Sitting in a darkened room, Kaido squints at the slightly too-small screen of the boxy monitor and taps the arrow key down to reveal a few more lines.

  Her frown deepens at the new figures, so she clicks her pen and jots a number down among a list before tapping out a few operations into a calculator with the back of her pen.

  She’s never been adept at audits, one of the few duties she’d been given that she could never get up to her own standards, and this accounting seems intentionally designed to be complicated. False trails of what look like missing income or expenditure that prove to be completely legitimate only after cross-checking two other databases that spiral out from every spreadsheet cell.

  She taps the down arrow a few more times, then turns a page in her notebook to reference the numbers that she’d written down several hours ago.

  The cultivator has been forced to run around for days between over twenty small sects, digging through convoluted methods of income reporting, then checking against the records kept by all the others.

  That days long web led her back here, the very place she’d started, this unassuming room where she’s been sitting for the past thirty one hours. Only now has she untangled the mess enough to get even the most basic understanding of the finances in this place.

  The disciple in charge of this sect’s finances makes a startled grunt, as if she awoke him.

  “...Is there something I can assist you with Master Cultivator?” He asks after a moment, for the fifth time this hour.

  She ignores him for a few minutes, typing out some more math and referencing several other handwritten pages, before finally swiveling in her chair to look at the person who’d been standing behind her the entire time.

  “Your records state that there has been a marked downturn in extracted tithe from all assets within your area. However, the documented revenue stream of purchases conducted by members of your order assigned to collect the tithe has not seen a matching decrease. I know that they are receiving a percentage of their collection, can you resolve this discrepancy?”

  For a single instant –barely long enough to even be noticed– Kaido thinks she sees a sliver of anger and fear flash across the accountant’s face, but then it’s gone.

  “Of course Master Cultivator.” He demures, reaching over and pulling another data drive from an unmarked cubby on the wall. “The council determined the decrease in tithe to be caused by a failure in the mortals. The percentage cut of earnings was increased so as not to punish members of our order for something they had no control over.”

  Kaido looks at the offered drive, knowing it’ll report exactly the same thing.

  Mortals being lazy is a reasonable explanation, a common one even. Typically it comes alongside a sect losing strength after battling another.

  While the records here don't report death and recruitment, she’s seen many initiates and youthful faces in several sects while she was investigating. It wouldn't be surprising at all if there was some kind of power struggle that led to a weakening of all sects within this sector.

  But…

  The cultivator looks back at the tiny terminal and pages of notes in this dark room.

  The first thing they did when she said she was here for an audit was to give the report authored by the previous member of her order assigned the same task.

  Their report gives no mention of any of this tangled mess, despite this format being used as far back as the sect has records, and this vassal is the largest in the sector, tasked with the collection and organization of all other other sects within it.

  For the records to be this opaque…

  The cautious words of her master ring in her ears as she unplugs her current drive from her terminal and, after referencing her notes, plugs in another drive before tapping though the menus on the keyboard.

  A few seconds later the file for a large scrapyard appears on the screen, the largest in the sector.

  They don't have a complete list of income sources anywhere, but over time she’s determined that this scrapyard makes up somewhere between fifteen to twenty five percent of gross tithe income for this sect.

  Her next step is there, almost no businesses in this place are large enough to need to keep record of their payroll for their employees, or if they do there are so few that any potential discrepancy could have any number of other causes.

  But this place has enough employees that it must, by necessity, keep a detailed record of payment. Detailed enough and with enough mortals to question that any discrepancy can be proven in the agitation.

  Even if everything she’s seeing is fake, if the tithe is being circumvented it will be revealed here.

  With that thought Kaido rises and adjusts her robe with a smooth swirling motion.

  “I am satisfied with my investigation.” She states, intentionally imperiously, then marches out the door and into the world beyond.

  _-__-_

  As the door closes, Head Accountant Shan does not allow his composure to break for even a moment even after he’s sure the auditor is gone, quietly working to put his station back in order.

  Only after the door opens again, admitting his master, does Shan allow the facade to ease even slightly.

  “She suspects, Master.” He says as soon as the door closes, gesturing at the untouched terminal. “I believe she’ll attempt to canvas for disbursement fraud at the scrapyard.”

  “Damn her.” He mutters as he purses his lips, thinking. “Do the records there match our own?”

  “No Master, there’s no point, if an audit were to investigate there falsified records would be so obvious as to make the effort pointless.”

  There’s a long silence at that statement, Shan watching his master stare firmly into the middle distance in thought, before slowly reaching into his pocket and removing a silver communication cylinder.

  Twisting the cap, the senior cultivator presses down on the top then waits for a few seconds, before a distorted voice comes from the device.

  “What?”

  “Your Excellency,” the senior cultivator says in a smooth tone, “The auditor is attempting to canvas the morals in scrapyard four four seven. Without drastic action our tithe withholding will be revealed.”

  Following the report there’s a few seconds of quiet, broken by a mildly surprised hum.

  “...I would not have expected her capable of interacting with mortals long enough to do such a thing. You are certain?”

  “Yes, your Excellency.”

  “Then she must die. Assemble a force of as many as you can without arousing suspicion and attack before she can report what she’s found. Do not underestimate her.” The voice commands firmly. “Furthermore this has accelerated our revolution drastically, abandon subtlety in your tithe collection. I will inform the other cells.”

  With that the top of the silver communicator pops out again and the device is pocketed.

  Shan snaps to attention as his master looks him in the eye.

  “I will alert the council. Finance a bounty large enough it will make those assigned fight with conviction.”

  “Yes Master.” Shan mutters, immediately spinning around and grabbing the true financial records off a shelf, hidden in plain sight among all the garbage.

  As he works, visions of the coming revolution and the abrupt elevation of his sect’s standing are very pleasant indeed.

  _____

  _-__-_

  –––––

  Lian hisses through her teeth as she slowly digs her way through the ever-shrinking gaps in the scrap as the pile settles.

  She’s so close.

  She’s barely been bringing in any scrap for days, all her effort instead devoted to this singular project, rushing against the clock for even a chance to get the final piece she needs to get out of this place.

  It’s been over a week, and in that time she’s stress tested every component of her ship she can without blowing the single use undock bolts, gathered enough spare food for a month, and dug her way almost to the dead center of this pile.

  She knows it’s in there, she just knows her starmap is just waiting inside that cockpit console, waiting for her to grab it and get out of this hellish place.

  She can't give up now.

  There’s the sound of grinding metal above her and she flinches as she can see the ceiling press in by another few centimetres, the motion creating a small shower of sparks on one of the walls that bounce against the black tar that has finally begun creeping through the metal.

  Confirming that nothing has caught fire and it’s not coming down further she continues deeper.

  Not now.

  But as she carefully presses her back up against a slab of metal to shove another out of the way with her leg, Lian’s breathing hitches as she realizes she can't find the edge to the metal plate behind it and she’s forced to temper her excitement with the experience of a hundred of false positives.

  However, her excitement can only grow when she sees that the plate is almost seamlessly welded against another, and the sound when she knocks against it proves that it’s thick in a way that she’s only ever seen on other scrapped ships.

  Shoving more junk out of the way and squeezing through gaps barely larger than her head, the scrapper feels her heart stutter in her chest as she sees how those thick plates are warped in the near pitch darkness. Placing the sight against the memory of that ship burned into her brain, she can only let out a quiet squeal of joy.

  Yes!

  This has to be it!

  Lian squints, looking around to try and get an estimate on where she is, because if this is the ship, then the edge of the buckling was just to the left of the airlock, so she would need to go…

  The scrapper throws herself in the direction of the airlock, ripping at the metal with reckless abandon, only reminded by a warning pop from all around to pause and continue more slowly.

  Carefully, she moves loose metal aside, testing to ensure she’s not disrupting her tunnel before–

  Her hands pause as she finds the seam for the airlock, stained with streaks of black but unmistakable, and for an instant all Lian can hear is the thudding of her heartbeat in her ears, the sight silencing all thoughts for a few seconds that feel like they stretch out to an eternity.

  Then she’s ripped out of her reverie by the echoing buzzer that signals a shift end.

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  For an instant she almost ignores it, wanting to continue working and not stop until she finds her starmap, but her better sense prevails.

  If someone doesn't show up, the foreman ‘volunteers’ a few of her co-workers to go out and search for them, and considering the fact that she’s been coming to this same pile daily people will know just where to look.

  It takes another half a minute for Lian to convince herself of this, then another two for her to slowly squeeze through the incredibly narrow gaps that remain within the settling mass.

  She’s got another two days, maybe three before it closes up enough that it’s impossible to get down there, and a sudden collapse could happen at any moment. So she’ll be cutting it close, but as long as things stay on schedule she’ll be able to grab it.

  But as she slowly climbs down the scrap pile and marches back toward the front, the question on how she’s going to get the starmap out of the yard rises once more.

  Lian squints as she carefully watches one foot fall in front of the other.

  The question of getting the thing out isn't new, everything else she’s ‘acquired’ from work has been small enough to smuggle in her personal bag with some luck and a basic knowledge of when security likes to do spot searches of people’s stuff.

  But, while she can't know the precise size of the starmap, it was rendered in the game as a black box the size of a microwave attached to a suction-cup looking thing covered in cameras by a bundle of cables.

  That’s not something she can really smuggle, and dismantling it to move piecemeal doesn't really work with the quite literally actively shrinking window of opportunity.

  In the end, her only real choice is both simple and quite risky.

  She needs to break in during the few hours in the middle of the rest cycle where there’s no one, between the evening shift leaving and the morning shift filing in. This plan has its problems, the most obvious being the fact that the scrapyard certainly won't be empty, with an unknown number of security and she knows that they turn off most of the overhead lights, so she’ll be working in almost complete pitch darkne–

  “Pst.” Someone whispers, grabbing onto her shoulder. “Wait a sec.”

  Lian catches a yell of alarm in her throat, strangling it to a squeak before throwing the arm off and stepping away as she turns to face the unknown.

  “Wh– Oh, hi Wei.” She stammers as she recognizes her co-worker. “What?”

  He looks alarmed, even more haggard than normal after an evening shift, and leans in closer as he points toward the counter where it’s hidden behind a pile of metal. “They’re back early.” He whispers.

  Lian blinks, then leans in to whisper as well.

  “...Who?”

  “The cultivators.” He says so quietly he’s almost just mouthing the words. “They’re back for the full tithe early.”

  The hushed news has Lian feeling as if the world is falling out from underneath her.

  “...Early!?”

  They can't be here early! It’s the middle of the week! She’s not gathered nearly enough scrap to cover even half a tithe!

  They’ve never done anything like this before!

  Lian shoves her hand into the collar of her boilersuit and yanks out the necklace of marks she has on hand and starts counting them off.

  She’s been spending almost all her time on the starmap, pushing her actual work to later and later! She barely has enough to pay the mortal protection racket back home!

  But if she gives the cultivators everything she has on hand, plus what little she’d grabbed on this shift…

  She’s fifty marks short.

  The scrapper’s mind immediately starts searching for a solution. Surely they don't expect the full tithe after showing up unannounced after giving half the normal amount of time.

  She saw some stuff that might be valuable nearby, if she rushes back and pulls it out, maybe she can get lucky and find fifty marks worth of something?

  Or maybe…

  Those thoughts fall to silence as Wei’s hand enters her field of vision, holding out a small handful of marks.

  She looks up at the older scrapper, struggling to process what she’s seeing.

  At her expression, Wei ducks his head and clears his throat.

  “...They’re not just taking the tithe, they’re taking everything, but from what I can tell they’re still getting mad at people who don't meet the normal tithe.” He mutters, pressing the coins closer. “Me and Hoyan have been… trying to keep everything smooth.”

  Swallowing the lump in her throat, Lian gently takes the offered coins and offers a genuine smile.

  “Thank you…”

  Wei looks somewhat flustered, and almost immediately after yanking his hand away he pivots then hurriedly power walks toward another scrapper, waving him down.

  Lian loops the coins on the wire of her necklace while she rounds the corner to the front of the scrapyard and enters the back of the line, shuffling forward with all her other co-workers to the counter to exchange the last of her scrap of the day for cash, immediately followed by entering another line to have that money taken away.

  Stepping to the beat, the scrapper struggles to keep her head bowed and eyes lowered with the strength of her frustration at the people who’ve now dropped any pretence of this being some kind of fair tax.

  The frustration is compounded by the fact that the people exploiting their power to break the deal they imposed on everyone are so weak as to be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

  One of the cultivators enters her field of vision as he walks down the line, and with her head bowed she can only see him from the waist down. But that’s enough to see the pistol on his hip, the holster tied to his excessively baggy clothes like it’s the scabbard of some kind of sword.

  Lian struggles to keep any noise of her frustrated amusement contained at the sight as she slowly approaches.

  He’s fodder. She’s made and burned probably millions of people just like him over her many runs on the other side of the monitor. Because creating a training pathway for cultivators that use any kind of gun is fundamentally a dead end choice, as firearm scaling falls off so quickly that wearing a handgun is just waving a giant sign around saying he’s the cheapest way to get the most combat power as fast as possible. Just strong enough to be able to beat up mortals and other fodder, otherwise they’ll chip away at actual power units.

  As she passes next to him, she sees the man pause, then reach down and fiddle with the piece of ribbon attaching the holster to his belt with such arrogant fastidiousness that she can't help but snort–

  …

  …..

  Lian blinks rapidly as she realizes she’s on the floor, mind foggy and a splitting pain above her right temple.

  Pushing herself up, the scrapper sees the cultivator had removed his gun from his holster and appears to have beat her over the head with the butt of the weapon.

  He’d been so fast she didn't even see him move.

  She has just enough time to blink before his arm seems to blur and she’s staring down the barrel.

  “You are to show your respect to your betters with silence.” He commands, even his anger appearing to be rote, something expected rather than a true emotion. “Back in line.”

  The sight of her death has the scrapper frozen on the spot, eyes wide as she stares up at her halfhearted killer.

  Lian stares, the sound of blood rushing through her ears.

  It takes till the person behind her begins to reach down and help her up that she snaps out of her stupor and gets up herself.

  The cultivator says nothing, reholstering his gun in a blink and continuing down the line without a backward glance.

  Lian mutters a thanks to the person who reached down to help after the cultivator is out of earshot.

  She needs to get out of here.

  She trudges forward, and everything falls into a kind of blur as she pays her tithe to the cultivator, stands silently in the decon showers, then blinks in mild surprise as she realizes she’s automatically making her way back home.

  Tonight, she’s getting her starmap from that ship.

  It’ll be there.

  It has to be there.

  _____

  _-__-_

  –––––

  Walking though the darkened and empty halls toward the scrapyard that stands as the next step in her audit, Kaido cannot help but have a small smile on her face at her ingenuity.

  She knows that the mark of a skilled cultivator is to have a grasp of their own weaknesses as well as their strengths. Not only as a method of knowing what skills must be developed further, but a cold self-assessment allows a cultivator to act in ways that negate those weaknesses by leveraging their true strengths.

  In her case, Kaido knows her weakness with technology, one of the many compounding issues that makes performing an audit a uniquely difficult challenge in comparison to another member of her order. Machines and computers do not obey her will as she knows is possible for even the most common mortal.

  But thankfully, with a bit of skill and ingenuity, she’s found a solution.

  Marching in front of her, barefoot and wearing a large nightgown, is the foreman of the scrapyard she’s auditing.

  It doesn't take a once in a generation genius to know a mortal is quite weak to the authority entrusted to her by her sect, so it follows that his strengths become hers.

  More than worth the few hours it took to track down his weak Qi signature to where he was sleeping, kick down the door, and order him to come with her.

  The fact that she has him at the point of a blade doesn't hurt either.

  He whimpers as they approach the scrapyard doors.

  “I–I–I swear Honored Cultivator! Whatever you want I don't know anything! I–I–”

  “You will be silent.” Kaido orders as they come to a stop in front of the doors. Leading into the scrapyard. “Open this.”

  The man trembles as he shakes his head and flinches.

  “I–I can't. My ID card was i-in my pants and–”

  His jaw shuts with a clack as Kaido sighs, making note of lack of pants.

  Truly, this excursion out of her sect proves to be another excellent example on why she avoids leaving it.

  Stepping past the stammering man, she leans in to investigate the obstruction, a secure door marked ‘management only’ in a side corridor a level higher than the entrance for the laborers.

  She tilts her head as she investigates how the secure lock attached to the steel door which, after a sharp knock with the pack of her knuckles, she confirms is hollow.

  A simple matter to bypass.

  She returns her blade to her sheath, crouches slightly, and with the sound ringing steel, her blade is at the other end of a slash. A second later the cultivator kicks the obstruction hard enough that metal warps and a diagonal bisection of the door is sent flying across the formerly secure room with a crash.

  Kaido habitually checks the edge of her blade for burrs before resheathing it, then steps over the remaining warped triangle with another sigh.

  “Follow.”

  Continuing with the mortal trailing behind, Kaido is forced to give three more doors a similar treatment before they’re stepping out of an elevator to the foreman’s office, panoramic windows giving an excellent view of the piles of garbage the man lords over.

  Assessing the room with a single look, she turns to the foreman and stands at a tight attention.

  “This is a formal audit performed through the auspices of the Silver Firmament Sect, you are to present me with all financial records and assist me in navigating these systems.”

  She’d said this before, but the man was screaming in his bed the first time, so he behaves as if this is the first time she’d given her instruction.

  She steps to the side and gestures at the terminal attached to the largest desk in the room, hoping desperately that the mortal doesn't need his ID card to access his own computer.

  Thankfully it seems that the mortal has everything he needs, as he hurries over to his desk with a great deal of stuttering compliance and, in a matter of minutes, the dimly lit room is bathed in the pale white light of the spreadsheets the business's records are held on.

  But as the cultivator watches official documents scroll across the screen, her eye catches on something unexpected.

  “Stop.”

  Staring at the characters on the screen, Kaido reads it twice over to ensure she’s not misunderstanding something.

  Because this document claims that this scrapyard belongs to Elder Jingwei, though not using the authority of his title. Only a small amount of digging finds the writ of ownership using the elder’s personal stamp, confirming that there’s no mistake.

  But financial assets owned by a member of the Silver Firmament Sect are exempt from the tithe. The only way the tithe would still be collected is if he didn't report it as his to the sect.

  Why would Elder Jingwei buy some tiny scrapyard and not report it?

  It doesn't make any sense…

  Kaido leans over the mortal’s shoulder, pointing at the spreadsheet marked expenditures.

  “Show me employee payroll and tithe extraction.” She orders, obeyed with genuinely admirable speed as the tables flash across the screen.

  It’s clearly laid out, simple, efficient.

  And what it’s saying is that the Bronze-Banded Fist Sect are doing far worse than skimming tithe money, they’re bleeding this place dry.

  Kaido shoves the mortal out of the way and starts flicking through the spreadsheets herself, and what she’s seeing only adds another layer of complication onto the nonsensical pile.

  Every week, they’re drawing more and more money from the business in such a way that she can tell even with a single glance that it’s unsustainable. That they’re burning any potential for future income for liquidity right n–

  Kaido flinches.

  Killing intent!

  Behin–