When Eui made the girls perform their spellcraft drills a thousand times per day, she thought she’d been too harsh. After all, even if they spent every waking moment on it, they’d have to complete each set in less than a minute and a half to meet that deadline. The plan had been to ease off after a few days once the routine had been set to give them room to work on their own presentations, but a week later, Yoshika’s disciples had risen to the challenge and beyond.

Out in the courtyard, in a space that they’d cleared specifically for their drills, Narae, Haeun, and Heian all stood ready with their chosen tools in hand. Eui shuffled together a set of painted boards by hand—mostly for effect—before placing them in the center of a formation of her own.

“Ready?”

The girls nodded resolutely and tensed themselves.

“Go!”

She activated the formation, and the boards flew up into the air in a random arrangement. The girls exploded into movement, rapidly drawing each formation as small and precisely as they could. Almost as soon as they’d begun, the boards rearranged themselves into a new order and the girls began again.

Each set of drills took them less than twenty seconds on average. Sometimes they’d get a more difficult arrangement and lose time, on others they’d get a simple or familiar one and clear it in the blink of an eye.

Eui was genuinely impressed. She couldn’t do what they were doing herself—not without cheating with Absolute Awareness and a few extra bodies, at least. It was supposed to be an impossible task, but they’d taken it seriously and made it possible thanks to a few advantages.

The first wasn’t really something she could credit them for. Hwang Sung had come through for them in a huge way. When Jia had brought the idea to him, she was worried he’d be insulted by the way they were abusing a system he’d had a hand in building, but instead he was quite enthusiastic.

“Oho! What a brilliant idea! If there’s one thing that Snake bastard and I could agree on, it’s that a mage is as powerful as they are prepared. However, I must disagree with the princess about ignoring accuracy entirely. Give me a day to prepare, and I’ll get you what you need.”

And indeed he did. What Hwang Sung delivered was nothing short of miraculous—a set of compact, scalable, modular formations which could fit together like puzzle pieces to create nearly any conceivable array. Apparently, he’d already been working on a set of standardized spell circles to make arcane arts more accessible to those with more of a mind for practice than theory.

She couldn’t imagine who might have inspired that initiative, but it worked out that her request had given him the chance to test the system before integrating it into the academy curriculum.

The second advantage was a bit of clever intuition on the part of the girls. Once they’d figured out that the formations could fit together, it didn’t take long for them to just fit all of them together. By reducing the entire set of drills to a singularity, they quickly trivialized the entire exercise by just drawing the same thing over and over again.

Eui had implemented the shuffling boards to combat this, forcing them to instead draw the formations in random arrangements. Still, it meant that each repetition only required them to draw a single formation, and while there were a near-infinite number of possible arrangements, the girls quickly learned to spot familiar patterns and replicate them with incredible efficiency.

Finally, there was the simple fact that when ambitious young students were given a challenging task with a strict time limit, there was only one possible outcome.

They raced.

“Done! Yes, ahahaha! Take that, Haeun!”

The princess huffed irritably as she finished her own final set, glaring up at Narae.

“I don’t know what you’re so excited about—you only got second place.”

The two glanced at Heian, who had transformed into a cat and curled up to nap peacefully on her own formation nearly an hour before them.

“Okay, well that’s cheating. She doesn’t even have to draw anything, she just instantly conjures the entire thing at once because she’s made of essence. Besides, don’t pretend you weren’t trying to keep your lead over me.”

Haeun averted her eyes and pouted.

“It’s just one win. And you overtook me because I still make sure I’ve drawn the formation correctly before moving on.”

Eui sighed and flicked Haeun’s forehead.

“Don’t be a sore loser. Narae didn’t have any more errors than you did, she was just more confident in her work. Now both of you go take a break. We’ll come back in an hour, then I want to see how your presentations are coming along.”

Haeun straightened her back.

“Yes master! I’m sorry, Narae, that was unbecoming of me.”

Narae chuckled and waved her off.

“It’s fine. I know how you feel.”

“I suppose so—all the more reason to apologize.”

“If you say so. Aunt Eui, I don’t know about Haeun, but I’m still ready to go. I can show you what I’ve been working on now if you want.”

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Eui shook her head.

“You’ve been doing formations for over five hours straight. Take a bit of time to relax, collect your thoughts, maybe a bit of meditation to let it all sink in. That’s not an offer, it’s an order.”

The two bowed in unison.

“Yes master!”

Eui smiled softly as she watched them run off—almost certainly planning to ignore her orders and get right back to work. There was one other advantage the girls had, and it was something she envied more than anything else.

In the last five years, her disciples had only recently made it to the third stage, and even then only Haeun and Narae—Jiaying was taking things more slowly, despite her talents. That wasn’t a bad thing in the slightest.

Yoshika—particularly Jia and Eui—had always drawn attention with the blinding pace of their cultivation. They had rapidly outpaced all of their peers, blasted through the ranks, and then become the youngest xiantian cultivators in history. But they’d done so under constant extreme pressure, and made a lot of sacrifices along the way.

Her disciples didn’t have that pressure. They had a blessing that she’d never been allowed—time. Time to be patient, to focus on one thing at a time and fully master their abilities before moving on.

Theirs would be the first generation of unified cultivators who’d truly been given all the time and resources they needed to realize their potential. Yoshika could only imagine what they’d be able to accomplish, but first she had to secure their future.

Eui glanced over her shoulder as she started cleaning up the mostly useless formations the girls had left behind.

“How long are you going to lurk back there? You know I don’t bite.”

Eunae grinned sheepishly as she emerged from the shade where she’d been standing by patiently.

“Sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt. Shouldn’t you have your disciples clean up after themselves?”

“Eh, they usually do it on their own. Not like there’s room here for a thousand formations. They just got a little distracted after the last one this time.”

“It’s an interesting training method, to say the least. Do you think it will be enough for their exams?”

Eui shrugged, finishing the job and turning to give Eunae her full attention.

“Nah, this is just setting the foundation. They should be ready to start practicing actual applications tomorrow. So, I take it that your own preparations are complete, then?”

Eunae nodded.

“Mostly. There’s no way to know for certain when my tribulation will arrive, but I should be fine to wait until after Haeun’s exam before I enter the Sky Hall to attempt my breakthrough.”

“Why the wait?”

“Two reasons—both rather selfish. I’d like to be there for my little sister during her graduation, and I’d like you to be there for me during my breakthrough.”

Eui chuckled.

“I don’t think the first is selfish at all, and the second goes without saying. If need be, I can do both at once, but I think Haeun would be happy to have your support.”

“Thank you. It means a lot that you’ve come all the way here for me.”

“It’s nothing—although, your family seems dead set on making something of it anyway.”

Eunae furrowed her brows and cocked her head.

“How so?”

“Well, your mother and older sister are both trying to play me against the other for some reason, and both of them are suspicious of your aunt.”

“The queen? In what way?”

Eui shook her head.

“They wouldn’t say. Misun was especially cryptic—she made a lot of implications, but always stopped shy of any conclusions. Both of them want me to make my own judgments.”

Eunae frowned.

“I see. That’s rather unlike them—both of them. Misun is usually extremely opinionated, and my mother is usually very precise in her demands.”

“It wasn’t a demand, so much as a request—or maybe just a warning?”

“Even stranger. I can scarcely recall a conversation with my mother in which she didn’t tell me to do something. Any idea what it’s all about?”

Eui sighed and scratched her head.

“Sort of. I can’t say too much since I promised Misun I wouldn’t, but it probably involves your spirit ancestor somehow.”

“Oh! Well that’s concerning.”

“Yeah. To be honest, I’m a little lost on the specifics. Do you still commune with your inner spirit?”

Eunae put a thoughtful finger to her lips.

“Hmm, occasionally. Mostly through dreams. Knowing that she’s simply part of who I am, it can be a little embarrassing how much she represents my desire for praise and acknowledgement. Why do you ask?”

“I was hoping to talk to her. Maybe there’s something in her ancestral memories that can help shed some light on things.”

The princess frowned, hesitating.

“Are you sure? I may have tamed my inner spirit, but she is still a fragment of the Kumiho. Can you really trust a spirit of deceit and manipulation?”

“I don’t trust your spirit ancestor at all, but I do trust you.”

“That’s what you said the first time, and it ended up placing a geas on your soul that forced you into my service.”

Eui snorted.

“Eunae, I hope you understand that I’m only saying this because we are friends and I trust you to take it in the same spirit it’s given—you placed a geas on us because you were insecure and subconsciously terrified that we’d leave you. You’ve grown past that.”

Eunae winced.

“It hurts to hear, but you’re not wrong. I suppose those insecurities are exactly the sort of things I must overcome for my ascension.”

“You will. I’m sure of it. Forget about what your clan thinks—Haeun believes in you, and you’ve got a family back home in Jiaguo who loves you. Whatever else your family has planned, I know you’ll shatter their expectations.”

“Well, I suppose we should see about finding out what those expectations are first, hm? Do you really think my inner spirit can help? She doesn’t know much more than I do.”

Eui glanced over at Heian’s sleeping form and pursed her lips.

“It’s not so much what she knows that I’m interested in. A spirit’s ancestral memories are more like...instincts, I guess? They’re not easy to understand, but we’ve had a lot of practice and Kumiho’s fragment is better at communicating than most.”

“Again, I feel compelled to remind you that she is better at communicating because deceit is part of her nature. But if you’re sure, then I’m willing to try. When should we do it?”

“I’ve got the next hour free if you do.”

Eunae pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed.

“As impulsive as ever. I should have guessed. Alright, fine—let’s get this over with before I can talk myself out of it.”