Chapter 44: The Charlatan's Bargain

"But of course, Your Excellency!" Bai Shuo looked up with a wide smile, her grand pitch dying the moment she registered what was standing in front of her.

More than a dozen figures in identical blue robes, each with a blue sword at their hip, sleeves embroidered with drifting clouds. The man leading them had a face like a blade — severe brows, sharp jaw, eyes that caught light the way stars did. His sword hilt was carved with a cloud, and the Immortal Qi radiating off him pressed against the surrounding air like a second presence.

Bai Shuo's throat moved. Heavens above — ten Immortal Lords, assembled in one spot. Whatever this group was, they had weight behind them.

Blue robes, blue swords, cloud emblem — Cloudsoar Mountain. And if that was right, then the man at the front was Nan Wan himself.

Which raised a problem. Every disciple from every major sect should have already made their way into the Strange City by now. By her own calculations, the gates would seal at midnight tonight. So why were these people still here, wandering South Sea City like they had nowhere to be?

She was still working through it when the man waiting on her ran out of patience. "Well?" he said, voice flat and cold. "Are your divinations worth trusting or not?"

"Completely trustworthy, absolutely!" Bai Shuo snapped back to the moment. She noticed the people on the street had quietly backed themselves to a safe distance, watching with open curiosity, so she lowered her voice. "This humble Daoist is at your service. What does Your Excellency wish to know?"

While Bai Shuo was busy looking Nan Wan over, he was doing the same to her — taking in the worn-through clothes, the fake beard that trembled with every breath.

So this was the fortune-teller the Favorable Winds Pavilion had sent them to find.

The disciples behind him looked equally unconvinced. One of them muttered near Nan Wan's ear, "Senior Brother, every back alley in the Three Realms has someone calling themselves a diviner. This one doesn't look like she could divine her way out of a locked room."

Nan Wan said nothing, frown sharpening. Before he could speak, Bai Shuo raised her battered palm-leaf fan and began.

"Your Excellency reached Foundation Establishment one hundred years ago. Grew up in a scholarly household, Jiangnan region, human realm. One older brother, one older sister. Your father died before his time. Your mother lived well into old age, looked after by her children to the very end." She glanced sideways at the disciple who'd spoken. "Anything I've missed?"

The disciple's expression collapsed. Nan Wan met his junior brother's eyes, and understanding passed between them quietly. A full century of someone's life, read back without a single stumble by this ragged wanderer — the skill was real, whatever the packaging looked like.

Bai Shuo held her face perfectly still. Behind her back, one hand was strangling a turtle shell hard enough to shake. She peeked at their reactions and let out a slow, silent breath.

That decrepit old turtle's trinket could actually read an Immortal's fate. Extraordinary.

A beautifully made Qiankun Bag landed on her flimsy stall with a heavy thud, nearly punching straight through it. The drawstring loosened just slightly at the top, and Bai Shuo angled her head to look inside — the whole interior seemed to glow gold.

At least thirty spirit pearls. She blinked.

"Your skill speaks for itself, Daoist. If you're willing to do one thing for me, what you're looking at is only the advance payment."

Only the advance. Bai Shuo's hand shot out and closed around the bag like a trap. Her face lit up. "Whatever Your Excellency needs, this humble Daoist will see it done. Speak freely."

"Retrieve an item. The journey is long. Three days is your window." Nan Wan kept it short. Bai Shuo's grip on the bag slowed, and the whole picture assembled itself in her head without any effort.

The Strange City strangled spiritual power — Immortal or demon, it didn't matter. Strange beings blocked every passage, and the Phoenix Tree Heart could be anywhere inside. Finding it through conventional means was a fool's errand. So he wanted her divination to cut straight to it.

A great immortal sect. The most significant trial in the Three Realms. And he was cheating. Brazen. But then — the rules only required that the Phoenix Tree Heart be found and claimed within three days. They said nothing about how. If word got out, he'd face some disapproving looks from the other sects. Against a Phoenix Tree Spiritual Artifact, a little gossip was less than nothing.

Nan Wan noticed her hesitation. His eyes narrowed. "Should the Daoist agree, and should you succeed, the reward beyond this will be considerable. And beyond payment — I can arrange formal entry into one of the immortal sects. You'd be able to cultivate properly."

The half-immortals watching from the edges of the street broke into murmurs. Being taken in by Cloudsoar Mountain was the kind of thing people spent entire lifetimes hoping for.

"I — well, that is—" Bai Shuo was fumbling toward some kind of refusal when one of the disciples moved forward with a hand resting on his sword.

"Easy there, easy!" Bai Shuo quickly tied the Qiankun Bag to her waist and turned up the warmth in her smile several degrees. "Your Excellency is far too generous, truly. But this humble Daoist's cultivation isn't worth much — sect life would be wasted on someone like me. The invitation I'll have to decline, but as for the matter of payment—" She rubbed her fingers together in a slow, deliberate circle.

Nan Wan's expression eased by a fraction. "Payment won't be an issue. Name your price."

"Nothing outrageous at all." Bai Shuo raised a single finger. "Ten thousand spirit pearls."

The whole street went quiet. The disciple standing behind Nan Wan looked like someone had pulled the ground out from under him. "I'm sorry — how much?!"

Ten thousand spirit pearls. That was half of Cloudsoar Mountain's reserves. This ragged, shameless priest had actually just said that with her whole chest.

Even Nan Wan's expression shifted, just for a moment.

But when he made no real move to stop his disciple's hand from creeping toward his sword hilt, Bai Shuo understood exactly what she was dealing with. He needed her, and badly enough that walking away wasn't an option he'd allow her. If she refused, they'd bring her along by force. She might as well be paid handsomely for the same trip.

"Immortal Lord, a deal made under threat isn't really a deal at all. If the price gives you pause—" She was in the middle of a leisurely fan wave when Nan Wan's voice cut through.

"Agreed."

Her fan stalled mid-air. "Half before we leave."

"You absolute—!" The disciple's face cycled through three colors as his hand flew to his sword hilt. He had met difficult people before. He had never met anyone quite like this.

Bai Shuo took a quick sidestep behind Fan Yue and peered around his arm. "Immortal Lord, wherever we're headed clearly isn't somewhere safe. This humble Daoist is volunteering her life here, after all…"

"Fine." Nan Wan pulled in a long breath and raised a hand to stop Mingxin. His gaze settled on Bai Shuo with something between calculation and reluctant respect. "The Daoist drives a hard bargain. Mingxin — give it to her."

Mingxin looked like he'd swallowed something sour. He flicked his wrist, a second Qiankun Bag appeared, and he threw it at Bai Shuo with slightly more force than was strictly necessary.

Bai Shuo fumbled it in both hands, pulled the drawstring, peeked inside. Her eyes curved into crescents.

Immortal sect disciples. So easy. With what she was holding, she and her little disciple would never need to run a roadside fortune-telling table again.

She already knew what Nan Wan was after. And knowing that, she knew A-Zhao was somewhere in that city — too trusting, too green, and completely unprepared for whatever the Fairy and Demon Disciples might try when none of the great figures were watching. Slipping in among this group was starting to look less like opportunity and more like responsibility.

"Come here." Bai Shuo turned to Fan Yue and pressed both heavy Qiankun Bags into his arms. She patted his shoulder with a firm hand. "Head home and wait. Once Master is finished, I'll come find you."

The road ahead had too many unknowns to drag him along. He had no way to defend himself right now, and if Nan Wan picked up on the demonic energy clinging to him, there would be no talking their way out of that.

"Let's go." Nan Wan hadn't glanced at Fan Yue once. He checked the sky, turned, and walked.

Bai Shuo moved to follow — and was pulled up short. She looked back. Her disciple had her sleeve locked in both hands, brow drawn low and firm. "I'm not going home. I'm going with you."

Fan Yue's grip was iron.

"Be sensible and do as I say. Go home." Bai Shuo kept her voice down and sharp, working at his fingers with no success.

"No." He wasn't moving. "Wherever Master goes, I go."

Some distance ahead, Nan Wan registered that she hadn't followed and turned back. His eyes moved briefly over Fan Yue.

"Daoist Bai?"

The Cloudsoar disciples drifted closer, clearly entertaining the idea that this priest who'd extorted half their reserves was already scheming an exit.

"Just a moment! Your Excellency — my disciple tends to assist with the readings. Would it be any trouble to bring him along?" She'd lost. She knew it. She stepped slightly in front of Fan Yue and angled herself to block Nan Wan's direct view.

Fan Yue finally let go of her sleeve.

Nan Wan looked the boy over. A locust tree spirit at his core — not even half-immortal. Entirely beneath notice. He gave a short, indifferent nod. "Fine. Daoist, I've already lost more time than I'd like."

"Understood, completely — right behind you." Bai Shuo seized Fan Yue by the wrist and left her fortune-telling stall behind without so much as a backward glance.

The group came to a halt just outside the southern city gates. Nan Wan stopped and stood still, studying something only he could see. Bai Shuo looked at the sky and let herself sound cautious. "Your Excellency — the Otherworldly City closes at midnight, if I've heard right. And the wilderness is thousands of miles from here. Looking at the sky now, I'm not sure we'd arrive in time even moving immediately. How does Your Excellency plan to—"

Nan Wan glanced at her sideways. "So the Daoist does know what I'm after. Then you've also worked out who I am."

"Blue sword, cloud emblem — it could only be the honored Nan Wan of Cloudsoar Mountain." Bai Shuo answered without missing a beat.

He didn't bother denying it. "Don't concern yourself with the timing. I have it handled."

He turned his palm face up. A blue stone settled into it from nowhere, lit from within, fine formation lines traced across its surface.

"A Space-Melting Stone?" The words came out of Bai Shuo at a pitch slightly higher than she'd intended.

Space-Melting Stones weren't natural artifacts — master artificers made them, from spirit stones and painstaking formation work, and they could move a person thousands of miles in the span of a single breath. Below demigod level, even a peak Immortal could only travel by sword flight and couldn't cross distances like that in any reasonable time. This stone dissolved the space between two points entirely. Crafting even one required no fewer than a thousand spirit stones. This was what it meant to be a major sect.

"You have a good eye." Nan Wan regarded Bai Shuo with something close to genuine surprise. The Shunfeng Pavilion hadn't exaggerated — this unkempt, mercenary priest actually knew what she was looking at.

"Your Excellency flatters me. I've only read about such things." Bai Shuo's gaze had fixed itself to the stone. Something that could take a person anywhere — sealed territories, hidden realms, the private mountain gates of the highest lords in the Three Realms.

"My Master forged it. As rare as it is, it only reaches one destination — it can't bring you back." Noticing where her attention had gone, Nan Wan offered the clarification in a cool, unbothered tone.

Single use. Of course it was. Bai Shuo mourned this privately. She'd half-allowed herself to hope — but it made sense. If a stone like that could be used over and over, Cloudsoar Mountain would have quietly claimed dominion over the entire Immortal Realm long before now.

"Daoist — stay focused. Losing concentration inside a Space-Melting Formation doesn't just hurt. It unmakes the spiritual core completely."

Nan Wan fed immortal energy into the stone. It trembled in his palm. A three-meter formation spread outward from it in glowing lines and pressed itself flat against the ground.

The Cloudsoar disciples stepped in one by one and went still, each one quieting their breath and guarding their core. Bai Shuo pulled Fan Yue in with her and copied them as best she could, gathering whatever thin spiritual energy she had and wrapping it around the two of them like a second skin.

Blue light rose. A beam fell from the trembling stone and draped itself over the whole group. The ground began to fall away beneath their feet — and then the earth shook. Something enormous was coming through the city gates at a dead run, moving like a landslide.

"There you are, you rotten priest — I've been looking everywhere for you!" Hua Hong the blacksmith — face still buried under the layers of powder and garish paint Bai Shuo had apparently talked her into at some point — came tearing toward them with a hammer swinging in one fist and a handful of chicken bones clutched in the other, scattering the crowd in every direction like water before a stone.

Bai Shuo looked at the rampaging Hua Da Tie and felt, briefly, that she had left her body entirely.

"You don't get to just disappear! You owe me for my chicken!"

Hua Da Tie's arm shot out to grab her. Whether the Cloudsoar disciples were too deep in their core-steadying concentration to react, or whether Hua Da Tie's painted face had simply broken something in their minds, not a single one of them moved in time. One massive foot came down squarely on the edge of the formation.

The blue light snapped sharp and brilliant. The formation closed. The entire group disappeared.

The city gate was suddenly very quiet. A few stray chicken bones drifted down through the empty air and clattered against the cobblestones below.