"Please don’t mind them". Wu Long had a relaxed and carefree smile as he - completely disregarding the occasional glances of people around - poured fragrant wine into Hong Yue’s cup, "This place was designed specifically for drinking this ludicrously overpriced wine as publicly as it is possible, so it is normal for us to attract attention, especially since we are concealing our faces in this kind of place"
The floors of the pagoda tower were all wide open rooms with no walls, with only low-height carved wooden balustrades in between supporting pillars on the edges, and thicker supporting columns surrounding the staircase in the center of the tower.
The tables on each floor were placed with enough space in between to not appear too crowded, but there were still enough on each floor to call it a public space.
The two of them attracted attention both as they were led up the stairs, and the mont they stepped onto the third floor their table was on.
"So it is a place to show off and stand out?", Hong Yue raised her eyebrow, still conscious to be the center of attention which went against all of her instincts as an assassin, "...a rather ridiculous idea"
"Haha, as you can see it is nevertheless quite popular, plus such places can be useful in many ways, which is why you could find them in abundance almost in every large city", he chuckled, understanding her mild bewildernt.
A doubtful look appeared in her eyes behind the veil, but she knew that her knowledge and experience was limited, not only due to the way she lived, but also because the very world she knew was a tiny isolated corner of the wider one she was currently experiencing.
Rather than continuing this line of conversation, there was sothing else that interested her more.
"I can see the question in your eyes", Wu Long smiled, taking a sip from his wine cup.
"...I surely hope this veil is not as useless in front of other people as it is in front of you", she answered after a short pause, sitting motionlessly in the sa exact pose, not touching the wine cup or snacks, "But it is indeed an unusual choice of a seat for you"
The fact that this table was reserved in advance ant it was a deliberate choice of a place. Hong Yue also didn’t believe he would be here to gather passive intelligence from listening in on the conversations of other people since it was sothing the Thousand Eyes Palace was already doing for him daily.
"Originally, Old Man Zhao was supposed to et with the ’masked talisman master’ here", Wu Long nodded, confirming her guess.
"That sounds like a pretty important eting... was there so kind of ergency or change of circumstances that made you cancel that plan?", Hong Yue had an absurd inkling about the reason for this change of plans that she pushed down as hard as she could, ’Surely, he didn’t cancel it at the last mont just so we could continue our conversation, right?’
Wu Long didn’t reply right away, with an unreadable look in his eyes as he looked at her, and finally said, "There was"
"...", the beauty stared at him through her veil. Although his answer seed to be saying it had nothing to do with her, the look in his eyes that she couldn’t read, and a subtle smile on his lips visible below his mask for so reason made her doubtful. Her intuition told her that his answer was truthful, and yet it felt a bit off.
She then sighed, as if tired of being surprised and shocked throughout their conversation, simply comnting, "You change your plans quite easily"
"Plans need to have flexibility to adapt, if they’re too rigid, they’ll break at the first sign of sothing unexpected happening", he shrugged.
"They still have to have so kind of structure though...", her tone was flat but felt skeptical, "... yours are not just flexible, it sotis feels like the plan is whatever you feel like doing..."
Wu Long chuckled, "Hmm, that might not be far from how it really is"
He poured himself more wine, "Oh, by the way, while I said this wine is overpriced, I ant it is overpriced for its quality, it’s still not that bad overall. It goes well with the snacks they brought us. If you’re don’t want wine, I could order tea, though unfortunately it would not be as good as the tea Huan’er makes"
Hong Yue turned to look at the wine cup in front of her. It wasn’t until now that she realized that she completely ignored the wine he poured for her, since this setting, or rather, the whole experience of sitting with soone at a pavilion was completely new for her.
However, even if she was not used to social interactions, she still instinctively felt that her just motionlessly sitting opposite him sohow made it awkward. Especially since she was by professional habit constantly conscious of her surroundings, and thus saw how people around behaved.
At first ntion of tea, she initially was moved. Previously only familiar with plain water, she was introduced to tea not long ago by her twin sister. But she was imdiately disappointed to hear it wouldn’t be as good as the tea that Yu Huan made.
Since it wouldn’t be that delicious tea anyway, she decided it wouldn’t make a difference trying this wine, "No, it’s fine, I will try"
As she took a sip, a fragrant sweetness spread in her mouth, making her slightly widen her eyes, and instinctively touch her lips with the tips of her fingers.
"Spiritual Wine is made from Spiritual Herbs or Spiritual Fruits, so it is essentially a low-potency elixir for cultivation, which is why even the lowest quality one tastes quite good, not to ntion a decent one (for the region we are in) like this", Wu Long smiled, seeing her reaction.
"...I see, it is indeed quite delicious...", she nodded, looking at the wine cup, feeling the sa when she tried tea or cooked food for the first ti with the Wu Family, as for her whole life before that she only ate Nutrition Pellets and Fasting Pills.
"Though of course, whether it is a low potency elixir or sothing as good as a Cultivation Pill made of the sa ingredients depends on the skills of the wine maker. However, even in all of the Seven Boundless Worlds, only the Wine God’s Palace is famous for making wine that contains not only more potent cultivation strength than even pills of the sa ingredients, but also principles and concepts of Dao", Wu Long continued explaining.
"But judging from everything I heard you say before, it doesn’t seem that the Wine God’s Palace has the sa status as the Alchemy Association...", she asked, taking another sip of the wine to taste it more carefully.
He made a wry smile, "Hahaha, of course, since one is considered the ’proper’ way to make use of Natural Treasures, and the other is ’officially’ considered degenerate. Plus, the history of the current Wine God’s Palace is actually short, since the one who revived it from basically ruins, known as Wine God, only the third person to ever hold that title, rose to prominence alongside , while the Alchemy Association existed in its current form almost as long as Current Era cultivation world, and there were nurous Alchemy God title holders throughout history"
"Degenerate... huh? Is it... like Dual Cultivation Dao, connected to the influence and prestige of the Dao Cultivators you talked about?", Hong Yue guessed.
"Yes", Wu Long nodded, "Wine Dao allows people to ponder the Dao by just drinking Spiritual Wine, which encroaches on the interests of the Dao Cultivators, and it also competes with the Alchemy Dao at the sa ti, so it is as annoying of a nuisance for the established powers as Dual Cultivation is. Though, like in case with Dual Cultivation, there are a lot of people who only publicly criticize Wine Dao while enjoying its fruits in secret..."
And then, as if rembering sothing, Wu Long chuckled as he took a sip from his own cup, "There’s actually a funny story about that... when I already had a bit of fa in the Boundless Profound World, but still an insignificant ant compared to the truly powerful, I once accidentally caught a fairly famous thief of the Boundless Profound World at the ti, one of the so-called Great Nefarious Five, the Crooked-Step Vagrant. He was truly unlucky, I really caught him by accident of mistaken identity while chasing soone else. Poor guy also was caught off-guard and exhausted since he ju~st recently ba~rely but triumphantly succeeded in getting away from a very arduous and prolonged chase, as he stole a few very precious Spiritual Fruits from an important and powerful higher-up of the Martial Alliance in the Boundless Profound World"
"If it’s Martial Alliance... then the whole Righteous Path in that region was after him?", Hong Yue deduced.
"Of course, there was a great deal of pressure on everyone to catch him. He caused a great deal of humiliation, those Righteous Path guys - especially the older and more important ones - are always very sensitive about loss of face, you see. But most importantly, what he stole was supposed to be a secret. At the ti, not even those chasing him knew what it was, since the guy it was stolen from still hoped to keep it under wraps. It was just announced that he stole an important secret of the alliance from a high-ranking Martial Alliance official", Wu Long nodded.
"Secret? Was he worried that those who chased him would take it for themselves?", Hong Yue’s curiosity, which was initially mild, gradually grew as she was more and more invested in the story.
Wu Long shook his head, "There was that, but the more troubleso fact was that those Spiritual Fruits were just that valuable, enough that being in possession of them was dangerous even for soone like him. Even if he was influential and had a pretty high position, those few Spiritual Fruits were enough to cause a bloodbath among so of the most powerful people of the Boundless Profound World. If soone knew he had them, he would have had to give them away, or risk being erased by those he couldn’t offend. Them being stolen was also bad since those who would’ve forced him to give the fruits up if he had them, would no doubt bla him for not offering them when he did have them"
"So... since presumably the stolen items were exposed later, was he killed?"
"No, he avoided death, but he was severely demoted and stripped of basically all wealth and authority. Instead of a lofty official, he beca a hunting dog under one of the Senior Elders of the alliance who saved his life by taking him in"
"That’s... rather convenient... a powerful figure who long since distanced himself from actual field work turned into a useful tool that runs around and does dirty work on command", Hong Yue narrowed her eyes.
"Haha, exactly. It is to the point that there were various speculations about whether this incident had a hidden hand behind it. So said that the items were not actually his, but that he held them for soone else without even knowing what they were, others said the fruits were his but he had plans to offer them to soone powerful... but what almost everyone agreed on, is that soone likely either hired the Crooked-Step Vagrant, or at least intentionally leaked the information to him"
"You didn’t ask the thief when you caught him?"
"I wasn’t even aware he was the Crooked-Step Vagrant at the ti, or what the situation around him was. As I said, I was chasing soone else. I only realized he wasn’t the person I was looking for during the conversation", Wu Long shrugged, and then made an amused smile, "You see, he was sure I was one of the people chasing after the stolen goods, since the first words out of his mouth were ’Wait! wait! Please spare ! I’ll give it to you, just let go!’ and I didn’t bother correcting him once I realized he was going to give sothing valuable in return for letting him go"
"...", Hong Yue’s jaw dropped as she looked at this shaless guy, and then realized, "Wait... and you just let him go? ...Even though you didn’t know who he was or what he gave you?"
"Haha, I was still quite young and inexperienced back then. It’s quite embarrassing to rember that ti now, but yeah, back then I let him go after he gave the jade box with the Spiritual Fruits. I knew it was a valuable item since it was a box made of the rather uncommon and therefore valuable Unbound Heaven Jade, one of the materials that for whatever reason cannot be put away into Spatial Rings, which is why it is used to store valuables, if soone stole it they have to carry it around which makes the thief conspicuous. And there was a complex array seal on the box which ant whatever was inside was still untouched"
"I am guessing you got in trouble almost as soon as you got your hands on it", Hong Yue easily predicted the next part of the story, strangely fascinated by the idea of Wu Long making such a simple mistake. She was so engrossed in the story at this point, that she didn’t even notice how she offered her empty wine cup when he raised the porcelain bottle.
"Indeed, not long after, the Crooked-Step Vagrant announced to the whole world what he stole through a third party, as fad thieves always do to claim their fa, but it seems the bastard held a grudge, since he also sohow dug out my identity and in the sa announcent pointed to as the one who had the stolen goods, though of course, he conveniently didn’t ntion how the goods ca to be in my possession to avoid embarrassnt", Wu Long shook his head while pouring wine to her and then his own cup, "As a result I went through a world of trouble, but that’s another story. The important part is, the Alchemist that I worked with at the ti betrayed , and it was around that ti that I t my friend, the one currently called Wine God, at that ti, just a ’wine enthusiast’, if we’re being very generous"
"No way... you didn’t...", Hong Yue almost gasped as she suddenly rembered that this story initially began from the conversation about wine, "You said those ingredients were so valuable that they would have caused a bloodbath among the most powerful people of the Boundless Profound World..."
"I didn’t really have much choice though", Wu Long shrugged with a sowhat nostalgic smile, "Consuming those fruits raw wasn’t really possible - at that ti I didn’t have a tyrannical Cultivation Technique or any Secret Arts I have now that could allow to do so, if I tried, I would’ve been torn to pieces by such a potent elixir - and as I said, the Alchemist I trusted at the ti betrayed ... and since there were many powerful people after I didn’t really have an opportunity to search for a skilled but trustworthy alchemist"
"So you two made it into a wine...", Hong Yue shook her head in disbelief at such a choice. After all, even thinking from Wu Long’s perspective at the ti, there was no way of knowing whether such precious ingredients would be just wasted, since the Wine God at that ti was, as he put it, generously speaking a ’wine enthusiast’ at best.
"Not just any wine, those fruits were the main ingredient, but we also collected quite a bit of fairly valuable ingredients, eventually brewing 12 large wine jars that we called the Flower of Stolen Sweetness. And since I was pissed off at a lot of people who were chasing for those fruits, I didn’t hide the fact they were made into wine. There was an uproar and public outrage. At the ti, Wine Dao was still looked down upon as was Dual Cultivation, so the fact we used such precious ingredients on ’sothing as lowly’ as wine invited public criticism and condemnation from basically anyone and everyone. We were both called idiots and madn"
"To be fair, I do see where they were coming from", Hong Yue said making a chuckle.
"Looking back, I do too", Wu Long chuckled as well, "But there’s an interesting fact. The leader of Martial Alliance for the entire Boundless Profound World at the ti, a sanctimonious and self-righteous prick nad Li Wuenzhou, publicly criticized the whole ordeal in an open statent, calling our action of making that wine an outrageous atrocity, lunacy, and biggest waste of the world’s most precious cultivation resources. Not to ntion a whole lecture on how Wine Dao was a disgusting, degenerate offshoot of cultivation that shouldn’t be practiced and a lot more of that sort of thing. The funny part is that about three thousand years later, around the ti I was about to leave the Boundless Profound World, a small porcelain bottle of the Flower of Stolen Sweetness was sold at a secret auction at an astronomical price which beat the previous record, to none other than that Li Wuenzhou"
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