He did not specify what.
He did not need to.
The not-specifying was, in fact, the instrument of it. A specific ask with a specific answer was a transaction. A favor, unspecified, owed to a Nascent Soul Mid Stage man who had just given your wife an ancient herb — that was something Ruo's mind would spend the rest of the day turning over, and the turning-over was the point.
Ruo looked at him.
He looked at the stream.
He looked at the path back to the village, where his wife was sitting at the center table, at the place of honor, with the amber eyes that he loved and the jaw like a statement and the six years of cultivation plateau that he had never been able to help her with.
He nodded.
"Tonight," he said.
He walked back up the path.
Cang stood at the stream for a moment.
He looked at the water.
'Evil Points,' the System noted, with the specific tone of the blue interface registering an operation in progress.
He stretched again.
