Like when Heian first began to speak, it was difficult to get her to repeat her ability to take human form, but Jia thought she understood why. After their fusion, Jia felt more in tune with her instincts and intuition, which had helped her to control her core and use Steps of the Stalker in a way that she had never imagined possible. She imagined that Heian’s transformation was much the same—her spirit familiar had experienced humanity directly for the first time, and her new form was representative of that. However, Jia found those instincts that had been so clear to her before had faded over time. The more time passed, the harder it was to make sense of the memories of their transformation—if it was the same for Heian, then it was probably difficult for the cat spirit to even hold on to the right frame of being that had led her to take human form in the first place. After a fruitless night of prodding, Jia decided to let it go and focus on the issue another time. Heian had performed wonderfully during their duel with Bai Lin, and she’d earned a rest.

The day of her match with Hayakawa was upon her, and to say that Jia was nervous would be a huge understatement. It was odd—she’d sparred and dueled with Hayakawa a number of other times, and she’d never been so nervous about it. Somehow the fact that she had earned the spot, that there would be people watching, and that she was expected to fight Hayakawa as an equal came together to make the duel far more impactful. It wasn’t like this duel had higher stakes than their other duels—and even if it did, Jia had literally been in multiple life-or-death battles. How could this compare?

Jia’s nerves cared little for her rationale. She was anxious and it seemed like there was nothing she could do to change it. Eui picked up on her anxiety as Jia was preparing to leave for her match and caught her in a tight embrace.

“Hey, don’t worry. I know you’re going to do just fine.”

Jia chuckled wryly as she returned the hug.

“You already said so last night.”

“Yeah, well some things bear repeating. Go knock ‘em dead!”

Jia giggled.

“Hopefully not literally.”

Eui shrugged noncommittally.

“Eh, I’m still pretty pissed at her for chokeslamming you into the dirt. You do whatever you have to do.”

Jia gave Eui another quick squeeze before releasing her and turning to leave, then in a moment of pure impulse, she turned back around and gave Eui a quick kiss—on the cheek. Eui went a bit red, holding her hand up to her cheek as she stared at Jia, dumbfounded. Jia beamed at her, trying to fight back her own rising blush.

“I’ll be back before you know it! Hayakawa won’t even know what hit her!”

Before Eui could say anything, Jia bolted out of the door, covering her cheeks with her hands as she ran. Jia’s heart was racing—all thoughts of her anxiety about the fight dispelled. It wasn’t like she’d never kissed someone on the cheek before—even Dae had gotten one after their impromptu library ‘date’, but this was different. Because this time, Jia had gone for the lips and then chickened out at the last second, and she knew that Eui knew it.

The two fighters stood opposite each other, eyes locked on each other. The stands of observers were more packed than usual, as even some of the noble visitors that had access to the scrying formations had chosen to come witness their fight in person. Despite the dense crowd, it was almost silent, as if the entire crowd was holding their breath in anticipation. Grand Magus Do Hye’s voice cut through the silence.

“Welcome students and visitors, to the final round of the single-combat division! It perhaps comes as no surprise that our final two fighters are the two girls that took the qualifiers by storm. On one side—the first heir to the newly installed Hayakawa Shogunate of Yamato. A martial artist of peerless talent, who has achieved the ki-embodiment stage at only seventeen years of age! Lady Hayakawa Kaede!”

There was a round of polite applause from most of the crowd—and loud cheers from the Yamato representatives. Jia blinked in surprise—the Hayakawa Shogunate? When had that happened? Do Hye went on, heedless of Jia's ignorance of world events.

“On the other side—a hidden talent who earned her way into the academy as a mere mortal by the merit of her clever guile and keen intuition. The first cultivator in history to unite the disciplines of spiritual, martial, and arcane arts into a single, unified method. Miss Lee Jia!”

Jia smiled stiffly. That was a rather generous interpretation of her induction into the academy, but it seemed that the grand magus had a particular narrative in mind. She just hoped that nobody would be unduly upset if she failed to live up to the grand magus’ exaggerations. Jia’s introduction was met with a much more subdued smattering of applause before Do Hye finished.

“Without any further ado—fighters get ready on my mark...begin!”

Without the fine control over her wall spells that Dae had, Jia decided to forgo the wall and meet Hayakawa’s charge head-on. Hayakawa was faster than ever, but Jia hadn’t been slacking either, finding that she could now keep up slightly better with Hayakawa than she could in the past. It was still a struggle to fend off Hayakawa’s heavy blow while Jia’s own strikes seemed to either land just shy of the pressure points or miss entirely. As much as she wanted to employ the Soft Fist against Hayakawa’s aggressive style, Jia didn’t think she stood a chance without Lightning God Transformation.

While it might seem like a simple martial arts infight to an outside observer, Jia didn’t waste her mana or qi. Her mana went towards body empowering spells that allowed her to keep pace with Hayakawa’s superior speed and enhance her blows so that even Lightning God’s fairly light blows couldn’t be ignored carelessly. Meanwhile, Jia focused her qi on the noxious aura of Fetid Bog. Hayakawa’s resilience as a third stage body cultivator limited the impact of the aura, but she clearly still felt it, as it slowed her movements down just a hair.

As the fight went on, Jia found herself surprisingly evenly matched against Hayakawa. While there was no doubt that Hayakawa was the superior martial artist, Jia’s other abilities were enough to even the playing field. It felt as though their exchange of blows would never end—neither could afford to disengage or let up in their assault, and a single error from either side could be catastrophic. It was exhausting.

Hayakawa slipped her head to the side, barely avoiding a spear hand as Jia’s claws drew a thin line along her cheek. She counterattacked with a heavy hook to the body that threatened to crush bones and smash organs to paste, but Jia pulled back her attack with unnatural swiftness and just barely managed to block the attack. Jia winced as even through her triple layer of mana shield, qi shield, and ki reinforcement the blow landed with enough force to send her skidding a few feet and crack the bones in her arm.

As much as Jia would have liked to use the distance that put between them for a brief reprieve, she couldn’t afford to. She felt the power mounting as Hayakawa gathered her ki for her ultimate technique—Jia was doing the same. Jia unleashed a bolt of lightning, which Hayakawa caught with a burst of ki, but it was just a distraction. At the same time, she used her lightning steps to arrive next to Hayakawa, taking advantage of the distraction to deliver a flurry of pressure-point strikes. To her credit, Hayakawa was still able to avoid the worst of the assault, but Jia still managed to land a couple of clean hits that sent twitching convulsions across Hayakawa’s body.

She rallied quickly, her body fighting off the paralytic effects of Jia’s ki as she tried to regain momentum. Jia’s successful attack had put Hayakawa on the back foot, and she was forced to fight defensively as Jia followed it up with a relentless assault, continuing to pour as much qi into Corruption of the Fetid Bog as possible—anything to help wear her opponent down. Despite Jia’s best attempts to press the advantage, they soon returned to a sort of equilibrium, both of them being slowed by their minor injuries.

As their frantic, neverending exchange of blows continued, Jia could feel the power of her ki reaching a peak, and through her domain she could tell that Hayakawa had done the same. After another brief clash, Jia and Hayakawa broke off from each other, panting to catch their breath as they created distance between them. Remembering both the lesson that she had learned against Harada, and Hayakawa’s own indictment about holding back against powerful opponents, Jia immediately pushed her awareness to the limits using Absolute Awareness. Any moment, Hayakawa would use her ultimate technique, and Jia’s only hope would be to counter it with her own.

Jia’s domain was focused tightly—it was as if the entire world was only her and Hayakawa as she tuned out everything else, leaving only a singular focus on what was about to happen. This was going to be the exchange that ended the fight—Jia knew it. Everything else had been preparation for this moment—each of them trying to weaken or delay the other to mitigate the strength of their ultimate techniques.

There was only one thing that Jia had. A small hope based on what Dae had told her. If Hayakawa’s weight was reduced to almost nothing, then there was a possibility that Jia could catch her in that state and send her flying out of the ring. It would be a thin window—she needed to be able to react to Hayakawa’s near-instantaneous technique and then counter it before she could react. The only way Jia could possibly move fast enough to defeat the Weightless Fist would be the initial burst of power from Lightning God Transformation.

Jia wished she could have borrowed Heian’s power again, but that had taken a toll on both of them, and she didn’t think either her or her familiar were ready to attempt that fusion a second time. Instead, she maintained concentration on Absolute Awareness for as long as she could, straining herself to the limit and beyond as her head throbbed painfully, threatening to ruin everything. Finally, her preparation paid off, as Hayakawa silently released her built-up ki and began to dash impossibly fast across the ring. Even under Absolute Awareness, the movement was almost too quick for Jia to follow, but she had been ready, and unleashed her own ki as a reaction, guiding her power towards Hayakawa for their final clash.

She shot forward like a bolt of lightning, both Jia and Hayakawa moving at speeds that would be difficult to follow by even peak houtian cultivators. Taking Hayakawa’s lesson to heart, Jia held nothing back, trusting that Hayakawa would be strong enough to survive the attack as she aimed a kick directly at Hayakawa’s center of mass. Even with her reaction speed dramatically enhanced by the Weighless Fist technique, Hayakawa barely had enough time to brace herself against the incoming attack, her arms crossed over her chest in a desperate attempt to block.

The twin thunderclaps of displaced air were followed by the explosive sound of their collision. Contrary to Jia’s expectation, Hayakawa did not get sent careening off the edge of the ring. In fact, she didn’t even budge, though the force of the impact reverberating through her caused her to cough up a mouthful of blood. Jia had it much worse—hitting Hayakawa had been like running into an anvil. The bones in her right leg practically disintegrated from the kick, and the rest of her didn’t fare much better as the force of her own attack rebounded viciously on her.

Jia crumpled to the ground, broken and bloody as she struggled to maintain her consciousness. The lightning ki still raged within her body, acting as the mother of all adrenaline rushes and keeping her from succumbing immediately to her injuries. Hayakawa dropped to one knee, clutching a broken arm and coughing up a second mouthful of blood—clearly she hadn’t come away from the exchange unharmed. Jia struggled to lift a shaking hand and point it at Hayakawa, summoning a talisman into her hand and pushing her ki into it—the fight wasn’t over yet.

Hayakawa tried to block the spell, but her broken arm failed her, and the bolt of lightning caught her dead-on, sending her convulsing to the ground. The two of them sat like that for a moment, both of them struggling to get back on their feet and continue the fight. Neither Jia nor Hayakawa was willing to back down and surrender. The fight wouldn’t end until one or both of them fell unconscious.

Hayakawa managed to sit upright just as Jia was aiming another talisman at her. She caught the hand and pushed it away just in time to redirect the spell away from her, following it up with a punch that caused both girls to cry out in pain—Hayakawa had used her broken arm. It had been a weak blow, without much ki behind it, but to Jia it felt like it had the weight of the earth behind it. She felt the coppery taste of blood filling her mouth even as Hayakawa reeled back for another strike.

Jia tried to move her other arm to block the attack, but the traitorous limb refused to budge, earning her another painful blow to the face. She struggled to get her good hand free of Hayakawa’s grip, but the other girl refused to release her, continuing to pummel Jia with the broken arm. Changing tactics, Jia matched Hayakawa’s grip with her own and used a technique she rarely had cause to employ.

At its core Corruption of the Fetid Bog was a modified version of Eui’s Tranquility of the Verdant Marsh—a healing technique that had been reversed from the wood element’s life and growth, to the corrosion element’s death and decay. While Jia had been able to apply the technique to her hand-to-hand combat in the past, it still required pressure point strikes, and she had found it to be far less effective than the paralyzing strikes of Lightning God. With sustained physical contact, though?

Jia pushed every bit of qi she could muster into Hayakawa, skipping the aura entirely to flood her body directly with the corrosive element. Hayakawa screamed in pain and rage, trying to shake her arm loose from Jia’s grip. Now the tides had turned, and it was Jia who refused to release Hayakawa from their struggle. Hayakawa rained blows down on Jia, and each one felt like it threatened to break the tenuous connection between Jia and the waking world.

Her vision was blurry, and her concentration wavered. What were they even doing? It wasn’t even a duel anymore, just a bloody brawl. What was the point of it? Why had Jia been so determined to win? She ran out of qi, but stubbornly held onto Hayakawa anyway. The blows raining down on her felt like they were growing weaker—or maybe she was just getting numb to them. Jia’s thoughts wavered as her vision narrowed to a pinprick of light. Where was she? What was she doing? She felt exhausted, everything hurt, and she just wanted to sleep. Why wasn’t she sleeping? She was being attacked? Jia didn’t feel anything but the throbbing ache that encompassed her entire body. The blows had stopped.

Was this it? Had she won? Won what? Jia couldn’t remember anymore. Then, as the last spark of the lightning ki faded, Jia allowed herself to slip blissfully into the world of dreams.