Dao Of The Salted Fish (Salted Fish Cultivator)

Wen Zhihao, despite being the older one, was more curious about the town. As a transmigrator, he had only seen such lively town scenes in movies and dramas. Experiencing it was very different. For one, it was a lot more noisy and dirty. And secondly, there were all the smells—the good and the less pleasant.

There wasn’t anything he wanted. Food could be had for free at the Sect’s kitchens, and he didn’t need any other items.

Wen Zhihao did listen out to the different hawkers. Small snacks could be bought for 1 wen, a bowl of meat noodles for 3 wen. The 6 wen he just gave to Sun Fuyu suddenly felt a bit small… As an adult who had (had) a working job, Wen Zhihao felt depressed.

“Sun-shidi, this shixiong has wronged you for not having more money to give you…”

Sun Fuyu shook his head. “This amount is enough!” His eyes strayed to the dessert stalls, then snapped back to Wen Zhihao.

...Too obvious!

“Buy whatever you want, Sun-shidi,” Wen Zhihao urged. “More money can be made later. Do you like those jian dui¹fried sesame balls?”

Sun Fuyu’s tongue flickered out, licking his lips. He nodded hesitantly.

Wen Zhihao pushed him towards the stall. “Go on.”

Sun Fuyu ended up buying two with a red bean filling, one for himself and one for Wen-shixiong. As a child, he had seen these desserts but never was allowed to buy one and absolutely never had the opportunity to eat one. His eyes curved in happiness as he took a bite of the warm, oily pastry with its sweet filling.

Then, under Wen-shixiong’s urging, Sun Fuyu bought two skewers of tanghulu²hawthorn (fruit) coated in sugar.

With this, Sun Fuyu had 2 wen left over, which he put away for next time. He felt settled having these two treats that he had missed out on during his childhood.

Wen Zhihao mentally patted himself on the back upon seeing Sun Fuyu’s satisfaction. The town wasn’t big, so they soon saw all the main attractions. So Wen Zhihao finally took Sun Fuyu to the forest “camping ground” where Wen Zhihao had slept before, completely skirting around the main Sect.

Sun Fuyu cleverly started a small fire with his qi, while Wen Zhihao took out all their bedding.

“Are you hungry for something more?” Wen Zhihao asked, taking out the food boxes. “I want something savoury after those sweet things.”

“En.”

Sun Fuyu waited until Wen Zhihao picked out a meat bun before picking the same thing.

“This place is very good for relaxing,” Wen Zhihao filled the silence after they finished eating. “I once slept here for days, peacefully and without disturbance. If you wanted to find a place to practice your sword in private, this place is also suitable...Oh! Speaking of swords!” Wen Zhihao took out most of the jade slips stored in his spatial ring. “Here, you can have these. They’re sword cultivation manuals.”

Sun Fuyu’s eyes brightened, but he reluctantly shook his head. “I can’t accept them, Wen-shixiong.”

“I bought them, but I no longer want to be a sword cultivator. Rather than selling them back and losing money, isn’t it better if I give them to my shidi? I know that you can put them to much better use,” Wen Zhihao urged. “Don’t be polite with me, and advance into the inner sect.”

“But…”

“Take it, take it,” Wen Zhihao threw them all at Sun Fuyu.

Sun Fuyu was very fast, catching all of them before he even registered what had happened. He stared at the jade slips in his hands in disbelief.

“I’m going to the stream nearby to wash up before going to sleep. Do as you please, shidi, okay?” Wen Zhihao suppressed his laughter, afraid Sun Fuyu would take it the wrong way. Anyhow, he was glad to get those jade slips off his hands, so he no longer had the pressure that he needed to use them and not waste them.

Wen Zhihao really did as he said. He washed his hands and face and completed other nightly ablutions, headed back to the ‘campsite’, curled up on his blankets and fell asleep. His qi moved in a constant gentle ebb and flow around him.

Sun Fuyu dithered a little. When he realised that Wen-shixiong really had fallen asleep, Sun Fuyu finally examined the jade slips.

He knew that Wen Zhihao was not one of the rich disciples, so these could not be rare cultivation manuals. These jade slips contained three common sword cultivation styles, all enough to get him to Late-Stage Foundation Building. Even though there were not unique, they were all better than the extremely basic manuals offered in the Sect’s Outer Library. Sun Fuyu was currently only in Qi Refining. These manuals would be really useful, and if he was smart with mixing the styles in unexpected ways, he could perhaps win a place at the next Intra-Sect competition and advance into the Inner Sect!

Sun Fuyu had felt really frustrated. Even though he was a second-year disciple, he didn’t have any backing like the others, and so his progress had slowed compared to the others who had access to better materials. Some of the other disciples even had the money to hire older cultivators to privately tutor them, and some disciples had family in the Sect.

In contrast, Sun Fuyu was picked off the streets. As some of the other outer sect cultivators in his year liked to remind him, he had no friends, no family, no backing. He should just hand over all his spiritual stones to them.

But now, holding this jade slips in his hand...It felt like a cat was pawing at his heart. Had he...somehow...become someone backed by Wen Zhihao?

...That didn’t make sense at all. Unless Wen Zhihao had a secret identity... 

Sun Fuyu decided to ask teacher Zhang Wu to make sure the cultivation manuals were valid. For now, Sun Fuyu tucked the jade slips into his pockets and went to sleep on the opposite side of the fire’s embers.

Wen Zhihao watching Sun Fuyu eat: ...Like a little rabbit (づ￣ ³￣)づ (this is all internal, of course)

Sun Fuyu sees Wen Zhihao smiling indulgently at him, and quickly hides his face.

a message from the author: the story that I had been co-writing, eat a mango, gift a garden, is now completed~! It's a modern slice of life/romance with a nonbinary x male pairing, and lots of food, check it out? 🥺🥺