Bond Sister,

It is good to hear that your time spent with those silkpants in the Peaks have not entirely gone to waste!

While it has been good to return home after my travels, having spent so long away, I find many things to mislike. Having sailed the world’s seas, the Empire seems small indeed, and its scholars’ minds smaller still.

Enough whining though! You had a question in your letter regarding your paper on qi theory, and I do have some insights. I do not think your “peers” are going to care much for them, nor will the simpering fops in court, if my impression is correct.

The trouble with the Imperial schools of theory is the assumption of natural supremacy. They acknowledge the impact of ascension on natural law, but I think few enough have really internalized it.

The laws of this world are mostly impermanent. The rules of nature which our most venerable ancestors lived under are not the same as those which we labor beneath today. To the layman, even one of great cultivation, this is not immediately obvious, but for one studied in history, this becomes clear. The world is mutable, and cultivation is no different.

Conservative thinkers, those promoted by the court in the Celestial Peaks, posit that foreign cultivation is merely a debased form, operating under the same principles but through lesser means. This is patently untrue, though if one has never left their perfumed halls, it may be compelling. Travel beyond the Empire’s borders though, and your own eyes will give you the lie.

Travel west beyond the bloodthirsty jungles, and you will find a land of a thousand princes who claim descent from a single god with a thousand faces, of which the Red Jungle is merely one. They know nothing of meridians or dantians, and instead, they invest their understanding in seven chakras, spiritual organs with only the most passing similarity to the three dantians.

Travel further still, and the methods grow more alien. In the land of Khem across the northern sea are a people with five souls, of which the body is the highest and most supreme. I have had the honor of speaking with one of their sleeping Priest Kings, and it more closely resembled an audience with our Great Sire than any Immortal patriarch.

I will give imperial scholars some face however. It is true that there are certain unifying rules to the operation of the world. It’s just that the scholars blind themselves to most of them in their arrogance.

It is true that the energy we call qi is the fundamental building block of our world. In the first realm, we learn to feel and manipulate it. In the second, we learn to begin empowering our flesh and spirits with the energies of the world. In the third, we begin to wield it in truth, gaining a grasp for the manipulation of the world around us through the alteration of energy and material. I would quibble on some details, but the foundational theory is mostly correct.

Where I find myself in disagreement is their theories on the middle dantian and shen energy. As I have heard it, the leading position is that shen is an energy wholly derived from potent cultivators and spirit beasts through which their will is imprinted upon the world, which is composed of the lesser energy, qi. This is why conflicts between those of the fourth realm and above so easily alter or scar their surroundings. Shen, the scholars posit, is a semi-divine energy, existing above the base mortal world, the first step toward wielding the power of the Great Spirits. This is why it allows us to escape the shackles of the world and fly or alter the workings of the systems around us in ways beyond the brute force of the third realm.

This is wrong. Shen exists in the world around us, not merely as a side effect of potent spirits, but as another fundamental aspect of the material world. All forms of material and energy are qi when broken down to their fundamental state, but during my time under Guru Abhinavagupta, a man of great renown in the west, I have come to understand shen’s existence in the world.

Men, beasts, and spirits change the world by exerting their will, their shen, upon it, this is true, but the world changes itself. We are not not as separate from material cycles as many would like to think. Shen is the energy of laws and reactions. When you strike flint to make fire, this is a miniscule application of shen. The patterns of winds which derive the weather is an application of shen. Shen is not the winds and rains themselves, of course, but the fundamental logic which drives them.

This is the source of shen’s potency and power when used in mortal hands. It overrides qi because qi operates as it does thanks to the laws and reactions imposed upon it by shen. Now you may argue, is what I just described not the provenance of the third dantian? Sovereignty, Law, Truth - whatever you wish to call it?

I would answer that it is, and that imagining those things to be a third source of energy rather than a refinement of shen is the greatest failing of Imperial qi theory. Of course, the truth is that sovereignty is really just a difference of power. If it is said that a fourth realm wields Law as a mortal would a sharp rock, then it may be said that an Eighth Realm wields it as a shaped cudgel.

It is only ascension that allows true mastery. It is only our pride and insistence on supremacy which deludes us otherwise.

Having read this, you will now understand my earlier words. The insights I have to give are not one your peers will receive in good humor, and that is assuming you yourself do not think me a soft-headed fool who has spent too much time at sea and among barbarians, Bond Sister!

Regardless, it has been good to hear from you again. I plan to remain in Shuilian City for some ten years. Once I have put my affairs in order, I intend to sail north again. I intend to travel beyond Khem and the isles of Pyrrhos and seek the legendary Emerald Isle, called the Conqueror’s Graveyard by the men of the continent. I am sure you can see why I would be interested!

But these old bones are not quite what they used to be. I am not certain I will return this time, Bond Sister, so I hope you will find time to visit.

Your Bond Brother, Zheng Lu, King of Explorers