My dao to eternity

The dried ginseng went up in price twice that summer, and the second time Li Fan noticed it, he asked the herb seller directly rather than simply paying it and moving on the way most customers did.

"Southern caravans are running thin," the woman said, wrapping his purchase in coarse paper with the same brisk efficiency she brought to every transaction. "Two of the regular routes stopped coming through entirely this season. The ones that still make the trip charge more for the risk, and I've no choice but to pass some of that along." She shrugged, the gesture of someone who'd weathered enough bad seasons not to treat this one as unusual. "Nothing that hasn't happened before. It'll settle."

Li Fan paid the new price without argument and carried the herbs back toward the shop, turning the exchange over the same unhurried way he turned over most things worth remembering. A rumor of fighting near the coast was one thing, easy enough to file away as distant noise. Two caravan routes actually stopping was a different kind of information, the sort that came from real disruption rather than mere talk of it.

---