Finally, the rush slowed down to a trickle, and— taking a moment to catch his breath, Mingtian realized how hungry he was. Stupid mortal body, unable to safely practice grain liberation even if he decided to leverage his meager alchemical skill to make the world’s most awful satiation pills… Usually he fixed that by transforming in sunlight when he went off to nature walks or the moon or wherever when his shift was complete, but even that wasn’t perfect.

Maybe he should just go get something to eat? He’d had to get a bank account and everything to deposit his paycheck, and the money had just been kind of… accumulating there. Though… he grimaced at the thought of eating alone. The restaurants in East Saffron were so much less communal than the informal things of his first sect, and he couldn’t help but find them—

Well, there were two people that’d probably jump at the chance for a free dinner. Finishing with the last of the books, he returned the cart, informed Janus he was heading out for dinner, then went on a very, very short quest to find Avyr sprawled out exactly where he’d been the entire day. He knelt beside the cat, scanning over the book he was reading— some sort of East Saffron history textbook? Then quietly asked, “so—”

Avyr flinched back in surprise, tumbling into the wall behind him with a hiss. “What— what?” He shook his head, picking himself up from the ground, wide-eyed as he stared at him. “How’d you sneak up on me like that?” Old habits, really, but that was… probably a bad response.

He just shrugged instead. “You were very

absorbed in your book.” Gaslighting for the win! “Anwyas, I finished up most of my work for today and was wondering if you wanted to join me for a meal someplace.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to be a burden…”

“It’s no problem. I planned on asking Lily if she wanted to come with, by the way, so if you could help me find her…” that, of course, made the cat jump to join. Well that or him getting frustrated at the convoluted history of East Saffron, Mingtian didn’t know.

Avyr gently grabbed the book in his front paw, replacing it on the shelf before following him out into the city park. Late afternoon sunlight streamed golden over the city, turning even the so-mundane buildings of its new districts into something, like burnished brass catching, and scattering, gliding the whole world beneath its radiance. Avyr’s fur almost seemed to come alight beneath that light— and Mingtian couldn’t help but idly wonder how impressive it’d look if he cultivated the Writ of Boundless Radiance…

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He followed along lazily behind the cat, not even bothering to expand his spiritual sense in search of Lily— Avyr found her easily enough. His senses were really not to be underestimated, and if he cultivated those as he advanced further through the realms he could become an unparalleled assassin or… no, no, he didn’t need to think about that. At least not for a few hundred years— when he approached Sundering, then maybe he’d consider stepping in if he hadn’t found a good technique for himself yet.

“…you’re not listening, are you?”

“Nope,” he lied. “I was listening the entire time.”

Lily gave him an unimpressive look from where she sat on a low-hanging branch, sleeves stained with ink and the forest detritus around her disturbed with the impression of rather… vigorous talisman training. “I was asking about the interaction between the amplification and modulation runes? Did you know about that when you gave me the worksheet?”

Yes! He grinned broadly, and maybe a little bit smugly too. “Of course I knew! I’m proud that you managed to figure that one out.” She was actually getting rather good— not suspiciously so for a mortal, yet, but still— good for how long she’d been learning. And that was Immortal Sovereign Mingtian levels of good, not this dinky realm’s standards.

She scowled at him— cutely, if he had to say so himself. “Then why didn’t you tell me!

“When given a single corner of a square, the intelligent disciple finds the other three without prompting. To show the whole square is for a master to fail—”

“I almost blew up!”

He coughed lightly. Right. Whoops… “well. You know the saying; it’s good you’re not too mad at that because I was going to invite you out to dinner with Avyr and I.”

“That’s not a saying!”

He raised an eyebrow. “Unless you don’t want to come?” She huffed, and scuffed the ground with a foot, but fell beside Avyr without too much of a fuss. “That’s what I thought about.” The big cat chirped with laughter, earning him a shove from Lily, to which he retaliated, and— Mingtian reached over and grabbed both of them before it could devolve into a brawl. “Dinner first, alight?” Both nodded, a little embarrassed. “Where do you want to eat?”

“The steak place down past the orphanage, at the intersection of the the bottom park near where the big warehouse—” she paused, then, a little slower— “there’s this really good steak place where they give you these little strips of meat, and then you get to cook them by yourself at the table, and I’ve always wanted to go. It sounds like so much fun, doesn’t it?”

Mingtian glanced at Avyr, who just blinked slowly. “I don’t have a problem with it.”

“Yes!” One victorious fist pump in victory later, Lily all but pulled them south through the park, garnering a few bemused gazes from the other passersby. Probably at the comical sight of a massive seven foot long cat being pulled along by a comparatively diminutive girl.