After about half an hour of walking, we come out to the main street of Fulian. Despite being in the afternoon, the prime activity hour in other cities, it’s still empty as ever. I lead them to the Liu Family Restaurant. Inside the small pub, four rotting wooden tables ring around on the outside, surrounded by simple wooden stools, some with their legs missing. At the center, a table with a large board engraved with the offerings stands. The engravings have eroded considerably with time, and the words are barely decipherable. A man mans the table, absently flicking through a scroll.

“Hey, Hu. Didn’t you say you would never come back here?” he says, spotting me.

“Well, Shi, my friends want to try your restaurant. Why they would want to is beyond me,” I reply. Shi looks up and sees the adventurers.

“Wow, Anglians!” he says, standing up. “We’ve never had Anglians come to our restaurant! This will surely raise the ranking of our restaurant! You know, increasing our demographic and things.”

“But you’re the only restaurant,” I mutter under my breath. Shi ignores me. “Please sit wherever you would like!”

We pick a table near the entrance, as it seems to be the cleanest. Shi plunks down six cups of grimy water and three worn pieces of parchment containing the menu.

“How come there is only one option for the entree?” Alduin says, scanning the menu.

“Yep! Our house special: Mystery Soup. It’s rated five stars.”

“Out of a thousand.”

“Don’t be that way, Hu. You never know until you try, right?” Lucien playfully nudges me. “We’ll take six bowls. Do you have any other appetizers?”

Shi gapes. “You speak Chinese?”

Lucien shrugs. “Is that a rare thing? Alduin also speaks it.”

“No, it’s just that your pronunciation is perfect,” Shi replies. “Well, since you have been so kind as to communicate in Chinese, I will provide you with some appetizers!”

He hurries off to the kitchen, where the cooks (also known as his wife and children) are at work. I can hear him telling them to put some of the crab from last week into the soup. 

“Ok, tell me what you were saying,” Perrine demands. 

“All you have to know is we’ll probably get food poisoning because someone,” Alduin replies with a pointed glance at Lucien, “decided it was a good idea to go to this unsanitary place. We should have just gone to our camp to eat.”

Shi hurries back with a tray of soggy gray lumps. “Here’s your appetizer: stinky tofu! It’s been sitting around in our house since I was a child. But don’t worry, I think the more something aged, the better it tastes, right?”

“Like I said,” Alduin groans. “We’re all going to be sick.”

Lucien picks up a piece. “It doesn’t taste that bad.”

Perrine maneuvers her chopsticks, in an attempt to pick up a piece, before finally succeeding and popping it in her mouth. “You’re right. It just tastes different from what we’re used to. That isn’t necessarily bad.”

The doorbell rings again, and someone saunters in. I don’t know who it is until she leans in close to me and whispers, “Miss me, Hu?”

“Go away, Lisu,” I mutter. “I’m not your boyfriend.”

“Lisu? I’m offended. You would mistake me for my terrible stepsister?” the person steps into the light. It turns out I’m wrong; it’s Liling, Lisu’s supposedly evil stepsister, who doesn’t really seem that evil to me, just horribly vain. “Although I wouldn’t mind being your boyfriend.”

“I don’t care which Ma sibling you are. Just go away,” I say in annoyance. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to eat here.”

“Hu darling, why don’t we have a one to one talk away from all those Anglians,” Liling says, casting a disgusted look at the adventurers.

“How about no. Go away,” I groan. Now Liling’s flirting with me. What is it with me and the Ma siblings? It’s not as if I have any particular achievements or lineage. 

Shi comes back with a tray laden with six bowls of foul-smelling soup. “Oh, Miss Liling! I didn’t know you were coming. I’ll prepare another bowl.”

“Thanks, Shi,” Liling says sweetly.

Lucien cuts in. “Could you be so kind as to introduce yourself?”

Liling seems surprised at Lucien’s fluency in Chinese. “Oh, I’m Ma Liling.”

“So you’re Lisu’s sister!” Alduin says. “Lisu is so dreamy. Can you tell her I said hi?”

Liling looks annoyed. “Excuse me? We’re talking about me here. Not my unbearable stepsister. If you want to say hi to her, go jump off a cliff.”

Alduin jumps up, pointing his wand at her. “Don’t you dare insult Lisu!” 

“Wait, Alduin maybe we shouldn’t-” Lucien placates, but Alduin cuts him off. “How dare you! Take this!”

With that, Alduin mutters something in a language I don’t know and a black beam of light shoots out of his wand. It hits Liling, who crumples onto the floor. Lucien grabs the wand while Alduin is gloating, waving it out of his reach. 

“Ow! I just came in here to greet Hu, what’s wrong with that?” Liling complains, clutching her stomach.

“Hu is Lisu’s girlfriend! Not yours!” Alduin says fiercely. “Also give me my wand back, Lucien! I have to curse her again for such an insult!”

“We are not dating!” I cut in. 

“Of course you are!”

“This conversation is getting out of hand. I think you should leave,” Lucien, ever the peacekeeper breaks in. “If you want your wand back, Alduin, stop fighting with her.”

Liling picks herself off the ground, glaring at us. “Fine. If you don’t want me, it’s your loss. There’s better men to be had in Fulian.”

With a toss of her hair, she saunters back out of the restaurant.

“What was that about?” Lucien asks with amusement, handing the wand back to Alduin, who snatches it with an annoyed glare. 

“I have no idea,” I sigh. The Ma siblings are so hard to decipher. Footsteps come towards our table again; Shi has come back with a bowl of soup.

“She left? What a pity. She’s missing out on our five-star cuisine,” he remarks. “I guess I’ll eat this myself.”

That’s a cue for the five adventurers to pick up the soup and drink. Wisely, I don’t eat any of it, instead eating a bit of dried fruit I had stored in my pack.

“This tastes horrible,” Alduin coughs. “Even worse than your cooking, Lucien.”

“Hey, my cooking can’t be that bad, right?” Lucien replies, unconcerned. 

“It is! Before we met Vofola, I constantly got bellyaches!”

After finishing the soup and paying, we walk back up to the camp, with Shi waving goodbye in the distance. We’ve walked for about half an hour when Perrine clutches her stomach. 

“I don’t feel so good,” she says.

“Me too,” Horacio adds.

“And me,” Vofola says.

“I told you we’d get food poisoning!” Alduin yells. 

“Then why did you eat it?” Lucien says, close to laughing. He’s the only one not sick.

Alduin glares at Lucien. “You brought us to that restaurant with Hu’s warnings just so this would happen, right? It’s not funny!”

“Actually, I think it is,” Lucien replies. “It really says something about human psychology.”

“How are you not sick anyway?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “I have a strong resistance to those kinds of things. Remember? I’m part-fairy.”

“I think I need to puke,” Perrine says shakily.

Lucien smiles at me. “I’ll take care of this. It must be about time for you to go back for your assignment. Why don’t you find Master Xia?”

“Sure…” I say, backing away. I really don’t want to know what happens next. I wave goodbye to the adventurers and fly back up to the mountain peak, where Master Xia is still waiting.

“Oh, you’re back early. How did you do?” he says. 

I fill him in on the plant yao in the cave. Master Xia nods in approval, but I still have one thing to ask. “How much do you know about Lucien Basilicus, Hero of Light?”

“Not much. Just that he’s really powerful,” Master Xia admits. “Why?”

“Well, he was kind of scary when he was fighting all the monsters. It was as if he was an entirely different person,” I admit.

“Ah, some people act like that when they’re fighting. Don’t worry about it too much,” Master Xia says. “I once had a classmate who would laugh like a maniac whenever fighting. Then he got sent to a psychiatric ward. Oh wait, that’s probably not the most reassuring story. I know! One of my teachers was possessed by a fox spirit whenever he battled, so eventually the spirit took over his body and killed his family. Wait, that one’s not good either. Well, I met this man once who was really funny outside of battle but scarily focused during it. And nothing bad happened to him as I know of, but maybe that’s because he’s been missing for seven years.”

“That is not reassuring me,” I groan. “Don’t say anything if it’s not helpful.”

“What? You were the one who asked. If he starts acting like a crazy person, you can just run away…probably. But he also might catch up to you.”

“That. Is. Not. Reassuring.”

Master Xia laughs. “Oh, how I love messing with you! But seriously, don’t worry about it too much. Most likely it’s just how he’s been trained to fight. There are some really strict duel academies in Anglia.”

I side eye Master Xia, causing him to guffaw again. We wait for some time before Zhiqiang and Qiao fly in, sweaty and out of breath.

“How’d you get back here so quickly? I had to fly ten li to find a yao!” Qiao complains.

“That’s because Hu actually thought before recklessly running off. There were dozens of monsters in a cave on this very mountain-I would have told you if you’d asked. There’s no rule against that,” Master Xia admonishes them. “This exercise was more about thinking through your actions, less about actually defeating those monsters. Hu wins.”

“Good job!” Zhiqiang says, high-fiving me. 

Qiao scowls. “I would have thought of that if you’d been more clear.”

“Well, this lesson is over. Do whatever you want,” Master Xia announces, before flying away, leaving us to stare after him. 

Qiao scowls at me once more before flying off himself. Zhiqiang stays behind. “Want to hang out and train?”

“Sure,” I say. The adventurers are probably still sick anyways. We head down the mountain to meditate. As we do, I wonder what Liling was doing at the pub, flirting with me. From the looks of it, she has her eye set on either Qiao or Zhiqiang. This will be a hassle, since not only will she cause trouble, Lisu will probably butt in. And that means I’ll have to spend even more time with her. But I put that out of my mind for the moment as me and Zhiqiang race each other down the slopes.