Ehhh, we are not distant from muteboy. We don't mind him and we probably think of him as an acquaintance right now. And you are absolutely right that we need to clear up the air between the two groups and see what makes them so incompatible with each other. As for Su Ling's perspective, she seemed ok with the taunts that Fan Yu was giving as it solidifies her world view that a lot of nobles are jerks, but she also seems to recognize the value of getting training from nobles as well.
As for making plans that could be derailed, I don't see a problem in that. If a plan is so rigid that a derailment would destroy the entire plan, then the plan should be destroyed by the derailment. We might not need to socialize with Li Suyin if we get a scene with her that discusses things with her next update. The same could be said with Bei Meizhen. By fleshing out the possible iterations of plans now, we can see weaknesses in them and try to either work around the weaknesses or admit to them but point out why they are not a big deal. Nothing bad comes from a discussion of plans if we don't invest too much into a single plan winning.
And we totally should keep exploring the mountain for interesting things. Now that we are allowed to leave the sect proper and head out into the wilderness, we should see if we can't find more Argent Vents that are better. As for Su Ling getting benefits from the Qi foundation pill, I think we should ask her about whether it would be useful to her before giving any of them to her. She commented on how her cultivation is starkly different than our type of cultivation and even different than Bei Meizhen's cultivation but didn't expound on it. It could be that she is shy about her abnormalities, or that she is confused on how people typically cultivate, or that she really does have a completely different method of cultivation that is unable to use the traditional resources of the sect.
I don't know how different it could be, but it might have to revolve around the consumption of Beast cores in order for her to get the energy needed to cultivate rather than spirit stones, and if that is the case than the traditional pills might not be useful to her.
It's possible, but I suspect she's just using an instinctive cultivation method from her bloodline rather then a learned one, and slotting arts she knows by instinct rather then from the library.
On the other hand, I don't really think we need to worry about maxing Argent Soul. Lets take a hypothetical 'busy cultivation' week. Lets say we cultivate physical, spiritual, three arts, and take one social action. We have unlocked a second extra action, so we can take five actions for cultivation and one for socialization.
We take an Argent Elixir, Steady Growth Pill, and Bear Marrow Elixir. Lets say one of the arts is wind, so we also take a White Hart Elixir.
Our spiritual roll doesn't matter for the purposes of this exercise.
Our physical roll is 7(talent) + 3(white hart) + 3(Bear Marrow) +4(Argent Elixir) +4(Steady Growth) +5(vent) +6(Argent Soul). Or 32 dice. Or roughly 16 successes. A third of that gets added to Argent soul, and to Qi, so five success each.
Two of our art rolls are 22 dice, or 11 successes, and 3 qi and argent soul each. The last will be 25 dice, 12 successes, and 4 qi and argent soul.
We get another five argent soul from the vent.
Or 20 success on argent soul. Four full cultivation weeks like that will max out argent soul without us taking a single action. Any extra bonuses to our rolls makes it faster.
Edit: Of course, our not busy cultivation weeks are going to be eating into that time too - but a theoretically nose to the grindstone us could max it out in four turns without spending a single action on it.
