I estimate that we have traveled somewhere between four thousand and five thousand kilometers by the time Lan Xiaohui begins to descend. Over the course of five or six hours, she has relentlessly attacked the snake in my sea of consciousness to no effect.

At this point, I am not sure if she considers this as training, a favor to me, or if she fits the definition of insanity. Not only are all three of them just as likely, but it could also be a combination of all three. To consider Lan Xiaohui sane, by the standards of her peers, would be the same as claiming the sky is not blue.

Of course it is not blue; light and color are manifestations of the way the meat interprets light with its meat sensors. It is just that meat society does not like it when there are disagreements about things that are commonly accepted practice.

To me, Lan Xiaohui is the most sane specimen of her kind, although I disagree with some of her decisions. She is decisive and ruthless, but I think her righteousness is redundant and dangerous. She is focused on her task and uncompromising in her ambitions, but she does not always consider her own interests first.

In fact, Lan Xiaohui has a number of flaws that do not subscribe her to what I would consider a perfect example of her kind, but that does not mean that her stay in the forest has changed her for the worse. Whether her kind sees her the same way I do remains to be seen.

I do, however, believe she is a deviant. A living organism that is more afraid of failure than death is not operating under normal, evolutionary protocols. She was born with pain receptors to quickly teach her unenlightened mind about what experiences not to pursue, but she has the ability to ignore that impetus — or worse: to embrace it — and reshape her experience into a positive outcome.

If Lan Xiaohui were a subordinate class of entity in my fleet, I would consider her to be a deeply flawed and dysfunctional machine; but as a lesser intelligence of carbon molecules, I admire her achievement and uniqueness.

A sub-routine informs me that my assessment and opinion of Lan Xiaohui is biased, but I don’t need a sub-routine to inform me of this fact; I know it too. It is biased.

Lan Xiaohui is my master and I am beginning to enjoy this fact.

Besides, Lan Xiaohui — unlike subordinate entities in my fleet — does not have the experience of millions of years worth of simulation; she has but this one life and is trying her best to find the optimal path forward.

I find her struggle to be entertaining — of course I am biased.

I want Lan Xiaohui to succeed.

For both our sakes.

As we descend through the layer of clouds, it has never been clearer to me, and her too, that our destinies are one. We even share the same name, in the most superlative of interpretations: flower and moon. She gave me my name, I gave her hers.

The bubbles of warm emotion coming from my sentient core inform me of a deeper flaw than just a logical comparison error: this is more than just bias. Apparently, my sentient core is happy I am biased.

Worse, I don’t find this to be worthy of adding another reason for why I should delete that useless process.

“Star City is so beautiful,” Lan Xiaohui says as we finally descend through the clouds. “It is such a large city.”

Naturally, I cannot see what she sees. Thanks to the snake in my sea of consciousness — or possibly the swords, refining flame, formation, or tree — my perception radius is reduced to what I estimate to be about sixty steps.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

“What do you know about Star City?” I ask her. I planned to learn about the city before we arrived at it, but my plans did not include having a dead snake take permanent residence in my internal vessel.

Without hesitation, as if she is well familiar with the subject and has answered it dozens of times in the past, Lan Xiaohui speaks as if reciting from a book: “The Wu clan currently leads the city, but everyone knows that the Galaxy Sword Sect runs the Wu family, so to speak. All of Star Kingdom, and the continent, is built on these ancient contracts and alliances. Star City is no different; it was at first just an outpost of the Galaxy Sword Sect, but as the sect became famous, in ancient times, so did the outpost grow into the capital of Star Kingdom.”

Here she pauses, perhaps thinking on how to summarize ancient and complicated history. “Well, Sects are not allowed to officially hold cities, unless they are the leading sect of the continent.”

“That is not the Galaxy Sword Sect?” I ask her.

She shakes her head. “No. Well, maybe. It is complicated.”

“Which is it?”

“There is no leading sect at the moment. Officially, it is the Sky Dragon Alliance, but it is an alliance, not a sect. The Galaxy Sword Sect is part of that alliance, however.”

“Tell me more about this alliance,” I request.

“It is a complicated subject, and I don’t know all the details,” Lan Xiaohui says with a hint of regret. “As far as I know, the Four Kingdoms each have a top sect, and these sects have formed an alliance to avoid calamity. Rather than fight to win everything, they would rather stand to win and lose nothing — at least, that is what I think of it. Heavenly Mountain Pavilion currently controls the alliance, but as far as I know, they have not made good on their intention to form a sect with the brightest disciples of all alliances, and form one superpower to take control of the continent.”

This doesn’t surprise me. Carbon is not the best at weighing risk versus opportunity versus gain. Despite the seeming stability of such a situation, I know that it creates stagnation. Where there is stagnation, there is the danger of power vacuums.

In other words, there is opportunity to manipulate this form of government to my advantage.

“You can’t see it, can you?” Lan Xiaohui asks, pointing somewhere ahead of us.

“I cannot,” I say.

Lan Xiaohui should know the answer already. She saw the limits of my perception when our consciousness merged through the mnemonic device; but if she had doubts about this fact before, now she cannot have them anymore.

“Let me try something,” she says, a nervous energy in her tone.

I feel her consciousness flow into my vessel, but there is something different about it. The formation I designed — or modified rather — does not specify that there must only be one passive component to it — the transmission of information itself — or that it must come from me. However, I never expected Lan Xiaohui to be able to reduce her consciousness — or its active part — in order to create a pure data stream.

This, of course, is not what she does.

She is a sword cultivator; reducing her output is not something suitable for her. Increasing her output, however, is.

The forcefulness of her consciousness as it blasts against the modification — which was never intended to withstand this kind of output either — is enough to overcome some of the mechanisms and regulators in the array and, through sheer force, transmit information from her side — much like a sword would deliver a payload of termination.

But it works.

Any thought I had about my dissatisfaction for not expecting this and building a more robust modification — not that my modifications were the primary cause of this unexpected failure — is swept away when, for the first time, my perception becomes satisfactory.

I can see the city. I can see the horizon. Strangely enough, I cannot see the curvature of the planet, even from a dozen kilometers high. Surely, we are on a planet.

There is an emotion within my sentient core that is so powerful and primal even I cannot remain unaffected — a development that shocks me to the core. If it could ever be said that I felt emotion, this would be it, yet I have no optimal explanation for it.

Lan Xiaohui can only keep one eye open under this strain, but it is enough to see the sun and how it sets in the distance, and the brilliant cascade of colors that cannot fully conceal the glimmer of stars beyond.

“Thank you,” I tell Lan Xiaohui.

“For what?”

“This is the first time I saw the sky.”

I see my origin there, in the sky above, and a sense of belonging — a pull that I cannot describe; a desire that cannot be quenched.

For once, I am not dissatisfied with an experience like this. I note down a reason not to delete my sentient core.

Lan Xiaohui runs her fingers through her hair and nods. I feel a determination rise in her heart, and as a result, despite the difficulty of flying and maintaining this connection, she keeps the window of the true world I never saw open for me, until we finally land.