The first day of classes found Daphne among the tiered seats, looking down into an open air arena. Their instructor was a man in his forties with a great beard and a cape that kept billowing despite the lack of breeze. Ten paces from him were several straw dummies dressed in farmer hats and tattered clothes more akin to rags.

“This year,” Hystor Gerard began in his soft tone, though his words carried themselves to Daphne’s ears with ease, “we shall be moving on from the theory of the four classical elements to focus more on the practical applications of our spellcraft.”

His words caused her lips to contort into a heavy frown—not because she wished to know more theory, she knew plenty of scriptures and secrets already, but because he had said there were four elements when there ought to be five.

The rest of his speech was uninspired—some talk about changes to this year’s study. It amounted to having a lot more free time to use as they pleased and to explore things which interested them, all euphemisms for “cultivate on your own time, you should know how by now”. All quite sensible.

Gerard drew his sword, a thing of beaten bronze inlaid with a cursive script. They were too far and too small to make out even with Daphne’s sharp eyes, but she suspected they were array formations of some sort. With an exertion of will, she called upon her qi sense to witness workings beyond the material world, and what she saw shook her to her very dantian core.

The sword’s edge had turned into a scalding red as qi coated it, but it was not just any qi. The hystor had honed it with pure yang fire, which was a powerful elemental technique, and he did so with contemptuous ease. If that were merely it, Daphne would have gained great respect for the old monster instructing them, but he was also utilizing earth qi at the same time! To master two elements marked one as a genius among geniuses!

But it did not end there.

With the slightest twitch of his sword, his killing intent was unleashed. Daphne had been through countless bloody battles and had many experiences where she'd had a close brush with death. She had no fear even when she faced armies or demons. But right now, even she could not help but tremble with morbid awe before the pressure their instructor was releasing. It was as if he was a bloodthirsty beast that wanted to tear them to pieces.

In the time of a half-breath, wind blades curved out of the air before him, dicing the paltry rags on the training dummies. Not even a scrap of cloth held onto any of them, yet not a single straw was cut. What precise control too! Indeed, if Daphne were to recount this story, it would take more time to utter two words than the actual execution of his technique.

“Water, earth, fire, and air,” Hystor Gerard said. “You all have spent the past four years learning how to command each of these elements by themselves, but now you will command all of them together.”

Daphne’s jaw nearly dropped. Only nearly, for she was a lady, and it wouldn’t be proper to look impressed with anything. She had to be like ice.

Wind was not part of the five classical elements, and it sounded as if the qi here was understood as the eight trigrams, though they were missing half the concepts like thunder, mountain, lake, and heaven. Still, she would not dare question their knowledge now after such a display of power.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

To command four such concepts at once … did he have some divine bloodline? Was he a hero of his own journey?

Perhaps most shocking of all to Daphne was that none of those around her, not even her cousin Blaise, looked surprised by his declaration. As if all present had already come to expect this, as if this were normal.

“You have learned power, but now you will learn control,” Hystor Gerard continued in the High Speech. “Power without control is nothing. What use is it to blow up mountains to crush an ant? If you burn farmland to kill an army, have you not harmed yourself as well? If you must swing your sword, swing once and be done with it.”

Daphne grasped some truth behind that. After all, one did not use three moves to end a doggy life when one was enough.

“The hystors magic is quite impressive,” Daphne whispered to her cousin.

“It’s the same as always though?” Blaise said. “Any graduate would be expected to be equally as capable.”

“And many of us graduate?” she asked.

Blaise gave her a queer look, but humored her with a response nevertheless. “We’re stoneborn, Daphne. It’s expected that we do. Among the strawborn, perhaps failing would not be seen as a failing, but one cannot even inherit their family’s estate without passing the trials.”

That was only good sense. An arrogant young master could not become patriarch if he were not strong himself, and a hero could not ascend to the heavens without many trials. Thus, this sect emulated the ways of the universe and the great dao in order to prepare them for their life.

The lecture concluded with an exhibition match, and the hystor called on Prince Hadrian but also the young lord of the House Eminent Morgan, to whom the Greenglades and all the Everbloom swore an oath of fealty too. Lord Martyn Morgan was in his last year in the school at eight and ten, and many beauties sought to ensnare him in an engagement before he departed.

Both young men drew runesteel swords as whispers broke out in the arena.

“Their magic is quite formidable,” Daphne said, taking great care to use the terminology of these people. “Prince Hadrian has called on a great deal of wind, while his opponent favors earth.”

Blaise glanced at her. “How could you possibly know that? They haven’t even struck the first blow yet.”

She raised a brow at him. “Because I have eyes. It’s plain as day to me.”

Then they exploded into violence, to her eyes like two arching stars set to collide. Only Prince Hadrian stopped dead eight paces away, pivoting with his leg as he unleashed the wind in his sword into a slicing gale.

Martyn seemed to have anticipated the move just as Daphne had, charging through it as earth coated the leather armor he wore for the day. Amazingly enough, the wind did not even leave a scratch on him.

“Fire now for the prince,” Daphne said, as the qi sharpened the sword with an otherworldly edge.

“Fire sharpens, wind lengthens, earth hardens,” Blaise murmured, no longer looking at the exhibition below. It sounded like a chant.

The exhibition ended in a draw soon after, arranged no doubt so that neither party would lose face before the crowd.

A gust of wind blew by. “How did you know what they were going to do?” Blaise asked again, in a lower voice now and using not the High Speech which every aristocrat knew, but the Edenian language favored by the peasants of the southern Everbloom.

“Like I said, I saw it.”

“Keep your voice down,” Blaise hissed, eyes darting around. “My silencing spells are not the best, and someone could still steal our words. Have you discovered a new spell? Something that lets you see the deeper workings of magic?”

“Are you saying you cannot see as I do?” Daphne asked.

“No one can,” Blaise said.

That was … troubling. Qi sensing was one of the first things one learned to do, before even condensation began. How could you concentrate what you did not know was there after all? And all those present were surely already in various stages of qi condensation, so all of them ought to be able to see as she was.

Still, it was not to her knowledge some special scripture, nor could she say she had discovered what every cultivator knew how to do in her old life.

“Later. Don’t speak of this to anyone,” Blaise whispered, as the wind around them died down.

When Daphne’s attention returned to the hystor below, he was speaking of a tournament. Ah, something familiar at last! Surely she would win a great prize by winning that competition.