She didn't want to leave a statement like that uncontested. I briefly explained how several people from Earth had been caught up in the red fangs plots. I suddenly had her interest and just as suddenly, felt a presence at least as strong as my own.

It wasn't Maxine.

The strength of a core approached.

"Are you expecting anyone in particular?"

Maxine stiffened doing her best to not look around, while doing exactly that. It was tradition. This subtle interference by the a newcomer reminded me that she was still the same woman I knew.

"No one of consequence. You are the biggest visitor so far today."

That was about the time that my senses gradually centered on one strong bearded man in a blue uniform. His salt and pepper hair made him look like he wasn't a cultivator, but a compacted core gave him away. I could feel his nascent soul brushing up against me and it was well defined where my own was a bit more on the superfluous side. There was a lot of it to be certain, but mine was diffuse and powerful where his was just a chonky boy.

He gave both of us a look. He was probably thinking that I was her muscle or that perhaps my hair was showing him that well, I don't know what. Curly hair was not common here. Neither were scraggly beards like the one I sported. I can't help it if not, everyone is destined to have a swoon worthy beard. At least I knew several vendors with tonics that promised to fix that specific problem if I ever decided the date again.

On his coat there was a sigil I didn't know surrounded by a yellow hexagon. That had to be some sort of rank or position or a name.

He stopped in front of us, pulled out a tiny scroll and double checked something. Then he looked at both of us and nodded. I wanted to go right into protective mode. She was my ex-wife and if anyone was going to question her it was going to be me.

"Can I help you?" Maxine said, cutting me off.

"Well I certainly hope so. I am inspector Bao of the emperor's constabulary. I'm seeking an audience with the proprietor of this shop," he said in the neutral tone that I had gotten used to whenever I had to deal with a police officer on duty. He was just here to do a job and I probably shouldn't expect much.

"Inspector Bao. What can the proprietor of Resting Bitch Lace do for you today?"

I felt like a fly on the wall. Surely she didn't want me to hear this. I gave her a nod and stood up, preparing to step away. She didn't even flinch. Then I slowly withdrew inside the shop to see if I could get more out of her. There's no one that wants to talk about their boss more than an employee who isn't happy with them. I was hoping to exploit such an opportunity if it presented itself to me. So back inside the store front I went as I made a beeline for the woman who had no idea what divorce meant. I quickly found out that she liked working for Maxine and hadn't been working there for too long.

She appreciated the care with which Maxine took in her interactions as well as how she made her lingerie. It was a new product and there had to be a lot of consumer education on what it was but the auntie network was in full swing in western jewel. I wondered if perhaps she might have considered selling Tupperware or something else as well. She could start her own multi-level marketing campaign and probably sell out for all I cared.

Her assistant, Grace, let me out through the back. She promised to keep me updated on any relevant issues so long as I kept the pork buns coming. I told her to watch herself around other associates of Maxine's. I didn't know how much she knew about the red Fang but it would be awful if Grace fell to their wiles. She was such a nice girl and I could see why Maxine hired her.

Stepping out back, I walked back to realize that I had left my broom in front of the shop. Oh well .

___

A long walk later and I was there having dinner at the moon compound. Moon Xiru Came by and I tried to explain the situation. He didn't seem perturbed by it but he didn't look happy. I tried to remind myself that this was a society where everyone put the collective above the individual. And in doing so I let slip that I saw a tattoo, tracked a red fang agent and may have visited my ex-wife. He wasn't pleased with any of that more so with the tattoo than the ex-wife, but hey some men don't have taste.

It was then that I realized that I could feel my bond strengthening itself with Min. She had spent the first week preparing herself to ascend to the third realm after my escapades. This week she was doing closed door cultivation to advance alongside me.

According to some unwritten rules, one spirit beast needed to remain at least a realm below their companion for the bond to not be stressed. I can see the benefit of this, as we might come to blows over unimportant things. One of us was clearly stronger. I did not hold to her tightly. She was free to go if she wanted to, but I was more than entertaining enough to stay on board. And now we would be reunited.

So why didn't it feel amazing ? I expected to feel her like a warm hug but she felt very withdrawn. I expected her to be done and moving towards me but it appeared that she was just going to be resting. I made the decision to go to her. Of course on the way I passed through the kitchen getting some of her favorite fruits. Star food was one of her favorites before so it stood a good chance of being exactly what she wanted.

I approached her cautiously. The special closed door cultivation room for spirit beasts was on the far side of the cramped Moon clan campus. This meant that it was directly next to a wall that adjoined the canal. Of course the top of the wall to the canal was about twenty meters.

Min perched herself on the wall. She purred on my approach. She had grown to be a bit more chonky than I had seen her before, but who doesn't love a fluffy queen?

Then she jumped down and smelled me. Presumably liking what she smelled, she ran herself across my legs. I should mention here that the moon spirit most often kept the form of a cat or dog. So fluffy was an apt moniker for my girl.

"You ride a thin line between anger and hunger," Min said, slinking forward.

"Sometimes I ride a unicycle down the middle and put a foot on both sides."

It was true that the world here felt fast, but without phones and a twenty four hour news cycle, I had to deal with stale intelligence gathered second hand. It was both maddening and a cause of constant fear of missing out that I was more than happy to avoid.

"The advancement, this budding core pleases me. Companion Joe, this world is not fast paced as the one you left. But it is a great deal more dangerous."

I sat down to pet the cat shaped beast. As she went on about her journey to the spirit realm where she had to solidify who she was. Some part of her would be more feline from now on. When she advanced again, it would be more pronounced. She was a shape shifter but her base form would always reset to something similar to her blue and white cat base. This meant that she had a lot of footpad work where she was looking for specific small creatures to advance.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Small creatures that one might expect an animal of her type to be attached to.

"And that is why you always catch the mice you can when you have the chance," Min said, capping off her exploits.

"That is quite the story. And this all happened as part of your moon field dreamscape?"

She shared one of my paths- the ability to dip into and create whole dreams. Together we were able to bring multiple people into the place and still maintain the facade that they were in a secondary reality. It meant that we could do a lot of rehearsals for big fights provided that we knew enough about what we were fighting, and in some cases, where. On my own, I was only able to pull one person up until recently.

"By the way, I visited your bestie and the law man wanted to speak to her," I said, explaining my afternoon to her.

"Oh wow! Is that all true? You wouldn't lie about bestie Maxine, right?"

"Scouts honor."

"You were never a boy scout," Min said,"This is a well established fact, in fact since you were-"

"That's about enough of that. No need to open old wounds."

I didn't heckle her for long before Moon Lee dropped in on us. Min nearly headbutted her off her feet, but she held her ground.

"Relative Lee! I did it! I made it to the third realm!"

"I'm so proud of you, little one," she replied, giving her a aggressively strong pets,"Did you have to choose a face of the moon?"

"This one is close. The phase of the moon and I will bond at the next step. It is unfortunate that I have to pick one. They are all so gorgeous."

"I know. You'll have to think long and hard about what you want and not just chose one on impulse. I have to make a similar choice soon but I have already gone back and forth so many times."

I scratched behind Mins ears. She was going to have to make grown up choices and I was proud of her. Sure, she was an immortal moon spirit that was only bonded to me for the rest of my mortal life, but a dad could be proud.

Now that she was out we could do some training, but when I heard a gurgle, it was clear that we would be making a trip to the kitchen.

"Did you care to eat something?" I asked.

Moon Lee and Min tagged along. We had some tea courtesy of the moon clan and Min gorged herself.

"I never thought a cat could open her mouth so wide. It's like her entire face opened up like a door."

"Yeah, I would probably look the same. Her snack choice is a bit odd. Who eats so much Yak jerky in one sitting. She's going to need some fiber or she'll be paying for that later. Then you might feel it when she-"

"Fiber. Got it. Is there any roughage in the kitchen? I don't want her to have a problem with what comes out of her-"

"Oh God. She did unhinged her jaw, Joe. It's like she's a snake and a cat together."

"Yeah that's-did she just swallow that entire yak leg whole?"

*Burp.*

"Yes she did. I'm so proud of her. I think she's just about the bestest girl ever."

"But she-oh Heavens is that elder Lui with a chair!"

---

Min and I slept good that night. Full bellies and a good food fight always helped one to work out their interpersonal issues. That was good because I was going to set her to work just as soon as she got her bearings.

"I told you about my visit to Maxine, yesterday. You know about the agent I saw. We have to see if she's still around, though I expect not. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of people live here but we have to find one woman."

"You can show me how she looks in the dreamscape and how you followed her."

"It's a bit amateurish and I need to heal up according to the Moon clan healers for a few more days. It would have been a lot easier to follow her on foot at this point."

We went over my initial sight of the woman. In the dreamscape I realized that I kinda left Moon Xiru in the lurch.

"If you see him, please apologize on my behalf for my abrupt departure. He will understand."

Min watched as I followed her around our inner model of the thriving port city. If felt a lot more fleshed out than the last time we had been here together. We then traced her to where I had lost her.

"Given her initial placement it's clear that she was walking to the airship depot or near there. Enemy nameless woman could have been trying to pass along a message or signal her little group. I forget what Maxine called them. This sense of urgency is not misplaced, companion Joe."

This woman herself was totally distinct in her garb and still she had given me the slip. The standard thing I saw around the city were brown, white and black robes. I saw a pattern of these red robed cultivators blending in with their mindset of everyone around them as fodder for their own cultivation. What lesson could I take from this? Her garb was a gift. The red fangs reliance on their ability to blend in wouldn't last long against someone who knew exactly how to look for them. Besides the ultraviolet tattoo, if they dressed they way that they felt, then it would be a dead giveaway.

Min would take a note of anyone wearing red that looked suspicious.

We zoomed out trying to project a map of possible places that she could have come from. I had been on the western side, one of the districts that was half shipping and commerce via the sea and the other half nautical themed dining and tenements for sailors families.

"Would it be reasonable to think that she arrived by boat?"

"It could be so. She might have been on mission and came back here, confused. This enemy is trying to figure out what is happening."

"Do you thing that demonic cultivators take some casual work on board a boat to what-hell pay their bills?"

Sailors at the port spent their time searching for leviathans, large sea monsters that were chock full of spiritual materials that made even the most stoic Cultivators salivate. Their massive ships spent weeks at sea trying to tame a savage ocean one beast at a time. It could make sense for the sect to try to infiltrate those sea dogs like they had been trying to do with the couriers guild. In my current opinion, that was the most likely but Min would be out there trying to prove or disprove my theory while I worked with group therapy.

"Can you think of anything else I should consider?"

"You can ask Moon Fei if he's up for some Intel gathering but I doubt he's ready for it. I'm still on the mend so I can't imagine how bad he has it."

---

Group therapy went well and I found myself again idle and chomping at the bit to do something active. There had been a time in my life when the only thing I look forward to was handing my daughters off to go work out in the middle of the day. It was one of the things that my college offered and that I took full advantage of. I had the same jitters but I knew that I had to take it easy. Sure they were great but those endorphins, well they helped.

I could feel Min working her way around. She was in need of a target if her feelings were correct. That she just had eaten something spicy. She had started where I had started. Then she worked her way around. Men had the same special ability that I had to see ultraviolet light. It just took a little concentration but for some reason everyone else here had a problem with it. That is everyone else here except for those already on the know.

I hadn't expected much so I tempered my resolve as I felt her inexorably turning towards me. At the end of group, we had decided that it was probably going to be a good idea to move on to a new location. Part of what we had decided on was to come back the next day with some new options for everyone. The fact was that not everyone knew their way around Western jewel and I wanted to help those who were completely lost to find their way. I also expected the much celebrated plans and sects to help out. So far I gotten a slight amount of buy-in. The moon clan was there with material help, bringing food and water. The Taoists had been helping trying to find work for some of them. I wasn't sure how successful that was going to be.