"His Eminence will see you now," the administrator in purple tinges robe said.

I had been waiting an altogether unforgivable amount of time to see this man. I had grown as a person in the roughly two hours I had spent waiting. And as someone prone to introspection and navel hazel I was over it.

First I was excited, then that turned swiftly into fear. I was in a cold sweat despite the warm climate. I had palpitations for what had to have been half an hour. Those didn't help much, but to let me feel alone and alive.

The fear then morphed into anger at having to wait so long without doing anything productive, which was probably part of the point. There were no cell phones to casually scroll the Internet here. There was no wikipedia for me to read up on. In other words, a needed distraction never appeared.

It was something that you could get used to after a while, but it still itched.

That anger eventually turned into indifference as I accepted that bureaucracy was part and parcel of my new existence. If I died waiting to talk to the Mandarin, I was ready to accept that. I felt like I had died already just in coming to this world. The tedium of the mundane of just sitting there was beginning to get to me, but I brushed it aside. That got me back at the beginning of the cycle of excitement, which was about the time that the attendant called me.

I stood up, straightening my already poker straight outer ceremonial robes. An attendant led me into a large open court where petitioners had been admitted one at a time. In the center, a single man with luxurious flowing locks looked over a large scroll. He knelt in front of a low lacquered wooden table, the gleam of which had to have been pointed directly at new arrivals. The room was easily the size of a house.

I had been schooled by the Moon clans protocol office as to how to conduct myself so I approached the man in a slow determined manner. I stood, awaiting his attention. He put the paper down like a father who had been asked just enough times to take out the trash that it was making him reflect on his life choices.

"Cultivator Joseph Pidge, your Eminence," I said, before giving him a curt bow. As a fourth realm cultivator I was close enough to his strength that I need not prostrate myself. Some deference was due to the man, but respect was earned in my book.

"Ah. Cultivator Pidge. Please join me at the table. Apologies for keeping you waiting but I have been reviewing the interviews conducted with those you- ahem-recruited for your unsanctioned actions."

I nodded. One of the things that the protocol guide had stressed was to not speak out of turn.

"So of course you'll understand that I am looking for specific answers as to how you found the root of the cause," The Mandarin nodded, asking me to speak.

"They all bear a mark. It's unmistakable if you know what you are looking for. I trained my bonded spirit beast to look for those with the mark."

"This mark-could you show me?" He put his scroll down completely giving me his undivided attention.

"I regret to say that I cannot. It's something that I cannot reproduce, except in the dreamscape. Suffice it to say that they have a visible mark that they use to signal their status."

"Fascinating. And this dreamscape, it is part of your path, I presume?"

There was a lot of disinformation out there about different paths. Every sect had siloed information about their particular brand of cultivation so much that it was like trying to get a trade secret out of a corporate AI bot to get anything meaningful. I had been told one particular that I should speak of my path in metaphors and allegory whenever possible so as to discourage understanding. After hearing that, I wondered if the whole of this civilization was built on such tenets.

"It is, your Eminence."

"Quite interesting. So you can project some sort of dream into the world or?"

But a direct question from the closest thing to a governor that this place had? I might pare down the metaphor. He was going to want hard indisputable facts.

"In a manner of speaking. It would be more accurate to say that I and whoever I choose inhabit a dream in someone's head. I pulled Sect Leader Wu Zhao into it briefly as a feint."

He leaned in, doing a pro gamer move if I had ever seen one.

"That was the strange disturbance that I saw."

His lips drew back as his eyebrows watered against what had to be nuclear grade intrusive thoughts. Now I had his attention.

"Can you pull me into this dream and show me this mark?"

My cold sweat returned rather quickly at that comment. I looked around for someone else to confirm that this was appropriate, and of course it was just the two of us.

The attendant had to have disappeared through some trickery. We were alone.

"I was barely able to pull Zhao in, and he was fifth realm. It would be taxing, but if you were willing, it would be a simple matter."

"Show me."

It wasn't a favor. This felt like a demand that I could not ignore.

I cycled my core pushing qi around as I prepared the dreamscape. I breathed in and out as I expanded my dreamscape to envelope both of us. I had advanced from needing to touch anyone I brought in, to now just needing to be close by them.

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We were both instantly on the courtyard where I had challenged the Red Fang Sect to fight me and my allies. However, this was my dream so they all listened to me. Every member of the Red Fang that I had ever encountered was standing at attention, awaiting my every word. The Mandarin arrived, his very presence warping space around him. He felt slippery and I knew that this might be my domain, but he was in charge.

I walked over to light up the ultraviolet marks on each demonic dream cultivators cheek. I touched a few one by one, demonstrating the position of each tattoo. The common foot soldiers had the largest fang, followed by what had to be second or third realm enforcers.

"This...what is this?" He said.

He inspected them down the line.

"This is an ultraviolet tattoo. It's on the far spectrum of light where our eyes are not designed to observe. Something about my cultivation made them stand out."

"This mark. Did they know that you knew?"

"It's hard to say. They were very punch first, ask questions later types."

He continued looking down the line for a while. Then he sized up the sect leader. My stand in for him felt like a fever dream. I only fought him briefly. Before that as his evangelist persona I had spoken to him once.

The fact that it had been something of an intended meet up when I had zero information about this world really got to me. There wasn't a day that passed where I didn't think about how it would have been had I been recruited then.

Safe to say it wouldn't have been pleasant.

"And you use this place to train yourself?" He said, looking down at his visage where he spotted the exact same thing he had been wearing in the real world. Usually people have a ideal image of themselves and that is the image that they conform to in the dreamscape. This man was so powerful that either this was his visage or he just disregarded that entirely.

"I train myself and others here. You can understand, fighting without the danger of losing your life could be helpful."

"I can see the merit. As well, I know several similar training methods. I will withdraw now. I have seen what I wanted to see."

I made a conscious effort to return from the dreamscape. It took two seconds longer than expected to take but I was in an unfamiliar location with so much stronger. That had to factor into it majorly as it was near instantaneous everywhere else. I had to look hard to find someone on my level who even had the time to entertain such trivial pursuits.

On the other side, he began taking notes with a fervor that I recall from my undergraduate days.

"They all have this mark. For some reason no one has been able to distinguish this," he said. He looked up to me ready to ask a question, holding his quill aloft.

I could volunteer something but I didn't want to step out of turn. This was his place to ask the questions. He didn't seem like he would drop the line of inquiry until he was quite satisfied with knowing everything he needed to know. I had to remind myself that both of us were the same side. Despite the fact that it took several friends of friends to alert them of the demonic cultivator problem before they acted, they did act with overwhelming force when it was needed. A few minutes later and I would not be here to complain about the ins and outs of cultivator bureaucracy.

"I have been told that you're working with some of the people recovered from the sect."

I nodded.

"If any of them happen to have better information about how we can track down these disparate units of my cultivators, please send a note to bring it to my attention. I took great pleasure in handling this myself above and beyond what the blue robes had expected. They will be hearing about this for the rest of their natural lives. I would like to speak to some of them once they are recovered, if that's possible."

His last statement felt more like an order that I couldn't refuse. And today was probably the day of my daughter's wedding according to him.

"If I hear something, I understand that I'll pass it up. If I may though-"

He gestured with his quill for me to continue, but kept writing nevertheless.

"The theme that I'm hearing or the thing that I'm hearing mostly is that they were summoned here. Then the sect tricked them into being recruited without clearly spelling out what that meant. I, myself, was almost recruited by the sect leader when I first arrived here but I didn't understand. I wanted to make my own path."

"There's something about the summoning process, or perhaps the one summoned that causes them to grow stronger at advanced rates. I am certain that you have seen this firsthand."

The Mandarin continued to write, his effortless script flowing at a super speed that I couldn't keep up with. I swear that he at one point took his hand off of the quill and it continued to write, before he grabbed it again. I blinked and I was then completely certain that this was a part of his path and that I wanted whatever skill that was.

Min snapped me out of it by tugging on me. I realized that I had been staring. This wasn't a circus but I was making myself into a sideshow.

He wasn't waiting on me to say anything, thankfully. So I just continued to wait on him. It felt like I was going to dip into my cycle of anger at being made to wait until he stopped.

"Do you have anything else to add?"

"No."

"Very well. I am here at the request of the emperor. He has seen fit to let me lead this city and I intend to root out any demonic cultivators."

I really wanted to ask him to do more for the people. A dictator, especially a benevolent one, could do a lot by virtue of their policies. I wasn't too read up on this man's vision for a better Western Jewel, but I was glad that he at least was interested in rooting out the bad apples. In practice, this might be a good thing? I didn't think that too many people could go toe to toe with him.

From everything I read, there were fewer cultivators at each level. That meant that there were perhaps a handful of fifth or sixth realm cultivators in the city, though I knew that there were big bottlenecks at the third and fourth realm. I was staring down one myself with the mountain of Qi that I would need to gather and refine in order to expand my core.

I waited for the Mandarin, but he seemed to be done speaking so I let it all go. I had learned to enter these types of meetings with a metaphorical empty bowl that I would fill up, rather than arriving with a full one.

I gave him a deep bow, and just like that I was dismissed. All of my worries had been for about nothing.

I returned to the administrator.

"I trust that your business has been concluded to the satisfaction of his Eminence?" The man said.

"It was yes."

"The Mandarin recognizes potential in you and as you have reached such a level, the government wishes to recognize you officially as a Nascent soul. The formal paperwork can be delivered to your residence, but curiously you have none listed."

"That would be because the red fang raided my home and I had to flee. I presume that it will be ready for my return shortly."

"We can send a courier."

"I'm doing a lot of work at the moment. You can send whatever you want to the Moon clan compound."