After a walk through the mountain slopes and a stop at a cafe with Zhang, we still had some time before evening, when Soro was due to take over the task of supervising the ever-dependent me.

As part of my initiation into Finger Qi, Zhang invited me to the Disco Cave. That wasn't its official name, of course, it was what people called the Finger Garden.

The Garden was housed inside a cave, entirely man-made and carved into the mountain. The surrounding rock insulated it on all sides, keeping the internal environment stable. Gravity was lighter here, though the oxygen level was still within breathable range. Technically, one could go without armour, if not for the spores.

Each garden cultivated a particular type of plant, nourished by a specific Qi. There were rare exceptions, such as the Air Garden, where Air Qi mingled with dust, but even there they grew flora sensitive to Qi.

The Finger Garden specialised in luminescent fungi. The air was thick with their spores. These spores could harm even a cultivator's lungs unless they were at least third stage, and even then, full exposure without protection was out of the question. The mushrooms were surprisingly hardy and invasive, thriving even without Qi infusion. Before anyone exited the area, their armour underwent thermal processing to incinerate the spores and prevent their spread throughout the school.

What intrigued me most was how the mushrooms were infused with Finger Qi.

In the Fist and Air Gardens, the process was crude. Cultivators simply released their techniques into the air, and the infusion happened more or less naturally. Here, however, the approach was more refined.

Finger Qi was focused into a beam. The beam hit directly and didn't leave behind residual Qi. To nourish the mushrooms, the beam needed to be diffused. For this purpose, an elaborate construction of enormous lenses and multifaceted crystals hung from the ceiling. When a beam struck one of the lenses, it was redirected into the crystal network, where it was split into a relatively harmless, warm light. That light then rained down onto the mushrooms in soft shafts.

Each beam aimed at the lens produced a scattered burst, and with several dozen cultivators working at once, the bursts came continuously. The effect truly resembled an endless disco, if only there'd been music, and if the glow weren't quite so blinding.

Thankfully, Alan had modified my helmet. I now had autotune. My visor adjusted automatically to the flashes, dampening their impact. They were still irritating, but at least no longer painful.

Zhang led me onto the 'dance floor,' towards the mushrooms.

The diffused light poured over us, triggering a queasy sense of vulnerability in me, even through the armour. It felt as though some unimaginably powerful being had cast a lazy glance in my direction and seen straight through me.

An overwhelming urge to raise a shield gripped me. But to activate it, I had to strike.

Strike what? The mushrooms?

"Are you feeling alright?" I asked Zhang.

"I'm used to it," she waved it off. "It's like getting punched. It's one thing to take a hit, another to land one yourself. And when you know you can hit a hundred times harder, it stops messing with your nerves."

There was logic in her words, but logic and sensation rarely coexist. And what I was feeling, was anything but pleasant.

I asked to leave that garden rather quickly.

Zhang contacted Soro and handed me over, quite literally, at a bustling self-service cafe. It was almost identical to the Tangerine, but more social. Both Zhang and Soro were approached by familiar faces, some acquaintances, some strangers who only wanted an excuse to introduce themselves to me. I was the new face in a whirlwind of routine ones.

The attention I was getting quickly turned suffocating. Back at Black Lotus, I'd had more privacy and time to myself. Here, it seemed they'd decided leaving me unattended was simply too dangerous. Plenty of people wanted to meet the boy from another school — a perfect pretext to come over and strike up a conversation.

Zhang didn't do much to stop it, but Soro acted as a filter at the door.

Frankly, that felt more suspicious, and far riskier, than just leaving me alone. There are far more efficient methods of surveillance than a body sat next to you.

Still, while the attention from men was somewhat tiresome, usually business offers to exchange contacts or resources, I couldn't really complain about the interest from young, attractive women. Especially since none of them had the... attitude I'd come to associate with the girls at Black Lotus.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

First there was Nur, with her ridiculous accusations. Then Kate, with her big-sister complex. And Zola — the forty-year-old thinhorn nymphomaniac in a cute body.

Those three had traumatised my psyche to the point that I'd stopped looking at girls as girls. I'd reduced my romantic life to pirated videos from the original Jake's archive.

And only here, at Yellow Pine, did I begin to recover.

A few second-periods flirted rather openly, but Soro intercepted them before they got too close.

"You have no heart!" I told her at the end of the day, after she'd escorted me back to my room. I brewed us some tea, since she wasn't planning to head home yet and we still hadn't discussed the next day's plans.

"Why's that?"

"Those girls were cute," I said.

Soro rolled her eyes.

"They just wanted to use you," she said flatly.

"Maybe I wanted to be used!"

Another eye-roll.

"Keep your little friend in your trousers and stop giving me extra work."

"And how exactly is your work connected to my little friend?" I asked her. "Unless… you've got designs on him yourself?"

"Yack, no!" Soro recoiled. Kate would've threatened to tear my head off by now, but Soro, emotional as her reaction was, at least gave a reason. "Sex is the oldest form of manipulation. Someone who's a few hundred years old is bound to have mastered it."

Honestly, I didn't exactly want to share a bed with a demon. Despite everything, I wasn't that desperate. Probably the body's virgin instincts kicking in.

Still, I couldn't help teasing Soro.

That was payback for the 'Yack!'

"Isn't it in your best interests, though? A reliable way to identify demons. Just screen the girls I sleep with."

"Girls?" she tilted her head sceptically. "Plural? Aren't we confident."

"Ah!" I clutched my chest dramatically. "Right in the heart."

"If that was meant to be a joke, it was just disgusting," Soro said flatly.

"Says the one who brought up my 'friend' first!"

"Are you flirting with me?" she asked, genuinely confused.

"Absolutely not!" I waved the notion away. "We've got work to do together. Best not to mix business and pleasure."

"Ri-i-ight," she dragged the word out suspiciously. After a sip of tea, she added, "And you'd really sleep with a demon?"

"Hell if I know," I admitted. "The devil's in the details. Do I know she's a demon? Does she know that I know? Does she want to kill me?

"When you think about it, dying during sex isn't that great a way to go."

"I couldn't do it," Soro said with certainty.

I glanced down into my cup. The tea didn't suit the tone of the conversation, so I opened the fridge and pulled out some juice and gin.

"Are you sure you couldn't?" I asked while mixing the drinks. "Do you have someone?" I added, handing her a glass.

She accepted it, but before answering, she narrowed her eyes.

"You're definitely not flirting with me?"

"Absolutely not," I assured her.

It felt like the right answer. But was it honest?

Me and Soro, in bed? I could picture it.

Worse yet, now I couldn't unsee it.

"No one," Soro said, taking the drink. After a small sip, she asked, "What about you?"

"Still running," I shrugged. "Can't seem to stop after that first year. Feels like I've got things under control, but it still won't let me go. Bloody demons again."

Soro didn't answer right away. She looked at me longer than usual, studying me. Then took another sip and asked:

"What are they like? The demons. I know you've spoken to a few. What struck you most?"

I thought about it.

Conversations with Novak about culture came to mind, as well as Nur's talks about borrowed memories.

"Yes, I've spoken to a few. But... I still haven't met your master, and I've no idea how much you're allowed to know," I said, shaking my head.

"Whatever you can share, friend," she said, spreading her hands. "I promise, I'll arrange a meeting with her as soon as it becomes possible. Mendoza has fewer students, fewer connections, and less clout than your master. She's busy.

"Give me what you can," she asked.

"They're capable of love too," I said, and it stunned her.

That caught her completely off guard. She frowned. "Sorry, what?"

I took a sip of the diluted gin. How was I supposed to explain the story of Vrhakzun and Thyzreth without diving into... details?

"Are we still talking about the eternal threat to humanity?" she asked. "Or have they somehow become more human under our influence after all these years?"

That caught me off guard, and I laughed.

"If they've learned anything from us, it certainly wasn't humanitarianism. We're not exactly angels ourselves, in case you haven't noticed.

"How many betrayals and stabs in the back did you witness during first year? They go through that same meat grinder every ten years. It's not exactly conducive to mental health or moral development."

"Then what are we talking about?" Soro asked. "Animalistic sex? Tearful romance? Do they kill out of heartbreak? Do they pity us?"

"They definitely don't pity us. Couldn't care less, honestly. They hardly care about each other. But, rarely, loyalty does happen. Believe it or not, they can form alliances and even sacrifice themselves for them."

Bloody hell. The bond between Vrhakzun and Thyzreth had lasted longer than some cultivators' entire lifespans. If you really thought about it, I wasn't the reason Black Lotus was successfully purged of demons, it was the twisted love between two broken monsters.

"They're still sick bastards," I added, "but they're capable of loving."

"Hard to picture a demon daddy cradling his demon baby and babbling nonsense."

"Yeah, hard," I agreed. Vrhakzun and Thyzreth wouldn't cradle anything. They'd turn their child into a traumatised killing machine.

Soro fell silent for a moment, lost in thought.

"But if they can love," she said slowly, "then family must mean something to them too?"

"Probably," I nodded. "Not that it really matters to us, unless demons have siblings.

"Ha!" I said. "That could be a thing."

If there could be lovers, why not brothers and sisters?

"The question is how to find them."

"Trace the links of dead cultivators?" I suggested.

"And how does that help with the living ones?" Soro asked.

"I've no idea," I admitted, defeated.

The conversation had officially drifted away from the much more interesting subject of sex. I felt deflated, tired, and hungry. Sleep sounded good too. Soro noticed my sudden lack of enthusiasm. We finished our gin, and she made her farewells.

Tomorrow I was getting a different cultivator, not Zhang. A man.

Shame. Zhang was delicate. And she wasn't a colleague...

I was thinking about sex again.

Time to review the old pirate video archive and clear my head for some real work.

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