It happened so quick.

She's still holding her pen. She's still in her bathrobe. She looks around, taking a cautious step.

The air is so still. A chill runs down her spine as she sniffs. The forest looks strange, more—sharp, more three-dimensional—no, that's because she has both eyes again. She unconsciously reaches up to touch her face. That old wound, gone. She blinks, marvelling at the sensation. Closes her left eye, then opens it and closes her right.

But it's no time to dally. She was hoping she'd have more time to put herself together, especially with her rushed mode of departure, but the Spirit doesn't seem to be extending her that courtesy. The ambience of this place is distinctly foreboding in a way she can't quite pin, striking her as more like a Master illusion than any real place on Earth, but—she's not on Earth anymore, is she? Her slippers aren't up to the task of keeping the dirt out of her toes as she makes a circle around where she landed, trying to investigate her surroundings. She bundles up her robe so it doesn't drag on the ground.

She can sense it more clearly, that strange feeling prickling at her, as she turns. Directional.

She tries to kick the grit out of her slippers and realizes she's being stupid. How does she use Dressing Room? She wants to change into her costume, and—huh. There it is. But a superhero costume might not be a good idea, depending on what world she's landed in. Something more neat and nondescript. A cotton shirt, jacket and dress pants, like she's out on a site visit. Then a metal full-face mask. She buttons the jacket.

And she rises into the air, above the tree tops. What does she see?

A mountain valley, containing corrupted forest with a few destroyed patches as if something very large was fighting there. In the direction of the Wrong, a patchwork of farm fields surrounding a stone-walled town. There are figures in black robes collecting bodies in the fields, and- Pulling the blood out of them, into themselves. And then the bodies stand up, zombie-like, and march for the blasted town gates.

Inside the town... That sure looks like a Shaker effect of some kind. The view is fractured, different patches of space showing different scrambled views of the buildings in town, with ugly seeping red energy surging out of the 'cracks'. There's more destruction, but surprisingly few bodies. The large compound at the center of town also seems to be intact, for now.

An enormous pale fox, perhaps forty feet from nose to tail, darts across the portal network, blue fire trailing off it and seeming to oppose the red. It seems to heal the cracks as it goes, trying to restore some sense of sanity to the space. The blue fire 'feels' like... It's hard to be sure, this unpracticed, but the sensation that jumps out is 'a Thinker' or 'the moon'.

There's a large gash in its neck, and another in its flank. It's being chased by a flying blaster wielding more red energy. Or rather- By how it turns to strike when the flyer hesitates, it's distracting the blaster, being difficult to pin down but too much a threat to ignore.

—not just a creepy forest, okay.

Time to do her job.

Her vision is definitely sharper that before, to be able to pick out details at that distance, which must be Emerald Orbs. Back on Earth Bet she'd call that Shaker effect an unstable dimensional fracture, but her knowledge may well be inapplicable here. Whatever it is, it looks immensely concerning, and it's something which might plausibly get past her invincibility. Battle Maiden and Battle Angel don't protect against environmental harm. Back on Earth Bet she'd call for a Tinker consult, but that's not an option here, again. She'll have to deal with this on her own.

(She's aware that she doesn't technically have the obligation to help here, but—she wants to. Her first act on her journey isn't going to be walking away from the sack of a helpless town, or potentially worse. And she doesn't see any other authority stepping in.)

The ones on the periphery harvesting bodies look straightforward to take down; even if they have unrevealed ways of damaging her, they'll count for Battle Maiden. She can start with them, interrogate, and work inwards.

Then she notices the fox. And the thing chasing it.

Hero and villain, she thinks. Immediately she cancels the thought, because it's almost certainly overfitting to her own native categories, but by the presentation, by the way the scene fits together, destruction versus protection, she's confident in who's the good guys and bad guys here.

The concepts that bleed through at the sight of the fire—is it the same as the feeling of rot-blood-wrong radiating from the town? There's clearly some new sensory modality opened up to her, but she doesn't have the time to mediate on it. There's a battle ongoing; every second counts. The fox is wounded, the corpses are closing in, and there are people to protect.

But first.

The fox, the blue fire. It's fixing the dimensional damage. If she's going to dive in there—

What happens if she tries to Dragon Fairy Elf Witch the fox?

Suddenly, a pair of pale orange-furred ears sprout from the top of her head. They hear better than her usual ones.

The new sense gets a little sharper. She can tell when the fox or the villain uses their powers, as a pulse in it.

And she can feel how grating and horrible those jagged red lines of fractured space are. Like nails on a chalkboard, or the flickering of a bad light. She can do something about that if she gets close, maybe.

Oh.

Definitely new senses from this world. She's not sure about the ears—

She's reminded she has a job to do when another streak of red lashes down in the town.

The mooks outside town are low priority, at this point. They're working on already-dead bodies, as far as she can tell, not killing anyone. The fox needs her help; the maybe-dimensional breach needs her help, and she can apparently help repair it. And whoever that flying person is needs to stop.

If Alexandria knows how to do anything, it's make an entrance. She tilts forward, and then she's moving. The distance flashes by in seconds, just enough time for her to think—this seems easier; did Inner Strength or Lightfoot up my maximum speed?—and then she's stopped next to the flying Blaster, the air rippling at the shockwave of her arrival, her right hand grasping for his throat.

He sees her surging in and begins a dodge, raising a sword in his offhand to slash where he thinks she is going to be.

It's not fast enough. So instead he turns to blood for a brief moment, flowing around her fist before reforming.

He's startled, and shouts a demand in an unfamiliar tonal language, holding himself in a ready position. It's a bit like Chinese.

Fox takes the chance to disengage and loop through a set of rifts. It's out of sight for a brief moment. The rifts make things echo weirdly.

She knows six dialects of Chinese, and this one definitely could be one she doesn't know, but unfortunately that doesn't mean she can understand it.

Well, if he's trying to negotiate—so long as he's not shooting anything or trying to run away again—she'll cycle through the dialects she knows, starting with Mandarin, asking, "Identify and explain yourself!"

Is this close enough to do anything about the cracks in space?

He's acting like a villain unsure about a new threat, not one trying to negotiate. 

It's hard to tell if she can do anything about the rifts without trying it.

The rot spikes. He's doing something that's not visible.

She tried.

Is the fox anywhere—she wants to ask about rules of engagement. She's guessing that she's supposed to kill this guy, but better to be sure. How is a question. She doesn't like the feeling of that rot, and if it's something that can get past her defences... she does have Immunity System, if it's some sort of disease he's trying to inflict. But she's not going to bank on that.

Ignore the rifts for now.

At the same time, she tries to grab for his sword and grab his neck again. She couldn't tell if the sword turned to blood with the rest of him last time; she's paying attention this time.

The sword does not turn into blood. She can grab it, and he no longer has a sword.

He strikes out with a lashing scraping motion from a hand that's covered in blood in the shape of a vicious claw. It attempts to dig into her flesh and weaken her. It's surprisingly painful, but leaves no mark.

He says something else; She recognizes a word that is probably 'fox'.

Then- A mass of blue fire surges out from one of the rifts in a vague shape of the giant fox from earlier.

The bloody figure shoots a bolt of malign energy into the fire, which starts writhing, as if in pain. Smirking, he turns back to Alexandria with a taunt on his lips.

She came in here expecting she might run into something exotic that could hurt her, but it's still a surprise when the pain comes. It always is. The question is if it's an illusion, some sort of sensory-neural stimulation, an invincibility-bypassing means of causing physical but non-obvious damage, or something in the dimension of the new senses she now has. Soul damage or something along those lines. Distinctly not a thing in Earth Bet, but the notebook all but said that fictional tropes (such as superheroes, she thinks) run in the multiverse.

Before she knows more, she should avoid it.

She's not sure what the fire puppet thing is supposed to do, but she should probably stop him. She tries stabbing the guy with his own sword from a distance.

He is stabbed! It does seem to impair him, for all that he then flows like blood around the blade, cursing.

-The giant fox bolts completely silently towards him from a rift he can't currently see. It leaps to attack with a bite around his torso-

At the same moment the blood villain is slashing at her with that claw attack again, completely unaware.

He only got her before because she was trying to grapple him. She has Alexandria's existing speed, Lightfoot and a swordlength of distance this time. She dodges the blow and cleaves at his arm, ignoring the fox so she doesn't give it away.

He partially dodges back from her counterattack, and-

Chomp.

Also: Lots of blue fire once he's shocked and stunned.

The demonic cultivator, who probably has an intimidating name and a long life story, is not giving up that easily!

Unfortunately for him, there is not much he can do at this point. Flowing out of a spirit beast's maw is not the sort of thing that works, especially when you're in debilitating pain and increasingly low on qi. His blood form attempts to activate, but ends immediately, this time. He tries to lash at the fox with his demon claw attack again, screaming in fury and pain. The fox shakes its head rapidly to throw off the attack. He tries to open new rifts, only for them to be immediately snuffed out.

He goes limp.

The fox spits him on the ground, then says something to Alexandria, wary but polite.

Excellent. She lays the sword down on the ground and gives the fox something between a curtsey and a shallow bow and scrape, a noncommittal fallback she finds convenient when she's uncertain what the appropriate formality of greeting is.

She'll try the same she did with the villain, starting with a Mandarin, "Apologies for barging in."

Does the not-wound from earlier still hurt?

It does still hurt. The sting is fading a bit though.

The fox stares blankly towards her, before rapidly shrinking down.

"Sister fox, [something something]. This... Old [something]. Speak little. [Something] qi. And- Ow." She touches the wounds still present on her now-smaller form. They're not bleeding.

She bows, fist on palm. "Good fight! Demon [something], always good to fight. Please, go to [something]. I will be in your care."

And then she carefully kneels on the bloody cobblestones, preferring that to falling over.

Cantonese? Wu? Hokkien? Xiang? Hakka? Any of those fit better?

The dialect they were speaking earlier isn't particularly close to any of these. There are some similarities, enough to start guessing at the meaning of unfamiliar words, though.

"Sister fox, [some sort of greeting]. This... Old [language]. Speak little. [Broken/drained?] qi. And- Ow." She touches the wounds still present on her now-smaller form. They're not bleeding.

She bows, fist on palm. "Good fight! Demon [scholars?], always good to fight. Please, go to [fort/manor]. I will be in your care."

The fox-person is now kneeling on the ground and breathing deeply, frowning in concentration.

She's just going to take a step back, look into her heart, and really try to understand where the fox—fox girl?—is coming from. (She uses Backchannel.)

...

The fox girl is greeting her as a senior sister? In the Chinese sense of a peer of greater age or tenure. She's saying this is a dead language she doesn't speak, and thanks Rebecca for fighting against the blood villain, whom she identifies as a practitioner of... demonic arts? She's tired, or injured, but using the term in relation to her powers or soul? And she's asking Rebecca to defend the town's fort—which is the central compound undamaged by the fractures she saw from the air—and saying that she's out of the fight for now. She's sincere but vaguely upset about it.

Linguistic relativists would be fascinated to look inside her head her right now. She understands the fundamental meaning of what the girl said, but she can't fit it back into words to further process because she lacks the mental vocabulary for it. She has a feeling that if she worked at it harder she could deconstruct it down into concepts she can more easily work with, but this is enough for now.

She asks Backchannel how she can ask the fox girl if she should take her back to the fort. The resulting construction is slightly odd in her mouth.

"I can bring you to the [fort/manor], if you wish."

She nods, and stands again with visible effort.

The sea of rifts breaking up the town is steadily settling down without its creator sticking around adding to it. The best way out is probably up and over. There seem to be more villains around, approaching through the maze.

That's an encouraging sign. Hopefully the rifts will go away by themselves; she wasn't looking forward to helping the cleanup. She approaches, turns her back to the girl and crouches down, gesturing for her to put her arms around Rebecca's neck. Unless she wants to turn into a fox to be carried?

Actually, yeah. She fox-ifies. A little fox this time, very long and slim and easy to curl around a shoulder or something.

Unfortunately Rebecca did not get the shoulder memo and just scoops the fox up in her arms.

And then she gets out of there before the other guys show up. She's reasonably sure she can take them, given that she just beat up their boss and was starting to do damage before the fox got the kill, but she has one injured here. She shoots straight up at a low but constant acceleration until she gets a good view clear of the rifts, and then turns for the central compound and points for confirmation.

Affirmative yip!

Wait, the sword! Ah, too late. It'll be there later, if nobody picks it up, and it wasn't particularly special as swords go.

The central compound looks and feels very solid. It has men and women in armor with spears or bows atop the walls, fighting off dead bodies. The most prominent is a middle-aged man dressed in silks and gold jewelry with a pot belly and another sword, who pulses with energy, noticeably strong, but weaker than the fox, who is weaker than the dead blood villain. He stands at the front and slashes at the attacking corpses with gusto.

The crowd of figures standing in the streets beyond seem to be panicking slightly. Probably they can feel that their superior is dead.

That's a bit more dire than she was expecting. She shoots towards the compound, having to moderate her approach to not squish the fox with the g-forces. Is there an obviously protected center courtyard or somewhere to put down the fox?

She's also realizing perhaps a tad delayed that this place is clearly some form of fantasy setting, with magic foxes and sorcerers and spears and swords as the cutting edge of mundane weapons technology. Chinese fantasy setting, like those... 鹿鼎記, or 射鵰英雄傳. Which means she most likely has technology to trade if she can get Dressing Room to work. It was her least favorite part of outreach for how large of an impact it has, but she knows how to do it.

Can she Dragon Fairy Elf Witch the... she should not Dragon Fairy Elf Witch the corpses.

There's a big outer wall which everyone is defending, a large courtyard full of hundreds of civilians but still some open space, and an inner manor/mansion.

She is going to descend straight down into the courtyard and set the fox down in an empty space in the middle of the civilians.

"This good?" she asks, cannibalizing the words from their earlier short conversation. She's pretty sure the civilians won't hurt her, but it would be a stupid mistake to make. Her understanding of Chinese folklore is that fox spirits are not well liked.

And she Dragon Fairy Elf Witched fox spirit heritage onto her head.

Too late now.

It's actually a little bit hard to approach the courtyard! Something wants her to Not Do That. It's a heavy, solid, stubborn thing. But not strong enough to actually stop her or do more than annoy her.

People scramble away from them.

Wynn turns human(-oid) again and shouts something into the crowd. A little boy thumps his chest and takes off running.

To Alexandria: "Good. Go!"

She vanishes in a blur, then she's up in the sky again, surveying the scene. How dense are the corpses, immediately away from the front line? Should she be going for mass damage in the thick of the pack, or helping out the defenders up close? Are the human mooks doing anything she ought to be interrupting—anyone or any MacGuffin obviously the controller of the zombies she can take out? Or are they all being vaguely ineffective after their leader got taken out?

The pack at the walls really seems to be most of the animate corpses. At least, the immediately accessible ones. It looks like the corpses are mostly autonomous but can be nudged by whichever blood user is paying attention to them at the time.

The blood users do not have an obvious leader. In fact, some of them are even retreating, as the lower-ranking blood-users lose their nerve and decide it's time to leave with whatever loot they can grab quickly. Looks like Mr. Gold and Silk is setting up for a charge out the gates to give chase.

Chasedown duty it is, then.

How dense are the ambiguously-dimensional rifts, still? Is the city legibly navigable enough that she can she track their escape paths, start with the ones closest to the town limits, and work backwards?

...Hold on, are they escaping on the streets, or escaping into the rifts?

Actually—she casts an eye afar into the fields. There were people who were raising corpses out there, earlier. Are those people still there or running away?

The rifts all lead to other parts of town or the nearby countryside. They are slowly shrinking and vanishing and seem stable. The villains are using them liberally to scatter faster. And there are indeed a few robed figures dashing at superhuman speed through the fields.

-Wait, new rift at the edge of town. Opened by three working together. A patch of creepy white and red forest is through it.

Uh huh. She's guessing that's the exit plan of at least some of them.

She's above the three in seconds, then slams down into the ground in front of the forest rift before they can blink.

Can she close the rift with her fox spirit powers?

She can! It feels kind of like smoothing out a sheet of paper or blanket. The rift vanishes.

Two of the three run. One decides to go prostrate and beg for mercy.

The problem is she doesn't want to kill these people, not without direct endorsement by probably Mr. Gold and Silk, but she also needs a way that's scalable to all of these stragglers.

She suspects handcuffs out of Dressing Room won't work, and not trying to fashion her Perfect Hair into bindings either. If they can make portals, they can probably find their way out of restraints. Without more knowledge on their capabilities, she has to assume they can manifest essentially arbitrary effects.

The longer she stands here, the more time she wastes. She grabs the person by the collar and flies towards one of the running ones, her prisoner in tow.

The first runner is definitely not fast enough to avoid Alexandria. Not even when they get a brief burst of speed, and then collapse in exhaustion.

She still needs a way to carry or secure multiple people efficiently, and the last person is still running. She can't keep making round trips from the city center; people are fragile so it'll be more than ten seconds per trip, and there's a few dozen to catch. What do they do at home, for a scattering mob—she doesn't have PRT backup here, which is the problem—

Or does she?

She plops her two captives on the ground, facing away from her, and steps back. Takes a moment to herself, and changes into a PRT standard-issue Wyvern 116 back-mounted containment foam system.

"Stand!" she demands.

They both stand and hold still, terrified.

She sprays them down. The foam engulfs them as it expands, bogging them down in misshapen masses about 3 meters in diameter.

Are they struggling or trying to get out by any means? Is it holding?

Containment foam is meant to hold against arbitrary effects within reason. It should be able to keep down even some second-rate Trumps. If there are easier containment procedures specialized for these blood sorcerers, or whatever they are, she can learn them later.

One is definitely struggling, but she's not Brute enough for it to unstuck her. The Blaster or Striker power she tries doesn't help much either. They remain foamed.

Good enough. She's going to leave them here and hunt down the third.

This is going to look incredibly odd, and it's going to be a headache figuring out the right Dressing Room play to get the solvent, but it works. And it's powerful demonstration if she intends to sell technology to the civilization around here.

Any trouble getting the third foamed?

He may or may not be slightly invisible.

Slightly. She can see motion blur and foam that just fine. 

The rest of the cleanup is some of the same, except for one who seems a bit stronger than the rest of the chaff who keeps dodging and sloughing off foam for a while. He's also carrying an unconscious girl- One of the blood users, not a kidnapee- Over the shoulder.

She's going to dart in and grab the guy directly. Does he dodge that?

Nope.

She's going to shrug off the girl and foam her first. The she'll presses him against the ground, foam most of his back, roll the whole thing over, foam the front, and then repeat until there's enough contiguous foam mass that he's trapped inside the shape, sloughy trick or not. Does that work?

He can't seem to repeat the full liquidation trick, so this works. Eventually.

Once everyone is foamed, she takes to the air again, changes out of the containment foam system and back into her previous outfit, and surveys the fields. If there's nothing pressing, she'll go back to the town. What's happening there?

Soldiers are sweeping through the streets in three large groups, starting from the center and pushing outward, making a huge racket to attract any motile zombies and slaying them all, while avoiding the remaining rifts. The town is at this point mostly navigable through the gaps- Only a few large rifts still block off whole streets or intersect buildings. A few of them have come across foamed blood users and are treating the foam as unknown and potentially dangerous. One of the blood users whose head was unfoamed has acquired a mysterious neck wound. Well, not so mysterious. The civilians are staying in the courtyard for now, and there are still a bunch of soldiers still on guard around the place. The fox is not visible from the air, but her 'feeling' is still around the courtyard somewhere.

Mr. Silk and Gold is leading the smallest group of soldiers. He bows in her direction when he notices her, before shouting out in mangled Mandarin - an offer to take care of all the trash that is not worthy of her attention, if she's reading through the flubbed words and tone correctly.

She will let the soldiers handle the cleanup and set down a good distance away from Mr. Silk and Gold before approaching on foot. When they're in speaking distance, she offers a fist and palm salute without bowing.

She needs to stop using Backchannel as a crutch. There's no emergency now, and if she uses it on this guy now she'll have to explain why she suddenly can't speak properly later. She'll start learning the local dialect the hard way. Again reusing words she's heard where possible, she tries to say:

"Apologies for my ignorance of appropriate address. I come from afar and am unfamiliar with this tongue."

While they speak, she will listen in on the ambient conversations to learn more, both of the language and what's going on. Does it sound like most of the vocabulary is shared with the dialects she knows, just with linguistic drift she needs to figure out and the usual custom grammars and turns of phrase? She will also pay attention to how people react and what they're noticing when they look at her: her clothes? her face? her fox ears?

(She's wearing a modern women's blazer and dress trousers. Perfect Hair, A Hundred Ships and Emerald Orbs are doing their thing, though she has the last on autopilot and isn't sure what her eyes look like right now; she trusts it's narratively appropriate. Her hair is as it was on Bet: long flowing and black; she's very firm on that. She's also visibly hispanic.)

The common language in use here has had a lot of linguistic drift and possibly melded into a patois with several other languages, but has at least retained some of the central features of Chinese dialects. There is some vocabulary overlap- Or at least vocabulary near-miss, where 狐狸 (Húlí) (Fox) has become something more like 'Xúlí'. So- Not much direct vocabulary, but enough that the way words sound can be used with context clues to guess sometimes.

People are mostly treating her like an unfamiliar maybe-a-hero? There's the awe, and thankfulness, and admiration and a sort of instinctive deference. But also a deep wariness. The clothes are unknown and exotic but who's going to ask her about her clothes right now; Of course she's pretty, higher realm masters always are, best not to stare too obviously; The fox ears are the source of much of the wariness, but they also seem to be reassured after thinking about it for a bit.

"No apologies are necessary, honored expert," Mr. Silk and Gold begins in a very formal tone. "I will explain anything I say that you do not understand. This humble village of the Valley of <???> is pleased to receive your assistance against the demonic practitioners. My name is Gao Gao, but of course you may call me-" an unfamiliar title, presumably Mayor. "-Or truly, whatever you wish. The blood tree demons have - bothered us for some time, and their attack today was - bold. We did not expect it. They ambushed and poisoned my son and his wife, who would have been our greatest warriors. I will do everything in my power to see you and your-" Hesitation. "-Fellow <ascended?> fox rewarded for this <vengeance?>."

Shouldn't be difficult to pick up, then. She'll probably have enough down within the day to sound merely like a mediocre second-language speaker and not someone trying to Frankenstein sentences out of linguistic scrap. For now, though, she'll have to work at it.

So she has a decision to make here. She can admit to Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, which might dispel some of the concerns about her foxy nature—by their reactions she guessed right that is a concern, though they seem to be on good terms with the fox girl specifically, perhaps—but it also might tick off the fox that Rebecca copied her. Her impression from home of fox spirits (ascended foxes?) is that they can be capricious and prideful, and she essentially stole their heritage.

But keeping her mouth shut is a worse idea. She doesn't know how to act right, and she's not going to stop Dragon Fairy Elf Witching things, so it'll come out eventually. And for the fox spirit, Rebecca is reasonably sure she can take the girl in a fight, and she thinks the girl believes it, so even if they can't smooth it over, it's not a huge disaster. And hiding it and having it come out later would make the girl more mad, even if she wouldn't have been inclined to it orignally.

So she says, "My condolences for your son and his wife, and I hope that they recover. I only recently arrived in this land, so if your people would host me for some time and explain the land and its ways and people for me, I will consider that ample reward."

A pause.

"I do not know the other <ascended> fox, though I commend her for her valor. I am not originally an <ascended> fox, but <shapeshifted> into the form because I saw the other <ascended> fox was able to <resist/repel> the cracks." She points at one of the still-open rifts. "The cracks are new to me, but I can assist in closing them now." She thinks.

(She's using a version of the word "shapeshift" that, in the Chinese she knows, has a slight but not definitive connotation of a higher being taking a lower form to act among mortals.)

"Unfortunately, they have both perished... By the hand of the very man you helped slay, which soothes my rage. I have hope they will find joy in the next life. I cannot claim to understand the higher mysteries of the Heavens, in my own time I have only managed to barely <breach?> the humble foundation. If you can banish the energies of the blood techniques, that would surely be welcome. Wen Huli is known to us, but she is - <reserved?> - and I did not wish to offend should you hold some relation."

She is not certain what that last part means, but:

"We do not hold relation, and rather I feared she might take offense if I did not clarify. I did not have time to ask her permission before copying her form, so I wish to speak to her once she is recovered to account for the transgression in person, but I do not need to do so now. I will excuse myself to banish the energies of the blood techniques, if you permit."

She will take a small step back and see if he has anything more to say. Otherwise, she will fly to the largest rift and try smoothing it out.

"I will inform miss Wen of your intent. Did you wish to question these evildoers? We can gather them to one place for you."

"I do not know enough about them to question them. I captured them alive because I did not know how you prefer to mete justice or if you wanted to question them. You may do with them as your laws declare. I do have the ability to tell truth from lie, if you wish for my assistance in questioning." She remembers they don't know what containment foam is. "The solid foam is safe to hande. I can pick up the ones in the field after; they are far and will be inconvenient for you to move, and I can do it quickly. If you have difficulty cutting them out, I have a way to dissolve the foam."

"They are murderers and invaders, not to mention thieves, desecrators of corpses, rapists, and <cannibals?>." He spits on the ground. "Demonic practitioners, that is to say, those that consume others for power, are to be put to the sword anywhere within the Three Jades Kingdom. There may be some value in locating whatever they call a camp. We will gratefully accept a way to remove this... Foam, or else dispose of it. A fascinating technique. Thank you again."

Medieval justice it is. She's not going to be precious about it. Extended incarceration as a penal instrument is a luxury afforded only by modern rich civilizations. Also—Three Jades Kingdom. That's a name. She nods, taking that as a dismissal. "I will remember that for the future."

Now: rift?

This one takes a little longer! For all that they're slowly shrinking on their own, they're also leaving sort of... Knots? It feels like it could snap instead of smoothing if she rushed it, and like it'd leave something behind if it went away naturally.

Can she unknot it? Can she inspect the topology and character of the knot with her new senses? Maybe she can find one of the smaller ones to practice first. Snapping the fabric of space probably has consequences she won't like.

While she works, she brainstorms how best to unfoam the demonic practitioners. The foam system comes with a small amount of solvent if she specifies the 117 model, but it's not a lot.

She can get a feeling of the topology - and start guessing where each particular rift and portal leads in the real world, in fact - but the 'knot' itself seems to be more like a sticky mass of everything running together. It's weird. Something about being closed loops is important for the rifts to actually lead elsewhere, and when multiple ones intersect each other they form lots of small extra loops that intersect each other, putting the whole thing in tension with itself.

...

While she's here, can she get a sense of how these rifts work and the moving parts to creating and directing them? It's probably a terrible idea to try, but maybe something she can study or ask about later. Portals are astoundingly useful.

Can she cut the loops? Is that something she can do and does it look like a terrible idea? Can she... selectively tangle or cut some of the intersecting groups from each other, and recursively break them apart like that until they're gone?

The rifts feel extremely bloody. They're doing something weird and spirally - off in this direction that doesn't actually exist - there's a sort of braiding thing going on, slightly different types of ugly tied together. This does not result in a flash of insight in how to do it herself.

What she can do is really more analogous to burning. She can strategically select threads to burn that reduces the number of intersecting loops, letting everything remaining join into bigger loops with less energy in them, that looks reasonably safe.

She will do that. Sort of like foam coalescence, but not really.

How fast is this going? At this rate, can she clean up the big rifts around town in a reasonable amount of time?

Now that she has the hang of it, looks like it'll take something like half an hour. Maybe less.

Good enough.

She will commit the braiding patterns and spirally things to memory if she can, even if she can't understand them. She suspects the people who did this were fucking everything up royally on the implementation level on top of the object level, and she shouldn't be emulating them even if she does go into portals, but there's no harm in it.

If she sees anyone still working on zombie cleanup, she'll drop in to bail them out if they're in trouble. Otherwise, she will finish healing the rifts.

The locals seem to have the zombies handled. They're moving on to cleanup. Sweeping rubble and washing off blood. A bunch of civilians are crying. Fox is nowhere to be seen. 

Gao Gao approaches her again with a large leather pouch that clicks of coin. "For avenging us and ending the threat. We may have to abandon this place yet, with no strong heir, but we yet live and that deserves a reward. However small it might be to ones such as you."

Bow.

The town is pretty destroyed, but to condemn the entire place? Because of "no strong heir"? Gao Gao said that his son and the son's wife were their strongest warriors, and they were killed—is the state of the art of settlement defense here "having a strong martial hero", a necessity as important as a source of water?

Accepting the pouch with a nod of gratitude, she says, "I am sorry it is all I could do. Do you frequently come under threat like this? Is there no lord of the county or province willing send you protection? I'm not familiar with how these affairs are managed in the Three Jades Kingdom."

"Of course the heartlands are protected by our lords, but the Valley of <???> is distant from the core, and new. It is my family's endeavor, to harvest certain materials from the valley, which can have wholesome uses. But our distance and independence comes at the price of danger- From the wilds, more than from demonic practitioners, usually. Such is the way the world works. More support to secure this area may be possible, or it might be best to abandon it. There are many places where strong practitioners are needed, and of course, not all are motivated by Karma. I will have to discuss the matter with Her bureaucracy. But this place leaves bitterness in me now."

"I see. I wish you good luck in that, then."

She considers offering to stay for a while to shore up their defences while they see if they can make arrangements for defense, but she doesn't know how long that will take, she doesn't know if this town has enough to hold her interest for weeks to months, and while she isn't in a hurry, she doesn't exactly consider herself not in a hurry either. She can always make the offer later if she wants, and it doesn't sound like they expect her to. It's not as if everyone here is going to die; they'll scatter to find their fortunes elsewhere, it sounds like.

If the fox girl is invested in the town continuing as a political entity (she's clearly invested enough in the people to fight for them) then getting tutoring for Rebecca's new powers and potentially forging a relationship with a spirit might make it worth her time, but if that's the case, she should hold her help as a bargaining chip.

"I shall collect the demonic practitioners I left in the fields and show your people how to remove the foam. Do you have a location I should deposit them?"

"The graveyard will do as well as any other." A scowl.

She was actually thinking of delegating the defoaming so she wouldn't have to do it all herself, but she decides that it's not worth it, with the communication barrier and how she hasn't figured out yet how to scale the process easily.

"I shall kill those still alive and pile their bodies in an open space at the graveyard, then. How can I identify the graveyard from the air? Or I could burn their bodies in some flat land past the fields, if that would be more convenient?"

"I wouldn't dream of burdening you with a task you did not wish for. The graveyard is the field on a hill with rows of memorial stones."

"It will be a bit easier to burn them than to remove the bodies from the foam, and if I don't remove the foam before putting them in the graveyard it will be difficult for your men to dispose of the bodies. But if your funerary customs even for the dishonored dead do not permit burning, I would not take offense."

"Burning is also acceptable, as we can bury the ash. The ceremony is the most important. Thank you once again."

So she has to collect the ash, then.

"Do the ashes of each person need to be separately stored, or will collecting all in one container be also acceptable?"

"Ideally they would be separated... And identified by name, if possible."

On the one hand, he doesn't want to annoy the wandering master. On the other hand, she obviously wants to do things properly and cutting corners might annoy her, instead.

"I will be sure to prepare a guest room to your desires so you might rest after this task."

She tries to imagine the logistics of it for a second.

"It would be appreciated. I don't need much, so an ordinary clean room with a bed and a desk will suffice. For the remains, it's acceptable if there's no way to differentiate to whom each set of ashes belongs, as long as each set only belongs to one person? The belongings that were on them will be mixed in, but the heat may render even metals and jewelry destroyed or unidentifiable."

"Acceptable. The courts of Hell will sort them all out. I shall ensure a good room is ready for you."

This is stupid. If she digs a big hole and makes a pool of dilute solvent...

"Setting aside practical concerns, do you prefer the separated cremation or to handle the bodies yourself? I just thought of a different way to remove the foam from all of them efficiently, so it will be the same for me after all."

"We will be glad to handle the matter and reduce your burden, if you wish, if there is some way to remove the foam. I apologize for my confusion."

Internal sigh.

"I am currently without some of the techniques I am used to, and so am somewhat poorly organized; that is my fault. I will return the bodies to the graveyard."

He just bows.

Miss fox appears, in her small form, around a corner down the street. She has a pair of bandages around her. She just stands there and peers inquisitively.

Rebecca turns to the fox and offers a light nod. "Wen Huli—I am unsure how you prefer to be addressed. I meant to speak with you, with an apology and perhaps a request, but I have some errands to run first. Is there a place I can search for you afterwards?"

She turns her head back towards the fort, which is obvious enough. Then a slow nod, and turning around to trot away.

She gives one final nod to Gao Gao and flies off. She finds a location far off, away from the farming fields, to start her project.

This is what she's going to do:

1. Dig a big hole with her bare hands. This sounds difficult, but it's actually very easy when you don't need any leverage and can just fly using your body as a shovel. The resulting hole is messy, but functional.
   
   
2. Dressing Room herself clean... or something. She has Personal Hygiene, which didn't make dirt not get under her fingernails, but Dressing Room's wording doesn't sound like it covers dirt under your fingernails, and when she willed herself to become clean, her fingernails and clothes both became clean, so whatever the interaction is worked.
   
   
3. Dressing Room a few huge plastic cloaks to line the hole. She makes them with waterproof zippers on the rim and zips them together.
   
   
4. Fill the hole with water somehow. She forgot to plan for this part, and she has to produce a hundred thousand liters of water somehow, which Dressing Room isn't going to do for her. It takes her half a minute to figure it out, but she eventually turns her Perfect Hair into an absurdly large amount of soaking wet hair, and let the water flow down into the hole. It takes two tries to get hair that's actually dripping instead of just damp, but it works. The hole is now full of water.
   
   
5. Dressing Room into the back-mounted solvent sprayer that they decommissioned back in 2006.
   
   So there are two problems with solvent sprayers. First, a solution that's too portable makes it easier for criminals to get their hands on; the current standard is spraydown rooms, with the solvent mixed and piped in from a separate location. Second, the naive design of a portable device doesn't have enough capacity. You can have a foam sprayer because it's a compressed liquid that expands in contact with air: a full foam sprayer can produce more than 50,000 litres of containment foam from an 30-litre tank. A 30-litre solvent tank produces 30 litres of solvent, which is enough to do nothing.
   
   Instead, the solvent sprayers they used to have were meant to be plugged into a water main. The pack just contains the solvent powder, which is mixed into the water flow as it comes out. The problem here, of course, is that there are no water mains to plug a sprayer into. Which is why she needs the pool.
   
   
6. Unload the solvent powder and dump it in the pool, repeat three times, mix well. Back-of-the-napkin maths makes that twice the usual concentration of solvent, which is good and fine here because she's not going to be washing alive people.
   
   
7. Find the foamed people and bring them over by the pool, still foamed.
   
   
8. Dressing Room into a pair of excavator claws and rip off the excess foam. She's used a few different models before, but something that looks approximately appropriate comes in without her specifying one. She's fast and strong enough that she can tear the people out of their foam bubbles, only accidentally stabbing a few of them. She snaps their necks quickly before they're mostly free.
   
   
9. Throw the foam-clogged bodies in the pool as she goes, dipping in to stir the water now and then.
   
   
10. Fish the defoamed bodies out of the pool once all is done.
    
    
11. Throw the removed excess foam into the solvent pool. Stir until dissolved.
    
    
12. Upend the plastic lining and let the water drain down the hole. The correct way to dispose of the dissolved mixture is evaporation and incineration or hydrous pyrolysis, but she can't think of an easy way to do that. It's somewhat nasty plastic pollution by US standards, but at this amount, even assuming groundwater flow takes the material straight towards town, it'll be dilute enough by the time it hits the crops that it wouldn't even register on the EPA scale. There's a reason she chose a good distance away from the fields.
    
    
13. Fill in the hole with the dirt she displaced.
    
    
14. Incinerate the plastic lining with a Dressing Room flamethrower. Specifically, she douses the gathered pile with most of the fuel tank and lights it. She chose a flammable plastic which burns clean.
    
    
15. Wash down the corpses with more Perfect Hair water while the plastic burns.
    
    
16. Take the bodies back to town as the last of the plastic burns out.

Are the demonic practitioners and the local environment cooperative with this plan?

The one relatively more powerful one tries to escape again, but fails.

The water pool acquires a bunch of bloody energy during this process, but not enough to seem very dangerous compared to the background level.

She will adjust the procedure to attempt to splash the water across a flat stretch of land instead of letting it all drain down the same hole. Then she waters the affected land area down with Perfect Hair again.

She is never using containment foam without a plan to dispose of it again.

A few people will take the bodies with acceptable levels of solemnity and mostly hidden hatred, covering them in plain sheets and lining them up near all the dead civilians.

Looks like a total body count of 187, 26 of which were blood users. Unless some of these bodies were already thralls beforehand.

She's not going to stick around. After the last one is delivered, she'll hover for a few moments in case someone wants to call her for anything.

(A few bodies ago the plastic finished burning up, and she's cleaned up the remaining debris. She forgot that the zippers had metal, which she scooped up with a handful of dirt and vanished with Dressing Room—actually couldn't she have just vanished the plastic cloaks with Dressing Room? Can she tracelessly destroy arbitrary small to medium objects with Dressing Room?)

A kid shouts out that she let his mama die.

His surviving relatives shush him very hard and shuffle him away.

She will give the kid and his relatives the solemn, apologetic expression she's very used to giving and glide off. You can't save everyone. She wasn't even there for most of this.

Though she does wonder, quietly—

That expression was focus group tested for an Earth Bet audience, primarily sampling from the United States. She might want to study local norms to develop a more localized version... later.

She heads back to the fort and lands in the courtyard again. Is Wen around? Anyone here can direct her to the fox girl? She's putting on her more approachable interacting-with-civilians face now, not the grim right-out-of-battle face.

An old woman flags her down. She has a faint ghost of the energy that other strong powered people have.

"Wen Huli is in there." She points to a half-detached part of the center house. "She won't let it show but she's not doing great. And she's a foundation level, who fought a golden core for us when she could have fled. So if you have any miraculous healing dan or secret <baby?> soul restoration pills or something... That would be great. But I'm just a talentless old woman, so," shrug.

Her brain informs her that if she makes herself fall in love with Wen Huli then she can heal her. She squashes the thought.

"I don't have anything with me, but if you know where something can be bought..." she trails off. "I'll speak to her first. Maybe there is something I can do directly."

Also: foundation level < golden core? Gao Gao said he was barely at the foundation level. She wonders what level she counts at, if at all.

"Not here. As you wish, senior practitioner." 

She bows, somehow making it look sincere and slightly sarcastic both.

"I mean in the closest major city, or so on. I can fly very quickly, but I don't know the local geography." She pauses. "I would need to consult more people and a map anyhow if I wanted to do that." She gives the old woman a grateful nod, to indicate she's leaving out of haste and not scorn, and enters the indicated chamber.

 The room is nice but empty of substance, like a fancy hotel. There's a bed, low table, desk, closet, and a water basin. Clean, aside from a reward bag seemingly identical to hers, a set of dirty dishes in the corner, and a few stray pieces of fur.

She's sitting cross-legged in humanoid form as Rebecca enters, and makes a point of standing and bowing before sitting again.

"Thank you for saving my life."

Close up, she looks small. Not smaller than the youngest Wards she's had, but for someone an entire town pins its survival on—though perhaps before all of this it was the son and daughter-in-law of Gao Gao who held that title—it's too young. Rebecca has seen girls and boys in the same position, travelling the Earths or just the nations of Bet. Children forced into positions no one can envy because of the powers fate thrust on them.

Perhaps she's projecting too much onto a face. Spirits are said to to be immortal, in stories. This girl may be hundreds of years old.

She doesn't look like it.

"Please do not stand on ceremony," Rebecca says. By what the old lady said, she shouldn't directly point out that Wen is hurt. Instead, she offers, "It must have been a long day. I'm not sure if you heard what I told the <mayor?>, or if he passed a message on to you?" She uses the title Gao Gao identified himself by.

"...I have had longer days, if not so many. The way I understood it, you used a powerful technique to imitate my qi for its properties of opposing the blood rifts? You may not be an ascended beast like me after all, and that you wished to speak to me. I cannot detect your qi, but that's explainable in a dozen different ways, of course. You surely have seen far more of the world than me. For all that the beast ascending path is a slow one, I am merely a middle-stage foundation practitioner. A speck of dust in the vastness of heaven and earth. And furthermore I'm proud to have reached this level quickly since attaining <sapience?>."

It's hard to tell, lacking this much context, how important Wen is versus what she's trying to project. The important words here are "middle-stage foundation practitioner" and "beast ascending path", but Rebecca doesn't know what those mean. Obviously Wen is stronger than Gao Gao, who claims to be a weak foundation practitioner, and weaker than the blood tree leader, who's supposed to be a "gold core"? But how far are those levels apart, and where do they think Rebecca places?

Wen appears to be the town's strongest defense, yes, but as Gao Gao said, she wasn't meant to be. Being hosted here implies a certain level of respect from the townspeople, but by the furnishings, it's clearly not her usual abode, and by what must be Wen's reward bag, defense of the town must not be one of her ordinary duties. So—a protector of circumstance, then. The town must either not think Wen is reliable to stick around, or believe her not powerful enough to hold the town against future threats, even with the leader of the local demonic practitioners dead.

What she needs to know, the information she would mean to extract from an accurate read is—how does Wen expect to be treated by Rebecca, and how does she expect to be treated by the common townspeople? Is she a harmless rogue, cautiously feared respected, but ultimately cowed by the martial leaders of the town? A local folk hero, reasonably well-liked in spite of her species, forced to step into bigger boots when other champions fell? A minor god descended in time of need, but still unable to withstand the most powerful villains of man? All of these inform how Rebecca should approach to get what she wants.

Wen is expecting Rebecca to know the facts of the situation from her words and common sense, and her deference from her tone and phrasing. But Rebecca knows neither the words nor what is common sense here, so she can pick up little more than the deference. Rebecca knows she's significantly stronger than Wen; she wants to know the dimensions and scale.

What she does notice, from what Wen and other people have said: there's a strong background assumption of a path of ascension. Growth. A way one goes from a civilian to one like Gao Gao, to one like Wen, to one like Gao Gao's son and daughter-in-law or the leader of the demonic practitioners, and eventually to someone like Rebecca. With the implication that the beast's path is slower—than humans? than Rebecca's, whatever they think she is?

Wen was a normal fox once, by the sound of "beast ascending" and the reference to gaining <sapience?>. And she became what she is now. It matches with some of the stories she's read.

The implications are positive for what this world can do for Rebecca.

For now, though, she needs to clear things up now she hopefully has a better grasp of the language.

"That is partially correct. The place I'm from does not measure power in the terms you use, and does not wield it in the form of qi techniques I suspect you to mean."

In some of the novels she's read, characters can learn to use inner techniques and training to express what amounts to minor powers. Strength, faux-flight, even energy projection. This world she presumes must be a... reification... of those tropes, sampled from the space of possible worlds, as she has inferred hers to be likely a sample after superhero stories.

"The power I used to emulate your abilities does not emulate your techniques or your qi, but your essence: in a metaphorical way, expressing a heritage in imitation of the person I am copying. It doesn't take anything away from you, or modify your bloodline or add yours directly to mine, but that is the practical effect. I now have the metaphorical blood of a—nonspecific—ascended fox.

"I am still learning the language, so if I said anything you don't understand, I can explain in different words."

At first she holds herself as trying to maintain stiff respectfulness. It doesn't really seem natural for her.

Offense and pride both flash across her face briefly during the explanation, both quickly quashed to return to that respectful pose, which feels like a neutral default for someone stronger than her.

"...Do you feel a tie of fate, Senior? Or do I presume too much. Of course, I will be happy to teach the words of this region."

Her instinctual techniques, she would not be so happy about. So hopefully she doesn't ask. But she wouldn't really have a choice if this unfamiliar powerhouse demanded it.

Well, at least Wen conceals her emotions poorly enough that Rebecca can read her,  closing some of the subtext communication gap.

Her having a slightly injured pride is workable. Even good, perhaps, because a starting frame of an exchange of favors is better foundation for a working relationship than just descending from on high as a saviour.

She's not entirely sure how to interpret the "tie of fate": it could be asking of she thinks their meeting was fated, or it could be asking if she thinks they are now bound together by fate.

"It is reasonable if you feel this as a slight against you," she says, "I would normally have asked for permission, but I did not know enough about this world to know if the leader of the demonic practitioner was powerful enough to hurt me, or if his technique was something I would be vulnerable to. I saw you were able to defy his powers, and that you and the town were in danger, and I did not have the time or words to negotiate an agreement, so I chose to act first and ask forgiveness later. For this, I consider myself to owe a favor to you."

A pause to let that sink in.

"If you wish, you may take that as the end of it: you can bank the favor for later, or ask something of me now if it is within my power and does not go against my dao*. However, if you would provide me pointers on this world and its ways, or instruct me in using the abilities I so rudely copied from you, I would consider myself further in your debt. I will not be offended if you refuse part or all of that request."

* Literally "way", Rebecca here referencing the principles by which a martial hero of ancient China lives. It is the only meaning she is aware of.

A local guide who is weaker than her but still of a relevant power level, worldly and not well-connected, and with a bond of battle, is ideal. She's hoping that's what she has here.

During the pause after a promised favor she seems - satisfied? Vindicated? Like this sort of thing is what she had hoped for, on some level. And then immediately after, conflicted and regretful in an introspective way.

This world. She stops breathing for a moment. Oh. That could be very good or very bad. Visitors from other realms are- Well, it's not like she wasn't already dealing with a Hidden Master. Okay, this doesn't really change anything.

"Senior, I am honored by your favor."

Always a good stalling sentence.

"...I'm not sayin' no or anything-" she catches herself and changes register back immediately. "-I have found myself at a turning point. I would seek to understand your dao, what you wish to reveal of it to me, and meditate upon my own, before making a momentous decision."

Declaring her debt did win Wen's favor, good. Some people take that as an insult.

Wen seems to be thinking of this as a greater commitment than Rebecca was asking for, but that's fine. She wouldn't say no to a longer-term guide and this girl looks like she needs help.

She needs to frame the context in a way that will make sense.

"In the world I hail from, I was one of the greatest among many heroes who took an oath to defend the populace from criminals and villains who would do them harm. For many years we enforced peace across the land. However, my world is under a greater threat which I and our other heroes cannot defeat alone. When I discovered a way to leave my realm, I therefore left to seek a way through the many worlds, to learn and grow in strength, in hopes of one day returning with the key to triumph. This is the first destination I have set foot in since I left."

What are her rules of conduct out here? Once she says them, they become real, so she has to be specific.

"On my journey, I intend to comply with the law of the lands I visit and fight evil where I see it. My goal is to trade power, services and knowledge with the people I meet. I will not swear myself to the service of gods, lords or emperors of worlds not my own, and in my travels I do not consider myself dutybound to enforce law and hunt down evil, but I will be moved by my personal sense of justice and the plight of those in need to intervene on a case-by-case basis."

And now to dial it back to the immediate scope:

"I of course do not at this time demand you join me on my quest or share my dao, merely act as a guide and instructor to what extent you are comfortable with. I am not sure if that answers the question to your satisfaction."

Righteous path, seeking new horizons.

Or lying for kicks and going to refine her for parts.

Not that acting suspicious would help in the second scenario.

She nods firmly and smiles.

"...I am also trying to take a righteous path, as much as I safely can as a wanderer. I'll tell you what I know and accept whatever lessons or treasures you think are fair in return, for now. I'm not sure about later. Uh... There are evil laws in some places. You probably don't want to follow those. I certainly do not."

Oh, good. That makes things easier.

She looks pleased and relieved without looking like she's trying to look pleased and relieved.

"If there is a law which says all who speaks of the local magistrate without the correct titles must be put to death, I may use the titles, but will not report those I see fail to do so, which is what I meant by not being bound to enforce the law," she explains, "...and of course if there is a law which requires one to slay an innocent man every week as an offering to some self-styled god-emperor, I would not do so, and may be tempted to depose the so-called god-emperor, is what I meant by 'intend'."

And she bows, confident but respectful. "And thank you for accepting my request."

She pauses.

"The use of qi as the beings of this realm wields it is unfamiliar to me," she says again, but it bears repeating. "I understand you have spent power, but not how surely and how quickly you will recover. Is there anything I may do to aid your recovery?"

She would offer to not count it against her debt, to avoid the impression she's trying to cheat Wen, but that might be a bit much. By what the old woman said and the sound of those objects she named, any remedies might properly be significant enough to count as a favor, and waiving that would be too good to be true.

"Yes, I mean evil magistrates and corrupt soldiers. I feel we broadly agree. Though there is... Each develops their own sense of acceptable acts, which do not necessarily align with the balance of Karma. Some of what I consider acceptable, you might not. Life is... Difficult, for newly awakened <diremonsters?>- The beings that become ascended animals, as opposed to demons, <ghosts?>, or 'true' <monsters?>. I did not... Have the luxury of walls and crop fields and guards."

Pause.

"As for my recovery, exhaustion is not a true issue. The wounds are, they are the same as your fading one. That was a <terrible?> technique, it attacks the <???> and lingers, which... I don't actually know if I can <sift?> clean with my usual method... I might need to do some research or find a spiritual doctor, if you are unfamiliar. This one is yet young and unlearned in many things."

Is she saying that she was once a petty thief ("crop fields") or has killed in self defense ("walls", "guards") or something else—some sort of... karmic violation? Cannibalism, kinslaying? In the context of newly awakened wild animals, it sounds plausible.

She can't actually make declarations about what she will or will not condone without knowing what it is she's condoning.

But she's condoned a lot, in the past.

"I do not much begrudge the acts of those who do what they must to survive or defend what they care about, especially if they are weaned of the habit," she says finally. "In my world, there are many who worked alongside me in service of righteousness who were once counted among the villains we swore to oppose. People can often change—and even more often, it is not that they must change, but that the conditions keeping them down change; that someone reach out to offer a chance to be better..."

To reach out and offer chance to be better.

She's more or less believed that, for some people more than others. But she never much thought of this speech in relation to herself. She shapes the circumstances, not the other way around. Cauldron wasn't... her vial and their resources were power, leverage, not slack. She's always been the one to pave the hardest paths, in light, in shadow or in blood.

But this time, translating this old spiel to a new dialect and having to ponder and hunt down the right words—she's thinking of the Spirit again, and what it promised her.

She gathers herself.

"I am unfamiliar with the problem you refer to, unfortunately. Is this an urgent problem, such I ought to fly to search for a spirit doctor to ask for assistance, or one that will keep while you research?

She looks very sad for a moment.

"...Heaven and earth are truly vast. Is anyone really righteous? You cannot- Offer a beast your hand and not expect to be bitten." Scowl. "The scorpion and the frog. Some are beyond help. And those in power always seem to have as their first concern- Keeping power, no matter the burden others face. I'm probably even the same, aren't I?"

She shakes her head.

"...This is a conversation for later, perhaps. I think this... Might actually be intended as a <???> furnace technique. To <inject?> foreign qi, capture with debilitating pain and imprison, and then slowly overpower and convert my true qi with more attacks, so that the demonic practitioner can take it for himself. It might pass in time and only hinder me for a while, or even prove to be beneficial once overcome. It might be getting worse every moment and lead to my doom. I would be surprised if it were that insidious. Han Nai of the Blood Tree cult was not a heavens-blessed genius. But it might be. I don't know and can't tell."

"Not all are open to redemption, true. And I do not extend my hand indiscriminately. But—you are right, it's a conversation for another time, but I do hope to revisit it. I consider it a field of scholarship."

And now for the poison.

The way qi apparently works here is oddly... mechanical? Versatile, powerful, expressive, in the way one might describe a programming language or design software; and also just more powerful in effect. She should have inferred as much from the runaway goons being able to turn into blood and open portals, but now they're getting into the moving parts, it's really striking her. Not at all like the novels she's using for reference, which mostly focus on martial arts. She supposed that old superhero comics didn't particularly well capture the complexity of Earth Bet.

"Your judgment here is better than mine. I can fly... I don't know your measures of distance and time, but I can fly"—she does some quick mental maths—"the distance of a month's horseback travel in about a tenth of a day, if your horses are the same as my world's." By her old speed. She suspects she may be able to sustain extended supersonic flight now. "I cannot carry a passenger that fast, but if there is a library that can help, I can memorize any books and writing perfectly. And I have heard mention of healing dan or soul restoration pills, though I don't know if they will help you or how hard they are to procure."

"Do I look like I know how fast mortal horses run? Let alone how often they need to rest... Anything like that would be expensive, and you do not know the customs in this world yet. If there's no other-realm knowledge that's immediately applicable..."

This is transparent fishing, but she moves on after a moment.

"I have... Thoughts that come without thought. <Instinct?>. They are vague, but rarely completely wrong. And they're saying I should eat a lot, do my katas, and cycle qi, and see if it is getting any better. If not, I had planned to leave this place soon anyway, we can travel back to the main part of Three Jades and make <enquiries?>."

Rebecca looks vaguely chastised, but in an unoffended and very slightly amused way.

"My people have medicines, but since we do not channel qi as you do, we have none for this sort of qi poisoning. So it sounds like your plan is to follow your instincts to attempt to naturally purge the corruption, and if that fails, to travel towards the heart of the kingdom to seek advice?"

So Wen isn't particularly attached to this town, and was defending it purely out of the goodness of her heart? That's remarkably charming, if true. And Rebecca is glad she didn't offer to stay and help out, now.

"That is my plan, yes. I should go ask <mayor?> Gao or his wife if any spiritual rice is going spare. It would help with healing. It's a little bit <???> but it's for a battle wound, so it should be fine."

"If there is nothing I can help with, I may go ask if there is a library I can attempt to peruse. I will assume that you prefer there not be distractions while you perform your katas and cycling? Is there a standard way to contact you, or vice versa?"

She could probably Dressing Room some radios, but not now.

"Yes, I prefer that at least a little bit. You can just ask a servant to come find me, I'll be coming back here after. If you mean <communication?> techniques, I don't know any besides beast speak. Which does not work far away. -Oh. I should mention, it may be wise for you to hide that you are from a hidden realm, or other realm. I feel like most hidden masters would have required me to swear an oath to the Heavenly Dao to keep it to myself, simply because that reveals... A lot about you to potential enemies, in theory."

...She's still acting like she's the biggest fish in town. With Battle Maiden, her original powers and the enhancements the Spirit stacked on top, it may still be true, but the leader of the demonic practitioners was able to hurt her a little, and this is apparently a remote frontier town. This is a completely new context with its own powers, not any old backwater Earth she's dropping onto.

"Thank you for the pointer. I had not been thinking of myself as acting in secrecy, but on reflection of how much I don't know, it is clearly wise, at least until I am better established. I would then request that you keep it secret, though I will not ask for an oath now, since you are the one who told me of it." And since she doesn't know what an oath to the Heavenly Dao is and how she can verify one. "I meant something like a servant, yes. I will ask a servant to find you the morning after tomorrow, then; is that a good time or do you need longer to check for progress?"

"That will be fine, senior."

She stands again, and does a nod and a fist-on-palm salute.

Rebecca returns the salute and takes her leave.

Anyone around for her to ask directions from? She wants to know about her room, and if there is anywhere she can find books. Also, if there's been signage around, what do the characters look like? Familiar or unfamiliar? She knows simplified and traditional modern Chinese characters but not specific historical scripts.

A man in plain clothes is waiting outside the first guest house, to show her to the second guest house and fetch anything else she requires. He's perfectly deferential and obsequious, almost as if using his job to divert attention from grief.

There is not any signage around. One of the soldiers who bow to her as she passes has 'fang' written on his sword sheath. There's one piece of flowy calligraphy as decoration on Wen's semi-detached guest house wall- A poem about a boulder growing worn in the wind and rain. And a similar poem about a field passing through the seasons in the other semi-detached house, which she is shown to. Most of the characters are familiar, if stylized.

Chinese logography, the great equalizer of regional dialects.

She picks up on the man's mood and does not comment on it, but acts appropriately somber and thanks him sincerely. Once she's shown the guest house, she will dismiss him for now, informing him she has no physical needs and will take a while to herself. Where should she fetch a servant if she wants to send a message or ask something later?

There is a pull-bell, and also they will be available in the small servants' house at the main gate.

She picks up a few rocks from the yard or wherever is convenient and checks out the interior.

There's rubble leftovers still around. 

The house has a sitting/dining room, a bedroom identical to Wen's, and a bathroom with clay-pipe plumbing and a large iron tub.

The indoor plumbing is a surprise, but maybe it's period-appropriate; the Chinese had some of the greatest cities of history. With Personal Hygiene and much to catch up on, she's unlikely to partake, but she's still pleased on general principle.

She sets her rocks down on a table and changes into a more comfortable T-shirt and stretch pants.

All the pressing emergencies are handled. She needs to take a second to think.

Wen's comment on secrecy highlighted a mistake which could have been critical:

Rebecca doesn't have a plan.

Or not plan, per se, but—operating model. She isn't aligned.

In her defense, she was dropped onto an ongoing emergency with no warning and no preparation. Still, not having an operating model is one thing, and not noticing you don't have one is a different one far less forgivable.

In retrospect, today she was falling back to an old but familiar script: that of her early days as Alexandria, trying to build a place in Los Angeles at the turn of the 90's, when public opinion was on the backswing from the initial novelty of superheroes, and she had to fight and barter for every inch of purchase. A paradigm where the most important thing was to make herself seen, understood and trusted, and reticence was a luxury not afforded. She had to perform to prove that parahumans could be more than lawless vigilantes and thrill-seekers, and that's what she's been doing today: performing.

And it takes a fool to strut about like a peacock when there's nobody to impress. So who is she performing for?

Gao Gao and his townsmen, perhaps. She had a reflex that she was unknown and needed to make herself known; that must be what triggered this presentation instinct. This town don't mean much in the grand scheme of things, but the people will talk, and it's important to spin a consistent story. Wen, whose assistance she wishes to enlist. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Herself and the Spirit behind her shoulder, to an extent; that she has to admit. Is that enough to justify her approach?

Concrete actions: what did she do that she shouldn't have, knowing what she does now? This is broadening into a more general post-mortem, now, but that's fine.

She shouldn't have spared the invaders? No, that's hindsight bias; even though she knew it was likely they would be executed, making an enemy of the state is more difficult to undo than having erred on the side of mercy. She shouldn't have used containment foam; that part was an error on two fronts, first the logistical difficulty of disposing of it, second the reckless flaunting of her unique resources. She didn't have better options, but—

What she should have done was consult the man clearly in charge before haring off after her prey. An old flaw of hers she's never managed to shake: trusting her judgment over seeking the facts.

And there's the error that provoked this inspection in the first place: information security. Telling Wen was unavoidable, she maintains, since Rebecca's total ignorance is impossible to hide; she needs at least one person in the know to feed her the right lines. The story about leaving her home to find a weapon against a great threat is mere flavor for her legend, irrelevant to any enemies; she hardly regrets that. Not asking Wen to keep a secret was the mistake, now corrected.

Was it a mistake to Dragon Fairy Elf Witch Wen without asking? No, the decision was justified and has proven its worth.

Was it a mistake to declare herself in debt to Wen? No, it's a legitimate ingratiation tactic and she intended it as such, and she made sure to include the relevant disclaimers.

Was it a mistake, that absurd exchange about burning the bodies—it has occurred to her at this point that Gao Gao's deflections about not burdening her were attempts to reject her politely—but no, that was a straightforward failure of thinking, not anything she can systematically amend. A general advice to check her cultural assumptions, perhaps.

What are the corrections she needs to make?

In the immediate term, she hasn't created any problems she desperately needs to fix. The people of the town know nothing important, except Wen, whom Rebecca already has maneuvered correctly, albeit with some prodding from the fox herself.

Next: as she already figured out, she needs to develop a considered approach to the future.

Getting the lay of the land. That's the theme of the short term. Keeping a low profile, earning favor and power where possible, but with understanding as the top priority. She can't make a plan without all the information. And she needs to fix Wen's problem, obviously.

In the medium term: resources. Making allies, earning money, arranging contingencies, and simply accumulating raw power with Dragon Fairy Elf Witch and Anything You Can Do. Simple to say, less simple to do. How much noise she's willing to make at this stage, and what services and knowledge are safe to trade away, depends on the findings of the first.

In the long term, she needs a method of multiverse travel and eventually weapons that will aid her against Scion. Both are projects that will last, but if she doesn't keep them in mind, they're not going to happen.

Laid out that way, it's dumbfoundingly obvious.

Are there obvious holes in that prioritization? Rebecca scans through the usual checklist. There's a case to be made that she's falling for action bias when she theoretically has all the time in the world, but she does have her metanarrative guarantees, and isn't actually made out of patience. The information gathering stage is the important part, really, and any tricky detail work hinges on what she finds out.

What that means in concrete details: she's going to read as much as she can and acquire off Wen basic competency in navigating this universe. When they reach a major city, she's not going to hit a jewelry trader, she's not going hit a publishing house, and she's not going to go evildoer-slaying to make a name for herself. What they will do is a question for then.

Anything else?

That seems to be it.

She sets herself on the ground, walks over, and picks up one of her rocks.

She memorizes the rock from every angle. Then she changes into a jacket with pockets, pocket the rock, and changes out of the jacket.

The rock sure is deleted.

Can she get the jacket with the rock back—yes. Same rock, when she inspects it.

She repockets the rock. Can she disappear the jacket and don a different jacket with the rock in its pocket? No. Can she move the rock to a different pocket on the same jacket? No. Can she just vanish the rock without changing her jacket and get it back the same, by "changing" into versions with and without the rock? Yes.

She puts the rock back on the table and tries to summon the jacket with the rock again... no.

She tries to summon the jacket with the rock again, picturing the exact rock and exact jacket—that outfit she was wearing a few moments ago—that works.

She memorizes her pile of rocks, turns around, scrambles them around, and pockets one without looking. She unjackets, rejackets, takes out her pocket rock, duplicates the rock, and takes out the duplicate. She turns around and checks her collection against the two rocks she's holding. Did it successfully return and copy the rock that she took from the pile?

Yes.

So Dressing Room acts as a pocket dimension, in a way. You can get back out objects which you put in, even if you don't know exactly what you put in. You can duplicate objects with more effort. She'll need something more exotic to know if the objects stored still meaningfully exist in a way when they're deexisted.

She examines the coin in her reward pouch. imagines the outfit of a rich merchant from historical China, with gaudy flowing robes and, importantly a small purse of coin at his hip.

It works.

She tries to think, this is my purse now, I own it, changes back to her previous outfit, and tries to put on a jacket with her coin purse in the left pocket; no dice—no, that wouldn't work since she can't transfer pocket contents between outfits. She changes back into merchant wear, removes the coin purse to the desk, then changes back into her normal clothes, puts the purse into a jacket pocket, and rejackets. The purse stores and comes back fine. Maybe she'll be able to do the first thing with more practice. She duplicates the purse a few times and puts copies into pocket storage on a few different outfits. Can she also just don the coin purse on arbitrary outfits as an accessory itself...?

Once she has a handle on the right frame of mind, yes.

Then she will spend an hour scavenging her memory for supplies with Dressing Room. She conceals in her infinite swappable pockets:

• 16 ration bars, taken out of the foil wrapping and rewrapped in her best guess at period-approriate paper.
• A variety of first-aid resources.
• 20 concussive-explosive charges.
• 20 incendiary charges.
• 20 contact shock charges.
• 20 freeze charges.
• A small handheld writing pad.
• A nondescript pencil.

The bars and first-aid kit are from PRT camping equipment, and the charges are from her specialized costume loadouts—when you gets into her tier of Brute, you loop back around to being the best solution for annoying Breaker/Movers, because you can just rush them and detonate a incendiary point blank in their force-immune faces. It's exactly what she could have used against that guy who kept turning into blood. The freeze ones are tinkertech, so she'll have to find somewhere to test that she recreated them correctly later.

Theoretically she doesn't need to store multiple copies of the charges, since she can duplicate them on demand, but she's not sure if it'll be as easy to do the duplication trick in a live situation when she's farther away in time from the outfit she's trying to reproduce. She also have to figure out later what exactly counts as a "quiet moment to herself". She's not sure if she wants to reveal those exact capabilities to Wen, but it is rather hard to test without assistance.

Once she's done, and she's ready to head out again.

Well. There is one other thing. But she's not going to try that in the middle of town. Later.

She will go for a walk.

Do the servants know where she can find books? To buy, to borrow, to browse. She's looking more for histories, almanacs, textbooks and the like, but fiction or historical fiction would also do.

There is, unfortunately, not a library or bookseller per se in this frontier town. The closest thing would be Old Gu's place, the town's schoolteacher, and he may have textbooks. The administration building has a few petty law and mercantile reference books and almanacs, and the Gao family of course has a modest shelf of tomes and scrolls which she may peruse.

The best place to build foundational knowledge is probably the schoolteacher's place. The place where she's most likely to find actionable information may be the Gao family collection.

The place least strange for a distant traveller to start at, and least likely to draw attention to what exactly she's reading, is likely the administrative collection.

She will head thataway and see if she can gain entry without rousing too much of a fuss.

To avoid being unnecessarily accosted by conversation she's not equipped to navigate, she will fly, but lowly over the town. She scans the streets on the way for what people are wearing and the way they move. She needs to start building an intuition of how to fit in—and she needs clothes to plagiarize.

Peasants walk like ordinary, if tired, people. Soldiers aren't much different. One gets the impression that most of the guards are effectively slightly stronger peasants. They've mostly changed back out of armor into durable and easy to move in duan-da, a sort of shirt and pants combo. A few people are instead wearing things describable as robes.

...The teenage boy at the admin building will!! Assist the Honored Cultivator as much as he can!! And go fetch the Clerk from his current work tallying the dead if required!!!

She will memorize the robes, guardwear and peasantwear all and see if she can reproduce them later. For now she'll stick with the same clothes she showed up to the town in; they've already seen her in it, and better to dress strange than wrong.

She smiles politely at the boy in a trying-but-not-particularly-hard-at-feigning-attention kind of way. She doesn't need to see the clerk, just to peruse their books. Unless the clerk is needed to approve that, in which case she can wait.

Oh no, of course not to look, anything not in the safe at least, just please don't take any without giving them a chance to make copies.

There's a whole lot of town records, two decades of farmer's almanacs, The Laws of Three Jades Kingdom (abridged), a forestry manual, a book of known merchant organizations and average prices for things like rice and linen, a list of proscribed cults and practices, a bunch of imperial declarations of various types, a moderately bad map, a book on architecture and civil engineering, and a scroll about how to recognize official seals and proofs of authority from the Kingdom, and the proper ettiquite for such officials.

Of course she won't take anything without permission!

This is more variety than she was picturing, which makes her pleased with her choice. She wants to go through all of it, but first: map! What's on the map? Does this look like a China or an Earth?

Looks like a 'neither'!

Three Jades Empire is has a long, thin body at the 'south', bordering 'the Lake of Mist' and 'Untamed Lands'. The village is in 'Untamed Lands'. The north has a more circular territory and borders the State of Qing (New) and the White Lotus Kingdom.

Multiple states. She's not sure why that's so surprising; the Han sphere was fractured at many points in Earth Chinese history.

So this village is doubly on the frontier of civilization, once being past the border of the Three Jades proper, and again with the Three Jades being a border country itself to unsettled land.

She doesn't suppose there's a distance scale somewhere on the map, or that it would be useful even if there was? Is the boy still around and can he tell her how wide the tongue of the Empire is, in terms of days of travel in various modes of transport?

The boy is trying not to be an imposition in any way, shape, or form. But will answer her questions nervously.

A trade caravan or army on the march can travel the length of the Kingdom from the capitol to the southern city of Roaring Rocks in perhaps three months, assuming they marched a hundred li per day and didn't stop very often. Perhaps, then, 8000 li in distance as the army marches, following this road? For a mortal it would take a year to walk all the way from north to south if they could walk every day and had to make camp most nights. A mortal would surely perish doing that, though.

She doesn't know if the li here are the same as the li from Earth, but the army is apparently marching at four times the speed of a "mortal", so—are they all on horses—

There is something up with either the logistics here or the humans here. Maybe the soldier are enhanced or trained in qi techniques, or maybe they have advanced transportation technology, or they have qi users who can bolster their troops.

But assuming the mortal and the trade caravan speeds are correct, the measure of a li is approximately similar to Earth. Then the whole country is a bit smaller than Chile. Not small, though not exactly modern China.

She will peruse the list of proscribed cults and practices next.

Cannibals, demons, Those Suspicious Foreigners, dealing with souls at all, the following addictive drugs, 'resentment farming', and price collusion on staple goods, among other things, are forbidden.

The following practitoner clans and sects are extremely dangerous and should be avoided and if possible reported. Note: The practitioner world is not entirely separated from mortal affairs within Three Jades Kingdom. Our noble Three Jade Sect defends us from the depredations of demonic practitioners and welcomes practitioners who follow righteous paths to the region!

(Blood Tree is on the list of bad sects).

Demons: apparently a thing.

Soul magic: apparently a thing.

Not surprising, but good to know. She will need to ask Wen about how up-and-up the Three Jade Sect is, and how strictly "righteous paths" is defined, whether it's more of a blacklist or whitelist sort of situation and whether Rebecca should be concerned about getting in trouble with her foreign powers.

There's no mention of ascended animals?

She will flick through the pricebook and merchant listings, particularly paying attention if it mentions any of those healing dan or soul restoration pills the old woman mentioned, and anything else in that vein? But also just trying to get a general picture of the relative prices of things. Any surprises?

Healing Dan, in a mortal merchant price book? Hahaha ha. Ha.

No.

There's a few things that sound like medicines listed, but nothing that seems promisingly miraculous. Mundane cures, a few 'fire aligned' or 'yang inducing' powders. Nothing specifically labeled for generic healing.

Prices are denominated in tael of silver or gold, small rectangular coins, and one tael seems to be about 2 grams, like a dime. A nice inn with breakfast and dinner costs around a gold tael a night.

Spiritual Rice (silver grade) is about as expensive as rare spices like cinnamon or frost pepper by weight.

A conversion for 'low grade spirit stones' is listed at 750-1500 tael of gold, approximately.

Various metals seem to be remarkably cheap too? For the supposed medeivalish tech level anyway. 

Commodity prices through medieval history were not one of the things Rebecca found relevant to populate the Library of Alexandria with, so she doesn't have an indexed lookup ready, but she does get a vague, low-certainty sense that the metal prices are unusual.

Spirit stones: a thing? She doesn't remember reading about them in fiction, unlike mystical dan.  A low-grade spirit stone is a about two kilograms of gold or more, and high grades must be even more. What are they used for? What section are they in, maybe that can give her an idea?

Also: "spiritual" rice?

If there's nothing on healing dan or pills, so they must be rare, not a fungible commodity, extremely expensive, or some combination of the above.

Laws next: common sense, surprisingly progressive, oppressive totalitarian or what? She's also looking for any more hints about the state's relationship with the Three Jade Sect and... other sects, it sounds like, which typically don't have a close relationship with the civilian state? And basically anything about qi, demons, souls, cults and so on.

Spiritual rice and spirit stones are listed next to 'spirit beast meat' and 'qi steel' and 'blood and qi pills' at a very small section at the end labelled 'practitioner goods'.

The laws seem like a mixture of common sense and totalitarian. Relatively short, but lots of death penalty. People can choose exile instead, or hard labor in some cases. No slavery, no debt bondage, no! There are a bunch of laws about merchants and one gets the impression there was a Problem with merchants in the past.

Practitioners have a list of special privileges aimed, depending on your perspective, mostly at keeping them from causing trouble because they're bored and frustrated? They go to the front of lines, and can shake officials right out of their beds to settle disputes or get things stamped, and don't have to bow to anyone but senior practitioners, etc. They still have to pay city entry tariffs, which are fairly steep, unless they're with the Three Jades Sect, of course. And serious crimes still get them into trouble, even Three Jades Sect members. At least ostensibly.

(Spirit beast meat sounds like a fraught topic given her choice of party member. She will sound out Wen about the general category of "practitioner goods" later.)

The merchant drama: is it more around unsavoury business practices like price fixing mentioned, or is it more of—general legislation against the merchant class gaining power and influence? Does it seem like she might get slammed with fines and red tape if she tries undercutting the market? (She's not planning to dump enough volume to move market prices more than locally and briefly.)

The laws around practitioners... bode poorly for the kind of people she's going to have to rub elbows with. The excessively deferential way people here are treating her makes more sense now.

What she needs to do is run a gauntlet of hypothetical scenarios against Wen to feel out the expected window of responses to things she might run into.

Seals, proof of authority and etiquette? She'll memorize it all like everything else; it seems important.

Nothing too surprising in there given the general tone of authority and respect to seniors that's a background assumption around here. There's an odd clashing of a central bureaucracy and something vaguely feudal. Impersonating officials is a serious crime.

Feudalism meshes with the power structure of entire towns' defences being pinned by single individuals—except it sounds like practitioners are concentrated in "sects" which aren't typically tightly integrated with mortal governance? Though Gao Gao's son was the local defender, and while she previously thought he might be a swordsman or other martial hero, her powers of pattern recognition tell her he's likely another qi user.

Maybe it's a bit like universities, where there's a core of permanent faculty, but other members peel off eventually to pursue governance or private enterprise, still nominally members but no longer directly representing or involved in the running of the the institution?

She will finally leaf through the civil engineering and forestry books to get a general picture of the technology level.

Pretty meh. The repeated mentions of miasmatic qi or accumulation of Wood energy might actually be real, though. Given everything.

She is not certain that the concept of qi she as she understood from before was applicable to things like trees, but she's already established that her map is not the territory.

Modern civil engineering is probably not useful to sell to the locals given the industrial base it assumes, but maybe the weirdness about metals moves the cost equilibria enough? It's not particularly important to work out now.

And she did say "finally", but actually she's noticed the imperial declarations again and will read them. What does the Empire declare?

Tax changes! Elevation of people as nobles! A Royal Spirit Testing Initiative! The rescindment of the previous initiative for unstated reasons! Warnings of bandit problems! Royal betrothals and marriage announcements! A grand exhibition and feast in the capital of Lavender Jade City slated for Cloadsoar Year 77,543! A round of army recruitment for possible war against the State of Qing (New)! A year long quarantine against something called Rage Fungus! A declaration that the coasts of the Lake of Mists are now safe-ish for civilian boat travel thanks to the Jade Navy! More tax changes and nobility elevations (Gao Gao's is in there)! 

Gao Gao's new nobility? Perhaps not for much longer if they abandon the town. "Rage Fungus" is very evocatively named and hopefully not very accurately, but she suspects she's in no such luck. War and bandits, standard problems.

The Spirit Testing Initiative sounds interesting, so she'll fish a bit.

"Tell me about the Spirit Testing Initiative?" she asks the boy, sounding thoughtful.

"Some two generations ago, I don't recall the exact year ma'am, the Three Jade Sect decided to dispatch their disciples to all corners of the realm in order to look for talents that might otherwise go overlooked. I believe it was abandoned because the number of such talents proved below expectation, as did the quality of said talents, and the program was very expensive."

An intrinsic sort of potential, or the more mundane meaning of talent? What the boy described is more of a good sign than a bad sign, she thinks, for the Three Jade Sect's virtue.

"A worthy project," she says. "Unfortunate that it did not succeed."

She thinks she's done with the books here. It's occurred to her during her time reading that Gao Gao's son might have references relevant to mystical practice, but it's too soon to be asking after a man's dead son's property. Though... does she care what Gao Gao thinks of her? She has enough credit banked, and the reputation of a practitioner she's now seen the extent of, that he probably wouldn't raise a fuss.

She cares enough, she decides. She doesn't need to optimize that hard here, and she'd rather make friends than enemies given the choice.

She will return the materials, thank the boy and ask if she can get some of her gold changed for smaller denominations here. (She has no clue if this is one of the standard functions of an administrative building.)

If it's properly minted Three Jades tael, like the palm size 100-tael bars in her reward, he can do that just fine, if she has raw gold he'll have to go get the Clerk.

Yes, she means the tael in her reward. She'll change one of them into smaller gold, silver and copper, please. A variety of denominations will do, up to him.

The ratio is 20 silver tael to one gold tael. Silver tael only come in small denominations, not large bars.

He gives her about an even number of copper bits (which are 0.1 silver), 1, 2, 5, and 10 silver coins (the copper and silver ones being round rather than rectangular), and 1, 5, and 10 gold tael.

(A bowl of plain rice tends to cost about three copper bits according to the price book.)

She'll tip him a silver for his help. It's probably not expected, but developing a reputation for generosity is better than the reverse, and she has approximately infinite tips to pass out.

Then she will head out and look for:

• A store selling local paper and writing utensils?
• A store or vendor selling less-perishable foods for travel?
• Anything selling, uh, spirit stones or spirit beast meat? She's not holding out hope, but she'll try dowsing for anything with her new qi(?) sense.

She will enter the first one she finds.

The blue rocks in her bag might be spirit stones! There's ten of them. They feel like something, anyway.

It's getting on to evening and normal business isn't really open again yet. Also, the place barely seems to have stores at all- There's a smithy and a cobbler and a carpenter and a wheel-maker and a cooper all on a small square in front of the fort compound, but nothing more specialty than any of those. The place barely deserves the title of 'town', really. And the admin building seemed to also be bank, post office, and courthouse. Some people are cooking and handing out food communally, and won't hesitate to feed her or even hand her big sacks of rice, though.

Maybe two or three thousand people all in all?

Huh. She needs to pay attention to her senses more passively. She didn't even notice there was something other than gold in there, since she hadn't gone digging through it. She needs to go back to the guest house and try duping them later.

Shame about the economic underdevelopment. Shopping will have to wait for the big city, then. She will decline any bulk food resources and inquire specifically after food good for the road, and insist on paying them if they come up with something (unless they try very, very hard, in which case she will ruefully accept).

Someone scrounges up some jerky, someone else some sugared dried fruit (and does politely demand pay for it, sugar is expensive), and there's nuts and hard crackers. She's still a clear outsider, if a respected one.

She will take some of everything and pay whatever they say is a fair price, unless they're obviously underasking (based on their demeanor and the merchant references), in which case she'll look vaguely contemplative, shrug and pay double what they're asking.

Whatever they sell her, she'll hold or put away in her coat pockets.

Once the candied fruit person doesn't get smacked, everyone else asks for what seem to be fair prices. It's a good three days' worth and comes to about one gold tael in total, the bulk of the price being the fruit.

She thanks everyone and wanders back towards the administrative building. Where does the sun look like it's at, and can she tell what season it is based on the angle of the sun over the day?

She asks the boy from before if he's still here, or whoever switched in otherwise, if there's a location or landmark visible from here where she's unlikely to be disturbed for a few hours?

It seems to be summer if one goes by sun angles. Twilight is about to strike as the sun dips below the edge of the ridgeline of what can be described more as tall hills than small mountains surrounding the valley the town is in.

The same boy is there. He seems to be an apprentice clerk. So is a family on business who vanish temporarily when she approaches. 

...Any of the hilltops should do, he thinks?? She probably won't be disturbed, the young master kept the immediate surroundings well culled of low-level spirit beasts.

More information! One of the functions of practitioners, or at least the domesticated ones, is keeping the local spirit wildlife under control. And by how blasé the kid is about it, spirit beasts must be not very much the same thing as ascended beasts.

She thanks the kid and heads back to her lodging.

Once she's back, she vanishes her food into Dressing Room storage and tries to duplicate the spirit stones.

It requires integrating them into some sort of jewelry, but once she figures that out she can duplicate them just fine. The duplicated ones feel the same as the originals.

For some reason she didn't expect that to work. But the notebook did say she could create magic items as long as she'd worn them before, so...

She duplicates a couple dozen of the stones in the format of crowns studded with them, carefully pries them out of the setting, and pockets them.

And then she waits until it's fully dark, informs a servant she's going out and might not be back until morning, and takes off.

She picks one of the farther and taller hilltops and flies towards it, paying attention to her qi(?) sense to check if anything weird pings her, and and also if there's any change in the... background radiation as she flies away from town and into the wilderness. When she originally went towards town it was notably ickier than the surrounding nature; has that fully evened out or there now a different differential she can sense?

The active ick seems to have been from the chief blood guy, mostly. It's still around but seems like a slightly different flavor, and is steadily waning.

The forest deeper in the valley has the highest level of ick now. The surroundings have different and much weaker flavors.

Obvious guess: either some of the guys from earlier managed to escape into the forest and/or their home base is in the forest and it's their lingering imprint or reserve members she's sensing.

She's not going to touch that for now. Maybe she'll offer to Gao Gao to clean the place out later, maybe with Wen along; she needs more practice.

But for now, she will just beeline for the hilltop she decided on.

Does anything stand out to her or accost her as she does a quick low-flying circuit to scout out the immediate environs? Is there a cave she can borrow?

(On Earth Bet, one does not usually find random caves this easily, but this is wuxia land, so maybe she'll get lucky. There's a possibility a cave will already be occupied, by the same wuxia land logic, but she does want somewhere with good visual cover.)

No handy caves, but there's a nice tall rock formation at least.

She will find a spot under the rock formation, putting it between her and the village, and also between her and the evil forest, if she can. She could try flying further, but then she might just get in range of something or someone else.

This place seems pretty undisturbed. Scraggly brown hills with nothing visibly moving except wildflowers in the wind.

Alright. She will sit down, center herself, and—

Attempt to use Dragon Fairy Elf Witch on Scion.

...

It did something, she's just not sure what.

She floats up. Whips her hand through the air and darts forward a few feet. She doesn't seem faster or stronger. Signature golden lasers? Not as far as she can tell. No new senses. If she can do something like give people powers, there are no new mental levers. Maybe she'd need to find a person to try and target first.

She gets a mirror from Dressing Room and inspects her appearance. It's not her old face—Hundred Ships, must be, and she didn't check before so she can't tell if it's changed again—but it's not golden or differently textured or anything.

She'll rise into the air again and survey the landscape to see if a wider angle gives her anything more.

No.

This is a bit disappointing.

She guesses it's time to go back, then.

She flies back in the direction of town. Anything catch her attention on the way?

There's some kind of giant (for a possum. 5 feet.) possum watching her fly by in the blood forest. Otherwise, nothing.

She is not going to bother the blood forest if it does not bother her. She memorizes the location of the possom anyway, though it might move later.

When she's back it town she looks at people, and she's still not detecting any Scion powers.

Maybe it's something to do with parahumans and there aren't any around.

She returns to her lodging.

When she said she'd check back the morning after tomorrow on Wen, she was expecting there to be more to occupy her time with. Most things she wants to do would benefit enough from a native guide that she's unwilling to rush them. She might have to ask after Gao's collection after all.

For now, she may as well rest. She needs to get used to having nonzero sleeping needs, now she's away from home.

She's not going to be paranoid about assassins; nobody has a sufficient combination of information, power and motivation to pull off a successful hit.

No alarm clock. She spent ten minutes trying to procure her own phone earlier and failed. It should be possible to Dressing Room a generic mobile phone, but honestly she's just going to leave the blinds open and wake at sunrise. It'll be more than enough sleep.

If she sees a servant she will inform them she's going to bed. If she doesn't she's not going to look for one.

And she turns in for the night.

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."

"I am glad to hear it. In that case, if there is no urgency to travel, what were your next plans? On my part, I am interested in learning the cultivation practices of the locals, but I have no timeline or priority in mind. Eventually I want to study the orthodoxy of the Three Jades Sect, but I'm not in a hurry."

"I believe it's time to leave this place. I... Got what I came for, which was some of the blood-essence herbs. I think I could make it to the nearest city, Amber Hill City, in just two days' travel if I went as fast as I could. However, it sounds like you have a lot to learn. I can always stand to learn things, too so we can travel at a slower pace and talk. I don't know a lot of formalized cultivation knowledge, sects keep that pretty secret..."

"What does it take and how large of a commitment is it to join... I'm getting ahead of myself. That sounds like a fine plan. Do you have anything to do before leaving?"

The martial-path guy with the strong chin and the V scar on his eyebrow.

"No. I travel light." She points at a little backpack a ways away.

"I have all the belongings I need with me." She's not wearing a pack, but her Earth clothing is complex enough it could be concealing the reward pouch somewhere (it's not). "Shall we bid our hosts farewell?"

"Very well. Hopefully I can afford a storage bag soon..."

She has a bag—does she mean some sort of enchanted bag—

She's not going to get into it right now.

"I'm confident we'll be able to obtain the funds."

Where can Gao Gao be found to give him the news?

She shoulders her small pack. A servant guides them to Gao Gao. The rubble is mostly clear, but some stains and damage remain.

Everyone is quite effusive about seeing the pair off (and it turns out the old woman who flagged Rebecca down and supported Wen is Gao Gao's wife). Several people still seem to think she and Wen are related. One of the stronger soldiers makes as if to step forward and say something, but Gao Gao's hand on his shoulder prevents this.

Wen's tail twitches irritably.

And then they can leave.

Wen runs like a speedster out the town gates, in fox form, almost seeming to become an orange and white missile than something that touches the ground. Highway speed, at least, leaving the town far behind. She relaxes more the further they go.

Wen is surprisingly fast. Rebecca assumes Wen knows where they're going. They have the right heading, at least, according to the map from the admin building. She matches Wen's speed in flight, skimming close to the ground.

One they have a few minutes behind them, she'll get slightly ahead of Wen and say, "Do you have an idea when and where we'll make camp? We need to brief each other on capabilities."

Wen lets out a yip, then slows to a light 20 mile-an-hour jog and turns to humanoid form.

"I'm just glad I can be less prim and proper! To an extent, anyway. Yes, we should talk. You've never done any qi cultivation at all, have you?"

"I haven't." Observant, though perhaps it's a bit obvious. "I'm not sure we even had qi where I came from. When I arrived in this world is the first time I sensed what I suspect is qi."

"It probably is qi. Okay, so add 'what even is cultivation' to the list of topics. And yet you clearly have strong power of some kind. This is pretty concerning, you know? I'm concerned. It's not like teaching you the basics is exactly strenuous, but weird things make one nervous."

It's a fair concern. She's not afraid of sharing some ostensibly personal but fundamentally non-actionable information.

"In my world, powers like mine are granted by... entities we know very little of. We call them agents. They exist in other dimensions—other layers of reality, if that doesn't translate correctly—and are invisible to conventional means. They do not announce themselves when they empower their chosen. We do not understand how the bestowed powers work. Most people only speculate in abstract that there are patrons to our powers—but I have seen the agents with my own eyes, in places where dimensions bleed into others and in other ways. The agents are not benevolent. They intend to destroy my world. But I hesitate to say they are evil, for I expect we are as ants to them."

She allows a pause for that to sink in.

"Recently, I was contacted by a different being, one much farther away and stranger than those intervening on my world. I believe it to be benevolent: it understood mortal values, professed that it shared at least some of them, and had me entirely within its power and only offered assitance. That being sent me to this world and bestowed additional blessings on me."

The context is difficult to condense. What she needs is a slide deck she can email to Wen after this.

"That being, whom I will call the Spirit, severed me from my original agent at my request, and recreated my original blessing by its own power. The agents will not be able to follow me here, and the Spirit's intervention is... precise. It has done all it wishes to do, and very likely will never directly contact me again. There are no terms to its boons and they will never be—can never be, even by the Spirit's own will—revoked."

"So the answer, in short, is that I was twice-blessed by forces beyond mortal comprehension. I did not earn my powers myself, which may disappoint you. But I have bled my due for them, and with the specter of my agent gone, they are now as much mine to own as my own body."

And Wen only has her word for any of that. Best to keep that in mind, when dealing with this sort of thing. 

"Dimensional shenanigans are the worst. And I say that as a fox with a bloodline that lets me see some of them, and skim along the edges a bit."

So she has a special bloodline?

"They are. Some of them, at least. Orderly dimensional gates I can abide. The type where space breaks like glass and foul things grow in the cracks I'm much less tolerant of.

"But let's not dwell on my fantastical claims which are in any case irrelevant to our immediate plans. Can you summarize what cultivation and qi is, to someone who has heard of neither? I've picked up the general picture, but it's best to start from the foundation. In return, I'll tell you more about my abilities."

"Qi is the energy of the heavens and earth. It is as real as the sun and soil. Perhaps more real, even, as it suffuses everything, even if in minute amounts, and can fundamentally change all it touches. Qi has many aspects and distinctions... It's a category of energy, not a specific kind. It's like saying 'plants'. Do you mean trees? Shrubs? <Algae?>? Crops? <???>?"

So, we have qi, the spiritual energy that underpins the world and the basis of all cultivation. Spiritual qi is the loose and free energy floating in the world, air and water and stone. Spirit stones are dense concentrations of spiritual qi. Bodily qi, sometimes called essence, is the energy that strengthens flesh and bone. Dragon qi is the energy tied to the fate of a nation, and 'true' qi is the spiritual mass of a person, the thing that your cultivation itself is made of. There are surely more types I don't know.

Qi perfects things. It makes them more. Depending on your perspective... Death qi could 'perfect' a person by killing them. That is more of the nature of death qi after all. All qi can be neutral or aspected, showing properties aligned with its aspect. The most common aspects are yin, yang, fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. But there are many, almost anything you can imagine. Blood qi is a derivation of water, perhaps with some influence of fire...

Cultivation, at your and my level, is the process of taking in spiritual qi, growing your true qi, and becoming more 'perfect'. It's a long, long road, and there are many mysteries I don't yet know. But the first step is to meditate and focus, learning to detect and then influence free spiritual qi. Then, using specific methods and patterns, to bring spiritual qi into yourself, and move it in cycles. These cycles change your body and spirit, making you stronger and faster and better at qi control, and over time will improve your true qi.

That is the first stage in a few words: Qi Gathering. The further stages are Foundation Building, Core Formation, Domain Establishing, Nascent Soul, and then... Several more, no doubt. I don't know the details. The truly immense can eventually become Tribulation Immortals. With varied and exotic methods to actually cultivate... And there are alternate paths to growing stronger. This is the 'standard' path that most humans use..."

"Let me rephrase and repeat back to you to make sure I understand.

"Qi is a type of energy which suffuses the world. Some qi is bound to matter, but other can be bound to more abstract things, like fate. Qi can be aspected or neutral, and aspected qi changes what it's attached to to become more aligned with its aspect. Imbuing fire qi into a rock would make it more fire-like, say maybe heating it up? At the Qi Gathering stage—is that the same as Foundation Establishment?—we circulate spiritual qi from the environment though ourselves, strengthening ourselves and growing our spiritual mass, which is made of true qi.

"My questions are: If neutral qi is imbued into an object, what happens, both to the qi and to the object? Where does qi come from; is it created or destroyed? The qi types you mentioned, spiritual and bodily and dragon and true; and the qi aspects, yin, yang, fire, earth and so on: are they orthogonal typologies? By which I mean: there can be yin or yang or fire spiritual qi, and yin or yang or fire bodily qi, and yin or yang or fire dragon qi, and yin or yang or fire true qi? What determines and what is impacted by the aspect of your true qi?"

She's suspecting that the last question relates to what exactly demonic cultivation is.

"High concentration of fire qi in a rock might make it heat up, or turn it to coal, or similar. Most of the world is not so dense and it would do nothing. Maybe retain warmth a bit. Foundation Establishment is... Technically the same but different in character? But your understanding of Qi Gathering seems correct. Neutral spiritual qi leaks out of most objects immediately; Pills, spirit stones, and special qi storage devices can prevent it. Qi can be destroyed by expending itself, and it comes... From everywhere I suppose? And you're right that type and aspect are two separate properties. It does get complicated and there's no universal answer. Lots of things I don't know. Your true qi aspect depends largely on your cultivation method, and what methods work well for you depends on your natural alignment, bloodline and physique, sometimes personality and other factors. My method is largely instinctual and probably only suited to me and not exceptionally good. Your aspect can determine what kinds of techniques you're capable of, strength and weakness against other aspects, and so on. And people can detect it, though doing active sensing on people to get more detail without permission is rude."

"I see. If I try doing things by myself, without orthodox tutoring, is it likely that I'll do damage difficult to reverse? What's something I can usefully work on myself without potentially compromising my foundation? Oh, also: what are pills and spirit stones for? Do you draw the spiritual qi from spirit stones to fuel Qi Gathering?"

"I think... So long as you remain in the qi gathering realm and don't try to integrate anything obviously noxious and don't try absorbing too much qi at once or anything... You may as well try to cultivate without a well suited method, to practice the skill of cultivation. You may have to dissipate your cultivation later, so if you're vulnerable to putting good money after bad be wary of it, but it will be faster for the practice. Spirit stones are used in formations like the one on the keep that kept the blood tree sect out, and in alchemy to refine pills, and to create qi gathering formations, and many other uses besides. They're universally valuable because they're very flexible and useful. But don't just... Eat one or anything. That's what blood-and-qi pills are for. Actually, don't eat any of those until you manage to cultivate naturally. Bad habit to rely on it."

"If dissipating my cultivation will work reliably, then I may as well practice and learn. One of my powers is that I learn much faster from someone I have a personal connection with. I'm not sure we count as having a personal connection yet, but I expect if we travel together long enough, we will."

Not telling Wen about Dressing Room duplication impairs their productivity too much to consider; she already decided before, but she checks her logic again now to make sure.

She's sure.

"So the reason I asked about spirit stones is it's important whether they, and pills and other high-value consumable goods as well, have a productive use not requiring outside assistance that's bottlenecked by the availability of spirit stones. I promised to explain more about my abilities, so I may as well start now, since it's relevant."

"I'm physically strong and fast, and can fly. You already saw that, and those are my original powers, from the agent which is now severed from me. Based on the map I saw and estimated distance conversions, I can fly to the capital of the Three Jades Empire in a few hours. Carrying a human passenger will slow me down, but I think if you tranform into a fox I can carry you while maintaining that speed, so—just for you to keep in mind in case we ever have a problem which you think is solved by being halfway across the nation as soon as possible.

"My second set of powers, the ones granted to me by the Spirit... are very specific. When I said the Spirit is aligned with mortal values, I mean it in a very particular way. One of the powers makes my hair always look beautiful and exactly how I want it to, as the specific intended effect, not a side effect or clever application. Which—sounds stupid, but it's the vein of what the Spirit cares about. It cares about mortal things, personal things. The same with my power which makes me learn faster from friends; it's very much the type of ability you imagine a normal person comes up with.

"One of the powers the Spirit granted me is the ability to, when no one is looking at me—that condition wasn't very precisely defined to me, and I'd like your help testing its limits some time—but when nobody is looking at me, I can instantly change into any outfit I wish. Outfits I create this way are not temporary conjurations; if I take them off they continue to exist forever, like any normal object. I can create jewelry or gold this way to sell. And... if you turn around for a moment, it'll save time if I just demonstrate."

"I should hope we become something that can be called friends. The extradimensional traveller and the canny ascended fox... Someone should write a novel about it!

...You can make spirit stones, can't you. Spirit stones are very useful. Both directly and as money. If we don't drop thousands in the same place having a lot isn't even necessarily suspicious."

Nonetheless, she turns around, shrugging.

She Dressing Rooms a silver crown set with a dozen of the blue spirit stones from the reward pouch, thirty blood-and-qi pills strung into string bracelets, and a berry wreath of crimson rose hips.

She's also remembering she never Backchannel-verified Wen, which is a considerable oversight, and uses it to gauge the sincerity of "I should hope we become something that can be called friends"—

Huh. She does want to be friends, insofar as that's the way she prefers their relationship to work out instead of—employer and employee, resource and leech, glorious leader and shoe shiner—but also she's trying to probe Rebecca's boundaries. And also she just sort of likes the idea, detached from all other concerns. There's more subtext, but Backchannel doesn't quite let her dig that deep past the text of the message.

Rebecca already has a fairly good picture of how she wants their partnership to work, but there's no reliable way to hurry that along. For now, this is a good sign. She should have noticed the disconnect, though, and she doesn't like that she didn't. She's too used to working in familiar contexts.

"I'm done," she says. Once Wen is looking, she tosses the spirit stone crown at her and says, "And yes, you're right. They come out qi-active, but you should check if I made them wrong in a way I can't tell." She's still wearing the wreath on her head, and the bracelets are dangling from her left hand. "If there are any other consumable aids, I can figure out how to copy them."

She catches it, befuddled. Peers closely at one.

"This is so ridiculous, you know? I know how to do a very basic qi-gathering formation thanks to- Well, I'll tell that story later. I mean, telling stories might even be strategic, if this mysterious power requires us to be friends. ...I can test if it does anything weird when we make camp, and that'll also be a good time to teach you. I... Guess it'll have to be my own method. I also have something called the five-phases method but it's widely known and widely considered nearly useless. If you want to advance quickly, anyway."

"I probably don't appreciate how much it is here. But even back home, it would be. I can duplicate... 'power armor', we call it, which lets baseline, unpowered people hit much harder among other customizable capabilities. The best power armor I know of could take down anyone I saw from the Blood Tree Sect except maybe their leader." That's including only models designed for non-parahuman use. "And I can make infinite of them. I obviously can't start pass them out here because nobody can maintain it and it'd draw attention, but if there's something analogous local, we could look into it.

"I think stories are good, not only to enable the friendship powers, but because it helps me learn background knowledge about this world so I can fit in. I also have a power that can make time pass slower when I'm engaging in a friendship or relationship activity, even for aspirant friendships. If we get it to trigger, we can get a lot of progress out of that. And I have another po... I should just make a list later for you instead of telling you my powers piecemeal like this."

A redacted list, obviously.

"'Power armor' might be useful in the qi gathering realm, but not against serious powerhouses, it sounds like. I don't think there's any rush for me to learn everything you can do? It'll all come out over time, and it's healthy to keep things back sometimes. Well, the story is, I thought this guy was making fun of me for being a diremonster so I challenged him to a fight, I really trounced him and I was still super mad."

"Buuuut it turned out it was just a misunderstanding and he was understanding about it, and like... It was nice to see someone empathetic instead of stupid? It seemed genuine, and it was my fault, so we talked and, ah, we did some bed exercises, and we stayed together while waiting for this tournament, and he taught me to do a dirt-simple qi gathering formation somewhere in there. We both got to the third round of the tournament before falling out. Fan Yong, from White Lotus, of no particular sect, he was. Don't know what he's up to now... But we both knew it wasn't serious."

"I was thinking of a redacted list containing anything that's relevant to planning and strategy. If you're happy getting things piecemeal I'm happy do that; it's just I've worked with people who absolutely hate not being able to keep neat and tidy notes all the time." She smiles drily.

"That's a sweet story. I was skimming the town's book on imperial law just yesterday and the carveouts they had for cultivators did not suggest particularly good things about their general conduct, so it's good to know there are friendly people out there. Did you often encounter trouble with people making fun of you for being a direbeast? I'm not too clear on how the beast ascending path goes and what the... cultural concepts are, around each step."

"I think that's fine. I don't need all the answers, I'm never going to be bookish. And, oh, sometimes. They tend to keep it quiet, or use backhanded compliments. 'Oh, she's strong despite... You know'. It's a matter of face, is the thing. Everyone is giving face to their betters and expecting it from those lesser. It becomes a matter of survival, almost, if you let insults slide, maybe you're actually weak, maybe someone can make you disappear and face not a whisper of complaint from anyone. And even if things don't devolve into violence, everyone's... Competing for resources all the time, and appearing weak means you get less, and therefore become weak. And diremonsters are known to cultivate slowly in general, to simply be less talented than humans. I think it's a real effect - some of our essence is devoted towards bloodline abilities, like my skimming and fire breath and shape-shifting, but exaggerated by there being a lot more humans in human sects. So the best of the best stand out more. And a matter of jealousy, too.

-Please don't insult people if you can avoid it. If someone much weaker than you openly disrespects you, you're pretty much expected to smack them around a bit and it would be weird if you didn't. You'll develop the ability to roughly gauge strength in qi gathering, unless people are hiding their strength for one reason or another. You can limit it to a dismissive kick as long as it hurts. And being whacked really hard is preferable to embarrassment! Pain is temporary, loss of face is forever."

"That makes sense. One of the things I wanted to do was run through a set of scenarios to ask—if each event happens, how would the typical cultivator react, and what's the least they must do and the most they can do without compromising their status or getting into trouble."

"I can answer that. Sometimes the answer is 'it depends', though. Lay 'em out?"

"For I'm guessing many of the answers may be different dealing with a normal civilian, a cultivator weaker than me, one on the same level, and one stronger than me. And there's the confounding factor that other cultivators might not be able to tell if I'm stronger than them, since most of my current power isn't qi-based. But to start..."

She didn't have a full set prepared yet, but she some of the central cases:

1. Someone accidentally/deliberately bumps or trips you in the street. (And the reverse case.)
2. Someone insults you or someone you know indirectly/directly.
3. You catch someone trying to steal or pickpocket something from you.
4. You catch someone trying to scam, underpay, or otherwise make a fool of you.
5. Someone tries to break the word of an agreement, e.g. not pay up after you perform a service for them.
6. You catch someone trying to poison, sabotage, injure or kill you.

"For the first one... Hold on, this'll be easier if I make up people to tell it with. Uhh, Bao is a mortal who sells dumplings, Xian is a low-level qi gathering cultivator who's part of a major sect, Wen is a foundation cultivator who's not part of a sect, and Elder Jian is a fourth realm elder with a lot of authority in Xian's sect.

Bao might apologize to Xian for tripping her, or just ignore it if she had accidentally tripped him. But for an elder, even if he reached out and kicked him deliberately, Bao just apologizes for being in the way. Trading insults is, you know, almost traditional? And doesn't have to escalate past banter? The best response to avoid escalating things is aloofness most of the time- 'as if I care' type of attitude. If Bao insults Xian, she'll insult him right back. If Xian insults Bao, he'll probably hold his tongue. If Bao insults Wen- Not necessarily me but someone in my position- It depends on if she wants to make a thing of it. You pretend not to hear mortals at all, or you decide this insult cannot stand and smash one of his cooking pots into the street... I'm finding it hard to entertain these as hypotheticals. It'd be easier as stories or playacting."

"I think that already gave me a lot of information. Trading insults not being a big deal is a surprise to me. Is there any case where aloofness might work against you? Say if Jian insults Wen, saying she's—weak and untalented and should have stuck to being a farmer—I suppose in this example her parents were mortal farmers. Could Wen acting aloof invite further escalation, or would Jian doing that be showing himself to have a thin skin?"

"There's two kinds of insults, see- Ones everyone knows is just banter - 'your sword might as well be a toothpick!' or 'oh, don't worry, I'm sure your skills will improve soon', and ones that are actually serious - 'your mother was a whore' or 'you're a gambler who will never amount to anything'. And that's only between those on the same level, honestly. Insults between levels tend to end in blows. If Elder Jian says that to Wen, she has to grit her teeth and complain to her peers out of sight later. Since she's not part of the sect or directly under his authority, and not currently trying to curry favor either, she doesn't have to make a massive show of respect, just can't show disrespect. She can frown and glare, maybe say something polite to defend herself - 'this humble farmer will see what she can accomplish', like, slightly sarcastic, but... But Elder Jian continuing to berate her could reflect badly on him- For caring so much about a petty matter. I agree that it's hard, I spent years watching humans when I first found them and I was still... Weird, when I first shape-shifted."

"Interesting. I see the difference. In my culture, you might trade banter like that between friends, but not strangers. But you're saying cultivators on the same level of power would casually trade insulting banter between strangers, even from a different sect? Is it like a social game, where you need to give insults as well as you take them to be respected, or is it more of a sideshow you can ignore?"

"It's kind of a fighter thing. Especially during fights. If you become a refiner or talisman maker or something you can mostly ignore casual banter, I think. Not that I've ever been a refiner or talisman maker."

So it's like high schoolers trying to "burn" each other? Or something. Rebecca's concept of high school as absorbed by osmosis from her subordinates may not be entirely accurate.

She'll understand better once she sees it in action.

"Tell me about fights. In my world we have sparring between allies, where the objective is to learn and improve, and injuries are avoided wherever possible; we have competition fights between allies, where the objective is to win the match for status or a prize, and minor injury is permitted but discouraged; we have standard live combat between enemies, where the objective is incapacitation or capture, and anything short of permanent injury and death is fair game; and we have rarer lethal combat, where both sides fight to kill or worse. Can you give a similar summary for types of fights in this world, and also when and why they're invoked?"

"Friendly sparring between allies or acquaintances, to learn and improve or simply for the joy of fighting. Often to first blood, usually holding back considerably.

Unfriendly sparring between allies or acquaintances, with the objective of embarrassing or hurting someone you don't like and getting away with it. Basically bullying. It's... If you don't have backing and can't avoid it, too bad for you?

Competition fights of all sorts, either between allies or among strangers, these can often lead to bad injuries, though usually not permanent ones. Some disreputable fights like that are to death. The prizes tend to be grand- Thousands of spirit stones, admission into a select group or access to a secret method. The better kinds have sect elders place barriers on the participants- If the barrier breaks, it's assumed you would have died without it, but it protects you.

Beatdowns where one group who is obviously more powerful is avenging an insult or theft or similar, with the purpose of injuring and humiliating the 'opponent' and displaying power but not escalating to killing. Or taking things from them. Usually done as a matter of face or if one refuses a 'tax'.

Standoffs between two groups of comparable power, where one group is trying to intimidate or extort or drive away another, and they fight to demonstrate seriousness and strength, but without necessarily having lethal intent. Conserving resources.

Suppression, fights where a powerful and experienced group sets out to exterminate or drive away a minor threat that doesn't pose a serious challenge. Qi condensation versus mortal bandits, or foundation establishment against non-sapient spirit beasts.

Open war, fights with the express purpose to imprison or kill whatever you're against, burn and steal whatever you can. Anything goes, ambush, poison, using up pills and talismans or exhausting techniques."

She nods, taking some time to digest.

"What are the usual pretexts for unfriendly sparring, a beatdown or a standoff? Are the former two less likely to progress to permanent injury than a competition fight? What are the signs that someone is coming at me with serious intent to kill or injure? Or that someone is burning scarce resources like talismans and pills? I want to avoid a situation where I retaliate with too much force when they're just trying to send a message, or where I misgauge how hard someone is trying to kill me and make mistakes because of that."

......

"Gen! Oh, how good to see you practicing diligently! How about I give you some pointers so you can improve."

"I wouldn't want to waste your time with one such as this, senior."

"No, I insist! It's my duty to help the juniors see the light! Now, stand guard!"

"...If they're making a show like that, or they challenge you openly, it's probably for face and not with lethal intent. Probably. If they're just attacking out of nowhere, that's a much worse sign. But it's hard to tell, which can make every potential fight nerve-wracking. If you want to de-escalate, grappling someone and being unimpressed, or applying pressure with your presence - it'll make sense once you have some - is a way to show your annoyance without doing violence. Talismans are small paper tags or pieces of jewelry, and usually you can feel them activating with qi sense. Pills are not always obvious unless you see people taking them, but if they seem like they're not used to their own strength, or they smell funny - I smell better than you probably - that's a strong sign of such."

"Understood. That was a useful way of demonstrating. At some point we should think about what useful talismans I could easily get access to to copy—I should only need to hold one for a while to duplicate it later.

"Back to the scenarios: if I catch someone stealing from me, what's an appropriate response? Say I'm walking along the street and I've been pickpocketed, or my residence has been burgled. I'm particularly wondering who I'd want to escalate the issue to, if it's another cultivator, or if I'm supposed to deal with it by myself. What would be proportionate force to use in retrieving stolen belongings?"

"...So, there's a thing I don't entirely understand, where the affairs of juniors tend to be left to juniors. Old monsters and sect elders don't just go out and kill their favorite pupils' rivals, or even rob them. If the young'uns get themselves killed starting stupid fights, they kind of deserved it. I guess."

"If someone successfully pickpockets you, and they happen to be from a strong sect, just going up and saying you have evidence of theft will get you laughed at and thrown out. Also, haha you were lax enough to get pickpocketed at all- Grabbing their arm as they try and scaring the shit out of them is perfectly acceptable, it's just chasing down after the fact that... If you go find them - outside of the secure parts of the sect - and beat them a bit and take your stuff back... Eh, juniors being juniors. But you might just not get it back, especially if someone indicates that they're not going to let you do that. House robberies... You're mostly just kind of screwed, if it's a larger group. Which is why you want to rent places that are backed by someone strong or locally respected at a premium, so they can be offended on your behalf if someone robs them. This is a lot of why people band together in sects and put their valuables behind a shared guard and defensive formation."

"So, if I discover my room at a random inn has been broken into and my stuff is missing, I'm just screwed. I can look for who did it, but unless they're a loner with no backing, nope. But if I discover my villa sponsored by Elder Jian has been broken into, I report that to the managers and they won't just compensate me freely, but they'll at least make a decent effort at investigating and getting the stuff back because it impacts their face. Such an event would end in either a beatdown or a standoff, too."

"To clarify what I think I understood: if someone successfully pickpocketed or robbed me, and I find out who they are—I can take my stuff back by force if I see them again in a public place, but if they don't have it on them, I shouldn't try to break into their sect. I'm assuming that gets me in trouble with the whole sect. Can I intimidate them until they go back to get my stuff and return it to me...? I can see a lot of ways that's inviting trouble, but if I'm in a pinch."

She tilts her head.

"Also, it might be useful to understand what things do and do not get me in trouble with the whole sect, as opposed to a specific sect member. I expect it's mostly common sense, but if there are any unintuitive edge cases?"

"That sounds about right? Intimidating them might be a spotty strategy but nobody would think you're monstrous for it. Sect trouble- Stealing secret knowledge or rare valuable things is the big one that will definitely get you in trouble with the whole sect. Anything else, frustratingly, it depends on how aggressive the sect in question is. You have to feel out their reputations. Some are bandit gangs with pretensions. Some are trying to be righteous and mostly succeeding. A lot are somewhere in the middle. Hmm..."

"When I was in the qi condensation phase, I couldn't yet take human shape, but I spent a lot of time sneaking into a small local sect- The Clay Pit School- And using their qi gathering formation when they weren't using it, at night. I knew they would chase me off if they saw me, and I knew I was stealing, sort of, but it was an animalistic conception of it. Ah, yes, the secret buried food. I will take it and run away, I'm so clever and smart! Well, they noticed the spirit stones powering the thing were depleting much faster, and set out a trap for me. A core formation elder waiting, hidden, for me to sneak in and cultivate there once again."

"He gave me two options. One, I let him study my cultivation method for a month, show him how I got through the defensive formation, and do menial chores in penance - I was a fox, so it was more about them being awful than actually doing anything of use. Two, he kills me and refines my body into fire and wind aligned cultivation pills. Obviously, I chose the first thing. He swore an oath to the Heavenly Dao about it, and something in me knew that was - sincere. You can feel it. I'm still not sure if it was pity that motivated him, thoughts of karma, or genuine curiosity. Something like five spirit stones... Ultimately a fairly cheap price for a core formation elder. The whole sect was very cold to me, and I don't really blame them. I would not be surprised if, any random sect, even nominally righteous ones, just murdered me on the spot about it instead."

Rebecca is quiet for a few seconds.

"I'm not sure if I should say I'm sorry that happened to you, since it sounds like you might have come out of the deal for the better. But I'm glad the elder didn't kill you." She looks troubled. "If it were a human of equivalent cultivation, would a random sect have killed you? Or was it because..."

"I really don't know. I spent that time terrified and confused but it was also when I first started actually understanding. Why there are laws, and sects, and - rules, money, cities - It's all a blur now."

She nods.

After a pause: "How long ago was that, now? I don't know how—is there an umbrella term for beings like you, through their entire ascending path?—how you age."

She takes deep breaths.

"Diremonsters. Spirit beasts are animals that have some spiritual power, some qi, within them. Diremonsters are spirit beasts who have gained awareness- Most just stick with the law of the jungle. I wasn't happy like that, I wanted safety, and that seems to be the motivation for most diremonsters that enter society. Ascended animals are diremonsters who have learned to take human form.

...And this was somewhere between... Twenty and thirty years ago, probably. It didn't occur to me to track the time like that until about ten years ago. Even after the Clay Pit let me go, I spent most of my time alone. Occasionally spooking some mortals into giving me tribute in exchange for protection, and avoiding other cultivators in case they also wanted to catch me. A few did come nosing around now and again. I'd hear them talking about how spirit fox fur is very valuable and either kill them preemptively or run for weeks."

So Wen is chronologically almost as old as her, or older. Rebecca was ready for that, but it still feels strange. And for the rest of it, she doesn't need Backchannel to interpret for this one.

"Those who hunt other thinking beings as resources..." She shakes her head. "I hesitate to declare people intrinsically deserving of death, but certainly some are more deserving than others. One does what one must to survive. You're a good sort."

(It's not as if there's anyone around to judge the irony.)

"Oh, am I? I suppose. Charitably, they may have thought I wasn't sapient. Though it sounds a little bit like you've faced the realities of life too, where you come from. If nothing else, being a protector will inevitably get... Messy."

"If you could transform into human shape—or did they only hear rumors and not realize—that would make it better, I suppose. Back where I came from, we had slavers, organ harvesters and worse. It's one thing to kill and harm for survival or out of ignorance, another to do it out of knowing greed or perverse pleasure. I spent twenty years learning and teaching to navigate the messiness of my home. Now I'm here, I suppose I'll need to relearn a lot."

"I wouldn't know. It seems to me that people are people wherever you are. I've crossed mountains, jungles, snowy places, swamps and lakes, and the general shape of things tends to stay the same?"

"People are people, but their expression is shaped by the structure of society and opportunities around them. Those of true evil and true good do exist, but for most people who end up as bandits, thieves, corrupt officials, or—demonic cultivators—or heroes or righteous elders or good mayors, it's less their inborn character and more their circumstances that make them so, is it not? One born into a bandit camp is more likely to become a bandit. The difference between empires with corrupt and honest governments isn't that the children in one empire are born more honest than in another, but because of the design of checks and balances in the administration, because of the Emperor's commitment to rooting out corruption, or simply because some cultures teach and uphold virtues better than others.

"That kind of perspective isn't as relevant when you're on the ground walking your own path, compared to being an governer commanding from up high, but—I think it still is relevant.

"When I defeated those demonic cultivators yesterday, I didn't know if I should kill or spare them. Because I didn't know what demonic cultivation is, but also: Did they become demonic cultivators because it was their way to survive, or because they relished in power and cruelty? Is it possible for demonic cultivators to reform, and are there institutions to help them do that? How likely was it that they'd go on to hurt more people if I let them live? One of the Blood Tree Sect cultivators turned herself in this morning, having dissipated her cultivation and swearing to become a Buddhist monk. I didn't know those things were possible. If I had, maybe I would have offered it to the others I defeated—I have the ability to verify such oaths, to an extent.

"The people who hunt diremonsters: Do they know their prey is sapient, or do they simply not care? Do 'righteous' sects condone their behavior? Does imperial law permit it? Do the imperial legislators know and not care, or are the cultivators too powerful to be bound by the law? Are there factions for and against the hunting of diremonsters? That tells me, if I see some in the woods, whether I should be tying up and lecturing fools, slaying them where they stand, or capturing them to deliver to someone. Or, if I'm more serious about solving the problem, if I should be spreading knowledge in the world, playing politics to get the laws changed, or attempting to empower the law to uphold its code."

"I don't really know about this... Organization stuff. It all goes over my head. Maybe 'cause I haven't got chances to learn, or been very interested in it. Mostly I'm interested in what society can do for me and how to stay safe... Well, in Three Jades it would be 'royal' not 'imperial'. I think the nearest 'empire' is across the lake. And in Three Jades it's more that the sect elders are honored advisors to the king, who is himself a former Three Jades Sect member, so. You can imagine that the laws favor the Three Jades Sect. From what I've heard, officially the killing of diremonsters is accepted under the same conditions as the killing of another cultivator- If they attack you or mortals, it's acceptable. But also, one can claim that the diremonster they were hunting was eating people more easily than that the random person they murdered was a demonic cultivator, or that she was actually just a dumb spirit beast.

I've actually been rescued by a Nascent Soul elder from Three Jades in the past, enforcing the law against murder against some independents. But only because I managed to evade and hold my own for the first thirty seconds until there was too much noise to ignore... But in the state of Qing, diremonsters are expressly considered menaces and threats, with a public bounty on them like any other spirit beast. Fully ascended animals are reluctantly tolerated. So, in Three Jades probably lecturing some idiots, in Qing... There's nobody to deliver them to who'd consider it a problem. It's hard to imprison cultivators. Also... Most diremonsters wouldn't consider it a problem to be hunted?"

She nods through the explanation on law.

"That's good, for the Three Jades. I suppose I'm used to thinking this way because I had a leadership position at home, but also because when I first started...

"I was part of the first generation to have powers. We had no existing place in society. Everything we did was setting precedent. All the world's eyes were one us, and every person I saved or accidentally hurt, every mistake I made, it was proving one faction right or another wrong, changing minds and... it was like every move slightly tilted the whole future in a different direction. Playing politics was the only way to secure our place.

"Here we're concerned on the lower level more, as you said. But part it's still things I need to learn. Who not to offend and how. When to escalate and not. The hierarchy of power.

"I admit I'm confused why diremonsters don't consider it a problem to be hunted, or—is it just that they think it normal, or do they benefit from it indirectly somehow...?"

"...Appearances. So tedious. Reputation, crafts, politics. Don't you want to just lash out and eat something, not caring about any of that, sometimes? ...It's normal and most wouldn't want it any other way. Also, if you win you can eat what was hunting you. If they want to go join human society, they can. Usually."

She snorts.

"It is tedious, isn't it? It was novel for a while, when I was younger. But these days in the middle of meetings I just want to jump out the window and go for a few rounds with Leviathan. That's a city-destroying giant water lizard that no one's ever managed to defeat, though we've tried very hard."

What she's not saying is that the fighting eventually wore on her as well, perhaps even faster than the politicking. And some days all left that she wanted was to shut the door, turn off the lights, lie down in her overpriced ergonomic chair and... stop.

"I suppose if the diremonsters are fine with it, who am I to say otherwise? I can certainly see the appeal of simplicity."

"It's not quite always so simple, but yes." 

She sighs.

"...Some take comfort in the cycle of reincarnation, but I can't really imagine that some future person with none of my memories is me."

"I'm of a similar opinion," says Rebecca.

After a pause:

"...At home people theorized about reincarnation, but common belief now is that we simply cease to exist after our body passes. Is the cycle something observable here? How does it work?"

"I don't really know for sure but a lot of people are quite confident, and you hear about reincarnated immortals- Tribulation Immortals, not Celestial Immortals- Recovering their memories over time, and raids on Hell to recover great sages, and the Great Solar Alliance used augury and travelled millions of li, to find the reincarnation of their leader."

"That's interesting. 'Hell' is... the word is used to refer to many things, in my home; what does it mean here? By your understanding, what determines the path one leads after death?"

"Karmic sin and karmic merit. Notoriously difficult to get a solid read on without specific arts for it, usually ones designed to interact with souls. Ghost cultivators are scary. Murder, torture, rape, grave desecration, and so on are sins. Charity, kindness, healing, guiding spirits onward, and punishing evildoers are merits. I was told once that I have slight karmic merit. Probably mostly from fighting demonic cultivators."

"Where do people commonly believe they pass into, for different levels of karmic sin and merit, and what happens there? I've heard different accounts of the cycle of reincarnation."

"There are dozens of Hells, each different from the last- You suffer there, until your sin is expunged, then you're reincarnated. Those with karmic merit... I don't know. It doesn't come up as much. Maybe they go somewhere for a while, maybe they just reincarnate."

"I see."

Better than some interpretations of the Christian Hell. And it puts the comment about letting the counts of Hell sort them out in context.

"Back to what you said about stealing secret knowledge from sects: does it still count as stealing if I learn something by observing a sect member execute a technique in a public, or if I buy the knowledge from someone else who stole it, either knowingly or unknowingly?"

"That is... Weird to think about. I mean... If I imagine being a sect elder hearing about a weird visitor who copied a technique by watching it, I'm concerned but resigned to it. If I hear about a weird visitor who did that and is distributing our sect techniques, I go kill them. Also, it's not like knowledge never spreads or leaks. They sell copies sometimes, usually with oaths not to spread it. They can't hunt every violator across the earth, just make it predictably a bad idea?"

So more like copyright than total-secrecy forbidden knowledge.

"Is it possible to copy a technique just by watching it?"

"No way, not unless you're multiple realms higher or, like, a sensory specialist and also they demonstrate it nice and slow for you."

She shouldn't spend time trying to figure a way around that. Her need-to-know-everything instincts aren't productive here. With Anything You Can Do and Time Enough For Love, adversarial spying doesn't play to her advantages.

"Should we break so I can get started on Qi Gathering? Is it something I'll be able to practice while flying, once I have the hang of it?"

"Probably. But can we just run for a while first? We've been talking for a while."

All of Rebecca's work circles are used to days spent 30% to 70% in meetings or poring over shop talk. Wen probably isn't. She needs to keep that in mind.

"Absolutely," she says. "Do tell me whenever I'm pushing too much. I tend to... overfocus on ironing out details, forget to take time to pause." Because she doesn't, except usually her endless attention isn't monopolized all day by the only person anywhere in sight.

She will allow them to run in peace until nightfall or Wen brings something up.

She goes to furry form, gives a yip that seems to indicate that it's no big deal, and dashes along for a while. The terrain steadily changes- Fewer rolling hills, more open plains. There's herds of animals in the distance once or twice. Around lunchtime she suddenly veers off the slightly-overgrown dirt road, surging low across the ground and keeping to depressions, and pounces on some sort of boar that never really stood a chance.

'Here's lunch!' her body language practically shouts. It's far too clear to not be some kind of magic. A head-tilt to a copse of trees says 'can you get some firewood?'

"Should I collect fallen branches, or break down some trees...?"

Tail-flick. (This is a shrug.)

Then she's human-shaped again, twirling a little knife and starting to work on butchering.

She will find a tree a little way into the copse and break a few large branches off. She tries to pick branches that won't leave the trees looking very conspicuously debranched. She's aware that this is stupid.

She also changes into something more camping-suitable, along with a butane torch and a pair of high-quality radio earpieces, while she's out of sight.

When she's back she dumps the branches in a pile near Wen, away from any flammable shrubs or such. Is Wen going to light the fire with magic qi, or should Rebecca torch it?

She blinks when reminded that Rebecca is here.

"...Either way, I can do fire, it's just wasteful to replace fuel entirely. And, sorry for being kinda... Eh. I usually travel alone, you know? And you seem like you're going to make yourself very busy. Which can get overwhelming."

She'll torch it and put the lighter away.

"I'm often described as intense," she says drily, sitting down by the fire. "Including by people who are themselves described as intense. But I'm trying to think of this as... not a vacation, since I don't expect not to do important or dangerous things eventually, but... a sort of development break, perhaps. So I'm not opposed to reminders to take it easy. How do you usually travel when you're alone?"

"If you make yourself sick of progress, progress stops being made. Even though I really sympathize with 'everyone else is doing it wrong and must be stopped'... The man who ends a mountain begins by carrying away a single stone. When I'm not in major kingdoms I spend a lot of time off the main paths. Wandering, foraging forgotten anomalies, avoiding many of the spirit beasts and diremonsters, just appreciating the immensity of heaven and earth. It's dangerous, but nostalgic."

She lets out an undignified snort at "everyone else is doing it wrong and must be stopped".

"We can do more of that if you like. We're in no hurry." She idly pokes the fire with a stick. "Studies say spending time in nature makes you live longer." After a pause, she laughs. "Sorry, that's—true where I'm from, but it's a joke."

"Spending time in nature makes you more likely to get eaten by something. I also have no reason to linger more than is really necessary. I came to Three Jades purely on rumor of blood-related materials, so I could have someone make a blood-quickening pill I've heard of, specifically for diremonsters with fire affinity. Water suppresses fire, you know. That should help my endurance and recovery!"

She separates a haunch, not especially caring about being partially covered in blood.

"This guy is - barely - a spirit beast. There's a core that might be worth something, I'll get to it in a bit. Sort of like <century?> koi. And the reason I went for him instead of packed food is that mundane food has slight levels of spiritual impurity- Just barely enough to hinder your cultivation slightly because you need to take the time to purge them. A lot like what I'm doing to my wounds. 'Spiritual' food, including spirit beast meat, has less. And, well, he wasn't a person. Law of the jungle. After this, I'll make a pair of qi gathering circles and we can camp for a day or two, it's not a bad spot for training if you're so eager."

"I would appreciate that.

"I wonder spiritual food I duplicate has the same purity. If I don't eat any food at all, would that keep me the most pure and help my cultivation the most? It would be a bit depressing, though, to never eat anything, even for fun... I didn't use to need food to survive, but maybe I do now, actually, to cultivate."

"Your spirit stones seem fine! Get some immortal chefs to make you the best bento they can when we're back in the city. Spiritual food is much tastier than ordinary food! And I would be surprised if you needed food. Requirements for breath, food, water, and sleep tend to go down as you cultivate."

So taking Breathe Easy was a waste of points She couldn't have predicted that and she's not even there yet.

"There are immortal chefs? Are those chefs who are immortal or just the name for chefs of a certain level?"

"No, that's just the name for the discipline of cooking spiritual food!"

Rebecca chuckles. "Do you want help with that?" she wonders aloud.

"Sure. The most annoying part is disposing of things so it won't make a stench or get into that stream over there."

She has big chunks of meat roasting on thin metal sticks in a few minutes, and clears the vegetation out of two large circles before drawing in them with some sort of special chalk with a hint of qi in it. There's one smaller circle with a few complicated glyphs around it - not characters she recognizes, if they are characters - and then a series of short arrows making a counter-clockwise loop along a much bigger circle.

"This," she declares, "Is Fan Yong's Dirt Simple Qi Gathering Circle. You just put a spirit stone or any other leaky spiritual material in the small circle, then sit inside the large circle. It should give off a steady thrumming of qi, which is helpful for the first prerequisite- Sensing spiritual energy and moving it in time with your breath. We can get started while the meat cooks."

Rebecca memorizes the circle but doesn't ask how it works yet.

When Wen's looking away she creates two spirit stones. She floats over the chalk so as to not disturb it, places one stone in the slot of the closer of the diagrams (does Wen want the other?) and settles in the middle of the circle. What does it feel like? She looks at Wen questioningly.

She does want the other, just not quite yet.

It feels like... Spinning. A slight breeze washing over her, slightly turbulent and uneven, growing stronger as it gets up to speed.

"This part is not very dangerous. But some parts of cultivation in the future can be very dangerous. I'm going to give you my instructions according to how I did it, how I would do it, from my instincts. There's probably reasons for doing things in certain ways. So sit in the lotus position, like this."

She demonstrates.

"Hands and arms wherever you feel comfortable. Get into a good posture that feels comfortable and alert but unburdened. Your breathing pattern is important, but people focus on that too much. What really matters is how you feel. There's a soul inside you, near immutable. And a spirit surrounding your soul like skin and muscle surrounds bone. Your spirit is like your body. It answers to you. It just doesn't know it yet. I think you can sense qi already, which will speed things up. What you should do now is focus. The thing it's brushing against is not your body, it's your spirit. You want to ignore your body and become aware of your spirit by degrees, like using a limb that's never moved before. Is it soft? Is it breathing like you do? Can you tense or relax it? Don't hurry. The goal is a meditative state where you can do this. My visualization is a steady flame, growing as I breathe in and shrinking when I breathe out."

She watches and waits until Rebecca seems ready.

"Six beats in, hold three, two beats out, hold four. That is the breathing pattern. Breathing in should come with a building of energy or pressure, and breathing out a sudden release of it. Now breathe in, slowly, slowly. Three, four, five, six. Hold, two three. Breathe out quickly, two. Hold, two, three, four. In, two, three, four, five, six..."

Rebecca did a stint learning how to meditate long ago. She got down the textbook basics but never went anywhere with it. She's good at focus, which she's not sure is the same thing.

She gives it her best shot. She settles into a lotus pose and tries to feel her spirit. She's been thinking of the way she's feeling qi as a singular sense; can she break that down more, into a—surface? As she inhales, holds, and exhales, does that change? She tries thinking of a candleflame first, but something about spirit surrounding your soul like skin and muscle surrounds bone shifts the picture, and she finds herself imagining something more like a tiny star inside her, a pinpoint core enveloped by a radiant corona, the latter expanding and contracting with each breath.

(She's not sure if Anything You Can Do is working. They're getting on alright, but they've also only spoken for a few hours.)