A little girl with stubby goat horns flew through the air, giggling as she zipped around a tree then flipped in the air and slammed feet first into her sparring opponent.

“Oof!”

Pan Jiaying nearly fell on her butt from Narae’s assault, but barely caught her footing. By the time she was able to throw out a reprisal, the little gremlin was already looping back around for another attack.

“This is so unfair!”

Lee Jia shrugged, her disciple’s complaints falling on deaf ears.

“Do you think a magical beast is going to fight fair? In a real fight, you have to adapt or die!”

Jiaying threw herself to the side, narrowly avoiding another attack from Narae, but leaving her completely open for a follow-up. Jia took note of the fact that Narae didn’t take advantage of the opening.

The park’s wide open space was extremely advantageous for Narae’s style, but Jia’s little sister was altogether too fond of making huge flashy strafing attacks instead of committing to her assaults. On the other hand, her newer disciple learned techniques quickly, but struggled to use them in actual combat.

Off to the side, a number of people had stopped to watch the demonstration—mostly mortals, but a few of the Purewater disciples had taken note of Narae’s impressive free-flying style. Among them, Li Meili called out her support.

“You can do it, Jiaying! Don’t let her bully you—you’re three times her age!”

Pan Jiaying’s face turned red.

“That’s not helping, Meili!”

She braced herself for another strafe, lowering her stance and channeling her essence only to once again throw herself to the side instead of counter-attacking. Eui clicked her tongue.

“Pan, what the fuck are you doing?! You can’t win by just dodging!”

“She’s like eight years old!”

“And she’s kicking your ass! Fight back!”

Jiaying growled in frustration and braced herself for another attack, a small flash of lightning crackling across her body. Narae’s eye widened in alarm at the sight, but she was too late to abort her dive. Jia watched as her disciple neatly sidestepped her sister and delivered a single pinpoint strike to Narae’s side.

Narae immediately lost control of her flight and went tumbling through the air, her arms and legs flailing comically as she crashed into the ground.

“Aguhblurghle—gweh!”

She rolled a considerable distance before colliding with a tree. The crowd’s reaction was mixed—a few concerned murmurs, some chuckling, and a lot of stunned silence. Jiaying blushed bright red.

“Do we have to do this in public? If I win, I’m bullying a child, and if I lose I’m being defeated by a little girl!”

Eui snickered.

“Whatever, Narae’s fine—aren’t you honey?”

Narae rose to her feet and offered Eui a shaky thumbs up, still spasming from Jiaying’s paralyzing strike.

“T-t-totally f-f-fine, hehehe.”

Jia smiled at her little sister—she was a real scrapper—then schooled her expression. It was time for feedback.

“Lee Narae, you’re relying too much on your flight to protect you. What have you been practicing your other techniques for? Mix up your attacks more, and remember to press the advantage when you unbalance your opponent.

“Pan Jiaying, you shouldn’t let your opponent fight on their terms. You can’t rely on your opponent being dumb enough to repeat the same attack pattern until you’re able to predict and counter it. You have to be more proactive and decisive in combat.”

Both disciples bowed, and Jia turned it over to Eui for more positive remarks. They were trying to break the habit of letting Eui be the naysayer.

“Pan, you’re getting pretty good with those pressure point strikes. Lightning God is a precise style, and landing a hit on a target that small and fast is impressive, even if Narae kinda gave it to you. Keep it up and that’ll become second nature soon enough.

“Narae, that was a solid hit. If you’d gotten just a little more weight behind it, you would have scored a knockdown for sure. Keep practicing your weight control, but don’t neglect your other techniques.”

Narae beamed happily and bowed.

“Yes master, thank you!”

Pan Jiaying’s response was a bit more subdued, but she also bowed.

“Thank you for your evaluation, An Eui.”

Jia smiled sardonically at that. Pan tended to prefer talking to Eui—even when they were joined together as Yoshika—because she didn’t like Jia. That sometimes caused problems, since by some quirk of fate, she had the same elemental affinity.

It was a small issue—Jia knew that she hadn’t given Pan Jiaying the best first impression, and once the flames of animosity had time to die down, they just kept a polite distance from each other. The business-like relationship with her disciple chafed slightly at her domain of Unity, but Jia knew better than to try to force a friendship.

Besides, in a roundabout way, they were actually quite close.

“You did it! Good job, Jiaying—I knew you had it in you!”

Li Meili threw her arms around Jiaying, who blushed fiercely and squirmed out of her grip.

“It doesn’t feel right being praised for beating an eight-year-old...”

As Jia’s avatar, Li Meili still kind of felt like an extension of herself even though Meili had her own autonomy. It made her blossoming relationship with Pan Jiaying...complicated, to say the least. They weren’t dating or anything, but Meili wasn’t subtle about her intentions, and Jiaying wasn’t entirely unreceptive. They were almost always together.

Jia had complicated feelings about that, but she was committed to letting Li Meili live her own life.

Jia clapped her hands once to get the attention of her disciples.

“That’s enough practice for today—each of you meditate on your lessons.”

With that dismissal, Jia left them to their own devices and got ready to work on her own training.

Life in the Spiritual Flowing Purewater Sect had been pleasant and peaceful, and Jia was happy for the chance to settle down for a while and just work on her cultivation. The quiet was a very welcome reprieve from the endless stress that haunted her.

Jia and Eui walked hand in hand, enjoying the park scenery. Even in midwinter, the sect took great pains to maintain the pristine appearance of their town, and especially the central park at the base of the mountain. The great falls cast a light mist across the park that clung to the grass and formed a seasonal layer of frost. It was a bit cold for mortals, but a complex structure of formations prevented the mist from extending into the town beyond the park.

Xin Wei and Guan Yi bragged that their home was the most beautiful place on the continent, and Jia had to admit that it certainly outclassed anything else she’d witnessed in her travels. The sect was also incredibly generous with its resources—the townsfolk wanted for nothing, and unlike Jiaying’s old sect, everyone was given a fair chance, though the unspoken reality was that most of the women were part of Lin Xiulan’s cult.

“Do you think you’ll get it today?”

Eui’s question snapped Jia out of her thoughts and she chewed on her lip before shrugging.

“Maybe? I’ve been watching Narae closely and practicing my butt off, but I have a really hard time with Sky and Gravity magic, even with Xin Wei’s help.”

Flight had been something that eluded Jia for years, even though she technically knew the same Path of Heavenly Ascension that Eui used, and had plenty of practice with it as Yoshika. Eui herself had already been able to implement many of the lessons they’d learned from Narae’s signature technique in order to improve the efficiency of her flight to be nearly effortless, but Jia would exhaust herself in minutes just trying to hover.

If they cheated a bit, Yoshika could make Jia’s body fly, but even then it was too costly to justify. Jia’s dream of flight was partially vanity, but only partially! If she could master flight as well as Narae and Eui had, then she’d be able to massively improve her combat potential as Yoshika, and travel much more freely over land and sea.

And she would have to travel overseas, if she was ever going to make good on her promise to open Sovereign Chou’s tomb—a prospect that had been growing more and more likely of late.

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You’ve always been the smart one.”

Jia elbowed Eui in the side.

“Don’t be sarcastic!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Tsk, Xin and Guan have been a bad influence.”

Eui snickered and shook her head.

“Nah, if anything I’ve taught them a thing or two.”

Jia rolled her eyes—her partner could be absolutely incorrigible.

“Speaking of which, what about you? Any progress with your sword technique?”

Eui grimaced—that had been a low blow and Jia knew it.

“You know I haven’t. I think part of the problem is the weapons. I can imbue a sword with Destruction, but then it becomes unstable. I can force it to stabilize, but then I’m not able to channel any other techniques through it.”

It was a familiar roadblock, one that had been holding Eui back from what would potentially be one of her most powerful and reliable techniques. She’d been trying to figure it out since they were still lost in the wilderness. In theory, a projected wave of Destruction essence would be an absolutely brutal modification to the Earth Rending Sword Art, but it was proving troublesome.

“Has Stoneface’s advice helped out any?”

Eui wobbled her head back and forth.

“Eh, a bit? I managed to eject the Destruction essence from the sword without it exploding, but the resulting wave of energy was too unfocused to actually do anything.”

“And also the sword disintegrated.”

“Exactly! The technique isn’t the problem, it’s the weapons. Training swords can’t withstand being imbued by my ki.”

Jia started counting off on her fingers.

“Neither can iron swords, steel swords, masterwork blades, magical swords—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Do you think Master Ienaga would let me try using hers?”

“I think she’d sooner use it on you.”

The two of them giggled together before finally arriving at their destination. The steep, vertical nature of Purewater Peak meant that there were precious few plateaus large enough to do any practical training. This meant that inner, outer, and core disciples alike did the vast majority of their physical practice in the training fields near the main barracks.

The mountain itself was reserved for closed door training and meditation halls.

Jia preferred the cozier environment of the main park, and her students were still low-powered enough that she didn’t have to worry about collateral damage or safety...as much. She wasn’t careless.

Her own current tutors, on the other hand, were quite strict about doing things in the right place, at the right time.

“You are three minutes and twenty seven seconds late to your scheduled lesson!”

Jia frowned at Guan Yu, the grandmaster of the Earth Rending Sword branch of the Spiritual Flowing Purewater Sect—which was an enormous mouthful—then shaded her eyes to glance up at the sun.

“How do you know?”

“I do not rely on something as inexact as the sun’s position in the sky—counting the minutes from dawn is a trivial matter for one whose time is as valuable as mine.”

At his flank, Xin Wei held his face in a palm, while Guan Yu’s son, Guan Yi, remained as stoic and impassive as his father. That particular apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.

Eui crossed her arms.

“We’re sorry for wasting your time, Elder Guan, but we didn’t know you would be coming.”

Guan Yi bowed.

“My apologies—I asked him to assist Miss An with her new technique after he expressed an interest in the problem.”

Guan Yu cuffed his son lightly in the back of the head.

“You know better than to be lax in your organization, boy. This error could have been avoided.”

“Yes sir!”

Jia scratched her cheek—even if she had known that Guan Yi’s father would be joining, she probably wouldn’t have done something like count the minutes to arrive at exactly the appointed second. There would be no point when there was always one person they could count on to be fashionably late.

“Oh, did I miss the comedy show?”

As if on cue, Yan Yue arrived, her casual strut betraying no hint that she had arrived late. Guan Yu glared intensely.

“You are four minutes and seven seconds late to your scheduled lesson!”

Jia had to suppress a giggle at Yue’s flabbergasted expression.