Yoshika took a deep breath and then sighed in resignation. She doubted there was any way she could argue her way out of this, but she wasn’t about to just give up entirely. She fixed Yan Hao with a cold stare and frowned.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but we—Jia and I practice a form of joint cultivation. When she was taken out of the fight she tried to transfer most of her power to me, in hopes that it would improve our chances of survival.”
Yan Hao’s eyebrows ...
2021-05-16 17:46:09 +0000 UTC
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Yoshika sighed heavily, then winced at the twinge of pain caused by the movement. There was really no sense denying it—she’d been caught red-handed, so to speak.
“We don’t suppose we could convince you that it was a different demon that killed Yan Zhihao? That this really was a big misunderstanding and that everything we’ve told you until now has been true?”
Zheng Long scoffed and shook his head.
“Do you think I’m stupid? I’ll admit, I had been ove...
2021-05-14 19:43:32 +0000 UTC
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The flood of energy was almost too much to bear. It reminded Eui of her breakthrough to the second stage, when she and Jia had absorbed a tiny sliver of the divine essence that Jianmo had used to suppress them after it broke down into more mana than they could contain within their domain. That had been the birth of Yoshika—the gestalt entity made up of both Jia and Eui’s consciousnesses.
Back then, with the combined mental capacity of Jia and Eui, Yoshika had barely managed to handl...
2021-05-12 18:27:38 +0000 UTC
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Zheng Long’s advance was halted by a wall of stone erupting from the path in front of him—most likely from Dae. Without needing any prompting, Jia’s team moved into position for a defensive battle against a single powerful opponent. Jia and Rika retreated back to cover Dae and Eunae, respectively, while Eui stood in the center as the pillar of their formation. The idea was that no matter who the enemy targeted, there would be at least one front-line and one support ready to receive them...
2021-05-12 18:27:35 +0000 UTC
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There will be no chapter release today to prepare for a double-chapter on Tuesday. Overall the release schedule is the same, I'm just delaying a single chapter to spare you from cliffhanger hell. Thanks for reading!
2021-05-08 18:12:48 +0000 UTC
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They had barely even set out before crossing paths with Zheng Long and the others. Lee Jia sighed in frustration as soon as she saw them approaching. She had really been hoping to go the rest of the trip without having to see them again, but it seemed that fate had other plans. If she was being paranoid, she might have even thought that they had been specifically waiting for her.
Zheng Long smiled brightly and opened his arms as he greeted them.
“Why, if it isn’t Miss Lee and ...
2021-05-08 18:05:04 +0000 UTC
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Jia and her friends sat in a circle, watching the kitten bat playfully at her fingers. It was almost disturbing just how life-like it was, but the kitten wasn’t real. Only Jia could interact with it physically—to the others it was just an illusion created from spiritual energy. The reason Jia hadn’t been able to detect the kitten through her domain was simple—it was part of it. Beyond that, she was still trying to puzzle out exactly what it was and what its presence meant. It was cert...
2021-05-06 19:00:23 +0000 UTC
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It had worked! Lee Jia hadn’t been certain it would, and she knew that she would have just lost the fight if it hadn’t. It had been a narrow thing, but Jia thought it had worked well for something so rushed together, and she was lucky that her friends had been able to put it together for her.
When she had asked Rika and Dae to make her some force shield talismans, they had been skeptical of the idea.
---
“Miss Lee, I’m sure you don’t need to be reminded that talism...
2021-05-04 18:46:40 +0000 UTC
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A kitten. Its black fur was the only resemblance it had to the shadow spirit that Lee Jia had encountered before. The panther had been taller than her while on all-fours, and its eyes had matched her own golden irises. This tiny little furball seemed to be the size of a regular kitten—though it was difficult to tell the scale of things in the odd space of her soulscape—and for the brief moment that she had seen them, it’s eyes had been blue.
Lee Jia stared at the little creature n...
2021-05-02 20:08:34 +0000 UTC
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Jia and her friends were able to rejoin Hayakawa’s group at the plateau without incident. Apparently the Qin group had elected not to return, but Hayakawa wasn’t particularly bothered by it.
“They can take care of themselves. Besides, with three third stage cultivators in their group, they’re likely safer than we are. Tell me more about this kami you encountered.”
Lee Jia nodded, and relayed her experience with the shadow spirit to Hayakawa. When she was finished, Hayaka...
2021-04-30 21:19:21 +0000 UTC
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Spirits—they were odd things, and not well understood, even in the cultivation world. Humans cultivated by gathering essence within their bodies, minds, or souls—all three in Jia’s case, and she was beginning to wonder if there was any true distinction there at all. Magical beasts formed a core, which drew essence into their bodies automatically, while elementals were cores that had formed independently and developed their own intelligence.
Spirits didn’t fall neatly into any of...
2021-04-28 20:31:20 +0000 UTC
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Minami Yuuko was sulking, and she wasn’t afraid to admit it—at least, to herself. Everything had fallen apart after Lee Jia somehow managed to single-handedly take down their entire back line. Yuuko didn’t understand it—Fujino was almost as good as her, and he would have had Ishihara and Fujikawa supporting him. Had Dae made Lee another one of those talismans that she used to take down Yan Zhihao? There was no way she could have done it by herself, that was for certain.
She wish...
2021-04-26 20:50:35 +0000 UTC
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Minami Yuuko was excited, but also a bit disappointed. She was looking forward to the chance to prove herself in front of the one who inspired their entire fighting style, but she was disappointed that she didn’t get to see Lee Jia fight. She agreed with that Qin guy—Zheng Long, was it? That one shouldn’t have even counted.
What were those Qin jerks even doing here, anyway? She’d never heard of most of them, except for Xin Wei—who was ostensibly in the same class as her under ...
2021-04-24 20:26:12 +0000 UTC
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The run to the mountain was uneventful, and they made good time, arriving at the base of the mountain before noon. They slowed to a stop, meeting up with the Qin group who had run ahead, and was waiting for them. Zheng Long’s expression was smug as he raised a hand to greet them.
“Glad you could finally join us!”
Hayakawa ignored the jab and nodded her own greeting.
“That’s an interesting technique. I think it shares some overlap with my family’s martial arts. We...
2021-04-22 20:36:51 +0000 UTC
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Eui wasn’t particularly surprised at the news that Sun Jaehwa might be going after Lee Jia’s reputation.
“It’s exactly what I thought—she’s trying to ruin your reputation and blame it on me. Then she can step in, clear your name with the ‘truth’ that it was actually all me, and you’re perfectly innocent. She hurts me, and you go running into her open arms—two birds with one stone.”
Jia scratched her cheek awkwardly.
“You don’t seem particularly faze...
2021-04-20 16:15:05 +0000 UTC
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The next few days were spent training according to Eui’s directions. Despite their best efforts they were not able to find an essence-based technique for deafening themselves. If they wanted to protect themselves entirely from Yue’s enthralling song, their only recourse would be to pierce their eardrums. Jia and Eui were reasonably confident that they could recover from that in a day or two thanks to their ki-empowered regeneration but—well, they just went with earplugs for practice.
2021-04-18 15:09:25 +0000 UTC
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Lee Jia paced impatiently around the tiny living space as she considered the implications of the memory she had just examined. Not only did it create more questions than it answered, she was still no closer to learning how to resist Yan Yue’s technique.
“Argh, what a waste of time!”
Eui glanced up from the talisman she was inscribing—she had to do it the old fashioned way, since the destruction element would disintegrate any talisman she tried to inscribe with martial arts...
2021-04-16 20:31:14 +0000 UTC
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Jia sat alone in her bedroom, eyes closed as she focused on her meditation. Opening her meridians by herself was an unfamiliar experience for Jia. She hadn’t really done it since her practice for helping Eui awaken, and afterwards she had always practiced joint meditation with Eui. It has been convenient to do so, since they were both technically practicing the same spiritual art, even if it expressed itself in wildly different forms for each of them.
For this, even if she had still b...
2021-04-14 20:32:15 +0000 UTC
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Thirty six and a half seconds—a little more than a half. It was a weirdly specific number, but Lee Jia had absolute confidence in it. At first, she thought it was just how long she’d been able to maintain the technique, but the number was more significant than that. That was as much time as she could recall objectively—the limit of her mental capacity.
She’d noticed it right away when she tried to practice the memory technique again, and her previous perfect memory was overwritt...
2021-04-12 20:38:00 +0000 UTC
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With their project completed, Jia and Eui were somewhat at a loss for what to do. It had given them time to decompress from their stressful encounter with Yan Yue, but they had put things off to do it. Yue had been continuously sending them letters asking when they would actually be embarking on the next mountain expedition with increasing urgency. Jia also knew that Hayakawa probably didn’t appreciate her disappearing into closed door training so soon after making their agreement.
Si...
2021-04-10 20:31:36 +0000 UTC
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Lee Jia wished she could still communicate mentally with Eui as the atmosphere became tense around them. Instead, she stood back nervously and allowed Eui to speak for herself. Whatever Eui chose, Jia would support her.
Eui scowled at Dae, narrowing her eyes at him as he sat back and waited patiently for an answer. His face was an expressionless mask as Eui took a few steps towards him, but Jia could only imagine that he must be feeling very nervous indeed—Eui was very good at being m...
2021-04-08 14:21:29 +0000 UTC
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Jia lay on the couch feeling miserable. The day had started so well—except for the part where she had woken up on the edge of an essence deviation. She’d gotten to try Eui’s home cooking—which had been amazing—and she could begrudgingly admit that it had been fun to have her hair and makeup done by Eui. Things had taken a decidedly downhill turn from there.
The accumulated stress of the day had built up, and as a result, Jia had lashed out at the only person in the world that ...
2021-04-06 20:54:40 +0000 UTC
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Jia’s attempts to find answers about her and Eui’s predicament were spoiled entirely by the extremely awkward atmosphere. It was a bit more quiet than her normal study sessions with Dae, since it wasn’t scheduled and thus he didn’t have a specific study plan in mind, but that wasn’t really the problem.
The problem was that Jia was extremely self-conscious at the moment. She couldn’t help but notice every time Dae glanced in her direction, or aborted an attempt at starting a ...
2021-04-04 20:41:22 +0000 UTC
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Lee Jia woke to a horrible throbbing pain in her head, and wished whoever was causing that horrible pounding noise would stop it. After a moment, she realized that the pounding was her own heartbeat, and that she would not be able to escape it. She hadn’t felt this awful since the day after her ki awakening—her mouth was dry, and her clothes were stuck to her skin from sweat.
Her first attempt at sitting up worsened her headache by an order of magnitude, so she gave up and decided t...
2021-04-02 20:45:54 +0000 UTC
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“Jia, stop clinging to me. I’m not going anywhere, relax!”
“Just a bit longer!”
Since returning from their confrontation with Yan Yue, Jia had refused to let go of Eui’s arm. After months of getting used to the casual intimacy of their shared thoughts and emotions, being without it was more disturbing than Jia had expected, and the physical contact was somewhat comforting.
It was also extremely embarrassing, at least to Eui, who kept glancing about nervously as i...
2021-03-31 17:52:05 +0000 UTC
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It had worked. Lee Jia had nearly panicked when Eunae turned to leave—that was her only chance. Eunae had clearly been suspicious about something, and Lee Jia had noticed her searching around with her mana sense. However, Yan Yue had done a remarkable job at imitating Jia—from her mannerisms, to her posture, to the way she treated her friends. It was uncanny—was she really that easy to predict, or was Yue just that good?
Jia had thought that everything was lost when Eunae seemed c...
2021-03-29 17:31:19 +0000 UTC
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Seong Eunae—actually, just Eunae, thank you—the less she had to associate with her family, the better. Eunae was worried—more concerned, really—about one of her friends. She had precious few of them, and all of them she had met after coming to the academy. Well, nobody who knew her before coming here would have ever dared call her a friend—she regretted that deeply.
Jia was particularly precious to her—not because she was her closest friend, that would be Rika. No, what made...
2021-03-27 18:05:15 +0000 UTC
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Jia and Eui’s connection had been severed—torn apart somehow by Yan Yue’s technique. Jia didn’t know how it had happened or how it could be possible. It didn’t seem as though it had been intentional, but that was a small comfort when her cultivation might have been irreparably damaged.
There was too much she didn’t understand about both Yue’s technique and the nature of her now-damaged connection with Eui. She had to believe that it wasn’t destroyed permanently—once Eu...
2021-03-25 20:33:02 +0000 UTC
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Yan Yue had been upset to learn about Lee Jia’s plan to train her spiritual resistance with Eunae.
“You’re going to ask her to use that power on you on purpose!? If it meant that much to you, I could give you some tips on how to resist my technique, but under no circumstances am I going to be alone in a room with that monster!”
Very upset. Lee Jia sighed and rubbed at her face in frustration. This argument had been going on for some time.
...
2021-03-23 20:19:02 +0000 UTC
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Lee Jia balked at Hayakawa’s demand, and she could feel Eui beginning to tense up as well. Hayakawa raised a hand to cut off a response.
“Before you answer, let me clarify. I don’t mean you need to teach me everything—only tell me. I may then want to exchange techniques or resources further, but the important part is simply knowing.”
Lee Jia paused, hesitating.
“Why? I mean, knowing someone’s full capabilities is valuable and all, but why us?”
...
2021-03-21 19:38:32 +0000 UTC
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