"That said, nobody should ask."

"Yeah, asking questions like that is a good way to get the seniors of the group you're sniffing around to ask some pointed questions of their own."

"...Rather like a guy at a bar going like, oh, you're down that street? Hey, have you got a roommate? A dog? An alarm system? Even mortals get skeeved out by that. General information like 'oh, it's a punching technique Senior Starlight showed me' is fine?"

"Yeah, it's fine to say things like "Senior Starlight has generously shared some basic techniques with me" and even "I know Canadian Fist", because that's basically just things anyone with half a brain would know anyway, but "I know Turtle Breathing" or "I can get bursts of agility from Ring Dancer" or "Ravenous Blade made me an iron knuckle" is the kind of information you only share with people you trust. Which, right now, means people we introduce you to as long-time allies or members of the group. Black Claw would know more about that than me."

Nodnodnod.

"...What is the process of developing new techniques like? I feel like I've asked that before, but..."

"It's a natural outgrowth of finding your personal Dao. Most cultivators of fourth rank have personal techniques and most of fifth have personal styles. Only a few cultivators, maybe one or two per sect, take on the mantle of dedicated mentorship like Silver Starlight has, though. It's a lot harder to develop techniques that are useful to people in the lower ranks where qi control is poor, and naturally such techniques are carefully guarded because they have the most influence on the progress and survival rates of the new generations of cultivators. Canadian Fist in particular is unique - it's an original foundation building art. There are only about a dozen good foundation building arts in existence, and they all made the reputations of the sects that invented them. If Canadian Fist works well, it could be revolutionary."

"Hmm. Something I've been thinking about... Just how many cultivators are there? Any given subject, even cutting edge science, will have thousands or tens of thousands of people working on it. There's probably something like several million civil engineers, just to name a fairly specific discipline. That's a lot of people to come up with new ideas. How many, uh, flying sword experts to try to name something comparably specialized, are there?"

"There's an annual flying sword race in China that takes a hundred entrants per year. I think maybe five times that many try to qualify and don't make the cut. Of those that qualify, there are maybe five or ten international entrants? And the rest are from China. So of one and a half billion people in china, maybe four hundred and fifty are considered flying sword specialists of any repute. It's harder to guess at the global numbers."

"Even assuming they're all twice as smart as they started, that's not a lot. In one billion people there's an Einstein. In five hundred there's a school valedictorian."

"There's maybe a thousand clans and sects put together in China, each of which has maybe half a dozen to fifty people each. Call it twenty-five on average. That's twenty-five thousand. Add another quarter of that in loose cultivators, and you get about thirty thousand. And I'd estimate maybe a third of the cultivators in the world are Chinese, so triple that - maybe a hundred thousand cultivators on the planet, total."

"And then maybe ten times that in support staff."

"It seems like there'd be a lot left to discover."

"I think Senior Starlight would agree completely."

"And people don't recruit masses of people for-Pride? Fear of escalation? Of raising threats to oneself?"

"Fear of escalation, limited resources, and the amniotic qi thing. You have to remember that a sixth stage true monarch can wipe out entire clans on their own, to say nothing of Venerables or higher, so the culture is deeply honor based and all glory is owed to the Seniors. Also there are nasty rituals you can do where you sacrifice large numbers of low level cultivators for more personal power, so anyone who starts recruiting heavily gets looked into as potentially on a demonic cultivation path. The established seniors mostly want to not be bothered - a couple of them have founded clans, even large ones, but they generally keep it to a number of people they can personally know since they're investing very valuable time and effort into them."

"There's no mass manufacturing, most spiritual ingredients are rarer than rare, and you want to keep control of your techniques and not risk leaks because if they get out into common circulation your whole power base can be stripped away."

Mass manufacture just makes sense, in her head. You should be able to make anything in bulk. Except apparently not. But then why would Senior Starlight... Of course. Fate or luck or whatever telling her that Bettrys is a good bet.

"...I think I'm done with the sidetrack questions for now."

"British Museum sounds fun to me. What about you, Butterfly Dancer?"

"I wouldn't mind tagging along. It's been a while since I last went to a musem."

"The place is huge. We can't see everything in a few hours but it should be fun!"

"What exhibits are there anyway? Butterfly Dancer, you want to look that up? I'm driving here."

"Egypt, rome, medieval europe... lots of world history, in general... Jade from China..."

"The Egypt stuff is interesting in my opinion. There's sort of an internet joke that it has history of everywhere the British Empire once touched. This belongs in a museum! So long as you think imperialistic acquisition is an appropriate response to cross-cultural interaction..."

"Could've sworn I'd heard that quote somewhere before..."

"The first part is from Indiana Jones. The bit about imperialism was added later."