{ You are un­sure who you can trust, } Kuli's in­tent prac­ti­cal­ly whis­pered into the air around Ki'el, qui­et­ly enough that she was un­sure whether even Mian and Xam could hear it. { You are not the only one whose se­crets en­dan­ger their lives or fu­ture. }

"Hmm," Chi­an crawled in a cir­cle around Ki'el, who was still too mor­ti­fied to do more than sit there. "A spir­it? Or some­thing... else."

{ I do not qual­i­fy as a spir­it, } Kuli re­spond­ed. { I am a con­struct, of a type that would be in­com­plete with­out a host. }

"Mean­ing you do not wish to be free." Chi­an sat back, plac­ing her full weight on the force plane. Ki'el could feel the qi drain on the key­stone, which she still held on her per­son, but said noth­ing. "You un­der­stand qi the way that I do? As a part of it?"

{ I am a part of qi, } Kuli con­firmed, { But I also have knowl­edge you do not. }

Chi­an nar­rowed her eyes, clear­ly tak­ing that as a chal­lenge, but leaned away with­out en­gag­ing with it. "If I be­lieve you... I may have ques­tions. Lat­er. But that is not a con­ver­sa­tion for this place." She re­fo­cused on Ki'el's face, though clear­ly she didn't no­tice or mind that the girl was re­act­ing to her scruti­ny. "This is... a trea­sure from your mas­ter, maybe?"

Ki'el couldn't quite meet her eyes. "From... ah... in a way, I sup­pose."

{ From hid­den mas­ters, } Kuli sup­plied. { About which we can say lit­tle. Her mas­ter is among them. }

Chi­an was qui­et for a mo­ment, be­fore fi­nal­ly clos­ing her eyes, tak­ing a deep breath, and look­ing away. "This... doesn't change much. Though... I sup­pose I ap­pre­ci­ate you not try­ing to keep se­crets."

"Clear­ly she's keep­ing some things from us," said Xam, qui­et­ly. And Ki'el glanced at her, and at Mian, as wor­ried by the ac­cu­sa­tion as she had been mor­ti­fied at Chi­an's close ex­am­i­na­tion.

But Kuli pro­ject­ed her in­tent once more, and Ki'el thought the aug­ment was do­ing sub­stan­tial work to reach the three oth­ers, and only them. { She was not wrong to be qui­et. Sis­ter Futi has ad­mit­ted she knows much of what hap­pens here, and knows many more se­crets than she lets oth­ers know. I do not be­lieve she can hear us now, or I would have re­mained qui­et. }

This time, both Mian and Xam's fea­tures shift­ed at the in­tent waves. Ki'el just nod­ded. "She said that most should not know what she knows, but..."

"Even so, it's not safe to speak too much here," Da Chi­an said, sigh­ing and slump­ing slight­ly, though she looked at Ki'el with odd eyes. "Per­haps we could go... out?"

"It might be best," Xam agreed.

The four of them got up, but Da Chi­an lin­gered out­side Bai Be­nai's lit­tle door. Ki'el paused and watched her, con­tent to wait while the red-haired woman was lost in thought, but when Chi­an turned back, her face was more se­ri­ous than Ki'el had ex­pect­ed.

She didn't say any­thing as they walked, and by the time they were away from the Less­er House, and Kuli and Chi­an were con­tent that no one was eaves­drop­ping, no one would have wished to hear about Chi­an's mus­ings about her clos­et­ed friend.

So Ki'el spoke briefly about Kuli. "Kuli con­sid­ers her­self to be an 'aug­ment', a con­struct in­tend­ed to be added to peo­ple to en­hance their mind, their mem­o­ry and knowl­edge," Ki'el said, qui­et­ly, into the trees. "The peo­ple that cre­at­ed her are... more ad­vanced than we are, as Sobon was when we knew her." She looked to Xam, and Mian, and Chi­an. "I am un­cer­tain, but I be­lieve that Sobon him­self was used to things like this. He spoke more than once of hav­ing known more, be­fore he lost parts of him­self. I sup­pose there is a great deal to know about the way things work that must be mem­o­rized."

Mian went from just nod­ding to adding into the qui­et, per­haps only to prove that he was not an out­sider to this dis­cus­sion. "She... he spoke of not be­ing a teacher, not know­ing what need­ed to be taught. That there was a whole world of knowl­edge, and he didn't know how much of it to try to teach us, or in what or­der."

"And that qi cores work dif­fer­ent­ly from what he knows," Ki'el con­firmed, though in truth, she was think­ing of the con­ver­sa­tion she had when Sobon taught her to ad­vance to Gold Qi, and open her dant­ian. They'd had that con­ver­sa­tion away from Mian, specif­i­cal­ly so he would not hear how that was done, too ear­ly.

"How is that pos­si­ble?" Chi­an's voice wasn't ac­cus­ing, but fas­ci­nat­ed, as she led them to­wards what Ki'el re­conized was a fire pit a lit­tle ahead.

"It is... com­pli­cat­ed." Ki'el wasn't sure how much to say, but when she didn't feel any pres­sure from Kuli against say­ing more, she con­tin­ued. "Qi is... more com­pli­cat­ed than it seems. There are raw pieces that make it up, and Sobon was taught to ma­nip­u­late those."

"Raw pieces?" Chi­an paused her steps, turn­ing and meet­ing Ki'el's eyes, though the girl once again didn't re­al­ly meet Chi­an's in re­turn. "I would... be very in­ter­est­ed in hear­ing about that. Spir­it mag­ic is also very dif­fer­ent from qi. I am sure it's very dif­fer­ent; I wouldn't de­scribe spir­it mag­ic as raw, but rather... old. A con­nec­tion to an­ces­try. In many cas­es, a con­nec­tion to very an­cient things."

"Aether is a raw pow­er of con­nec­tion," Ki'el said, feel­ing a surge of re­lief that Da Chi­an seemed gen­uine­ly in­ter­est­ed. "It comes in many forms--"

"If we're go­ing to the fire pit, let's do that," Xam said sud­den­ly. "The thin air here does get cold at night."

"It does," agreed Chi­an, as she con­tin­ued walk­ing. "And since I start­ed talk­ing about my own past, I will con­tin­ue. I am from an old and pow­er­ful spir­it beast blood­line, and many peo­ple de­sire my blood, or... more vi­tal parts. The 'why's have nev­er meant much to me. I don't think I can bring my­self to care about what some­one would do with my heart or liv­er if they were able to re­move it."

Ki'el gri­maced at the thought, but only for a mo­ment. When Chi­an got close to the fire pit, al­though there was no wood there, Chi­an ges­tured, and a ball of light ap­peared at the cen­ter. "This will help us to gath­er wood," she said, "and there is al­ways wood around."

But Ki'el, and Kuli, stayed there for a mo­ment, pro­cess­ing what they had sensed.

The ball of light, Ki'el mused, must have been spir­it mag­ic, be­cause it was not qi, ex­act­ly, though qi was in­volved. For only a mo­ment, Ki'el had thought she sensed two flows--one of qi, but one of spir­it, and the spir­it guid­ed the qi in ways she was sure that Chi­an could not have, and then re­treat­ed some­where back into her. It made her won­der if she would look sim­i­lar, if she was us­ing Kuli.

{ That is not wrong, } Kuli an­swered, but men­tal­ly prod­ded Ki'el to­wards gath­er­ing wood. { But it's also not what I was cre­at­ed to do. If I were to per­form aether pat­terns on my own, it would look sim­i­lar, but my task and my de­sire is for you to learn the pat­terns and per­form them your­self. }

Ki'el fi­nal­ly moved af­ter an­oth­er few mo­ments, and the group was most­ly qui­et as they in­di­vid­u­al­ly sought out dried branch­es and large chunks of dead wood.

When at last, they had gath­ered a re­spectable amount, Chi­an again per­formed a sim­ple touch of spir­it mag­ic, just enough to start the fire, and even that Ki'el thought was more qi than she was com­fort­able us­ing. "You are not com­fort­able us­ing qi?" she asked, as she squat­ted by the fire with the rest of them.

Chi­an looked at her, seem­ing unim­pressed. "Qi is qi," she said at last. "I don't know what the tribu­la­tion of the Gold­en Wall is for peo­ple with hu­man blood, but for us, we must wres­tle with the an­ces­tral spir­its that give us our pow­er. If one is lack­ing... some be­come fer­al, as the an­ces­tral spir­it takes over. Not for­ev­er, but it is hu­mil­i­at­ing and dan­ger­ous."

"Hu­mans are struck by light­ning from the gods," Xam said. "I've heard it said that hav­ing a great deal of qi may not help with that, but I've nev­er un­der­stood how that can be so." She glanced at Ki'el, who re­turned the look.

Kuli knew, of that Ki'el was cer­tain, but she said noth­ing, and Ki'el con­sid­ered what Sobon had said in­stead.

"All I know for sure is that it is a de­lib­er­ate test," she said, fi­nal­ly. "And... I be­lieve that it is most like­ly to do with what Sobon said about adapt­ing to be able to han­dle greater... qi." That felt right; she had di­rect­ed some guess­es at Kuli, try­ing to read the aug­ment's re­spons­es, and she had been... amenable. Kuli had doubt­less let some­thing leak, but Ki'el also did not press the ad­van­tage very hard. "Per­haps both tests are the same, in that way."

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"Be­ing able to han­dle it?" Chi­an looked down at her hands. "I... sup­pose I have been burned once or twice by try­ing to use too much qi, but is it re­al­ly im­por­tant that we be able to han­dle..." she stopped, and seemed to muse qui­et­ly.

"Sobon be­lieved so," Mian said into the si­lence. "She... he spoke for a while about sick­ness caused by too much aether. Too much qi. How the body could... I don't know how to de­scribe it. All I re­al­ly re­mem­ber is that it was a re­bel­lion, in a way, one that caused sick­ness."

"Mu­ta­tion," Ki'el said. "Small pieces of the body that no longer un­der­stand them­selves as part of a whole, and at­tack the body around them. Some­thing like that."

For what­ev­er rea­son, Chi­an seemed to re­act very bad­ly to that idea, grab­bing her­self and shiv­er­ing like she was cold. Ki'el looked at her, and be­came con­cerned when the girl didn't im­me­di­ate­ly re­cov­er her­self, but Kuli calmed her. { Re­call her rea­son for not feel­ing like a girl, } Kuli said. { Her body al­ready rebels. The idea that it could some­day do worse... }

It must feel very real to her. In one stroke, Ki'el both could un­der­stand Chi­an's dis­com­fort, and felt more solid­ly the rea­son for Sobon's cau­tion. And... she con­sid­ered, and pushed a thought to Kuli. Do you know... what Sobon spoke of re­gard­ing the spir­its of or­gans...

{ Spir­i­tu­al heal­ing of spe­cif­ic or­gans and mal­adies is stud­ied, } Kuli re­spond­ed, to her alone, { but it would take re­sources we do not have to dis­cov­er and fix such prob­lems. }

Ki'el con­sid­ered that as she stud­ied the small fire that they were all slow­ly feed­ing with sticks. The top­ic, though it was un­pleas­ant, brought her to an­oth­er, and she looked at Xam. "Have you had any more thoughts about your 'cen­ter'?"

"It still makes lit­tle sense to me," Xam said, glanc­ing at her, and then at Chi­an, who looked cu­ri­ous. "Ex­plain it again."

So Ki'el closed her eyes, and Kuli helped pick out the mem­o­ries of what Sobon had al­ready told them all. The clar­i­ty of the mem­o­ry, with Kuli's help... was im­pres­sive, Ki'el found, and she licked her lips. "This is what Sobon told us... some weeks ago, now." Had it only been that long? "It was... not his field, but he had been told that there are nine cen­ters, and the ...qi users are dif­fer­ent based on their cen­ter. The cen­ters were the mind, the sens­es, the voice, the heart and lungs, the stom­ach, the hands, the feet, the skin, and the mus­cles."

"Those are odd choic­es," not­ed Chi­an, and Ki'el looked at her.

"Sobon didn't speak much on them. But I... as a skin-cen­tered user, fo­cus a lot on de­fense. Spir­i­tu­al­ly, I am much like my skin, want­i­ng to keep for­eign things from get­ting in. And Mian..." She looked at him, but he looked back, as though let­ting her con­tin­ue, so she did. "Sobon said he was cen­tered in his heart, which cir­cu­lates pow­er. Be­cause of that, it is his na­ture to all be in a sin­gle state at once. The pow­er that cir­cu­lates through him is the same every­where it goes."

"He said some­thing about mus­cles, too," mused Mian, "for those who can't tell what their cen­ter is."

Ki'el shrugged. "Only that if I couldn't tell what my cen­ter was, it was one of those. But... it is a strange con­cept for us to sim­ply, nat­u­ral­ly 'know'."

There was a pause, and Chi­an said, "I would be cen­tered in my tail, I think."

Ki'el blinked, and looked at Chi­an, but like every oth­er time she'd seen them, they had no such thing. "Ah...?"

"It is a spir­it tail," she said, glanc­ing at Ki'el. "I have to choose to man­i­fest it, or hide it. It con­nects to my spir­it beast an­ces­try, so it might be strange if it wasn't my spir­i­tu­al cen­ter." Chi­an flexed a small stick in her hands, not choos­ing to break it, sim­ply play­ing. Af­ter a mo­ment, she re­turned her at­ten­tion to it. "It feels... larg­er in my mind, in a way. It must be a part of what you're say­ing."

{ I think you would count as a 'voice' cen­tered user for their pur­pos­es, } Kuli pro­ject­ed, though with the dis­tance, Ki'el felt that it cost her a sur­pris­ing amount of qi to do that lit­tle bit. { It could also be 'sens­es', but if it were, I think you would feel it in your spir­it ears, in­stead. }

Chi­an looked at Ki'el, sur­prised. "You know about my ears?"

Ki'el just nod­ded, un­sure whether she should feel bad for not men­tion­ing it soon­er. "They came out dur­ing the fight. I... did not see your tail, though."

Chi­an kept look­ing at Ki'el for only a mo­ment be­fore she looked back to the fire. "Oh," was all she said.

{ A voice-type user is cen­tered on com­mu­ni­ca­tion, } Kuli pro­ject­ed. { In your case, with ei­ther your spir­i­tu­al an­ces­tor, or spir­its in gen­er­al. There are voice-type meth­ods for im­prov­ing your cul­ti­va­tion, and voice-type tech­niques will be eas­i­er to learn. }

That part, at least, did hold the fox girl's at­ten­tion. "A voice-type cul­ti­va­tion tech­nique, re­al­ly? I don't see how that even makes sense."

{ I apol­o­gize, but I can­not con­tin­ue to pro­ject. } Kuli re­turned her men­tal voice to Ki'el alone. { It will be bet­ter if you ex­plain, but I think that she needs to know that it came from me. I be­lieve that she trusts me more eas­i­ly than she does... liv­ing peo­ple, with bod­ies. }

Ki'el want­ed to ob­ject to that idea, but she also couldn't imag­ine it be­ing false. The only time she had seen Chi­an with any life to her at all... had been when she was com­ing to see Bai Be­nai, and Ki'el was un­sure what their re­la­tion­ship was.

She put that out of mind, though, and spoke thoughts that Kuli or­ga­nized for her. "Voice-type abil­i­ties of­ten com­mand spir­its or con­structs, and voice-type cul­ti­va­tion re­quires..." she frowned. "...an in­ter­nal con­struct paired with an ex­ter­nal one, per­form­ing ac­tions as a matched pair?"

"Huh." Chi­an went from look­ing at Ki'el to look­ing sud­den­ly into the sky, and she flopped back onto the ground, clear­ly think­ing about that.

"And what about me?" Xam si­dled a lit­tle clos­er to Ki'el. "The only thing in that list that makes sense to me was my feet, but de­pend­ing on what 'mus­cles' means, I sup­pose--"

"Kuli thinks that you are prob­a­bly right," Ki'el in­ter­rupt­ed. "As a foot-cen­tered qi user, you will have an in­stinct to ex­plore. When it comes to ab­sorb­ing qi from a lo­ca­tion, it will go smoother if you have ex­plored where the qi comes from, where it flows to, and what in­flu­ences it in the area."

Xam frowned at that. "That sounds... vague. And don't most peo­ple like to know the area around them when they cul­ti­vate? And what is af­fect­ing the qi in the area?"

"Not re­al­ly," said Mian and she glanced at the man, per­haps giv­ing him a Look that Ki'el could not see. He sim­ply of­fered her a smile in re­turn. "Once my qi be­comes a part of me, it won't mat­ter where it came from, will it?"

Ki'el could not help think­ing of Broth­er Du's in­sis­tence that qi was full of wis­dom from the world, and Kuli's qui­et in­sis­tence that it was not, but said noth­ing.

"I still don't see it as a 'foot-cen­ter' thing," Xam said, turn­ing back to Ki'el. "Is there any way to ex­plain that?"

Ki'el shrugged, sens­ing Kuli work­ing on piec­ing to­geth­er an an­swer. Af­ter a mo­ment, she re­peat­ed it. "Some of the an­swers are sim­ple, but they are gath­ered from many peo­ple over a long time. Their an­swers vary, but they share some things. A sense that the feet bear the bur­den of the body, but they are also at the mer­cy of the mind and the sens­es. Do you not of­ten look ahead to see what you might trip over or step on? It is that same in­stinct, but for qi." Ki'el sighed. "In truth... I do not un­der­stand what Kuli is try­ing to say, ei­ther."

But Xam was qui­et, think­ing. Af­ter a time, she said, qui­et­ly, "Your Kuli is not wrong. I do look ahead. I ob­sess about what I may step on or in, some­times. I have treat­ed it like a dis­trac­tion, but per­haps..."

When she didn't con­tin­ue, Ki'el looked to Mian. "Do you need any more help?"

"Not un­less you can give me a tech­nique to help speed every­thing up." He shook his head. "Then... the turn­ing tech­nique felt like it was close to some­thing. Maybe, like Chi­an, I need some­thing out­side that cir­cu­lates a qi flow that will join the one in­side."

Ki'el felt a dis­con­tent buzzing from Kuli, but thought the aug­ment's ob­jec­tion was the same as her own. "Per­haps not quite like that," she said. "But if you can cre­ate a cy­cle out­side your body that pu­ri­fies it be­fore it is drawn in, I think you may find that eas­i­er. Do not try to draw in qi that is not pu­ri­fied."

"Hm," Mian said, but nod­ded. "I saw the stuff flak­ing away from your cy­cle. I can see how that would be bad to get in­side." He looked down at his hands. "Still... a cy­cle that stays out­side feels... wrong. I won­der if I have to have a loop that leaves and re­turns...?"

With that, Mian was qui­et, and Ki'el was left with three com­pan­ions who all were med­i­tat­ing on their own meth­ods. She con­sid­ered that, as she used a stick to ad­just the fire. In the end... do I have a spe­cial tech­n­qi­ue? Ex­cept that the qi pu­rifi­ca­tion cy­cle is ex­act­ly that, isn't it?

{ It is, } agreed Kuli. { You want to be able to see for your­self that the qi is clean be­fore you ab­sorb it. To know that what is com­ing in is not for­eign or dan­ger­ous. }

Ki'el con­sid­ered that, spin­ning an­oth­er thread of en­vi­ron­men­tal qi into a cy­cle and watch­ing the in­tent flake away. There was some­thing to it, she de­cid­ed--some­thing to watch­ing it be­come clean, know­ing that it was. Know­ing that the dirt would not en­ter. But... she also con­sid­ered, as she watched the qi cy­cle. Kuli...

{ If you in­sist, I can help you to main­tain more cy­cles, } the aug­ment replied, { But it will be bet­ter if you prac­tice it un­til you are com­plete­ly hap­py with your tech­nique. With prac­tice, you will be able to do more as well. }

Ki'el nod­ded to her­self, watch­ing the qi thread turn whiter as it ro­tat­ed be­tween her hands. She knew... that in the end, she want­ed to get bet­ter, not only be­cause it made the qi pur­er, but be­cause of what it meant. She had only been able to im­prove the pu­rifi­ca­tion when she un­der­stood more about aether, about the next lay­er--Out and In, Gen­e­sis and Con­sump­tion. She was ea­ger, some­day, to un­der­stand what came next--Ac­cel­er­a­tion and Re­vival, Sobon had said.

But what he had said made lit­tle sense. Ac­cel­er­a­tion makes peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence more time, she re­called, even with­out Kuli's as­sis­tance. Re­vival at­tempts to pull the pre­sent back to the past. They sound­ed so straight-for­ward, un­til she be­gan to ac­tu­al­ly think. How could pow­er, sim­ply pow­er, make a per­son ex­pe­ri­ence more time? Even if qi was full of high­ly com­plex en­er­gy...

She could only hope that some­day, she would find ex­am­ples in na­ture, like the riv­er stones, for her to med­i­tate on. For now, she in­stead re­turned her mind to those stones, and the flows in and out, which were clear­ly a matched pair when put side by side.

Ki'el was fo­cus­ing enough that it was strange to her, when she looked up from her qi cy­cling, to find that the oth­ers were stand­ing and chat­ting qui­et­ly, the fire hav­ing gone out. And Mian, hav­ing seen her wake, ges­tured for her to come.

"We should sleep," he said. "It's got­ten late."

So Ki'el fed some of her pu­ri­fied qi to the bar­ri­er stones, and ab­sorbed the rest, and they all re­turned, Chi­an break­ing off at the stairs to go up a lev­el. And when they got to their room, Xam pro­duced two thin sleeping mats from her space ring, and she and Mian... cud­dled, on one of them, set on the sec­tion of re­main­ing floor, while Ki'el rest­ed alone on her bar­ri­er floor, hap­py not to be too close to the cou­ple when she saw that they seemed com­fort­able to­geth­er.

In spite of the strange­ness of the floor, and the feel of the bar­ri­er con­trol stone in her pock­et, Ki'el was able to fall asleep, and even felt some­what com­fort­able as she did.