It would have been a much better “morning” for Fubei Li, if the “sunshine” shining on his face wasn’t so grey and pale, and he wasn’t lying inside of a pool filled with a kind of chilly half liquid half condensed fog liquid substance. But he could not complain either, because he could sense that the liquid substance was acting as a healing agent, that was both mending the wounds on his body and replenishing his Xuanli in a slow but steady manner.

“You’re awake, Mr. Li.” a Fog Dweller in the shape of an octopus but with many more tentacles, six eyes on his bald head, no mouth and no ears and three insect-like legs standing beside the pool greeted Jianmen with a child-like voice and an accent, which was strange because it was not spoken through a mouth or through any means of communication through the air but by a special kind of telepathy: “You have been unconscious for about … about three Earth Days and fifteen Earth Hours and seventeen Earth Minutes.”

“That’s quite a long time.” Fubei Li struggled to sit up from the pool, he could sense that he was in a weakened state, but lucky for him there were no serious injuries or trauma. The slowness of the healing was mostly due to the incompatibility between the power of the pool and his Xuanli, the Fog Dwellers already tried their best, and from what he could tell it was effective enough: “What happened?”

“The vortex and portal exploded and the explosion swept almost our entire frontier clean.” the Fog Dweller said: “We lost many, but thanks to you and your efforts, no more creatures of the gaps were able to advance on our realms anymore - for now that is.”

“What about Dave and Xyankor?” Fubei Li tried to stand up on his feet, but his legs were still too weak for him to stand, so he could only kneel with one leg in the pool: “And what about Perketta?”

“Deputy Perketta is still in recovery, she had sustained much damage from the battle and it would take her much longer than you to rise again.” the Fog Dweller answered: “The Depth Dweller visitors were dealing their own business here, with the help of other deputies to Fog Lords. Lord Tamura just told me that he would like to meet you when you are strong enough to get out of the pool yourself.”

“Splash!” Fubei Li tried once again to stand up and move, but his legs gave out and he fell face down in the pool and inhaled some of the liquid - it was a mixture of salty, bitter, sweet and light umami, like one of the earlier dishes he cooked up while he was still an apprentice in his clan.

“Looks like you still need time to heal.” the Fog Dweller grabbed a grey stone tablet from a pile of similar tablets around the pool with one of his tentacles and gently dangled it in front of Fubei Li: “Here, these are some of documents Xyankor and Daekan-Velliander requested and insisted that we put here in case you woke up.”

“What are they about?” Fubei Li took the tablet and skimmed it, the whole tablet was covered with complex symbols that were also slowly turning and moving. These were the words of the Fog Dwellers, where the same symbol could mean different things depending on how it was carved or drawn, or what kind of initial angle it was in, or in which direction it rotated, Fubei Li could understand some verbal Fog Dweller language, but when it came to written form, the limited knowledge he learned from Dave on the language of Depth Dwellers from Dave stopped being helpful: “I - I can’t really read this, do you have a dictionary or something?”

“They are documents and records of our history and our knowledge and wisdom. You are holding it.” the Fog Dweller turned his head and looked at Jianmen in a curious form: “This is a dictionary from Fog Dweller words to that of Depth Dwellers.”

“I am a human from Earth, so I can’t really read either. Sorry.”

“That is completely understandable. Do you want me to read it to you then?” one of the six eyes of the Fog Dweller dropped down from its original position, then disconnected from the main body and became a floating eyeball with no eyelids and three pupils.

“Yes, please.” Fubei Li let out an embarrassed smile: “Or if you can, just give me a crash course on how to read your language.”

“The language of ours is not really easy to grasp for newcomers. And even a ‘crash course’ could take several Earth Days to explain. But that’s not going to be a problem, I am happy to read it to you.” the Fog Dweller grabbed Fubei Li another stone tablet: “This is one of the most influential documents we have in our archive. Almost every Fog Dweller has read it at least once or twice.”

“Really? What’s it about?”

“The basics for postpartum care for livestocks.”

“... anything on the creatures of the gaps?”

“Oh! Yes, those are relatively new and probably wouldn’t be very organized, thorough or accurate, since we just started encountering them recently.”

“That would be fine, just tell me as much as possible.” Fubei Li nodded, then he stressed: “Find me the records about the realms from which they came - I want to know about every mention of it and every theory about it.”

“Searching. Please give me a second.”