"...We can't get two foundational techniques for the same reason, I assume?  But I do want to check that."

"I will not forbid it, but I will advise that it's almost entirely suboptimal until you've established yourselves in the first realm - no matter where you are going, you may only step through one door at a time. Besides, if you can't break through to the first realm fast enough to earn a third technique, then you're not the talented young girls I think you are."

She nods.  "I am rather drawn to the synergies between the Virtue technique and the Academic one.  Given that, though...I suppose that the question is which to approach first."

"Virtuous techniques are the ones which grow in strength the better you can live thier virtue, so perhaps it makes sense to cultivate your ingenuity first and the foundation of ingenuity you can cultivate second?" 

"Quite reasonable.  Opal, do you know what you want?"

"I think I have come to a decision, yes."

"I'd like The Correspondence on Perfection, if you please, as well as Invincible Coyote Prana."

"I would like Inward Facet Reflection and Flattering Mimicry Posture, to start with.  I expect that I will desire the Reflective Crown Process next."

The appropriate books are distributed, and thenrest are given to a servant to return to the vaults. 

"Would you like to attempt to contact great-grandfather now? Or are there preparations you still need to make?" 

"Well, that entirely depends upon the amount of time we would be left to prepare, wouldn't it?  Though I do believe dear Diamant has some items to fetch."

She does indeed.

She has a little rolling cart absolutely full of them, in fact; there's a lot of spools of thread, just in case they get lost, as well as cartography supplies; there's some of the twins' samefoods in case they're down there for a while, and she's gotten something for Great-Grandfather - she knows she never remembers she ought to eat when she's really caught up in a project.  ...And they should probably change out of their formalwear first!  If this is going to be an adventure, or they're going to be in a workshop.  Unless, ah, is that contraindicated by social protocol?

...If it proves necessary, they can always change before they encounter hazards to either outfits or people.  If there's not enough time for them to start properly cultivating in their leeway to depart - she'd rather impress, if she can - then they're ready.

They're not going to be heading into danger, you know, they're going into the basement to meet thier ancestor. All the security measures will recognise them as his own blood, and allow them to pass. They should dress to meet thier honoured ancestor, not for an adventure. 

(Thier auntie thinks, privately, that the cart seems awfully inconvenient, but then, many things about mortality are awfully inconvenient. They have presumably considered these things.) 

It's got this neat handle, and wheels and axles and stuff!  She loaded it with a few hundred pounds of rocks once and barely noticed!  Compared to normally definitely noticing moving that much object.  ...That's not a lot to cultivators proper.  But it's still a useful principle!

(...Diamant may have been displacing her "oh gods what will Great-Grandfather think of me" onto "oh no what if dangers", though.  Oops.)

"My dear sister may have read a few too many overly sensationalized stories of hidden realms," she ruffles Diamant's hair in a sisterly-teasing way, to much flustered eeping, "but goodness knows we don't actually know what most of the basement is like, and from that perspective, I can certainly see why she'd pack some 'adventuring equipment', out of what we had readily available.  Plus a gift for Great-Grandfather, you'll note.  I daresay she's trying to impress, in her own way.  Didn't you design that yourself?"

She did!  It's no proper wheelbarrow in terms of carrying capacity, but what it handily beats them out on is ease of traveling over stairs.

"...I must pre-empt your lecture upon its principles; I don't imagine Auntie is very interested in mechanics.  ...My dear sister is quite ingenious, but her words flow like the Yellow River upon the subject that has caught her eye today and we haven't the time for that right now."

(n.b.: The Yellow River, for those of you without the fortune of so knowing, is notable for a), its erratic floods, and b), being perhaps the river with the most widely divergent path over time, due to the mechanism underlying said floods.  The metaphor seemed apt for hyperfixational infodumping.)

"Indeed, we had best set off sooner rather than later. Diamant dear, if you'd like to explain, you can do so *while* we walk."

Then they'd best get going!

And going they do. At first, thier path is largely normal, at least by the standards of the family home - stairways paired with inverted ones on the ceiling and gardens where strange flowers bloom above perfectly reflective pools, but in the bowels of the house things get still stranger, as things are illuminated only by daylight a thousand times reflected and more and more of the structure of the house is impossibly reflective. They cross through a maze, made of dozens of identical rooms walled in mirrors to make it impossible to tell where there are real passages and where there are solid mirrors and where there are mirrors that you must step through to continue your passage in a reflected pocket-world. Eventually, deep in the house, they step out of what seems like the front door of the house, into an eerily silent world where all ground outside the house is a single perfectly flat mirror and the sky above contains a reflection of the real (or realer, at least) compound far away. By the door, there is an ancestral shrine, identical to another more visited one at the entrance of the compound. It's the only thing here which isn't a reflection of something. 

Except that it is in fact a reflection of the exterior shrine this is so cool!

Her sister is having a wonderful time; this is all she needs to see to be glad they are doing this.

Perhaps the shrine is a reflection of the one above - or perhaps the one above is a reflection of this one, or they are both a reflection of some third shrine somewhere else, or perhaps the family architect is merely profoundly unoriginal when it comes to sacred buildings. It is beyond the kenning of a mortal to say. 

The shrine itself is a simple thing, a small pagoda of dark wood and red tile polished to the unnatural sheen common to most materials in the compound, the back wall a single huge mirror etched to show a stylised rendering of a dragon. Either side of it are tablets representing the founder's own ancestors (there is a proper graveyard elsewhere for more modern family members), and an altar in the center, for flowers or incense to be placed - and incense is already here, a single wisp of smoke the only motion in the eerie mirror world.