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Character recap!

Tamers of Hundred Beasts
(You), Quiet Word, almost 8 year old. Second Stage, working on opening your Dragon Tail Dantian.
Dhundan Kepa, peerless genius. You've witnessed him yell a tiger, a shot arrow, and even the sun to compliance. Although this never worked on Ai.
Ai, peerless genius. Can speak and calm all thing (except Dhundan)
Three "lesser genius but still genius" kids - Sin Din, skilled Horse cultivator. Man Din, bounded with a precious spirit. Yi Norm, Monkey Cultivator.
Kyo Ko (nicknamed Kyo Kyo), 13 year old Second-Stage cultivator. Extremely secretive of her techniques.
Gro Ta, 15 year old Second-Stage cultivator. Whale Cultivator.
Bathias, 18 year old Third-Stage cultivator. Current Hawk Master
Ryota. Boar cultivator, Branch Master.
Maya Tao, that you know more as Snake Mistress

Other Stable Lotus cultivators
Venerable Stable Lotus, local's bigwig.
Young Mistress LienWen YanEr, his sole daughter, your age. And she is a good friend.
Young Mistress LienWen JiaLin : ambitious cousin of YanEr - starting to respect you despite haughtyness.
Medicine Master Soulgaze : Uncle of YanEr. Pill crafter expert.
Sovereign All Learner's Teacher, Master of Versatile Harmony Quest.
Ping Jun, student of Versatile Harmony Quest, bounded with Golden Talismanic Horse Spirit. And he's a good friend.
Meiying Youling - Ant-burning mentally unstable young mistress of Death Harvester Cult
Ster Ling, unsuferable Genius boy of the Stable Harbor Military Youth
Xiao Niar, Death-seeking unskilled boy of the Stable Harbor Military Youth
Inborn Tanuki's Lantern; Loose cultivator that saved Bathias life.
Marketer Golden Eye, Silver Tongue - All-selling Merchant Alliance highest rank cultivator.
Old Jiang - Owner of the town's spiritual technique bookstore.

Golden Skystone Village
Daoist Golden Skystone Patriarch, Village leader. After plotting with Gilded Waters, seems loyal.
Man Cong, eldest son, 18. Bounded with Golden-scale Stellar Snake. Second stage.
Dan Rol, second son, 14. Bounded with Golden-scale Stellar Snake. Last step of First stage, studied in the main sect for a few months.
Daughter (unnamed), 7. Bounded with Golden-scale Stellar Snake. A bit haughty. Working on opening her Heart Aperture.
A harem of domestics, probably still jealous of Maya Tao and the Patriarch's... closeness.
Luo Bin, the nicest highwayman you know of.

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======================================

Leaving the mostly First-stage older kids fighting without a care in the world, you go back to the bowels of the coliseum, looking for the hospital.
You found the dim-light rooms quite fast - modular space, going to an hundred beds, one for town.
Of course, all the beds of the Six year old and Seven year old are taken, and your own age group fill half of their allocated beddings.
They all seem fine - first stage injuries are easy to treat to someone as proficient as the golden-core Medicine Master Soulgaze.
Your squadmates seems fine - although their Energy is heavily depleted, thus the need to stay put while the Medicine Master mix them some extremely-custom made Qi pills.
Ster Ling, his eye seemingly restored without a trace of the trauma he just suffered, is sitting on his bed.
"How are you?
- ... Fine, I guess?
- We won.
- ... Oh? Good, I guess?"
You try to probe him some more and discuss, but you feel like talking to a wall. If you liked the guy, you might feel concerned.
For you mind tranquility, you still ask the busy Medicine Master Soulgaze if everything is fine.
"Bodily and Energetically, yes. What weight him down is an ailment of the mind.
He's seeing himself as the best archer around, a peerless genius. And realisation is settling down after losing the shout-out."
Looks like that harsh defeat of Ster Ling was an unfortuitous encounter that will most probably delay his cultivation.
Maybe it will make him less of an asshole in the process. So complete win? You move on toward the Frost Beast Town hospital.

You are stopped in your track by Fairy Wise Crane, the beast-tamer master that was manipulated by Ryota to take the town, now belonging to her.
"Where do you think you're going?
- Apologize to the white dress girl? Check on her that I didn't hurt her too much?
- Oh? That's... unexpectedly new. Go on."
You progress among the wounded, feeling out of your place. You feel your lip pinch in the awkward, polite smile while crossing Bjorn and Ing Rid.
The priestress-dressed girl white robe is soaked in red, a bandage on the chest. You read anger and sadness in her eyes, immediately defused by your words.
"Hello. I came to tell you I'm sorry I shot you.
- Have you thought of, maybe, not do that if it makes you feel sorry? I mean, I would had been fine pelting you half to death with the Hailstorm.
- Well, the fact we're opponent in a tournament doesn't mean we have to hate each other outside, right?"
She burst in laughter.
"HAHAHAHaHaha... aoutch. It hurts to laugh. If you were a kind of weakling I'll just give you deep pointers for such a retarded take.
But you're not. Very well. Next time we'll fight, I'll non-personnally wreck your sorry self, but we can share a drink or a meal afterward.
This daoist name is Bai Fenglan, so you know the source of the ice that tempers your tendancies, Heartpiercer."

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Last, you navigate the corridors toward the hospital quarters of the Great Library sect.
No one prevents you from walking in. The stares, though, are harder and angrier. The only thing preventing those kids from jumping you is their beaten up state.
Strangely, the adults in charge simply step back and watch with a knowing smirk.
You avoid and ignore the turban kid, the military fighters, the gourd and void bell girls, the caligrapher.
"Hey you the strategist. I wanted to...
- Rub the victory on my face and warn me I'm only alive because the fight is a tournament one? Don't rest : if you expect our next fight to be fair, we aren't playing the same game at all.
- Well, I wanted to apologize for the wound, congratulate you and your team for the results, and maybe offer you some tea and a game of Go...
- Is this some twisted way to rend my heart? I'll make you pay for all of this, Heartpiercer."
You feel you overstayed your welcome at the first step in the room. Nothing seems to explain the hatred. You go away, to watch a few of the fights.
Of course, the Imperial City won most of them, with most of the time the Great Library as foes for their last match, while the gears of your mind are spinning.
Great Library team field no Beast Tamers based on their uniform. However, several kids are bounded with metallic ice turtle spirits.
And this musician girl... you feel you missed something about her and her affiliation.

>Free-form Write-in : have you figured it out?

>>6125181
They have huge grudges because of their affiliation to Frost Copper Turtle which got rekt for their betrayal

>>6125179
>Oh? That's... unexpectedly new
Does nobody ever seek out their opponents in the infirmary to chat after fights? Oh right, ancient chinese arrogance
>Bai Fenglan
New acquaintance, good. I don't know how our QW is in ice affinity. I wonder if we'll see other people again. Even if we don't there's still other new characters we could try to learn from

>>6125181
Don't tell me THEY are what remains of gilded water artificer town or whatever that Ryota took over.

Or a clan related to it.

But that doesn't make sense for them to be in a new town. .

>>6125201
We did also go to apologise. Which nobody really does. Because you come here to win, why apologise for winning.

As an aside, good work in Sumo QM.

The beat is good.
We'll earn Rising Pheonix another time.

As a side thought, we are once more inventing the concept of not being a cunt after winning. Maybe it will catch on.

>>6125181
I dug up the old records yay for archives being back and see the following
>Golden Skystone Sect is the village we went undercover at.
>They were being backed by Symphony of Gilded Waters.
>SoGW attacked Bathias, and when tailing them back they noticed the presence of several musical instruments among the attackers.
>SoGW was, in turn, being backed by Frost Copper Turtle.
>FCT was taken over by Ryota and is now a Frost Beast Town, part of our sect.

So I’m guessing Great Library wasn’t affiliated with FCT, but has taken in people from various sects who are now getting cracked down on due to said association. Other sect’s losses are their gains. The adults and many other fighters didn’t hate us, which is why I think they’re actually independent of this in general.

The musician did. She was likely part of SoGW given the music theme, and it’s possible her sect has disappeared as a result of actions taken by Fairy Wise Crane, Ryota, and other opportunists.

So I guess the grudge makes sense. A diplomatic mission to Great Library to stamp out some seeds of hate before they bloom wouldn’t be unwarranted.

>>6125181
Prob a survivor of Forest copper Turtle Village. Or baring that from a branch sect that had ties to it. Or one of her siblings died there. It's the only reasonable reason she hates word.

Which is just mainly retarded in mindset be these are 8 year olds. She'll be a character to watch out for. No doubt scheming some shenanigans.

>>6125278
If she gets uppity, just shoot her again.

>>6125248
Sounds correct.

She is a tactician whose elders were defeated by our elders and their cunning. Then she was defeated by Quiet Word and his cunning. What sort of world does she wish to inhabit? One full of friends who strive against Heaven together, as we do. One full of victory? That is ours too. One of glory? You have seen the glory of our path. Why do you reject truth? My way is the way of friendship and mutual prosperity. Let go of the ways of the past that led to your defeat and work with me that we might all prosper together.

>>6125441
If that’s too high-minded for her given her current attitude then we can settle for saying that hatred is less effective as a tutor than our own method, and we’ll show her the secret if she’s willing to learn it. If she can beat us with it, she’s earned it.

Grinding every day isn’t much of a secret, after all. So few are willing to put up with it though.

>>6125464
>>6125441
She doesn't want anything to do with us. Just let her be man, some maturity going her way will change her mind.
Or maybe it won't.

Either way we put a hand out to take.

>>6125504
I’m okay with that. Just stuff to consider if we mention this to Ryota and he believes there’s enough benefit to sending people to their sect for low-level diplomacy. We could be one of them, after all.

>>6125248
This sounds like the correct answer.
>+1

I haven't forgiven you guys, but don't get your hopes too high for an update today.
Might be tomorrow; might have to wait some more.

>>6126227
What did we do?

>>6126604
We? You know what YOU did, anon!

Lol. J/k. Pretty sure our QM meant to say forgotten instead of forgiven.

>>6126227
>>6126604
>>6126724
Indeed. Exaustion mixed badly with my ESL

You pieced it together.
Golden thread on her instrument and her hairdoe. No doubt she was affiliated at some point with the Symphony of Gilded Water, identified foes of your branch of the Beast Tamers.
It turned out they were backed by the Frost Copper Turtle, a noble family in charge of the North town - so roughly of the power of the Stable Lotus clan
Frost Copper Turtles clanmembers, surviving the attack from Ryota and Fairy Wise Crane.
The Great library capitalized on the loss of the Noble family by picking up the scraps? As the Symphony of Gilded Water town is still standing, that means they are at the very least in good terms with the All Knowing Scholars. Enough to back them in case of outright fight with your sect? Would the Fist of the Green Dragon back your own side up?
It is quite certain conflict is subtly brewing. You don't know how long it has been the case. The harsh words of the young girl have stroke you harder than you thought ever possible.
Why can't you just get along, build your own relation without the interferences of the elders?

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The rest of the fight pass through in a haze. The capital city won almost all the rounds. A few talent shone through and gathered thunderous applause, but you truly didn't paid any attention, focused on your introspection. However, no other group where granted the honor of meeting closely the ruler of the land.
After yet another landlside win of the Imperial City cultivators, the Empress clap her hands, somehow dimming all sound in the stadium.
"Today is gathered the empire's finest. Today I will also judge the misdeeds of some of the empire's citizen.
Ryota of the Tamers of Thousand Beasts. Fairy Wise Crane of the Tamers of Thousand Beasts. Both of you are guilty of scheming, assaulting and grieviously slaying the Frost Copper Turtle Clan.
Some advocated this was high treason, especially with the situation of war at our Western border. I was tempted to indulge them.
But I changed my mind when the Dao showed me the two faces of the conflict in the Arena. Let it be known that I rule that particular fight as your Trial By Combat under the Heaven's Will.
Most of us can assert it was by far the most interresting fight of the day. Obviously because the Main Sects keep poaching over and over again the talented disciple of the whole Empire.
To avoid more bloodshed in the stupid fight of the Easterling, and stop looting the future of the whole Empire for the benefit of a few sect master, I took a decision.
The Empress mandates that all of you regain their own town, and travel among the Empire's main town is forbidden for the time being."

Instantly, the attendee rise up like a single man, walking away. You are part of the crowd, and feel as compelled to follow the Empress Mandate as the various high-grade sectmasters around you.
Immortal ships are taking off, bringing you home.
That's it? That's your reward after winning the tournament? Not getting your master executed for defending the sect interrest from interference?
Most of the kids around you - the least wounded ones - lament that their diligent work to get noticed by Capital City sect was for nothing. And all the minor sect master from provincial towns look dejected - you know the promising older disciples are either turning into master or selled out to big sects, which only care to train disciples with a proven foundation and affinities. Their whole economical model is shattered by a few irresistible words of your ruler.

>How do you feel about that?

>>6127020
*swirly hypnotized eyes*
>"I feel as my Empress demandssss. Oooookaaaay.

>>6127020
So if I’m understanding this right, she’s saying that everyone is stuck in their towns now, not just returned to them, and travel through the capital city is forbidden for now? This collapses the model of smaller sects by keeping them from shifting promising students to larger sects in exchange for resources?

If so, it sounds like she just collapsed a main pillar of trade in the Empire, that of promising cultivators. Relations between similar sects will wither as relationships between people who would move and remember those who helped them grow will instead stay at their home village, and the lack of resources means those outlying villages will starve. No reason for others to support them without something to trade, after all.

By the same token, large sects that used to sustain their dominance by poaching talented cultivators will find themselves get outclassed by others that may lack teachers who are good at their job. Talent can hide that weakness, and lesser cultivators feeding in will expose it.

Hopefully this is a short-term restriction, or there will be a large uptick in wandering cultivators and there will be great societal upheaval. But maybe the latter is the intent. Take down the old guard, build a new guard out of sects that have gained her favor by ensuring they have access to resources.

If so, we are incredibly lucky to know fusion right now because no beast sect will ever give up that secret, even if we climbed in power.

>>6127020
>Someone is feeding the empress false words. The question is who. And what was the gain from such an accusation? Someone is scheming for power possibly an internal force in the empire being puppeted by an outside one. It could be considered just be internal strife from the great library trying to trample breast sect power down a notch.

We'll have to talk to Master Ryota about this. Someone wants to ruin the sect or weaken the empire. Dangerous times afoot.

>You need more power be that yourself and externally to understand the current state of the board. Possibly creating a spy network.

>>6127072
Or using the motion as an excuse to curtail power

>>6127020
Confused. Why shut down commerce in the middle of a 'war'. The Empress must be very confident that the war can be won easily. Banning travel doesn't just stop the trade in children, it also stops the majority of the other trades.

Quiet Word had a plan to do what the Empress is currently doing, although he would have gone about it differently. He would have sucked up those with greatest potential into a 'Town Guard' while using his device to more efficiently allocate entry-level cultivators.

The Empress was likely consolidating power in some fashion. Of course, there was always the chance that she was just a Zealot for freedom and sought to break the hold of the great clans in general. A dangerous prospect which would require either great foresight to determine what would come next, or great hubris to destroy without having a pan to rebuild.

Either way, his fellow students were still children and had not yet been trained in etiquette or politics. Quiet Word assumed that came after you became old enough to lose your inborn chi, or perhaps never from the stories that he had heard about impolite elders and the shoddy courtesy of the older boys in Skystone village. Surely the weak had more need of teaching courtesy and humility than the strong? If they had cared so little for this training, how little did those who considered themselves strong care about courtesy?

Quiet Word also considered for the first time that the Gilded Waters likely had a strong desire for spiritual gold to gild their instruments. If they ever became a threat, alchemically poisoning their gold to bring disharmony to their music was a possibility. That or bending their golden strings to warp their instruments. Dangerous to wield such a delicate and complex weapon on a battlefield.

>>6127020
Intrigued, there had to be another layer to this command.
But the command to restrain our travel is only temporary so this shouldn't be terrible.

Also delighted that we saved Ryota and wise fairy

>>6127020
>>6127269
Thinking over this more, I wonder if she played up the “Ryota and FWC fucked up” bit to make them feel indebted to us for winning. The stuff about shutting trade may have always been planned, but she is only 14 and could have been feeling cheeky.

If so, she’s got a hardcore way of doing favors for people. It’d fit for a young Empress though.

>>6127314
I think she might.
It's what I'd do, it costs her very little in terms of face and influence for a possible good yeild return from the best crop of the younger generation

>>6127379
It did cost Ryota and FWC some face to be called out specifically for their acts while no one from the FCT clan was singled out. Perhaps she believes the pardon will be the end of it, but that seems naive.

I could see her assuming we have a more adversarial/selfish attitude in our clan though, befitting our ruthlessness on the battlefield. That we’ll use their momentary humiliation to our personal advantage with others in the sect aware that we saved it from being beheaded and possibly absorbed by another at royal decree. It’d be an incorrect assumption, but not a terrible one from what little she’s seen.

Unrelated, perhaps she’s also aware of why our generation is exceptional across the land and is locking everyone in to see what may blossom with new sprouts spread across the land. The current powerful sects may get too powerful if allowed to single-handedly reap the harvest of talent.

We mentioned it before, but not in the context of the talented generation shared by everyone. If the previous Emperor planned this somehow then Ryota’s attack could have been her excuse to implement this restriction.

… was Ryota bribed by the Empress? He did get a lot of cultivation materials to spend on the others. He claimed it was from pillaging FCT but that could be the cover story. He was loyal to the Empire if I recall correctly, and his plans were rather suddenly changed. It’d be unlike him to launch an attack without much consideration for the future repercussions unless he didn’t have a real choice.

Was this whole thing staged for the Empress’ edict, and Ryota already received two rewards (the immediate loss of a rival and further growth for his pupils) to make up for the loss of face this caused? The materials she gave him considered enough to ensure he would win and she could claim it a Trial By Combat? If he failed, he’d only have proven himself an inept leader and not worthy of further support.

>>6127072
>>6127073
>>6127089
>>6127269
>>6127379
>>6127433
Loving those thoughts.
Sadly, still no visibility on when I can push the next update.
Those two were already hard enough to fit in the schedule.

>>6127464
We can wait warmly in the meantime.

Ryota probably appreciates not having to answer QW on how much he helped in setting this up for as long as possible.

>>6127433
Nah she didn't with an 90% certainty.

Ryota knew the emperor was dying and scrambled when he got the news to wipe out his rivals. Even before it happened we knew that Ryota intended to use the chaos to better the sects position with the turbulence of a passing monarch.

The enemy they wiped out was on par with stable lotus, who is at rank 7.
I think they said true monarch, so rank 6?

The resources needed to cultivate a man of that power or the resources they reap casually is incomparable to a sect like ours headed by a guy not even at golden core yet. The preponderance of the evidence says that nothing odd has happened, Ryota was just decisive, had lots of prep and powerful friends.

>>6127433

From what she said we can infer that she is also casting shade on some of her advisors. While they are not losing face in front of the masses, they are being reprimanded and losing face within the court, along with their plans being thwarted. 'Some of my advisors counseled otherwise, but I know better than them and ignored them'.

Guys I also want a question considered.
Why is she a gold core at 14.

A genius in the caption is second stage by 20 and golden core by 40.

She is over double the expected point, like, a monster.
But I refuse to believe she is just naturally born that powerful. Imperial resources are also extremely potent, so that could play a part too. But the bits I am most interested in are the heavens mandate and the growth energy in her words.

My theory, is that the emperor is the emperor due to a connection with some kind of font or energy with ties to the divine itself. Which yields an extreme ability to concentrate natural qi.

I could be wrong and it's just multiple unrelated abilities that we can't refuse due to being a tier 2 scrub. But come on.

>>6127503
The strength gap would have me more convinced that he had support from at least someone in the court. Knowing that the Emperor was that soon to die couldn’t have been widespread knowledge, the enemy worked through several intermediaries and Ryota could have done the same using allies to the Beast Tamers, and a lightning strike does nothing to insulate him from consequences from others higher up the chain.

It’d be irresponsible for him to go loud without some assurance that the aftermath would be manageable. We should at least ask him about that since it delves into politics, and the bonding thread we gave the Empress ensures we’ll be more involved with it as time goes on.

>>6128006
Given the Mandate’s effect, I would assume that you’re right about the direct backing of divine power. She should have the power of a never-ending tribulation going through her, albeit in a more constructive form, and that’s gotta come with some other benefits.

Part of the difficulties with cultivation are supposed to be a lack of inborn True Qi to break through bottlenecks, the need to channel your own energy unless you take supplements, and that the gods getting pissy at certain points. If the gods are backing you with their power then none of those are much of a problem anymore. The only real limits should be based on how much they favor you (setting a limit on how much they’ll let you draw from them) and how effectively you wield your power.

>>6128080
The emperor has been in poor health for decades. It's not like him taking a massive turn for the worse eas unexpected.

Also let's not forget that he is a sect master in one of the 8 most powerful towns in the empire AND he is consistently characterised as a diplomat. If anyone has a pulse read on shit it is him.

Regarding manageable though, He did head on over with Wise crane fairy and Quicksteel Atris and his other friends who are a stage above him. One of which I remind you is a golden core from the school of martial artists who's claim to fame is bare handed murder of two enemy cultuavtors a stage higher. Can't remember if it was Atris himself or just someone from his dragon sect.
Consequences would be dispersed and ultimately have a lot of strong shoulders to bear the weight. Just Ryota and Crane being called out is. . Lends credence to the idea of it being a favour to us.

---

For the divine part, Consider that she is only recently crowned. She was absolutely tapping into these benefits previously so it either isn't an inherent benefit to holding the crown and is ik fact directed to aid her, or by taking the crown your cultigation level shoots up significantly.

I have another theory. Old emperor wanted his kid to be a Gold core before he passed on, Because if they had 9+ dragon marks on the core he could rest easy to hand over power, knowing the single hardest bottleneck has been surpassed. And. And! She is 14.

How old is her dad again? Hundreds of years? Is there a reason for waiting so long for an heir? What about other heirs?

Rolled 16, 85 = 101 (2d100)

>>6128006
>>6128080
>>6128173
Once again, letting you guys cook because of my inherent too-busy-to-write state might be for the best.

Next update will be that kind of discussion with Ryota, hopefully answering a few of your questions Rolling with advantage of Ryota's insight on the several subjects he might deduce answers

>How do you guys plan to capitalize on the growth roll of fabric?

>>6128489
>>6128489
It's a stellar material I figure once we can craft with our feathers we use it for the stitching. I'd like to find a grandmaster to do the formation on the robes for the arrays. Wonder if the primordial wolf would mind if we ask for some of his wolf hair that's shead. Prob not but a man can dream. Find some high quality snake scales and sow them on the sleeves and bottom making it stylish. Idk what else to add to it. But that's the theme I got. Perhaps feeding it a cup of tea but that's just crazy talk.

>>6128502
Maybe some tailhairs from a horse as well

>>6128489
>Use it as a blanket until we can get a tailor to talk to to make it into clothing.

>>6128489
So it is a free moving/movement which is the colour of rainbows and clouds.

Get it appraised first and foremost.

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Thoughts are swirling in your head. And you have several days of travel back home. So as soon as you can, you go sit next to Ryota for a lengthy discussion about what just happened.

>*swirly hypnotized eyes*
>"I feel as my Empress demandssss. Oooookaaaay.
Worded as :
>What is the Empress's mandate? Why are we compelled to just abscond despite some of us stronger than her?
- A power transmitted from Emperor to Emperor as long as man can remember. All those that hear it are compelled to obey.
>So if I’m understanding this right, she’s saying that everyone is stuck in their towns now, not just returned to them, and travel through the capital city is forbidden for now?
- Only those hearing the mandate.
>This collapses the model of smaller sects by keeping them from shifting promising students to larger sects in exchange for resources?
- Indeed. Our best element are barring from getting sold to big sects. This also collapse the model of bigger sects by preventing their recruitment by the way.
>But maybe this is the intent. Take down the old guard, build a new If so, guard out of sects that have gained her favor by ensuring they have access to resources.
- Maybe. Maybe not. Won't risk hypothesis.
>We are incredibly lucky to know fusion right now because no beast sect will ever give up that secret, even if we climbed in power.
- Yes. If you share the secret, you can help me rise the branch from 2nd-tier to Major Sect of Stable Lotus Harbor. That is if we overcome the main hurdle of the branch. Without travel to the main sect, I won't have a way to refill the supply of Spiritual Beads..."
>Someone is feeding the empress false words. The question is who. And what was the gain from such an accusation? Someone is scheming for power possibly an internal force in the empire being puppeted by an outside one.
- I truly have no idea on that matter.
>I feel confused. Why shut down commerce in the middle of a 'war'. The Empress must be very confident that the war can be won easily. Banning travel doesn't just stop the trade in children, it also stops the majority of the other trades.
- You missed a key point : Noticed the lack of Merchant sects? This indeed stop the trade of gifted children. Those that were not picked for the tournament are still up to sell and travel. In particular, it will help the Military keeping talented kids out of the battlefield long enough for them to grow more relevent.
>The Empress was likely consolidating power in some fashion.
- That is most certain.

>I wonder if she played up the “Ryota and FWC fucked up” bit to make you feel indebted to us for winning.
- I'm pretty sure she doesn't thought about you enough and she was telling the truth with her trial by combat.
>Was Ryota bribed by the Empress?
>No. Even before it happened we knew that Ryota intended to use the chaos to better the sects position with the turbulence of a passing monarch.
Worded as :
>So you weren't aware? No bribe or some kind of backroom deal among you and the throne?
None indeed.
>Why is she a gold core at 14?
- Bloodline, heaps of money for cultivation ressources, training grounds, as many opportunities as money and influence can buy. It's enough and not unseen previously.
>Knowing that the Emperor was that soon to die couldn’t have been widespread knowledge
- You, a small nobody-boy of Stable Lotus Harbor was aware. So this is false.
>Then, he must had prepared his heirs!
- Empress used to have a big sister and a big brother. Her sister died following a Qi Deviation incident. Her brother was killed in a battle against Knights of the West. Circumstances are sketchy enough that both could be called "assassinations"
>Is the Empress backed by the divine?
- It is said so. I don't know the part of legend among the truth.


With those matter clarified, you have to figure out what to do in the mad flight back home

Either Combine a Foundation and chose 1, or chose 2. Pay extra attention to the circumstances and the flight.
Some options will be auto-failure, other have higher threshold for success as usual.

Combine your Foundation work (pick 1 body and 1 meditation):
>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]
>Body [Golden Scales of the Skystone Snake]
>Meditation [Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfighter Wanderer] [Pills available]
>Meditation [Poem of the Rising Phoenix]
>Meditation [Poisonner's Ultimate Selftrial]

Potential
>Maybe one specific technique of yours should be improved? [Choose in addition to said technique. More chances of breakthrough]
>Investigate Phoenix Dao using legends.
>Work on your Unlimited Rising Star Kick [Pills available]
>Work on your Mental Energy with Dhundan
Weapon skills
>Work on your Unarmed Style : Metal-melting Truefire
>Work on your Windy Cavalier's Halberd [Pills available]
>Work on your Spear style : Blood-Shadow Wolf Painful Assault
>Work on your Mounted Archer’s Wind-Gliding Phoenix's Venom Arrow [Pills available]
>Work on your Meteor Hammer Style : Silk Tiger Sun-Seer [Pills available]
Spiritual Arts Technique
>Work on your Crimson tides of life Ichor
Spiritual Beasts
>Investigate on the talking Spiritual Beasts
>Investigate Body Shifting with your Spiritual Animals

>>6129081
I wanna ask for some pointers from snake mistress if she is here or Master Soul gaze on medical techniques. But I don't think we have any injured people on the carts. Plus it reveals a trump. So.

>Golden scales
>way of the beastbound fighter

>Spend the flight congratulating our team, seeing how they are doing mentally and ask if they have any new insights or suggestions or feelings about their roles. If something else is more suited or specific training that they need for refinement.
This also serves as a bit fo socialisation time. With purpose so we don't feel bad for wasting time.

>Snake mistress if she is here
She's not.
>But I don't think we have any injured people on the carts
There are. Bathias, Gro Ta and Yi in your own cart.
Meying Youling, LienWen JiaLin and countless other in other carts.

>>6129081
>Body [Golden Scales of the Skystone Snake]
>Meditation [Poisonner's Ultimate Selftrial]
Figure these will combo well and with nothing coming up soon it's time to crack into training poison.

>Work on your Crimson tides of life Ichor also crack into this so we can become a zombie maker.(What thateans is bring people back from the blink of death to attack repeatedly.)
>Investigate Body Shifting with your Spiritual Animals ask Dhundan for a hint at least.

Now the spiritual balls conundrum. My best guess it's a type of formation inscribed on the ball. Something aligned with space. With these semi valuable only one really gifted per spiritual event. The material is something decently valuable but not out of reach. Best I got is a spiritual cage containment unit. Meaning we need a formation master under employ. Expensive but I don't see another option

>>6129081
>Golden scales
>Wanderer
Scales is our only body choice, poison is out until we speak with snake mistress.

>Investigate Body Shifting with your Spiritual Animals
Dhundan did it in the tournament thanks to mirroring someone else. Maybe he’ll offer pointers on it since it’s not one of his “cheat” skills. I forget if his skill gives him much of an understanding of what he copies though, so I’m not attached to this.

If he doesn’t know much, I’d back what >>6129098 suggested. We can continue to set aside our personal advancement in order to benefit the group as a whole.

>>6128502
I’d love if we could find a way to turn it into a training tool, but I’m struggling to think of it. A small portion of it might be usable for our aptitude tool, at least. If the “growth” aspect can be channeled to increase/decrease its stretchiness then people can tune it up or down based on their level, then everything would have a standardized scale.

We’d get two general types of numbers out of it then - some metric that determines overall affinity strength (baseline power instead?), and the person’s relative spread of affinities off of their baseline.

>>6129182
We don't need to speak with poison mistress it was just asking for pointers really. But lazy to look at the pastebin made yet it should be relatively fine.

>>6129123
the option is choose one.

But we can practice the technique back in the sect, with a person we trust.

>>6129123
+1

>>6129081
>Body [Golden Scales of the Skystone Snake]
>Meditation [Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfighter Wanderer] [Pills available]

>Investigate Body Shifting with your Spiritual Animals

>>6128489
>>6129080
How to use the growth fabric?
>A banner of legends. Something to tell the tales of our victories and inspire us with lessons from those victories. What is a Leader without a fantastic banner?

Foundation
>Golden Scales & Poisonner's Ultimate Selftrial

Potential
>Work on your Mental Energy with Dhundan
should be easy enough to sit next to him and avoid jumping out of the cart.

>>6129081
>Body [Golden Scales of the Skystone Snake]
>Meditation [Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfighter Wanderer]
>Investigate on the talking Spiritual Beasts

>>6129257
IIRC, the last time we tried Poisoner's Ultimate Selftrial, we were comatose for something like 3 days and wasted half of our efforts cultivating that turn. As it turns out, trying to microdose poison as a body tempering technique is dangerous and prone to harming the user-- which is why so many anons (myself included) want to wait for the Snake-Mistress' tips before attempting it again.

>>6129617
It was a bad roll. The only issue was that we have no resistance yet.

>>6129617
Wasn't poisoner's it was training bow skill.

Winning combination :
Golden Scales, Way of the Spiritual Boundighter, Body Shifting.

Locking; Writing

File: TrueQi.png (10 KB, 250x150)

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Once you have the answer to your questions, there's truly only one option : drawing on the ample ambient energy so close to the Capital, and work on your cultivation.
But what should you focus on? Obviously, things requiring little-to-no movement. You're heavily tempted to work on your Poisonner Ultimate Selftrial, but any misstep of yours might have awfully bad repercussion, taken into account that all the medical-inclined cultivator of the group are busy with the wounded. Better avoid it for now.
You start sucking in ambient energy, thread it into Qi and Blood threads, refine it further by circling the threads through all your aperture, turning the string-like blood-laced Qi into their pure, liquid form of True Qi, trickling down in your dantian.
You feel you immediately ripped some benefices, as your amount of stockpiled energy doubled in only a couple days. According to Ryota, the secret of breaking through second dantian is splitting your Qi in four parts, each greater than the last one, and smash it against the dantian inner gates. However, he only brushed on the subject, and you feel there's much to ponder about that matter.

Despite your best efforts, Beast Shifting remained outside of your grasp for now. However, the sheer amount of Qi techniques displayed at their fullest around you during the tournament where troves of insight. Three days away from the capital city, and halfway home, your Astral Self stands once more in front of gates.
Looks like the precious True Qi empowered said astral self : most of the doors you're facing are new ones.
Acting fast to seize the moment, you push...
>The Golden door ornated with ingots, weapons and jewels goldsmithed bas-reliefs and engraving
>The familiar wooden door seemingly swarming from the engraved snakes
>A blackstone door sparckling with spare white incorporation, giving you a faint sense of vertigo
>A door which arch of rough and weathered sandstone is held by columns sculpted in the likeness of strongmen holding up the weight of this world.
>A door made of battleworn steel, framed by two fighters staring at each other, radiating an aura of barely contained power
>Another golden door, chiseled finely and including green Jade gemstones. You recognize the recurrent motive of the Qirin on it.

>>6130225
>Black door speckled with white.

A space door.
Mouth skill here we go.

Ad an aside I had a thought. Once we have our beast shifting work on a snake skill, ask for Ryota to send us back to sky stone village.

We can teach the younger kids, if the old one is still gonna be a cunt, and benefit from the energies to practice our snake form and movement technic.
I do kinda want to connect with Dan rol and his sister in a more positive way than not.
We have the time to focus on that now, having reached our benchmark for geniushood.

>>6130228
+1

>>6130225
>A blackstone door sparckling with spare white incorporation, giving you a faint sense of vertigo.

Let's get some shoes.

>>6130225
>The Golden door ornated with ingots, weapons and jewels goldsmith bas-reliefs and engraving
Kinda want to do here we might get more unique crafting mats for our growth robes. or learn how to make maybe something to catch beasts.

in order
crafting
snakes
space
idk sounds like an arena like greek myth you guys know the one
realm of fighting
and qirin.

>>6130225
>A blackstone door sparckling with spare white incorporation, giving you a faint sense of vertigo
Let's gooo. The Space realm is bound to have cool shit inside.

You guys identified correctly what is the leading option. So quick question :
Can Quiet Word breath in space? I guess we'll find out quite soon.

>>6130240
Well since space is a high level realm only high level cultivators can reach I figure we shouldn't go there.

>>6130240
>Can Quiet Word breath in space?
He's not Batman

>>6130240
Do you think that's air, you're breathing, Ne- Quiet Word?

To be perfectly clear : you CAN go to space realm and benefit. But the trip will be a short and dangerous one.

Anyway, nothing locked right now.

>>6130240
Who needs to breathe? It's our astral self, not our real self.

>>6130402
Not anymore. Your improvement of the technique means your real self travel on the wake of the Astral self. This have a lot of benefits, but some downsides too.

>>6130225
>Golden weapon door

>>6130428
Oops.

>>6130225
>Another golden door, chiseled finely and including green Jade gemstones. You recognize the recurrent motive of the Qirin on it.

>>6130228
>>6130229
>>6130237
>>6130238
>>6130239
>>6130558
>>6130769

4 for space, 2 for 1st door, 1 for last door.

Last chance to get buyer's remorse.

File: WarnedYou.jpg (581 KB, 1000x1000)

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Alright.
I'll take1 roll of 1d100

Rolled 72 (1d100)

>>6130821
Fuck it, we ball

>>6130832
Could be worse.

>>6130821
I don't know why the didn't listen to the repeated warnings whatever.

>>6130853
Crafting realm would've been the best with bolt of growth cloth bruh.

>>6130853
Danger and fortune exist in equal measure. Space is a really high level affinity and one we have a decent affinity for.

As a result. We stand to profit big.

Didn't managed to write today. Will try tomorrow;

I'll need one more 1d100
less than 50 : wound.
More than 75 : good stuff

Rolled 6 (1d100)

>>6131408
Whelp, here goes nothing.

>>6131425
Wound it is.

At least it's not a crit fail.

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You don't hesitate, and push the black door. Instantly, you are suckled.
Things are very dark - but not an oppressive kind of darkness. More like the cozy, comfortable darkness of the starry night you are in.
There seems to be nothing around you, although you can smell sample amounts of Space energy - surely treasures, but far away ones.
There is, however, a few most pressing matters. First is the itchiness : you feel like a sand-charged windstorm scraped every inch of your skin, making your eyes, nose and lips especially painful (and so are your nether regions). Each tear you shed is immediately turned into a small cloud of ice shards, scraping your eyeballs further.
Second, you feel like your lung grew a few size, ripping partially inside your sternum. This draw a hiccup of pain, and instantly all the breath of your chest is drawn out and lost in the void of the eldritch place.
That bring you to the realisation of the third problem : a complete lack of breathable air nearby. You start panicking. Go back! Go back!
Alas, you're unable to will yourself out of the mysterious realm. Ironic : by improving your Astral travel to let your true self move with your Astral Self, you made several place much more dangerous.
Out of air, you start choking. But your nose skill still works : a treasure, floating in the ether, cross right in front of you. Your hands clutch the prize as you fall unconscious.

A couple minutes earlier
Sin Din : Ryota! stop! Quiet Word disappeared!
Ryota : Did he fall? ... Can't feel his energy...
Sin Din : He was there, meditating, and he just popped away!
Ryota : It must be his complete Astral Travel skill. We'll circle around... There! That was a short trip.

You take a deep breath while winds are scratching at your plummeting face. You blink. Twice. The floor is coming awfully close dreadfully fast.
You materialize your Ascended Phoenix wings in the hope to slow your fall. But with your head lower than your legs, the furled wing are actually increasing your stoop's speed.
You open your whole wingspan, trying to avoid the disaster. Your body redresses from vertical to horizontal.
Then you hit the ground hard enough to snuff your consciousness out a second time today.

You are pain shaped in human form. Breathing is hard and hurts. The wind brushing your skin hurts. Each and every jolt of your bed hurts.
Why is your bed jolting in the first place? Your eyes open again, this time in Ryota's cart.
The rest of the trip back home is uneventfully painful to say the least.
At least you have plenty of time to gaze at your prize, even in that sorry state of yours.

The weapon you clutch is a 3rd-stage worthy Halberd, radiating with Space and Void energy. Holding it, you feel your mind focus and sharpening. Mostly on the pain you're feeling.
What will you do with the Halberd?
>Keep it for yourself.
>Gift it to Sin Din!
>Sell it for... [takes 1 action]

Sooner or later, you are back to your home. You limp toward your dorm, and fall asleep, barely noticing Ai and her second-stage level.
It's been 2 years and 10 month since you joined the Eastern Province branch of Tamers of Hundred Beasts.

As you're Wounded, some actions will be autofails.
Either Combine a Foundation and chose 2, or chose 3

Combine your Foundation work (pick 1 body and 1 meditation):
>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]
>Body [Golden Scales of the Skystone Snake]
>Meditation [Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfighter Wanderer] [Pills available]
>Meditation [Poem of the Rising Phoenix]
>Meditation [Poisonner's Ultimate Selftrial]

Potential
>Maybe one specific technique of yours should be improved? [Choose in addition to said technique. More chances of breakthrough]
>Investigate Phoenix Dao using legends.
Crafting
>You have to exploit the roll of Growth fabric before it's too late [Write-in]
Friendship
>Keep improving things between Ai and Dhundan
>Help the trio of gifted Cultivator with their cultivation!
>Train Squad Tactics
Other
>Reflect on your archetype [Write-in] [Locked]
>Work on your Unlimited Rising Star Kick [Pills available]
>Work on your Mental Energy with Dhundan
Weapon skills
>Work on your Unarmed Style : Metal-melting Truefire
>Work on your Windy Cavalier's Halberd [Pills available]
>Work on your Spear style : Blood-Shadow Wolf Painful Assault
>Work on your Mounted Archer’s Wind-Gliding Phoenix's Venom Arrow [Pills available]
>Work on your Meteor Hammer Style : Silk Tiger Sun-Seer [Pills available]
Spiritual Arts Technique
>Work on your Crimson tides of life Ichor
Spiritual Beasts
>Investigate on the talking Spiritual Beasts
>Investigate Body Shifting with your Spiritual Animals
The sect
>Ask Ryota for a Mission!
>Ask Ryota about the ideal split to break through!
Strengthening the Jar
>Gardening time : You're curious about how much did your Ashtree grew.
>Slack off [It will be bad for your mental health]
>Ask Snake Mistress about what is love
And, as always...
>Write-in allowed!

>>6131459
>Crafting, Capitalise on our Roll of growth fabric

We need this done in two fucking months otherwise we are FUCKED. 2 months we hit 8 and our inborn true qi snuffs out.
My recommendation is we take it to be appraised by golden eye silver tongue, the merchant should be able to see any deeper qualities and organise a craftsmen. But things to make from it, maybe a Gi? A quiver to allow for ease of drawing an arrow? A traveler's cloak?

>Go and see the Martin mistress for the Blood based foundation tempering technique.
>Spiritual art Ichor of life

Remember we wounded our lungs. Any strenuous activity is gonna do massive damage, let's not aggravate it. But it is a good spot to try self healing.

>Gift the halberd to sin Din

>>6131519
The concern is more the massive trauma you took by skydiving without a parachute than the little trip in SPAAAAACE

>>6131519
Support it was so dumb to go to the space realm at our level of power. Ugh. Can we not make retarded options next time.

>However we share the halbard for training in Windy Cavalier's method perhaps adding void to the keyword and to see if we have affinity for it. If that fails we still got space tag on it. Is that reasonable qm.

>>6131519
+1
>>6131664
but now we know

>>6131519
>>6131459
I like this, but it doesn't decide on what to do with the fabric.

>Hold the Halberd for now. I'd like to give it to Sin Din, but we might need something to pay for the work on our growth fabric.
>Ask Martin Mistress for help with our Blood technique. See if she knows any healing arts.
>Spiritual Art Crimson tides of life Ichor
We're wounded and blood magic seems to do better when you're wounded, so why not? Answer: it's also probably more dangerous when you are wounded and have less blood to spare.
>Have the Growth Fabric woven into a spirit banner to reinforce us through our deeds. Do cool stuff, get stronger and gain renown.

I'm not married to the banner. Gi, quiver, cloak, curtain to the spirit realm are all good ideas. I'm just voting for a banner because I like Banner Saga.

>>6131459
>Keep it for yourself (for now).

>Ask Martin Mistress for help with our Blood technique. See if she knows any healing arts.
>Work on your Crimson tides of life Ichor
>Gardening time : You're curious about how much did your Ashtree grew.

Normally, I'd want to work on the Growth fabric right away, but I think in this case it'd be better to save it. Since our new Astral Wanderer ability will let us get to the Crafting realm more easily, it seems like a shame not to head there before we work on that.

>>6131672
I also say we put in work and train crimson tides until we can not work about being out of action repeatedly for months

>>6131664
It wasn't that retarded we got a 3rd tier weapon out of it.

>>6131697
For a Growth thing to be bound to us, we need to bind it to our inborn true qi.
The thing we lose in 2 months.
This turn and the next turn, after that it is GONE. we can no longer use it. None. Nada.

To go to crafting realm we need to do wandering beast mind training, get a crit, then vote for that.
This turn or next.

So let's not delay and lose this chance.

>>6131779
Ok then we could've went to the crafting realm. WHEN WE HAD TH- whatever. We're injured and can't go realm hopping, So we have to hope the merchant will pull one for us. So dumb I'm call you dumb for being dumb.

>>6131459

>Sell it for the services of a great Tailor on short notice... [takes 1 action]

>Investigate Phoenix Dao using legends.
>Work on your Crimson tides of life Ichor
>You have to exploit the roll of Growth fabric before it's too late: you brainstorm and draw up ideas for Growth Clothes and items so you can better work with the Tailor.

>>6131459
>Sell it for the services of a great Tailor on short notice... [takes 1 action]
>Investigate Phoenix Dao using legends.
>Work on your Crimson tides of life Ichor

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99 KB PNG

>>6131664
I won't allow sharing the treasure with Sin Din.

>>6131849
However, I'll allow this as you can use the action to sell and the one to brainstorm in one go.


Tally status.

>>6131519
>Change gift the halberd to sell the halberd for a tailor.

>>6131988
Alright. I'd appreciate a backlink to your vote or support (>>6131664 >>6131672 have been counted as votes; >>6131779 is not a vote)

>>6131989
It is backlinkwd to my vote.

I linked my vote and said to change it. Or do you mean a different way of backlinking?

>>6131993
What I mean is I didn't counted >>6131779 as a vote because I haven't seen a "support" or "+1" or a pick of propositions.

>>6131958
>>6131664
Then I'll support selling this to move the story on. >>6131849

>>6131997
Very good, that wasn't a vote, that was explaining the flaws in someone else's idea to wait for crafting realm

>>6132015
Alright i'm retarded, focused too much on the ID
Fixed my count. Sell wins.

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You are a single sore point - although a big one.
Due to your condition, you are excused away from the sect's daily routine. Good, as you need ample rest time.
After a couple slow days devoted to lying in your bed, limp toward the dining halls, limp back, nap, and do it all again a couple hours later, you feel well enough to attempt doing something more complex.
You start the meditation you somehow learned in the Growth Realm. It feels extremely right and instictive, despite running through a small, underdevelopped channel of yours.
You figure out quite fast the technique can't work without raw material. It's not worth it to take your own blood for it - it would cost you more energy than it would restore.
Good thing you have a fair amount stockpiled for the tournament; amount you didn't digged in for summoning purposes.
You're afraid it will be far from enough, but your Hemomancer Profound Bloodstore seems to hold more than what you put in in the first place.
First, you mend the damaged skin. At least you don't feel like a walking scab. Then, you assert internal damages.
A few broken bones, a concussion, inside of your lungs somewhat bruised? That look bad. You fear you won't have enough blood and aptitude to fix everything.
But with how naturally the technique comes to you, you developped your Life Channel at the same time you fixed yourself. Fractures are lightly glued together.
Organs unbruised - you discovered in the process your liver and pancreas were also damaged.
You're almost out of troubles - as long as you don't stress up too much your consolidating bones in the upcoming days.

In the middle of the week, you are well enough to visit the blood-chilling Marten Mistress.
"You reek of Blood. How exciting.
- Yeah, I hurt myself stupidly.
- Talking about your Qi, idiot.
- Well, looks like I'm interested in Blood techniques after all. Do you have any blood foundation technique to share?
- ... You're a good fighter, right? I have a mageblade technique that could work.
- I think so, but what's a mageblade?
- Oh, your reputation as one knowledgeable about the art of war seems exaggerated? It's the archetype for one fighting with a sword empowered by spiritual art."
Half Frontliner, half Spellslinger. Of course, limiting it to sword users is a retarded take so you instead labell mentally the archetype as a Gish
That's obviously what you missed for LienWen JiaLin. You were close with your intuition of Half Frontliner, half Assassin, yet not enough. At the very least it didn't cost you the win.

Over the next couple of days, you are instructed the meditation - strangely unlinked to any other fundamentals of the sect.
"If someone asks how a Beast Tamer knows such an heretical technique, you can then truthfully answer that you don't know."
The Mageblade Bloody Winner's Meditation is as efficient as situationnal. The technique allows to siphon energy from the spilled blood of a foe after a victory, filling your dantian at a meagre cost. Of course, your training is theoretical only as you don't have blood-spilled foe under your hand to experiment with.
Still an useful, albeit questionable, tool at your Cultivator's soulbelt.

After a bit more self-healing for appearance sake - depleting completely your Hemomancer Profound Bloodstore, you're ready for a trip to Stable Lotus Harbor's cultivator's market.
You asked Ryota if the sect would be interrested in your prized Halberd, which made him shrug and answer that your common friend Golden Eye Silver Tongue would pay more for that.
When you asked about the permission to go to town for your business - with maybe an escort, he replied that a second stage was grown up enough to go for a supply run, especially the fabled tournament-winning skydiving-losing Heartpiercer.
He gave you a shopping list and pocket change for the mundane errands of tea and horseshoes. As a diligent disciple, you start with those before requiring a meeting with the Marketer.

"You scooped a fine piece of equipment. Want some cash or have something else in mind?
- What about service? I'm looking to get something tailor made from that fabric.
- I knew you wouldn't let me buy that. Bamboo Grove, can you fetch Seamstress Syl Viang for me?"
The pretty assistant of the Marketer, a late second-stage girl a few years older than Kyo Ko, fulfill her assignment just the time for the two of you to enjoy a cup of tea in a cozy silence.
The Seamstress is a middle age 3rd stage woman with her red-hue hair bringed above her head in a bun held by an impressive array of several-materials needle.
Her expert sight focused on the fabric running through her hand, she answer the unasked question in the firm voice of the accomplished craftwoman.
"Yes, I can do it. I grade the job difficulty at first meridian.
- And I rate the worth of your offer at fourth meridian. Meaning we can even supply a couple crafting materials as long as you're reasonable."
You can't really complain.
"So what do you want? "

>A brief. Somehow you find the idea extremely funny.
>A blanket. That might be a way to finally cultivate while you're sleeping? It won't. But a boy can dream
>A banner. Fitting for the leader you're turning into.
>A cloak, ready to handsomely float behind you
>A Chuan Fu. You feel of déja vu, same but different.
"It should take me less than three days. Gather the materials you want me to include, and come back."

You have Two whole turns to gather materials. You have as immediately available materials Jade, Light and Mist Hawk Feather.
The third turn will be the end of your deadline, with an action auto-picked to go back to the merchants.
The materials you'll use will count as much as the shape of your item. Depending on what you'll gather, I'll propose to you an array of supplementary materials from the market.

Either Combine a Foundation and chose 2, or chose 3

Combine your Foundation work (pick 1 body and 1 meditation):
>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]
>Body [Golden Scales of the Skystone Snake]
>Meditation [Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfighter Wanderer] [Pills available]
>Meditation [Poem of the Rising Phoenix]
>Meditation [Poisonner's Ultimate Selftrial]

Potential
>Maybe one specific technique of yours should be improved? [Choose in addition to said technique. More chances of breakthrough]
>Investigate Phoenix Dao using legends.
Crafting
>You have to exploit the roll of Growth fabric before it's too late [Write-in]
Friendship
>Keep improving things between Ai and Dhundan
>Help the trio of gifted Cultivator with their cultivation!
>Train Squad Tactics
Other
>Reflect on your archetype [Write-in] [Locked]
>Work on your Unlimited Rising Star Kick [Pills available]
>Work on your Mental Energy with Dhundan
>Work again on the Horse Realm martial scroll
>Examinate the scroll obtained in the Tamers of Thousand Beast treasurery!
Weapon skills
>Work on your Unarmed Style : Metal-melting Truefire
>Work on your Windy Cavalier's Halberd [Pills available]
>Work on your Spear style : Blood-Shadow Wolf Painful Assault
>Work on your Mounted Archer’s Wind-Gliding Phoenix's Venom Arrow [Pills available]
>Work on your Meteor Hammer Style : Silk Tiger Sun-Seer [Pills available]
Spiritual Arts Technique
>Work on your Crimson tides of life Ichor
Spiritual Beasts
>Investigate on the talking Spiritual Beasts
>Investigate Body Shifting with your Spiritual Animals
The sect
>Ask Ryota for a Mission!
>Ask Ryota for skills allowing survival in extreme environments!
>Ask Ryota about the ideal split to break through!
Strengthening the Jar
>Gardening time : You're curious about how much did your Ashtree grew.
>Slack off [It will be bad for your mental health]
>Ask Snake Mistress about what is love
And, as always...
>Write-in allowed!

>>6132757
Are we damaged? We could try another realm hope if not.

>>6132757
>Meditation [Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfighter Wanderer] [Pills available
>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]

>Maybe one specific technique of yours should be improved? [Choose in addition to said technique. More chances of breakthrough] double up on using wanderer and rising Phoenix.

>Work on your Crimson tides of life Ichor

Really simple plan fish to enter a realm

>>6132765
You are a little bit damaged.
>>6132770

Don't forget to discuss what you are getting commissioned and what you want it to do.
You had quite a bit of luck regarding cost of the Halberd/cost of the service

>>6132770
>>6132771
>A Chuan Fu. You feel of déja vu, same but different.
Can we exchange the feathers to sect for some blood and qi pills to use for healing.

>>6132770
Actually switch out ichor since we don't have the blood. Might need to do a mission to source a lot of blood to train.
>Work on your Meteor Hammer Style : the shadow one.

>>6132789
Thinking about what kind of elements to place in it. Repair would be one, life, if we still have that phoenix feather I'd throw that in there.

I'd want to track down a mythical material at least qm can you give us some examples the merchant can offer as materials?

>>6132757
>A chuan Fu, with a specified large amount of pockets.
>Apply mist and jade feathers, Ask for the merchants to apply blood shadow fur & warrior wind horse hair and ask Ryota to provide a snake from space gold snake.

So ai get the idea right. Meridian is what stage the materials are. So if we ask for first stage beast materials. It shouldn't cost us too much. Worse comes to worst the6 charge by the element and we just cut out wind from the parts we buy from them

>>6132757
>>6132803

So the doctor doesn't recommend stressing bones and then we will be A okay.
I don't like body tempering but the body resistance keynword might help.

>Ask ryota about the ideal split to break through.
>Meditate [wanderer]
>Body [Golden scales]
>Focus on technique [Wanderer]

>>6132803
Thinking about it we could grab the keyword elemental following the five elements earth fire metal water and fire. Blood prob as well. So growth elemental and blood as my suggestions now if elemental isn't a mythical word aquire something like phoenix or horse and well figure out the last three based on if we go realm hopping. Or based on trade with merchant items which I figure we grab the elements from and using trade goods to exchange for.
Watch tho go to a realm and then nat 100 looking for materials.

>>6132821
Oh right we can use the merchants to trade for beast blood to stock up for training/healing.

>>6132821
Please remember and keep this in mind.

Treasures DO NOT raise our affinities they support them.
Sticking a light element on the cloth will not help us as much as earth or poison.

Excuses made for blood since qe are actively training that one up.

Please bear in mind,

>>6132778
>Can we exchange the feathers to sect for some blood and qi pills to use for healing.
Better use some Medicinal Pill to heal wounds.
>>6132789
Smart thoughts.
>>6132799
>If we still have Phoenix Feather
You don't. However, you might have a write-in hidden way to acquire some more, although it's a long shot.
>I'd want to track down a mythical material at least qm can you give us some examples the merchant can offer as materials?
A few example might be things like "Sword Intent Seeds" - seed of flower growing in high sword energy environment. Munching them can help develop Sword Intent.
Caligrapher's bright gemstone : A glowing crystal. Its proximity helps you focus better on your pencil's strokes
Spooky Scary Skeleton : the set of bones of a deceased humanoid. It seems to unsettingly move on its own as if not completely dead, sending shivers down your spine.
Mud-grass horse : a small clay statuette including blades of grass. For some reason, you feel it's offending.
I'll even allow you to go wild and propose stuff. Mythical is more expansive.

>Meridian is what stage the materials are.
Quiet Words knows that "Meridians" refers to the sub-realm of 3rd stage. Treasure and cost are indexed on cultivation level. A base entry Stage 1 treasure is worth 10 to 100 time less than a base entry stage 2 treasure, which is worth 10 to 100 time less than a base entry stage 3 treasure. Some thing retains their quality way better than other at higher level, which makes appraisal of worth and comparative cost a pain. Merchant capitalize on that, of course.
The fact I don't want to set up a whole economy to crunch numbers on my side is most definitely not a factor of this messed up system.

>>6132809
>So the doctor doesn't recommend stressing bones and then we will be A okay.
What if I told you You're the doctor?

>>6132821
>Element Cycle
Not quite how things work in that setting. Elemental is however a keyword letting something be made of an element. A Flame Sword is a regular sword on fire. An Elemental Flame Sword is directly made of fire.

>>6132833
That might be an option later. For now, I won't allow Quiet Word to distract from this 13th hour Growth Gets sidequest.

>>6132876
Alright then phoenix would be a material we want to boost a good amount of tech. Blood, growth, phoenix are recommended then to boost our abilities.

Shadow is one of our cores as well as poison. But hear me out we could go western elements which are fire, water,earth and air throwing in lightning for fun for elemental. Jade could work as we got a few jade techniques. Mainly we got options for the last three slots.

Besides the craft we have to think about how we're training next.

Ichor is gonna take allot of blood meaning no doubt beast blood.

Our bow skill has problems with the poison aspect which we need to train our new meditation/talk with snake mistress.

Our halberd style is falling behind because a no good weapon(just traded one to help...) wait since we haven't Yet traded the treasure could we train with it to breakthrough the technique? Could also evo the snake Spirit to use polearms which would solve this issue as well
First style is fine however not the most important.
Spear art is fine as it is.
Rising kick is good to train whenever
New meteor style needs to be trained up to 2nd realm first no matter what tho

We have scrolls one to evo phoenix and another for horse martial arts suggest we get those checked out after craft and meteor training.

Next on the agenda talking with Ryota for when to breakthrough. And acquiring a stable source of blood.

Then we breakthrough our skills that were apex and train meteor to peak of this minor realm. Maybe go on a mission at that point figure out when spirits are coming in and go profit. And date of next tournament.
>>6132876
The long shot I remember being our ability to shotgun feathers that we could maybe eventually make into a crafting material. Which would be training... I forgot which shill we got it from.

>>6132895
Ignore my elemental rant.

>>6132895
>>6132895
>wait since we haven't Yet traded the treasure could we train with it to breakthrough the technique?
I consider it already traded so No.
>The long shot I remember being our ability to shotgun feathers that we could maybe eventually make into a crafting material. Which would be training... I forgot which shill we got it from.
Breakthrough coming from Beast Shifting your Phoenix Spirit while training your Bow skill.

>>6132907
Fair.
Can we go to Pill Uncle and trade some items for some custom pills for beast shifting/meditation.

>>6132885
If you t9ld us we are the doctor, I would reply that of course we are, it's why I trust that the doctor has our best interests in mind.

>>6132895
I agree with your assessment of value.
Pheonix is our super dao, super in tune with it and it's a mythic keyword.

It might cost a fair bit though to put it in. . Well the value of the service is fucking tier 3, subrank 1 if I read this right while our offering is sub rank 4.

Using this approximate theory, we REALLY should be able to get a bunch of 2nd tier materials because with the 3 meridian difference he value for rank 2 items is about 30 to 300 items, making some assumptions.

Silver tongue golden eye isn't gonna let us wipe him out of house and home though, so best to focus.
Growth is already present, pheonix will be a bit costly but shouldn't break the bank, and including blood should be simplicity.
I agree with those.
3 key words left, I would actually suggest something to support our rising ascent.

What are we gonna do wearing our clothes? Movement, healing and I'd probably suggest something for a meditation technique

>>6132916
I consider something defensive for one keyword physical or mental. We're training fighting intent, so I'm leaning more toward physical.
Earth or steel isn't bad idea and the other two are Whatever we figure sounds cool
Blood = healing
Growth for well growth
Pheonix = Offensive
??? = Defensive
Intent, or another element, Movement, support, etc. mainly it should fit the roll for supporting Word is what I think. And help us stop being injured for months.

>>6132924
Well we got body refinement with snake scales.
Maybe key word shield? And we can tie that in with our cavalier horse.

Something else to bear in mind, the material itself is said to allow for ease of movement. So maybe pick 5 key words, and this will have growth+ unknown one.

Hmm. Shield or mental resilience, since I don't think the intent is a shield so much as a sword.

Why not Dragon, Lotus, or Kirin? Aspects which compliment and boost us?

>>6132757
>A banner w/ Phoenix, Lotus, Growth, Healing, Protection, Beastmaster.

>Foundation: Golden Scales & Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfigher Wanderer
>Exploit the roll of Growth Fabric
>Investigate Body Shifting. Consider that I was able to reshape my body using Crimson tides of life ichor. Instead of shaping my body into its healed form, reshape some into animal forms. Start with reshaping the tips of my fingernails into claws.

Dragon would be cool. Lotus is local. Why put in blood when we can just put in healing directly, if we are going for healing? I suppose because blood is more versatile, but growth+healing might result in regeneration.

>>6132757
>>A Chuan Fu. You feel of déja vu, same but different.

>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]
>Meditation [Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfighter Wanderer] [Pills available]

>Work on your Crimson tides of life Ichor
>Gardening time : You're curious about how much did your Ashtree grew.

>>6133144
+1

>>6133091
>figure
None of our techniques use those key words and they are all mythic, aka expensive. That is why.

>>6132757
>A Chuan Fu. You feel of déja vu, same but different.
>Meditation [Poem of the Rising Phoenix]
>Maybe one specific technique of yours should be improved? [Choose in addition to said technique. More chances of breakthrough] Crimson tides of life Ichor
>Investigate Phoenix Dao using legends.
>Examinate the scroll obtained in the Tamers of Thousand Beast treasury!

>>6133144
>>6133247
>>6133149

Guys guys we don't have to train Ichor pcik something else

>>6133254
the blood*

File: PSA.jpg (13 KB, 226x223)

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Looks like Chuan Fu get the most adhesion, with one Banner vote.
To be extremely clear :
Chuan Fu will directly buff you. Banner would be weaker, but AOE buff on your allies.

Other votes are splitted all over the place, so I'll gave you more time to organize and discuss

>>6133247
Just letting you know fellah it is 3 options, not 4. You either mix a foundation and a body temp or take an option. You have taken 1 meditation and 3 actions.

>>6133098
The reason to add blood instead of healing is that blood would empower a greater number of techniques at once.

Healing plus meditation plus spear skill.

>>6133272
I will suggest again to vote for something else then ichor since we don't have enough blood to train it.

>>6133550
You know there has to be a butchers In the town somewhere.
We could just pay him for his runoff.

Or put in a day's work ourselves to drain it properly.

>>6133366
>>6132757 literally says Either Combine a Foundation and chose 2, or chose 3. I dis choose a meditation but by not picking body tempering I left an option open since originally meditation and body tempering were two different options that just got constantly taken together

>>6133247
>>6133802
They're right. You picked :
- 1 Meditation
- Crimson Tides
- Focus on Crimson tides
- Investigate Phoenix
- Examinate scroll
I count that as 5 choices.

Ya know since we reached the 2nd realm should we get another action? I mean it would make sense.

>>6133873
We need to move past the need to sleep for that to happen.
Maybe find some time dilation realm

>>6133873
Nice try. Won't allow it though.
Anyway, my vote is still tied.
And looks like you guys prefer discount Chuan Fu too bad. I personnally liked the Banner idea.

>>6134084
Which options are tied?

>>6134100
Not ackchually tied but 3 votes for Ichor which is a bait option pointed and told as such

>>6134112
Well never said you weren't merciful.

>>6133149
>>6133144
Hey Fucccckkkers

>>6134159
OK uh change my vote to... what again? I wasn't paying attention

>>6134160
>>6132770
This but meteor hammer - Shadow training.
The other option I could see was trading our feathers for healing pills.

>>6134160
Can do a meteor hammer technique or a tempering technique or. . Anything really.

>>6134191
>>6134234
Fine

>>6132757
Change vote from >>6133149 to uhhhh

Fabric choice
>A Chuan Fu. You feel of déja vu, same but different.
Choose 3
>Work on your Meteor Hammer Style : Silk Tiger Sun-Seer [Pills available]
>Investigate Phoenix Dao using legends.
>Gardening time : You're curious about how much did your Ashtree grew.

>>6132941
>>6132757
>For a Chuan Fu, I'm voting for the following affinities:
Phoenix, Growth, Beast Taming, Body, Mind, Blood.

Should help with most of our core aspects and help with foundation building. It's not particularly defensive, but Body helps with that some.

>>6134320
Uh. no the new better meteor skill. not the sun-seer that was a qm messup and we need mats for the robe. uh. Bruh.
We must go world hopping,

>>6134334
Why would mind or body help?
None of our techniques use those key words, nor do beast taming really.

Body refinement, astral self, fighting intent, whatever the poem helps with, this we do use.

Brain kinda hurts for people not reading the responses from the QM and the questions. Right now we need to world hop for materials to boost our Chuan Fu and no ones voting for it.

>>6133247
>>6133366
>>6133819
In that case I'm changing my vote
>A Chuan Fu. You feel of déja vu, same but different.
>Meditation [Poem of the Rising Phoenix]
>Investigate Phoenix Dao using legends.
>Examinate the scroll obtained in the Tamers of Thousand Beast treasury!

>>6134464
Not entirely true, we still.have 3 third stage "meridians" worth of Bargaining power with silver tongue golden eye.

Asking him what he can aquire should easily net 4 materials, limited only by rarity.
Common materials like blood and shadow shouldn't be an issue.

File: qjedpix168151.png (92 KB, 500x375)

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Alright we pushed a 'shitty choice' situation into a proper tie.
Locking "Combining a foundation"
Body foundation is tied :
Wide Ballet >>6132770 >>6133144
Golden Scales >>6132809 >>6133098
Locking Meditation of the Wanderer

Tied options :
Focus on your Meditation (RealmhoppMaxxing) 6132770 6132809
Dao of Phoenix legends (PhoenixMaxxing) >>6134320 >>6134568
MeteorHammer training 6134320 >>6132789
GardeningTime >>6133144 6134320

>>6132789
>>Examinate the scroll obtained in the Tamers of Thousand Beast treasury!
>>6134647
I'll switch hammer for the above to maybe increase getting phoenix feathers if someone wants to vote for realm hopping.

>Then we go all in to try a Phoenix breakthrough in the next turn and go for the long shot.

>>6132809
I will change my vote from "ask ryota" to
>Dao of Pheonix

>>6134650
To realms hop, focusing on our meditation technique is the optimal move since we are just crit fishing.

>>6134660
Wait a minute.
>also change golden scales to wide ballet

Because multiple related techniques done together will gain increasing bonuses

Rolled 3 (1d3)

Rolling to break the tie, it's been going on for too long.
1 : Realmhopp critfishmaxing
2 : Meteor-Hammer time (bad choice)
3 : Gardening time

File: PhoenixLegend.jpg (117 KB, 647x1000)

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You're definitely getting better. Enough to cultivate again.
You opt out of the resilience-enhancing Golden Scales of the Skystone Snake, fearing it might be too hard for your bones. Instead, you work on you Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet.
It feels right and natural - and, overall, soft on your harmed body. Coupled with your meditation, your stockpile Qi continue its skyrocketing soar; good, you have a reputation to protect.
Are you especially skilled, or lucky this days? Surely. However, the second stage minor realms seems to fill faster than those of the first stage.
You still have to listen to your body and let it heal. The lack of blood - and no way to prelevate some on yourself with your current state - is concerning.
Finding a reliable source of blood would most definitely be useful in the future.

You relentlessly go bother your seniors and various masters about tell tales and legends about the Phoenix.
The answers you find are vague at best. Be it the wondrous beast itself, a Phoenix-related treasure or a cultivator following the Phoenix' dao, they are always a minor element playing a side roll.
It's quite strange. You feel like there weren't any Phoenix-aligned cultivators powerful enough to create their own sect in the past.
There goes the sliver of a chance to stumble upon a powerfull Phoenix Inheritance. Chances to understand better the deep nature of the Phoenix though the hurdles of other.
The more you think about it, the more you wonder if you could become a legend-worthy cultivator. At the very least, the story starts well enough - the true genius winner of the Capital City tournament, able to rise and soar like a phoenix while making death rains on his opponents?
This barely distract you from the fact you've only lost time focusing on Phoenix Dao as it didn't let you gather some of the oh-so-precious materials you need.

You need to vent. As such, you take the decision to travel to the little hole in the ground you call your "Immortal Cave" and check out on your Growth Sapling.
It has indeed grown tremendously - grown enough that the tree originally ruling alone at the top of the small hill is nowhere to be seen.
Neither is the hill, now completely covered by the five-meters wide, twenty-meters high ashtree. The hill itself turned into a wall of root.
But the most unsettling sight is the amalgamate of roots starting to shift and move - toward you.
Instantly, you feel a link between your Astral Self and what can only be called a Wandering World Tree. You unmount and step forward as the tree extend a root, guiding you to your cave. The layout is identical, barren. Walls and flooring are made of weaved roots instead of dug dirt. Your month-worth of 1st stage Seclusion Pills stockpile, the three feathers and your Gar Ruk storybook are exactly where you left them.
Over the course of the next days, you take time to examinate the tree and its capacity. Its movement aptitude is fast for a tree; not so for a human - roughly the pace of your leisure walk speed. You are able to communicate to the Nascent plant spirit wordlessly, letting it raise roots and lower branches for you to climb.
The tree even guided you toward an extremely energy-dense green branch, incitating you to pluck it.
>Obtained Branch of the Wandering World-Tree
You smile as you lay the fine ingredient with your feathers. That visit was full of welcomed surprises - and most certainly the best use of your time by sheer luck.
Indeed, there was no need to focus on your meditation : near the end of the week, you reach the coveited state of enlightment bringing you to the mystical doors. Wait, why is the number different? And why are there no beast-related door?
Looks like True Qi changed the rules of realm-hopping more than just forbidding your access to Growth realm.
Adventure time!
>A white marble door featuring rich marquetry representing couples dancing in countless different styles
>A blackstone door sparckling with spare white incorporation, giving you a faint sense of vertigo
>A door made of battleworn steel, framed by two fighters staring at each other, radiating an aura of barely contained power
>the golden door, chiseled finely and including green Jade gemstones. You recognize the recurrent motive of the Qirin on it.

>>6135379
>the golden door, chiseled finely and including green Jade gemstones. You recognize the recurrent motive of the Qirin on it.

>>6135379
>the golden door, chiseled finely and including green Jade gemstones. You recognize the recurrent motive of the Qirin on it.

>>6135379

>A white marble door featuring rich marquetry representing couples dancing in countless different styles

>>6135419
>>6135431
I'd appreciate if you two could backlink your ID

>>6135379
>Qirin door

Qirin must be very valuable, we can absolutely trade this crap for more resources.

Not our greatest turnover but. . Pretty good thus far.

Also, wandering world tree? Like perhaps. . . Able to appear in many places?
>Devious speculation

>>6134660
I am me, here.>>6135435

I think my posting is also rather distinct in style, so that's probably not a surprise.

>>6135379
>>the golden door, chiseled finely and including green Jade gemstones. You recognize the recurrent motive of the Qirin on it.

>>6135441
Well Qirin door it is, we'll see what's inside it.
no doubt using World-tree branch that's gonna be cool.
Next month we have the option of world-hopping for mats or gambling for phoenix feathers using.
>>6132907
Using this method. Which would be
>Meditation [Poem of the Rising Phoenix]
>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]
>Investigate Body Shifting with your Spiritual Animals
>Work on your Mounted Archer’s Wind-Gliding Phoenix's Venom Arrow [Pills available]

To maximize our chance to make perm phoenix feathers

The vote is not close yet.
Have you figured how New Realmhopping works?

>>6135447
I know I'm just suggesting what we do next turn.
Other then that no idea I assume each hop removes a door from the picks is my best guess. And the door picked that minor realm lock in a theme. Otherwise I'm drawing blanks

>>6135431
>>6135433
Sure. Uhhhhh.

I'm this guy.
>>6126724
>>6128537
>>6130237
>>6131849

>>6135444
This would require us spending the last turn trading with the sect for our feathers to be transmute into something useful.

Qm what elements can we smell on that branch?

>>6135496
What you're sure of : Growth and Astral Self.
A solid maybe in trace amount : Space
Another sent you don't know yet, but is most likely Plant-related.

>>6135496
the idea would be to trade in the feathers with the merchants and pick out what we want on the robe on creation.

>>6135498
A good ingredient to put in perhaps.
Kinda don't want to waste the growth part since the fabric already has growth keywords but. Eh.

>>6135496
>>6135498
So Growth, Blood, Astral, Space, something from this realm and hopefully Phoenix Feather me thinks longshot.

>>6135515
Sure we will get a better price than trading simple things in the sect treasury?

Merchants are greedy fudgers after all, and as beast supplies the sect will value them at a direct margin

>>6135518
Sounds nice. We can always just buy the pheonix feather if the merchant is given prewarning.

The elements are expensive but shouldn't be out of reach

>>6135412
>>6135419
>>6135431
>>6135435
>>6135441

I REALLY advise you guys to think better about the question over there >>6135447 as the "puzzle" is completely getting over your heads

>>6135524
Ok so last doors were
>The Golden door ornated with ingots, weapons and jewels goldsmithed bas-reliefs and engraving
>The familiar wooden door seemingly swarming from the engraved snakes
>A blackstone door sparckling with spare white incorporation, giving you a faint sense of vertigo
>A door which arch of rough and weathered sandstone is held by columns sculpted in the likeness of strongmen holding up the weight of this world.
>A door made of battleworn steel, framed by two fighters staring at each other, radiating an aura of barely contained power
>Another golden door, chiseled finely and including green Jade gemstones. You recognize the recurrent motive of the Qirin on it.

>A white marble door featuring rich marquetry representing couples dancing in countless different styles
>A blackstone door sparckling with spare white incorporation, giving you a faint sense of vertigo
>A door made of battleworn steel, framed by two fighters staring at each other, radiating an aura of barely contained power
>the golden door, chiseled finely and including green Jade gemstones. You recognize the recurrent motive of the Qirin on it.

We choose the space door and the question / puzzle is
Have you figured how New Realmhopping works?

We also had no beast doors show and of these three of four are the same now I see a conjecture that in fact the correct door to go to is.

>A white marble door featuring rich marquetry representing couples dancing in countless different styles

For our >Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet] is a dance and if we use what we find in there we could breakthrough and be able to make real Phoenix.

It's that or I'm sniffing paint

>>6135524
Is that close QM?

>>6135531
In fact if you look at the order of options the crafting realm was our best option and the Qirin was the worst option.
and the order hasn't changed meaning it orders itself to the best to worst realms to go for what we need.
>>6135441
Changing vote to
>A white marble door featuring rich marquetry representing couples dancing in countless different styles.

This makes sense since we need to breakthrough for the feathers. so fuck it lets go see if I'm correct in my crackpot theory guys.

>>6135535
For more thought value we have a lot of points to spend for the trade in weapon meaning it'll be easy to acquire beast materials/ other mats. The thing we'd want most then is a breakthrough of the technique and how does that happen? Going to a realm that will benefit it.

If Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfighter Wanderer works like this it's pretty busted.

>>6135524
I didn't even realise there was a puzzle.

But fuck it, if the QM is giving me a kick to move my ass, I'll just shift shit over and move
>>6135435
>to support the dancing door.

No real thought or rationalisation behind it, maybe something to do with our affinity levels?
Dance, Space, fighting intent and Qirin doors.
I just wanted an expensive element to trade.

>>6135379
>A white marble door featuring rich marquetry representing couples dancing in countless different styles.
Honestly I don't know what the puzzle is and I don't think this is the right one simply because one of the guys QM responded to voted for this also the first option always being the first door frankly doesn't make much sense to me from a OOC perspective.

>>6135544
I think the amount of doors may be based upon our True Qui circulation at the time? Not sure about theme but they def seem to be relevant to our affinities/desires atleast to a degree.

>>6135635
Actually know what screw it gonna change my vote to
>A door made of battleworn steel, framed by two fighters staring at each other, radiating an aura of barely contained power
I have eyes but can't see Mnt. Tai for shit

>>6135635
Oh no.
You got it in one.

Gold space snake body refinement
Now dancing space and body refinement.

It's our body refinement plus way of the beast bound fighter.
Damn. That's a good sense. Well done man.
Though uh. . . Why is the Qirin present, our unbreakable bond to the empress?

>>6135655
Thinking about that makes more sense

>>6135433
I bet you would, cakeboy

>>6135379
>A white marble door featuring rich marquetry representing couples dancing in countless different styles

>>6135535
Just in case changing my vote>>6135412
to
>A white marble door featuring rich marquetry representing couples dancing in countless different styles

Locking.
I'll take 3 rolls of 1d100.

Rolled 61 (1d100)

>>6135980

Rolled 54 (1d100)

>>6135980
Gains?

Huh, maybe dance fits well with a free flowing robe

Rolled 36 (1d100)

>>6135980
I will roll the last die

It is clear : the door are related to the foundation you've practiced in accord with your Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfighter Wanderer Meditation - explaining the differences of the appearant door. What about that Qirin one? Could it be due to your link with the Empress?

You push the white marble door. Instantly, you're sucked in a whirlwind of blue shadowy figures in an insanely huge ballroom.
The floor is one immense mirror, reflecting the ceiling in a head-hurting way. You recognize the shadows for what they are : Astral Selfs.
You have a flash of insight : those forms are echoes of Cultivators currently dancing. However, something's strange : you fail to recognize their sect's outfits.
Style are mixxed, with many clearly foreign. More foreign than natives. Normal people makes up for less than one over twenty dancers, other having strange facial features such as deformed noses and ears, a really dark hue of skin, lithe beings with pointy ears, squat and stouts bearded jig-dancers, demons, buddhas, and so many beastfolks - white-winged, catlike, fishlike.
Your eyes wide open in awe, you step away to avoid a couple waltzing only to ram two women interlaced in an intricate style involving some kind of leg-knitting, dissipating them in a cloud of particles.
"Ḯ̴̢̢̞͙͈͖'̶͉̞̊̓͐͝d̴̺̄̚̕͘͝ ̴͚̠̓͝ă̸̢͕͓̤̌͒͘̕͝p̶̹̟͙̗̍̿̄̕p̸̬̙̯͍̽̊͑̿̇͠r̸̢̻̻̎̌̽e̸̠̫̟͕̓̾̌͝͝c̴͙̻̻̣͊̉͜ì̷̦͇̱̭̹͓̆̂̆̎à̴͖̰͉̓ṱ̵̠̳̔͊e̷̻͒̈́͛ ̸̝̜̯̳̾̋̆i̴͉̠̫̜̬͐̄̋̈̉f̷̞̫̼͈̯̓͛̎̕͘ ̴̧͛̋̕y̵͍̤̭̙̽͜͜ö̸͇͓͔́u̴͍͖͋̆̚͠͝ ̵͓̞̓́ç̷͕͚̺̭͙͑͋̐̌ô̷̧̮̭̗̬͐̐̃̐̕͜u̶̱̍͛l̵̹̘͎̽́̾͊ḍ̵̓̒̕ ̵̙̯̼͍̓͑̍̏ȓ̷̺̝̘̎͂̋̇͗ẹ̶͆́̍͂́͊s̴̗̪̏͂p̴̛͍͗̀̒̐͠e̷̠͔͕̤͖͛͆̋̓͊c̸̛̘̹̻͚̥͌t̸̛̗͎̱̉͆͑̀ ̵̰͓̈́̀̕ţ̸̻̜̉̆̓̄̏͠ĥ̵̛͕̳̣̬̝̃e̴̙͎̯̟̖̺͒̔̈̕̚ ̷̢̬̙̪̀ō̴̥͉̭̈́͌́̽̍͜t̶̻͚͊̌͊͂h̵̳͚̏̃e̴̮͙̯͈͍̾̂̽͑r̷̗̄̀͋͘ ̷̩̊d̶̛̰̰̺̀ä̷̖͛͊̐̈́ņ̶̨̹͚́͋̇͋͌c̵̥̫͇̈́̉͋͝e̸̱͖̯̬͆̑̐̔̚r̵̡̨̤̭͛̿̕'̵̧̛̳̟̤̈͌s̶͍̣̠̟̠̘̉͑͆̚ ̸̞̹͙͇͇̋̌͠i̵̞̘̺̟̠̹̔̋́ñ̸̝̥̜͉̻̿͆s̴̨̯̜̍̀̆̚͝ṕ̶̡͓͙̈́i̵̳̓́̈́̃r̸̞̒a̶̦͒̔̎t̶͇̦͎̤͆͝i̶̢̱̻̻͖͌̿̓̐̽o̷͈̤̬̍̈̿͘͝ņ̵̞͐̔,̵̢̓̓ ̷̛̞̹̺̭̍͗̓̒l̸͔̹̱̿̍͘i̴̢̧̛̬̥͐̏̊͠ṯ̴̝̝͂̈́̿t̶͍̭̓̈́̇̈́l̴̡̜̥̠̕e̵̮̖̜̖̘̼̐ ̵̝͙̫͚̖̔̿P̸̡̧̼̖͓͛̕͜h̶̜̬͍̤̹̃͊ö̸͓̣́̉̍͝e̴̤͎͖͋̈́͋͒n̷̛̆͜i̸̜̦̖̱̰̊͋̕x̸̼̬̆̾̎̒͐̑ "
So those are practitionners of Dance techniques currently having heaven-blessed performances? And colliding with them messes with their favored opportunity? You do your best to avoid the other as much as you can.

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That is to say you struggle a lot, feel like you lack grace, and interfere a couple more time before understanding the place's logic.
What, or who, pulled you there organized and orchestrated the inspiration for the many styles and rhythms, including that sharp-looking blade dance, to fit each other in a way that overcome your comprehension.
The answer is simple, really. You have to dance your Rising Phoenix's Wide Ballet - this let you mess up with a good few less of the inspired dancers, most certainly avoiding you the ire of the great choregrapher.

You take a deep breath as you made it out of the dance floor; safely protected by the walls. This is the perfect time for some introspection.
Enhanced by True Qi, one of your Channels is particularly bright - in a way you never even had the luck to perceive. The benefits of wandering to hidden realms can't keep piling like this, can they?
Anyway, you see your channel related to "Dance" as a blue string in a red sheath. The string is your channel itself, while the sheath is... your potential? Apparently, your channel grew to match the sheath - concerning for the future.
However, dancing in this peculiar realm seems to draw the minute, trace amount of Inborn True Qi remaining in your body toward the sheath, widening it by a hair width.
Is that overcoming a bottleneck? Increasing one's own potential? Well, you never figured your dancing ability might be a limiter so early in your cultivation.
Anyway, nothing to get in that exact room. You push the ballroom's door, finding yourself in some dim-light pub with a stage occupied by some kind of Singing and Dancing Turtle Spirit.
You instinctively clutch your single remaining Spiritual Bead.
>Use it on the wild spirit (lose your spiritual bead, gain a S&D Turtle Spirit)
>Safekeep the Spiritual Bead for later use

Whatever your choice is, you press on. Wait, how are you back to the first ballroom? It is now empty. The performance seemingly put the dancefloor on fire - no, that's not it.
These are flames made of exceedingly strong "dancing" intent but holding no kind of fire energy, laced with an unknown energy. You extend your hand, and somehow grasp it, while your body is pulled back to Stable Lotus countryside.
>Obtained the strange "Dancing Flame"

You bones have healed and solidified.
It's been 2 years and 11 month since you joined the Eastern Province branch of Tamers of Hundred Beasts.
Either Combine a Foundation and chose 2, or chose 3

Combine your Foundation work (pick 1 body and 1 meditation):
>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]
>Body [Golden Scales of the Skystone Snake]
>Meditation [Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfighter Wanderer] [Pills available]
>Meditation [Poem of the Rising Phoenix]
>Meditation [Poisonner's Ultimate Selftrial]
Potential
>Maybe one specific technique of yours should be improved? [Choose in addition to said technique. More chances of breakthrough]
Friendship
>Keep improving things between Ai and Dhundan
>Help the trio of gifted Cultivator with their cultivation!
>Train Squad Tactics
Other
>Reflect on your archetype [Write-in] [Locked]
>Work on your Unlimited Rising Star Kick [Pills available]
>Work on your Mental Energy with Dhundan
>Work again on the Horse Realm martial scroll
>Examinate the scroll obtained in the Tamers of Thousand Beast treasurery!
Weapon skills
>Work on your Unarmed Style : Metal-melting Truefire
>Work on your Windy Cavalier's Halberd [Pills available]
>Work on your Spear style : Blood-Shadow Wolf Painful Assault
>Work on your Mounted Archer’s Wind-Gliding Phoenix's Venom Arrow [Pills available]
>Work on your Meteor Hammer Style : Silk Tiger Sun-Seer [Pills available]
>Work on your Jade Phoenix's Concealed Meteor Swarm
Spiritual Arts Technique
>Work on your Crimson tides of life Ichor
Spiritual Beasts
>Investigate on the talking Spiritual Beasts
>Investigate Body Shifting with your Spiritual Animals
The sect
>Ask Ryota for a Mission!
>Ask Ryota for skills allowing survival in extreme environments!
>Ask Ryota about the ideal split to break through!
Strengthening the Jar
>Slack off [It will be bad for your mental health]
>Ask Snake Mistress about what is love
And, as always...
>Write-in allowed!

>>6136163
Can we use the turtle as a training guide for dancing? If so then yes.

>Meditation [Poem of the Rising Phoenix]
>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]
>Investigate Body Shifting with your Spiritual Animals
>Work on your Mounted Archer’s Wind-Gliding Phoenix's Venom Arrow [Pills available]

Might get poisoned but it crit fishing time

Growth astral space blood dance and phoenix.

>Trade in whatever meridian points we got for a nice blood material and whatever word thinks would be good along with those feathers to max it out.

>>6136163
>Toss out the bead
We can trade it in for better shit and possibly get some more.

>Mounted archer style
>Focus improvement [Mounted archers style]
>Investigate beast shifting.
Use the pills.

Alrighty hotshot, this is your best chance to make solidified feathers. Roll a crit, don't fuck it up.

for everyone else who might be wondering, Focus technique lowers the crit rate while the pills available should give us advantage to rolling for the upper numbers.

Side note. Isn't it weird to you guys how there isn't a realm for pheonix.

>>6136176
The techniques might add bonuses though. . .

Fuck it, I think 2 success8ve pheonix based techniques would add a sufficient bonus to outweigh Focus.

Plus we are getting more benefits besides.

>>6136179
>Change focus improvement to wide Ballet and Poem of rising Ascendency

>>6136180
I remember this tidbit.
As this technique shares similarities with your Bow skill, it looks like training the Halberd skill after your bow skill yields great results.

So the question is our bonus with meditation and body better then halbard into bow skill. I remember it was mentioned before about how it's yes and no and we also have pills for halberd style.

Can we get some clarity QM?

>>6136183
So we could halberd into archer into investigate beast shifting.
For a double pill bonus in theory.

Clarification : the [Pills Available] for Mounted Halberd and Wind Gliding Phoenix Arrow are a mistake as you finished them a while ago and I failed to update my choices.txt

>>6136183
Mate, we cant do that for the simple reason that while it would boost our chances for bow skill to hit a crit, we need to advance the animal-soup manifestation skill, which involves beast shifting option.

The joke in all of this would be that permenant manifestation is 3rd stage or higher, but let's not be like that.

>>6136305
>>6136176
>>6136179
What can we do now that benefits the most from the last bit of Inborn True Qi we have?

>>6136341
Honestly I'm not sure.
Nothing else is growth related bar metal melting truefire, but we know that technique intuitively.

Helping our bottlenecks, which we can't really do much about without items.
The beast scroll we got from the main sect isn't growth related but is related to pheonexes.

Short answer nothing comes to mind.
My recommendation is that we follow the other anons plan to try our best and get a solidified pheonex feather skill.

>>6136347
OK

>>6136163
backing >>6136179 >>6136180

>>6136161
>Use it on the wild spirit (lose your spiritual bead, gain a S&D Turtle Spirit)
>>6136163
>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]
>Meditation [Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfighter Wanderer] [Pills available]
>Maybe one specific technique of yours should be improved? Mounted Archer’s Wind-Gliding Phoenix's Venom Arrow
>Investigate Body Shifting with your Spiritual Animals

Rolled 94, 72, 35 = 201 (3d100)

>>6136163
>Take the turtle. He's not strong, but he's defensive. What songs do you sing kappa-san?
It's our final season with true Qi. Probably the same for our age mates.
>Train spirit powers with the other children. Watch for what goes missing as we transition from the period of limitless potential. Use the growing shadows left behind to help understand the nature of True Qi.
>Bond with the Growth Gi.
>Attune the other children to the Device to better understand the nature of the energies and attunements flowing through us.

Roll a trio of dice, for no other reason than the love of seeing chaos coalesce into certainty as the future slides through the present and into the past.

>>6136163
>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]
>Medittion [Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfighter Wanderer] [Pills available]
>Work on your Mounted Archer’s Wind-Gliding Phoenix's Venom Arrow
>Work on your Jade Phoenix's Concealed Meteor Swarm

>>6137610
Great waste of perfectly good rolls, anon.

>>6137706
Well fingers crossed we crit for perm feathers. heck we could trade some to pill uncle for custom phoenix pills maybe

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"... And here is that crooner turtle spirit.
- Hmmm... you should have held onto that bead. It's a second-stage turtle with Dancing and Singing attributes.
The sect only have a couple body-tempering techniques using dancing : that Hawk Wide Ballet of yours, and the Pearl Hare's Frolic.
None of those students have music inclination, nor Turtle affinity. And without the possibility to travel, I can't really trade it to other branches.
- So my hard worked fell into emptiness like water drawn from a woven bamboo basket.
- Don't misunderstand, it's still worth something. But not much. Around one beast-related material worth."

You then spend two weeks giving your best. On the good side, your cultivation keeps piling up and increasing, already reaching a neat quarter-full dantian.
On the less positive side, there is no kind of improvement for your goal of creating permanent Phoenix Feathers using your burst skill. You can't help but think you picked the right way to achieve this goal, but merely lacked insight. You have the utmost and profound certitude that this course of action will definitely pull this sooner or later. But do you have such time at hand? After all, you'll see the merchants again quite soon.

Either Combine a Foundation and chose 1, or chose 2

Combine your Foundation work (pick 1 body and 1 meditation):
>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]
>Body [Golden Scales of the Skystone Snake]
>Meditation [Way of the Spiritual Beast Boundfighter Wanderer] [Pills available]
>Meditation [Poem of the Rising Phoenix]
>Meditation [Poisonner's Ultimate Selftrial]

Potential
>Maybe one specific technique of yours should be improved? [Choose in addition to said technique. More chances of breakthrough]
Friendship
>Keep improving things between Ai and Dhundan
>Help the trio of gifted Cultivator with their cultivation!
>Train Squad Tactics
Other
>Reflect on your archetype [Write-in] [Locked]
>Work on your Unlimited Rising Star Kick [Pills available]
>Work on your Mental Energy with Dhundan
>Work again on the Horse Realm martial scroll
>Examinate the scroll obtained in the Tamers of Thousand Beast treasurery!
Weapon skills
>Work on your Unarmed Style : Metal-melting Truefire
>Work on your Windy Cavalier's Halberd
>Work on your Spear style : Blood-Shadow Wolf Painful Assault
>Work on your Mounted Archer’s Wind-Gliding Phoenix's Venom Arrow
>Work on your Meteor Hammer Style : Silk Tiger Sun-Seer [Pills available]
>Work on your Jade Phoenix's Concealed Meteor Swarm
Spiritual Arts Technique
>Work on your Crimson tides of life Ichor
Spiritual Beasts
>Investigate on the talking Spiritual Beasts
>Investigate Body Shifting with your Spiritual Animals
The sect
>Ask Ryota for a Mission!
>Ask Ryota for skills allowing survival in extreme environments!
>Ask Ryota about the ideal split to break through!
Strengthening the Jar
>Slack off [It will be bad for your mental health]
>Ask Snake Mistress about what is love
And, as always...
>Write-in allowed!

>>6137860
>Weigh our assistance with the aptitude of the new kids coming in against another material.

It's soon to be our third anniversary, sp it's time for kids to come in again.
And hey, We might not be able to use it.
But guess who can.

That sect of weirdo's with no speciality and a wild "throw everything at the wall to see what sticks"

They would have a singing and dancing spec cultivator. And they would probably pay well for a second stage beast.

But do we even need to sell it?
I think we have enough to get every bit we need. .

Got dancing flame, astral body stuff from the twig, 3 floating 3rd stage meridians of value, we can directly trade the turtle now for a blood shadow wolf fur off ryota or all learners teacher.

Plus our feathers to trade.

So my second action I guess is
>Trade our feathers and turtle to whomever for our desired aspects, then send a letter to golden eye so he knows the bits we want him to supply us with before we get there.

I feel like the qm won't like this write in though.

>>6137881
>>Weigh our assistance with the aptitude of the new kids coming in against another material.

That can definitely be done as a free action, tying you in for next turn.

>Trade our feathers and turtle to whomever for our desired aspects, then send a letter to golden eye so he knows the bits we want him to supply us with before we get there.
This will be rejected but not for the reason you think : the "second half" of the turn will be the trade and exact craft rules with cashing in your various treasures, favour, materials.

>>6137894
Aight.
>biw skill
>animal shifting

Why not

>>6137896
Send it support nothin else but to try for round 2.

>>6137896
+1

>>6137860
>>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]
>Meditation [Poem of the Rising Phoenix]

>Work on your Mounted Archer’s Wind-Gliding Phoenix's Venom Arrow [Pills available]
>Work on your Jade Phoenix's Concealed Meteor Swarm

PHEONIX PHEONIX PHEONIX PHEONIX PHEONIX

>>6137860
>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]
>Meditation [Poem of the Rising Phoenix]
>Maybe one specific technique of yours should be improved?

>>6138127
You can have foundation and a move or two moves.

Not both. The third move is preselected to finish our garment.

>>6138154
Improve the meditation technique or the body tempering?

>>6137894
Oh yeah, I thought it was obvious but might not be.

I am still pushing that free action with my vote here.
>>6137896

The extra favour is good.

>>6138127
Im this guy forgot about garmet move

Changing to

>>Body [Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet]
>Meditation [Poem of the Rising Phoenix]

>Work on your Mounted Archer’s Wind-Gliding Phoenix's Venom Arrow [Pills available]

<whispers>pheonix pheonix pheonix <whispers>

>>6138237
We also, sadly, lack pills.

But if we make shit and have favours left over, we can probably afford to buy more pills or get stuff for uncle soulgaze to trade for pills.

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Tally status.

No update tonight.

>>6137860
>Foundation: Rising Phoenix Wide Ballet & Poem of Rising Phoenix
>Investigate Body Shifting

>>6138221
>>6138154
Oops I thought I included Mounted Archer’s Wind-Gliding Phoenix's Venom Arrow

>>6138707
You have 2 options to pick, adding archer would mean replacing one of your two options. Because to focus down an option you have to he doing it anyway

So the winning option still is bow + body shifting.
However, Foundation + body shifting gives you better odds and it feels out of character not to pick the foundation

>>6137923
>>6138855
>>6138446
Then I'll Swap and support this.