Fates parallel vol 2, p.20
Fates Parallel Vol. 2, page 20
Jia stared at the stone with trepidation and took a deep breath to strengthen her resolve. She had already made the commitment to Eui, and this was for her. What was another promise on which her cultivation was leveraged? Okay, it was a lot, but she had to do it. Lee Jia reached out for the stone, but to her surprise, Hayakawa pulled it away from her.
"Good. Then we have an agreement. I look forward to working with you, Miss Lee."
Jia looked up, confused.
"What? But I thought that—"
"This isn’t an oathstone, Miss Lee. It’s just a regular spiritual tablet—connected to my father, actually. If anything happens to him, I’m to return home at once. I suppose we are to return home at once, now."
Jia’s face went red as she cried out with indignation.
"What!? You tricked me!"
Hayakawa covered her mouth and giggled.
"I told you that you were too naive, Miss Lee. Though oathstones do exist, and I am capable of procuring them, I don’t just have one on me. They really are exceedingly rare. Your resolve was proof enough for me."
Lee Jia crossed her arms and huffed irritably as she slouched in her seat. She didn’t appreciate being fooled like that, but she did understand Hayakawa wanting to test how serious she was. Hayakawa smiled kindly and seemed to relax quite a bit now that their business was concluded.
"Was there anything else, Miss Lee? You’re essentially my subordinate now, and I prefer to treat those under me well. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you."
Lee Jia hesitated as she prepared to take her leave—she was anxious to rescue Eui.
"Well—there’s one other thing, if it’s not too much to ask..."
* * *
Eui had a concerned expression on her face.
"Ancestors, Jia. What did you sign us up for? I don’t know if I like the sound of being some noblewoman’s lapdog."
Jia stared down at her lap, downcast.
"Sorry, Eui, I know that was a big decision to make, but I couldn’t stand the thought of you being Yan Yue’s hostage or puppet."
Eui gave Jia’s arm a reassuring squeeze.
"I’m not mad at you, Jia. I appreciate everything you guys did for me. I’m just—processing, I guess. I didn’t really have any plans for what to do after the academy, but I guess I do, now."
Takeda glanced between Jia and Eui with a look of worry.
"I don’t know if either of you really understand the gravity of this. Yamato has a lot of internal conflicts when we’re not actively at war. Even as we speak, Hayakawa’s family is challenging the current Ienaga shogunate—who my family serves under. When she said you might end up facing me on the battlefield, that wasn’t a random example—that’s a very real possibility."
Jia sighed sadly, the possibility of ending up on the opposite side of a war from her friends was not something she wanted to think about at the moment. Eui just nudged her gently and fixed Rika with a wide grin.
"Don’t worry, Rika. We’ll try not to kick your ass too badly if it comes to that."
"Oh you arrogant little bitch! That’s it, we need to have a duel later, you’re getting too full of yourself."
The girls fell into fits of giggling and playful banter after that, and for a little while their troubles were forgotten.
* * *
It was late at night when Jia and Eui finally returned to the place that they had called home for the last half a year. It had been their sanctuary, but after the intrusion of that strange foreign domain, and Yan Yue insinuating herself into their living space, it no longer felt quite as inviolate as it had in the past. Jia still had her arms wrapped tightly around one of Eui’s as they relaxed on one of the couches.
"Are you going to cling like that all night, Jia? It’s going to make sleeping a challenge, and after the last few days I think I’d appreciate a proper rest."
Jia squeezed tighter and shook her head.
"Just a bit longer."
Eui shook her head with a wry smile.
"You said that the last three times, and I’m starting to think you don’t actually mean it."
Jia snorted in amusement, but didn’t deny the accusation. After a few minutes of companionable silence, Jia spoke softly, in a near whisper.
"It feels wrong, doesn’t it? Like a piece of yourself is missing."
Eui shuddered, understanding exactly what Jia was referring to.
"Yeah...what—what happened, Jia? I remember a weird dream where we were Yoshika, and then something tore us apart. After that—I don’t remember. When I woke up, I was stuck with Yue until she dumped me into a black void, and something felt off about my domain. It wasn’t until we were reunited that I realized it wasn’t just a dream."
Jia nodded.
"I had the same dream. I think when Yue’s technique knocked us out it forced us into some kind of dreaming state where our consciousnesses merged without her knowledge. When she tried to wake up just me she was—indelicate. The forceful separation damaged us, somehow."
Eui growled in frustration.
"Rrgh, ancestors, I hate her. Are you sure we can’t kill her?"
"Honestly, I don’t even know if we could. She’s powerful, and we still have no way to defend ourselves from her technique. Eunae’s agreed to help train us against spiritual attacks, but neither of us know how effective that is going to be."
"Fine. How do we fix this, then?"
Jia shrugged and frowned. She’d been agonizing over that question herself, already.
"I don’t know. The only idea I could think of was to try one of our old joint meditation techniques and see if that helped."
Eui hummed thoughtfully.
"Hmm, alright, that sounds like as good an idea as any. Let’s do it."
"What, right now?"
"No time like the present. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to get this fixed as soon as possible. We’re already stuck at a bottleneck, and we can’t even cultivate at this rate."
“Fair enough.”
Jia finally released Eui’s arm as the pair of them sat across from each other in the lotus position, hands linked. It had been a while since they had used such a technique, since their newfound bond made it so much simpler, but they still remembered how to do it and the breathing methods remained the same.
Jia considered for a moment which discipline to meditate on. She lacked the proper level of understanding of her domain to manipulate it in the same way she had when she had first developed the technique with Eui. While its function was similar, the domain was a fundamentally different sense from a mage’s aura. As for ki meditation, establishing joint ki-meditation was difficult and painful, so she ruled that out as well.
That only left Qi meditation. It was a good place to start, and it was their soul that had been attacked in the first place, so it made sense. Their foreheads touched as they leaned in to close the distance between them. The technique required them to share breaths, and while it was more efficient to do so directly, Jia didn’t think she was ready to go that far yet, in light of Eui’s recent confession. She still needed time to sort out her own feelings.
Jia released a thread of qi through her breath and sensed Eui do the same as they meditated. As they had done in the past, Jia and Eui each maintained control over their own qi while drawing the other’s into their own dantians. After a few moments, their qi flows began to merge together and circulate. Jia braced herself for the flood of emotion that always came with—
A pulse of energy from the core in Eui’s body rippled through both of them like a shockwave, and Jia coughed up a small spray of blood as she felt it disrupting the energy in her body and soul. In a panic, Jia tried to break the link, but she felt the energy being forcefully ripped away from her.
"Aaagh! Eui, stop!"
Jia felt her vision become hazy and her consciousness began to fade. Eui’s eyes shot open and she shouted something with a panicked expression, but it was impossible for Jia to hear it over the ringing in her own ears. Then, the world went sideways as Jia passed out entirely.
* * *
As Jia fell unconscious, Eui caught her, a horrified expression on her face. What the fuck had just happened!? She had been expecting a flood of emotion when she felt something happen in her demonic core, and then a rush of energy that had felt amazing before Jia screamed and passed out.
Eui felt something wet on her face and reached up with a trembling hand to find Jia’s blood running in small rivulets down her cheeks. Looking down at Jia, she had gone horribly pale, and her breathing was heavy, as though she had a fever.
"Oh fuck! Hahaha, shit. What the fuck have I done? Oh, ancestors—"
Eui still felt the strange rush of energy flowing through her body like a shot of adrenaline. That, combined with her fear and panic had resulted in a bizarre, manic laughter that soon devolved into sobs as she clutched Jia’s unconscious body in her arms.
What the fuck was happening to her? What had she done to Jia?
...
Why did it make her feel so much stronger?
20. Tension
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 to lay still for a bit. Since moving her body was too painful, she relied on her domain to take stock of her situation.
She was in her own bed, with the covers drawn up to her shoulders—slightly disturbed by her attempt to sit up. A damp piece of cloth sat next to her head, where it had presumably fallen from her forehead. Eui knelt next to the bed and had fallen asleep with her upper body slumped against it, another damp cloth clutched in her hand. From the redness around her eyes and the streaks on her face, Jia could only assume she had been crying. The damp cloths and the small basin of water next to her suggested that Eui had been caring for her all night.
Considering how sick she felt, Jia was glad that Eui had. What had happened to her? She remembered meditating with Eui and then—something went wrong. Eui’s demonic core had activated somehow, and instead of sharing their spiritual energy evenly, it had begun to greedily absorb Jia’s cultivation.
Jia tried to assess her own injuries—they must have been terrible if Eui’s healing had been unable to help her. As she circulated her ki throughout her body, she was surprised to find that she was actually in perfect physical health. As she meditated, the true problem became immediately obvious.
Cultivation was generally a process of accumulating spiritual energy—or essence, as Jianmo had called it—within the body, mind, or soul. Well, in Jia and Eui’s case it was all three, but the principle was the same. Once a certain quantity had been built up, that essence would need to undergo a qualitative change in order for the cultivator to continue to build up any more—that was the bottleneck between different stages.
The quality of Jia’s cultivation had remained unchanged, but the quantity—she had lost too much essence to maintain her current level of cultivation. She had effectively dropped back into the first stage, and her energy was tearing her apart trying to maintain a form that was no longer possible.
Jia tried to weigh her options. She’d known about the possibility of losing levels of cultivation, but hadn’t really done much research on the subject. There were some things she could figure out intuitively on her own, though.
The simplest option would be to simply relax her cultivation methods. She could allow her liquid qi to become gaseous once more, withdraw the ki from her flesh and bones, her domain—well, she still had no idea how it worked, so she could only hope it would sort itself out.
She’d really rather not do that. For one thing, it would require her to break through again—something she wasn’t entirely confident she could do on her own, considering the unusual circumstances of her original breakthrough. Most importantly, though, she knew that she was quite close to the border between the first and second stage.
If she had lost more essence than she had, her cultivation would have collapsed entirely and caused a deviation—or she would have just died—and if she had lost any less, then she wouldn’t be suffering so much. With a bit of luck, she’d be able to recover enough to stabilize herself just by meditating.
Jia focused her thoughts inward and relaxed her breathing—which she hadn’t even realized had been so heavy. She and Eui had developed a sort of unified cultivation technique that relied on drawing mana in through the domain—which was extremely good at controlling the ambient energy in the air—and distributing it through their body and soul.
Normally, a huge amount of energy was lost to the domain absorbing it for some inscrutable purpose that Jia and Eui had yet to figure out, but even so it was much more efficient than regular meditation. To Jia’s surprise, as she pulled the essence in the air into herself, her domain didn’t greedily suck up the majority of it.
The result was an unexpected flood of energy so intense that Lee Jia had to actually slow down her cultivation in order to handle it. Within the hour, Jia had managed to draw in enough energy to restabilize her cultivation and prevent any further backlash. Once she had returned to the second stage, her domain went back to eating most of the energy she cultivated.
Jia felt much better coming down from her meditation session. At some point Eui had woken up and replaced the cold cloth on her forehead, but she was no longer in the room. It wasn’t hard to guess where she’d gone off to, however—Jia caught the heavenly scent of cooking meat in the air.
She got up to investigate and immediately felt gross as her robes stuck to her body. The enchantments on them included self-cleaning, but it took time, so Jia decided to change into something else for once. She removed the offending robes and went to take a look in the wardrobe, grimacing when she realized that it was still full of Yue’s seemingly infinite variety of green dress robes.
Instead, Jia went through her storage ring and picked out fresh underwear and some casual clothes that were a bit more girly than what she usually wore—a loose green jacket and a long, baggy, light blue skirt. The skirt was Goryeon style, which meant that it naturally made room for her tail. It occurred to her as she got changed that she should probably shower first, but for now she’d settle for clean clothes.
Once dressed, Jia did a quick examination of herself in the mirror and barely recognized the person she saw within it. She looked—well, like a girl. It was a strange observation, but she’d spent most of her life wearing more practical men’s clothing, and most of the last year wearing combat robes.
Some girls—like Eunae, Yan Yue, or Hayakawa Kaede—managed to pull off perfect feminine grace regardless of how they dressed, but for Lee Jia, a simple change of dress felt like a complete transformation. Jia was starting to reconsider her choice of clothing, but the smell of cooking food was too enticing.
Jia found Eui in the living area, standing over the stove and frying what appeared to be an assortment of fresh meat and vegetables with an arrangement of spices that was making Jia’s mouth water. She noticed Jia entering the room and let out a sigh of relief.
"Jia! Thank the ancestors you’re awake! Are you okay? I—"
Eui froze when she turned to look at Jia. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped as she saw Jia’s appearance. Feeling a little bit awkward, Jia averted her eyes and raised a hand in greeting.
"Good morning, Eui. I think I’m fine now—thanks for taking care of me last night. Um, what is that? I didn’t know you could cook."
Eui blushed and turned back to focus on her cooking, her voice slightly higher pitched than usual as she responded.
"W-well I learned more from my parents than just how to brush my hair, you know. I just didn’t cook before because I knew you’d make me do it all the time if you knew that I could."
Jia’s hand unconsciously went to her own tangled mop of hair, but she couldn’t bring herself to worry about it at the moment.
"That’s probably fair. Where did you even get the spices?"
"I got them a while ago while you were busy making every food stall in the market rich. I had planned on surprising you on your birthday but—"
"I don’t know when my birthday is."
Eui gave Jia a flat look, but after a moment her eyes began to wander before she blushed and turned back to the stove once more.
"That’s not the point, Jia! Anyway, instead I thought I could use them now to apologize for last night."
The atmosphere grew somber for a moment, and Jia realized that Eui was probably blaming herself for what had happened.
"Eui, last night—"
"It was all my fault, Jia! Everything has been my fault. I dragged you into this joint cultivation without telling you how I felt, and now that it’s broken I can’t even fix it without nearly killing you! Qin Zhao was right—I ruin everything. The world would be better off without—"
Jia interrupted Eui’s ranting with a tight embrace from behind, shaking her head in vehement denial.
"It was an accident, Eui! We had no way of knowing what would happen, and I’m fine now. It’s not your fault. We will find a way to fix this, and we’ll do it together."
Eui’s hands trembled as she lifted food off of the stove and began to serve it over some rice that had been set aside to stay warm.
"The—the food is ready, Jia. Um, s-sorry about the outburst. I’m just—ever since last night I’ve had this weird rush of hyperactive energy. My mind is going a mile a minute and I can’t stop moving. It’s like I ate an entire bag of sugar, but the rush isn’t stopping, even after I fell asleep."
