Chen Xuan hadn't gone outside the city to help distribute food. He trusted Liu Shuyue to handle it. Besides, he was the shopkeeper, an outsider to Qingzhou and even to Liu Shuyue's world. He had no business getting too deeply involved.
Still, whenever she came to collect a new shipment, Liu Shuyue filled him in on the food distribution.
Lately, it had become routine for the two of them to sit at the counter around three or four in the afternoon, each with a cup of coffee, and chat for half an hour.
As it turned out, Liu Shuyue had handled things even better than he'd expected.
"I didn't think you'd let the refugees sell their relief noodles," Chen Xuan said, topping up her coffee.
"I thought of it the first day I tasted them," she said cheerfully. "Just add boiling water and a few seasoning packets, and you get something this delicious. Even wealthy families find that novel. Food prices are still rising, but those people never worry about going hungry or being unable to afford grain. Give the young masters of prominent families something new to try, and they'll gladly pay a fortune."
"You haven't been out to see it. Plenty of restaurants around the city have Lotus Cloud Hot-and-Sour Noodles on the menu now, and rich people have to queue for them. All their lavish dishes have been outdone by relief food for famine victims. What a ridiculous world."
"Are you still handing out noodles, then?" Chen Xuan asked.
"No. It's better for me to negotiate one deal than to let the refugees sell them individually and get talked down by merchants," Liu Shuyue said frankly. "Of the noodles you give me now, I store half and sell half. Then I use the money to buy rice, flour, and flatbreads, which fill people up better than instant noodles. By my reckoning, one serving of noodles gets us five or six servings of other food. It's a good bargain."
That was Liu Shuyue's marketing at work.
With the twin hooks of "miraculous food made with Immortal Arts" and "refugee rations tastier than restaurant meals," she had spread word of the instant noodles across the city in no time. Once the wealthy came looking to try them, they were on her hook. Relief noodles became a commodity, their price leaping severalfold. In return, she got all kinds of less tasty but longer-lasting dry rations and cured fish and meat.
Chen Xuan had thought he could keep supplies flowing for only about two weeks. Now it looked as though Liu Shuyue could hold out for a month without much trouble.
If he had supplied rice instead of instant noodles from the start, it probably wouldn't have worked.
A sect disciple really did know a trick or two.
"But what's going on with the Prefect? You said he's seemed preoccupied lately?"
Liu Shuyue nodded. "Yes. He may think he's behaving as usual, but the disordered aura around him tells me something is troubling him."
With someone solving the refugee problem for him, the Prefect ought to have been smiling in his sleep. Chen Xuan immediately imagined a whole scandal in which the local official had embezzled a vast sum of disaster relief funds.
But that made no sense. The relief money and grain were still on the road. Besides, Liu Shuyue had used none of Zhangwei City's resources to solve the refugee problem. The Prefect had everything to gain and nothing to lose. Now that the refugees were being taken care of without him lifting a finger, he should have found it even easier to steal the relief funds.
"You think there's something wrong with him?"
"I made a few inquiries, but found nothing. Shen Fang has had an excellent reputation throughout his years as Prefect of Zhang Wei. He's honest, and he handles cases fairly. The people even call him Shen the Azure Sky in private."
Maybe Voice of Trust, the ability I got from Joan of Arc, could help? Chen Xuan thought. It couldn't detect lies, but it could sense whether someone harbored hostility.
Before he could speak, though, Liu Shuyue waved a hand. "Never mind. I don't really care what he's thinking. I just heard that Qingzhou's first shipment of disaster relief grain will arrive in Zhang Wei in two days. Once it does, I'll have achieved what I came for."
Of course. The refugees had never been her responsibility.
She had stepped in to handle the mess only because she couldn't bear to watch people suffer.
Once the funds and grain transferred from other regions arrived, the crisis here would resolve itself.
"Where will you go next?" Chen Xuan asked casually.
"I haven't decided. I hear an evil cultivator has appeared in neighboring Yuanzhou. Perhaps I'll go have a look." She took a sip of coffee, smiling. "In the end, I owe you for how smoothly this went. Without Broadly Read Through the Ages, I doubt I'd have thought to promote Lotus Cloud Immortal Noodles the way I did. And without Liberty Leading the People, I couldn't have united thousands of refugees in a single day."
"You make it sound like I gave you those abilities for free." Chen Xuan shook his head with a smile. "You paid for them. The results are entirely yours."
"Are they?" Liu Shuyue stole a glance at him. "I seem to remember a rule at this shop: if I'm dissatisfied with an ability, I can return it within a month for a full refund?"
Chen Xuan's smile froze.
"Uh, well... Do you want to return them?"
"Hmm... No. I'm very happy with both abilities." Seeing him relax despite himself gave Liu Shuyue a strange sense of satisfaction.
These had been the easiest days she'd had in years. It wasn't just that her new home was rich in Spiritual Energy and felt like paradise. She had suddenly found someone she could talk to about her ideals. Nor had she faced the refugee crisis alone. Knowing that such a mysterious Ability Store stood behind her, ready to help, filled her with confidence.
In her eyes, Chen Xuan was no longer merely a merchant. He felt more like a friend.
Even if that was only her imagination, she hoped the feeling would last a little longer.
After all, once they parted this time, who knew how many years it would be before they met again?
When Liu Shuyue finished chatting and went upstairs, Chen Xuan finally had some time to himself. He had spent the past few days arranging purchases of instant noodles and hadn't had a chance to examine the new abilities in his inventory. Now he could finally try them out.
He had equipped Heavenly Cloud Skill as soon as he obtained it, replacing Pure Heart Art, but he hadn't noticed much change overall.
He could tell that this Mind Method was far more complex than Pure Heart Art, though it didn't replace all of its functions. Pure Heart Art, for instance, could calm the mind and regulate body temperature, keeping him cool in summer and warm in winter like a portable air conditioner. Heavenly Cloud Skill offered no such convenience. It strengthened other spells more, though. Where Pure Heart Art leaned toward support, Heavenly Cloud Skill leaned toward combat.
As for the description's talk of evolving oneself and moving toward Ascension, he hadn't the faintest idea how to do that.
Everything he knew about the ability came from Liu Shuyue, and she naturally had no idea what Ascension meant.
Perhaps the Ability Store's descriptions of abilities were full of nonsense and shouldn't be taken as gospel.
In any case, it was a secret Mind Method of the Lotus Cloud Sect, one that only its most outstanding disciples were qualified to learn. Now that it had fallen into his hands, Liu Shuyue had, in a sense, seriously broken her sect's rules. She had talked that through with him, of course. She hadn't taught him the incantation, copied out a manual, or even explained the most basic techniques for circulating energy. Strictly speaking, she hadn't passed the art on at all.
He had to admit, she was pretty flexible about the rules.
The other three abilities—Divine Eye Method, Golden Cicada Sheds Its Shell Technique, and Thousand Thoughts Sword—were much easier to grasp. After equipping Divine Eye Method, Chen Xuan found he could clearly see clothes drying on a balcony hundreds of meters away and catch the instant a bird left a branch. It was much like a cybernetic eye, vastly improving how much visual information he could take in.
Golden Cicada Shell was a life-saving spell with a rather mysterious principle. According to Liu Shuyue, it used one's fate to avert an otherwise certain death, but it wasn't automatic. If the caster failed to foresee his own death, the spell would not activate. Chen Xuan found that disappointing. If it couldn't protect him from an ambush, its usefulness dropped considerably.
As for Thousand Thoughts Sword... the name was literal. At an advanced level, a practitioner could summon a thousand swords made of condensed thought. Each moved like an extension of the mind, striking from any direction at will. Chen Xuan gave it a quick try in the shop and thought the swords were rather like a swarm of drones: almost impossible to defend against.
Unfortunately, at his current level, he could summon only two or three at once. Any more, and his head swam and he struggled to concentrate.
According to the explanation of shopkeeper levels, an LV2 shopkeeper could use traded abilities only up to LV2. In someone else's hands, Thousand Thoughts Sword might be LV10, but in his, it was stuck at LV2.
Was this shop afraid its shopkeeper would pocket all the abilities?
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