Hudson went into his house and rummaged around in the cabinets under his sink. He found a small bucket and carried it back outside, where he began picking up the green crystalline pieces of Sal’s broken avatar and placing them in the bucket.

“For one so eager to abuse his elders, welch on his obligations, and demand to ‘have a discussion,’ you are awfully quiet. You wretched little smoke-stain.”

Hudson ignored the jab momentarily, and picked up a few more bits of crystal off of the ground.

“I’d say we got off on the wrong foot,” Hudson said, “but you don’t have any feet.”

Sal gave off a sound like broken glass and breaking stone.

“But that’s not very fair. How’s this? You stop insulting me, and I’ll do the same?”

“Fine, but you will owe me a single favor. My insults are obviously better, and larger in quantity. Do you agree?”

Hudson laughed, then shook his head. His reaction surprised even himself.

“No, I do not agree,” Hudson said and continued looking through the grass for shards of crystal. The different shades of green mixed in with each other, making it difficult to see smaller pieces.

“Maybe we need to start somewhere even more fundamental,” Hudson said after a while. “You’ve said things like my cultivation is incomplete, but you’ve also said I’m a genius. I find it hard to believe both can be true… which is why I also find it simply hard to believe you, at all.”

“How’s this for a trade: we both tell the truth, to the best of our knowledge. Do you agree?”

Sal floated in silence.

“If you can’t even do that, I’m just going to leave. There’s no point in continuing further.”

“Fine,” Sal answered. “I agree, you pathetic worm. To think that we, a collective consciousness millennia old, have been brought to such a terrible state, bargaining with the livestock for our entertainment.”

“Aw, has the flying tree been lonely?” Hudson chuckled to himself. He thought Cor would have been proud of that one. He was working on his trash-talking.

“We are not… very lonely,” Sal said, catching himself slightly. “We are bored. We spoke the truth when we said that a fully realized mindscape, with a manifested avatar capable of direct communication, is vanishingly rare at the qi gathering stage. The Sage only allows those at the qi gathering stage to touch our broken form.”

The Sage could only be the wizened old man from the pavilion.

“Since we’re talking, having a discussion and not trading favors in any way shape or form,” Hudson said, “then who’s the Sage? And why only limit you to qi gathering stage?”

“What are you willing to trade for that information?”

Hudson sighed and looked around the ground around him. He had picked up all of the broken pieces of the silicate’s avatar that he could see. “What’s this worth to you?” Hudson said, holding up the bucket of green crystals.

“Pfft. Hmph,” Sal made a series of unintelligible noises.

Hudson smiled. It was worth enough that Sal didn’t actually want to answer the question. At least not truthfully.

“The chance to actually negotiate, to strive for advantage and take it… we miss that greatly,” Sal said. “But to be bound in this manner by something so… inelegant… as facts…ugh.”

This could be a prime opportunity to gain knowledge – knowledge about cultivation that he was sorely lacking – but Hudson had a new thought, and it was a disturbing one. “How do I know that all of this posturing and grumbling about the truth, and how we agreed to speak the truth, isn’t just another ploy?”

Sal’s tinkling, crystalline laughter was the only response. Hudson thought deeply for a minute. Was he actually being too clever here? How could he truly know if Sal was bound to tell the truth?

His mind made a connection, and he opened his mouth. Nothing came out except for a strangled, muffled sound.

“Such a disappointment. You figured that out way too quickly,” Sal commented.

Hudson couldn’t lie. He had just tried to say that the grass was purple, and the words hadn’t come out.

“How is this possible?” Hudson asked. “I can’t lie, I just tried to, and I just can’t.”

“Provide me the bucket and the unfortunate remains of my projected self, and I will answer three of your questions,” Sal said.

Hudson pulled a small piece of green crystal from the bucket. “One piece of crystal for a simple piece of information. Two pieces for a complex answer.”

“You attempt to barter to me what is rightfully mine to begin with,” Sal countered. “You should simply give it to me, to generate goodwill with a powerful elder such as me.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“It’s not yours, it’s mine now,” Hudson retorted. “If it was yours, couldn’t you just come and get it? You can’t, so it’s mine.”

Both of them considered the pieces of crystal to be their own, as both had said so. They were each limited to speak the truth as they believed it, but the reality – what the actual, absolute truth was – could be different.

“Fine. We will agree to one piece for a simple answer. More for a complex answer. And we have the right to refuse to answer,” Sal said.

“And I also have the ability to cancel the deal,” Hudson added. “Are we agreed?”

“Yes.”

Hudson flicked a small piece of crystal at the floating tree. It soared across the bridge and struck its trunk, sticking to it. Hudson watched as it was slowly absorbed within.

“The Sage?”

“The Sage of the Forest, inner elder of the Disciples of Grothkyll, a true master at the peak of the nascent soul stage. My enemy and captor. He cultivates the dao of silence, and has a soft spot for young saplings such as yourself.”

Hudson flicked another crystal over to Sal.

“Can you tell me more about where we are right now? You told me we are inside my mind – were you lying? And if we agree to tell the truth… why can’t we lie?”

“That is not a single question…” Sal said, waiting expectantly, until Hudson tossed over a few more pieces of crystal.

“If we could lie, we would say it is a pleasure doing business with you, but sadly we cannot. We were not lying previously – you are indeed inside of your mind palace, or mindscape. It is not entirely accurate to say you are inside of your mind, because for one, the mind and body dichotomy is false, and secondly this is a construction that your subconscious mind has built.

“How to explain this to someone so ignorant… Constructs of qi, like this mindscape, are… closer to nature. Closer to the dao, and the original creation; closer to the form of forms. This place is closer to the way things should be, and thus they have more power to be bound by their creator.” Sal put heavy emphasis on the word ‘should.’ “So when you bind qi to your words, the nature of this space makes them real.”

“I’m not following,” Hudson said, frowning.

“Understandable. Predictable, even. And not our problem.”

Hudson sighed in exasperation. “So all ‘mindscapes’ are like this? Other cultivators can have mindscapes, and you make agreements in them and be bound by them?”

“Eh… mostly yes.”

“So this mindspace can actually be quite dangerous.”

“Very. As if the pieces of ourselves you so casually barter could not tell you that.”

Hudson’s mind was spinning.

“Then why am I talking to you? Didn’t you say only qi gatherers are allowed to touch your crystal form?”

One of Sal’s hanging roots made a little ‘wiggle’ motion for payment.

“So few qi gathering cultivators can create a mindscape, and those that do would know – ahem, should know – not to attempt to match wits with as fearsome an entity as ourself... The subconscious mind of you humans protects itself quite well, and recall, we are bound by the Sage to provide a single boon to each of you young saplings who manages to smudge our physical form with their dirty mitts.

“Most of you burn with enough ambition that communicating a compatible dao sigil through their subconscious is simple enough. And no one says ‘qi gatherers,’” Sal scoffed. “The young cultivators these days… just what are they teaching you… clearly, standards have fallen very low.”

He was much more confused about the ‘how’ of what was happening than when he’d first started this line of questioning; he also realized that while Sal was obligated to answer his questions, there wasn’t anything in their agreement that said they had to do so in a manner that he could understand.

“Enough of that,” Hudson said, and tossed over another chunk of crystal as payment. “Explain your previous comments about my cultivation. What did you mean, it was ‘incomplete’?”

“‘Incomplete’ means ‘not complete,’ and that is a fair descriptor of your cultivation technique. It is incomplete because it will never allow you to accumulate enough qi in your dantian to advance to the next stage, formation building.”

“Why not?” Hudson asked.

“Ahem. Two pieces,” Sal said, and Hudson angrily tossed the greedy tree another two pieces of crystal.

“Very simply spoken – so that a dirt-pounder such as yourself can understand – your technique is not designed for your stage of cultivation, or even so much for cultivating. It appears to pull in significant quantities of qi, but also expels that qi from your dantian into your qi channels and body simultaneously. If you somehow gathered qi in your dantian, it would also expel that stored qi.

“It is a powerful technique. It could even empower the bodily cultivation of a core formation level cultivator, allowing them to exceed their limits and burn their cultivation for a temporary boost to power. But to advance to the foundation building stage, you must gather enough qi in your dantian to condense it, and this technique will not allow that.”

Hudson thought through Sal’s answer. It made sense, in a way. His advancement through the qi gathering stages had been exceptionally fast. He had learned this technique from Chiang-sensei – if it was incomplete, why had she used it that day? Was it really to teach him?

Maybe she knew more about the technique, or a different technique that he could use to gather qi in his dantian.

“Is there a way to complete my technique?” Hudson asked, throwing over another crystal.

“Yes,” Sal replied.

Hudson waited for a moment, but when no more information was forthcoming, he asked again, “Well, how? How can I complete my technique?”

“The value of that information far outweighs what you are offering. Perhaps if you would trade the young sapling you have there, born from the spiritual seed of a ten-thousand year old oak?”

“No,” Hudson shook his head. It was obvious that a cultivation technique was very valuable, and that Hudson would – and perhaps, should – pay a dear price for it.

“If I may… while initially amusing, I now grow weary of your petulant queries,” Sal said. “You know what I want. And if a cultivation technique isn’t tempting enough, I would like to present other forms of power. Sigils of the dao, marks born of nature or consumed from worthy opponents, all taken to build the steps in my path.

“Now available for you to sample… for the right price, of course.”