Avyr stared at him in shocked surprise for a moment, and even Lily gave him a wide-eyed glance— for good reason; a cultivator’s path was not something lightly spoken about. Even if he was technically a mortal, and actually an Immortal Sovereign and thus above the sort of concerns that spilling such secrets was wont to bring, he’d still have been wary about just sharing.

Clearly Avyr was warring between that inclination to secrecy and his friendship, his trust— but, ultimately, haltingly, he whispered— “I cultivate the Writ of the Peerless Paw, which… it is a powerful scripture. I know that it can advance to at least core formation, and I’ve been told that it even has secret techniques to survive the Sundering tribulation, but…” he was silent for a long moment. “It was my parents’ technique. And my parents are gone.”

“I imagine that it relies on a cultivation resource of some sort to advance from Shedding to opening? You don’t have to clarify what it is—” if he knew, which Mingtian highly doubted— “but as far as I understand, that’s the general gist I get from the cultivation techniques of—” this world— “here,” he finished lamely.

Avyr blinked. “How’d you know? I was hoping to transition the Bloody Saffron Sutra or whatever the sect uses, but, yes— that’s exactly how it works.”

“I guessed, but it wasn’t that hard of a guess to make—” he shrugged, then paused as their food came, letting the the waitress put everything down on the table before picking back up the conversation and a particularly delicious looking shrimp both— “Shedding cultivators are few and far between, but more common than they should

be in a city of this size, with so many formations absorbing the environmental qi. And that’s not even mentioning Opening cultivators— and the fact that everyone seems to become a cultivator through public service, which suggests they’re being made cultivators. And, it would allow a pure… hm, ‘flavor’ of qi to be used in their advancement, which would make designing cultivation paths a fair bit simpler.” Something that was never easy to do for another person.

“That’s…” Lily blinked, mouth a little open for a long moment. “That’s genius, actually. I can’t believe you figured that all out just from… situational observation.” Then— “anyways, what does that have to do with Avyr’s problems?”

Stolen novel; please report.

Mingtian chuckled. Of course— trust Lily to cut to the heart of the problem. “The essence of it is that cultivating through whatever miracle resource the sect doles out to its subsidiaries isn’t the only way of cultivating. It’d be a great deal more difficult, but not at all impossible to just… cultivate through Shedding normally.”

Avyr sat back stunned, as though the thought had never even occurred to him. “Like higher realm cultivators? That’s possible?

Isn’t the whole point of Opening to carve meridians that make that possible?”

“All the ancient cultivators couldn’t have relied on natural treasures to advance. Not if there weren’t cultivators already to procure those natural treasures for them.” It was simply logical, and totally not something he’d already known. “If you had a formation of appropriate strength or a sufficiently tall mountain, or a spot outside the city… you could, theoretically, advance gradually through to Opening, or at least half-step Opening, increasing your strength to peak-Shedding instead of the low-Shedding it is now. With a good enough formation, you could even cultivate an aspect to your qi that you chose. To match your Writ of the Peerless Paw, or even something else…”

Lily narrowed her eyes. “Then why aren’t you a Shedding cultivator already? Or even an Opening cultivator?”

Mingtian just nibbled on the dumpling he’d fished out of the soup, and sat back, and gave the two kids his very best ‘mysterious hidden master’ variation of smile. “That’s a good question.” He didn’t say anything further. Luckily, the two kids had temperance enough to know not to push…

Though, given how Lily looked, he half expected her to try and cultivate on her own as soon as possible. That’d be something he’d have to address… but for the moment, as they ate, and talked about less heavy things, he could content himself in giving his very first secret hidden master advice! It was just as fun as he’d imagined.

Perhaps…

He’d have to keep a careful eye on the two of them. But for now, they enjoyed their meal, those problems so far away—

Simple.

At peace.