Jingyi Bo, having returned to her shed to wash the taste of jade out of her mouth with tea, held the slip of Stone in her hand. It was a mystifying thing on a conceptual level - a thing this elementally pure should just be crystallised qi. Instead, Bo reasoned that someone had intentionally petrified this once-jade slip by aligning its material perfectly to elemental Stone. It was much the same as one could have pure gold, entirely free of impurity or contamination. It came as something of a revelation that one could even have a material that was purely made of its element like this, but the true revelation that it led Bo to was that all objects were, functionally, made of some very precise mixture of elements.

Still, turning this thing into pure jade was a feat slightly beyond her for now. Thanks to her unusual desire for a jade snack, Jingyi Bo was fairly certain exactly what Jade was, elementally speaking. It wasn’t just a specific combination or ratio of elements, but it also had to be the right shape. Putting all the constituent parts in without the appropriate shaping would be like trying to make a cake by piling all of its raw ingredients together and then serving it. Forming this exact, miniscule shape while simultaneously stepping the elements appropriately through to what they needed to be would either require far more skill, or some kind of sixth sense that let her see the qi. For now, it would be like trying to bake that aforementioned cake blindfolded and without instructions.

Thinking about cake made Bo hungry. Another bowl of rice later, she considered meditating - after all, she hadn’t tried these new breathing and meditative techniques yet. Closing her eyes and falling into a trance, Bo was almost alarmed at how easy that had been. Had she been doing it the hard way this entire time? Silently cursing the obnoxiously vague methods of the Everchanging Way sect, Bo found herself drawing in qi with far greater efficiency than before. The vessel inside of her was not quite anywhere near filled, but now that she knew what it was and how to fill it more effectively, she had made more progress in one night than she had in the last month.

--

When the ambient qi finally dried up, it was late at night. Frankly, Bo wasn’t used to suddenly losing nearly a whole day to meditation. Completely awake and not particularly needing to sleep, but not wishing to wander around campus in the middle of the night, Jingyi Bo determined to entertain herself by practicing her Endless Steps.

Another thing she had realised from Elder Qin’s jade slip was how strange the Endless Steps of Transformation was. Spiritual techniques, it seems, were meant to use up some internal supply of qi to cause effects in the world. For whatever reason, the Endless Steps technique used nearly nothing from one’s internal supply - the ‘engine’ formation within her heart meridians needed a slight jumpstart, but the actual effect didn’t add or subtract anything from the world, merely rearrange it. Functionally speaking, the technique only had a start-up cost. Still, it was an underwhelming effect despite that, and Bo hoped that her growing skill and power would expand its usefulness.

To the end of training her technique, Bo spent the better part of the night transforming things. Her wobbly wooden table was transmuted into a wobbly stone table, which took the better part of an hour. At several points, Bo had found problems. Wood was shaped in a way that held together if it was wood, and not if it was stone, and reshaping it internally caused all sorts of issues. Sometimes it became too crumbly, or the material itself shrunk as it was forced to condense, leaving the tabletop uneven. By the time she was done, Jingyi Bo had made the table unrecognisable, its thick table top and thin, sitting-height legs transformed into a thinner top and shorter, sturdier legs. While she had grown better at controlling it all, looking at the grey-brown, vaguely uneven stone table just made her appreciate a craftsman’s trade all the more.

Bo tried her hand at transmuting other things. The dirt outside her house turned freely into mud, though it turned out that just made her hands dirty. Leaves fallen from the old tree happily turned into mud with their Yang removed, with Bo noting that she still had no clue how to conceptualise Yang. Sighing, Bo continued turning random things into mud. Why did all matter desire becoming mud? Maybe it was merely Bo who enjoyed watching things melt into sludge.

She even tried transmuting the hem of her robe, experimentally. She was aware it had some enchantments to protect it from damage and dirtiness, but the transformation seemed to bypass this in some way. Cloth apparently held many similarities to wood, which meant it turned to mud with ease.

Stop it with the mud, Bo! Can’t we turn this into something more useful?!

Bo pinched a section of the hem of her robe and concentrated carefully, stepping a little bit further to turn it into … earth. Earth is just dry mud! Try again! Next, she steadied her breathing and focused, turning another pinch of her robe into water. Rather than fall away, the water just soaked the surrounding unaffected bits of her robe. And water is just clean mud … wait. It didn’t all fall away. Perhaps I could …

Putting a finger to a wet patch of the cloth, Bo influenced the water to become ice. Sure enough, the wet cloth turned stiff as though it had been left out in a snowstorm. If it could become ice, then it could become … Air? What am I meant to do with air? Experimentally, Bo converted the ice into air, which predictably just meant the cloth was now no longer wet or frozen. Great. I’ve discovered the world’s least efficient method of drying clothes.

---

After some time practicing the mystical art of turning things to mud, Jingyi Bo realised the sun was soon to rise. Recalling the schedule, that meant it was time for physical training. Bo had mixed feelings about attending. On one hand, learning a new discipline was bound to grant her insights that no amount of spiritual cultivating could ever deliver, and she had always been interested in staying relatively fit. After all, Jingyi Bo had spent a lot of time fleeing from disasters caused by her own localised miserable luck.

However, Bo also had some prejudice against such barbaric Yamato arts. Her mental image of a Yamato cultivator was entirely aligned with that muscle-bound pillow-placer she had seen the previous morning. But was this place not meant to be for the purposes of coming together and learning about other cultures and techniques? At least, that’s what Jingyi Bo guessed - why else would masters from every corner of the world offer to come together here and teach foreigners?

Somehow while mulling that all over, Jingyi Bo found herself at the training field. She had expected something a bit more elaborate than a field with some stone platform on it, but it would have to do. Bo’s unbelievable sleeping schedule and apparent lack of better things to do have her at the field before most people, but she was by far not the first.

Elder Ienaga was standing before the platform, her hands resting on a wooden training sword embedded in the ground. Bo couldn’t help but feel intimidated, being this much closer to her. She had her eyes closed, but Bo was certain that she was perfectly aware of her surroundings. Her red armour had that Yamato flair to it that many Qin found barbaric, but Bo could only be impressed. Still, despite how terrifying she seemed to the cowardly Jingyi Bo, she found her eyes running over her musculature, her fine features, her powerful presence …

I’m just appreciating a fellow cultivator! Nothing more!

Also there was a group of Yamato students, stretching and practicing. Along with them was the pillow-placing man from yesterday - he didn’t seem to notice Bo staring as he performed squats at an incredible pace. It was almost impressive, if it weren’t so obvious that the rest of the group didn’t seem to want anything to do with him. Was this some kind of punishment? Had he wronged the Yamato code, a thing that Bo was certain was real? Or was he just a bit too weird for the rest of them?

Rather than waste this time waiting for the sun to rise, Bo sat down under a nearby tree - Elder Ienaga was probably going to yell very loudly at them when it was time to begin, and no amount of meditative trance could prevent her from hearing that. However, her meditation was cut short by the arrival of none other than Chao Da and company.

“Hey, junior!” Bo’s imminent arrival at completing the concept of heavenly dao was shattered as the young man ruffled her hair.

“... Senior. You’re up early.”

“Nah, the sun’s just about to rise--”

“The sun has risen! Your training begins now!”

Youni’s snickering was drowned out by Elder Ienaga’s crushing voice. Some of the students - the ones that had been here since quite early, Bo noted - were sent away. Seemed an inefficient use of time, but perhaps that was just how things were done in Yamato. Still, she didn’t have time to think about it as Ienaga carried on … about ‘ki’. Was it her accent? Did she mean to say ‘qi’? Or was ki a different thing entirely? The similarity of the names couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? Where would this ‘ki’ even go, anyway? Her meridians were already suffused with qi, which may or may not be the same thing. But the way Ienaga said ‘body’ made Bo think that she meant it literally - the soul and the body were two different things, after all. Maybe if she suffused herself with ki, she could be as full-figured as Elder Ien--

“That’s enough explanation,” Elder Ienaga concluded. “Let’s begin the actual training. All of you start running laps. Do not stop under any circumstance.”

Everyone stopped for a moment. How was running supposed to get rid of the impurities in one’s body? Maybe it all came out in one’s sweat, or perhaps it made one bleed--

“NOW!”

Bo didn’t need to be told twice. One glance at Elder Ienaga’s wooden sword, and Jingyi Bo couldn’t help but wonder if it would break her before she broke it. Deciding not to find out, she ran for it.

---

Chao’s gang had mostly been keeping pace with Bo, but they were in much worse shape than she was. Evidently, the trio hadn’t had to flee for their lives before - they were only keeping up with her due to their longer legs, but Jingyi Bo was working herself to the limit. Every time she looked over her shoulder, some slacking Qin student got walloped over the head with that wooden sword, spurring Bo to keep running.

The pack slowly thinned as people collapsed or abandoned the field. There were a surprising number of Yamato that left, leaving only a handful of Qin students. Still, Chao’s gang seemed determined to stay in the game as long as possible. That being said, Youni was routinely getting prodded with Ienaga’s training sword - every time he would slow down, she would race over at lightning speed to hit him, and every time he would take that as his cue to speed back up again. If he wasn’t panting and wheezing so loudly, Bo would’ve imagined he would be snickering every time he got smacked.

All that said, Youni was still the first to collapse. As though a puppet with his strings cut, the greasy teen tripped, fell and refused to get up. Elder Ienaga plucked him out of the way, whispered something to him, and then came straight for the group of slacking Qin students who had dared to look back at their fallen comrade. It wasn’t long before Chao met the same fate, collapsing with a wheeze. As if on cue, Wang collapsed with him at the same time. The field was now almost entirely Yamato and half-spirits, though a few eager Qin students existed as though to deny Bo the accidental honour of being the last one of their kind standing.

Jingyi Bo’s mind raced as she ran - was there a way to cheat at this? Some kind of technique to keep running? Reaching up to wipe the sweat off her brow, she semi-intentionally transformed some of the water into ice, cooling herself off … but not particularly helping in any way. She used the last of her strength to ensure she wouldn’t land face-first in the dirt when she collapsed … to no avail. The dirt under her instead transformed into slightly softer mud. It would have to do.

Elder Ienaga plucked the unfortunately small Qin student out of the mud, depositing her on the side of the track. Her voice in Bo’s ear was surprisingly soft and motherly, her closeness making some voice in the back of her mind very happy. Barely able to hear the elder over the sound of her own heartbeat, she focused on Ienaga’s advice. It had been simple and straightforward - Breathe. Bo quietly wondered why she couldn’t have had an elder like Ienaga back at the Everchanging Sect.

Not really able to focus on any kind of breathing technique or really much of anything, Bo simply fought to stop her body from melting into a puddle of goop. Looking inside her soul, her meridians were doing just fine - the whatever-it-was stone in her dantian busily sorting and consuming elemental leftovers. It was her body itself that was upset, her heart pounding, her veins throbbing, her head threatening to explode with an oncoming headache. The only reason she hadn’t vomited was the fact that she hadn’t really eaten anything recently. The boons of spending all night transforming things.

Eventually, Bo calmed herself down enough to reach a point where she could meditate properly. It didn’t feel like meditating as much as it did like she had simply collapsed unconscious on the ground, but all the same, she fell into that trance. There was something moving around inside her body, not entirely unlike qi - Bo guessed that was the ki. It passed through her body like qi, circulating through her veins instead of her meridians. It felt great, though. It reminded Bo of the first time she had experienced qi and awakened as a spiritual cultivator, with some part of her that had always been there finally being acknowledged.

The calming gave way to understanding, then to waking. Bo opened her eyes to see Youni De hovering over her, and she instinctively scuttled like a crab to get out of the way before a drop of sweat from his head could hit her face.

“Damn, Junior. Damn. Damn.” Chao looked like he was struggling to think of something more articulate. Wang gave a nod and a ‘damn’ of his own. Youni just snickered. It was nearing sunset, and it looked like everyone else had finished running. Most other folks had woken up by now, and Ienaga addressed them - all four of Bo’s group had their jaws drop at the revelation that that was only the first of many possible training exercises. Slightly disheartened, the lot of them stumbled on home.

Bo pushed open the front door of her shed and sat on her lumpy-yet-somehow-enticing bed, exhausted. Chao sat down on the cushion by the table, Wang sat where a theoretical second cushion would go on the other side, and Youni collapsed into her bathtub.

“Could one of you close the door?” Bo gestured. Wang nodded and graciously attempted to stand. However, he could not. Chao shakily raised a hand and made some sort of gesture - a slight gust of wind pushed it almost all the way shut. Was that part of his spiritual technique?

“Thanks, Chao.”

“You’re welcome, Junior.”

After a pleasant moment of peace passed between the lot of them, the four cultivators barely fitting in the tiny shed, Bo sat straight upright.

“Why the heck are you all in my house?!”

“Woah, Junior. This is your house? I thought this was, like, your secret hide-out or whatever.”

“There is no shame in having a small house.”

“Yeah, Wang’s right! Size doesn’t matter! You’ve got a great secret base here! Maybe the Chao gang should have it as their headquarters?”

“You HAVE YOUR OWN HOUSE!”

After a bit more shouting, Bo finally shooed the boys off. The three of them plodded back towards their dormitory, waving goodbye and expressing a desire to return. Jingyi Bo didn’t have the energy to really tell them off, so she shut the door, activated the charm on her bathtub, and sat in it. Fully dressed and awkwardly splayed out in the tub, Jingyi Bo fell asleep as the tub finished filling.