"Normally when people reach the second realm, they expel a ton of impurities and...you just. I've seen it before. This is not what it looks like," she still was looking at me like I had three heads.

"It's not?"

I was beginning to think I'd done it wrong, but everything felt like the moon clan said it would.

"Look I swear. Maybe this is some partial change. I know a lot less than you do."

She kept her arms crossed.

"Maybe I just have less impurities! Look I don't know what's going on."

"Where are you from, exactly? I haven't heard of a nation called Earth. And planet?"

I sighed. It was damage control time.

"I took a wrong turn and somehow I am here. I am not some demonic sect guy, I haven't the faintest idea of how that works at all and you have to believe me."

"The only thing that is saving you so far is your speech pattern. You speak so plainly that I wouldn't think that you had the requisite knowledge to be a member of a demonic sect."

She slumped down, taking a seat.

"Additionally, it would have been really convenient if there was an easy explanation, but everything about your presentation thus far makes me think that...that you're telling the truth."

I slowed my breath. The whole secrecy about my origin didn't mean much when there were no stakes. The possible stakes were binary. Either it mattered or it didn't. It it mattered for some reason, then I would keep it on a small, need to know basis. If it didn't matter, I probably would do the same thing.

"Can we keep this between the two of us, at least for now?"

She chewed on her lip, finally relaxing.

"Fine. You're going to owe me so much."

"I expected that at the minimum," I said,"Now would you like to explain the formations, or perhaps use your talisman to see watch me cultivate how I am now?"

It felt like if would be easier to do now. She nodded, getting out her talisman. I took a swig of water from her water skin, thanked her for it and then jumped back in. The ambient aura around me was stronger now. It felt like a current of water trying to move me down, like I was standing on the beach and slowly moving with the tides. The aura wanted me to turn it into qi. Perhaps that was humanizing something that is a force of nature but it felt right.

I turned it on, wading through my cultivation. I had always loved the beach as a kid, and taking my daughters there was one of my great joys. I had taught them how to swim, and later to surf. I felt like it had helped to get them a little more well rounded in the end. As I cultivated, I imagined Rachel cresting a wave and then just as fast the image was gone.

It was gentle really. Gentle and insistent. If I had laid down in the water and floated over time the ocean would pick a direction and carry me. Not just out to sea, but along the coast. The water here was up to my knees. Step after step I moved towards...what? There was something there along the way. I tried to visualize myself running but it wasn't happening.

I came out of it a short while later. Egiyas sat in awe. I'm not going to wax poetic about it here, but you can imagine that I was happy that a beautiful woman was standing over me trying to get a reading.

"Did you get anywhere with it?"

She jumped.

"There's something going on with you. I always-I always listened to what father said and it was always unclear."

"You didn't understand how he explained cultivation? That's... That would be discouraging at the least."

"That's about where I am with it. You just seem to go straight to the problem, instead of beating around the bush."

"There's a time with my patients where I want to go directly to a problem-"

(Things like suicidal tendencies or self harm would have to be addressed post haste. Someone working through their feelings of betrayal because their mother couldn't live up to the ideals of basic human decency? That would take some time.)

"There's two ways we can do this, Egiya. We can do some coaching where we work on problems and this is usually appropriate for what we do. The other big thing is venting this is something you could do with me and I'll listen non judgmentally and we can just sit with that. I often recommend that people vent to get out the most pressing things before we talk about what we're doing about it. And by we I mean the client because they have to do the hard work. I just sit and coach them through it."

"So like an instructor?"

"An instructor, for one person at a time just for them to get better. That's about right. And getting better with their mind."

"That's...hmmm. Well perhaps I'll need to vent a bit. Then with your help I think I'll be able to make it to the first realm, perhaps even the second or third."

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"Bold claim. Let's see where you get with that," I said, "Maybe a real focus, contemplating your own way will help. Speaking of which, did you want to have a chat since we're out here?"

She looked at the totem one more time before nodding.

"I want... I want..."

I gave my best impression as she stumbled through various faces as she thought out what she had wanted. I had challenged her to think about herself as a separate entity from her parents. From her father in particular, she would need to separate herself. Without his money and connections, she wouldn't be running the shop. That he'd been an invisible partner for a long time was weighing on her. Her mother as needing at least part time care was a huge mental burden.

It's something we in the business call the mental load. Generally men expect that their generally female partners will take care of everything for them. The mental load that she experienced was the invisible burden that kept her house running. She didn't have children but she had to keep track of her mothers appointments, meals and since she never really left the house, social life among other things. Housework itself was a lot of her time, and doing things like checking totems for her father had to take away from her main work of running the shop.

Me just taking her to the tea shop was an imposition. I would have to meet her somewhere it was easier for her. I didn't like the idea of holding a therapeutic session on her ground, but I was going to have to give a little.

"I want help. Doing this alone has left me feeling so isolated."

"Good. Now let's get specific. You want someone to come in and take care of the mental load of housework? Caring for your mother? The shop?"

She waved a hand vaguely at the universe.

"All of that. Some of that. Sure," she said, wavering in her conviction,"It's not a betrayal if someone else helps my mother out, is it? If this were children I wouldn't want someone else to raise them but this is my mother and..."

"I have always had a problem with that whole line of thinking. Getting childcare help or elder care help it-it isn't a betrayal against your mother. You do not exist just to support your parents. I didn't exist just to support my children. Sure there was a lot of hands on work when they were younger but ..."

She nodded. There was a bit of an age gap between us. I had my daughters when I was 22 and 24 respectively. My parents had helped out a ton with childcare as I was getting my clinical work done. Then at a certain point, I had needed them less and less and my ex wife had stepped up in a major way. Later on I realized that I had just been going from thing to thing living in my own personal hell until the girls were school age and then I wanted completely different things from my ex. That was the beginning of our big break, unfortunately.

"So no, it's not a betrayal. You're still taking care of her in your own way. Obviously, you have to make sure that whoever is working with her does it with compassion."

Egiyas wiped her eyes. This world needed tissues.

"Is there... I don't even know how to find someone to help you, but I think we have a start here," I said, brushing off my legs.

I had a habit of patting my legs when I was getting a little antsy, preparing to stand up for the door. Just a quick pat and then usually they would check the clock and realize that whatever was going on would have to start wrapping up. People picked up on it because usually it was right before the end, and it became a pavlovian reflex over time. I didn't even need to say it for some of the long term ones.

There were no clocks here, but we had definitely made a breakthrough of sorts. What remained was for her to implement for herself. We would need to reconvene later, but for now we could get back to business.

While she thought it over I took some notes. I had intended to make notes on the formation arrays but my talk with Egiyas left me with some thoughts about what I was doing right here.

I wasn't getting paid for this session, because we had decided to be friends. Egiya was giving me excellent information on several of the clans and what seemed like the gangs of Western Jewel. I wouldn't call the Tea Brokers union a gang, as I was loosely aligned with them and had been doing jobs for them.

I might need to make my own crew here.

A poet once said that the smallest gang possible was two people. I tended to agree. I wondered if Egiyas wanted to be roped into some shenanigans. I knew she would have a fair bit of time in the future if she got her help. I trusted her to hold up her end of a bargain when there was an incentive involved so far.

She had been fair and even handed with me, not holding anything back. When I asked her about some of the details of the Moon clan, she reluctantly explained what she knew. Her own clan was small but related somehow to a previous King or emperor. She hadn't known exactly but of the two Kang clans both had a distinct character in the imperial dialect. Of course it was plastered all over her robe now that I looked.

She had was able to speak the imperial dialect but it wasn't often brought up except in her dealings with the state. That was another piece of information. There were a handful of languages spoken here, but for the most part on this continent everyone spoke imperial. There were a few languages that she knew of and a few that she didn't. I was still dealing with trying to figure out the scope of the world. It seemed large but I didn't really know.

"There's an awful lot of farming going on around here," I said on the road back.

It looked like every single thing that the city needed was a part of this little southern plot of land. Thousands had to be fed through this, and I was very certain that other food had to be brought in regularly. There was probably a whole cultivator line just dedicated to growing crops for consumption.

"These fields support the entire region. The Za clan runs it."

"I don't recall the Za clan as one of the major players you were talking about, are they?"

"They are more well known outside of this continent. They are a force in the airship industry as well, shipping goods across the world."

"I don't think that I have gotten a letter from them, but clans and Sects are a bit different?"

"Clans are large families, some run Sects, but Sect leaders are supposed to put the Sect first rather than the family. It would be too easy for a strong Sect leader to funnel resources from their work to enrich their own family... Sects are supposed to be apolitical in this regard."

"That makes sense. It explains it a bit."

"If you look Northeast, you can see the Za family airship port."

A nondescript building stood tall on the divide between the farmlands, totemic wards and the city.

"They made it in the right spot, I guess."

"It's the main way for mundane people to travel, though it it quite expensive. I have only traveled by airship twice in my life."

I watched as a blimp closed in from the horizon. Well above the fogged up land outside the totems, it was above all of whatever spirits had sought to do man harm. It was something that I would have to go all tourist about to look at, with how far out of the way it was. Then again, I had the energy to go that far.

"It is expensive. Many cultivators learn how to fly with a spirit weapon or through their pathway. My father has a spirit sword that he stands on to fly."

Like every red blooded north American male, growing up I wanted to have super powers and be a hero. Superman was a big thing for me. I liked the idea of tactile telekinesis to explain a lot of his powers. Similarly, like every dad I wanted my kids to listen to me. I could not imagine having little cultivator kids flying all over. It would be chaos.

"At what realm can a cultivator fly?"

"They can begin at the second realm, the stage you just achieved."

For the first time in a long time, I smiled.