I thought about myself. Being the new me composed of two people was a little weird. I felt like a fancy sandwich made from many extra delicious memories.

Did my desires overlap? Is that why I hadn’t gone insane? On one hand, I loved melons. On the other hand… I also liked melons. Yay.

Except the thing I had stolen wasn’t just a melon, it was a yellow-and-black striped cantaloupe. Hrm.

I was still Ash, but an Ash whose head was now crammed full of ancient knowledge. The extra memory I was blessed with could fill a thousand scrolls worth of information!

It was bewildering that people of the distant past had read so much. That within their hands they held these devices… phones filled with the libraries of the entire world. Wikipedia and Google were the gods that they worshiped, appealed to, for nearly limitless answers.

The Immortal Cultivators of the Gold City hid all of their knowledge behind thick compound walls. Just one memory of one long-dead human was enough to fill me up, to set the sparks in my mind alight into a firestorm of possibilities.

The way back to the city was a lot more difficult because it was uphill, and I couldn’t use the slippery pipes to my advantage. A gun alone wouldn’t cut it in the sewers and catacombs of the Gold City.

I thought about the geisha’s adorable servitor spirit.

“How much can your ferret carry?” I inquired.

“Uhm. About half my weight if I put a lot of Qi into him. Why?”

“Okay, put a lot of Qi into him and send him to buy us a few bags of flour,” I ordered.

“Are you planning to bake something... here?” Celes looked at the ruined skyscraper top.

“Nope. It’s for… other purposes.” I grinned at her.

She looked at me like I was losing my mind a little.

“Do you mind not questioning my authority and just doing what I ask?” I pressed. “It’ll help us get back, okay? I know what I’m doing here, Miss Rada.”

“Miss?”

“An ancient honorific used for addressing a woman who is not married and is known by her maiden name.”

“Are you implying that I’m a clueless maiden? I’m older than you!” Celes huffed.

“Not at all. I’m simply asking you to put trust in my thousand-some-year-old experience and know-how.”

“Fine.” The geisha sighed. “Knipz. Buy me as many bags of flour as you can carry.”

The ferret servitor materialized on her shoulder, grabbed a few coins from her, and departed.

“Do you know how servitors are made?” I asked her. I’d been chased by them plenty of times, but I had no idea how cultivators shoved them into lanterns and stuff.

“A beast is killed, and their core is cut in half. One half of it is shaped and bound into god-blessed metal, secured with containment and command runes.”

Celes pulled back one of her sleeves, revealing a golden bracelet with a small beast core gemstone embedded in its center.

“This is half of Knipz’s beast core. The remaining half of the core is used to summon the soul of the beast from their bones. The cultivator consumes the soul to bind it to themselves,” she explained.

“Since Knipz is a very young beast and since I didn’t personally slay him, I did not gain his powers or skills, however minute they may be.”

“What about human servitors?” I asked.

“I do not know the process of creating human-ghost servants.” Celes shook her head. “Such practice is kept secret by the High-Cultivators. Han told me that it involves a sacrifice of parts of the body and soul to Lord Boundless Chorus in the Central Well.”

“Can’t be too different from a beast.” I shrugged. “Ol’ Boundy-butt probably just wants a cut. I do wonder if I can summon myself as my own servitor now… is that a thing?”

Celes simply stared at me like I was out of my mind. What? It was a perfectly rational idea.

I was in perfect agreement with myself. Both of my memories wanted to work together on solving problems. Why had I not gone insane? Was I just a lucky coincidence? Did I accidentally find my perfectly compatible soul-pal across millennia and fuse them to myself?

“No time for your judgy looks. Get your fox butt ready!” I told the geisha as I stood up, dusting myself off. I then circled towards the back of the building’s roof.

“Ready for whaa—?!” Celes yelped as I ran forward, leaping off the edge of the skyscraper towards the passing ladder.

Catching ladders was a pain in the butt, but I had yet to fail at it. The ladder swung forward with my person on it, and upon its return journey, I tried to aim it for Celes.

“Get on!” I yelled at her as the ladder flew by. It took another two passes of me swinging by for Celes to get over her fear and leap towards it.

She missed, but thankfully I was there to catch her by her robe.

She was shaking with fright as I held her in the air. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to achieve this feat without being twice as strong. I had generously called these “ladders,” but they were basically ropes with occasional knots in them for support.

“Do you mind holding on to the ladder on your own now?” I politely asked after a minute of swinging. “My arms are getting tired. Even amazing, self-made cultivators like myself have limits, you know.”

“Hey, uh…” Winded, she kept pausing to catch her breath. “What’s with that… black wrapping all over you? It doesn’t... look like regular cloth now that it’s been… cleaned up.” Celes panted as she stared at my tape-covered feet from below.

“From what I understand, servitor spirits contain a whole bunch of magical electricity,” I replied, focusing on pushing Qi into my arms so as to not slip off the rope. “The damn things make my scars itch like crazy. The electrical tape provides points of very low conductivity.

“Figured this one out accidentally before I knew anything about electricity too! I found the tape down in the Dead City and thought it was cool. My personal record is forty-two seconds inside of a ghost. After that I start to pass out.”

“Girl, you are crazy,” my unexpected partner in crime muttered. “Why would you… *huff*... try to stay inside of a servitor to begin with?”

“It’s kind of like holding your breath. The more you do it, the more servitors you can pass through consecutively! And before you ask why—it’s an easy way of bamboozling and slowing down the servitor hunters. It’s a survival exercise, just like urging Qi into your legs to run away faster!”

Celes remained silent at that. Or maybe she was simply out of breath. Being a pretty tea-butler didn’t provide her with massive amounts of stamina.

Yes, I felt superior to her in the fitness department, and no, I’d never stop patting my over-inflated ego! In fact, I’d inflate it harder… Watch me!

“My judgment is declared—geishas suck at climbing ropes! Don’t skip arm day next time.” I smirked, poking fun at her.

She huffed irritably. She clearly didn’t appreciate my thousand-year-old humor.

It was at this exact moment when Knipz chose to return, bearing an enormous backpack, presumably full of flour. The servitor looked very silly with such a large bag in its mouth.

In moments, the ghostly ferret had deposited the backpack atop its master’s neck and shoulders and broke up into flickering sparks, looking extra smug.

“What?! Flour?!! GAH! No, no, no!” Celes started to slide down the rope, desperate eyes staring up at me. She was unable to bear her own weight plus the flour backpack.

“Couldn’t you summon Knipz again to carry the bag?” I asked curiously.

“I’m not a High-Cultivator, Ash!” Celes hissed, sliding farther down. “Summoning him drains my Qi, and I don’t have enough of it now because of the purification-song! I... I can’t hang on! Heeellp!”

“This is what I get for hiring you without reading your resume.” I grabbed the flour bag off her. It was indeed quite heavy, but I managed to climb the rope with it without sliding down like my unfortunate companion.

Chatting to Celes about chakras before the climb had been a wise decision, since it let my Qi fill up.

“What in gods’ name is a ‘resume’?” Celes whined. “And you didn’t hire me; you stole my beast core!”

“You also stole it, ‘member? But you don’t see me rubbing it in your face! I was doing a greater good, see? Kinda like Robin Hood! I steal from rich geishas and reward poor starving children…”

“Who’s Robin Hood? And what starving children?!”

“Me, obviously! I rewarded myself with a ghost-pal, and I’m starving slightly less today… thanks to you!”

Celes shook her head at my antics.

Enough jabbering. I had to focus on climbing this ladder before my Qi started to run low again.