Eui looked into the eyes of her opponent and saw nothing but sadistic glee. Yue had been right about the bound spirit—almost as soon as the fight started, Eui sensed the presence of another domain. The spirit’s domain was weak—subdued somehow by whatever contract was keeping it bound to Bai Lin. Although Eui couldn’t see it, she’d been able to sense it—a giant spider spirit, weaving its webs all over the arena. It had been trivial to detect and destroy them, but Bai Lin used that time to run away and attack her from a distance.

It was infuriating. With all the webs in the way, she couldn’t afford to carelessly use spells to propel herself, so she had no choice but to chase Bai Lin through the traps, cutting them down as she went. If Eui had been able to keep her knives, she could have used them to attack from a distance, but unlike the qualifiers, she hadn’t been allowed to bring weapons into the single combat rounds.

The turning point happened when Eui managed to finally suppress the domain of the bound spider spirit. As soon as she did, the spirit seemed to panic—Eui could feel its distress as it switched from weaving traps to aggressively trying to entangle her directly. She could guess why—with its domain suppressed, the spirit had no mana to sustain itself, and it would only be a matter of time before it was forced to return to the vessel it was bound to.

Bai was either oblivious or uncaring of the spirit’s distress as she grinned sadistically at Eui. Yes—’she’. There had been a second surprise that Eui had been able to sense once the spirit was no longer blocking her domain—Bai Lin was a woman. Eui didn’t know why she was pretending to be a man, but wasn’t particularly interested either—she had bigger concerns at the moment. The revelation did nothing to assuage Eui’s discomfort over the way Bai Lin leered at her.

“You’re a rather pretty one, almost perfect if not for that unsightly tail of yours betraying your impure heritage.”

Eui spat at her, but it came up short.

“Fuck you! I don’t want to hear what you think of my body.”

“Tsk tsk, I wasn’t talking about your body—I was talking about your soul. I can feel it—your anger, your hatred. You’re like me, I can tell. For some, violence is a means to an end, but you and I—we can take pleasure in the act itself. I’m surprised you haven’t let that demon of yours out yet.”

Eui narrowed her eyes dangerously.

“You don’t know anything about me, you bitch. I am nothing like you, and my demon is none of your fucking business!”

Bai Lin put a finger to her lips.

“Shh! That’s supposed to be a secret, haha. But come now, I think a demon being unleashed is everybody’s business. You’re a danger to everyone around you—we can’t have that.”

Eui could feel the spirit straining. She just needed more time—she had to keep Bai Lin talking.

“I’ve already made my peace with my core. I’m not going to be succumbing to demonic hunger now or ever. The only person I’m a danger to right now is you!”

“Hmm, we’ll see.”

Eui sensed a shift in the spider spirit—it moved closer to her, though she still couldn’t see it, and she suddenly felt a burning sensation in her meridians. She bit her tongue to keep herself from crying out in pain, circulating her wood essence to counteract the poisonous qi that was invading her soul. She received a few more cuts from the threads binding her, as well as a few from the ones directly being controlled by Bai Lin, and she took the time to heal those too, glaring balefully at her torturer.

“Is that all you’ve got? I’ve had obsidian wolf blood showers. I got hit by divine lightning! You’ll run out of qi before you get me to succumb to this weak-ass attempt at torture.”

Maybe Eui shouldn’t have said that. Bai Lin had already demonstrated against Fujino that she’d just toss her opponent out of the ring if she got bored. Eui had a way to escape if it came down to that, but she was trying to wait for the right moment. Bai Lin didn’t seem to be bothered by her goading, however.

“Aww, I’m surprised you managed to withstand my pet’s bite. You wield your stolen techniques well. In that case, I suppose I don’t have to hold anything back either.”

Bai Lin waved her hands, and Eui felt the threads wrapping around her arms, legs, and the base of her tail slowly tightening as they cut into her flesh. With a flash of panic, Eui channeled her destruction ki through her body and snapped the threads, falling to the ground and landing back on her feet. The maneuver had cost her a huge amount of ki and she cursed herself for giving it away so soon.

Not wanting to waste the opportunity that she’d given herself, Eui lunged forward. Not at Bai Lin, but at the presence she could still feel skittering about within her domain—the spider spirit. She threw her arms forward as she arrived next to the invisible presence and unleashed a blast of raw, unfocused destructive energy. It wasn’t really a technique, and it wasted a lot of power, but it was effective. The presence disappeared and Eui no longer felt anything struggling against her for control of the area within her domain. She turned to grin at Bai Lin.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, now.”

Bai Lin frowned.

“That was rather rude—I liked that one.”

Eui wasn’t about to give her time to recover from the loss of her familiar. With the disappearance of the spider spirit maintaining them, the webs that had limited Eui’s mobility fell without any structures to adhere to. She summoned another earth pillar to launch herself at Bai Lin—it would only take one solid blow to end the fight. Before Eui landed, her flight was arrested as she felt more invisible presences emerging from Bai Lin. Her domain was pushed back by the appearance of what felt like at least three more of the spider spirits.

She felt the spiders biting her, each trying to poison her meridians in their own way. Before Eui could even think about using her destruction to break free of the webs, she was forced to put all of her concentration into fighting off the venomous spirits. Bai Lin walked forward slowly, with her usual sinister grin.

“Since you already figured out one of my secrets, why don’t I share another? I have more than one bound spirit. They’re something of a clan specialty.”

Eui groaned, sweat dripping from her brow as she tried to fight off the poison—despite her best efforts, it was slowly overwhelming the healing power of her Tranquility.

“You’re...not in the second stage, are you?”

Bai’s eyes widened in surprise, then she clapped with a huge grin on her face.

“Well done! You really are remarkable. You’re quite right, I’ve been in the core forming stage since the start of the year. Unlike some people, I understand the value of hiding myself from undue attention. Now then, you really are quite dangerous, so have you anything else to say before we bring this game to a close?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Ahaha, well said.”

There was a sudden tightness against the base of Eui’s tail followed by an excruciating pain that elicited a guttural scream. With her focus on her healing, there was no way for Eui not to realize what Bai Lin had done. Her tail had been sheared off by the razor thin threads constricting it.

“There you go. Now you’re just perfect.”

Eui had no response—the pain and blood loss were too distracting, and her healing wasn’t able to both restore her dismembered limb and fight off the poison. She felt herself go weightless for a moment before she landed hard on the soft ground outside of the ring, then the world went dark as the poison took its hold.

---

Jia stared at the scrying formation in mute horror. She was dimly aware of her friends shouting at her, but she had no attention to spare for them. Her emotions ran wild—anger, disgust, hatred, frustration, terror, and concern roiling in her soul like a storm. She didn’t even realize that she'd started to move until she felt someone holding her back.

“Let me go.”

Her voice was flat, completely lacking any emotion at all. That didn’t make any sense, she was livid. How could she not be expressing her emotions now?

“Jia, stop, your fight is tomorrow. You can’t do anything if you get yourself disqualified as punishment for breaking house arrest!”

She didn’t know who was talking. It didn’t matter.

“She’s going to die.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic, Eui will be fine! Xin and Fujikawa can probably save her tail like they did for Deungjeong!”

Jia shook her head.

“Not her—Bai. She’s dead.”

“...she?”

Had they not noticed? Actually, when had Jia noticed? Her head throbbed painfully, but she shook it off. She had to—to what? Right, murder Bai Lin. Yoshika reached for her knife, but Jia didn’t have any and Eui—her head throbbed again and she fell to her knees. What was happening? Her friends were shouting again—they sounded concerned. Eui—no, Jia? She focused her domain inwards and realized that her essence had become unstable, and she was suffering a deviation.

“Oh. That’s bad.”

Again, her voice lacked any emotion. That wasn’t right, she should be screaming and crying right now—she settled for meditation. She couldn’t kill Bai Lin if her own essence tore her apart from the inside first. Ignoring the commotion around her, Jia focused on the deviation—there was unstable essence in both her body and soul, and even some of the mana in her immediate vicinity was behaving strangely. For a brief moment, she wondered why the deviation wasn’t being absorbed by her demonic core before remembering that she wasn’t Eui—why did she keep getting that mixed up?

Jia wasn’t in any immediate danger, her body was safe, and she was among friends. She reminded herself of that over and over as she tried to calm her raging emotions. She concentrated on her breathing, letting herself get immersed in the feeling of breathing in new essence as she slowly exhaled the deviated energy bit by bit. She let her thoughts fall away into nothingness, though it took more effort than usual—her worries about Eui and her anger at Bai Lin were difficult to let go of. Eventually, she felt a stillness in her body, mind, and soul and her essence returned to its usual, placid state.

She opened her eyes and found her friends standing around her, with worried expressions. Her face felt wet, and she realized that she must have been crying. To Jia’s surprise, Haeun was clinging to her side, holding Jia in a tight embrace with tears of her own running down her face and getting soaked up by Jia’s robe.

“Big sis Jia! Are you okay!? Your glow got all weird and then you fell down and then—hic—and then—”

Jia put a hand on Haeun’s head and tried her best to smile reassuringly, though her heart wasn’t quite in it.

“I’m—I’ll be alright, Haeun. Thanks for worrying about me.”

Haeun clung to her even tighter and Jia returned the embrace gently before glancing up at the others.

“Is Eui alright?”

Yue rolled her eyes.

“Tsk, still worried about others even after that display? She’s fine—Magus Hwang assisted in the surgery to reattach her tail, and the qi healers were able to ensure that there were no permanent complications.”

Jia frowned. Why wasn’t anyone else more upset about this?

“I should have been there to help—how long was I out?”

“Not long—a few hours or so. You gave the children quite a scare. What was that, anyway?”

“Um...I don’t really know. A deviation I guess, but it was kind of confusing. I think I need to go see Eui.”

Yue let out an exasperated huff.

“Of course you do. She’s fine, Jia—she’ll be back by tomorrow. You have your own matters to consider. You’ll be fighting Bai Lin tomorrow afternoon, and you’ll need to figure out how you plan to defeat him.”

“Him? Oh, right—I thought that...but why—?”

Jia shook her head. It seemed like that confusion hadn’t quite cleared itself up yet. It felt like she was forgetting something important, but when she tried to recall it all she got was fuzzy impressions. It was something she hadn’t really felt in nearly a year.

“Never mind—why aren’t you guys more upset about this? He tortured and maimed Eui, and you’re acting like it was just another bout!”

Haeun squeezed Jia tighter—she was the only one giving the situation the proper gravity, and even then Jia suspected that Haeun was only upset because she was. Yue opened her mouth to speak, but Eunae raised a hand and cut her off.

“Jia, you have to understand that while what Bai Lin did was distasteful, it was not against the rules. If anything, I suspect most of the audience would criticize his actions because they were inefficient rather than because they were cruel.”

“What!?”

Jia glanced at Rika and Yue and saw that they both agreed. In fact, now that she thought about it, Eunae had probably interrupted Yue because she knew that Jia would be less inclined to accept it coming from her.

“So that’s it? Someone tortures a friend and we just shrug it off because he didn’t break any rules? Don’t think I didn’t notice that it was her tail that he cut off, either! What happened to everyone telling me I had to be more ruthless?”

Rika scratched her head.

“Nobody said anything about shrugging it off. That fucker’s going to pay, and tomorrow is the perfect opportunity. We’re just trying to make sure you don’t mess up your chance. I know you want to go see Eui, but she’s okay. You’ll get your chance soon.”

Jia took a deep breath. They were probably right—she was overreacting. Her emotions were still as turbulent as ever, and it was as though she had felt Eui’s torture herself. After giving Haeun another hug and assuring the little princess that she was fine, Jia sat down and meditated just to relax. A few hours later, after Rika and Eunae had returned home with the kids, she shot to her feet, sensing Eui’s domain at the edge of her own.

As Yoshika’s domain became whole, Jia and Eui’s memories came together and she understood the full picture. Bai Lin was sadistic, to be sure, but her torture of Eui had been purposeful. She had been trying to goad her into succumbing to demonic hunger. Perhaps as an excuse for greater violence, but Yoshika couldn’t rule out collusion with Yan Hao or his disciples. She turned to Yue—perhaps Yan Hao’s former disciple could offer some insight.

“Yue, do you think Bai Lin might be working with your former master? He’s been awfully quiet since the incident with Zheng Long, and outing Eui and I as ‘demons’ in front of all the visitors would give him a much stronger case against us.”

Yue bit her thumbnail as she thought about it, then paused.

“Yoshika?”

“How did you guess?”

“Just getting better at telling, I suppose. We have been living together for some time. You have a demeanor that’s just a tiny bit distinct from either Jia or Eui. To answer your question—it’s possible. Yan Hao loves to act through agents, and he’s terribly lazy. I think you’re right to be wary—I can look into it, if you’d like.”

Yoshika hesitated, but it was too important not to address if Yan Hao was plotting against her again.

“I’d appreciate that—actually, that reminds me. You seem to be able to come and go at your leisure, aren’t you supposed to be under house arrest as well?”

Yue rolled her eyes.

“It’s called asking for permission. You might want to try it some time. The instructors don’t particularly care where we are as long as they know where we are.”

Yoshika remembered Master Ienaga saying something to that effect as well and shrugged.

“Also, any idea why Bai Lin is hiding the fact that she’s a woman?”

Yue choked on her tea, coughing and sputtering for a moment before giving Yoshika and incredulous glare.

“What!?”

“She’s a woman. Also in the third stage—and she didn’t have just one spirit familiar, she had four. I—Eui took one out, but she had three more she was holding in reserve. That’s how Eui lost in the end.”

“I see...it’s not unheard of. Most clans are inherited patrilineally, but lesser sects can’t afford to squander their talents. When I was born, my father could simply rear another talented heir—but for a lesser clan, it’s not so simple. A talent such as mine would be an enormous fortune for a smaller sect. Perhaps I too would have to pose as a man in order to inherit my sect if I were born into a clan like Bai’s—though I’d have a terrible time of it with my figure.”

Yoshika rolled her eyes as Yue preened a bit. She had to begrudgingly admit that Yue did have a very curvy figure. Though compared to Eunae or Sun Jaehwa, she had nothing to brag about—to say nothing of Seong Misun and her rather revealing attire...

Jia blushed and averted her eyes when she realized she’d been staring. She heard Eui cackling in her mind.

“I can’t believe you were ogling Yue, Jia. You’re so bold!”

“That—we were Yoshika! That was your influence!”

“Oh, what a convenient excuse. I can’t believe my unfaithful girlfriend is blaming me for her wandering eyes!”

Jia’s face was completely red as Eui came inside, snickering audibly. She shook her head.

“I can’t believe you! I was worried sick, and the first thing you do when you get back is start teasing me!”

That only prompted Eui to laugh harder as Yue looked back and forth between them with confusion written across her face.

“Did I miss something? I hate it when you two do that!”

Eui snorted in amusement, her eyes lingering on Yue’s chest for just a bit longer than was appropriate. Jia frowned—Eui was doing it on purpose now, just to fluster her even more. She quickly sobered as Eui turned to her with a serious expression.

“Bai Lin has to die.”

Jia inhaled through her teeth, but nodded.

“Yeah...not tomorrow, though. Ancestors, probably not as long as we’re in the academy, unless she makes more trouble for us, but yeah. She’ll pay for what she did to you, and tomorrow I’ll collect the interest.”