Using Brella as an example, Lya took only the slightest nibble off of the Yin and Yang leaves. She closed her eyes and waited for the spiritual energies of the leaves to attack her Soul-Ward. From the many talks she’d heard describing the process, it would happen naturally. All that was expected of her was to limit the attack in order to keep the freed up Soul-Space as little, as central and as circular as possible.

The smaller the Soul-Space, the easier it would be to condense Qi inside it for the Core forming stage of cultivation. The other aspect that had to be watched was the positioning of the Soul-Space inside the Soul-Ward. The more central it was, the easier it would be to later control Qi inside. They’d heard of Sects that were against such a practice, preferring to place the Core elsewhere in the body in order to hide it from possible threats and enemies, but at this stage Lya would be happy if she could have a Soul-Space at all.

She took a deep breath and waited for the process to begin. They’d described it as lightning, fire or water in the veins. It varied from person to person. But all she felt as she waited was a certain heaviness spreading inside of her. She tried to grab a hold of it, wondering if it was part of the variance from person to person, but nothing she tried could bring it under her grasp.

Sweat was running down her face by the time she realized what must be happening. She’d taken the Yin and Yang energies out of proportion! Opening her eyes Lya took another nibble out of one leaf, hoping it was the one she’d taken in wrong proportion. There was a fifty-fifty chance, it was risky, but riskier still was doing nothing. If she didn’t act fast she would lose her cultivation base at best and die at worst.

She just felt more heaviness, it was spreading.

“Lya! Are you alright!?” she heard Brella yelling at the corner of her conscience.

Lya blinked her friend out of focus and tried to think. She needed to act fast, but she’d already forgotten which leaf she’d bitten out of. Crying in desperation she decided her best course of action was to take both leaves whole, it would destroy her chance at forming a good sized core, her Soul-Space would be too big, but at least it would guarantee the right quantity of Yin and Yang. She’d selected the leaves carefully, so she knew they were about the same size. It was the only option she could see.

Closing her eyes, she stuck both leaves in her mouth and chewed quickly, waiting for the energies to stabilize.

They didn’t.

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The heaviness only grew a thousandfold. The air around her felt like a boulder crushing her to the ground. Tears ran down her face as she spasmed. She was losing control of her body, and her conscience was blacking in and out. She couldn’t grab onto any real shred of reasoning, but in the midst of her oblivion, she had a moment of perfect clarity.

“Two Yang leaves,” some part of her mind announced. “You’ve taken two Yang leaves. You need two Yin leaves to balance it out.”

Not sure where she got the energy from, she crawled to the Yin bag and took two leaves out. Not caring what size they were, she stuffed them in her mouth and chewed. The relief was immediate, all the heaviness she was feeling was being lifted off of her at incredible speed. If the Yang leaves felt like heaviness before, the Yin leaves felt like lightness and they balanced each other perfectly.

Tears of relief ran down her face, when the heaviness subsided she thought she might survive the incident after all. Before she could celebrate too much though, something felt off. It felt like pieces inside the most inner part of her being were falling apart. Like the cracks the heaviness had left behind had fissured her entire Soul-Ward and it was all falling apart now. The most destroyed part of her Soul-Ward collapsed, the one right behind her bellybutton. She fell over and puked a black mass.

Another part fell and she puked more black tar.

It tasted vile, but she didn’t care. It had to come out, and with each piece that got torn apart from inside she puked some more. The fissured in her Soul-Ward kept growing and at first she could do nothing to stop it. She felt as they grew from her belly outwards, leaving her body hollow. As much as she tried to strop the fissures from growing, she could only prevent the thinest layer on the outlines of her body.

The Soul-Ward that touched her skin was easier to command and when she willed the fissures to stop there, they did… mostly. In some places the Soul-Ward left felt paper-thin, almost non-existent, but it held. She coughed another piece of black phlegm and was done. Her throat felt like it was shredded to pieces, her whole body felt like it had been buried by an avalanche… but she was alive. She was still breathing

“L-Lya? What happened?” Brella asked, her voice faltering as she carefully approached her friend.

“I took two Yang leaves… my cultivation base is destroyed.”

“Two Yang leaves? But how? That makes no sense… we were so careful…”

Through hooded eyes Lya watched her friend blanch as she looked between the bags.

“I know how this must look Lya! Two Yang leaves means that the leaf you got out of my bag was Yang aspected… but you have to believe me! I only picked from the Yin side of the mountain! I swear it!” She held her chest in an oath of honesty.

Lya closed her eyes, exhausted.

“I know,” Lya answered in resignation, “it’s why I took the two Yin leaves from your pouch without hesitation… I’m tired. I am going to rest for a bit now.”

Lya let the blackness of unconsciousness take her. She’d worry about what this all would mean when she woke up.