Jingyi Bo awoke with a start. It was mid afternoon by the light outside, and she was lying on a piece of cloth draped over one of the couches in her house. Given the mud dripping off of her, it was pretty clear why the cloth was there, but she had no recollection of coming home. All she knew was that she felt quite weak. She sat up to check if anyone else was there - it seemed like she was alone.

Flopping back with an unpleasant squelch, Bo closed her eyes and looked inwards. The problem was readily apparent - she had used her power too much. The Endless Steps was a particularly efficient technique in terms of using up qi, but the by-products it left behind were just as bad as running out of energy, perhaps worse. Her meridians were caked with gunk, and the only reason she had been able to wake up was the fact that the world index in her dantian was busily cleaning up. Bo shuddered to think what would have happened to her if it wasn’t there.

Deciding she wasn’t quite cut out for making up new techniques in the heat of battle, Bo got up and started to clean her mess. The blanket was soaked, and she suspected the couch was probably not looking great either. It was a simple matter to just whisk it all away with the--

“Huh?” A problem immediately arose. The blockage in her meridians was too severe! She could move the qi around that let her manipulate things, but it was like trying to thread a needle while submerged in a swamp. She would have to deal with a mess of an entirely different kind, it seemed. Dealing with this mess would make a new mess, so rather than ruin her living room she decided to head into the front garden.

There was a sitting area there, though Bo didn’t particularly frequent it - no matter who it was, she didn’t much care for the idea that people could see her while passing the house. Still, there wasn’t much choice. She would just have to apologise to Kokoro later for whatever ungodly mess she was about to make in her garden. Bo took a seat, closed her eyes, and began to meditate.

Peering within her metaphysical body had become second nature to her by now. Her meridians spiraled out before her view, a vague reflection of her own body, each and every one of them blocked up with unpleasant goop. Focusing in on a single meridian, she inspected its contents in the same way she would focus on something to use her Endless Steps. The contamination wasn’t quite the same mixed-element slurry she was used to seeing - instead, it was all rather concentrated around a specific subsection of elements. It was a mix of Mud, Water, Ice, Earth, Mist and Wood, with some extras thrown in for good measure. Bo found that some of the elements had congealed together or metamorphosed - most of it wanted to turn into mud, but there were bits of Purity, Air and Sky floating around in there.

It wasn’t enough to be useful to anything, frankly. The vast bulk was Mud, which unpleasantly clung to the meridians like real mud would to anything else. Unlike the corruption that blocked a cultivator’s meridians to begin with, this elemental slurry wouldn’t break down in the presence of qi - she would simply have to eject it. Commanding her limbs in this state was always a strange affair, but she yelled down from the metaphorical tower of her soul to the body and raised her arms. Arms outstretched, her hands open and facing directly away from her body, Bo began to force the unpleasant mixture out of her soul.

At first she tried simply pushing the meridians free one by one, starting with the hands. Bo quickly realised that this would force her to slowly move the mixture back through every now-clean meridian, and had a better idea. She decided instead to push it out from the bottom-up - turning her attention back down to her feet, she used her free qi to push from the back end, forcing everything upstream in turn to slide out.

Part of her wondered what this looked like in reality. Breaking her meditation would cause it all to collapse and go everywhere, flooding back into cleaned meridians, so she would simply have to trust that it was going fine in reality as she drew the rest of it up. Signals from her body came to her as though from a great distance - she knew she was sweating with exertion, that there was a strange smell in the air, and that something was brushing up against her. It wasn’t causing any harm, and she couldn’t imagine anyone would be trying to hurt her here, so she carried on.

All in all, it felt like it wasn’t taking all that long. It was taking lots of concentration to stop it all from collapsing in on itself, but it was going by relatively quickly. Meditating didn’t exactly give a great way of checking the time, but Bo had a good feeling. Once the majority of the stuff had been cleared (enough for the world index to be left in charge of cleaning the rest), she opened her eyes and took stock. Her world was filled with flowers.

“What in the Emperor’s name?!” The entire garden looked like it had been left to grow unchecked for years. The pleasant little bush that had been immediately to Bo’s left was now an enormous, sprawling mess of vibrant colours that dominated half the garden. A creeping vine that had made a tasteful addition to the front of the house now covered the entire wall in blooming flowers. Even the stone tiles that made up the courtyard were starting to crack as weeds and grasses pushed up between the gaps.

Bo looked around for the cause of the sudden growth, noting that a majority of the overgrowth was immediately around where her hands had been. In addition, there was next to none of the goop she had extruded left. A little bit of it was splattered on to the stone bench Bo was sitting on, a tiny daisy growing out of it at an alarming rate. She got down to her knees and looked at it closely with her aura to find that it was, unsurprisingly, the same stuff she had pushed out.

What did surprise her was what it was doing. The Mud was acting as mud does, being wet earth, but the mixture of other elements - especially the Wood and trace motes of Purity - were fertilising the plants magically. Bo had accidentally poured a bucketful of extremely potent qi fertiliser all over her front garden! If she could make it in any reasonable amount without destroying her meridians, she’d be the envy of any farmer. At this rate however, she suspected even the most patient disciple of the land’s bounties would run out of patience.

Unsure of particularly what to do about their newly invigorated garden, Bo extricated herself from the floral mayhem. She was faced with an immediate problem that became two-fold as she looked about - her front door was sealed with vines, and the gate choked with brush. It was getting late in the afternoon - if she didn’t do something about this, Hizashi would come home to find her house ruined!

Her first instinct was to try yanking the vines off of her front door. However, the nutrients they had absorbed had made them strong. They weren’t immovable so much as they were stretchy - hard and brittle would be no match for her martial arts, but these refused to be torn or snapped. The story was similar with the brush around the gate, but it was more of a case of being almost impossible to find the main branch. The leaves, twigs and flowers covered it so heavily that sifting through for the core of it all was nigh-impossible.

Bo attempted transforming the vines, but they were strangely resistant to transformation. It took her a moment to realise, but the plants were imbued with a supply of qi - much like a cultivator could use their qi to resist someone else’s, the plants were automatically deflecting her metaphorical grip. It was kind of like trying to grab something coated in slippery oil - it was theoretically possible, but Bo didn’t understand how.

Wait, that’s it! Understanding! This is what Life is - I need to understand it to control it!

Taking a seat on a cushy pile of weeds, Bo concentrated. Using her aura, she observed the various flowers and leaves, the roots and petals, the branches and twigs, the blades of grass. One thing that stood out to her was how much they were in motion. Wood, in the literal, tangible sense of something wooden, was not something associated with motion whatsoever. A wooden table didn’t get up and walk away, nor did trees (at least, so far as Bo knew), but the inside of these plants was a vibrant world of, well, life. Water and nutrients flowed through miniscule veins like blood, petals turned sunlight into growth.

Wood and Life being one and the same had been a stumbling block for Bo for so long. Wood could be dead, after all, but it had once been alive. Life was motion, flowing like water, but seemed still and implacable, like earth. The Yang part of Wood was still a mystery to Bo, but she was starting to understand a common trend - Yang tended towards the tangible, or things that aided and created. Light was a Yang expression of Fire, and Life benefited from Light. The Yin-form of Life was Corrosion, which made Bo think of death and decay - Yin things were a bit more prone to destroying, while Yang was more prone to creating or aiding.

With that rambling thought petering out to its end, Jingyi Bo pulled herself back on track. The reason she couldn’t grip the vines or branches properly with her Endless Steps technique was because they were so utterly suffused with Life that it kept moving out of her grasp. She couldn’t just yank them out of the way (or, she could, but only with great difficulty) - instead, Bo would simply encourage them to grow and move in a different way.

Spreading her aura out to its limits, she covered the vines that bound shut her front door. With her newfound understanding, she directed the vines to change direction, to move off the door and crowd up somewhere else. To Bo’s surprise, she realised that tapping into the vines like this let her influence more than was just inside her aura - Life was motion, and her orders were carried on the stream. With a smile on her face, she uncovered the windows too. The house looked brilliant with flowers, without getting in the way. A shame one can’t see it from the street, Bo did not at all think.

She turned her attention to the thick brush dominating the garden. Using the same method, Bo commanded it to move and change - in no time at all, the thick bush was instead forming a kind of hedge around the house. Eager to avoid having her house be something of a spectacle on the street, she commanded the bush to shift its flowers inwards - they could collect the sunlight and bring joy to the sun herself, while the outside looked like a basic, uninteresting hedge. I’m so clever!

By the time she was done, Bo felt tired again. A quick peek inside realised that her meridians were once again clogged, this time with Wood essence - however, the stuff was rapidly moving out of the way, most of it pouring into the world index. It wouldn’t be anywhere near the kind of problem she had experienced before. She headed inside, cleaned up the muddy blanket she had intended to clean in the first place, and flopped once again onto the couch.

“Welcome back. Quite done out there?” Bo nearly leapt into the air as she noticed Izumi sitting on the opposite couch.

“H-H-How long have you been--”

“I’ve been here the entire time, making sure you’re okay. Then you trapped me inside with flowers - very romantic!” Izumi’s giggle indicated she was telling a joke, but the tiny blush on her cheeks insisted to everyone but Bo that she wished it had been intentional.

“... Why didn’t you help?”

“What did you want me to do, punch down the door? You seemed to be having a kind of revelation, so I didn’t want to interfere. How was it?” Bo tilted her head in confusion, so Izumi clarified. “Your revelation, that is.”

“Ah, it was … pretty interesting! The last two elements I understood had some attachment to people, but this time I didn’t really have anyone to consider … but you’ll never believe it! Wood isn’t just something still, it’s life, in motion! I ended up making this fertiliser, and …”

Izumi patiently listened to the story of all the bits she hadn’t had a chance to see before asking her own question. “You said you associated people with these elements? How so?”

“Well, Lightning was like that half-spirit, Lee Jia. Strong, striking unexpectedly and with purpose … it’s pretty amazing! Mist is this presence that can confuse and hide, but also keep things safe. I could stay wrapped up in it forever! It feels really comforting. Like y-” Bo caught herself, her eyes going wide. Her brain finally caught up with what her mouth was saying, and the chorus of voices in her head said Shut it! Cram your damned mouth!

Izumi wasn’t stupid. Her eyes went wide for a moment, and a blush crossed her face. She hid it by standing up, heading over to prepare some tea.

“Like who, Jingyi? You stopped.” Her voice was a bit distant - was that mist forming around her?

“L-Like, um … y-y’know. It’s like, uh …”

“Holy heck! What’s with all th’ dang flowers?!”

“S-Sounds like Hizashi’s home. I better go tell her what happened!” Happy to escape from an awkward situation, she nearly fell over the back of the couch scrambling to get away. Stupid! What were you thinking?! It almost sounded like you were confessing your love for her!

Rushing out to the front garden, Bo found Hizashi staring bemused around at the state of things.

“C’n I guess you had somethin’ t’do with all this?” Smiling brightly, Bo was sure she could see the flowers turning their petals away from the setting light and towards the true sun before them. Shaking away her nerves from before, Bo explained everything that had happened as they headed inside. For some reason, Izumi was nowhere to be seen, but she had boiled the water and filled the teapot. Knowing the woman’s tendency to vanish, Bo shrugged it off, even if she wished Izumi had stayed.

Still, Jingyi Bo felt safe and comfortable. Izumi was somewhere nearby.