There are only so many ways that you could take an hour-long at etiquette class.

As a man who didn't grow up inside of a monarchy, I was not accustomed to being told how to sit and how to receive orders and how to wait. According to my handler, the emperor's aid, it was expected that I conduct myself as a fourth realm cultivator should. This was fine, as I expected that the emperor was stronger than me.

He was very vague about the emperor's actual strength. I found that odd.

If I was that level, I would want people to know so that they can know what to shoot for. I ended up getting a non-committal answer that he was somewhere around the eigth realm. This meant that although he was immortal, he had decided not to ascend the heavens or whatever that meant.

It also meant that with him being that realm, that was about the highest thing anyone around could hope to achieve. Apparently at some point in time you needed resources at only a state could get. Resources like Divine treasures that had to be created or had to be found and then that became part of your process to get to the next realm.

I didn't have the powers of the state.

I was barely able to get the state to start functioning. The state was my bitch at this point in time. I was going through extensive state training to up its game. At least, so far as it affected every blue robed individual.

We sat through the tea ceremony and the tedious process of being assigned a specific time to petition the emperor.

Now I'm going to remind you that the emperor requested our presence. He wanted us there. It wasn't so much set out right but it was heavily implied that it would be in our best interest to actually show up and speak to him. I didn't want to forget that I was a free agent and despite me wanting to help out the government so it'd be more efficient, I had no dog in this fight.

I just wanted to be back with my kids again. If that wasn't something that he could give me? Then he could just go fuck right off. Rachel and Courtney were probably all alone, bouncing around between my parents and Maxine's parents.

In my nightmares, they were out in the streets. Trying to do whatever they could for money. I knew that my parents wouldn't let them do that.

My father had been agent for multiple grammy-winning artists. He was well off. Had to that, he was still alive even if he was absent and had been an absent father for most of my life. They will be taken care of as they were teenagers who only had a few years left to complete high School.

The rational fear that they would be on the streets Ward with my knowledge that they would be fine.

I knew that they would be fine. I just wanted to be home. There was a little ache in my heart when I thought about how no one was going to be able to give them a satisfactory answer as to what happened to me or Maxine.

Our divorce hadn't been the best and our split had been particularly acrimonious, but we still agreed that we were going to put the kids first. Neither one of us had decided to come here.

That we were both here meant that they had lost both of their parents. Part of me thought that perhaps only my consciousness had gone here. Maybe my body was still back there and this was all just a figment of my imagination and I could still be hooked up to like an ICU bed and in a dream state.

Someone had told me that there was a way to get back. I even had someone who had described this very same world. Come into my office once as a client. I hadn't connected the dots until later but once I did it made sense that at a certain level people were turning or people were going over to Earth from here.

That no one was able to tell me exactly how meant that I was just going to have to find that information myself.

I was clinging onto that hope like the third monkey on Noah's arc.

So if he asked me for anything I would ask him for what I wanted. I tried to hold on to that feeling this is the price. I had done so much for him already.

The hallways outside of the imperial court were all marble. The gray and white flowed together as if someone had painted them. Above it, columns held up an impressive looking roof. The cord itself was a public arena where many people could come and see the petitioners of the emperor as well as listen to the degrees. When we filed in, we sat at a space designed for petitioners on the side.

At that point in time, there were dancers or fighters that were going through a increasingly intricate back and forth. They were dancing with swords or spears depending on the moment and it was a play fight where they were trying to tag each other.

They were moving very fast, in fact I had trouble following it from time to time and to compound this, there was a percussive band playing music. One stringed instruments stood out against the drums, it's discordant vibes exactly in tune with the fighters.

As a music increased in tempo, so did the two that were performing. When it slowed down, they did the same. I could imagine an old sword dancing master mustering the courage to ask these young masters to plie across the yard. They in turn would jump and spin in accordance to the dao.

The jumping spin? Yeah that was an easy opening for an attack.

If this was a fight to the death, one of them would have taken that opportunity to kill the other.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

That cemented my idea that this was a display for the court, the dozens of people that were washing around from the outside as well as for the emperor who seemed to lounge disinterested on a throne of Jade.

The emperor himself looked like he was a model out of a martial arts teen vogue magazine. He very clearly was intelligent and he also very clearly was wearing the most expensive hairpiece around his high cheekbones.

Angular face and long beard made him appear young. Although I knew that he was at least somewhere in his hundreds, based Where I had expected gray hair, it was all black. If there was a living breathing definition of dad bod, this was it. I had heard rumors that he had several children himself, but it wasn't able to confirm that. All I saw was a woman to his side on a chair that was just as equally ostentatious and gaudy.

She on the other hand was intently watching the proceedings.

I got a sense that music drove the fight as she only glanced every so often at the fights.

By the time I realized that, they had switched weapons and now they they were doing so I could see that one was donning the mask of a demon. Were they going out with some historical piece of theater? Or were they showing one of the recent acquisitions that the emperor had figured out to use his propaganda? I hadn't the foggiest idea.

Let's get one thing straight. I knew that I could be a great source of propaganda.

He could point to me and say if this foreigner living among us can ferret out the amount of cultivators and so can you.

I did not want to be used for that. I would not agree to that.

As the pace increased, the man attacking the demon fighter had donned a wig. If so had to describe it, I would call it a deflated afro.

We're they trying to approximate what I looked like? No one had hair like that anywhere, so far as I had seen.

This caused my companions to all turn and look at me.

I shrugged.

They turned back to watch as the man using a spear tried to drive the demonic cultivator back. At least that was my sense from their interaction.

There was a lot of finger snapping and toe tapping in between where I was like. If this was a terrible gang or is them trying to approximate what actually happened they were failing hard in the name of a good story.

They made it look as if the demonic cultivator was the aggressor, which made sense, because otherwise they would have to account for how I knew what I knew.

It was looking more and more like this was a rush job. Some two-bit hack had created this to appease his patron. I had a lot of notes for that composer, but the dance itself was on point. I wasn't a dance critic, or even someone with a passing fancy for dance, but I had brought up two teenager girls and yeah let's just say that the two of them had performed on 'Dance Force' at their high school.

I had paid for enough dance tickets to know that this was a cross between that and a trip to the circus. It was professional, just super new. The crowd loved it though and that seemed to be enough for the emperor. Maybe he has some path the required others approval. That would be some kind of hell long term if you didn't do what you needed to do to gain and keep it.

More likely he was just powerful and wanted his friends to not fight him. I could dig that. Still, I wasn't here to watch the circe de soleil. Going to the opera has gotten me into this damn mess in the first place. If I hadn't found Xiran there, then we wouldn't have branched out to hunt these cultivators and let's just say that my life would have been very different. I might even be sipping wine on the beach, As ridiculous as that might sound. Western Jewel and the capital both had a nice warm year-round temperature that I had grown accustomed to.

Of course, one was right next to the water and the other one wasn't which meant that I could jump in the water if I ever wanted to lose my life to a Leviathan or a whale.

As the dance dragged on, I realized that it was as much a show to make us wait as it was for other people to watch. This is probably going to be about 2 and 1/2 hours you might have watch. Ed. Still, didn't have a smartphone and I didn't bring anything to rage so I just sat there. I briefly debated heading into the dreamscape to get some training in. We were there and we were going to see our way through this.

Moon Lee and I waited until it seemed like they were finally going to do the final curtain call. Honestly it felt like such a waste of our time. We should have just showed up later if they were going to be like this. But if this is how they honored their heroes?

I was going to have to do the right thing and accept it. Nothing less would be acceptable.

I took a moment to fully envelop Lee's hand in mine. Getting out of this situation would be great for my morale. I felt like we could have a conversation about what we were while we were there. We had gotten a space up high. It wasn't like a special box. It was more like we were waiting to wait.

"Hey, I know that this is crazy, but did you want to talk about the future?" I said.

She turned to me.

"What does that mean?" She said.

"There's this thing we use as back home where we 'define the relationship'. How do you feel about us putting a label on this?"

She cuddled in closer.

"What are my options?" She said.

"Well, we can be boyfriend and girlfriend, friends with benefits, not definite this at all or something else?"

She rested her head on my shoulder.

"Can we be besties?" She said. "What about frenemies? I have heard that one before."

"That was Min, trying to get under my skin."

"Doesn't she live in your dantian?"

"Technically yes," I said itching my belly. "But really she's just around. I take it that your spirit beast doesn't give you the same issues?"

I feel like she had an opportunity to float and had decided to not take it.

My stomach gurgled.

"Mostly yours just seems to give you indigestion and anxiety," She said.

"I prefer to call it spicy depression."

She squeezed harder.

"There's the man that does the thing that makes me need a soundproof bedroom."

"But seriously, I know we're having a good time and I'm in no rush to define this. It's been six weeks and I'm fully ready for you to call me your boyfriend whenever."

"Is boy toy short for boyfriend?"

"No it's the familiar version of fuck boy."

"That's a good girl," I said. "Now I think that there are going to be **several** speeches from men that are completely full of themselves and then we'll be off to the races."

The chancellor called the court to order and then praised the performance for what had to be the length of one, maybe two Bluey episodes. Long enough that you were annoyed that you had to click play again. Just thinking about that. It was something that I wasn't able to get to.

The conveniences of modern day living were all out of my reach. I just wanted to be able to turn on some streaming service and watch something mindlessly for hours on end. Something to lower my cortisol would be just the right thing. Of course I didn't have anything close to modern equipment on hand. The closest thing I had was the Opera and I could only handle so much of that at once.

It seemed that every time I went to the Opera everything went to shit.

But then, I could see that the emperor was beginning to address petitioners. And went over it in my mind. One more time. Don't speak unless spoken to avert your eyes. Don't look directly at him. Speak frankly but quickly. It felt like I was going to the principal's office.

Frankly, I had been a graduate for far too long for this to feel like anything more than a supreme inconvenience.

But I was going to get them. I was going to get them all. And when he asked me what I wanted? I would ask for a trip home.

I might even ask my new girlfriend to come with me.