How desperate her Continent sounds, he thinks; how desperate they must have been, to have worked so to find a concoction that would transform ordinary children, without the ability to cultivate qi or form a golden core, into something like cultivators.

And then to have lost it.

"I am sorry," he says. "Do your sorceresses fill that void, now that the recipes are gone? To cultivate - or practice their magic, I suppose you would say - and protect?"