Maksym Pachesiuk
patreon
Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 81: Vials and Snakes
🕑 Added 2025-06-01 23:36:01 +0000 UTCTwenty-four vials of Fist Essence lay in my locker like dead weight. Twenty-two, if I counted on Omar — and he didn’t seem like someone who’d go back on his word.
I could trade the rest for something useful.
I thought of Hakim.
A cocky conspiracy theorist from second period. He claimed he could get hold of anything that could be gotten. Ha! Should I ask him about a qi crystal?
I wasn’t sure how much of it was true, but he gave the impression of someone who definitely knew something. And definitely had connections.
The only issue was that the outcome might be... unexpected. Like that time he brought me a cadet with drugs instead of the guy with tea.
Trust him? Hand over Essence that could raise some eyebrows?
No. Hakim wasn't the right channel.
The issue wasn’t willingness — it was trust. Even among my closer acquaintances, everyone had their own agenda, and among the lesser-known ones, that agenda tended to be the top priority. So that wasn’t as much of a problem as the fact that bloody Marek had tried to off himself after that botched setup! Everyone had nearly forgotten about it by now, and I had no intention of reminding them.
Still, the idea refused to leave me alone. Eventually, it mutated into something acceptable.
I opened my mail on autopilot and typed out a short message to Adam.
Outgoing message: A. I. Veyron
Subject: Personal meeting
Content: Got a minute to talk? Nothing urgent, but better face to face.
Adam had contacts. Not quite like Hakim’s, but he had been the one to sell my technique to someone from the Yellow Pine School.
Sent. And almost immediately, I got an incoming call.
“You into something Kate can’t handle and Novak shouldn’t know about?” Adam asked without a greeting.
There was no surprise in his voice — more like anticipation.
"Not yet," I replied. "But I could be. Still, I don’t think Novak would care. Too petty for him. Kate could probably handle it. But I bet you’d cap your cut at ten percent without nagging me to death," I hinted at the profit.
“Where are you right now?” he asked.
“In the infirmary. Twisted my ankle during training.”
“It happens,” he exhaled. “I’m off today. No armour, no arena, no training, no work! Unless this is an invite to Marco’s or something like it, I’m not stepping out.”
I smiled. Marco’s was the classiest establishment on campus that I knew of — a cafe with sky-high prices. Wooden tables, tinted glass, fragrant coffee, and delicious pastries. It was the pastries that made Adam want to go there.
“This feels more like a Tangerine sort of thing,” I tried to bargain.
“Tangerine can come to me,” Adam shot back.
“I’m still mid-treatment, but as soon as I’m done I can swing by. I need your advice.”
“Advice, not a favour?”
“Let’s start with advice. Then we’ll see.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Sending you my location. Bring your own tea. I’m out.”
Adam lived on one of the upper floors of the senior cadet dorms. The location signal led me to an unfamiliar door that opened after I knocked, no words exchanged.
“No bourbon, no Pure Thoughts.” Adam said, giving me a once-over.
I handed him a tin box.
“Gunpowder?” he grimaced. “I hated that stuff in first year.”
“It’s for guests,” I said, shaking a packet of sweet sticks. “Don’t tell me you hate carbs too.”
“I love carbs!” Adam replied, grabbing the packet. “Come in.”
Adam shared the top floor of the block with other third- and fourth-period cadets. Considering how long those periods lasted, cadets were given more space than standard dorm rooms — even more than second-period ones.
His flat greeted me with the scent of pine and something that reminded me of metal freshly taken off a lathe.
The walls were lined with dark matte plastic styled to look like wood. No posters or personal decor, except a set of photos: him and Lina, him and presumably his parents, and Lina with hers.
There wasn’t much furniture in the living room: a low table, a few armchairs, a flat shelf stacked with actual paper books — the first paper books I’d seen in this world! A glass cabinet with lighting displayed his armour and gear: three cracked helmets and five pairs of gauntlets.
The most striking thing was the wall opposite the entrance. It was made up of four rectangular screens that simulated panoramic windows. I took them for real at first. But our school definitely didn’t have an evening square paved with stone, a fountain surrounded by pigeons, shadows of passers-by, and the warm glow of streetlamps. Especially not passers-by without breathing masks! And it wasn’t even that late. More likely, the view simply matched Adam’s lazy mood.
The furniture arrangement mimicked Novak’s lounge — only cheaper and less pretentious.
While Adam brewed my tea, I sat in the chair I always used at Novak’s place. It just felt more natural that way.
As he fiddled with the leaves, I told him the whole story, leaving nothing out.
“Little bastard got what he deserved,” he said about Marek. “I’d shake Kiren and Tan down too, but that’s your business. Get to the point. What do you want from me?”
“My Fist root’s at 50. And I’ve got twenty-two vials of essence in my locker.”
“Oversupply. You want to sell?”
“I want to trade them for ones that'll help push my other roots up to 15. At least the ones aligned with Yellow Pine’s curriculum. You can arrange that, can’t you?”
“I think it’s doable, though not as quick as it was with the gear. Let’s run the numbers.”
Adam scooped leaves into a cup, poured hot water over them, and covered it with a lid. He placed it in front of me, then dropped into the chair Novak usually claimed in his lounge. He looked at me, and judging by the movement of his fingers in the air, he was checking my stats through the interface.
“Fire – 8,” he said. My Fire was actually 7, so Adam was clearly calculating the gap. “We’ll skip Water. Lightning – 11, you’ve got Earth too, Blade – 10, Finger – 4. That’s thirty-three vials,” he concluded. “We swap 22 Fist one-to-one. That leaves eleven to acquire.”
“Exactly,” I confirmed.
Adam gave me a deeply thoughtful look. You could see him running through names in his head, figuring out who he’d have to talk to and what to offer.
“Yellow Pine, like our lot, doesn’t trade in units at the moment,” he said. “Only points. But I know someone. The problem is, essence is scarce. Realistic price is 700 units a vial, though it can go up to 1,000.”
I nodded. That made sense.
“I’ll take them at 700. If it’s 1,000, they can find another buyer.”
“Add my ten percent — that’s another 70. So we’re looking at 10,010 units. I’ll gift you the ten.”
I did a quick calculation of my own.
“Knock off another thousand. I got those vials when they were going for 500 at the shop. Your ten percent’s 50, not 70.”
“Still doesn’t make up a thousand. The difference is twenty per vial. Twenty times twenty-two is four-forty. You owe nine-six-sixty.”
“Deal,” I agreed.
“Alright. I’ll need the money and the vials up front. I’ve got to hand them to my contact so he’s got something to work with. Just so you know, this won’t be fast — could take a month, maybe six weeks.”
“That’s a long time,” I said.
“These aren’t the kind of numbers that make someone bust their arse. If you want speed, add a few thousand.”
I stayed silent.
Adam watched me for a few moments and nodded.
“Thought so,” he said. “My advice? Pay a visit to those two idiots who set you up. Shake them down. You might squeeze out a few more vials.”
“Or land myself in more trouble,” I replied. “Don’t poke shit — it stinks. Ever heard that one?”
“Forgiving the snake doesn’t take away its fangs. Heard that one?”
I didn’t agree straight away, but there was a part of me that knew he was right. Don’t poke shit — it stinks. But those guys weren’t shit. They were coiled snakes, waiting. I needed to pull their fangs — or at least tug hard enough that they’d never look my way again.
Kiren, Tan and Marek had set me up. But only Marek had paid the price. I owed them something. And I needed to deliver it in a way that wouldn’t come back on me.
That thought gnawed at me all the way until lunch, when it finally sharpened into something concrete.
I started by trying to track them through the schedule. Not so easy without a team. I didn’t want word spreading that I was looking for them. No way I was posting in the assistant supervisor’s chat either. If Dubois saw that, she might put two and two together and get in the way.
During peak hours, more than a thousand people crammed into the cafeteria at the same time. No fixed seating — tracking anyone was impossible. So I had no luck at lunch. I tried checking their room, but ran into one of their neighbours instead. The kind who’d definitely warn them. I pulled a dumb face and said I’d got the wrong door.
Dinner was less crowded, but still no luck. I shelved my revenge — at least for the night. The Flow Chamber needed prep, and I wasn’t going to waste time on bullies more than necessary. Cultivation was always the priority.
Morning brought me a stroke of luck.
I stepped into the corridor as soon as I woke up — not for a stroll or to build up an appetite before breakfast. I made a beeline for their room.
All four of the room’s residents looked surprised to see a guest that early. Kіren and Tan were still asleep, but my smile told them everything.
“Good morning,” I said. “Up you get, sunshines. We need to talk.”
Kiren flinched. Tan took a little longer to clock what was happening, though he’d struck me as the smarter one last time we spoke.
“Something wrong?” Tan asked, glancing at their roommates, who clearly had no idea what was going on.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve got an unresolved issue to sort out. Get dressed. I’ll be waiting outside.”
They didn’t exactly rush. Their roommates, clearly intimidated by them, cleared out quickly. The pair of them dragged their feet. I, on the other hand, had all the patience in the world.
Eventually, they gave in. Tan was the first to step out.
“Look, man, that was Marek’s idea. You’ve seen for yourself — we haven’t pulled anything since.”
“You’d love to,” I said with a grin, nodding at the bruises they’d got from their own victims. “But getting smacked around isn’t as fun as dishing it out, is it?”
Tan winced and relented.
“So, what do you want?”
“You two promised essence if I let things slide. I’ve let it slide for nearly a month. Time to pay up.”
“You… you’re serious?” Tan couldn’t believe it.
“More than serious,” I said. “I get that times aren’t great, so I’ll offer a discount. Make it twenty vials, not twenty-four. Ten Wood, ten Mace.”
Kiren and Tan exchanged glances.
To help them decide, I added, “I don’t need a crowd. I could turn the two of you into mince on my own.”
Kiren clenched his jaw.
“It was all Marek…” Tan began, but I cut him off.
“He must’ve bullied you into it, poor things…”
They looked at each other again. Tan winced once more — he was clearly the one making the call.
“We’ll need a couple of days to gather that much…”
“No,” I said. “You don’t. The issue with those vials was their origin. Marek bought them. But that works in my favour now. I don’t want vials you stole off other cadets. I want vials bought by you — so I can claim they were a gift. And then it’s your word against mine. Given Marek’s history…” I spread my hands. “I reckon they’ll believe me first.”
Kiren lowered his head. Tan looked like he wanted to say something, but didn’t dare. Instead, he dragged Kiren back into the room. They whispered through it, and twenty minutes later, we were standing in the school shop. They made the purchase — clean and proper. I transferred them 14,000 units: 7,000 each. Their eyes went wide.
Now the essence had a clean record. Officially — a simple resale. In any future discussion, it’d be their word against mine. No ‘gifts’ they could use as leverage through Liang Shi or the Hall of Order. I figured they only agreed because they were counting on something like this all along.
“And one more thing,” I said quietly. “If you ever try a stunt like that with another cadet, I’ll break your legs. And I’ll do it in a way that’ll make you thank me for it. We clear?”
“Crystal!” Kiren barked. Tan stayed silent.
I understood why they were so bitter. Despite the tidy payday, they’d lost the one thing that mattered most — points.
Comments
Jonathan Griffith
Tyftc!
Максим Пачесюк
Should be good now. Appreciate the help!
Nameless
After the entrance to Adams dorm theres a talking "" idk it should be that way
