Jia shot out of her seat and made it halfway out of the garden before her mind caught up and she stopped to think for a moment. If the elementals wanted to attack, then they wouldn’t need to surround her house. Whatever they were up to, it didn’t necessarily mean that her family was in danger. Still, that didn’t mean she wanted to risk it. She turned back and saw the girls looking at her with concern and confusion.

“Girls, something’s come up that big sis needs to take care of. Can you stay here with Eun-eun and behave yourselves for a bit? Actually—Heian has to come with me.”

Narae and Haeun looked disappointed that their friend had to leave, but didn’t argue as Heian vanished, returning safely to Jia’s soulscape. Eunae approached with a worried frown.

“Are you sure, Jia? Do you need me to come with you? Maybe I can...”

Eunae trailed off and Jia shook her head.

“I need you to watch Narae for me. She’ll be safest here, and I trust you.”

Jia didn’t waste any more time as she circulated the essence of lightning to empower her steps, crossing the palace grounds in seconds and launching herself through the gates. As soon as she was through, Yoshika expanded her domain to its absolute limits, heedless of anyone she might be offending. She sensed three xiantian auras near her house along with half a dozen weaker elementals. The surrounding streets had been completely evacuated and there was a conspicuous absence of any other auras within her range.

Her mother was in the middle of saying something but paused when she noticed the sudden change.

“—you sure that...Eui, what’s wrong?”

Yoshika shook Eui’s head.

“Sorry, mom. It’s nothing—Jia’s on her way. Like I was saying, just stay inside with dad. I’m going to go check on Jung.”

After confirming the safety of her family, Yoshika considered her next steps and redirected Jia’s body towards the embassy. Jia had been planning to rush straight home, but Yoshika knew that if the elementals turned hostile, there was little that she’d be able to accomplish with two bodies that she couldn’t do with one. Instead, she prioritized making sure that all of her friends were safe and aware of what was happening.

What was happening? As the elementals closed in, Yoshika stepped out with Eui’s body to meet them, hoping to get answers to exactly that question. The weaker elementals had spread out to surround the estate, while Yoshika could sense two of the xiantian auras at the front and one high above. At the front, she recognized the chilly domain of the Ice elemental she’d met before, along with what seemed to be her polar opposite—a vaguely humanoid being made entirely of molten rock. Looking up, Yoshika couldn’t see any sign of the last one, but assumed that it must be Sky or Air. Then, between the Ice and Magma elementals, something caught her eye.

The...thing before her all but defied description entirely. A paradoxical mass that seemed to be both blindingly bright and impossibly dark at the same time. No matter how Yoshika tried, she couldn’t focus on the thing, as if it lacked substance entirely and was just a hole in the world that led into nothingness. She was unable to make out any sort of shape—if she stared directly at it, it almost filled her vision entirely, like there was no end to it. Yet if she turned away it would disappear entirely from her peripheral vision, leaving nothing but an unnerving sense of absence at the edge of her vision.

To her extrasensory perceptions, it was even worse. The being, whatever it was, didn’t appear at all within her domain. She sensed no mana or aura surrounding it, couldn’t make out any physical substance or detect traces of its passing, and not even the absence of its presence stood out. It was as if there was truly nothing there, and her physical senses were lying to her entirely.

In a moment of panic, Yoshika withdrew her domain, accelerated her thoughts with Absolute Awareness, and meticulously inspected her own soul for any signs of tampering. No matter how she searched, however, she found nothing out of the ordinary. A small trace left behind by Jianmo in order to track them, tiny ‘scars’ from their practice with Eunae years ago, and not a single sign of the tell-tale invasion of a technique like Yan Yue’s. As far as she could tell, there was no mental or spiritual assault whatsoever.

Yoshika allowed herself a sigh of relief as her thoughts returned to normal speed and her domain swept out once again. The elementals had not moved during her moment of vulnerability, but she could sense their attention on her. Steeling herself, she took a step forward with Eui and called out.

“What do you want? Why are you here?”

There was a brief pause, and Ice shifted slightly, a quiet tinkling like chimes as she turned to gaze straight at Yoshika. As before, she could feel the elemental’s gaze staring straight past the physical and observing her soul on some fundamental level. It left her feeling exposed. When a response came, there was no doubt in Yoshika’s mind that it was not Ice or Magma speaking, but the entity next to her.

“Knowledge.”

The ‘voice,’ if she could call it that, was like nothing she’d ever heard. As if it spoke by simply subtracting all other sounds until what remained was what it wanted to say. Like everything about the creature it was horribly unnerving.

“What knowledge? What did you need to know that you couldn’t just ask normally instead of...whatever this is?”

“Precautions. You bear the child’s touch. If it is here, danger.”

Yoshika scrunched up Eui’s face in confusion.

“‘Child’? What are you talking about?”

“The child of hatred. Bearer of the map and key. It knows you, and you, it. The blade of destruction.”

She narrowed her eyes, was it talking about...

“Jianmo?!”

Yoshika sensed every elemental surrounding the house take a step back, except for the entity speaking to her—though she wasn’t sure how to even tell if it was moving.

“Yes.”

Of course. Yoshika was quickly starting to loathe the names ‘Do Hye’ and ‘Jianmo.’ Even with the latter on her side, they seemed to be causing her more trouble every time their name came up.

“She’s not here! The last we heard of her, she was leading Sovereign Shen on some wild goose chase.”

“You can find it.”

It wasn’t a question, yet Yoshika still felt as though it was seeking confirmation. With the motives of the elementals still in question, she wasn’t sure whether she should say. She never got the chance, as the thing spoke again before she could formulate a response.

“Do you have the key?”

Yoshika shook Eui’s head.

“Jianmo threw away their key. We don’t know who has it.”

After a long pause Yoshika sensed most of the elementals begin to move away.

“Acknowledged.”

As Ice and the strange entity began to move away, Yoshika took a step forward and shouted after them.

“That’s it!? No way! You just intruded into our home, threatened our family, and then demanded answers! We want answers of our own! Who or what are you? What are you trying to do? How do you expect to accomplish anything if you won’t just fucking talk to people normally?!”

The elementals all paused once again, and though Ice’s face remained as still and expressionless as ever, Yoshika couldn’t help but feel as if her glare carried a hint of disapproval. The strange mass of nothingness seemed to shift in some nearly imperceptible way that hurt Yoshika’s head to think about before answering.

“Irrational and unreliable beings. Truth is twisted. Understanding is flawed. Communication is difficult.”

“So you don’t try at all? You just run around making threats and demands without any explanation? No wonder you haven’t been able to get anything done in almost three years with all that power.”

A susurrus went through the gathered elementals, but the leader—which Yoshika was becoming more and more certain was a Void elemental—did not appear to react until she sensed a stirring of the mana in front of it. She tensed at the sudden display. It was the first time she’d been able to sense it at all, but there was no question that it was the origin of the phenomenon.

It began as a small whorl of mana in front of the Void elemental, then Yoshika’s blood ran cold as all of the mana for as far as she could sense and probably beyond was near-instantly stripped from the air and compressed into a tiny core. Her own domain, the auras of the people in range, and even the other elementals were completely powerless against whatever force the Void elemental had used. A few of the lesser elementals even had their cores fall to the ground as their physical forms were stripped away—forcing them to rebuild themselves from their cores out.

Yoshika didn’t pay attention to any of that, however. Her focus was on the tiny core of solid mana hovering between her and the Void elemental. Already she could sense activity from it—small tendrils of power reaching out for something. Next to the Void elemental, Ice reached a hand out and released a thin stream of Water essence towards the core. At the same time, the Magma elemental, which had remained quiet and still before, created a trail of Earth to meet it. The tendrils of power emanating from the core latched onto both elements, feasting greedily as a thin film of viscous goop began to manifest around it.

She watched with fascination as the film grew layer by layer, forming a protective ‘body’ of transparent sludge between the core and the open air. Then, the moment ended. The Ice and Magma elementals cut off the mana supplies and the entire thing fell to the ground with a wet plop. Yoshika sensed the core reach out again to draw its splattered remnants back into itself until it sat as a head-sized droplet of goo with a solid core in the middle. While she was still puzzling out what exactly she had just witnessed, the Void elemental’s soundless voice spoke to her again.

“Emissary. Communication established.”

Without giving her a chance to respond, the presence vanished entirely, leaving no sign that it had ever been there in the first place. All of the elementals began to withdraw, completely ignoring Yoshika’s attempt to get them to stop and explain. Within a few minutes, she was left alone, except for the strange little thing that they had left with her. Yoshika approached cautiously and crouched down to investigate the newborn...mud elemental?

“‘Emissary’ it says. How are we supposed to communicate with a shapeless blob?”

As if in response to her words, the elemental’s aura stretched out towards her, followed by a vague pseudopod that wiggled in the air in front of her. Yoshika hesitated for a moment, but she could sense the creature’s aura clearly—it was only just barely a first stage elemental. Even Narae wouldn’t be threatened by this thing. She reached out with a finger and tentatively poked the pseudopod. It reacted immediately, latching onto her finger with surprising strength. Yoshika pulled her finger back in surprise, and the elemental released it with a pop.

“What the hell?”

The tiny slime creature went back to probing the air with its pseudopod, and with a tired sigh, Yoshika poked it again, letting it latch onto her finger. It just sat there enveloping her finger as she examined it, and after a moment she realized that it was very slowly sucking the moisture from her skin.

“We don’t suppose you can talk, can you?”

The elemental wobbled indistinctly, and Yoshika’s face fell.

“We feel like we’re being sent a message somehow, but we have no idea what it is.”

At around that moment, Jia’s body arrived at the embassy. As Yoshika explained to her friends what had happened, and updated Eunae through the speaking stone, she considered what she should do about it. The mud elemental was...something. A challenge, maybe? If she could communicate with it, then maybe there was hope for coming to some sort of understanding with the greater elementals.

She was pretty sure that Void was the avatar of a deity—or perhaps even the deity itself, since she couldn’t seem to sense it at all. She was pretty sure that was impossible, but a lot of impossible things had happened to Yoshika since she’d entered the world of cultivation. Either way, it had served as a wakeup call.

With all the xiantian cultivators in the city, Yoshika had been putting off her divine essence practice for fear of being discovered, but now she realized that had been backwards. Now more than ever, she needed the ability to interact with divine essence. Otherwise she’d be doomed to complete powerlessness in the presence of xiantian beings.

Yoshika had enjoyed the relaxing days after reuniting with her family and friends, but leisure time was over. It was time for her to start taking her training seriously again.