With only a few days left before Haeun and Narae’s exams, Eui didn’t have much time to question Misun about what she’d seen in the Kumiho’s memories. Even if she had, she doubted that the princess would have been open to answering. Indeed, when Eui took the mental snapshots of the formation that Dae requested, Misun was brusque and standoffish the entire time. Although she supposed that wasn’t exactly a departure from the norm.

While Eui was busy training the girls, Jia found an unexpected opportunity when she met with Dae to pass on the formation.

“Are you sure about this, Dae? I’ve done my best to strip it down to the bare essentials, but you know how much of a strain Absolute Awareness puts on people.”

Dae chuckled as he prepared his work space within an isolated building that they’d reserved for the purpose of testing potentially dangerous formations.

“I’ve been practicing a few similar techniques myself—not to mention working closely with Miss Iseul, who is not the slightest bit shy about blasting people with unfiltered memories whether they are ready for it or not.”

Jia sighed.

“That girl is a menace sometimes. This is different, though—for all we know a xiantian’s Absolute Awareness will crack your skull open like an egg.”

“Yes, well, try to avoid that, if you can manage it.”

“I’m serious, Dae!”

He shook his head and laughed.

“And so am I. You’re selling yourself short, Jia. I wouldn’t have made this request if I wasn’t certain you have the fine control necessary to do it safely.”

Jia put her hands on her hips and frowned.

“Well I’m glad you have so much faith in me, but it’s still a big risk to take for a curiosity like this.”

Dae hummed thoughtfully as he put the finishing touches on his wards.

“I think this is much more than just a curiosity. Has Eui noticed Seong Misun acting strangely during her stay at the palace?”

Jia blinked.

“Wait, how do you know about that?”

“I saw it first hand during our consultation. Should I take that as a yes?”

“Eh, there’s a lot going on over there. Some kind of plot by the Queen, or Misun, or maybe both against each other? I’m not sure, really, and it’s a huge mess.”

He smiled wryly.

“Politics, eh? Well, if I had to guess, Seong Misun is keeping a secret dire enough that she’s desperate to avoid even so much as admitting something adjacent to it, and it has something to do with Do Hye.”

“Oh, lovely, more cryptic unknowns for me to puzzle out...”

“My apologies. My leading theory is that she directly received the memory of this formation in much the same way you’re about to pass a portion of it on to me. It is my opinion that she knows exactly what the intended application of the formation is, and that it’s significant enough to dedicate the bulk of her time and resources into replicating it—even at the risk of drawing suspicion and ire from her family.”

That certainly made sense—though Jia wasn’t sure why Misun wouldn’t just tell her as much. If the formation had anything to do with breaking the divine seal, then she’d put her full support behind it.

“Well, I don’t think guessing is going to get us anywhere, but thank you for telling me. Are you ready?”

Dae nodded.

“As I’ll ever be. I’m sure that even with your superlative control, this won’t be pleasant.”

“Probably not, no. Brace yourself.”

He tensed up as Jia reached out with her aura to touch his. It wasn’t quite the same as joint cultivation, but it had similar roots. Telepathic communication took a lot of practice and control, since the human mind wasn’t accustomed to processing information that way. Even basic exchanges could be overwhelming for the uninitiated.

This was no basic exchange. Absolute Awareness was a crystallization of every single thing the user experienced in a moment of time. In the moment, it felt like time slowing down as the user processed exponentially more information than they normally could. Recalling those memories was the opposite—everything came crashing into one’s mind in an overwhelming rush of knowledge.

When Jia had first started practicing the technique, she nearly ended up leaking her brain out through her nose. Now she had to make sure she didn’t do the same to Dae.

The trick was a gentle touch. At any given moment, Yoshika was experiencing the sensations of up to five separate bodies, plus a domain that encompassed all of Jiaguo and most of Yamato. Even most xiantian cultivators would buckle under the weight of her full depth of experience, so she had to cut out as much as she could without losing any important information.

With the very slightest touch Jia could manage, she felt Dae’s awareness at the edge of his aura and shared the tiniest slice of her mind with him.

Dae reeled, nearly collapsing on the spot before Jia caught him.

“Shit! Dae, are you alright?”

He stared up at her blankly as she supported him, blinking a few times before wiping a trickle of blood from his nose and nodding slowly.

“Y-yes. I, er, I think so. That was—I thought I knew what to expect, but you really have transcended beyond my comprehension, haven’t you?”

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“I tried to warn you.”

“You did. I apologize. I suppose some part of me still sees you as the bright-eyed and eager young mortal girl taking her first steps into the world of immortals. Ancestors, that was over ten years ago, wasn’t it?”

Jia shook her head and chuckled as Dae regained his balance.

“It feels like it was a lot shorter.”

He nodded.

“Yet also an eternity. Our perception of time is a funny thing.”

“Did you at least get what you needed?”

Dae closed his eyes to concentrate for a moment, then nodded.

“I believe so, yes. What a fascinating design—though I’m noticing a few anomalies. Errors, maybe, or perhaps there’s some purpose to them that I don’t understand.”

Jia smiled ruefully.

“I’ll take your word for it. I couldn’t make heads or tails of them.”

“Here, I’ll draw them out so that we can go over them together. Once I explain the gist, you might have some insights I missed.”

He began to carefully inscribe the formation with expensive mana-infused paints and inks, using his Soul Sight spell and a number of specialized techniques he’d developed for the express purpose of drawing extradimensional formations.

Jia furrowed her brows as she watched.

“Didn’t you promise Misun not to copy it?”

“I’m not drawing the entire formation—I doubt I even could without tapping into our nation’s strategic resources, and even then it would be a significant investment. No, this is just an isolated test—I’ll dummy out the bulk of the main formation.”

Dae worked fast, but even the partial formation was very elaborate. Jia didn’t want to break his concentration with idle chatter, so she just waited patiently, watching him work with interest. Nearly an hour later, he stood back and brushed himself off.

“There we are! All finished.”

“You used permanent materials for this, but what happens if those anomalies you mentioned really are errors that need correcting?”

“An unfortunate necessity. A formation of this complexity simply wouldn’t work with more disposable materials. I’ll likely have to rewrite it a number of times over the course of my research. Don’t worry—I’ll fund it out of my personal reserve.”

Jia shook her head.

“The academy budget can afford it, and if you think it’s important, then I trust your judgment. So, what are we looking at, exactly?”

He’d done a perfect job of replicating Misun’s work, but even isolated like that, Jia had no idea what the formation was actually doing.

“Exactly? I’m not sure. Generally, however, it appears to function as a sort of mana accelerator, for lack of a better term. It makes use of extradimensional routing to vastly improve throughput in the main array.”

“Okay, yeah. I know some of those words.”

Dae chuckled.

“If you picture the formation as a channel through which the essence flows, then this formation is designed to widen that channel. Theoretically without limit, although—hm, with a static input from the environment it would hit a ceiling eventually. Perhaps by routing mana from the main—no, then you’d need to accelerate the accelerator which is an infinitely recursive problem...”

“Dae! Keep your head out of the clouds for a second, you can explore them later.”

“Right! Sorry! If we accept that the mana amplifier is meant to duplicate essence somehow, then it explains the need for components like this, but unless I’m missing something, it’s putting the cart before the horse.”

Jia pursed her lips. The technical details were pretty far beyond her, but she could see what he was getting at on a broader level.

“There would be no point in trying to widen the channel unless you had a reservoir to match the demand.”

“Precisely. The presence of this formation suggests that either my master got side-tracked trying to solve future problems—which is very unlike him—or that he’d already succeeded in developing a mana amplifier, and this was his attempt to scale up.”

She shook her head.

“Or it was never meant to be a mana amplifier in the first place. Creating essence from nothing is impossible—like, really completely beyond the laws of heaven and earth as we understand them impossible. Right?”

“Well, yes, but—”

Jia held up a hand to pre-empt him.

“And Do Hye knew that. Probably better than anyone. But what about this mana accelerator? If you presuppose a large enough reservoir, is it possible to make a formation that uses all of it, no matter how huge?”

Dae furrowed his brows and stroked his chin, pacing around the room and muttering to himself as he contemplated her question.

“It’s...not impossible. Not in the way that the amplifier is, at least. I’m struggling to imagine a solution to the recursion problem, but if that could be solved then...yes. My understanding of higher dimension arrays is that it should be possible.”

“Then start looking for that. Because I think that’s what this is. Do Hye was looking for a way to tap into the Sovereign’s Tear and create a spell powerful enough to overwhelm the divine seal.”

Dae stared at her for a moment, then down at the formation, then back at her, his eyes widening.

“Oh my ancestors—of course! I knew it—that’s exactly the sort of insight I was hoping for. Thank you! I think I have what I need to start putting this puzzle together, now.”

Jia smiled.

“Glad I could help. Keep me updated, will you?”

“Of course! Is there anything else I can help with before I start diving in?”

“Hmm, maybe. Could I get your opinion on this?”

She conjured up a small jade slip. Once she’d learned how to make them, it was almost embarrassing how long it had taken for her to get around to it. The materials were expensive, but the process couldn’t be easier. Jade was naturally very good at containing essence, and it made an excellent medium for artifacts of all kinds. Jade slips in particular were little more than little samples of mana encoded with the intent of the creator.

Dae raised an eyebrow as he accepted it.

“What’s this?”

“The current and possibly final draft of Narae’s graduation thesis.”

“Oh? My, but they grew up fast, didn’t they? What’s the subject?”

He didn’t wait for her to answer before reading the contents of the slip, his face going pale as it sank in. Jia grinned playfully.

“Spiritual self-embodiment of ephemeral beings through the creation of artificial soul cores. She thought it would look better if the title sounded wordy and technical, but she wants to give Heian a body.”

Dae shook his head in disbelief.

“I’m not qualified to advise on this.”

“Nobody is. It’s never been done before. What I want to know is whether her theory is sound. I’ve looked it over myself at least a dozen times, but I can’t find any problems with it.”

“I...don’t see any errors. With a sufficiently high quality mana stone as the base, and a very sturdy vessel, it would be roughly the equivalent of a xiantian ascension.”

Jia nodded. That was her conclusion as well. Heian and Narae had really outdone themselves with it, and while she was worried for Heian, she was also a little excited.

“Do you think they can do it?”

Dae ran a hand through his hair and sighed heavily.

“I think that if Narae and Heian intend to present this to Seong Min, then you should ask them to hold the examination inside the Sky Hall. Ancestors, even your disciples don’t do anything by half, do they?”

“Nope! And I couldn’t be prouder.”