They argued back and forth and finally settled on an acceptable remuneration. Yung's portion was increased by a lot, which honestly he didn't really feel bad about. Setting best market practices wasn't his job. There were no anti-trust laws here, and how the market balanced itself was out of Yung's capabilities to fathom. They promised to hash out the details, such as the price of the end products, at a later date. It was then that Ziyou Maque also showed interest in joining the deal. The same went for the Dark Star mercenaries.

Yung would supply the silk, and the rest would be up to them.

“Now then, this is the modified smaller version of the fortune fox totem.” I can feed the excess xinqi to the pink heart ring. It doesn’t seem to have an upper limit as of yet. I’m sure it does, but that’s a problem for future Yung.

He passed on the cartoonish sketch, enthusiastically explaining the deeper meaning behind Silky rolling upside down around a blue disk that was Earth.

The audience understood nothing but agreed.

The group exited the shop in a generally amicable mood, with Yung and Su Nanya at the head.

They dissolved, the Youjin patriarch leading his clan members towards the citadel alongside the Dark Star mercenaries, who had set base in the upper town. They would have much to discuss on the upcoming hunt and Westmoon kingdom matters. Ziyou Maque having to organise gang operations, also bid farewell. He still had a slight limp but assured Yung he’d be back in fighting shape by the time sect recruitments phase one ended.

Yung headed back to his room. He’d gotten a promise from Youjin Liu that a fully furnished workstation would be created in the Dim gold hotel for his exclusive use by this evening. Yung had plans to delve deeper into runes, arrays, and modifying captured light and sound in tokens.

He had plans for many things. He climbed up the steps happily, floofing Su Nanya and humming a tune. No, this is cultivation! I’m cultivating, okay?

Su Nanya scoffed, but was happy to let her servant pamper her.

Only to bump into a bright-faced Youjin Chao leaning against the wall in front of his door.

Before Yung noticed, Su Nanya had vanished.

“Brother Yung. Have you heard the news?” Youjin Chao greeted with a cold smile as Yung’s eyes wandered to search for the golden fox.

Is she hiding under a bed again? Yung was dismayed. “What news?” Does he know I made out with Nyanya?

“Of the sect recruitments, of course!” Youjin Chao fist pumped, “Su Nanya qualified Dim Gold City again.”

“…. You’re fast,” Yung said.

“The Youjin clan runners have been shouting about it all over town.” Youjin Chao said, “with your totem in tow. Did brother Yung convince her somehow?”

“I may have had a hand.”

“Are you really not going to partake in phase one?”

“Why would I? I’ve got a free pass.”

“I would like to compare my talents to yours.” Youjin Chao said with a fiery gaze, “It would only be fair, if Su Nanya is to make a proper judgement.”

“She… already knows about my ‘talents’,” Yung said, my talented tongue, heh. “Besides, it’s not healthy to compare yourself to others so much.”

“Brother Yung, it is rather disheartening to see you treating this situation with such levity! Love, as you've pointed out, is an action. And by failing to show your best qualities proactively, you risk losing her favour. How regrettable that would be for you!”

I think Nyanya and I are way past that point….

“I won’t lose! For I act with actions, not articulations.” The taller boy grinned, proclaiming his plans like the world must hear them.

A talented tongue is needed for proper ‘articulations.’ Gawd I’m so cheesy! Yung tried not to blush.

“Well, then. That will be all.” With those final words, Youjin Chao parted.

“Good luck with the sect recruitments!” Yung shouted hesitantly to the taller boy’s back. “I’ll cheer you on!”

Youjin Chao waved without turning. The stairway was dim, with the hubbub of the restaurant coming from below. With an assertive stride, the taller boy made his descent down the staircase. Each step was precise and assured, yet also carried an air of grace. He bore an uncanny resemblance to a cinematic hero: unyielding and brave, his posture resolute and undeterred, emanating an essence of dauntlessness. And his heroic stature was amplified against the contrast of the bustling activity below the stairwell, crafting a scene that could befit a superhero movie poster.

How cool, Yung thought, and dumb. Should I tell him about Nyanya and me?

“The yang stifles us so.” Su Nanya said.

“You’re back!” Yung jumped. Su Nanya brushed against his legs like a kitty. “Where did you go?”

“Under your bed. That obnoxious child’s yang qi stench would not reach us there.”

“….”

“We suppose you must have missed us dearly.” Su Nanya said, waving her adorable tail.

***

The Youjin clan did as they promised, relocating an entire jade slip workshop to a large room in the hotel.

“Thanks!” Yung waved the workers, and the elder supervising the task, goodbye. He then looked at the new jade slips containing the runes, arrays, and formation techniques needed for his new project.

Sound, light, and scene capturing and transmission tokens. Six in total, with detailed breakdowns of each rune and array necessary to create the working formations.

“How is our tail?” Su Nanya asked, back in her yao form and leaning against Yung on a stool next to him. She glanced at the workbench with disdain, and whispered in his ears.

“Mesmerising!”

“Very well,” With a poof, her yao form vanished into puffy clouds, and the little golden fox appeared. She went for the same pillow Floofy slept on and put it by the window so the sunlight would kiss her.

She curled up, going silent, staring at Yung’s every movement like a super cute surveillance camera.

Yung got to work.

He took a scrying tool from the workbench and put a fresh void jade under it. In another, he placed a scene capturing token. He read, and then reread the instructions. With the jade carving blade, Yung carefully etched part of the formation loose on the token.

As Yung was unacquainted with the process, there were several unsuccessful attempts, resulting in the squandering of void jades. However, this didn't concern him as he hadn't intended to finish these to begin with.

“Done!”

He’d successfully isolated one of the arrays. He recorded it with a light capturing token, and on a separate paper scroll, he jotted down diagrams and notes with a bamboo pen.

Yung then shifted his focus to the scene transmission token, treating the sound and light capturing and transmission tokens similarly in succession. Eventually, he procured a fundamental jade slip, also known as the jade scroll token which was traditionally used for information storage, and mirrored the same process with it.

He isolated the parts of the formation responsible for qi supply, qi acquisition from the cultivator, storing the captured data, reading the cultivator’s commands, and transmitting the information.

The instruction manuals for each of the tokens explained mostly the process and the function, but not the underlying mechanics. Such as, how each array in the formation connected to create unique results.

It took a few hours, and Yung stretched his arms and cracked his fingers with a tired moan as his work neared its end. He scanned the token with the light captures of all the isolated unique arrays one last time, smiling lightly.

“I’ll call these… Functions.” He wrote in big words at the header of the scroll.

It was tempting to equate the runes, arrays, and formations to programming languages back on Earth. But comparing it to a normal language such as English or Chinese would be more accurate.

Yung hadn’t been able to find the equivalent ones and zeros for the runes. But nouns, verbs, and prepositions abounded.

Yet it was also true that these runes, although similar to a hieroglyphic version of Chinese, served an active, magical purpose. They were circuits in and of themselves, combining to create larger integrated circuits. When provided with enough power, or qi, they would display wondrous effects.

And now Yung had a basic list of building blocks he would work with.

Each function, or the unique isolated array, was a sentence. The component runes were the words. The special runes that connected these functions to create the formation of the tokens as a whole, were the punctuations, prepositions, and conjunctions.

And Yung had this distinct guess that the libraries, the compilers, and the interpreters that made all of this possible, were the grand dao itself!

“This array limits the quality of qi that the token can take… this restricts quantity,” Yung scratched more ‘words’ and ‘phrases’ on the scroll. Adjectives, adverbs.

The basic manual for jade carvers also taught apprentices in a similar fashion. With the common Chinese used by the renyao here colloquially as metaphors and analogues. Yung opted to use a similar style, but using English and Python.

I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. I can use techniques already in use here.

"How do you find our bosom, pray tell?" Su Nanya suddenly asked.

“Dangerous!” Yung said absentmindedly.

The vixen was back in her yao form. She strutted over, swaying her hips, and took a seat on Yung’s lap with a pout. “You may not ignore us!” She put her hands around his neck and looked at the scroll with an amused expression.

“You may find such diagrams and breakdowns in any respectable formation master’s collection. Why bother creating your own?”

“It’s a syntactical problem. I like to use my own notes.”

Su Nanya nodded, “This is a language we have not seen yet. Was it the soul contract that granted you such esoteric knowledge? Or have you dreamt of another’s life?”

“W-What?” Yung gasped, panicking. Does she know?

“You think us a foolish fox!” Su Nanya huffed, visibly offended. “Is it not obvious that you have changed greatly after contracting the yaoguai? Was it the memories of past contractors that you have oh so shamelessly inherited? Or perchance a naughty glimpse into the planar memories of a lost, forgotten plane desperate to re-emerge?” The vixen squirmed, trying to find a comfortable spot to lean her body. “It matters not. We have no interest in such simplistic language. Look at these lines, these squiggles. Truly revolting!”

“H-Hehehe, y-yeah. Just a boon from the soul contract. Nothing too serious.” Yung could feel his smile cramp despite his best efforts to keep a poker face. He wished he could share his past life with her. But he wasn’t ready. Yet.

Su Nanya glared at him, then dropped the matter. She traced the functions Yung had arranged on the scroll with her dainty fingers as though she was tracing a line on Yung’s thigh, before saying, “You wish to transmit written words.”

“You can tell?”

“We are all knowledgeable!” Su Nanya was proud, her tail wagging happily, which in turn caressed Yung’s cheeks with each swoosh of a swish. “How strange it is, dearest boy. Why would you wish to limit the functions of the light transmission token, to handicap it as such? This new formation appears to also contain the arrays for storing and retrieving merely the words written onto jade slips. On either ends. Peculiar indeed.”

“It's to enable the token users to communicate instantaneously, in real time, through written words and designated symbols, instead of resorting to voice or transmitting entire scenes.”

“Do explain to us,” Su Nanya said. Her expression turned serious, “Not that we need you to. We merely wish to hear your voice. Understood?”

“Oh, sure!” Yung was flattered. It was amazing how coquettish this vixen could be, “Currently, when someone sends a transmission with a token, let’s call it the transmitter, it has to be completely received by the recipient’s token, the receiver, before the recipient can send a reply.”

Su Nanya nodded, saying, “Indeed, we understand your point. With xiantian or pingtian grade tokens, the speed of transmission can be shortened substantially, as with range and overall efficacy.”

"That's brute forcing it." Like powering an iPhone with a nuclear reactor. "The algorithm is trash! The manuals kinda elude to what xiantian grade tokens look like. If I'm not wrong, they use more power, larger formations cramped into smaller surface areas, and better materials. They're just a modified version of this basic algorithm. No innovation whatsoever."

“Alg—what manner of word is that?” Su Nanya tilted her head, confused. It was cute. “Do you mean the set of rules by which the formation operates?”

“Smart.”

“We do suppose even the pingtian grade token follows this same... ‘algorithm’. We see now. It certainly is a brutish metaphor.” Su Nanya took a jade slip from her hip chain, squirming on Yung’s lap as he did so.

The boy stilled, appreciating each second of the sensations. Whoa! His eyes went to the jade slip, the vixen dangling it in front of Yung’s eyes with a seductive smirk.

Glistening with an ethereal shimmer, the token seemed to defy the norms of reality, transmuting light into a polychromatic spectacle that danced across its surface. Its form was a faint echo of a typical token, yet a closer inspection revealed a complexity that dwarfed its houtian counterparts. Thousands of facets adorned its surface, each meticulously inscribed with tiny arrays, together weaving a grand tapestry of power, a super formation if Yung had to name it. It was an intricate puzzle, pulsating with concentrated potency, a silent testament to its remarkable craftsmanship.

“Is that a pingtian grade one?”

Su Nanya nodded, “Merely so.” She passed it to Yung, who took it reverently.

“The token, in its servile charm, captures our voice through the delicate dance of qi, finds the spiritual imprint destined for our words, and so dutifully carries our messages forth. Likewise, it stands ready to receive messages directed to us. Should we choose to lend our beautiful ear, we could perceive such changes in the briefest of moments. As far as our knowledge extends, this ‘algorithm’ applies to houtian, xiantian, and pingtian tokens without exception.”

“I thought you were all-knowledgeable?” Yung asked.

“We are!” Su Nanya harrumphed, sending vibrations to where their bodies touched. Yung couldn’t help but kiss that cheeky lips, much to the vixen’s delight.

“That algorithm is the most basic form of a chat, or messenger app.”

“App?” Su Nanya touched her lips with a blush.

“An application. A transmission formation if you will.”

“Then does our dear servant think he can create a superior algorithm with your paltry village knowledge? We should admit, we do not despise such ambitions.”

Yung didn’t reply, letting his two hands do the talking for him. He grabbed the vixen in a hug and started feeling her up, “I’ll show you who’s boss!”

“My, mercy me! Such a malicious rogue. Why must you do this to us, you bandit?” The vixen giggled, letting the rogue have his way.