The rest of the week passed in the blink of an eye. Despite their restricted freedom, Jia and Eui kept themselves incredibly busy between Narae’s training, magical research with Dae, and practicing divine essence control with Heian. They hardly had a moment to spare for anything else, though Jia made a point of spending quality time with her sisters and Heian. Narae got along well with Heian, and they would often play or practice together.

Technically, only Jia and Eui were restricted to their room, while her family were free to come and go as they pleased. Heian couldn’t go too far from Jia and Eui, but ‘far’ in that context encompassed the entire area within a mile of the consulate, if they expanded their domain as far as it would go. Narae had started taking Heian outside to ‘play,’ which consisted of Narae teaching the cat spirit the tricks of her trade. Jia kept a close eye on them to make sure that they didn’t get into any serious trouble, but she trusted Heian to handle any small problems.

Yoshika’s progress made a few advances in places that she’d previously been frustrated in, thanks to Dae’s assistance. While she was no closer to unraveling the secrets of the barrier formation that she’d been studying, she was now aware of exactly what it was she was missing—there had been parts of it that she couldn’t see. Unfortunately, even with the memory perfectly preserved by Absolute Awareness, there was no way for Yoshika to inspect the missing portions of the formation, as she’d never actually seen them in the first place. However, the knowledge that something was missing meant that she could see the gaps and begin to try filling in the blanks.

To that end, Dae’s assistance was invaluable. Not only did he show her the formation matrices that he’d memorized, but he also shared with her his own notes on how he thought they worked—and more importantly, how he thought that his former master might have figured them out.

“It’s entirely possible that he’s figured out some kind of spirit walking ability like your own, but I doubt it.”

Dae was poring over the notes that he had available and doing the best he could to transcribe relevant passages from books he’d read on the subject, but didn’t have available. Yoshika looked up from one of the two books she was studying and raised an eyebrow.

“Why not? Jianmo and Sovereign Shen both seem to be able to do it at will. Is it really that uncommon an ability?”

Dae shrugged.

“I can’t speak for the divine realm, of course, but in this world at least, it’s quite rare indeed. Nothing my master shared with me made any mention of it, and nothing else I’ve read even mentions the spirit world. Even my master, for all his genius, simply referred to it as an additional spatial dimension that we couldn’t perceive properly. I suspect that the way he designed these formations began with a way to perceive the spiritual world, rather than travel through it.”

“Okay...how do we do that?”

Dae huffed irritably.

“Well, apparently you can already do it by simply merging your thoughts with Heian—as taxing as that is—and she can do it naturally. Perhaps my master used a bound spirit, or otherwise learned a technique from one. He had quite a few mental modification techniques that he used—like your Absolute Awareness, or my compartmentalisation.”

Mental techniques—it wasn’t something she’d ever been taught at the academy, though she’d made the effort to learn about it anyway. Mages had more than just spells and formations at their disposal. The true advantage of mental cultivation was in the ability to commit the mana in one’s aura towards certain mental functions. In Yoshika’s case, she would accelerate her thoughts and memorize every sense she experienced in perfect detail. Recalling an experience with Absolute Awareness was like reliving it entirely, with the ability to focus on things that she might have missed the first time around. There was a limit to how much information she could retain that way—only a few minutes, up from the thirty seconds or so she’d started with—and it taxed her mind to maintain, but it remained one of her most powerful techniques.

As advanced as Yoshika’s Absolute Awareness was—something she had learned out of necessity in a desperate time—there were a number of simpler tricks that mages could use to sharpen their minds beyond the usual benefits conferred by regular cultivation. Dae and Ja Yun both practiced a technique that allowed them to set aside their distractions in the heat of combat and focus themselves entirely on whatever task was before them—though apparently it left them feeling uncomfortably cold and empty while they did so. Such techniques were generally only taught to the most advanced students of magic, due to the dangers inherent to modifying one’s mind like that. Jia had nearly bled herself to death while practicing Absolute Awareness, and according to Dae that was one of the more benign dangers of such techniques.

“Do you think he kept any notes on it?”

Dae answered Yoshika’s question with a sigh, shaking his head ruefully.

“Not that he shared with me, no. However he had a habit of giving me all the pieces I needed to figure something out, and then leaving me to discover and then subsequently assemble the puzzle.”

Yoshika looked up from Eui’s book and narrowed her eyes at Dae.

“That sounds absolutely infuriating. We thought Elder Qin was bad with his ‘let them fail’ philosophy, but I think Do Hye might win the ‘most annoying old man’ award.”

Dae chuckled.

“It’s not so bad once you get used to it. The challenge can be exciting. Though...admittedly, a puzzle is often much more fun when you’re aware of it. In any case, I suspect that the answer exists somewhere in the formations that I’ve memorized. I just need to figure out how to deconstruct them and put the pieces back together in another configuration.”

Yoshika blinked at Dae, feeling a little lost as he began mumbling to himself and scribbling down arcane formulae. Content to leave him to his work, she shifted her attention temporarily to her own infuriating teacher’s impossible puzzle. The tiny mote of divine essence continued to frustrate her every effort to manipulate it. Yoshika didn’t understand it at all—Heian could move it effortlessly—a matter of pure instinct—yet nothing Yoshika did seemed to affect it at all. In theory, they could do it by merging with Heian, but that was costly—mostly for Heian, who lost huge amounts of her own essence every time. Besides, the intent of the lesson was for Yoshika to learn how to manipulate divine essence herself, not to have her daughter do it for her.

She had tried everything she could think of—pushing her domain against it, surrounding and pulling against it, undulating her domain like a wave—she had even fruitlessly tried to grasp it with her bare hands, but nothing worked. If nothing else, Yoshika had made incredible advancements in her domain manipulation, but it hadn’t gotten her any closer to manipulating that horrible little mote of divine power.

The worst part was that Yoshika knew that she had done it before, in a manner of speaking. When Jia and Eui had first merged their souls, in the first moments of Yoshika’s existence she had been bound by a mote of divine essence not unlike the one she was now struggling with. A piece of Jianmo’s power, disconnected from—yet still claimed by—the strange, capricious demon. Back then, the slice of power had been much smaller, yet it had still been enough to oppress Yoshika and her friends to the point that their lives were in danger. She had acted on instinct at the time, stripping the mote of Jianmo’s lingering intent and breaking it down into regular essence that she could absorb. Even that tiny point of divine essence had nearly overwhelmed her—and absorbing it all had facilitated her breakthrough to the second stage.

Yoshika puzzled over the mote of divinity, comparing it against her memory of the one that Jianmo had once trapped her with. The most obvious difference was size—though that was only an approximation of what she felt from it. Essence wasn’t a physical thing, and didn’t truly have a size or shape as Yoshika understood it, but it was a reasonable approximation. If the divine essence that had once trapped her was a speck of dust floating in the air, then this was more like a grain of rice. It didn’t seem like much, but Yoshika could sense that the power was orders of magnitude greater.

As before, the essence carried a lingering shadow of Jianmo’s intent—not an active control, but enough to hold its form together and keep it from breaking down into mana. Could that be the problem? Did she need to strip it of Jianmo’s hold before she could manipulate it for herself? That was a dangerous path—if it broke down into mana, there would be no putting it back together. Any misstep would be an irrevocable failure. Would Jianmo leave her with a task with such a risky solution that could only be tried once? Yoshika scoffed to herself—of course she would.

Dae looked up from his work and gave Yoshika a questioning glance.

“Something wrong?”

Yoshika sighed and flicked an errant piece of charcoal from Dae’s pencils across the table, answering in Eui’s frustrated voice.

“Just trying to figure out this stupid divine essence thing that Jianmo left us. The only ideas we have risk complete ruin, and it feels like a trap. Every ‘task’ she’s given us has flown in the face of everything else we’ve learned, is completely impossible, or both.”

Dae frowned, scratching at his chin thoughtfully.

“I’m still a little surprised you agreed to follow the demon so readily.”

Yoshika rolled Eui’s eyes and scowled right back at him.

“We didn’t have much choice, under the circumstances. Besides, as infuriating as she is as a mentor, there’s no question that she’s among the most powerful cultivators in the entire world. She was able to trap that ‘Sovereign Shen’ in the spirit world so that we could escape—do you think even Do Hye could have managed that?”

“Perhaps not, hehe. Well, feel free to use me as a sounding board. You never know when an outside perspective might help you to find a spark of insight.”

Yoshika shrugged and explained the problem that she was stuck on. Dae listened intently, sitting back and letting out a long breath when she finished.

“You’re right, that both flies in the face of everything I know, and sounds entirely impossible. It’s somewhat intriguing, though. You’ve just been carrying that essence around with you for the past week?”

“Well, mostly it’s been Heian, but yes.”

“See, even that should be impossible. Miss Heian is no more a xiantian level cultivator than you are—spirit or no. The way she uses essence may be unique, but in theory she shouldn’t be capable of anything that you aren’t. Individual as she is, she is still essentially a part of your domain.”

Yoshika drummed her fingers on the table, frowning.

“If that’s true, then the fact that she can manipulate it without stripping it of Jianmo’s intent is proof that I should be able to do the same.”

“I would presume so, yes, but this is rather uncharted territory—it’s very difficult to say for certain.”

Yoshika froze—something else came to mind—a strange and stupid idea that she would never have considered without Dae putting the thought in her head.

“Dae...please tell me right away if this sounds stupid. If Heian can do something, then I should be able to do it too, right?”

“Erm, yes? In theory at least. You are, after all, her vessel. Without you, she is nothing more than living essence.”

“So if she can move Jianmo’s divine essence, then I should be able to do it to—the same way.”

“Yyyes? I’m not sure I’m following.”

Yoshika met Dae’s gaze with both pairs of eyes and he glanced nervously between her faces, unsure where to look as she spoke in an excited chorus.

“We never told you how Heian did it. When Jianmo offered it to her, she ate it. Held it inside of herself without absorbing it!”

“Uh, Miss Yoshika, I’m not sure if that’s—”

Dae’s nervous voice fell on deaf ears as Yoshika grasped at the idea forming in her mind. If Heian could do it, then so could she! She didn’t need to literally eat it—in the first place, that was just an abstraction. Heian never truly ate anything—she was not a physical being. Yoshika closed her eyes to meditate—abandoning the physical entirely for a moment as she focused on her own soul and the tiny mote of divine essence, glowing like a golden sun to her spiritual senses.

Jianmo had warned her not to absorb or cultivate the mote of divine essence, but she didn’t have to absorb it. It was as Heian had shown her—she simply had to eat it without digesting it. She enveloped the divine mote with her domain, but didn’t try to move it. It had been an absurd idea to try to move it through space from the beginning, and she was sure that Jianmo was laughing at her somewhere. Instead, she drew it into herself as she would any other kind of essence—something that had long since been second nature to her.

The divine essence resisted her pull, but only weakly. It still belonged to Jianmo, but the demon was not here to fight for its control—and she probably wouldn’t even if she were. The mote of power traveled through the pathways of her soul until it settled in her dantian, next to the mostly-solid core of qi that represented her spiritual cultivation. Her cores both vibrated hungrily, but the essence was not hers to absorb. She had taken it within herself, but only to hold.

Yoshika opened her eyes and grinned proudly. She’d done it! With a gleeful laugh, she turned to tell Dae about her success, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she came face to face with a seven foot tall purple-haired demoness. Jianmo let out a sharp bark of laughter at Yoshika’s startled expression.

“Hah! I finally got you! I don’t hate that shocked look on you, darlings. Well done.”