"Hmm, maybe some books from early in my education would suit. But they were all aimed at kids, and quite frankly you're smarter than that? But maybe you'll just read them quickly. I think that if awakened animals have a charecter suited to etiquette they mostly come out knowing it the same way they come out knowing language and cultivation."

"As far as research topics go - I have a vague sense that there's a noble clan somewhere that has multiple people per body somehow, so we could look into that? And we should be looking up information about the proving grounds so that when we go there we can be more effective, they're the obvious place to start with the monster hunting plan."

"I think maybe we should focus on your technique, I'm happy to switch facing and I expect yours to take more time to read." 

She's glad to hear that she has still come off as smart, given that she feels like she's been spending a lot of time floundering lately.

"I think it's worth giving the kids' textbooks a look, at least.

Ooh, if there are people who have already been working out best practices for body-sharing cultivators, that sounds *very* helpful! Even if the details are secrets, I bet there's useful tips we could glean from looking at the general outline.

And yeah, I don't have a good sense of what to expect from the proving grounds."

"Starting with *my* books certainly works for me," she says, with a touch of amusement at herself.

"Oh, speaking of other body-sharing cultivators, what's a heart devil? They've come up a couple of times now."

Jasmine is going to attempt something tricky: she's going to try and pass the front while also talking to Kedri. 

"Heart devils are like - if you immerse things in lots of qi and leave them for a while, decades or centuries, sometimes those things will wake up and start cultivating? Heart devils are like that, but the thing which wakes up is something you've been repressing or compartmentalising, or the losing side of an internal conflict, or an intense emotion. A part of you which is separate enough from you that this sort of outcome makes intuitive sense. Sometimes you can reabsorb them or reconcile yourself to them, or just share, but often they want to eat you to use your power to enact whatever it is they're about, so you have to fight them." 

She fails to pass the front. 

"...I guess that's another reason why it's important to understand yourself and resolve your contradictions."

She...supposes this is not substantially more concerning than the existence of demonic possession in general. Although it would be unnerving, to know that the demon was a part of you once.

"Indeed it is. I'm going to focus on passing control to you now." 

Jasmine will sit and meditate and eventually get it.

Kedri checks the front and back matter of the Immortal Education, looking for indications of a suggested reading schedule or order.

The Immortal Education suggests, in the first pages that ideally you would read all of the recommended books first, then the first and second volumes, and only then the third volume, only using the following schedule as a guide as to what to refresh yourself on, but that this isn't realistic advice so instead, please read this introduction, chapter 1 of this book, the introduction and chapters one through three of the second volume, and either these two volumes of poetry or, if inaccessible, at least the excerpts provided in appendix a of volume 5, before reading chapters 1 and 2 of the cultivation book, which are sufficient in themselves to allow cultivation to the start of the first realm (then go read these six books and most of the rest of the first two volumes while you're working on that). 

If she'd been preparing for this since she was twelve, perhaps she could have done things the ideal way.

But she's had, at most, one day. Realistic order it is, then.



Even so, she smiles as she settles in to read.

The Great Academy Immortal Education is surprisingly readable, for a textbook covering a mix of philosphy, ancient literature, and technically detailed metaphysics. The author had, if nothing else, an undeniable knack for communicating difficult concepts efficiently, albiet with heavy use of proverbs and classical allusions - each of which does, at least, get explained, either explictly or by context. 

The first chapter of "Philosophy" covers the design decisions of these books and very persuasive justifications of the ways education in general, and this education in particular, aids in behaving in a manner functional, ethical, and righteous.

The first chapter of "Advice" is largely advice on good study habits, and in particular, good study habits for people whose mental capabilities are changing fast as they study. She's through the big warnings on how to safely self-modify her mind without doing unsurvivable damage - not easy with this technique but certainly possible, and the carefully chosen examples which mean she'll never forget them, and into the section on managing energy and burnout when your limits are constantly changing when it's time to get ready for the feast.

In hindsight, she should have read this before the class catalogue after all: she'd probably have come up with the "one class plus this" plan faster and saved a lot of trouble.

Well, lesser timelines safely averted, time to focus on this one.

Ooh, it comes with cultural literacy in proverbs and allusions! She is making so many mental notes...upon reflection, she will get a notebook and (after confirming with Jasmine that it's okay if she uses this one) make a bunch of physical notes.

Yikes. They are, uh, certainly doing a good job of explaining why you should not eat the delicious marshmallow unsupervised. She's...glad those outcomes are very avoidable.

She makes a lot of notes on the energy-and-burnout section too. That's certainly going to be useful sooner rather than later.

Ah, it's almost feast time.

...normally she doesn't pay mild false-breathlessness much mind (and it is even milder than it was this morning), but she feels a little self-conscious about it after having worried Jasmine. She tries to steady her breathing at first, but in the current circumstances she's not so sure that it's worth the distraction of having to consciously monitor it.

Jasmine is grateful for the reminder that she is not asphyxiating but it's not a huge deal now that she's aware of the situation.

They can get ready for the feast, putting on Jasmine's best robes (which are, well, the same as the rest of her robes, but slightly less worn and of slightly better fabric) and generally trying to look presentable.

The feast is being held in yet another grand hall, this one in a long-house type style, but scaled up in ambition and grandeur to that of a cathedral. Arches meet above them; the walls are tastefully hung with weapons and tapestries. At a high table sit elders and seniors - the fortress-commander is here, as is the head archivist, but the third seat fit for a 6th realm is empty, and while many of the other seats are filled, more than half are empty, left to honour invitees who could not attend. Two long rows of tables run down the room from the high table, with the outside edges used for seating and the centre filled with numerous fires, stoves, and preparation areas, where dozens of chefs are hard at work preparing the meals at the direction of the exuberant chef Trout, who is herself working at slicing up a tuna with a long thin blade that is only kept from being a sword by the fact that most swords don't have handles like that. The students have, again, placement pre-determined, and a page will see them to their seats.

It's...so strange, to see...hundreds? of people gathered around a single indoor dining table.

She's eaten communally at smaller extended-family gatherings, twenty individuals but only three sets of breath-bonds. She's eaten at restaurants where the opaque dining-stalls were all along the edges of the room and the centre was all transparent, people chatting happily with one another by signing through the glass. She's eaten outdoors.

Indoor feast halls feel as archaic and distasteful as the practice of a whole family bathing in a single tubful of water.

She's never been in a disease-warded feast hall before. She never thought she would.

Her subconscious dredges up an old memory of reading an interview with a walk-in, and how he said that perhaps the single thing he missed most about his native culture was the midwinter feast, everyone coming together to stand strong against the night and prove that there could still be warmth and joy in the world. He understood why people here had stopped doing such things more than a lifetime ago, it made conscious sense as a tradeoff, but...nonetheless, something had been lost.

(Something as vital as air, and requiring as much caution. But then, she would say that.)

She wonders what the people here have gained, by being able to build vast cities like the one she saw out the window this morning. She's not an experienced judge of population, but she thinks it was bigger than any pre-modern Rekkan city ever got before collapsing under the weight of its own disease load. And modern people gladly gave up trying, when trains and telegraphs first conquered the tyranny of distance.

Maybe that was a...collective trauma, or...or a selection pressure: back in the day, everyone who wanted to live in cities moved there and got themselves killed or crippled, so she is descended from the people who didn't want to.

Cultivation has existed here since time immemorial: twelve thousand years at least. They...never had the visceral flinch at crowding carved into their culture and their souls by the teeth and claws of Nature, pruning away the edges of the desire for togetherness whenever it grew too great.

What does community become, unbound from its natural limits?

Maybe she'll find out. She'll never be a person who was raised here, let alone a person who evolved here, but it's surprisingly feasible for her to one day become a person who's spent 90% of her total-lifespan-to-date here. Maybe, in time, the flinch will ease.

It is with this on her mind that she sits at the table and looks around at the strangers dining to her sides and the strangers cooking in front of her.

Sitting to her left is a woman in a blue robe emblazoned with a house sigil based on a stylised ship's hull, wearing heavy make-up to match and looking like she is very clearly putting on a blank face to conceal her emotions. Sitting to her right is a man wearing a sheepskin jacket (with wool still attached, along with extensive embroidery) and a wolfskin hat on top of his robes, looking equal measures exasperated and excited. Across from them is one of the chefs, offering them drinks. The honoured guests may choose from a variety of very expensive but ultimately mundane rice or fruit wines, a variety of fruit juices squeezed fresh, or cold water. 

Not the right time to strike up a conversation with someone, then.

Part of her feels relieved at not facing another almost-certainly-awkward conversation right now, while another part of her feels guilty about not embracing opportunities to network (and a third part of her feels sorry for the adjacent people who are apparently having bad days, and hopes that things get better for them soon). She should work on resolving this inner conflict, but not right this moment.

"Freshly-squeezed fruit juice" and "fruit juice preserved in a way that makes it last indefinitely but taste terrible and have neurotoxicity right around the edge of what a soul can compensate for (it would be strong enough to affect your mind, if it didn't taste so bad that in practice you couldn't drink it very quickly)" is a weird juxtaposition. She thinks she's vaguely heard that there are people who lack the taste receptors that make alcohol taste bad? Maybe that's more common here. Or they're masochists, that could also be it.

(Does this tongue lack those taste receptors? She's not sure she wants to find out the hard way; plus, if it does, without that initial warning system she might accidentally drink the wine too quickly and end up intoxicated in public. Which...presumably this culture is pretty permissive about, if they're serving alcohol straight-up like this, but that doesn't mean she's okay with it.)

She selects one of the more unusual (from her perspective) fruit juices she's curious about, opens her mouth to ask for it, pauses, then confers with Jasmine on whether to get that one.

Jasmine is fine with trying that particular fruit juice, she hasn't tried it before either.

New juice it is, then!

She takes a sip and smiles.

"What do you think? I think it's great; I know having the same tongue isn't everything, though."

"It's pretty great! Not my favourite fruit juice ever, but better quality than I normally get to have. Maybe a little underwhelming, for a 4th realm's table, I sort of expected something utterly incomparable." 

"Maybe they're easing us into the utterly incomparable bits."

She takes another sip. It continues to be delicious.

Hmm...

"Are there any other psychoactive drugs someone might casually offer me that I should...know to watch out for, to be able to make an informed decision? Not necessarily tonight, but like, in general.

I've eaten dishes that had wine as an ingredient, and we use alcohol for cleaning things, but drinking a whole glass of it is not something we normally do in my culture. I happened to...know what I don't know, about how to handle that, but maybe I won't recognise the next one."

(She hopes she can get through this conversation without letting on how repulsive it is to--even at safe doses--take disruptors in public. It's true, but she shouldn't say it.)