Shards of Awakening

When one speaks of the confluence of ley-lines that form cultivation sites, one must, almost perforce discuss the unrivaled puissance of the Imperial Palace. A vortex, an anchor, and the metaphysical heart of the Eternal Empire. The Imperial Palace draws in flows of qi from even the farthest corners of the empire with the aid of a rigorously designed and meticulously placed geomantic arrays. These edifices of aspected gi and artifice, colloquially known as "waystones", serve as principal locations whereby the sluggish and unregulated qi of the natural world can be siphoned, packaged, and transferred unto the capital.

While no cultivation site can claim to hold even a fraction of the breadth and depth of power that flows into the Imperial Palace, there are a small number of artificial sites that have attempted a similar feat of arcane engineering, at least in miniature. Most notable among these are the Thrones of the Seven Kingdoms. In contrast, radiative analysis of the concatenation of flows through waystones predicts the presence of numerous natural cultivation sites of incredible potency. Undoubtedly some have been previously claimed by various Spirit Courts, but even then, statistical analyses of known Spirit Courts across the Empire demonstrates that Spirit Court assumption of sites only accounts for a fraction of the total number of predicted sites.

The differential between predicted and known cultivation sites has several speculative answers that will be discussed in detail in subsequent chapters, however in brief the hypotheses are as follows in ranking of likelihood: sites are in fact known, but knowledge is hidden or restricted; radiative analysis is incorrect in its predictive methodology; the number of Spirit Courts vastly exceeds current statistical models; that the radiative analysis is observing the presence of an orthogonal network of waystones or similar coordinative effects.

Introduction to Song Daiyu's Dissertation on the Nature of Cultivation Sites. Encyclical 234. Published under the auspices of the Ministry of Glorious Expansion.

[X] Plan Noble Social + Cultivation
-[X] Cultivate Art or Technique
--[X] Dreamer's Endless Journey
--[X] 2 Spirit Diamonds


Dreamer's Endless Journey was a bit of a peculiar art, though that could perhaps be said of most arts. Nevertheless, instead of quiet, boring, cultivation, locked away in some cave or whatever, her art required her to move. Or rather to follow fate wherever it led. That was how she'd found her cute little maids after all, one of which was currently trailing along a step behind her.

Is Mei Mei really that good a role model?

"You should walk beside me, that way I don't have to turn around to see my cute maid," words that would have infuriated Screeching Monkey merely made Xue Meilin blush and lower her gaze.

Still, she hastens forward a half step with a whispered, "as my lady wishes."

Quan Jia sighs, but lets it go. Mei Mei had said to let them have some time, and since it hadn't even been a full week… well, they still had four days left. "You know, if you'd said you and your brother couldn't cook, we could have picked up a chef or something while we were out."

"Please accept my most humble apologies for mine and my brother's failings, my lady." What made the response so annoying was her maid's complete lack of mockery. Honestly, there wasn't even the slightest trace of sarcasm.

Four more days…

"It's not something to apologize for, Mei Mei can't cook either and she wouldn't apologize for that." Quan Jia smiles a somewhat forced smile hoping to reassure the girl.

"As you say, my lady," it doesn't seem to work.

Sigh…

"So anyways, we're here, wandering through this rather… would you call it pastoral… scenery, because there's apparently a decent chef at the end of the rainbow." It was, perhaps, a touch late to be describing why they were out in the mid-afternoon sun, traipsing through near wilderness like this, but better late than never…

Mei Mei would have asked...

"As you say, my lady," her maid echoes, not commenting at all on Quan Jia's word choice.

Four more days…

Perhaps this was the wrong tact. Perhaps she'd have better luck by just overwhelming her with questions. So with no better options coming immediately to mind, she babbles into the awkward silence, "So, how do you like your work? Your clothes are cute, right? There's not too much work for you is there? Are you sure you and Scre- I mean Xue Shi don't want separate rooms? What were you doing in that alley? Do you want to learn to cultivate?"

The torrent of questions washes over Xue Meilin and Quan Jia grins internally as hesitant confusion gives way to motionless shock at her last question.

Gotcha…

"Are you, do you, I can't... ," her maid stutters, caught in what could only really be described as a rapidly growing panic.

Quan Jia grins externally as well, "why not? It'll be a few years before you can awaken, and a few more for Screeching Monkey, but we can test your core for purity before that. Well, Mei Mei can, I'll just be there to watch."

"As easy as that…" she mumbles before belatedly adding, "my lady."

Almost…

"Sure is," she nods an agreement, "cool people are worth cool things… life doesn't have to be hard, you know."

"In fact, I'll let you in on a secret," Quan Jia waves her maid over and lowers her voice. Can't ever be too careful when there could be sneaky Mei Mei's around, "I'm trying to teach Mei Mei and Xiao Lien those same lessons too, and I could use some help…"

"I don't see how, but whatever help I can offer, is yours, my lady," the other girl looks up at her, dark eyes solemn.

"Good, in that case this next part is even more secret," she puts an arm around her maid to draw her in closer. Her voice lowers to a bare whisper, "you have to overwhelm them in ways they're not expecting. Mei Mei with friendship: to show her she's not as alone as she thinks she is. Xiao Lien with gifts: to show her that she's worth far more than she thinks she is."

Quan Jia pauses there, grins as her maid's posture begins to relax and continues, "you by showing that I'm really not that untouchable, am I?"

"My lady?" there's a bit of a plaintive note in the other girl's voice. One that Quan Jia happily ignores.

I almost made it three whole days, that's not too bad...

"Nope," she grins, "it's a metaphor… or is it a simile? I can never keep them straight. Well, whatever it is, Xue Meilin just needs to see that being a maid is just something she does, not something she is."

"And if I like calling you my lady?" Xue Meilin's voice quavers, fades down to a nervous whisper.

"Hmm," she hums thoughtfully, "well, I suppose we can work on that later."

A small, clay roofed building appears around the turn in the path they were on, and the ray of rainbow light she was following similarly ends. Reluctantly, she lets go of her maid as they walk past a sign depicting a bowl of noodles with a pair of chopsticks sticking out from it.

"Well, here we are," Quan Jia muses as she looks through the single smoky glass window facing their direction. "Hmm, it feels like there's a… fork? No that's too punny, Let's call it a split in fate. Down one path I go in and hire our new chef, down the other, my cute maid does it for me. It's just a shame I can't tell which option is better."

"Umm, my lady, are you sure that's something you want to entrust to…" her maid trails off with a seeming lack of confidence.

[] "Don't worry," she grins, "I may not look like it, but I can fight pretty good. If anyone gives you any problems, I'll beat them up." (Xue Meilin goes inside and negotiates for hiring a chef.)

[] "In that case," she grins, "I guess it's ok just to watch and learn. For now." (Quan Jia goes inside and hires a chef.)

[] "Don't worry," she grins, "I may not look like it, but I can fight pretty good. If anyone gives you any problems, I'll beat them up." (Xue Meilin goes inside and negotiates for hiring a chef.)

Xue Meilin could pinpoint the exact instant that her world stopped making sense. It had been when an Immortal, wearing a shimmering dress of black and gold worth far more than the village itself, had… skipped… into the alleyway she and her brother had called home for the past few months and started arguing with Shi. It had been when a vibrant chaos had arrived, distracted green eyes and a distracting face both glowing with an inner light and bringing with them a change from the dull grey of reality into the pastel softness of the surreal. It had been when something like fate, or perhaps just surrender had come for them.

After months spent teetering on a knife's edge of hunger and survival and despair. After months spent in a state of constant fear of anyone larger, older, stronger, because she knew enough to know the misery that awaited stray children caught by those dead-eyed demons. She'd been tired, so very tired. So when that Immortal had said that she wanted them, Xue Meilin had known that their time in that alley was over. There was, after all, no refusal she could offer; it would have been the ants' defiance of the tiger, only less successful, for she wouldn't have been able to offer up even a single vengeant bite. Confusingly though, in that moment where She had smiled at them, a purse full of gold coins in her hand, and made an offer; Xue Meilin had felt only liberation by accepting. It was had been peculiar kind of feeling to surrender to fate like that.

Yes, chaos, fate... salvation, had arrived with a name that she scarcely dared utter within her own thoughts for the feelings that came with it. It was fortunate that Lady Liu Mei had taken her aside and provided her with an example to emulate and the distance from the confusing, impossible, emotions that it afforded.

All of that and more blurs formlessly through her thoughts as Xue Meilin looks back at her lady. A face, ringed in loose strands of blonde hair smiles in what was probably meant to be an encouraging way, but only makes her heart thump loudly in her chest. The thumbs up, on the other hand, releases a knot that had been tightening in her chest, and she breathes out.

Right, I can do this. I can't fail my first mission…

Turning back around, only partly to hide the blush on her cheeks, Xue Meilin glances briefly at the sign for a noodle house before her eyes fix on the restaurant itself. It seemed entirely too innocent for the way it loomed in her mind's eye. Thin trails of smoke rose out of a chimney, and a single window gave a muted, distorted, view of the interior. It was peaceful, unremarkable, the kind of place she and Shi would have gone with their parents when momma was too tired to cook. It was the kind of place she'd meticulously avoided after. And now...

A door yields beneath her hands and Xue Meilin is inside a room lined by long benches and equally long tables before she can even truly process that she'd moved. Sunlight fades to a firelit haze wreathing the room with a faded, purple smoke. Half dozen dull, tired eyes glance up her entrance and then quickly, resolutely, back down to bowls full of browned meat and yellow noodles. For a minute, she's is taken aback by the mundanity of it all, but more than the normalness, there's something deeply liberating in the complete lack of interest. There's also something incredibly empowering in both her mission and her lady's waiting presence.

I could slap that big guy over by the fireplace and get away with it…

The thought bubbles up and Xue Meilin chokes down a, probably slightly hysterical, giggle as she scans the room and faces for the one she'd come in to find. Fortunately, finding a chef in a single common room wasn't exactly a challenge, and after no more than a moment of study, she'd spotted her quarry. There, haloed against the gloom by the cherry red light of the cooking fire is a boy, somewhere past puberty, but not yet a man. His long black hair is tied back loosely below his shoulders and a sweat-stained bandana covers a forehead slackened in confusion as he stares directly at her. The trust placed in her by her lady forestalls a flinch, but she can't quite avoid the discomfort that level of scrutiny brings.

Still, she had a mission to accomplish, and the cooking boy was it, so with a fortifying breath, she weaves through long benches and averted gazes and over to his side. Voice pitched low so as not to carry within the almost completely silent common room, Xue Meilin bows slightly, as Lady Liu Mei had demonstrated. "Greetings. I am Xue Meilin, Chief Maid of Lady Quan Jia. On my lady's behalf I come with an offer of employment as the personal chef for one who works within this restaurant."

Blue eyes widen with shock, and the wok in the boy's hands tilts dangerously toward the fire. With a visible shake of the head, he seems to regain composure and, setting the wok aside, bows deeply. "Lady Xue. I'm Shi Yun. Welcome to the Twisted Noodle, pops cooks for the dinner crowd, but he's been teachin' me 'bout handlin' the rest of the meals."

It was odd, and perhaps a bit exhilarating, to be treated with that kind of respect. It was that momentary rush which must have loosened her tongue enough to ask, "would you say that the… colorless offerings on display here represent the extent of your craft?"

"We make do, best we can," he shrugs, and that bland acceptance of a poverty she knew all too well drags that fluttering feeling back within her chest. "Veggies're out of season. Can't do much 'bout the color with what we can afford."

"Right," she nods, a touch quickly, and with more than a touch of embarrassment, "but you seem to have a number of customers despite the hour."

"These louts'd eat anythin' with some meat in it," his easy grin shows that the words are more endearment than anything else, "But it ain't 'bout that, it's about respectin' the food and the eater, and me an' pops've been perfectin' recipes's long as I've been alive."

"So that is the choice then?" Xue Meilin muses, as much to herself as to the boy, "whether to hire the father or the son."

It seems almost a bit cruel to take away the father and leave his son behind to try and manage this place by himself. And yet is it any less cruel to take a son from a father and leave an old man to run things by himself?

"Perhaps if you could describe your styles?" she finally decides.

"Reckon I can," the boy relaxes a bit as he begins to speak. "Pops got trained in one of the big cities, Liuzhou, maybe, under some famous chef. How we came to be out here is a whole nother story, but to answer the question: pops likes things traditional. Real good with fancy meals, roasts, meats, that kinda thing. Me, I prefer things weird… experimentin' with flavor combinations and textures and that kinda thing."

Well, there was really only one thing she could say to that. "You're hired."

"So easy as that huh?" He mumbles more or less to himself and then looks over at the wok and asks, "ya mind if I finish up here and we can figure things out?"

She'd want to come inside then, watch things happen, and sit on these dirty benches next to these dirty men…

"My lady is currently waiting outside, if you would like to explain the delay to her..." she trails off meaningfully. No hint of the horror her thoughts had brought about showing on her face.

"No, Lady Xue, that's quite all right." the boy, on the other hand, can't quite hide his terror at the thought and practically tears off his stained apron as he calls out to one of the studiously eating diners, "Cautious Boar, tell pops I've got a new job. I'll be back when I can."

[Hired Shi Yun, a chef that Quan Jia will likely greatly appreciate, the others, less so.]

[] Only Meng Chao can answer why he was inspecting individual grains of rice at a merchant's stall, but Quan Jia found it odd enough that she had to stop what she was doing and investigate. Has he always been this weird?

Quan Jia frowns at the behatted… what a wonderful word, behatted… figure of Meng Chao as he picked up a single grain of rice. She tilts her head as he brings the grain closer to his face so he could look at it with one of those weird monocle thing her pops' used when he was making clockwork stuff. She drifts forward in curiosity as he mumbles something softly and places the grain back down.

"Whatcha doing?" she pushes herself up on her tip-toes to look over the taller boy's shoulder.

"Lady, or rather just Quan Jia," Meng Chao shifts in a weird way that has him a pace away and facing her without quite going through enough motions to make that happen. "It has been some few weeks since last we met. I hope your estate has remained to your satisfaction."

"Yep it's great, I've even hired some maids and a chef to take care of things," she grins, thinking of the breakfast of sliced fruits with a spicy dipping sauce she'd had earlier in the day.

"Good," he smiles, or at least his face twists as though smiling. "I am glad that our exchange has remained satisfactory for both then."

"I was wondering about that," she hadn't been, but the thought had just occurred as he mentioned it, "the estate's worth a lot more than a few gems, right? Especially for us, so why give it up so cheaply?"

"Was it for the gems?" he asks with a curious tilt of his head, "or was it perhaps for the familiarity that would invite an acquaintance to stop and chat?"

"Huh, that's kind of an interesting way of looking at things, but why didn't you take that pig's money instead?"

"Let us say that my honored mother has on many occasions stressed the importance of eschewing temporary gains at the cost of broken agreements," his eyes get that same kind of fond look hers did when she thought about her pops teaching her stuff.

"It's cool that you and your mom like the same things," she grins, ignoring an unpleasant fluttering in her chest. "Pops always tried to get me interested in building things, but there's just so many rules… don't do this, only do that when the moon is occluded, you can't sleep here princess… that kind of thing."

"It has been a great blessing, that my mother is available to assist in the complexities of both commerce and philosophy," Meng Chao agrees.

"So," Quan Jia prompts, gesturing to the jeweler's loupe… that's what it was… and the rice grains.

"Are you perhaps familiar with the Essays of Song Wen?" When she shakes her head, he smiles that weird smile again. "Then allow me to summarize: Song Wen postulates that it is the labor of a thousand mortals that provides the… soil, if you will allow the metaphor, from which a single Awakened may blossom."

"Does that make sense?" Quan Jia thinks aloud, "I mean, I've got three working for me now, and that seems about all I need… so a whole thousand seems like a lot."

"Hmm," Meng Chao seems to ponder something to himself, a line of thought that ends with a nod to himself, "it is unnecessary for the purposes of this conversation to describe the whole of it, but for an analogy, consider that your chef requires the labor of dozens, perhaps more to provide the food necessary to feed your household. And then yet more to provide the utensils they cook upon and with, to say nothing of the clothing they wear or the education they require or traditions they employ to facilitate their cooking."

"So it takes a lot of people working to make sure my chef can feed us," it made some sense, but, "wouldn't that still prove true even if he were cooking for mortals."

"Regrettably the analogy does fall apart under scrutiny," Meng Chao agrees, "however the essence of it, I believe remains valid. But perhaps to state things a different way: the probability of any mortal actually Awakening spontaneously is incredibly low."

"Right, finding a resonance that is loud enough to actually work for your diamond core is really hard if you don't know what you're doing." That much she'd remembered from one endlessly boring lecture or other.

"So it is, that a society built upon cultivation perforce requires a functioning mortal society below it." the way he says that sounds a lot like he's reciting something.

"What does that have to do with rice though?" Quan Jia returns to the original reason she'd dropped by.

"Rice, wheat, and the foodstuffs made from those grains are the staples of mortal life," he gestures around the marketplace, "each stall and shop. Every merchant and blacksmith. They all owe their existence to a humble grain of rice. How could that not spark curiosity, not spark a desire to understand the connections between things."

"Oh, it's a cultivation thing?" She grins, "you should have just said so, mine makes me wander around aimlessly, frequently looking for things that aren't there yet."

"In part," he admits, "I also wish to ascertain the quality of rice passing through the markets of White Caps, and address that shortcoming if the quality is indeed lacking."

"Because it takes a thousand mortals to make one of us?" Quan Jia asks, not necessarily seeing the connection itself, but definitely seeing the connection as Meng Chao sees it.

"Just so," his grin seems a lot more genuine than those earlier smiles had. "More than that though, the Meng believe that we hold a measure of responsibility over the quality and sufficiency of mortal goods as well."

"So how's the rice here?" It was a weird kind of way of looking at things, but maybe not entirely boring.

"Passable enough, for now," Meng Chao leans forward in an almost conspiratorial manner, "though perhaps a Meng sponsored caravan will pass by in the next few months."

"If Quan Jia is interested, perhaps she could join me in my inspections," he offers, "and since that task would no doubt prove boring, afterwards there is a hidden gem of a food stand that serves the most delightful fried eggplant."

[] "Sure," she lowers her voice to match his earlier conspiratorial tone, "I'm hiding from Mei Mei, she's being grumpy about something." (go with Meng Chao, learn more about his philosophy, increases social link +1)

[] "I'm actually a bit busy," and that did sound a bit boring, even with the food offer. "But maybe next time Meng Chao is doing weird things in public." (spin the gacha voter's choice.)
-[] specify exploration option.

[AN since a vote of go with Meng Chao or don't seems kinda pointless, have a vote about social stuff or gacha instead.

Also, I wonder if folks have a preference on update length? For instance, the previous post was ~1.2k while this one's ~2.6k. Is the former too short to be properly engaging? I think it might be, but it's difficult for me to say since I wrote it.]