Shen ran over and hugged her friend. “It’s great to see you again.” she said.

  Sho hugged her back. “Yeah, it’s been a little while, at least on human time scales.”

  Shen finished the hug and let her go. “So I assume you are here for the caravan?”

  “Well, there is one more reason. I came here early because I need to talk to you about something.”

  Shen remembered the reason she had to stop visiting Dragon Town, and nodded. “I think we should go some place private. Come on, I’ll show you where I live.” Shen lead Sho to the room she shared with Mae. Mae was inside studying, and Shen introduced them to each other, unsure if they had met before.

  “Right, you’re her Dragon friend. Nice to meet you.” Mae held out her hand and shook.

  “So, you wanted to speak with me?” asked Shen after introductions were over.

  “Yes. First of all, congratulations on reaching Foundation. I was over fifty before I reached it, but you’re more talented than me. Now, dragons don’t celebrate birthdays, but we do celebrate Breakthroughs, so here.” Sho waved her hand and a book appeared, which she handed to Shen. Shen could see that she was wearing one of the Space Metal storage rings that Shen made to sell to the outside. “This book contains a better shapeshifting technique than the ancestors taught in there.” She pointed to Shen’s copy of ‘The Complete Dragon Technique Guide’. “We’ve learned a lot since then. In fact, in a decade or so you should be able to look like a dragon.”

  Shen looked a bit sad, but took the book and stored it. “I take it your father wants you to teach me that so I fit in better?”

  Sho looked confused. “No, that’s just the book I learned it from after reaching Foundation. He did send me though, to give you something and deliver a message.” She looked at Mae. “Is it okay if I talk in front of her?”

  Shen nodded. “I told her the whole story. Go ahead.”

  Sho nodded in response and pulled out a long box from her ring. She opened it and inside was a katana with an added blue beast core where a pommel would be on other swords. The handle and sheath were white. Shen removed it from the case and pulled it slightly out of the sheath to show the light blue metal of the blade.

  “So, I take it this is a wedding present?” Shen asked with a sigh.

  Sho shook her head. “No, it’s an apology. He apologizes for putting you in this horrible situation. He didn’t understand human culture or their mental and physical development, and so he made a request which was inappropriate. He deeply apologizes for his mistake and offers you this gift in hopes that you will forgive him. He forged the blade from one of his own scales, made the handle and sheath of spirit wood, and covered them in the skin of a draconic eel. The core at the base comes from a Foundation level Ice Wolf which attacked me as a child, and was killed by my father. The blade can, if you wish, use the Deep Freeze technique on anyone it cuts, allowing it to do far more damage than a standard sword.

  He now considers the request he made to be withdrawn, though if you wish to continue this discussion he will be willing to do so once you reach the age of adulthood.” Sho shrugged. “He made me add that last part to the apology. I did, however, already notify the elders that he is withdrawing the request.”

  Shen looked at the sword in thought for a few minutes before speaking. “Is it dragon tradition to bribe people into forgiving you?”

  Sho smiled and shrugged. “Pretty much. Dragons like nice things. Giving a person something important to you that they might also treasure is a common way of showing that you mean it when you ask for forgiveness.”

  Shen nodded. “Giving me something he had made from his own scale and a core of a beast with memories of your childhood seems important to him, and I would treasure it.”

  “That he made from his own scale.” Sho corrected. “Father’s also a smith, and thought it was interesting when he learned you were a relic crafter, and recently started doing a bit of smithing as well.”

  “Oh.” said Shen. “Well, please tell him that I accept his apology. I’m not sure what I’ll do when I’m older, but for now I can’t consider his offer seriously.”

  Sho nodded and stood up. During this conversation Shen had sat down on her bed and Sho had knelt on the floor. “Well, I guess that’s why I came here, so I’ll go find a place to stay for the night.”

  Shen stood up as well. “Actually, I have an idea. Can dragons eat milk products?”

  Sho nodded. “As long as they are cultivators, they can. We can’t digest it properly, but the health benefits of cultivation mean that we won’t be sick from it. Why?”

  “Well, have you ever heard of Ice Cream?”

  While waiting on their icecream Shen decided to practice with her divine sense. She wanted to fight in the contest tomorrow, but her sense was less developed than she would like. She knew that, because she was now an inner disciple, she would be competing against other inner disciples, and most of them would have far more experience with their divine senses. When her Divine Sense touched Sho, though, it seemed to sink into her.

  “That’s strange.” said Shen.

  “What is?” said Sho.

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  “Oh, well it feels like you have about thirty times as large of reserve of chi as me, about 28% water chi, though we are at the same level. I’ve also never heard of divine sense allowing you to assess another person’s chi reserves.” Sho was actually in the middle of the Foundation realm, but the chi quantities should be similar in humans, assuming they had both expanded their capacity to the limit.

  “Well, there are techniques that will allow you to do it, they just aren’t common. It is interesting that you can do that, though, as it’s a dragon bloodline trait.”

  “Wait, I thought I only had the scales. Or technically the barrier technique which reinforces them.”

  “Me too. It’s really rare for anyone that’s less than a quarter dragon to have that ability. If you had learned a technique to do something similar and the trait made it easy to learn or use it might make sense, but this is quite unusual.”

  Their ice cream arrived and they paused their conversation. When the waitress had left Shen resumed. “So, why would that be a dragon bloodline trait? It doesn’t seem to fit with what I know about dragons.”

  Sho swallowed what she was eating and thought for a few seconds. “Well, I guess to explain it, you need to learn a little history. About ten million years ago dragons were the only intelligent beings on the world. There weren’t many of us, though, as we were extremely territorial. They often kept other, lesser beings as pets, but other than family and an occasional mate, they wouldn’t allow others to enter their territory. This lead to many fights, but eventually the surviving dragons became really good at figuring out if the other dragon was stronger than them, and in many cases this trait was so strong that it could be passed on to their children.

  After that, society changed. The strongest dragons subjugated the weaker ones, forming something like kingdoms. There were dozens of elemental types for dragons back then, but the weaker one all quickly learned to sense who was stronger and not challenge them. This continued for a few million years until a few of the weaker dragon groups started overthrowing their rulers and killing them. Back then dragons hadn’t yet learned to cultivate, so the strong were still mortals that were only a few times stronger, but more skilled in combat. There was some experimentation with different forms of government for a few million years, but eventually our independent nature took over and we started hating governments. We figured that we didn’t need other people telling us how to live, but still wanted communities, so families would join together to form small communities. We remembered the past, though, so we did our best not to fight amongst ourselves, afraid that a war might result in the kingdoms of old.

  Then about a million years ago, humans first appeared. You were primitive, but had the intelligence to learn. We ignored you for the first few hundred thousand years, then Pai Wo was born. He heard the old stories of how Dragons came from the heavens but took mortal form, and sought a way to return to that. Or maybe he wanted to improve the lives of others, and developed cultivation to do that. Or maybe he just wanted to study the chi that we could feel but had never studied, and cultivation was a way to do that. There are three different stories about why he developed cultivation, and no one is sure which is the truth. Personally I think it was one of the last two, or some combination of the two, since he never showed any interest in trying to develop the technique to reach the Ascended realm. In fact, no dragon did back then, and very few do now. Something about it just doesn’t seem to sit well with us. When I think about the idea of losing my corporeal body and starting over, it seems like a really dumb idea.

  Not that I’m saying humans that do so are dumb. I don’t want to discourage you. I just know that few dragons choose to do so, and the ones that do are rarely full blooded. Something inside of us just doesn’t like the idea of not having a body.”

  Shen had finished her ice cream by the time Sho had finished her history lesson. “I do have a few questions.” she said, and Sho nodded.

  “Go ahead.” She scooped out a dried fruit and put it in her mouth.

  “First of all, are you saying that Earthly dragons are descended from Heavenly dragons?”

  Sho shrugged. “That is the most common interpretation of the legend that dragons descended from the heavens, but I don’t know if it’s true.”

  Shen nodded. “In that case, you said there are dozens of different elemental dragons? But I’ve only heard of nine types. Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, Wood, Light, Dark, and Life, with some rumors that the Death type were killed off by ancient sects.”

  “In modern times, those are the only pure dragon bloodlines that remain. Most of the others only remain as partial bloodlines within the main elemental bloodlines, and some of them died off. That story was from millions of years ago, so a lot of time has passed since they existed. I suppose there could be a few beings out there with a partial bloodline, though, like the poison wyrms. They are part dragon, and many think that they have the Poison elemental bloodline, even if the last pure blooded poison dragon died about one hundred thousand years ago, hunted by ancient sects the same way the Death types were.”

  They spent the next two hours talking. It started out with Shen learning history, but eventually shifted to what had happened to the two of them in the last year as well as what had happened in the dragon town. Eventually, the two of them were tired, so they said goodbye and made their way back to their rooms. The sect had several inns in the outer city for travelers to stay in, so Shen was certain that Sho would be able to find a place to stay.

  Shen had the next day off due to the Caravan festival. She would be participating in the tournament like last time, but due to her position she would have to participate in the Inner City bracket, where none of her friends would be able to watch. This meant that she would be on her own. Luckily that also means that she wouldn’t have to fight any of them.

  Shen went to the baths to relax, but they were far more busy than they normally were. Apparently, most of the people from out of town considered it a luxury to be able to take a proper bath, so they would be making use of the baths while in town. The crowd made it difficult to relax, so Shen decided to get out early. She did notice that Sho was there as well, but she also left quickly. Presumably the fact that Dragon Town had multiple hot springs, including the main lake, meant that she wasn’t willing to put up with the crowd either.

  After that Shen went by the library, as she had several hours before she needed to be at the field for the tournament. She wanted to see if they had anything on developing her Divine Sense. That was still a weakness, and was the core skill of the Foundation realm, so she would need to develop it if she wanted to advance to Nascent as quickly as possible.

  ---

  A group of travelers entered the city. While not technically a part of the caravan, many independent traders chose to come to the sect town on Caravan day, often following the caravan there. One of those people was a man by the name of Fei Hua. Hua was a refugee from the Lakes region who had fled the demon invasion all the way north. Unlike most of the others, however, he was in the Peak Foundation realm. Most travelers and refugees cultivated to some degree, as it would allow them to carry more weight, walk further, be healthier, and even go for longer without eating. Hua, however, had taken it much further than the others. This had allowed him to fight off several of the bandit, beast, and spirit beast groups that had attacked his group and come out uninjured. This had also allowed him to gather several rare materials and the best of the bandit’s loot, making him the richest member of his refugee group and their default leader, despite only being in his twenties.

  “Mr. Fei.” said an old man from the group. He was a carpenter that had joined them a week ago. “Do you know where we can set up our camp?” Normally, they would just set up where ever they wanted, but as they were in town there might be specific areas set aside for that.

  “I’ll go ask.” Hua said, before walking over to one of the guards. He quickly got directions to the camping area that was set up outside the outer wall, and thanked the guard before advising his people of the location.

  It only took them a few hours to set up their entire camp, and, after eating a basic meal of flatbread, the refugees entered the town for a second time. By then the Caravan stalls had all been set up, and Hua had instructed the refugees about the rules of setting up their own stalls. Many of the refugees had gathered useful materials on the way to the sect town, and would be selling them in order to raise money to continue their journey. Hua would also be selling things, but instead of medicinal and spiritual herbs and mushrooms like the others had he would be offloading all of the equipment the bandits had on them to one of the caravan merchants.

  While everything that the refugees could use, including much of the armor and many of the weapons, had been distributed to the refugees that could fight, everything else was given to him, as he killed more than half of the bandits in every engagement. Several of the bandits had even been equipped with spacial storage items, such as the spacial backpack he was currently wearing, which allowed the refugees to carry everything without becoming overburdened. After all, if the bag was ten times as large as normal on the inside, the weight would also be reduced by a factor of ten. This meant that he could carry several tons of extra armor, weapons, and other loot, while only feeling like he was carrying a person. At the Foundation realm, even the weakest person would be able to carry another person with little effort.

  Hua found a merchant that was selling combat equipment and managed to unload most of the loot. The man hadn’t given him as much as he had hoped, but the lower quality weapons and armor that were left after distributing the good things to the refugees would mostly need to be repaired, and in some cases reworked entirely, before they could be sold.

  With that out of the way Hua decided that he would sell the rest of the items later and started touring the outer city. It was quite an interesting layout. In fact, it was almost as if the entire city was a massive defensive formation. Most interesting.