Randy stepped up to the gate to the base, and someone came over to meet him. “Mike?” I asked, realizing I knew the man.

  “Oh, Kevin. Good to see you again.” he said. “I knew Randy was joining us, but didn’t realize you were too.”

  “Oh, I’m not. Just came to see my cousin off. I guess that means you are the team sniper?” I pointed to the gun that was slung across his back. “Is that a real 50 cal?”

  “Yep. Military model too. I kept it when I left the service, and even bought some Core level bullets for it.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a five round magazine. “$200 per round, though, so I only have ten magazines.” He pointed to the P90 hanging on his waist and 9mm pistol on his waist. “That’s why I have these. Foundation rounds for the Glock are only $5 each, and $4 for the P90, so I can fire for a lot longer if use them.”

  “Nice.” said Randy, looking at the rifle. I knew he wanted a military issue weapon himself, but for a civilian to own one required a special license, which Randy didn’t have. If he made enough on this trip, though, he would probably spend the time and money to get one.

  “Well, we’d better get going. The team is scheduled to leave in about an hour, and we need to double-check your equipment to make sure you have all of the things you need.”

  Randy nodded. “Fair enough. See you when I get back, Kev.” While the base on the other side of the gate had a cell phone tower that could relay calls through the gate, the gate tended to disrupt radio signals, so it wasn’t certain that he could get a good enough connection to call anyone on the other side.

  Randy showed his ID to the man at the base’s gate, had his mana signature verified, and was allowed to enter, as he was part of a team that was allowed to travel through the dimensional gate. Once inside he moved to the staging area in front of the pagoda, which was having a second story added to it for offices and meeting rooms, and saw six other men sitting around two electric hummers. The SUVs were specifically designed to run indefinitely on qi, drawing in the energy fast enough that the only way to deplete their onboard qi storage on Earth would be to accelerate at a high rate constantly. In the other world, with its measured twelve times higher background qi levels than here, the vehicle wouldn’t even face that issue, with only minor modifications being needed to allow it to use the qi more quickly.

  As the vehicle would have far more energy at its disposal, a Foundation level defensive formation had been added to it to as well, letting it ignore weaker attacks. Some of the vehicles which went through the gate, mostly those of the military but sometimes those of mercenaries, which Randy now qualified as, would also have attack Formations or devices added, with a few having flight or stealth formations added so that they could either sneak into other areas or fly where they needed to go, though the flight would be much slower than their top land speed if they didn’t deactivate the defensive formation and use its power to fly faster.

  Mike introduced Randy to the others, and they went over his equipment. The only issue they had was that he didn’t have any emergency rations, which all of them, including the non-combatants had. They quickly bought him a bottle of satiation pills, about the size of a water bottle and containing 15 pills, and everyone got inside the vehicles so that they could set out.

  Mike, Randy, and two others would be acting as guards for the four scientists onboard, two anthropologists, a geologist, and a biologist, which would be studying the local societies, ground structure, and lifeforms.

  When they were ready, two guards and two scientists per vehicle, the main doors of the pagoda were opened up and the two vehicles drove inside. After the military verified that the vehicles and everyone inside of them were whitelisted by the gate’s barrier and that everyone’s body camera was on, requiring someone here at the base to turn it off, they were allowed to go through it.

  The SUV came out of the gate into a large concrete courtyard where several other vehicles were parked, though no lines were drawn to mark out specific parking spots. After they were through they went towards the main gate, not intending to stay here if they didn’t have to. After their IDs were checked once again, they were allowed to leave.

  Outside the base’s walls were several primitive looking houses. Gathered around these houses were hundreds of natives. While the natives watched them, none of them approached the vehicles, as they knew that some of the vehicles would automatically attack anyone that touched them if they weren’t part of the team.

  A few minutes later they had left the refugee town and turned onto the main road for the area. While it had been designed for something like horse drawn carts, being paved with stones, the cars could drive on them well enough, though they couldn’t travel at their full speed as the road was too bumpy.

  They drove in the direction of one of the major cities in the area. It was a small city-state of around ten thousand people name High River, being built beside a mountain lake. It would be the first stop in their journey, though they hoped to travel to several other such city-states before having to return.

  As High River was around 250 miles away, or 500 li, what the locals used to measure, a distance that was considered reasonable by the locals even though it would take over a week to travel on foot, and the SUVs could only make 30 kilometers per hour on this road, it would take over eight hours to reach the city. They had left just after sunrise, local time, 10:00 on Earth, so they would likely arrive some time in the late afternoon, after which they would have to find a place to store their vehicles and get a room in an inn.

  Randy was taking a nap in the back seat around noon, them being most of the way to the city already, when someone poked him. “Hey, Randy, wake up.” said Mike, who was in the passenger seat working as a lookout. “Someone is coming, and she’s in the Core realm.” Mike pointed Randy looked out the front window to see a woman coming towards them on a flying sword.

  “That can’t be a practical way to fly.” Randy said. “A boat is much better.”

  “Also much bigger, harder to carry, and less useful in fights outside of maybe naval battles.” Mike responded. A minute later the woman landed on the road, jumped off the sword, and waved her hand at it, causing it to rapidly shrink and fly into a bag on her waist. Quite a nice waist, in Randy’s opinion, though her chest was a bit to small for his tastes. Not that he’d turn her down if she offered.

  The two vehicles stopped and the eight of them got out. Mike slung his Rifle onto his back and put his hand on his P90, just in case she decided to attack. “Only fire in self defense,” said Greg, the leader and Geologist of their expedition, then Greg walked towards the woman.

  He held up his hand and started speaking in some strange language Randy barely recognized. While he had installed the Other World Language app on his phone, a program which could automatically translate from English, French, or Mandarin to any of the three native languages of this world, and had an AI to teach you those languages, Randy had only learned a few common phrases from it, much like he had learned to curse in Spanish before ever learning to actually speak it to some degree, though he wasn’t fluent in it.

  Mike, on the other hand, had learned as much of the local language as he could, much like he had learned Arabic when he was stationed in the middle east before the discovery of qi. It never hurt to be able to talk with the locals, after all, even if they were hostile, as one couldn’t properly interrogate a prisoner that one couldn’t understand. This woman, however, didn’t seem to be hostile.

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  “Hello.” said Greg, tapping his heart with his right hand in the traditional local greeting. “How may we help you?”

  “I sensed a group of eight cultivators approaching and grew curious. Your vehicle it strange. Is it some type of relic?”

  “You could say that.” answered Greg. “It draws in the ambient qi to power its formations, and those formations let it move, along with other things.”

  The woman nodded. “I am Green Butterfly, of the Eastern Gate sect.” she responded. “Who are you?”

  “I am Greg Talmidge. I don’t have a dao name. I am an independent cultivator from the nation of the United States.”

  The woman looked puzzled. “Strange, I have never heard of this ‘United States’ nation. Is it far from here?”

  Greg nodded. “Quite far. We are not sure how far, but a demonic cultivator opened a portal to our nation’s territory several moons ago, and we only recently built a base on this side.”

  She nodded. “Such portals are rare, but not unheard of. Do you know the Dao name of this demonic cultivator?”

  “I believe it was Blood Red Scorpion. He was in the late fifth realm.”

  Upon hearing this name she seemed surprised. “I had heard that he was in hiding, as several fifth realm masters of my own sect had sought to eliminate him for what he did to us, but I didn’t know that he opened a portal to escape to another land.” She thought for a few seconds then continued. “Then I assume you are scouting out this area for your alliance of states?”

  Greg nodded. “Partially, though we also seek to find trade routes so that we may bring new techniques and cultivation resources to our people.” While the true purpose of the trips was to learn about the world and its people, saying so would make them sound like spies. If, however, they pretended to be simple merchants, no one would suspect them. The money they made could be used to fund further research groups or the information sold to a company so that they could open a trade route. The anthropologists thought that understanding the economy would help them tremendously as well.

  Butterfly nodded. “In that case, do you mind if I look over your trade goods? I may be willing to trade with you if you have something useful.”

  Greg nodded and motioned towards his vehicle. She followed him there and he opened up the back of it and removed several crates before setting them on the ground and opening them. “This crate contains books of techniques from our nation, this one contains alchemical products, and this one contains devices.” None of these were the best, as the government didn’t want to pass on any of the good stuff, but several publishing companies had printed collections of free techniques in the local language in hopes that those going through the gate would buy them, and Greg had bought one of those sets. The alchemical items were all common, cheap, medicines, and the devices were all lower grade, cheap examples of their type, with Greg not being allowed to sell the better ones to the locals out of fear that they would be used against us.

  “Do you have a jade slip with your inventory?” she asked, and Greg shook his head.

  “I haven’t had one made, as our nation doesn’t use jade slips to store information, and none of us have learned that technique yet, but I do have a magazine.” He pulled out a three ring binder with several printed sheets in plastic protectors inside, documents which listed everything we had in stock as well as everything we could get if we discovered a demand for it.

  Butterfly looked over the book, paying special attention to the plastic, as it was a strange material, and read the names and descriptions of several items. “You must be quite rich if you can afford so much metal that even this reusable book contains it.” she remarked, tapping one of the metal rings which held the pages.

  Greg remembered that the locals didn’t have much metal, and nodded. “Our nation has many mines, as metals there are far more common than in this region, so metal is cheap. In fact, our vehicle is made of mostly metal.”

  She looked surprised. “Can you repeat that?” Greg did and her eyes got wide. “Not even the richest cultivators or kings can afford a vehicle made primarily of metal, even the cheapest ones like iron.”

  Sensing that he might have found a viable market, Greg motioned towards the car. “Are you interested in buying some? I can certainly get it for you.” He knocked on the side panel of the car and it rang slightly. As far as he knew, raw materials like bulk steel and copper weren’t restricted for trade with the locals at all.

  She looked surprised at the sound. “I have only heard such a sound coming from expensive instruments. One of the elders of my sect has a drum with a head made of Steel, and another has something called a ‘bell’ which is made of a metal called ‘copper’. This wasn’t as refined as those, but it is definitely metal.”

  A few seconds later she recovered from the shock and started looking over the catalog once again. After a minute she asked about several techniques that were listed and Greg removed the books from the crate to show her. She flipped through and handed it back to him. “A third rate technique at best. It reveals nothing of the philosophy behind its techniques, merely the details of the technique. With such a method one will only grow stronger through practice and memorization, not by gaining a greater understanding of the dao which governs it.”

  Greg nodded. “I hadn’t thought about that, but where we are from, the principles upon which a technique is built are either commonly known, or considered irrelevant, as one doesn’t really need to know them on a deep level to use the technique. Just a surface understanding is enough. For example.” He lifted slightly off the ground, made a few small loops, and landed back where he started. Butterfly looked on a bit surprised. “That is a levitation technique. It works by bouncing the qi particles in the air off of the skin in order to push oneself, and is easily learned even by those who have yet to start true cultivation.”

  Butterfly looked at him a bit confused. “But that is such a crude manipulation of qi, with no understanding of philosophy or elements. I am surprised that it can have such an effect. Do you mind if I attempt it?”

  Greg shook his head, an action which meant the same here as on Earth. “Feel free. It is listed in several of these technique books, but if it appears useful, perhaps you can purchase one of those.”

  Butterfly nodded. “Does it require any particular elemental affinity or spiritual root?”

  Greg shook his head. “Most of the technique we brought, including this one, only use neutral qi.”

  She nodded and focused on the qi in the air. After drawing it in, rather than absorbing it, like one would do during cultivation meditation, she prevented it from entering her skin. While she felt in hit her, pushing slightly, it wasn’t enough to move her. “Strange, I couldn’t make it work, though I used far more qi than you.”

  Greg smiled. “You are instinctively aligning it to your own qi before it hit you. This is likely a habit you developed during cultivation. Try again, but use less qi and don’t align it to you.”

  She nodded and tried again. This time, when the qi pushed against her feet it launched her into the air higher than the top of the vehicle. She landed and looked surprised.

  “You still used too much, so it pushed much harder than it should. That just wastes qi.” He repeated the technique and slightly lifted off of the ground. “It takes far less qi than that in order to get the full effect.” He floated back to the ground.

  “You have such fine control of qi,” she said, “Even when manipulating the ambient qi. Can all of your men do this?”

  Greg nodded. “They might not have my skill, but all of them can use it. Most use a relic to fly if they need to do so, however.”

  “You have flying swords as well?” she asked. “I didn’t see them listed.”

  Greg shook his head and reached into one of the boxes before pulling out a cheap looking bracelet. It would only cost $20 in any device store in the city to get a levitation device, but these were likely of lower quality and bought in bulk for a discount. “They have one of these, or a superior version of it.” He handed her the bracelet. “Try putting it on and focus on it lifting you. Tell it to do so with your mind.” Most formation devices could take simple commands from the mind of the user, and these bracelets only had the on/off and direction functions.

  She put it on and thought about it lifting her off of the ground, and a slight field of qi surrounded her before she started floating slightly, like she was weightless. She looked both surprised and happy.

  “Now, just think of the direction you want to go and it will take you in that direction.”

  She tried it and the device responded the way it should, moving her in the proper direction. After playing with it for a few minutes she landed and removed it. “It is quite a nice device, but I doubt I can afford something like that.”

  “Nonsense. It isn’t that expensive. How many stones do you think it would cost?” A Stone varied greatly by region, based on what type of stone the locals had, but in general one stone equaled the amount of energy within a peak first stage cultivator of the mind path, what on Earth would be a person that was at the peak of Gathering after converting their nervous system to meridians. The type of stone used to store it was irrelevant.

  “Oh, at least five. Maybe even ten.” Such stones were usually used to rapidly recharge a person’s qi, usually during cultivation. To a person on Earth, however, that amount of energy was what a cheap bracelet could generate in a matter of minutes. Because of that, the stones were worthless on Earth, but valuable here.

  “In that case, can you look at these stones and tell me if they are good enough to trade with?” He opened a fourth crate. It contained quartz crystals that were fully charged on Earth, but once coming to a world with much higher levels were charging to an even higher level. “How many stones is this worth?”

  She looked over the crystals, slightly confused. “These are all depleted, though they seem to be recharging properly. Did you use them to power a device? Whatever the reason, you only have around thirty stones worth of qi within them, even though they are large enough to store thousands.” Qi charge in crystals worked much like electrical charge in capacitors, with the background level being the voltage that charged them. For that reason, having twelve times the background level meant that they could store 144 times the qi. “In general, depleted stones sell for twenty percent of their full value, two stones for enough crystals to store ten stones of qi, so you could earn money by selling them, but I would probably keep them and let them recharge.”

  “Yes, they were used to power a barrier array.” Greg said, giving her a viable reason for them to be depleted. Arrays were what the locals called large scale formations that were arranged by people or objects. “It will likely take a few months before they are fully charged.”

  “Well, if you need more stones to power your array, you can follow me back to my sect. I can ask the elders to allow you to trade with the disciples. I can vouch for the quality of your wares, after all.”

  Greg nodded. A few minutes later she was flying along the road on her sword and the two cars were following behind her.