"Have you met many other Jades yourself? You mentioned meeting with a Heaven's Glory elder at one point. Do the schools mostly leave you alone, or do you find yourself having to handle politics a lot?" 

"They haven't tried to ban you from giving yourself tips, or something like that, have they? From what I've seen already maybe they should." 

"I've met a fair number. Golden Sword sent a Jade who wasn't an Elder to meet with me and talk about joining their school back when I was an Iron but was visibly on the cusp of advancement. I declined, which she seemed insulted by until I explained that it was because my Path was too entrenched for me to retrain to their madra types. Not entirely true and not the actual reason I turned down the offer, but she didn't need to know that. I've met an Elder of all three clans to negotiate freedom to move through their lands in exchange for gifts and tribute. And I met who I believe was plausibly the only other clanless Jade at the time, an incredibly old man who lived outside the valley proper and was trying to cycle his way to Gold in a cave. He had a theory the remnant absorption was a myth and in reality advancement to gold simply caused your own remnant to partially manifest itself in your body, turning you a kind of half-remnant. A fascinating theory. He wasn't there the next time I visited- I hope he succeeded and is out exploring the wilds as he dreamed, but I fear he fell to the spirit beasts of the deep wilderness."

It's relatively common knowledge that the far wilderness away from Sacred Valley is filled with Spirit Beasts and Remnants of Jade power, and many of them hunt in packs. The school elders sometimes go on hunting trips, or the patriarch of a clan to prove his might. Every once in a while someone gets the bright idea to try to start up a village far from the valley and gather up a group of people to try it and all of them die.

"Wow, sounds exciting and not a little bit tense. I hope that old master made Gold as well."

She pauses, trying to marshal her conversational acumen. Her mind is whirling; for whatever reason, Terem already seems to be making really surprisingly unguarded remarks. Rejecting a School's offer to join for unspecified personal reasons sure does suggest he has some personal plan, doesn't it? But what could it be? She doesn't dare ask this soon, but from what she's seen so far he has greater ambitions...

"This is a foolish question maybe, but now you have me thinking. Your advancement's this fast even outside a school, and you're turning down alliances... Do you really believe you can make Gold? No-one's done that for hundreds of years, but you seem the type to try from what little I've seen of you."

He grins. "Now, you'd think that that might touch on something a bit private, but in fact every Jade I've had a long conversation with thinks they might be the one to make Gold. Jades are just rare enough that being the first in a few hundred years really only means you need to be, what, the one in a thousand? And every Jade has been one in a thousand since they started comparing themselves to their peers. Rarer than that, in fact, the Valley has a million people or more in it and a bare few hundred Jades. It breeds a certain sense that you can do the impossible. And I've done more impossible than most, haven't I, getting this far on my own? I'm sensible enough to know I probably won't actually manage it, the raw power necessary to hold the remnant seems to slip away from everyone who grasps for it, but why not try?"

"One in a thousand out of one in a thousand, huh..." 

She takes another bite of her fish. "If you can overcome the odds once, maybe you can do it again. I'm sure all the clanless will be cheering for you. And I know I will be." 

"I do wonder if maybe that elder had the right idea. Or one of the right ideas. Maybe it's not raw power, but something more complex. Maybe the remnant idea is wrong somehow. There's been so few Golds that it's very possible that the 'common wisdom' isn't right; it's not as if anyone's witnessed a Gold breakthrough for hundreds of years."

Knowledge is power. If you were a gold, would you tell everyone how you did it....?  

Well of course he would if it wouldn't get him killed somehow, but he's well aware he's odd.

"Longer than that, actually. Did you know none of the credible histories describe any ascensions? In the few cases specific Golds are mentioned by name they even tend to disagree on where they came from. There's notable disagreement about whether Vorias was from Heaven's Glory, Fallen Leaf, or perhaps one of the clans. There's even disagreement about whether Vorias was his name or a title. It certainly has an odd shape to it."

"Huh."

She chews on that along with her fish for a long few minutes. 

"If that's the case, does that mean there's a chance that Gold wasn't even from the valley? I have no idea where they would have come from, but if they were a Gold they wouldn't be threatened by most of the beasts of the wilderness, and they'd be able to move even faster than a Jade going at full speed..." 

"Maybe it's like an Iron body and becoming Gold makes you stop aging entirely. Then all the historical Golds could just be one individual who mostly lives out in the wilderness and only drops by the valley from time to time. I've certainly heard of eccentric elders like that." 

"If there was a historical Gold, what happened to them? Did they die? Leave the valley? You'd think either of those things would be noticed..."

"I never really expected I'd make Gold, and I don't have access to the history books, so I can't say I've really thought about any of this before. But it's interesting, isn't it? If there's a Gold every thousand years or so, what happened to them?"

"The histories, of course, also disagree on what happened to Vorias. One claims he was killed by a small child with a halfsilver dagger- that one I consider rather unlikely. Another that an alliance of the schools put paid to him. And a third that he simply vanished. Which is probably why you didn't know, the story they tell varied from village to village and I think eventually mostly stopped being told at all. For the older tales, we only have names and some claimed feats of strength, nothing about their fates. It could just be one person, provided they're willing to appear as a woman sometimes and a man others. In one breath you'll see an old Gold praised for defeating a raven Remnant that was apparently rather frightening, and in another you'll see tale of a Gold knocking down a mountain. Perhaps they've just been slowly gathering power for ten thousand years, but it seems the older tales are the ones that claim more impressive acts. Perhaps all the power is slowly leaking out of the world and we're just all that's left, and the beasts claimed the rest of the world as we diminished."

A short pause.

"Something that nobody tends to mention is that if you go too far from the valley, more than a few weeks of travel at Jade speeds, the beasts become- wrong. Strange things of monstrous power, rotting alive. If you do hit Jade some day- be careful. Don't stray too far from Sacred Valley unless you have a large party of Jades with you, and even then, if the beasts become wrong, turn around."

"Whoa."

"Maybe that's what happens to you if you advance for a thousand years like a spirit beast can, but don't hit Gold. Maybe taking in too much aura is — toxic, somehow, over the very long term, changes your spirit..." 

"It does make me less confused about where all the Gold spirit beasts are, though. Maybe the remnant rumor is true, and if you don't do it in a controlled fashion..."

"I don't know. All of this is speculation. Maybe some of it is somewhere near the truth. All I know for sure right now is that there's a lot more uncertainty around how to get to Gold and what it even does than I expected. Maybe getting to Gold is somehow a bad thing just in general? All we seem to have is legends, and that not very corroborated..."

"My instincts say that Gold exists, because there must be something generating the legends, and I don't see a principled reason for why madra manipulation would just stop having stages. Maybe there's even something after Gold and we just don't know because there have been too few Golds in the valley. But how to get there... is very, very up in the air."

She's very clever and he finds himself quite appreciating this about her. It's a shame about the everything else in his life.

"Mine say something similar. There must be something generating the legends and the histories. But really, the more you learn the more confused you get. Presumably it reverses at some point. If not I suppose we know where all the Golds went, they got so confused they decided to wash their hands of the world and go live in caves where the confusing nature of the world couldn't bother them."

"Maybe that's where gold the metal comes from. Golds make it from rocks with earth madra and trade it for all the nice comforts of home. This would be a secret organization of literally underground Golds, you understand." 

"More seriously, I think it's likely that if Golds live a long time there's at least one in the Valley somewhere living a quiet life and not showing off. There's nothing else for thousands of miles and living in the wilderness with twisted wrong creatures sounds tantamount to suicide, or at least unpleasant enough that it's unlikely you'd want to do it for thousands of years. They'd have to be lying low."