Jingyi Bo wanders aimlessly amongst rows of shelves, disturbing haphazardly arranged items. The scene is familiar, though the perspective is somehow different. The shelves are in disarray with all manner of new items. The repository has become a battlefield in which hundreds of vials fight for shelf-space.

The old woman turns her head from the mess with a sigh - will she ever prevail over this impossible sorting task? Will she ever get to be whole again? And why were the labels on these containers getting so damned weird?

She wanders the aisles, rearranging cartons, double-checking the tags written in a familiar hand. Jingyi Bo stops at an ornamental mirror, and Jingyi Bo’s face stares back - the young Bo! Looking good, me!

Reaching the end of a row of aisles, the old woman finds a set of doors. Unlabelled, mysterious, ominous doors. Were these always here? She can’t seem to count how many there are - how odd! Ah well, nothing for it. If there’s a mysterious door, there’s nothing to be done but to open it.

Jingyi Bo rubbed her eyes blearily as she woke from the strange dream, and most of it was already fading from her memory. She remembered the aisles and rows, the chaos on the shelves, and … “Why are there doors in my soul?”

“Hn?” Kokoro was lying next to her - she had a strange habit of sleepwalking, curling up with Bo as she slept like she was some kind of plush toy. It was a little annoying trying to squirm out of her grasp, but she couldn’t deny that she felt a kind of safety like that.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. ‘Scuse me …”

Prying herself free with all her might, she hopped off the bed and out into the main room. It had been a couple months since their trip through the forest, with winter fading away to spring. The group had spent a lot of that time meditating, practicing, training … boring but necessary cultivator things. All the martial artists had made a mana awakening by now, but no spiritual one - Chao and his gang were universally awful tutors, none of them really understood Qin’s awakening technique, and not one of them wanted to even attempt to be lumped with the Endless Steps of Transformation. Only Jingyi Bo was fool enough to continue with what was likely the world’s least effective spiritual technique.

Bo changed from her sleeping gown into her Academy uniform - as much as she liked the nice robes that Hizashi occasionally bought and forced her to try, she had a weird worry that she would ruin them somehow. Given that her spiritual technique practice routinely left her covered in all manner of mysterious elements, it wasn’t an entirely unreasonable assumption. Her uniform was starting to look like a painter’s apron, the stains going so deep as to deny the enchantments their ability to keep the thing clean.

Still, Bo was a far cry from the girl who had been launched into the Academy all those months ago. She inspected herself in a mirror - her scrawny arms had flushed with muscle, her scars clearing up, her skin becoming smooth and soft without any effort. Her hair was still a mess, kept short to maintain the thin ‘disguise’ that would single her out as one of the only female Qin students at the school. She had idly wondered if there were any more like her, lurking in the shadows, but never found a satisfying answer.

Staring herself over, she nearly jumped with surprise to hear Kokoro yawn behind her. Her martial arts had been proceeding with amazing results, but now it was strangely difficult to hear her coming with how careful her steps were. Nearly every member of the group had made a breakthrough to the second stage of their primary discipline, with the notable exceptions being Jingyi Bo and Tatsumaki Ryu. Everyone’s power had increased greatly, though they were all only recently broken through.

Tatsumaki’s lack of a breakthrough was a personal choice, as his martial art evidently demanded a perfect understanding of ‘fundamentals’ before progressing, but Bo’s had been something of a mystery. There was absolutely nothing in any of the books, the scrolls, or the jade slip about how exactly to begin breaking through for the Endless Steps of Transformation. Her dantian was replete with qi, but something was missing. While she sought to figure that out, she focused on her other disciplines.

The two women finished getting dressed, Hizashi donning a lighter, less formal set of robes embroidered with waving lines that made Bo think of sunbeams.

The pair sat down to eat something - it had become something of a habit for them to eat immediately after waking up, and Bo had been enjoying learning how to cook more interesting meals than plain rice. Today’s meal was a stir fry with all manner of vegetables they had collected from the garden in front of their house.

“What was all that about doors?” Kokoro reclined on one of the couches, her chopsticks flying as she chowed down.

“I’m not sure. I know I had a weird dream … I was back in that place with all the shelves and stuff.” Bo had since told her housemate about her previous experience - though evidently, her ability to remove the element-collecting artifact had been lost to her, which made showing it off impossible. “The shelves were all messy, and I think there were some doors? I don’t really recall.”

“Well, I can’t say I’ve got any clue what yer dream’s about. What do y’think, Makoto?”

“It could be any number of things.” Bo nearly dropped her bowl as she realised Izumi was seated right next to her. Her friends all being higher level cultivators meant that she was routinely surprised by how quick, stealthy, or just plain skillful they could be. She suspected that Izumi just enjoyed surprising her though - the woman in question giggled at her. “Maybe the doors have something to do with your breakthrough? You didn’t happen to open any of them, did you?”

Wracking her brain, Bo recalled the fact that she had. Relaying it to everyone, they all put their heads together. It was Izumi who spoke up first.

“Why don’t you look and see if anything’s changed with your artifact?”

It was a simple enough idea. Bo excused herself as she closed her eyes and began to meditate, peering deep into her dantian. The ominous little octahedron was continuing its mysterious work, but there was a change. A tiny metaphysical hole had opened in the side of it - there was an intuitive understanding that she could use the Endless Steps to retrieve the elements that it so greedily stole from her. A thought occurred to her though - if she could pull stuff out, could she look inside?

Focusing even closer, Bo immediately regretted her decision. A flood of information piled into her brain, like a thousand voices shouting at her at once to listen to the most tedious listing of items possible. Even with her mental awakening, it was too much to handle - her concentration was broken, and she involuntarily shouted out in surprise. Both Izumi and Hizashi jumped in surprise.

“Bo, are you okay? You’re bleeding!” Izumi grabbed a cloth as Bo touched her hand to her face, noting a not-insignificant amount of blood gushing from one of her nostrils. Her head throbbed in pain as the voices faded from her mind, and she plugged up her nose with the cloth.

“There’s a hole I can take stuff out of now,” Bo explained, “but looking in hurts like hell. Going by what I can keep in my head, it’s trying to tell me the contents of every individual thing stored inside the index.”

“That’s … weird, but I suppose it makes some sense. Did you find out anything else?”

Bo wracked her slightly-scrambled brain. One thing that stood out to her was the reports of elements she was missing. An overwhelming number of the voices had informed her of missing basic elements, enough of them coalescing to be heard over the din of endless lists of mysteriously specific ones. They were all the elements she didn’t understand properly, ones she didn’t have a good image of.

“I’m going to guess that I haven’t been able to break through because I don’t have enough of a grasp of the elements to form the basis for the next stage.”

“That makes sense.” Izumi elegantly sipped some tea. When did she get that? Is that my special blend?! “As far as I can tell from my research, the Endless Steps of Transformation is a very strange technique that doesn’t have a true elemental affinity. Many cultivators follow their natural elemental affinity, or balance it out with the opposite of their affinity, when choosing a technique. The Endless Steps seems to just use them all.”

“And if I don’t understand some of them, then there’s no way I can get better, right? I see … What a convenient and neat explanation!”

“We weren’t gonna fig’re it out unless we all said it.” Hizashi shrugged. “‘Sides, it’s good for the readers.”

The ladies sipped their tea and enjoyed the rest of their morning meal.

---

Later that day was Saoka practice. The group had become quite good at it, even adapting Elder Ienaga’s basic martial arts technique to suit their needs. As a result, the basic forms had become significantly more slippery - rather than meeting with head-on attacks, they focused on ducking, dodging, weaving between each other. The game was starting to look like an intricate dance, their footwork improving immensely.

Jingyi Bo was not playing today, and neither was Izumi. They had once convinced Izumi to join the field and try the game with them - her skills were far beyond everyone else’s, and it was a total wash for whatever side she opposed. No one bothered her to play again after that.

“Let’s try working on Mist first.”

The two women had decided on working through the elements that Bo hadn’t internalised yet, from those she was closest to understanding to the more intangible ones. It was quite convenient that Mist was one of the first on the list, as it also corresponded to Izumi’s own elemental affinity.

Unlike the other martial artists, whose techniques fully used their elemental affinity and were seemingly built around such things, Izumi Makoto’s arts were far more straightforward. She was fast, she was precise, and - most of all - her blows were like running into a brick wall. Still, she had some use for her natural abundance if Mist-aligned ki.

Holding out her hand, Izumi circulated her ki and caused it to fade and blur. It was the simplest expression of her affinity, though Bo believed with some work it could expand into quite the formidable ability.

“Are you going to just stare at it, or are you going to hold my hand?”

“H-Huh? Oh, right.” Bo blushed slightly as she broke out of her thoughts, placing her hand in Izumi’s. Using her spiritual technique, she absorbed some of the excess Mist that was being forced out from the inefficient usage. Closing her eyes as she stood there, hand in hand with Izumi, she considered Mist.

At its most basic, Mist was the Yang expression of Ice, which was in turn a mixture of Air and Water. The Everchanging Way sect categorised things like Mist as ‘tertiary’ elements, made up of three distinct parts. It was easy to imagine a literal mist - it was what fog was made of, and Bo had many memories of cold winter mornings, surrounded by the stuff. What wasn’t as easy to understand was what Mist actually did.

Bo opened her eyes and brought her other hand up to clasp Izumi’s, turning it over to inspect it. She ran her fingers along the flickering, faded digits and attempted to internalise what Mist wanted to do. It was a force that obscured and hid. It confused the eyes, distorted sounds, ducked away from blows. Bo pictured herself in a forest she had once been to, when she had once become lost in a heavy fog. It had been an unhappy memory at the time, but the mist in this recollection felt comfortable. There was a shadow in it that was watching over her, keeping her safe. Mist was something she could hide from danger in, something to deceive her foes with.

“I think I understand now.”

“Great. Can I have my hand back, then?”

With a start, Bo realised she had been grasping Izumi’s hand quite tightly for the better part of the last ten minutes. With a nervous chuckle, she let the woman’s hand go - Why do I want to hold it again? Be quiet, weird brain!

To demonstrate her new-found understanding, Bo used her aura to convert some of the air around her into mist. There were some false starts, as tiny particles of ice formed in the air and immediately melted in the warm sunlight, but after a short amount of practice she was able to start producing mist!

“Jingyi, I don’t mean to be rude, but this is …”

“It’s great, isn’t it?!” Smiling brightly, Bo held in her hand a small ball of mist. Held in place by her aura, it wasn’t doing much of anything. Izumi’s frown softened, and she couldn’t help but smile back.

“I suppose it is a good start. It’s like a little spirit or something.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Holding it up, Bo made it float around. The wispy ball slowly dissipated as the sunlight evaporated it away, but it had made for a fun way of practicing. It felt so nice and peaceful, playing with the mist.

And being with Izumi.