"Success is when you don't have to bow, even when everyone else wants to bow for you."
Uncle Hei said this while squatting in a field of spirit mint leaves, glaring at a caterpillar who had the audacity to nibble on his future profits.
Xiulan, perched nearby on a flat rock with a brush in one hand and a mug of Truth Drizzle in the other, blinked and dutifully copied the words down in his leaf diary.
"But you still bowed to the Sect Leader," he pointed out softly.
Uncle Hei grunted. "That was a head itch."
"Your back cracked."
"I'm old."
"You're not—"
"I'm wise."
Wise. Wealthy. And now widely feared in human merchant circles.
Uncle Hei, who once growled at the concept of trade and threatened to bite any fox who dared sell forest berries, now wore a sharp, fitted robe of moss-green silk—cut to hide his tail, of course—and carried a golden emblem that read:
Tea Consortium Elder: Hei, Lord of Wild Leaf Wisdom.
He hated it.
But he never took it off.
"Why do they call you Lord now?" Xiulan had asked once.
"Because I growled at a duke when he tried to lower my tea prices," Uncle Hei replied, chewing on a dry ginger root. "Apparently that's considered a show of power."
The tea house, Tea of Heaven's Whimsy, had grown beyond its quaint wooden structure. It now had three branches—each filled with overpriced calm, underpaid servers, and customers who were either there for cultivation breakthroughs or to catch a glimpse of "Heavenly Maiden Xiulan's Blessing" in a cup.
Xiulan had grown fond of the visitors. Especially the ones who brought shiny things and thanked him for "existing" before dropping fat pouches of coin on the counter.
But the forest had rules. And Uncle Hei made sure none of the greed leaked too deep into the child's garden.
"You will grow your leaves. I will grow the business. You need not worry about taels or titles," he said, flicking a gold coin into a barrel like he was discarding a stone.
"But if I do, I can grow a tea leaf that repels taxation," Xiulan offered.
Uncle Hei paused.
"…we'll revisit that."
The humans had taken to calling him Grumpy Lord Hei, a nickname born from fear, respect, and the odd rumor that he could tame divine beasts with a grunt.
The truth?
He once chased a cultivator off the mountain for stepping on Xiulan's glow-root sprouts. The forest whispered about it for days.
Young Master Jin, always at his side, had practically printed their legend into every merchant scroll in the region.
"From the Depths of the Wolf Forest, a Lord Rises — Taste Divinity, Sip Legacy!"
Uncle Hei had thrown a tea cup at his head the moment he read it.
"I am not rising. I am aging. There is a difference."
Still, when human merchants came in ornate carriages and bowed too low, Uncle Hei puffed his chest just a little.
When sect elders offered contracts to sell his tea to nobles, he made them drink a cup of Honest Throat Tea first.
Two nobles cried. One confessed an affair. The fourth started a poetry school.
By the end of the week, no one dared question his prices again.
Even cultivators tread lightly when they came to buy his Rune-Infused Cabbage of Hair Restoration, especially after Elder Fang's miraculous (and slightly frizzy) regrowth.
"It tickles," Elder Fang had admitted tearfully. "But I feel young again."
"Don't flirt with my tea," Uncle Hei had growled, but secretly noted the formula.
Xiulan spent his days learning from the Sect Master's meditation chamber and scribbling leaves full of new rune concepts. He occasionally ran into other disciples who now bowed to him like he was a soft-spoken deity with walking mushrooms.
Xiulan sat, curled beside whispering rocks and afternoons near the boundary where human cultivators dared to visit for training or "nature enlightenment" (whatever that was). Baby Po called them grass-footed children. Uncle Hei just growled at their robes.
It was during one such peaceful forest afternoon that a visiting disciple from the Cloud Soaring Sect wandered a little too close.
She was tall, serious, and had the noble bearing of someone who spent at least two hours braiding her hair to perfection.
Xiulan, crouched beside a patch of whisperleaf cabbage, was scribbling runes onto the soil with a stick. The leaves around him glowed faintly, and one cabbage made a soft humming noise.
The girl froze mid-step. "What are you… doing?"
Xiulan blinked up, a little smudge of soil on his cheek. "Teaching them poetry," he said, as if it were obvious.
"The cabbages?"
He nodded solemnly. "This one likes tragic poems. It sways more when I write about loneliness."
The disciple looked at the swaying cabbage. It swayed.
She dropped to her knees instantly. "I—Great One! I did not realize I was in the presence of a spiritual agrisage!"
Xiulan tilted his head. "A what?"
"You are the cabbage whisperer of prophecy!"
"No," Xiulan said gently, "I'm just Xiulan."
She stared at the cabbage again. "Can it… talk?"
Xiulan, unsure if he was joking or not, replied truthfully, "Only when it wants to."
Her breath hitched. "And what does it say?"
He leaned closer to the cabbage, listened very seriously, then turned back with a faint frown. "It says your boots are too tight."
The disciple immediately untied her boots and sat barefoot in the dirt, bowing twice to the cabbage.
From a tree above, Duoduo snorted so hard she fell off her perch and fluttered awkwardly to the ground.
Xiulan sighed. "You didn't have to do that."
"It's an honor," the disciple whispered. "Can I… can I take one of these sacred vegetables back to the sect?"
Xiulan blinked. "No."
"But—"
"They're still babies," he said firmly, patting the cabbage. "And also, one of them bites."
She paused. Slowly stood up. Bowed to the entire vegetable patch.
"I shall return with an offering," she promised, then ran back toward the sect trail, barefoot and wide-eyed.
Duoduo whispered, "You've just created a cabbage cult."
Xiulan picked up another leaf and scribbled:
Rune: "Please don't worship my crops."
By sunset, Baby Po arrived with a basket of mushrooms and a question.
"Why did five disciples leave acorns in your garden?"
Xiulan, looking at the forest horizon, murmured solemnly, "I may have accidentally become divine again."
Po sighed. "Was it the talking cabbage?"
"…Yes."
Uncle Hei, despite the noise, made sure one thing remained firm: The forest is first. The child is sacred. The rest can bow or get lost.
And so, he stood, tall (for a wolf beast), feared (for his glares), and rich (because Young Master Jin was terrifying in spreadsheets).
Leaf Diary Entry
Uncle Hei said you do not need to chase gold if you grow it.
So I tried growing a golden daikon. It bit back.
Still, I think we are rich now.
He wears silk. I wear vines. But he grunts louder.
I think that means he is happy.
Or constipated.
— Xiulan