Zae Zin Nim awoke from dreams that she was being dismembered to find herself in a dark room. She could barely make out a few crystal-reinforced windows at the tops of the walls, letting in what looked like moonlight. The architecture struck her as the lord's estate, but she had never seen this room.

There was no way to determine how she had gotten to this position, so Zae Zin Nim attempted to leave. She only got two steps before a wall of blue light flared to life and pushed her back. There was a dark metal circle set into the floor around her.

After a moment of panic, she set about trying to escape. The energy extended both above her and through the floor, so the simple options were blocked. It wasn't qi or mana but chakra, a wild emotional energy that she couldn't control. Her father had once warned her that chakra from Rosemount could be dangerous, even if it wasn't as refined as qi.

No way out, and no sign of her captor. Zae Zin Nim wondered how things would have gone if she had not attempted to steal anything, but there was no sense regretting her decisions. Instead she knelt down and began to cultivate.

.

..

.

For a time she saw no opportunities to escape and simply waited within her prison. Eventually Omilaena walked into the room, propping a pair of blue goggles up on her head.

"I'm disappointed that you decided to steal from me," she said, "but honestly I can respect it. I don't plan to kill you or anything, but we'll be asking the questions a little bit differently now."

Zae Zin Nim stared back at her silently, letting her eyes promise that she would say nothing.

"What I've been able to derive from your samples is honestly fascinating. It seems to me like you had several different factors that independently slowed down your cultivation in return for a higher potential maximum. Was that your plan, or the path of your sect? The combination seems so extreme that it's hard to believe someone would make the attempt."

It was deeply troubling that the cruel woman had been able to figure out so much on her own, and Zae Zin Nim worried about what might have been done to her while she was unconscious. Still, she said nothing, even when Omilaena sighed at her.

"I'm not trying to interrogate you, just talking out loud. This might relate to one of my pet theories." She shifted her weight onto one hip and tapped her lips with one fingernail. "I think all the paths, even the most refined and polished, are missing something. I'm not so sure that a clean path in which there are never any surprises or blockages is actually a good thing, as in I think it's worse for your long term growth. But this is devilishly hard to prove."

Despite herself, Zae Zin Nim listened to the theory. It was definitely contrary to everything she knew, which suggested that blockages occurred only when cultivators used inferior arts, or that they suggested fundamental crudity of method. Yet when she compared the sleek cultivators who had followed every rule of the sect to some of the people she had met...

"You're an exception to the rule, actually. People from other continents who come to Deadwaste tend to stagnate and perform a little worse than you'd expect, as if their power couldn't adapt."

"Of course they stagnate," Zae Zin Nim said. "This continent has almost no power." Then she shut her mouth, but Omilaena had already smiled at her.

"There, you see? Nothing bad is going to happen if you talk." Omilaena walked closer to the barrier, pacing around the side. "What you said is true, but there's a counter-argument: people who start on Deadwaste and manage not to die instantly when they go to other continents tend to do better than you'd predict. I'm not convinced that all this striving in weak environments is actually a waste."

Zae Zin Nim sat silently, refusing to give in again.

"Of course, I wouldn't expect someone from Cloudspire to understand. You have everything figured out, don't you? Not like the poor clumsy-"

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"What do you want?" Zae Zin Nim demanded. "Don't torture me like this."

"Fine, let me be brief: I need to take a small amount of your blood while you're conscious. The sample I took before isn't working for my theory." Omilaena revealed an empty syringe. "Now, this won't hurt much and it won't harm you permanently, but I'm guessing that you won't be cooperative, will you?"

Zae Zin Nim rose into a combat stance and waited.

"Oh, alright then."

When the barrier imprisoning her dropped, Zae Zin Nim leapt for one of the exits, only to be blocked by a wall of smoke. It was some subtle chakra trap, something her cultivation wasn't capable of foreseeing. She recoiled and tried to move in the other direction, too slow. Omilaena grazed her with a fingernail and something began spreading through her arm.

"You see, normally cultivators are extremely weak to poisons intense enough to get through their base qi reinforcement," Omilaena remarked calmly, as if they were still just chatting. "You're resistant in a way I didn't expect, so I'd love to know more."

There must still have been poison in her system, because Zae Zin Nim couldn't fully draw from her dantian. And, if she was perfectly honest with herself, she didn't think she could beat this opponent. Omilaena pretended to be cocky, and maybe she truly was, but her arrogance was a thin facade over a ruthless intellect.

Just when Zae Zin Nim thought she had connected with a palm strike, she felt something hard under the other woman's clothes. It blocked her qi just long enough for a needle to graze her neck, then suddenly there was a hand gripping her robe.

Omilaena twisted her outer robe, pulling it half off in order to bind her arms behind her. Zae Zin Nim tried to struggle, but the poisons were accumulating in her system and she couldn't fight back. She felt a sting in her arm and could only watch as her blood was drawn into the syringe.

"There." Omilaena stepped away, with both her blood and outer robe in hand. "We could have done that non-violently and it would have had the same result. But I suppose cultivators have to be difficult. If it would make you feel better, feel free to tell me that you've lost face and that you'll murder my entire family."

"Why should I work with you?" Zae Zin Nim asked bitterly. "You enjoy hurting me."

"That's not true at all. I'd much rather we be friends." Omilaena glanced down at her, then raised an eyebrow. "Actually, now that you have that shapeless outer robe off... I would not mind being more than friends. You do your best to hide your body but damn."

Zae Zin Nim gasped and shrank back, drawing her hands closer to her body. Her inner robe covered her completely, but it was thinner and she suddenly felt it revealed too much. Over the course of her life many disgusting men had stared at her... this was the first time she had felt such lascivious attention from another woman.

"The question is those scars..." Omilaena tapped her finger against the side of the dark syringe. "Too regular to be all gained in battle. It would be a shame if you caused them yourself, because you'd be gorgeous without them. Or is this another weird illness? I swear, some of you walk out in the rain once and suddenly you're tragically dying."

"Please stop that. Leave me alone."

"Oh, why are you being so obstinate? What do you think I'm going to do to you?"

"Violate me to use my yin energy in some experiment." Zae Zin Nim glared at the other woman without holding back an ounce of her hatred. "Use me for your advancement. That's all you care about, isn't it?"

All at once the other woman's face went from playful to an utterly blank mask. After a pause, Omilaena dropped her outer robe so that it covered her, then stepped back. Before the circle of metal bound her again, Omilaena tossed a bright orb onto the floor.

"No, that isn't all I care about," she said, surprisingly gently. "I won't compromise, but I'm sorry for this. Take the qi as a small token of apology."

With that she swept out of the room. Zae Zin Nim stared after her for a while, then looked down toward the pill. It didn't seem to be poisoned, just more pure qi from Cloudspire. After a long time glaring after the other woman, Zae Zin Nim picked it up and returned to work.

.

..

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"This is fascinating," Omilaena said one day by way of introduction. "These cultivation-locked Physiques you have are real works of art, not something I can duplicate. Are you going to tell me about it, or are you going to be difficult again?"

"It is the Blackblood Physique," Zae Zin Nim said flatly. She didn't want to give the other woman satisfaction, but cooperation was easier.

"Well, that's remarkably restrained! I'm surprised it wasn't named the Heavenly Divine Thunder Supreme Obsidian Blood."

"If it had been from Rosemount, you'd call it the... the Purple Butt Physique."

Omilaena stared at her, for a moment completely thrown out of her usual cool manner, then she laughed. "Well, it seems you know something of my home continent! I suppose chakra techniques don't seem very interesting, when instead you could spend years sitting in a cave."

"It's better than all your techniques that seem to involve sleeping with as many people as possible."

"Now that's not fair. There are only a few types like that, and you're the ones always going on about yin and yang dual cultivation."

"You just act like that for fun, then?" Zae Zin Nim asked seriously.

"There's a tongue on you after all." Omilaena grinned back at her. "Settle down, I don't have anything serious in mind for today..."

They were not friends. Zae Zin Nim knew that they never would be. But for now she would smile, and cultivate, and wait for her opportunity.