The awkwardness of dinner never quite faded, no matter how many dishes the young cultivators ordered or how much wine they drank. Su Xiang quickly reached her limits and retreated to her room gratefully when Jin Wuya suggested that young ladies shouldn't be up too late drinking with men lest it harm their reputation. Wu Ling himself held back from much of the wine, serving tea to Huang Yeyan and keeping his conversation to light topics until he could make a polite retreat of his own.
Once in his room, however, Wu Ling gave himself no time to relax. Opening the room's small window, he quickly summoned Hou, setting the Golden Crow on the windowsill and looking intently into the bird's small, red eyes.
"You know what you're looking for, right Hou? Just tell me if there are people there, and I'll do the rest," he told his increasingly trustworthy Guardian. While Hou still couldn't count and had difficulty reporting back much information about the things he observed when Wu Ling sent him scouting, repeatedly sending him out to practice was slowly starting to bear fruit as the resplendent bird sharpened his mind along with his talons.
With a quiet - CAW - Hou fluttered into the cooling spring night air, quickly vanishing among the narrow, winding streets of Blade's Edge waystation.
Meanwhile, Wu Ling changed into a dark red dress trimmed in black brocade. The makeup he applied for the evening was dark, smokey, and accented by deep crimson lip stain and eye shadow. His nimble fingers carefully wove their way through his long, dark hair, arranging it in an elegant snake bun. Only when Hou returned giving an affirmative CAW did Wu Ling retrieve his final element of this evening's ensemble.
There were some things that he felt weren't appropriate for the treasured zither he'd taken from the Bamboo Silk House's treasury with his cultivation manual and so he'd spent over two thousand contribution points on a new, polished zither made from rich Mountain Blackwood and accented with the dark red leather of a Crimson Scaled Adder.
While he would have considered it near heresy to paint his treasured zither, the dark black color of his new zither allowed him to paint several Blade Winged Birds and other designs on his new zither without revealing themselves too easily to casual observation. While he doubted anyone would understand the purpose of painting dozens of simple bird shapes on an instrument, on any other zither, they would likely draw attention and attention could mean questions that he didn't want to answer.
Slipping quietly out of his room, Wu Ling made his way through the dark, quiet streets of the Waystation until he found a butcher shop on the corner of a strip of small shops. With a deep breath, he summoned the results of countless hours of practice at the Pure Virtue Musician's Hall and walked elegantly into the dark alley between buildings to knock on the building's side entrance.
Dim light and the faint smell of pipe smoke spilled into the alley when the door was yanked open by a short man wearing a rough tunic with his sleeves tied back.
"Eh, pretty sister, this brother thinks you've found the wrong place," the squat man said, eying Wu Ling up and down suspiciously. "We're closed. Come back in the morning if you need to do your shopping," he said, moving to close the door before the woman could respond.
"I'm not here to shop," Wu Ling said smoothly. "I came to bet on a winner," he added, placing a delicate foot in the doorway before the door could close.
"Eh? Pretty sister came to gamble?" The man took a closer look at Wu Ling, peering at her with eyes that were dark and sunken. His nose twitched several times as he sampled the aura clinging to the strange woman who'd come calling at their door but whatever he detected gave him no clear answers. "Who told you we gamble here?"
"Boss Fenglun did," Wu Ling said easily. "But I'm not here to gamble myself," he demurred. "I'm just here to look for a winner that I can… entertain. Are you a lucky winner, big brother?"
"Fenglun is dead," the man said, his hand reaching around to the small of his back to grip the handle of a curved boning knife tucked into his belt. "He didn't send you here."
"Boss Fenglun died just before the eclipse," Wu Ling acknowledged, showing no sign that the squat man's actions bothered him. "Why do you think this Sister is looking for a new winner to entertain? But Boss Fenglun wasn't as strong as the Mountain's Bones," Wu Ling added, lowering his head slightly and looking at the short man through fluttering lashes. "Sister won't feel safe entertaining just any lucky winner. Can you help this sister find a winner even stronger than Boss Fenglun?"
"Even Fenglun would walk small and call out 'Big Brother' to Little Boss Nalan," the squat man boasted. "This brother is called Tong," he said, finally taking his hand off the hilt of his knife and opening the door wider. "How is little sister called?"
"This little sister's name is Hua Qianhu," Wu Ling said with a slight smile. "But Brother Tong can call me Sister Vixen if he likes."
"Sister Vixen, I'll show you to Little Boss Nalan," Brother Tong said, gesturing for her to follow him into the darkened back room of the butcher shop. Several meat hooks hung from the ceiling along with a wide assortment of knives, saws, and a handful of hammers. When Wu Ling looked carefully, he spotted additional implements that resembled normal butcher's tools but were clearly sized for something other than sheep, cattle, or fowl. His observant gaze also spotted thick chains that served little purpose to a butcher but could easily secure a person to the large wooden table in the center of the back room.
The thick scent of blood and meat masked any other less savory smells and Wu Ling had to carefully manage his breathing as they walked deeper into the shop if he didn't want to become overwhelmed by the stench. Brother Tong led him down a narrow flight of stone steps into a chilled basement where the carcasses of several spirit beasts had been hung, a few of which were so fresh that they still dripped potent blood onto the stone floor.
Finally, moving to the back of the cold room, Brother Tong knocked on a heavy wooden door with an odd rhythm before opening it and gesturing for Wu Ling to follow him inside.