Chapter 15: Two Lardlords and a Dead Man Walking

The carriage rattled along the mountain road, its wooden wheels catching against uneven stones as the driver guided the horses down toward Liangjing. Through the open side, Charlie watched the slopes recede behind them, dark pines giving way to terraced fields and scattered houses as the road descended toward the city. The afternoon sun had begun to soften, casting long shadows across the hillsides, and a cool breeze carried the smell of damp earth through the carriage.

It was almost peaceful. That was probably why his mind kept returning to everything that had gone wrong.

Zhao Renguang had offered him a job, promised him access to resources, and even dangled the possibility of getting his legs treated. A few weeks ago, Charlie would have considered that a rather generous offer. Now he was beginning to suspect that this world had a peculiar habit of presenting him with opportunities that came attached to problems he had never asked for.

He could have accepted. The position of Principle Examiner sounded important enough, and the prospect of treatment was difficult to dismiss when every step reminded him that his legs were barely cooperating. He might even have learned something useful from Renguang, who seemed to enjoy an argument almost as much as Charlie did.

But then what?

He would be working for a man who wanted to become Grand Administrator, challenging other people’s arguments and helping shape political decisions in a city he barely understood. He didn’t know the factions, the families, the history, or even enough about the laws to recognize when someone was trying to manipulate him. It would be remarkably easy to become useful to Renguang without ever understanding what he was being used for.

And Charlie had no intention of becoming somebody else’s political instrument. He had enough trouble being an instrument of his own bad decisions.

He shifted against the carriage wall and carefully stretched his legs. Pain travelled through them, dull at first and then sharp enough to make him stop. His jaw tightened as he waited for it to pass.

Brilliant.

He had somehow ended up in a world where people cultivated supernatural energy, sect elders could threaten to cut his head off over a meal, and an argument could apparently become a legitimate path to power. Yet here he was, unable to stretch his legs without paying for it.

The duel with Han Yucheng was the most immediate problem. Charlie could tell himself that he had two weeks to prepare, but time meant very little when he had no idea how to train, his legs were damaged, and his opponent had probably spent years learning how to turn another person’s bones into a collection of medical concerns.

Han wasn’t the sort of man who would forget an insult or withdraw from a commitment simply because the other party was disadvantaged. Charlie respected that, in a way. He just wished the man’s principles had chosen someone else to inconvenience.

Still, there was a difference between being outmatched and being entirely helpless. Charlie had survived situations in which he possessed neither authority nor physical advantage before. The trick was usually to understand what the other person wanted, what they were afraid of losing, and what they were willing to do to protect it.

That was how he had handled Elder Guo. it was also how he had ended up with a sword pointed at him. Charlie rubbed his forehead. Perhaps his methods needed some refinement.

Old Man Taixuan.

The name had lodged itself in his thoughts almost as firmly as Renguang’s promise. A healer who understood the body and its meridians better than anyone else in the Jianghu sounded like exactly the sort of person Charlie needed to find. Unfortunately, the man was supposedly more than three hundred years old, wandered wherever he pleased, and refused to treat people who didn’t meet his standards.

The Living Immortal. Charlie watched a cluster of trees slide past the carriage window. Wonderful. All I need now is a map, a miracle, and someone to explain why every useful person in this world seems fucking useless.

The thought almost made him laugh, but it faded before the sound reached his throat. He had no idea how long it would take to find Taixuan, whether the man would agree to help him, or what would happen if he couldn’t repair the damage to his legs. He didn’t even know whether his condition was temporary.

That last possibility was one he tried not to dwell on.

There were plenty of things he could tolerate: uncertainty, inconvenience, even the occasional threat to his life. But the thought of spending the rest of his time in this world unable to move freely, dependent on people who might or might not care whether he recovered, frightened him more than he wanted to admit.

He wanted his legs back. He wanted to stop calculating every step. He wanted to walk into a room without wondering whether he could get out of it again. And, more than anything, he wanted to go home.

The thought of Erika came with a familiar ache, followed by the faces of the children and the memory of conversations he could no longer have. He wondered what they had been told about his disappearance, whether anyone had given them an explanation, and whether they were still waiting for him to come back.

He had no answer to any of those questions. He couldn’t even promise himself that he would find one. Charlie turned his attention back to the road.

There was no point in letting his thoughts circle the same impossible questions. He couldn’t reach his family from here, and he couldn’t change what had happened. All he could do was keep moving, even if moving currently required a carriage and a great deal of patience.

The carriage lurched as one wheel struck a rut. Charlie caught the edge of the seat, grimacing when the jolt travelled up his legs.

"Great," he muttered. "Even the road’s trying to kill me."

By the time the carriage reached the manor, the sun had slipped lower behind the rooftops. The familiar outer walls rose above the road, their dark tiles catching the last of the afternoon light. A servant came forward to receive the horses while the driver brought the carriage to a halt near the entrance.

Charlie waited a moment before reaching for the doorframe, studying the distance to the ground.

It shouldn’t have required thought. In his old life, getting out of a carriage—or a car, for that matter—had been something he did without noticing. Now he had to consider where to place his hands, how much weight he could put on each leg, and whether the landing would leave him standing or send him straight back into the dirt.

He lowered himself carefully, managing to reach the ground with more stubbornness than grace. Pain flared through his legs, and he caught the carriage for support while he waited for it to subside. I really need to stop taking basic mobility for granted.

A familiar grunt came from somewhere behind him. Charlie turned to find Biggie being led toward the entrance by a servant who had apparently decided that keeping hold of the pig was preferable to allowing him to wander through the courtyard. The animal looked entirely untroubled by the journey. If anything, he seemed offended that someone had interrupted his exploration of the roadside.

"Glad you enjoyed yourself," Charlie muttered.

Biggie answered with another grunt and pulled toward him.

The servant released the rope, evidently relieved to transfer responsibility, and Biggie immediately pressed his snout against Charlie’s hand. Charlie scratched behind his ear, briefly envying the pig’s uncomplicated existence. Biggie had food, somewhere to sleep, and apparently no interest in whether he would survive the next two weeks.

In fairness, Biggie might have had the right idea.

Charlie looked toward the manor doors letting out a long breath and starting toward the entrance, moving at the pace his legs would allow.

"Two lardlords and a dead man walking," he murmured. "And somehow, I’m the one expected to keep everyone alive."

Charlie had barely made it through the entrance before Biggie decided that their arrangement required immediate renegotiation.

The pig had followed him across the courtyard with the determination of a creature who believed that any journey undertaken in Charlie’s company ought to conclude with a meal. Having apparently concluded that the kitchen was too far away to wait patiently, he nudged Charlie’s hand with his snout, then repeated the gesture when it failed to produce the desired result.

"You’re aware that I haven’t eaten either, aren’t you?"

Biggie grunted.

"That wasn’t an invitation to argue."

Another grunt followed, louder this time, and Charlie found himself staring down at an animal that had never contributed a single coin to the household, possessed no useful skills beyond eating and occasionally causing trouble, and nevertheless approached every day like of a man collecting a debt.

You would’ve surely made an excellent sect leader.

The kitchen was warm when Charlie entered, the lingering heat from the stove mingling with the smells of rice, ginger, and the stock simmering in a covered pot. Someone had left a bundle of washed vegetables beside the chopping board, and a basket of firewood stood against the wall. The ordinary clutter of the room offered a welcome contrast to the grand halls and political conversations he had spent the afternoon enduring. Here, at least, the problems were understandable. Food had to be prepared, water had to be heated, and things had to be cleaned before they attracted insects. None of it required a philosophical debate.

Charlie surveyed the ingredients and began calculating what could be made without requiring too much time on his feet. His legs were already aching from the journey, and standing at the stove for an extended period seemed a poor way to reward them. He settled on a simple meal, setting the rice to cook before turning his attention to the vegetables.

Biggie stationed himself beside the table.

"You know, watching me doesn’t make the food cook faster."

The pig blinked at him.

Charlie continued chopping, occasionally shifting his weight from one leg to the other when the discomfort became too distracting. The knife moved steadily beneath his hand, but his thoughts kept returning to the conversation in Liangjing. He could still remember Renguang’s expression when he had refused the offer, that mixture of amusement and curiosity suggesting the man had found his decision more interesting than disappointing.

Perhaps Renguang had genuinely wanted to help him. Charlie wasn’t so cynical that he considered every act of generosity a disguised attempt at manipulation. The trouble was that good intentions did not make a person harmless, particularly when that person held considerable political ambitions and had the resources to turn a stranger into a useful asset.

He had spent enough of his previous life watching people convince themselves that their motives were noble while quietly arranging matters to their own advantage. There was no reason to assume the Jianghu operated any differently simply because its disputes occasionally involved swords and supernatural energy.

A shuffle sounded behind him.

"You’re back."

Charlie glanced over his shoulder. Yu stood near the kitchen doorway, carrying a small stack of folded cloths. Her gaze moved from him to the food on the table, then settled on Biggie, who had begun inching toward the basket of vegetables with the subtlety of a siege engine.

"Yes," Charlie replied. "I thought I’d surprise everyone by returning to the place where I live."

Yu ignored him. "You were gone longer than I expected."

"An eventful afternoon."

"Did you meet Zhao Renguang?"

Charlie returned to the chopping board. "I did."

"And?"

There was a particular quality to Yu’s questions that made evasion feel like an inefficient use of everyone’s time. She didn’t raise her voice or crowd him for an answer. She simply waited, her attention steady enough to suggest that she had already decided he would tell her eventually.

"He offered me a position."

Yu paused. "A position?"

"Principle Examiner. Apparently, he needs someone who can argue convincingly and isn’t too attached to the opinions of the people around him." Charlie slid the chopped vegetables into a bowl. "I may have exaggerated my qualifications, but he seemed willing to overlook that."

"You refused?"

"I did."

Yu stared at him for a moment, as though she were waiting for the rest of the explanation to arrive and had begun to suspect it had been lost somewhere along the road.

"Why?"

"Because I don’t particularly want to become involved in local politics."

"That is not a reason to refuse a position offered by someone like Zhao Renguang."

"It’s a fairly good reason if you ask me."

"Charlie."

He looked up at the warning in her voice and sighed.

There were times when he forgot how little of his situation Yu could actually see from the outside. To her, he was a man with damaged legs, uncertain prospects, and no obvious means of supporting himself independently. An offer from someone as influential as Renguang ought to have been a rare piece of good fortune. Refusing it probably looked less like caution and more like deliberately throwing away the rope someone had lowered into a pit.

Charlie could hardly blame her for thinking so. If their positions were reversed, he might have asked the same questions.

"He is now a Grand Administrator," Charlie explained. "That means he has rivals, allies, obligations, and a long list of people who would benefit from seeing him succeed or fail. If I accept his offer, I become part of that struggle whether I intend to or not."

"You would have a position, an income, and access to people who might be able to help you."

"All true."

"And you still refused?"

"Also true."

Yu placed the folded cloths on the table, her expression tightening slightly. "You make it sound as though accepting help is the same as surrendering your freedom."

"No. I think accepting help without understanding what the other person expects in return is a good way to discover that your freedom has become expensive."

She considered that, though not with the sort of immediate agreement he might have preferred.

"Did he ask you to do anything improper?"

"Not directly."

"Then perhaps you are assuming the worst of him."

"Perhaps." Charlie turned back to the stove, stirring the vegetables into the pot. "But I’d rather be wrong about a man’s intentions than discover too late that I should have been suspicious."

The answer left a brief silence between them. Outside, someone crossed the courtyard, their footsteps fading toward the servants’ quarters. A wooden door closed somewhere in the manor, followed by the faint sound of the caretaker clearing his throat. The household carried on around them, indifferent to the fact that Charlie was attempting to make decisions that might determine whether he retained any control over his own life.

Yu eventually moved closer to the stove. "You said he could help you?"

Charlie nodded. "He offered to arrange treatment for my legs."

Her expression changed.

"He did what?"

"Offered to find someone who could treat them. Someone capable, presumably. He seemed confident that he could arrange it."

"And you refused that too?"

"I refused the position. The treatment was part of the offer."

"That is not what I asked."

Charlie closed his eyes briefly. There it was. The part of the conversation he had known would be difficult to explain, mostly because Yu was not entirely wrong.

"No," he admitted. "I haven’t accepted the treatment."

Yu looked at him with a mixture of disbelief and frustration that he found considerably more difficult to withstand than Renguang’s polished arguments. Yu, as far as Charlie could tell, simply wanted him to stop making his life harder than it already was.

"Charlie, your legs—"

"I know."

"You can barely walk across the courtyard without needing to stop. You have no idea how long your recovery will take, and now someone is offering to find a physician who might actually help you."

"I know."

"Then why are you refusing !?"

He stopped stirring.

The simplest answer was that he didn’t trust Renguang, but that alone didn’t quite capture the unease he had felt when the offer was made. It wasn’t the prospect of owing someone a favour that troubled him. What worried him was the possibility of becoming dependent on a person whose interests might eventually diverge from his own.

If Renguang helped him recover, Charlie would owe him gratitude at the very least. If the treatment required expensive resources, he might owe him considerably more. And if the price of that assistance turned out to be political loyalty, how easily could he refuse once his legs were healed, his livelihood depended on the position, and the people around him had begun treating him as one of Renguang’s men?

He didn’t want to discover the answer while standing in the middle of someone else’s war.

"I don’t want to put myself in a position where I can’t say no to him," Charlie said at last. "Not because I’m ungrateful, and not because I think he’s necessarily a bad person. I just don’t know enough about him or the situation he’s involved in to make that kind of commitment."

Yu folded her arms. "You could accept the treatment without accepting the position."

"Possibly," Charlie conceded. "But I would still be accepting a favour from someone whose ambitions I don’t understand. And if the treatment doesn’t work, or if he expects something in return, then I’m back where I started, only with another obligation hanging over my head."

"That is a great deal of worrying about something that has not happened."

"Occupational habit."

"What occupation?"

"Being a disappointment to people with reasonable expectations."

Yu’s mouth twitched, though she seemed determined not to reward him for the remark.

Before she could continue, Biggie shoved his snout against Charlie’s knee.

Charlie looked down. The pig had abandoned his earlier attempts to negotiate with the vegetable basket and had apparently decided that direct intervention was necessary. His small eyes remained fixed on the pot, and his tail gave a hopeful twitch.

"Go sit somewhere until I’m finished," Charlie informed him.

Biggie grunted.

"I’m not repeating myself."

Yu shook her head and reached for a bowl. "You should feed him before he decides to help himself."

"I’m teaching him to not be greedy. Whit that big belly of his I’m worried he migth eat my in my sleep."

"Charlie."

"Fine."

He scraped a little food into a separate dish and placed it on the floor. Biggie descended upon it with the single-minded concentration of a scholar finally presented with the examination questions he had been waiting his entire life to answer.

Charlie watched him for a moment. "At least someone in this household knows what he wants."

"Biggie wants everything."

"Exactly. Clarity of purpose."

Yu gave him a look that suggested she regretted asking him anything at all, then helped carry the finished dishes to the table. The conversation might have ended there, but Charlie could tell she had not forgotten the question of his legs. She rarely abandoned a concern simply because he had managed to distract her from it for a few minutes.

He served the food, set aside a portion for the master, and made certain Biggie’s bowl was positioned far enough from the table to prevent the pig from interpreting proximity as permission to investigate everyone else’s meal. Only once the immediate demands of the household had been addressed did he allow himself to sit.

His legs welcomed the relief, though the ache remained, a steady reminder that his body had not been impressed by his afternoon’s accomplishments.

Yu sat opposite him.

"You mentioned someone else earlier," she said. "A healer."

Charlie looked up from his bowl. "Taixuan."

Yu’s eyebrows rose slightly. "You know about him?"

"Only what Renguang told me. Apparently, he’s one of the best healers in the Jianghu."

"That is an understatement." Yu considered the matter before continuing. "I’ve heard his name since I was young. People say he understands the body’s meridians better than most physicians understand the pulse. Some claim he can treat injuries that other healers consider permanent."

Charlie felt a small, unwelcome spark of hope.

"And where is he?"

"If anyone knew that, finding him would be considerably easier."

"Why did I bother asking."

"Taixuan doesn’t maintain a clinic or belong to a sect. He travels wherever he pleases, and he is said to appear only when he wishes to. There are stories of people spending years searching for him without ever catching sight of him, while others claim he appeared at their door without being summoned."

"Convenient. A physician who operates on the principle that his patients should have no idea where to find him."

"He is also said to be very particular about whom he treats."

"Particular in what way?"

Yu shook her head. "I’ve heard different stories. Some say he refuses anyone who seeks his help for fame or wealth. Others claim he dislikes treating martial artists who have harmed others with their cultivation. There are even stories that he turns away people who simply irritate him."

Charlie lowered his spoon.

"That’s encouraging. My legs are broken, and now I have to pass an interview with a three-hundred-year-old man who may decide he doesn’t like my personality."

"You are making light of this."

"Would you prefer I panic?"

"I would prefer you take it seriously."

"I am taking it seriously." He leaned back carefully, trying to find a position that didn’t aggravate his legs. "That’s why I’m asking questions instead of immediately setting off into the mountains to search for an immortal who might throw me back down them."

Yu studied him for a moment, apparently deciding whether that counted as a sensible response.

"Renguang told you where to look?"

"He mentioned the western mountains. He seemed to think Taixuan might be somewhere in that region, though he couldn’t tell me exactly where."

"The western mountains are vast."

"I gathered that from the part where he couldn’t tell me exactly where."

"And you intend to go there?"

Charlie glanced toward the courtyard. Through the open doorway, he could see Biggie finishing his meal, seemingly satisfied with the day’s arrangements. The pig lifted his head when he noticed Charlie watching him, then returned to his bowl, confident that the world would continue providing whatever he needed.

Charlie wished he could borrow that confidence.

The thought of travelling into unfamiliar mountains with damaged legs, limited money, and no guarantee that the person he was looking for would even agree to see him was difficult to defend. Yet remaining where he was would not make his condition any less uncertain. He could wait for his legs to improve, but he had no idea whether time alone would be enough. He could seek another physician, but he didn’t know who could help him or how much they might charge. And he could accept Renguang’s offer, though the prospect of becoming entangled in local politics remained as unappealing as ever.

Every path seemed to lead toward a different kind of trouble.

Yu watched him, her earlier frustration giving way to something more subdued. "You should not make this decision simply because you are afraid of owing someone a favour."

"I’m not."

"Then what are you afraid of?"

The question was simple enough that he could have answered it with a joke. He almost did. The words were already forming when he realised that Yu deserved something better than another attempt to make the conversation easier for himself.

"I’m afraid of losing the ability to make my own decisions," he said. "I’ve already lost a great deal of control over my life. I don’t want to give up whatever remains just because I’m desperate to get my legs back."

Yu’s expression softened, though the concern did not disappear.

"And if refusing help means you never recover?"

Charlie looked down at his hands.

"I don’t know," he admitted.

Yu rose to collect the empty dishes. "Think about it before you decide anything. And don’t go wandering into the mountains without a proper plan."

"I wasn’t planning to."

She gave him a sceptical look.

"All right," Charlie amended. "I wasn’t planning to do it today."

She gathered the bowls and carried them toward the washing area, leaving Charlie at the table with his thoughts and the lingering smell of the meal. Outside, the last of the daylight was fading from the courtyard, and the household was settling into its evening routines. Somewhere nearby, the caretaker was making his rounds, muttering to himself about something that had probably been misplaced or left undone.

Biggie waddled over after finishing his meal and lowered himself beside Charlie’s chair with a satisfied grunt.

He remained there for a while, listening to the familiar sounds of the manor and allowing himself the rare luxury of not making a decision immediately.

For tonight, there was nothing more he could accomplish by worrying.

Charlie rested his hands on the arms of the chair and looked toward the darkening courtyard.

"One week," he murmured. "To figure out how not to get killed."

Biggie snorted in his sleep.

Charlie glanced at him. "Glad to see we’re taking this seriously."

The pig did not wake.

And, for the moment, Charlie decided to take that as a good example.