Chapter 7. Evil profiteer!! (bubble tea, no sugar)

Phương laughed. “Changing the power source of each of these lights one by one? No way! These lights are all connected to the house’s unified power source. They’re connected via electrical wires to the on-off switch there”—he pointed to a flat rectangular item stuck on the wall—“and the house’s power is generated using energy from the sun and the wind and stored in non-spiritual batteries.”

“An energy gathering array?”

Phương smiled. “Something like that.” He gestured to the light orb in Long Quang’s hand. “When I make these for others, I tell people to use spiritual stones as an energy source because they’re easy to obtain. If you want non-spiritual batteries like the ones I use, you have to buy them from me. They cost several times more than the energy-equivalent of a spiritual stone, not to mention the cost of the recharging device. Interested?”

Long Quang made a face. What a profiteer!! Buying the light orb didn’t cost ‘much’, the expenses were all in its upkeep! He looked at the light orb in his hands with a complex feeling and decisively turned it off to save energy. And then he put it into his spatial storage and took out spiritual stone.

“Big brother Phương, I want more cups to take away.”

Phương smiled as the stone flew into his hand. “Very good, little Long Quang!” In a good mood having successfully ‘trained’ Long Quang to call him big brother, Phương made a dozen cups of bubble tea.

By the time Phương finished making the bubble tea—six honeydew and six brown sugar—Long Quang had finished the cheesecake.

Long Quang placed bubble tea in his spatial storage and stood up. “I’m going home now.”

Phương opened the door for him. “Swim safely and good luck with developing more moves, I believe in you.”

“Hm.” Long Quang’s impression of the human improved from -1000 to -500.

“But if you can’t, you can ask me nicely and I’ll help you. You might not realise, but I’m a genius at creating things.”

Long Quang’s impression of the human fell back into a deep ditch. “I can do it myself! Good bye!” He strode out with purpose and jumped into the sea, turning back into a dragon as he did so. His form soon disappeared from sight in the dark waters.

With Long Quang gone, the house was a lot more empty and quiet.

It made Phương think…Long Quang was working hard to become more powerful. What was Phương doing? He was supposed to be retired, but for some reason, he felt that he wasn’t doing retirement very well…

There was a glint of light in the darkness.

Phương kept the door open for his sword’s return.

“Did you have fun?” He gave his sword a spiritual stone once it entered the house.

The sword bobbed out a ‘yes’.

“You know, most swords at your strength have a condensed sword spirit form that can talk. I wonder if I should dismantle you to see if there’s any issue—”

His sword immediately flew away.

Phương’s lips twitched in amusement. “Hey, if you want any special materials for your new sword blade, go look for them yourself!”

With that, Phương closed the door and got ready for bed.

Long Quang didn’t go home right away. Instead, he took a detour to cultivate by one of the underwater reefs.

A few hours later, Long Quang huffed with frustration, sending up bubbles in the water.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t control the explosion time of the ice spheres.

But there was no way he was going to ask that human to help! How could he? Everyone knew that human cultivation methods didn’t work with dragon cultivation methods.

However, asking other dragons was also out of the question.

Long Quang sat down on the riverbed in humanoid form and sipped on a cup of bubble tea while brooding. Currently, his ice spheres exploded on contact or after a certain amount of time due to instability. He could make the ice spheres more stable and use long-distance ice-shard projectiles to force them to explode—but then his opponent could take advantage of that…

Could he use a fuse akin to those on firecrackers and fireworks?

Or could he attach a line of spiritual power between the ice sphere and himself, allowing him to ‘turn them on’ from a distance, a bit like Phương’s light switch?

Long Quang became excited. He had not just one method, but three different methods! Each had their own benefits, which could diversify his combat and increase his competitiveness!

Long Quang finished his bubble tea and started swimming to a secluded underwater ravine to test out his ideas.

Cultivating, practising, testing—the days slipped by, and Long Quang could feel his internal strength rising. Soon, he could skilfully and confidently control his ice spheres.

Whenever he made a breakthrough, he celebrated by having some bubble tea.

Whenever he was stuck on making a move work, he reinvigorated himself by having some bubble tea.

Next time, he wouldn’t fail so early in the tournament!

Satisfied with his new mastery, Long Quang swam home. The guard turtles’ complete disregard of him didn’t bother him.

Long Quang’s baby brother and several young cousin dragons were swimming about near his cave.

“Big brother! You’re finally back!” his baby brother Long Bảo chirped. “Play, play!”

One of the slightly older dragons swam up to Long Quang. “Brother, do you have any more sweet drinks?”

Long Bảo’s eyes widened. He started swimming in excited circles. “Sweet drink? Does big brother have more sweet drink for Bảo?”

A little cousin dragon held her front paws together. “Big brother, Ngọc wants a drink too.”

Long Quang hesitated. After many days of cultivation, he only had a few cups left…but his little brother’s and cousins’ eyes were really hard to resist…

A large female dragon emerged from one of the caves nearby. “Long Quang, you should share with your little brothers and sisters.”

Long Quang stiffened, his good mood slashed in half.

It was his mother, the dragon whom hadn’t spoken to him for years. Why was she here?

Reluctantly, Long Quang took out all his remaining cups of bubble tea. “This is all I have left. You have to share nicely, okay?” he told the younger dragons.

“Hmm! You’re the best brother!” the little dragons agreed. They took the cups and gathered in a circle.

“I take one sip, you take one sip, then you take one sip.”

“Hurry up and sip!”

“Mmmm!! Yummy!”

“You can only have one tiny ball, not two!!”

Long Quang swam over to his mother. “Mother, do you need something?”

His mother, Long Hồng Nhung, frowned at him. “Can’t I come see how you and the little dragons are doing? They’ve been insisting on finding you after cultivation training.”

Long Quang’s chest tightened. “Mother…I’ve been doing…”

On the one hand, he wanted to tell her that he had been doing well and fine without her. On the other hand, he wanted to tell her that he had been struggling and needed her help.

But if she had been keeping track of his performance at the regular tournaments, then she would already know that he had been failing but didn’t care to help him; if she didn’t keep track of his performance, then it meant she didn’t care.

Either way, she didn’t care.

Long Quang’s eyes lowered. “How has Mother been doing?”

“Mother has been doing well,” Long Hồng Nhung said. “I heard that you recently developed a new technique.”

Long Quang’s eyes immediately raised, his heart lifting. Was his mother going to praise him?

“Can you show Mother?”

“Yes!” Long Quang formed a small ice sphere and threw it into the distance. BOOM! It exploded in the water, making the water ripple.

“Ahh-hahaha!” the little dragons scattered and then reformed in a group, joking about how the other little dragons had been scared.

“You remotely triggered it to explode,” Mother noticed.

Long Quang nodded shyly. “Before, I couldn’t control when it exploded.”

“Show me again.”

The tone in his mother’s voice that said that she expected to be obeyed made Long Quang’s stomach drop.

Long Duy must have told her something.

Long Quang’s jaw tightened. “I—”

“What? Is your technique so secret that you can’t show your mother? Or did someone else develop it? Tsk.” Long Hồng Nhung turned her head away, already feeling that her time had been wasted.

“I’ll show you!” Long Quang blurted out. “I’ll show you…” He forced a smile to his face. “I’ll teach my little siblings and cousins too.”

“Really?” Little brother Long Bảo swam over, eyes bright. The other little dragons gathered too.

“Then go on,” Long Hồng Nhung said.

Long Quang’s chest felt painful. “To form it, first gather spiritual energy like this…”

Thankfully, his mother learned the technique quickly and left immediately after. As for his little brother and cousins, the learning session turned into a playing session, as they swam around dodging exploding ice spheres…

Local traditional music floated through Phương’s workshop, coming out of his new music playing device version 3.

In the workshop, there were new outdoor tables, chairs, and large umbrellas. Phương recently had a group of visiting cultivator monks who had taken up every single chair he had. With the subtle feeling that the number of guests was increasing, Phương decided to proactively make more furniture.

(Bubble tea was vegetarian so the cultivator monks had willingly drank it, though they declined adding any sugar because that would make it too enjoyable.)

Phương placed the new furniture at the front of his house and placed an overhead shield-array to protect against rain, sand, and insects.

While he was in the mood to improve his little tearoom, he wrote up a basic menu, which he hung of the wall, and added a display cabinet with a few small things on sale—new bamboo cups, straws, handmade notebooks, a blender and a few refined light orbs of various shapes and sizes.

“Knock knock.” His sword with its new flaming red blade knocked the wall.

Phương raised his head. “Is someone about to come?”

His sword bobbed in agreement.

Phương arranged the last little price tag before stepping to the front of the house. The front walls were currently folded to the side, opening the house to the wide open beach. Phương looked towards the ocean—was it Long Quang?

Long Quang’s mood in this chapter: /////////////

Author: Poor baby dragon u_u

Long Quang:  ( ｡ •̀ ᴖ •́ ｡)   it’s your fault!

Notes:

Vietnamese familial pronouns and terms of address: while pronouns for “I” and “you” exist in Vietnamese, when among family, you typically use pronouns that are ‘relational’, e.g. if you are the sister of the person you’re talking to, you refer to yourself as ‘sister’ and you refer to the other person by their relationship to you (e.g., “Sister understands, don’t worry, sister will help little-sibling…”).

Similar to Chinese, you can call unrelated (and related) people similar in age as brother and sister, so Long Quang’s cousins also call him older brother (the Vietnamese word is anh, so the little dragons could be calling out anh Quang! Anh Quang! Please give us milk tea!!!).

Extra note: older brother is ‘anh’ and older sister is ‘chị’, but generic younger sibling is ‘em’ (non-gendered, though you can add additional gendered terms if you want). There’s no (accepted) term for older nonbinary siblings ("-ࡇ-)