’s eyes swept across it. Radishes. Clay bowls. Died herbs. A comb missing three teeth. A boy in a plain gray robe sitting on an upturned basket.
His gaze passed over Qian Fan without slowing at all, the way a man’s eyes pass over a fence post.
“Pitiful,” Qian Wudi said to nobody. “Our clan lets side branches sell vegetables in public.”
Then he walked on.
Qian Fan watched him go and felt no anger whatsoever, which surprised him a little bit.
He had been a phone voice for four years. He knew exactly what it was worth to be a person nobody looked at. It meant nobody watched what you did, or counted what you earned, or asked where your stock came from. And concluded that being unnoticed is a blessing.
Cousin Wudi, he thought pleasantly, please never learn my name.
* * *
The confrontation ended the way these things always did.
Qian Wudi declared that in three months, at the clan’s junior competition, he would show the whole city what a Mystic Grade genius could do.
“And I hope my dear cousin signs up,” he added, loudly enough for the fish sellers to hear. “The one who carries water. I’d like the city to watch him lose in public, since he enjoys making speeches.”
Wang Batian declared that the Wang Clan’s junior competition was in two months, which made it earlier and therefore better.
Qian Wudi said the Qian Clan’s competition had a bigger stage.
Wang Batian said stages didn’t matter.
Qian Wudi said that exactly what someone with a smaller stage would say.
Three months, Qian Fan thought, filling it away with the tidiness of a man updating a calendar. Twelve weekly payments. Time for a 2nd-layer boy to become something else entirely.
Assuming, of course, that the boy bought anything at all.
Then one of Wang Batian’s lackeys, overcome by the moment, shouted the chant again, and one of Qian Wudi’s lackeys, not to be outdone, shouted his. Both groups shouted. Somebody’s elbow hit a fruit cart.
The fruit cart went over.
Apples rolled down the entire length of the market street. A small boy shrieked with joy and began stuffing them into his shirt. The fruit seller knelt in place and put his face in his hands.
“Charge it to the Qian Clan’s account,” Qian Wudi said grandly, already walking away.
“Charge it to the Wang Clan’s account,” Wang Batian said, walking the other way.
The fruit seller lowered his hands and stared at them.
“Neither of them has ever paid…” He said, to nobody in particular.
Qian Fan looked at him with the deepest professional sympathy he had ever felt. In his last life, he had once spent six weeks chasing a man who owed forty dollars on a blender.
* * *
Ten minutes later, one of Qian Wudi’s lackeys came shuffling up to the stall.
He was a broad-shouldered boy of about seventeen with a red face and a voice that had clearly been through a great deal.
“Do you have anything,” he croaked, “for a throat?”
Qian Fan looked at him.
He thought about fifty chants a day, every day, at increasing volume, in an escalating rivalry with six men who had the numerical advantage and better lung capacity.
“How much do you shout, exactly?” he asked.
“Forty, fifty times a day,” the lackey rasped. “More when Young Master Batian is around.”
“And does the Young Master pay you for it?”
The boy looked at him as though he were looking at an idiot asking whether the sun paid for daylight. “It’s an honor to serve.”
Ah, Qian Fan thought. Unpaid internship.
He reached under the cart and produced a small jar of Bone-Strengthening Salve.
“Rub this on your throat before you sleep,” he said. “Twenty-five coppers. It’s meant for muscles, and your throat is mostly muscles.”
The lackey counted out twenty-five coppers from a very thin purse.
[Sale complete! 🎉]
[Quota Progress: 4%]
Does that count for the quest?
[Sadly not, Host! The First Sale quest requires a Protagonist! 😊]
He looked like the superhero sentai when they got into formation earlier with Qian Wudi. He shouts for a living and doesn’t get paid. That sounds fairly protagonist to me.
[He is not flagged, Host. Ordinary customers contribute to your Quota only!]
So the bar goes up, and the timer keeps running.
[Correct! 🎉]
Qian Fan sighed. Four sales, four percent, and the one customer who mattered was still somewhere in the compound carrying water.
“If it works,” Qian Fan said pleasantly, “come back, and remember to tell all your friends.”
The lackey nodded, croaked something grateful, and hurried off after his master.
Qian Hou beamed at his son. “That was kind of you.”
“It was twenty-five coppers.”
“It was kind and twenty-five coppers,” his father said. “The best kind of business.”
Qian Fan opened his mouth to argue, but found nothing to say, and closed it again.
* * *
By late afternoon, the street had settled. The apples had been gathered. The fruit seller was writing something on a piece of paper that Qian Fan strongly suspected was another invoice nobody would honor.
Qian Fan leaned back on his basket and thought about the numbers.
Twenty silver a month. Twenty-five silver a month. Two identical swords with different tassels, bought at 26 and 33 times their value, because a spoiled kid couldn’t stand the idea of another kid having a nicer one.
He had spent his last life selling installment plans to people who wanted things they could not afford.
In four years of phone calls, he had never met customers like these.
They didn’t need to be convinced. They didn’t need to be pressured. They didn’t even need to be sold to.
They just needed someone else to have something first.
Give me one good product, Qian Fan thought, and those two will finance each other into the ground.
[Host! That is a wonderful attitude! 🎉]
Thank you.
[Shall we begin with Young Master Wudi?]
Not yet. He doesn’t know that I even exist. That’s an advantage that I’m not going to spend it on a sword that would possibly stab me in the future.
He stretched, glanced up the street, and stopped.
Coming down the road, walking carefully, was a thin boy in a patched robe.
He had a cloth bundle in his arms, held against his chest with both hands, the way you hold something that is worth more than your life. His sleeves were rolled up. There was still hay in his hair.
Qian Xiaotian was heading for the market.
Qian Fan sat up very slowly.
[Ding!]
[Protagonist approaching! 🎉]
[First Sale quest: 4 days remaining.]
Tag it, Qian Fan thought. Stall Placement. Three coppers]
[Tagging Iron Hide Tempering Manual for Stall Placement! 😊]
[Price: 3 coppers]
[Contract will activate upon reading]
He had meant to do this tomorrow.
Tomorrow, it turned out, had arrived early.
Qian Fan reached under the cart, moved two bundles of dried herbs aside, and placed a thin, cracked, rat-nibbled book on the very edge of the stall.
Then he picked up a radish and pretended to be extremely interested in it.