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The Path Unending (A Cultivation Quest)

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[x] I will approach the grandmother as a Caretaker approaches a contact. She's been sitting her for only the divine knows how long; she must have borne witness to something. It simply must be teased out with care and subtlety.

I'm thinking this approach.
 
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[X] I will approach the grandmother as an appreciator of her craft and focus on her skill. By determining how she got so skilled, some light may be shed on what's going on here.

I want to say this would look the most natural in terms of behavior, and if whatever may be watching sees us it'll just look like Zhi is doing crafter nerd things. Zhi also works best when being honest, and he can honestly appreciate her skill.
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as a Caretaker approaches a contact. She's been sitting her for only the divine knows how long; she must have borne witness to something. It simply must be teased out with care and subtlety
 
All right, here's my current working theory:

This place was a stronghold of the Court of Tides, one of the Artists of which set up a time-loop-based defense around. The guy asking about couriers is asking about them because he was expecting advanced word of an attack on the stronghold by the Pale Warden. That attack eventually came and futzed with the time loop resulting in this constant debacle. The reason the children know about a more recent event than the Pale Warden vs Emperor of Tides is because the last Clerk who passed through told them of the Gossamer Blade's Duel. When that Clerk got trapped in the time loop, the Bureaucracy wiped the Village from the maps on-purpose to avoid losing any other Clerks.

Likewise, the Grandmother that's weaving is a red herring. This is just the natural result of practicing weaving for hundreds of subjective years within a stable time loop. All the people in the Village have some level of awareness that they're in a time loop and are part of the time loop proper, but outsiders aren't and can die after too many time loops from old age, which is why nobody wants to talk to us unless they have to. Nobody wants to take a chance on getting attached.

This all could be completely wrong, of course. It's just what I currently think is going on. . .
 
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[X] I will approach the grandmother as an appreciator of her craft and focus on her skill. By determining how she got so skilled, some light may be shed on what's going on here.
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as a Caretaker approaches a contact. She's been sitting her for only the divine knows how long; she must have borne witness to something. It simply must be teased out with care and subtlety.
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as an appreciator of her craft and focus on her skill. By determining how she got so skilled, some light may be shed on what's going on here
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as a Caretaker approaches a contact. She's been sitting her for only the divine knows how long; she must have borne witness to something. It simply must be teased out with care and subtlety.
 
[x] I will approach the grandmother as an appreciator of her craft and focus on her skill. By determining how she got so skilled, some light may be shed on what's going on here.
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as an appreciator of her craft and focus on her skill. By determining how she got so skilled, some light may be shed on what's going on here.
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as a Caretaker approaches a contact. She's been sitting her for only the divine knows how long; she must have borne witness to something. It simply must be teased out with care and subtlety.
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as an appreciator of her craft and focus on her skill. By determining how she got so skilled, some light may be shed on what's going on here.

How often do you meet a Seated who crafts like a Teacher? We have to talk to her about it. If only to be able to tell our Dad about it later.
 
What exactly would approaching the Weaver lady like a Caretaker entail? When I try to picture it, I come up blank for the most part. Zhi has only approached one other contact that was eager to help him, so I am unsure how this would be attempted.
 
[x] I will approach the grandmother as an appreciator of her craft and focus on her skill. By determining how she got so skilled, some light may be shed on what's going on here.
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as an appreciator of her craft and focus on her skill. By determining how she got so skilled, some light may be shed on what's going on here.
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as a Caretaker approaches a contact. She's been sitting her for only the divine knows how long; she must have borne witness to something. It simply must be teased out with care and subtlety.
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as an appreciator of her craft and focus on her skill. By determining how she got so skilled, some light may be shed on what's going on here.

Being genuine might be the best bet.
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as an appreciator of her craft and focus on her skill. By determining how she got so skilled, some light may be shed on what's going on here.


I did consider the caretaker option but the fact that "It simply must be teased out with care and subtlety." made me question of Kong Zhi actually has the subtlety to do it. Though him trying and failing could be quite entertaining
 
[x] I will approach the grandmother as an appreciator of her craft and focus on her skill. By determining how she got so skilled, some light may be shed on what's going on here.
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as an appreciator of her craft and focus on her skill. By determining how she got so skilled, some light may be shed on what's going on here.

Even if we don't learn what's going on, we might learn some weaving, and that's almost as good!
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as an appreciator of her craft and focus on her skill. By determining how she got so skilled, some light may be shed on what's going on here.
 
So a couple of things stand out to me.

If this time loop started around the time of Emperor-in-Tides' third reign, they would likely know about the Court of the Tide story. But if that happened, then they wouldn't know about the Gossamer Blade and the Mirror Hand, as that story occurred much later.

But if the time loop started after the story about the Gossamer blade and the Mirror Hand occurred, then this village shouldn't know about the Court of the Tide because of the censorship.

My current theory on how to reconcile this is that the time loop happened after the Gossamer Blade and the Mirror Hand story became popular. Then a relic detailing the story of the Emperor-in-Tides was either fished up or washed ashore by the village, except that the relic was potent with anam and triggered the time loop to try and achieve something.

Maybe a type of relic that a powerful spirit inhabited? Like what Zhuan Kun hypothesized had possessed Clerk Ni?

But then there is the issue that apparently the Sea is really great and purifying and destroying sensitive charms because of the salt content.

Questions, questions.
 
[X] I will approach the grandmother as a Caretaker approaches a contact. She's been sitting her for only the divine knows how long; she must have borne witness to something. It simply must be teased out with care and subtlety.
 
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