It was likely the least efficient way of training that could possibly be conceived. There was a lot of downtime in which to think, and Dan’s thoughts kept returning to the fact that there must be a better way to do this. As Hyun Soon lifted himself from Dan’s bed, still winded from Dan’s punch, Dan imagined that he was thinking something similar.

“Does it feel like warm sand yet?” Hyun Soon asked, wheezing a little as he tried to take a deep breath and start the cycling of his mana again. Dan felt the mana in his core sliding around. It definitely felt a little like sand, but it didn’t feel warm. The flimsy gauntlets that he crafted with the mana, a literally pale imitation of Hyun Soon’s crimson armguards, were all he could manage at the moment.

Each evening, Hyun Soon had been sneaking to his room and the two had been developing Dan’s technique in secret. It had been slow going but the progress was clear. It wasn’t as far along as Dan may have liked, but Hyun Soon sported his easy smile as the translucent pink gauntlets maintained their form for the longest time Dan had managed yet.

“It’s more like beads of glass,” Dan said, shaking his head, “there’s no heat in them.”

“Shall we try again?” Hyun Soon took a deep breath, his confident words being betrayed by a waver in his voice. As solid as the broad boy was, it still hurt to be punched in your core, and the mana extraction that Dan was capable of also left one breathless. It was already a weapon, but if Dan didn’t understand the edges of his new blade, he would cut himself before he ever defeated an enemy.

“I think we need to try something different.” Dan sat and pondered. He reached up under his hood and touched, gently, his scarred eyes. There were facets to Dan’s power that he still didn’t understand. He opened a journal which he had begun keeping, Xiaomei had been right that writing things down would help Dan. He had never had much opportunity to write but he found it calming now that he did.

For the most part, Dan described the feeling of his mana and his theories on why it did what it did. For the rambling, hopeful writing of a fourteen year old boy, Dan felt it did a good job of explaining an up-to-now unheard of technique. Dan knew that some of the more valuable texts in the whole world were penned by masters discovering new abilities or applications for their mana. It gave him a slight thrill to, perhaps arrogantly, think that the scrappy journal he held in his hands could sit amongst them someday.

“I agree,” Hyun Soon rubbed his sternum tenderly, “something different would be great. Any ideas?”

“Well,” Dan found the page he was looking for, leaving his finger there while looking at his friend, “I’ve actually used the technique twice, right? One against Po Daiyu intentionally, but I only knew I could because I accidently did the same with Guan Fa Lian.” His mind had slowly changed the events of the Sasin forest into something of a fond memory, Fa Lian had become someone Dan wistfully wanted to spend time with again with him noticing the change.

The page that Dan had held onto was the passage that he had written with Xiaomei a few nights previously. It detailed the fight with the puppetmaster and the events leading up to it. Dan found what he was looking for, words he kept thinking of when he looked at the bruised Hyun Soon’s posture. Fa Lian had been healed, hadn’t she?

“What are you doing? How did you stop me?” Guan Fa Lian’s words echoed in Dan’s mind. He had told her to stop using her mana and her mana had stopped. That definitely wasn’t the same as what he had done to Po Daiyu, nor what he had been attempting with Hyun Soon. What was the difference, though?

Intent? Could it be something so simple? Dan heard Park Man-Shik’s gruff voice telling him that the simple answer was often the right one. When Dan fought Po Daiyu, his intention had been to take her mana. Once he knew it was a possibility, it made sense to try it in a fight. Even now, he was trying to replicate that feeling.

Except when Dan had interacted with the void-like core and annihilating mana of Guan Fa Lian, he had been trying to help her. As he saw Hyun Soon now, an unconscious tension in his muscles at Dan’s every move, Dan wanted to help him too. Maybe that would be enough.

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Dan gathered himself into his stance, feet planted at shoulder width. Hyun Soon sucked in a sharp breath, but issued no complaint and steeled himself for the incoming blow. Dan let him, it would actually be a better test if Hyun Soon wasn’t sure what was going on. Dan condensed a ball of mana and aimed it towards his friend, drawing in his attention and focusing only on Hyun Soon. As always, no matter how dense Dan could make his mana within himself, it splash harmlessly against everything.

The mana did its job though, as Hyun Soon’s core lit up in Dan’s vision. The soft orange glow of a warm coal encompassed the boy’s frame. Dan saw him far more clearly than he ever could with eyes now. It was like seeing his soul. Dan suffered only a moment’s hesitation, a flinch of panic as he remembered the psychic combat he endured when this had happened with Fa Lian. He somehow knew that Hyun Soon’s soul held no hidden demons, like Fa Lian’s core had.

Instead of a palm strike to the core, Dan gave Hyun Soon a friendly fist bump right in his centre.

Perhaps it was the jump to square stage and the further understanding of his mana that had allowed it, perhaps it was simply that Hyun Soon’s mana was not as violent as Fa Lian’s, but this time Dan could see the process in full. The flames of Hyun Soon’s mana, not scorching but a soothing warmth flowed easily from Dan’s knuckles into his mana channels.

At the same time, though it was normally as invisible as the air, Dan saw his own mana. He almost gasped. It was… beautiful. Like stars in a crystal clear river. As Hyun Soon’s mana entered Dan, his own ran to fill the space. It was working, Dan didn’t even need to get confirmation. Nearly instantly, Dan saw his mana join with Hyun Soon’s core and sit pulsing in the middle.

Dan enjoyed the feeling of the new mana. It moved like the hot water in a well deserved bath, running up Dan’s spine, relaxing in its calmness. Like sunlight through leaves. Like warm sand. He let himself understand the alien mana within and waited for it to settle into a place on his core. It was not a sequestered section of his core, but instead Hyun Soon’s mana simply mingled with the water’s of Dan’s own, rocks parting and directing a river.

“Did it work? It feels like it did!” Hyun Soon’s excitement caught Dan like a spark on gunpowder. It had worked. Dan flexed his arms and instead of forcing the mana into the shape he imagined it needed, he let Hyun Soon’s mana do as it wished. The mana itself knew what form it enjoyed, what shape it most easily melded into. Like plates of armour locking all the way to his shoulders, Dan felt the crimson armguards appear in full. They were heavier than he expected.

“It worked!” Dan smiled happily at Hyun Soon. Even though Dan himself didn’t need to look at someone to see them, he still turned his face to his friend to express his happiness. Just like Dan, the other boy had a huge smile on his face. Before he could forget the feeling, the sensation and what it had required to make the process work in this way, Dan began journaling. He was loath to let the armguards drop, but he hardly needed the armour to start writing.

As Dan released the mana, he felt and perceived it disappearing inside himself. That was also useful intel so he made a note of that. While they had been covering his arms, Dan hadn’t felt as though there were any risk of them dissipating but when he enforced his will on the mana to relinquish the technique, he lost concentration. Dan wrote down everything that Hyun Soon had to say about the experience himself, though most of it Dan could have guessed.

Hyun soon said he felt reinvigorated. The extent of the “healing” that Dan’s mana was doing was unknown, but he felt at least as good as he had when they had started.

“Like it never happened, like you just came into the room?” Dan asked, looking for clarification.

“No, Dan… I feel like I’ve had a good night’s sleep. Like I could start the day.” It was true, Hyun Soon had lost all fatigue and sense of tiredness about him. Dan wished he could do that to himself, stifling a yawn. The technique itself hadn’t drained Dan much that he could tell, but they had been going for hours. The excitement of the breakthrough was one thing, but Dan needed rest.

“Well,” Dan said, chuckling and jovial for the first time in a while, “I hope it doesn’t affect your sleep cycle. It must be late though, you should be leaving. They must be ready to let me leave soon.” There had really been no hint of what was to become of Dan, his last meeting with any of the Guan family elders or higher-ups had been the night of his conversation with Po Shang.

“You’re right,” Hyun Soon agreed, “I still have to tell Mei everything.” Dan couldn’t help himself this time, not now it was just him and Hyun Soon.

“It’s Mei, now is it? And she’s off waiting for you, is she?” Dan was teasing, but he also wanted to poke his friend. Dan had heard this kind of gossip daily since entering the Jiaoduo, and now was the first time he could join in himself. As serious as Dan’s situation was, as exciting as the prospects his new ability had shown, this subject was of just as much importance.

“I mean- You know… Xiaomei is just a bit… long to say every time.” Hyun Soon’s eyes were both somewhat embarrassed and, somehow, suspicious. “And no, she’s not waiting for me.” The boy huffed. “She’s just… waiting to hear how things went.”

Dan kept a straight face for as long as he could. Honestly, he was impressed with the ten seconds or so he managed it before he guffawed. Hyun Soon told him to shut up, shoved him playfully and said a final goodbye before quickly shuffling out of the room. Dan fell onto his cot and continued giggling to himself for a while, even after Hyun Soon disappeared from his sight.

The thrill of a breakthrough combined with Dan’s true exhaustion - both from the continued, consistent cycling of his mana and the fact he hadn’t slept in over a week - caught up to Dan like an apex predator. He was the prey, and the blanket of sleep was his hunter. It caught him quickly, and without even time to have his usual anxiety about it, Dan was falling into dreams.