The Soaring Meteor Sword Emporium was located in the wealthiest commercial sector of the city.
The showroom floor was immaculate, lined with floating, highly-polished flying swords that cost more than a small island.
The dealership manager was a sleazy-looking, pale-faced cultivator with slicked-back blonde hair and an incredibly punchable, aristocratic sneer. He was currently standing next to a sleek, jet-black flying sword, aggressively slapping the hilt to impress a customer.
"This baby right here?" the manager, Young Master Mal-Fo, grinned smoothly. "It can fit so much Qi in it. Zero to Mach-Two in three breaths. Pureblood craftsmanship. And the handling? It's like flying on a cloud."
"Objection," a raspy voice echoed through the showroom.
Mal-Fo paused, turning around.
Lo Yu, myself, and the goat marched through the front crystal doors. Lo Yu casually tossed the snapped, smoking, half-eaten front end of the Nimbus 3000 Pro onto the pristine showroom floor. It landed with a heavy, expensive clatter.
Mal-Fo's arrogant smile vanished. "What is the meaning of this? You are tracking dirt into my showroom!"
"We are tracking liability into your showroom," I corrected, stepping forward and pulling out my legal pad. "I represent the young man who was just violently embedded into a brick wall on the Avenue of Azure Clouds because your luxury sword suffered a catastrophic failure of its anti-lock spiritual brakes."
"Preposterous!" Mal-Fo scoffed, adjusting his silver and green silk tie. "The Nimbus 3000 Pro is flawless! The kid was probably flying recklessly! He was probably trying to catch a speeding spirit-sparrow! That is operator error. We offer no refunds."
"Operator error?!" I yelled, stepping right up to the pale manager. "My client was trying to buy cabbages! He channeled his Qi to stop, and your defective braking array sucked the energy right out of his meridians like a parasitic tick!"
Mal-Fo blinked, his pale face flushing with indignant rage. "Do you know who I am, peasant? My father is the Patriarch of the Mal-Fo Clan! My father will hear about this lawsuit! He sits on the City Council!"
"I don't care if your father is the Heavenly Emperor himself!" I roared, tapping my charcoal pencil aggressively against the broken sword blade. "Your sword's deceleration matrix fused! It accelerated into a wall! My client hit the bricks so hard he nearly got permanently evicted from the mortal realm!"
The other customers in the store gasped, slowly stepping away from the displays.
"You have no proof of a defect!" Mal-Fo squeaked, realizing the customers were listening and his brand was in danger. "You are just ambulance-chasing extortionists! I will have the City Guards throw you in the dungeon!"
"I am going to hit your profit margins with an injunction!" I countered, turning to the crowd. "And I'm seeking fifty thousand spirit stones from your corporate bank account!"
"Junior Associate, that is enough theatricality," Lo Yu chuckled, leaning heavily on his walking stick. "Let us present the forensic evidence."
I snapped my fingers. "Head of Security. Exhibit A."
The cross-eyed goat trotted forward. It looked at Mal-Fo, let out a small, highly judgmental burp, and spat a jagged, chewed-up piece of the sword's internal rune-core onto the pristine floorboards.
"Look closely at the bite radius," I said, bluffing with absolute, unshakeable Earth-realm confidence. "Our firm's forensic beast has perfectly exposed the fused runes. The deceleration matrix was melted before the impact. The brakes failed. We have it on record. You sold him a sword that handles like a drunken hippopotamus."
Mal-Fo stared at the goat spit covering the melted runes. His slick blonde hair seemed to lose its volume. He knew he was caught.
"If we take this to the Grand Magistrate," Lo Yu whispered, his voice dropping into a menacing, raspy cadence. "We won't just sue for the boy's medical bills. We will demand a complete, highly public recall of every Nimbus 3000 in the Southern Province. Your stock will plummet. Your brand will be ruined. We will sue you so hard, you will have to sell your father's estate just to cover the legal fees."
Mal-Fo began to sweat profusely. He looked at the other customers in the store, who were now staring at their own swords with deep suspicion. He definitely did not want his father to hear about a public recall.
"Okay, okay! Keep your voices down!" Mal-Fo hissed, frantically waving us toward his back office. "Let's be reasonable. No need for a public recall. What is your settlement demand?"
I smiled. The sweet, intoxicating smell of an out-of-court settlement filled the air.
"Three hundred mid-grade spirit stones," I said smoothly. "And a Non-Disclosure Agreement. You pay us, and my client officially collided with the wall because he was distracted by a passing cloud. The defect remains our little secret."
Mal-Fo winced, but he didn't argue. He knew a PR nightmare would cost him ten times that amount. He marched into his office and returned thirty seconds later with a heavy, glowing pouch of stones.
"Take it," he spat, shoving it into Lo Yu's hands. "And get that disgusting, cross-eyed farm animal out of my showroom."
"Pleasure doing business with you," I cheered, as Lo Yu pocketed the pouch.
We didn't even say goodbye.
Ten minutes later, we were walking down the street, happily eating bowls of hot beef noodles from a local stall.
"Boss," I said, slurping some broth. "We have to give the kid a cut, right? He did break his collarbone."
"We are not monsters, Junior Associate," Lo Yu grinned, tossing me a single mid-grade stone to pay for the food. "Give him ninety stones. Keep our thirty-percent contingency, plus an extra one hundred and twenty stones for 'Administrative Rapid Response Fees.'"
I laughed, tossing a noodle to the goat. The Dao of the Ambulance Chaser was incredibly profitable. The Heavenly Peak City legal system was ours for the taking.
We returned to the firm an hour later, flush with cash and eager to log our earnings.
The office smelled reassuringly of boiled cabbage, cheap brothel wine, and the acidic drool of a three-headed hellhound. Mr. Wiggles was fast asleep in the center of the room, his fiery tail keeping the office at a pleasant, toasty temperature while his drool slowly burned a new crater into the floorboards.
"Boss," I grinned, tossing the glowing pouch of stones onto our oversized wine-barrel desk. "We are on fire. The Heavenly Peak legal system is basically an ATM at this point. Who is next on the docket?"
Lo Yu didn't get a chance to answer.
The beaded curtain that served as our front door rattled violently.
A young woman stumbled into the office. She was incredibly beautiful, wearing the delicate pink robes of the Peach Blossom Sect.
But something was horribly, physically wrong with her.
Her arms and legs were terrifyingly thin—almost skeletal, as if she hadn't eaten in weeks. Yet, her stomach bulged outward grotesquely, shifting and rolling under her silk robes as if something inside her was actively moving.
"Welcome to the firm," I said gently, slipping behind the wine barrel while Lo Yu inspected her with his single eye. "Are you seeking a divorce, or are we suing a restaurant for severe food poisoning?"
"I... I don't know," the woman cried, collapsing onto the client stool and clutching her rolling stomach. "I am Fairy Rourou. A week ago, I purchased a premium 'Feather-Light Slimming Elixir' from an independent alchemist in the market. I needed to cut weight for the upcoming aerial sword-dancing gala."
Lo Yu puffed his pipe, a dark cloud of smoke obscuring his face. "And the elixir worked?"
"Too well!" Rourou sobbed. "I lost twenty pounds in three days! But I am starving! I have eaten six entire roasted spirit-pigs today, and I am still hungry! And my stomach... it keeps making noises!"
As if on cue, her bulging stomach let out a wet, gurgling chirp. The skin on her abdomen visibly pushed outward in the shape of a long, serpentine coil.
I gagged, knocking a stack of legal pads off the desk as I backed away. "Oh, Heavenly Dao. Did you swallow a snake?!"
"It's a diet pill!" she wept.
Lo Yu didn't look disgusted. He looked absolutely thrilled. He stood up, walking around the barrel to inspect her stomach. He tapped the bulging mass with the tip of his bamboo pipe.
HISS. A muffled, angry sound echoed from inside her digestive tract.
"Medical malpractice of the highest order," Lo Yu declared, his missing-tooth smile returning in full force. "Fairy Rourou, the alchemist did not sell you a fat-burning elixir. He sold you a dormant egg. You are currently hosting a Class-Two Parasitic Gluttony-Worm."
Rourou let out a blood-curdling shriek. "A TAPEWORM?! I HAVE A SPIRIT-BEAST TAPEWORM IN MY STOMACH?!"
"A highly efficient one," Lo Yu nodded analytically. "It is consuming all of your caloric and spiritual intake. It is a fantastic weight-loss strategy, but highly illegal to install without signed consent forms."
"Get it out of me!" Rourou wailed, grabbing Lo Yu's robes. "I'll pay anything! Sue him! Execute him! Just get this demon out of my intestines!"
"We will absolutely sue him," I chimed in, my eyes turning into dollar signs as my paranoia took a backseat to sheer greed. "Unauthorized parasitic implantation? Emotional distress? We are going to bleed this shady alchemist dry. But Boss, we have a logistical problem."
Lo Yu looked at me. "Which is?"
"To win a medical malpractice suit, we need to present the defective product to the Magistrate," I said, pointing a charcoal pencil at Rourou's writhing stomach. "Which means before we go to court... we have to extract 'Exhibit A' from her digestive tract. And we are lawyers, not surgeons."
Lo Yu stroked his scraggly beard. He looked at the goat, which was currently chewing on a piece of old cabbage in the corner.
"Fear not, Junior Associate," Lo Yu rasped. "The Dao of Litigation provides many pathways to evidence retrieval. We simply need to make the parasite an offer it cannot refuse."