Jingyi Bo had mastered more than half of the elements, and rounded out her knowledge of all the low-hanging fruit. All the elements for which she had a basic understanding or at least some glimmer of an idea about could be safely crossed off the list. That only left the daunting task of learning about the more dangerous, unusual and unknown remainders.

She had intended to ask Hizashi Kokoro for her help understanding the element of Light, but their schedules for the following week were a nightmare of near-misses. Kokoro was attending more classes to catch up on her magic, and was working on her spiritual awakening - in fact, the whole group of Bo’s friends that hadn’t already done so were working towards finally performing their spiritual awakenings. While Bo didn’t exactly understand why it had taken them so long, she felt like it might be somewhat rude to ask.

What Jingyi Bo did have were some new classes of her own. Having never once shown up for a proper lesson of Elder Qin’s, she had plenty of time to attend classes from one of the new instructors. One more from each of the three great nations, and each with something interesting to teach her. It also got Bo to thinking - formations, alchemy and artifact-creation were all distinctly less combat-oriented than what the Academy had been attempting to instill her with so far. Could there be a future for a cultivator whose strength lay outside, well, strength?

The first of these classes for Bo to attend was that of Grand Magus Do Hye. By sheer coincidence, she had managed to get in on the front end of registrations for the mage’s second class. Izumi Makoto was right there alongside her, just as eager to learn more about magic than any of her peers. When they arrived, the lecture hall was absolutely packed full of students. To the testament of the book-keeping skills of Do Hye’s apprentices, there were exactly enough seats for everyone. Bo and Izumi found a spot to sit off in some obscure corner of the hall.

The time came for the class to start. Every single chair was filled, and a soft murmur of excitement filled the room with a tense energy. The platform at the front of the hall was entirely empty - Magus Hwang normally kept books and reference materials up there when he was delivering a class, but Grand Magus Do evidently didn’t need a thing. Several minutes passed beyond the agreed start of the class, and many members of the audience were starting to get antsy. The murmur became chatter as discussions filled the space - the loop of talking louder to be heard over the crowd accelerated beyond control until nearly everyone was shouting. Bo just wanted to cover her ears and curl up in a ball, suddenly realising how many people were stuffed into this singular room.

It was around that moment that a loud explosion turned all conversations to surprised gasps, a magical wave of silence preventing the crowd from further noise-making. A veil of smoke parted, revealing the Grand Magus himself standing with his arms outstretched.

“Welcome, one and all, to the greatest class on enchantments and formations that you will ever have the honour of attending!”

Grand Magus Do was at once endearing and off-putting in his confidence. From someone less prestigious, Bo might have been inclined to roll her eyes and ignore it. From the Grand Magus, she could only assume that he was absolutely correct. With all the drama of a master performer, he swept his arm wide across the stage and conjured a variety of implements. Bo only wished her aura could reach anywhere near the stage - her mana sense was insisting that there were some really interesting interactions going on down there, but she was far too far out of range to actually see and understand them.

“Today, we will start with the basics. No doubt, my dear friend Magus Hwang has taught you many pre-made formations. Useful stepping stones, of course, but they are nothing compared to the wonders of knowing the very fundamentals.”

His speech was rather grandiose, but he was an excellent teacher. A certain charisma poured off of him as he spoke, and he could make even the dullest lecture about basic shapes sound like a most thrilling narrative. The explanation itself was also quite easy to follow, like the man had spent a very long time refining his explanations.

The general sentiment was that everyone already understood the basics - they simply didn’t know they knew. It was a weird kind of paradox that showed up a lot in cultivation, but this was simply a matter of talking about how many students had been working with talismans for some time. The principles of inscribing spells onto talismans was quite similar to inscribing formations, but with more shapes, more permanent materials and some slightly altered priorities.

One of those priorities was permanence. A spell was a one-and-done situation, but a formation wanted to last. Do Hye’s example was one every student was familiar with - the formation present in the fireplace of every student house. Where a spell simply took its user's mana, a formation could be built in a way that it drew in its own mana to continue without its creator’s input.

The lesson for the day largely culminated in explaining the principle components of mana-gathering formations. It was an extremely simple topic with an astonishing level of nuance and detail - one could control what kind of mana was gathered, or where it would be pushed to, or what sources it could be accepted from. In fact, the mana-gathering formation seemed strangely reminiscent of parts of the Endless Steps technique - Bo belatedly realised that mana-gathering was an inherent part of that entire situation.

There were some exciting interruptions partway through the explanation, such as a student recording the formation so perfectly onto their page so as to nearly destroy their stack of notes with collected mana. It wasn’t until everyone had enjoyed a good laugh about the unfortunate mage’s too-perfect records that Bo realised it was Pan Da-Han - the half-spirit had managed to get into the same class! It was something of a blessing that Bo and Izumi were both fairly hard to spot out of a crowd, and that the panda himself was seated up near the front. But what if he sees me? Should I drop the class to avoid him? What if he learns some powerful formation to destroy us? What if he attacks us? What if--

“Hey, calm down.” Izumi’s voice was soft and level, snapping Bo out of her rising panic. She placed a hand on Bo’s white-knuckled grip of the desk in front of her, stopping her from shattering the thing into splinters. The calming influence of Mist flooded into Bo’s heart, and she realised that her close friend probably didn’t know very much about Pan Da-Han at all. Not that she would need to fear the mage while such a powerful martial artist was at her side! After a few moments, Bo realised that Izumi’s hand was still on top of hers. For some reason, she blushed.

Izumi didn’t ask about her sudden panic there, but she did retract her hand with an awkward cough. I’ll have to tell her later. After class! However, the end of class already had something of an encounter to get through. While everyone was readying themselves to leave, eagerly chattering about all the wonders of Do Hye’s instruction, Bo steadied herself and made to approach the Grand Magus. Or, she would, if her feet would let her.

Stupid body! Just go and stand in front of him, so I can ask about the Everchanging Way Sect! Her mind screamed down to her legs to walk towards the man, but she realised she was slowly leaving. It didn’t help that Izumi was leaving too, unaware of Bo’s own internal struggle. The flow of the crowd made it ever-so-easy to just continue moving further away, but she needed answers! Bo turned to Izumi and opened her mouth, only to be further betrayed by her voice. C’mon, just say ‘I need to talk to the Grand Magus’, and Izumi will stop leading you out!

Her mind and body warred, her spirit fussed and shook its metaphorical head, and her entire being vacated the premises and returned unsuccessfully to her home. There was a kind of mutual agreement that it was all too much effort, that the elder would have no time for one so puny as Jingyi Bo, that he wouldn’t even recall such an insignificant place. Of course, that last part was factually impossible - a mage that powerful would surely remember every detail of their life from the moment they awakened their mind with uncanny precision - but it was a convenient lie to tell herself that even a mage could forget, if that meant not having to approach him. It was like attempting to scale a heavenly peak, so that one may satisfy the curiosity as to the top of a distant but much smaller hill.

--

The next day was alchemy class. Despite Elder Yan Hao’s insistence that he would only teach those who were ‘worthy’ (which Bo took to mean ‘good students of Elder Qin Zhao’), she was able to enter the class. In fact, she hadn’t even signed up - a letter had been posted to all Qin students that they were invited to the class. This courtesy had evidently not been extended to Bo’s friends from Yamato, a fact that confused her until Chao Da of all people explained.

“I don’t know what part of Qin you come from, but it’s pretty common for Qin cultivators to dismiss the skills of foreigners. Not to mention, those from lesser sects. Maybe he thinks it would be too complicated for a foreigner?” Chao seemed to hold an attitude of ‘what can you do’, but when he had explained this some days earlier to the group over Saoka practice, many of them had been quite rightly indignant about the whole matter. In fact, none of the Yamato students wanted to even bother applying for the class now that they had heard this snub. Even Izumi had insisted she would merely go over Bo’s notes - which is the only reason Bo carried a notebook today. The fact that she had made it out of leaves was hopefully going to be something nobody noticed.

The alchemy classes were in a moderately sized hall which Bo rather pointedly noted was on the same side of the Academy as the male dormitories. Elder Yan Hao’s insistence on making the entire experience much easier for his countrymen made it rather more of a hike for Jingyi Bo than expected. I guess he really is looking out for his countrymen, then. At the very least, it made it easier to meet up with Chao and the gang on the way.

Inside, it was not dissimilar to the large lecture hall that the mages taught in - a semi-circular array of tiered benches, allowing everyone to look down to a central ‘pit’ where a massive, black stone bowl dominated the space. The inside was perfectly smooth, polished to almost a mirror sheen, but the outside of it was decorated with all kinds of images, characters and finery. Even from here, Bo could tell it was an artifact of some kind. Beside it were tables with vials, jars, bottles and boxes, some of them steaming or bubbling. There were scales, scalpels, spoons, and stirrers galore. There were devices that Bo couldn’t even think of a name for - strangely shaped pieces of glass, odd kiln-like boxes, pipes, rods, all sorts of odd things. She gave up trying to understand it all now - after all, they were here to learn.

Elder Yan made a rather more ordinary entrance than Grand Magus Do seemed fond of, simply walking in from a door at the back of the room. He regarded the nearly-entirely Qin audience with a characteristic smile. Seemingly out of respect, most of the audience hushed their chatter and waited for the elder to begin speaking - it was very different from Elder Hwang’s lectures, where the man routinely asked nicely for silence rather than demanding it with his presence. This felt somewhat uncomfortably tense, like talking out of turn would be punished by death. Bo began to miss the old bird.

“Welcome, one and all! So good to see so many have come to learn the ancient arts of alchemy! While I can only assume Lord Elder Qin Zhao’s instruction has granted you a veritable font of knowledge on your techniques, there is so much more to the life of a cultivator than merely flinging fireballs about.” Okay, maybe he isn’t so bad.

Elder Yan spoke for rather longer than expected on the greatness of alchemy. However, not one person dared to make a peep. He spoke like some great salesman, and Bo had to admit his pitch was very good - it would have made more sense if he was giving it to a room that wasn’t already full of people ready to listen to his every word. After several minutes of aggrandizing, high-flying promises and general self-flattery, the lesson began properly.

From a box carted out by two helpers, Elder Yan pulled out and explained the purpose of several common plants. Each of them seemed to fall into one of two categories - healing or hurting. The plants that healed could be brewed into teas, dried and ground into powders, rubbed into wounds, held as some kind of charm … for each different piece of near-identical greenery, there seemed to be some strangely specific use. Meanwhile, all the plants used for hurting people had some myriad methods of applications. This one particular berry could be squeezed into food or drink, rubbed onto skin when prepared into a paint, turned into a poisonous mist with a flame, or any of a number of other methods of delivery. Bo was starting to get the feeling that even Qin alchemists were quietly obsessed with the ending of lives.

Still, Bo walked away from the lesson with pages of information. Elder Yan had even shown a trick one could do to promote healthy plant growth by cycling one’s qi through the soil of one’s herb gardens. It paled in comparison to the hyper-potent growth mixture that Bo had incidentally discovered, but it seemed a tried and true method that didn’t require a specific technique. She stored the knowledge away - who knows when it could be helpful?

After the lesson, Bo returned home to share her notes with Izumi. She paused at the gates to her own home and looked over to Izumi’s house, a curious thought passing over her. Bo had never set foot inside the place, or even really thought about it. When she wanted to talk to Izumi, her friend was nearby. Even now, Bo could sense the slight traces of Mist in the air that Izumi seemed to leave behind if she wanted to be found. Why she insisted on leaving tiny clues that only Bo would ever recognise instead of simply showing up like a normal person was beyond her ability to understand.

Sure enough, Izumi was inside. She had prepared tea, and even a bit of food - rice, with a few sides. A soft steam rose from both cups and both bowls - Izumi had evidently just prepared it. A blank page of her notebook sat open nearby, and the woman’s face broke into a gentle smile as she saw Bo approach. No doubt she heard me coming a mile away.

“How did your lesson go?” Izumi gestured for Bo to sit, even though it wasn’t her house. I feel like a guest in my own home!

“It was interesting. Everyone in the audience was weirdly still, like they might die if they started chattering … ”

Izumi Makoto listened intently, her smile growing as she watched Jingyi Bo speak at length. Bo could never have known how happy it made Makoto just to listen.