After nearly an entire month of rehabilitation, Lee Jia was finally well enough to return to her training. Even now, it still startled her just how much was possible with cultivation. The injuries she’d sustained should have killed her—did kill her, briefly. A mortal would never have been able to survive something like that—ancestors, most immortals wouldn’t. That was twice now she’d nearly died on that mountain—was it cursed or something?

She had...died. It was only for a little bit, but there was a moment when Lee Jia’s soul was not in her body, her heart wasn’t beating, she was—in every sense of the word—dead. It was by pure chance that her attempted sacrifice had resulted in the restoration of their bond, and that Yoshika had been able to return Jia’s soul to her body.

Eui was furious with her. Even after spending a month nursing her back to health it was obvious that Eui had not forgiven Jia—maybe she never would. It made the atmosphere of their new home tense and uncomfortable, which was not at all helped by their roommate.

Elder Qin had been good enough to move their accommodations to a larger dorm, and while Jia couldn’t help but miss the old, cramped apartment that had been her home for so long, she also had to admit that she was glad she didn’t have to share a room with Yan Yue. The upgrade wasn’t huge, but they had their own small courtyard, a second bedroom for Yue, and heated shower formations—which Jia was beginning to see the appeal of, now that she’d experienced them for herself.

Not having to share a room was only a small comfort, though. There was still a limited living space, and they were under house arrest. Friction was inevitable, and for better or worse, Yan Yue made a convenient outlet for Eui’s anger and frustration. Not that Jia hadn’t had her own clashes with Yan Yue over the last month but—

Jia’s ears twitched as her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of shattering ceramics. She mentally added it to the tally of broken dishes they would need to replace—at Yue’s expense, of course.

“What in the Emperor’s name was that for!?”

Yue’s voice was shrill and indignant. Eui snarled at her, pointing accusingly.

“I told you to stop bitching about my cooking!”

Yue crossed her arms, pouting.

“And I told you that the food you make is too spicy! Why can’t you just put the seasoning on your own food instead of mine?”

“Because the spices need to cook you fucking idiot! I’m not eating raw spices just because you’ve got the palate of a fucking baby!”

Jia chewed on her breakfast impassively, staying out of the argument. It was small, petty, and neither of them were truly upset about the food. It was just the latest tiny slight that had ignited the powder keg of anger and frustration that all three of them had been living with for the last month. Yoshika had been spot-on—they really could find fault in the way that Yue ate rice.

“If you don’t like the food I cook, then don’t fucking eat it, Yue! Make your own, survive on rice, or fucking starve for all I care! In fact, please do us all a favor and take option three.”

“That’s not fair! You hog all the ingredients, and I don’t know how to cook!”

Eui scoffed and rolled her eyes.

“Not my fucking problem! You’ll eat what I make, you’ll eat nothing, or you’ll eat fucking pottery!”

Eui raised another bowl threateningly and Yue raised her hands defensively and backed off. Though she had progressed quickly since losing her cultivation, Yan Yue was still a bit defenseless—which Eui was more than happy to take advantage of.

“This is just bullying! Oppression! What have I ever—I mean, haven’t I done enough to make amends!?”

Jia’s eyebrow twitched, and she found herself getting annoyed, despite her attempts to stay out of it. Yan Yue used this argument repeatedly, and Jia was surprised she hadn’t figured out how much it aggravated them. Eui was happy to put what they were both thinking into words.

“Absolutely fucking not! Do you really think that what you did is something that can be made up for!? That you can just wash it all away with some token charity? Fuck off, Yue.”

Yue looked like she was on the verge of tears, but Jia couldn’t bring herself to feel sorry for her. She agreed with Eui—what Yue had done to them was unforgivable, and the fact that she kept trying to brush it off was not a point in her favor.

Yue had been extremely cooperative over the last month, happily footing the bill for various medical aids to assist in Jia’s recovery. She was eager to help in any way that she could, but the problem was that she kept acting as if that was enough to fix everything she had done. As if she could just buy their forgiveness with money and goodwill.

Worse, sometimes her mask would slip and her spoiled sense of entitlement would leak out. Occasionally—like today with her griping about Eui’s cooking—she would act as though they owed her something for her cooperation, rather than the other way around. Jia considered herself to be fairly mild-tempered, but sometimes she just felt like Yue deserved to be slapped.

Yan Yue ended up storming off before the argument could escalate any further and Eui flopped angrily onto the couch across from Jia—they had intentionally mimicked the layout of their old home, for familiarity. Eui scowled, crossing her arms and grumbling with irritation.

“I cannot believe that bitch. If Elder Qin is trying to torture us by forcing us to live with her, it’s fucking working. By the end of the year, I swear that either she’ll be dead, or I’ll have the restraint of a fucking monk.”

Jia nodded once, slowly. She wasn’t really sure what to say, and she knew that when Eui was this upset it wouldn’t take much to set her off again. Unfortunately, saying nothing turned out to be just as bad, as Eui’s brows knitted together in a deep frown.

“And why are you being so fucking quiet, anyway? You’re not the one I’m mad at.”

Except she was. Since they had repaired their bond, Jia and Eui had regained the ability to sense each other’s emotions, though the seal on their domain restricted that ability quite a bit. Still, though Eui never outwardly spoke about it, it was clear to Jia that she remained upset about what Jia had done. They still hadn’t spoken about it.

Jia stared down at her food in silence for a moment before shrugging lamely.

“Just thinking about stuff, I guess. I’ll be glad to get back to training.”

Eui snorted and shook her head in resignation.

“You would be.”

Jia furrowed her brows.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Jia, you’re probably the most work-obsessed person in this entire academy, and that’s comparing you to the guy who spent a week studying without sleep, or Princess ‘meditated so hard her head exploded’ Seong.”

Jia’s head jerked up in alarm.

“What!? Eunae!? Is she okay!?”

Eui scoffed and rolled her eyes.

“She’s fine, Jia, I’m exaggerating. Rika’s taking care of her. The point is that you put both of them to shame. It’s like the only things you have room for in your head are training and food.”

Eui didn’t quite manage to keep the bitterness out of her voice as she spoke.

“In my defense, your cooking is amazing.”

“Pfft! Well at least someone appreciates it!”

Eui and Jia giggled, and the tension lifted a little bit. Jia knew that she’d have to have a proper talk with Eui sooner or later, but for now she was just happy to enjoy the moment.

Surprisingly, a month of missed lessons—even on top of the leave that she’d taken to focus on preparing for the mountain trip—didn’t really amount to much. Jia had never really appreciated just how far ahead of the average her practice had gotten. The vast majority of the students had been first stage, single-discipline cultivators when the year began. Now, with summer approaching to mark the end of the first half of the year, most of them—had not really progressed much.

While over half of the students had awakened to a second discipline, that still left many of them stuck on just one. Furthermore, only a small handful of students who had begun the year in the first stage had broken through to the second—most of whom had been at or near the peak of the first stage to begin with.

Not a single person who’d started in the second stage had broken through to the third, which meant that there wasn’t a single student in the third stage—at least not now that Yue and the others had their cultivation reset.

Jia was surprised that the students had stagnated so much, and said as much to Dae while they conversed after the lesson ended.

“Only you would innocently say something so audacious, Miss Lee.”

Dae shook his head and sighed.

“As I have repeatedly tried to explain to you, your perspective is rather badly skewed. Most cultivators will not reach even the second stage until well into adulthood, if at all. Excluding Master Ienaga, all the greatest masters in Yamato have plateaued at the peak of the third stage—some of them centuries old.”

Jia rolled her eyes. She’d heard this lecture a dozen times already.

“I know that! But the students here are all supposed to be talented elites or whatever, right? I mean, except for Eui and I.”

Dae gave her a flat look.

“You and Miss An have cultivated at a speed that defies reason—I don’t think it’s fair to exclude yourselves from that description. Anyway, yes, that is true—to a point.”

Dae scratched his head and chuckled.

“Hehe, part of the problem is that many of the students are focused on trying to learn foreign disciplines—in many cases needing to unlearn many of the preconceptions that have been drilled into them. Some have adapted better than others, while others are held back by the same talents that brought them here in the first place.”

Lee Jia crossed her arms on the seat in front of her and rested her chin there.

“Hmm, so you’re saying that Eui and I have progressed so quickly because we didn’t know anything about cultivation before?”

“In part, yes. Though I suspect that there’s no small amount of natural talent involved as well—to say nothing of your many extremely unusual cultivation methods.”

“Yes! About that...”

Lee Jia jumped at the new voice interrupting and looked up to see Magus Hwang standing over them.

“Pardon my interruption, but I need to have a word with Miss Lee and Miss An.”

Dae stood and collected his things before bowing politely.

“Of course, Magus Hwang. Miss Lee, we can speak later. You know where to find me.”

Lee Jia waved goodbye as Dae left, smiling stiffly. Had he forgotten that she wasn’t free to visit the library at her leisure? Magus Hwang cleared his throat to get their attention.

“Ahem, Miss Lee, Miss An, I understand that you are both under punitive house arrest after last month’s altercation, but given the importance of our research, I have arranged to have special dispensation granted for you to continue to help me collect data on omnidisciplinary cultivation. However, I believe it’s time we had a discussion about Miss An’s demonic core.”

Jia’s face fell, and Eui crossed her arms, scowling irritably.

“Ugh! No wonder everyone’s been giving us weird looks today. Does the entire school know now?”

Magus Hwang nodded curtly.

“Most probably, but that’s not the point!”

Jia sighed.

“Magus, with all due respect, we’ve already been lectured about it at length by Elder Qin. We get it—the demonic core is dangerous, we should never have formed it, and relying on it for cultivation is dangerous and reckless.”

Magus Hwang blinked at her in confusion then shook his head. The feathers in his hair poofed out indignantly.

“What!? That’s not what I was going to say at all! You should have told me about it. All the data I collected is worthless now! At the very least it has to be reframed, but without the proper context, I fear that I simply wasn’t doing the right kinds of tests—asking the right questions! I was supposed to be bringing Do Hye in from an advanced position, but now I have to start over from scratch with him overshadowing me every step of the way! It’s a disaster!”

Jia smiled awkwardly, trying not to laugh at Hwang Sung’s complaints about his rival.

“We...we thought we’d get in trouble if anyone knew about it.”

The Magus looked offended as he shook his head vehemently.

“Nonsense! You wouldn’t—okay, well actually perhaps you would get into quite a bit of trouble, as you already have—but not from me! If anything, I would be delighted to have the opportunity to study the effects of a nascent demon core on a young cultivator! Demonism is so poorly understood, as you’ve no doubt discovered with your own studies, and Qin’s answer to anything they don’t understand is violence! And they call us beasts.”

Lee Jia didn’t really have a response for that. She’d always known that Magus Hwang was a bit eccentric. At first, she’d thought it was mages in general, but she was starting to learn that it was mostly just him...and Dae—Do Hye too, now that she thought about it. Maybe it was a mage thing.

Eui narrowed her eyes at Magus Hwang.

“I don’t really like the sound of being studied or experimented on, either. I only agreed to do your stupid tests because you promised to help us understand our new cultivation method and modify Jia’s training manuals. You haven’t really delivered on either, and I’m sick of being treated like a fucking specimen.”

Magus Hwang recoiled from Eui’s outburst.

“N-now see here, young lady, that’s no way to—”

“No! Fuck you, Hwang! I’m done with this! I’ve had it with decrepit old assholes trying to decide my life for me! I don’t need your help, and I certainly don’t need your judgement.”

Eui turned to storm away, leaving Magus Hwang and Jia stunned for a moment before he waved a hand and she bumped face-first into an invisible barrier. She whirled around to snarl at Magus Hwang, but his serious expression gave her pause.

“Stop right there, young lady! While I understand your feelings, I’m afraid I cannot tolerate that level of disrespect. I apologize if I made you feel invalidated or dehumanized—my passion for research does get away from me sometimes, and I forget that not everyone shares my zeal. That said, another outburst like that against me or any other instructor and I will ensure that you are removed from this academy permanently, am I understood, Miss An?”

Eui hesitated for a moment, glancing at Jia’s concerned look before taking a deep breath.

“...fine. Sorry.”

Magus Hwang raised an eyebrow at her and she clenched her fists before grimacing and bowing deeply, speaking through gritted teeth.

“My deepest apologies, Magus. I let my emotions get the better of me. It won’t happen again.”

The magus nodded, satisfied.

“Very well, Miss An. I won’t pursue further punishment—this time. Be more aware of your status though, hmm? You are already under probation after last month—consider yourself lucky it was me and not one of my other colleagues, I doubt any of them would have been so understanding.”

Eui didn’t respond, except to avert her eyes and frown unhappily.

“Your cooperation with my studies is of course strictly voluntary. I would appreciate your continued cooperation—both of you—but it is not compulsory. That said, I still believe that if you insist on pioneering a completely new method of cultivation—much less one augmented by both dual cultivation and demonism—you would do well to have proper scholars behind you.

“As much as it pains me to admit it, Do Hye has travelled the world over. There’s likely no practitioner more experienced and worldly than he, and I tentatively include Qin’s God-Emperor in that estimation. I’m sorry that you feel that I have failed you so far, but it’s barely been a year! Have some patience—cultivation, and the study thereof, is a slow process.”

Jia considered what Hwang was saying. Had she and Eui been rushing things? When she stopped and thought about it, rushing things was practically all they’d been doing. Eui had mentioned more than once that Jia trained too hard, and Dae had implied that her expectations had been warped.

Magus Hwang glanced between the two girls and sighed.

“Give my offer some thought. I’ll be in my lab tomorrow morning, and you may join me there at your discretion. Farewell, girls.”

He left the girls to their thoughts—through the door, as he didn’t have Qin Zhao or Do Hye’s penchant for theatrics. Jia approached Eui and reached out, tentatively, to put a hand on her arm.

“Eui...are—are you okay?”

Eui shook her head before resting her forehead on Jia’s shoulder.

“No? I don’t know. I’m just stressed out. Between everything that happened last month, worrying about healing you, Yue’s stupid bullshit, everyone finding out that I’m a demon, and...”

Eui trailed off, and Jia could feel the complicated surge of emotion through the tenuous connection of their sealed domain. Bitterness, resentment, anger, but all of it coming from a place of love and concern. Jia wrapped her arms around Eui in a gentle embrace.

“Yeah...um, Eui, I think we should probably talk about what happened last month.”

Eui stiffened for a moment before letting her breath out in a mirthless chuckle and relaxing into Jia’s arms.

“Heh, I guess so. I should have known you’d notice. I guess some part of me thought it would be like when you didn’t notice how I feel about you.”

Jia blushed and coughed in an awkward attempt to hide her embarrassment.

“Th-that was different, okay? A-anyway, let’s go somewhere else to talk. The lecture hall is probably not the best place.”

Eui snickered at her before nodding.

“Sure, Jia. Lead the way.”

As they left the lecture hall, Jia sighed with resignation. Eui was definitely never going to let her live that down.