It had been a long time since Mingtian had been forced to truly deal with bureaucracy, and he was just now starting to remember exactly why most cultivators felt such distaste for the practice. Perhaps that was why, with such monumental power in their grasp, they so often felt free when they were in every respect the opposite.

  Not that he, pretending to be a mortal, was any more free. Especially not as he looked at the enormous stack of paper Lexi had dropped onto his desk with little fanfare and a great deal of smugness. It seemed almost ridiculous. “This is the amount of paperwork you do every day? Just for this one library?”

  “Not even. Just the ones that are important enough that regulation demands physical copies.” It was five inches tall, and that wasn’t all of it? For a cultivator, it might have been a trivial amount, but for a mortal it was… then again, Lexi wasn’t quite mortal. In the city of East Saffron she essentially was, but that gap between essence and reality revealed a fundamental, unbridgeable gap— in Aurelia or another planet or another realm entirely, she was still a first step cultivator. With no little bit of diligence, she just might be able to do that much paperwork…

  It was such a waste of a cultivator’s talents, but to a society that had started to touch on the means and methods of elevating great numbers of its populace while still stuck so thoroughly in the early stages of production… perhaps that sort of flagrant misuse was an inevitability.

  He’d supposed it didn’t matter. He’d have to do the paperwork either way. Respectfully, he inclined his head to his boss. “What would you have me do?”

  “Right now, we’re going to go over these forms. This is probably the form you’re going to find yourself most acquainted with— any official library in East Saffron can request certain categories of books, and— in question— East Saffron is obligated to procure them for the requesting library.”

  Mingtian observed the two page long, incredibly intricate looking form. “I have a feeling that the ‘in theory’ there is pulling a lot of weight.”

  A snort of laughter escaped Lexi. “You’re right, of course. Not that they won’t do it— obligation is the life-thread of East Saffron’s bureaucracy, and it is a rare and dangerous thing that can cut through it. A sect disciple can, if they feel so inclined. Certain lawful orders from appointed ministers. The Duly Appointed Administerial Governor has a wide range of sweeping powers to be used in the pursuit of smooth administration,” he could hear the sarcasm in her voice— “but you’re more likely to see a dragon and phoenix together than you are to see him using it for anything other than to pursue his own political agenda.”

  “I fear that’s true of politicians everywhere.”

  Lexi rolled her eyes. “You’d think he could at least pretend to do his job, but no— everything important is left to the sect to swoop in and deal with, and everything unimportant falls on us lower-level bureaucrats to solve.” She sighed. “It’s just the state of things. Perhaps it’ll get better in the future, but I don’t hold out much hope.”

  So it went, usually. In his experience, a mortal world like this was the most likely place for things to get genuinely better. The amount of true, universal improvements that’d happened in the Heavenly Realms, he could probably count on one hand. In the Celestial Realm, despite everything that was always happening, nothing ever happened. “The form?”

  “Right, the form.” She grimaced. “Essentially, they’re obligated to provide us with the book, but there’s an infinite number of positively evil tricks they can do to essentially stop any requests in their tracks. One I run into commonly is an indefinite delay in delivery, which needs to be contested with a remote arbitration document— or in person arbitration, which I actually ended up doing once, but nobody has time to arbitrate all day. Regardless… essentially, this form will be your best friend and worst enemy. Do you know the heart of the mission of this library?”

  He cocked his head. “Not entirely. I assumed it was to… be a library, but from the way you said that, I’m going to assume that there’s something more to it.”

  “You’re not wrong, but it’s a little more complicated than that. At the heart of our operation— at what it means for me to be a chief librarian and for this library to be the 32nd Library of East Saffron, is our mission to provide the means and measure for the citizens of the city to properly educate themselves in the matters, moral and material, of the city and the Sect. If we were to fail that— by say, hypothetically, failing to keep a relevant and modern selection of books on the shelves— then a canny bureaucrat could take that as an opportunity to do essentially whatever they want to the library.”

  Mingtian blinked. That sounded… wrong. “Surely the system is not that ridiculously corrupt?”

  Lexi smiled sadly. “It's usually not a problem. While there is always some animosity between the bureaucracy of Old Saffron and those who work in the city, it's usually not a big problem. There’s bigger, meaner bureaucrats whose job it is to keep the whole city running well, so if someone starts acting too out of line, then they’re likely to lose their job. Now, if a politician were to endorse that sort of chicanary, though…”

  “I see.” It was a handle on the method of power. A way of leveraging people into doing what they wanted them to do. “That sounds… annoying.”

  “Oh, it certainly is, but—” Lexi smiled suddenly, smugly proud— “it also, funnily enough, leaves a little bit of a loophole. Most of the larger, wealthier libraries rely on various backers, factional support, and interrelationships with the internal bureaucracy to ensure that everything goes smoothly for them. For them, it is a matter of scale and attention— oftentimes they’re simply too large and complex for them to be subject to this sort of exactitude at every step. For example— the University’s 6th Precinct library is one of the largest in the world— it’s impossible for a single mortal to even know the names of every book in the library, much less actually keep track of them. For our library though? If I fill out all the forms correctly enough, oftentimes they simply cannot be bothered to fight it unless they want something from me. So, it works either way.”

  “Sounds like a lot of effort for little result.”

  “It’s a means of keeping order. I won’t claim that its the best system— but East Saffron is one of the most prosperous cities in the entire world. There’s some method to the madness. There has to be, even if I don’t entirely understand it myself.” Mingtian simply stayed silent. Sometimes, chaos hid grand machination, order materializing out of the nebulous shifting and ever-transforming of the inscrutable.

  Sometimes, chaos was just chaos.

  “Anyways.” She pushed the paper an inch forward towards him. “Start with your name and the library details. You’ll have to fill out section 1.8b, given that you’re completing this on my behalf…” and so on, and so forth. They set to work.

  Time flew.

  ………

  It was late by the time he was finished. Well, not that he did finish— he gathered, rather, that finishing wasn’t quite the point. The battle was neverending. He found it respectable that Lexi put so much time and effort into ensuring the library’s continued prosperity. All for the people of the 32nd Precinct… it spoke well to her character.

  It wasn’t finishing that stopped him, though. Rather, it was a familiar presence, slipped so silently into the sanctified, ever-flowing qi of his room’s serenity, that caught his attention and dragged him away from his work. “Don’t you have things to be doing? Surely, spending all your time in the city can’t be what you want to do.”

  A silent moment, and a nod only he could see— before Zhihu unwrapped a shimmering, almost-invisibly dark cloth from around her and tucked it away into a pocket, leaning against the wall next to his window. “Not many cultivators would willingly want to spend all their time in the messy, chaotic qi void of a big city like East Saffron, but… under obligation, it's not too bad. Things have gotten better since I was younger.”

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  He raised an eyebrow towards her. “How old are you?”

  “Don’t you know it’s impolite to ask a lady her age?”

  “I never thought cultivators were so shallow as to be affected by something as petty as that.”

  “Then you don’t know cultivators. And I know you know cultivators, Mingtian.” She grabbed the extra chair, sinking down onto it and seeming to really take in the room at last. “Give a man the power of a god, and you’ll see the whole breadth of petty tyranny before long. The sects play an irrevocable role in curtailing that excess.”

  Mingtian gently placed his pen down, leaning back in his own chair. He knew he wasn’t going to be getting any further work done. “What then about the people who rule the sects? Their authority is absolute.”

  “In theory, their authority is absolute. The Elders of the sect would never stand for something depraved.”

  “Do they have a choice, though? If the Sect Leader of the Bloody Saffron Sect were to ascend to the eighth step tomorrow, would anyone in all of Ca Cao be able to stop him?”

  Zhihu frowned. “Two steps… it is still doable, if one absolutely must fight. It would be a losing battle, yes, but they would fight regardless. And that isn’t to mention the Ever-Joyous Harmony of Bells Sect. They would not tolerate some… demonic practice or whatever you insinuate amongst the upper eschalons of a sect beneath them.”

  “What if the Sect Leader of the Ever-Joyous Harmony of Bells Sect decided to do something unforgivable?”

  A grimace floated across Zhihu’s face. “He would never. And I’ll advise you to avoid speaking ill of the world’s most powerful Immortal Ascension cultivator— the rumors are many, and the truth of them is likely somewhat far lesser than is claimed, but it is said that the Sect Leader of the Ever-Joyous Harmony of Bells Sect can hear the wingbeat of a cricket on the other side of the world and taste the flavor of his name from any mouth.”

  “Fair enough. I don’t doubt it.” It would be a legendary feat for a mortal— even an Immortal Ascension mortal— but… doable. They’d have to have a very aura-perception focused cultivation path, and just from the name of the ‘Ever-Joyous Harmony of Bells’ Sect, he could well imagine that sort of path being favored amongst them.

  Higher amongst the echelons of power, that sort of thing was common. The Peak Divines of the Heavenly Realm were well known for pulling those sorts of tricks across the breadth of whole realities. So, he wasn’t at all unfamiliar with it.

  “You understand what I speak of though, no?”

  “I’ll admit to being a bit ignorant of what you’re trying to get at.”

  “There is a pretense, to our power. Cultivation is a search for power— near the core of what it is, that truth exists. There is value in masking it and pretending that it is not so. Peace is a virtue. Yet in turn, if the one wearing the veil starts to pretend it doesn’t exist… self delusion is a dangerous thing.”

  “Power gives rise to civilization. Civilization relies on power. The flourishing of civilization is not something that masks the power beneath it— it builds atop it and creates something new and altogether wonderful in pursuit of greatness.” Zhihu crossed her arms daring him to refute her— but what she didn’t realize was that he hadn’t even really been talking to her in the first place.

  After all, of the two of them, only one of them was wearing veils.

  He sighed, shrugging. “I merely think that the power of power is undeniable. To pretend it does not exist— that it does not convey almost as much authority to your Sect Leader’s words as does the authority vested in him by the rest of the sect— is foolish.”

  “And I think your conceptualization of the politics of power is foolish and outdated. Have you ever learnt about contemporary cultivator geopolitics?”

  “I’m not a cultivator.”

  “And I’m a fluffy kitten.” She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t come to bicker about philosophy, believe it or not, so I suppose I can be magmanimous and let this conversation lapse.” Her gaze settled on the huge stack of papers off to the side, all neatly filled over the course of the day. “Did you actually do all of those as a mortal?”

  “Why wouldn’t I have?”

  “Some of the Sect Elders could learn from you with that kind of patience.” It was a joke, yes, but also probably not entirely inaccurate. Most of the elders of any respectable institution probably wouldn’t suffer the ignominy of doing such tediously pointless mortal tasks. “I don’t know if I could manage to do so.”

  “Sit down and I’ll teach you. Maybe it’ll help strengthen your dao.”

  Zhihu laughed, but— notably— did not take him up on the offer. “Wow. You really are old fashioned. I don’t think I’ve heard reference of dao like that in…” she tapped her fingers against his desk for a few long seconds, then just shrugged. “A long time, certainly.”

  “It’s not that bad, really. I find the work tedious, and moreover pointless… but as far as bureaucracy goes, it’s not the worst. At least it works with only a minimum of corruption.”

  “Right. A minimum of corruption.” Zhihu snorted. “From the perspective of someone the highest-level bureaucrats would hesitate to bother with anything other than a matter truly critical, I can assure you, corruption is the very nature of the game.”

  “The city is not corrupt, though.”

  “The city bureaucracy is an impersonal power, above any single mortal functionary— pinned in place beneath the ever-vigilant eyes of the Bloody Saffron Sect. It is a tumor, an ever-sickening blood-sucking growth that erases productivity and forces the exact sort of inanity you have before you—” she waved a hand at the papers— “in search of some impersonal yet somehow all too politically personal order.”

  Mingtian hummed softly. “You clearly feel strongly about the matter.”

  “I…” she sighed. “Kind of. As a disciple of the Bloody Saffron Sect, it doesn’t reach me in any meaningful regard. You’d be remarkably surprised how trivial something can appear the moment it no longer entangles you… but, yes. I dislike the way the city is going. The government, the society, the very warp and weft of it… the decadent boundary between inner and outer, the current political issue with the Sundering-level cat that rules a small enclave like a petty lord…” she shook her head. “It is not that bureaucracy is bad, in and of itself. The bureaucracy managed to keep East Saffron prosperous and secure for thousands of years, that I cannot deny— I rather think that the world has been changing too fast over these last few, recent centuries for any institution to survive unchanged, and the change to the bureaucracy has been almost universally corrupting.”

  He shrugged. “Then do something about it.”

  “If only it were so simple. I’m just an outer sect disciple. Vested with authority, perhaps, but not the authority to cause change, only to be change. I am the sword, not the hand that wields it.” She shook her head. “Regardless— let's get back on track. I came to pester you.”

  “I figured.”

  He earned a mock glare for that one. “To pester you into renting a place. You’ve brought attention down upon yourself by mentoring— sponsoring, supporting whatever you want to call it— two students with such potential. Some might see the common factor and find themselves… interested.”

  “You seem content to leave me well enough alone,” as though he wasn’t in the middle of being pestered right that very moment.

  “I can’t say much to that effect.” She just shrugged. “I know you well enough to know that you’re no threat— and perhaps, worse, no opportunity.” He couldn’t help but think she was being a little naive about it, but… alas, so went the way of the young. “I haven’t told anyone, but that doesn’t mean that nobody will check. Besides, it has to be uncomfortable, not having your own place to sleep.”

  Mingtian raised an eyebrow. “Who says I even sleep at all?”

  “Right, because you’re secretly a Sundering-stage elder who has eschewed mortality entirely.”

  “No, I’m actually an Immortal Sovereign descended from the heavens.”

  Zhihu rolled her eyes. “Ha ha, very funny.” Her laugh was so sardonically dry that he could all but feel the sarcasm rolling off it. “I’m sure with your librarian’s salary and the spirit stones that you definitely didn’t pass off to your disciples, getting a decent place should be well within your means. Do it tomorrow.”

  He mock-bowed to her. “As her eminence the outer sect disciple commands.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  He sighed. “Could you be any less subtle?”

  All she did was laugh.

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