Shen returned home and pulled out her set of engraving tools. These weren’t quite as durable, and therefore less expensive, than the ones she used at work, as they needed to engrave stone instead of metal, but the skills used with them were almost identical.

  After taking a strip of paper and drawing the design on it to make sure that her formation would fit properly on the bracelet, she took out one of the blue bracelets and started engraving five equally spaced small arrays on its outside. Each one of them would gather a specific one of the five elements and purify it.

  By the time she was finished it was almost time for Last Meal to end, so she hurried over to the cafeteria to get something to eat. Apparently everyone was talking about the new techniques. Danka had even been allowed to read the book that his guard station was given, partially as a reward for winning the contest. Apparently, it was possible to circulate chi through a specific body part in order to remove weak points and replace them with stronger material. That would let you not just strengthen your muscles, like with weight lifting, or your skin, like if you used it enough to grow calluses, but every part of your body. There were even techniques in the Body Refinement book which would allow you to regrow missing body parts or heal damaged organs. Apparently the guards were going to be teaching this last part to their people so that they could heal themselves if they were injured, though they didn’t expect the guards to be better at healing than the healers.

  “Speaking of the contest,” Shen said, “Do you know what you are going to do with that beast core?” Shen could make good use of it in a relic, which is the main reason she joined the tournament in the first place, so if he didn’t need it, maybe she could get it from him.

  “I don’t know. I specialize in Metal chi, with a bit of Earth for defense and stability. Fire really doesn’t help me.”

  “In that case, could I buy it from you?” she asked.

  Danka shrugged. “How much are you offering?”

  “One hundred stones?” She knew it was low, but hopefully he didn’t.

  “The merchants offered me two hundred.” he countered. Apparently there was some demand for it.

  “Then I’ll pay that.” Shen agreed.

  “I turned down that much already.” he said. “Why would I accept it from you?”

  “Because I’m your friend?” she said, and Danka started thinking about it. “Also, you seriously hurt me and almost tore my shirt off. You can’t treat girls that way.”

  Ponma and Mae looked at her in surprise for saying that, but Danka just looked like a radish with his face that shade of red. “Fine.” said Danka after the normal color started to return. “Two hundred and fifty.”

  Shen smiled and took the stones out of her storage bag. Almost all of her profits from her business was gone now, but she would be able to make something nice with this.

  Danka pulled out a small spherical gem that was red with slight streaks of black in it. “There.” he said sliding it over to her. He was still a bit embarrassed, so he slid the stones into his bag quickly, then got up to leave.

  As soon as he was gone, Mae looked at Shen. “Why would you say that?” she asked as if scolding her friend.

  “I was just teasing him. I know he wasn’t trying to do anything wrong with his attack.” Shen put the tiny stone in her bag, finished the rest of her rice, and got up. “Well, I’m going back home. I’m working on a project that I need to get back to if I’m going to get enough sleep and have it ready for tomorrow.” With that she dropped off her dirty dishes and left.

  Mae’s question kept bouncing around in her head while she made her way home. Why did she say that? She knew the situation wasn’t like that, and she’d never been the type to tease people. Even if they were as good looking as Danka, with those muscles… She shook her head, forcing herself to stop thinking like that. Obviously Mr. Cal’s request and the resulting discussion with Sho about relationships had been on her mind, and she wasn’t thinking clearly. She focused her mind on the formation she was making at home. That was what was important now.

  When she got home she picked up the bracelet that laid on her bed. While she was away each of the symbols had picked up a bit of chi from the environment and refined it, though, as they had nowhere to send it, it simply sat inside the various arrays. Shen would now correct that.

  Along the inside of the bracelet she created five different arrays to feed the chi into herself, then, using five copies of a formation she had also used in her plate device, she balanced their output. Each symbol would feed her the same amount of chi as the weakest one. This would lower the speed at which it would give her chi, but would guarantee that it never put her internal chi out of balance. The next version of this bracelet would instead measure how much she had of each element and feed it to her proportionally based on that information, but that was a much more complicated formation and she wasn’t yet confident in her ability to create such an array. This one, however, was just a smaller but stronger version of the plates she had created, so it only required the skills she developed before getting a job and the tool skills she learned while making flying swords.

  Once all five formations were finished she connected them to the symbols on the outside of the bracelet and 8% pure chi from the five elements started circulating through the inner arrays, feeding their chi into the next element in the cycle so that all of them balance each other’s strength.

  Once she saw this effect she placed the bracelet on her wrist and immediately felt stronger energy than she could create enter her body, then follow her chi pathways back to her middle dantian where it was absorbed. As she hadn’t added a safety feature yet which would cut off the flow once her body couldn’t absorb all of the energy, she meditated for half an hour to help purify the wood and water chi, then removed the bracelet. She just needed to purge any excess energy that spilled out of her dantian, as it was already full, and the purity increased significantly just from that small amount of cultivation. Still, she would need at least a few days straight of meditation for it to fully purify her chi if she continued, so instead, tomorrow she would try something else. If one had a glass of salt water and wanted a glass of fresh water, it didn’t make sense to keep pouring in fresh water until the water was no longer salty. Instead, one only needed to pour the glass out then refill it.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The next day she did exactly that. While she didn’t have time to restore her supply of chi before work if she dumped all of it now, as the bracelet would take around six hours to fully restore her chi, she could dump all of her chi into the swords. Which was precisely what she did when she got to work. First was the Wood sword. She fed it chi faster than she needed to on purpose. While this would allow her to produce a slightly higher grade of sword, it was extremely wasteful of chi, and so was discouraged. When Master Chen said something about it, however, she explained her reasoning, so he allowed her to continue. Once she was finished she did the same to produce a Water sword, then an Earth sword. By midday meal she was just finishing up a Metal sword, sweat pouring off of her head. This wasn’t just from the hard work, but from the fact that she had almost intentionally let her chi be dominated by Fire chi at a purity she wasn’t used to.

  Once she was done she asked for permission to go to the cafeteria for a meal and was allowed to do so. Despite the fact that it was almost freezing outside she only carried her coat, the cool air feeling good on her exposed skin.

  By the time she had returned her Water chi had mostly restored itself so she was no longer feeling hot. Instead, she put on her coat despite the comfortable inside temperature and started creating a Fire sword. By the time she was finished she was shivering. With all of the Fire chi missing from her body and the balance now favoring Water chi her temperature had dropped significantly. Eventually she would adapt to the imbalance, but at the moment she simply didn’t have enough experience with chi of this purity.

  As she sat in front of the heater shivering she considered making a Water sword next, just to remove this feeling. While her Wood chi was the fullest, she probably had enough to make a Water sword. While the total amount of water chi was less than it was when she made her first one this morning, it had gone from 6% purity to 8% purity. This meant that she only needed three quarters as much chi as this morning to complete the sword, but as she had purposefully wasted most of the energy this morning, her current 70% full state would likely be more than enough.

  She then considered the side effects she would have if she had full reserves of Metal, Earth, and Wood chi but little to no Fire or Water chi. Metal chi tended to make one stiffer. Earth chi made one slower but stronger. Wood chi tended to give one more energy. So if she skipped ahead in the cycle and emptied her reserve of Water chi, which counteracted the stiffness of the Metal chi, she would find it difficult to move. The Earth chi would mean that she could likely force herself to move, but would be slow in doing so. And the Wood chi would make her want to move even faster, but as she couldn’t, things would feel like they were going too slow, like she was watching syrup drip.

  No, doing them in order would probably be the best way to handle the situation. She grabbed another wooden sword from the rack, moved her carving table closer to the heater, and got to work. Soon, without the Wood chi feeding the Water chi, the symptoms started to go away.

  Three hours and three and a half swords later she sat the Earth sword on the rack. Today’s swords were considerably better than yesterday’s, especially the ones she made in the afternoon, and Master Chen complimented her on it. Shen explained about how the bracelet had helped her and offered to make him one. He turned her down, however. He had enough chi to do his job as things were, so he didn’t need such a tool.

  Just as they were cleaning up the shop before closing an Elder entered the store. “Greetings Elder.” said Master Chen with a bow. “Is there anything in particular you are looking for?”

  “Mo Shen.” he said, and Shen dropped her broom before coming forward to bow.

  “How can I help you, Master?” she asked with a bow.

  “I have come to talk to you about your business.” Shen looked at Master Chen. “Not this one, your Water Blossom business. I have already sent someone to bring Gin Ponma to my master’s office, but decided to come pick you up myself, as you were working.”

  Shen bowed again. “Then I will follow you.” She bowed to Master Chen who motioned for her to leave, then followed the elder out of the shop.

  Soon they were in the inner city office where the Elder worked. Upon entering his office Shen saw Ponma sitting there and an older Elder sitting across the desk from him. The older man nodded and the younger one left the room. Shen sat down on a chair like Ponma was doing and the man sat down his glass of tea.

  “I am the sect’s quartermaster.” he said. “I had my disciples bring the two of you here because I believe that the two of you have found a way to harness a valuable resource which the sect now needs. It recently came to my attention that you have been harvesting and pickling a type of flower known as a Water Blossom from the lake beside Fisher village.”

  “The children of Fisher do most of the work, sir.” corrected Shen. “We just pay them to do so.”

  The old man waved his hand. “Close enough.” he said, then sighed, trying to remember where he was in his speech. “The recent shift to greater war support means that the sect now has need of those flowers, as they can be refined into Water Chi pills and sent to the front or kept here to restore the chi of our own people. We recognize, however, that gathering these blossoms takes a lot of work, and therefore wish to make you an offer. The two of you will receive permission to run your own business, and therefore be counted as employed outer sect members.” Normally one needed to be at least an Inner Sect disciple to start a business, so this was quite unusual. “The sect will also guarantee you one spirit stone or five points per jar of small blossoms or one and a half stones or seven and a half points per jar of large blossoms. I understand that this is less than the Caravan was willing to pay, however the guaranteed income and ability to sell them as they are produced should make up for the slightly decreased cost.”

  Ponma looked like he was thinking, so Shen pulled her chair closer to his and bent over to talk to him. She knew he was calculating costs and profit margins. “I don’t think that will be enough.” Shen whispered. “With the war funding the cost of goods will increase.” She might not have known much about business, but she did know that if the supply of a good was less than what was demanded, the price would increase. With the sect spending so much on war funding, the cost of most common goods would rise, meaning she would have to pay the kids in Fisher more. She was already barely making a profit selling them to Dragon Village at only one stone in price.

  “Maybe.” he said, and when she looked confused he continued. “The cost of things in contribution points will increase, sure, but if we are guaranteed payment in stones I think we’ll be ok.” Shen looked even more confused. “Think about it this way. Many of the inner sect disciples are currently making stones and selling them or using them to pay rent. That way they only need to spend a few hours a day making a stone and can spend the rest training. But with so many jobs opening up, many of those that were doing that will start doing outside jobs. I heard that the number of bounties on spirit beasts has already doubled since a week ago, and that will only increase in the future as their materials and the occasional core you can harvest are very useful and the inner disciples can earn far more than a few stones per day by hunting them.

  So, the supply of stones will drop greatly, making stones worth even more points. And if that’s the case, the value of the materials we need to pickle Water Blossoms, all of which are common materials, won’t increase anywhere near as quickly. This could be quite lucrative.”

  “What if that doesn’t happen, though?” Shen asked. “Right now, I’d barely turn a profit at one stone per jar, and only really make money on the large blossoms.”

  Ponma nodded. “In that case, I’ll negotiate a bit.” He informed the elder that the stated price was a bit low but if he guaranteed payment in stones they could do it for one and a half per small blossom jar and two per large blossom jar. After a few minutes of negotiation they split the difference and signed a contract to supply the sect with the flowers for one and a quarter per jar of small blossoms and one and three quarters per jar of large blossoms.

  After the contract was signed the elder pulled out a list of buildings available for rent and they picked out a warehouse in the outer city where they could store the goods and paid the rent in advance. It was in the outer section of the Wood district, and cost fifty points per month. Shen handed over the ten stones before Ponma could fish them out of his storage. “So, I take it you two will be heading out tomorrow morning to set up your business?” The Elder asked.

  “Actually,” said Shen. “I think I would like to finish learning about arrays and relic crafting. Not only is it quite interesting, but I think it will be greatly needed in the war.” She pulled out her remaining sixty seven stones and handed them to Ponma. “For now, please consider me a mostly silent partner. I will try to help out on my days off, but I would like to spend at least five days out of ten studying under Master Chen.”

  The Elder looked slightly disappointed, but Ponma nodded his head. “Sure. I’ll use this money to buy a cart, jars, and maybe a few magic bags to make things easier. I’ve built up enough strength recently that I can haul even a full cart by myself.”

  With things settled they both bowed to the Elder, who bowed back, and they left. Ponma was going to be quite busy tomorrow.