“It’s probably a bound spirit.”

Jia glanced at Yue, who was still talking about Bai Lin and the unusual strength he had displayed for such an unknown figure.

“I’ll bet the reason he’s gone unnoticed before now is that he was trying to keep a low profile—a bound spirit is likely to draw more than a few envious eyes. Though, not as much as a dimensional ring would. Can you imagine if someone had both?”

Yue glared pointedly while Jia fidgeted self-consciously with the invisible ring on her finger. They were on their way to the arena to fight their third round matches along with Eunae, Rika, and Yuuko. Eui stayed behind, since her match was scheduled for the next day—were they doing that on purpose to keep them apart? Most of them were scheduled to fight each other, and the sparks flying between Yuuko and Rika were almost tangible. Yue seemed much more relaxed as she made casual conversation. Jia looked up at her with a frown.

“Aren’t you nervous? I’m surprised you’re so calm about our match.”

Yue covered her mouth as she giggled.

“Jia, please! There’s nothing to be nervous about. How many times have we sparred over the last few months? The outcome of our duel isn’t in question, only how much of a fight I manage to put up. You’ve grown quite a bit since we met—I’m not sure even the old me could defeat you.”

Jia bit her lip and flicked one of her ears.

“I’m not so sure about that—in some ways you’re stronger now than you were then.”

“True enough! I have you to thank for that, but I don’t think that those strengths will be enough. Frankly, I’m more interested in the others. Who do you expect to advance?”

“Hmm...I think Dae will probably beat Hana. She’s really good, but specialized in martial arts like most of Hayakawa’s team. Dae’s specialized too, but if it’s between two one-dimensional cultivators...well, the higher stage usually wins.”

Yue nodded along, biting her thumbnail as she thought about it.

“Especially a mage against a martial artist. For my part, I think it's fifty-fifty whether Kim Yongsun throws the match in favor of Eunae or burns everything he has in order to give her a better chance to prove herself.”

Eunae grimaced, shaking her head.

“I’d really rather he did neither. I’m trying to hold my ancestral technique in reserve—the qi it uses is very difficult to cultivate.”

Jia regarded Eunae with interest.

“The one that doesn’t use your gaze? Does it take a special element, like my shadow qi?”

“Yes—soulfire. Sometimes called foxfire, since the only other known user of the element was Seong Heiran. Which is interesting to me, since I couldn’t find any record claiming that she was a spiritual cultivator.”

Yan Yue stiffened a bit at the mention of Eunae’s legendary predecessor, but she schooled her expression, looking askance at Rika and Yuuko as she changed the subject.

“What about those two? Who do you think has the advantage there?”

That pulled Rika and Yuuko’s attention away from their staring contest as both of them stared expectantly at Jia. She raised her hands defensively, taking a hesitant step back.

“Uh...no comment. I’m sure it’ll be a close match.”

Both girls clicked their tongues, then seemed to get annoyed that they’d responded the same way and went back to staring daggers at each other. If Jia didn’t know any better she’d think that they hated each other, but they were just extremely competitive. Soon, they arrived at the converted training field and began preparing for their bouts.

---

Yan Yue held her hands inside her sleeves. The loose robes were convenient for hiding her trembling hands as she faced off against Lee Jia. Many of Yue’s new...friends scared her. Eunae had a terrible power beyond understanding, and Eui’s capacity for violence was second to none—it was concerning to imagine what she would be like without Jia reining her in. Yet in truth, the more she got to know them, the more it was Lee Jia that scared her the most.

It was a little bit harder to place exactly why Jia scared Yue. She wasn’t violent like her girlfriend, nor did she seem to violate the fundamental laws of the soul like the new fox princess. No, if Yue had to name one thing that frightened her about Jia it would be the fact that the girl was, in all things, absolutely relentless. Everything about her was just so—extreme. She trained constantly, and it was obvious that she’d be the type to seclude herself on a mountain and meditate for centuries on end if she didn’t have her friends to distract her.

That part was easy enough to understand, at least. She had lived her entire life without ever learning to live—only survive. Without the constant pressure of survival—the question of whether this day or the next would be her last—there was no other outlet for that drive that had kept her alive except for cultivation. If it was just that, Yue could understand—even sympathize—but it wasn’t just that.

Jia did everything with the same passion that she had for cultivation. She had an intensity to her that was hard to handle sometimes. Whether it was eating a meal, sparring, shopping, or friendship—Jia put forth everything she had, all the time. It was exhausting, yet endearing. Jia wore her emotions on her sleeve, and could be refreshingly direct compared to the people of the empire.

That all or nothing attitude swung both ways, however, and Yue had been on the wrong side of it more than once. She’d seen Jia nearly burn out her own meridians to shoot Zheng Long out of the sky with lightning, she’d seen her break her own bones against her enemies twice in the last week alone. As with everything else, Jia fought each battle as if it would be her last. That was what Yue now stood face to face with. A friend that wouldn’t hesitate to break every bone in both of their bodies because her girlfriend was skilled at healing. She’d feel awful about it, but do it anyway.

Yue was snapped out of her thoughts by the signal to begin. She knew that Jia would open the fight aggressively, and met her charge with one of the ever-popular wall spell talismans. It wouldn’t hold Jia off for long—Yue had seen just how quickly Jia bypassed such a defense in the qualifiers—but it gave her enough time to start her song and create some distance. Jia came darting around the side of the wall in an instant, and Yue grimaced at what she saw.

The pure white of the fur around Jia’s ears had been marred with a few spots of red—she’d ruptured her eardrums. Of course Jia had deafened herself as soon as the match began—she was insane! Yue didn’t let it get to her—she had other avenues of attack, and her new domain allowed her to affect foes with her song even if they couldn’t hear it. Or it would, if Jia’s own domain wasn’t blocking her. For the same reason, Yue hadn’t been suffering the effects of Jia’s noxious aura—the battle of dominion over the space around them became a sort of secondary metaphysical battle between their souls that happened parallel to the real duel.

Yue was actually faring better than she’d expected in the battle of domains. She’d tested herself against Jia’s domain before, and it was usually only a matter of time before Jia’s domain overpowered hers, but this time Yue was holding her own, perhaps even gaining a little bit of ground. She squashed the part of herself that wanted to take pride in her accomplishment. There was a much more likely reason for the difference—Eui’s absence. Though they hadn’t always been merged as Yoshika when testing their domains against her, it seemed that there was much more to their unity than simply Yoshika or not-Yoshika. One point in Yue’s advantage, but Jia was still stronger, faster, and more capable at spellcasting.

She continued to fight defensively, stalling Jia as much as possible with obstacles, shields, and traps. It helped that the martial art that Yue had chosen to pursue was also one based on mobility. The Starlight Dance was almost a perfect match for her Melody of the Dreaming Moon, and Yue had been delighted when she’d examined the manual that Ienaga Yumi had picked out for her. While working with Rika on her own modified technique, Yue had used some of the things she’d learned to integrate her own techniques in a similar manner. Her dance matched her song, as she flowed across the ring, narrowly avoiding Jia’s unrelenting aggression.

It wasn’t perfect, and she took more than a few blows for her trouble, but Jia’s strikes generally lacked power if they didn’t hit a pressure point, and Yue had been supplementing her movements with her small repertoire of defensive spells—she silently thanked Jia for her insistence that such spells were critical to learn. Overall, the fight was going...quite well, actually. Yue was a bit shocked by that. Her domain was slowly overtaking Jia’s, and her defense was keeping up just fine. The talismans would be a bit costly to replace, but Yue hadn’t really expected to make it this far. She couldn’t bring herself to relax, though—Jia seemed far too calm for Yue to think she was winning.

The reason became all too apparent when Jia started to emit a familiar bluish-white glow and lightning crackled across her body. Yue clicked her tongue—she should have known better. Time had not been on her side, and the reason Jia was so calm was because she’d known that Yue wouldn’t overpower her domain in time. She threw her arms up in surrender.

“Stop! I yield. I’d really rather not get hit by that, thank you.”

Jia aborted her technique, taking a few seconds to meditate. As she did, the glow faded before she stood back up and skipped over as if she hadn’t been about to shatter every bone in Yue’s body.

“Good match! I think you might still be a bit too focused on your spiritual attacks. It’s fine in a team setting, but you should be able to defend yourself solo against people who can defeat your Melody.”

Yue smiled and shook her head ruefully. To Jia it was as if it were just another sparring match.

“True. You need to work on your domain control—it’s painfully evident you’ve been relying on Eui’s influence to correct for you. There’s no excuse for you to be losing to my domain at a more advanced stage of cultivation.”

As Yue spoke, Jia stared at her mouth rather than meeting her eyes. Lip reading—another skill Jia learned just to fight Yue. Jia grimaced when Yue finished speaking, but nodded.

“You’re right. I guess we should practice that more often.”

The two of them left the ring, chatting about the lessons they had learned from the fight and how they could improve in the future. Yue gripped her hands together tightly beneath her sleeves and tried not to imagine what would have happened to her if she hadn’t yielded.

---

Takeda Rika fought off another wave of nausea as she parried a spear-hand from Yuuko. It was like fighting Jia—but not. The little copycat had learned Jia’s techniques, but she didn’t use them the same way. Corruption of the Fetid Bog, for example—Jia used it as a constant pressure that would slow you down and wear on you over time, while Yuuko preferred to maintain the shock value, using it in pulses to disrupt Rika at key moments. Like when she was feinting a spear-hand attack from Lightning God Transformation in order to create an opening for her more conventional attacks. Another difference—Jia used Lightning God Transformation exclusively, while Yuuko had incorporated some of its strikes into her previous style, and frequently mixed it up.

Rika took the blow to the gut and backed off. Before Yuuko could follow up, Rika stepped in with her second body to give the first a moment to recover. This was Rika’s new technique—a completely new style that incorporated both her family’s signature Unseen Strike, and the Valley of Illusory Mists spiritual art. The elements of Mist and Force working together to create something entirely new, and even Rika wasn’t entirely sure what to call it.

She could no longer make multiple projections the way she used to, but the tradeoff was that the one she did make was perfect. Almost too perfect, in fact. Rika could see through its eyes, hear what it heard, and feel the attacks that it took—she wondered if that was what it was like for Yoshika. She could also channel her essence through either body freely, they were both as strong as the other, but Rika had to control both of them herself. She envied Yoshika having the power of two minds put together—this was hard!

Another wave of nausea telegraphed that Yuuko was trying something—it was too predictable, a gimmick that would only work once or twice. Rika pretended to tag her bodies out again, backing away from Yuuko as if to escape whatever attack she had planned, but she projected a telekinetic handhold behind her. It was her favorite trick to quickly change her momentum in ways that people couldn’t predict. Well, most people—Yue and Jia usually sensed the ki projections with their domains.

Yuuko was startled when Rika suddenly changed direction, while her projection continued to press forward—or was it the original? Rika lost track sometimes. Suddenly faced with two assailants, Yuuko was forced to abandon her attack and go on the defensive. Rika grinned viciously as Yuuko backpedaled away from her. It was time for her new favorite trick—with one body Rika threw a high kick to force Yuuko to duck, and with the other she threw an uppercut. Yuuko wisely chose not to take either attack head-on and jumped backwards—only to trip on a telekinetic projection behind her. Rika hadn’t had that kind of range before, but she did now that her cultivation was unified.

As Yuuko tumbled to the ground, one of Rika’s bodies jumped on her, pinning her to the ground while the other started pummeling. It only took a few seconds for Yuuko to give up.

“Argh! Damnit! That doppelganger technique is so unfair!”

Rika shrugged, grinning at Yuuko as she dispersed her double—though her grin faltered when a different body from the one she’d been expecting dissipated. That was a little unsettling, but she only had herself to blame for losing track of which was the real her. She shrugged it off and offered Yuuko a hand.

“You’ve got a long way to go before you get on Jia’s level! Sure you don’t want to try unified cultivation?”

Yuuko grumbled as she accepted the hand up. For all they played up their rivalry, they were still friends.

“Tsk, I know! After the tournament, probably. Ishihara and you have really turned me around on the idea. I’m not trying to copy Jia, you know.”

“Noo, of course not! You’re just using the same techniques as her by coincidence. I understand.”

Rika giggled at the sour look Yuuko gave her as the two of them left the ring. She was stopped short by a familiar presence and sighed. She knew she wouldn’t be able to avoid it forever. Takeda Keiji, the patriarch of the clan stood before her, arms crossed and a deep frown creasing his features. Rika bowed formally before greeting him.

“Hello Grandfather. It’s good to see you again.”

Her grandfather continued to scowl at her, sparing Yuuko a glance as she awkwardly bowed in her own silent greeting. He harrumphed as he responded.

“Takeda Rika, your greeting is weeks too late, girl! How dare you avoid me for so long. Come here and receive your punishment.”

Rika stepped forward, head bowed. Was he really going to do this right here? Right in front of everybody? Her grandfather glared down imperiously at her for a moment then grinned and swept her up in a tight embrace.

“Oh, how I’ve missed my little girl! A year is far too long already. Aren’t you ready to come home yet?”

Rika’s face flushed bright red as she reluctantly returned her Grandpa’s hug. Why did he have to be like this? Yuuko covered her mouth, but failed to suppress her snickering. Rika sensed the invisible force in her domain, but her Grandpa was too fast for her to warn Yuuko in time. There was a rush of air as the hem of Yuuko’s robe flew up into the air unbidden, eliciting a high pitched yelp from the unsuspecting girl as she rushed to straighten out her clothes—though not before everyone around them got a good look at her legs.

Takeda Keiji held his granddaughter at arms length and glanced between her and Yuuko’s blushing faces with mock outrage.

“Rika! How many times have I told you that it’s not proper for a lady to go around doing that sort of thing? That’s not what our Unseen Fist style is meant for, and I would have you respect the art, young lady!”

Rika buried her face in her hands and groaned.

“Grandpa please...why are you always like this?”