Jingyi Bo had to admit one thing—she lived in interesting times. It was a famous Qin curse, to wish that someone’s life be full of eventful days. Or was it from Yamato? Maybe it’s just kind of something everyone says? I’m getting sidetracked here.

There was some kind of curse, luck-bending singularity or evil demon attached to her very being that ensured that, no matter what she did, times remained interesting. Her life had always kept her moving along like a malicious storyteller losing the crowd—when things seemed to get boring, when the audience started to yawn or inspect the lint in their pockets, some horrible event happened to shake things up. There was a point in time where Bo was fairly certain she was responsible for everyone’s untimely fates, being the protagonist of a gruesome tale. However, there was a certain parallel thread to be considered—crying, running and generally panicking didn’t help. To an extent.

Joining the Everchanging Way Sect had mostly been about getting a roof over her head that wouldn’t collapse to spite a visitor. If anyone could survive a malicious and destructive curse, it would be the immortal cultivators of a hidden sect, right? It turns out, there’s always a bigger fish. Or tiger, as things turned out. A tiger with a phenomenal throwing arm. I wasn’t even aware tigers could move their legs like that. Or grab people. Or throw them across continents. I’m at least mostly certain that it wasn't a normal magical tiger-beast.

Then, Jingyi Bo arrived at the Grand Academy. Having already awakened her qi with what was the world’s least powerful Spiritual Art, she fit right in as the most useless cultivator ever to cultivate. By some miracle, she managed to go months there before someone died! It wasn’t even someone she knew—some Qin noble’s son, beat up by a demon or some such. That hardly even counted! Then, Bo figured it out. I’m no longer the protagonist.

Sure, Jingyi Bo still got into adventures. She found friends, attended classes, learned some cool moves—okay, they’re mostly just cool to me!—and even won fights! Sometimes. Kind of. Fortunately, the malicious storyteller had found someone far more fascinating to heap the blessings of interesting times upon. From what Bo could tell, Lee Jia was nobody from nowhere, starting with nothing and rising up like the most gifted scion of a noble house. There were bets placed about the secret of her origin—secret princess of Goryeo, blessed with unearthly magical powers? A gift from the heavens, meant to save the world? Just some girl who had been chewed up by the world and spit out, only to end up in exactly the right place she needed to be?

Honestly, it didn’t matter. All Jingyi Bo knew was, it had taken barely a single, face-to-face meeting to transfer this horrible curse. There was no fanfare, no dark aura or really anything at all—perhaps it had been all in her head after all. However, Jingyi Bo would never forget that meeting. If only because she had barely realised it was Lee Jia at all.

It had been a fairly standard morning, as far as things went for Bo. In fact, things had been relatively unexciting for a short while now, and it was starting to make the young cultivator worry. This kind of silence before the storm was part and parcel of everything rather dramatically exploding—the weirdest thing that had happened in recent memory was Chao Da getting his head stuck in a railing, and even that had been a momentary diversion.

Seated at the front desk of the library, trying her best to side-eye a manual about farming, Jingyi Bo had hoped against hope that today was not the day that the dramatic explosions happened. Maybe it’ll be giant wolves this time. Big ones that breathe fire. Or shoot lightning out of their eyes. Or–

The door to the library burst open as a rather beautiful half-spirit girl fell in, a sinister laugh following hot on her heels. There was a brief, frantic conversation with whoever was on the other end, followed by the doors slamming shut once more. There was a part of Bo that wanted to shout, This is a library! Keep it down! However, there was also a large part of Bo that didn’t want to anger a girl who could almost certainly kick her ass. Her brain split the difference by defaulting to a dull, shocked stare—the look of a person who never has anything interesting happen to them, ever.

The decidedly feline girl eventually approached the desk. Either she had chosen just about the most boring place in the Academy to attend for a date, or she simply enjoyed dressing up—Why does she look so familiar?

“I-I’m here to use the library. I should be on the list of people with permission—Lee Jia.”

“Of course, Miss Lee. Feel free to—”

Jingyi Bo’s brain froze up. It felt like all thought had been manually knocked out of her head, replaced with one overriding message—By the Emperor! This is the part where the dramatic explosions happen! Yet, despite that, the library remained remarkably intact. Bo was fairly certain that something, somewhere, had gone horribly wrong—or was going to.

“Miss Lee!? By the emperor, I hardly recognized you!”

Okay, hold on. Hoooold on, Bo. Lee Jia isn’t a dressing-up kind of girl. Was the secret princess thing real, maybe? No, no, if it was, she wouldn’t look so embarrassed right now. Incredibly, Lee Jia’s actual blush had managed to glow through her make-up. A dangerous, reckless, stupid part of her wanted to pat the girl on the head.

Instead, Bo managed to finagle a completely reasonable sentence based on the web of rumours, hearsay and possible fabrications that she had absorbed on the topic of Lee Jia. Okay, it was mostly just things that Makoto told me. But it’s probably true, right?

“Miss Yan must have gotten you, eh?”

All the tension in Jingyi Bo’s muscles evaporated with a singular smile. It wasn’t even a nod, just a pleasant little yep, that’s the one! and off she walked. A moment passed, and Lee Jia was gone. Then, a thought crashed straight through Bo with all the force of a boulder tumbling down a mountainside. She was totally lying just now!

It wasn’t even really a big deal if she was. After all, she probably looked at Jingyi Bo and said to herself, “Who is this weird Qin boy, and why does he know my name?” Unfortunately for Miss Lee, everyone knew her name—and certain dedicated members of the community had traced out an awful lot of information about her and her friends.

First, consider that Miss Yan Yue is almost certainly not a lover of women. Bear with me. This thought is going places. Makoto and Kokoro had all but certainly figured out that Yan Yue was into a guy named Guan Yi. Apparently, Kokoro had even attempted a calculated wardrobe malfunction to see if Miss Yan would be interested—she had been declared straight on the spot. A crying shame, frankly.

It wasn’t that Yan Yue had got her in some kind of make-up based revenge scenario, she had helped Lee Jia with her make-up! For a date! There was really no explaining it otherwise—Yan Yue was obviously the best person to ask for make-up advice, and even Bo had to admit that doing another girl’s make-up as a prank was a little gay. I wonder if Makoto would do mine…? Wait, no! I have an image to maintain!

So, Bo thought, Miss Lee was here for a date. As the librarian-slash-janitor of this vaunted and selective archive, Bo knew there were only so many people that came in here. In fact, because there was only one way in and out of the building, and Jingyi Bo was required as part of her job to make sure of exactly who was coming in, she knew exactly who the other end of this date was. One Hyeong Daesung, perfectly bookish nerd and all around good boy, was currently in attendance. Wait! Mr Hyeong isn’t anywhere near dressed up! Is this a…

Hyeong Daesung had been wearing his plain, ordinary Academy uniform into the library today. In fact, it had been such an ordinary occurrence that Bo was entirely certain she would have remembered if it was any other way. This had to be a surprise rendezvous! Hyeong wasn’t aware that he was going to be entertaining a dressed-up Lee Jia, which is why this had to happen at the library—and only Jingyi Bo would ever know this had happened.

But wait! Crash! That boulder of a thought from before was destroyed by a second, larger boulder labelled ‘An Eui’. That menacing, rat-tailed girl was definitely, one hundred percent in love with Lee Jia. Could this have been a secret from her, perhaps? Or maybe…!

Wait, let’s back up a few paragraphs. Um, something something make-up revenge prank, something rambling about Yan Yue’s unfortunate heterosexuality…Aha! Frantic conversation! Sinister laugh! That could only have been the terrifying An Eui!

So. Miss An knew about this. In fact, it might have even been a team effort. Miss An pinning Miss Lee down while a disgruntled Miss Yan prettied her up. The pair of them tearing off her clothes and dressing her in finery—no, let’s not think about tearing off clothes, part of my brain that’s always thinking about Izumi Makoto. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.

All Bo could ask herself was, what is the endgame here? Of course, the question she might have asked herself at any earlier point in her life was why do I care? Frankly, this was all devoted entirely to finally having gossip to share with Makoto and Kokoro. Heck, even Tatsumaki had brought gossip to the table—though it was mostly a long list of men who were ‘strangely interested’ in talking to Amai Ichiro. There would be no victory in the day if it didn’t involve a carefully concocted series of mostly-imagined events reconstructed from a singular polite conversation.

Lee Jia has been dressed up by Yan Yue and An Eui, probably against her will, solely to get her to put the moves on Hyeong Daesung. Bo briefly considered what anyone would want from the guy—he was cute, in the way you might call a wide-eyed puppy cute, and he was a genius when it came to magic. He was also amazingly happy to hand out his arcane secrets, so they probably weren’t trying to seduce some magical mumbo-jumbo out of him.

Remember those boulders from before? You know, the weird metaphor. Boom. Third one. An Eui and Lee Jia are so close to each other, so impossibly connected, that they don’t even consider what they have a relationship, so they’re going to get Hyeong Daesung in there to be their boyfriend. Is there a word for that? I’ll have to ask Makoto.

Jingyi Bo realised around that moment that she had been staring at the ceiling, idly daydreaming for the better part of an hour. If she was going to really seal the deal on this one, there was only one thing to do—go and spy on them! Mr Hyeong and Ms Jia were certainly together by now, possibly even—no! Not in the library! I-I’ve got to see! For the sake of the library!

She crept around the corner with the utmost care. Slipping into an aisle as quietly as she could, Bo snuck a peek through an empty shelf and a gap in the back of a bookshelf she had been meaning to fix—only to see that Lee was meditating, and Hyeong was quietly reading. Damn it!

With a sigh narrowly suppressed, Bo returned to the front desk. There wasn’t any juicy gossip, just another Lee Jia moment—the girl was a cultivation monster, so even a certain-for-sure date was going to end up with meditation somehow. It was so…standard! So predictable! So weirdly boring. That was usually when things exploded. Dramatically.

They never did.

Well, she did see Yan Yue vomiting in a bush on the way back home, which was kind of like an explosion. Bo still didn’t have any idea of what kind of abilities Miss Yan possessed, but she knew the woman was far, far more powerful than she was. She attempted to back away slowly—Bo had basically rounded a corner and nearly tripped over her—but it was far too late. Instead, she said something stupid.

“Well done on Ms Lee’s make-up.”

Yan Yue, figure of feminine perfection, extraordinary beauty that surpassed Bo’s wildest ambitions, wiped a small stain off the corner of her mouth and stared at her countryman like this stranger had just asked her to dance around with her undergarments on her head.

“Is this–cough, cough! Some kind of joke?!” Yan Yue glared at Bo, who bowed so deeply that she was all but kissing her knees.

“N-No! Forgive my impudence, miss! Your make-up work is really good! Congratulations! Sorry about whatever is wrong! Goodbye!”

With that out of the way, Bo turned and sprinted away. Saoka practice had made her very good at running, and she had every confidence that no matter how strong Yan Yue was, she couldn’t catch up to a fleeing Jingyi Bo. Bo was so eager to get away from her that she ended up doing a lap of the entire campus before returning home.

After that night, Jingyi Bo’s life became…surprisingly boring. Classes, library duties, gossiping with friends—there was a stable, predictable routine that she had never experienced before. It was comfortable, but came with it an odd feeling that something awful was going to happen, sooner or later. To that end, Bo prepared herself—she wouldn’t be caught off guard by catastrophe. Instead, she would be caught perfectly on guard and probably still not terribly helpful.

Bo’s first goal was to finish understanding the rest of the elements to finish her breakthrough. Her cultivation was comically behind because of this, especially as the months went on and her friends became more powerful. To put into perspective just how far behind Jingyi Bo was, it is important to rush forward to the big tournament.

It was the eve of the qualifiers. Izumi Makoto had thrown herself into her training with unusual fervour, quoting something about how she definitely wasn’t into women. It was clear, even to Bo, that Makoto was avoiding her—and was unusually blushy about it, which just made Bo feel weird about it, so they mutually avoided one another. Hizashi Kokoro and the other Yamato students in Bo’s friend group were also quite eager to get to training—it was the Qin students who felt little need.

“I’ll be the strongest one there! Everyone will fear me with my new technique!” Chao Da was making weird poses that were supposed to be animals, while Youni De and Wang Wei nodded along. Wang even gave a polite spot of applause, which Bo felt was a bit too much. Chao’s Air-based spiritual technique had greatly improved, allowing him to bounce around from place to place as though he was untethered from gravity. The technique he was bragging about was a martial arts technique—his natural bodily affinity for Ice had been utilised in tandem with a weirdly animal-based martial arts manual Bo had half-read. Whenever he used it, he could leap like a tiger, or dive like a hawk—and then cover whoever he hit in a layer of ice.

Wang Wei’s odd copycat art had improved too—he seemed to be able to copy distinct parts of different peoples’ techniques, combining them for devastating fusions. An Ice-coated version of Tatsumaki’s spinning Heat kick, a Miasma-filled gale of poisoned gas—it was really quite terrifying. Still, he was only as good as the allies around him—and as interesting as their abilities were, they still weren’t that powerful. Youni De’s Miasma had really just evolved into the same thing but with more of that nasty oil—it was always a nightmare cleaning up afterwards.

Hizashi Kokoro had learned a technique for firing beams of light, and a spiritual technique for Purity-based healing—a fact that came in handy whenever Youni accidentally poisoned someone. Hoshikawa Junpei and his older cousin Amai Ichiro had solidified—no pun intended—their body-hardening martial arts into slightly distinct forms. Ichiro learned a spiritual technique to emit a field of raised gravity around him, making his slow, earthen maneuvers far more viable against faster foes. Meanwhile, Hoshikawa had learned how to turn into an indestructible lump of metal. This really didn’t have much benefit except for momentarily rendering him a non-combatant at will.

The second-weakest member of the crew was now Tatsumaki Ryu, who had discovered how to turn his Heat blue sometimes—it really wasn’t clear what that did. Then, there was Bo.

Jingyi Bo had managed to understand some more elements. Light, Sky and Purity were all ticked off, with the help of her friends. Force and Darkness had taken a bit of work, but she had a good handle on both. Plasma was…a work in progress. Void and Destruction were right out. Which meant, unfortunately, that Bo was still stuck. She was easily the weakest cultivator in her group, which was easily the weakest group of cultivators in the entire Academy. Naturally, she had signed up for the tournament.

Then, on the day of the qualifier event, Jingyi Bo’s friends had some remarkable betrayals.

“Oh, I didn’t sign up!” Kokoro laughed. “I’m rather fond of having my limbs attached to my body. I’ll be cheering for ya!”

“At least you’re in the running, right Chao?” Bo looked over at him hopefully, and the young man nodded.

“Yeah! But Wei and De didn’t wanna come. Wei said something like–”

“I said, ‘I cannot guarantee we will be in the same division, so I cannot abide the chance I will not be at your side’.” Wei helpfully added.

“And De said–”

“Hehe.”

“Nothin’. Traitors!” The boys laughed and jostled each other. With a sigh, Bo turned to the other guys in the group.

“Are any of you–”

“Of course!” Tatsumaki bellowed. “I shall defeat all challengers single-handedly! That’s what single-combat’s all about!”

“Unlike Ryu,” young Hoshikawa sighed, “I realise that this will be all about whatever alliances have formed. We don’t have the numbers or the connections, so I never signed up.”

“Then Junpei told me not to sign up!” Amai gave a gorgeous smile that Bo had grown immune to. “So we’re here to cheer you all on!”

That just left Izumi Makoto, who was still awkwardly refusing to meet Bo’s eyes. “We’re not in the same division.”

Bo confirmed it—none of them were in the same division! She felt like an idiot—her entire life, running away from danger, and like a fool she had been overcome with hubris and decided to go hang out with it. Jingyi Bo would recall this as the dumbest thing she had ever done, at least until the next time she did something collossally stupid.

—

Chao Da had been in the first of the divisions. Unbelievably, he was not the first person to be knocked out of the running—as though denying him that honour was the universe’s idea of a joke, he was an immediate second.

As much as Chao liked to say that he knew everyone, the truth was that he didn’t actually know any of the people in his division personally. So, when he almost immediately came face to face with the mage Seo In-Soo, it was a shock to the both of them.

“The guy from the library!” Chao gasped as they met in the forest—during the event, no less.

“You–!” The Qin man looked remarkably angry. “You…wait, why am I angry at you?”

“Um. My friends and I tried to trick you into letting us into the library, then we hatched a ridiculous scheme to make you and your girlfriend confess to each other so you would be too busy to have the job of librarian and would give it to someone else?”

They both nodded. Somewhere in the distance, an explosion rang out—fighting had started.

“So, uh, thanks for that, I guess?” Seo laughed kind of sheepishly. “Should we, uh…?”

“Team up?” Chao smiled brightly. “Yeah, that’d be a great idea–”

“Oh, absolutely not! I was going to suggest we get to the part where we beat the snot out of each other.”

The two young men stared at each other for a long moment in silence. There was a group of people grumbling nearby about choices in leadership. A bird flew down between them. A cold wind caused Chao to sneeze, and Seo gave him a handkerchief. Then, with his nose clean, Chao had a revelation.

“Right! This is the part where I finally get to punch you right in your punchable face!”

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“My what–” Chao punched him right in the face, and Seo went down like a sack of rice. Then, before Chao could even celebrate over the announcement of Seo In-Soo’s defeat, he was punched really hard by a black-haired half-spirit. Chao hit a nearby tree, bounced off of it, and folded neatly over a low-hanging branch—he was out cold.

—

When Chao had relayed the story of his inglorious defeat to the rest of the crew—in surprisingly honest detail, no less—Bo had somehow felt worse about her upcoming qualifier. She was in the last division, which had one terrifying note looming over the top of it—Lee Jia. Everyone knew she was the one to beat, and even Bo’s little group had become aware of how much everyone was worried by her presence. It was Bo’s singular worry that she would get punched into a fine paste on the ground if Lee Jia saw her as an enemy, so she decided to distract herself from that fear by building a hidey-hole.

Struggling to clear the final requirements of elemental understanding that was so harshly blocking her breakthrough, Jingyi Bo had spent an unusual amount of time practicing her building instead. She could convert most of the physical manifestations of elements into others—thankfully, Destruction, Plasma and Void weren’t particularly useful building materials. This meant that Bo could make shapes and structures in more malleable, comfortable elements like Mud, then solidify them with a few steps. It was easiest to turn the Mud to Stone through Earth, but Mud to Wood was right there—hampered only by her limited understanding of the Yang element involved.

As she stood in a forest that was soon to become a warzone, Bo focused intently on building a shelter. First came planning—maybe like the little shed I used to live in? No, too flimsy. Wait, like a fortress! But smaller, obviously.

It was pretty easy to make stuff up as she went along, at least in Mud. There was a kind of sliding scale of Water to Earth in the Mud mixture that let her make it easier to keep in place, though it still tried to get away from her—slopping all over the ground and forcing her to focus on picking it back up. After a couple of minutes, Bo had made a tiny fortress—with comically low walls. It looked more like a scale replica, and all she could do was groan. Why am I so dumb?!

Knocking over the mud walls, Bo endeavoured to start with something simpler. Channelling the qi through the ground, her technique gave rise to a kind of box. It felt like something you might keep a pet in, especially after she carved out a little doorway on the front, but Bo wasn’t feeling particularly picky—there were only a couple of minutes before the fighting began. She turned the Mud into Stone, only to see it starting to crumble under its own weight. Building stuff is hard!

She built trusses and supports on the inside, only to realise it didn’t leave much room for her—Bo expanded the building out, discovering that this only made her structural issues worse. From there, Bo was entirely lost in the process of building. For every change she made to her miniature fortress, it introduced a new problem and sparked a new idea. When she fixed the problem, some new one would arise, and when she added a cool new idea it only exacerbated those issues. The ‘fortress’ became less like a building and more like a weird boulder covered in pointless additions and other random nonsense.

The outside had been covered in spikes—hooked spikes, because those were nastier—and also covered up with some quickly grown foliage. If someone didn’t know what it was, they might have seen some especially verdant rock—the leaves covered up the spikes. There was only one thing left to do for Bo’s masterpiece of a fortress to be complete—she had to get in. Crawling inside, Bo shifted the earth to cover up her entry hole, functionally sealing herself in. It was a dark, uncomfortable, cramped spot, but it was perfectly safe. No one would bother her, and she would totally get to pass this stage as everyone else beat each other up!

Then, a thought occurred to her. Wait, why would I want to get into the next stage? Then I’d have to fight people properly! I’m still the weakest of the weak—it took me all this time just to make a boulder to hide in!

Now a little worried that she might actually progress to the stage where she would absolutely get her ass kicked, Bo shot up—smacked her head into the rocky roof of the boulder—and carefully extricated herself from the mess she had made. She stuck her head out, made sure the coast was clear and finally shimmied her way out of the dumb earthen jail she had made for herself. Bo stood up, stretched, and was immediately knocked out by a flurry of pinpoint pressure-point strikes. Whoever had done it had the good grace to stop after a few, surprised to find someone so weak here.

When Bo woke up, sometime later, something heavy was on her face. It took her several moments to extract her head from Hizashi Kokoro’s lap, only to realise that half of her body was still paralysed—she tipped dramatically in the opposite direction, and landed in another lap entirely.

“Wah! D-Don’t lie on me!” Izumi Makoto carefully lifted Jingyi Bo’s half-paralysed form off of her lap, leaving her to lean against Kokoro’s side. She couldn’t really move her head, but Bo could hear Makoto hopping up off the couch. It looked like she had been taken home.

“Now, I hope y’all don’t mind,” Kokoro gently laid Bo back down, “But I’ve got a mind ta use my healin’ technique.”

There was some general murmuring and the sound of several people clearing the room. Bo had never actually seen Kokoro use her healing technique, but surely it couldn’t be so distressing that everyone had to leave, right? Then, some primal part of Bo’s mind kicked into overdrive. My spiritual technique works off physical contact—what if hers does too? What if Kokoro has to get, erm, close? Skin to skin contact?! Wait, I’m already being smothered, I can’t go out like this!

“Mmph! Mm!” Bo attempted to flail and mostly just twitched.

“Bo, you’ve gotta close yer eyes, reeeeal tight, okay? It might be a bit much if yer lookin’ right at it, heehee.”

With her eyes dutifully shut, Bo pretended she wasn’t imagining what Kokoro was doing right now—the Yamato woman was shuffling about, perhaps moving her clothes– No, bad Bo! That’s definitely not what’s happening…is it?!

Then, with her face bright red with embarrassment, the healing began. At first there was a soft feeling of a hand caressing her body—not a physical hand, Bo made sure to remind herself, but one made of qi. It was like her meridians were getting untangled by a skilled masseuse. Not that I have any idea what that’s supposed to be like.

Bo had started to feel her body relax, and had finally managed to reassure herself that everything would be alright, when a certain glow started to creep through her eyelids. It was like trying to nap while the sun shone in through a window, forcing Bo to scrunch her eyes even more tightly shut. Unfortunately, this didn’t help at all—instead, the light got brighter and brighter until it felt like she was staring at the sun.

She reached out somewhat desperately with her mana sense. Bo’s body was filled with Purity qi from the technique, but Kokoro was giving off a pile of excess Light ki in doing so. It all made sense—why she had warned everyone, why Bo had never seen the technique before. It’s really hurting my eyes!

Thankfully, the healing effects of Kokoro’s Light of Spiritual Purity technique covered for the eye-blasting waves of light it gave off—by the time Kokoro was done, Bo was feeling much better. Good enough, in fact, to leap out of Kokoro’s grasp—a totally smooth way to hide this blush!

—

Things went pretty smoothly for the rest of the tournament. Makoto had managed to not only get into the tournament proper, but also win fights! Until she ran into Hayakawa Kaede, that was. When the match finished, Jingyi Bo had headed straight to the medical pavilion. Makoto had taken a rather nasty blow, though the healers in the tent were more than capable of putting her back together. All Bo remembered of that fight, through blurry, tear-filled eyes, was that Izumi Makoto had been really, really damned cool.

Then, the tournament did its thing. Bo wasn’t terribly interested in the outcome, now that Makoto wasn’t involved, but it was still interesting to hear the results. Everything was set up for a rather dramatic climax—Lee Jia’s team against Hayakawa Kaede’s team, a fight which was sure to be amazing. Well, it would’ve been pretty cool, if Bo had any way of watching it.

Apparently, the fancy nobles that had come along had themselves some amazing viewing thingies that let them see the fights going on even in the middle of the forest. It had been easy to sneak a peek at what was going on in Makoto’s fight, on account of that being in the arena—Bo had built a little platform for her friends to watch from—but in the forest? All they could do was hope they might get to hear the fireworks.

“Honestly? This sucks.”

Chao Da grumbled away while the group lazily played Saoka, and no one could blame him. The most amazing fight to ever happen in their vicinity, and they wouldn’t even get to see it!

“For once, I have to agree with Chao,” the younger cousin Hoshikawa Junpei kicked a goal, though no one celebrated, “it really is a shame we can’t watch.”

“At least we’ve got a nice, pleasant day, right folks?” Hizashi could smile with the brightness of ten suns, but even she couldn’t help everyone out of this funk. There was a weird tension in the air, and everyone was willing to blame it on the fact that they just couldn’t go see this cool, cool fight!

Then, Jingyi Bo uttered a dreadful phrase.

“Ugh! I wish something interesting would happen!”

As though the Emperor himself had heard her plea and decided to make it possible, something interesting happened. Something very interesting. Something so interesting that it entirely changed the course of the fate of the world– Oh, get on with it already!

Something changed with the sky, and the air. In fact, Bo felt it immediately after the words left her lips—her keen understanding of the elements clued her into a phenomenal wrongness all around. That oppressive tension in the air unfolded into something endlessly worse, and Bo’s eyes snapped towards a point in the sky. She had enough time to second-guess herself before that patch of sky became a horrifying hole in existence.

It was nowhere near them. By virtue of their place out on the Saoka pitch, it was easily on the other side of the school. But the hole transfixed Bo. She could sense the elements within—all of them, even the ones she didn’t understand, and Bo quite suddenly understood them. It all made sense, why she couldn’t wrap her head around them—they were so thoroughly antithetical to what Bo had imagined the Endless Steps of Transformation were.

Void was nothing. Literally-but-not-literally nothingness. Plasma was an intangible flame that could never be grasped by physical flesh. Destruction…was simply the opposite of what Bo wanted her technique to be—she wished to create, not destroy. These revelations hit her hard, and Jingyi Bo fell to the ground clutching her head. Looking inward, she saw the world index—that weird little octahedron living in her dantian—suddenly expand and open. It didn’t stop being an octahedron, but it was like it had suddenly become an endless, fractal copy of itself—if she looked closer at it, it was all octahedrons, all the way down. It was so thoroughly dizzying that Bo had to stop herself from looking—there was enough time for that later.

Instead, it was time to panic. She had thought, not so long ago, that Lee Jia had taken her curse of interesting times. Perhaps she had—that horrifying crack in reality was over there, near the forest where the excitement of the tournament had been. However, that was little consolation. It was now time to leave, yet another safe place destroyed by Bo’s phenomenal bad luck. This time, however, she wasn’t going to lose everyone she cared about in the process.

“We need to run. Away. Now.” Jingyi Bo looked at everyone, and everyone understood. There were monstrous, powerful beings coming, and none of them stood even the vaguest chance against them. Right now, Bo’s advice was the best chance they had—the master of running away had raised the flag, and it was time to go.

So, they ran. Chao Da and Wang Wei skated away from the school on a thin layer of air, with Youni De sliding right behind them on an oil slick. Tatsumaki Ryu, Amai Ichiro and Hoshikawa Junpei just started running—they were awfully fast when they wanted to be. Hizashi Kokoro performed great bounding leaps to get away, leaving Izumi Makoto and Jingyi Bo.

Makoto could have just run for it—and probably outpaced everyone there—but Bo was lagging behind fiercely. The weakest of the weak, Jingyi Bo had suddenly become the expert of running away only in theory, and not in practice. Sure, Bo was much faster than a mortal, but compared to those actually dedicated to physical disciplines she was but a snail. Whatever had happened to the school wasn’t just some attack on the school grounds, either—peering over her shoulder, Bo could see tracts of land exploding behind her. Heck, a mountain got cut in half! Glad that was in the other direction, sheesh!

Still, Bo was falling behind and even Makoto was growing impatient.

“Jingyi Bo.” Makoto said her full name, her voice not even mildly affected by her running pace.

Bo shivered, and gave out a panting response. “Y-Yes…Izumi…?”

“I’m going to p…pick you up. Okay? It’s just for…you know, getting away faster.”

“You’re going…to whaARGH!”

As though waiting for Bo to finish talking was going to be far too much time wasted, Makoto zipped aside and scooped her up. Izumi Makoto was not a very large woman—one might call her short, or even mousy if you were feeling malicious. Fortunately for her, Jingyi Bo was even smaller—though, barely. To the strength of one such as Makoto, her weight wasn’t an issue, though this size closeness was a concern. Throwing Bo over a shoulder would leave her nearly dragging on the ground, and a piggyback situation would be just as bad—so, it could only be done one way. Makoto scooped her up sideways, holding her in both arms.

Isn’t this…how you carry a bride?!

Of course, Jingyi Bo could not resist—in the literal sense, mostly. Held in the oh-so-strong, comfortable arms of her closest friend whom she liked perhaps a lot more than just friendship, Bo felt safe. All she had to do was look up into Makoto’s unreasonably beautiful face, maybe blush a little bit at how much she was blushing, perhaps even look a bit to the right and see a chunk of debris flying directly for them–

“GAH! MAKOTO!”

Bo pointed with a finger, but the chunk was way too close. It was, frankly, massive—a huge lump of earth and stone that was clearly recognisable as a chunk of one of the school’s many plazas, including a park bench affixed to it. Everything seemed to slow down as adrenaline and probably whatever kind of messed up cultivation equivalent there was to adrenaline coursed through Bo’s system. A few facts became immediately apparent.

First, Makoto was fast, but not fast enough. If someone had wanted to squish two fleeing women with a massive boulder, they could not have aimed it more carefully—the size of the thing meant that every direction to dodge was just as good at murdering them as standing perfectly still. Second, despite their enhanced physiques and powerful skills, that was simply just too much weight for them to bear—Bo remembered how Makoto had looked after her fight with Hayakawa, and was certain that while Makoto may survive, Bo certainly wouldn’t, and no one would know to come and help them.

Finally, Izumi Makoto was trying to be a hero. She had been fast enough to hear Bo’s warning and look behind her, and her reflexes were way faster than Jingyi Bo’s. Makoto, dear Makoto, had made the exact same mental calculations as Bo—she could never hope to dodge it, and Bo could never hope to survive it. So, she was currently in the process of trying to hurl Bo to safety. Doing so would leave her entirely unprepared to receive the damage—Makoto would most certainly die.

A switch flipped inside Bo’s soul. Somewhere, in the dusty old library slowly collecting little samples of all the elements the world has to offer, a lever rumbled dramatically. It had been, for Jingyi Bo’s entire life, firmly chained down to a position marked FLIGHT. The little old Bo-fragment that lived in Bo’s soul took her sweet time dusting off the label on the other end, and chuckled as she wrenched off the chains and threw that sucker into FIGHT.

Bo held onto Makoto like her life depended on it, wrapping one arm and both legs around her in the tightest embrace of her life. She didn’t even have time to be embarrassed about it—instead, she lifted up her free arm and opened her senses. Her aura extended outwards from her hand, far further than she had expected, as though some recent event had just caused it to balloon in size. In that endless moment, Bo understood the face of death flying towards them.

It was, mostly, Earth. There was a bit of Stone—the plaza had these orderly stone tiles that Bo had always felt were just a little bit boring. The park bench was Wood, and it reminded her of fun adventures. Some of the dirt attached to the boulder wasn’t Earth, but Mud. Gravity coiled around it, as it coiled around all things, but it had so much stuff to grab on to here. There were hints of Metal—the nails in the bench, some miniscule flecks of metal ore in the ground. But, there was something else.

On one edge of the boulder, there was a handprint. It was stained with every element, but it felt malicious—No, it’s not just regular old malicious, it’s Malice. This is Malice! The boulder had been thrown with evil intent, by a creature who couldn’t do things without malicious intent. The weirdest thing was, Bo knew it was an esoteric element even if she had never seen it before—it was simply that strong. This grip of Malice was somehow guiding the boulder, ensuring it would end up in someone’s life-or-death scenario, certain to cause misery or chaos in some way or another. With that esoteric element plastered on it, it didn’t even need the forethought of aim or focus—it was simply going to cause trouble.

So, Jingyi Bo focused here first. She took the Malice into her soul, felt it burn her meridians on the way—I’ll be paying for that one later!—only for it to be slurped up by the world index. Neatly filed away on a metaphysical shelf, it couldn’t hurt her. Still, the boulder was a tangible object already in motion—it was still going to collide with them! There was very little that Bo could easily turn this into that wouldn’t hurt them more, so she considered her options.

The Metal could be peeled away to Fire—bad idea—or Earth, so Bo turned it to the later. The Wood could become Water or Earth—Bo chose the former, hoping it would hurt less. Stone had to become Earth, because the nearest neighbours were Force and Acid, which Bo wasn’t willing to gamble on either being more helpful. There wasn’t much that could be done about the Gravity, given the fact that the stuff was always wildly persistent, so now Bo had simplified the problem down to a lump of slightly damp Earth.

It occurred to her that she was thinking this through awfully fast—there was no way her reflexes were this good, and it felt like she had an eternity to think it over. Was there some benevolent force aiding her? Some mental technique she had finally figured out in those last few moments? Just a trick of the narrative pacing? Don’t ask me, I just live here!

But the thought also came to mind that she really should just let the elements do what they like to do most—turn into Mud. With a thought, the huge mass of Earth and the little bit of Water turned into a big wave of Mud. Now, this isn’t really much better, but it’s manageable! The transformation had caused the boulder to expand into more of a mud-bomb, the sky blotted out by the size of the thing. Wait, expansion, that’s it! I just need it to spread out more!

Just moving a chunk at this speed was proving too tricky—If I could’ve just made a big hole in it, I would’ve already done so!—so Bo resorted to a slightly different technique. It was mostly a curiosity that Bo had realised at some point while playing around that had never been particularly useful to her. When elements turned from more solid, tangible objects into runny liquids, they kind of spread out a little. Then, if you turned those liquids into more ethereal, intangible substances—like smoke or steam—they expanded more. They did the exact opposite the other way, which was part of what made building with the Endless Steps technique so annoying, but here…

Right next to Mud was Water. Above Mud was Wood. Rotating across Water, through Wood, replacing Earth with Air…was Mist. Such a maneuver was untenably complicated unless Bo had a reference material, but here she was clinging to the master of Mist. Makoto had been concealing them with her mists almost the entire way out of the place, and the vapour still lingered. There was even some floating within her aura—the perfect blueprint. All she had to do was perform a complicated transformation at extreme range within a matter of seconds. No pressure.

Bo could feel the Earth entering her system, running through her formations and being substituted for Air. What she didn’t have within her, Bo drew from the literal air around her—though this had the unfortunate side-effect of covering her skin in dust from excess Earth. Then, she realised a small problem—the Yang component of Wood, and Mist. A tiny chiming feeling in her dantian resolved in ejecting the mass of Malice she had incorporated into the world index, including the horrible feeling of it merely existing within her. A segment of meridians she wasn’t even sure she had got to work deconstructing it into all manner of weird stuff—but mostly a pile of…ugh. Yin.

But, wait! Yin is just a single step—through the octahedron, sure, but a step all the same—removed from Yang! Into the converting formations it went, and out came a boatload of Yang. Again, whatever that is! The mass of Mud looming above her became a rather more threatening chunk of Wood, but not for long. Channeling the Air through it caused a rippling hole to open in the middle. Bo wouldn’t have time for the whole thing, but just enough was just enough—the centre of the mass simply evaporated like steam, and the world came tumbling down.

The chunk, once a mass of Earth and Stone, then a wave of Mud, now a slab of terrifyingly solid Wood, landed directly around Bo and Makoto with a hideous thud that shook the ground and implanted the mass into the ground below. A steaming, misty hole in the centre revealed a surprised Izumi Makoto, and a shivering Jingyi Bo, still holding one hand in the air while the rest of her limbs clung for dear life.

“Jingyi. I’m.” Makoto blinked a few times. “I’m certain that what you did was. Um. Very impressive. But. Can you…stop holding onto me so tight? O-One might get the wrong idea.”

Bo let go. She fell on the ground with a thud, realising belatedly that she had no plan for staying upright and that she had spent all of her mental energies on saving their lives. Scrambling to her feet and desperately trying to hide her blush, Bo simply cleared her throat as some sort of acknowledgement, or to make noise that didn’t sound like ‘I actually rather enjoyed clinging on to you, and would like to do so more in the future’.

“Wait, shouldn’t we still be running?”

“Crap! Uh, come here!” Makoto scooped Bo back up again and got right back to fleeing. In no time at all, they were at the edge of the shield formation—or, where it should have been—only to find their friends waiting for them. Makoto put Bo back down in a hurry.

“I was just carrying her because she runs so slow–”

“You see it was a tactical maneuver–”

“Y’all’re so cute together!” Hizashi Kokoro’s smile could never be stopped. “Y’all should be a thing, y’know?”

“But I’m not–”

“But I’m not–”

“You’re not?”

“You’re not?”

“I mean, maybe–”

“Could you stop interr–”

“Hehe.”

“YOUNI!”

The voice of reason was, inexplicably, Chao Da.

“Hey, we really gotta keep going. I found a few other people on the way, y’know? You can kiss once we’re not looking, ‘cause we’ve got company.”

Izumi and Bo blushed heavily, but they were curious. Looking past the regular group, there were three more additions. There was the ever-so-punchable former librarian, Seo In-Soo, who was currently being hefted over the shoulder of his vaguely-tiger-like half-spirit girlfriend, Pyeon Sa-Rang. The two of them were keeping an eye out on both the sky and the surrounding area, though Bo couldn’t help but notice that Pyeon was stuffing her face with an assortment of fried goods. The crunching almost distracted her from the sight of the final guest.

Dressed in torn, colourful robes, his massive furred mitts perched grumpily on his hips, his black-and-white fur was distinctly marred by dirt and debris. Despite the circumstances, Bo hadn’t expected to run into him here. In fact, she couldn’t control herself. Pointing, she shouted.

“P-P-P-Pa-Panda man!”

“It’s Pan Da-Han, you ingrate!”