Jingyi Bo was, inexplicably, alone with Youni De. In an effort to learn more about Miasma, she had asked the one person who seemed to be its master - what she had not expected was a private consultation. Chao Da and Wang Wei had quite simply departed, and Bo couldn’t even feel Izumi’s comforting proximity. She was well and truly alone with the greasiest teenager that had ever and likely would ever exist.

Through non-verbal agreement, the pair had made their way to another forest clearing. They didn’t want to make a mess of their Saoka pitch, or really make a mess anywhere where they might be asked to clean it up. In fact, Bo had specifically used her mana sense to find the most dull, uninteresting locale they could get to. The clearing was just a gap between some trees where it seemed like something had knocked them down long ago - hopefully long enough ago that whatever beast did it wasn’t still around.

Still, being alone with Youni was … uncomfortable. He had this unpleasant rictus grin permanently plastered on his face, snickered at everything Bo had to say and, as per usual, didn’t say a word. She had heard him talk before, twice. Once when they first met - he had asked what sect she came from and Chao had stopped him, and once again when they had fought the rabbit. The lad could speak, he just refused to. What, did you decide on a gimmick after our first meeting, is that it?

Youni gestured for Bo to watch and scrambled over to a fallen tree. This particular trunk was a relatively recent addition to the forest floor - given the state of the dirt around here, it must have simply become too heavy to stay up. The dead tree was not exactly what Youni was going for, however. Reaching his hands under it, he lifted the log slightly off the ground and waved for Bo to look underneath.

A bit wary, but ultimately dedicated to her goal of understanding, Bo crouched down and looked. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness under the trunk, but when she finally got a clear look she saw what Youni was going for. The underside of the log was absolutely crawling with bugs of all shapes and descriptions. Even with the scant bit of light that he was letting in, the lot of them were scurrying for better hiding positions.

“Oh, I see! The wood that was once alive is rotting away, but that life continues on in other ways! I … I don’t think that has anything to do with Miasma, Youni.”

The man sighed and shook his head - the unhappiest expression she had ever seen him offer. Was Bo really so far off the mark? With a few gestures, Youni got her to hold the log up - it was heavier than it looked! - and reached under into the soft dirt. He pulled back a handful of various insects, some of them crawling out of his grasp. To Bo’s horror, some of them crawled down his sleeve. To her further horror, he put the clutched mass to his mouth and took a bite. The resulting crunch would have been enough to cause a mortal Bo to pass out on the spot. For now, she simply resorted to holding down her bile.

“What in the name of the Emperor are you doing?!”

Bo couldn’t help but shout, and Youni looked a little taken aback. He dropped the rest of the bugs, many of them in pieces, and finished his mouthful. It was an awkward few moments of unpleasant crunching as he did so - if this turned out to have something to do with learning about Miasma, Bo was pretty sure she was going to quit cultivating on the spot.

With a loud gulp, Youni snickered and gave his wide grin again. It was frankly unsettling.

“I thought you might like some, hehe.”

“I-I might l-like some … bugs?! Are you crazy?” Bo was not in the mood to be shocked by his sudden eagerness to talk. Youni shook his head and shrugged, giving another snicker.

“Those bugs are good meat. The birds eat bugs, the fish eat bugs, the animals of the trees eat bugs … bugs are good, hehe. Bugs know lots of things too, hehe.” Sitting down on a log, Youni held his hand out, palm up. After a few moments, a long, many-legged insect crawled out of his robes and took up a curious, exploratory posture in his hand.

“This particular beetle has a nasty little trick, hehe.” With another finger, he gently flipped the insect and prodded at its underside. After a few moments of prodding, the creature seemed to become upset. Realising its flailing legs weren’t righting it and sensing that it was under attack, it began to spray an awful mist of snot green ichor from its end. A foul smell permeated the air, and Bo had to cover her nose - that was one hell of a stench!

Still, Bo was curious. Extending her mana sense, she observed the ichor and noted it to be full of natural Miasma. It wasn’t that the bug itself was manipulating mana - the stench pouring out of and off the stuff was the physical representation of the element, like dirt was Earth, or water was, well, Water. Looking back up at Youni, she saw he had fixed up the bug and dropped a tiny droplet of some mixture on his hand for it to drink. Once the bug was satisfied with its treat, it retreated back into the folds of his robes.

“Have you … tamed that bug?”

“Hehe. No. We work together. We’re a li’l bit the same. Hehe.” Bo could have sworn she saw a kind of soft sadness on Youni’s face, but it was still tempered by the mental image of him eating a mass of bugs like one would bite into a piece of fruit. That crunching sound would be permanently engraved upon her soul. Another awkward silence filled the air, and Bo wasn’t really sure how to proceed.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but … I only asked you for help because your spiritual technique uses Miasma. I was hoping to study it a bit.”

“Hehe. There’s more to Miasma than my technique.” Having said that, he still conjured a ball of the slick, disgusting oil that Bo had seen before. It was black-brown, with a weird rainbow-coloured sheen on its surface. Much like the bug’s ichor, it smelled awful. Extending her aura, she observed the oil closely. It reminded her of the corruption that had come out when she had her martial arts awakening, though not quite as bad. There was a kind of beauty to it, despite how awful it was.

“This stuff is, like, bad smells and stuff, hehe. Poison. Filth. Hehe. It can be like this, or …” Youni used his other hand to control the ball of Miasma, extending it out into a long ribbon before causing it to dissipate into a horrid black cloud. Bo watched it sink down and float away, suddenly jumping in surprise as she watched it pass over and destroy a sapling. The scant few leaves had almost liquefied with sickness, and the wood looked rotten. With another gesture, Youni pulled it back in.

It took Bo a moment, but she realised something - Miasma was the Yin expression of Air and Water combined, and its opposite on the Yang side was Mist. It stood to reason that they shared some similarities. You could hide in a Miasma, but it wouldn’t keep you safe - it would always be trying to destroy you from the inside out. Turning her gaze back to the rotten sapling, she saw that it wasn’t entirely riddled with Miasma - it also showed signs of Corrosion. There was some kind of process where the Miasma mingled with the wood, draining away its Yang element and replacing it with Yin. The remaining Yang was simply lost, so far as Bo could tell.

“So that’s what you meant … Miasma can be like air or like water, like Mist can. The Yin component corrupts and ruins living things by replacing the Yang. That makes so much more sense!”

“What? Hehe. I meant it’s, like, gross. Hehe. And I can turn it into a cloud. Like Mist? Cool. Hehe.”

The things Youni said didn’t make any sense, but his help had been very much appreciated. Bo went to thank him with a hug and thought better of it - her robes were stained enough as it was, she didn’t need them starting to reek of whatever it was that Youni had going on.

“Well. Thank you for showing me, Youni. I’ve been wondering, um … have you tried channeling other elements? Perhaps you could learn a few techniques to balance out your elemental affinity?” Bo had heard that most spiritual cultivators went one way or the other, with full commitment to an element usually resulting in physical manifestations. The grime that constantly gave Youni his unpleasant look was certainly one of those. Imagine how much clearer your skin would be with a bit of cultivation effort, Youni!

“Hehehe. I like Miasma. I didn’t know it was called that until I got told, hehe. But I like it. It sounds cool. Hehe. Miasma. Mi As Ma. Mee As Ma. Hehe.”

“Uh … Oh! Hoshikawa’s martial art is based on Metal, which is the complete opposite of your Miasma. Maybe you could learn it from him?”

“Hehe, nice. You think he’d want to learn this?” Youni snickered as he conjured another tendril of oil to snake around unpleasantly. Somehow, Bo didn’t think that anyone would care to learn such a disgusting spiritual technique. It did seem quite interesting, but she would still rather keep it at arm’s length.

After a bit of discussion, Jingyi Bo tried her own hand at controlling Miasma. The main difficult in using Miasma, as well as a number of other elements, was how the Endless Steps of Transformation cycled elements through the body to change them. Allowing Miasma uncontrolled into her body would only poison her. Though she had Youni here to conjure up more Miasma to manipulate, she still needed to learn how to transform it, which entailed having it in her meridians. There were two possible solutions that she managed to come up with.

The first was the simplest one, but the more costly. Whenever she grabbed a mote of elemental mana, Bo wrapped it in a thin layer of her own qi. This acted like a manipulator - it pulled the element into her being where it could be converted, then took it back out in its new state. This thin layer of qi was not enough to protect her from the nasty side-effects of some elements, so she had already been using a larger supply of qi to make a kind of capsule around the more dangerous materials. The obvious problem was that this meant that Bo was throwing away prodigious amounts of qi, sometimes more than double her usual amount. It was one of the reasons she had struggled with lightning - it was like trying to draw a precise talisman while wearing blacksmith’s mitts.

The second was a novel concept that had sprung to mind while watching the effects of the miasma on that sapling. What if, instead of converting the elements inside her being and carefully transporting them in or out, she simply produced less dangerous elements and mixed them in her aura? It was far easier said than done - She still didn’t understand Yin or Yang enough to create those elements, so that had to be drawn from a supply she kept within her (or drained from the area around her, which was generally more efficient - if more difficult to source). Also, the process was fiddly. Allowing the formations in her meridians to do all the work was far easier than trying to extend their effects outside of her being.

After a few shaky attempts which largely ended up in a spattering of ice crystals, Bo successfully combined a handful of transformed Ice with some ambient Yin. A tiny hovering cloud of frost between her hands suddenly transformed into a sickly black ooze. It began dripping, and Bo very nearly got some on her boots. With a squeak and a quick toss, she flung the droplets away from the pair of them. They hissed and sputtered as they poisoned a patch of grass.

“There we go! That’s … annoying to do!” Bo threw a hand up in triumph - she now understood Miasma! Mostly. It had occurred to her that her ‘understandings’ were largely just scratching the surface, that subsequent bottlenecks might demand even greater study from her. But if the Endless Steps had such a jump in utility from these kinds of understandings, she couldn’t wait to see what was in store further down the track!

As the pair of them began to make their way back out of the forest, Bo couldn’t help but wonder about Youni. She knew practically nothing about him - this particular outing was the most she ever heard him speak. Where had he come from? Where did he learn this technique? Just what in the world was Youni De’s deal?

“Um, I was wondering. Does your technique have a name?”

“Hehe.” Was that a no?

“Okay, uh … where did you learn it? When we first met, you asked me what sect I was from. Did you come from one?”

“Hehe. No. The bugs told me.” As if on cue, a small beetle landed on Youni’s outstretched hand. “They whisper things if you listen, hehe.”

Is that part of your technique? Alright then, keep your secrets. “I … I see. You are a strange one, aren’t you?”

“So I’m told. Hehe.”

---

When Jingyi Bo was back with everyone, Youni De went right back to normal - at least, as normal as he could be. He reattached himself to the Chao clique like nothing had happened, the other two trying to pump him for information on what happened while they were alone - Youni just snickered.

“You smell!” Izumi wrinkled her nose and waved a hand. “What did that boy do to you?”

“We worked with Miasma - it just smells bad, is all.” Bo was going to tell her about the bugs, about Youni’s sudden chattiness, but it somehow felt like a violation of trust. There was something almost otherworldly about being alone with Youni, like he had become a different person. After a moment’s thought, she decided to keep that all to herself.

“So, you now understand Miasma, so that’s … half of the elements?”

“Only half?! Oh man … I thought for sure I’d made it through more! I suppose I could kind of tick off Corrosion, though.”

“How so?” Izumi looked genuinely puzzled - Bo hadn’t done anything with the element today.

“Corrosion and Miasma are really similar! They can both cause each other’s appearance, and they both ‘poison’ - though Corrosion causes things more like rot and rust instead of sickness and disease.”

Bo grabbed two pieces of wood to demonstrate. The first she affected by adding Yin, causing the wood to blacken and rot away to nothing as it became Corrosion. “There’s life in Corrosion, in a way. Plants have their roots fertilised by dying leaves and stuff rotting away. It’s, uh, yin and yang! Two sides of the same thing!”

With that out of the way, she moved to the other piece of dead wood. Repeating her trick of making ice in midair and combining it with yin, she splashed sickly droplets of miasma onto the wooden surface. “Look, nothing’s really happening to it - you can’t make the wood sick, because it’s already pretty much dead. But, if I grab some leaves … ”

Throwing a small handful of leaves onto the miasma-slick surface, the lot of them began to discolour and warp as poison destroyed them - and, as Bo predicted, corrosion was created from the interaction. The wooden surface rotted and became ruined, as well as a small patch of grass underneath it. Hopefully no one notices that bald patch!

“In that case … there’s only one more element for you to learn before you move onto the hard ones.”

Both of the girls looked up from the decay and over to the next likely source of Bo’s tutelage - Tatsumaki Ryu. It was finally time to learn about Heat.