There's a rules page for the server that pops up, one of the standard isolation channels to try to make sure that the user reads the rules before going forward. 

This server is supposed to be a more casual place to talk with fellow daoists from a wide variety of backgrounds and traditions and times, so the rules are going to be pretty light overall, though there's still a few things that need to be covered.

1) Be respectful of other traditions, clans and lineages - a little boasting is fine, and technical analysis is welcome (so long as you keep deeper dives in the appropriate #Sermon-Containment channels or hide the relevant content with discord's tools), but blanket statements about the strength and moral alignment of lineages will result in a temp ban - remember that there's always someone stronger out there, and there are as many ways to enlightenment as stars in the sky!

2) Keep not safe for work content in the containment channels - it's important to keep the logs clean for our juniors. 

3) Any request for cultivation resources, duel preparations, techniques, weapons, talismans, formations, food supplies and tribulation oversight should go in #request-marketplace to avoid clutter and to best ensure fair dealing. Failure to live up to agreements made shall be rectified and punished by the resident seniors discretion, alongside indefinite bans from the marketplace. If you need to negotiate in private, feel free to contact an administrator to ensure the deal works out best for both parties. 
 
 4) If you have any questions about the modern world or the fundamentals of cultivation, please check the pins in #modernity and #resources respectively before asking - it saves time for everyone. 

5) Don't forget to be kind to your juniors and pay respect to your seniors!

6) Please try to stay on topic here - digressions are fine, but make sure that you listen if the group asks you to move a conversation to a different channel, and remember we have the seperate channels for a reason!

7) React to this message with a checkmark to get access to the rest of the server to show you've read the rules, and feel free to add your own pronoun, tradition, interest and DM status roles using the rolebot. 

8) Contact me or Glacial Glave Grandmaster if you want to get a realm role, so we can appraise you properly. 

She blinked hard.

It was normal enough to have a rules page like that, and if she tilted her head most of the rules were the same sort of thing she'd seen in any number of places. 

Simple things like 'be respectful / don't be a racist', 'respect containment channels', 'keep your end of a deal', "don't ask stupid questions when we have a resource to answer those questions for you", "be kind", "stay on topic" and even instructions for getting roles, verified or otherwise but...

She shook her head. 

That didn't seem quite right. Would they really go that far in making even the rules page something that far in-character? She'd seen a bunch that were partially like that - but it was almost always an italicized bit for style as a sidenote beside the normal version - not the sort of plain rules written as if it was all...

Real. 

She shook her head, breathing out softly. 

It wouldn't do to indulge in escapist fantasies like that but...

She scrolled down to look at the emojis for the roles, checking them out.

There's a bunch of reacts spaced apart onto multiple posts - it looks like it needed to be split apart to have enough room for everything, and a ✅ react on the rules themselves.

⚔️👊 🏹🗡️📜🍖💊🛠️🖋️🧭🌐🌿🎵🪄

♀♂⚥

✡️☸️☯️✝️⚛️🕉️

Most of them have about a dozen reacts, while there's 42 reacts on the checkmark and nearly as many for the crossed swords one, and significantly fewer then might be expected for the male and cross reacts.

She smiles a little wryly, and reacts to the female sign and checkmark to go forward. 

After a moment, her name changes color to a soft blue, and the rest of the server opens up!

She scrolls down, looking at the long list of users on the server - each one with the sort of ridiculous chuuni names she saw earlier - 'Mindful Master Maid', 'Steely Student', 'Supreme Spear Spirit Soveriegn' are just a few of the ones she sees on the user list.

The channel list is a little much too - there's one for more or less every trade that a cultivator would want to discuss, and they are all reasonably active, though the general channel seems like the main focus, considering how seemingly every time she checks up on it there is someone typing.

She takes a moment to check it out.

Ooh fresh blood~ 🩸

Your eagerness is appreciated as always, Ruby, but I doubt that’s the sort of welcome they were looking for. 

But in any case, welcome to the server! It's always a pleasure to get to encounter more fellow daoists and get a chance to learn from them. 

pouts

Honestly, half the reason why I like going along with posting that emoji 's 'cause it looks like a beautiful lil teardrop gem, but well...

That being said - there’s generally always something for someone to learn, be they your senior or junior, and your flying sword skills are good enough that range shouldn't be much of a limitation for coming to meet them, so perhaps you’ll get a taste of blood from them after all~? 

blush

You really are as vicious a tease as you are a fighter, aren't you? 

🙃

Something like that, yes~

Pleasure to see more people joining the server! 

Gosh I'm so excited for the Inborn Realm - it seems like getting a flying sword would be so freeing, and there's just... so much to do once you get the chance.

Does anyone know who the new invite is? I think that Senior Fox of the Sylvan Spirit Lake said that she had a few juniors to invite a while ago - Steely Student was part of that, and they're a joy, but not sure if she had more people to bring in...

Oh yeah it's good fun - just a lil slow - Golden Cores are fiddly things and getting the best grade and dragon mark count makes it take decades.

...You know that a lot of people take decades for even the first realm, senior? 

Yeah yeah - it's just that even if you don't run into a bottleneck it's the first one that really takes forever, yeah? 

I got to True Master at 7, Battle Queen by 13 'cause I wanted to delay it a bit to get the strongest tribulation and set up a body cultivation art right, 'nd got to inborn for 21, but it'll be at least twenty years before I can get through to the end, and it'd probably be more like thirty if I want to do maximal prep for it and avoid just throwing away my life into closed door cultivation. 

@Steely Student 

That's true - but remember that most cultivators get through in a few years, and it's hard to really draw conclusions about speed from people who have hit bottlenecks. 

That being said, Ruby's the sort of curve-breaking genius that defies the normal standards enough for her results to not be very useful to you, too. 

Even with how late you started and less support than many clan members would expect, you are still nearly to the peak of the second realm after a decade, so it's not nesscarily too slow to get through that phase.

That sort of speed is the sort of thing that you can expect from a genuine talent, and it taking dozens of years to get to inborn and hundreds of years to get to Spirit Sovereign is more or less to be expected even with the increasingly good talent it requires to get that far.

awkwardly rubs the back of my neck

Oh yeah. 

Back to what Radiant Heart was sayin', it's always hard to keep track of what she's up to when she has that racial clone technique thing, even for that sorta senior. 'll have to ask when she next comes on or something like that. 

hummm...

'Moonsilver' is an interesting name, especially just on it's own - that's a good smith name basis but there's all sorts of holy types or body cultivators that'd go with a name like that so...

It is a little unusual - perhaps it's simply her common name or she hasn't settled on one yet and just wants to have that fragment down.

Possibly!

I hope she shows up properly soon - it's always a little awkward when people end up going into closed door meditation before getting a real chance to interact here.

@Resplendent Solar Solider 

I suppose that makes sense - I guess I'm still used to thinking in mortal timespans that start everything off much later then most clan cultivators do, and I know that a lot of the reason why I've progressed so far is with your help, senior sister.

She took a deep breath, hands on her keyboard, trying to resist the impulse to just write something. 

She wouldn't be 'that guy' who didn't read the pins just because there was something cute going on that they wanted to be a part of. 

She went to grab a glass of water, trying not to let this capture her thoughts too much.

Deep drink and...

Breathe. 

If you want to dive in so badly, then just read the bloody pins. 

It's not like she had anything else better to do with her life.

She huffed a little, drank down another shot of water, and nestled back into bed to read back through the logs as best she could.

The resources channel has a lot of things - first off, there's a lengthy explanation of the cultivation realms that they were mentioning and the associated special abilities and status, alongside a typical age range - apparently most of the members of the chat according to their roles were on the 'young genius' side rather then seniors themselves, journeymen only somewhat independent and established. There's a warning that overly detailed descriptions and understanding of some of the higher levels can be hazardous if you don't have a sufficiently good 'cultivation base', but it still tells of cultivators who can walk upon the sky, create illusory realms with their thoughts, wore power-enhancing crowns of light and even resurrect the dead with the right preparations, techniques and materials. 

The links ranged from several esoteric analyses that she can't make heads or tails of, a fairly disturbingly detailed procedure for getting a fake ID, apparently for 'seniors who have been away from the mortal world for too long', but one of them really jumps out at her - a basic 'fist methodology' that was apparently designed to work for just about anyone called the "Twenty Four Flowing Fists".

And there's something weird about the image in the pin that draws her in further.

She stared at the images, transfixed.

It looked like just the beginning, but there was... some sort of moire to it that made it seem almost like the figure was moving - not flowing like she had tired not through the motion of a video or an ordinary optical illusion but in her mind somehow and... 

By instinct, she clicked through to the pin and the rest of the images, and got washed away. 

When her focused returned, there was a firm hand on each of her shoulders, and a verdant glade around her, with a sweet-dew-laden breeze running through the fall air. She blinked a little, and moved to turn her head.

"Breathe."

Her hands gently guided her head to her centre, then slid down to her shoulders to adjust them slightly, just as the soft and smooth sound of her breathing in and out guided Moonsilver to sink a little more. 

The woman strides over in front of her, each step perfectly aligned with her not-quite-quieting breathing, before she starts flowing through a motion, a smooth and slow dance through the whole of her body, every motion burning into her memory, her eyes glinting with a silent invitation to follow along with her motions.

A small relaxed smile formed on her face despite herself and...

Come on. 

Of course she was going to follow along. 

The movements were oddly natural, not just because the motions that were designed to intermingle with each other and work alongside each other, but because it was like she already knew exaclty what she was to do and this was just the finishing stroke, the completion of something deep inside her, the natural thing to come up simply breathing and feeling that building hum inside her. 

The energy slowly coalesced inside her as she finished out the final kata, hands drifting back down to her side. 

A hand reaches out to her chest the moment the energy settles and - 

"Dive in." 

And an elaborate system of energy inside of her becomes visible, with an obvious a void inside her heart waiting to be filled with the thread of energy she's formed, as her breathing still guides her foreard.

Her breath half-hitched at the vision as she centered herself once more and...

She followed the breath, the gentle guide of this vision and these motions and clasped the thread of energy with her will and...

There.

It locked in, and vital energy gently flowed back out through her body as the scene started to fade. 

She blinked hard, and glanced over at the system clock on her laptops display, trying to shake off the daze with focusing on the concreteness of the time and moments and... 

What was that. 

She laughed a little hoarsely, overwhelmed with the feeling and the shock of tiredness flooding through her system from... whatever the hell that was. 

She'd...

Drink first, brainstorm later.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

She chugged down the rest of her glass swiftly, the cool liquid tingling pleasantly as it slid down her throat.

Ahhh...

She'd heard of stories with all sorts of situations for accelerating cultivation - from specialized formations, to places where the energies of heaven and earth naturally gathered, to countless alchemical, acupuncture and soul-based methods to increase cultivation, and even jade slips and trial realms that made only a moment pass in the outside world, but this was just...

A bunch of screenshots in discord, for goodness sake, and she doubted that even if there was some elaborate 'technomantic' method to embed soul seeds or whatever this system called them in images that it wouldn't just be in a resources page that anyone in a large-ish group could access, and most novels had manuscripts needing some sort of elaborate inking process that just...

She sighed.

She had no idea what that was, beyond this abiding bone deep certainty that the method would work, and that as far as her computer's clock was concerned, she'd just spent around 10 minutes reading the page not... 

However long it was inside the... 'simulation'.

So the only thing left to decide was...

...Would she do it? 

She'd just encountered undeniable proof of the supernatural, but nothing about that meant that this technique was real or did exactly what it said it did, and there was no reason to believe that if it could do something like that it couldn't compromise her judgement in some way. Of course, nothing about the technique seemed inherently like the sort of thing that would do that, but it wasn't like genre knowledge is some absolute defense against being ticked. File away as something to consider, move on. 

Whatever it was, it was (seemingly) posted on a community discord - not some private message she somehow got access to, but a place that was intended for sharing basic resources amongst practioners. Cultivation novels were full of dangerous techniques to ones body and mind, but there was a reason why such things were basically synonymous with 'secret techniques'. Those things were generally edges, clan techniques, the sort of thing that one works hard to keep secret, not the sort of thing that you leave lying around for years on a server filled with people from different traditions. And similarly... She really hoped that there was something to prevent random discord staff from stumbling into this w/ admin permissions if things were as dangerous as said - but still, there was no real reason for this to be a trap, there's no obvious effect on her mind and there's no reason why that off all things would be where the trap was if they were going to put one there for the case of something like this happening - no one actually reads the rules is apparently one of the biggest mantras of community building for a reason, and...

She sighed and rubbed her forehead.

"It was real." 

Diving into the root of that thought gave her the same sort of jumble she'd expect from her own nature, a twisting staircase of thorns whispering of the value of meta-knowledge, of the seductive power of the chance to be important, resounding steps echoing with gleeful words telling of how this would already be past the defenses, that any such game would be already defeated with access into the heart of the community, 'til the winding path ran back into the placid milky cloud-lake of the heart of her thoughts that told her that she knew it was real in the same drilled way that she knew the laws of mathematics, the same instinctive comprehension to rederive the comnclusion, the knowledge of the way that her heart guided her breath guided her arms guided her energy guided her mind guided her energy to create something profound, that every prediction she had was something that she could test, that it was alterable and adjustable for use in any sitatuon where she could do those sort of motions, and that there was nothing more that she could possibly ask for beyond a vision, a test, and the indications that this was a simple encounter of chance. 

It was real. 

And what would she gain not pursuing it? A touch of embarrasement? A waste of a few hours? Those paled in comparison with the chance for immortality and...

Yes, she didn't understand enough to tell whether or not it was a... "Cauldron technique" - one of those evil-techniques designed to turn the body and soul of a cultivator into resources for another, and yes you would want to share that widely, but...

She laughed, a little. 

"They seemed nice." 

...And they did. More reasons popped into her mind to complete the 'argument' - that for example, that such techniques were far rarer then normal ones, that usually that sort of thing relied on manipulation of the dantian in a way that was totally unrelated to the technique, and of course the countless mechanical arguments about why that wasn't the case emerging from those instincts inside of her but...

Ultimately... 

That was really all she could go on. 

She breathed in deeply, taking care to not follow the method she had somehow gotten downloaded into her head, and let herself reflect wordlessly for a moment. 

...She should sleep, first. 

Clear her head, even if she doesn't have a strong reason to believe that it's actually better, because the odds that it makes a difference to her judgement are much much better then the odds that it will actually make a difference to a non-urgent decision to end up sleeping.

There's a lot of annoyingly large numbers to understand in the payoffs and in the denominators but...

Yes sleep. 

She dragged herself off to bed, brushing her teeth - would this really make a difference if she gets to enjoy the benefits o body tempering - a shower - really just for today's sleep, but still same question - plugged in her laptop, pulled up her covers and...

She wasn't gong to sleep that easily. 

She sighed. 

She let out a long yawn, letting the heat sink back in, and breathed deeply to slowly force herself to drift off to a nearly dreamless sleep. 

The morning came (and mostly went) and then her eyes popped open, and...

It was real. 

...She smiled, a little, and...

Yes. 

She'd try it - and then reach out, more then likely if it worked, because even her instincts from the download were... not nesscarily incomplete, persay. It seemed too high quality for that, but the instincts and knowledge trailed off into nothingness in a way that was hard to express and harder to work with.  There just wasn't the same contextual experience of learning in the 'extras', or the theory of composition so much as there was the theory of working - if it was a mundane martial art, she'd describe it as the knowledge of a master not some sports scientist or kinesiologist or designer who would know how to edit it or have the complete understanding of why it works that way but just the understanding of an athlete of intuition and descriptions and not-quite-experience to modify the action to be just right for what exactly she was doing and map it onto herself, which meant...

She didn't exactly have a full suite of 'if things go wrong' reactions, just some pitfalls 'to be wary off' that came in with the process, and doing heavy exercise without a spotter was... unwise. 

As for how to do it...

There was a park with some nice woods that should work well enough, even if some visual effect shows up, considering the tree cover and lack of popularity so...

Breakfast, grab phone, and off she goes. 

Walking to a park to intentionally do something that she was constantly thinking about not at all using was a curious experience, she found. 

The whole point of it was to get something controlled - ideally she could even do a quick test of whatever visual result she ended up getting - her instincts more or less gave a shrug and that the relevant calculations required sensory techniques to get the information that it needed to work, and that it would vary from session to session in a complicated way until some versions of complete mastery - and what that ended up showing on records and seeing how the start up happened would be valuable too, because the meditation method was something that could probably be pulled off in a lot wider contexts then just this. 

It was also a way to get time to think about what it meant if it worked - and... mostly just not think about it? 

She had something either way, but the outcome of this working was better, and that's the whole reason she was doing this. 

So, she stretched out her shoulders as she walked, hummed a little to herself, as she went through the streets to the little 'forest', and into a spot with a little tree stump to set up her phone on, which she promptly did, setting it to record. 

Alright. 

It's time.

She takes the time to... 'build' her stance, trying not to think about how silly that idea would have seemed to her a while ago at first glance, and takes a deep breath. 

This isn't something to rush, the only reason why it was so swift in the initial training was because of her guide and the better circumstances, and she has the time to ease herself into it slowly. 

In...

And Out. 

There's elemental details to how it works, but it's balanced between the five elements and yin and yang to make something stable and smooth inside, so just... 

In and out, out and in...

Commencing. 

Inhale, knees bent modestly, palms down up to shoulders, drifting in arms as they fall back to my side, Exhale. 

It's more then just this - ways to fortify, grasp, strike, force forward, even just gently relax out your shoulders and let your tension drain away - but this was still complete in itself, and that's not worth worrying about as the warmth gently slid into her muscles, recentering. 

The Wild Horse Parts Its Mane.

Inhale, shift weight to right foot together with left, hands circling around her chest following the intent in her eyes, energy soaking in a little deeper, step left, right hand down, in, left out and flow forward, exhale. Shift foot outward, Sink down, left palm forward, right to hip, inhale and set back again to do the whole series of motions in reverse with her other foot - 

Breathe as one with the world, and follow the steps - 

She shifted to the motions of the White Crane Spreads Its Wings to the Earth Brushing Step to the fifth to the sixth onwards and through the full series of motions as a soft ache settled in. 

It wasn't quite like what she would expect of a cultivation technique - the strain was almost more mental then physical, every physical strain equally matched by a reinforcing healing fortifying vigor drawn up through her body, but there was still... something in her body that made it feel like it was too full of energy, like she had skipped the first stage of exhaustion and just experienced the lingering burn left over after the tiredness and sharp pain multiplied a few fold and...

She stumbled a little as she faintly noticed a slowly then swiftly disspating aura of energy around her. 

One more step still left. 

She sat down on the leaf-laden ground, sitting in a fairly comfortable spot against a relatively thick tree in a rough approximation of the lotus pose. 

Dive in, she said - and so she did - the physical experience trading out for a more spiritual one, attuning to the currents of the wrold, breathing in the evergy of heaven and earth as she worked to condense the energy as she was taught - a thick thread of energy forming near her center. 

Breathe, don't force it, follow the dao in all things - 

and she did, the thread going to her heart, and somewhere there it linked in, and... 

Success.

There as the theoretical possibilty of doing more - forcing more threads in, refinements of energy besides that catalyzed with the physical practice - but she could feel something nastier then simple sweat caked on her skin and a bit of bile in her throat, and she was frankly just... exhausted.

She laughed strainedly, and let tears start to fall. 

I really should have brought a bottle of water here, really. Alas.

She grabbed her phone, stopping the recording, and took a moment to inspect herself with the selfie camera. 

Her face was covered with these thin streaks of black sludge, her hair matted with the same... 'impurities', alongside the grime coating the rest of her skin. 

The smell wasn't exactly ideal either - the sort of offensive scent that reminded her of excrement that she bet was going to soil her clothes pretty badly, too. 

Goddess, she needed a bloody shower. 

But more importantly...

It had worked.

Knowing it academically via some absurd magic intuitions was one thing but...

She was a cultivator now.

An actual cultivator on the path to immortality, refining her body to something stronger and better, practicing her spirituality for... hundred days foundation building, she thought? 

She shook her head. 

She didn't know anything about this, not really, but...

She laughed brightly, and grinned. 

She was doing it. 

So let's see what happened as I did it. 

The recording on her phone was.. not ideal - the cover of the trees made the lighting pretty poor, and the motions weren't especially well captured with the changes in the conditions and the angle wasn't great but...

She could see herself walking up as normal and... when she started breathing something about the lighting changed? It was hard to parse under all of the layers of computational photography that cameras on phones had these days, but even beyond the changes from the branches moving around in the canopy, the light sort of... gathered, around her, and as she did her breathing it faded into a the blue of her eyes, a subtle aura that emitted around her and added little currents as she went through each action - every aura something that looked like it would be something that could be unleashed if used in the right combative form, as best she could tell, though the aura rippled in and out of her skin as the impurities just sort of... oozed out of her skin as she went, starting with something that made her look just a little dirty to streaks of gunk, tending to increase a bit more as each motion completed through the exhales. 

She chastitised herself a little at forgetting about this - especially since water would help with normal exercise, so she just...

Groaned a little, pocketed her phone and walked back to her house, kicking out her legs to get the overstretched feeling out and rubbed out the worst of the impurities - hopefully she could just get away with being sweaty and grimey in the normal sense if anyone saw her. 

She trudged back home, breathing using the patterns as best she can - she doubted that she'd get much results out of it, but there were minor benefits in theory even for the mundane version so...

Her shoulders slumped down a little as she finally wrenched open her door, and took a moment to rally her energy to bound up and into her shower, turning the water all the way to hot just because she could and it might help, too - shucking off her probably permanently ruined clothes before reaching her hand in to touch the streams of water. 

Oooh that's interesting.

Her skin was... just a little bit more sensitive, but it didn't quite hurt as much as it ought? It felt light and smooth and soft and even supple as she ran her fingertips across each other, blinking as she noticed that the callouses were gone. 

....She grinned a little, and just stepped into the stream of water. 

Ahhhhhhhhh...~

Gosh it was nice - especially since it gave her an excellent showcase of so many of the little things that had changed - the way that she could half-hear every drop of water against her skin alongside how much she could feel it, the more noticeable taste of dew of her tongue and an odd opposite feeling of being both loosely comfortable in her skin and yet have it tight and hanging just right on her now-enhanced curves, and... is that the start of proper abs? 

To think...

And wandering lower...

Her hand gently traces across her sex, feeling the little jolts of pleasure and the eager responsiveness that makes her feel like a teenager again. Even beyond that though... 

It's all there in a way that she never would have expected - each little bit of her folds were sensitive, not just in the way that made them perk up to light brushes of fingertips but with that fullness of sensation it was so hard to get without angling everything just right and going hard enough that it was hard to discern from the mass of sensation that came with, and it wasn't painful or uncomfortable, it was just... 

nice.

As she gently washed it out, there was just... a few little differences here and there, from the smoother skin to the crevices finally being clear of all the little ickiness they normally accumulated, to an added supple quality to the point where she was fairly sure she didn't have hair follicles down there at all. 

Gosh she was excited to get to take this on a ride - once she figured out if she needed a special artifact dildo to it safely, at least. 

She let herself chuckle bemusedly. 

That'd be a whole different dimension of awkward to ask around about. 

She ruffled her hair, throwing on some shampoo to clean it off and enjoyed the way her hair positively glistened in the light, like the silver she named herself after in truth.

This will be a good life after all...

She went through the process of conditioning - she wasn't even sure it would help, but no reason to be neglectufl if it didn't, and besueds - relaxing with hte water pouring down her skin was hardly the worst use of her time she could get up to - so...

She smiled a little lazily, turned off the faucet, and stepped out of the shower to towel herself off. 

Alright. Throw on a now-pleasantly-tight t-shirt, some nice yoga pants, and then...

Let's see how this all goes.

Hey. 

Sorry for not talking when I first showed up here - there's a lot to unpack here so... 

I guess I'll just start from the beginning? 

I think I got accidentally invited here, and when I was reading through the resources pins and I had some sort of vision from the slides in the resources about the 24 flowing fists and it worked  - I got some sort of impurity sludge coming out of my body and I feel way better now after completing a strand but I have no idea about basically anything apart from the methods inside there - and if one of your resources can drag me away like that...

Could you please help me, seniors? 

Oo someone figured out how to cultivate that?? 

+1! 

And also hi Moonsilver! We'll have to check in with the seniors about what to do with you. 

@Fox of the Sylvan Spirit Lake @Transcendant Tourmaline Trapmaster @Glacial Glave Grandmaster

Huh. 

First th'ngs first - you ok @moonsilver?

Any weird pains, feeling too stretched out or stung? Headaches or memory problems? 

Actually, might as well just ask how your body feels different in full generality. 

Deep breath - be respectful, be kind, be descriptive. 

I think I'm okay, Senior. In terms of discomfort, there's not a lot - I practiced the technique last night, and there's really not much left in terms of strain or anything. It just sort of reminds me of what I feel like when I do a really extended work out at my limits, or something like that. 

As for how I feel... 
In a word, great. I feel a good bit more strong, agile, beautiful, comfortable, firm, relaxed and perceptive then I ever had before - like I'm suddenly this nearly captain-america version of myself, from head to... toe, let's say. 

You totally checked out your new sex, you perv, didn't you? 

🤦‍♀️

🤦‍♀️

🤦‍♀️

Ruby...

Alright, alright - but honestly that is one bit of the changes that you'd note first 'cause it's such an upgrade, yeah? 

No one is disputing that, Smelting Savant. 

Resplendent Solar Soldier's words are quite true! 

Though personally I really loved what it did to my hair above all else.

Ah...

You juniors are 'dorable as always. 

I'd have to see your body to be sure, but it seems like you successfully cultivated the technique, Moonsilver. There shouldn't be any problems beyond the obvious - like, intoxicants will tend to be less effective 'nless you have a technique that lets it in, reduced need for sleep, enhanced endurance, a bit of a shock to your sleep schedule from that, a bit of change in hunger - most people have it taper off, some get a bitta pangs for food for a while - either is normal - the purification process sometimes can't get the best results without more stuff to work with and sometimes they'll be extra storage and such that means you need less. 

Uh...

There's a bunch of poisons, alchemical stuff and techniques that have somewhat different interactions depending on your rank, you'll have overall better physical stats - the technique you used shouldn't have any flaws that cause problems with controlling that, though it can happen for a while in some less dexterity focused techniques. Psych meds will tend to work less and for shorter times, though generally the stuff that that targets should sorta taper off to nothing from this - mental disorders exist amongst cultivators but your brain becomes... less important, and the sort of problems that come from that won't really translate to your spirit, though some people end up sorta instinctively reimplementing that? Anyways, there's no reason to expect it to be worse then anything you had before, and for most people it's lot better. 

In terms of practical advice for being new - don't donate blood or organs or anything from your body because your physiology is now slightly alchemically active , at least without supervision from someone who understands cultivator medicine, and for similar reasons try to avoid complicated mixes of herbal medicines, especially when cooked or in close contact to your spiritual energy 'cause there's a bunch of possible minor alchemical things like that that can pop up, be careful of intense religious, meditative and spiritual experiences generated without the use of tested cultivation technique, at least 'til your foundation is established and you know a bit more about this stuff - it's possible to accidentally try to create a technique through processes like that and experimenting can be reckless, don't make oaths that you aren't prepared to keep 'cause it's taboo and also harmful, if you're still a virgin not fucking for at least a while can give benefits to your cultivation, and just like don't do anything obviously reckless? 

There's a bajillion side effects that most people don't really notice from complicated shit like this - studying the effect of cultivation on gut microflora was fascinating - but fundamentally there shouldn't be anything to worry about, despite how fuckin' long this post is, ok? 

't least 'til you hit the Second promotes Third Tribulation there's not really anything that you can expect to be truly dangerous unless you go out of your way to put something like that there - though I'm sure that Senior Tourmaline 'll needle me if I don't tell you that jumping through the dragon gate, establishment of an immortal body, and some aperture talents have the same sorta list of minor things that it might be useful to be aware of when you go through 'em. 

No need to get ahead, you rabid rascal. 

She snickered a little despite herself. 

What a charming little community I've stumbled into...

The list of potential problems was both... intensely concerning and relieving, both? 

It'd be nice to get off of anti-depressants - those were just... killer, really, though they did help - though...

Does the drug immunity effect mean that I should be able to just get off something that would need a taper if I was a mortal? 
And I... do admit that I'm a little nervous what's going to happen to me, and I'm morbidly curious how often that sort of thing comes up that you mentioned for the weird problems. 

Nah, shouldn't be a problem or anythin' - the drugs would have come out as impurities and your physiology should have 'reset', basically - don't worry about it. 

Most of the detailed handling of this 'll probably have to go to our senior fox - it's her technique and server, after all, but you won't get wiped or anything - you would have tripped the wards if you weren't cool (or secretly a venerable grade master of formations or something equally improbable.)

It's not... like maximally rare or anything, but it's kinda hard to meet a lot of the conditions without it being on purpose - there's a decent chance an older senior 'll have seen something but considering that the worst of the risks are on the sort of loose cultivators that don't have enough resources to make sure they can do things safely, it's still really rare. 

Ended up having to deal with the results of someone who managed to start cultivating despite some pretty nasty amounts of radioactive contamination that ended up getting super condensed into her impurities - cleaning that up in a envirosafe way actually took some moderately tricky formation work. 

...Okay. 

So...

I'm safe. 

That's good to know. 

...And yep she was having hunger pangs, so let's go take care of that, though...

Speaking of the side effects... 
I've just noticed the hunger pangs, so I think I'll take my leave for a while, senior. Please ping me if there's anything else I need to follow up on? I'm also a little curious about what Ruby said about this technique not being cultivated before, or at least surprising. 

It was still so... awkward to just go and ask questions, to have everything reset to the place where she's starting this all out - like she's in school again, like the rest of her life might just be a dream and it's... scary. 

Her hands tremble, then pause - it's... still in control, somehow, even with that extra edge of panic in there. 

She wanders down to the kitchen to grab a bun to thaw.

Hum. Might as well ask about the differences in terms of food for cultivators? Not sure if I should expect to change anything, and it's probably worth seeing if there's anything standard to take care of. 

...You really don't know what you are getting into, it seems, Moonsilver.

Oh hey! 

A fellow daoist inquiring about food? It must be my birthday! 

Nutrition with physiology of a cultivator is... weird? Even with incoporeal qi and having to rely on blood (not actual blood, the sorta spiritual stamina thing related to it) to catalyze proper techniques, there's a lot of flexibility in terms of what you can get out of what you eat. Generally, it's good to go for the standard things that people tell you to eat, though there's a lot more flexibility for cultivators to eat large quantities of meat or go vegetarian or something like that. There's a lot more that you can do with the right techniques - the simplest stuff just helps directly with cultivation, but there's much more interesting options if you pursue the path dedicatedly, even without going into cooking monsters or anything like that. 

Also, feel free to indulge your cravings! It shouldn't really meaningfully impede your progress even if you splurge a lot because the process of purification is basically incidental and there's a few minor reasons why it can technically help through training your body to get rid of contaminants well, though there's also a bit of a balance with not having that impede your ability to preform at your best to get the highest strand counts, and drink lots and lots of water - sports drinks are ok, but are increasingly less desirable as you get further along, and teas and such are actually solid too! 

Oh and there's actually some basic immortal meals that basically anyone can prepare and have! Spirit Green and Black Teas you can just make like normal tea (though Respledent Solar Soldier's Yang Sunfire Qi flames have just a lovely muskiness to them, and any food can be radically improved if treated with the right specialist techniques). 

I hope I can figure out something soon for getting some sort of delivery system more practically set up - non-perishable immortal food of higher qualities is a good bit harder to make but it can make a huge difference to cultivation when mixed properly with everything else that helps. 

Oh yeah - like, there's some stuff that only the seniors can really help with, but our lovely maid 's been really helpful in getting the overall quality of foundation and speed of cultivation to the sorta thing that isn't nesscarily lot worse then w/ clans or such - 's a cool alt. model, even though there's limits for how much you can do w/out just the sheer network and number of resources that you get there - hate to say it but like a lot o this only works 'cause of some fortitious encounters or weird angle that isn't nearly as available as you might expect. 

@Mindful Master Maid

Must you describe it as 'musky'~?

I really appreciate what everyone here can offer, it's just... not ideal for a lot of people. There's some options for going for a clan here, too, but loose cultivation is something that I think we can make a real option. 

But of course! 

It's my duty both as an oath-sworn soul and an uprising immortal chef to never compromise on the accuracy of my ratings of foods! 

Would you be inclined to tell someone lies about spearmanship, RSS? 

I suppose not...

For what I recommend as someone without Mindful Master Maid's expertise, purely on a practical level... 

Do whatever feels comfortable and affirming - there's a personal conception of myself as an athlete that makes it interesting and often... 'worthwhile' to try to eat healthily and try to refine an edge for the time I have left while my body really uses that at all, short of spiritual effects, so I keep to a schedule religiously, with a lot of fruit and chicken and such you see in the higher calorie requirement options, and I fit in Mindful Master Maid's meals whenever I can for the advantage it gives.

I suppose that I follow that - shopping in the mortal world is something... quite enjoyable. The smells are lovely, and the sheer variety makes me thankful for all of the progress we've made civilizationally, and the sheer range of products means that it can be worth it to just wander there with a few alchemical analysis techniques active - there's a variety of simple things that you can accomplish, and there's only so much that my photographic eyes can help with something that exotic. 

Yeah - suprisingly decent chunk of clans don't even have bloody first level chef, even - 't's apparently 'beneath them' - been a help to even me even though she's just at third stage - 't's good to see us getting the benefits from that and...

Oh the fox is here! 

Hey-o Senior!

Hello juniors! 

And I see a new one has joined our little community. 

How to put this... 

Let's go for something minimal. 

Something like that, Senior. 

Please don't worry, Moonsilver - the technique is tested as safe, if not in the way that would be the most ideal, and I'm happy to spend the time to check-up on you and drop by a little gift for you! 

@Transcendant Tourmaline Trapmaster

Mind casting lots for her? Please don't worry about costs - I'm happy to reimburse you for any costs you incur. 

But of course, Slyvie!

She darted over to a book shelf, grabbing a handful of volumes, a finger flitting open a cosmos bag as a thick cloud of obsidian-black ink spilled out, the fog drifting into the air as a line spilled out to create a formation circle, thick spiritual energy laden in the ink imprinting on the stone. 

She cast the books into the air - the binding unfurling once more to let the pages spill out, flitting papers drifting up in to the air.

May I read from the Book of Changes to see the branching paths, may the heavens reveal the truth, may the earth yield its secrets, may the links of karma reflect the future. 

The pages drank in the ink, reaching the zenith as they transformed, then falling to the floor, drifting down like the leaves of cherry blossoms to the floor. 

Blood - a tiny burst of sword qi bit into her hand, dripping into the circle - Breath - She breathed, a rush of power flowing into it as it nearly reached the floor - Bile - the ink darkened in some places, the pages seemingly withering away - Bindings - the circle surged with light as the result was decided, her powering sojourning through the sea of time - 

And thus, the die was cast, the lots were laid, the choice was made, and the heavens answered her plea. 

She laughed and grin as she read the pattern of broken lines, the images of her transtemporal gaze playing out in her mind's eye as she saw the result selected from the possibilities. 

Syncreticism was a finnicky art at the best of times, especially for a fortune teller, but this was the good shit that made the whole thing worth, above and beyond the lil accuracy bonuses that improvements can give you. 

Check a few things more out, record the results in detail with the awesome cam on her flashy lil phone, 'nd ooh spirit lake water scrying pool 's gonna be great for this so let's run that and... 

There we go.

Omens good - Heaven and Fire - to the mass of embers to reach up to the sky, to burn brightly, together. Heh, it's bloody the thirteenth trigram of all things 'nd that's a great value for occult optimization in the modern western sys, and it's a good balance with the unbounded radiance - a numeral of the night and bindings. Less directly, the whole things smells like heaven-defying luck and a windfall of positive karma for us for a good while to come, 'nd have even checked her stuff out with your lovely scrying pool - thanks again for that, Five Tails - was easy enough to check that the wards here are all good and there doesn't seem to be any trickery or whatever on her side - no ghost qi, abnormal contaminants in her mind, exotic alchemical bits, or any other evidence that she's been tampered with as a way to get through the wards - though have to ask, were you a meditator or somethin' like that before you got the cultivation technique? Your mental energy is honestly a lil wow for someone hasn't spent more then a day of her life cultivating. 

Blink. 

She'd always...

It was hard to express. 

Focus, dismiss the thoughts of the possible intrusion and the risks of the things that she mentioned, recite from memory, reform, reframe, speak unafraid and fludily - 

Not as much as you sound like you expect, Senior? I've dabbled in semi-regular meditation - on the scale of half an hour or two on every other day for a few months, sometimes, but I've always really prized clarity of thought and instinctively experimented with doing things like quieting my inner voice and... dealing with trauma and nasty memories and even just sort of... 
Tilting my head and focusing in a way that works to solve what is in front of me, even if it isn't quite the normal version of me or some such thing? 
It's all just sort of come together to make me work better, I've found. 

Ooh cool. 

In theory it's possible to train that shit beforehand, just really really impractical to do it at the ages that get the best results for foundation building, and is mostly practical to just train to ~standard safety for body tempering liquid and getting the best base to safely work out. 'll be interesting to see how that goes. 

Oh!

I think that's the reason why people weren't able to cultivate the technique as a foundation establishment method - I've managed to complete the technique's progression, and I think Tourmaline picked it up to more or less completion herself? But between how difficult it is to get people try a new method and the failures we've had, well...

@Moonsilver, I'll have to check up on you soon! Seeing the details of how it works out for you will be useful for my research, so I'm happy to help you out and give you a gift besides. 

For now...

Feel free to hang around here, and I think @Rabid Ruby Smelting Savant will end up coming around and helping you start out!

Real subtle, senior :p

Do you really want to protest a paying job, Ruby? 

yeah fair, though it's not like she actually promised payment...

headpats the feral junior

You know we're better then to scuff you on that. 

embarrased rawr

pffft

bemused snort

No need to pile on :p

@Moonsilver, mind sending over your address? 'll pop by asap, give you a lil gift myself alongside some training help 'f you'll host me and play ball w/ it all. 

Hmmmm...

blush

It feels really weird to be getting this much attention, but I'm really quite thankful for everything you are offering me.

..Okay she's crying. 

...Breathe.

There's a little pained wince, there, but it's just... 

Let the shake happen a touch, shake, stabilize. 

It's so weird to see people caring about her, just talking about it like it's natural and not because of a job because this whole thing was something besides job because they didn't just have those and it wasn't like it was there job to help or be nice and sociable and honestly really cute for her but it just... 

Happened. 

So...

She wiped her eyes, blinking quite a bit, and opened up a PM to... "Rabid Ruby Smelting Savant". 

She snorted to herself, more to get it out her system then anything else. 

That was a little silly but...

It still fit, really, even if things like the gem theming and such was odd. 

And this was what she was hoping for, wasn't she? 

Alright. 

She shot off a quick PM to Ruby. 

Hey, here's my address. I live alone, so don't worry about running into anyone else. Poke me when you come, and do it a reasonable time, if you can. 
And thank you for the help - it seems like it'll be... really rather useful.

Her stomach rumbled a little, so she went and grabbed the ingridients for a quick ham sandwich - filling it with spices and sauces just because that feels right, though throwing in a handful of spinach, an apple and... several bottles of water? 

Several bottles of water. 

Ahhh she almost forgot how nice that is, to get to drink it. 

She took a deep breath, taking in the lovely smell of the cornbread bun, and glanced over at her phone to check for any real reply. 

 mmkay. Anything in particular I should bring over? 'nd oh, might as well check if you know about any like weird ambience or whatever 'round your place to take advantage of...

Gosh it was nice to get to eat with the just... fullness of sensation she felt, the heady slightly honeyed taste, the slight glaze making it extra satisfying to lick and enjoy, and it was ore savoury then she reembered in experience and just... 

Solid. 

She chewed through it quickly, then checked her phone again. 

...Let's just answer that, shall we? 

Regardless of how... out there, it seemed. 

I don't think I'm that lucky, unforunately - haven't heard or noticed anything special here? There's a random church a block or two down - Here's the location on maps - but I doubt that's anything special, for what it's worth, plus a park a five minute walk away. For things to bring over... 
It'd be interesting to try out the tea MMM mentioned, and I tend to prefer black. Don't worry about bedding or anything like that, have a nice foam mattress downstairs and all the covers I can need from hand-me-downs. 
And same for trying to be a good host for you - I'm not... especially resource-laden, but happy to put in a bit of work to accomodate you. 

Oh yeah, don't worry about that - can be a touch useful but not a big deal. If there's a good, basically empty place or two that you can clear, and yoga mats or somethin' like that for a good place to stretch and meditate - ideally two seperate spaces for cultivation 'nd sparring, that'd be great.

'nd oh, ridin' over now. Be ~2 hours. 

Oh. Really should take the time to check out your roles and specializations when I get the time...

Have a basement and garage that should work - more or less already there but will do what I can to clear it up, and obviously feel free to do whatever to the floor you need for them. Yoga mats... 

Guess I can grab one once I finish up eating.

Nah, please don't let me stop you. Everything 've seen makes it seem like getting this all clear and into your stomach early is important. Can slow down or stop by somewhere else - so many lovely lil tourist traps or idiotic demonic cultivators who don't know how to shield the presence of there evil shit to save their lives to enjoy.

In any case...

Idk, another hour or two, thrown in an extra cultivation session for you or bonus supply run or...

Ah 'll figure something out, please take care of yourself. 

Don't worry about funds for this stuff, if relevant - happy to reimburse, 'nd Senior FoSSL 's pretty loose with her finances in the mundane world, so 'm sure that you'll be able to get the basics covered, at least. 

...Oh. I suppose I should have figured. 

Look forward to seeing you. 

Grabbing a bunch of apples, plums, and pears to just bite into, letting the juice trickle down her cheek was oddly, almost primally reassuring.  Something about it made a little bit more energy just sort of trickle into her core, her stomach oddly empty as she devoured more and more of the food. 

She stimmed a little, too, letting herself pace with her light and smooth feet across the floor, the ease of motion still making it a little shocking. 

There were... a lot of instincts in her head now, and to some extent it was screaming that the best way to adapt to her bodies changes was to cultivate - and there was no reason to really doubt that but...

Of course, the problem with adapting using a body tempering technique was that was another way to get waves of changes, and that's fine - cultivating was good and she really wanted to get into it but there was only so much that it made sense to push...

So she walked, and paced, 'til the rythm of her breath slowly let her calm, not quite using the technique, because she didn't want to adjust her mind too much but...

Still. 

Trying out the 24 flowing fists again with a full stomach, a water bottle on hand and the benefits pass of body refinement was... odd, though that wasn't all there was to it. 

Resetting her expectations of what it was, from the faint-traces of memories of what was probably the 'original' basis of the flowing motions (from tai chi chuan, her memories helpfully supplied) and from proceeding from the name and instinctive pace for first practicing the art gave it a very different impression from doing it anew with a faster, harder pace, or at least one a lot less concerned with accomodating problems that no longer existed. 

The movements were still slow, essentially, something far slower then what she could accomplish even before all of this, they still followed the deep breaths that seemed just as much part of the form as the physical motions or coursing energy, there was no need to force her body to stretch or still nearly as much, or to force her lung capacity to increase to more naturally fit into the motions, she simply moved, every motion natural not just as a possibility or the next item on the list but because there's a completeness to it, a firmness rising and falling that made it feel so much more focused, everything there something that could deflect, parry or facilitate a blow that she knew would hit hard with the weight of her spirit behind it, though there was still a long time to go before she'd be manifesting the more... extreme versions of the abilities within. 

Despite the slivers of black shooting through her sweat, she felt cleaner then she'd been in a long time as she sat to meditate, her energy neaerly overflowing before being tamed with each breath guiding it back into control, focusing down into the aperture of her heart - and... 

Strand formed.

Focus, recall the process, internalize the knowledge, guide my breath with hands and feel the heart still going, the elements coming in and staying, taking hold of the rest of the energy still there even after the formation of the strand, full breaths in nose and mouth, stabilize it, gently glide the energy in place like the brush of a palm, hold it as the strain starts coming in harder, and... 

Third strand created. 

And exhale-cough-slump-drawn-in-just-a-little-draw-from-pulse-focus-qi-focus-blood-stay-safe. 

...Okay. 

Okay. 

Okay. 

She rested there for a while, feeling how thin she was stretched out as she chugged down a good deal of water with slightly trembling hands. 

So that's what cultivating to your limit felt like. 

She smiled a little despite herself, grinning a little unfocusedly. 

I can work with that. 

She took a moment to run her hands over her chest, feeling the racing of her fuller-heart, her...

blush

Substantially heftier breasts and yep those are abs, not quite the complete version she was expecting but something that she knew would be 'washboard' someday. 

Goodness this was nice.

That was...

She checks her phone. 

That was like an hour and half, just for the actual cultivation, and probably another ten-twenty percent of that thrown for... reeling. 

Probably worth checking in on the chat about this all, at least after a shower.

Hey - just got back from cultivating another 2 strands - that was a lot. Felt like my energy was so... thinned out and I'm pretty spent, and might have even avoided something nastier - any advice for mundane things that I can do to help with that? 

It really depends on how badly you overstrained and your realm - I find that mostly I just practice katas at a lower level as a cool-down exercise. 

...

I wonder why it isn't called a "warm-down" excercise instead, since that ought to be logically equivalent. 

Some use things like a Gentle Dao Pill - I make large batches of Constitution Calming Capsules for myself that equalize my energies and get it up to a more suitable level, but that's more of a custom solution then anything else. 

You are using a Taoist art, right?

@Steely Student

Yeah.

I expect there's a breathing method in there that should be somewhat specialized for that - traditionally, looking for an elemental balancing method and basic regeneration of your mental energy. There might also be something you can do with biocontrol or such that might help the absolute speed of your recovery, if not something that is especially practical for this sort of thing. 

Also, two strands on your second day together? 

That's rather impressive, @Moonsilver.

Oh it is? 

Yeah - normally there'd be a good stretch of time where you can only do one per day, or at least one at a time, though I'm sure this server hosts some exceptions to that rule - took me... 'til my thirty-fifth day, I think, 'til I was able to get 2, though it really does accelerate from there quite quickly - got through to beyond mortal at 212 after about four months - really got helped by Resplendent Solar Soldier's help and instinctively focusing on optimizing thread-size a little agressively when bottlenecked - the quality of it isn't quite as ideal as you'd normally expect for that few, but it is a real reflection of quality.

nod nod

I think I remember seeing that it was usually 300? That's quite a bit of an edge, I'd expect...

It is. It's always good to get to get those as soon as possible, though...

I'm curious if anyone else would like to volunteer the counts of threads they had, going through foundation building? 

157, IIRC. Poss. done > that if rec. hunt. 

It's always so absurd to see your talent laid out so starkly, Ruby. 

I took 171 strands to form my foundation, personally - didn't experience too much of a bottleneck, if only because Glacial Glave Grandmaster made the effort to help the process along in my case specifically, taking a bit less then a month for it all and not encountering much of an opening bottleneck. 

999

tilt head

draws back

Oh...? 

I'm sure there's some clever trick to why that was a good idea but I've frankly never heard of such a thing and I'm eager to learn.

So ok. 
The whole conception of 'filling' the heart apeture is weird, 'cause it's not exactly a normal physical thing, yeah? You just sorta put the strands in the heart and they go in and establish, but there's no like, notion of optimal thread packing efficiency, or the existing strands somehow 'getting in the way' of you putting in a new one. 
Can't do the whole bit on this properly to the juniors, but basically it's sorta-kinda a conceptual receptacle for the strands themselves that has a bunch of criteria for relative fullness relating to e.g. interferometry, and the 'quality' and 'volume' and yes quantity of the strands. Conventionally, you want to max out the parameters for quality and volume, since that's the traditional way to do it, plus it's inherently kinda faster and more something that builds agressively on itself and synergizes with a lot of conceptual frameworks as well etc etc. 
But like...
You don't have to do that. 
The technique I was using for my foundation kinda sucked at the whole 'volume' thing, and in a few other areas besides, so I just... went and tried that, and forged my own path from there. 
Went for 999 'cause that's the last num 'within an order of magnitude' of the sort of answers geniuses get and I want to use that as my snide reply :p
(Plus the diminishing returns kick in ~badly must past there and numerological reasons and yeah yeah.) 
After patches throughout the years and stuff, that bit of my foundation is prob. of about the same grade as yours, RSS, ignoring the bennies of my realm. 

Interesting!

Ah seniors are amazing as always - though that sounds like the sort of thing that would be about as annoying as it is helpful. 

@Mindful Master Maid

Ouch that a lil too real. 

Got a buncha interesting techniques out of it, just not...

Something I expect I would even want to teach an apprentice, beyond as a bitta knowledge on more esosteric possibities. 

Who knows, something like that could eventually create an interesting mutant lineage...

laughs

Yeah that can be horrifyingly fascinating...

Oh, and mine was 238, for what it's worth. 

Not too exceptional, I've always had better results with tempering constitutions and mentalities then cultivation like that... 

Oh well. 

Oh and Ruby, don't forget to show off your flames cooking properties! 

Forging flames are actually ok for a lot of things, but your Pheonix arts are just mmph, though getting the alignment quite right seems a little touchy, even in principle - I'll have a few more notes soon for making some cooking implements to make the best use of them! 

ok. l'll be in touch, after meet w/ @moonsilver.

...Oh yes. 

Better get prepared. 

Following the instructions for recovery pointed to by Mindful Master Maid was pretty helpful, but it definitely left her in the sort of condition where it was a good deal more natural to just relax back and read the chat as it came in then really do anything. 

She felt... if not ready to face the day, 'merely' a little tired and laggy rather then aggressively shoved-down or some such, and as long as she didn't cultivate without a bit more rest...

Should be fine, which was aptly demonstrated when she was able to just manhandle the detritus in there to clear plenty of space for whatever she had in mind. Getting a yoga mat was probably a bit much to ask, in the time she had left, but there were a handful of perfectly fine beach mats lying around in a sub-basement that would probably be fine. 

Alright. 

She swung her arms around, feeling so free to just have that strength waiting for her, ready to tap and use at any moment, with that idealized flexibility and grace that just made motion so reasonable feeling. 

She smiled a little, and sat back by her door, waiting as she drafted up some questions on her phone. 

About half-an hour later, there's a firm repeated rap on the door. 

Hey. 'm here. 

She perked up as the alert popped up, and walked over to the door. 

The door opened out just around the moment she came by with the screeching sound of twisted metal, the door stopper snapped open and the hinges warped as she forced it open with a casual motion. 

"'ey, you must be Moonsilver. Pleasure to meet ya." 

She reached out her firm hand to shake, leaning in with the help of the flying sword she balanced on subtly adjusting to let her float in closer. 

She wore nothing but a satchel slung across her back, a minimal white two-piece bikini, and a pair each of welding goggles and thick metallic bracers upon each of her forearms.

...She took the opportunity to both stare in horror at the mess of her front door and to stare at those beautiful breasts and hard abs speechlessly, because that was totally what she was going for and she wasn't even entirely sure she could stop herself from watching in awe, though...

She could sense something about her, beyond just the obvious fact that she was clearly controlling that sword at her feet, that it was made out of something special, considering how it looking like the entire blade was made out of this multifaceted gem save for tracery in gold, that there was an extra weight to her, that... 'smelled' of the elements she'd breathed and...

Yes shake her hand, try not to look too hard at her toned thighs as she shook her hand, clasping back firmly to try to do this politely. 

"Pleasure to meet you, Rabid Ruby Smelting Savant..." 

"Ooh you're sharp, aren't you?" 

Her slightly rough hand cupped her cheek, brushing fingertips across it as a soft tingly flush spread throughout her. 

Her breath hitched for a moment and - 

Oh. 

The warm radiance of life and rebirth spread throughout her system as she instinctively balanced it, shivering and pressing in unconciously as her lungs expanded further then she expected they could before, filling her body and then... 

shaky-exhale-relieved-sigh.

"Fuck you are adorable. And adaptable too, it looks like." 

She pinched her cheeks, fussing with them lightly, then dropped her hands to her sides bashfully.

"Anyways, should probably get in, make you some tea and sit you down to talk, yeah? Seems like you really need the chance to actually talk and such, 'nd there's so much to learn, even now. So..." 

She kicked off her sword, and flipped up and over her, sword sliding back down to her hip as if sheathed. 

"And don't worry about the door - perceptual filter's up around the thing, and needed to dismantle it a little to construct something a little better, assuming you want to stay here, and if not..." 

Shrug clicks her tongue.

"Can just repair it good as new in like a min." 

She turned and followed, scoffing a little despite herself at just how... 

dramatic that entrance was. 

Ruby clunked down onto the kitchen table, dropping the bag onto a seat next to her to paw through it, before quickly producing two fragrant tea bags maybe a quarter full of leaves imbued with weak wood qi. 

"So ok. I'll get the tea running, run the flames for the best experience and give you the space to think, ok? Like, I realize that I have 'Rabid' in my fucking Dao name, but that doesn't mean that I don't have patience or the ability to give you space. New cultivation stuff is really always overwhelming, and when it's a fateful encounter thrusting you into 'nother world, it's a whole 'nother level. Remember 'm here to help." 

She popped over to the stove, made a slightly unsatisfied grunt, and ran her finger over the metal supports with a blue-white jet of fire that carved thin burns into it in the shape of an inscription, before turning it on to produce a flame that looked much the same, then filled the kettle and settled back down. 

"...Okay." 

Breathe settle in, relax, nod. 

"Could you start from what that was and just... what your general advice is for someone starting out? I don't know enough to ask, in a lot of ways, as best I can tell." 

She snorts. 

"Have you read the whole genre of lit on this whole... thing?" 

She gestures vaguely. 

"One of the most common refrains in 'em is that to cultivate is the will to defy the heavens. If you can't just let yourself ask the questions you have, then you're shooting yourself in the foot." 

She lets out a small hum-sigh. 

"Though happy to answer what you do ask - just a lil disposable formation to generate slash convert existing flames to 'Phoenix' ones. Something like that has a half-life of like a week, but half-the-reason I did it that way is it's a decent measure of luck too, since it can break down at any moment completely, but doesn't really... 'wear down', at least under the sorta conditions you'll have here." 

She rolled her eyes a little. 

"That's part of it, but also..." 

She grinned, a touch, and laughed shortly. 

"It's a test of it's own, if more of a rorschach one then some clever experiment like whatever technique you used when you touched my cheek - that felt like it was some sort of exotic fire elemental energy, probably the same sort as what you are using for the kettle." 

"Reasonable enough." 

She titled her head slightly back in concession. 

"The basic answer is... You need a value prop, as a cultivator. Being a novelty is super useful, of course, and getting support helps too, but takes a while before you can get to the point where you can reasonably hunt so you should try to get a niche - most want a production skill, but really any interesting trick can make something worthwhile. I can forge and do formations well enough that it's easy for me to get a lot of cultivation resources and... money I guess if I ever decided to want that? And most of the group has at least one thing that they do one the level of there realm - be it talismans or cooking or alchemy or whatever. That being said... you actually do need a good bit more basic stuff, too." 

"I suppose that makes sense - I just... can't say I know what getting that looks like." 

"Yeah that's the awkward bit - there's no real... natural spot to get all of it, you know? There's always a time where you need a new upgrade, a new trick, and not always a good opportunity to earn for it. That's what makes loose cultivation hard, alongside stuff like getting ganked by demonic cultivators or something like that." 

She rummaged around in her bag, then slapped down a few handfuls of cash stacks, each a mass of red bills in light brown clips keeping them fairly neat. 

"This is just twenty wads of 100 - 200k, net. It's all real, and it's yours caveat free - hell, most of the reason I went that low 's cause more is a bitch to carry and best to just wire you more - there's 5 million for you when you want to bother with that. Do whatever the fuck you want with it, 'cause like this isn't worth that much. Can make that in like 5 minutes, For what more to get you... I can't do everything, but to start, setting up basic defenses 'round here, a safe-enough sparring and cultivation spot, and a basic weapon is something that I can easily provide you. I don't have any decent quality unburdened techniques suitable for your level, so passing on techniques isn't something I can do for you, properly, at least - but the fox loves collecting those, so shouldn't be too problematic. Your meditation and fist technique should be fine 'til at least peak of True Master, but for the goddess's sake get an agility technique - you need one, and specialized body tempering methods and trades are prob. your next priority. Though..." 

"There's a reason why it's called 'foundation building' - it's time to train, not earn or demonstrate mastery. Better results here give better results later down the line, and doing well enough 'll open a lotta doors and garner a lot of interest." 

nodnodnodnod.

Staring at the bills was natural, too, and she couldn't help but think of the scenarios she'd normally associate with that much money - some high drama political plot, a heist, or some dubious massive purchase of drugs or a nouse. 

It was... a relief, and considering that rates she mentioned, she wouldn't be suprised if that was just a minor sweetener and of course the products of a cultivator were valuable but...

It was a lot, to an extent that was hard to believe. 

"That... makes sense." 

Breathe. 

"And of course thank you for the help and..." 

Pause. 

"What does this make me owe, then?"

Bemused snort. 

"That's always the question. The answer is... Arguably nothing." 

Her sword floated over to the stove's temprature knob, shutting it off as a whistle started faintly going, and brought over the kettle and mugs. 

"It's not that simple." 

And that's not a question.

"Course 'course." 

She pours out the water, and smiles a little as the smell hits her and the energy starts diffusing properly into the medium. 

""s just important to note - you literally don't owe anything. But well..." 

Vague gestures. 

"Expectations exist?" 

"Yeah something like that." 

She hummed quietly. 

"Ah shoulda brought in some nicer milk and sugars - MMM's sweetener's great source of pep and makes this sorta thing a good bit better... Ah well." 

She drew back a moment. 

"I guess the best way to explain it is something more like..." 

She taps her hand against the table. 

"Getting an education in primary and secondary school is free for the kid, basically, and in vast majority of places you can just up and leave to nearly anywhere and nothing stops you. But the whole thing is intended to be part of the system where you aren't supposed to want to leave, 's supposed to be part of the cycle of investments and dues to promote a stronger community. This isn't supposed to be coercive or abusive like the school system, but there's a way that this all can be a bit dick-swingy, yeah?" 

Soft chuckle curt nod. 

"Oh yes. Novels at least are full of just... so much drama, there." 

"Yep." 

She cocks her head back. 

"So it's part of the cycle. Seniors Cherish the Juniors, Juniors Respect the Seniors. The gifts are in a way, a dedicated signal saying 'Yeah, we are willing to have you in our social circle, and have the benefits thereof', and that'll go on for a while. In some situations, you can get into awkward situations if you end up effectively 'rejecting the generosity' of your seniors, and the whole point of this is to pitch the value of us and to get a bitta attachment and lock-in, but..." 

She sighs. 

"No one is forcing you, and honestly it's not nesscarily more then just... doing what you've already signed up for, in staying with me here and getting checked up on by the seniors and what you've said about wanting to be in the group but..." 

"Ties always mean something, and a price already paid is just as real." 

"Oh yeah." 

She glanced at the clock on the stove, and hummed. 

"But also like... The process of cultivation for you rn is very physical. I'm at Inborn, and accumulating Karma is basically like the thing that I need to do to get best starting Golden Core results, beyond keeping up my Life Item and practicing my cultivation method as best I can. It's been on my mind a lot so..." 

Jerk head to the side. 

"Take that w/ a grain of salt." 

Nods. 

"I see... Though I suppose it always helps, if not always so directly?"

"Yeah, though the list of things that can matter is pretty long - luck, will, karma, karmic attachments, bonded creatures, and items, environment, mentality... It goes on." 

"But for now..." 

"Drink up - helps your constitution and mental energy a touch, and with any luck should be able to spar me once this is all over. Plus, it's fucking good imo." 

She nods, and fetches herself milk and sugar to plop in, and offers her some. 

She throws in the two sugar cubes, then takes a big sip of the normally far-too-hot tea, and lets out a long satisfied sigh. 

"Mind leavin' it out? Something about the first lil bit of it makes having it blacker better." 

"No problem." 

The tea was... delicious, strong enough to send a shiver down her spine, but still soft enough to linger pleasantly in the sides of her mouth and across her tongue in even the densest parts, and part of the efect had to be more mystical since it reminded her of...

Strolling down a wooded path, the day fading into the gentle night, with only the soft rustling of the trees and crunch of the leaves beneath you to form your thoughts, the image of the breath of warm air she exhaled overlaid with a pleasant chill of the frosty air of the starts of winter. 

She smiled contentedly to herself, a little lost in the moment. 

"'s always cool to see people who are new to this..." 

She snorted. 

"Have a box of the bags, btw, 'nd happy to share most of it. More then 1 bag / day is dangerous for people who haven't cultivated, so be careful about that, and having more then like 5 a day for you is probably ill-advised while in foundation establishment, but otherwise, go wild." 

They drink in silence, for a while. 

"...Could you talk to me a little about your dreams for all this, Moonsilver? I realize this is awkward but well..." 

Shrug.

"Is the nature of the beast. You can call me just 'Ruby' whenever, by the way - 'm not really a senior, no matter my realm, and happy to just hang." 

She fidgetted a little nervously as she sipped at her tea. 

"I want to..." 

She paused. 

"It feels so wrong to just go and express things like that. Vainglorious, irrelevant, silly or... something that means that it's pointless to talk about." 

She reaches out her hand to hold. 

"...I do get it, you know. I've talked to Iron enough to know about how much the mortal world just... doesn't care, and offends you against the whole idea of something caring with these stupid fakes everywhere, but really..."

She gestured down at her form. 

"This body is a wet dream come true for me, and I bet you, too. What more is one impossible fantasy~?" 

She grinned widely, and squeezed her hand reassuringly. 

She hid a soft flush with a bit-too-fast jerky drink from her mug of the tea.

"...Yeah." 

"I..."

I dream of being trashed, discarded, thrown away, scoffed and scolded and stared at, of being simply attacked because I'm not even the sort of the person that people believe could even exist, that the dignity of personhood was meaningless because 'that's not how things work', that every fantasy I could dream up would be some entertaining side show or scandal to others at best and...

Sigh, drink deeply from the dregs of the tea, root myself, focus foward, let the groan slip out, feel, express.

"I dream of a chance not to be terrified of being worhtless, is the most real answer I can give you." She sighed, drinking down some of the last tea she had at the base of her cup, the dregs still oddly rooting to take in. "I want to do something interesting and novel that can't be dismissed as irrelevant or having me be irrelevant in the process. I want to have the sort of power base that means something and that can protect people I end up caring about and developing interesting things. I want to get at least a chance to experiment and work and become an even better version of myself through this training. But mostly... I just don't want to have to be scared, and everything else just feels like it's either part of that or some out-there speculation about what I could desire, someday."

She listens quietly, and her fingertips gently play across her wrist. 

"Yeah that's harsh - but remember that well... you have support, and like already a half-decent boost to your life span - just keep on going, 'nd there will be so many more chance to fix things, yeah?" 

Silent nod drift forward slightly tired hum.

"Yeah. So..." 

Rolls her head back.

"...What now?" 

"First, I cheer you up a lil." 

She gently patted her head. 

"Then... diagnostics!" 

Slight smile lean in. 

"For what? I don't really know enough about what matters for these things to guess without just listing off an absurdly long list of things that are only vaguely plausible."

"'Compatibility factors', basically. Talent shouldn't really be tested in ways other then just bloody getting to work, but it's not ideal to waste time with something that doesn't fit you." 

She hummed, and glanced over her appraisingly. 

"Has your constitution settled down yet?" 

"Not... quite? Seems a little incomplete and there's still progress to be made there, as best I can tell, though it seems like it's mostly just touch ups." 

"'lright - won't do the more in depth bits poking at that 'cause results aren't always great but..." 

She licked her lips. 

"'ll go set up the basic formation for testing for spiritual aptitudes, which should be able to use the same basic circle set-up for the cultivation bit so..." 

"Where to?" 

"Just down by the front door, the door to the left." 

She got up and followed forward.

The garage was grungy, the sort of grey unfinished mess with a few machines moved away to the side that gave the impression that it was a simple discarded feature of the house, a concession to the practical realities of the maintenance of cars and sound isolation rather then some 'man cave' or place of pride. 

The lights are LEDs, though, leaving the room with an oddly clean cast despite the dust and dirt caked on the floor. 

"Is this a suitable spot?" 

She scoffed. 

"Yeah course this spot ends up being a natural geomantic eddy spot just about perfect in size for the proper formation..." 

She laughed. 

"Yeah it's better then fine - the quality of the natural energies here is crap, but this is as much of a natural centre as one gets, here." 

"So ok." 

Her sword floated up and away from her side, spinning in the air, the slower movements making a thin channel filled with deep black ink as it glided through the bare concrete, carving and inscribing a circle a few meters wide. 

She dissapeared in a rush of air for a moment Moonsilver wasn't entirely sure was real, then crouched down with her satchel in her offhand and a wet brush in the other, a slightly navy-er black paint coating the tip, as she drew out 6 circles and a few more complicated details with her hand with swift and graceful motions. 

"Ideally, this'd all be done from scratch with a proper permanent array with an actual bloody dragon line, but that's a waste, to me. The whole point of a proper cultivation formation is to gather the energies of heaven and earth, and the balances of the energy inside determine your affinities, so just need a few filters - can see an instinctive adaptation technique when I meet a user, and Senior fox was kind enough to give the theoretical alignment numbers for it -won't capture the most accurate pic, but actually the main bit that'd through it off isn't that big a deal - the equality of the whole thing means that it shouldn't make that much of a difference from sub-technique affinity, but 'm sure she can manage." 

Each circle save one has a little sample in it - the flames of rebirth, a splash of water that refuses to diffuse out of the circle, a teabag, a shard of iron, a clod a tajjiof mud, with the remaining circle simply being a drawing of a Taijitu in chalk and the lighter ink. 

"Not that those details nesscarily matter to you? Though the basics can help, of course - lotta people learn the basics of reading a flow to the apex in the world to a minimal level without a technique - 'nd every lil bit of advantage helps on a path this treacherous. " 

Her sword flew around the garage, inking fine script, bizzare geometric patterns and lineart art that she couldn't quite follow, each line leading into a collection of dozens of others that led her eyes to more and more intersections 'til she was lost entirely in the design. 

*hmmm..." 

"Should equalize to test conditions in... 2 min, more or less? Need a few hours to touch up the whole thing to the best product I can get out something this rushed and low-on-resources, but should be plenty for you now..." 

She poked out her tongue, and rested back on her butt, falling undignifiedly to the floor.

"Any questions while it configs?"

"How much of this sort of thing is... 'normal', and when would I be able to do this sort of thing if I studied formations with a good technique?"

"Eh..." 

She wiggles her hand. 

"Almost every cultivator w/ an at least decent level of talent or backing has some trick to help with cultivation speed - but formations is just a way to do it - probably the most common basic buff set-up is alchemy - buying pills is a lot easier then setting up a good permanent spot - though generally the cost-to-performance ratio isn't as great and so on." 

She traced her hands across her knees and stimmed a bit. 

"If you got a technique just now, then sure, you'd be able to rig up something like this - but it'd just be a small edge - maybe a tenth extra in speed as long as you are in the foundation establishment realm, with the sorta thing that you could throw together with cheap materials in a rush. If you wanted to do something as good as this, you'd probably need to get most of the way through third stage, or something like that - this'll really speed up the whole process for you 'til you get to that point anyways then mostly drop off - 's not supposed to be something that replaces a dedicated effort to improve yourself at a higher skill level - just a help for when that sorta thing isn't really feasible. That's the whole point of seniors helping out juniors, I think." 

She smiled back a little. 

"'s good to get to give back, a lil." 

"And oh, the diagnostic bit is cheap enough - qi reactive substances are something easy to make for basically any alchemist, and even the way I did it was cheap enough - just a few dozen mL of first grade formation ink. And..." 

She sighed. 

"'ll make sure you have the option to get something for your first realm, ok? You're a good kid and don't want to leave you hanging dry." 

She tapped a spot on the linework, and the air shuddered a little before stilling back. 

"You're good to go in, now. Just breathe with the technique, though it's ok to talk and just settle in." 

"Alright." 

Pressing into the circle was... odd, especially for how natural it was to frame it that way. There was a small ethereal shimmer like shifting currents of air against her skin, and a gentle buzz inside it, that lets her feel odd just from the tiny motions against the... 'membrane' of it, with an interesting lingering touch of futzed senses in her arm that... 

She purses her lips curiously, and tries circulating her energy and seeing the difference in the timing - 

"Pfft. Oh c'mon." 

She gently pushes her forward, letting her stagger into the circle. 

"Get the instinct, but 't's the time for testin' you, not this, yeah?" 

"...Yeah." 

Breathe out settle in don't get upset sit down...

Breathe in. 

"...Does it get easier?" 

Her eyes are looked to hers, staring unabashedly despite the imbalance. She's cast off the fears of her old life, more or less, and there's no reason to start generating silly ones now. 

"No." 

Stare unflinchingly, focus unwavering, judgement hovering.

She watches the lines of her face, the light red of her altered eyes, the part of her rosy lips, chest softly rising and falling as they gaze upon each other. 

She's relaxed in that slightly predatory pose above her, her eyes glint with glee, her lips slide just far enough apart to give the faintest view of her vividly crimson tongue as the edges of them quirk up wider and wider.

She lets the tears start flowing, just a little, the faint glaze upon her eyes forming as they start to sting as she works to focus past the strain. 

She laughed, bright and clear, and reached out to ruffle your hair. 

"Oh yeah you're totally going to do well, you cutie." 

blush soft laugh reflexive blink slight chuckle concilliatory deferential nod lean in shiver recenter relax back.

"It does get more natural though. 's just another thing that gets appended to the long list of stuff that you exist under, another way to live and work and think and feel, and it helps other things, too, so it can even out in the end but...." 

"That doesn't mean it gets easier." 

"Yep."

Quiet rest back on her legs, let them sink to the floor, wait, refocus on the technique, glance up at her hand, eyes, 

Balance it, invoke balance itself into the mix, light and dark, fire and water, and the rest of the elements besides - sink in, respire more, as always, meditate. 

"So... What do these affinities even look like? I'm not sure what to expect of the process beyond some cultivation progress." 

"It's harder for you to see - you don't have a relevant technique, but basically the mix will tend towards a balance of stuff that you promote, and that'll start feeling like the barrier, just... more aspected. You'll start ot feel a bit more... 'you', I suppose, and more a bunch of specific things that are related to that but mostly..." 

"It just happens, you just keep on cultivating, and you can feel the ebb and flow of it 'til it reaches the limit." 

She smiled, warmly and softly this time. 

"So ride on up. I can cultivate here too, so don't worry about wasting my time or anything like that. You'll get the best results when you aren't in a rush and let yourself fall into the rhythm." 

And so she did, hands upon her knees gently pressing down, roots slowly seeping in, breathing deeply and slowly even as it felt more and more like she had been living on some high-up mountain for all her life but had suddenly gotten a chance to feel that rush of oxygen, blood and qi flowing through her body as she focused 'til the void and her eyes were her only thought, slowly refining - it wasn't quite designed to actually do the start-to-end process, but it was in principle possible and it would help start it up if she wanted to do more but still...

Be Still. Meditate. Rest. Generate. 

Hand-on-her-chin in a moment, words-in-her-mind. 

"Up. Practice."

Slight jerk-in, fold legs a little, push up by hands, up and flow.

It wasn't the most natural thing, not quite, the formatting still something that bugged her, but she knew how to breathe and walk in a way that few cared to already, and she knew how to follow her instincts, so she danced across the circle, going through the parries from her left hip to past her right shoulder, then contracting back into slide out of a crossguard, qi and blood rising and almost spiking as the abundant mental energy catalyzed the process more and more agressively. 

Center, focus, form, see, grasp, slide, click, thread. 

Long exhale out as the energy of her body drained away and she stood there, feeling half-naked without that cloak of energy around her. 

That's 4. 

"And there we go." 

She ran her tongue down her pointer finger and stuck it precisely at the threshold, then placed it on a little circle in the drawing. 

"That's that." 

She sighed. 

"And to think that I thought that going into formations meant that I could avoid the annoying medical stuff, but no." 

Her foot scuffed at the chalk taijitu, partially breaking it and...

Things felt a little brighter, somehow, after a bit of greying out. 

"You ran down your Yang, there - pant out a bit, let yourself get a touch ragged, 't's ok. Rebalanced the air a lil to help w/ recovery, just take your time to breathe and..." 

Disappear, reappear, water. 

"Drink." 

D-rink shake p-pant shudder gasp faint groaning sigh. 

Rest back in the circle, because it's for that. 

Pause, because you have the time and you have no idea how long any analysis takes.

That was a bit much.

She waits for to recover, silently and essentially undetectably cultivating.

"I have the results for when you'd like them, by the way." 

Her voice feels half-distant, easy to ignore willfully but hard to simply forget or brush off. 

Drinks deeply. 

"Let's talk that over with another cup of tea, say?" 

"Oh yeah sure." 

She walks out, taking a little diversion to the side to let her blade fly out the door. 

"You've cleaned out your system of it by now, I bet, and there's enough headroom to fine even if not so..." 

She went to work making it again. 

"So ok. Obviously, a lot of this is probably going to be at least partially meaningless to you, but it is useful for comparisons. Weapon energies are a separate thing and won't be touched upon." 

She hums and strokes her hand along the kettle. 

"Weird how much I kinda just wanna flash boil it, but never quite the same, and besides - that's a waste, here." 

She gestures down at her ripped body. 

"If you ran this test on me, and did the same level of summarization as 'm doing for you, I'd say I have a really great affinity for Yang, Fire, and Metal (plus forge and formation stuff and sub-elements too complicated to get into, with some specialist natural resonances w/ Earth, an overall solid balance between body, mind and soul cultivation w/ excellent compatibility for doing it dual. My affinity for wood, shadow, and water range from totally unusable to sorta workable. even have a decent nascent aptitude for space, oddly enough, though as Respledent Solar Soldier'd probably say, 'm enough of a genius for that sort of thing to be... a lil silly." 

She snorts and points at her. 

"You're... sorta more normal? Solid Wood and Yin affinities on a base of similarily great Mind and Dual cultivation affinities, though actually your elements align pretty excellently for doing balance work in the style of taoist techniques like the thin' you already have, and there's definitely firmly usable. You'll always have a bit of a struggle building your cultivation around body cultivation w/out some dramatic intervention, but your soul and mental energy are good. And for more exotic stuff..." 

She snorts. 

"Void, of all things - should be pretty useful, though techniques are a lil impractical early on. There;s some more... interpretative, bits, of course, but that's the basics. Ususally that sort of ting is for..." 

She waves her hand vaguely. 

"Builders and endurers, focused talents and trick users who go for skill-strats and pulling of 'expertise' in general, even if it translates out to an advantage elsewhere." 

She nods a little. 

"I guess I'm lucky I had a good compatibility with the technique - I suppose that will help quite a bit. And..." 

She blushes again. 

"You really ended up testing my affinity for that sort of cultivation?"

She raised her eyebrows. 

She laughed hard. 

"Ah... It's fun to get to play 'round with this with people who get it from the fics, and such." 

She smiled relaxedly. 

"It's something related to the whole synergistic characteristic you have - some people naturally have energies that sorta... work well with others, natively? It's natural to detect when playing with your energies and so on, 'nd it is useful for a lot of things when cultivating next to other people or so on, beyond just..." 

Eyebrow-raise-higher. 

Eyebrow-wiggle.

"Sex." 

She broke down laughing. convulsing with laughter as she let the awkwardness fade away. 

She snorted hard and laughed back with her, smiling widely. 

"ah..." 

The kettle started going off. and she went up to take care of it. 

"Beyond all that... Don't cultivate for the rest of the day, at least to get strands - you're too unstable right now to get safe results, and you'd probably just end up wasting your time. Three strands on day 2 is great, don't worry about that. And..." 

Hum plop in the sugar and milk. 

"Doing the formation work for the house now, 't'll be up properly in a few minutes. It'll be..." 

She sighed. 

"'safe' here." 

She winced a little. 

"I assume with a lot of caveats?"

"Oh yeah." 

She let her tongue lap down at one of the mugs, lapping up a bit of the still hot tea.

"Gonna be implementing features for a while, but it'll block out sensory technique of less then fourth level 'nless they figure out something clever, block out stuff like ghost spirits 'round the third level, and even trying to brute force invade into the house would take like two-or-three extraordinary meridians running to eventually get it, though someone at the peak could probably get in pretty dang quickly. Without sieging, probably not feasible for a second stage ward breaker or stealth technique user to get in without something special. It should deter most casual predation attempts, and has the standard call for help features, or will  but..." 

"Obviously, you don't have that safety out of here, and it is beatable, and a rush job. You can prob. get away with just staying here - happy to get stuff delivered if you need anything, but it's... limiting." 

She glances back down at it, and drinks a bit from hers. 

"It's ready - though the curve is a good bit more aggressive with this to the right level, you can get away with something a good bit quicker, and it keeps to something solid for quite a while, so don't be too worried about that in general."

"I understand but..." 

Drink tea, focusing on getting a better hang of the essence.

"What do cultivators do all day, if you have these sorts of limitations?"

"Cultivate." 

Dubious-glare.

"No seriously - in a couple of ways, actually. There's a default function of the Nose Aperture that means that you autocultivate, and everything is a part of a path, just not always the one you are walking." 

Conceding-nod-to-the-side, eye-roll.

"Usually, a cult, sorry, 'clan' cultivator is basically just thrown in to learn everything that they can - the amount of time that you can actually spend practicing a fist technique might be only what, 4 hours a day? But you can spend the rest of your time meditating, reading up, practicing forms, sparring, sleeping, listening to lessons, eating, practicing a profession - whatever, as long as it's part of the path. It goes quickly, I find? But like... YOu don't have to do that to your life. 't's the least we can offer you." 

"Yeah - though honestly I might want some help for... how to meditate properly without going for the strands and wearing out like that? Or just... get a chance to relax or..." 

She ran her hand across her forearm, then sighs a little as she notices more impurities.

"Oof yeah that sucks - only-half-reember it but having a lot of baths and stuff helps, and even in as much as that stuff can still happen to me naturally sort of purify it, but well.." 

She twitched her head to the side. 

"'s not the most transferrable thing." 

She tapped her finger against her mug.

"It'll keep. Feel free to go shower." 

Long slow sip contemplative sigh. 

"I know there's a lot kind of front loaded to this but... 

Gosh there's a lot of fun to be had, too. 

'll show you something cool after, promise." 

She smiled a little, cautiosuly letting her shoulders slump back.

And of to the shower, after an unnesscary nervous glance back over her shoulder. 

Showering again so soon after the changes was yet another especially odd experience. It wasn't that it was anything unepxected - the sensual texture to the feeling of her skin - both in terms of the input and output - was something entirely expected, as was the extra lightness and strechiness that made gliding her soapy hand down her legs so easy and comfortable and nice, nor was the slight tinge of aroused heat in her chest something that she especially found unusual, considering that Ruby was virtually objectively hot, considering all the refinements she had gone through, and being gay was just...

Natural, as was the little shivers down her spine she flet when she really focused in on her, though the ideas and swirls of impressions of thoughts from there were something that would need a lot more then just idle notes no the nature of humanity. 

And of course, the further details she was feeling were... a good bit less something that she could just explain away as 'natural'. 

Her chest was a good deal more muscular, the sort of thing that was all clean hard lines forming what she couldn't helkp but think was the proper way for her abs to be, on an excellently taught stomachm or the thing that was so much easier to notice...

Her breasts. 

They had practically inflated to something a good bit larger, the sort of hefty things that you see in models and wet dreams, larger then what ought to be practical for most, but without the sort of sag of strech that she'd associate with seeing that sort of thing in nature. 

She couldn't just say that she was somehow having her pectoral muscles grow to something more substantial, or that there was some trick of the eye or her shifting proportions that made it seem larger then it was. 

They were genuinely large in a way that she just... hadn't had before and...

She let out a warm sigh as she settled into feeling the droplets of water run acrosss them, an oddly comforting weight of it pushing down that just made it so pleasnt to sit there and relax, rolling her shoulders and letting out the small satisfied sighs that the steam of ater washed away. 

It was easy to just slip this into thinking about the commercialization that she could presumably pull off with this, but it was just... Good to have the sort of beauty that people value, incliding her, and that's not... sinful, or anything. 

Still, it'd be annoying for a while that.. 

She laughed, watching her breasts jiggle pleasantly. 

She'd totally be fine without a bra, wouldn't she be. 

But of course. 

Not like that'll make this whole thing more sexual. 

She shampoo'd and conditioned, enjoying the little refinements to the even-ness of her scalp and just... 

The way it was better, beyond the sort of thing worth description, and enjoyed the perfected sheen of it. 

Ah this is cool too, really. 

She smiled, and changed back into something a bit lighter - a tank top with shorts she'd be sure would be unrestricting even with her more muscular thighs, just because being in a good set up for fighting seemed natural for whatever Ruby's idea of fun was. 

She didn't just enjoy the process of the shower of course - she wasn't quite there yet, but she knew that cultivators cultivate, in a soul-deep way that was difficult to describe, and listening to the sound of her heart and the dribbling water splashing down across the tub was...

Profound, if just a little, the way that he breathing shifted to compensate intriguing, and just... fascinating. 

The way that it drained away was interesting too, the faint sense of dew washing away together with the slick on her skin. 

She walked down the stairs to meet Ruby once more.

She had a speaker set-up on a table, and started playing a certain snappy techno song. 

She relaxed back and bopped her head to the music.

Oh.

Listening to music like this is... 

Different.

The bass feels more real, the soundstage more open and spread out around her, the location of the speaker less masked by the airiness of the room, and everything was just sharper.

It wasn't just her senses, at least not probably, it was the sort of thing that just sank into her head, every bit of clear and precise and flowing, the sort of thing that she had only ever half-seen in domos or seen as from random youtube videos showing how relatively little that it changed things to add that extra filter to the whole process but...

Wow. 

She took a moment to sit with tears half-formed in her eyes. 

The music transitioned to another peppier piece

and she let her head bop to the faster beat, grinning a little. 

"It's really a lot when you first get it, isn't it? This is just a cheap curiosity, relatively speaking, but the sound quality is apparently at least as good as what you get from the best mortal setup money can buy, and it's a lot less cumbersome so...~"

"That's pretty amazing. I can't exactly pretend to know all that much about how the audio for these things work, but I know offhand that most music isn't mastered as well as I can tell this is, and that there's fancy things you can by for every step of the chain to make it as good as possible and it's still not perfect but..." 

She snorted a little at the feeling of her head being carreid along into the bops as the beat dropped once more. 

"And you are just doing that with your phone, somehow?" 

Incredulous laugh small bounce smile.

"Yep! Sound qi and some conceptual tricks can work miracles. Could make something like this but not worth the time when I can buy it off of someone who specializes a bit for cheap." 

She lazily grinned. 

"That's not even The Thing though." 

"Oh?"

"Yep!" 

She started humming along to the music, and it just... worked, notes sliding smoothly and quickly up and down right on the beat as the music played, staying oddly clear and crisp as she went. 

"Try it!"

She blinked. 

"Oh and sorry for the harsh music from the start when you came down to drink some tea. Here." 

The piano softly played, a gentle thrum of the bass sitting nicely alongside the pleasant fluttering chorus slowly coming in. 

She drank up, smiling faintly, and letting herself hum along and...

It was easy, not just to make the sound in her throat, but to project it, to slide it out, to mix in her breathing to stop it from interfering with the sound, easy to know the note, just from hearing it, and it didn't even leave that faint trace of a burn or sting from going hard to just... let herself drift into the song. 

"...Do cultivators have perfect pitch or something like that?"

"Yep. There's a reason why the first realm is called 'beyond mortal', you know? The reason you'll see in textbooks or that the stogy seniors 'll tell you 's cause you haven't established the 'beating core' of a cultivator, fundamentally, but to me it's just that there's so much that only really completes once you get to that point that just means that you're done with the basic mortal progression. There's... honestly too long a list of things to list properly, but generally the hearing ability of someone 'll trend back to youth optimal and get this, too. You're young and healthy, so it's easy enough for you."

Drink drink. 

"And it works for singing and talking too - my sexy voice is all natural, 'course, but it's really actually quite easy to retune stuff to fit what works best for you, throw in an accent, or somethin' like that. So...~" 

"Karaoke?"

"...Sure why not, at least after I finish this." 

"Ok." 

She puts on some quiet rain noises while they finish up. 

"Alright, let's play this lil gem." 

The opening notes plays, the trills of the background singers resounding, as she pufs out her chest to sing. 

No more excuses and no more playin' dead
There aint' no silver linings in anythin' you said
If you keep on denyin' and I could stay away
We could hold up our hands, say we don't want it, we don't need it

She sings boldly, belting out the lyrics alongside the vocal track, keeping the notes clean yet projecting out firmly, every bit clipped and clear, eyes watching her inviteingly. 

She rose, singing back just because she could, because it's fun, and because adding the little touch of a taunting lilt here is too. 

If I give more than enough ground, will you claim it?
I will take it all in one breath and hold it down
And if I try to pretend that I don't hear it
You can tell me to move and I won't go
You can tell me to try and I won't go

Her singing is lighter, more hesistant, a slight pause drawing her words back to make the instinctive click into sync fall away, but it comes out lyrical anyways. 

Her eyes twinkle with amusement, and she sings back the altered chorus, a dare in her gaze. 

If I give more than enough ground, will you leave it?
I will take it all in one breath and hold it down
And if I try to pretend that I don't see it
You can tell me to move and I won't go
You can tell me to try and I won't go

Their eyes lock, because of course they do, and they sing together as one of the hopes on the great Way. 

No more distractions and no more staying still
I am chasing the skyline much more than you ever will
You can keep to your story and I could stick to mine
We could hold up our hands, say we don't want it, we don't need it

As they finish it up into the repeating loops at the end of the song, she breaks down laughing, chukcling hard as she lets the recording play out the rest of the song on it's own. 

..."You really are quite a blunt person, aren't you?" 

Tilt head quirk eyebrows up. 

"But of course. There's no need to tip-toe, here. It's freeing, and empowering and just... good." 

Slump back onto the non-existent headrest on the chair.

"Besides, challenges are a great way for cultivators to develop - at least the ones with a talent. It's just... part of our nature. Get the words and motions and song in your heart flowing out, condense back and grow stronger - that's the basis of so much of cultivation from the very start - and you do need to hear yourself think about the mortal world and what it means to you leavin' it, at least as a card carrying member, yeah?"

"I suppose. I realize that I can probably get away with risking it, all things considered, even with the importance of these precautions but..." 

"Ain't the same thing. There's no truth to it, I bet, is the reason deep down, 'nd..." 

She thumped her chest. 

"Break your excuses. Crush them beneath the strength of your convictions. Speak your mind and reach for the heavens with everything you do.  And you will find yourself a virtuous soul, even if not in the fuckin' 'layer of soul light' way or whatever." 

Nodnod. 

Her grin starts to match hers, just a little. 

"You totally like being blunt becuase you can get that pause from people, and get control of the conversation for kicks, don't you?" 

Hands-tuck-behind-her-head. 

"Do I~?"

Press forward.

"You do." 

They sit there, staring together for a moment before breaking off to listen to a good bit more music throughout the rest of the night, cycling through there playlists - Ruby has a taste for dynamic music that's fun to project and sing loud and with passion, alongside a weirdly large selection of songs with mentions of 'gold' scattered throughout, while Moonsilver's song list has a lot of techno that tends towards lighter things, plus some pleasant ambinet music to while away the night with, after they take the time throw a couch onto the cultivation circle and rest together shoulder to shoulder. 

Somewhere in the process, she wraps an arm around her shoulder. 

She's a little tired, but well aware enough to notice and instinctively nuzzle and press back up into her.

*MMmmmmmm~" 

"Thanks for sharing all this, btw - always nice to get to grab more options for music and stuff. For now... Uh, I'll take care of the sparring field and talk to the chat a bit about this all? There's probably more stuff you can get in good will with this sort of stuff, 'nd it's good fun." 

"Same to you - it's good to get a chance to cast off a limitation I didn't need and you're... quite nice company in the right headspace, at least." 

snort.

"Right back at ya." 

She lay down on the sofa, kicking her feet back up on the armrests, trying not to think about how close her butt was to her face at this angle. 

Got affinity test back from Ruby - Wood, Yin, 'Balance' are my strong ones, and apparently my energy is best suited for mind and dual cultivation. She seemed decently pleased with the results and called it solid - I just... don't know what that means, and would like your thoughts.

Ooh nice to hear from you, Moonsilver! 

A Yin affinity is usually a good sign of the future of a female cultivator - I know that she didn't highlight body, but it'll probably make you a bit more compatible with refinements to yourself in those terms. 

Plus, it means you get more perks early on!

That's a decent list of affinities too - it's not too uncommon for people to just have one, you know.

Balance is a useful one - though a touch hard to get right - expect you to have a bit more... 'swings' then you'd otherwise get, though it can be a useful way to keep a diverse skillset. 

I'm Fire, Yang, Yin, and Balance aspected elementally myself, at least for the basics - I find it offers a lot of options and synergies for some of the purer ones. 

Oooh!

Wood is great for herbalists, and gotten a lot of mileage out of it cooking, too. 

Ruby's usually pretty reluctant to heap praise, so I expect you'll have a bright future!

Though it's probably worth mentioning that you can pursue whatever you'd like, and your affinities will help you somewhat - there's just more and less obvious applications, and different strengths of the effect. 

Yeah - though there's really an obvious application for everything too - a metal affinity helps with well, metal attuned alchemical ingredients, even if the overall process is a good bit more complicated.

Oh and I half-forgot - she mentioned void as one that she saw, too? Not sure what to think of that. 

Elemental affinities that aren't one of fire, water, earth, metal, wood, yang, yin and 'balance' are... 

Less conventional, one might say.

There's as many elements possible as stars in the sky, as one might expect, but the basic compositional elements that the chinese paradigm focuses on is those, and you'll always have at least one of them, and it's thought not to be possible to have more then four  - whereas other elements it's a lot... looser. 

You can have affinities for weapons or processes or metaphysical elements that aren't part of that system or any number of things. Void is a strong one, or at least one well understood the upper levels of for being quite useful in a number of combat and mental applications. 

And thank you for sharing this - I'm sure it will help the seniors pick out gifts for you!

It's always wonderful to see the windfall and reactions!

Oh!

I'm sorry I don't have much to offer, but the Spirit Black Tea is a decent source of Wood qi, and focusing in on that with your meditations might help, as well as influencing the area that you cultivate with that sort of thing - I've seen a lot of pretty places with all sorts of things scattered about to go for the best results!

Though actually, still haven't gotten rid of some of my left-over blood and qi pills - happy to mail some over!

...I want to protest that those are valuable, but at this point, they really shouldn't be too big a deal, and it can be helpful to keep a generally good reputation on the quality of the items you sell and those were... 

Fine. 

For those ridiculously low standards, at any rate.

Aww.

It's always a little fun to see you a little defensive, Steely Student!

And honestly half-just want to ask to run over now!

Have to prep the garden for my absence, though, so I'll be a while. 

Is it really so expected for everyone to come over? 

Sort of!

The seniors have there own time tables - Glacial Glave Grandmaster tends to go into seclusion for weeks of cultivating, and is off on that sort of thing now, I think, and some juniors can get stuck, but well...

Cultivators like gifting there presence, too, you know~?

That's one way to put it, MMM.

Getting to know each other personally is a good way to network, and when cultivators have enhanced memories, there's a lot more that you can do with that then you might expect. It's good practice to be a part of the scene, and it's useful to show up as part of that - but it's also definitely a way to show off. 

I understand ^^

Cultivators are... really different, aren't they? 

It really depends on perspective! 

The thing that's easy to forget is that there's just... not a natural place in the modern day that people would end up with the sort of confidence and comfort in there body that cultivators naturally get unless they mess something up - not to mention the differences in how growing up with it works. 

There's a lot of people who work a lot more like simply naturally gifted people out there, but there's certain...

Ways that they try to be something different, or even manually go for something different!

Really, cultivating by default includes little modifications to better understand the path, and by the time that you get to the metaphysical optimizations...

I like to think that nothing nesscarily changes, but...

It's been nice, and rather different, to have this wealth, amongst other things. 

Yeah - Ruby gave me a few hundredk cash and I just... have no idea how to spend it. The only thing that seems even remotely reasonable to spend that much money on is a house and considering that she's already warded mine...

Don't let it be a trap!

Personally, what worked best for me was just to do what I normally do - and then see if there's a more expensive version out there that's actually better. That doesn't have to change anything, you can even look in the same sort of places, you can even just do everything the same but turn off your sense of 'things being too expensive'!

It doesn't have to be stressful. 

That's quite on point - though also, cultivators have any number of interesting versions of things, and there's plenty of places in the mortal world are designed to help people with those sorts of questions, or industry publications or journalists or just youtubers commenting on those things. 

Reading something like the Financial Times can be interesting in it's own right, and the associated content can drag you along into interesting places.

Well...

It really depends on what you want out of your money. Getting into the culture in that direction is easy enough, but well...

Not always the best idea. 

Yeah.

Though also, cultivator items can be great, or just minor comfort things or cool fashion stuff! 

Getting measurements and shopping for cool dresses or fun dyes or make-up is still kinda exhilarating, to be honest. 

And just...

Pillows! Kitchen Gadgets! Beds! Silky clothing! Toys! Beds! Soaps! Incenses! 

And of course, the simplest answer is of course 'just google it'. 

True true~! 

Though visiting our lovely little lairs might give you some ideas too~

Oh yes.

There's nothing like just...

Seeing it in front of you to change your instinctive perceptions of what it's all like. 

Yeah!

Though it's a little surreal when you have to work to see the spiritual details to tell if it's exotic...

Also...

I'd encourage you to just... 

Try to make something yourself, even if it would normally seem like a silly or impractical idea? 

Money can change that a lot, and exploration is the spice of life~

Yeah...

I really do need to try that all out, though I know that I'll be mostly just working with Ruby on cultivation for a while. 

Fair! 

Just remember that well... A lot of your life will have a lot of cultivation in it, if you want to go forward, and that doesn't mean that you shouldn't fit in the chance for other meaningful things, too. 

+1!

Well said.

Alright, I'll get back to you when I get the chance to play. 

Thanks for your advice.

NP!

Alright so... 

She walked down to the basement, assuming she could find it on her own easily enough, checking up on her progress.

The lights were off in the basement, but there was still a lot she could see, dimly from the light spilling out from the door, and the faint glimmer of red energy inscribed on the ground, nearly complete save for a few details that Ruby was down on her hands and knees to finish off, the pose showing off her tautly covered butt in a way that had to be intentional. 

"'ey Moonsilver. Give me a few secs and..." 

She did a few finishing strokes, and sprung up to her feet with alarming alacrity. 

"There we go!"

"The sparring arena is ready, then?"

"t is - as long as someone's willing to get there power down to third realm or lower, injuries beyond a bit of scrapes and bruising that goes away quickly with a bitta blood and qi won't really happen - though don't use fucking backlashing techniques 'cause it doesn't help a ton with that, and effect's 'll get caught and mitigated to be safe 'nd shit. 's just well... enough to work, 'nd honestly if it wasn't me you'd prob. get this just to second realm so... Yeah." 

She a fist pounds against her hand. 

"Tell me - how much do you know about how to fight?"

"I -" 

Hum think reset pause. 

"I was going to say that I know how to fight from the cultivation method. I don't know if..."

Reflect, stretch out, breathe.

"That means anything."

"Cultivation Methods are awesome. There one of the most valuable things in fucking existence, and don't let anyone tell you fucking otherwise." 

Long pause narrow eyes. 

"They're fucking shit for actually giving you experience or the complete ability to fight out of the gate, tho." 

Raise a finger. 

"One - Cultivation methods are fuckin' huge, at least ones that are of any decent quality. Tell me, how many times have you stumbled across something that you didn't know that you knew how to do?"

Pause, reflect. 

"Not quite too many times to count, but it'd be easy enough to call it that, and a lot of the reason why I can count it - to 7, at least - it's quick but..." 

"Cognitive, even when instinctive. Useful, complete, but unintegrated, and integration doesn't mean that everything you need is there." 

Stroll around her form, glance across. 

Her eyes track her falling hands, feet shifting wider, shoulder purposefully not-quite tensed, watching. 

Two fingers up. 

"Two. Your current instincts are wrong. Fox of the Spirit Sylvan Lake includes a training form, with different patterns of qi and blood and motion and speed. Did you know that?"

Small deferential head-hang. 

"No." 

No disclaimed expressions of knowledge that she didn't really have, no ambiguity. 

Three fingers. 

"Three. It doesn't teach you counters to other techniques, or give you muscle memory, not at the most basic level. It'll give you a toolkit, and even a ready-enough option to reply - but not skill." 

"Do you understand?"

Stand at attention, respond. 

"No." 

I don't - I can listen but. 

Expectant gaze, stalk around her.

"I understand at least a version of that idea - that it doesn't give a complete understanding of what to do in the 'micro' of a fight, but merely gives a response and a toolkit. I don't understand fully what that means in practice, the level of preformance difference, or the metaphysical implications of the idea of 'skill', if something like that applies." 

Clipped nod, another finger up. 

"That's four. You need to get mastery of the art - in a way that only training can get, and that you can only properly get from training to fight, training in fighting, in both senses. Better efficiency, better power, better mastery of the associated elements - fist and balance, for yours." 

"Condense Fist qi in your hand. You'll need to circulate your blood there too and drain it into it - but the manual has the complete method. Follow it."

And yes, that's there, of course. 

It condenses fairly smoothly, an thin aura of white fading into existence around her hand. 

She peered appraisingly down at her.

"How does it feel, to hold in your hand?"

"Strained. Loose. Strong. Incomplete. Plain. Firm. Sharp. Mine."

Understanding nod. 

Her hand glides out, and presses against the glowing cupped hand, the strands of qi just stopping against her skin as she instinctively presses back against it.

"This is what passive resistance from a body tempering art feels like - the Iron Immovable Body, in this case. Feel it, and try to break past it." 

She breathes deeply, and the energies that enter her go into her core, form her balance, and intermingle and shift into the condensed fist qi against her hand, as she squeezes hard against her hand. 

It's untouched, firm against her despite the supple softness in her skin, and so she looks deeper. 

The motions of the punching techniques are part of them, of course, though there's only so much she can do like this, but she still remembers them and shifts her hips and arm to follow in accordance with it as best she can, the details of the knowledge forming and shifting in her mind. 

There's other details as well, of course, different degrees of investment optimized for, different targets, different ways to fight and follow up, and of course the meditation technique, to hold it all together and make it real. 

Her qi isn't defective, it's just... stopped, a wall of Metal and a decently large amount of Earth standing firmly against her, the control and power and focus of the technique dissipating as it hits just at the edge of her perceptions, failing each and every moment even as it grow sharper, denser, cleaner, smoother, ignoring attempts to simply build strength in her hand to release in a surge to overwhelm it, sturdy enough to simply let it wash off, burn away, grow around, the elements falling apart against the barrier of it but...

"No true native affinity. Take your hand back, and punch." 

Withdraw, recenter, set into a blow, fist qi spiking - 

Her blow slammed into her open palm as her hips twisted to try to force the blow forwards, this defense much flatter and energetic. 

"Feel the way that the blows power drains as it shifts out of your technique into just wielding the qi by instinct. Repeat as needed."