To say that the next auc­tion was con­tentious was an un­der­state­ment.

Sobon knew that the start­ing bid of 100 coins would dis­ap­pear in­stant­ly, but she wasn't ex­pect­ing the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly to im­me­di­ate­ly bid 300. But in spite of what Lai Shi Po had said, this time, even they had to com­pete to hold the high bid. But it wasn't even the Lai Fam­i­ly Leader who im­me­di­ate­ly chal­lenged the bid; there were sev­er­al anony­mous bids in quick suc­ces­sion, all in 50 coin in­cre­ments, be­fore the Lai Fam­i­ly pushed the to­tal to 500. The ac­tion be­came heat­ed, with a se­ries of small­er in­cre­men­tal bids that the bid­ders had to know wouldn't ac­tu­al­ly win.

Even so, the bids didn't stop, not even when the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly went to 700. Lai Shi Po was laugh­ing qui­et­ly to her­self as her eyes flicked from one bid­der to the next, but what­ev­er she was see­ing, what­ev­er the identities of the bid­ders, they were rais­ing the price too quick­ly for her to ex­plain. The Ap­prais­er, too, was bounc­ing on the balls of his feet, though he was no longer pranc­ing back and forth, sim­ply bob­bing up and down with poor­ly con­tained ex­cite­ment.

Sobon glanced at each of the bid­ders, ex­cept a few where she might have had to lean too far out to see them, but with most of the booths re­veal­ing noth­ing but shad­ows, she would have to wait for Lai Shi Po to speak on the po­lit­i­cal war be­ing raged be­low and around them. The in­cre­ment of bids got small­er, but Sobon not­ed that the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly was be­ing silent, and she cor­rect­ly guessed that they were wait­ing to have the last word.

In­deed, af­ter near­ly a dozen sin­gle flame coin in­cre­ment bids, the to­tal jumped from 746 to 1000 with only a word from the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly, and Sobon could feel the in­tense dis­ap­point­ment and pres­sure from their booth, the aether feel­ing smoth­er­ing even to her.

"[1001.]" Sobon looked over at the Lai Fam­i­ly booth, as­ton­ished that they would dare, but equal­ly as­ton­ished that they were still ar­gu­ing de­spite the mas­sive cost.

"[1100.]" The Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly bid­der's voice car­ried ac­tu­al mal­ice in its re­sponse, and Sobon shiv­ered, feel­ing cer­tain that all her aether ma­nip­u­la­tion abil­i­ties couldn't pro­tect her if the peo­ple in that booth de­cid­ed they want­ed her dead.

"[1101.]"

"I'm start­ing to think I got a very good deal," Lai Shi Po said, with deep hu­mor in her voice, and a sharp light in her eyes. "If any­one in the room had known just how des­per­ate the bid­ding would get, the last one would not end up in my hands."

"The Lai Fam­i­ly won't end up with it," Sobon said, con­fi­dent­ly, de­spite the tense si­lence af­ter the last bid. "I--"

"[1500.]" This time, the qi pres­sure wave that came from the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly's booth ripped through all the pri­va­cy fields. Sobon, for her part, only got a mi­nor headache, though Ki'el, Lui, and Mian all im­me­di­ate­ly clasped their heads and stum­bled back. Sobon also could see that the low­er class peo­ple pop­u­lat­ing the non-pri­vate booths and the auc­tion floor all had much stronger re­ac­tions, with some of the ones on the floor sim­ply falling over and not ris­ing.

More im­por­tant­ly, the pri­va­cy field pro­tect­ing the Lai Fam­i­ly rip­pled, as though de­fend­ing against and at­tack, al­though they held.

"[With all due re­spect to the in­es­timable bene­fac­tors in Booth 1, we would like to re­mind you all that vi­o­lence is not ac­cept­able in this establishment, no mat­ter the cir­cum­stances.]" The Ap­prais­er's voice was sud­den­ly much rougher, al­though still he man­aged to put nu­ance and in­tent into his every word. "[On be­half of the Jade Phoenix--]"

"[1501.]" Sobon felt some­thing un­pleas­ant stir as the Lai Fam­i­ly spoke up. Sobon knew that the Ap­prais­er had been pre­pared to call the auc­tion, but with the bid al­ready topped, the man stopped.

This time, how­ev­er, the pre­tens­es were dropped. A fig­ure, and then a sec­ond, sim­ply stepped onto and over the rail­ing of the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly's booth, re­veal­ing a young man and woman, both very hand­some and well dressed, with what Sobon would con­sid­er healthy aether--not blocked or re­pressed, not cor­rupt­ed or con­fused, with both nu­ance and strength. They walked in midair, on a qi plat­form that they sum­moned be­neath their feet, with the young man lead­ing, al­though both of them had match­ing an­gry looks to their faces. Not con­ceit­ed or ar­ro­gant, from what Sobon could see, but def­i­nite­ly an­gry.

"Does the in­es­timable Lai fam­i­ly not be­lieve in giv­ing any face to the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly?" The young man's words were not barbed, but there was no dis­guis­ing the anger, bor­der­ing on rage. Al­though he made no ef­fort to add in­tent to his words, they still car­ried eas­i­ly and clear­ly. "Per­haps you be­lieve that your cof­fers are deep­er than the Im­pe­r­i­al trea­sury it­self? Or per­haps you be­lieve that Our will is only so shal­low?"

When the Lai Fam­i­ly's pri­va­cy shield dropped, Sobon was half sur­prised to find that the face of what must be the Lai Fam­i­ly Leader--Lai Shi Po's hus­band--was very hand­some, mus­cu­lar but still grace­ful­ly pack­aged and dressed, with a stub­born set to his face. Alas­si's body had an im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion to his looks, which Sobon stub­born­ly ig­nored, though she could un­der­stand the at­trac­tion; phys­i­cal­ly, he was a pic­ture of strength and el­e­gance, al­though Sobon felt that his aether seemed off.

"Prince Djang Ban Dai, Princess Djang Ban Fen." The Fam­i­ly leader of­fered a half bow, which didn't even come off as sar­cas­tic. "Did not the Fam­i­ly just de­cide against us in the pre­vi­ous bid? With­out ques­tion, the po­si­tion of the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly is great, but es­pe­cial­ly here, out­side of the Em­pire it­self, you can­not ex­pect to op­pose peo­ple and then be treat­ed as a trust­ed ally and friend."

"And your an­swer at such a mo­ment would be to de­clare war?" The Prince's voice wasn't an­gry, only dis­ap­point­ed. "If the No­ble House of Lai weren't so frac­tious, We are sure that the pre­vi­ous bid­der, be­ing your le­gal wife, would have very hap­pi­ly al­lowed you to share pos­ses­sion of her own. And yet this is not the first time that We have had to side with the ge­nius Lai Shi Po, fa­vored by our fam­i­ly, against you." The Prince took an­oth­er step for­ward. "In case it should be un­clear, we have al­ready giv­en or­ders that she and her par­ty be pro­tect­ed, in case any­one, even the no­ble leader of House Lai, should at­tempt to show her any dis­re­spect."

The Fam­i­ly Leader's face twist­ed mo­men­tar­i­ly, but when he spoke, it was clear­ly. "I, too, val­ue the in­de­pen­dence and well-be­ing of my wife, and I unashamed­ly ac­cept and ap­prove of the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly's ef­forts to en­sure her safe­ty." Sobon glanced at Lai Shi Po, whose pos­ture was rigid as a stat­ue. Be­hind the Fam­i­ly Leader, a very tall man with shock­ing­ly white hair and a very wrin­kled coun­te­nance scowled, and spoke, but his words did not trav­el out­side of the booth. What­ev­er he said, it ap­peared he was ig­nored by every­one else as well.

"Un­der the cir­cum­stances, Lai Ten, there are many rea­sons for Us to be of­fend­ed. Es­pe­cial­ly since this mys­tery item is from an un­known mas­ter." The Djang prince turned to Lai Shi Po's booth, and Sobon stepped back, hes­i­tant­ly, but Lai Shi Po didn't seem to even flinch, her eyes glued to the ex­change. "If Lai Shi Po her­self be­lieves that this item is tru­ly pro­found, then We are in­ter­est­ed to dis­cov­er ex­act­ly what this un­known mas­ter has pro­duced. But We would be for­giv­en, We think, if We be­gan to feel see signs of a con­spir­a­cy here. An un­known mas­ter, an un­prece­dent­ed ar­ti­fact, and mem­bers of a sin­gle house col­lud­ing to raise the price sub­stan­tial­ly."

Al­though his voice seemed very small in comparison, the Ap­prais­er spoke up. "[The Jade Phoenix Auc­tion House would nat­u­ral­ly per­mit our bene­fac­tors, the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly, to ex­am­ine the item and as­cer­tain to their sat­is­fac­tion that the item is as de­scribed.]"

The Prince didn't move a mus­cle, but the Princess tele­port­ed to the ground with a slight twist of her body. Al­though Sobon felt like she should not at all be look­ing at ei­ther of the two's qi cores, she did glance, and found that both of them had cores like suns--balls of con­densed flame, the Prince's Red, and the Princess' Or­ange. Al­though it was only a glance, Sobon was cer­tain that the Princess was the stronger of the two.

There was a ter­ri­fied still­ness in the auc­tion house as the Princess stud­ied the item, and it oc­curred to Sobon that the ma­te­ri­als she'd made the crown out of wouldn't be­gin to work at their lev­els of qi, and that the Auc­tion­eer hadn't spo­ken about its lim­i­ta­tions--per­haps be­cause, not know­ing how to speak of such things, Sobon hadn't said any­thing when she spoke to him.

"[This item has an up­per lim­it of qi it can re­fine, de­ter­mined by the ma­te­ri­als used in its con­struc­tion, but I be­lieve the item is ex­act­ly as pro­found as it was de­scribed to be.]" the princess in­toned, her voice calm and de­tached in spite of the tense cir­cum­stances, "[I ex­pect that such a mas­ter in­scrip­tion­ist, once in pos­ses­sion of prop­er re­sources, might cre­ate a ver­sion of the ar­ti­fact which would be of im­me­di­ate use to those of us in the Flame phase of qi, but I would not ex­pect this ar­ti­fact to be of use above the Heav­en­ly Gem Phase. At the Tran­scen­dent Gem Phase, they would be re­quired to use so lit­tle qi to avoid de­stroy­ing the ma­te­ri­als, that al­most no pu­rifi­ca­tion could be done. Even at the low­est lev­el of the Flame Phase, our qi would de­stroy the ar­ti­fact be­fore any pu­rifi­ca­tion could be per­formed.]"

"[Even with only a mo­ment of study, I can con­firm that this ar­ti­fact con­tains a sin­gle mote of what the Ap­prais­er has termed Pri­mor­dial Qi, and it is there­fore an item wor­thy of fur­ther study. If this ar­ti­fact could be used to raise an ex­pert ca­pa­ble of re­fin­ing Pri­mor­dial Qi them­selves, they would be a pow­er­ful ally. Po­ten­tial­ly, this ar­ti­fact could be used to ac­cel­er­ate the cul­ti­va­tion of a prodi­gy by an ex­treme­ly high amount. Even among the high­est tal­ents of a gen­er­a­tion, it could raise one to the ab­solute pin­na­cle, per­haps even above in­nate ge­nius­es.]"

"I see." The Prince's voice re­mained even, with anger ev­i­dent there, but not over­pow­er­ing his good sense. "Dear Ap­prais­er, would the Jade Phoenix Trade House be will­ing, giv­en that the de­scrip­tion of the ar­ti­fact has changed, to restart this auc­tion from its ini­tial bid? We will not con­test the pre­vi­ous bid, won by Lai Shi Po."

There was a pause, and Sobon thought she sensed cod­ed qi puls­es, but the Ap­prais­er bowed. "We are will­ing to restart the bid­ding, with an ini­tial bid of [100 Im­mor­tal Flame Coins.]"

"Good." The Prince raised his chin at the leader of the Lai Fam­i­ly. "Our open­ing bid is [1500 Im­mor­tal Flame Coins.] Does any­one dare bid against us?"

Sobon felt pos­i­tive­ly dizzy at that ex­change, and she imag­ined every­one else did as well. All of that to low­er the bid by a sin­gle coin? To give Lai Ten a chance to not stand up to them? Sobon glanced over at the man, who was star­ing at the Djang prince with a stub­born set to his chin, and the tall, white haired fam­i­ly El­der whis­per­ing fran­ti­cal­ly in his ear.

When he fi­nal­ly spoke, it was with res­ig­na­tion in his voice. "The Lai Fam­i­ly will with­draw from this bid." And with a ges­ture, Lai Ten re­stored the pri­va­cy shield over his booth.

No one else spoke, and the Djang im­pe­r­i­al Prince and Princess both smooth­ly and ef­fort­less­ly moved back to their booth. The Ap­prais­er, who had def­i­nite­ly stopped fid­get­ing at some point that Sobon hadn't paid any at­ten­tion to, sim­ply re­mained bowed, near­ly as still as a Stat­ue, but with the oc­ca­sion­al twinge or shake. Af­ter a long mo­ment, he straight­ened. "[The Jade Phoenix Auc­tion House will take a short break to en­sure that all at­ten­dees are prop­er­ly seen to af­ter that dis­play of spir­i­tu­al pres­sure. We will re­sume the auc­tion in a few min­utes. Re­fresh­ments will be made avail­able to all our at­ten­dees, as well as med­ical at­ten­tion for any­one who feels un­well af­ter be­ing ex­posed to the pres­sure. If any­one feels any need or de­sire, please only find a mem­ber of the Auc­tion House and speak, and you will be at­tend­ed to.]"

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

When Sobon turned to check on Lui and the rest, she was star­tled to see the Lai fam­i­ly guards al­most im­me­di­ate­ly be­hind her--and Lai Shi Po im­me­di­ate­ly turned, her eyes wide, but her eyes nar­rows. "You did hear--"

"Our loy­al­ty is to the Lai Fam­i­ly," one of the guards said, but there was more ten­sion there now, more fear. "And our only or­ders at this time are to safe­guard Lady Lai and en­sure that she does noth­ing to of­fend the House."

Lai Shi Po sim­ply glanced at a crys­tal near the door, and spoke with care­ful in­tent, in­tent that Sobon could feel res­onat­ing strong­ly with the crys­tal. "[This Lai Shi Po would pre­fer that the house guards of the Lai fam­i­ly were re­moved from her booth. Again.]"

Both guards tensed, and Sobon be­gan gath­er­ing aether in her arm Spir­it Bones, but it was only a mo­ment be­fore there was a knock at the door, and it opened to re­veal two Auc­tion House at­ten­dants, and a swords­man whose qi was in a tur­bu­lent riot, as though fu­ri­ous, al­though his sword re­mained firm­ly sheathed. Sobon only took a mo­ment to as­sure her­self that the swords­man was much stronger than the two house guards, and then re­al­ized, once again, that she was for­get­ting one of the ir­ri­tat­ing facts of this world.

That her qi screamed her name--or rather, Alas­si's--to any­one who could see her. It was too late to stop Lai Shi Po's guards from know­ing who she was--but this guard was like­ly from the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly.

Sobon took a breath and wove an aether bar­ri­er around her core, and she no­ticed sev­er­al eyes fall on her as she did, but the two Lai guards both sim­ply kept their hands far from their weapons and moved away to­wards the door. The swords­man didn't move, and kept his eyes firm­ly on the two guards--and none of the three out­side stepped in­side. Once the two guards were out­side, the door snapped shut as though of its own ac­cord, and Lai Shi Po fi­nal­ly breathed a sigh of re­lief.

"I'm sor­ry," she said, and Sobon re­al­ized with a start that the woman was pos­i­tive­ly ex­haust­ed. She glanced at Sobon. "I have an ar­ti­fact to con­ceal your qi's name trans­mis­sion, but I didn't think to give it to you. I should have, be­fore the Lai house guards even came, though they would not have al­lowed you to re­main anony­mous, not to them. Not to the House."

"It was al­ways op­ti­mistic to think I'd get away stay­ing anony­mous, es­pe­cial­ly to the most pow­er­ful peo­ple here," Sobon said. She glanced back over the rail­ing, to­wards the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly booth. "That... I'm glad it didn't get worse than that."

"What hap­pened is bad enough. My hus­band is a damned fool, and El­der Lai Ton Bari is worse. He is one of the El­ders that keeps in­sist­ing on me bear­ing sons for the house. He has many meth­ods to en­sure that he al­ways has my hus­band's ear, and some of them are black­mail in all but name."

Sobon winced, but nod­ded. She glanced over at Lui, Mian, and Ki'el, who were all sit­ting down, but in good spir­its, all of them sip­ping some kind of tea that Fau Mide had some­how quick­ly brewed us­ing items from her space ring. "How are you three?"

"The shield helped," Mian said first. "But I can still feel an echo of their... the Prince's anger. Not quite as bad as the feel of your at­tacks, but it doesn't want to go away."

"It stings," Lui agreed, "the med­i­cine helps." She paused. "Were those re­al­ly... the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly?"

"As much as there is such a thing," Lai Shi Po con­firmed. "There have been many gen­er­a­tions of sons and grand­sons of the Di­a­mond Lord, but He will nev­er be re­placed as leader. In­stead, a few of the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly com­pete to gov­ern spe­cif­ic re­gions or parts of the gov­ern­ment, chang­ing when one choos­es to leave or does some­thing to of­fend the Di­a­mond Lord. But since the Di­a­mond Lord has been silent, none of their po­si­tions have changed in many years, not even the ones who want to pass their of­fice on."

"I ex­pect­ed to dis­like them more," Ki'el said, qui­et­ly.

But Lai Shi Po just shook her head. "Right now, they only ex­ist to grow stronger and learn what they need to know. If they take over a part of the gov­ern­ment, or if they get in­volved in the pol­i­tics of the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly, then they will be­come some­thing they are not, yet. Whether that is great or ter­ri­ble will only be seen then. But even then..." she paused, and glanced out over the bal­cony. "More of­ten it is oth­ers that are eas­i­ly cor­rupt­ed, swayed by need­ing to fight, be­tray, and steal to gain pow­er. Of­ten enough, the be­tray­al and back­stab­bing is what fi­nal­ly breaks the young ge­nius­es. Each gen­er­a­tion, we all hope it will be dif­fer­ent." She half turned her head. "Some­times it even is. But nev­er enough."

Sobon just nod­ded. Even Crestan his­to­ry had long pe­ri­ods where things slow­ly grew in the wrong di­rec­tion, and every­thing wait­ed on a change that nev­er came. Usu­al­ly, some­thing had to shock it from the out­side, or else the cor­rup­tion had to reach a crit­i­cal lev­el.

Af­ter a few more min­utes, the auc­tion re­sumed, if at a some­what more mut­ed tone. The very next item up for bid was the In­vin­ci­ble Sword that Mian had been fas­ci­nat­ed by, and al­though Sobon could see that it was, in­deed, a com­plex sword whose ma­te­ri­als and scripts were cho­sen to make it re­main pow­er­ful and sharp in all cir­cum­stances, it got that far with brute force, stor­ing great pow­er in­ter­nal­ly and pack­ing in­tent dense­ly be­hind the blade. Al­though she couldn't see well from a dis­tance, Sobon imag­ined it would have been dif­fi­cult to adapt the de­sign to add any oth­er fea­ture along with its strength.

Af­ter the In­vin­ci­ble Sword came a line of less­er Star­beast cores, start­ing with a Moon­stone core aligned with De­struc­tion in­tent, and a Sap­phire core aligned with de­fen­sive in­tent, or what Sobon would have called 'Struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty' in­tent. Af­ter that were a va­ri­ety of less­er met­al phase cores, low enough lev­el to not in­ter­fere with in­tent as strong­ly, and here Sobon chose to buy two of them at bare­ly twen­ty Flame Coins apiece. Af­ter the cores came a se­lec­tion of raw met­als, and then al­chem­i­cal in­gre­di­ents, a few of which Fau Mide tried and failed to pur­chase.

Af­ter that came Lai Shi Po's sec­ond Space Ring, and Sobon re­al­ized they were only halfway through.

"Most of the rest will be for the peo­ple be­low," Lai Shi Po said, as com­pe­ti­tion for her space ring heat­ed up. "When they form an auc­tion, they ask the pow­er­ful back­ers whether they want the in­ter­est­ing items ear­ly or late, as each will have dif­fer­ent sched­ules. Some can af­ford to spend their en­tire day at the auc­tion, but I am one of the few who does so every time--thus my rings be­ing spread through­out. The no­bles may leave an at­ten­dant or send one ear­ly, if they so choose, but most would rather be here for at least the in­ter­est­ing ones."

"Will they wait un­til the end to de­liv­er pur­chas­es and mon­ey?"

Lai Shi Po shrugged. "We can re­quest it at any time. Though, I should have made clear, the auc­tion house takes ten per­cent of your win­nings as a fee. Af­ter the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly's mess, they might charge them the cost of the ex­perts who treat­ed the oth­er at­ten­dees, and if that fee is high enough, they may not take your stake of that bid." Lai Shi Po just shrugged. "Since it is your first time, they might give you that grace, if you de­mand it. They will want your re­peat busi­ness."

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it seems very un­like­ly." Sobon looked down at her hands--at Alas­si's hands. It was easy to ig­nore, when she was get­ting swept up in every­thing, just what was still com­ing, still vis­i­ble on the hori­zon. "We all need to speak on what comes next."

"Af­ter this show­ing, you might gain the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly's fa­vor. But even then, it will mean noth­ing if what you ask for is be­yond their abil­i­ty to give, and what­ev­er this trea­sure is you are af­ter, I imag­ine it is one the Di­a­mond Lord will not part with." Lai Shi Po turned away from the bal­cony, look­ing se­ri­ous­ly at Sobon. "But that is not all that you're think­ing about, is it?"

"You said that a few hun­dred Flame Coins could cre­ate a no­ble house," Sobon said, her mind slow­ly grind­ing on what she had been think­ing for a while. "Be­cause of my mis­sion, I can­not rule one, and as a non-Djang, they wouldn't want me. But..."

"Even a thou­sand Flame Coins can­not pur­chase me away from the Lai fam­i­ly. I know, I've tried." Lai Shi Po scowled. "And my hus­band, or more like­ly, the El­ders will try to col­lect you. If you only want your fam­i­ly tak­en care of, that would ac­com­plish your goal, es­pe­cial­ly if you choose to die and be re­born. But..."

"I have no in­ter­est in that," Sobon waved dis­mis­sive­ly. "You've said enough about how the El­ders in­ter­fere with things. And there is still the mat­ter of end­ing things with the Mofu fam­i­ly; there will need to be a re­place­ment for them. An ide­al an­swer will be one in which my peo­ple, some­how, raise in to that sta­tion, while I fade away."

Ki'el stepped around Lai Shi Po to look at Sobon, her eyes se­ri­ous. "You are un­will­ing to change your mind on this?"

Sobon gave her a sad smile. "It needs to be done. And I will not be gone for good, Ki'el. What comes next is un­cer­tain, but I know that much for sure." It was im­plic­it in what she had glimpsed in the fu­ture of the Crowns, al­though those fu­tures came with caveats that she would not speak of, not yet. "I wasn't sure be­fore, but now I am be­gin­ning to think that my mis­sion may be over soon­er than I thought."

Not over, changed. Sobon let the thought roll around in her head. The spir­it she had spo­ken to, the one who had asked about myth, had said as much, and now her glimpses of the fu­ture re­in­forced the idea. Was she re­al­ly okay trust­ing that? With so much fate-at­tuned aether in this world, it was en­tire­ly pos­si­ble that her vi­sions had been tam­pered with, or that they would change sub­stan­tial­ly--and she still didn't know how things would come to pass, only that a few spe­cif­ic things seemed cer­tain.

"And you will come back to us, when your mis­sion is over?" Ki'el's voice held a cer­tain sus­pi­cion.

"I in­tend to, yes." Sobon let her smile speak for her, be­cause she wasn't sure what words she might use to say what she want­ed to say while keep­ing her se­crets.

There was a knock at the door, and Lai Shi Po frowned, but--once Sobon had re­freshed her iden­ti­ty-mask­ing field, the door opened and a se­ries of attendants en­tered, with per­mis­sion, to de­posit items, in­clud­ing a space ring for Sobon filled with mon­ey, as well as the Cores she had bought, and set­ting down the box Sobon had cre­at­ed on the table. Lai Shi Po, with ad­mirable re­straint, didn't charge at the item she'd bought un­til the door closed.

When she snatched it up, and ex­am­ined it, she couldn't help frown­ing. She turned the crown over and over in her hands, ex­am­in­ing the in­scrip­tions and the in­tent as care­ful­ly as she could. "This crown... was de­signed to hold its true pow­er back, was it not? Al­though the Appraiser spoke in glow­ing terms of its staged pu­rifi­ca­tion process, that is a cheat, a de­cep­tion. It could pu­ri­fy your qi en­tire­ly." She glanced at Sobon. "And you in­stalled a lock so that you could use it in that way, if nec­es­sary."

"I could. Ki'el could. And I could teach you." Sobon shrugged. "But hav­ing heard the Ap­prais­er talk, I like the idea that it teach­es peo­ple to ma­nip­u­late and rec­og­nize pu­ri­fied qi. There is lit­tle point to hav­ing it if the wield­er thinks of pu­ri­fied--Pri­mor­dial Qi as the same as reg­u­lar qi. It has spe­cif­ic use cas­es, cas­es where hav­ing any stray in­tent in your qi is un­ac­cept­able. I know you have run into a few your­self."

"I have." Lai Shi Po turned to look at Ki'el, and the girl took a step back, her eyes now wide as saucers since Sobon had thrust her into Lai Shi Po's at­ten­tion. "Pri­mor­dial Qi would be of im­mense ben­e­fit for in­scrip­tions, but also..." she stopped, and con­sid­ered the crown in her hands for a long mo­ment.

"...But also, as the Princess said, it could ac­cel­er­at­ing the cul­ti­va­tion of a prodi­gy. We spend years try­ing to re­fine away mis­tak­en and ac­ci­den­tal in­tent, and cor­rupt­ed or dam­aged qi, so that we can ad­vance even a small step with­out harm­ing our next and fu­ture ad­vance­ments. To have qi to use for ad­vance­ment that can­not do any harm would change every­thing."

"And that is why it can­not be giv­en out so freely," Sobon ac­knowl­edged, qui­et­ly. "It would sim­ply let a fam­i­ly buy progress and strength, buy suc­cess in pol­i­tics."

Lai Shi Po stud­ied the crown for an­oth­er long mo­ment, then turned to look at Sobon. "And you can ac­tu­al­ly cre­ate this Pri­mor­dial Qi? Tru­ly?"

She was tempt­ed--sore­ly tempt­ed--to pull out the nine aether dy­namos and pro­duce the qi drop, but she closed her eyes and forced down the urge. Al­though the meth­ods were most like­ly be­yond even Lai Shi Po, there was no telling what the woman would see or learn from the syn­the­sis process--even the ex­is­tence of pu­ri­fied fate and time aethers might make some­thing in her mind start work­ing in ways Sobon couldn't con­trol. Any source of pow­er can be­come a bomb, if you are will­ing to sim­ply let it ex­plode in your hands. Mak­ing prop­er use of it is much hard­er.

"I have, and I could again. But it's not my se­cret to give away," was what Sobon fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed to say. It was true, af­ter all, and an hon­or­able way to de­flect from the ques­tion. Some odd part of Sobon want­ed to run the syn­the­sis process over and over, if only to have an ex­cuse to touch her Hy­pe­r­i­or Aether dy­namo again, and see odd glimpses of truth, or what­ev­er it was that the aether showed her, but it was dan­ger­ous, and she knew it. It would be wis­er--much wis­er--to dis­pose of all of those high­er-or­der dy­namos, pick­ing apart the hy­per­torus­es that were cre­at­ing them and let­ting the loop­ing flows ease. But she also wasn't sure what would yet need to hap­pen to com­plete her mis­sion.

"I see." Lai Shi Po sound­ed dis­ap­point­ed, but Sobon was pleased to find that the woman felt sat­is­fied with her an­swer, at least. And the woman fi­nal­ly placed the crown on her head, and sat down and fo­cused, and Sobon watched her try to pro­duce suc­ces­sive­ly clean­er qi. Sobon was pleased to find that her ear­li­est ef­forts were more than enough to by­pass the first loop, but got dis­tract­ed as an­oth­er batch of Core Ma­te­ri­als was put up for auc­tion--this time, less­er cores from nor­mal beasts rather than Star­beasts.

So Sobon spent some more of her new­found mon­ey, and left Lai Shi Po to ex­pe­ri­ence won­der and a pro­found­ly new way to think of qi, in peace.