Two days after her return to their secret training realm… otherwise known as her qi gathering formation, Lily flopped down against one of the cong with a huff, annoyed. “Why can’t this stuff ever be easy?” Avyr didn’t respond, busy cultivating as he was, but she could see the way his ear flicked faintly in recognition of her presence. Good enough, she supposed— she didn’t really want to break her friend out of his meditation anyways. “Stupid formations, stupid runes, stupid, dumb…”

What made a rune, a rune? The answer was a deeply profound secret… probably, because she had no idea. If she’d been able to just figure it out, just crack that one little bit of the code, then she’d be able to make some really awesome things, she was sure. Formations that were not formations, or ideas expressed out of ephemerality, grand seals, arrays… she didn’t even have the names for what might be possible if she just figured it out. Something so simple…

Except, it was not simple at all. That was the crux of it, really— it was fundamental, but it wasn’t simple.

Sighing, she picked herself back up, looking out over all the work she’d managed to do. Barely two weeks, and their little enclave up in the mountains had transformed from hot springs and basically nothing else into a whole cultivation paradise— in a certain, highly optimistic sense of the word. The density of extreme yang qi she’d been able to push into the pool…

It was a lot of qi, that was for sure. Once she’d added the cooling pylons, on Avyr’s advice, she’d been able to really shove in a bunch more qi. She was sure there were ways to really make the formation heaven-defying that she just… didn’t understand, could not understand at her level of cultivation, but for a mortal’s work? She was sure it was nothing short of miraculous.

Therein lay the problem, though. It was so wide-reaching, too impressive in the totality of its grasp, that there was really no place to put a defensive formation in the whole mix of it. Not with everything else that was going on. IF she just knew a bit more about runes…

“I’m going to have to open his book, aren’t I?” She grimaced. That was the last thing she’d wanted to do, even though… all her other formations knowledge had come from Mingtian, so what was one more time? Or maybe that was the reason she held such an aversion to it? “Do I even qualify as a real cultivator, Avyr? I mean, I haven’t even cultivated at all yet, and I haven’t figured anything out, and…” she gritted her teeth, and kicked those thoughts out of her mind, and metaphorically locked the door behind them. Not like it’d keep them for long…

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She’d wanted to do this, just once at least. The reasons were selfish, and she knew that the scroll Master Mingtian had given her was a treasure beyond measure that was probably filled with all those secrets she desperately needed

…

“I don’t really need to do it. I’ll advance either way, with everything that Mingtian’s given. It just feels… I dunno, disingenuous. Like it’s too easy. Cultivation is something that should be struggled for. Something grasped against hardship, not coasted along…”

“You’re not helping anything, you know.” She squeaked as Avyr rolled his eyes at her, face flaming. She’d known that the big cat was watching, but she’d kinda forgotten that in the moment… “cultivation isn’t some… legendary pursuit. It’s easy at times, and hard at others. I’d wait until you actually become a cultivator before you worry about whether you’re doing it right or not.”

“Well, but—” Avyr had already returned to his meditation. Biting back a sigh, she slumped further against the cong. The answer was obvious. All her problems, solved by just… learning a little more. “I guess it has to do with what I find more important.” And her mind turned back, once more to that question that had been asked of her. She still did not have an answer, of course, but between personal power and Avyr’s safety? She knew which of the two was more right.

She stood, stalking over to her bag and pulling out the scroll case. It was… not innocuous at all, honestly. The ornate engravings, filigree of gold all aglow beneath the wan winter sunlight, the richness of the wood— and her knowledge that it was some sort of rare, refined treasure— couldn’t but hint at the treasure within. It really looked like the sort of thing a cultivation treasure would’ve been stored in. She wondered if the librarian inherited from wherever he’d learnt formations…

Then, with a grimace and a squirreling, twisting, sickening uncertainty that coiled through her gut, she pried open the box and pulled out the scroll.

The introduction was similar to pretty much everything else that Mingtian had ever given her, but it rapidly devolved into philosophical esoterica. She was… not good with philosophy, she’d admit— if pressured— and the sudden shift from the understandable, comprehensible science of runes and their connections and all the things that could be made with them to the nebulous drawl of thoughts on ontology and the nature of the realms was jarring at first. At least she could take a little bit of comfort in knowing that she’d never have managed to figure it out on her own? There was that, at least…

What was a rune?