Lee Jia wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t what had happened. Yue fell upon the unsuspecting group of boys in a sudden and unexpected burst of violence. Her first victim didn’t even have time to realize she was there before she kicked him in the groin so hard that Jia thought she heard something crunch, and the boy collapsed to the ground, groaning.

The second turned to investigate the sound and his eyes widened in surprise—which was a horrible mistake, as Yue threw a spear-hand into his face and poked his eyes. Yue didn’t have claws like Jia, but her fingernails were long and well-kept, and she didn’t hold anything back with her strike—her fingers came back bloody.

Within the first seconds, two had already gone down, but that still left her outnumbered four to one, and the ones that had left to watch the roads would no doubt be returning once they heard the commotion. Zheng Long staggered back in surprise, his jaw hanging open in a flabbergasted expression.

“Wh—Yue!? What in the Emperor’s name are you doing!?”

Yue didn’t respond. Her face couldn’t seem to decide between a mask of grim determination, or manic desperation, and the combination resulted in an unsettling rictus grin as she lunged forward, desperately trying to keep up the momentum as she targeted any weakness she could find.

Without the element of surprise, the tide quickly turned against her. Though she fought viciously, there wasn’t any technique behind her attacks—she just desperately lashed out at whoever was closest. The two boys Jia didn’t know blocked her off while Zheng Long and Han Yu stood behind them. Zheng Long created a ball of fire in his hand—far less intimidating than even what Yan Zhihao had been able to manage, but still dangerous—and reached back to throw it.

“Look out!”

Yue barely reacted to Jia’s shout of warning in time to duck out of the way, but the wasted movement left her open to attack from the nearby boys, and she was knocked to the ground by a brutal kick that had been aimed right at her face. Yue rolled on the ground before shakily rising on her hands and knees next to the barrier.

Han Yu laughed incredulously as he stared down at her with a mocking expression.

“What did you hope to accomplish here, Yan Yue? You’re only making your situation worse. I can only imagine what your father will think when our master reports this to—”

“Shut up! I don’t care anymore, Han Yu. I don’t care about our so-called ‘master’. I don’t care about my father. I don’t care about our stupid country or our piece of shit emperor!”

Yan Yue looked half-mad as she rose to her feet, still shaking like a leaf. One of her buns had been knocked loose from the fighting, and the loose hair hung over her shoulder or stuck to her face where she bled from a cut over her eyebrow. She gesticulated wildly as she yelled.

“I’m sick of it! Sick of being a piece of property! Sick of pretending to be happy! Most of all, Zheng Long, I am sick and fucking tired of pretending to like you!”

Yue raised a fist, clenched so tightly that her own hand bled from her fingernails piercing her palm. She looked down at her feet, and too late Zheng Long realized where she was standing.

“Wait—!”

She threw her punch, with as much ki behind it as she could muster with her limited training, straight towards the ground at her feet, where one of the formation circles maintaining the barrier was etched. The flagstone shattered, along with Yue’s fist, sending shards of stone into the air and causing the barrier to wink out, freeing Jia and her friends.

Zheng Long’s expression hardened as Yue rose once again, one arm hanging limply at her side while she raised the other in a defiant fighting stance.

“Yan Yue, you have made costly mistakes before, but this goes far beyond anything that can be accepted. This is no longer simply pushing the boundaries of the leeway your name affords you. You are courting death.”

Yue spat a bit of blood to the side and leveled a venomous glare at Zheng Long.

“That’s infinitely preferable to courting you.”

Zheng Long made an angry choking noise, but didn’t respond. Jia felt a tug at her sleeve and turned to see Eui pulling her away.

“Come on! We’ve got to move, remember?”

Jia hesitated, glancing back at Yue.

“But Yue—”

Yue chuckled raspily.

“Go! What do you think I freed you for? Save our home—I’ll be quite cross if I lose my wardrobe, you know!”

“You don’t have to stay here! They can’t follow us into the girl’s dorms.”

“No. I need to slap that smug expression off of Zheng Long’s face. Maybe remind Han Yu of his place while I’m at it. I’m not doing this for you, Jia—this is for me. Now get out of here!”

With great reluctance, Jia turned back to join Eui and Eunae. To her surprise, it was Eunae who paused as they started towards the dorms. She turned back to call out to Yan Yue.

“Yue, don’t forget what we’ve been practicing for the last month! You’re not just a spiritual artist anymore! Remember that!”

Yue chuckled ruefully and shook her head, but didn’t respond. As they turned and ran, Jia’s ears twitched as her enhanced senses barely picked up the sound of Yue muttering under her breath.

“—making me feel guilty for being so afraid of you...”

The lookouts had returned by now, but most of the boys chased after Jia’s group rather than bother with the clearly injured Yan Yue. As they ran, Jia glanced back to see Yue confronting Zheng Long and Han Yu alone. She whispered to herself as she ran.

“Good luck Yue, and thank you.”

The house was not on fire, thank the ancestors. When they arrived, they found Rika engaged in a very strange fight with a group of hooded girls. There were about five of them, but only four fought Rika at a time. Jia could only use the word ‘fight’ loosely, since the dynamic went something like this—Rika would use her doppelgangers to distract her foes while she disengaged and went after the fifth member of the group, who would be forced to stop trying to paint the formation on the wall of the house to defend herself. Then the girls would converge on Rika, except for one who would attempt to draw the formation, forcing Rika to repeat the entire sequence.

Jia couldn’t tell exactly what the formation was meant to do, but at the very least she recognized the fire mana gathering formation that formed the base—which was enough to confirm that the girls were probably trying to burn their house down. As soon as they noticed her approaching, the hooded girls abandoned their attempts and began to flee.

For a moment, Jia thought about just letting them go, but she remembered what Hayakawa had told her. It didn’t really sit right with her, but if she didn’t make an example of them now, then it would embolden others to take advantage of her leniency. Tae In-Su probably used the same reasoning to justify having her beaten and cast out of the city. It was too late to think about it now, and Jia couldn’t let those thoughts distract her. These people were trying to destroy her home—she didn’t have the luxury to choose how lenient she wanted to be.

Jia channeled lightning ki throughout her body, feeling a few twinges of pain where her meridians were still slightly damaged—something that might never fully heal—and launched herself forward like a human lightning bolt. She instantly caught up to the slowest girl and delivered a flurry of pressure-point strikes that sent her surprised target convulsing to the floor.

The remaining four turned to defend themselves, but their reactions were so slow! Jia was already upon the second of them by the time she had pulled out a talisman, and Jia snatched it out of her hands with contemptuous ease before throwing the girl to the ground. She followed the move up by whirling around and casting a lightning bolt from each hand, each targeting one of the girls as they fumbled to cast their own spells.

Jia frowned as she slapped the last girl’s blast of wind out of the air with a quick burst of her ki. Something felt wrong—this was too easy. These girls were so weak that it was amazing that they had managed to hold their own against Rika for so long. Probably a bad matchup, since Rika struggled to get through mana shields with her projections.

“Jia! Stop getting so distracted. We need to teach these idiots a lesson, come on!”

Eui rushed past, snapping Jia out of her thoughts. She nodded and ran after Eui, but it was still bothering her. She glanced back toward the house, but they had already run far out of sight of it—cultivators could move fast when they wanted to. What was she missing?

Yan Yue stood defiantly against Zheng Long and Han Yu. She felt good, despite the throbbing pain of her shattered hand—she really should have thought of a better way to do that. She didn’t really like her chances of winning this fight, though. It had been less than two months since they’d all had their cultivation reset, and while Han Yu was probably barely more threatening than a mortal, Zheng Long had clearly been hard at work trying to catch back up to where he’d left off.

“I don’t understand you, Yue. You had everything you could ever want. Why throw it all away for some worthless beasts?”

Yue smiled, despite herself. What a ridiculous thing to say.

“You really don’t understand me, Zheng Long, if you think that wealth and security are all I could ever want. You think that I’m doing this for Lee Jia and An Eui? I’m not throwing away my future for them—I’m entrusting it to them.”

Han Yu scoffed incredulously, but Zheng Long blinked a few times before his brows knitted into an expression of genuine confusion.

“What reason could you possibly have for—oh, don’t tell me those salacious rumors are true?”

Yan Yue did her best not to blush—damn those rumors!

“Of course not! I just appreciate their potential. I was arrogant to think that I could escape my destiny alone—I see that now. Had I simply trusted Lee Jia from the beginning, perhaps things would have turned out differently.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Yue shrugged, wincing at a pain in her shoulder—had she dislocated something with that punch?

“I don’t care. I have no intention of justifying myself to you—I was merely thinking out loud. Now are you going to fight me or not?”

Han Yu seemed ready to go, but Zheng Long hesitated.

“To what end? Neither you nor I are likely to change the outcome of what happens next, and I stand to gain nothing from fighting you here. I’d rather get to class before I can be accused of breaking my confinement.”

“Tsk, always so rational. Where was that sensibility when you were deluding yourself into thinking that Jia killed little Zhihao? Or did you simply think that she made a convenient scapegoat?”

Zheng Long frowned and shook his head.

“Go home, Yan Yue. I won’t be goaded into fighting you. Come on, Han Yu—we’re late to class.”

Yue wanted to chase after them as Zheng Long simply turned and left—It was so unsatisfying!—but she lacked the strength, and she was in a great deal of pain already. What a strange day this had been. She half-chuckled, half-sobbed as she began limping back home. She hoped that she’d still have a home by the time she got there.

There was no sign of the idiots that had gone chasing after Jia and the others. They had presumably dispersed after realizing that their ill-conceived plan had failed and they weren’t going to catch up in time. The peaceful walk home was almost disappointing—Yue would have killed to not have to be alone with her thoughts right now.

She was surprised when she arrived back at the dorm to find nobody present, save for a single figure hunched over near the house, quietly working on a temporary formation. Yue blinked in surprise then looked around for any sign of Jia or the others. What were they doing?

“Oh, it’s you.”

Yue glanced down at the figure, who had paused what she was doing to stare up at her. Sun Jaehwa made no attempt to hide her identity, though her short, busty figure was rather distinct—to say nothing of the tall rabbit ears, which would be impossible to hide under something as simple as a hood. She didn’t strike Yue as the type of person who would wear a disguise, anyway.

Yue shrugged, then inhaled sharply as she winced from the pain in her arm—she had to stop doing that.

“How astute of you to notice that I am indeed myself. I don’t suppose I could convince you not to burn my house down? I have things in there, you know.”

Sun scoffed and turned back to the formation, continuing her work as if Yue wasn’t even there.

“I’m afraid not. I don’t have anything against you Yan, but it’s your own fault for sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. A moth flying too close to the flame.”

She giggled at her own joke, but Yue didn’t see the humor. The formation that Sun Jaehwa was writing was much more advanced than the basic ones that had been abandoned by whoever had been here previously. It was clearly much more advanced than anything Yue knew how to make, but she paid enough attention in class to guess that if finished it wouldn’t leave much of a house behind.

“Don’t you think this is a bit extreme just to get some social credit? I don’t know what you’ve been told, but Lee Jia and An Eui are not the easy targets you might expect from their backgrounds—I should know.”

Sun Jaehwa titterred playfully as if she wasn’t in the process of destroying Yan Yue’s home right in front of her.

“You think I don’t know that? I know exactly what Eui is capable of, and I have no intention of underestimating Miss Lee like you morons from Qin. I had so many contingencies for this plan and it still nearly failed. I’ll probably have burned more bridges than I built, after today.”

“You seem rather confident in your success, given that the house is still standing. What makes you think you won’t be stopped?”

“Let me answer your question with one of my own—why haven’t you tried to stop me?”

Yue grimaced as Sun Jaehwa called her bluff. Yue was in no condition for a fight—for all she had tried so desperately to pick one with Zheng Long—and Sun Jaehwa was clearly a skilled mage. She deflected, rather than answer the question.

“You still haven’t told me why you’re doing this. You said yourself that you’re likely to lose more face than you’ll gain going through with it—so why bother?”

“Hmm, well two reasons. First, I called a lot of favors for this, that can’t be undone. I either recover some face by going through with the plan successfully, or lose all of it for nothing. Obviously I have no intention of getting nothing for all my hard work.

“Second, social capital is a tool—it’s the means, not the end. I’m not doing this just to show off by putting the upstart nobodies in their place—though it’s amazing just how many people are happy to help me do so. No, this is about sending a message to that thieving whore not to take what is mine!”

Yue furrowed her brows in confusion for a moment before the pieces suddenly fell into place.

“Wait...you’re doing this all out of jealousy!? Over Jia? By the Emperor, half the empire’s bachelors would fight each other to the death to learn that girl’s secrets.”

Sun Jaehwa stopped her work for the first time since the conversation had begun and turned to stare at Yue as if she was the biggest moron in the world.

“I’ve barely met Lee Jia, you idiot! I don’t care about her! I admit, I was a bit taken by her looks at first, but that was before she revealed herself to be the mangy street whore she really is. How dare she!? Not only did she take what should have been mine, but she lied to my face about it!”

Yue blinked a few times in confusion.

“I’m sorry, you’ve lost me. What are we talking about? Did Lee Jia steal something from you?”

“How can you be this stupid? She took Eui from me! This should have been my chance to make things right with her, but that filthy cat took her away! She seduced Eui and turned her against me!”

What an interesting interpretation that was.

“From what I have heard, you did a fine enough job turning Eui against you all by yourself. What claim could you possibly have over her after you discarded her so callously?”

Sun Jaehwa shook her head and snorted derisively.

“As if someone like you could ever hope to understand. I did what I had to do to protect her!”

“Hah! I’m sure she felt very safe, alone in the wilderness. No, you did what you had to do to protect yourself—at any cost. Which is something I am well familiar with, thank you very much. Besides, you seem to have a different story for every person you speak to, so I doubt I can really trust your word. You’d fit right in, back home.”

Sun stood up straight and whirled angrily on Yue.

“Don’t act like you know me! You’ve only heard what Eui told you after that bitch poisoned her mind against me.”

Yue smirked, doing her best to straighten up and adopt a haughty posture, despite the pain she was in. Some things were worth a bit of sacrifice.

“Oh, but I’ve heard it straight from the source. Your own retelling, as biased as it was, still didn’t exactly paint a very good picture of you—especially not if your goal is to protect An Eui. Tell me—why exactly were you trying to flirt with Lee Jia if you hate her so much?”

Sun Jaehwa’s angry blushing face was too precious.

“I don’t know what she told you but—”

“She didn’t have to tell me anything, I was there! I’ll tell you a little secret, Miss Sun—when you offered Jia your warning about An Eui, it wasn’t her you were speaking to, it was me. It’s a bit of a long story, but I was borrowing her body at the time. I’ve never had another girl make advances on me before—poor Jia nearly had a fit when she thought I was going to reciprocate on her behalf.”

“That’s—I—I don’t have to explain myself to you! Besides, this entire conversation is just a transparent attempt to stall me!”

Yue snorted derisively.

“Obviously. It’s working, isn’t it? I don’t even know why you’re telling me all this, but you’re surprisingly easy to rile up.”

Sun’s face was as red as a tomato, and it took all of Yue’s composure to keep herself from doubling over in laughter. The poor girl must have considered herself to be a master manipulator, but she hadn’t been brought up among the Great Sects of Qin.

“Enough already! I don’t have time to waste on you. Try to stop me if you dare, but I doubt you’ll be capable of much in that condition. If I were you, I would just stay out of my way, otherwise don’t blame me when you get trampled. I have no particular quarrel with you, but I won’t hesitate to crush you if you stand against me.”

“Hmm, bold words, but I’m afraid your time is already up. Look—”

Yue pointed a short way down the street, where Jia and Eui were approaching at a run. Sun Jaehwa looked up with shock.

“What!? But they should be—how—?”

Yue grinned widely and removed the active speaking stone from where she had hidden it within her sleeves.

“Oops! I must have forgotten to deactivate it. How clumsy of me. I’m very glad you were so talkative, though. It really would have been unpleasant to have to fight you in my condition.”

Sun Jaehwa’s screech of frustration was music to Yue’s ears.