After handing over my pills to a beaming WuJing, I went down to the shop floor to find SuYin.

“Hey! Can you help me out? I want to study some techniques.”

A look of confusion crossed her face. “Just go up to the library.”

“The what?” While I had lived in the Pavilion for well over a year, I had spent almost all that time focusing on creating my new cultivation technique. The thought of resuming my tour of the place hadn’t even crossed my mind.

“Come on.” She sighed as she led me to the stairway. “The fifth floor has the workshops, the sixth floor is the library, and the seventh floor just has a few conference rooms. That’s where we hold important events, such as large meetings with the heads of smaller branches. The rooms on the seventh floor are rarely used, but we still have to maintain them. Anyway, we just need to go to the sixth.”

Once we had tromped back up the stairs, SuYin brought me to a library that wasn’t too dissimilar to those that I had seen in the Twin Mountains Sect. Large wooden bookshelves filled the entire space, and around the perimeter, there were small reading rooms where people could go to study. There were no windows on this floor, and lighting was provided only by softly glowing orbs.

“You can flip through anything you want on the floor, but to study a manual, you need to register it with the librarian first, and she will charge it to your account. If you want something that isn’t here, talk to the librarian. If this branch has it, then she will check your contribution to see if you are allowed to view it. If we don’t, then she can requisition it from the main branch.”

I nodded. “Thanks. What about herbalism and wood qi techniques? Where would I find those?”

SuYin smiled wistfully at this question. “Let me show you.”

She brought me to a section of the library dedicated to plants. There, she gently ran her fingers across the spines of several books.

“Here they are.” Her voice was soft and held a sense of longing. “Everything that you could ever want to know about growing plants.”

I wasn’t great with people. I had spent centuries alone in a shed in the past, avoiding them, but even I could pick up on some clues.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She looked down and shook her head. “It’s just… My parents are farmers. Most people in these parts are, you know? I just can’t help but imagine what this kind of knowledge could do for them.”

“You can’t buy it and send it back to them?”

She let out a wry laugh. “I could, but no one in my family can cultivate. No one has any affinities, so it wouldn’t do any good even if I did. That’s just how it is, you know? Most of us are just hanging on. Waiting for someone to get a blessing that can help.”

We just stood there for a moment.

SuYin finally shook her head. “Sorry… I… I need to go.”

Without looking back, she walked away.

I headed toward the stairs, too. Not to follow her, but because I was no longer in the mood to study. I went to one of the break rooms on the second floor, where I would be able to sit down and relax.

I had been hoping for a few moments of solitude, but not long after I sat down, a young woman walked in front of me.

Mei’s expression was rather bleak. “Come on. Follow me.”

Mei led me down the stairs to the warehouse floor and out of the side entrance that she had sent me to the first time we had met.

Seeing the apprehensive look on my face, she gave me a soft smile. “Don’t worry, no Grandmaster is going to jump out and attack you this close to the Pavilion. We’re safe.”

I had assumed so, but I was still nervous about Master Zhong’s uncle finding trouble with me too early.

Mei took me to a nearby apartment building. Its aesthetic was similar to the Pavilion’s, but the smaller size and reduced ornamentation made it feel significantly less ostentatious. After taking me up to the fourth floor, she guided me into one of the rooms and gestured at a small sofa.

“Welcome to my apartment. Take a seat.”

Mei’s apartment was well decorated, and it put my paltry efforts to shame. There was no gilding, and there weren’t any expensive knickknacks strewn about the place, but there were tastefully subdued wooden carvings spread about the place. The sitting room had a large balcony, but all that was visible from it was the side of the Pavilion’s lower floors.

After I sat down, Mei quietly made a pot of tea and placed it on the room’s small table. Then, she poured two cups and began drinking one without saying a word. The entire time, I was worried about what was happening and why she had suddenly brought me here.

After finishing her tea, she set down her cup and began talking.

“You know about my blessing.” Her voice was subdued but firm. “I don’t know how much you know about how it works, but I know that you know what it is.”

I nodded. “Yes, I do.”

She hadn’t explained it to me in this life, but WuJing had told me about it the first time we met. She gained knowledge about the best way to act to gain the most benefit in any situation. To me, this made her both the most and least trustworthy person that I knew. With both my reincarnations and the System, the idea of such a blessing ordering Mei to betray me seemed absurd, but trusting the intentions behind any of her actions was equally absurd.

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“It doesn’t tell me the words to say, and it doesn’t let me read minds.” She focused her gaze on her empty cup with a downcast expression. “It just guides me on how to behave. I don’t know the reason why I should act the way I do. I just know that is what I am supposed to do. At first, I tried to fight these impulses, but it never did any good. Now, I’m trying my best to live with them.”

A tear welled up in the corner of her eye. “Right now, when I look at you, my blessing is guiding me to act vulnerable and afraid. When I’m not looking at you, the control my blessing has over me fades, but I still feel vulnerable and afraid. Is that the real me, or is it just an echo of my blessing?”

Even hearing Mei spell out that her actions were dictated by her blessing, I still felt a need to protect her, to help her. I could not let emotions control me around this woman.

She took a deep breath and let it out. “I didn’t bring you here to talk about me, though. We are here to talk about little Yin. Do you know about her blessing?”

I gave a slight shake of my head. “No, only yours and WuJing’s.”

“Her blessing gave her a perfect memory. It’s nice, it helps her around the Pavilion. She can remember anything you tell her, and she is especially good at remembering and recording images and diagrams, but that’s about it. Like me, she has no affinities and will never be able to cultivate. She is just a girl with a good memory.”

We sat in silence for a bit, but finally, I looked at Mei. “And? There is a reason you said all of this, right?”

She smiled wryly. “I’m sure there is, but as far as I can tell, I was just supposed to bring you here, act vulnerable, tell you about Yin, and let you decide what happens next.”

I tapped my leg nervously as I tried to firm up my resolve. “Alright. Is there anything else you need to tell me about her?”

“Just… I don’t know if the way you handled Gou and Master Zhong will be good for her. She is from a poor family. Most of the attendants are. Working here, they have a chance, but Pavilion Attendant is a job for the young. They trade their youth for the hope of a better future. SuYin might not have liked Gou, but I don’t know if she will be able to find anything better, especially now.”

I sipped my tea without responding. I knew what I was being pushed to do. I knew what Mei, what Mei’s blessing, was asking for. But… Did I want to do it? Even if I didn’t change every future for them, I could give them a single life…

I chuckled mirthlessly. “Mei, your blessing lets you give advice to others, right? You’ve told WuJing how to act around me, for example. Do you just tell people how you yourself are supposed to act, or is it how they should act?”

“It’s…” She paused to think. “It’s a bit of both. It’s more… I can feel how I am supposed to tell them how they are supposed to act, if that makes sense.”

I sighed. “Yes, it does. So, what does your blessing say? Should I do it?”

She shook her head. “It’s your choice. I’m not supposed to tell you either way.”

I knew that I was being manipulated, but hearing SuYin’s story, I couldn’t help but think back to my first few lives in this world. I couldn’t help but remember what my life had been like when I didn’t have an affinity and I couldn’t cultivate. How much would it have changed things if someone had been there to hold out a helping hand?

“Alright.” I nodded, making my decision. “Choose. I know what SuYin wants. What do you want?”

I didn’t tell her the question. I wanted to test her blessing’s power. If she was telling the truth, she had to combine what it told her with her own powerful intuition to know exactly what was happening.

For the first time since entering her apartment, she looked me directly in the eyes. “Anything?”

I smiled. “Sure, anything.”

“Wind. If I could choose anything, it would be wind.” When she said this, she smiled, but her smile soon faded, and she shook her head. “Too bad that’s the wrong answer.”

She paused for a moment and then nodded decisively. “Water. I guess it has to be water.”

Was the mention of wind from her or from her blessing? Was her blessing telling me to look for wind qi techniques? If so, it was unnecessary. I was going to do that anyway.

I turned my head and began subvocalizing so that Mei couldn’t hear me.

“System, how much would it cost to give Mei a temporary low eight-star water affinity and SuYin a low eight-star wood affinity?”

Cost 520 credits. Discount applied. Discounted cost 260 credits.

I laughed quietly. Well, if this was going to burn my discount anyway, I might as well play big.

“How much is a wind affinity?”

Temporary Low 8-star Wind Affinity. Cost 2,600 credits.

So, ten times the price of the basic elements.

“Alright, System, give them both mid seven-star affinities and give Mei a mid eight-star wind affinity.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 15,620 credits. Discount applied. Discounted cost 7,810 credits. 45,515 credits remaining.

Was this a smart move? I wasn’t sure.

Credits were valuable, but this had only cost me 8,000 credits and a rather limited discount. I could spare it. Besides, looking at the situation from a purely mercenary point of view, this purchase may have bought me something far more valuable than mere credits.

Normally, Mei and SuYin would have died long before my encounter with Formation Emperor Du XiongMing. Now, with my help, they should easily be able to advance to Grandmaster and live much longer lives. Mei’s blessing made her powerful, but if SuYin’s blessing truly gave her a perfect memory, her assistance could be just as valuable.

When I looked at Mei, something about the way she was staring at me made me twitch with a hint of irritation. She seemed too… happy. I couldn’t help but feel like I had been played.

Still, the purchase had been made. All I could do was keep moving forward.

“Alright, it’s done. Get me a pen and several sheets of paper.”

Mei’s mouth twitched in a fractional smile, but she refrained from acting giddy or excited. She moved with a gravity that reflected how I was personally feeling about my decision. I still wasn’t sure I had done the right thing, but it set me down a new path. I might have been manipulated to choose this path, but I was still interested to see where it led.

At first, Mei gave me only a couple of sheets of paper, but as I started writing, she left her apartment to buy more. I spent two hours carefully writing down two Peak-Yellow cultivation techniques, one for water and one for wood qi. Without cultivating wind qi, the extra affinity wouldn’t do much for Mei, but it should give her the ability to slightly control the air around herself.

When I was done, I held up the two manuals. “Alright, this one is for you. The other is for SuYin. They are the best I have. You might be able to get something better from the Pavilion, I don’t know.”

She ducked her head as tears began to well in her eyes. “Thank you.”

I just nodded, trust and distrust warring within me.

“If you have any questions, you can come find me. Tell SuYin the same. Don’t rush. Slow and steady is the only path forward. Don’t worry about qi stagnation or any problems like that. We can take care of cultivation speed with pills. Instead, be slow and deliberate. Your blessing should give you a lot of protection from the mental deviations that cultivation can cause, but you still need to be careful.”

“I understand, thank you.” As she said this, tears began to flow from her eyes.

How much of this was real? How much was an act?

Would I have even considered purchasing affinities for Mei and SuYin if I hadn’t been brought here? No. Mei–Mei’s blessing–had pushed me down this path. While I couldn’t trust Mei’s emotions, I could certainly sympathize with how she must feel if she were being manipulated like this all the time.

While I wasn’t comfortable with this situation, I maintained my confidence that a blessing designed to guide Mei to act in the manner that best served her interests would never force her to act against me. After all, making an enemy of an immortal time looper was about the worst decision possible.