The modern world,
Shen Yao decided,
was extremely loud.
And extremely confused
about what was valuable.
The problem with Tianhai City was that it had no caves.
Shen Yao stood on the museum steps and scanned the skyline with the specific assessment of someone looking for a cultivation site. Mountains — none visible. Forests — replaced by infrastructure. Quiet peaks with good spiritual veins — buried under twenty million people and their construction.
"You're looking for somewhere to cultivate," Feng Li said.
"Yes."
"They don't do that here," she said. "No one cultivates. The spiritual energy has been sitting in the ground for six thousand years because nobody knows it exists." She tucked her hand through his arm. "We need money first. Shelter. Then cultivation." She paused. "You still have the emergency gold."
He checked the outer pocket of the storage ring. A small cloth pouch. Mortal gold coins from his trial centuries — currency he had used trading with mortals in ancient markets. Possibly still valuable. Possibly worthless. Depended entirely on whether this civilization cared about old gold.
He was about to find out.
They had been walking four minutes when someone said:
"Hey. Are you lost?"
A young man leaning against a food stall. Late twenties. Alert eyes — the specific alertness of someone who had learned to read situations quickly because situations had not always been kind to him. He was looking at Shen Yao's robes the way people looked at things that didn't compute.
"You're doing cosplay?" he said. "Because people are staring."
"Why are people staring," Shen Yao said.
"Because—" The young man gestured at the ancient sect robes, the gold bracelet, the general existence of someone who looked like they had walked out of a period drama. "Everything. All of it." He straightened. "Simon Xu. You look like you need help."
"Shen Yao," he said. "I need to find an antique dealer named Marcus Webb."
Simon stared at him. "Webb Antiques? On Longhua Road?" He glanced at Feng Li. At the bracelet. Back at Shen Yao. The mental calculation was visible. "I'll take you. But you need different clothes first. Respectfully."
"We have no money in the current form," Feng Li said pleasantly.
Simon looked at the bracelet again.
"That's real gold," he said. It was not a question.
"Yes," Shen Yao said.
"And you'd sell it?"
"It was a gift from my annoying elder sister," Shen Yao said. "It is not important."
Feng Li's smile became extremely specific.
They found a clothing store two streets over. The girl behind the counter — name tag reading CARA — looked up, looked at Shen Yao, and her hand moved toward the security button.
Simon stepped forward fast. "Costume event, he has money, we're just shopping—"
"He doesn't look like he has money," Cara said. Her eyes were on the bracelet.
They stayed there.
Her hand moved away from the button.
Forty minutes later — Shen Yao in dark trousers and a white shirt that Cara had selected with the focused attention of someone who had suddenly become very invested — they stood outside a jewelry exchange on Mingzhu Street.
Shen Yao opened his hand on the counter.
Thirty ancient gold coins.
The dealer went still.
Called his manager.
The manager called an expert.
A crowd formed.
Simon stood behind Shen Yao watching six professionals lose their composure over coins that had come from a ring that was too small to hold them, worn by a man whose archaic Mandarin belonged to no living dialect, who had appeared in a museum that was built on ruins that were older than the city itself.
He filed this.
He filed a lot of things.
Two hours later they walked out with enough money for months and the expert's card begging for more pieces.
Cara was still with them.
Simon looked at her.
She looked back with complete serenity.
He said nothing.
There are more coins, Simon thought. More than thirty. The ring keeps producing things. The bracelet was old enough to destabilize expert opinion. And his Mandarin sounds like it belongs to a dynasty nobody has catalogued.
He looked at Shen Yao walking ahead.
Who are you, he thought.
Then Cara said she knew a mansion they could rent for cash and Shen Yao said yes without asking any questions and Simon followed because at this point he had committed to understanding what was happening even if it took him the rest of his life.
Which, looking at Shen Yao press his foot against the pavement every few steps like he was reading something in the ground — Simon had a feeling might be significantly longer than he'd budgeted for.
— End of Chapter Two —
The mansion is rented. But Simon doesn't know it's already occupied.
Neither does Shen Yao.
Chapter Three — they meet the other tenant. 🔥
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