Without the fear of reprisal from the High-Administrator looming over her head like the sword of Damocles, Celes became more friendly and less panicked. Being inside of the place she knew - the compound of the cult probably helped a bit with that too.

Celes was still hesitant when I suggested staying in the compound to teach me everything she knew, but my sparkly personality and good reasoning prevailed in the end - there were a lot of tools and materials here, a solid wealth of resources which simply sat around waiting to be experimented upon after all. And who better than me to do it? I decided that everything in this temple was now mine and had to be understood, utilized and optimized.

Celes had given me one of her old robes, promising to properly initiate me into the tea-making arts… although she wasn’t convinced that I would make a good geisha. Even for being ‘old’ the robe was still quite the fashion statement if a little too gaudy for my tastes with all the gold-thread embroidery and embedded jewelry, but still, I enjoyed the silky feel. According to her comment about me, I was far too hyper, impatient and danger-craving to become a proper geisha. She was probably right, but I couldn’t let that stop me!

“Danger is my middle name and I’m not here to become one of you people,” I told her, twirling in my new, shiny robe. “I have no desire to serve the cult, projecting serenity at geezers who think too highly of themselves. My real goal is to steal everything that’s not nailed down.”

“I thought that you were here to learn about our ceremonies,” Celes raised her eyebrow and I could feel her judgmental gaze.

“Information theft is theft too,” I declared merrily. “Thanks for the robe by the way, it’s the nicest thing anyone’s given me!”

Celes winced a bit at that, she knew how the destitute masses of humanity lived outside of the compound walls.

“Do you have a family in the city?” She asked.

“Let's not talk about that,” I waved her off, my mood darkening instantly. “There’s not enough serenity in this place to deal with such grimy subjects.”

The people responsible for my sorry state would get their comeuppance. Six beast cores and a gun with nine more bullets underneath my sparkling geisha robe would make sure of that. Vengeance was best served with hellfire. I stepped closer to my calmness radiator and tried really hard to hold my feelings in. It worked, just barely. I drowned myself in the memories of the Pharmacist-me. That life wasn’t as dark. Sure, the ancient human had problems too, but they weren’t anything like the life of a starving, friendship-deprived street urchin.

All the Pharmacist had to do was log into discord, click on the Silver-Pen group and start chatting to someone there about new books. Friendships weren't hard when you had the internet and weren't starving or living under constant threats of violence.

Celes looked like she wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure what specifically.

“Okki, you gotta show me the rest of the temple,” I jabbed my companion in the side. “I must know exactly how much there is to steal!”

I had gone around Serenity temple with my new "instructor”, asking an unending stream of questions about everything I saw.

A lot of the replies I got were useless esoteric knowledge that had provided no real answers, made up of labels and assumptions without real understanding of cause and effect.

It was a bit like Victorian medicine that used leeches and bloodletting to solve problems, applied mercury to the face and gave out cocaine for toothaches. I had recognized a lot of the plants and they were extremely addictive or poisonous. It was probably the fact of how unkillable high-cultivators were that allowed them to enjoy consuming these without horrific side-effects.

Celes had a lot of things within the temple, passed down from “retired” geishas of prior generations. The biggest trove of wealth were the hanging gardens of exotic Qi-filled plants that were maintained by the servitors of the Boundless Cult. There were live plants all over the place, growing within special glass bowls. This was a bit like hydroponics.

I saw a few of the servitors watering the plants. It was quite an ordinary sight for Ash but was something very curious and interesting for the Pharmacist.

“So, um, are you alone in this temple?” I inquired.

Celes nodded. “Each geisha gets their own temple building within the compound. We aren’t really permitted to interact with each other. We are however allowed to take on an apprentice that we think will serve the cult well."

“Hrm, yeah. Seems like a way to make sure you guys don’t form a union and demand equal rights such as being alive longer,” I commented. “So, um, how did you learn all this stuff, if not from other geishas?”

“I did have a geisha instructor when I was younger, for just a year. She died during Convergence and then I only had these scrolls,” Celes pointed at a wall filled with scrolls. “They contain information about these plants. For example…"

After another hour of tedious education, I realised that I started to tune Celes out because my brain couldn't handle the lack of sense or logic in her words.

“...a fully blooming June Lotus brings enlightenment, while a closed bud represents a time before enlightenment, the stalk of the lotus is the path to enlightenment,” she lectured.

There was indeed real magic in geishas, such as their songs, but alas a lot of the plant information was esoteric bullshit built atop more esoteric bullshit.

“To grant enlightenment, the June Lotus craves the light of the shattered moon, so we must…”

“Did your Qi reload, yet?” I interrupted Celes, feeling a bit brain-boggled from listening to her try to explain what plants really craved. At least it wasn’t electrolytes, but eeesh.

“Ukhm… I, yes. Why?”

“Can you do the purify song on me again?”

“We have a bathing pool, you know,” Celes said.

I froze. On one hand I wanted to hear Celes sing the time-stopping song. On another, there was a bath! I’ve never had baths. The shower that I took approximately a thousand years ago didn’t count!

“Gibs purify song in the pool,” I demanded, wanting to have my cake and eat it too.

“Follow me,” Celes sighed.

The bath section of the temple of Serenity was a hot spring, partway within the temple, partway outside. The amount of relaxation the place exuded with its architectural and gardening perfection was simply absurd.

“Geishas sure know how to live,” I whistled, feeling extremely out of place amidst this well-maintained, optimally-arranged hot spring.

“It’s a cage of gold,” the kitsune whispered, disrobing and putting her clothes away into a shelf carved within one of the rocks. “We are more butterflies than people.”

“Well, personally, I’m more of a butterfly with a gun,” I followed her motions. “And I’m not locked in here with the cultivators, they’re locked in here with ME.”

“Are you keeping the tape on?” She raised an eyebrow at me.

“Obviously I am. It’s waterproof and you never know when a ghost might attack,” I pointed at the white scar on the left side of my head. “My hair ain’t silver-blue at sixteen cause of some magical cultivation bullshit. It turned white when a servitor struck me.”

“Right,” Celes nodded, descending into the steaming pool.

I followed, keeping my gun and six magical balls within my leather holster, held overtop my head. What? What kind of an idiot would I be to surrender my most precious possessions and drop my guard?

“You don’t have a tail. I expected a tail.” I commented at her back.

“What… I, ugh.” Her face turned red.

“You better cultivate a tail, or else,” I laughed.

“Or else what?”

“I dunno,” I shrugged. “Tails are cool. You’re not a proper kitsune without nine tails.”

“This is a very specific amount of tails.”

“Just another bit of ancient culture spilling out of my big brain,” I placed my precious holster next to me on a convenient flat rock, while I sank into the shallow, warm pool. “Ah yes, this is quite nice.”

I soaked in the incredible hot spring for a while, without a care in the world. The clouds overhead parted and the shattered ruin of the moon revealed itself, glimmering in the sky. The Pharmacist part of me made me twitch.

Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that. Moon’s got a big hole in it now. Presumably one of the gods punched right through it. Or something, I dunno. Maybe a wizard did it.

I stared at the broken moon and its numerous fragments slowly spiralling across the sky, far above the earth. It looked about a hundred times bigger than the Pharmacist was used to. The collision must have knocked the moon off its original orbit and brought it far closer to earth. Dangerously close, if I had to hazard a guess. I wondered whether the cosmic-monstrosities in charge of earth cared if the moon fell from the sky. They’d most likely just shrug it off, the damn things were probably immune to direct asteroid hits if they could punch through moons.

I got out of the pool with a deep sigh. It was far too nice, but there were things to do, cultivator secrets to learn. I grabbed a fancy black towel with embroidery of a giant gold dragon on it, dried myself off, put on my new geisha robe and sat down in a lotus pose in front of the hot spring. Celes followed.

“Are you rejuvenated enough now? Make with the purity-song!” I impatiently demanded of her.

“Do I have to?” Celes glanced around nervously, as if she was expecting someone to shame her for this break in protocol.

“There ain't nobody here and I gotta learn it, don’t I?” I pushed all of my Qi into my eyes, staring her down. “Song, now.”

Celes stared back at me, unsure of herself.

“Before my eyes catch on fire, please. This is quite painful,” I added, pushing her buttons.

The geisha relaxed, inhaled and started to sing. The world around her waned, stretched and rippled. Space-time itself was being somehow meddled with the power of mere tones. A majestic aurora borealis of Qi spread out from her, engulfing a section of the pool. The exposed water solidified. The steam billowing from the pool paused its upward motion. A couple of cherry blossom petals that were falling down froze in mid air.

Her Qi was doing something as she sang, but I couldn't determine, couldn't understand what exactly was happening. My eyes saw too much information for my mind to process. As a university-educated pharmacist, I knew which parts of the brain were responsible for processing visual information. What would happen if I pushed Qi into my brain? Not into some vaguely located chakra, but right into my neurons, directing it to improve my understanding of what I was observing?

As Celes warped the world in front of me, I cautiously started to push Qi down my optic nerves towards the optic chiasm, reaching my lateral geniculate nucleus. Beast cores responded to my desire when I had used them. Rocks blew up when I wanted them to. Qi was wielded by clarity of desire. A more exact, more precise understanding of the human mind allowed me to direct my Qi all the way across my brain to my primary visual cortex, lighting up myriads of neurons along the way.

Understanding, I desired pure understanding and not just of what Celes was doing with her alien song, but of myself, of my mind - I wanted to understand exactly how my mind currently processed visual information and to improve the entire process. I wanted to witness and to understand the impossible, to bend the natural laws of the universe more efficiently.

The chorus of tones expressed by Celes suddenly lit up with spectral arrays of colors, Qi forming distinctive fractal patterns in my vision. The first and the most important one was stopping time, halting the world. The second one, was scanning the area for what Celes considered dirt and the third was designed to destroy it, to vaporise it out of existence. Together they were the song of Purity, but each one was incredible on their own not just in terms of magic, but in terms of potential use. I decided to label these patterns simply as [Time-stop], [Scanning] and [Destruction].

I knew how to project, how to push Qi into something. Could I push it in a way to form just one of these patterns? Could I replicate, create a Qi effect fractal without having to sing it?

I chose to memorise [Scanning] because the first step of the scientific method is observation. My brain ignited with pain as I wrote [The Song of Scanning] into it via brute force of Qi. I mentally gasped and lost control of my motor functions when it happened. The only reason why I didn’t immediately fall backwards and drown was because Celes was still slowing time down with her song.

Her song ended as everything within the circle of stopped time became clean. The bubble popped. I screamed and fell, holding my head between my arms. The world was on fire. No, my brain was on fire and my eyes were melting out of my head again. Stupid, stupid Ash.

“Ash?! Ash!!!” Celes was shaking me.

“Wazasburgh?” I mumbled. The geisha flickered in my vision as a thousand ghosts.

“What have you done to yourself? Damn it, girl! Why are you like this?!” Celes was holding me and crying.

“Whuuttt?” I croaked.

“You weren’t breathing! I told you to be careful with Qi overuse! Did you listen? No! Of course you didn’t.”

"I'm guud. Juss a leetle tired. Five morrr minutes nap, k?"

"Ash! Focus. You almost died! I… I am not a healer. I don't know how to help someone who's not breathing! I thought I lost you!"

“I’m pfffine. This is pffine.” I assured her. I didn’t feel fine. Celes was made up of a million, billion, trillion ghost-bits and I could identify them all, all at the same time.