"Yes..."

"Uh," says Cassiel, "the China of the time period most Earths, including the one with psions, are from, is very different from this one, there's - developments in politics."

"I would like someone with as much cultural context as possible, then."

"Okay, I can put that in the request." Nelen taps at his computer for a bit making that happen.

Meanwhile--

The first bus is leaving from the Emperor's palace, with a collection of courtiers, concubines, guards, and dignitaries. Although not anyone, like, important. 

The bus takes two hops - the intermediate station isn't really anywhere anyone would want to go, so they're quick hops - and arrives in a lively and lovely bus station! This bus will continue on from here but passengers who didn't have anywhere specific in mind to go probably want to step out into the station, or the city surrounding - it's on Vanda Nossëo proper, in Edda -

- the passengers are suffocating, fuck?

- the bus hops back whence they came.

A collection of courtiers, concubines, guards, and dignitaries are suddenly able to breathe again!

They did not expect this as a consequence of going on a trip!

Nobody did! It's very concerning! Are they all okay now or do they need medical attention?

They are all okay now that they can BREATHE.

The Emperor is going to remember this VERY HARD. The courtiers are sure of it. 

They're so abjectly sorry! They've never met anyone who couldn't breathe outside their own world before.

Well they SHOULD be.

The bulletin goes out to everyone and Nelen confusedly informs his contacts that apparently natives can't breathe if they leave the world?? ????? They don't know why or if there's a way to solve the problem yet.

"Okay, so what do we know about breathing. The breath takes in the air qi and expels various toxins. The lungs mix the air with food qi and distills it into vital qi."

"Natives have been fine in our spaceship, so it's definitely something about the world and not the air itself. People have also seemed fine on the imported food though they're now looking more closely at that. Maybe being in this world imbues air with qi."

"Does your air not have qi?"

"Not that we've noticed, but it would be pretty subtle, wouldn't it, or someone would have noticed the spaceship air acquiring it."

"Well, you can learn to see it with-- three months of meditation-- hm. Yeah. I see the problem here."

"Yeah. If you want to experiment with this, I can teleport people much faster than they'd run out of air from holding their breath, but I don't know if even that's a safe amount of time, considering that for all we know the air inside people's lungs is affected too."

"I mean, lots of cultivators don't need to breathe."

"- then I guess maybe you can travel? Unless you're doing it by - internally generating air qi and that stops working?"

"Well, I want to go figure out whether I can travel to foreign worlds, but my husband will worry, so I'll delegate it to Lan Sizhui."

"If Lan Sizhui wants me to hop him a world over and see if he can breathe there I can do that."

"Yes, please."

"Okay - if you don't speak once we're there I'm going to assume you're having trouble and come right back."

Pop.

"--that is very strange," Lan Sizhui says immediately.

"Do you feel all right?"