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A new planet is discovered! It's an Earth. The people involved seem to be psychologically human-typical and non-reductionist. Their biology seems to be magical in some way; demons can't conjure any basement dwellers of the humans on this planet, even if they don't appear to be capable of using any magic. Magic users, called "cultivators," are strong and tough and can fly using swords and do assorted magical effects by writing things on specially prepared pieces of paper. Cultivators typically seem to form their own parallel societies which barely interface with the non-cultivator society. Their territories mostly but not perfectly match up with non-cultivator polities. They tend to match up better when the non-cultivator polities are empires and less well when polities are rather small; presumably because cultivators have fast travel and communication, their polities tend to be rather large. Magic users mostly spend their time dealing with assorted monsters, mostly dead people, who seem to have a remarkable tendency to arise from the grave and start killing people.
A delegation is sent to the largest empire on the planet, China, and a second delegation is sent to the associated cultivation polity (called the "jianghu").
