Chapter Eight
Leander studied the list of plants and herbs, slightly horrified. “Master Yang,” he said. “How many of these do you expect me to find today?” Leander stood in the front yard of Master Yang’s house while the pill master stood on the porch glaring down at him .
“All of them,” he said. “I pay you to find, enrich and harvest all the plants listed.”
Leander gritted his teeth and swallowed a hundred synonyms for stupid that were trying to escape his mouth.
“No doubt you know these mountains well, and you could find these herbs within the allotted time,” Leander said slowly, carefully feeling his way around the language and avoiding insults.
He might break his brain trying to be nice to people who had suffered too many traumatic brain injuries.
“But I am a stranger with a poor knowledge of the mountains. If you send a guide who knows where these plants grow, I can enrich as many as possible before my chi falters, but without a guide, I can only walk in a random direction and find as many herbs as possible. I fear it will be too few.”
Yang Xiangren snorted. “You are worthless if you cannot find the ingredients I need.” Given that Master Yang was only paying thirty-five yuan an hour, he deserved to get near-uselessness back from an employee, but Leander was trying to make a good impression.
“Every person has their own skills, Master Yang. Mine lies in giving plants additional chi, not in finding them .” Leander eyed the tall donkey tied to a post in the yard.
He appreciated China embraced traditions—the magical community even more than the mundane one.
The flowing green robe he wore was testimony to that.
However, giving him a donkey when others rode mopeds.
.. it seemed stupid. Dunderheaded. Obtuse.
Short sighted. Pointless. Inane. Illogical.
For someone who was skilled in a profession requiring a nuanced understanding of ingredients and incredible control over huge magical reserves, Yang Xiangren was a complete moron.
Leander kept his gaze on the ground and swallowed his pride.
“Useless outsider. Li Daiyu cheats me with your services.” Out of the corner of his eye, Leander saw a servant flinch. Apparently, insulting Auntie Daiyu was going one step too far.
“I can offer chi to any plant I am shown, skilled Master Yang.” Technically, he could give chi to the harvested ingredients sitting in Yang’s storeroom, but now he knew what an ass the man was, Leander would take that secret to his grave.
Walking unfamiliar mountains with unknown dangers was a blessing compared to getting trapped in a room with Yang Xiangren.
Add in a pill oven with the terrible twisting magics it created, and that was a description of Leander’s hell.
“I must find the plant for you, like you are a child who requires an adult to hold his hand and walk him to the riverside.” Yang spat the words.
“Useless. Why do I pay you at all? If you can do only part of the work, you will get only part of the pay. I will give you twenty renminbi an hour, and no more.”
Leander fought an unholy urge to call the vines out of the earth and choke Yang to death with his own ornamental plants.
He bowed. “I do not want to bother Master Yang with my incompetence. I will leave and not return.” He had enough savings to survive for a significant amount of time, and he could find some other way to make money.
Backing away, he sent magic into the ground and found the most stubborn, the strongest, the nastiest weeds he could under Yang’s property and fed his magic into the seeds, urging them to the surface.
He couldn’t do too much without Yang getting suspicious, but a couple of hungry vines with sticky, toxic sap could make the yard a little less pleasant.
“I didn’t say you couldn’t work here. You will work for twenty yuan an hour,” Yang said, his voice commanding.
“Good Master Yang, I dare not offend Auntie Daiyu by changing the agreement she made. It is far better for me to leave your employment and return when I have corrected my ignorance.” Leander tried to keep his face impassive, even as he secretly crowed at the constipated look on Yang’s face.
The asshole wanted Leander’s chi-infused ingredients; he just didn’t want to pay for them.
Leander kept backing away from the porch, projecting the same sort of timid persona that had kept Druwolf’s enforcers placated for so many years.
People who traded on fear were easy to manipulate if a man sacrificed his ego, and Leander had given up his ego long ago.
“I hope Master Yang has a successful day,” Leander finished before he turned away.
“Ten remnimbi per plant you improve and harvest,” Yang shouted.
Part of Leander took offense. He could end up getting paid less than Shanlin for the day’s work. Even if he found the fifteen herbs required for him to earn the salary Yang promised, this new deal would mean that he would make no money if Yang didn’t need supplies that day.
However, this would give him an excuse to walk the hills and forests and even trek up into the mountains, and he could set the trees to guard the perimeter while he explored and harvested whichever plants he found.
“You are generous,” Leander said, his expression bland, even when Yang’s face reddened with anger. Leander probably shouldn’t poke this asshole, but it felt good to get a little sarcasm in there. “Does Master Yang have a harvesting basket?”
“Are you so incompetent that you don’t even have simple tools?”
“Good Master Yang, I came here with only clothes, and I thought I would work in the fields or with your normal harvester. I didn’t think to ask Auntie Daiyu where I could purchase a basket,” Leander said with feigned innocence and another bow.
Choke on that, asshole. Auntie Daiyu seemed the sort who could damage a man’s reputation.
Yang turned even redder. Leander needed to stop poking the man, but Yang was using his position to cheat Leander. “Get the incompetent outsider a basket,” he bellowed before he disappeared back into his house.
A young woman with light brown eyes came over, a look of hatred on her face.
“Return this undamaged, outsider,” she ordered.
She wore a simple dress, but she had a gold hair crown and a necklace that drew attention to her cleavage.
Maybe she was a favorite mistress because Leander couldn’t imagine a simple employee defending this asshole.
“Of course,” Leander agreed. He took the basket from her and then eyed the donkey.
He did better with plants than animals, but he disliked the idea of walking for hours.
His butt might regret this later, but he took the reins and walked the animal toward the path leading away from the lake and the streams that fed it.
His robes swished oddly against his legs, and getting on the donkey might be embarrassing, so Leander led the creature over the bridge and into the hills below the Flying Swords school before even trying to climb on.
Either donkeys were horrible beasts, or someone had given him a disagreeable monster because he couldn’t get the donkey to hold still.
Leander considered walking it back to Yang Xiangren’s house, but that felt like defeat.
The beast was clearly their petty attempt to sabotage him, and Leander refused to reveal it was working.
“Stupid beast,” he muttered. At least he tied the basket to the saddle so he didn’t have to carry it.
Then he tied the beast to a low branch and sat down to center himself in his magic.
He let his magic unfurl and tangle with the grass under him before drifting out into a spiral, searching for anything interesting.
He could identify footpaths through the woods by the pattern of plants.
Well-trafficked areas were stripped of valuable plants.
He didn’t know the Chinese names of all the plants on the list, but he knew most of them and marked them on a mental map he was forming of the area.
He found clusters of wolfberries and abrus and mugwort.
He could harvest most of their vegetables out of the hills, meaning they would only have to purchase rice, which was cheap, and meat, which was not.
Leander sank deeper into his magic as he searched for clusters of plants that would reveal caves or ideal hiding places.
He found a grouping of old wild ginseng.
Someone would have harvested it if they had known it existed.
That hinted at a good hiding place. He also found streams, their banks defined by birch and salt cedars and a small berry bush he didn’t recognize, but he could feel the plant’s deep thirst. It grew near water.
Magic relaxed Leander the way few things did.
He could escape thinking, which was the bane of his existence.
But when he shared his awareness with plants, all the fears and regrets and guilt faded into a gray calm where life and growth existed without human emotion.
Magical tangling worked best when he touched a plant, but he used his connection to all the plants across the mountain to find the oldest trees.
They were steady and staid sentries. Leander set them the task of alerting him if unfamiliar humans walked through an area.
He would touch the trees over the next few weeks to reinforce the tentative connection, but at least now he felt safer.
Officials could still drive a car up the road without setting off Leander’s alarms, but if the people hunting them were officials, Leander had no illusions about escape.
He feared assassins ghosting through the forest, and that would not happen without Leander knowing.