Right now, I'm confused with people's desire to get to know Xuan more. It seems to me that people are wanting to base a friendship/training buddy relationship with him for the major purpose of getting to know formations more. I just don't see that working out. We have few coinciding interests, we know he likes books and is a major formations buff, but that is about it. His vague and poetic style of speech is annoying to me, and we have nothing to offer him. He does not seem to indulge in social interactions all that much and seems to prefer it that way.
If people are going to try and get a friendship with him to learn formations, then I wouldn't bother with the action. Stick to Li Suyin, and use the archives pass. Pay up the sect points for week long formations lesson, but don't try to base a relationship around the possibility that the relationship will give us formation lessons when we have nothing to give him in return.
We could give him pills, but he can buy those, he has a larger allowance of spirit stones because of care packages that would be sent to him by his family, and I don't want to give him accesses to any of the sites that we have found. The sites so far are our largest bargaining chip and something that we should hold dear to our hearts, as it is the only resource we can consistently use and allows us to have an advantage over other cultivators.
If people just want to expand our social circle, then that's fine, but I'm personally fine with the social circle we have got right now. We have three "good" friends, one of which is in serious trouble emotionally. We are making inroads to have Lady Cai as a possible social action, which might or might not go anywhere.
We already have someone who can help us with our formations knowledge, and I like her character. I think that need to spend a lot of time with her in order to help her out of the hole that has been dug by her and our actions, but I appreciate her for being the only one among our friends who will experience the same thing we will, our mortal family dying in a blink of an eye. All the other friends we have made won't have that happening to them, they will have support structures and families to return to soon enough and will have them for quite a while yet. Suyin and us, on the other hand, either has no support structure, or the support structure will die very soon (relatively).
Other than the possible formation lessons from Xuan, I don't see a need or want to expand our social circle to include him at the moment (or ever). He is smart, talented, and is going to be a competitor for the inner discipleship. Whether that is from the production side of the competition or the combat side, I don't know nor do I particularly care. I'm sure he is a good guy, but I don't see us making friends with him to just be friends with him.
And before people start screaming that I'm a hypocrite for wanting to keep Han Jian and co around for training, even though we don't really give them anything, or that we approached Han Jian for friendship based purely on our need to have a large group to protect us when we couldn't offer anything in return, I would like to point out significant stark differences.
We approached Han Jian's group because we needed a large group to protect us and help us get our bearings and feet on the ground. After that, we provided solid assistance in helping them clear the first trial of Zhou's test with minimal effort, and have then subsequently provided the elixirs to them as another gesture of appreciation. We are now helping them hunt, and also we will be able to help Han Jian and Co with their problems, once they figure out they can ask us. None of this is the case with Xuan as we don't need him to help us, nor do we have anything we can do to help trade knowledge for knowledge (like what sparked our friendship with Li Suyin).
All of this is to say that if people are wanting to have Xuan as a friend and willing to expend the effort to enlarge our social circle then that's fine. But if you are wanting to expend the effort to enlarge our social circle to include Xuan for the reason of getting more formation lessons, there will be a lot of problems with getting him to be our friend. Remember, Yrsillar doesn't make one-dimensional characters, Xuan will most likely have nuance and personality and may not appreciate an offer of friendship for formation lessons.
