Waking up, I decided it was time to review my Techniques. After reading the stories from yesterday I noticed a lot of high rank and successful individuals had Techniques that scaled well, widely applicable, or extremely powerful in niche, but important roles.

“If I am to rise to these challenges, like any official, I need to plan out future steps I can take to achieve important Techniques or other supporting opportunities” I began to mutter out loud before the shadows yet again flutter. Thinking I get another drive by of advice I turn to where I think Baohu is coming from. I get pleasantly surprised when I notice Lady Zhou is with him.

“Lady Zhou” I nod to her, “oh mighty big brother watching all from the shadows” I smirk at him.

“While you may be joking, your jesting is not far off” she quips.

“While I may have extremely useful divination under the limitations of the Clan, Bao Bao here has near omniscience under his limitations” She adds, which greatly perplexes me.

“How can that be? I get you both are fairly high ranked, probably more so than a village this size, even for our Clan, would normally have, but that sounds too good to be true” I ask.

He decides to answer this time, stating his capstone Technique [I Guard from the Shadows] is both unique in that it is a merge of 4 different Techniques, and that is has very strong limitations on it. Some of the Techniques were easy to see, such as [Shadow Teleportation] and [Shadows have Ears], as he used those aspects readily around me, but a less noticeable skill both allowed the whole combination as well as placed a huge restriction on it. [A Guard knows his Place] allows him to be the eyes and ears that he needed to be, connecting his teleportation and other shadow-oriented skills to previously earned Path of the Guard, while also limiting the niche of the Technique. Ultimately his Technique required set up, as his omniscience was restricted to Zhou controlled lands, as well as any time he made someplace his new area to “guard” he had set up formations to “sync his shadows”. Even then, he could only have two areas registered at any one time, and that’s only because he expanded the Technique. Lastly, he mentioned that the only reason they could even merge was because has one of the highest cultivations in our Clan.

“I am in the Peak Stage of the Spirit Realm” he concludes with “only at the Spirit Realm can even three Techniques merge”. Lady Zhou takes over, explaining that this is brought up because of my current decision. “You see, your [Cultural Translation] is ironically, more of a diplomats Technique. While there are ways to use it in other ways, as you determined, you are beginning to accrue specialized or niche Techniques” she explains.

We begin to have a conversation that sounds a lot like “what do you want to do with your life”, where I mention some childish dreams about magic and mythology as a basis for why I wanted to embrace my Chinese side of my heritage.

“Hmm, well I see a possible connection here that may have some synergy, but first we will need to have an in-depth conversation about Qi and formations” She adds.

Turns out Qi isn’t exactly synonymous with magic. All these things about “Internal” and “external” cultivation began to make sense. Internal cultivation was basically magical body building, if you include building a body so it can teleport. External cultivation was not exactly magic, but what I saw as a “spell blade" in video games, was similar enough of a comparison. It was the application of Qi to connected objects, like a sword or book, but still used our own Qi. While individuals could technically do both, at higher Ranks and cultivations you needed to focus on one or the other, since if you had a body strong enough to survive the equivalent of a nuke, you couldn’t exactly shoot an arrow that could pinpoint target a village on the other side of the Jade Empire as if it was an intercontinental missile. Even then, External cultivators still had some internal cultivation techniques, such as speed, hand eye coordination, and minor strength enhancements, but much of that became inherent to cultivation. Apparently, By the end of the Mortal Realm you gain a minor “physical” and “mental” increase, with physical implying things like strength and speed, while mental implied things like intelligence and wisdom. In the Profound Realm, as its name hints at, whichever set of attributes you use more, gains a major boost, while the only set gains a minor boost.

Then she says formations are more alike to the magic I was thinking, as it took the Qi in the environment, using specific wordings, etchings, and materials to achieve the desired result. She specifies that while any high rank necessitates some cultivation, Formation related Paths don’t need it as much, but still are beneficial. Finally, she connects all these related bits together “you see [Cultural Translation] doesn’t just translate what you perceive so that it makes sense to you or others but can translate what you know into a way this world can use it” she pauses “The stuff you mentioned about ‘rune magic’ and your own World’s mythologies can be brought over here through formations”.

She speculates how until very high ranks are achieved, as well as confluence of multiple Paths, I will need to start with normal formations and our own Spirit Beasts before moving onto more legendary creatures of this world. I am still unsure of how this all relates to my assumed future Path of the Scholar, until they remind of the need to study these creatures, know their weaknesses and strengths. They even remind me of “warrior-scholars” who wield what they learn in battle and for the Empire like any dutiful Official. With all this in my head, I still cannot forget my more immediate concerns of needing to pass two scholar exams, remembering I have a handful days left before I take the Zucai exam. Resigning myself to a few more days of studying before I ask to do a practice run of the exam, before polishing up anything I might need, I head to bed for the day