The surviving members of the Blood Tree sect have scattered to the wind. Their compound relatively nearby was secure enough against the Gao's limited ability to invade it- With only a smattering of condensation level juniors and some martial artists, there was no way an extensive scouting and attack on the compound would have made sense. But the defeat of their sect master at the hands of a pair of ascended foxes who can close the blood portals-

-The Blood Tree sect, petty and tiny as it was, has no more reason to exist. The compound sees a stream of survivors loot everything that isn't nailed down. A few dying to the traps of their fellows or infighting among the lower-level surviving members, as a demonic sect is never a very trusting place. The rest scatter as individuals or in small bands. The most important remaining member, a 7th level qi condensation cultivator, fills his spatial pouch and begins a long run north, skirting the edge of the Untamed Lands and intending to benefit from the relative culling of the region but not actually interact with the guards. 

It was a stupid decision to come down here anyway, he thinks, perfect cultivation material or not, there's just too much heat. Back to Qing, where the worst thing we have to worry about is competition over resources, not righteous assholes who'll cut you down just for what's in your cultivation base if you try to enter a city.

The town of Valley of Clotting does its best to make things normal. Huddled whispers of worry and muffled cries of grief. They had two hours' warning and all evacuated to the central keep, so the death toll isn't actually all that high, and most of it was among the soldiers who fought at the outer walls, and the odd stubborn fool. But the soldiers took a lot of casualties, and mostly deaths over injuries. They knew the risks, but... There's no way the two foxes will stick around. And they wouldn't really want to be beholden to the protection of two strangers either. Not everyone here personally knows Gao Gao, but everyone knows of him, a genuinely kind and responsible man who is simply not that good at cultivation.

And so the great Ancestor, Shennong, commanded his disciple in the ways of preparing the fields. Till the land. Fell the Trees. Divert the waters, Break the Rocks, Sow the Seeds, Reap the Harvest. Craft for theyself a place to call home, and give thanks to the land for its bounty...

They have tilled the land, felled the trees, diverted the waters, broken the rocks, sown the seeds, and reaped the harvests. They've built a home next to the blood forest, which Gao Gao and Gao Lan both regularly went into, only to bring back secretive bundles of special materials. But despite the attachment to the land, the toil that's been poured into this place, it's only existed for some eighty years. Three generations. And it cannot be defended without Gao Lan. Perhaps the heavens will smile upon them after this tragedy, and another house will come to bolster the region. But perhaps not. By all accounts, whatever the forest produces is of niche use to cultivators. Not a spirit stone mine, but something for esoteric purposes, rarely used and with limited demand. It might be too risky for anyone else to properly secure it. And anyway, why maintain a full town when you can send an occasional foraging expedition instead?

So. This is probably the last year in Clotting. They'll close things down respectfully. Clean the houses. Turn over the fields one last time. Pack away anything of value before they go, splitting this community into innumerable other places with room to take them. People are already writing letters to distant relatives, asking how the villages and towns and cities closer to the coast are faring...

Gao Gao kneels before a fresh grave, and weeps.

The low-level soldiers are mostly in the Martial Arts world. Stronger than normal, but not on the true path. Their talent not strong enough to earn a place in a proper sect, to earn additional resources. But a few, cousins and nieces and nephews or siblings-in-law of the Gao family, are properly qi condensation cultivators, struggling to advance. Any advantage, any boost, might be well worth the risks taken to get it. Not so much that they'd turn to the demonic path- That's disgusting, bad for your karma, and as they've seen, gets you killed just as surely. But taking advantage of opportunities? Practically expected.

The dead blood sect members had a few valuable things on them. Some pills, some gold, some spirit stones, various other things. All told, the cleanup crews gathered up about 50 spirit stones' worth of loot, and all 40 spirit stones' worth of loot were turned in to the Clerk. The Clerk presented the 35 spirit stones' worth of loot to Gao Gao and asked him what to do, and then distributed a portion of the loot to the survivors and the dead's families, with some of the rest reserved as an additional reward to the two fox beasts and some retained for the village as a whole.

Spiritual rice can be had, after she politely requests it. It diffuses slowly in her stomach, a smooth and wholesome injection of qi to begin refilling her body's badly drained reserves.

She's never been truly good at visualizing qi, no matter how the manuals and different methods depict it. The metaphors make little sense, and the sensation of qi flowing through her meridians is more... Visceral than anything else. Even internal meditations, where you're supposed to be able to almost literally see your spiritual landscape, your inner sea and violet palace, do very little for her. It's more like groping around in the dark and feeling the smooth stones of a well-trod road, than seeing the flat and sturdy foundations she's supposed to be building.

She's done it mostly on instinct, this whole time. Some of the young masters would spit blood at that- Inventing your own cultivation path? Do you seek death?!?

But it's not like she has any other option. Prized secret manuals of the best-designed techniques?

Pffft. Not without backing. Not without sect membership. And certainly not on a budget that, for the first decade she was aware of herself, consisted of herbs, berries, and small game in the primeval forests. By the time she started interacting with humans- And saw how much more they seemed like her than the beasts of the forest- Her path was set.

Her cultivation method has been written down, by her, as after encountering the concept of a cultivation manual, she did experiments to try and find the best way to do what her basic instincts knew how to do. Writing down the results of subtle variations on things so she could see what helped with more reliability did smooth things out after a while- Though she remained dreadfully slow. She didn't even know what she was doing back then- But even then, she knew that slow and careful was the best way, regardless of the allure of strength. Sneaking around, learning and watching, meticulous preparation. The same part of her that feels a primal rightness when she buries something for later, or a pure and simple satisfaction when she eats or slips through the edges of the world for a moment, knew to take it slow and careful.

And now she has a spiritual wound that causes deep pain every time she breathes. It would be so much worse if she had rushed to this strength, she can tell. All the work to make her body lean, fast, smooth, to get rid of the impurities at every turn and infuse it with the perfecting energies of qi as she cultivated, has made her true qi stable in a way that most other weak cultivators really seem to lack. Other people feel like they're trying to change themselves to fit the qi. She, much more painstakingly, changes the qi to fit her.

But the wound is still here, and she's...

She has to admit her emotions to herself. It works best that way. Then you can understand and flow through them properly, instead of trying to flinch away and create dissonance.

Scared. She almost died. She might still die, and that's a gnawing pit that overarches everything. It can't be put into words. The bone-deep certainty that you will end...

Frustrated. She risked too much, doing this. Maybe she should have ran away. She probably would have died to that damned False Core blood cultist, if not for Rebecca.

Anxious. A different flavor than fear. Who is Rebecca, really? What does she know? What is she scheming? Because old monsters are surely scheming something.

Hopeful. Someone with unique powers. Someone strong, who she can make connections with. She's been so jealous of the established sects and clans... Limited in their own ways, and not necessarily a trade she'd take even, but the freedom from uncertainty is an immense allure. Can Rebecca actually help her? Grant opportunities, if not directly powerful ones, to grow in new directions? Probably. Maybe.

...She hasn't really felt this worried since before everything. She'd been on a stable and safe path, slowly travelling, hunting, cultivating. Living in cities and inns, learning things. Stagnating, maybe.

So... What went wrong here?

Wen thinks, in expectation, that she should have just ran away. Rebecca was not expected in the last. What would have happened without her? Wen would have died, or at least been crippled.

To save a village of mortals. Sure. But... One village. A few thousand souls. Even if-

Even if she-

So many more can be saved, given good lives, if she survives to grow in strength and power, and then protects the innocent. 

If she wants to protect the innocent.

It's a foolish thing to do. For all that she proclaimed her righteous desires to Rebecca, like an idiot, for all that she justifies it to herself as the cultivation of karmic merit so others will be able to trust her-

...

Without any of the justification or reasoning, ask the simple animal inside of you: What do you want?

She wants the pain to go away. She wants to grin together with friends. She wants to grow stronger and learn things. She wants to secret away caches and preparations just in case. She wants pleasures of the flesh, food and wine and sex and music.

She didn't want to see them die.

She does exercises, the forms that should be completely effortless being... Not painful, but a slight strain, in this condition. But she focuses on the final thought. She didn't want them to die. They didn't die.

Her inner turmoil settles, somewhat. And so she turns to her true form, and gently bites her own tail, and settles down and rouses her energy before sending it scurrying along the well-trod trails of her body, paths made of fire and air, currents in reality blowing endlessly. She knows these trails on a level beyond sight, smell, or words. She is the path. The path is her.

Smooth and fast, slowly turned to perfect sprinting paths that she can dash through all simultaneously in rhythmic pulses, through years and years of the same, the qi moving in cycles within her draws the qi of the world inwards.

And the festering, bloody rot crawling over part of the paths-of-herself... Shifts. Paths-of-herself takes it into the streams by degrees, the fire that's not quite fire boiling the blood to vapor and the wind that's not quite wind carrying the cancerous scabs away piece by piece. The foreign qi burns, and becomes more heat for herself, and she laughs a long yipping series of barks in joy before refocusing on the task at hand.

In and out, the ash-and-spark laden winds of her soul blow, purifying the blood qi through fire...

In the morning, a servant brings Rebecca breakfast unprompted, knocking gently on the door. When she answers, the maid also says that honorable Wen Huli said to inform the Senior that she is recovering well, and that Lord Gao Gao would seek her counsel on a minor but slightly sensitive matter at her convenience.

Oh, excellent! She will immediately get dressed, take the breakfast in her room and secrete it away in Dressing Room (she's curious if it goes bad), return the dishware and cutlery after a short period of time she could plausibly have wolfed it down in, and go to meet Gao Gao first.

Gao Gao shows her into the main house, past some sort of security magic, and into the basement dungeon. It's empty except for one person, a woman who she recognizes as having successfully fled into the woods yesterday. She looks closed down and miserable, sitting on the stone floor.

"Can Ming. She was prostrate before the town gates, having dissipated her cultivation and declaring a request to go become a Buddhist monk in repentance. I am of a mind to execute her, but I saw yesterday that you prefer mercy."

What does it mean to dissipate your cultivation? Destroying your own powers, presumably. But she doesn't know how big of a deal that is, or the cultural connotations attached to the act. And she's not going to ask and reveal her ignorance.

The stock answer to this is to ask to offer mercy within the bounds of their law, but not beyond it. Except as she opens her mouth, she realizes she has different tools now.

She says to the woman, "Repeat what you said to him to me."

And she will use Backchannel to check how sincere she is.

"I-

This one begs for mercy she does not deserve. This one will make no excuses, but I now see. Demonic cultivation is tainted and reprehensible, and that the nature of the world is to suffer. This one would seek to follow the teachings of the Bodisatvahs, and strive to escape Samsara."

She believed that she could partake in demonic cultivation and not have to hurt innocent people. And she was wrong, at least in this case. Rebecca wonders if there is something to the practice which unavoidably corrupts and claims, or if it's more about the culture and systemic incentives.

Rebecca turns to Gao Gao.

"All I can say is that she is telling the truth. She regrets her crimes and she regrets demonic cultivation, for the harm she has caused others, not only for the harm it brought to her. She is sincere about becoming a Buddhist monk and striving to escape Samsara. I cannot say if she may one day change her mind again and return to her old ways, but at this moment at least, her repentance is true.

"It's not my place to tell you to spare her or not. I am simply a traveller. I have not suffered the loss you have, and if other demonic cultivators are emboldened by your mercy, I will not be the one to ultimately reap the consequences. So I leave the choice to you and your people."

Gao Gao sighs.

"Wrath for wrath's sake is unbecoming. We'll keep her prisoner for now and have her do menial labor. When it comes time to travel to the city, we'll bring her and release her to the temple there. Thank you for your insight."

"Is there anything else I can do for you?"

It occurs to her that the standard practitioner—cultivator?—probably wouldn't be this deferential, but it also occurs to her that she doesn't care enough to put on a high-and-mighty act.

"I would not dare to task one such as you with petty things. Oh- An additional reward, should you wish it. From the various dropped bags and recovered belongings of the demonic cultivators. There are a few spirit stones, some unknown pills I would have destroyed if you don't want them, and some standard blood-and-qi pills with the correct telltales of Three Jade's brewing guild, and a few bundles of crimson rose hips, one of the alchemic plants we forage the forest for."

"I wish to examine them, to familiarize myself with the modern standards of the Three Jades, but will not take more from your people. You have already had enough taken from you."

By which she means she will image them all with Dressing Room so she can clone them later.

Gao Gao bows and hands over a small pouch.

Oh, convenient.

"May I borrow a room with a table to sort through this? It will only be a few minutes."

"Of course."

The main manor house has all sorts of slightly dour stone walled rooms. Gao Gao will wait outside as she works.

She checks to make sure she can reproduce all of them before putting them away. She's getting faster at workshopping her requests within the bounds of Dressing Room.

She'll also pay attention to what her qi sense is telling her. Are the spirit stones stronger or weaker than the blue ones from before, or differently flavored? What do the mystery pills feel like, and the standard "blood-and-qi" pills? Do the crimson rose hips register at all?

These spirit stones feel roughly like the others. If there are fine differences she can't detect them at the moment. The blood-and-qi pills don't feel like anything but have a particular lacquer and color. Most of the other pills don't feel like anything, but one feels... Gem-like? The crimson rose hips feel faintly of ick, but a more pure kind of ick. Less rot, more just... Blood.

Back in the pouch they go. She'll ask Wen about it.

She'll return them to Gao Gao, thank him, and if there's nothing else, go find Wen.

Wen is doing human-shaped katas in a field. Long, lunging kicks and punches in a low stance, and the occasional instance of vanishing for a brief instant only to appear a few feet away. She seems to be taking it slow, in order to be sure she's capable of taking it steady.

She notices Rebecca, but finishes her current set before turning and doing the fist-palm salute. "Good morning, senior! I worked on it, and I think I was right. I'll actually benefit once I clear it up completely."