A Cross‑Realm Alliance

Elise Spencer puts terms to the man she takes for a demon out of the race that destroys worlds, and Liam Kirby accepts them. He came from a world of machines with orders to keep human civilization going, and the cultivators he landed among read his equipment as demon work. He means to use the arrangement to open talks between the two sides. For Elise, the point of it is that demon power is now within reach and she has a revenge waiting to spend it on. Neither of them quite hears what the other is saying. His technology and their cultivation do not agree about how anything works, and the misunderstandings pile up while the two of them go further into the other world's business together.