Jia was feeling a bit apprehensive about her first lesson with Ienaga in over a month. She’d neglected her martial arts training in the frantic effort to prepare for the mountain trip—for all the good it had done them against Zheng Long—and she had also forgotten to inform Master Ienaga about her arrangements with Hayakawa. Jia was not looking forward to telling her martial arts master that she had become a vassal of the Ienaga family’s rival clan.

She arrived at the training field together with Eui and Yan Yue. Their third wheel roommate had grown much more quiet after her confrontation with Yuuko, and hadn’t even left her room except to attend the lesson. Jia was a little surprised that she had still joined them, rather than leaving early to avoid them or something. Without prompting, Yue walked well ahead of them, keeping her distance.

Seeing Yan Yue acting so sullenly gave Jia conflicted feelings. On one hand, she couldn’t help but think that Yue deserved whatever she got and worse for the things she had done—but on the other, Jia didn’t feel comfortable being the one to inflict that suffering. She wanted to be better than the people who had looked down on and oppressed her all her life, but she couldn’t really bring herself to forgive Yue either.

Jia didn’t arrive at a solution to her conundrum before Ienaga began the lesson in her typically abrupt manner.

“Yan and Eunae, continue practicing basic forms and sparring. Lee and An with me, the rest of you choose your own partners and focus on practicing second stage techniques.”

Jia wasn’t sure which was more surprising—the unlikely pairing of Yue and Eunae, or the fact that even Master Ienaga used Eunae’s given name. She supposed it made a certain amount of sense. They were the only two students in the group who had yet to reach the second stage of martial arts—ki infusion.

Jia sighed with resignation as she dutifully attended Ienaga while the other students conducted their own training. It wasn’t like Ienaga never called out other students—in fact, she did it almost every lesson. The reason she kept her classes so small was that she preferred to give direct, one on one advice to each student. Still, it felt as if Jia and Eui were called more often than average.

Ienaga’s brows were furrowed in a rather deep frown, and she gripped the wooden training sword tightly as the girls approached. She let out a long suffering sigh as she regarded the pair.

“What am I going to do with you two?”

Jia knew that she wasn’t meant to respond, and simply hung her head guiltily.

“Lee, I’m glad to see that you’ve recovered well. I’ve been apprised of everything that happened last month—and more.”

Ienaga tapped the tip of the wooden sword impatiently on the ground, and Jia swallowed nervously as she watched it.

“Do you have anything to say for yourselves?”

“I—”

Jia hesitated as she saw Ienaga tighten the grip on her wooden sword.

“N-no, master. I have no excuses for my behavior.”

Ienaga turned her gaze to Eui, who simply shook her head. Ienaga nodded.

“Good. If you’d tried to justify yourselves, I might have had to permanently remove you from my classes and petitioned to have you expelled from the academy entirely. Frankly, I’m amazed that Elder Qin didn’t just side with Hao’s disciples and have you extradited to Qin or summarily executed. Do either of you have any idea how stupid you’ve both been!?”

Jia was fairly certain she did, but it didn’t really feel like it was her turn to speak yet, so she simply hung her head and accepted the reprimand with as much grace as she could muster.

“Your joint cultivation was already reckless enough, but transforming An Eui into an oni and picking a fight with the entire Yan family by stealing their artifact!? When did you plan on telling me about any of this!?”

“I didn’t—”

Jia cringed back as Ienaga met her with an angry glare, but squeaked out the rest of her protest anyway.

“...steal anything.”

Ienaga let out an exasperated sigh and shook her head.

“Obviously, they don’t see it that way. I’m disappointed in you—both of you! I had hoped that I had enough of your trust and respect not to have to learn about all of this from the other instructors after an incident had occurred. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jia had nothing to say to that, and now the weight of her alignment with Hayakawa felt unbearably heavy on her shoulders. Ienaga seemed to deflate a bit, her righteous fury draining away in an instant.

“I’m just glad that you’re both alright.”

Jia and Eui both blinked in surprise.

“Y-you’re not angry?”

Ienaga moved faster than Jia could follow and smacked her hard in the head with the wooden sword. Jia winced and rubbed at the spot where she’d been struck. She’d been doing so well, too.

“Of course I’m angry! However, I am also relieved that you are both safe—for now. I’m concerned for both of you—neither of you truly understand the ramifications of what you’ve done, and I am partially at fault for that. I’ve focused too heavily on your martial training, and failed to properly educate you about the world itself.

“You’re more or less protected while you attend the academy, but your lives are going to become extremely complicated once you leave. You’ve made permanent enemies of one of the most powerful clans of Qin, and aligned yourselves with Yamato’s most aggressive warlord.”

Jia grimaced as she realized that Ienaga already knew about that.

“I didn’t mean to betray you or anything! I just—”

Master Ienaga cut Jia off with a sharp wave of her hand.

“That’s not the point, Lee—and I’m not the one you need to worry about. My clan is rivals with Hayakawa, but we’ve come to terms with the fact that the shogunate is going to change hands. It happens more often than you might think, and if my father intended to fight the Hayakawa clan in earnest, I wouldn’t be here.”

Ienaga rubbed her temple and made a sour face.

“I don’t blame you for joining Hayakawa Kaede—she probably made you a very strong offer, no doubt under orders from her father to poach as much talent from other countries as she can. There’s a lot of politics involved and I’m really not the person to talk to about it, but Hayakawa is probably only here because I am—to make sure I’m not involved in their war of succession and steal my technique for breaking through to xiantian if possible.”

Jia frowned, feeling a bit confused.

“If you know all that, then why teach her? And why are you telling us all this?”

Ienaga sighed and gave Jia a look of pity.

“I’m teaching her in the hopes that I can instill better principles in her than her father has. And I’m telling you about it because you need to know. Hayakawa Takeo’s ambitions do not stop at the borders of Yamato. He would attempt to use either my technique or the disciplines of other countries to bolster his armies and wage war to unite the continent. He’s one of the greatest threats to peace on the continent, and now so are the two of you.”

Jia and Eui both recoiled from Ienaga’s words.

“Wh—us!? What did we do!?”

“Did I not already say? Two commoners from Goryeo who’ve made enemies of one of the great sects, being harbored by a warlord from Yamato, and holding a precious artifact—to say nothing of what’s actually in the ring. Wars have been fought over far smaller matters, Lee.”

Jia gulped nervously. She hadn’t thought about any of that. It was pretty clear that her dimensional ring was no longer secret, and Elder Qin had warned her that it would be coveted by even powerful cultivators.

“W-what are we supposed to do?”

“For now, nothing. As I said, you’re mostly safe while you’re here. The house arrest Elder Qin put you under is as much for your safety as it is a punishment, since clearly we can’t trust the two of you not to go out and do something suicidally stupid without constant supervision.”

Jia and Eui both blushed with embarrassment. They had no argument, they had gotten themselves into a lot of trouble since they’d gotten here.

“So for now, you’ll do nothing. You’ll continue as you have been—under stricter supervision—learn just how much of a mess you’ve created for yourselves, and train until you’re strong enough to clean it up.”

Eui crossed her arms and scowled, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at Ienaga.

“Why?”

Ienaga seemed taken aback by the question.

“What do you mean, why? The academy can’t protect you forever, and you’re almost certainly going to see conflict once you leave it.”

Eui shook her head.

“I get that, but I mean why go through all the trouble? Why is the academy protecting us at all? Why are you and Elder Qin putting in so much effort to help us? At least Hwang and Do are up front—they are just using us for their research—but what about you?”

Ienaga Yumi stared at Eui for a moment then closed her eyes and sighed wearily.

“Sometimes, I forget about your backgrounds. I’m sure you have every reason not to take my word for it, but I am doing this because I care. Not just about you, but all my students. I worry just as much about Eunae, Takeda, or even Hayakawa—each for their own reasons. You two, however, have a unique penchant for getting into trouble.

“I can’t speak for Elder Qin—and I doubt that man has only one reason for anything he does—but I came to this academy because it’s what I wanted. Nobody sent me—in fact, the shogun urged me to reconsider, but being the strongest in the country does afford me some freedoms. I’m not teaching here out of some sense of duty, but because it’s my passion.”

Jia couldn’t really say that she was surprised by that revelation. Master Ienaga could be a harsh teacher, but she did seem to care deeply about her students. Jia had even experienced it first hand when she had depleted her body of ki and nearly died. Ienaga had resuscitated Jia herself using a shared breathing technique that was still embarrassing to remember.

Jia bit her lip nervously, and she felt her tail curling in on itself as she realized just how much danger she had managed to put herself and Eui in.

“What are we supposed to do? How—how are we even going to get strong enough to protect ourselves from enemies like the Awakening Dragon Sect?”

Ienaga smiled gently at her.

“You’re already on the right track. Friends and allies can go a long way, but that’s not my area of expertise—maybe Elder Qin can help with that, but I’d take any social advice from Qin with a grain of salt. What I can teach you is how to fight, and to that end I’d like you two to spar—full contact, but use the Soft Fist technique I showed you.”

Jia furrowed her brows in confusion.

“Spar with the Soft Fist? It’s not really a fighting technique is it? I mean—we used it briefly against Zheng Long, but that was—”

“Lee, the Soft Fist style is a martial art. Make no mistake—despite what you might have been led to believe by the therapeutic nature of the first forms, it is a technique for fighting and killing. The creators of the technique simply recognized that maintaining inner peace was necessary to prevent a warrior from losing themselves to bloodlust.”

Jia shrugged. She didn’t really understand, but she was willing to take her mentor’s word for it. After a few moments to reattune their ki, Jia and Eui stood face to face in matching battle stances.

When Ienaga gave the signal, Jia and Eui moved at exactly the same time. Almost as soon as they began their first exchange, something felt off. Jia knew that Eui was better at hand-to-hand combat than she was, but she found herself moving to avoid Eui’s attacks almost automatically. Likewise, her own strikes met only empty air as Eui moved to avoid them before Jia had even started the motion.

“Stop!”

Master Ienaga pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration as she put a stop to the sparring match.

“What did I just witness? Did you choreograph that?”

Jia scratched the back of her head and flicked an ear in embarrassment.

“Uh, n-no. It’s just that...I think we can sense each other’s movements because of our connection. I didn’t need to think about how Eui was attacking, or whether she was feinting—I could feel it.”

Eui nodded in agreement. Even with their domains sealed, they were familiar enough with each other at this point that it was second nature to sense each other’s movements.

“Yeah, pretty much. It’s kinda like trying to arm wrestle yourself.”

Ienaga glanced between the two of them with a frown.

“I suppose there’s no helping it, then.”

She lifted the wooden sword, then seemed to think better of it and planted it in the ground before taking a stance of her own.

“Both of you come at me, then. I’ll only use basic movement, and no ki, but I want you both to go all out, as if you were trying to kill me.”

Jia swallowed nervously, but took her stance alongside Eui. Ienaga regarded each of them coolly.

“Don’t worry about a signal, you can make the first move.”

Almost as soon as Ienaga finished speaking, Eui burst into motion and Jia moved to match her. Jia and Eui coordinated their attacks effortlessly, repeatedly assaulting Ienaga with what should have been unavoidable combinations. The martial arts master more than earned her title, however, dodging and deflecting their attacks with only a bare minimum of movement.

She wasn’t even trying to hit back as she calmly brushed aside strike after strike. A blow to an extremity—even from behind—was slipped away from with the slightest possible movement, body blows and kicks were swept aside with contemptuous ease, and every feint was completely ignored.

It was like trying to fight a phantom. Jia and Eui couldn’t so much as touch Master Ienaga, and only their supernatural coordination had stopped them from bumbling into each other as Ienaga redirected their attacks. Jia’s frustration was mounting, and she knew that Eui felt the same. With an unspoken agreement, Jia and Eui joined hands and instantly switched to Yoshika.

She immediately activated Absolute Awareness in order to search for openings that she might exploit, but to her alarm, not only did she not find any, but Ienaga’s reflexes were still faster than hers. Yoshika was interested in seeing how Hayakawa’s ultimate technique would fare against Ienaga’s raw speed.

The need to maintain physical contact between her bodies put Yoshika at a mobility disadvantage, but without her enhanced perception she didn’t think she stood a chance at landing a hit on Ienaga. With Jia and Eui’s bodies holding hands, the graceful, flowing movements of the Soft Fist style looked even more like a dance than usual, but it also allowed Yoshika to attack in ways that Jia and Eui wouldn’t have been able to coordinate individually.

Jia swung out with a kick that Ienaga avoided with ease, but she followed the move up by using the momentum to swing Eui around to strike at Ienaga from an otherwise impossible angle. The move seemed to catch Ienaga slightly off-guard, but though she was taken aback by the maneuver, she moved swiftly to block it.

Block—not dodge. It wasn’t a solid blow, but it felt like a win to strike something other than air for a change. Perhaps Ienaga agreed, because as soon as it happened, she started fighting back. With an uncanny speed, Ienaga caught the leg that Eui had struck her with and threw her back over Jia’s head. The awkward angle nearly caused Yoshika to let go of her hands, and as her bodies fell in a tangled heap she realized too late that she should have done exactly that.

Ienaga didn’t give her the chance to disentangle herself, descending upon them and twisting their limbs painfully into a suppression hold that prevented either body from being able to move or fight back. Yoshika desperately tapped on anything she could reach as she cried out in chorus.

“Ow! We give up!”

In her urgency to surrender, Yoshika hadn’t thought to speak in only one voice. She’d never stood a chance. Ienaga released them and stood up, brushing herself off even though Yoshika was sure that she’d been completely unscathed.

“Well done. Better than I expected—what was that in the middle? Your movements suddenly improved when you joined hands.”

Yoshika stood and brushed the far less imaginary dirt from herself as she answered with Jia’s voice.

“We merged our thoughts together to fight as one. This is only the second time we’ve done it—the first time was against Zheng Long, and Jia was mortally wounded at the time.”

Ienaga furrowed her brows.

“Joint Combat Meditation? And why are you talking about yourself in the third person?”

Yoshika hesitated for a moment, but decided that she owed Ienaga an explanation.

“Sort of. We don’t fully understand it ourselves. It used to require meditation, but now we can just kind of...do it. Right now we’re one mind controlling both bodies.”

“An is controlling both? What happens to Lee, then?”

Ienaga looked deeply concerned, but Yoshika quickly clarified.

“No, it’s both Jia and Eui, just...combined. Our personalities blend together into one entity that we call Yoshika—that’s us, er...me.”

“Ah...I’ve heard Takeda use the nickname before. I can’t say I fully understand, but it’s a formidable technique—though it would be better if you didn’t have to join hands for it. It’s a unique path you’ve found for yourselves—even among dual cultivators.”

“Um, thank you. We normally don’t have to hold hands, but Qin put this fucking seal on us. So now what? I assume there was a point to that thrashing?”

Ienaga chuckled lightly as she retrieved the wooden training sword.

“Ah, I see. You really are an amalgamation of both their personalities. For now, I want you to keep practicing Soft Fist together. I can’t give you my full attention during every lesson, but we’ll repeat this spar at least once a week until you can land a hit or force me to use ki. On your own time, keep practicing your individual techniques—especially An. Your joint combat meditation has given me some ideas, but we’ll need to work on them.”

Yoshika bowed with both bodies.

“Yes, master.”

Ienaga turned to leave in order to attend to the other students before pausing and turning back.

“Oh, and Hayakawa has asked me to give you special permission to do some extracurricular training with Fujino’s group. I’ve approved of it, for now. Take advantage of that time to get used to integrating the other disciplines into your fighting style. I told you to go all out just now, but you still only used martial arts.”

Yoshika blushed—she had just assumed that she was only supposed to use martial arts during the spar.

“It feels like we’re being given a lot of ‘special permission’. Is that really okay? Aren’t the others going to protest?”

Ienaga scoffed.

“You think Han Yu and Zheng Long aren’t getting just as many exceptions? The punishment is meant to improve your discipline, not restrict your cultivation. The important part is that we know where you are and what you’re doing, so that we can keep you from getting into any more trouble.”

Yoshika hadn’t considered that. In fact, she hadn’t seen or heard any sign of either Zheng Long or Han Yu since last month’s incident. Which, when she thought about it, was probably for the best.