Jingyi Bo reclined lazily in mid-air. What had been mortal terror about two hours ago had swiftly turned to boredom. Who knew being flung into the air by an immense and powerful tiger-beast could be so tedious? The young woman had realised, shortly after her unanticipated flight, that she was not going in the kind of arc one might expect if one were being thrown off a mountainside to perish. A brief spot of meditation and a simple taste-test later, Bo realised she was shrouded in a very thin, surprisingly sophisticated layer of Air qi. A spot of meditation later, and she realised what it was for - it would stop her from being annihilated by the sudden oncoming of terra firma.

At this point, Bo would have welcomed said gravity-assisted smushing. While the qi surrounding her would ensure her survival, it did nothing for her comfort. The rushing wind was blisteringly cold, tempered only by her ability to very slightly step the elements around her into warmer ones. She couldn’t even admire the view - looking anywhere but immediately opposite her direction of travel blasted her in the face and made it impossible to breathe, to say nothing of the extreme discomfort involved. By side-eyeing the terrain beneath her, she estimated she was making days of on-foot travel in minutes. All she could do is clutch onto her possessions and await her arrival in whatever land that destiny had in store for her.

---

Another hour had passed, with Bo attempting to meditate (rather unsuccessfully) on … anything other than her current predicament. Even looking up towards the sky was getting to be a pain - the midday sun was immediately above her, following her, mocking her. A young Qin woman like her should be trying to find a husband right now, not sailing through the air clutching some ill-gotten sect treasures! It was while Bo was certain that her luck had finally run out that she suddenly hit a rather concerning amount of turbulence. With a start, she realised that the energy sheathing her had activated, and her descent had begun.

The qi unfurled itself in some way that Bo was vaguely aware of (the spearmint taste of Air qi was unmistakeable), and unfurled itself like some great set of wings - catching the wind and slowing her down. She wiggled herself around in mid-air to look down, now falling face first at an alarmingly slow pace. Bo considered that perhaps falling like this wouldn’t make for the best landing, but the ground was still a significant distance away. Why had the technique slowed her so soon?

Am I going to be stuck floating down for an hour, now? At this rate, it’ll take--

Thud.

“Ow!”

Bo’s face collided with … nothing. Or at least, it looked like nothing. There was something tangible there - an invisible wall or barrier, she surmised. Sitting up, she rubbed her face where she had smacked into the thing. Bo wanted to gather her bearings, only to realise that this wall was hot! It was burning her with some sort of energy, possibly as a side-effect of whatever was making it -- Now’s not the time to think. Run!

She leapt to her feet, making bouncing strides across this slightly curved, invisible surface. It was like running down the side of some immense ball, except she couldn’t tell where her feet were meant to go, and only found out they made contact with the ground burning the soles of her shoes.

Where in the world am I?! Bo puffed with exertion - she had gone from frozen stiff and sailing through the air to running across a burning bubble in mere moments. This is like a … Goryeo shield barrier! Did that damned beast throw me all the way to Goryeo?!

As the incline began to grow steeper, and the ground a little closer, Bo made one singular misstep - Just one, damn you! Can’t I be afforded a single mistake? - and tripped. Instinctively clutching her possessions into her chest, she tumbled and bounced down the side of the barrier, picking up a concerning amount of speed … Bo clenched her eyes shut and prepared for her death. Again.

---

Bo emerged from the inky black of unconsciousness, wondering momentarily if she had actually passed on from the earthly realm - before her distinctly earth-bound body screamed its discomfort at being slammed into the ground at high speed. Still, that was a fall that should have killed me, Bo considered as she put out a hand to lift herself up, so how did I -- Oh.

A soft, colourful cushion had broken her fall, though Bo suspected she had done far more damage to it. Shakily getting to her feet, wincing at the pain of what was likely a cracked rib, she looked down at her unwitting saviour - a large beastkin man, lying face-down in the dirt, dressed in the most awful, multi colored robes that Jingyi Bo had ever seen in her life.

So, that’s what’s fashionable in Goryeo, she idly and incorrectly mused. Still, this … chance encounter proves it. I must be in Goryeo - I hit a city’s shield formation!

Dusting herself off, Bo thought to actually check on the man. He did save my life, after all, she noted as she carefully rolled him over. For a moment, the thoroughly Qin woman thought that she might have actually landed on a real animal - the man looked so much like a panda that the only thing that changed Bo’s mind was his eye-catching garb, and his human hands. Still, he was breathing and merely unconscious, with no obvious signs of injury. The young cultivator sighed with relief - it wouldn’t be the first time she’d been the death of someone, so it was good to see today was an exception … if one ignored the collapse of the sect that had just taken her in. Perhaps fate had taken its dues, and overlooked this one panda-man.

After making sure she wasn’t going to die of internal bleeding, and ensuring her saviour was still breathing, Bo set to looking for her belongings. The Goryeon man’s bag of books had exploded everywhere, but it didn’t take long to find the wooden box - no worse for wear, despite the rough landing. However, the location of the element-filled gem eluded her. After several minutes of searching, pushing through bushes on the roadside, looking under the unconscious man, attempting to peer past the barrier without getting burned, she couldn’t find the thing.

“Agh … That thing seemed important. I wish it would just … appear in my hands!” Exasperated, Bo held out her hands, only to discover the gem was there. Her eyes bulging out of her head with excitement and surprise, she considered the possibilities. Does it come when called? Was it hiding somewhere? Can I hide it again, maybe?

Bo closed her hands on it and loudly wished it hidden - her hands clapping together as it vanished. Focusing and looking inwards, she saw the answer: the gem had taken up residence within her very being. It was trying to do … something in there, but now wasn’t really the time to be finding out. Her new panda friend was starting to groan awake, and Bo didn’t want to be around when he did. Turning to make her egress, she nearly tripped over a shiny medallion in the dirt.

A single step can be more important than ten-thousand, if taken in the right direction.

Words of wisdom from the Everchanging Way Sect echoed in her mind as she picked it up. Bo knew about shield formations, and how they often used tokens to denote who could come and go. If she was right, she could take this and flee entirely out of the reach of the panda before he could wake up and seek revenge! Turning on her heel, she confidently strode forward, hesitated upon recalling the treatment her face had received hitting the barrier the first time, and slowly walked through the shield formation. No sooner had she crossed its threshold was there a sharp crack and a flash of light - the medallion was no more.

“Oh.” Bo made an uncomfortable face as she realised she was now trapped. “Oh, you--”

“Yooouuu … !” A low growl echoed towards Bo, somewhat distorted by the barrier. She turned slowly, to look back and see the panda man, shakily sitting up and pointing a claw at her. If his face didn’t look so adorable, Bo would be terrified of him.

“Um. Hi! Crazy weather, huh? L-Looks like you got hit by something … beautiful and not-at-all-heavy? Would love to stay and chat, but, uh … gotta go!”

Without another word, Bo sprinted away from the panda as fast as she could, in case the man could get through the barrier still and give her a hard time.

Still … This shield formation sure seemed far from its city. Weird.

---

Bo had kept running for as long as she could, but it wasn’t a sustainable pace. Eventually she fell into a weary plod, and then into a soft-looking bush. Her body hurt like hell, she was trapped in some weird, absurdly large shield formation and, to top it all off, the sun was setting. A stronger, more determined person might have pushed on - hungry and desperate, the promise of a barely-glimpsed city might have tempted someone on. Bo, however, realised that sitting down was a mistake. This bush may well have been the most comfortable bush in the land - The Emperor himself would be jealous of the way this bush made Bo forget about her aching bones, how it held her just so nicely, how it made her eyes dip shut …

…

“Hey! Y’see that, Fu?”

“What’s it, Mu?”

“Looks like some’ns dead in that bush!”

“Well, heck! Yer right!”

Bo stirred awake, her body even unhappier than the day before from a night spent awkwardly collapsed in a prickly bush. It had in fact been a night, going by the morning sun barely illuminating her surroundings. The voices of two of her countrymen rang out nearby, along with the sounds of a horse-drawn cart, the men getting closer. Bo tried to get up, but her body wholly refused. The best she could manage is a groan and a flop before the pair opened the bush to reveal her.

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“Wa-hey! This feller ain’t dead!”

“No, he ain’t, Mu. Hey there, feller!”

The two gave Bo charming smiles, their teeth full of gaps and their faces burnt and wrinkled. Peasants, farmers, traders, something like that. Simple folk. Bo wasn’t exactly a jade beauty, or a noble, but even she knew where she stood in the world. For now, she was thankful as the pair lifted her up out of the bush.

“Now ain’t you a sight to behold! You one’a them cultervatin’ students fer the Academy?”

“I’m … yes.” Bo decided to play along - This place was an academy? And why were Qin peasants here?

“Nice t’meet’cha, sir! I’m Ru Fu, this’s my brother Ru Mu. Can’t say we’s expected t’see no mighty cultervater in a bush on th’road! What’s yer name, son?”

Bo couldn’t help but notice their mistaking her for a man - sure, Bo wasn’t particularly ‘gifted’ in the department of femininity, and her robes were rather utilitarian, and her hair was short, and she was covered in dirt and bruises, and there was definitely a branch sticking out of her hair-- Okay. Bo did just look like a young man, at least for now.

The pair of peasants eyed Bo, concerned.

“You … din’t forget yer name, did’ja?”

“Must’ve been a mighty battle ye fought, to make ye forget somethin’ like that.”

“Huh?!” Bo snapped out of her thoughts. “N-No, no … no foe I couldn’t handle. Just a little … beast. It might have given me something to think about, haha … ha … ouch …”

Fu and Mu listened intently to Bo’s somewhat embellished version of events as they helped her onto their wagon - a cart laden with bags of rice, which they rather unceremoniously piled her onto. Bo’s version of the story had her fleeing her besieged sect reluctantly, the elder entrusting her with a … totally worthless box, not worth stealing, and how she had valiantly attacked the mighty beast, only to be flung here by a powerful blow. Then she engaged a horrible … and non-descript beast, who she easily defeated - but it got some sneaky, underhanded hits in. Now Bo, a young man for sure, was here to enrol in …

“What did you say this place was again?”

“The Grand Academy o’ … Mu. What’d you say this place was again?”

“Dang it, Fu! How’s we s’posed to sell our rice if’n we can’t remember the name o’ the place? It’s the Grand Academy o’ … Spiritual … Marital .. an’ Wizard Stuff!”

Mu and Fu laughed uproariously between themselves. Bo wheezed out a chuckle, though she wasn’t sure if the name was genuinely funny or if the situation had become so absurd that she couldn’t help but laugh. Had the tiger intended to throw her to a new … not sect, per se, but a place to learn? Or was it simply a coincidence?

The cart ride was slow and uncomfortable, but bags of rice made for surprisingly good shock absorbers. It was enough, with Fu and Mu idly chattering, the cool wind refreshing against her skin, to fall into a state of relaxation that allowed her to meditate. Looking inwards, it was a damned mess. Like walking into a house after a flood tore through it, with stuff lying around everywhere. Her meridians were lined with a fine layer of what Bo understood to be ‘junk qi’, a kind of useless slurry of leftover bits from when she used the Endless Steps improperly. The elemental stone (Bo really had to think of a better name for it) was kind of just sitting in (maybe near?) her dantian doing some nebulous thing to the junk. It wasn’t consuming it so much as it was kind of sorting it into piles … metaphysically speaking, of course.

Bo turned her attention to her body. Her injuries weren’t really as bad as she thought, but everything’s a bit of a worry when you’re flung halfway across the known world. Most of it was just bruises, scrapes and light burns, though she could feel the crack through one of her ribs. An idea passed through Bo’s mind and, while part of her said that this was a very bad time to be experimenting with spiritual techniques, she decided that things couldn’t get much worse. She was wrong, but that was beside the point.

Focusing her qi on the bone itself, she explored the elements it was composed of. Bone was something like Earth or Stone, but also kind of like Wood, which were all fairly easy elements to understand. But there was something like Purity in there - her body healing itself? Bo didn’t really understand how to visualise Purity, so she would have to leave it for now. Instead, she focused on what made a bone be a bone … and started stepping the crack shut, transforming the blood that had seeped in back into solid bone. At first it seemed to be going fine, until a sharp, searing pain erupted within her, causing her to cry out.

“Woah, Is ‘e alright back there?”

“Don’t you worry, Mu. Just some cultervatin’ stuff. They do stuff like this. Don’t let it get to ye.”

Bo’s concentration had wavered for a fraction of a second, when she had tried to take one step too many. A fractional chunk of blood and bone had been transformed into a shard of metal - barely a splinter, but it hurt like hell! Steadying her breathing, she slowly stepped it back into bone, the pain subsiding as the crack vanished. Her work complete, Bo peered back in to see how her meridians were doing. As expected, they were even worse off than before, encrusted with a theoretical gunk of qi. Was that good? Bad? Bo had no idea, but she felt a lot better now.

Sitting up, she realised it was midday again. At the very least, the Academy was well within sight now. Mu and Fu dropped her off at the gate, pointed her vaguely in the direction of an important-looking building and left. With the two old peasants gone, Bo couldn’t help but realise she was once again surrounded by cultivators … though, a little voice at the back of her head told her they weren’t all cultivators - some mages, going by the scroll-toting beastkin, and even martial artists, if those rough-looking Yamato folks were anything to go by.

“Excuse me … sir.” A decidedly tactful voice made a small, polite cough behind Bo. She turned around, coming face to face with a chest the size of her entire body. Looking up the length of the towering man, Jingyi Bo looked into a face that seemed to have been chiselled from stone (to say nothing of the man himself). His impassively neutral expression gave nothing away, though Bo couldn’t help but feel scrutinised.

“Sir. Did you hear me?” Bo had to stop making a habit of getting lost in thought when people were trying to talk to her.

“Y-Yes! I heard you loud and clear!” Snapping to attention (and taking a step back), Bo tried to make the best show of herself.

“Are you a new disciple?”

“Wh-Why! How could you tell? Haha …”

“Because you are wearing travelling robes, and standing in front of the building designated for new arrivals.”

Bo looked past the man, to the sign on the wall that read ‘New Arrivals Here’. She looked back at him and gave an unconvincing but polite smile. With that out of the way, Jingyi Bo was led into the building. A cramped, paper-filled room that stank of ink, it gave Bo the impression that it was once busy, but that she had arrived rather late.

“Why am I stuck cleaning up the last of the-- Guan! What is this?”

“A new arrival, Xin.”

“I. Yes, I can see that.” Bo’s stone-faced escort had a not-unattractive friend, who she rather thought she could trust about as far as she could throw. A true man of Qin, it seemed.

“Well? Does the new arrival have a name, or shall I just draw a picture on this form?” Xin, she assumed, lazily wielded a brush and a piece of paper. Putting two and two together, Bo realised she was suddenly filling out enrolment paperwork. Just the thing for weary, bruised muscles!

“I’m Jingyi Bo, from--.”

“Age?”

“Nineteen. My birthday is--”

“There’s no way you’re nineteen. What did they feed you in your sect, shrinking pills? Unless … “ Xin squinted at her appraisingly, and then shook his head. “Never mind. Cultivation level and discipline?”

Bo thought about that for a moment. The sect she had awakened with had some weird hang-ups about naming ‘levels’ - something about ‘seeing the steps in-between’. So, that would have to do.

“I’ve taken three steps.”

“That … doesn’t even remotely begin to answer my question. Whatever.” Xin wrote it down, eager to be done with it.

“First stage.”

“Guan, speak up.”

“Sh- He’s in the first stage, is my guess.”

Xin sighed, crossed something out, and wrote it down. “Whatever. Just give him the uniform. Do we have any more rooms left?”

“There’s still space with that Hyeong boy, but I’m not sure if Jingyi here would appreciate rooming with a--” Xin caught himself. “With someone who isn’t a countryman.”

Bo wasn’t quite sure what the hesitance was for, but it didn’t mean anything to her. The idea of being roomed with a boy, however, could be a problem. As she got changed within a fascinating grey field of privacy, she quietly hoped that she would have a room to herself instead.

Removing her travelling robes, Jingyi Bo made a mortifying discovery - not only was the whole thing filthy, but the back, where she had sat on the shield formation, was speckled with burn holes. She blushed brightly, thinking how moments before she had been effectively standing around with her underclothes on display. Thankfully, these new robes - a handsome green and gold, like everyone else here had been wearing - were rather more covering. The stone-faced man, Guan, had given her a key and a set of instructions for finding her dormitory, tactfully refusing to mention the snapped comb teeth still lodged in her knotted hair.

As she left, the sound of Mr Xin cursing the heavens for keeping him in the building with ‘yet another stray’, Bo headed off to find her new home.

“Your building will match the engraving on the key,” Bo muttered to herself, repeating Guan’s words, “But this thing only says ‘shed’. I’m sure that’s just a pet name for the thing, right?”

It took Bo a worrying amount of time to find her place. She passed the nice dormitory buildings, where well-dressed and well-to-do Qin cultivators notably did not mingle with other well-dressed and well-to-do Yamato or Goryeon folk. Then, slightly less nice dormitories, followed by even worse ones, followed by what Bo had assumed were the simplest, most bare-boned of homes … none of which matched her key. It wasn’t until she stepped past the last building did she see what her fate was.

Sat in the shade of a tall tree was an old shed, possibly older than the academy itself - some original building left over from before its construction. Some vague effort had been made to turn it into a home, but it was ultimately still a shed - inside was a low table, a firepit, a cooking pot and kettle, and the saddest, sorriest bed that Jingyi Bo had ever seen.

Bo sat on the bed, and found herself lying back on it, staring at the ceiling. With tears in her eyes, she shouted at the roof.

“Why do I have to live in a SHED?!”