A man with golden eyes sat across from another man with blue hair. The two of them picked up the teacups in front of them and took a sip. A few long moments passed before the calm smile on the blue haired man’s face finally cracked and he had to break the silence.

“Are you going to tell me anything about where we are, or explain how you’re going to get me out of Deep Shore?”

Sage, the golden eyed man, answered the questions of Blue Tiger with a smile. With this lack of an answer, irritation started to show on Blue Tiger’s face and he clenched his free hand into a fist. Across from him, Sage waited till Blue Tiger looked about ready to burst into anger. Only then did he finally provide any explanation.

“I’m sure you have some guesses for where we are. No one should be able to find us here and after a few days when they give up looking for you we’ll start moving. Consider it to be a vacation for a few weeks.”

Blue Tiger did not seem very convinced, but he also didn’t say anything more on this topic. If the man could properly guess at where then Sage would not be surprised if the man had a little more confidence in him. While he didn’t want to show off all his secrets and blatantly say what was going on, as long as Blue Tiger was given some clues it was likely the man would gain a little trust in him. In fact, he was ready to share a few of his secrets in exchange for those of Blue Tiger.

Sage broke into some small talk, attempting to learn more about Blue Tiger’s origins while also sharing details of his own. Considering that this man came from a drastically different place than his own, he had little fear of this information being used in the wrong way. Since neither of their interests conflicted there was nothing to be worried about in sharing general information. Without knowing where their home nations were, it wouldn’t matter how much inside intelligence he spread, Blue Tiger wouldn’t know where to use it. It took a few days of small talk before Sage made any progress, but eventually he got the information he was looking for.

“My tiger? You mean my Martial Spirit?”

“Is that the formal name? Very interesting. I’ve never seen anything like it, is that a Clan or Sect secret technique?”

Blue Tiger seemed surprised, “No, most people where I’m from have one.”

“Where do you get them from? Is it from a special resource?”

“At the age of sixteen, everyone attends the awakening ceremony and finds their Martial Spirit.”

From there, Sage was able to pry a bit more information about the awakening ceremony and what it was all about. If all it takes to gain this ‘Martial Spirit’ is a single ceremony, then his first guess was that there was something special about the ceremony. There was also the chance that Blue Tiger was from a separate race of humans and the ceremony was simply a method to jump start a special bloodline type ability. Of course, that was far from an exhaustive list of reasons, but he was hoping it was his first guess.

“Tell me more about the ceremony itself. Is there a special Magic Tool being used or an Alchemical Pill you have to take? Do you enter a Formation Array?”

Blue Tiger thought it was such an absurdly mundane thing to talk about, but he still answered Sage’s questions without putting much more thought into them. After that, he requested to see the Martial Spirit up close and Blue Tiger humored him once again. Sage guessed that being on his home turf made Blue Tiger give in a little easier than he might otherwise. It was always better not to upset one's host, at least as long as it didn’t go too far. Since Sage wasn’t asking for any of Blue Tiger’s secrets, he figured there wouldn’t be any big problems with this approach.

That’s it. I knew it!

As soon as the Martial Spirit appeared, Sage used his Spiritual Sense to examine it and the hunch that had driven him into helping Blue Tiger was finally proven correct. The reason he’d gone out of his way to help a stranger and entered into the conflict was all because of this hunch. He’d thought he’d sensed something unusual about Blue Tiger’s Martial Spirit and now he finally had the chance to confirm his suspicions. The Martial Spirit gave him the same feeling as fighting against Whitestaff. Were these Martial Spirits a form of soul cultivation?

Sage asked a few more questions and got a few more demonstrations before he was finally satisfied. Blue Tiger didn’t really know what he meant by ‘soul cultivator’, but he did explain some of the details in regards to the Martial Spirit. It turns out that everyone where he was from had to awaken their Martial Spirit by age twenty or they would never be able to have one. They could try again the next year if they failed the first time. Only those who failed four times in a row were doomed to become mortals. The vast majority of the people where he was from awakened their Martial Spirit. At the same time, most people were not destined to become powerful combatants and their Martial Spirits were used as tools to assist in their jobs.

He also found out that they didn’t require any special techniques to continue to raise their Martial Spirits. Their spirits would grow more powerful along with them and they also used the same style of Qi Cultivation Technique that Sage was used to. Sage was very interested in this key point and he pieced together a few more clues from what Blue Tiger told him. The awakening ceremony didn’t seem to require a Formation Array, nor a complicated and elaborate ceremony. Instead, there seemed to be a very specific stone that was used as a measuring device and the ceremony had to be performed on a very specific day of the year.

Sage was disappointed to hear he could not get a Martial Spirit of his own, but that didn’t mean he’d given upon this topic. If the future generations of the Lang Clan had Martial Spirits who knew how much more powerful they would become. The only problem was that he would have to get his hands on an ‘Awakening Stone’ for this to happen. Blue Tiger didn’t have one, but it seemed they were pretty common back where he came from. Since the two of them still had no idea where the other was from, Sage could only put his hopes in finding one in the Depths. Specialized goods from so many different places were all collected in these cities and he had no idea what most of them were. After getting a detailed description of an Awakening Stone and how he might identify one, Sage brought out a small bottle and handed it over to Blue Tiger.

“Here, take this as a token of my appreciation. You’ve shared a lot of valuable information with me.”

Blue Tiger didn’t think much of the bottle, even as Sage explained what it was. It was only after Blue Tiger consumed a few drops of it that his eyes widened and he looked at Sage intently, “Where did you get this? Do you have more?”