I loved the elaborate description of how dual cultivation works and the inherent power imbalance (in the opposite to normal direction) if done wrong.
It also suggests that there might come a time when Lady Va might come to
want him to do it "wrong". After all, their current environment doesn't have but so much in the way of cultivation supplies....
Now, don't get it twisted. I don't necessarily expect that it's going to happen. It would require a number of things to line up just right.
- She'd have to be seriously worried about her rate of cultivation, but be unable to acquire other more normal cultivation supplies
- She'd have to be unwilling (for one reason or another) to receive such assistance from her peers, for reasons that would
not apply to Yon.
- Yon would have to be close enough to her in cultivation that she'd derive significant benefits from it.
...and this is complicated, of course, by the profound unacknowledged and unresolved semi-romantic feelings on
both sides of that particular relationship. It's also going to be complicated by whatever her current social status is with the rest of the young core disciples. On the one side, by the rules that everyone was functioning under at the sect, she'd take severe status damage from even thinking about it. On the other side, the rules are very clearly different here (though we don't really know by how much for people at her level). Further, there are ways to gain meaningful and important status that are not beholden to the old rules in any way. Meanwhile, Yon is useful. He's valuable, and he's been becoming moreso over time, while also becoming less beholden to her. Most of the tools that she used before to ensure his loyal service are either no logner available or severely attenuated.
So... the
possibility exists.
