Almost five years after Jiaguo had transformed from a tiny city state into a burgeoning new empire, Yoshika still couldn’t get used to just how much work it was to run an empire. Yan Yue and Ashikaga Sae were excellent leaders, but no matter how much she delegated to them there was always something major that demanded her attention.

The northern Qin Empire had been mostly silent about Yoshika declaring herself empress, beyond a few probing skirmishes along Yamato’s border. It was an open secret that Yamato’s mighty defender, Ienaga Yumi, was injured and unable to continue her tireless defense of the nation, but no sect wanted to be the one to put it to the test. Yoshika’s status as the empress of Jiaguo put her at direct odds with Qin’s god-emperor, but he had remained silent on the matter and the great sects were content to continue pretending nothing was happening.

Yoshika received limited intelligence from her connections within the Spiritual Flowing Purewater Sect, but Xin Wei’s visits were infrequent, and it was always difficult to get a grasp of what was happening there. As a rule, the immortal leaders of the sects were slow to action, however.

Meanwhile to the south, the reforms to Yamato’s feudal system were going slower than Yoshika would have liked. Lords were encouraged to resolve things peacefully between each other, but they were still quick to violence, and Ashikaga’s preferred response to such transgressions was more violence. Kaede spent the vast majority of her time putting out fires in Yamato.

On the eastern side, relations with Goryeo were strong, but as Jiaguo’s population grew it became impossible to ignore the success rate of their grand academy, which was rapidly making new strides in cultivation techniques. In Jiaguo’s eponymous capital, the immortal population outnumbered the mortals nearly two to one—far and away the highest rate in the world.

Goryeo’s mages, though they also served as important military figures, were generally academics at heart, and many were not satisfied by merely participating in the exchange programs and research treaties. As more college mages chose to emigrate in order to take full advantage of Jiaguo’s academy, tensions rose with the noble factions who felt that the empire was poaching their best talents.

Most recently, even High Magus Hwang Sung—one of Goryeo’s foremost academics and Yoshika’s former teacher—opted to accept the invitation to return to his position as the academy’s dean of arcane arts.

Yoshika was on her way to see how he was settling in. She walked through the academy in her spirit form avatar, a body which combined the physical traits of Lee Jia, An Eui, and Hayakawa Kaede into a curious chimera with mismatched red and gold eyes, long black and white streaked hair that turned red towards the bottom, a single black horn on the right side of her forehead, and an overly long prehensile tail.

Since coming out to the world as a gestalt being, she’d been using her spirit form more often. It was a convenient way to signal that she was representing herself as empress, and not as any of her individual identities, and it served as a useful smokescreen. Many of Jiaguo’s people had taken to calling it her ‘true form,’ but they were only half correct.

While her spirit form was a body which superficially represented her unified soul, the avatar was not her true body. In fact, it wasn’t a real body at all, so much as a living puppet that she could control anywhere within her domain. Yoshika’s actual true form stayed sequestered within her soulscape—an inner world that reflected her domain as a representation of her soul—to focus on growing her power.

Yoshika stepped into Hwang Sung’s new office to find what looked like the scene of a burglary. Talismans, scrolls, papers, and magical artifacts were strewn about with no discernable pattern or purpose. He hadn’t changed a bit.

“I see you’ve already made yourself at home, Master.”

Hwang Sung’s wizened old face poked out from behind a stack of books, and the owl-feathers in his hair puffed out as he laughed.

“Ohoho! My apologies for the mess, I’m still getting settled in. And please, Your Majesty, don’t call me ‘master.’ I haven’t been nearly a good enough teacher to warrant such respect, especially from you.”

“I disagree, but if you promise not to call me ‘Your Majesty’ then we have a deal.”

“Very well, Lady Yoshika. What can your humble servant do for you today?”

Yoshika carefully made her way through the disaster area to find a relatively uncluttered seat, moving some stray papers aside as she sat down.

“It’s been a long time, and I thought we’d catch up. Last time I saw you was when you begged me not to found this nation, insisting that it was a dire mistake that would cost me everything.”

He chuckled awkwardly.

“Ahaha, well—I suppose that aged a bit poorly.”

“You weren’t really wrong. You know, I’ve always wondered how you could be this disorganized.”

“Complacency, mostly. Once I put something down, it's simpler to just treat that spot as the item’s new home rather than try to find it a proper one.”

Yoshika gave the papers she moved a sidelong glance.

“It’s not going to cause any problems if I move things, is it?”

“Not at all! I don’t bother remembering where I put them anyway.”

She narrowed her eyes. Even houtian mages had perfect recall, so it was trivial to memorize even a mess like Hwang Sung’s office. He had to go out of his way to forget things.

“Do I even want to know why?”

He laughed at her skeptical expression.

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“When you get to my age, you find that your mind fills up with all sorts of useless information. There’s not a limit to how much one can remember, per se, but it does start to take much longer to recall things. It’s more efficient to reserve one’s memory for things that can’t be easily searched for. That’s why even xiantian mages like myself like to keep plenty of books around. It’s a small optimization, but those little things add up!”

Yoshika blinked—she’d forgotten how long-winded he could get when he got into it. Not that she minded—it made her feel nostalgic for her time as a student.

“Good to know. So how have you been liking the academy? I regret that I haven’t been able to personally teach classes as often.”

“Hoho, one can hardly expect the Empress herself to be teaching regular classes, but perhaps I can arrange for you to appear more often as a guest lecturer. As for the academy—I must say it’s a welcome change of pace. So many fascinating new subjects to study! I’m particularly intrigued by the princess’ new discipline—‘divination,’ was it? Or is it summoning?”

With a flourish of her hand, Yoshika called the mana around them to her. Much of it was already part of their domains, but even if she were trying to, Yoshika couldn’t completely suppress natural essence. Air and Wood were common with all the papers around, but Hwang Sung had a few artifacts with their own unique essences seeping into the room.

Even with years to practice, Yoshika still hadn’t mastered the technique as well as her disciple, but she knew enough to get by.

“Divination is probably the better term for the discipline as a whole, but Haeun and Narae are always giving each other hard times about naming things, so she still hasn’t decided. At its core, the method revolves around sensing and understanding the essence around us.”

“How does that differ from typical arcane arts?”

Hwang Sung’s question was genuine, and she could see the enthusiasm in his eyes as she laid it out.

“At this basic level? It doesn’t, much. That’s probably why Haeun’s tutors had so much trouble with her—on the surface, she seemed to already have a solid foundation, but they couldn’t get her to translate that into orthodox spells or formations.”

“Indeed. I tried my hand at teaching her myself, once. I wasn’t able to understand her methods, then, and I resigned rather than try to force incompatible techniques onto her.”

“If I had to draw an analogy, then a mage focuses on seeing, while a diviner listens. They work exceptionally well together, but techniques from one method don’t translate to the other.”

Yoshika closed her eyes and tried to forget about the composition of the mana. Domains, elements, mana density, flow—none of it mattered. She ignored all of it to focus on only the intent—the meaning behind each and every little mote of essence. Individually, they were inscrutable, but taken together the flow of essence sang a song to anyone who knew how to listen.

Haeun could do it without even concentrating, but for Yoshika it took some focus.

“Let me see... You’ve got a formation in here keeping the room at an even temperature and preventing gusts from scattering your papers—ah, but it still slowly cycles air out to keep things from getting stale.”

The professor chuckled and shook his head.

“You could have just as easily gleaned that from examining the spell circle.”

Yoshika shrugged.

“I could, but I didn’t. Like I said, at a very fundamental level, it’s pretty similar—the difference is in how it can be applied. That’s where we get summoning.”

She focused again. All essence carried intent—a purpose. Cultivation was the art of gathering essence and refining it to alter that purpose. A spiritualist refined essence into qi within the dantian of their soul, a martial artist used their body to turn it into ki, and a mage used formations and talismans to redirect mana through their spells.

For a diviner, it was a matter of learning the song of natural essence well enough that they could compose it themselves. This part was much harder, and Yoshika could only manage a few very basic applications. Haeun was such a natural talent that proper understanding of divination was slow to progress. For her, it was as simple as talking to the mana and making a request.

Yoshika’s method was a little more brutish. She gathered mana together until it formed a sort of pseudo-spirit without a mind or soul of its own. Using a bit of her own essence as a ‘seed’ she imbued that construct with enough intent to influence the rest into following suit.

The invisible sprite flew through the room, gathering scattered papers and stacking them up neatly on Hwang Sung’s desk. Before long, it ran out of power and dissipated harmlessly, returning to its natural purpose.

The old mage applauded politely.

“Quite an impressive feat. If I didn’t know any better I’d think that you’d simply cast a spell without a talisman, but it wasn’t quite that, was it?”

“Not exactly. I did cheat a little bit by adding my own essence, but usually the idea is to get those little sprites to follow simple commands entirely on their own. Haeun is much better at it, and she can even use it to cultivate her other disciplines.”

“Interesting. I’ll be sure to make that my main subject of research! Perhaps we can improve the rate of awakening even further with a new method!”

Yoshika pursed her lips.

“As much as I support my disciple’s endeavors, I’m not sure divination will ever be a practical method for awakening. It’s theoretically possible, and probably how Haeun did it, but I’ve never encountered anyone with the kind of natural mana sense to pull it off.”

“Oho! Never say never! When I first met you, I wouldn’t have thought it possible for you to become one of the world’s most powerful and influential figures in a mere decade.”

She sighed and shook her head.

“You’re exaggerating. I just ended up in the right places at the right times. To be honest, I’m always worried that everyone is going to wake up one day and realize just how fragile my power here really is.”

Hwang Sung scoffed.

“We’re all fragile, in the end. As long as you understand that, and keep your pride from getting the best of you, then you’ll do fine. You don’t have to end up like that snake Do Hye, thinking he’s above everyone else, to recognize that you are important.”

“Thank you for the advice. Whatever happened to Do Hye, anyway? I haven’t heard news of him for years.”

“Tsk. Dead, I should think. There were already plans for his execution in place last I left, but I wasn’t privy to them anymore. Perhaps one of the princesses will know more.”

Yoshika stroked her chin thoughtfully. As much as his influence had disrupted her life, she didn’t really bear Do Hye any ill will. She wasn’t about to mourn his death, but it would be good to get closure—Dae would also want to know what became of his father-figure.

“If Eunae knew, she would have told me. Maybe I can try contacting Misun...”

“Hah! My condolences. I wouldn’t want to inflict that woman on my worst enemy.”

“Hm? Oh, she’s not so bad once you get to know her. Prickly on the outside, but she cares, in her own way.”

Hwang Sung shook his head incredulously.

“Ancestors, you really can get along with anybody, can’t you?”