Yuyu stood with Remuru as they waited for the hour to elapse. The guardian had endured endless hours like this one, and he did not particularly care what the outcome was. Sometimes cultivators died in the Poketto Sunpo, adding to its vitality. Sometimes, they broke the rules and had to be punished. No one but the patriarch was free to do whatever he liked beyond the gate, and even he did not abuse the privilege. One did not become patriarch without understanding the value of having access to a high-magic region and maintaining its integrity for the future of the line.

He scratched the fur on his neck and glanced at Yuyu. "Do you remember when you challenged me to a duel?"

"I remember." Yuyu was channeling in place, her eyes closed, and her bond beast curled at her feet. Her focus did not mean she wasn’t aware of her surroundings, a cultivator would not last long if they couldn’t do something as simple as channel and hold a conversation at the same time.

"You were so full of fire then, you gave me more trouble than any of your cousins at that age."

"I have a water affinity. It is only natural that the fire in me would eventually be doused."

The old lemur trilled in his throat. "I doubt that. What is so special about these two? You are sacrificing your own advancement yet again."

"Delaying it." Every visit to the Hidden Valley took Yuyu one step closer to her fifth star, and if she had kept the ambitions of her youth, she might have attained that honor a year ago, or five. Instead, for the last decade, she had used her token to collect favors from other cultivators, trading its use for treasures and manuals, amassing wealth far beyond what was typically expected of someone at her level.

"Why?"

"I think they will be useful to me."

"No, I mean why have you labored so long without advancement. You are not without talent. Four stars is a peak for some, but for you there are higher mountains yet to climb."

Though her face was serene, Yuyu inwardly frowned. She had a fondness for Remuru, and a part of her wished to share with him her burdens. Another part wanted only to see his blood spilled across the white stone of the gate. He hadn’t helped her, not when she really needed it. No one had.

How could he deserve her secrets now? There were different kinds of power in this world, a thousand ways to advance if you were willing to pay the price. She had seen more of Hollow than some sages, or so she believed. There was nothing this silly monkey could tell her now.

The rainbow barrier undulated violently for a moment, bulging like a soap bubble, and expelling Sunwhisper with two of his companions strapped to his back along with a massive pack of Seishin grass. Yuyu opened her eyes in time to see the spider jump out after him only to have its front legs buckle and flip itself onto its back, waving its steel-clad claws in agitation, apparently unable to right itself.

Sunwhisper unhitched himself from his burdens and went to help Ogumo get back on its feet. The sacred beast was exhausted, and after it was back on its many feet, it lowered its body to the ground and was still.

"There was something like a monkey dog," Sunwhisper said, "a pack of them. Are they common in that place?"

"The Nue," Yuyu replied. "Did they attack you?"

Sunwhisper busied himself undoing the web bindings that held the grass packs together and Janna and Karasu to the grass. He maintained a conversational tone, not bothering to look at Yuyu. "They wanted to, but I bluffed them. I was wondering how strong they were."

"Not strong, but a pack of them would kill you." His benefactor and owner was marking the harvest with her eyes. "What happened to the others?"

"Butterflies," Sunwhisper said, "or rainbow moths. I don’t know what to call them. They carried sleep dust. It was deeply inconvenient."

"Unlucky," Yuyu said, "but interesting. I take it you were immune?"

Sunwhisper finished separating Janna, and again tried to wake her. The water of the pool of Laughing Tears seemed to have had a revivifying effect, and her eyes opened enough for her gaze to focus on him.

"Humuhmmm…" she mumbled.

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"It appears so," Sunwhisper said.

(Ask her if she knew this would happen.)

"Did you expect me to be immune?"

Yuyu stepped to the mound of sacks bulging with Seishin grass and unstopped a waterskin at her waist. With a few concise motions of her hands, she caused the water in the skin to flow out in a controlled stream, coating the grass. Then, with an application of will and art, she caused the water to thicken into a preserving gel.

"I expected you to survive. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have shared my easement with you."

Sunwhisper had released the golden light now that he was no longer in such a mana rich environment that he could risk holding it indefinitely, but he could still feel the pure energy of the spirit water he had drunk changing him from within. Even without the Seishin grass, having had the opportunity to drink from the Pool of a Thousand Laughing Tears was a boon on the order of being given a basket of spirit fruit.

Now that Yuyu had given him the scarf, her true feelings were laid bare to Sunwhisper, but that did not mean he understood her perfectly. She was a tangled mess of emotions. The pain in her had been honed into a killing intent that was chilling to contemplate. Sunwhisper carried the hunger of a spider in his heart, and he had become accustomed to it to the point where he no longer felt compelled to stuff his mouth with any biological substance in sight. Moreover, the hunger was assuaged to some extent by channeling, and as full as his core was with the mana of the realm they had just visited, as well as the spirit water, it would not trouble him much for a time.

Yuyu’s hunger was different. The emptiness in her baffled and worried Sunwhisper, and he was unwilling to attempt to use the Hand of the Gentle Sage to try to help her. When she looked at him, or at Janna, or at anyone, he got the sense that she did not see a person. She saw things, and some of those things were useful, and some of them were not. It was impossible to be sure how taking it on would affect his personality, or how she would react to being modified in that way. It wasn’t anger, exactly. It reminded him of the stories he had heard of some early mechanoborg models before the system had gotten the hang of representing EQ as a statistic.

Certainly, it was not something he would attempt without permission, at least not yet.

"Can you help them?" he asked.

"They will come out of it soon enough. We are going to visit an alchemist who owes me a favor. Properly refined, this should be enough spirit grass to push you both into your third star."

It wasn’t clear whether she meant Sunwhisper and Janna or Sunwhisper and Starscream, but there wasn’t any chance of clarification while they were still in the presence of Remuru. Yuyu had been insistent that the symbiotic demons continue to masquerade as a single cultivator, in the hopes of maintaining the best possible advantage when it came time to assassinate her former mentor.

The guardian watched their exchange without comment, scratching at his neck fur. Yuyu tucked the harvest away in a Yubiwa, a cabochon that had been faceted and scripted in such a way as to allow for extra-dimensional storage.

(Oh man, we have to get one of those.)

The sacks and their contents vanished when they contacted the crystal. Sunwhisper knew it couldn’t be as simple as that, but whatever the actual mechanism was, it was something that took place on a level he wasn’t privy to. Maybe Karasu would have been able to watch it happen, whatever it was, but she was still unconscious.

When the spoils of their brief adventure were all well and gone, Yuyu declared that it was time for them to move on, and Sunwhisper was left with the task of herding his companions, who were still trapped in various stages of awareness.

The raven had to be carried.

"The application period for the Heavenly School of the Azai is in three weeks," Yuyu said as they followed the path down from the gate of the Hidden Valley. Sunwhisper held Karasu in his arms, while Janna and Ogumo were being tugged along on leashes, both of them still next to useless from the influence of the sleep dust they had imbibed in the other world. "That should be barely enough time to have you ready to meet their requirements."

"Three stars," Sunwhisper said, "that seems like a high bar to set for entrance to a school."

"In the Middle Kingdom," Yuyu replied, "you are not considered a cultivator until you earn your third star. Below that, you are an initiate."

The border guardian who had single-handedly killed Sunwhisper’s exploration party had been a two-star. An initiate then, even if he had been one of the most powerful men in Fringe Village. It was yet another example of the power differential in Hollow, and how woefully unbalanced the terms of technology and magic really were.

Had his fathers been fully equipped, their weapons and munitions at capacity, and their systems unaffected by the heavy entropy that surrounded the world of the Quintessence, Sunwhisper thought the outcome of that fateful meeting might have been different. But if they had survived their encounter with Makoto, the next challenger would have been the First Elder, and from what he understood of the scalability of cultivation, that contest would have had a foregone conclusion.

And they still would have only been facing an entry level pure artist.

He wouldn’t be like his fathers had been. When it came time for him to find the Quintessence, he would be ready for whatever Hollow had to put in his way.

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Quest Update — The Source

Regions of high-magic density are not only a valuable resource but may present a clue as to the nature of the Quintessence and its relationship to Hollow. Seek out more information relating to the Hidden Valley of the Azai, as well as similar regions.

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