Celes’ spirit ferret was back, holding a bag with two breakfasts in its jaws.

It dropped the bag onto her lap, flickered, and broke up into a cloud of colorful sparks of Qi that got sucked back into her. More specifically, the spirit dispersed into a fractal, radiant, purple halo that flashed over her head.

The kitsune looked resigned to her future doom. To my bygone sensibilities, she looked intriguing, surreal. Gold clips pinned to her black hair danced in the wind.

Even as frustrated as she looked when I glanced at her, I felt inexplicable waves of serenity radiating off her. Was this some sort of potent... mind control? Was this the reason why I wasn’t freaking out about losing everything and everyone I knew?

“I don’t know how I can teach you my tea rituals here… All of my tools and herbs are back at the compound,” she finally said, looking back at me.

“We’ll have to go there and grab it all then! But first — breakfast.” I grabbed the servitor-delivered bag from her lap and discovered two chicken sandwiches within it. Excellent! I hadn’t had meat for ages because the spirit hounds could track it far better than vegetables.

Resisting the maddening urge to chomp it down, I looked at the sandwich and observed its fibrous content. I took note of every grain, every last vein within the chicken sandwich. Tiny, but clearly perceivable currents of Qi flowed through everything.

Celes noticed the brilliant gleam of silver and blue shining from my eyes. “Uhh… It’s not poisoned,” she muttered. “I wouldn’t… kill someone just because they—”

“I have no idea how to detect poison using Qi. I’m simply trying to see whether the food from the Gold City has Qi in it… which it does.”

I looked at my grimy, scratched-up fingers. Beneath the tape, beneath my skin, my veins shined with Qi. Every single cell within my body pulsed with brilliant currents of magic.

The geisha looked at me, expecting an explanation.

“I was born up there.” I pointed at the black sky dotted with fraudulent gold galaxies and constellations. “I wrongly thought that the plants down here were poisoned, contaminated. But this isn’t the case. It’s the opposite! I’m full of Qi, irradiated, changed by it. My body rejects the food from the Dead City… because there’s literally no Qi down here, no magic.”

“Makes sense, I suppose.” Celes nodded. “We are unable to inhabit the cursed land of the Ancients because we were born in the divine radiance of the gods.”

“I wonder if this is the case everywhere in the world… or perhaps Boundless Chorus has sucked everything out of this place?” I looked at the pulsating yellow tentacles in the distance and wondered once again whether they were sucking time itself out of everything they’d touched.

I rewarded myself with the chicken sandwich for my incredible discovery. The delicious meat practically melted in my mouth.

Celes must have known of a quality restaurant where she had sent her phantom-ferret! The geishas were property of the cult, but at the very least, they could enjoy nice meals.

I gulped down the sandwich and continued to observe her. I had watched people before on the streets of the Gold City, but I could never formulate the right kind of questions. Questions such as… how the hell did cultivation even work?

Considering my overall position in life, I couldn’t even ask pertinent questions to the people with the know-how because I had no friends from within the gold-plated walls of the cult compound.

The one person that taught me everything I knew about cultivation, such as pushing Qi into my eyes, was an absolute monster, a living idea of villainous animosity. I shuddered and tried not to think about... my gang boss.

“Anyhow... you can teach me the tea thing later. Tell me about yourself!” I besieged Celes, interrupting her breakfast.

“What specifically?”

“Why are you a fox?”

The bluntness of my question had bowled her over just as much as the melon incident, albeit less dramatically.

“What?” She finally recollected her wits.

“Work with me, fox-girl. Why do you look like you do?”

“My grandfather was a very powerful cultivator in the city of the Prodigious Desiccator. He had killed and bound a 372-year-old foxbeast to his soul. This power still remains in my blood, albeit diluted.”

“Hrm. Binding a spirit changes your DNA?” I muttered.

“What’s... a dee-en-ey?” she inquired.

“Never mind that.” I didn’t have the time to explain the intricate complexity of the microscopic to her. “Am I going to age rapidly now? Is that how this works?” I had no idea whether my past self was male or female, but this seemed like a serious concern.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to you.” Celes shook her head. “You’ve done the servitor-binding ritual completely wrong.

“Firstly, you didn’t personally slay the beast — it had not submitted to you, so you won’t get any of the powers from the core itself. Secondly, the human skull you used didn’t belong to the beast core. They’re incompatible.

“For you, the core simply acted as an activator — it burned away as it drew ancient strength and memory from the skull. I can see that you’ve gained a bit of strength and knowledge from the bone, but that’s about it.”

“Wait… How do you see this?”

“Your Saha and Mani are now twice as bright.”

“My what?” It was my turn to be confused.

“There are seven defining chakras in every person. Saha, Ajna, Visu, Anaha, Mani, Svadi and Mula.”

“Uh-huh.” I nodded. This sounded like the cult’s way to explain complex phenomena with over-simplified terms. “And where are these magical organs located?”

“They’re not organs! They’re chakras. Saha is responsible for consciousness.” Celes pointed at the empty space right over my head. “Saha is defined as purple Qi. It controls servitor spirits. Saha-masters can control very powerful servitor spirits and even fuse with them to become beast-like.”

“Tell me the full list, please.” I urged with a beckoning hand. “They don’t teach this stuff out in the streets.”

“Alright. Ajna — is the third eye. Violet in color,” Celes pointed at my forehead. “Cultivators who specialize in raising their Ajna can see the future, predict the moves of their opponents, and block them. Ajna-trained masters are undefeated in battle because they can dodge an arrow before it strikes them.”

“Hrm. Subconscious probability calculation? That is very intriguing,” I mumbled to myself, in awe of the truly incredible potential of magic.

“Visu is blue, and it’s located in your throat.” Celes pointed at my neck. “It is the power of space and purity. As a geisha, I have been taught one art that utilizes Visu by the Unbound Cult—Purify. I use it to cleanse the ceremonial tea cups after the tea is served.”

“Cleaning and purification? Does it kill germs too? It sounds very handy!” I looked at my extremely dirty hands. Damn it, Ash, don’t eat food with dirty-ass hands. Germs exist. You know this now. How did I even survive to be sixteen?

“Visu-cultivating masters can expand any of their five senses to divine level. They are able to taste or even hear Qi emanations, peer through solid walls, etc. Such cultivators are very dangerous opponents because they cannot be deceived— they are able to smell, detect lies with their nose!” Celes added.

“Smelling lies, eh?” I immediately imagined a polygrapher sitting in a cult compound room, whose entire job was sniffing out lies.

“Anaha is green. It is located in your heart.” Celes pointed to the center of my chest. I didn’t bother correcting her about my heart’s location. “This chakra is responsible for focus, bravery, balance, and most of all—serenity.”

“Hang on,” I said, focusing on Celes. “Is this Anaha of yours the reason why I feel… so calm when I look at you? Are you mentally influencing me somehow with it?”

“Not on purpose.” Celes shook her head. “As a geisha I was trained to continuously circle my Qi through my Anaha — the chakra responsible for serenity. After a decade of training, the current of Qi formed a persistent loop of energy within my Anaha chakra so the effect is eternal.”

“You radiate serenity?” I raised an eyebrow.

The serenity-reactor, shaped like a girl with golden eyes and dark fox-ears, nodded. I could see why the cult had made her into a geisha. Her nearly jet-black hair and golden eyes were within their doctrine of appreciation of two specific colors.

“Well, keep it up!” I grinned at her. “I totally don’t mind. Anxiety can get me down sometimes. It’s nice not to worry about things!”

“Right. Mani is the gold chakra. It is located in your chest, below the heart.” The geisha pointed at my solar plexus. “It magnifies dynamism, the energy and the power to save, change, or to destroy. Masters that cultivate Mani are able to bend steel beams with their hands, punch right through a hundred-elbow thick stone wall, and move faster than you can blink.”

“The One-Punch Man power,” I mulled. Celes didn’t get my reference. I sighed. I was going to miss anime.

“Svadi is orange.” She continued her lecture, ignoring my forlorn look. “It is responsible for pleasure, sense of oneself, relationships, sensuality, and procreation.”

“Pffffff.” I tried really hard not to make any sex jokes as Celes pointed at my lower belly. Keep it PG, Ash!

“Svadi also magnifies creativity and manifests desire and confidence.” My instructor squinted at me. “What was that noise about? Geishas aren’t trained to amplify Svadi. I’m not a concubine!”

I could tell this was a bit of an irritation for her. A lot of people made loud and obnoxious erotic-themed jokes about geishas in the Grand Bazaar.

“Last but not least is Mula. It is red... and amplifies passion and longing,” Celes concluded. She didn’t even point to anything. I could guess where it was regardless. Mula sounded suspiciously similar to Svadi.

The cultivator methodology clearly wasn’t a very precise science. Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me, but when Celes spoke of specific colors, I could actually see them moving inside her aura.

They didn’t stay still for very long — her Qi was akin to a living aurora borealis, constantly shifting within her.