“This makes no sense,” Etra scratches her head, “how in the good name of the gods did everyone pass the interrogation?”

  “It means someone managed to sneak in” Kisrin replies.

  “But how?”

  Tantra paces, how indeed? There are a multitude of methods to get into the mansion, the sheer number of windows are a testament to that, but to do so without getting caught? Ridiculous. It’s not even a case of advancement, there are Qi techniques to shroud the body, her old housemate Sola for example, but those techniques are only effective against those with no Qi senses.

  Not even immortals could escape notice.

  So, apparently a savant’s come to Ralth with the express purpose of murdering nobility, or maybe it’s just the marquis? Who knows, there are too many unknowns. At least they know the weapon used was serrated, that’s something.

  Practically useless but it’s something.

  “Does it matter if we know?” Yorin says, “we’re not part of the investigation, and everything we come up with would just be speculation.”

  “Your right,” Tantra sighs, “it’s just concerning that something like this could happen under everyone's noses.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Yorin shrugs, “it’s not like this mystery assassin’s coming to kill us.”

  “You're surprisingly cavalier about this,” Kisrin points out, “whoever this person is may have made a significant breakthrough in cultivation.”

  “Yeah well, I’m not exactly looking to skulk around all sneaky like, so it doesn’t really matter.”

  “It does matter though,” Tantra says, “this could change the geopolitical landscape forever, whoever gets their hands on this person and finds out how they did what they did could threaten every noble with just a handful of cutthroats.”

  “And even if they don’t find them they know now that it can be recreated.” Kisrin adds.

  Tantra nods at him, “indeed.”

  “This is stupid,” Etra huffs, “we should just get back to training, worrying about mystery assassins is bad for my heart.”

  “What, you scared?” Yorin teases.

  “Fuck you, you lug of a man, I’m not scared”

  “Sure,”

  “I will shove my staff up your ass to prove it.”

  “Is that a challenge?”

  “You know it!”

  They both stomp out of the room heading in the direction of the training field, pushing at each other along the way.

  “Those two should just kiss already,” Erick says.

  “Boy, did I say you could stop threading?” Tantra scowls.

  “No,” Erick drawls.

  “Then get back to it.”

  Kisrin chuckles at Erick’s grumbling as Tantra glares at the boy. He’s come along nicely in the passing years, needing perhaps only a few more months before he reaches foundation, and then they can head back to the sect. She wonders how the masters will react to Tantra teaching a secret technique to someone outside the sect. Her friends? Sure. But some random kid off the streets?

  She’ll just have to find out, it’s not like she’s bringing the boy anywhere near the DarkWoods as a vulnerable mortal, so whatever consequences come will come, and she has no regrets for the matter.

  “How’s Synthia doing?” Kisrin asks, “shouldn’t you be with her, all things considered?”

  “She has Ezra,”

  “I meant emotionally,”

  Tantra shrugs, “I’ve never gotten the impression Synthia cared for her father, If anything she’s probably examining how this might affect the family dynamic, and how she can exploit it to her favour.”

  “Still, it’s family”

  Tantra goes quiet at that.

  “Yeah,” she whispers, “It is”

  Kisrin places a hand on her shoulder, “just go see her, It couldn’t hurt.”

  “And you’ll watch Erick?”

  He chuckles, “of course, can’t let the kid get any rest after all.”

  Tantra sighs and nods, “Thanks,”

  “No problem”

  Tantra steps out of the room, heading towards the western wing where the family resides. It’s a little inconvenient for her guard to be placed in the east wing, but Tantra doesn’t really need to sleep much so It’s not like she uses the room frequently. A lot of nights she just stares at stars from Synthia’s balcony, the girl allowing it because she’s her guard, and she’s technically preventing any intruders from entering with her presence.

  Not like anyone would get that close.

  Well, maybe not before this incident.

  As she walks towards the exit to the eastern wing, she’s stopped by a thin hand placing itself on her shoulder, Tantra sighs and turns to face a slender woman of delicate curves, she wears a robe of black with a white trim, that alongside with the token of a gigantic mouth always puts her off balance.

  Brings back bad memories.

  “What do you want Rimi?” Tantra says in a clipped tone.

  Rimi raises a thin brow above her eyes of yellow, “always one for politeness I see.”

  “I don’t feel like dealing with you today, all things considered.”

  Rimi shrugs, “well too bad, Doman wants to talk to you, kin-killer.”

  “What would the young scion want with me?”

  “something about discussing the terms of your employment,”

  “Funny,” Tantra scoffs, “only a day has passed and already the boy’s trying his hand at power plays? Even the first son doesn’t have the authority to discuss my employment, let alone the third, go back and tell him, respectfully, that I don’t care”

  Rimi tilts her head, “you truly think that is wise?”

  Tantra shifts her position, manifesting Rakan’s old kanabō in the middle of the hallway, startling a few servants as they scurry to make distance from the scene.

  “We’re all under the same banner Rimi,” Tantra says with a dangerous undertone, “there’s no need to be throwing around threats like a monkey throwing shit.”

  Rimi smiles, “oh, I wasn’t threatening, just giving some advice.”

  “Your advice is both unhelpful and unwanted.”

  “Very well,” Rimi shrugs, “Let it be known that you were warned.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Then the woman turns around and walks down the hall.

  In the same direction that Tantra needs to go.

  Tantra groans as she walks down to the west wing.

  -

  Tantra’s been stuck on six threads for a while now.

  It’s not like she can’t start the next exercise, her soul doesn’t need to be all that strong to try, considering she’d only be controlling one massive thread. That’s something she’s discovered recently, adding threads stresses the soul, but making those threads bigger?

  Barely does shit.

  The second exercise involves putting a decently sized thread of Qi back into your core, keeping it separate from the mass already stored, and pulling out the other side.

  Her control is probably good enough to salvage maybe a tenth of the Qi she uses if about…a fifteenth of her core were full? She doesn’t know, she’s estimating.

  But that’s not the bottleneck.

  The bottleneck is her Qi senses

  To even keep Qi from reintegrating with her core she has to be able to differentiate between the two, and it doesn’t help that they’re practically the same. It’s the equivalent of trying trying to find the droplets of water you dripped down a river, technically possible, if only as the tiniest fraction of possibility Tantra can think of. So what is she supposed to do? It can’t be to train her Qi sense, expecting them to be that advanced on the second exercise is just ridiculous.

  There’s got to be a better method to make it work.

  She’s experimented, provisionally, with how to differentiate the two, trying to bend reality to change her Qi.

  Which it turns out is actually possible, if she wants to burn through her entire reserves in about a split second. The first time she did that she literally knocked herself out, when she woke up she was pissed.

  She was almost ready to cleanse another meridian!

  She’s got about a hundred of those now, hundred and three to be specific.

  Since her core was already empty, Tantra decided to just say fuck it and pull the remains of her soul Qi and pushing her collection of world Qi through it, which…wasn’t all that bad. She could tell the difference, only problem is she barely has any soul Qi to spare, courtesy of a distant soul.

  It’s a route she’s actually considering, for now, since it’s the only viable option she can imagine, and it makes sense. Someone practicing this technique would have an abundance of soul Qi compared to her, she just has to sacrifice making any progress with her meridians for however many years it takes her to get to the third exercise.

  But she doesn’t want to be hasty, so she just plays around with six threads for now. She’s not even bleeding! If she didn’t get a literal heart attack when trying to pull on seven threads then she’d just stick to the weaving exercises.

  Well, at least the second exercise will train the ethereal portion of her Qi sense, most can only train it by proxy through the pairing of their normal senses.

  As she makes a second pass through her intestines with a six threaded rope, she sighs. It just isn’t a challenge, and if there’s no challenge there’s no progress. Is this what older cultivators have to contend with once they get far enough along the paths? Needing to put themselves into life threatening scenarios just to make an inch of progress?

  It’s not like she needs more control, what she’s decided to call serpent’s circulation doesn’t need her to have finer precision, it’s just…she needs progress.

  It isn’t a suggestion.

  It’s a requirement.

  Control’s already proven its utility, beyond even her fancy technique. She can cover her whole body with the scales technique, she can’t manage serpent’s circulation in conjunction, but even being capable of covering her entire body for more than an instant is far beyond the scope of the technique itself.

  All because of her weaving.

  She’s experimented with a few other techniques, but beyond rejuvenation and regeneration, she just doesn’t see the utility. She still can’t get rejuvenation to work, the concept of connecting to her soul with a thread of Qi being too complicated for her puny understanding to manage, but she’s getting closer.

  She thinks.

  It’s all conjecture really, it’s not like she has a master to tell her if she’s actually making progress.

  Better not to think about that.

  There’s also the fact that some techniques are too complex to translate from the traditional brand of Qi manipulation and her free control version. There are ranged techniques but those are largely useless without a dao, and most fights between cultivators are settled in melee combat.

  She’s gotten very invested in cultivation in the past few years, but can anyone really blame her? She hasn’t practiced her financial capabilities on anything practical since she was fourteen, the Farlagh estate being too stingy to part with a few ledgers for her perusal.

  She still dreams of being a merchant, but that dream seems to grow distant as time passes.

  At least she’s learned to at least tolerate the violence, like Rakan suggested, makes her life a lot easier to live that way, but she doesn’t want to just be a thing of violence.

  Doesn’t want to live a life of violence,

  She wants to explore the vast reaches of Testhim, delivering rare goods to all the corners of the world, but that requires investment, and a lot more than the coin she’s been saving. She’s in possession of exactly one platinum, which is the equivalent of a thousand gold, but that isn’t enough to start anything but a middling company. Considering the Jade Sol’s dominance in the market, anything middling won’t survive unless they’re niche and stick to their specific localities.

  The thought of her family causes a familiar ache in her heart.

  She’s seen them, a few times, over the years.

  Hard not to when she’s guarding the marquis’s daughter, each one had a guarded expression and decidedly avoided her, which…hurt.

  But she’s gotten used to the pain, and she refuses to regret her choice.

  If it cost her family and potentially her dream then that’s just the way it is.

  -

  The halls of the manor are quiet.

  Tantra is of the mind that no one really gave a shit about the marquis, except maybe his wife and a few others, but appearances still need to be made. It wouldn’t do for a servant to start quipping jokes so soon after his passing, have to maintain the image of subdued mourning.

  Well, Tantra’s a cultivator so she doesn’t really need to play along, but she’s also nuanced in politics, and despite how her manners have devolved over the years she still understands the need for proper presentation.

  She gave the same advice to her friends, but only Kisrin and Erick really took to it. Which isn’t a surprise, Kisrin is smart and Erick is obedient. Surprisingly so for a child of his age, when will his rebellious faze come about she wonders? She just hopes it’s after they return to the sect, the masters can deal with it then.

  Okay, that’s not fair to Erick, he’s a good kid.

  She just…laments the childhood he could have had if his parents were still alive. Instead of having to suffer the half-baked wisdom of a bunch of fools. Tantra was hoping Synthia would send tutors for him, but apparently as a commoner he isn’t worth the investment.

  Which is fair, if a little blunt.

  So Tantra’s been the one in charge of his education, all while scouring books to further her own knowledge so she doesn’t languish in her intellect. She’s exhausted the books available to her on trade, so instead she furthers her mathematical capabilities, getting decently on functions and geometry.

  Otherwise she just keeps reviewing her biology books, she’s not the greatest at remembering what everything does, Erick’s actually a lot better then her when it comes to memorizing organs and muscles and the like.

  Luckily for her he’s lacking in the financial department so she can still gloat.

  “But…this…what?” Erick says stunned at the makeshift journal in front of him.

  She might not be able to practice with real journals and ledgers, but that doesn’t mean she can’t make her own!

  “What seems to be the problem, my young pupil?” Tantra says, turning up her nose.

  “Don’t do that,” he grumbles.

  “Do what?” Tantra points her nose up higher.

  “That!”

  “I do know not to what you refer to,”

  “The thing you’re doing with your nose,”

  Tantra brings her nose down and chuckles, “alright little mongrel, what’s the issue?”

  “This!” Erick points at the journal, “why are revenues a credit? Aren’t you making money? And why are expenses a debit?”

  “That my young pupil is truly one of finance's greatest mysteries,” Tantra intones, “the answer is to just roll with it.”

  “But that makes no sense!”

  “Well, think about it this way, if you debit revenues, then what account will you need to credit?”

  “The company's coin,” Erick grumbles.

  “Indeed! And if we credit our total coin then?”

  He sighs, “then we’re losing money.”

  “Except with revenues we should be making money, so to keep everything in balance it’s designed as a credit normal.”

  “Financing is stupid.”

  “Perhaps it is you who is stupid, and not the subject?”

  Erick scowls, “yeah, what's the point of the gallbladder almighty sage?”

  “Bile,”

  “And what does bile do?”

  “Something with digestion,”

  “What exactly?”

  Tantra grumbles, “you’ve been reading without me haven’t you?”

  “Nope,” Erick gives her a cheeky smile, “you just forgot, like you always do.”

  Tantra sighs, “I’m better at memorizing formulas and rules.”

  “So you admit to being a dumb?”

  “That’s not even a proper sentence.”